happy birthday jeremy!


to my absolute favourite everything! my molecules wish your molecules a happy 32 years and a happy 33rd en route.

my heart wishes yours the world. you've given mine just that.

x

a list to never get through


we started an awesome list book that's meant to capture all the great ideas we invent and forget in the same hopeful moment. there's generic things, (pay this bill), and chore reminders, (clean my boots) but there's also neat ideas (plant wildflowers on the hill behind phil's house in spring) and creative starters (make a photo exhibit with images of trees). it's a list we'll add to forever. it's a list that will never run out. it's the perfect thing to go to when we feel there's nothing to do to be reminded that, indeed there are a list of things.

seeds of ideas that need to be planted. and watered. and maybe rototilled with my strong but imaginary ox and cart.

this is the way we walk to work early in the morning







fall soup

more goo goo for gaga

i can't help but dance like i get paid for it to this song.

and yeah, maybe i mean THAT kind of dancing.

hurry up halloween! i need to practice my moves in costume.

science symposium

maybe it isn’t an obvious marriage that science and creativity would fold so neatly into each other but for me, they absolutely do. i can see how one could think science a technical and mathematical thing but those boundaries of science, those gargantuan and miniscule parameters, have within them the stuff that day dreams are made of.

when i think about space and time and atoms and mass and how nothing is destroyed, only transformed, my mind boards the express train through the lush and vast grasslands of my imagination knowing everything is eternal and metamorphic.

i read about einstein this morning and how he’d conjured up his theory of relativity without help or reference or even very much in the way of mathematical equation work and i was so moved by this prospect that a man could, essentially alone, dream up a scientific theory. science from imagination.

on my walk to work i wondered how it should be possible for me to feel connected to a scientist who’s been dead for 60 years but then i remembered that nothing is destroyed and smiled at the notion that einstein’s particles were perhaps floating by me, riding swiftly on some westward breeze.

bill bryson says that if our solar system was drawn to scale and the earth was represented by a sphere the size of a pea, then pluto would have to be drawn a mile and a half away. and our solar system is just one of billions within our galaxy. and our galaxy is just one of billions in the known universe.

there is a formula that scientists use to determine the probability of life on other planets. starting with the estimated number of planets in the known universe they divide by the number of planets that could facilitate life, then divide further by the number of planets that could facilitate intelligent life and the answer is a number of potential, intelligent, live giving planets in the TRILLIONS.

that isn’t even the most amazing part.

the space between all these trillions of things is staggering. in fact there is more SPACE in space than anything else so even if there was life (which of course there must be) and even if you travelled at the speed of light for millions of years (and didn’t stop for bathroom breaks) you would only see less than 1% of these planets. you just can’t grasp that kind of size. or the kind of time it would take to move across it.

even more fascinating than the number of galaxies and the size of the universe, is our place within it. at once we are so insignificant and complex. we come with such a range of emotions and interests and talents and beliefs despite our almost non-existence in universal terms. we feel so intensely. we dream so mightily. we struggle so heartily with things that ultimately, universally, don’t matter.

and we do it as though there is no nobler mission. for on earth it would seem, there isn’t.

husbands push wives over cliffs

or more accurately they encourage them to go close to the edge. even when they're scared. even when they refuse to move at all unless their husbands hold onto the back of their vests while they get used to the feeling of vertigo.

which of course, they eventually do, and the husbands let go so the wives can explore on their own. feeling braver for having first been held.

knock knock

who's there? a very tiny person, obviously. with really long retractable legs for extending the metre and a half distance from the door to the forest floor.

i can't wait to come over for tiny cups of tea. i hope your tiny furniture is surprisingly solid.

you know when you're trying to take a photo but someone in the background keeps getting in your shot?

yeah, it's funny when that person is a moose.

also, sandwiches!

pulled pork on kaisers! if there's anything better than eating this while looking out at that i don't want to know because it would just throw me over the edge.

a loonie love story

i have been married for one whole year. a fall, a winter, a spring a summer and now it's fall again so we'll repeat that same cycle over and over until we're 98 and 100 respectively and decide to lie down on the forest floor and rest eternally or until the park ranger shovels us off the trail.

maybe they'll erect a monument! here lies two swell folks who loved each other and nature very much. and passerby will sit on our monument, (it will also be a bench), and ponder their own lives and loves whilst soaking in the scenery.

the last day of our trip we got up early and packed the car and drove to a trail to be the first ones on so we could spend the final hours of our outdoor adventure alone, together, in the wilderness. we stopped by a lake after an hour of walking to drink from our thermos of tea and share a peanut butter granola bar and found ourselves in total silence.

no cars no people no dogs no noise of any kind except the minute rumblings of only barely audible life. a loon flew past and we heard her wings. we shared a glance and heard the thoughts behind them. the love we share became a thing, like the fog on the lake, that didn't need to be expressed to be understood.

in the silence, if you can obtain it, is clarity. and an achingly wondrous feeling of freedom.

you and me and a couple of trees

we just got back from our anniversary algonquin adventure and in my mind we're still walking this trail with the needles underfoot and the coloured leaves dipping down and i'm reaching for your hand and we meet halfway because you were reaching too.

her boyfriend took this photo.

are the people you enjoy beautiful because you enjoy them? or do you enjoy them because they are beautiful?

either way i think mel is beautiful. we work together so i get to look at the top third of this face over our computer monitors every day. lucky me! she's also a devoted foodie and a lovely writer which totals three wonderful qualities in this paragraph alone.

i like when she brings me baked goods. and all those times we quote lines from alladin from across our work stations.

mushroom mugshots




let's share stuff with each other.

i am a notorious starter and stopper of activities. i have four pairs of ballet shoes, a yoga mat and a t-shirt from a tai chi studio. i love the idea of dancing and stretching and meditating through motion but i'll sign up for a class and before long i'll be going to great lengths to justify not going.

i like to believe it's because i'm so free spirited but probably it's because i am so lazy. and because i get enough exercise doing my nightly frog and cane dance routine.

all the news that is the news

where is that line from? i think it's from popular culture somewhere but it could also just be something my grandpa made up. i love childhood memories that you mistake for real life truths.

steph came for a visit! i took friday off work and jeremy too and we started the fun with some warm banana pancakes by a bright sunny window.

she came on friday and left on monday and it went by in fifteen seconds and i really enjoyed all fifteen of them. when i went to deflate the (very fancy) air mattress i saw a blue crocheted flower attached to my bag that she'd left me as a treat and it made me feel nice.

come back any time! like tomorrow for example! we can hang out more in the sunroom. xox