Engaged!!

The day started off by being woken up by two scurrying ferrets. And by scurrying I mean, ran across my arm. Luckily I didn't freak out and it wasn't a Baltimore rat, which is what I was afraid it was before I opened my eyes. But I tapped Joel's shoulder and before I could get a word out one of the ferrets ran across his leg. So, needless to say, it was strange: the last thing I would have imagined being woken up by. Ever. Save for the one time a raccoon sniffed my face while I was sleeping on a houseboat. But thats a tale for another time. So we made flyers and posted them around the neighborhood and was stopped by one of Joel's neighbors who told us it was Joel's next door neighbor.



The ferret above is named Peanut, I later found out.



Peanut was the friendly and less psychotic of the two ferrets (the other ferret's name is Scooter, they're both girls) and decided she liked it over at Joel's house so much that she decided to come over again today (two days later). Just one ferret is fine for me!



Scooter is the lighter ferret. They're really quiet when they're sleeping, you'd never known they'd exist if they slept like this all the time! When I was looking for Peanut a while ago she fell asleep in a suitcase -- but I didn't know that so when Ron, her owner, came to look for her I panicked a little cause I couldn't find her. Not but two minutes later I was smarter than the ferret and figured where she had hid herself.

We then went up to Annapolis Rocks which is just past Frederick, in Gathland State Park. We were going up for our honorary anniversary since I wasn't here when our real one was. So it turned out okay. On our way up (2.5 miles, steep grade and 95 degrees -- I wasn't sure if it was worth it at the time) there were lovely white flowers that made the trail into a corridor of celebratory blossoms. I even said they looked celebratory before I knew what was going to happen. :0)




There was a lot of wildlife along the way too. So many spiders, caterpillars, cicadas, and so colourful too!




This photo is a story in and of itself but I'll be brief. In Western Maryland at this time of year (end of May, early June) the trees are full of caterpillars, that means, millions of caterpillars, munching on leaves and pooping. Its the funniest sensation because while its sunny it sounds like its raining, and well, it is in a manner of speaking, its just not water!



More cicadas and caterpillars.







The view from the top! We made it! Not without much ado but it was well worth it. This is where Joel and I sat for a while and talked about the last year and the good things about it. Meanwhile I was very distracted with the promised rain and the thunder that we could hear in the far off distance. But finally we got back to talking about our year together and Joel came up and sat behind me and said, "And those are all reasons why I would like you to marry me." He held out a ring for me and I threw my arms around him and said, "And I want to marry you too!" It was lovely! For those of you who are in MD, you'll see the ring in the near future but for those of you not in MD I'll be posting a picture of it in the near future cause I couldn't describe it well enough.

Its a beautiful antique ring thats about 75 years old, and came from Pittsburgh. We wanted to do something that was environmentally responsible and "green." So it fit our requirements and its beautiful! Its very elegant and subtle which is a lot nicer than flashy stuff. :0) As many of you know, I'm not flashy, ha ha.




In any case, we watched the storm clouds roll in over the hills and the farmlands towards us. The weather cooled down considerably and we both felt much better. It finally started to rain and the thunder sounded over head so we decided that it was probably a good idea to go back down before the rocks got too slippery. The rain brought out some animals that we had't seen before on our way up. We first saw a frog, and then later we saw this toad.



We saw a couple squirrels on the way up and on the way back.



And we saw a lovely iridescent green beetle, much like a June bug.



Here are the lovely white flowers again, they were so delicate and beautiful!




Here's the beetle again.



And another lovely flower that was at the entrance to the trail. :0)



I'm now engaged! Hurray! I will keep you all updated with further plans. :0)

Baltimore!

Oh its so good to be back!!

I've been back for about a week now and I've seen so many people and have been basking in the joy of having people to talk to and seeing people I care about. I'm in the Panera I use to work in and all the workers that were here when I was remember me. Brian is the manager on duty and he said hello. I had a fairly extensive talk with Alexandra though it was broken between Spanish and English, she's always so happy and wonderful to talk to. I also talked to Alejandro and Yenira, Alejandro is from Ecuador so he's been loving this weather, though I think he's nuts. Its been in the upper 90s and VERY humid. Its like living in a sauna!

Last week, the day after I got here, Joel and I went up to Timonium to pick up my bike. Its beautiful! Its a Marin Larkspur hybrid 24 speed bike, very smooth. Well, on our way back to Baltimore the lightrail was down over the longest stretch between stops but we decided to bike to the next stop anyway. Halfway there we stopped in at Barnes and Noble to figure out how to get to the Falls Road station. I will also mention that in the last seven years I've biked five times and it was raining as well. By the time we figured out where we were going and had rested up enough, night had fallen and we road to the Falls Road station. We managed to get almost all the way there before I fell off my bike and make seven or more large bruises on my legs. I was coming to a stop but then decided to continue going and when I turned onto the sidewalk (Falls road is intimidating to those of us who are amateur riders) which had a concrete wall sticking out, I lost control and fell off, and messed up my brand new bike a bit. It now has a scar across the name, Joel had to readjust my brakes and my chain had fallen off (very minor, which was able to be fixed once we sat down at the station). I got away without a drop of blood spilled. Just bruises. :0)

Then Saturday I went out with Joel to volunteer at Habitat for Humanity, where he works. That was the first day of the heatwave. It was pretty miserable weather-wise but other than that it was really cool to see where he works and be able to be a part of it too. His house was being dedicated, his roommate Jess was also having a house dedication that day too, which was cool. So after getting home, Joel went to REI to work that night and then Patty came to pick me and Jess up to go to a benefit concert (Hard Hitting Music for Hard Hit People) which was a lot of fun. Then we dropped Jess off, picked Joel up and went to Patty's house that night to stay over and go to church with her in the morning.

Church was wonderful, it was so grand to see all of those people again. Coming back to such a warm and welcoming community was so good, such a blessing! I love all of them so much! Everyone seemed so happy to see me and joy was bubbling to overflowing inside of me. Having such a loving community like that is the most amazing thing ever. I just can't put it into words what they mean to me. After church a handful of us went out to pizza at Ledo's, which was delicious. Jess came to church and lunch with us too, which was cool.

I am so ecstatic to be back here, even the horrid weather isn't able to get me down. To everyone of my friends in and around Baltimore: I love you!

Done!

I'm all done with school! I had my last test yesterday which seems like it was a lot longer than that. But in any case, I'm done for the semester. My favourite class by far was my environmental biology class, my teacher was very inspiring since she is clearly enamored by the subject. Thats why I just can't get into math, teachers rarely seem passionate about it. Or at least that has been my experience, save for my 8th grade teacher Ms. Reyes who was very encouraging.

I also tried to get my license again today. I was on stand by which really wasn't a problem since there were so few people at the DMV. Remarkably few! I had to wait a little longer than an hour before I got called to take my test. I also got a really friendly examiner, also remarkable since it almost seems to be a requirement to be cranky to work at a DMV. I suppose I'd be cranky if I had to deal with the same questions over and over again by people who just didn't get it. But whatever. In any case, I failed my test again. The examiner, Pam, said that I would have passed except that I ran into the curb when I was backing up. Why that is an automatic fail is beyond me, oh well. So I'm going to try again on monday and see if I can do it. I at least got to go through the whole test this time and the examiner was actually pleasant. But alas, no license yet.

Four more days left on the West Coast and then I go back to the East Coast for some time. Its really nice to feel like home is everywhere. When I go to one side or the other I feel like I'm going 'home.' Its just a really pleasant feeling. Sure, I'll miss the openness of the Valley and... well, to be honest, I can't remember much beyond that now. In the summer its really brown, even the things that are green or whatever other flowers are blooming, its all very brown. The spring here has been really wonderful and I'm glad that I've been able to share that with you all but now its time to leave.

But now I will start on a new adventure of learning how to farm. I'll share that all too. Life is really interesting, I think if I sat down and tried to really consider Life and what that entails and how it pertains to me I think my head might explode. I wonder why things happen, I try to psychoanalyze these things and then I scold myself. Over and over again. Solomon had it right,

'All streams flow into the sea,
yet the sea is never full.
To the place streams come from
there they return again' (Eccl. 1:7)

Someday I will divulge my thoughts more thoroughly but for now I am going to go and think them through a little more first. :0) Goodnight!

Supa Creative!

I've been a little (or a lot) neglective of my blog. I finally have all school work taken care of and done. All I have is some written finals that I need to take and thats it. Hurray! I've also been funneling all of my creativity into two things recently. Neither of which happen to be school, by the way. The first is a painting I'm doing for commission (money? What's that?) for a woman at church. She had a painting that was behind a book case in my dad's office that was given to the last pastor. It was widely recognised as one of the worst paintings known to human kind, or at least the most embarrassing. Its the kind of painting you just don't let go from your possession if that was your painting. So Lori commissioned me to paint over it. Its actually a sister piece to a painting I did for Lori previously.

This is the original painting that I did for Lori last summer. Its 16 x 20":



This painting on the other hand, is 6 x 4'. By far the biggest painting I've done. This is before it was done, there's lots of layers but this is the only one that I took a picture of.



And this is the final piece. Most of it was to do with detail, I also fixed the colours as well. Its not a huge difference from the one above, but its what brought it together.



So thats the final completed piece. Thats what I spent half of my energies on, well, most of my energy this week was devoted to that. But for the last couple weeks I've been working on a story. I mentioned it a long time ago. Maybe when I started posting more regularly. Its an anarcho-punk dystopian novel about a girl who gets wrongly imprisoned, the country and the economy completely crumble and... thats about all I want to tell right now. But I printed it out last night and its 9 pages long. Which was a little surprising because I haven't known how long it was til then because the program I'm using to type it up is more basic than basic. Is it possible? I think so.

In any case, thats also what I've been working on. If anyone is willing to edit it or just interested in reading it, I can send it to you. I'd love to have to feed back please! I also write better there than I do here, ha ha. Oh well. Anyways, so thats what I've been up to.

And its rained the last two days, not consistently but a little bit here and there. Which is super exciting when you live in the desert, let me tell you! Grey cloudy days are wonderful here!

Official Link

Under my links list I put my link to my other blog, Save the Brown. It was for my environmental biology class but now since its been due I don't have to make it quite so...school related. But in any case, check it out! Here are some of the photos from my most recent post.

This is a cactus flower that is blooming right now. We got these from my grandpa's house. He had a portion of his garden devoted to succulents and cacti.



My Mortgage Lifter heirloom tomato that I'm growing. I'm also letting two cucumber plants grow in the same pot since its so big. I do wish I had somewhere else to put them though.



Another blooming succulent in my window.



I just watered the plants. This is my newest edition that I bought at the Poppy Festival.



This guy got stuck between my screen and my window pane. I have a field guide to insects so I looked it up and its apparently a Braconid wasp. It was about an inch long. He has since fled the premises and has gone off to discover other nooks in the world.

To Grandmother's House We Go

This last week my mom and I went up to my grandma's house in Stockton, CA, which is about 6 hours North of us. It was a great trip. As we descended out of the Tehachapi hills we came upon a farm stand which had cherries, apricots and... Animals! There were peacocks, chickens, a llama, goats, fancy pigeons (who would ever keep pigeons by choice? I'll never know) and I think that was about it. But we bought some apricots, cherries and two hot-house heirloom tomatoes from Oxnard, they weren't that good but everything else was!





Also while on the road we saw a Mazda freight truck which we passed a couple times. With the slogan, "How do you zoom-zoom?" With the written answer on the bottom saying, "Zoom zoom this," which I enjoyed immensely.



So six hours later we got to my grandma's house. We were going up for Mother's Day so we brought her some lovely flowers from Trader Joe's.



My grandma is one of the most amazing women I've ever met. She's 77 and goes to the gym three times a week (has been doing this for the last couple years, five maybe) and has the most infectious personality. The two nights we were there we stayed up til 1.00a and played a dice game called Rollover, which she promptly won four out of the six times we played (I won once, yay!). She has a piano in her house that she plays on occasion. She use to be a lot better but with her hearing in her right ear gone she has a little harder time picking out the notes. I'm not sure if she reads music or not.

She also does the crossword puzzle in the newspaper every morning!



This is her little condo, its a nice little humble thing on a lake. One of her neighbors has a really loud cockatoo and I saw it on Saturday but didn't take a picture of it.






On friday night I went to a show with my cousin Courtney. We missed most of the show but it was awesome to hang out with her which we haven't done really since we were little kids. It was also good to get away from my mom and grandma for a little bit. They can wear on you, they're not terrible, its just that it's nice to hang out with people your own age and don't care what you do.

Then Saturday noontime we went home. It certainly seemed like the trip home lasted twice as long even though it took exactly the same time. Not a big surprise since I didn't want to come back in the first place. I seriously thought about not coming back home when I Portland and Seattle but it cost more to cancel my ticket so, obviously, I came back.




It was a great couple days, a much needed leave from the Antelope Valley. I'm going to be back in Baltimore in 20 days! I'm ever so excited to see everyone who's there. It'll be nice to have friends again. Funny, I've been here for five months and haven't made any friends. I'm a little amazed, I must admit. It feels terrible.

Oh, the Animals!

I've currently ditched efforts to make recognisable animals and have concentrated on making cute monsters instead. I think they'd sell better at the potential craft show I might be selling in. I applied but I don't know if I've been accepted, that's why its "potential." But, without further ado: monsters!










And another monster, that I like to call my cat, did something wonderful the other day. My parents and I were sitting at the take for breakfast when we noticed that there were little holes by the house. We already had two holes from toads that burrowed under the cement slab, so to see more of them was a little curious. Not to mention the fact that Kiki was extremely interested in these new additions to the landscape. We thought they were maybe snake or lizard holes since they weren't that big (i.e., a gopher hole). But while I was at school my mom saw "a furry little head poking out of the hole." Good thing it wasn't a snake that would kill us in our sleep, I said. I have an active imagination. So later I was in my room reading a book when my mom came very excitedly saying Kiki had caught the gopher! Though I thought, its not a gopher mom, duh. But as it turned out, it really was a gopher. So I took my camera to document what my honour student had done. I was *very* proud of her! What an efficient cat I have!






We put the gopher (its a female Valley gopher) in a tub and threw it out cause we weren't sure what to do with it. Kiki wasn't the least bit interested in it after she killed it. She just dropped it on the rug at the back door and trotted inside with the air of a huntress after a great kill, but as it happens, is actually a vegetarian. She's not really a vegetarian though. Just me. :0)