Hidden In France

Hi and Bye for now.

Just a few words (and no pictures) to say that I am traveling 'en famille' at the moment.  New York, (Yipiiii!!) then Vermont and Canada. 

If I find internet connection I might peek in, or should I say I sneak in some internet R&R, but that would be bad of me as I am making an attempt to disconnect from the virtual world and connect instead with the real world, a.k.a. my family and... gasp.... nature!  

I wonder what it will be like to single task.  I wonder if I can handle a slower pace.  I wonder if the mosquitoes will devour me and me alone.  (And I suddenly have a hunch mosquitoes are the very reason my family insist on bringing me along.)

I'll be back on the fourth of July.  I love you guys!!!!!!

Hello world, I'm on hold...

... with AT&T for the last hour and fifteen minutes.  They were ripping me off, big time. Pay careful attention to your bills, guys!  It pays.  I will be saving $40 monthly and will receive a $50 coupon to reimburse me for charges they could not justify.  All it took was persistence... and PMS.  Actually, we're in the MS zone at the moment. It reminds me of the yellow 'police line' type tape i use to own, only it said "PMS LINE DO NOT CROSS."  Hilarious.

And it feels so good to know I'm not the only wildly hormonal girl on the planet.  (Though not so good to find out from some of you that menopause is no relief.)

But the sun is shining here in So.Cal. School ends today. I'm throwing a small pool party this afternoon for my nine year old's friends and their mothers.  Life is overall good, with blessings big and small every day.

The rest is just noise.

Really, really LOUD noise.

Look what I found in the ever-gorgeous Purple Area.  Love these.  

I recognize most of the tableware on these pictures is from rice.  Purple Area links to a company called Inreda. Something tells me it will require further exploration, but I got to get to work now.

You tell me what's wrong with me.

via Swissmiss.

Clue # 1 Friday: Got all chocked up watching a class of fifth graders reuniting with their mothers …after a field trip. 

Clue # 2.  Saturday: Laughed hysterically during You don’t mess with the Zohan.

Clue #3 Saturday. Intense and unexplained burst(s!!) of libido (just in time for father’s day, though.)

Clue #4 Sunday. Wrote a very public bitter and angry post about my dead father.  (Thanks for the support girls, it went straight to my heart.)

Clue #5 Monday.  Three hours of frenetic and masterful writing. Perhaps my life’s best work. Realized an hour later that it was, in fact, absolute crap.

Clue #6:  Monday. Went off on best friend for forgetting my birthday a month and a half ago (note:  turns out she hadn’t.  I am the one who somehow forgot her card and the rose bush she had brought me the week before.) Scene ended with sobs and professions undying love on my part.

Oh, wait… Could it be..?  could it be..?

Yep!  IT’S PMS!!!!

Funny how it always comes as a complete shock.

Now that I finally know, I better stock up on bonbons and put a pillowcase over my head for the next few days. 

The damage done so far: priceless.

Here:  a picture that perfectly illustrate how I'm feeling at the moment:

via Design Scene.

No time to post!

But I must: I keep coming across such inspiring images.  And you know, when you get your hands on some  (eye) candy, you simply have to share with your friends. Thanks to someone (? can't remember, please tell me if it's you.) I discovered the photographer Sandra Lane, represented by Sarah Kaye. What a gorgeous, gorgeous world this woman inhabits! 

It is so hard to chose just a few images.  

What?  Do you mean to say I don't have to chose?  

Click in the images below and it will open onto the Sarah Kaye website.  This is a typepad feature I just figured out.  Slowly but surely, I am taming the Typepad beast.

Happy Father's day!

Not to mine, sadly.  

The old goat would not tell me he loved me on his deathbed.  True story.  It never happened.  He could not say it.   As he laid in his hospital bed at age 81, I caressed him, hugged him, kissed him, told him I loved him (true)  and that he had been a good father to me (not true).  This was not a fluke I mean, he knew he was days, hours maybe away from death.  My lifelong quest for the Holly Grail that was my dad's love and approval did not end happily.  I often wonder, still, what kind of dying father would not even spare a little white lie to his daughter.

This was 4 years ago.  I have since decided I had no choice but drop the fantasy once and for all. Liberating in a way, though I guess you can tell the bitterness is still a bit thick and sticky around the edges.

I married the opposite man.  I married a man who lives for his children, adores them, spends every minute he is not at work with them, teaching them, guiding them (sometimes against their will), with a firm enough hand to protect them from themselves, but a gentle enough touch to respect who they are.  My children have a father who pays attention, who analyzes his decisions, who agonizes for them, who is willing to suffer with them.

My children will always feel secure in the most important of ways:  they will know without a shadow of a doubt that they are lovable.

There is good news for me too: I married a man who (unless he is furious at me.. sure it happens,) tells ME he loves ME, and shows he loves me, every single day.

Molly Chicken makes tender things.

I'm in awe of those who can not only make pretty things with their bare hands, but come up with entirely new ideas.  One day I fell in love with this little guy I discovered about a year ago in Molly Chicken.

I adore  Molly Chicken.  Reading this blog makes crave a slower pace, and playing with yard, textiles and ribbons.  It makes me want to hide away the pens, toss the keyboard and take out the old (rarely used) sewing machine.  

What usually happens is that I will go to the fabric shop, get all excited, get a few yards of this and that, get home, start cutting twice, measuring once, ruin half the fabric, get disillusioned, put it all in a box, and rush back to the pen and the keyboard. 

Leave it to the pros, I say:

How cute:

Molly Chicken even gives you tutorials to some of her creations.  I Really want to maker this Pom-pom today.  I used to make them as a child.  Not as cute as those, granted.  The tutorial is right here.  Pleeeease don't tempt me Molly Chicken: I've got deadlines.

Loulou Addict: Not to be missed in Paris

From reading everyone's blogs, it seems that quite a few American 'bloggeuses' are planning a trip to Paris.  

Good for you!-- for braving the the bad economy, the dismal dollar exchange rate, the preposperous requirements for passports to be still valid six months from your date of departure, (WTF?) and the extra charges for suitcases gas, and the right to go to the bathroom (maybe I exaggerate here, but barely) .  

You are going to Paris even though everyone told you the Parisians were this way and that way... but you are bigger than that!  (Plus you want to score macarons, so you don't have a choice do you?)

I've been receiving many e-mails asking me for my favorite addresses in Paris.  Here is one.  The lovely boutique Loulou Addict.  It's also a blog.  The boutique is situated in the 11th arrondissement, metro Bastille.  Bastille is cool.  Bastille is hip, so you must visit the quartier anyway.  Cécile, the owner of Loulou Addict and I seem to have all the same tastes!  I absolutely love the way she displays her merchandise.

Loulou Addict is also an online store, and maybe she'll ship to those of us who can't go to Paris this year.

She sells Rice products.

She sells Mariette Jombaz.

That's just a pretty picture found on her blog.

She sells beautiful textiles from Mingla Design. and many more small designers and creators.

Run to the blog, and if you're lucky enough to go to Paris this summer, run to the store.

Apartment Therapy knows me?

I'm all over the place today again. At the moment, the insanity versus enjoyment of life quotient is high. Maybe when school ends, so will insanity.  (Though it could get worse.  What do you do with your children for two long months? Us: we argue. It's quite stimulating, really.)  

But blogging is still fun.  For one Apartment Therapy L.A.  talked about my blog today.  The sudden influx of traffic is baffling.  But even more puzzling to me is that they know my blog exists at all.

But back to design,and art.

The doshi levien sofas i just discovered in decocentric got me quite excited.  

Comfortable?  Not sure.  Awesome?  YES! The inspiration too is wonderful:

This site was a mine of wonders and excitement.  Through doshi levien (the name of the two designers,Nipa Doshi and Jonathan Levien) I discovered the following artists:

The Iranian photographer Shadi Ghadirian. 

And the Los Angeles painter Kehinde Wiley: 

As you might see I'm still struggling with Typepad.  Nothing looks as I need it to look, but every time I try to fix a problem, I create five more, so F@# it.

Canada, here we come... I think.

We're traveling to New York a the end of June, then off to beautiful (and so unlike L.A.) Bennington Vermont where we have a house. (I'll blog about the house another time.) 

I had a micro-tantrum, stomped my feet and expressed the desire to go somewhere new this year.  So it is that we will be spending a few days in Montreal.

MONTREAL CANADA, BABY!!!!

Yikes!  Montreal?  Canada? What have i done?  Now it's up to me to find a place to stay and i am absolutely hopeless at planning a trip of any sort.  See, I'm a confident virtual traveler who dreams of faraway places and adventures, but the reality is that the non-virtual (also called actual) me is an utter and complete chicken.  

And I get overwhelmed with choices.  So far I must have looked a 10,000 website and blogs, and I'm no more enlightened as to where to go, what to do or where to stay. I'm afraid because I want to go everywhere, do everything and stay everywhere, but the way it's going I'll probably end up going nowhere, doing nothing and booking the most horrid room in the most undesirable location.  Or such is the fear.

Can you help?  Do you know what part of Montreal is best, do you know of a quaint bed an breakfast, or a small hotel?  Where to eat?  What website or blog to guide me through this?

These amazing photographs of the Basilique Notre Dame de Montréal were borrowed from Phillip Chitwood Flickr stream.

Yeondoo Jung

Thank you How About Orange for being up as early as I was, because I had painstakingly emptied my google reader the night before and had nothing to feast my eyes on.   And I was up, and cranky, and anxious.

Now I have a personal affection for children drawings.  I can't trash my kids most mundane doodle.  It's becoming a problem because my 9 year old is a heavy producer.  At age two he went through an entire ream of paper and covered them with crisscrossed lines, in what we now believe were train tracks.  (There was also the possibility that he was satan.)

How About Orange posted about the art of Korean artist Yeodoo Jung, and it brought a huge grin to my face, not easy to do at 5.a.m.

   Click here for the creative process for those images.  In his series Wonderland, children's art is recreated into photographs.  I love it!

There are many more of Yeondoo Jung's odd, whimsical worlds here. Some of the craziest and most interesting are the series Bewitched, which magically transform people into their deepest wish for themselves, is something between funny and heartbreaking, and the series Location transports you to an entirely new universe between reality and dream.