'i kick it like adidas, flowin sticky like adhesive'

well, after a good night at work and a long week of reality, i'm treating myself to jim beam and quesadilla's. it's so simple and, like the jelly belly bean splurge of the other night, so perfect.

tonight, i've decided to thought bubble. i'm not sure exactly what that means either...but basically, this blog will be a whole mesh of thoughts...separated by double colons. (so basically...leave NOW if you don't feel like being subjected to TONS of randomness...)

tomorrow, packing food for haiti with the kid::i still need to submit references for the magazine i'm applying to be a volunteer photographer with::how did i forget to START the car but still managed to put it into reverse and roll down a hill, while assuming i had started it? thank goodness for bff's who yell...'hey retard! you need to TURN THE KEY!::i love job's where i make 20 an hour in cash, plus a minimum hourly...but, could i turn that into a business? with a poofy dress, an apron and a tray, could i 'host' private parties? i had an opportunity to do just that but couldn't make it work, schedule-wise. this economy could really benefit me in that sort of a venture. people aren't renting larger spaces as much, so staying in, with a 'host' coming to them, could really work...can i be that motivated? i would have LOVED a host at SO many of my parties. i have people willing to come aboard with me already::why, when you put too much lime away into a dishwasher, why does it bubble out the sides and ALL over your floor? i hope i didn't destroy the floor...::i'm so sick of being yelled at. i am ready to be done with fights. there's only been two, but it's been two too many...eye-to-eye is so much better::dang...my quesadilla is gone::i wonder where my boy bff is? he's totally m.i.a.::i gotta do more work on my kid's girl scout website...that's my role in her troop and i'm slackin::i feel really bad, that in my last blog, i called that camera stupid. it's SO not. it's a 1978, polaroid 600 series. i only called it stupid due to a fight i was in. it's not though. polaroid is stupid for not making the 600 film anymore. that camera, and the two bucks i spent on it--completely worth it and totally NOT stupid. someday, fuji, or an independent market, will pick up film production and i'll be ready. fuji makes film compatible with older model polaroids so it'll get there. the camera i got was a great buy. it's beautiful, and shiny and fully functional--flash and all::what the hell am i doing in life? chasing dreams? probably...but why do i feel like i can?::i love the new b.o.b song, magic, but i LOVE it SO much more now that i know the weezer front man sings the chorus::i heard my old high school crush, the one i just ran into, is a total douche bag. i heard that because i e-stalked him, found a mutual acquaintance (my bff) and inquired (while trying NOT to be completely creepy for inquiring about her co-worker's, ex). he's SO cute still though...ass outweighs cute though any day::why do i feel like i'm the most mentally stable one lately? i'm so sick of dealing with insanity! it makes me insane too! i happen to be quite chameleon-esque; so, when i have all the crazy in my life, i feel it too. when i'm away, as i like to be lately, with my family, i feel functional. there's no room for crazy when you have a fishing pole in hand::i'm not sure what that last thought meant either, but eureka's a great show::that sounded crazy didn't it?::yep. it did. but that show is darn good::

ok. i feel better now. i'm not sure any of that made much sense, but darnit, i feel better.

sunset to moon up, i felt good...

today, i bought a stupid camera that i can't get film for.
i ran over a curb because i forgot to see if one was there.
i overflowed a cup, flooding the counter, because i neglected to turn off the water when i heard a song i liked.
i got incredibly excited when i won big on the webkinz wishing well.
i chased a sunset and lost my breath when i saw the moon...but i never once, not even for one second, felt embarrassed about who i am until i spoke to you--and i never once felt so stupid for all that i'm not, until you spoke to me...

the butterfly story

(butterfly, day one. this is as far as she'd venture outside her box...)

wow. that last post was number 400. how sad...i didn't even celebrate it with cake or anything. and i would have gladly taken that as a wonderful excuse to have cake. then again, i don't need much of an excuse to have cake. bday cake is the best though. the kind with the butter cream frosting...((insert homer drool noise here...)) yep...definitely one of my all time, favorite foods.

anyway here's the point of this blog...so, my kid and i found a butterfly. well, actually, my dog found a butterfly that couldn't fly--so we first, saved her from the dog and second, saved her from all that would have loved an easy meal. my theory on it was that in the dreary, muggy, soggy mess we called last week, she probably emerged from her cocoon. her wings were perfect, and healthy looking, but, like paper that gets wet, they were curved. apparently, that makes flying next to impossible as every time she'd try, she'd drop down with a tiny thud. i always see butterfly's sunning themselves, opening and closing their wings, but there hadn't been sun in awhile and the air was so saturated with dampness that she'd probably never really got to flatten out from being rolled up.

so, we crafted her a home from an old banker box. we filled it with grass, sticks, an old pear that i was gonna toss and a pot of pink impatiens. we propped one of the lights for my light box up and shone it in on her. it was a 100-watt bulb, so it definitely added some warmth. we left the cover off all the first day, as she couldn't go anywhere anyway, and she was perfectly fine just hangin out...well unless you gave her a finger to crawl on, then she'd want to be on you.

day two: she was still alive and trying to fly; surprisingly, she was getting better...so we moved her, and her surroundings, to an old birdcage and added sugar water to her diet of old pear. the birdcage was much bigger and she couldn't just fly down into the dog's mouth while practicing or anything, though she could squeeze out if she wanted--she just never tried.

day three, today: it was gorgeous outside. muggy stuff, gone. rain, gone. sun and wind, here. i decided to move the cage outside and as soon as i got her in the sun, she started opening and closing her wings and sunning herself. pretty soon, she was flying around her cage. we decided she was doing great so we freed her, only to have her start off incredibly strong, get hit by the wind and wind up flat on the ground. we scooped her back up and popped her right back in her cage. it sucked having to do that and our once tame, friendly butterfly didn't seem so happy anymore. anyway, we checked on her a couple hours later and she was gone! we're guessing she slipped through the cracks of the cage and simply flew away...which is all we wanted and were incredibly happy to see!

i love butterfly's and so does the kid--it was SUCH a cool experience to get to see one so close and all her parts...we watched her proboscis unwind as she ate food (and as she attempted to eat my shiny bracelet), we saw her turning her head as if she had a neck, we felt her sticky little feet climb on us, we studied her wings and the white dots on her thorax, we learned about her enemies and, best of all, we got her back to healthy. normally, butterfly's go so fast and want nothing to do you with you so you so this was an incredibly cool experience all around.

hmmm. that's the end of the butterfly story. i thought it was a pretty good one...though i may be a bit impartial. oh! i found this wonderful site that matches volunteers with opportunities. it's updated everyday. currently, my kid and i are looking forward to trying a few new things...first up, packing food for haiti...

anger to inspiration...

(stand behind, support, teach, let them fly...)

can you picture Jesus Christ holding a political sign?
campaigning for a certain political party?
the thought of that makes us roll our eyes in a blasphemous disgust.
if i were to illustrate a picture of Jesus with a Nixon button...what would you think?

as Christians, where do we need to be? what matters should we trouble ourselves with? with a candidate? with big button political issues? or maybe within, helping make our communities stronger, better, more wholesome places for our children to be raised? i am so appalled by things when i take the time to look them square in the eye. any church that troubles themselves with the affairs of washinton is as guilty as the politicians in their level of corrupt. change starts in your neighborhood...and as the future generations move around, they will take the messages we teach them into their new communities. you don't need messages to be taught in schools, you need them taught at home. you don't need to change curriculum, you need solid parenting and to teach children that condemning others does not promote Jesus's message. you don't need to outlaw abortion, you need to make sure mom knows that if she chooses to keep that baby, it will be loved in her community. you don't need to outlaw gay marriage, you need to embrace solid families for children as they ARE the future and too many of them are being raised terribly in hetero homes already. those are political issues that have sneaked into our minds, soaking minds with dark negativity, shielding us from the light of our true spirituality.

i could make a solid argument that the devil is winning in his deflecting...turning us against each other in the name of Jesus. but really? have we fallen for that? we have so much wrong with our nation and we are so stupidly under the belief that if we change one major city to believe what we believe, it will all just magically get better. what an idiotic way to think! let the government rule our politics, let us rule our spirituality.

i challenge people...the next negative thought you have toward someone for thinking differently than yourself, recognize the negativity and pray for peace within your own mind. a genuine peace that will help someone...not just try to sway someone--if intentions are not pure, then neither will the deed.

as an artist, i recognize that without our differences, SO much beauty in this world would be lost....and yet condemning someone for thinking differently you is a justifiable hate for so many. if you are not my color, of my beliefs, of my political mind...i can hate you because my belief states that i should. i will accept Jesus's word over your word of hate any day...

i do question my own intentions for writing and consequently posting this as i'm typically the one in hemp preaching to legalize marajuana and keep choices in the hands of the women who are fully capable of making them; however, this morning, while watching a documentary called, Jesus Camp, i just couldn't take it anymore...sitting silently with my pipe and writing to myself about these things. i've started to pity people over time who are hooked on the political drug and use it as a platform to spew hate veiled with a thin layer of concern. i've started, over time, to feel superior to those poor saps waving red, white and blue signs on a street corner, as i know that my daily work with children and art is making a million times more of an impact than they ever will. and it's within those thoughts that i realize i'm just a hypocritical as the people i shake my head at in a combined state of pity and sympathy. and in the same way i challenge you to turn your negative emotion into genuine positive, i challenge myself.

it's time to step away from washington and look out my own front door.
it's time to realize that my daily choices effect the earth more than my words will ever effect my senator and to keep the word of Jesus alive, our earth needs to be here.
it's time to chose humble over boisterous.

it's time to study the word and ignore the words...

hey there sexy...long time, no see...

(the beginning of the beautiful 15 ft long ivy plant given to me by my grandma...all i could think was, please don't let me kill it...)

o.m.g.
i'm writing again.
and it feels incredible...
like an itch that's needed to be scratched for so long, that i've never been able to reach...
ya know the kind way down in your kneecap...yeah. it's like that.

i mean, sure, i'm writing here...and it's for all to see. but the stuff beneath what's visible in this surface blog are the things that write the history books. they're the things that people dig for for years and are priceless to whomever may be in the market for them; but, to the rest of the world, they're most likely just garbage--however, to someone who's been looking, there's unimaginable wealth in that find. in my letters, my sentences, my paragraphs...it's simply sorting through all my brain can't seem to figure out...and to me, that's priceless.

i'm quite certain my studio room has now made way for a writer's den as i seem to lose myself in here for hours at night lately. i know this will fade--as i'd be a fool to believe, or put stock in, anything otherwise; but, for now, i will ride this wave...because when it breaks, through past experience, i know that catching a new one may prove to be impossible for many moons to come.

i thank my writer's brain for never leaving me...only being muffled temporarily by all the noise around it.
i thank my writer's brain for sifting through the insanity, only to find a deeper insanity that keeps it effortlessly, and eternally, inspired...

that kinda sounded like an emmy acceptance speech. it wasn't meant to be...as mostly, i'm not even sure what an emmy is. is that music? no. that's a grammy, right? it must be tv or movies then. hmm. there is a google bar up there ^^^. but yeah. i don't even care enough to spend the ten seconds it would take to figure it out...

wishin i was ten again, so i could be your friend again...

(taken by 14 yr old me while hiking in glacier nat'l park. these shots are taken while going through logan's pass...)

oh! so i love my new project!

here's the how's of how it was born:
i was sittin at my dad's house, all alone, in complete quiet, road map in hand, thinkin' about where to go next with my camera...i was all geared up and rarin' to go. however, the problem with that scenario didn't lie within my motivation, my gear, my lack of a plan--as i never have a plan, or my creativity...the problem lied within the fact it was 93 effin degrees outside and the air was so dense you could nearly swim through it. so, i sat there, back pack on, pettin a purring cat...tryin to push past the lazy feeling the afternoon was forcing upon me--and i just couldn't do it.
so, i sat there.
feeling like a loser.
a sweaty, cranky, loser.
and then i started thinking about how long i've actually had a camera in my hand...thanks mostly to my dad and christmas. i started thinkin about how badly i always needed to have a working camera and film in order to feel complete. i started thinking about all the camera's i've been through and all the pictures i've taken over time. and then i started remembering the genuine excitement every time i'd develop a roll of film and how i'd pick out, so carefully, all of the best shots; how i'd sort all my photos into piles and change my fav's from each batch time and time again. then, i started thinking about all the time i'd take, carefully laying out my photos in an album and how much thought i'd put into the order of them, to make it make sense. then, thanks to all of that and to being at my dad's...i remembered the photo albums that i had worked so hard on, with the pictures i'd taken so much time with, were right there, in that house, behind an opening in the wall!

at that moment, i decided to re-master; to take my old, and digitally alter them into new. the same...but fresh. something with new life. i could finally give that work the attention i had wanted to so badly back then but couldn't...because the means didn't exist.

so...that's what i've been up to! like when george lucas digitally remastered star wars; it's like that. hmmm. well, my pics are gonna actually get better though...

tomatode

as i write, i'm licking my lips (in a fairy tale cat sort of fashion, i suppose), lost in the lingering taste of the salmon burger, topped with fresh tomato, that i just ate. i skipped the bun, skipped all sauces and spices, skipped everything but that piece of salmon and the tomato slice i put on top.

hmmm. this is a terribly boring blog so far.

hmmm x 2. i wonder what happens if you eat too many tomatoes...now that i think of it? (look...i never promised it was going to get better with that statement up there ^^^; i simply stated it was boring...so, don't hold your breath in hopes of a michael bay-esque writing scene. or do if it's suicide you're attempting, i don't care. you may just succeed after i'm done here...) i've added tomatoes to two of my three meals for a week now. lunch today: rice with cheese, tobasco, soy chicken and tomatoes. dinner last night: rice with tilapia, topped with cherry tomatoes. lunch yesterday: open-faced egg salad sandwich, topped with, you guessed it, a tomato. dinner the day before yesterday: ok, i actually don't remember that...but, i know it had tomatoes in it somehow too. my garden just keeps throwin 'em at me, so, i keep eatin 'em. and i've learned that if i add tomato, i don't need anything else. no sauces, spices, fats, nothin...just tomato.

ok. this is ridiculous. i've been writing for 15 minutes about tomatoes. hey! i wonder if too many tomatoes can make you cramp up so bad while running that each step feels like you're being stabbed or ripped apart inside? that happened to me yesterday. i had to hobble a whole mile home. it was terribly embarrassing and terribly aggravating--as i got completely screwed out of a good run. too many tomatoes can't do that...can they? no. i don't think so. i hope not anyway! that would be awful...they're my friends, right? RIGHT!?

omgosh. ok. enough! this blog entry needs to be put out of it's pathetically, boring misery. tomatoes, cramps, running, days of meals, more tomatoes, this is insane.

hitting, publish now.

(oh heyheyhey ps...you dead yet from that suicide attempt? i hope not. i have like, uhm...three readers any you're one of them...and without you, i'd be down to like, 2 or somethin.)

i love you cupcake

so. guess what? i found my favorite wine.

i discovered her on saturday while walking through the wine store, took her out to our best friend's 10th wedding anniversary party and fell in love.

her and i had a wonderful night together. we started off slow but by the end of it all we had had a great snuggle/laugh session with our best friend, played 'have you ever' with a bunch of people we hardly knew, figured out/planned our sister's wedding for whenever it may or may not happen, lost our shoes and the keys to a vehicle we hadn't driven in days yet apparently still felt the need to bring, ate six hour old food that had been at room temp the whole time that made us sick and made us cozy up in bed and fall asleep before even hitting the pillow.

it was a great first impression and i can't wait till we hang out again. someday. but no time soon. i'm still recovering our last bout...