Skip to main content

It's been over a week of my silence. I'm sorry about that. Been very busy with a lot of stuff I'm just not gonna go into here. Life is good, I'm alive, things are well. And aren't I descriptive? I'm typing this on my sister's laptop, because I just spent half my weekend here. Headed home in an hour or two after a shower and deciding which sweater to steal from her for the week. Next Sunday, we'll be headed to Santa Ana for Patchwork, where Tara will be peddling her beautiful wares! I foresee a whole lot of Christmas shopping going down. Hopefully by then I'll have my paychecks all sorted out (forgot to cancel direct deposit when I closed my F&M account last week. oops!). Meanwhile, I'll be working absent-mindedly, writing furiously and guiltily, and trying to be faithful to everyone else in the meantime.

Being faithful to people can be complicated. How do you choose between two opposing forces? How to you respect lines honestly and healthily drawn? How do you measure the worth of an individual in increments of time? Or productivity? Or the depth and/or length of a conversation? I'm not trying to be complicated here. Once upon a time, I thought I was a good friend. I thought I was faithful and thorough. I don't know if I've changed or just figured myself out better. I'm also not looking for affirmation. Just musing on growing up - what it means to know yourself and others better, and how increased understanding lends new responsibility.

(oh, and that is a whole blog post on its own - how understanding a person, whether you ask for that understanding or not, makes you responsible for them. why is this? i don't know. but it makes me think that those who understand human beings best should all be monks - to devote themselves to prayer for the world. how else will you have the time to fulfill your responsibility to your own human understanding?)

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

window in the sub

Dear Nathaniel, I am microwaving pie that Mom bought up in Oak Glen this week on her way home from the orthodontist. As I put it in the microwave, I was full of sadness that I was not in Oak Glen with her. Why did I not go? I was working. I want to see the trees turn. I want to wander slowly through autumnal gift shops. Under the water, you cannot sense the approach of the seasons. Even here it is difficult because, after all, it's California. But I can still sense it. After three seasons in Illinois and one in Scotland, it must be with me for good. Or at least for a while. Because I am all abuzz with eagerness for fall and winter, for turkeys and dried leaves and Santa. I should start cooking again this fall. Fall foods are my favorite. Baked squash dripping with melted butter and brown sugar, pumpkin soup... this year, if I have enough money, I will put together a holiday dinner for my friends. And we will drink Scandinavian mulled wine, which is the most wonderful thing I have e...

Fontastic

One of the perpetual projects in my little publishing company's life is the development of our company logo. This is my favorite project, as it involves the use of fonts. And I am rather a font fanatic. I have spent the last few hours trolling dafont.com, which is a wonderful website of free and mostly-free fonts for personal and often commercial usage. Rather than download every font I like, I sketched out my own versions of each of them as they inspired me. I thought I'd share them with you here, and if any of my noble readers have preferences, feel free to shoot me a comment. I am hoping I have determined the font-of-choice by the time the new website is ready to go up. After all, what's a corporate website without a corporate logo? Here are some photos of my most recent selections.

Being a Baker

Working at the Main Library has surprising advantages. Just now I stepped out of my office, walked five paces across the hall, scanned a badge, and walked under the civic center plaza to the elevator that stretches from beneath the earth up to the mayor’s office on the fourteenth floor. I didn’t have so far to go—just up one level to the utilities counter, where a sympathetic, amused woman named Sue shut down my gas payments. It took less than five minutes. I finished packing up my kitchen days ago. My cake pans were in boxes sometime early last week. But as I walked through the underground loading dock on my way back to the office, I was distinctly aware of the finality of what I’d just done. I would never, from that moment on, be able to bake for anyone out of that kitchen. Maybe it doesn’t seem like a very big deal, but I’ve gotten a lot of mileage out of a certain identity, namely being “the person who bakes a lot”. I made a tiered wedding cake for some friends (because...