updates {in 4.5 parts}

1.

today was a good day, but the old familiar feeling cuddled up in the pit of my stomach sometime in the last few hours and now it's almost to the point of unmanageable. fear, that ravenous beast taking harbor in the cozy spot between my stomach and heart offering up an endless monologue running counter to everything i feel in that still and true part of my soul.

so i keep telling myself it's just one of those weeks. a little dip in the highs of the past month.
three steps forward. one back. hormones are always a bitch. and for the second year in a row, i've avoided the oscars.

artist envy at its worst {though this post both is and isn't about my art}.

in honor of moving beyond artist envy, i bought a card on sunday that merely said:

i never wanted to be famous,
i only wanted to be great.

ray charles

.........................................................................................................................................................................

2.

my dear friend sheree was in town this weekend. what a treat. a trip down into a particular part of my spirit that i always seem to find when she's around. her laughter is glorious. her honesty a simple fact she breathes into every moment.

we had a lovely day of it on sunday with eden. coffee {or rice milk hot chocolate for me} at bauhaus. a trip into ballard. a fantastic sale rack find on my part that scored us both these adorable hats. boom noodle for a late lunch. goodbye to eden. a nap. a movie {true grit} that ended with us exiting the theater, taking three steps and exhaling identical sighs simultaneously. we looked at each other and threw an arm around the other and shared in the fullness of the story we had just seen. next we went to poppy, this lovely restaurant with the most amazing honey-covered eggplant french fries. incredible. trust me. a little martin millers gin for her. some tea at roy street coffee and then an impromptu top-of-our-lungs singalong dance party on the car ride home. the soundtrack: home by edward sharpe and the magnetic zeros. we sang along to it twice. full heart and full volume. then we rounded off the night stretched out on my couches in a candle lit room as i gave her her first listen to radiohead's newest album.

it was a good visit.

sheree in the awesome restroom at poppy.

.........................................................................................................................................................................

3.

i needed a little pick me up. it was a long day on friday going from work to photographing a wedding with thankfully a few hours between. even still, i was looking for a little perk. a little treat. a little sweetness for the spirit. so when i came up to the mailbox, i thought to myself wouldn't it be great if there was a stray bird that arrived today? i pulled out the mail and was disappointed to find only the usual handful of junkmail and bills. but the feeling only lasted for a split second until i heard myself think that isn't right. look again. and sure enough, a longer reach into the back of the box yielded the glorious results: one pool colored enveloped.

thank you, karina. lovely to be in contact again and you couldn't have picked a better landing date for your bird as "late" as it seems.

.........................................................................................................................................................................

4.

i was on a search for the perfect red lipstick, a particular red that would be the reddress equivalent for my lips. something to be bold in when the weather's colder. it was hard to find but we finally met at the chanel counter about a month ago. even so, it's not a color that can be pulled out any old day and it finally made its debut on the night of sheree's party. wanting to post the color here, i snapped a few photos, some more, some less successful at highlighting the color. but one of the least successful was also one of the most interesting {pictured above}. it gave me an angle of my face i don't normally see {albeit distorted a bit as my iphone usually does at close range}, and somehow it's given me pause. a way to reevaluate how i see and understand my face. and as quirky as the angle and my face is within it, somehow, there's a little more softeness in my opinion of myself than there was before.

some of the "more successful" at showing off the lip color that is appropriately called dragon.



.........................................................................................................................................................................

1b.

why is the way never clear? my marching orders aren't in line with the present conditions so i guess perhaps the direction is off.

kismet, why are you such a tease?