Mother Nature is up to her old shenanigans! It is cooo-ooold up here in the little valley that nestles our cozy, little cottage house. The only thing is… the last several mornings- and evenings- have been far from friggin’ cozy!

She’s a bitter tease, that old wench! Ahhhhh… Mother Nature!

Regardless the frosty start, things are shaping up to be a pretty good day. An early morning…. Ok, so it wasn’t spent alone as I prefer, but little Fidge has a way of making me smile. Even when she’s intruding into the sanctity of my very sanity; my buffer-zone; the peaceful silence of my first-thing-blissful-aloneliness, watching the sunrise with only the gently hum of my laptop and delicious hiss of steam from my cup o’ life-affirming joe.

Shower. Removal of offending body hairs. Head to toe. Sure the brows could use a little more work, but hey…. it’s a Thursday and the tidiness around the cankles would make even the best of electrolysis-icians proud, making up for what might be still sprouting out of place above my increasingly hooded lids….

Happiness=Hairlessness, I always say. OK, not. But to begin a day 1. actually clean; and 2. less several hundred grams of body hair…. well, it gets things off in the right direction.

Yes, things are off to a dandy start…. as I head into the ’school room’. Oh, please let the good times at least continue, if not actually roll….

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That has surely been the question bouncing around between the various voices in my head lately.

My stripping images of all but the slightest tinge of colour has reached OCD proportions recently, whether they be kid, client, or otherwise.

So, as I continue to explore this inner conflict, sucking colour from every image before me, and as I wait for the passing of yet another phase in my life in photographs, I present my Best Shot Monday…. desaturated… and not.

A Little Sparkle

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I just posted Wordless Wednesday…. But, of course, everyone knows, it is, in fact, decidedly NOT Wednesday.

I’ve been up since 4am when I bade mi Filipes goodbye and good luck on his, ‘A Mystery Weekend’. Certainly, his whereabouts are of relatively no mystery to me, but no one else- not mother, not brothers, not sister, not friends and neighbors- has been allowed any information regarding what he might be undertaking these next few days.

The mystery will undoubtedly confirm to those in our immediate neighborhood- none of whom really understand what this dude does all day, from his home, on the phone, in his underpants- that he is, indeed, employed by the either the CIA, MI6, or Al-Qaeda. Maybe even a fascinating combination thereof.

Anyhow, after dutifully linking to various Wordless Wednesday participants, it suddenly occurred to me….

It’s Thursday.

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I’m always reminded, when I find myself with only one child, how friggin’ easy it would be with only one.

The boys are doing golf camp all week. Filipes was out golfing. So it was just the Fidgey and I. The girls.

We’ve had a lovely, oh so easy, girlie-day. This perfect day began with Fidge sleeping in, waking a whole two hours after the boys left this morning. Wild! What on earth did I do with myself, you ask? Oh, plenty! I caught up on The Daily Show/Colbert Report as I blogged, edited photographs from last couple of gigs… just some relaxed piddling. Which, surprisingly, actually amounted to something.

Anyhoo… on with our day. A little crunchy yogurt- yogurt, flax seed and granola (one of her breakfast faves)- for the girl and on to choosing our girlie-day wardrobe. Apparently, this day called for….

Fuschia!

It was the only colour for which we had dresses in common. And she was insistent that we wear matching dresses. On this girlie-day. Regardless of the fact that my particular dress is cut down to two and a half inches BELOW my sternum.

I felt like I was about to drop sadly deflated hooter at every turn.

And too damn hot for another layer…. No wonder that dude in the grocery was hovering beside us over the vegetables. I gave new meaning to “a little nipply”! Hel-lo!

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BC Cherries! And cherry stained faces! Perfect, plump, absolute edible joy and bliss….

There’s more joy in Best Shots at Mother May I….

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And so we strive.

“… when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason.”

—John Keats

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A treasure from this weekend? My neice… my sister’s youngest child.

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After these last two events, I have decided I need a new bike. I want one that has gears… that actually shift; wheels that actually turn, propelling one forward, as you pedal uphill; a seat that actually supports an ass, rather than violates it; and… well, I just want a REAL bike.

Sure, this lovely specimen won’t help me set any records in the Wasa tri- all those hardcore trifreaks will continue to look down their Cervelo P2 Carbons at me as I roll into the transition area on my big, fat, nubby tires- but I don’t care, I’m hoping to narrow down my annual event circuit to our local Extreme 3 anyways. And for that, I would need the bike, this bike, I found today.

Ahhh… she’s a beaut… oh yes. A fine bicycle.

And I would have thoroughly lost myself in it’s previously owned magnificence… had I not been distracted by the young man trying to sell it to me. Understand, I’m one hip momma. I’m all over the whole tatoo and piercing thing. In fact, I even have a few… tatoos, not piercings. OK, so I have a couple of piercings: my ears, in the usual location, and my belly button. But we all know these hardly count.

I digress. His arms were covered in tatoos. And hey, like I said, I’m one hip momma, I barely noticed. I’m kind of into that anyhow. However, I was having a hard time not staring at the dumbbell through his eyebrow- Hate them. Hate them. Hate them. I found myself silently questioning, as I do whenever I am confronted with young, innocent, eyebrows impaled, WTF and Why The Hell…?

But honestly, when I found I could actually see the row of bikes through the holes in his earlobes, that was it. Over. I couldn’t hear a word the nice, young feller was saying. I mean, I could see everything… a guy getting his bike fixed at the back of the open shop… the Dairy Queen across the street… my Honda Odyssey…. Depending on where he decided to position himself as he rattled off specs and features of said bike, I was provided a whole new view of my hometown through the symmetrical pair of holes in his ears. Sure, it was a little disjointed. I mean, each scene was oddly cleaved by his head, before resuming once again through the other sagging, open lobe.

I was transfixed. Totally. Entertained. I found myself bobbing around wildly trying to get good sight of my car to see what my kid was doing within. Is that my neighbor in the drive-thru? Hey, hair salon… I need to remember to get my highlights done this month… Jesus, that guy needs to slow down….

Oh my God. Too weird.

Whatever. Each to his own, I guess. I still want the bike…. And between now and October, when it goes on sale, I’ll enjoy visiting it and gazing upon its loveliness through my nice salesboy’s ears.

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