four different types of rodent...

...are clearly out to get us. it's getting cold in the upper midwest and the critters are trying to get somewhere safe and warm for the winter. unfortunately, the little fuckers think they should be sharing OUR space, which does not suit. chipmunks (outside, trying to get in the basement), squirrels (outside, trying to get in the garage), raccoons (outside, trying to get in the garage/attic--i don't even know if a raccoon is a rodent or not, but it's a nasty fucker at the very least so i'm classifying it as one) and field mice (outside and, sadly, already in the basement somehow) are all clamoring to invade our house. the mice have even invaded the cars as well, fuckers. i will say i'm in love with these mouse traps, which have a very satisfying little red flag that goes up when you catch one, kinda like the flag on the mailbox.

game on, bitches!

blog action day: food

today is blog action day, a day in which hundreds of bloggers around the world all write about a common theme: this year, it is food.

where i live, right smack in the middle of america, there is definitely no shortage of food. if you live in the united states, a respectable percentage of what you are eating most likely began its life within a 500 mile radius of me. we are beyond fortunate to have access to the abundance of food available to us 24/7, but such is not the case with much of the world's population. mercifully, famine is not my experience.

some of my fondest memories, be they of place, people, experiences or food, involve meals spent with others. in all cases something significant was happening: an engagement, a new adventure, a death, a birth. these are my top ten most treasured food memories:

10. baking cuban bread with gammy in her kitchen on west lane
9. drinking gallons of vanilla soy milk for gus...and later for sophie...because both of my babies were lactose sensitive
8. biting into a calville's blanc d'hiver apple from wilson's orchard and realizing i'd never truly tasted an apple until that moment
7. gingerbread every thanksgiving and every christmas at the houston club
6. lobster bisque at tony's on one of my first dates with rich
5. trying a bowl of duran's red chile for the first time and learning that food could indeed be "velvety"
4. sitting in a circle with people i didn't know (and one that i did), eating indescribably delicious, yet unidentifiable, food in a modified tent rock in central turkey a few hours after my first panic attack
3. drinking veuve cliquot for the first time at gammy's funeral, and then many times later with my friend julia
2. eating fettucine en carrozza at costanza in rome first with a group of new and to-be-lifelong friends, then with a friend from school (who died shortly thereafter), then with rich, and then again with rich, and then again with rich for our 10-year anniversary
1. running around the ile st. louis after rich asked me to marry him, eating a dinner of french onion soup at monte cristo

what are your favorite food memories?

treehouse v. 2.0

little miss thing up in the trees

YET AGAIN, rich proves he is the coolest dad, ever. a few years ago, rich built gus and sophie a treehouse in the backyard of our house in los ranchos...and now he's looking to do it again. it is still in the construction phase, but he thinks it will be finished, with a roof and all, by the time the first snow falls. there were some design challenges with this tree--it is on a slope, it doesn't have the abundance of low branches that the other one had, it is oddly bifurcated--so it lists a wee bit in one direction. it's still mighty cool--check it out!

sophie up high, during the early construction phase

sophie, gus, and his friend, victor

see that tiny little white dot in the center of this image? that's rich, as seen from the house, working his carpentry magic

sophie going up into the treehouse--she's about the only one who can fit up there (rich has a tendency to make those entrances a bit snug)

second phase complete--only the railings and the roof remain to be done!

sometimes these things write themselves, again

these are the top 35 keywords, over the past month, that people have used to end up at cyberallens.com. only one of them actually pertains to the site. all i can gather from this is that a bunch of people want to dress up like fay wray for halloween and that there are far too many people searching for unicorn tattoos. and what the fuck do crystals have to do with the porta portese? *sigh.*

11 Visits 4.35% crystals porta portese
9 Visits 3.56% old american flag
8 Visits 3.16% fay wray costume
6 Visits 2.37% gay unicorn dolphin rainbow tattoo
5 Visits 1.98% 1930 tilt a whirl
5 Visits 1.98% allen family bermuda triangle
4 Visits 1.58% ann darrow costume
4 Visits 1.58% bermuda triangle stories
4 Visits 1.58% CIRCUS TRAILER
4 Visits 1.58% el kookooee
4 Visits 1.58% forbidden gardens katy texas
4 Visits 1.58% moriondo e gariglio
4 Visits 1.58% naked roma children
3 Visits 1.19% diapered kids
3 Visits 1.19% fay wray king kong costume
3 Visits 1.19% halloween postcards
3 Visits 1.19% jock strap
3 Visits 1.19% meals on wheels interior
3 Visits 1.19% neo nazi tattoos
3 Visits 1.19% panda stupid
3 Visits 1.19% real men like unicorns pee
3 Visits 1.19% unicorn peeing
2 Visits 0.79% bermuda island tattoo
2 Visits 0.79% fontana delle anfore
2 Visits 0.79% gay triangle tattoos
2 Visits 0.79% gay unicorn nazi tattoo
2 Visits 0.79% jock support
2 Visits 0.79% king kong anne darrow
2 Visits 0.79% nazi unicorn tattoo
2 Visits 0.79% real men like unicorns
2 Visits 0.79% unicorn cupcake peeing rainbow tattoo
2 Visits 0.79% unicorn guy
2 Visits 0.79% unicorn pee
2 Visits 0.79% unicorn peeing a rainbow
2 Visits 0.79% unicorns humping
2 Visits 0.79% unicorns pee rainbows

working in the garden

rome, 2011. i shot this lovely little flowering quince at the orto botanico in february.

rich and i have been working like mad in the ravine and the garden, trying to get all our projects done before the snows start to fall. i've concentrated on keeping the grass alive and the weeds out of the perennials; he's had a much more physical challenge: building a treehouse. he built a beautiful one in new mexico and he's wanted to build one here but we didn't have the right trees for it. since our land purchases, now we do. pictures to come when he's ready to show it off.

my camera's back from italy...and so is rich!

rich took some time before a meeting to cycle the lake como region for about a week, and he brought back these images of the gorgeous scenery there. while my camera got to go with him, i did not--he was biking northern italy while i was trying to rid our offspring (and myself) of hand, foot and mouth disease. the stars have not been in my favor this month. anyway, rich is back, is surprisingly unjetlagged, and is already planning his return trip to cernobbio. i'm not sure exactly where every picture was shot, so my captions may be sparse, but the beauty of the region is perfectly clear.

the trip was almost doomed from the beginning, as rich discovered his bike had been dropped on the way there and his derailleur hanger was broken...but necessity being the mother of invention led to a clever repair using a wire hanger







you know how some people shoot pictures of their kids while traveling on a train on vacation? yeah.

il duomo (milan cathedral)

interior, il duomo

near lugano

near lugano

menaggio (i think!), on lake como











near cernobbio, this is the church of the madonna del ghisallo, which is dedicated to cyclists

interior, church of the madonna del ghisallo

interior, church of the madonna del ghisallo

pizza con funghi e proscuitto (rich's nightly meal) from tom e jerry's pizzeria...yum!

folk art in texas: the orange show

texas is bright for an iowa bunny

since my camera has been on a fantastic voyage without me for over a week, i'm forced to look to the past for photographic inspiration. these are images i shot this summer in houston while visiting the orange show, one of the happiest, brightest, most positive places on earth. the orange show was former postman jeff mckissack's residence, which he dedicated to his favorite thing--the orange. he started building it in the 50s and finished in the 70s; today it accessible to all for a whopping admissions fee of one dollar. i've even got a copy of his manifesto, "how to live to be 100 and still be spry". highly recommended viewing in the bayou city!

the orange show center for visionary art

excellent advice, but i think sophie is just picking out all the "s"-es.

sadly, no amount of reminding will render her cautious

view from the roof, looking down

a wise old owl

so happy! so bright! so cheerful!

this is pretty much the exact philosophy i use to approach life

beautiful, matisse-like tile work

view from the roof, looking out

i love you, too.

tharr be pirates in iowa...

pirate sophie warns ye ta be on yer guard...

...and she holds no allegiances...

...ye scurvy swines were warned!

who(m) the hell am i?

so...yeah. i've got a problem. at this age, and even for a bit before, i am grateful to find myself comfortable in the person that i am, the beliefs i hold, the skin that i am in...all that good stuff. existentially, i'm in a good place and seem to have purpose and can figure out who i am in an abstract sense. i'm cool with me.

legally, however, i may or may not exist. allow me to elaborate:

1. i was born in the 60s to separated parents and my birth certificate was issued as MSD (this is a name i haven't used for decades and doesn't even show up on a google search--i'm going to hang on to this little bit of privacy). parents were divorced and i was raised by my mom and my maternal grandparents.

2. mom remarries in the 70s; decides to "simplify" (this is the operative word here) things by legally changing my name to her husband's family name, making me MSG. mom gets a court order to change my name and has my original birth certificate invalidated. mom files name change with county court (different from birth county) but fails to get new birth certificate issued, thus state bureau of vital statistics has no record of me.

3. at same time of name change, mom registers me for a SS# in the new name, MSG.

4. in 1980, i get my first passport--a little trouble with proving who i am but ultimately passport is issued as MSG (this is 21 years before 9/11/01--it was easier back then).

5. driver's license issued, with passport and SS# as identity proof, as MSG.

6. high school diploma listed as MSDG (some of my school records were MSD, some were MSG--it made sense at the time).

7. undergraduate degree listed as MSG.

8. MSG marries RCA and i had some trouble proving who i was for the marriage license, but i did get it. i ultimately become MSA.

9. graduate degrees listed as MSGA (again, some records as MSG and some as MSA).

thus today, i have five potential legal identities (MSD, MSG, MSDG, MSA, MSGA) and one casual professional identity (MGA--that isn't even included in this ridiculous accounting), however the lynchpin of them all, MSG, never seems to have legally existed. to prove who i am has always been a challenge for me when i was younger; today it is a full-blown nightmare. as one friend recently pointed out, the president of the united states had all the proof of who he was that i do except the birth certificate, and that still led people to believe he wasn't who he claimed to be.

i've spent hours on the phone with county and state recording agencies in texas just trying to figure out what i need to do to remedy this. the vast majority of these people have absolutely no idea where to begin to help me, but all agree--i don't exist in the vital statistics records. one woman i spoke with had a brother with a similar problem, but her direction hasn't gotten me anywhere (yet). and none of this ever really bothered me terribly until another friend raised the possibility that i may not be legally married--MSG married RCA, and MSG was never fully established as my legal name. texas has rather generous common-law marriage statutes, so i feel secure i have at least met those, but it bugs the shit out of me that a few missing sheets of paper may determine that i am not who i thought i was.

at this time in history, particularly in the US, it seems to be more important than ever to firmly and unequivocally prove one's identity, and the birth certificate seems to be the one unassailable document for doing just that. even if i can get a new birth certificate issued (three and a half decades after the name change), does it automatically and retroactively solve the problems of my legal identity? would anyone even bother to challenge who i claim to be? i don't know what will happen in the future, but i do know that as of now the issue of who the hell i am is murky at best and unlikely to ever be clarified by the filter of time. my kids are going to have a hell of a time settling my estate.

i think i will, at least, remarry rich when i get a proper birth certificate. it'll be a big party--you're all invited--and i'll be billing my mom for it. :)

in the reptile house

sophie loves all animals, especially dangerous ones

sophie and i took a trip to the san antonio zoo this past summer, where it was well over 100 degrees outside but a crisp 70 degrees inside the reptile house. they have a beautiful collection of snakes--if i recall right, i think they have a live specimen of every poisonous snake on the planet. i have to go back there and shoot more (maybe next year?), but for now please enjoy these.