old-same,

By chance i came across the premiere of project runway. As the only things i seem to come across now adays is say yes to the dress and antiques roadshow. I find by and large nothing else appealing. And i did like the concept of parachutes as an unconventional design but most designers hardly did a thing with them, along with the occassional nutter and disaster piece. IN my mind it was suppose to premiere in August.

But then for the first time in years (possibly ever) I missed my car registration payment having thought for some reason it was on the 14th. No the 8th. Also I've given charge of Lolly to mom as I can't afford her or the July $1037 pricetag I owed for all the bells and whistles combined. And apparently I had to get her smogged? Whatever that is about. Conspiracy abounds. As if paying $28-$60 for something the government is making you do... Nevermind. I ultimately didn't pay for it anyway. I mean thank the Lord Jesus I have a mom who is my mom and no other kind of mom. I would still however like to be able to afford to exist in LA. But apparently not enough to hustle. You know what i mean. I'm not totally adverse to going to back to Korea. I guess? Maybe ironically when I finish moving the parents. I'm hoping God will work some miracles in the meantime.

Yesterday I fought through some seriously searing daggers whipping through my mind in the a.m. to rally and actually write a cover letter and application and submit it. I even went so far as to call the HR department prior to it. I do not jest when I say even opening up a job site makes me passively suicidal. And other people who do not struggle with how dark the dark can get or are constantly employed don't really get it i dont think. Like, I wish i was being melodramatic. Anyway it's for a prop supervisor who has to hire a staff of 20 student volunteers? And only gets paid $14 p/hr. Such is the sign of the times. But i like objects and it would be for an art school.

Any "productive" thing I did on top of that was just aces. And any less productive thing inconsequential.

You and cath are starting jobs in September. It would be nice to do the same I feel. In a show of solidarity.... and as i drink my 2nd cup of coffee there was something about bruckner hearing from God i thought. Some near death experience? But back to coffee- i have to use 4 scoops to make this trader joe batch i got worth anything close to something i can taste. And in such an ironic LA turn the best coffee there is - it's free and it's at my church. Not the best of the best. But at least the 2nd. It tastes like butterscotch. It's written up to be one of the best and because of the work of this guy named Bob is why we have it at our church in the first place... if it's not the sermons or the people by Gods good grace it will be the coffee that got me to go to church. What a change! If my 8 year old self could see me now!

Meanwhile Marley my cat- who in people years is at least 118 and 19 in cat years, keeps yowling in senility and sometimes laziness and sometimes hunger which drives me a little nuts and is annoying until i remind myself he might not remember where he is and that's distressing with his bad hips and his general oldalpha surlyness. It's funny to see in contrast Twist and her mewing- who is trying to see what her different calls yield- if i mew here will she open the door? open the window? give me a treat? pet me? It's pretty adorable. Ah the life of human to cat relations.

Otherwise i'm pleased that my nails are almost returned to their nonwrecked state. Hope for the future and all that-  alright i'm going to go play some teamdeathmatchesonxbox and later my ch4response on the meaning of marriage. Que: sigh heavily at this singlesadstate.

m.

KEEP CALM & CARRY ON
(poster from the govt. as seen on antiques roadshow-uk edition worth 900pounds)

The Month of August in Photos Pen,

I'm a little late flying into september already Pen, but enclosed below you will see what was the main preoccupation with August... clearly muffins and kittens. Flaxseed/Apple, banana quinoa and Twist, and marley and one really particularly hot day. Oh and Thorne and a really good rice/bean/cilantro medley...I was fasting and freaking out about finances... i'm much calmer now bcs i think i'm going to korea though none of the paperwork is done and i dont have a contract... still it's going to be a few months... so right now i'm going to , go make breakfast, go finish painting a set, and then to the beach... after that... ? figuring out skype..consolidate balances. getting through this current heatwave so i can make more muffins...

enclosed photos c/o pen:

well june wasn't as bad as the proceeding months except for when my cat got that mouth infection and seemed like he might die... still it seems touch and go and mostly a shrug the shoulders affair. but there was some mystery. some outings into nature. some danger and darkness... friends made up for it i think. so when i say 'm'eh' its not a reflection on you whatsoever. but m'eh.

this one is my favorite of the month i think. a reflection of spent daisies.

oh kitty, live forever. he's like eh, come on i'm 16 already. STILL i say. still.

this one below i was at the trendy 'coffee table'. my date was a no show so i sat there and read the hunger games. i just set out to photo the sparkly tiles but i'm pleased instead with the luminescent pool before me. i was reminded that its good to adventure into trend everyoncenwhile- but its back to the working class SBux for me in the future.

besides an excessive amount of fraps as a soothing mechanism... i did reach the 'green card' goal... so lo' and behold i get my soy shots for FREE now. its like a new light has dawned. who knew... anyway this describes my feelings on the matter of the month (not my feelings about the greencard which are awesome)  while out and about with callie- i noted my shingles have moved to slightly tender but mostly recovering except for the ugly brown scarring so far.

i thought i'd flip someone off on my way to church. i was feeling misunderstood and unloved by humanity at that moment.  i sent this as a text pic. i thought it was funny... ?

wendy and i before we tasted honey or got attacked by seagulls... a portent, surely.

oh computer! i have no idea what file is corrupt. please stop it.

Would you believe Pen,

On Sunday I was attacked by a seagall.

Let me explain. The day started innocently enough. Wendy agreed to be a champ and come with me up the coast. We get breakfast. She is ever generous with gas money and wildflower seeds. We stop and taste honey. The one I bought of course mom explained is the one everyone buys. Orange. I have already in the first slip fallen into mediocrity. But we venture on. We witness a bmw bike being knocked over at a gas station, (As another man who had been having a dialogue with himself rushes over in loose fitting leather pants to help....) and the man not being able to pick it back up. I feel that should be a requirement of purchase, but nevermind. Up the coast we go. I am already having second thoughts, not having thought this through and already so far along. We pull up and I can't bring myself to pay $10. I haven't packed a lunch. It is already near to 12. I ask the kids at the gate about seaweed. She's like, um, we like, totally have seaweed. I say, can i go look at it. She's like, um... yes? She says, Just park in the 20minute spot. So we do and I'm already a little down at the sight of hightide and already drying out clumps and twists. But there is some- it is out there. Though not in mass quantity and cleverly hidden like black uninteresting blobs. I am sad now i didn't collect more- of course- that i didn't keep going down the stretch of beach but nevermind.

We head back down to ventura. We get gas. I pull up on the wrong side. I have to enter the transaction at least 3x. It cuts me off at $50 but i leave it at that. There's no bathroom. But there's an in/out close and delicious fries await. We make it to the beach, find parking close and bring our bounty to sit on the rocky shore. We are distracted by the seal, distracted as it comes out of the water and seems to be having a dialogue with the 2 young girls. Too distracted to see that one by one large LARGE white gulls are beginning to perch by us. One by one. Talking to one another. We immediately bring up Birds. Wendy confesses a fear of them since but she recovers quickly as one dive bombs her head. We think that was close. I think odd. Bold behavior. I take a 3rd, maybe fourth bite of my double double and thats when it happens. Swoosh. And the bastard takes my burger. But the meat insultingly tumbles out into deep sand as they rip apart the packaging. Never in my life have I had to take revenge on mutinous mineminemine birds. But there are enough pebbles and rocks close by as one by one i take aim.

Wendy even lets me have half of her burger as I still angrily eye the birds who dare to flap back. Toss.Toss.Toss. Thud.Thud.Thud. The packs of dolphins feeding nearby eventually turn me from my hurling rock enterprise. We read poetry. We grow cold in the wind and decide to go but not before I get a few more shots in. Never in my life. I shake my head. We drive back down inland. We get cherries which are sadly not that sweet. I get fizzy water. And wendy gets purple licorice. We make it back into town and she drives off homeward. And then i think, what a curious day.

m-
ps.
My kitty cat Marley is holding steady. I think we decided to spoil him rotten with tuna and forgo dental surgery for now since the infection is gone, as we think he got into something which made him sick and just happened to uncover bad teeth. We'll see. Pampering may just continue into his future.

Also, I finished Hunger Games. It is a catchy read. I did find for all that the end dreadfully rushed and you know what I'm talking about. So SO rushed! COme ON. Kudos for plot twists though despite the somewhat  flimsy philisophical treatise on why war is bad and why peace is good-*duh*- BUT page-turner. I think it would make a good tv episodic on the sci-fi channel. I would totally watch.

ttyl.

dear one,

i'm going to write about the redemptive gift eventually. i wanted to write it today but i don't know if i have the headspace. so onward to more babbling stuff. like the awesomeness of bridesmaids. i started laughing at this one part when sookie is on top of the blonde girl and slapping her and asking her about her spark* and saying you're the problem, you're the solution. remember that part- i gawfawed? no one laughed. a teenager was overheard saying, why is that funny? i was like only the depth of more years will explain why that's funny. but maybenot. maybe i need sookie to jump on me and demand if i have some fight in me left after all.. so,

i've done yoga. which at the end there were too many forward bends and i had to stop as i still have intermittent- i dont know- discomfort? but then i picked grapefruit, put dishes away, fed some of the birds. perhaps my energy is truly rebounding? yesterday i even painted the base coat on a series of canvases. of course my engineering fgrade got the better of me as the clamps were ineffective- one crashed to the ground, another onto me. and oil paint is toxic and i can tell my skin starts reacting against it- its called gloves, i know. but i dont have any. not painting ones-- i just need some light fabric gloves maybe? eh. well anyway there it is. surely i warned myself against painting inside but i did it anyway and now the sheets on my chair have blue spots and theres a light blue haze on the floor/chair matt. alas. i dont have a plan b yet.

and marley is doing better. more irrascible but still costly dental work awaits him? maybe? mom has to decide. i would hope if we do it, it'll give him a couple more years he wouldn't have had otherwise. poor kitty. stemming the decay of the curse is expensive and mostly expected. the question is, will it resolve the issue or is it a shot in the dark? or 50/50? either way soft foods and pampering await him for the rest of his life. my pastor when i went to prayer walk with him on thursday wondered in a polite way if we were just going to go ahead and put him to sleep then? if he's that-old? i gave a sigh and thought certainly when my peer here gets to heaven he will not be allowed anywhere near the animals. he's never had cats. i dont even know if they own dogs. it makes me suspicious. there is something non-pet people just dont understand. i mean hello- SIXTEEN years. he's been around 1/2 my life yo. doesnt he deserve our best? anyWAY.

i've got to find some snacks to take with me before the prayer council meeting. perhaps a practice in futility but surely not? just raking the ground, picking up rocks. we don't have to be savetheworld productive. we do we do! you know i want us to be. but upside of coming early maybe i'll get to play xbox. so thats going to motivate me to cut this letter short and go take a shower- i woke up early again- itchy and hot? and uncomfortable. totally unpleasant. and another cloudy june gloom day- boohoo. poor california. lauds is just not my thing. but there must be something to it.

love you.
m.

Pen,

Enclosed please find photographs for what turned out (according to the pictures) a very strange and winsome January. With each photo see explanation. I am loathe to analyze what such pictures might say in total as with the blog for instance one can only wonder what one gathers about the two of us. Though only brave and determined voyeurs, moms and best of friends read such a thing as letters back and forth between friends.

And unless otherwise noted there was a trip to Gardens of the World which was really quite ordinary but nice, some thorne/danica outings, walks, laying out, walks through the church basement, and of course camping, and camping while sick is just awful, though mom persists she had a good time despite my dead weight. both financial and otherwise.

Note that Marley is actually tucked into my sweatshirt. I am convinced he would rest quite well in a baby sling.



joanna sent me a christian calendar in which to mark my days, and following is my lions share of the holy day collection.



here we are finally covering the dumpster up in the lot next door to church. the morning glories are actually not at all visually assulting as i previously had feared. carole is the awesome greenteam director.

these are a couple of pictionary attempts: firing squad and moustache.

oh and do note the friendly old man in my ceiling.

after this we finally got some safe traps so that we can release them into the garden. 3 survived marley and it seems we've gotten them all.
coots!

Penofmylife,

I don't think i can communicate enough the magnificence of such a dream. It taps very much into my secret desires to do exactly that, or squirrel away and be a hermit or come under someones teaching and take on my destiny. Perhaps its a warning that I shouldn't neglect you when I do. Remind me. I probably suggested you stay. That would've been grand. Next time your dream takes us on such a voyage, remember to stay with me- no matter what I say. It's clear there's some sort of key to the comings and goings of me. But apparently I do frustratingly thwart and deviate the path. I had a dream the night before, my mom reminded me, that involved me touring in a bus, in foreign lands and at one point of a bathroom stop i was barefoot, and I was wondering why didn't I put on my shoes and my mom was yelling at someone because the bathroom was so dirty, and I just remember it being impossible for me to go in there. Obviously according to you, I made it to my next stop. Last night I may or may not have been ziplining and rockclimbing in this gym, which was strangely after celebrating someones birthday who had the same birthday as jesus. And there were at least 5 other people celebrating birthdays and I was like, whoops i forgot to ask for candles, as we already had the cake, and the waitress brought them.

But anyway, oh I got our book we're going to read. I thought it would be thinner somehow but let me know when you're ready for it. I'm also reading this book called "scandalous risks"... I'm not sure how scandalous it is so far but we;ll see. I need to read today as yesterday I spent 10 hours watching tv. I did sort of work on the jewelry but mwah i'm feeling thwarted by materials, my vision, my lack of knowledge about jewelry construction and what if its not good enough? What if the materials break? What if its inferior to what i envisioned? Ach.

So let me tell you about my first ever, quite possibly, visual migraine... the pic is sideways but mom and i came in from touring the garden, where the other day we picked all of these beauties. It is the first of the spring harvest as we've been steadily picking bouquets since then. It always makes it hard to imagine there will be summer flowers to harvest. Ok, but anyway, I come in and i'm sitting down and i thought i'd stared into the light outside too long, so i blinked thinking it would go away. But no it extended out from to the right of my right eye like vibrating pixcelating piano keys in iridescent staccato. Like a scythe. It didn't matter which eye was open. There it was. Then after that I'd read things and there was a smudge in the way. The little one in the pic, the same color as the other one in the middle of my vision distorting only part of the words i was reading. And then the scythe came back a little closer in to the right side of my field of vision extending out and fluttering and finally sometime around closing my eyes (where it still appeared but was less distracting against a black background), taking aleve, lying down and listening to kill bill 1. it finally went away. WTF. Mom seemed to enjoy the camaraderie as she has visual migraines from time to time but anything new and possibly debilitating is so not cool with me right now. As my eyes were tired after, slightly headachy to boot and I can't say I feel particularly plucky this morning- even though there are places I can go, things to be crossed off the list.

In other news I've fully embraced quinoa as an awesome hearty grain, preparing it in vegetable broth is very tasty and so is mixing it with feta and cucumber- and dill and greens. The banana bread recipe hits the spot and now the only thing if we could have another thing is a scone recipe. There is still the waffle recipe and the pancake recipe to try also.

I will try not to make more cryptic references to "the letter" as I cannot possibly explain it here. But Pen you can explain however much you'd like to Andria. And this is a perfect segway to give props to callie who gets a total award for sending me a card that says exactly thee most perfect thing ever. Not that mom doesn't give me props for the chocolate attilla the bunny card from easter, but still. Cards do sometimes say it all. I'd lost faith, and yet there it is.

In other news before I go out to read in the sun, properly sprayed down for sun protection, i wanted to show you a pic of my innocent looking cat marley and then how if you scroll down i finally caught on camera the vicious attack he levied on my golden retriever. Bodo seemed to be glad of the attention, kind of? But still.

And in the sum of things, besides the migraine these are all good and true things, despite the nebulous, non productive week i've had.

see you in your dreams,

m.