seeking comfort

events of the past week. the past few months for that matter. four days of gusty winds, driving rain and sleet. general uncertainty. it all has me wanting to hunker down. light candles. stir up a real batch of cooked oatmeal - like the kind that you have to cook for 15-20 minutes (jamie tells you how here.) - and top it with blueberries (don't ask about the food miles), butter, real maple syrup and a drizzle of cream. seeking comfort. finding it. and also having it find me in unexpected forms that i only realized were needed after they arrived. life is like that sometimes.

the alien rowing team

the alien trooper from series 13 seems to have replicated himself around here. i was rather disappointed at first (i'd much rather have multiple unicorns), but then i decided that a whole group of them could easily take the canoe out for a spin, like they're a rowing team. our weather has been absolutely horrible this weekend - rain, sleet and hurricane force gales, even as far inland as we are. but for a few glorious minutes late in the afternoon, the sun came out and the aliens went for a little row.

husband pointed out that they were going to row in circles. he should know, he's an old rower from way back. but i liked how their little ray guns looked all lined up on the one side of the boat too much to switch one paddle to the other side. pretty cool that they're all lefties, eh?

the theme for this year's creagive (the local art group i'm part of) spring exhibition is "reflections," so i find myself drawn to water. with all of the rain we've had of late, there's a lot of puddles around, so i have no shortage of reflections to explore. i have to find shallow puddles, tho', because that little canoe doesn't float all that well.

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can LEGO be art?

and if so, when?

windows of new york

in light of today's events in france (the shooting of the suspects), i have a need to look at things that feel beautiful and inspiring and aspirational instead of dwelling of the fear and the pain and the terror and yes, the disappointment that they don't have to answer for their actions. because some part of me wants answers - why did they do this? what possessed them? if we could just understand we could do something and these things would end, right? and no one would have to go around in fear. right?

oh well, just look at the pretty windows, will you?

a little assemblage of thoughts on the tragic events in paris

the tragic events in paris at charlie hebdo are on my mind, like they surely are for you as well. i'd frankly never heard of the magazine before, but my french is pretty weak, so it's no wonder. i have great affection for biting satire that forces you to think deeper and from what i've seen and read, they produce a newspaper in that vein. it is a horrible tragedy that they were slaughtered for doing so by people who didn't agree with their views and methods. it's so horrible that i think on some level i can't even really fathom it. it seems quite unreal, even in the face of graphic videos shot by bystanders. so it's taken me a few days to begin to collect my thoughts enough to write something about it. but i have been reading a lot of articles about it in a variety of places, from the nytimes to the guardian to danish newspapers to a friend's blog. that blog is probably the best, most sensible piece i've read.

i find it exceptionally disheartening what the tragedy seems to have done to people. i see it in my facebook feed, but i'm also reading it in the various opinion pieces online. it's not only the blood and gore of it, but how it has turned on a hatred of an entire religion, based on the actions of a few fanatics. my facebook feed is full of people calling for closing denmark's borders and sending home syrian refugees, calls to withdraw all resources from programs which help people in need who happen to be muslim. there is a mass reaction that is very black & white, very unnuanced and which, in my view, contains as much hate as those men with the guns must have felt on wednesday. it's a similar kind of reactionary fanaticism.  and it's tinged with more than a little racism and xenophobia. and to me, it means that the terrorists have won beyond their wildest imagination. if they can make us fear and hate at the same level as they do, they have reduced us.

i am heartened to see pockets of rationality and sense here and there. twitter is our barometer these days and like in australia, where a supportive hashtag surfaced, saying #illridewithyou, after the lunatic held all those hostages in the lindt café, there seems to be a groundswell of folks rallying around the policeman they so brutally shot, saying #jesuisahmed, rather than #jusuischarlie, which carries with it a more radical connotation.

it is hard to see what good can possibly come of this, but i do hope that we are able to take up a discussion which allows us to discuss the nuances and actually begin to address the problems that underlie these things...like the imbalance of resources in this world, the imperialist notions of those in the west, so sure of our own superiority, like getting education to women and the young populations of the muslim countries, so that they can see that they have options other than violence. rather than saying we need to send all of the foreigners home, maybe we should make them more welcome around here. it's much harder for people to hate and kill when they are your friends.

the thrill is gone

i'll admit it, having access to a whole box of fresh series 13 minifigs and just cutting them all open with a scissors and collecting the whole set immediately, while a great privilege, does not fill me with the excitement i felt when i first discovered collectible minifigures at the grocery store back in the summer of 2013. of course, i am pleased to have the whole collection and i do delight in the details in the same way as i did then - the little paleontologist has a cute bone and a little round fossil and the roller skate-wearing groovy singer is so cute, but the thrill of the hunt is gone. that feeling of excitement of not really being sure which ones you got - of opening each package and squealing in delight or groaning because it's another lady cyclops. the pull of going back for more because there's still one more that you just have to have. i miss that.

it leads me to think that a great deal of the pleasure of collecting must actually be in the search - whether it's minifigs or catherine holm enamelware or antique locks or whatever it may be. the pleasure lies less in the having than in the search. i suspect there's a life lesson for me in this.

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thinking so much about spilling ink's gratitude post. 

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withknown looks pretty interesting.

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it's quite obvious that i need a sous vide kitchen machine.
and it's all amy's fault.

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yes, i am continuing to take a photo every day.

for the 5th (or is 6th?) year running.

you can see them here.

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now this wind turbine tree is quite possibly the coolest thing ever!

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fascinating historical photos of titanic survivors taken with a brownie camera.
and more of world war I, also taken with a brownie.
is the brownie the most important camera ever made?

sometimes you have to get your knees muddy to get the right shot

bacon & eggs decided to go for a little sail today.

they were rather surprised to see a couple of mermaids lurking in the shallows.

we've had a lot of rain of late, but we've never seen mermaids in a cornfield before!

lessons learned:

1.) sometimes you have to be willing to get a bit muddy if you want just the right angle.

2.) a grown woman crouching in a muddy cornfield, photographing lego is totally normal behavior.

despite what those people driving by may have thought.

and who cares what they thought.

that little lego canoe isn't particularly seaworthy.

luckily, i was able to find some shallow puddles.

getting muddy is fun.

the mud will wash right off.

and eggs looks like she had a fine time!

i resolve not to resolve

with the dawning of a new year, i always ponder whether or not to make resolutions. i'm not so good at them, you see. and so i was thinking that this year i'd make some that i can keep...like drink more wine, watch more netflix, eat more and exercise less, never dust, buy more stuff. those would be pretty easy. but is that what i really want? i could throw in a harder one, like "start smoking," which would be a bit of a challenge for me, since i really have no desire to do that. but i wonder if those are actually resolutions at all.

but still, the blank slate of the new year beckons new thinking.

we could spend the summer as vikings, dressing the part, going from one of those viking festivals to the next, cooking over open fires and learning to dye wool with nothing but pee and wildflowers. husband wasn't that keen on this idea, since he's got a new saw of which he's rather enamored and was thinking he'd need an awfully big trailer and a pretty long extension cord to haul it around to the viking festivals.

we could volunteer to help with the ebola epidemic in africa. but alas, we have no medical training and who would feed the horses and provide the service level the cats have come to expect while we're away?

i think about going on a writer's retreat and getting serious about that book. sadly, i fear it's already been done (tho' i wouldn't have made up some crap about "disney sex" if i'd written it).

maybe i just need one of those silent getaways where you don't speak for a week.

or perhaps i just need to reread my own manifesto and leave it at that.