list five: Movies I can watch over and over again...

(Note: These are not necessarily my favorite movies, just the ones that get stuck in my DVD player for days/weeks at a time.  I have a bad habit of falling asleep with a movie on in the background... And it's usually the same movie every night until Sean mentions pointedly that we've been watching the same movie every night for about 19 days now and isn't it time for a new one?)

•  Julie and Julia (this one is a new addition)
• Garden State (Hi Gabe and Jac!)
• His Girl Friday
• Monsters Inc
• Bread and Tulips (this one is in Italian and when I dream I dream in romantic languages)
• Stranger Than Fiction
• Lost In Translation (there is something amazing about this movie)
• Spanglish
• Mary Poppins
• Alice in Wonderland (my favorite favorite favorite (!!!) Disney movie)
• Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou

list four: My Favorite Poems

* Why I Am Not a Painter
By Frank O'Hara

I am not a painter, I am a poet.  
Why? I think I would rather be  
a painter, but I am not. Well,

for instance, Mike Goldberg
is starting a painting. I drop in.  
“Sit down and have a drink” he  
says. I drink; we drink. I look
up. “You have SARDINES in it.”  
“Yes, it needed something there.”
“Oh.” I go and the days go by  
and I drop in again. The painting  
is going on, and I go, and the days  
go by. I drop in. The painting is
finished. “Where’s SARDINES?”
All that’s left is just
letters, “It was too much,” Mike says.

But me? One day I am thinking of  
a color: orange. I write a line  
about orange. Pretty soon it is a  
whole page of words, not lines.  
Then another page. There should be  
so much more, not of orange, of  
words, of how terrible orange is  
and life. Days go by. It is even in  
prose, I am a real poet. My poem  
is finished and I haven’t mentioned  
orange yet. It’s twelve poems, I call  
it ORANGES. And one day in a gallery  
I see Mike’s painting, called SARDINES.

* Love after Love
by Derek Walcott

The time will come
When, with elation,
You will greet yourself arriving
At your own door, in your own mirror,
And each will smile at the other’s welcome,

And say, sit here, Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
To itself, to the stranger who has loved you

All your life, whom you ignored
For another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

The photographs, the desperate notes,
Peel your image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.

* Sleeping in the Forest
by Mary Oliver

I thought the earth remembered me,
she took me back so tenderly,
arranging her dark skirts,
her pockets full of lichens and seeds.

I slept as never before,
a stone on the riverbed,
nothing between me
and the white fire of the stars
but my thoughts,
and they floated light as moths
among the branches of the perfect trees.

All night I heard the small kingdoms
breathing around me, the insects, and the birds
who do their work in the darkness.
All night I rose and fell, as if in water, grappling
with a luminous doom.

By morning I had vanished at least a dozen times into something better.

25 Things To Do Before I Turn 26

1. Learn to crochet
2. Spend an afternoon taking pictures in the city
3. Sew a garment to wear
4. Hit 500 sales in my etsy shop
5. Learn to cook Vietnamese food
6. Draw with crayons
7. Grow roses
8. Finish a painting
9. Create a vision/inspiration board
10. Take more portrait photos
11. Go camping somewhere new
12. Kayak in the ocean (or bay or salt water of some kind)
13. Buy a fun coloring book
14. Paint a painting
15. Write a short story
16. Spend time on a boat
17. Perfect a recipe
18. Visit Salvation Mountain
19. Go dancing
20. Re-arrange the art in my house
21. See a play
22.Visit Chinatown with my camera
23. Explore a new city
24. Adopt the perfect kitten
25. Find a bird's nest

list two: My Favorite Foods

• shrimp, bean, and rice burritos with avocado and salsa from Los Gallos
• tuna casserole!
• sourdough toast with butter  
• clam chowder in a bread bowl from Splash
• breakfast quinoa with peaches and blackberries
• hollandaise sauce
• Benny-Cado from Heavenly Cafe (that's egg benedict with avocado instead of ham or whatever and drowned in the most heavenly hollandaise sauce I've ever had.)
• Crab Louie from Gilda's on the pier
• french bread pizza 
• animal style fries from In n Out
• garlic bread
• goat cheese and tomato quesadillas or grilled cheeses
• grapefruit with salt
• watermelon that drips down your chin
• salmon sashimi (melts like butter on your tongue)
• Jenny Love roll from I Love Sushi 
• blue cheese salsa from the farmer's market
• banana bread

list one: Qualities of a perfect day.

* there would be foggy mornings
* with fresh fruit over quinoa for breakfast
* a walk in the woods or a yoga/tai chi class
* silver needle white tea
* a long hot bath with a great novel
* and then sunshiney afternoons
* knitting outdoors
* picnic blankets
* and taking pictures of clouds
* strawberry lemonade and banana bread
* finishing the really great novel
* a nap in the shade
* then back home for evening tea
* get spiffed up
* for an amazing sushi dinner
* a trip to the bookstore
* and a walk downtown
* then back to the mountains
* for a shower and cuddle time
* with fuzzies and my man
* in front of a beautiful movie