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Photos from the Texas Renaissance Festival, which we attended this weekend. Click to enlarge.

Kate, Lilith, and Megan (Kate's, like, BFF forever and stuff), swangin':




The Bird got her face painted upon for a ridiculous fee (which was so worth it considering how in love with it she was):




The painter gave her two stones (Lilith is a fervent rock collector to begin with, so this was the coolest to her), and he has her convinced that one of them is a real petrified dragon's tear, and now she's obsessed with it.
She said she wished on it for tacos, and on our way home, we stopped at Taco Bell (ew ew ew I know) so she could eat something, without her even telling us - so now she's so sold.

Lilith and her stones (the clear one is supposed to be the dragon squeezins.



At the Ded Bob Sho! (Lilith LOVES Ded Bob now).



The 'Horror Faery' got catapulted. That kid's fearless!! I was completely freaked out the whole time.



I laugh everytime I see this photo... Hilarious:



I took photos of Lilith & M while I spent 45 minutes getting 17 inches of my hair wrapped:





My wrap... you can sort of see it, anyway..:




I had a really good time. It went much better than I'd have thought. I feel a bit foolish for waiting seven years to go back due to my silly fears of seeing too many of my old ghosts. I did see a few (yes, that one included) but it didn't actually bother me at all. 

This year's lame carvings. Jack Skellington and a sweet potato pi:



The aftermath of trick-or-treating. Too fregging funny. She got just under five pounds of candy on our trip 'round the blocks. As you can see, she foams at the prospect:




( more more more photos (of course) )


I have to say, Trick-or-Treating was glorious... pure magic this year. I was sooo thrilled. How did you guys do?

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Lilith sounds like a goose yoked to a howler monkey.

Looks like a trip to the pedi today, assuming I can get her in. Naturally, the definitively well child gets too ill for the miraculous 'sleep-it-off' cure that generally works for her - right before the first gorgeous Hallowe'en we are to have had in the last three years. She's pissed.

I'm very ready to not be in school anymore. Although by comparison I really enjoy what I'm doing now, I'm really not actually doing much of anything. I can't help but feel the pace in this particular course of study slackened by comparison, and I'm afraid I've gotten quite comfortable with that.

My gpa is holding at 3.8, and I'm doing exceedingly well, but... you know, I honestly could not tell you what the hell I've been working on. At all. The methods of 'teaching' are anything but, and my study habits have become complete crap. I don't ever look at this stuff until... oh... the night before the exams (which happen at least once a week). And this is not because I'm not interested (well, okay, I don't really give a shit about some of the compulsory BS we have to cover), I suppose I've become pretty complacent. I think I'm burned out.

One of you will have to bail me out of jail at some point over the next two years, when I can no longer contain my frustration with my Hematology instructor who, despite being very good at her specialty, is strikingly inept at instructing. I have a practicum to do today during which I am to run an erythrocyte sedimentation rate, two hematocrits, platelet & white blood cell smear estimates, and Plt & WBC manual hemocytometer counts in one hour.

All of this would be fine, except that I have never ever gotten satisfactory tutelage in shiny little refractory platelets in the manual counts, regardless of the number of times I have asked for clarification. She gets insanely huffy with you when you ask her questions. Because if you weren't splattered out of your mother's womb with infinite knowledge of everything you're in school to learn, then you are no more worthy of respect than a mixed-breed Dalit dog with eczema and diarrhea. Which is exactly how you are to be treated.

So wish me luck.

The newest addition to my family, Orville "Moondog" Harvey (as named, brilliantly, by Lilith):






He's very social and sweet and quirky... and absolutely obsessed with computer monitors.

Aaannddd... this is Lilith's Hallowe'en costume this year - she's going as Jody Stroud from Christopher Moore's Bloodsucking Fiends. (She wanted to be 'that redheaded vampire girl' from the cover of the novel I was reading this summer):

The ten things I would not / could not be fulfilled without:

01. My daughter. My tiny girl-shaped saviour. This is a given, not only because she is my child and no one should take a child from the jaws of her mother, but also because I have serious doubts about whether or not I'd still be alive today were she not thrust into my uterus at the time that she was. Her presence abruptly snapped me back into some sort of reality. Without that, it was most likely the gutter or the ground for me before 18. And now that I know her, I cannot remember things that happened ten years ago without wondering where she was, and I cannot picture myself as whole without having her as one-quarter of myself.


02. My partner and closest ally, Michael. I have laid down my roots with him and within him and him in me. Within this coccoon of a life and a family we have created, I feel more whole and together than I ever have under the influence of air alone. After these five years of our worlds colliding, I cannot imagine not collapsing onto his chest and into his ear a million times a day. He has truly become an integral part of my existence, a vital organ somewhere behind my spleen. His children have also become tantamount to my children, slowly evolving and seeping into my psyche, my love for each of them choosing the most random time to shout its presence in my face. This is my family. It feels good. Michael is one of the most unique people I've ever met, he's completely irreplaceable. Despite the random snarls that come from the union of two completely independent-minded bulls, there is no one else who could fill the oddly-shaped mold of my life-love-companion needs like he does.


03. My truest friend, Matthew. We have been balancing dominant sides since we were awkward twelve-year-olds sharing a nervous slow dance to Selena in the Weis gymnasium. And we've done a million little dances in the years since then - both of us seeing eachother through our own respective calamities, each being the root that grounded the other. Now we're in our twenties, dreaming of our trip to India when we're thirty - ebbing and flowing in and out of constant communication, but always settling back to the same comfortable napping-house of banter and laughter and tears and inside jokes as though we'd never spent a moment apart in all our lives. Everyone should have a friend like this. His family is my family and everything and nothing is sacred between us. He is my brother and my confidant and often knows me better than I know myself. Not to mention, he always knows what I should be wearing (I'm finally learning to listen to him about that bit). I miss you, Matty, get the hell back from Russia (and don't forget my Matroyshka).


04. My books. Since learning to read as a toddler, books have shaped my entire existence. I read everything I could get my hands on as a child, spending hours a the library or in my room with my pretzels, lost somewhere between pages. So much of who I am today, how I feel about things, my reactions to concepts and situations all came from the books that I have read. I am a victim of literary thinking, my running mental narrative of everything around me reads like a frenetic, scattered collection of essays without beginning or end. When I moved into this house, all I brought with me of my own were a few clothes and about a hundred books. My books have been with me through everything, most of them having been read a few times over, cementing their philosophies into my skull. Books open up the entire universe. There is no limit to what a person can discover through infinite thought manifested in printed word.


05. My Boston terrier, Tallulah-Prudence. This sounds ridiculous. I never thought I'd be one of those people who obsess over their dogs and show people photos of them, in their wallets, and let them lick them and be all gross and things, but, alas, Tallulah has bestowed upon me a completely retarded affection affliction for her. She has the most fantastic personality, and she's bloody adorable, and she always knows just how I'm feeling and responds accordingly. I'm so happy to have her as my snorting, smiling, 24-hour backpocket shadow. I don't know how I lived this long without a Boston in my life.


06. The practice of Yoga. As it turns out, all my life I have been a practicioner of Hatha yoga. Having been born with extremely open, 'double-jointed' hips, I have always enjoyed stretching them and contorting my body, and have always found a sense of peace and bliss in the feeling of lengthening muscles and controlled joints. Ten years ago I discovered that there was a name for this and an entire people who have felt this same deep holiness through posturing since before ancient was a word. I have expanded my practice over the last couple of years to reach beyond the physical to kripalu, incorporating meditation and pranayama practise - and though I am not anywhere near ready in my spiritual evolution, the integral consciousness that accompanies the Jivanmukti is my ultimate goal. When I do not have daily hatha practice as a part of my life, I feel it like a big heavy rock in my guts. It makes me feel more like myself, it grounds me and it liberates my banal obsessions, even if just for those moments. I feel like a slug without it.


07. Food. Yes, if you know me, you know I have issues with it. I'm working on this. In the meantime though, let me say this – I love food. I'm a through-and-through foodie. I love baking and cooking and sharing and tasting everything cruelty-free there is out there. I love experimenting with natural, healthy, whole foods. I love what food can do for your body, and I love learning everything I can about it. Food is a very complex science around which the whole world revolves. There is a whole universe of ethnology and lore and history completely encompassed in gastronomy which is accessible by any person, regardless of their cultural bonds. In moderation, food is wonderful.


08. Art. I'm obsessed with many different aesthetics and media, and I love feeling them and finding out about them and their creators. The word 'art' covers so many things for different people, and I use it pretty much in any way you can imagine. Visual, audible, spiritual, and literary – anything striking in implicit meaning. Art refreshes my awareness of my own existence and my position in the human collective. It challenges me to change my perceptions – which is a tough feat considering my level of stubborn. I love to make art – I love the feeling of creating something you can't necessarily control anymore once it reaches a certain threshold in its manifestation. Though I'm not creating much these days, when I do, it's like all the broke Christmases (which are the best) I had as a child rolled into one moment.


09. The availability of unadulterated Earth. I live in a place where development has become king and concrete his queen (served by a legion of ladies-in-waiting dripping with acrylic nails and bottle blonde in velour track suits). It sort of disgusts me a little. Since childhood, my most valuable intrapersonal moments have taken place in the dirt, with the juniper berries, seed pods, mimosa fuzz, and birch bark that were my friends when I didn't have any. I feel more at home on a tree branch eating wormy mulberries a thousand miles from here than I do standing in my own front yard. There is a peace for me in the elements of earth that I can't get anywhere else, and every once in a while, I just have to go back to them briefly so that I can remember my roots. My backgarden fills this need a little bit, but it's not wild enough for me, though it is beautiful and is becoming quite fruitful (you should see the sweet potato patch!! And, I finally have some bigger pomegranates!). Sometimes I just have to trek out to something unmowed, unlit, and unfuckedwith, and just sit there and feel things.

10. Order of my indoor surroundings. I always thought as a teenager that I was never meant to be a Virgo, because I simply wasn't anal or nitpicky enough. As I've aged, I realize that I am a COMPLETE basketcase when I feel that things are too chaotic or cluttered or filthy, and that in order to feel normalized again, I must fix them. I'm not talking OCD here, I don't flip when two small thing are a quarter-inch off-center in the mandala that is my living room, but you know, messes. The prevalence of this little quirk of mine was SO reinforced over this summer's vacation, when spending a week in a place where order and neatness takes no priority. I felt very Martha Stewart, I guess, running around and picking up after people. But it made me feel so much better. I'm more like my mother than I ever thought I'd be. Haha. 

Alright, your turn.