home dreams

for a long time now, i've been daydreaming about owning a home. and not just owning, but renovating--buying a lovely old victorian or craftsman house and restoring it, while updating the kitchen to be the stuff of our fantasies. (lofty dreams, for someone who's not even out of college yet!) and last night these home dreams went beyond daydreams and infiltrated my REM cycles as well. =)

but we are just lowly students, renting a slightly-too-small apartment (though with a very generous kitchen!) and moving in six months to one side of the country or the other (still undetermined). so no home renovation and design in our foreseeable future. =/

however, since i have this itch i'm really wanting to scratch and because i'm a grown, married woman now and i should probably stop stashing stuff in my parents' house, i decided that i am going to help my 15-year-old sister E redo her bedroom. but what does this have to do with my stuff? well, her room was my room until i left for college--we shared it for several years as well--so it's currently the staging place for a ton of my things i haven't used in five years as well as nearly everything she has ever owned and outgrown in that time.

it'll be a good project, i think. we'll be purging a lot of stuff, which will open up a lot of space in the room. it's have a bunk bed in there for a decade, so taking that down will free up the vertical and make it feel so heavenly, we might just hear angels singing. =) also, i think it will be fun to be intentional with what gets put back in the room, and how a few color choices and things like that will (hopefully!) tie everything together and it will be an intentional, cohesive space that reflects E, rather than a haphazard collection of random posters and hand-me-down furniture and all that.

particularly satisfying is making the mock-ups. thanks to ikea's room planner, i've made 3D models of what the room could look like in various furniture arrangements, and then i can play with those in photoshop to try out different colors, snag pictures of items (lamps, rugs, curtains, chairs, whatever) online and put them in, all sorts of stuff. of course, it's not going to be perfect, but it's great fun, and (so i'm telling myself) very useful. =)

life on hold

it's not that i dislike waiting.
i'm definitely more about enjoying the journey than getting to the destination.
it just feels like my life is on hold while the world around me keeps moving.
i'm a placeholder, marking time
until six months roll around and i can fall in step again.
i'm waiting for something to make one week different from the next.
i'm waiting for anything i've done to be meaningful.
all around me, friends and family are actively seeking, creating, planning for
what comes next
or they have it already in their grasp.
but not me.
i'm waiting for my future to find me,
sitting here waiting every day because i've already done everything i can
to secure it
but it isn't secured.
waiting for the letter that hasn't come,
the phone call that hasn't rung,
waiting for something that will validate
all the years i've been preparing
and all this time that i've spent
waiting.

thank you, thank you, thank you

thank you.

that's a phrase i've been thinking over for a while now. likely resulting from having been surrounded by love and support and assistance and joy from all our friends and family for our wedding (six weeks ago already?!?), and now taking on the task of acknowledging how much we appreciate everyone's contributions and thanking them for it.

thank you. kind of weird, grammatically. as it is, without a subject, it sounds like a command: Give Thanks to You. (but who, then, is the demand being directed at?) or is it like spanish, where you can drop the first person and it's just known that any pronoun-less verbs are attributed to the speaker?

speaking of spanish, i think that's my favorite thank you: gracias. in french it's merci, which also means mercy. in german it's danke, but i don't know enough [read: any] german to know if that word has shades of meaning. but in spanish, it's gracias, graces, thanks. love that. what is this concept of "thanks" that we have in english? an expression of gratitude? a recognition of another's actions? gracias, giving graces.

and with thank you comes you're welcome. for this one, i like english best. spanish and french are de nada and de rien--it's nothing. but that's not true. if you give me something, of your time or treasure or insight or what-have-you, it may be trifling or it may not, but it's not nothing. i want to recognize that, give you thanks and graces for it. i don't want you playing down the value of what you've given me, because i value it too. (and, i'll be honest, sometimes i don't want to play down the value of what i give, too; it is valuable...) so trifle or not, significant or not, english's you are welcome is always appropriate. you are welcome to it, partake in what i have to offer, i am glad to share it.

thank you.
you are welcome.

olds and news

first post on a new blog...
an old habit.
last semester of college =
first season of married life;
new home,
filled with our history.
old pictures of old friends:
familiar places
facing unknown futures.
new city, new life?
age-old dreams
so close to true...

i think in fragments
better expressing
jumbling ideas
mix of old and new
know where i come from
imagine where i'm going