Stellar

I'm a couple glasses of wine into my Friday night and I am tired. It's been a long day of last minute preparation for the trip to LA, my book and my photography show. And maybe its because I have had those glasses of wine, I just want to take a minute - via blog - to jump and down and shout about how fucking awesome that previous sentence is. After years of research and writing and editing and agents and no more agents and massive self doubt and self-sabotage, I received a hard copy of the first chapter of Veiled Remarks: A Curious Compendium for the Nuptially Inclined and It. Is. Gorgeous.

I am so proud of how Harvest (the graphic design company next to Mothersville) was able to literally make my dream into a reality. The book is a collection of obscure, really cool wedding-related trivia, and after constantly being advised to do so, I finally wove in my own story of getting dumped by my fiance to give the trivia a narrative thread. All that was missing was the artwork to tie it together, and as of today, I just have the prettiest little package to present to agents. Honestly, I don't even care if I get published at this point. I am just so happy with the way it turned out.

After getting beaten down by people I thought were friends when I was younger, I have since been tentative about sharing good news for how it or I would be perceived. But now that I am old and have a nice buzz going, I'm just gonna keep sharing.

Have I made an official announcement about my photography show?

June 6
6-8 pm
at Spruce
5040 Sanderlin (next to L. Weiss Gallery and Interim Restaurant)

I really hope you can make it.

I know this is during cocktail hour and my friends with babies probably won't be able to make the trek out to East Memphis (ahem, free drinks AND free sushi), but just send me some good vibes while I'm walking around with a drink in my hand, trying to handle the weirdness that will be me at my solo photography show. The whole thing is still kind of bizarre to me as I feel like a total poseur who is being mistaken for a photographer, but I'm just trying to roll with it.

And then Sunday we will be on a plane back to LA for a few days of sun, friends' birthdays, tamales at farmers' markets, Venice beach houses, the Dwell Design conference and window shopping. (My god, have you seen what they charge for framing these days? No wonder they ask for ridiculous prices at galleries.)

I feel blessed, humbled, harried and maybe that just half a glass more is all I need to pack and type up a price sheet and clean the house and find those receipts and do just a little more photoshop...

Sweet Baby

sweet baby, originally uploaded by medusahead.

Milestones

That's right. We got a walker.

Officially 14 months old today, and Miss Thing has decided that if no one is going to open up the fridge for her, she is just going to do it herself. Must be her daddy's midwestern genes.

She walked herself down the hallway to the entry and turned around and smiled.

I smiled back and crouched down, opening up my arms wide.

Come here, I entreated her.

She just smiled back and kept walking the other way.

And that made me cry a little.

So now she's walking, and saying SHOES! Not just shoes but full exclamation marks SHOES! - in context -and Da-DAH! and "cheese" (exciting but not nearly as exciting as SHOES!) and grabbing the car keys and letting herself out the front door.

I can't believe she's already 16 years old. How time flies.

sigh

sigh, originally uploaded by medusahead.

I think I may have to stop taking photos because I'm not sure its possible to get any cuter than this.

Plus, I want to be in a photo kissing my kid, dammit.

daddy & daughter

daddy & daughter, originally uploaded by medusahead.

Memorial Day

unmade bed2, originally uploaded by medusahead.

Hope you all had a lovely, lazy holiday weekend.

Sitting on our porch swing while that summer storm crashed down around us was a nice way to bring it to a close.

Now back to work.

Such a big girl

big girl, originally uploaded by medusahead.

It's hard to keep my mind on the real reason for honoring today when all I can do is a continuous happy dance that Alexa and Mike now live in Memphis. Well, Collierville for the time being, but that beats 3,000 miles. They rolled in on Friday night, and per Lex's request, we ordered up some Memphis Pizza Cafe, drained several bottles of wine and just giggled over the fact that we're neighbors.

(Speaking of wine - I neglected to mention that while in Chicago we stopped by a wine tasting where I sampled my first glass of red wine in 7 years. No headache, no vomiting. It seems non-American wines are the way to go. And I have such a way to go.)

Speaking of momentous occasions, I feel a failure as a mommy blogger that I have neglected to mention that Harlow is kinda sorta walking. She can practically run if she's holding onto a finger, but she has been taking tentative steps on her own. My seriously jacked up lower back is psyched that we are steadily moving forward. I'm kinda sad that soon she won't need me as much. I'm also simply terrified at the thought of having the toddler version of Harlow unleashed and running amok.

She's such an fascinating companion these days. Feeding herself with a spoon, spending a full minute petting the dog so she can feel the softness of his fur under her fingers. Random family belly button inspections. Lying on her back on the kitchen floor and singing row row row your boat. Just because she can.

I have no pictures, I have no audio, but please take my word for the truth when I say Caleb played one of his best shows in years Saturday night. HIs singer-songwriter gig showcases his killer songwriting skills, but Saturday was all about sexy, dirty rock n roll. The man was on fire with a backing band, all Jaggeresque attitude and charisma. And I got to go home with him.

Converse

converse, originally uploaded by medusahead.

I took this picture this morning.I mention this because it was a minor miracle that I was even able to hold my camera and shoot, what with the stack of shoes being thrown at me and orders barked to fit them. That's right.

My daughter is a shoe whore.

She comes by it honestly. But not from me. I'm really late to the game. The past two years I finally caught up to the rest of my sex and starting buying shoes that couldn't be categorized as "will work with most outfits" or "has sensible heel." No, the blame falls squarely on Caleb's fancy feet.



The above photo was not styled. That is all Harlow. Just like her daddy, when she has on an outfit, shoes must be tried on. ALL of them. Like the sweet flower she is, she holds them out to me, sticks out her foot and then yells at me if the shoe doesn't fit. I can't say I blame her. I want to build a little shoe shrine to those candy apple patent leather red moccasins, but somebody just had a growth spurt, and I hate to disappoint, but those shoes are just not fittin.

Wearing mismatched shoes* is exhausting.

*turns out you gotta click on the pics in this post to actually see them in their full digitized glory

Just because

Harlow anime, originally uploaded by medusahead.

Between art directing my book and trying to figure out drum scanning and printing and framing for my first ever photography show (how casually I just tossed those out, right?), I haven't been posting much. So here is a blast from the past.

The Doctor-Deanses

2003 - It's 3 AM at Villa Silvistrini. I'm ankle deep in the Adriatic with a group of American women I met 24 hours prior. The water is inky black but tantalizingly warm. I just want to jump in but it's dark, see, and there might be things in the water and I'm just not sure and SPLASH. Gina has whisked off her dress and plunged headfirst into the ocean. I stayed dry and safe. Gina got the better story.

One of my earliest memories of Gina pretty much sums up the girl I would come to love and adore and later challenge to a game of topless ping pong (her daredevil atttude is infectious). I wasn't the only one bewitched by her on that trip. Her future husband Robin (the one boy among seven women) fell hard for the saucy fashionista and left his native London to marry his girl and make Buster, one of the cutest boy babies on the planet.

We finally got a chance to visit the Doctor-Deanses this past weekend in Chicago and crash at their lovely home in super cool Wicker Park. We ate lemon cookies and killer falafel and tried to barter Harlow for root beer float cupcakes. We met a fellow cute boy in a hat with a baby who beat-boxed Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. Apparently he is kind of a big deal. We shopped at Paper Doll and Sprout Home and Penelope. We gave our babies a bath together and got to know each other as parents. Not surprisngly, she is a kick-ass mom. This mom got her ass kicked by the baby in the pack-in-play 2 inches from the bed. Constant crying and nursing made for a very sleepy train ride into the burbs to hang with the Vickers on Saturday. We partied with the neighbors - well, Caleb and everyone else did as I crashed at 9 PM. And Sunday came Christmas. The whole family piled in the car and went to Ikea where I bought fabric and picture frames and weird Swedish crap that you can't buy online just because I could. I'm not sure if there has ever been retail therapy more effective. We had just enough time to catch Max's soccer game - and his awesome 2 goals - before we hopped the plane back home with our loot. And as it is 9 PM, I think I may have to go to bed again. Getting old makes me sleepy.



Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.

Chicago

bubbles, originally uploaded by medusahead.

We're back from Chicago and I wanted to share one pic before I crash. Too late. I crashed.

Mother's Day

Holy crap I'm a mom.

You think the shock would have worn off by now, that the little spidermonkey who is always hanging off of my arm (or boob) and chirping mam-AH! isn't a constant reminder. I opened a card on Mother's Day that said "mom" on the front. As it was handed to me by my own mother, I thought it odd that she got me a card that was all about her.

Oh yeah.

How cute is my family?

How non-seven months pregnant does my sister look?

And how heinous are those drapes?

Happy belated Mother's Day to all my mamas, especially those who braved the wind and post cupcake coma to march over to Peabody Park and celebrate SAM and Sassy's badassery!






When I lived in LA, I was told I looked like Mia Farrow (Frank era, thankfully) about once a week. I never really saw it, but now I that's all I see when I look at my daughter's picture:

Blurry Boys of Summer

2 great iPhotos, originally uploaded by medusahead.

Hooping

Like mama...



...like daughter

Mothers Acting Up this Sunday

From the Mothersville blog:

We hope this Mother's Day involves you, lots of love, food, flowers, praise and maybe even some feet rubbing. In addition, we're celebrating moms the world over with Mothers Acting Up, a nationwide organization dedicated to reclaiming the peaceful origins of the holiday. The Memphis chapter of MAU is meeting at Mothersville at 3 PM this Sunday and marching over to Peabody Park for an afternoon of fun and honoring some fabulous local mamas. Costumes and your imagination encouraged! We hope you will join us!

For more information, please visit memmau.blogspot.com

Jasmine

A conversation with the proprietess of my favorite Thai food restaurant:

Me: Hi, I'm here to pick up my order.

J: Ok, that be $10.75

She takes my cash and gathers the change.

M: I have to thank you. You made all that chicken satay and spring rolls for my daughter's birthday party. They were delicious.

She pauses and stares down her glasses at me. I stammer.

M: Uh, everybody loved them?

J: Oh. Oh! Yes! Good! I so happy.

She smiles at me.

J: I not recognize you!

She touches her hands to her face and smiles.

J: You so pretty last time.

M: ....ok.

Scenes from a weekend

Friday night before cocktail hour, before Elizabeth Alley's lovely, sly art opening and just about the moment when the heavens opened and dumped on Musicfest (seriously, has there ever been a dry one?), Harlow and I were snacking on blueberries. She started imitating a penguin and hurling her body in the general direction of the case of berries, her usual signal for wanting more food when I asked her as much. She stopped, looked down at her hands and touched her fingers together, the American sign language motion for "more."

About five seconds later I was running through a thunderstorm to the garage to announce to Caleb that our daughter, to whom we have been signing "more" since she was born, is paying attention. It was kind of shocking really, this realization that this little creature has been watching and learning and now has the tools to express that. She wants more!

The rain slowed, revealing our backyard to be this unexpectedly verdant, lush garden. A slight pit pat on the roof, beads of water trickling down the backs of my legs, my husband all flex-y muscles with the table saw and covered in sawdust. I smiled at him. He looked good. I felt like I was in a commercial, running through the rain to discover my lover welding something in the garage to sell some perfume. He smiled back and said he'd seen her "ask" for more a couple of times now and yeah, it was totally cool. He went back to working on his project.

Oh.

I muttered something about needing to attend to our child who I had left sitting in her high chair and ran back inside.

***


Nashville plans were scrapped, so we hightailed it down to the farmers market with the rest of midtown to watch the 9 AM tamale making demonstration by the chef of McEwen's. Stupid health code wouldn't let us sample, but there wasn't any code stopping me from getting my hands all dirty with fillings and masa and rolling myself a beautiful BBQ chicken Mexican-style tamale, the likes of which inexplicably cannot be found in any Memphis restaurant. The fried beef smothered in chili kind dominates these parts, but I'm hoping my whining to the chef about this might rectify the problem.

A brief siesta at home and we went back downtown to listen to some music commemorating the 5th anniversary of the war in front of the Civil Rights Museum. Not much of a turnout as it was competing with this other concert called Music Fest, but happily it afforded me a pretty view of the arena.

weekend, originally uploaded by medusahead.

Have you checked out all those new shops on South Main? Wallet firmly in purse, we stopped into Divine Rags and Runway Boutique and Mode du Jour and found some really prettily designed shops with so-so offerings. Hey - it's a start.

Saturday night found us eating burgers on the grounds of my lovely, insanely wealthy friend's palatial estate. C is married to M. C and I go way back to my LA days, and it still amazes me to see how her path has led her from smashing beer bottles in bar fights to hosting cocktail parties for the Memphis elite. And she hasn't changed a bit. Except for the bar fight thing. Their property backs up to a golf course, so their yard fairly resembles Central Park. There was just the slightest chill in the air, so we gathered down by the fire pit to toast some smores and watch all the kids scramble around the acreage.







Saturday night. I and every 13 year old in the tri-state area convened at the Paradiso for the 9:45 Iron Man. Love me that Robert Downey Jr. Hate with all the bile in my stomach lining 13 year olds at movie theaters.

Sundays have become the church of good cookin. We invited over our favorite lawyers in love for some dinner, and mama turned it out, y'all.

Watermelon and feta salad. Individual fontina, prosciutto and mushroom pizzas with white truffle oil and homemade crust. Iced Chocolate mostoccioli for dessert. A damn sexy meal for damn sexy people. And their kids.

It

When people talk about their kids, how "it" all goes by so fast, I now know what "it" is. I cannot imagine there will come a day that I cannot bury my face in the back of my child's neck and breathe her in without her threatening child services on me. That beeping and clicking my tongue won't be the FUNNIEST THING SHE HAS EVER HEARD. That I won't be able to accessorize her. Like here.

somebunny loves me, originally uploaded by medusahead.