Peaceful Nuggets

GUESS WHAT!!!!!!!!!!!

(did you guess yet?)

My proposal was accepted for Firehouse Gallery's Human=Landscape show next August!!!  Yay!!  I'm so jazzed!  It's perfect timing because I will already be back in the USA and most likely (99.9999999% sure) be living in Vermont so it will be superrrr!  I don't have any new art images to show you (as I have been doing more writing as well as intense tourist-ing- and yes, that is a verb- with my sister and her husband, Geoff) so here is an old one:

"Pink and Yellow Bouquet"

I sold these recently on ETSY.  Yay!!  I'm happy that they are finally going to another happy home, but when I was packaging them up, I remembered how much I like them and therefore how I will miss them.  I guess that means I will have to make a pair I like even more.  Perhaps for Clare's bride's maids? 

The furry creatures you see behind us are snow monkeys.  ACTUAL monkeys!  They are amazing!  Mikel drove my sister, my brother-from-another-mother, and I up to this hot springs where Monkeys come naturally to bathe in the warm water and do various amazing things like using their human-like hands to pick things up, cuddle into ridiculously cute balls of monkey hugs, and climb wires.  The small ones were so cute they received the nickname "nuggets" from my husband.

If that's not cute, I don't know what is.  

In case you don't see it yet, that big monkey is holding a "nugget".

This is totally going to be a scene in a future book I am going to write.  I think it will have a character who is a professional trapeze artist who can't sweat.  Through some interactions with other characters, a few beers and maybe the appearance of an essential lost sock, he will have a cathartic blast which will start his sweat ducks a-pumpin'.  He will have to quit his job but he won't know if it is because his now overly sweaty body is too dangerously slippery for a life in the big top, or if it is because his catharsis has changed so much that he no longer needs his old way of life to feel whole...

N E way...

Thanks to Mikey for taking this photo.  This is a lovely and flattering shot of Clare, Geoff, Ali and I at Kappa Sushi (did I already tell you the joke about how you know you're a foreigner who has been living in Japan too long if you think it is okay to make a peace sign whenever someone takes your photo?)  Even though we had Clare and Geoff in the back of our car for about 4 hours of their vacation in Japan to go to see Monkeys and then had to rush them through dinner here at our favorite cheap, frankly overwhelming, sushi restaurant, they both claimed that those two things (monkeys and sushi) were possibly their favorite parts of their WHOLE vacation (which, I would like to point out, included San Francisco, Hawaii, Okinawa and our tiny farm town, Anan).  We almost didn't make the trek!  It was SOOOO worth it.  

We also experienced the drive-by look at the melting buzz of an ice sculpture festival trying to happen by the castle in Matsumoto.  It was a bit warm and therefore sad that they kept unloading huge blocks of ice into the park, only to drip rather than chip.  At least we saw Taiko drumming, snow sculptures, a sweet rock band (who's hair's personality could compete with Blagojevich's for most prosperous independent hair colony.)  Clare and Geoff's two day Japan blurr ended with a hilarious train station goodbye, followed by a night with our best bud in Japan, Ali.  We watched an old movie called Parenthood and drank some warm spiced apple juice with brandy while I tried to tame my inner "I-want-to-have-babies-now" voice (awakened and exacerbated by the video).  mmmm....  What a weekend!!  I am already excited to go to Clare and Geoff's second wedding next summer...  I better get on with the earring design and production (not to mention sleep!)