*8 Things I always Take on Vacation

1) books.  On a two week trip I will bring four, buy one or two and read about three.

2) journals. My current journal to write down my memorites because I don’t really take pictures, an extra journal because I will most likely fill the one I’m already working on, and little journals to take notes, write directions or phone numbers and keep track of my spending.

3) extra Ziploc bags.  For leftover food or soap

4) Envriosax.  So handy for those extra things I accumulate. 

5) jeans.  I spent three months without a pair and regretted it…even in the desert.

6) hair straighter.  I get stressed easily and doing my hair always makes me feel better.  It’s like a magic wand.

7) a treat.  On this vacation to Canada it was a bag of dried cherries.

8) my blanket.  Down filled, suede covered…I’ve never been away without it and it’s light enough to pack.

 Be inspired by Magpie Girl and join *8 Things yourself!

Thank you Fernie, BC.

It’s the end of June already.  I’ve written so much and yet put up nothing!  I found my inspiration late in the month in Fernie, BC which turns out is my second favorite place in North America, just after Seattle. 

My quest for new adventures has taken me to Canada this month.  I came for a wedding and am staying two weeks.  I’ve seen Calgary, Edmonton, Fernie and tomorrow I head back to Calgary for a few days with a day trip to Banff planed.  I’ve seen some great friends from the New Zealand days and today went on a beautiful hike in the mountains, but I didn’t take a lot of pictures.  Pictures have never been something I’ve been good at.  I tend to write what I experience.  Memories are more to me than seeing a place through a camera. 

Yesterday while exploring Fernie’s board shops, the Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory and a great teashop I also stumbled into the most dangerous of places—a bookstore.  I wondered to the back and found three books:  Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott, Steven King’s book on writing and Old Friend from Far Away by Natalie Goldberg.  All three are great books on the writing process, Bird by Bird being my favorite book I read last year.  I bought Goldberg’s book.  She winds you through your memories and helps you remember intricate details so that you can write your own memoir.  My goal in a usual week is to write about ten hours.  I usually do about six and in that time I put out about four pages of stuff I will go back to someday or post on here.  Yesterday in one sitting using this book and the serene setting of Fernie I wrote about nine pages I think are really good.  One of the exercises was to write for three minutes about a memory connected to sound.  Here is what I wrote:

            “I thought it was early to be up. The clock said it was 5:30am but it wasn’t the alarm I was hearing.  It hurt my ears.  I know what it is—the apartment next to me is empty and the smoke alarm batteries are going dead.  Its sending out a warning that if somebody doesn’t change them we could all lose our lives in a fire.  But then why is it getting louder?  Why is there a now a chorus of smoke alarms?  Surely all the batteries cannot be dying at the same time?  But then, surely my home cannot be on fire?  I ate breakfast before the smoke came through the crack under the door.”

            I also must update you on my news things for the month, Canada being the most obvious.  I did pretty well this month! On top of my new things I also set myself the goal that I would get myself into Seattle Central Community College before I left for the great wild north.  I took my placement test, registered for classes, proved my Washington State residency and took care of financial aid all in one week.  Looks like I’m set. 

Here’s how I filled the ongoing goals:

New Things of June

Café: Vivace on Capitol Hill

Restaurant: Queen Sheba, Capitol Hill

Thing: Glassblowing at the Fremont Art Walk, and The Moore Inside Out

Books: 1) The View From Planet Earth, Vincent Crown 2) All the Pretty Horses, Cormick McCarthy 3) The Alchemist, Paul Coehl 4) Thirst, Mary Oliver, 5) How We Are Hungry, Dave Eggers, 6) Through Painted Deserts, Donald Miller

New Things!

The year is half over already!  I set some hefty goals for myself in February.  Two things inspired my goals for this year.  The first was a small, but significant breakdown regarding a heartbreak and the dilemma of non-fair-trade socks*.  The other was a friend’s husband’s blog, The Art of Nonconformity, by Chris Guillebeau (which I highly recommend!).

            Mostly my goal was to be happy where I am, content in the space I dwell in—physically, spiritually and emotionally.  They involve money savings goals and reading goals.  Mostly they were an effort to feed the travel monster that often takes over my brain, but also learn how to love the place I am in, which for now is Seattle.

2009 Goals…the tally so far

One New Café Each Month

February: Irwin’s, Wallingford

March: Zeitgiest, Pioneer Square

April: The Crumpet Shop, Pike Place Market

May: Elliot Bay Café, Pioneer Square

 

One New Restaurant Each Month

February: failed!

March: Canterbury Inn, Capitol Hill

April: Fishermen’s on the Pier, Downtown

May: Homegrown, Fremont

 

One New Thing Each Month

February: Volunteer Park and Greenhouse

March: went to a play “The Mistakes Madeline Made” featuring Taylor Maxwell (co-worker and friend)

April: Seattle Underground Tour & Ye Old Curiosity Shop

May: Discovery Park (same day the bear was seen...)

 

Read 50 Books This Year…count as of today: 14

A River Runs Through It, Norm Maclean (read if and fall in love…I’m just warning you)

If Grace Is True (did not enjoy at all)

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, Jonathan Safran Foer (best book of my year so far, maybe my life)

The Audacity of Hope, Barak Obama (slow going, but made me want to be in politics, HA!)

“Vanity Fair”, Feb Issue (new president meets pages littered with pictures of a young Paul Newman…brilliant!)

Spilling Over, Sabrina Ward Harrison (under the topic of faith, “talked to $*@(#, survived.”)

Mountains Beyond Mountains, Tracey Kidder (made me want to do something with my life, like change the world)

Blue Like Jazz, Donald Miller (an oldie but a goodie…more religious than I remember but a wonderful bridge to expanding faith and thought.)

The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell (SO GOOD! Big Bird will never cease to teach me new and valuable lessons about life.)

Letters to a Young Poet, Rainer Maria Rilke (I think I will read this book every day for the rest of my life)

In Defense of Food, Michael Pollan (by day three I had finished half the book and completely changed the way I eat)

Blink, Malcolm Gladwell (amazing! Again! Loved it from the first word, which is what the book is all about.)

A Moveable Feast, Ernest Hemingway (this might actually be my favorite book ever.  It changes my life every time I read it.  “My words would become something that would have to be destroyed and sometimes, if possible, me with them”)

Grace (Eventually), Anne Lamott (no better way to explain my love for her than saying I call her my Guru.  We all have so much to learn about gentleness, love and chaos.  She embraces them all.)

Other goals for my life this year include but are not limited to…

One trip out of the United States of America: Canada Extravaganza ’09! June 21^st-July 5^th.

Getting my health figured out: Kidney stones, check!; cavities, processing; Migraines, procrastinating; Wisdom teeth, end of the year. 

Starting College: procrastinating…

Take up four new hobbies and loving old ones: mostly I’ve just been focusing on writing and reading, which are really all I like to do anyway. 

Starting a blog and letting the world see this part of me:  Obviously, this is well underway. 

There are seven months left of this new year!  Get started on your own list!

--

*ps.  Chris' wife, and a friend of mine, Jolie, is an artist of many mediums.  She knits socks and I couldn't decide if I should by the fair trade socks shipped to Seattle from South America or buy some from her.  The dilemma came in when I realized that in order to pay her a livable wage for the socks they would cost 100's of dollars!  This should not have stressed me out, but it did.  

 

The Sad Irony of Cyndi Lauper, as displayed by Greg Laswell

Coming of Age

27.May.2009

“I tell you that I have a long way to go before I am—where one begins…”

–Rilke

 

“Not long ago I was looking at photos of myself at various ages and weights—way before the neckular deterioration began, way before the fanny pack of menopause—and I could see how gorgeous I must have looked to everyone else…Twenty years! Why did it take me so long to discover what a dish I was?”

–Anne Lamott

 

I’m finally starting to feel like an adult.  I’ll be twenty-five in three weeks.  The other day I bought a green shirt.  I put it on, did my hair and looked in the mirror.  It was the first time in my life that I actually looked like an adult, really, truly.  I’m not sure why I’ve never felt that way before; I’ve often felt a little mature for my age.   The moment seemed magical.  This shirt is the color of a freshly painted kelly-green tractor and my eyes reflect it perfectly.  I was wearing my favorite eye shadow.  My hair was wavy and pulled back loosely, my neck was framed by a pair of beautifully artistic earrings I bought at a market in New Zealand.   I was showing off my newly acquired sun-kissed (burn) glow. About four days a week I go through my twenty-minute beauty ritual, which includes actually washing my face, applying light make-up and not hiding my hair with a headband.  I guess this was one of those days where I cared enough to put on the earrings.

There I found myself, standing in my bathroom staring at this woman in the mirror.  She was no longer a young woman, no longer a girl. She had lived many lives, left things behind and had many adventures ahead of her.  She was someone I felt that I had known once, or would know in the future, but in this moment she was a stranger.  I paused for a moment in front of my mirror and stood up a little straighter.  This woman looking back at me had a glimmer of wisdom, endurance and other things that continue to remain unnamed but add up to beautiful.   She held herself with true confidence and I was startled when I learned that I was her. 

I’ve read a lot of books, been on plenty of airplanes and endured some big stuff, but never have I fully seen myself as an adult.  I don’t know that I’ve ever felt really at home in my own skin, but in this brief moment I did.  I haven’t been able to shake the feeling. It feels like it’s haunting me. This adult-looking-ness is new to me. I just don’t feel “there” yet, even though I don’t know where “there” is.   I’ve been walking taller, standing a little prouder but still something in me is screaming at myself to slow down!  Something is telling me to just stop, to just rest.  In my heart I want to pace myself, allow myself to learn, make mistakes, to endure the moments as they happen with all their messy emotions and unnecessary dramas.    I want to embrace being a twenty-something but for so long I’ve been trying to achieve forty and feeling very far behind.  I think I would rather gather around the women who find themselves truthfully at their age and learn from them what only they can teach me. 

For now I think I will embrace the twenty-five year old woman I see looking back at me through my very own eyes and I will do my best to record my twenty-something dilemmas so that when it is time I will pass on the wisdom I learned about beauty and love and self and life and God.  I will live at peace with now and embrace the surprising beauty as I come of age. 

Remember

26 May 2009

I must remember …

Not to turn my faith into something it is not about

Not to struggle with what should be resting

To keep my head up

To sing the songs I love most

My creator

My creation

That everything is meaningless

That there is more beauty than darkness

I must remember to breathe.  

I Will

22 May 2009

I will sit in the park, at the lake

I will stare at the mountains and their snow.

I will read my words

I will read the words of others

And I will live in love with them.

I will enjoy this day

Dwell in it’s silence

And be haunted by it’s beauty

I will get lost in the blue,

Sky that surrounds me

Today I will love all that is God

And be loved by all that is God

I will.