Our friend Eddie is leaving shortly for a Jesuit seminary, and he is allowed to bring ten books and ten CDs (and an ipod, but that’s beside the point). Since he told us this last week I’ve been fixated on my ten. I can’t even fathom ten books, because really, if you tell me I can have only ten books you’re really saying “you can choose three.”

But ten CDs – that I can do. Because it’s not forever. He can switch them out whenever he wants. So let’s just pretend. Pretend I’m going to be a Jesuit, because truly, if I had the required parts and was called to be a priest SURELY, if there is some rational god, I’d be a Jesuit (but not he icky conservative kind – I’d be the kind that gets arrested like it’s a bodily function).

Here are my ten. Right now. On the brink of autumn. These are not necessarily my ten most important or favorite albums of all time, just Ten For Now. For pretend seminary. Peace be with you.

Iron & Wine – The Creek Drank the Cradle
Paul Simon – Graceland
Neutral Milk Hotel – In the Aeroplane Over the Sea
Gillian Welch – (Time) The Revelator
Neil Young – Live at Massey Hall
Nick Drake – Five Leaves Left
Joanna Newsom – Milk-Eyed Mender
The Avett Brothers – The Gleam EP
Ryan Adams – Cold Roses
Bruce Springsteen – Nebraska

What are your ten?

The first week of August hangs at the very top of the summer, the top of the live-long year, like the highest seat of a Ferris wheel when it pauses in its turning. The weeks that come before are only a climb from balmy spring, and those that follow a drop to the chill of autumn, but the first week of August is motionless, and hot. It is curiously silent, too, with blank white dawns and glaring noons, and sunsets smeared with too much color. Often at night there is lightning, but it quivers all alone. There is no thunder, no relieving rain. These are strange and breathless days, the dog days, when people are led to do things they are sure to be sorry for after.

(I’ve been thinking about a childhood favorite all summer, and then Erin posted this – this is why we’re friends.)

Music music music, tiny family, far-away friends, cramming into tents to wait out downpours, ice-cold beer, dancing, happy kid, her “I love my life” and everyone else’s “I love mine, too” while passing around a jar of moonshine and bobbing in the coldest swimming hole in Fayette county (at least…)

…bliss that you could cut with a knife.

We’re all stuck in here together like a big family… let’s drink.

This and this.

When the whistle blows each morning
And I walk down in that cold, dark mine
I say a prayer to my dear Savior
Please let me see the sunshine one more time

When oh when will it be over
When will I lay these burdens down
And when I die, dear Lord in heaven
Please take my soul from ‘neath that cold dark ground

I still grieve for my poor brother
And I still hear my dear old mother cry
When late that night they came and told her
He’d lost his life down in the Big Shoal Mine

When oh when will it be over
When will I lay these burdens down
And when I die, dear Lord in heaven
Please take my soul from ‘neath that cold dark ground

I have no shame, I feel no sorrow
If on this earth not much I own
I have the love of my sweet children
An old plow mule, a shovel and a hoe

When oh when will it be over
When will I lay these burdens down
And when I die, dear Lord in heaven
Please take my soul from ‘neath that cold dark ground

Yeah, when I die, dear Lord in heaven
Please take my soul from ‘neath that cold dark ground

- lyrics by Dwight Yoakam, performed in the above link by Gillian & Dave Rawlings

The Makery is a super-awesome little shop run by our friend Melissa. She has done such a good job with this place & it’s jam packed with treasures made by her and many, many other talented folks. Stay tuned for a photo of my gal in some goods from here when our tshirt weather returns in the next couple of days. When we walked into the store Melissa was playing country roads, just for us even though she didn’t know were coming.

WHY Louisville, another awesome shop full of their own screenprinted shirts, stickers, jewelry, and all kinds of stuff. We made Andy pose at his desk and pretend to be working. Notice the poptarts. This store makes me feel the need to restock my tshirt collection, starting with this one.

There is also this awesome record store, but I didn’t take any photos there.

Now I must go cook a delicious, nutritious, post-roadtrip-weekend supper of… veggie burgers and tater tots. Typo: poptarts. I’m not THAT tired.

1.) Maggie and I went thrifting – joy! I bought the $9.00 school desk I’ve been thinking about buying for two weeks. Also found: icons and oldtime music books for Mikey, some yum fabric, a Billie Holiday record, and two glass canisters for treasures. A morning well-spent.

2.) My mom came over so that Mikey and I could simultaneously leave Hazel for the first time. He played a show – it was a must. I’m sure it would have happened sooner than 17 months old if Hazel had spent her first 13 months around her grandparents more than once every few months, and if she hadn’t spent her last three snowed in away from them all the time, but here it is – 17 months old and we’d never been out together alone. Not that we never went out – we just took her everywhere. I don’t know how she would have fared at one month old or five or ten or thirteen… but at seventeen months old she didn’t shed a tear and went to sleep on her Grandma’s shoulder without a fuss. Liberating! The show was really good – lots of people that I love and have missed were there. Who cares if my eyeballs and throat still hurt from the cigarette smoke (3.5 years of smoke-free bars, I’m not used to this).

3.) Lots and lots of time outside in the beautiful weather with my pretty little Bitty.

Listening: Iron & Wine
(I am) Reading: The Poisonwood Bible
(Hazel is) Reading: The Peace Book
Working on: spotted box; bunnies; custom jewels

They played a friend’s book launch tonight as the Tylenol Cold & Flu Stringband, because Mikey & Alison are both sick. The more I hear people describing their bouts with H1N1, the more I am convinced that IS what Hazel had a few weeks ago. I assumed it wasn’t a virus because her appetite never faltered and she wasn’t vomiting, but most people are saying they have eaten normally – just a fever that won’t quit, and aches / a headache. Which is exactly what she had for a whole week, and is exactly what Mikey has right now. I told our friend Brian (whose whole family just had it) that I thought yesterday was Mikey’s worst day and that he seemed to be on the upswing today, and Brian said “No, no, this is where he SEEMS to be better and then it’s going to get really bad. You’re looking at three or four more days of having to pack by yourself.”

Um, haven’t I already done that for… oh… sixty or so while he flits around between libraries and conferences and music practices? I think I can handle a few more :) I am the queen of packing up our life. And I get to do it all again in less than a year – yay!

Mikey just went to bed and I am headed there now. It’s 11:51. I don’t think our whole family has been in bed together before midnight, EVER.

Oh, I was on the phone with Kelly today when a call came in from my parents’ house. We were almost through so I just let it go to voicemail, intending to call them as soon as we hung up. Immediately after that my cell phone rang, and I had my standard “shit, someone is dead” moment. I called back right away and my dad answered (my dad NEVER calls me, ever, ever), and I realize he’s in the middle of hyserical laughter. He had called to tell me that about an hour and a half before, he’d gone to get something from his truck and Paisley got in, ready to go for a ride. She threw a fit when he tried to get her out, so he just rolled down the windows and left her there. He forgot all about it until later, when he let all the dogs into the house and she wasn’t with them. He went out to look for her and found her still sitting on the passenger seat of the truck, looking around at the scenery, where she’d been for an hour and a half.

“Well she sure does travel well! She’s having a nice long trip out there.” he tells me between fits of laughter. He wants to know how to get her out of the truck. I suggest that he drive down the driveway and back and she’ll think she’s arrived home and that the trip is over. I don’t know if he tried it or not – he didn’t report back, but I suppose two phonecalls in the same year is a bit much to expect. I can’t wait to have my dog back! Neither can Hazel. She looks all around at least once a day yelling “dog!! DOG!!”, as if expecting her to come trotting out of the next room.

May 2008

Not as horrible as I imagined. When I got home, though, Mikey said “so, um… did you cry the WHOLE way home or just right now?” Hazel (who was awake and eating a snack at two in the morning) studied my face for a second and burst into tears, too.

Hazel moos at cows in books now, by the way. Usually there is no “m”, it’s just “oooooooooooooooooooooo” in a tiny, low voice. Unbearably adorable, this child of mine.

Listening: to someone who just started hammering downstairs, which is no doubt – in about thirty seconds – going to wake Hazel up an hour into her nap for the FIFTH DAY IN A ROW
(Hazel is) Reading: Trick or Treat, Calico
Working on: craft show stuff
Packing progress: nothing today – I have been crafting all morning

Not horribly sad because I will see everyone there again a few times before we go, and I knew I had to preserve all the pieces of my heart so I could leave ‘em all on the floor of the Silver Dollar on Wednesday night. Here’s a barstool baby, chewing on a straw and bobbing away to the music. Our friend Rob taught her how to high-five shortly after this, and for the first time in her life she clapped after every song… a new connection in her brain is clapping when pleased with something other than herself :)

Today was every kind of beautiful and we spent a few hours playing outside. Most of these few hours were spent examining leaves, sticks, and looking for dogs. Tomorrow is supposed to be just as nice and we intend to spend the morning outside with Andrea and the girls. She and I will watch them play and lament the fact that they will not get to grow up together, just as we did this evening after supper while we listened to them making each other giggle and squeal with delight. Expect photos of the three cuties in all the Oliver + S skirts that we’ve been churning out. I made two for Hazel this evening, but the second one – complete with embroidered vintage ribbon destashed from Erin well before I even got pregnant – is so stinkin’ cute that I had to stop for the day because I knew the last two, less adorable ones would be not quite as satisfying.

Only two more sleeps without Mikey!

Listening: Elliott Smith
(Hazel is) Reading: Hidden Hippo
Working on: craft show stuff; squares; skirts
Packing progress: packed a box; cleaned out our bathroom cabinet & drawers, throwing out expired meds and such