What the heck was I thinking when I e-mailed this photo to my work computer?  Honestly, I really thought that I'd have a few minutes to write a quick blog post and get started on a little project I'm planning on working on this month.  But, oh dear.  It was field day and the sun was shining and a sweet breeze was blowing and everyone was outside playing all day long...And then when I was at my computer there were proofs to approve, e-mails and letters to write and other letters to edit.  Sometimes my fingers just get typed out.

So it's been a year here in the blue rain room, and I am so grateful for what the past year has given me.  One of my favorite things about having the blog is the way it's caused me to look at my life through the lens of my camera and how I connect those pictures of my life with words.  I am no photographer, but slowly I'm figuring my camera out, and I hope to take better and better pictures and capture better and better moments.

Did any of you guys see this?  orangeflower started it, and yes, I know it's not April anymore.  I also know that we're already a couple of days into May, but I want to do it too.  Of course, I love structure, but I can't stand rules, so I'm making up my own game.  For the next few weeks, you know most of May, I'm going to work on my own thirty photo challenge.  I want to spend some time refining my craft here and spend a few weeks celebrating one of my favorite parts of blogging.  My rules are this:  thirty photos between now, and say, the end of the school year (June 6, 2008).  It doesn't need to be every day (can you see how much flexibility I like in my structured projects?), but hey, I'm trying to accomplish something here, so it should be most days.

That means, starting today, for the next little bit, we're on macros.  And we still might throw in a blog overhaul or two!

We had scary winds all around us yesterday.  Scary for us, but wretched and terrifying for many near us.  Somehow it doesn't feel quite right to be celebrating my 1 year blogging anniversary, the blog that is so much about my home and my family and my life, when so many who live near us have been made homeless by these storms.  Sending out lovingkindness to all of those who didn't have a home to come home to last night.  May you soon find someplace snug.

Did you hear all the news reports about Earth Hour?  Started in Australia by the WWF in 2007, during this hour (from 8-9 p.m.) we turn out the lights to bring awareness to our energy consumption and to even save some energy.  Whole cities turned out their lights and even the Google homepage went dark.  On the spur of the moment (I really wish it had had more press, but it's a growing movement, so maybe next year) we decided to join in.  And had a wonderful evening. 

Neel lit all the candles downstairs, and we sat and talked and played Simon Says and had so much fun that we extended our hour, and even after we were ready to watch a movie we kept all the lights out.  Callum liked it so much that we're going to have Earth Hour every Saturday night. 

Now I'm off to buy some compact flourescents.

We're being kissed by spring today.  Here's a little Wordsworth to celebrate:

It is the first mild day of March:

Each sweeter than the day before,

The red-breast sings from the tall larch

That stands beside our door.

There is a blessing in the air,

Which seems a sense of joy to yield

To the bare trees, and the mountains bare,

And grass in the green field. 

Seriouly folks, it is lovely out.  About seventy five degrees and so breezy.  The kind of wind that is blowing all the winter away.  Jonquils are nodding, cherry blossoms are blustering.  I'm reminded of one of my favorite childhood books called Hamilton Duck's Springtime Story.  Callum has it, I think, up in his room.  I'll have to find our copy. 

This is the kind of weather that makes me want to change all sorts of things in my house and paint every room a bright, sunny yellow.  Like this and this.  My mom's coming for a visit tomorrow and we're thinking of all sorts of fun things to do, and I wickedly want to add, "paint the dining room" to the list.  You'd enjoy that, wouldn't you mom?  I've never been totally happy with the color (don't tell Neel), and as the sun is higher in the sky and the air is blowing warm life back into us, it feels dark and heavy in there.  (And you know, I totally thought I'd written a post about my secret dislike of the dining room color, but I can't find it anywhere.  Clearly this is a simmering-below-the-surface issue for me.)

So as the clouds skuttle across a wind-swept sky and the jonquils and grape hyacinth nod in the breeze (must. get. photos. of. grape. hyacinth. tomorrow.), I want my inner space to reflect the same light.  I'm thinking a clear, shining blue.  For spring.

However, they are calling for snow on Monday.

Aren't those flowers pretty?  They came from a birthday party we attended this weekend, a friend of ours turning sixty.  It was a lovely party with dress up and a swing band and dancing.  Neel joked that he should have bought me a wrist corsage.  Getting ready reminded me of this old "cotton" commercial.  Remember those, "The touch, the feel of cotton.  The fabric of your life."?  In one, a mom and dad are getting all dressed up, ready for a wedding maybe, and the kids are jumping on the bed and admiring their parents.  It's sweet.  You can somehow tell that the mom and dad don't get dressed up that much, and that it's as exciting for the children of the family to watch as it is for the parents to do it.  (Callum liked to see us dressed up, but he was mostly irritated at having to come inside from playing with his friends in order to go out and play with other friends.  Whatever.)

It was a fun night.  The birthday girl, who is in a band, sang at her own party, and her husband and son gave a really lovely and touching tribute.  Still, the bar closed at 10, and by 10:15 we were ready to go.  When we went to say good-bye, she handed each of us one of the centerpieces.  We didn't realize until we were outside that the vases were glowing with a lovely pink light.  I held the beautiful rosy orb on my lap the whole way home.

I realized over the past few days that I haven't been paying attention to things the way I need to for the blog.  Not the way I used to, at least.  I once read this really sweet book called My Sweet Folly (chick lit, I unabashedly admit it) where the two main characters meet (and of course fall in love) through letters.  Folie, the woman, talks about how her whole world revolved around those letters.  What she would say in them, how she would write about her life to show her world to this far away man.  "This is how I polish the silver..." she would think, thus imbuing her most mundane tasks with thoughts of him.

That's how the blog used to be for me, until I lost my way.  I've spent so many ridiculous moments thinking, "Oh, I have nothing to write about..."  I'm realizing though that it's just the writing that's so important.  The open window, allowing you in.  So instead of thinking about what to say, it's enough just to say these things.  The simplest parts of our lives, like how I didn't feel like going to yoga last night, that I just wanted to be with my family.  That while I like the new spring masthead, I don't love it, and I may make one using a photo of these flowers.  And how we had a salad for dinner that we've been making since Callum was a newborn.  And after dinner Neel and Callum played jump rope games until the dark and chill sent them inside.

All that, and these flowers, are sometimes enough.  I'm paying attention again.

One of the things I knew I'd miss most about leaving San Diego (land of eternal summer) were the year-round flowers, but you know, a place isn't too bad when you can come home to this during the dark and chill of January and February.  This is my Winter Blooming Daphne, and in a few years when we have scratch and sniff blogging, you'll see how divinely it smells.  I know it's coming every January, and it's waiting by the front porch for us to come home every evening.

Another midwinter treat is our backyard camellia.  The two we have soar as high as our second story windows, and I love them.  Camellias are great because they come in so many varieties, some blooming at Thanksgiving, some through these dark and cold days.  Really, I'd love a few more.  That's a broad hint Neel, garden-man.

A February kiss.  Tide-over until Azalea time.

Well, they're all looking out the back door, but the truth of the matter is that we're all just waiting for Neel and Callum to get home. 

While the boys headed up to Neel's parent's for the weekend, I got some much-needed solo time in.  I can't say that I was particularly productive by any stretch, but I had a lovely time of it.  The perfect combination of solitude and company.  Dinner with my friend Jean, a movie with my friend Rebecca.  A riveting America's Next Top Model marathon on MTV (now that's the kind of watching I can't do with an eight year old son around!).  I did a little dress shopping (no luck), a little cleaning (we'll see how long it lasts once the boys arrive back home), some knitting, some sewing, and a lot of lounging around. 

We had thunderstorms last night and all three dogs quaked around me, but I imagine that any minute those tails will start wagging furiously.  Time to myself is a luxury anymore, and I feel refreshed and rejuvenated. More than that though, I'm ready for the return of my family.

Happy Valentine's Day!  I know I've been MIA lately... feeling a little lost, a little like I needed a break, and then a lot busy, but I've missed my funny little blog.

I dreamed of snow last night, and we woke up to this.  Enough of a dusting (in these southern parts) to give us a two-hour school delay.  We needed the break, let me tell you.  So a leisurely morning here, and the right back at it.

So maybe a little lost and funny-feeling still.  Maybe still needing a bit of a break, but I couldn't let Valentine's Day pass without blowing a little kiss to my all my sweetest ones... I'll be back at it soon, I promise.

Oh, my whole weekend was great, actually.  Just one of those normal, run-of-the-mill weekends made up of everyday kind of stuff like Trader Joe's, and karate lessons, and the grocery store, and helping Rebecca pick out an appetizer for her impromptu cocktail party.  I must have needed normal, run-of-the-mill because it felt so nice.  On Saturday night, we threw a pork tenderloin on the grill and split a bottle of wine in front of disk one of Ken Burns' Civil War , (Neel's birthday present) just a perfect evening.  Yesterday I booted Neel and Callum outside and headed up to the Blue Rain Room.  That was nice too.

I wised up pretty quickly and plugged this in while I organized my fabric stash.  Hello, Daniel Craig. 

It's no James Bond, but prettier now.  I was hoping that pawing through all the stash would make me feel plump with fabric, but mostly I just want to go to the fabric store.  I'm feeling a Valentine's Day apron in my future.

I spent some time trying to tame this...

Into this...

And I'm still not there yet.  Ummm, I love chenille.  We had some egg tostadas and watched more of the Civil War for dinner last night.  By the end of the evening Callum started to tank.  He's really stuffy and does pathetic SO well.  We went up to bed at the same time, and I told him he could read in my bed for awhile before going to sleep.  He said instead, "No, I just want to look at you."  Okay.  Well.  That's relaxing.  Here's to a relaxing start to the week.

Dear Rebecca,

This seems to be the best format in which to tell you that I won't be returning your cardigan.  I've decided to keep it.  Thank you for letting me borrow it, and I'm sorry (sort of) that I won't be returning it to you.  If you want, I'll pay you $15 for it. 

xoxo,

Lauren

I'm on a little bit of a Jane Austen kick.  Neel started it.  Well not the initial kick.  That started, too early perhaps, back in eighth grade.  That was the first time I read Pride and Prejudice.  (It's barely possible that the much beat-up copy you see near the top of the stack is the same copy, but doubtful.  I'm like a little bird when it comes to new things, and a college reading list is no different.  Give me a list and a bookstore and I'm toast.)  As much of a reader as I was even back in the eighth grade P&P was a definite reach for me.  My main impression was of lots of talking and dark ballrooms.  Callum would say it was talkey. 

Jane Austen, and her novels are the kinds of things that you (well, English Literature Majors at least, and the former ones) like to think you have a special relationship with.  You know, I love her books best.  We're so close.  I understand her so well.  And then somehow you turn it around and think that she must know that about you too. Somehow she knows that you understand her so well.  Amazing how one woman who wrote so long ago and lived such a retired life can still be doing that to readers centuries later.  When my favorite English professor in college declared it to be, in his opinion, one of the best novels ever written, well, we all had to love it that much more.

So Neel started me on my most recent kick.  We watch the BBC production about once a year or so.  When it first came out we were living in Pennsylvania while Neel was in graduate school for his Ph.D.  Our closest friends were a group of gay men (most of whom were named Mark), and as soon as Mr. Darcy walked out of his pond at Pemberly, Mark called me.  Colin Firth has that effect on everybody it seems.  So a few weeks ago we watched the BBC production, and it really is the best, but I started thinking how long it had been since I'd read Pride and Prejudice itself.  Have we talked about this before?  Are you a re-reader?  Because it absolutely blew my mind to hear that there are people out there who will read every book once and never reread them.  There I definitely books whose covers I will never turn again, but I have my stand-bys.  I have books that I look forward to returning to each year.  They are like my winter jammies.  Soft and cozy. 

And then really, how can you read Pride and Prejudice and not want more?  There are so many interesting spin-offs and variations out there.  It's been fun to explore.  Just from me personally, (you know because Jane and I are so close), I'd have to say that Pamela Aiden's Fitzwilliam Darcy, Gentleman series (three books) captures the man the best, although I could have just as easily left out the middle book, I loved the third.  Darcy's Story was fine, and Without Reserve by Abigail Reynolds, a really, really interesting concept.  She has several of these and tells the "what if?"   For example, what if Elizabeth had accepted another proposal and Darcy had to win her affection from another man.  I was totally intrigued by the idea and intrigued to hear that they were a bit, ahem, racy, but this one at least fell down for me.  The proposal Elizabeth accepts is out of duty, a premise I have trouble believing even more than the pre-marital sex.  Needless to say the racy bits were a bit gratuitous.  Still, she captured the sense and the language well.  When I have a bit more pin money, I may try again.

Well, you can't have too much Jane, so I moved on to Persuasion, my second favorite of her novels, and that's when, low and behold, I discovered that sometimes the universe does pay attention to me.  Masterpiece Theater is doing a whole Jane Austen thing for weeks and weeks on end and airing film adaptations of all of her novels (some of them new), starting with Persuasion.  (Although when did it become Masterpiece and not Masterpiece Theater and why did they change the music?)  Again, this is just me, but movie-wise, I thought Persuasion was a bust (poor Neel who had never read it could not follow at all... go get the 1995 version, it's much better), but Northanger Abbey was great.  Funny and spooky all at once.  This week, upcoming (with a sad lack of football) we have Mansfield Park.  I'm looking forward to it.  And, it seems as if there is a whole world of spin-offs out there.  Frederick Wentworth, Captain is in the stack up there, and I can't wait to dig into it.

What with all this book talk floating around, it seems a really appropriate time to wish the happiest of birthdays to Shoshana, one of my favorite readers.  I have what I think is a great photo of her wearing a bucket hat and looking goofy, but somehow I think part of my gift to her will be not to share it here.  She's the kind of friend that stretches me and that I always wish I could see more of, and that, I think is a very good thing in a friend. Happy, happy birthday my dear.

Oh weather, why do I get so invested in you?  After building us up with promises of an "Urgent Weather Situation!!" what we have in the photo above is all you managed to deliver.  Powdered-sugar frosting on the roofs of houses and our cars.  I yearn for snow.  We had soft fluffy flurries all night on Saturday night.  It was really quite lovely, actually.  The roads grew slick, and there was the excitement and promise of snow in the air.  I'm holding out hope for this winter, still. 

What we have instead is bitter cold and sunny.  Callum spent his day playing football with the neighborhood boys, and I spent it huddled under blankets and dogs.  It's cold in the house.  I watched a movie and a House Hunters International Marathon and knit a scarf.

This scarf, actually.  It's yarnmonster's tambourine scarf (In her July archives), but it's my two play-off games, one movie and a House Hunter's International Marathon Scarf.  I needed something mustard-y to go go with this...

It's my totally funky new coat that I got on serious sale at Boden last week.  I'm not sure I can completely rock this coat, but I sure am going to try.  I'm going to use it to distract me from the fact that I want to pull up all my stakes and move to someplace exotic.  Just like everybody did in all those episodes of House Hunters International.

I mean seriously, how funky is that?  It should be warmer tomorrow, so I'll take it on a test drive.   

Oh, and apropos of nothing, if you haven't made the Moo Shu Pork from this month's Everyday Food, I highly recommend it.  Go grab yourself a pork tenderloin right now.  It was that good.  Like real Chinese food!  Paired with a chilled Hefeweizen and a wedge of lemon this was about the perfect winter meal.  Callum finished reading Charlie and the Chocolate Factory today so we're off to watch the Tim Burton/Johnny Depp version.  I need my blanket and three dogs.  And my scarf.

Rest a little, rest a little, cheep, cheep, cheep... I cried "uncle."  Took a couple days off from the Bat Cave of my office and decided to hunker down at home.  Nice idea.  It's raining here today.  Our winter.  Rain and forty degrees.  So I finished Neel's hat, and I'm going to clear out the mess that has become the Blue Rain Room, do some laundry, make plans for Neel's birthday dinner... that kind of  thing. It's just nice to be alone (aside from the dogs) in the house and know that I have the next few days stretching before me.

So, it snowed today.  I know.  It's a little hard to tell.  Still, except in extreme circumstances, this really is about as good as it gets for us.  Life in the coastal south.  We're more likely to get Hurricane Days instead of Snow Days.  I know I've mentioned that I work at a school, and as much fun as it is to be at a school at holiday time, it's really fun to be there when it snows.  I looked up from my computer to see the flurries swirling and headed out to try to get some pictures only to find the kids literally pouring out of the Lower School building.

I have a very distinct memory of elementary school and a snow day from when I was growing up.  In East Tennessee it didn't snow  a lot, but back then (you know, back then, when I was a little girl...) we definitely had more snow than we do here.  This memory was in fifth grade.  My math class was in an odd corner room that had a long angular bank of windows overlooking the playground.  Math was in the morning (to be gotten over with), and one morning, out of the blue, it started to snow.  You know, back then, when I was a little girl, I wasn't glued to the Weather Channel ten days beforehand... And it snowed and snowed and snowed.  So we tried to work.  Everyone sneaking peaks away from our worksheets of fractions and out the windows.  Pretty soon the grassy fields beyond the basketball and four-square courts were white.  And, amazingly, not long after that, the basketball court grew white.  There was a sizzle of energy in the room.  Who could pay attention to a fraction with that sea of white in front of us?  Mr. Holt, our math teacher was clearly restless too.  When he left the room, the whispered rumors started. 

"They can't get in touch with our parents or they'd let us out now." 

"They have to keep us half a day because the cafeteria has started making lunch already."

"If we get a day off now we have to make them up in the summer."

Everyone speaking with total and complete authority.  I believed them all, each and every one. The funny things is that after that morning class spent in awe of the whitening fields and increasingly heavy skies filled with snow, I don't remember specifics of what happened.  I remember a jumble of kids in the hallway as we rushed back to Homeroom (Callum doesn't have Homeroom, his school has one class per grade, and I certainly don't think he feels the lack.), and I still remember the sizzle of excitement.  Did we go home early?  We we out of school the next day?  Who knows.  I guess excitement is what lasts when specifics don't.

Look how thrilled these kids are!

What I learned yesterday is that it doesn't go away.  And as our kids, from Lower to Middle School poured out of their classes, I saw that teachers get excited too.  (Heck even our Business Manager squealed on the phone to me when a second wave of flurries moved through!)  There was barely enough snow to catch a flake on your tongue, but there we all were.  For some of us (those who don't see it that much, I imagine!), it doesn't go away.  I'm holding out hope for a snow day this year.  I'll keep you posted.