We can do it;

My inner Rosie the Riveter is coming out lately. I have a new job now, at the same place but now I'm a maintenance worker instead of a custodial lead. And apart from having one supervisor who's a sexist ass-wipe, I really like my job. It's gratifying to walk into a bathroom to find a leaking faucet and poor hot water pressure and have the tools and knowledge to make that space functional for the person who lives there next.
It helps that I'm really good at my job. My boss that's super-awesome says that I learn a lot faster than most of the guys on the crew and that it took one guy two months to learn what I did on the first day.
If fixing plumbing and electrical is easy and fun, fixing bikes is like ecstasy.
I'm in love with my new bike. I already took apart the brake levers and the shifters just to figure out how they work. And with that new knowledge I'm going to fix Eric's brakes tomorrow while he's at work.
So I'm really enjoying working with my hands, learning new (and practical) things, and riding my bike! (More on the bike soon)

Return to things I'd like to learn;

I posted a list of things I'd like to learn, and now I know some of those things! So it's time for a new list. The stuff I now know is in italics. The new stuff is in green.

I would like to learn:
how to crochet
more about my family history
how to identify every plant in my yard
why i always lose my head when the tree turns into a gem display case (more on this later)
how to bake apple pies
how to grow the most delicious vegetables
what deer eat
a lot about the olympic national forest
how to fix the sewing machine from 1926 that my mom gave me
how to build my own house
how to raise animals to eat
how to train a dog real well (so i don't end up with a Miles to the umpteenth degree)
how to design patterns for clothing in my head
how to fix a drywall patch
what type of bird is hopping around my backyard right now (i see a sparrow, a robin, a stellar jay and a mysterious yellow one)
how to teleport
how to make time to paint
more about gabriel garcia marquez
how to be a better person
how long it takes to ride my bike to school
and other things...
how to maintain my future bike
how long it takes to ride my bike from Olympia to Ventura
how to run a farm
how long it takes to ride my bike to the lake
how many licks does it take to get to the center of a tootsie roll pop?
how to grow food year-round
how to make herbal medicine
how to play the banjo better
and other things...

Food, Bikes and other things;

One thing that I am damn near sick of hearing, is college kids saying they don't have money to buy good food. It's usually the case that people who claim they're broke are choosing to use their resources on other things. I hear people say, "I would buy organic, but I just can't afford it. I'm a college student." Well, most of you are at college because some kind person is helping you out. Be this your parents, a relative, a stranger, or the government, you're getting help from somewhere, and more often than not that help includes money for food. Or you have a job, and you're paying for food yourself. So really it's a matter of choice.
Choosing to spend food money on beer, or acid, or whatever you choose to do with yourself is very different from not being able to afford food. So I don't want to hear about how trashed you got this weekend and then see you in line at the food-bank. I don't want to hear that you live on ramen in order to buy new clothes every week.
And the reason I don't want to hear it, is because you're hurting so much. By supporting these companies you're hurting the local economy, your insulting the people that work hard to grow fresh, organic produce only miles from your home, and you're pumping bad stuff into your body. I guess if you're spending that money on alcohol or drugs, you probably don't really care what you're putting into your body, believe me your children will care, even if you never do.
But I guess it all boils down to priorities, and there isn't much you can do to change someone else's. I would think that Evergreen, which advertises itself as eco-friendly, and in a recent survey 96% of the school population said they were concerned with sustainability and the environment, at least that many people would be doing what they can.

Well, one rant down.

And now for another:
My car. She's a good car, has served me well, isn't a disaster, was inexpensive initially, and wasn't too much to maintain. My insurance. RIDICULOUS. It's criminal, what I get charged for being an unmarried 19 year old. The money I will save on insurance alone will pay for my new bike. And, I gave away the punchline. I'm selling my car to buy a bike. Which seems a little backwards to some of the people I've talked to, but makes perfect financial and ecological sense. I'm actually excited to get back into biking.
My (future) bike is pictured above. And boy does she ride sweet. I can only afford her after i sell my car, but with my insurance renewal fee plus monthly insurance plus gas equals a whole lot of money to deck out my bike.
Plus a little more money for good food. ;]

Lunchbox Culture;

So, I bring a lunchbox to class. I like to pack my lunch. I don't want to pay mass amounts of money for small amounts of low quality food. I don't want to make extra trash. I like my tuna-fish and pesto sandwiches. I like my lunchbox. ect. ect. ect.
Well, on the first day of class (which is scheduled to start at 9:30) I walk in at 9:15, only to see that my entire class is already there. It was like the college equivalent of the coming to school naked dream. There was one seat open towards the middle of the class, so I fought my way there, trying to hide my obvious embarrassment. My precious lunchbox slapped against every chair I passed! Oh god!
And now, due no doubt to that embarrassing scene, everyone in class talks to me about my lunchbox. It's just a lunchbox. We're taking a class on food. I like good food. I dont want to eat on campus. I think it's ironic when we're talking about how corn is ruining american soil, to see people from my class rush out to munch down on corn chips and corn syrup soda. I pack a lunch. My boyfriend packed my lunch. I like my lunchbox. How many excuses do I have to give? It's not like I have a tattoo of my lunchbox on my forehead. Do I have to be like the kid in middle school with the backpack on wheels, forever remembered for my accessory?
My solution: a lunchbox culture. I've seen those awesome retro ones, with wonderwoman or i love lucy or the wizard of oz. Hell, there can even be lunchbox sub-cultures, to underwrite the lunchbox culture as a whole. But this way, at least I wont be the only kid with a lunchbox...

Walt Whitman, "This Compost"

1
Something startles me where I thought I was safest,
I withdraw from the still woods I loved,
I will not go now on the pastures to walk,
I will not strip the clothes from my body to meet my lover the sea,
I will not touch my flesh to the earth as to other flesh to renew me.
O how can it be that the ground itself does not sicken?
How can you be alive you growths of spring?
How can you furnish health you blood of herbs, roots, orchards, grain?
Are they not continually putting distemper'd corpses within you?
Is not every continent work'd over and over with sour dead?
Where have you disposed of their carcasses?
Those drunkards and gluttons of so many generations?
Where have you drawn off all the foul liquid and meat?
I do not see any of it upon you to-day, or perhaps I am deceiv'd,
I will run a furrow with my plough, I will press my spade through
the sod and turn it up underneath,
I am sure I shall expose some of the foul meat.
2
Behold this compost! behold it well!
Perhaps every mite has once form'd part of a sick person--yet behold!
The grass of spring covers the prairies,
The bean bursts noiselessly through the mould in the garden,
The delicate spear of the onion pierces upward,
The apple-buds cluster together on the apple-branches,
The resurrection of the wheat appears with pale visage out of its graves,
The tinge awakes over the willow-tree and the mulberry-tree,
The he-birds carol mornings and evenings while the she-birds sit on
their nests,
The young of poultry break through the hatch'd eggs,
The new-born of animals appear, the calf is dropt from the cow, the
colt from the mare,
Out of its little hill faithfully rise the potato's dark green leaves,
Out of its hill rises the yellow maize-stalk, the lilacs bloom in
the dooryards,
The summer growth is innocent and disdainful above all those strata
of sour dead.
What chemistry!
That the winds are really not infectious,
That this is no cheat, this transparent green-wash of the sea which
is so amorous after me,
That it is safe to allow it to lick my naked body all over with its
tongues,
That it will not endanger me with the fevers that have deposited
themselves in it,
That all is clean forever and forever,
That the cool drink from the well tastes so good,
That blackberries are so flavorous and juicy,
That the fruits of the apple-orchard and the orange-orchard, that
melons, grapes, peaches, plums, will none of them poison me,
That when I recline on the grass I do not catch any disease,
Though probably every spear of grass rises out of what was once
catching disease.
Now I am terrified at the Earth, it is that calm and patient,
It grows such sweet things out of such corruptions,
It turns harmless and stainless on its axis, with such endless
successions of diseas'd corpses,
It distills such exquisite winds out of such infused fetor,
It renews with such unwitting looks its prodigal, annual, sumptuous crops,
It gives such divine materials to men, and accepts such leavings
from them at last.

Things i'd like to learn;

In anticipation of the new quarter and the amazing class i'm going to be taking, i decided to make a list of all the things that i know i'd like to know. (Which is incredibly short, i noticed. probably because there is so much i'd like to know that i don't even know of yet.) So, here goes.


I would like to learn:
how to crochet
more about my family history
how to identify every plant in my yard
why i always lose my head when the tree turns into a gem display case (more on this later)
how to bake apple pies
how to grow the most delicious vegetables
what deer eat
a lot about the olympic national forest
how to fix the sewing machine from 1926 that my mom gave me
how to build my own house
how to raise animals to eat
how to train a dog real well (so i don't end up with a Miles to the umpteenth degree)
how to design patterns for clothing in my head
how to fix a drywall patch
what type of bird is hopping around my backyard right now (i see a sparrow, a robin, a stellar jay and a mysterious yellow one)
how to teleport
how to make time to paint
more about gabriel garcia marquez
how to be a better person
how long it takes to ride my bike to school
and other things...

Since sliced bread?

For the past week or so all of the bread we've been eating I have made. So i made these colossal loaves and we've been eating pieces off of them until we needed a chisel to get a slice off. (The small remnant will be sparrow food tomorrow) And while homemade bread has a tremendously better taste, is more rewarding, and lasts longer, I finally understood the meaning of that old saying about sliced bread.
Eric & i got off work today, completely exhausted, and stopped by the Co-Op to buy some bread and coffee. I haven't had the time or energy this week to bake any, since we've been doing a huge project at work. So, when we had whipped up some baked beans and sat down to eat them I finally understood the luxury of sliced bread. You didn't have to saw at it, reducing some percentage of it to crumbs that necessitate a kitchen sweep after your toast. You didn't have to do anything to eat it in order to make it consumable. I was genuinely excited about this small victory and was sharing it with Eric when he interrupted me,
"Honey, are you trying to say that it's the best thing since sliced bread?"

Yep. That's exactly it.