A New Friend

My trip to Washington DC was amazing and it allowed me to feel, for a couple of days, like I was dabbling in a life that wasn't my own--leisurely walks to the farmer's market, a lazy Sunday brunch followed by the New York Times book review.  It's a life that I sometimes covet and is very far removed from my own.

A couple of friends from New York were there and I grilled them about living the artist's life in New York City.  From what they tell me it's almost as nice as I imagine it (except for the fact that one of them got hit by a car last week.  YIKES).

One of the New York bunch was the wedding photographer, Dallas (Dallas is not actually a wedding photographer but Frances is VERY persuasive).  I've had an internet crush on Dallas for a long time and I met him at a party once but we were never really friends.  He was seated at my table for dinner so I was finally able to get to know him in real life.  He is charming.  He is the kind of person who when you tell him that you are a stay-at-home mom will put his arm around you and tell you that you are doing the most important work in the world.

(And even though it would be the perfect moment to drop the bomb he will not tell you that he writes children's books.  You'll hear that from someone else.)

Needless to say, when I got home I immediately started re-stalking Dallas and ordered his book.  It is charming.  You can read it online for free but you're going to want to order it because you are going to love Red Fred and the Jolly Troop and their New York City life.

Red Fred also has a blog where a new story from the troop is published weekly and every Friday they have downloadable coloring pages.

The troop is pretty adventurous.  Their stories made me a little nostalgic for New York (which is odd because I have never lived in New York and have never even been there but I missed New York somehow--maybe it's just the dream of that artist's life)

Here is the troop at the Alexander McQueen show

They recently went camping

And, thankfully, the whole troop was able to stay safe during hurricane Irene.

Picture Perfect

The wedding was perfect.

And Claire had a good time at home with her dad. (this is the picture the hubbs texted me on Sunday morning--yes, those are q-tips)

A lovely little weekend for everyone.

A year ago....

A year ago this weekend we picked up our little family and moved to San Diego.  That next day my mom flew in to help me unpack and get adjusted to life in a new state. On our first trip to Trader Joe's my mom bought me a pineapple fern which we loved and which died a couple of months later.   In my traditional lazy-lady fashion the dead plant has sat on my porch since then.

Just two weeks ago it started sending forth little shoots.  And now I know that we have a perennial on our hands.  Lucky thing I didn't throw it away.

Today I am flying to Washington DC to celebrate the marriage of one of my favorite people.  It is the first time I am leaving Claire over night.  It's hard to say who's more nervous about the situation.  Of course, I have a couple of long flights where I'll be able to read, watch movies and relax and the hubbs has two days with a busy little lady.

All ye that labor

This year for labor day we labored to relax.  We went to meet baby Adam who had arrived in the world less than 24 hours before we met him, and then headed to San Juan Capistrano.  We hardly ever leave San Diego County so even if the Mission turned out to be boring it would have been a worth-while trip for us just to get out and about.

Lucky for us the mission is 100% awesome and you should absolutely go there. (It rained on and off the whole day so please forgive the fuzzy hair.)

A couple of our friends from the OC told us that after our trip to the mission we should cross the street and go to eat at Pedro's Tacos (something of an OC institution I guess.  We were a little suspect.  We don't like In n' Out Burger (another California institution) at all so when people tell us that there is a California fast food joint that we have to try out we sort of roll our eyes).

Pedro's was amazing.

So Pedro's and your cheap and delicious Carne Asada burrito, we'll see you soon.

Claire's Book Club: Nudist Edition

We have two books that Claire loves these days.  Oddly, they both have bare bottoms in them.  I'm going to assume that it's nothing more than coincidence.

No David

This book provides Claire with the opportunity to do one of her favorite things--point at people, wave her little finger and say, "No!*" which she does every time we turn a page. She LOVES this book and wants to reread it again and again and again.

I Ain't Gonna Paint No More

We found this book at the library this week and it has been a MAJOR hit.  It provides Claire with the opportunity to do two of her favorite things. 1) Point at people, wave her little finger and say, "No!" and 2) have different parts of her body pointed out and tickled as we read. I have literally read it 10 times today.

The pictures are wonderful and the cadence and rhyme of the words are perfect.  Somehow at our house this book is always read in a southern accent and even while we're around the dinner table the hubbs will say, "Ah what the heck gonna paint my neck."

*Claire's favorite word these days is, "No!" She repeats it over and over all the time.  Several mother's have mentioned to me that their kids didn't ever do that.  They thought that perhaps that was because they didn't tell their kids "No" very often.

 The truth is out. Claire get's told "No" multiple times a day and in all kinds of ways.  She gets plenty of love and there is also a lot of "Yes" but she'll certainly be able to make her own "No Claire" book very soon.

Book Club: The Shipping News

Reading the Shipping News made me terribly sad that we aren't a real book club who gets to meet together and eat snacks and talk about things because there are so many things I want to discuss about this book. This was one of my favorites that we have read so far. 

So instead of one thought explained you are getting a list of the things I want to talk to someone about. Think of it as book club but without so many delicious snacks and comment away.

1) Cousin Quoyle: 

Cousin Quoyle and his story-line were perhaps, my favorite parts of the whole book. I loved the white dog who terrorized Bunny that no one else believed in who turned out to be real.  I loved the knotted pieces of string.  I loved when Quoyle went to go visit his cousin.  Quoyle had lived in fear of his cousin, felt like he was being harassed and worried that his cousin would put up a fight for the family homestead but when he got to his house, cousin Quoyle was a pathetic, poor, old man who did not have much life to live.  I love that idea and metaphor--how many of the things that we fear and dread are really poor, pathetic old men dying in the corner.

2) Pulitzer Prize Winners

Reading the Pulitzer Prize winners has been more depressing than I anticipated.  I understand that deep and thoughtful writing has to examine the deep and thoughtful things of life but by golly....these books have been hard--kids shooting up their high schools, the misdeeds of war, the cruelty of other people, slavery.  The Pulitzer Prize winners have it all. 

In this book I kept expecting things to go wrong.  I kept expecting people to take advantage of one another, for their home to be taken away...for something to go horribly wrong.  It didn't.  People, on the whole, are kind to Quoyle and his family.  He finds people to care for his children, he succeeds in his job, he makes friends.  Sometimes life does turn out.   

3) Hope

I loved the signs and thoughts of hope in the book.  Jack Buggit coming back to life was perhaps my favorite of them all.  I loved the final lines of the book.

For if Jack Buggit could escape from the pickle jar, if a bird with a broken neck could fly away, what else might be possible? Water may be older than light, diamonds crack in hot goat's blood, mountaintops give off cold fire, forests appear in mid-ocean, it may happen that a crab is caught with the shadow of a hand on its back, and that the wind be imprisoned in a bit of knotted string. And it may be that love sometimes occurs without pain or misery.

4) Life and Progress

I loved reading about life in Newfoundland.  I grew up in the suburbs and now live in the city.  The life they describe in the book is so far removed from the ones I know.  I really liked reading about the way modern life is creeping in.  I didn't have to feel guilty that Walmart is making us all stupider, the way that they addressed what's happening was so much more gentle. I loved this quote from the book.

"There's two ways of living here now. There's the old way, look out for your family, die where you was born, fish, cut your wood, keep a garden, make do with what you got. Then there's the new way. Work out, have a job, somebody tell you what to do, your brother's in South Africa, your mother's in Regina, buy every goddamn cockadoodle piece of Japanese crap can. Leave home. Go off to look for work. And some has a hard time of it. . . . Now we got to deal with Crock-Pots and consumer ratings, asphalt driveways, lotteries, fried chicken franchises, Mint Royale coffee and gourmet shops, all that stuff"

I also very much enjoyed the descriptions of the old way of doing things.  The fishing, the sailing, the dragging of the Quoyle family home across the frozen ocean.  I appreciated that even though Quoyle was new to Newfoundland he was taken in by the people and they showed him what life had been like.

5) Change

Along the same vein of life changing the characters of in this book grow and change in the best ways. Quoyle, who has never been successful at anything finds his nitch.  The Aunt who has lost love gets to find it again--people get to change.  So often I pigeon-hole myself and others.  I say, "I'm not good at so and so." or "She is like x."  This book was a nice reminder that life isn't really like that.  We're not just one thing or another.  Even if I am x I don't have to stay that way.



So what did you think?

Happy Weekend

Or should I call it garbage truck day.  We spend every Friday morning anxiously awaiting the arrival of the garbage truck.  Claire says, "truck," runs to the window and the nice garbage man waves at her.


I know that today is the day we should be discussing The Shipping News by it's Friday, Labor Day weekend and a friend from Salt Lake just arrived.  We also have just procured a working key to the pool in our complex and we are going to celebrate this weekend in style.  Shipping News on Monday so get your thinking caps on.