Kid's eye view

It's always pretty interesting to give a kid a camera. You never know what they will see. Maxine took this picture, and I think its really good. I would never think to take this piece of my kitchen, But when I thought about it I realized that I spend a lot of my time here, cooking breakfast, lunch and dinner. Maybe 30 years from now I'll like having this reminder of it.

Dreads: The Why

A friend asked me the other day to explain the reasons for dreading my hair. So here you go:

1. "Dreads symbolize the natural growth/of not just the hair, but also of the mind." Thank you, Arrested Development.

2. anti-consumerism. No money on shampoo, styling products, cuts. I love that.

3. effortless style. emphasis on effortless. style, I guess, is in the eye of the beholder.

4. what style effort I do spend is on finding pretty scarves, screen-printed bandanas, and such. It's fun.

5. People may make assumptions about me, but I find they are not bad assumptions. Especially in my city, in my neighborhood, I think people see "a hippy chick who means no harm." That's not a bad image for a white girl in the hood.

6. satisfies my astrologically Leonine desire for a mane.

7. An exercise in patience, long term. Change is seen not in weeks, but years. More like life. (see #1.)

8. I'm a little bit country, I'm a little bit rock-n-roll.

me + kids

I like this picture because my eyes don't look wild and crazy, like all the other pictures I tried to take that day.

Full Circle

Remember when I made this, and imagined my little boy playing with it? My friends the Wests were over the other day, and Neall snapped this picture. How quickly things come around.

I keep checking this page, as if

someone besides me is going to post something interesting. Maybe something that I forgot I did. In a dream? Or sleepwalking? Come on, its possible.
Yesterday was the first time we've ever bothered to do something special for St. Patrick's Day. St. Louis is a interesting city in that every section has its own history populated by a different group. There's The Hill (Italian), and where we live, Dutchtown (German, was Deutchtown originally.) The Irish neighborhood is called Dogtown, and that's where the party is. Giant flashy green bead and candy throwing parade. And of course, your requisite "drinking at 8:30 am college kids.) Our friend Kosha lives down there so we hung out for the day to check it out. I realized that, at seven, Maxine didn't really have a concept of what a parade is, beyond the halloween parade at her school, kids marching around the block in their costumes. So, she had a blast. Although she was still trying to figure out the reason for all the madness. ("So, Irish people must really like necklaces!")
So some friends and I were talking today, we think we'll go to the STL gay pride parade. How rad would it be to march in it as a group of crunchy, bisexual moms, with all our kids and stuff? Next to the floats with disco dancing hardbodied men? Of course, we might get ostracized for identifying as bisexual, with male life partners and kids. But then again, I can't accurately join groups like "Straight But Not Narrow" either. Points to ponder.