Gemini: Better Than Rilke

Critics will call your first poetry collection a "stirring work of utmost courage and beauty," which just goes to show how much mileage that man from Nantucket has.

(Photos: Old Sarge)

Nesting: Home Sweet Home

Mandrew went home for Easter this last week, which meant I had a lot of time to myself. I mostly did a lot of cleaning. Our apartment starts clean, gets progressively more and more cluttered, until I can't take it anymore and have to clean it or I WILL JUMP OFF THE BALCONY TO ESCAPE THE DIRTY DISHES! THE DIRTY FLOORS! THE DIRTY LAUNDRY! THE DIRT!!!

I am becoming my mother. The woman that grounded me when I would say, "Come on, Mom! My room doesn't smell THAT bad."

The apartment really feels like home now, and I've been wanting to put up some kind of "Home Sweet Home," or "Home is Where Your Heart Is" decoration to punctuate the sentiment. But since I can't needlepoint, I made the following:

Now I just need to find the right frame.

Update: 8 x 10, Kinko's color toner on watercolor paper (hat tip: Rebecca)

Reading Rainbow: Atheists and Foxholes

Last week I went binge buying on Amazon and ordered Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life, Great American Hypocrites and God is not Great. I’d seen the various authors give intelligent interviews, and I wanted to read more of what they had to say.

Don’t worry mom, I am not a vegan food terrorist, hubristic partisan hack, or atheist out to make everyone worship Darwin… at least not yet.

I had the books delivered to me at work, and our BYU intern brought one to my office. She’s always been pleasant, even though she knows I’m an ex-Mormon that’s “gone off the deep end.”

She handed me the package, and I said, “Yeah! One of my books arrived.”

“Oooh, what’d you get?” She said.

“Let’s see,” I replied, opening the package to find the book that mocked her religion and framed me as hostile to her and all other believers. WHY COULDN’T IT HAVE BEEN THE GARDENING BOOK! THE ONE ABOUT HOMEMAKING AND CANNING TOMATOES!

I blushed a severe shade of red and hesitated.

“Do you not want to share?” She said.

I didn’t want her to think I’d just purchased How to Enslave and Eat Innocent Children, so I pulled out the bright sunny cover of God is not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, and laughed with obvious embarrassment.


Luckily this intern has a sense of humor/strong sense of civility and laughed so hard that my face returned to its natural color.