A Few of my Favor....THIS THERMOS ROCKS!

Back in the summer my boyfriend bought me this tea thermos from Teavana. It's a nice silver with a dragon motif that looks like it came off a Robin McKinley book. The really NEAT thing about it, though is that the inside is lined with Yixing clay.

I was super entertained by this and adored it. He also bought me some pricey Jasmine Oolong tea to go with it. Since I don't drink a lot of hot tea in the summer and didn't want to use up all my fancy tea I waited until it snowed to get it out (today).

I used several times this past summer and when I opened it the wonderful jasmine scent was still there. HOW COOL IS THAT?! You're supposed to use anything made with yixing clay with only one type of tea because the clay absorbs the flavor and the more you use it the more it seasons.  And it actually does! For some reason, I didn't believe it.

It's about 30$ at the store, but if you have money to blow on something tea related or want to buy someone a tea gift, you should check it out!

This is a picture of the clay inside:

This is my face when I tilt the thermos to show the clay and forget there's a little bit of water in it....and dump it all over my keyboard!

Hum Drum

Sadly this blog is slowly just becoming one more piece of internet detritus. Yet, it's not because I don't like to write. It's definitely not because I don't like being narcissistic.

I actually have a life now that involves a plethora of human interaction (much of which I'm opposed to, but alas. You do in fact have to deal with people you don't like in life.)

Which is surprisingly not as exciting as my rich inner life!! (Thank you, personality test.)

It's a bit hum drum. Actually doing homework, worrying about money, and doing chores. I'm a junior in college and not 16 I promise.

EXCLUSIVE!!!!

There's a million things that would be a good idea for me to use this blog as an outlet for... How hard life is during a depression (economic), how difficult holding together can be, the experience of being enlightened to the fact that life is not ruled by societal rules, people are..... BUT I'm going to blog about my hair instead.

I got it cut much shorter than I usually wear it, and I share it with you my dedicated readers who are numerous and bountiful my cup is overrunning!!!! Before and after! The second picture is cheesy so exclusively on this blog and not Facebook!!! (That's right, readers, exclusive content).

Empty Chairs

I have a tendency to be disturbed by completely immaterial things. Immaterial things being things that I know that are there but I only see out of the peripheral vision of my mind.

I don't like to swim in my pool at night because I once saw a white vested silhouette in that general area. I'm not saying that seeing that figure that is rational, but if YOU saw it would you go back out there at night? That would be irrational to invite myself to die of a heart attack when something like a grasshopper leaped out of nowhere and I thought I was being attacked by ectoplasmic insects.

I don't like to look out of my peep hole as has been mentioned before.

And I feel great uneasiness from an empty chair. An empty chair even in broad daylight can disconcert me on imaginative days. Is an empty chair not an invitation for just anything  to sit in it? If you don't believe me google image empty chairs.

Kaleidoscope Shrooms

Are not, in fact, a long lost Beatles song. I've been spending the summer trying to find ways to eat more plants by eating wild ones. (Which has boiled down to: wild plants are gross. With the notable exceptions of plants I'd been eating for years and dandelion petals).

I love mushrooms, and of course, they grow EVERYWHERE. So I thought, hey, I'll eat some of them! But upon further reading realized I couldn't distinguish between them well enough and could wind up with a delicious grilled fungus or secret rubbery death!!!

While still in the investigation stages, I found this fellow (Manderly the Mushroom) in the yard and it was quite lovely if stinky on the inside. This mushroom is actually edible before its spore stage (or so some very badly designed blogs tell me).

Listening

Dark Comes Soon by Tegan and Sara is one of the best songs ever.

When Tiny Crabs Attack

To Articulate Life: Blunt Belligerence or Subtle Guerilla Warfare

When I was 10 I had dreams of being a glamorous author who lived in a renovated house that had once been abandoned to time. It was going to be littered with the paraphernalia of my creative and brilliant life. Scarves from India were going to be draped on all of my furniture and my teapot would always be full of aromatic teas from far away places. I would spend my life talking with trees and stones. Wiggling out the stories that they had been witness to, while they smiled silent and amused at the bug who pestered them so pointedly from their observation of sun and moss.

Now that I'm 2o, that dream rolls over sleepily in the back of my mind with all the other lives I've lived through the filter of daydreams. My goal of glamorous author has been passed up for other things that had more endurance in the race, but the remains are still there. The fight to articulate my thoughts is still raging within me.

So I struggle with the world and try to assign words to all of these outlandish things that happen to solitary me. Sometimes I strive for a sentence like a farmer using a machete to get through blackberries. The rest of the time I tip-toe around it looking for cracks in the wall that I can squeeze though and grasp something tangible and worthwhile.

And so I struggle. My fist around a pencil instead of a gun. The War of the Words. I did just blatantly do that, yes. Yes, I did.

Also A Tale of Nothing

Have you ever felt a burgeoning drive to write, but it's stuck in your heart and won't come out?

Welcome to my entire life. Especially now. For some reason my heart and brain say, "Write! Write! Write!" And my hands say, " ... ... ... Squibble bibble head bobble!"

The Past vs. What I'm Doing Now

Soooo, I was rereading some old journal entries and reliving some of my teenage years.

Then: I wanted to fight everything loudly yet underground with the help of fellow rebels. Things largely consisting of government control and injustices to the impoverished.

Now: I want to fight illiteracy and hunger.

Then: I wanted to live romantically abroad and eat olives on Italian verandas with my partners in rebellious crime.

Now: I want to EAT REAL FOOD in the yard of a small house with a couple of acres of yard complete with garden and chickens.

Question: What happened? I don't feel like I've lost anything except for some weird urge to be difficult. I still want to fight for change, but by helping and teaching. I still want my romantic veranda, but home is where I want it. Is this aging? I'm only twenty for good grief and holy romans sake!

Perhaps, living in the STUDIO APARTMENT OF SUCK has just caused me to realize how much I love my life and family back at the living place.

It has also occurred to me that being politically active is HARD. It turns out that not very many people really give a damn. So, you can't just ride along with an incited crowd and pull a lever and all the abortion clinics morph into soup kitchens. Go figure!

My political activism has been rather melted down to keeping informed about the latest debacle to happen to the education programs and trying to protest the stupidity of the latest one.

Forgive my extreme lame and boringness. I'm having issues typing with my fourteen year old self making scowly faces at me from the back of my mind. She's all dressed in black and carrying around gothic romances. She frightens me a little, but I want to hug her. Weird....

Things Never Change (Unless They Get More Annoying)

I have been experiencing something quite profound and, as far as I can recall, not precedented in my life. I am finding the day to day experiences of my life so extremely irksome that I have become annoyed with existence. Not in a self destructive way, but in a poking a loose tooth kind of way. It's like a persistent pain in the mouth.

So far this semester has tried it's best to prevent me from getting to my classes. With doctor's appointments, snow, random mid-winter illnesses, and slightly flat tires...That is just annoying. And you know...I don't think the professors believe me. The one time that I'm not lying about absences too. I'm usually doing something much less productive when I skip things....Like eating pasta on my steps and reading.

Then of course there's the rest of the humdrum. No job, no money, too much weight, not enough exercise, and worst of all NO SUNSHINE IN COOKEVILLE. I swear, it's like there's a giant umbrella over this stupid town.

I keep trying to snap out of this routine of tedious tedious existence, but I snap right back like a rubber band. The tough kind that tends to be stinky.

On the bright side....It's one day closer to summer. Also, I have classes that I enjoy when I get to them, and these really adorable stuffed animals called "Beanie Boos".