My Grandma died. For various reasons I'm not feeling very creative. I'm taking a few days off. See ya latter.

A great artist is always before his time or behind it.-George Edward Moore

My brother was an artist. I don't know if he was actually as good as we his family thought but he was certainly different than other kids. I don't remember him ever using crayons, he was creating full page drawings (which were recognizable) with fine point markers when he was 3 or 4. He was really frustrated when he went to kindergarten and all they let him use were those big fat crayons and huge paintbrushes and all he could produce was something that "looked like a kindergartner drew it."

When he was about 6 he decided it was time to start trying to sell some of his work so he set up a table in out driveway and displayed several of his pictures with a sign saying they were ten cents each. This probably would have worked better but our street didn't have any sidewalks, was on a super steep hill, and was extremely busy traffic wise. However after a couple hours one of my friends who live two doors away walked purposely down the hill and spent several minutes in serious deliberation before deciding witch picture she wanted. She gave him a dime and took her new possession home. It made his day. I have always appreciated that she did that and that she treated it like a serious transaction.


A couple notes:

1. I had forgotten this story until something my BIL (P) said about Fiona having a distinctive art style reminded me. And I thank him for that.

2. (This will get slightly sad so feel free to skip) Roses posted something this morning that made me realise something. I was still thinking I was going to try to make a living in theatre when my brother died. Unfortunately every single song I tried to sing made me think of him. I told my voice teacher I needed a break but I never went back. I didn't sing at all for well over a year. I've been a little embarrassed and angry at myself that I spent so many years taking drama, dance, and voice lessons and then never even tried to do anything with them. It wasn't till this morning that it occurred to me that it wasn't entirely laziness or cowardice on my part. And I thank Roses for helping me forgive myself a little.

True friends stab you in the front.-Oscar Wilde

P&A were over on Fathers day. I snuck out of the room for a minute to call my Dad, ya know 'cause you're sposed ta. Came back a minute latter.

Me: That was weird? I told my Dad "Happy Father's Day" and he was all "Yeah okay thanks." So I asked if he got the book I sent him and he said he did then he was all "Thanks for calling bye."

Dave: He didn't want to talk to you?

Me: I guess not.

AK: Your parents we're totally doing it.

Me: Doing what? Oh Eeeeeeeeewwwwwwwwww.

All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That's his.-Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest

Saturday we went and picked strawberries.



We'd never done this before. Surprisingly a white skirt is not the best choice ever for doing agricultural labor (I know I was shocked too) but I expect I'll be able to get the stain out.



Alright I've got to admit something here. Since I was old enough to say "cheese" I have never been totally natural if there was a camera around. I like to have my picture taken. I like to see pictures of myself. I am all kinds of vain and a complete ham. I can't help it, if I see a camera I WILL pose. Which is why these pics are kinda great. I honestly didn't know Dave was taking pictures. They are totally and completely candid, and also kinda sweet.





When we were done we had about 200 pounds of strawberries.



So naturally we needed a cake and some whip cream. Dave culinary genius that he is, made an angel food cake from scratch. He told Fiona it was a Mothers day cake which I guess confused her because she kept trying to sing me Happy Birthday.



Sunday I got flowers, a balloon and this card.





Which apparently Fiona insisted was the one she wanted. It's so very not me that it makes Dave and I both giggle uncontrollably so I think it was a good call on Fiona's part.

Dave decided to make jelly out of our gazillion strawberries. I made the labels.





Then he cleaned the kitchen and took Fiona swimming.

I also got to have this conversation:

Me: Well yes she's a Mama if she has babies.

Fiona: Ooooh...I was a baby.

Me: Yes you were. You are what made me a Mama.

Fiona: Ooooh (thoughtful pause). You're welcome!

It was a nice weekend. Hope you all had a great Mother's day too.

Win, lose or draw, you're all my cousins and I love you.-Chill Wills

Fiona was giving a three year old soliloquy on babies which I just don't have the skill to reproduce.

Me: Do you know you have a new baby cousin?

Fiona: I DO?!

Me: Yes she's named Miss V.

Fiona: She's my friend!

I hope that will be very true. Congrats to A&L on your new baby girl I look forward to meeting her in person.

Life is a Bowl of Cherries-Proverb

Dishing out a second helping of fruit cocktail to Fiona

Fiona: Where's the nother red one?

Me: Here's one, and here's another one.

Fiona: And the nother one?

Me: You've had like five of em. I think you got em all now.

Fiona: Awww.

Me: When I was little there was only one in the whole can.

Fiona: Oh no.

Me: Yeah and I had a brother so we had to fight over who got to have it. I always won because I was the oldest and I was bigger than him.

Fiona: You were old like me?

Me: Yep, I was old like you so I got the cherry.

When red headed people are above a certain social grade their hair is auburn.-Mark Twain

The problem with bangs, at least the straight across kind I have at the moment...



Side story: Does any one else think it's weird that when I went to my parents house a couple weeks ago to go through more random stuff from my grandparents house (Hello packages of instant flan that expired in the late 1980's) neither of my parents noticed I suddenly have bangs? My Mom noticed my hair is currently red (well strawberry) which I've been in the habit of doing every year or so since I was seventeen but not that I have straight across actual bangs for the first time in just shy of twenty five years. Not even when we were discussing hair styles as I was cutting her hair because she didn't want to pay $12 to get it trimmed.



The problem with bangs is it's really hard to put on moisturizer or the really spiffy anti wrinkle serum I use without getting it in my hair.

Happy Birthday David!

Last week ended badly. Due to everyone in the house having the stomach flu, probably still being contagious, and a general feeling of not being in the mood due to some very sad news we called off the plans to go out tonight to celebrate Dave (and his twin brothers) birthday.

However the day should not pass unacknowledged. So my lovely assistant and I performed a culinary experiment.
Fiona was in charge of sprinkles. Admire her even distribution.

They did NOT come out the way I intended. However.....

Cool hu?

Happy birthday Dave. Love ya!

Edit:

Becky asked how I did this and I started to respond but then it got too long for a comment so I'm moving the explanation here.

They were supposed to be stripped. I saw some very vague instructions on line a couple weeks ago but either they weren't very complete or I didn't understand because that's not what I got. However as they did come out pretty cool here's what I did.

I used Vanilla cake mix but I'm sure any white or yellow cake mix will work. I separated it in to ramekins and added food coloring. The one pictured was just regular red, yellow, green, blue but I also made some using neon food coloring, we haven't bitten in to any of these yet so I can't report on how they look (if it's extra cool I'll upload a pic). Then I just layered the different colors in to the cupcake papers. What happened is it sort of erupted and came out tie dye, oddly the blue was actually on top but wound up in the middle after cooking.

Do me a favor if any of you try this out email me a picture or link(email info on the contact me page) 'cause I'd love to see how they came out. I'm wondering if I could get a cool swirly effect like marble cake.

These gems have life in them: their colors speak, say what words fail of.-George Eliot

A few other things Grandpa gave me besides a dining set and a pink snuggie.

Grandma has Alzheimer's and hides things she also occasionally does really weird things like throw her wedding rings off the back porch. Luckily the gardener found them and gave them back to my Grandpa but this sort of thing is why they are moving. Grandpa figures it's better to give my Dad and I the more valuable pieces of jewelry rather than wait for Grandma to hide them or throw them off the porch. He gave me a few things when we were picking up the table.

This is her gold charm bracelet. They used to travel all over the world and there are charms from all kinds of places.


Also several that were obviously gifts from Grandpa including little boy and girl charms from when my brother and I were born. Guess who this little butterball is?


And this is her silver charm bracelet. I usually don't wear gold but I might wear the silver one.


This was from their 25th anniversary. There is one on the gold bracelet from their 50th but I couldn't get a clear picture (actually this one isn't very clear either)


He also gave me a necklace he wants me to save for Fiona when she's older that belonged to my Great Grandma Emma, some pretty earrings, an opal pin, and this locket which was his and has a picture of Grandma in it from when she was young and beautiful and less nutty.

If you live to be 100, I hope I live to be 100 minus 1 day, so I never have to live without you.-Winnie the Pooh

Lol! When I dropped off the Tahoe.

A: I read your blog. There better not be a pink Snuggie in our car.

She is one of my favorite people. I love LOVE that she knows us well enough to suspect we'd do that.

The family - that dear octopus from whose tentacles we never quite escape, nor, in our inmost hearts, ever quite wish to.-Dodie Smith

My Grandparents are moving out of their house and in to an assisted living facility as a result they have a whole house full of stuff they need to get rid of. We adopted their dining table since we didn't have a table of any kind. P&A were nice enough to loan us their Tahoe to move it because well it wasn't fitting in a Saturn Ion. As we were leaving my Grandpa hands me a box and says,"Here you can give this to Fiona." It was a Snuggie...a pink Snuggie. Dave and I did not make eye contact knowing we would giggle if we did.

Note: If you like Snuggies that's cool but you have to admit the commercials are so freaking cheesy they'd make a Rolls Royce look like a tacky piece of cheap crap.

On the way home we had to cross one of the many bridges in the bay area and didn't think about the fact that it was going to charge P&A's Fastrack account until after we went through the toll.

Me: That's okay I'll give em five bucks when I return the Tahoe.

Dave: Or you could just give them the Snuggie.

Me: I should totally do that, wrap it up real nice and give it to them saying, it's just a little something to thank you.

Dave: Or we could just leave it in the truck and when they ask if we left it say no.

Me: (in my best innocent voice) Why on Earth would we leave a pink Snuggie in your car?

Note again: I didn't though 1 'cause Grandpa was just trying to be nice and more importantly 2 P&A read my blog sometimes and then they'd KNOW. Hi guys thanks again for loaning us your car.

It was a friendly afternoon of sledding, and as I understand it he completed his run and fell off the sled.-Darryl Seibel

Fiona sledding on NYE.

I kinda love this first video.


This second one is actually Fiona with her uncle P.

Gentlemen can now only behave as such, or be tolerated as such, in circumstances that are manifestly contrived or unreal.-Simon Raven

When I was a teenager and my Dad would drop me off anywhere he would always get out of the car, come around and open my door for me. My friends and in some cases their parents thought this was a strangely old fashioned thing to do but really the door handle was broken on the inside.

Home is where one starts from.-T.S. Eliot

Well my grand experiment worked (except for the picture posting sideways which I don't know how to fix). 'Cept it was so crowded that I lost my wifi every afternoon so I only go that one post up. I'm going to start working on our pictures but in the mean time here are a few I took with my phone and one or two funny things I thought.

As plenty of you guessed we were in Disneyland. Can you think of a better 3rd birthday present? None of us had ever done Disney at Christmas before. Let me tell you if you get the chance it is really amazing. Here is Fiona on our first night there (after a long day in the car during which both she and Cousin we're perfectly behaved) being snowed on in Fantasy land in front of It's a Small World.
This was much cooler looking at night all light up but my camera phone was not capable of capturing that, it just came out as a bright blur. But see the big clock was wearing a Santa hat how cute.

AK and I also went on the Haunted Mansion ride which was all decorated in Nightmare Before Christmas fashion which we thought was cool.

Fiona's favorite Disney movie (so far) has been Dumbo so it was my mission this trip to get her a stuffed Dumbo as an early birthday present. She loved it and when she fell asleep a little while latter had a death grip on that thing. The next day Dave won her a different Dumbo at one of the midway games at Disney's California Adventure. AK also won one so Cousin got a Dumbo too.

These are the worlds ugliest pants. They were shiny appeared to be satin and were beige and pink paisley. Yep I was that person taking surreptitious pictures of a stranger to mock latter. The pants were THAT ugly.

The whole time we were there we were having a good natured argument over whether Disney Land or Disney World was better. AK and I contend that DL is superior (though DW is nice too). Dave and P argued that DW was less crowded and therefore better. I think they are just plain wrong on that one and this is my blog so I will say so. Fiona and Cousin both being CA natives like AK and I are being counted as coming down on the DL side (AK and I wielding their proxy votes as they are minors). Although on the drive home last night I thought of the #1 reason DL beats DW (for the guys any way) neither of them has ever thrown up in DL but both have not once but twice in DW (once food poisoning and once stomach flu).

And since we are on the subject of rather yucky bodily ailments. You know that Seinfeld episode where they go the India and George doesn't "go the the bathroom" the whole time? Sadly that is my body's natural reaction to travel a lot of the time. I'm very happy to be home.

Did ya miss me and all my bathroom TMI? If you said yes you're in luck because I thought of another bathroom related post while I was there. Oh the anticipation!

Family love is messy, clinging, and of an annoying and repetitive pattern, like bad wallpaper.-Friedrich Nietzsche

I don't know if I ate something wrong or if I've just had the worlds worst case of PMS (and there's your daily dose of TMI. You're welcome) but I haven't left the house in two days and awesome as Fiona is there's only so many cute conversations with my two year old I can publish.

Interesting that was all one sentence. I'm not gonna fix it 'cause ya know what? I don't care.

I have nothing much to say today. I just want to lay around and drink tea until Dave gets home then I'm going to lay around and drink wine. Have a great Thanksgiving everyone! And for the handful of international readers happy Thursday that does not involve eating to much (unless it does which is your business).

Perhaps something interesting will happen that I can tell you all about on Friday. Although this year we're not seeing my family so my stories probably won't involve me telling anyone to bite me. Though I make no promises.

Sometimes being a brother is even better than being a superhero.-Marc Brown

The first time I ever donated blood (yeah I actually did it again after this)

At my high school if you were over 16 and had parents permission you could get out of class to donate blood on blood drive days. Pretty much only the kids who actually had debilitating phobias about blood or needles didn't donate because "DUDE YOU GET OUT OF CLASS!"

So during the first blood drive of my senior year I reported promptly for my appointment during second period. They set me up on a cot, got the line running and went to work on another student. Normally it takes about 15 minutes or so to fill the bag but when the phlebotomist (sp?) came back just a couple minutes later to check if things were flowing properly they discovered the bag was full. I've never discovered what exactly went wrong but I did discover the hard way that if I loose that much blood that quickly I pass out. Luckily someone caught me and put me back on the cot.

After an hour they decided to try getting me up again and......I passed out. So I lay back down and passed the time chatting with the other students who came and went in the cot next to mine. Finally they got me up and walked me to the table where there was juice and snacks (not sure why they didn't try giving me some while I was still on the cot, maybe because we were in the library). I had a little meal and chatted with my friend who was there and after a bit they told me I could go to class so I got up and.....passed out. This time I was caught by a very cute boy, which would have been a total movie moment but he was dating a friend of mine so oh well. Back to the cot for me, luckily my friend who'd been at the snack table had the good sense to go get my lunch for me. They tried to send me to class again a while latter and I guess I collapsed in the hallway and someone brought me back but I don't remember that part. Don't ask me why my parents weren't called or maybe a hospital because I don't know. Any way I finally made it back to class during seventh period (six hours later) and walked in to class half way through an Algebra test. My teacher took one look at me and said I could make it up.

I was actually feeling pretty much better by the time I got on the bus to go home. The Jr. High students also rode our bus. Normally my brother (who was in seventh grade)and I each hung out with our own friends but he saw how awful I looked and asked what was wrong so I told him the whole story, with help from our next door neighbor (the one who got my lunch) filing in the parts where I was unconscious. My poor brother was very upset. The bus stop was about half a mile from our house and my brother insisted on walking with us and every few blocks he made me sit down and rest, it must have taken us twice as long as usual to get home. Once we were in the house he insisted I lay down on the couch and let him bring me snacks and juice. I'm sure I didn't need the attention by then but he was just being so sweet.

He was like that. Today would have been his 31st birthday. I'm sorry he's not here to celebrate but I'll always love him for the things he did in those first 18 years.

Photograph: a picture painted by the sun without instruction in art.-Ambrose Bierce

Pumpkin Patch 2010

I didn't like this pumpkin patch as much as the one we went to the last two years. Dave wanted to check this one out because they had a record setting corn maze but since the maze was supposed to take 1 1/2-2 hours we didn't do it. Maybe we'll go to the other pumpkin patch later this year.

They had these cute little houses which we eventually noticed had exposed rusty nails. NICE!


Dave rented this little pedal car and tells me it was quite a work out. I preserved my dignity by offering to take the pics rather than getting all sweaty.


Because it was about half way between our houses P&A came down with Cousin (seriously that's what we call her in our house). When the waggon was rolling we told Fiona to hold on to Cousin so she wouldn't fall over and Fiona promptly grabbed her around the neck. But they looked cute!


Am I wrong or do the pink flamingos completely destroy the ambiance?


No I'm right


But with careful cropping I got some better pics.




And here is a rather nice one Dave took of the sun. Don't look directly at it.

Show me a man with a tattoo and I'll show you a man with an interesting past.-Jack London

Admire my restraint. We went to my grandparents house. Grandma has Alzheimer's, Fiona has a temporary tattoo.

Grandma: Is that a real tattoo?

Me: No

2 mins latter

Grandma: What's that on her arm? A tattoo on a child?

Me: It's not real grandma. It's just a sticker. I'm pretty sure we'd get in trouble for getting our two year old a tattoo.

2 mins latter

Grandma: (In stage whisper to Grandpa) I hope that's not a real tattoo

Me: No Grandma it's not.

2 mins latter

Grandma: I hope that tattoo isn't real.

Me:...................................................


See see! I completely resisted the urge to tell her yes and then create a spontaneous story in which Fiona had too much tequila on shore leave. I'm such a good person.

Happy five year anniversary Dave. Looking forward to the next 100.

A family is a unit composed not only of children but of men, women, an occasional animal, and the common cold.-Ogden Nash

So my....uh cousin in law (is that right?)...any way, Dave's cousin posted this link on Facebook.

http://www.peekyou.com/

I was curious so I looked myself up. Nothing particularly interesting under my current name. But when I looked up my former/ maiden name it states that I'm in my 60's (I thought 35 was bad) and apparently married to my Mother. I pretty sure that's not legal even in California.

Query: I wonder who they think my Dad is in this scenario. Our Guatemalan house boy?