Today, I am...

     This is a post format I saw often on my mom's blog. There was no single topic, no specific focal point; it was just a glimpse of daily existence-- a peek into the candy bag of thoughts in her mind that day. 

    I really had the hankering to write something today. I am working on a number of drafts about a few different things, but while those are all in progress, I wanted something I could publish quickly, so I figured I would sprinkle some random thoughts on the digital page today!

   Today, I am....    

    -quite looking forward to dinner tonight. I'm making sourdough pancakes with maple sausage and raspberries. (My sourdough starter has been so much fun to play with in various recipes! And, my stomach is thanking me for it. It has allowed me to enjoy banana bread without the stomachache.)

    -grateful for my job. Even in our busiest seasons (such as now, preparing for the new school year), getting to call myself a librarian and to have dozens of books in my hands every day is a blessing I admittedly take for granted quite often. I am also blessed to have many tasks on my to-do list; it's nice to always have something to do.

    -drinking water out of a Bragg Organic Apple Cider Vinegar glass bottle. (Yes, I washed it.) The label is still in pristine condition; it does stick out like a sore thumb amidst the various tumblers and water bottles being used in the office today, but it is the perfect size and shape to be a water bottle. And it is kind of fun- as well as resourceful!

    -enjoying a slightly cooler few days. The temperature is dropping about ten degrees for part of this week, and it feels like a foreshadowing of autumn. (I am not complaining about summer, though. A point of maturity I thank God for is that He is helping me to realize that complaining about the weather (or anything outside of my control, for that matter) is quite silly and sinful. I am so richly loved by the Creator of the universe; to gripe about heat and sweat, such temporary things, is to hold such a low view of His purpose for me on this earth and the eternity of glory to come afterward. Thank you God for summer-- a time to practice patience and to remember your creation is so good!)

    -wondering how I could go about making a pumpkin spice latte with my Moka pot (when the time comes, of course.) I will have to look up a recipe for the pumpkin flavoring.

    -thinking rather fondly of playing four-square with Riley and my siblings at my family's house this past Sunday. I haven't played a ball game like that in a long while; the heat, sweat, shouting and laughter were good for me. We worked up quite an appetite. The sun was almost down by the time we finally went inside, where Mom had pancakes and bacon waiting for us, which we ate while watching "My Cousin Vinny". I always love an evening spent in my old home. 

That will be all today; hopefully soon I will finish one of the many drafts I am working on. Have a lovely day, and remember to go outside!

Gallery of June, 2025

 Now that it is July (!!!) it is also time for my monthly gallery. June was lovely, as all months are if we learn to realize that God has adorned every day with mercies and lessons and beauty. 

Here are my photographs!

A seashell full of pearls by candlelight. This is on our bathroom counter and it just looked so lovely one night I had to get a picture. 

Just a handsome lad. (My brother Bennett. This was sent to me by one of my sisters. Glad to know nothing has changed since I moved out:) )

My upward view during my lunch break one day. I use this time to quiet my mind and observe God's creation. It really turns my heart around for the rest of the day.

Me and my Riley at the Prairie Fire in the Padre Hotel where my dad's band, Bad Modem, played a fantastic set of glorious 90s covers.

Breakfast for dinner at my in-laws' house!

Me and my sister in law Emily

Bath time. Lately I have been slicing lemons and putting them in the water; it makes the steam smell fresh and bright. 

My husband at his home workbench, with a clock movement. He is teaching himself clock repair and is already astonishingly proficient for how little experience he has yet built up. I love to see and hear his passion for the trade.

A painting I spontaneously did one Saturday. I sat and painted in a freshly cleaned apartment, accompanied by a fresh cup of coffee from my Moka pot and the music of Garoto, a Brazilian guitarist from the 1930s whom I've recently discovered. It was a very mind-nourishing afternoon!

Me and Riley after I cut his hair BY MYSELF. It was a very scary process and for a minute I was petrified because he was starting to look like Dwight Schrute-- but then he washed and dried it, and it has looked wonderfully handsome ever since. Now we know I have the ability to cut his hair, and we can save $25 and a trip to Great Clips.

Lunch break with the trees! (Do you catch my silver hairs?? My grays are all growing in straight/wavy, by the way. Audrey pointed out one time that the curly hair might have only been a phase, and now I am wondering if I'll have straight or slightly wavy hair when I'm fully gray. I guess we'll see!)

The bathroom windowsill at night. We brush our teeth by candlelight every night and there's something whimsical about it that I adore.

So, June is over! It was a busy and marvelous month, full of sweetness and the ever beautiful settling and flourishing into our home together, every day becoming more in love with each other and with Christ. (That is something I always thought was an exaggerated fairytale myth, whenever I heard it: "every day in marriage is sweeter than the last". Well, I am now comfortable telling you it is wholly true. If you both love the Lord, you will love each other, and it actually does deepen every day. It is, like Paul said, a profound mystery. And I am almost in disbelief that I've been given the gift of this mystery to live through every day until death parts us. I think, "I am already so in love with him; how can this become any more beautiful?" And each day is proof that it can and it does. Thank you Jesus for my marriage.)

I look eagerly on to July. This weekend will be sweet: Independence Day on Friday, and the Westchester parade with family that morning-- celebrating with friends in the evening. Saturday, bright and early, Riley and I are off to Santa Barbara. We will return Sunday night and begin another week of work. 

Good day, friends!

A Trip to the Desert Oasis

    *This has taken me entirely too long to write, but I know that if i don't record it, I will forget many of the details I treasure. So here it is, a month late!*

The week before Memorial Day weekend, Riley messaged me from work and told me he booked us an Airbnb in a place he didn't disclose and that we were going to be skipping town on Memorial Day weekend, Sunday to Monday. All he told me was that the house was very secluded, it would be warm, and there was a bounty of art and shopping in the town nearby.

    I needed no convincing; I made my glee known to him and all week I kept reminding myself of my prize: a weekend with only my love. 

    It has been about three months since we came home from the honeymoon; I have missed the excitement of being strangers together in an unfamiliar town. There is a certain thrill I feel at the thought of being away, alone, with the best person I have ever known, in a new place and totally reliant on only our own decisions and wants, where the time is only ours. (Being on our own terms is one of the gems of marriage we've been savoring deeply.)

    We threw a day and night's worth of things into his duffel bag on Saturday night. Sunday, straight from church, we got gas and began to drive. 

    I could see, from his GPS, that it was going to be a long drive-- about 3.5 hours. I didn't care; I had my crochet work, my best friend, and a very expansive Spotify queue to keep me happy. 

    We drove through hills and small mountains. No, I don't remember which highway we were on. I was busy crocheting and enjoying the fact that I wasn't the one driving. I only know the sky was clear and the hills were turning brown for the summer, but they were somehow still very beautiful. (I have grown tired of complaining about the flat expanse of brown plains that surrounds Bakersfield. How can I complain when the sky is so tall and wide and blue, and the land sweeps upwards into the mountains on the horizon the way it does?)

    After those 3.5 hours, at about 4:00pm, as we got into more populated land, Riley said, "Welcome to the desert oasis." Palm Springs! It was new to both of us. I was excited to be exploring somewhere that wasn't the coast; I love the sea, more than many places, but it's been such a long time since I've visited any town that wasn't a beach town. (Of course, he could have taken me anywhere and I would have been just as ready. I'll go anywhere with him.)

    He turned onto a dusty road of broken asphalt and we rattled along through cacti, yucca trees, and small houses nestled into the desert land. We turned and drove for another thousand feet and finally arrived at our Airbnb: a tiny, bright pink house with a white picket fence.

    There was a little hot tub in the back, and further down the hill, also belonging to the house, a deck with a little cowboy pool and two blue wooden lounge chairs--fully bathed in sun and surrounded by desert brush. 

    As soon as we set our things inside, we changed into our bathing suits and went down to the deck. We listened to Bob Marley, and I lay in the sun while Riley smoked a cigar. We talked endlessly and stood in the pool when we got too warm. We savored the look of the surrounding hills and mountains, layered further and further back into the sky.

    That night after dinner, we laid on the bed with cups of coffee and watched a little TV. Once it was dark we enjoyed the solitude of the hot tub and the clarity of the stars above us, so much brighter and more numerous than the stars in our Bakersfield sky. 

   We came inside and got trail mix with little glasses of wine and watched Nacho Libre until past midnight.

    We slept like rocks through the night until we were woken by the sun flooding in through the window shades. The desert realm was clearer and bluer and seemed wider in the morning than it had been the day before in the afternoon. When I drew back the shades, the whole place turned white and shining. 

    We spent the morning in delicious slowness, getting dressed and packing away all of our things, wishing we would've had more time here (we're going to keep that little house in our minds for future trips) but ready to get out and explore. We drove about thirty minutes into actual Palm Springs (we were just in Yucca Valley), and after a late breakfast, we began to walk.

    The city was warm and full of sun, yet we were enjoying the warmth as we walked; it felt appropriate for being in the desert. We found a Palm Springs magnet for the fridge (we've decided we want our refrigerator to be a gallery of all the places we've been) and a Palm Springs postcard to add to my wall. 

    There was a little 1930's general store museum created from a collection of authentic 1930's household items-- cleaning supplies, beauty products, hardware and tools, dry goods, boxed/tinned foods. It was a little wonderful to see how my shelves and cupboards at home were beginning to look like the shelves of this store: boxes of baking soda and washing soda, dry goods in glass jars, oil lamps and candles to light our way at night. 

    We found a thrift store as well (it is criminal, in my mind, not to seek out a thrift store in every city you visit) and most of everything in there was too highly priced to take home any souvenirs, except for a dartboard, still in its plastic, that caught Riley's eye. We purchased that and went back out into the heat and light. 

    Our next quest was to find smoothies. This wasn't hard, as there were about six smoothie joints to choose from in our area. He ordered this dreamy cinnamon vanilla date thing that I want to try and recreate at home; it tasted like a milkshake. I had a VERY pink smoothie with dragon fruit and raspberries. 

    Sufficiently refreshed and full of fruit, we considered leaving then; it was getting later into the afternoon and we'd seen about all we wanted to see. But Riley decided we weren't done yet. He pulled up directions to the nearest art museum, and there we went.

    We used some of our leftover honeymoon cash to pay for admission and spent the next hour wandering slowly through the exhibits, admiring or laughing (quietly), depending on the art. (If you've ever been to a contemporary art museum, you will know what I'm talking about. Some of it is brilliant and some of it is... well... a plank of wood on the wall with a red stripe through it. I've never been more inspired.) Anyway, it was a really enjoyable way to end the trip; it was freezing cold in there, and the smell of paint and echo of voices over the vast granite floors satisfied something inside me that I can't be bothered to define with words. Museums just... do that. 

    When we'd combed all three floors and seen everything we could, we went back to the car, defrosting the instant we stepped outside, and set the GPS to home. 

    There was traffic in the first leg of our trip, but we didn't care; we listened to the Office Ladies the whole way home and I worked on my scrap blanket. 

    We have since decided that from now on, destinations more than two hours away deserve more than one night's stay. But neither one of us regrets anything about the trip. Half the fun of traveling is the getting there, if you've the right company. And he will always be my favorite company.

Gallery of May, 2025

It's a week into June now, but I've had this idea for a long time; at the end of every month, I want to write a post dedicated to the past month and its photographs. (Someday I'd like to get into real physical scrapbooking, but I like the idea of doing it here too.)

Anyway, my hope is to do this on the first of every new month-- clearly I'm off to a great start on that:)

Without further ado, here is marvelous May!

~~~~~

-this is the coffee can clock on top of our microwave. I just thought it deserved a picture:)

-this is the broken grandfather clock on our patio! A sweet family friend wanted us to have it after learning of Riley's interest in clock repair. We now have the best-looking patio in our entire apartment complex.

-some rather radiant strawberries I couldn't help but photograph one Saturday in the middle of my meal prep. I love berry season

-the picture is sideways, but this is my wedding bouquet drying as it hangs on an old lamp my sweet grandma gave us.

-my view from the couch one day, to my left. Dried flowers in an old vase, an onyx ashtray Riley bought on the honeymoon, and his stack of clock repair books. 

-my new favorite way to drink coffee: a cortado with honey. Every Thursday we make dinner with our friends and two of them are especially proficient with an espresso machine. What a gift to have this little cup of love when I would be paying $7 for this in any coffee shop! And it wouldn't be nearly as delicious, I'm sure of that.

-me, my sisters, and dolls. This was taken at an estate sale one Saturday

-my lovely women, that same Saturday. This was in the greenhouse at Cricklewood Secret Garden.

-a moment during one of our regular Monday sibling nights when I decided Riley's big toe could use some color. (That stayed on all month until he decided enough was enough)

-some silly sisters (undeniably gorgeous and chic though)

-a frame from one of my lunch walks. Something about this looked almost eerie- liminal might be the right word, although everything is liminal to everyone nowadays and we might have watered down that word, haha 

-my new lunch spot. It's in the quiet bend of the commercial road by my building. Lots of businesses surrounding but almost no noise in this spot except for the birds. It smells like hot grass and it is wonderful. 

-the top of my beloved bookshelf. I love when there is so much to look at in such a small corner of your home. 

-one day after work I chose to spend 30 minutes eating stove top popcorn with my legs in the pool. I faced west, so the setting sun soaked my body in warmth and made me sweat-- but I went inside glowing, restored and definitely less hungry (therefore more calm.)

-the lunch I made with a dear friend who came over. (Quinoa with roasted sweet potatoes, pan fried chickpeas, sautéed kale, avocado and lemon garlic tahini sauce. We both perished on first bite)

It was a sweet afternoon; more people should cook one on one together.

~~~~~

That is May! It's getting late, so I've lost the ability to be very coherent or eloquent now, but I can't leave without saying I owe all the beauty in my life to Christ. His mercies are new and many every day. 

Hello!

 Welcome to the Clover Cabinet!

I've wanted to start a blog for ages now, and I'm not quite sure why I never pulled the trigger until now.

 I think what finally pushed me was the second read-through of my mother's blog, which she had from 2007 (when I was three) until 2015. (If you click that link, make sure to scroll to the dropdown labeled "peek into the past" and go back to 2007, when she was writing and posting multiple times a week. It's just the sweetest.)

Yes, I have been reading it like a book. I adore it so much; to have the mother's perspective of the childhood I lived is something so special and precious. And getting that look into her mind as she raised us is just the best thing ever. I get to see her thoughts about life, about her growing children; her prayers, the things that made her heart soar, the things she struggled with. And at the time, you know, I was busy growing up; isn't it just the best thing that I can walk back through those years with my now-adult mind and my understanding of every word she writes?  Also, in every picture she included, there is always something to trigger a staggering bout of nostalgia; a toy, a book, a piece of clothing I was particularly fond of-- all things I would not be able to recall if it weren't for the gift of these archives. 

Upon reading her blog through for the second time, I just felt, more so with every post I read, that I wanted this for my future children. I wanted to give them the gift of their childhood captured for them from their mother's loving eyes. I want them to read about our joys, our trials, our daily life, our favorite moments. And for any of you wondering why I don't just do this on Instagram, well, that's exactly what I am trying to get away from. 

The difference between the two platforms is vast and crucial. I have so much I could (and someday probably should) say about the poison of short-form social media, but that isn't supposed to be the focal point of this first post. But if you are reading this and you've ever had social media, I'm sure you know what I'm talking about. It is not a place I want to keep this treasure, these records of myself and their little lives. I want them to find it in a safe and quiet place, just like my mom's writings.

And yes, I do know blogging used to be quite the community, back when my mom was in the thick of it. But that's not even comparable to what modern social media has become. Her community of fellow bloggers was comprised of pretty much only people she already knew, or friends of friends who began following and reading along with her life. They were people who cared to be invested in her life. And, as I go through the years of her blog and read the comments (which I am ecstatic that I can still access, almost twenty years later), I see that THIS is what "social media" was supposed to be. It was ACTUALLY SOCIAL. These people would write paragraphs of thoughtful response to every post she made. People don't really "comment" anymore. They leave a word or two, maybe a sentence, an easy heart emoji. Then they swiftly move on to the next, barely holding on to what they just consumed and interacted with. Back when blogging was the cool thing to do, people would spend actual time reading what people spent actual time writing. And then they would write mini-letters in the comments. People still interact over social media; people still do things similar to the mass scarf-exchange-by-mail my mom put together with her blogging friends in 2008; the difference is that everything these days is faster, more transactional. I cannot be the only one who feels so deeply that what we've made social media to be today is much less personal and much less intentional. I guess I should say, this is all MY experience. I know many prefer Instagram for reasons I can't totally invalidate. But I have observed both sides: the blogging community of the late 2000's-early 2010's, and the Instagram "community" of the late 2010's-2020's-- and what I have observed in the former is just so much sweeter in my eyes.

Now, I'm aware blogging isn't the same community it once was. Most people have migrated to the common areas: Instagram, TikTok, etc. And I don't expect there to be any sort of revival in the blogging world. But, something I've been learning in my young adult life is that it is not enough to sit by and wish people would do certain things or bring back certain practices or appreciate certain dwindling (or long-already-dwindled) crafts. The wishing is pointless. You have to become the person you wish you'd see around you. You have to become the person who starts hosting monthly tea parties; you have to become the person who gifts custom-burned CD's to their friends even when it would be so much easier to just make a Spotify playlist; you have to become the person in the friend group who leaves their phone in their bag and starts talking to the others even if you don't quite know what to say. You have to become the person who begins to do something not because it is the present social currency, but because you love it and it builds up your character. And I was tired of wistfully reading my mother's blog, wishing it was still this way, wishing my friends and I could have this much fun just writing and reading together. I decided it was high time I just started my own. 

And if no one ever jumps on my little bandwagon, and no one ever reads these words, well, that's alright. There is another reason I wanted to start this blog, as well: 

I miss writing!! I used to write every day, in some capacity; I would journal, I always had at least one story going (most of the time it was multiple), and of course, there was writing for school -- which was the portion of my academic years that I actually seemed to excel at. I always, always had a place for all the words in my head to go. 

Now, being newly married and working full time (which is not the ultimate goal, but more on that later), writing is something I must force upon myself. And I do hate this, because it used to come so naturally to me. In recent weeks I have tried to write in my journal more often, because I know how good it is for my heart and mind to have a place of release; but it has felt more mechanical and almost chore-like, trying to get back into it. I'm not letting that discourage me, though, because I know it's a matter of habit. In my best years, I would write daily, sometimes multiple times a day, about nothing really at all (because at thirteen years old my life was pretty tame), and it was just one of my favorite things ever. It allowed me to process my ever-turning mind and my flighty heart, as well as allowing me to sharpen my skill as a writer. It was deeply satisfying and often as easy as breathing for me. 

I hope to return to this point in my twenties and beyond. For the health of my mind and the stability of my heart, I must write. I believe God gave me a way with words specifically to glorify Him and also to sanctify me. (Often, when writing my mind, seeing the words on the page will give me pause and help me to truly question myself, to challenge my attitude and explore my heart. A sentence I write in anger can be used to convict me, when I read it back the next minute. This is what I mean when I say writing helps me process things: it helps me examine my soul.) 

So, here I am! I'm encouraged to say that I feel refreshed and, frankly, a little exhilarated after being able to write all those words so freely. I'm very happy with this; I cannot wait to use this tiny crevice of the Internet to document these days the Lord has given me, to leave little bits and pieces of myself for my children, and to examine my soul.