Fly Fly Away

art love

life is much too short to
sit and wonder
who's gonna make the next move
and will slowly pull you under
when you've always got something
to prove? i don't want to wait
a lifetime; yours or mine,
yours or mine.
-b.harper

*f & j

We Heart Baking Soda.

Why do we heart baking soda, you ask?
Or maybe you really thinking, how do I get my
grubby little hands on one of those delicious
looking cupcake cones? Well, for starters, you can't .
It's just a picture, numskull. But you could try to
make them. Using baking soda and other stuff.
But look what else baking soda can do before
you start making huge chocolatey confectionary
confections and gobbling them down like the greedy
little goblin hobbit you are.

BAKING SODA CAN! (do all these things):

*In your dishwasher it deodorizes and cleans inside.
*As a paste it cleans smudges on wall paper and shines porcelain, jewelry and coins.
*On bee stings it lessons the pain and it’s an emollient for softer, smoother skin.
*For pets use 2 tablespoons in bathwater as shampoo. In cold weather use in powder form as a dry shampoo. Either way it adds softness and luster to their coat. Sprinkle it on carpeting to remove pet odors too.
*Make a paste to clean silver, add lemon juice to clean copper pots.
*Put it in water to make an antacid for indigestion.
*Its deodorizing ability in powder form is also legendary for your car and in smelly sneakers.
*Got a clogged drain? Mix one cup of baking soda with a cup of salt and a cup of vinegar; pour it in your drain *followed by boiling water.
*Three-parts baking soda in one-part water foams away acid build up on battery terminals.
*Trouble getting on rubber gloves? Just sprinkle in some baking soda and they’ll slip right on.

-f

Ditty for a Monday

And here we are now. Sometimes on a craptastic day the only thing that makes us feel better is a Diet Coke. Or a bag of chips. Or a pretty poem.

But usually just the right ditty can do the trick.

We're growing up. We're living. We're learning. We're doing all the stuff that makes up cliches and movie climaxes and purple passages in chick lit novels and reality TV.

Soak it in, soak it in. This is us.

*j

Love You No Shit

(fast-forward to 1:30 to get things going) This vid's for you, Frank.

Sometimes things don't work out. You don't get the job, the guy's not a fit, the CD you bought really only has two solid songs on it, which you could've bought for for $1.99 instead of $5 for each good song.

But that's okay, and you have to know it's okay. Alexander was right. Some days are no good and very bad and beyond. But Annie was oh so right and righteous and above and beyond. So keep waking up for a fresh start, a tabula rasa, a new world, and all that jazz. Eat cupcakes for breakfast and sip champagne here and there throughout your rough and tumble day. Because we don't just say that stuff, we abide by it.* When life gives you crap, get through it, remember to like yourself, and try to laugh when dogs poop. Because that is seriously hilarious.

*j

*Not that we're tipsy the whole time. Geez, get your minds outta the gutters, bellas.

Thanks Be To Oprah

photo love

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"While pursuing a course of action apparently wholeheartedly, I had changed behind my own back".

~Anne Truitt

We came across this little gem on Miz Harrison's playland of a Website. And we feel it. We know it. Sometimes it feels like it's all we know. We think we absolutely want something, and then we don't. With the snap of a finger, the sip of a latte, the last note of a song. We don't want it anymore. We're on to something new, the next thing to want and wish for and hope for and look forward to. Every day we keep changing (isn't that a song lyric from the '80s?). We keep morphing into the person we are still becoming (cheesy but true, daphodils). And we wonder when we'll land on our feet, on solid, understandable ground. On safe pavement. And maybe we never will. Maybe we'll always be hoping for something and wondering about what could be and what we'll do tomorrow and which drink special will tickle our fancy tonight.

But then we thinks... OkaAayayyYYY. We are READY. Bring. It. ON!! Because we are read' to go, snap peas. This bean is willing and able and scrappy enough to take it all on. Life is quite the merry-go-round ball of infinite blessings and crap, and though we may wonder 'til the cows come mooing on home, we are a-o-flippin-k with that. Because we will always change our minds and think new thoughts and backtrack here and there. But we're also always happy to do so, and happy with the lot we've got.

So thank you to us! And you! And the double chocolate hazelnut biscotti we had for breaky this morn. Because if you don't make joy in your life, no one will do it for you.

Here to wondering, cheers to changing our minds, and thanks be to Oprah!*


*j

*We have now written your toast for tonight. Wherever you may go, please order the drink special, grab the open mic and toast the world inside the bar with this dandy of a ditty.

Life Resolution #462

art love: our girl sabrina

Our sister and I used to collage the world pinks and blue hues and pretty poetry and oceanic magazine images and everything else under the sun and including the sun. It was color exploding in front of our eyes and we tore it out from everywhere, to mish-mash it into being of our liking, on pages in notebooks in our bedrooms.

It's creating. It's that act of creating that feels so good you feel it in your toes and your eyes and the ends of your hair. You feel alive and happy and fulfilled. You feel like it's California warm outside even when it isn't.

“True happiness comes from the joy of deeds well done, the zest of creating things new.”

-Antoine de Saint-Exupery (author of The Little Prince, which we haven't read since third grade but now totally are dying to)

We don't collage anymore, but we create. We create. Poems and stories and jottings and ideas and anything and everything. Just to create. It's a resolution we want to keep with ourselves forever and then some. Because sometimes it's hard and sometimes the speed of life gets in the way, but we don't want to let it. What a cop out, really, don't you think, moonpies?

*j

2 Cents Thursday

photo love

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“Be brave.

Take risks.

nothing can substitute experience.”
-Paulo Coelho

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Sigh. We love this man.

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*j

There's Nothing On My Horizon Except Everything.

art love

We went to Colorado. Came back a little looser, a little lighter, a little brighter, and a little more...perplexed. Because we knew when we came back, our job sitch would be changing. We'd be dealing with living in The Great Barrier Unknown Reef and swimming along with other schools of job-hunting fish. Oh fuck.

But hearing other people's stories wets our whistle. Puts a little skip in our step. Hop in our pop. Toke in our smoke. Likkkke, our friend Margot is working her way through PT school. Our friend Katy...nursing school. And a new friend we recently met...builds green houses and has the philosophy that you truly should love what you do, all the time. Afterall, you spend most of your time AT WORK. And that makes sense to us! But now we must devise a plan to find out how to do that, find a pot of gold, a neverending supply of no-calorie chocolate bunnies, a faster metabolism, Ryan Gosling, and a happy ending. Not that kind of happy ending, Chester you pervo molester.

But the story doesn't end there. Nope. We are also searching for a raspberry flavored schnazzberry wallpaper and a bucket of stars plucked down from the sky to paint our ceiling with. Just joking! Gotcha. No but seriously it didn't all end there because as we were driving back home from our ski trip, feeling warmo and reflective (as we always do after trips) we saw a cop up ahead with his lights on, flashin' red and blue.

So then we got pulled over (for going the wrong way down the highway). Just joking! Geesh you really are Gulliver's Travels guillable. No but a cop had a car pulled over and we glanced over as we drove by. And made eye contact with the man getting cuffed. And in that split second, we thought how similar it was to a sequence from 'Crash.'

Here was this guy with a look of sorrow or remorse or fear or hopelessness or dejectedness in his eye- about to see his life changed, forever. Maybe he stole that car. Maybe he had drugs in the trunk. Or a body. Or a body and drugs. Maybe he deals drugs to pay for his sick mother's doctor bills. Or maybe his sick mother killed someone (hence the body). Maybe he really was a dirty scoundral. Or maybe he was a good-hearted person who truly never had a stroke of good luck and was born into a dire situation. We know they ALL say that. We also know that DOES happen.

SO here we were, a dare-we-say-it privileged wg with several pairs of shoes, several winter coats, driving home from an ultra extravagent weekend with close friends- thinking our problems= not that big. Our life=very, very good. We'll find a job. We'll figure it out. We=lucky.

*f

We Are The Lucky Ones.

Anytime you need help remembering that, watch this or this and breathe in a deep breath of gratitude, and let your heart bleed (a little) for humanity.

*f

The Big Bang of Plans. 2008 Edition

art love

It's here. It's upon us. The new year and all the promises and possibilities it brings with it. It's not so much resolutions as ideas for us, little crumpets. We can swagger, we can swish, we can take on all that we want at the very same time, if we so choose, or we can sit and snuggle with our brand new book. Whatever floats our boats, senoras. Whatever blows our hair back, GI Joes. You get our drift.

So, our thoughts, in a list, which is one of our favorite things to make...

*Make a homemade photo booth. Because we saw one online and it looked really cool, and we've wanted to own (and perhaps even rent out to friends and lovers on occasion) a photo booth for about a year and one-quarter now. It's Go time, moonpies.
*Study religion. All religions. Because we did this once during our senior year of high school at our community college, and totally peaked our interest, but we were just too busy living the high school life and making lists and organizing and saying good-byes and preparing hellos for the next step.
*Finish at least half of the stories we've started. Because starting is soo much easier than finishing.
*Write more love letters. Because we only have today.


*j