happy friday.

i love today.

my first bike ride since the storm was quite glorious.

and both yoga classes i taught today were full of heart & soul.

we are off to the gym & then our second spanish session.

seattle is basking in her greyness.

life is good.

hi there.

the weekend was perfection.

heart-opening, smile-inducing yoga.

the whole weekend with my husband. it had been way too long.

a swim in the lake.

a humid hike.

joy.

sun in my soul.

the sun came back! oh yes it did. and i am feeling it. the weekend was lovely.


i
meditated.
rode my bike.
walked the dogs.
played in the garden.
cooked up yummy foods.
watched princess mononoke.
listed new goodies in the shop.
ate a boca burger with the kids next door.

bliss.

a prayer for my parents.

Their house is partially underwater. My grandma has been evacuated from her nursing home. They are okay.

For all of those struggling through this:

May you be safe.
May you be sound.
May you find your way back home with a smile in your heart.

*
I take back everything I said about being bummed about the grey in Seattle.

I need a shot of Southern California... or Mexico.

Dears, I don't mean to sound like a total drag, but...dang! I'm ready for summer. It has been cold as heck here for the past month, and I need some heat!! To make myself feel better, I planned out a perfect so-cal outfit for a Saturday of fabulousness.


Meanwhile, here is what I'm actually wearing these days.

The return of the light is almost upon us.

Dears,

Although I am truly enamored by the Pacific Northwest, I do tend to begin to crave some sunshine right around the Winter Solstice. For this reason, I am working on a piece that is a total ball of sun.

Here is a sample of my latest obsession: sewing together little journals. It is so satisfying to hear the needle pierce paper.


Oh, and P.S., I had some prints of this piece made. They are totally yum and will be going to the shoppe shortly.

xoxo

The wind.

The wind is blowing something fierce in Seattle this morning. When I first woke up, the words "imposssible wind" came to mind, but when I stepped outside and experienced its soft warmth, I ditched the impossible from its title. How can you experience the wind visually? By looking at the uniform waves it makes in the puddles. By watching it dance with my baby-dog's floofy tail. By taking a moment to notice the blades of grass that have managed to grow somewhere sheltered and compare the morning they are having to those without the luxury of a wind-break.

Photo: Washed up Leaf by Sharon Mollerus (*clairity* on flickr). (Used under a creative commons license.)

Droplets.

Dears,

It snowed this weekend! Can you believe it? One minute I was smiling on a sunshiney walk with the family, the next I was staring into a snowing, blowing introduction to December. The snow stuck around until Sunday morning, and then the big, fatty droplets of rain began their steady dissent. And they have not let up since.

This is my favorite kind of rain: heavy droplets that are so obese with moisture that they appear to bounce back up after they have hit their earthly targets. On a walk through the arboretum yesterday morning, we watched a pair of ducks bob amidst the natural jacuzzi the rain created in their little pond. This is the magic of the Northwest.

For now, I'm staying dry indoors. Watching all of the wintery wetness move in outside.

The un-precious.

I am definitely not Type A, at least not when I'm living authentically. Back when I was a prosecutor (motivated by a sense of Karmic duty to domestic violence and child abuse victims as well as the dubious quest for trial experience), I had to live a Type A lifestyle in order to keep it together-- working 90 hours a week, still trying to keep my yoga practice intact, making art only when there was *time*-- it required a lot of planning and scheduling, but not a lot of time to think or relax. This was not my path.


My path involves volunteering, teaching yoga to the elderly and at-risk youth, using the old law license on a low-key basis in an office at home, painting everyday, keeping the home fires burning and the such. Part of inching my way back to the path of living a truly authentic life has involved giving myself time to play. Play at yoga. Play at art. Playing is hard when you limit yourself to tools that are *too precious* to mess up. I've mentioned this before, but I do some of my best work (or my favorite work, at least) on cheap, throwaway materials. They allow me the freedom to just do what comes naturally, rather than plan out everything to the point where I've stiffled any of the ideas that have swirled into my brain at 5 a.m. But now that I have begun the process of offering my work for sale, I am torn about my re-use, re-tool, re-cycle tendencies. I want to give someone the best quality materials possible. Hmmmmm. Sounds like I might need to get over my *fear* of good materials. I think the new Fabriano paper might be just the starting point.



But before I do, I have some pack-rat scribbles to share with you, dear readers. The backstory: my husband studied geology as an undergraduate. He has all of these fabulous books from those days. I love digging through them to find new words or images. As I was looking through a petrology book, I found a cache of old tests and study guides. These are such a lovely bit of archeology, in my opinion, his twenty-year old boy handwriting, atrocious spelling, the professor's notes, it's so fascinating. The next day, though, I found the pile of tests in the recycling bin. What? I asked him if he really wanted to get rid of them. He gave me one of those "not everyone keeps their retainer from junior high" looks, so I knew he had let it go. Nonetheless, I thought it proper to ask him if I could scribble on them. These images are the result. Un-precious fun.

rainy rain.

After a truly lovely weekend, the rain has returned. This time, it feels like a wintery, full-press drizzle.

Frogs and rain

It looks like rain. Here comes the rain. (imagine Bob Weir singing this with his eyes closed and TRY not to giggle.)

Two Days of Gray

It was really gray and drizzly for the last two days. I know that the rest of the world might expect this of the Northwest, but I just never expect anything but sunshine and roses after Summer Solstice. Luckily, the glorious sun is back (sort of) this morning. Here is what is looks like when the sky is gloomy here. On a positive note, the rain and cloud cover truly keep the forests lush in a way that I can only describe as what I imagined Middle Earth would look like before they made the Lord of the Rings movies. Ferns everywhere, lushy lush, where are the fairies? Anyway, a snapshot of the week!