• the sticks

    Earth to SAJ

    "pretty silver moon"

    I’m going out to my mom’s for the weekend and she does not have wifi at this moment. It’s some crazy mix-up with her shutting off her house phone-line and using cell phones as her primary source of communication and thus shutting off all cable connections etc etc etc… there’s always some sort of drama going down at Camp Chaotic. But this drama has seriously got me quivering with the shakes. What am I gonna do?!!! Life without the internet? Does it exist?

    Normally, I would say this is a good thing. It’s about time I disconnected my head from my laptop and learned to appreciate the finer things in life, like paying 100% attention to my daughter for a change! BUT work is crazy busy right now! Not to mention, thanks to you wonderful people, my etsy shop is going off! I get about 20 emails an hour. I can’t let go. And if I do let go, when I get back I’ll be so buried I’ll die! I’m already months behind on some emails. Going without writing back for three or four days will just kill me. How did this happen?!!

    If it weren’t for the fact that a very special “green birthday dinner” with a very curious green jello “poke cake” has been planned, I would consider not going out. And you know how much I like going out to the sticks! This is going to be very hard for me. I’m already plotting maps to all the free wi-fi locations within a twenty-mile radius of my mom’s house. I am that pathetic.

    So anyway if you don’t hear from me (email-wise… not hearing from me blog-wise for a few days is nothing new) it’s because I’m lost in outer space. I will miss you probably more than you miss me. I hope to be back by Tuesday. Maybe sooner.

  • Beach Bits,  Bug,  Family Matters

    Let’s Go Fly a Kite!

    Let's Go Fly a Kite!

    Today was a PERFECT day to fly a kite. (What better way to spend your real birthday, right?) It was so great. The weather was pretty, windy and clear as a bell. You could see all the way to Catalina and beyond. The tide was out and nobody was on the beach. Just yards and yards of wide open space. It was beautiful.

    Since Uncle George (more famously known as The Perchinator by his buddies and hopefully blogging soon if I have my way) brought Baby Bug a kite for her birthday, we thought we might as well try it out first thing. Her new kite is a beauty. Gigantic AND GREEN (with some purple). Though I think the turquoise side is showing in this photo. Take my word for it, the other side is GOREEEEEEEEN!

    Baby Bug's Birthday Kite!

    It wasn’t quite ready for flying yet (it’s missing some struts) but we did manage to get it up and in the air. I would have taken pictures but I was busy running up and down the beach flying it with no hands for camera shooting!

    Kite Flying with Uncle George

    But that’s okay because Uncle George brought his super duper stunt kite! That thing was crazy! It whipped around this way and that. I have never seen such kite flying! I had no idea it was such a sport. Or should I say, Uncle George is crazy?! He’s actually a trained stunt kite flyer. Who knew?!! There are a lot of things Uncle George is really good at that nobody knows about. It’s kind of a Ponnay trait to be the best at whatever you do. It can be annoying to someone like me who is not really the best at anything but I certainly enjoy being a spectator.

    chasing Uncle George

    Baby Bug thought it was pretty fun too. She chased after him all over the big, wide-open beach. She would have been right in the thick of things if we weren’t so afraid that those knife sharp strings might cut her head off. I kid you not. Uncle George said that the strings on a kite can actually decapitate someone. I had no idea. Let’s just say I’m going to be leaving the stunt kite flying in the hands of someone a little more experienced. He tried to let me hold the strings but I declined. That’s like handing me a gun and saying, here shoot someone. Yikes!

    Mr. Stunt Kite Guy

    carrying the PURPLE string

    We let Baby Bug carry the string but it wasn’t attached. She didn’t care. She thought she was “large and in charge”! One of these days we’ll fly her kite and keep things a little calmer.

    scaring the seagulls

    I was very happy to leave the stunt kite flying in the capable hands of Uncle George. We could have watched him for hours. He showed us how to scare seagulls with a kite and some tourists too. I don’t think scaring the tourists was on purpose but it was pretty funny. He plunked the kite down (probably on purpose to save their heads) five feet from a couple walking by and they nearly jumped out of their skin. It was hilarious. Thankfully they were very good natured about it and actually sat down (several very-safe yards away) to watch the show with us.

    diving out of my frame

    That kite was a wild whippy thing. It was very hard to photograph. Along with not being able to see my lcd screen very well in bright sunlight, my camera’s extremely annoying shutter-delay factor did not help. The kite flew so fast it was all I could do to get it in the frame. So please don’t mind the tipping horizon. Don’t worry, the ocean was not actually about to pour over on us.

    Uncle George gave us our very own kite show

    there it is!

    I did get a few though. And then we called it a day because that whippy wind is tiring! Poor Baby Bug zonked out on the stroller ride home and it was a whole hour before her nap time!

    tuckered out

    I’d say this photo is a pretty good indication that we had fun.

    Thanks Uncle George!

    (More photos here.)