Leanne Shawler, Artist

#1. Watch a Sondheim musical on the plane. In my case Into The Woods . Earworms stay in your head for days. "Agony". "Hello Little Girl".  "It Takes Two of Us". Ahhh ah-a-ahh a-ahhh.... You're welcome. #2. Don't take charge of your space. Like when the clanging water pipes continue to clang and you realize your neighbor is not taking an epic shower and the noise is there to stay. Don't wait until 1:00am the night before your flight to complain to the hotel's front desk. #3. Pay attention to your husband. When you wake up and he complains he can't sleep, don't give into empathy and sit up with him, no matter how much you love him. You're in business class, you can lie flat, for Pete's sake. #4. Take epic walks before your flight. So epic that the first walk has you limping and it makes you limp on day two because it feels like walking on knives. (Bonus if you can do this and not have plantar fasciitis.) Then dela...

What to Expect When You're Not Expecting (and Never Will) awkward silence after they ask "how many kids do you have?" (Or other questions where children are assumed to exist in your household) swallowed tears after they ask "so when are you two having kids?" or swallowed anger or a sharp retort bursting out of your lips at the same question the rush of mooshiness (you know that's a word) on seeing a newborn and being glad that the emotion is no longer *really* bittersweet your pets will become as adored as if they were your flesh and blood children being able to travel whenever you want - at least until the pets come along... that one Sunday in the year that is super awkward because you chose to be childless. Yeah, you heard it right. Chose.   I did try to get pregnant for a while, but when it got down to fertility drugs and the concept of triplets, well that's when I bailed. The concept of being responsible for one child terrified m...

So it's been a while since I've done the 7 Quick Takes, which are quite unlike the seven deadly sins but somehow there seems to be a lot of confessional stuff in the Takes that I read. Hmm. Anyway, here we go: 1. For some reason this week, I've kept thinking its the 18th of March (3 days in a row) and that it's the 4th week of Lent. I feel ready for Holy Week next week ... Almost. 2. I've been enjoying volunteering for the United Campus Ministry -- we hand out free cookies and the volunteers get to eat the broken ones. What's not to love? I hope to get more reflective (less shallow) about this ministry later. 3.  The Les Miz DVD is out today. What a wonderful film that was. Although perhaps they should release a highlights reel, which for me was every moment Ann Hathaway was on the screen, and "Empty Chairs at Empty Tables". 4.  By the way, you don't want to know how many times I've seen Les Miz the play...

--1.-- Confession, I hear, is good for the soul. I have done a couple of these Quick Takes posts in the past, but it wasn't zinging for me, although of course I still read Jennifer's blog. But for an Amazon gift card? I'm ready to not-zing! --2.-- This week has been quiet on my blog because I spent four days at a retreat house in Santa Barbara. It was formerly run by Episcopal nuns and is now run by Episcopal monks. It's called Mt. Calvary Community at St. Mary's Retreat House and it's located right next to the Old Mission and the food is to die for. (Like roasted green chile crepes with creamy mushroom gravy and spaghetti with red clam sauce, and home made bread and soups. Heaven.) Anyway, pictures from the retreat will appear on Monday. I haven't quite finished downloading them yet. --3.-- Which brings me to another thought. I used to not like mushrooms. I mean the flavor was okay, but putting one in my mouth was the slimy equivalent of a...

--- 1 --- I am making my own iced tea. It dawned on me that I didn't need to buy this stuff. I have loads upon loads of tea (loose and in tea bags) so why not use it?  The Mountain Spring Jasmine green tea by Mountain Leaf is just scrumptious. Mentioning it here so I can buy some more once I run through the rest of my insanely huge tea stock. --- 2 --- Came home from chanting Lauds at the cathedral to discover that my husband had packed up the nativity scene. I guess he doesn't read my blog . --- 3 --- Spent Monday and Tuesday at Disneyland and California Adventure. Needless to say, had an absolute blast and went on a ton of rides because it a) rained on Monday and b) it's winter! --- 4 --- I just set up Twitter Feed for my blog so it can push my posts to my Twitter feed and to Facebook auto-magically. This post will be the second one that's pushed, so I want to share the past few posts here in case you missed them because they weren't linked to a...