nursery school picture day

 i gave this vintage western shirt to my friend who has two studly boys under the age of two point five. 

she said this is the outfit he put on for his school pictures. she said he wore the shower cap because he was cold.

new good things

gonna get back on the blog horse from the new house with a list of good things:

1. the internet here is fast and reliable. this may seem like a small deal, but for somebody who had aggravated charter repair visits on a more-than-monthly basis for the last 2 years, this is a Big Deal.

2. the water pressure is awesome. my shower is no longer a clawfoot tub designed for a child. the plastic shower liners do not sweep in and give me unwanted mildewy hugs.

3. kid D's sweet little girl teylor scores a soccer goal.

4. betsy's " great list" - i love this idea. i love her attitude of gratitude. i love her link to our old friend from san diego dr. adam tibble's letter from afghanistan to anderson cooper. 

5. there are surprisingly good restaurants around here in east asheville. who knew? i didn't. east village grille. cafe azalea. pomodoro's (which i mistakenly thought was 1. a chain and 2. like olive garden based on their signs. note to  restauranteurs - be careful of too-slick/clean-looking marketing material!)

6. my biggest t-shirt order of all time came this week: 10 t-shirts to a girl in texas. yee haw!

7. the amaryllis in the photo re-bloomed 1.25 years later. i kept watering it and the leaves kept growing for a year and then a new shoot shot up and now BOOM giant pink flowers towering many feet in the air above the pot.

8. had a couple rugs and couches cleaned today. they look and smell like new, now with 98% less dog fur. thank you five step carpet care

9. eli turned 8 this week. he got a big ball of raw hamburger meat. he enjoyed this. nacho got a miniball. he enjoyed his, too.

bonnet shores 1989

packing up boxes i came across some old photos that needed scanning. 

 i'm not going to identify the people in this picture because it's just too ridiculous, but one of them is me, and this is a normal typical scene from my childhood. 

one of these girls had just cut her own bangs with manicure scissors.

i'm gonna git you worm

i babysat for a total of 1.75 hours today and felt like i deserve to funnel a case of beer and get $5000. 

how the HELL do you people with kids do it? 

how do you wash your hands while holding a baby? i was covered in milk, water, soap, baby fart medicine. after not even two hours. with one 7 month old adorable sweet boy who didn't fuss one time. not even a fuss face one time. and still i can't imagine tending to him 24/7. 

congratulations, parents! you have all my respect.

new print available - napa valley

this image just absolutely blows me away. 

if you or somebody you know has been to napa valley and had a good time, you might need to hang this image on your wall. i think this print is incredibly beautiful and dynamic. click on it to enlarge. and get lost inside.

via Jay Archibald:

it is from Oakville appellation in the Napa Valley, specifically it is on Oakville Cross Road, facing Howell Mountain to the east and Mt. St. Helena to the north. The vineyards in the photo, I believe, belong to Plumpjack, Groth, and Miner. It is comprised of 28 images.

print available for extremely reasonable price. makes an unbelievable present. contact me or jay directly for more info. 

primary

last week kevin & i celebrated the 3rd anniversary of our first date.

december 10, 2008. wednesday night. i was living in asheville, he was living in charlotte. we met at a bar that neither of us had ever been to in hickory, about halfway between.

we hadn't seen each other for more than 10 years. we were friends in college in chapel hill in the late '90s. 'friends' might be pushing it - the truth is he was friends with my boyfriend, and i was living with his girlfriend. the 4 of us hung out together throughout that year, and i always liked him.

we reconnected through the magic of facebook in november and then decided to meet up for a drink. we ordered hawaiian pizza and didn't touch it. we had beer and eye contact and laughs and sparks and made plans to see each other asap. i drove to charlotte two days later with holden and nacho and stayed for 3 days at his fantastic house on a lake and the rest is history.

i can't say it's luck or destiny or hard work or familiarity or timing or what. we like to do a lot of the same things. our energy levels are about even. he is smart and funny and kind and honest and responsible.  he is curious and adventurous and makes his own health and mental health a relative priority.  i love his hair. i love his smile. i love making him smile. his family is funny and generous and eerily similar to my own, and he has excellent taste in friends.

i don't write about him or love or relationships too much here, maybe thinking sharing will dilute it, or maybe jinx it, or maybe because i know the anonymity of the web has evaporated in the past year or two and i am not comfortable with who is reading. i don't want it to seem like bragging, or sillyfluffy, or gag-inducing. i'm not very social and i'm not very open to the public, and i am glad for this blog to be a creative outlet, but if you're looking for deeply personal stuff, and you're not one of the 2-3 close friends i am able to maintain at any given time, you should probably watch some reality tv instead!

i put the picture of the tee box markers on top since there have been 3 years, which is by far the longest relationship i've been in.

there's been a lot of golden moments, and some blue, and some red. but mainly when i look back, they have been gold.

i'd climb a tree for a date with you

i love dates. 

this is no secret. 

i try to eat one a day at least. i eat them plain. i stuff them with peanut butter. or cashews. or goat cheese. 

i bring them with me to almost every potluck i attend. medjool dates are so sweet and smooth. if you don't like them, i bet you've never tried them.

my friend betsy is trying to use all the extra food in her pantry, and had a half bag of dates and featured my 'recipe' on her awesome betsylife blog last week. 

if you close your eyes and chew long enough, these things taste just like the old hostess funny bones. 

twin towers march 1998

this photo isn't black and white, it was a cloudy day.

this was also new york in '98, but on a much more sunny day.

colorado for labor day

i spent the past 5 days in colorado, and it was glorious.

on the first day kevin's brother teddy took us on a hike to diamond lake - which is not a dammed river, but a true mountain lake. good lord there's a difference.

we had great lunch and beer in boulder and listened to a barefoot hippie play classical piano in the middle pearl street.

we went to breckenridge and hung out with kevin's parents and his incredibly cute niece and nephew, piper and jack, for the weekend.

this is an actual conversation i had with piper:

(after hearing that rose, the 13 year old black lab bed hog climbed on piper's air mattress and slept with her all night, eventually pushing piper's legs off the bed)

me: it was cold last night, so rose was probably keeping you warm, and you were keeping her warm.

piper: yes, and she was keeping my heart warm!

i walked around the astonishingly beautiful breckenridge golf course and witnessed kevin's dad chip in from out of a bunker that was over his head. it was incredible!

i played no fewer than 50 games of hullabaloo.

we went to the phish show sunday night. it was my 3rd time seeing them and BY FAR the best. there was much platypus slapping and dance party USA. one strange coincidence was that they covered for the first time 'the way it goes' - gillian welch's new song that we heard her play (better) a few weeks ago at the orange peel. but cool of them to try! the whole night was a blast.

we flew back across the country on monday straight into a tropical storm and other than a few in-air and on-runway delays, we got home close to schedule. this lady was rolling this girl around the charlotte airport like so. not sure of the safety implications here. 

i hope your labor day was labor-free and even 1/10 as much fun as mine.

sweetness!

sweet mountain cabin for sale

my friends lindsay and josh are selling their super cute little mountain lodge in south asheville.

new roof! new A/C! new hardwood floors! so much more!

it is just so cozy and homey and NICE.

check out the listing details here.

you know you want to buy a house from people who look like this, imagine the good vibes that permeate the structure:

leo!

everybody's favorite shar pei - golden retriever is here for the weekend.

reo red panda!

he is even clownier than nacho, if that is possible.

he snorfles.

he snuggles.

he also is 'marking' the furniture. not sure how to get him to stop doing that.

his breed is golden pei, so what do i expect.

he also doesn't eat much. i just don't understand dogs that don't eat much. my dogs are obsessive vacuum eaters. reo gets top of the line newman's own wet food and looks at it just like 'eh, not hungry,' takes a bite and walks away.

checkin out the piggies

went to charlotte this weekend for a super fun british open party. here is emmitt, a ridiculously cute nugget of 10 month old sweetness. how awesome are his cheeks? and his hair? and his name?

shady bluff, charlotte's rockingest trio also graced our ears with a noon set.

later i walked around the corner and found these two nutball sisters by themselves frozen and whispering. i said "what are you doing?" and they said "being statues." i said, 'can i take your picture' and they said "YES!" and here we are:

squirrel tidbits

highlights of this week included:

finding this nut-eating golf-playing squirrel fake-collared sweatshirt at goodwill. he has a rhinestone eye.

going to see a week-old baby. he was probably smaller than this squirrel. the whole time i was there he was sleeping, healthy, and pink.

watching kevin compose an ode to holden on a terrible dented manual typewriter - "The Bowels of Heaven"

ALSO one of the people in the following photo will be doing 5 minutes of stand-up comedy next tuesday july 5 at the magnetic field in asheville's river arts district. (event link here.)

i consider stand up comic to be the scariest job in existence. i would rather change the light bulbs on top of bridges.

happy 4th of july! hope your bombs burst in air.

globular truth & wisdom

"from time to time, the world does change."

i bought a sweet new globe and i love this insert that came with it - so true. and it's a great program replogle is running -- if, no WHEN, the world does change, i can get in touch with them and they will sell me a new globe for 50% off.

i have learned a lot already by studying the globe. i had no idea australia was so far from the UK. opposite side of the earth. must have been hell on those debtors.

also, the pacific ocean is not small. 

baby bonanza

it really seems like every one of my best friends and family has a baby under the age of 3 right now. it's wild how they all have such different personalities and styles, in line with their parents' personalities of course. though they are spread out across the country, i would love to get them all together. especially in like 13 years.

two more tots joined the party this week, and if you ask me they look like tough little cookielets. and perfect prom dates in 2027!

introducing...finley!

and...lucas!

muchos adorables, no?

baby fresh roll

all my friends' babies born in the past year all have giant blueberry eyes. it's uncanny!

you don't need teeth to eat noodles.

nicest beach i've ever seen

i was back in the so-called redneck riviera this week.

i was there last year exactly when the deepwater oil spill started. there were no visible effects whatsoever.

in fact, i said it's the most beautiful beach i've ever been to. i've been to many beaches in

rhode island
long island
palm beach
puerto rico
outer banks
wrighstville
down to
kiawah
key west
los cabos
sea island
nice
marbella
kaikura
bondi
ventura
san diego
santa barbara
santa cruz
kauai
cadaqués

and the powder sugar sand and clear coke bottle glass green water and uncrowdedness of the beach at watersound on the gulf of mexico in the florida panhandle makes it my favorite.

we caught some relatively big fish variously referred to as whiting and ladyfish. saw a shark and some rays. dolphins playing because all dolphins do is play. somebody saw a killer whale but he was only 4 so...

it's a fantastic place to have a fantastic vacation.

i flew back to asheville direct on vision airlines. my ticket cost $59, but if you book early enough fares are $39 one way. the plane had relatively big leather seats, and two rows of three. it left on time and they gave us big bags of pretzels. full size bags like at supermarket cash registers. i was impressed and would fly with them again in a second.

new orleans

we left the house at 230AM thursday night (or friday morning depending how you count), drove an hour and a half to the greenville, SC amtrak station, and at 5AM boarded the crescent bound for new orleans. i woke up 4 hours later pulling out of the atlanta station.

we had a roomette which was nice because you can lower the seats and put on a bedroll they provide and completely lie down, also can close the door and curtain. there's a toilet in there, which is too close for comfort for me.

in the dining car they sat you with strangers if you didn't have a party of 4. they ran out of things like nobody's business. the service took forever. the coffee was piping hot. the salad had dark green lettuce not just iceberg. the meals were extremely overpriced, but free for those who were traveling in the roomettes.

the train slowed way down through tuscaloosa alabama. there were neighborhoods completely leveled by the tornadoes 2 days before. so many snapped trees and then 100 year old trees on their sides - their red roots unnaturally perpendicular. factories a heap of twisted steel and cinder blocks. people in neon yellow shirts handing out water. old men in their backyards surrounded by shredded belongings watching the train go by. (slide show of the destruction)

there is no open container law in new orleans and no last call. (or seemingly). there's a casino. where you can't take pictures of the blackjack table. you can take bloody marys and walk down by the mississippi river while an old lady plays the pipes on top of the natchez paddle boat, it's so windy the pipe steam cloud is blowing right back in her face.

tipitinas uptown is a legendary venue and i loved seeing two of my alltime favorite bands share the stage there and also some old friends on the dancefloor. the show was supposed to start at 1, but instead doors opened at 2 and it was sunrise when we stumbled out. my time's coming but it's not tonight.

the food at the fairgrounds of jazz fest is worth the price of admission alone. ingested included: giant strawberry lemonade with chunks of real strawberries, chicken fricassee, fried plantains, and 'jama jama' (spinach) from the african food court. to die for. a bowl of shrimp and grits. perfection.

old timers playing the blues and some mardi gras indians. sunday morning. can you beat it? no.

as a last hurrah, later that night mr. b's had the best dining experience of my life. perfect service and timing and not too stuffy and awesome AWESOME food.

the floor of the blue nile has the arabic patterned tile. waiting for the show to start a man asked us "did they find his body?" which is how i found out they killed bin laden. the hippie next to me said super sarcastic "a trillion in war debt and how many thousands killed? mission accomplished! yay america! are the troops on their way home?" i tend to agree. watching teenagers rejoice in front of the white house on tv later i didn't feel like celebrating and i didn't feel any safer.

the train left new orleans at 7am. we got to the station in a cab whose driver had lived in the city for 4 days and had to plug the train station into the gps. he moved to new orleans from charlotte where his wife and kids still live because he couldn't find work in charlotte.

we got back to greenville at 1130 monday night, back home at 1. we got mooned in mississippi.

wait your turno

i love this time of year!

it's warm. and green. and gold. and growing.

we are taking a train from south carolina to louisiana for jazzfest this weekend.

ALO and Tea Leaf Green are playing a show at Tipitina's that starts at 1AM on my birthday.

i can barely wait my turno!