Heat waves all across California, and that means beach season is extended. I’m not upset about it.

Hi guys! So, this might be the last post I put up for a while. Not for sure, but possibly. Probably. Because I’m just spread too thin these days, between parenting (and trying to be a very involved parent), full-time graduate student-ing with my graduation date looming and all my projects piled up, and now running a wine bar which is only 3 nights a week but gosh, owning and operating a business is really time consuming!

But I’m not complaining. Not at all! Not complaining, just explaining. I’ve got so much going on right now, and something’s gotta give. So I might take a little break from blogging, or space my posts out even more than they already are (remember when I used to post like 3-5 times a week? oh those pre-grad-school days!). But I won’t leave completely, k? So don’t give up on me.

And it feels right to bow out — if I do in fact bow out for a bit — with a joyful celebration of our little everyday lives. Here’s what it’s been looking like, lately:

We did it! Finally, after years of trying and failing, we did it. We grew our own watermelon at home. And it was deeeelicious.


This crazy van down at the beach.


Portland Vegan Beer Fest!!! It was good. So good


So good.


Damian and I attended “Back To School Night” — our first one ever. It was surreal (to be on the other side of it) and sentimental and my goodness, I am just so in love with my kiddo. I know it’s dumb and trite and every parent feels it, but dang. I love that kid!


When you let the child pick out his own outfit to go hiking.


At the wine bar. It’s so crazy to me, still, that we’re running a vegan wine bar. And I love this tender little moment that a friend was able to capture. But honestly, most of the time we look more like this:


Truth.

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And now, it’s time for the one, the only, Le Love List!

OPENING A WINE BAR! // The fact that people are LOVING the food at the wine bar. Honestly, the food was an afterthought for us – something we’re required to serve because of the type of liquor license we have. We never intended the food — all vegan food in a decidedly non-vegan town — to be a part of the appeal. But to our absolute delight, people are LOVING this food. I had two people last weekend — both of them omnis of course — tell me that our heirloom tomato and stone fruit salad was the best salad they’d ever had in their life. And the pudlas! People are seriously freaking out over the pudlas. It’s amazing and thrilling and it feels like the best kind of vegan activism I’ve ever done. ♥ // Waking up next to Waits and seeing his smiling face. // A Los Gorditos soy curl fajita burrito, smothered in the orange salsa, which is maybe my singular favorite food on the entire planet. // Also all the other food I ate in Portland. // The fact that I was able to visit Portland not once but TWICE in September. Starting a small business on credit cards is probably a bad idea, but at least you end up with a lot of airline miles, and a lot of free flights! Right? I mean right?? Silver lining? // Waits recently informed me that he wants a new bathing suit. Specifically, a bikini. And I have to say, I really do enjoy the fact that thus far he seems impervious to the influence of our gendered, and gender-normative, culture. I know that it won’t last, but right now I am really enjoying the innocence of it. // The democratic debate and the looming Presidential Election season, yee-haw let’s do this! // Jeremy and I picked up a present for Waits in LA – an ice cube mold that made ice shaped like Star Wars X-Wing Fighter Planes. And after we made the ice, Waits said that he wanted to put the X-Wing cubes inside the salad spinner “to make them fly”, and so we did. It was such a simple and creative little request, and so much fun. And those are the kinds of moments that are really, really making me happy these days. Just those instances, or interactions, amidst the minutia of daily life. Or maybe that’s it – they ARE the minutia of daily life, except they stand out because they are exceptional, and they remind you that daily life – weekly life – yearly – life – our entire lives – are made up of these infinitesimally small moments of divine happiness. If only we can pause to acknowledge them. At least, that was my lesson from Waits and his salad spinning ice planes. And it’s the lesson I’m trying to take to heart, again and again and again these days. ♥

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Alright guys, now it’s your turn! Please leave your own Le Love Lists in the comments below, so all of us can read what’s been making you happy, peek into your life, and share the joy!

And as always, I hope you have a wonderful weekend, and if I do disappear for a while, I hope your fall is blustery and beautiful and full of everything fall should be: nesting and nostalgia and moving inward and quieting down and warm spaces and knitted things and books and tea and lovers arms and long lazy stretches of spending quiet time just all alone.

Happy autumn!

♥