Bear Ears

My tiredness shines through in the moments when I am not smiling...
A cold day in the snow wearing my bear ears.

Walk in the rain

Sunlight in the tentacles...

Yesterday I didn't take any photo's. I spent the day buried deep in boxes of paper, sorting and searching for a single piece of paper I haven't seen in eight years. It is not the proverbial needle in a haystack, it is the actually needle in the haystack. We should all have to do this kind of thing once in our lives, right? I still have not found it, but I have many many boxes to go...
Out of the habit, I did not pick up my camera immediately upon rising this morning, as I have done every other day this week. However, as I was waiting for someone to arrive at my house, I walked through the kitchen jellyfish (see this post) that was full of sunlight. The camera came out and this is what happened...

The granola incident

Some of you may have heard about my granola. I talked about it a lot there for awhile. More than is strictly necessary for granola. This is a post I wrote way back at the begining of the summer, but I didn't get the photo's uploaded until now.

See the thing is, I hate granola. No really, I really hate it. It is too sweet. It is too expensive. It hogs all the milk. It always has wheat in it. It's just gross.
Then we made a ginormous batch of the stuff for Firemaker this year. We spent hours filling bowls, mixing it with hands covered in honey and oil, baking it in huge ovens. It was a lot of fun.
But...I was still set against liking granola. You see, it's gross.
At Firemaker, that first day, I felt like I should at least give our granola the benefit of the doubt (I helped make it after all). I'll just have a little bit.
Hey...this is kinda yummy. I'll have granola again today. And today. Mmmm, yogurt. Extra sesame seeds. Ok. I like THIS granola.
The second day after I got back from Firemaker I made myself a small batch. Good. I eat it every single morning, with yogurt and milk. Chris inevitable becomes jealous of the lazy morning food that I have and asks me if he can get in on the next batch.
Ok. We'll make a double batch I say.
The shopping for the granola is epic. It takes us all day long to procure all the ingredients. This is because I want this to be worth it financially, so we go to a million stores. I go across town to buy coconut oil. I buy almonds here but raisins there. I not sure Chris thinks it is worth it.

I mix it all up (a quadruple batch)...




I sit for hour upon hour in front of the hot stove on a hot day, turning batch after batch of granola every five minutes (while reading a historical novel about the search for Vlad the Impaler, the originator of the Dracula legend).



Finally, it is all mixed, baked, cooled, and jarred.
Chris wanta me to write that his had arsenic in it instead of raisins. I don't know why.
It's a fuck of a lot of granola. And it is fabulous!!


The Granola

6 cups rolled oats
1 cup almonds
1 cup flax
1 cup sesame seeds
1/2 sunflower seeds
1 cup honey
1 cup coconut oil (extra virgin)
1 cup raisins

Mix first 5 ingredients together. Add honey and oil and mix in through with hands until all ingredients are covered. Bake in a 300 degree oven for 15-30 minutes, turning the granola with a spatula every 5 minutes until golden brown. Don't burn it (it is easy to do and tastes disgusting). Cool. Add raisins. Jar. Enjoy.
I like mine with plain yogurt and milk. Either bites of yogurt with every spoonful, or a granola soup (depends on how my day is going).



Postscript; several days later Chris cleans the entire kitchen. He tells me later that any time he started to feel resentful at doing all those dishes he would get this image in his head of me sitting in front of the hot oven for a whole day, making him granola...

Simon and the Kitchen Jellyfish

The saga of Simon continues...

So, remember how Simon was going to move to the west coast after that incident in Toronto?
Well, he decided to take the VIA train all the way across Canada. It was a lovely trip with beautiful scenery. Everything went swimmingly expect for the tuna sandwiches they served one day in the dinning car, which upset poor fragile Simon. He had to spend an entire night in the dome car to avoid the smell.
He finally arrived in Vancouver and immediately went to the ocean. You see, it had been years and years since Simon had seen the ocean. He had occasionally gone for a dip in Lake Ontario, but it had always given him a terrible rash. He had missed the water and the feel of the smooth coldness flowing over his shiny blue scales.
Simon was headed for Victoria, to stay with FeenAHHH's daughter-like person Breeee while he recovered from his ordeal of failure. He had planned on taking a ferry over because he had heard they had these cute little pens with tiny moving ferry boats inside them and he wanted one as a souvenir. However, when he dipped his tail fin in the ocean he knew he would have to swim over.

This was an unfortunate choice, because half way across the Salish Sea Simon was attacked by a kitchen jellyfish.



The kitchen jellyfish (medusozoa culina) is a very rare but deadly species native to the Pacific West Coast. While it normally lives on the ceilings of kitchens it must return to the ocean at least once a year to spawn. It's multi-coloured tentacles are it's most distinctive feature, though it can also be recognized by the rotating blades that protrude off the top of it's body. It is also common for the central umbrella body mass to produce light, a rare occurrence in the jellyfish world. The sting from it's streamer tentacles is very poisonous, particularly to Styrofoam sea life.

Simon fought hard against the kitchen jellyfishes tentacles, trying desperately to escape. He knew he only had so much time before the deadly poison would incapacitate him. When that happened the jellyfish would have it's way with him. Yet, no matter how much he struggled, Simon felt himself drifting slowly deeper into the poisonous spell...


to be continued...
(next time Simon meets his biggest fan...)

Rejected

Where I am at right now...

The well cared for Muse...

If I had a muse, I would treat that muse well. I would make sure that she was well fed, lots of sleep and rest. I would want her to be happy and healthy. I would want the world for her.
So here I am, taking a coures that asks me to be a muse for myself. Today I realized that means I must treat myself like a muse. Well fed, lots of sleep and rest. Happy and healthy...

I had an emotionally intense meeting today. The beginning of a process that will most probably involve university officials and mediation of some kind. I am not looking forward to it. In fact, it totally stresses me out (which is part of why I have come to this place to end up at that meeting). The situation causes panic to bubble up from it's dark home inside me.

As I left the meeting I made the decision to just go home. I had made plans of productivity and "good student" inclinations for the rest of the day. But here I was, relieved, emotional, and suddenly just wanting to be in my front door before the sun left the sky at least one day this week.

So as I left the building out the entrance for the bus, I saw the most beautiful tree. Tall, strong. Yellow leaves against a brilliant blue sky.
I knew I had to stand in front of it and pull out the camera. I knew I had to smile and to tell the camera the story of my frustration, panic, and anxiety...and my need to look after myself and rise above it all. To realize that, in the end, this stressful situation does not matter. It is my happiness and health that matter. It is my ability to keep truly smiling that matters.



I love this photo, because my smile is real, but I can also see, just beneath the surface, the tiny bits of trailing stress. It is not quite yet an unencumbered smile...not yet.
Today I started to learned to treat myself like a true muse. Well fed (chocolate at home), lots of sleep and rest (curled in bed in my jammies right now). Happy and healthy too.

Giving myself the world? Well, I'm working on it...

Inspired

I have been so inspired already by my Muse course that I got up this morning and immediately starting shooting pics of myself. Here is my favorite from today. As per usual, it is one of the first I snapped today.

I am...

In the Muse course today we were prompted to explore a series of sentency beginings, such as "I am...". I filled them in and then was inspired to take the following photos...

The Muse Set

I've created a Flickr set for all my photos from my Muse course.
It can be found here.

Muse

Today I embarked on a 6 week journey of self portraiture with the lovely Lady Vivienne and a bunch of other wonderful folks. I've known Vivienne since our time working at a local health food store and over the years I have watched her grow into an amazing photographer. She has the ability to show such courage and beauty in her work. So, when I heard inklings of a potential e-course with Viv I knew I had to be on board.
The course is entitled You Are Your Own Muse and is a wonderful journey through beauty and storytelling via self portraits. I am very excited to participate. I know Viv is already planning on putting this on again, so check it out if you are interested.

I've decided that part of my process will be to post some of my pictures and thoughts here on this blog. It might be the best picture of the day or (as a challenge) the worst picture of the day. Or it could be both.

Here is my favorite from today...