Summer To Do List

April is drawing to a close, and I'm a little amazed.  May signals the end of the school year and the end of the school year means a summer TO DO list!  Here goes mine:

1. Eat my favorite burrito at El Parasol in Santa Fe
2. Sing a song that I wrote on a stage with my band
3. Learn French (I always put this on my summer list)
4. Make bread, with yeast.... here's hoping it doesn't turn into the yeasty wheat blob
5. See Steve Martin play banjo while sitting on a lawn with a beer
6. Take a long walk with my friend Kara... she goes on these realllly long walks
7. Watch the Story of English
8. Read like a muther lover (I kinda overloaded the ol Kindle.... not to mention the stack of novels I want to get through)
9. Wear high heels through an entire wedding and reception
10. Do five yoga poses every night before I go to bed
11. Sit outside Chautauqua and listen to a concert
12. Band practice!
13. Write more poetry 
14. Wake up early enough to smell the dewy grass
15. Soothe a baby to sleep

It's a work in progress... might add to it.  What's on your to do list?

On creativity and band names

There has been this influx of creativity and general ingenuity in my life recently.  I mean, just now my neighbor was like "Let's make cheese next week" and I was all, "Okay... why not?" and that was just a few minutes ago.  There is this stagnation that comes with my hibernation in winter; it involves cozy comforters and marathons of Parks and Rec.  And that is okay too, but with the buds of spring, the greener leaves, the itchy allergies (okay, not so great) come many lightbulbs.  A friend wants to start a band with me... yes.  I created a new knitting pattern for a scarf... absolutely.  I have read like five books cover to cover in the last three weeks... awesome.  I made cake... well that's not ingenious, or helpful to my figure, but cooking is creating.  I really like this openness to creativity I've had in the last couple weeks.  It makes me feel more aware and present in my life.  It comes with a good dose of purpose and intention that makes the morning more easily met.

My guitar and lyric books.

I think 2012 is going to be an amazing year of growth for me.  Growth comes with tough challenges and fantastic results.  Right now the creativity in my life is breeding more creativity and who knows where it will go, but it will be fruit-full.  I suppose on Easter, that is a good lesson for me to take away.  What is your creative outlet?  Where is it taking you? 

p.s. What are some good band names?

Born with duck feet...

No, I wasn't born with a duck's webbed feet, but I sure do love spring.  And what is better than spring but spring in Portland, Oregon where ducks waddle into fountains and the smell of damp bark lingers on your clothes.  I am fresh off the plane from my spring break trip.  I really love Oregon.  And I am really glad that my mom moved back there so I can go and visit and be in the greenery.  Sometimes, a girl needs to hydrate.

Fangorn Forest aka The Reed College Campus

Oregon is lush, and the flowers are in profusion, but more are coming.  We've had such a mild spring here in Colorado, but I worry that that mildness (sans snow and rain) will make a tough summer.  Listen, I am a Colorado girl at heart, I was born knowing all the words to "Rocky Mountain High" and I have a great sense of direction.  But there is a draw, a pull towards the rainy northwest, especially the Pacific ocean.

The coast was especially beguiling this week.  It would be coolish and stormy, and then the blue sky would creep through and reveal a postcard just for me.   Mom and I went to Newport and holed up next to a fire and read books and drank tea and ate fantastic sea salted cookies from Panini's and settled into our beach routine.  Get up, breakfast, read, walk, lunch, read, grade (maybe... don't overdo it), look at the fire, go out to the lighthouse, eat at Local Ocean.  It is a good routine, and sometimes we get to see the people we've come to know in Newport and sometimes our family comes to meet us.  Fish, chips, and crabcakes are always involved in our days there.

I didn't find the Graham Greene book I was looking for at the used book shop, but I did find something else this break, my sanity.  You know how sometimes people picture their "little stone cottage" when faced with anxiety and stress?  Oregon is that for me, and I work on refueling the imagery when I venture back into it.

Reed College--yes, it is gorgeous

Blue sky!  Go catch it!

Ruby at the pub with a friend... and tater tots.

To what purpose, April, do you return again?
Beauty is not enough.
You can no longer quiet me with the redness
Of little leaves opening stickily.
I know what I know.

      "Spring" by Edna St. Vincent Millay

I love that poem by Edna St Vincent Millay, Spring.  It is sorta bleak to be honest, but poets have always been a little cynical about springtime.  Yeah it sure is purdy, but it comes with mud and muck.  But every cycle has some detritus, right?  We leave a season, enter another and the moving boxes take a while to break down.  But this April, my refreshment has arrived, and I will be the babbling idiot running down the hill, strewing flowers.  Deal with it, Edna. 

Bye bye Facebook, Hello Spring!

I deactivated my facebook account last month.  General reaction to this was "WHAAAA??" and "Oh good, cause I thought you defriended me."  I don't miss it as much as I thought I would.  I love my friends, but now I catch up with them the old fashioned way, I text them :-)  I haven't been tempted to go back to it.  Really, I like the thought of being a little less plugged in.  I've been enjoying life for realisies. 

Painting Pottery instead of facebooking

Visiting Estes Park and waiting for my dad while he grocery shops... instead of facebooking.

 And did you notice?  Spring is coming... all muddy and windswept and budding it caught me by surprise. 

I caught the awful chest cold blarghy madness last week, and now I am emerging into 60 degree weather and daffodils.  I needed that.  Right now, all my windows are open and I am letting the sounds of life come in. 

Zoey sniffs the spring air

It is a good cure for the mean Sundays.  Another cure for that is going to the big red box store and indulging on free samples of waffles and chocolate filled cereal.  I love going through the dollar section and finding silly Easter decorations and ready-to-grow plants.  I also indulged in a new pair of pajamas (they were on sale, and I like sleeping fashionably).  My point is that Sundays are always my hardest day, the weekend is over and I'm gearing up again.  But it doesn't have to be so meh. 

Mini roses on sale at Safeway!  How cute are these??

Basil, forget-me-nots, and a joshua tree.... germinatin'

So what are the lessons for this March Marvelousness?  Maybe I've learned to be okay letting the meh in, give it a cup of tea, maybe some ginger snaps.  Just as long as it takes the hint I'm sending and knows when to take it's leave.  I've got things to do. 

A good question...

The Summer Day

Mary Oliver

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean-
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

from New and Selected Poems, 1992
Beacon Press, Boston, MA