Trans-Planted Experts

Driving down a quaint French road, we saw the plant--big, bushy, gorgeous lavender. But we weren't quite sure if it was lavender (it had a sort of bushy, sage feel to it)--so, we pulled over to the side of the road and I reached out an innocent arm to take just a snip of evidence. I was quite aware of the numerous bees floating around this yummy bush, full of pollen, but as I was watching the two or three to the side of me, I paid absolutely no attention to what was in front of me and to where I was slamming my big paw into and BAM! I felt it instantly. Pulling out a flower never had quite this level of burning before. When I brought the stem up to my eyes, there was the little, seemingly innocent, creature that had stung me. He was stuck to me. Not with glue, happiness, or obsession. He was stuck to me cuz he had no other choice. I now had his little butt sticker and he probably didn't want to let it go. Heck, I literally had his life in my hands. In my finger! I shook him free (and, yes, i know, to his death) and slowly but surely started freaking out.

I haven't been stung since i was a little kid, maybe five or six? I barely remember it. I know I'm not allergic to bee stings, but what if I'd grown to be allergic? What if I'd gained an allergy in my older age?! There's so many people with so many more allergies these days, the hypochondriac in my brain got the better of me. I was thinking snake bite, the poison slowly sinking into my blood stream with each passing minute. My mom was in the back seat and my sister was behind the wheel,

me: ah! ah! ah! ah! ah! oh man, get it out! gads, its in there! help me get it out please!

mom: um, okay, uh...lemme try and find my glasses. i cant see it in there. are you sure it's his stinger? i think its just a bit of sticker from the bush...

me: no, no, no, its his stinger, i'm sure of it, somebodys got to pull it out and suck out the poison! i cant cuz i'm squeezing my finger to make sure it doesn't flow into my blood stream!,

I turn to my sister,

me: jeezus, it hurts! gads, get it out! please!

sister: oh, um, okay, hang on, hang on...i gotta find my glasses, i can't see it. i know how you're feeling though, cuz this is how i felt the other day when i got stung. did you know i got stung two days ago when i was trying to take a picture of you and mom?

mom: oh yeah, molly, did you know your sister got stung yesterday? oh,no, not yesterday, but a couple days ago when she was up in that window? jeeze, how bad did that hurt Kaari?

me: oh man, you guys, THIS one really, really hurts...

mom: okay! i found my glasses, lemme see, let me see it...


YANK! she pulled it out and the pain just continued. I couldn't beeelieve how much it hurt. Man, did it hurt this much at age six?! Was it poisoning me as we sat here?! Was i going to die?! Was my finger swelling up?! It looked bigger. It definitely looked much bigger, and blue-er. Not good. When would the pain go away?! I'd put so much pressure on it, it was white and flat. Nope, It didn't look good. While I was wondering if I needed to lay down for awhile, I heard...


mom: so, um ...is it lavender?

MOMS day should be every day

Not only did I end up with probably the best mom in the world, but the luck continued when I got a mother-by-marriage that's really incredible to me, as well.

It started with Kick.
Kick is my mom, that's her nickname.  But it's what everyone who meets her today, calls her.  I started to think about all the incredible things I know and love about Kick and how lucky I am to have her as a mom.  And it made me wish I knew her mom better, because she loved her Bernice as much as I love my Kick.
It put me in mind of something my friend, Nancy, wrote about:  I, too, would list my mom as the number one teacher I am thankful for.  She's my best friend and makes me laugh as hard as anyone does.  We can talk til we're blue in the face and barely staying awake, we can hound a topic til it grows whiskers.   She paints and plays tennis and throws dinner parties and holds weekly mahjong sessions and she's the only one that reminds me that though she's a certain older age that remains to be unspoken, she still feels about 17.  Thank goodness she warned me, 'cuz now I know what she means.
And only my mom could give me the best gift I've ever gotten and it didn't cost a thing:  One night across the dinner table, in a room filled with people,  she said, "I feel like Molly is like my sister."  I'll never forget the way my heart soared and our eyes filled to the brim.

I don't know why I got so lucky in the parental department, but I'm awfully glad I did.

Happy Mothers Day, Moms.

Dads, Pops, Fathers

Fathers Day is coming up...and we have some fabulous new cards in our shop that I'm so excited about.  It's so cool to have this online card shop now:  So nice to be able to finally say,
'oh, whats that? you want to know where can you get my cards? well, online, of course!'
instead of, 
'um, well, if you live in (name town I don't have an account in) I'm not sure...um...'  Soooo, there's that!

I really love our mothers day cards, too, and though that 'holiday' has passed, you can still get all our mom's cards in the shop, as well.  The great thing is, the cards are just right for sending to your mom any day of the year.  I've always been a fan of just celebrating the mom, herself, rather than yelling out 'happy mothers day'... I like sending my mom a card any ole day, just cuz she's my mom (or madre, or mutter, or maja), hence the official cry of that national holiday hasn't hit up my cards yet.

But, back to fathers day, which is what we were talking about in the first place... 

I decided to make a little photo studio to work with...

Compared to other photo shoots I've worked on over the years, this one was surprisingly easy going!  The models were a charm to work with.  And we all really believed in the cause, as well.

Don't forget to send YOUR dad a fathers day card this year!  Tell him stuff you don't tell him all year long, you know, the good stuff, the juicy stuff, the how much you love him and how he's influenced your life in all the right ways stuff.  Dads like that kind of stuff!

I'm reading a new (actually, old) Anne Lamott book.  Gads, I love her writing!  Every word, like angel food cake:  not too sweet, feels like a hot day with a cool breeze, you don't want to stop eating it.  
Okay, so metaphors not always my strong point. 
But, she writes and I relate. 

I'm reading Blue Shoe and, while the entire story is fantastic, one paragraph jumped out at me last night.  The little six year old boy, Harry, who has a baby sister named Ella,  is talking with his mom in the kitchen,

"So, will Lee die at the same time as me and Ella?  Or just you?"

"What?"

"Won't you and I die at the exact same time?" he asked in rising panic.

His mom placed food on the table.  "No, honey.  Where did you hear that?"

"From Stefan.  He and his mom are dying at the exact same second."

"No, they're not, darling.  And besides, I'm thirty years older than you.  So you and Ella-- and Stefan -- will probably live much longer."

Harry gaped at her.  He pushed his eggs away.  Then he covered his face with his hands and began to sob, which got Ella started too.  "If I had known that,"  he cried, running back to the window, "I would never have agreed to be born."

I know exactly what Harry means.  I feel the same way.

It's my Pop's birthday today and he's got everything one could possibly want.  But, if I could give him one thing it would be a "live forever" card with a  "+1"  for mom. 
Happy Birthday Dad.

Happy Mothers Day!

A big humongous shout out of love and appreciation to all the moms world 'round, all my mom friends, and especially to mom, kaari, lisa, mara, monique, nina, juliet, nana, lois, and to megan's mom and suzanne's mom, two fantabulous women who are no longer on this earth, but still watch over us daily, i just know it.

You CAN go home again, my mom says so!

I'm just back from a week in LA. I go to LA to hang with family. It's really hard to capture in words how much I revere my family (i've started this post, in my head, on paper, and scratched it out and started again...i want to do it justice).
This was an especially groovy time 'cuz it was Camp G&G: That stands for Camp Gramma and Grampa. My nieces stay at Camp G&G for two weeks. On their own. It's pretty big--on all counts.
So I got to hang with siblings and spouses, mom and dad and nieces. And my Uncle P. He's like this wonderful sage and I love thinking about how he's my mom's brother-- like the way I have these brothers--and they're good friends and their choice of time spent is time spent together.

Whenever my family is around each other, we get melancholy, we know it's gonna have to have an end. Someone will have to get back in their car, or get on a plane...it all amounts to the same thing: leaving each other.


One of the greatest things that went down while I was there: My brother J. built our nieces an amazing fort.

Uncle J. (my brother, as he is to the nieces) brought home tons of cardboard boxes one day and announced, "these are to build a fort!" And a fort was built.

It had separate entrance and exitways, windows cut at the requested height for each niece, and a multitude of items velcroed to the walls (sofia's room had a pack of cards--cuz, it's true, you never know when you might wanna break into a game of old maid or gin-again. And, we did, actually, two or three times) Did I mention how much time we spent hanging out in there? Yes, all of us, at one time or another, got down on all fours and crawled into the cardboard comfort that only a fort can bring. I think it's why my mom agreed to get on in there and play SkipBo with us. Uncle J. had made it so there was so much room, and so much head room, that four of us could get in there at a time. One day SkipBo, the next a nap. Syra decided she'd better keep a schedule of comings and goings. She likes to run a tight ship! So, one pleasant evening I strolled out there with my glass of wine to see whats doing in the fort and that's when I got talked into making a future date at the fort.

"What do you want to come the fort for?" Um, drinks
"And what time did you want to come by?" Um, 6:00pm
"Name?" Molly
"And, finally, who are you bringing with you? You're allowed to bring people." Um, everybody?


During the early mornings, when the sun was just warming up the cardboard, that's when I liked it best. Although, the night both girls decided to sleep outside in the fort (simple but comfortable "beds" were set up in the fort--and the "floors" were carpeted. Uncle J, he's a good finder!), I read them a book until they fell asleep. I turned off the flashlight and listened to them both breathing. It was a really warm night, the doors to the house were open, and I listened to my parents and brother and Uncle P. talking around the kitchen table. Just barely. And I took my time leaving the fort that night. I breathed in the cardboard and I closed my eyes and imagined I was little again...and my parents were young bucks and we're all back before life seemed so complicated and yet so simple it was crazy.


So, while life seems to be passing by like a speeding car, it's good to be able to experience not only the company of kids, but to grab the opportunity to experience being the kid again. But, this time, with all the nostalgia and all the beauty that it holds experiencing it with three generations of family.

Like My Mother Before Me

I am my mothers daughter.
Just as she is her mothers daughter before me.
ie:  We are all our mothers!

Now, I know many would disagree and tell me, 'i'm nothing like my mother!'  But I would ask that you take a closer look.  When you make a certain movement, did you learn it from her?  When you say a certain phrase, do you say it like she did?  Do you press your garlic the way you saw your mom do it?  For me, in all these ways, the answer is yes.

One of my favorite things learned from my mother, learned from her mother before her, is the sending on of newspaper clippings.  These clippings derive mostly from the local paper, but sometimes it's a magazine article, or a great ad seen in a flyer.  And not very often, but every once in awhile, it's someone we know from the wedding or the obits page.  My mom always laughs and says she can't believe she's sending the articles on to me, but her mom did it to her and now I do it to others, as well.

Today's clippings in the mail ran the gamut:  One was on book making (my latest and one of my greatest phases, for sure) with a note at the top 'so sorry about the spills on this- it was next to the stove', while another was an editor's letter with a photo that clearly looked like me and my mother's handwritten note said, 'oj said "who do you think this looks like?"'  OJ is my brother.  It's a nickname he earned when the grand kids were little and they couldn't say John and said uge-J instead, which morphed into OJ.  He's a trusted right hand man at the kitchen table in our house, scouring the LA Times with an eye like no-one else.  So, of course he'd see me in a photo that isn't really me.  And then, the third clipping, I knew it was coming one of these days... a quick jot from my mom that ended in two exclamation points:  More reason for you to move South!! It was an article about the naked dudes in SF.  Not just any naked guys, but more and more naked guys in this wacky city.  And they're not just walking around naked, but sitting down on the same seats you and I sit on.  So, a city ordinance is being talked about here and hopefully is put in place before my mother comes to visit!

Bon Voyage!

One week from today, I'll be on a plane heading to meet my mom, my sister, and mogull for our annual French General Chateau Getaway.  I know it doesn't sound like it, but it's actually a job.  Sure, there's amazing juiciness to be found in every day we're there.  Really, how can it be otherwise? We're in the South of France, glimpsing a life so far removed from the ones most of live every day... well, there's going to be magic found at almost every turn if your eyes are open.

And while much of it is returning to places we've been before, or visiting artists we've visited before, for the 60 or so women that are coming along with us this year, it's all brand new.  That's where some of the real fun comes in... It's such a treat to see, some women who've never left the U.S. before, some who've only been to the city of Paris, some who've only heard about the life in France, all coming together and experiencing a live farmers market, or a tiny apartment of a weaver who's entire half of her house is taken up by a 15 foot loom, or eating lunch atop a medieval village while gazing over lavender fields.

And then there are the moments that we laugh til we're crying, or we discover we had a talent for something we didn't know was possible (we do a lot of fabulous craft classes out in the studio at the chateau), or I'm strolling the streets with my mom when she finds the perfect *thing* she loves and must have (most likely vintage linens of some kind, it's an addiction) and we squeal with happiness and make our way back through the little village we've lost ourselves in.

We meet so many incredible women from all over the world who join us for one solid week of a life-changing event.  Every year I have to pinch myself that this is my "summer job".  It's a ton of work, but the rewards are many.

I don't know many people who get to travel to Europe and even work with their family, especially their mom, but this summer we actually have two guest artists that get to do just that:  Debbie & Shea Fragoso of A Guilded Life and Wendy & Monica Addison, from Theatre of Dreams.  Mother and daughter teams, creatives, and super fun women.  We also have the artist Charlotte Lyons coming for one of the weeks, as well.  All these women, besides being incredibly talented and very funny, share very similar obsessions with me: vintage ephemera, fabric, and the juicy dig!

Mother, may I?

one of my favorite little first graders, margot,  just told me,

if i could pick any mom in the whole world, i would pick you, miss molly

well, i said to her, YOUR mom is really, really pretty great...

 oh, well, she could be an aunt, she replied....


I always figured I'd have a lot of kids. Five, actually.  I think the number 5 stuck with me because I have four brothers and sisters and being one of five is one of the best parts of my life.  I've always been happiest when I'm with my family. At a party, I feel stronger with my sisters and brothers there. I'm proud to walk into a gathering with this crew. I'm proud of how my siblings make people feel alive. I think, in a very large part, we owe it to our two awesome parents. I'm one of those people that thinks alot of what we are, both good and bad, we owe to the people who raised us.

From the moment I met RK I thought 'damn, we'd make good parents. we'd make those kind of parents other kids wanted as their parents. those all-around parents that are just being themselves cuz they like each other so much and they're digging on you being your own person and they still like going to beastie boys concerts at the hollywood bowl and they're cool but have good boundaries that i won't totally appreciate until waaaaaay later....'. You know, I went there. I've always wanted to carry and raise a bunch of little kids.

So, it seems inevitable that I envisioned living out this life with my husband and this large brood doing all the fabulous things my family did. We'd go camping and canoeing A LOT. We'd stop at every river along the road and look for fools gold. On the way home from a long day at the beach, we'd do chinese-fire-drills at every stoplight.  We'd hike into canyons and climb trees and go skiing in the winter.  We'd throw crazy parties & wear costumes for any occasion: valentines day, st patricks day, halloween.  I'd make my mom's infamous sugar cookies stamped in the current holiday shape.  We'd own a VW van.

As fate would have it, I don't think we'll be birthing our own.  And, other than family, friends and first graders, I don't know that we'll ever have kids in our day to day lives.  It's a little strange to accept.  And, as it turned out, it was a loooooooong, strange acceptance.  But acceptance it seems to be.

Though sometimes I don't know if comments like margot's keep me sane or quietly break my heart.

A life unknown until now

My mom and I sat at the kitchen table and, with a fine tooth comb, went thru each and every page of Mrs. H's photo book. Her life, or a large part of it, was hand-collaged with scotch tape in all directions, on each and every page. A life that included at least 30 letters from her daughter, Cheryl. A life that produced a husband (who became an ex), two children, Cheryl and Ronnie, and a bounty of other relatives. A life, that, at the point of her death, and the estate sale that followed, no one was there to pick up and carry on with. No one would be repeating the story of the time Ronnie dressed in that funny straw hat and strummed on that big guitar, maybe pretending to be Elvis. No one would be sharing the memories of the time they all traveled to meet at Rocky Motel and spent that crazy night in that wild town.
To some, it may sound like a sad tale, but I don't see it that way. Or, at least, I never had before. My mom and I, my sister and I, my mom, sister, and whatever other members of my family happen to be nearby--have done this before. We've bought an album, a shoebox, a ziplock baggie filled with photos, letters, divorce papers, birth records, and numerous other documents of someones life and bit by bit, pieced it all together. We pour over the photos, we read the letters out loud to one another, we search the documents for clues. Without knowing one of these souls, after hours and sometimes days of this digging, calling in friends and strangers alike to comment on our findings, we can tell you who's who, who married who, who divorced who, where they went, what they did, how they lived.... it's a bit of an art, really. It's years of practice that has brought us here. A keen sense of observation, a dire curiosity of others, and the ability to fill out a person's story with very little detail known. We love this.

This time, though, it got me thinking. About Mrs. H., Cheryl and Ronnie and how there was no one left to pick up the pieces. In fact, this time, it almost made me sad.


a thank you to: all photos borrowed from one of my very favorite sites.

sixth thought

I was recently tagged by a cool little blog I'd never heard of before...man, I love this internet thingie, it really makes the world a smaller place!
Brinja, said blog writer, is a shop owner in Copenhagen (where I have always wanted to visit)! She tagged me with a job to do. It went along the lines of writing about the 'sixth picture in the sixth picture folder' way... but, I don't keep picture folders, so I had to improvise. I went to my iphoto, um, 'area' and clicked on the sixth 'event' category and then clicked on the sixth photo in that section. And, this is what I got:Funny for two reasons. The photo that Brinja, my tagger, posted was also a portrait of herself. The other reason is that I use this photo everyday: it's my 'blogger' profile photo.

This is a detail of a painting my brother John did. {My brother is a ridiculously fantastic painter who I've wanted to highlight for ages. And this probably sets that idea in motion, finally.} The complete image has my sister, Lisa, and me in the back seat of a car. It was painted from a photograph my mom took (or maybe my other sister took?) on the weekend that just the girls came to visit SF. It was an awesome weekend, my mom, two sisters and me (RK popping up occasionally to see if he could get us anything...). We did the junk shops, fabric stores, and general eating til we were full. My mom brought a box of old photos she'd bought at an estate sale and we spent countless hours trolling through them under the dim, warm lights in the apartment, putting together full life stories for this person. A classic weekend all around.

This photo reminds me, I need another girls weekend.

don't go

Somedays I think I should just move back home. I'm missing my mom and dad's life. Everyday that goes by is another day I'm not seeing them or laughing with them in person. And when a (un)certain time has passed and they have passed, I don't know what I'll do without them.

I've got hours and hours of phone messages recorded, over various years of life, with mom and dad using the answering machine to it's un-dreampt-of power: regaling me with stories, as if they were actually talking to me. They'll start to say, "oh, you're not there...well, give us a call! Oh, wait, I forgot to tell you..." and away we go! Sometimes it's five, ten minutes of one-sided conversation. I'm thrilled! And, I wonder sometimes, will I listen to these incessantly in the coming years? Or will they be tucked away, too difficult to hear?

My Uncle Jack used to tape a lot of things: jokes, his banjo playing, songs from records, and phone conversations. There's one conversation in particular,about a picnic, that all of us have listened to over and over and now refer to as an inside joke pretty regularly. Today, I'm so glad we can hear my Uncle Jack and my grandparents voice debate and laugh and giggle and talk and talk and talk..., as they've all gone on to another place -- but how hard is that for their sister, their daughter: my mom?

Whenever I meet someone much older than me that still has their parents, I think to myself, 'yes! there's the testament! it CAN happen... we CAN all grow old together...' but at some point, I know, we've all got to go. I've always, always hoped it was me first.

So, I recently made this card and when I showed it to RK, he said, 'ooops! i think somethings missing...' But no image seemed appropriate. So, I told him he was wrong.



What I was really thinking was, much to my chagrin, someday, he'll be right.

Where there's smoke...

So, this past week, I was thrilled to read David Sedaris' editorial all about the perils and wonders of smoking. I was laughing out loud with every sentence he wrote. And it put me in my own contemplative mood about smoking and the role it's taken in my life.

Every once in awhile, usually as the recent news announces another country introducing the smoking ban, someone asks me if I was ever a smoker. I usually answer 'nope'. But that doesn't account for the number of times I tried to be. I am not not a smoker because of health reasons or good manners or the lack of smokers around me in life. No, not at all. I am not a smoker because, as much as I love cigs, the darn things don't like me back. Not one little bit. Not even for a temporary toke. It's as if cigarettes decided they wouldn't hang out with me. Not the other way around.

It wasn't that I grew up craving them or determined to smoke the first pack I could get my hands on. In fact, I suppose I could have tried smoking as a young kid. For years, my mom had a pack she kept hidden in the freezer. It was tucked waaaay in the back, under some iced-over thing in a baggie that surely none of us kids would get into. I can barely remember what she looked like, smoking, it was so infrequent and really only in "emergencies" like a big 4th of July party at our house, or my godparents were visiting. I do remember thinking it was cool, even then, for my mom to have something that was sort of a secret. But a secret out in the open. Not to mention, I thought it made her look cool beyond belief. Besides, those were the days when everyone smoked anywhere. Even a number of years later, I took a flight from Portugal to England and was asked if I'd like the smoking or non-smoking section. I chose non-smoking because I thought, 'why take up a seat from someone who really needs to light up?' Turns out, the non-smoking section were rows 1-20 and the smoking section started at row 21. So, while I technically could not light up my own cigarette (which I didn't have anyway*) I could gladly 'smoke' my fellow passengers generous fumes. But, I wasn't upset, I really liked the smell.
*{Another thing I never did was buy my 'own pack'. I did it for others, gladly: I'd take their five-bucks --or, in the good ole days, their quarter, to buy just one!-- and march into the corner store and say, real cool-like, 'yeah. hey, can i get a pack of american spirit/salem/marlboros?'}

I had that same feeling when my sister started smoking. 'How cool is that,' I thought. My big sister, with the cool dyed hair, living in New York City, in love, living in a wacky apartment, of course she smokes! That's what really fabulous people do! It's not a dirty habit, it's a way of life. Case in point: smoke breaks (you don't get to 'break' from your job every fifteen minutes with any other vice, do you? but smoking, it's acceptable, it's intense, everyone recognizes that, you get taken more seriously, it requires focus--you can be in a rush to get somewhere and frantic and decide to make a full stop to light your cigarette before you take one more step! and it's forgiven!)

I would talk on the phone with my sister and hear the lighter snap and then the intake of her breath in between answering all the questions I had about her exciting life. And even though I knew, I always asked, coyly, "are you smoking?" Like my mother, she was a very specific smoker, very civilized. Never before 5 o' clock and never without a glass of wine.

When I, too, finally got old enough to leave home and lead an exciting life, I moved to the UK and one of my best friends was a huge smoker! And he hated smoking alone. So, I jumped in whenever he needed me...and always felt desperately sick afterwards. Eventually he just let me hold a lit cigarette, waving it around as if it were my talking stick, while we had a pint and he smoked wildly.

Many years later, still a non-smoker, on a visit home one summer, my sister and I sat on the deck to talk about life into the night. She lit up a smoke and I said, "oh heck, give me one of those!" And we lit up one cigarette after another until we both noticed I wasn't making a lot of sense any more. I stood up and thought I wouldn't be able to walk straight. When I did finally get inside, I told my mom I didn't feel very good and she took one look at me and said, "You're GREEN!" I was. I'd done it to myself (maybe even subconsciously?); smoked enough cigarettes in one sitting to never long for another cigarette in my life.**


**Times have changed! Now, no one in my family smokes and I think I only have one friend that is still buying his own packs.


***I must make a disclaimer here, if there are any young, impressionable people (kids) out there reading this: I'm not pushing you to smoke. I am aware of all the dangers and the terrible things smoking does to you, of course, but that's never reduced the fact that I still look on it, longingly, as something more than a habit. Smokers tell me I'm crazy and that I'm just having a classic case of wanting something you can't have. Could be true.



****again, great thanks to this fabulous vintage photo site for the photos.

It's been a week of some weird and some wonderful.
Strange things have crossed my path lately and I've found that this is what holds my interest.
Strange and Weird and sometimes Wonderful.  I love those things.

When these pictures were first emailed to me, they were attached to the cutest, albeit sad, little story about a mother piggie who passed on after giving birth to these babies and a tiger mom who lost her little kids, too, was depressed and needed to bond.

I fell in love with the the total implausibility of it all!
It seemed so incredible:   They wrapped these little piglets in tiger skins and presented them to the Tiger mom as her own.  And she took to them.  She didn't want to eat them, but to love them.  Too beautiful to be true!  But, here was picture proof!

Well, turns out, it was too good to be true.
The photos are real, but the story is not exactly.

As it happens, this sort of intermingling of species is not at all unusual at the Sriracha Tiger Zoo, where "creating successful relationships with animals of different species" is something of a guiding principle. The facility, more accurately described as part zoo and part circus, boasts offbeat attractions like basketball-playing elephants, "lady crocodile wrestlers," and a petting zoo where customers can bottle-feed baby tigers with their own bare hands. Visitors have reported seeing tigers, pigs, and dogs all housed together within the same enclosure, with sows nursing tiger cubs and tigresses nursing piglets "adorned in tiger-print costumes."
The costumes are strictly for show, by the way. The mother tiger pictured above, who has been photographed on other occasions suckling piglets au naturel, was herself nursed by a pig in infancy and apparently regards the other species as family, not prey.

Ah well, it's still a beautiful thought.

This Is All About The Shout Outs

Amazing few weeks around here:  The Love & Snark show was a big hit and I don't have one photo to show for it!  Too much meeting and greeting to stop and snap.  Super good time that I can't wait to repeat in the next gallery or shop I come across.  As always, I couldn't do any of it without all the fantastic peeps that come out to party and support.

Before that big night was The Art of Craft weekend held at my sister's shop, French General.  Teaching the Curiosity Box class was a thrill.  30 fantastically creative women sat and crafted to their heart's content, coming out with some amazing ideas.

I've not taken many classes myself, but am so totally impressed by the gusto of these women who do sign up with pure joy of the unknown, go into the project with a real sense of adventure and friendship, and come out the other side with something really personal, really beautiful. 
Thanks to each and every one of you.

And, finally, with all this creative spirit whirling around, my mom went and opened herself an Etsy shop!  Kick is a Francophile thru and thru and she's gotta find a way to support the habit, this just seemed like the perfect outlet.  She even made an announcement on her Book Of Faces page!  If I write Kick's age here, she'll kill me, but let's just say, the pride I feel for my own mom stepping up to 2011 is beyond measure.  A real shout out for Kick!

Stalk much lately?

Does it make you a stalker when you randomly come across someone's blog and leave more than ten comments in ten minutes?

I'd like to say "in my defense..." but that always makes you sound even more stalker-y. But, in my defense, the blog cracks me up, his mom stories make me think of my mom stories and, last but not least, it reminds me of my stand-up days and life in NYC...so, at least it's a positive-based stalk, right?

Polly

We have an old family friend that we used to giggle about, and with, because she would cry at the drop of a hat. We'd all be sitting around the kitchen table and could be talking about the most innocuous thing when tears would start to fill up in her eyes. Oh, she'd laugh while big drops were streaming down her cheeks.

I can remember when my oldest sister started in with the same uncontrollable tear ducts. "Ohmy," we'd be laughing, "you're just like Polly!" Not many years later, my other sister would have tear-filled-eyes in an instant. And, finally, me. I cry at commercials or when I hear beautiful music. I cry when I think about how much I love RK. Or when I'm with my whole family and we're all laughing so hard together, it quickly turns to tears of joy. Some of my most common cries these days can start when one of the kids at school says something really, beautifully adorable. A real water-works show for me was at an after-school performance this year: As the kids began to sing a familiar song, I started to quietly weep and my first graders were in shock. They stared at me in wonder.
"Miss Molly, Miss Molly, what's wrong? Are you okay?"
"I don't know", I whispered to them, "I guess this song just always makes me cry."
Q., who was sitting on my lap at the time, turned around to look behind me, "Well, it can't be that the song is sad," he said to me, "I just looked back at my mom and SHE'S not crying!"

Polly's daughters, D. and K. are the same exact way. There have been times when we've all been together, my mom, both my sisters, our two friends and Polly, and if you walked in the room while we were deep in topic, you might think someone had just died. But, no. We were probably just talking about a good old memory...that made us cry like babies.

When I watched this video for the first time on Paige's site, I bawled. And at the end of this good cry, I laughed to myself, thinking, "ohmy, i'm still just like Polly!"

But for the Rain,

This coming Saturday, Kick (a.k.a. my mom) is participating in an open air market in Summerland, near Santa Barbara.

Kick's the queen of textiles.  She never misses a good deal and has been collecting for years.  Our annual trip to France is no exception.  She spies them from far away, sidles on up, does a 'hem and a haw' routine she's worked out with myself and my sister and darn it all if she doesn't walk away with some of the prettiest linens you've ever seen.  There's a tiny sample of goods on her Flickr site, just to whet the appetite. 


Kick at the woad forest, shrugging her shoulders at a field of blue. What else can we dye?


Kick and myself looking for the linens....


Kick sorts the linens in France.

No matter what she finds or where she finds it, the linens always come out looking like new.  I wore Kick's wedding dress on my big day, but before I did, we had to pull it out of a box that had been in the attic for 30 years.  Besides removing the sleeves and making some room in the busty area, mom knew it had to be cleaned.  We were bemoaning the fact that we were quoted around $300 to clean it.  To a woman who grew up on a farm, that seemed crazy!  Instead, Kick soaked the whole thing in the bathtub in her secret ingredient, laid it out on the grass for the chloroform, and dried it by the light of the moon.  It was the most beautiful site I'd ever seen...  She's magic like that.

Wednesdays are Jack

I grew up baby sitting as a pretty regular job. Grown adults, with confidence, left me, a mere child, in charge of their own children and then gave me money at the end of it all. I have funny, sad, and scary memories of those years--and not a dime to show for it (in my day, the going rate was about $3.00/an hour and that was more than my sisters got just a few years before). Of course, the money wasn't the reason for doing it; the driving force was being around babies. I took care of kids of all ages, but it was the babies that kept me in the game. As I got older, and a little bit smarter, I realized taking care of other people's kids isn't that much fun. As an equal adult, who's being treated as anything but equal, you start to see the cracks and fissures in the entire gig, and realize you should wrap this up ASAP (which you'd like to be 9pm, when they say they're coming home...but you know it won't actually be til 11pm).

Luckily, for me, a very good friend of mine is giving me the chance to re-invent the world of child-care one day a week. Turns out, it's a totally different situation when the following things are in place:
1. the child's mother is one of your best friends, and she's one of the more easy going people you know
2. you're a wanna-be mom, yourself, and of legal baby-making age
3. the child is Jack, the most beautiful little 4 month old I currently knowI spent all day on Wednesday with him and feel like my life has been changed (not to mention my arm, chest and back muscles which have been worked into a frenzy--i've never been so happily sore!). He's funny and smiley and loves having his diapers changed (i swear!). Every Wednesday,thru the summer, Jack and I will be making our rounds of the Sunset District of San Francisco: Hop on the N Judah, arrive at Arizmendi Bakery, eat a little fresh pizza (well, just me really, Jack is sleeping like a baby against my chest at this point), have a little decaf, and then cruise to the park, where we frolic for awhile in the shade of the big trees and I make up stories about ladybugs and birds and the mini parties they have in the tall blades of grass.
By the time my friend, Jack's mom, gets home, I've shed tears of happiness, I'm exhausted and I thank her over and over again for entrusting me with the magic that is Jack.

What kind of fairy are you?

It occurred to me that I've believed in fairies my whole life. I hate to admit it. Fairies have a bit of silly reputation. But when you see it again through a six-year-olds-eyes, well, it's made me re-think my "history" with fairies.

I grew up with godparents who always referred to themselves as my fairy godparents. For many years, in my youthful innocence, I had an image of my godmother flying with a magic wand like that one from Disney's Cinderella. Then, when I was about four or five, I was in a little red schoolhouse where my friend, D's mom, worked when (i'll swear on anything) I saw a leprechaun, a real leprechaun, sitting up in the corner of the room by the celing. To this day, I repeat that story because I know it happened and I just can't believe it happened, at the same time. Then there's the one about the butterfly that followed me while I went bike riding down a long Neenah, Wisconsin road. And I was convinced that butterfly was my mom's sister, Betty, who'd passed away. We were having a family picnic that day at the house they all grew up in.

The Case of the Cottingley Fairies

So, bringing it to the present day: About three months ago now, one of the kids at school, brought in about six different ziplock baggies for morning share. Inside each baggie was a little smattering of glitter. She wanted us all to see her collection of fairy dust. One of the boys said they didn't know that fairies were real...and our fairy expert yelled back, "Oh, they're real! They're real! I know it! They visit me!" Well, this bold statement would not go overlooked! So, over the next week, the fairy letters started pouring in. Our little fairy-factoid-giver shared with us all how she left little houses in the garden for the fairies, and food treats, and maybe a a strange object (as some sort of sacrifice? testing what it is fairies really like?... as it turns out, these random objects left for the fairies become a great focus for the kids, always aiming to make the fairies happy: maybe we should leave them a rose petal? oh my gosh! Fairies like seaweed! We left some for them and they left us a note!...but I'm jumping ahead of myself here...). Then, the next morning, or a few days later, she would check back in the very spot she left something out for the fairy and there would be a note! Or, a little flower! Or, some fairy dust!

This rock-solid confirmation that fairies were real was like setting a fire in a dry forest. The girls, and a couple of the boys, in our first grade class are now consumed with fairy visits. They've constructed elaborate houses out of cardboard boxes and left them the random objects I mentioned above, and notes upon notes upon notes. Wanting to keep this belief alive, my co-teacher, PS, and I have taken on the job of being the responding fairies at school. They all still have home fairies, which are different than the ones that visit us at school. Recently, a few of them left notes hidden in their houses. I had told PS that I would get the notes and respond (she had done it the last time, and me, the time before that...it's gonna be a turn-taking thing).

In the morning, I get there extra early to sneak in with the notes from the fairies and hide them in their spots, with a little extra glitter sprinkled in and maybe a little sparkly tied ribbon... When they get there, they run to the houses and find the notes. Pulling them out, asking us what they say, we've got to pretend we're reading them for the first time. I usually stumble on a word or two or ask them what their original note said to the fairy. Watching them jump up and down and get all excited, it makes me think, 'why couldn't there be fairies everywhere?'

And then you've got your modern day, grown-up version fairies, as in "wow! it's like the fairies came and visited me!" That's what you might say if one day, out of the blue, a box arrived in the mail and inside were three homemade goodies from the garden master herself!
One of the very best jars contained sun dried tomatoes. Probably one of my favorite foods. I've eaten them for longer than I can remember and I've never had them like this. Originally, I had thought I would fill the jar with olive oil and herbs and eat them they way I knew how. I'm SO glad I didn't! Their freshness and sweetness is so intense, it's like they're right off the vine. Every bit of flavor you could attribute to a fresh tomato is in these little bits.
So, yes, I feel like the fairies have visited me once again.