weekend visitors and more on photography

Recent addition to clearing away the clutter: A goal of ridding myself of one bookcase full of books. For now, maybe more later. I plan to see if my book club girlfriends are interested, and if not, they go to the library sale. It was strange pulling out "good finds," as I might have called them when I scoured the used book section at the bookstore where I worked, but I know I won't return to them, and what is the point of keeping those books if they aren't going to be read again by a resident of my home? They need to go into the wide world, be read by others, and I can be free of more cumbersome furniture. Simplify, streamline. Some day.

My husband's friend from graduate school is coming up from Missouri to visit. I always love when people come for the weekend, provided I have the time, because the house gets a wee scrubbing. I can know that for one night, the floor is free of (most) dog fur, the sinks have been wiped, the coffee table isn't stacked with old mail.

For now, I am reveling in the everyday, enjoying the company of our pups, who now whine when they cannot sleep upstairs with us, but we have to break them of that habit, who are eager to return to us, who don't run off when the leash is dropped. Everyday bliss--the scent of lemons and cloves, sitting at the kitchen table and talking long after dinner is done, laughter, and more laughter, and that kind of love that fills a room, makes you want to curl up and keep this moment forever. Everyday life being good.


Still on an etsy photo buying kick; last night, it was from this shop. Today, this shop.

I spent some time yesterday ordering some prints, so be sure to watch my own etsy shop! I'm only currently offering singles of the buoy print, but once the other Alaska postcards come in, I will only offer them as sets. I've also ordered some winter white images in that I've taken this season as 5 x 7's, so I'm pretty excited to post those as well.

Clearly, I've been addicted to flickr as of recent, which has inspired me to work a little harder at changing my vantage point. My first year of a photo a day had a lot of standard, straight-on shots of my life, but this year, I'm thinking of perspective a little bit more. It's not that I think I'm getting any better, but just looking at the world differently. It's good practice, and I thank Angie profusely for pointing the project out originally to me!

If you haven't noticed these photographers already, here are some of the flickr folks who have inspired me to start seeing the world through new eyes--I encourage you to check out their photostreams:

:: (ku)nihito :: a.n. ::andrea (scout) :: astrid :: cloth paper string :: danske :: fieryeyed * :: gee, nicole * :: hanne :: hrsmithjones :: jeanne_boyle :: marthasnail * :: mav * :: orangette * :: saffron :: simplyphoto * :: soda o :: tom_tom ::

recycling cd + dvd cases

Two thousand and eight is the year of trying to live more simply. No more buying DVDs; we have Netflix. No more buying of CDs; we use Pandora (and computer downloads).

Donate. As much of our "stuff" as we can. Push it out, all the clutter, the knickknacks, the clothing we haven't worn in ages, anything that is good but not a regular part of our lives.

I think about gift giving too--consumables. The gift of letterpress stationary, soup kits, recipes. Love letters, poems, a day well spent.

Thinking about the Story of Stuff.

Thinking about how Zephyr is doing his part. With those shoes, you know.

We have transferred all CDs and DVDs into binders, pretty leather ones, because I am also driven to a better aesthetic too, and we have boxes full of DVD and CD cases, plastic cases with the inserts intact. I would throw them all out, heave-ho, but with living simply, with changing aesthetic, we are also working on living in a more green manner.

So I found this website. Green Disk will take most computer supplies and find a way to recycle them. I know I won't eventually sell the CDs or DVDs; I'm more apt to throw them away (or recycle them) or give them away.

Any other good tips on reducing stuff & living more greenly? I'm enjoying these slow-but-sure changes.

love & other catastrophes

Above are some of my favorites of the ones I've taken.

Have you seen the movie? It's one of my favorites, Love and Other Catastrophes. Among other things, one of the protagonists must wander from building to building on campus, bumping about, trying to get the drop slip signed.

I always think this: Harumph, love and other catastrophes whenever a string of little bitty frustrating events occur, sprawling out in your morning. I think of it as one event causes another, as events act and react, as the culture of me and my propensity to knock into walls and tabletops backfires. I am always bruised and don't know why; it usually is from my gracelessness before.

This morning I woke up to a flat tire. (This always happens when my husband leaves to go out of town--darn you, and your adventures--and he just kissed my head good-bye at four thirty this morning.) Flat, as in, rumble rumble, rim-to-the-ground flat. My third in as many years, I believe. My second sitting against the wet pavement of our driveway; the last time, I simply called in for the day (an hour commute doesn't really help), but today, I got a ride. (And the first time, in the middle of no where, and two high school girls pulled over to help me change it--I was so struck by their kindness.)

Thank goodness for the locality--the less-than-a-mile, the local shop picking up my car as I work, the easy pick up of a teacher at the corner, just after the school bus goes by.

And I lost a contact somewhere on the way out the door, so I am half-blind, or rather, half-fuzzy. I squint at my students' power point presentations, hope it all makes as much sense to me as it does to them.

I could go on: our garbage, which I struggled with last night, was not picked up, was tipped over instead. My father is coming for the reading tomorrow, and he wants to watch a Packers game, but we don't have TV (as in, no cable, no reception, just an addiction to Netflix), which presents a pickle. I don't like it when my husband leaves. I overslept; I dreamt that I would arrive at school after the bell (nothing like white cats and prophecies). Zephyr, the destroyer of all things, took down every single coat and scarf and whatnot hanging in our mud room and made a shredded bed out of one of my canvas bags while I was in the shower. (He's quick, that bugger.)

You see, if I hum to myself, Love and other catastrophes..., I am a little less hands-up-in-the-air frustrated. There is no frenzy, no chaos. There is take-it-one-step-at-a-time and it-will-all-work-out-anyway, a kind of peaceful, methodical pace to resolution. I wish I could say my husband's mantra of, No use getting upset; there's nothing you can do about it would be my saving grace, but sometimes, when he says that, I have the urge to kick him in the shins.

But the film, with all its little stumblings, the plot that reminds me of me, bouncing off the walls of life, is so "feel good," so upbeat and such a pleasant, peaceful, smooth viewing that I can't help but smile thinking of it. Smile and think, "Well, I have an ending like that too."

Life is too good to concern oneself with flat tires and lost contacts. (Especially when everyone in this town, helping me, giving me rides, dropping keys off and whatnot, makes me want to open my arms and give my town a big hug.)

Last night I had a smaller reading through Intermedia--the Writer to Writer folks did a final presentation of what we've been up to over the semester's mentorship work. I read my series of poems about my grandfather, and I think it went well. Husband could make it to this one (since he's out of town for tomorrow's longer reading), which was nice, knowing he was there, warm and content in the audience. I got to hold his hand afterwards, pinch his leg just before in nervousness. I love having him cheer me on in his own quiet, supportive way.

This is something that I am forever amazed at: Since I completed my undergraduate degree, I have floundered a bit with the future. First, I was going to pursue my MFA. I had my AWP handbook, I had my list of colleges, I sought a job to keep me afloat for my year off, and then I panicked. He held my hand, comforted me in my confusion. I realized it would be just as hard to find a decent job when I was done with an MFA as it was then. The MFA wouldn't get me anywhere; I knew this. So I contorted and shivered and found myself in the M.Ed program. I taught. I missed my writing. I wrote. I wanted an MFA again. I hated teaching at Old High School after a while. Then I found myself here, and it was only supposed to be for a year, so husband stood by me again as I confessed I wanted to go back to school, that this long term sub gig was perfect, and I didn't know if I'd return to teaching again. Newly married, with a mortgage, he said OK. This takes a big leap, since finances are becoming intermingled. But now I'm at another one of those ping pong moments: I now have eighteen applications out there (nine regular programs and nine low-residency) and the possibility of me returning to Local High School grows stronger. And he stands by me. There isn't a leaning from him, even if I ask, and I think that is right. When I mention going away for graduate school, a long distance marriage, he tells me to apply, that we'd figure it out. When I mention working here and doing the low-res MFA, which means loans, he says to apply, that we'd figure it out.

And now I want to hug him, press him close to me, but he's up in the air over Kentucky now.

For now, I'll just work my way toward four working tires, a new contact, and an optometrist appointment. For now, I'll just hum, love and hum and other catastrophes and think of tomorrow and reading. And think of Saturday and sleeping in. And Packer games, apparently.

the green post

To see other photographs from our Alaskan honeymoon, click here. It's worth waiting for them to load, if you haven't seen them yet.

When I was an undergraduate, I joined MPIRG (Minnesota Public Interest Research Group), a student run non-profit that focuses on environmental and social justice issues. I can spout that line easily, most likely because I wore many hats in my three or so years with this organization--canvasser, state board secretary, local board representative, task force leader, etc. I worked on bringing The Vagina Monologues to Twin Cities campuses for the V-day initiative, marched with Take Back the Night, petitioned and lobbied for environmental initiatives, and helped plan Earth Week activities.

I loved being an activist, getting my sleeves rolled up and feeling as if I were doing something. I loved the debates in the university newspaper, the righteousness we felt, as a collective, the way we'd go out for tofu and tabbouleh and discuss grants, discuss political debates, discuss the quality of local beer.

I burned out though, which seems to be a trend with me--throw myself into something so passionately that I detest the idea of returning. (I slumped there for a while with teaching, last year, but I'm so glad I came here, gave it another go, tried another district, as my husband and others urged--sometimes it really does make all the difference, even if you are without one of your best friends--which, by the way, does make you sad every day.) I've stood back, focused more on supporting the arts communities--Minnesota Center for the Book Arts, the Loft, the Anderson Center. Buying local artwork. Funding local businesses.

But all of this is from-a-distance. It's easy because I'm not up front, telling you how I feel directly. I'm just the grinning supporter, cheering from the sidelines. The lazy way out; the way out that keeps my feelings from being hurt and my exhaustion (exasperation) level at a minimum. You see, if I care too much again, I will become emotionally involved. It's my nature.

Everything is about progress, about working your way up. That's why my resolution list is so long--it's not a collection of wishes, desires that would simply end when 2008 ticks over to 2009. I want my lifestyle to change. I want to be healthier, inside and out. I want to be more at peace with myself and with the world.

And part of that is changing the way we behave and live in this world.

For me, it's this fight I've been having with my house--clearing out the clutter. Tomorrow the Epilepsy Foundation is doing a pickup, and we will leave boxes out in the slush, bags lined along the curb. I love the feeling of saying good-bye to these things I'd allowed myself to relinquish. I'm a pack rat by nature, and now I am learning what to save (heartfelt letters) and what to recycle (the birthday card from ten years ago).

But I'm also learning how not to bring things into my house in the first place. See this: Story of Stuff on YouTube. And learn about Compact, or read the local newspaper article on the idea.

We stopped shopping at Wal-Mart a long time ago. This autumn, we added Target. It's amazing how ticking the big box stores off your list of places to shop will prevent you from collecting that unneeded, unwanted stuff. This action helps my resolutions in more than one way--returning to local living, helping with the financial goals, helping with the clutter and home goals, helping with the peaceful goals.

Instead, handmade gifts. Instead, baking bread. Instead, buying locally.

There are so many things I need to change. I have the canvas bags for the grocery store, but too often I forget them at home. We haven't switched over all our light bulbs (we didn't want to throw away the bulbs we already have stored--that seems against the point). We haven't found a satisfactory replacement for household cleaners yet, but I might try this. I want to bring tupperware to restaurants for my leftovers (because I never finish a meal), but like the canvas bags, I always forget. I need to call our energy company and see what we can do to switch the source--I'm not sure how to do that yet, but I hear you can. We are in the market for a new car, and I am lobbying for a Prius. I want to buy organic and free range. I want to be more of a regular at the farmer's market. I want to have a third good year with my garden.

I could go on forever, because it takes a forever amount of changes, but through all of this, I will leave you with one last link, one especially for you :) How to green up your sex life.

glasses, etc.

Note to self: do not leave dogs alone in basement with glasses on bedside table. They are now chewed to pieces. Good thing I am not completely blind. Is it just me, or are these dogs being particularly trying as of recent? I am trying, trying so hard, to be patient with them, but it's too much to team teach an all day (read: meets from 9-12. 1-3, and 6-8) theatre course with incredibly gifted kids, to plan a wedding, and to properly care for two puppies. I took them this week because The Fiance is teaching his graduate course again this summer, leaving him in the Twin Cities for a long stretch of hours, and kenneling them on a night with the upcoming holiday seemed too difficult. But I will not (do you hear me, fiance? oh yes, he doesn't read this blog), WILL NOT take them next week. If he wants me to be a sane person, he is going to have to deal with their chewing, which also included destruction of a very beloved Statue of Liberty hat he bought after we sun burned our ears on the day we got engaged. I'm beginning to rethink this whole dog thing. :)

In other news, Emily is on her honeymoon (or honey love moon, as Sam so wonderfully puts it) and we have booked ours. I also have two more events that take up swaths of time in the near future: North Carolina with two girl friends and one week of a poetry workshop. I desperately am looking forward to these three things, a relief from the feeling of drudgery I often get as I stumble through lesson plans in a very tired fashion, a relief from the Midwest and all the frustrations that go with it, a relief from the disappointments I bring into my world. I've been trying to keep myself up, up with positive feelings, up with a good attitude, but sometimes these things weigh me down.

I am reading a book Emily lent me, The Conscious Bride. I've only read the first twenty pages or so, but in it, the author encourages the bride-to-be to wallow, accept the anger and madness that goes into planning a wedding. I don't think this is what is the little pit of [something--is it sadness? anger?] that has taken up residence at the base of my heart, but I'm a little restless, and I think the world "frustrated" has bounded around in my mind a little more than it should.

A great deal of it is combined stress--the feeling that I am a person who is stumbling to catch up with her life. In just a few days, I can officially announce I am getting married in one month, and I'm not one hundred percent certain my guests will have chairs to sit upon when they arrive for the ceremony. I am currently living in a house that made me very unhappy in my teenage years and though we've all grown out of a lot of those behaviors, I find myself worn down anyway. And I'm teaching, which is wonderful, but the timing is rough. I want to write; tonight, my poetry writing group is meeting, and I am sitting here in the rain, on a night my mother has given me off (and she had the afternoon off, though it was spent running errands for dressmaking--it's all a matter of stumbling to keep up) and I want to be there, writing poems, reading books, working on a little knitting or sewing project. Instead, I am here, in the muggy humidity, with a broken elbow, and never enough sleep. And now, very funky looking glasses.

I hope I don't seem too complaining or wallowing. I promise to return, less in a fog of a nap, where I've woken up and things haven't magically fallen into place for me, and I just want to curl up with my stack of dusty Netflix, but instead, I should probably prepare for tomorrow's lesson, or figure out how many favors we ought to order, or wonder if we shouldn't just try to have our rehearsal dinner at the vineyard... I promise to return in better spirits, but for now, I am muggy with disappointment. (And at nothing specific, which is so ... well, frustrating.)

I need to remember: simplify, simplify.

If I were at home, I would curl up into The Fiance's very strong arms and he would tell me to just take it one thing at a time, and I would kiss him on the lips, and he'd help me tackle whatever to-do list is weighting me down. So I will close my eyes, imagine this, and start through that list. Now, if I could only just find that list...

poetry shoes

This is why it's hard for me to throw anything away: I attach my heart to it, pin it to its little grubby laces, and even though there will be no running left in these shoes (not that I ran in them anyway, more like meandering around campus), I cannot seem to part with them. Its mate also seems to be missing; I am guessing Zephyr has buried it somewhere in the mess that is our house.

So this is my project, and you have already witnessed it once (ugly gas station cup, a memory of when K and I first met): to find ways to throw things out that have no real use, that have no huge memories attached, and to throw, just after a sad little memorial here on the blog, complete with illustration. This needs to be theraputic but I need to clear out the clutter in this house before I tear my hair out: I must ask, "Which is more important? My sanity living in this house fast becoming a refuge for lost trash or keeping mementos from every moment in my life?" I'm sure no one else finds this interesting, but you must realize that a blog is a very selfish act in and of itself initially--it is our little space to pontificate and ruminate on our very own lives and the things we find most important around us. Sure, many blogs do great social justice. Now I'm starting to feel guilty and get distracted when this is really a memorial for my poetry shoes.

You see, my first year at university, I felt so small and the world was so big (the population of our campus is 60,000) and I was floating about, trying to get my footing. I had just escaped home and was so relieved and needed something to keep me tethered to Earth.

Enter Introduction to Poetry class. Oh, I fell in love so quickly and so easily. I stopped writing all those terrible, mournful love poems and began to write about real things, things that mattered to me but could also matter to others, to my classmates, to people who did not know me or the person I wrote about again and again after a particularly melodramatic breakup. I had my first workshop and survived. I would walk out, feeling floating high as a kite and adored sitting and critiquing, picking apart work to be helpful. This is where I found out I could be a Poet, or at least some day in the future.

And there was a very cute boy in this class, no matter that K and I were in the throes of love, and he had very cute shoes and he was very clever and very pompous (which meant we could never have a future, alas, but I still liked the idea of exuding poetry like that) and so I got these shoes. And as I write it down, it all sounds very silly, which it probably is, but to me, at nineteen, poetry was what really mattered (and there is a lot of truth in that for my own life now--heck, I just spent an hour with my creative writing class doing something they struggled with because I wanted to write the entire hour with them). And I wanted to exude it too. Not that running shoes will do that, but when your whole life has gone from driving about in a suburban town (OK, so Parents Town is not a suburb, but it definitely has that quality) to walking e.v.e.r.y.w.h.e.r.e, you want something nice for your feet. Something that will remind you of poetry.

And I kept them for too long, went canoeing in them for the first time with K, went hiking and wandering around Tahoe and Duluth and on long walks everywhere, holding his hand, loving him and walking on words. So while I can always get a new pair of running shoes, these little blues should be dipped in bronze to remind me of those Tuesday and Thursday nights spent in the classroom just on Washington, with the sound of buses going by in the night, getting home at nine, writing poetry on the palms of my hands. Instead, I'll just come back to this post to remember every once in a while.

be careful what you wish for

K made this stocking for me one Christmas. It was a cheap stocking, but he wrote my name on it in puffy paint and filled it up with all sorts of small wonders. I think this was one of our first holidays together; certainly it was well before we moved here. In my cleaning spree, I discovered this on the dining room table. I knew Zephyr had found it somewhere, but I did not know he chewed right through the center, abandoning it when it was not as delectable as he had thought. Little bits of Christmas fluff. I had to throw it away. (I told K that we should revive a tradition from my own family I treasure: leaving an orange in the toe of each other's stockings. We would pierce the long part of a candy cane through the skin and slowly suck the juice out. Have you tried this? If you haven't yet, do. I'm sure I'll mention it again this next holiday season, but for now, I cannot think of candy canes when the world is just emerging from wintry slumber!)


And with my I-am-going-to-trash-useless-crap upswing, this shortly followed suit. (My thumbs up is not some beckoning to summer fun but to be used as a scale. I didn't have anything else handy. It truly is a big cup.) It is a "Killer Chiller" plastic mug from the Shell station and has been sitting on top of half a dozen fridges (or more) as I have moved from place to place since leaving Wisconsin. I kept this mug because of nostalgia. John, K's best friend from high school, gave it to me as I was driving several boys around who should not be driving. A designated driver for my then-boyfriend (a strange boy who made many, many bad choices, and I am glad I got out of that one, though when I gave him the gift of The Catcher in the Rye, and he looked at me saying, "I don't read" or maybe it was, "I can't really read well," I probably knew it was very much so over) and his two buddies, we stopped at a gas station for orange juice. We had just driven by the radio towers, those lights flashing in the night, driven in places I had never been, but was directed by these bouncing boys, streaming through graffitied tunnels and between zippy hills. John was working late, and we had a special kind of kinship--he teased me and I teased right back, though his teasing always seemed a little mean. I soon learned this was His Way, though not getting along with your future husband's then-closest friend was a little upsetting. Of course, K and I were not dating then, but we were crushing on each other, but I don't think John knew it. He was just sympathetic to my plight as caregiver to these loopy boys, fascinated in the candy aisles. So he gave me a stack of sturdy cups, which I later used in games of kings (this being the sickening center cup, too full for anyone ever to want, too mixed with the nasty cheap drinks of college kids). I clung to this ugly cup because it was a memento from the very first months of K and my dating. Ah, good-bye ugly piece of plastic, you will live forever in my heart.

And now, I have a photograph of it, emblazoned on my memory and forced upon the eyes of any who read this blog. Ta-da, my first step at clearing out the junk and finding a way toward simplicity. It is going to be a long and arduous road, folks, but I feel good about this. I don't know if I buy into feng shui or any of that, but I do buy into maneuvering around the coffee table in peace and not having to fetch things from the jowls of my ever-growing lab-mix puppy. I also don't want to take another dog to the vet for an x-ray because someone decided to leave her knitting needles out the night before. (Those x-rays are expen-sive!)

OK, back to watching Marie Antoinette. I'm about halfway through and enjoying it. I'm not sure why I'm surprised at certain things; the previews were very honest about the twist on this biography. But the rock star theme! The music! And were those Converse in her piles of decadent shoes? It's very atmospheric--very aware of its setting, costume, walls. Everything is cold and pink and beige and rich. Turquoise and hot pink. Little pastries and glasses flowing with champagne. I know her life gets dark, but thus far, it is nothing but powdered wigs, bustles my own wedding dress will never see, and tiny birds.