just a thought

wouldn't it be cool if you could mentally suck up books through your hands like evil willow does in buffy, (but without the evil part), and you could go to a party and be all 'the pacific walrus is the third biggest pinniped next to two kinds of elephant seals' because you just sucked up volume w-z in your animal encyclopedia set?

my baby takes the morning train

train travel definitely has its charms. cutting through the land with a steady forward chug you see the back side, the exposed belly, the gentle pastures kept hidden from the noisy smog of road. you can imagine the land before roads and in that way the train transports you back in time.


i spent the five hour trip to ottawa staring out the window and sampling strange combinations of foods offered in the economy on-board menu like hummus and crackers and coffee and the last of jeremy's carrot sticks that came with his egg salad sandwich.

we arrived at 10, found our hotel, and waited for morning to herald in breakfast in my favourite ottawa restaurant with my favourite ottawa friend. stone lion wanted to come but he was too big and he left concrete crumbs on the burgundy naugahyde booth seats.



i know people who don't care for ottawa and i can see how school age trips or the wrong kind of experience could lead you to that conclusion, but i adore it. i love the parks and the grandeur of the buildings. i love the sprawling lawns and i love the clock tower, heard from all corners of downtown.

i love the silence, almost deafening, and the history and the view. i love the way my hands smell of iron from all the peeping i do through the gates and doorways.


every where you look you are surrounded by architecture or landscape or bridges or river. you are nestled among them. you are cradled in their arms.

this trip we went to the national galleries to visit the pop art exhibit and the massive spider sculpture that guards the entrance.

it's an incredible thing. giant and egg bearing it manages to be maternal and terrifying all at once.


there are classic pieces in the gallery as well. like picasso and van gogh and monet. i cried at the monet when i read the little plaque beside the painting where he describes what it was he was trying to achieve.

"to reproduce something that exists between the subject and myself, the beauty of the air, something wholly unattainable"

and to that my heart replies, "pitter patter".

we called on rapunzel though she'd recently cut her hair so we had to visit shouting back and forth between the sidewalk and her turret.

sometimes i wonder if passerby understand that i am merely imitating the unicorn.

and the lion. and that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery even if you are a statue.

on the train ride home i dove into my book and another egg salad sandwich and i thought about the space between past fun and present reflection, between ottawa and toronto, between me and you - something wholly unattainable.

just you and me and the sunday tree

when drawing the moon, drink iced tea with mint.

jeremy thought we should make art for the bedroom instead of buying it and for a second i resisted before the greatness of the idea soaked through as greatness does when given half a chance.


so we made these moon prints and i like both and i also like how easily you can guess whose is whose.

darn tree swings! give me away every time.

e-i-e-i-oh.

my grandpa used to salvage things that people left outside the underground dumpster in his apartment building. like clocks and chairs and an old stuffed panda bear.

when we found this wooden barn sitting next to our garbage i thought of him when jeremy suggested we take it and clean it up and think of something to do with it.


at first he wanted to make it into a bird feeder but i got to love it after i washed its floors so now it lives on the red bench and slowly, guests are moving in.

there's an owl in the rafters and a donkey in the pen and once a month i think they'll be someone new. including maybe a vagabond who lives with the owl and can keep the place clean when we're busy.


i like to open the barn doors on days when it's really hot, you know how donkeys can get when there isn't a breeze.

to the moon, alice!

when life hands you lemons, you make lemonade. and when the mirrored art things in the bedroom fall off the wall, you take that as a sign that the wall wants something new to wear.

shopping for your bedroom is fun too. it's like a really easy room to forget about because it's just for sleeping and that other thing but such a nice nest to feather when you get into it.

what do we want to look at when we go to sleep? when we wake up? i think we need a dreamcatcher too i've been having crazy dreams lately. or one of those frog sound machines. or i can just start making those sounds myself.

so far for the wall we like the idea of an old moon map.


or one of these charley harper posters.




or this cool set that may be meant for elementary school children but who the hell do they think they are.




i think the moon map's in the lead but we might put up a couple small prints of the others. and later we'll build a hammock bed and paint the walls blue and pretend we're taking naps under the sea.