Wheat, by M

How the fuck is wheat in soysauce!
Oh wheat, why have you become my devil. My bane. I'm not even going to get started on corn and dairy.

a cash cow, let’s be honest

Another weird thing on the way to RDU this weekend: the BK apple fries. We stopped for a rest room run and the children wanted a snack, so I picked something small for all 3 of us… apple fries. It’s an apple cut into the shape of fries and served in a fry box. Clever, right? I thought so, until I had to pay $1.49 for each one. I mean… honestly, it’s not that expensive, but it’s an apple. $1.49 for a single apple is appalling, I feel. Not only that, but it’s not even a whole apple, it’s more like half an apple. [The picture, needless to say, is soooo not accurate; there’s got to be some sort of shelf in the bottom of that box, and it is certainly more stuffed than the boxes we received.] Sliced with what I’m sure was either a machine or a gadget—really easy preparation. On the one hand, both kids were kind of excited at the concept of apple fries and scarfed them down, regardless of my hiding the caramel packets, which is great. On the other hand, I feel BK is discouraging healthy choices by drastically overcharging for this small menu item. I’m just saying. Maybe if I had ordered the meal, instead of a la carte? Why do they gotta play games.

rdu: recap

This weekend, drove up to rdu area for brief visit with family and friends. No plans, rhyme or reason, really, though there was a gigantic consignment sale of kids’ items at the fairgrounds, to which I went, determined to score a dresser or possibly even a bed for my children, but no such luck. However, it was still a treasure trove to which I’ll venture again a few months from now, better prepared. Like I’ll actually bring bags or other, possibly wheeled, container to put things in, rather than assuming that carrying armloads of games and clothes and toys and things, while navigating a side-by-side stroller filled with two cranky children is plausible. It’s harrowing, is what it is.

Tour Highlights:

• On the drive up, I was convinced I saw a real, live man perched on the very top of a billboard. On the way back, I saw that it was a dummy, with a dummy sign, something like, “I can see such-and-such car lot from here!” Glad the man was okay.
• Driving J.Lo’s vehicle (for supposed, non-existent furniture pickup) was briefly unnerving, being different and bigger than my own vehicle… then eventually empowering, in that section of I-40 where it’s claustrophobic and everyone drives a little crazy. Briefly pondered Bigger is Better Power Complex ingrained in our society. Would I be affected?
• Although, speaking of said claustrophobic I-40 section, many were abiding by the speed limit? Which I found odd. I guess the police department needs money and drivers need to keep their money? Or maybe it was an odd couple of days.
• The children didn’t sleep well the first night, continuing the trend…
• I've concluded that my children’s behavior isn’t necessarily abominable, but it seems as such when I’m sleep-deprived. It’s a sad and stuck perception for all of us, difficult to extract oneself from…
• Caught up a little on sleep Friday night, thanks to my mom, who stayed with K.Lo. Thank heaven.
• At the sale, my favorite find of all was a set of Hogwarts robes for the kids’ dress-up bin. Gryffindor!
• Took home bounty of garden veggies from my parents: tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, zucchini. Yum!
• Saturday: farmer’s market with friend J, and though I’ve been several times before, this visit was borderline depressing, putting our local markets to shame. RDU’s is perhaps 20x bigger, open 7 days a week, with so many more vendors and variety and shoppers. Which incidentally drives the prices down. And then there were several meat and poultry vendors, another thing we simply don’t have much access to in ILM. It’s very limited by comparison…. ah, whatever. Can’t really afford it anyway. Stocked up on peaches and onions and corn, and fresh lemonade.
• I ordered 2 cups of ice cream intending to share with all, and then it’s like no one wanted any, so I had all this ice cream to myself.
• Which was fine, but the next stop with a cupcake bakery. (Joined up w/ friend N.) Chose a Brown Betty, spilled cup of water into my purse while cleaning up children.
• And then the stop after that was a chocolate shop. Sheesh! Amazing chocolate, though, some of my favorite ever. Stocked up on a couple of bars, though my company opted to select small boxes of hand-painted chocolates with alluring combinations such as chocolate and lavender and I can’t even remember what else… next time.
• Though I sort of hate the feeling of “catch-up” on returning, it can be good to get out of town sometimes if one is in a rut or funk… I feel shaken out of it, for the moment. Hooray. :)

Dear Penelope, by M

i feel like there's a storm coming. some sort of rough and hard thing. perhaps it was too much time watching the sea pound the shore and sweep surfers north from a south swell yesterday. and the feeling is something that wants to trip me up and sweep me out too even though i'm on the mountain top full flung with joy... sometimes putting on sneakers, bandaging my foot, sometimes dancing, sometimes back at my friends porch guarding her with angel sentinals as the bored man looks on. i'm fragmented. maybe its the loud loud battle i see right beyond the trees and her vision of all the animals running down the mountain fleeing from something. she's seen a bear, a fox, a deer in real life wandering past in the night. the other day i saw huge butterflies, no birds. and i can't shut out the fierce clanging. and the image of my husband lost out there somewhere, in the battle beyond, where i can't see him. like in the refiners fire i've been left to go on beyond the mountains without him and trust he'll meet me and i won't be left there alone, as a mystic without a lifesong. he was laying in the field like a casualty and i stepped over him to the battle and marked him with a cross on his forehead and kept walking but then came back and sat with him a while but was forced to go. and he ran back out.

perhaps too much is happening in my head and i need an isolation tank. and everything around me too intense and vibrating. and its the hot days and the jobless wonder, right before the searching comes and the breeze cools, right when the bills are due and not being sure if the EDD is coming through. or feeling that push to go off to a far off place and already knowing the loss of change. that, something is coming. something, like i said, rough and hard.

but anyway its time to sleep. probably tomorrow it'll vanish and the anxiety will recede, but maybe it won't and then i'll remember why. or i'll be in the waters writing and painting and finding my way back again to all the concrete parts of me.

the cracked glass

I posted this article yesterday on FB, mainly in reference to my week, which has been… trying. It turns out that I wasn’t born patient(!), and I have to work on it daily. Some days are much more successful than others, and then I maybe get a little too proud of any practiced patience, thinking that it can come easy, when in fact it does not.

Here is the important quote referenced in the article:

“You see this goblet?” asks Achaan Chaa, the Thai meditation master. “For me this glass is already broken. I enjoy it; I drink out of it. It holds my water admirably, sometimes even reflecting the sun in beautiful patterns. If I should tap it, it has a lovely ring to it. But when I put this glass on the shelf and the wind knocks it over or my elbow brushes it off the table and it falls to the ground and shatters, I say, ‘Of course.’ When I understand that the glass is already broken, every moment with it is precious.”

So, thinking in terms of my occupation, I’ve got two little inevitably broken glasses in my hands: lovely, beautiful, precious. I do appreciate them, more than I can say. I appreciate them much less in lack of sleep and lack of space; sleep and space are ingredients to the ideal penelope. Without sleep and space, it is much more difficult to expect the glasses will break and then to accept the brokenness.

After reading the article last night, today I found the concept a virtually impossible mental hurdle: Yes, I expect one of my glasses to be incorrigible, pesty, whiny, overemotional, uncompromising, needy, lazy, stubborn, AND defiant, all stinking day long. But does that make it okay?

On the other hand, maybe I’m off on the definition of “expect,” twisting it all up with the word “dread.”

Even more likely, I am in my under-rested, feeling-crowded state, over-thinking the matter entirely, which always leads to trouble. I’m guessing the whole point of the exercise is to not really think or analyze too much, lest you crack the glass just by looking at it. Patience does not come easily to me, and nor does the not-thinking. The more you try, the more it eludes you… And with that thought, I’m off to have some wine, watch a movie, and not-think for a little while.

The Purple in My Eyes, by M

The problem or good thing about going to Muriel is that she's a cash and check only kind of girl. Sort of limits the crazy I can get into and we can literally say, if God wants me to do this, he needs to provide the money for it. Which is something I've been trying to work on. Instead of purchasing first and figuring it'll come somehow someway. So I scaled back a high creditcard payment figuring that's where it would've been going anyway and coughed over the $175 for an hour diagnostic session.

The first thing I loved was the new patient form which included 1. was my birth traumatic? 2. what are all the major injuries you've ever had? (I love talking about myself) 3. categories: PAST/NOW: mild/moderate/extreme- and I got to circle how i construed each of the sections from family life to vocation to financial and lifestyle. I also got to answer: what i do to keep healthy, what my intent was, and generational ailments. Awesome analysis good times. Oh and dur, what sort aches and pains do i have currently- hips, knees, kneck... a crick in my shoulder.

She then informed me that though she is called a chiropractic office there's actually no physical adjustment involved and all her language swims around the term 'energy'. It's a term I'm comfortable with because I like to talk about energy I sense in rooms. And um whatever. So anywayz first we talk about the form and if I have any sort of residual issues from childhood traumas and anything I think I say, I'm suspicious, will be confirmed or denied by my body. So I say, mmm, no? She also tries to figure out what exactly I do for work which somebody, please tell me! I say well i was at this desk job for a year and then, I went on vacation, then i got laid off then i wasn't working for 4months, then i got a 3wk desk job, followed by my wacky art dept job... she's like hmm, ok. Clearly she's going to have to look elsewhere. But did I explain my frustration about the weight thing?

So I'm on the table and she's holding up my left arm and asking my body questions, and holding up my right arm and asking my body questions... and by that I mean she says "resist" the push of my hand and she touches a point on my body and if that part of the body is blocked somehow my arm goes weak. I've had this done to me before since '97 or so when this wacky guy named 'sunshine' gave me a tape to watch and then he died a few years later but i never watched the tape until i dug it out and it was all about energy realignment. So that when I got into a car accident the chiropractor was able to help the neck that got hit by the wave and now had whiplash from the lady who hit me, was able to work on me and not freak me out about it... . So she's muttering and making notes and checking here and there and everywhere and then she says, i'm feeling inspired. Is this a spiritual issue? And my body says yes. A what!? A spirit? Something something something... she's like I don't know what it means, i never ask this question like i said, you're going to have to ask God.

Hmph!

So I go back the next week for a follow up session. Hand her my food diary, lay down for my healing tweaking session which involves laying there for a 1/2 hour and her intermittently poking and reflexing me. And toward the end in the back of my eyelids I see the most beautiful color purple. Its this purple tinged with darkblue and it would just sort of morph into a few forms really slowly that I just enjoyed watching it. I didn't even honestly question why it was there. But just took for granted that it was something I was seeing. I get up and I am super relaxed. I say that if nothing else that's what I am. Muriel then says, well you were healing too not just relaxing. Yah yah, mmm hmm, whatever. I am sooo relaxed. She's like, did you see something? Yah i said. The color purple. She's like, that's a spiritual color. It's coincidentally the color of the folder I'm giving you, too. She then hands me the diagnosis of me and a plan-

yeast+ toxicity = a. h2O retention, low metabolism, elevated insulin levels which results in = hormonal imbalance. b. junk in the joints, sinuses resulting in aches, congestion, allergies.

My plan is to tune up the diet, heal the intestines, tune up the spine, detox!? the body (maybe), and then she put in a box on the page as if even to her it was important or at least unusual she wrote "spiritual healing"... upper cervical (so in my neck, where i got hit by that wave when i was a kid)... and I'm like hmm? Hmm.

Still I am all HMM, about it.
But again she says there's a disturbance. Says that people who are sensitive are often physically and spiritually beat up because of it. And that my body needs to know it can function beyond survival. That I need to feel safe in Gods arms- i suppose even when being beaten up by waves at the beach... but still what might that look like and feeling pretty sure you have it... though that color I saw swimming in my eyes must mean something. Because it was a calm sure place that was really beautiful, if nothing else, if anything that's what it was.

do birds feel grief?

Yesterday I was sitting in the backyard while the children played on their waterslide, and out of the blue there was a random *thunk.* A bird’s nest fell out of our Japanese maple. And it turned out there had been an egg in it, and it did not survive. Sadness! No commotion of birdspeak, feathers or flying followed the incident, and so perhaps it was just gravity. Or poor planning on the part of the builder? I couldn’t help but wonder about the mama bird who just lost one of her  young, and whether she knew it was her fault, or not, and did she lament the fallen nest and egg on the ground. Or maybe it was just an *oops,* or a *damn, that’s inconvenient,* and she moved on to build a new nest and lay the rest of her eggs without lingering. I suppose I’ll never know the answer, but it was still sad, anyway. And I swear I still don’t like birds. Okay, maybe a little bit. Maybe.

Prelude to: The Purple in My Eyes, by M

After procrastinating for about 2 years, I finally was like, yes, lets do something about this whole, I can't lose weight no matter how much I'm working out or eating right thing. I have friends who just automatically assume that I'm eating a lot of horrible things or that I have no idea what healthy food might mean. What is this? A carrot? I reject you carrot! Which I ocassionally do but nothing that should warrant a zero drop in the scale. Considering that when I work out 4-5x a week and am eating right nothing happens. I suppose I don't articulate that well but then its like, sure, right, uh huh, sure you're eating right. Sure you're getting all that cardio in.

So then I go on this volcano trip and I lose about 13/14 lbs. Which is about 2+lbs every week I was gone. What did I eat you ask? What I wanted. I had canned peaches, eggs and bacon every morning, almonds, dried fruit, chicken, broccoli, whatever looked good on the menu- burritos, fries, ocassional burgers even. Granted the pace was so vigorous that my body was no longer able to ignore the fact that I was being active. I came back in better shape. My lung capacity was improved- look out world. Then having acclimated to the vigors of travel I kicked up my workouts. I jogged. I almost got back to my 15min mile pace I had in college (which for me was fast, and when I was working out 5/6x a week). I hiked. I swam. I severely curtailed my addiction to breakfast mcmuffins. 4 months later the scale hovered a little above a little below where I left it. THEN I get a job for 3 wks where I'm on my feet for 8 hours a day, moving here, there, and everywhere, up and down ladders, or just sitting for 5 hours painting grout lines and I lose 3/4lbs. What was I eating you ask? Whatever I wanted. I even every week indulged in chicken nuggets and fries. I ate eggs and potatos and bacon and sausage everyday. I ate chicken, roasted vegetables. Nut and fruit medleys. Ocassional kitkat bar minis and fruit.

There's something obviously about what I chose to eat myself here in the real world that must be sabotaging me. So finally, I after all this time, about musing about my thyroid going haywire or whatever it occurs to me that instead of paying a lab +doctors fee to tell me whats wrong ($400 w/out insurance) then I'll go to this holistic healer person my friend Danica and I know. And see if she knows.

And Danica is one of the straightest shooters I know, so if she's willing to give this whatever it is a try. Then why not.

Glass in my Foot, by M

I spent some time meditating the other day. An hour actually. Which is a throwback to all those days in highschool i sat in the dark with candles lit, incense burning and a lethargic, melancholic posture as I contemplated existence. I had it down back then. Nowadays the most I normally do is look wistfully out my window. Or save it for yoga, or before sleep prayer. I do not these days often long for night swimming by REM or for somebody to love by Depeche Mode or even still those rainy days of Skid Row where everything is tinged with sadness and longing and awesome 80's hair. But I do a have rekindled love for Beethovens sonatas which i was in love with back then and his violin/cello suites with a dash of Grygorian chanting. Equally mysterious I think and ennui expressing but just a little bit different... but as it was those Cd's were in the car, so i chose another old throwback favorite, Enya's watermark.

And instead of pounding me down into the bottom of the sea as it used to I floated blissfully on top, dutifully lit the candles, burned the incense and wondered, how exactly does one meditate and on what exactly? I felt compelled to after my visit with the holistic chick. Wrote it down even, like an assignment. Meditate 1 hour. Which I always long to do, in the yard, with a long list of Bible verses at my side. I never do though. So to open up, and its often criticized, I flipped through the Bible and randomly landed at a passage. Normally Psalms. I am possibly hedging my bets that its going to be good but it usually is somehow shockingly theme appropriate. Here is the one from the other night:

Psalm 92
A psalm. A song. For the Sabbath day.
1 It is good to praise the LORD and make music to your name, O Most High, 2 to proclaim your love in the morning and your faithfulness at night, 3 to the music of the ten-stringed lyre and the melody of the harp. 4 For you make me glad by your deeds, O LORD; I sing for joy at the works of your hands. 5 How great are your works, O LORD, how profound your thoughts! 6 The senseless man does not know, fools do not understand, 7 that though the wicked spring up like grass and all evildoers flourish, they will be forever destroyed. 8 But you, O LORD, are exalted forever.

For one, its a song for the sabbath, classic! day of rest, what am i doing? resting... listening. And with enya i've got the lyres and the harps sort of... so anyway then i thought the bed was too comfortable and so I got on the floor, (after about 50 min in i went to scratch my right thigh and found i couldn't feel it. Which was an odd sensation to arrive at. I wonder if it meant something)So I began, took deep breaths and meandered my way to the theme of the meditation which was my health and the main things that came to me were these,

first: Not my will but His will, not my struggle but His struggle, not my success but His success. Mainly in an act of giving it over to God, my body, which is His.

middle: As the holistic chick requested I phrase the term weightloss into a positive, which is something I often point out to other people. Negative thinking. Tsk. Lets turn that around and call it, I would like to be at my optimum weight which got me thinking, I would also like an optimum job and an optimum relationship and in an optimum place I would be traveling. And all of this thematically wound around being able to help people, being able to belong, and being able to serve.

2nd middle: Ask for help, Ask for healing. I am not good at being active in asking, deliberate or intentional in this area. Mostly because i'm a little obsessive and it plays like a loop until it breaks- this hurts, that aches, this frustrates, this annoys- i'm sure there's a request in there somewhere but they're often statements that need a little more recipe to them than that.

Last: I turned, with no deliberation, to where I am on my spiritual landscape. Since Nov 2007 I've been, first near a stream in dappled light looking toward a far off mountain, then walking toward the mountain with jesus, then a little further up, then sitting and waiting on a wheat strewn side of the mountain, (never mind that i eventually found myself on a volcano tour climbing a mountain and meeting god there) but on the mountain it is always warm and always pleasant looking out into the valley, where just once i saw a black tree grow and then was cut down, and then waiting at dawn/dusk on an outcropping of the mountain intermittently windy and calm, further up so that the sky was all that i saw, then the place got a little larger and flatter, like the waiting would be longer, and intermittently, lately there's been a small cabin surrounding me, sometimes there's a broom, other times not, and the minute i realize there's a roof and walls, it gets ripped off and sails, or is flung right off and out to the right of me and disappears into a bright blue sky. I can no longer see the valley below though I remember it.

So when I went there again, this is the first time it has ever been at night, I was dancing with someone on the wood of the cabin floor, no roof to be seen, but a few walls, and i was happy and had an exalted feeling, and as I turned to look down there was a piece of glass in my right foot, and I couldn't keep turning, and in my mind I kept trying to forward the image so that the glass was gone and the dancing could continue but in my image I just sat down and the man was holding my foot and sitting on a stool. And I sitting on a bench in low firelight.

And then Enya clicked off and my right thigh was waking up from its issues and I was left with pondering if, and this actually did happen when I was 3, what stepping on glass has to do with anything and is it me that put it there or was something more sinister involved. The actual incident was that my mom warned me not to play with the glass and I did anyway and the bottle broke and i stepped on it, then i had to get stitches and the doctor pretended to be santa claus and i was angry at the man for lying and i, to this day still have a very wide 2 stich x----x scar on the pad of my right foot. So that in my mental landscape I often find when I am in a dark place or feeling attacked, it is often by glass, either flying toward or raining down upon me or coming up from the ground. So that it seems significant that there appears to be glass in my foot in the last part of my meditation. Perhaps it is warning me against willfulness, or that there will be someone there to remove it finally, whatever wound this really is. I am curious about the answer.

M's Post Work Outing

i didnot expect to be so entertained. though i feel we perhaps meandered a tad too much. it was a relaxing day of non-work that one cannot argue about. sea breeze reaching us, invoking reminisce of italian countrysides, pompeii and what amazing things were preserved for us to find... which i mostly didn't take pictures of since i only had my camera phone. but i'm sure photos of us are just as entertaining... evoking the mood and what not right? however we were overcharged for food and trapped to eat there. we blame my mother for not warning us to pack lunch. but besides a few oddities like the awful redesign of the area that wasn't the actual museum and the parking fee- i would definitely come here again. my only concern is finding a job that lives up to the last. i'm sure our next outing will be equally entertaining.

picky

I’m sharing this company photo series here rather than over at Lo.Co., mainly because the point of this post is more that I am picky. This charming little pool that I bought today at Target for $29.99 will be returned shortly. Yes, one can actually return a pool, with the help of a towel, a deflation device, a strong arm, and some packing tape. And a stubborn streak. I didn’t particularly want to spend much on a pool, I was more figuring on $15 or so, but then I thought I’d go ahead and get this one with the slide, because N.Lo would be more likely to use it. The enticement would be worth a mere fifteen bucks: He’s not a big fan of the water these days, but is a big fan of slides. And indeed, he did try to make it up and down the inflatable slide. K.Lo tried, too, she really did. But, the thing was generally unwieldy with no slip-slide factor to it at all, and after a quick brainstorm, I just moved the whole pool over to our real slide, which worked fantastically. They both had such fun, with about an inch of water in the pool. But then I thought, okay, I’m now stuck with this inflatable slide, which is both useless and landfill, and I essentially paid way more for the pool package as a whole because of said slide. And that irked me. It’s not just the money, but more the principle of spending every penny wisely and also refusing to be ripped off? Maybe it’s not worth the trouble, but I also think that’s what the companies count on… In the meantime, I’ll either purchase another small, simple pool as a replacement and rig it up to the bottom of the slide, or do what I perhaps should have done in the first place, which is to see if the hard plastic pool sitting in the back corner of the yard can be salvaged. It’s sort of a swamp land at the moment, but maybe with a good scrub. This entire predicament could have been avoided had I tried that procedure to begin with, perhaps, but learning is so much fun and I try to do it often. Anyway, considering the fun we did have while it lasted, I don’t see the morning as a total waste. Weee!

 

good, bad & ugly

Finally, finally, the okra has a blossom! I have heard they are beautiful flowers, isn’t it lovely?

And, I have a pepper! Salsa, anyone?

Oh, but wait. All my tomatoes are being eaten by worms. A single, hideous green worm has taken up residence in my last two reds and wasted them. YUCK.

My basil, on the other hand, is nearly as tall as me. It’s staked. I have to trim the tops after so many days away, although although at this point, I’m not sure it needs much more encouragement to grow.

  

My random sage has pretty white flowers, and the roses continue to bloom. The zucchini and squash, on the other hand, are pretty much done producing, and today I trashed 3/4 of them, as enough green continues to grow and smother my cucumbers. I’m hoping now the cucumbers will make a comeback with more room and light, but it may be a lost cause. Stay tuned.

appropriate

I flipped the wall calendar in our kitchen to July and was met with:

Yeah…

More soon!

xoxo, pen

My Favorite Summer Flower, by M

as penelope has taken the mantel of reporting all about the garden i have held back from the jungle of my existence plus its just same ole same ole but THESE! i love these. I have for a few years greatly looked forward to the harvest of zinnias. And these are a spectacular example. the one on the left is about the size of a softball and the other a tennis ball. and the dahlias are a few weeks away yet!

Dear Penelope, by M

i can't believe you've left me for the weekend. i'm sitting here eating bing cherrys and contemplating the quiet of my house and the warm breeze outside. parents are gone down to redondo for the day and night. maybe i'll take my bra off and spice things up a bit. see whats on tv or find a netflix to watch. certainly not leaving the house, no intention really of seeing anyone. happen to be in an anti-social phase of the week, unfortunately lying on a holiday. seem to be missing that jovial, come on down and swim in the lake sort of atmosphere, like a holiday weekend sort of thing- i hope you're having a blast. bcs that seems idyllic. like the pinnicle of what it means to celebrate. that or a pool, and a boyfriend. but certainly that.

i'm going to see that holistic chick on monday. good thing i asked if she took creditcards. allocated some funds, sort of, and should be no problem. funny its cash. waiting for my last paycheck to come in anyway. and since i love analysis of me i hope she's got some interesting things to say.

weighed myself on friday and seemed to have inexplicably lost 2lbs. i don't at all know where they've got to. swam my 20laps and inhaled some pool water in the bargain. don't at all know how to really get chlorine out of the hair. the tips of my hair are bleach blonde. saw this blackwoman taking somesort of wrap to her hair, a plastic cap and then a swimming cap. wonder if she came out dry. should maybe get one along with another pair of goggles. maybe i'll join weightwatchers after i lose 100lbs and become obsessive about slices of bread. but either way can't wait to yoga with you one day. maybe one day when we have full screen video chat skype conversations we can be side by side.

meeting kerry's boy on sunday. heard that within 36 hours they had 2 good phone conversations. at the beach yesterday another girl said it'd been 3 days since her boy had called her after their first date but i guess he called in btw the beach and the yogurt shop. so free and clear there. wondering if we could all be in relationships all at once so we're not all (meaning me) annoyed by such talk of the minuit progress of such things. no stopping it anyway i guess. and its fun? when i got stung by that bee it was hourly updates about swelling and discomfort. new relationships might be alot like getting stung by happyinducing nettles. and then its all vague mysterious interactions.

yesterday it was so windy at aforementioned frolicking spot it was picking up in a steady storm and salting us head to toe. i had sand in my ears and some other places. took my friends son spinning to mars, pluto and saturn at least 10times, drew a crab, that's not what a crab looks like, drew a shark, that's not what a shark looks like, and so on. surfed the pretty warm waves of seal beach. then had dutch chocolate frozen yogurt piled with chopped almonds and fruit. glad yogurt is making a comeback after its death in the late 90's. came home then and washed lolly down to her rims. spent the night having sister wendy telling me about art down to 'nasty pointy shoes', 'cleave of the buttocks' and so on. it was pretty great.

got up without a todo list. though i'm staring at one. maybe work on my cenAm albums. finish my letter to my 38yrold self. either way. its time.

xo,m.

The Last Days, by M

the last days went by anti-climatically enough. and everything in these pictures literally no longer exists. returned to prop houses, cut up and put in dumpsters... and nothing too much exciting happened. the AD stormed off and quit bcs the DP told her to fuck off and she took 3 of her crew with her. but the next day like a vacuum everyone was replaced. and the production designer told me as he walked by me painting a vase, thats great, then later, no that's too grey... i mean i know its in black and white but still... lets paint it alabaster. ok.

the last night of shooting went long like the nights always did and i left before it was over thinking, ok, see you all at the wrap party and my final check better be in the mail!

over all i give the experience 4/5 stars. a definite win/win and now onto the jobhunt? or at the very least some lazy days in front of the tv.