in the details

i want to tell
her about the postcards under
my windshield wiper, the day spent
surrounded by books (my dictionary
too). the way your shirt sleeve
gets damp but i keep my hand
there for the whole movie anyway,
i want to tell her about mixing pancake
batter at 2 a.m. and how you send
me words, save me words, love
my words. she should know that when
you told me you weren’t leaving, you
tightened your hand on mine just slightly
and i thought how no one (not even
me) has ever stayed.

i wrote this in march after nate and i had just started dating :) i discovered it in a notebook in a box in the garage recently so thought i'd post it.

we're headed to nashville this weekend to visit laura and drew-- nate and i are flying out together on friday afternoon, then i'm heading home sunday evening and nate's staying for a few days for the iie conference. i'm really looking forward to spending time with laura and drew, and time in nashville :) the may trip has become a yearly pilgrimage for music and tasty american beer :)

other than that we are deeply in love with our screened in porch and have spent most of our waking moments sitting on it. the weather has been in our favor, nice and cool in the evenings. this past weekend we spent a lot of time in the yard/porch making it a nice little haven. nate's project was pavers for the screen doorstep, which he did a fantastic job with. my project was lots of foliage and flowers for the porch and reviving the flower bed that was almost entirely destroyed by porch construction.

while i was kneeling next to the reed grass in the flower bed i heard a rustling which i've gotten used to given all the lizards we have around, but then saw a 4 foot (at least!) black snake shoot our from behind where i was working. needless to stay i screamed bloody murder and ran in the opposite direction. put a serious damper on my gardening but after prompting nate to poke around with the end of the rake, i was satisfied he didn't leave any friends behind and finished off my planting!

that's it for now :) hope your week is going well!

summer in florida and the living is easy :)

our new porch is in! we've been out here every night since they built it on tuesday. i've posted updated pics on smugmug of the whole process :) i also posted pics from our trip to PA for music weekend which was a fantastic time- we were all sad to leave.
we did get to share connecting flights with laura and drew which was really cool :) we met up in cincinatti at the starbuck's airport, and one the way home, we flew through atlanta together, so that was a nice way to prolong the trip a bit :)
nate's dad will be coming to visit and help us paint at the beginning of june which will be great - not only for painting help, but also for a definite date to get painting! left unchecked, i think i would paint the entire house various shades of green, but i'm trying to branch out a little :) i think the living room will be blue, the kitchen 'asparagus' green, dining room undecided, guest room a goldish color to match reds and quilts, our bedroom a nice sagey green, the guest bathroom a bright green, the study.. no idea, the extra bedroom... maybe tan? and our bath i haven't figured out yet either!
i want to buy all kinds of palm trees this weekend to turn our porch into a tropical oasis :) we also want to catch a good sale on a chaise or double chaise lounge- we have a couple of chairs and a loveseat, but as we'll be spending a lot of time out here reading we want to be able to lay out :)
i think that's it really... work's been pretty crazy busy lately, but hopefully i can get that under control soon enough. tomorrow our department has an all day team building event scheduled at one of the parks so that should be a nice way to spend a friday :)
have a great weekend!

and congrats to jilian and todd :)

saving the earth...one piece of junk mail at a time!

so i just joined greendimes.com -- it's a service that aims to reduce the junk mail you receive by 90%. takes about 8 weeks to take effect, so i'll keep you posted. it's $35ish dollars per year but they plant a tree for every new membership and if i can save at least a few trees by not receiving ridiculous amounts of credit card apps, that would be awesome ;)