• Previous posts

  • Aging is for the weak, and everyone else
  • More short cuts
  • Smol Ketchups
  • What’s the opposite of green juice and deep breathing
  • Living through it all online
  • The Change
  • 18
  • Ok but ALSO:
  • Midlife POV
  • Influence and Dooce
  • Horse therapy
  • You can’t go home again
  • Obsolescence
  • Before and after
  • A cringe confession on friendship

Archives from 2002-2006

Things I’ve bought lately that make me happy:

The song Velvet, by The Big Pink. Just lovely, and great for running.

Also, Sabali by Amadou & Mariam. Sounds a bit like that pretty Devotcha song, “How It Ends”, then the singing starts and you go, wow.

Dapper Snappers. These things are freaking genius for beanpole kids whose pants are always falling off their scrawny behinds. They snap onto the back of the pants, cinching the waist tighter without causing any weird bunching, and unlike belts there’s no extra stuff for a kid to deal with if he has to, say, use the bathroom. I got one for Riley and it’s like he has a whole new wardrobe now, where he can finally wear all the too-wide but just-right-in-length pants I’d sadly stored away for whenever the peanut butter calories actually start sticking to his body.

Morrocan Oil. I saw this mentioned over at Not Martha and decided to try out a small bottle, because I am a giant sucker for supposedly miraculous hair products. Usually I’m disappointed, but this oil is amazing. It makes my dry, damaged hair actually look like hair—swinging and soft—and smooths out a lot of frizz without adding any heaviness. It’s got a strong, exotic scent, which I really love.

iTunes U. This isn’t something I’ve paid money for because it’s free, and seriously, holy awesome. Thousands of lectures and videos from universities available from iTunes, and did I mention the free part? I studied for (and subsequently aced, thank you very much) a quiz on the digestive system in part by listening to lectures while running and during my commute. FREE!

The TiltShift iPhone app. This is an awfully nice little program for making your cameraphone images look a lot more special, without adding the super-processed look that gets old after about, oh, two images.

Little Black Book of Stories by A.S. Byatt. I can’t remember the last time I’ve enjoyed a collection of short stories this much. Each is rich, dark, wistful, beautiful, and spooky. Fairytales for grownups.

Your turn! Share share share.

Seattle is flirting with spring. One day is lush and sunny, the next scowling and drizzling. Everything is covered with a fine dusty coating of pollen, and the patio is littered with sticky yellow seed pods that cling to the bottoms of toddler-sized shoes and get trampled into the carpet. It feels moistly, thickly alive outside, like the air itself is bursting with unfurling blooms and delicate reaching green tendrils. The branches are trading their fierce skeletal winter bones for whorls of leaves and pink-tipped buds. We spread mulch in our front lawn and the smell is rich and fertile and organic, like the clean bedding of warm-blooded creatures.

It is a lovely transformation, accompanied by a nonstop energetic orchestra of singing birds, but here is the important thing: WE CAN THROW THE LOUD, RAUCOUS-ASS CHILDREN AND THE FARTING, FUR-SHEDDING DOG OUTSIDE NOW.

Glory, glory. Hallelujah.

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