all sorts

licorice all sorts - a favourite of mine both for their good looks and taste

Just stood outside for a minute or two with my coffee, it's an absolutely beautiful, still and warm morning. The sky is clear and filled with a thousand million stars.

I'm tired this morning. Busy, full, mixed bag, all sorts kinda day yesterday. One which by noon I could feel the beginnings of one of those head aches and the kink at the base of my neck was getting worse. I was just packing the sweeties up in the car when I happened to glance out my kitchen window and realized that the platform that I had made under the window to feed the birds had overnight become a raccoon feeding platform. They had climbed up on it so they could reach the feeder (now empty) of black sunflower seeds, washed their sweet little hands in the water feature and the platform was now covered in raccoon poop. Sigh! The sweeties waited patiently in the car while I cleaned up and repositioned the feeders so that the platform was no longer directly under them.

Just as I was finishing up, a truck pulled up in front of my house and I'm thinking "don't tell me that's chimney sweep No.2 "(whose not supposed to be there for another 2 hours at 9am). It was BFF Harry with a humongous basket of fresh basil, another of Italian parsley and his food processor (on loan for the big pesto making event). Perfect!

Chimney Sweep No.2 had happened to call me to see if I needed my chimney cleaned, before I had a chance to call Chimney Sweep No.1 (who really was my preferred guy) No.2 has irked me in the past but I do like his wife and I do kind of feel bad for him ... so ... "Oh Well sure, he can come and do the job ...see you at 9am Wed!".

Off to the beach, late and because we were late we had a rushed much shorter walk, swim, fetch than usual. I don't like to rush and I have carefully planned my day to day life so that no rushing is required. To me rushing is totally counter productive to my attempts at a serene, live-in-the-moment, chilled out life but ... I needed to be home by 9am to meet No.2. Chimney Sweep and I finally was having a conference call with the design team from big fish Chicago gift company at noon.

Fast forward to noon, no sign of Chimney Sweep No.2 and no phone call. This is the thing. Shit happens, stuff comes up, all I ask of these guys (plumbers, yard men, brick layers, chimney sweeps...) is can't you call me and let me know that you can't make it. Eeeerrrrgggghhhh! On the bright side I did use the time between 9am and noon while I paced around in a POed state to cook a bunch of stuff, file several months worth of receipts, tidy my office, file my project folders, hang out laundry, brew a headache, etc ... however, on principal, I'm afraid No.2 has lost the job.

Conference call was amazing. Wow! I felt like a designer queen, it really was a big deal. Not a "sure we'd like you to work on a project or two" it was a "we're so thrilled to have you as part of our team, and we can't wait (whenever it is convenient pour moi) for you to come to Chicago and meet everyone". It's all (initially) jewellery design (thrill, thrill, happy, happy) and would I be interested in designing my own line of jewellery under the big fish brand (Shut Up!!!). This is when my head (all for fantastic reasons) began to pound. I was conscious of remaining SO cool on the phone while chatting with the human resources person and 4 designers. Why do we feel the need to be cool & collected, why can't we gush. I was SO gushing on the inside. Hung up with promises of loads of great work direction to follow shortly and the sweeties and I danced around my office/studio. yeah, yeah. Whipped off an "I'm so thrilled and happy to meet everyone" email to HR and tried to get some of my other day job work done.

3:30pm. Jake is beginning the restless act, my head hurts and I have a kink in my neck SO let's go get ready and see if we can't unwind with a big walk on the beach. The tides low, it'll be just what we need. Quick stop at the post office where I picked up 2 magazines (I'm a full blown magazine junkie) and a big parcel from MLou @ 1-800-design help. She and her geo-physicist husband had just gone on a little trip to a geo-physicist convention in San Antonio via Chicago (very smart is the new handsome, I reminded her in a later phone call. I've always loved saying my friend's husband is a geo-physicist). The parcel contained an amazingly thoughtful assortment of Chicago info & stationary items (bus & metro maps, brochures, a pop up map of the city, info from the Field Museum - she knows my love of Natural History Museums and all things science & nature , a post card of Sue (the biggest T-Rex skeleton found), several greeting cards, 2 from Great Arrow another company that I eventually want to work for, and the highlight - a package of 12 vintage map of Paris file folders from fav company Cavallini. I called her when we arrived home from our walk and she and I had a perfect, hour long, catch up phone chat.

6pm. Chicken noodle soup on the stove for dinner (comfort food) and plans to pulse (food processor) all evening, instead I washed the sink full of basil, attempted a zen like state as I relaxed and spent an hour, in the moment, pulling the leaves of basil from their stalks in preparations for pesto making (which will now be bumped up a day). Then I folded my, just brought in from the line, laundry - stopping to breath in deeply that exquisite, freshly hung out, scent and ... sigh ... said a big thank you for another great day.