the busy heart

Someone should explain what it means to match, because I thought it was about matching similar colors or like black/red, blue/white--obvious pairs--but lately I see girls wearing purple shoes with yellow blouses and green patterned headbands and it's so pretty but I never feel brave or smart enough to do it myself. Color stresses me out, in part because I love it so much, and I want to "get it."  Once, in a most wonderful store called Accessorize in London, I was trying to find something to match an outfit I had bought that was all about brown.  And I was looking at a brown necklace, thinking I would get it, when I asked the sales lady and she said, in her perfect London accent, "No, no.  That's far too obvious."  Oh.  She helped me pick out something with green--green with reddish-brown flecks, and it was much better. And I won't even talk about how I used to wear a purple shirt, plus a purple collared shirt, plus a purple sweater, PLUS a purple ...

Walking through the common today on my lunch break, I had a lovely little moment.  It was gorgeous out, and everyone was lying on the grass, hands holding up books or sandwiches, other hands resting on the thighs or stomachs of their companions.  I couldn't hear their contented sighs, but they must have had them.  The entire park was sighing contendedly. Well, all except a white tent on the far side of the common, which boasted a big banner that said "Old Fashioned Revival."  I wanted to see if I could hear the preaching and the wailing from the path I was walking on, so I took out my headphones.  The music I was listening to pulsed and buzzed distantly in my hands, and sure enough, I heard the preaching (no wailing, yet).  A man in a dark suit was shouting, "The fire downnn below! It never STops BURNNNING and Mark tells us ..." etc.  I thought about going and standing in the back, hearing more about this fire, but I pressed on.  Another song, ...

Well, we got it. And here it is. This isn't the Queen Anne Victorian. It's a condo we fell in love with when we first started looking, that we went back to look at four times, that we couldn't for the life of us get out of our heads. And so we'll stay in the same town, and live here, among all the wood and windows and sunlight. We couldn't be more thrilled. Come see us. There will be plenty of room.

Remember how, a year ago, I was posting from Paris/London/Italy.  Yeahhhhh, I'm not this year.  But I've thinking of it, missing it, so I thought I'd repost a wee post.  Happy Friday, etc. On a brisk walk this morning, in one last attempt to find something special before we trained away from Paris, I saw a little old lady walking her dog. And her dog was holding an umbrella in its mouth. It was scheduled to rain today, so this brilliant lady must have trained her dog to hold her essentials. I wished for a dog like that as we waddled through the streets with all our stuff, heading for the metro. It wasn't as bad as it could have been, but I found myself thinking what I always think when I have to carry my own junk: what IS all this junk? I begin to regret packing specific items, like my stack of ten (!?) books, a skirt I haven't had occasion to wear yet, my pair of black shoes, etc. But we got here, to London, sigh of contentment. The train was speedy and it ...

[family, draper temple] I went to Utah last weekend, took hundreds of pictures of the nieces and nephews, went out to eat with friends, took a long walk with my parents and sister and her kids, had a sister/mama sleepover, and just generally soaked up the sweet home feeling.  Arriving, when the plane came into the Salt Lake Valley, I could feel my body relax.  It's so green now, so lovely and familiar.  I could pick out all of the temples and my parents' neighborhood, and I could hardly breathe, I was so glad to be there. [Ari, jumping] I don't have a cohesive story about being there aside from that.  But here's something I want to remember.  My niece, Ari, loves Sam.  When Sam comes to visit at Christmas, she shouts "SAM!!" and runs up and hugs him.  He's not exactly used to this sort of attention, and he likes her for it.  Everyone likes Ari for this: she's spunky, and she's good at making people feel...