routine interrupted

that's right. my rigorous routine has been interrupted by the arrival of the raspberries. now, i'm up in the morning, make my coffee, GATHER RASPBERRIES, then am free to continue on with my reading and painting and such. and i've been doing a lot of both lately. good books i've finished lately: The Bell Jar and Silent Spring. and i'm currently reading The Moor's Last Sigh, which has been a fantastic read. i'm also painting the house from the terrible tan it was to a dark, dark, almost black charcoal, grey, white, and some red. you'll see pictures of that soon enough.

i may have mentioned my dog's ability to get wrapped up around anything and everything in the yard, and here is photo documentation of just that. image to the left would be incident 1: trapped around the laundry line post. he sort of resigned himself to the fact that he was trapped and stayed there quietly until i came and released him from his prison of string. then... three minutes later.... incident 2: trapped in the chair. this photo expose will no doubt be continued.

i also saw some awesome bugs on the raspberry bush.... little monsters. i think they are taking turns giving each other rides.

white rocks and the alien invasion

i don't mess around with dog safety, so proton gets strapped in just like everybody else. please avert your eyes from the larson chin.

today some friends took me to White Rocks, a scenic overlook a 15 minute drive from Rutland. as most scenery in vermont, it was pretty outstanding. a short hike up and all of a sudden you're looking out over an insane view of trees and mountains and wow. i'm already super excited to see the view in the fall.

slightly more interesting would be the thousands of alien pods we saw on the hike down. i'm not sure how i missed them on the way up. probably some sort of alien mind trickery. my friend brandi chose to take the she-ra route down, which meant my falling and tripping numerous times, but those close calls also brought me face-to-face with the pulsating alien embryos disguising themselves as common moss. i dared not touch them with my bare human hands, but i did manage to capture their existence on film. no telling how long exactly they have been laying dormant. or when they will hatch. from my calculations, i'm guessing they'll hatch somewhere around october 14.... around 3:15 p.m. how might i know that? i'll tell you.

upon closer inspection of the photo i took, i noticed a peculiar organism peaking out from behind one of the pods. obviously, it's difficult to
determine whether the pod the creature is next to is the one it hatched from using a photograph, but visiting the site again may lend some light on the issue. regardless, based on the size of the organism in the photo, previous data gathered on the organism (see Aliens), the ratio of living creatures: unhatched, the unseasonal amount of rain Vermont has been receiving, and the chlorophyll content of surrounding conifers, it's obvious to any junior scientist that the pods will hatch october 14. and 3:15 p.m. is right when kids get out of school, giving the newly hatched alien empire plenty to nibble on.

your yeast

reason i love the co-op here: because i can scoop out my own flour, sugar, granola, and BAKER'S YEAST. amazing.... reminds me of back when i was a kid and we would go to the amish grocery store to get delicious treats. today i was on the hunt for yeast to make bread with and i couldn't find it, so i head to the front of the store and ask the girl at the register "um.. so i was wondering if you had yeast." (obviously that was met with a blank stare, matched by the stare of the man at the other checkout). "i mean.. yeast to bake with. like if i wanted to make bread." yep. they've got it. in a big jar in the fridge next to the huge tub of maple syrup. now i needs to get big vats to get my syrup and honey on.

TCM

couple of things: 1- the raspberries are here!, 2- check out major lazer's album "guns don't kill people, lazers do," 3- the cows are violated every morning. my new plan is to record the sounds on garage band.

yesterday proton and i watched The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. the original. the one with the guy in the freaking wheelchair who gets chainsawed to death. wow. wow. wow. has to be one of the few horror movies i have seen in recent months that did not disappoint. don't even get me started on Bloody Murder. apparently TCM came out the same year as The Exorcist and people were losing their minds. no doubt. inbreds with skin on their faces and dead grandpas sucking fingers? GA-ROSS. i, of course, was engrossed in the film, but proton was curled up rather contentedly on my chest, little dog paws curled into the air in the pose of complete relaxation. and i must say, one of the best things in the whole world has to be cuddling with your favorite dog and feeling their little dog breath on your neck. even when you're watching idiot texas getting their heads split by axe-weilding inbreds.

i scream, you scream.... apparently cows scream

i don't know what is going on at the ol' cow farm , but i can tell you what it sounds like: cows getting raped. huh. maybe those animal rights protestors were right: meat is murder, milk is rape. maybe what i heard was cows getting milked. no. i don't think so. but the squealy/honk-ish/alarmingly loud cow hollers were absolutely bizarre and continued for quite a long time. proton and i were on our morning walk when all of a sudden one holler ripped through the morning air. we both stopped dead in our tracks and turned around to see what was going on. we saw nothing except one of the folks from the cow farm in overalls standing by the gate, kind of kicking the ground, pretending that they didn't hear some cow getting their butt poked in the barn. god it was loud. i grew up next to a cow farm and never heard sounds like this. maybe it's a vermont thing. maybe it's cow meditation. maybe they're recording for a CD of sexy cow sounds. i'm concerned for proton's little ears and his innocent sensibility.

right now i'm watching Robot Holocaust. was this someone's thesis project? did someone honestly fund this? i just watched naked people dance like phish fans in smoke outside of a chamber (the pleasure machine for those who serve the "dark one" faithfully) that housed a topless girl also dancing like a new england hippie. outrageous.

floating bookshelves

it's like i'm living in my own little summer camp. wake up, make coffee, eat cookies for breakfast, go outside and read and watch the dog get tangled around plants and poles, come inside, shower, eat breakfast, do some crafts and gardening, check the mail, run to town, come back home to continue with the crafting, gardening, and reading, take a nap.... it's pretty lovely. i'm also trying to balance all of this returning to mother nature bullshit with academic stuff = preparing my syllabi, doing curriculum mapping, etc. i met the new technology guy at the high school i'm going to be teaching at and i think we are going to be a tag-team of technology. the school is kind of living in 1974 as far as computers and technology goes, and our principal is absolutely adamant about us shaking stuff up. pretty exciting to walk into a place where you're expected to and encouraged to make huge changes to the way things have been. even if i can't show my tats. i also asked if it would be ok to show horror movies in class and the principal (also a priest..... crazy) was very much excited about that. what kind of catholic school is this? technology? making changes? outrageous! i also met another new teacher = guy in his early 20s who is also a priest. kind of weird to meet a person younger than you who's wearing the whole priest get-up and is all into the big JC. and he was shaking all nervous-like during the whole conversation..... apparently he was a chemistry major in college, but then changed to the god stuff. but, as he stared at the floor and tried to avoid eye contact with me, he stuttered out that he was really happy with the choice he made and that he had started out wanting to go to grad school for chemistry but then ... you know... this came up. i had to fucking pretend my lips were glued together to not say "yeah... i was really hoping to be a catholic priest, but then that whole doctorate of biochemistry path kind of threw itself in front of me." he also mentioned something about doing team teaching. um.... no. no. no. no. i don't do group projects and i sure as shit don't do team teaching. especially with a man of the cloth. i appreciate the dedication to black, but no.

my craft of the day: the floating bookshelf. easy to make and looks pretty rad.

DDT not for me

I am currently reading Silent Spring and want a home DDT test. Like you squeeze the life juice out of a plant and midstream place the plastic applicator underneath it and - means "yes... safe again." + means "oops. you've got a lethal chlorinated hydrocarbon in there." It is also making me that much more determined to grow as much food as I possibly can in my backyard, make good use of any plant products possible, and never ever ever use any sort of chemical pesticide. And my image of the 50s is really getting bizarre.... lots of smarty-dressed housewives smoking cigarettes, wacked out on benzos spraying their azaleas with liquid poison. Yum.

I have successfully dried and stored my first batch of lemon thyme and am aiming to get a bunch more before the season is out. I'm also drying out peppermint leaves and plan on using those as a yummy tea or nice addition to facial steams. It was really easy to do: I just pulled off the mint leaves, washed them, and am drying them on the countertop. My next goal is to figure out what the hells I can do with my licorice plant.