Monthly Archives: March 2008

In the last couple of years, I have changed my perspective slightly about guns and gun control, although with another area shooting under our belt, it’s hard for me not to wonder if my bleeding heart mentality was so far off the mark. It’s unfortunate that our area of Virginia is in the news again for more shootings. They’re still on the hunt for whoever is responsible, and have closed all the local schools and have the nearby small town (between Charlottesville and Mom’s house) on a lock down. It’s a relief that everyone is alive, but the truly unnerving part is the fear of crazies shooting at cars on a major highway especially one with such a rural proximity. Here’s to everyone’s safety and to keeping guns in the hands of people that are sane and educated about how to manage that kind of power, if at all.

http://abcnews.go.com/TheLaw/story?id=4536158

1. It’s a busy Wednesday here in Charlottesville–I have a lot of meetings today and I’m doing my part to not be distracted by the warming temperatures. It’s supposed to be 68 degrees today and so I am hoping that I will be able to run out of my office as often as possible to take it in and get a little solar energy on this winter white skin. This morning I opted to wear a skirt and boots with no tights which reminded me of some early Spring day in sixth grade and hearing on the morning weather that it was going to be 60 degrees that day. I clearly remember wearing a pink and white stripped shirt with white jeans, and under the jeans I snuck a pair of white biker shorts with lace cuffs (This was 1993, afterall!) because I was sure that 60 degrees was pretty much summer temperatures. Thinking of my best interest, I’m sure, Mom was always wanted me to wait just a little longer before wearing shorts to school, and I can clearly remember that exciting and terrible feeling of knowing that I was sneaking behind Mom’s back as I snuck those shorts. I pulled my jeans off when I got to school and instantly got goosebumps and purple legs and spent the remainder of the day putting my jeans on and pulling them off if I thought it would be warm enough. I don’t know why that memory stands out to me so much, because I’m sure it wasn’t the first time I had snuck something, but at some point almost every Spring I remember that outfit, the too-cold day, and the fact that 60 degrees is enough to warm your cheeks, but hardly enough for me to start baring any skin.

2. Although a little counter-intuitive, this is the time of year that I associate the most with a sunrise. I was trying to find some pictures of a sunrise in my library to toss up, and came across the picture above from last June when our photographer friend Katie Falkenberg was visiting and she snapped this picture in the early morning light of our old house. While I revel in the size and space of our new house, I will always covet and remember the unique quality of light that came through those windows first thing in the morning on Rosser avenue. Drew and I spent many a Saturday and Sunday morning sitting just like this, with our faces tipped to the morning light, day dreaming about what the day would hold.

3. And finally, I’ve spent the winter mornings making the bed every morning, situating pillows on the couch and keeping the living room tidy because we are in the house so much. These last couple of warm days, I’ve had to remind myself to stay on the ball because the sun is up and I’m ready to run. I want to apologize to the house and to Drew for feeling the Anne Shirley in me rearing her head and pushing me to go linger in a row boat somewhere with my fingertips lazing into the water. Of course, there is no water, no boat, and no lingering to be done (yet!) but that sun still calls to my private lack of sensibility and encourages me to spend a day making a whole lot of something out of nothing.

but for now…back to work! Happy Mornings to you.

It’s Easter Sunday…in North Carolina the annual Easter Party will be beginning to wind down, especially with the early date, and here in Virginia, our Easter Sunday is coming to a close too.  Mom and I and had a great day together, we indulged in fresh crab cakes in our eggs chesapeake at brunch and picked up a lot of new bulbs for the yard.  I re-potted  some plants this morning and cut some forsythia for the house and now my head is dancing with visions of dahlias and lillies. 

Here’s the  living room with our painting from Gail.  The mantle is filling up with new plants, and I just love having the cut flowers from our little stash of forsythia in the back yard:

Here’s a sampling of some of the bulbs we got…

which will go here:

the path wraps to our back yard:

where we have hundreds of violets–they are scattered like tiny Easter eggs around the yard-

All these little blooms and delusions of grandeur that I have about about the big blooms to follow sure are making me happy today!

It’s a quiet Saturday here, well into the 60s and a good day for yard work.  If you’re a nursing student who doesn’t get many Saturdays off, it’s a good day for yard work, and then a nap.  Happy working, happy napping, and happy Easter!

It’s overcast and cool today, but everything is literally exploding around town…I wish that I had just a few more minutes to prioritize with in a day (though how can I really be complaining now that daylight savings is on our side) to take some pictures. Hopefully I’ll get out and about this weekend to record some of the budding buds, and in the meantime I’ll leave the description to the masters–well, one of them:

In the morning the sun rose brilliant and quickly wore away the thin layer of ice that covered the water, and all the warm air was quivering with the steam that rose up from the quickened earth. The old grass looked greener, and the young grass thrust up its tiny blades; the buds of the guelder-rose and of the currant and the sticky birch-buds were swollen with sap, and an exploring bee was humming about the golden blossoms that studded the willow. Larks trilled unseen above the velvety green fields and the ice-covered stubble-land; peewits wailed over the low lands and marshes flooded by the pools; cranes and wild geese flew high across the sky uttering their spring calls. The cattle, bald in patches where the new hair had not grown yet, lowed in the pastures; the bowlegged lambs frisked round their bleating mothers. Nimble children ran about the drying paths, covered with the prints of bare feet. There was a merry chatter of peasant women over their linen at the pond, and the ring of axes in the yard, where the peasants were repairing ploughs and harrows. The real spring had come.

LEO TOLSTOY, Anna Karenina

That was a big saying of Skip’s–I remember coming to him a number of times as a kid and sagely saying, “It hurts when I do this” and Skip pointing out the obvious in a kind, if not ironic way. A lot of grown-up children run around harping on all of the things that they will do differently from their parents once they have children, but I can’t help but think of all of the things that Drew and I know we want to do just like our parents…including wise sayings like, “You have two choices for dinner: take it or leave it” (another Atwater favorite). It could be the Spring, or just nature working its magic, but it seems that Drew and I have been talking more about our future family plans in the last couple of weeks which is making (most) children that much cuter. A friend sent this video of two English brothers to me over the weekend, and I cracked up, so I thought I would share it here as a little light hearted moment and a reminder about one of the many antics that we’ll be signing up for down the road!

We had another lovely weekend here in Charlottesville! Mom and I are signed up to do the 3 Day 60 mile walk to raise money for breast cancer research in DC this coming October, so we’ve started walking on the weekends. It’s a good way to catch up and soak up the budding Spring weather, and so far we’ve covered a tenth of the walk no problem…now on to the other 54 miles! While we’re still doing the shorter walks, Grace comes along and sniffs everything out, and as you’ll see below, takes herself for a little dip.

Drew had a long weekend in the hospital–he came home last night and started his Sunday night decompressing with, “Nursing is hard. Nursing is really, really hard. I chose a hard profession.” He takes pride in this, and I think he’s thinking forward to his proposed schedule of three long days on and four days off. Working in the CCU (cardiac intensive care) means that he works with one to two patients per shift, handling all of their needs, ranging from medications and monitors to bodily functions and he literally does not stop moving for just about 13 hours straight. In the year and a half that he’s been a student, this was the first time that he has ever expressed to me that he got his butt kicked a little, but it’s also one of the reasons that this program is so cool. In a standard nursing program, students never get to work as individuals with one mentor (their preceptor) teaching them along the way in the hospital prior to starting their job. For Drew, his entire experience has been oriented around working as an individual, having to rely on his studying and instincts from almost the first month of the program. This is just one of the reasons that the graduates from this specialized program are so highly coveted by hospitals; they graduate ready to walk on a hospital floor and quickly become leaders.

So, that’s some of the news from the Walton household, and here are some pictures from our walk:

A Picture reveals
soft, hard and light: glow there, glow
what words cannot say.

I have this theory about Haiku which is a little obtuse, but basically I like haiku in photos as much as I do in words. I was looking at my friend Tom Daly’s photo blog and saw that he had a nice little photo haiku on Spring yellows and that made me think about my love of things in threes, and my equal love of inference over direct contact both in words and photography. So, here are a few examples, not the greatest quality, but telling nonetheless.

The first is old and one that I called The Emotional Hand Series (I have A LOT of these floating around)

And here is a sort of silly one that was for Charlotte on a Rainy Day:

And Tom’s take on yellow in Spring:

Unfortunately, these are just the one’s that I have access to at work, I will try to remember to pull some better examples from home, but like Haiku, I love the deceptively simple nature of having to pair precisely the right images together to bring something to life. As I have always been relatively terrible at Haiku, but enchanted by the form, I think the photographs are a nice outlet and I love that three simple lines or photographs are so wholly their own long story.

We had a great time at Mom’s birthday dinner the other night–she’s crossing into her next decade with grace and charisma, and it was truly a celebration! Drew and I cooked for Mom and Skip and some friends, we had bacon and rosemary stuffed pork (check out the pictures of Drew wrangling the stuffing in below), a white bean, collard and chorizo gratin, roasted red and blue potatoes and a big old salad. It turns out that I would like to celebrate Mom’s birthday all the time, particularly if it means eating chocolate cake every week.

While this might be a sensitive subject, the sentiment stands so I’m going for it–it’s nice that aging today largely means that a majority of the boundaries that are set by age only have to be mental and that our age is more accurately reflected in how young someone feels. I love that I am surrounded by adults who are vibrant and full of life and who, at any age, I always aspire to emulate.

Anyway, here are some pictures from the festivities…

Here we are dancing and doing the dishes:

And, the birthday girl herself:

Happy Birthday Mama!  Here’s to many more!