2011
If Memory Serves
If last weekend had a theme, it was Inappropriate Dress, and among the highlights were (1) flip-flops in a three-hour rainstorm, (2) jeans and knee socks and tennis shoes during a backyard brunch attended by many women in pretty sandals and sundresses, (3) defiantly refusing to wear a jacket at the cloudy, windy, cold park because it was Memorial Day Dammit, (4) going on a surprise hour-long walk in shoes that gave me blisters absolutely everywhere, and (5) taking off my jacket while gardening among unfamiliar shrubbery and then waking up this morning with some sort of bitey-poisony allergic rash up and down both forearms. In short, my performance did not earn MVP this weekend, although all together my family managed to pull off a team win, thoroughly enjoying its collective self, weather and mama’s stubbornness and leperous aftermath notwithstanding.
That said, I’m a bit preoccupied with the poisony-bitey rash right now, especially since I’m not sure whether it’s definitively bitey or poisony or a little bit of both. I’m leaning toward the former only because yesterday evening I felt what I thought was a bead of sweat trickling down my back, and when I reached around to wipe it away, I caught a small tan insect of indeterminate species (bad idea: describing a bug to Google and then clicking Images), and I caught him such that his face was peeking out between my thumb and forefinger and the first four of his legs were free and scrambling (waving hello?) in the brief moment before I crushed him in a panic. If I were a poet or a Saroyan-type storyteller, I would no doubt interpret this face-to-face wildlife encounter as fodder for a metaphysical meditation on the nature of the world and time and life and death and creation and existence, but today I’m just thinking too bad so sad, motherfucker, *scratch scratch scratch* and a better pre-revenge than squashing would have been its death by Calamine.
For the record, because I am a sensitive soul who enjoys at least reading metaphysical meditations on the world and time and life and death and creation and existence, I did experience a sharp pang of regret upon so thoughtlessly severing the thread of life of my creepy-crawly good-for-nothing stowaway, and this is what I’ll remember every time I temporarily lose functionality in my neocortex and think, “Hey! We should totally raise backyard chickens!” (I suppose an impaired neocortex might interfere with my ability to remember anything, but whatever. Just go with me on this.)
Our house came with a chicken coop, you see, and the four specimens we saw in our friends’ yard on Saturday were as fetching as e’re poultry has been, but then “Know thyself!” screams all past and present wisdom, and I do know for certain that if we were to acquire chickens I wouldn’t be able to resist giving each one name (first and middle) as well as regularly subjecting them to indulgent bokkeh portraiture, both attachments that would deeply object to their slaughter come the day they inevitably stop producing eggs. I obviously wouldn’t be able to slaughter them myself, and I can’t imagine abiding Simon slaughtering them (if he were even able to muster the huevos), and thus our coop would be continually restocked with fresh egg-layers while the cluckers past their prime stayed on into old age, enjoying all the benefits of retirement in an overpopulated cage underneath our back porch until death should come on quiet wings in its own sweet time.
Also a problem: I was a little bit grossed out that the eggs we got from our friends’ lovely brood still had bits of feathery fluff and other unidentifiable detritus stuck to their shells courtesy of the chickens’ butts/vaginas/egg-holes/WHATEVERS; I do not know these things because I don’t want to know these things; see also: why we do not and will never have chickens, amen.
Meanwhile, back on the road of an actual narrative, I’m thinking happy thoughts about the adventurous weekend passed, even the parts that didn’t go as planned. Example: Simon’s band played an outdoor concert from 2 to 5 and it rained from five of 2 to two after 5. Example: We took an impromptu stroll along the beach at dusk (the day before a crowd of civilians and police offers watched someone drown himself there; yikes), from which we made an impromptu detour, still on foot, to Trader Joe’s, where first the milk carton sprung a massive leak while inside the stroller with Wombat and then we got almost all the way through checkout before realizing we didn’t have any wallets or purses or cash or cards on us and had to hike all the way back to the car to get them before we could leave with our non-hunted/gathered produce and animal product and non-leaky milk. (This is the last time we left something important in the car at that beach. Cursed?)
Otherwise, it was all good. No one was brained playing or observing or sitting dangerously near the numerous rounds of lawn darts that occurred, and Wombat played and played and played with a variety of children and chidlike adults. A sign of a good weekend is when the first morning back at daycare is set to the soundtrack of “Noooooooo. I want to stay here with yoooooooou and have fuuuuuuuuun.” I’ll take that as a thumb’s-up.
This photo was our Memorial Day dinner, but the one at the top of the post was just a regular old Monday. Simon says he’s really into food presentation and styling now (WTF?), so this is me indulging him as he indulges my need to take photographs of absolutely everything. Yum.
In conclusion: Chickens bad, bugs bad, flame-cooked food good.
2011
141 to 147
Week 21 (all Wombat, all week, which is trying at the moment since I wanted to throttle him this morning; SO MUCH WHINING) of Project 365. We’re halfway through the year! That’s pretty crazy.
Whining!
***
Elsewhere:
–The winner of the Corral boots from Langston’s Western Wear is…(oh my god, it was so hard to read your comments and not buy every single one of you a pair)…monstergirlee! Congratulations!!! You are the envy of the Internet and also very, very stylish. I’ll email you today with your prize info and also to see if you live close enough that I could borrow your boots now and then, since we wear the same size.
If you didn’t win the free boots, don’t forget there’s still time to take advantage of the free shipping offer. Use promo code AGIRLANDABOY at checkout before May 30. I think I’m going to get the ones with the eagles.
–Are you on Pinterest? Here’s why you should be. (Let’s be friends. I’m “agirlandaboy”.)
–Why did I spraypaint a plastic fly gold? Just because.
–Janet from This Confetti Life (fun site! check it out!) got together with a friend and recreated Simon’s Honey Martini Recipe from four years ago, and it is hi-freaking-larious. They start with “Step 1: Grow a Moustache” and stay as close as possible to Simon’s ridiculous instructions until…well, there was a crash and things suddenly got very sticky and twice as expensive. Seriously funny stuff.
–Some things Style Lush makes me want: this nail polish (all of it), a succulent wall, shoe clips!, time to ride my bike again, and a baby girl.
–The antidote to wantyness is sometimes getting, sometimes working to get, sometimes reexamining priorities, sometimes reexamining motives, and sometimes just knowing I’m not the only one who feels that way. Lawyerish has a superpower that allows her to type what’s in my head onto her own blog, and this entry in particular–about the other lives we could be living–is a current favorite. (FTR, I also am fine to let the child bathe in his own pee.)
What are you wanting/making/spraypainting this weekend?
2011
My Favorite Ho(e)
We went to Lake Tahoe for thirty-three hours last weekend, and it was heavenly. (Pun intended.)
We hit the road on Friday after work and five minutes into the drive Wombat was sound asleep with his sunglasses on and his hat I-did-it-myself-style backwards. Burritos in hand, we drove through the night on Highway 88 (listening to The 88) because Highway 50 was closed due to snow. In May. (It’s all Kristin’s fault.)
We made it to South Lake Tahoe by midnight, at which point Wombat popped wide awake and strolled through the lobby of 968 Park in hat and sunglasses like a rumpled starlet.
He didn’t act like a kid whose nighttime slumber had been interrupted but rather like one who was energized after a refreshing four-hour nap. Here he is at a quarter to one in the morning.
We worried what this might do to the rest of our vacation (i.e., the possibility of sleeping in, even just a little), but we needn’t have, as Wonderboy was snuggled deep into his luxurious queen bed until 10:15 a.m., at which point he was awoken by the sound of a DSLR shutter clacking away overhead like an interested helicopter.
Since we didn’t have any real plans for the weekend (Holly gave us her freebie Groupon for two nights at the hotel, so we didn’t have anything in mind aside from actually staying in said hotel, along with a whole bunch of other last-minute Grouponers; there should be a secret hand signal so Grouponers will know each other without someone (Simon) having to yell out “Groupon?!” at strangers as confirmation), so we just kind of hung around and went places and did stuff until we felt like not.
We picked up breakfast and headed to the beach, where Wombat weaved in and out and up and down the playground equipment, met a giant dog, touched the water, and stored sand.
Then we drove up to the Emerald Bay overlook and had ice cream among the hateful colorful tourists of America. “Mawmaw, I want to go back home to Louisiana, where they don’t have hills.” “Shut up, Xavier.” (I’m pretty sure his name was Xavier, although at first I thought she was calling him “Savior,” for which the only appropriate (internal) response is “You named your kid Savior?!“) I later heard this same mother trying to calm down her other children, who were freaking out that if they didn’t get back on the road soon the Walmart might close before they got there. Understandable, as who wants to spend the day looking at this crap, amirite?
Simon took the camera to get this shot of us at the snack truck, explaining in a loud voice from across the parking lot that he called it a “Lolita” photo because of the roadtrip/Americana aspect of the Nabokov classic and not because I looked like a prepubescent girl who was “ready to go.” I can only hope Savior was out of earshot by then.
In what might have turned out to be a very unfortunate choice indeed, our Next Fun Thing was a hike down to the Vikingsholm mansion, where you are all cordially invited to visit us as soon as we get that proverbial shitload of money in hand.
Wombat nearly had his face eaten off by that ground squirrel disguised as a chipmunk (the naughty-looking one), but the scariest part was that after we had traded off carrying Mr. Whinypants down the steep mile-long trail, he also wanted to be carried back up. And that’s when it started to rain.
My life flashed before my eyes, the misty watercolor slideshow ending with me dead of exhaustion facedown in a puddle of sweat and rain, but then the sprinkling stopped about two minutes after it had begun and I decided to buck the hell up because if Simon could carry an extra thirty pounds of wriggling live person up the mountain, I could get myself up it too, even if I did have the extra weight of Simon’s cotton sweater tied around my waist. (Wombat got his wimpy genes from me. When I asked if he was tired after being carried all that way, he whined “Ye-e-e-e-s.” Poor thing.)
The straggler straggling.
Exhausted and starving, we drove back to town and got burritos and tacos at the Baja Fresh in the strip mall across the street from the hotel because we are adventurous folk who live to enjoy all the exotic pleasures the world has to offer. Please note that Simon had a burrito for dinner the night before and a breakfast burrito that morning and would have yet another the following day.
Also on the menu: booze. Hoping to surprise and impress me, Simon retrieved from the mini-fridge one of the two bottles of champagne he had stowed away, and I figured that would be as good a time as any to reveal the bottle of wine and (one-upper!) the travel-sized wine glasses I had brought along to surprise him. At which point he pulled the full-sized champagne flutes from his suitcase and smirked.
We ate, sipped, lounged, colored, and then discovered that when you share a hotel room with a kid who goes to bed at 8 p.m., your night is kind of over at that point. I’d brought cards and a cribbage board, but that would have been too loud, and every time we turned on the lamp to read Wombat would wake up and ask what we (all) were doing. Simon and I played on our Nintendo DSes for a bit and then settled into a crummy romantic comedy via streaming Netflix because, well, because I don’t know why. Because we were on vacation, I guess, and one thing you can do on vacation is waste your life for a few hours and not feel too terrible about it.
Here’s the slept-until-nine version of Wombat the next morning, in the outfit he wore to the lobby to rustle up some grub.
We hit the lobby again before we hit the road, and the coffee and tea and blueberry poundcake hit the spot. Thanks, 968 Park and Groupon and Holly!
Thanks, Ta-hoooo!
