Ten Thing Thursday: Fruits and Vegetables Edition

1.  I have to buy some gifts shortly.  SPOILER ALERT: These are my latest go to items. Because I want them myself.

Alphabet pillows from Elsie Dodds (via Creature Comforts)

Funky foodie baby clothes and dishtowels from my friend Jenny’s Etsy shop, The Plain Chachalaca:

The Obscure Vegetable Series:

2. Speaking of vegetables, I saved this for some reason. Some people have a lot of time on their hands.

3. The Best Waterfalls Around the World. These photos are amazing, and the whole blog I saw them on is pretty awesome.

Now I really want to go to Croatia so I can float on my back in this lake:

Plitvice Lakes National Park in Croatia was one of the handful of pre-planned stops on my RTW trip; the Park's series of cascading lakes are formed from a series of underground karst rivers, with 16 visible lakes on the surface, all connected by boardwalks and boats. It's a UNESCO site (I collect these) and on the beauty-scale, it rates high! It takes an entire day to wander through the miles of carefully constructed paths at Plitvice Lakes, so pack lunch!

4. My Self-Esteem is Not Low Enough to Date You via Chicksgonebad

5.  Joke of the week

How many hipsters does it take to screw in a lightbulb?

Oh, you’ve probably never heard of the number; it’s really obscure.

6. Crazy article about Jon Stewart and his place on the political spectrum. I love him anyway, but there’s some food for thought here.

O-kay. Well, Stewart had his reasons, I’m sure. After all, he’s really not the same as Wallace, is he? I mean, Stewart’s the coolest guy in the room, any room, by definition, while Chris Wallace wouldn’t look cool next to the guys in hats riding little cars at a Shriner’s Convention. He’s the very embodiment of the self-important yet dim-witted — or is that dim-witted yet self-important? — media creature whom Stewart has made a living schooling over the last tumultuous decade. So if Jon Stewart can’t be smug and contemptuous and superior with Chris Wallace, who can he be smug and contemptuous and superior with? It’s not like he came right out and said he’s better than Chris Wallace…

Oh. Wait. He sorta did?

7. The Most Outstanding Comments Ever Left on a Facebook Photo  Close your office door.  It’s that funny.

8. This is one of the lions that almost killed me in Africa when our car broke down. I owe you that story.

9. Did you know I have a poetry Tumblr? Not MY poetry, heaven forbid, but poems I like.

10. This is my favorite fall poem, and my favorite Frost poem, and one of the best poems ever written, I think.

After Apple Picking

My long two-pointed ladder’s sticking through a tree
Toward heaven still,
And there’s a barrel that I didn’t fill
Beside it, and there may be two or three
Apples I didn’t pick upon some bough.
But I am done with apple-picking now.
Essence of winter sleep is on the night,
The scent of apples: I am drowsing off.
I cannot rub the strangeness from my sight
I got from looking through a pane of glass
I skimmed this morning from the drinking trough
And held against the world of hoary grass.
It melted, and I let it fall and break.
But I was well
Upon my way to sleep before it fell,
And I could tell
What form my dreaming was about to take.
Magnified apples appear and disappear,
Stem end and blossom end,
And every fleck of russet showing clear.
My instep arch not only keeps the ache,
It keeps the pressure of a ladder-round.
I feel the ladder sway as the boughs bend.

And I keep hearing from the cellar bin
The rumbling sound
Of load on load of apples coming in.
For I have had too much
Of apple-picking: I am overtired
Of the great harvest I myself desired.
There were ten thousand thousand fruit to touch,
Cherish in hand, lift down, and not let fall.
For all
That struck the earth,
No matter if not bruised or spiked with stubble,
Went surely to the cider-apple heap
As of no worth.
One can see what will trouble
This sleep of mine, whatever sleep it is.
Were he not gone,
The woodchuck could say whether it’s like his
Long sleep, as I describe its coming on,
Or just some human sleep