"Sometimes the night was beautiful 
Sometimes the sky was so far away 
Sometimes it seemed to stoop so close 
You could touch it but your heart would break..." 

- Rich Mullins

Been watching lately...

So if we've talked recently, Gilmore Girls has probably come up - I've fallen completely in love with it!!

When I was in high school, my penchant for reading combined with my attendance at a private school earned me many comparisons to Rory Gilmore.  As I got older, people even noted us looking alike.  One time while working retail I walked up to a customer and asked if I could help her, she turned around and then slightly gasped, saying, "Oh my gosh! I thought you were Alexis Bledel!!" Because she would work at an office supply store?  Haha... anyway, the comparisons were enough to make me want to check out the show at some point.

Well now, thanks to the series coming to Netflix, I have been able to!  I'm nearly half-way through the show and it's so good - funny but dramatic, witty and emotional.  They feel like close friends and I'm pretty much ready to move to Stars Hollow :)

Here are just a few favorite moments:

And finally... the perfect way to deal with someone you're mad at:

Classic.

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It's not the end of the world and I know it will be okay... 

Going Wilde

Ok, so it's not exact but, for our Dead Author Reading, this was my inspiration:

And this, my execution:

Best decisions for this particular costume have to be the [faux, of course,] fur, parting my hair in the middle, and constructing my own cane with a wrapping paper tube & the lid to my hairspray :)

Oh, and my chosen selection was Wilde's preface to The Picture of Dorian Gray. 

Set
     backs


Dear Spring,
For a season of new life, why so many set
backs?  Why the confusion and self-doubt? 
To be honest, why all the tears?

Mentally, I know these are not life-ending, but
they are life-altering--
so many decisions; so many do-I-dares1.
My composure is wearing thin,
my strength is waning, in their place
only well-worn seams struggling with the tension
of holding this self together.

Primavera.  "Springtime."
Prima vera.  "First real."
I think broken apart, like myself, 
those words offer a better answer
to my initial question.  
Why all the set
backs?  
Because of all the realities.
Ones I'm experiencing for the first time. 
Realities I thought would skip me.  Set
backs I had hoped to avoid. 

Yet a wise philosopher2 conjectures, "Pain is 
what you experience when you bump into reality."
For some aspects of life, this is the "first
real" of a Spring where to become whole,
one must be broken; to move forward, one must be set
back.


1 "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" by T. S. Eliot
2 Definitions by Dallas Willard

The peony gods had mercy. 

I called around and was able to find a place nearby that at least had peonies incorporated in their bouquets. Hopefully this will invigorate my soul for the upcoming weeks - they're big ones & I've been feeling like a lazy bum. Cheers to peonies!

Nothing Gold Can Stay

Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

- Robert Frost 

I've reached the point of the year in which I need peonies.  Like, two weeks ago.

Preferably I'd be watching the shoots grow, the buds swell and burst with countless petals.  Then I could bring a few of those extravagant blooms into the house and inhale of that delicately sweet aroma.  And... oh.  I really need peonies!!

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