Okay…enough with the Multiplying Mushrooms of Doom. Back to rust and decay.

* I leave it to you to figure out who those people might be.

1. Breakfast is the most important meal of the day. Even if you got out of bed at noon, you should have a well balanced breakfast.

2. Breakfast is so important it cannot be entered into lightly. You must prepare by first eating half a banana, a glass of juice and half a piece of toast. This forms a secure base for the handful of vitamins, minerals, and life-prolonging supplements you swear will keep you vital well into your 12th decade. This is not to be confused with an actual breakfast, which requires many more dishes. Breakfast also should not be eaten alone. Even if the entire household claims to have already eaten, or to simply not be hungry, do not accept this. Keep offering to include them in your breakfast, eventually they will see the wisdom of your ways and join you. Now inquire as to why they are giving you that look.

3. Someone else will surely want that half a banana and half slice of cold toast from your pre-breakfast; leave it out for them.

4. Only bread that disintegrates into such huge piles of crumbs that it is best eaten over the sink, the trashcan, or a flock of pigeons is any good. Never eat that bread in any of those locations.

5. Because of the lateness of breakfast, you probably will not be hungry again until later in the afternoon. Around 5:00p.m., dinner preparations will be underway. Realize with a shock that you have neglected to eat lunch, and that failure to meet the mandated minimum of three meals a day will result in DEATH!!! You should quickly root around in the refrigerator and pull yourself together some kind of lunch.

5b. A simple sandwich is NEVER EVER EVER an option for lunch.

6. Microwaves are only to be used for heating up cold coffee or tea. For heating a late lunch, use whatever pans are sitting on the stove. Surely that’s why they were sitting there.

7. Sandwich consumption has an approved time. That time is immediately after you have heard the words, “So in about half an hour we’ll got out for dinner.” That is your signal to go to the refrigerator and build yourself a sandwich of epic proportions, on the crumbly bread mentioned in Rule 4.

While eating your sandwich, wonder silently why on earth anyone would marry a woman who could get so bent out of shape over a little thing like a sandwich.

or Do NOT Put Your Mouth on That…

I can’t wait to go back to this place when it’s a bit colder (and all danger of snakes and spiders is past) and the light has changed and see how differently the photos turn out.

We spent a couple of days with our friends who live in a gorgeous spot out in the weeds. We took a hike to the abandoned farm on the edge of their property and I threw my almost paralyzing fear of snakes to the wind and shot a few hundred frames of the decay. You know how I love me some decay.

This spider either has a spatial/perception problem, or he did not get the standard issue web building manual.

This year’s abundant rain has given us another bumper crop of giant mutant acorns and black walnuts. The squirrels and chipmunks are going insane over the buffet. This means the dogs are going insane over the squirrels and chipmunks. This is how the Million Dollar Dog is spending her days.

Hey! I think a chipmunk just ran under the basketball goal!

Yep. I’m sure of it. Please come out little chipmunk.

I only want to be friends. Ignore my large and pointy teeth.

Don’t be silly. That is not the hot breath of fanged death you feel.

Fine. I will wait all the way over here and lull you into a false sense of security.

Ah, to hell with that. I’m coming in after you!

That whooshing sound you hear is a large sigh of contentment from me. I have done all I can do for my client, sent the invoice, and wished him well with the endeavor.

Today is the first day of a beautiful tradition in our school district of Fall Break. A whole week off to drive into the mountains to look at leaves, or to the beach for that last swim of the season, or if you are like us, a week to relax, have lots of friends over, and see just how many meals we can cook with actual fire.

It’s also a lovely time to live here in our own personal wildlife preserve. I have encountered these gents several times lately, but always without a camera. There are six of them, the largest two are further in the woods. The other night I walked the boy down to the neighbor’s house to play. They have a tall wood fence running the length of their driveway, and as I got to the end and turned the corner, something large moved not three feet away from me. It was one of the big bucks. We stared at each other for a few seconds before I begged his pardon and backed away.

In lieu of talking about the project which is making me yank out clumps of my own hair on these days, I am going to tell you a story about a previous project. Read it and chuckle with me. But if you ever find yourself in the client’s place, take the message to heart.

Several years ago I was working on a promo piece for an artist/author/mystic/clothing designer.* She had many irons in the fire, and wanted one brochure that would hit on all her endeavors. She had a photo that was very special to her, taken by a friend when they were on a meaningful trip together, and she wanted to use that image on the cover. Unfortunately, (from my perspective) she had gone through a divorce, lost a lot of weight, had a little work done, and generally given herself a persona makeover since the photo was taken. But she was determined to use that photo. That particular trip, and that particular spot had been a turning point in her life. Okay, I could understand that.

We spent days, literally days, sitting in front of my computer while I trimmed her waistline, raised her eyebrows, reshaped her chin, plumped her lips and replaced her formerly less than perfect teeth. I spent hours looking back and forth from her face to my screen, and following directions like, “No, my eyes are more of an emerald green. See? With flecks of gold around the pupil. Can you make them more emerald? Well, yes, that’s more emerald, but now you don’t see the gold. People really notice the gold, so it has to show up.” Or, “I really don’t like the bracelet I was wearing in that picture. My ex-husband gave it to me. Can you replace it with this one I’m wearing now?”

We went through pretty much the same process with every other photo in the brochure. Every time she left, I pressed a fresh proof of the brochure into her hands and got her solemn promise that she would read it carefully, then have someone else read it, check all the names and addresses, especially any that had unusual spellings, and let me know if I needed to make any corrections. When she was finally satisfied with all the photos and at the last possible minute that would allow the printer to meet her deadline, she scribbled a signature on the proof left to go get her tattoo touched up.

She called me up in a seething rage week later because she was on her way to a trade show with ten thousand brochures that said RavenWind instead of RavynWinde. Yep, she spent hours obsessing over her eye color and never bothered to read her own damn brochure.

So please, people, if you have randomly changed an E in your name to a Y, or if you have dedicated your book to your Norwegian grandmother, whose name without a crucial umlaut means rotten fish guts as opposed to meadow lark, take a few minutes and read the freaking copy before you approve the printing!

*Her name wasn’t really Ravynwinde, but it was a similarly convoluted spelling of two common words.

I’d love nothing more than to put up a lengthy post ranting about the client I am designing for right now. Let’s just say that I have used every ounce of strength I possess to sit quietly while he or she (no clues as to identity) dithers over insignificant details of a project that in the future will prompt a phone call from either an ex-spouse or a parent saying, “I’ve sold the house. If you don’t get these 20 boxes of (Insert Ill-Advised Title Here) out of the basement, it’s going in the dumpster.”

Which brings us to the title of this post. What makes it such a beautiful world, you ask? Well, I’ll tell you.

We tolerate a person in our lives who is constantly calling to tell us about his most recent encounter with someone famous (formerly famous, usually). In his version, they are always greatly impressed with him, want to keep in touch, become his new best friend, buy him a drink, invest in his latest business idea, or if they are female, get him in the sack. We have gotten to the point that after getting one of these calls, we just look at each other and say, “Wonder how that went down outside of his imagination?”

Yesterday we went to a wedding and happened to find ourselves seated next to someone he claimed to have met and hung out with a couple of  weeks before. Because we are evil and opportunities like this don’t come along every day, we just had to bring up their recent meeting, you know, let her know how much the guy enjoyed their deeply personal encounter. Our table mate looked puzzled when we brought it up, and then apologetic. She said, “I didn’t meet anybody while I was there except the show host. I just showed up and taped the spot and then left . There were some people hanging around, but I didn’t get to speak to any of them. We were on a really tight schedule; I left there and went straight to the airport.”

We couldn’t wait to get out of there and give him a call to let him know we’d been chatting up his new best friend. Oh, that long pause on the line, as though he’d swallowed his gum…as Kathy Griffin would say, it was like a little hug from Jesus.

I met Athena for coffee and a little stroll around the park yesterday. Lucky we did it yesterday, because today it is pouring again. After fortifying ourselves with coffee and a snack we went out and snapped a few photos. In case you weren’t aware. we have the world’s only full scale replica of the Parthenon. There was some kind of event going on, so we couldn’t go in and visit Athena’s namesake, so we had to make do with wandering around outside.

I love the fact that the guy on the left (to quote Bill, or Ted) is all like “Whoa! Wait a minute!” As if  he has just realized that only the men are naked… perhaps he has misread the invitation.

There were some magnificent Angel’s Trumpets (I think that’s what they are called).

I love their curled edges, so very Tim Burton, Nightmare Before Christmas.