Pikchas!

Letha, you're so absolutely gorgeous on Sundays.
Why thank you.
How do you manage to pull it off?
Hot rollers and face paint. Behold:

American Geisha:


Taking out the hot rollers


Shake out the curls, admire Hair Band look:


Pin it back


Admire from every angle:



the hair looks a bit like a wig in pictures...





enjoy the squinty eye



The Women Folk

what i've learned

I have a VERY good car. If my car had a personality, I would say I have a very patient, kind, loyal car.

I have also learned that PT Cruisers aren't necessarily designed for ...off roading. But dear Alfred, my patient, loyal car, did his darndest.

I know the pictures are bad, it's because my phone can't send images, so I had to use my digicam to take a picture of a picture... on a phone. So some are sidewise. Cry, why don't you?

So I have a dirty car:


Here's the hole I managed to dig with my front tires:


Again:


And Alfred, in his tired, dirty glory:



I went on a walk with Chris yesterday and on the way home was a detour. I haaaaaaaaaate detours in neighborhoods I don't know. So... Chris and I thought we'd follow the car before us. So we did. And then the pavement ended. When the car in front ended up turning left onto a construction/residential site, Chris laughed that they obviously didn't know where they were going. (Uhm... neither did I, but whatev.) As we drove over the dips and gravel and narrow ridges and sandy divets, I grew a little nervous, but then we saw the road we were trying to get to. Success!

OH HOLY CRAP THAT'S AN ARROYO AND IT'S FULL OF --- OH CRAP WE'RE STUCK IN SOFT SAND!!!!

Craaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaap!

I tried backing up, but the delightfully amusing thing about soft sand is that... there is no reverse in soft sand, only digging.

We tried calling the friend with the biggest truck, but couldn't get a hold of him. Chris called his dad, but was told it'd be at least 45 minutes. We waited a few minutes and I'm getting pretty anxious because... this is my CAR! I love my car. What have I done to my car?! So Chris and I dig a bit around the wheels and try to back up, but it's really not going anywhere. Then I realize that duh -- my bumper is a big empty piece of plastic and it's DRAGGING SAND in it. So I've been slowly pulling my bumper off. Effing... geez louise. And then I notice a tear in my bumper on the side right below the seam. That's when I call it quits.
Chris meanwhile has been bringing over slabs of broken concrete (we were actually pretty blessed to have landed where we did) and dropping them off by the car. Then the clouds got dark and it sprinkled a bit (and I was grateful that things had cooled down, Heavenly Father loves me, this I know).
Chris tried putting some of the broken slab behind my tire so I could back up onto it, but it only burned rubber when we tried (I'm going to need new tires pretty dang soon).
Feeling kinda down, I'm sitting in the driver's seat thinking back on what got us where we were, and I could not recall any warning feeling on the way down to our sandy pit.
You know that voice or feeling you get that says, "oh, you really shouldn't go this way," or "don't talk to that guy in the greasy trench-coat," or "you should probably fill your gas tank NOW (even though you're at least 1/4 full)"... You Momos know exactly what I'm talking about.
And then you don't heed the warning you were given, and then as you get yourself in a sticky situation for it, that voice or feeling comes back and doesn't so much as say "I told you so," as it says, "This is what I was trying to save you from."
You know?
As I thought about this, I didn't recall any such warning being given. In fact, I felt pretty normal the whole way into the pit. Which brought around a horrible frightening question: Was I so far from the spirit that I couldn't recognize it?
How very sad and terrible! I was pretty downcast after wondering that; but Chris! He was with me the whole time and was even encouraging the trip. Had he felt nothing either? What a sad lot we are...
But then that feeling came back and reassured me that no, I was not given a warning. I was assured that there was nothing to protect me from, which is why I wasn't deterred from that place, but in fact, there was something I needed to learn.
Oh great. Learn something? That PT Cruisers don't do well in soft sand? Lesson learned, eh?
But no.
Then I started thinking that you know, I should probably say a prayer for some help. So right after I thought that, before I was even able to prep for prayer, the feeling came back and reminded me, "Uh, Letha. You have a JACK in your car."

OF COURSE! A JACK!
We ended up lifting the car and putting the cement UNDER the tires and then were able to reverse out from there. You can see where Chris put more concrete behind the slab under the tire to form a bit of a runway, and how deep in we were.


But there you go. Pretty cool, huh? And we got to Chris's house right as his dad was fixing to leave and find us. Yessssssssss, PTL!

Strapped for cash... or was it stripped?

I hate the State Fair.

Seriously. It's hot, it's smelly, it's packed with sweaty, smelly people... Everything is packed tight together. It's not just terrible for the claustrophobics, but for us agorophobics (which I really don't think is really accurate for me, I call myself a "people claustrophobic", which is actually more like claustropopulophobic...but whatev)--- the fair sucks for us.
So naturally, I signed up to do chair massage at the fair. Let me tell you: it was hot, it was smelly, and it was packed with sweaty, smelly people. Yessssss. And I was there for 4 hours. The tips weren't too bad, actually. But honestly, I would have done a bit better if that one lady in the yellow suit didn't steal some of my tips.
Can you believe that? I give this woman a massage and while I'm wiping down the chair and she's gathering her stuff together, there were two 5s in my tip jar, but after she left, there was only one. CAN YOU BELIEVE THAT?! I give her a massage and she still took my money. WTF is wrong with people these days? Cripe's sake.

We were right across the aisle from Chuck's Nuts, which makes fudge and caramel apples all with nuts. It's actually really good. Chuck came over in a super-friendly neighbor sort of way and GAVE us fudge. OMG... I <3 Chuck's Nuts. Seriously. That stuff is amazing.

But I still hate big crowds, I hate sweating if I'm not exercising, and I hate people who steal tips. Seriously, what the crap.

One good piece of news: CC is no longer in my class. Rumor is she's moving to the afternoon class. That's fine. I wonder how well THAT'S going to work out.

Life's swell.

Just a little bit of searching

Every time I feel like I need a good cry, I seek out the movie A.I.


It really is a sad movie and it seems like the whole purpose of the film is to make you weepy. So, when everything goes to pot and you can't quite get it out, watching this movie makes it all boil over and hey -- you always feel better after a good cry.

So, I watched it with my sister last night and I noticed that the intro credits said it was based off a short story, Super-Toys Last All Summer Long by Brian Aldiss.
It's an interesting read and accomplishes the same goal as the film (though to much less of an extreme). I'd always figured it was some uber-modern twist to Pinnochio, and if you think about it hazily enough, it is.

And you know those awesome lines that are super powerful in movies that you just have to write down? For half a second you're thinking that the writers are brilliant for coming up with that, then you google it so you can quote it more accurately, only to find out that it's a billion years old.
The poem quoted in A.I.:
Come away, O, human child!
To the woods and waters wild
With a fairy hand in hand,
For the world's more full of weeping than
you can understand.

It's by William Butler Yeats and this is the poem in full:
The Stolen Child

Where dips the rocky highland
Of Sleuth Wood in the lake,
There lies a leafy island
Where flapping herons wake
The drowsy water-rats.
There we've hid our fairy vats
Full of berries,
And of reddest stolen cherries.
Come away, O, human child!
To the woods and waters wild
With a fairy hand in hand,
For the world's more full of weeping than
you can understand.

Where the wave of moonlight glosses
The dim grey sands with light,
Far off by farthest Rosses
We foot it all the night,
Weaving olden dances,
Mingling hands, and mingling glances,
Till the moon has taken flight;

To and fro we leap,
And chase the frothy bubbles,
While the world is full of troubles.
And is anxious in its sleep.
Come away! O, human child!
To the woods and waters wild,
With a fairy hand in hand,
For the world's more full of weeping than
you can understand.

Where the wandering water gushes
From the hills above Glen-Car,
In pools among the rushes,
That scarce could bathe a star,
We seek for slumbering trout,
And whispering in their ears;
We give them evil dreams,
Leaning softly out
From ferns that drop their tears
Of dew on the young streams.
Come! O, human child!
To the woods and waters wild,
With a fairy hand in hand,
For the world's more full of weeping than
you can understand.

Away with us, he's going,
The solemn-eyed;
He'll hear no more the lowin
Of the calves on the warm hill-side.
Or the kettle on the hob
Sing peace into his breast;
Or see the brown mice bob
Round and round the oatmeal chest.
For he comes, the human child,

To the woods and waters wild,
With a fairy hand in hand,
For the world's more full of weeping than
he can understand.

I think they did a pretty dang good job of combining Super-Toys, Pinnochio, and Stolen Child.

"Midnight all alone in the moonlight. I can smile at the old days. I was beautiful then..."

Wow... and the sad thing is, these aren't really all that old... I need to get back to running again. My word.
















Wow... First, I miss Alanna a whole lot. Second, I need to run again.