Living Life...

One could always come up with some perfectly adequate excuses for not having kept up with blogging...
one could say, "I've been swamped at work..."
one could say, "I've been dealing with family stuff..."
one could say, "I've been in the hospital. Dying."
one could say, "An alligator bit off my right hand..."
one could say, "I lost the password to my blog..."

Wait, let's go back to the alligator one. It's much more interesting. But if we're going to be completely honest with each other, I've simply been lazy. I really have no legitimate excuse, as I work part-time and have plenty of time to keep up with updating my blog.

Would some photos make up for the absence of newsiness? Yes? Okay, let's start with the prettiness.

In spite of the laziness of my life, I've filled my time with the little things of life that keep you occupied. Nothing particularly worth while to creating change in the world but little things that make your heart happy, boost your esteem, and fill your soul with vanilla-pudding kind of peace. (Smooth and creamy...now I'm hungry.)

Those little moments that we so often just glide by without even a second glance. Little moments of magic, moments that if we just stop long enough to capture with a capture, we'll see just how beautiful they are. This is my life at the moment...because in spite of going crazy with no school and only a part-time job to keep me occupied, I am also distracted by the little, good moments.

I'm taken back in time with the dance of a pen in my hand as it begins a letter with, "Dear Rose..." and the up and down loops of f's and g's and y's in my cursive. It's an old and well-loved motion, a piece of my life on a piece of paper. Enclosed in its envelope home, it'll fly it's merry way across waters to reach it's new destination. Magic. 

There's the moments where you come home and you hesitate over a book or a movie. But then your soul decides it needs some uplifting...no, it needs some spilling. And you let it pour out of you as music floods your soul and words drift onto the page of your journal. Sometimes it means exclamation points, italics as only a very Emily Starr soul can understand, and sometimes it means words all in caps and illustrations and word circles. Sometimes it means an EXPLOSION of words. From the comfort of your bed, from the vividness of your mind...you treat your soul to word therapy and you realize what this is. Magic. 

There are mornings when you drown yourself in cup after cup of tea, and you let yourself sink into the energy that flies from your fingertips. The snap of the shutter, the whir of the photos uploading onto your laptop. The excited breathing as you click through each photo, looking for the gem you made through a lens.
The excitement of multitasking as your fingers quickly ease over the keys, editing each photo, tweaking it just a skosh (Skosh: a form of measurement) to perfection, and figuring out your schedule. Making your photos while you cross each day that has slipped by, realizing you've not even come close to capturing enough of the moments in your life as each day goes hopping by. Magic. 

I may give in to my laziness of avoiding posting on my blog, but this doesn't mean I'm just letting my life slip by unnoticed or unappreciated. I am filled with love for these beautiful moments that I'm too lazy to always capture on my blog. Mugs of coffee, cups of tea, random photo shoots, music blaring, journal-, letter-, and novel-writing, spontaneous dance and tea parties with little sisters, movie nights with besties...I am living life and I am loving all these little moments of magic. 

Coffee

Coffee

It deserves its own blogpost, don't you think?

I have a love-hate, bitter-sweet, half-n-half (hahaha) relationship with coffee. It gives me some very high highs and some very low lows. It's been known to make me the most loving, most friendly, most awesome person on the planet. And it's been known to make the most annoying, the most loud, the most dead person on the planet. It gives me energy or it gives me a migraine. I never quite know how my body is going to react to the caffeine. Is it worth the risk? Probably not, but it tastes so damn good.

Can we talk about the amazing coffee? My favorites? I'm not afraid to admit that I'm a huge Dunkin Donuts fan (what can I say? you can't drive 5 min. without running into one here, whereas you have to go into the cities to search for a Starbucks!)...their Pumpkin Spice lattes are *amazing*. All those cracks about girls going berserk in the fall for the pumpkin spice lattes? Well, I'm that cliche. I could drink them all year round.

Now that winter has set in, however, the peppermint mocha coffees (hot, preferably, though iced is not insane for a New Englander in the middle of the winter...it tastes amazing either way) are fabulicious.

Does this mean I have the $$ to blow every day at DD? Sadly, it doesn't. So I have to resign myself to making a cup at home. I like to brew a cup of DD's myself but lately I've been guzzling the wondrous delights of a Dark Chocolate blend that a friend sent me. Sadly, I can't remember what brand it is, but normally I find that the funky flavors aren't as good when you make them at home. This time was an exception. It is delicious!

My bestie Genny occasionally runs out to grab me a coffee and knows exactly how I love it. As she puts it, "Lotsa cream and VERY sugary." Such a girl. And it may seem like the cliche thing to be the photographer that walks around with her camera in one hand and a cup of coffee in the other, but that's okay. I like being the cliche. :) There's a reason why I'm called CoffeeGirl.

Here's to many more years of a rocky relationship with coffee!