biggest photo dump ever.

*

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Ingredients:

1 cup bisquick

1/2 cup milk

1 large egg

1 tbsp vanilla extract

1/3 cup crushed Heath candy pieces

1/4 cup sugar

1. throw everything in a bowl and mix it together. lovingly.

2. use the 1/4 measuring cup to pour onto hot griddle/pan

3. flip when you see bubbles. try not to drop them on each other.

*

I’m a terrible flipper.

Alex likes his with peanut butter.

I like mine with honey.

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…the devil’s in the details.

I’ve been toying with the idea of doing a house tour of sorts. but it’s a daunting task. and things are constantly growing, changing, evolving. so instead i’ll do a series of photos, a collection of details, fragments of the things that make me happy, the place we call home, our sanctuary of chaos. the new, the old, the broken, the vintage…the handmade, the ugly, the faded, the beautiful…all of it. all the pieces of our pretty little puzzle.

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I cried a lot this week. I cried when you were in pain from teething…your eyes filled with so much hurt. I cried when your alarm went off and I couldn’t get to you fast enough. I sat outside your crib after that, trembling and nauseous, watching you sleep, watching you breathe.  I cried when I watched Kamo’s teeth sink into your shirt, scratch the perfect skin on your little arm, desperate to play with you. I didn’t cry when I stuck my hand in his mouth, against his teeth to keep him away… just when you reached for my face, screaming and scared, heart thrashing in your chest, heaving against mine. You leaned your face against my nose, and our tears fell together, burning my chapped lips. I cried a little when you moved around in your walker last night all on your own, overwhelmed at the light in your eyes. A tear fell when you snuggled your head under my chin to nap and didn’t want to be moved, perfectly content to just stay there with me, breathing deeply, smiling softly. My eyes burned when I watched you with your daddy, his cheeks sore from beaming.

And I was so excited, so unable to control it, that I cried out today when you rolled over for the first time during our photo shoot. You lay on your back, staring at me with the biggest eyes I’ve ever seen, eyebrows furrowed in confusion. And then I started singing, stopping only when I was drowned out by your laughter.

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how the narwhals came to be:

a girl followed the blog. a girl named Dannielle. a canadian girl. I friended Dannielle on facebook. Dannielle accepted. Dannielle said “what should I paint…?” I drank some beers. I said “NARWHALS.”  I feared she’d think me crazy. I fell asleep. I woke up. Miss Dannielle didn’t think me crazy after all and while I was dreaming painted up the two best looking narwhals I’ve ever seen. A momma narwhal and a baby narwhal. Me and B. It’s hanging in B’s nursery, a little piece of our new canadian friend, a sweet reminder of the best surprise ever.

Dannielle, you’re a bad ass.

*****

Update: apparently I missed the memo that it’s narwhal…not nar-whale. I always just thought people were saying it wrong. awkward.

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From Alex, To Jamie, With Love

The coffee beanery was about to explode

Or was it a field?

Nobody knows. Nobody saw it coming,

but for days, the forecast predicted frost,

the TVs radiated ice.

The toyota became a baked alaska,

and if we took out our spoons,

the windshield wipers scraping beneath.

A little work for dessert,

if every course would put up a good fight first.

All that you build will probably fall someday.

Then you’ll be left with only polaroids.

So, what I want to know is when the sky caves in,

who’s gonna pick up the pieces then?

The signs, they were all there before,

a blink of barette

the waves crashing down on the colonials.

Everybody said “Don’t get caught, darling,

you gonna end up in a Folgers tin”

but even they liked the storm.

And they drive me batty when they say things like that

’cause you know I’ve heard the stories, too,

oh I’ve heard the wives’ tale

where Polly at a load of stale reunion bread

and got killed by one of her seven siamese cats.

Never did want an American short-hais

’cause they’ve got bones to pick.

All that you build will probably fall someday.

Then you’ll be left with only polaroids.

So, what I want to know is when the sky caves in,

who’s gonna pick up the pieces then?

I had a dream about Helena

where she was strumming her cello like it was a banjo.

We got drunk and danced in the sand dunes ’till she said,

“Why don’t we go and see about that parade?”

And James with his beard which is down to his knees,

is probably in Asia chewing on a coil of ginseng

and he’s writing me every week about the big beautiful world,

I kind of want to be a part of it.

All that you build will probably fall someday.

Then you’ll be left with only polaroids.

So, what I want to know is when the sky caves in,

who’s gonna pick up the pieces then?

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massages and candles, room to think, room to breathe. tennis and bikinis, fountains and pools. peach beer and grass between perfect little toes. dumb movies and dreamless sleep, alarms and running, crashing and crying. columns and statues, art and trash…angels, rust, and steel. a pretty headband and grape flavored bubbles. chili and beer, tickets and prizes. green iguana and a live guitar. shots, burgers, and a cranky baby. walks over bridges and braids in my hair. toys and tattoos, games and caffeine. trading and drinking, laughing and stealing. trains and balloons, old chairs and guacamole. driving and cursing and losing and finding. hula bay and a fishbowl drink, a salad over waves. soccer and winning, koko and cheering. a naked baby and a rubber duck, splashing bubbles made of honey.

wearing: staff T, cutoffs-target, moccasins-payless, handmade braided leather headband

* you want to know why this post is so late? because I thought it would be brilliant to go run around town today using up gift cards. but it was monsooning and my clothes were soaked and B thought it was a dumb idea and I kept forgetting things in the car and not finding what I was looking for and a middle aged jack ass looked at me with B in his sling and said “kids having babies…it isn’t right” and then I spent at least 3 hours trying to finish the video but the filter app won’t work and the other 100 things I tried didn’t work either and I just realized that I got completely shafted by Apple. so here ya go, a non-vintage totally normal video 12 hours too late. Apple and gmail can go to hell. good night.

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This is what we’ll be listening to this weekend while I get a massage, tie dye our brains out, spend the day at Chili Fest, watch dad play at Green Iguana, go to a very special first birthday party and maybe go to Hula Bay and break out the bubble machine. Favorite songs I’ll sing to B and to the pups, on repeat as they reverberate through the walls. Songs I’ll request dad play on stage – he does the best Mary Jane…he plays it for me every time. Songs I’ll tease Alex about – Copacetic?  cocapetic? cocalepic? Songs that filter through my mind, my heart, my laughter.

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I went to Sam’s and bought some treats, even though Corona is large and Stella is a jerk. I accidently bought the really really big kind. I didn’t know this until I got home and opened the box.

whatever. B and I had to go run some more errands. So I put Stella’s crazy emotional anxiety ridden ass in her crate, which made her extremely happy. But I didn’t know what to do with the open box of treats – it wouldn’t fit anywhere in the house except the floor. I stacked a bunch of stuff on it. I told Corona NO. She didn’t really care. And she’s a good dog. I thought this was sufficient.

B and I came home. Not even 30 minutes had gone by. I opened the door. Corona was passed out on the couch, on her back with her grossly fat belly hanging over the edge. SHE COULDN’T EVEN GET UP. She was laying in a bed of crumbs and drool. I followed the crumb trail to the kitchen. She had tipped over the box, eaten about 25 treats that were bigger than her head and then gone into a food coma. She ate so much that she couldn’t even eat any more. There was half a box of treats left and she didn’t even want them. Stella was in her crate shaking and shrieking and twitching. For once she wasn’t the asshole and she couldn’t even handle it.

It took an etire week of barfing/crapping in the house for her stomach to stop dragging on the ground. Kind of like the time she ate 5 lbs of raw steak in 10 minutes.

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A while back we took B to a carousel. Dottie meant to take pictures, but instead she took videos. Videos that weren’t meant to be taken, that no one even realized were being filmed. Videos of B in my lap, waving his little hands. Videos of me kissing his cheek, backlit by the carnival lights behind us, standing amidst the horses, the dragons, the zebras, the carriages. I never considered deleting them, these 8 second snapshots of him in my arms. I want him to have these videos, to watch them often…because if something were to happen to me, I need him to have proof that I loved him, showed him things I believed held magic. Proof that I held him, kissed him, looked at him in awe. Proof we were connected. And one day, something will happen to me and he’ll be left in the world to live out his days without a mother. These videos, the pictures I take, the words I write will be all he has left, the only tangible proof I ever existed, all he’ll have to validate what he knows in his heart. And still it doesn’t feel like enough, these remnants of a life, what all too soon will be his past. I just need him to have something, anything, when I can’t be there to hold him anymore.

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