There's this woman who comes to Bible study on occasion. Let's call her S. Today S kind of was harsh to me...I think? I'm really unsure of how to take this.

We held a bridal shower for one of our group members today, as it was the last day of Bible study. I got Renee a bunch of eco-friendly soap/bath soak/etc., as the theme was bath and laundry. One of the girls in my group also got her some green cleaning supplies, "Just for you, Jessica!" as she said to me. I never preach to them about being environmentally conscious - they just know it's part of who I am. Right? Right. So S comes maybe once every other week or once every two weeks, as her job permits. She was new to the group this fall, so I haven't really gotten the chance to know her or understand how to take this.

She says to me, quite pointedly, "Well I've tried some of those eco-friendly products and they are total crap. They don't get anything clean."

Fine. Have your own opinion, by all means. I pointed to the one in the basket and said "I haven't tried the ones from Clorox," (they are greening their products)"but I usually use Seventh Generation detergent."

"Oh no," she said. "Seventh Generation doesn't clean clothes at all. It makes my daughter break out in a rash. Tide is the only thing that really gets clothes clean." (O.o Tide gives me a rash - I tell her so.) "Tide Free wouldn't. Tide Free will get your clothes clean."

oK. So aside from the fact that saving the earth is my business in life, I feel like she told me that my clothes weren't clean! I didn't argue, but...what could I say? My clothes are clean, and they don't reek of perfume when they're through the wash because they are CLEAN. Nothing is clinging to them, not dirt or deodorant or perfume or stink. And I don't need my tub to smell like Comet to trust that it's been scoured.

I'm a bit stressed out, so I may be blowing this all out of proportion. It seemed way harsh though!

I often go without makeup on Mondays. It's kind of scary, but if I'm wearing a decent color it doesn't come out too badly. Slouched posture is indicative of my feelings about work, as I am finishing up for the day.

( Natural is beautiful...right? )

Post pictures of yourself without makeup. If I can do it - I mean, you saw me, I have no eyebrows or lashes without it - you can do it too.

Our landlord turns off our heat when the first robin appears, which makes spring the coldest time of the year for us. The heat blasts all winter and we walk around in t-shirts in our apartment, bundling up only to face the cold of others' dwellings or public areas. But as soon as the first 70-degree day shows itself, the heat clicks off and remains off until the fall. Thus, on a 48-degree day like today, I eat entire pots of shells and cheese in an effort to keep warm. And my shivering is exacerbated by the Excedrin I took this morning to finally get rid of my headache. Jessica + caffeine = the shakes. I wish salad could be microwaved.

Normally when I read a 50-page ramble about addiction/politics/religion for work, my eyes fall out and roll around on their own for awhile until I'm done reading. This man was so sweet though, in his own slightly misinformed way. He had overcome chemical addictions of all kinds and kept thanking God for His help. This isn't out of the ordinary, but I was won over by this sentence:

"I do know I talk about Him more and more as time passes it's like He is becoming a part of me."

He was just so honest. No pretenses about his lack of education or self-important talk about overcoming. Just really simple, charming faith. Real faith should always be charming.

Amy, Mom, and me, shortly after Amy was born in July 1985. Happy Mother's Day, mom, even though you don't read my blog. You did a great job, and you still do, faults and all. I love you.

Happy Mother's Day to all of the other moms on my list. I hope you think you're a great moms, too.

Wasn't someone thinking of getting a bird-flock tattoo awhile ago? I love this image from Australia's fashion week.

I love animals. (I'm so different.) I even started college as a biology major, even after being warned that biology is really chemistry. If biology was really biology, who knows? I could have been one of the greats. My powers of observation, however, are best suited to looking at things and saying "Awww!" and writing bad poems about them. Here are some pictures from our anniversary day at the zoo:


This sleepy snow leopard was curled up next to the glass, which has never happened in all of my zoo visits. His paws! They are adorable! I will eat them!


Lions are my favorite animals. The only activity they partake in more than sleeping is sex. That's not why they're my favorite though. This sleepy one flopped down on her side just as I snapped her picture.


These lemurs, curled up in a sunbeam on a rock, have stolen my heart. I hope they do this often. It must be lovely to have fluffy fur and be able to sleep comfortably on any surface.


This zebra wasn't asleep, but I had to post it because zebras should not exist. Look at it! It's a horse with stripes! Nonsense. It's about to talk to me in this picture, look at that face. It's going to tell me it's from another dimension, and I'm going to believe it. I love it.

It's been awhile since justneverended pointed me, in an email, to www.cowboypoetry.com. I skimmed the site and read a few, thought they were good fun, and forgot about it. But last Wednesday I was invited to Beaver Falls Coffee and Tea Company, a cute little place started up by a couple I graduated college with, for a cowboy poetry reading. my_nomenclature went with me to brave the cold. Perhaps the time was just right, or the atmosphere was; I don't know if it was the sad parts or the funny parts or the hot chocolate outside on a chilly evening. But now, cowboy poetry is mine! Hearing it read aloud really brought the magic out, as with all good poetry. I'm so glad I went.

Open Range, by Robert H. Fletcher

Western land was made for those
Who like land wild and free,
For cattle, deer, and buffalo,
For antelope and me;
For those who like a land the way
That it was made by God
Before men thought they could improve
By plowing up the sod.

I want the rivers running clean,
I want a clear, blue sky,
A place to draw a good, deep breath
And live, before I die.
I want the sage, I want the grass,
I want the curlew's call,
And I don't want just half a loaf,—
I've got to have it all.

These cities seem to wear me down
And I can't stand their roar,
They make me have the itching foot
To get back West once more.
I hate the milling herds in town
With all their soot and grime,
I wouldn't trade a western trail
For Broadway any time.

Just give me country big and wide
With benchland, hills and breaks,
With coulees, cactus, buttes and range,
With creeks, and mountain lakes,
Until I cross the Great Divide,
Then, God, forgive each sin
And turn me loose on my cayuse
But please don't fence me in.

My mom has this big, circular patch of freckles just above her knee. I was fascinated by it, and one day when I was probably nine or ten she told me how they got there.

"When I was young, I went into the yard on the first day of May and wiped the morning dew all over my face, saying 'First day of May, take my freckles away!' I wiped my hands on my leg, and there they stay."

I had nothing against my freckles (which I have not only on my face, but my arms, knees, shoulders, and sometimes knuckles) but I had to see if it would work for me. So come May first (already buzzing with birthday anticipation) I awoke and stepped directly outside in my nightgown and knelt in the grass. I don't remember it being particularly cold. There was dew though, so I brushed my hands over the grass and rubbed my face all over. Then I said the magic words.

"First day of May, take my freckles away!"

And I pulled up my nightgown and wiped them on my thigh, just above my knee. Nothing appeared, but I decided it might take awhile for them to show up. I went inside and peered into the bathroom mirror. Still, the freckles were stuck firmly to my face.

It was an odd disappointment. I was a cynical child in many ways, and I only half expected it to happen. And I knew it would have been science, not magic, unaware as I was that the two mingle more often than not. Looking back I treasure the memory, though; my mother, the good Christian wife, was always unknowingly filling my head with traditions and mysteries from religions and superstitions long gone. She was the loving mother who followed the rules and she was the subversive tutor who balanced eggs on the counter on the equinox, mixing science with magic.

Today, neither of us have freckles on our faces. My mom never has, in my memory, and I haven't been in the sun this year to call them out. But oddly, I do have a thick patch of them on one of my wrists. Maybe I bumped my knee on my way in and wiped them all up, seventeen years ago, four days before my birthday.

I don't know what it was about my apricot-orange fruit spread that I had on toast for dinner tonight, but it made me very happy. Fruit makes me happy now. I think about it often.
My mouth's favorite flavor has always been orange, and two weeks ago I actually ate an orange for the first time. The texture is absolutely repulsive to me, but little by little (and with liberal use of the paring knife) I am eating and loving oranges.
Maybe after this I will learn to like a wider variety of vegetables. I'm so excited not to be limited to grapes and bananas for fruit this year! I have this amazing recipe for orange salad with maple syrup and cinnamon that I am chomping to try. The combination of eagerness and a recipe is not common for me, so you'll forgive my excitement I'm sure.

I never dread falling asleep, or waking. In fact, unlike most people I know, I wake up with a quiet exuberance that inflates and takes the place of everything else in me. Unfettered as I am - without self-doubt, children, a stressful job - my days are (almost secretly) untroubled.

When morning comes, I am ready. My time is meted out liberally to myself. I pass Caribbean-colored stitches across my needles while growing dayflower lace. I create a kitty-fort with the cushions to play with Echo while he hides in it. I write something brilliant... a poem, or just a phrase. I watch the squirrels with their bottle-brush tails on the trees outside my window, and I go for a walk and take pictures with my step-dad's old Nikon Coolpix. I make scientific discoveries about fire and knives in the kitchen. I water the catnip. I drink poetry for lunch with my mango cubes. Six swans fill my living room with clamor and feathers until I turn them back into princes, the silent heroine with my nettles and my book.

I love my days until the shine wears off. Most days. I should be a good girl and say that it's because I pray every morning, but I will be my true failure of a self and say it's because sometimes God reminds me to look up and be silent. That's where the shine comes from.

I live in a treehouse apartment. In summer, all of my windows are emerald colored for the leaves that grow from branches so close I can pull them into the bedroom. God has been waiting for me to wake up all night, so we can talk. Most days I blabber at him, asking him for stuff and thanking him that I don't have to earn the love he gives me through my friends and trees and fairy tales and books and faceted gems and water and songs. Those days, I am happy enough, but it's the days when I leave all the stuff of life, sweet as it is, in its own box. Or the other stuff of life - the bitter things, like work and health problems - in a different room. I meditate, I empty myself. Not for the sake of being empty, but of being full of something that is better than all my desires, better than all the beautiful gifts it gives me. God, me. adonai Echad. The Lord is One. All. Only. Every.

Everything works against me. It pushes toward me, nuzzling my hand or shouting, wanting to be my One. But I found an image in the book of poetry that Hans got me for our anniversary that is my new friend when I want to quiet my mind. It is the last line of the first stanza, but as I love the whole poem and it very much expresses my prayer experience - sometimes where I am, but mostly where I long to be (when I remember who I am) - I'll post all of it.

From A Timbered Choir: The Sabbath Poems 1979 - 1997 by Wendell Berry. Poem I from 1979:

I go among trees and sit still.
All my stirring becomes quiet
around me like circles on water.
My tasks lie in their places
where I left them, asleep like cattle.

Then what is afraid of me comes
and lives a while in my sight.
What it fears in me leaves me,
and the fear of me leaves it.
It sings, and I hear its song.

Then what I am afraid of comes.
I live for a while in its sight.
What I fear in it leaves it,
and the fear of it leaves me.
It sings, and I hear its song.

After days of labor,
mute in my consternations,
I hear my song at last
and I sing it. As we sing,
the day turns, the trees move.

I can leave all of it now, asleep - waiting for me when I am stronger, when I am more One with my God. Thank you Hans, for choosing this book for me. Even in spite of our hardships, my days have a new shine.

A few nights ago, welfy was asking people to post pictures of their favorite shoes, and there were many adorable ones. I don't have any pictures of my cute shoes, but yesterday I had the opportunity to walk outside barefoot for the first time in...oh, so long. So long. I miss having my own yard and knowing that the worst I'll step on is a fuzzy bee or a patch of crabgrass.



I had nearly forgotten what grass feels like under feet. And what feet look like on grass. my_nomenclature's backyard is filled with violets and brown bunnies. A perfect place to spread my toes.

Hans took me to the zoo today for our anniversary, which was really big of him because he doesn't think much of the zoo. He had a good time though, I think. It's the middle of the week and most kids are still in school, so we didn't have to contend with the summer crowds or lots of children. I had my third hot dog since the day I swore off them when I saw them being manufactured.

It was sleepy time at the zoo, too. A nice temperate day (I was sweaty, truth be told - I'm such a wuss in hot weather) for the animals to be lolling about in plain sight.

I got Hans the Indiana Jones boxed set, two Led Zeppelin CDs, and Happyslapped by a jellyfish by Karl Pilkington. He got me a gift card for the yarn store (yay!) a Kate Rusby CD, my very own copy of Spinning Straw into Gold and a book of poems by Wendell Berry which are so pretty I can only read one for days. Oh! and pretty little orange roses.

We had our special dinner last night as tonight everyone is coming over to watch the new LOST, and before that it's The Office.

I woke Hans at five this morning. Candlelight was softly burning, or so he thought. It was actually a flashlight, but he's not the most coherent of people when he awakens. Is she serious? he thought. It's way too early for this.

"Are you awake?" I asked.

"Kind of. What's going on?" he was kind of panicking and definitely annoyed.

"Echo caught us a mouse for our anniversary, and now he's playing with it at the foot of the bed."

"Are you shitting me?"

"Nope."

I put on some jeans and socks and a jacket, and also the dishwashing gloves as Echo tends to be rather possessive of the animals he's caught. Just for those who didn't catch his adventure last time, we live in an apartment, not a farmhouse, and I really don't think there should be mice in my nice building in my nice neighborhood.

We spent the better part of an hour chasing him and then dismantling the bed and the futon so he would have no place to hide. He hissed and spit and growled - it was very manly - and finally he dropped it. Unlike the last one, it was stone dead and much easier to deal with than the last, which was still warm and slightly alive. Falling back to sleep after that was difficult, but sweet.

When I awoke, Echo was curled up like a pillbug at my feet, sleeping off his night of adventure. It was a funny way to start an anniversary; working together to solve a domestic issue. We had already decided to go to the zoo today, but do we even need to?

Nicked from welfy

Tomorrow, Hans and I will have been married for four years. He proposed to me four months before we got married, with the best ring ever:





I know. It's awesome. We're not doing anything fancy; tonight we're going to Aladdin's, a restaurant in Squirrel Hill we've never been to but keep hearing good things about. We already exchanged presents because we are the least patient people when it comes to giving gifts. We're like nine year olds.

(I posted about some really fun rings at Folk and Fairy, which if you are into jewelry (staring at or wearing) go see the jewels.)

Anyway, off to finish painting my nails and then dinner!

Just a note for writers, poets, and other dreaming artists: a new online zine, called Les Bonnes Fées, is accepting submissions of "fairy tales, folklore, and everything in between." Read more at Folk and Fairy or the blog for Les Bonnes Fées.

Sometimes I feel like the grossest person alive. How could anyone stand to come over?



This is one of my dirty secrets - I suck at keeping the fridge cleaned out. I think I'm doing alright because all of the containers are sealed and new, but really they just sit there until they expire and I'm too much of a chicken to clean out the containers and recycle them. Fortunately for me, unfortunately for the planet, many of these containers were NOT recyclable. I have no reason to be leading an environmental team.

My house is actually very clean aside from this and one other dirty secret. Every week we dust and vacuum, I clean the bathroom at least once a week (sometimes more) and the cat litter is scooped often. I promise we're not that gross!

A week or two ago, I tasted mango for the first time. After deciding that it was made up of magic and sparkles, I bought one myself and today I chopped it up. Here's what I learned:

1. The skin is easier to tackle with a serrated knife than a vegetable peeler. A lot easier. At least I assume this; I had taken five minutes skinning most of it with a peeler and only a few seconds with a knife to get the remaining bits.

2. Chopping a mango is like cutting through jello with a very sharp knife, but only if you know to avoid the Impossible Core. I tried to slice through it with the serrated knife that was so great for the rind, but to no avail.
2a. We are doomed to repeat the mistakes of our fathers. My father once used our butcher knife in an attempt to even out the trunk of our Christmas tree. The mango core was similarly tough, but I had a Cutco knife on my side. It suffered no damage, unlike the butcher knife.

3. Planning a meal of mango and pineapple is a good and delicious idea, but only if you remember to defrost the pineapple bits first.

Jolie jolie jolie jolie!
I think she loves flowers - all of her videos have all kinds of growing things in them. :D