Ode to TJ Maxx and a Teal Pot

When I was little I remember throwing a fit everytime my mom took me shopping her to TJ Maxx. It seemed like she would spend hours puttering through the lotions, shoes, linens, cooking ware and specialty foods. If you have ever been to TJ Maxx you will know it was meant for puttering. It would bother me to bored tears how she would hardly ever end up buying anything when we spent so much time there (and the times when she did buy something she would most likely return it the next day).

While she tried things on and sorted through different novelties, my mom would quiet me while I sat in the half size TJ Maxx cart by letting me search through her purse to pick out all the loose change that had spilled from her wallet. Anything I found she would let me keep. Most of the time it was just stinky pennies but oh the excitement of finding a quarter! The way Mr. Swirly Patterns described me was money for me when I was little translated into "candy points". So a quarter was 25 candy points to me and meant a handful of stale sugar beads from any candy dispenser. I could mellow long enough for my mom's TJ Maxx wandering fix for candy points like that.

Fifteen years later, I will give up all (well maybe just most) candy points for any time to wander TJ Maxx. I can't think of anything more theraputic than poking through different stationary sets, kitchenwares and exotic foreign foods. Although I rarely even buy anything when I go, just like my mom, on one of my last trips I brought home a lovely teal enameled, cast iron pot. I can't tell you in words of its beauty, so I have posted a picture. It reminds me of Matt's Grandma Sweeney and her teal kitchen. Just looking at it and thinking of all the things it will slowly braise and boil takes my thoughts to happy, serene places. Matt christened it on Valentine's Day when he made Beef Bourguignon. And oh the joy of comfort food cooking that pot brought into our home.

How to Run through February

Do you ever feel like you're in a movie? I guess not just a movie but you...your movie. Sometimes I get that feeling when I'm running. Actually sometimes that is how I can get myself out the door when I keep finding things to do around the house to keep me from it. I tell myself that I will go and run and I will be like the cover of a Runner's World magazine. Not the cover. No. Those are usually of gaunt looking extremists that intimidate me at races. Instead it is more of the picture you see when you turn to the "Rave Run" section. The picture that shows the sillouhette or some dramatic form of a runner in one of the most beautiful places you could imagine to travel to on foot. I swear, everytime, I would run there barefoot.

I would never submit a picture of myself to a magazine that would show everyone where this place is for me or what I look like when I am there. Sometimes, though, maybe even more often than not, I find that place when I run. If I'm honest, most of the time it is in my head. There are no trembling aspens in February. The air isn't thick enough to fill my lungs and there is no irridescent hanging mosses in Utah. But I swear it's all there. I find a long stretch that sets me staring uninterrupted into the fog swirling Timpanogus and it makes me someone famous. Or maybe just someone who is really important just because I see it.

I can't get there if I can hear the rush hour around me. If I hear the traffic I see the the exhaust puffing from cars. But if I have my music I get caught up in something bigger and more extraordinary. I listen to something poetic that someone else wrote which really has nothing to do with me but should. A lot of the times I don't even know what the song is really about but that makes it even easier for it to be my song. Lately, Miss Camera Obscura has my been my lead voice on these runs. Sometimes I think she can sing the most beautiful things.

Unfortuately there is no way I know how to play one of her songs. I've tried for the last 2 weeks to figure out how to play her on my blog but alas, my techy-incompetence overcomes me. But I will share this part of my "rave run" with you. This song makes me feel pretty awesome too. If I swore, I would say I feel pretty damn awesome when I run to it...but I don't swear of course.