It's not Mastercard

Waffles for breakfast
Snuggle time on the couch
Playing one-on-one on the floor with the littlest one while big sister goes to ballet practice
dinner at the overlook cafe
car ride doing the usual architectural tour of PDX
chatting with the husband about the future
playing with the flashlight and light board in the tent with the girls before bed...
all these things are priceless

Communion

"And the deepest level of communication is not communication, but communion. It is wordless. It is beyond words, and it is beyond speech, and it is beyond concept. Not that we discover a new unity. We discover an older unity. My dear, we are already one. But we imagine that we are not. And what we have to recover is our original unity. What we have to be is what we are."

a closing prayer by Thomas Merton

Outside In

Driving home tonight I looked at my two wonderful daughters in the rearview mirror and got one of those elusive snapshots of them immortalized forever in my brain, me on the outside looking in.

It is a rare moment when I can see my children 'objectively'; at least as much as motherly possible! Usually I am correcting grammar, laughing, telling one to be more quiet, asking the other one to take her thumb out of her mouth and talk to me, blithely unaware that life is happening to me at that very moment.

Seeing them, one, two, looking at me, me seeing them looking at me, as their mother, that was a good moment, a good day.

Lovely

John Waterhouse

Smile Deux

Smile One

Garden Gnomes make me smile.

Love

dance 101

I am a wallflower. I stand at the back of the room, blending in with the scenery, hoping not to be noticed. I am also a hypocrite. I want to be seen, talked to, danced with so desperately that it practically sweats out of my pores. But all the hairpins fall out of my up-do and you never see me at all. You just walk around smiling at people, happy in the knowledge that you can leave me at the table-we didn't come together as a date.
I guess that was reverse karma for not going to the dance with my future husband. I hope not to make the same mistake in the future's past.
Life feels like a dance sometimes.
Choose a partner with dry palms.
Drink horrid punch you wish was spiked.
Smile like you mean it.
Go alone, leave alone.

Maybe it's just me.

Down the rabbit hole once more

Twas brillig, and the slithy toves

Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

"Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!"

He took his vorpal sword in hand:
Long time the manxome foe he sought—
So rested he by the Tumtum tree,
And stood awhile in thought.

And as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!

One, two! One, two! and through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.

"And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!"
He chortled in his joy.

'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

'The Jabberwocky'
-Lewis Carroll


ps-Tim Burton is reported to be working on a live-action/CGI version of A in W. for 2010. yipee!

Wisdom of the 4 year old

Abigailisms for the week:

"I can't eat the pizza without the cheese on top!"(wailing and crying commenced)

"Well I'm just not going to talk to you!"

"Maybe her poop is frozen inside her."(Referring to her younger sister during a particularly fun potty training incident)

"Barack Obama is our boss at the White House. He uses pens, not markers. They don't use markers at the White House. (I then asked her how she knew that and she said): I just know that he wouldn't. He's the boss."

and does everyone remember the words to Jingle Bells that go like this "Joy to the world, something something something. We bar-b-q'd her head! mumble, mumble, mumble, Barbie, something something, flushed her down the potty..."??
Well, I do, because my sweet Abby decided to sing it while on the way to preschool today.

When I asked her not to sing those lyrics because they weren't very nice, she proceeded to do this "de darbqued der dead! de dlushed der down da dotty..."
-See how smart she is??

Aack!