Dude, look! I just took a picture of lightning inside a rainbow! (Actually, a double rainbow, if you look carefully. Now if I'd just managed to fit that warlock and the herd of unicorns and that army of orcs in the frame... ) I'm going to be famous!

Kitty Burrito

Pearl's been needing medicatin' recently (nothing to worry about; just a semi-routine kitty-lady malady, and so twice a day I roll her into a snug towel burrito (with a furry feline filling) and shove a dropper-full of noxious liquid down her gullet. The sight is:

1. Pathetic. She mews sadly from the depths of her terrycloth tortilla.
2. Hilarious! (I'm sorry, but you know it is.)
3. Endearing. I've never met an animal who is so ungrudging. I do this to her twice a day—catch her, and wrap her, and dose her—yet she shows no hint of resentment. Just, "Here we go again." Let us all aspire to be the Pearl.*

* I say "aspire". For now, whoever captures and force-medicates me will become the target of a serious grudge.

Annou, in turquoise hat and green get-up: "It's beeen, old bean."

Fortune cookie: "Many receive advice, only the wise profit from it." That sounds like a load of hooey. I'm not going to listen to that.

Why so sad, lil' monkey? (You're orange. Life is good.)

Each night I prepare a tray and bring it up to bed: two mugs of coffee, to be drunk cold in the morning (on my balcony with the willow tree); a glass of water, to be drunk during the night (though I have to cover it with my drum practice pad, so the kitties don't drink it instead); and a banana, to be eaten in the morning with the cold coffee. Last night, having prepared my tray to carry upstairs, I looked down and saw this. (Entirely unintentional. Though given the unvarying elements, I'm surprised this chance configuration hasn't occurred—or I haven't notice it—before.)

Cherry tree against a starry sky, by Louise. (Clearly I'm not the only iArtist in the family.) I'm really digging the black and brown and red and gray color scheme. And the use of the soft "brush" to suggest "leaf-ness". And the way the ornate background pops out agains the big slabs of foreground color. Love it. (We've got a little tree theme going here this morning.)

Some people have clouds in their coffee. I have a willow tree in mine.

More Phaux Phacial Hair Phun: Big cheesy mustache and soul patch.  What's a word that means "funny because it's fake but would be really not funny if it were real"? (Maybe some guys can actually manage this look. I'm not one of them.) Many dudes, in their youth, visit the Land of Misguided Facial Adornments, gracing their visages with various god-awful facial hair get-ups. I (thankfully) never made the trip, but as I trend towards my middlin' years, I'm apparently compelled to imagine what might have been (and then render these imaginings in digital form and then torture my poor wife with them by texting them to her at unexpected moments while she's innocently going about her business).

Circular Logic

This city cannot handle traffic circles. It's not in our driving DNA. I spent a spell in England in my youth, and those folks live and breathe traffic circles. But us? No. One of the city's few circles is right out front of where I work, and I sometimes see bewildered drivers come to a panicky standstill in the middle of it. Oh, crap! What's happening here? Where are the right angles?* Not to say that we're bound to Cartesian rigor. As a city bent around a twisting river, large swathes of our street-scape devolve into non-Euclidean funhouse nuttiness. But this futuristic whirligig carousel, somehow built in the name of efficiency? Not for us.

Now neutral grounds (you call them medians), that we know how to handle. (Always check for oncoming streetcars before turning left.)

* To make matters worse, the thing has two lanes. We're stuck in Remedial Traffic Circles For Wayward Colonials 101, and they're expecting us to manage that merge-to-the-inside-while-circumnavigating,-then-back-to-the-outside-before-exiting trick. What happens instead is a whole lot of Oh-beep!-That-confused-dude-is-going-to-fall-prey-to-centrifugal-befuddlement-and-hit-me!

Hello, Junie

We watched "Hello, Dolly" last night. Watching old musicals with June is like sitting next to a sponge, a sponge that soaks up Vaudevillian razzmatazz. Observe, observe, okay: swing, kick, big hammy wink-and-grin, jazz hands, ra-ta-da*! What will that child be?

Scary skeletal man in mustard jacket. (Don't ask me. I just drawr the stuff.)

Pink flowers and weird green pods. (Just a little "Invasion of the Body Snatchers", don't you think?)

Getting There

You know why I'm happy it's Father's Day? Because it means we're one year closer to the age when my children can brew me coffee and make me martinis. Not yet. Our coffee making method involves gas burners and boiling tea kettles and nuanced pouring, skills our lovely but spastically gangly brood are not ready for. Things are closer on the martini side. They can certainly pour wine. And I'm sure, with guidance, they'd do just fine with a whiskey and soda with lemon. (Yeah, I'm sure they would. Let's get on that.) But to make a proper martini requires requires a measure of soul that no single-digit-aged larval human can possibly muster. But even in the absence of child-made coffee and martinis, they are rather cute and charming. And we're getting there. Happy Father's Day.

Demitasse, late afternoon

I just noticed that the utility pole in front of our house is pole number three-billion, nine-hundred million, four-hundred forty-six thousand, four-hundred and thirty-two. Is Entergy really tracking four-billion-ish of these things? (I'm gonna go with "no".) Hmm...

Louise at fence

Field Trip

A few snaps of this weekend's field trip with my sweet silly Entrepeneur Art Club boys. (Laser tag. Whooh!)

Mr. David

Allow me to present to you one of my New Favoritest Things:



It is a drawing of yours truly (with certain fanciful augmentations) drawn by Russell, one of the boys at the afterschool program where I tutor on Wednesdays. (It was given to me along with an equally awesome card from the whole gang at this past weekend's end-of-year field trip.) A few notes:

• Neck up, it's a strikingly accurate resemblance.
• Neck up, it's strikingly reminiscent of my own self-portrait icon up there in the corner of this screen.
• Neck down is the fancifully augmented part. Russell is partial to drawing superhero-esque figures and graced me with some muscular lagniappe. (I'm not actually this radically ripped.) I'll have to pin this on the wall for inspiration during my morning exercises.

Love it. So sweet.

Rusty fence


Virgin Mary with flowers

iDoodle: Ceci n'est pas une parrot. (I have no particular justification for or explanation of this drawing. (Well, there's a radically tangential story about a trashcan converted into a standing desk and a Magritte quote on a Post-It, but I fear that would just muddy the waters.) If it (the iDoodle) could talk (and had adequate knowledge of 20th century pop culture), it would simply quote Popeye: "I yam what I yam." (These parentheticals (nested and otherwise) are getting mighty weird. I think I need a nap.))

Ain't That the Life?

Do you ever have those "Ain't that the life?" moments? They can surprise you. As I was sitting on my balcony early this morning, I heard slow silky music coming from somewhere. And then I saw a portly middle-aged man with a small helmet strapped to his big noggin pull up on a moped at the stop sign below. On the back he'd rigged a large boombox which was wafting out some mellow soul-jam. He gave two little exclamatory beeps of thie horn, then went on his way, moving slowly, seeming to be in no great rush to get wherever he was going and damn well going to enjoying the process of getting there. And I thought myself, "Ain't that the life?"*

* Which, all in all, seems like a pretty obtainable lifestyle vision if I really chose to pursue it, much easier than Ferraris and mansions.

Louise, swim meet