brb, maui

Finding Ellie

Look who I found in Boston!

Or wait. Did she find me?

Plus She Can Fly

This kid came to visit us yesterday . . .

. . . and by "visit" I mean "did all our yard work."

. . .  and by "did all our yard work" I mean "planted all the plants we stole from her mom and dad."

. . .  and by "all the plants we stole from her mom and dad" I mean it was sanctioned thievery!

. . . Kat gave them to us!

. . . we went home in not-the-Westy-and-why-didn't-we-drive-the-Westy? full of all of the everything.


Our Field is now full of all the everything.

You remember this kid, right?

Yeah, her.

I know. She still makes that face.

I texted Jacquie for the inside poop on the confusing monkey-like creature on G's gloves, because I know Jacquie's girl had the same confusing monkey-like creature on her long-ago jammies:

Who's this again? The gloves, not the kid. I know the kid.
Skippy John Jones!
Aka?
Paul Frank.
How desperately boring.
Right?? 

She'll always be Skippy John Jones to me.

She's a warrior, this one.

Plus she's adventuresome . . .

. . . plus she's intrepid . . .

 . . . plus she can fly.

charlie

You guys. This popped up on my "on this day" facebook feed the other day, and I actually busted my guts laughing. It's soo great. This was the spring of 2010. Just immediately before All Hell Broke Loose. Please if you do nothing else, watch the video at the end. 

MONDAY, APRIL 19, 2010

poor charlie

Just because my boy goes into his room at night, please do not assume that he has gone to sleep.

He is busy in there. Usually, the morning brings an annoying mess of clutter to wade through on my way to open the curtains and force in the day, but just as often he is involved in creative pursuits like drawing or building with legos or creating tiny habitats for inanimate objects.

Case in point:

It's confusing, I know.

The floor is so bright, it distracts you from the details. Remind me to never carpet my home in dayglo puce with starburst effects.

This is Charlie's house. Charlie is a goldfish.

Let's take a closer look:

not that kind of goldfish, silly. Charlie's house is not in the sea. He's a goldfish of the Peperidge Farm species, genus whole grain cheddar.

The above photo shows Charlie lounging on his custom made sectional sofa. Charlie likes his sofa, it makes him very happy.

See?

Charlie likes to sit on his happy sofa and watch his big screen tv.

Look, it's Sponge Bob and Patrick!

When Charlie wants to hit the town, he can rock his jeep

Or his hog

At the end of a long day, Charlie tucks himself into bed.

Night-night, Charlie!

Charlie was the best pet/roommate/child/husband/friend that anyone could have ever asked for. He never complained, he ate whatever I made for dinner, or just went without dinner.. for days on end... if we forgot that he existed for a while. He seemed too good to be real.

One day, I came home to find a version of this note taped to aproximately every flat surface of my household:

Our hearts were clearly broken. Just look at the cracks!

Charlie was gone. We don't know exactly what happened to him, but we do have a suspect.

We hired security to keep the perp away during Charlie's funeral.

My girl was the officiant. She prepared careful notes and held the ceremony in her room, which is a notably more solemn venue.

It was a somber, emotional event:

Rest in peace, Charlie.

Questions from the heart

I went to a poetry event at my girl's school yesterday morning. She's in second grade. For there to be a poetry event at my 7-year-old's school makes my heart glad. It was really quite wonderful. The clever and progressive poetry teacher who comes in for the unit once a year was engaging and inspiring. She is doing something important with these kids. With humor.

At one point, she handed out paper and pencils to all the parents in attendance and had us do a writing exercise. She then had us share what we had written. Luckily I didn't get called on. I got a fierce case of writers' block during this elementary exercise, which was really quite a deep felt human exercise when you get down to it.

The assignment? To come up with "questions from the heart" - questions that can't necessarily be answered but that you wonder about nonetheless. Questions that even if they do have possible answers can't be answered by others, as they are your questions from the heart.

Here were some of the parent questions:

When does love become love?
If a rainbow could sing, what song would it sing?
Do chocolate donuts smile when eaten?

I'm not nearly that clever. But after the assembly, and the poetry readings by the kids back in the classrooms, when in my car on the 20-minute drive into work, I could think of nothing else but these questions.  My questions were mostly on the serious side; rainbows and donuts did not pop into my head. Alas, I guess I'm no school girl anymore. I forgot many of my questions even before arriving at the office, but here are a few that I do remember:

why are we so afraid of each other?
when is a lie white?
when is enough enough?
why is the mind so hard to still?
why are tears ridiculed?
why don't we look each other in the eye?
why can't we see the bigger picture?
why do all the forgotten things surface only when you lie down to sleep?
why don't people use their goddamn f-ing blinkers?

What are some of your questions from the heart?

The Spring of our Content

Now is the Spring of our Content . . .

Made glorious by tulips . . .

. . . and a Full Moon . . .

. . . and clouds that should be famous . . .

. . . and Easter with some of my favorite women around . . .

. . . including these two lovelies:

 Oh how glorious, our Moms are.

 We Big Ones missed you, though, Ann . . .

. . . and you too, our beautiful Dad.

Paume Ressorts

Wanna see my vacation pics? Of course you do, everybody loves it when Uncle Merv shares photos. I just wish  I had an old timey slide machine that we could look at. 

Most of my pictures are of Clara, and I can only assume that she has many photos of me, but I'll never see them because I'm not allowed to be her friend on social media because she's mean. Here's what I gots:

Day 1

This was outside our weird first room. The windows didn't open so we dragged over some plastic chairs and sat on the landing. 

Isn't it a weird room? Late that first night, drunk neighbors enjoyed the plastic chairs that we'd left right outside our door and had a fun party. Jerks. 

We arrived on a Thursday and found a great spot to eat and people watch. We moved over to the counter seating shortly after this adorable photo was taken.

It was village fest! Such a fun spot to walk around and get to know the hood, and our hotel was right over there by that mountain.

This band was amazing! They were mostly kids, their youngest member was 12 and the singer had the most incredible voice. We couldn't leave til they finished

Clara found a boyfriend.

Day 2

We browsed in the gift shop while waiting for our appointed time on the aerial tram. This hat weighed 23 pounds. 

While we weren't exactly dressed for the 45 degree weather, we warmed up with a great hike 

I had a vision for this photo, which Clara failed to execute

Good thing she's so cute and lovely

She's also good at findin' walkin' sticks

It was gorgeous up on that mountain

truly spectacular

360 degrees of wow

fave.

Oh look, I'm in one! Nice forehead. Nice crooked smile. 

That's much better.

Traversing the rapids

Clara has a video of me crossing a much more treacherous log while simultaneously making fun of her for being scared and almost falling in

I was rewarded justly for my courage and determination

That afternoon, we spent a little time at the pool. It was really ugly there.

We made the wise choice to have snacks for dinner then went out for dessert

Our new room had lots of light and outdoor access! Yay! The place was lousy with jasmine so I clipped some and hung it on the shutters. 

Day 3

There's our little porchy-poo. Good Morning!

We had to wait a while, but it was so worth it. And we speak french now. 

Des Boissons

délicieux

Oh, I guess that's all the photos. Not pictured from day 3:  more pool time and shopping, getting to the botanical garden 2 hours after it closed, getting dressed up for dinner.

On Day 4 we came home after a reeeeeaaaaallly long and painful stop at the godforsaken outlet malls. But we scored some key purchases and had an easy and beautiful drive back to sunny San Diego.

la fin