home early tonight

ah! i'm getting into this hyper-stimulation mode again. stepping into a thriving place like new york just morphs me into this huge sponge where every subway encounter and cultural event i am exposed to soaks up into me...

and after 3 over-full weeks of such sponging, i end up feeling really, really tired. ha.

today was such a day of almost overindulgent absorption: 'twas the first day of open house new york, where hundreds of awesomely interesting locales in the city typically closed and locked to the public are opened up for free perusal. awesome, yes? yes. after visiting 10 such sites scattered far far apart throughout the boroughs, topped off with an excellent film screening tonight at the maysles institute, i just had to come home. i planned to stay for the post-screening poetry reading, and then meet more friends to go dancing on the lower east side... but... all the way back down from harlem to avenue A after a week of readings and screenings and subway insanity and i just couldn't muster the strength. heck, i can't even muster the strength to tell you all about what awesomely interesting locales i went to and visited.

instead i was home by 10 to bake some banana-cinnamon-sugar-chocolate-bread-cake amazingness. and speaking of that, why yes that photo is in fact 3 stacks of oatmeal chocolate chip cookie pancakes that me and dear xarissa made last weekend to celebrate general conference. we feasted that weekend, with a perfect farewell-to-summer key lime coconut cake as well. oh and did i further mention that i also made my first scones recently?

homemade bagels are next.

and a very large p.s./fyi.. i cannot express in proper words how much i miss this:





















and maybe that's where most of the actual exhaustion comes from after all. :(

11 weeks until we're reunited. (not that i'm counting or anything)