Productivity is Dead! Long Live Procrastination!

Hello, everyone.

I can never see that opener (Hello, everyone.) without hearing it in the deep smooth voice of Karl Haas from the old radio show on WRR in Dallas, Adventures In Good Music. It takes me back to Tuesday evenings, an old beat-up beige Volvo station wagon, Sonic burgers and driving to piano lessons. How I wish the powers-that-be would release a compilation of his shows on mp3 or cd or something!

In other news, we're packing up the baby and leaving for Canada tomorrow. With a nine hour drive ahead of us, I've borrowed a copy of Anna Karenina (30 cds...oh yeah!) from the library and find myself sitting here in front of the laptop instead of working through the million-and-one things I should be doing before we go.

In other news, I'm super excited to see Niagara Falls. This is a business trip first and foremost, but on the way home we're spending one night in Niagara because we can. To celebrate, I'm going to share with you a piece called The Niagara River from my most favoritest poetess, Kay Ryan:

The Niagara River

As though
the river were
a floor, we position
our table and chairs
upon it, eat, and
have conversation.
As it moves along,
we notice—as
calmly as though
dining room paintings
were being replaced—
the changing scenes
along the shore. We
do know, we do
know this is the
Niagara River, but
it is hard to remember
what that means.

And here's a little link to Ms. Ryan reading it: tadaaa!

In other news, can you believe F is going to be one year old on Thursday? I can't. And I can. All at the same time. Her new tricks are as follows: climbing up the stairs, giving me a heart attack, making funny faces on purpose, pulling up on everything, giving me a heart attack, wanting to touch everything that's pretty, giving me a heart attack, being obsessed with the cats, learning lots of sign language but only really using the sign "cat" on repeat, and pretending to read books on her own.

On the plus side I guess since she's officially weaned, she's only eating me out of house and home instead of house and body...

Still Breathing

To all you busy people in the world, I salute you.

After a relatively peace-filled life, I was suddenly confronted with an Impossible List of things to do a couple months back. I'm more than half-way through them now, and despite my ever-increasing number of white hairs, I'm still alive. Obviously.

So here's the quick skinny*:

1. The trip to Turkey was beautiful and amazing as always. The extra special part was seeing Istanbul for a totally packed three days. It blew my mind. If it weren't for my sister constantly at my shoulder imitating Iago the parrot from Disney's Aladdin, I might have forgotten for a minute that any place else in the world existed.

2. A week after we returned home from Turkey, I hosted a sweet sixteen (!) party for HC. No, she didn't get any shiny new keys or even her own reality tv show, but we did invite about 50 kids over to view a drive-in style movie on the lawn. With fireworks. And a fire pit. No one died, and we discovered just exactly how useful Ulrich is at teenage parties. There's something wet-blanketish about ninety pounds of enthusiastic German Shepherd body slamming you whenever you try to cozy up to your girlfriend under the stars. Apparently, he confuses Splendor in the Grass with WrestleMania.

3. A week after that, baby F and I descended on my old stomping grounds, Wide Awake Wylie, Texas to host a shindig in honor of my brother's nuptials. If you're wondering what is a good plan for such a party, traveling alone with a squirmy infant halfway across the US to arrive with only one day to organize food (which you insist on making yourself) and decorations (for a site you've never seen) in a three bedroom house with eleven people sleeping in it IS NOT A GOOD PLAN. The party, of course (of course!) was adorable and delicious. I met lots of cool people. I slept for fourteen solid hours and still didn't feel recovered.

4. A week later I turned 27! I think. Turns out, I don't really know how old I am. When I was in the hospital for F's birth the nurse asked me my age. Twenty-five, I responded. My Mom nodded. Twenty-six, countered P. I was aghast. I'M TWENTY-FIVE!! I insisted. My Mom agreed with me. Turns out, I was twenty six. The two people in the room who were actually *present* at my birth got it wrong. That's why I pay the bills, because clearly I have superior numberating skillzzz.

5. A week after that, R got married! The wedding was beautiful and fun and it was so inspiring to see a couple so in "wuv, twue wuv" that it was just beaming out of their very hair follicles. The best part though was seeing my extended family and getting to catch up with everyone -

• plane tickets: $200

• drinks on 6th street: $30

• discovering that your sister and your uncle, separated by hundreds of miles, and without knowledge of each other's quirks, each invented *the same* stupid looking dance to embarrass their significant others which involves looking like a jellyfish: PRICELESS.

6. And here I am. My garden is overrun with "volunteer" plants, my basement flooded for the sixth time when we got home, and there's no food in the fridge, but I don't care.

I'm just thrilled that I have ten whole days before I host my next party.

*the "quick skinny" sounds like some new diet secret on HSN. Sorry to disappoint. Unless, of course, you're in the position to work out five times a week, breastfeed a baby and run around so much you sometimes forget to feed yourself. In which case, go for it! You'll look just like me! Except probably not quite so haggard and graying and freakishly tall. Other than that, you'll look just like me.