easter weekend.

this weekend was a lot of good food, adorable children, and many rounds of rumikub with the grandma. i feel really sick tonight (is today tuesday? i am so confused). i never get sick, but i have been more sick in the last four months than i have been since my kindergarten strep marathon (nine times in nine months, folks). and although i don't want to blame my new boss directly, or blame anything really, i would not be surprised if my raging headaches, fevers, and nausea were work-stress-related. i hate being sick. i hate not being able to do things, and being forced to lie on the couch, sweating it out. i have goals to work on, people! and here i sit with time on my hands, and no energy to do any of them. grrrr.
also, we have an ant problem that i do not know how to solve. also, our apartment is being shown this week and i have to keep it clean. i feel overwhelmed by life tonight.
hey, but aren't these kids so adorable? let's look at how cute they are:zoey heads up the composition portion of the afternoon while greta and graham assist. i love the little pink dresses and the feet!

grady is totally fascinated with the camera--seriously, this is the most easy-going baby i have ever met.

annika reads to the older baby-cousins while ava scoots around, reaching for her own book. she is the other most easy-going baby i have ever met. so sweet.

and of course, i love me some good midwestern architecture.

my mom is pretty intent on the game, and grandma makes her power play. she's pretty good at rumikub, especially for a woman who says, "now, how do we play this game?" every time the tiles get dumped onto the table. she still wins.

i am inheriting hands that look like this. i think they are beautiful.

escape.

when i was growing up in southwestern colorado, i remember a bumper sticker my mother had tacked to the bulletin board in her office (also the laundry room/mud room). it said, "escape to wisconsin", words i learned to read before i understood what they meant. our annual summer trips to the midwest did not exactly feel like an escape.
then we moved to wisconsin and the bumper sticker made even less sense.
now that i am grown up and moved to the city, i have a better appreciation for the beautiful green and rolling hills of northcentral wisconsin. i can't wait to escape this weekend.

i am heading to my parents' house for easter and my grandmother's eighty-seventh birthday. i have to say that i really love easter--when i was a kid, my mom would create elaborate hunts for our easter baskets, with full-on riddles, limericks, and crazy clues that sent us all over the house until we found our treasures. one year they were stashed in the dryer. when i was little, it also meant a new dress and sometimes a hat, a one-time-a-year accessory.
but lately, i am just really grateful for a springtime excuse for our extended family to get together. there will be lots of hilarious children, favorite aunts and uncles, and my mother (and my dad. i love you dad! but you all know about mothers. i am proof that you can successfully bond with your child even if you don't spend the first three minutes of her life staring into each others' eyes*).

i have had a really foggy, exhausted week and i look forward to getting out of the city and away from my normal routine. i hope you all have a wonderful weekend.

*i was born c-section. somehow, even though i am far, far away from having children, i am inordinately obsessed with the statistic that a mother and baby bond most during the first three minutes of life.

abbey swears by them as a husband-catcher. it might be time to get me some peonies. i'm mostly joking. well, sort of. besides, aren't they just pretty? yeah. we still don't even have buds here in the perpetual tundra.

spiritual mansions.

i am super-proud of my friends and their band, spiritual mansions. just enjoyed some good listening last night at the red stag. i am not a music critic, so i have no enthralling words to describe their music or style, except i like it and it's great.





it's moments like this when i wish my blog had a million readers who would all go over to the band's myspace page and check them out, catapulting them to new heights of fame. sigh. maybe someday (i promise i'm not delusional, just a dreamer). i was sitting behind the band, so all the photos are of their backs, pretty much. but again, playing with my little digital camera is a huge source of entertainment for me.
it's also moments like this that make me proud to live in minneapolis and be a part of a community of great art and music, if not specifically me yet, at least vicariously through my talented friends.

box lunch.

although the weather has been nothing but gray this week, i have had a bit of color in my food this week-some natural, some not.
i do love a good breakfast sandwich, and of course surdyk's does not disappoint. let's talk about surdyk's for a second. it is becoming increasingly apparent for many reasons that i either need to a) stop going there or b) start working there. i am there at least once a day, often twice. i never walk away without something, even if it their 75c coffee--which is really good, by the way. also, my job is getting to me. it really, really drains my soul. and my brain. i have spent this whole week working on feeling positive about it, but i am coming to the conclusion (which i had a hunch about before) that i am just not cut out for boring office jobs. or office jobs at all, probably. so it has crossed my mind to check on the employment opportunities there.
anyway, the food. . . .
we also have for your enjoyment, an orange, cut just the way i like it. and left-over red velvet goodness.

what do i call it?

in an effort to create interest and continuity, i have decided to implement the regularity of featured blogging content (wow, that was a stuffy sentence!). so let us commence with the inaugural installment of cube food* (a temporary name, i am terrible at names. i did name my business after myself, after all. any good suggestions would be greatly appreciated).
i have chosen thursday as the day for cube food, because thursday is my favorite day of the week and this is a favorite thing i am doing here. so, without any further ado, i give you. . . what i have been eating at work lately!
ooh, maybe a little further ado: the cheese is yummy, yummy driftless sheep cheese. i usually go for the donnay dairy goat cheese at surdyk's, but apparently all the donnay goats are about to have some kids and aren't milking. the driftless is really good, although i do crave that perfect, tangy chevre (it's the best in the world). i topped it with the greens and curry chicken.
the chocolate is some amazing thing with cocoa nibs and nutmeg.






*also, almost immediately after i so carefully and proudly scheduled this post to publish, i was informed that no one gives a you-know-what about what i had for lunch. incidentally, this also comes from the same people who suggested i create interest and continuity through regular blog content. apparently, i am easily influenced? easily intimidated? i guess we'll see how this all goes. tell me what you think, but say it nicely, i'm a little sensitive at the moment.

the submarines.

just heard a great in-studio performance.
another reason i love my mpr.
also checked out their website. it's lovely.

there are days--lots of them lately--when i want to stand on the roof and scream at the top of my lungs.
amy suggests that perhaps that could be the american equivalent to the siesta. round about noon we all hop out onto our roofs, wherever we are, and let loose, just get it all out.
i almost feel refreshed just thinking about it.
minnesota will never be the birthplace of that tradition.

walking home from the bus stop tonight, i turned into one of those people. you know, one of those people you don't run into often, but you are probably glad you don't. those people who perhaps sing or whistle along to whatever music is playing only in their ears, those people who bop along on the sidewalk, just happy to be alive. agh! those people!
i was suffering from an overload of energy (i do work in an office after all--another subject for another day) and i just really could not help but sing along with my ipod and then get terribly distracted by the deep dusk sky and the white lights on the trees along second street. and seeing as i am so obsessed with valentines, i tried to draw a heart for you while the exposure ran. it reminded me of writing my name with sparklers as a kid, the bottom photo reminds me of a slinky. the lines and textures of the photos also remind me somewhat of the lines and textures in printmaking, which are always unique and wonderful.
oh, and of course i couldn't resist the moon mingling with the twinkle lights above the squares of the condo roof.
it felt great to bop around the sidewalk, sing along with gillian welch, and play with my camera for a few minutes. it felt great to ignore everything else and be really happy to be alive.