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I'm super stressed out right now.
This is what my mind looks like.

I'm supposed to be packing, printing, editing.
I leave at 6 tomorrow morning for a 30 day trip, 2 weddings and who know what.

needless to say,
I'm ADD and I take a break to blog


This is the inside of me right now.

Christmas Carnival?

A ways down the road from my house is a couple that loves Christmas. You know, the type who deck the yard with spinning snowmen and ho-ho-ho-ing santas. Everynight, from 5-10 they turn on the magnificent show of lights in thier front yard. I'm sure thier electrical bill for December is somewhere around 2000.00 dollars.

cry out loud

"Please pray  for me to Our Lord that instead of merely writing something, I may be something, and indeed that I may so fully be what I ought to be that there may be no further necessity for me to write, since the mere fact of being what I ought to be would be more elopuent that many books." -Thomas Merton

Silent Night

Frozen Inside

I've been cold lately.
Really, really, really cold. I don't know if its just something in the air ( a lack of breathable oxygen, maybe?) or if I was just spoiled all summer long in Colorado and then with a return home to a warm autumn.

Whatever the reason, may it be reversed El Nino, or Mother Nature's Pure Revenge on us,it was -9 degrees out today.

And this is what my insides looked like.

Quite literally, actually.

I woke up to this on the inside of my window.
A gift, perhaps?

Home For the Holidays

The Tree is Up.

Blogs have been short lately, more updates to come soon.

:)

[ Time for a new bookshelf. ]

December

Ok, so. 

Its December 7th today. 

For the last few weeks in Minnesota, its been ridcliously warm. Like, super, duper, duper warm.


Its not warm any more.
Yesterday, I did a family shoot and it was 19 degrees outside.
Painfully, brisk.

Its December. 

Its cold.

Holiday

merrychristmas

Can't live without it

.... and a few rough days later....


I am reminded that "just breathe" isnt even an option anymore.

You cannot just breathe.
Inhale, exhale.
Inhale, exhale.

You gotta keep going.
gotta keep going.

A normal life

Whatever that is.

I don't pretend to know.

Don't think I haven't

tried to fold the socks

in neat pairs and stacked

the chipped blue rimmed bowls

and matching plates

inside the cupboard.

For years I have fed

the black and white dog

who barks whenever 

the doorbell rings.

I filled the calendar

with important dates,

snipped daisies

blooming in the garden

beside the house, arranged

them in a glass vase

sitting in the sunlight

on the kitchen windowsill.

 

 

Marjory Heath Wentworth

DO THIS

Rooms

I miss her today.

Taylor

Today I had the sweet opprotunity of doing an uncommon photoshoot.
Well, uncommon for me at least. Taylor is one cool kid. Student by day, BMX rider by all the other hours of the day, Taylor's got skills. With firey red hair and a smile to boot, this kid know how to enjoy life.

Even the senoir portrait side of it.

Check it, yo.

Don't Throw it Away

Don't give it up.

Sunday Afternoon Art

I

I've been meaning to get over to my friend Elise's house for a while to have a little henna art party, today we finally managed to get something together.
Turned out qutie well.

3.14 and Thanksgiving

I'm feeling

This

and this:

 

I signed up to be a face painter at the "Harvest Festival" at my church tonight.
I've never done face painting before, but, I figure I'm fairly good at doing my makeup everymorning and I like to paint, so ...
why not merge the two?

So, in preperation of this, I wanted to dress up. You know, for this "Harvest Festival".
When I was little, we would always go to events like this, but my mom would never let us dress up. She didn't want us to get too into it.
So, this year, I wanted to dress up.

Like a butterfly.

I started painting on my mask, a beautiful purple, a lovely pink mask across my face, distinguishing myself as someone who has arrived, changed, not a worm any more.

While painting on my lovely face, I thought about masks, about cover ups, about growing and changing from wormhood to fluttery flight. And how
despite it all.
Lets face it. I'm totally still a worm.
I'm totally still not there.

I can put up a front, I can pretend, pretend, pretend that I've matured completed , that I can just fly away, but I'd be lying. That would be a facade. That would be a mask.


I can't live this New Life promised while wearing a mask.
I won't be able to breathe. 



I ended up wiping off my bohemian butterfly mask.
I can't pretend to be something I'm not.
(plus, my mom said I had too much eyeliner on)

Instead, I wore a hat. My favorite blue hat.
To keep my head warm while I paint the faces of little smiling kids dressed up like harry potter and ninja turtles.



Peace

October

Keep it real. Keep it Rolling.

Life cannot stop just because we want it to.

Faith and Sight

 If Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, 

Faith is in the eye of the blind man. 

Emiline Harris

Coffee

G

Gonna need alot of it today.

Gold, Crimson, Spice

Big things come in small ways sometimes.

_____________________________________

All week long I've been going to a seminar on resolving basic youth conflicts int he home and man....
its been wearing me out.  The "Work all day and then the seminar till 10:00 to get to bed late to wake up early to do it all over again" routine wasnt working out for me.

So, this afternoon after work, while driving home after work, I wasnt paying much attention. You know, dazed driving.
Whipping around country roads and up and down surly hills, I went unaware of what was going on around me.

The world was changing before my eyes.
Dazed, I did not see.
Tired, I was unaware.

Until I hit a bump.Water from a passerby puddle splashed up onto my windshield, waking me up.
Rendering me aware.


I pulled my classic car on to a small side street lined with trees, parked  and sat in my car.
Eyes opened and rather stunned.

Gold, Crimson, Spice. In plush, ripe tones.  

The world was changing before my very eyes. I shut off the car, turned the volume knob to the left and listen.

It was silent, yet not quiet. Still, yet moving at incredible speed. The delicious sound of of wind and and earth blending. Like some ethereal sound from a story book.  The smells of smoke from nearby chimneys and  exhaust from my still warm engine filled the air around me. The kind of smell that reminds you of being young.

The leaves and the wind and the Earth had surrendered themselves to the consequences of time. The changing of things, of seasons.

I thought about the changing things in my life. Housing, and Finances. Our Country. My Relationships.
All these things changing, changing, changing.
And I know. I know that things are always changing, morphing, becoming better or worse.

Life is steady in its changing ways. 
This, I know.


 Right now, though  it seems as if life is throwing at me a different kind of steady.
A different kind of change.  The leaves of my life are turning from chlorophyll green to a rusty red, I do believe. Different from what they used to be.


My heart is changing. My desires are changing.

 And yet, I tend to keep a watchful eye on that rear view mirror of seasons. I keep wanting to turn around, go back to my eco green lifestyle of not ever needed anyone and living out of a backpack. To my own, private poisonous urge to change everything, to act without reason, to move for movement's sake, to unsettle everything that God has ordained.

I struggle with looking too far ahead and too close behind.  I struggle with change. Its pretty dumb.

Last year, at about this same time I wrote in my journal:

"...Usually, I would keep going, crunch the leaf and continue on my way…. By for some reason this time it was different.
Maybe it was the way this piece of summer gently floated off the tree down to my feet. Maybe it was the color that caught my eye, a brownish red, the color of change- of different things coming. Whatever the reason was, I stopped and stared at this little leaf for a while.
This solitary leaf.
This first soldier of winter.

I thought about change in life.
Change is seasons, in our season.
In my life.

I wondered if the leaf wanted to fall.
Or if it had a choice.

I wondered if the leaf wanted to stay up on the tree, where it was comfortable, and how even if I picked it up and glued it back to the tree -it would still be out of place. Even if it went back.
I wondered if the leaf would even want to go back now- back to the easy way of life- because maybe … it was supposed to fall, to change

As I stood there on the sidewalk staring down at my feet and this strange phenomenon before me, I thought of this summer. This season of the sun now winding down, falling into rest. . The ending of something beautiful. I gave a September sigh...."

A year later and I'm still battling this monster. A year later and I'm still uneasy about Fall, my fall and The Great Fall.

They say, at the Conference, that God isn't so much concerned with what we go through as our attitudes and reactions to the events.

I think thats probably true.

Its how I react to the change around me that matters more than whats going on.
Its if I keep driving, or if I pull over and open my eyes.
Its if I choose to remain dazed and tired or if I shut the car off and listen.
Its if I choose to engage in now, in RIGHT NOW, instead of waiting once again, to go somwhere else.
Its if I live today because He gave it to me.
Its if I realize that Gold, Crimson and Spice are sometimes far more exciting than green.

Its if I pray, like Thomas Merton, that "instead of merely wiring something, I may be something. So fully that the mere fact of being what I ought and doing what I should would be more elloquent than many books."

Its resting while yet pressing on.

Its knowing that He won't lead me anywhere I'm not supposed to go.
Its being ok with taking this road.
Where ever it might go.
 

____________________________________________________________________

big things come in small ways sometimes