Snot Monster (reminicing)

(In the spirit of sickness and in sharing past memories of Italy, I thought I would share a post I wrote on our first blog that we started to keep our family and friends up to date with our lives in Italy. In the previous post, I shared about the time when Kyle was sick in Venice, but previous to that, I had been sick. I was just beggining to stretch my writing muscles and devlop my voice. I remember being really proud of this piece, but now as I read through it, I am tempted to edit and revamp it, but as it is a relic from another time, I am holding myself back and leaving it as is and accepting it as it is. Here is that moment:)

The Snot Monster
So it has come to that time in the season where everyone is getting sick, including me! Noses become red, everyone sneezes and coughs and tissues are a hot comodity. I have become a statistic in this common pattern. My body is no longer my own but now merely a shell for snot. I am afraid there will be an uprising soon and the snot will not only hold my body hostage but will become a snot monster and try and take over the world. It could happen and if it did, Italy would be doomed. The snot monster would be a force to be reckoned with and we would need the amazing powers of a superpower to fight this evil. Maybe spiderman, batman, superman or better yet superwoman. Even the incredibles might not be able to contain this gigantic mass of yellow goo.
I am very glad I am sick now though instead of in Venice and during fall break. I have been taking it easy, moving slowly and not changing out of p.js. So far I think that my home remedy is working. But yesterday we had to go do laundry in the cold. We do have a laudry service but we were advised in the begining not to wash anything in there that you are particularly attached to because they might ruin it, so we have to hand wash and hang dry the clothes we are attached to. The problem starts to occur when you feel that your clothes aren't very clean from swishing them around in a bucket full of soap. Also, winter here is cold and wet meaning clothes will start to freeze soon instead of dry. Everytime we hang things to dry it ineveitably rains. So the point I am coming to is that I had to wash clothes in the cold while sick yesterday and it didn't make me a happy camper. Don't you agree Kyle should have done it all himself. Most of the clothes were his anyways, but I am a good girlfriend and we split the labor.
Kyle is not sick and is showing no signs of being taken over by the snot monster but only time will tell.

(Ironic isn't it, that Kyle DID get sick in Venice!)

Here's Kyle's current snot trail. Enjoy!

P.S. If you are wondering if the strange, sickly looking plant in the back is growing from the pile of tisssues, no it's not. We are trying to grow a pineapple bush. So far it's not looking so good.

We are sickies

**Waaambulence alert***

After a long emotional weekend, spent in a conference room along with 100 plus others, all of us breathing the same recycled air, our immune systems puttered and sniffled their way to the snotty helldom. My throat feels as if some long-nailed critter has been living inside, and has been meticulously clawing his way out, piercing his long nails into my soft, sensitive flesh in his attempt to escape. Kyle on the other hand has a full-blown cough, and a waterfall of snot and the worst of the worst- loss of taste. Sick crazed tastebuds is something I rarely experience, but which happens to poor Kyle nearly every time he contracts a snotty illness and it is the bane of his existence. He LOVES food, he lives for each meal. When his tastebuds desert him, the look of despondency in his face is that of abandoned child, lost without his blankey even to warm him.

It reminds me of that time in Italy...

The last semester I was in college, we decided to study abroad in Italy. Through this program we visited many cities throughout the boot shaped country, including Venice, the self-proclaimed, "most romantic city" in the world. And it would have been, had it not been for Kyle's cold. Sitting in the outdoor patio, listening to the quartet play familiar romantic ballads, while the breeze twirled our hair and tickeled our neck, Kyle sat across from me, his nose Rudolf red from constant blowing with his tongue hanging out as he struggled to breath.
"Sweetheart what would you like to eat?" I asked trying to hide my disappointment at the lack of romanticism in his zombie eyes.
"It doesn'd matter, I can'd tasde anythingd." He said followed by a sneeze, and watering eyes, not from emotion, but from his illness.
"What about texture. You can still feel texture right?" I said trying to stay positive, but actually bemoaning our bad luck that this should have been one of our most amorous evenings of our relationship but instead of my sweet boyfriend, I was stuck with a snot-filled, bass-mouthed robot and he felt miserable.
"How aboud lasgnda?" He said dejectedly.

Later in the evening, he started to feel better and even regained some of his taste back, enough at least to share a gelato with me. As with everything unpleasant (most of the time), this too will pass.
Expect more exciting posts when the lava flow from our brains has dried.

The time for life is now!

Not tomorrow... We have been waiting around for life to begin, but we are in it, life is right now, at this moment in time. Tomorrow is that grand day when life will be better, but it never arrives because the present is all we have. We are learning to live for today and realizing that our possiblities are unlimited when they are uninhibited by the past.

More to come on the source of that, but enjoy the quotes for now :)

"There would have been a time for such a word. To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow, creeps in this petty pace from day to day, to the last syllable of recorded time; And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle! Life's but a walking shadow; a poor player, that struts and frets his hour upon the stage, and then is heard no more: it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."

~ (MacBeth) William Shakespear

“We worry about what a child will become tomorrow, yet we forget that he is someone today.”~ Stacia Tauscher

“Tomorrow is often the busiest day of the week” ~ Spanish proverb

Music in the Schools

San Antonio is trying to spruce up it's local spice. This is a great city, a huge city, but sometimes, there is a lack of activities especially in comparison with other cities of similar volume. Which is why there has been a lot of initiative taken recently by our city council and mayor to change that. One activity for instance was a summer long battle of the bands competition, culminating in one electrifying show downtown at Sunset Station. Well, it wasn't exactly electrifying, but it was good, and as it was only the first year, it will only get better. We learned about this event through my friend Elizabeth who was going to support a friend, Lynette Brehm, an amazing bilingual, guitar strumming, power-house voice musician who was in the competition. (Check out her website and her beautiful songs.

(a picture of one of her band members, her cellist)

While we were there, it was mentioned several times that Lynette had started a non-profit to help students and schools with their music programs. Along with budget cuts for everything else during a recession , fine arts programs are some of the most badly hit. Instruments are expensive and some students cannot afford them. Lynette realized that without help, many of these schools and students would suffer significant losses, so to aide these ailing programs, she started a community based non-profit to help called Music in the Schools. Sadly, I never took up an instrument, a mistake I hope to remedy one day, however, I was involved in fine arts as theater was my life through out middle school and high school. It was a crucial part of my enjoyment level in my childhood and adolescence and I think that schools lacking in fine arts programs are less enriching and less challenging. To learn more about Music in the Schools, and how you can contribute or get your school involved in the San Antonio wide competition, click on the website.

Is Love enough?

Napolean and Josephine divorce?

I just finished the Josephine Bonaparte trilogy, three thrilling historical fiction books based on one of the most acclaimed love stories of all time, and it ended in divorce and death?? Why must all of these LOVE stories end in tragedy.

When I finished "Gone with the Wind", the most fervent love story of all time, I threw the book across the room. I couldn't believe that I read over 1000 pages only to learn that in the end, their marriage doesn't blossom into the love that they both desired, but decayed and disenegrated painfully in heart ache and despair. However, the difference between these two stories, is that Scarlette and Rhett are fictional characters, the came from Margret Mitchell's active and twisted imagination.

Josephine and Napolean are characters in French history, they were genuine human beings, with actual feelings, and authentic heart-break. Why was love not enough? I wrote a ten page paper in college about how Scarlette and Rhett's lack of communication, and their inability to say "I'm sorry" was ultimately their demise. This story galvanized my perfervid passion of the importance of communication. But Josphine and Napolean talked, they communicated, they were spirit-friends, as she called it, but it wasn't enough. Napolean was convinced he needed an heir to uphold their empire which deteriorated quickly after their divorce. I lay in bed next to my sleep-thrashing husband (he sometimes convulses in an agitated way while sleeping, especially when he is stressed), reading devotedly as I rabidly clung to the hope that in the end, they would be reunited. Maybe they were reunited in death, but they were not by each other sides in the end. It frightens me to read these stories of passion and woe as I often relate so strongly with the characters having had a whirlwind romance all of my own. Is love enough? Will it get us through the hard times? Often, there are small fractures hidden within the foundation which spur rapid crackling and ultimate severing in the end. Communication, as I have said before is key, open, honest, and heart-felt communication. However both of these stories took place during tumultuous times, the civil war, and the French revolution, situations which were not serendipitous to a healthy relationship. Hopefully there will be no uprisings, wars nor revolutions in our future, but no how much we will it, we cannot control all situations. I pray that love will bind us and in the future when our love is acclaimed as the most romantic in history (obviously I have a vivid imagination as well, as I do not actually believe that we will also rule an empire and be remembered throughout history, but for the sake of argument) it will not end in tragedy as so many of them do, but will end with "they lived happily ever after."


Interesting facts I learned while reading these fascinating books.
1. Napolean came to power directly after the French revolution. (Maybe I didn't pay enough attention in history, but I have both of these parts of history categorized in completely different compartments in my mind.)
2. The French Revolution and the American Revolution basically occurred simultaneously.
3. Women, in order to be beautiful, slowly poisoned themselves unknowingly with lead makeup base.
4. Napoleon's family was a crazy bunch of power-hungry deviants.
5. Napoleon and his family were not French, but Corsican. Corsica is an island to the west of Italy.
6. Josephine went through menopause before she was thirty because of the deprivation she went through during The Terror while being held in a disease-infested prison.


I hope you are able to read the books. They are remarkable!

Picture crazy!!

So, a few weeks ago, I got an email from an old high school buddy requesting photos from our theater days in high school. My first thought was, "yeah right, I have no photos on the computer from high school. The digital camera was WAY too pricey at the time, which would mean hours and hours of looking up photos, scanning them in, yata yata yata."

But then...

I opened the closet under the stairs.....

I found some photos

it was really exciting...

I might of peed in my pants.. just a little

I ate a banana..

And I went kooko like a crazed monkey on cat nip

Scanning

cropping

editing

seeing stars, from looking at the computer screen for so many hours of the day

uploading to facebook

pulling my hair out

The Internet is my best friend right now- storing my treasures for all eternity

I LOVE looking through old photos and reminiscing. I had a great childhood, and high school experience, basically I have had a great life. I like to complain about the muddy quicksand that we are currently wading through and have been stuck in for what feels like FOREVER, but we really have been very blessed through everything.

So I thought since I was reminiscing so much, and I couldn't think of much else to write about, (the truth comes out) I would share some of our good ole' times...

Not too many so that you start yawning and looking at the old watcheroo, but enough so that you can see us before... from when we were... young.. I mean.. younger. We are STILL young. We are NOT OLD yet! Hey, I know, maybe I will make a series of these posts. "A look back" hmmm... "Another time, a younger time" any suggestions on the name?

This picture, I believe was our practice in an Austin Park before the State UIL one act play competition of what should have been the #1 play of Anna Karinina. It was a real honor that we made it to state at all. High school theater in Texas is incredibly competitive and to this day, I still remember some of the amazing performances we saw while there. Honestly, some of them were as good as a Broadway performance.

We really liked posing in pictures. It is a pity however that I have those ugly curlers in all of those shots.

Here is a picture of Kyle, my new handsome boyfriend, posing to be drunk at a picnic table in the same park before our competition. Isn't he so cute!! We had only been dating a few months and I was smitten.
The new boyfriend again with PUPPIES. My mom bred Bichon Frises and Maltese to help put me through college, the result being that we always had puppies running around, the downside: heaping pools of poop and pee!
This is us at the Disney Ball when we worked at Disney. I love this picture of us.
And these were my Disney roomies at Christmas. Notice the snowflakes (which were not allowed as they were considered a fire hazard) and the beautiful Christmas tree. We worked every holiday, including Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Years as Disney college slaves, I mean- interns. I have to say that that Thanksgiving is at the top of my favs. We worked till the wee hours of the morning, like 2 am, and then came home to a feast potluck, with tons of friends, and amazing food! Through our sleep deprivation, we followed with making the snowflakes that you see in this photo. Complete with glitter, as no snowflake is truly fulfilled without glitter. We had lots of fun as slaves and made many lasting friendships.

Kyle just informed me that the first picture is of us in San Antonio, not Austin. Also, he has told me this many times. I just don't listen to my husband as well as I should!

p.s. the writing in blue was Kyle writing, if you couldn't tell... I do listen! But all I hear is "wa wa wa!"

Want a Ghillie Suit!? I'm Your Man!

For those of you that don't know; I, Kyle Rogers, am addicted to airsoft. What's that, you say? The most accurate description I can give you is to say that it's a bunch of guys playing army, shooting eachother with plastic bb's. Most people say, "like paintball?" Yes, It's like paintball in that you shoot people, but there are quite a few differences. For one thing, airsoft ammo looks like this:
and is made of plastic and is smaller than a pea.
Paintball ammo looks like this:

and is made of colored corn syrup and a plastic shell and is about the size of a grape.
Paintballs definitely bring on the hurt more than airsoft bb's

as you might have guessed, and it's a thousand times more messy. For those of you thinking, "but aren't little plastic bb's bad for the environment?" yes they are, but the demand for Biodegradable bb's is growing and as of yet, no birds seem interested in eating the plastic ones anyways. Even if they did, they're completely non toxic.
So why would guys want to play with guns that don't even hurt the people your shooting? Well, airsoft gameplay is more complex than paintball. Generally airsoft games consist of two teams that must accomplish objectives in an allotted amount of time. This could be anything from a "capture the flag" scenario to a "Search and Rescue" mission. Generally in paintball, it's mostly a "Team A, Kill Team B" set up. Both are fun, but Airsofters tend to be more strategic, team players where as paintballers seem to just like to shoot stuff. Airsofters do to, but we like to be more "proffessional" about it.
Another major distinction between the two is the equipment. Here are some pics, just to give you an idea of what an airsofter looks like and what a paintballer looks like.


See the difference?

Probably the biggest difference between the two is the guns themselves.

PAINTBALL

AIRSOFT
See what I mean? Now I guess someone like my wife would look at those to images and say something like, "What the hell Kyle!? There's no difference." Which is exactly what she just said to me. For those of you who are of like mind, airsoft guns are EXACT replicas of the real thing on the outside. Inside they are completely different but put a real one next to an airsoft one and the two guns will look identical. They are so realistic in fact that Military and Law Enforcement trainers use them!

So basically, paintball is all about having fun shooting, while airsoft is more about having fun playing GI Joe and shooting! Let me state for the record that I love both sports and don't mean to convey any disrespect for paintballers out there. I started off in paintball and a good part of my heart is still in it. The only problem is, I show up to a paintball game in my sniper gear and get laughed at, I show up to an airsoft game and get bowed down to. Ok I still get laughed at, but then no one can find me and I kill all ze infidels!

So here's where my addiction has taken it's new turn. Over the past few weeks, I have started doing some work for SAAirsoft at their new shop. I've pulled up tree stumps, done some work on airsoft guns and even spent Saturday at the gunshow trying to sell a few. Mark and Alma and their son Julian are fantastic people and I have had alot of fun getting to know them and learning more about this growing past time BUT, that's not really the "turn" I was talking about. So Mark and Julian mentioned to me that they have alot of kids come out wanting airsoft Sniper Rifles and this got me to thinking. When I was a kid I was obsessed with Snipers. I think it mostly came from having seen the old Tom Berringer and Billy Zane movie as a kid as well as Red Dawn, but also from a love of nature and being outdoors. One of my favorite things to do in Elementary and Jr. High was to play army with my buddies Dan and Chris. We would go out in the woods with our BDU's from the surplus store and spend hours hiding from each other or building forts. Honestly, we spent alot of time playing with GI Joes and blowing up Ken dolls. I should however make a point though that what we played with were a long shot from the cheesy neon crap the kids play with today. Our "GI Joes" were more flexible than a spider monkey and were decked out with accurately replicated gear. The Army Rangers may as well have modeled their gear off of our "toys"! As we grew older though, things evolved. We got bb guns and later paintball guns. We taught ourselves all about "stalking" and concealment and eventually became quite good at moving quietly and unnoticed through the dangerous fields of Suberbia. By 9th grade, we were playing paintball every other weekend and although I'm not sure Dan ever made one of his own, I had my very own, hand made Ghillie Suit. For those of you who don't know, that's the suit snipers wear to help them disappear. It looks like this:



and when a sniper wears one he looks like this:

That's me by the way. Can we say Where's Waldo? ;)


Anyways, after talking with Mark and Julian about the growing demand for sniper rifles, I thought it might be a good idea to make a few Airsoft Ghillie's to try to sell at their store. Now a real sniper spends alot of time crawling around on his stomach, but in airsoft, you generally have to be a bit more mobile and in Texas with our 100+ temps, a full ghillie can feel like a sauna. The perfect solution is the Stalker Poncho. It's a light version of the ghillie suit that helps break up the natural outline of the human body and allows the wearer to blend in but still be mobile.
So here's what I did:
1. Enlist the help of my "enthusiastic" wife.
2. Cut burlap till hands are nothing but blisters and play with lots of paint.
3. Watch paint dry. Super exciting....
4. Assemble ponchos so that Sniper can become one with nature. Be a tree, be a bush, be deer poop, WHATEVER!

4. Test in field. Here's me trying to be deer poop.

So anyways, I haven't made any sales yet BUT I have had quite a bit of interest and hope to get my little operation rolling as airsoft picks up more and fall starts coming back around. So that's what I've been up to lately! By the way, if you are like super jealous of my mad disappearing skills and want to be able to resemble deer poop at will, let me know! I will happily make you a good deal! And, if you want to know more about Airsoft or perhaps get your airsoft on, check out Julian's site at www.saairsoft.com Let him know I sent ya and brotha will hook you up!

Happy 3 year (wedding) Anniversary to us!

September 2, 2006 Kyle and I stood before a preacher (his uncle) to be joined together in holy matrimony in front of our friends, family and God. It was a beautiful Texas summer evening, still hot enough to cause sweat to streak our backs, but the mosquitoes were at bay and a gentle breeze glided through the ceremony to cool us off every once in a while, even our ring bearer (our Maltese) appreciated the breeze. The wedding was all that I had dreamed of and more. But the most important aspect, more than the cake, or the music or the even our friends and family who were there to witness it, was that Kyle and I were officially husband and wife, at the end of the day we were there to be married. And married we were, with or without the mysteriously missing marriage certificate which was never found... (Good thing it was his uncle marrying us or else the ceremony might not have occurred)

To celebrate our THREE years of marital bliss, because we are poor (very poor right now), we decided to have a romantic evening in a park overlooking the city, Comanche Park. We dressed in our best "dress up" clothing, picked up some fabulous Greek food with a bottle of wine and hiked up to the look out spot, missing the sunset by only five minutes. But the streaks of purple and pink illuminated the sky for quite some time after the sun had gone bedy bye, providing us with ample entertainment. The mosquitoes, because we have had so little rainfall this year, have been amazingly sparse this summer, and I only left with three bite wounds, one for each year married, an amazing record for sitting outside at sunset without any protection to ward them off. It was very romantic, and because we are sentimental saps, it was the absolutely perfect way to celebrate a landmark in our marriage.

Last sunday in church, the preacher recognized a couple who had just celebrated their 70th wedding anniversary. The old man, got out of the pew, stood in the aisle and placed arms in the air like Vanna White when presenting a letter, however he was showing off his beautiful bride. I nearly burst into tears right there. How wonderful that this couple had not only made 70 years of marriage, but that he still was so proud of his wife to stand in front of the large congregation and present her so proudly. It was, to say the least, inspirational. So before descending, we toasted to 67 more years of wedded bliss. Glasses up everyone!
The cakes my aunt madeWe bit Mickey's ears off. Sorry Mickey! (The Mickey was from the Tree of Life wedding cake made by my aunt, but Kyle actually made the Mickey. He was edible, but didn't taste good )

Maybe eating Mickey wasn't such a good idea!

Old Friends

Looking back to the carefree days in high school, I find my eyes glistening over with love from our high-spirits, love of life, idealism and possibilities of the future; the future which seemed so far away and so full of limitless dreams. There was some drama in high school as there is in all aspects in life, no matter how much we attempt to avoid it, but my romanticized notion of what life was like without the boulders of the failures, is not over-exaggerated at least in my mind. I preferred my mind and heart, open, and trusting, to one that is more cautious and jaded.

I saw some old good friends from my past a few days past, and our meeting reminded me why we became friends in the first place. Laughter was overriding as we sipped on raspberry tea. Hope and affection were surly ingredients in the leek, chili and potato soup as it seeped out of our pores.

Kyle and I have met a good many different people through our travels, tribulations, and experiences, some keep in touch, while others fade into the blue hue of yesterday. But each time I meet with good friends from my past, from those times of naivety and light-heartedness, I am reminded of my former self, one less self-conscious, one less caught up in the tediousness of life and I wish that I could somehow transport myself to those untainted emotions. I wish I could remember daily that 26 is not old and that I still have my entire life ahead of me. I assumed, credulously, that by 26 my life would be sorted out, that each piece of the puzzle would at least start fitting together. I supposed, ignorantly that I would at least have the border in place, but instead, I don't even think that I have all of the puzzle pieces on the table, and sometimes, I am not sure there aren't more than one puzzle involved in this game. Am I to incorporate these pieces and design my own masterpiece, or should I sort out the unfamiliar pieces and work with the what I ascertain is the correct, original puzzle? It is all so confusing, living life without a manual, without instructions. Many people are given outlines, I threw mine out a while ago by choice, but now I feel that I am wandering lost without a charted map. And I find myself wondering if I shouldn't have kept it, that outline, just as a reference or if it is better what we have chosen. Only time will tell however, if those decisions will create the masterpiece we had in mind. We have endeavored to live life on the clished moto of "live life to the fullest" which is more fulfilling that living by the book, yet as we have quickly discovered, it is not quite as simple and as there are higher mountains with this lifestyle, so are there deeper valleys.

I must look upwards however because I no longer want to nuzzle next to the jagged rocks. Here is to climbing our mountain! Here is to soaring above and beyond what we believed possible. Here is to blindly believing that life always works out in the end. Cheers to my past to my friends, idealism, naivety and joviality , cheers to the present and taking pleasure in the small things and remembering to be appreciative of our blessings, and cheers to our unknown future, where ever it may take us, may it bring us joy and send us soaring!

The mind, once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original dimensions ~ Oliver Wendell

(Does this quote fit at all here? A friend sent it to me and I wanted to use it, so I just kind of shoved it in this puzzle as I feel like I do with many of those loose odd-fitting pieces)

Shara and Mike (now living in Arkansas), Kyle, me (living here and there) and Andrea (in corpus). It's funny how non of us girls have the same last name as we did at the beginning of our friendship.

Visiting with Andrea and her hubby and adorable baby boy in Corpus.

My lovely Shara :)

Hallelujah, it rained!

It was automatic
Systematic
Hydromatic
Why there was great Lightning (last night!)

It was positively electrifying!

Ok so I switched around the lyrics a bit to try and fit what I was trying to say, and although it makes no sense, it made me laugh so I ain't changing. In fact, I am listening to John Travolta sing Grease Lightening as I write this post. That was the best musical ever made- cheesiest, but the best!

But I digress... the point of this was to sing hallelujah to the electric band of hard metal angels that rocked out last night like there was no tomorrow. And man, did they have a spectacular light show. There were times the entire Texas sky was alight in that illuminating white light that can either mean 1)you are on your way out to the great golden gates in the sky so gather your belongings 2) or there is a Texas thunderstorm overhead. A flash in one corner, and then in another, followed by some punk percussion playing angel pounding his heart out. I can just imagine a chorus of angels dressed head to toe in black, classic gothic style, dark sunglasses hiding clear eyes of one, a tatoo of Jesus on the hairy chest of another, while yet another has a hot pink neon halo adorning his head, all playing the largest set of drums imaginable sitting atop a dark ominous cumulonimbus cloud. While a classier angel, dressed in the classical style of an orchestra conductor complete with the tuxedo tails, throws his hands up in the air, back and forth, to the left, softer now, harder now, leading this band of angels in the magnificent thunderstorm that was last night. It was quite the show, a short one, but an amazing delectation for all it's guests, all that aren't afraid of a little thunder and lightening that is. The combination of lights, music and that magical life source, water, pouring from the heavens, pounding on every vulnerable naked surface was nothing short of genius. I, along with most of central Texas probably would have payed to see the show, but as it turned out, it was free. Maybe not exactly free as it has been about a year without significant rain in San Antonio, and we are in a pretty severe drought but I didn't spend any of the green paper I keep tucked away in the banks or under a cushion in my living room but I'm not telling you ;) . The rain last night, may not have solved our water issues, but the plants today are smiling into the sun rather than their typical saturnine disposition, curled in on themselves looking sullen and gloomy. Today is going to be a majestic and glorious day now that the angels have blessed us.

Realy!? Kitty wigs?

Has it really come to this? Is our world really so superficial? I would call myself an optimistic person, one who tries to see the best in all humans, but I am having a hard time fathoming a grown woman, or man for that matter seriously purchasing something so silly as a wig for a cat. I admit, that as I child, I enjoyed dressing up my cats, when they weren't wildly batting at me, claws unleashed, but I have outgrown my fanciful days of dress up the poor kitty cat after the age of 7 years. Some adults, nah, many adults according to Chronicle books are going purrcrazy for these silly over priced CAT WIGS!! How is it, that there is a market for something so ridiculous and so ludicrous!

The Kitty Wig craze—sprung from the feverish imagination of Julie Jackson and her purring partner in crime—has swept the globe. Glamourpuss presents 60 stylish portraits showcasing furry models in the most fetching custom-made cat wigs ever created.

You have to see their marketing- you will not believe this. Under each $50 wig, it tells of how it will make your cat feel:

SILVER FOX

Silver is all about sophistication. Indoors or out, this wig takes Shaft to a special place -- where everything is sleek and svelte, young and foxy.

Silver makes your kitty feel sexy and smart, like a cougar on the prowl.

(Exactly my thoughts, this cat already looks more like a cougar on the prowl!)

PINK PASSION

Pink is the color of fantasy. Our model, Chicken, looks like her mind is elsewhere when she wears this wig -- somewhere in a land of cotton candy and pinwheels where the air smells like sugar kisses.

Pink makes your kitty feel elegant, modern and quintessentially feline.

( I didn't know that modern cats were lacking the quintessential feline feeling! I am so glad that there is a pink wig to help them feel like a real cat again!)

ELECTRIC BLUE

Blue is edgy and electric. In this wig, Chicken sports some serrrrious attitude: she’s thinking saxophones, smoke and snapping fingers.

Blue gives your kitty a sharp look -- jazzy and totally copacetic.

( Snapping fingers eh? Can cat snap their claws? In case you didn't know, copacetic is a rarely used word, especially outside N. America to mean excellent, fine, going just right. I am pretty sure this cat's feeling about this dress up game is quite the opposite however. "When can I stop playing this stupid game and go chase that butterfly out the window" is probably what this cat is thinking)

No QT! No matter how much you beg nor grovel nor give my leg unwanted love bites, I am not giving in to those pleading eyes! I know you want one of those wigs, that you feel incomplete without it, but you will not find your feline-ness in a wig, only within no matter what the advertisement says.

Alright, alright, electric blue it is. How can I say no to you! Plus you do have polydactyl toes (five toes) so maybe you can learn how to snap.

How many of me are there?

"What is in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet." (Who can name that quote?)

When I married my love-a-dub husband, one of the many things we discussed was the changing of our last name. In English speaking cultures it is a societal norm to change one's last name to that of the husband's. Ironically, when we lived in Chile, a very macho-oriented culture, this was not the tradition. Rather, the children take both the mother and the father's last name. But the end by-product results very much the same. The mother's last name eventually is dropped when it is given to the next generation, as in our culture.

Can you imagine what their names would be like if they took each surname of both their mother and father, grandparents, great parents and so on. It would be like reading the first few pages of the Bible everyday; this is John Mike Smith, Johnson, Rogers, Baker, Pain, Peters, Torres, son of Cain..... Somewhere the chaos has to end, and someone's name has to make the cut or else insanity would ensue.

It was interesting when we would introduce ourselves as Kyle and Vanessa Rogers. A bewildered look would squirm across their faces. Despite the number of American movies brought to their country either through legitimate means or pirating, I gather that they still didn't make the connection as to how the transferring of last name works traditionally in the U.S.. We were often asked if we weren't brother and sister nearly everytime, and we would have to explain, "No, in the U.S. traditionally the wife takes the husbands last name." The response to this was often, "how machisto. How sexist" in a condescending manner, the irony blatantly oblivious to the founders of the machisto society.

But they have a point, it's true, our tradition of dropping the maiden name can be considered sexist as in our history it demonstrated the transferring from the father's control to the husband's control. Additionally, it implies that the woman has no surname of her own and her name is merely a reflection of her relationship to men.

Kyle and I discussed our options when planning our marriage. We could leave our names as is, but the problem with that is the lack of unity in the family unit. Eventually, we would like children, and felt it was important that our last names represented that we were a family. So the discussion continued to other options, taking my last name, hyphenating our last names, even creating a new last name out of our current names. Brogers was the most popular of our creative options. In the end, we went with the traditional method, and I changed my last name. The switch was both wistful and a joyous occasion all tied together in a messy ball of confusing and expensive paperwork. My maiden name had been mine, had represented me throughout my entire existence and now symbolized a past self, a pre-marriage self. In some ways it was hard to leave behind the name that in some way had helped to mold me into who I was, but in another, I was illustrating to the world that I was permanently attached to the man I loved and we were then and forever more family.

I mention this now because I recently came across a website called How many of me, which tells you how many people in the USA have your same name. There are a total of 21 people with Vanessa as their first name and my maiden last name as their last, however my current last name, which is by far the more widely used, has 186 of us roaming around the US of A. These statistics made me feel a uninspiring, and unoriginal. It also got me to thinking; who would I be today had I had a totally different name. Would a rose really smell so sweet if it had a different name. What if a rose was called gerg or scat, something that didn't roll off the tongue so sweetly. Would the disgust in our mouth from creating the unpleasant sound taint our image of the rose? How important is a name? Do people see me differently now that I have changed my last name? How many of you are in this world. How does that make you feel? How has your name shaped your life if at all?

The Visitors

Texas, the lonestar state, is known for many things, it's big beautiful blue sky, the perpetual and sometimes unmanageable heat, it's size, not only the mere size of the state but the largeness of the people as well (we have three of the fattest cities in the USA), and it's wildlife. The other night we were visited by some very unconventionally beautiful guests. Some in fact might even consider these creatures of the night to be frightfully repelling, especially when they literally walk out of their skin to leave their outer shell hanging like a deserted evening gown hung on the side of a house. Yes, I am talking about ghosts! No, no, no, I kid, I kid. I am speaking of the lovely cicadas that serenade our summer evenings with a orchestrated high-pitched roar which efectively drowns out any other evening noise. If you are unfamiliar with their songs, you can click here: The songs of cicadas





This little bugger was hanging out on the brick outside the front door, a dangerous place for a bug considering the prowling habits of QT, the magnificent cat. However, this particular evening, he was not alone, he had brought along a friend of note, a dragonfly. When we float down the river, a common activity in the unrelenting Texas heat, we often are visited by pairs of dragonflies taking a rest from their manic mating, landing on our shoulders or heads. They are not an uncommon critter. However, this particular one, was quite extraordinary, and in fact, I have never seen it's equal. Because of her remarkable coloring, she will hence forth be called she because if it is a male, he may be confused about his sexuality, wearing pink and purple as his primary colors. And yes you read correctly, pink and purple. Every dragonfly I have ever come across in my life have had green and blue coloring, but this astonishing flying animal was colored to go out on the town and paint the town red, or pink and purple in her case. How wonderful nature is to have such astounding creatures. Nature is something that I have always loved, respected and feared equally. It never ceases to astound me. What is it about nature where you live do you love?



An old post from our Italy blog about critters. It's fun! Go down a few posts to check it out. There are some funny old photos there.

Show us your world!