One More Time

Early May and June

This is our time,
A reassurance that there are some
sensations I will never forget.
The sun coming back,
the heat,
the trees, their leaves, the natural world.
This is the time that we found
each other —
we confirmed each other.

In eighty years I know
even if I don't remember who I am,
I will see the particular neon green bouquet of maple buds,
and hear the playoffs whistling in a room
down the hall of my convalescence,
and I will return spring of our courtship,
when we were lucky enough to gleam a future
in each other's eyes.
-DDH
(c) 2010.

Graduating

I just celebrated my 8th wedding anniversary, my daughter is about to turn four, and I am about to have a baby. I dated my husband for 4 years before we got married. We started dating right after I graduated college. I realized the other day, when on the way to meet my husband for our anniversary dinner, that I am living my life on a four year pace -- graduating to something new every four years. It's pretty wild! And I just realized, when I think about my career goals, I have a four year plan. 4 years! It's incredible.

I suppose I have been programmed to believe that it takes 4 years to learn something: elementary, junior high, high school, college. It's a comfortable amount of time for a "stage." And it did cross my mind, when thinking about having a second child, that it'd be nice not to have both of them in college at the same time.

When I told my husband, he reflected and came to the conclusion that he prefers a 2 year pace. Do you have a pace? Or are we just weird?

Current Events

Went to the U.S. Open the Tuesday after Labor Day to see the mens' 4th round and women's quarters in a night session. Federer and Wozniacki both won in straight sets, so we got out at a reasonable hour which is nice in my old age, but slightly disappointing compared to 2005 when I saw Agassi beat Blake in a barn burner. Still glad I went and my date declared we should make it a yearly tradition, which is exactly what I've been wanting someone to say to me since I was 14. Victory tastes sweet.

Now I can work on getting to Wimbledon.

Did a sketch for a friend's birthday card yesterday. I need to revive my hobbies or I'm in danger of dissolving into a hybrid couch potato/barfly in my free time. Right now it feels like I'm dabbling in everything and it's not sticking. I've got a Le Carre book languishing on the bed stand, a stalled needlepoint project (I told you, I'm old), and a twice a week running schedule. Ugh.

While waiting for the train home from the Open, my friend and I were talking about current events. I admitted I don't really follow the news anymore. I read the New Yorker and follow NPR via my Facebook feed (it hurts me to come clean about that, I usually refer to it as a "news feed."). It took a long time for me to inquire more about ISIS. Because really, do I want to know more about these people? It's disgusting.

I spent most of my twenties engaged and enraged about the death and suffering caused by the ignorance and righteousness of this country -- that's your takeaway when you study American History at NYU. But at about seve months pregnant with my daughter my fascination and anger turned to sadness, and I realized in order for me to live powerfully I couldn't do it anymore. I've transferred that over to Mr. SevPrez and now he fights the good fight on that front.

I confessed to my friend that I went through old journals and correspondence when we moved and found evidence of a smarter, wittier, more relevant, firecracker version of myself. I was so sure of myself and my opinions! I used to write better. I was unabashed.

Am I a complete milquetoast? Does that come with the territory of marriage, motherhood, and mid-thirtydom? It's disorienting to feel you've lost your shine, but with that comes humility, and with humility comes the opportunity for grace. I do slightly less embarrassing things and make much better sartorial decisions. I can finally cook. Everyday my daughter eats, sleeps, and dances. So if I'm a bit of a dud, at least there's that.

Still. Gotta finish that book, sign up for a race, learn needlepoint, and get to Wimbledon. These are great projects and I should keep them alive. Never give up.

Speaking of Marriage

My college roommate got married last weekend!  

I have never seen anyone so excited to get married. It was life affirming to see such pure joy in two people's commitment. It made me feel proud to be married.

She is from Massachusetts and found an amazing place to get married, New Marlborough, in the Berkshires. The ceremony was in a meeting house that was built in 1771, and the reception and lodging was just down the street at the Gedney Farm, two old barns that have been converted. There was no TV, no cell reception, no wifi, no nothing. Just old friends, good people, and the excitement of two people coming together to spend the rest of their lives together. And peak foliage. Did I mention peak foliage? 

All together awesome sauce.

Sharing a Poem: Love and Marriage

For What Binds Us
by Jane Hirshfield

There are names for what binds us:
strong forces, weak forces.
Look around, you can see them:
the skin that forms in a half-empty cup,
nails rusting into the places they join,
joints dovetailed on their own weight.
The way things stay so solidly
wherever they've been set down-
and gravity, scientists say, is weak.

And see how the flesh grows back
across a wound, with a great vehemence,
more strong
than the simple, untested surface before.
There's a name for it on horses,
when it comes back darker and raised: proud flesh,

as all flesh
is proud of its wounds, wears them
as honors given out after battle,
small triumphs pinned to the chest-

And when two people have loved each other
see how it is like a
scar between their bodies,
stronger, darker, and proud;
how the black cord makes of them a single fabric
that nothing can tear or mend.

"For What Binds Us," by Jane Hirshfield from Of Gravity and Angels (Wesleyan University Press).

Reset Button

I sat the long New Year's weekend out with the flu. I did a lot of laying around, thinking of all of my to-do lists and how none of them would ever get done again and that would be OK. 

After three solid days my will to go on returned and in a burst of energy I took down all of the Christmas decorations and the tree. I grew up in a house where the Christmas tree once lingered all the way to Saint Patricks Day (with coordinating ornaments of course), so I never understood the people who took their trees down the day after New Year's until last year (my first with a child). Now I get it: let's get on with our lives already. It's a little sad but it's also so nice to feel ready to take on what's next.

The whole family experienced a rolling wave of the flu - first my dad on Christmas day, followed by my mother, my sister-in-law, my mother-in-law (on the other side of the family), myself, Baby SevPrez, and finally, the Mister. My parents were healthy enough to take the baby on the New Years Day overnight to give us a break. As much as it was such a relief to be able to lie around and sleep uninterrupted by the needs of a sick child, it was equally as amazing to just be in the house with my husband alone. As parents who both work full time, we are always trying to spend as much time with our kid as possible, which I realized while laying on the couch with a flu, is probably to the detriment of our relationship. You tend not to realize that it is difficult to completely and utterly relax and enjoy each other without being encumbered by the responsibilities of a youngin.  We need to make time, even if it's just once a month, to be alone (not after 8pm in our house on the couch while she sleeps upstairs).

I guess what I mean to say is that being sick is such a total drag on every level. But when you step back and look at it from a birds eye view, it's actually a chance to wake up and realign to what will really sustain you in having a healthier life. Like having smoothies for breakfast, or more time alone with your husband.

My Heart

Coming To A Living Room Near Me

We finally pulled the trigger on a new couch, and it's spectacular.  "Go big or go home" is definitely turning out to be my home decor mantra, between this velvet fox and my yellow chairs. I think I will just have to be one of those people who has a house filled with eccentric treasures that somehow go together because they are loved ecstatically. And I'm okay with that.

Special shout-out to Sonny the cat, who we lost last month. His passing allowed us to finally let go of our 7 year old Ikea wreck and move on to something more grown up. I know what you're thinking -- your kid is going to ruin that couch. You may be right, but the time was right for us to say yes to a piece of furniture that we absolutely love.

Extra-special shout out to Mr. SevPrez who rejected my reasonable, compromise choice in couches and fell in love with my fantasy couch, and then spent all of Thursday night moving furniture around to make it fit in our family room. (We won't get the new couch til February but we are living with the new configuration.)

We spend a lot of time on our couch. And a lot of time looking at it, since we have an open floor plan. Why not have something big, bold, and beautiful? Life is short, seize the teal velvet!

What's For Lunch?*

Some big changes are afoot in the SevPrez household. Mr. SevPrez is embarking upon the road to another career and going to grad school in September. As such we are switching gears from a couple of bon vivants to a hungry student and a starving artist. Only I don't think we'll actually be all that hungry or starving, because we have been cooking up all sorts of great meals at home in lieu of dining out. Our spirits will be hungry and starving, not our appetites. I'm looking forward to the change.


I've started bringing my lunch to work instead of dining at fine establishments in lower Manhattan. This affords me more time to do other stuff on my lunch break (which I still get, and take.) Lots of walking, park-sitting, reading, sun bathing of the shins (a fruitless endeavor, for sure), taking pictures, and drawing.


These last bits have been inspired by my purchase of the Maira Kalman retrospective book, Maira Kalman: Various Illuminations (of a Crazy World). I got over my grief of narrowly missing her exhibit at the ICA in Philadelphia enough to carry the book from the shelf to the register of McNally Jackson. The book is a gigantic reminder of the things I should be doing with my life: things I will be happy to have done on the day I die. Lucky for me, these things don't require that I quit my job and start over. All I have to do is work on a little something every day.


I've been reading lots of good, inspiring things and trying stuff that I don't think I'm all that great at in the hopes that one day I will be better. Mainly I am searching for ways to call forth my life. The resulting pursuit is quite enjoyable, magical even. 


This is all a preamble to my request, dear readers. Please bear with me as I post some of the proverbial fruits of my lunch breaks. You may follow the blog for other reasons, or not enjoy the first drafts of my artistic endeavors, but it's helpful for me to share, and sharing is why I have a blog in the first place. Nobody likes a miser.

It has to be stated that I drew this Vaseline jar from memory, since I could have googled the label on my Blackberry when I wanted to remember it better. I had to draw it after I read a rant by Dave Eggers and got that old Flaming Lips song stuck in head. 


*PB&J on whole wheat. Ate it at 11:30 and it hit the spot in a big way!

Holy Matrimony

Today is our third wedding anniversary. May 12th was the day we got engaged. In a week or two it'll be the anniversary of our first date, though neither of us can remember exactly when it was, because the twinkles in the eyes had started a few weeks prior. 


As I get older, I need a lot of inspiration to write a poem. Luckily, a six week period of springtime love will do the trick. I wrote this one for the mister.


Early May and June

This is our time,
A reassurance that there are some
sensations I will never forget.
The sun coming back,
the heat,
the trees, their leaves, the natural world.
This is the time that we found
each other —
we confirmed each other.

In eighty years I know
even if I don't remember who I am,
I will see the particular neon green bouquet of maple buds,
and hear the playoffs whistling in a room
down the hall of my convalescence,
and I will return spring of our courtship,
when we were lucky enough to gleam a future
in each other's eyes.

-DDH
(c) 2010.


Happy Anniversary, Mr. SevPrez.

Photo by RBB.

End Of Day Two

We're getting there!

I happy to report that Mr. SevPrez loves butchers block as much as I do, if not more. I am lucky that he trusts my offbeat taste!

Who Are These Philipians, Anyway?*

By now faithful readers know that my spiritual quest does not often lead to church. 

However, when I do spend time below the cross, I do it at the place Mr. SevPrez and I were married, two years ago to the day. Elberon Memorial Church, in Long Branch, NJ, is a non-denominational summer church founded more than one hundred years ago for the use of vacationers at the Jersey Shore. It's a big old gorgeous church, located about a block from ocean. Several preachers from the area take turns giving services on summer Sundays starting in July, and great music is played by renowned area musicians.

Since our wedding was being held in a church (albeit one with, thankfully, limited "churchiness"), and performed by a minister, we were encouraged to include a passage from the Bible in our ceremony. I didn't fight this too much, because even though it's personally not my favorite book, it is a pretty powerful one, so I was pretty sure we'd be able to find something meaningful to both of us besides Corinthians 1:13 ("love is patient, love is kind..."). That's one of those passages that gave me goosebumps the first time I heard it, but because of my job, and because we went to six weddings last year, has begun to ring hollow from overuse.

So after a bit of research, we chose Paul's letter to the Philippians. Our minister, who'd been in the business of performing weddings for several decades, professed he'd never used this passage in a wedding before, but he liked it a lot. So much, in fact, that three months later, when he got married, he used it for his ceremony. (You have to know how much it pleased me. They don't call me the quote master for nothing!) It reads:

"...Whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of good repute, if there is any excellence and if anything worthy of praise, dwell on these things.
The things you have learned and received and heard and seen in me, practice these things, and the God of love will be with you."
(Philipians 4, New American Standard Bible)
It's another way of expressing one of my most closely held tenants: you gotta keep on the bright side of things. But don't get carried away. Never forget to pack sunscreen.

























*Philipi was a town in what is now mainland Greece, though at the time it was Macedonia, under Roman rule. Paul wrote this letter from jail to the Christian community he had converted there, basically telling them to keep the faith in hard times.

And Now For Something A Little Lighter

Because the weekend is here and despite recent evidence, I'm not all life and death, fear and guts. I guess it's just been an interesting week.

So I give to you, at long last, my husband and Jon Stewart, together, at Cute and Cuter.

And enjoy your first April weekend. I will be hosting new friends and running past as many daffodils as I can. You gotta get 'em while their out.

Resolving To Be Up to Something

On Monday my brother did me the favor of asking me what I will be up to in 2009. What a nice way to put it. New Year's Resolutions don't inspire me much. Don't they just sound like things that are born on January 1 and are meant to die sometime before mid-February?  And why rely on the New Year to resolve to do something that you've either always wanted or never wanted to do?

Excited to answer my brother, I followed his lead and listed my priorities for the new year. All of these things are currently in my life, but I eagerly look forward to working towards new and exciting developments in each area.

• Inner Peace
  
• Health (Going to the dentist and the dermatoligst, taking a multivitamin, keeping up with the exercising: maybe this is where I am hiding my resolutions...)
• My Marriage
• Family
• Laughing
• Blogging! (Writing, Photographing, Crafting, Baking, Cooking, Racing, Designing)
• Being a Sophisticated Lady

I intend to refer to this list both when I'm on a roll and when I'm in a rut. 

While thinking up this big list, I let my mind race around until it got to the Department of Wildest Dreams. One of my wildest dreams in life is to have my own platform to reach a lot of people. This is probably why I get so excited about this blog, and why I so want it to grow. But what if I had a TV show? That'd be big. Then I looked at my 2009 list and saw it all materialize: If I am on TV I will have to be a svelte, sophisticated lady, with good skin and teeth, a sharp wit, great composure, and a strong support system to get me through the tough shooting schedule. See how it all fits together? Like Magic.

So, lovely readers, what's out there for you in 2009? Or, as the late great Mary Oliver put it, "Tell me, what is is you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?"

Happy New Year to all!