Smoke And Mirrors and Other Weekend Notes

1. The first morning glory has bloomed, as well as the first of the Sweet Autumn Clematis. These seem like good omens. And yes our house needs to be painted terribly. It's on the list...

2. Hattie has taken to nesting on our box of Sola Gratia tomatoes. She seems to think they will hatch. If she's not doing that she is climbing in the farmers' market bag with our corn. That girl likes her produce. Yes, I suppose we could take it all out and put it away. Huh...that just occurred to me....

3. One of those statements from your teenager that is hard to argue with: If you can say fuck when we're out of black pepper, I can say fuck when I bash my finger.

4. I took Leo driving for an hour yesterday and I gotta say....I am impressed with how great he is doing. We went to lunch after and then stopped at the grocery store. All told....a good three hours of chatting with him. Lovely.

5. I got a new phone and am kind of tickled with it. I'd been ready for an upgrade for quite awhile but was perfectly happy with my old phone. Lately though I was having problems with it and since I'm trying to instagram for work more regularly it was driving me nuts.

Don't you think getting a phone is like getting a new car? You just know there's smoke and mirrors and some kind of snake oil going on. You go in thinking you pretty much know what you want and that you're too smart to end up buying stuff you aren't planning and then they're telling you it won't cost you anything because you get this credit and that credit and you leave there with no idea what just happened...but you do have a new phone. 

6. Stopped by Fries and Peanuts and had a rare sighting of our beloved Michael and Renee Pollock, who both look ridiculously great. I adore them and it did my heart good. Oh...and on Sunday we stopped by to visit Mel!!! She looked wonderful and is headed back to work today. I've got some wonderful friends. As you can see, I cropped as much of myself out of the picture as possible...had to leave some in.

7. Our lawn is an overgrown prairie but our lawnmower is broken and reportedly at that questionable level of repair cost/value of mower. Ernie's in denial. If you come on Friday and see an acre of weeds and grass gone to seed, just pat him on the shoulder and move on.

8. Speaking of this Friday (Jon Langford/Rebecca Rego/Abstract Man) Ernie's doing a mountain of pulled pork. We've made some North Carolina barbecue sauce, some South Carolina mustard sauce and will try an Alabama white sauce later in the week. I'm going to make a batch of something succotash like. If you want to bring something coleslaw, salads, desserts and the like are all welcome.