In Arizona, You Can Give Your Love Away...

...or at least this is what Ed Masuga beautifully repeats at the end of "Arizona" on his self titled album. Along with holding a spot on my ever-growing list, "Relishes" (an assortment of easy summer finds), Mr. Masuga sports a fancy beard and uses hand drawn posters for concert announcements. I like this man. I'll try to hold him in my hand next to Chris Buhalis, Peter Prince, Charlie Sutton, and other men of folk.

This is one of the other fellows that I hold in my hand. Meet Baruch. This little guy and his brother, Petree, came to stay with me until they could feed themselves and flew the coop.

The interests of early June are many.

1. Things made of paper...

Whether we are wasting paper and time while making "aeroplanes", fortune tellers, birds, fish, stationery, and beads or not is certainly debatable. I debate that it isn't.

2. Broken ceramics...

I'm collecting broken cups, mugs, saucers, and other eatery that someone as clumsy as myself once held. I'm not exactly sure what I'm going to do with each one, but I've started on a new venture...I am now a professional collector of shards, insects, wasp nests, paper jibbles, books, lists, hand-written notes, pressed flowers, and mail. Oh boy.

3. Crane Flies...

and sweat bees are my insects of choice at present. Crane flies are sometimes called mosquito hawks. They do look like mosquitoes, blown up to about fifteen times their size. But, they do not, like most people think, eat them. They eat plant roots. Sweat bees are annoying at any rate. They are attracted to salty water, so a southerner working in the yard is rather unlucky. We have swarms in our Helleri bushes. At least they are available for catching.

4. Attache Cases...

shouldn't be something that siblings fuss over. Heath and I haven't reached this point, yet. But, every time I bring my black 80's number back up stairs, it disappears again. I haven't figured out just exactly why it keeps finding it's way to his room.

5. "I Spy" Cards...

come in happy meals and are highly amusing. I know this, because Kaitland got a set, which are actually a memory game, and because I have played game after game.

6. Overton Park's Levitt Shell...

is where it's at. Free Concerts four out of seven days a week. Check it out at http://www.levittshell.org/.

7. Passenger Seat Adventures...

are not to be reckoned with. They are epic. Always. They are either epically wonderful or epically aweful. People don't ever get out of the passenger seat after a trip and feel neutral. They are extremely something or extremely something else. All of my Passenger Seat Adventures of late have been extrememly lovely. Of this, I am grateful.

8. Embroidery...

used to make me very happy, and I want to get back into it. I guess this means that I collect napkins and handkerchiefs and other random textiles, too. The image conjured in my head of my future home is a mess of oddities. I like it. But it frightens me.