come to our art sale!

i'm not totally sure who all reads this blog aside from the usual suspects, but...anyone who sees this who lives in boise should come visit my gender studies service learning group at the farmer's market this saturday! perhaps you are a stranger who follows my blog and is looking forward to meeting up with me, perchance to steal a lock of my hair or to stab me or whatnot...here's your opportunity! this is where i'll be from 9am to 2pm on saturday, may 2! internet stalkers rejoice!

i don't know what everyone else in my group is selling, but here's a list of a few things i'm bringing to the table. i'll try to post some pictures between now and saturday.

-magnets and postcards of a photo from boise pride '08
-matted 8x10 photos
-monsters
-record bowls
-recycled pendant necklaces
-rainbow awareness ribbons
-possibly some wood pieces and a canvas bag or two
-anything else i can scrape together before saturday

so, obviously it's pretty much crucial that you come by our booth and spend lots of money on our fabulous "suggested minimum donation" wares. SMD because we don't want to have to deal with sales tax, but if anyone tries to low-ball us i will personally shoot daggers out of my eyes and slice them up into tiny shameful pieces. it will all be very reasonably priced anyway--tons of stuff under $10, some of it only $1. we'll also be handing out a brochure our group put together, diversity magazines, tons of literature from TCC and other organizations, and free condoms! be there!

reload

what a fabulous weekend it's been! the weather is just too perfect. the last couple nights i've been taking bike rides at like 8pm--in a t-shirt!

the garden is pretty much all planted as of sunday. we planted a bunch more peas, carrots, spinach, lettuce, and some cucumbers, pumpkins, dill, parsley, rosemary, cilantro, pomegranite, blueberry, three tomato plants, and a whole ton of flowers. still waiting to go in are eggplant, basil, lavender, bell peppers, and a few more flowers.

i got word tonight that i won second place in the sigma tau delta poetry contest! for a poem called "patina." there's a $200 prize that i'm pretty psyched about, and i think i might have to read the poem aloud at some function.

i really needed something to build my poetry confidence a bit...so much of the stuff i've been writing lately is crap, and i'm just so ready to give up. the one i turned in for this week is absolutely awful.

one of the worst things about this semester is that i've really started to doubt myself in even being able to judge which of my pieces are crap and which aren't. typically if i come to workshop thinking what i've written is terrible the whole class likes it, and if i have the tiniest bit of confidence that what i've written is good everyone hates it. i'm starting to experience some hostility in comments because no one gets most of my poetry, which is fine i guess, but it's sort of pointless to bring those poems to workshop because i don't get much valuable feedback for revision.

i'd love to finish the semester strong and turn in a couple poems that i'm proud of...maybe this will give me the oomph i needed to do that.

roller derby

i'm writing an article about the treasure valley rollergirls, so i went to one of their bouts tonight. it was pretty fun. i took a million photos and very few of them turned out well, but the ones that did are pretty good i think.

monk-she goes to australia

my mom came home from australia today. she took some pictures of the sock monkey i made my aunt--at first nancy named her "she monkey," but then decided on "monk-she." pictured above in brisbane; below, at the san francisco airport, qantas plane in the background.

above, with friends at my aunt's house in surfer's paradise; below, taking over a hotel bed in brisbane.

my parents have again offered to send me on a trip after graduation. i wasn't going to push the idea after my mom lost her job, because even though they have plenty of money they're also plenty tight with it, especially in anxious times...which is probably why they have plenty. but since they renewed the offer i think i'll go for it. i'm trying to decide between three places: hawaii, belize, or australia.

each place has advantages and disadvantages...i'm familiar with hawaii and i love it there, plus i wouldn't have to bother with a passport; in australia i have free boarding and transportation with my aunt and uncle, whom i haven't seen since i was a kid; and belize would just be so goddamn cool. all three would be very long plane rides, and anywhere i go it might be a challenge to get enough of the right vegan foods. australia poses a danger because i'm smart enough to know that a lot of the insects and animals are poisonous but may not be strong enough to resist playing with them. i'd rather go someplace i haven't been a bunch of times, even though i love hawaii. i'm really leaning towards belize. i've been pretty stuck on the idea of going there ever since i watched a travel documentary about it a year ago or so.

wherever i decide to go i'll get some fabulous opportunities to use the new underwater camera! photography is such a huge motivator for me to want to travel. when i was looking through my mom's travel photos it made me itch...i mean, i can always find great things to take pictures of here in boise, but it doesn't even compare to tropical areas.

jawsome blossoms

this day has been so fabulous! so many flowers are in bloom!

i spent half the day gardening and the other half taking pictures. i planted two rows of peas and a row of carrots, then filled a mini-greenhouse tray with cucumbers, lettuce, spinach, oregano...and a ton of other things i can't even remember now. i also started red peppers in little pots.

my bike ride was overwhelming. i was getting so overstimulated by the gorgeousness of everything that it was actually slightly uncomfortable at times. in some cases there was too much beauty to capture in a normal photo so i had to make some panoramas...

i really super enjoy vertical panoramas.

no leaves on the trees by the river yet...getting close though.

this ladybug was taking a drink of water out of this flower:

the way these blooms bunch together reminds me of fancy pink-dyed poodle tails:

first butterfly picture of the year:

a big happy bumble bee! it didn't stick around long enough for me to get a good picture. probably because i was trying to pick it up. it was so huge and cuddly looking.

i adore tulip magnolias. their insides look so tropical, like they belong in hawaii. certainly not in idaho, anyway.

color in your cheeks

75. it was seventy-five degrees on tuesday. oh my goodness. the only bad thing was that it was crazy windy...especially after dark, like when i was trying to ride my bike home and the headwind was so strong i actually had to get off and walk for a while. but it was a warm wind. i also stopped on the path for a few minutes next to a really fragrant blooming bush that i couldn't get enough of--the wind was blowing it right in my face, and the nearly-full moon was sparkling on the river, and i felt like i could just die right there.

it was kinda funny, on my way to school i was listening to an audiobook of moby dick...i was gliding along with a fabulous tailwind, nose to the air breathing everything in, completely enjoying myself on this gorgeous sunny day...and listening to captain ahab rant about "this lovely light, it lights not me; all loveliness is anguish to me..."

it was pretty beautiful out today too. the nicer the weather the less i care about school. just over a month left...

i got a new camera today...used new...an olympus stylus. it's not the greatest but it was cheap and it takes pictures underwater! it's waterproof to 10 feet. and it's just a wee little point and shoot guy, so i can bring it everywhere, but i'm guessing it's only going to be good for snapshots.

i'm so happy it's my weekend! i have a ton of things to do, but they're mostly fun things...like tomorrow i'm going to tea with my friend bethany, then to a poetry reading, then sometime i need to put together my documentary podcast about trashpicking (which katherine helped me with TREMENDOUSLY by being the best interviewee ever), and there will doubtless be much gardening and making of monsters. and blogging, my gosh. i have been kind of obsessed with this thing lately.

so many legs

i was consumed with gardening and insect-wrangling today. the overarching project was to clear out weeds, grasses and rocks from a stretch of land about 2’x20’ between the creek and a small fence that separates the yard from the creek. but since i can never do just one thing at a time, and since i kept finding fun creatures, i ended up stopping every fifteen minutes to either haul a load of vegetation to the composter or play with a bug or take pictures.

while digging out weeds i uncovered a lot of little friends. i found a grub, a caterpillar, about five large millipedes (four of which went into a terrarium), quite a few worms, two water striders that i relocated to the front pond, and i lifted this one piece of wood that had probably twenty pill bugs underneath.

i also found some egg sacs that i tried and failed to identify. the largest one is about .5” wide, they’re very thin and scale-like, made out of a peach-colored, semi-transparent, paper-like fiber, and they have little orange eggs inside. i ruled out just about every living thing i found near them and even some that weren’t: water striders, millipedes, centipedes, wood lice, earwigs, katydids, dragonflies…nothing even looks close. i’m pretty sure it’s not any kind of spider either. i’m thinking of sending in a query to “what’s that bug?” …or i might just wait and see what hatches.

all in all i spent about six hours outside, and most of the time i really was working…i’m already starting to get sore, but tomorrow i might not even be able to move. the next step is to work in fertilizer and compost, then i’m going to plant a row of sugarsnap peas along the fence, and maybe some carrots.

here’s one of the terrariums i made. i put the millipedes in a larger one. they’re so cool. i took one out and just watched it walk around for like fifteen minutes. it’s funny, they seem so graceful walking over uneven terrain, but when they’re walking on flat land it’s a rather inelegant sort of movement. they don’t undulate forward in smooth waves like caterpillars, it’s more of a march, with their bodies bumping up and down as they go. they also don’t grip very well, which seems odd considering how many legs they have to grip with.