I have to admit I’m solar-powered. You always wondered why I’m full of enthusiasm and great ideas. Well, that’s my secret. It’s the sun. When the sun goes down so do I. So I get plenty of sleep which is awesome. I’m like Wall-E when I wake up. I have to situate my face so that the sun can fill up my battery reserves and then BVrrroooong! I make that sound a mac makes when it starts up and you forget to turn off the volume before shut down last time (Don’t you hate it when that happens at the library?).

This also goes for my moods. Sunny = Happy. Cloudy = Sad.

It’s great that I live in Southern California where it is sunny 90 percent of the time but when it’s cloudy I suddenly become like the rest of you sad people on anti-depressants and I don’t know what to do with all this gloom! It’s so murky and, and…awful!!! How do you cope?!! How do you get anything done? Ugh. I feel like I’m wearing cement shoes and my arms are stuck to the ground with strings of chewing gum. I just want to go crawl into a hole and die.

This is all not very fantastic when you’re planning a birthday party for a little girl who is turning six and birthday parties are what you are good at. There is no failing at birthday-party-planning in this house. No sadness allowed! We eat obstacles for lunch. Bring on the challenges!!! Fifty people in a small mobile home with muddy feet?! I can do it!!!!

As you can see, my winter-wonderland of backyard fun with stumps for chairs and bedspreads for tents might not be happening. My visions of tulle strung from the trees and girls sipping lemonade is vanishing before my very eyes. All I can see are freezing cold fairies with muddy feet running in and out of my house and tracking mud all over my peach-colored carpet. Which I hate anyway so I guess it’s not that big of a deal but I’m still getting hives over it. Ugh! Mud! Kids! Hyperactivity! The bounce house people won’t deliver the bounce house if it’s going to rain!! What am I going to do?!!!!

There is a thirty-percent chance of rain predicted for Saturday. I know in Portland that would be a perfect day for an outdoor party. You might even throw a pool party on a day like that and wear a bikini but here? We are weeenies! We are freezing our butts off!!! We are seriously shivering and moaning. It’s sad and pathetic and majorly cramping my party-planning style.

Well, until the sun comes out. When the sun shines I can think of all kinds of crazy ideas. I can do this. We can have an indoor party. I am excellent at crafts! But when the sun goes back behind a cloud again I shrivel up. The obstacles! It’s too hard! I just want to cancel the whole thing.

Such crazy talk.

So here’s my plan: The bounce house people said I can decide on the day of the party whether or not to have a bounce house. If it’s raining we’ll just move on. If it’s not really raining we will move the bounce house to the front yard and put it on the driveway where there is no mud. I don’t know where people are going to park but that’s their problem.

Inside: I’m going to move all my furniture to the side and create a big open space in my living room/office. Maybe I’ll talk Toby into letting me borrow the giant heirloom Persian rug that he has rolled up in Bug’s room at his house that is not getting used. He won’t mind too terribly if it gets chocolate cake ground into it, right? Hmmm…that probably won’t fly.

Then I’ll use all that tulle that I was going to put in the trees outside, inside. It will be like prom night! I’ll just hang it from the ceiling from an old hula hoop or something.

I bet you wondered why I have a whole bolt of tulle. That’s a good question. I’m weird. I used to do flowers for weddings back in the 90′s and I had a much bigger budget back then. I guess I just bought a whole bolt of tulle and I still have it to this day. I have a whole shed full of floral supplies leftover from those days. It’s coming in very handy.

So with the tulle and these stars it could be magical, right? Bug and I made silver stars the other day with card stock and glitter. I was going to hang them from the trees outside with my fairy orbs but now I think I’ll just hang them inside. Maybe I’ll get crazy with some sheets and make fairy tents inside too. That will be super fun when the kids pull them down along with the sheetrock from my ceiling. Oh boy.

I wish I had a man around the house who liked to build things. That would be so awesome. I could probably install a giant branch in the middle of my living room and bolt it to the ceiling. The cats would go crazy. (Note to self: If ever dating again make sure to date someone handy.) But I have no man around the house and my dad is working until Saturday so I’ll probably have to scale back my visions. That’s okay. It’s gonna happen. We’ll make it work. It always does.

Ugh. How am I going to make this work? You see this kitchen? Charming you think? Shudder. The wallpaper offends me so badly that I think I’ve blocked it out. It’s like a weird vibration in my head that makes me only see white where the little flowers are. But then I got this idea that I would rip off a part of the wallpaper near the sink. It had some water-staining and was really driving me crazy. I thought I would do what I did in my bedroom and go with the whole I-live-in-a-run-down-Parisian-apartment look where the ripped wallpaper reminds me of an Anthropolgie ad.

It did not work. Now I have a big blank spot over the sink that is still water-stained and your eye is drawn to it because it is NOT wall-papered!!! I might as well install neon signs pointing at all the ugliness. This would not be a big deal if the weather was great. I would just route everybody straight to the backyard and they would avoid the kitchen but now all my guests are going to be filing through my kitchen and silently judging me. I just know it.

If I had a man around the house I would ask him to paint all the wallpaper red for me or maybe pistachio green to match the cupboards. (Boy, don’t I seem like a catch?) I would do it myself except all those shelves would have to be removed (and the screw holes are puddied) and there is this light fixture contraption near the sink that my Grandpa installed that is bent on electrocuting me. I already tried to de-install it once and it zapped and ker-powed at me like a comic book villain. I’ve decided to leave it alone. So I don’t think this kitchen eyesore is going to be magically beautiful before the party. Back to blocking it out.

Did I mention that we went to one of Bug’s friend’s party this last weekend and they had a huge perfect house where they regularly host weddings in their living room? Yeah. No pressure. None at all. How does one go about canceling a party at the last minute again? Can I just board up my house and pretend I don’t live here?

Let’s talk about what is working. The craft ideas for the party are going along swimmingly. I know it’s hard to tell when I’m being sarcastic and when I’m not but here I’m actually happy about something. I decided to use Momfluential’s idea for fairy house kits. All those floral supplies I have on hand totally saved me. I didn’t even have to buy one thing to make all these bags up. It’s kinda scary that I have that much crap on hand but hey, it works out. I get to get rid of a lot of stuff and the kids get make fun fairy house with odd bits and bobs. I hope they are into it. I know I will be. I am all over this kind of craft like a fly on…nevermind. You get the picture. It’s going to be fun.

I think I’ll give each kid a stump disc and maybe some putty to stick things into. I was going to be on glue-gun duty but I decided with thirty-some kids they’d probably all want me to glue something and one of them was bound to get burnt. Since I don’t know every kid as well as I usually do I think I’ll pass on all the possible lawsuits. I think they can manage with sticks and putty and chennile stems and string. It’ll be fun.

The next thing that is working are the fairy drinks. I bought a whole bunch of canning jars and covered the printing on the lid with some silk flowers.

Then I punched a hole through the metal lid with my trusty metal hole-puncher and my super human man-hand strength. Actually, I only did one. It was pretty tough but it can be done. I’m leaving the rest of the lids for Saturday and I’ll let my Dad do it. Or any other random strong person who comes around.

Then I filled the jar with ice, a lemon slice and some delicious homemade lemonade from my backyard. I screwed the lid back on, stuck a pretty striped straw through the hole and presto! A perfect fairy drink!

So I’m making it work. When the sun comes out I’m pretty positive.

Bug has been begging me to pick lemons for weeks now. I was putting it off because once you start picking, you have to process the lemons right away. You can’t just let them sit around on your table looking pretty for weeks and weeks. They can sit around on the tree for months and months however. But the draw of fresh lemons was strong so I finally gave in and let Bug pick a bushel when Anna was here visiting. We had to treat our out-of-towner to something special after all.

So we squeezed them and made lemonade.

Anna taught me how to make sangria with lemonade. I had no idea that was the a way to make it and here I’ve had a lemon tree at my beck and call all this time. The sangria is made with just one part orange juice, one part lemonade and one part cheap red wine with lots of fruit thrown in for the pretty. It was delicious.

I made some lemon bars too because that’s just what you do when you have guests and a whole lotta lemons!

All photos by Anna.

Yesterday was a very big day. My dad came over to chop down my front yard pine tree with his trusty chainsaw.

You could say we were excited about it.

No, this is not a sponsored post for chainsaws.

So here’s my front yard with my funny pine tree. It’s kind of hard to see because there are multitude of landscaping errors going on here that are distracting. But if you look close, you’ll see there are two palm trees growing beside the misshapen pine tree. They are volunteers. It happens around here. Palm tree seeds fall from the big palm trees and next thing you know you have a little sprout growing. The sprouts seem innocent at first but if you don’t pull them out right away then they grow into giant trees that have to be pulled out with a semi. I’m serious.

We did that with another palm tree in my side yard because it was uprooting a brick wall. It was a crazy job. My dad actually hooked chains to his 18-wheeler cab and hauled the thing out. It left a huge hole and then the fallen palm tree sat around in my side yard for six months because it was too heavy to carry away. I had to pay something like ten gardeners to chop it into smaller pieces and finally get rid of it for me. Those palm trees may look majestic and beautiful when they are tall but you better make sure the sprouts land where you want them to or they might just take out your house. I’m not kidding.

This is all backstory to my pine tree story. You see, when my Grandpa lived here he intended to take out the two small volunteer palm trees when they were sprouts but he never got around to it. They were growing out of the side of this lighter-colored gravel-diamond that mobile home parks call landscaping around here and they offended him greatly. My neighbors recall him mumbling about them but never actually taking them out.

Fast-forward ten years and now I’m here. My immediate opinion was that the pine tree in the middle looked like a bonsai hack-job gone wrong. Somebody (probably my Grandpa who was known to be a little short-sighted when it came to gardening) trimmed it very badly over the years (or maybe the weather broke a central branch or something) and it looked like nothing you would see growing naturally in nature. It just looked bad.

I figured: take out the pine tree and leave the volunteer palm trees that would be murder to take out anyway. They might be a little off-center according to that lighter-colored gravel diamond but they didn’t offend me nearly as much as the Frankenstein pine tree with branches sticking out like broken arms. Not to mention the palm trees would make a huge mess when they were up-rooted from the green-cement fake grass.

I could write a whole post about that stuff. I don’t even know what it’s called. It’s some wonder-garden water-efficiencey landscaping idea left over from the 60′s. I hate it. I think it looks as much like grass as astro-turf but it’s low maintenance so I overlook it. It’s just part of life out here.

ANYWAY!

The trees were all growing so close together that the palm fronds were getting stuck up sideways along the pine tree branches. Are you following me still? Let’s just cut to the chase and say that it was a “cluster.” And that is why my dad was here to cut it down. Well, that and I wanted some stumps for the Fairy party. Yeah, I know. Ulterior motives.

So cut cut he did!

Zwirrrrrrrrr! Zwirrrrrrrrrrrrr!!!

Yes, it was kind of sad to see that big tree topple. I hate cutting down living things. But I think it’s for the better.

At least the tree will live on in wonderful little stump art! Stumps! Stumps! Stumps!

My dad is the best in that he humors my silly visions. He made me every size stump I could ever ask for.

He even cut some thin disks that I can make into signs! Something like “Fairies This Way.” Can you see it?

I’m so excited. I’m going to let them dry out for a day (they are very sappy right now) and then shellack them so they are pretty and shiny. Maybe I’ll paint a sign first or burn a message into them. I haven’t quite figured out that part.

I love wood grain.

Except when it makes my hands like this. Though, I did figure out a magical way to remove tree-sap from your skin. I don’t know if this is common knowledge but when I was taking a shower and madly scrubbing at them, I tried a little droplet of bath oil and voilá! It came right off! Who knew?!! Not me. I tried the oil again with Bug and it worked for her too. So there you go: Have tree sap? Try bath oil. I recommend Neutragena because it smells lightly of sesame.

I’ve yet to figure out how to remove sap from my expensive sheepskin boots though. I was such an idiot to wear them. Ugh. Blarg.

Anyway, it took the rest of the day to clean up the mess and now my yard looks like this:

It’s going to take a few days for the palm trees to adjust to their new-found freedom and I need to hire someone to blow away all the sawdust bits but I think it looks better.

It is what it is. Don’t even get me started on those lumps we call Juniper bushes. I’m going to do something with them but I’m not going to carve them into squares like everyone wants me to. I just can’t do that. I want them to be more oval like trees if it’s possible but I’m still trying to find someone who will lend me their hedge trimmer. It’s a process…

A very, very long process that I probably will never get to see to completion. But in the meantime, the stump makes a mighty fine coffee table for me while I sit and contemplate the possibilities.

Just some photos from our thanksgiving this year… So much to be thankful for.

Waiting for dinner…

We had made pies the morning of. Bug made her own mini pies.

Pumkin for us.

Cherry for my Dad. He loooooves cherry pie and will rave on and on about it even if you use store-bought pie crust and canned cherries.

Everyone was so thankful he made it home for the holiday. It was a close call. The trucking industry can be brutal sometimes.

My cozy couch-less living room.

Nobody seems to mind.

It’s television-less too so we watch documentaries on Russian Ballet on Netflicks on my laptop instead. Football Schmootball.

Both my Aunt Keren and Bug have studied ballet. They discuss the finer points.

Poor Holly had to stay outside. Not because we didn’t want her in but because my mom brought her hyper crazy herding dog, Spreckles, over and the hyper crazy dog needed company so she didn’t dig a thousand holes in my backyard. They dug five together instead and chewed up my red rubber boots. Stupid crazy hyper herding dogs. But you already know how I feel about Spreckles. She is NOT Holly.

We LOVE Holly. There really is nothing better than a chilled-out seven-year-old black labrador. I wish she would live forever.

Dinner finally ready! Everybody come sit down!

It’s so good to be together. My brother and his family even joined us via skype.

You guys all know my neighbor, Boo, right? She’s popped up a time or two on this blog. She’s a super cute girl who lives across the street from us. I love her. Anyway, she turned ten and her mom (my friend Wendy) threw her this fabulous circus-themed birthday party. It was awesome.

I may be a tiny bit biased because there was FACE PAINTING!!!

Done by ME!! I know. You’re rolling your eyes because I have to brag about every little thing but seriously, I have wanted to be a face painter since forever. I have gone to carnival after carnival and paid the five dollars or one dollar to watch some mediocre painter paint some kind of blob on my daughter’s face and call it a butterfly. I have been holding myself back from grabbing the paintbrush right out of their hands and taking over on the spot. You don’t know the willpower that requires! It was painful!

Bethany bought me this kit (I added my own paintbrushes) probably a year ago but I haven’t had the chance to break out until now. I didn’t even get a chance to practice. But guess what? I didn’t need to! It was totally easy and kids are such great sports about things. They were thrilled with everything and if a bit ran or looked funny, mistakes wipe right off with a baby wipe. It was the most pleasant experience ever. I’m going to hire myself out starting tomorrow. Need a face-painter? Call me up. I’m serious. How much do face-painters charge these days anyway?

So right. This party was about Boo, not me face painting. I hope she loved her party because it was super sweet.

Her mom (that’s Wendy on the right) is the best game-inventer ever. I might need to tap into her talent and start a company or something. Too bad we both have plans to move out of town next year.

There was hot potato.

Musical chairs.

Freeze Dance.

You might wonder why Bug is dressed up as a lion. She was part of the show. She was the ferocious lion that Wendy (the lion tamer) led out on a (necklace) chain. You should have seen Wendy play-acting that the lion was growling and giving her a terrible fight in the bathroom before she brought her out. Then this little pip squeak in a tutu came out and everyone rolled on the floor laughing. Bug ate up all that attention of course.

There were a ton of other games too, all carnival style but due to privacy issues and some funky bright lighting, I didn’t get any photos of those. She had tic-tac-toe toss games and a spider toss game that Boo made up herself. It was so cute. You had to throw a spider onto a giant web and if you got it in the middle you won. And of course there were prizes.

Fun photo ops.

Cupcakes with circus-animal cookies!

And random break-dancing.

And of course a rousing rendition of Happy Birthday complete with whistles.

It’s great to turn ten. HAPPY BIRTHDAY, BOO!

I keep telling myself I need to get in the habit of writing every day about the little things instead of waiting for big things to happen and then documenting them as if I’m writing a book report on my life. But days slip by as they are wont to do and my great ideas on blogging are in vain. As usual.

So here are the big things:

Bug has a two-wheeler! She inherited SuperChic’s old bike. My mom had it sitting around at her house and a neighbor offered to fix it (flat tire, stripped screws where the training wheels needed to go…it just needed a major tune-up) so my mom paid her neighbor and now we have a new bike that is old but totally cool because I didn’t shell out a buncha bucks at Walmart or somewhere even more expensive.

Recycling at it’s best! Bug totally loves it and it has not even crossed her mind that I could have bought her a shiny new Hello Kitty bike for only five hundred some bazingas. Rusty princesses for the win! Actually, it’s not that rusty, so don’t worry about Tetanus or anything. I know somebody out there was worried about that. They don’t call me a seasoned blogger for nothing.

She’s still a little bit wobbly and scared to death of how the whole bike shifts from left to right when she moves her weight from one training wheel to the other but I have no fear that before long she’ll be whizzing around faster than I can yell at her to slow down. Right now I’m thankful for her fear. Even though we live on the American Dream cul-de-sac, I have nightmares about her getting run over by some crazy moron driving down our street too fast. So we are proceeding with the bike-riding with utmost caution. If she takes all year to learn I’ll be a happy momma. But considering how long she took to learn how to scooter I think she’ll be out of training wheels by next week. Sheesh.

I just wish she’d slow down with this growing-up business!

Did you notice her dark blue corduroy jumper? If you read my post about Bug loving hand-me-downs over on my review blog, you’ll have to chuckle at this outfit. It’s Rapunzel’s from ten years ago. I never expected Bug to like it and I almost tossed it in the goodwill box when I was going through old clothes, except she pulled it out and begged to wear it. Shows you what I know.

You know why Bug likes it? Because she thought the red ladybugs at the bottom were red spotted mushrooms from Mario Brothers Mushroom Kingdom. How does my kid know about that? We don’t have Nintendo. It’s not the 80′s. I guess in today’s world all red spotted mushrooms mean super fun musical games or something. Go figure. And yes, she was a bit disappointed when I pointed out that the red mushrooms had black heads and antennae. But she still wore it anyway.

Next big thing:

My Grandma turned 85 on Wednesday. EIGHTY-FIVE!!! How is this possible? It’s really true that when you pass thirty time speeds up to warp speed. I hate the fact that I’m being so clichéd* and moaning about it. But it’s true. My Grandma is so full of vim and vigor, I’m not ready for her to be old and frail. She’s taking it gracefully though. If ever there was someone to emulate, it is my Grandma. I want to be just like her when I grow up—which should be in about five minutes by my calculations.

So we went over to her house for dinner because that is all she really wants. Material presents are not important, just spending time with family is what she really enjoys. Good thing too because I am the worst at remembering to buy thoughtful gifts when I am navigating motherhood at warp speed. Actually, I think I was bad at remembering to buy thoughtful gifts even when I was young and bored but that is neither here nor there. The important thing is that we were all together and it was super sweet.

My Aunt Keren thought Grandma would enjoy some kitten-time so my mom brought over all six kittens that she has right now. She’s babysitting my kittens until they find homes since my carpet is freshly clean and she has wood floors and she has three other kittens from a feral cat who abandoned them in her yard. Isn’t my mom nice? Yes. And I’m really trying hard not to take her for granted. By the way, five of those kittens have good loving homes and now there is only one left! Phew!

Anyway back to Grandma and the kittens. It was so sweet! The little black one curled up on her chest and slept there for a half an hour. It was adorable and I think Grandma enjoyed it but then one of her eyes started turning red and itchy so we removed the kittens and decided Grandma might be allergic to the adorable little fluff-balls. It was fun while it lasted though.

We also had root vegetables, which we all love. Best dinner EVER. It was like old times. We missed you, Aunt Kathy.

Last big thing:

I found a trench coat at Target. You guys thought I already had one didn’t you? Nope, I didn’t. I never have. It doesn’t rain here, what do I need a trench coat for? Streaking? Hah! Like that’s gonna happen. It’s all part of my made-up Secret Agent Josephine character in my head. She doesn’t have a double chin either. Bet you never noticed that. Oh you did? Blarg. Well, she’s my made-up character so I felt inclined to improve her. Them’s the perks of being an illustrator. I can draw myself any way I want to be. Be all that you can be!

Stupidly, I got rid of my knee high black boots a while back because I didn’t like the pointy heel so I will probably be investing in some new boots soon. I’m so glad that pointy-heel-pointy-toe trend is over. But knowing me, by the time I get around to shopping for some again will be back in full force. I hate fashion sometimes.

But who cares about that! How funny is Bug? She’s the best model ever. I hate to exploit her cuteness on this blog but as you can see she steals the show without even trying.

So here we are in our official garb looking so very spyish. It’s almost like we didn’t just throw on some trench coats over our sundresses and pull an impromptu photo shoot in our driveway with the neighbor who actually doesn’t know how to use my camera but did a pretty good job anyway! It’s almost good enough to put in the back of my books as my author shot I think! In fact, I think I will just do that.

Keep calm and spy on, Secret Agents!

* That d is for you, Bethany.

As you can see (by my banner and all these pictures) we are in full tomato production out here in the sticks. Tis the season! I’m surprised I haven’t turned red, I’ve been eating so many.

For breakfast I have a bagel with cream cheese and a giant slice of tomato and then a slice of muenster cheese on top. It’s soooo delicious. I could and do eat this every day.

Then I have a tomato sandwich for lunch. Pretty much the same thing as breakfast just minus the cream cheese and bread instead of a bagel. Mmmmmmm….I can’t believe I’m not sick of this yet.

I have them for dinner a lot too. I should post a picture here of some delicious spaghetti I’ve made with fresh tomatoes but I haven’t figured that out yet. My mom has convinced me that it is easy but I’ve yet to try it. One of these days…

My mom canned a lot (this is only half of them) so I can make spaghetti with them even easier. It’s going to save me so much money this winter. Well, maybe not. It’s not like jars of spaghetti sauce were breaking my budget but it does make me feel super frugal and less wasteful when I see all these jars lined up so nicely in my pantry.

Tomato plants are a pretty good investment, especially if you count the water bill as therapy. Yes, I water my garden to calm my nerves. You should try it. Now you know the secret to my green thumb.

Tomatoes,

tomatoes,

tomatoes!

We’ve got them coming out our ears.

There’s only one problem.

Somebody else likes my tomatoes.

Somebody who doesn’t even bother to pick them.

They just walk by and take a big ol’ bite out of a slew of them in the middle of the night when nobody’s looking. And then they just leave them there to rot. How rude!!!

I’m talking to you Mr. Possum! You might look cute and cuddly but YOU ARE NOT!!! You are a snarling, growling, evil tomato-eating menace.

Even Holly is afraid of these guys. We camped outside the other night and I thought sure that Holly would finally catch one, she barked enough. But no. Apparently Holly is a big wuss dog. Though that might be a good thing because I really don’t want to take her to the vet to get possum teeth removed from her nose. Have you heard possums growl in the dark? They are scary!!!

So does anyone know how to get rid of possums? I’ll pay you in tomatoes.

* * *

In other news: Please check out my review for REI.

We had so much fun with them!

I have been trying to write about the little fiesta we had this weekend since it happened. But life has been driving me off the road like some kind of crazy testosterone-driven maniac with big tires and blinding high beams. I know, I need to stop complaining about that. It’s a good thing. But sometimes I miss being bored on long afternoons and writing posts about everything under the sun just for kicks.

The fiesta was wonderful. I’ve been wanting to have a summer party out here in the sticks since before I even moved in. I might live in a trailer in the middle of nowhere but it sits on a lot that is the perfect setting for an outdoor party. If only I could figure out a way to move this whole place to the beach.

There are covered patios on both sides and a backyard that seems to go on forever. It is hotter than heck in the daytime and sometimes you feel like your face is going to melt off but when the sun starts setting, it is glorious. Big skies, a soft breeze, my giant saguaro cactus majestically casting long shadows as we sip some sort of beverage and listen to mariachi music softly playing in the background…sometimes I feel like I’m in Mexico—in a good way.

I couldn’t wait to share summer in the sticks with my friends. Or maybe I just feel the neeeeeeeeed to have a party two times a year. It could be the latter.

Also, Bethany is in town and she didn’t seem to mind kicking off her visit with a meet-up with all her old friends.

It was so fun to have everybody back together again.

Add some new friends.

And some really old friends (like way back from second-grade best friend kinda friends).

Some mustachioed friends.

Some old friends fondling zucchinis from my garden. (Scandalous!)

A whole passel of kids…

and some goofballs and you got a good time!

Add some food,

And you’ve got a party!

My mom womanned the barbecue. We had carne asada street tacos, which are basically little tiny tacos that you can pop in your mouth five at a time. Well, maybe not five at a time but they were that good. I think from now on I’m going to order pizza or hire my mom to barbecue because the food went so much smoother than all the other parties I’ve ever planned. Remember the tiny cold mini-hamburgers at the princess party. Yeah, this was nothing like that.

What could top off a summer fiesta? A piñata of course? Shrek?, you’re thinking. Really? Is that the best you could do? Aren’t you artsy fartsy and into making your own piñatas or something crazy like that? Well, yes and no. I would have loved to make my own piñata but even I have limits and I reached them pretty much at eight am, the morning of the party. I did buy a super cute and cliché burro piñata at Target of all places but then my five-year-old daughter went and fell in love with the thing.

Maybe getting a cute burro in pastel colors was not such a good idea. She fell apart in a puddle of dramatic tears when all the kids started talking about how they were going to bash it to pieces to get the candy out. I tried to tell her to tough it out and made up all kinds of stories about piñata spirits being freed when they are broken by children but she was not buying it.

In the end I caved and had my mom pick up the ugliest piñata she could find at the local Mexican market. So Shrek it was. Apparently Bug has no problem beating Shrek to smithereens.

Squee! Candy!

Besides the candy, we had paletas for desert. Those things are so delicious!

And flan that my friend Jen made. Swoon! I’ve never tasted flan so good. No slimy egginess at all. I wish I had some right now.

There was even dancing.

And a sunset as a grand finally. (photo taken by Bethany) It almost makes me want to live here forever…sigh. But not quite.

But that’s not all the news! Guess what happened on the morning of the party?!!

Aqui had her kittens! Five of them! How very festive of her, right? I was a bit worried that the crowds might make her nervous so I moved her to my back bathroom shower and she stayed there happy as a clam. She didn’t even try to move them. I think the cool shower floor was much nicer for her since it’s been so hot here lately. She’s still there five days later and she’s the best mama ever. I’m kind of surprised since she’s still almost a kitten herself but she is doing a great job. All the kittens are gray just like her and they are soooo cute! At first they looked like a bunch of drowned rats but now they are fluffing up and pulling on my heartstrings like nobody’s business.

So a few days later, when Bethany and the crew and I went to the paint-your-own pottery studio, I painted a plate in their honor. This is what it looks like un-fired. I can’t wait to see what it looks like fired. It’s kinda fun. I didn’t share it with you but I’ve painted plates for Bug for each of her birthday parties (starting at the rainbow-seed party) and now we almost have a whole table set of plates that commemorate all the parties we’ve had. It’s kind of silly but fun to talk about when we sit down for dinner.

That’s the news!

Actually I have one more piece of news. Bummer news, unfortunately. You know that cook-off I was supposed to be in at Blogher this weekend? Well, they sent over the contracts for me to sign this last weekend to be a Knorr spokesperson and it was not a good fit for me. I felt terrible turning it down but I just know if I had gone through with it, I would have resented that contract until it ended in January. So, I’m sorry. We are all super bummed but there will be no secret agent cooking at Blogher and no CC either. Though we did all pitch in money so she could come down to visit a bit with us and Bethany and then get her girls so she can take them back home for school.

I’m sure something else just as fun will come along for me. It always does. And somebody else is going to have an awesome last minute surprise when they get to take my place! I can’t wait to see who they pick!

What do you do when you are buried with work, deadlines are falling all around you like giant redwoods in a timber harvest, you have guests coming in from out of town and you decided to have a great big fiesta on Saturday with lots and lots of friends? Do you knuckle down and get your work done so you’ll have plenty of time to clean your house and get ready for the party before your guests arrive OR do you walk around your house and dream up some impossible last-minute DIY home-improvement projects? The latter of course!

Because you wouldn’t want your guests to see the bathroom floor looking like this:

The horror! Actually, it looked much worse than that. The paint had come up in spots and it was soooo dirty. Muddy kid bathing, running-over sinks (that’s another story) and dogs with hair and claws do not do well on painted pressed wood (not to be confused with plywood, that would be a step up). It was the floor that could not be mopped. Oh, I tried to mop it. Believe me. But scrubbing seemed to just make it worse. You know you have a problem when you moisten the wood and it just comes up in crumbs in your hand. It was icky.

So I decided to paint the floor! Giant deadlines be damned. (Don’t worry clients, all’s well in the end.) My mom had taken all the girls over to her house for Camp Grandma so I decided to attack the floor with wild blood-shot-eyes of craziness and then get my work done on the side. That’s how we get things done around here.

Oh yeah.

First, I was just going to paint some flowers to distract from the ugliness of the dirty mint green paint. I drew them in with a sharpie and was quite pleased. Then I painted the flowers and leaves and some odd purple paisleys around the toilet area and discovered that the new fresh paint made the old dirty mint green paint look like a hot mess of awfulness. It didn’t detract at all! It pointed instead and screamed, Look! Look! It’s dirty in here! You’re probably going to catch something awful if you walk in here barefoot!

Oh woe is me.

Did I mention that I was using old house paint from a craft project from a long time ago and I didn’t have enough paint to cover the whole floor and definitely not enough for more than one coat? Good thinking, that thar me. But I tried anyway. I tried and tried to skimp out every last scrape of “lemon icing” paint to cover the ugly mint green but there was just NOT enough.

This is about the time I started walking around my house naked doing a one-woman stand-up comedy show all by myself for myself and the dog. I really wish I could have recorded that because I think I am pretty funny. But there was nakedness and blood-shot craziness so no recording was going on.

I did jot down some notes for this post though. I’m such a blogger like that.

Here are my notes:

1. Don’t have a dog, with hair when you are painting your floor. No matter how hard you sweep and wipe up the hair with a wet paper towel, you will miss about 80 thousand of them. That is why they call painting white wash. You are washing the hair with paint. Check your OCD at the back door.

2. Don’t paint with old paint from a past project because you WILL run out and you won’t be able to match it with your home stash of acrylics or the kid poster paint.

3. Do not leave the phone on the counter where you can’t reach it later without stepping in wet paint.

4. Do not forget to paint behind the door. Just because you don’t see it doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.

5. Do not paint in your favorite nightgown.

That’s all I wrote down but I’m sure there are about 95 more things not to do when painting your floor. In the end I went to Home Depot, shelled out 88 trillion bucks for a gallon (They don’t sell smaller containers. Gah!) of “lemon icing” matched paint and a gallon of epoxy garage floor paint for cement to put over the top and hopefully make the whole mess more mop-able. I really hope it works and doesn’t peel up my masterpiece when I roll it down Friday morning.

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention how drying times had to be factored in. You know how I am so great at math. Ha ha. Imagine me with a calculator and smoke coming out of my ears. It turns out I do have enough time to get it all done before the party on Saturday (when my guests will mostly likely need to use the restroom!!) but it was close. So close in fact that I had to step aside and painfully not paint more detail so that I could give it a whole 24 hours to cure before laying down the garage floor epoxy laminate clear coat, or whatever that stuff is called. It was hard stepping aside. I desperately wanted to add more flourishes and scallops and maybe some tapered dotting but I started stepping in paint in places I couldn’t cover up and I knew it was time to cut my losses.

My original plan was just to paint some flowers as a temporary measure until I could put some groovy old 70′s linoleum down but now I’m kinda liking the flowers. They’re bright, they’re crazy. They make the rest of the bathroom look like an old lady running away from a flower child on acid but I kinda dig it. If this clear coat thing works out, they might stick around for a while.

At least so I can tell this story over and over.

Her name is Aqui. She’s the neighbor’s cat but she lives at my house. We don’t know why her name is Aqui but it seems to fit her because in Spanish “aqui” means “here” and she is always here. Also when you call her, “Here A-qui, Aqui, Aqui! it sounds an awful lot like “Here Kitty Kitty Kitty!” So there’s that.

I didn’t mean to have a cat. As you know. I’m over cats but of course I have a soft spot for them and when she was always around begging for food because the neighbor was gone, I started feeding her. Then I noticed that she was getting really fat. First I thought it was worms, then I thought maybe I was feeding her too much and now I’m 99% sure that she is pregnant. Which is really sad and scary because she’s really still a kitten herself.

She gets along with Holly and she stays outside which is key because I am soooo over cat boxes. I don’t care if I never ever ever see a catbox again. I’m sure at some point in her life I’ll let her in but right now she’s content to sleep the day away on my patio. She doesn’t even want to come in and believe me, the kids have tried to coax her.

She seems very happy.

I was so worried about her and her giant belly I finally asked my neighbor if I could take her to the vet and my neighbor said “Sure, she’s your cat now. She’s always over at your place anyway.”

So there you go. I have a cat. And I love her already.