Today another sample of Starbucks Via instant coffee came with the newspaper. I like the samples, and I think the coffee is good. But this is not an item that I will ever buy. It is just too expensive for what it is.

I’m lazy so I’m not going to do a full cost-benefit analysis of Starbucks Via instant coffee the way I did for my Liberal Arts degree or Master of Fine Arts but:

3 cups of Starbucks Via costs $3.
Or, if I buy Safeway brand instant crystals, 100 cups costs $3.

Or to change this up, 9 cups of Starbucks Via costs $9.
But if I buy a half pound of Starbucks coffee beans, that also costs $9 but I can make about 60 cups of coffee.

So that means I pay about 7 times as much money for Starbucks Via as I would for normal Starbucks beans. That makes no sense to me.

Setting: The situp mat

Old guy: I need to stop at the stationery store and pick up some nice paper for when I fax the resume.

Young hunky guy: I’m not sure it makes a difference- it’s a fax.

Old guy: Every little bit helps in this economy.

Young hunky guy: But it’s a fax. They can’t see what kind of paper it’s on.

Old guy: It would be a little better on nice paper. I knew a guy who got laid off from this high powered job on the city council. Made buckets of money. Buckets. And now he can’t even get a job as a bouncer at a strip club!

Young hunky guy: Well, I’m not sure those jobs require the same skill set.

Old guy: He applied at a strip club and they told him he wasn’t qualified! Times are really tough.

Young hunky guy: I mean maybe he was short. You don’t see too many short guys as bouncers.

(etc)

I’m sure we’ve all heard about the art heist from the Paris Museum of Modern Art and a French cultural official who beseeched the thieves to return it, claiming nobody would buy it on the black market. “What would you do with $120 million in stolen art?” He asked (or something like that).

Here’s what I’d do with it.

The Braque and the Modigliani I’d put over the couch. But I really think the frames should be gold.

The Matisse I’d put on the wall in the “entry nook” and the Picasso over the piano.

A Leger was also stolen, but Leger is not my favorite, so I would take that one and sell it. Then I could afford to wear fur coats and ride around in a Bentley. Anyway, my point is a painting is something you put on the wall and enjoy, regardless of its value.

And FBI, Interpol, or whoever- please don’t send a SWAT team to my house, these pictures are totally faked in Photoshop. I did not steal the art!

I got these flowers from the maintenance men.

Our neighbors across the street have (well, had) these huge, beautiful bushes in front of their house. I want to call them butterfly bushes but I’m not sure that is right. They are kind of like giant marigolds as high as your head and the flowers are a mass of tiny round multicolored petals in orange and red and yellow. With the sun full on it, the bush blazed like a pile of jewels. Almost every single day I saw a random stranger pass by and stop and admire the flowers, exclaim about them to their friends, take pictures on their phones, touch them, smell them (they had no fragrance.) Anyway, it was an amazing sight.

But yesterday the yard workers showed up with their weed whackers and hedge clippers and mutilated the poor bush as well as the hot pink bougainvillea next to it. Chop chop! And the glory of the bush was no more.

So I rushed out and collected these flowers off the ground before they could sweep them all away.

“I like flowers,” I panted to the maintenance man because that was all the Spanish I could remember in the heat of the moment.

Here he is in action:

Sometimes we like to take pictures with buckets.

That one is at Michael’s. I am wearing my Forks High School Spartans T-shirt. It is one of my favorite shirts. I got it in Las Vegas.

This is a French bucket, from the French Bistro near the house. Actually, it is not nearby at all. It takes like an hour to walk there. They have, in addition to tiny tabletop buckets, french fries in duck fat which sound gross but are very good, and instead of paintings, they have empty frames on the walls, which is just awful. The restaurant is called The Burned Goat or something like that. Also, coincidentally, I am pretty sure they got this bucket at Michael’s.

Above is the iconic Lolrus image.

I like literal titles for blog posts. Have you noticed?

I’ve been working on my urban garden.

Here is a view towards Park Blvd of my wealth of geraniums and petunias and whatnot.

I will be filling in the gaps with alternating colors. Probably pink.

I found the poinsettia in the trash in the alley. That probably sounds nasty, and I guess it is. But the poinsettia was at the TOP of the trash, so I wasn’t worried about cooties or whatever. And it would just DIE in the landfill, whereas, in my urban garden, it will THRIVE.

Moving on, here are my paintbrushes. I was working on a seascape.

This is what I sent for Mother’s day.

Reusable bag from independent bookstore? Check.
Organic, aphid-infested plants? Check.
Wooden spoon? Check.
Bottle of tonic water? Check.

After I planted the catnip seeds WEEKS HENCE*, I decided to turn the giant planter thing in front of the building into a BOWER OF EDENIC SPLENDOUR. So the other morning AS EOS DANCED THROUGH THE SKY KICKING UP HER FLAMING SKIRTS OF GOLD, when I ventured out to the local grocery store- which happens to be a natural foods store- I picked up these tragic rejects of plants for free. Well, basically for free. They either didn’t charge me for the plants or for the dry, hard, gluten-free muffin. No, I’m just kidding. I’m pretty sure the muffin had gluten.

Of course, living as we do in a tiny apartment, we do not have what you might term gardening tools. Thus the wooden spoon and bottle of tonic water, which I refilled with normal water after I rescued it from the recycling bin in order to SPRINKLE THE EARLY DEW upon my plant charges.

Also, do not despair regarding the aphid infestation. I, too, suffered the PERILS OF THE DAMNED when I saw the insects, but I had anticipated this. Organic bed plants are always infested, so I bought marigolds as well, which attract some kind of special fly that feasts on aphids, and they are already all gone.

* Please recall, Gentle Reader, that all caps should be read, not as shouting, but in an English Accent. CHEERIO.

On my way home from the Dentist I got my first tube of Gamblin’s Torrit Grey paint. Gamblin hosts an art competition for artists using Torrit Grey every August and I look forward to finally entering. The paint is free and it is made of the leftover pigments that get caught in the air filtration system at the factory. I got my tube from our neighborhood art store called I think Sixth Avenue Art and Craftsman Supplies.

Torrit Grey is probably the second coolest name for a tube of paint. I think the coolest name is Krappalack Dunkel- aka Alizarin Crimson.

Also, here is my new painting apron. The old one, which was made by my grandmother and said “I’m a Hot Tomato,” disappeared in the move.

I was walking in the morning. Sunshine, palm trees, Craftsman homes. I had on a visor since I am ever vigilant about skin cancer. Some hoodlum on his way to school tore this hibiscus off a bush in someone’s yard and then hurled it to the sidewalk like thunderbolts from Olympus. So I took it home and painted it.

Today was a momentous day in our lives since the washer- which has been broken SINCE TIME IMMEMORIAL (about 2 weeks) has been replaced.

When I trotted downstairs to the laundry room to discover this happy fact, I also discovered Laundry D-Bag Neighbor. This is a neighbor I only ever meet when he is monopolizing the laundry room amid a CHORUS OF LIES.

Sometimes I see him naked in his window as well. Not a pretty sight as he is large and lumpy in the manner of a saggy old couch whose cushions have settled into an odd and unpleasing new shape.

His CHORUS OF LIES is when he says- and he says this every time, “Oh, I’ll be done in a minute.” And I say, “Sweet!” I head back upstairs to get my laundry bag and soap and $20 million in quarters. Then I trudge back to the laundry room weighted down by all these items- down two flights of stairs, up the sidewalk, around the corner and up another sidewalk beneath drooping lime trees THE COLOR OF SADNESS. I arrive at the laundry room which is locked so I sort through my six pounds of keys, finally wrestle the door open and find he has put ANOTHER LOAD IN THE WASH and it will be THIRTY SIX MORE MINUTES and I shout and kick things- in fact this kicking might be what killed the old washer- and call curses down onto his head. Then I lug it all back up the stairs and accept that the house will smell like a locker room for AT LEAST ONE MORE DAY. THAT IS ALL.