Keeping up with the Joneses

I try not to wear that catchphrase out but it's hard to resist. Some images from our holidays 08'...

Parties and cheer and many discussions about Santa and Elves and baby Jesus and the importance of being nice.
An extra special party at the Bartlett's in San Antonio
The Nutcracker at the Long Center was delightful as was Ella's repeat performances
Hulk gloves under the tree to channel boy energy
And a Big Boy Bike
Commence gulf coast excursion...
Lotsa jumping, running, chasing, crawling, catching, spinning, rolling, sitting and staring at the ocean from (and on) the sand dunes -- or "moon dunes" as Ella coined.

Texas Beaches are considered open highways for motor vehicles. So beware of the Portuguese man-of-war, sting rays, rattle snakes and big trucks. This is our humble mini van.
Self portrait
Buckets

Donut Party

If I stand very still outside the door of Ella and Cy's bedroom after "lights out" I may catch a snippet of a scintillating conversation. On one such occasion the popular topic of Birthday Parties was being discussed. Cy, continually carb obsessed, expressed his interest in a Bagel Party. Ella was unsure about the bagels but was certain that she would be in charge of opening his presents.

So in the days and weeks to come we got to talking about Cy's 3rd Birthday Party and bagels and circles and other things that are round, like pizza and Frisbee's and Cheerios and DONUTS!!!! Bagels were soon usurped by donuts as the central theme.

Voila! Donut Birthday party featuring....

Birthday Boy and DIY Donuts

Good friends and beverages

Girls

Trains

Requisite Pinata

My Pack

Mo Garbler developed a theory about people and their associated animal archetype. For example, I'm a cat (shocking I know). Mr Mooks is a big cat. Ella is a horse and Cyrus is a dog -- actually a puppy. Mo is a cat but also a dog and J Garbler is all dog where as little Finn Garbler is a puppy and maybe a cat too. I like to think there is a little dog in us all. That must be why it felt so good to have my pack together this holiday. Muchas Gracias Garblers!

Sample of J Garbler's 2008 Thanksgiving pic's

It's Her Thing

Nothing like some funk and a sparkly pink leotard to get your cartwheel on. Ella Rae's gymnastics team, appropriately called "Hot Shots" performed their routine to the Jackson Five's version of "It's Your Thing" for the school carnival/fund raiser. I was proud as a peacock.

Our cheeky Hot Shot had another chance to strut her stuff recently at the The Biscuit Brothers performance and recording for the Austin City Limits TV show. In addition to enthusiastic dancing, clapping and general noise making Ella was prompted by Buford Biscuit to spice up the lyrics to a well known tune. According to Ella, "she'll be eating pepperoni pizza when she coooommmmmessss... " The show will air in the spring on PBS.

And down doheny way

Thanks to my old gal pal Sharon (and Facebook) and her talent for documentation at a tender age, I'm posting pictures from one of my favorite times and places. The first two shots are of Doheny Beach, California, circa 1984. The summer before Junior High School. Doho, as it was affectionately known, was the location of many firsts -- first real ride on a long board, first fried burrito, first drag of a clove cigarette, first taste of Kahlua and cream, first kiss.

As it happens Doheny Beach is also mentioned in that sweet anthem to California surf culture, Surfin USA by the Beach Boys. And if you've ever been curious about the real genius behind that band check out the documentary Beautiful Dreamer: Brian Wilson and the Story of 'Smile'.

Sharon also shared pictures of her birthday pool party. I'm the one wearing the light pink one piece that barely passed Big Daddy What Mookie Thinks inspection.

It's about time

I've been periodically choked up over the past few months when thinking about the impact of this election. Ella Rae, my sweet six year old girl asked me yesterday "why is it so important to vote?" After a confusing answer about democracy and freedom my eyes began to sting and I squeaked out, "if Barack Obama wins then it will mean that our country is getting better." She hugged me and said, "don't be sad Mama." I then delivered a very confusing and tearful diatribe about equal rights, racism and how sometimes you cry when you are happy.

Calisphere, created by the University of California is a good resource to help develop less confusing answers to complex questions regarding race and culture. This overview of the African American experience in California from the gold rush era to the present is a good place to start on this historic election day.

Surf's Up!

I proudly cast my vote today. GOBAMA!

"Talented and lovely..."

.... so said the host at the Carrie Rodriguez show we saw last night at the Cactus Cafe. "Talented" is an understatement. You wouldn't believe the voice on this Chica and the way she plays the mondoguitar and fiddle, like they are living things. And "lovely", well yes, she's gorgeous and mesmerizing stomping her perfect, little high healed foot and closing her big brown eyes -- but it's more than that -- she physically and authentically inhabits the range of emotions that accompany well written songs. Fresh from tours with Lucinda Williams and Alejandro Escoveda and with a stable of A list collaborators including, Malcolm Burn, Chip Taylor, Gary Loris and Tim Boquiest, Carrie has been tapped by the singer song writer gods to ascend to the great heavens.

Carrie and her family have a strong connection to our Neighborhood here in Clarksville. In fact Carrie was raving about the cheese burgers at Nau's Enfield Drug Store during the show last night. Nau's is an old timey soda fountain/pharmacy down the block. Her Mother was in the audience and piped up to say she'd ate them when Carrie was just a little bun in the oven. This kind of 6 degrees of separation or rather connection to talent and loveliness warms my heart.

Fellow fan set me strait on a comment suggesting a better video clip.
Video sample of Carrie and Chip playing Wild Thing

Wii love you Mielle!

True to form our dearest, sweetest friends are making delicious lemonade not sour faces out of a challenging situation. The very short of it is, Mielle, one of Ella's first friends, her cute little baby buddy, was diagnosed with an autoimmune disease called juvenile dermatomyositis (JDM) in October 2007. Mielle deserves a cure and her community is trying hard to raise awareness and cash money. Please consider a donation to www.curejm.com. See more information regarding the disease and how to donate on her dedicated blog. Also see this classic video of Mielle playing Wii bowling. The movement is really good for her body and her soul. We love you girl!

Mielle and some lemonade at her incredibly successful yard sale fundraiser!

Family photo taken for a story in the newspaper

Boys

Here we have three of the four boys in our kid care co-op. Tuesday is my day to corral, cajole and cuddle the crew. The focus of our imaginary play the past few weeks has been knights and pirates. My role is alternately a fiery dragon or the bad guy pirate. In either case I walk with a limp, growl and make threats about my taste for toes and earlobes. Yesterday we also made playdoh. This whole activity lasted about 20 minutes (plus 45 minutes prep and cleanup) and mostly consisted of the boys playing knights and pirates with blood and guts ie playdoh on their hands.

Peace Baby

Ella's first peace march. Here we are with tens of thousands of people on Market Street in San Francisco, October 2002 to protest Bush's policy on Iraq. At the time this was the largest peace rally police and protesters could remember since the Vietnam War. Signs read "Drop Bush, note bombs" and "Grannies against dead children."

Whip It!

Need I say more? The Lonestar Rollergirls next Throwdown and the Showdown is on October 11th. Tempted?

This is what they wrote about Whip It!

What do you get when you combine Juno with Charlie’s Angels? The roller-derby film Whip It! which will star Ellen Page and will be directed by Drew Barrymore. Whip It! marks Barrymore’s directorial debut and has begun filming in Michigan.

“I’ve been working toward the goal of directing my entire life.” “Whip It! is a story that really spoke to me.” - Barrymore, 32

Whip It! is a film that chronicles the adventures of Bliss Cavendar, a teenage misfit stuck in a dead-end town outside Austin, Texas. The small-town teen is a reluctant beauty-pageant contestant that decides to take up the time-honored tradition of Roller Derby by joining an all female roller derby team. Based on the book Derby Girl by novelist and screenwriter Shauna Cross, Whip It! will be produced by Barry Mendel and Barrymore’s Flower Films for Mandate Pictures.

TXRD is proud to announce that two of our very own skaters, Rocky Casbah and Sacralicious, have been selected as stunt body doubles for the film. Rocky Casbah will be assisting production in the film as the stunt body double for Ari Graynor, while Sacralicious will be serving as the stunt body double for Drew Barrymore.

Roller Disco

Perhaps it's the passing of Paul Newman or the financial and political volatility but I'm feeling nostalgic for simpler times. I'd like to strap on my skates, blast some Donna Summer and disco dance with my gal pals until the street lights come on.

Outing the ordinary

If functional items such as clothes, food and electronics are visible in my home I'll be more inclined to buy stuff that I really want to look at (a lot) -- and in theory I'll take better care of fewer items. I've been meaning to circle back to the original mission of this blog "to chronicle my efforts to become a more conscious consumer." I'm guilty of getting off track with too many thoughtless trips to Target, Ikea and the like.

To kick off this outing the ordinary concept I've ordered these Magnet Tacks from Design Within Reach. According to the product description these pretty little guys are "a superpowered magnet inside a sturdy thumbtack. They provide a sensible alternative to the junk drawer. It’s only fair to say they might also replace the junk shelf and junk countertop. Easily hang keys, sunglasses, small tools, pens and paper clips simply by holding those items up to the Tack. Any object attracted to a magnet – think stainless steel, brass, bronze, and silver – will find a tidy new home. Magnet Tacks come three to a pack and can be organized on the wall or corkboard in a grid or more abstract formation of your liking."

I'm sure I'm not the first to entertain this idea -- any thoughts or inspiration on this topic are welcome.

Runners and Clumpers

We've pretty much decided on punting pole -- a gorgeous clumper. This bamboo variety will grow to be a proud 40 plus feet. That should help block out the mini "green" mansion going up behind our house.

Kinder Chambers aka "TxBooGuru", President of the Texas Bamboo Society and his lovely wife Minnie had us out to their farm. We were smitten with the lovely varieties of cain and the Chambers themselves -- they are a rare kind of people that make you feel like getting old may actually be sorta fun. We plan to go back for a float down their river and a cook out in the groves.

When can you play with me?

This is number 4 on my shout out list. Fellow Austin blogger happythings channels my exact sentiment this week. I've copied and pasted her entry & photo here...

Bea wants me to play with her.

Not now -- because she's sleeping. But the rest of the time. For the record, taking her places - kiddie classes, field trips, parks, or shopping -- does not count. Cooking together does not count. Reading kind of counts, but not really. Doing "lessons" about letters or science experiments does not seem to count. Buying more toys for her to play with herself definitely does not count, not for long anyway. Watching shows together is desired but still does not count. Time spent doing adults chores, even those for her benefit, counts negatively. Playdates with other kids do not even count. Argh.

This is all to be expected. It should actually be appreciated and desired by a person in the right frame of mind. I know, I know. This little problem does not amount to a bean (definitely not a hill of beans) in our world full of problems. I know. And yet, tonight, I am tapped out and I send up a prayer for patience to play.

New Pie

I'm so appalled by the Palin pick that I stutter and stammer and stomp my foot when trying to express my distaste and fear for the future. Fortunately these women do not have that problem.

"Here's the good news: Women have become so politically powerful that even the anti-feminist right wing -- the folks with a headlock on the Republican Party -- are trying to appease the gender gap with a first-ever female vice president. We owe this to women -- and to many men too -- who have picketed, gone on hunger strikes or confronted violence at the polls so women can vote. We owe it to Shirley Chisholm, who first took the "white-male-only" sign off the White House, and to Hillary Rodham Clinton, who hung in there through ridicule and misogyny to win 18 million votes.

But here is even better news: It won't work. This isn't the first time a boss has picked an unqualified woman just because she agrees with him and opposes everything most other women want and need. Feminism has never been about getting a job for one woman. It's about making life more fair for women everywhere. It's not about a piece of the existing pie; there are too many of us for that. It's about baking a new pie." ~ Gloria Steinam
Link to full article

"Americans love the outsider plucked from obscurity. And Palin provides bucketfuls of the new and exciting. As long as voters and the media are caught up in the latest installment of As Sarah Turns or the Alaska version of All My Children, they aren't paying attention to the lack of solutions McCain is offering to the serious crises that face us." ~ Arianna Huffington
Link to full article

"72-year-old John McCain and 44-year-old Sarah Palin, whose average age is 58, a mere two years older than the average age of the Obama-Biden ticket. Enthusiastic Republicans don’t see the choice of Palin as affirmative action, despite her thin résumé and gaping absence of foreign policy knowledge, because they expect Republicans to put an underqualified “babe,” as Rush Limbaugh calls her, on the ticket. They have a tradition of nominating fun, bantamweight cheerleaders from the West, like the previous Miss Congeniality types Dan Quayle and W., and then letting them learn on the job. So they crash into the globe a few times while they’re learning to drive, what’s the big deal?" ~Maureen Dowd
Link to full article

flutter flutter

Mojo moments I'll call them -- the very second you realize you've discovered something special. I happily stumbled across two seminal 'mojo making' icons from my girlhood this past weekend. Friday night I saw Lawrence of Arabia at the Paramont Theatre. This was my first full viewing of the master piece. Why did I wait so long? Honestly, my inspiration for going was my near forgotten crush on Omar Sharif. Sometime in the 70's before I crossed the great chasm between preadolescence and puberty I encountered Omar Sharif in 'Funny Girl'. I was captivated by his face and understood in a flash that there was something between men and women that I was going to like.

AND on Saturday night Mr Mooks and I stayed up late enthralled by performances from The Old Grey Whistle Test on DVD. These BBC recordings started in 1971 and significantly influenced music tastes and record sales. Debbie Harry, Talking Heads, U2 were amazing and they are all such adorable baby rockers. But Bob Marley and the Wailers performance of 'Stir It Up' took me back to the swivel seats of my neighbors custom van. That was where I first heard the now ubiquitous Bob. Eureka! This new sound was some kind of grownup elixir -- sad, mad, sexy, stoned, ohso funky and very different from my little girl life -- and I was going to get me some of that someday! Not surprisingly Doctor Zhivago is at the top of my netflix queue.

Omar and Babs in Funny Girl

Bob and the Wailers on the set at The Old Grey Whisle Stop

Ethiopian Soul

Mr What Mookie Thinks stowed a CD in my minivan -- written in his confident print reads 'Mulata Astatqe -- Ethiopian Jazz.' For months I've used this CD as my secret weapon against particularly restless car rides. Within a song or two all passengers are transported to a very mellow, groovy place -- humming, foot tapping and thumb sucking included. This blend of american free jazz, traditional ethiopian music, and blaxploitation funk tames the Joneses.

After some rudimentary research I found that this magic is made by Mulatu Astatke also spelled Astatqé, an Ethiopian musician and arranger, the father of Ethiopian jazz. His genius is by no means a secret -- he worked with Duke Ellington in the 70's and more recently his music appeared on the soundtrack to the Jim Jarmusch film Broken Flowers.

I'd recommend clicking HERE to get a taste. If that works for you check Dengue Fever too.