Family Fun

We had big-time, family-style fun today. There are lots of us in our immediate family. The current count is eleven if we are all present, but it will be twelve come October (thanks Joe & Mindy!). How do you transport eleven and a half people on a family excursion? Well, it helps to have a brother who's in a band and whose band has a big van for tours.

We stopped in Tampa to have lunch at Chipotle. Yum. Unfortunately, we don't have one here in Lakeland, so eating there is a real treat. Then we all walked across the street to the cupcake shop. I don't remember what it was called, but know this: all the boys ordered the Guinness and chocolate flavor. Andrew had a s'mores one with freshly-torched marshmallows on top and Emma got a pina colada one. Me? Well, I didn't get one. They didn't have any vegan ones. Dang allergies.
Then we headed over to Channelside in Tampa to watch "Up." It was really a sweet little movie. I definitely enjoyed the story, but I thought the score was really striking. It sounded so classically Disney - magical and swooping, sweet and sparkling.
It's such a blessing to have our family close by and to be able to do things like that together. I think it has made a world of difference in the raising of our children.

On another note, I don't know if you noticed the little progress meter over there on the side, but my mom's birthday (February was a long time ago!) shawl is finally finished! It's so soft and beautiful that I wanted to keep it for myself. But I didn't. She has waited patiently and I think she likes it.



In case you were wondering (and you all know you were), the pattern is the Japanese Feather Stole by Anne Hanson of knitspot.com. It was a pretty easy pattern, even though I'm not by any stretch an experienced knitter. It came together smoothly and beautifully and my fingers really loved the 100% cashmere yarn, too.

Daily Bliss: laughing so much my face hurts
Wake-up Playlist: My Morning Jacket, Evil Urges

Movie Hair, Mushrooms and a Little Music

Haircut day! Haircut day! It's my favorite.
No matter how yucky I feel when I get there, I always leave my hairdresser's chair feeling like a million bucks. Usually, he asks me what I want to do with my hair and I shrug and tell him to do whatever he feels like doing. It's always good. But I'd just recently made Chris sit down and watch Amelie with me, one of my favorite movies. It has subtitles. It took me a long time to convince him it was good. He did like it. Please don't take away any of his man points for that. I promised him his points were safe, but I think we will have to watch Wolverine and the new Star Trek movie to make up for the fact that Amelie is a French movie. And possibly a John Wayne movie too.
Anyway, I love her hair. So, I asked my hair guy for something like it, but a little less severe. He pointed out how nice it is to have a hairdresser that likes foreign films, because he knew exactly what hair I was talking about and also knew exactly how to adapt it to make it work on me. He and his wife own the movie. He's so cool.
I tried to make an Amelie face for a picture, but it was really, really awful. So here's a couple of less-awful ones:


Also, there were some cute little mushrooms growing out of a tree root by our neighbor's fence. I was taking pictures of my hair when I saw them and they distracted me. I went down on all fours in my pink sundress and started taking pictures and trying to get the aperture and the shutter speed set just right. Oh me. What must my neighbors think?




I love these sneaky little ones, stretching out after their nap in the cracks of the bark.


Aaaannnnd, the kids had their last recital of the school year this evening!
Emma played three pieces on the recorder and one of them was an original composition! I am so proud of her. She wanted to play the flute, but her arms aren't quite long enough to reach, so her teacher started her out on recorder. She was extraordinarily nervous and, though her performance was nearly flawless, she burst into tears the minute she stepped off the stage. My poor girl. I understand exactly how she feels.
On the other end of the spectrum is her brother, who is quite the confident performer. He played two piano pieces, a euphonium solo, a duet with another euphonium player and a brass ensemble piece. He was brilliant. He was not flawless, but he shrugs that kind of stuff right off and keeps going.
I am so blessed to have been given charge of these two amazing people.

(warming up)

(Malaguena!)

Daily Bliss: Clearance lip balm from the happiest place on Earth - Anthropologie! I really like lip balm and it's in a fancy little tin. Lurve.
Wake-Up Playlist: Some piano song that I wrote in my dream. It's gone now, but I am left with a lingering desire to return to my first instrument

Friday Fun

Today was the big Typhoon Lagoon field trip with Emma. We really had a good time. We ran into one of her girlfriends first thing, so we spent the day hanging out together. This girlfriend has a mom I actually really like, so that's a bonus. There were a couple of water slides and a long ride around the park in Castaway Creek and mostly there was the wave pool.
I went to Typhoon Lagoon when it first opened with a friend of mine. We must have been in our early teens, though I'm not really sure, so it was fun to go back and see the things I remembered. Theme parks are not really my thing, but I was able to set that aside and just enjoy the company of my Best Girl, which makes any day a great day.
The swimsuit/coverup debacle is another story.
I found this cute little shirred-top strapless dress-ish, skirt-ish thing that you can wear up like a dress or down like a skirt. It's polka dotted, which I adore, and has a ruffle at the bottom, which I also adore.
I'd planned to stay mostly dry. But that ended almost immediately upon entering the park. The first wave in the wave pool soaked me and I spent the rest of the day in a dripping wet, woven cotton, droopy dress thing.
Oh well.
I have never really been able to pull off the whole "glamorous" look, so it was not surprising at all. Nor was it upsetting. Whatevs.
We dug around in the fridge for leftovers to serve as supper and played a couple rounds of Dirty Uno (No, no. It's not that sort of dirty!)while listening to Anberlin, and the face time with my kids has done my tired heart some good.
Tomorrow is haircut day! Maybe I'll get around to taking some decent photos this time around. I don't believe I've properly shown you my super-short hair! Ah well. I'll only take pictures if it's cute. Deal?
Emma has got the sun-sleepies and was out like a light within five minutes of laying down and I think I may be heading in the same direction.

Daily Bliss: a giant bag of cotton candy and the feeling of accomplishment that comes from eating leftovers instead of eating out.

Wake-up Playlist: I actually woke up singing some song my brain wrote while I was sleeping. I don't remember it now. Does that happen to anybody else out there? I write songs in my dreams all the time. I've always wanted to be a songwriter, but I never can seem to break the barrier when I'm awake and access the music that lives in my heart.

A Rescue and Some Beards

I came in to work today and met a turtle outside my office. He was very lost. He looked at me helplessly and I knew instantly that his name was Petie Turtle. It turned out not to be Petie the Turtle, as I'd initially thought. We have no lake or retention pond anywhere near my office, so I have absolutely no idea how he got there. But I called Katelyn who hadn't gotten in to work yet and asked if she and her sister (who is visiting from Michigan) knew of a lake that we could help Petie find, since I don't live nearby and have no idea where a lake might be. She said yes. I put him in a Staples paper box and he tried to get out. A lot. He was very scared but he liked for me to talk to him. So I spent a good hour leaning over a box talking to a frightened turtle this morning. And by the time he left, I really loved him.
The final report was such: as soon as he saw the lake, he got very excited and scrambled straight to it as the instant his feet touched the ground. He jumped right in the water and swam around a lot. Goodness only knows how long it had been since he'd been in the water! The girls stayed a while to watch him and make sure he was happy. And he was. Consequently, I was too.
So, it's been a good week, in which I rescued Petie Turtle (maybe it's spelled P-e-t-e-y but I can't be sure as he did not bother to spell it for me) and exactly three ants, whose names I never did find out, that had snuck inside on some gardenias.

And also...why didn't I know about this earlier? There is a World Beard and Moustache Championship!! We all know I'm a fan of the facial hair. I don't know how I missed out on being a judge. With great categories that include "Freestyle Partial Beard" and "FuManchu," this is a really comprehensive showcase of the ridiculous things testosterone can force a person to do. I'm just sayin'. You will get a good chortle out of perusing the galleries of present and past winners.

Daily Bliss: an hour in the fabric store by myself and the lovely anticipation of a new project in my mind
Wake-up Playlist: It's Not Easy Bein' Green (In my defense, I was dreaming about gardening. This much I do know. Whether this ties to the deeper meanings of this silly tune I can't say.)

My boss is out of the office for the rest of the week. I had planned on really digging into the blankie I'm knitting while he's away, but I didn't get much done today. I mean, it isn't like I had a lot to do. My job is pretty easy and once I've finished the main task for the week (which takes me about one full work day), I'm pretty much done. But I had a copier repair man in my office all day and the Treasurer was in to do some paperwork and the Director of Music came in to do some of her practicing for Sunday. So, with all of that company, I had to try and look busy - you know, like I was doing actual work. So, I checked my email 50 gazillion times and read lots of blogs so that I looked like I was doing computer-ish work. But knitting on a huge red blanket would have probably looked bad. So I even cleaned out my purse for heaven's sake.
But I had a fun evening. I had to shop for a swimsuit coverup and I took myself out to the movies. People look at you in an understanding way when you go to the movies by yourself. But I didn't mind.
But the shopping. Ugh.
I have to go to Typhoon Lagoon on Friday for a field trip.
Now, I am a self-confident, intelligent woman. I have long since given up judging myself based on the size of my thighs. But you know, I have never enjoyed wearing a bathing suit in public. Not even when I was a pocket-sized teeny-bopper. And I haven't been swimsuit shopping in probably six years. I'm really not kidding. I haven't owned a swimsuit for that long. If necessity dictates that I must invent a way to get in the water, I usually cobble together something decent out of my mom's selection of suits or my own collection of tank tops and shorts or something equally ghastly.
I did find a nice suit on the first try. It seems to hold me up in all the right places and hold me in in a few other places, which is good. But those places aren't the ones I'm concerned about. It's the parts that are going to be naked regardless of the type of suit that worry me. So I went out searching for a lovely sarong.
It seems to me that fashion has told us sarongs were the way to go for water-side glamour for years now. But does any store have a sarong? No. No, they do not. I will not be glamorous after all. I have brought home two skirt-ish options and I am about to take a deep breath and try on the ensembles in order to choose the least offensive option. That will probably happen after I glug down a glass or wine or two for courage.
Wish me luck.

Daily Bliss: cherries for supper
Wake-up Playlist: Johnny Cash - Ring of Fire (I know, right? It doesn't make any sense to me either)

Focused? Nope.

I was utterly bored today, for a good portion of the day. That made it so very difficult to focus on anything important (not that I have much important work to do).
But once I got home, things started looking up. Or at least more entertaining.
I followed a couple of new-job-idea-leads while the kids practiced their myriad instruments and generally made noises all around me. I managed to get some dinner going and to suddenly toss a serious, future-iffic conversation at my honey the minute he walked in the door (Honey, what about if I just join the circus? I mean, I'm talented, right honey? Right? Honey, why are you rubbing your temples already?). It's not wonder that he sometimes comes home late.
He did the dishes for me, even if it might have been an attempt at finding some peace & quiet, because I will generally not be found anywhere near a sink full of dirty dishes.
I forced the elder of my noisy children to play Uno with the youngest of them and they managed to turn even that into a serious competition. And I tried to knit. But I was reading blogs too.
My head is just elsewhere and it is refusing to be put back in line. I have my little tricks and gimmicks for reigning in my mind and I will use them when it becomes absolutely necessary. It is almost absolutely necessary.
But maybe not just yet.
Chris has some money in his iTunes account that's been sitting there for a while. It's a good thing I didn't know about it before. It might have mysteriously disappeared. He bought a couple new albums of which I highly approve (Iron & Wine's new one and the She & Him album that I've heard is really good - he kinda looked a little dreamy-eyed about Zooey Deschanel, but I don't mind.). I've been on something of a folk kick for a while. It seems that's all my subconscious is singing in the morning these days, too.
Oh my. I lost track of my point. Surprised? Me neither.
So, he called me down to check out M. Ward's new album because he was liking it and that was his first mistake. iTunes, for me, is like an endless tunnel. Once I get in, I will never find my way out. It was not long before I had commandeered the mouse and found two or three more albums that I was strongly suggesting he should purchase. Um, Patrick Watson? I might love you. It's a good thing he's so open to suggestion. Or else it's a good thing that he thinks I'm cute enough to buy music for.
Whatever.
Now, I have a shawl to block (hear that, Mom?) and I need to obey some lovely rain that is calling me to the bathtub.
Maybe that doesn't happen to anybody else.
I love to open my salvaged window right next to my claw-foot tub and listen to the rivulets of water smacking the pavement of the driveway as they roll off the side of the roof. And sometimes, that is even a trick I use to bring my brain back into submission when it has decided to go a-wandering - giving it something so lovely on which to focus.
But we are not resorting to tricks yet, are we? That's what I'm telling my brain for right now. I suspect it is a little skittish and I don't want it to run off in the other direction under the threat of being forced to behave.

Daily Bliss: watching a papa cardinal and his baby peck around by my mom's bird feeder

Wake-up Playlist: Iron & Wine - Resurrection Fern

Just Nothing

How can I even write of the nothingness of this day? Honestly, I'm just making up a post so that I can keep putting my daily wake-up playlist here. Because I like the song that was in my head this morning (which is not always the case).

So.

We bought some dirt to put my squash seedlings into.
And then we put them into the dirt.
And watched another movie.
And I knitted.
The end.

Daily Bliss: cupcakes for breakfast :)

Wake-up Playlist: Fleet Foxes - Tiger Mountain Peasant Song