Taste of Summer

, originally uploaded by sweetmondaygirl.

Ripe tomatoes, sliced, a few dashes of sea salt.

Divine.

Monsieur Marcel

his legs and mine, originally uploaded by sweetmondaygirl.

There's this French restaurant in the farmer's market that G. and I discovered last year, just as my little love for all things French was kicking into gear. This place is great. It's small and cramped and the wait time is always nearly unbearable, but these are actually some of the reasons I love to go there. The waiters are French, and I don't know if it's just good luck or what, but I always seem to end up sitting next to French people when I'm there. Because of this, I feel transported while sitting in that tiny place, devouring delicious food.

All afternoon I've been thinking it might be a good night to eat there. The clouds that plagued the morning have long since burnt off, the past few hours have been sunny and warm, and it looks at though we're going to sink into the evening in just the way one hopes every weekend will start. It's the perfect atmosphere for enjoying a cozy cafe.

And then just now, G. called to let me know he was on his way over to pick me up. "Why don't we go to that French place at the farmer's market?" he said.

For all the ways we are different, the boy and I, we sure do think alike much of the time.

25,000 or thereabout

green with..., originally uploaded by sweetmondaygirl.

I'm having another okaynowwhathappensnext moment with the book. Finally finished up the Sally Bishop story, and the next chapter needs to return to the primary story, but I'm stuck. Although I think I know how I want things to end (many, many pages from now), I am not quite sure how to get there. Second act is always hardest, and I'm still in the first. This is an overwhelming feeling for me. I always think there's no way I'll figure out which direction things should go, but so far I've always become unstuck without too much time in limbo. I hope this week will be the same.

Also, here is something I am learning:

When it's time to write, I am a brilliant procrastinator, and suddenly can find many new things that need to be cleaned or organized or fussed over. Anything besides The Page At Hand.

But when it's REALLY time to write, I'm there, and I do it.

the mondays

train station, originally uploaded by sweetmondaygirl.

i'm a bit homesick for the weekend.

it comes from good things. from having had a couple of days of feeling loved and content. from accomplishing stuff i set out to do, and taking care of myself.

it comes from wanting to do more of that, and finding myself paralyzed by work induced boredom.

CMW

CMW, originally uploaded by sweetmondaygirl.

Tomorrow is my amazing sister's twenty first birthday.

Happy birthday, Corinn! I love you.

to go forward

pair, originally uploaded by sweetmondaygirl.

always there are the resolutions

to drink more water

to insist on high quality dark chocolate

to take better care of my hair

to look more carefully before taking a sharp turn

to wake up ten minutes earlier

to eat the vegetables before they spoil

to clean the bathtub with more vigor

to plant something

to be just a bit more

On Tuesdays, they cut the grass around my office building and it smells divine.

I don't want to be at work today. My mind is filled with the tiniest buds of ideas and sitting at my desk under the fluorescent lights is the quickest way to ensure they don't grow into anything. I feel I should be exempt from my office job on days when I feel inspired creatively. It's a shame to waste them. It pains me.

It's been slow going with the writing. I've been averaging three pages a week rather than five, and last week I only wrote on two days. The result is that I'm only at 75-ish pages when I should be closer to 100. This only bothers me because I'm still aiming to have a first draft finished by the end of the year, and I have some catching up to do to make that happen.

My landscape has shifted the last couple of months, and I'm happy about it, but still figuring out how to best move about the new terrain.

I don't like to have a post with no photo to go with it. The new camera has changed what I expect from myself in regard to visual things.

Last Days of School

, originally uploaded by sweetmondaygirl.

Every year around this time, I get a little restless, as though my mind will forever be programmed to anticipate summer vacation, no matter how far my life continues to advance into adulthood.

In many ways, I associate this time of year with a renewed sense of possibility much more than I do January 1st. There's something about the feelings evoked by summer smells, summer foods, summer happenings that make me feel as if something new and exciting must be just around the corner. As a child, and even up until I graduated from college, the source of this anticipation was always quite obvious and much less cluttered a feeling than it is now. It was always pretty clear what was next. Long lemonade days followed by a rush of new things -- new clothes, new teachers, new friendships. I often miss that comforting combination of things that are familiar and safe leading up to a change that is signifant, but non-threatening.

These days, I often struggle with the What Comes Next? of it all. I feel, rather strongly, that there needs to be a Something Coming Next. All around me, friends and family are getting new jobs, getting engaged, getting new homes, getting new couches. And although I wouldn't call my life static by any means, it could use a little push forward, a little oomphf. But I'm also quite fond of my life as it is right now, and I don't want to disrupt the delicate balance. I want new things, better things, more exciting things, but without altering the amazing things I already have.

I'm not entirely sure what to do with this year's restlessness. I wish I could say that a summer break (or at least a mental one) would magically make things clear, steer me where I need to go, but I'm sure it will take more work than that. Life is much trickier to navigate once there's no longer a report card in June bearing the name of who your teacher will be in the fall.

May Flowers

, originally uploaded by sweetmondaygirl.

Megan and Tony -

Looking forward to a month from today!

The Birds and The Bees

This weekend I worked on a short film that Hosea's friend was directing. It was my first time really being on a set since moving out here, which was a bit funny considering that being on set was my whole motivation for making the move in the first place. But that's a whole other thing.

The actual shooting experience was fine, nothing spectacular, nothing that made me too sad that I'm not much a part of that world right now. I do like filmmaking, but working on this made me realize that the vast majority if what I like about it has to do with liking the people I'm working with (and having a true sense of team work going on) and working on a project that I believe is solid creatively. With the exception of being happy to spend a weekend working on something with April and Hosea, which is always fun, neither of those elements were really in place, so it wasn't brilliant, it was just fine. But I'm glad I did it.

A couple of weird things that I will remember after I've forgotten almost everything else about the weekend:

There was a woman and her two kids who were in one scene of the movie. They were friends with the writer, whose house we were shooting in, so they brought their dog, Timmy, to the set with them. Right before we started shooting the scene, Timmy shows up with a live bird in his mouth. Much yelling at the dog ensued before we could get him to drop it, and of course by then it was too late for the bird, and one of the fine gentlemen on set had to put it out of its misery. I hate stuff like that. It makes me really sad and hangs over my head long after it's over. I know it's the circle of life and all that, but I can never get over feeling sad for the poor birds or other little creatures that are just going about their days and suddenly find themselves trapped in the foamy mouth of some other animal.

An hour or so earlier, we were shooting a scene in the back yard and had already started to roll camera when suddenly the actress who we were shooting said "Oh my God!" and her eyes got big as saucers and then there was this horrible sound, like a plane on fire, only softer and more organic, and I heard April gasp beside me and finally I looked up and there was an enormous swarm of bees coming towards us. Literally thousands of them. We all took off running for the house, and everyone made it in without being stung, and within a minute the bees were gone. Their target was clearly something else, something they hadn't gotten to yet, but for a few brief moments I felt pure fear and a rush of adrenaline like I don't think I've felt in years, if ever.

Before all that though, there was a moment when we were shooting a very uncomfortable scene, physically, and we were all hot and in a cramped space and there were sound issues because planes kept flying over head and dogs kept barking, so we all had to stand there sweating a lot longer than we wanted to, and then on one of the last takes I noticed a hummingbird in the bush I was standing next to, so I watched that for the rest of the time until I felt calm, and it flew off.

Darling Things

new plates, originally uploaded by sweetmondaygirl.

I had a friend in town last weekend and we ate at two of my favorite French restaurants in town. They are most likely NOT two of the best in town, but I have personal attachments to them, their food is tasty, and they are inexpensive enough that I can frequent them without feeling guilty.

At both meals, our food was served on lovely white plates with blue around the rims. While I have no idea if there is anything French about this type of plate, eating off of them made me feel more appreciate and captivated by my food, made me savor it more, and I KNOW that is a French thing.

I was thrilled, later in the weekend, to find some similar plates at Target for only $3.99 each. I scooped up two in blue and two in yellow. Last night I had my first meal on one of them, and it was divine.

, originally uploaded by sweetmondaygirl.

Mira likes to flaunt her belly.

I believe it's called Soft Floral.

On Monday, a few hours into my work day, I became painfully aware that someone around me was wearing ghastly cheap perfume. Pungent, offensive, floral perfume. The kind that is found on the shelves at K-Mart. Not in the glass cases, just on the open shelves. That cheap.

I've nothing, in theory, against cheap perfume. There are gems to be found in that world. And let's face it, my own favored brand, while definitely a tiny bit expensive for me, is no Chanel No. 5. But this was, My Goodness, Just. So. Bad. As the day wore on, and the scent grew stronger, I began to wonder what could possibly be behind the decision made by one of my co-workers to suddenly sport something so... challenging. Perhaps in the store, lightly sprayed on the inside of her wrist, it had smelled better? Less like a combination of molasses, gardenias and alcohol? It started to burn my nose. I could actually feel the little hairs in there withering away to nothing, brought down to their follicles by a $11.99 spray.

I longed to complain out loud, longed to commiserate with someone near me. Surely I couldn't be the only one in such pain, both physical and emotional?! But of course, I could say nothing without offending the owner of the stench, and so I suffered in silence all day, growing ever more nauseated and befuddled with each passing hour.

Leaving the office that day was more of a relief than usual. As I stepped into the open air, I breathed a sigh of relief. I'd survived. I climbed into my car, and there, in the comfort of my own space, I realized that some of the stink had gotten on me. I could still smell it. I frantically started sniffing my jacket, my arms. Yes, it was on me! It was stuck on me! I raised the top of my tee shirt to my nose. It was on that, too! And... wait... it was REALLY on that. I smelled again. Man. Then something terrible occurred to me. I gingerly sniffed my armpit. Yeah. Um... that smell, THE smell... that would be my new deodorant.

ode to hormones

piano fingers, originally uploaded by sweetmondaygirl.

my insecurities come like clockwork. i can tell you just when they will hover and when they will lash. when they will politely decline to comment and when they will shriek so loudly that attempting to ignore them is pointless.

i know, long before it happens, when exactly i will cry upon reading someone else's sad blog entry, when i will shudder every time the phone rings at work. when i will interpret the things that are said to me in the worst possible way. when i will feel as if i can't fit into any of my clothing, when i will have hair that is an offense to humankind. when i will tell myself mean things that make me feel small.

this knowledge, hard won, is rendered meaningless in the face of Week Three of Four.