UGH. it has been a great day!

that's right. on my list of things to do today are about a dozen items that i had been putting off- emails, phone calls, grading assignments...well, here's pretty much the whole thing:

- email: lw, kf, al, jg, dad, rb, b, pr, ep (aside from "dad", which stands for my dad, those are initials); sga blog

- laundry (3 loads!)

- pantry: inventory, email, volunteers

- grade artist lists

- finish grades

- register for jury duty (bleh)- fill out form and call

- call old doctor's office

- call new doctor's office

- work on layout

- email layout

- call about layout

- blog?

- pilates

see how many emails? see how much grading?? ok, so i only have 8 students, and it took a matter of minutes to read and grade their two-page homework assignment, but that hasn't ever stopped me from putting it off! and anyway, see how many phone calls????

WELL. i was slightly dreading today, yesterday, because, like i said, those are almost all things i'd been putting off. and who wants to purposely fill their day with chores they actively avoid? but today i had two things to look forward to: a delicious breakfast of pancakes made by my b (yum!!), and dinner out tonight (also with b). with those two lovely events, i wanted to fill my day with productivity (fueled by whole-wheat sourdough blueberry pancakes), so that i could confidently enjoy yak tonight (we're planning to try out a nepalese restaurant), satisfied with a day's work well done.

by lunchtime (12:30*), i had gleefully gouged in check-marks over the following items:

- email: lw, kf, al, jg, dad, rb, b, pr, ep; sga blog

- laundry

- pantry: inventory, email, volunteers

- grade artist lists

- finish grades

- work on layout

- email layout 

that left:

- register for jury duty (bleh)- fill out form and call

- call old doctor's office

- call new doctor's office

- call about layout

- blog?

- pilates

and now i'm down to:

- blog?

- pilates

which will soon be just:

- pilates

i really enjoy pilates. for a long time i fervently believed that you couldn't get a good workout without doing something highly strenuous and high-impact for a long time. but those kinds of things tend to hurt my knees and i can't afford to buy $80 sneakers every six months. then i discovered pilates on netflix streaming. it's really wonderful- it's relaxing, but i feel like i get a quality workout. and i don't even need shoes.

anyway, i was noticing that, not only was i getting stuff done like crazy today, my attitude was even pretty good. i know this is god working in me- blessing me today. i usually only work cheerfully on things that i like working on, while things that i don't enjoy are 1) avoided, or 2) done with resentment. i've often experienced what i would call god helping me get things done, but this is one of the first times i've (relaxed and) enjoyed the process, hunkering down and simply slogging through. and craziest thing of all- i didn't put anything off today, and now, at just past 3pm, i'm done with all that i needed to do! yay!

i'll let you know how the yak is. :)

*i made a yummy smoothie for with lunch- it was, approximately, 2 carrots, 1/2 cup plain yogurt, 1 cup orange juice, 1/2-2/3 cup frozen blueberries, 1 banana, ~3/4 cup frozen pineapple. there was a lot, but it was good! i may try something similar with coconut milk.

books

Several weeks ago we had some friends over, and one of them, perusing a shelf of books, pulled out my copy of “Sailing Alone Around the Room”, a compilation of poems by Billy Collins, US Poet Laureate 2001-2003. He mentioned a few things about Billy Collins, saying he liked his work and asked what I thought about it. Well, I had to admit that I’d never actually read the book. It’s really quite pathetic- here’s this lovely slim volume of poems given to me by a good friend (Alanna) in high school. I remember trying to be interested in a book of poems, but really I have this innate fear of poetry- so much of it is deceptively simple and innocent on the surface, only to be about dark, evil things- or else it’s just vague and unnecessarily dense and “meta”. I didn’t even give this book a chance. And so for six…seven…eight years it sat on my bookshelf in my room in NY while I finished high school, went off to college, and then came back and then moved again…and then over Christmas I boxed it up and shipped it 3000 miles across the country, where, upon pulling it from the cardboard box, I carefully placed it on a different bookshelf and promptly forgot about it.

And then the brief aforementioned conversation happened, and, assured that Billy Collins’ poetry was quite harmless and pleasantly amusing, I plucked up the courage to read it.

And I loved it! My first read-through was fast. I just went from poem to poem like they were chapters in a book, not really pausing at all to enjoy them as separate entities. It was like, once I started reading them, I realized I had been starved for poetry and just had to keep gulping them down whole, as fast as possible, whenever I had a spare moment. Here are links to two of my favorites: “Another reason why I don’t keep a gun in the house”, and “Directions”.

This whole episode reminded me of a half-hearted new year’s resolution I made back in January. The Billy Collins book is not the only book of mine on our bookshelves that I haven’t read, though by this point most, if not all, have travelled hundreds, if not thousands, of miles with me. It seemed like a cool project to take this year and read through all these books, including “The Singer Trilogy”, “Conversations with an Eagle”, “Renoir, My Father”, “Les Fleurs du Mal”, and many art books (looking at the pictures dozens of times doesn’t count). It seems a bit late to get started on a new year’s resolution, but maybe I’ll still give it a shot!

Well, that’s all I wanted to say, so…toodles :)

various. sundry.

1) garden: growing! things are actually continuing to grow in the pots (with the notable exception of the thai basil- there in the back- we bought a month or so ago at whole foods...i have half a mind to haul that empty pot over to whole foods and demand a refund for the faulty seeds they sold me. jerks.). b and i are planning to divide the tomatoes today, which may end up killing the bigger ones, but they're supposed to be planted at least a couple feet apart, so they'll die anyway if we leave them together.

2) aaron bros. was having a sale on frames last week, and i found a great one for this beautiful photograph- taken by none other than the lovely photographer of nature-y things, ms. alida oegema. she took this stunning photo at glacier national park; i love having a big "window" into the great green wilderness of the north here in socal. it's good to have a reminder that such places exist.

3) sitting there below the picture is a wonderful little artwork by cathy reichel-clark, a local artist we met a week and a half ago at a little art show called "art on palm" in altadena. b and i hemmed and hawed over her work for a loooong time, and talked to cathy quite a bit in the process. her work mostly consists of hand-built ceramic vases. she can't use a wheel because of (i think) some sort of neurological disease that causes numbness in her hands (and feet), and generally leaves her exhausted. her work is exquisite- it's very different from most ceramics works because of the fact that it's not thrown, and until i saw her work i would have thought this would make her work inferior. but she's very talented and creates work that brings out the best in hand-built ceramics. it's so elegant and interesting (i wish i had thought to take pictures!...if she would have let me- she doesn't have a website..and i can't find any pictures online), and her glaze work is really amazing- b and i really like this black and white design, but she also had pieces that were very "rustic" looking, some that were modern-arty...a really wide range of decoration techniques that was all very, very beautiful. well, we didn't buy anything at that fair, but thought about it and then went to the sierra madre art festival last weekend, where she had a booth, and there we decided to take this piece home with us. yaaay! :) 

4) this mysterious black binder contains the first hard-copy version of a project i've been working on with scripps professor roswitha burwick (and others). i'll have more to post about this at the end of the month. :D