Adventures

I know I have mentioned that Emma and I were on an Artists' Retreat, but I have neglected to really say much about it. For the benefit of my newer friends and readers, let me 'splain.
My daughter is definitely a creative girl. And, well, so am I. I want to teach her how to be creative in a healthy way - to take care of herself, take time to look for inspiration, to seek adventure and find her place in this world that isn't always so friendly to our sort of girls. I also want her to have a community of creative women around her as she grows - people who understand and value the way she thinks and works. One activity I've devised that fits the bill is an Artists' Retreat. The past couple of years, we have gone to visit my friend Allison, who lives near the beach just a bit south of us. She is a writer and a poet and a Great Understander of People.
She's one of us.
So we go and stay with her for a few days. We eat interesting food that we find wherever we happen to be, we write and paint and draw and go to the beach a lot.
It's a few days of fun - connecting and creating.
We made a few really fun stops during our stay this year. An especially quirky one was the New University Pyramid Village. It's just a spot that Alli has always wanted to check out, so we did.
It's community with homes in pyramid-ish shapes and giant statues of composer heads.
I'm not even kidding.




We laughed and laughed, but we also felt super uncomfortable. I won't link to the website because it's pretty creepy, even if you could understand the poor English. It's some kind of new-age-ish European community. But still. Really funny stuff.
People crack me up.

On another day, we visited Koreshan State Park, which, now that I think of it, is pretty creepy in its origin too. But I love old buildings and crumbling structures and history, so I really enjoyed walking around.




But it was super-hot. We had just about given up and decided to seek out some air conditioning when we spied a pirate.
A real, honest-to-goodness Captain Jack Sparrow pirate.
Like any good free-spirited girl would do, we decided to follow him around a bit. I mean, the story is a bit more complicated than that, but Allison wrote a delicious poem about it that captures the whole event in far better and far more romantic terms than I could dare hope to write. Read it. You won't be sorry.



This pirate was so convincing that we spent the rest of the day giggling and wondering if he had been actually the real Captain Jack Sparrow. Upon close inspection of the photos, it has been determined that he was not. Sigh.

But that doesn't really matter, does it? We met a pirate. He told us we made his day. End of story.
The only reason there is no photo of me with the pirate is that I was pretty sure I couldn't PhotoShop out the lake of sweat that had welled up in my clavicle. I am a very vain girl, it seems.

(yawn) More tomorrow. I have spent this entire day playing with photos and I am ready to do something that doesn't involve a computer.

Road Trip: Part 6 (The End)

On our way back home from our visit with Chris' family, we stopped in lovely Franklin, Tennessee to have lunch and hang out with some old friends - boys I have known for-stinking-ever and their wives and kiddos. The wives they found are so cool. So very cool, in fact, that they are now my best blog friends - Mary and Amy.

We met at a park and strolled down the streets toward lunch at their favorite pizza spot (where their daughter Amanda happened to be our fabulous server). The kids behaved so well - by now, there are lots of kids when we get together. Emma and Amy's daughter, Chloe, are kindreds in such an amazing way. They immediately click with each other and both of them chattered the whole day away.

I managed to get a picture of Travis and Amy,

but not one of Kris and Mary. I don't know how that happened, since Kris wanted to play with my camera for a minute (and burn with jealousy) and managed to snap the only picture of me on vacation that seems to exist.

Amy knew that I would fall in love with her hometown. She could not have been more right. There were blossoming trees lining every historic street and peeling-paint details that distracted me at every turn.






We stopped at a sweet little cupcake shop, which was perfect since Chloe and Emma want to open a bakery together one day.


I'm not sure if that was decided on a previous visit or this one, but the plans are magnificent if the level of excitement in their voices can be considered any indication.

Mary and Kris have three boys - no girls. I would like to state for the record that they were so well-behaved during this entire, decidedly-girly adventure. Such boys deserve to be rewarded and I must say it took little convincing to get the dads and boys headed back to the park. Fortunately, that sounded good to all the small girls too, so we three mamas had a little bit of grown-up time to enjoy. We wandered and shopped and talked and had an all-around good time. This little shop ended up being my absolute favorite.


It was just brimming with white paint and rough edges.



But there were so many shops with so many gorgeous displays. It was hard for me to focus.








As I sifted through my pictures, though, I found a trend. Apparently, there were chandeliers everywhere in Franklin and apparently, that is mostly what I decided to photograph. So, I present to you My Favorite Chandeliers in Franklin.




Mary scored a pretty blue glass treasure and we all went back to the park with smiles on our faces. But the smiles didn't last long for some of us. The goodbye hugs were so incredibly sad and the pictures so incredibly hilarious and heart-wrenching that I'm afraid I must subject you to all of them.





With that, I take leave of this silly road trip story. There will be more pictures, here and there (when I get to it), but there are other things to attend to and other stories to tell.

Road Trip: Part 5

Okay. This road trip has got to be the most-posted event ever. At least, for me. There still are so many pictures I want to show you and some of them need a little work. For some of them, I'm planning to choose the very-est best one only (and having a hard time doing so) and for some of them, well, they need work because they're not-so-good.
But.
On Wednesday of our week away (or was it Tuesday?), Chris and I stole away by ourselves to the historic town of New Harmony.
If you could script my Most Perfect Day Ever, it would unfold a lot like this one did. It was sunny and breezy and about 74 degrees.
We grabbed a cup of coffee and headed first to the local nature preserve, with trails and wildlife to explore. I talked to a sleepy owl and marveled at the first signs of spring breaking through in the forest.



It was almost like a tender layer of greenery was floating in the air, safe from the harsh conditions near the top of the canopy, where the trees were still stark and bare.


Once we'd had our fill of the forest, Chris and I drove with the windows down, past corn fields and farms, fallen barns and cows. We were listening to Iron & Wine. After a nice little jaunt through the countryside, we rolled into New Harmony with its brick-building Main Street and iron-gated lawns and homes.
It even appeared that they had been expecting us. Chris has his own pharmacy in town.

We wandered through the antique shops and I even found an apron to add to my collection!







There was one stop we needed to make on our way back - a little labyrinth. It was just a circular path cut out of shrubbery, but it wound its way into a tiny, round, stone building in the middle. The weather was so beautiful that neither of us minded the quiet, meditative walk.

Do you see that blobby, pink tree on the right? There will be more pictures of that. It was my favorite thing all day.
Once we were close, we found a cheaters' gate, though, that took us straight to the building and I couldn't wait any longer. I know patience is a virtue, but it's not one that I have really mastered. Lo and behold, up on the sweetly painted ceiling, there were gobs of ladybugs!

In fact, they were everywhere.

So many landed on me, too. It's probably because I wear the symbol of ladybug friendliness.

Road Trip: Part 4

On the afternoon that we went to the river town, we also visited the General Store. This little store in Newburgh, Indiana, is a favorite place of mine and it's quickly becoming the destination of choice for my kids too.
It's an old-fashioned general store that sells lotions, soaps, coffee mugs and that sort of thing, but it also sells locally-produced foods, kitchenware, and pretty linens.



But the atmosphere is the best part. The store looks like it's been there for ages (and I think it actually has been) and that people have just piled objects into corners over the course of time. Sometimes, it's hard to decipher the store inventory from the atmosphere.

My favorite part, though, is the candy counter.

There may or may not be a panorama of this delicious candy counter after my class tonight. I like Photoshop's panorama tool better than Gimp's and I can only get to Photoshop at school. Hope I have time to stitch the images together! I can't wait to see how it comes out.