Lovelihood

I find myself whistling that old Porgy and Bess standard "Summertime" a lot lately. You know, that one about the living being easy. And The Mr. and I regularly marvel at how good life has been to us. Enjoying a pleasant dinner with our usual bottle of wine on the back deck on a pleasantly climed night, it hits home that we are home. And wouldn't it be nice if it could stay this way forever?

The other half of yesterday's haul, the proof press, sat in the trunk of our little car until we worked up the energy to heft it out and into a cool corner in the basement. I've been saying it's the heaviest thing I've ever carried (with help). And while I'm not entirely sure about the veracity of that statement, I do know that the car, when I took it out to the store afterward, was notably happier for not having the press weighing the trunk down over the rear axle. In the press' near future will be a good deep cleaning.

There's irony here. I've spent my entire career working in print media. And while the modern (you might call it dying) era of print is far removed from the days of metal type and hand-cranked presses — I mean, my relationship with it is through a computer screen, fercryinoutloud — it's still, you know, the same basic concept. Ink and paper and reproduction and all that. Mr. New Media, on the other hand, has spent his entire career parsing out lines of code designed to erradicate my entire line of work. And somehow it was at his work that he came across a back-breaking boxful of headline-sized Helvetica bits and an ancient beast of a proof press sitting in a forgotton corner next to the garage. And he knew enough to call me down to haul it away, with the proper permissions, of course. Because what were their plans for it? Sell it off as scrap metal, to be smelted down for, I don't know, computer parts or something. I guess that's not ironic at all.

Finished the latest sashiko swatch. I've got no idea what this one, and hopefully a slew of similarly alphabetic motifs, will conspire to be. Likely, it will just hang on the boards for a few months gathering dust while interest in other projects waxes and wanes.

Nestled in amongst the visual mishmash of our books, so that you might not even see them if you weren't looking, are two of my latest artistic acqusitions in pastels, fingerpaints and glitter. Love.

For months the darkest corner of the house was the one our couch sits in. A lovely couch it is, custom ordered once the paychecks started rolling in again, a spot designed for lounging with a crossword puzzle or settling in with some needlework. That is, if there were enough light to make out anything between my face and the television. And I've got some binding to sew onto my latest project. So lighting that corner pushed its way up the priority chain this weekend, and we headed down to Ikea to pick up my favorite lamp, one we've previously owned and failed to move with us. You've likely seen it a million different times in magazines and other people's homes. Maybe even your own home. Not exactly an original. But I like the shape and life of it, even while I dream of brewing up some lighting concoction out of mason jars and cardboard tubes. Some other unlit corner, perhaps.

The children's haul from Valentine's Day, all strewn across the table is a pretty pleasing sight, even as we're trying to tidy up for the night. It's the first year that most of the Valentines were hand-addressed by fellow kids, and seeing The Boy's name in another child's snaky scrawl is a rather sweet thing. The Boy, of course, has no appreciation for this, instead fixating on the Skittles and fold-up racecar, which are admittedly far cooler than penmanship of even the highest degree.