photo story one

This must have been around Christmas, the only time we saw crazy aunt Doris.

Her presence anywhere was misery for all. She must have been the locus of one of the family's unmapped wells of guilt, I can't think why else they tolerated her.

I remember one holiday dinner.
It was a very long time ago at my great grandparent's house, when I still sang along with cousin Donna's accordion recitals at the head of the table. Aunt Doris started an argument before hanging up her coat, puncturing the holiday euphoria like a hatpin.

When she tried to kiss me I snarled "You ruin everything, just go away!", creating one of those moments of crystal silence too perfect to endure.

I bolted for the guest room before it crashed apart, sliding underneath the bed on the polished hardwood floor and clinging to the slats like a koala when they tried to pry me out.

After much tumult I was frog-marched back to the living room, ordered to apologize and placed in front of my great grandpa's Good Chair, where a theatrically distraught Aunt Doris was holding court.

"Everybody hates you!" I yelled in her face.

Chaos.

I never did apologize.
The mythology of my youth credited this minotaur to immobile stubbornness, oblivious to the unknowable dynamics of adult relationships and how blood ties multiply their complexity beyond seeing.

Nobody honestly wanted me to apologize because everything I'd said was true.
I was the only one able to speak it, the only one outside the black gravity of her shared shrouded past.

My Grandfather's funeral was her last invitation to a family gathering and again she was yelled at

Before the service she charged our pew and grabbed both my arms, feverishly demanding I not cry, as vast Heavenly rewards were being heaped upon the dead man even as we poor sinners slogged forward through the trench of sorrow in our prisons of mud.

Mom chased her off loudly, uncharacteristically protective.

That was the last I saw of Aunt Doris for 30 some years, until we didn't speak at my cousin's wedding.
She looked exactly the same but only came up to my chest, a human Bonsai.

HYPERBOLIC COVER BLURBS!!1

from Destination Baghdad:

The story of the F-117A Stealth Fighter, The Plane Credited with Ripping Out the Eyes and the Heart of the Iraqi War Machine, as Told by the Pilots Who Flew the Most Dangerous Missions of Operation Desert Storm.

I think they missed a trick by not using ALL CAPS and sprinkling it judiciously with bolded and italic type.

commemorative post

A gallery of small homes around the world in honor of our last month in the Secret Garden.

musique nonstop

Having swapped cassettes for iPod, it's time to roll out a modern musical caravan, exchanging camels for Land Rovers.

iTunes unearthed a cache of ripped CDs while composting its musical library, stuff I'd mostly forgotten. The dollhouse square footage of the Secret Garden dictates that, like an iceberg, the bulk of my musical collection exists unseen below the surface. This is like finding a core sample of what'll be available at the new place, very exciting.

I'm starting out with some funky soul music.

Blaxploitation,
Blaxploitation, the Sequel and
Blaxploitatioin: The Payback.
7 1/2 hours of unadulterated bassassery.

A great series of anthologies, digging deep into the catalog and venturing a few steps closer to the intersection of jazz and funk than most.
It's a fine compliment to Rhino's excellent In Yo Face! series, both are highly recommended.

/edit
Another great funk rediscovery, a Roy Ayers anthology.
Rock solid, although I favor the later stuff over his earlier more conventional tracks.

the modern era

I picked up one of these for the store, so no more trawling the cassette troves.
As illuminating as the musical journey was, there's nothing to love about a format that combines the annoyance of turning over albums with muddy sound and the ever present danger of the machine eating your tape.

So onward to the new generation!

cleaned out

The combined might of Goodwill, a friend of the Burls who was having a yard sale and a friendly nearby dumpster has dispersed 9/10ths of the mountain of crap excavated from my mom's place.

And it feels good!


I did uncover some interesting stuff in the far recesses of the garage, suspended in the vast ocean of junk.
A pyramid of tubs containing several full sets of china and all my great grandma's crystal, a box of pretty good watercolor paintings by an as yet unknown artist, the horrible oil painting that dominated my grandparents living room, a box of leatherworking tools and supplies, a bunch of my great grandfather's shoemaking tools, and completely buried all the way in the musty spidery rear corner the sideboard from the 11th street house I grew up in.

And more pictures. Always more pictures, strewn casually about. I found one folder of ancestral tintypes in the middle of a big crate of junky Christmas ornaments from China, another album in a bag full of ancient disintegrating tee shirts and sweat pants.

You can learn a lot of interesting stuff going through old photos.

An envelope full of infant cousin Donna featured several familiar family members but no potential father.
My great grandmother's family hailed from Sioux Falls, and among the portraits of family members and their houses I found a group shot of of Seth Bullock and his Cowboys, the notable sheriff of Deadwood.

My mom's dad measured up to granny's drunken tall tales.
He was indeed a member of the 77th infantry and hauled a heavy machine gun aroiund Okinawa, . I found a picture of Ernie Pyle's grave in the mix. There's no way to tell if he actually plunged into a foxhole on a night march and won a desperate melee with an enemy soldier, but I found a silk Rising Sun battle flag and a handmade photo album of Japanese snapshots in a box of assorted war memorabilia.

In one box of random junk I found a tiny tape recorders and a bunch of miniature cassettes, which I dimly remember from the time he was dying of lung cancer. Maybe they'll illuminate more family secrets.

he's so juicy

Happy time at the pediatrician today- they were out of Hep C vaccine.

The fusser weighed in at a hearty 11.11 lbs, which the doctor noted was "almost too healthy".

attn bobo

a monument after your own heart!

cake!

Devritsko brought us a delicious housewarming cake last night, chocolate raspberry with neato purple icing.

Alas, my camera was at home, but take my word for the style and deliciousness.

Thanks Devritsko!

post mortem

So, it went better than expected.

It was a microcosm of this whole process- a big pile of junk hiding a few unexpected pleasures.

Eamonn was strapped to my chest like armor and deflected several harpy bombing runs, yeoman work for such a little fella.

Many more of them seemed disoriented on a battlefield missing its defining feature, confused by the sudden absence of familiar landmarks.

I did have some good conversations with people I hadn't expected to see.

Mom's basic impenetrability was on display during the testimonials, all work anecdotes, group activities and glossy generalizations.

A popular explanation among bystanders for our disaster of a relationship was we were "too much alike". It was true, but in not the way they meant.
The fatal similarity wasn't inherent to our personalities but imposed by shared disasters that exiled our humanity to deep vaults. It made it difficult for anyone to engage us and doomed our relationship with each other to robotic posturing.

Courtney has a story she tells, she was terrified of me the first two years we worked together because I didn't speak to her.

Mom could always chat, not saying anything or giving anything away, but maintaining a pleasant flow of banality. It was a habit from her work as a stylist. I spent many hours in the salon with her at various points of my childhood and I noticed people getting their hair cut like to talk, and people cutting hair are reliant on tips and want them to feel comfortable. So she got good at small talk, and at deflecting conversations away from herself.

It confused me, that someone would learn how to pretend to be interested.
It never fooled me so I didn't see the point.

Her facade was more outwardly acceptable than my steel wall, but they achieved the same result and she ended up being stuck with it. Like the old woman in Oni Baba, she couldn't pry the mask off before the credits rolled.

The foundation of my wall is still there, but I've dismantled most of it over the last few years.
It's more memorial than obstacle.

music

hey, they made a video for Devestation!



This song is just so fucking great.

today's super great retro album pick

If you could swap the self-indulgent If The Kid Can't Make You Come (7:33 of tedium) for 777-9311 (8:03 of unfiltered musical apocalypse, ending with one of Prince's greatest guitar solos) you would have the perfect funk LP.

Oh wait, it isn't 1984.

*hums happily to self while firing up Nero*

pic of the Fiend

by the duck pond at the cabin.

My neglect of this former Baxblog mainstay has been shameful, I'll make an effort to expand my coverage to the rest of the family.

best email spam ever

subject line:

"Time is Right for a Paris Hilton Snuff Tape, Say Experts"

runner up:

"Katie Holmes, Britney Spears in Cat Fight over Burundi Orphan"


stolen from BOBO's inbox.

post funeral w/ e. s.

i'm floating in a black balloon
o.d. on easter afternoon
my mama told me baby stay clean
there's no in between
and all you ladies and you gentlemen
between is all you've ever seen or been
fit poorly and arrange the sight
doll it up in virgin white

you disappoint me
you people rakin' in on the world
the devil's script sells
you the heart of a blackbird

shine on me baby cause it's rainin' in my heart

- A Distorted Reality's Now A Necessity To Be Free

people

Surprisingly it has been easier to deal with my mom than the cadre of hangers on who crowded her final days, trying to snatch drops of grace with their buzzard talons.

Her memorial is today and they'll be flocking around one last time, clawing through the ashes.

My mom knew the truth even though she couldn't confront it, and she used a huge amount of energy lying to people about it. We both did the same thing- turned it into something else. I sequestered it until I found a way to defuse and disperse it. She kept addling twists and dead ends to the maze between her and the world until the day she died.

She was afraid of me.
She spun it to everyone like our estrangement was my fault, but it was mutual. She couldn't look at me without seeing what she spent her life hiding from.

I knew the convoluted path through her labyrinth by heart. Her only other company at the cold center of her life was that unbearable reality, dug in to her shoulder like a stone ghoul on a cathedral.

Dealing with her was complicated, but we both knew the score.

Her intimates all treat the fairy tales she spun them as gospel and approach me with axes out, ready for the big bad wolf. I've about had it with playing movie screen for these projections.

We'll see what happens. Hopefully I can get through this final charade without exposing anything unseemly to the flock.

Elliot Smith, Talking to Mary

saw the one big problem you keep under your hat
and its pretty unlikely that anybody else would be cool with that

you got bus fare in your pocket and more money down in your sock
but she can't tell you how to contact her if you won't listen to her talk

one day she'll go, i told you so
one day she'll go, i told you so

it's no problem, i'll just keep quiet if it's easier for you
to make believe in that i don't love you as much as i do

one day she'll go, i told you so
one day she'll go, i told you so
i told you so, i told you so

Today's Super Great Retro Album Pick

From just before they became mega-popular.

Greatest hits packages are kind of cheating though.
Check out this one for equal amounts of awesome without the cherry picking.

today's drama

Yelled at bi-polar mother in law, evicted her from the new place and told her not to come back unless she was invited.

Mom's memorial thing is Sunday.

Netherlands 9, USA 8

This will probably land me on a Terrorist Watch List, but...
BOW BEFORE QUEEN BEATRIX!


And yes, before I get any whiny comments from geography puritans, 'my people' are Danish...but as a matter of spiritual kinship I embrace Norway, Holland (and occasionally Sweden)as well as my homeland of Denmark.
Any icy country where immense blond people dwell calls to me.

today's super great retro album pick

another gem from the cassette archives at the store:




This is called "finding the silver lining".

bax facts

today's sifting netted a yellow silk bound Our Own Baby book starring yours truly.

Weight: 9 lbs 5 oz
Height: 22 inches
blood type: 0 negative

first words: book, ball

first sentence: Santa Claus gave it to me.

first question: what's that, momma?

"steve's passion is books + stories-always has been. He won't to to sleep without a story at bedtime!"

and a late entry

10/14/70
steve's father has been gone for two months. steve has been really affected. He won't let me out of his sight. He says that maybe someday I will leave him too. When he sees his father he is shy and aloof.

And then later you get to dig out allll that shit by the roots.

Wheee!

great scott

The nurse lady came today and took some measurements.

Eamonn is in the 90th percentile for size and weighs 11 pounds, up from 7 when he was born.

today's super great retro album pick

Working my way through our dusty old cassette catalog here today.
I'd forgotten how much ass this record kicks.

things mom had a lot of

Garage Edition.

- more old soap
I found a bag of Christmas soap to go along with the Guest Soap I found in a bureau drawer.

- more self help books
I found two more boxes in the garage. The larger of them was labeled Self Help Books: They didn't work, ha ha ha!

- more old dolls
Many more dolls. Random limbs, hand made doll clothes, doll wigs and assorted doll paraphernalia.

- more photos
Many, many, many more photos, including nine large banana boxes packed with carousels of slides her dad took. I found his tripod upstairs in a closet. I'd totally forgotten about his photography kick (it came after his begonia kick and before his aquarium and jewelry making kicks).

- old sewing kit
All of my great grandmother's stuff and all my grandmother's stuff, in boxes.
Added to the more modern collection up in the craft room and it is a substantial mass.

- Christmas decorations
Enough junky wicker and sheet metal from China to bury the dining room of the Apple Farm. Tubs and tubs of the stuff.

- tools
Old and new- stuff I remember from her dad's garage, stuff that must be from his dad's garage (two man ripsaw? shoe forms?). Unlike most everything else, this will come in handy.

-ancient handmade clothes
Lots of stuff that looks like it will evaporate if you stare at it too hard, must be from my great grandmother. Hand tatted lace, baby clothes, all kinds of old stuff on the verge of disintegration.
I have no idea what to do with it, but I took it out of the damp fog-bound garage and put it in a closet for now.

The oddest thing I uncovered were the seat covers for the car she drove when I was in high school. It was totaled in an accident, I guess she wanted a memento. They were at the bottom of a giant steamer trunk underneath a big rubber bin of Christmas lights.

overheard

two indie youths chatting on their way out the door:

"...but he was a normal pervert..."
"Yeah."
"...he was kind of a cool pervert."

lawyering

Finally talked to the lawyer.

His office was odd, cinderblock walls and a heavy metal door like a liquor store in a bad neighborhood, or Ed Gein's basement, interior paneled in spots and stocked with solid looking antique bric a brac with an emphasis on clocks and dusty mounted animal heads. Hang a red velvet curtain and add a dwarf receptionist and Kyle Mclaughlin would have felt right at home.

The good news is the house seems secure.
The trust trumps the lien. The geek in me pictures this as a bureaucratic Magic: The Gathering throwdown, the lawyer blocking the state's big attack with a superior card to much gnashing of teeth and ill tempered hurling of Cheetos.

The bad news is the trustee (your humble narrator) is on the hook for 25k worth of bequests made by his pauper benefactor, and of course the lawyer needs paying for this and that (This and That translates from the Legalese into I'll be needing several thousand dollars right quick).

As the estate has exactly zero liquid assets, it's to the bank I go.

My career in the antiquarian book trade was marvelous preparation for sifting the contents of her physical abode, but is less useful in these ethereal financial wranglings.

Although even a humble book dealer knows 30k is a laughable price for a nice pad by the ocean in the Golden State.

So far so good

Unsolicited testimonial from the well put together gal at the cafe:

"You smell great!"

"Oh...thanks."

"And I love the way you mixed stripes and polka dots!"

"What can I say, I'm just a fashion rebel."

"It's working!"

Where was this when I was young and single?
Oh, right...when I was young and single I dressed like a transient and stunk like a goat.


First thing at work a lovely French lady pushing a stroller asked one of those deadly questions, only slightly improved by her darling broken English:

"I don't, um, know the title. Or the author, but, ah, it is for children? It is about, uh, what you do with things? Like petting a dog?"

My weird psychic book sense kicked in and I nailed it in one-

"A Hole is to Dig, by Ruth Krauss and Maurice Sendak."

"YES! Yes! That is it!"


Plus there are lots of weird old pictures I scanned for Flickr.
ENJOY.

thanks

to Baxblog stalwart DT and recent converts James and Courtney for their gifts.

DT did me no favors by packing Steeler PJ's atop his care package- the wife screamed in horror and I had to fling handfuls of less polarizing items from the compressed brick of clothing skyward to distract and placate her.

As of this writing she hasn't seen the terrycloth I.U. onesie J & C sent us, but I greatly appreciate the cigar at the bottom of the box and will be enjoying it on the balcony this evening after we finish off the last stubborn vestiges of resistance in the garage.

garage

We've finished everything except the garage, the subconscious of the house.

So far it is a fine rich stew.

The recipe is forthcoming.

thank goodness

he restored HONOR AND DIGNITY to the White House!

false perception of value

Chatting with Bobo while he surfed Ebay.

"This guy thinks he's going to get more than 1,000 for this pile of junk because that's what he paid for it. Schools should start teaching a Realities of the Market class."

I get this all the time at the store.
"I paid $30 for this!"
"And I'm not giving you more than $2."

A lot of people think because something is theirs it is automatically valuable. Finessing around this giant cultural blind spot takes up a lot of my time when I'm buying stuff, assuming the books are worth the effort.

Sometimes I just shove reality out onto the stage, naked and shivering in the spotlight, and let the customer make of it what they will.

A gal was just in a couple of bags of absolute crap.
I winnowed two mildly saleable books out of the dross, a Getty collection of photos from the '50s that was slightly water damaged and a Melissa Bank book we didn't have in stock. The Girl's Guide to Hunting and Fishing is her only really saleable title, but it's nice to have the other one if we can get it cheap.

My offer of $2.00 didn't go over well and the titles rejoined their companions with the huffy exclamation that she'd "sell them on Amazon".

Yeah...good luck with that.

Assuming she actually lists them and gets a buyer (the Getty book had condition problems and would have been 'as is' in the store, which is a recipe for a costly and annoying return on Amazon) she'll make....two bucks.

GRATZ!

insomnia

Sorted and packed at her house after work and woke up at 4am with Speed Trials running through my head nonstop.

The death certificates arrived so I can meet with the lawyer and paper over her life. They look just like birth certificates, only a different color.
I wonder if all copies of vital records use the same paper.
I suppose it would be efficient.

It seems stupid to me after sitting and watching her go in time lapse, needing a document to prove she's gone. But nobody will talk to me without it, the hole in the living room doesn't mean anything to them.

They're the kind of memorial the bureaucracy can understand, solid like the brass handles of a coffin.

And it doesn't have to mean anything to me, it just has to work.


A couple of months back we were getting in the car when a young urban nomad riding his cruiser up the street the wrong way called out

You can't escape karma!

Apparently karma didn't know quite what to do with me.

Greatest Author Name of All Time

I dare you to top it.

Octavius Brooks Frothingham, author of Transcendentalism in New England.

quotes

from the wife:

He's got a boob in his mouth, his eyes are crossed and he's shitting!

and a reply from bobo:

Like father like son!

Bastard!

random thought

Men should steer clear of lip gloss.

Anner blog

Continuing today's trend of thematic whiplash, here's a new photoblog Anner started with some nice lady from Australia.

CLICK!

Black Moses RIP

Rest In Peace, Mr. Hot Buttered Soul.

Swanky Roofs of NYC

A return to a kinder, gentler time (was it only last month?) when the Baxblog casually strolled the internet collecting appealing blossoms for its bouquet of links instead of obsessing about the human condition.


set on Flickr.

Great Moments in Diapering Volume I

Laid the fella on the changing table & dismantled his poopy diaper.
With tragic history as my guide I laid a washcloth over his plumbing.
As I was prepping the fresh diaper he started pooping everywhere.
Undaunted, I grabbed his feet and slid him out of the swamp, wielding fresh wipes with elan.
New diaper at the ready I snatched the washcloth heavenward.
Sensing opportunity he struck, trying to write his name on my shirt in urine while I laughed uncontrollably.


A few weeks in I can see how someone who wasn't 100% behind the whole project, or who had unrealistic expectations about family life, would be absolutely miserable and prone to taking out that disappointment on the blameless child.

I'm happy my automatic reaction to being pissed on was a laughing fit.

reinforcements

Recruiting The Burl to help sort out mom's stuff was a stroke of genius, I must say.
Genius born of desperation still counts, right?

An uninvolved cohort disrupts hidden gravity fields of family attachment and keeps everything moving forward. If I get snared by cards from a Christmas 30 years gone or a pile of beaded leather hippy purses from mom's (officially redacted) roach clip era, Burl is there to exclaim in horror over a jar of olives that expired ten years ago or brandish something from the kitchen cupboards and ask me "antique or junk?"

We trucked 20 bags of garbage to a dumpster last night.

Things mom had a lot of

televisions.
4 sets in a one bedroom apartment.

expired spices.
I filled a 30 gallon trash bag with stuff from her pantry. I kept one 50 year old tin of Schilling Pumpkin Pie Spice as a memento.

empty perfume bottles.
Collected they filled a shoebox.

ancient bars of soap.
Emptying out her dresser I unearthed at least 20 bars of soap. some, like the worn tan fleur de lis she put out when we had visitors, I remember from my childhood.
Apparently no-one was brave enough to use it.

old dolls.
Presumably immigrants from the estates of my great grandmother and grandmother.
Their creepy Twilight Zone aura of menace argues for the incinerator, but the voice in my head whispering Ebay...Ebay...Ebay... mounts a compelling defense.

pictures
After sorting the relevant bits I was left with roughly seven feet of photo albums and a banker's box full of unbound pictures. She was inordinately fond of blurry landscapes and underexposed interiors.

self help/diet books
These were hard for me.

note to future generations:
If you're serious about your mental health spring for a good therapist, and no matter how much you obsess about weight you're still gonna die.

baby update

The tyke is doing great, the wife not so much.
I'm getting off easy, since I don't have to feed him- I've been getting most of a full night's rest, then getting up early to spell the wife after the morning feed.

The biggest issue is he doesn't sleep much at night.
He fusses and he eats and then fusses some more.
He sleeps more during the day, but during the day the wife has things she'd like to do extending beyond feeding a bottomless pit and changing a succession of diapers and clothes.

This morning I was roused at 4am today to play cavalry for the beleaguered wife and rode to the rescue pennants streaming in the pre-dawn breeze.

A spell on the glider resulted in a series of worrisome volcanic sounds from deep within his soft mantle of blankies. A quick change, a re-swaddle, some more gliding and voila, I was free to watch House of Flying Daggers while he snoozed on my chest.

I wasn't exactly sure why we got a 5 dvd changer when we upgraded years ago, but it's a handy arrow in the quiver when dealing with a restless infant who squalls if you so much as think about putting him down.

I kept him placated until 6, when he roused from his slumber to root around for breakfast. My Moobs are resplendent but purely decorative and so I awoke the mobile buffet.

A quick nap before work and here I am, no worse for wear after a couple of mugs of coffee.

Saunders on expiermental fiction

Experimental fiction is the art of telling a story in which certain aspects of reality have been exaggerated or distorted in such a way as to put the reader off the story and make him go watch a television show.

Full scoop.

Big co-sign from the BAXBLOG.

barbaric

The cd player at work has expired of heat prostration.

I've been driven to the open if somewhat musty arms of our ancient tape deck to drown out the too-loud chatter of the open bar inside my head.

Does anyone remember the misery of cassette tapes?
I hated them even when they were au courant.
Time and the digital revolution have done nothing to improve their standing.

Albums maintain nostalgic cache with warm analog sound and a huge canvas for graphic artists to play around with. There is something archaic, noble and lasting about a ranked mass of record albums, like a ruined castle overlooking the sea.

A bunch of cassettes is redolent of a dusty corner in a not particularly good thrift store, or Grandmas station wagon.

Cassettes don't even get shine for the crowning achievement of the mix tape because digital does them 10000 times better.

I feel like I've been exiled to a rest home AV room.

today's pet peeves

* borderline types who ask where to find a book and use your answer as a springboard to power a lecture about where it SHOULD be filed.

WELL ACTUALLY ALICE IN WONDERLAND IS HARDLY A CHILDRENS' BOOK! IT HAS MATHEMATICS, PHILOSOPHY...YOU NEED TO UNDERSTAND EVERYTHING BEFORE YOU UNDERSTAND ALICE IN WONDERLAND!
CHILDRENS...HAR HAR HAR!

* freaks who lapse into dialect for no reason.

A long haired renfaire refugee regaled me in a terrible fake Irish accent for the crime of showing him where to find Joseph Campbell.

Ach, sure and begorrah, you'll be wanting some hair of the dog after this long trip!

housecleaning

I'm lavishing a surplus of care on the excavation of my mom's house.

I proceed meticulously, an archaeologist excavating an army of terra cotta warriors entombed along with their god-emperor, teasing them from the ancient soil with a selection of small trowels, scoops and brushes, sending the debris through a sifting screen and taking calipers to the likelier bits lest some telling detail be lost.

In the real world I'm filling up 30 gallon plastic bags with crap nobody wants and stacking donations in the garage for pickup.

Understanding this has not so far changed my behavior.

But it is a tomb I'm working in.
Empty, occupant a cypher, nothing left but a lattice of intentional debris collected over a lifetime. Every stack of magazines I haul to the garage, every container of spoiling food I throw away, every photo album carried off in the trunk of the car is another tiny stone pried from the mosaic of her life, the only testament she left.
Trying to understand the picture as I disassemble the thing and cart it away in pieces seems the least tribute I can offer.


Or it could be I'm not an archaeologist at all.
Things going missing, floating through the air, an unseen force loose between the four walls trailing anarchy in its wake.
Maybe I'm a poltergeist.

Then which one of us is doing the haunting?

Give me your eyes
I need sunshine
Give me your eyes
I need sunshine
Your blood, your bones, your voice, and your ghost

Wolf Parade

outing II

We took a stroll to the community garden down the street.



Full report on Flickr.

outing

Today was our first excursion beyond the front door as a family (I don't count visiting mom since we hadn't been home yet) and I can see why family life turns you into a homebody. The production was reminiscent of a safari and really demanded native porters and a mounted column- loading everything into the trunk of a car was a profound anticlimax.
Another let-down: instead of crossing the sun-blasted savanna searching for dangerous wild game, we were crossing the sun-blasted asphalt of the hospital parking lot in search of a gynecologist.

Happily the wife is healing nicely. The allergic rash from the surgical tape looks worse than the gash they dragged our boy out of. Also, she lost 20 pounds in 7 days.

I doubt even the most wild eyed body dysmorphic would sign up for that particular crash diet.

On the practical front, we need some kind of sun screening device for the baby seat. The wife may beg to differ, but me hunkered in the back seat holding up a blankie isn't a viable long term solution.

We swung by the DMV on the way home to wrangle some stuff with my mom's car, but a tiny, officious gal with a giant clipboard informed us they close at 3:30, or rather they don't exactly close, but you can't get in without an appointment.

After weighing the relative merits of several threatening quotes from our Governator I settled on I'LL BE BACK as least likely to get me arrested.

things they do

Yesterday our doula Carrie checked up on the fella and brought us a quiche.

His Aunt Helen delivered a bag of goodies from Trader Joe's then cleaned our bathroom.

Aunt Teresa delivered our car which we'd left in her driveway during all the drama.

The Fiend wove a cozy nest for her cousin from hand-picked quilts and blankies.
"Oh, this one is just right!"

"Everyone is being so great!" noted the wife.