A Sorta' Fairytale

Once upon a time there was a lovely princess, who lived in a beautiful bungalow in the great kingdom of North Carolina.


This princess was loved by everyone. She was so gentle and kind it was hard to hate her for having rock-hard postpartum abs.


When company would come from far and wide to visit her kingdom and royal family she and Prince PM would prepare lavish meals for a feast in the countryside.


Like chilled blueberry soup.


And proper tea sandwiches.

As a treat to the fair ladies, she would take them to Royal Fabric Palace, where you could acquire things like this:


and this:


Upon returning to her magical cottage, great banquets would appear and guests would immediately be stuffed with delicious food and fine wine.


Little nymphs would be present for entertainment.



And there in her enchanted manor, the princess and her family lived happily ever after.

The end.

Lucky Ducks

This weekend we were offered the vacation home of some friends of my parents in Wilmington, NC, right off the coast of Wrightsville Beach. It was a beautiful house in an even more beautiful development, full of multi-million dollar homes on huge manicured lots, each one deserving of a spread in Traditional Home or Architectural Digest. The Stepford-ness of it all prompted Pete to comment, "This does not look like the kind of neighborhood where people put their garbage for pick-up on the curb. In fact, this does not look like the kind of neighborhood where people even make garbage!". We did quite a bit of eating out, and stumbled upon this little gem, an Asian restaurant whose back patio made me covet.


It was a fabulous opportunity to spend some quality time with just my boys, and a wonderful place to celebrate Pete's 2nd Father's Day. Nothing that Pete does in terms of generosity of spirit surprises me, but I am continually amazed by his commitment to our marriage and to our son. I cannot imagine anything he could do to be a better father to Andrew, and my heart bursts when I am reminded of the obvious, that he is not just my husband and father to our son, but Andrew's dad. Our child is an incredibly fortunate little man.


Last week we were crawling into bed and out of nowhere Pete says to me, "Every night when I go to bed I have that great feeling like I used to have on Christmas Eve, knowing I get to wake up to Andrew in the morning."

I know the feeling.

Just Up My Alley

A few days ago we went to WV to celebrate my friend Karen's 30 birthday. Her husband was throwing her a surprise party (nearly always a very bad idea) and had recruited me to act as the ruse to throw her off the track of suspicion. So of course I agreed to help out with that and in a further gesture of generosity asked if there was anything else I could do (nearly always a very bad idea).

At first he declined, but then I heard a glint of opportunism in his voice. Yes, if you really want to, I have a project that is just up your alley, he says. He then points me in the direction of this site and tells me that Karen has dreamed of nothing more than a pineapple palm tree to call her very own.

For those of you who have always fantasized about sinking a 1" bit through tropical fruit, let me assure you it's a nasty business. Pineapple guts covered the floor of my parents' garage and I ended up having to spray a hose through their core, a pineapple douche, if you will, before sodomizing the poor things with table legs.

My 82-yr-old grandfather helped out and was both mesmerized and repulsed by what we were doing.

Sadly, the tree was not the hit I had anticipated and I think Karen barely noticed that it was there.

Upon my return to NC I emailed pics of the final products to friends and offered to extend my talents to mark their special occasions too. Like a guillotine out of field strawberries. Or a suckling pig out of kiwi fruit. These were their requests:

1. I think you should definitely make something for my wedding. Perhaps out of large bananas. Jumbo.
2. For my next decade birthday, I would like you scupt the Statue of Liberty out of hummus.
   
3. A fetal feline out of french fabric.

We all agreed that I should be very thankful that he didn't ask me to make this: