a vacation ruled by laughs, love, and dogs

I am still trudging my way through strep and the sinus infection it left in its aftermath.  I have been very good.  Sleeping mostly, drinking as much water as possible, and ignoring chores and tumbleweeds of dog hair blowing about the house.  I only took the girls out for one walk since Friday, and after huffing and puffing myself around the block, I temporarily crossed walks off the list.  Now there's only mournful faces and cheeseburger stomping (Margo stomps on her cheeseburger when she's mad at me).  

Prior to getting sick we went on a wonderful trip to Texas.  Our plan was to visit with Robert's sister, Abby and her significant other, Joseph for a day in Dallas.  Then on to a small town just outside of Dallas to visit my brother, Jason.  The last couple days were going to be spent hiking in Austin (conveniently on Thanksgiving when everything was closed).

Plans are really just a vague outline, right?  We got to spend more time than we expected to with Abby and Joseph, which was wonderful.  They are just as excited about food and books as we are so we did a fair amount of that.  We then had an amazing time with Jason.  During our time with Jason I told Robert I had already gotten more out of this trip than I ever expected.  Enough joy, laughter, inspiration, and time with family to last us through the cold months.  Robert agreed.  When we left Jason's we checked the weather for Austin one more time, and it said the same thing it had been saying for the last couple days.  Rain, rain, rain.  We decided to come on home and have a few days to unwind and hike familiar trails.  

I promptly got sick and the rest is history.  But at least I made it home before I got sick this time.  

This was our first long trip with the girls and I think they loved it.  Unlike Rose and Ella, who cuddled with each other all the time, Margo and Josie do not really ever sleep with each other.  At one point on the trip I caught them sharing the bed and captured this rare picture of them cuddling. 

Margo and Josie are not allowed on the furniture at home.  They have one couch in Robert's office that belongs to them and they understand everything else is off limits.  Robert and I decided to let them sleep with us while we were traveling, and it was both a success and a complete disaster.  We didn't expect them to sleep with us the whole night, but they did (success).  Margo was a lump of love, but Josie ran at least two marathons in her sleep (disaster).  

We didn't have to say anything about the couches in the rooms.  They seemed to both know instinctively that the couches belonged to them.  

Minutes after meeting up with Abby and Joseph, we were whisked away to H Mart, a mega Korean supermarket with a food court.  We tried many delicious things, including a soup dumpling for the first time.  

Then we slowly and rapturously wandered the store.  I picked out some canned sardines and mussels to take home with me.    

The lima beans are from a gas station.  I love finding unusual food at gas stations!

Later, I tried one of the best teas in my life - a grapefruit green tea with actual grapefruit lurking in the bottom of the drink.

We paid a visit to the Half Price flagship bookstore, and I found a few books.  Check out that map!

We weren't quite ready for dinner so Abby and Joseph asked if we had anything on our lists.  I thought for sure they had heard of Barney Smith's Toilet Seat Art Museum, which was weirdly the only thing on my Dallas list, but they hadn't.  So we went!  A bucket list item for me!  It was even better than I imagined.  His artwork is so thoughtful, humorous, and filled with pop culture.

Check out those toilets!  Perfect place for a picture!

Robert and I popped into a couple libraries, and I was really impressed with Plano's color-coded holds.  Seven colors, one for each day of the week.  Instead of consulting a list, the librarians just pull the expired holds by that day's color.  BADASS.  And so pretty.  Never have I spent so much time gawping at a wall of holds.

Plano also had an assistive technology table. 

And their Early Reader section was surprisingly less difficult to understand.  Still feel like early readers are way too complex, but I appreciated the color-coded levels and the descriptions for each level.  

On our way out of Dallas, we stopped in Denton, which is an adorable, artsy town north of Dallas.  We went to Thistle Creative Reuse (recycled crafts) and Recycled Books, Records, & CDs, which had the best poetry section of the whole trip.  Many shelves of poetry.

Next up on our trip was Jason!  The last time we saw Jason was in 2019, over three years ago and way too long.  Jason is one of those special people I can just sit back and listen to for hours.  He's brilliant, witty, and is always extremely passionate about his interests.  He recently got his ham radio license and is one of only a few people I can sit with and listen to music for hours.  His music room is crazy!

Anyways, we took a fun stroll through the same park we went to twelve years ago when we first met, and I convinced him to climb a rock with me.  Or did he convince me?  The dogs didn't need convincing!

This picture is a winner for so many reasons.  Mostly Josie's face.  But also, as you can see, Margo promptly dumped us once we helped her up.  

We didn't stay at the park long though.  Jason's dad, Gordon, asked his friend who owns the bookstore in town to open it up for us at 11:00.  First time in my life a bookstore has been opened up for me.  I had a wonderful time browsing titles with Jason while listening to Gordon and the bookstore owner talk it up.  

Gordon also gave us a private museum tour!  The museum was in an old post office, and we got to see all of it.  From the basement to the top, where the lookout gallery was.  Here you can see Robert using one of the slots in the lookout gallery.  So cool!

We spent the evening listening to and sharing music in Jason's incredible music room.  I can't even describe the quality of sound he's created.  No words can do it justice. 

Robert and the girls managed to talk me into a compromise.  The night before we wash bedding each week is now a holy holiday here, because I agreed to let the girls up on the bed for that one night a week.

We really don't have enough holidays in this house - cuddles during evening tea, every time I take the leashes off the hook, whenever Robert and I ask the girls if they want to go for a joy ride.

Allowing the girls to slumber on our expensive foam mattress while they kick the crap out of us while we try to sleep seems like something my cold heart can allow once a week.

lotsa color and joy

I am fighting another cold/sinus infection. 😞  My words all feel like alphabet soup, so I will try to use them sparingly.  

I finished a few pieces that are available on my Etsy.  Lots of joy went into making each of these, and now I'm out of thread, tea, and oomph. 😆 Thankfully the only thing I'm good for right now is drinking tea and doing some questionable online shopping (I have a vague memory of buying more thread on Black Friday).

Please enjoy!

This collage is made out of 100% tea bags and tags.  It was weirdly tough to measure the petals, but I really enjoyed cutting out the petal strips, putting them in a box, shaking the box up, laying them out, and matching them up together.  Sometimes I cut as I go.  Other times I cut up everything at the beginning and put all the different pieces in different boxes.  I did a rough sketch and then cut up everything I needed for this piece.  I did need to lay out all the petals again, because I measured wrong the first time.  But I'm glad I stuck with it, because the piece turned out very nicely. 

I decided to go very crazy and colorful with this flower.  I used a lot of multicolor thread and also mixed up other threads based mostly on rash, impulsive feelings of happiness. 😄  I did sketch out the flower and a color-coded map so I wouldn't go too crazy.  So there is a map under that craziness that says, "orange" or "go crazy here." And it's written in permanent ink because I was feeling pretty confident when I drew this.  I love my washable fabric markers, but I constantly have to redraw lines that have been smudged.  Because this piece filled the whole hoop, it needed the permanent marker or I would have been the one with crazy written on my face.  

I did about half of this zen piece on a roadtrip I'll blog about once my brain is less foggy, and the other half on Thanksgiving.  Sometimes I hunker down and do nothing but sew.  I'm not sure if the sense of urgency is due to a concern that I'm going to forget the completed picture in my head or if I just completely lose track of time and surroundings.  Probably both.  

a nest of trying

The Carrying by Ada Limón (Poetry)

This is my second time reading this collection and it won’t be my last.  My favorite poem is The Vulture & the Body, which is close to the beginning and exemplifies the many reasons I loved this collection.  Limón is comfortable sharing her numerous and strange connections and invites us into the many rooms and their connecting hallways her profound and winding thoughts make.  It’s a little like a maze, but the reader always finds themselves right back at the beginning of the thought by the end of the poem, and additionally, returned to their own world feeling heavy with contemplation.

The poems have more recurring themes than I have space or time to write.  But I most appreciate how she portrays the marriage of life and death. They’re not separate, and the cycle is constantly blurred and in motion.  Not an easy thing to convey!  It’s not a book you read straight through in a few sittings. But because the poems speak to one another and the book reads like it has a loose narrative, you can’t just read a poem and walk away for several days.  Dear future self – when rereading this, don’t read this too fast, but don’t walk away for too long!  

Favorite poems/lines: 

The Vulture & The Body: 

“What if, instead of carrying

a child, I am supposed to carry grief?”

Dead Stars:

“I am a hearth of spiders these days: a nest of trying.”

Of Roots & Roamers:

“Have you ever noticed how the trees

change from state to state? Not all

at once, of course, more like a weaver 

gradually weaving in another color…” 

A New National Anthem:

“And what of the stanzas we never sing…”

Maybe I’ll Be Another Kind of Mother:

“I’ll stare at the tree and the ice will have melted, so

it’s only the original tree again, green branches giving way

to other green branches, everything coming back to life.”

so much beauty

Granny & Bean by Karen Hesse & illustrated by Charlotte Voake (Picture Book)

Granny and Bean’s beach excursion is filled with exciting moments. It’s clearly a cold, windy, and rainy day, but they have a blast teasing the waves, singing, racing around, and enjoying each other’s company. Because it’s such a gray day at the beach, all the illustrations pop against the beach’s background. The text is simple, rhyming, bold, and filled with language that pops.

Beautiful You, Beautiful Me by Tasha Spillett-Sumner & illustrated by Salini Perera (Picture Book)

It’s aok that we don’t always look like our families, and what matters most is that we love one another and celebrate both our differences and similarities. Though there are a few books with this message, this book stands out because the language is simple, the message is repetitive, and at the end, the roles reverse and mom gives her daughter an opportunity to recall and dispense the beautiful message.

Margo’s hamburger

Ever have one of those days where you faceplant into your hamburger and decide to stay there?

beasts

I was so thrilled I had made it past the halfway point of storytimes without getting sick, I totally jinxed it and crowed my gratitude to Robert.  Naturally, I immediately got sick.  Nothing too bad this time around, knock on wood!  Just a small cold that I'm trying to convince not to turn into a sinus infection.  I took yesterday off and was planning to go back today since I didn't have a fever or sinus pressure.  Thankfully, I stayed home, because I've been asleep much of the day.  I tend to get a little down when I'm not racing around doing a million things at once.  Thankfully, I had a couple weeks of pictures to organize and many things to read.

I never know how the girls are going to be sleeping when I wake up.  They tend to get a lot of love first thing in the morning, so I think they are starting to figure this out and have been hamming it up.

Two weekends ago, the girls were ready for baths so we went to a swimming hole (Back Hoof) before the torture.  Josie was such a superstar when she jumped off the dock.  Poor Goper just flopped into the water each time.

Josie will jump on anything.  Before hiking at Swope on Sunday, we stopped at the dog park, because we are forever hopeful the girls will want to socialize with other dogs.  They were both ambivalent about the other dogs, tried to go home with a couple hoomans, and Josie jumped on everything she could.

I found this rock on the hike at Swope but left it for another person to find.  I just finished the third book of the Witches of Brooklyn series (quite possibly my favorite juvenile graphic series), and in the series they talk about dragons sleeping beneath cities.  In the third book the main character, Effie, maybe wakes up a dragon but no spoiler alerts here.  This rock makes me think about all kinds of ancient characters and beasts just sleeping beneath or at our feet. It's a wonderful thought.