because I kept passing out last week and got very few done (hence I am BAD, if I am unconscious and do not keep to my own inner voice quota, I am 'bad Beth!'). Also, I prepared to send the rest of the ‘Winter Gifts’ which I guess those who keep Xmas call ‘Xmas Gifts.’Some things I do need to wait on arriving but I sent out about 23+ packages this week and a bunch last week. In two weeks, the lines to the post office and the slow down of service means everything is difficult. And I have enough self esteem issues that I believe if I send things to arrive Dec 20th-24th I will be lost amoungst family and friends and just be, “Shall we open this envelope from that crazy internet chick?”
Now while I can’t get the big presents, I do try to find something both unique and that will make people happy or improve their life. So I want my gift to have space to breath, so I send it early. Of course that Aunt who gets you Thomas the Train Ear Muffs even though you are 35 ALSO thinks she is getting just the right gift for you. See how insecurity and Guilt Inc. are having fun with me!
Thanks to Linda, we were able to go see Lynne who is a locally renown carver and soap maker. She spends way too many hours a day carving and in the summer I showed you her stall at the local market. Well, for two days she has a ‘special’ event where she sells what she has been carving over the time since the summer market. She told us to come early in order to have full accessibility as she gets crowded.
First we weave through a tended garden with lovely flowers,
a pathway and painted out- buildings before arriving at the kind of door which appears in Fairy Tales, and it opens to a sort of winter celebration land, smelling divine from all the hand made, organic and good for your skin soap (sadly she doesn’t sell online).
I wanted to get there early so I could see all the new things she had carved. There were additional clams and shells but also full cooking onions as well as this garlic. As I was loading the picture, one worker said, “Oh, I love that purple garlic, it is so delicious, where did you get it?”
This is why when I send the soap out I have to put a note saying: “This is soap, do NOT eat” as even I forget. The baskets to shop with were Walton’s General Store style depression fruit baskets/boxes
and here you can see the fruit she normally has (plus pears). Even I go, “Well, once it is pitted, that peach will be good to use.” Before I remember that the pit IS carved and it is all still soap.Another new item were these Amaryllis bulbs which is traditional to grow for some people’s Xmas.
Since I am new to all this 'tradition' and more of a ‘lets have a party to celebrate not being dead in winter’, I tend to drift from Wicca to Christian and toward anyone else who will give me cake. I have to admit the Christian Xmas is wee like being on acid when there is the ‘conception day’ celebrated three weeks before the ‘birthday’ and while I am thinking ‘So Jesus was…an insect to be hatched so quick?” Then I remember the great American Xmas Tradition: Killing People on Xmas Eve after dinner and drink! (I am SO locking my doors)Yeah, remember Washington crossing the River standing in his boat at the dead of night on the way to glorious victory? Well he was going over to the Prussians/Hanoverians who owed the British from the help in that seven years war I talked about last week. George Washington, a British Officer during that war KNEW that the most holy day of the year (and the one they get most drunk on) for the Prussians was Xmas (Indeed, the tree, the punch, the whole traditions we have arrived with Queen Victoria when the Hanovarian arm filled in the British Royal line, spreading Xmas to the British Empire and then now, to the world). So Washington snuck over to where, on the holiest day of the year, where the troops celebrated and were too drunk/asleep to resist, he slaughtered them, thus creating the first colonial victory! Oddly, most classes and pictures focus on Washington leading the troops across the icy river (because it was December) and so far, have found no pictures of troops bayoneted or throats slit while holding a bit of fruitcake mumbling, “It looks like normal food…but you can never finish it…so thick and heavy!”
Um, aside over, back to gift buying, here is a table of all the bars of cocoa butter based soaps from Blackberry to other lush scents.
So smooth. What made me go, “I wanna, I wanna!!!” was the finding of these carved vellum covered, gold leaf books.
Amazing no? She said that years ago, with better eyesight she had put titles on and everything. I wanted to hand one to her and give the Bambi eyes and go, “Put Titles on?” But she was already giving me special treatment. Here I am looking youthful and happy.
“That’s because I’m not just a spokesperson for this soap but I use it regularly!”She also had made gingerbread men, which looked so edible, and smelled of ginger. I didn’t get one as I thought the gingerbread man had endured enough than to be cleaning Area 51 and the other delicates.
After the soap we headed up to the university with our bag of a bit of left over lettuce to find the ‘wabbits, I mean rabbits. Over a decade ago, a few pet rabbits ran away, across the road and the rest is history. Now people come and dump rabbits here as they think with so many, they won’t be noticed. Much like the squirrels, once they heard the bag, the rabbits found US.
And now, for my NEXT act, I will attempt to feed TWO rabbits from the hand at once!
Ta-da! Not as impressive as tigers, right? Oh well. Even Linda was getting heavy attention as the holder of the bag from rabbits and fed them.
I noticed that the rabbits or at least this one must be a Literature Major as he had the whole Oliver Twist, “Mum, may I please have a bit more gruel’ look down pretty perfectly.
This next picture of me feeding the rabbits is a bit of a test.
Okay, done!If it took you up to three seconds to notice there was a BUNNY in the picture, then you are male/lesbian/bisexual/interested in my breasts.
If it took you more than FIVE seconds to notice then you are sexually frustrated and WAY too interested in my breasts.
If you never noticed a Bunny in the picture, then you are the male who they make those reports about, the ones which they say that 16-21 year old males think of sex every six seconds (How are they able to complete sentences? And why are they allowed to operate motor vehicles?).
It was cold, I had frostbite and we were out of lettuce. We headed home. Over the next 36 hours I had a FEW incidents which required extra sleep or suddenly being in bed on the concentrator mask for oxygen as my weaker state meant that my heart or lungs were not working properly or as happened one time, my blood pressure went from 120/70 to 178/164 in a few minutes. Also I had a lot of fevers. BUT (lets ignore the spiral of downward health and focus on what is IMPORTANT, so says Guilt Inc.) I got some postcard done, about 59 in all, which brings me over 100 so far this month and over 3,100 in total.
I really like the stamp of the girl reading. I also, of all the postcards we brought back from Hawaii have a couple favourites: one is the set of the ones of Turtles
which are sold out in Hawaii and online so this is the only pack (if you have a love for endangered turtles please let me know!).The second is this picture of the spinner dolphins in Hawaii doing a group dive.
It is so beautiful. The old picture of the moon taken through an early telescope is pretty cool too. We stickered, we matched, stamped and I wrote and wrote and wrote and I really hope you can understand my handwriting. Here are some of the postcards which we sent out, from Magic Eye to Polar Bears,
there are gifts of postcards from the postcard project here from at least six different people plus postcards I bought from Hawaii, Japan and online from three places. But for the quality postcards you send me as a gift, I honestly do send them out again just as fast as I can around the world. This posting went to four continents and one subcontinent (or two - how many subcontinents are there?)Next time we are doing a ‘kids posting’ (shh don’t tell them) which is where we send a postcard to every teen or child on our list. So if you have a child or teen or 2 or 3 year old who likes animals that I don’t have on the list, or have forgotten please let me know. Last time it was Polar Bears, and this time there is another cute primary animal which I managed to get the postcard book of, which is good considering it goes for between $20 and $60 (I got in on the swing and paid a rational price). So I am looking forward to that, it is always fun in terms of stamping and of stickering. We know there isn't going to be post back but we also remember how good it was to get post/mail when a kid.
I hope you had a good weekend, those were my small pleasures. Please comment on any soap that delighted you, or children who need postcards or anything that comes to mind, except for very long and detailed comments of my breast, even (especially) if they start with ‘Like the beautiful smooth, cool and white round alabaster breasts one sees on a statue or a corpse, your breast was the fullness of beauty. It made me long to work in a mortuary near you so that one day I might fondle them at my leisure!”
Keine Kommentare:
Kommentar veröffentlichen