speaking of heaven...

this week has been difficult. pat and lill and grae have all been on separate trips, so esmé and i have been on the verge of tears ever since they left. and by verge, i mean everything makes us cry. i'll tell you some stories later.

but here's one that's sticking to me right now.

one of the things i adore about pat is that he believes in certain things. whatever those things may be, he is full-on confident. but i'm a waverer. and waverers like me really enjoy the company of full-on confident gentlemen.

i ask him sometimes if there's a heaven. and he says yes. and i say but how do you know? and he calmly answers i just know in a tone that does not invite wavers and calms me like nothing else in the world. so, for at least a few days, i worry less about that one thing and more about whether we would all live through a tsunami. and that conversation goes pretty much the same way.

the other day, my neighbor's grandfather-in-law died. he was apparently one of those old-school lovely men. the kind who made his mark on his family's hearts, which is always a nice thing to hear. a good life, lived well. all we can ask for in the end, yes? 

she said they had been chatting just days before and he was fine. plus adorable.

at one point, he mentioned his wife who had died the previous year. i saw her yesterday, he said. she told me to get my hat because we're going for a walk.

and that was that.

it's my favorite story of the week. there aren't that many words in it, but it still made me cry and fill up with wonder and wonder less all at the same time.

you can borrow it if you're waverers, too. xoxo.

gimme, gimme, gimme.

of note...

stopped me in my tracks. i wish i'd written it.

also, my jakarta home and a few of my words are on design mom today. i like that gabrielle very much.

and the weirdest news of all? this.

i like those equals project ladies. they are good ones to support. and the piece i wrote for them is so different and more real than anything i've ever written before that when i saw my name on the front cover, my mouth filled up with panic water. 

the more i write, the more i've found i can throw myself out there straight off the edge in terms of my words and feelings and opinions...far better than i can write my bio, much to my professional detriment. 

ugh. i am not a good lister of accomplishments or associations. unless i am writing yours, that is.

five minutes in heaven...

part of my job as a mother is to wake up my girls on school days or swim meet mornings. i know just how to whisper to each of them to begin their days right. but this rarely happens.

because the morning version of lillie responds to sweetness with snarls and fake compound word swears like butt-chops and piss-fiss, and that sets me on fire like no other match in the world. and grae can sleep with her ice-blue eyes open, so i'm never quite sure if she sees me. plus it creeps me out. which is why i have to turn on the lamp. two inches from her face.

esmé? i whisper. always whisper. she's seven and still snarl-free. and she snores, even at seven o'clock after a fat night of sleep.

you already know about her sleepy morning dress-me routine. after that, as soon as she's sorted, i whisper in her ear "five minutes in heaven!"

and then i always always grimace and shake my head like what did i just say? i mean. i live in indonesia and i have heard about this sort of experience and you don't just say things like that without a plan, do you know?

kind of unrelated, but last night a few friends and i were talking about the sexual undertones in EVERYTHING here in indo. you simply can't get away from it. the cute ladies teetering on heels and staring down men, the men ogling the cute ladies teetering on heels. and my daughters.

it's strange and so in-your-face. all. the. time. relentless.

and! the phenomena of big fat white guys with hot indonesian women? mind-boggling. like, you would barely be able to contain yourself. you would want to shout OH, COME ON?! SERIOUSLY?! with a side of falsetto IS THIS HAPPENING?!

it is happening. and it's sad, this sex-as-currency thing. i definitely don't mind it as part of a package deal, but on its own with nothing else to offer? just sad.

but the weather is awesome and the pedicures are cheap, so it's fine.

sigh.

and really. would the world be a better place if five minutes in heaven meant five minutes playing minecraft? yes. that's what i thought.

gimme. gimme. gimme.

vine...

the only thing better to me than instagram is a moving instagram. short and sweet and ripe with juicy bits of meant to be forgotten and embarrassing and vertigo-inducing and random albeit sometimes pretty or interesting to one or two people and why bother seconds of our lives.

it is called vine. and i love it. 

i especially love it when i catch a loud indo noon rain and get reminded that my curbs are cute. i forget that too all too often during rainy season.

it's also a nice app to show esmé how there was a year when i let her sleep five extra minutes in the mornings.

my handwriting and horrible mood and also this hedgie of ours.

oh. and the year i bought the girlies three tap shoes. absolutely made for marble floors but not the tile ones in the sunroom that are now skidded silver. lillie and grae have a dance this weekend, and i'm trying to persuade them to bring along their taps. i figure it could buy me at least one more year of no dating, yes?

related: when we lived in jordan, there was a dance studio right by our place. i wanted the girlies two to turn out just. like. me. and so i signed them up for tap. pat suggested "how about latin instead?" to which i answered "that's boring! tap is so happy!"

to which he answered "let me see what you remember from your years of tap."

if i remember correctly, my routine looked a lot like this.

and that is why the girlies two took latin. but as you can see, despite all efforts to the contrary, they turned out just. like. me.