Festival of Colors

On Saturday my friends from Logan came down to participate in the Festival of Colors. Though they showed up freakishly early to pick me up (I wasn't even dressed yet) we got to the Krishna Temple in Spanish Fork, got a great parking spot and hung out until the chalk got flying at 1pm. The chalk cloud engulfed us in darkness, blocking out the sight of people even five feet from you.
It took forever to get cleaned up afterwards (I was snorting out purple snot for hours), but worth every moment of splattering chalk at my friends.

"Corner of Misery"

It started small, when I was at a different desk across the room.

We are required to bust up cds and disks when we are done with them. Broken bits, flashing in the light, gathered on my desk as I broken each piece and I thought, someone else could make a brilliant piece of modern, abstract art out of those pieces. Then I thought, why can't that someone brilliant be me? It started with bits of cds and disks and quickly incorporated bags of blood and the left over barbed wire from Halloween. After I moved to another desk and got to redo it, I added the purple tissue paper behind it. Over the months, I added the scissors I broke while trying to cut up a cd, a few marshmallows during the phase of throwing those back and forth, and some dried, crusty frog "throw-up" (that's the yellow stuff).

The flowers and figurines came later. I guess because everyone saw the "darkness" of broken bits, I got the persona of a more gothic, destructive type. People started to tease me by decorating my desk with flowers and pink and figurines, thinking it would bother me. Don't they remember that I hiked through England for two months twice? Immersed in nature and beauty and Romantic and Victorian literature? Don't they remember I write Fantasy? Anyone who writes fantasy is a romantic at heart. Haven't they ever found beauty in anything around them that isn't an obvious kind of beauty? Sometimes it's harder to find. It requires looking. The black film, closest to the light, reflects it so well, you can't tell it's black. Further down, the black mixed with the right light reflects the flower above it.

I added the flowers and figurines to my "Corner of Misery." Perhaps it should have a different name. It makes me happy every time I see it. I named the figurines: Tess, Dorothea, and Kathy. Some misery and happiness in their stories.

4 Day Weekend

Good things about my 4 day weekend.
~Went home and hung out with my family
~4 days straight without thinking of work
~Hung out with my best friend and her family
~Had indian food
~Had homemade ice cream
~Played games all weekend long
~Borrowed books and cartoons from my brother
~Planned for my trip to Maui

Bad things about my 4 day weekend
~It wasn't long enough
~I played too much and didn't sleep enough
~I lost 3/4ths of the games I played (That never happens!)

The Queen

I love to dress up. Not sure why. But I do. My friends and I had a game night on Friday, so I decided to dress up because it was the same day as Alice in Wonderland coming out. I assembled my costume out of whatever I had in my house: the cardboard tube from christmas wrapping paper into a scepter, paper hearts pinned to my skirt, yellow plastic bag for a crown-under which was a small cup to boost up my hair. My bavmorda cloak. Overall I think I did a pretty good job. The picture is from my phone, so not the best quality, but here is how I looked.

Lucy

I love nicknames; love giving them to people and I love having them. During my England trip in 2007 I acquired two more nicknames: Satan, because well, I am evil, like the fru-its of the devil, or so people have told me. And Lucy, because when you are wandering through cathedrals it seems inappropriate for someone to call out "Hey, Satan, look at this!" So Lucy became short for Lucifer and certainly more subtle than Satan or Devil Girl or Evil Woman. And of course who would use my actual name? That's just boring. Lucy I became.

I've always loved the name Lucy, mostly because of The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe, one of my favorite books. Until now I never really considered it as a potential name for any offspring I might ever have. (Probably because I don't think of having offspring very often.) But someone asked me what I would name a girl and I decided if I would like her name to be Lucy. At what point, though, do I break it to her that she is name after Satan? While she's a child I will tell her she's named after Lucy Pevensie, a partial truth, but when the time is right, I will break it to her. Maybe when she is 25 or 43. Maybe on my deathbed.

Other nicknames throughout my life: Duck, Ducky, Duckles, Chip, KD, Queen of Venar, halfpint, Skaggs, Skagget, Bird girl, Pretty Eyes, Rache, Roche (pronounced roach), Rachel Anna Maria, Ruth Ann (only pronounced with a hick accent), Rathel Lou Hucklebarns, the Energizer Bunny, the High Lord of Hell, Petunia Weed, and Nibbs because I have small hands. I am sure there have been others.

Room in My Future House

"I'm hiding in the cheese closet"
-Dashti, Book of a Thousand Days

I want a closet devoted entirely to cheese. If I had a closet for my cheese, I would hide in it too.