Lunchtime is for Mothers

I got a new lunch kit.



It's great, like a bento box for grownups with seals in the compartments so the liquids don't get everything disgusting.



I ate some of it before I thought to take a picture.

I hiked over to the Long Center to sit in the grass and look at this view.




I also found this.



The keys werent great but the sound was all right for a piano that's been outside for a month.



So I played the piano. Outside. In the cool breeze of a dry Texas spring. And for once, took a peaceful breath.

Eliot Gets the Ball

So we have this awesome friend and care provider Katie Holmes (ok, not THE Katie Holmes but in our book, totally THE Katie). She cares for Eliot during the day and plays a bitchin' fiddle. Also, she sends pictures. I guess today Eliot inched his way over to a ball for the first time.

I have another friend who cares for kids during the day. She used to talk about how the baby would be walking all over the house and after the weekend Working Mom would show up crowing about the baby's first steps. This friend would allow the mother to think that she had witnessed the first steps without disenchanting her. Which breaks my heart a little. But we have pictures.

Starry Nights Bed and Breakfast

To attempt to forget about my heinous night last night, which involved pulling two complaining children away from a Thanksgiving meal in progress and throwing them into the car, only to have said car freak out and break down in South Austin (karma for losing my cool during meal?) where I had to simultaneously breastfeed and teach older child to blow bubbles in bubblegum in a Target parking lot for an hour while Wilson got lost repeatedly trying to pick us up, I will remember our retreat to the Starry Nights bed and breakfast in Wimberley last weekend.

It was a little 2- bedroom cabin, perfectly clean. Here's the gate and the gate-opener, and the much-looked-forward-to yard and treehouse -

The reason we were there was to play at Matila's wedding, so of course we needed a new pink sequiny dress.

Tried to catch some baby smiles on the phone, but that didn't work...

My favorite part, even more than the nature trail and cute little dangerous boat, was the fire pit....

 from which you literally could see this, for your sunset.

Aah. Now isn't that better, self?

Garlic!

This is the first time I've actually grown enough garlic personally to braid it, although my parents had me do it when I was small. It's a little screwy, but I like it.

we laughed, we sang, we got a lung infection

This last weekend the family hauled out to Kerrville Folk Festival 2010, whereupon I played with the settings on my camera while utterly failing to take any pictures of my own family.

 

I thought this would be a fabulous album cover, actually. As though we ever go on the road anymore! 

Thanks to being so pregnant, I fell asleep at 11pm mostly, considered a big time-waster at Kerrville. One thing that kept us going were trips to the river (this is the 'blurry' setting on the camera, apparently). 

It also takes great pictures of other people's children...

This is Judy's take on the popular rock-stacking pastime at Kerrville.

We usually enjoy the earlier acts on the main stage even more than the later ones, since you get to hear people you never have heard before. In this case, it will seem new every time, since I have absolutely no idea who this is. The point is to get you a nice vantage point of the stage in the daytime, because....

 

This picture of the Indigo Girls' set in the nighttime is completely unviewable. But trust me! They were there! At my music festival! Did I mention I had an Indigo Girls cover band in college???? I saw my friend Mustang on the stage taking pictures and generally rubbing elbows, and while I was jealous for a minute, I have to admit that had that been me I probably would have just drooled and said something unintelligible, so it was safer to stay in the audience.

It was so sad that poor Sparrow woke up with a lung infection - small bit of pneumonia - on Sunday morning, precipitating a hellish ride back into town to the urgent care clinic. Poor little bird. But at least her momma is cool enough to have taken her to her first IG concert at 4, even if you have to suffer a bit from neglect.

No really, she's doing great now.

on the road again

Seemed like with the new baby coming and all, it might be time to revitalize this blog to keep up with family and friends. We'll see how I do - apparently I have a talent for dropping projects like this one when I get busy. For today's adventure, I took the train to the office. Since we can't seem to get out of the house on time this morning or any morning, I wound up waiting here for about 45 minutes.

Your two options are, you can sit, or you can have shade/rain protection.

The train itself was lovely, nice smooth ride and good voyeur opportunities into people's backyards. A bus connection later I made it into the office. Total ride - 50 minutes. Not bad. Total time from house with waiting time - an hour and a half. Ick.

OK, so my office is a cubicle. In fact, the entire floor is a rabbit's warren of cubicles.

 

 (Shot taken standing on my chair)

There's something so 9-5-with-Lily-Tomlin about it. The retro look of the pictures comes from an iPhone app called Hipstamatic, and I think it adds to the atmosphere of this post. Now I need to go out and get some cocktail dresses. Oh, wait, I have to have this baby first. 

Round you out with a picture of the grandchild, mom, with her friend at kiddie acres:

 

 All right then.

Austin Ball Moss

How. Cool. Is. That.

An explanation (courtesy of every internet site that mentions it):

Ball moss (Tillandsia recurvata) is common in Austin but rare outside of Austin. It may be that the city ‘heat island effect’ allows it to grown in Austin. This is a member of the bromeliad family, closely related to Spanish moss.

It is an epiphyte, not a parasite. There is no evidence at all that it harms trees, contrary to local myth. Indeed, since it is an epiphyte, it is difficult to see how it would harm trees. The myth probably arises from the tendency of sick and dying trees to have conspicuously large ball moss populations. This is likely due to the lack of new (hence ball moss-free) growth and also to increased light levels within the canopy of an unhealthy tree.

the cat bowl

This NY Times article really set my mind spinning this morning. It's about our total inability to get rid of heirloom furniture, be it ever so beat-up or uncomfortable. A few pieces of our own furniture leaped to mind... then a few more... and then I realized: almost every damn thing I own is a piece of heirloom furniture, and it's almost all beat to hell.

This has two main causes: (1) DH and I are poor and used to be more poor and we never buy furniture and (2) both of our parents homes are (or were) home to many of these items, and they didn't want them either.

Exhibit 1: The Haviland China ("The molds were broken in WWII!!). Worse than furniture and worth more. Bequested by my Great-Aunt Mary on her deathbed for when I married, which prompted guffaws from me at the time but lo and behold I am now married and my mother wasted no time in passing down the Fated Dishware of Imminent Guilt. Please note: I am the only person in my family with a toddler. I have no business owning this. So naturally, it's in the garage. I've never used it, not in 5 years. By the time I can use it (read: no kids in the house) I'll be morally obligated to pass it down to my own newly married daughter, who will never use it either.

Exhibit 2: The Wierd Cuplike Mexican Leather Chairs of Discomfort. Now more appropriately called the Cracked Decaying Porch Chairs of Discomfort. I keep swearing one day when I'm rich I will get them 're-done'. Whatev. As long as they don't end up like the Great-Grandmother Red Chair (left out in the rain) and Settee (Dog Bed).

Exhibit 3: The Easter Bar (topped by The Shed Painting). All right, this one's pretty cool, but will keep us from ever living in an apartment. It's huge and used mostly as a short open closet. It's just good to explain to people that, because I'm from Louisiana, it was a perfectly appropriate end-of-Lent gift in 1969. Happy Easter, here's a bar.

The list goes on. Our complicated and heavy bed from Wilson's grandmother, now with the varnish chewed off by wee Sparrow. Our complicated and rickety (but pricey) crib with varnish chewed off by same child (new, but automatic heirloom thanks to preciousness and the fact that Wilson's mother gifted it). The couch, every chair, the vanity, the chopping block, the cat bowl (ok, jk): in short, nearly every piece of furniture in the entire house.

Which makes a trip to Ikea an impossibility regardless of winning the lottery.

It Rained! And there was a Party!

Finally on Saturday we had a brief thunderstorm. It sent a rolling, dusty river down the street in front of our house, and today the grass is electric green. Perhaps it will stay that way for a few days before dulling to the 101-degree beige.

Hey, at least it goes with the house.

In a spirit of celebration we drove out to K&J's house, or perhaps we should refer to it as the Compound. With 5 children, they've committed to a sprawling extension that is currently a frame on a slab, the smell of which reminds me of my father's carpentry days and childhood in general. As J put it, "I'm going to have teenagers in the house for the next 18 years". So if they build the ultimate den, the theory goes that the teenagers will hang out at the Compound instead of places unknown. Either way, it's a beautiful piece of work and sends my own house lust roaring out of my chest. One day, one day.

The end result of a long party (15 kids! 10 pounds of fetuccini! A dragon cake! 8 pounds of tiramisu! And only then do you get the margaritas!) was an exhausted princess that was still awake after 1 a.m.

And today, a total meltdown by 11 a.m. and a very blessedly early nap. Which is where I'm headed now.

high and dry

One of the stranger things about my new office is that, even though it has not rained here for more than a month, I look directly at two fountains pushing water very high into the sky. 3 stories high. I'm not complaining, because i rather like the reminder that water exists somewhere here. You can't see it on the surface.

It makes my swamp-raised body nervous and jittery to dry out. I think the lack of water affects us on a deeply biological level, makes us always on the lookout for sources. I learn a lot about this issue being around so many geologists and hydrogeologists and whatnot; the four precipitation projection models  based on climate are deeply disturbing. They're all over the place, but go in the same general direction: way, way down.

Could they put in a pipeline over to new orleans?

We're letting the grass go crunchy over at the house. How long, I wonder, before we have only bare dirt? The neighbors mostly water. So the bunny seems to be ok, and gets his nightly carrot regardless of rainfall or drought.