OF THINGS THAT ARE MOSSY + HAPPY WEEKEND

all in all it's been a really lovely week. 

i got a sitter a couple nights ago and snuck off to see saving mr. banks and the secret life of walter mitty and cried the entire way through both. walter mitty, in particular, is amazing. the plane sequence, though!

i lucked into a real good writing groove. i got so much out, it felt like i really cracked it open. which of course means that next week i will suck and decide that i'm a hack and that i'll have to give back the advance and call it all off. (this happens about every three weeks or so, on average.) 

i won THE most satisfying level of candy crush last night. and then found a moment of rare emotional clarity (as well as a few minutes of free therapy) from a modern family episode? blue note cards.

i walked in on my dad building a rocket ship in the garage with huck out of the cardboard box his new desk came in. he'd fashioned a palette out of a flattened 12-pack of pepsi and was in the middle of painting a giant green space alien on one side while huck ran around "catching spiders" with a fishing net. hang on, photographic evidence:

yep.

(at some point i miiiiiight be persuaded into hauling the real camera out for things like this.)

in a moment of whatever-ness i went into the bathroom today and re-pierced the third hole in my right ear that i'd DIY-pierced in that very same spot in that very same bathroom in a similar moment of whatever-ness when i was 17. i'd let it close up when i was in college and i'd missed it ever since. and so. i wrote earlier this week that middle school natalie was having her resurgence this month, and i guess now we've graduated on into high school natalie. making the same dumb decisions over the same bathroom sink, fourteen years later. how's that for symmetry!

i went out for a walk yesterday to see if i could force some interesting thoughts into my head, but instead all i did was wonder about doorknobs. doorknobs! first of all, doorknob is a wonderful word. and secondly, when did we get so many doorknob options? and why? how does one decide these things? think about it, some turn, some you push, some you squeeze with your thumb, how do you know what will make you happy? and when did it become the norm to have a doorknobs the shape of elephant trunks? what a weird idea. a half mile or so from my parents' home is this sprawling new development made up of identically different homes, all vaguely crafstman looking, all completely devoid of any life forms. it is interesting to note that i did not see one other living person while i was out. at 4pm. no sign of life anywhere. i do think i am not cut out for that kind of thing.

then i met these odd two trees and texted them to brandon, who wrote back and said, "i feel embarrassed for the first one, and a strange need to kneel down and worship the second."

brandon is funny.

but!

i did have a rare moment last weekend where everything in my life started to make sense. i have this pinterest board i'm obsessed with that is made up of nothing but forests in the middle of nowhere. lord of the rings type crap. it doesn't make any sense to me but it makes me absurdly happy. so we were driving around the back ends of town, where all these tiny farmhouses live positively dwarfed by these enormous fir trees, smoky chimneys and foggy grass, and then there it was, i could see it. brandon and his lumberjack beard chopping down wood for the fire, my love of scratchy wools and wood grains and pebbled leather, crackling fires in the fireplace and enormous pots of soup. i saw it all and for the first time i could see me there too, very clearly. it made me wonder if my someday farmhouse in the middle of the trees is coming up sooner than i expected, which made me wonder if maybe i am getting old. but there will definitely need to be a pick up truck, that much is certain. betsy the flying potato the second. and a goat, probably. but we're not there yet. new york isn't quite finished with me and i'm not finished with her, though i'm in a lot less of a hurry to get back there as i expected to be. i have my theories.

lastly, huck has been bathing in a bathtub that is bigger than his whole bedroom. 

and that is all. have a lovely weekend!