the busy heart

It's a little amusing to me that I used initials yesterday for our friends' names, and today I'm going to share a good deal of their business, so let's just say now that their names are Kenneth and Emily, and we were friends with them here in Boston, and we plan to be their friends forever and ever. They are the best sort of people, and they've been trying to start their family for eight long years. I'll let you insert what you know of infertility, and pretty much nod that all of that was involved. And now, to their surprise and gratitude, they're expecting a baby girl in ten weeks. As I said, they came up last weekend to visit and I threw a small shower, and in what I think must be the curse of a lot of Pinterest activity, I was stressing about making it fabulous. Didn't I need favors and decorations and games and all of that? It turns out I didn't really need any of that, since it was more of a luncheon out at a restaurant, and only a few of ...

Have you seen Jiro Dreams of Sushi ? I watched it the other night while I was getting the baby to sleep, and it was such a lovely film. It's a documentary about an 85-year-old man in Japan, Jiro Ono, who has dedicated his life to making the perfect sushi. He has a small restaurant (just ten seats!) and it's ranked as one of the best in the world. It takes three months to get a reservation, and a meal there costs $300. He obsesses over quality ingredients, over how long his assistants massage the octopus to make it tender, over the seating arrangements of his customers. And this is what gets me: he is so happy. He says all day, as he makes sushi, he's ecstatic. He says the way to live your life is to find something you really love doing and dedicate yourself to it. I wonder if that's so. When I first watched it, I thought he was right, and I wondered what on earth I could give myself to with that much ecstasy, but then I read this review by Roger Ebert , and Ebert ...

My friend Em and I made this quilt for a girl at church and her wee babe.  Please note: Emily did the ENTIRE quilt in LESS time than it took me to make the meager little flowers.  (sigh.) (It was a strange shower, since she had also received some sort of clothes hamper that looked a lot like a rubbish bin, and every gift she opened went straight into that to keep them all together, I suppose. So our quilt and all the pretty pink outfits? Seemed to go straight in the trash ... Oh well.)

I'm a sucker for things hanging from the ceiling. I don't know why. I remember going to an art exhibit at BYU which consisted of hundreds of tiny white paper boats hanging from the ceiling, swaying ever so slightly. I stood and stared and swooned. When Sam and I were on our honeymoon in DC, we sat in the Calder room at the ... what, Smithsonian? Okay, I can't remember the museum, but there was a room full of Alexander Calder mobiles and we sat on a bench against the back wall, watching for a very long while. They made these gorgeous, moving colored shadows on the tall walls, and I rested my head on Sam's shoulder, and we whispered about how happy we were to be together and how pretty the room was. That has to be one of my favorite memories. Maybe that's part of why I'm so obsessed. If I had my way (and maybe someday I will), we would have something hanging from every inch of our ceiling. And I would just sit with my head turned up, smiling. All day lon...

It was too loud. Everything's been too loud. But today I'm sitting in my office and I don't think anyone knows I'm here because I've just been at my computer, reading a new blog that I'm obsessed with. And I won't tell you what it is because I'm stalking and I want to stalk quietly. Shhhh. I want everything to be quieter. I don't want to cry in Sam's arms again, like I did last night. I mean, some day I will again, I'm sure. But it's such a bummer for him to have a sad, slumpy wife. I hate sad, slumpy wives. Me, I mean. That me. I thought I was this person, this poet, this happy person who sang songs to her cats and danced around her house in the mornings and had oodles of wonderful people in her life and liked to run and learn stuff and eat pretty food. So I keep feeling like she's coming back. The other day I walked up the stairs to my office and I actually felt good and happy and energetic and useful to my students and it made me r...

I've become increasingly aware that I never really talk about reading or writing on this blog--the stuff I'm doing and thinking and teaching about all the time, or whenever I get a chance. This seemed like a problem. But it just didn't come naturally for me to talk about it here. So ... time for another blog. This one you have in front of you will still cover everyday sort of happenings--my cats, my husband, outings and excurions and cookie-driven angst. But hopefully on the other one I will I'll post bits I've read that have struck me, stuff from podcasts and audiobooks I like, links to literary journals, maybe even stuff I'm writing. It's called picking up handfuls of birds , from a line by Herbert I've had on my sidebar here. In case you don't get the birds, I'll post the entire poem over there at some point, and perhaps that will illuminate. Anyway, happy Sunday. See you at the other blog, if you feel so inclined.

Today Sam and I shrugged off our stacks of ungraded papers and went down to the Museum of Fine Arts, finally. Although, honestly, I wasn't as dazzled as I had hoped. Maybe we just weren't in a art museum sort of mood. Or maybe it's because they're busy renovating and it's sort of confusing in there . Anyway, we walked into the Impressionism gallery with tons of Degas and Monets and Renoirs that should have been, well, impressive. Sam said, immediately, "Well this is boring." Did I tell you why I love that man? Because that was EXACTLY what I was thinking, but I never think I'm supposed to say stuff like that. Sam, on the other hand, is refreshingly free of filters. At least sometimes it's refreshing ... Still, blaspheme, I know. My artsy friends have stopped reading. I guess I'm just tired of seeing the images I've seen 5,000 times. They are beautiful, yes. But I can't really SEE them any more, you know? But the visit ended nicely. O...