hermes and hestia and some studio love

I've been hanging out with this book a lot lately (see the sidebar for info). I bought it right after we moved into the little gray house, which is actually a bigger-than-we-need gray house, because after over ten years of apartment and condo living, Neel and I were moving into our first honest-to-god house together. On our drive across the country to a land both foreign and familiar to us, I spent a lot of time thinking about framing our new life in this new space.

I still think about these things, oh, almost daily, and I love books like this. I tried for a long time with this book and books like Denise Linn's Sacred Space, or Karen Kingston's to work hard at really creating the kinds of spaces that they talk about. A lot of it doesn't quite feel like the right fit for me. Too much bell-ringing and energy-clearing. Oh, I tried it all, but boy did I feel self-conscious doing it. Still, books like this are so inspiring and... well, comforting. They tell me it's okay to spend time (way too much time, actually) thinking about stuff like, so, if I do get some brown curtains for the bedroom, what will that do to the gray and red quilt I want to make us? I still haven't decided about that one, but what I find works best for me is to simply be mindful of the space I'm living in. Really, being mindful is the way I want to try to live every aspect of my life, but it comes out more clearly in my home.

Jane Alexander talks about bringing Hestia, the goddess of the hearth back into our homes. Our lives, Alexander argues, are Hermes-driven, hectic and over-full. Over-full to the point that we have lost the essential order and sense of haven that our homes should give us. And I love this: Alexander points out that the word "focus" is a Latin word for hearth, and the hearth is Hestia's domain. You honor Hestia when you lay your table with attention and care, or when you light a fire to sit by on a cool autumn evening.

When I think about the rooms in my home, the idea of intention is what comes most to my mind. I like rooms with intention. Rooms that have a clear use and are clearly used. That's where Hestia seems to sing most for me. I offends my sense of order and focus when rooms are a hodge-podge of items and intents. "Let's put the CD case in here because there's room on that one wall, and it doesn't really go anywhere else," kinds of rooms. I'm never successful, but boy I'm trying. Our kitchen is our family room and home office, but really it's meant to be all of those things. Do I think a comfy sectional with a wall-mounted flat screen for tv watching and XBOX playing would give it more intention, well sure. But the sofa that's here now is serving it's purpose just fine. The tv too, I suppose. And what else is funny is that my same sense of order isn't offended in other homes. Just my own. In other people's houses, I tend to find myself thinking things like, "what a great idea to put the CD cabinet there. I wonder if ours would work in a different spot." Go figure.

All this thought about intention brings me right around to the Blue Rain Room. Of all our rooms, this room has had the least intention of any. For awhile, at least. When we moved in, the previous owners were finishing up a master bedroom/kitchen (don't get me started on that one...) addition, and what was once just a smallish bedroom became a walk-through room to the master. It's hard to know what to do with a walk-through bedroom with no lighting, only one outlet and a really small closet. If we'd had another baby, it would have made a great nursery, for awhile at least, but since we didn't, it just became a room we walked through to get to our bedroom. We plunked some bookshelves in there because that was a good place for them. We talked about ordering a closet system from IKEA and turing it into a closet space while using our current closet to expand our master bath. Somewhere along the way, as we were just walking through, I painted it this lovely shade of gray blue (Rain Washed, by Behr), and the color alone made me happier to be in there.

I started sewing only shortly before starting blogging, so have only recently needed a space. Knitting, which I've been doing for awhile, can be done anywhere... in the car, in front of the tv, on the front porch. Stuff your yarn and needles somewhere and you're good to go.

Sewing's different. With sewing, you need to be somewhere. Knitting you can pick up and take along. Knitting you can realize halfway through Top Chef that you have an unfinished sock or Josephine next to you and work your way through a few rows. Sewing you have to intend to do. It requires intention. Perhaps that's why I'm falling in love with it.

So I carved out a little space. Moved a table, squeezed in my machine, bought an ironing board. Tried to hang a shelf (it fell). Cleared a bookcase for some fabric. Bought some lights. Dragged in about a mile of extension cords. I did some research too. Spent a lot of time looking enviously at other crafter's studios. Some of my favorites can be found here and here or here or here. And did you know there's a whole craftroom pool over at Flickr? I could spend days digging around all those photos. Those spaces, and many others too numerous to name, all sing the same song to me. They are ordered and deliberate and intentional. They are as much about inspiration as they are about utilzation. Intention, as I well know, can be beautiful, and I want the Blue Rain Room to be filled with order and intention and inspiration too.

We've been working hard in here over the past few weeks. Really hung some shelves. Paid attention to what went on them. Oh the luxury of more than enough space. It's a dream really. I already felt lucky to have a room here that I could carve out just for me and my endeavours. Now, walking through here, I feel extra-blessed.

Many of the things that inspire me are here, from the baby blanket my great-grandmother made me to some pottery of Callum's to a photo of Neel as a young child...even the range of colors on the spools of thread hanging on the wall. There's still work to do, I need a better table to cut fabric on and definitely some better lighting. And one day I'll get my act together and get over to flickr to put some notes on these photos, but right now I can't wait to get to work!

Sometimes being mindful is about nothing more than putting my daily (or three) sparkling water in my grandmother's glass with a slice of lemon instead of just drinking it from the can. Sometimes it involves measuring and painting and many trips to the hardware store and pilot holes like a dotted line across the wall. Sometimes it's as much about how you got the room this way as it is about what you do in it once that space is ordered to your liking. All I know is that I smile when I walk through here now. That it's hard to walk through without stopping and grabbing a piece of fabric or digging out a matching bobbin. That I seem to settle into myself when I'm in there. And that my brain is about to explode with all the stuff I want to do, starting with every single project first and doing them all right now.

eye-candy monday

View from on high, the Theatre at Epidarus.

I imagine you're wondering if I still think about Greece, and if I have any more to reveal about our trip earlier this summer. Well yes, for good or for ill, I have one, maybe even two more installments on the Greek travelouge in the pipes. And I do think about it a lot. About what being there meant for me and did to me. Just about being there. It still feels present, if a lifetime ago. For today, though. Just a photo or two, from the early part of our trip.

Quintessential Greek. Blue-checked baklava.

A view you'd never tire of...this was what we saw from our room in Porto Heli, home to Neel's conference.

This is not your daddy's scientific meeting...it was a lot more fun! During the day, our Greek hosts would scout out local restaurants (and do some taste-testing...tough job, huh?) for the group to attend each evening. The dinner surprise was one of my favorite parts of the meeting. I can get paralyzed with indecision, always wondering if something better is just around the bend. But here! Here, we got on a bus, and got off the bus at this lovely spot.

On these nights, my hardest decision was the wine: red or white (and wouldn't you know, I still changed my mind!).

This was a night hued in terracotta. The wine jugs, the candles, the very light. In a country known for it's deep blues, from the onion-domed houses to the wine-dark sea, these oranges were a warm complement. (Get it, Neel? Complement? Har, Har, Har. A little science humor there, the geek rubs off on me too!)

Callum's up and my quiet time is done! After a hectic weekend, Monday is catch-up day around here. Grocery store, some errands, and Underdog while Neel's at a late meeting. I hear it's a real tear-jerker, right Shoshana?

movie night

So I went to see this movie with Jean and Rebecca last night. Have you heard of it? Oh, it was really lovely. A musical, actually. It took me a few minutes to settle into the accents and the language (seriously, English with Irish and Czech accents are so easy to understand), but the dialogue was at times poignanty and witty, the music moving and the scenery lovely. Pretty sharpish, I started wondering how Neel would look with a beard. And curly red hair. I can't really imagine why I bawled my dang fool head off through most of it. Could be that it's a little sad too...

We don't go to movies much in our family. I tend to think that people are either movie people or not-movie people. We're definitely not-movie people. Given a choice, I will almost always pick food and conversation over sitting in a theater. By the time Callum turned three, I could tell people that the last movie I'd been in the theater was Shakespeare in Love when I was pregnant. Neel and I tried to go and see A Beautiful Mind for his birthday one year, I'd even bought tickets for it. We went to dinner first and it was so nice just to sit and drink sangria and eat tapas that we let time slip alongside us and we never made it to the movie. I still haven't seen it.

Now that Callum's older we make it to more movies. Every installment of Pirates of the Caribbean when it first comes out. We saw Ratatouille a few weeks ago and Underdog comes out this weekend. Kids' movies I can make it to, no problem, it seems. Last night, nothing but the grown-ups, was a treat indeed. I'm starting to see the movie-people side of things. We had an antioxidant, free-radical infused cocktail beforehand (what the hell is an "acia berry", anyway?) to make up for the copious amounts of popcorn that we intended to consume. Great seats, front row of the balcony, in a great independent theater here in town. Rebecca was definitely driving the bus to get us to this show, and let me tell you dearheart, despite all of the bawling I did, I'm glad we went.

When my dad was up a few weeks ago, he brought a CD he'd purchased because of one song he'd heard on the Sopranos. The song is Evidently Chickentown by John Cooper Clarke. (There's an expletive or two in the song, not counting "bloody", so be careful when you click on the link.) As often happens in our family, song lyrics or phrases enter our personal lexicon, and for the rest of the week he was here and even after we've been saying, "Keep that bloody racket down, this is bloody chicken town." Dad asked why I thought he liked the song so much and I asked what he thought "chickentown" really was. My image was of darkened Dublin streets, washed in streetlights and recent rains. Angry young men clinging to the edge and dying to get out, out, out, anywhere else by here. The kind of images that ran through my head whenever I would read James Joyce or WB Yeats. 'Cause you know, I've always got my James Joyce nearby.

Things fall apart; the center cannot hold;/ mere anarchy is loosed upon the world. -The Second Coming, WB Yeats

Well, Once is Evidently Chickentown. Just what I pictured. Bloody Chickentown. It was nice to see my mental images blown up big on the screen.

Here's another story about last night that has a potential spoiler so don't read on if you don't want to. After the screen went black, we all sat there, three in a row at the front of the balcony, me scrambling madly for napkins to wipe my seeping eyes. Shell-shocked. We couldn't belive it was over (and believe me, we berated Rebecca quite considerably on the way home), ended just like that. And I remembered this story about going to a movie with my mom, a long, long time ago. You know where this is going, don't you MJ?

There's a great old theater in Knoxville called The Tennessee Theatre. Our own independent theatre here is a scruffier version of The Tennessee, but hey, where else can you get baklava at the concession stand? Or yeast flakes on your popcorn? The Tennessee shows everything from old movies to concerts. They even have a Wurlitzer, can you believe it? Before every show the Wurlitzer rises up, the curtains open and a bouncy ball hops over the words to The Tennessee Waltz as everyone sings along. You know the movie is about to start when you sing The Tennessee Waltz. This is a place you go for the experience as much as the movie itself.

So one year when I was maybe nine or ten, my mom took me and my friend Stacy to The Tennessee for a matinee of The Kind and I. Just like last night, we sat upstairs in the balcony, and just like last night, the ending was an abrupt surprise. When the lights went up, and as we were walking out, my mom said what we were all thinking, "Nobody told me the god-damned king was gonna die." After reading this, if you go to see Once (and despite it all, I really hope you do), you'll now know that, metaphorically speaking, the god-damned king dies. I think I'll go download the soundtrack.

Jean and Rebecca will know that another phrase from the movie has entered our own neighborhood lexicon, but I'm too polite to say it here. Just as I was congratulating myself on my diminished use of that word too.

And the Yeats quote up there in the middle somewhere? That's another one that's entered into the fam. lexicon. Import it into your own, I bet you'll find it applies...a lot.

And another funny thing. Because of that song, I finally learned how to spell "evidently". Seriously. It took a long time. I was always adding an extra syllable or two.

Callum and I are going to have an Emergency! filmfest on my bed today (with the ac a crankin'). Now that's some watching I can relax about.

oh no, oh no

Going to bed and waking up to horrible news and images from Minneapolis. Megs, my first thought was of your brother, is he okay? Sending lovingkindness out to the deep midwest.

Update: Megan's brother is okay, but Marianne, I forgot about your brother-in-law...any word?

Updated Update. Everyone I know of is safe, but oh how my heart goes out to those who are still waiting for news.

dinner, then bed

I went to bed heavy-headed last night and woke up the same way this morning. That's how my headaches feel sometimes, just a heaviness in my head. Not a good way to end the day, or to start a new one either. We have to run long and hard today too, which is another thing I hate. I'll be out the door by 10:30, and a late meeting will keep me out until at least 7:30 or 8. Let's just say it's a two cup of coffee day for me today, instead of just one.

Perhaps to make up for the rushing we'll do today, we had a quiet evening at home last night, thanks again to Fran Warde. Neel made Pimm's and Gingers, and I made the Crusted Golden Rice Bake from Eat, Drink, Live.

I really have yet to make a dish in the book that I haven't liked, although this one may need more tweaking than the others. Persian in feel, it has some of my favorite Indian spices (cardamom, tumeric and Garam Masala). Perhaps because we're so used to eating Indian, this felt a bit mild to me. Maybe some more cardamom. Or even some cumin. Still, it was lovely and delicious, and the house smelled amazing.

Callum and Neel made the pupodums, we love to see them bubble up in the microwave, and we had those with some cranberry chutney. But what's missing?

Ah, that's better...Have a great day everybody! See you tomorrow.