the teeniest, tiniest

you guys. I'm in it. I'm up to my eyeballs in it. am swimming in unwieldy cardboard boxes and unending rolls of bubble wrap. am wading through seven years of the kids' paintings and drawings and school work, seven years gone unchecked. forgotten thrift store finds and unfinished art projects, more broken crayons than I have ever seen in my life, more old bills, more receipts, more paper everything. (side note: I have enough party supply stock to open my own shop). we do not actually leave the city of portland until the middle of june but we have to be out of this house by the end of the month. that's fourteen days. there's so much to do I don't even think there's time for sleep. I  AM  IN  IT.

but the secret to surviving what's often referred to as the third most stressful event of life (preceded only by death and divorce) is this: teeny tiny breaks. the teeniest, the tiniest, the most mundane of pleasures, but in highly concentrated form. last time we moved, I remember taking the time to sort ava's hair accessories by color. in the middle of everything. in the middle of the mountain of boxes and the feverish to-do lists and the small children knocking at the bathroom door, crying for frozen waffles. I remember how cool the bathroom tiles felt beneath me as I sat and sorted, how spectacularly overwhelmed I was by everything but how completely calmed I was to sit there and just sort for ten minutes.

and that's what these photographs are for me. my teeny tiny break. taken with the holga in palm springs back in 2012, finally dropped off and developed two years later. teeny tiny break number one: sitting in the car, thumbing through said freshly developed photographs. teeny tiny break number two: sharing them here. when I look at these, I can practically feel the heat on the back of my neck, smell the air around me, hear the click of that plastic camera. I am transported, just for a second. and really, that's all I need.