wrecks to riches

If I've said it once, I've said it a thousand times: ALWAYS BUY THE CAKE.

I had every intention of taking my own advice this weekend for my lovely girl's ninth birthday extravaganza. With the breakneck pace of our lives these days, it was a smart idea. But when my girl and I went to the bakery to order a cake a few nights ago, the options being offered were not to our liking. I told her I'd order one during the week, with a birthday party, a visitor, and Father's Day on the weekend calendar; I suspected that I'd be at the grocery store even more than my usual 3 or 4 times this week. And I did hit every joint in town at some point, but the cakes never quite presented themselves in a way that made the cost seem worthwhile.

Flash forward to Friday night. THIS is why store bought cakes are worth the money:


I assessed this situation with Erin, my dreamgirl niece who came to visit this weekend. She had, incidentally, supervised the baking and decorating of 24 cupcakes for my girl's class the night before without incident. She helpfully recounted a story about a time when one of the Huxtable kids tried to cover up the evidence of having dug into Claire's cake too soon by stuffing the cavern with paper towels and then covering it up with frosting. I was not sold on the paper towel idea, but I did like the bones of the plan, and I had just the things to fill our caverns: frosting and oreos.

The rest is, as they say, history.




Happy Birthday to my baby girl! And goodbye, lovely Erin. We miss you already!

Weekend 3-way: random loveliness

I'm inspired by my lovely and loved co-bloggers' recent posts, highlighting select random moments of pure loveliness. I love those photos that we save without quite knowing why, the ones we make a point to skip past when running through a cleansing purge of the ol' memory stick. Ellie's Motley and Beth's Hodgepodge posts brought to mind some of my own random images, and what better way to share the lovely than in this weekend's 3-way?

Let's celebrate the random lovely moments we've recently seen captured on camera...

Jacquie:

First, let it be noted that I will never again be caught without a ready photo of a pretty drink

Eric's mai tais, as I live and breathe

Next, we have a shot that really requires no explanation:

right?

Finally, the photo of my heart. My girl and her Brownie Troop, fastidiously preparing breakfast at the soup kitchen for a long line of appreciative folks on a bad turn of luck.

Those faces. Those faces.

Beth:

Does this look like a Mini Boden clothing ad, or what?!

Doesn't this marshmellow ant just make you smile?

How to get a baby to sleep on an airplane

Ellie:
Wow, what loveliness you lovely co-bloggers have! Let's see if I can find even more loveliness this week.

Ah ha!

Sunday, June Twentieth, is a Big Day in our family:

Happy 9th Birthday to my lovely lovely niece.
(This was her 6th birthday, way back when.)

Happy Fathers Day to our lovely lovely Dad.

Happy 51st Anniversary to our lovely lovely Mom and Dad.

Loveliness, indeed.

Friday hodgepodge, my first

Miss - iss - i - ppi
I just finished reading The Help by Kathryn Stockett. I really enjoyed it, and found her afterward, in which she described her relationship with Mississippi, her home state, quite interesting. She stated that Mississippi is like her mother in the sense that she can talk smack about it, but nobody else better (unless from there as well).

Well, sorry, Kathryn, but what’s up with that place? With Jackson, Mississippi (location of the book), especially? I mean it doesn’t seem to have changed very much.

I received this email yesterday (and last week) about the embattled clinic in Jackson:

Two weeks ago, an anti-abortion extremist invaded the waiting room of the Jackson Women's Health Organization in Jackson, Mississippi. Law enforcement authorities were not only slow to respond when called, but once on site, chose only to talk with the aggressor instead of filing a police report. This is the only abortion provider in the entire state of Mississippi.

Okay, first off, abortion is legal, people. It’s a right that women won back in the 1970s, but perhaps Jackson was still too stunned by the fact that black people were finally considered equal to notice?

And yes, it's true, people protest abortion clinics all over the country, not just in Mississippi. Abortion is what we call, controversial, folks, but c’mon -- it’s the duty of the police to remove the invaders, take the damn police report, and help to ensure that this doesn’t happen again.

I'm a bit skeptical. (And really, ONE clinic in the whole state?).

I’m fairly confident that Jackson has more than one pickup truck displaying the oh-so-ironic combination of “Babies are a Blessing; Choose Life!”and “I used my Economic Stimulus Payment to buy a New Gun” bumper stickers.

I'm glad Mississippi's not my mother.

Graduation?
Why oh why is there such a thing as kindergarten graduation? It’s their first year of school, not their last! It’s somewhat baffling to me, but, that said, I’m of course going to my kinder’s graduation. In mere minutes.

Okay, it was worth the trip. Eevn if the cake was misspelled.



Skunky
We had a run in with a skunk the other night. There seems to be a cute little one cruising the neighborhood. It walked right into our neighbor’s house, through the cat door, to eat some cat chow. It made a stop in our yard because we’ve got the dog food right outside. And remember how much skunks like dog food…

And, of course, it was our dog that got sprayed, not our cat. Our cat stayed perfectly still, while the skunk advanced. She did not move at all. But the dog? The dog? Oh no, he was much too stupid curious. He just had to run right up to poor little skunky. Che, che, che, sprayed the little skunk, right on his head. God does that dog stink.

Just one more reason I’m not a dog person.

Motley? Oh, It's Motley

I have lost all sense of time and space while immersed in the world of bad guys and secret police and intrepid reporters and badass tattooed heroines in Sweden.

That's right. I just read the third Dragon Tattoo book -- The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest. And I didn't look up for 3 days.

Plus Monday night was our neighborhood field trip to the Polish Club in Montville, then Tuesday night we had an impromptu party on our deck which turned into a late night, then I had a long day yesterday -- I was busy! I had a meeting! -- and well, I just never had a chance to think up a good blog idea for today.

But has that ever stopped me before? Of course not. Not when I have a laptop full of motley photos from hither and yon, with the motliest photos collected in a folder called, you guessed it, me and you and ellie. For use on such occasions as these, when one is immersed in a novel about Lisbeth Salander and has no time for anything else, or on a rainy day, or both.

Let's see what we find in that Pandora's Box Folder, shall we?

Aw, my little quarter-Lebanese niece making stuffed grape leaves with her Lebanese Jidoo. Dad looks a lot more than four times as Lebanese as our girl.

This one is labeled "Drunken Ellie". For obvious reasons.

I got caught up in something -- probably a book -- and had to return library books I hadn't yet read so took a photo of them on my shelf. This is not an impressive collection of books. Except for the Bridge to Terabithia which I had never -- believe it or not -- read before. Do not read that Lionel Shriver, although her previous one was good. This one was awful.

When Jacquie and I went to the Grand Canyon in 1988, during our 3-month cross-country trip, we had to stay an extra day because we could not actually see the Grand Canyon, right behind us, on the first day.

The Oscars! Still doing yeoman's work after all these years. How I love those Oscars.

The praying mantis is Connecticut's state insect and it is illegal to kill one. Or perhaps that's just an old wives' tale. The female eats the male's head off after mating. That is not an old wives' tale.

Mom and I occasionally go to St. John and drink bloody marys overlooking the bay. Or sometimes we just drink bloody marys in front of the Caribbean triptych in our living room instead.

"Contented." For obvious reasons.

I must ask Mistah Schleckah where he took this. I don't remember but I cannot be expected to track him down either upstairs or downstairs and ID it for me. Who has that kind of time?

Our Westy bed is actually much more enticing and inviting and comfy than this photo indicates.

As my sister MB would say, "Yeah, aren't we all?" (Just kidding, Mom.)

Ah, Fort Davis. I miss Fort Davis. And all of a sudden I'm terribly thirsty.

The red-hot New York Metropolitanos have won 6 in a row, are 11-2 in June, and all of a sudden are ½ game out of first place. Let's Go Mets!

Young Rosie was just a wee rose bush way back when. Two years ago, I think. She's out of control now. Just the way I like it.

Speaking of Texas . . .

. . . who has a cooler state flag than Texas? Nobody, that's who. Can you imagine the Connecticut state flag painted as a mural on the side of a building? Yawn. Actually, South Carolina's flag is really cool too. And would make a perfectly fine mural. But only Texans actually do that sort of thing.

And finally, this punk. This hula-hooping (at his sister's 6th birthday party in 2007), gooberific, weirdly creative, totally-11-year-old nephew of mine who, this week, threw down the walker, kicked over his wheelchair, and walked. Wobble Boy walks!

As Jacquie says, we're going to have to find the kid a new nickname.

onetwothree

As Aunt Ellie mentioned a couple of weekends back, she has this thing with my kids when they enter a pool together. In her words:

"I got in the pool with the kids, and flipped them up into the air. Actually, I flipped the boy up into the air. He and I had a great routine, where he'd stand on my shoulders, I'd grab his feet, I'd sink underwater, I'd tap his feet three times: "One, two, three . . . " and I'd push against the bottom and burst up into the air and throw him up and he'd do a giant flip or at least a jumping twirlsey, from my shoulders, into the air. All the while the girl was hanging onto my neck, strangling me, screeching into my ear like a screech owl."



This last weekend, we were at a pool.

Sadly, we were without our beloved Aunt Ellie.

But we had Daddy in the hizzy (pizzy?)



So okay, the moves here were not quite as polished as Aunt Ellie's routine had been, but who doesn't love being tossed about in a vat of chlorine drenched water by the seaside? Who?

After Daddy retired to the jacuzzi, the kids took it upon themselves to work out the whole underwater launch/thrust/twirlsey/screech owl routine.

Careful planning and preparation were required

One... Two...

Three!

Oops. Little to the right that time

whoopsie, on the left

backwards

sometimes he wobbles wobbled

time for a pep talk

now let's get serious

One....

Two...

Three!

Ten word Tuesday: get off your ass

Has it been too long since I've taken a walk?!