You Say It's Your Birthday

It's my birthday too, yeah.

I got up very early this morning and made coffee and went out to look at the garden. I counted the bees as they busily collected pollen from the arugula flowers that last a few hours at most. I took a few pictures of my beloved sunflowers. Look at my happy friend!

After, Dave and I had breakfast (brioche that we bought at the farmer's market yesterday and turned into French toast this morning, blueberries, strawberries, caramelized peaches, maple and ginger syrup, and soy sausage). Yum!

And I may as well show you lunch (a shared salad and small pizza) while we're talking about birthday meals.

Don't judge me: Dinner was a Lotaburger and fries and a diet Pepsi.

After lunch we spent a little time at the studio and I painted this lady olla that has been patiently awaiting my return to the studio after my time in Deming.

She's all ready for the bisque kiln now, after which she'll assume her place in the garden, buried up to her neck.

And there were pressies, of course!  My mom sent me my own cast iron grill pan because I liked using hers so much. Hers is a single burner type, but my new one is the turbo version of that--a double-burner, reversible grill pan. I had Dave model it so you can see how big it is! (Dave is 6'4" by way of comparison.)

Dave got me some awesome gifts, too, including this set of steak knives and a set of teaspoons.

He also got me the new Vampire Weekend CD, a sleep mask to wear on the train, a bunch of travel-related things--oh, and a trip to Chicago!

Oh! And gift cards to Sephora, Torrid, and Shoes on a Shoestring. I'm going shopping for some new clothes and walking shoes for our trip.

Of course I had to get myself some presents. I bought this mermaid sculpture from Anand Naren who sells at arts and crafts fairs, farmer's markets, and sometimes at the local hippie-dippy co-op that we belong too.  She's designed to hang from a tree, but has assumed her place in my sea change altar.

I also bought a set of calavera tea towels. Look at those. Just look at them.

And then I decided to get rid of some hair. This is a photo from several years ago, when I had my last (professional) haircut. That's fourteen inches or so of hair. Today I cut off about the same amount.

This is a photo I took this morning, just after I butchered cut my own hair. 

That's a little more than half of what was cut off. I cut that myself and later in the day I asked Dave take off more.

Rather than falling past my waist, it's roughly shoulder-blade length now. So much hair!

After dinner: More adventure!

For Dave's birthday, I ordered him some miracle fruit tablets. If you don't know, miracle fruit contains something called miraculin which ultimately makes sour things taste sweet. Tonight, after chewing a half tablet each, we tasted plain Greek yogurt, sour cream, Castelvetrano olives, balsamic vinegar, basil, chard, feta, passion fruit, nectarines, apple, kiwi, ginger syrup, plum, maple syrup, tomatoes, brioche, and diet Pepsi. Dave also had cherry juice, orange, and white vinegar, none of which I wanted to try.

With my sour taste buds out of commission, the most disgusting foods were basil (which I normally love, but which tasted like the nastiest, most bitter medicine), nectarines (disgustingly sweet) and passion fruit (bile fruit, more like). Dave hated the tomato and white vinegar, and he disliked basil and sour cream. My favorites were tomatoes (we had sweet 100s and yellow pear tomatoes), kiwi (the only thing I had more than one bite of, it was so yummy), and maple syrup. Dave favorites were maple syrup, cherry juice and orange.