Category
Chas
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05.15.08I finished the king quilt
Chas, Daily, Making (8)
Folded on the back of a chair in the studio, this quilt has sadly watched me come and go through several creative phases, none of which included quilting. But with the rising temperatures, it’s time to throw off the down and throw on the lightweight cotton.
It’s made from thrifted fabric I found in Austin, Merrimekko prints and monoprints made last year.
After a quick, sweaty run and breakfast, we’re off to spend the day in San Francisco, where we can stay cool ride bikes. Here’s Chas, who just woke up. That means I need to hurry up and get out the door.
Happy morning! I’ll post better pictures later, when the light is coming into the room.
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05.08.08mom, I need the car key. and some money. see ya in the morning!
Chas, Daily (0)
Tags: ChasSicore, Seth Whitman
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05.06.08punching in, all punchy and stuff
Chas, Daily, Damon, Please Bear with Me (1)I spent time today in the sunshine, running a fast 4 miles, mulching the flower bed under sweet grapefruit blossoms, listening to the quail, admiring the profusion of blooms and bees, only to feel like complete and udder feces. We all have “off” days, when our perspective is skewed; I’ve had about three off days in a row, wondering where this is coming from and waiting for it to pass.
All the while, Chas has been enduring a restless bout of coxsackie virus, leaving him whiney, demanding and without neither appetite nor humor to pull him through.
But I’m helping him, and he is wrapped around me like Silly Putty, molded to my pores. His heightened nipple fetish is getting most annoying of all. It was also our 7th wedding anniversary.
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04.28.08flutter fluffer
Chas, Daily, Ford (1)
PROBOSCIS is such a funny word. I think what has happened is that I’ve heard it used inappropriately too many times, so that I’ve now become conditioned to think dirty thoughts when I hear the word. SO. Here’s Ford and his, um, proboscis. Uh, getting to the nectar?
Chas is mastering the lepidopteran art of mimicry and nectarology and proboscism.
Wha?
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04.19.08Lovelocks
Chas, Daily, Damon, Thinking (2)
When Chas was a day old, asleep in my arms, I ran my fingers through his strawberry hair and furrowed my brow, wondering where the hell his red hair came from. Neither Damon nor I have red hair. Luckily, Chas has the Sicore nose (read: funky nose that only Sicores have, both in appearance and ability, capable of detecting fabric softener within a one mile radius), so I rested knowing I wouldn’t have to prove paternity. But the red hair had me completely perplexed, and a little worried, too; Damon has always made fun of redheads and freckles, and it appeared we’d managed to spawn little orphan Annie.
But months passed, and Chas’ hair changed. Some babies lose their hair, but Chas only grew more of it. The red paled to a towhead blonde, like Damon’s childhood hair. And while the front half of his crown grew straight, the back half grew wavy and wild. With each day, whether brushed or not, it began to tease itself into little blonde dreadlocks, and to this day it would appear that Chas, even ten minutes after having his hair combed, looks like he just got out of bed, or maybe scrubbed the bathtub with his head.
Everybody seems to love this head of hair as much as he does; in fact, Chas will grin and tousle his hair after I brush it, just to prove I’m ineffective. He loves his hair like a loose tooth, eager to reward compliments with Bruce Lee-inspired side kicks and leaps off of chairs, which make the gold dreads bounce and fly. “I wish I had hair like that!” is an acceptable compliment, less creepy than “I want your HAIR!” Perhaps the one person who would never tire of seeing Chas’ proud display in light of these gestures, besides Chas himself, is Damon; Damon, in all honesty, would actually love to have Chas’ hair. Which, every time I hear him say it, kind of makes me cringe. I always wonder how Chas perceives this strange compliment, being a three year-old and not entirely versed in the full play of our language.
So it happened last night, at dinner, while the four of us were in a booth waiting for our food and talking about the day, that Chas’ hair was catching the falling beams of sunset in a glorious flaxen halo. While he could have asked Chas to pass the chopsticks, or the soy sauce, Damon was stunned by the vision before him, and instead he asked,
“Chas, can I have your hair?”Chas bashfully tucked his chin into his chest and grinned at Damon, telling him “Nooooooo, daddy, you can’t have my hair!” and I sat there before my empty place setting, looking for my chopsticks and wondering why it always feels to me like Damon’s asking him, “Chas, can I have your spleen?”
But I smiled instead, and before I had the chance to ask Chas to pass the chopsticks, I looked up to find Chas reaching across the table to Damon, stretched beyond the limits of love, grinning and holding in his stout little hand a rather large lock of fine golden hair.
“Here you go, daddy.”
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04.07.08sous chef at chez alis
Chas, Daily, Friends, Sketchbook (0)
sous chef at chez alis, originally uploaded by young@art.
I took Chas up to Skyline so we could bother my friend Alis on a workday.
Under the hazy sun I sat in the lounge chair while Chas made lunch and Alis took a work call. He wasn’t just making lunch, he was his own Iron chef competition. More complicated than that, even, because it involved acrobatics and small Tonka trucks. After about 45 minutes, he was done, and only after he had told me so, not a minute before.
Nevermind the fact he was playing right beside an actual plot of bolting kale, cabbages and beet greens.
When I brazenly picked up the plant saucer full of broken sticks, he furiously demanded I take the saucer with the crumpled up dandelion greens that had been yanked out of the ground and plunged into the water trough with the drowned bees and rusting scrap metal. I mean, salad.
“NO!” He demanded, “That’s not yours! That’s Alis’.”
There are two particularly delicious sounds that make me happy. One is the low-pitch quiet sound of the barn in the afternoon, when the horses are chomping on grain and hay. I love this lulling sound. The other sound I adore is the high-pitched, little-mouth delicious sound of Chas, pretending he is eating sticks and twigs. So there we had pretend lunch ad afterwards, as he played, I sketched.
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04.02.08the pace of things this week
Chas, Daily, Home, Photos (3)
, originally uploaded by young@art.
I just posted midspring pictures to Flickr so that, later, when the hot dry blasting winds of summer parch the soil, I can look back to all this green. But you see that background there? That fuzzy, blurry background would indicate the speed of things around here. Actually, make that warp speed.
BUT. Tonight is date night. Black Keys in the city! Not so much a pause but at least some glitter in blur. I’m wearing ma GOLD heels like a Roman goddess and I’m going to spend today running around the house looking or my glittery tights. So. I guess, expect more blur.
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03.30.08silhouettes
Chas, Daily, Thinking (5)
, originally uploaded by young@art.
Silhouettes are on my brain. I have no idea why, or what will become of it, but I’m obsessing over the silhouette. I’m going to run with it, this week.
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03.14.0830 dayz in the treehouse, day 20
30 Days in the Treehouse, Chas, Daily, Please Bear with Me (5)
30 dayz in the treehouse, day 20, originally uploaded by young@art.
Chas, who I rarely ask to pose, still working the treehouse sit-still-and-be-quiet. We just leave the quilt laid out up there now and return every morning. It’s soooo good. Looove the treehouse. Thinking about building an addition, but I’ll have to locate some good long pieces of old lumber first. OOH, we need LACE up there, too. Don’t tell the boys. they might not like that. But I feel like it’s my treehouse too, you know? I mean, why not? Lace.
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02.21.08Ford blogs: Japanese Tea Garden
Chas, Daily, Ford blogs (1)
Yesterday we went to the Japanese Tea Garden in San Francisco and we got tea.. It was Japanese tea, no, Jasmine tea. It tasted kinda good.
A lady with a pink dress, a kimono, with birds on it, gave it to us.
Mom look at me. Mom, look.
Mom, look at me!
…And we had treats: cookies.
Then we went for a walk where the pond was and we saw some fish. They were koi fish. They were white and orange and big.
The garden looked like a big giant map thing, like a circle, with bridges that had no rails whatsoever. And stepping stones! That was really fun for me.
We walked under a big red castle tower thing.
But we got cold.
And I had to go to the bathroom.
But we went to the gift store. I got a Japanese paintbrush kit.
I chose that ’cause it’s kinda cool to me. I like Japanese characters and it had those and some pictures on it. Now I want to paint with it. Period.
recent posts
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