Homegirl Quel (kel) in Austin

If I had a nickel...

If I had a nickel for every time I've seen a black dude at the bus stop straddled atop the trash can riding it like a lasso-twirling cowboy, I'd have one nickel. I only wish I had my windows down so I could have heard the words that were coming out of his mouth.

Seen in South Austin on the way to Newflower Farmer's Market yesterday.

Spring Done Sprung

 

My butterfly iris plants bloomed this weekend! They were mostly just white and pale yellow last year. This time, they're beautiful!

Big Cow

 

Zack speaking fluent cow at the Austin Children's Museum this past Sunday.

Dragon Boats

We went to the 11th Annual Dragon Boat Festival here in Austin this weekend. We arrived late because I slept until almost 11 a.m. and Zack went down for his nap shortly after I woke up. It started at noon. We missed the geisha and karate performances and all the fun Asian cultural stuff. Still, we got there in time to see the last race and enjoy some people watching and much needed QT outdoors on a beautiful day.

Home Time

I do this all the time, when we're just around the house in the afternoons or on rainy days. I have so few pictures of myself and my son because I'm always the one with the camera, which is ok, because I enjoy the collection of Mother-Zack self portraits I'm amassing.

Bubbles!

A friend of mine brought bubbles along on our stroller walk in the park the other day. Zack enjoyed them.

Cat Daddy I must confess

I have a secret. I won't tell everybody, just you guys. As my dear friend would say(from a radio show that doesn't air in Austin, but that she listens to, and quotes frequently, where I think people call in to make confessions), Cat Daddy I must confess...

Centerpiece

I went to a beautiful baby shower this past Sunday. We got to take home the centerpieces as one of the favors. It's right at home in our dining room.

Random Observation

Crocodiles and alligators look exactly the same in all the children books, art, cartoons, etc.

I feel like I'm confusing my son by calling them alligators sometimes and crocodiles at other times. Add to that Spanish versions of the words (I'm teaching him Spanish vocabulary too), "cocodrilo" for crocodile and "caiman" for alligator (what happened to "alligatoro" ?!) and it just becomes too much. I've made it to 31 without knowing the difference between the two, but somewhere along the way I learned that, generally,  it is acceptable to call the green reptile with the big teeth and long tail a crocodile or an alligator depending on which word comes to you first.

Among the other things toddlers have to learn, the difference between crocodiles and alligators is SO unimportant. However, I did some research. Google searches count as research. I have educated myself and am sharing my new found knowledge with you guys and ultimately my son one day when he's much, much older.

OK. So there are are 3 major physical differences between crocodiles and alligators...

Love songs on the radio

A friend of mine from my moms group recently helped me rework my daily activities to fit in time for myself at night. The past few days have been wonderful! I manage a one hour soak in my garden tub every night--I do conditioning treatments on my hair and a facial while I soak and finish with manicure/pedicure touch ups. I look forward to it every day. For those 2 hours, it's just me, a glass of wine (if that's what I'm in the mood for) and Delilah.

Yep, Delilah as in Love Songs With Delilah on FM radio. I started listening to nighttime dedications shows every night when I was in junior high school. I didn't start listening to Delilah until high school though. I looked forward to that every night back then too. I'd listen to all those stories the people who called in to make dedications would tell of love and lost loved ones and old lovers finding love again. I'd listen to Air Supply sing "I'm all out of love, I'm so lost without you..." and Elton John sing, "How wonderful life is now you're in the world...and you can tell everybody that this is your song..."and Journey sing, "so now I come to you with open arms, nothing to hide, believe what I say..."and I would want to be in love.

I listened to her show back in college too. In those days, I would lay there and hear Bonnie Rait sing, "I can't make you love me if you don't..." to somebody's lost love and Lee Ann Womack sing "and when you get the choice to sit it out or dance, I hope you dance, I hope you dance" to some mother's daughter, and Mariah Carey sing "I can't live if living is without you..." to somebody who felt their lover slipping away, and I would be depressed about love.

Nowadays, being married 8 years/in love for ~13 years, I listen to Delilah with a whole new set of ears. I'm in love now. Been through many stages of love and sure I have a few more stages yet. These days, I reminisce about struggling to keep my pre-marital virginity when I hear Paul Davis sing "Come on over tonight/Come on over/It's gonna be a cool night/Just let me hold you/By the firelight/If it don't feel right You can go", and I think about how lucky I am sometimes that he stayed with me through my growing up years (we met when I was 18) when I hear Billy Joel sing, "She can kill with a smile/She can wound with her eyes/She can ruin your faith with her casual lies/And she only reveals what she wants you to see/She hides like a child/But shes always a woman to me", and I think about how small the small stuff really is and how small even some of the big stuff is when I hear James Taylor sing,"And what you plan to do with your foolish pride/When you're all by yourself alone?/Once you tell somebody the way that you feel/You can feel it beginning to ease/I think it's true what they say about the squeaky wheel/Always getting the grease/Better to shower the people you love with love..." and I feel calm and content and grateful to be going through love stages.

And now,just because it's my blog, and what better place to share some videos of my favorite tunes from way back when before I was even born...

Daily Fit: Weekly Reflection 7, On My Mental Health

I lost a couple of pounds this week, to minus 17 pounds, which is great. But I'm really tired, and not from working out. I'm a mom. A stay at home mom and I'm tired. I'd like to have a little more energy. I'm eating enough and sleeping enough, but based on what I've read, I'm sure I would have more energy if I could fit more cardio into the early a.m. hours. I'll need to restructure my morning activities...maybe go to Zack's story time/playgroups in my workout clothes and walk with him at the park after. That's looking like the best option right now.

Also zapping my energy is the mental conversation I've been having with myself for way too long.

HoneyMag.com is back!

Honey Magazine recently took their beta site live and is gearing up for the official launch of the new website. There's a whole new vibe going on over there with new layouts and features and most importantly BLOGS! As y'all know I was the Austin Honeybee back when they had City Blogs, but now you can be a Honeybee too...and you and you and you too.

So buzz on over to HoneyMag.com, checkout my profile, "HomeGirlBlog", set up your own, friend me and get buzzing!

Daily Photo technology difficulties

I won't be posting daily photos for a minute. Temporarily, I do not have upload capabilities on my laptop. I will continue to take pictures though, and will do a catch-up post whenever my laptop is back up and running.

ROCKS!

Rocks at the park. My life is all about rocks at the park, any park, these days. My son does not want to swing or slide. All he wants to do is play with the rocks and scream, "ROCKS!" the whole time. Or grass. He does the same thing with grass.

Potatoes and Food Blogs

Smitten Kitchen. I ran cross this website this morning and am positive my cooking life is forever changed.

Pounds of potatoes and onions are staples in my pantry and never have I thought to gratin them. I feel like a new world of possibilities has opened up for me cooking wise. Like when I learned you could slow-cook  a whole chicken  in a crock pot. Or that you could season meats with cinnamon or add prunes and apricots to lamb stew, or saute dry rice in olive oil and spices before adding liquids as an alternative to plain rice. I have cookbooks and have tried recipes from them all, but have been complacent with my potato cooking repertoire.

This recipe, Simple Potato Gratin, will singlehandedly be responsible for many guilt-laden glutinous nights of white sweet potato gratin with salmon, and golden Yukons gratin'd up with bacon and bell peppers, and YAMS! yam gratin, and many days of leftover simple potato gratin with scrambled eggs and toast for breakfast, and on and on ad infinitum.

A few other sites I discovered and that are equally cooking-life-changing, not only because they have awesome recipes, but also because they combine my two newest hobbies, cooking and photography. Odd pairing at first thought, maybe, but considering the whole food worship thing I (and apparently many thousands of others) have going on, immortalizing food as art or les objets du désir in pictures just makes sense. Without further adu...

• Orangette
• MattBites
• ForTheLoveOfCooking
• Obviously, Smitten Kitchen
• And my favorite of the bunch, 101 Cookbooks

Off to check on my yams...

Unwinding

I was out walking with Zack when Billy was on his way home from work today. He met us at the neighborhood park and stole a moment by himself. He works so hard all the time, it was really cool to see him kick back after work and play a little.

New Clinique Reviews Up!

A couple of Clinique reviews of mine have gone live in the past couple of weeks. Two more reviews will be up shortly as well. The two most recent reviews are for:

Youth Surge SPF 15 Age Deceleration Moisturizer: I actually wrote in this review, so there's no video clip preview to post here.

Redness Solutions Instant Relief Mineral Powder: The video review online is technically not a review, rather a statement that I, for very obvious reasons, do not have issues with redness on my face...or anywhere for that matter. FYI, I had a fair-skinned friend who used it though and it really is amazing with instant results if you do have redness.

Please visit my Clinique Insiders profile page to read this review and to catch up on others you may have missed.

Retro Tub

Zack in the play area at the library.

It's Heather!

I met Heather B. Armstrong tonight at Book People. She was wonderful. This is a picture of her husband taking pictures of her.

"Where are all the black people?!"

I met a black woman in the neighborhood Target the other night--very few of us in this area. I was there with Billy and Zack and was on the phone when we entered the aisle where she was with her son and friend. She stopped me and was like, "No ma'am you are going to have to get off the phone, this is an emergency." I thought she was somebody I knew or something (I'm horrible with remembering faces and names), so I was like, "K" and ended my phone call as promptly and abruptly as she had interrupted me. She went on to say how happy she was to see another black person/mom/with natural hair in Austin. She's a D.C. transplant--moved here for work. I cracked up when I realized that was her emergency. She introduced herself and her friend, and her son introduced himself as Spider man and we rolled with that the whole time (right now all I know is I met a pint-sized loc'd Spider Man). She asked me all the questions We ask when We move here and I gave my usual answers: