Time to refuel

This actually is a burnt out light bulb. 

MAN. My light bulb is burnt out you guys. I'm busy at work, I have a zillion errands to run, I can't catch up on hausfrauing, my mind is going a mile a minute all the time. I'm feeling the pull from many directions, and pressure to do and be from all sides. My brain seriously felt like it might fall out of my head yesterday.

This morning I thought about the small things that made me smile over the past week and it helped me relight my fire enough to switch it into gear and finish this week out in ass kicking style.

• Sleeping with the windows open
• New nail polish
• Catching Overboard on tv
• Staying up late to finish a good book
• Sleeping in
• Laughing so much my cheeks and stomach hurt
• Dreaming about soft ice cream
• Found money

• Seeing lots of sweet mullets in person
• A successful new recipe
• A coupon for a free iced coffee
• Two vats of iced coffee in my fridge 
• Spending time with my BFF 
• Hearing one of my more obscure favorite songs on the radio
• The arrival of US Magazine in the mailbox just as the weekend is starting
• Leftovers from my neighbor =  don't need to pack my lunch
• A cheery little pitcher
• Drying lavender
• Kisses from my dogs
• Getting a video of my brother's first college soccer game from my mom since I couldn't be there
• A funky bottle adds a little disco to dish doing 

• Fruit in a bowl
• Turning off the Republican National Convention and going to bed
• A shopping trip with MFD
• The smell of baby powder
• Brother's Pizza
• Getting veggies from my uncle's garden
• Brie
• A three day weekend looming in the not so distant future

What's getting you over the hump today?

p.s. I mentioned coffee twice in that list. That calls for another cup. Cheers. 

No apologies

There are times in life when apologies are necessary - when you hurt someone's feelings; when you want to convey your sympathy for the situation someone is in, when you spill red wine in someone's lap; when you forget someone's birthday.

Then there are things you shouldn't apologize for, and the things you know you won't ever apologize for...what are yours? Here are mine:

1. Thinking Beverly Hills 90210 is the greatest show to ever air on television. My car is named Kelly Taylor. That's right.

photo: sharetv.org

2. Laughing in inappropriate situations, or laughing at farts and people falling.

3. Liking something too quickly on facebook. Sorry to disappoint those who think I'm creeping on them. I'm not going to read something and think "Oh, I have to remember to go back and like that later so I don't seem like a creeper now." Live in the moment, people.

Photo: boston.com

4. Being organized, thinking and planning ahead, labeling shit and being prepared. It's served me well, and to those who say I'm anal, I say toodleoo and why do you care if I'm organized? I don't care that you're disorganized.

photo: undeniablestyle.com

5. Demanding silence when I am trying to fall asleep. I need quiet and dark.

6. Being hungover. I drank too much while having an awesome time, what's it to you?

7. Being a feminist. Women don't get paid the same, women are still victims of abuse and rape and discrimination, women's health/safety/reproductive rights are still threatened both here in America and around the globe...we are so far from equality I can't even see it on the horizon.

8. Treating my dogs like furry children, letting them sit on the furniture and sleep where they please, even if it is on top of my head.

9. Refusing to read 99.9% of nonfiction books.

10. Saying no to invitations even when nothing is on my calendar - I am very easily a victim of my own over scheduling, so now I schedule in free-time.

11. Liking my alone time. I love MFD, but I also love being alone in my house to putter and daydream.

12. Calling bullshit on someone.

photo: dailykos.com

13. Liking stupid movies. Keep your fa fa The English Patient movies. I'll take Moving Violations any day.

14. Having my mood be directly related to the quality of the nail polish on my nails.

15. Being me. I am always working on myself, seeking better ways to be and do, vacuuming negativity out of my aura, sucking knowledge in daily, but at the end of the day, I am myself. Warts and all. If you don't like me, that's totally ok. But that's your issue, not mine. Don't expect me to apologize for being me.

I hope you all list #15 as something you'll never apologize for, being you is your very essence. Swim in it.

Cause down the shore everything's alright...

If I could live anywhere, I'd live at the Jersey shore - not the fist pumping Jersey Shore shore - but Strathmere, Cape May, Ocean City? I'd live there in a second. I grew up going to Ocean City, and through the years migrated to other shores: Sea Isle, North Wildwood, Cape May, Strathmere. Some of my best memories were made down the shore, and not to be new agey, but I feel very much myself there. MFD feels the same way, which is why we chose to get married down there.

The shore is laid back, easy, no fuss. Throw some clothes in a bag and go. I pack my beach bag with a big hat, long sleeves for when the wind turns between 3 - 4 p.m., sunblock, two books, crosswords, twizzlers, and plums or nectarines, and I'm content to be at the beach all day.

I like it when it's sunny or overcast. I like the beach in the spring, fall, winter. I like it when it's raining.

I love to travel to places I've never been, but when it comes right down to it, I'd choose the shore over any other destination. Every time I go down, I'm reminded of so many great times shared with people I adore. Since I'm heading down this weekend, here's a little through the years kaleidoscope.

The cure for anything is salt water - sweat, tears, or the sea.  

~Isak Dinesen

For whatever we lose (like a you or a me)

it's always ourselves we find in the sea.

- e.e. cummings

hark, now hear the sailors cry, smell the sea, and feel the sky 

let your soul & spirit fly, into the mystic...

~Van Morrison

A beach was a fine place to come to terms with all the cycles of the universe. 

~Pat Conroy, Beach Music

To me there has never been anything more evocative of 

summer and wildness and bittersweet joy than a sea wind. 

Anne Rivers Siddons, Outer Banks

In still moments by the sea life seems large-drawn and simple. 

It is there we can see into ourselves.

~Rolf Edberg

There is one spectacle grander than the sea, that is 

the sky; there is one spectacle grander than the sky, 

that is the interior of the soul. 

~Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

Yes, to dance beneath the diamond sky with one hand waving free, 

Silhouetted by the sea, circled by the circus sands, 

With all memory and fate driven deep beneath the waves, 

Let me forget about today until tomorrow. 

― Bob Dylan

The sea is emotion incarnate. It loves, hates, and weeps. 

It defies all attempts to capture it with words and rejects all shackles. 

No matter what you say about it, there is always that which you can't.

~Christopher Paolini, Eragon

I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.

-- T. S. Eliot

We'll be making more shore memories this weekend with Amanda and Frank.

It's nice to have something to look forward to in the middle of the week, no?

Wishing you all a stellar Wednesday,

Scenes from California

Legs out on Haight Street. San Francisco Sky. Saxes on Haight Street. Alcatraz backdrop. Turning the cable car. Looking up Lombard Street. 

Awesome clams at Franchino's. Following the Barbary Coast Trail. Interesting flora - one of the things I love most about traveling is seeing the flowers and trees that are native to that place. Live jazz. Andy's street dogs. View of the Golden Gate from the Alcatraz Ferry.

I loved these trees. Sipping on a dark & stormy at Vesuvio. Chinatown. Waiting on a cable car. Driving over the Golden Gate Bridge (life list item). We were. 

Did you know this is the same as Hellman's, but on the Left Coast it's Best Foods? Trippy. The path leading up to our deck in Truckee. Cruising Lake Tahoe with WedFest people. Lake Tahoe. Sonoma sticker. Lovely flowers tied to trees to form the aisle at the wedding. 

Wedding arch with Donner Lake backdrop. MFD tubing in Donner Lake. KVS caught the bouquet. Reflections. Sunset at Donner Lake. Rocking out to Not Mick Jagger. Bride and groom jam. Seize it. 

Thank you photographs for making today's blog for me. My circadian rhythms are not back on track yet. I feel like there's a sheet of plexiglass over my brain that I can't think through.

Happy Wednesday!