Lovelihood

I'm positive that things used to get made, by me even, without the warm glow of technology at my side. But it's been a while.

Gazing out the window one gray morning, The Boy, hunting out cloud shapes, identified one swiftly-passing specimen as Russia. That's how it usually goes for Seattle's cloud-gazers, our amorphous nimbi generally spanning all visible overhead space, more resembling continental land formations than fluffy little fauna. The clouds overhead today are more suitable material for stream-of-consciousness daydreaming.

Took a little trip to the Downs today, mostly to watch weiner dogs hustle their ridiculous little bodies down the straightaway — an annual event designed to attract families to the track (spoiler: it worked) — but also to see some horsies up close. Bear, a lifelong city-girl unaccustomed to seeing large animals up close, doesn't care if it's a thoroughbred or one of the horses with neon bandages tasked with escorting the racers to and from the track. But the escort horses do take a more leisurely course, closer to the spectator area, so there is that. Having forgot, of course, to bring the camera, I made do with the camera phone and one of the many now-passé Instagram filters.

What I imagine Picasso's freebie cake watercolor palette would look like, taken out, one Friday summer evening, to the back deck to get in a spot of painting/mess-making before bedtime.

I've developed a little case of tattoo fever. And while I labor over questions of what and where and when, questions that could go years before finding satisfaction, I've gotten my first (of many, I'm sure) shipments of Tattlys to keep my ink lust in check. I suppose similar temporary satisfaction could be achieved with pen to skin, but where's the fun in that?

The popsicles were doled out as a token of understanding that they'd just spent a rough couple of hours at the doctor's office, receiving seven shots between the two of them. And they did enjoy their popsicles, taken on the back deck (always on the back deck), where it was still a little damp and chilly this morning. Still, for two kids enjoying popsicles, you'd expect at least a glimmer of a crack of a smile.

Difficult to tell, but that's a tiger, a scavenger hunt prize picked out by The Boy earlier this month at a friend's annual Independence Day shindig. He filled the cage up with water, was several times reminded that it would take a few days to grow into full tiger size, and tucked it in a bucket where other little toys are sequestered, out of the way and forgotten. Tidying up the other day, he pulled out the cage, tiger now fully grown, and was so excited about its growth you would have thought a living, breathing animal had actually made its way into the cage, instead of the bloated mass of whatever that material is, shedding murkiness into the water that helped it grow. Boy wants to attach it to his backpack. I rather like it on my shelf.