It was one of my dying ivy plants. Of course, in my fury I immediately asked Jonah (my youngest son) who did it, because he was out there and the one that put out the flames. An older boy was out there too and apparently Jonah was afraid to tell me, so the boy urged him to just tell me. Come to find out it was another guy from the neighborhood who recently turned 18. Anyway, he is the same one who (he and his younger brother) I’ve had problems with for the past 12 depressing years I’ve lived here.

I have to get out of this place. Guh. Anyway, police are on their way so I can file a complaint.

(10 minutes later}

Police just left, but before they got here, the culprit came and apologized, so everything is cool and I didn’t file the complaint.

Anyway.

The week before last Jonah and I went to the Rendezvous at Pinnacle Mountain, which is a really cool festival with people dressed as pioneers and Indians. We go every year, though I was disappointed the Chief wasn’t there this year.

The photo below is of a woman who had all sorts of little vials and stuff. She immediately made me think of the witch, Adria, in Diablo! *coughBlizzardsuxbecausetheytaketoolongcough*

Cool stuff.

Only Jonah went with me this year, so that meant only Jonah got an awesome handmade bow made out of bamboo. Because he wanted it “really, really, bad.”

Aaaaaand, of course he broke it after a few hours.

A couple photos of me, staring off at whatever, and one with my new bag I only paid $3 for at the Goodwill.

And last, I saw this as we were leaving.

So, with that said, have a good night.

Brian came to visit me for 5 days and we spent New Year’s together. On New Year’s Eve we went to a nice place downtown called Bosco’s. I know, I look like a wannabe Vegas showgirl or something with the feathers on my head.

The whole time he was here it was COLD. Though, thankfully not until after our walk/climb up Pinnacle Mountain, or our visit to The Old Mill, which Brian also really loved.

We also went to the Old State House Museum, which was free admission and really should have charged something. Seriously, the place was enormous and had a maze of rooms with great exhibits that was set up nicer than some high dollar museums I’ve seen.

Here’s Brian standing next to…well, his body-double? :-| I still wonder if this is coincidentally cool, or if someone needs to catch up with this century maybe? :-P

We took tons more photos, but I’ve never been interested in seeing other people’s museum photos for some reason, so I won’t bore you with ours. I guess it’s one of those things that you’d rather just see in person. Same with zoo photos – they are boring to look at usually, unless you’re the one taking them. Interested in the museum, follow the link above. :-)

And what would any trip to visit me be without going to FLEA MARKETS! At least he actually wanted to go to a few, otherwise I would’ve felt wrong dragging him along, hehe.

And as I have demonstrated in the past, you can find some weird stuff in flea markets, like this ginormous bag clearly made for ginormous giants. Here you can see shopping carts made for hobbit people and here, perverted mannequins.

We also saw Sherlock Holmes, which I thought was good, but not as funny as I expected. Though, you can’t go wrong with Robert Downey Jr., so it was worth it!

The day began horribly for me. I woke up with a toothache and so I called-in to work, but that wasn’t the only reason. I simply just did not want to go for reasons that I mentioned in my previous post.  Vague, I know, but that’s alright; it’s enough to make the point. The first half of the day I spent job-hunting and feeling like crap. Then when I got home, I just kind of lost it. Not because of the job-hunting (that went the way it usually does — nothing much out of the ordinary) but because I felt the need to be job-hunting. That, on top of a lot of personal woes non-work-related, which I’ll also not go into just because, really caught up with me and I lost it.

After my mini breakdown, I decided to get up and climb a fucking mountain. It was the perfect day: overcast, cool and breezy, the smell of rain in the air, but staying in the distance so we could do the ‘mountain thing’ and not get wet. It was beautiful. I needed to get out and feel the wind on my face. So I took my kids and we drove to Pinnacle Mountain.

And what I got out of today’s visit and why it was different from my visits at the top before, was knowing that my woes and all the things that break me, are nothing compared to the beauty and power of nature and the world.  Jobs are nothing. Bills are nothing. The things we are forced to do in order to ‘live’ are nothing.

They only become something when we let them.