There are at least 1000 things about you that I don't know yet

like ice buckets from hotel rooms
in the early morning
from the night before
when the ice is nearly all relented
the water is the coldest you ever knew
normal people would not hold it up and drink it
but I always have
I always do


photo here

Love, Friday

This week I only wish I had a letter penned by my mother or my father.
I wish I had one. I don't-but I know their secrets.
Long ago I would sneak lookies at cards they left for each other on the wooden kitchen table.
At the bottom of the card, under a signature was always ILYTM in tiny capitals.
On his cards. On her cards.
ILYTM
I found out later, when I had the courage to ask, that it meant:
I Love You The Most
ahhhhh
What little love letter quirks do you do?

For a girl in need of a tourniquet

I did drive around in my 1988 Volvo at the bittersweet end of the 90's with this song playing.
I would sing it out and practice subtle vulnerability at stoplights.
At octagonal red signs.
At ends of driveways.

yearly click day Blaise

Blaise.
I love you.
You are three.
I love that we are taking these yearly click photos with the amber necklace.
I love that Finn takes his with an old shirt of dad's.
I love that someday I will frame them all for you.

and what I wrote to Finnian last year applies to you:

It is making for a great growth series I think as I fast forward in my head and imagine him standing in some backyard all lovely and tall and distracted and really wanting to be done with the picture.
He will be 18 and the portraits will be finished and he will run off and not look back.
But some day when he finds his nostalgia, when he wakes up and his invincible skin has rubbed all off and he is broody for the irrecoverable past. Someday when all he wants in the world is to reach backwards to prove it was once really quite so simple and perfect- well then he will have these to remind him of his mama and all the love and hope she had for his future.
And he will smile and show them to his lover and they will hang them in their house and
he will tilt his head and wonder was he ever really that small.

Yes you were.

Thank you for being a giant sunshine on this earth Blaise. xo
We all love you.

I hope three is just as lovely as two but with less diapers

Blaise turns three years old on Monday.
I have been weepy just thinking about it.
Today my parents and my gran came for a small family birthday party.
We did potato soup, cheese balls, and cake. Yummo.
Blaise opened pressies with gusto and we all smiled a lot.
The Pièce de résistance was the yellow remote control Lamborghini from papa.
All the boys in the house went wild for it.
On Monday I will post the yearly click.
Today I just stare at the little boy with blue eyes who throws tiny arrows at my heart hourly.

Love, Friday

This Friday I am just had to say I am short on time
and my love letter is simple and sweet:

Dear Joe,
I love you so much. Thank you for taking a day off today to hang out with us. The possibility of a whole day surrounded by you three is enough to make me attempt a cartwheel. xo me

Back to normal posting next Friday.
Send me letters to post?
amytsharp at gmail dot com
xo

Help us name the new WOODLAND ANIMALS- Little Alouette contest!

WINNER WINNER~
Thanks everyone for playing! After MUCH grueling name picking fun:

FENNEL the FOX
and
BALDWIN the BEAR

THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR HELPING US OUT! xoxox
Congrats to Kittenpie and Schmutzie~ Please email me at amy at littlealouette dot com and send me yr addresses! xoxoxo







Help us name the woodland creatures!
The BEAR and the FOX need names!
Bella the Bear? Frankie the Fox? HELP!

Help Little Alouette name the newest members of the wee teething safe toy line.

The new WOODLAND SET is in need of snappy new names.
Help give BEAR & FOX a cool new moniker!

TWO WINNERS will receive BRAND NEW WOODLAND SETS
(4 pieces of wood love!)





We will choose a winner for the FOX and a winner for the BEAR!

CONTEST RULES:
1. Leave a comment with your picks for new names. GET CREATIVE!
2. Twitter (@littlealouette) or blog about it and earn one more chance for each.(leave a new comment and tell us what you have done to spread the word.)
3. Have FUN!
4. We will announce the winner next Wednesday right here!



Good luck and ALL MONTH 10% of the sales from WOODLAND SETS will go to UNICEF to help children affected by the earthquake in Haiti! xo

This is the greatest thing in the world.

Buena Vista Social Club - Chan Chan.mp4 from misswell on Vimeo.

If I were a fancy design blog I would paste up gorgeous photos of sexy Cuban women in dresses that slit to the ass cheek and men so handsome with dance moves like danger.

I would throw down pictures of Cuba blurred ever so lovely with photoshop that would make you tumblr crazy.

But I will just say that this CD was on heavy rotation when I lived in Athens in the 90's. I would pull it out when I cooked in my tiny apartment. I would wear aprons and make food for myself and I would think this is the greatest thing in the world. And tonight I think about how lovely it would be to be there. In that video, wearing a low cut dress in red, drinking drinks with ice. Sitting at a small wooden table pressed against my Joe, feeling the music. It's like I don't even need to know what they are saying because it is so good. Like years ago when I had a Greek lover and he might have been saying I was a donkey and my feet were smelly in island whispers long ago. I didn't care. It just sounded like life amplified. Or like today in the post office when I pretended to understand Spanish. These two guys were chatting up a storm and I kept looking at them and raising my eyebrows from time to time. I really freaked them out I think. It just sounded so pleasing to me. I wanted to be there.

Sometimes words just make sounds that make us crazy.

I have found this poet that I love so much I need to stalk her gently

Happiness

How far away is your happiness?
How many inches?
How many yards?
How many bus rides to work
and back?
How many doorways
and stairwells?
How many hours
awake in the dark
belly of the night
which contains
all the world’s bedrooms,
all dollhouse-sized?
How far away is your happiness?
How many words?
How many thoughts?
How much pavement?
How much thread
in the enormous sewing machine
of the present moment?

- marlena morling

Love, Friday

In 2010 I want to post love letters each Friday.
I think love letters are the pulse of life. I live in fear that they are falling lost away from us anymore. I want them back. I want you to give and get love letters this year. I have collected some love letters and want to publish them.
Some I may have written, some may have been given to me.
Some may be little figments of characters I create.
Some may be from friends.
Some were found in an old antique store.
Some may be from you if you want to send me some.
I just want to know how they move you.
how they make you feel

Love letters require passion and fearlessness.
open and brave
This is a good thing.

This week I am reposting a prose poem that is kind of a love letter of sorts I wrote in the mid 90's. It was a childhood memory. My friend Mindy (although that is not her name) was the center of this memory. It's all true and it's all real and just last night my mom tells me of some terrible news from my hometown that revolves around her. She needs a love letter today. And here it kinda is:

I was eight and sleeping over at Mindy Miller's farm. I always slept over, we were best friends and all. I guess we were on our best behavior considering the previous weekend we were all busted in Mr. Miller's small cinder block garage for playing some sort of doctor game. But it was Ryan Farely, the pervert neighbor kid who had suggested it, and indeed we were curious. And if Stupid Frankie Dinnel hadn't knocked over that shelf we would have been in the clear. After the talk about the sanctity of our bodies by our mothers, we made a pact to behave and at the very least to exclude Frankie from any future excursions concerning curiosity.

It was about nine o'clock and hot still. We stood outside of Mindy's house in our white cotton nightgowns. Our small flat chests chaffing against the material as we climbed the fence that divided her property from the Farley's. We always sat on that fence. It was slipping into pure black night and in the country darkness is massive. If you were a city kid or a pussy like Frankie you would be afraid, but we weren't scared of night. It meant that the tent of sky light stars would open and we would crane our necks back and talk. Talk about eight year old fears and wonder what we would look like when we were twenty. How we would change. It didn't matter much that my friend was skinny and had buck teeth or that I was chubby with incredibly large feet for my age. Everything was fine and when we looked up we weren't afraid of the curious future.

And then we heard him scream. He was yelling our names so loudly. We were busted again. Across the road. On the gate. In our nightgowns after dark. Only Mr. Miller was jumping up and down and flapping his arms and motioning us over towards the house. He was squealing and against the porch light dim we could tell he wasn't angry, only excited about something. The closer we came to the yard we could see Mr. Miller's face scrunched up and strange and his finger pointed sharp towards the green wet grass. It was there on the lawn, burning and popping. A meteorite. Mr. Miller said it was matter from the solar system. Fallen from up there. He wasn't even mad that we were on the fence because this was important he had said. Soon it was over like the way a sparkler from the fourth of July simply stops with that last shooting spark. I remember Mindy's teenage sister came home and thought we were stupid to be so excited. She hadn't seen it. She swatted us away and walked into the house. She was mean and wretched, but I still wanted to be her. I fell asleep on the top bunk that night wondering if it was anything special to see the sky fall.

Now I'm twenty three and drinking a raspberry ginger ale with my friend Pete. It is September and hot still. We are on his roof in the city. He is complaining about not being able to see the stars so well and what he going to do with himself in the Fall. I tell him about that night out at Miller's farm. He listens hard and tells me how beautiful, how rare of an occurrence. Do I know this he is asking me as he leans in closer. I hear him, like a murmur. But I am thinking, I am wondering if Mindy can remember that one night out of the hundreds we spent in childhood.

And Pete is now looking up like we all do to escape the ground. To swim around in the sky. I take out a deck of blue playing cards from my handbag and we begin to play war. I'm beating him but that's not why he's jealous. He wants to see one too. A moment that stops everything else. I can see it in the way he looks at the card that accidentally flies out of his hand and over the edge. Falling blue matter...

My Little Rabbit

Blaise wearing my old shirt, originally uploaded by turnsharp.

last month he was asking everyone the name of each object in the world
or each person he encountered
even the grumpy strangers
this month he wants to know who made each morsel of food
that goes in his little mouth
and he says hello to everyone
he meets
even the garbage collectors
even the old men on the streets

even small gestures

Red Cross. Donate for Haiti.
You can use yr blog to spread the word. xo

painting by Kasimir Malevich

I wonder how much space there really is inside of there

This one apartment I had in college was tiny and cold.
It was the basement of a house.
Above me lived a slutty Icelandic woman and above her lived a lesbian filmmaker.
The sounds that came from the house were like songs.
I was choosing my days at random then.
Like a spinner.
I had a lot of melancholy in that apartment that year.
I lived on Virgina Woolf and seedy bars.
It's funny because I just didn't know that right around the corner was bliss for me.
I stepped out of that apartment and into adventures like storybooks.

But sometimes when it's cold outside
when I live in houses that have old windows
windows that seem to puff cold air at me
I think about that apartment
or perhaps about that time


And I think of those other women
who breathed in and out in that same space.
And I wonder who they are now.
I have so much space in my mind.

I can't remember anything real.
but I can't forget all the people.

photo via

We had a concrete slab on our front porch, and I would put on "Hey Mickey" and go back and forth about 400 times a day.

p

I was so excited to be featured in the Columbus Alive this week!
The series is Alive and Unedited and it was a relaxed Q&A with the super cool John Ross.
Here's the online link.

Thanks ALIVE! xoxoxo

I could waste my life on this hill.

We spent the day out with family sledding at Highbanks Metro Park. It was so much fun. Finn declared that he wanted to waste his life on the hill. Cousin Andie got a bump on her head from a collision but was tough and kept at it. We all had a good laugh and Auntie Vicks fixed us cookies and hot cocoa when we returned home.

It was one of those good days.
Here are more photos from the day.

Love, Friday

In 2010 I want to post love letters each Friday.
I think love letters are the pulse of life. I live in fear that they are falling lost away from us anymore. I want them back. I want you to give and get love letters this year. I have collected some love letters and want to publish them.
Some I may have written, some may have been given to me.
Some may be little figments of characters I create.
Some may be from friends.
Some were found in an old antique store.
Some may be from you if you want to send me some.
I just want to know how they move you.
how they make you feel

Love letters require passion and fearlessness.
open and brave
This is a good thing.

Dearest Jimmy,

There is a place, a field beside of the road near our house, that I sometimes think of taking you to. We would pack a picnic and walk there in the hot summer and the sun would start to fluster us and my neck would turn red and drops of sweat would roll down our backs and we would swing our arms and walk and talk. We would talk about things that we don’t really talk about now. We would say what we want to do with the rest of our lives. Things about children and things about you and me. We would slowly fall down in the field after we feast on our baguette sandwiches with tomatoes. (the ones you loved so much when you were in the service) We would fall onto soft blankets and you would make love to me like I know you want to. You would call me sweet names like Lapin and other words you know in French. You would make me sing.

I know you don't want to sit in that wooden rocking chair and stare at something that I cannot see. I know that you can move your gaze and see the future. Just turn your head and the future is standing in the hallway in a pale yellow dress.

I love you Jimmy. Let's go walking soon.

All my love,

Helen

Get me delivered to yr email xo

What are you reading?

Do you read Raising Foodies?
I love it. It is the brainchild of my friend Jos and I just love it.
I love that it is real and not fussy and it makes me want to eat better with my family.

Here is what she has to say about her blog:

I want my two young daughters to love, appreciate and understand good food -- why it's important, where it comes from, how to enjoy it. Maybe it's asking for too much, but I want them to be little foodies. Desperately.

My desire is two fold: for one, I really don't want to cook two differently meals every. single. night., and there are only so many dinners of organic nuggets and Annie's mac and cheese that I can stomach. But my primary motivation is to create in my two daughters a healthier, more confident, more passionate attitude about food than I had as a teenager and young adult (for too many years, as as someone who came of age in the era of snackwells, food was the enemy.)

So this is the space where I’ll share our family's food "experiences" and where I'm hoping you'll share yours too, as I'm guessing I'm not alone here. What worked, what didn’t, what we cooked together, what we read, where we went and what we ate when we went there…

Welcome to our family food journey.

Check it out today!
What blogs do you love right now?

Please take off your dress

I thought about buying a digital recorder for speaking into but they are a bit too pricey for me right now. I think I gave all my money to the beer companies of the world last month. I have started carrying my moleskin notebook around again. I was inspired by my friend in NYC who is a really smart cat and although he tells me I exaggerate things I do know that he is one of the smartest people I know. Anyways, he has these little notebooks of the simple spiral design that he carries around and works formulas and other interesting tidbits of his work. (Don't ask me what he does but it is all mathy and important.) I peeked at one of his notebooks and it terrified and titillated me in the same moment. It was obviously loved and worn and bentish. There was commitment to that notebook.

Anyways, I want to have access to my thoughts on the go and it feels like I am always on the go and I figured it would be good for me to have it for writing my book and things that make me wild and inspirational bits that fall from the sky and all of the good conversations I hear and man this is what I used to do when my brain was so focused on turning the world inside out and sucking the marrow from it.

I have boxes of the world in little notebooks in my basement right now.

You would freak out if you read them.
You may be in them.

Did you sit next to me in the 90's on a bus in Europe?
Did we kiss in discotheques?
Did you walk by me in Los Angeles?

I am about sick of having grocery lists and paper and the occasional Thomas the Tank Engine in my pocket.

It's winter- the pockets are deep.

So far here are the things that I have written down:


my love for Jenny Owen Youngs
recipes for assorted comfort foods
the lyrics to Glycerine by Bush
all of the people that smell good
open and brave seven times
reminder to reread A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
ten small love letters
a new secret
the origins of the word panache
Prosopagnosia is a real disorder and I think I read once that Jane Goodall suffered from it
Phonetic version of please take off your dress in Russian



I think it's going to be good for me.
It's going to be a wild year.
I can feel it.





photo via ffffound

Love, Friday

In 2010 I want to post love letters each Friday.
I think love letters are the pulse of life. I live in fear that they are falling lost away from us anymore. I want them back. I want you to give and get love letters this year. I have collected some love letters and want to publish them.
Some I may have written, some may have been given to me.
Some may be little figments of characters I create.
Some may be from friends.
Some were found in an old antique store.
Some may be from you if you want to send me some.
I just want to know how they move you.
how they make you feel

Love letters require passion and fearlessness.
open and brave
This is a good thing.

Dearest Judy,

When I wake and you are gone I am desperate for you. I reach all the way across the bed until my body hurts from the pull of muscles and skin. I want you to be here again. Across the bed are all of the memories of you pressed down on the cottons. They are of you and your wicked mouth and lamp eyes and your breasts skimming across the duvet and the way you turn into a small ball when you are cold. And when you are cold I take you in my arms and hold you. And all through the times that were harder than now, I would hold you in that tight ball and rock it all away. And if you let me do it again it will all come clean my love. It will all press out with the iron and we will put the bed together and walk down to Johnson's and grab a vanilla soda and then walk home slowly under the fast moving silent sky. And you will know that you are mine. All mine. Just come home Judy. I only love you.

Yours forever, Willem