Ramblings, Part II

A creepy photo of Lucy to kick this post off... those are stickers from Trader Joe's.  I love Trader Joe's... except that they think kids need 20 stickers each.  When I was a kid, we would get one, maybe two stickers.  That's it.  A lollipop at the bank?  That was like winning the lottery.  A sticker AND and toothbrush AND a bouncy ball from the dentist?  That was excess in my day.  Less is more, people.  See, these two eye stickers entertained her fine.  The other 18 are probably all over the inside of my car.  Thanks a lot, TJ's cashiers.

She stuck them on her own eyes herself.  I bet if she could have seen herself, she would have been disturbed and pulled them right off again, ha.  The hooded cloak, though, is adorable.  It was a Christmas present for her because she loves to dress up.  I got it from an etsy shop here.

This is Cecilia in our local coffee shop... no, not drinking coffee.  She and Lucy split a hot chocolate in two cups.  The older girls take dance lessons at a studio down the street from the coffee shop, so I sometimes stop in there to grab a drink after dropping off Caroline.  Cecilia's class starts an hour later - that was the closest I could get them to overlap - and so she, Lucy, and I run errands before her class begins.  This was an extremely cold day, so I told them that in honor of the cold weather, I was treating them to hot chocolate.

I love the atmosphere in this coffee shop... see the background, how the light fixtures look?  There are several mismatched wooden tables scattered around the place, a few armchairs and couches, and local artwork (for sale) displayed on the walls.  A nearby CSA does their vegetable share drop off here on our dance day.  We haven't done it ourselves because it is pricey, but I would like to try it one day.  And, it is hard to believe it now, but this space used to be our local photography store.  Sadly, it closed because the owner just wouldn't go digital... but I used to come here for film developing, and now I come here for coffee.  The building has come full circle for me... if that even makes sense.  I gradually stopped going because I had switched to digital and only occasionally went to get reprints of old photos, and then it closed... and then it became another local business that draws me in.  Sometimes I will try to remember where things were when it was Clyde Collier Photography, and I barely can.  Or I will sip coffee and think, "There used to be pictures here in this building that I took."  Weird.

Lucy clearly didn't want her photo taken.  She kept trying to block me with her foot.

I have cut back almost completely on the caffeine.  When I was pregnant, I stopped drinking coffee except for the occasional decaf.  I switched to decaf Irish Breakfast tea as well.  I like to keep caffeine out of my system during pregnancy.  With the emotional sadness of the miscarriage, I wanted to turn back to caffeine... but didn't for some reason, overall.  I have had an occasional cup of coffee here at Swift and Finch, but more often get decaf.  Mostly decaf tea at home, too.  I figure I might as well keep it mostly out of my system as I hope to be pregnant again sometime soon...

Here is an example of some of the local art hanging up in Swift and Finch... this is totally my kind of decor: beer cap mosaic.  I made one myself over a year ago in the shape of a big N for my brother, although I superglued them on.  This guy's got the right idea - he pounded them flat and staple-gunned them to the wood.  Much more durable, as the superglued ones kept falling off.  Anyway, can you tell what scene this artwork portrays?  If you lived in Atlanta in the early 90s, you would recognize this as the "Braves win!  Braves win!  Braves win!" moment when the Atlanta Braves beat the Pittsburg Pirates to go on to the 1991 World Series... their first World Series ever.  Everyone in Atlanta became a baseball fan then, because the Braves had truly sucked up to that point.  I collected the newspaper articles, I watched all the games, I recorded the cheesy musical tributes on VCR tapes at the end of the season... I had a foam tomahawk... yeah, I was into it, ha ha.

So, I didn't go back to caffeinated coffee after the miscarriage, but I did decide we were going to a concert at a bar in Atlanta.  Which I might have done anyway had I still been pregnant, just for the music, but it was much easier to decide that Chris and I needed to go out and do something fun together, because we really did at that point.  So this is me in a photo I texted to my mom for fashion advice, ha.  We had seen these cute cable-knit sweater button down legwarmer type thingies (I swear they don't look all 80s or anything; I realize they may sound that way!) when I was in ATL around Christmas, and my mom said I should get a pair... I just didn't know what color to choose and said I would look at some of my outfits to see what would be most versatile.  They are the kind of thing you have to wear with leggings.  I am very picky about leggings - I don't believe they should be worn as pants.  They need to be worn under a dress, tunic, long shirt... something that covers the crotch, in my opinion!  At least on me.  So this is me, modeling a grey tunic-ish thing and a maroon shirt under it with black leggings and mismatched boots.  One dressier black knee high boot, one black combat boot circa 1997.  Just so she could give a good opinion based on what I might be wearing these legwarmer thingies with.  So she got me a pair and then we went to Atlanta a few days later, and I wore them with this outfit to the concert.  With the combat boots, of course.  I need to get the toes on them redone... the leather is all scuffed up.  I am just kind of overprotective and don't know that I trust somebody to take them apart and put them back together again with some new leather.  Kind of like how I won't leave old negatives for reprints (see, back to photography again!) at places that send them off because I am afraid they will lose them or shred them up in a post office machine or something.  I think that's called paranoia or something...

So we went into Atlanta to see Emerson Hart perform at a club called Vinyl.  It has a parking deck underneath that must be classified as an antique at this point.  It took me about seven minutes to get into the parking space - really.  Tight, tight, tight.  We got there just a bit before the opening act went on - and there were two openers - and yet there were no tables left.  I hadn't realized they would have a bunch of tables; photos online of this place looked like an open area with people just milling about.  But there was a raised platform area towards the back that had couches and armchairs on it, so we sat in the two armchairs, and this was our view from there.

This was the third time I dragged Chris to see Emerson Hart.  It was the first time we'd heard him tell so many stories and cuss so much (Emerson, not Chris), ha ha.  The stories were very interesting, although he got very rambly the later it got, after a few people brought him shots of Jameson.  The show was open to all ages even though it was in a bar, and there were a couple of people who had kids there around maybe age ten... so he kept apologizing to them, saying "I'm sorry, sweetie, those are bad words.  I shouldn't say that."  Then he'd keep it up anyway, ha.  Lesson: don't take kids to concerts in bars at 10:00 at night.  Three kids at Gramma's house, none in my uterus - check.  No kids exposed to bad language.  And I was able to have my favorite beer which they had on draft, Terrapin Hopsecutioner.  A small treat in the grand scheme of things.  But it was good to get out together and just listen to music (and stories, lots of stories).

And that is enough rambling for now... I keep thinking I have words inside me that I need to get out in writing, but I don't think they are coming.  So you get this jumbled reflecting instead. ;)