Camping, Front-Yard-Style

While my dear Elijah was in town for a visit with her adult man toddler Sam, we headed to Gravel Switch for a few days to take in Emily's log cabin, creeks filled with chrinoids, hiking loops around lakes, four-wheelers, competitive matches of Corn Hole, and even a round of front-yard-camping.
My front yard has a road called High Street running through it, so even though Tommy, Emily's son, was completely unimpressed by front yard camping, I was in full nature retreat mode. There were picnic tables, a fire pit, benches, an already pitched tent, and a stack of firewood. It was like all the work of camping had been done for you and all you had to do was spray on some Deep Woods Off and get to making a fire. And S'mores.

Sam brought the mallows.

And got a lesson from the pros.

Do you remember how good S'mores are? I think they've got to be one of the best desserts ever made, and I'd forgotten all about the extent of their deliciousness until this camp out made me an addict. At one point a chocolate square came down to me or the baby, and I seriously thought about stealing it. Sam removed any say I had in the matter by just taking it right from me and plopping it in his drooly, gooey mouth.

After our sweet binge, Sam played around on a rusty old tricycle and in a gravel filled sandbox hours past his bedtime. Liz and I drank Budweiser and kept an eye out for lightning bugs and chatted about whether or not the lightning and thunder would actually bring rain. Tommy played with a lighter. Liz and I are up for Babywatchers of the Year.
Liz really wanted Sam to see the lightning bugs, and man, does she know that baby. He loved them. Tommy and I would catch one and bring it to him and he'd poke at it and watch it crawl around, and when it would inevitably fall to the ground or fly away, he'd ask for more. I showed him this old trick I learned when I lived at a seedy apartment complex growing up, where you rip the butt off and write your name on your arm and watch it glow. It didn't work as well as I remember, probably because now I feel guilty about it. We also used to pluck their butts off and put them on our ring finger and pretend they were diamond rings.
Since it was a couple hours past Sam's bedtime, Liz put him down after all the lightning bug excitement. Tommy and I hung out up by the house, looking at the stars and talking in a whisper so the baby wouldn't be too jealous. We took breaks to tend to the fire and I decided to break out my poi stuff. Tommy got pretty excited about seeing fire spinning, mostly because "of the chance of death associated with it."

The best part of the front-yard-camping experience, though, was that when the rain -- and by rain I mean holy jesus thunderstorm -- finally did roll in, all we had to do was grab the baby and run up to the house, where we could shower and enjoy climate control while we slept soundly on our beds.

Southern Comfort

Sitting on my counter right now are two jalapenos, six yellow squash, one zucchini, and one tomato.

Sitting there the other day were three cucumbers and a fresh loaf of homemade, garden-sent zucchini bread.
As much as I'm hating the mosquitoes living off my ankle blood, the poison ivy trying to crawl through my front door, and the thick air that makes jeans feel like a modern form of torture, I am loving the sharing of the harvest that comes from the South.

Holy Freaking Boring

Wake up, sometime between 9:30am and 1pm.

Take care of responsibilities such as washing dishes, watering tomatoes, brushing teeth, checking email, looking for jobs, listing mini-fridge on Craigslist, etc.

Study fire fans and wish I had even a modicum of dancing intuition.

Make coffee.

Check TiVo suggestions.

Make a giant salad of mixed greens, a cut up tomato, and some intensely delicious salad dressing made by Annie, whoever she is.

Wait for Mack to wake up.

Kick laundry to the corner of the bedroom.

Feel concerned and impressed that we rarely ever have enough for a full load.

Check the mail.

Download podcasts.

Take a walk.

Research cameras, both SLRs and point and shoots.

Secretly wish for more money.

Make popcorn.

Feel annoyed that popcorn always burns in one spot in the middle.

Curse Orville Redenbacher.

Start making noise so Mack wakes up.

Save the lives of snails.

Sweep the porch.

Read Thomas Paine essays.

Have a glass of kefir.

Perform a frontal lobotomy.

Articles

When we moved from Kentucky to California, there were two collections I just could not bare to pare down.

My books and my artwork.

I don't own anything worth anything in the way of artwork, but I do have things that I love, things that hang on the wall and remind me of people I love, experiences I've had, places I've visited. Some of them are beautiful, some of them are scary, and some of them have penises. If you really want to get to know your guests quickly, hang a penis in your kitchen.

The most I've ever paid for a piece of artwork is $350, which I paid to the artist Bill Santen in three installments because I didn't (and still don't) have hundreds of dollars waiting to be plopped down on a piece of art. I like dingy art, stuff that is imperfect and dusty and could cut your fingers if not handled properly, and I prefer knowing the artist I buy art from -- maybe not personally but at least knowing something interesting about the person. All this is to say my art needs to have a soul behind it and not be more than my rent.

With the rebirth of DIY screenprinting and the launch of Etsy.com, affordable art is more accessible than it's ever been. And because it can be hard to choose art -- and because buyer's remorse can sting if you've paid a couple hundred bucks for a penis that you end up not really liking -- here are some places you can go to make that place over the mantle a little less Garden Ridge.

20X200 -- I just found out about this site, but I love it. Artist Jen Bekman is offering 200 pieces of art from different artists for $20. Every Tuesday and Wednesday a new piece is offered up. So you've got PostSecret on Monday, 20x200 on Tuesday and Wednesday, and now I just need some Thursday and Friday highlights.

Kids at Play, Dusk, Kashgar, by Raul Gutierrez

Cricket Press -- a husband and wife screenprinting enterprise in Lexington. I worked at the dollar movies with the wife, Sara, when she was in high school and she was basically who I wanted to be. We reconnected in photography at UK, where she'd evolved her awesomeness. I've bought prints from them for Jen and Betsy as gifts, and have a few of their originals in my own collection. If you live in Lexington and have seen really awesome band posters, these are probably the brains behind them.

The Red Dress, by Sara Turner

Decor8 Blog -- with the tagline "fresh finds for hip places," this blog is more like a Real Simple pleasure than an online art collective, but they do find some pretty amazing artwork sometimes that will definitely jazz up your pad. And be by relative unknowns with brilliance and a believable price tag. They also have Etsy Take 5 Tuesdays, where they turn you onto Etsy artists you are probably totally unaware of.

Carrousel by Irene Suchocki

UGallery -- when an art student graduates from college, where do they go? to work as bank tellers, nannies, junior editors. and that's just sad. At UGallery, you can shop for work by emerging artists, most of whom are recent college graduates, based on pricetag, color, or style. And if you find someone you like, you can actually follow their career, much like you would a band or actor or... your stocks.

Hundreds of Years Ago, By Maryam Gaber, School of the Art Institute of Chicago

Miss Kitty Goes to Heaven

A little while before we moved to Kentucky, we were sort of forced to give Miss Kitty away to Mack's parents. We were pretty sure we were going to be moving, and the little old lady cat just refused to use her cat box. We needed time to air out the carpet before we gave up our apartment, and it seemed like every time I shampooed it, it would only be pee-free(ish) for 3 minutes before Kitty would christen it her toilet again.

I'm pretty sure I threatened to kill her a hundred times. Mack took her to the vet to see what was going on with her, why she wasn't using her box. Well, she had bowel loops, her kidneys were shriveled remnants of organs, her thyroid was a disaster and she didn't have that much longer to live. The vet clearly did not know of Miss Kitty's defiance.
When I first met Kitty, Mack and I had just started living together. He came back from a visit to his parents' house with this fluff ball with enormous chunks of matted hair, and suddenly we had a new pet. Kitty was a fine addition to our family, even if she was very clear about the fact the Mack was hers and I was number 2. She and Mack spent hours on the porch swing in the carport, she laying in his lap while he slowly clipped and pulled her mats out. I'd never seen a cat so calmly surrender to someone with barber shears before, but Kitty gave her life over to Mack and he delicately freed her from bad grooming. It was trust and tenderness all wrapped up in one unlikely little package. And I was jealous.
She was an old cat when I met her, probably 15 or more years old. Kitty chose Mack when she was younger, probably after she'd already had a litter of kittens or two in her life. He was camping in the backyard when up walks this puffy hunk of sass who decided to move in. His parents let him keep her.

She ended up being pregnant or getting pregnant -- I'm not sure of the details -- and when she gave birth, it really solidified her union to Mack. In the middle of the night, while he slept with her on his chest, she started to deliver her kittens. He says he woke up and froze, afraid to move and hurt her or her babies.

Every night when Mack and I would go to sleep, Kitty would assume her place, perched right on top of his chest, secure in his line of sight. And sometimes, just to really drive home her place in his life, she would lay between us, a 6 pound wall of fur that kept me away from her man.
When we took her to California with us, she rode in the cab of the pickup truck, most often on the center console next to her boyfriend. At night she would walk around on top of everybody and interrupt their sleep. Mack would put her in a little cat box when we stopped so she could do her business, but other than that, she was an amazingly good traveler. I was shocked at how well she did on that trip.
In Los Angeles, she settled right in. Aside from that one time she was arrested, she seemed beyond content with her life. She slept the necessary 20+ hours a day, liked potato chips, and demanded we rub her tits by plopping down on her side and rolling around.
She also liked to have her butt spanked and would often discuss the founder of the People's Republic of China with Mack. When I decided to put a bird feeder outside and attracted a family of cute little mice, Kitty used it as an opportunity to hone her hunting skills and wiped out the entire clan. We tried to make it so she didn't have to jump -- something she hated -- and Mack and she spent hours every day less than 2 feet from one another.
After she went to Mack's parents' house, she seemed to be doing well... not as well as she'd have done had she gone to live with Jen, but well enough. She liked being outside and got endless attention from the neighborhood kids and passersby in their apartment complex. Shahin fed her turkey and Tom gave her milk and that, combined with hundreds of pets a day, made her happy.

She was losing weight, but we knew she was old and sick and didn't have much time left. In fact, we'd been telling ourselves she didn't have that much time left for about 6 months (the vet had said she had a couple months max). When we knew for sure we were moving, we decided to leave her with his parents, unsure she'd survive the road trip a second time.

One day before we left Laila and I were coming home from a walk, and we saw Kitty on the porch. "What is she doing?" Laila asked, and seeing Kitty twisted around with her tongue hanging out of her mouth, I told Laila to go get Mack. I scooped her tiny body up in my arms and rubbed her dirty little nose, and by the time Mack got out, whatever was happening had stopped. She was shaking, disoriented, barely able to walk, but she was back. Her eyes were tired but she was behind them. Two days later, it was like nothing had ever happened. Leave it to Kitty to improve by having a stroke.

We left California a few days later, and knowing that would be the last time we saw Miss Kitty was rough. Mack did his usual hurry-through-goodbyes-so-they're-not-as-hard as we were heading out, but I picked her up, nuzzled her little face, came to peace with my biggest challenge for getting Mack's love and attention. I took her picture, and off we went.
Miss Kitty continued to deteriorate. On June 25, she was put down. She really was an angel of a cat.