The Garden of Schroeder

On some especially gray concrete Los Angeles days, I like to think about my parent's backyard in Lompoc. I know the flowers are blooming, bees are buzzing and the trees are making fruit. It's probably gray there this morning too as the summer is dissapating, but I'll just pretend :) This was what it looked like, the weekend we got married.

Oktober. FEST.

Guess who's hung over today?This birthday boy, that's who. We celebrated with beloved friends and family last night at Oktoberfest, and it was grand indeed. We ate bratworst and potatoes and saurkraut and pretzels, and liters and liters of Alpine Larger. Well, some of us did, I opted to drive David Michael so he could fully enjoy his night, and it was definatly worth it. The dancing, the stomping, the slamming of steins, the leaping over tables and the stickiness of beer and sweat that permeates everything, the mockfights and the singing words you don't know at the top of your lungs, the parade though the tables, the hoochie german maid outfits, chicken and peter pan hats, the white thigh highs, the braids and beards.



Christine's photos came out great, and they are here on her Flickr Page. Enjoy!

MMMmm mmmm mmmm

Taking a little break from some housecleaning to make myself a watermelon-mint-yogurt smoothie with my fancy shmancy blender that get this - actually blends instead of just moving the pieces around. YUMMMM! Taking a moment to pretend I'm back on the island, cooling off with sweet sweet melon.

Tiny Tea

Last night The Tiny finally finally had a day off work, and we got together for dinner. We ate burgers and beer at Father's Office, and then tottered over to La Dijionese to purchase treats from the pastry counter.What fun the Tinies have united! How much delicous food we eat until it hurts! We are bad bad influences on one another.

Tiny Lindsey: "Lets get 2 treats!"
Tiny Jessie: "No, Lets get three!"
Tiny Lindsey: "OK!"
Tiny Jessie: "Can we have four? Can we have the chocolate one too?"
Tiny Lindsey: "No!"

We brought them home and made a Tiny Tea party, complete with bee teapot, bee hive cozy, yellow birdie plate, and the ever beloved Kitten Creamer!!! Such lovely presents! We forced Tiny David Michael to come sit with us but he spurned our treats and made a large bowl of popcorn. Which he ate, entirely, and watched us.

I have to say, I'm really proud of myself this week because I have not been as lazy as usual. I've made it to the gym a couple times and I've cooked every night, decent meals, even when it means stopping at the grociery store for that one item I forgot before, when i'm so tired and just want to go home. I also scrubbed all the gunk of the kitchen floor this last weekend so I can walk on it happily barefoot without feeling disgusting, and I I dug out the acrylics and actually painted on Sat and Sun. I remembered all those beautiful wooden panals Warren made for me a couple of years ago, back in the time of Forest Steet, Inglewood, and I painted on one! It's going to be a present so I can't show it yet, but I want to paint again this weekend. It's been so long I felt really rusty at it, and I remembered how the hours deliciously slip by as you work the color together patiently. I've given up on the idea that I'll ever be a really great painter, and it helps me not be so inhibited to try.

Oct. 34th

I asked David to go to the corner market and buy some eggs, and he bought these specifically for the experation date. I can't quite decide if they've already expired, or if they never will.

Russins' Makin' Children

This weekend we went to Levan & Heather's baby shower. It was near his folks house in a little rumpus room very happily adorned with monkey decorations. The baby is coming soon, end of November I belive, and now they will be quite prepaired with tons of monkey presents to give him. It is quite lovely to see your friends celbrating such a happy event, and I can't wait to see if he is born with a tail.
I decided to drink a lot of wine, and took this guy's picture. I didn't meet him, but I was amply socially lubricated to think I was friends with everyone by the time David wheeled me out the door.Congradulations Monkey People!

That Bad Man

Wed. night Christine, David and I attended the Hollywood Bowl to see Cat Power, Spiritualized, and Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. Hot damn, Nick Cave puts on a good show. I think it's one of the best live performances I've ever seen. There was so much rocking and rolling and gyrating and kicking of the long legs. If they ever come through town again, I will try and get tickets as close as I can so I can have the best of views. When he closed the show with Stagger Lee I was gonna pee myself, wishing Adrian Symcox was there. Who knows, maybe he was at the Bowl too, but I really wanted to turn to him and scream, "that Bad Man, that bad, bad man!" I could have watched that show for another 2 hours more when it was over. I was so sad it had come to and end, it was AWESOME.

Creations I Am Proud Of

This awsome illustrated pocket containing a Booty James musical Mix for Lindsay's birthday.
Stawberry Muffins (idea stolen from Lindsay) with whole wheat flour. DEELICIOUS!

AIR HOCKEY

Not much can rival my love for air hockey. Poo-poo on foosball, don't even mention it to me.
Am I good at it? Not necessarily. But I have an over-enthusiasm that makes up for any lack of skill. I don't think there's much more fun to be had than a great night of air hockey with the people you love. I'm really excited that Tiffany has given me all her pictures from the wedding weekend, and I've spent all morning delighting over them. I'll share more soon, but first I wanted to share the awesomeness of the hockey. I dream that one day, one glorious day, I'll have my own table at home, and I'll have tournaments all night long until my arm is quite broken from the strain, listening to awesome music.

Find the Kitteh

Mount Islip

This last Sunday David and I resumed our outdoorsiness by treking out to the San Gabriel Mountains for the first hike in a long time. I was overenthusiastic about my abilities, and picked a 5.5 mile trail. It's been a while though, and the road was closed a ways before the start of the trail, and Mt. Islip ended up rounding up to approx. 11 miles, round trip. Lets just say my body didn't take this gracefully. I also thought it'd be a good idea to put in my contacts instead of glasses, and I developed a big fat migrane half way up. At the top of the mountain, I had to take of my shoes and lay down on a rock for half an hour and try to summon the will to make it back down. It was just too much, the muscles in my legs became seriously pissed off at me, and yesterday and today I've been hobbling around the office & at home, in misery. I was so incredibly frustrated with my body, plus the fact that David was totally unphased didn't help. I'm still glad we did it, - it was an awesome hike too, so beautiful with views of the Mojave Dessert and the mountain side. But it was just too much to start back up with, so I think the next one will be a bit tamer. We did see a few really great places to camp at along the way up, and I hope we come back and do that - it was pretty secluded and goregous.

What the heck is this?

Oh, the outrage. Or the horror of it all, I don't know what bother's me most about this, the fact that they are totally flippant about out right lying about the evil that is corn syrup, or the fact that they find the public so incredibly stupid. No, as a SWEETENER it's not that bad for you, in MODERATION it's fine. But no one eats it in moderation when it's the number one filler substance in almost everything you eat. When it's the first ingredient listed in every packaged food. When we pound so much of it on a daily basis that obesity and diabetes have sky rocketed to new heights and now occur in children, which was never a problem before we started mass pumping into our diets. Also, it's not natural, during the process used to create it they add chemicals to it. Like I said, there's just so much wrong with this.

I also hate that this appears at a time when it seems like people are finally waking up to these social problems and at least becoming conscious of them if not taking huge action, and here comes someone to slap the blinders back on. I found on YouTube another clip of this woman who goes into greater detail demystifying corn syrup - how it's made, why it's used and the political backround of farm subsidies and how it's changed our food. It's long but I recommend listening, also go rent King Korn.



Maybe I've just been a little punchy lately, but I'm listening to the political coverage all day every day on NPR of the democratic and repbublican conventions, and all the different people analyzing and interpreting speeches and campaings, and I'm starting to feel this impending doom. I can't imagine four more years of the direction this country is already going, and how much deeper a hole it could dig us. The whole of my adult life has been shaking my head in horror at George Bush, and the thought of more makes me pretty depressed. Listening to Barak Obama makes me feel a pride and excitement I've never felt before about politics, and I can't wait to vote for him. So much needs to be set right, so much needs to be healed.

Enough of that now, I'm going to go eat a bowl of cereal, guess what it's made out of?

It's been a long time since big time hikers got in any hiking whatsoever. This is going to be remedied soon I hope. Most of the things we got in excess of as wedding gifts went back to Target in exchange for camping items. Camping items that can be carried on our backs to camp somwhere! I've never been backpacking camping, it's always been California camping in a car with many comforts in a designated spot surrounded by other people in a small campground with bathrooms right there. I'm excited to be doing the hiking now, and I'm curious to see if i can really do real camping and still love it :) I don't think we'll get to go until next month, so I'm hoping the summer weather holds on a little while longer. I'm going to start looking up places to go, David has said the Kern River is a good spot, and I think the San Gabriel Mountains are supposed to be a good place too. I miss our hikes a lot, and can't wait to get back out there.

LaborDay Weekend

A pretty laid back weekend here - Saturday was spend in Cerritos with family for David's mom's birthday; we all went to see Tropic Thunder and have lunch. Sunday I spent most of the day in Manhattan Beach with Agata and Bill, laying and soaking up the sun until it hid in the clouds and we retreated to The Kettle for beers and food. I spend the other parts of the day working on my Roatan sketchbook, adding some watercolor to my drawings and pasting in things like plane tickets and such.I made it out of an old Beach Boys record album cover, and I love how it turned out. I got so much writing in there, I can't wait to revisit it as soon as I've forgotten a little of the trip and get to enjoy it all over gain.

Monday made me restless in the house and I did a lot of reading. I finished Eat Pray Love and then headed over to Bill Botts park to lay in the grass and finish When You Are Engulfed In Flames. These were both really good books, and share the common themes of internatinal travel, which I suppose made me feel even more restless, even though I just got back from some international travel. David took my blues away by sweeping me to the Arclight to see Hamlet 2 and buying me a box of Milk Duds, most favorite movie going candy ever. I feel pretty relaxed today, and looking at the calander, which has every weekend in September already filled in with plans, I guess it was right that we took it easy this weekend.