I'm thirty-two and a half today!

argh

Today has been an annoying piece of crap. Here are things I am grateful for: 1. books about Andy Kaufman 2. Mom and Nana coming home from Virginia finally 3. This American Life being re-aired on Wednesday nights 4. the occasional introspection of bitchy people 5. the eyeball providing years of laughter 6. Eliott snuggling early in the morning 7. sleep and dreams 8. "accept no one's definition of your life; define yourself" 9. taking Vinnie Velvet-ears for a walk 10. hot coffee on a blustery day 11. Dad making me laugh with his irritating antics 12. Keeler's beautiful mind 13. kindnesses 14. all the trees coming alive in the wind 15. Krip and RB putting up with my shenanigans

six words

Sick of the six words project. So, I am taking a break from it and from blogging and computering of all kinds. Peace out.

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This thing was on our street!! I finally looked it up and found out that it is called a Hickory Horned Devil and is actually harmless but, as you can see, it is an enormous mofo with menacing spikes and horns. Crizazy nature.

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Keeler organized and hosted movie night.

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Why am I so sleeply today?

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RB did a ton of work.

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Karen and I laughed in disbelief.

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No harm done. Harm done: none.

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Reading every book about Andy Kaufman.

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Should have tried V-8 juice sooner.

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I am in the twilight zone.

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Silent Dance Party is my religion.

singing skulls

This is the funniest thing and I have no idea why.

so much beauty in the world

Birds on the Wires from Jarbas Agnelli on Vimeo.

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More like Andy Kaufman every day.

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Front lawn, silent dance party tonight.

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Experiencing a total paradigm shift, man.

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(Eliott calls these his "dinosaur cozy things") Front step, iPod. Everything is cool.

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Can't sleep. Lying in bed, sighing.

Dream:

I am at a school dance. I jump around, flailing my arms and legs in a carefree way; sometimes I fall down. Curiously, the last song of the night is "Ramblin' Man", which pleases me immensely. I flail about some more and sing along. Some cool kids come by wanting to know if I am drunk. I explain that I am not; that they are just fooled into thinking that because of my "awesome moves". I do some more of my "moves" for emphasis. The group of us leaves smoking cigarettes and boards a school bus. Everyone is reading big, black books which I assume are some sort of vampire series. I am so tired from all the jumping and flailing that I promptly fall asleep.

Dreams please me.

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Sick and tired of being adult.

Now that I am skilled in the fine art of embedding videos...

I can and will post videos of my favorite music. Could life get any better than this? I submit that it cannot. Okay, some may say he's creepy (Martha), but here's the truth: he is the most beautiful man on this planet. and pretty dern soulful for a skinny white dude. Here is Ray Lamontagne singing his lovely heart out:

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Yay: Eagles trounced Carolina. Boo: sickly.

Georgia O'Keeffe rocks my world

Three cheers for all who insist on living authentically!

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(there is a spider on this flower) Feeling sick as a dog today.

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Dreamt I was on the moon.

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Asleep at the table during dinner.

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Life is weird... me too, maybe.

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I don't understand people. Drinking wine.

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Healthy. Time for a dance party.

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Thank God for Krip and Marth.

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Missing out on all the fun.

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Allergies are ruining my life, man.

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Happy Birthday, Fel! The Eagles stink.

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monsters on the brain all day.

Monsters

This little guy is the first in a series called, "monsters: how we shield our genuine, tender hearts". The inspiration for this series came from the writings of Pema Chodron, these two passages in particular: "Rather than original sin, there's original soft spot. The messy stuff that we see in ourselves and that we perceive in the world as violence and cruelty and fear is not the result of some basic badness but of the fact that we have such a tender, vulnerable, warm heart of bodhichitta, which we instinctively protect so that nothing will touch it." "... this is a practice where compassion begins to arise in you because you yourself have been there. You've been angry, jealous and lonely. You know what it's like and you know how sometimes you do strange things. Because you're lonely, you say cruel words: because you want someone to love you, you insult them." To me, recognizing these things about ourselves and others is the basis for relating to each other with compassionate understanding. This is so important! All of us are monsters: sometimes just annoying, sometimes horrific, but always with great big tender hearts inside.

six weeks

Fall weather makes life so heavenly.

Monster Update

For the Krips of the world who care about such things, this is what the little guy looks like this morning. I can totally relate to him. Love you!

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So excited about painting this monster.

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Neighbors turned an anxious day lovely.

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John was a new person. Wow.

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I am getting bored of myself.

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Everything is changing, I feel afraid.

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Clothes shopping: blech. New park: rad.

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swam in the ocean: green, perfect.

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Feeling good about my clean house.

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RB made all of us laugh.

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Kids are having a sleepover...oy.

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Met Vincent and fell in love.

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8:30 couldn't get here fast enough.

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Feeling inspired, manic. Ate delicious soup.

(also, I made these earrings today over at Sherry's house [she's the delicious soup-maker] and I am quite fond of them.)

six words for today

kids annoy, my adults delight me.

six word memoirs

For Krips birthday, one of the many nice gifts Marth gave her was a book of six word memoirs with which I have become obsessed. I read it every time I visit them. I am toying with the idea of writing a six word poem (or memoir or whatevs) on the daily tip for a year, but am also aware that I may not be programmed to do the same thing everyday for a year since the 365 photo thing was a bit of a flop (though really cool while it lasted). Maybe I need to have a smaller time frame. I will do six word memoirs for a month starting today and then reevaluate. Today's is: Super mom today, played countless boardgames.

In our family we...

1. call each other names freely and almost constantly

2. say swear words to make each other laugh

3. never ever close the bathroom door

4. entertain each other by doing a series of odd back and forth dances past the open bathroom door for whoever is sitting on the john

5. draw the most horrible looking things we can think up and then proudly display them all over the dining room wall

6. simply want to eat our high-fat, high-carb diet without being disturbed

7. smell the kids glorious and vile morning breath with glee

8. hang around in the yard wearing underwear or pajamas

9. try to eat three half gallons of ice cream outside in our pjs in the middle of the night so they won't turn into ice cream soup during the black out

10. love a good book on tape

11. move worms out of our way and put them in a worm hotel established by Keeler in the garden

12. talk a lot about poop

13. wrestle around and hug and kiss and zerbert

14. listen to "Bonzo Goes to Bitburg" for months on end at the kids' insistence

15. stand around town with a big sign that says "HONK" and go berzerk when someone does our bidding

16. like to hike and jump around in creeks

17. make a lot of silly props with paper and crayons

18. say "I love you" many times every day

19. have unattractive tantrums

20. say sorry

21. make up ridiculous names for the Eagles like "Kevin corn on the Kolb"

22. stay at a campground every summer

23. like to sing about "Mike Fink, the King of the River"

24. make idle threats

25. play poker

top ten things about today

1. making and eating egg salad while listening to "Love, Stargirl" on cd (Marth - I was able to take out the book and cd from the library so we can have a mini book club! :))

2. playing poker with the kids

3. unexpectedly passing inspection with friendly inspectors

4. wearing a shirt with watercolor-y birds and flowers and a ric rac skirt

5. going to bed ultra early

7. tall sunflowers with big buds on them in the backyard

8. getting a letter in the mail from a sweet friend

9. hearing the satisfactory conclusion to "Harriet Spies Again" and being in love with these books

10. contemplating my new name: Fireflower, given to me by Keeler and inspired by Super Mario Bothers.

good things to think about

1. Saad's Dad

2. baby praying mantises, grey and fuzzy

3. Ray LaMontagne's beard, brown and fuzzy

4. our skeleton bones

5. a circle of people who love you

6. Mr. Roger's and not being afraid to be a fool

7. Keeler's list that sounded like a poem with the lines, "red cars, red shoes"

8. Bodhidharma was a redheaded, blue-eyed barbarian

9. library books that have something left behind, like a postcard of a red squirrel from 1964

10. zinnias

11. the word sesshin

12. the other stars are as big as our sun and so much space in between

13. good heart

14. walking in a cold rocky creek, tall trees, green leaves and sunlight

15. When They Might Be Giants played "She's an Angel" as an encore

16. "don't let your mind stop you from having a good time"

17. Laura's paintings

18. "seeing confusion as the four kayas is unsurpassable shunyata protection"

19. finding the index card on which Eliott drew a pink heart

20. laying on a blanket with Karen at the park

21. Star Girl

22. the air in fall, walking somewhere in town

23. RB giving me a lovely ringtone

24. loving frogs and snails because of Ken

25. Nick Swardson's farting ghost

26. the hilarity of spending 3 months with Krip documented in a travel journal

365 project: day lilies

365 project: Kman at the eye doctor's

365 project: RB on Father's Day (taken by Fel)

365 project: my view all day Saturday

365 project: freckles and sprinkles

365 project: happy birthday, marth!

365 project: Fel and friends

365 project: magnetic poetry

365 project: doorknob

365 project: freckle face plant

365 project: flower bush with rain drops

365 project: coming home from Mom's

365 project: RB's tattoo

365 project: Fel wrestling around with his good buddy

365 project: two of my best men

365 project: kman

365 project: baby praying mantis on lily