squeak!

this is the li’l one responsible for munching on about $25 worth of nutrition bars. plus s/he (they?) got into the dog food. i brought andy into the garage and he totally freaked out, he couldn’t find the mouse but he could definitely tell it was there. so i set up this “live mouse trap” that i got for xmas, and about an hour later we had one very confused and adorable mouse!

i found the trap on veganessentials.com. it might seem like kind of a silly thing to buy, since you’d think it would be easy enough to make your own no-kill mouse trap, but i don’t advise it. once i made one out of a bowl, a baking tray and some toothpicks: it worked perfectly the first time, but the second time the mouse must have set it off with its tail because the bowl fell down and broke its back. i was completely devastated. no more homemade mouse-catching devices ever again! plus this one worked so damn well. the only downside is that it’s really small. but if you check it often enough and let the captives out quickly i guess it’s alright.

mccall in winter

it was gorgeous in mccall this weekend. driving up there we passed right through the inversion that’s hanging above us here in boise. the sun was so intense in the mountains.

the snow was above andy’s head! but it was heavy with a thick crust so he could galumph through it pretty easily. at first he needed coaxing, so i told him there was a kitty kitty and he dove right in.

he went snowshoeing with me! until i fell on my ass and froze and went back inside. who falls snowshoeing? honestly.

even lucy was able to make it up into the snow, but not easily.

after a long cold day in the snow andy likes to curl up right next to the wood stove and basically cook himself.

i was checking out the spaces in between these logs…this part of the cabin was built the 1930s, and another part was added on recently, so the logs used to be outside but now they form a wall in the kitchen, living room and dining room. and stuffed in between for insulation i found pine needles, burlap, mud, and all kinds of miscellaneous crap.

my mom made an icicle-tini.

i blew on my lens to create a neat misty effect.

here we are dipping back beneath the inversion…yuck. at least i got a few nice days of sunlight.

frozen profiles and other pairs

recent craftiness

this is tummybox, the lunch box monster. she started her life as a brand new insulated metal lunchbox with a picture of some shitty band on the front, which someone donated to idaho youth ranch, evidently failing to recognize her monstrous potential. i scratched up the metal, glued down some faux fur and painted a couple fangs on the handle/lips. at first i was going to add big googlie eyes but i thought the rivets and metal clasp looked neat instead, sort of like three tiny spider eyes with a wee rectangular nose. in these photos she’s resting on my gorillapod, so the legs are not actually part of the construction.

i needed to cover up some embroidered letters on this sweatshirt, so i copied the microcosm publishing chainring heart design and printed this patch:

and that got me started making more patches. voluntary human extinction movement—may we live long and die out!:

i used the scrabble tile pendant technique to apply a picture to this big chunky wooden ring:

amazon.com had some fabulous colored bike chain that i made into bracelets:

instead of wrapping presents in disposable wrap, this year for christmas i sewed a reusable bag for each gift. it’s a good thing i started in october because it took forever—not only did i make the bags but a lot of the gifts themselves were handmade, so it took months to finish everything. i ended up putting together roughly 50-60 bags, mostly out of brocades. then i used scrap yarn to tie most of them, and printed little wallet-sized photos to use as tags. the gifts pictured here are only the ones i gave my parents and grandma—i wish i’d gotten a picture of all the bags together, it would’ve been huge.

overjoyed unemployed (freedom is a word i rarely use)

no one in the history of forever has been so delighted to be laid off as i am. this morning my boss called to let me know it would be my last day—not because of anything i did, but because she can’t afford to have employees anymore, except for the ad sales person. she had to lay off her mom and husband too. i could tell she felt awful and she was probably dreading calling me; the same kind of situation happened with my predecessor, who didn’t take it very well. i found myself consoling her rather than the other way around. it is very sad that the company isn’t doing well, and i feel so bad for her and my coworkers, but to be perfectly selfish…

i’m free!

just last night i had a bit of a breakdown because i couldn’t figure out how i would ever disentangle myself from this job. my mom has written for their magazines for ten years, so i knew i’d have to be incredibly careful about how i ended things. i worked for them for nine months and had a lot of assignments with due dates far into the future, and my responsibilities were such that it would be very hard for them to find a new person to replace me, especially because there’s no longer an office building and my boss works from her house up in mccall. and on top of that, i really like the people i worked for and with, and i didn’t want to let them down.

this has not been a bad job. it’s been very stressful at times, but mostly because i made it that way. my former boss and coworkers are all wonderful people. for the last few months i’ve kind of been living someone’s dream, working from home, making my own hours, having a for realsies job in my field of study, with lots of perks like free tickets to events and movies and occasional free food at fancy restaurants...i can hardly complain, but i am burnt out. i’m so ready to give all that up it’s not even funny.

i got my first job the day after my 20th birthday; now it’s two weeks until my 23rd birthday, and i’ve been working solidly that entire time, with a few months overlap when i had two jobs. on top of working i’ve also been going to school full-time and haven’t had any real vacations. there was about a six-month period recently when i didn’t even have weekends—i had one day off a week, and that was usually filled with running errands and doing homework.

i am not the type to work like that. people seem to get the impression that i’m a responsible person and that i have my shit together, but this is not the case. around last fall i started feeling the walls closing in on me, adulthood a vile and intractable fate tightening its oppressive grip around my neck. it never mattered much what i was doing, only that i was doing things and pretending to be responsible when i’m really quite not.

as i’m writing this i just received a heartbreaking email from a coworker, the last remaining employee…he feels like it’s his fault and he’s really upset about it. but he works as hard as he can, and he can’t help the economy. poor guy, so depressing…

i’m still going to get paid to write articles for all the magazines and do freelance editing—those were my favorite parts of the job anyway. i don’t have to worry about distribution anymore! i don’t have to force myself to work when i don’t want to! i don’t have to think about work all the time and feel trapped by it! i am so, so happy.

my former boss wants me to go on unemployment since she’s been paying for the insurance this whole time and she doesn’t want it to go to waste, but i don’t know. i’m not sure if i even qualify, for one thing. i certainly don’t need the money, and i don’t feel right about contributing to the unemployment issue (and draining the system’s funds) when the economy is so shitty and there are so many other people who genuinely need the help. i’m torn. i’ll look into it further.

tomorrow is the first day of my 12 day vacation before the next semester starts. i haven’t had this much time off in about 3.5 years. oh sweet donothingness…

for spoony...