Update! I know, right?

I've been busy. I'm currently at my last residency for my MFA, and this Sunday I'm graduating with a grown-ass degree and a pretty dress. This past month up until this week was all writing, revising, doing paperwork, redoing paperwork, picking pages to read for my thesis defense, writing speeches, packing and traveling.

So yeah. Not much blogging.

But in addition to that, I've gone on a new diet. We're pretty sure that most of my health problems come from having an underperforming thyroid, so I'm now on a thyroid friendly meal plan, which I'll be on for a month or two to see if I can control it with diet. I hope I can, because I don't want to take pills every day of my life.

And really, the diet doesn't cut out all that much--mostly stuff I shouldn't be eating anyway like white starches, fatty meats, excessive alcohol. I can eat all sorts of things I've been craving--dark chocolate, salmon, sushi, grapefruits, avocadoes--which, basically, just tells me I need to get back in the habit of listening to my body when it's telling me things.

So! When I get home, I'll post a proper discussion of what I've been going through and not talking about much, and in the weeks to come, I'll talk about how it's working and how I feel.

And, along the way, I'll talk about what I learn about this constellation of problems and how to fix it in case there are other people who feel as scrappy as I did.

Top Ten Tuesday - Criminals With A Good Heart In Movies And Tv

1. The Transporter
2. Luc from French Kiss
3. Remington Steele
4. Most Irene Adlers
5. Patrick Jane
6. Sawyer from Lost...eventually
7. Captain Mal
8. Han Solo (and maybe Lando Calrissian)
9. Finch and Reese
10. Delores VanCartier

Tipsy Tuesday #9

You know what I love about Pinterest? Lots of booze.

For this week:

• Champagne with Pomegranate and Clementine - a kicked up mimosa if ever I saw one
• Frangellico Fall Basket - because I adore frangellico
• The Dirty Girlscout - thin mint with booze. Om nom.
• Cayman Lemonade - the islands, not the alligator
• The Dreamer - scroll down for the recipe
• Girl On Fire - not sure if they mean Katness or Alicia Keyes, but it sounds devine
• Cherry Almond Cocktail - classic combo!
• Tropical Leprechaun - green drinks!

I think I need to go get some new, awesome cocktail glasses...

Top Ten Tuesday - Things That Are Improved With Sweetened Condensed Milk

1. Coconut cake
2. Coffee
3. Tea, especially spiced
4. A spoon
5. Instant pudding
6. Shaved Ice
7. Key lime pie innards
8. Custard
9. Fingers
10. Life

Tipsy Tuesday #8

Delicious boozy loveliness from my very own Pinterest page!

For this week, we have some lovely purple things, and then some others:

• Fall Peartini - because pear doesn't get enough love anywhere ever
• Blueberry Lavender Mojito - because almost anything with 'mojito' in the name is worth drinking
• Hot Buttered Rum and Cider - again, I'm a sucker for cider
• Home Made Limoncello - I tried this once on the fly, without a recipe, and it was okay, but I think this recipe sounds SO MUCH BETTER
• Purple Storm Pina Colada - nom nom nom
• Gingered Pear and Brandy - could anything exist that is more Fall than this?
• Ever After - raspberry liquor and rose petals??? I was there before I knew this existed.

Bottoms up!

Top Ten Tuesday - Plants I Have Failed To Grow

1. Heirloom tomatoes
2. Thyme
3. Natal plums
4. Dragonfruit
5. Lychees
6. Honeysuckle and jasmine cuttings
7. Citruses of all varieties
8. Pears
9. Sea grapes
10. Lingonberries

Kickstarter Awesomeness - Crowd-funded Space Telescope!

Tipsy Tuesday

Comin atcha from Pinterest!

This week, I've got some lovelies for you:

• A mimosa made from Champagne and Orange Sorbet - I could drink mimosas all day long.
• Limoncello and Prosecco with raspberries - how perfect for summer does this sound?
• Boozy-Fruity Mulled Cider - because I love a good mulled cider any time of year.
• Frozen Peach Bellini - another perfect summer drink.
• Tropical Slush - Anything that has Coco Lopez is alright in my book. The recipe is for the non-alcy family version, but I think a little rum would be easy to add.
• And last but not least, Home Made Amaretto - because amaretto and soy is my fall-back when I want something sweet and nutty and boozy.

Drink up, lovelies!

Top Ten Tuesday - Weird Health Things That Seem To Work

1. Apple cider vinegar for almost anything
2. Rose water for smoothing your complection
3. Calcium, vitamin c and omega-3 to treat toothaches
4. Green smoothie breakfasts for energy
5. Jumping up and down to clean out lymph nodes
6. Nasal irrigation
7. Olive oil as hair oil
8. Early morning sunshine to improve overall health and mood
9. Aromatherapy
10. Cutting HFCS to improve most things wrong with you

Monday Mani - Orange!

 Bigger than real life!

This is Wet n Wild's 9021Orange from last summer. It's super-sheer and super-sparkly, and it never quite gets up to color-pop or fully opaque, but it's so shimmery that it hides a multitude of flaws. The pictures didn't even come close to how shimmery it was in real life. That top picture? Way less than real life.

I like it, but I think it might do better as a topper than a stand-alone like this.

I eventually added a coat of a green-shimmer matte to that ring finger, and the contrast is nice, but I couldn't get a decent picture of it AT ALL.

Dumb light.

Gardenation - What Urban Farmer says to plant in June!

Here's my latest mailer:

Beans
Beets
Cabbage
Carrots
Corn
Cucumbers
Herbs:
Melons
Peppers
Summer Squash
Tomatoes

For discussions and suggested varieties to plant, sign up for their email newsletter!

Yay gardens! What're you planting right now?

The Gospel of Creativity

I'm not a religious person, but I understand the usefulness of written gospels that tell us how we should behave. People forget, and so we need these reminders. I've decided to start a collection of my own to support the ideas that I think are most necessary for the world right now, and for our lives.

---
Creativity is not just that thing that you're told you have when you're little and you're coloring the horses purple. It's a state of being, an action, a practice, and a goal.

Creativity is something like the old idea of Divine Inspiration, but it's also something that comes from within us, and is fed by everything we do, all the ideas we listen to and think about, and it's made up entirely of what we fill ourselves with--so we need to fill ourselves with the sort of things we want to produce.

Creativity is a practice that you can get better at. The more you create, the more the world is something to be created from and for. The more you create, the more you can create.

Creativity is an instinct, the opposite of the impulse to destroy. It's the direct answer to destruction, and the best way to combat it.

Creativity is a cure. If there are problems in the world and in your life, you can work through them or around them or past them with creative thinking--ask yourself: What can I make out of this? What can I take from this and turn into something beautiful or useful or helpful? What can I learn from this?

Creativity is the connection of ideas that no one has put together before.

Creativity is the re-connection of ideas that people once put together and have since forgotten how it goes.

Creativity is looking at what you have and seeing all the potentials in it--and then working to actualize those potentials into something that adds to the world, your life, your culture, your community.

Creativity is making something out of what looks like nothing--and making something out of everything.

Creativity is making sense of the chaos that can so easily swamp everything.

Creativity is using what you've learned doing everything you've ever done to make something new instead of just making the same choices, the same decisions, the same actions and the same mistakes over and over again. It's making new mistakes and learning from them.

Creativity is making life--literally and figuratively.

Creativity is an answer. It brings meaning and adds context and offers alternatives.

And most of all, creativity is innate. Nature creates. When we're kids, we create everything--worlds and lives and dreams; it's giving in to life being stupid and mean that beats it out of us, but it's never really gone. We just have to remember how to do it.

So go. Create. Make life better. The more you do, the easier it becomes and the more creative your creativity gets to be.

Garden Report - End of May

The last couple days since the sun came back, the garden has been going bonkers. Did I tell you about the fantastic Asiatic Lilies my sister got me for my birthday last week? They're just gorgeous and they've been popping open like firecrackers since the day I put them out there. As of this morning, all but two are open; I'm hoping more buds will grow and they'll keep going longer into the summer. I need to see if there's, like, lily food I need to get for them or something.

In that first picture, too, you can see the garden-gift I got myself: a planter with sunflowers, two bush-type cukes and one zuke, and (still unsprouted so far), green onions along the front. They came up in about a day and a half--even the seeds are all we need to grow right now. I planted the sunflowers because they're supposed to attract labybugs, which, with roses, I thought would be nice to have, since I've already found a few aphids on them. 

And look at these nasturtiums! There's more competition in that little pot, so there's smaller leaves--but so many more of them! And look at all the flowers! You can't really see in that picture, but there's literally fifteen more buds waiting to pop open, and they last for ages. That first one went on for over a week! I hope the bees are doing their job; I'll leave the faded buds there and see if seeds grow in, and then I'll plant them next time, or in the fall, and get even more!

The rose is still trying to open, a little more each day, and it looks like it's going to be pink instead of red, but what a gorgeous pink it is so far!

I can hardly wait for the veggies. If the cukes grow, I'll be making pickles (if there are lots of them) or salads (if there are only a few). And I only planted one zuke because I know how prolific they can be, and I didn't want a whole fall of eating only variations on zucchini. I don't know how all those things will do in that one little planter together, but we'll see!

Here's what my GardenGate reminder says I should be planting out in June (and which I should have already started inside and haven't):

• Luffa
• Marrow
• Okra
• Sweet Corn
• Sweet Potato / Kumara
• Tomato

I hear you can eat luffa when it's small, but it's a big-ol' vine and I just don't have the space, so that's not happening here or now; I'll add it to the calendar for some other year. I think marrow is an overgrown zucchini, so check there. I don't like okra. I did dig out all my fun corn seeds from my seed stash, and I plan on planting some of them just to see what happens; that's probably next week or the week after, though, because this week's free money is already spent and I'm on a budget. I need to get something to plant them in. I grew sweet potato once sort of by accident; one sprouted in the closet and I decided to keep it. It got HUGE. I am super-curious about the bag-style planting of potatoes and other root veg, so I might try that some other time. And it pains me that I don't have any tomatoes; maybe I'll go by a garden center next week, too, and get a few that are already sprouted.

Goals for this week or so:

• Get the compost going outside
• Find something to plant corn in and get planting
• Maybe plant some bush beans

How's your garden going?

Making the world a better place

I've been thinking about this a lot lately. We have this national narrative right now that everything's going to crap and no one is listening, and I think it's becoming a self-fulfilling prophesy. It combines with the general victim-ness that seems to be spreading, too, and the bad-economy depression, and whatever else, and people stop trying to do anything about it.

But here's the thing: there's always something you can do about it, even if that thing is only trying to make your own life better, and even if 'better' is a relative term.

Now, formerly, I'd thought about 'better' as a vague thing, and a stratified thing. I wanted to make my own life better, sure. I wanted to make the world better. But I wasn't thinking of them as the same thing until I was looking at the blogs I follow in my reader and I realized--it's all the same. Trying to eat better--both healthier and tastier. Trying to think about beautifying my house in ways I can accomplish and afford. Trying to garden and make my outside healthier. Trying to be nicer to myself and more positive with the world. Thinking about society and working through those issues and spreading the better ideas around. Being mindful and journaling more. Being creative and helping others be creative. Trying to be happier. Trying to help others be happier. Trying to be greener. Trying to get out of the oppression of a consumerist, retail-based culture of poorness and want that I don't agree with.

Focusing on art and literature and creativity and beauty and health and thoughtfulness.

All of it is the same thing.

I read a lot of blogs that have a positive view of the world. Everything from Danielle Laporte and Leonie Dawson and Emilie Wapnick and Gretchen Rubin, to the Nerdfighters Hank and John Green, to Wil Wheaton, to Discovery News. Not to mention all the cooking and home-decor and crafting blogs I follow that talk about a way of life that I really want to build for myself. Not to mention the general magical-thinking of being a total geek. I've been doing this for a long time, and lately I've been synthesizing it and seeing what tips for life I can get out of all of it, everything I'm taking in, and what I can pass on about it. And this is my first insight:

Make the world a better place.

Any way you can and every way you can, from the most personal detail to the most cosmic action. It should all be in the name of making things better than you found them. In the name of improving your life and everyone else's life in some way. In fighting against this wave of stupidness and meanness and depression and selfishness that seems to be overwhelming all the good that still exists and still needs help getting noticed. Because really--do you want to live in a world that thinks of itself as a near-dystopia on a downward slide, or do you want to live in a world where kitchens are full of sunshine and tasty baking, where anyone can write or create art, where gardens are the norm, and where everything can be beautiful, whether it's functional or not? Do you want to live in a world where you're stuck in a job you hate because you have no choice, or one where you can decide to do whatever you want, even if it's hard and risky, and happiness is the main outcome? Do you want to reinforce a world of isolation and mistrust, or one where people smile at each other and share things and make friends?

I know which one I want.

And I know where I'm putting my effort now. What about you?

Caturday