I admit it, I'm a freak for cards. I can happily spend an hour in the cardstore searching for the perfect card or boxed set - at least, I could before I had two kids. Now I'm lucky if I get fifteen seconds to grab the first thing that catches my eye before someone needs a drink, a pacifier, a time out or (more frequently) to go potty. In recent years, I've bought our Christmas cards from our local warehouse store - it was quick, it was easy, and I'd be going there anyway so no special trip required. The quality was OK, the selection was OK, but nothing to write home about.
This year, I tossed around the idea of making cards - a beautiful pipe dream, but again with two kids, it's probably not going to happen. We're not members of the warehouse store anymore. I started thinking about ordering cards online and then I happened upon an offer from Shutterfly - 50 free holiday cards for bloggers! (If you follow me on Facebook, you already know since I statused it earlier.) I've drooled over their photo books for years, and was anxious to see what their card selection was like, so I hopped on over and...
O.M.G. The selection is fabulous! They've got classic holiday cards, contemporary/modern holiday cards, nondenominational holiday cards, Christian Christmas cards - they've even got holiday cards that tell a story *and* thank you cards for all those fabulous gifts under the tree!
The colors are luscious - deep black, chocolate brown, hollyberry red and mistletoe green, pink and blue and in-between. How many photos to include? One photo? Two? Five? Do I want a 4x8 card? A 5x5? Glossy finish, matte or stationery? Where to start? And then, I spotted a card that ordinarily I might miss - and I couldn't look away.
Seriously - check it out. The Elegant Pearl Christmas Card. White is the perfect backdrop for color photos or black and white, for those night shots of the kids meeting Santa's train or close ups of the lighted Christmas tree. The script greeting is a great little pop of color that registers without overwhelming. It's classic and timeless and fabulous. I'm also debating With Love Chartreuse (depending on what shots I can get - i.e., how cooperative the kids are) - it's bright and cheery and packed with photo punch, plus it's a folding card so there's room on the inside for more photos and holiday wishes. Love it!
If you want to order your own Elegant Pearl or With Love cards or another design of your choosing, Shutterfly is offering 20% off all holiday cards! Go now and see. Why are you still reading? Go! :)
Tuesday, November 2, 2010
Saturday, October 9, 2010
Last Letter published
This is HUGE. In the scope of the Plath/Hughes pantheon, this is practically unheard of in terms of forthrightness. I am stunned by this discovery, and not surprised that Ted Hughes did not want this to be seen until after his death.
“Last Letter” by Ted Hughes
What happened that night? Your final night.
Double, treble exposure
Over everything. Late afternoon, Friday,
My last sight of you alive.
Burning your letter to me, in the ashtray,
With that strange smile. Had I bungled your plan?
Had it surprised me sooner than you purposed?
Had I rushed it back to you too promptly?
One hour later—-you would have been gone
Where I could not have traced you.
I would have turned from your locked red door
That nobody would open
Still holding your letter,
A thunderbolt that could not earth itself.
That would have been electric shock treatment
For me.
Repeated over and over, all weekend,
As often as I read it, or thought of it.
That would have remade my brains, and my life.
The treatment that you planned needed some time.
I cannot imagine
How I would have got through that weekend.
I cannot imagine. Had you plotted it all?
Your note reached me too soon—-that same day,
Friday afternoon, posted in the morning.
The prevalent devils expedited it.
That was one more straw of ill-luck
Drawn against you by the Post-Office
And added to your load. I moved fast,
Through the snow-blue, February, London twilight.
Wept with relief when you opened the door.
A huddle of riddles in solution. Precocious tears
That failed to interpret to me, failed to divulge
Their real import. But what did you say
Over the smoking shards of that letter
So carefully annihilated, so calmly,
That let me release you, and leave you
To blow its ashes off your plan—-off the ashtray
Against which you would lean for me to read
The Doctor’s phone-number.
My escape
Had become such a hunted thing
Sleepless, hopeless, all its dreams exhausted,
Only wanting to be recaptured, only
Wanting to drop, out of its vacuum.
Two days of dangling nothing. Two days gratis.
Two days in no calendar, but stolen
From no world,
Beyond actuality, feeling, or name.
My love-life grabbed it. My numbed love-life
With its two mad needles,
Embroidering their rose, piercing and tugging
At their tapestry, their bloody tattoo
Somewhere behind my navel,
Treading that morass of emblazon,
Two mad needles, criss-crossing their stitches,
Selecting among my nerves
For their colours, refashioning me
Inside my own skin, each refashioning the other
With their self-caricatures,
Their obsessed in and out. Two women
Each with her needle.
That night
My dellarobbia Susan. I moved
With the circumspection
Of a flame in a fuse. My whole fury
Was an abandoned effort to blow up
The old globe where shadows bent over
My telltale track of ashes. I raced
From and from, face backwards, a film reversed,
Towards what? We went to Rugby St
Where you and I began.
Why did we go there? Of all places
Why did we go there? Perversity
In the artistry of our fate
Adjusted its refinements for you, for me
And for Susan. Solitaire
Played by the Minotaur of that maze
Even included Helen, in the ground-floor flat.
You had noted her—-a girl for a story.
You never met her. Few ever met her,
Except across the ears and raving mask
Of her Alsatian. You had not even glimpsed her.
You had only recoiled
When her demented animal crashed its weight
Against her door, as we slipped through the hallway;
And heard it choking on infinite German hatred.
That Sunday night she eased her door open
Its few permitted inches.
Susan greeted the black eyes, the unhappy
Overweight, lovely face, that peeped out
Across the little chain. The door closed.
We heard her consoling her jailor
Inside her cell, its kennel, where, days later,
She gassed her ferocious kupo, and herself.
Susan and I spent that night
In our wedding bed. I had not seen it
Since we lay there on our wedding day.
I did not take her back to my own bed.
It had occurred to me, your weekend over,
You might appear—-a surprise visitation.
Did you appear, to tap at my dark window?
So I stayed with Susan, hiding from you,
In our own wedding bed—-the same from which
Within three years she would be taken to die
In that same hospital where, within twelve hours,
I would find you dead.
Monday morning
I drove her to work, in the City,
Then parked my van North of Euston Road
And returned to where my telephone waited.
What happened that night, inside your hours,
Is as unknown as if it never happened.
What accumulation of your whole life,
Like effort unconscious, like birth
Pushing through the membrane of each slow second
Into the next, happened
Only as if it could not happen,
As if it was not happening. How often
Did the phone ring there in my empty room,
You hearing the ring in your receiver—-
At both ends the fading memory
Of a telephone ringing, in a brain
As if already dead. I count
How often you walked to the phone-booth
At the bottom of St George’s terrace.
You are there whenever I look, just turning
Out of Fitzroy Road, crossing over
Between the heaped up banks of dirty sugar.
In your long black coat,
With your plait coiled up at the back of your hair
You walk unable to move, or wake, and are
Already nobody walking
Walking by the railings under Primrose Hill
Towards the phone booth that can never be reached.
Before midnight. After midnight. Again.
Again. Again. And, near dawn, again.
At what position of the hands on my watch-face
Did your last attempt,
Already deeply past
My being able to hear it, shake the pillow
Of that empty bed? A last time
Lightly touch at my books, and my papers?
By the time I got there my phone was asleep.
The pillow innocent. My room slept,
Already filled with the snowlit morning light.
I lit my fire. I had got out my papers.
And I had started to write when the telephone
Jerked awake, in a jabbering alarm,
Remembering everything. It recovered in my hand.
Then a voice like a selected weapon
Or a measured injection,
Coolly delivered its four words
Deep into my ear: ‘Your wife is dead.’
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x9275566
“Last Letter” by Ted Hughes
What happened that night? Your final night.
Double, treble exposure
Over everything. Late afternoon, Friday,
My last sight of you alive.
Burning your letter to me, in the ashtray,
With that strange smile. Had I bungled your plan?
Had it surprised me sooner than you purposed?
Had I rushed it back to you too promptly?
One hour later—-you would have been gone
Where I could not have traced you.
I would have turned from your locked red door
That nobody would open
Still holding your letter,
A thunderbolt that could not earth itself.
That would have been electric shock treatment
For me.
Repeated over and over, all weekend,
As often as I read it, or thought of it.
That would have remade my brains, and my life.
The treatment that you planned needed some time.
I cannot imagine
How I would have got through that weekend.
I cannot imagine. Had you plotted it all?
Your note reached me too soon—-that same day,
Friday afternoon, posted in the morning.
The prevalent devils expedited it.
That was one more straw of ill-luck
Drawn against you by the Post-Office
And added to your load. I moved fast,
Through the snow-blue, February, London twilight.
Wept with relief when you opened the door.
A huddle of riddles in solution. Precocious tears
That failed to interpret to me, failed to divulge
Their real import. But what did you say
Over the smoking shards of that letter
So carefully annihilated, so calmly,
That let me release you, and leave you
To blow its ashes off your plan—-off the ashtray
Against which you would lean for me to read
The Doctor’s phone-number.
My escape
Had become such a hunted thing
Sleepless, hopeless, all its dreams exhausted,
Only wanting to be recaptured, only
Wanting to drop, out of its vacuum.
Two days of dangling nothing. Two days gratis.
Two days in no calendar, but stolen
From no world,
Beyond actuality, feeling, or name.
My love-life grabbed it. My numbed love-life
With its two mad needles,
Embroidering their rose, piercing and tugging
At their tapestry, their bloody tattoo
Somewhere behind my navel,
Treading that morass of emblazon,
Two mad needles, criss-crossing their stitches,
Selecting among my nerves
For their colours, refashioning me
Inside my own skin, each refashioning the other
With their self-caricatures,
Their obsessed in and out. Two women
Each with her needle.
That night
My dellarobbia Susan. I moved
With the circumspection
Of a flame in a fuse. My whole fury
Was an abandoned effort to blow up
The old globe where shadows bent over
My telltale track of ashes. I raced
From and from, face backwards, a film reversed,
Towards what? We went to Rugby St
Where you and I began.
Why did we go there? Of all places
Why did we go there? Perversity
In the artistry of our fate
Adjusted its refinements for you, for me
And for Susan. Solitaire
Played by the Minotaur of that maze
Even included Helen, in the ground-floor flat.
You had noted her—-a girl for a story.
You never met her. Few ever met her,
Except across the ears and raving mask
Of her Alsatian. You had not even glimpsed her.
You had only recoiled
When her demented animal crashed its weight
Against her door, as we slipped through the hallway;
And heard it choking on infinite German hatred.
That Sunday night she eased her door open
Its few permitted inches.
Susan greeted the black eyes, the unhappy
Overweight, lovely face, that peeped out
Across the little chain. The door closed.
We heard her consoling her jailor
Inside her cell, its kennel, where, days later,
She gassed her ferocious kupo, and herself.
Susan and I spent that night
In our wedding bed. I had not seen it
Since we lay there on our wedding day.
I did not take her back to my own bed.
It had occurred to me, your weekend over,
You might appear—-a surprise visitation.
Did you appear, to tap at my dark window?
So I stayed with Susan, hiding from you,
In our own wedding bed—-the same from which
Within three years she would be taken to die
In that same hospital where, within twelve hours,
I would find you dead.
Monday morning
I drove her to work, in the City,
Then parked my van North of Euston Road
And returned to where my telephone waited.
What happened that night, inside your hours,
Is as unknown as if it never happened.
What accumulation of your whole life,
Like effort unconscious, like birth
Pushing through the membrane of each slow second
Into the next, happened
Only as if it could not happen,
As if it was not happening. How often
Did the phone ring there in my empty room,
You hearing the ring in your receiver—-
At both ends the fading memory
Of a telephone ringing, in a brain
As if already dead. I count
How often you walked to the phone-booth
At the bottom of St George’s terrace.
You are there whenever I look, just turning
Out of Fitzroy Road, crossing over
Between the heaped up banks of dirty sugar.
In your long black coat,
With your plait coiled up at the back of your hair
You walk unable to move, or wake, and are
Already nobody walking
Walking by the railings under Primrose Hill
Towards the phone booth that can never be reached.
Before midnight. After midnight. Again.
Again. Again. And, near dawn, again.
At what position of the hands on my watch-face
Did your last attempt,
Already deeply past
My being able to hear it, shake the pillow
Of that empty bed? A last time
Lightly touch at my books, and my papers?
By the time I got there my phone was asleep.
The pillow innocent. My room slept,
Already filled with the snowlit morning light.
I lit my fire. I had got out my papers.
And I had started to write when the telephone
Jerked awake, in a jabbering alarm,
Remembering everything. It recovered in my hand.
Then a voice like a selected weapon
Or a measured injection,
Coolly delivered its four words
Deep into my ear: ‘Your wife is dead.’
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x9275566
Friday, September 24, 2010
Get Sketchy!
If I were going to design a baby shower invitation based on a movie premiere, this would be it. Based on Get Sketchy #56 (http://getsketchy.blogspot.com/2010/09/gs-56.html), this was a whole lot of fun to make - thanks to Summer for pointing me toward such a fabulous contest!
Monday, September 20, 2010
Changes for the holidays
It's almost the equinox, folks. How crazy is that? Where does the time go? Why do I always feel like quoting Monty Python right about this same time every year? "A year passed: winter changed into spring, spring changed into summer, summer changed back into winter, and winter gave spring and summer a miss and went straight on into autumn... until one day..."
The questions, they have no answers.
At the same time that I'm considering simplifying lots of things around me, I'm planning on ramping up others. Like the holidays. Most years we just send out a printed photo card from Sams Club - and that's fine.
But to paraphrase Dr. Seuss - "maybe [the holidays] mean a little bit more". So I'm thinking handmade cards for Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas. Yep. And more handmade gifts, quite possibly personalized by the kids. And food gifts.
Because really - don't we all have enough brightly colored plastic bits around the house already?
What are you planning to do for gifts and cards this holiday season? Any particularly awesome ideas or recipes to share?
The questions, they have no answers.
At the same time that I'm considering simplifying lots of things around me, I'm planning on ramping up others. Like the holidays. Most years we just send out a printed photo card from Sams Club - and that's fine.
But to paraphrase Dr. Seuss - "maybe [the holidays] mean a little bit more". So I'm thinking handmade cards for Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas. Yep. And more handmade gifts, quite possibly personalized by the kids. And food gifts.
Because really - don't we all have enough brightly colored plastic bits around the house already?
What are you planning to do for gifts and cards this holiday season? Any particularly awesome ideas or recipes to share?
Saturday, August 21, 2010
Journeys
So: lots of new things going on in ye olde brain.
First, I am doing my best to rid my life of time sinks that get me nowhere (yes, I'm talking about you, pointless yet incredibly addicting Facebook games). I have a brain (a pretty good one, in fact, and one I spent a lot of time cultivating) that is so not challenged by "ooh, look - a rain god tiki head! click! click! I can level up my glass of water recipe to one that looks exactly the same! click! click! click! crap, I'm out of energy - must visit other farms so I can continue growing pretty pixels!" So yeah: not doing those anymore. I may slowly reintegrate them but I need to complete my 12-step Clickers Anonymous program first.
Second, I actually scrapped last night - at home. This has not happened in forever. Hopefully it will continue! I would love to get Ian's book done, or at least brought up to date.
Third, I'm writing again. But more on that later.
Fourth, working on getting the house in good working order so it just takes a little time each day to look awesome!
Fifth: I've taken a few steps on a faith journey.
All of these things conspire to make me happy.
What are you all up to?
First, I am doing my best to rid my life of time sinks that get me nowhere (yes, I'm talking about you, pointless yet incredibly addicting Facebook games). I have a brain (a pretty good one, in fact, and one I spent a lot of time cultivating) that is so not challenged by "ooh, look - a rain god tiki head! click! click! I can level up my glass of water recipe to one that looks exactly the same! click! click! click! crap, I'm out of energy - must visit other farms so I can continue growing pretty pixels!" So yeah: not doing those anymore. I may slowly reintegrate them but I need to complete my 12-step Clickers Anonymous program first.
Second, I actually scrapped last night - at home. This has not happened in forever. Hopefully it will continue! I would love to get Ian's book done, or at least brought up to date.
Third, I'm writing again. But more on that later.
Fourth, working on getting the house in good working order so it just takes a little time each day to look awesome!
Fifth: I've taken a few steps on a faith journey.
All of these things conspire to make me happy.
What are you all up to?
Wednesday, August 11, 2010
Things, things everywhere and no place to put them.
I know most of you feel my pain - the pain of too.much.stuff. and not.enough.space. NEVER enough space. I think that's why I love photography so much - pictures (particularly digital ones) take up very little space and they can be fit anywhere: on a wall, leaning on a mantel, tucked under the rim of a bulletin board. Of course, all the *stuff* that goes along with my photography habit (namely, my scrapbooking habit) is copious - but more on that in a moment.
And so, in the name of gathering toys together to pass on to a friend, I have come up with some goals for myself - and a question for all of you.
1. Reduce. My stuff (and the kids'). By at least 25 percent.
2. Reorganize. Make better use of the space we have.
3. Redecorate. OK, so this one is kind of a cheat, as I've already started. We're painting the house and doing all the things that (had we been smarter) we would have done almost nine years ago when we moved in. Yay housing market collapse! :(
What are you holding on to, and why? Take it as abstract as you want. It can be a flowerpot that you painted when you were six that doesn't go with your decor *at all* but you love it because it's bright and cheerful and it reminds you of when school meant pencil boxes and papier mache and those thick jars of glue. Or it could be the weight of the world. Your call. But tell me - I wanna know!
And a picture from this afternoon of Missy whacking herself on the head with a flower. Love that girl.
And so, in the name of gathering toys together to pass on to a friend, I have come up with some goals for myself - and a question for all of you.
1. Reduce. My stuff (and the kids'). By at least 25 percent.
2. Reorganize. Make better use of the space we have.
3. Redecorate. OK, so this one is kind of a cheat, as I've already started. We're painting the house and doing all the things that (had we been smarter) we would have done almost nine years ago when we moved in. Yay housing market collapse! :(
What are you holding on to, and why? Take it as abstract as you want. It can be a flowerpot that you painted when you were six that doesn't go with your decor *at all* but you love it because it's bright and cheerful and it reminds you of when school meant pencil boxes and papier mache and those thick jars of glue. Or it could be the weight of the world. Your call. But tell me - I wanna know!
And a picture from this afternoon of Missy whacking herself on the head with a flower. Love that girl.
Sunday, August 1, 2010
A question for Sunday
Before I head off to Target to check on the clearanced toys, a question: What's one craft you've been wanting to do, and what's been stopping you from doing it? It can be a specific project, or a type of crafting - anything. What's on your mind that needs to be out of your hands?
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