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The one thing that is never supposed to move is the earth beneath your feet. It’s very unsettling when it decides to start shaking.

We’ve had two minor ones in the last two days. Do you think the earth is mad at us?

So the other day bythelbs emailed me about cleaning out under her bed because she was going to be getting a new mattress and she discussed the possibility of spiders and spider carcasses and etc. I happened to read her email in the evening, and had a dream that night that featured a gigantic spider. I’m talking like Gilligan Island’s style gigantic spider. A grown man could have rode around on it. Fortunately, it ran off into the woods as soon as I saw it, and the really scary part about the dream was a small poisonous moth that kept flying around.

Then yesterday evening I read her blog. More spider talk. So last night as I was falling asleep, I chanted in my head, “Poisonous moth, poisonous moth…”

Can you guess what I had a dream about?

Gabby and her sister, Shazbraz.

Daniel and I went to visit them for some reason. (We’ve never met in real life.) Gabby had to leave somewhere, and she left her son with Shaz. So we were all hanging out at Shaz’s house. No topless gardening went on, don’t worry. But I was completely delirious from lack of sleep (funny to have a dream about not getting enough sleep) and I think Shaz thought I was a weirdo. Gabby’s son was *very* tan in my dream and his face was literally black. Like he’d colored it all over with a sharpie or something. At first we didn’t notice it (that’s how tan he was), until part of it started wiping off.

No spiders OR poisonous moths. There was a very soggy diaper on a very fussy baby, though.

I was also very tan…and skinny. A good dream!

Want to puke.

Our carpet is all wet and it REEKS. Just called the landlord. They’re going to be tearing apart my bedroom and bathroom, I’m sure. She said she thought it was probably coming from the unit above us, though. We’re on the ground floor.

Here’s some pics of random dinosaur craziness, taken at a truck stop in Yermo, CA.

Wish me luck.

I did a search for something on Google Maps in Huntington Beach, then I started zooming out to view the greater Los Angeles region.

Any guesses what all these dots are? The map above includes Hollywood, LA, Pasadena, Orange County, etc.

Then I did a search for something else as a contrast. Here’s the results of the second search:

So what do you think?

• Strawberries
• Blueberries
• A bike ride in the sunshine
• Stale Cheetos
• Looking at the world through a camera
• Laughing with your kids
• A really good book
• Wisdom

Add to the list.

Every so often I like to go browse around the Found Magazine website. It’s a web site where people email in things they find in random places—photos, lists, receipts with notes on them, whatever. It can be fascinating to get a little glimpse of the lives of strangers that way.

My brother gave me one of their books one year for Christmas, and I showed it to my daughter Catherine. She loved it. So when she found a drawing on the ground one day, she had me scan it so she could submit it.

She just got notified that it was the Find of the Day for April 10th!

Some of the comments are funny.

I bet you can’t look at the site without surfing around to look at other finds for at least 15 minutes.

I’ll have lots more in a few days when I get my film developed. Here’s some digital ones for now.

Me with my parents at Zibriski Point:

My parents were here visiting all last week for the kids’ spring break. We managed to do some fun stuff even though I had to work pretty long hours. Last week was crazy busy for me. Anyway my parents suggested we all go to Death Valley. Daniel took Elijah to Dumont Dunes to go dirtbiking/camping, the rest of us went to DV. It was a fun trip although we didn’t get to spend much time in the park, only a couple hours, so we didn’t get to see very much.

Catherine, me and Nathaniel hiking to the Natural Bridge. It was so hot, an uphill incline, in gravelly sand…seriously wore me out!

We saw a young coyote on the road. It came right up to the car and waited. It was obviously hoping for some food. I wish people wouldn’t feed the wildlife, it’s really dangerous for them. Now this coyote is going to be hanging around the road all the time waiting for people to feed it, and it’s likely to get hit by a car. My mom took this photo:

This next one was taken on the road on the way to Death Valley. He’s kind of hard to make out, but that’s Nathaniel on top of the hill.

Here he is in a crevice carved by water, on the trail to the Natural Bridge:

There’s a place called Mormon Point. I couldn’t find any info on why it was called that, but I assume Mormons must have traveled through there way back when.

Here’s Nathaniel at the Ashford Mill Ruins:

This was taken from the car while we were driving about 60mph:

So was this:

And this:

Here we are in the car:

I have a whole lot more to say but no time to say it.

You got any personal mottos?

Here are a few of mine:

Better living through repression!

I’d rather laugh than cry.

As long as no one’s in jail, in the hospital, or dead, we’re good.

Whatever doesn’t kill you, makes you wish you were dead, anyway.

Emotional conservation: Why stress the big stuff?

If you have no expectations, you’ll never be disappointed.

Is it only happiness you want?

The toughest time in anyone’s life…is when you have to murder a loved one just because they’re the devil.

OK, that last one is an Emo Philips joke. BUT I’VE LIVED IT.

–

I’m short. 5′2″. (Same height as Prince! I could be one of Prince’s girls!)

My daughter’s shorter.

She used to complain about how in fashion everything revolves around tall people. Models have to be tall. She’d say when she grew up she was going to design clothes for short people.

I told her that was cool, but privately I was thinking, “Good luck with that.”

So when I heard Tyra Banks was looking for short models for the next season of America’s Next Top Model, I had to tell my daughter immediately. We bumped each other’s fists in victory. Yes! Way to go Tyra!

Tyra’s always trying to push the envelope a bit in the modeling world. She often has plus-size models on the show, and this season she has a contestant who has scars all over her lower body from a burn when she was a toddler. Problem is, the non-conventional contestants always seem to have confidence issues and don’t always do that well. Although last season (I think it was last season) the winner was a plus size model.

Anyways, I’ve been thinking lately about how in boxing and wrestling they have weight class divisions, but they don’t have anything similar in other sports. Why can’t basketball have height class divisions?

EDIT: I posted a fun “name these tunes” over at Kulturblog.com today, check it out here.

You see a character on a TV show wrap their arm around someone from behind to choke them, and you say, “Look! A triangle!”

My husband loves to watch mixed martial arts. You know, those UFC fights with guys wrangling on the ground, punching each other in the face repeatedly (it’s called “ground and pound”), and then standing up to kick each other with their feet and knee each other in the face?

It’s horribly violent, and I abhor violence. Yet I watch it all the time.

I just turn my head away when there’s some really bad punching going on. I hate when someone gets a big gash on their face and they show close-ups of it. Ugh! And thankfully, if someone gets a limb broken (it’s rare, but it happens), I’ve managed to avoid seeing it.

It was really the reality show that got me into it. There’s a show where they have a bunch of guys who dream of being UFC fighters all live in a house together and train in two teams, with each team being coached by a big-name fighter.

There’s lots of drama, and WAY more crying, than you’d ever expect from a bunch of fighters. It’s awesome. I love to see the coaches, the guys who are already big pro fighters, and what their personalities are like. Some are complete jerks (*cough* Frank Mir *cough*). But some are astonishingly sweet (aw, Rampage Jackson).

There’s a famous MMA fighter from Huntington Beach, Tito Ortiz. I saw him yesterday at the bank. He was at the teller window next to me. It was funny to see the “Huntington Beach Bad Boy” being fawned over by bankers and tellers. I always figured I’d run into him some day. Like, at the pier, or downtown at a restaurant (because I frequent those downtown restaurants so much). But at the bank?

To be honest, I barely looked at him. I figure if I were famous I wouldn’t want people staring at me (especially if I was at a teller window!), so I just did my transaction and left him to the bankers who were after his money. As I got into my car, I wondered if I could figure out which car in the parking lot was his, and I realized it was parked right next to mine. A big bulky Range Rover.

So there’s my celebrity sighting for the month. Did I mention Daniel saw Coolio at a ski lodge the other week? In line for a lift ticket. Crazy braids and all. I’m just surprised Daniel didn’t start singing “Amish Paradise” to him.