Hallowe-an Vacation

Being in the undead business business year round, I decided to take the month of October off. Don't ask me why, but I did. I also took a year off from being some form of a zombie at Halloween, since to me zombie facepaint and fake blood are about as "business casual" as it gets. So I convinced my husband to dress up like Robert Smith and Simon Gallup (or fill in the blank other member of The Cure) but in my "usual way" (read: esoteric snob) I didn't just want to dress up like them in their normal style. Instead we did an homage to the Head on The Door poster I had up on my wall as a teenager, also known as the "In Between Days" album cover. I got some awesome day glo facepaint (almost like a powder) from my good friends at Performance Studios and a couple Kiss wigs (the best thing I could find for a Robert Smith look) and we were in! I even carried around a fake blow up guitar on my side for good measure.



My sister and her boyfriend let us tag along with them and we hit a show at Foobar with a sweet lineup of cover bands. Nikki Lane worked the door which seemed unnecessary seeing as how a little mason jar with a note would have worked considering it was a beyond reasonable $1 cover at the door. But its cool, she looked pretty smart in a Boardwalk Empire look complete with a wiggle dress and vintage fox stole. Super fun!! and I even saw another Robert Smith there at the party which rocked my WORLD! I went up to him and introduced myself by asking "Disintegration? I'm Head on the Door" drawing a blank stare from him momentarily before he realized this short girl in front of him was actually dressed as Robert Smith as well. He looked fantastic so I had to request a picture with him.

Nothing like seeing two Robert Smiths playing pool with each other in a smoky bar.
Only in Nashville.

A bunch of cover bands played but I think the Ramones took the cake for look-alike points. A baby "mosh pit" even formed, if you can really call it that (you can't, trust me, it was very "comfy") and I was on the outskirts just watching the show but did intervene when I saw that pacman had fallen down and his huge pacman head was making it hard for him to get resituated. Mosh pit etiquette definitely was in effect but not without some chuckles on my part that I felt led to rescue Pacman from a mosh pit. Goodness Gracious....



It was so worth having a neon green face for the following day to go with my mild hangover. Soooo worth it.

xoxo, rr

Tractor Show Bliss 2011: Man and Machine*

Bells Bend Tractor Show 2011

Could possibly be the coolest thing ever in the History of the Land.
Completely Bad Azz.

Our day started off right away with some education, courtesy of the Professor of Tractor Studies himself, Mister George West. What a hero of mine. A man of true grit and substance but so much more! He's an activist and leader in the community on top of being just a real dyed in the wool country man. He plays the fiddle and also counts "songwriter" as one of his hobbies. Love this man and everything he stands for. Not only did he show us his corn processing tractor (I am sure there's another and more cool name for this but I didn't catch it) which he revved up for us, but he sang me part of a song he wrote, which touched me immensely both for the writing as well as the fact that he shared it with me on the spot.

So rad.

The corn comes out of this shoot when its done being separated from the stalks. So cool!

Never met a mason jar I didn't like.

More of the corn tractors guts. There was a really cool story about this but since I didn't take notes and can't remember the technical highlights I will just say its really cool, made in America and clearly a gem before Planned Obsolescence came into fruition.

A country man in training.

Happy on a Tractor. Just like his mom.

More pics of the tractor in a jar on a tractor. Be still my beating heart!

That is sand in there too.
Adds literal "Grit" and acts as simple metaphor of history.
Love it so much it can't be 'splained.

My "little man" looks cooler drinking out of his sippy cup
than your man looks drinking out of his coffee cup.

Can crushing contraption made from old farm machinery and completely mesmerizing.

Gorgeous Gears

Orion getting to "drive" a Farmall for the first time.

King on his first tractor ride, with dad, courtesy of the coolest pre-teen this side of the Mason Dixon line. I thought I was cool cause I learned to drive a car by myself at 12. This kid has studied tractors since he was 4 and drives them amazingly at the ripe old age of 10.

Sick.

Not so much "street style" as it is "dirt road style" and I can't get enough!!!
A lovely couple and so authentic.

Fierce.

I am a truck lover too, and adore anything vintage
as far as vehicles are concerned

so I had to capture a pic of this lovely creature.

My cup runneth over!

Happy Hambone.

*The subtitle of this blog post was taken from the brand Man and Machine (http://www.man-machine.com/). To give you a quick rundown, Man and Machine is a great little company that makes medical grade, hygienic and liquid resistant keyboards and mice. I had the good fortune to meet and schmooze with the CEO of this company back when I worked in the technology sector in a previous life. This guy is a really cool cat and their products meet the needs of an important niche and are of the highest quality. Also...their branding kills!! Check out the names of their keyboards here and see why this company is "really cool". Why do I jump from tractors to medical grade keyboards, you might ask? I just wanted to give credit where credit is due, since I didn't come up with the phrase "Man and Machine" but did want to use the term in this post since its about (country) men and their (farm tending) machines.

xoxo, rr

Undead Living, Country Style.

I miss my tomato garden.

I reckon

the deer

and peafowl

and foxes

and groundhogs

and chickens

and all the other animals

who helped themselves

miss it too.

Oh well...at least I'm not the only one. (grrr)

(And yes, that is our "cowpool" in the background,

and yes, those are lawn chairs around it but usually we put them right in the pool.)

We keep it country.

Strawberry lemonade served in a honey jar.

Not trying to be cool here and no I don't remember the "recipe."

Okay, fine...it had lemon guts and strawberry blood in it

and of course diabetes generator sugar

and good old filtered cold-as-it-can-get-without-being-ice--water.

That's all I got.

And the jar is simply cause its all we drink out of (and not the cool ones like mason jars, oh no!! That's for when we have company over or special occasions) so this was the prettiest one I had clean at the moment and it was huge which I love drinking out of the hugest jars I can find just to be competitive with myself on how much green tea I can drink or whatever....

Lately we're big on the Party Dip (salsa from TX) jars with the labels still half attached that we really should have just taken straight to the recycling bin but tried to squeeze just a little more life out of them, if ya know what I mean.

Again, keepin' it COUNTRY.

Country moms like me can wear a muscle tee and yoga pants to the party. And we don't even really worry about things like store bought cakes or whatever. This happens to be a homemade "Yummy Good Cake" decorated with strawberries, blueberries and ....(wait for it)...blow pops.

Country.

In the country we like to spruce up our 1970s chandeliers

with cobwebs and vintage fishing lures and hooks.

Just cause.

Just cause we're country, that is.

Turbo Country.

That's how I'm livin'! ~ rr

Summer Reading for Woman and Child

Always.

I miss entertaining.

Sedaris Forever!

Viva von Furstenburg! An original "modern woman."

A family favorite.

Bullies suck.

Richard Scarry is the BEST.

Damn straight we're the Busiest People Ever!

Another classic from Doris Burn.

Definitely in the Andrew Henry vein.

I want to live here.

Kids being kids.

Perfect.

Back on the Wag

Not that anyone really cares but I am really trying hard to get myself to write more. I am pretty busy/distracted right now in my life, but also I can be quite lazy when I do get a free second (that's what its for, right*!?!) which makes for a bad mix with writing. Just taking a second to write helps me clear my head sometimes so I must try to do it more selfishly and not care what any of you might think. That is, any one of you 3-7 people in my family or friends circle that read this blog. Look at me---damn, I went there. I sound like Fantastic Mr. Fox talking about his column.

God I love that movie.

And dadgummit if it isn't a totally accurate depiction of foxes as it turns out. Well I mean in personality, looks and swagger. Sure, FMF is a bit more on the urbane side. I'm not gonna lie: Our foxes are country as hell, travel in packs, don't articulate quite as clearly and they are naked every time I see them. With fat squirrel tails.

We have a couple that sometimes hangs out in our backyard and when they make an appearance we are so fixated on them we stop what we're doing, usually me at the sink sandblasting the egg yolk off the breakfast plates, kids at the table or the other window trying to peer out and watch these guys sit there and lazily lick themselves and scratch their ears. We are hooked.

"Crazy like a me!"

Poor things look sort of mangy sometimes but still super cute and the coolest color red with some black white and gold highlights cause he's a Commodore or something, I dunno. I love anything with an Italian Greyhound looking body, a cat head and a squirrel bordering on ferret tail.It's such a cool hybrid! God totally rocked it out on this one! (air guitar)

These pics were taken through our kitchen window so not as clear

and he wasn't really doing anything but chillin.

Cause he's a foxxxx.

He's pretty dwarfed by our overgrown grape arbor as you can see in the above picture, for reference.

(yah yah, there is an old grape arbor on the property that needs mega maintenance and restoration. Dang. ...I'll get to it, I'll get to it...It's on the "to do" list right after "Get back into wine making" and right before "tap our maple trees for syrup"....sheessh.

You know...it sucks sometimes being in such a cool world with so many choices of rad and fun things you have to choose from cause you can't do it all. If you can't get my Louis bite, check this...

God I love that man.

Yummy.

Anyway, back to our WYLD FOXES!!

From this angle he looks perched on the wood but in reality that is our deck and he's clearly in the grass way behind it. Couldn't get any better than this cause his wily butt jetted off after spotting me. The puss.

I love watching them run away not knowing we are their biggest fans and would never hurt them. The picture I am posting is super bad but its the closest I could get and then one of them ran off and the other waited a second, saw me and jetted. It was such a kick in the groin cause I was trying to get a picture of them in the wild, not through my window, so I went out of my deck door to take the shot when he spotted me. Wily fella. I went and took a random snack of fruit and nuts to Reuben's memorial stone which was close to their hangout and set it there as a snack cause I found out they like that stuff. So I'm trying to provide for the little guys. I'm into it.

Check out our friendly fox.

xoxo, rr