outside the squares

When you live in a small town you sometimes just want to get out of it and go anywhere else, even if for just a few hours.  Being kind of in the middle of nowhere, there are few towns within reach that have things we would all like to see or do that we haven't already done to death.  We recently went to Yakima (chosen simply because we had never been), and while we loved the arboretum and an old bookstore that was warmed with a wood stove and steeped in incense, we didn't find much else.  I would have been happy with the drive and seeing somewhere new, but our teen was disappointed it didn't have anything more to offer.  

Sometimes just going beyond the edge of town is nice, too, and last weekend's snow and fog made for a magical, quiet landscape.  The snow all melted with yesterday's warm downpours, and today it is sunny and 59 degrees.  Perhaps our coldest days are behind us now.  

I deactivated my Instagram account this past Tuesday.  I still see a lot of good and have learned a lot there, not to mention the *insta friends I've made, some as far back as 2011, and I'm not prepared to cut the cord just yet.  But right now I'm just really tired of all of it - the lifestyles, experts, influencers - it has come to feel like noise and clutter in my mind. I am inviting more quiet and creativity into my days, more thoughtfulness and attentiveness to the very real life I am living outside of those squares. We will see how it goes, I may go back after a while, but right now it feels pretty damn good.  

the ordinary

How was your week?  Here, we returned to our ordinary days.  Thor returned to school and piano lessons, my husband returned to work and spent part of the week in Portland, and I held steady with some projects at home.  Wednesday was my Dad's 88th birthday.  I'm so glad he is still in my life and that I get to spend so much time with him.  He is such an inspiration to me.  I started a watercolor class, started knitting again, started a new sourdough adventure, and started journaling again.  

Small ordinary beginnings that feel good.  

I've been thinking a lot about the ordinary and what I want my days to look like, to feel like, and about how I want to feel and how I want to make others feel.  The walls I have put up my whole life have done nothing good for me or my relationships with others.  

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A friend (@EmilyCrofts) shared the following on Instagram this week and I wanted to share it with you, too, about quiet, simple, ordinary, beautiful things.

"It all matters.  That someone turns out the lamp, picks up the windblown wrapper, says hello to the invalid, pays at the unattended lot, listens to the repeated tale, folds the abandoned laundry, plays the game fairly, tells the story honestly, acknowledges help, gives credit, says goodnight, resists temptation, wipes the counter, waits at the yellow, makes the bed, tips the maid, remembers the illness, congratulates the victor, accepts the consequences, takes a stand, steps up, offers a hand, goes first, goes last, chooses the small portion, teaches the child, tends to the dying, comforts the grieving, removes the splinter, wipes the tear, directs the lost, touches the lonely, is the whole thing.  What is most beautiful is least acknowledged.  What is worth dying for is barely noticed."   

~ Laura McBride, in We Are Called to Rise

january

  

School starts up again Monday.  I always look forward to January.    I think it is one of my favorite months.  It feels so quiet, uncluttered, and slow.  However, just like last year, I am starting it out under the weather, but I've got Pip by my side, two books I'm part way through (Coventry by Rachel Cusk, Why We Sleep:  Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams by Matthew Walker), and another that I'm listening to (Robin Wall Kimmerer's Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural History of Mosses), so it's not all hankies and day sleeping over here.

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Until next week ~ sending love.  x