I think it’s safe to say that summer is here but then who knows, it is still June. The mornings are still chilly. But the fruit is here!

And my garden is exploding!

I’m such a happy farmer. I’m sure my neighbor thinks I’m a genuine nut with all the watering I do and the walking around crouching down taking pictures of things. It’s like they are my babies.

The kids are doing great. They are properly bored as they should be so their imaginations can grow, grow, GROW!! We have no television (it’s a godsend, believe me) and they spend almost 100% of their time outdoors making up complicated games and cluttering up my yard. But I don’t mind. I’m just happy that Bug has playmates. We’ve come a long way from being bored in the beach-house living room and watching Nickelodeon all day.

Of course I still have the internet so we struggle with that. I’m probably going to have to start clocking how much time the teenager puts in on Facebook.

There are swimsuits hung on the line…

…movies to be watched in the living room where the daylight seems to last forever.

And I’m wearing my hair up! A sure sign of summer.

So! I almost got an oven this last week. That would have been exciting. The oven here has been broken since I moved in. The gas guy came out to fix it and sent us off on a wild goose chase for a 1970′s thermal couple that doesn’t exist anymore because they don’t make them anymore. He did say I could sell this old Okeefe & Merritt for a couple thousand dollars. I wish that was true. Does anybody know anybody who collects old ovens like this (the one on the left)? It’s really cool and green! It’s also very narrow but I didn’t care. A narrow oven is better than no oven.

But as things always go, the exhaust pipes for the new oven didn’t quite fit so now I have a new oven (which is actually an old one from my mom’s old house) hole in my house that is not quite hooked up. It’s okay. I’ve waited this long, I can wait a bit longer. My dad says he can fix it when he has home time again which might be as soon as this coming weekend. Woot! If it really happens, I’m sure I’ll be posting all kinds of pictures of me making lemon bars! You don’t know how many times I’ve looked at my lemon tree wistfully thinking of all the lemon things I could bake if I just had an oven!

The new old oven is kinda cool and funky too. It even has a clock in it that all the cool cats are making into screen savers these days. I don’t care. I just want it to BAKE!! I tried making cornbread in my mom’s toaster oven a while back. It did not work. The top burned and the middle was raw. There might be a way if I just adjust the temperature and time variables.

The coolest thing is that my dad was home. I wish he was home every weekend, but you know how it goes. He’s a long haul trucker and the more you drive the more money you make. So them’s the breaks.

Hmmm… what else is new? St. Patricks Day was pretty fun. Bug wore green from head to toe which brought back old memories. I whipped up a really quick Leprechaun treasure hunt in the backyard for her. It wasn’t that special really but she thought it was fun. I just painted some rocks green and then put them out strategically so she could follow a trail to an old Easter Basket filled with some leftover green taffy I already had on hand. When she questioned the item’s familiarity, I told her the Leprechauns are probably just like Santa Claus and they like to borrow stuff from us like wrapping paper and old baskets and things. They’re very resourceful, those seasonal characters. She seemed to buy it but I think that explanation won’t last much longer.

Speaking of Bug and her many outfits, I have found a solution for the constant pink. You might recall that she will only wear a particular shade of hot pink and sometimes I feel like whipping out the pantone book and telling everyone who gives her gifts to match it to a number (Pantone 233 if you’re curious). It’s that bad. But sometimes she likes to play act certain characters. Her favorites are Sleeping Beauty and Barbie, of course. Occasionally she will dress up as me and put together an outfit that looks amazingly like mine.

Recently we have been having wars about how she wants her hair done. She always wants two braids at the top of her head pulled back because that’s how Barbie does her hair, apparently. That’s all fine and everything but her long long hair gets sticky and tangled and all I ever want to do is chop it all off or put it in a high-up pony tail. Her dad doesn’t want her to cut her hair at all, which I can kind of relate to since I too had really long hair as a child, so that’s not an option. A pony tail is the obvious solution but I guess I just haven’t put enough Barbies in her path wearing a pony tail.

I thought I’d take a different track so I showed her a video of Lara Croft kicking butt and it worked like a charm. Now she wears boots and shorts and wants her hair up all the time. The back yard has become a tomb and she’s always hunting for treasure. Whatever works, I say. Kids are funny and sometimes require parents to be even funnier.

This weekend while Bug hung out with her dad, I tagged along with my friend Deb to a cool antique store. Except it was sort of like a cross between a thrift store and an antique store and they had all kinds of “junk” out on the sidewalk for super cheap. I wasn’t going to buy anything but the ladies working there were so nice and kept pawning things off onto me. “Here buy this purse, it looks so nice on you! What a great shape!” “You like that chair? I’ll sell you both of them for twenty bucks!” etc etc… it was kind of fun and silly. I would love to own a shop like that and sit around with a bunch of girlfriends drinking coffee and encouraging suckers to buy stuff.

I could find all kinds of old forgotten gems (aka junk) out in the sticks where people don’t know what they have and then sell them for twice the price at the beach. Now if someone could just rent me a store front for next to nothing. That would be the thing to do! I could have a little espresso machine in the back and probably do graphic design on the side. I’m not sure where Bug would hang out though…Lara Croft kicks might not go so well with glass lamps and fine china. But it’s a nice day dream.

It was a great place to take 7days shots, there were mirrors everywhere! Which by the way brings me to how much I hate my new haircut. Every shot I take of myself, I hate. I guess this is just part of getting older but please tell me next time I get a haircut that I’m NEVER allowed to have layers above my ears again. It’s taking forever to grow out. I guess you can’t really tell in these photos, which is intentional. My delete key sees way more photos than anyone these days.

I found my shot and bought this silly mirror thing for five bucks. It’s pretty cool I think.

I spent the day yesterday preparing to file my taxes. I hate this time of year so much. I don’t use any spreadsheets to track my income and out-going expenses so that means I have to sit down with my calculator and the tower of Pisa pile of receipts and add each one up by hand. This is a whole lot of fun for someone who claims to have Dyscalculia. Several times I had to take a break and tell myself over and over, You’re college educated. You can do this. and then practice breathing exercises for five minutes in the bathroom.

Every year I vow to start using ibank or quicken or some other program but every time I try to set up accounts I get so overwhelmed with all the tabs and buttons and possibilities I just end up giving up. I swear I’m going to do it this year though because there has to be a better way.

The only thing I have going for me is that I do like to be organized. I save everything and file it all away neatly like a squirrel. So that helps. I hope all my neatly typed reports get me points with the tax man because I think otherwise I’m going to be one big fat headache for him. Filing separately from Toby is causing a whole bunch of problems, naturally. I closed all of our joint accounts so now I can no longer access my handy dandy online tracking systems (which were really great when I needed to see what checks I deposited etc… I love that check image feature.)

Then there’s the whole what-can-I-write-off dilemma. Can I write off all the parties I organize? Does blogging it count as business? Party planning posts do generate a lot of traffic on this site but I’m thinking the IRS is not going to go for it. I’m thinking a bounce house is right up there with hiring strippers when it comes to red flags.

Of course all this busy work generated some sketches. I figure I’m ready if anyone ever needs to hire me to create some stock art of tax season.

In other 50mm news, how cool is that old hole-puncher my Aunt gave me? Her office mate moved out and left a bunch of stuff. Most of it was awful 80′s crap but this hole-puncher seemed like a keeper for me. It worked great for all my notebook organizing yesterday. The holes are extra big which is kind of neat.

I also finished the 2nd Stieg Larsson book. I know I’m late to that book-reading party. I’m really enjoying them though. Right after I finish each book I watch the movie on Netflicks and that’s super fun. Of course I have to watch these in secret from Bug when she is asleep though because they are NOT appropriate for children. Oh my goodness, some of the scenes are not even appropriate for me. But I do love the characters so I keep on watching, not even noticing that I’m reading subtitles. I have to say I’m a little disappointed in the 2nd movie though (I’m half way through it). They left out so many details! I guess that’s why you read the books first!

Bug got to have her own movie night last night. She really wanted to eat popcorn in bed and turn all the lights out “just like a movie theatre” but I refused. I do not like popcorn bits in my sheets! So I set her up with a beverage bar (she’s caught my cold now too and I wanted her to be hydrated) and popcorn and put my laptop far enough away that it wouldn’t be ruined if she spilled. I know Toby is probably looking at that last picture and hyperventilating over the possibility that some beverages might ruin the laptop that he paid so much money for but I am here to say that it was perfectly safe and now it’s back on my desk far far away from any evil liquids of death.

And that was my day! Now I just sit tight and wait until my tax appointment on Friday to see how much I owe the IRS. Or maybe I’ll get money back. I’m not getting my hopes up.

Life is quiet out here in the sticks outside of my incessant sneezing. The cold rages on as you can see. Thankfully even wadded up used tissues look better with a 50mm lens.

In other news, I rearranged my bedroom. Huzzah! I love it that I can rearrange furniture whenever I please. This new arrangement is not for beauty or any kind of bren* shui though. It’s purely because I got tired of the drafts from the window wafting down on me in the night. It gets cold out here at night!

I think I’ll move the bed back under the window in the summer because then drafts are quite nice. For now though this is much cozier and it only hampers our path to the bathroom by a few steps. We don’t use that bathroom much anyway so it’s no big deal to have to walk all the way around the bed to get to it. In Bug and Holly’s case, you can just lumber right over the top of the bed and save yourself five steps.

Since we’re doing a “home tour” I might as well show you Bug’s fairies. She draws them (with some help from me) and then tapes them around the house. Look right below the red poppies painting and you’ll see this little guy:

I think this is me as a “mom fairy.” She watches over me when I sleep or maybe this is just here so I know where my bed is. Who knows. If you give your kid paper and things to draw with and access to scissors and tape, you never know what you are going to find randomly taped around the house. Right now as I type this, I see there is a colorful Easter egg taped to the living room window. She’s very proactive with her seasonal decorating.

Holly has a fairy too but it was too dark when I took that photo and it was too blurry. (You can see it in the window shot, just really really small. That’s where Holly’s dog bed usually is.)

This is Bug’s fairy. I drew this one (per her instruction) and she colored it.

While I’m in Bug’s room I might as well show you her giant shoe collection. Do you think this kid has enough shoes? (Most of them are hand-me-downs or gifts.) You’d think she does but there is aways some outfit that doesn’t match with any of these. Good thing kid-fashion is pretty carefree. She wears the craziest combos and nobody even blinks an eye anymore. I think she also has a giant shoe collection because her feet never grow. She’s been a size 7/8 for a whole year now. She’s just like me with tiny feet.

Also, the vacuum cleaner lives in her closet. I do feel a bit bad about that but there is no room anywhere else and it’s almost like that shelf was built just for vacuum cleaners. Thankfully Bug doesn’t know any better and thinks it’s totally normal to have a vacuum cleaner in your closet.

These are some very important rock star concert documents. Can’t you tell? The one on the right is a contract that I had to sign and on the left is some sheet music I presume. Bug made this really long movie describing them all and what they are for, (the card is for zoom-zooming in the zoom zoom machine) but then after she was done and I was watching the movie, I noticed my shirt was gaping wide open sideways showing some armpit/boob action so I deleted that movie. Sorry Bug. I’ll have to have her do it again. It was all very funny of course as most doomed things are.

And that concludes my boring Tuesday in the life of Brenda post!

*Bren shui is my own form of feng shui that has no system of aesthetics other than my gut feeling of where things should be.

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I’m kinda feeling under the weather today. Don’t feel too bad for me. I’ve been healthy as an ox all winter and just now caught something. It’s about time I caught one of the many viruses Bug brings home from preschool. I also attended a Bikram Yoga class on Saturday for the first time in my life and I am sore!! Oh my goodness, hot sweaty yoga is not for wimps! Have you ever tried it?

It’s regular yoga with simple poses except they crank up the heater to 110°F or something. I’m so proud of myself for making it through all the way to the end and not fainting. At first I thought it was a cinch. I thought, I can totally do yoga even though I haven’t worked out in an entire year. Ha!

Then I woke up the next day and I couldn’t bend my legs. So yeah, I’m not feeling so hot. I am also worried about all the other people in the class who were sitting in a hot damp petri dish with all of my germs. It was pretty gross. I wonder how they clean those rooms after everyone has dripped five pounds of sweat each onto the sticky carpet. It was low pile carpet, thankfully, but it still looked pretty gross. I’m just going to stop thinking about it and tell myself that the benefits of a deep workout offset the grossness of hot damp germy floors.

I’m sorry I had to drag your mind over to that ugly place. Here, feast your eyes on some blurry coasters from Paris! Aren’t they pretty? Everything is prettier with a 50mm lens blurring out the background. Today I wish I could wear 50mm glasses and then crawl into bed and read a book very close up. Maybe I will if I can convince Bug to nap with me (not likely).

I just thought I’d check in and do a quick blog. Maybe I’ll start a habit of it. Probably not. I’m always promising things and then not following through. But I’ve been working really hard on a post about painting and my insecurities about it and I’m not making very much progress. I’m starting to think that posts that take more than a week to write aren’t meant to be shared. Blogging is not supposed to be work. I don’t have time to be that deep. I should take the time but I have a five year old bopping around interrupting me constantly.

Bug’s bopping is so awesome though. She drives me crazy regularly but the minute she’s not around, I miss her with the heat of a thousands suns. I wouldn’t want her any other way.

Look at her messy desk. I used to brag to anyone that would listen that my child was naturally neat. She does like to match things up and put out of order products back in order in the grocery store but her OCD stops there. Her room is a mess daily. I think I’m going to have to take back all that bragging. I’ve probably spoiled her by tidying up after her. I can’t help myself sometimes. I just hate clutter! She will clean up with a lot nagging of course (maybe even less nagging than most kids) but she often drags her feet and tells me that cleaning up is so BOOOOORRRING. To which I roll my eyes. A lot of things in life are boring, kid.

I guess compared to her imaginary world where she changes characters hourly, cleaning is very boring. Does your kid do this? She’s a cat on the left and a knight or a Barbie Musketeer or something on the right.

Then she’s a hula girl…it never ends. I’m thankful for her imagination but I’ve had to make a rule that she has to keep whatever outfit she’s wearing on until she puts the last one away. This has helped with the constant piles of clothes on the floor but now I’m finding perfectly clean clothes stashed in the laundry and behind hanging clothes in the closet. Kids!

Sometimes I get in on the action too. But not very often.

Definitely not today.

Today I’m going to hide behind my 50mm lens and pretend the world is blurry around the edges.

I’ve invented a new drink. I’m sure it’s not really anything new but it’s newish to me and I love it. If you want to have me over for cocktail hour this is what you should serve me.

Muddle some fresh strawberries in a glass. Drop in a few ice cubes. Dump in a shot and a half of the best tequila. Fill with fresh squeezed grapefruit juice and serve! I think it’s pretty good!

When I was a teenager I loved to wear long shirts over leggings. We all did, right? It was the late eighties. I remember my Aunt Knittery particularly did not like this fashion. She’d tease me constantly, asking me if I was wearing a shirt or a dress. In the end she called it a “shresh,” said with a layer of eye-rolling and pity. I didn’t care. I thought I looked cool.

Here it is 2010 and I still like wearing long shirts or “shreshes” over pants. I still love leggings too but they don’t look as cute on me as they did when I weighed eighty-some pounds. I like to wear dresses over my old beat-up jeans. However, my husband thinks this is downright awful. I wish he was here to write a paragraph because he could probably sum it up with two or three scathing sentences that would have you rolling on the ground laughing.

I finally found an embroidered peasant blouse! Except it’s not a blouse. It’s a dress. I really wish it was a blouse. I could shorten it but that would cut off all the really pretty finishing stitches on the bottom. I could probably pull it off wearing it as a dress but it’s kind of short and super see-through. Sometimes I’m self-conscious of my knees. Wearing a slip under it would just ruin all the light-airiness of it. The perfect solution? Wear it over jeans!!!

Except Toby hates it. What do you guys think? Hot or not?

My life is so boring right now I’m going to blog about making spinach cubes. I know. I hate to blow the air of mystery I have around here but seriously, I’ve got nothin’ going on. It’s just parks and grocery shopping day in and day out. If I’m not counting to one thousand while I push Bug on the swing then I’m probably writing up a grocery list and plotting how I’m going to zig-zag across town getting the best deal on groceries.

The highlight of my week this week was going to the local Persian market and buying a giant pillowcase-sized bag of raw spinach. I’m not kidding! The bag was so huge I should have taken a picture. I didn’t want a bag that big. I wanted one one-fifth the size but they didn’t have any and the GIGANTIC one was only $3.49. I must have wheeled my rusty metal grocery cart up and down the crowded narrow aisles of that market eight times trying to weigh whether or not I could actually use as much spinach as a small restaurant.

In the end I decided I could. I figured I’d call up my neighbor and give her some. I’d eat probably a quarter of the bag raw and then cook the rest. Cooking spinach is like some kind of circus show where the clowns pile into an impossibly small car. You can add handful after handful of raw spinach to a boiling pot of water and it just magically disappears. My mom says there is a great debate over whether raw spinach is more healthy than cooked and now I know why. You are probably getting 10 times the amount of vitamins when you eat it cooked simply because it condenses down to such a small size. Five bowls raw probably equals one bite cooked. It’s pretty amazing.

Of course, enjoying cooked spinach is probably key. Which I do. I don’t love it but it’s not bad. I especially like it drenched in lemon juice. Lately, what I’ve been doing with my raw spinach (and the reason I was buying it in the first place) is making smoothies. Cheeky Lotus Shakes to be specific. I don’t know if this diet works. I can’t stay on it long enough to tell you but I can say that I like drinking super-healthy smoothies after I’ve binged on Pop-Tarts for a week. Nothing soothes a bloated tummy and a guilty conscience better than a delicious fruit smoothie packed with ground flax seeds and raw spinach.

I know a lot of people will think this breakfast is disgusting and it is if you think about it too hard. But you don’t taste the spinach at all. Everything is sweet. Blended bananas cover a multitude of healthy fibery things. The texture is funny but I’m not one of those people who is bothered overly much by textures. I’m weird that way.

So that is my breakfast. A smoothie (or shake) and my big cup of coffee. And now you know why I made spinach ice cubes. Because I want to use them in my shakes. I can’t tell you how they tasted yet because today is Pop-Tart day but I’m sure I’ll be able to let you know by the end of next week when my third-of-a-pillowcase-sized bag of raw spinach runs out or gets slimy.

This is what a slow news day looks like in the sketchbook.

A story from Bug. A few days before we had filled out one of those ad-lib story things except I let her know the context of the story as we filled in the words. Now that story is forever stuck in her head and she wanted me to sketch it here. I wanted to embellish it a bit and take it the story line out of the cliché but Bug would have none of it. So cliché it is. And those angry cats…they are supposed to be tired. I need to work on my tired faces.

Angella day! Also I made gravy, which is quite a big deal. You should celebrate.

Some more sketching at the park. I’m still required at the swings for pushing duty but every once in a while I get to steal myself away for a nice sit on a bench. I love just sitting around at the park instead of climbing around on the equipment rescuing certain height-challenged people. Then the next day it was breakfast with the kids I babysit and some more time with Angella and Bethany and Jen in Oceanside. Oceanside is trippy. It’s not my favorite beach but it is a nice halfway point between here and San Diego and the food at Hillstreet Cafe is YUM-diddy-yum-yum! (Bug’s word.)

Yesterday we killed some time at the mall and didn’t buy a single thing besides lunch and some gelato!

Now you’re all caught up. The excitement! How can you stand it!! Just kidding. Blargh.

…is to tell everything —Voltaire. But that’s not going to stop me of course.

Notes:

1. I’m combatting my stiff neck by drinking less coffee. It’s just as dreadful as you’d think.
2. I sent my jumper material home with my mom. She’s more optimistic than I am.
3. When I say I need to de-clutter. I’m talking about the mess Bug and I make.
4. I sort of petered out on the last sketch… I meant to go back and draw more and color it in but then I forgot and now I’m over it.