early Thanksgiving

I was thankful for lots of things last week. Getting to take a mini trip, even if it was for work. Waking up in the hotel to see snow outside my window and walking to work with snowflakes falling on my eyelashes. Touring breweries. Mary Oliver's new book, and finding a cool independent book store to buy it from. Seeing Band of Horses play in my town. Sunny days and kayaking with Linz. This Blondie song.

scab or scar

How long can a scab last, really? In August, I scraped my knee across a rock in Malibu. The waves were huge and knocked me over. I didn't see the rock in the water. (Why'd you go during south swell? my sister asked later.) The person I was with didn't care and swam away from me. Afterwards, I sat on my towel and watched it bleed a little. My hand is covering it in the picture. It left a purple scab that I thought would've gone away by now, but there it is. Maybe it's permanent? Nooo!

what's a month? five years?

The other day I woke up from the silliest dream. FP and I were getting married, a totally natural thing in the dream because we were in love. Only, on my way to the wedding (my mom was driving me in her minivan), I realized I wasn't wearing a white dress. I had on this magenta colored dress I bought that summer, the one I can't wear anymore because I now have the belly of Gary from Teen Mom. Ah, to be young and thin again. But I digress. I hadn't watched this video of FP I have in a long, long time. In it, I'm wearing the dress and we've just come back from his birthday dinner. I thought by watching it now I would see something new, maybe say "Look how young and naive I was. I'm so different now." Am I?

I prefer coworkers who are under the age of 7

Last week I got to babysit Ava, my little friend who I used to watch a few days a week. We had a princess tea party with fake names (mine was Ava, hers was Silfia), we read books, drew bunny people, and when it was time for bed she put on the Hello Kitty nightgown I gave her for Christmas. Aaw. She told me, "We're having so much fun right now, right? I wish we could do this over and over, I wish you could be my babysitter again. We can pay you $60!" She is so cute. I wonder where she got the $60 from? She also told me that she let a slug crawl across her toe once, and that it wasn't gross - it smelled like lavender. Kids...

summer medley; or summer don't go not yet!

from the archives

For a second, I couldn't find the files for my grad school thesis anywhere. Thank God I found them on my external hard drive. Enjoy this old precious gem.

Change

Consider the hau tree
positioned crookedly
on the side of the
red dirt road,
heart-shaped leaves,
buds blooming yellow
in quiet early morning,
orange under midday sun,
and, by nightfall, red
petals lying in the road-
dissolving into clay.

sandy times

I keep finding sand on my bed! Very unsettling for a clean freak like myself. I think I even chewed on a bit of sand a few minutes ago - how did it get in my mouth?? And now I'm listening to a song called Sacred Sands... Soon I'll have a sand carpet and and I'll sleep between sand sheets, and when guests come over and go to pour themselves a glass of water, sand will come out of the faucet. The ocean house becomes the sand house!