January 2014

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Sunday morning, not terribly early, but new enough to witness a hoary frost. I had a strange night, waking three times, once after a dream, the variety where I thought I was awake, my body gazing upon the glow of street lamps stealing through drawn curtains. I heard rain and was absolutely delighted, the ground hard and dry from its lack. But the gentle patter soon turned into a deluge and began to inundate our house, so I dashed out of bed and was hit by a wall of water, beautiful with rectangular flashes of white light that grabbed me by the wrists and kept me from swimming. I awoke to the tender prodding of the hubster, saying he heard an awful whimper. Oh dear, did we have a good cuddle after that.

I am loving my new camera! It takes a bobby dazzler of a photo and has so many new-to-me features. I shall be busy with it for ages and ages, frittering the time enchanted by all my view finder reveals, the world on glorious display. I forget the cold, the hour, and start at the voice of another soul. “Good morning neighbor, how are you?”

Presently listening to My Morning Jacket (do you know their cover of Rocket Man? The best!), while pondering a funny day. Normally, I am the resident dervish, cleaning, cooking, talking, and dancing about, but yesterday, in an amusing and quite unusual turn, my presence was feather light and spare. The hubster, on the other hand, did laundry, vacuumed, mopped, took down the holiday decor, baked brownies (a first), and even uttered a few very Colleen witticisms! Kooky! And, as I was contemplating it, he said, “You are quiet today, Buddy. Are you okay?” To which I planted a jubilant kiss on his delicious cheek and giggled and made a reference to Freaky Friday, one of my favorite movies as a kid. Shall I dare put it in the Neflix queue? Oh, yes!

So there you have it, my Sunday, random and sundry as it was. Hoping yours was lovely or silly and always fun!

 

words to treasure

silver

Sweet story – I bought this outfit (minus the boots) for Luna while she was in the hospital. When she first saw it, her face lit up as she uttered the sweetest sigh and reached her hand to touch it! At that point, I didn’t care if she ever wore it. I was so happy to witness such delight. Though, now I hope I am not helping to create a little fashion monster. There are worse things, I suppose.

winter

resolution

Less sugar, like a Mike’s Drive-In Peppermint shake.

More muscle – my friend Mahoney just challenged me to twenty regular push-ups. I tried after breakfast (not the best timing) and can do ten, so I am already halfway there!

One Community is a monthly project in which participants photograph their homes and community with a theme in mind. The goal is to both showcase similarities and differences in our communities worldwide – and bring us all closer together in understanding through art.

Would you like to join us? Post one or more photos for each of the theme words, treasure, silver, winter, and resolution, and add your blog post to the link-up. Easy! It begins today, January 5th, and stays open for one week.

Snap happy!

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Happy Friday, peeps! That’s my darlin’ Maren, in town for holiday festivities. We made a pilgrimage to the Portland Art Museum (as is our nature), walked, talked, ate, and gave satisfyingly big squeezy hugs. It is marvelous to have friends. She is conducting a Trimpin kinetic sculpture that made the most sensational sounds. It was the cause of many a smile, too, and rightly so.

detail of This Land is Our Land

Abbie Miller

She uses a single 100 foot zipper. Wowie!

detail of PMU #25

Roxy Paine

Follow this link to see how another work in the series was made.

Oh bother, I forgot to get the artist info on this sculpture, anyone know? The mobile, however, is a Calder.

I didn’t get the name of this one either, silly bones.

This beauty, however, I can say with 99.5% certainty is a Mercedes 300, circa the 1950s. Shiny!

Hello. We were happy, not only because we were together, but had just gorged on homemade biscuits and gravy, which were fab. I had food disappointment earlier, at what I thought was a promising new diner near our house. The biscuits were hard, and though the gravy was called mushroom, there were, no exaggeration, three tiny slivers of fungi in the whole mess of gravy. Sad face. So we made up for it, and how! The purdiest, flakiest, yummiest, mile high biscuits (a riff on this recipe) bathed in gravy swimming with mushrooms and country sausage. I took not one photo, just to prove that I don’t actually have a camera appendage. Honest.

Cold

What good is the warmth of summer, without the cold of winter to give it sweetness.

John Steinbeck

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Ninety

My Grandma Frances, sometime in the forties, I am guessing, my very favorite photo of her. She would have been ninety years old today, always proud to be a New Year’s baby. I woke up early and sang her a song in the bath. She would have liked it, would have laughed and kissed me on the forehead with her coral lips.

She’s been with me a lot lately. The scent of her in passing, the chewing of her favorite (now mine) Wrigley’s Spearmint gum, and her car, which I have spied in a myriad of places around town. Best was when she visited me in a dream, rattling around in her house, wearing her navy blue dress with sheer sleeves and pleated skirt, the one she kept for best. She wants her story told. I am working on it.

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