Mouse's daily dose of HAPPY and style. From here.

Charlotte Gainsbourg at Cannes. I think she just wakes up in the morning and her hair does that awesomeness on its own

From here.

So, Mouse has various distractions from work today, not the least of which is giggling about Tiny Niece. They went fishing. Tiny Niece informs me: "I caught SEVEN FISH!"* She also says, "I caught the biggest fish IN THE WHOLE WORLD! IT WAS FOURTEEN** INCHES LONG!"

Now, while Tiny Niece is clearly on her way to telling world-class fishermen's tales,*** I do have to say that fourteen inches ain't bad for rainbow trout. I bet it was delicious.

*By "I caught SEVEN FISH," I think she means "My brother, my dad, and I caught seven fish."

**Tiny Niece is five, so I know she understands "fourteen," but I'm not sure she can actually gauge inches yet. Do you think so?

***Like Old Wives' Tales but with fish. One of Mouse's assorted older brothers tells lots of them.

(Nice drawing of rainbow trout from here. I think the photos are less flattering. They always look menacing through the mouth, in the photos.)

First seeds germinated! First tomato flowers! Whee!

Oh, wow, nice mice, meet the most optimistic and well-balanced person on the face of the earth: Mouse's favorite yoga teacher. Today, the woman has a swollen jaw from a wisdom tooth that came in funny and that she can't get pulled until next Wednesday,* and not only did she teach her hour-and-a-half yoga class as usual, but want to know what she told us?

"Everything in life is a gift. The universe gives you pain so that you can feel it in your heart, and know where your heart is."

Mouse gulped down assorted gripes about the week PDQ, let me tell you. I want to feel like that. Without the toothache, though.

*Money is stupid.

Mouse survived the scary job interview but used up all her words and energy. More later today or tomorrow, depending on how long the brain cells take to revive!

xo

When is a cotton commercial cooler than a commercial? Um, when Zooey is in it, wearing the rockin eyeliner and looking like that. Mouse has got to learn how to do that eyeliner.

Farmer's market in Maui, which was in fact in the central courtyard of a mall.
Chinese eggplant. Mmm.
Squash.
Bitter melons (Mouse and her mom chickened out on trying to cook these. The Wikipedia entry made us think it would be pretty hard. Anybody know how to cook bitter melons?)

I forget the name of the giant thing, but I recognize those tiny bananas as good friends from way back.

My favorite were the okra (universally awesome when fried), and the wing beans. They taste just like green beans, but have all this extra lacy texture. Mmm.

This weekend, Mouse:

1. Took stuff out of the garden: spurge, grass, weeds, weird viney ground-cover with purple flowers that looks pretty but chokes everything else out, broken glass, bottle caps, typewriter cartridge, cigarette packet, dead leaves.

2. Found stuff in the garden: violets (maybe viola, technically), previously undiscovered azalea bush, possible day lilies.

3. Put stuff in the garden: salvia, columbines, lupines, marigolds, dahlias, zinnias, money plants, poppies.

4. Mulched and watered stuff in the garden.

5. Started seeds on her porch, some of them in fiber-pots.*

6. Planted three kinds of tomatoes and some serrano peppers in big big containers, in spite of what happened last year.**

7. Realized that her landlady might tear up some of the flower seed to put in a new tree, but decided, after deliberation, that this would beat looking at the dead magnolia tree for another year.

* I still don't understand this whole fiber-pot thing.

** Last year, the tomatoes were decimated by ants who made a hill in their roots, squirrels who stole all their fruit, and whiteflies that killed them. But this summer I won't be out of town nearly as much, so I BELIEVE in tomatoes. Plus we're getting chicken wire.