friday present: now.

We have bucket loads of decisions to make every day, the most important ones having to do with our outlook. We can choose to be thankful, appreciative, compassionate. Or we can choose to dwell on what ails us. Right now, for instance, I decide to dodge the darker hollow and head for lighter ground. With one moment's gratitude list. Right now I'm thankful for...

{via}

this moment. 
I have pregnancy nose big time. The dry weatherscape here dries me out even more, so it's a pretty bloody mess lately, crescendoing this week. Not being able to breathe through my nose properly is suffocating enough, and if I ride that wave of thought, it'll make me panicky and most certainly grumpy.

So this morning, just as I was rising to panic point, I let the wave pass. Focusing instead on all the good things about right now. Sparrows chirping, sudden flocks of ibis squealing overhead. Sun pouring through my window. A lapse in the neighborhood dogs barking. Warm inside while it's wickedly windy outside, clothes on the line so quick to dry. That if I calm + slow down, I can still drag a decent breath through my nose. That there's always the emergency back up of my mouth. I'm breathing for two. Our baby hiccuping inside. Sparrows.

What are you thankful for?

penguin amor.

I did it again. I think our little one is such a part of me already (hi big feet and sciatic nerve, hello cute rolling and poking in my belly), that it's like he's already here. This happened once when we stumbled across baby Halloween costumes in Santiago, and I wanted to get one. Then yesterday's conversation between me + S, who is currently in Ushuaia, "southernmost city in the world." They'll even stamp your passport saying so if you ask nicely in the tourist office. 

S: I'm looking for a penguin costume for the baby.
Me: That is going to be SOOO cute! You should get us all penguin garb.
S: Really? Yeah that would be cute too.
[I have to stop here to point out two things. 1.) S was totally going for us dressed up as a family of penguins: hilarious and utterly endearing. His willingness surprised me. 2.) I believe there are some embarrassing pictures of me dressed as a penguin, complete with bow tie, floating around on Facebook.]
Me: Really? OK, yeah, let's all get penguin costumes. Then we can dress up as penguins for Christmas!
S: Ummm, Heather. He's not going to be here for Christmas. 

{via}

Has this kind of thing ever happened to you too? 

is that a rock in your pocket?

First, get your mind outta the gutter. This might be what the security guard asks me when I pass through security on our flight to Santiago or Lima or San Francisco. 

Let's just get this out of the way: I ♥ rocks. And pine cones. And shells. And worn beach glass. Messages in bottles. Driftwood.

{this guy loves stones too : by jos van wunnik}

I'm the girl who lugs stones down from the mountain with her. (I can be kinda clumsy--even without a big pack or big belly--so casing the landscape for pretty rocks underfoot while I hike works out well.) When backpacking I try to stick with the smallish stones. I collect and whittle down the collection on the way. When we arrive home, I always find a surprise rock somewhere in my rucksack--along with the yellow rosary given to me by a dear friend, which has been traveling the globe so rigorously for the past three years.

S entertains my addiction to flotsam. One of the best presents ever: a huge piece of driftwood he brought back for me from a kayaking trip. How he balanced that fat birdlike beauty across his kayak on the windy waters is another work of art in itself. Obviously we won't have space or weight (it's about 15 kilos!) left to bring the wood with us; neither the bags of rocks I pulled from the cupboard last night.

It seems I have stones coming out of my ears. Last night I chose a double, mounded handful of my favorites, placing the heavy ones on a windowsill and the tiny not-gonna-part-with-these in a bag with the shells. Shells are light, right? Someday I hope to have a rock garden (along with our herbs, flowers and fruit trees), with swirls of shells in between. A shell mobile for the boy.

{black stone spiral by jos van wunnik}

Living our transient life and moving a few times a year doesn't lend itself to gardening, not even hard gardening. I'm not a hoarder by any stretch, and I know you can't take it with you. But maybe just one more stone. The one with the plant fossil, or the stripey striated ones like tree rings showing centuries of compression, or the ancient stamp of shell from the mountain's peak--reminding us that we were all under water once. That we know how to swim.

Do you collect anything? Do you frequently weed out your collected?

expanse.

{by tjasa maticic}

May your day be expansive. Like if you were the object of a painting, you'd let your arms and feet and hair would flow out beyond the frame. Rooted, perhaps, by a carrot or a sweet sweet melon into all things.

friday present: randoms.

It's been a couple weeks, since I've written one of these posts. Busy on the home front of moving (obtaining immigration visa, deciding to move + then acting on that whirlwind decision), though that should just be a different post altogether. So let's organize the thoughts, scattered leaves: This week I'm grateful for...

sockets. 
So many sockets. Most houses here have one single-plug socket per room. (At its heart, Puerto Natales is still a poor fishing village, riding the wave of Torres del Paine tourism and trying to learn how to grow.) Most houses are boxes built from scrap wood and tin; the guts of the house an afterthought. The electrical wires run on the outside of the walls, making for eye level sockets--one per room, if you're lucky. (You pay the "electrician" per outlet, and why pay more?) Then comes the extender plug (usually a three-sided danger toy), maybe another extender, then all the appliances plugged in, Frankenstein fashion. Yeah, you can call it a fire hazard. 

Not so where we live now. In a house with forethought: inset ceiling lights, closets, and more sockets than I've ever seen in all of South America. We have, for instance, five sockets in the living room. Three of which have three outlets each. We're only here another three weeks or so, but one of my fondest memories of this place will be the fact that I could plug my computer in anywhere--without unplugging something else, getting tangled up or tripping. 

{the moving night by luis argerich}

emptying.
Like I said, we won't be here much longer. We leave Puerto Natales on November 29. We're selling everything, so I have a good reason to make spreadsheets. I can sort by whichever column I like and filter the information as I please: Who bought what, who do I owe items to, who owes us pesos? It's overly organized, and I love it! Every day this week, someone has stopped by to take something away. It feels good to physically see less to-do items in our space. 

beach glass.
Even though I'm wringing out our home, I still want it to feel homey, livable. Right now I'm looking at a row of beach-combed glass jars. The amber one holds a duck's plume. I'll let the jars catch light on the windowsill another week or so before rolling them in newspaper and jeans. It's decided; they're coming with us to California's cold Pacific. 

{via happy mundane}

deep sleeping. 
Aside from the fact that last night I got to sleep with my guru again after six days, I'm happy that I'm still able to sleep deeply. Of course I wake up a million times in the beginning of the night to pee. Or maybe baby gets all wiggly right when I'm snuggling in and it takes me a bit to fall asleep. But for the most part when I'm there, I'm there. (I know this luxury will slacken soon, so I'll just enjoy it while it lasts!) 

Last night S had his arm draped over my belly, and baby kept swatting at his hand. Baby does this; when he feels pressure, he starts to nudge around in that area. I telepathically told baby to hit harder, but sleeping S still didn't feel a thing. This morning, on the other hand, while S was in full-on play mode with our kicking baby, I didn't even wake up. 

breakfast in bed. 

{via}

S is the morning bird, I'm the night owl and baby still gets to be both. Someday they'll share the early morning hours together preparing me great late breakfasts in bed. We'll eat feasts of yogurt and honey, fruit and Turkish toast in bed together, before going for a hike on a sunny, breezy afternoon.

What are you thankful for right now?