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.

8...one more than 7

For the longest time I took up issue with "blog tags". In my mind they seemed like elitist forms of those absurd facebook applications like "throwing a goat" at someone or giving them a "super poke". I appologize for associating any of the fine blogs that I love and read with the superficial world of facebook applications. But the truth was, blog tags both confused me and made me feel like a loser. With no one tagging me I was left to think I didn't belong in this exclusive cyber game.

Until one day...all that changed. That was the day that I discovered that Cheese on Rye had tagged me. And this is my response. This is the story of how I became Cate the Great being tagged for questions eight.

8 Things I'm passionate about
1. My dear, charming Matt
2. Brooks and Sweeney fams
3. Running (especially where I can smell Sage Brush)
4. Mary Jane shoes
5. Art and understanding the visual world I live in
6. Baking up a party that bring friends into my home
7. Tomato Soup
8. A good book

8 Things I want to do before I die
1. Complete a full triathlon
2. Blow up the Glenn Canyon Dam (I got this from Claire and thought it sounded neat)
3. Have some chilluns'
4. Write a memoir
5. Learn the intricacies of French pastry cooking
6. Go to Argentina with Matt and sit in that tea shop he always tells me about
7. Learn the French language good and proper
8. Teach an art history course

8 Books I have read recently
1. Speak Laurie Halls Anderson
2. Out of the Dust Karen Hesse
3. My Antonia Willa Cather
4. Swimming to Antartica Susan Cox
5. Morality for Beautiful Girls Alexander McCall Smith
6. The Fountainhead Ayn Rand (well I tried at least-until page 350)
7. Twilight Stephanie Meyer
8. The Good Earth Pearl S. Buck

8 Things I often say
1. "I'm calling in a minute..."
2. It's not hip-hop, it's electro....
3. super much or super great
4. Can I have a bite?
5. Ain't no thing...
6. "I'm not okay with...."
7. lovely
8. "brrrriisssskyyyy" (thanks to TR)

8 Things that attract me to friends
1. sincerity
2. non-competitive
3. compassionate
4. loves good, interesting things
5. unassuming
6. non-judgemental
7. finds humor in irony
8. dedicated to being a good friend

8 Songs or albums I could listen to over and over
1. Anything Andy B.
2. About A Boy soundtrack
3. Underacheivers Please Try Harder Camera Obscura
4. "Mr. Tough" Yo La Tengo
5. The Il Postino title track
6. Quelqu'un qui m'a dit Carla Bruni
7. Round Our Way The Mint Juleps
8. Best of Sam Cooke

8 Things I learned this last year
1. No matter how much you love someone, you can love them more the next day.
2. Being engaged isn't hard....it's planning a freaking wedding that will ruin you
4. Fear doesn't help anything
5. How to write a coverletter
6. I am worth more than $7.00 an hour
7. Organic milk really does taste better
8. 1st graders might be cute but they are dumb

8 Random things about me
1. I am currently planning a high school reunion that I won't be able to attend
2. I adore Paula Deen (I have two cookbooks and I've read her memoir)
3. I hope I never have to go on a cruise
4. I once played Hamlet in the "15 Minute Hamlet"
5. I want a cardigan the color of split pea soup
6. I enjoy not liking Provo culture
7. The smell of pine and sage made me cry when we drove through a forest in France
8. I once ate a bowl of jam for breakfast as a kid until Mr. Swirly Patterns made me stop

I hereby tag the following:
1. Ellen
2. TR
3. Joy
4. Mary C.
5. Lauri J.
6. Chrissy
7. Allyson Ham.
8. Mairzy D.

Now you can all feel as blogily validated as I.

inverted Utah

January is really great. I mean the best holiday of the year is in January - namely my birthday (that's on the 23rd for anyone who hasn't bought my gift yet). I can be tough about sending sprays of ice all over my hands in the morning to see out my windshield. I can talk myself out of a depressive state when I get less than 9 hours a day of sunlight. And since high school, I have even learn how to swallow my pride and run around in spandex pants, even if it means scadalizing all those who are pruddish enough in this town to wear shorts on top

Now a brief word on wearing shorts on top of spandex pants. If that is you, consider the alternative. I plead with you. It will make the rest of us look so much less disreputable and you less chafed if we were all in this together.

But back to what I cannot tough out, talk myself out of, or swallow. I dread the imminent Utah valley-anywhere inversion. It is so brutal. Not even the southern happy valley where Provo stands can avoid it. I have already heard of the "the red alert" day announcements in Salt Lake. It is slowly thickening and spreading southward until it will finally choke me with shrapnel swirling with exhaust from soccer moms' Hummers and the ghosts of Geneva Steel. There is no avoiding it. It will find me. It will force me into recreation centers with crying babies where I will have watch The Rosie O'Donell show or the Country Music Awards instead of watching trees go by. Or worse it will slowly lead me, in desparation, to gigantic gym chains with men in circus pants flexing in the mirrors that surround me and I will run, run, run and go nowhere at all. Nowhere at all for 2 months.

New Years Eve syndrome

I hereby resolute in this 2000 and 8 year to:
1. write at least one blog a month

Most often, I really hate New Years Eve. Actually, I should modify that and say that I am usually miserable on New Years Eve. No fault of the holiday really except that it demands that you have the Most Ultimate Super Coolest Night EVER! Otherwise, you're some kind of loser who has nothing socially promising to look forward to in the new year. Also, the placement of News Years Eve as a chaser to a week+ of a lot of traveling, last minute frenzies of shopping, and feasting on rich foods in a house full of family is not so helpful for you to feel up to Ultimate Super Coolest Night EVER! By the time New Years starts making up its expectations I am usually sick, exhausted to apathy, or (as it went in high school) feeling like a loser for not having anywhere to go besides drinking Martinellis with my parents at home. At least, that's how New Years Eve always felt to me.

This year wasn't Awesome or Super Ultimate or even INCREDIBLE!!!! But it was nice and it was fun. After a campy Mexican dinner at La Frontera, my mom, Matt and I made vanilla cardamon cookies from my new cookie press. Matt and I then delivered them with tea to a friend of mine who had experienced the "sick" and "exhausted to apathy" News Years Eve syndrome of which many of us may be acquainted. When we got home my mom had set up the fixings for round after round of Rummy cards and Mexican Train.

Indeed we even went a little wild with the holiday crackers and noise makers. After resolutions we toasted in the New Year with Simply Grapefruit. Oh how lovely it was. Turns out dominoes aren't such a social sin on this holiday. Really, it can make one of the best endings to a great year.

Oh...and here's some pics from the christening of the aforementioned cookie press. It's great.

what makes Robert Smithson so great

The day after Thanksgiving, us Brookses (and Sweeneys) found ourselves grateful for Mr. Robert Smithson. I am thankful indeed that he finds the same kind of art and beauty in Utah landscape, most especially the Great Salt Lake. This was my third pilgrimmage to the Spiral Jetty and I would say that it gets better everytime but really it is just completely different. In late July you can wade out to the jetty tip in water that reflects your image as still as a mirror. When I have gone during the winter though the lake recedes and has taken on a foamy red tide. The wind is nearly unbearable but makes the whole experience so sublime despite spending an hour driving on burley dirt roads and passing endless cattle grates.

It was lots of fun.

We made salt shadows.

Matt got really cold.

English said I looked like a barge hauler on the Volga River (rightly so).

And I found a neat stick.

The best thing though was that I was able to experience it this time with that dear Matt of mine.

Brookses in the park

One of these things is not like the others,

One of these things just doesn't belong,

Can you tell which thing is not like the others

By the time I finish my song?

(Click to enlarge picture.)

art in my classroom

There are lots of adventures for an art instructor who teaches everyone from the unsocialized levels of kindergarteners to the attitude-know-it-all sixth graders. Until this last month, I would say that I more often mourned my role as art entertainer to 600 students than celebrated it; I have quickly learned that the role of "entertainer" is an inherent characteristic in the work of any public school teacher. But I made it through the first of four terms and I tell you what - I believe that my art class is fun (even for me).

We have done all kinds of projects so far. The kindergarteners were awed by the wonder of leaf rubbings as well as the fact that when you turn over a sheet of paper you can use the other side as if it were a new sheet; I am learning time and again that less is really much more for them.

The first and second graders learned how shadows don't have details like smiley faces (that took quite of bit of prompting on some of their first drawing exercises). First they outlined each other's shadow outside with chalk. The next week they took turns posing in front of an overhead light for the other students to draw the shadow in their sketchbook. Of course, I "only picked shadow posers who were sitting quietly criss-cross applesauce". Then this last week we made a shadow dance mural with butcher paper from the projection of a poseable figure we put on the overhead and outlined on paper where it was projected.

Really though, I think my favorite results were from the 3rd-6th grade sketchbook/masterpiece activity. We took a month talking about how artists practice for a masterpiece in a sketchbook first like making a draft for a paper. They had to plan what materials they would use for their masterpiece and why. Watercolors aren't good for details and colored pencils aren't good for soft looking textures, etc. And then, I stopped the teaching and let them decide what to do. And that's when the transforming robots, dragons, birds in fast flight, delicate arches, gigantic drills appeared on their papers. The stuff they made was so incredibly creative. I swear they were taking from the kind of inspiration that anyone from Kinkade to even the Dadaists cry themselves to sleep for not having. It was marvelous. I am so proud.

But to those 5th and 6th graders that wish to continue dishing out the "-tude" and their pre-teen triumphs as top of the elementary totem pole... just wait till middle school and acne hit you next year ... Then you'll long for the validating comforts I offered in this art classroom.

and to think it was a last minute costume...

From the Sunset View Elementary Halloween parade, working at the public library, and living too close to BYU campus, I saw a lot of pretty great costumes this year.

But nothing really competes with Old Man Autumn.

Good work, Matt.

tribute to autumn

There have been lots of things to make this years's Fall eventful and really beautiful. The kick off probably started with the Utah State Fair. Gosh! I will never get too old to eat funnel cakes and pet goats. And what is it that is so captivating about old people square dancing in folksy tutus and cowboy boots? It is almost like watching a migration of co-ed aquasizers move with the season from the pool to the dance floor. There is something beautifully absurd about it.

And those of you Provo peeps, have you taken an autumn pilgrimage up Rock Canyon yet? It is something great. The colors get as rich and overwhelming as a yellow orange forest where you could be sung to a 'O Brother Where Art Thou ' baptism. I just got back from another trip up there where I collected oak and maple leaves for my students. I can't wait for them to do their leaf rubbings or outline them with crayons then watercolor the rest until the paper crinkles when it dries. If I had another month and there weren't so many aphid infested trees we would do a lesson on Caulder and make leaf mobiles.

I can't stop with making soups and ciders either. Winter squash and green apple bisque was one of my favorites. The grape cider was more of an improv when we boiled the grapes with too much water that we had to add mulling spices to give it more depth of flavor. It was perfect for our tea party. We served it with pop tarts and cinnamon tea and the compliments given on the flavor were no match to how proud I was of the color.

What else makes for a good rite or ritual of Fall?