It’s Monday! 

I am actually excited about it being Monday, and here’s why. 

1. This weekend is over. The Dawgs losing was just heartbreaking and I can’t talk about it. AHHHH. 

2. Tonight, we’re finally decorating our tree and putting lights up on the house. 

3. After tree decorating, I plan on catching up on episodes of Revenge and finally watching Liz Lemon get married in her Princess Leia costume. 

What more could you want from a Monday?!

I can remember checking the temperature on the thermometer just outside the kitchen window in the mornings before school— was it a jacket day or a shorts day or a sweater-over-a-tee-shirt day (so that running around on the playground was feasible but the chilly classroom couldn’t win)? Now it seems I do the same thing, only from the comfort of being warm under the blankets whilst checking weather.com and Swackett on my phone. 

This morning as I was walking through downtown on my way to work, there was a guy about 30 feet in front of me also making his way through the streets. He had a quickened gait, not of someone late or hurried, but cold. It seems his long-sleeved shirt wasn’t enough for the brisk 48-degree Georgia morning chill. He had his hands stuffed deep into his front pockets and was wearing these shoes: dark brown bucks with a electric sole.  His stride was long and deliberate and with every step I would see a flash of the bright blue from the bottoms of his feet. 

I wondered who he was; where he was going. I wondered if he was meeting someone for breakfast or headed to work himself. I wondered if he checked the weather before he left… making the decision to brave the cold in order to enjoy a jacket-less walk home later in the warm afternoon. Of if he made no habit of this, simply walking blindly out into the wilderness, armed with nothing but the seasonal knowledge that usually, October in Georgia is Not That Cold. 

I wondered what it would be like to know a man like that… who was either too stubborn to wear a coat or so hopelessly optimistic about the afternoon sunlight baking the earth that he didn’t need one. I wondered what it would be like to love a man a like that… to be able to check the weather for him and tell him it is cold outside and insist, despite his stubbornness or optimism, that he should wear a coat. 

Eventually he turned the corner ahead of me where I continued straight, losing sight of him and his electric soles. I looked down at my own feet on the street at my bucks with the hot pink sole and wondered when there would be a blue pair to match. 

Monday Love - Come Thou Fount Print

Today’s Monday Thing I Love is this sweet print I just bought from Kate’s Letters (Lilies of the Field here on Tumblr.) I cannot wait to hang it on my wall and stare at it and be reminded of how God is tuning my heart everyday. I mean really, that is so awesome. 

If you need me, I’ll be over here, starring at the wall in anticipation and coveting Kate’s calligraphy skillz. 

Monday Love - New Haircut

I used to associate how long and beautiful someone’s hair was with their relative popularity. This metaphor, like most things I thought whilst in high school, proved to be entirely unreliable as I discovered things like “logic” and “not being an idiot teenager.”  

There was a girl on my volleyball team who was the high school triple threat: athletic, smart, and had the longest, most beautiful hair of anyone I’d ever seen outside of the pages of the Guinness World Records/Little House on the Prairie novel. She was also, unequivocally, a world class brat. My mom always reminds me of this fact by never calling this girl by her name in stories, only by the moniker That Bratty Girl On Your Volleyball Team. At the time, I couldn’t see that through all the Hair Envy I had going on. I wanted long hair and I wanted it right then. Many-a-high-school mistake was probably made based on Hair Envy; mine was trying to be metaphorically cool via long hair. 

My hair is really too thin and wispy to be anything but fairly short. I’ve fooled myself for a long time in this realm. I look back to pictures of high school with my long, pine needle straight hair and wonder, truly, what I was thinking. This look is especially unforgiving when your hair is the actual color of pine needles.  

Throughout college I alternatively chopped and grew it out… never really deciding what I wanted. Last year around this time, I chopped it about 11 hours before my best friend’s wedding. It was mostly an emotional cut… feeling the need for a drastic change but not quite ready to commit to a tattoo or temporary-horrible-boyfriend.

This time, it got a little bit cool and breezy outside and I decided that short hair looks better with scarves. I envisioned my freshly-bobbed self skipping down Boulevard with the leaves falling all around me like a J.Crew catalogue cover. Today is hot and rainy, but I stand by it. 

I chopped my hair off again. Short hair for the win. 

Monday Love - Tee Shirts 

It’s no secret I love a good tee. Striped tees? Even better. Striped pocket tee? Sheesh. Just send it to my house already. 

My mom recently sent me a package that contained only tees and a note to throw out some old ones that were looking ratty because I rarely wear anything else, ever. (Mom: Success.)  

Tee shirts are also the next clue to my secret project I’m working on. A giant clue. (Can we call that a clue? More like a waving flag.)

Ruminate on that for a while and I’ll be back with more deets soon. Whoop. 

Monday Love - The Artistic Mind of a Friend from Afar

On Mondays I’ve been posting drawings or graphics of things that I love… but this day… being a holiday and all… I lost track of time.

No matter.

There’s this “friend” that I have (can I call you that?) that I’ve never met In Real Life, but she’s a best friend of my best friend who moved to Nashville a year ago and this particular friend (the one I actually DO know in real life) was visiting this weekend and so I was thinking about Nashville and her new friends and cool city and also about my love for run-on, nonsensical sentences. So this Friend that I don’t really know is the friend of my friend that I do really know and when your friend has a friend you kind of just love them no matter what, right? Right. (That’s a thing, right?)

And. Let’s be honest. I Like a lot of stuff on Instagram. Mostly because Instagram is a happy and funny place. I could probably scroll through and Like everything I see. Homemade pizza? Why yes, I Like it. Sunset by the river? I love it. Cute little puppy chewing on your shoe? Oh I’ll like the mess out of that. The note someone left on your car that says “Parking Job: F-“? Yeah. I’mma Like that (true story.)

But this particular Instagram snapshot stuck with me. Like 5 hours later I thought to myself “wow, I really do like yoga pants and hummus.” I mean I bet I could open a store called “Yoga Pants and Hummus” and become a bajillionaire.

So. I needed to share the awesomeness of this Instagram photo brought to you by the artistic mind of my not-really-friend-but-ok-you-know-i-wish-we-were-real-friends-in-real-life, Eden.

Props, girl. Props.

Monday Love - Normaltown 

I’m a big fan of projects. My Myers-Briggs test indicated I am bad at follow-through, so giving tasks the title of “Project!” really helps get me motivated to stick with something. Probably some left over fear from grade school about not getting A’s or getting into college, but I digress. 

The new project I’m tackling is really two-fold. First, I just moved to a new neighborhood and am constantly discovering new things about the city of Athens because of said-move.  What I’m talking about here, people, is food (if I’m being honest.) I’ve lived in this city for 7 (holy guacamole) years and the fact that there are still things to discover is one of my favorite things about this little Slice-o-Heaven. So, I’m starting, along with some of my friends, to do a Normaltown Food Discovery Adventure.  If you live in Athens or have been here for a visit, I’m hoping to enlighten you on some hidden gems off the beaten path. 

The second part of the project involves t-shirts and you (and your friends.) I’m just going to leave that tantalizing little nugget out there until more of the details come together… so stay tuned. 

Normaltown Food Discovery Adventure, commence! 

Lime Pop Music - Monday Love

There are few things in life I enjoy more than a lime popsicle on a hot day. Except maybe pancakes, staying in bed and reading with the fan on high blast, or watching musicals. But other than that… Lime Pops it is. 

Today’s Monday Thing I Love is my new Mumford & Sons Gentlemen of the Road Tour Tee because I am wearing it right now and I just love it. OK? 

OK. 

Carry on. 

We’ve kayaked down Section 9 of the French Broad and the Upper Green. 

We’ve roamed the halls of Olympia High school and grazed the sandy banks of Lake Down. 

We’ve hopped through the waters of the Wind River Range and navigated the tall grasses of Max Patch on the AT. 

We’ve traversed southern France and the musty streets of Venice. We’ve shuffled through the tiled sorority houses during rush and stomped on bleachers in Sanford Stadium. 

We’ve danced and hiked and studied and worshipped and laughed and learned and cried in these shoes. They have taken me everywhere. And now they are tired. Worn out from a decade of living large. 

We’ve been together for ten years, and now you are broken and I am sad. My 15-year-old self could not have imagined all of our adventures and my 25-year-old self can’t believe it’s been that long.

RIP, my longest relationship and smelliest friends I’ve had. You’ve been good to me. 

Aaaaand I’m back from my much-needed vacation to Colorado and the great state of North Carolina. 

After hiking some sweet mountains with my family and enjoying copious amounts of delicious food, I headed to the sweet little town of Black Mountain, North Carolina, to visit one of my favorite places in the world: Camp. 

A few weeks ago, I started posting what I am calling Monday Love: a Graphical Tribute to Something That I Love. Today’s Monday Love design is a little print I made for one of the friends I visited last week at Camp. Camp and Black Mountain will always hold a special little place in my heart so I thought this was appropriate! 

Anyways! Bloggy Blog is back from vacation now, too, I suppose.

Happy Monday! 

I’ve been moving! And it has been awesome! And horrible! But the house is cute and my friends are great and I’m just all sorts of thankful at the moment. 

Back to regular bloggy bloggin’ now. 

Mondays, Am I Right?