Pink Prickly Pear

Nipples the size of dinner plates!

Oh wait, that is a dinner plate!  Okay, technically, a breakfast plate.  D'anjou is all about the food these days.  This morning we were sure Mr. Pear's bagel was about to get swiped.  I don't remember Mini-Pear being even remotely interested in real food when she was his age. 

Hey, looky-looky!  Is that breakfast in bed?  On a week day?  Do I get a prize for good fellow or what?

And as if fetching breakfast in bed for my man wasn't enough of a good wifey maneuver (I must want something), this afternoon we delivered a steaming hot cheese steak with onions and sweet peppers from Philly Frank's.  We were up in that neck of the woods, getting d'anjou's birth certificate from the county clerk's office and I thought, "Isn't there that authentic philly cheese steak joint around here somewhere?"

Actually, that's a total lie.  We'd heard rumors of authentic Philly cheese steaks in San Marcos and decided to give it a go last weekend.  Rumors confirmed - OMFG - that's some good cheese steak!  I immediately wanted another.  All week I schemed how I might finagle another one without looking like a greedy little piggums.  Finally, I hit on the perfect excuse.  Wasn't the county clerk's office in San Marcos?  Why not go pick up d'anjou's birth certificate?  If we left right after the chiropractor's appointment in the morning, we'd be finished at the clerk's office right around lunch time...

I so crafty when it comes to the food.

Rockstars and their parents.

I love these photographs.

Decluttering.

Moving is the perfect excuse to lighten the load.  I've written before about how much I detest stuff, to the point where I'm convinced there is probably a medical name for the sense of dread I feel at things like overstuffed drawers and generously filled gift bags alike. 

I'm pretty good at getting rid of things.  I'm not as good at stemming the tide against things coming in.  I'm trying, though.  Here are my latest tricks in the ongoing battle:

When the mail arrives, I immediately tear the back cover off all unwanted catalogs before pitching them in the recycling.  When I get a minute I call the 800 number on the back and cancel the catalog.  The other day, I took 4 back covers in the car with us to karate.  While d'anjou napped, and mini-pear practiced her blocks and kicks, I canceled all four catalogs. 

I've also tried to stop rationalizing the need to pick up little brochures and other ephemera.  I tend to end up with little piles of museum postcards, flyers for classes/community events, etc.  As if I need proof that I was there or something.  For the most part, the same information is available on the internet.  I hope I spend less time filing stuff away or sorting and throwing away most items in an accumulated pile six months from now.

Wrong needle!

Every time I leave the dentist's office I calculate how many hours worth of custom tattooing I could have gotten instead.

The new children's museum...

was definitely more our cup of tea than the Reuben Fleet Science Center.  I made sure we weren't visiting during peak hours and it made all the difference in the world.  We pretty much had the place to ourselves.  If I lived downtown, I'd get a family membership and just come hang out at least one afternoon a week.  Maybe we'll get one anyway, just for the bad-ass climbing wall;)

 

The staff were young and energetic and friendly (look at me getting all age-ist!  there was one delightful old bird assisting with the painting workshop!).  There were cool art workshops scheduled throughout the day - mini-pear made a buckyball inspired tree decoration in one and a monochromatic painting in another.  In addition to the workshops, there were various stations you could drop in on anytime - there's mini-pear messing around with some clay on the shaded terrace.  The building is architecturally interesting and supposedly* environmentally sustainable.  There's an organic cafe (which we didn't check out because we'd already had lunch at home), a cool playground across the street, and it's a short walk from the train station if you want to leave the car at home.  Disclaimer: We didn't leave the car at home.  It would cost us $24 to take the Coaster there and back!  I'd like to be greener, and Maude knows we were all over the trains and buses back in DC, but $24 bucks seems a bit steep for a day trip.

We rocked out inside the Porta Party - a porta-potty retro-fitted with lights, a disco ball, a thumpin' sound system and an iPod.

 

And although my first reaction to a room filled with mattresses and pillows was, "Ewwww.  Head lice!" much fun was to be had in here after I noticed the velcroed slip-covers on the pillows.  Hopefully they get washed often...

So, the children's museum?  We liked it.  Next time I'm going to give the organic cafe a go.

Ooooh, I almost forgot!

For Martin Luther King Day, I took the kids to see the Martin Luther King Jr. Community Choir perform downtown.

We packed a lunch to eat while watching the performance, but it being a gospel choir, we found ourselves needing to move our hands and bodies way to much to sit and munch our hummus and veggies.  We packed up and ate after the show, never mind our grumbly tummies.

Anyway, locals, if you get the chance to see them, they are great choir.  I must be getting old, or sentimental, but the words of the songs struck me in a way they hadn't quite before.  Maybe it was just seeing the MLK choir on MLK Day and picking up on the emotions of the performers.  I was moved to tears at one point.  Then, out in the lobby, meeting the woman whose solo moved me to tears, I said, "You moved me to tears!"  She gave me a huge bear hug, which had the unfortunate effect of moving us both to tears!  That's me, sniffly-puss.  What the heck?  Or as we say here at Chez Pear, "Matter the what's?"

Besides being an awesome show, all their proceeds (not just from this performance, but any proceeds they receive as an organization) go towards providing scholarships to college bound visual and performing arts students. 

Oh, what a beautiful morning! Oh, what a beautiful day!

I'm it!

Flo tagged me.  So here I go with six things that make me happy;)

Mini-pear reading to d'anjou.  Watching them snuggled up together in the big bed, seeing her share something she loves - it's really beautiful.



Mini-pear's kooky sense of humor.  Somber?  What's that?!?!?



This guy!  We celebrate our tenth anniversary this June and I still want to keep him.

 Hiking! 






























Road trips!



Plotting new projects.

Does this mean I have to tag you?  You're it!

Cormac McCarthy ruined my night.

We're thinking of moving to a new neighborhood.   I like to check out all the amenities*, so we visited what could be our new library.  Everyone was ridiculously friendly, wanting to help us find our books and tell us about jazz night and "Come play Wii night!'.  The library itself is very, very small, but we can order books from the main library and, most importantly, we can walk there.  Mini-pear found a pile of books and I grabbed Cormac McCarthy's The Road.

I'm going to tell you about it because you all keep inviting me to join GoodReads, so you must want to know what I think about what I'm reading.  I'm not ignoring your GoodReads invitations, it's just I'm pretty sure I'm a member already, because they know my name and keep sending me emails about stuff and about books some of my other imaginary internet friends are reading.  I tried to log in with all the usual passwords, but no dice...

Anyway...

The Road.

This is some bleak shit, yo.

I got about a third of the way though in one sitting and it gave me the willies.  A man.  His boy.  Post nuclear annihilation.  Implied cannibalism. 

I wasn't going to read anymore, but d'anjou fell asleep on the way to karate so I read some more in the car while Mini-pear was in class.  Then I did something I never do. 

I flipped to the end to see if anything happy was ever going to happen to this poor defeated man and his boy.  Because, seriously, if there wasn't a light at the end of that tunnel, I just wasn't going to be able to read another page.

Nothing happy happened.  I stopped reading.

Later on, at home, I noticed Mr. Pear was reading one of Mini-Pear's library books.  After teasing him mercilessly, we had the following exchange:

Triple P:  I've got Cormac McCarthy's latest from the library if you want to read something a little more...

Mr. P [interrupting] NO!

Triple P: ...grown up and depressing.

Mr. P:  That guy does bleak very well.

Triple P:  Tell me about it!  That shit was depressing!  There's this man and his boy, nuclear annihi...

Mr. P:  No thanks!  Don't even tell me about it!

Triple P:  ...lation!  Implied cannibalism!

Mr. P: La, la, la, la, la...I can't hear you!

Then it gave me fucking nightmares.

Not cool, Cormac McCarthy. 

Mr. Pear slept soundly, undoubtedly with visions of Warrior Cats in his head.

^{* Which I think is more "I can't wait to get over here and walk to all this stuff! and less "I'm not moving here if the post office doesn't have one of those fancy self-service "print your own postage" machines.}

Oh computer!

There you are;)

I keep meaning to get on here, but I also keep meaning to do things like clean the toilet and wash the sheets.  Hygiene's got to come first, doesn't it?  Unfortunately, a clean house is very low on d'anjou and mini-pear's scale of needs and wants...so most of the time, we take this party to the streets and leave the dirty house to the dog.

Last week, we hit the botanical gardens.  It's a great setting for lovely photos, but these days mini-pear either runs from the camera or makes faces like this...

 

She is charming.

On Friday afternoon, we met up with some friends at the beach to explore the tidepools.  This was a totally fun outing.  So fun, in fact, that we took Mr. Pear back the next day.  All of a sudden, it was not much fun at all.  When we'd gone with our friends, the tidepools were pretty much deserted, but on Saturday afternoon, it seemed the entire town had showed up to investigate the very low tide.  Our collective impact on the environment kind of appalled me.  Hordes of clumsy bipeds crushed anemones by the thousand, starfish sank helplessly the bottom of buckets of sun warmed water, brittle sea stars lived up to their name...

Nature.  I like it.  I don't need to conquer it.