We went camping with Cooper and Jessica in the Sequoia National Park! There was SNOW and some mighty, mighty trees. We climbed this Moro Rock and it was way freaky. What actually happened was that Coop, Jessica, and I started up with Bruno (5) and Jack (7). Matt got stuck behind with Henny (3) who was having a little three year old meltdown about something-r-other. Halfway up I was having extreme panicky sensations as I watched my bouncy, fearless kids bounding up the stairs that wound around the rock, with nothing but a thin railing between them and a completely sheer cliff, nary a ledge or a scrap to hang on to, just a full on plunge 100 feet down. I decided to turn back and switch places with Matt. When I found him he had climbed up with Henny about a quarter of the way and was as pale and shaky as I've ever seen him. We had a simultaneous parent freak-out at the base of this set of (extremely well travelled, I'm sure hundreds of people go up each day!) stairs and were moaning and fretting and cursing ourselves for letting them go up with their (amazing) aunt and uncle who might not know that they are both liable to start fearlessly climbing anything and everything... cautionary signs and 100 foot drop or no. Needless to say everyone actually survived but it was comical that Matt and I, who are the opposite of anxious and over bearing, had our mutual helicopter parent moment. Probably because we both knew all too well that tempers can rise in a flash and a scuffle in an unbalanced moment could cause us to leave California with one less kid than we came with.
I got to visit Mary Beth, who runs ReDiscover Center, a creative reuse center in L.A! I met her at the Tinkering workshop I went to with Gever this winter. I think her place is really awesome and it was great to get to talk to her about her experiences getting (and keeping) it going, because we are still trying to start something like it here in Austin.
These paintings were by Cassandro Tondo, and were all made with paint"from the local Household Hazardous Waste Center and from the mistint shelves at home improvement stores, " in her words. 
I also got to visit Watts Tower... talk about creative reuse!! This guy spent 40 years building this insane structure out of bits and bobs, and no one really knows why. It's awesome and I'm so glad it still stands.
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ALRIGHT! ATTENTION! If you have made it this far, I must tell you something very, very important... I have an exciting giveaway coming up TOMORROW, this MONDAY, the 27th.... DON'T MISS IT! I feel a bit shy like I'm trying to act like such an official real-type bloggy-blog but this really is an awesome giveaway and you are going to LOVE it. With all your heart. Way down deep. For real!
I would just love to camp in these woods and visit the tower and amazing reuse center. Are they connected? I'll put it on the list. I live in australia.
ReplyDeleteP.S. Good luck with starting a reuse kind of centre. Where are you up to with it? I am interested for Sydney Australia. We have reverse Garbage where we buy craft supplies but nothing like this.
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