Pen, Enclosed please find the following recap of Sept. *hugs*

we had just fjorded a major river, come over a hill and stopped to rest. i almost died on this bike ride because i was overheating like a christmas goose. i hear they overheat. and that led me to dousing myself with copious amounts of water before we biked the last stretch home.

faux marble- i was going for general impression and not accurate- they read dirty concrete. i can't please everyone. in only 3 hours over 3 seperate days... being rushed everytime... but what am i going to do for money this month. that's the question.

danica outing...

ah, mom and her bbq'in ways.

curiouser and curiouser

perfect match

new obsession

so frickin delicious.

we wandered here from the basement of our church. whoops.

hello tea.

hello spectacular weather (we don't get a lot so we were impressed, let me tell you)

xoxo,m.

for ole penelo-mine,

i know. i know. endure the ticking hours. though after knowing you for 11 years! it's like wait what? where did the time go? i mean we're thankful for 2010 to racing toward a conclusion though i felt november and december were long in the tooth but for the most part. snap. for me anyway. snap.snap. i don't understand it. all i can think is that i'm excited for epiphany to arrive. i vaguely know why. but tomorrow IS a new day. and amen to those. to the dawn. to a fresh breath. we need it right. another footing. some direction?

i'm home after a bustling day. i went hiking with danica in the a.m. totally impromptu (it was awesome), lunched with mom (a rare delight), traderjoed , frapp'ed, picked annmarie up athe airport, got kerrys car, went to poquito mas for dinner- and BAM- there went the day. though i averted several car accidents, people collisions and a general air of crazy out and about. You could feel it in the air, people just straining. maybe the year's been on hard on everyone. it probably has. and everyones like, just lets fucking get this done, shall we?

i am totally sad you did not capture pictures- these are mine from the day:

what else, what else. i enjoyed our 2010 rehash. i deposited some checks too and i have enough money to pay for my car insurance. probably not the doublemin's on all my cards but thats a start. ok its huge! lets not take it for granted. but i can only celebrate very quietly. i'm going to make some tea, eat a mango, light the candles and maybe craft? or read to mom or she'll read to me. but right now they're out at bigjims. dad lured mom to go look for a laser level that got stolen and lowes closed 5 min before they got there. anyway i could not agree more about the no-shame of the price club. its a wonderous place. lets be honest. granted not a big a bargain as it used to be but there's good stuff there. nevermind. and they've got a good meat section so sometimes you just have-to.

maybe i can rally the troops to play the officeclue with me on the new year. that sounds a perfect way to begin the day. oh and gluten free pancakes because dad broke the waffle maker. there it went careening to the ground. alas alack.

alright my attention span is totally gone. and ihave cornchip taste in my mouth.

holysnap- the colony just brought over a plate of ribs, another plate of potato salad, doritos and rice. um OMG. totally beats the savory and dessert tamales they sent over for christmas. shizzzz. i've got to go. i have to focus!

xo, to you my dearest pen. may this next year be bright and may it not be from a meteor, oncoming trains or hazard lights or the dying sun, but you know internally bright, not from something going nuclear or super nova, but you know sparkly like stars.

m.

pen-

I am skint with words right now. It may be my xbox game addiction or the fact that i'm little aware that days are passing from one to the next and its now november. i was in denial about actually going on a retreat. I forgot to tell people, didn't really figure out where i was getting the money from and yet here i am in the hills of santa barbara on a silent retreat with danica. Very strange. I cheated and brought my ipod but mostly just listened to meditative music, and brought along non-fic reading i've been meaning to get to on prayer. I have actually concluded I am a girl who likes projects and work so my dream of doing 'nothing' is more complicated than that, but also that i spend more time with God in contemplation than I would've thought, and that meditating is exhausting and trying to do it 3x a day only yields so much at a time. Me, an avid jogger- am no, marathon runner. So there was some spiritual greed involved thinking i could ring all the moments out of the day but i was scheduled and it went pretty good. Danica could talk at mealtimes which encompassed light debriefing and banter about the glory of our surroundings. We did find the gym open and unguarded and may or may not have done a little kickboxing,tabletennis and raquetball all in one night. We had a lot of pentup energy and after that is when i got the stick to the eye. But I recovered. There are more words but let these suffice for now otherwise these won't even make it up.
(oh ps. this is totally the $14 shirt i was talking about earlier down from $60!)

Pentalope,

So here we are again. Look at me go! Documenting things and everything. Breathe soft though. My first adventure was to Little Tokyo. Thorne as always is hilarious. Very mod, though I felt overaccessorized with the red sweater. Her mother insisted however. Underneath is a very retro pinstripe longsleeved tee- She felt a bit like taking over the world and insisted on walking and being amused, and dragging plungers around the mall. It was a good deal for $5 though. At one point in our grazing of all things tasty the fro-yo guy was like, dude she's staring into my soul! It's freaking me out! Oh formidable girl. (We laughed at his pain and kept on eating our yogurt).

Previous to this we ate at a nonspecified eatery and I threw caution to the wind in the name of soy. I faired ok. The miso was good I thought, I adventured with the crab salad- not my forte but pretty good and the presalad was great, and the rolls were decent, the teryaki only so/so but hey good times. We tried "new". Followed with infusion tacos because we couldn't not try them. Obviously. I mean we were so full but still.

then after such a day and a talk on sin, by alisterb@gg the day began again with Callie and we were at first going to hike and then opted to explore the canyon instead. Wandered. Found this structure. I would be an angry hobbit too if my house was painted green. And then after looking all round the textures of the place were just crazy- dizzy and overgrown, and zigzaggy crazy. I did break out my guide books and identified 'bermuda buttercups' (notpictured) and a red-tailed hawk... sure I could be making it up but still... the things unidentified is what we really care about... possibly poison oak? cool puffy yellow tree, random wall with holes in it... strange terraces and signs of fire. And the lovely sound of water. It was nice.