friday finds

I cannot work out the pace of weeks; I cannot work out if in removing certain things from my days, they are getting longer or shorter...

...does anyone else have this weird, tilting feeling, during the week? As though you are racing yourself to a finish line, or a goal, that doesn't really exist? Two day rest-breaks in a marathon of life.

I like to read Stephen Fry's Twitter feed, especially when he posts pictures like this. What a cool alumni of people!

Few things have stunned me more than these photographs of Iceland.

What a good idea!

Interesting article about what deems a book a classic/the idea of personal classics.

A necklace that I have more than fallen in love with.

I hope you have a lovely weekend.

I will be reading A Comedy Of Errors - before seeing it, live, next week - and then trying to make sense of it. If Shakespeare has taught me anything, it is how wide the chasm between reading and understanding dilates...

And on Monday it will hopefully, hopefully be time for a little Valentine's Day date! (Even though I don't really believe in it - a statement which seems to be such a cliché in itself nowadays - I don't think I will ever, ever give up the opportunity to spend time with my love).

reading lives

The other day this lovely, lovely lady named me as being one of several bloggers she deemed the most stylish. (There was an image, too, but for some reason technology is completely and utterly failing me right now). It was a nice day and I am grateful. It is so good to know that your words---even if you are not expecting them to, even if you don't, as you write, know who you are declaring them to---are being read and empathised with in some way.

The idea, anyway, is that in being recognised by someone else, you declare seven facts about yourself and then flag up the blogs you, yourself, particularly favour. (You're supposed to nominate fifteen blogs, apparently, but because I like to even up the numbers, I am going to do seven of each, instead).

So.

Me, in numbers.

1. Although I have lived in England for most of my life, I was originally born in Canada. It explains my love of winter, my sometimes off-pronunciation and my penchant for maple syrup.

2. Quite often, I still talk to a bear---mostly when I have had a bad day and often when I can't sleep and Arnold isn't with me. And because of the truth that is in this image, I am perfectly, perfectly okay with it. His name is Benjamin. He is a good little guy with a super heroic heart.

3. I had a fear of holes as a child.

4. My favourite flavour is mint.

5. I obsess over things. Worries and fears, mostly. But a lot of the time, it is also with sheer amazement at people's talent and wisdom.

6. Where I can, I like to collect first-editions of my favourite books or books by my favourite authors. And then refuse to lend them to people---unless they are as like-mindedly anal about book spines or creased corners.

7. Sometimes I like to recite movie lines. My favourites to say are "Do they have large talons?" and "Can you bring me my chapstick?" from Napoleon Dynamite. It doesn't get old.

...

And here are seven of the lives I read most about.

Taza and Husband

The Wild And Wily Ways Of A Brunette Bombshell

The NeoTraditionalist

Joie Butter

Le Love*

Forgotten Bookmarks

Andrew And Carissa

*Le Love isn't a personal blog, as such, but a collection of people's love-stories. Only they're not really love-stories, they are more like heart-aches. The negatives far outweigh the positive, happily-ever-after love-stories that so many of us aim for. But do you know what? It makes me appreciate love that much more. It makes me yearn for the happily-ever-after, and, I'm sure, will make me treasure it more, right through 'til the end.

february's bakes

The bake sale a couple of weeks ago was deemed a success, thankfully. As a result, we had another little one today.

Red Velvet Cupcakes are pretty much all the rage right now---although I confess to preferring Cookies'n'Cream when I had one from Harrods---so I thought I'd try making some.

They're kind of seasonal, too, which is a bonus.

Another recipe down.

heights

"I cannot express it; but surely you and every body have a notion that there is, or should be, an existence of yours beyond you. What were the use of my creation if I were entirely contained here? My great miseries in this world have been Heathcliff's miseries, and I watched and felt each from the beginning; my great thought in living is himself. If all else perished and he remained, I should still continue to be; and if all else remained, and he were annihilated, the universe would turn into a mighty stranger. I should not seem a part of it. My love for Linton is like the foliage in the woods. Time will change it, I'm well aware, as winter changes the trees. My love for Heathcliff resembles the eternal rocks beneath - a source of little visible delight, but necessary. I am Heathcliff - he's always, always in my mind - not as a pleasure any more than I am always a pleasure to myself - but as my own being. So don't talk of our separation again." Wuthering Heights, Emily Bronte.

Stumbling across passages like this reminds me why I read at all.

Because it articulates, more eloquently than I ever, ever can, the things I am afraid of---especially those entangled within love.

And is it a little weird that of all the characters I have ever read, I identify most with Cathy, the crazy woman?...

beetle, beatle

Arnold's penchant for The Beatles has clearly rubbed off on me.

I cannot stop thinking about this song---even though it is a song which makes me a little teary eyed and a little too reflective. Dwelling, almost.

What are the songs which make you reflect the most?

on fear (and love)

I stumbled across this lovely photograph of the Obama's a few seconds ago. (Source here). I suppose I wanted to share it for a lot of reasons.

I guess it is because I have spent a lot of time this weekend thinking about family. And about marriage. And about what, at the age of twenty-one, it really means to me.

My greatest hope is that I will one day find out---but only through acting it out myself, only through being a wife, being a mother, being a part of a little family of my own.

But that is a long way off---really, a very a long way off. And I am okay with that. But it doesn't mean I will stop praying (in the own little way I have---with wishes and deeds and offering nature a little helping hand) for the things that foreground it. For the things that, right now, are troubling or worrying or casting the tiniest little doubts across the horizon. You see, for all the things I have been worrying about lately*, there is the highest of chances that they will pan out alright---and if they do, I will consider myself the luckiest, the most blessed---but there is, underlying, the tiniest chance that they just might not. I guess it is that chance, that lesser chance, that is making life feel a little harder, a little scarier, and a lot less relaxed. Because even though the moment, the moment that I feel it all depends on---though probably doesn't---is a long way off---months, in fact---I feel like I am waiting, just in case.

But I am hoping everything really will be okay. Because the thing I am hoping for is truly worth it---something, in fact, that I believe will shape and change and better the world. (I have never believed in anything so whole-heartedly; I have never wanted to devote myself so much to one thing).

Please, world?

*I am sorry so many of my posts have been made up of worry---and I am sorry, too, to be quite so cryptic. I guess I am still not ready to reveal everything about myself just yet. One day, maybe.

--

I have been pretty slow this week. And I guess you could say that my gut-feelings on Sunday pretty much fore-told how the rest of my week panned out---how it has been a week of needing reassurance and conversation and a hug. But I hope that is all. I hope my gut-feelings on everything else simply don't---because if it did, if every little and every big worry actualised itself, life could lead to a lot of tragedy.

How do you prevent yourself from (often unnecessarily) worrying?

Next week will be sunnier.