Well it's been seemingly forever since I've been able to blog. The main reason for this is my unhappy acquisition of the lovely Swine Flu, which has kept me in bed for the better part of three weeks.

I haven't been able to get hardly anything done in the vein of my sewing and crafting. I've done a little bit of cross stitching to pass the time while I lay in bed, but that's about it. It amounts to a few lines of Xs, nothing more.

Hopefully I can get over this soon and get back on with life and then I'll have some things to share. Until then, I'm just trying to stay afloat with homework and everything. I'll let everybody know as I go along. Hope you're all doing well on your projects! :)




If you liked this or any other post, please leave a comment and subscribe to this blog. I love to meet new people!

I forgot to mention: we got mixed recycling!! Finally, after way too long...if I must, I will keep four separate containers for all the different types of recycling, but I sure don't like it. Now we can just throw everything in and take it down to the recycler once a week or so, and everything's good. :)

Also, I ran and snagged a few photos of the mums for you to see. I put a can of ginger ale in there for scale. :D They are massive! I love them! :D They cover up the water nozzle just perfectly.






If you liked this or any other post, please leave a comment and subscribe to this blog. I love to meet new people!

So my poor grandma finally gave in and gave me one of the beautiful Jade plants that my godmother had given her like twenty years ago. Whoo! This thing is older than I am and will probably (really) live another hundred years. I got the one in the brown pot. It looks fantastical out front, although it will have to come inside once it gets cold. I also got a huge (I'm talking HUGE) pot of deep red mums for the porch. Mom picked them out and they're AMAZING.

In other news...BABY TOMATOES! That's right. 'But wait, Meg!' you say. 'You don't even like tomatoes.' True...I don't like them in the sense that I don't eat them like apples the way some freaks do (you are a freak. a FREAK, madam.) but I do love their flavor and to have them in things, as long as they aren't too chunky, because it's their texture that freaks me out. But guys! I lived in Italy. I'm growing to love tomatoes (and loving to grow them as well). I had to, or I would have starved. :)



Have a great Monday everybody! :D



If you liked this or any other post, please leave a comment and subscribe to this blog. I love to meet new people!

Well last night I gathered up my mom, aunt, and grandma and we went to dinner and then went to the movies. Several advancements were made which are of note!



When we went to Thai food at the Wok, everyone ordered something different, from Thai salad to spicy prawns to BBQ pork rice. I had my old faithful, Tofu Pad Thai, and thought it was the cheapest, it was unanimously declared to be the best meal of them all. Finally, finally, after years of wondering, tinkering about making my own sauces, and wishing I was Thai so I'd have a family recipe, I finally grew a pair and asked how they made their sauce.

The woman said she didn't want to answer because we'd all laugh. We insisted we wouldn't but we were wrong. You know how they make it? Equal parts ketchup, white vinegar, and sugar. I was stunned. Here I'd been scouring Asian and Hispanic markets for tamarind and palm sugar, and the best Thai place in town uses ketchup.

The woman explained to us (I don't know if this is correct or not) that catsup is Asian originally and that most old Thai families make their sauce this way. I am still stunned. I didn't believe at first but she showed me the ingredients and the vat. Crazy! I'm afraid to make this on my own but I don't think I'll have a choice...I'll just have to try it.


The second big accomplishment of the night was in going to see Julie & Julia and finally helping my grandma understand what a blog is. This is a really really big achievement, let me tell you. :)

Okay, more later. Right now I'm going to spend my last few hours with the fam before we head south again. Happy Sunday!




If you liked this or any other post, please leave a comment and subscribe to this blog. I love to meet new people!

If you liked this or any other post, please leave a comment and subscribe to this blog. I love to meet new people!

In my quest to be independent of the marketplace, I've added making my own clothing to the list. I've had a sewing machine for years...the only problem is I get too creative and start making things that were not on the agenda. Oh well! :) I've decided to start Sew Something Saturday. The point is that at least once a week I bust out my Brother and get to bobbin'. I hope a few of my friends will participate with me. :D Today it turned into an Ugly Doll. She was lonely and so I made her an Ugly Guy as well. They're intentionally quite primitive, and so I named her Prim, and he's Proper. :) They're a very sweet couple, made from organic cotton and lace.





If you liked this or any other post, please leave a comment and subscribe to this blog. I love to meet new people!

Well, I found out yesterday that my Uncle Rocky died of a massive heart attack. It was really painful and also really a shock, since he was only 40 years old. I can't imagine what his kids and Elaine are going through. My dad called and the conversation went something like this:

Dad: Boo?
Meg: Hi daddy. You called?
Dad: Yeah. Honey, I hate to have to tell you but I found out yesterday that your Uncle Rocky died.
Meg: ...Oh.
Dad: He was only 40 so I know it's got to be a big shock.
Meg: ...Yeah.
Dad: I know we hadn't seen him in a while so it's got to be tough, but you just got to keep his kids and Elaine in your prayers right now.
Meg: ...Right.
Dad: You'll do that then?
Meg: Of course.
Dad: Okay baby. Well, I'll talk to you soon then.
Meg: Okay.

I went and took a shower and tried to call my mom and got ready for school and then sat down to watch something on TV. Like two hours after Dad told me, I started crying. And I just couldn't stop crying. I kept thinking of the most fun and sweet things Uncle Rocky had ever done for me and how nice he was and how I hadn't seen him in person since I was 12 or 13. My memory of him had faded so much...he was just tall (or was I just short?) with orangish hair and a little mustache, in a T-shirt with belted jeans and a ball cap. I don't even know how accurate that is. I couldn't believe how quickly he was dissolving in my mind.

I called Dad back. He was working but he took almost an hour to talk to me, which is saying a lot because we love each other to death but we're pretty succinct and usually our phone chats happen two or three times a week, are about three to four minutes long and consist of, "You're alive? You're good? I'm alive. I'm good. I miss you. I love you. We'll talk soon." You know. Just to check in. But sometimes I lose sight of how deep my dad really is. It seems to happen a lot that I'm just struck by the fact that he's this independent person with a life and his own thoughts, not just My Dad whose only job is to be responding to whatever it is that I've done or said.

We talked about Uncle Rocky and how crazy he was and how crazy the Todd (my dad) + Rocky combination was. They both had heart attacks young, my dad in his thirties, just from being too damn wild, and Dad insists that if Rocky hadn't moved to Spokane, and they'd kept running together and doing everything together, they'd both have been dead ten years ago. It's probably true.

Before my dad married Peggie and became all respectable and grown-up, I can remember conversations like this:

Dad: Now, Boo, you need to get to bed. I told you, 12:30 AM sharp is your bedtime. I promised your mom I'd have you to bed at a decent hour.
Meg: But Daaaaad, Uncle Rocky's here.
Dad: And Dad and Uncle Rock want to drink beer and play cards and talk about stuff. So you need to go to bed. You can have one more hour of TV, but it needs to be in the bedroom with the light off.
Meg: But Daaaaad.
Uncle Rocky: But Toooodd. The girl wants to learn poker, doesn't she?
Meg: Yes!
Dad: No. Bed. Now. Go.
Meg: But Uncle Rocky says that when he's here, he's the boss. I'm confused.
Uncle Rocky: It's because Uncle Rock has seven years on your dad and can whoop his ass.
Dad: Like hell you could! Okay. But you're going to be in bed by 1:30. Sharp! Deal?
Meg & Rocky: Deal!

When we were talking, Dad mentioned how Rocky spoiled me rotten. Lots of people feel bad getting kids presents that are nicer than their parents could afford...not Rocky. Before he had kids, I was like his baby. I don't remember anything he ever got me, but I remember knowing that seeing Uncle Rocky was like getting an all-access pass to stay up late, drink the foam off of beer, and angle for that Furby I'd been eyeing.

I can't believe he moved to Spokane when I was only 5. He visited occasionally but not often. It seems like I saw a lot more of him than I really did, because he always made such an impression and was such a sweetheart to me. I know his own kids didn't always have it so well...he and his wife were sort of troubled and there were some incidences. Elaine spent some time in prison, I'm not sure for what, maybe drugs. It shouldn't surprise me...harmless as he was, Rocky had a big mouth. He swung a golf club (a 6 iron) through a guy's windshield once when the guy threatened my dad. He didn't mess around. He was the best kind of friend to have on your side, and and awesome uncle. Nothing else really seems to matter anymore.

I'll miss him a lot, and I wish I could have seen him more. This is just another reminder to love the people you have around you, and not to take them for granted, or take it for granted that they'll always be there. Rocky was a great guy and I'll always regret not getting to know more about him, and who he was, instead of just seeing him as Uncle Rocky. But like my dad told me, he wouldn't want me to be upset, and he didn't suffer, which is good. I'll try and honor him through my happy memories of our times together.





If you liked this or any other post, please leave a comment and subscribe to this blog. I love to meet new people!

With a camera checked out from my awesome school, I can give you a few better pictures than I had previously done. :) Just a few more areas in the house which were hard to see before.









It's far from finished, but we're doing what we can. :) Next step --> drapes! :D



If you liked this or any other post, please leave a comment and subscribe to this blog. I love to meet new people!

To cement my status as best girlfriend ever, I got Branden a bunch of camping stuff for his birthday, and when he opened it, I even let him set the tent and stuff up in my full-of-breakables living room. I know...I just give too much sometimes. ;) Luckily the tent and things were more than big enough for his hugemongous 6'4 frame. That's always a big concern for us, but the camping store did right by us this time. :P























Hopefully we'll have enough time to meet and head over to a lake site that's supposed to be just gorgeous, about 45 minutes away. Maybe next weekend or the one after. :)




If you liked this or any other post, please leave a comment and subscribe to this blog. I love to meet new people!

So in one of my programming classes, our first project is to code our own personal portfolio website. It doesn't sound so tough, except that they don't provide us any server space for actually launching it once we're finished, which is frustrating for me because I don't want to have to just throw up a Wordpress site if I can help it. But this is one of the things that's been keeping me so busy and making it impossible for me to redo LMMG with all my own coding. Branden's got Dreamweaver and that will help a ton because it will make everything super-speedy (I'm used to coding in WordPad...gross...or in TextWrangler when I can get my hands on a Mac in the lab), as soon as we get around that tricksy rule about transferring to other computers without paying for the software twice. We'll get it worked out, no worries.

In the meantime, look forward to getting a nice new format for viewing my art, photography, poetry, and short stories. I'm really super excited, especially since I've gotten a ton of stuff built up from my time living in Europe that no one has seen yet.



























If you liked this or any other post, please leave a comment and subscribe to this blog. I love to meet new people!

The super-awesome news is that the issues with the RSS feed have now been worked out! If you haven't before, now is the time to subscribe (now being 'now that it's working'...lol). Sorry about the delay, guys. :)





If you liked this or any other post, please leave a comment and subscribe to this blog. I love to meet new people!

Hey guys! So, I'm in school for computer design and I've got about four different classes that each require their own website. So I'm giving up on perfecting my own coding right now and I'm reverting back to a pre-made layout. It was supposed to make things easier...now, without anything snapping to my grids and no rules for how I like things set, it's turning out to be tougher than expected. So for now, LMMG is going to be in a sort of limbo between my own coding and premade coding. Forgive me. :S

Forgive the bad picture, but today we made and ate chocolate-covered strawberries and my blackberry was the only thing around to take photos with! But mmm mmm mmm, they were awesome. :D

So we went shopping at the good ol' Whole Foods yesterday and one of the things we acquired was "Smart Bacon," a soy product that is meant to mimic The Guy's favorite breakfast food ever.

The result was...not pretty. Besides being impossible to separate into slices, it didn't cook up well. Its similarity in appearance to Fruit Leather was not altogether appetizing, either. I could hardly choke down a single bite, while That Boy consumed several slices just so he didn't hurt my feelings.







Overall, I'd give it a C-. Maybe.

October 4, 2006

The River

I hate the smell of bleach on skin.
I almost cannot swim in pools for the chlorine.
I much prefer the smoothly rippling river,
Where you must watch for fishhooks and the men come around twice a day
To empty the nets. I like to ride the waves their boats make.
Even more, I love to float in limbo, quiet, and hearing my own breathing.
It is deep, and I can trace it.
I follow it, in through my nose, my chest expands, my diaphragm drops,
Down my windpipe, spilling into the bronchi, then into vessels
Full of blood and oxygen, and mixing with sugars.
Shivers bolt through me like liquid ice in my veins.
It is the breathing of a person
Who is ignoring that their temperature is slowly dropping.
My feet are numb, five feet below the water, in the center of the river
That runs down from the mountain.
I hang suspended, sharing a womb with more creatures than I can count.
I listen to the tinkling, swishing, chirping noise that Nature makes.
There is life around me, and I am life, I am the very essence of life.
Bleach kills. But I like to feel the cool slide of fish on my legs
And watch the tiny shelled creatures draw their lines in the sand.
I sink lower and feel the biting coldness against my eyelids,
And I breathe out, out, out
Thinking, what I don’t like about bleach isn’t actually the smell on skin,
It’s how it takes away one’s own smell.
I like the way I smell. I smell like clean, salty air, like a sea breeze,
And I smell of the warm, spicy smell that women have.
It says,
I am here, and I play, and I breathe, and I love, and I work, and I write,
And I swim, and I sweat, and I laugh and I sigh and I am alive.
I have the desire for life that some have for lovers.
I live enough for the little ones who can never be of me,
And I am happy now, even carrying that.

Me and my brother. Isn't he a little cutie? He's gonna be such a heartbreaker!!

For one of my classes, all of our homework is turned in via blog. I think it's a really nifty idea. I'm kind of stoked. First entry is due today, and I've written about 150 out of the required 500 words...I'm pondering how I'll finish it up.

It will be here...once I write something.

I love having green spaces outside my windows. I just couldn't live in an apartment complex in an ocean of concrete. I mean, you do what you have to do, but I wouldn't be happy. This house makes me pretty much as happy as I could be. My little island of green in the middle of the city.

<3