it's the middle of the afternoon...

esmé is still a new-enough reader that she often stops herself a few times every page and smiles at me with the clearest blue seas of happy and asks can you believe i can do this?

i can believe she can do anything. 

she reminds me it's good practice to marvel at yourself a few times every page. i mean, we're all probably doing something right now that would make someone else, somewhere else, catch their breath and think we just hung the moon. i'm sure of it.

sometimes she says things like man...i used to be so DUMB! i remember just laying in my crib thinking what am i? i don't know any words, i can't do anything...i'm just laying here! and then all i remember is walking around and talking and finally acting like a person! and it just gets better every day!

yes. we've all had those dummy days. who said tomorrow's money...it brings more sense? most likely, a rapper. anyway. it's truth. {also truth? esmé needs to be one of those cheesy motivational speakers. can you imagine? her tour could be called man...i used to be so DUMB! sold. out.}

last night she made me promise i'll stick around and help her grow up. because she thinks there's a lot more for her to know. she can just tell.

some days i think i'm severely under-qualified for this job. and then immediately after that, i think there's at least one person in the world who would look at whatever it is i'm doing right now in the middle of the afternoon and catch her breath and think i just hung the moon.

it's hitting me that i'm leaving my mom again. everyone, really. but, my mom...

ugh. can't put this one into words, i guess.

 

yep. that about covers it.

 

images from here and here.

my words, elsewhere...

well, hell's bells. what is wrong with me these days? i seem to write anywhere-but-here! i think i need a redesign. of my life, maybe, but it'll be easier to begin with my blog, yes?

anyway. i wrote another little thing for the equals project. there's a lot of thoughtful writing over there. it's become a daily.

in other news, the girlies three and i got some painful shots in preparation for indo. for some reason, this has emboldened esmé in odd ways. i overheard her telling our neighbor that she wouldn't have to stay away from animals frothing at the mouth anymore. like that happens. and when grae was asking if an alert on telly was for a tornado, she seemed crazy relieved. 

not scared of tornados anymore! she crowed. i got the shot!

no. that was typhoid, honey.

lovely list here.

handwriting...

most of the time lately, i seem to just spill my words all over this blog. they're written distractedly and without intention, and i honestly think more about how loud each letter sounds as i punch it out rather than the words i'm making and the sentences i'm building. my texts have more substance. 

i know that's not good for any of us, but i thought i couldn't find my way around it.

when i wrote something recently for someone else, i wrote it by hand. ink all over my fingers. pages of yellow ripped out and folded and rewritten in my crazy process of olden days. like, three years ago olden. 

and there's the difference, i think. when i don't physically make my words...they're just not part of me. i can pretend they are and you can pretend they are, but we're both probably just pretending. i like that we're polite that way.

all this to say i wrote something. really really wrote something. and i hope you like it. xoxo.

OH! and p.s. i was also over here and a tiny corner of my home {now dismantled due to a crankypants realtor!} can be seen right here.

gimme. gimme.

on falling down...

the girlies two had lacrosse all weekend. i am utterly exhausted from watching them run up and down the fields with their gorgeous young legs and swinging hair and also from keeping my stomach muscles clenched for every single minute of every single game. 

it's hard to let your babies play hard.

grae's finger may be busted but is probably just jammed and cut from a slashing stick. she doesn't mind at all because it makes her look thug-lite and plus she scored a goal. poor lill was laid out so darn hard in her sunday game that her coach came on the field. i've never seen a crash like that, so much so that i can't think of another word for it. {her coach called it an assault, but that seems a leetle sinister. even though i wanted to press charges.}

anyway. we took them out to dinner to celebrate that they were both still alive, and the waiter asked if they'd just had a game. they smiled and said yes, and he asked if they'd won.

grae answered yes quickly, then thought about it for a second and changed it to no. when he walked away, she laughed and said something like but i kind of won. she got a cool injury and a goal. she did win.

i don't even look at the score. i look at how they get back up after being down. i honestly thought they'd have to carry lillie off the field and that i would have to kill someone, but she sprang right up and got right back into it. 

i look at how grae started yelling straight-away from the sidelines at the refs in her inside voice that they should yellow-card the girl who plowed down her lillie. you should know that grae's inside voice is the bad one that she only uses inside our house. it's so disdainful, you'd cringe. but she was fighting for someone she loves even more than she realizes, so pat and i let it go.

sometimes all the time i feel like i brag about these girls of mine. i know i do. i just look at these small versions of the someday women they'll become, and i see shades of...i don't know what. but it's beautiful. and thrilling. and disappointing. and worrisome. and exhausting. but mostly thrilling and beautiful. 

babies, man. they'll break your heart seventy times harder than you ever thought you could survive, but then you'll see them get back up and fight and you take this breath and maybe your chin does that i'm going to cry tremble and it's all back together again. 

i live for those moments when it's all back together again.

everything pretty found on you only live this life once.

balaclava

 

if you'd like, you can see two-thirds of of the girlies hairchops on instagram - i'm mackinink, i think. - but don't even try looking for the grae ghost. it's not that she's shy. i mean, she just sang her poem at her school's poetry slam, for god's sake, and it was ABOUT POTATOES! she doesn't even like potatoes. but i guess it was better than the llamas at walmart limerick.

anyway. lill got kickass fringe halfway covering her eyes. a few rude boys at school called her a dog. grae restrained herself from giving them rabies, while lillie really socked it to them in the insult department. i mean, talk about cutting. brutal. don't save the worst for last, kid.

she said. ahem. "AT LEAST I COME FROM A HAPPY FAMILY!"

i don't know why, but i have been laughing my head off about that uncontrollably. back in the day, i called bullies things like buck-toothed buttfaces, fatbutts, and every other insult with the word butt in it {don't you remember how sweary you used to feel when you used the word butt?!}. maybe even threw out an "I KNOW YOU ARE, BUT WHAT AM I?" which was way better than the little chips of chewed-up gum i threw in their hair during social studies. i was not nice. i've told you this.

i guess i'm just a little giddy that, even in the face of shite comments and petite stress...she knows what's important. and she's proud of it.

p.s. when i told pat this story, he shook his head in {hopefully} fake bewilderment. "we're a happy family?" rude.

balaclava found on double dark, which makes me like those twins even more.

because pour porter told me to...

esmé and i stood out in the cold and waited for the discovery shuttle to fly over us. shivering because she was in sequined tap pants and the thinnest canyouseemyhoobieboobies sweater and because i was made for eighty-five and above. temp, not age.

why do we have to stay out here and see this? she grumbled.



and i thought about it and then dumbed it down to this: because that shuttle carried us to amazing places, and we owe him a proper goodbye.

she smiled hard and bit the inside of her cheeks and asked if i was crying.

no, i answered.

me, too, she said.

in case you'd like to see what we saw, here...




pretty badass, yes?

p.s. the girlies three are getting haircuts tonight...kind of major ones. remember the kind of hair appointment where you took in a beautiful photo of some model or actress or someone who looks strikingly like peter pan {or wait. is that just esmé?} and you expected to leave the hairdresser looking exactly like that picture? i think this is that kind of a haircut. makes me nervous. i'm keeping my fingers crossed for these little women of mine. xoxo

babies...

a long long time ago, there was a baby beginning for us. there was the shock - i thought we were done! - and then five minutes later, there was the joy - we aren't done! - and then a few weeks later, there was a sharp burst of sadness and a more resolute we. aren't. done.

and then about a year or two later...came esmé.




about a week after i learned i was pregnant with that little thing, i slipped outside of lillie and grae's school. i don't remember much, but i do remember smiling hard and holding grae's mortified hand and walking while gasping to our land cruiser and driving us to the hospital. i limped gracefully in, smiled at the receptionist, and announced that i probably just broke my ankle. and could i please see someone about that, please? or did she have a cast i could throw on and we could just call it a day?

all the omanis in the waiting room covered their mouths and their smiles. dumb american. talk about drama. she thinks she's broken.

one man shook his head when we sat next to him and told me "you're not broken. you would be crying if you were broken."

well. after x-rays, they had to call the orthopedic surgeon. there would be screws and a plate and anesthesia. there were questions about how i had gotten to the hospital. did i have a driver or a husband waiting somewhere?

i told them i had driven myself. the surgeon looked at me and looked at grae and asked "how?" and grae replied "she just kept saying shit shit shit every time she had to shift."

nice moment.

wait. surgery? anesthesia? no no no! i had a brand new baby growing. and this one was the one! there was crying and a mortified grae and then a solution. i would have an epidural. given by a grinning doctor who announced, just prior to inserting the needle, that maybe i should reconsider. "are you sure you want me to do this? he asked. sure, i mumbled, trying to look away from the needle he was waving. "because i'm iraqi," he smiled. "and you're an american."

thank you, george bush.




i'm telling you all this to tell you this. after two surgeries and casts and crutches and showers given by my housemaid and monitored by a mortified grae and many, many months, everything worked out as they should. you know how this story ends.

but what i want to tell a few of my friends who could write the first paragraph in this post is that i feel you. i feel for you.

i spent the nine months of pre-esmé waiting for another miscarriage. one day, i was chatting with one of the other mothers at school and she said "karey! pat told my husband you were pregnant! i didn't know that!"

and i whispered "ohh. yeah. well. it's still a little early. we weren't really going to tell anyone for a while."

and she asked "how far along are you?

"six months."

insane.




but it is, isn't it? it's all insane if you think about it. how things are made. how things break. who fixes the unfixable. who stays and who cannot. it's a heartbreaking tightrope walk every minute of every day. don't look down, don't look up, just fix your eyes straight ahead. there's tomorrow. there's another chance. there's better, there's worse, there's richer and poorer and ice cream for dinner and warm socks fresh from the dryer and sunsets that make you want to stick around to see it come back up again. there will be those shit shit shit moments and a whole lot of mortified.

but then there will be the one day when you finally find what you've been looking for...love or babies or whatever...man, it all just seems to have a way of finding you.

i think that's what i wanted to tell you.

gimme. gimme. gimme.

pancakes...

pat's back home, so this past weekend was spent mostly soaking him up and getting accustomed to having a boy in the house once again. that just usually involves less nudity and less ice cream.

on saturday morning, we woke up to a strange smell. esmé and i looked at each other with the exact same whaaa? look on our faces.

what is that smell? she asked. not a clue, i answered.

grae walked by us in a hurry to get downstairs, and shot a frown at us.

it's food.

oh, yes. that again.

did i ever tell you that my grandma used to make us pancakes in the shape of turtles or men riding bicycles or storm clouds or cars? they all looked like circles, i think, but the point was that she was trying. that was a lovely gift that i appreciate more now than i probably did then. isn't that always the way? elephant pancake here.

suffering...

when my sister was dying...i mean, truly dying...and the only appointments she took were from people who gave her a bath or medicine that wouldn't touch her pain plus those who wanted to give their goodbyes, we still giggled.

it was kind of funny the way they'd panic and fill the air with their own maladies. me you same same, do you know?

talks of summer colds and lumps that turned out to be nothing, thank god, and battles with a jackass of a love became conversation starters and enders when all lin probably wanted to talk about was manicures. or dinner plans. or her size four levis that she would have died to fit into once upon a time. but now that she was dying, they were too big. or something other than how we're all suffering.

that was a given, in her mind.

but, still, she'd coo and empathize and make everyone around her feel less pain. while she was suffering silently with her own. couldn't talk about that, though, could we?

all day i've complained about my root canal. it's the pain plus the fear plus the pissed-off feelings i have because i didn't cause this. he did.

but on my way home, armed with prescriptions for antibiotics and vicodin and a few cadbury eggs to be taken as needed, i saw a mini parade of wheelchairs. little kids being pushed in the sunshine. their heads to one side, their hands trying to stretch to touch the sky...just enjoying the moment. joy in all that pain.



if lin was next to me right now, she'd coo and tell me how sad she was feeling for me. root canals are the worst! she'd say. and i would laugh and ask as bad as cancer? and she'd laugh and probably swear and say even worse!

and we'd both know it wasn't true, but it was a much better thing to say than good-bye.

here and here.

memories...

esmé ran into the kitchen carrying a bunch of letters in her head.

mom! does w-a-l-e spell whale?

kind of! well done, mémé!

and does p-i-k-l spell pickle?

almost exactly!

she took a deep, proud breath and looked around like mad trying to think of new things to spell. that little thing melts me. i've given up apologizing for how captivated i am by every little move she makes. the best way i can describe it is that she means it. and when you meet people like that...well...they're pretty unforgettable.

i said isn't it amazing? you're a speller now. and there's so many words out there just waiting for you. isn't that weird?

and she gulped and nodded and said yeah. sometimes i don't even know who i am, it's all happening so fast. makes me dizzy!

she pronounced it like dizz-ay and then ran off to connect eighteen chubby straws i just bought so she could drink her juice in the kitchen from the living room.



when she was born in chicago, pat was in oman and my sister was dying and lillie and grae were home with my mom. my other sister popped in to the hospital after work to see how i was doing, but the whole baby coming out of her little sister skeeved her out a bit.

we were chatting and one of the nurses - the one who kept announcing to everyone who entered the room that there's no father! - asked if she was going to stay.

ooh. i don't think so. my sister said. it's late and...

well, she's going to have the baby in about five minutes. the nurse shrugged.

jeanie looked at me like that was crazypants and said five minutes? why isn't she screaming?

and the nurse answered because this isn't a television show.




anyway. where was i? oh. when esmé came, the first thing i said to her was YOU'RE SO CUTE! and then the doctor took her to check her out while my sister followed and refused. to. leave. her. side.

the doctor said she was normal. jeanie turned to me and said she's remarkable!

the doctor said she had good reflexes. jeanie whispered he said she's very intelligent!

the doctor gave her an average new baby score. jeanie practically crowed she's perfect!

i don't know what i'm trying to say here. but her whole life...she's just been the best memory i've ever had. hmmm. i don't think that's exactly what i'm trying to say at all, but it'll have to do.

here here and here.

exactly...

mean people leave dents. they really do. and when you're feeling particularly soft, they draw blood.

especially so when you know the person and felt like she knew you.

i feel, of course, so bad about my reply to my hater last week. when pat finally caught up on my blog, he declared it nonsense and said i was better than that.

whoa, mister. that's how i got into trouble in the first place.

anyway. i will try to temper my smugness about my move to a third-world country. i won't relish in the one perk to which i'm most looking forward - a maid - but will instead gleefully anticipate parasites and dengue and a slew of scary insects, rodents, and scaled creatures whose bites have no known antidotes. yay. i could also write about my loneliness and emptiness and difficulty communicating with the ones who will be awake while i'm sleeping. not to mention most of the people around me. that would be funny stuff.

my most paralyzing fear is water, and this new place is going to be surrounded by it. sometimes, this water acts up. but hopefully a tsunami wouldn't happen at the same time a volcano erupts. that would not be serendipity.

would you want my life? not in a million years. but would i ever give it up? not in a million years.

so that's where we are.



actually, no. that's not where we are. a girl left a comment on my sister's story last night and it made me cry. full-on tears.

that's where i am. and that's why i'm here.

gimme. gimme.

naming things...

lillie and grae have made the terms skeeve and aggro kind of popular at their school. i imagine many parents and skeeves will be pleased to see them get on a plane.

those aren't words! small people tell them with furrowed brows.

of course they are, they answer smugly. our mom's a writer.

well. not that kind of writer. i just like naming things.




last night, i was helping lillie and esmé fall asleep. they are roomies, with esmé on the bottom bunk so she can stall the midnight killers long enough for lill to make a getaway.

i. know.

i was playing scrabble on my phone, signed in as LiLlIe kATiE, and not really expecting anyone to take me seriously. but one lady started out with a 30-point word and started taunting.

uhhhm?!

waiting?!

you going?!

i kept the girlies up for an extra thirty just so they could see me crush this rude mother trucker with a score of 270-something to a little less than 80 before she exited. this son of a bucket monkey mouth. just...i was just so peeved that i was making up fake swears left and right and all the way around again.

lillie asked if she could use son of a bucket. i wasn't exactly sure. still not sure this morning.




a few days ago, i was cleaning a sink caked with toothpaste, hardened, and a mound of fresh rainbow suds. i growled at esmé and announced that in four months, i would never ever not ever clean a sink again. ever.

how come? she asked.

because we are getting a maid in indonesia. i snapped.

her face. man, it was like heaven was shining on her. she gasped and clapped and suddenly seemed to grow an inch taller with joy.

oh, mommy! what are we gonna name her?!

oh. dear. i guess she likes naming things, too?

gimme gimme.

if my blog could talk...

...it would beg me.

ever notice that when your life grows fatter with everything delicious and mouth-watering and can i borrow that recipe, please and four hundred and fifty degrees for thirty minutes until it's bubbling over that it makes you lose your appetite for all that you honestly want to send back to the kitchen?

i need to have a sit-down with the chef in charge of this blog, yes? she has been using expired ingredients.

but i promise you i'll boomerang back soon.

by the way, did you see my nails? here is another peek. DON'T THEY MAKE YOU HAPPY? and will you drunken french paint yours, too? say yes. also, gimme.

i couldn't choose...

sending wishes you've found a forever love, or hopefully will tomorrow. doesn't matter when, i guess. just make sure you cross it off your list at some point.

also not to be discounted is a healthy side of thug-lite in the ones you love. keeps things interesting. unless you're at a lacrosse match and two of yours are holding sticks.

happy day, friends. and now, i must go check on esmé's hard-boileds. they're probably done because my little kitchen timer has just asked the question that precedes a mini explosion or petite fire.



"what's with the popping?"

gimme. gimme.

it's friday...

and i just realized i've not written anything here all week. it's just...i may be a little off.

it started out just rotten when a friend i've never even met but who i adore nonetheless shared some sad news. through a stream of monday mails, i half-joked that i was experiencing the seven stages of grief for her. i've not yet made it past pissed.




and then every single night has been full of drowning dreams. do you even know how stressful it is to save people you love from impromptu floods and skyscraper waves out of the clear blue? when you aren't a strong swimmer?

sigh. i hate getting my hair wet.

and then there are the edge-of-the-cliff nightmares. when someone falls, i always seem to jump with them. it feels like the right thing to do. until it is clearly not.

all of these nightmares make me a little giddy during daylight hours, and that is not as delightful as it sounds. especially if a someone sadly tells you that an old man neighbor just died. and you start laughing and then look at the girlies three in a laughing panic who look horrified at your laughing and then you try to knock it off, mister! but holding in laughs is even worse than letting them out in situations like this. i should know.

the other night, a sweet friend was talking about something awful and tragic and she used the whispered phrase "i mean...it was like the holocaust."

umm. not even close. like, not even in the same universe close. what she was talking about would more accurately be classified as a bad scene. not genocide. which is why i busted out laughing uncontrollably. do you understand? please say yes. but, man, i wondered later if anyone stumbled into that conversation late and heard the word holocaust and then saw me on the floor in a fit of giggles...well...that would be a bad.

ever since, every time something insignificantly annoying happens that peeves off people around me, that phrase she used flies through my head. each time, a different historic tragedy. I KNOW! it's making me so wiggly uncomfortable and i can't for the life of me make it disappear!



see? so this is why i haven't posted this week. otherwise, i am dandy.

i found these two images on sex for breakfast. i think that is a good name for a blog. or a bakery.

the other side...

this day is about to turn into a late afternoon and early evening of intense madness. my stress levels were freaking out a little until until until i came across a few drawings by esmé.

are you sick of hearing esmé escapades? i understand if you are. but, man. i will never tire of writing them down.




ever since we saw da vinci's ginevra de' benci - the only da vinci in the western hemisphere and it's hanging in our museum! and i just edited out a what now, complete with shout-out pose. and then i thought better of that edit. - she's been drawing on both sides of her papers.

a front view and a back view.

i find this fascinating. marvelous. interesting. brilliant. badass.

and it's amazing to me how excruciatingly different the same scene looks. it's like the difference between hello and goodbye, one of which i avoid like the plague. it breaks my heart too hard. does that even make sense?




if there's a point to this, it's that i'm going to look at my late afternoon and early evening of intense madness from my girlies' view. which turns it all straight-away into a few hours of wonderful.

hope you have a sweetheart of a weekend, you little sweethearts. from any view. xoxo. here and here.

man on fire...

we watched man on fire all together camped out, with esmé playing more furiously when scenes turned too red for her liking.

it's one of my favorite movies. when the girlies ask me why, i tell them that it's love. in its most basic, beautiful form, it's love.




would i kill for you? die for you? trade my life to save yours? yes to all. in a half-heartbeat.

before mémé fell asleep, she told me she thinks she can feel herself growing up, listing all the things she knows now. how to make friends anywhere, how to read a few words that she couldn't read before, how to make art that makes her dad's eyes water, how to change the kitchen garbage bag, and the meaning of love.

what's the meaning of love? i asked her.




when you cross the bridge for someone, even when there's something awful waiting for you.

yes. that's a start.

here and here.

fears...

it's strange, the list of things-that-probably-will-never-happen-but-that-still-scare-the-britches-off-me. you probably have a similar list, don't you? here are my top five. this morning.

one. wooden stairs and socks.

two. a lion attack out of nowhere.

three. replying to all.




four. piñatas. which is really more about the sticks.

five. when you're leaning over the sink, brushing your teeth, and then you look up at yourself in the mirror and there's a killer in a balaclava standing there. this has only happened once. and it was gracie. but, whoa.

golden bandit bunny. too bad it's sold, bunny! have a sweetheart weekend, you little sweethearts! and if you find yourself forced to run up a dark staircase, just be sure to throw out several donkey-kicks in case there's a murderer chasing behind you. it works. tah-rust me. xoxo.

so this is it...

it was a sunday morning or maybe saturday, but i remember three things. uncle sugar was looking quite chocolate-lovely on a leather chair with a bon appetit in his hands. i was standing in the kitchen hoping someone would make me something. and then he looked up.

those browns of his, when concerned, gut me every time. and at this moment, he looked very concerned.

kar? we're about to go through a very. bad. period.

every bit of liquid that sloshes through my body rushed to my toes and i thought i'd faint a little. so. this is it. this is how it happens. on a sunday morning or maybe saturday.




he continued, shaking his head in grave apology.

those beans i bought...they're terrible.

liquid back to sloshing as usual.

coffee beans. coffee. beans.

i almost just wrote we need bigger problems, but then i got scared about throwing that out to the universe. so forget that, mister. i will gladly take sub-par and somewhat bitter beans over trouble any day. did i say that loud enough? sigh.

gimme. gimme.

murder...

so i was picking up my friend's full-length mink the other day...

i could stop there, couldn't i? but i won't.




the place was nice but kind of a hike, and there was a doorbell. i stood there for a moment while the guy inside stared hard at me and i stared hard back at him and that's when i made the decision not to ring the doorbell. they let me in anyway. i think because of my furry mitts from pour porter peeking out.

fur shops are strange to me. i'm not anti-fur or anti-anything, for that matter, but i felt like i was choking in there. it smelled old. and everyone was unattractive, but trying super hard to make you think they were not unattractive. did i just write that? oh, my. i should've stopped at the choking bit.




so they give me my friend's mink, which is the longest most beautiful richest color piece of perfection that kind of made me make the same sound i make when i am cuddling with one of my people. the end.

wait. there's more.

so i walk out of the shop, merrily making my way to my car when i hear FUR! IS! MURDER! and i thought about it in my head as i was walking and agreed. good point. for sure. it is murder. unless the animals in question have already perished. then it's simply serendipitous, yes?

again with the FUR! IS! MURDER!

and i looked at this group of grungy fellows on my right, one with a camera and all looking at me, and i smiled and nodded politely and said something along the lines of it sure is, mister.

and then i looked down. you'd think that my first thought would've been dummy. you're. carrying. a. giant. bag. out. of. a. fur. shop. with. the. name. of. the. fur. shop. emblazoned. across. it. sadly, it was not. my first thought was a hissper to myself they see my mitts!




anyway. i hid my hands under the gigantic mink and smiled my most reassuring, brightest, non-threatening to all animals of the world smile and assured those lovely boys in a bit of a panicked voice that IT'S NOT MINE! IT'S MY FRIEND'S!

i didn't tell them she has others. and i won't tell her what they said, either.

p.s. my friends said i could wear the mink as much as i want before they come to pick it up, with only one rule. i must wear it to lacrosse games while puffing on a filtered ciggie in one hand, a dirty martini in the other. i will be sure to instagram that as soon as it happens. also, for the record, my mitts are not even fur. they're just so darn...furry.

gimme.

wise words from my friend...

trying to get back here. i am i am. until then, a stashism.

we're not going to talk about this...

do you even know some of the poor decisions i've made? like, trying to cook a pizza on a wooden pizza peel.

as soon as it started flaming, i stomped my foot and asked the girlies three why the heck would they name it a pizza peel if you couldn't use it to make a pizza?!

their answer included something or other about the basics of fire and flammability. doesn't take much, does it? wood and flame. yep.




i've microwaved metal, even after insane conversations with my brain trying to convince whoever's in charge that it's not so much silver...maybe the microwave won't even notice it.

i never wash my grapes, i seem to always ask when the baby's due when the mom is standing there holding a three-month old, and i continually forget to ask the guy to trim my nails until after he's polished them. can you just...a little bit shorter...it's fine...

it's remarkable. when you say to someone that it's fine and wave away all the it's not fines from the air around you, it usually is fine.

i thought i shouldn't go to alt summit this year because we're moving this summer. this should come as no surprise, but i am not good with time or numbers or deadlines - or at least not as good as i am with creating fires, contained explosions, and uncomfortable situations - because, to me, there's no in-between time. there's now and then there's late. and now, i find that i actually could've spared a few days next week. too late.

{insert a traffic jam of regret right here.}




so, if you're speaking, feel free to facetime me during your chat. i will nod my head and smile at you like you're the smartest little thing in the room. you probably are. and if you're attending, you can do the same; i'll whisper all the right times to clap and encourage you to ask questions. lots of them. and if your name is joslyn and you have a blog called simple lovely, you can call me at midnight and i will call down to the front desk and order you coffee for the morning. at which time, you are to call me once again so we can share a cup of caffeine.

sigh.

the whole point of this post is that i would've worn these tights to the white party.

name calling...

ages ago in oman, i had a friend who was so awesome. like, swedish supermodel who adored her gorgeous and witty italian husband and her three gorgeous and witty babes and spoke four languages. i still miss hanging out with her. they don't make a lot of women like that in my current neighborhood.

the point of this is that, if she didn't like another woman, she would call her a cow. i thought that was funny and rather mild, and i was always a little shocked when our other international friends would take instant offense. i kind of thought something was lost in translation, do you know?




fast-forward to last night, when grae wouldn't let lillie in front of the bathroom mirror. as an aside, can i tell you that this home is insanely mirror-heavy and there still aren't enough for those girlies three.

and lillie called grae a pig.

{insert brawl here.}

part of me is happy that they're not using the language i hear coming from, say, their busmates' mouths. but the other part of me is taking away their electronics and telly privileges for the weekend. i told them that sisters don't call each other animal names. sisters don't fight. if they don't have each other, they have nothing.

grae shrugged and replied we'll always have esmé.

{insert brawl here.}

have you ever been called a name that set your temper on fire? tell me...

instagram...

yes, instragram. i don't know how to use it and it seems silly to me but i am such a screamingly visual person that it seems sillier that i not try it out. so i am.

here is my new bauble tree. it's massive and it catches the light so captivatingly in the mornings that i gasp. and i don't even mind that captivatingly is not a word. it should be.

i wish i was a photographer. i do. so does uncle sugar. one christmas in london, he bought me a fancy camera. when he gave it to me, he said something like "now you can be one of those cute ladies who walks around with a camera and takes pictures all the time."

i remember telling him a few minutes later - just after i whipped off the camera strap from around my neck because i thought it was choking the life out of me. i'm claustrophic like that, you know. - that i take better pictures with my words. and that i'd prefer to just look at things hard and write them in my memory. that if he ever wanted to revisit a particular holiday or one of the girlies' sporting events, just ask. i'll tell him the story. heck, i'll even re-enact it as best i can.

{crickets.}

yep. that was a good christmas memory. if you'd like, i can re-enact the look of disgust and disappointment on that guy's face. let me know. because there's no photo.

p.s. and here is my little disco ball.

stealing my breath...

just a few images that stopped me.

this is what the new year is looking like so far. stunning.




i need to remember this one. needy and homeless, redefined.

and whoa. this is love, yes?

may you have someone or many ones in 2012 and beyond who will always always come after you.

gimme. gimme. gimme.