I've been in Arts & Crafts mode for a few weeks now, but my fear in making unnecessary treats in Spain only means hauling them back to the States. And well, the largest suitcase I have broke on the way up the stairs in September. Fail? Regardless, I'm taking baby steps until I can fulfill this fantasy. I've made home-made Mother's Day Cards, completed a Puzzle or two, Sidewalk Chalked, Sidewalk Glittered, Painted, Spray-Painted, Face-Painted, Penciled and Photoshoot-ed. Marielle says in LA we'll throw A&C Parties and Wine Parties and play Scrabble on the deck in the sun. Lindsey says we'll Color. Three points if you can guess what these pictures are of. And seven more if you're interested. Not sure? Oh just click here.

Last night I spent several hours cleaning out my gmail (re-reading inbox, outbox, drafts) and exhausted, I emptied the trash. Unbeknownst, my attempts to delete the outbox version of an email (despite me saving the inbox version) failed. The entire threads of conversations and rantings and old pictures and papers and memories (that I had intentionally been saving) were gone. I was devastated. I was alone. And I know all of this seems petty and trivial and yes, okay I'm over it by now, but there's still a part of me that wants to remember how unprepared and fooled I felt. I want to frame that feeling and stare at it a thousand times over, throw a party for it maybe, because it sucked and it sucks that I have to use that word to describe it. One of the 32 remaining emails (please note 25 of 32 welcomed me to some uber internet trendy fascist site a la Twitter) was a letter from a professor, parts of which he wrote: "Dear Amanda, Your real education has now begun, which distinguishes you from many of your peers who, having learned very little new, will now discover even less about the beautiful and brutal world in which they variously dwell. We can constantly transform mourning into an opportunity for new experience, at once critical and creative. The sadness is real, but it makes the joy all the more powerful. Have faith in your abilities and remain in the direction of your interests. It is quite obvious that you've much of great value to say." I think if you look real close like, you can see that the fire of the volcano is simply red fairy dust. What fools we are, fools!

I met these two guys in the forest.
I asked them how they got the swing up there.
They didn't know. They said they found it that way.
Then I asked him how he got up in it.
He said he didn't know. He just ended up there.