Today is a very sweet day.

In one month, at about this time, I will be marrying Adam Lloyd Whitlock and kissing him a lot. Today we went to Trader Joe’s. There was music playing by the frozen fish and I started bopping and he started bopping and he grabbed my hand and I grabbed his, and before I knew it, we were dancing in the grocery store. It was a little dance. It was a lovely one. My days with Adam are speckled with sweet things like this, and I love it.

It is sweet how I look forward to Monday, when I get to nanny and hear Rowen say the cats are “coooot!” and watch Ella jump with her invisible jump rope.

It’s sweet how my mailbox is full of wonderful postcards.

It’s sweet how money is so tight, but I feel so taken care of.

It’s sweet that I could wear short-sleeves without sweating, today.

It’s sweet that I get to read books and drink tea.

Today is a sweet day. How was yours?

The self portrait challenge this month is to show yourself in your natural environment. My natural environment is a sidewalk full of colourful little surprises (and most sidewalks are). I love to walk. Plop me in any town, and I will be content to explore on foot for hours and hours. There is always a treasure to find or some quiet thought to hold. From my first day in Romania, I took long walks that gained me bags of sea glass and prayers and obscure adventures. In Norway, there were many walks of solitude. The ones in Alvdal were painted with sunsets (I’ve never seen sunsets like I have there). In Oslo, little treasures are tucked in here and there: a bakery, those faces at the coffee shop, rose cups, graffiti, a snowy bookshop.

And I love to walk at home. I like my walks to work or to class. I like my walks to nowhere in particular. I like walks in every season, even winter when they freeze my toes. Adam stole my heart by taking me on walks last autumn. And then we went on walks where he secretly stole my kisses before we were “official”. I love walking with my dear friends. I love walking when it’s just me.

This is nothing super-cool or inspirational. It’s just me in my natural environment: comfy shoes, a skirt, and a sidewalk scattered with treasure.

I’ve always been crazy about my dad. I mean always.

Even that time when I was a very cool ten-year-old and my dad jumped around pretending to play the guitar on my cello in front of everyone as I was getting on the bus. I sat down, mortified, next to Jamie Huhn.

“Your dad is so cool,” she said. I knew it was true, and even though I was embarrassed, I was pretty proud, too. I was always proud of my dad. I loved when people said I looked like him. Sometime in high school, my older cousin remarked to his friend that I was “like a little Tomm.” I beamed over that for months.

Yup, I’ve always been crazy about my dad. But who can blame me? This is the guy who gave me shoulder rides and taught me to make snow angels. Who helped me (unsuccessfully) practice bridges for those few humiliating weeks of kindergarten gymnastics. Who brought me up on the Beatles, and listened to hours of Ace of Base as I tried to explain to him how cool they were. Who still cannonballs into the pool when the water is chilly and rough-horse with me and my sisters.

I am crazy about my dad.

Happy father’s day, Dad-o.

Today was Adam’s last day of school. He stopped by after his exam (a couples hours before I was expecting him) and found me curled up on my bed in funny pajamas watching Anne of Green Gables on my laptop. So girly. So busted. I tried to tell him that we should keep watching because it was a really good part with Gilbert Blythe! He did not buy it.

Instead, we went rummage-saling before work. He bought me a yo-yo and himself a tiny Stimpy bank.

I was done with school a few weeks ago. But I still feel like summer is just beginning. Adam won’t have homework anymore. My sisters are all stoked about the school year being finished. Gardens are growing. Weddings are approaching. The sun is coming out.

I feel like celebrating. I feel like eating cart food on the street and berries with whipped cream. I feel like going to festivals and planting things and drinking coffee outside for hours. And maybe walking to the hookah bar and smoking rose tobacco and eating stuffed grape leaves. I feel like having long breakfasts at Lazy Jane’s with Janelle. Lounging in the sun. Reading books for fun. Biking and biking and biking.

I feel like summer.

*note there is an update on the wedding page*

Check it out. Really. Right now. SO interesting!

From blossoms comes
this brown paper bag of peaches
we bought from the boy
at the bend in the road where we turned toward
signs painted Peaches.From laden boughs, from hands,
from sweet fellowship in the bins,
comes nectar at the roadside, succulent
peaches we devour, dusty skin and all,
comes the familiar dust of summer, dust we eat.

O, to take what we love inside,
to carry within us an orchard, to eat
not only the skin, but the shade,
not only the sugar, but the days, to hold
the fruit in our hands, adore it, then bite into
the round jubilance of peach.

There are days we live
as if death were nowhere
in the background; from joy
to joy to joy, from wing to wing,
from blossom to blossom to
impossible blossom, to sweet impossible blossom.

-Li-Young Lee

Yesterday I got an e-mail from Sarah Buchkosky in Constanta, Romania. It reminded me of getting cinci mare pâine every day at the bakery that made the whole street fragrant with baking bread and learning to say “pâine” and hearing Turkish weddings from the rooftop and gathering sea glass and that time we had a long nighttime train ride through those enchanting Transylvanian mountains and it began to snow and we stuck our heads out the window to catch the air and the flakes.

Adam and I have gotten pretty sick of this wedding planning business. Pretty sick, indeed. The whole process just tends to get too materialistic for us. There are lists and websites and magazines full of things to buy and gifts to give and what to register for and it is just so centered on stuff. It stresses me out and, honestly, makes me just want the whole thing to be over.

Did you ever get sick of your wedding?

Today, I stumbled on this lovely Flickr photo set, full of silliness and flowers and fruit and banjos. And, this little photo set reminded me that weddings can be beautiful and fresh and real and sweet and silly. I so needed that.

And now, I’m excited again, and my brain is buzzing with menu ideas and visions of laughing people and berries and boxes of cereal.

Flickr, I am glad you exist.