change...

for those of you who regularly visit my little corner of the blogosphere, you may notice that i have been changing the header recently. i got bored with the blogger-standardized one, and realized, 'hey, i'm a designer', and started playing with ideas. i'm still not 100% happy yet, but will be soon...i hope!

which brings me to what is on my mind tonight, the concept of change. i am a big fan of change. i like things to change. i am all for change.

what i don't like is the actual process of change. the annoying, complicated, messy, inconvenient steps that need to be taken for the actual change to occur. and i am in the middle of more than a couple of changes in my life right now. ick.

my natural tendency is to get grumpy and wish all the icky-ness away, but life rarely takes a turn for the better just because we are done with it being sucky. i need to take my own advice, and 'suck it up, princess' more than i really want to...and make sure that my attitude is one of joy instead of the one of impatient grumpiness that i too often don.

i need to remember rilke's admontion to 'be patient with all that is unsolved in your heart,' and remember that there is a bigger picture being played out that i am not seeing the whole of yet... which brings us to the concept of waiting.

don't let me get started on waiting...

i am home

after spending time with my family, coming home is never the same. there are the times when after the crazy busyness (especially around the holidays) that i crave the quiet stillness of my own little nest. then, there are other times, when i know that the family is all together, laughing and playing games on the other side of the country, that my solo sighs echo off the walls that i have yet to hang pictures on.

i'm not sure which this one is.

yes, it was a busy and packed six days, filled with lots of laughter and children and game-playing. there was babysitting the cutest kids in the world. hearing jayden say my name for the first time. nicky proving that he is a better driver than i am (at least where need for speed is concerned). hanging with meg, reading and buying books. going with mom, dad & doug to mom's appointment, where we got some good news, and caused an ocologist to wonder exactly what was wrong with our family (in a good way). losing with dad to the rest of the family at pictionary (we should get an award for being the suckiest players EVER!). admiring my sister-in-law as she is a better mother than i ever could dream of being. playing and hanging with john's boys. way too much shopping...

and now i am home, tired, and while there are no sighs echoing, i miss my 'peeps'. ;-)

and then it was august...

leaving

well, the suitcase is packed...and i have to say that it feels more than a little weird taking my big bubba of a suitcase not brimming over and bordering on the maximum weight allowed by all major airlines. it feels like i am doing something wrong. but, that being said, if i can pack for three weeks in ukraine & paris in this suitcase, and then turn around and have trouble fitting all i'll need for six days in calgary, i have a problem.

i am downloading all the podcasts i can in an effort to be entertained while in the air, when what i really need to be doing is sleeping... so i will do just that.

anne sophie swetchine wrote, "travel is the frivolous part of serious lives, and the serious part of frivolous ones." tonight i don't think i can decide which one fits...

If Fonts Were People

Times New Roman and friends battle the forces of evil.

"Mailbox. Open mailbox!"

read more | digg story

tourists

on my way to work this morning, my mind started down a track that i haven't been able to wander from yet. it was started while i was listening to the sarah slean song get home, and there is one line in the song that says, 'to me you're just a tourist...'

the song started me thinking that it is too easy for us to be tourists in our own lives. i, myself live like this with alarming frequency.

what is so wrong with being a tourist, you wonder? well, you are reading the words of someone who doesn't like to be considered a tourist even when she is in a foreign country. the best compliment i EVER received was on my first trip to paris, when i was crossing a street in the latin quarter one morning with this old woman who apparently saw something funny, and said something to me en francais, and was surprised when i couldn't answer her. ah, the good days...

...but i digress.

being a tourist, at least in my estimation, is cheap. you don't belong to the place where you are, you are just there to enjoy it, not make it better, not necessarily grow from it, to only get what you can from it. you may disagree with me, but i believe at the root of being a tourist is the consumerism that is so prevalent in and diseasing our culture. it is deliberately standing orbiting of the heart of a place, sampling the hors d'oerves, but never actually sitting down at the table .

in many ways i am more a tourist in my everyday life than i am when i am in france. i forget the things that make my life, and this place where i live great and beautiful and magical, in the face of the banalities of the every day...or worse than forget them, i take them for granted.

in the busyness of the days, how does one remember to live?

i can admit that sometimes i not always the brightest crayon in the box...

a long time ago, i was introduced to the band caedmon's call, and fell in love with their music, some songs more than others. and coincidentally, all of the caedmon's songs that i absolutely loved were the ones written by derek webb. i got to the point that when a new CD would come out, i would listen to it and be able to identify which songs were written by him on the first time through.

there was [and still is] a poetry and purity to his lyrics that has always resounded in me. his music has always moved me.

and then, he met a girl and got married. i knew that she was an artist too, that he first met her when she was playing in a nashville coffee shop, but i didn't think much of it. it never even occurred to me that given my love of derek's music, that music that he essentially fell in love with, would be something that i would enjoy.

until i heard sandra mccracken's song ten thousand angels on grey's anatomy... and started thinking that maybe i need to broaden my horizons.

i downloaded sandra's new CD, gravity|love from noisetrade.com, and have not been able to stop listening to it. (first of all, if you don't know what noisetrade is,
go there immediately!) but beyond that, this is seriously the most beautiful CD i may ever have heard, with lyrics that both uplift and break your heart.

if i had to pick a favorite song, i would have to tell you that it changes every time i hear a new song. portadown station is brilliantly, painfully beautiful ("i hear your voice inside my head but i miss the sound"). all the miles has an honesty and purity that is rare ("I'd rather have the mystery and the madness and the rains/ 'cause hell's the only place you can be free of all love's pain").

i could go on & on, but i won't. go to noise trade. get the album...and experience it for yourself.