if you live here in the valley, i hope you got a good look at the mountains today. it was a rare site... beautifly clear and gorgeous.

all the orange trees that surround this area are in full bloom right now. wich puts me in a strange place, as i realize the beauty of it and the sweet smell. but, as sweet as they do smell, the aroma fills the air with a hot thickness. causing my nasal passages to fill with a heavy invisable mucous. i cant breathe. leave it to me to find something bad about even one of the most beautiful things.

me, alone in the theatre watching dawn of the dead is a frightful thing. and it happened today.

now, a few months ago, woody and travis and i went up to play in the snow...


as we were milling about, i saw a post in the ground. and the image of the best snowman ever came into my head... travis and i built it. woody wouldnt have anything to do with it for some strange reason...




i also got my film back from last years trip to mexico... wich brings to mind, we are leaving for mexico again this coming saturday... pray for us after you read this...










i had a hard day. i hope yours was better than mine. peace.

im really glad that corey finally realized that he and i connected in a way. its about time he saw that.

travis had three run ins with official type people last night. three run ins in one night...

i love corey and travis, as juvenile as they may be at times. i supose thats alright though, seeing as though they are juvenilles...

but, there are few things that i love more in this world, than waking up from my nightly sleep naturally. no alarms, no person waking me up, just my body clock.

i took myself out on a date last night and saw secret window. it was entertaining... extreme stephen king ending... i had a good time.

i think im getting over my consumption. im feeling better.

welp, see ya later.

dinner and a movie.

today, for about 30 seconds, i thought it was going to die when i started coughing and couldnt stop.

i told travis he could have my skelington when i die...


im sort of scared of "K.T"...

heather found her tooth brush.

i am one of the 4%-6% of the U.S. population who suffer from SAD "summer depression"... this year shouldnt be as bad as past years though...

i planted a rose bush in my new flower bed this evening.

peace.

i went for a walk this evening through the orange grove. i stopped, at one point, and looked closely at a small section of an orange tree. i saw a gnat, a small spider and a lady bug. i blew on the gnat and it disapeared. the spider ran under a leaf upon the realization i was looking at him and the lady bug, who was in hiding in a curled up leaf, just stayed put.

today was hard. the questions i am adressing in my head are heavy ones and the dreams at night last long into the day.

today is your birthday. i drew this for you... i wanted to mail it, but i didnt. happy birthday...

i began to write about our trip to the mountains on saturday, but decited against it after all... although, i will tell you it was great fun. and i GOT TO SIT IN THE PASSENGER SEAT!!!!!

ahem...

i have some plants coming up in my garden. im excited.

welp, off to work i go.

it is saturday morning and i woke up at 8:30...

last night was bizarre... first off, yesterday was exhausting. its hard when your boss and miserable customers have the perfect ability to make your working experience so hellish. but, it doesnt matter. im leaving in may and untill then im building character... hehehe...

i ran into garett yesterday afternoon at the coffee company. garett is my current hero. today he is leaving visalia to move to santa clara ( or something like that ) to start an organic rasberry farm. he was so excited when he was telling me about it... he says he has always loved gardening and farming is what he has really always wanted to do. i wish there were more guys like that here. but i supose they arent here becuase they like to move away to santa clara... anyways, it got me to thinking.

i also ran into chris down there. it was good to see him.

mara met me for coffee and we sat outside and talked for a few hours. she invited me to have dinner with her that night and some of her friends from the saviours community church.

in my head, i freaked out. i dont like meeting new people, expecially in crowds, especially christian churchy type people. but (and it came as no suprise) i sort of felt like God wanted me to go for whatever reason. once again, God had a hay day with me, shoving me out of my comfort zone and making me do something i wouldnt normally do. mara is my good friend and she really wanted to me go, so i did.

we ended up going to red robin (wouldnt have been my choice... i would have rather stayed down town...). i was part of a crown of eight. i havnt been part of a crown that big in probably years... and i was still freaking out. im sure they were all nice people... they were all nice people... but they were just so loud... obnoxious... loud... sort of superficial... of course they were beautiful, all dressed up in nice little clothes, pretty done up hair and un-natural hues of makeup... i dont know. i just cant handle crowds... i hope some good came of it though... if not for me, maybe for them...

highlights of the evening... talking to garett, chris and mara, running into travis and kevin driving downtown and following them several city blocks as travis tried to loose me... pulling up next to his car and hearing him scream... the waiter at red robin was cute and i think he was smiling at me in particular, hopefully recognizing that i did not belong in that certain group of people... coming home and watching tombstone and then going to bed.

im going to the mountains today.

peace...

i stepped out the backdoor leading from my bed room to the garden. it was a lovely day. the sky was clear blue with white, puffy clouds lazily floating by. all the hard work i had been doing in the flower beds was paying off with beautiful, brightly colored blooms on several different sorts of flowers. butterflys flew by and birds were singing. i took a deep breath... not many days here in the central valley were like this, due to the abundance of pesticides in the air, it was usually extermly foggy. but today was different. today was gorgous.

i looked up as i heard voices coming from the left of me, only about a quarter of a mile away in the orange orchard. the voices were hushed, dark and a little frightening. from my back yard i could see two different tribes of indians stealthily sneaking around the groves, weaving in and out between the trees so as not to be seen by their enemy. they used some strange pattern of movement, stopping behind a tree, peeking out and then slowly moving on to the next. i looked closer and saw that they all held weapons of some sort. alarmed, i thought to myself "what could they be up to?" their pattern seemed to be leading them all together in a sort of battle stance. one tribe closer to me, the other further to the west. suddenly all movement stopped. i could only see a couple of them now, the ones closer to me. my imagination was racing as i wondered what they were doing... all time seemed to stop in that moment... the clouds disapeared, the birds were silent, the color seemed to drain from the flowers and then it became dark. as though a storm were moving in, coloring the air a dirty brownish grey color.

and then, i saw them... the guns. each indian had a gun strapped to their belts in a halter. then it hit me what was going on. they were in battle. in that moment, as if my realization had sparked their movements, each man reached for his gun and drew and aimed at the enemy across from them. horrified, i froze. everything was a blur then, and it took the loud BANG that filled the air as the first shot fired to awaken me.

suddenly i thought of the stray bullets. i wasnt too far from the battle ground, and anything that flew my way could easily hit me.... the thought crossed my mind quickly, and within 30 seconds of the first shot, i flew face first down onto the ground in front of me. if any bullets came my way, then they would fly over me. the scene was horrific. the force from the bullets caused several of the fighting indian braves to fly over to where i lay. the sound was deafaning, the smell was awful. all around me bullets and braves flew. i could feel the wind of them above me and around me. although i could see nothing but the ground in my face, i knew that the battle was a major one. i heard a loud shot from one of the guns and one of the indians landed in front of me, dead. "whats going on?!?" was all i could think.

and then, a stray bullet hit me. it hit my in the side, close to my ribs, piercing my body. i could feel it burning inside of me as it went in and i felt it stop somewhere in me. the pain was unbearable, the blood came running out. "thats impossible! i am out of the way!". but never-the-less, i got hit. for a moment, i was aware of death all around me, before me and then inside of me. i was dead. my body slipped away...

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thats a dream i had last night. i thought it was so weird. the weirdest part about it was that after i died, i found myself limping around the bethel assembly of god church at some stupid semenar with a bullet wound in my side. i was bleeding everywhere, dying again but no one would even look at me.

im not too worried about analyzing my dreams. but it was entertaining and amusing (to myself anyway) to write it down. so, for entertainment sake, i hope you enjoyed my weird dream.

peace be in your hearts...

it must have slipped my mind that working out in the sun for 5 hours will burn you. and the beauty of my extremely fair skin type is that i burn awful, then i peel and then im whiter than before i got burned. i love it. my shoulders and the back of my neck are toast.

but i feel good. mostly becuase of the work i got done in my garden. i constructed a few trellesis for some climbing bushes, cleaned out several of my flower beds, dug out and dumped four wheel barrel loads of dirt/manure into my flower beds, planting a few seeds and put up the startings of an arbor im building over the back porches. it looks lovely out there and it did my heart and body good.

so, oddly enough, i actually saw two good movies in a row this weekend... matchstick men and runaway jury. both about con-men. both good. the leage of extrodinary gentlemen was bearable, i supose. mosre of a movie that 12 year old boys would love. i bought once upon a time in mexico. i couldnt help it. there it was... $12.99... there was my little bit of left over tax return money that i was allowing myself to spend... so i got it.

i hope you all had a lovely sunday. the weather here is horrible. i live not even five minutes from the mountains, and i cant see them becuase of the smog. the air is hot. but its nice under the patio in the shade. travis and i went to church this morning in visalia then shimmyed on over to juanitas house to sit under the shade of the willow tree for about an hour, talking about nothing in particular. it reminded me of the old time movies where the wealthy people just lounged around in the gardens all day, doing nothing. lovely times.

peace...

*great big sigh of relief*

silent, unspoken, mutual feelings... funny how unpleasant circumstances caused by people in my life cause me to drift away from people who used to matter a lot to me... not just that, but the type of people they have all become and the type of person i have become... the differences are huge... but sometimes not so huge... sometimes im sad and something in me wants to restore damaged relationships. but are they really damaged, or have we just grown apart, as was to be expected. there was a time when we needed eachother, but i dont think i need them anymore... but still...

im really very happy that amy has dared to be different from all the others. she has been accepted to a non-christian school that is no where near here. im very excited for her...

anyone up for a picnic this saturday?

the suffering girl dreamed of ways to relieve the pressure from her body. the pills she took 30 minutes ago just werent helping yet. when would the pain stop? she tried to distract herself by doing various other things, but nothing seemed to work. sometimes it was worse than others, but almost always it was there... pounding, pulsing, suffocating her insides, feeling as though she would explode... she screamed on the inside as the exrushiating pain gripped her organs and twisted them around in a hot, violent burn...

im feeling better thanks to motrin and another forgien substance, television, an AIM conversation with a friend, pleasant thoughts... i read outside for a while today. the air was hot, but it was cooler than it was inside. it did me good.

... wonders never cease...

now, off to watch my televison crush, C.S.I. Miami.

UGH. i feel like CRAP. blah. :(

i went by myself to see the passion on friday evening. i thought it was awful. but that was to be expected judging by the things i have known about the crucifiction before i went to see the movie. i knew it would be awful. awful... but also moving, touching and beautiful. to heart the quietness in the theatre after the first five minites... to glance around and see everyones eyes fixated on the screen, on Jesus praying in Golgotha, watching him being beaten and seeing him die on the cross... the film touched me.

i felt strange though... when i first got there... it struck me as odd that there were families in the theatres munching on popcorn like they were there to see the latest jim carrey film. but when it was over, i dont think any could have walked out of the theatre as the same person they were when they went in.

strangly beautiful, the realist depiction, although still a far cry from the actual truth, the passion is a humbling reminder of the love that Jesus Christ has for me.

some days are harder than others. some days you wake up in the morning and commit yourself to God, telling him that you only want to please him today. you give him your heart, mind and soul. sometimes, those days can be the worse days. sometimes, those are the days when your coffee in the morning tastes like crap and your boss is on your case all day long for no reason. you are extra sensitive and every cutting coment or remark hurts. sometimes, this lasts for days on end. becuase every morning you wake up and re-commit yourself to God. hope dangles from a thread... but still it is hope and hope wont disapoints us.

do you pray? i could use some prayer right now.

*why* didnt anyone recomend this movie to me? i loved it...

"harvey, could you get me a glass of water and two asprins?"
"yeah, why do you have a headache?"
"no, but i want to avoid one."
"oh..."