crystal, Canon Digital Rebel

I am off to Florida to spend the holidays but wanted to let you know that you can find me in the current issue of Sunset magazine! I was so delighted by this, and honestly had no idea that Sunset was a cool magazine until I got the issue. Sunset rules. Did you know that?

I am running at half capacity here, getting over the flu, but I hope to send transmissions from the road over the holiday when I am well fed and sunning myself by the pool.

And a tiny game for all of us to play during the holidays… Ask a family member one question about their life that you have never thought to ask. {ie. What do you remember most about the holidays as a kid? Who did you admire most growing up? What are you grateful for?}

Or, better yet, let a family member know one thing you are grateful for about them. {ie. I love your playfulness & humor, I am grateful for your incredible cooking, I appreciate your wisdom, I love how you take such care in putting the table together…}

“The deepest craving of human nature is the need to be appreciated.”
– William James

Cassidy, Canon Digital Rebel

This sweet photo of my friend’s daughter Cassidy reminds me of being a young girl and chatting with my friends on the telephone all day. I love the dreaminess of her expression in this shot and the way in some of the others that she looked at the camera in this wonderfully engaged, yet slightly bored pre-teen kind of way. She is at that great moment in life before things get really weird and self-conscious. What a treat she and her brother were to photograph…

Cassidy, Canon Digital Rebel


Dylan, Canon Digital Rebel

kelp after the storm, Canon Digital Rebel

The theme of the storm keeps coming into my life this week. I did my funny little divination game with the dictionary yesterday morning and asked, “What do I need to know about my life right now?” I closed my eyes, opened up the dictionary and got the word “storm.” This felt like an apt description, and comforting somehow, knowing that storms actually have an end point and that sunshine eventually finds its way through grey clouds.

Later in the day I went to an amazing celebration at Glide church. My favorite song of the day was sung by Vernon Bush. The lyrics said, “Well my brothers/sisters, the storm ain’t gonna last always…” Later, during the sermon, the storm theme returned when Douglass Fitch preached about making it to shore on the broken pieces of your life. He reminded us that when the storm comes, we can still make it on our brokenness. We don’t have to be whole, or perfect, or together to make it through.

And to complete the set, my first show of the holiday season is this Saturday night. It is called, you guessed it, Storm. It is a fashion show and party featuring 100 emerging SF designers.

If you are in the bay area, I hope to see you there!

flea market typewriter, Canon Digital Rebel

I’ve been struggling with what to write here all morning.

I turn 34 tomorrow, and well, have some mixed feelings about it. I know that those of you who are older than me will say, “You’re so young! What are you talking about?” and I too will probably look back and wonder why 34 loomed at all largely in my mind.

But I think that the only reason any age feels not very celebrate-able is because we attach some kind of meaning to it that disempowers us… And I have attached some pretty unsavory thoughts to what 34 means. (My doctor didn’t help when she said to me in a conversation about fertility, “Well, you are one year older than you were last year.”)

Shouldn’t things be different than they are now? Shouldn’t I have certain things in place? Even as I write this, I know it isn’t really true and yet the feeling is still there. We all have our version of this. We all thought that by now (whatever age that is) life would look a certain way. Our shite would be “together”, we’d be stable or with partner or family or house or with record deal or whatever…

……

I’m going on a hike in the woods tomorrow with my sweet, amazing mother-in-law. She is someone that started doing marathons in her mid-forties and still kicks my ass at pretty much every sport in her sixties.

It will be hard to keep up with her. But as I watch her tromp through the woods ahead of me I will try to remember that our age is only a number…