quick, duck...

birthday celebrations

Beccamas spanned three days this year. Many celebrations were had, it was the best.

5am

Woke up at 4:50am to "Poison" by Bel Biv Devoe, totally 1980's, totally random, totally fun. Drove the empty roads, opened, lit candles, lit incense, assisted. Silent hugs and whispered wishes for happy holidays. Best beginning to the best day with many celebrations still to come. Peace & happiness.

plentitude

Skating followed by hot chocolate, christmas carols everywhere, more celebrations than time. Lucky.

happy lights

I know these pictures are nonsense, but I looooove this time of year with the houses all lit up. It's magic. I keep setting out to take pictures and keep coming back with blurred messes, I like these too. A few years ago I was excited to show them to a visitor who thought they were "kind of tacky" and I was so surprised, it never occurred to me. After that I could see their point but I still preferred my pretty one. One person's tacky is another person's magic, perspective is a wonderful thing. So are differences.

In unrelated news, wonderful days, life smiles on me. In further unrelated news, as I typed a huge Caterpillar made it's way across my rug. Begging the question of how on earth it made it up three flights of stairs in the dead of winter, what am I going to do with it? It moves as slow as molasses but the cat has retreated under my bed, scared. Looks like I'm alone on this one.

this weekend

was perfect in every possible way - each and every minute of it. Pictures from a brilliantly bright and beautiful Saturday morning walk...








Life amazes.

dog park

Happiness is a park full of leaping, bounding dogs.

As of today: so much snow = pretty; so busy = overwhelmed; only one week to go = excited.

decembers

2001: India. 2003: Costa Rica. 2004: France. 2005: India. 2006: Finland. 2008: Croatia. 2009: Home.

Just realized how few Decembers I've spent at home. It's all twinkling lights, the gorgeous part of winter, and celebrations. Pretty and happy and fun, I like it. It's also ridiculously busy. Cottage-bound for what's going to be the last bit of peace, quiet and the fireplace for a while.



Croatia.

sunday

Overslept. Assisted. Practiced. Breakfast. Happiness is a plate of hot scones waiting. Visited Little India. Laughed. Felt change approaching. Thought. Curled up under blankets to read. Accepted dream contract.

Wandered through the park after brunch talking to dogs and looking at stuff. Found the words above painted on the sidewalk just inside the entrance. Lovely huh?

cottage living

Creek listening, star gazing, fire loving, silence. Autumn's end is here and nature is in a state of decay. Death, stillness, rebirth. Not photo-beautiful but very definitely beautiful in its own right.

imaginary pictures

If I were to post the pictures I wish I could there would be one of the family of deer running through a field of Canadian Geese yesterday, causing total chaos. Best part of it is that they weren't even going anywhere, they were just messing with the geese because they could. Deer are funny, who knew?

Or one of Richard, a local homeless guy. No home but a professionally made, laminated sign asking for "Change Please" left beside a jar outside the coffee shop he hangs in. Best times are when he is outside panhandling, he heckles anyone passing by in a suit yelling after them to "Get a real job". Classic.

I don't have those pictures as my camera wasn't at hand much this week. Instead a blurry picture of my Friday mornings. Some assisting, lots of laughing.



And if I were going to write more I'd add that as I was typing this the glass candle holder on my table exploded setting my tablecloth on fire. This follows the bedroom fire a few nights ago. Seriously. WTF?

Headed to the cottage tomorrow, if fire didn't symbolize so many supercool things I'd be way more worried about what might happen with the fireplace and all that wood...

MacBookBabysitter

Me and Mac's PhotoBooth hanging with Kai while Erin slept.



Love, love, love.

the nose knows

In unrelated, but very bad, news: while I was playing with pictures in the living room my spaceheater was on fire in my bedroom.

sunday

Practiced, assisted, then met the rolfer for brunch. We managed to keep it to just a few hours to leave time for the madness that was the Santa Claus parade before heading north for the shala's first birthday party. It was an epic weekend and a gorgeous fall day. Life is good.

friday

Dinner with friends. More dinner with different friends in a different city. Taking 1,001 pictures from the same angle to amuse myself while the Very.Bad.Band played. Following the art crawl from gallery to gallery looking at stuff. Wandering through the city with a laughing group of old friends, young spirits until the early morning hours. Good people, good food, good art, terrible music. Lucky, I am.

torontonians are stupid?

Thank God for such detailed instructions, otherwise I wouldn't have known what to do when I got to this big metal structure bridging the river...

unclear signs

Ok, so wait - where do we go in?

some people are very smart..

...as long as you’re breathing, there’s more right with you than wrong with you...

~ Jon Kabat-Zinn ~

crappy pictures, perfect weekend

Sleeping in, catching up over tea, freestyle-playground-bliss inducing yoga at the other studio, early dinner where the cool kids play, sitting in the dark, eyes closed, listening to the Giller nominees spin their stories, brunch spent lost in conversation, hours passing, a quiet night alone, and a new electric blanket to crawl into bed with because it might only be November but it's Baltic to me!

Food for the soul, all of it.