Pink Prickly Pear

I forget.

Mr. Pear worked today.  So I invited mini-pear's little boyfriend and his family to go on a mini-hike with us. 

I was not planning on playing third wheel to marital strife, but sometimes shit just happens.  I had very nice conversations with the wifely unit and similarly nice conversations with the husbandly one, but there was a sense of something unsaid.

Actually, it was not so much a sense, but a WTF? when wife received a phone call early afternoon and just took off without so much as a buh-bye. 

I hung around for another hour and then we came home.  I wanted to nap.  My dreams woke me up all night long.  I had a dream about this kid I haven't even thought about since high school, and I accidentally left mini-pear at my grandma's house and was too embarrassed to call and find out if she was still there, and then there were too many covers, too few covers and those birds started singing way too early and would not shut up.

Mini-pear was not keen on the idea of a nap.  Her afternoon plans involved a stack of library books and my best accents and animal voices and I was not feeling it.  Plus, she started sniffling and now that I've had 2 glasses of wine this evening, I must confess that repetitive sniffling and that heavy breathing kids do when their nasal passages are compromised gets under my skin and just irritates me.  After reading for half an hour, I suggested we watch Savage Sam, the extra film on our Old Yeller rental.  I thought I might sneak in that nap while the girl watched yet another account of a hard scrabble pioneer family and their hapless dog.  What an awful movie...  Travis and Arliss have a new dog and get captured by injuns with Elizabeth, who has finally grown into her teeth.  The injuns are evil horse thieves who speak in gobbledygook and beat their chests and Travis and Arliss are just as pathetic as they were in Old Yeller, yet clearly on their way out of favor as 1950's child stars. 

It was so bad I got out of bed (the DVD playing device is in my bedroom) and swept up the dog fur which likes to collect on the tiles in the hallway.  Then I tested a new recipe for beets.  The kid couldn't have a less messy favorite vegetable.

death and things that grow in dirt...

The dog killed a ground squirrel this morning.  Her first, I think.  She pounced into the bushes, grabbed it in her mouth and gave it a vigorous shake.  And then Mr. Pear chased her off with a big stick.  Mini-pear wanted to bring the poor thing home so we could "taxiderm it".

I draw the line at home taxidermy for seven year olds.  You know who'd end up doing all the work.

***

After lunch at Bety's, we went for a walk in the Botanical Gardens.  I really want a roof like that one on the left.  It would really nice on my cob house, no?  Mr. Pear likes the idea of a cob house, but he also likes to ask questions about building codes and such, and the only advice I've encountered so far seems to suggest the best way around building codes is to build in a secluded area.  I don't think he's taking that as a satisfactory answer.  Maybe I could thug a roof like this up on my suburban home, or at the very least, on my garden shed.  Since I don't own either of those at the moment, I have all the time in the world to plot and plan and conspire ways to circumvent the building code.

This little family of cactus struck me as comically human, or perhaps more accurately, Hensonian.  Speaking of puppets, at the library yesterday  I though we might check out a DVD.  Our mail carrier has a habit of leaving outgoing mail strewn across the sidewalk so I've learned to make special trips to the nearest mailbox to return my Netflix.  More often than not, this translates to carrying them around in the car for days, leaving us with nothing new to watch over the weekend (it's okay, we always have sex as a last resort).  I spied a copy of the Dark Crystal just as Old Yeller caught mini-pear's eye.   In some unfathomable turn of events,  we ended up coming home with the latter.  There is no accounting for mini-pear's taste.

Anyway, it was an inspiring afternoon, walking among the various gardens.  We came home and attacked the lilac in the garden.  I hack away at a few branches once a week, but this afternoon Mr. Pear could not resist the call of the new pruning saw, so we massacred it.  Now the little tree behind it might actually get to grow.  We also found another football and a nice little wooden planter.

I was going to tell the story of how I met the woman who used to live in our house, but Mr. Pear just informed me that it's almost 8 and we haven't eaten.  Is this my job? Apparently it is.  Lately I think a lot about getting a real job.

Oh, real quick about the lady who used to own our house.  So I'm at mini-pear's track and field club a couple of towns over and I'm getting small talked because I'm new.  I mention the name of our town and the woman I'm talking to asks if I know the D_____s.  That's a little wierd, because it's a small town, but it's not that small and I did just get here, but oddly enough, we get a lot of mail for the D______s.  So I say I'm sure it's not the same D______s, but we do get a lot of mail for a D______.  Then she says, "It's not Bruce and Patty D_____, is it?"  and I say "Actually it is!"  So then she leans over and yells over her shoulder, "Hey Patty, get over here and meet this lady!"  and I'm thinking wierd, small world and Patty is really odd and stand off-ish and doesn't seem to think it odd at all.  She wants to know how we figured out that she used to live in our house and so we tell her about the mail and then she gets really stand off-ish and I tell her it's just junk mail, but she appears unconvinced.

And now I have stalled and Mr. Pear has made my dinner;)

Friday in photographs #7

the only brazillian wax at our house;)

Gilles Peterson has a podcast;)  And I'm late to the party so I have hours and hours of listening and catching up to do.  Bliss.  Bliss.  Bliss.

What are you listening to?

Things I'd like to do every day...

Mindful breathing exercises
Mandarin lesson
Spend half an hour in my studio
Tai Chi

Friday in photographs #6

Careless blunder?

It was certainly a blonder moment. 

A cheap laugh, were I writing for a lesser sitcom.  Ditsy mom picks up dad from work.  The kid is regaling them from her perch on the backseat with silly stories.  As mom swings into the driveway of their suburban ranch house, the garage door automatically opens.

The garage was built for two cars.  There's ample room for a ten year old compact car and the family's collection of bicycles.  Side by side, that is.

Dad's pride and joy, a limited production light weight single speed he lovingly oils and tweaks regularly, is actually okay.  The bike rack, ripped from the roof of the family sedan and hurled onto the driveway, did not fare so well.

Yeah.  I actually did that.  He did not lose his cool but silently picked up the pieces and shook his head.

happy mudder's day.

The Pear household is pretty hum-buggy regarding most holidays and I am just fine with Mother's Day being one of them.  Besides, there are already fresh flowers on my kitchen table (courtesy of my new friend who had better move here) and we did exactly what I wanted to do today anyway.

Mr. Pear and mini- walked the dog.  Morning dog walks are my job, but I like a break every once in a while, particularly given the dog's favorite activity evah! of chasing bunnies in the cactus.  She gets spines all over her and then I have to spend ages with her in a headlock on the kitchen floor pulling out the spines with tweezers.  I am so over walking the dog.

All I wanted to do was finish switching mini's room with my office.  We have a ridiculously big master bedroom, a tiny second bedroom and then a third room that has double doors opening onto the living room and a second door onto the hall.  It seemed well suited for an office.  But mini-Pear hated her room.  It was small and the window looked out onto a narrow gravelly area next to the fence (read: dark) and the smoke detector was spooky.  Well, spooky to the girl who has declared repeatedly that the only things she is afraid of are 1) toilets that flush by themselves and 2) blinking lights.  We tried to cover the smoke detector's blinking light with cool stickers, but that trick doesn't work on big seven year olds (yeah, not even seven year olds with irrational fears about blinking lights).  Bedtimes were getting more and more difficult and no one was getting any sleep with the increased nocturnal invasions of our bed .  One night, I gave up and stomped off to her room...and guess what?  You can't sleep in there.  Bad chi or something.  I was tossing and turning and then I gave up and read until I was cross eyed and sleep just was not coming and I was feeling more and more like I just did not want to be in there.  So we decided to let her have the other room, even though it's in kind of a wierd spot for a bedroom.

Moving makes a mess.  I wanted to start off the week without a mess.  Mr. Pear started making noises about going to the desert.  I was not having anything to do with the desert, especially if we weren't leaving the house until mid-day.  Then mini- put her foot down and declared it a hang out at home day.  So we finished the switcharoo and cleaned the garage (which was actually the second item on my Mother's Day chore-a-thon list).  I wanted to be able to actually park the car in it.  Because, you know, it's sunny here and the car gets hot, but my sensitive child does not like to drive with the windows open, so I need to leave the car in the shade, otherwise I am driving around town sweating like...I was going to say a hog, but I don't think pigs can actually sweat, can they?

And then mini-pear declared she might actually be up for leaving the house.  I think because she heard me mention a solo trip to the bookstore.  Then since we were actually going out, we snuck in a trip to Home Depot (where all the other mothers were out shopping).  Yay for presents!  I got my pruning saw (the California Lilac must be pruned judiciously!) and a crochet stitch dictionary (because my mom bought me a mother/daughter matching fair isle sweater kit at least three years ago and there are so many things wrong with the thought of me and mini wearing matching sweaters, not to mention me taking the time to aquire fair isle knitting skills...I digress) so I can make a blanket with all that wool laying around, and then I remembered it was the last day of REI's sale and I had a coupon and we need a sunshade for the beach, so we went and ordered that.  And then we were very tired from all that retail bamboozlement, so we went to Wahoo's for spicy fish burritos.

And now I'm home and I'm crossing my fingers that bedtime will once again be the smooth operation years attachment parenting promised and I can stretch all the way out in my own bed, all night long.  That would be a fine mudder's day gift indeed.

California glossary

"Sani-family" - improbably large, yet secular-looking family.  At least four children.  Possibly "blended" a la The Brady Bunch.  Mom looks like the kids, but her body does not even hint at the ravages of childbirth, breastfeeding, etc.  Sometimes you can tell what kind of surgery mama has elected for by looking at the shared characteristics of the children.  They are, categorically, freshly showered and in new designer gear.  Most often seen together out to dinner on Saturday evening.

*

Gmail ads.  They are always so off the mark.  Most recently displayed to the right of my email exchange (this string referring to San Diego real estate and playdates):

San Diego Bikini Wax (I am too much of a wimp.  I'd rather get pricked over and over again with ink filled needles...)

DubaiLand (okay, maybe...)

Free downloadable Mormon ringtone (curiosity may get the best of me on that one)

North County's Premiere Pizza Spot  - Low-Gravity fun for everyone! (I just don't get it.  Sounds positively nauseating.)

Rebecca sent me some knitting related emails designed to confuse the Gmail ad generator.  References to dildos and Jesus in the same message made it roll over and play dead.

Friday in photographs #5