When we were nineteen, my boyfriend and I took a trip to Mardi Gras. I got us a hotel on Canal Street and being broke college students, the only travel we could afford to get us down there was the bus. It was a twenty four hour trip on Greyhound, memorable in its hellishness. But New Orleans was a wonderful adventure once we finally made it. We got our first tattoos there and the proprietor tried to convince me to get a body piercing as well (this was 1989 and the idea of piercing anything but my ears was really unthinkable, so I turned her down). Mardi Gras was a big party as expected, the crowds were suffocating at times, but the tit flashing was a little less ubiquitous and there were not nearly the plentitude of bead crazed frat boys and girls gone wild as the most recent time I was there. Each time I have returned I discovered more of the unique character and voodoo beauty of New Orleans. I'm really sad that some of it could be lost in the next few hours.

Inspired by Ex-Millenial Girl, I have listed the songs I hate the most.

Any song by Creed. I had such a pure hatred for this pretentious band and it was thankfully alleviated when I realized online that I was far from the only one that despised them. Their music makes my skin crawl. I hope they stay gone.

Through the Wire by Kanye West--It's not fresh and clever to rap when your jaw is wired shut, it's stupid. And so is citing God as your executive producer. The song is just pure cheese, made even worse by the fact the cheesemaker takes himself so seriously.

Drops of Jupiter by Train--This seemingly innocent song irritates the shit out of me. I don't like slow meaningful lyrics that include the phrases tae-bo, deep fried chicken, and soy latte. It justs seems inherently wrong.

These are the only ones I can come up with off the top of my head. I've never been a real ardent hater of many songs and I've always been very open and accepting to all types of music. The same goes for art but I have to admit lately I've grown tired of some of the ridiculous crap being produced by today's artists. But that's another list for another time.

Autumn is around the corner: the season of cooling weather, changing leaves, beautiful sunsets...and good television, yeah!!! Presumably, The Sopranos new season of twelve episodes starts sometime at the end of September. Although the news was just announced that this will not be the FINAL final season, there will be eight more episodes in 2007. Survivor begins September 15th (Merritt's first birthday) and America's Next Top Model and The Apprentice: Martha Stewart both start on September 21st. And this Sunday I will be watching the new HBO series Rome. I've been loving The Comeback and tolerating Entourage on HBO Sundays. I was really affected by the last episode of Six Feet Under--Alan Ball is a supergenius but I knew that from American Beauty.

We took Merritt on his first plane ride this weekend. Brigette's surprise bridal shower was in Annapolis on Saturday and there was no way I was missing it. We got an awesome deal on Southwest and stayed for five days. Merritt was an absolute angel on the plane and now Andy says he thinks we should probably fly again for the wedding in November (Yes! I hate the long drive.). The only bad thing has been that I caught a head cold or allergies and my ears felt like they were going to explode on the flight home. They still haven't popped and everything sounds muffled. I hope I don't get another sinus infection. We discovered while we were in Maryland that Merritt has allergies there in the late summer: if he spent any amount of time outdoors his nose ran and his eyes turned really red.

I totally love that Cindy Sheehan has camped out at Bush's ranch and disrupted his precious vacation. More power to her. My only question has been: why is she the only mother of a dead or injured soldier that has spoken up? You would think there would be more. But I guess most of them have been brainwashed to think they are dishonoring their dead child by protesting the war. I just don't get that. I would be so angry to lose my baby to a cause that did not seem to have a concrete purpose or an imaginable end. Over the weekend I read The Kite Runner and after that I've had quite my fill of male honor and brutality, and how these things can destroy innocent lives.

God I wish my ears would pop.

Merritt has begun to walk. He will only do it between two people but at the rate he has been going, this time next week he will toddling all over the place. He also says "kitty" and it is so cute I can barely stand it. He waves hello and goodbye. He turned eleven months old yesterday.

It's so stifling hot outside--I can't believe I was pregnant this time last year! I must never have left the house.

I wasn't chosen for the Projekt30 exhibition and my overall rating was perfectly average; rather then being let down I was inspired to just keep on moving ahead. I always envision myself doing something totally new with my art and then there is the temptation to see how photorealistic I can get with a painting, just to test my skill and patience. I felt my home page needed to change a bit and I'll probably alter this page design too.

The artists that I admired the most were predictably all in the chosen 30, including a fellow named Matthew Kucynski who did enchanting mixed media pieces (incorporating such materials as coffee and xerox transfer) on bed sheets:

My goal lately is to concentrate on the plants that I already have, rather than spending heaps of money on more. Because that is an addiction of mine, as I've mentioned before. And it's been good for me to step back and appreciate what I have and begin to think compositionally a bit more. Up until now I've just planted what I liked, waited to see if it took or moved it until it was happy, and observed the seasonal changes. I think the next step is to make art in the garden: think about height and color and contrast.

Actually most of my summer has been spent fighting a formidable pest: the oleander caterpillar.



Because it only eats poisonous oleander, the usual caterpillar predators such as birds will not touch it. So once I got a few on my red oleander, they went to town propagating and chewing it to bits. I have spent months trying to eradicate them using nonchemical means but as soon as I think they are all gone another moth (which incidentally looks like a black wasp) lays eggs and I have tons more of the little nasties to deal with.

So today I resorted to a pesticide, a mild one called bacillus thuringiensis, and I hope this will finally bring to a close the 2005 caterpillar reign of terror.

The heat has been pretty ungodly lately, but that's Florida at the height of summer for you. You can feel the sun baking your skin when you step outside. Performing any activity at all, even just loading groceries into the car, leaves you sweaty and tired. Swimming pools feel like a warm bath, not the refreshing coolness you expect. But from what I understand the heat has been a lot worse out west and about the same here as up north so what's the difference. We've got the beach, the palm trees, the lizards. We had a huge tree frog hanging out on our front porch for a few nights. He was the beautiful pale green color of a luna moth but when I photographed him the color wasn't quite the same. The only major disappointment about summer is that I'm not taking walks with Merritt in the stroller anymore and I think we both miss it.

This morning the boy was bouncing up and down to his musical toys, it was super cute. Yesterday we went to Clearwater to visit family and he didn't get to bed until midnight. He handled it well and fell right down for a nap this morning. I'm getting so good at reading his cues and anticipating what he needs. It surprises me that it's not so obvious to other people but then again Merritt is my total focus in life; every move he makes is computed, analyzed, stored by my mommy brain. My only hesitancy about having another child has been that I wouldn't be able to give my full attention to Merritt anymore. But the ironic thing is that only children have told me they actually didn't like that aspect of being singular--so ultimately it would be in his favor for me to have a second. But two will be it for me!!

I read an absolutely incredible book recently, The Time Traveler's Wife, a science fiction love story that had me laughing out loud at times and crying my eyes out at others. I just heard that Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston bought the movie rights to the story so who knows what will happen to it. I'm still waiting to see what Steven Speilberg will do with the rights to Memoirs of a Geisha.

I really want to get a little reading chair for Merritt. Sometimes I miss working only because it gave me the freedom to just blow a hundred bucks on something like this.