•3 min read
Where beauty grows
Everywhere I drive around Austin, I see wildflowers. They are pockets of color, persisting. From what I've read, wildflowers are more prone to grow where the soil has been "disturbed" so they grow more frequently along roadsides and in places one...
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Finished Late Night socks
They're done! This is the first pair of fingering-weight socks I've made (and kept) for myself. The self-patterning yarn was incredibly fun and motivating to knit, since I could always convince myself to knit to the next color. One of my favorite...
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Spring in my step
To all my Northern friends and family, I realize that my yearning for spring is likely nowhere near what you may be feeling, especially in the midst of heavy wintry weather, which is something that doesn't really happen here.
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Not exciting, but sanctifying
I feel a pang of it every now and then: wanderlust and the pull of an "exciting life," or even just a different life from the one I have. It's followed closely by discontentment and comparison. You see, honestly, I really like (well actually, love)...
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Progress toward creative goals, winter 2017
I wrote a post in January about this year's creative goals. They seemed a bit lofty at the time, but I've actually made a good deal of progress. I think now is as good a time as any to check in, assess, and adjust as necessary:
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A staycation
Schedules of nurses are weird. They are irregular; different days every week, only a few days every week, but far more hours in each shift. That said, I love to have full days off on weekdays. Even if I don't have three days off in a row, it feels a...
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In the in-between & new favorites
It struck me today that much of our lives are spent in "in-between" phases. We dwell in the already-past or the not-quite-yet. We're caught in the cradle of reflection and anticipation and we dream and think of the future. I write about this all the...
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Patches of light
The light this morning fascinated me. I love the beauty of contrast in a lot of things, in fact. I notice
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Tuesday joys & my making
Tuesdays with him are patches of midweek joy. I've written about it before in a post of instagram, so I won't reiterate it here. But I'm so fond of little loving routines. And amidst the routine of a work meeting, we preserve a few extra moments of...
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New materialism & satisfaction
There are days when I think I've won the battle of against the thought of "I want more stuff." In the past, I've countered this with large amounts of donations and a cross-country move.
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Better resting
I love being a nurse and generally, I'm exhausted after a shift. The two are not mutually exclusive. But I have this tendency, which comes in waves, to approach days off and generally, rest as an entitlement, and that breeds some less-than-balanced...
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Sweeter than an afternoon treat
Initially, I inadvertently used the term "fika" a bit flippantly, thinking that it was something we already did. I mean, we do drink a lot of coffee. But it's more than that. Since we began talking about fika more, we practice it more, and as a...
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Birthday weekending
It's still (his) birthday weekend around here, so we're enjoying a few days in a row of sleeping in, sipping coffee slowly, and generally being our homebody-selves. More specifically:
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Him, 27 years
Today is Nicholas' birthday and each year, around this time, I write him a love letter.
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Creative goals, 2017
I've seen a few of people's "best nine" selections of things they want to create in 2017 floating around on the web. And so, I thought it would be a good idea for me to loosely organize my "creative plans" for the year. My reasons for this are...
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On sentimentality
I've been thinking about it a lot lately, and I'm realizing more and more: I'm a sentimental person. I'm still deciding whether that is a strong point or a fault. Perhaps it's a bit of both.
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Tidiness & a welcoming home
As a 22-year-old newlywed, I didn't have much "vision" for our home. I appreciated order and organization, as I always have. However, we accumulated a lot of stuff throughout our college years and I felt burdened and unsure of how to store or manage...
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January weekending
Weekends in January (so far) look like:
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A sick-day mentality
I'm in the midst of kinda-sorta-maybe feeling better, and I'm hopeful that the (slow) recovery will continue!
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One Second (most) Everyday
This will be my last year-specific post for quite some time, but it is one I really wanted to share.
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Awake (again) in 2017
You may remember my plans for 2016: Be more awake. And guess what? I've decided that I'm not going to limit such a heart-centric projects to 365 days. Sometimes, a word-of-the-year deserves to be a word-of-the-two-years. My heart could use another...
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2016: A year in review
At first glance, it was difficult for me to sum up this year. We didn't move across the country, we didn't start new jobs. But I don't want to categorize the past year on what we didn't do. We did make new friends, grow in our marriage, develop new...
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2016: A (knitting) year in review
What we do with our time says a lot about who we are. What I can say for myself is that my knitting hints at several things: my love of a balance between beauty and utility, my need for a creative outlet and a challenge, my enjoyment of rhythm and...
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Christmasing 2016
We're back from a Christmas trip up North to see Nicholas' family! Being in the Midwest always feels "homey" especially around Christmas. Because our families live in different states (Indiana and Minnesota), and we live in a third state (Texas),...
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Countdown to Christmas
Today, I was scheduled to be at work, but I'm at home on-call, so our day looks like:
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