A Boulder Berry

Let's be like the Aardvarks

Thu, 29 Sep 2011 10:38:00 -0400

Spent the morning making 5 birthday cards.

Best.

morning

ever.

I was born to create. I don’t know what means. Maybe I’ll work my entire life and just enjoy making cards and birthday banners. But I have so many balloons in the air right now I can’t even decide which one to pull down and play with for awhile. I know… rough life.

Until then… I’ll keep following the Aardvark Manifesto:

Not Blog-esque

Tue, 13 Sep 2011 15:21:51 -0400

Not blog-esque. Unblogable. Lacking a high level of blogability.

Whatever you’d like to call, that is what my life has been lately.

It isn’t neat or tidy or pretty. (Despite various packaging idea and numerous costume changes.)

It isn’t easily explainable.

Or digestible.

Not for you. Not even for me.

Thus, I’ve refrained from attempting to scribble down any string of thoughts or emotions or observations. I’ve been hoarding my energy reserves.

And then there’s the general blog anxiety. I’ve had it for months now.

A little voice, with nothing to lose, didn’t.

I don’t know where it picked up a megaphone or how it made so many flyers, persuading the rest of my thoughts with it’s brightly colored paper and catchy slogans. Regardless, it established its tyrannical rule.

Eventually, the rebels lost. I think their supplies were cut.

So I dismissed any mission of rescue. My thoughts had been taken and isolated.

I adhered to the voice in the megaphone, broadcasting it’s demands. I fell in line with it’s rules and schedules.

But a series of events has finally persuaded me, including a determined campaign by Miss Courtney Claire. She sent me a poster with a quote that has been on my mind lately.

“It is in all of us to defy expectations. To go into the world and be brave and to want, to need, to hunger for adventures. To embrace change and chance and risk so that we may breathe and know what it is to be free.”

A year ago, I thought I was as free as they come.

Now I stand on a different hill, with quite a different view. I see what freedom is, and it was not the girl I was. I was bound. Bound to responsibility and duty and my own impossible standards. Bound to reading a scale of my worth that wavered, daily. Bound to fear. Bound to intimidation. Bound to rejection and pride.

Bound.

I believe it is what life does to all of us. Some are small chains. Some heavy and so stinking of metal it makes you sick. Everyone does whatever they need to do to get by, but essentially learn to live with them. Some decorate them. Or try to hide them or pretend they aren’t there. I guess some people may even shake them everywhere they go, wanting you to notice them. I felt they weight, but didn’t have eyes to see. Like I said… different hill.

Here’s the kicker. While the desire is in all of us to be free, so many don’t fight. They don’t ask or push or wonder or crawl or cry through. And it is taking some pushing. And crawling. And crying.

And the pushing and crawling and crying has felt unbloggable.

Then last night, while sharing with my sister about some of the pretty intense stuff that is happening in both our lives, I realized, no one wants to fight alone. No one wants to feel as though at the end of the day, they are all the have. That it’s up to them. That no one understand and no one knows.

I feel so strongly as to the opposite way of thinking… that this life is for sharing. And we’re to be involved and fight for and with one another.

So I think unbloggable is stupid. It’s a stupid made up word and it’s a stupid made up concept.

I think I’ll swing back to sharing. The hiatus is over.

I think.

Follow these simple steps to a stellar blog!

Tue, 06 Sep 2011 15:01:00 -0400

Step One:

Choose new layout to rejuvenate weary blogger

Check

Step Two:

Write

…

Found

Sun, 24 Jul 2011 11:58:21 -0400

I found my owl covered notebook that holds my list.

You remember, I hope. The list of good things. Mostly small, but good nonetheless.

I remember putting it aside one day. I kept repeating the same things. Well my life curved and swerved a bit since then. I strolled past some new things:

ink wells

turquoise fountain pens

80’s themed parties

do-it-yourself watercolor postcards

brown craft paper

empathy

watching people rediscover typewriters

parents teaching their kids what typewriters are

If you can’t tell… I’m enjoying my new job.

Happy Sunday

"“Where do you keep your cigars?” Courtney asks. Without missing a beat, Meg replies,..."

Tue, 19 Jul 2011 12:58:42 -0400

“

“Where do you keep your cigars?”
Courtney asks.

Without missing a beat,
Meg replies, “In a pouch.”

WHAT?

I found this written down in an old journal. And it makes me so excited to see these girls again.

Duh.

”

I confess

Mon, 18 Jul 2011 10:13:33 -0400

So I was wrong.

I went back on my “only 2 years in Colorado” mantra I chanted awhile back.

A man, buying a card for this wife yesterday looked up and me said, “Key to marriage girl… admit when you’re wrong.”

We’re not married, but I admit it… I was wrong.

I signed another lease.

I’m a Boulderite another 12 months.

And I’m feeling pretty good about it.

To to the lady didn’t need to burn her bra to get her...

Thu, 09 Jun 2011 13:11:19 -0400

To to the lady didn’t need to burn her bra to get her point across

(though it would be incredibly fun):

I think you rock.

Photo

Thu, 19 May 2011 00:08:07 -0400

you’re gonna love love love

Mon, 18 Apr 2011 01:22:43 -0400

you’re gonna love love love

National Kite Month. Yes. Yes, please.

Mon, 04 Apr 2011 14:09:02 -0400

National Kite Month.

Yes.

Yes, please.

“We’re hiring. Inquire within.” I’ve...

Fri, 25 Mar 2011 13:39:31 -0400

“We’re hiring.

Inquire within.”

I’ve been waiting a loooooong time to see those words and get excited.

And it happened yesterday.

At my very favorite store.

Two Hands Paperie.

It’s a beautiful place. A haven for crafters.

And I was telling my friend Jess. And she broke out in a huge smile.

“Look at you. Look how excited you are. Jesus just loves you so much. He knows how much you love to create and inspire and write letters. Doesn’t that seem like the smallest detail of your life? You love letter writing? And yet, HE KNOWS IT! And LOVES it about you and wants to give it to you because he has GOOD THINGS planned for you. Even the small stuff, like pen and paper.” (But let’s clarify, it isn’t small to me!)

So I’m busy today making this crazy cool, intricate, accordion fold cover letter and resume that will surely blow her socks off.

Well, I’m hoping this risk of unconvention will do that anyway.

But I am excited.

And feel crazy showered in love by my God who literally delights in these details.

What a day...

Tue, 22 Mar 2011 16:30:00 -0400

for letter writing…

15 single socks. No match to be found. Frustrating.

Sun, 27 Feb 2011 12:06:00 -0500

15 single socks.

No match to be found.

Frustrating.

If it's your birthday..

Fri, 25 Feb 2011 18:46:00 -0500

And facebook lets me know.

And I cannot recall how I know you.

Or wish I didn’t know you.

I unfriend you.

And I’m sorry.

But not really.

Because it’s just the way it goes.

holy moly

Wed, 23 Feb 2011 13:30:05 -0500

holy

moly

I just watched You’ve Got Mail. You can’t deny....

Sun, 20 Feb 2011 18:33:43 -0500

I just watched You’ve Got Mail. You can’t deny. It’s a ‘feel good hit’. One of the more memorable lines: Don’t you love New York in the fall? It makes me wanna buy school supplies. I would send you a bouquet of newly sharpened pencils if I knew your name and address. Ahh, romance at it’s finest. My pencils need to be colored, fyi. *Thanks dad, for forever placing movies into either the ‘feel good hit’ category or the ‘not worth watching’ category.

A smelly blue hardback...

Sun, 20 Feb 2011 00:58:04 -0500

I’ve had a life long love affair with books.

My earliest memory is sneaking out of bed at night. I would crack open the bedroom door so the hall light would fall into my room and I would lay in that tiny strip of light to look through my books. The Little Tugboat That Could is so vivid in my mind I could draw you the illustrations.

Skip to 6th and 7th grade. Pretty rough years for most kids. I believe it was the of combination of glasses, terrible taste in headbands, and Sweet Valley High that caused me so much grief. I always had my nose in a book, and my peers lacked imagination. They needed to tease me for status, which is fine. I understood that at age 9 and cared as little then as I do 15 years later.

I flew across the Atlantic to find out making books is as much fun as reading them. Well, a reallllllly close second. And now I bind my own journals and love books on a whole new level… structurally.

Even tonight, I’m climbing into bed after a particularly exhausting 3 day stretch of work and found enough energy to be giddy over this beautiful old classic sitting beside my bed.

All I’m trying to say here is

love.

books.

Happy reading.

Or writing

Or binding.

Or illustrating.

Or whatever it is you feel like writing a blog about…

I was here!

Sat, 19 Feb 2011 22:09:12 -0500

I was here!

OREOS

Fri, 18 Feb 2011 16:46:04 -0500

tomywife:

Double stuff. Not negotiable.

i love this guy…

suicideblonde: Paul Rudd’s knitting you a sweater for...

Thu, 17 Feb 2011 11:01:30 -0500

suicideblonde:

Paul Rudd’s knitting you a sweater for Valentine’s Day