ahhhh!

crims! i am so so so behind on life.

this is always (creatively) a bad time of year for me, because it is time for my anniversary, Halloween, trying to get Xmas presents done (ha!), and of course the Great End of Year Time Vampire (a.k.a. the Eloise Calendar).

needless to say i have forgone the personal costumes, or costumes for Elosie, to focus on Severin's. while i am sure Eloise is shedding no tears from her big googley eyes, i am disappointed. i am also annoyed by my inability to not LET THINGS GO, and obsess pointlessly over minute details of something a 15 month old doesnt give a toss about. but finallyfinallyFINALLY i finished it last night and i hope to take pictures tomorrow before he shreds it and it is a pile of felt and love.

Eloise Calendar, Year 4 is probably going to be a little scaled back. again, if i could let details go and stop being neurotic, things would go a lot more smoothly. last year was just the most horrible time in my life (from a creative standpoint), short of when i was a college student running the wardrobe for the school's play for minimum wage (an amusing tale where the moral is "dont believe flattery and ask questions ALWAYS"). i say "scaled back" but already i am laying in bed for hours at night planning things out so i doubt i have a hope in the world of it being as wonderful and stress-free as the first year. i cant tell if having a theme helps or not.

needless to say i am way way behind on journalling! this makes me really frustrated at myself and while i want to buckle down and have fun doing it, i dont see where i conceivibly have time. i will have to really focus this weekend to take some time for myself and not be sewing/hot gluing for everyone else.

xo
Bird

i love Huell Howser, and you should too.

i love Huell Howser. i mean LOVE.

for those of you that arent in California, you probably have ZERO idea what i am talking about, which is a pity. i suggest looking him up on YouTube immediately.imagine the most infectiously interested person ever, and then multiply it by 12.

my first experience with Huell was when i was a super jaded late teen. i walked in on my grandparents watching him, and thought "who is this yokel?" 5 minutes later i was sitting on the couch, hooked. after that he became something my grandmother and i enjoyed together, and i treasure him for that too... she is gone but every time i watch Huell i remember her laughing. once, she saw an episode about pop up books, and knew i would love it. so she got on the phone, and ordered the video of it for me. if you knew my grandmother, you would know the only thing she hated more than talking on the phone was entrusting any sort of financial information to a faceless human, and talking about technology she didnt understand (VCRS!). for this reason, i still have that video, even though i dont have a vcr. now my mother and i have Huell Howser parties when Adi is on business trips and watch hours of recorded episodes on my dvr.

anyone that knows me knows i am pretty grumpy. i would like to see the magic in everything, but generally i am too busy focusing on the fact that i am broke, or someone pissed me off, or i like eating brownies more than doing sit-ups. its something i work on and struggle with daily, and it always has been.But when i watch any episode of Huell Howser, i suddenly start to see how awesome EVERYTHING is.

he makes you realize that no matter how trivial and mundane something is, it can be seen as a learning experience, a miracle, a story. he loves people, and hearing their stories. he seriously seems like the nicest guy on the entire planet. the best part about him is he asks questions. constantly. sometimes we have the ridiculous ones ("you mean, they make the burgers, right here, on this grill?") but we also have the ones that you would think some Pollyanna fluff show would not ask (i.e. wtf is with the bible quotes on In-N-Out Burger cups?). he can be very droll, which i adore.

i made this bumper sticker for my car, and you would not believe the number of people that literally swarm me for it. i should have ordered more and sold them out of the trunk. i have had frat boys, high class ladies, and drunk hobos applaud and start talking to me about Huell in parking lots and on the street.

the station that shows him announced Friday that they are going independent (they were a PBS station), and want to show more "current events" shows. i cant imagine this bodes well for someone that does an entire half hour show about just one of the swimming pools at Hearst Castle.i am not exaggerating when i say that there were a few tears.

i dream someday of meeting Huell Howser and telling him thank you for all the happy memories, and all the things he has taught me about this state. most of all i want to thank him for changing my outlook just a little bit every time i see a show.

4 Dumb Things I Did In High School.

1) one time i accidently inhaled a starlight mint in English class and wanted to go the the nurse because i thought i was choking to death even though i was not coughing.

2) i chewed on this cheap ballpoint pen* and it exploded in my mouth, and my entire face was covered in ink. it is starting to become clear to me, years later, why everyone thought i was on drugs.

3) i used vinyl decal letters to spell out "SIOUXSIE" (which i wanted everyone to call me, OF COURSE) on my locker, which just resulted in someone rearranging them to say "I SEX U" while i was in another class.

4) i was super unathletic so i pretended i was schizophrenic so i could get out of PE a lot.

*in high school, we spent a lot of time in the library, where they had this machine i was obsessed with that dispensed ballpoints for a dollar which i then broke open in my mouth. i dont think i ever did any sort of studying in the library, but i do recall stuffing sodas up the sleeve of my jacket and then drinking out of the sleeve. because that doesnt look suspicious. i also remember Xeroxing pictures of Roman Polanski out of the Encyclopedia of Crime, writing Mary Sue fanfic with Nick Cave and Robert Smith, and coughing so i could tear pages out of magazines since we couldnt check them out. probably so we wouldnt tear out pages.

back again.

i have been crazy busy and alternately withdrawing because of grump-making lameness, which is EFFING UP MY AWESOME FALL!

just to cap off Summer, Santa Barbara had this brutal week-long heatwave which culminated in my car TOTALLY OVERHEATING! i could not get into my mechanic until 4 days later, and when i did i found out my car was going to cost $1,300! add to that that A's registration is due, and he also found out it was going to cost about $700 to move his practice studio, all in one day.

so i was grumpy and didnt work on my journal like i wanted to before all that went down.

additionally, the output jack of my new(ish) camera jack is shorted so taking pictures is not fun. i finally got the scanner back in order, but scanning was not working since i have to glue like 40 pounds of stuff to each page.

regardless, the colours of my pages are all off. i would take the shots outside during the day, but i never have time! i only get some peace after Severin is in bed!

i am just going to post the first one where i left off for now because there are about 10 of them as i took so long to upload!


Journal Prompt: The colors of Fall. What do they look like where you are from? Which colors stick out, which colors amaze you? Document it :)
- goodness... i started and destroyed this one many times, i wasnt liking how any of them were coming out. i was over-thinking it. finally, i settled on keeping it simple and i came up with this, which i like. also, the tree is brown, not black, like it looks.

i am going to try my best to keep up from now on, it sure is hard to just sit down and get your thoughts out and be creative on a timeline.