All About The [Upright] Bass

Sunrise Service

I rolled over in bed this morning. The house was still cold. The muffled noise of my daughter sleeping from the other room. I stared up at the darkness. 

I breathed a quiet 'thank you' without anything specific in mind. Then I laid still and watched the sun come up slowly as if to say 'you're welcome'.

Sounds Legit

A scrap of paper I found in my files dated 2009 recounts the following conversation. 

N: Do you think I'm going to hell?
Me: What? Hell? No!
N: I don't go to church that often.
Me: You think you'll go to hell if you don't go to church?
N: Yes.
Me: Why?
N: Somebody told me that at school.
Me: Well, whoever told you that was misinformed. I'm older, I'm your mother, and I know more than anyone you were talking to at school. You're not going to hell for any reason.
N: [pause] Sounds legit.

Fall Break Road Trip

She Quotes The Blues Brothers to Me Here ""Full tank of gas..."

Spring Creek Prairie Audubon

2.8 mile hike

Something I Found Recently

Pulling Back

I came across an old photograph recently. A morning portrait where I have a soup-bowl sized coffee cup in my hands. I'm smirking at my boyfriend who sits behind the camera. 

I remember that year, that boyfriend, but not that particular morning. 

Twenty years later there is a constant photo feed. Smart phones. Digital cameras. Direct uploads. And there are still mornings I won't remember clearly. It's the wash I remember. The peculiar habits. The fact that this particular boyfriend was a barrista. That soup-bowl sized cup of coffee would have been brewed to perfection. 

I have a long history of smirking at cameras which has naturally led to a series of unflattering pictures posted all over social media.  
  
I was looking at this particular photo and what I didn't know I wanted to say was 'Come here. Share sections of the newspaper with me. Let's cook up some scrambled eggs. Stay in this moment with me, please, please, don't pull back just to record it.'

Late Night Surfing

Sometimes, late at night, I fall in love with the glowing screen of my laptop. I'll start plunking away on the keyboard. Searching out the possibilities of things: recipes I might try, foreign countries I might travel to, jobs I might take. 

It's that that euphoric sense of new love with tangled sheets, late night conversations, the sleep deprivation that somehow feels OK the morning after. But it's just me in the bed. Searching out the possibilities of something else that I might know or become. New stories I might have to tell.

National Day of Unplugging

March 7-8 Sundown to Sundown

Some People I'm Proud to Know...

Swimming Upward

“Happiness is the consequence of personal effort. You fight for it, strive for it, insist upon it, and sometimes even travel around the world looking for it. You have to participate relentlessly in the manifestations of your own blessings. And once you have achieved a state of happiness, you must never become lax about maintaining it. You must make a mighty effort to keep swimming upward into that happiness forever, to stay afloat on top of it.” ― Elizabeth Gilbert,