Vyolette loves Gene

Who knew?

I always suspected one of my children would be a rock groupie but at 16 months? Tonight, while her teething kept her up, Vyolette saw for the first time her true love: Gene Simmons of KISS. She howled when she saw him in full costume and clapped as he tried to lick the camera.

I shudder to think of her at sixteen. Gene, you dirty old man. My door is on the left. ;)

8 Random things about me

Grrrrrr. I hate these things but here goes!

1. I am able to pick up almost anything with my toes.
2. I turned down graduate school to spend one more term at OSU and pick up a second major (history), then met my husband a month before I graduated and never went back to school.
3. I was once stranded in the middle of a river while tubing with my brother as teenagers. It took hours to get me back across.
4. I quit college at 18 and moved to NYC with no money (or brains) then returned to college after I figured out I couldn't make it without an education. Duh.
5. I can't stand many blonde actresses and most female singers make my skin crawl.
6. I found an ancient knife point while on a dig in Scotland, right in front of US tourists. Perfect timing. ;)
7. The first ghost I ever saw was my dog, Jake, a month after he'd passed.
8. I like to eat cottage cheese on my hot dogs. Wha?

Camp

I hate camp.

Well, not really. This past Sunday, the big girls went off to girl scout resident camp for a week and I had no idea how used to complete chaos I was. Two tiny girls could never compete with three cranky, goofy, popsicle-munching pre-teens.

Rowyn and Syenna went south about three hours. I kept having flashbacks to The Haunting where Mrs. Dudley kept saying, "no one could hear you scream. You're alone. In the dark." Real comforting.

Wynter was closer but the 100 degree heat put a real damper on the fun I was imagining her having. Hopefully they stuck all the girls in the pool and sprayed them with hoses.

I received two postcards from Syenna today:
"I had seven mosquitos in my cabin on the first night! We do lots of things at the beach. Sorry Dad, we had no choice, I have to do crafts."

"I want to go to day camp instead. The days are so fun , we are going swimming in a lake and rock climbing and hiking, it's real fun! I would like to do this as a day camp instead. That would be best. I miss you. I want to come back."

Er. No guilt here. She'll see me in therapy, I'm sure.

Trevor Luckman photography

MySpace works in weird and wonderful ways. Yesterday I was hit up to be the friend of Trevor Luckman, who lists himself as a photographer in Oregon. Being of the webbed feeted variety, I had to check out his work and discovered that he's from my home town area! No, we're not related.

He does lovely work in Grants Pass, OR. Please check out his site and say hello!
http://www.etsy.com/shop.php?user_id=5111231

Happy Independence Day!

Somehow Independence Day gets me into some kind of trouble. I'm usually minding my own business when WHAM - the car I'm in slams into the truck in front. At a stop sign no less. Just decided to hit the gas before the truck ahead moved. ????

Another year, Bryan and I sold ice cream off the back of our truck in downtown Portland, Oregon. We made enough to live off of for a month that day.

One year, I was in California visiting my sister and decided I absolutely needed to see the Rocky Horror Picture Show. RIGHT THEN. You can imagine how that went over. TOAST!

This year we had a quiet (for a family with five small kids) and boring 4th of July -- until the tornado warning. Aside from it being a normal muggy crappy DC day, I didn't even see this one coming. No storm, no warnings then WHAMMO - tornado warning, get the ribs off the bbq, we're going into the basement. Rightttttttt after I finish this cocktail... Needless to say, all is well and though we skipped being evacuated at the National Mall (though that would have been fun too) we celebrated by researching Revolutionary era ghosts and playing with sparklers & morning glories. My dad would be proud. Of course, that's a whole other story...