giving hope to adult children everywhere (but not adult babies...they can fend for themselves)

this weekend has been amazing. on saturday, nikki and i got coffee and then went to baggley park and acted like 7-year-olds. i rode my cruiser and she rode the kickbike…


and we flew a kite...

(the wind wasn't much but we gave it our damnedest)

and blew scented bubbles...

and shot pew pew laser cats bubbles...

and climbed trees…

then gorged ourselves on zeppole kalamata olive bread, and sluggishly pedaled/kicked back to my house where we played with water guns for a while. we ran so much, i’m actually sore today…my mind might have thought i was 7 but my body is confirming that i am, indeed, an old old woman. i also got a sunburn, which i’m actually enjoying, because it’s nice to be a color other than elmer’s glue.

we came up with a pretty important concept while we were at moxie. nikki was talking about how she needs to do laundry—she was wearing mismatched socks, and said she was almost out of underwear. i commented that i have a near-unlimited supply of underwear, but there’s a certain underwear hierarchy…and she got really excited and said that her underwear drawer is hierarchical as well. so we decided that we should advertise the concept, for a reason i can no longer remember…perhaps because we thought this could be a great unifier, something to really bring people together. i identify with the underwear hierarchy!

it was plenty gorgeous out yesterday, but today it got up to 76 degrees! even now it’s in the upper 60’s, and i still have the windows open, with a lovely breeze blowing through. it feels so exotic and tropical…if i close my eyes i can almost imagine i’m on kauai, relaxing after a day of body surfing and exploring tide pools, sipping pineapple juice on the beach, surrounded by palm trees and tiki torches… so relaxing. i spent pretty much all day outside again, neglecting my homework, helping my mom plant a vegetable and herb garden. my dad made an above-ground garden bench thing out of an old display table from moon’s kitchen, he drilled holes in it and built up the sides then we filled it with potting soil. we also have a few other little gardens scattered around the yard. so far we have parsley, coriander, lavender, oregano, savory, dill, basil, chives, rosemary, cilantro, lettuce, tomatoes, and strawberries. we planted seeds for carrots, bush peas, cucumbers, cabbage, bell peppers, and more lettuce and parsley, most of those in individual pots, except for the carrots and some peas. and we also put in a bunch of pretty flowers—mostly natives, i think, which is nice.

baroness ingrid von bogdanoff

"we've come a long way...maybe"

i’ve had a super crazy day today. crazy for me, anyway…most of the time i try not to be a busy person, so having a day where i’m constantly on the move kinda kicks my ass. i got to sleep at 3 then woke up at 8 to the sound of my dogs singing to each other—andy does this howling sort of thing, only it’s not exactly howling, more like a deep, mournful baying. i thought he was dying the first time i heard it. he only does it when he thinks no one is around to hear him, and then only rarely. i’m not sure what sets him off. today lucifer joined in for the first time, and her voice had a dramatically higher pitch…the combination was haunting.

i had a job interview first thing, at a little publishing company that puts out a few local magazines. i won’t mention the name of the business, for lots of reasons…but it’s an adorable house in hyde park, the people are incredibly warm and friendly and they hired me on the spot. they have a live-in dog named karma, a big old lumbering black lab, who i totally fell in love with right away. i start in may, right after finals week, and i’m super excited about it. i’ve never had a really real job before. i’m also doing my internship there next semester, so it’s perfect.

after that i drove home and grabbed my bike (i think i'll ride my bike to work most days, but i haven’t timed how long it takes me to get to hyde park yet…probably a while). then i went to all my classes, then pedaled home and ate dinner and felt sorry for my exhausted self, then went to a poetry reading. i came home and worked on this fabulous lyrical essay i’ve got going—it’s a segmented essay, and each segment is like a little prose poem. it’s about nature and connectedness… influenced by a lot of the stuff i’ve been reading lately, especially robinson jeffers and ed abbey. and it’s basically the pinnacle of all the nature writing i’ve ever done. i think. i might hate it tomorrow, you never know.

my friend be started a blog today! exciting. she and i began working at joann’s on the same day (almost 2.5 years ago…wow), we went through training together and discovered that we were both vegan, and had a million other things in common, and we bonded instantly. she and her husband taught me how to knit, so…i can both blame and thank them for that. they moved away a while ago and it’s been difficult keeping in touch, but blogging will help remedy that, i hope.

now i’m going to go work on craft projects, if i can keep myself awake any longer. it’s been a long time since i screenprinted any new tshirts. i’ve outgrown a number of my old ones, philosophically or horizontally or both. a book i’m reading inspired me (“sisterhood, interrupted: from radical women to grrls gone wild”—it’s about the history of feminism and feminist philosophy. my idea of pleasure reading, because i’m demented). there’s a lot of talk in that book about the importance of the statement “the personal is political.” so that’s the one i’m printing tonight. a couple days ago i copied this one from proletarian threads: http://www.proletarianthreads.com/tshirts/t110.html god they have excellent tshirts. i wish i had the skills to make the “save water, share a shower” one. i could just use the slogan, but it wouldn’t be the same without the graphic.

in abstractia

mackerel sky, mackerel sky. never long wet, never long dry.

i just found a blog post with some amazing beautiful cloud pictures, and fascinating info. check out mammatus--breast clouds are the best clouds.