home again

After several hours on the train, wondering just exactly how many pine trees there are in Virginia, here I am back in Raleigh. It was sad to leave bugheart this morning, in a flurry of craziness and complications as always, I hardly got to say thanks.

I love going to DC. Generally I need to go up once or twice a year for conferences and meetings and suchlike. This spring I went for a conference, and as always stayed at bugheart and grub's. Sadly grub wasn't there this time - grub escaped for a weekend in NYC with friends while bugheart and I visited with each other and with papa bugheart, as I'm sure you all read in yesterday's wonderful guest post, and in my ramblings yesterday on bugheart's blog.

The main thing I love about going there, even more than Teaism and museums and big city life, is the time with dear friends. Do you have someone that you never tire of being with? I feel so lucky to have a friend like Bugheart, even though we live kind of far apart now and I'm not very good about calling on the phone. Every time we get together it's like it's only been an afternoon since the last time we talked.

For those of you who don't know her, Bugheart is an amazing artist, photographer and craftista, which you have probably already deduced from her blog. She is also a really gifted scientist. As a liberal arts major myself, I really admire scientists, even though I don't always get along with them (my idea of hell is to spend an eternity in a locked room with an engineer). But biologists... oh baby. They are holistic thinkers. Big picture people with powers of concentration that allow them to focus on the tiniest of life cycles... biologists are hot stuff. Bugheart is an artist-biologist. She loves to find the itty-bitty details that make whole systems work. For her, I think, beauty is in the tiny mechanisms of living systems, like the cilia that let an insect skate along water on sheer surface tension.

Her photos and her artwork are full of little details, too. If you are ever lucky enough to get a package or a card in the mail from her, it will be full of tiny wonderful things that amaze you and make the whole package a delight (and if you know her for very long, you probably will get a package sooner or later). Bugheart is enormously generous, and she shows her love by showering people with gifts (though sometimes months or even years later than she intends to...). As proof, here are the parting gifts I left DC with this morning:


a vintage red top with embroidered leaves


a sleeveless linen blouse to wear with my fancy work clothes


an olive green top with embroidered flowers


my most recent monday give-away item: a sparkly green brooch


a vintage purse - the perfect size to cram a bunch of junk into


...and my new most prized possession, a bugheart original. the snail bag! be still my heart...

You can get some goodies too, since today is another exciting installment of the Great Monday Give-Away. What a haul! In exchange for the snail bag I owe bugheart my old Gocco printer, which I am swapping to her since I haven't used it in quite a while. I know she'll get good use out of it.

But of course, these are all material things. It's nice to have remembrances of the people you love, but time together is infinitely better. Thanks Bugheart for making so much time for me this weekend. I hope that all of you (those that slogged through all this sappiness and are still reading) get to spend some time with someone you love soon, too.

If this were a bedtime prayer I would close by saying "...and please bless HWWLLB, and Sis, and Grub, and Bugheart. I'm thankful for tea and for good friends." Good night!