Glutter

Just a grrl

It's been a year since I relocated to LA. It's taken a year to get into my stride and be used to the vast hugeness of Los Angeles and able to take advantage of all this place has to offer. I am still working on my cactus garden although I had to take a lot of my plants out of the ground and replant them into small pots, as raccoons seem to enjoy chewing up the more expensive (always) and exotic plants. I am starting to get used to the land more and realized that they are too small to look good in the garden.

And my off shoot project of going to a pottery studio to make some pots for my plants has grown into a full blown passion onto itself, and I started creating a style of hand building sculpture that is inspired by the South Western Landscape of rocks and canyons and the study of bones I did about six months ago. I also started collecting pieces of pottery both from my teacher and other artists. Mostly I am getting kitchen wear as the artistic space in the house is taken up by my own work.

With that I am also baking, I learned to make bread, apple pies, blue berry pies, quiche, roast a chicken, Yorkshire pudding and all sorts of daily dishes that I had not thought of before such as apricots and carrots. I challenged myself with making a ginger bread house with little ginger bread people all decorated with icing, which was a success. I resurrected old childhood favorites of scones, shortbread, chocolate chip cookies, plus added to my repertoire old family recipes such as cauliflower and cheese. I made my first full blown Christmas meal all by myself, with my mum's recipes with twists of my own. Yummi Stuffing with walnuts and Apple. Pieter got my a super duper food processor for Christmas which I am happy to put to use.

And for Christmas I got my first REAL Christmas tree, my aunts from Hong Kong decorated it all, and bought us the cutest one and half feet penguins with lights in them. We had candy cane lights in the living room windows and an explosion of tinsel. I can't wait to go to China Town and get some Chinese New Year decorations as that's coming up.

Then there is the dancing. This winter I started taking modern dance class in a local community college, plus a history of dance class which includes labs. I have tried my hand at sufi dancing, a little bit of choreography, and studied the Graham method. I love rolling around the floor and dancing across the vast studio in triplets. I love dancing, and with the far more democratic American style of teaching, a non competitive environment, I am excelling at something I loved but was never particularly good at before. I love the fact the teachers point out different moves and who they are created by. I love understanding the moves in the historical context instead of blindly following. I am going to take some free workshops of the Durham Method, a famed African American Choreographer who was also an anthropologist of dance. I can't wait. There will be African drummers, and afterwards we get to watch famous dancers and choreographers at work. Next semester I am hoping to pick up tap dancing again, which I have not done since I was a girl. The most incredible part of all this is I am doing it at junior college, and phys ed classes are only one credit. The cost per class that is twice a week that last 16 weeks? A mere $20. Incredible.

As if that's not enough to fill one's day. I have some small mosaic projects planned, and read a lot of butterfly gardening, and native plants. I recently planted a package of butterfly mix of native wild flowers and hope due to the rain they will come up soon ready for the Spring Bloom.

There are concerts: Neil Young and BB King -the symphony. There are cactus shows. I joined the Natural History Museum so I can return without admission for a year. We joined the Autry Museum. Soon when my papers are ready I want to volunteer at Moca. There are so many art museums and galleries in LA that I realized there is no going to all of them, especially in the weekends when we would like to go hiking or drives up the mountains. It's taken me a year to just walk up and down the beautiful hill I live on.

I still keep planing to go whale watching again. This Christmas during our mini off road adventure, we saw elk, a huge herd of them. We saw a bob cat in the wild. We spent a lot of time with Inyo petroglyphs, a scale of engraving I have never experienced or imagined. I hiked in the snow, and made a snowman. We saw some Bristle Cone Pine the oldest living organism in the world, up to five thousand years old, and the oldest specimen is kept secret. We got stuck in some silt and had to be towed out. For New Year's Eve we ended up in a local bar in Bishop of Sierra Nevada and listened the thrash metal, and kissed on midnight.

We plan to go see Joshua Tree National Forest because I love the cactus there. There are free movie screenings, disneyland, universal studios, still have not gone to San Diego to the Zoo or safari. There is the Los Angeles Metro Art Tour I want to go on as I catch the train a lot. I have been enjoying using the LA public transport system as I don't like driving every day. I hate the hassle of traffic, and since Pieter can pick me up once I get back to the surrounding area, I like that I can go anywhere during the day and not worry about parking, and getting in and out of the car. There is always some "adventure" of course, because this is still dirty, rough, and strange LA. Like yesterday I had to call 911 because a passerby fell down a big flight of stairs and hurt his head and arms bleeding all over himself and the sidewalk. This being overkill America, they sent at least eight men, one ambulance and a full blown fire truck to take him to the hospital and the men were so rude. Barking orders at us and barking questions at a man with concussion.

There is more I have done, and more I want to do. And the one thing that has fallen on the wayside is writing. I would like to pick that up again a little bit this year. I would like to take a drawing class as well, and when everything is settled take more upper division law classes at UCLA extension. In March I start the LSAT process for the June Exam. I pulled up my camera again so I can record everything.

Talk soon. xoxo