It's ALIVE

In the unannounced and unplanned month long hiatus I took from blogging, you will be happy to know that I didn't squander my life away eating ice cream on the couch in my PJs. Ok, well I didn't ONLY do that. Just one hour each night to eat ice cream and watch Ghost Hunters, but I label that "Sanity Preservation," not "Life Squanderization." Instead I took a week long, 14 hour a day, painting workshop. During this workshop, I began the portrait of Sayde you see above. Next step, color - and that's where it all goes wrong for me. But I'll post it up anyway when it's done, good, bad or mediocre.

I also took my portrait model up to Massachusetts for the2nd annual "Girls' Weekend!" Whoo HOO! My mom, my daughter, and my 3 younger sisters, and one almost 2 year old nephew, all get together to engage in the distinctly female social gathering behaviors that include:
pedicures
ice cream
Smirnoff Ice
prowling the mall for sales
group mothering (it takes a village sometimes, people)

Relaxing? No. Not really. But fun, heartwarming, and much needed? You betcha hot doggie.

Just for the record, I'm not planning any month long blogging breaks in the near future, but you just never know. It's part of the excitement, right?

Biltmore House

The following is a handy little update on our mountain trip, written by my adorable husband to his family:

Hello Family. A vacation update.

Delete if sleepy because this will most likely put you over the top. We went to the Biltmore Estate today. It was absolutely gorgeous. The tour of the Biltmore Castle took about 2 hours. Then we spent another three hours walking around the breathtaking gardens and forest.

The kids were amazing. Sayde and Connor walked all day without complaining at all. We arrived at Biltmore around 11 and didn't leave the grounds until after 6. Ella, on the other hand was surprisingly stubborn. She did not nap at all and I had to carry her in the baby bjorn for 7 hours. She will hopefully sleep until Friday.

We ended the trip at the Biltmore Winery. It was a small winery but Katie and I found some nice bottles of wine. For dinner I found the #1 rated kid friendly restaurant in Asheville. It was in the heart of the city. Unfortunately I did not check the menu. After being seated we discovered that it was an international vegetarian restaurant. Katie and I loved it, Connor was not convinced that "tofu sloppy joe's" really was hamburger meat....

When asked what their favorite part of the day was, Connor replied "The Dead Moose." We should thank the taxidermist. Love to all.

Rabies, and Lions, and Lyme Disease OH MY!

Tonight's blog is brought to you all the way from Asheville, NC. Yup, Lennie actually got me to go back to a log cabin in the mountains. Hopefully this time, no one will die. I can't make any promises though and did I bring a knife with me on our walk down the gravelly forest road. You never know when you will run into a black mountain lion. I swear they exist, and if one pounces down on me, I'll be pretty glad I have a steak knife in my trench coat. I want to at least get one good stab in before it's jaws clamp down around my neck.

Nervous? I'm not nervous at all thank you very much. I love wilderness. Yaaaay mountains.
Hopefully tomorrow we will head into the city and explore some art galleries. There's way less chance of being eaten by lions downtown.


Quote of the Day from Connor: "Did you know that one time, I was almost throwing up, but I sucked it back in?"

Mama said Knock You Out

Yes, that's right. Lennie and I spent this weekend in Tampa, where we collected seashells on the beach, went running, went to the movies together, and I got into a fistfight. But, more on that later. We also went to (get ready because I'm going to sing it:) The Suuuuperbowl La La La Laaaaaa! Since Lennie is still technically on the Browns' roster, and those days are rapidly coming to an end, I figured it would be my only chance for a long long time - if ever - to go see the Superbowl, la la la la. Plus, we haven't been away together without kids since Sayde was 13 months old. So, even though the Red Bitch was in town, we had a great time doing all the stuff you take for granted when you don't have kids, aka, peeing without an audience.





Oh, by the way, if you are ever in North Redington Beach, swing by The Frog Pond for breakfast. Holy Yum. After Lennie and I snarfed down an omelet the size of France, and a fruit plate that rivals the Chiquita Banana lady's hat, we were off to the game. We got there plenty early (5 hours early) so that we could walk around the NFL Experience, and get price gouged. We waited on a 10 minute line just to get IN to the *tent* store, and once inside, we discovered not only was it 1,000 degrees, but the acceptable price for a sweatshirt is apparently hundreds of dollars. So, empty handed except for a $10 beer (which was worth every penny), we wandered over to the stadium.

Our seats were about 2 rows from the very top, so we ambled up up up the ramp and walked along the concourse looking for our section. Whoops, you can't get to this section from this side of the stadium, so back down down down the ramp we went on our way to the opposite side.

If you have ever been to Raymond James Stadium, or watched a Tampa Bay Bucaneers' game on TV, you will be familiar with the pirate ship, which sits in one of the endzones:




It's pretty cool, except for one little oversight by the designers. In order to get from one side of the stadium to the other, 72,000 people have to squeeze through a concourse that suddenly shrinks down to about 10 feet wide in one section. Needless to say, this creates a bit of a logjam.



Here's where the fistfight occurred. Now, let me just preface this by saying that I abhor confrontation. I am typically a mild mannered suburban mom who smiles and waves at people while I putter around town in my minivan. However, I have now learned that I have a darker side and can suddenly turn into a screaming lunatic at a moment's notice. Lennie and I were inching our way through wall to wall bodies, smiling at the people trying to squeeze through and bonding over how much it sucked, when it happened: I felt a hand on my butt. "Ok," I thought, "It's really crowded. It could be an accident." Then, the mystery hand squeezed my butt... twice. Without a thought in my head, I whipped around to face the man directly behind me.

"How dare you," I snarled.


He immediately put both hands in the air and said, "It wasn't me." Guilty. And that's about the time when I LOST MY SHIT.

Here's me, face to face with Mr. Grabby, placing my right hand on his douchebag neck and shoving as hard as I can (which I'm pretty proud to say caused him to stumble back a few feet) and screaming, "HOW FUCKING DARE YOU!"

A circle cleared around us, and a lot of people began yelling. That's when Lennie jumped in and I think pulled me out of the way so he could have some words with the disgusting pervert. The rest of it was kind of a blur...I hear rage tends to do that. After spending a few minutes convulsing with adrenaline, I decided to not let it ruin the game for me. But, I am still hoping the pervert got hit by a bus later that day.

After the unexpected discovery of a backbone, I also stood up for myself when someone cut in front of me in line to buy a t-shirt. I know, it was a big day for me. We also got to see The Boss, which was pretty awesome. Plus, the actual game was not too shabby either.

Minus one moment of guttural furor, the weekend was beautiful. Many thanks to Poppy, La La and D for watching the kids for us while we were away. We had such a good time, in fact, that we decided to expand our family. Meet "Prime" and "Sally".




We thought Sally was dead for a while. As it turns out, she is only shy.

So much fun, I broke my brain.

Brain clogged with sunscreen.

Can't. Write. Today.

Mountain Cabin

I have to preface this post by saying that I am a suburbanite through and through. I was raised in the suburbs of New York City, and have been living in suburbs ever since. This lifestyle has prepared me for one thing and one thing only: living in suburbs. So, I had to laugh at Lennie when he began packing things like compasses, pocket knives, a year's supply of food, a crank radio (just in case there is a nuclear war, he says. Right, because if all the TV stations get blown up, I'm suuure the radio stations will still be on air). My log cabin essentials? An ipod, smores ingredients, and a bottle of wine; and my only regret about this weekend is that I only brought one bottle of wine.

So, this soft suburbanite didn't start her trip off on a very good note when the minivan crushed a squirrel as we were pulling out of our subdivision. :( This is the first animal I've ever hit with a car (I don't count suicidal toads). This squirrel obviously was not suicidal because it was carrying an acorn during it's ill-fated road crossing. Searching for food=desire to live. I flinched as I looked in the rear view mirror and saw the acorn rolling across the street and the poor squirrel flopping around.
Me: "IT'S STILL ALIVE! IT'S SUFFERING"
Lennie: "Hit it again! You have to put it out of it's misery!"
Me, bursting into tears: "I can't."

So I climbed out of the car and stood on the side of the road while Lennie backed the minivan over the dying squirrel, twice.

When I got back in, Sayde was frantic. "What did we hit?" She demanded to know. "Daddy says it was a rock, but I KNOW it was an animal. Why is Mommy crying?"
"It was a rock," I mumbled.
"YOU'RE LYING!" She screamed.

I handled that well, don't you think? And so our vacation began.
We later parlayed this little experience into a lesson with the moral being: see what happens when you don't look both ways before you cross the street?


After a few hours in the car, we arrived in Blowing Rock, NC. "Beautiful" is the best word to describe it. It is a gorgeous little mountain town with a great Main Street. There was a huge public park with a playground for the kids to burn off some energy, and lots of cute coffee shops for Lennie and I to get some energy. We had a really peaceful afternoon exploring the shops and galleries.

As evening begin to set it, we figured we'd better start heading to the cabin so we'd have plenty of time to find it while there was still daylight. We punched the address into the trusty navigator and headed off. As we drove further and further from Blowing Rock, the sun sank lower in the sky, and my anxiety crept up. "How far away is this cabin?" I wondered. We spent a good amount of time slowing winding our way up a mountain on narrow roads with no guard rails, and then even higher up the mountain, on dirt roads. At the top of the mountain our navigation system said in her honey sweet voice, "Turn Right." Only there was no right turn to be found. "Where the fuck are we?" I asked politely.
"Don't get ridiculous." Lennie said. You would think after 7 seven years of marriage, that Lennie would know that this statement only increases my ridiculousness tenfold. We whipped out the printed version of the directions that the leasing company gave us, and it turns out we were on the wrong fucking mountain. So, I eased the minivan back down the mountain, now in complete darkness, and that utterly biting silence that comes after you and your spouse both realize at the same time that the other one is a total moron.

A half an hour later, on top of a different mountain, and through more white-knuckle dirt roads, we pulled into the gravel driveway. Lennie went in first to make sure there were no bears, squatters, or mental patients with hook for hands waiting inside to eat us, and then the kids and I followed. We walked in and I was very relieved to see this:







A quaint and cozy cabin in the woods. Although, the kids were pretty pissed off about the deer head above the fireplace, the turkey tail next to the fireplace, the quail-type bird on the other side of the fireplace, and the trout over the door. "Mean people live here" I think was the quote. I was so happy to be in a house, there could have been a baby seal mounted on the wall and I would have thought, "How cute."

The next morning, we woke up and walked out onto the deck to see this:






Completely gorgeous. We decided to explore and went for a walk up the dirt road, when several large dogs began barking and running towards us. So we high-tailed our asses back down the dirt road and went for a drive instead. Crossing over one of the dirt roads, was a large black animal which I at first glance thought was a bear, and then it turned and I realized by it's tail and the way it moved, that it was a very very large cat. Are mountain lions black? I have no fucking clue, but I remember telling Lennie that instead of a compass and a radio, he should have brought a gun.




We ended up having a really fun couple of days and the best part is we're still alive.

These are the wildflowers Lennie gathered on his morning walk. Awwww.