Shades of a Jungleman

Burn the floor

Raphael Saadiq is my best find of 2013 so far. His records are new, but they sound like the old soul that I love the most. I haven't heard a song yet that wasn't like a bacon wrapped dance party. Watch out because this video is full of sexy ladies acting like their tiny outfits are on fire and burning them in slow motion.

Jug Wine: Indoor Kids

Jug Wine: Indoor Kids

Here is a comic by a girl who I sort of know who shares my sentiments on sports.

mommystyre: 5 Days

Hot damn I just realised that I've done exactly 300 posts on this dorky blog o'mine. I should've probably gotten better at it by now, Oof. Ah well, here it is, limping along, spurting and rambling. Touching on things from my job, brain, hands and home. You're welcome to it, because I enjoy doing it and documenting and celebrating the little quirks of my corner of existence. Also, I think my kids are exceptionally brilliant and good looking so it's really their show. What? They are.

I went back and forth about putting these pictures of myself on the internet because it seems silly and makes me self conscious but! I love to dabble in fashion and since my new job is quite a bit swankier it affords me new challenges in outfitting my mommy self. This is not a fashion blog and never will be but I feel my "career" as a barmaid has a limited shelf life and never again will I have a reason to piece together so many outfits and then try them out on a couple hundred strangers each night.

Don't misunderstand me, I am not fashionable. I know what I like and I try to make something similar out of scraps I pick up at the local thrift shop and then attempt to fool actual fashionistas. It's a creative outlet to balance out all the hours I spend in pajamas changing diapers.

All of these badly lit bathroom photos were taken at 4am after working all night. If I look tired, it's because I am. If I look old, I AM. Part of the challenge of bar fashion is keeping in mind that you will be splashed with all manner of liquids, have your hands in water almost to the elbow all night like a medieval washerwoman, you must be able to shake your arms freely, bend way over without showing coin slots or your lacy unmentionables, squat, and don't even think about wearing something flowing or flappy or you will be snagged on the pour spouts- mocking you like dozens of silver fangs from their sticky troughs. Oh and you will be standing and reaching and bending and shaking for 7 hours. No food, no real breaks. 

This leaves you with limited options: dark clothing, mostly pants, minimal rings and bracelets, no loose hair, no spanx, and *gasp! sensible footwear. YOU try to look lithe and in charge while sweating, dunking dirty glasses and nibbling on pretzels and the occasional olive. The upside is this: it is usually dark, usually smoky, and people have been drinking! They squint at you through the haze as a magical being of power, dispensing expensive social medicine and forgive many details, such as dirty hair or a jacket obviously made for children.

Here are five answers to that challenge which actually survived a shift, taken in a dirty mirror by an undercover mommy. I welcome your advice and ridicule.

More old comics

Here are the last couple of post it note comics from this past summer that were actually inked and scanned, with some bonus ones by Ruby. Hers are probably from a year ago but I think they're pretty interesting, especially the men "blowing fire" (she saw someone smoking at the coffee shop) and sporting monster scratches (do I detect male pattern baldness?). I also like the aerial view self portrait. She has since improved her drawing and sassing skills and Jesse does a bit less accidental cursing. He actually talks in real sentences like a tiny man now, for example "Mommy, somebody put a sticker on my banana! That's funny."

Evan and I have however regressed, and are still calling them "sh*tmunks", even when it's clearly a squirrel.

ever heaps,
Mami

check check! 1,2, 3...

 Hello internet! I missed you. I hope we're still friends. I am checking in, and would like to report that we are safely ensconced in our new rickety old house in Denton, Texas and having all manner of adventures and misadventures here in our new "small" town.

Evan is right this second playing drums and freestyle rapping about Jesse's dino pants, Ruby has stolen my vintage clip on earrings and has paired them with a strawberry polka dot shirt and stripes, and I am about to down a cold cup of coffee, dress like a vaguely hip prohibition girl and serve drinks with names like Aviation and French Pearl using such ingredients as liquor of crushed violets, mint leaves, absinthe and egg whites.

Here is a tiny comic I drew this summer for a project entitled "100 Days of Summer" in which I promptly got very behind and discouraged and I believe I squeezed out six whole days of summer. Anyway, Evan scanned them for your web pleasure.

I hope to not allow this blog to suffer the same fate as my house plants did, which was a slow death. Yesterday I dumped out their frozen wilty carcasses and dug up some nice green flowering something or others from the yard, put them in the pot and dragged them inside to a sunny window to beautify the "parlor". I promise to water you and love you and not let Evan talk me into no internet because it is good to take a break. Or something.

MURAL MATCH 4

Coldtowne Theatre

A red and white mural match with my old chum Jeff. This is possibly the last Austin one we'll do in quite a while since we quit this town in a week! Actually, I should stop fannying around on the internet and continue packing my life into cardboard.

Last night was our going away/Tacks listening party at my work and I got many warm hugs and high fives. It isn't hard to leave this city, but it will be hard not to see these friends I've made over the last decade and a half without a four hour drive beforehand. On the upside, our new house has guest quarters! Come and visit us.

Lamm"s Candies

Breaking up with cool cool Austin

Hello! This website is experiencing technical difficulties. Thank you for visiting. Please enjoy the archives and the mental image of yours truly surrounded in boxes and chaos. Actually I was miraculously able to upload this one photo using stolen neighbor internet. It took an hour.

Denton! It's actually happening. We have jobs, we've signed a lease, we move November 1st. Yikes. I had meant to do a thoughtful write up of why we are leaving this wonderful city and pros and cons punctuated by pertinent photos of both towns but! I have two pet monsters who love to eat my to-do lists and poo them out onto my clean laundry.

Instead I am including here a copy of a letter I wrote to a friend months ago in which I discuss the subject using parables and slang.

You were so aghast or possibly incredulous? when I mentioned leaving Austin's warm bosom that I feel like explaining a little more, plus I've been explaining a lot so it will be good to write it down.

If you asked me a couple of years ago if I wanted to leave Austin I made the same face as you did, but since then quite a few of my closest friends have left to seek their fortunes, my babies have gotten older, and my elbows have gotten very cramped in these close quarters. I missed the bus a decade ago when my money savvy friends were furtively buying properties on the east side and I was cocktailing, fooling around in the sculpture studio of ACC and working at the youth hostel. Now Austin is becoming a real city complete with crime, secret millionaires, rapidly disappearing view of the sky and so expensive that all the artists and brown people are being pushed farther and farther outside of town.

If I were single, I would stay forever, I would! But now I have this huge thing that is my family, and here I am trying to cram it into my old single lifestyle. I believe that Austin is the best place in the world to spend your twenties, but now I've outgrown it. The things Austin has to offer are better than ever, but they aren't important to me anymore...a dozen invitations per day to attend rock shows, birthday parties, festivals, fashion shows, mustache competitions, binge drinking contests. I don't even read them anymore. Amazing restaurants, mecca organic grocery stores, vintage boutiques, a bar on every corner. I can't afford any of it, nor do I have the free time to enjoy it if I could.

The things I dream about these days are big trees in which to build forts, an orchard full of fruit, a house that I can really call my own- that I can knock down a wall or paint a mural on without fear of losing my deposit. I want Ruby and Jesse to be able to venture further than ten feet from the front door without being in danger of a car flattening, I want them to have woods and chores and bb guns and food from a garden instead of Fiestamart.

I grew up the poor kid in a privileged school in suburbia because my dad was a graphic designer and my mom stayed home with us. We had a great time with each other but I really felt the lack of "fancy" stuff and "nature" and I don't want the same for my little monsters. Sure I could find a better job than bar work but no thanks if it means somebody else raises my kids.

I feel that kids are very like dogs. You can have dogs in the city, you can pick up their poop with your hand. You can take them on doggy playdates to the doggy park and leave them at doggy daycare and feed them chicken and rice and wash them at Shampooch and send them to doggy obedience school and treat them at the doggy bakery. That doggy would probably be happy. OR you could have two acres on the outskirts of town, pour chow in a bucket and the dog leaps and races and catches squirrels and protects the children and swims in the river and has the time of its life, leash free and on the cheap. I want my kids to be farm dogs, higher quality of life with less fussiness.

Pet donkeys for riding and camping. Chickens, milking goats, studio and cabins for recording albums. Art barn for woodworking, ceramics and large projects, library, gardens, writing and illustrating new children's books. That's our big adventure.

I'm excited but nervous, and every time I get stuck in traffic or pay for parking I snip one more thread that binds my heart to the city.
Ya dig?

ever much
Shayla

Eyeball Feasting Fashion

The club in which I work used to do big fashion shows all the time, and though everyone took it VERY seriously, it always felt kinda smalltown even coming from my limited background of the Houston modelling industry. I guess Austin is finally a city now because I'm hightailing it out of here, and we're finally getting the whisperings of a credible fashion name.

My dad considered going into the fashion industry because he had a knack for design and my mom dabbled in jewelry inventions so I genetically had no chance of escaping the secret love of fashion. I've just discovered this Austin based designer and am taken with her vintage fabrics and shimmery laces. My eyes feel fat from feasting.

"Dawn Younger-Smith, former model, muse, and make-up artist to the stars, is the artist behind the line Boudoir Queen. After years of working in the fashion industry as a make up artist and developing her own cosmetics line, Poor Little Rich Girl, her sense of style and affinity for the past turned her to designing her own vintage inspired pieces. In 1997, the Boudoir Queen brand was born, and Dawn began creating ’20s and ’30s-inspired pieces using vintage fabrics."

Read the rest and see more lovely pictures at atxstreetstyle.

that's so pinteresting...

 

 

Because of my recent extreme busyness (5 weddings since April, moving across state-NO BIG DEAL) and loss of technical capabilities I accidentally dove headfirst into the Pinterest river of time wasting the other day. I've decorated my entire future music ranch and filled it with food and well dressed babies. And cats.

Shayla's pretty stuff here.

Crickets

gospel brunch at threadgills

Crickets, like silence. Not like a human choir sped up. I do think about the blog every day, but we've decided to sell this computer at our garage sale this Saturday for sixty bucks. (because it doesn't actually work. Fifteen minutes to upload six photos)

Should I put phone pictures up? I just got a cell phone after a year hiatus. That's right! Cell phone free for one whole year to the chagrin of my friends and poor Doctor Grey who (unfortunately for her) is the new owner of my old number and has fielded all of my birthday wishes and coffee appointments with much grace.

p.s. We're moving to Denton, Texas in about two weeks.

!!!

Divine Style

Things that make me not an atheist.

"Pillars of Creation" Interstellar formation known as elephant trunks in the Eagle Nebula, part of the Milky Way.

I've believed in God ever since I was very small, and I've just never been able to shake it. I like to think of him as an artist, and like all artists, he has a definite style. Note how lightning in slow motion looks like tree branches and the human nervous system. Crickets chirping sounds like a human choir. Even the cold, dark outer reaches of space hold breathtaking beauty. It makes me feel so tiny, but in an amazing way.

Copyright 2012. Magnifying the Universe by Number Sleuth.

"sleep"overs and newlyweds

Sleepovers. We're having two in a row. Last night was my house, tonight is Ariel's. Chaos weekend- Evan has three shows, I work two nights until nearly 4am and today is our five year anniversary. We did it! That's some kind of mile marker right? We still love each other and everything! We haven't sold our children to the gypsies (though it's a regular threat). If I cared about receiving gifts I would demand an awesome one. As it is, I pretty much only care about coffee, and I get that every day. We'll celebrate later this week, at least we didn't both forget like last year.

I have so many pictures from the last fortnight (sorry, reading too much Thomas Hardy in bed) that it is quite daunting. Brooke's wedding, mountain adventuring, Madison's bridal shower, shaving cream fight. I'll tackle the sifting and cropping soon, and luckily my best Alison already did an awesome post about said shaving cream, (with lot's of unwarranted compliments to me) which you can enjoy HERE.

 This is my favorite photo from the Central City nuptials yet, can't wait to see the rest! Huzzah Brooke and David! LUCKY B-WORD DAVID.