November is Coming

It's getting to be that time of year again... Some people get depressed when the weather changes and the days grow shorter... I tend to find myself in the opposite predicament.  Suddenly, I am Absolutely Certain that I will succeed at everything I try, that I am an amazing artist and writer, and that I should Do Something About It.

So.

Let's just overload our schedule, shall we?

First, it's NaNoWriMo time again... that is, National Novel Writing Month in November.

Last year I won.  I wrote 54-odd thousand words in 30 days.  I made promises to my imaginary friends (my fellow bloggers) to allow a select few to read and edit the thing.

And then I quietly never mentioned it again and hoped no one would ask.

It was...

Not good.

But I did it.  I wrote a novel!  In a month!

This year I am planning.  I have a plot (I KNOW, right? A plot?).   I have characters I already love, and a few that I hate.  And one that terrifies me.

I have a setting... where it's cold and dark and airless.  Where the world ended, but everyone tried to pretend it didn't.

I am terribly, terribly excited about it.

I am going to write another novel!  This November! And this one should be something I can share with others! 

A few days ago, I also found this:

http://terribly.deviantart.com/art/30-DAY-ART-CHALLENGE-330788048

Draw a picture every day?  That sounds like a good idea, doesn't it?

I know!  I'll do it in November!  Because I won't have enough to do!

So.

Yes.

So... I'll be posting my progress, pictures, and the eventual collapse of my psyche.

Sounds fun, right?




Oh, and here's an octopus.

Because octopuses (yes, that is the correct plural) are cool.

Let's go Camping in the Scary Woods

Sounds fun, doesn't it?

Commune with nature. 

Smell the flowers and... treesap and stuff like that...

Just us and the great outdoors... no TV or internet, no phone... no escape.. just some good companions and the Big Scary Woods.

"Us," was my parents, Boyfriend, and me.  Oh, and the dog, Bonnie. Who had never in her 12 years of life been camping before.

What could possibly go wrong?

We went to one of my favorite places to ski in the winter time.  It's an old logging road turned wilderness area called Sawmill (because people around here are very creative with naming things).

Since it isn't exactly a trail so much as an overgrown road with random turnoffs that lead nowhere, disappearing directions, and inconclusive maps, it's a fine  for skiing... It's wide (so you run into fewer trees), doesn't have much of a slope, and you can follow your tracks home should you get turned around.

In the summertime, Sawmill looks like a road in places, and sometimes looks like a field, and sometimes looks like you're just plain lost. On the plus side, there are rarely any people out there other than the random serial killer hunter, which is kind of the point.  We would be miles and miles from help from the distractions of the modern world.

We hiked in for an overnight trip, and only a mile or two, so the packs were relatively light. I had room to strap my second best ukulele to my pack so I could annoy the moose entertain myself during the long, and probably a little bit boring evening after we stopped (queue ominous music).

Yes, we're skeletons.  What of it?

And we put a bright pink flag on Bonnie Dog so that no hunters would mistake her for a bear.

It was a beautiful late summer day.

Bonnie romped around the underbrush on either side of the road, chasing squirrels and pretending to be a great hunter.  She seems to enjoy chasing squirrels, and the squirrels seem to enjoy teasing her back. 

After walking for about an hour, we came to a beautiful meadow.




The air was crisp at 10,000 feet, but no where near cold.  It was surprisingly lush and beautiful.

(A word of warning... For those of you who do not like violence, you may want to look away, now.  Shit's gonna get real.)

(For realsies.)

(Ahem.)

I can't possibly know the whole story, but I can extrapolate a little bit of the story that happened before we arrived....

Molly Meadowmouse was the... Verna Vole... Polly Packrat was the most beautiful rodent in the whole meadow.  She had long, silky silver fur, perfectly shaped rat fingernails, and the most mesmerizing brown eyes you've ever seen on a packrat.

She regularly had visitors from all over the woods to look at her splendidness, and had a list of suitors from the Rawah Wilderness to the Roosevelt National Forest.



A picture of Polly outside of her little tree hollow home shortly before... the incident.

One bright September day, Polly was sunning herself on a branch near the tree hollow where she lived.

"What shall I do today?" she said to herself.

The tree hollow house was stuffed to the brim with her winter stores, and there was little more that Polly could do to prepare.

"I think," she said, "I shall go down to the meadow and smell the last of the summer flowers and have a picnic."

So Polly packed her cheeks with some snacks for later, consisting of a few seeds, a late ripening strawberry, and some dandylion greens, and headed out.

She hopped down from her branch and skipped into the clearing. There was a flat area a few feet away that seemed like an ideal place to have her picnic lunch.  It was near a tree stump.

As she climbed the stump, a giant black and tan creature emerged from the brush.

"Why, hello!" said Polly.  She was not in the least bit afraid as she looked at the creature.  She assumed that this animal, like so many others, was here to admire her amazing beauty.

She was, of course, wrong.

She had time to let out one small, surprised squeak before the black and tan creature snapped her pretty neck.



"Bonnie!  NO!" shouted my mom.

"Drop it!" said Dad.

Bonnie is a good dog, and did as she was told, dropping the soft little body on the grass.

We all stood around, staring at the little dead thing, and reminding Bonnie to stay away seven or eight times.  She really wanted to go back for more.

"Maybe it's just stunned," said Boyfriend.

"Um," I said.

Probably not.

I briefly considered taking a photo of the creature because I always take pictures of dead things, but decided it had been through enough.  We followed my parents and the killer, Bonnie.

Not long after the incident, we found a reasonable place to camp.  There were protected areas in the trees, but open rocky areas where we could have a fire in relative safety with little danger of burning down the state.

This is a different meadow than the one where Polly died.  It's like, at least 500 yards away.

We spent a little extra time setting up the tents because we kept changing our minds as to where they should be.  By the time we had them put together, the light was beginning to dim.

Bonnie looked at each one of us, and whined.  It was as if she were trying to say, "Hey guys, this was a pretty good day, but isn't it time to go home now?"

Our tents are much more state of the art than pictured.  Much nicer.
What?  Maybe I am a gear snob.

Instead of going home, we gathered some branches and started a small camp fire while cooking dinner.  Bonnie was slightly less than impressed, and kept trying to crawl under low lying tree branches and shrubs.  She stared at us dubiously while we ate.

We celebrated our CaveMan like ability to create fire out of wet branches.  And a lighter.  What, did you think we were rubbing sticks together or something?  Are you insane?

I suppose that maybe Bonnie sensed what was coming.

Because we were camping.

Outside.

So obviously it had to rain for the first time all summer.

And lightning.

And thunder.

No, there's still a coal over there.  I don't want to burn the whole state down...

Bonnie wasn't the only one worried.

We scrambled into our tents after stomping out the fire.

I played the ukulele, softly in the tent.  It was too early to bed, and I probably wouldn't attract bears.
Probably.

The storm didn't last long, and we all bedded down to sleep.

Bonnie was in the large vestibule of my parents' tent, worn out and passed out. Fires and storms are stressful for pups.

The night grew calm.

All was quiet as the moon peeked out from behind the clouds.

But wait... something disturbs the night...

What is it?

Something searching... searching for the dog who killed her...

It could only be... Polly the Packrat, come forth from the grave to exact revenge!

Four hours dead and the ravages of the storm were not kind to that vain and beautiful little packrat.

Someone would have to pay for this...

...Or not.

Polly had time to let out a surprised, ghostly squeak before she was eaten by Bonnie for the second time that day.

And Bonnie went back to sleep with only a slightly upset stomach.

 

As we hiked out the next day, we passed through the meadow.  There was no sign of Polly's body.  Probably some other animal came by in the night and ate her.

Probably.






Polly Packrat is survived by her 40 children, 637 grandchildren, and 1,198 great grand children.  She was 2 years old.

Notes From Katrina: Evacuation - August, 2005

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I woke this morning thinking about Hurricane Katrina. I don’t think about it too much anymore. Seven years has muted the intensity of that storm a little bit.

I didn’t think about how maybe we should have been better prepared, and how dumb we were to not own a car of any kind, and how stupid it was to not leave when we had the chance because I didn’t want to lose my $5 an hour job at Tower Records.

I didn’t think about how goddamned lucky we were to have a neighbor who happened to have a cousin who left their car behind and given us permission to use it.

I didn’t think about the mad dash around the house, or the realization that in order to bring my three cats, the neighbor’s dog, cat, and the neighbor, my roommate, my sister, and me, we would have to leave behind almost everything we owned.

Nope.

None of that.

What I was thinking about this morning when I woke up was a single moment on the side of the road at the beginning of our 14 hour, 100 mile trip out of the path.

The Toyota two-door Ark was almost out of gas, and all of the stations were out.  Of gas.  Empty.  It felt very end-of-the-world.

Neighbor, Roommate, Sister and I were in a parking lot about three hours and less than 20 miles from where we’d started. There simply wasn’t enough road to empty out a quarter of a state in less than 24 hours.

Neighbor was talking to his mom on the phone, trying to come up with a solution for the gas issue, and my sister and I sat on a curb, smoking. We watched the traffic.

We couldn’t stay out here.

My mind leaped to the only alternative I could think of: Heading back into town and hoping for the best.

I felt tears welling in my eyes as I took another drag, and tried to will myself not to cry.

It was a very real possibility that we would die if we went back to town, but I felt sure we would die out here with no shelter and miles of bridges ahead of us.

I stared at my phone. Should I call my parents now? There wasn’t a whole lot they could do from Colorado, would it just be cruel? Maybe I should wait until we were back in town… Maybe… we could go back, siphon gas from someone, and come back… Maybe…

I glanced at my sister, her outside blankness a mirror of my own.

Roommate sat down with a sigh. He knocked a cigarette out of his pack, put it in his mouth, and lit up with a big, dramatic drag.

“Well,” he said, pulling his cigarette out of his mouth and looking at it. “Guess I beat cancer.”

My sister snickered. I covered my mouth and chuckled. Within moments, we were all gasping as we struggled to breathe through the laughter. It was that ridiculous laughter, that doesn’t make sense. The kind that keeps starting up again for no reason, the kind makes you look away because every time you look at anyone, you start up again.

Just as suddenly, we stopped, like a switch was flipped.

“So,” I said to Neighbor, “Anything?”

We did eventually find gas, and get food, and at about 4AM, we landed safely in north central Louisiana.

That moment was only a moment in a long, long traumatic day.

But that’s what I was thinking about this morning:

Sitting on the side of the road, laughing death with my neighbor, my roommate, and my sister.

Giant Centepedes and Other Monsters

When we were in Hawaii, we decided to go for a hike (my previous Hawaii post is HERE.)

After a confusing bus ride, a short walk up a twisty road with no shoulder that had directions that made us walk WITH traffic (and thus made my mind say in no uncertain terms that I WAS DOING IT WRONG), we finally made it to the trailhead, and this sign:

In case you can't read this, it says, "PIG CONTROL IN PROGRESS"... some other stuff  blah blah blah and then "Full Moon Hunts Will Be Scheduled".  Well, that... sounds... interesting.

Sounds good.  Wait, what day is it?  It is awfully had to keep track of this stuff when hanging out in paradise for a week.

I had checked out the hike on the internet, and learned the following things:

1) Bring bug spray, the mosquitos will eat you ALIVE!

2) There is a such thing as 8 inch centepedes, and they exist in Hawaii.

3) There are no large predators in Hawaii, and no poisonous snakes.

4) Where we stayed in Waikiki averages about 20 inches of rain a year.  Where we were hiking, a few miles away, averages about 280 inches of rain per year.  We WILL get rained on.

5) There is a fantastic view at the top.

What could possibly go wrong?

Yeah...

Maybe I should make a list.

Or better, allow me to give you a small snippet from my brain...

Do you like steam of consciousness?

Ahem.

Well, here's the turnoff... away from the tourists and kids, shit it's hot.  Is that mud?  I hope the trail gets better, this shit's slicker'n snot.  Why does it smell like pooh?  Great.  It's probably pig pooh from the pig hunts.  Damn it's hot.  And humid.  Why did I wear a shirt again?  I should totally be hiking in my bikini top.


Wow, look at that, there's no one behind us.  I wonder if this is a real trail, or if someone's just leading us astray.  Shit, I wonder if "pig hunt" is a euphemism for hunting humans.  I don't think Hawaiians were traditionally cannibals.  No, I'm pretty sure I would have read something about that on the internet.  


Don't touch anything.  There are probably big bugs here.  Oh yeah, eight inch centipedes.  Great.  Big. Giant.  Fuckers.  Why did we watch that Animal Planet show last night in the condo?  The one with the Grasshopper Mouse that howls like a werewolf and hunts giant poisonous dessert centipedes. The centipedes here probably aren't poisonous.  It would have said on the internet, right? The internet is never wrong.


Those grasshopper mice were pretty freaking cool.  I wonder if they are like, descendants of were-mice or some shit.


Holy crap, FULL MOON HUNT.  They're totally hunting were-pigs, aren't they?  THAT'S what they're doing.  I wonder if it's close to the full moon.  Great, I almost twisted my ankle, is that how they get you?  Leave all these roots lying all over the trail so you can't outrun them?  Pigs would totally eat people.  I saw Hannibal.  I saw Snatch.  Fuck, I'm gonna die.  I should totally stop watching so many scary movies.

And who the fuck decided that were-animals were sexy?  I mean, come on, people.  What's next?  Sexy Ents?
(I'm looking at you, Laurell K. Hamilton and Charlaine Harris!)

Boyfriend is totally right.  It IS quiet out here.  I can't hear anyone.  The bamboo sure makes weird noises.  Like Ents or some shit, talking to each other, rattling and shit.  Or maybe that's the were-pigs signaling that they have some victims walking into their trap.

Fuck, I'm hot.  Oh, wow, this is beautiful.  I've never been in a bamboo forest before.  Why is this so hard?  The elevation is what, 500 feet?  I should be flying up this trail.

OH MY FUCKING GOD WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT?

Eight INCH centipedes.  INCH.  INCH INCH INCH INCH.  Stupid brain.

It's a tree.  They said eight INCH centipedes, not eight foot.  What the hell is wrong with me?  


I thought this trail was only a mile and a half.  It feels much longer than that.  It's because the were-pigs moved the trail, they're totally going to kill us and eat us.

Why won't it fucking rain already?  Don't touch that, there could be a centipede.  It's a trap!  Wow, my shoes are MUDDY.


Wait... really?  We're there?  Just in time for the rain.  Fuck, yeah, we made it.  This is absofuckinglutely beautiful!


So yeah, all in all, a good hike.  I even learned some things:

1) Anyone who complains about the mosquitoes in Hawaii has not been to Colorado.  That or we were EXTREMELY LUCKY, because mosquitoes LOOOOOOVE gnoshing on some Leauxra (I think it's because I have Kool-Aid for blood), and I never got bit in Hawaii.

2) DO NOT CONFUSE the word "inch" and "foot" in your head, or you will spend  the entire hike worried about eight foot centepedes.

3) There are no large dangerous animals in Hawaii, except probaby were-pigs, and that they hunt on Wednesdays, Sundays, and during the full moon.

4) There are places in the world where the rain is warm, and it isn't terrible to walk in it.

5) There really is a fantastic view from the top.

See?  Paradise.  Told you.

Celebrity Diet

I braved the Wal-Mart (and yes, there is a "the" in front of "the Wal-Mart"... it doesn't sound right if you don't say it that way) last weekend.

Originally we were going to go camping, but the sky was doing this:

Actual photo of the sky above my house.

So we decided to get the car out of the garage, and use the space to brew beer instead.

Sitting around the turkey frier while the wort boils is pretty much more awesome than camping.  Especially when it's in the garage with the door up and you collect 9 gallons of rain water in about three minutes from the one of the gutters for later use on the garden.  Especially when it is the first real rain in a few months, and the mountains are all flooding, and the lightning is making your teeth rattle it's so close.

We had such a good time, and another three empty kegs to be filled that we decided we were going to do it again the next day.

I decided, though, that we are also desperately low on cider.  The alcoholic kind, I mean.

So we went to the Wal-Mart for the main ingredient.

You really don't have to use organic, single-squeezed apple juice from happy trees in Eden.  Any old thing will do provided it doesn't contain any preservatives stronger than ascorbic acid.

Things are never as fast as you would imagine them to be at the Wal-Mart.  If you go to the express lane, you are guaranteed to be behind at least one person who is an extreme couponer, someone else using who wants to split the $12 total between cash, a card, and a check (I really was tempted to just pay for his purchase, but he was a little bit scary), and a checker who is so happy to be there that they are in a coma.

So...

I was in line for a Very Long Time.

"Is that your favorite drink?"

It took me a moment to realize that the guy behind me in line was talking to me.

I eyed him cautiously.  He didn't look crazy, or even weird in any way, which was strange in and of itself.  Just a normal young guy.

"Oh," I said, looking down at my cart.  "Yeah, well, I'm trying that new celebrity diet.  All apple juice, all the time."

He stared at me for a moment, confused, and then laughed.  "Good one!" he said.

I smiled.

I turned away as it was my turn in line.  "There's 8 of these," I said.

The cashier sighed, and swiped the bottle 8 times.  She was not interested.

How to Make Hard Cider:

1) Clean the shit out of all your stuff.  Uninvited Microbes = Bad Juju.

2) Pour your FuckLoad of apple juice into your fermenter.  In this case, a plastic carboy.

This takes concentration.  And a funnel.  Unless you really like sticky cement.

3) Admire your nearly 6 gallons of apple juice.  This is approximately 398,476% of your daily recommended value of vitamin C.

The foam is the cleaner/sanitizer, specially formulated to make the ale yeast happy.

4) Aerate the juice.  That means getting some bubbles.  Shaking 6 gallons of liquid is hard.

My head is HUGE in this picture.

5) Add the yeast.  Any old yeast will do, but we actually want this to taste good and not be too alcoholic, so we went with an ale yeast.

Stop staring at my wrinkly thumb.  They're double jointed so I have alien hands.

Just pour it in.  Millions of little yeasties will eat sugar and shit alcohol and carbon dioxide.  Appetizing, yes?

6) After mixing again, put a bung in the top (that's what's the lid is called, I promise), and add some way to let air out.  If you don't do this, your bottle will explode and you will have a juice fountain in the basement.

In this case, we used a food grade plastic hose, and a small bucket of water.  This will allow carbon dioxide to leave, but no nasty little bacterias or wild yeasts to get in.

7) Store in a cool, dry place until it stops bubbling in about 2 weeks, or you're sick of waiting.

Two beers and a cider hanging out in the basement.

8) Later, we will put these guys into kegs and pressurize with CO2 to give it bubbles.  There are other ways to get the bubbles, but that is the easiest.

Apparently in Colorado, you can homebrew something like 200 gallons of beer per year for "personal use".  This is about 15 gallons, or 13 twelve-packs of beer (and cider) brewing in the basement.

Whoever it is that needs 200 gallons is some kind of impressive, really.

No Sharks No Sharks No Sharks

I tried to force my breathing to slow down. Calm down calm down calm down. There is no such thing as sharks.

Just float. Just float.

That Australian tourist said there was a turtle over here, but the water was so close to the coral that I kept worrying I was going to slam into it. I couldn’t seem to get use to the tunnel vision of having the mask on. I can’t see! I can’t breathe!

The world was silent except for little splashy noises and my Darth Vader breath.

Just float. Stop splashing, you’ll attract sharks. No I won’t. There are no sharks in Hawaii.

Fact.

Is this what drowning feels like?  Note to self: don't drown.

The snorkeling almost didn’t happen for me. The first mask the tour company gave me was a piece of shit that had a mask that was really good at filling up with water, and a snorkel that I couldn't breathe through. Crying, panicking, nearly screaming, I was making my way back to shore when Boyfriend stopped me.

He traded masks because apparently he doesn’t mind the feeling of drowning as much as I do, and he really wanted me to have a good time snorkeling. I stood there for a minute or two, trying not to feel like a failure or embarassed by my freak out, pulled myself together, mostly, and tried again.

Yes, I can swim.

I took lessons as a child because I was so afraid of water my parents could barely bathe me.  One of my earliest memories is my mom dipping me in a kiddie pool and me getting water up my nose.  Another early memory involves banging my elbow in the bath tub and passing out, and waking up with my brother holding my head out of the water and screaming for Mom.  She left for a minute so my older brother could pee, and I nearly drown.

Go me.

So. Swim lessons when I was 7. I was older than the other kids in the beginning class.  I remember those lessons with a combination of fear and embarrassment.  I think the next oldest kid was about 4.

I was so afraid of the water, chest tightening fear would hit me at random while we did our lessons, that I would wake up in cold sweats the night before swimming lessons.

And then they forgot about me and I almost drown.

They wanted the kids to swim from one end of the pool and back.  And I didn't make it back.

At first, I couldn’t believe it. Why couldn’t I touch the bottom? Where is the edge of the pool? It should be right there… Then my body wouldn’t respond, and I got even more scared. I couldn’t lift my arms. I was going under. Where was the teacher? I was drowning. No, this isn’t right! Why can’t I move my arms?

Through the water I heard a whistle and shouts, and splashes, and suddenly the instructor yanking me up by one arm. “What are you doing?” she shouted.  She was angry with me because she forgot to watch me.

I couldn’t speak as I gasped for breath.  I'd almost died! If I'd had the strength, I would have punched her in the face.   Once she righted me, I found out that actually, I could touch the bottom.  I huddled on the side of the pool for the rest of the day, and went back the next week.

But I learned to swim.

I won’t drown, probably.

A slightly larger wave pulled me away from the coral, then back down. I bobbed along the top in my life jacket and rented snorkel gear.  Remembering the time I almost drowned was a bad idea, but there was a similarity here.  I felt helpless.  I felt scared.  But I wanted to like it. I wanted this to be fun.

I tried to relax.  This is fun, goddamnit.

This wasn’t the chlorinated pool water at the civic center. This is the huge wild ocean. I was thousands of miles away and almost thirty years from my childhood drowning experience. I haven’t had a problem swimming in years and years. And since I got my eyes Lasiked, I actually like swimming.

But the panic was there, just underneath.

No such thing as sharks, if I don't look they aren't there, I CAN'T SEE YOU.

I tried not to imagine braining myself on the sharp edge of the reef. Or getting sucked out to sea. Or sharks. Or giant squids. Leviathans. I made little movements, and tried to propel myself with little mermaid kicks with my feet.  Look!  A clown fish!  And what was that!  That fish was yellow! Neat!  I want to see an octopus.  Where the fuck are the damned octopusses?

Calm, calm. Breath in, breath out.

Shit, why did I think of mermaids? Those bitches are going to fuck you up.

Deep breath, but not really through the snorkel mask. Darth Vader.

And then the coral dropped away from me to the sandy floor, and there it was.

It’s a motherfucking sea turtle, y’all.

"'Sup, bitches?"

My eyes saw it, but it took a moment for my brain to sort it out, to understand what I was seeing.

I let myself float over it, and past.  Holy fucking shit.  That thing was huge.  And it was watching me!  It's real!

I pulled my head out of the water.

I called out to my boyfriend, who was maybe 20 yards away. I waved at him, and then stopped. I didn’t want to look like I was drowning, even if I did just inhale a mouthful of seawater and turtle pee.

He looked over.

I pointed down. “Turtle!” I shouted.

And then I put my mask back in and my face down because I was choking on the water and I didn’t want to touch the reef but it’s too shallow to just swim with my head out of the water like that.

Saw it.

Hellz yeah.

Time to go in.

Relief washed over me as I took off the mask and flippers. I tried not to feel guilty for barely being able to tolerate snorkeling. My fear had been unexpected.

As I waded up on the sandy shore, I glanced back out to sea.

Holy shit, look where I am!

Not to scale*

*Holy crap, I should illustrate more, it's so slimming!

A Quick Note to Crayola

Dear Crayola,

I have always been a huge fan of Crayola colors.

I have more crayons than any adult has right to.

And colored pencils.

And markers.

If I ever have a daughter, I will name her Crayola Pavlov*.

Recently, I decided I was going to start illustrating my posts on this here blog with markers and colors.  It was going to be completely damned awesome.**

I stopped at the grocery store on the way home.  I had an excuse to go down the school supply aisle!  The yellow and green Crayola packaging glowed out at me, the logo smiling its rainbow smile.

Not only are these the best and most brilliant colors, but unlike the fancy shmancy Prismacolors that "professionals" seem to like so much, these were cheap, easy to find, and washable.

After some back and forth, I went with the largest package I could find of Crayola SuperTips.

Sure, I noticed that there were some "fun scented" markers in the package... it did not escape my notice that there were absolutely no large packages of markers from you that didn't have "fun scented" markers included.

I'll be honest, though... I thought when you said "fun scented", you meant something more along the lines of, oh, I don't know, fun for children in some way.

But honestly, I didn't think much of it.  I assumed that the scented markers would be mostly fruity smells and it would be akin to coloring with my old Strawberry Shortcake dolls' heads.

Mostly, I was just excited.  So many colors!  So.  Many.    I couldn't wait to get started.

I was a little disturbed that these so-called fun-scented colors were dressed all in black, like some kind of biker gang coming to crash the local debutant ball, but I still wasn't too worried.

In fact, I looked at them with growing excitement.  They might be fun.  I started opening them up and sniffing them without even coloring with them.

Yes, Crayola.  You did this.

You got me sniffing ink (and they didn't get me high (not that I was trying)).

And despite the little marks of red and brown around my nose, I was still mostly OK with it.  Cherry!  Oh!  That one is burnt marshmallow!  How fun!  

And then we got to the blues and greens.

I don't know about you, Crayola, but when I think "Forest Pine" or "Fresh Air" or "Bay Breeze", the first thing that doesn't come to mind is an opium den.

What ever happened to Raspberry, Lime, and Blueberry? Why did you do this to me?  Why?

If you are going to perfume your markers with THAT kind of fun, you should just be honest:


Fresh Air: A Teenager's Bedroom

Bay Breeze: French Whore

Forest Pine: Lysol

I would appreciate it if you would please update your labels.

Thanks so much for listening,

XOXO LOVE AND KISSES XOXO,

Leauxra

*I will also train her to respond to bells and whistles.


** Why YES, Virginia, Leauxra IS working on some new posts, and she's ILLUSTRATING them.  With Crayolas.  And  ***SPOILER ALERT*** They're about Hawaii.  First one comes out on Thursday***


*** I am trying to get back into a twice a week schedule... Mondays and Thursdays.