Over the weekend, I hosted another fine installment in a neverending series of teenage slumber parties.
Can you see the tiniest evidence of the scrap of influence I attempt to exert over these situations?
Oh, slumber parties. I don’t think TTOC slept at all, but his friend admitted he fell asleep at some point during the night. But they had fun, and they’re such good boys.
And tonight, Buddha the Grouch made a really tasty dinner that seemed to have been cursed for at least the last week. First, the rice he had been carefully saving for stir fry – allowing it to become the perfect texture – got eaten. Then he got sick. Then today, when he finally got down to cooking this epic meal, he opened the tofu to discover it smelled like, as he described it, cat butt. And it really did. I’m not sure how that happened with unopened tofu that was not yet past its expiration date, but man…that was the stankiest tofu I ever smelled. Tofu emergency!
We all survived, though I was worried when Monk told me he actually tasted the cat-butt tofu. He had cooked it first, so…I’m still hoping he doesn’t get sick. Yuck. I’ve never smelled tofu like that. So. Gross.
So, the way my work week works, I have two more days of work, then a day off, then one day of work, then two days off. It’s not bad. Not bad at all. Although my next day off is going to be spent running weird errands. I’m still trying to find a good rhythm. This week isn’t a good example because I’m a little rundown & feeling like taking it easy. I have things in the works for the next couple of weeks, though.Exciting times.
Though they didn’t need help, I was thankful for the excuse to make it out to the festival, and enjoyed some yummy food.
Chole Samosa
Accompanied a friend to The Great Outdoors, where we gawked at greenhouse flowers before he bought bags of soil for his garden.
Pitcher Plant
Pitcher Plant 2
Bougainvillea galore!
Nerded out at the opening of the Hats off to Dr. Seuss exhibition with one of my very favorite superheroes…followed by dinner and giggles at surreal-0-vision.
I think this one was called “Ejecting a Surly Cat.”
Sunday was about much needed solitude.
Abundance
Manifesting the inspiration from the preceding day into art.
Yertle the Tortuga, Pt. 1
They Obeyed
Contemplating…
Journaling…
Maintaining…
When I was working, this time of night on a Sunday was a time of mourning for the lost weekend hours. Now, I celebrate the time spent in pursuit of more esoteric goals. I am memorizing the contours of a simpler life-measuring the hours of the days and comparing them to the important things that need to fit within them. I am taking time to listen to birdsong and track the daily growth of the leaves on trees. I am paying close attention to my kinder instincts and (internally, silently) admonishing those who would wish me to be more cruel because that is what they would do. I am appreciating the fact that my child quotes Neitzsche when confronted with my angst (specifically, though paraphrased: “He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.”)
I am listening to Camper Van Beethoven, and welcoming spring.
❤
And now…the news:
Troubling reports continue to come in from the Pegasus Tarsands Pipeline spill in Mayflower, Arkansas about the apparent control of the proverbial chicken coop by the foxes:
On Friday morning, Inside Climate Newsreported that an Exxon spokesperson told reporter Lisa Song that she could be “arrested for criminal trespass” when she went to the command center to try to find representatives from the EPA and the Department of Transportation. On Friday afternoon, I spoke to the news director from the local NPR affiliate who said he, too, had been threatened with arrest while trying to cover the spill. http://www.motherjones.com/blue-marble/2013/04/reporters-say-exxon-impeding-spill-coverage-arkansas
Thankfully, the residents of Mayflower are fighting back:
On Friday, homeowners filed a civil lawsuit against Exxon in the U.S. District Court Eastern District of Arkansas Western Division. In the class action suit, homeowners said the pipeline was unsafe and its rupture hurt property values. http://thecabin.net/latest-news/2013-04-06-1#.UWJPgpPvuSr
We have reports that because Exxon had already partially destroyed this wetland, they pumped diluted bitumen spilled in other areas here to get it all in one place and keep it out of sight of the media. We went in anyway.
This is how we comfort ourselves when we feel helpless:
And I did a little studying up on the history of May Day, in preparation for the planning of picnic/potluckness:
Originally a pagan holiday, the roots of the modern May Day bank holiday are in the fight for the eight-hour working day in Chicago in 1886, and the subsequent execution of innocent anarchist workers.
In 1887, four Chicago anarchists were executed; a fifth cheated the hangman by killing himself in prison. Three more were to spend 6 years in prison until pardoned by Governor Altgeld who said the trial that convicted them was characterised by “hysteria, packed juries and a biased judge”. The state had, in the words of the prosecution put “Anarchy is on trial” and hoped their deaths would also be the death of the anarchist idea. http://libcom.org/history/1886-haymarket-martyrs-mayday
The farmers, workers, and child-bearers (laborers) of the Middle Ages had hundreds of holy days which preserved the May Green, despite the attack on peasants and witches. Despite the complexities, whether May Day was observed by sacred or profane ritual, by pagan or Christian, by magic or not, by straights or gays, by gentle or calloused hands, it was always a celebration of all that is free and life-giving in the world. That is the Green side of the story. Whatever else it was, it was not a time to work.
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