never was the sky so blue

Seriously...so blue. I don't think there is a single crayon in the box that could match the sky that stretched over us as we moseyed our way past moss, concrete and a wandering bear or two...

it rained today (again)

and so the pajamas stuck around a little longer than usual...

and then there was the sand spit...

Though, we didn't actually make it that far.

The beach was almost deserted, save for the gulls and the plovers and a handful of surfers.

There were (enormous) sand crabs to hunt for.

And driftwood houses to explore.

this morning we rode to the beach...

in the fog. it was wonderful. there weren't many people out and those that were nodded a happy hello. we rode out to the coast, stopped for coffee and treats then walked along the pier in the fog. it was at once calm and eerie. we heard gulls scream off in the distance further than where the fog kissed the sea. we stopped to watch a seal watch us as it danced in the green water and we crouched low to touch with gentle fingers the dozens of water droplets bejeweling the spiderwebs that decorated the pier like lace doilies in a grandma's cottage. the air was cool, salty and fresh and the bike ride was a welcome end to a week spent in worry.

words & pictures: sweet

it's no secret that i have a sweet tooth, just ask my thi...no wait, scratch that. anyway, while i do indeed have a hankering for things sweet, i'm a little bit peculiar about it. it's a combination of things really. while i love a good cold coke, i cannot stand pepsi or sprite because i think they are too sweet. rootbeer is sweeter than those two drinks but rootbeer, i like...it's spicy. whipped cream is lovely, but only a teeny bit sweetened. i love classic old school bubblegum but am not a fan of jelly beans unless it is buttered popcorn and my sniffer is working. oh wait, scratch that, black pepper. did you know that there is a black pepper jelly belly out there? it was developed as a flavor for the bertie bots and you can only get it in one of those boxes but then you run the risk of having to sort through sardine, booger and ear wax flavors. the dirt flavor isn't too bad either but don't quote me on that. i use honey in my tea but only a little bit but my coffee calls for oodles of the sweet stuff unless i am drinking it whilst eating something sweet and then i drink it with cream, no sugar.

my favorite candy bar in highschool was a kit kat but now i succumb to those miniature peanut butter eggs from reese's (evil, evil, things). but i am try, try, trying to get into dark chocolate. the flavor really does linger. i think i would like dark chocolate better if the sniffer worked. sigh. so, for now, it's all about baked goods. cookies, breads, cakes, cupcakes and pies though if there were a buffet spread out in front of me with anything i could imagine, i do believe it would be the apple pie that i would pile onto my plate. sure, cucpakes are all over my photo stream but that is because a cupcake is an itty bit more photogenic than a slice of pie. at least, it is a wee bit cuter, what with all the frosting and sprinkles and which i totally remove from my cupcake. i may have a sweet tooth but it a bit peculiar, hand me a cupcake and i'm likely to ooh and aah all over. i'll take pictures and clap but when it comes time to eat it, i scrape the frosting off.

and the pixy stix? i just like the wrapping...i'm peculiar like that.

**this post was enabled by the loverly pip and her words and pictures project. head on over to meet me at mike's for more fun.

words & pictures: the long drive

mister a-go-go & i have a thing for road trips. we like exploring our surroundings and are hoping to execute THE GREAT ROAD TRIP within the next two years. originally, we were to head out for places unknown directly after my graduation which is this May. however, it seems that i need to get my mouth and face fixed which requires a bit of cash and many hours under the knife and a hospital stay and orthodontia...for two years. it's probably a good thing though what with the economy being the way it is right now and the mister still employed and all. we should take advantage of all those medical benefits and such and i think i'm finally tired of the clicking, popping pain in my jaw and face. the idea of having everything change scares me to pieces but the idea of being pain free has its allure. while we wait, we plan. we have a large map of the states up on the wall with pins marking all the places we want and need to see. some are for parks, some for cities and others for people i would like to see and meet. wouldn't it be super cool to meet? the GREAT ROAD TRIP is our trip of all trips. it's a trip to explore and figure out where we wish to land. we're hoping we can make it last for three or more months, that's why we call it the GREAT ROAD TRIP, it's going to be a very long drive.so, the GREAT ROAD TRIP. we're planning to pack up this tiny, jammed pack casa of all it's vintage goodness and junk and hitting the road. the witch-baby will go live with family, we will sell and donate a great portion of the vintage goodness and junk and yes, even bits of my well curated fabric stash. we will pack up as much as we can fit into a tiny u-haul and storage unit and the rest will be portioned out however it may be. we will have a set of handy maps and a long list of places we wish to visit. we will camp, we will sleep in the car and we will crash on your sofa or floor or in your back yard. we will cook on the car engine and wear the same pair of jeans until we find an all night laundromat to pull into to wash our back pack full of clothes and work a sudoku puzzle or two. we will share the driving and use our cruise control and stretch out our mileage by driving all pokey-like. we will fill ourselves up with cheese and crackers and fruit picked from where we can pick it. we will take picture after picture after picture. we will visit as many state parks as we can. we will use up more than one bottle of sun-screen and our hats will be much appreciated. we will load up on podcasts of Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me and This American Life and we will listen to Patsy Cline, The Magnetic Fields, The Ventures and Cab Calloway. We will make sock critters and play our ukes and we will go to bed early to wake up with the sun.

We will head one way and end up in another direction. We will argue over who ate the last slice of cheese. We will laugh, we will have fun, we will get cranky with each other.

We will have the time of our lives.

for more takes on the long drive, motor on over to Meet Me at Mike's.

words and pictures: cozy

even in the middle of this funk, i am loving the weather change here. people who are not from l.a. refuse to believe we have seasons, but we do. they may not be as showy and colorful as most but they come when most needed to carry us through until the next change. spring in los angeles can be hot, very hot. it can be gray and moody. it can be crisp and clear. it can be windy as all get out. spring days in los angeles are funky and odd and can feel like any other funky and odd day here in lalaland. it's the mornings that are magical.

this morning i was too comfortable, too cozy to get up and out of bed. it wasn't the funk that kept me in my cocoon or the vintage soft caress of the floral bedding that wrapped me up in sixties love. it wasn't exactly the amber sunlight that peeked through the ugly cracks in the hideous plastic shade pulled down over the window.* it was a combination of all these things that rested a cozy crown upon my head as my toes searched for a new patch of cool to tickle under the covers. this is the best kind of cozy. the kind where the day feels like vintage paper flowers and fresh brewed lavender tea. where the light is just so and whispers of spring. it's the kind where your eyes flutter shut for a moment or two while you revisit that dream full of southern bohemian spirit. it's the kind of cozy where no matter where you stretch your limbs under the covers you are at once slightly chilled and cozy, warm all at the same time. it's the kind of cozy where the birds and their twittering, their chittering and chattering drown out all traffic, even the muffferless cars. it's the kind of cozy that you gather up about you, that you knit into the most lovely of memories and carry with you for the rest of the day.

it's my kind of cozy and i hope it stays.

*we really need to replace that shade!

check out more posts about cozy over at meet me at mikes!

words & pictures: school lunches

Pip over at Meet Me at Mike's has started a nifty blog along inspired by Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird. Since I have oodles of papers for school to write that I am so very good at putting off, I thought that maybe adding another assignment would help get those words out. All you have to do is post a picture and write a little somethin' somethin'. I almost went with a haiku for my first post but I couldn't figure out where to start so you get the ramble, ramble.The kick off theme is school lunches, here we go!

I was a free lunch kid. In grade school they would put our little white cards up on the lip of the blackbird to collect just before lunch time. The cards were white with red and black writing and had little boxes on them that got punched out with each meal. My school served breakfast and lunch and if you had a white card you got it for free. Most of the kids in my class got a card so it wasn't too big a deal but man oh man, did I envy those kids walking out to a separate lunch area with brown bag lunches and those fabulous metal lunch boxes shaped like school buses and such. Pizza day be damned, I wanted desperately to have a lunch box with a peanut butter sandwich and ding-dongs tucked away inside. I think my mom was able to pack me a lunch only once and I had to brown bag it but I didn't care, I got to sit with the kids with all the variety. It didn't matter that the jelly on their sandwiches had seeped through the sticky white bread. It didn't matter that their apple juice got warm or their zinger got squished. This was the life and I wanted to be a part of it.

Eventually I ended up working in the cafeteria for my free lunch. Free lunches by way of the meal plan were awkward by the time I reached fifth grade and if you worked in the cafeteria you got a free lunch and it was cool. Sometimes, you even got a special lunch if Roberta the cafeteria lady liked you and you didn't really dig the burritos. If you were fast, you got to do trays which involved pulling down a tray and adding a plastic wrapped napkin and spork combo. Sporks! My cousin & I started a spork collection there were so many different colors. Each spork came numbered and we made it a competition to see who could get as many in sequence as possible. I liked the blue sporks and kept my collection in a sticky-tacky yellow tupperware container small enough to cart around with me but large enough to house my growing collection.

By the time junior high rolled around, I was selling my lunch tickets for half the cost of a hot lunch and using my dollar to buy a carton of milk and the best frosted brownies ever! I can still recall that flavor if I close my eyes and breathe in slowly. When I got to high school, I made my cousin bring me brownies home they were that good! Don't think too poorly of me, after my first semester in junior high, I formally quit the free lunch program and managed to sustain myself with sandwiches from home. I didn't have any friends to eat with in seventh or eight grade so I got a job working in the library at lunch time. It was easier pretending to be busy than being lonely and odd. Ninth grade got much better as I found a small group of girls willing to hang out with me and I even managed to maintain those friendships once we went to high school.

In high school I bogarted my friend's G.I. Joe Lunchbox. She had altered it to be a snarky commentation on the military and I loved it. Then my brother picked me up an old Scooby-Do box and I scored a Hardy Boys box in perfect condition for fifty cents. I was finally one of the cool kids with a lunchbox. Granted, I was seventeen at this point and considered quite odd but I didn't care. Every lunch period we would sit in our small cluster and eat. That is unless it was Pizza Day when I would have my mom order us a pizza from Hungry Howie's and we would have it delivered to our spot. Two for the price of one. All the leftovers were passed along to my cousin or the nice guy on the basketball team that I had been in school with forever. One of my gals and I would switch off who made lunches. Sometimes I would make our lunch, roast beef sandwiches on toasted whole wheat toast with american cheese, mayo and lettuce. And sometime she would, turkey. It was a nice system and then I got addicted to carrot sticks and ate so many I turned orange. Literally.

For a long time after that, people would get me lunchboxes and I still love them but have nowhere to put them. Inside, I tuck (stuff) away mementos (junk) and put them up on a shelf. When I got this box down to photograph it for the post, I realized I hadn't peeked inside in years. Here's what I found:

*wooden nickel celebrating the centenial of Rockford, Ill.
*picture of my highschool buddy, Margie who I miss dearly
*photo of me back when I lived with the Jimi fanatic
*1992 newspaper clipping on Nick Cave
*letter from my favorite pen-pal, also missed, Amuah if yer out there, Hello!
*real Nottingham Lace edged hankie, in package
*1980's pic of my cat with a comic bubble on it
*an even earlier pic of my mom in a fabulous bathing suit & sunglasses

Lidsville really IS the kookiest!