here is autumn

walking beneath bright trees

leaves that are too beautiful

friends that are too beautiful

funny faces

little forest elfs


knitting parties in cozy homes

how to save money at walmart

only buy things that are purple.

p.s. this does not actually save much money, because granola bars and various adhesives are rarely purple and you'll probably need to buy some of those, and you'll probably accidentally end up buying ladybug-shaped pushpins and a nice tin of colored pencils, but purple-themed shopping IS pretty fun.

here i am up on a mountaintop

oh golly. it sure is great.

important fact: my roommate is made out of gold.

here is a silly picture of us with some carter hall room #360 flora:

(the humble green plant, clusia, is apparently capable of reaching a stately stature of over thirty feet. i did not know this when i purchased it for $1.99, but the prospect excites me, however impractical and improbable it may sound when considered in the confines of a room the size of a small canoe.)

my job is to clean things. i have acquired many useful skills that i previously struggled to perform gracefully. you should see with what adeptness i can coil a vacuum cleaner cord these days. you should see how smartly i scrub toilets. i don't mind so much. in the chapel at seven a.m., birds come and sing on the windowsill while i spray and wipe the glass. i can't hear them chirp because the glass is so thick, but i can see their little mouths move sharply. piano and violin strangle each other in a lovely muffled mess, played in side-by-side practice rooms. there is genteel and amusing tension there. i spy on the practice for west side story while i tidy the auditorium. i held a small grudge against a certain group of people who ate powdered donuts in the same spot every day until i realized it was just the ceiling crumbling a little bit and snowing down onto the chairs and carpet.

i have a little collection of apples that i take from meals and forget to eat. they punctuate our room nicely but soon they will get mushy. for now i'll admire their shape and color and continue to forget that they are food. how pleasant and wasteful! oh dear.

pancakes

chalice is home from new york!

to celebrate we made pancakes for breakfast,

but they did not turn out very well.

they looked like this:

but three-dimensional and more arresting to one's sense of smell.

but they really DID look like two-sided feet

because,

for lack of more appropriate cookware,

we fixed 'em on a pan with ridges,

which i suppose was meant for meat.

they also did not taste very great,

but we are blaming that on the 1975 church cookbook recipe,

and not the baking powder mix-up.

the main point is that i am glad that my friend chalice is home for this week so that i could make pancakes with her, however unpancakelike those pancakes might be.

no slugs

last night my family rushed out to the front yard to see a space shuttle. i was confident as i walked through the blackness blindly, barefoot, trusting the brick walkway that's been my friend for so many years that by now it knows not to let any slugs slide under my feet. it's not a good idea to tell someone that i probably won't ever wear the shirt she bought me for christmas, but it's okay if it's my mother because she understands. she wants me to tell her. it's not a good idea to go shoeless down a walkway on a pitch-black summer night, but it's okay if it's my very own walkway, because my walkway understands. it wants my feet to fall upon it heavily and without hesitation. sometimes you can do dangerous things around people and walkways you trust. or maybe this is just foolishness by dint of familiarity, but it seems to work out pretty well.

anyway, we never saw the space shuttle. there were trees and clouds in the way. but we never saw any slugs either, and for that i am glad.

p.s. these days i am 98% certain that my mother would never buy me a shirt i didn't like.

here's a little true story for you

during the entire month of august, but particularly on saturday the eighth from five till nine, some photos and i will be hanging up and hanging out, respectively, at the lovely little joie de vivre gallery downtown. if you and your good-lookin' face would like to come and keep us company for a minute or two, i will give you a hug and m'photos will politely refrain from interrupting. there are remarkably tasty chocolates and cappuccinos two doors down, at your service for an ulterior motive.

tossing photos

i've been instructed to "toss these pictures up on a couple of blogs" so that is what i'm doin'!