Thank you, Mr. Canlas

I had a friend come by and take a few pictures. Too much to say but sometimes stories are beyond words. Thanks, Jon!

Please check out more pictures here. http://canlasphotography.blogspot.com/2010/10/pitcher-family.html

Thanks, Judy

Like I tell my kids -- it's just three movies and one dinosaur museum away. Who wants to go to Colorado? (Me! Pick me!)

Judy is my super-human friend and "life coach" who has rescued me from the brink of Colorado fever time and time again. She just sent me this shot from the inside of my parent's bat cabin where I spent a good chunk of my summer. She's wonderful but the picture makes me homesick.

(Out, out -- damn bat.)

Dear Marco ...

I love you, sweetie!! Would you marry me all over again ... in this dress???

(You have to give this video a minute and a half to really get to the point. What?! You have time for two minutes of "postum-autumn" art. This is my new art movement. It is derived from the return of children to school in the autumn, giving Mormon hipster moms enough time to brew a good strong cup of Postum and sip it slowly whilst surfing design blogs. These are the good times. Anyone got some extra ketchup??)

Rosie by the fire

Cozy and sleepy next to the fire. Welcome to Utah, Rosie Jo!

love is in the air ...

and so is fall.

(Anyone want to swap something I have for a whole bunch of HTML advise?? My pictures are posting fuzzy. Click on Zina to see the real thing.)

Chickie Davis

It's a long story . . . and all my mother's fault! I'll tell you about it later, but for now please welcome our newest family member -- Chickie Davis. (Xan just calls her Rose.)

This one is nobody's chicken but mine.

BTW - I think I am bashing my head against techn0-color template issues here. What's a girl to do??

Z at the Dentist

Here's her version of Fifty-Nifty while on "silly juice". (Sorry I ran out of memory before the last line of the song.)

iThoughts

1. Maybe I shouldn't read The Bell Jar while Marco is on one of his mega China trips.

2. Maybe an iPhone would have saved Sylvia Plath's life. (I can see the Apple ad now -- a celestial Sylvia promoting an app for manic housewives stuck inside with babies because of English winter weather.)

3. Maybe this English winter weather in Utah is getting old.

4. Maybe I should keep my iPhone fully charged until the sun comes out again!!!

(posted from my iPhone)

The Lawyer's Daughter

She's FIVE, people!

Tonight as I tried to escape the kid room without being detected by lightly slumbering children, the following conversation occurred ....

Zina: MOMMY!!! DON'T GO!!!! YOU HAVE TO SNUGGLE ME FOR 3 WHOLE SONGS!! (We have played the same bed-time music CD just about every night for the last seven years.)

Me: I already said prayers, read stories, told times, rubbed back, found bunny, covered toes AND snuggled for 3 songs. Now I have to go down stairs and do the dishes. (Lord forbid I tell her that really I am heading off for two hours of mindless design blog surfing.)

Z: No, the back rub was the one you forgot last night and the prayers don't count as a bed time treat because Heavenly Father makes you say them too. So that is ... (counting on fingers) only 5 bed time things and not 7. Besides, we were saying prayers during most the first song. So really, you only snuggled me for two and a half songs -- OR LESS!

What if you snuggle me for half of one more song -- starting after we stop talking about it -- and pick two more bed time treat things because two of your ideas don't really count as treats for kids. You can do two more times (our word for stories) or a foot-rub on two of my feet. Which one do you pick?

Me: Zina, I am the mom and you are the kid and the kid part of the day is over and now I have to go do mom things ... like dishes. You know, boring work stuff. Then I promise I will come check on you before I go to bed.

Z: How about you just wash the "poky" knives and the butter knives and then you come back up?

Me: Honey, I have to do ALL of the dishes.

Z: Well, how about you can wash just the "poky" knives, the butter knives and three of the bowls -- then straight back upstairs.

Me: (Hoping for an easy out) OK, I will wash "poky" knives, butter knives and all of the bowls and then come check on you.

Z: Good. I will stay in bed while you are washing (counting on fingers for my benefit) "poky" knives, butter knives and all of the bowls, as long as you PROMISE not to wash any spoons, forks or plates. Then come straight back upstairs.

Me: Fine. Now go to SLEEP!

At which point -- I kid you not -- the child gets out of bed and turns on the light. When I ask her in my most exhausted mom voice what she thinks she's doing, her response was proof of her genetics. This kid comes from a long line of lawyers.

Z: I'm getting a piece of paper and pen so I can write down that you have promised to wash only the "poky" knives, butter knives and all bowls -- leaving alone any spoons, forks and plates until the morning. Then you will write that you will come straight upstairs to snuggle me for half of a song with no talking or prayers. After you write your part you have to write your name at the bottom and my name at the top. You can't just write M-O-M either. Lots of people are M-O-Ms. Just write A-N-D-I.

Me: ZINA, get in bed and go to sleep ... now!!!

Z: Ok, you can write the spoons in too and just do the M-O-M word if you like, deal??

ZINA, GO TO SLEEP, p l e a s e ....

In the end, she went to sleep and I didn't do any dishes. (Like contract law really works now days.)

I'm doing this!

Drama

It was a strange day of wandering around abandoned houses for sale and going to the eye doctor where I had several great esoteric conversations about blogging and the elevation of the Kiabab. It was normal Andi-esque random connections with total strangers. (I know, I just referred to myself in the third person. Sorry, we can work it out later in therapy.)

In the doctor's office, I officially introduced myself to a nice nurse named Ashley. I recognized her from blog hopping. "Hi -- I'm Andi. I've been blog stalking you. Not really, it's just that you are linked to the Arizona 20 something girl with all the drama. Do you know someone with premie twins and a dad who underwent emergency heart surgery last week?? Do you know how the surgery went?? She hasn't posted anything in over a week and I'm dying to know who killed JR -- er, I mean, uh -- if her dad pulled through or not."

It was slightly awkward being the crazy internet person who starts asking her questions about her personal life at her place of work. So what! To the dogs with propriety! My desire to find out what happened to a total stranger out weighed any shred of my pride that would keep the conversation on just a professional level. The good news is that Ashley the nice nurse doesn't think I am a crazy. (I gave her my blog address so she could see I was ... what ever it is that I am. But that's the subject of another post.) I have a new friend who's good with needles. Best of all, the dad of her friend appears be on the mend. All is well in Zion.

So, today at 3:40 pm -- just when I think I have wrapped up a good mystery and there is no more drama in my life, I ...

1. Lost my phone just at the time I needed to pick up a kid.

2. Found the phone, but lost the child.

3. Found the child ... 10 miles up the canyon where he got off the wrong bus.

4. Drove up the canyon in a blizzard safely.

5. Drove down the canyon in a blizzard.

6. Called 911 on my newly found phone when I saw a white pick-up truck go FLYING OFF THE SIDE OF THE HIGHWAY, LAUNCH OVER A SNOW BANK, BREAK INTO 17 PIECES AS IT DID A FLIP MID AIR AND LAND IN (or very, very near) THE RIVER UPSIDE DOWN.

The truck was driving the opposite direction in a snowstorm and over corrected after sliding on the road. The accident happened the second we drove past and I had dialed 911 before the cab landed on the ice. Only later did I think about how easily the truck could have flown off the road into oncoming traffic. We were the oncoming traffic.

And now I have no information about how the story ends. There's no blog link, no friend of a friend to randomly recognize. No nice nurse to say, "Hi -- I'm Andi. I've been blog stalking you. Not really, it's just that you are linked to the owner of the white truck that went flying off the road last week ..."

Did everything work out? I hope so. I hope someone walked away from the truck leaving the news with nothing to report. At least once today I found out that no news is good news.

Irony

39.7 means I crave Fire Hot Cheetos when I pms and I have a bad hip.

Lovely.

I caught a big one!

Look what I nabbed at Cindy's latest art opening! At first I thought it would be the fish that got away because I basically had to arm wrestle about 20 people for this piece. The photo is does not represent the item well (phone camera). It's a paper cut of two old geesers sitting on top of an icy lake, fishing for more than they realize.

I bet there is a Sunday school lesson cut into this piece. Maybe that's me and Marco up top, just shootin the breeze -- laughing about some NPR story. Only God really knows what lies just under the surface of our puny human lives. He's waiting to see how we react when we -- by hook or by crook -- snag a big gnarly monster fish of life and love!

Check out more of cindymindypindy's Sunday school visual aids here. (Cindy, I think I just gave you your next book idea -- hmmm?)

This morning on KSL

Baby Girl For Adoption

salt lake city, UT 84106 - Feb 19, 2010

i dont know if this is the best place to do this but i really do need to adopt out my little baby girl to any happy family out there. I was given this side by a friend who told me she once did and succeeded in finding a home for her child. Please if they is any one out there who can help, please do contact me now. I really do need your help

I found it in "other". This ad on KSL was taken down after a few hours of being posted. Bogus?? Or was it for real?? Tell me what you think.

Seriously, So Kursed ... 'n Stuff

(Click here if you are unfamiliar with "Seriously, So Blessed")

Last night I blog surfed until midnight. It was unintentional, I promise.

I was searching for images of metal railing and I clicked for 3 seconds on a blog post of a girl, obviously Mormon. It was a picture in a hospital lobby dated July 2007. That was three years ago. I had to see how it all turned out. I was off mom-duty and the dish washer was humming, "You deserve this, you cooked three meals, you cleaned the kitchen, you deserve this, you just keep surfing, you deserve this". (Raise your hand if you know exactly what I am talking about here.)

There's a feeling early on when you've hit a good vein of 20-something LDS "joyful tragedy" blogs. Nine times out of ten, the more wall paper, music and ALL CAPITAL LETTERS when that first page loads -- the sadder the beautiful patchwork story. Then you sit there ... with a bag of microwave popcorn ... watching the blog post roll out backwards. It's like watching a house on fire ... only in reverse ... starting with the 40 foot flames of personal tragedy ... usually a baby ... or four... and ending up with the perfect engagement picture.

It's a spectator sport.

Stop me if you've read this one: "I love wakin' up at 4:30 am to run the 10 miles in the snow to the NICU. (Got to get that pre-baby bod back!!!) Just love pumping for my pre-term twinners. Born at 21 weeks, my baby boy and girl (Chantz - the boy and Ashyr - the girl) are lit'l champs. Then I head upstairs to ICU. My daddio-patio is a big champ!! At 47 years old, nobody thought he would pull threw. Surprise, he just finished up his third round of flesh eating virus and a couple of open heart surgeries. Oh, yeah ... that huge cyst on my husband's frontal lobe looks way better after a couple of MRIs. They don't know what it is, but at least they know what it isn't."

(I have resisted the temptation to post the links, but if you email me I'll send them to you... they're seriously so real, I promise.)

It's a rough world out there with really upbeat people. Are Mormons more likely to blog their hardships than other religions? Is it like sending a picture with the wedding invite -- something only we do? I'm not making any of this up, even the preterm baby names. (Asher for a girl??) And I don't mean to make fun of anyone either. They are simple people in very difficult circumstances, and they really have positive attitudes. They're everyday Saints. And they blog because talking positively about their lives helps them to feel better about their lives.

Then I clicked one of these girls' random "friends" links. (For rill it was someone named Tam R.S.) Guess who was in the first picture of the most recent post ... my kid in his kindergarten duck costume.

It is all around us, people -- all around us.

Will you be my v-a-l-e-n-Z-i-n-e?

Guess who got a hair cut ...

I think this cut was invented for Zina or she for it ... I don't know which. Let's see if we can stave off a return to the "long hair curse" of little girls with ultra fine hair for a bit longer. Oh, how I love her with sassy flapper hair.

Confession: I am not above giving into a green sugary bribe to get a decent shot. Not proud of it, but now you know.

Old School

It's tradition! Here's a pile of hand cut Valentines from this morning.

Alien Valentines from "Zather".

Zina got her first growing flower card from Daddio. Me thinks this is not the first expandable Valentine Marco has whipped together for a five year old.

Pink Shag Bathroom - swanky!

Did you know Jayne Mansfield, the actress from the sixties, had a bathroom completely covered in PINK SHAG CARPET. (You have to click on that baby to get the full effect of her pinkness.)

Did you also know that she had FIVE CHILDREN UNDER THE AGE OF 12!! (That may be directly related to the presence of her heart shaped tub lined in little mirrored tiles.)

I bet Jayne loved Valentine's Day.

(Did you also know that the Law & Order's Olivia is her youngest daughter. Who knew?.)

Oh boy ...

What a strange and terrific boy I have. He is jangly in his own "special" way -- some days flailing around like a puppet attached to someone else's strings. This must be his Pinocchio phase as he learns control and the difference between wrong and right. His great loves are Zina, weapons and reading anything ... and I mean anything printed in front of him.

I sat in on a first grade lunch this week and learned he has a special job in the school cafeteria. Xan is the designated fortune cookie reader -- no lie. He sits at the table closest to the recess door and small children file past him, passing him little strips of paper as they move on to the nirvana of afternoon recess. Being one of the very few first graders who can read fortune cookies has made him a veritable Dalli Lama to Mrs. Clark's first grade class. After he reads them, he lets the children know what they might mean and which ones will come true. Today the ones printed in blue were real and the red totally bogus.

Suddenly I have to be careful what kind of literature I leave lying around. For months we had a magazine in the little bathroom about buying cows for families in third world countries. It wast was full of innocuous pictures of bovines and chickens and fun to leaf through while sitting on the toilet. Last week, after spending 20 minutes or more in the potty, he came out with the magazine in hand, asking what a "gen-o-kid" was. And could he go to Uganda to be a part of the group of boys who got AK-47s when they were his same age. They even got to sleep outside for two years without any parents or school. The word was genocide.

He had found a story about a man who, as a boy, had been kidnapped at 6 to be a child soldier in Uganda. The boy was given a machine gun at 7 and killed at 8. What a world between these two boys. I tried to explain a little about war and that the boy in the story didn't want to be a child soldier. Xan had a hard time believing such nonsense. Literacy is an amazing thing. Even Zina in preschool reads better than many people will their whole lives.


Zina has a mind and wit that is all her own. After I said something about how well she gets along with her brother, she said without blinking an eye, "It's like we have an indivisible cloak."
Her other joke is about a "flock of girls" being a "herd of hers". She likes the sound of things and has started matching pitch. She will find a note on the piano and say it "rhymes" with certain other sounds like the note an octave above or the squeak of Marks truck.


Children are strange in between people. (How un-PC is it to have a first grader that supports child slavery in sub-Saharan African civil warfare?) The box feels small for the big personalities of my little people.


Maybe the face only a mother could love.

squeak, squeak

Last night I thought I heard the scuffle of little mouse feet somewhere in the cabin. I felt a small wave of panic then had to laugh. Funny that it was the mouse that cause my pulse to rise. I was much more affected by a 3 oz. rodent than either the 6 foot long mountain lion OR the 2 ton mama moose with an attitude.

Of course I would have been more traumatized by the mountain lion under the same circumstances. Like if I heard it purring ... 10 feet away from me ... at midnight ... in the dark ... inside my house ... sniffing my stinky shoes ... searching the darkness for the stinky feet that matched the smell inside those stinky shoes ... barely brushing my cheek with its long soft tail as it walks past me ... watching me doze on the sofa with its giant glowing tiger eyes ... waiting to pounce ... RAARRRR!

(Anyone want to come up and sleep on the couch?)

Before and After Shots

I've been thinking about these apples and their shiny reflexions on a red stove. I've been thinking about pictures of pretty food that is half eaten when photographed. I've been thinking about the details of comfort and surplus.

And then I feel guilty.

There is something about the image of haphazard ingredients or a photo of food mid meal. It's something we see all the time now on blogs (orangette, for one) and in artsy cookbooks. This is a new thing within the last decade or two. My grandmother's cookbooks always contained images of perfect molded aspects and parsley laden platters of untouched food. Why the shift??

Zeitgeist of our time -- I say. Messy plates with utensils dropped mid bite is a 21 century icon. It says, "I'm not making this because I have to -- it can't be bought and I don't need to sell it anyway. I've made this pretty because I have time and money to throw towards one more apple galette that I can't even be bothered to finish. -- HA!"

So why do I want to post about how superficial my apple galette has made me in body and soul??

Because I think it's important to see ... and photograph ... the small details of my world. It's an exercise into seeing the details of bigger worlds. Yesterday, as I was literally day dreaming of green apples against a pomegranate wall, I drove past Orem cemetery going 45 miles per hour. I caught a glimpse of two different groups of people surrounding grave side services. One of them had 200 people and row after row of flower sprays. The other had four frozen mourners surrounding a tiny pink casket. The whole experience lasted only "one one-thousand, two one-thousand, three one-thousand" and then I had sped past it. A three second exposure to my brain with my natural 50mm lens in my eye.

Perhaps spending the morning looking at green apples was part of learning to see details and life's juxtapositions even when driving through life at 45 miles per hour.

(This shot is a little bit tipsy, but I like it anyway.)

Moose Tracks in the Snow -- A Mormon Cookbook

What if there was a cookbook that paired Mormon inspirational stories with quirky refreshment recipes. Just like the "gentile" cookbooks that pair the perfect wine with the perfect cheese, this would be a guide to our best loved tales to be served up with something containing Marshmallow Whip.

Take my first concoction of a reading of "Footprints in the Sand" and a recipe to make your own "Moose Tracks" ice cream in the comfort of your own home. The book would be called "Moose Tracks in the Snow" and maybe this would be an appropriate cover photo for the book.

Think of it ... we could do laminated posters with schmaltzy pictures and recipes in the bottom corner to be sold by the dozens at Des. Book. Tears would be "strolling" down the cheeks of touched reader and eaters alike!!

Moosetracks Ice Cream. Mix the following ingredients into Vanilla or Chocolate ice cream:

1 cup fresh Marshmallow Whip

1 cup chopped mini Reeses Peanut Butter Cups (about 20)

4 oz. chopped semi-sweet chocolate

1-2 cups fudge ripple (see recipe below)

Fudge Ripple
from The Perfect Scoop
Yields about 2 cups

1/2 cup sugar
1/3 cup light corn syrup
1/2 cup water
6 tbsp unsweetened Dutch-process cocoa powder
1/2 tsp vanilla extract

1. Combine sugar, corn syrup, water and cocoa powder in a medium sauce pan and whisk until well-combined.
2. Heat over medium heat. Whisk constantly until it comes to a low boil.
3. Continue to cook for one minute, whisking constantly.
4. Remove from heat and stir in vanilla.
5. Chill thoroughly in refrigerator before using.

Fudge ripple, if covered and refrigerated, can be stored for up to 2 weeks.

(What are your favorite morm-o-phide recipes?)

Stinky Cheese

It's raclette season in the mountains! If you haven't heard of raclette, I'll fill you in. You start with a heated slab of marble that is piled high with sausage, peppers, onions and thin slices of pink steak. Under the marble is where you stick little trays of potatoes covered in cheese that broils to bubbly browned perfection.

Usually I stick with your basic mild white cheeses like Havarti or baby Swiss. Last week we had a brave bunch of diners that I subjected to the maximum stinky cheese test. I splurged and bought a chunk of real raclette cheese.

When eaten cold, this stuff is akin to culinary water boarding ... a virtual decent into taste bud hell ... worse than Wensleydale ... stinky socks meets dead mouse smell cheese. You get the idea. The trick is to pair the melted cheese with enough pickled condiments like capers, pearled onions and hot mustards so that the two extremes cancel each other out.

Of course fluffy homemade sourdough is enough to make even the stinkiest sock-cheese palatable. (Go ahead, click on that picture to experience the combination of flour covered crust against the red wall. I love it!)

Our guests were even better suited for the raclette challenge than I had hoped. Above is a shot of Christian's plate mid meal. When in doubt about the potential success of any given occasion, be sure to invite the Asplunds. Lara is the best cook on the planet and she'll read poetry. Christian will bring multiple musical instruments for plenty of inspiring new music.

After dinner we had a small music night. I think my favorite numbers were Glenn Cornett's contemporary version of the Prayer of the Zoremites and David's original tune about Jerry Springer. There was also a new piece of music Christian titled "Shadyside LLC". He can blame that one on the ambient fumes of stinky cheese.

I told a musical joke:

Knock-knock. Who's there? Knock-knock. Who's there? Knock-knock. Who's there? Knock-knock. Who's there? Knock-knock. Who's there? Phillip Glass!

Lara made this fantastic apple-lemon galette. But the best piece of performance art was when Glenn decided at midnight that a small group would drive up to the top of Sundance to see some of Kent Christensen's art work.

It was the kind of evening where we couldn't be bothered to clean up or actually put small children in real beds until the next day. We were all too busy chatting about our up coming spring time jaunts over the pond to London and the Sundance films we were going to see.

Little Zina finally dosed off on the sofa around midnight with her maraca still in her hand. I hope there was something about the smell of raclette cheese and the din of grown-up talk about the future of contemporary art in the Mormon world that her sleeping five year mind took with her to dreamland. This is the makings of a true Davis girl.

Bring it, girl friend!

Usually I have excellent moose etiquette, but maybe I crossed the line when I got a little too close to this fine mother's baby. This is the look that says, "You mess with my kid, you mess with me, girl-frenn."

I spotted these two in the river bed below South Fork park eat fresh green watercress on my way back up the canyon from dropping Xan at the school bus. We had meet this summer when the calf was much smaller at the salt lick by Charlotte's.

She must not have remembered our summer encounter fondly because the two turned tails and headed up stream as soon as I got my camera out. Naturally, I ran up the road to catch them. I climbed up the snow bank to see if they were below in the river, thinking they would head off into the willow marsh toward the mountain. It was a surreal feeling as I wrapped my brain around the potential consequences of what I saw at the top of the snowy hill.

The mother moose was quickly climbing up the other side to come check me out. I came nose to nose with her and immediately calculated the triangulated positions of the moose, my car and my butt. That mama moose was going to kick my trash unless I politely bid farewell and hustled back to the safety of my large vehicle.

I got the shot of the day, but she definitely got the final word. I swear I saw her squint those shiny black eyes and point straight at me with those long ears of hers as she mumbled, "You get on with your big bad self or else show me what you got this morning. You and me -- in the lower meadow at noon. Bring it!"

I admitted defeat and headed back to my little calf waiting by the window in the cabin.

(Static cabin hair girl.)

Hear Kitty, Kitty ...

The blogging gods are smiling on me and my renewed commitment to posting. MOUNTAIN LION -- HUGE -- BEAUTIFUL MOUNTAIN LION. Last night, 10 minutes after walking into our cabin I looked out the front window and saw this amazing pale golden cat -- nose to tail it was SIX FEET LONG. These pictures are from my cell phone in the dark, but you get the idea.

This cat was about twice as big as a large golden retriever. S/he put his or her nose to the front window of the cabin and then wandered over to Charlottes place and crawled around under the front deck. Yep - Grandma Charlotte has pumas living under her house. How do you like them apples? (Frankly, I am not surprised. Charlotte is about as tough as they come.) This morning there were tracks all over the place with several urine markings next to where Charlotte's dog, Jessie, had pooped. That dog is a marked dog.

So, come on up to the cabin -- hang out with our 200 pound kitty cat.

Above is Xanny's seven year old hand next to cat track. FYI - Cat tracks typically do not show their retractible claws unless there are icy or slippery conditions. You can also tell the track belongs to a mountain line if there is a tail drag on either side of the rear paw in the snow. AND you can also tell the track belongs to a mountain lion if you SEE IT WALK PAST YOUR FRONT DOOR.