A girl and her Ted.

My niece Ainsley just turned one and for her birthday she got this huge furry tan bear. It was instantly named 'Ted' for the movie-bear it resembles. Ainsley and Ted have been pretty inseparable since meeting, and every time she sees him she jumps on him and cuddles him. This summer I'm thinking I need to do a whole series of Ainsley and Ted hanging out together, possibly the bear doing naughty things around the house he 'blames' on Ainsley... haha.

You've got to jump off cliffs all the time and build your wings on the way down

When life gives you lemons, read some Annie Dillard... it's. just. so. beautiful...

"There is always the temptation in life to diddle around making itsy-bitsy friends and meals and journeys for years on end. It is all so self conscience, so apparently moral...But I won't have it. The world is wilder than that in all directions, more dangerous...more extravagant and bright. We are...raising tomatoes when we should be raising Cain, or Lazarus."

"How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives."

"I think it would be well, and proper, and obedient, and pure, to grasp your one necessity and not let it go, to dangle from it limp wherever it takes you."

"You've got to jump off cliffs all the time and build your wings on the way down."


"Similarly, the impulse to keep to yourself what you have learned is not only shameful, it is destructive. Anything you do not give freely and abundantly becomes lost to you. You open your safe and find ashes."

"You can't test courage cautiously, so I ran hard and waved my arms hard, happy."

"The dedicated life is the life worth living. You must give with your whole heart."

"There is no shortage of good days. It is good lives that are hard to come by. A life of good days lived in the senses is not enough. The life of sensation is the life of greed; it requires more and more. The life of the spirit requires less and less; time is ample and its passage sweet. Who would call a day spent reading a good day? But a life spent reading -- that is a good life."


"It is no less difficult to write a sentence in a recipe than sentences in Moby Dick. So you might as well write Moby Dick."

"He judged the instant and let go; he flung himself loose into the stars."