good morning cali-effin-fornia (and beyond!)

gasp... do i really live in Los Angeles?? whenever i see those live feed thingies they say at the top 'los angeles arrived here 1 minute ago' - every single time. do they mean me?? or is someone in los angeles following me around?? hmmmm curioser and curioser - i thought i was a housewife of OC???

i need to stop my kids from saying 'lookit'. it's 'look at it' - three words, not one. the can o' rice was a pro, lookit is a con.

it's date night tonight - we are celebrating the anniversary a-g-a-i-n at ruths chris :) no whammies, pleeease, no whammies! no female waitstaff either, especially not pamela! they all have something about them that irks me - either making googly-eyes at my husband and forgetting to refill MY drink or acting like overbearing mothers telling me i should clear my plate when i am saving a creme brulee sized space for dessert :| i only like the men, it's pathetic but true :) but NOT in kelly owl-woman kind of way of course.

i am shocked that Ricky Gervais went to the white house in pyjamas.... whhhat was he thinking?? i admit... i wore jeans but:
a) it was COLD
b) i was NOT meeting Obama
c) jeans do not even equal pyjamas!

must go. carpool lane awaits

scenes from a beach house

teaching them how to play dominoes

and cards

meet Lola and Michelle :)


the cat from next door, O.G. - we borrowed him :)

always collecting (this time black pebbles)

on the beach at 7am in pjs








we stood for minutes on end waiting for these dolphins to jump out of the water like they had been when we didn't have a camera ready. everytime we put the camera away, they did it again... this was the best we could do :)

a-n-o-t-h-e-r day in paradise

i went to target this morning for absolutely nothing at all and spent a LOT on absolutely nothing at all. i did get a can of RICE. a can of RICE :) how totally cool is that?! we had it for dinner with a fancy enchilada pie thingie that Aaron made (mm-mmm!) and it was so interesting in texture and taste :) a can of rice! that equals no more boiling rice til it sticks to the pan and forms a round brick! this is why i LOVE America!!

i have a model making migraine. having completed a scale model of John Wayne Airport, then Newark Airport, i am making the grand-daddy of them all - Atlanta Airport!! complete with sky tram, dozens of starbucks and every airline that Hartsfield-Jackson proudly services. i bet jon&kateplushate doesn't build freaking airports... (too busy making out with that bodyguard she needs to keep women wildly jealous of her hair at arm's length ;)

best picture ever. bar none :)

off to finish that model and return with pics..............

wednesday

oh please... whichever little toy in my house is talking nonstop... please, i beg of you - stop!! i am 50 minutes into "real housewives of NYC: the reunion" and i cannot possibly be distracted right now! the countess of class who i can't remember the name of, is accusing Kelly (owl-art-thief) of having no girlfriends (she sooooo doesn't) who is accusing Bethanny (skinny-nasaly-cook) of not being a REAL housewife whatsoever because she is NOT even the ambassador for wool (??) and it is an all-out catfight, which is almost impossible to keep track of. but ohhh how i am using that little 'go back' button nonstop so as not to miss a peep! so please, little people inside rocket - SHUT UP!!!!!!!!!!

i do feel horribly sorry for Simon though... i wish people wouldn't be so mean about him. there should be a rule about picking on people like Simon, it's just plain wrong to do so :)

oh great. now Oprah is on telling us what we can live without :| seriously. this is the woman who has gold plated shoes and a poop butler for each of her dogs... talk to the freaking hand, Oprah!

speaking of dogs... today i walked our dogs :| worst.walk.ever!!!! i NEVER walk the dogs for good reason - it is a total pain in the ass but i did feel terribly sorry for their big, sad, droopy eyes today so off we set. half way up the trail, Blackjack started to do his spinning poop dance. gasp - i had NOT A SINGLE bag on board!! i went hot and cold and hot again with panic - what on earth was i going to do??! not even a cellphone to summon help! i could not possibly leave the poop! so i ran to a trashcan and pulled out..... a USED poop bag - ewwwwww!!!! yes, it was gross but it HAD to be done!

got to school - the principal is totally anti-dog and doesn't allow the beasts on campus, not even off campus! she marches over in her fancy burberry boots to tell me off and i fear her! i really do! so i had to hide behind the school buses with the dogs lying in the bushes... when who should come through the bushes but a woman with a cart FULL of animals - possums! snakes!! rats!!! little foxes!!! total mayhem ensued - so much for being inconspicuous :|

got home so exhausted from all the stress that i became completely entangled in their leashes and halti collars and vowed NEVER AGAIN will i walk those pesky pups and especially not in the midday sun. but i did have a brainwave at that moment... maybe if i had a fringe or ahem "bangs", i would be able to see where i was going and would be able to untangle the leashes without major stress and bodily injury? i am 75% sure i need a fringe.... but 25% on the fence. i will sleep on it....

off to shower, look at my hair for a while and go to bed early. it's been a busy day

what do you think my chances are......

of getting 30 minutes of uninterrupted, no questions or requests time to myself???? as an eternal pessimist, i expect they are slim to none, but the enternal optimist in me figures Danny has already eaten lunch and had a piece of chocolate.... peed and pooped.... has all his favorite toys in his room... has on a dinosaur movie he hasn't seen in forever... is wearing no scratchy clothing... has no owies that need kissing... has his 3 favorite blankets... and is really really tired... so it's looking good... right? urgh, i hear the door opening - save me from "the room"!!!!!!

today has been nonstop and i really need it to stop for at least 30 minutes! so far i have:

• got the kids up at 5am so they could indeed drive with Grandma to the airport, when leaving them fast asleep in bed was a much sounder option
• organized picture-taking day with Sam's teacher and counted the letters in "Mrs Walker's Third Grade" at least a dozen times (each kid will hold a letter) so as not to embarrass myself in front of 8 year old math wizards when i run out of letters/kids
  
• walked miles upon miles, via school, past the old playground that Danny refuses to go to anymore because last time he bumped his head three times, to a new playground that i am hoping Danny won't fall out with anytime soon
  
• braved the seedy public bathrooms there with Danny who insisted on flashing the door open at the most inopportune moment (twice)
• walked another half mile to the library to find it didn't open for another 26 minutes :|
• made the best of a bad situation and took pictures in Old Town
• walked to Sprouts for 99c berries
  
• braved the scary fruit man who talks to himself but i think is talking to me so i try to answer so as not to be rude only to be given a weird look by the weird man (he started it - he was weird first!)
• consoled a small sobbing child when we found raisins were out of stock
• had a picnic of strawberries and grapes (no raisins) outside Sprouts
• walked another 1.6 miles home in the baking sun
• put away all the groceries and painstakingly completed pre-nap checklist
  

and now... i am sitting down with nowhere to be for another hour. could it be? it can't last an hour, can it? Danny will think of SOMETHING he needs, right??! i haven't watched any trash tv in over a week - my bedroom dvr is at least 80% full of desperate housewives and real housewives. must get some quality trash tv watching in today. must. it's on the to-do list :)

back with more pics and a bowlful of berries and pear yogurt for lunch.... ahhhhhhhh!

things i learnt on this vacation ;)

i really really really really really really need a beach house. i don't just want one - nope! i actually need one. for medical reasons. i will be clinically depressed if i don't get one. and it must be an A-frame beach bungalow painted all in white

having a beach house would actually SAVE me so much money because when i am at the beach house i never want to leave, thus saving lots of money on gas and shopping!

if i lived at the beach i would eat more fruit and drink more water - all these things are pros and yet there are no cons ;)

i love watching dolphins jumping around and flipping up in the air much more than the ones in paddling pools at seaworld

thus saving even more money on seaworld tickets (and gas to and from... and theme park food... and wooden whale tale necklace...)

on this leg of the donut tour we found out donuts made of potato aren't gross at all - they are actually quite edible and good (but not Boston good...)

the drive home from Malibu is always at least double the drive to Malibu....

in Santa Barbara it costs $42 for a kid's tie dye teeshirt (how can hippy kids afford them??!)

the battery on the Canon T1i lasts forever and ever

and the tones are more 5d than 40d (it's all very very good)

i love that camera... now all i need is a beach house :)

ju$t a l1ttle jot....

1n ghett0 talk n0 le$$... 0h ye$, th1s 1sn't a fancy font - nope, it's ME! 0h my go$h, th1s 1s $0000 hard... and taking far too long :)

i cannot type for long - i am off to the airport to pick up my MUMMY!! she is, as i type, flying over Jon&Kateplus8ville, marked by a big scarlet A for adultery :| i am shocked!! (but not really) they seem like such nice small-town church-going folk. i always thought those deeply religious holier-than-thou homemaker types who like to cook and craft were incapable of such despicable behavior (ok... not really either...)

i must remember that i cleaned the kettle with vinegar today and i must must remove that boiled vinegar and rinse it out thoroughly before making my Mum her first cup of good old fashioned American tea. or she will not be impressed with the way we make it over here :)

off to clean, pack and get out of here for a week....





picking out flowers for Grandma's room

shooby dooby

down to ruby's where the food is great... ok not really great but it's not horrible either ;) i used to work at their corporate office and that annoying little jingle is still in my head after all these years. i hated working at ruby's apart from the free milkshakes and kitchen drawers full of nothing but jelly bellies, ohh and the soda fountain too... yup, hated it. the woman i worked for was a Disney pin collector :| (and that should tell you exactly why i hated working at ruby's)

anyway we are shooby doobying down to ruby's because star testing is over!! this calls for burgers in baskets, refillable french fries and very yummy peanut butter milkshakes that taste like they have 175,000 calories in them. (probably because they do :)

today we went to IKEA via the 99 cent store as we arrived an hour before IKEA opened (who opens at 10am???) Danny fell in love with the 99 cent store and he couldn't believe everything was 99 cents (and some things were 59 cents too!) he bought some dinosaurs and a frisbee and a hat for a secret person (shh) and they even had pints of ben&jerry's - for 99 cents! then we went to IKEA and guess how much our fancy breakfast was?? 99 cents! then we got some bamboo for 99 cents and a little vase for 99 cents and a bag of rocks for 99 cents. we did pay $6.99 for a weathered white pitcher but oh it's perfect for my future kitchen table in cape cod and therefore worth an extra $6 :)

then Danny and i made tiny succulent gardens inspired by my amazing friend {leah} and cleaned like maniacs in preparation for Grandma's arrival from the UK!

why i love my hubbie

• he makes the very bestest coffee ever. hot, strong and dark. and he makes it every morning without exception. i don't know his secret recipe :)
  
• he always gets triple free samples in Jo Malone by smooth talking the lovely man in there :)
• he never lets his beard get to scary yeti proportions
• he would never wear flip flips - ever
• or tattoos or earrings
  
• he can fix anything just by looking at it - he even fixed the windscreen wipers by looking at them
• he always always picks the right paint colors, no need for an exasperated sigh and do-over
  
• he always tops up my drink when he gets one and puts in three chunks of ice
  
• he always lets me sit by the window on train/plane rides (the very opposite of Glenn Gulia from the Wedding Singer, thankfully)
• he doesn't like meat on pizza either. except CPK barbecue chicken which i love too
  
• he always puts the gas in my car (i am scared of getting doused in gasoline and setting on fire or the hose not reaching to my car or the pump not clicking and looking like an imbecile)
• he is the most awesome Daddy e-v-e-r and he is kind and lovely to all children
  
• he loves all animals, no exceptions
  
• he can outdo me when we are exercising our mean streaks together :)
• he can always make smalltalk with old people (i find it impossible)
  
• he can saw things in a straight line (i can't no matter how hard i try)
• he can make an adorable picket fence around our veggie patch in one hour flat AND whitewash it :)
• and then put the kids to bed
• and then bring a little chocolate in bed to share while watching Hotel Inspector

it's all good.... and i love him :)

my almost 7 hour walk :|

today i went out walking at 8am sharp. and didn't get home til 2:45pm :| imagine someone lost in the desert for days on end, sunburned but with two white rings around their eyes, dehydrated, weak and thready and about to collapse of heat exhaustion on the bed... that would be me right about now

i met starlet of New Zealand, Peta Mazey at the park as part of my mommy marathon. no matter how many times she tells me the correct pronunciation of her name i can never get it right. sometimes i say Peta as in 'could not be sweeter' and sometimes i say it Peta (as in 'better at figuring stuff out than me'. sigh. Peta i apologize for always saying it wrong :) and i adore you to pieces and am already missing you and you didn't even leave yet :(

next i walked to Sprouts for strawberries, candy corn (it's a veggie right?), raisins, bananas, apples, kiwi fruit, cantalope and pineapple. on the way home a piece of Danny's trash accidentally blew into the street. i didn't know what to do!! on the one hand, i absolutely cannot leave a piece of trash on the street - just can't do it, i feel sorry for trash and want to put it with other trash so it doesn't feel so worthless. but my stroller has no brake either! and we were on a hill!! i couldn't abandon my child to run into traffic! two scenarios flashed through my head: i was the victim of an Oprah hidden camera set-up to catch bad people littering. or it was a Dr Phil show on catching bad Moms red-handed. in either case i was NOT going to give the audience the chance to shake their judgmental heads at me. no siree!! i stood my ground and waited until several cars had blown that piece of trash back over to my side of the street and went to retrieve it. take that, both of you!

anyway the reason for all that shopping... i am only eating fruit from now on - i am cleansing my soul from the outside in, you see. no more fried eggs. no big greasy sausages. just one hebrew frank weiner a day (99% fat free... it's basically all water:) and a whole lotta fruit. i will report back tomorrow on if it helped my spots go away

i am also giving up biting my thumbs anymore - it must stop! i am reinventing myself today! i am SICK of biting them til they bleed and then holding them til they stop bleeding and then repeating from step one. so they are slathered with neosporin and bandaged up so i cannot possibly bite them. i bit my thumb so hard going into the White House i had to hold my thumbs inside my palms really tight so blood didn't squirt all over the freshly cleaned East Room rugs. very embarrassing :|

onto pictures from yesterday, i have more to process but i must go and watch Oprah incase the trash throwing show is on so soon...
mother's day in palm springs - always

it's official, i am the queen of the seamless panorama :)


blessed and lucky for the above and the below


saying cheese for Danny