Some dog joy to start your week:
Margo met a friend the other day. Everything terrifies this dog. Not this mask though. She did not want to leave it!
Is there anything better than coming across a fluffy and glowing creature from the heavens? Look at those lip wrinkles!
Or going out for puppuccinos with the windows down in single digit weather?
How about some rare sister cuddles?
Since we've started allowing the girls in our bed, they've completely taken it over. Josie likes to sleep on our bed even during the day, so we got a special blanket to keep the hair down. Every night, before going to bed I use a lint roller to get rid of any hair near our faces. The dogs eventually discovered that the sound of the lint roller meant we were going to bed soon, and it became a frenzy of golden retriever excitement. I've never known a dog to get so excited about the sound of a lint roller, but you know, if I stop being surprised and delighted by things, that's probably when you'll hear the ominous music start playing.
So anyway, I thought I would beat the dogs at their own game and use the lint roller in the mornings. This has deeply confused them. They can be anywhere in the house but when I start using the lint roller they come pitter pattering ever so tentatively into the bedroom and look at me like, "Are we going back to bed?" This has been going on for a while, but they are still confused and somewhat hopeful every time. Heaven forbid I don't do a good enough job with the lint roller in the morning and I have to bring it out at night, because they are still 100% excited about that.
Recently I bought myself an industrial-sized lint roller with a metal holder (happy holidays to me!), and when I ripped off the first layer of paper, it sounded like a plane taking off. No matter, fur was flying, tails were whipping, and before we knew it, we were engulfed in their fur frenzy.
If you look closely, you can see the industrial-sized lint roller on one of my side shelves. It takes up the full shelf!
I will say reading the news in the morning is ever so much more pleasant with a hairy dog booty in your business.
It's that time...
For Spotify Wrapped! And also Apple Music Replay!
I listen to a lot of music. I live, breathe, and eat it as does most of my family. Growing up, one of the best things we did was take turns picking music while doing housecleaning. Music is quite literally fuel for me. Not just for housecleaning but also for creating, moving, relaxing, being ok with myself, being ok with not being ok with myself, having a safe place for all emotions, and sometimes all it takes is a certain song to give me strength to step into the day.
I listen to both Spotify and Apple Music for different reasons. First, I have spent a lot of time scouring the ends of the universe for music that doesn't exist on either platform. Seriously! A recent example was an Aaron Neville CD that had a song on it that didn't exist anywhere - "Jesus is a Friend of Mine." Dear Spotify and Apple Music, Aaron Neville is a legend and his gospel music most beautifully highlights his voice. How do you not know this?
I get that some artists (ahem Garth Brooks) do not allow their music on one or the other and it gets very complicated. Thankfully I have CDs of a lot of these artists (ahem Garth Brooks).
There are also these incredible cds that Northsound put out in the 90s where you hear popular classical and jazz music with loon calls mixed in. This is also why I still search for CDs anytime I see them at a used bookstore, library sale, or random thrift store. You know how many times I see a version of a favorite classical song that doesn't exist in Spotify or Apple Music? I would say about one out of six times it happens. I don't mind spending hours combing through classical music for unusual versions of songs.
Another reason I love Apple Music is that I have daily meditations, poetry, and other spoken word mixed in with my music. Apple Music also allows me to cut out specific parts of songs and manipulate the music depending on my needs. I don't want to hear "Beluga Heights" at the end of Jason Derulo's Whatcha Say every time I listen to it. I also have a couple songs where I only like 30 seconds of a ten minute piece. Sometimes to do this I need to purchase these songs individually, but because it's music, it's always worth it.
I use Spotify primarily for my monthly playlists, which I usually create with extreme excitement the first day of every month. The moment I hear a song that lights me up it's dumped in the new month's playlist, and I delete that month from last year. This means I have only 12 playlists and no distractions for when I need to focus or am feeling a certain mood. Because of the sheer number of songs I have and the years I've used Apple Music, I have dozens of playlists, and I get easily distracted by them.
Both Spotify and Apple Music also recommend different music and my weekly lists of new music are always different between the two platforms. I spend a lot of time both listening to music and searching through music. It's one of the ways I treat myself when I need some me time. I sit down and look up something that's recently resonated with me and everything related to it. One path sometimes turns into miles and miles of music. And each music platform creates different paths.
Here are my end of the year music stats. I do hope you share yours with me if you are a fan of Spotify and/or Apple Music!
First up, it looks like I love Spotify and Apple Music equally, which I love to see. It totally validates why I need both!
Top songs:
Turn It Up is probably the most balancing song for me. Anytime I felt out of sync this past year it was like a hug from the bass Gods. I sometimes found myself replicating some of the noises from this song when I was struggling with anxiety. It's therapy.
I really like Tartarus because it sounds like the song is throwing a rage tantrum, which is a feeling I was quite intimate with the past year or so. It's so incredibly cathartic. Do you need to throw a tantrum? Let this song take care of that for you. You will feel like you are growing your own calm.
A World of Our Own is just so stinking beautiful I can't even stand it. The crunchy sound is how I feel when all is right with the world. It's also just the right pace to take whatever it is you're carrying and do whatever exercise you do until what you're carrying turns into just your heartbeat, that crunchy strength.
I have loved Spiegel im Spiegel for a very long time. It's easily in my top twenty favorite songs. I love all versions of it, and it's one of the few songs I can listen to for hours. Viktor Orri Árnason's version is my favorite. The effort, resonance, reflection, and imperfections haven't been stripped away. It's like what Kendrick Lamar says in his song Humble, " Show me somethin' natural like ass with some stretch marks." This Spiegel im Spiegel has those stretch marks.
Come up on My Side - I really don't have a lot to say about this song. It's like music junk food. I find it very amusing that the song starts with the word, "shit." At least I hope that's what the word is, because I laugh every single time. I have tried to find lyrics for this song, but I'm glad I haven't looked too hard, because it sounds like some questionable things are being said.
There's a lot of sadness with "Shake and Stop," which was a song I used for spring storytimes, my last storytimes RIP. Am I sad nothing surpassed it in Apple Music? Nope! This was just the dedication and love I had for storytimes shining through. I used to sing my storytime songs to and from work, memorizing every little detail so that my mind could be freed up for the moments I couldn't plan, the fantastic, unbeatable chaos and energy of so many people uniting in their unique journeys.
Dread was the song that woke me up and helped me start healing again. I have only been listening to it since August, and it's the song that gets me going when nothing else will.
Apashe has been one of my top artists for the past few years. He's brilliant and takes music to places I've never been to before. Devil May Cry is a masterpiece. The build will literally lift your pulse right out of your body. Right around 2:00 is where your life will probably change, and 2:30 is when you will realize that the song has completely moved into your body.
Robert and I just got back from a very relaxing trip to Nashville, which we loved so much when we visited in 2023 that we had to go back!
Here are the best pictures from the trip!
The dogs needed the vacation the most, and they made every moment count. Lots of places in Nashville are dog friendly, so they even got to do some holiday shopping with us. If you don't like your holiday gift, it's probably because they picked it out!
On our way to Nashville (sort of) we visited my dad at the lake and then drove up to St. Louis to have lunch with one of my writing friends, Dale who moved there a few years ago.
Before lunch Robert and I explored the Missouri Botanical Garden, which we've never been to. While November isn't the best month to enjoy everything the gardens have to offer, it was the very first day of the model train exhibit. We were the first ones in the door too! We also spent time in the climatron and arid house, where I took an ungodly amount of pictures for future art inspiration.
Though I didn't get any pictures with Dale, he picked an excellent lunch spot, La Bonne Bouchée Patisserie & Cafe where I had the Salade niçoise, which had both anchovies and tuna! Why haven't I made this salad before? Every salad I make for a while is going to be some version of this. It was a wonderful lunch and so great to catch up with Dale, who has some wild stories and is writing them down for his family. Hint hint nudge nudge to my family!
The next day we drove to Nashville, and the very first thing we did was go to Guerilla Bizits, which has the best biscuits I've ever had in my life. I will spare you from a deluge of biscuit pictures, but I did find a pillow that matched my philosophy about life.
We spent the week eating biscuits, swimming at the hotel, and doing lots of holiday and book shopping. We also took a tour of the Nissan factory in Smyrna (sorry no picture taking allowed, so no pictures), and it was surprisingly fascinating. We recently added several factory tours to our list of places to see on our travel list, and if any of them are as interesting as Nissan, we might need to create a factory list! We learned the employees do different things at Nissan every day, so our plan is to do two tours on different days when we go back to Nashville. It was incredible to see how how all the different pieces of cars come together (I lost count of how many times they need to take doors off and on), learn about the history of the factory, and discover there are good robots who are programmed to shut down when they come in contact with a human and bad robots who are programmed to keep doing whatever it is they're supposed to do whether or not a human comes in contact with it. I'm sure Robert is rolling his eyes at this, because he got more than killer robot stories out of the tour.
How do I describe the food scene at Nashville? I know, I know this sounds like the beginning of an ode. In KC, if there are dairy-free options it's an afterthought and we only have a couple vegan restaurants who have stood the test of time. Nashville has many vegan restaurants and also restaurants who offer vegan or dairy-free items that are thoughtful and delicious. Nashville is passionate and creative about food, and I have yet to encounter another city that is better.
Recently, I have become aware that there is such a thing as vegan parmesan and it can be done in different ways. One of the coolest finds was discovering three kinds at a specialty store.
I have been collecting stickers for a while and am going to make myself a sticker collage to frame for my office. I couldn't turn down a potato slut sticker if I tried. Who thought of a potato slut sticker btw? How are we not best friends?
Nashville also has not one but two craft and art supply recycling stores. I know what you're saying. WHAT THE WHAT????
The first, Smart Art + Craft Supplies has a lot of yarn and fabric and more importantly, tubs and tubs of beads. The second, Turnip Green Creative Reuse is incredibly sacred to my heart because it focuses on the most useless, funked up bits of shit that you think nobody wants. Prescription bottles, piles of eraser nubs, shelves and shelves of fabric and paper swatch books. Turnip Green isn't afraid to sell stacks of expensive paper with a few doodles on them. There's so much you can do with castoffs and abandoned art. We have a place in KC called Scraps, and they started out this way, but over the years they have gotten more choosy with the stuff they sell and I no longer see all the weird tiddly bits (though they did have a barrel of doll heads the last time I went). One time, when Scraps was very new they had a huge paper box filled with castoff scraps of paper that were about the size of my palm. The paper was the kind of paper you find at fancy stationary stores. It was incredible luck for someone who makes collages with teeny tiny bits of leftover paper. Turnip Green embraces this kind of junk. They also don't have prices on anything. You just pay what you think it's worth. I was like ok, here's all my birthday money bitches. Take it all because I love you. Thankfully Robert was there to reign me in and remind me we needed room for the dogs to come back home with us.
Sadly, the piece of plane you see in one of the pictures is not for sale.
We also ate some epic BBQ (to balance out all the "chkn" and "tofuroni" and "nutnog"). Peg Leg Porker does something interesting with their rub. They put some on after it's been cooked. Anyone else do this?
We also stumbled upon a combination glassblowing coffee shop place (Glasshaus) and enjoyed watching glass being made. They were just starting to make cups and the plugs for decanters when we walked in, and one of the artists was creating a playlist for this. I love artists.
We hiked some too. We spent Thanksgiving letting the dogs spread their dog joy chaos throughout the woods.
And we "hibernated" a lot, which happens when we get tired very early (like 7 PM) and go back to the hotel and just let the dogs cuddle us to death. We both were wondering why we don't do more of this kind of lounging when we're at home, and I think it can be tough to ignore chores and work and laundry. This is what the dogs tell us anyway. They just have too many responsibilities to become professional hibernators.
If we weren't cuddling with the dogs, our dogs were quietly destroying the hotel room couch with their hair. I'll have to share my lint roller escapades in another post so this one doesn't get too long, but we didn't just flip the cushions over when we left (though we thought about it).
This blue couch is the reason Robert and I try to get everything in the Pantone color, Golden Retriever Splendor, which is the most luxurious of the wheat and camel colors.
On the way back I was grousing about taking the dogs out for a poo in a strange field behind a gas station. It was SO cold! And then the entire field erupted around us and we were caught in the middle of a murmuration. I am still trying to find the words to describe this.
This collage was supposed to be spontaneous, but these two birds insisted on a plan. As I was tearing up the pieces for this collage, the word, "comfort" kept coming up from multiple types of tea. These birds are very serious about their job to bring comfort, but they are also mischievous birds, as birds made from painted paper plate scraps and tea materials usually are. One had an angry eye for a while, and well, that wasn't very comforting, so they shopped the tea papers a bit more until a more comforting option was found.
Though there are other papers in this piece, including hairy papers that were simply up to no good, this piece contains a lot of tea bags - Bigelow, Yogi, Pukka, Celestial Seasonings, Harney & Sons, Choice Organics, Organic India, Stash, and Tazo, which was mostly used to inform the pattern on the Comforting Chamomile bird.
These flowers grew at about the same time but in different places.
I was in the mood to cut shapes, so that's what I did! I used a flower picture from a long-ago hike outside of Salt Lake City. I remember looking at the picture of the flower and thinking about how the background was stealing the show.
I used many recycled papers - a silver and peach perfume box, unused pastry bags from Paris, an endpaper from a damaged book, a Starbucks gift card holder, tea packaging, and even some old thank you cards. Included is one small piece of a print from a licorice box that completely jazzes me up. I love the licorice print so much I would probably use it as wallpaper somewhere if it was possible. Can you guess where the licorice print is?
Also included is the last Kew Gardens coffee sleeve from our trip to London/Paris in 2019. The coffee sleeves were not only this calming yellow, but the paper itself was buttery and crackled so beautifully when used. Can you find the word, "Kew?" How about, "Make a difference?" Those are from my very last Kew coffee sleeve. I will never feel uncomfortable asking for a few extra coffee sleeves or various papers from places again.
This embroidered flower was my sidekick for a couple months. It went to Florida with Robert and me when we visited family. It went to my first art show, so I could keep my hands busy and my anxiety muted. I used up some leftover thread and let it grow how it wanted to. I like to think it's one of those healing flowers.
This collage grew from another rejected collage that was scraped and sanded down. Interestingly enough, I went into the first collage with zero direction and the collage withered and died. The second time I went into the collage, I knew only that I wanted green and purple to work together as a background. Later, during a walk I saw the slime of a snail trail lit up in the purple dusk and I knew what the purple and green were going to support. The original slime color wasn't going to stand out enough, so that is how snail slime morphed into blooms. I didn't know all the steps going into this piece, and I think that was a bold place to live for someone who likes a plan or scheduled moments of spontaneity.
This collage is made entirely of tea packaging (tags, bags, and boxes): Taylors, Yogi, Allegro, Stash, Bigelow, Pukka, Harney & Sons, English Tea Shop, Choice Organics, Teavana, and I'm sure some others I'm missing.
