A worthy cause

So, I did something the other day that, although was sort of sad, made me feel really good. I donated my wedding dress to a great foundation called Brides Against Breast Cancer. This group accepts donations of dresses and various wedding accessories from individuals, as well as retail and wholesale boutiques, and sells it to the public at discounted prices. A quote from their webpage:

"Brides Against Breast Cancer^TM" gown sales continue to be important fund-raising events for Making Memories. Our more than 32 yearly shows provide brides-to-be with an opportunity to find their dream gown (at an incredible savings) while making wishes and dreams come true for women and men who are losing their fight against breast cancer.

The worldwide support of designers, manufacturers, bridal shops and individuals (who donate a most treasured possession) make possible our Nationwide Tour of Gowns sales. The proceeds from these events help bring a moment of joy into world of someone for whom a cure is too late.

This foundation basically grants wishes, just like the Make a Wish Foundation, to those with terminal breast cancer. After reading some of the stories of the people who have been granted wishes, there's no doubt in my mind that this was the right thing to do.

My gown was beautiful and has many treasured memories attached to it, but truth be told, it's a material item. The memories are not in the fabric, but in my mind and heart.

Hopefully, this dress will bring joy to the woman who purchases it for her wedding day and ultimate peace to the man or woman suffering from cancer who benefits from it's sale by having their wish granted. My heart goes out to them all.

...Life is good because there are people in the world that care for complete strangers and inspire us all to do the same. And because in the midst of pain, sometimes you can see hope and feel at peace.

Unique pieces of art

Christian just sent me an email with the following message:

Last year, two Russian artists, Leonid Tishkov and Boris Bendikov, created an "illuminating" art show by creating large light sculptures of a quarter moon, and suggesting, somewhat tongue in cheek, that these could become one's "personal moons," to bring home and place where ever one needed one.

Check out their site by clicking here.

I absolutely love images of the moon. The power it has over me is amazingly strong... I just can't get enough of it in artwork, photography, poetry, and in real life. Take a long look at some of these images and see if it doesn't do the same for you too.

Life is good because of artists who can envision something grand and convey what's in their heart to someone they don't know and probably will never meet.

Self-cleaning ovens... what will they think of next?

Does everybody know about this already or am I just a little slow? I've lived 36 years without having had the experience of using the self-cleaning button on the various ovens in my life. It doesn't seem at all possible, yet here I am today- having just had one of the most amazing domestic experiences I've had in a while. Wow! It was so easy and so thorough. My oven is sparkling clean! I keep sneaking back into the kitchen to take peeks. Dare I say, I almost can't wait for it to get dirty so I can have this fun all over again.

Life is good because of... fabulous results with very little effort. Something that was dirty is now clean... and I was doing something else the whole time it was happening. How cool is that?!

My first post about a book... and I call myself a librarian?

Why did it take me this long to blog about a book? Certainly books are among the good things in life, right?! But being a librarian sometime I have books I HAVE to read for work (for projects, programs, conferences, etc.) and I get bogged down. By the time I'm done with them, I'm either burnt out and don't want to read anything for a while or I'm completely starving for something of my own choosing.

Thankfully, this August I was starving... and so I read Blankets by Craig Thompson, a book I've had my eye on for a very long time in my library and in various bookstores and comic shops. It's a graphic novel that's 582 pages of pure perfection. I LOVED this book!

The author recounts his adolescence- with stories both painful and heartbreakingly beautiful, interweaving childhood flashbacks with a first-time love affair. He shares his thoughts on a lot of emotionally charged issues including an overbearing religious upbringing and the effects it had on shaping his life so far. Religion vs. spirituality plays a big role in this novel, as does the sweet love story- and the inevitable process of discovering who he is. It's a thoughtful, quiet book that takes it's time to unfold. And the artwork is amazing... especially since the author/illustrator seems to share my sense of awe with bare trees in winter.

Life is good... because of intelligent, thought-provoking, emotionally candid works of literature and art such as Blankets by Craig Thompson.

I highly recommend this book!

You'll laugh, you'll cry

I saw this video a month or so ago and it struck me so deeply. I emailed it to people and verbally told as many people as possible that they NEEDED to watch this. I came across it again on someone else's blog this morning and realized that I, too, must archive it in a more permanent way. So here it is, again:


Where the Hell is Matt? (2008) from Matthew Harding on Vimeo.

I love that someone had this idea and followed through with it in such a mind-blowing way. 42 countries in 14 months! The dancing is so dorky that I can't help but laugh every time! The music is perfect for this project- uplifting, sweeping, energizing, and perfectly synchronized to every moment being shown. My favorite part, hands down, is the scene from India- it's so majestic and colorful and the music at that particular moment just brings me to tears.

Every time I watch this video I pretty much laugh with pure happiness and cry with an overwhelming sense of hope for the world. This man was lucky to have brought joy to so many lives. It was only a brief moment of time for each of those clips and all the people involved, but stringing them together it creates a feeling so much bigger than just the sum of it's parts. Isn't that a wonderful summary of life?

This is definitely why life is good... I don't want to ever forget this.

Seduced by potatoes

Alright, that title needs a little explanation. I've been meaning to write about this for several days, if not weeks... random smells-- I'm fascinated by them.

Where does a whiff of perfume come from when there's no visible person in your vicinity? How come that smell so often reminds you of someone you once knew? What are the odds that today at work I would be brought back to two very distinct times in my life, smelling both Dustin's cologne and the perfume of one of my elementary school teachers within twenty minutes of each other. Random.

For the past few weeks I've had to drive by a construction site near my home, and almost every day I smell potatoes. It makes no sense to me. Prior to construction, this area had been one of those usual parcels of land-- nothing all that beautiful, just something you passed on your way to somewhere else. They knocked it down to build-- get this-- another housing development. The smell of potatoes is so strong you have to wonder if this was an old farm back in the day and they're digging up remnants of the past. And here's where this blog entry's title comes in: There's something about the smell of potatoes for me... or maybe it's just the dirt... I don't know, but it makes me happy. In a strangely oxymoron-ic way, the dirt smells clean... fresh... crisp. It smells simple.

There's another parcel of land further down the road that is just an empty field with a chain link fence marking off it's boundaries. There's one of those pubic notice signs on the fence that states something too small to read from the road, but I suspect it's a sign of more construction to come. And every time I pass this area, I smell the strongest scent of sweet grass. It's like a tiny meditation every time I pass it, causing me to breathe deeper and become more aware of my surroundings.

The doldrums of work were interrupted for a brief moment by good memories from my past. The disturbing sight of construction was eased a little by the fragrant smell of vegetation. Is this natures way of soothing us? Are all of these scents readily available to us from somewhere beyond in order to ease any bad feelings of the moment? Do they really come from the outside or do they get conjured up from somewhere within ourselves? So many questions...

So basically, life is good because of random smells:
-that cause me to stop and notice the moment that I'm in... right then and there
-that take me back to good times and good memories
-that cause me to ponder deeper things about the inner workings of life

And most of all, life is good because of unanswered questions. I kind of like making my own stuff up to explain things!

Carefree Weekends

Life is good for carefree weekends. Staying up late on Friday nights, knowing you can sleep late Saturday morning is the best! We spent some time on Saturday with my family at a picnic, stopped at a garage sale or two on the way home, stayed up late again knowing we could sleep late on Sunday (best feeling in the world!), moseyed on out of bed at noon, finally took advantage of the little corner deli not far from our house, shared the picnic table outside with a friendly kitten named Tiger, went on a quest through back roads to find more garage sales (using a map to find our way back!) and finally settled in for a dinner at home on the barbeque. Carefree indeed!

More reasons why life is good:

Having a boyfriend who

• loves to stop at garage sales as much as I do
• encourages back road exploration
• doesn't freak out, but instead laughs, when I have to make several three-point turns to get back to where I was supposed to turn in the first place
• gets matching face-paint tattoos on our arms that have our initials painted in a heart
• and then poses for pictures as we all laugh
  

Life is good!

Night Rider

I was listening to an interview and live performance with Dan Wilson tonight on my way home from work (on my favorite radio station in the world, WFUV) and it reminded me just how much I love to drive at night, with the windows down and the music blasting! His acoustic guitar was reminding me how I have yet to fulfill my desire to learn to play this instrument. I've got to get moving on that!!

I also discovered that one of my favorite songs, Easy Silence, that I thought was solely a Dixie Chicks song was actually co-written by Dan Wilson and the Chicks. This song is available on both of their albums, with each artist performing their own version. Watch both below and decide for yourself which you prefer.

Can you tell that I've learned how to blog with hyper-links and embedded videos recently?! Learning new stuff is cool!

So to wrap it up... life is good because of night driving, warm breezes, the existence of acoustic guitars and the people who can play them, and beautiful songs that make you cry while you're driving home from work.

Slowing things down for a visit

Tonight we had dinner in the backyard, the culmination of a week-long visit from my boyfriend's sister's husband's father. I know that was a pretty long string of people that I listed there, but it isn't really that complicated... the dad of one of my house-mates was up from Georgia and stayed with us for a while. And it was a pure pleasure. This man has such a quiet way about him, but he is filled with such wisdom and patience. When I was talking with him, I found myself immediately calming down... it was quite strange actually how consistent that feeling was over the course of the week. He had interesting stories that took a while to tell, but I found myself fascinated every time. And his kindness was so honest and genuine. He spent his time here visiting with his family, of course, but also found time to do things like trim the rose bush out front and fix a car in the driveway that needed repairs. And when he wasn't doing any of the above, he was perfectly content sitting in the rocking chair by the front door, smoking his cigarette, and taking in nature.

So tonight, the night before he was set to leave, we had a wonderfully delicious dinner: barbequed pork chops (which we all learned that if you boil them beforehand for about 20 minutes, they barbeque quicker and stay juicier), green salad, roasted corn (don't get me started again about roasted corn), and wine. Between 3 of the 5 of us, we polished off an extra-large bottle of some tasty, tasty wine. And not that I'm going around promoting alcohol or anything, but I have to say, there is something special about sitting outside on a beautiful summer night at a picnic table in a rather large backyard with really cool tiki torches nearby setting the mood, eating a delicious meal, and sharing a bottle of wine. Something about the slowness of a glass of wine... it just makes you want to linger and talk all night.

It was a good night- and a good week. I got to meet someone really cool and I got to watch as a father and son re-connected and a daughter-in-law and father-in-law got to know each other even better. It was wonderful all around. Thank goodness for opportunities like this.

Summer barbeques

Life is good...

• because of the smell of a barbeque while cooking hamburgers at 10:00pm on a Wednesday night
• because of the first person who decided it was a good idea to roast corn, still in the husk, on an open grill
  
• because of the mixture of sweet corn and salty butter, leaving an unintentional pool of dropped corn kernels and the hint of a buttery-salty sludge on the plate that I just can't help but run my finger across and sneak tiny inappropriate licks, hoping no one notices
  

And so it has begun...

I've been meaning to start a blog for a while now. Ever since I became one of the contributing writers to the blog we recently started at work, I've been saying, "I should do this for myself."

But the truth is, I've been blogging all my life. It just wasn't called that. It was called "keeping a diary" when I was little- where I started every entry with a detailed account of the weather, what I had for homework, what food we had for dinner and the names of the boys I currently loved. You know, the basics.

I then moved on to poetry- god help us all. I would write a poem dripping with teen angst and emotion and then proceed, in a strangely jovial way, to visit each room of the house to show my work off to anyone who would read it. (Hey look at my pain, isn't it nicely worded?!)

I worked my way up to "journaling" as an adult- a fancy way of saying "keeping a sporadic diary." To this day, my journaling ranges from traditional entries that span a certain time period, all the way to hastily scrawled "to-do lists" housed in fancy notebooks. Either which way, unknown to me at the time, I've documented a life.

And that's how we arrive at this particular venture. Blogging. I'm that same teen-age girl, all grown-up, with that same fascinating need to have people read my stuff. And I'm still documenting a life, just in a different venue- with a potentially wider audience. "Potentially" is the key word... I'm not kidding myself to think that millions will read this. It's not like when Patricia and I were little and decided to paint rocks and sell them outside our house and I went to bed that night having dreams that we stopped traffic with the line of people who wanted to buy those rocks. (The next morning, we set up the table in the driveway and had three sales- our Mom, our Grandma, and our next door neighbor. Reality sort of bites sometimes, but when you break it down- we were 75 cents richer in our youth because of that venture!)

So basically, I'm out to share my thoughts with the select few who will choose to read this blog. But more importantly, I'm out to spread some positive vibes while I'm at it. The whole point of this blog, as partially evidenced by the title and URL name, is to share the reasons why I think life is good. It would have been even more apparent had the name, "Life is good" not been taken already. (Damn you mystery blogger who thinks life is good also, damn you!)

Looking back at past diary entries/journals/poetry I've written, one of the most overwhelming things I've come across is an undying sense of hope. Even in the darkest of days, I can see hope in my writing. I can see optimism where you think there shouldn't be any. And for that I am grateful.

And so now, hopefully without being too saccharine about it, I want to try my hand at the next phase of my writing. Whenever I come across something that makes me remember why life is good, I'm going to write it down. Here's hoping this list will never be complete...