An amazing blog can be found here.
Next to it you can see the little collapsible bag we have for getting groceries, and a blanket that Emily made. Here's a picture of the beautiful pocket.
So anyhoo, after I fixed my bike, me and Ems rode over to Ryan's house (we're watering their plants) and I fixed his hot water heater! I have never fixed so many things in one day in my whole life. I was a golden god, a manly man from he man town. Then Emily reminded me that I was a science fiction nerd with a wizard obsession who snuggled with tiny bunnies and became a vacant eyed drooling zombie at the Science Fiction Museum in Seattle. I conceded that though those things were indeed true, she was the one who had dated me for three years; what does that say about her options huh! HA! 
I've been really into wizards and magic recently (hell, I just watched David Blaine's dvd and loved it--that guy is CRAZY!!!). My addiction to magic has surpassed the mystic gemstones and has ventured into me doing 3! magic tricks (of which two work, and of those two only one works all the time). But the wizard nerdiness reached new heights with this purchase of what I like to think of as my own super nerdy pewter Isle of Roke (Earthsea fans rejoice!!!). I know I will be mocked for this, but I can't resist cheap little pretties that I can display. Hee hee.
And here is the most adorable-est bunny in the whole wide world. Sleepin' in the litter box. He's so much like his old man that it almost brings a tear to my eye. (Sniff).
Now prepared to be destroyed by cuteness. A sleepy Cornbread stretches and FALLS!!! I just died of the cute.
I just finished reading John Steinbeck's The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights. It's really good, but Steinbeck left off before the end. Does anyone who reads this (aka Ian) know if I should check out a translation of Mallory (if so, which one?), or should I just read The Once and Future King and be happy with that?If Thine Eye Doth Offend
by J. PaddockI never really minded Toby's second eye, even though some of the other kids made fun of him. I think he minded it more than anyone. I know his mother used to tell him how great it were to have two eyes, and see twice as much. No one else seemed to think that way, including Toby. His remarkably shaped ocular bone seemed to just melt over the bridge of his nose, parting like water and leaving two pools of sight on either side of his nose. When the other kids would condescendingly peer down their noses with their perfectly centered eye, laughing, I would reach over and pat Toby's hand. They was always around, always talking about Toby's eyes; but for the most part I never even noticed it.
Toby and I'd grown up together in the same neighborhood. While the other parents warned their children away from Toby, mine never seemed to care. They were always too busy with themselves. It seemed like we spent hours underneath the oak tree in his backyard swinging on the tire swing in the hot wetness of summer. If it weren't for me I don't think Toby'd ever have a girl bat an eye at him. His mother was always crying in the bedroom; that is, when she weren't too gratifyingly trying to pamper me. I suppose it were 'cause I'd come play with her boy.
Thinkin' bout it now, I was the only kid Toby did see outside of school, and even there they only spoke to hurt, out of spite or cruelty. My parents were always yelling; at each other, me, the world. I came to Toby's just to get some damn silence now and then. Toby was always good for that. He never spoke a word out of turn. When the other kids in the hallway would walk past, lashing out with an elbow or a harsh word, stepping on Toby's heel to make him trip, I would pick him up. So I guess we kind of comforted each other.
One time one kid painted an eye on each cheek and covered his real eye with a hat. He said he were a freak like Toby and the other children laughed and laughed. They laughed even harder when they saw Toby crying from both his eyes, leaking tears down both cheeks in symmetrical lines, until tears of their own began to fall in the normal, even, manner; rolling gently down to hang like a diamond on the end of their nose before plummeting to the floor. I told Toby not to let it bother him, but I might have laughed a little myself, so he didn't talk to me for three four days. It weren't my fault it was so funny.
I'm not sure how long it was that we didn't talk to each other because that's when it started to get real bad at my house. My mother was always yelling and my dad was always slamming doors. I don't think there were this much racket when the dinosaurs got wiped out by the comet. After a day or two of WW3 amongst themselves my parents began to take it out on me. It was awful. It seemed I couldn't do nothing right. The way I breathed seemed to offend. In the end I just sat and stared straight ahead while they yelled at me from both sides. I wondered if that's what the world was like for Toby. People coming at you from both sides, relentless in their noise and fury and insistence, wanting from you what can't be found in themselves. Flooding you with themselves till it seemed there couldn't be anything at all left of you. For a second there I think I understood why Toby was always so withdrawn. He knew that one were MUCH better than two.
After that it seemed that my parents were always at me or at each other. I managed to slip through the cracks at home and at school, barely noticing what lay ahead of me or my surroundings. It seems forgivable to have been that wrapped up in myself. Even though I didn't talk to Toby much no more I felt I was maybe mentally closer to him than ever. Maybe I should have known that he was as desperate for change as I was. Change. Any change at all was what I needed. I suppose I should have guessed that he would find the answer first. He had been dealing with two and the problems it raised for much longer than I had.
I walked in at the end of it. The other children said later that nothing new had happened, just the same old teasing. Then Toby picked up his knife and rammed it into his right eye. How odd it seems to write that. His right eye. When I walked in it was already over, Toby keening at the table, blood and viscera all over his gray plastic cafeteria tray. Children watched in rapt attention, standing or kneeling on their plastic chairs looking for all the world like predatory birds, hawks ready to swoop. They were silent for once as Toby entered their monocular club in the most violent way he could think of. Teachers were already rushing in and gathering him up, but not before he raised his head from his hands and the keening turned into a fierce cry of something primal and awful, whether it were victory or pain I certainly coudn't say. A tiny drop of crimson hung from the end of Toby's nose showing that he finally had gotten something right, even if the color were a little off. The nice thing about tears and blood though is that on the tip of your tongue they taste almost exactly the same.
As they escorted him out, with gore splattering his sweater, the sweetest Hallelujah of the soul entered my body and exploded like light from a bulb. Toby had told me what to do. Standing over his deserted table where his forsaken eyeball lay trailing blood like some sick swollen slug, I knew. I picked the knife up off the floor, and wiped the blood and goop off on my skirt before I slipped it into my pocket. If there was one thing that Toby had taught me it was that one was always better than two.
And if that weren't true, then at least it got one some silence.
