Business Travel Children’s Stories… The Denver Bunnies

March 31, 2015December 9, 2018Lauren

So as I’ve mentioned before, ad nauseum- we were in Denver recently and will be moving there soon. I travel a lot for work but on this last business trip to Denver I didn’t have to go slowly stir crazy waiting to get home to my family because, wonder of wonders, my husband got to come with me! We were gone for 6 days… and terrible though it is- I forgot to bring my girls’ stuffed animals to write some stories about. So… an origin story is in order for 2 new friends. And let me just say, we drive our oldest INSANE because we won’t tell her where we actually got these toys, we just keep telling her we found them in downtown Denver. (We actually bought them in a Walgreens- happy, kid?) So my husband, Tim Duncan and I make guest appearances here.

The Denver Bunnies

“Life sure is hard out here, living in downtown Denver, isn’t it Sweetie Pie?”

“It sure is, Creampuff. We’re cold all the time. We never know when we’re going to eat next. And it’s so lonely!”

“Well Hello there tiny bunnies! What are your names?”

“I’m Creampuff, sir, and this is my friend Sweetie Pie.”

“It sure does seem like you have a hard life out here, am I right? How would you like to come live with us? I have two beautiful daughters that I know would take good care of you!”

The bunnies didn’t have to think twice.

“Oh can we really?! We’ll be good pets for your daughters, sir- we promise! You’re doing us such a huge favor- is there anything we can do for you in return to show you our thanks?”

The man said: “Now that you mention it, there is: Do you know where we can watch the Spurs basketball game? My wife and I don’t know our way around your city.”

Sweetie Pie thought for a second and then pointed down the street.

“Sure thing, sir. You’re going to go down two blocks (It should take you… oh about 10,000 bunny hops to get there.) Once you get there you’ll want to jump on the huge shuttle monster and go down 6 stops. Then walk past the tasty shrubs we like to chew on till you get to the pine tree we sleep under when it’s warmer. There should be a place to watch basketball around the corner from there.”

“Thanks, Sweetie Pie! Good thing you’re coming with us though, just in case we get lost!”

Then the nice man’s wife picked them up and said:

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, bunnies! Sweetie Pie, I know our oldest daughter Lily will LOVE for you to be her pet. Here, hop in my pocket and warm up! And Creampuff, there is no way our youngest daughter Noelle wouldn’t love to have you! Hop in my other pocket and get cozy!”

The bunnies settled into the pockets- warm for the first time in months. They were going to love this new life!

Later…

“So this is basketball, huh, Creampuff?” I like it- look! It’s Tim Duncan- he’s my favorite!”

“Yup. I like it too, Sweetie Pie! Though MY favorite player is that Tony Parker guy.”

Lily and Noelle’s Mom and Dad smiled down at them when the heard what the bunnies had said. They knew they had picked the PERFECT bunnies for their daughters!

So… totally going to make this a regular feature. ~~Because frankly… blog content gets thin sometimes and I have a ton of these.~~ Because I hope it does some good in the world.

In the Denver Museum

March 19, 2015December 8, 2018Lauren

Soo… HUGE collection of Pre-Columbian artwork in the Denver Museum… just mind bogglingly massive. Like there was some hoarder of all this stuff who died in Denver and no one knew what to do with it all and they gave it to the museum.

And in the middle of this mass of ancient artifacts is one thing that really caught my eye: this rare snake shaped pot. It’s very small (about 6″ tall and wide) and the opening is on the other side from the picture below. The way it’s designed makes it seem like it had to be hung on a peg… and been impossible to keep clean…anyway.

Up close, it is just the cutest little thing ever.

But from more than 4 feet away and I feel like someone in Central America, 1,200 years ago, is punking me… because it is JUST like you’re looking at a pile of dog poop in a glass case on the 4th floor of a museum.

Denver

March 8, 2015December 8, 2018Lauren 1 Comment

I recently took a new job (which- let me just say: Love it. Would have quit the old one sooner if I’d known you could enjoy a job this much) and we’ll be relocating to Denver this summer. Which sounds big, and is… but it’s so much easier than I thought it’d be too. It reminds me a bit of the feeling I had when I met my husband. It was so easy to accept the fact that my life, in the moment of meeting him, was going to change completely- fundamentally and permanently. I knew all of that looking into his eyes all those years ago… and it was so easy to accept, be excited about, and welcome in my life. My life was never going to be the same again- it was an amazing feeling.

And now, again- this is a huge change. Moving across the country changes not just my life, but my husband’s, my daughters’, my family in Texas… so it’s big. But it also is surprisingly easy to accept and welcome. My husband and I are in Denver this week- I’m working, he’s applying at school districts, and we’re house hunting. Plus fitting in as much fun as we can.

Anyway, so this bear is outside of the convention center right around the corner from the hotel we’re staying at in downtown Denver- and it may be one of the best known pieces of art in the city. I love it- it makes me smile. And outdoor art… there is a lot of it in this city, which I both like and was a bit surprised by. And it’s all pretty good- not pretentious stuff like Austin has.

Ugh- seriously, let’s talk about Austin for a second. Austin is as over praised as Breaking Bad, bacon, Starbuck’s bitter-ass coffee, and Andy Warhol are. Seriously- why are those all put on a pedestal? It’s baffling to me. Having lived in Austin and gone to school there I can easily say- give me San Antonio any day. Or Denver. I’ll totally take Denver too.

What I Do On Business Trips…

February 7, 2015December 9, 2018Lauren

So, as I’ve mentioned before, my day job is a traveling sales rep. Traveling sounds cool until you do it- it’s mostly quiet, and you aren’t out living it up or seeing whatever local highlights there are to see and do in your destination. (“So what’s there to do in Port Lavaca, TX? Be sad and breath in carcinogens? Oh. Okay…I’ll just stay in my hotel room then.”) Mostly it’s just time you are aware, every single second, that you are away from where you want to be. I turn into Dorothy when I travel: “There’s no place like home! There’s no place like home!” Maybe if I got some red glittery heels off of a corpse that would work, because it sure didn’t work with the snow boots I wore on this last trip.

So when I do travel for more than a few days I take along a couple of my daughters’ stuffed animals and write stories about them. Making these lets me feel- from very far away- that I’m still participating in my family. I’m contributing. Connecting. It’s totally worth an hour in a hotel making something for my girls to laugh over while I’m gone. And I always call my husband IMMEDIATELY after I send it and ask if he read it. “Did you read it? What did you think? My favorite part is…” and so on. Because I’m THAT person, I guess.

I don’t buy them anything on my trips usually- as a wise Snapple cap once told me: “The more you own, the more that owns you”- but they have binders of these stories from me. I hope it’s something they remember- that Mom sent them effort and some chuckles instead of a magnet or keychain. I hope they remember. But even if they don’t… writing these stories for them made me feel better when I travelled and I needed it. Oh! And also, I feel like I grow as a person each time someone gives me some side-eye for being a grown ass woman walking around taking pictures of stuffed animals. Pride is a sin, so they say- so those occasions help me overcome my not insubstantial personal share.

(So- Baby Tiger is the big eyed one here. Stripeless USED to be called Baby Tiger until the new Baby Tiger came along- at which time the name was changed by my oldest daughter to Stripeless- because she’d been so well loved by that point her stripes had rubbed off. They are both girls.)

The Adventures of Baby Tiger and Stripeless in Canada, eh?!

“Well, here we go! I’ve never been in an airplane before, have you Stripeless?”

“No, I never have, Baby Tiger! I’m so excited! I sure am glad we got to come with Lily and Noelle’s Mommy on this trip. I bet she is too- I’m sure their Mommy would have been lonely without us. We have a very important job to do- keeping her from missing Lily and Noelle too much!”

“That’s true, Stripeless… but we are here MOSTLY to have fun, right?”

“RIGHT!”

“Canada! It wasn’t the quickest airplane ride, but we finally got here. I wonder if Lily and Noelle have looked on the globe to see where we are in Winnipeg, Canada? This snow sure is cold, how does it taste, Stripeless?”

“It tastes freezing! The world is one big snow-cone up here- lets go back inside, Baby Tiger!”

“Run quicker- we’re not snow Tigers!”

Whew! A hotel fire- that will warm those cold tigers up!

“Ahhhh… it sure was nice to warm up in front of that fire, Baby Tiger! It’s been a really long day… I think it’s time to go to bed, don’t you?”
“I sure do, Stripeless. Do you think if we shouted loud enough that Lily and Noelle would hear us tell them goodnight?”

“GOODNIGHT LILY AND NOELLE!!!!!”

Part of me can’t believe I just wrote a blog post about stuffed animals. And part of me totally, totally can.

Coq au Vin

January 20, 2015December 9, 2018Lauren

(Image by Silke Rabung)

This recipe has a special place in my heart because it was on my Maternity Leave Bucket List when I was home with my second daughter. I decided to have a list to accomplish during that time with the second one because with my firstborn it seems like I pretty much didn’t leave the house for nine weeks and watched Magnum P.I. three times a day. (LOT of sitting around when you’re nursing a newborn; turns out.) A nice, involved recipe is good for getting you sane through a variety of trying times, not just new parenthood; such as every single Sunday afternoon ever.

This is an old French recipe, and I’m sure about 65,350,000 French citizens will think I am royally jacking this up. But they put rooster feet and a cup of blood in theirs; so I can live with the French contempt. (With more French contempt.) And you need one bottle minus one glass (for le chef, of course) of red wine for this recipe and make it a middling to good one. Why go to all this trouble and have bad wine ruin the whole thing? Go ahead. Indulge a bit.

My least favorite thing about this recipe is peeling the pearl onions, but just consider it a lesson in patience. Feel free to watch a whole episode of Magnum P.I. while you do it- it makes the time go by faster. You won’t get tips like that from Julia Child! But don’t skimp or shortchange the quantity of them- you’ll thank me. And besides, Magnum P.I. is total gold. I will tell you, though I found it a pain, that if you boil them for 2-3 minutes and then put them in cold water immediately the onion jackets should slide right off. I must have done that one wrong though because it didn’t turn out that way… I’ll stick with the Magnum P.I. method, myself.

6 skinless, bone-in chicken thighs

1/3 cup all purpose flour

Salt and pepper

6 slices of bacon

8 oz Cremini mushrooms, cut in half

2 carrots, cut into 1 inch pieces

2 stalks celery, cut into 1 inch pieces

12oz beef broth

1.5 Tbsp. tomato paste

25-30 small white pearl onions, peeled

3 cloves garlic, sliced

1 fresh bay leaf (or 1 dried, if fresh unavailable)

4 sprigs fresh thyme (1.5 tsp. dried, if fresh unavailable)

1 bottle (minus one cup) quality red wine – Pinot Noir preferred

1 package Egg noodles (12 oz.)

*small handful minced flat leaf parsley for garnish

In your biggest pot over medium low heat cook the bacon, being careful not to burn. While that is cooking mix the flour, salt, and pepper together on a plate and then dredge each piece of chicken in the flour mixture. Remove the bacon, once it is cooked, and then increase the heat to medium in the pot. Brown the chicken pieces in batches in the bacon grease, and remove to a plate. Add 1 tbsp butter, if needed to any remaining bacon grease and sauté the pearl onions, carrots, garlic, mushrooms and celery. Remove vegetables from pot. Pour off any remaining grease or oil, carefully. Place the pot over medium heat again and deglaze the pot with a cup or so of red wine. Add chicken, vegetables, thyme, bay leaf, remaining wine, tomato paste, and beef broth to barely cover the chicken and simmer for 1.5 to 2 hours.

Cook the egg noodles in a separate pot, drain and return to pot. Place one chicken thigh on a bed of noodles in individual bowls and spoon sauce over the top. Garnish with the minced parsley.

From the Paper: Chaos Theory

January 18, 2015December 10, 2018Lauren

I find the opinion pages of my small town Texas newspaper to be a daily lesson in patience. Most of the time I can be that water-resistant backed duck. But sometimes… Perhaps it’s simply that any kind of nationalism (yes, even our own) strikes me as a bad idea. Odd to hear coming from a Texan? Who loves her state yet realizes calling it “the best” is an opinion based on bias and lack of knowledge on the others? Yup. Hi there, that’s me! Extrapolate that out to all nations, cultures, ethnicities, and races and that there is my world view. So anyone claiming to be “the best!” gets my back up, and strident whining about how everyone else should appreciate said bestedness even more so. Toss some twisting of historical fact and thinly veiled Hitler praise in there and I get all fired up. Same as the last time I wrote a post like this I’m not posting the letter to the editor I responded to here… due to possible issues with my local newspaper and because I’m not giving the author a forum for his words to go one step further in the world so maybe this is a bit cryptic. I’d like to think it can standalone in this way though let me know if not and I’ll work the next one differently.

Chaos Theory and that thing Mr. O said about 1941

Let’s talk “Butterfly Effect” briefly- and I’m talking chaos theory, not the 2004 movie with Ashton Kutcher. It gets oversimplified into this: the possibility that a hurricane in North America may be caused by a butterfly flapping its wings in China, and all of the aftereffects that result from that small action. Now, there are some problems with this theory, I’ll admit. One of the main ones: Could you really say with certainty, after the fact, which butterfly was responsible for a specific result? The other problem with the theory, as I see it, is that due to such rampant pollution I’m really not sure how many butterflies are left in China. Come to think of it, it has been a pretty quite hurricane season…

When this concept is taken out of the realm of just butterflies and applied to man it basically boils down to this: every action has an effect on the present and therefore changes the future. I’m not going to pick apart each of the claims Mr. O makes about the German influence on history… except for one. (We’ll get back to that.) I’ll just state that his assertion that “there would be no USA or Europe as we know it today (without Germans)” is only accurate if we realize there truly would be no USA or Europe as we know it today without every single action of every single one of the people of the world. Chaos theory. Butterfly effect. The past changes the future. It is a beautiful way of seeing the world and is one of the main reasons I love history as much as I do.

Now…let’s talk the German invasion of Russia in 1941 that Mr. O states was to protect Christianity. Go ahead and look up who ordered that action, called Operation Barbarossa and why it was ordered… no don’t do it on Wikipedia! Sheesh, use a reputable source… go ahead. I’ll wait here. Found who ordered it? Little bit shocked, aren’t you, that anyone would have the absolute chutzpah to trot out anything that guy did as heroic, protecting Christianity, or anything worthy of praise? Yeah, me too. And for anyone who didn’t look that up- here’s a hint: he’s wiped a specific form of mustache off the list of acceptable facial hair for well over six decades now. Was it done to defend Christianity? Do butterflies flap their wings to make hurricanes? Or do they do it to preemptively invade Russia to defend the Third Reich from a perceived threat on its Eastern front? Now, the cause of the invasion can actually be proven (there is, not totally unexpectedly, a plethora of very well-organized notes and directives concerning it) but the final effect is what is up for some interpretation from us today. So there you go, that gives you free reign to interpret and have opinions on the results of factual events in history… just not to misinterpret the motivations or to be piecemeal about the facts themselves.

(Image courtesty of Jean Scheijen)

Random Picture Friday

January 16, 2015December 8, 2018Lauren

Low on inspiration for blog posts? Or have SO many things to possibly write/think about; surgery, new carpeting, health insurance decisions, phone plan decisions, real estate decisions, vehicle decisions, work decisions… that you just want to take a nap instead? Well have I got the blog post for you! Here’s how it works: Press the Random Picture generator on a free images website. Press it repeatedly until you get to a picture you cleave to, but pretend you only take the first one that pops up.Write zippy comment(s) about said picture… and you’re done! Without further ado, may I present to you:

Image courtesy of Gölin Doorneweerd – Swijnenburg

A load of carp- first time ever that has been typed and not been a typo. We’re making history here folks!

I’m scraping to bottom of that carp barrel, so you’ll just need to give me a pass on this one.

Happy Friday!

the something garden

Bridge Over the River Why

Author Lauren