tears coming and going

2002

we came a long way in the nearly a decade that we lived here (we moved in in 2001, but i couldn't locate any of those pix this morning). i cried my eyes out the first time we looked at the house. it was a 70s nightmare through and through, green countertops that on top of it were for freakishly short people and came up to about my knees (only a slight exaggeration). but we built on and we built a whole flock of little buildings in the garden. and we shared many a laugh and dinners and countless bottles of wine with friends. and now it's time to move on to the next chapter and i find myself crying as we leave too.

2010
the house (and my photography) have come a long way!

but, i have to dry my tears, pack the iMac in the car and locate the cat. see you sometime next week on the other side. :-)

serenity now or totally jonesin' for blogging

pretty viking boat picture promotes calm thoughts
or maybe i'm just hoping the viking will throw me a lifeline

if i had a sneaking suspicion that i was addicted to blogging, it has been proven to me over the past week when time in front of the computer has simply not been there. don't get me wrong, i've been in front of a computer a bit, but it's definitely the wrong one. and i'm simply not blogging from that piece of crap, bit of waste, example of bad design, toxic waste that i can't lift, piece of trash behemoth. it's a PC for odin's sake. i have more pride than that. not to mention that one shouldn't really blog at work. mostly because it will be full of vitriol and utter bewilderment at the corporate world. but i digress.

i'm seriously jonesing for my time in front of the internet. but more accurately, for my daily writing. for more than two years i've written on a daily basis and i can tell you that it sucks not to be doing it right now. i can seriously feel my sanity slipping (which i'm sure has nothing to do with the great white collar/blue collar debate with which i will regale you on another occasion, tho' do feel free to leave me feedback on how those words make you feel) without my daily outlet. i tell you, blogging is cheaper than therapy.

let me give you a little summary of where we're at:

~ # of witty small trucks we have rented to take stuff that can't be properly enclosed in boxes (e.g. a loom, an alarming amount of rocks and about 800 pieces of driftwood) over to jylland: 2

clever truck #2 - we rent them from a company called "lej et lig" (rent a body) that started out renting out hearses
this one is an old postal truck and on the side it says:
"this will inspire jealousy on your car holiday. if your trip takes you to albania"
i'm still laughing maniacally chuckling to myself about that one.

~  time 'til big-ass truck arrives: approx. 12 hours (as of this writing)

~  amount of stuff not packed: 8%

~ amount of stuff that will just be thrown randomly into boxes labeled with vague things like "crap from back of upstairs closet" and "underneath the sink" and "bottom drawer of the refrigerator" (strike that, we'll just throw that penicillin experiment away): 8%

~ times husband has forgotten his own name: 1 (of which i have documented proof, there are probably others.)

~ times husband has completely made up new words, written them on boxes containing objects which already have perfectly good words assigned to them: 1 that i know of, probably countless others.

~ times husband has forgotten my name and sabin's name: 1 (again with the documented proof - which will no doubt come in handy during the inquest).

~ times when i have taken in The Enormity of Things in the past few days: 0

~ times when husband has taken in The Enormity of Things in the past few days: 3

~ husband's level of stress: high (for him, which means undetectable for normal mortals, but which completely freaks me out because hey, i'm the crazy one around here).

~ days i am behind on my calendar art journal: 22!!! (yowza! something had to give and that was apparently it - mostly because i had to pack all of my art supplies.)

~ sushi restaurants opening in our town as soon as we're moving: 1

~ times we sneaked out for sushi without the child: 1

~ times we went out for sushi with the child: 1

~ sushi we owe the child because she grilled me and i spilled the sneaky sushi trip: 1 (doubles as reason i should never submit myself to a lie detector test.)

~ days in a row we have eaten sushi: 2

~ days in a row we wanted to eat sushi: 4

~ people we had over for dinner at the last minute: 5

~ how much of the kitchen is packed: 8%

~ how much of the laundry is done: 98%  (it would be 100%, but people around here seem to keep wearing clothes for some inexplicable reason.)

~ how much stuff isn't going to fit into that big-ass truck: 10%

~ activities we have done to avoid the stress: playing cards with friends,  shopping for buying a horse, making dinner for 8, going out for lunch, going to the eye doctor and spending 30 minutes chatting away with her about inability to throw away baby clothes.

pretty water and ropes = lifeline to sanity

things for which i'm grateful:

~ it'll all be over soon.

~ my 365 photo project, which makes me take at least a little break/walk every day.

~ my neighbor can come and do the cleansing of the house.

~ the horse guy will deliver the horse next week, so we don't have to move her ourselves (now to find somewhere to keep her while we build a stable...)

~ the fact that all of you still keep reading. i promise i'll be back to reading and commenting on your blogs and flickr photostreams soon. i haven't forgotten you. and i miss you very much.

~ this too shall pass.

deep thoughts

you never know where your life will take you. what the people you meet will inspire you to do and think. the world is so complex and there are so many things that have to align for you to live exactly the life that you're living.

to try to predict what's next or what will come of your decisions and relationships is completely impossible. you have to find a balance between allowing life to carry you along and guiding it in a direction that you more or less think is the right one. but it's always a fine line. and you never really know which side of it you're on.

sometimes tho' it just feels right. and the path seems sure. and your doubts dissolve. and you know the path is the right one for you in the here and now. even if you don't know where it leads.

because any path at all leads to adventures and new chapters and it's exciting to contemplate what lies ahead. but you have to remember to stop and take a walk and a deep breath along the way and just enjoy it. because life, as far as you're able to comprehend here and now, only happens once. or at least this particular version of it.

do remember to stop and enjoy the sunset once in awhile, because it all goes by pretty fast...

things i'm wondering...

when you drive a long way, you have loads of time to think and wonder about things. things like:

~ how on earth will i survive the corporate world after being in a creative one?

~ did the cat miss me while i was away?

~ speaking of the cat, how is she going to adjust to moving across the country?

~ do we need a filipino nanny?

~ what were they doing on my computer while i wasn't here?

~ why hasn't KLM sent the official confirmation of the reservation i made this morning? will they blame it on the volcanic ash?

~ what will be left after we're gone?

~ does the danish hollywood wives television show mean that the world has indeed gone mad?

~ why do PCs still exist when there are macs?

~ ditto for all other phones when there are iPhones?

~ why does anyone use internet explorer when there are other browsers?

~ how did i get along on flickr before i knew about greasemonkey scripts?

~ why did i eat all that junk food?

~ just because things have always been done a certain way, doesn't mean that it's right.

~ how do you, as an individual, work to create a better corporate culture?

~ is facebook really an instrument of the lord? (disclaimer: not me who thought this, but one of my FB "friends")

~ will i ever live in a windmill?

now run along and do something to celebrate the earth. what i did was notice the amazing light all the way home. the earth is cool. let's take care of it, shall we?

april snow

i was so dismayed yesterday as i drove into a small patch of snow flurries, just as i got near our new house. i was going to pick up the keys and drop off a few things. it seemed like a bad omen, that snow.

the house, now empty, seems forlorn. and i had another of those awful moments of the Enormity of the Project. since the first look at this house, we've been looking beyond what's there and concentrating on what we see in our minds - focusing on the potential and not the reality. but now that it's empty that reality is even more stark - sagging wallpaper, greying paint on the walls, low ceilings, the most awful silly putty color of paint on the kitchen cupboards (seriously unappetizing), i could go on and on. we have a five-year-plan for what we want to do with it, but five years is five years and we will live in it in the meantime. and that's just how it is.

but even more overwhelming was a sense of sorrow hanging over the house. the family we're buying it from is moving because their dreams and hopes didn't turn out as they planned and it had become a place they associated with those broken dreams. although i know this doesn't mean it will be a sorrowful place for us, that sadness is hanging there in the air. and it was very nearly physically palpable yesterday when i stopped by in the sudden snowstorm. 

i can tell you that next week, although we're not going to paint and fix everything (those pink cupboards have got to go), i can't wait to open all of the windows and let in fresh air and sunshine. fresh air and sunshine should go a long way towards chasing the sadness away, but some friends have suggested a ceremonial exorcism cleansing and i may actually have to do something along those lines. we have to chase out the previous sadness and replace it with our energy and happiness. and while i feel confident we can do that, things were looking a little blurry there for awhile in yesterday's april snow.

shadows of thoughts

reading murakami (again again) and feeling thankful that my chairs and lamp still have shadows.

many thoughts are swirling in my head, but they have yet to coalesce and form shadows...so please stand by....

the nature of time and place

i keep thinking about time. maybe because it feels like it's getting away from me. or going too fast. or that there's simply not enough of it. and i feel carried away on the winds of time like a fluffy feather, without any hope at all of preventing it, time is just going to take me wherever it wants.

there are certain places i've been where it felt like time slowed down and was enough. the half year i studied in russia, time elongated itself and i could fit everything in that i wanted - long rides on romantic old trains, walks and countless cups of tea with friends, spoonsful of homemade cherry jam and  deep conversations, walks in the park, walks in the snow, trips to the opera and ballet, concerts and of course studying, reading and homework. there was enough time for all of it.

my father-in-law's house (which now belongs to my sister-in-law) is the same way. time stretches out there and there's enough of it for you to read another page of that book before dinner, add one more line to your drawing, play one more hand of cards or have one more glass of wine.

i'm hoping the new house is that way too...but i guess only time will tell...

it's so hard to be a kid

we had a party today with sabin's entire class. a chance for her to say goodbye and also the birthday party we didn't have back in january when the weather was bad. the kids are mostly 10, sabin is the youngest at 9. they're definitely 'tweens now - not teenagers yet and yet no longer kids. the dynamics are more and more marked and yet more and more subtle.

we divided them into three teams and put them through that painful moment of choosing teams (painful if you're the last one left). but even before that, the dynamics were in play. i've never really had a sense before of anyone being teased or bullied, but i saw moments of it today. one of them really surprised me, because if you look at the kids, the girl who seemed to be teased would have been the one you thought was coolest and most popular, the other one i wanted to bully a little bit myself. i had a very hard time keeping a straight face when a classmate said to him, "sorry to ask, but are you handicapped or something?" i had honestly been wondering the same thing as he repeatedly, almost obsessively, poked the fire with a stick after being asked not to by both me and his peers. it was like he went deaf a little bit.

i watched kids clown their way out of embarassing situations. i listened to the surprisingly astute observations they have. i was astonished by their humor and facility with sarcasm (they are little danish kids, after all). i was touched by their kindness to one another (it wasn't all bullying and even the bullying was mild). i wondered at their tears (my own child, whose expectations were so high, completely melted down at one point). but mostly, i was bowled over by their energy.

and grateful that i don't have to go through it all again. it's hard to be a kid. but it's joyful as well.

grateful friday: because it's been too long...

grateful on a friday for...

~ the fact that it's friday

~ pretty, new, trendy, safe bike helmets (safety items do not violate "not buying it" mantra)

~ that my child wasn't done for eight counts of shoplifting (oops, was that out loud?)

~ sharing a carafe of wine with husband in a café while the kids saw a movie

~ party plans

~ laughing over my inability to muster a single bit of caring where the water pipes run from the well to the house. even after i really, really tried - giving myself a mental lecture and everything.

~ red velvet cupcakes

~ wine

~ espresso

~ a murakami novel (a wild sheep chase)

~ pierce brosnan

~ getting this post in while it's still friday. but only just.

happy weekend, one and all.

a stroll down memory lane: scenes from business class

the view from the business class bathrooms on SAS

i'm feeling nostalgic after having meetings with loads of vendors and old friends from my previous professional life. you know, back three years ago when my suitcase was never unpacked and i didn't know what time zone i was in or which continent i was on without checking my blackberry.  tho' it feels good to be back in the hugo boss suit these days, now i'm all iPhone and ecological and stuff. but those days of jetting around in business class were well, da bizness. i asked a friend yesterday if we properly enjoyed them and he said, "yes, we definitely did."

a few moments for your enjoyment:

~ my first time in business class was on a upgrade that a kind gate agent in atlanta bestowed upon me and a colleague after i got sent back to the check-in by security so i could check in the small kitchen blow torch i'd bought at williams sonoma. he got such a kick out of us, he upgraded us as a surprise and we didn't know it 'til we got to the gate. i still have the souvenir glass i took from that flight. and would you believe the airline was actually air france?

~ my first actual trip where i was booked in business class and there intentionally was together with a colleague who had spent most of his childhood in business class and related how world-shattering it was for him when he realized that all those people downstairs on the plane got to the destination at the same time. sigh.

~  the time we got upgraded from business to first class on thai, but only on the short flight from bangkok to phuket. first class on thai airways is so heavenly - with the softest, cushiest purple leather seats you've ever seen and room for dinner guests and their pony - we said we were staging an environmental protest when it was time to leave the plane. the protest was that we refused to leave that environment. when we encountered the customs officials, it turned out that we should definitely have stayed on the plane. corrupt bastards.

~ the time on south african airlines where i sat next to a hilarious guy from finland (seriously, finnish humor is totally underrated) who insisted we try ALL of the wines (south african, of course) and then do away with most of a bottle of amarula, all while regaling me with stories of his travels that kept me laughing the whole way and not even minding the lack of sleep. strangely, i don't even think i learned the guy's name.

~ one time in chennai when a lufthansa flight was delayed by several hours - really a drag because they tend to be scheduled for 1 a.m. anyway. we were finally let on the plane and seated and served our champagne, only to have the whole plane flash and go dark. a few worrying minutes later, the captain came on and said the plane had blown a fuse and they were looking for it. a little disconcerting in light of how old and un-modernized the biz class seats were on the 747. we said to the stewardesses flight attendants that we didn't really mind that much at that point, as long as they kept the G&Ts coming. it got even more interesting once we arrived in frankfurt, hours late, missing our gate and found that someone had forgotten to order stairs, so we waited on the tarmac another 45 minutes before some were brought out to us. so much for german efficiency. and in the end, we flew back to copenhagen on the same flight with skeptical environmentalist bjørn lomborg, who was wearing his signature tight black t-shirt and trying to act like he wasn't pleased to see the recognition in people's eyes. (i have actually written about this before, but it was a memorable flight.)

~ hurrying through the airport in tokyo to make our SAS flight and we overtake some really elderly SAS stewardesses flight attendants hobbling along making their way to the gate. my colleague says, "i'm sure those geriatric specimens will be the flight attendants on our flight and they'll ignore us the whole way." sure enough, they were, tho' they did keep the wine coming, which was all that really mattered. SAS stands for Sexy After Sixty, i tell you, so it's not too late yet for my dream of becoming a stewardess, unless, of course, they go bust, which just might happen.

~ with the same colleague, we used to choose the same movie our individual screens, then count down and start it simultaneously, since it would be annoying to watch the same movie but be at different points in the film.

ahh, those really were the days and sometimes i do miss them. i blame the hugo boss suit for bringing it all back and making me feel a bit nostalgic.

this too shall pass...

opening doors. we've got open doors galore around here. it's spring, so the doors are literally open to let in the fresh air. we've metaphorically opened the doors to a new house and new jobs and a new school for sabin and for a whole new life. i remember back in november after a conversation with my neighbor about how sometimes you have to close one door to make another one open, how i made a decision about my job in norway. one which closed that door, but was surely the first step in opening all of these other doors.

but i'll admit that the open doors are also very draining. since i've started my new job and we're using this month to basically get moved over to the other side of the country in stages, it feels both like the new life has begun and like it's waiting to begin - i have a foot in each life at the moment. and that uses my energy in a whole new way. everyone always asks me how i find the time for all of my blogging and i always say that it's because i prioritize it. and i did and i can feel that right now i haven't been.

when i'm not properly writing or properly thinking about writing, i begin to feel cramped somehow. and squirmy and uncomfortable. and i feel that way right now, because i haven't had time to do the writing and thinking that i need to do to feel in balance. but it's just this interim phase that we're passing through. life will settle in and i'll settle back into the creative place. it's good to realize that i'm immediately aware of it and also aware of what it is that is a problem. i think previously, i didn't recognize that and i went around in a bit of a fog, feeling anxious and irritated and not knowing why. this time, i know why and i also know that it's just a period that we're in. and that it too shall pass. we just need to close a few of the old doors first.

in the same boat

there are these moments, not moments of perfect clarity exactly, because those are something else, but moments where you suddenly, out of nowhere are able to take in, just for a second, The Enormity of Things. i had one the other day when we took a load of books and things to the house. i had unpacked them onto a shelf so we could take the boxes back home to load again and it suddenly hit me, in all of its fullness, exactly how much work we had to do on the house before it would be as we want it. luckily, it only lasted a second, because otherwise i would have just gone mad from the enormity of it.

i had a similar flash of The Enormity of Things today on the train, when i looked up and saw a strange, goofy, awkward man looking at me. you know how you can feel someone looking at you sometimes? and i tweeted something uncharitable about how i had forgotten about weirdos on the public transport. and then i was suddenly hit by the feeling of how everyone is really just trying to get on with their life in their own way. and our paths cross or they don't, but we're all just living along, inside of ourselves, trying to make our way. and the enormity of all of us going along, living, was just THERE for a second. and then it passed. thankfully most of the time our minds protect us from that knowledge of The Enormity of Things. i think if it didn't, we'd just be paralyzed, unable to move. just sitting here frozen, but in the same boat.

i wonder what it is about right now that's making me susceptible to these gateways of my mind...

happiness 101

erin from dropped stitches gave me one of those blog award thingies - it's called happy 101 -  in which you list ten things that make you happy (thank you, erin!). after a really lovely weekend where lots of details of our move began to fall into place in earnest, a list of ten things i love was just exactly what i needed.

1) i love that within these nascent buds, while beautiful in their own right, there are future apples. nature rocks. (and yes, i probably should have cropped this, but i wasn't in an editing mood, so what you see (or what i saw) is what you get.)

2) beginnings. whether it's the beginnings of the peonies, just poking up out of the ground, or the beginning of a new job, or the beginning of life in a new home. i love the excitement of the beginning.

3) looking at things differently. from another vantage point. outside the norm. or just plain upside down.

4) blue skies. and magnolia buds.

5) the way the late afternoon light falls in spring in scandinavia. it's really quite amazing. especially when it falls on sabin, so golden and warm. it almost makes it worth the winter darkness.

6) lego. and their attention to detail. especially when they make a little horse trailer with range rover to pull it and a little horse. and you can transport your jump up on top.

7) renewable energy.

8) walks in the woods.

9) bright, colorful clothes.

10) things which are appealingly and inspiringly displayed.

what is making you happy right here and right now?

reflecting on language

i find myself thinking a lot about language this week. language gets a lot of abuse from a lot of different angles. but it is especially abused by non-native speakers, who tend to assign new meanings to words that already had a perfectly good meaning assigned to them already. and if you happened to know that original meaning, you can be left feeling mightily confused. especially if the new meaning has no apparent connection to the original, ostensibly real, one.

but i say ostensibly real, because that's the thing about language - it's pretty arbitrary. why chair means chair and not table is because we've all more or less agreed upon that. but the chair i see in my head when you say chair and the chair you see in your head may be quite different. my generic chair is a lot like this one:



but, because of the way language functions, we more or less agree that a chair is something you can sit on and then there are variations from there and so we all understand the gist of it when we say "chair."

and i don't just mean neologisms, where someone makes up an entirely new word - like sustainovation (a combination of sustainability and innovation), but what if the meaning given to a word, like say, "quota," is very different from any you've experienced. to me a quota is a quantative amount that one tries to meet. it is not another name for your vacation days. so if you encounter quota in the sense of vacation days, you are left feeling a bit bewildered. because it is bewildering to be reading along in what is ostensibly your language and suddenly you don't understand the meaning, even tho' you understand the words.

it seems that it's worse in written language than in spoken. if someone said "quota" to you to mean vacation days, you would, through expression and body language, communicate that you didn't quite get that word, or you could directly ask. there would be more understanding possible in spoken language than there is in the written word, where you are left to suss out the meaning for yourself from the context.

i suspect that entering a workplace populated by 50-some different nationalities, where the shared language is english, i'm going to be encountering lots of these little gems. of course, i've been working with non-native speakers of english for more than a decade now, so i'm rather used to it, but it seems it will be even more marked this time, with the addition of german into the mix as the predominant other language.

adding to that the fact that companies, especially very large ones, have a tendency to create their own internal language, i think this is going to be an exciting linguistic ride.

ack! a random post without pictures!

so much input and so many impressions and so little bloggy time. and although i'm taking photos, i neglected to bring my card reader with me. sigh.

: : the teletubbies totally speak to the under two set. and i had forgotten how that works. what is it about the teletubbies?

: : i'm not sure i can continue to refer to wind turbines as either windmills or fans. it's like referring to an 11,000TEU container vessel as a boat.

: : i can only see yellow cars when sabin isn't present (we play a version of the old "slug bug" car game involving yellow cars). when i called her to say i'd seen one, she said she'd saved up 12 slugs for me.

: : our new house gives me a little flutter of butterflies when i see it in the sunshine.

: : if you're really dressed up and wearing your signature wolford tights, it's really hard for anyone to be condescending to you.

: : even tho' i know who will win project runway from watching the show from the models' perspective the other day, it's still exciting to watch the finale. and i still think carol hannah should have won.

: : there is a lot of plastic surgery on american television.

: : while waiting for my new work computer, i went a little nuts on LinkedIn.

; ; things have a way of falling into place as they should. when they should.

: : i already miss hanging out in my sweatpants.

: : the corporate world is full of people doing loads of busywork powerpoints in which they make up terminology according to some kind of elusive and perhaps unspeakable buzz word dictionary. and no one says, "this is meaningless," because they're afraid they didn't understand and they don't want to be exposed for not being up on the latest buzz words. it's a condition exacerbated by english being the business language of choice without necessarily being the native language of many of the people involved. it seems to be an overwhelmingly unbreakable circle. and when i try to really think about it and wrap my head around it, it makes me a little dizzy.

: : i wonder how productive the world would be if everyone just stopped all that shit and did some work.

: : jutland is the new black: totally trendy.

reprise of wordless wednesday

historical weavers

the more i learn about weaving, the more fascinating i find it. for example, van gogh's entire weaver series (and it seems there are many paintings done in 1883-84) features men at the loom. that means that as recently as the 1880s weaving was a man's work, tho' i think that today it's perceived as a woman's pastime. and i use pastime on purpose, as in the industrial age, it's something people do for fun, not by necessity. if you think about it, that's a fairly fast transition, which was, of course, aided by mechanization - but it represents a radical shift in gender, from male to female work. and, although i've only begun a bit of preliminary research, it seems there has been a corresponding downgrading of the profession.  i can't at the moment think of another profession that has undergone a similar change of gender.

one of van gogh's weavers

another of van gogh's weavers

a third of van gogh's weavers

one last weaver by van gogh

this one may be the most surprising one of all - as there's a child in a high chair with the weaver!

of course, not everyone weaving today is a woman, case in point, my weaving teacher, textile artist paul jensen. but i will admit to being (pleasantly) surprised when i signed up for the lessons that my teacher would be a man.  now i just wish i could paint...

i didn't even go into how beautiful van gogh's looms are and i wonder when the design of those changed as well and if it's somehow connected to the change in gender. it seems there is plenty more to learn and research about weaving.

piecing things together

artwork by sabin + awesome washi tape

we've spent the past five days of the easter holiday packing and packing and packing some more. and only last evening did it finally start to look and feel like we'd made some headway. 2/3 of the books are packed, all of the pretty paper and most of the fabric. i have sorted a zillion things that were hanging out in the attic and husband made countless trips to the dump and the donation containers yesterday. why were we keeping all that crap i asked myself again and again yesterday. and as the day wore on, i became more and more ruthless about getting rid of things, which was undoubtedly healthy.

once the things were taken off the walls in the blue room and boxed and bagged, it felt less painful, the less it looked like itself. i still have some way to go, but husband will take the first load over to the new house on friday. and the current owners have been kind enough to let us begin to fill up what they call "the old living room" with our boxes and things. husband is taking everything that won't fit properly into boxes for the movers to handle - things like my loom and rolls of leather.

all of this packing gives us a sort of spring cleaning that we should have done ages ago and it feels good to purge a lot of stuff, especially clothes that we haven't worn in ages. i saved a bag of hopelessly out of date sweaters for felting, but i did a fairly good job of really culling our old clothes. what is it in us that causes us to hoard and save? i always joke that i was in the siege of leningrad in my last life and that's where the impulse comes from, but i think it's something deeper than that, more of a biological drive to hold onto things you might need if conditions change. because if it's that, then i can't help it, right?

aside from sorting and getting rid of things, packing gives you lots of time to think. i found myself thinking a lot about how i wanted to arrange things in the new house and daydreaming of color schemes and of what to plant in the garden.  but i also got all sorts of ideas for bloggy topics, which was reassuring, because i haven't been exactly brimming with those of late.

it's interesting how taking all of these pieces of a life apart and packing them up and imagining them in another place actually feels cathartic and like a relief of some sort. we'll surely piece them all back together in a new, but familiar, configuration, in the coming months.

* * *

i'm going to be traveling back and forth in the coming weeks, since i start my new job on the other side of the country tomorrow and husband and sabin won't join me 'til the last week of may. it means i'll be a bit absent from all of your blogs (which you probably already noticed) and probably using lots of pictures and few words here. :-) but i won't forget you and i will be stopping by again just as soon as i can, so please be patient with me!

daily art journal: march

this month, the details are on flickr, so click each picture below if you want to know more.

1. daily art journal for march, 2. march 1-2, 3. curiosity bird detail, 4. march 3-4, 5. march 5-6, 6. march 7-8, 7. march 9-10, 8. march 11-12, 9. march 13-14, 10. march 15-16, 11. march 17-18, 12. march 19-20, 13. march 21-22, 14. detail - march 22, 15. march 23-24, 16. march 25-26, 17. march 27-28, 18. march 29-30, 19. march 31, 20. daily art journal for march

i'll admit the project grew more difficult in march and i fell behind, sometimes by a week at a time. i could definitely feel the effects of house- and job-hunting this month. it ended up both good and bad. good in that i had room for more two-page spreads, which i felt gave me greater flexibility on some of the pieces and some of the thinking it helped me do. bad in that i didn't get the daily creative practice that i embarked on this project to have. but april is a another month and i'm back on track. well. almost anyway. but i blame husband because he said yesterday was only the 2nd and it was actually the 3rd.

recurring themes - maps and eyes continue to crop up again and again. i'm beginning to see that come out when i look back at previous months. in any case, it's an interesting project and i'm starting to see a glimmer of where it's taking me.

it's beginning to look a lot like easter

mama and baby lamb - that just says easter, doesn't it?

wandering around the yard, i spotted these. and thought i caught a flash of a fluffy bunny tail out of the corner of my eye.

sure enough, there she was, the easter bunny, in the flesh!

here's hoping the easter bunny makes it to your house this year too!