5x5 Challenge : Day 9 | FAIL

I'm sorry, friends. I did not take a single photo today. Not a one. As the minutes ticked by this past hour I thought about taking five photos of the same thing, five photos of five things that fall under the same umbrella, five photos of me? 

Alas, I took none and that is how it will stay. And here's something I want to ask, anyway: if we're being challenged to notice and pay attention, see the small and the beautiful, shouldn't we NOT be taking photos? Shouldn't we be looking through actual eyes rather than the limited/limiting eye of a camera. Call me a luddite, but isn't part of what we should all be doing is putting our devices down and snapping heartfelt memory shots instead? 

I mean this sincerely. And I'm also trying to justify my slackerness to avoid being on the hook for a dinner for four, which is the penalty for any one of us who drops the ball by not posting daily during this Challenge. Well, ladies, Bon appetit! 

5x5 Challenge : Day 8 | Back to work

"You are seen. You are heard. And if you weren't here the world would be different."

 - Elena Brower

I suppose it could be said that this single quote sums up my experience at Wanderlust this weekend. But I suppose that would be an oversimplification. I suppose all summations are overly simplified versions of the thing they're meant to describe. But it is accurate to say that this quote makes me feel simply amazing. 

Do you feel it, too? Can you read those words and feel them to your core? Can you listen to the message of these words without judgement - of yourself or the person saying them to you? I heard myself judging right after I felt amazing. I'm thankful that the feeling came before the judging and now I'm wondering how I can stop at the feeling... to let it in and around and out and be, just be amazing.

Kind of like these two creatures. Amazing. 

#nightlight

Day off : Pause for the Cause

Some trendy phrases are worth saying for the simple fact that they're fun to say. "Pause for the cause" is one of them. 

I'm taking the day off today because I'm at Wanderlust. This is my pause and I am my cause. I'll still be here tomorrow but I think I'll have my bearings and will remember to take some photos. At least five.  

5x5 Challenge : Day 7 | It's actually pretty easy being green...

I spent some time in our yard today. In doing so I realized that I haven't done so in quite a while. How is that possible? I live here. I live on top of our yard. How is it that I have not walked the perimeter or explored the contours in what feels like weeks? Weeks!? 

I suppose it's because I always do the same thing in our yard: I tend the garden. I walk the diagonal line from the back door to the raised beds, extra long garden hose in hand, and I water and weed and tend like a good gardener does. 

But then what? What - I'm all tuckered out from holding the hose? I'm too spent to check out the other acre of land around me? 

No, I suspect it has more to do with the fact that it's usually a tiny miracle that I've carved out enough time to water the garden (rarely in peace, most often fighting Dash for the hose and repeatedly telling him I do not want to be sprayed today) and when I finish, I quickly move on to the next thing I remembered I needed to do. Sadly, walking around in our yard just looking at stuff isn't on that list.

But today Ryan took the kids to "throw rocks in the lake" (this is an actual activity) and I watered the garden on my own. And I whacked some weeds and cleaned up the sand table toys and threw some sticks into the firepit. Then I just started walking around. The grass was freshly mowed, which made it infinitely more enticing to me, and the breeze and temperature were perfect for outside meandering. No overbearing sun. No annoying mosquitos. It was pretty perfect. 

And so amazingly green. Like, woah. SO GREEN. Everything is green right now. Emerald and jade and lime and forest... every hue nature has to offer is on display, right here in my frickin' yard. 

So I was feeling pretty lucky as I walked over to my favorite corner, which is outlined on two sides by cedar trees. It's shady and smells delicious. My blissful gaze stopped when I spotted... no, it couldn't be... I would have known about this... would've seen them last summer... unless I wasn't walking around our yard often enough...

Raspberry bushes! Right there on the edge of the little forest that forms the boundary line between our yard and that of our neighbor. Of course, the berries are green. For now.

Even this is a delightful shade of green. #septic

5x5 Challenge : Day 6 | HAPPY PLACE

Here is a bathroom. It's not my bathroom, but I do intend to take a shower there one day. It's so pretty. I feel like I'm in a fancy hotel when I'm in this bathroom. The kind of hotel that you're pretty sure you could live in. Yes, you'd miss having a kitchen and the constantly changing neighbors would start to really annoy you, but the bathroom amenities make you so happy that you could probably get over all of the troublesome stuff. Pretty, well-organized spaces make me happy. 

My hairbrush makes me happy, too. It's bright yellow with a big oval-shaped head and a smooth rubber grip. I apparently don't clean it out as often as I thought I did. Can you spot the lint? My brush used to belong to my sister but she left it at my mom and dad's house when we were all there for Christmas and I asked her if I could keep it. That's how much I liked it. I'm still talking about a hairbrush.

Step 1. 

Step 2. 

It's that easy. Just chop it in half. Et voila! You're half as needy as you were a few weeks ago! Isn't science grand?

And since this post turned out to be a bit of a caption-fest, can we just talk about the name of this toothpaste? This is something else that makes me happy -- or at least makes me smile. And then I'm smiling, so that sets off all of those happy hormones they talk about and before you know it my toothpaste is making me happy. Science.

5x5 Challenge : Day 5 | BEST GUESS

I've always found it pretty funny that I go to a hair salon every 12 weeks or so to get chemicals and foils stuck in my hair, which temporarily makes me look like this:

So hot. 

And then, like a bruise that gets super deep purple before it fades to yellowish green and then disappears completely, the foils and chemicals get washed away and all that's left is a happy blond. 

That's me. The happy blond. 

And why does being blond make me happy? Oh, I don't know for sure. I think it has something to do with the fact that I was blond as a kid. I loved the magical science behind my hair getting even lighter and happier as the summer wore on - all by itself, just by being outside. 

That's probably why.

5x5 Challenge : Day 4 BITTERsweet

I love cereal. I think I love cereal more than I should, but I know I'll never stop. I love cereal with high protein and fiber content and low sugar. I love cereal mostly at night - in fact, I haven't eaten cereal for breakfast in at least a year. Maybe two. 

Every night after I eat cereal, I swallow a little pill. As I've mentioned here before, that pill has been getting smaller and smaller. (You may be surprised to learn, as was I, that the dosage of the pill corresponds directly to its physical size.) I went from 100 mg, which was yellow and oval, down to 50 mg, which is blue. Now I'm experimenting with 25, so I chop the little blue sucker in half. The notion that half of a pill has exactly half the amount of medication in it is positively ludicrous to me, but what do I know? I've been swallowing these pills for eight years not knowing exactly what they're made up of so why start asking questions now?

I know for sure that cereal comforts me. Cereal makes me feel like everything is normal and right and the way it's always been with no judgement as to whether it's always been good or bad. Nighttime cereal is my "goodnight" to myself. Swallowing a tiny pill afterwards is my "fingers crossed." 

Nighty night, Zoloft.