Adventures at the Zoo

We took Abby to the Austin Zoo today. They have animals rescued from ill-equipped "roadside zoos" and from silly people who think they can keep a pet tiger—its full name is actually "Austin Zoo and Animal Sanctuary." They also have animals like goats, sheep, and potbellied pigs. A weird zoo for a weird town.

The African lions were amazing. It felt like we could have reached out and touched them! I got a short movie of this one lion dude who kept pacing back and forth, back and forth in front of the cage opening while a zoo staff member scrubbed out the cage. I think he was hungry.

But then he stopped pacing, and I stopped filming because, well, a frickin' LION was coming towards me and about to ROAR in my face. Put yourself in my shoes when you're watching and try to decide if you would have flinched too, or if I'm just a scaredy cat.



Still, I really wish I had kept filming. Because after he roared at us, he turned around, raised his tail, and shot a steady stream of LION PISS right at Erik!!! OMG. I almost died laughing. Yes, Erik was holding Abby at the time, and yes, she appeared to escape the lion piss. And Erik seemed pretty lucky too, with only a few splatters on his shorts, which he promptly changed when we got home.

Then we ran some errands later on, and we kept smelling something rank. It took probably too long for us to realize it was remnants of lion piss somewhere on Erik. Mmm.

Literati

Some friends of ours from San Francisco were in town this weekend, so of course we took them to the downtown Whole Foods. But we didn't time it right and showed up right during the lunch rush. I could sense an imminent system shut-down if we didn't get them somewhere less overwhelming, so we whisked them off to my favoritist store in the whole wide world, BookPeople. (I have seriously considered getting a part-time job there just for the employee discount.)

I was feeling splurgy, so we picked up a few things while we were there:

• Eating the Alphabet: Fruits & Vegetables from A to Z


• Our Tree Named Steve


• The Original Rubber Duck for Abby


• A fair-trade necklace from World of Good for me


• And...Literati Challenge, a board game

We tore into the game as soon as we got home and played it after dinner, and ohmygosh. It rocks!

You pick 5 cards and put them on the table for everyone to see. Each card has a word on it, like "laconically" or "egress" or "laud". Then everyone gets a slip of paper to write a story using as many of the 5 words as possible. You start the timer, everyone writes, then when the time's up you go around and read your stories out loud. You get points for every word you use, and you can use some twice to get more points. And if you write one sentence with all 5 words, that doubles your points!

We're going to pursue publication for the liquid gold that poured from our fingers that night. But I didn't want to make you, our faithful blog readers, wait those few months until publication before you could enjoy these wonderful stories. So here is a special sneak preview for you!

Best story beginning to end (throughout the rounds, even) was Ant's, for sure. But best single sentence out of the whole night? Well, see if you can spot it in Round 6.

I imagine this is going to be particularly enjoyable for those of you who, unlike us, actually know what these words mean.

Round 1
Featuring: sanction, odious, obligedly, imprimatur, and some 5th really hard word that none of us knew so it's not in any of the stories

• Ant: A girl was sanctioned to eat cookies. She did eat them and they were fucking odious. She didn't ever want to eat cookies again, but she did, obligedly.


• Nif: The odious sound coming from Erik's mouth was sanctioned by Kelly, who obligedly set story time for Abby from the imprimatur hour of 8 pm to 9 pm.


• Erik: The repentant terrorist obligedly sanctioned his tongue that had an odious stench due to the anthrax he bought from the imprimatur men on the corner of 5th and Main.


• Kelly: The United Nations sanction was odious to the terrorist nation. They felt obliged to not blow up the world, and that was unacceptable.

After this round, we reviewed the rules and realized that if no players are confident in the meaning of the word, no one's likely to challenge you if you don't use it right. And after seeing our fellow players' stunning vocabulary knowledge in the first round, you can probably predict what happened next...

Round 2
Featuring: demure, paucity, garrulously, plaudit, knottily

• Ant: The cookie girl sat demurely on a cushion, like a girl. The paucity of manliness was extreme. Her mother garrulously ventured to tell her this, but gained no plaudits because her voice was knottily.


• Nif: The demure feline took paucity before diving under the bed knottily.


• Erik: The plaudit pundit with the smooth demur danced garrulously around the subject without ever giving paucity to his knottily assembled rhetoric.


• Kelly: The cat garrulously complimented the gnome's jaunty belt with the paucity of a plaudit. "I demur," said the gnome knottily. [You must read Cat & Gnome.]

Round 3
Featuring: nettle, laconically, facetiously, omniscient, gustatory

• Ant: I was stung by nettle. Cookie girl put balm on it laconically. "Are you fucking kidding?" I said, facetiously. "God," said the cookie girl, taking the omniscient being's name in vain. A gustatory wind was blowing.


• Nif: The lactating bovine laconically gazed at the field of nettles beneath the omniscient sun while the farmer licked his lips in a gustatory fashion.


• Erik: The chef, known as a gustatory master, assembled a nettle pie that he facetiously called the everyday meal due to its omniscient presence on the menu.


• Kelly: I threw the nettles on the compost heap with a gustatory flourish. I then facetiously appealed to the omniscient God of the Maggots to laconically bless my stinky heap of rottenness.

Round 4
Featuring: radiantly, desist, begrudge, admonish, laud

• Ant: Cookie girl smiled radiantly. "Desist that shit," I told her. Begrudgingly, she did. She does not usually listen to my admonishments, so I laughed in her face laudably.


• Nif: Anthony radiantly deflected the Texas sun onto the criminals to get the criminal to cease and desist. The ground lauded his efforts as his skin melted off. He did not begrudge them.


• Erik: He begrudgingly admonished the cookie girl for her ability to desist his advances in a radiantly manner that left him feeling laudacious.


• Kelly: "Cease and desist with the cookie girl stories," I admonished him. "I will never laud them."
  
  "Don't begrudge me my cookie fiction, anti-baked-goods bitch!" he added radiantly.

Round 5
Featuring: daringly, bamboozle, afoot, apocryphal, yearly

• Ant: We daringly bought a winter home in Austin to bamboozle the weather, yearly. Our cleverness was afoot. This story is apocryphal. And I killed cookie girl daringly, with a spoon. She was a bitch and she had to die.


• Nif: Erik's apocryphal words run in Kelly's ears as she daringly bamboozled their guests with a herd of dogs as she dove for the cookies. Cookie girl made her yearly visit and said something is afoot.


• Erik: He daringly set afoot into the woods where last year he had an apocryphal vision of melting ants marching circles like a bamboozling circus freak.


• Kelly: The suburban lifestyle of Cedar Park is apocryphal. Yearly bamboozling is afoot in the quiet suburban homes.

Round 6
Featuring: stratagem, laboriously, abhor, pernicious, egress

• Ant: My stratagem was to dig laboriously til the grave was done. I abhorred cookie girl, and I was glad she was dead. I never gave her no egress. Her pernicious little comments sickened me. My stratagem paid off.


• Nif: I abhor the laboriously pernicious efforts of our President to egress lame stratagems.


• Erik: He laboriously struggled with the stratagem set for him by his pernicious superiors, who he secretly abhorred. Plus he was a fucking egress.


• Kelly: I abhor the pernicious persnicketiness of Cedar Park suburbia. Our friends will egress to the horrible land, but I am laboriously working on a stratagem to rescue them from its grasp. [Apologies to any readers who live in Cedar Park. It's just that our good friends were about to abandon us to go stay with some other friends who live in Cedar Park.]

Kelly Becomes a Real Woman (Or Tries)

For over 11 years, I worked in the R&D department of my company. (That's "Research & Development" for all you non-techie types out there.)

I wore jeans every day except when I was interviewing candidates. Flip-flops every day of the summer as long as my toenail polish was presentable. No more make-up than it took to cover up the dark circles under my eyes. And I was surrounded by a bunch of male engineers whose own dressing habits, in general, made me look high maintenance. (I said in general—you know I didn't mean you!)

But since June 30th, I've been in my new position as Sustainability Specialist. That position just so happens to fall under the Marketing department at my company. And can I just say that these people know not only how to dress but how to ACCESSORIZE.

I do my best with my brightly colored shirts and my black-pants-that-go-with-everything, but every time I go in the office and look around at my new co-workers, I feel insufficient. Like I'm not a real woman. I suddenly become painfully aware of the fact that those staple black pants are a little too short and are a little too tight around the last 5 pounds of pregnancy weight that are firmly entrenched in my middle. I remember that I should have put hand lotion on before I left the house because DAYum, how did my hands get so dry when it's as humid as a sauna outside?

And I realize that my neck is naked. My wrists are naked. My earlobes are naked. The only piece of jewelry I wear is my wedding ring.

I know that accessorizing involves more than just jewelry, but a girl's gotta start somewhere. So where is a "Sustainability Specialist" supposed to buy jewelry? Certainly not from a jewelry chain store, right?

I just don't have time to hit all the local crafts fairs in Austin looking for locally made jewelry that looks professional. Because if I'm being honest here, a lot of the stuff at those crafts fairs isn't something I see myself wearing to work.

After a few weeks of ever-so-casually keeping my hands in front of my naked neck every time I had to meet with a well-accessorized co-worker, I had an epiphany. I remembered Etsy. It's a web site where you can buy and sell handmade items. When I first came across it, all I thought to myself was "Gee, I wish I could make something because that'd be cool to support yourself that way." I didn't envision myself actually shopping for items on Etsy.

But Etsy has a "Shop Local" feature. You just enter where you live, and Etsy gives you a list of all the most recent handmade items for sale in your area. Perfect! Locally made is pretty dang sustainable in my book.

Unfortunately, you can't search within those local results (as far as I can tell), so I started scrolling and scrolling to find jewelry. And then it dawned on me that I know someone in Austin who makes awesome jewelry. Duh. I blame mother brain. This kid must be sucking my brain dry of all those fatty acids you need to stay smart.

So uh, I guess that's my long-winded way of saying: Check out MetalsGirl. These photos are a little taste of the sweet-ass jewelry she makes.

New Duds for Abby

Abby has now grown out of most of the used clothes we've gotten from friends. We know reusing is best, and consignment shops have tons of onesies in her size. But with her big cloth diaper butt, we can rarely snap them at the bottom. So we've been looking for some cute baby t-shirts.

An artist named Will Heron has a booth at the Austin Farmer's Market where he sells t-shirts with his designs—like the one on the right. He has a great collection of baby clothes, but in Abby's size, they're all onesies.

The last time we were at the farmer's market, I noticed that he uses American Apparel shirts. This weekend, I went to their site and saw that they make a t-shirt in Abby's size too. So I emailed Will Heron and asked if he'd be willing to order those shirts from American Apparel and put a few of his designs on them for us.

He wrote back yesterday to say he included the shirts in his weekly order from American Apparel, and we should be getting everything in about 3-4 weeks. So very soon, Abby will be sporting American-made baby t-shirts with a local artist's designs. Woohoo!

Perspective

So last week at Whole Foods I picked up the most recent copy of Delicious Living. We like this magazine because it has some good articles. In this particular edition there was a picture on the back cover from an artist that does a great job of putting things into perspective. For example, ever want to see what 2 million plastic bottles looks like from a distance then up close?

A couple days later, I was reading the blog of a brewer who is opening up a new brewery here in Austin called 512 Brewing Company and I saw he mentioned the same artist.

It's good stuff. I can only imagine what these images must be like in person when viewing them in their original size.

Power Savers Unite!

In January, I signed us up for the Austin Energy Power Saver Program, and then I promptly forgot all about it. But this week, we got a box of goodies for signing up—two compact fluorescent bulbs, an energy-saving night light, outlet sealers, and weather stripping. (As nice as that all sounds, I would much rather have gotten a snazzy cape to show off my Power Saver status.)

Austin Energy started the program because most people use most of their energy in the early evening—to cook dinner, wash clothes, wash dishes, cool down a hot house. During a sweltering Austin summer, all this heavy use at the same time can cause a peak demand for energy, resulting in Austin having to generate more electricity or buy it during the most expensive hours of the day.

So when you sign up as a Power Saver Volunteer, Austin Energy contacts you up to 10 times during the summer and asks you to take four simple actions to use less electricity between 4:00 pm and 8:00 pm:

• Switch off unnecessary lights
  
• Delay washing and drying dishes and clothes
  
• Cook dinner in your microwave, rather than with an electric range
  
• Turn up the thermostat by three to four degrees

But remember how I said I signed us up in January? Nice and chilly outside. It's not even June yet and we're already hitting the 90s just about every day, so that last request is starting to look a little harder to swallow. We keep our AC at 78-80 during the day, so that would mean bumping it up to 81-84. Dang.

Who knows? Maybe we'll discover that with our fans on and after changing into light clothes, 81-84 can be bearable. But even if not, it's only 10 days out of the year, so we'll survive.

If you're an Austin Energy customer, why don't you join us this summer and we can lament our sweaty situations together? If you're not in Austin, don't feel left out—your electric company might have a similar program. But if you get a cape, I'm gonna be jealous.

A Gift Card Collage?

Last week, I used up all the money on an HEB gift card I had. So I asked the cashier if they take the empty cards back to reuse:

Cashier: "No. And you can't put more money on them after they're used up."

Me: Holding up now-useless gift card. "So what am I supposed to do with this?"

Cashier: Shrug. "You could make a collage out of them." Laugh.

Ah yes, a gift card collage. What a clever idea. I'll get right on that.

I happen to know that some gift card technology out there does allow you to recharge an empty card because I've done it at Whole Foods. And if that's possible, how hard would it be to take back empty cards and reuse them?

According to the HEB gift card FAQ, I can contact HEB at 1-800-987-4438, Monday through Friday between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m., with my questions or issues about the HEB gift card. Oh, my sweet HEB, you are going to rue the day you hired that snarky cashier with an affinity for arts and crafts!

I called, and the nice lady on the gift card hotline said that they don't have the capacity to recharge used gift cards, although they've talked about the possibility for the future. I registered my frustration with having to throw away a perfectly good gift card, but I'm just one little person.

So my fellow HEB customers—will you call too? I promise it'll just take a couple minutes out of your day. Or if you prefer, you can fill out an online contact form. And let me know what you hear back!

Baby's First Farmer's Market

Every New Year's Eve, Erik and I cook a nice early dinner (because we're lame and never have exciting NYE plans), and we sit down to eat with two sheets of paper. On the first sheet, we list all our accomplishments from that year. Everything from "We switched to cloth produce bags" to "Erik brewed 31 beers" to "Mae won the dog division of Run for the Rovers for the second year in a row." Okay, technically that accomplishment belongs to one of our dogs, not us, but it's not like she's going to make her own list of accomplishments—so we get bragging rights.

On the second sheet of paper, we write down our goals for the next year. Not resolutions. These are goals, which we can start any time during the year. As opposed to resolutions, which if you don't do them every day of the year starting with the first day, you are A Big Fat Failure. So one of our goals for 2008 was to start going to a farmer's market at least once a month. Because even besides the fact that local food has to travel less distance to get to you so you're helping to save a bunch of fuel or even the fact that shopping there supports small family farms, The Sticky Toffee Pudding Company has a booth at the main Austin Farmer's Market, and in said booth they sell scones and other amazing deliciousness.

So yesterday, we made our first trip of 2008 to the farmer's market, which also happened to be Abby's first farmer's market trip ever. She did great in her Zolowear sling until she puked all over herself. But then she was happy to be out of the sling and taking it all in. There was another baby there her age—a little boy—but Abby was way cuter. Even his mom said that girls are so much cuter than boys.

The farmer who sold us some eggs even helped us fully immerse Abby in her farmer's market experience:

 

Flowers Purty

Erik and I have both lived in Austin over 10 years, but neither of us had ever been to the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center. Abby turned 9 weeks old today, so we thought we'd celebrate by taking her to see the pretty flowers. And of course, we had to dress her up in her Under the Nile dress (thanks Doug and Deb!) and matching sun bonnet (thanks Grandma Linda!):

She slept most of the time and didn't really get to see the flowers, but we're going to let it slide since she was dressed head to toe in flowers herself. I can't believe it took us this long to go to the Wildflower Center. But from now on, it'll be a yearly tradition in the M-H-M family.