Ink A Bink A Bottle Of Ink

We go together like rama lama lama ka dinga da dinga dong. Together forever like fricks and fracks, Franny and Zooey, In-n-Out, Bill and Ted, Limbaugh and Percocet, ass and Kardashians, Garfield and pizza, Harold and Maude, hippies and patchouli, warm cookies and cold milk, pestles and mortars.

You guys are catching my drift. Presumably.

These are the exceptional godparents to our tiny Sassy Pants. On her 3rd birthday she was gifted a book of temporary "tardoos" and ever since she's been strutting around preschool like the bad ass, inked up, queen bee that she is. 

Now that she's ripened to the age of 4 and a half, my husband and I have decided she needs to start pulling some of her own weight around here. After all, 34 pounds takes a week's worth of pay to feed. 

She has designated chores like feeding the pup, dusting the tables, making her bed, re-roofing the house, re-wiring the dimmer switches, paving the driveway, and tiling the kitchen floors. These things earn her about $5 a week which she immediately tosses into her treasure box for safe keeping. 

Last month she earned enough to buy herself the much sought after Barbie Pearl Princess dress (which rocked high fashion runways around the world) and this month she has her eyes on its matching scooter counterpart. 

Once one gets that taste of success, one often finds it difficult to go back.

Enter- The Traditional Summer Lemonade Stand:

Yeah, no.

If you're going to do a stand, then do something amazing. 

Go big or get outta here.

There are lemonade booths on every corner of every suburb around America as we speak. But my kiddo is a savvy trend setter, a think-outside-the-box entrepreneur, and a fashion icon. She looks other kids in the face and laughs at their mediocrity due to her badassness. She never cries, she eats broken glass for breakfast and she knows how to work the system. 

Look at her game face. 

Stern yet fair, approachable, and totally relevant. 

"Keep your eyes on the prize," she says.

"They won't come to me?" She says. 

"That's fine. I will go to them," she says.

The girl waved down every passing car and eventually had a waiting line down the street. Motorcyclists pulled over, couples came from their houses, kids ran over from the neighborhood park. Our security was breaking up fights, people were bowled over to get to the front, elbows were thrown, punches were bountiful.  It was an anarchy situation behind the red rope. 

She made $14 in 45 minutes. 

"That's enough for now," she says. "Maybe I'll come back out tomorrow when I need cash for that My Little Pony I've been eyeballing."

She's so cool.

Sold!

So we finally did it. 

All the financial struggles, the saving, the searching, the excitement, the disappointment...

It all finally came to a fantastic conclusion. 

We found our house. 

And we spent 10 million years signing paperwork. 

My realtor, Mary, said in all the years she's been doing this as her job, she's never ever had clients bring champagne to a closing. This truly boggles my mind. I mean, who doesn't bring champagne to a closing? It's our first house! This is a big deal! This is cause for celebration and not at all a true sign that we're total alcoholics and any accuse to day drink would be fine with us!

I will give a few words of advice now that we've gone through it and lived to tell the tale:

1: Try to not let the stress get too bad, chill out, and really enjoy this day. Bring champagne, relax, laugh and high five each other when you finish the last signature. 

2: Take a million pictures.

3: Make sure to ask your realtor to bring a "sold" sign when you do your final walkthrough the day of closing. There are 3 days that will go down in my personal history as monumental game changers and they are the day I married Jason, the day my daughter was born, and the day I bought my first house. This is a picture we will always cherish and I'm so thankful we got a snap shot of it. 

And seriously, if I was a neighbor peeping through my mini-blinds to check out what was moving in next door to me, this would be exactly the kind of thing I would want to see. Anyone who moves in a life sized R2D2 on a jogging stroller must be the best new neighbors ever. (In my opinion)

So although our walls are still the creepy grey color of a dead body, we're eating off an Igloo cooler for a dining room table, I can't find the box of coffee cups so I'm drinking out of wine glasses, and the furniture hasn't been delivered so we're sitting on patio chairs... 

We're in!

This is my view for the next few weeks, but at least it's a view of progress and we couldn't be happier about it. 

Thank you for all the well wishes and I'll keep you updated on all the progression!

Homeownership! Whaaaahooooo!

(high five)

The Magnet Mission

The 22 Spanish mission churches of California are very near and dear to my heart. Not because I'm religious or into period architecture or fountain designs or anything like that. Mostly because many years ago, I got drunk and put it on my bucket list to collect a magnet from every one of them. 

Now it's become a personal challenge. 

Plus,

 you know, 

I think they're pretty buildings.

So the previous visit to California we stayed mainly down in Orange County, however this time was predominantly up in LA. It was pretty much a straight shot from my mom's house to the San Fernando Rey De Espana Mission and from there it was only another hour up to the Mission Buenaventura. 

The San Fernando Rey De Espana mission is by far the coolest in pop culture history for a couple of reasons.  For one, it's the burial place of Bob Hope and his family which I had no idea when randomly stumbling on his tomb in the back gardens. (It's also the burial place of Ritchie Valens and Fred from I Love Lucy!)

For two, this mission is where they filmed the scenes from the Alamo in Pee Wee's Big Adventure! Now, we all know how I feel about the Pee Wee movies so this made the two hours in the car the best two hours of the trip. I've officially seen the same Alamo as the same person who rode in a car with Large Marge. My life is pretty much validated at this point. 

Next stop was a quick 45 minute to drive up the 101 to Ventura. Upon pulling into the parking spot, you can see immediately how much smaller and non secluded this second mission was. We put 20 minutes in the parking meter and didn't even use 5 of them. There were homeless people everywhere and the lady working the counter had a unnecessary attitude that made me want to kick her ass. Plus their magnet selection sucked. 

After a pit stop for milk shakes and burgers at my beloved In-N-Out, we headed back down to Long Beach and it was really just a perfect palm tree day hanging out with my mom and my baby girl. 

So I'm on magnet 9 out of 22, not too shabby! Looks like a trip to Northern California is in order to finish up the collection! Anyone want to put me up for a week?

Abalone Cove Tide Pools

Stepping out of the airport and into Los Angeles is like Dorothy opening the door of her tornado tossed house to the colorful world of Oz.
It's a completely different planet.
I hopped into my old pickup, flipped on the radio and the very first thing I hear is a commercial about "treating yourself" to body improvement.

Buy a new boob get the second one for free!
Use the plastic from your Starbucks cup as an implant for your ass!
No lips? No problem! We'll tattoo them on for 20 low monthly payments of $99.99!

It's so different from au natuale hippyville Fort Collins where people are more interested in getting stoned than making themselves look like they're perma-smiled and on Ecstasy.

It had been a minute since my last visit so it took me a bit to readjust to the same things that I never even used to notice.
Like, for example, every single corner has a kid with a surf board in their arms. I forget how prevalent the surfing community is in all the little towns, and although I'm not a surfer, it was refreshing to be reminded for some reason.

Anyway, since I wasn't quite feeling 100% yet, we decided to drive up through San Pedro and go wander around the Abalone Cove tide pools. It's the perfect thing to do if you're on vacation and you feel like shit but you still want to be out in the sunshine and keep your 4 year old busy and entertained.

So,
you know,
if you're ever in that same predicament...

We had an absolute perfect and crisp view of Catalina Island. 

There happened to be a surf contest going on that day, with swells higher than they had been in over 30 years, so there were a ton of people in the water and a ton of people up on the shore cheering them on.

It takes some energy to get up over the rocks, but once you've made it you'll find the hike was completely worth it. Even if you felt like you might lose your lunch and the world is spinning and you have a fever. Still worth the hike.

Our timing probably could have been a bit better had we gotten out of bed early enough to catch low tide, but there were still tons of star fish, crabs, sand dollars and sea anemones for our viewing pleasure. 

We had perfect weather, clear water, and a live sporting event to check out so other than my constant nausea, I really had no complaints. 

All in all, aside from teetering on the edge of fatality from this awful flu, I'd say day two was a success. I had to postpone my trip down to Orange County for fear of passing along my near death experience to my BFF, but we reunited later in the week and all was well in the world. 

The following day we headed over to a couple of missions that I hadn't seen before but more on that later in the week. 

I hope everyone had a happy and safe Saint Patrick's Day!

Rendezvous At Meet Up Point

The thing about blogging is that it takes a lot of effort. And networking. And Time.
While this year has been great for me at The Brighter Writer as far as exposure, sponsors, and luck of the draw, I'm certainly not the world's most professional social media influence. I hear constantly about blogging conferences, seminars, and opportunities but I rarely take advantage of them. I read the advice columns about the importance of consistent writing but I just don't have the time or energy to write as much as I'd sometimes like to.

But I do just fine.

I'm very happy with my little community of readers.

And I thank the people who constantly show up to read what I have to say.

This week I'm trying something different.

It seems as though the pages in which I subscribe are all participating in NaBloPoMo. I can't write every single day for a month. I just can't. And I can't imagine anyone would want to read a post where I was really reaching for a subject. I would think after a few weeks I would just run out of things to write about. Which is why, I suppose, I've been reading all these articles lately from my fellow bloggers along the lines of "100 topics for writer's block" or "50 ideas to get your blog started" or "creative writing jump starts..." You get the idea.

Out of complete curiosity, I read one of these lists and it was totally not my cup of tea. (Idea 27: Write about the last thing that made you cry??? What the hell?!!!)

However one of them took me to the link of a photo challenge. This totally insane woman took a photograph every hour on the waking hour, for an entire year. Partly for her readers who like to see how other people live, and also to just have a journal to look back on some day.

I won't be doing that either.

But I thought it might be fun to try it for a day.

I set my alarm for every hour on the hour, and wherever I am, whatever I'm doing, will be photographed.

So in the words of Pee Wee Herman, "Why don't you take a picture, it'll last longer?"

 6AM: I meet up with this stud, Mr. Coffee, and we fall deeply in love. 

7AM: Everyone in the house is physically awake yet mentally still asleep. It's still quiet enough to get a little work done. Today's essay: The Brotherhood Of The Traveling Unicorn (final draft).

8AM: I listen to my husband sing a nice little homemade song about how much he enjoys food ("♪♫ Oh my God, I love food so muuuuuch, ♪♫ I love the way it tastes in my moooouth and I wish I could just eat all the tiiiiiime...♪♫") and an encore about how today is definitely a hat day while he tries to fix his hair. Kalynn and I eat the breakfast casserole which is freshly out of the oven. 

9AM: I (along with my entourage) listen (and dance around) to our favorite Pandora station while I put on my makeup. 

10AM: We're roaming around Target, checking out the toy section, making a mental note of our list for Santa.

11AM: Kalynn makes the executive decision of being this hour's photographer since she already has possession of my phone.  In true Marie Antoinette form, she instructs me to smile and then cuts off my head. 

12PM: We make our way downtown to the Lincoln Center to buy tickets for Kalynn's performance in the upcoming Nutcracker ballet. The door is open so we pop our heads in and check out where she will grace the stage as the cutest and most talented snowflake that ever lived. 

1PM: With half the day successfully behind us and nap time creeping up fast, we take a few minutes to construct and jump in the world's largest leaf pile just outside our building. 

2PM: It's time for my break. And by break I mean time to fold the laundry, wash the dishes, prepare dinner and pick up the living room. It is also the hour when I become queen of the creeper club and spy on my baby and her cuteness.

3PM: Both of my children are freshly awake with emotions deeply rooted in codependency. Everyone wants soy milk and a snuggle from Mommy and nothing else will substitute. 

4PM: Time to clean out the car. I'm on fruit-bar-wrapper patrol while Kalynn mans the camera. 

5PM: Jason is home! And he brought Happy hour with him!

6PM: Turkey, mashed potatoes with gravy, stuffing, green bean casserole and brown sugar sweet potato pie.

7PM: There are 2 things to remember about the gym: #1 Summer bodies are made in the Winter and #2 no matter how slow you go, you're still lapping everybody on the couch.

8PM: Bedtime for Kalynn. But first, snuggles with Daddy in the book nook.

9PM: Wine and my pup-doo. 

10PM: Goonies never say die!

10PM: Tomorrow night there is a full Moon in Taurus and a meteor shower shining from the constellation Leo. The combination of being a Leo myself and having an influential Taurus in my life, it kind of makes it feel like this particular full moon is my very own. The Universe is apparently on our side right now. 

There you have an average day in the life of Me.  Goodnight!

Notre Dame, The Louvre, and the Place de la Concorde

So, I'm putting my scrapbook together, and I'm going through all the odds and ends that I picked up along the way in Paris.

I've kept every brochure, every ticket, every receipt.

I've kept little leaves I picked up off the ground.

I even kept the french sugar packets off the cafe' tables.

I literally kept every souvenir I could get my tiny little hands on.

I didn't really have enough time to do a travel log while I was there, but I found on the back of one of my receipts some scribbled down notes. They aren't like "today I went to the Louvre.." kind of notes, but instead they're of the "Why do all these beautiful fountains smell like dead fish?" variety. Just a few very unfiltered thoughts about the way I felt about Paris while I was there in the moment. So for whatever reason, I'll share.

*My tour guide just told us about our meeting place for the afternoon and then repeated it in 3 other languages for everyone on the bus. Impressive. Everyone here seems to be bilingual except me.

*This city is clean, CLEAN, CLEAN!! I haven't seen a piece of litter in 3 days.

*I had no idea Paris was divided into quarters. 

* Everyone is very polite here. I wonder where the "Parisians hate Americans" stereotype came from?

*Every single building looks like a castle. Even the public toilets. 

*How can a city smell so sweet like crepes and also like piss at the same time?

*Even the graffiti is gorgeous here. 

*It's true. French people really stink. 

*I wonder why there are virtually no fat people here when all they eat is cream filled pastries. I haven't seen any joggers so...?

And there you have it. Those were my intimate thoughts about the City of Lights.  

My family literally did 5 million things in our 4 days in Paris. Our plane landed at 9am, we dropped our luggage off at the hotel and we hit the ground running. By noon on the first day we had already walked from our hotel, down the Champs-Élysées, to the Grand Palais, to the Petit Palais, to the Pantheon, to half a dozen bridges, and then here to the Louvre. We literally walked for miles with our heads looking up at all the architecture and our jaws open. And I'm so glad we walked and didn't take a cab ride to all the main places we wanted to go otherwise we would have missed all the details along the way.

But anyway, the Louvre! Talk about grand, this place is gigantic!

It was originally built as a fortress by King Phillipe-Auguste to protect Paris from a viking invasion but when that never happened, it was turned into an enormous royal palace. After decades of use through the middle ages, Louis XVI decided he would rather live in the palace of Versailles with his wife Marie Antoinette so they kept all the spare stuff here kind of like a storage garage. In 1793 it was opened to the public as a museum to show off all the royal paintings and sculptures.

The Louvre is the largest museum in the entire world and houses over 1 million pieces of artwork, the most famous being the Mona Lisa. I heard a tour guide saying that if you spent 30 seconds looking at every single piece of art, and you never took a break to eat, sleep or pee, it would take you just over 9 months to see everything.

We didn't go inside, the line was hours long and I didn't want to spend that time waiting to fight with a million other tourists to see the Mona Lisa or the Venus de Milo, so we just hung out in the courtyard for a while.
The Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel was also designed for Napoleon's military victories but in comparison to Arc de Triomphe de l'Étoile, this one only took a couple of years to build instead of 30, and it is only half the size.

The Place du Carrousel is the courtyard just outside the Louvre. It is home to the Roue de Paris which was installed in 2000 for the millennium celebrations. We didn't ride on it but I'm sure the view from the top of the wheel is outstanding.

So, right down the street is the Place de la Concord and it has a seriously creepy vibe to it. It's the largest open public square in the city and it happens to be where the main guillotine was during the French Revolution. The guillotine beheaded over 1,300 people in just one month during the summer of 1794's "reign of terror," with a total of just under 3000 people total being killed there including Marie Antoinette and her husband King Louis XVI. There is an old wives tale that a herd of cattle once refused to cross the square because the smell of blood was so strong.

The tall pointed obelisk in the middle of the square is called Cleopatra's Needle. There are three of them in the world, the other 2 in New York City and London. All three are original ancient Egypt stone monuments but they don't really have anything to do with Queen Cleopatra VII of Egypt.

From there we headed to a little Gothic cathedral called Notre-Dame.

Notre-Dame de Paris, French for Our Lady of Paris, holds some of the most first class pieces of Catholicism history including the Crown of Thorns, one of the Holy Nails, and a piece of the True Cross.  

The detail in the stone is like nothing I've ever seen before. To think about the fact that the ground breaking for this cathedral was in 1163 to be "completed" in 1345 blows my mind.

Obviously, there have been many changes and restoration done throughout the years, but the main structure remains the same. My favorite part of the additions are the gargoyles which are actually functional water spouts used for drainage.  

There was a mass going on while we were there with bleachers set up out front for everyone to sit. There was a large projector screen and a giant camera and boom microphone to broadcast the ceremony to the people outside. It was extremely hectic.

Roman Catholic Saint and French heroine Joan of Arc has a great statue right as you're exiting the church. I think it's great that there are so many fantastic women in French history and that they are celebrated the way they are. 

There it is; our first morning in Paris. I've been trying to blog as much as possible so that I have a reason to go through all my pictures and remember everything I learned. If I don't write it down now, I'll forget all the details. Since The Brighter Writer is kind of a melting pot of my ideas and experiences, all of you have to sit through every vacation I ever go on! Ha!

Seriously, I appreciate all the love lately and thanks for reading! 

Next week, I'll start writing about my trips to the Palace of Versailles and Claude Monet's house.  Have a great weekend everyone!