Fun in New Bern

At midnight last night Mom decided it was a good time to open her new box of 72 colored pencils. Then we decided together it was a good time to take pictures and play with the setting on my camera. Mom and I share a fascination with nice pens and colored pencils.


There was a massive amount of fruit here at my aunt's in New Bern when I arrived this past Thursday morning. They had already given some away to people in the neighborhood and Mom and I brought a bunch to a shelter, but there was still too much. We found a banana bread recipe in a vegan cookbook and I volunteered to make it. Aunt S thoughtfully set out on a tray all of the ingredients and tools I would need the next morning....


...on a folding table in the shower! There is not a lot of space in an RV and we are a creative family. For the record, I had to sit on the toilet to take this picture.


Mom and I headed into town for some more sight seeing. We saw this beautiful church and some graves on the property. I promise, we did not go looking for grave sites, but once we had found them, I couldn't help but take some pictures...







Mom is a good subject. When I asked her to sit on this bench and look casual, she did not even hesitate. She also did not say anything about the fact that her youngest child was crouched in the middle of the street taking pictures.



We passed a barrel of flowers on the sidewalk and Mom said they were petunias. I got excited and told her that I know someone who calls every flower a petunia. I thought it would be a great idea to take pictures of actual petunias so this person could learn. After I'd taken one picture Mom says, "Oh wait, those aren't petunias, they are pansies." Whatever. They are pretty and I kept taking pictures. And now we know - this is not a petunia.


House in New Bern.


This is a seed pod from my new best friend, the crape myrtle.


This is the thingie that holds the seed pod onto the tree, my new best friend, the crape myrtle.


The walk back to the car.

I Love Vacation

Today was great. We started off by doing that thing that families do -spending quality time together. Making memories. Being happy. Telling stories. And, in my family, taking pictures of everything funny or beautiful that we see.

Then Mom and I ran some errands which included a lot of stopping the car and walking around and taking pictures of beautiful and interesting things we saw around New Bern. The story follows:


This was my Day After Christmas present from Aunt S. Mom the vegetarian can't eat it, so she misses out. I got it! Ji-Soo homie, you and me are all over this when I get back to Brooklyn, ok? I have recently been really fascinated with packaging and am in love with this blue and red and yellow.



This is what it looks like when you unwrap a block of Nestle Abuelita's chocolate for making hot coco. I took a quarter of this and melted it with half a cup of soy milk and half a cup of 2% milk and a half a cup of sugar. Mom and Aunt S and I all thought this picture made the chocolate look like a chocolate cake. I love that I think like my mom and aunt. This block is about the size of a hockey puck.


As we were sitting around this morning we heard a thump and saw something fall in the front of the RV. Turns out we had a suicidal banana. It "unzipped" itself, to use Mom's word, and threw itself on the seat below.




Here is the scene of the crime. We had a good laugh over this. We took pictures. I picked up the unzipped banana and put it on the table and went back to doing the dishes. Two minutes later we heard it again.




I guess misery loves company. This banana had unzipped itself also and thrown itself off the hook and towards its friend. This one missed the chair and landed on the floor next to the heat vent.



I went back to melting Abuelita's chocolate with milk but had to stop immediately because it looked so cool I had to take a picture. Why does it look so cool?


Abuelita's chocolate turned into buelit chocolate.





Then Mom and I went driving to do some errands and found ourselves on a road we didn't need to be on. We pulled over to turn around but really just stopped and I got out and took pictures of this building, because I fell in love with it.


And I also fell in love with this one.


And this one. Mom says, "Imagine the conversations that have happened on that porch."


After we had dropped off the pounds of extra fruit at the shelter, we stopped at the cemetery. I was in love with these crape myrtle trees (don't get too impressed, I only know what they are called and how to spell it because Aunt S told me). The wood is smooth and polished and looks like muscle.


New Bern Cemetery.


Spanish moss on crape myrtle.


And now begins the onslaught of gravestone pictures. They were beautiful. Mesmerizing. Mysterious. We only left the graveyard because Mom and I got cold. I also had to poop but I didn't tell Mom that.



















There are a lot more cemetery pictures that I would be happy to share if you are interested, but for now enough is enough. Next, we stopped next to some modern sculptures or herons made our of car parts, took some pictures of historical landmarks, including the childhood home of photographer Bayard Wootten and then we found this guy in front of the Sudan Shriner monument:

Christmas Day

Here are some images from my wonderful, warm and wet Christmas day in New Bern, NC. I wanted to post the picture of my mom with her head tilted back dropping a handful of pomegranate seeds into her mouth, but I decided not to.



These are peach tree leaves that Aunt S brought in for us.


This is the little dude that guards the campground. Thanks, faceless, genderless little dude, thanks.


Some ducks trying to act like it was actually cold out today. Not even.


Aunt S was in the shower and mom snuck these blue lights in and set them up. She asks me, "Do you think these with drive Aunt S crazy?"
"Um...they might drive me crazy." Which really just means that they are awesome and I love them. Aunt S calls them snorkeling lights and has decided to keep them. Mom says she got them for free and I ask how.
"Dumpster diving."
I scoot a little further away from the trash lights.

Non-image update:
I am out of pomegranates. I'm not sure what to do.

My Vacation As Seen By My Tummy

Here I am in Brooklyn eating curry soup:


Here is my favorite person ever attacking a "wit whiz" from Pat's in Philly:


Energetic french man making us volcanoes:


that looked like this:


Snow storm in Philly. You can see the fruit, cheese and bread tray reflected in the window:


This was my lunch at Saigon Grill in Manhattan with Megan:


Back in Brooklyn. Smoked horseradish cheddar cheese. So delicious. I think it looks like cheese cake.


Our desserts here in North Carolina: peppermint white chocolate covered Ritz peanut butter sandwich (I'm not even making that up) and peeled, roasted chestnuts from the Korean grocery store in NYC that my mom and aunt lovelovelove:


Pomegranates in a blue glass bowl (Raquel, where are you?):


Eating with my vegan mom: