an afternoon out.

The best place in town to grab lunch. Simple enchiladas with beans, salad and homemade salsa on the side. Humble food. A humble environment.

Down in a basement, a coffeeshop we love.

Pretty rugs on the sidewalks in front of flea markets and antique stores.

Beautiful town, built into the mountains.

Calves of rock-hard muscle are a given. You're always climbing.

Treasures on the street, so enticing. The longer I look at this photo, the more I feel I should have picked up that blue + white blanket.

***

Today I found a couple of darling teacups with saucers at a thrift store for $4. There were tornado warnings and we received a weather-alert message saying a funnel cloud was half a mile from our home. The rain came down so hard and we were soaked clear through as we went from store to store looking for an old sofa with good bones to reupholster and a vintage scale for the kitchen. We've been experiencing a drought already this year so every single drop of it was welcome. 

Though it's January, it wasn't cold rain. I wore only one layer and no socks with my moccasins. The springtime weather and the tornado warnings felt like a treat in the middle of winter. The Farmer's Almanac predicted a very wishy-washy winter.

"Wild temperature swings, periods of storminess."

I would say it's quite accurate. Last week I was driving Kyle to class each morning because we had temperatures barely above freezing and snow flurries blessed us each afternoon. This week, Kyle comes home from classes with his sweater thrown into his bag and sweat on his brow. 

Though tornadoes are horribly destructive, and storms can be so damaging as well, I really enjoyed today. I think that those who grow up near the ocean have a special relationship with understanding the water. Those in the mountains, an ability to judge the winds and what they will blow in. For those of us in tornado alley, I think it's a special understanding of the way an eerie stillness overcomes you and makes the hair on your neck stand straight up before a funnel appears. I don't wish these storms on anyone or get joy from their destruction, but I deeply respect and appreciate our earth and all her many faces. There's something so humbling and incredible in being reminded that we are all the children and she is the mother. 

3/52

Participating in Jodi's 52 project. Go take a look at her beautiful photos.

***

Hello, friends. Are you enjoying pleasant weather where you are? School began this week and I've begun to finally move past a bothersome (and so painful) sinus infection I've been battling. Lots of steam is being breathed in and facial massages are being accepted in the Farmer household.  

Tomorrow we have the day off from classes and there are two pounds of strawberries on the table waiting to become a jam filling in a layered sponge cake. 

It will be a great day indeed.

2/52

***

I log on to Che and Fidel every day, hopeful for an update. Today I was surprised to find that my own name was mentioned in her post. I blushed endlessly. She was so kind to say that she liked my photographs this past week. I've so enjoyed looking through all the participants' sites and am truly happy to watch this series evolve, both in my own space, and in these other beautiful womens' places as well. 

a little Sunday hike...

I promised myself that this year I wouldn't say ill things about winter. I'd soak up every peaceful moment of the earth in hibernation and use the time for self-reflection, cups of warm soup, and tending to the home tasks which are often neglected during the months that the daylight hours stretch into 9 pm and the garden calls my name. (There are six bulbs that need changing in the apartment and have since June, our two suitcases from our holiday travels still have not been unpacked, and the boxes of things to take for donation have been taking up too much space in the bedroom closet since before Thanksgiving...)

So I won't complain or say anything bad about this cold and barren land that I love so much. I'll just say that while I sit on our sofa, wrapped in a quilt, with only a few slivers of blue-grey light coming through the windows, I'm dreaming of days like this one from late October. We hiked in the crisp, cool weather when Autumn had just begun to really settle in. It was an easy trek, only a few miles long each way and we passed only two other hikers the whole trip. We sipped on a coffee spiced with cinnamon and other things that made it taste like a pumpkin pie and dared one another to get a little closer to the cave full of bats for a peek.  

On the way back down, we stopped at the little cliff that overlooks the water and waited for that special moment at sunset when the whole world turns gold and the fiery leaves on the trees set themselves even more ablaze. I don't think my heart could have been happier at that moment, up on a big rock on the side of a mini-mountain, watching the water below us turn silver and the land surrounding it turn gold. Kyle and I spent a long time up there, just the two of us, holding each other and talking. We didn't leave until most of the light was gone and we had to hike back to the car in an eerie blue, silent forest. 

1/52

***

Jodi, a woman whose lovely blog is always an inspiration, has spent the last year posting a photo a week of each of her children to document their growth. She invited her readers to participate with her as she begins her next year's chronicling and I can't wait to participate during 2013. My own photos will be focused on our surroundings and on Kyle.

For seven years I wrote words and accompanied them with photographs, putting those feelings on the Internet. When I found myself hand in hand with the man who would become my husband, my life reaching new heights of meaningfulness and my inner self altering in ways I had never known to expect, I felt the need to walk away. So I did. I walked away from the practice of sharing my life with others. 

In my life away from a computer's lighted screen, I also retreated. I found myself craving privacy and I nurtured this new relationship with myself, with the woman I was destined to become, in quiet. I learned to live more slowly, deliberately. I spent my days sorting through the mess and the muck that had been my previous, young and jumbled self. I spent them with dirt under my fingernails and yeasty bread rising on the countertops. I married my best friend in the mountains that we now call our home. We said our vows alone and later celebrated with three parents and one brother. 

I was not hiding, but I was not seeking the company of the people I had known or the places I had been, save for such a small few. I put hundreds of miles of distance between myself and those parts of me that I had once been so ashamed of. They became fuzzy and unfamiliar shadows of a vague life that had lacked the purpose I now felt. In private, I exposed the ugliness of my worst traits and worked through them every day to become a more enlightened being, one I felt content with at the end of each day. 

I valued the anonymity. I needed to be, without eyes from my past looking in on me. The greatest thing I have ever done for my soul was to take the hand of my lover and quietly slip away from a life I was barely living. 

Two years after this first seed of change was planted, I am pulling open the curtains with a centered soul and a heart that is strong. I feel ready to say hello. 

Hello, there. I think I have a story to tell, if you'd like to stay for a while.