1. Lt. Governor gavels in the Mock Session | 2. Sundown on the Capitol | 3. Last walk to the hotel | 4. Sunrise from our hotel room | 5. Quick visit with the LG | 6. Requisite Awkward Selfie | 7. (Finally) some baseball | | 8. Daylight Savings Shandy

So here we sit. I'm up early so I can get a few minutes to myself before the rest of these bozos get up. I'm not going to lie. It's weird to have Cal upstairs and all of us ready to start a school day. Let's face it, he's not looking forward to it much.

I think we've already established that I'm a bit of a pre-travel stress shopper, so I wasn't surprised to find myself at the mall on Thursday before we headed to the Capitol on Friday morning. I'm never very lucky in those instances, but this day the dress gods were smiling on me for sure. I knew I'd done some good shopping work when we were in the hall of the hotel picking Cal up for dinner Friday night, and one of the girls, a fellow page, said to me, "Oh! I love your bag!" And then to Cal, "Your mom is so stylish... my mom just looks [unintelligible] all the time." Well. I call that a win-win-WIN.

We had a great dinner with Cal's roommate and his dad, and Neel and I spent the night in a gorgeous room in the hotel. Gorgeous was about all it was because 16 floors up we could still hear people coming home from the bars at 1AM, and yelling in the halls all night. Lovely.

Saturday morning was graduation. Cal had a bit more time to work at the Capitol, and Neel and I came full circle as we ran into a family in the Starbucks at the hotel who we'd seen there on the very first day. If I have one criticism of the weekend at all, it's that the parents didn't get enough time together. We had a lovely lunch on the very first day, but it would have been nice to repeat it again at the last when we'd learned about each other's kids a bit. It was such a moving day. Full of so much.

My heart is full when I think about it all, and there's so much to tell you. Cal will write is promised post too. But right now it's back to life and back to reality. And getting back to those things is hard.

Before I go, I wanted to thank you for all your thoughtful comments on my post on Friday. I'm glad you don't think that blogging is dead! Like Petra said, this space is so important to me as a way to collect my thoughts in a much more formal manner than just journaling does. It's good for my mind that way. I never read style blogs or shopping blog (which makes that girl's comment above all the more shocking!) and even when I read home decor blogs, those things were secondary to me. Much like Christine, I go to your blogs for you. It's the details of your lives that matter to me and what you're thinking, whether that's about a chair or what you had for breakfast or what a new friendship means. So I guess we'll stick around, won't we? And let Rome burn around us, come what may. Love you ducks.

1. I think this #40bagsin40days thing will be quite good for me. Neel and I are generally pretty ruthless about clutter, but as I said sometime earlier, it has been weighing on me. That clanking, heavy-petticoated Victorian skirt, you know. So #40bagsin40days is the brainchild of Ann Marie at White House Black Shutters. It's her Lent. MJ of Pars Caeli tipped me off, and I'm so glad she inspired me. I'm all about intention, and with clutter, sometimes intention is just the thing I need.

2. I think my scrappy little hometown seems to be coming into its own these days. Neel and I took advantage of our childless weeknights to try out several of the new restaurants in town, and they're really cropping up all over. We hit up Norfolk Pendulum, above, for lunch Thursday. Norfolk Pendulum is a butcher/sandwich shop selling locally sourced meats, cheeses, eggs as well as oils and salts and breads. Its exposed brick walls and roughly-hewn floors perfectly proclaim the vibe of rustic and cool. This is a place that celebrates meat of all sorts and treats it sacredly. That's a pretty good thing.

We tried a couple of other new restaurants in town, and I'll save them for another day, but recently an olive bar and a new produce shop have both opened up. These two things I am eager to check out. You guys hear me talk all the time about how restless I am, yearning to go. This place doesn't feel fun. It doesn't feel like a place anyone would want to visit. But you know what? When I look around me, we have a lot going on.

3. I think, tucked in the back of my brain, are thoughts I never thought I'd have. I had a conversation with a friend a few days back, wondering if blogging was dead. Dead? Hmmm. Well, part of me hopes not since I'm signed up to teach a class next term! (wink) What I do wonder, is has my relationship to blogging changed? Why do I do it? I started blogging to record my family's life and to have a place to process ideas and thoughts. It became a forum for photography, and at its deepest level I'm here because of the relationships I've developed. Of course. I was never doing this to brand myself or make money. I get the most ridiculous clearly-you-didn't-even-LOOK-at-my-blog--before-you pitched-me emails (I'm sure you all do.), that I barely glance at before hitting DELETE.

So why am I here? And more importantly, should I stay? My life is changing and my family is changing, but I would miss chronicling it. I would miss having it chronicled. Equally importantly, I would miss you. But lacking real direction, and sometimes getting caught up in the pettiness of it (and knowing that's not a place I want to be), I wonder. But enough about me!

4. I think we've had a great first few weeks of our Ditch Your Gear class. We discussed composition last week and sent our students out to study leading lines, the rule of thirds and my favorite, negative space. This week we'll play with some editing apps. I sometimes wonder about teaching a class like this online, but I'm not quite sure how to go about it. And when I dream my big dream I have a studio where we teach all sorts of classes and Annie comes to design it for me.

5. I think I can't believe how quickly we've come to the end (sort of) of the General Assembly Session. Cal's time there, sadly, is done, but there still seems to be some wrangling over the budget. Cal would, I think, gladly volunteer to stick around and help out! We go up today to watch the Mock Session where the Senators act as Pages and Cal presides over the Senate as Lt. Governor and tomorrow morning he graduates. I have so much to say about all of this, and you can expect a full recap soon. Cal has promised to write us a post as well. He has so many great stories! All I'll say now is that I couldn't be prouder of my boy. Really, really.

weekend recap, march 10

five things, march 7