Costco-Time

Being low on gas means that it's time to go to Costco. I like going to Costco. You never know what you're going to find. The thing about the Costco location I go to now, though, is that it's always a madhouse. Always. Even at 7:30, it was still a circus to find a parking spot. And I'm always in the minority: about 30% of the people there were Indian; another 30%, Asian, 15% were single twentythirtysomethings, and the other 5% were old ladies.

Today, when I went, I thought to myself, "It must be summertime at Costco," because berries, swimsuits, fans, watermelon, papaya, tents, hammocks, and juice popsicles dominate the shelf/pallet space.

And it must be summertime because a large clamshell of grapes, a fan, some sunscreen, some potato chips, and (if they had been there) some mini frozen cream puffs would have ended up in my cart as well. Do I need 4 lbs of grapes with which to feed myself? No. Do I need 2 lbs of potato chips? No. But it's summertime at Costco, so I just couldn't help myself.

At least I managed to control myself enough to refrain from purchasing a tent or an inflatable kayak.

one letter

A bit ago, I posted about one line. Now, I'm posting about one letter.

Throughout the day, I spend a lot of time reading. It's part of my job and it's part of my fun. I read fb posts and legal documents and lame yahoo articles and sports scores and classics and cream puffs and nonfiction. I read price signs and traffic signs and bills and emails.

Just one letter can make a difference.

For example, today alone, I found the following one letter errors:

Pubic affairs meeting, tonight, 7pm.
Deprecation totaled $9,285,332 for the year 2013.
Here we are with some of our closet friends. Only the Huberts were missing!
For sale: trinkets, clothing, and housewars.

Facepalm.

Letters do matter. Just one can make a whole sentence just sound awful, or bring the hilarity factor to the table when it really doesn't need to be there.

avocados & bad seuss

About a year ago, I was introduced to the idea of using avocados in everything instead of mayo. Yay, grocery store marketing campaign: it worked, and now I'm hooked. No more mayo for me! I use avocados in deviled eggs. It tastes yum, and you can almost go back to your Green Eggs and Ham days if you want...yes, it does tinge them a bit, but I promise, the shade is not as bad as that of the pale green pants with nobody inside them.

Today I tried it with my tuna fish. It was too hot to cook anything, and I wanted more protein than just the avocado by itself would provide. It did look like someone had messed up one fish two fish, but it was actually really good...just need to remember to put some more spices in next time, and it will be epic!

Avocados are good. I'm a believer. Too bad they're so dang expensive. I bought a bunch at the cinco de mayo sale though, and mom told me to let them ripen and then stick them in the fridge and they'll keep, and it's worked like a charm. Hail avocados! Down with mayonnaise!

scrappy books

When I was about 14, I went through a phase where I would listen to basketball games while I scrapbooked. I would have watched them, but access to a tv was sometimes difficult to get, and so I would just do random scrapbook things while I listened. I didn't go all-out...that's not really my style, especially when I didn't really have any money, and my mom wasn't into scrapbooking, so I made do with the minimalist gear I had. 

That's probably why there's more stuff in those scrapbooks than in any other years...the time between when I was 14-16. Seems like I just had a lot of energy and time back then...

But last night, I was scrapbooking. I was, admittedly, feeling a little sorry for myself that I didn't have anything to do on Saturday night. I thought, well, it's been awhile since I scrapbooked, and it's way better to do something useful than to sit around and mope.

And you know what...it was a good thing. Every picture I was in meant someone cared enough about me to stop to take a photo. I wasn't much into taking photos for the first few years of my life. I came across some really funny pictures, though...and some that made my heart squeeze a little.

I found one of my cousins and their mom, 20 years ago. It hurt my heart that 2 of the 4 people in the picture are no longer alive. I found a whole section of pictures I took of my sister and her fiancé ten years ago. They both looked so happy...theirs was a beautiful marriage, cut too short by Evil Nemesis Cancer. 

I found some of my cousins...I used to spend more time with them, but I bet it's been almost 10 years since I've seen the majority of the cousins on my mom's side. There was one where the group of cousins that were between 3-5 years older than I was were all posing, and it made me laugh. The thing about scrapbooking is that it brings back memories. I couldn't help myself from editorializing as I went through the pictures. The thing I found myself wishing most is that I had been more diligent about wearing sunscreen. There was one set of pictures I came across...I was either 11 or 12. In all the pictures, I looked extraordinarily red and extraordinarily unhappy. There were some that looked like I had just been crying, and some others with my face seeming bright red, with a forced smile. I didn't remember being really unhappy, but then I think, yep, puberty was no fun...no wonder I looked like that in those pictures. So many feelings, so much angst, so much that I was trying so hard to express. Maybe I tried to express too much...maybe that's why I got so many "extra chores." I should have said, 'Mom, you're stifling my expression!' Haha...yep...that would not have gone my way. :P Not that I mind now, though. I'm grateful that I had experiences that helped me learn how to deal with my emotions. 

I'm so grateful, too. It seems I've gotten prettier as I've gotten older. I really don't think it's that I like myself more now than I did then...it's just that I guess I grew into my features. Most of the boys that liked me back then (assuming there were any...I admit I've kind of forgotten all about that, and I really don't want to dredge up the memories) must have liked me for my winning personality. :) 

It was a night the brought back lots of memories, and made me want to be closer to my family. Which is good, because a sister of mine is going to be moving within driving distance! So now I'll have more family close. Yay for happy memories, and yay for family.

art

In my apartment, I have (on the walls)

1 original painting I did by myself
1 original painting my friends and I collaborated on
3 original coast scenes
1 family picture collage
1 scenic tourism picture collage
2 limited edition prints
1 framed map
1 framed landscape (with the requisite cow, of course)
1 etching that hung in my bedroom when I was a little girl

I look forward to getting a "where the wild things are" print in the future. I would also love a Japanese scroll painting, the kind that have muted blues and greens in them and have mountains, trees, and elegant birds in them. (No people allowed, of course.)

Last night I went to an art walk, where a bunch of galleries stay open a little later than usual and kind of try to work together to sell a lot of art. One of the galleries was having a show of miniatures...most were no bigger than 4"x4". The brush strokes were incredible; for some of the detail, I'm sure that the artist used brushes that were no bigger than five hairs, and there were about 300 of them on the wall. I decided one day it might be cool to have a bunch of miniatures. There were a few that I really liked, and I still may go in and buy one, but I have to think about it. There's only so much wall space in a place, and only so many dollars in my pocket. But it was fun to go and see what's there and know that there is creativity alive and well. Sometimes, I get so bogged down in the every-day that I forget about the beauty of art. But I'm remembering this week!

one line

Sometimes, I think about one line. One line from a play, one line from a text, one line from a book, one line of music.

If you take out the line, how much does it have an effect on the rest of the piece? If you think about it, every sketch is made of a series of lines; every book is made of lines of text, every text message is a line of communication, every spoken word in a play is called a line. One line is all you need to connect one thing to another. It's true that the more lines you have connecting two things, the tighter they're linked, and the harder it is to erase the line.

Sometimes, I think, what if one line was left out? Think of your favorite poem, or your favorite song. How different would it be if your favorite line was left out? Would it still be your favorite?

Often, I get a song stuck in my head, and it's one line from that song. If it's a song I don't like, occasionally I wish that the one line would just disappear and that I could forget it entirely. But if that line is the "backbone" of the song, or the point of the poem, or the first words in a conversation with that really cute person you've been trying to get your nerve up to talk to for ages now, or "I love you," then it seems like the one line, that one connection, isn't just one line. It's more than one line. 

I was thinking, if you picked a line from a book, any line, and took it out, the chances of it mattering are pretty slim. You would have lots of other lines of text to give you information and context. But in a sonnet, taking out one line would make an entirely different poem. And in a haiku, one line missing ruins the structure completely.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that every line matters. Every decision, every connection, every day matters. Yes, you might just think of it as one line of text in a life, or one measure of music in a song, and that it's ok because you have context and other lines to back it up and give context. But sometimes, if you have a limited number of pencil strokes, or lines, in the painting of your life, it seems to me that it's important to keep tracing over the lines that you want to really stand out, so they won't fade. 

If you leave one line out, then how do you know?

I was thinking about this in church as I was singing a hymn. And then as we stopped singing, I thought of the first poem I ever worked at memorizing. I was in fourth grade, and I still remember most of it. It's the one about the roads diverged in the yellow wood. The last line says, "And I, I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference." Even if you claimed that "and that has made all the difference is actually a second line, if you took either one of them out, the poem would not be nearly as impactful. The person in the poem drew a lonely line that probably went in a roundabout way, but realized that he/she would never get back to that exact place, time, and situation...so even if the exact intersection was visited multiple times, it would never be the same. 

Every. Line. Counts.