washing dishes

Green and Purple Experience

some orange

Still not sure what that card that was served to me with the homemade orange/carrot cocktail said. Well, thanks anyway.

mugwort tea

Good for the stomach!

a little blue

winter in spring

Last night when I came home from a meditation session I found this drawing by my youngest daughter on the table, another tribute to this injured dolphin my mother and daughter are especially fond of namedWinter. As a baby it had gotten caught in some fishing lines and wound up losing its tail, so the line my daughter drew shows where the prosthetic tail overlaps with what's left of the dolphin's actual tail. Ironic that a lot of innovations in prosthetics inspired by attempts to help Winter were then adapted for use in human amputees, especially injured soldiers. Certainly seems that dolphins inspire where humans don't. I guess it's somewhat harder to like humans at times.

creatures

I overheard some people talking about creatures and realized it's a very strange word coming out of such odd mouths as we humans have. But we can't help ourselves can we, given the compelling designs and definitive haecceities held by those crystallizations of organic matter we find ourselves among. Every spring I look forward to greeting the larval ladybugs I find on the spirea bush in front of the house, some say they look like spiny little alligators. This one took a break from devouring aphids and waved one of its tiny front legs at me. If it's lucky it will avoid itself becoming a snack for one of the birds that glean such things from trees and shrubs, like the warblers I saw this morning snacking on all varieties of immaculately green caterpillars. It's strange that these things that go so fast are, in a large measure, made of things that go so slow.

stilts and swords

Sick, bored, boring and home with the kids for Spring Break, I've figured out a way to spice things up a bit. We pretend inanimate objects have eccentric compulsions, and I try to do everything I can with a plastic sword. I'm getting pretty good at cutting the oranges in mid air, but find it hard to pare my cuticles.

So far, our big outing since returning from Virginia; a trip to the Neergaard on 5th Avenue. I got Sambuca Negra, elder syrup. Meanwhile, news of my mom's Rhode Island neighborhood keeps flooding into our house from the radio, and she tells me the Pawtuxet River was 6 inches deep in her basement this morning. She needs some stilts.

Last legs?

The old caloric double oven in our kitchen. Who knows how old it is.

It has problems, the ovens don't bake things evenly, the pilots go out easily, it's internally grimy beyond rehabilitation, but man is it cool. Certain parties are bent on seeing it replaced very very soon. But I can't let go. I think.

I saw the new things at Sears. What gives me the creeps more than anything: the digital components. Do they really add anything besides opportunities for repair? What should I do?

breakfast views: pangaea

around here

When we got back from Florida we couldn't find the hamster. I thought she was gone for good. I was feeling horrible about it until I glanced at the front page of a recent NYT to see a man carrying a boy bloodied in a car bombing. In the kitchen, I heard her; the little Houdini, who had pushed back the top of her cage and scaled the refrigerator, was attempting entry into a box of Wheat Thins in the cereal cabinet. She came to me without much fight. She'd lost weight.

I knew my daughter was still pretty sick because she barely smiled after she learned the hamster had been apprehended. This is day 6, I'm hoping she'll feel better. R has recovered and seems very happily at work making faux fossils from a kit he chose for his birthday, which was Sunday.

You know You're Not a Real Hobo When...

you wash your harmonica in the dishwasher.

kitchen table nephology

Mystery formations photographed on a recent flight. I'm not sure how to classify them, more cloud study seems to be required. As soon as I think I've got it pinned down, I realize I got nothing.

Good Spelling!

Operator Error

Someone left the craft box out in the rain last Saturday.

Sunday Still Life: Humility

Instars

I took the top picture last year, calling it Rue Beastie because I had no idea what it was. I saw the same thing 3 days ago on a dill plant, since then it's grown into what I'm sure is a Parsely Worm, which will morph into an Eastern Tiger Swallowtail if all goes in its favor. This is not every day animation, the forms of larval arthropods are tricky. They don't seem to wear the same clothes in every episode. The little beastie is spikey, but the spikes will give way to rolling hills of baby fat unlike no other.

"Instar" seems like such a corporate word for a phase in the development of a caterpillar. Who is responsible for that choice? Well, at least it resonates with avatar, and ties into the whole transformer mythos that young ones get loopy about, for good reason, I'm sure it's in the genes, and parents like it too, because we need constant reminders that "it's just a phase," the little horns will retract and the thorns of irrationality will get swallowed up in the fat of wisdom. So, you know, enjoy the freak show while it lasts.

From Wikipedia:
An instar is a developmental stage of arthropods, such as insects, between each moult (ecdysis), until sexual maturity is reached. Arthropods must shed the exoskeleton in order to grow or assume a new form. Differences between instars can often be seen in altered body proportions or changes in the number of body segments. Some arthropods can continue to molt after sexual maturity, but these subsequent molts are generally not called instars.

Ladybug instars I observed on 11th Avnue, here.

Recent Accumulation