On the road

Lookit that face ... it smacks of desperation, doesn't it?

That's the face of a man who's firmly entrenched in a war with his bladder. The whole ride home from Denver Sunday, Bill kept having to pee really bad all of a sudden.

This one happened just as we were getting into Glenwood Springs and we were able to make it to the KFC you see in the distance.

But the worst episode happened just as we were getting to the Eisenhauer Tunnel. For those unfamiliar with Colorado geography and highways, Eisenhauer Tunnel is bored through the highest point of Interstate 70 as you cross the Rocky Mountain Continental Divide. It's a long tunnel and there isn't anywhere — either before or immediately after the tunnel — to pull over.

Before we entered the tunnel, Bill started complaining about having to "go." It got so bad that I had to hold an empty water bottle for him while he drove and relieved himself at the same time.

I laughed so hard that Margaret tore off her headphones and demanded to know what was so funny. I gave my standard reply, "Your daddy's really funny."

The worst part was we ended up with a almost full bottle of man pee. The idea that it was in the car really grossed me out and I had to gag a little. But I just diverted my attention and tried to forget that sitting in the cup holder just to the left of the gear shift was a water bottle full of human urine.

I suggested that he throw the bottle out of the window, but we both agreed that ... well, that just ain't right. So we drove for another 45 minutes or so until he needed to pee yet again and it was disposed of properly.

The good news is that he's back to normal now ... well, as normal as Bill can be — and that's not really saying much.

Staying in the big city

Even though I lived in a major metropolitan area until after I had graduated college, I have enthusiastically embraced the mind-set of a small-town dweller. I love being awed by the gradeur of a big city and am not afraid to act the fool in order to enjoy it.

I'll take pictures inside Denver's fine restaurants just like I take pictures at the Pizza Hut here in Grand Junction.

We may not know how to act right, but we sure know how to act like we're having a big, ole, bunch of fun.

Click over here to see pictures and read more about our trip to Denver.

Art, for my sake

Hot springs + art + nice hotel + fun family = awesome trip to Denver.

A couple of pieces that we all thought were pretty flippin' cool.

Claes Oldenburg's dustpan and broom:


John De Andrea's work is so amazgingly haunting. It's so real, it'll make you feel bad about staring at nekkid ladies.

Click here to read about our time at the library and art museum.

Getting the heck outta town

Finally, we're actually heading over the divide to Denver — first stopping here for a long and much-needed soak.

In Denver, we're going to stay here, where they claim to have fluffy pillows and nice bed linens. Because really a hotel room is all about the bed.

I don't think I've ever needed a weekend away like I do right now. I can't wait to get on the road (I guess since I'm only working a half day today, I'd better get my work done!).

I'm sure I'll have pictures next week.

Hurray for Friday!

My kid

If I knew ahead of time what a challenge parenting is, I would've smacked myself with the a cast-iron frying pan a couple of times and then went ahead and had a kid anyway.

Being a parent is the hardest, most-challenging responsibility I've ever undertaken. Some days I feel like I'm going to be crushed into blintz from the pressures of making the "right" decisions for my kid. But then she'll sit down at her keyboard and play a sonatina from memory and I can't believe I wasted all those years without kids.

Tuesday, Margaret and her classmate, Cora, represented their school in the school district's Battle of the Books. Click over here to read how they did.

But gah! The gray hairs and wrinkles that I'm getting will always be a reminder of this time for sure.

Getting our motors running

Yep, Riveter is getting ready for a road trip ... or air trip. But first, a show at ye olde Quincy Bar to kick off our trip to SXSW.

We've been in the recording studio recently and it will be great to get back out and play. Plus, we're having our friends' new band open for us, so that will be fun, too.

A friend made this poster for us. I wish I could make posters so cool!
23 days to go ... it's gonna be a good time!

I don't need this ...

but I think this is awesome.

Lookit, it's Clocky.
It's an alarm clock. After the snooze, the alarm sounds again and then rolls off the bedside table and tries hide from you.

Now that I think about it, I don't really want this clock. I want video of people trying to find this damn thing after it has rolled underneath the bed all the while sounding it's deafening alarm.

That would be some funny YouTube.

What am I going to do?

The weather was gorgeous over the weekend. Margaret and her friend, Kate, played outside all weekend long.

There will still be a few more days of winter left, but spring is definitely on its way to western Colorado. And that fact strikes fear deep into my heart!

See, since Christmas of last year, I have worn one of my six black, cotton, Old Navy turtleneck sweaters to work every day. Every single day in the past two months, I've gotten up and readied myself for work knowing that I would be wearing a black turtleneck sweater.

It might sound lazy or boring or like I'm touched in the head, but I don't care (and I say that without admitting that all of the above might just be true). I love not having to worry about what I'm going to wear to work.

I hate work clothes. I hate spending money on work clothes. I hate getting to work and hating my work clothes.

Because I hate hating stuff, I enacted my ingenious plan. I instituted a Rivetergirl dress code for work. At first I just eliminated any color other than black.

If I had a monochromatic work wardrobe, then everything would match and I would eliminate part of my work-clothes anxiety.

That worked for about two years (yes, I've only been wearing black to work for more than two years now). But then I found that I hated finding new long-sleeved shirts and sweaters to wear in the winter. I also discovered my true and undying love for black, cotton, Old Navy turtleneck sweaters.

So I decided that it really didn't make a difference if I wore different black shirts every day and skipped varied and raced head-long down the aisle toward uniformity.

Now I wear one of my six, black, cotton, Old Navy turtleneck sweaters with a pair of black pants or a black skirt. For a while I was wearing knee-high sock and boots with my skirts, but I've grown tired of that and plus it's getting too warm for layers.

Which leads me back to my clothing conundrum: what am I going to wear when it's finally too warm for black, cotton, Old Navy turtleneck sweaters?

Can I ever find a substitute that I love as much as Old Navy's black, cotton, turtleneck sweaters?

The search is on, my friend. The search is. on.

Finally Friday

It's been a doozy, I tell you what.

I've been running from project to project for the last couple of days, stressing, tearing my hair and having panic attacks when I can find the time. It's all been so hectic that I actually said "Yes" more often than I should've last night when our neighbor had his hand-crafted vodka flowing.

(Note to self: Thursday isn't "close enough to Friday" when it comes to diving head-long off the wagon. Friday morning smarted a little too much this morning."

Tulips Day 3.

Tulips Day 2

I love tulips.

V Day

Yes, it's Valentine's Day.

Bill has always treated me so well on Valentine's Day (and my birthday and Christmas and every other day of the year, for that matter), so it's always a nice day for me. Plus our office is always innundated with flowers. I love flowers so it's a fun day. Click over here to see pictures of the flowers Bill sent me.

I went to Margaret's class to help with their Valentine's Day party. It was not the experience I was expecting. I was more than a little disappointed.

The whole experience made me want to move to another school district, or another state ... or another country for that matter.

Getting new stuff

We're pretty much done with the many roomed redo we've undertaken in the last two weeks.

Repainting Margaret's old room was a task (I didn't cry, but when my boss called at 3:30 on Saturday and asked if I could come in to work briefly, I was thrilled to have an excuse to quick painting for the day). It's tiny, but in this case, size only mattered in that it just made everything harder.

Click over here to see snapshots of both rooms.

This weekend the nice, new futon we bought should be delivered (hopefully). I was amazed at how comfortable futons are now. The mattress we picked has acutally coils. It also has a separate ottoman that we can use as a bench in there if we have people who want to sit around with us in our tiny office/TV room.

I love the season of the tax return.

Look out Austin!

Hey, what are you doing March 17th? Oh, you're going to be drinking green beer downtown. Huh, that's cool. Me? Yeah, I 'm gonna be playing music in Austin during the South by Southwest Fest!

The official fest is hosting 1,300 bands over the week long event including Iggy Pop and the Stooges ... um, Iggy Pop ... 'the hell?

We're playing a festival organized by GoGirlsmusic.com during the last weekend. My band, Riveter, is playing Saturday night, March 17.

That's right, baby ... St. Paddy's Day.

This is a huge deal for us. I mean, it's SXSW week in Austin. We can hardly contain ourselves and because we're a bunch of girls, we have to get together often, stand in a little circle clutching one another while jumping up and down screaming like leeettle girls — or not.

No, because we're adult girls (no, that isn't oxymoronic) we get together often do shots of Jaeger and get tattoos — or not.

Maybe we sit quietly and hold each other while we sob quietly over our good fortune — um, definitely not.

Really, we get together often, practice like hell, arrange to have an EP with four brand-new songs and get a show locally a week before our trip so we can kick off this adventure the right way ... by playing the gay bar in town — because we're girls who know how to rock!

Staying home

Two sick kids ... that's what we've still got. So we decided to postpone our trip to Denver. Insert sad, pouty face here :( (I wrote about Mar's continuing bout of the respriatory flu over here.)

But we'll go in two weeks and it'll be great.

In the meantime, I'm going to paint Margaret's old room, as we're converting it into a study for Bill and I. Right now the room is pink — perfect for a little girl's nursery, but really horrible for anything else ... except maybe an ice-cream shop (mm, ice cream).

Hopefully I'll have some pictures of everyone's new rooms Monday.

Oh and I should have some very exciting news to break here about my little band Monday as well. Good times.

Bitter: it's not just a taste anymore

Yeah, I'm bitter ... and tired ... and bitter and tired.

My kid is still sick, just as sick as she was Sunday. They're calling what she has the respiratory flu. Basically it's the worst cold that you wouldn't even wish on one of your lesser enemies (because you'd totally wish this on your worst enemy — it's e-e-e-v-i-l).

I stayed home with her yesterday and listened to her cough until I was able to get my hands on some codeine cough syrup. Then she slept ... finally. Her nose is like a broken faucet and then there's the fever ... damn, fever.

We didn't send her to school today , but instead took her to our trusty daycare lady, who is our lifesaver, to say the least.

Tomorrow we're supposed to be traversing the Continental Divide to go see the scroll on which Jack Kerouac wrote "On the Road." We're already been charged our first night's lodging so we're pretty sure we're still going to go, but it sucks that Mar is sick.

Since I don't want to leave y'all on a grumpy note, go here and watch this guy draw this daily monsters. Great short clips that make me wanna start drawing (and it helps me forget that I have a sore throat ... which was Mar's first symptom).

This is why

To follow up on yesterday's teaser, I wrote a rambling and incoherent entry over here. Read it and you'll understand my brevity here.

Sicka, sicka, sicka, ooooh ... sick as a dog

My kid is way sick.

Bill is home with her this morning and I'm leaving work around 11 to relieve him. I've got a ton o' crap to do, so I can't explain why we were parked in the Home Dept parking lot at 8 a.m. Sunday morning with my husband looking like this:

Unexpected

There was a box on our porch yesterday when I got home from work. It was from my mom.

It isn't any one's birthday, so I wasn't expecting anything from my folks. Needless to say, my curiosity was piqued. I only had a couple of minutes until I had to pick up Mar from school, so I opened the box quickly.

It was a lovely surprise.

For Margaret, my mom had sent these items:
This was not the first time I've seen these things, as they used to mine when I was Margaret's age. I used to carry that box full of Hello Kitty items back and forth to school everyday.

I remember the statuette claiming I was the "World's Greatest Student" sitting on the shelf in my perpetually messy room. I remember losing the pin to the hinge of my Hello Kitty pencil sharpener and replacing it with a straight pin from sewing box. I remember the thin red tape that used to be dispensed from the tiny tape dispenser. Oh, those fond childhood memories.

It made me think about saving Margaret's toys and loved objects in order to give to her daughter some day. (But if that's going to happen, I'm going to have to get more organized. Doh!)

Also in the box, was a Loki jacket Bill and I gave to my dad last year. Apparently it never fit him right and instead of it living out its days hanging unworn in his closet, they gave it to Bill. He felt guilty about keeping it — but I could tell he was secretly thrilled to have it.

There was also a small box for me with a note disclaiming that I would wear the item as a bracelet or I could use the beads to decorate something else. This is what I found inside that little box:
I've said many times before that my mom knows everything, including just the things to make an otherwise bleak day, one full of delighted smiles.

Dinner with my husband

Need I say more?