Refverie - Watercolors

 Took an awesome pop-up watercolor class today and got to make this spring intentions mandala. I’m feeling (from the inside out) seeds of possibility, poking my way in to new things, rounding out & filling out my relationships, and protecting myself during all that vulnerability. . . This is a fun craft and I’m excited to explore this medium more- I never paint, I’m mainly a yarn crafter, but watercolor has always drawn my eye. So excited to have had the opportunity to learn some techniques!!! 🎨💕✨ (also I just saw Annihilation, so the spacey vibrant floral vibe is probably inspired by that)

Refverie - Sunday Not-as-scaries

 Sunday night planning vibes ✨✨✨

Refverie - Sunday Scaries

 I had such a good weekend but I’m behind on schoolwork and want to do literally anything besides the work I should do ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ maybe I will just wake up fresh and try to just #livelaughlove through tomorrow. I honestly need to get out of a deficit framework. I’m so comfortable procrastinating then feeling shitty, but honestly WHAT is the point. I get paid to work from 8:30 to 4:30 so lemme just remember that and try to sit with my cats and talk to my friends and play silly computer games if that’s what needs to be done... papers will get graded or they won’t?????!!!?????? Idk idk

Refverie - Skincare

 I’ve started doing a skincare routine with *~sErUmS~* and honestly my skin feels So Good. For the first time since... ever? I don’t have any blackheads or zits on my nose?????????? Amazing. I follow Nicole Cliff on twitter and she said someone told her we care about skincare because we are afraid to die and tbh it’s true, but ima do it anyway. My face feels great. (I don’t have a “routine” in that I do the same thing every morning and night, I just kinda mix and match. But The Ordinary is like super cheap and Super Great and you can get it at Sephora.)

Refverie - Cooking Growth

 I think I like cooking now??? This fall/winter I’ve been cooking more meals and I think I’m starting to get the hang of it. Probably it is a result of my extra time from not coaching swimming, coupled with a light grading load this semester. The part of cooking that was the most stressful was the planning and grocery shopping. I’ve conquered this by choosing a default grocery store - Food Lion off 55/I40 - that has a good selection of produce and whose aisles I have learned pretty well. I have also utilized some cookbooks I’ve had for ages to search for easy and hopefully healthy meals that are within my skill set. Now I find that I don’t mind coming home to cook, and I enjoy what we eat! Slowly I am learning some instincts, but I still definitely need a recipe. (I’m a true baker at heart.) It only took me 30 years to get here ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Refverie - SMART Resolutions

 I love new beginnings. This upcoming year will hold such huge things and I’m excited, nervous, and ready. My SMART goal resolutions are both daily resolutions: read one poem and go on one walk each day. My broader goal is to soak in all the goodness of my interpersonal relationships this year. I’ve always loved the way weddings are huge, fun reunions, and I’m excited that one wedding I get to go to this year will be mine!!! Could be overwhelming, but I’m trying some positive framing. I just know I’ll be reconnected to so many cool people and I want to pay attention and soak it all in!! 🦋 🦄 🐳 I know last year was kinda butts for lots of reasons, but I enjoyed the new and challenging conversations I engaged in, and I felt like I payed even more attention to the media I was taking in. I feel so much more enriched, but also like a million times more existentially stressed, so who’s to say really.

Refverie - 2017 Best Books

 I read SO MANY books in 2017! So many more than I set out to, at least. I credit the fact that I started (and stopped lol) a book club and decided I was allowed to buy books (reduced my library availability/deadline anxiety). This year I tried to read more books by women of color and I was NOT disappointed. In fact, going back to read books by white guys was honestly destabilizing. Anyway I think these were my 6 favorite books! • BINTI was some of the best writing I think I’ve read ever... her world was so lush and it pulled me in immediately. HOMEGOING was unique and rich with feeling and sadness. THE MOTHERS was the first one we read for book club so it holds a special place in my heart. Lots of good discussion. TURTLES ALL THE WAY DOWN was obviously good because as 🙄 as he may be, John Green knows how to write a YA novel. Writing from the perspective of a person with the disorder he also suffers from made this a very authentic read. DEAR FANG, WITH LOVE brought up similar issues with mental instability- and showed how complicated it can be to love a family member suffering from a mental condition. HUNGER was the most straightforward thing I’ve ever read (I’m feeling hyperbolic about these books but ¯\_(ツ)_/¯). Gay’s struggle with body image is compelling and relatable, and her writing feels fresh and honest. • • Honorable mention: Fates and Furies (so compelling and eye-roll-y) and Sing, Unburied, Sing (so rich and sad and ghosts!)

Refverie - Foggy Riverside

Foggy school morning... I can’t believe this semester will be over in 5 short school weeks! It’s definitely a different vibe- I’m not coaching swimming!! I have so much free brain space! It’s wild. I’m excited/nervous to teach AP again in the spring- it’s been a whole year and I’ve just been teaching/grading for one class this semester. I’ve got a lot of systems that work for me and I’m excited to put them to work. (I hope it snows on Friday!!!!)

Refverie - New Chair

 Got a new chair for the guest room ($35 from @trosathriftstore!!!) and it’s allowed me to pick up this big ol crochet sampler blanket again... I forgot how calming crocheting is- the repetition, the resulting product, the time spent away from this phone lol (please ignore the adorable Hillary bag that I thought I would be able to wear with pride this past year 😭😭😭)

Refverie - Wreath

 I got a new wreath today but it was really hard to take a pic bc I hung it on a mirror? How do ppl take pics of mirrors? I’ll never understand the ways of the instafamous.• • • I was feeling out of sorts & very SundaySad today, then I remembered that yoga is a thing. I forgot how much my physical being is connected to my mental being. I need to spend more time caring for my body & moving it & listening to it. Bodies are weird and I don’t want to be at odds with mine (a feeling I’ve had lately). Gonna keep trying I guess!

Refverie - Camping

This weekend was so refreshing!!! I got inspired at (& presented at) the NC Science Teacher Association conference, camped in perfect camping weather with perfect fall leaves, survived a 10-mile hike with not-yet-broken-in boots, attended a new & awesome book club, caught up with my sis @jillb0_baggins, ate delish tacos/drank a delish mocktail/made new friends/kept the old at @katrinapm’s house, and Byron just brought me pizza in bed!!!! Im feeling really calm, grounded, healthy, and #blessed lately! (Gonna try to hold onto this feeling as long as I can in this school week lol)

Refverie - Down to the River

 Got to take some classes down to the river this week! I loved getting my feet wet in the nice cool water, especially with it this clear, calm, and low. Not being the naturalist at the Eno this summer meant that I didn’t get as much time out here as I would’ve liked. I forget how much I love rivers until I’m down in one! Gotta find my hammock straps so I can do some hiking & lounging now that it feels like fall again.

Refverie - Weaving Again

 Y'all... I love weaving. It's so fun. It is very detail oriented and tedious (which I actually love) also it involves a lot of counting but not a lot of measuring (which I also love) but it doesn't make my wrist hurt (like crochet and knitting) so I'm into it. The only problem is that looms cost $500 used 😲💸 Ima save up haha

Refverie - Books

 I'm sitting here grading papers looking at a stack of books I wish I could be reading!!! Take me back to the summer when we hadn't set up our TV yet and my brain was relaxed enough to read all day! I read like 6 long books in July and loved it.• • If you can believe it, I didn't really start reading for fun til like 2013... School had somehow trained me out of reading for leisure. When I was young I would read alllllll the time. Then I just... stopped? I guess? In 2013 I made it my New Years resolution to read 15 minutes per day, and it changed my life! In 2014 I read 52 books! I also credit Goodreads with making me enjoy the reading community and also @taliaissmart for peer-pressuring me into writing reviews of books. Last year I felt burdened by reading again, but this year I allowed myself to buy more books (and I got a kindle and use the library app to get ebooks), and I'm back! I was nervous making my reading goal 30 books bc I didn't want my hobby to feel like a burden. But this year already I've read 28 books!!! That's wild!!! I love books.

Refverie - Weaving

 My little home for the next eight Tuesdays! I'm excited to learn a new craft skill (weaving) but this time with the guidance of a teacher and the structure of a class (instead of teaching myself). I think I might like this! If I do, I'd be following the footsteps of my mom's grandfather and aunt, and I think that would be really cool.

Refverie - Eclipse

 Still not over the eclipse y'all... I know the pictures all look the same but this was something that just has to be experienced in person. I was really overwhelmed. A teacher at school asked me why it was overwhelming and I had a hard time pinpointing it. That seeing the sun and the moon at the same time interacting kinda made me lose my mental footing as if I realized for the first time we are on a tiny little globe hurtling around with other globes & stuff all around space??? Or that it was just so beautiful to see something I've literally never seen before hanging up in the middle of the sky??? That it universally caused people to exclaim in awe, reminding me that nature is a language and spirit that can impact any & everybody with this sense of grandeur???? It's hard to think we are just plopped down here with no souls or no spirit... I think when seeing this sight I just tapped into the spiritual river that is flowing all around but hard to access sometimes in the humdrum day-to-day stuff. Like when I went to church after the election and the songs filled me with such a sense of the holy spirit & hope- that the fight against oppression was not new and this body of people has a language to talk about this hurt and songs to sing about this hurt and tools to affirm the humanity of all people in the face of such evil. Maybe it's this sense of timelessness that knocks me down but also grounds me? Idk but this feeling will be with me for a long time.

Refverie - Back to School Followup

 Thank you to everyone who reached out to comfort me in my beginning of school despair!! I have been able to process things a lot more to isolate exactly why I am feeling these things & how to redirect to feel better things!!! It's easy for me to forget to do this type of thinking bc it doesn't come naturally, but that's why I have friends like y'all to help me!!!! • • • I went in to school today even though we aren't supposed to start til Thursday... I just knew I'd get stressed & want to talk to everyone and not feel like I got anything done. Though not many people were at school I still managed to spend a lot of the day talking lol... I'm now starting to get that excited feeling again!!! I'm glad to have my space back so now I can get back into my routine. Xoxoxo

Refverie - Back to School

 School is about to start and I'm feeling honestly not great. I've been trying to push down feelings of depression since August hit, and it's making me feel all out of sorts. I didn't think about school hardly at all this summer, rather focused on reading and getting the house in order and thinking about the wedding. But now that I have to face school again I'm just filled with such dread. I feel disconnected from my teacher self after such a hard semester last spring, and I feel like I've lost my footing a little bit. I keep comparing myself to teachers on the internet and it ends up making me a combination of sad and mad. I want to not compare, I want to feel confident again, but it is hard! I want to claim my uniqueness like I worked hard to do last year, but something is off right now and I can't quite figure it out. I might just need to take some meditative days to get my mind right in this next week. Oh, also I'm going to take a weaving on a floor loom class this fall so maybe I will like it and it will give me some meditative space. We can only hope!!! (But seriously if you could pray for peace for me that would be awesome xoxoxo)

Refverie - Screened-in Porch

 It has been a dream of mine for a while to have a screened-in porch because I LOVE reading & lounging outside but I HATE bugs/wind/direct sun. This was on the wishlist for a new house when we were looking, but I knew it was unlikely we'd find one simply bc of our price range & size of house we were finding therein. HOWEVER, this house was delivered to us from heaven because it has the most delightful screened-in porch and that wasn't even the selling point of the house!!!!! The weather here is so lovely today and Byron installed a ceiling fan (😻😻😻) this morning while I was at church so now I have come home to the most pleasant room I can imagine and it is truly a dream come true. I can't wait to essentially live out of this room during the fall. 💕🎋🏡🎏

Refverie - Wedding Food

 It's been a minute!!!! Today we went for a tasting at Med Deli to see which dishes we want them to include when we have them cater my *wEdDiNg* next year. The owner gave us all this for free and let us take home leftovers!!! While we were talking to him, regulars kept coming by to chat with him and he'd explain who they were afterwards. He also talked about how if we didn't eat everything on the wedding day, we could take it home or he'd give it to the homeless shelter because he hates wasting food. What a solid guy who clearly values this community and sees how good food can bring people together. I love it! Also... this food is going to be so legit why do I have to wait a whole year for this party?!!!?