so says the straw hat

Grandma gave my sister and I special presents this year - heirloom rings from our great-great-grandmother Eloise Austin Whiting. Mine is pure gold with a flat-plated circle where an ornate "W" is etched. The band has swirled gold designs on either side. When we opened it and Grandma explained what they were she started crying and we all started crying. In a good way. She said she figured we should have them now anyway and then made us all laugh by letting us know that they were rings that had to be sawed off great-great-grandma's hands when she died. Oh Grandma. I also inherited all the Serendipity books from when we were kids. Score. And got a great camera - pictures taken with said camera are forthcoming. I got many wonderful lovely gifts this year. Lucky lucky me. Mostly I just love being around my family for the holidays. We've looked at pictures of us as babies, eaten too much candy, watched It's a Wonderful Life, Elf and Home for the Holidays, we've ...

Something instinctual inside of us knows how to dance. How odd. We make music. Do other species make music? Just to make music? I know there are special mating rituals and calls--some here may argue that our "dance" is a form of mating ritual as well--but I do not know if there are animals that dance without purpose. (note to audience...looking up "dancing animals is so not worth the ten minutes of wasted youtube video watching time). Not the point! The point is that we dance. That the more we dance, the more we want to dance. That we are born with some innate sense of music and rhythm. The other day we were visiting a local craft fair that my friend Misha , talented artist extraordinaire,  was exhibiting at and I was running about outside with her son Kazimir. When he heard some music he stopped in his tracks, head cocked to the side to get a better sound-to-ear angle, and once he got the rhythm it was time to get his groove on. We were born to move our wonderful b...

You know how when a relationship ends, there are certain roles played out? For example, sometimes the girl becomes very proactive about getting her life together while the dude goes out and sleeps around and eats too much. OR vice versa. Sometimes the boy suddenly has everything going right for him--he is working out, eating right, girls are falling off his biceps, while the girl sits at home with a pint of ice cream watching too many Rom Coms on repeat slowly growing fat and zitty. Ugh.  All of this to say that I am very close to my sister. Very close. Freakishly close. She is my best friend. And being so many miles from her for so long feels sort of like a slow motion break up. In this scenario--she is the one with the rippling biceps and the shit together. I will call her up and her voice message will be something like "sorry! I am busy training for a marathon while running my dog so that I can go to my professional job and still have time to go out with my f...

I have trouble writing about news stories. I don't know what to say. Especially on this blog that was created mostly as a place for me as an exercise in writing (no offense to you, if you are reading). Let us face it. This is not one of those "useful" blogs where you come away from it feeling like you have learned something valuable. This is just where I sometimes go to dump my brain. That is why writing about news or social happenings are hard for me--I want to write something worthwhile, but writing with a message feels inauthentic to me--that is not something I am practiced in. This blog post took me 2 days just to figure out how I was going to talk about very simple news stories I heard. What a lot of hoo-ha. So. Without further ado--here are two news stories and an observation on advertising that I am going to give you--backed with very little commentary because when it comes to what I should say about them, I seem to be at a loss: 1) States Fail in Fight Against ...

six months later we are looking through pictures for christmas gift ideas: Serious and sweet flower girl. Mersi Mandi and Rell Lovely flowers and threaded mason jars. Mamnunam Ameh Jaleh and Shokufeh Rainbow Soda In full disclosure, this are the "untouched" photos David graciously dumped on us post-wedding so these are sans editing and still beautiful! What a wonderfully warm and silly day. Endless gratitude goes out to all the people who helped us pull it off. Y'all know who you are. Photos courtesy of David Mendolia