once upon a time, on a quiet street, in a rather deserted part of town, someone slipped in one night and hung a painting on the side of a building.

it was a large painting, the kind that makes you feel small when you stand in front of it.

the unusual thing about this painting – though perhaps this is not so unusual at all – is that no two people could agree on what they saw in it.

you might stand in front of the painting and see a ship, far out at sea, sliding up and down waves the size of mountains.

your sister might see a magnificent oak tree in the middle of a meadow; the tall grass is waving back and forth in the wind and it looks like it is bowing to the tree.

your neighbor might see a basket of pears sitting on a counter, impossibly ripe and glistening in the sun.

your teacher might see a looking glass, reflecting back a beautiful, strong, wise woman.

i guess the most unusual thing about the painting is how tangible its effect is on its viewers.

you smell the salt of the sea and hear the roar of the waves and want to shout as exhilaration rushes through your body. your sister feels the earth beneath her feet and the soft brush of the grass against her skin. your neighbor can taste the ripe pears on her tongue and smell the crisp fall air. your teacher feels seen, heard, respected.

i don’t know what each of you would see in the painting but, if you see it one day, i’d love to find out.

once upon a time, there was a little girl, just like you or me.

of course, none of us are exactly alike, and one of the things that was special about this particular little girl was that she had a long fuzzy tail. it looked rather like the tail of a cat.

the little girl loved her tail; she often used it to get people’s attention. her parents and family and friends loved her tail too, especially because they saw how happy it made her.

sometimes, the little girl would use her tail to play a trick on her mother. she would wait until her mother was watching her and then she would wrap her tail around her glass of milk as if she were going to use her tail to pick it up. her mother would rush over, ready to catch the glass. the little girl would smile, remove her tail, and say, “got you!” with a happy giggle.

when the little girl was only a few years old, her parents brought her to the doctor to see if her tail could be removed; they were worried about it affecting her balance. the little girl cried so hard that they told the doctor to never mind, that they didn’t need it removed after all, and they left the office immediately.

as they drove home, the little girl tickled their faces happily with her tail.

you know, it’s kind of funny that her parents worried about her tail affecting her balance because that little girl was the most agile, steady, and surefooted of all her friends. she could walk along the top of a fence with ease and climb trees like a squirrel. i wish i could do both myself.

while keeping atlas company on the couch, i am amusing myself by writing tiny stories.

since this week is a holiday week in the states, and i know many children are on vacation, i thought i’d share one of them. it’s about a boy named jack and a wandering tree.

feel free to read it yourself, read it to children you love (or have them read it to you), or pass it along.

children, you know, are the original wide-eyed wonderers.

click on the link below to open the story. it’s in a nice little pdf, ready for reading or saving or printing.

jack and the wandering tree

sometimes, when i do a reiki session for a client, i see a series of images that may or may not be accompanied by a story. if i can manage to remember the images and story until the session is over, i like to share them with the client.

i was doing a reiki session for myself one day when i saw the following story.

it is a beautiful day and i am walking down a path. there is lush green grass on both sides of the path.

i push and pull at the castle gate, but it is to no avail.

at this point, the story stopped. i couldn’t see the ending. my sense, however, was that the ending, the way into the castle and celebration, had something to do with giving up, though i didn’t know if it had to do with giving up or with giving up something.

today feels like a good day for a (rather silly) story.

has anyone ever told you the story of the invention of parkour? i don’t know if you’ve ever heard of parkour, but if you’re younger than i am, you are probably an expert at it already.

years and years ago, there was a group of children that spent every afternoon playing in a park near their houses, running and sliding and jumping.

the park was like their second home. they spent so much time there that they knew the very best ways to get around it.

for instance, the fastest and most efficient way to get from the fountain to the big hill was to jump over the fence, run up and down the see-saw, and swing through the branches of the big oak tree to the left.

the fastest and most efficient way to get from the entrance to the fountain was to vault the railing, jump from swing to swing, and then run across the bricks to the fountain.

these might not sound like the quickest paths to you, but trust me, they had timed them. one of the children had received a stopwatch one birthday; timing things became his new favorite hobby. he timed everything. and i do mean everything.

whenever someone new would visit the park, the children would take him or her under their wing. they would show the new person all of their routes, and they would also encourage that person to create their own routes and to share them with everyone.

the actual name of the park was the marsha and bob grady provincial park. the children thought that was a long and boring and unsatisfying name, so they renamed the park, as children generally do.

their name for the park was our park.

eventually, they decided that their routes and ways of getting around the park needed a name. after much discussion and more than a few votes, they decided to name them after their beloved park and call them parkour.

the end.

i love my little niece so much i can hardly stand it.

i wish she lived here. i would take her to story hour and to the children’s museum and she could chase atlas all around the house and pull his tail. sniffle.

i made up a song for her: “oh, savannah, oh don’t you cry for me, for i’ve come from portland, oregon, to hold you on my knee.”

i also have a new nephew, who i met, but i forgot to ask his mom if she cared if i posted a picture of him. i did start a story for him, though. it is the story of prince lars, who went out one day with a very large sword to hunt dragons but somehow came home with one instead because it was so cute. he let his dragon light the fire in his fireplace every night with his fiery breath. (at that point, i had to stop the story, because that was not where i thought it was going at all and i was very confused.)

savannah also has her own story. in case you’ve forgotten, it is the story of queen savannah, who rode her pony named mustard around the island of molasses every morning and decreed that all the little girls on the island would be princesses. people came from all over the world to see the herd of princesses on ponies following queen savannah and mustard around the island and they even ended up as a feature article in national geographic.

did i mention that i love love love her?

there is much excitement in the elizabeth & atlas house.

early tomorrow morning, i am setting out on an adventure. my youngest sister is studying in spain this semester and i am off to spend her spring break with her.

as a bonus, i am going to turn 35 years old in morocco! with that beginning, i am pretty sure that 35 is going to be the best year ever.

i will be back on the 20th – with lots of photos, i suspect.

(speaking of photos, did you know that if you buy a spare camera battery and it sits in the box for four plus years without use, when you happen upon it and are excited to take it on an adventure with you and go to charge it in preparation for the trip, you will discover that it doesn't work? i feel rather sad that my poor battery expired without ever getting to do the thing for which it was created.)

my blog will be quiet while i am gone, so i am leaving you with three things:

a picture of atlas, who will be having a jolly time at the doggy ranch;

a rather silly story about a hippopotamus named humphrey;

Humphrey

and a sneak peek of my brand new website, which i adore and will introduce sometime after i return. it's from the lovely allie of allie creative, who is a design genius.

until i return, may your april be full of sunshine and flowers.

it's valentine's day!

this year, i feel like i am overflowing with love, and i have always loved the essence of valentine's day. it is full of love and sweetness and delight and connection.

in honor of the day, i thought i would share a story about one of my favorite things – organization. because clearly nothing says valentine's day like the thought of organizing.

(it's a shame you can't hear me giggling away over here.)

(what can i say. being a professional organizer is on my very long list of things that i think would be oodles of fun. in the meantime, i get to organize my own house every day, which is also fun.)

the invention of organization

happy day to one and all.

i have been recording the occasional story for my little niece savannah and posting them on a secret page just for her. that way, her mom can play the stories for her and hopefully she won’t forget her auntie who loves her so very much.

i listen to this particular story every once in a while because it makes me giggle. (this also makes me giggle, because i made it up, so you’d think i could just think about it and that would make me giggle, which it actually does, but it’s even funnier when i hear myself giggle on the recording.)

i am feeling a little silly today, so i thought i’d share it, in case it makes you giggle too.

when the world was flat

once upon a time, there lived a teeny-tiny girl.

she lived in a teeny-tiny house in a teeny-tiny forest in a teeny-tiny world. she was so teeny-tiny that, to her, her house and her forest and her world seemed just the right size.

every so often, her world would shake and rattle. this startled the teeny-tiny girl at first, but soon she became accustomed to it.

she grew to love it because, as soon as the shaking would subside, snow would begin falling from the sky and the ground outside her home would slowly become covered in white. she thought it was the most beautiful thing ever.

every time it happened, she would run outside and let the flakes fall on her face and in her open mouth.

have you guessed where the teeny-tiny girl lived yet?

she lived in a snow globe!