Frenetic Caffeinated Irish Typing

Filling orders at the job, listening to Riverdance (as played by the Boston Pops) and fueled by a Grande Caramel Latte from Starbucks. I keep typing faster and faster ... my fingers are doing a little step dance of their own.

I blame coffee and my Irish heritage. Haha!

Nashville, 7:43 a.m.

Misty city morning.
Sleepy buses lumber
up drowsy streets.
Blushing light spills
over a hillside zenith
and steam rises above
lavender glass,
silver metal,
and shadowed brick and concrete
stained by passing hands;
a lone guitar is tuned.
Twang.
Coffee brews.
Footsteps hasten.
Batman gleams, and
Nashville wakens.

Amish Vampires?

Two things I don't understand:

1) The popularity of vampire characters in teenage fiction. Perhaps it is the lure of danger and the forbidden?
2) The popularity of Amish characters in Christian fiction. Perhaps it is the lure of safety and the forgotten?

Dust off your Polaroid camera!

I was blog hopping this evening and kept running into people mentioning the Impossible Project. I finally had to know what they were talking about and almost literally caught my breath in delight: they have created a new film for Polaroid cameras! Now I have an excuse to beg, borrow, or steal the camera that I wanted for years and years but never bought because right when I was about to do so ... Polaroid went out of business, and their film expired just in the past few months. Polaroid photography is back, friends! Yay!

Ditch Digging at The House, Circa 1997

Red clay.
HOURS of digging.

Rotten *stinky* vegetation

(gag-worthy)

from \where\ the trees

and overgrowth

were plowed                under.

Wet.

SQUOOSHY.

                                STICKY.

                                                HEAVY.

Resistant. Hard.

        You can imagine ...

NEVER

( )

AGAIN.

(Formatting provided by MelindaJ.)

Pink / Purple / Blue. Sun / Wind / Rain. Trucks / Highway / Me. Storm / Rainbow / Books.

I drove to book club last night after it had just stormed and journeyed through an array of brilliantly lit canvases of city life from stark, modern imagery soaked in light and shadows, to soft, pastel impressionistic strokes subdued by mist from the passing trucks. God painted. I drove and stared in awe.

Pebble sized hail had ricocheted off my sliding glass doors and then plummeted to the ground. Wind had wrapped around my townhome building. Driving rain had drenched the ground and turned my walkway into a lake.

After the worst, I scurried to my car, carefully cradling a glass casserole dish that contained my grandmother's famous chocolate cake. Then I drove south, to Brentwood. A rainbow spanned the city of Nashville.

I savored my place in this momentary and idyllic urban pastoral scene.

Must. Focus.

Clean the house. Exercise. Eat right. Make some fun iTunes mixes to motivate me.

Sleep.

Latte, Please

I am sipping a McDonald's latte. I want to be sipping a Starbuck's or Fido's latte. Unfortunately, there is no good coffee shop on the way to work by the path I take.

Therefore, I would like to petition that someone set up shop just off the Church St. exit from I-40, between there and, hmm, 10th Ave.

Please and thank you.

My Monsters Are Gone

Anybody seen my monsters? Pink, all stitched up, little red hearts gathered carefully in a plastic bag, purplish spots. I have searched my house, my closet, my car ... they simply are not to be found.

I'm afraid I may have unleashed Mayhem (times three) upon Middle Tennessee.

Dissappearing Act

My husband said in his sleep last night, "I have to warn you. I'm going to disappear."

Yikes. Thanks for telling me, sweetie.

101 Things (More or Less) In 1,001 Days

I ran across this idea when a friend of mine posted her list. She, in turn, had borrowed the idea from a friend of hers. Digging a little deeper, I discovered that the concept had been dreamed up by New Zealander Michael Green in his web project Day Zero.

I love it! Daniel and I decided to make lists of both short and long-term goals. This is a work-in-progress. I will probably need to edit the list to be more precise. Some of my goals, I guess, are hard to quantify. So, without further ado, and in no particular order, here are my own 101 Things:

1. Take a trip to Austin, TX to check out the live music and thriving indie-craft scene
2. Participate in a major craft show
3. Finish my novel, "Searching for an Indian Gentleman: Or, the Princess of Unit 22)
4. Go to Washington, D.C. ... and see the zoo
5. Go to New York, NY ... and see a Broadway show
6. Fly a kite in a park
7. Learn more origami
8. Make chocolates!
9. Speaking of chocolate ... perfect my grandmother's chocolate cake recipe (the best I've ever had)
10. Refinish a piece of furniture
11. Be in Connecticut for a family celebration ... and give my brother and sister-in-law some much-needed free babysitting time while I'm there
12. Go to my cousin Christine's wedding in California in August of 2010
13. Join a Bible Study ... or start one?
14. Craft with friends
15. Make bubbles on a summer day! Bubble wands ... YEAH!
16. Build a snowman
17. Pray for my friends to meet their future spouses. And for their future spouses to hurry up, already.
18. Host a regular game night at our house
19. Volunteer at the library, an art museum, or a community event
20. Share the gospel with someone who is open to listening. Not be scared.
21. Whiten my teeth
22. Make art for our house
23. Gussy up my blog
24. Grover readership and scope of said blog!
25. Average 50 orders a day at least 5 days out of a busy quarter at work
26. Go to the Bluebird Cafe in Nashville, TN for a live show
27. Write a travel log/tour of my favorite spots of Nashville
28. Find a way, every day, to tell and show my husband I love him!
29. Make soap
30. Leave my coworkers each a random, encouraging note or anonymous gift
31. Make fudge from scratch
32. Make the "must see/must listen to" lists of movies and music for Daniel that he and I have been saying for months we need to make for each other every time we look at the other in shock and say, incredulously, "wait. You really haven't seen THAT movie?!!!"
33. See all of Shakespeare's major plays live
34. Decorate our apartment in vintage/modern/eclectic style that combines our interests and aesthetics in a visually pleasing way that is also, well, practical!
35. Buy a Kate Spade purse
36. Make Valentine's Day cards the way I used to like I was a kid. Red and pink construction paper, white paper doilies, crayons, markers, glitter and all ... and give them away to friends and family
37. Perfect at least one healthy, "grown-up" recipe each for pork, chicken, beef, and some kind of fish! By memory! (Daniel can cook circles around me when it comes to main dishes. This must end.)
38. Take a letterpress class. Dreamy.
39. Visit my grandmother in Pennsylvania.
40. Take pictures of fall foliage
41. Take pictures of interiors that I find intriguing
42. Practice writing articles and enjoy the writing process by sharing the lives of people I know and admire
43. Leave a 100% tip
44. Write a list of all my Facebook friends and how I know them--and share it
45. Write a poem
46. Go on an impromptu weekend roadtrip
47. Even better yet, walk into an airport and buy a ticket to somewhere unlikely or intriguing. No luggage. No plans. Just ... adventure!
48. Attend a seminar, class, or conference that enhances my professional life
49. Learn to play "Rhapsody in Blue" on the piano
50. Celebrate my 30th Birthday in a BIG way
51. Go to an opera
52. Eat cotton candy at a carnival or fair
53. Design and purchase a t-shirt
54. Make a return visit to Hopewell Furnace
55. While I'm at it, revisit Valley Forge National Park. Maybe ride a bike on the bike trails.
56. Go on a picnic
57. Take a picture of a bare-limbed tree silhouetted against the colors of a sunset on a clear day
58. Find an active workout I like and become good at it
59. Invent an ice cream flavor
60. Do three pull-ups. Really.
61. Make a "wish" on a floating Dandelion fluff
62. Make art to the music of a soundtrack--whatever I think it looks like, and that comes to mind
63. Set aside time at least twice a month to write at length
64. Start a prayer list and keep it updated--and prayed over
65. Learn to track purchases and adjust to our new joint budget so that we can save money!
66. Make a soundtrack for 2010 and burn a mix CD of "the soundtrack of my life" :)
67. Stay in touch with good friends at least once a month, despite living in Nashville now
68. Call my dad once a week
69. Keep in touch with my brothers on a monthly basis
70. Lose 30 pounds to improve my health
71. Exercise at least two times per week for three months straight.
72. Go stargazing in a field on a warm summer night
73. While I'm at it, catch fireflies! (And release them, of course.)
74. Take a cooking class
75. Read all of the Newberry Award Winning children's books
76. Make mood mixes for my iTunes
77. Organize and/or participate in a Robadue family reunion
78. Be debt free!
79. Make Baked Alaska
80. Start the T.A.G. program (or whatever I end up calling it)
81. Get a MacBook
82. Participate in NaNoWriMo ... and complete the challenge by writing all 50,000 words in 30 days!
83. Organize my papers
84. Get a massage
85. Publish at least one issue of a Zine
86. Get an entire outfit from Anthropologie
87. Make house plans for our new home
88. Learn a foreign language well enough to get by on a trip to another country
89. Learn to do tatting
90. Sell something on Etsy
91. Make a video and post it to the web
92. Get ears pierced
93. Buy really cute earrings for my newly pierced ears
94. Write an article for publication. Be published. And PAID.
95. Play a game of Monopoly all the way through in one sitting
96. Watch all of the Agatha Christie movies
97. Buy a piece of original art
98. Go on a tour of the Crayola Factory with Daniel
99. Visit Hershey Park
100. Actually log one of those "Where's George" bills
101. Memorize a chapter of the Bible

Beautiful, and True

I found this lovely picture in a house tour at Apartment Therapy. It reads "A successful marriage is the union of two great Forgivers."

From the same apartment tour, I also saw this lovely little idea in Emily & Meeko's apartment:

It's 2am ... Do You Know What Your Husband's Talking About?

I am blessed; my husband does not snore.

He does, however, sleep talk. And turn on lamps and spin them on the nightstand while looking at them oddly, hoping to find the switch again, which has apparently disappeared.

With his permission ... nay ... encouragement ... I gleefully report these anomalies of his nocturnal habits to family and friends. The other day he said to me, "you should start a blog about this; we could make money off of it." Well, I don't know about that, but at the very least, I will blog here.

He has talked about getting tickets ... no, just one. To which I replied to my dear sleeping husband, "oh really, and where are you planning on going without me?"

He has talked about figuring out where to get rings. To which I replied to my dear sleeping husband, "honey, you already bought those."

He has talked about how he was broadcasting on the wrong channel. To which I replied to my dear sleeping husband, laughing so hard I woke him up, "yes, yes you are."

And last night, he began to remark something unintelligible. At first I thought he was mumbling about having seven mirrors. So I asked him for clarification. He responded back (still asleep, mind you!) that he had discovered seven errors in Windows 7.

Ah, yes. That's my husband for you. Always the geek. Always working out problems in his subconscious. Although when he's had time between work and setting up house to trouble shoot an entire operating system is beyond me.

Bottom line: he might wake me up in the middle of the night, but at least he keeps me entertained when he does!