Seussical

 I wish every last one of you could have been with us on our weekend in Portland.

Except... it was kind of nice to just spend time with Mr. Suite. 

 While he indulged my every whim. It was an "as you wish" kind of weekend.

 And even this shopping-averse farmgirl enjoys the city now and then.

Look how thoughtful the fabric store was to make a waiting area for the patient husbands.

 Portland is just so... yummy.

 And quirky and fun.

 Sometimes not my style, but still impressive.

 Oh, Hippo Hardware, how I love you.

You light up my life. (Couldn't resist.)

Between Hawthorne and Sellwood neighborhoods

I took a few dozen inspiration pics for our new old farmhouse. This one has similar lines to ours.

 A teahouse in a caboose! If only the girls could've been there. 

Except, I remember again, it was kind of nice to be alone with my husband.

 Right before we left I had decided to see whether wheat might be contributing to my arthritis symptoms.

But when you're eating at Bread and Ink restaurant, 

Noah's Bagels, Central Bakery, Bijou and Papa Haydn's....

You eat bread.

At least I do.

 No trip to Portland is complete without Powell's.

This time it was so incredibly busy that I didn't get that "home away from home" vibe.

Still I managed to blow the book budget. On both visits to the store.

 We didn't go by train.

Maybe next time. With the children.

 I couldn't resist the house of lolo.

Since we have a lulu of a Lolo of our own.

And this? Just one of many surreptitious shots stolen in Anthropologie.

Love.

Also? Planning to hack it.

Thanks for coming along on a bit of a recap of my romantic weekend away. 

Mr. Suite took photos of omelettes and other important subjects.

I just share the good stuff with you.

Hardscrabble life

Our beautiful fall weather continues this week. The air is clear and cold while the same sun of summer lights up autumn leaves just turning to look for clouds.

The forecast calls for storms next week. But that's next week, and in true Scarlett O'Hara fashion we'll just worry about that... tomorrow.

Ooh! Guess what we're doing today? Go ahead and guess. You'll NEVER GUESS.

We're driving up the Columbia Gorge to see if there's a rescue kitty waiting to come home with us!

We have heard rumors ("rumor" is my word for October) that there are Maine Coon kittens at a special shelter there. In fact my husband has been corresponding with one of the staff about a certain cat, huge and furry and orange and not such a kitten anymore.

So we're going to go meet him and see if he's our family.

Meanwhile, on the three-hour drive, we'll just likely pass a few fall displays of color and possibly a couple of photo ops. Hurray for the country drive on a cold clear day in October! Three cheers for the cooler packed with roast beef sandwiches and thermoses (Thermi? I crack myself up.) of soup! Best of all it's family time.

It's a hardscrabble life but somebody's gotta live it.

More Camera Begging

See that smudge up there in the left hand corner of this picture? I can't blame that on the camera since it was likely on my Suburban windshield. Everything else wrong with the photo, let's say it was the camera.

What I wanted that photo to do and what it does are two different things. I wanted it to tell you how insanely tired and hot those field hands are. I wanted you to feel the lead weight of their legs, how they can hardly lift their arms after days and days of bucking hay in the 90-degree heat. How that ride on the flatbed trailer may be their only rest, because there's more hay in the next field and rain's on the forecast. (What does the photo tell you, in actuality? That I followed a tractor for quite a while, and went slow enough to take a picture through my windshield.)

I'm not a photographer. Back in my cub reporter days (don't you just love the sound of "cub reporter"? Say it a lot, over and over again, and you could kinda get hypnotized. Then I'd command you to read my blog daily and comment more than once each time you read. A-hem.)... Anywhat, back when I was a news reporter, I had a photographer all my own. Sort of like an entourage of one.

I covered an air base; that was my "beat." I was intimately familiar with F-16s and spoke daily with "flaks" and even got to go in a Stealth Bomber once. I can't remember much about it because the military wiped my brain afterward. Or maybe it was later pregnancy that made me forget. Also, motherhood made me ramble. I never did that before, I swear.

My trusty photographer! That's where I was. Even though cub reporters (cub reporter, cub reporter) were paid diddly squat, just enough to make the $225 monthly rent on a riverfront cottage while your husband finishes eng-gen-eer school -- despite the low pay, I didn't have to take my own pictures.

I had a Nikon film camera of my own that sat in its sturdy bag with its many pretty lenses. They were a prerequisite to looking the part. My first photographer, Todd, tried to teach me how to use it. I was more interested in learning his unbelievably fascinating backstory than paying attention to F-stops and the like. Todd was formerly a minister who got washed up and ran away to the West Coast to take pictures for a small daily paper. Man, that was interesting to me. But that was before I knew that lots of pastors burn out and choose another career before they really get a foothold in the church. Hmm. That's for another post.

My second photographer was named Lou. He's still, 15 years later as I blog, taking fantastic pictures for the Associated Press. At that time he liked to take pictures of falling-down cabins and barns along the way to the airfield. He also liked -- a lot -- stopping at the local bakery on the way there and back. Don't tell our editor. I learned my love of rural landscapes from him.

Took this one a month or so ago on a back road on the way from my farm to KL's. Dang if I didn't wish I had my old Nikon (I hear the song, Nii-kon Ca-mer-a, love to take a pho-o-to-graph, every time I type that). Because if I had been carrying my old SLR, you'd be able to tell there's a stock-still doe standing at attention between the trees. Her eyes were huge! Her ears were bigger! And yet it looks like a random photo of some reprod timber. Sigh.

Lou? Are you reading? Any tips on how to take a decent photo with a point-and-shoot digital camera? Any tips on how to remain in the state of contentment with said loaner camera? Any tips on how to get my blog on the AP wire? (Just kidding about that last one.)

So I'm not a photographer, but blogging pays even less (if I'm wrong, email me to tell me how) than a small daily paper does, and it does not come with a sidekick photographer to chronicle my mommy days. I have to take my own dang falling-down-barn pictures. And I need a new schmancy DSLR camera to do so. Anyone giving one away? Nikon? Canon? I'm not choosy. (But I could be ever so loyal and blog about you every day. Just mail me the camera and I'll mail back my contract to promote your camera shamelessly.)

That’s Right, I’m Not From Texas

I love me some Lyle Lovett. I am known amongst my farm- and city-folk friends alike as a Lyle, um, lover. One time I spent my wedding anniversary with Lyle. (Hush. It was not so much an outdoor ampitheater as a singing stroll through the park. Lyle was serenading me.) My husband is understanding like that. Plus it’s in our pre-nups. Lyle and me, we’re like THAT.


But my friend Barb over at So, The Thing Is… she loves her some Lyle too. She can even put Lyle into her blog somehow. She’s amazing. Or maybe Lyle likes her better than me and loans her his best music videos exclusively because his poetic nature is perfectly in tune with her poetic day-to-day life. (What’s that? You can download songs online? With video?)

And then, my friend Ei, she's in love with Lyle too. I'm not sure whether she's from Texas because she's a cyberfriend (first I typed cyberfiend. I have a problem typing too fast.), but she loves Lyle a lot (maybe more than I) and she's available. She doesn't have to exercise any prenups to stroll through the park with the big-haired cowboy crooner.

So basically, it's like an episode of The Bachelor, where Lyle has to choose between all these lovely ladies. I think I got kicked off on the first rose ceremony. But until I was a blogger I thought it was just me an' Lyle, alone in the world.

Speaking of my husband Fabio, he corrected me on two counts over the weekend. Maybe more than that, but only two come to mind immediately. Because I’m forgetful.

(one) Tom Clancy was not an attorney. He was a financial adviser. Even better! A financial adviser turns popular spy-thriller novelist. Surely if I can surreptitiously borrow WiFi all the while having no clue what WiFi stands for, and subsequently zoom out of the neighborhood undetected, passing a “Shotz” coffee stand that says “FREE WIFI” in red neon letters – surely if I am stealthy enough to pull off such a Saturday out-of-state mission, I could easily sneak in and out of a government building with high-tech secret documents, photograph them, and then replace them with cleverly doctored fake-o documents to throw off the competition spies, all the while safeguarding my infant and pre-schooler in the double jogger. Wait, they already did that movie. I think it was called “Mrs. Doubtfire.”

(two) I’m not from Texas. I had forgotten.

My husband, Fabio, moonlights as an engineer. You may know him as EGE, or the Eng-Gun-Ear. (It’s a dumb inside joke among the pocket-protector set.) His first job – aside from that little margarine thing – is fact repository. Within moments of reading my last post, he was advising me that I had fact errors. So now he has a new side job. As my fact checker. Because he remembers all sorts of things like what Tom Clancy's pre-published career was. And he still has room for lots of baseball stats and stuff. He must be pretty smart.

But I'm not buttering him up for a new camera or anything.

***
Oh, for crying out loud. I am editing this later in the day to say:
I can't even get a correction right. My dear husband didn't say financial adviser, he said insurance salesman. The risks of insurance sales must have translated quite nicely into spy novels.

But I'm still not from Texas. Dang.

***

Three Nursing Bras, Sarah's Glasses and A Book

Those are the things left behind on our weekend away for a funeral.




It was all fun and games, like this:



Yep, love, Dutch Brothers Not-So-Hots, cuddling in the car and more love. You are glimpsing the dog in the background. He is always in the background. Except when he's in the foreground.



Okay, I'm leaving out the carsickness and the careening wildly through orange traffic cones to get to the side of the road in time for the carsickness.



We dragged a traffic cone 30 feet. Then when we backed up out of the construction zone, post-carsick-episode, the traffic cone popped up in perfect upright position. That was cool.




Here's a picture of my camera-shy super-cute nephew:

I tried to bring him home with us, but for some strange reason he didn't want to come.

Maybe he knew about the carsickness. Little babies are smart that way.

The other thing we left behind was my camera's autofocus. It might've been because I dropped it on a brick path, I mean the yellow brick road. Thus I am only able to take photos like this:


Of my girls and their great-grandma right before we had to leave for home.

The most important thing is, we're home. And my camera is broken, so... you know I need a new camera. The old one just about got me arrested by the po-lice, and still no new camera. I did a little pre-Mother's Day hinting, and still no new camera.

And yet I didn't win one on The Pioneer Woman's site. The Gods Must Be Crazy.

I miss my camera. It is usually attached to me, closer than the baby (unless she's nursing). I don't consider it an event if there are no pictures. I can't truly enjoy a farmish view or time in my garden without the camera.

I also miss my nursing bras. I wonder whether Nana will mail them. I miss my book, The Kite Runner, which is a good read even if I have been trying to find time to finish it since approximately the time that I got it, before Laura was born. No coincidence there. I miss Sarah's glasses, which may or may not have been lost on the trip, before or after the carsickness.

I miss my pre-mommyhood sanity, but I'm probably romanticizing that too.

I'll just stick to missing the camera and looking for the glasses. Yep, bra-less and picture-less. It's a good combination.

Sheesh

After the Fabio comments, and the bad photo of the EGE squinting into the sun whilst sweating over the chicken coop foundation, and my sassiness in general, the EGE sent me an email (I knew he was reading my blog from work!):

Sheesh.

That's all it said. So then I sorted through my digital photos. It's a thin collection. Although I am a picture addict, this computer is new to me and I only had three months' worth of family snaps... and most are of the girls of course. I was looking for a drop-dead gorgeous picture of the EGE, so you'd all say how handsome he was (KL, didja HAVE to say it looked like he was wearing a yarmuckle?!? I know you didn't spell it right and neither did I -- we definitely could not pass in a synagogue!) and then I'd be off the hook about the Fabioso comparisons.

Unfortunately the best I could do was another squinty picture. Despite my lousy photography, which by the way would be completely fixed if someone bought me a Nikon digital SLR from the Shutterbug for, say, Mother's Day -- anyhoo, despite my lousy photography, it is perfectly clear from this photo that he is handsome, isn't he? Drop-dead gorgeous actually.



Come to think of it, this is my second post that comes around to begging for a camera. If the third time's the charm, y'all can look forward to another cockamamie (prolly don't spell that right either) justification of my need for the bells-and-whistles Nikon. But truly, truly, the EGE is a good-looking guy. I'm lucky he aged so well, because when I married him, I was SO in love with the mullet.



He could sell whipped-and-dyed hydrogenated fat (what did you THINK I was going to say?!) with the best of them. Except I need him around here for farm-type and engineering-type and father-type chores. Sorry, Parkay.