Archive for the ‘home’ Category

Parving cumpkins

Sunday, October 19th, 2008

Aside from the stoopid chicken pox episode, it’s been a fabulous few weeks. My dear friend Yoni flew in from Ireland-well, he’s been living in England mostly lately, but did a sweet sojourn in the isle of Guinness-to visit.

Yay! Sure missed ‘im. It was so good to catch up on everything and see his cool pics of Avalon. Ooooooh.

I had to postpone my Knotty Lingerie party due to Sam’s itchypoxybadness, so instead, Ms Rowan came over and we hung out and laptopped and laughed our butts off. Then, sunday, we had a passel of friends over for pumpkin madness!

Yoni made punkin soup, Rita brought punkin cookies, Ben made punkin pie and we all scooped the guts out of a buncha punkins and made loverly lanterns.

punkins

Flickr’d pics here.

Rowanated!

Friday, July 4th, 2008

I had a fabulous tween weekend.

Sam and I missed Rowan’s birthday last week, so we celebrated(and said goodbye to her for the summer) by having an all weekend campout in the backyard.

Thanks to Jim’s palatial tent, we all had our own rooms too-perfect for privacy and connection, teleportation optional, but highly recommended. :)

It was blazing hot, so we filled the hot tub with cold water and the kids tested their Popsicle Samurai endurance skilz.

cold tub

What a full weekend! We went to WALL-E(good movie that), took the Bday girl manga shopping, tromped around town in search of desserts… There was marshmallow-roasty bonfires, late-nite manga madness, stormy gusts blustering the tent, giggly morning conversations about god, the universe and everything and a lovely trip to the Dobyn’s trampoline.

tramprow

Where Rowan trounced us all with the sheer power of HAIR.

M’kehla chopped hers off halfway through the weekend, to emerge looking all cute and shorn and elegant. Fortunately, Rowan has enough hair for all of ‘em and then some.

hair!

And, apparently(according to Sam) it has rejuvenative powers. It wouldn’t surprise me-she could put the fear of hair unto a horde of rastafarians.

More campin’, trampin’ and hair power here.

Give me your tired, your hungry, your aching…

Friday, June 6th, 2008

…just don’t, please don’t give me your tea kettles, because I will kill them.

No joke. I will burn the blazing hell out of them(sorry, Sophie!) and leave them flaming and melting on the stove ’til the whole freakin’ kitchen is filled with greasy black ash on every surface and draping from the cobwebs like some ghastly post-apocalyptic Halloween prank.

I don’t limit myself to tea pots-my pyromaniacal destruction of kitchen pans over the years has ranged from saucy sauce pans to cast iron(and man, does it take talent to massacre one of those babies), but I do seem to have a special vendetta against kettles.

Gah.

Scrubbing for three hours straight is so not how I wanted to spend my evening.

oh well, at least the top of the fridge is cleaner than it has ever been.

:)

Hey, who turned the sleet back on?

Thursday, March 27th, 2008

It’s s’posed to be spring already for God’s sake!

Got off work a little early, happy to be able to walk back to my car(I parked a zillion miles away for my walking pleasure) in the light… and got slapped chilly for my pains by the nasty sleety rains.

Sigh.

Oh well, at least I wasn’t locked out when I got home. Like yesterday. When my housemate’s main squeeze, Jim, forgot we don’t possess a key to the lower lock on the front door.

:(

Luckily, Molly came home as Sam and I were prying the screen off of Sophie’s window and betwixt the three of us, we broke and entered. Sam did an excellent job of scrambling up Molly(no boots in the face) and popping in the window(without crashing any of Sophie’s knick knacks) and unlocking our front door(yayz!).

Jim however, is in deep, as this is NOT the first time he’s remembered to lock, but forgotten which lock NOT to lock.

;)

Who says a bedroom forest isn’t useful?

Tuesday, January 8th, 2008

bedtree

It’s perfect for hanging laundry on.

:)

The long road home.

Wednesday, September 12th, 2007

Getting home from BM was quite an adventure in itself. My first solo roadtrip ever! I enjoyed it immensely, well, for the most part…

Sitting in my car for four hours in the blistering duststormy heat during the BM sunday exodus was not terribly fun though. :( ‘Specially since Agnitara(my subaru outback) choked up in disgust and refused to start somewhere in the middle of it. Luckily, two very kind men spent half an hour or so helping me diagnose why we couldn’t even get it out of park… As the car filled up with dust and everyone behind us made their disgruntled, or amazingly patient way past, we eventually figured out that it was stuck in ’shift lock’ and pryed the shift panel off to find the cleverly hidden lock button. That got her out of park but didn’t do beans for ignition-THAT took a jumpstart from the good woman a car over.

I kept her running from then on and had no more problems… Well, except for missing a turn in the dark and ending up in Reno! Hey, it was dark and poorly marked to boot! Luckily, some other nice Burners at a taco stand that appeared like a hungrylostgirl’s dream oasis on the long desert road gave me ample good advice and not-quite-so good directions that nevertheless got me to Reno after a few more turnabouts. :)

Reno was a garish mess of brazenly blinkling casinos and scarey motels. The first one I tried said ‘acancy’ in green, which looked hopeful, but after ringing the bell for a while and watching the blind(or mostly blind) manager feel his way to the door, I was informed it was a double and I left it for the supersized American couple who happened to pull up just then in their supersized pickup.

I headed towards the University, hoping for something slightly less squalid. A sign proclaiming: ‘University Hotel’ caught my eye and I made the stupid, stupid quickie u-turn that brought me up close and personal with one of Reno’s finest. The officer cast one eye over my dust-encrusted ride and gnarly green dreads and proceeded to grill me. I assured him I wasn’t the drunken maniac hippiechick from hell he took me for, merely a tired citizen looking for a motel. He looked pretty dubious and informed me that I’d be more likely to find a spot to park and sleep than a vacancy, but that if I did I’d probably get run off by residents or police sometime during the night. Sigh, so much for protecting and serving-I guess that only applies to properly groomed citizens. At least he didn’t write me a ticket. I thanked him politely and turned back to the obnoxiously glittering downtown lights. I pulled in to a tiny, grotty motel that said ‘vaca’ in red, after passing six or so that said ‘no’ in either color. After a brief struggle with the sliding glass door, I managed to get in and the big, blousy, tough-looking ol’ lady behind the counter took my credit card and then as a couple came in behind me, hastily told me to ‘go around’. She rolled her eyes at my befuddled look and gestured me out.. I walked around the front of the building and lo, there was another, identical sliding glass door! In I went and the very same proprietor lady came out from behind the curtain that seperated the two motels. I can only presume that I entered the wrong side-the side where you rent by the hour and definately not by yourself!

r

Ah well, at that point all I wanted from life was a shower and a bed and though the faucet took some persuading and the hot water cut out pretty quickly I quite happily made use of both.

The place looked even skeevier in the morning, but the lady was very nice to me and let me fill up my cooler from her ice machine. I hit the road fer serious, drove ten hours, stopping only for coffee and gas. Met all sorts of burners scattering off home in all directions. It was pretty cool, watching out for the dusty cars and tarted-up bicycles and big tired grins. Starbucks in Susanville yielded an insipidly sweet chai latte and an authentically sweet, tattooed, green-tufted hottie named Dragonboy. ;)

I was pushin’ for Breitenbush Hotsprings, dreaming of the delicious sacred luxury of soaking in the meadow pools, dipping in the gorgeous river and steaming in the awesome cedar sauna cabin. My heart rejoiced as the roadside foliage grew gradually greener, taller and wetter-glad for the return to my beloved, succulent PNW after a week in the blank, hot desert dust. But Bend had other plans for me. When I got there and popped out of my car to ask directions, the first fellow I encountered was so staggeringly drunk he could hardly stand, let alone speak intelligibly and yet, he insisted on blathering me the whole incomprehensible nine yards. Sigh.

The guys inside the store were rather confused and confusing, so I asked a largish young man in a largish shiny truck on my way back out and he gave me excellent directions, but then told me that I couldn’t go that way because highway 20 was shut down from the forest fires and the evacuation of Black Butte Ranch. Doublesigh.

I gave up and weeded through a bunch of over-priced motels until I found one I could almost afford and curled up happily on the comfy queen bed, took a series of boudoir shots to commemorate my green braidiness,

me

luxuriated lavishly in the nicely appointed bathtub and my new favorite chocolate-coconut body oil-aaaaaah, my dust-dried skin rejoices anew to think of it! And then happily flopped between the lovely squeaky-clean sheets to watch the end of X-men and almost the entire Die Hard. I think he’d saved the hostages before I passed out.

I woke up to the phone attempting to compete with the crashing of a wild thundernrainstorm. My mom got all excited to hear I was in Bend-her new sweetie lives there! Soon, I was happily breaking my fast at Sam’s comfy, art-filled hacienda.

sam

He treated me to a royal repast, complete with fresh-baked biscuits, bacon, eggs and ‘taters-God, it was good after all the road food and trail bars! Such a good, dear man. We talked and talked and he even gave me a spontaneous breakfast piano concert while I sipped my tea. It was the perfect respite from my solo road adventure.

Determined to spend at least an hour or two at my heavenly Breitenbush, I headed for the mountains. Agnitara bravely went up and up and up and down and down and down the steeply winding highway, through the swathes of charbroiled mountain forest amidst green, green valleys.

Breitenbush at last! I paid my $12 and went directly to the far meadow pool. It was exquisite, exactly what my poor car-achey muscles wanted. Aaaaaaaaaaaaah.

Later, in another pool a foxy Tibetan(I’m guessing) boy attempted to entice me with his knowledge of spirals(I was wearing a playa gift, a spiral pendant) and the Golden Ratio. His lovely lean muscles and impressive hard on vied for my attention rather more eloquently than his conversation, but I only had an hour and I really, really wanted to sit in the sauna. Still it’s always nice to be admired and the warm sparkle in his eyes as he handed me my towel stayed with me for a long time on the drive home.

I made record time, from Breitenbush to Seattle in four and a half hours, but I was really draggin’ my tail the last few miles. I was so happy to see the lights of my own dear city, I almost cried with relief! What an adventure! How great to come home to(in order of appearance) my garden, my house, my friends and housemates and last, but certainly not least, my kiddo.

Oh and my bed, my own sweet, sweet bed. I think I’m almost caught up on my sleep… Intense roadtrips are apparently a wonderful cure for insomnia. :)

Breaking sod!

Friday, May 4th, 2007

Once again, to usher in a whole new garden.

Harrrumph, that last 7 inches of lawn was grrrrravelly! Now, to compost and fluff the bed all nice for my new babies.

tb

Woohooo! Tilth plant sale this weekend!

:)

Hooray! I’m bleeding!

Friday, April 27th, 2007

Finally, hwoof… Now I’m cleaning house like a skilled madwoman and culling my wardrobe ruthlessly for the coming naked Human Party.

I even found my warrior tank top-it’s been missing since last summer!

Insanimals

Wednesday, April 25th, 2007

Sometimes Edsons go a little crazy:

sz

s

See the rest, if you dare, on Flickr.

Gorgeous girlfriends.

Wednesday, April 25th, 2007

sc

These two are sisterkind… See our beautiful giggly night.