Hello my dears! How was everybody's weekend? Can you believe it's Monday already? I was so toasty and warm and cozy as I wrote this that I just resisted the thought of Monday coming at all. Our weekend started with Callum's cross country meet at his school Friday afternoon. I took pictures with Big Daddy, but I haven't taken a good look at them yet...not sure if I can eek out a post on it or not! We had a great time and caught up with some old friends from way back in the lacrosse days. That was a long time ago!

Now the bread I will be posting about next week, and I can't wait. My friend Jackie, who is my original photography teacher (and a woman to whom I owe many thanks), has a brick oven in her back yard and she bakes once a week. Our original plan was for me to come and take pictures last Friday, but the headaches got me down, so we bumped it to this week instead. She was kind enough to offer us some bread anyway and give us a quick tour of her gorgeous oven. I can't wait to really show you. I only wish I could share with you some of her amazing bread. And look! We made progress on the bathroom! The plaster is up. The walls just need to be smoothed and we can prime and paint. I can almost smell the finish line. There are only some plumbers standing between me and our long awaited dreams (wink, wink).

Baseball lesson Saturday. Neel's writing a grant, so his weekends are spent at work. Cal has some sniffly bug, and he clearly doesn't feel well, but he rallied to take some batting practice and some fielding practice too. Without our beloved fall ball, he needs these tune ups, and I was mesmerized watching his coach work with him. For those of you who think baseball is boring, come with me sometime. So many little tiny pieces that make up every single throw, much less every play. Not to mention the fact that his coach is a, well, a character. Ahem.

Of course I saw all of this after Neel and I snuck out to the coffee shop for a bit. I love that place. So much to look at. If I'm feeling stuck and lonely here at home, I need to remember that this amazing space (and coffee!) is available. Getting a different view is important, sometimes, don't you think?

On Sunday, Cal was even snifflier. Poor guy had to give a Bat Mitzvah party he was looking forward to on Saturday a miss (We took him out for yogurt to try to make up for it. Remember those strawberry thingies, Erin?), and there's not much worse than facing down a barrel of homework when you're feeling crummy. Sunday was my favorite kind of day. The temperatures dropped 30° in about 12 hours, making for a cool, blustery, fall-like day. Finally. I may hate it in late February, but right now, I'm happy to have the lights lit, the gray skies and the smack of wind-driven rain against the windows. I spent a lot of time at the computer on Sunday. An inspiring Blog Brunch on Saturday had me thinking even more about how I want things to work more smoothly around here. I'm worried about how things are going at Squarespace. I'm wanting (haven't I been saying this for ages?) to switch things up a bit. I want themes and tag lines and whine, whine, whine. I realized that even though we're getting into a better routine (hello, finally), I'm operating more defensively than I want to. I want to play offense, not defense. So that's me from now on. I have the ball.

I watched this video this weekend, which talks about picking five words to describe your brand. Funny. It echoed something one of the photographers at my group mentioned last week. That was three words you want people to use to describe your photographs. People. This is not easy. Trying to represent yourself in tag lines and words and images. Tricky stuff that. So in the coming weeks, I'll be working on business plans and short and long term goals, and really trying to understand what I want this place to be and what I want my other work to be. Some of that I may share here, but who wants to see the sausage making, really?

So here's to a good week, peeps. As I write this, we don't know if Callum will be at school in the morning. He sounds really yucky. Of course, by the time you're reading it, the decision will be made.

Three words, five words, hmmm..... What are mine? What are yours?