Shots of Our Lately

Hi -

Okay - third and final entry for today. We're caught up with Virgens now, and this will fill in visuals of our Lately.

The shot above is our friend (She Who Was Surprised) and my partner playing Mario racing Wii or some such at our friends' house in Tucson. I don't know what was more fun - watching these two play or listening to the oh, my!'s and uh-oh!'s coming from the pretty pink princess character my partner chose to drive her race car.

Certainly does no justice to this ad. Virginia currently has a great series of ads up in D.C., exploring the many reasons one should come visit. These are so fun, I'm willing to overlook the "Oh, when we said "Virginia is for Lovers", we meant the "one man, one woman" variety" sub-text in their campaign and enjoy the ads.

This was my favorite and the image does not do it justice. It's a picture of a woman who is a master oyster shucker, and they've got her dressed as Venus de Milo, coming in on a big shell in a fabulous gown. Here's more on her - fantastic.


This is the wall where my Love's spleen met its terrible fate, lo some 30 years ago.

As the story goes, it was the last day of school and, in a fit of unbridled joy, my partner jumped off this high rock wall behind their place in Lancaster. In a tragic turn of events, her cute little toe caught one of the rock spikes and she fell the five feet down to land flat on her stomach. A distracting concussion kept everyone from realizing that she was bleeding out from the inside from a ruptured spleen for three days until she woke her mom one night, unable to sleep and a ghostly shade of pale. She was rushed to the ER and, one emergency surgery later, she was on the road to health, minus a spleen but complete with a body cast just in time for the hot and humid of a PA summer.

White House bees. Fantastic.

White House garden. Yes. I have to say that the whole D.C. area feels better since that Jack-Ass took his leave. It's not perfect, but, oh, does it feel better.

Soon, my Precious, soon we'll be together - spending long summer days lounging about watching the leaves do their thing.

I know grass is a huge waste of space and resources, but I do love our little patch around the garden, just enough to wriggle your toes down into without worrying about stepping on thorns or cactus needles or fire ants or scorpions or valley fever or any of the other things buried down in the southern AZ soil (Yep - still healing from the climate. It's a process.).

I want to stretch out on the grass and watch the photosynthesis today. It's that kind of day.

This is the mess of Virgens on our art desk before I started organizing and photographing them. It's been busy.

The Great Potato Miracle of 2009. This wonderful bit of green coming up in our garden is a potato that started to sprout in February at our old place in Denver. I moved it up with us and threw it in the ground here when we broke ground for our garden. I didn't expect it to do anything, blizzards and snow and forgetting surely have taken its little life. Look at this, though - grow it is, so tend it I shall.

It's a perfect day for drying clothes on the line - cool breeze, clear skies, bright sun. I love the peace that takes over me when hanging clothes. My, it's simple fixes for me, more often than not.

Oh, she's just so bad. This is Squeak, a.k.a. Monster, who decided that what she needed to be doing was hop from the top of my desk to the topmost shelf of our wall display, nibble on the straw sticking out of the top of the chicken, and then work her way down to explore the next shelf. She was apprehended at this point, but will surely rise again another day. Surely she will - she's just that independent and focused.

Here's to that. Here's to independence, focus, and the adventures that result from the two. Here's to meditative laundry, friends, green, and all other things that bring you peace, however it is you define that.