Life is pretty awesome, after all.

These vintage 3D latch hook kits are awesome :)

Sorrow prepares you for joy. It violently sweeps everything out of your house, so that new joy can find space to enter. It shakes the yellow leaves from the bough of your heart, so that fresh, green leaves can grow in their place. It pulls up the rotten roots, so that new roots hidden beneath have room to grow. Whatever sorrow shakes from your heart, far better things will take their place.

Rumi

Everything in my life is so crazy and mixed up at the moment that all I can do is laugh and smile, and listen to songs on repeat.

Life takes some sharp twists and turns sometimes, but in the end, somehow, everything will be okay. Somehow, in the midst of neurological craziness, and health problems up the wang, and emotional overload, and missing people like crazy, it just stops mattering. Somehow, I'm alive and loved and I have joy in my life, so I really can't complain. And I'm gonna celebrate by wearing my favorite red pants tonight, so y'all can look forward to that.

So no complaints. Life is pretty awesome :)

What to do in the heat

Palazzo Pant Jumpsuit - Oh to have the energy to make!

1. Put a fan directly facing you
2. Move slowly - Talk with volunteers at thrift stores
3. Take an afternoon nap/siesta (I like to listen to talk radio)
4. Hydrate regularly (Factor in excess sweating)
5. Expect less of yourself (and others)
6. Exercise early in the morning, or late in the evening
7. Write more: Letters, emails, poems, stories
8. Read more: World news, fiction, non-fiction
9. Forgive quickly (heat psychosis is rampant)
10. Listen to folk music on Pandora (Emmylou Harris, baby!)

"Here we come rejoicing"

There's a small out-of-the-way thrift store downtown that I go to pretty often. I don't know if I've talked about it before. The thrift store supports a deep-seated ministry in the city. I don't quite understand what the ministry itself does, though I've been shopping there for years. There have been signs on the wall saying that some money helps kids go to camp, but I don't think I've seen those signs lately.

It's my secret spot. I always find good stuff. Oftentimes, I have to spend a lot of time cleaning my purchase(s), but it's usually worth it.

Anyhoo, there's a lovely woman who works there, and she enjoys listening to children's bible tapes. A couple months ago, children were singing Old Testament passages from the Torah. Today, they were singing songs about Jesus. I told her how much I enjoyed the music. I bitch and moan about Christian music overkill in thrift stores, but I'm beginning to appreciate the nostagia of it. Today, as those children were singing, I was thinking about my childhood, and this album. I've been trying to find some audio, but have been unsuccessful.

"I'm so lost without you"

So I love Air Supply, like love them. I listened to their original Greatest Hits as I ran at night in college. I'd measure out a mile and run laps and listen to Air Supply on my Walkman. For some reason, I always ran at night. I'd get energy at dark, and then I'd hit the pavement in my dorky running shorts and ridiculously long legs. I'd always wanted to be a distance runner, so I figured I'd finally found the perfect opportunity of desperate loneliness and pitiful self-hatred. I think I alternated between that tape and James Taylor's 1985 album, "That's Why I'm Here". I never felt scared of running at night. I don't do it anymore. I fell one too many times. All of my knee scarring is from falling on asphalt, hard.

I don't always listen to music now when I go walking. Sometimes I listen to podcasts, but lately, I've been leaving my headphones at home. I like to spend the time arguing with myself. It gets out a lot of junk that I can leave behind and feel release at the end of the day, like I'm not holding onto stuff I have no business holding onto. It's become my "crazy thinking time". I do all of the crazy thinking when I can go in any and every direction without worrying that I won't be able to come back from it. I walk back in the door and it's done. Walking is my therapeutic container for the day.

My crazy then goes off into the night sky, off into the atmosphere, then gets sucked into the sun and burns up. Take that world.

8. Modern Folk Music

Maybe I should call this category "Female Singer-Songwriters". There's something beautiful about a woman who's lost a mother, or didn't have a real mother, for whatever reason. A lot of folk singers have quite a bit of loss in their lives. The soul cries out in this unique, raw way. Music is surely one of the best ways to express it.

I found over the summer that I truly love all folk music. There was an interview on Democracy Now with Billy Bragg this past summer, and I'd been thinking for a long time that I was a non-punk kind of girl, but I loved him. He sang songs about protests and coal mines. He spoke truth. Folk is truth: beautiful, honest, bloody truth. Love it.

1. Lori McKenna-There aren't enough good things to say about this amazing artist: vulnerable, honest, deep, suffering, great voice, prolific...For a whole day, I listened to this song on repeat (I pretty much can't listen to it anymore, not because I hate it now, but because it connects with a place in my heart that I just don't want to go). She speaks to me, not because I'm a mother or a wife, but because she is real. Love her.

2. Patty Griffin-I am not in love with her newest album, so she's taken a bit of a backseat lately. My friend has her live album, "A Kiss in Time" and every time I drove her car, I'd listen to Long Ride Home over and again, singing at the top of my lungs (Nothing is better than the version on that album). I am not a fabulous singer, but I wanted to be fabulous for that song.

3. Cry, Cry, Cry-A single album collaboration between Dar Williams, Lucy Kaplansky, and Richard Shindell. A good friend made a tape for me in high school, and it was on repeat in my car. I think Billy Joel finished off the second side of the tape :) It's synergy, baby, synergy. Those three, all together, are magical. I like them all individually (Iowa and After All by Dar Williams are two of my favorites), but the sum is greater than the parts.