upcycle

my new season’s resolutions are going well. i’ve sewn three new canvas bags, and cut out a bunch more…i started an assembly line process so it goes faster, but now i have bags in various stages of production all over the place. i’ve also started making craploads of bandanas.

the camera experimentation has been fabulous, and it’s made me realize how lazy i was before, not paying much attention at all to the ISO or aperture settings. my pictures are turning out better than ever.

the hummingbird feeder hasn’t had any takers yet, at least not that i’ve seen, but i put up a birdfeeder that’s turned my back yard into a local wildlife hangout. tons of little birds eat out of the feeder, including three gorgeous mountain bluebirds who’ve become regulars. a pair of ducks, some mourning doves, and a few other larger birds all lurk underneath, eating the runoff. the squirrels love to raid it; they were actually damaging the feeder so i jimmy rigged a little protective cover that i thought would keep them off. they were discouraged for about an hour, and quite vocal and pissed about it, but then they figured out a way around it. although it isn’t a successful deterrent, it’s an effective trap. watching them try to dismount the feeder is pretty comical.

i haven’t started painting, or composting, or printing tshirts or reading outside. i’ve been reading inside, though…the other night i started three books. first, “the lone surfer of montana, kansas,” a collection of short stories written by davy rothbart, the genius behind found magazine. i read four stories and they all pretty much sucked. same goes for “woman on the edge of time,” an old sci fi novel my creative nonfiction professor recommended; i’m going to give that one more of a chance, though.

i also started “the beach book,” an anthology of short stories that each involve the beach in some way. it has stories by anthony doerr, jeffrey eugenides, gabriel garcia marquez, roald dahl, and a bunch of people i haven’t heard of but i’m sure they’re cool too. so far i’ve read doerr’s “the shell collector” and dahl’s “the boy who talked with animals,” and they were both spectacular.

the awesomest thing about this book, though, is that it’s totally waterproof! the pages are some kind of plastic material, and it’s nearly impossible to damage. it’s one of a diverse collection of “durabooks,” the first of which i laid eyes on was “cradle to cradle”—in tom trusky’s book arts class he showed us that book and, without mentioning that it was waterproof, dramatically poured a glass of water on it while flipping through the pages. the whole class was totally astonished that he would do such a thing to one of his beloved books until he explained what was going on. after that exciting incident, i was book shopping with a friend of mine, trying to locate her a copy of “i <3 female orgasm” in the sexuality section. that was where i found cosmopolitan’s “aqua kama sutra,” also completely waterproof, and exactly what it sounds like—a compilation of sex positions that involve water (mostly shower, bath, ocean, etc., but also some very creative ideas, like one involving a sprinkler). so clever! anyway, ever since trusky’s little demonstration, i’ve been obsessed with durabooks. the beach book weighs probably four or five times as much as any normal book its size, but the novelty of it being waterproof is entirely worth the hand cramps.