Business Travel: Occasional Distractions from Melancholy

December 17, 2016December 8, 2018Lauren

It sounds cool: traveling for work. I promise I am WELL aware of that. And that the following will sound so entitled- but traveling the country for work sucks. Big ones. I travel to Portland. Indianapolis. Denver. Salt Lake City. Dallas. Pittsburg. I have to travel to Canada regularly too. Know what I get to see more than anything? The inside of Marriot hotels. Airports. Conference rooms at engineering firms, which all seem to have the same tables and chairs. And it’s just excruciating to be away from my family. All I ever want to do is get back to them.

But every once in a while… I can carve out just a tiny bit of time and literally force myself to look up and enjoy the places I visit. So occasionally I can eat lunch and walk in an old growth forest in Washington (honestly? I felt like bear bait on that one.) I get to go to an awesome bookstore in Portland. Once I stayed in an AMAZING Bed and Breakfast in Seattle because the entire city’s hotel rooms were sold out. And this last trip… I got to carve an hour and a half from the afternoon and went to the Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh. It’s an Art Museum! It’s a Natural History Museum! Here are some pics.

Van Goghe

Another Van Goghe

From the Colonial Era Room…

Cezanne (my favorite painting from the entire museum)

…And then there is the Modern Art Wing

“Art”

*Eyeroll* Heavy Sigh…”Art”

But my FAVORITE part of the museum was the Natural History Museum. I took more videos in that wing, so I don’t have pictures of the T-Rexs or Brachiosaurs, but here are a few of the pics.

IT’S A TWELVE FOOT TURTLE! Dude!

And my favorite thing in the ENTIRE place- a two foot fossil of a prehistoric flower. Amazing! And that’s more art than a tire in pantyhose- Fo’ SHO’.

Insufferable Parenting #489- Of Wood and Plastic

November 17, 2016December 8, 2018Lauren 4 Comments

Plastic is scary stuff, what with all it’s mimicry of estrogen in the human body. And in fish. And in animals. And… yeah. So I actually think this latest generation will be similar to the last generation that grew up with lead paint and leaded gas- we are very close to a full realization as to how dangerous this stuff is and our behavior as a society and products WILL change to reflect that very soon- of this I believe. *Hand on heart while staring knowingly into the distance. Sunset behind me. Eagle cries ringing overhead.*

BUT- I sure as hell wasn’t going to wait for Johnson and Johnson to make the change for me. So with all the girls- we used glass jar baby food as much as we could. Glass storage containers. Few plastics in the girls eating utensils- no melamine plates, ever, but there were some plastic cups for a short period of time. Those have long been replaced with small glass jelly jars. I buy olive oil in glass jars. I’m… yeah. It’s important to me.

I have gone off the deep end, a BIT, with it with our latest daughter. Metal baby spoons (turns out Oneida makes some still). Organic blankets. Organic crib mattress and mattress pad. I tried glass bottles, but she wouldn’t go for it- but we use the only organic, American made formula once we started supplementing at 7 months when I was just DONE pumping at work 3 times a day. Morning and night we still breast feed though. And yeah, we can’t help but use the plastic baby food pouches, but they’re organic at least- scout’s honor. Wooden toys and teether (she uses the teether to hit the wooden drum and has never once put it in her mouth. But then, she hasn’t been teething yet either, so I’ll hold off saying that $17 was wasted yet. Who am I kidding. Totally was.) Did I order wooden baby bowls and plates? Maybe.

The biggest one- which I could CARE LESS at the expense of- was a 100% wood high chair from Great Britain. Yes- I had a damn high chair shipped from Europe- but the only one I could find in the US was plywood- and hell, that might be worse than plastic. I just plan to turn it into a heirloom. And I figured we saved so much by borrowing baby stuff and not going overboard on swings or other baby gear that we still came out on top. And it may sound like it, but I am not justifying the expense- I’ve never once felt guilty about it- it was totally worth it for my plastic fearing self.

Wooden high chair, how do I love thee? Let me count the ways…

How self righteous does this post sound? Oh god. So very. Here’s my point though. What’s the WORST plastic in the house? The cheap bath toys- can’t seem to find a good alternate to those. What are Mary’s favorite toys? Take a guess. Does she crawl around the house with one in her mouth, INTENT on torturing me? You bet your ass she does.

Random Thoughts

November 10, 2016November 8, 2016Lauren

I HATE that I can’t spell champagne without sounding out CHAM-PAG-KNEE in my head. Just did it again.

Going out to eat ALWAYS takes more energy than just sucking it up and sautéing some chicken and tossing a salad together. Sheesh when am I going to learn that one.

I love wet weather- nothing will make you feel more alive than a light mist coming down at night. Cool on the face and forming haloes on street lamps… love it.

The fact that the words fluid and liquid don’t mean the same things annoys me. Fluids shouldn’t also encompass gasses- I’m just going to come out on that side of the heated debate not at all raging over this one.

Chikungunya. One: it’s a disease that is spelled like that. Two: it’s a disease that has nothing to do with chickens. And three: I’m an idiot.

On Champagne and Standing and a View of Construction Equipment

November 6, 2016December 8, 2018Lauren

I’d LIKE to think sharing this article is not like drinking spoiled milk and going “oh my God- taste this!”

It was hard to read. Read it!

This article

It’s an article by a favorite writer of mine about mothering her dying friend through Hospice care. And the whole article is lovely and haunting, what with it’s ripping the curtain back from the Wizard of Oz- only it’s Death, always Death behind the curtain. (Jesuschrist, woman. Downer much on a Sunday?) So yes- the whole article is hard to read- but important. The thought that gets me is that her friend asked for champagne, right before she died. She was told, “No, it’s 6am we don’t have any champagne.” God help me- god help me to give someone champagne. Please – please let someone give me champagne before I die if that’s what I want. Agh. It’s the detail that gets me on that. For some reason that’s the thing that haunts me.

I think it haunts me because I can draw correlations to my grandfather’s last day. He was very antsy. Plucking at the arms of his wheel chair. Agitated. He wanted to stand repeatedly. In the middle of a small concert of hymns. In his room. In the hallway. I called an orderly over each time. We heaved him up by his belt and under his arms. He stood for as long as he could each time. It was important to him. I hope it was his champagne.

On that afternoon I got him a new tank of oxygen. Wheeled him around the facility. Here’s the garden. Here’s your room. Here’s the other hallway. He fell asleep looking out a window in the main living space as I rubbed his shoulders and hummed Silent Night- just like I hummed to my children. The window was overlooking a large red oak tree. The tree was pretty but I picked that one because it also overlooked Dean Word Construction Company’s back property. You could see all sorts of loaders, and backhoes, and heavy equipment. I thought he’d like that.

I sat with him as he slept. And when my Aunt and Uncle got there I left for home. It was just hours later my brother called me to say he died in his sleep as my Dad and my aunt sang and played piano for him. He won his long fight.

Anyway. I don’t know what my point on this one was. I saw some correlations between that article and past experience and it’s opened the wound that is everyone’s mortality for me a bit. It’s… all okay though. Because it has to be- because it’s always been the truth here- the price we pay for being here is to eventually leave and I get that. And that’s okay too. Not easy in the slightest, I’ll sure as hell tack that on though.

A Poem. Lovelier than a Tree.

November 3, 2016November 8, 2016Lauren

Object

I object

To being an object.

Fat lot of good it’ll do me, though.

(Oh man. Not the poem-ing type over here… but this wouldn’t stop rolling through my head a few weeks ago when the whole Grabby-Hands McShittySteaks video came out. I totally forgot I wrote it down, but just stumbled across it in my drafts folder. Figured I’d share.)

Also? Your poem sucked, Joyce Kilmer. Totally sucked. You’re what’s wrong with the world, honestly. You and Grabby-Hands McGildedRot.

Hey, Cat

November 2, 2016November 2, 2016Lauren

Hey Cat,

You know the story of the boy who cried wolf? THE CAT WHO CRIED FOOD WORKS THE SAME WAY!!!

“You know, Flowers and…”

October 29, 2016October 2, 2021Lauren

My husband and I love gardening- we like existing outside, as much as we can- and we like doing it in a nicely landscaped place. And I have dabbled enough in landscape design to be all annoying about it. I like a French Cottage style- not as chaotic as English Cottage, but still emphasizing an abundance of flowers while also incorporating veggies and herbs right in the same spaces. Also, all organic, and stuff. So.

Back in the day I used to work in a garden center and thus became a bit of a plant snob- I want the unusual, the hard to grow, the unknown, the ones with cool historical stories. Honestly, a landscape of New Gold Lantana, Salvia greggii, Knockout roses, and crepe myrtles might as well be beige walls as far as I’m concerned. (So Bourgeoisie! I’d have never made it through the Reign of Terror with that kind of attitude, let me tell you- Robespierre would have definitely seen to that. Ho, ho!) But also people- please don’t fall for the trap: most commercial growers and big box stores grow plants that look good in POTS so you’ll buy them- for a rockin landscape you want plants that do best in the GROUND- they should almost always be just green and unassuming looking in pots for sale. So.

Our house had been abandoned for 20 years before we moved in- and the people who flipped it as an income property ran out of money and bad ideas and installed next to no landscaping. They did put 8 shrubs in, actually. They were Yaupon Hollies. And if the latin name of Ilex vomitoria ‘Nana’ doesn’t just perfectly sum them up, I don’t know what would. We ripped them out. So… we get, finely, to my point here.

Slowly… ever so painstakingly slowly- we’ve been landscaping. The front yard has sod and new shrubs. (anyone care what kind?) They’re dwarf myrtles, Myrtus communis compacta. Sweet myrtle is a plant that dates back to ancient times, with the first recording of it in written history in 50 AD. White flowers. Purple berries (edible, yes. Palatable? eh.) It’s considered an herb, and I use it extensively in cut flower arrangements. Supposedly it was one of the plants Adam was allowed to take out of the garden on Eden (how’d that work? Some kind of severance package, maybe?). We also have a side garden in and establishing. We’ve planted poppies and larkspur seeds in the 70′ bed between our new driveway and our neighbors. So, even with a now 10 month old we have done some really big projects. Oh- and we took out the trash trees in the back: Cedar Elms and an Arizona Ash (Boo! Hiss! Who plants those awful things?! It’s dead now.) And my husband and some contractor (cough cough, Dad, cough cough) installed a new fence. Okay! Jeez, this is taking together all too long to get to the point of… “Hey, wanna see the few flowers we’ve got over here right now? There aren’t that many because we haven’t landscaped the backyard yet, but we eked out what we could this year.”

Francis Dubriel Rose. We get a rose for each of the girl’s when they’re born. Mary’s middle name is Francis (How Catholic are we, amiright?! Not very, actually.) so this one seemed like a good choice. Turns out it gets 8′ tall. Gulp. Maybe should have done a bit more research. It’s from 1894 and named for a rose breeder in Lyon, France who started out his career as a tailor. (My plant snobitude- it is DWARFED by my level of rose snobbery. lovelovelove me some antique roses. Hearts.) Hey and look! Turns out the jerks who sold us the house didn’t even sand the exterior before they painted! Haha…yeah. Don’t do that.

My Nutmeg scented geranium- love those leaves! Flowers are small but very cute and both are cute in cut flower arrangements. Hey and look! You can see that the jerks we bought the house from built the deck using nails instead of screws! haha… yeah. Don’t do that.

Chocolate Sunflowers… now that’s one to file away for future use! Grow, sunflowers, GROW!

Coreopsis from a wildflower mix the neighbor gave us to add to the driveway bed.

John Fannick Phlox named after… some guy in San Antonio. Owned a plant nursery. They can’t all be interesting stories.

Weed grass heads from the bamboo forest/ghetto in the back corner. The seed heads do look nice in flower arrangements, though. And that’s all I got… except for this last one, that is.

Happy Saturday. (“Don’t say Cat-urday, don’t say Cat-urday…”)

the something garden

Bridge Over the River Why

Author Lauren