Beneath a Pure Blue Sky

The bleached-out sun beats down, relentless, giving the world a slightly-frayed look: colors of summer slowly unraveling into white.  He is a banked-coal weight on my back, delighted by this new experience, the new sights and sounds and smells that are his for the embracing.  A deep blue hat keeps his face in shadow, safe, while a trickle of sweat begins to form in the long channel of my spine.

The woman at the stand gives us specific instructions- "Go to the shorter bushes.  They have the larger berries.  And start in the middle of the row, not the end- you'll find more."

We are in the habit of listening to the wisdom of experts, and it soon becomes apparent that we are wise in our habits.  I find a likely-looking place to start, and crouch down, setting the box- and my water bottle- just so.  Then, because we are the only ones there, I take him off my back, and settle him in a patch of shade within reach of the berries.  I am counting on the novelty to keep my sprout rooted to the spot.

Although they fall swiftly to my attention, the berries on the bushes prove difficult to harvest for tiny fingers new to the pincher-grasp, and so he takes to collecting the fallen.  While I approve of his ingenuity, I am less thrilled by the accompanying handfuls of mulch that are subsequently shoved into his mobile mouth.

I move the box so that he will reach into it for his berries, thereby hoping to avoid a throat-full of splinters.  He is delighted by this development, for it makes his berry-acquisition easier still.  For a while we work in companionable silence; I put a handful in the box, he takes a handful out.  Fortunately his hands are small, and the level in the box slowly rises.

And then I realize that he is in very real danger of asphyxiating himself in his enthusiasm for this new-found bounty, and so I rearrange once more: now the box is out of reach, and one pale, motherly leg forms a barrier between him and the mulch.  I hand him berries one at a time, which slows my collection rate but soothes my paranoia; he is still probably eating far too many for a creature of his mass, but at least they are going into his stomach and not his lungs. He is simply happy- happy to be outside, happy to be eating berries, happy to be with me.  Happy baby boy.

He will not remember this day, spent feasting in the shade of hardy shrubs, but I will- my heart stained, indelibly, with his blueberry grin.

A Three(-to-Five) Hour Tour

We started our little mini-vacation today, spending five days hanging out with Lara up on the Peninsula.  Generally speaking, it's a three hour drive.

Or at least it was, before Neeps got to his current developmental stage.

Now, don't get me wrong- I'm no fool.  I  know that now that we have a kid, things take longer, period.  So I told Lara that we were planning on leaving around 10am, and should arrive between 1 and 2.

It is to laugh.

We did leave at 10 (okay, 10:06), but we didn't get here until after 3pm.  Because even tho' I'd carefully planned our departure to coincide with Nap Time, I had not planned on someone waking up a full hour and a half early, thereby throwing off his entire freaking schedule for the day.

::sigh::

So instead of sleeping through a large chunk of the trip, Neeps was awake.  And... not necessarily pleased about being stuck in his car seat with no one to entertain him (because the back seat was full of away-from-home stuff).

We took a lot of breaks.

It wasn't all that bad, to tell the truth.  We weren't really on a schedule, so I wasn't actually stressed out about it taking so long.  And it was actually quite pleasant to take a long, picnic break in a park, where we all enjoyed the shade and wind and ate junk food and watched Pokemon Go players wander about amongst the pigeons.

family picnic in a strange town!

But we did finally make it!  And Isis is happy as happy can be with her fur-breathren, and Neeps is gratifying pleased to see his Auntie Lara (whom he hasn't seen since January) and of course I am looking forward to a few days of not-working.

And then there's the freaking delicious wine we've been drinking, all grapefruity and wonderful.  Woo, vacation!

In the Eye of a Perfect Storm

I open the door to heaven.

The house is clean and calm and moreover it smells fresh.  It is pleasantly cool, especially in comparison to the heat doing its slinky dance on the porch.  In fact, the hum of the air conditioning is the only sound that greats me.

It is not yet two o'clock in the afternoon.  I am giddy with potential.

You see, my husband has taken today off from work, and is out taking photos on Rainier.  And my son is still at daycare.  And my boss let me off early as a reward.  And- this may be the most important part- the cleaning ladies came this morning, but no one has been in the house since.  Well, no one except the animals, and for once in their lives they seems to have decided they don't actually need to besmirch anything at the moment.

What will I do with all this peace?  Cook? Pack for tomorrow's trip?  Finish the movie we started last night?  Simply sprawl out on a clean floor in blissed-out ecstasy?  Honestly that last one sounds the best... but then again, writing without interruptions of any kind also sounds pretty damn good.

And so here we are.

Mermaid Bait

I used to think that, thanks to my early-childhood training, I wasn't particularly susceptible to advertisements (Except for pizza, man: I see it, I want it.  Every time.  Every damn time.) And when we entered the age of Facebook and Targeted Advertising, I laughed and laughed, because they never showed me anything even remotely appealing.

But I guess after eight+ years of gathering data, they've finally begun to figure me out, because I suddenly find myself... curious.  Curious enough to... click.

And damned if that doesn't occasionally work out in my favor!

Now, if you are a woman, you know what a pain in the ovaries it can be to find a decent swimsuit, let alone a good one.  And if you are a woman with large breasts, you know that the pursuit of decent (hurr hurr) swimwear becomes even more complex, especially if you are in the habit of doing anything beyond laying perfectly still on the beach.  Which, obviously, I am (in the habit of doing "beyond").  So when Mi Ola popped up in my newsfeed, promising me a bikini that would be comfortable and stay put, I was highly skeptical.

But I clicked.

And lo- they had tops specifically designed for large-breasted (and small-rib-caged) women!  And the reviews were... promising.  And the suits were... well, damn cute.  The price was a bit ulcer-inducing, but since I've recently made the decision to start ponying up good money for good quality (and they promised free returns) I went ahead and bit the bullet.

I was torn between two fabrics, so I let Nathan choose: he chose wisely.

The suit arrived surprisingly fast, but when I pulled it out of the packaging I had a brief moment of, "Yeah.  Friggin'.  Right," because it didn't look like it was going to be able to handle my ladies.  But I tried it on anyway...

...and pods of lovely sirens began singing Glory In the Highest, because damn if everything didn't stay in place and look damn good while doing it!  The top was cut lower than I would usually prefer, but that's because usually I'm having to tug the damn thing up all the damn time, and need to leave a little room for "error".  This one doesn't seem like it's going to have that problem... but I'll report back once I've actually worn it in the water.  The way the straps work was like a miracle, because it didn't put any pressure on my neck (a huge problem for me, normally).  The bottoms were also comfortably snug- you know how when you put on a pair of something and you can just tell it's not going to ride up?  Yeah.  Plus they do this cute ruching thing that accentuates the booty.  Good stuff, sisters.

(Seriously, this thing is so good I'm probably going to order a second one in the near future.)

So!  Sometimes advertising works the way it's supposed to, and everybody wins!  Good job, Targeted Advertising!  I'm Proud!

Sinister Little Gentleman

I spent most of the day at home doing lame-boring-domestic things.  But I did take some time to figure out how to set up the sun-shade on the carrier, and then took Neeps for a test walk around the neighborhood.

He showed his appreciation by leaning out from under it (to the left) for the entire walk.  Needless to say, my back is now feeling a bit tweaked, since I didn't have a companion to lure him over to the other side.  Babies, man.  No consideration.

Who needs shade when you can blind passers-by with your dome?

Load Up!

Back when we first got the Subaru, we knew that we'd appreciate its spacious interior, should we ever add a third party to the human portion of the family.

What we didn't realize was that the spacious interior wouldn't actually be spacious enough for two adults, one infant, and one 70lb pigbull and all our stuff.  Not for multi-day trips, anyway.  Or, rather, it's spacious, but not comfortable.  Especially for the pigbull, crammed in the cargo area as she is.  And there's no room for us to change a diaper in the shelter of the car.  Or get to anything with anything resembling convenience.

A few weeks back my brother and co came for a visit, and when they pulled up I noticed that their Subaru was sporting a fancy new cargo box (they have one less pigbull, but one extra kid, soooo...)

"That's frigging brilliant!" I yelled, possibly before I even said, "Hello!"

They left, and I started researching.  And then I started prowling for the best deals.  And then, because we have a long trip up to Lara's coming super soon, I decided it was time to eschew deals and just take advantage of my REI dividends (which were, um, embarrassingly high this past year).

So we declared today, "Going into Portland Day" (yes, it's become an Event.  Blame the extreme increase in traffic over the past decade) and then Nathan casually mentioned that Chick-fil-A has branch in Clackamas, not too far from the REI, and our plans were solidified.

 We got a super-nice salesperson to help us out, and since he was normally a rock-climbing guy, he was pretty thrilled that we'd already done all of our research, and only needed help wrangling our box of choice out to/on top of the car.

(Of course, there was a minor debacle with the one we purchased having a key snapped off in the lock... he was mortified, and then extremely grateful by how chill we were about it.  "Some people wouldn't be," he said.  "Yeah, well, some people are jerk faces," I said, wondering who in their right mind would pitch a fit about something like that.  They literally just brought us out a new one, didn't even make us stand in line to "return" it.)

This is the face of a husband who is wondering why the heck I'm taking a photo of him installing a cargo box.  Or possibly he is gauging my size and comparing it to the interior volume.  Hmmm...

There had been conflicting reports on Teh Interwebz as to whether or not the one we wanted would still allow the hatch to open all the way, but it totally does.  Woo!

So we drove off into the noon-day sun, having rendered ourselves even more PNW as frick.  I can't wait to put it to use next week!

Bonus adorable baby photo.

adf

Slow Swinging Sea

Made a little more progress- added just a hint of color to the background, and laid down the basic seal shape:

lurvely