Tuesday, October 8, 2013

Freedome.

...

Perhaps I should start using jumpy as my literal adjective for excited. Molly might be on to something here. 


"Freedome" by Molly May

"Freedome is when you get to go to school white and brown. You get to go to church and look at God's home. The sun shines on you when you go outside. You are part of the earth alive and happy. You lauf. You giggle. You can even make the brightest smile. There's lots of things about freedome that makes me jumpy. You could plant trees whenever you want and in some places with no freedome you can't do that. Everything you buy is free. Maybe not everything but freedome should give you just about the same amount of money to do life."



Thursday, October 3, 2013

Poodle Fail.

...
So, a couple birthdays back Kelly and I decided that 30 was the new 21 and that of course equated to an unfounded belief that we were still cool enough to embrace our inner hipsters. Quite possibly true, if we had ever had inner hipsters to begin with. No need to burst our bubbles on that. 31 pretty much kicked our asses and set the record straight.

Yet, on that glorious birthday week of not so far ago, we wore our wannabe hipster dreams like a badge of honor. Our birthday pub crawl was in all glory what a pub crawl should be... much too long, way too divey and full of some very good company. Check. Check and more check. Austin has a really fun dive bar scene and conveniently, a great bus line that runs straight down the route (Capital Metro #3---bring your own barf bag).  Perfection.

Here she is in all her glory:


Any party that begins with chicken shit bingo (look it up... it's fantastic) and ends at a year-round Christmas themed bar is destined for greatness. Well, if weren't for stop number 3.

Oh, Poodle Dog.

If a methed-out bouncer (at least... she seemed to be guarding the door), 5 feet deep of smoke-clouded pool tables, where the bathroom stalls are doorless and the bars are stocked with only cans of good ole' pearl is your thing... then you are luck. Poodle Dog is just the place for you. Don't get me wrong... three stops in to the crawl... I loved Poodle Dog too. I just probably should have polished the pub crawl off with a tetanus shot. That place is a whole other category of divey. Two years later, I'm owning it. Twas' a bit of a poodle fail.

I know all about poodle fails these days.

Fast forward a bit. Birthday week 2013 has now come and gone. Tear. It started with a celebration of all things Kelly, pumped full with some fantastic date nights, hiking trails, girlfriend happy hour, a housewarming party and capped off with some really bad bowling with some really good friends. It was everything that birthday week should be.

This year was the first year that the May kids were really in to our birthday week. Initially, I assumed that it was more because of the added opportunities for cake but turns out that they were all about birthday planning. Hooray, kid autonomy. So in typical birthday-daddy fashion, I pretty much let the kids come up with every detail of Kelly's birthday dinner. Any video footage of our stroll through HEB, would have been nothing short of chaos, I'm sure. I'm just going to own it... there were some crazy ideas, excitable, LOUD voices and quite possibly some sweet dance moves down aisle 9. Who knew that Gabriel could do the Roger Rabbit? We ended Project: Daddy Birthday in the card aisle where each of my little people proudly selected their very special message for Daddy.

Lucy, quite predictably, went for the sparkliest/craziest pink card that's cover read: "Hey Girl." She colored all over the inside and sealed it with about 8 million stickers.

Gabriel, rather unpredictably, comes racing towards me with yet another crazy, pink card with the chipettes faces plastered all over it because "Daddy loooooooves this song from the Shipwrecked movie". Um, sure. Taken home, enscripted with some weirdy wording and a compass rose in the top right corner denoting 'Norf' and East only and sealed with what I can only assume to be some really nasty smelling spit. Kid's a big mouth breather. I feel sorry for his future girlfriends.

Molly, two seconds in comes running at me in full hysterics holding this.

Now, if you at all know Molly then you know that Poodles are undoubtedly her spirit animal. Curly-haired, fancy... not so nice... you know, all things Molly. She sleeps with so many stuffed poodles at night that often times in the dark it takes us a couple minutes to locate her.

The card was immediately taken home where her message was written in full-on, Amadeus-like laughter and stuffed in a sealed envelope. Per Molly, her message read:

"Dear Dad, hope your birthday is as fabulouse as mine. Love your dear, old daughter Molly." (Sun image) followed by crazy Molly script of  "You are bright". Our very own comedy genius.

Kelly loves the cards. He always does. Yet, when he made it to Molly's card, he just didn't stop laughing. I mean, laughing through tears sorts of laughing...

Apparently, it seems that I probably should have read the messages in the cards before purchasing after all...


Dang birthday week poodle!!! You win again.