I {need} to

SuperHero name tags stuck to my fingers the room smells like glue YouTube play lists fill the room with melodies  and...memories that are still sharp as a knife too many weeks of silence  A pile of scraps keeps gathering at my feet a mess a {beautiful} mess...gathering on the floor beneath me this humming gets a little louder with every.single.song

It's almost 2am and I'm safe, here in my cocoon safe in the walls that I call home the same walls where I grew up gloriously alone has been exactly what I needed this last year and a half 

I need to create I need to hear I need to feel

dream a {new} dream

Why am I battling with myself to post something already? Where did these lame self-imposed restrictions come from that I have to be planned, polished, spell-checked, or scheduled before I can write about my life? What is going on?   Well, I'll tell you real quick like.   I'm sitting here bored with my life (I know, how ungrateful!) planning my something/anything months in advance but equally despising that it's already nearly the end of January and the year is ticking away. Tick-tock, tick-tock. {I might also be despising that I'll be 32 in a few short months.}  

Source: colorflystudio.blogspot.com via Lauren on Pinterest

    I'm currently surrounded by paperwork...a mass of paperwork.   ~ Enrollment for an Dispatch Academy Instructor Course which...yes, I want to become an instructor - I have years of experience, I have stories to tell, I still have passion for what I do. ~ Education reimbursement forms to get paid (yes, paid!) to complete my BS in Business/Marketing (do you suppose I've completed any homework that I can get handsomely paid to complete? No.) ~ Tax paperwork (show me the monay!) ~ Customer Service homework   & the humdinger: The Authentic Dreaming Worksheet An excerpt or two: "...but what if your dreams are to live simply?" "You cannot stop dreaming. You must, you must, you simply must dream a new dream."   My computer has a slew of open tabs, I can't decide if I want to cook or travel or create or go to yoga... I want to do them all.   I just know that I'm again in this spot where I feel like I am:   1) on the verge of tears 2) on the verge of a breakthrough 3) on the verge of a genius/epiphany 4) on the verge of a long nap   This is comfortable and unfamiliar at the same time.   This {tune} has been humming in my head all day long & then, just on cue, a good friend sent me this:  

  & what, in the hell, Lauren, do cowboy tunes have to do with anything?   Well...everything.  Every damn thing, because the slew of paperwork, the maxed calendar of events, the travel miles, and the A.D.D. brain are just a cover up for that {simple} that I dream of.   My dreams are not outlandish. They're way more country than rock and roll. They're simple.   I'd "settle" for a cowboy, a little piece or land, some plants to water, some animals to feed, some little ones to plan my week around, an little studio to get lost in where creatvity bursts all over the walls onto cards and canvas and into journals.   I would. I could. I want to.   I can plan and stack and sort through the paperwork of my reality all I want to, but when it all boils down, my dreams are my dreams and there's no escaping that they're not going anywhere, anytime soon.   {*sigh*}

{400} Oak Trees: what my dreams are made of

Well, it is really no secret that I've had quite the long standing love affair with the South. Say...since I was 12 years old and read through Gone with the Wind one Summer like it was a nursery rhyme. A really long, petulent nursery rhyme.   Fast forward to Nicholas Sparks and every novel he's ever written and every movie that's ever been translated to a screenplay and well there you have it. This place {collective deep sigh}:   

Source: Uploaded by user via Jessica on Pinterest

   The Wormsloe Plantation in Savannah, GA. It was on my travel bucket list when I went to visit, oh a year and  half ago, but...I never made it. I half suspect that I had to keep something still on the list so that I'd have a good reason to go back again. I think that in this year that I've declared to be one where I get back to what makes me think and dream and feel free again - the one that feels authentically me again, travel is a must.  I must go see this beautiful place that haunts my happy thoughts.   You see, in the movie version of my life, I live in a place like this. My driveway has 400 sentinel oak trees that welcome me home every day and an army of 400,000 crickets that lull me to sleep every night.    The only thing that could make this better is if I was at home watching these movies  next to my fireplace while listening to the rain beat down on my tin roof.   Be still my mossy oak tree driveway lined, balmy weather, accent lovin' heart. Be still. It's coming all in due time.   <3   This blog post was brought you you courtesty of: the ABC Family channel and their full night of Nicholas Sparks-esq movies.

Snippets & Soundbytes: Simply {Sunday}

Well, it's my version of Sunday at least.  Simple?  Eh.
There's music, pictures, food, a little bit of comedy. I managed to make it through 14 hours of work... yes, 14 hours (0200-1600) in one piece, but  determined not to hit the couch face first right when I got home.  Shift work ain't for the birds.   Honestly, it's half the struggle sometimes.
We're in another Indian Summer around here. Typical for these last few years. Hot August nights roll into sultry September days. 

It was 95* when I got off, but a gentle breeze was calling as a reminder to  open all the doors and windows,  put on some Zac Brown Band and let the light come streaming in. 
Everything around here, the hills, the leaves, the trees  are shades of brown, orange, and red.  The sun is setting earlier and earlier, painting everything in sepia tones. 

I ended up in the backyard watering the thirsty garden and then while Emma "supervised" I finally picked some tomatoes. I tell you nothing beats home grown tomatoes.  This is actually the first time this year they've made it into the house.  I usually grab a handful and snack on them while I water early in the morning.
I have more tomatoes than I can use myself,  so I plan on gifting some of them to my mother.  Especially after this text she sent me a couple of weeks ago: 

See mine in the picture up top and hers? 

They're from the same nursery and planted at the same time.  

I have no idea what happened to them, but she's killing me with this diatribe. 

Thirty minutes later, fresh off of a weekend road-trip home from Lake Tahoe,  I convinced my friend Mellissa and her husband Dave to join me for a pedicure. 

Exhausted and completely willing participant to the calf and foot massage I was getting,  I fell asleep with this gem of a tune playing in the nail salon. 

I thought this kind of music was legally only allowed to be played  on Midnight Special DVD Collections at 3am and in elevators?  Yeah, see, 14 seconds into the song and you're probably comatose too.   I was out.  There might have been drool.

{sidenote: some kind of power of suggestion, my nails are the exact same color as my car. Weird}

Nothing cures a massage chair coma like a Freeb!rds burrito and  a few more tunes on the drive home with all the windows down.   This familiar old song is straight out of my ... pre-teens? 
Yeah, this is twenty (one) years old! 21.  It's old enough to legally drink now! What?!
Ah, anyways, here I am now, blogging a little bit of my night before I finally give in and go to sleep.   I have two whole days off (fingers-crossed) and no solid plans. Maybe I can finally get to that stamp collection I've been meaning to organize. Just kidding.  But I'm sure I'll find another adventure in the next 48 hours. 
Hope y'all have a great Labor Day Holiday!
Stay thirsty, stay classy, stay safe my friends!
<3,

paint {fumes} & Pandora

I searched for moments of peace this weekend. 

I searched with intention.

I sought them out like it was a treasure hunt and I had the map with the X that marked the spot.

I found a few moments in likely and unlikely places.

I found one at the gym, both headphones tightly tucked in, drowning out the world around me. I stared across the street, across the 20-lanes of traffic merging in the intersection outside of my fishbowl of a gym.  I locked my gaze in on a flag waving in the early morning breeze, and then I turned up the pace to 9.5 miles per minute (a huge feat for me).  I am not a runner by any means, so I had to let all thoughts but "keep going" and "don't stop you're almost there" take the lead.  There was no room left for stray thoughts, for anything other than focus, and just those two simple thoughts to fill my head.  One quick step and one relentless drop of sweat at at time, I chased down  3.21 miles of simplicity. 

Walk.run.walk.run.walk.run...just don't give up.

I didn't give up, so I rewarded my sore back and body with a massage.  A very likely place to find some peace, but surprisingly, sometimes this is the hardest place to not let my mind wander.  The music helps, and this Bach track especially, which I have yet to hear too many times.

1. push play
2. close your eyes
3. listen

 I found another long and extended one in this paint bucket which I have yet to part with, for my room is big, the walls are thirsty, and the interruptions were not kind, but I got a good start and the transformation has begun.  This chore has been on my to-do list for years now.  Years. It'll just be a few more days of Paint Fumes & Pandora, and Al Green Radio will keep me company again, but in the end, the walls will have a new life and the room will have a new intention.

{I always paint barefoot 'cause I can always feel it on the bottom of my foot before I manage to track it all across the floor one wet footstep at a time.}

Interior semi-gloss paint not to hold the sole title for peaceful transformations for the weekend, I took my Summer sandaled feet  in for some TLC.  As I sat there in the massage chair, I set my phone in the bottom of my purse {after my picture proof of course} and picked up a book.  Even if only 30 minutes at a time, it's 30 minutes in the positive.

Finally, the prompt to write this post, because I fell in love with a new site, with a collection of words, and a poet. I fell hard. I fell in love and lust. Again. When it comes to these kinds of inspirations, I am not a selfish lover. I knew I had to share, and so I will:

Tyler Knott

{link}

A wordsmith after my very own beating heart.
Oh, to write love letters like he does.
Oh, to receive love letters like the ones he pens.
I wondered who is the lucky someone who is his muse?
I read. I thought. I reminisced. I wondered. I read some more.


And now I have sat here, speechless, but only to read out loud the words my eyes were soaking in like the walls that drank in paint this weekend.

{link}

Next week, I may find my moments of peace and calm in a sunset or a glass of wine or a rock song, for I have come to find that solitude is what we make it.  It's not a zip code, it's a state of mind.

simply me,
~ Lauren