Rainy Afternoon

It’s raining outside.

After an overlong winter, the steady rain is a relief.  While it does rain a substantial amount in the fall, I somehow always associate it with spring and summer.  Maybe that’s because spring doesn’t seem to officially arrive until after the first thunderstorm.  Maybe it’s because of summer nights I huddled in the front seat of my boyfriend’s car when pouring rain drove us away from our bench outside the library.  Maybe it’s because the final days I spent at home before going away to college for the first time are punctuated with rain in my memory.

Maybe it’s just because fall isn’t as important to me as spring and summer are.  I was born in the spring, a season filled with tulips and possibilities.  My goddaughter was born in the same season this last year, and I wonder if she and I will share delight in new gardens as she grows.

If spring is the potential, then summer is the realization.  I fell in love in the summer, each and every time I fell in love with my boyfriend.  We held hands at the carnival and read to each other in the middle of the woods.  He first kissed me on a July evening.  It wasn’t raining then, and as the sun set, everything was bathed in my favorite shade of golden light.

I believe that summer will forever be my favorite.

I don’t like being cold.  I tolerate it, for I live up north, and snow has a certain charm, as do outdoor football games and Christmas light shows and thawing out indoors afterwards, with lots of blankets and hot chocolate.

I don’t like being cold, but I don’t mind being wet.  In the summer and late spring, it’s warm enough outside for me to go out in the rain and not be miserable.  Rain changes every activity, walking, gardening, swimming, listening, and every activity becomes something just a little bit different.

The light itself is different, and I find it healing when I’ve been overwhelmed.

I love watching water, water in oceans, water in rivers, water in puddles, water falling from on high.  I love feeling it on my face, I love listening to it, I love being close to it and being separated, warm and distant.

Above all, I love doing what I’m doing right now, sitting with a mug of tea, working on a small project of some sort, staring out the window, with my rainy day music playing softly in the background.

I wish you rain in your day as well.

7 Quick Takes: Feast/Fast

Once again, I’m joining Jen.

(Rhyming make my life happier.  So do all of the 7 Quick Takes at Conversion Diary. So do readers who make it through my especially long quick takes.  Sorry for that.)

-1-

Does anyone else have whiplash from this week?  I take my Mardi Gras & Paczki Day celebrations seriously, so Tuesday saw me eating delicious, fatty, sugary fruit-filled pastries and juicy hamburgers.  Well… one of each.  I’m kind of a lightweight.  But there was definitely junk food and definitely meat.  Party!

And then there was Ash Wednesday, and there wasn’t very much food at all.  With the start of Lent, I say goodbye to meat until Easter.  I might not be totally abstaining from it this year, but I will not be seeing much of it.

But then it was Thursday, St. Valentine’s Day!  I love Valentine’s Day, because I love lots of people.  I think we as a human race can always use an excuse to tell the people in our lives how much we value them.  So, for me, Valentine’s Day is not just about romance, but about family & friendship & the strangers you meet on the street & yourself.  So I celebrated in a variety of ways all week.

Now, it’s a Friday in Lent.  Like I said… this week gives me whiplash.

-2-

I feel like that first take really works as two (you know, one take for feast & one for fast), so I’m skipping this one.

-3-

next step- the zipper! *cue dramatic music*

I had planned to finish my dress in time to wear to my Valentine’s activities on Thursday night.  Then I ran out of thread.

So here’s another picture of a partly finished dress.  All it’s missing now is a zipper and a hem.  I’m a little nervous about the zipper, because more than one person with way more sewing experience than I laughed nervously when I told them that my “very easy” pattern had a zipper.

I have been warned to follow the directions very exactly and not to take any shortcuts even if someone else or the pattern itself tells me that it’s an option.

Follow me on Twitter to get every update in all their gritty glory.

-4-

My boyfriend and I did spend some time yesterday devoted just to our relationship, and he did get me a real gift: an ironing board.

This sounds awful, in fact, so awful that he asked some of his female friends in advance if I would be legally obligated to beat him for getting me a household tool for Valentine’s Day.

What makes it actually delightful is the fact that the ironing board I have now is about 18 inches long, 3 inches high and barely padded.  It makes my sewing projects a literal pain as I hunch over it, ironing yards and yards of fabric, pressing seams & redoing it all 15 minutes later.  I had been complaining, and so my boyfriend got me a nicer one in order to help along my creative endeavors.

An ironing board to sew fun dresses is much nicer than an ironing board to do laundry.

Plus it has polka dots, which is just really cool.

-5-

Of course, my boyfriend also got me a bouquet of tulips, my favorite flower.

big red bow and all! ❤

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Some friends of mine compete in a trivia competition every Thursday evening, and when I can, I join them.  Last night, the woman who runs the competition read a question that asked which “New England city” is known as “the city of brotherly love”.  Now, this is a really easy trivia question, but as we raced our answer in, I protested: Philadelphia is not in New England.

Some of my friends quibbled with my surety.  So I pitched the question on Facebook, especially asking the input of my Philly-area friends.

The comment thread in response to this post has evolved to discussing the names of regions across the whole US, with several friends & family members, none of whom know all of the others, chiming in.  It is making me so happy to read.  This kind of thing is why I love social media so much.

-7-

It goes without saying that I love all of those people in the above take, and indeed, all of my friends and family, but I’m going to say it anyway:

I love you all, my family, my friends, and you, my readers.  Thank you for reading, for responding, and for making my days so much cheerier and so less lonely.

Happy Valentine’s Day, and a Blessed Lent.

Love,
Dill