Sparklers instead of Rice

We spent most of the day cleaning and organizing, re-potting plants and dusting. Hilariously exciting. Well, I cleaned and Ruby went around behind me making new messes. Jesse just Be'd cute and ate peaches. Evan was in Utrecht, the mini, better Amsterdam today, playing the Paradiso*. They take an early morning ferry back to ye olde Londontowne for their last show, thank the Lord.

I have a rare Thursday night free since I pawned my shift off on Heidi and now that I've gotten the sugarmonsters to sleep, what the heck do I do? Hulu and malbec with my lovely neighbor? Very yes. (and Jesse, turns out)

I found some mystery picture disks** today so I will treat you to some never before seen
snapshots of our sparklers-instead-of-rice wedding party. Hard to believe we're coming up on our 4th anniversary next month. Hooray, love!





*photo of Paradiso show courtesy of Jeff Klein
**wedding snaps courtesy of John Nordstrom

Underage drivers

Today we had zero friends over, which means I let the house get really messy and just enjoyed my sweet munchkins. Our fridge was down to condiments and jalapenos so we went to the dirt cheap mexican joint around the corner and ate egg tacos washed down with horchata and caught up on our looney tunes. Next I dragged them to the market to grab some essentials (do watermelons count as essential? possibly, considering Austin just broke the record for most consecutive days over 100 degrees. We win?) and Ruby and Jesse charmed passersby with their dual cart driving skills and pinchable cheeks.

Back home for some naps Ha! not mommy, and certainly not Ruby. Back home so Jesse could sleep off my breakfast that he stole after finishing his own. Jesse "whipped us up some lunch" and later we actually attended a sort of short story release party downtown for my writer friend Ben Reed (former manager of Club DeVille) and got to hang with his wife Carolyn (teaches with Evan at the community college) and Henry (Jesse's future bandmate). Ruby knocked over a sculpture of course, and even though it was a very ugly sculpture made from a broom handle, I was slightly mortified. She made a friend and they commenced running in circles and rifling the contents of anything they were tall enough to reach. We escaped without having to buy anything except the one thing I planned to buy, the short story. Phew. Then we might've eaten eggs AGAIN and shared most of a pint of caramel cone Haagen Dazs. What.

p.s. I will try not to talk about bathroom incidents on the internet but Ruby had a potty training breakthrough and I have never been so happy while kneeling next to a toilet!

A Week in Pictures

Today I had ten, ten friends at my house! It was awesome, most came in pairs and a bunch overlapped and it made me feel loved and wish I had a bunch of cucumber sandwiches and crumpets to offer instead of corndogs and water. TinaMarie insisted on taking me on a movie date and her obliging son Chandler was bribed with pizza and root beer to watch 3 wild babies. Saintly. We saw 'Crazy Stupid Love' starring Steve Carrell and the not very ugly Ryan Gosling. It reinforced my notion of soulmates being real and made me miss my mister. No pining allowed!

Speaking of misters, mine played a sold-out show in Winterthur, Switzerland tonight and they are currently driving 8 hours on no sleep to make it to Amsterdam by tomorrow. Sweaty pictures from the show here. I will now post an entire week's worth of photos. These are for you, Evan.

Prince of the Jungle

Jesse might have thought he was safe from mommy putting him in fancy outfits because he's a boy, but he was woefully mistaken. Luckily Ruby now does it of her own volition...

Milan and Via Audio

My Jerusalem and Evan have been in Udine, Italy for a couple of days, swimming in the Mediterranean, eating gelato, and trying not to spend all of their worthless american dollars. Today we skyped him in Milan and caught him up on all the excitement he's been missing at home.

"Well, Ruby and I had a fight over breakfast because I wanted to watch Michael Jackson videos and she wanted to watch cat videos on Daddy's laptop that he left behind. Jungleman now climbs furniture and heaves gritty handfuls of plant dirt across my clean floor. We went swimming. Again. I mopped the floor. K'...that's about it."

I will post too many pictures of last week's adventures tomorrow, promise. Grandmas.

I think I've decided to start a new feature, band of the week! My brother is forever asking me for fresh music and I think I shall oblige him and anyone else who has thirsty ears.

The album we've been dancing to all week is 'Animalore' by Via Audio. They are friends of Evan's and hail from Brooklyn and I love their irreverent myriad of styles and pretty sounds. They've played at Club DeVille during South by Southwest but it has been way too long since I've seen them live.

Here is a video of a song called 'Presents' which is from an older album, but I couldn't help it! This one makes me laugh every time.

7 Days of Style

So Evan is in Italy. Shut up Evan! With your italian hotel and italian too busy to tell me about all the awesome italian...stuff. In other news, I'm trying not to feel resentful that my husband is traipsing the globe, sipping espresso from tiny cups and rocking out to hordes of bronzed foreign beauties while I am slinging tepid lonestars to to the 1am crowd on Red River and changing a dozen diapers a day. Did I mention it was 107 degrees today? Jesse burned himself on a drinking fountain at the playground, so we went home and dunked ourselves in hose water.

I was being slightly theatrical there, I'm actually too occupied to feel resentful. Today we brought pho noodle soup to the lovely family Vaclav* and got to snuggle new baby Maggie and play with sweet Marik** and learn our names in sign language. Heidi and I cooked alfredo gnocchi with (turkey)bacon and broccoli and stayed in, sipping modelos and watching the new Matt Damon movie Adjustment Bureau, the best mix of sentiment, intrigue, sci-fi and kiss power that I've seen in years. They also sprint through New York. A lot. Nine thumbs up.

Last night at work a band called Schmillion made up of 4 teen girls and a drummer made us all feel really old with their boundless energy and epic stage posturing. I'm not even sure if they were any good, they were loud? and all I could think about was what I was doing at the age of 17 on a Friday night, which was quite a bit less sparkly miniskirt and a whole lot more wondering whether Anne Shirley would EVER let Gilbert Blythe kiss her already.

I will leave you with seven days of Ruby Style for your fashion enjoyment.


*J Vaclav photography here
**give a gift to Marik here

Vienna

Watch out for those hooting sirens, guys.