As many of you know, lately we’ve been looking at houses for sale and last week we put an offer on one beautiful row house in the Near Northeast/Old City area. Our initial offer was accepted and so we’re moving forward with paperwork, inspections, and great amounts of excitement! And, wow, at the risk of jinxing ourselves, is this first-time homebuyer experience starting off wayyy too easy?
So anyways, I’ve been thinking about paint colors for the living room, gigantic kitchen, 2.5 baths, and 3 bedrooms that are soon to become ours. What do you all think of this yellow door color? Too much?! Maybe just a little… More seriously though, I am digging these wall stencils from Cutting Edge Stencils. I’m definitely thinking we should do something a little bold with at least one of the rooms.
But all that will come with time. Moving in and customizing is going to be a fun task, though overwhelming to think about at the moment. It will definitely be a piece-by-piece project, but that’s part of the reason we chose to buy a place that has room for fixing up as we go but is still totally livable right now.
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poetry
September 30th, 2010
When you were a kid, if you were like me, your favorite poems were ones that rhymed or were written by Shel Silverstein. That was about the extent of it.
In high school, I remember one English class, we all thought our teacher was so cool for playing Aerosmith’s “Dream On” and explaining that songs were poems, too. I’m not sure why I never realized that until that moment, but it was one of those “ah-ha” things. I think after that, I liked poetry much more, whether the words were technically songs or otherwise.
At our wedding this past May, we chose to have a poem read as part of the ceremony. It was Pathways by Rainer Maria Rilke. My dad had given that poem, those same words, to my mom when they started dating, and it was always meaningful to them. I liked that it was special to them, and the words are simple. Sometimes I can’t appreciate a poem that has to be read 5 times to make any sense. Since then, I’ve had Rilke bookmarked and have pulled up different poems to read from time to time, usually during moments of great procrastination.
Today, I pulled up this one and wanted to post it. Feels depressing, until you get to the end.
Autumn
The leaves are falling, falling as if from far up,
as if orchards were dying high in space.
Each leaf falls as if it were motioning “no.”
And tonight the heavy earth is falling
away from all other stars in the loneliness.
We’re all falling. This hand here is falling.
And look at the other one. It’s in them all.
And yet there is Someone, whose hands
infinitely calm, holding up all this falling.
We hope everyone had a nice, long labor day weekend. Weather-wise, it was just gahhh-geous dahhhling. We spent much of it relaxing, doing schoolwork, and watching college football, of course. Matt also found some time to scan the fujichrome sensia 200 slide film that came back in the mail last week. The results include this shot, from an alleyway in Capitol Hill, where we had been wandering sometime last month. I happened to look up and see a few birds perched on the lowest window sill, and then suddenly we realized the whole side of the building was covered in them. It was a very creepy Hitchcockian moment. The birds were all so quiet that we could have passed through the alley, looking at the ground, and never noticed the entire flock staring down at us. Freaky!
Lots of backyard greenery going on here… I love this little oasis! Especially the flower boxes on the very upper railing. Good place to sit and have a cup of morning tea.
So how funny is this sign? It definitely has a little bit of a ransom-note feel to it, with the mixing of all the various sized letters and spacing. Maybe it’s just me… but I think I’d rather have the occasional recyclable(s) in my driveway than having to look at the words on this sign every day. NO DUMPING. I mean, isn’t this information already implied by the rules of being a good human being and refraining from putting junk in your neighbors driveway??? They should have at least implied some sort of fine or penalty for breaking these rules, like “Our dog will bite your leg if you dump boxes here.”
The people who leave trash in random places are the kind of people who don’t obey signs anyways. These same people who have been leaving mattresses in our alleyway — 3 including a set of bed springs in the last two weeks — and I’m pretty sure that a “no mattresses” sign wouldn’t have changed anything, besides clogging the visual landscape with another sign.
Now if you’ll excuse me while I go listen to some Tesla.
It’s just one of those days. Your wagon tips over and you just don’t have the energy to set it upright. Poor wagon. Probably should have checked to make sure there wasn’t a puppy or kitteh or something toppled over on the other side…
