guest post! anything once: dressing up like a gorilla to run through the streets of denver

Today's guest post comes from Miss Kim, one of my sister's BFFs, and now a friend of mine! We share a similar sense of humor, love of bad reality TV The Bachelor, and she let me borrow her sister's dress for my sister's wedding (clearly that equals lifelong friendship). She was mostly inspired by this very random activity, but in part she wanted to help me achieve my goals. So she's a friend and an enabler. Miss Kim, you're the BEST. Take it away!

See if you can follow this story.

I have this friend Hannah…

Who is married to a handsome man named Nick…

One of Nick’s cousins passed away a year and a half ago…

Nick’s cousin loved gorillas…

For the second year, Nick’s family has run this race in Denver called The Gorilla Run in memory of his cousin…

Nick is currently living in Washington DC for an internship…

Nick had planned on coming home for said race but did not…

Hannah needed someone to take Nick’s place…

Enter me.

When my friend Hannah asked me if I wanted to participate, I wasn’t too sure.  I had heard about the Gorilla Run before, and I knew you had to run the entire race wearing a gorilla suit.  I mean, I like to run, but I wasn’t sure about the whole gorilla thing.  Turns out, it was way fun.  Who knew dressing up in a gorilla suit with 1,300 other people could be so entertaining?  (Also, in all honesty, we didn’t run. We walked. And despite the fact that it was cold that morning, it got hot in those gorilla suits! I admire the folks who did run.)

Here's me pre-race, channeling my inner gorilla. It's hard to tell, but I'm wearing the suit sans head.

Here we are in full on gorilla suits.  You can’t even tell we’re people can you? Can you?

We didn’t want to get too intense, so we took some human photos, too.

Here’s all the gorillas ready to run the race. You may be asking yourself what they’re chasing.

Oh that’s right, there are others dressed as bananas (dogs, small children, adults on bicycles… the possibilities were endless).  

Oh yeah, and no one just dresses like gorillas.  They wear costumes over their costumes.  

It was so sweet to take part in an event that was so special to Hannah and Nick’s family.  I did my best to channel my inner Nick, but I could never replace him.

And in case you’re wondering, the Gorilla Run is a fundraiser for The Mountain Gorilla Conservation Fund.  You can read more about it here. 

All in all, this is a first I’d be willing to repeat.

Guest Post - anything once: selling crafty wares at the swap meet

This guest post comes from my mother, who I will prattle on about on Sunday. 

I have always had a distinct propensity toward being a very crafty person. This is apparently a fruit that has been shaken from my family tree: my mother always had a “project in the works,” and my grandmother’s fingers pretty knit, crocheted, and tatted (yes, it IS a lost art) until her fingers wouldn’t work any longer. But underneath all the saved toilet paper rolls, pipe cleaners and pretty scraps of yarn, I have always wanted to sell my wares at “ye old craft faire.” Okay, there really isn’t a local “craft faire” here in California, but “ye old swap meet” just doesn’t quite have the crafting ring to it.

A couple of weeks ago, I mentioned to my mother, “Mother’s Day is coming up in two weeks and I would love to sell craft stuff at the swap meet,” and she quickly responded, “Let’s do it!” I ventured down on a weekend to the swap meet to make our $40.00 reservation. I was rewarded with a permit for a 10ft x 10ft stall that we could turn into an adorable Mother’s Day crafting oasis.

We proceeded to think of the swap meet as our personal crafting quest, crafting like CRAZY for those two weeks.  My mom made charming coin purses and she even made a “ring-keeper,” a latex glove stuffed with quilt batting and a ribbon with lace around the end of it. She made one as a test product and brought the “ingredients” with us to make more if they actually sold. I created a whole bouquet of BIC pens from the 99-cent store (10 pens for a dollar? Do you see profit in my future?), wrapped them with yarn and put a button on the end – soft, cute, funky, who wouldn’t have to have one of these for their beloved mother? I folded endless origami bookmarks and put together sweet gift bags of matches and smelly candles. We had such a precious array of inexpensive items starting at 50 cents and topping out at $3.00. We were sure to make billions of dollars.

The morning of our adventure, I picked up my mom and discovered we had both gotten up early almost as excited as any kid on Christmas morning. We came back to our house and my husband, Timmy, helped us pack up the pick-up, and we headed out to the swap meet. We had no idea what to expect, but we were in this together and regardless of the two week prep period we felt confident that all who saw our booth would feel sufficiently reminded or guilted into remembering their mom with the purchase of an item from this sweet little booth.

This single space booth, no matter how charming, was dwarfed against the backdrop of double-wide spaces exhibiting tool vendors, second-hand paraphernalia and knock-off name brand handbags and apparel. We felt tiny, mostly invisible, yet satisfied since we were not making a living from this. Every once in a while someone would come by and comment – “what a great idea” or “how adorable” – as they touched our handy crafts, smiled and possibly bought a little item. But most walked away. Parades of people came and went in a human wave as we pondered what we learned from this crafting excursion:

1.     Know your customers. If we had perused the event prior to being a participant, we might have noticed that there were NO other “crafters” in any of the aisles. (hmmm, good to know…)

2.     If possible, try not to be sandwiched between a booth that hides you completely and a booth that people will walk through YOURS to get to. (We got asked about prices for the merchandise next door many times throughout the day. If we’d been on commission it would have been great!)

3.     Attitude, attitude, attitude. Why were we there? To make money? Or to enjoy the lovely weather, people watch and maybe do something we’ve always wanted to do, with someone we love doing things with, for adventure?

Since we followed point three on this list and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves, I would deem this “anything once” as a success so, we told each other to…

"Give yourself a hand!"

(Yes, those jokes were going ALL day and were an endless source of amusement.)

Guest Post: In the Garden with Nathan, Part Four

View Parts One, Two, and Three. Or just start with Four...it's not like there's a story line here or anything. Part Four might be my favorite plant that Nathan's told me about:


Nathan: This is a portion of my Nepenthes collection. They are also commonly called tropical pitcher plants and I believe all the ones in this photo are from the island of Borneo. I've got these guys hanging out in the skylight above our breakfast nook. They seem to like it up there and have doubled in size in just the past couple of months. I think they might have been a little too immature when I bought them so it took them a while to get accustomed to their perch and get established.

These guys are really cool. Bugs are enticed into their pitchers by the sweet juices inside of them and then they cant get out because of the slick walls inside. The juices slowly dissolve the bug and that is how the plant gets its nutrients. For fun I catch moths and drop them in. I'm a little sadistic like that.


Me: I just read this and said "WHOAAAA!" out loud at the bug part. That's amazing! How many other plant species eat bugs? I previously only really knew about the Venus flytrap. And that's because of Little Shop of Horrors. (See, you know things about plants, I know things about movies. But sometimes my movie knowledge lends itself to regular knowledge!)

Nathan: Haha! You had the same reaction that the neighborhood kids had. :)

The other plants(I'll use common names) that are carnivorous are:

Cobra plants

American pitcher plants

Sundews

and Butterworts
There many be one or two others, but I cant remember and they are definitely not common.

I bought my co-worker a venus fly trap. It sits on his desk. We named it Norm.

I also have a sundew. Annie and I feed it spiders. When a spider lands on its sticky paddle arm, the arm wraps around it and slowly sucks the life out of it. SO COOL!

One last interesting fact, some Nepenthes pitchers are so large, scientists have found drowned mice and rats in them that it was feeding on.  Crazy.

Guest Post: In the Garden with Nathan, Part Three

Here are Parts One and Two!


So instead of a single plant photo, today I thought I would send you a plant combo that I really like. The leafy plants in the front are Melianthus major and the small trees that are just coming out of dormancy in the rear are Manihot esculenta, aka Cassava. The Melianthus will grow to form a nice tropical looking hedge between our neighbor and the Manihot will grow a little taller adding a different texture and height. I really like both of these plants and have them all over, but together I like them even more. My large Melianthus by the sidewalk has become impregnated so I am looking forward to collecting lots of seed from it.  The Manihots were similarily free in that the mother tree that I bought several years ago seeded and I found little babies all over the front yard, so I dug them all up, pampered them through the winter to give them a robust head-start and am now planting them in the ground. Pretty fun stuff.

This is one of my succulent propagation areas on the back deck. It's more shaded back here which allows the soil to stay moister and the cuttings to put out roots easier. I'll usually keep those cuttings back here for a couple of months so that they can get a robust root system going and then move them out into a sunnier place so that they can really start growing. I did up these cuttings last weekend. They should be overfilling their pots by mid summer. I'll start some more seeds on some other plants next weekend and place them next to these guys.

Guest Post: In the Garden with Nathan, Part Two

In case you missed Part One, you can find it here. On to Part Two, which is a bird edition!

Nathan: This photo's a few weeks old. There are now two eggs. I just forgot to take a better photo when I raced out of the house today. This thing that I love about my garden is that other animals have found it a place of comfort and refuge. I get a lot of comfort from my garden and it's nice to see that for other things. It was a pair of doves that nested in this front hanging pot and another pair nested in a hanging pot in the back. Those are bromeliads in the pot (which will be a future email). With the massive walnut trees on our property we get a lot of birds. I love watching and listening to them all when I can get a chance. The hummingbirds, though ubiquitous, are my favorite. Do you get many hummingbirds around your apartment? When I lived in WA, we'd see them from time to time and I would say that they were fairly common, but at our house I think I see multiple hummingbirds nearly every time I go out in the garden.


Me: Awww...precious little eggs. Do you see the doves around often? I don't see a lot of birds around here at all. Our apartment complex is rather noisy - groundskeepers every Monday blasting unnecessary leaf blowers, oodles of lawn mowers, etc. I don't really want to live here as a human, so it's not surprising that we don't see a lot of birds. I do see Canadian Geese at school a lot. Sometimes they waddle across the street in front of me. If I'm in a hurry, I like to yell that the freaking Canadians are holding me up, but I secretly love them.


Nathan: Yeah, I used to see the doves every time I walked through the front or back door. I think that they've abandoned their nest though because I didn't see them in it all weekend. They were just hanging out on our
neighbors front lawn. Jerks. Just last Thursday, a pair of Canadian geese that roam the parking lots of my office had little babies. Their were four little fluffballs. They were too young to know that they are supposed to follow mama in a line. They kept bumping into each other and flopping over. It was entertaining. 

Guest Post: In the Garden with Nathan, Part One

You may remember Nathan from his birthday last year. Well, Nathan and I were trying to find a time to skype so I could get a tour of his garden a few weeks ago. With the time difference, that proved significantly more difficult than you'd expect, so he started sending me emails with pictures attached, and I've been learning a ton about his garden. Nathan's passion for plants is pretty infectious. It's also rather impressive to me, since I once killed a cactus. ("About a month ago, I got a cactus, and a week later, it died. I got really depressed because I was like, damn, I am less nurturing than a desert." - Demetri Martin) Anyway, Nathan said I could share his garden with you, so get excited.


On to the post!


Exhibit 1: Salamanders! I find these cute little guys all around the property, usually under mounds of leaves. It always amazes me how this amphibian that likes cool/moist environs can survive through our scorching hot, dry summers.

Now another reason I love spending time in my garden:
Echevarias.
These plants are just so dang cute. I think they look like rose flowers laying on the ground. They are not particularly cold hardy, so I never saw these until moving to CA, but my garden stays just warm enough in the winter that I can grow these anywhere in the garden and  not worry about them dying from cold. Then beginning in Spring, they send up the most unique and colorful flower stalks. I love placing these near walkways and in pots around seating areas because I've found that people always stop to admire them.

The ones in the foreground are Echevaria elegans and the ones in the back are Echevaria imbricata.


Another thing that I really like about my garden are my bananas. This guy is an Ensete ventricosum 'maurelii.' They're not looking their best right now (this picture is from about a year ago) because they lose all their leaves when it frosts, so they are just coming out of dormancy. My bananas are a little more high maintenance than most of my other plants, but I totally think that they are worth it for the massive, tropical leaves. So hott! Maybe I'll buy a few more of these this year. They have far exceeded my expectations. I'm only sharing the photo of this guy because the rest of my 'banana grove' has not yet come out of dormancy so it just looks like a bunch of sticks in the ground. They have some of these guys at the Santa Barbara zoo near where the island fox is at.

This concludes part one of the Matson Garden tour. Stay tuned for bird's eggs, impregnated Melianthus, and Bromeliads - oh my!

Guest Post: Practical Tips on Long Distance Friendship-ing

Howdy, Lobsters. We're back again with a follow up guest post from my dear long distance friend, Libby. For her first post, click here. These are such great, practical tips. I hope you'll contribute some of your own as well!

Hello! Libby here again. So great to be back on Long Distance Lobsters to chat with you. We’re back with the second half of a mini-series about long distance friendships! Last time I posed some questions about why we form certain long distance friendships and why these are important. Good theoretical questions, but I am ALL about the practical, so today I want us to look at some tips for growing those friendships across the miles—and I’d love to hear your ideas, too!

One of the best things I’ve found to do is to keep a list of key things that are going on in my friends’ lives. Can anyone relate to the scatterbrained feeling? I might get off the phone from a great conversation only to jump into something around the house and realize the next day that I’ve forgotten just what it was that my friend was sharing. I absolutely cringe if that happens because it means I can’t follow up very well the next time we chat and it means I can’t pray too effectively for them either. I’ve found that jotting a few key things down after that phone call can really help to keep those details in the forefront of my mind. I know it always feels great to hear from a friend a month later and realize that they remember exactly what we had talked about before.

Another great thing that can help others feel connected to you is to start a blog like this one! Your personality, interests, joys, and concerns can all come through so well on a blog. It is not nearly as relational as a phone call, email, or visit, but it does a great job of filling in the gaps and helping people far away know the ups and downs in your life. One of my favorite things to do in my spare time is to flip through my friends’ blogs who I no longer live near and get to see life through their eyes again.

I have a few people that I love to email back and forth with as well. I have heard recently that many people think that email is becoming obsolete. No way! I love a good email! I hope it sticks around, because I have way more to say most days than I can fit into a tiny text message or facebook comment. Email is a great way to really share some deeper things with good friends, to get into the details, and also to keep a written memory of shared thoughts and questions you’ve had. Now that I have a busy 15 month old who sleeps less than most kiddos her age, phone calls are hard to come by. It is easier many times to write a long email bit by bit as I have time than  to block off that prized hour of phone time I really want with a friend. And it gives my friend flexibility on the reply end as well.

Pictures, pictures, pictures! I am terrible about staying on top of this one, but when I see updated pictures of where friends have traveled, a new haircut, what their kids look like now, it helps me to feel like I am passing time with them somehow and not always seeing them in the past. So take those pictures and get them uploaded in a place where friends can see them! For some that is on Facebook, others it is through programs like Flicker, Shutterfly, or Picassa. Find out what is easiest for you to use and go at it!

Finally, I think that praying for our friends we miss is a great way to stay connected as well. I am so thankful for the reality that those of us who are saved by grace through faith are looking forward to an eternity in Heaven with our brothers and sisters in Christ. For Christian friends, there is never a goodbye. It is always an “I’ll see you later.” And praying for each other helps us to continue that relationship on earth that we will have in Heaven one day, all pointed toward the Lord together. For friends we love who don’t call Jesus their Savior and Lord, it can be our heart’s desire to pray for opportunities for them to encounter the Lord and come to faith. It can also be a platform that spurs us on to continue remaining active in their lives even when we see sinful choices being made.

Those are my top ways to continue friendships with my loved ones far away. How about you? Anything I missed that has helped you??

Guest Blogging

What's another way you can cultivate long distance friendships? Guest post on one another's blogs!

My first guest blogging experience was posted today. I got to write for one of my favorite blogs, thanks to my old friend and Spring Break In the City co-conspirator, Becca Eliasen.

Check out the post here: Confessions of a . . .

You should browse her blog, its adorable and encouraging. Then you should comment on both of our blogs begging her to guest blog for us too. Wouldn't that be great? Yes, it would. Come on Lobsters, together, we can make this happen! ;)