iPark

You should watch out for people who have iphones. Particularly when they're the IT people who work at a small university. Because when they come back to work after lunch and see you parked all skiwampus they take a picture and immediately send it to me. Then I get to make a special trip out to the parking lots to lay the law down.

#sirigivethatcaraticketyourself

dancing moths like sugar cane

After attaching the rusty bicycle wheels she had found, Pince pushed the tank out of the lake. She was taking Able to a concert in a park. 

The sun was already setting as she tried to maneuver them through the woods. The path was a narrow trail of matted leaves, the wheels squeaked over their green, yellow, and brown carpet; catching on small branches. Pince would have to stop from time to time, working out their bark fingers as Able sat in awe of everything around him. He had never seen a sunset or trees from this vantage point before. Once he swam through a petrified forest in a glacial lake but everything looked so different covered in air and pushed about by the wind. Under the water he had felt the trees pushing back at him. Now they arched to the sky; a distant, private chorus of quaking leaves and long shadows.

There were clarinets, pianos, violins, and horns playing all night long on the makeshift stage. A troop of moths flew choreographed dances to the music and the trees weaped their helicopter seeds. Pince was worried about the seeds collecting in Able's tank, becoming a gross soggy mess, so she climbed in and held an umbrella over them.






PS. This is a mess of illustration but Pince's afterlife is not fit for my regular sketchy methods and I'm not sure what I want it to look like yet.

8 bit

Frequently choral directors tell you to sing with a lilt like you're dancing. On Tuesday practice our director asked us to rate ourselves personally on a scale of 1 to 10 how well we were doing. I imagined waltzing robots while we sang and then scored myself a 10.

I'll be driving by again in about a month

everything was really beautiful as I drove home

prairie 2.0

a preview of what's to come

gut spillage or don't make me

I am constantly finding forks in my purse. I have to fish around for a minute to find anything else but forks? Forks are easy to find.

This is the state of my life: forkpurse. I get forkpurse because I can't wake up ever with enough time to eat breakfast at home and you don't even care because that part of the story is boring. Even though at work they think it's funny. They peak over my counter and say, "She's got her breakfast again!" "Have any to share with me?" etc. etc. etc. I'm the only one who finds forkpurse funny but it's also the first time I've tried that joke out.

It's not a joke.

Should we be honest here? (No.) I may be a moody person. For all that I'm a happy person I'm equally always falling into despondency and feeling blue (there must needs be opposites--never were truer words twain met. What?). This is probably normal. I mean, I assume this happens in a normal range of emotion. However, I've learned over time that if I don't do certain things even if I find them hard (particularly: talking about my feelings) I do actually become the real dictionary definition of depressed. Several years ago was one of those times. All those questions on the screening questionare could have been checked off if I'd done anything like that. I didn't. Instead I tried to join an eating disorder support group which refused me because it was March and they only take people at the beginning of a semester. I can see the reasoning but I was past my wits end. I finally talked with sweet Jbottoms who is ever and always there for me.

To be perfectly clear, I was not anorexic or bulimic or EDNOS or any of those other things at that time. I hadn't exhibited any of those behaviors in five years but all of those feelings and stuggles that led to those behaviors were still there. Why? Why after so many years of trying and working and learning about myself and even becoming a bit less shy, why were these feelings of worthlessness and hopelessness still there?

This is not where I meant to go with this. But I was thinking the other day that someday my epitaph could read "She never expected any of this."

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List of things I wasn't expecting to be part of my life and yet: 
moving back home
learning about insurance things like "named party vs. interested party" for work 
(I would like to go to an interesting party where I can name some people.) 

Also:  
teaching myself architectural design software
the weather to be jaw-ache brisk this morning
finding a steak knife in my forkpurse

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A year after working through that bout of depression I was not expecting that from time to time I would find myself feeling deeply hard-to-move-or-think sad for no reason. Still?! I raged at myself. Still?! Really?!! Yesterday I was so happy, why can't I just pull it together? There is no reason to feel this way! Why does this happen? What's wrong with me?

Did you know that that's no way to talk to yourself? Yourself doesn't really like it, it's not healthy. It's also really hard for me to not have these conversations sometimes. Particularly the part where I ask myself "Why?" I currently have a strict ban against "why" coming up in inner-dialogues. The first party to bring it up is muted and must spend the next half hour reading science blogs or calling friends on the phone. In which case she's not technically muted. Because I generally don't call people and give them the silent treatment.

The thing is, sometimes I can't help suddenly being sad for no reason––nay, not even à cause de the ill-reputed PMS––and sometimes sad is very heavy. But it's less heavy when I accept it as a state of being that is here now and will pass. And it's even less heavy when I try to learn what I can do with sad. If that makes sense. This possibly becomes too esoteric for my communication skills but mostly I try to make some special time while sad to work out my thoughts or burn a candle or rediscover my music collection. Wait, duh, you do that too, but... I can only find peace in these things if I accept being temporarily sad. There is no peace in doing them to make myself happy.   

things i love about the prairie 1.0

from the museum/where i never white balance

recap:

This is me celebrating Carl Sagan day

last year on this day

As I spend 8 hours a day/5 days a week at a computer, I generally hate coming home to one now. Hence I never say anything much here or chat with you on-line or respond to your emails. I just love to skype with people. The end. So you get some pictures just because I still need your attention but I don't want my eyes to rot from my head. 

daydreams of various sorts

Somedays, like today, I decide to celebrate Carl Sagan day by making a Carl Sagan pin and wearing it on my sweater and nobody at work notices so I begin to wonder what I could get away with wearing without anyone saying anything. It's good to have a challenge. I've been thinking I'll make some pins of a few of the characters in Twin Peaks, and there has to be one of a flying whale. My life would be complete if whales could fly.

Otherdays, like not today but yesterday, I decide a zombie apocalypse would be the surest cure for a headache.




Oh yeah, and a pin of Aung Sun Lee. She's kind of cool.

Let's go to Italy tomorrow.

why i'll never not vote

there's a cathedral in my mouth

snippets and picketsures

Remember when I was attacked by yarn/bought a fancy twist of alpaca wool and silk yarn and just ended up making a mess? My mom sorted it out! 

Perk # 553 of moving home.

Which meant that last week during my life reflection and rest time I could crotchet more slippers and play maracas for my nephew while we skyped.

Tonight we had Old Ladies Choir where we were supposed to imagine there were cathedrals inside our mouths while we sang songs about drowning in love's diadems.

The arm thing is part of Cathedral Mouth exercise not some new twitch I've picked up.