12-05-08

Air Plant

From our walk the other day…

12-04-08

Persistence

I use to think of winter, not as hibernation but as the phoenix season. The easiest way to describe it would be by the cliche’ phoenix myth, but instead of a majestic bird, picture a church mouse and instead of a dramatic burning of the self into ash, it plays out more like this: the mouse bumps into a gasoline can and splashes some of the liquid onto his fur. Shocked, he backs into a nail…leaning against a shovel and as it slides to the ground it kicks a spark which ignites the mouse and in the end the mouse becomes reincarnated…as a mouse that smells like soot. This is the phoenix season.

I’m taking it out on the plants. As much as I wish they would all stay the same and all grow the way they are, they all require to be trimmed and cut back in order to thrive and come back better (stronger, smarter, they can rebuild you!). So arms get lobbed off and neighbors get pulled out by the roots. I couldn’t quite kill the caterpillars on the passion flower, so I cut her back and left the clippings laying on the ground so they could finish their lunch and have time to find something else.

If it is so easy in the garden, why is it so difficult in real life? Not like the lobbing of arms, but the burning to the ground? (bridges and things)

About the pic: Roma has been with us for ever, since we started the garden. She’s survived drought, floods, bugs and kids. Who am I to kill her off with dedication like that? So a few weeks ago when all was dead except a sprig at the top (and to this point I hadn’t had much luck with rooting a tomato clipping), I dug the plant up, cut off the top and stuck it back in the dirt, wishing it well and going on my way. Well, true to Roma fash, she grew. That is persistence.

There is much to learn from the garden. Pure, unadulterated nature.

12-04-08

Chocolate Mint

Chocolate Mint runs four feet down the length of an iron shelf. Chocolate Mint plans to take over the world.

Choose your next move wisely.

12-03-08

King Louie XIV is CLEAN!

Lucifer went to the groomer today and now he smells like “sugar cookie” which is apparently the doggy version of homme eau du toilet… and he got a cute little bandana with candy canes. Sugar Cookies and Candy Canes. Was it worth the exuberant amount of money? The lack of clicking as his nasty nails hit the ground tells me yesssss….

He also went to the vet today prior, which resulted in a shiny red new tag…which he got for being good when they jabbed him with a needle full of dead rabies.

He still smells like dog, caramel coated dog.

12-01-08

Eco-Friendly Christmas Tree

Tree. Yes, this is the same tree from my backyard. Every Christmas we’d get a tree, then it would slowly fade over the holidays, needles would fall off and litter the carpet and you just knew it was a dead tree.

This year, however, the tree goes back outside when we are done here (along with it’s pet lizard that followed it in. The hornet, however, has left already.) And hopefully it will be with us for many more Christmases. Which gave me a happy thinking about as I strung the lights on it.

Daddy and the girls put the balls on it:

12-01-08

Fresh Picked…

Memories! Yay!

11-30-08

Holy Crap: It’s Jerry’s Curb Service

Nom, fries, cheese and special sauce. Oh yeah. Jerry’s :)

11-28-08

Hipsters! Hide!

Once, Laur made an off handed, snide comment about hipsters…possibly eluding to the fact that we may be hipsters.

S: Eff you laur, you heinous bitch. The end.

Months later, I still have to ask D:

S: D, Does this make me look hipster?

D: No Shell

Months, months later the paranoia increases at an alarming rate, and finally I scour the internets looking for the solution to the problem:

Was Laur or was Laur not being a heinous bitch in claiming I was a, gasp, Hipster.

Then I stumbled on hipster clues and began to get angry that I fell into a few of those, ok, the first four of those categories.

Depressed, I put on my very gold ballet flats, my vintage trench and went for a walk.

That’s when it happened: the solution. 5’6″ of hipster goodness came scowling down the sidewalk passed me. Skinny Jeans, crappy ass top straight from the eighties and big effin’ sunglasses in a pale color that accomplished approximately zilch in the blockage department…in that it protected me not from the scorn she shoot me when I very happily, almost all too excitedly said:

S: Hi

Translations: OMG! THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU for proving to me that I am indeed only half way in love with a heinous bitch who often confuses scotch with whimsy and NOT a hipster.

As she passed I pulled out my imaginary sword, spun on D and:

S: Ah! A duel, she challenges my uber hipster status! Avenge ye!

So in a totally unrelated instance, I got lost in a pmog search (ok, distracted when we crossed the Girls Next Door site which somehow winded me up on adbusters (don’t get me started, hypocrites) and to this little ditty on hipsters. Which led to this little ditty which led to this little ditty because I only got to the first sentence about “Chloë Sevigny fellated Vincent Gallo” and I got distracted…sort of like the shoes over the electric wire that caught me away from yelling at D. Distracted.

Fellated in paradise (because, really, just the word sounds like a happy state? No? Or wait, “elated”?),

~Shell

(p.s. in case you missed the sarcasm between the lines, it’s there…look harder. It’s all bull)

11-26-08

For Christmas I got you FIRE!!!!

It all started at work, when I yelled a little too loudly for the cubicle walls “you bought what?”

“I bought you a chimnea for the back yard! I bought it for your birthday, and your Christmas…and my christmas” meaning he spent a lot on it. “Oh no, I got it on sale” he said when I asked him how much. “I opened a credit card and got $30 off.”

Here’s where my office cohorts REALLY loved me.”YOU DID WHAT?” I yelled, visions of his $2k in 2 week splurge in Miami a few years back we are still paying off.

Everything will be ok.

———-

So a few days ago the thing comes in. It’s not a chimnea, chimneas have limits…they have a roof, the flames can only go so high. This is a three foot, solid metal OPEN fire pit. It sits approximately three feet on all three sides by two wooden fences and a brick wall.

“I’m going out for fire wood” he says.

“Don’t we have a bag of briquettes in the back under the grill.” It;s not enough, he comes back in and sets a BAG of wood, nice, clean chopped, cliche logs of wood.

The girls drag the bag across the tile chanting “fire! fire!”

“The girls go to bed before you start it.”

“Awww” all three of them: instant bad guy. The girls go to sleep, I go about my business, alternating web surfing and crocheting until I smell smoke. I don’t look up, I municode.com the burning regs for Vero. Small=ok. Ok, good. I look up.

David’s dancing around the fire in some adrenaline enduced euphoria holding a poker in one hand and a bottle of lighter fluid in the other. Or at least this is what I envision if I wasn’t blinded by the flames leaping into the air rivaling the fires set by the drunk kids at A&M.

I, doing my wifely duties, fly to the door and chastize…in a low voice so as not to draw attention to the situation…which is great in retrospect because it’s hard to miss eight foot high flames. He has the fire set up boyscout style…all teepee shaped and ready to cook a frozen turkey in 9.5 minutes. ABSOLUTE MARSHMELLOW EXTERMINATION.

He is dejected, on the verge of protest, finally setteling on a “yes dear” as his body slumps.

I spin back around, sit on the couch and refuse to acknowledge my back yard for the next two hours. The smell of smoke is thick. I’m waiting for the alarms to go off.

This is the gift that rivals the “she wants a Playstation, she told me” Christmas where my brother got a new playstation after persuading my mom I wanted one so badly I couldn’t see straight.

Everything will be ok. As Ben Stein would say: Burn Mother F@Ker, burn.

11-25-08

Oglebay Park Christmas Lights

I was feeling very sad and heartachy, as I am apt to do this time of year, feeling homesick (in addition to regular sick…my voice is now gone gone gone. The minions will smell weakness and turn to attack.) So what’s a girl to do? Oh, I don’t know, how about go a googgling some of her favorite childhood memories to REALLY make things bad.

First stop, Oglebay’s festival of lights. I use to love going here and I am pretty sure we went every year within a year or two of it beginning in 1985. I remember being bundled up in the car, eating at Big Boys (RIP) and stopping by the glass factory, the mansion and the zoo. When we got older we use to stay at the lodge. There is a corridor that reminded me of the scene from the Shining.

We were there for New Years once, I remember sneaking into the ballroom and seeing it all decked out. We met a kid who taught my brother to play Magic the Gathering in the lobby and the piano in the gathering room always made me want to learn how to play.

I hope to take the girls there one day…when they are a bit older and will remember.

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