The beginning of catching up.

No posts here since April.....

That's a long time, isn't it?  I'VE BEEN BUSY!  I have!  Really!  There's a lot going on in Casa Banana.
Let's see... Since April there's been a trip to Mexico City with my BFF to visit my brother,

 That's us, there. In glorious Mexico City. More photos to come, eventually.  It was pretty great.  We saw the pyramids and ate a lot of food and went to a creepy witchcraft market and bought a lot of things and I finally learned how to haggle.  I am (was) a truly terrible haggler.  More than once, I've offered to pay full price for something once my shopping companion had talked the seller into a lower price.  I was concerned that the seller wouldn't actually commit to the lower price and if my friend wanted it that bad, I could just get it for her...  I did this kind of a lot and Jesse had basically forbidden me from saying a word whenever he was discussing prices with someone.  Mexico City changed all that.  I haggle all the time, for all the things and it's shocking how many people are OK with lowering their price.  I mean, it's not for places like Target but I do a lot of shopping in Downtown LA and those guys are tricking people into overpaying all over the place.  I realize that this is probably not new knowledge to everybody else in the world but it's exciting for me.

Then there was a trip to the Grand Canyon with the Guy and the Kid.

 That's us, there. At the glorious Grand Canyon. More photos to come, eventually.  We brought the Doctor along and all of us had a great time.  The trip was planned as a long camping road trip kind of thing and since I booked the campsite at the Grand Canyon, I asked the Guy to find campsites on the road to and from the place.  We ended up spending the first night of the trip at a campsite in Needles, California.  For those of you who are not familiar with Needles, California, I give you some information.  1) It is not actually in California, it is on the face of the sun.  There's some kind of travel science magic thing that makes this possible.  2) It is the most boring city of ever.  3) The average daily temperature there is roughly 3 bajillion.
We lasted one night because we are Ultimate Campers.  Then we went to a hotel and stayed there until our campsite at the Grand Canyon opened up because camping is the worst.   At the new campsite, feral Elk ate our tablecloth and giant ravens tried to eat my dog.  I imagine that's what living in the apocalypse is like.
The Grand Canyon was very beautiful, we oohed and aahhed and then canceled our stay at the third campsite in favor of our beds and air conditioning.

The kid had a big show where he got a pie in the face.  I have no photo of that magical face/pie moment but I have this:


 He's the tall one in the middle. It was a cute show.  Kind of odd seeing 11 and 12 year old girls vamping it up and singing about giving you a good time but hey - kids these days, amiright?

There's been a bunch more stuff but I've realized that if I illustrate every single thing with a photo, this post will be way too long to deal with.  I'll talk about more stuff later, possibly.


FLOSS EVERY DAY
I had my teeth cleaned for the first time (ever) today and the dental hygienist was surprised and impressed that my teeth are as good as they are.  Judging from her expression when I told her that I'd never done it before, she must have expected them to be falling out of my face.  I have good teeth, people. 

Believe

Inbetweens

I'm doing a thousand different things now and while sometimes it gets overwhelming, I'm having a lot of fun. 

One thing I'm doing is helping a friend open up a salon. Designing and arranging the space has become my favorite thing.  It's like creating a movie set!  Everything has to be just so, it has to say something specific and be harmonious with all the things around it. If I weren't doing a million other things, I'd want to take a design course!   For now, I'll stick to learning how to do lash extensions and teaching myself how to speak French and how to play bass guitar. 

Oh!  And how to develop my own film. I'll be using a friends darkroom tomorrow to develop some photos I took while at the Grand Canyon. I'm not sure if the camera I'd been using actually works so the developing process will be extra exciting. 

I'll get back to the trip to Paris soon. I've finally finished uploading all the photos. Now I've got a couple of fashion shoots, a trip to Mexico City, and the Grand Canyon trip photos to get to. Someday I will catch up with myself. 

Day le first, continued.

In a Banana first, I've managed to get quite a few photos edited and uploaded in the first two days after coming home from Paris.  Now, keep in mind that I took roughly a squillion photos during the trip.  Having "quite a few" done means got about an eighth of the photos done.  For me, that's a lot.

The first of very, very many cafe cremes that we had in Paris.

This was the very first thing we saw.  We took the metro from the airport and our stop was just outside of the Notre Dame. 

Pretty spectacular, right?  No photos we took did justice to the beauty and awe-inspiring majesty of the place.  Also, J almost knocked down a wall dividing the tourists from the people worshiping in the rows.

This guy is pretty gruesome.  I think it might be Saint Denis.  I bought a book (at Shakespeare and Company!  I was there!  I shopped !) called Paris: A Secret History.  Pretty fascinating read, lots of weird and cool stories about the history of the City Of Lights.   The point being that's where I read the story of Saint Denis.  Which is also on Wikepedia.  Ah- when I went to the Wiki page, I saw a photo of this statue.  So there.  It's confirmed.  St. Denis.

The aforementioned Shakespeare and Company.  AKA The Awesomest Place In The History Of Ever. 

This was the spectacular view from our hotel balcony.  We stayed at the Hotel Cardinal and it was pretty great.  There were a couple of things that went wrong during our stay (the wallpaper peeled off in a massive piece near the window, the window in the shower broke right off the hinges, The Kid slept in a red sweater and now his sheets, they are pink) but they seemed to be cool about it.  Kind of hard to tell, really.  My French is not so good.   I'm just going to assume that they're used to problems with the buildings.  After all, most of them (the buildings, not the people) are well over a hundred years old.   Also, there was a bidet (not pictured).

And that's the first day.  Odds are good, given my bloggy history, that I won't mention the trip anymore after this.  Hopefully, though, I'll get more in here.  There are some great stories from Paris.

Day le first.

Jet lag has struck and I'm lying in a hotel bed in Paris at two in the morning listening to the sound of a night winding down. There's a cafe across the street from the hotel and it's been a good evening for them.
We got in at 8 in the morning and instead of sleeping on the plane, I thought it would be fun to watch 3 movies. We got to our hotel at 9am, we'd been awake for roughly twenty hours, and we were told that we couldn't check in until two. Five hours of more not sleeping. I was fine with this. I've got YEARS of not getting any sleep, what with nighttime jobs and daytime relationships. I dragged an exhausted husband and a nearly comatose child out into the streets and we went to Notre Dame and then Shakespeare and Co. That bookstore was a dream come true. I hadn't seen it when I'd been to Paris before and that's a good thing - without a family to answer to, I would have just moved right in. The bookstore is large but you'd never know it because there are so many twists and turns and little nooks to explore. The Kid wedged himself into a kind of cabinet with two typewriters inside and as I browsed upstairs, I could hear him clacking away on the typewriter keys. ALL the new books downstairs, lovely, dusty old books upstairs, with little cots scattered here and there. I met someone once who said they'd lived in the children's book section for a little while. That must have been amazing. It's my idea of a perfect world. If anything ever happens to J, I'm going to pack right up and move into the bookstore.

The things that are up

Now that I'm not working a day job, I've got three other jobs keeping me busy. Photography is still the main gig but I've added Perfumer and occasional Fancy Event Lady to the mix.
The perfume thing is great. We've got funny and flirty and occasionally, slightly naughty names for them, like Temptress, Granny Panties, Flirt, and our latest, Himbo (that's the male version of a bimbo).
We sell them online and at the Melrose Trading Post, as well as in a few stores and they're doing really well. It's pretty exciting to watch this grow. I'm be attending some small business seminars in the next couple of months, too. Self-improvement! I has it!
The Fancy Event Lady job is a lot less complex. A few times a month, I get dressed up and stand around for a couple of hours and take names, or press elevator buttons, or show people where things are, or, rarely, hold a tray of tasty tidbits. It's for a very fancy hotel that has a residential complex. Actors, producers, athletes, musicians, all kinds of fancy people live there and if they have a party or if there's a open house at the residence, a few girls are hired to help with the decorations. Mainly by being decorative. My favorite job, so far, has been Elevator Girl. The residences are so fancy that every floor has a separate fob that allows access and so they need us to help guests get to where they're going. I stand in a tiny gilded box, press a button, and have twenty second relationships with all kinds of people, guest and resident alike. When
I'm not chatting with someone, I think of ways to make standing in an elevator more fun and occasionally worry about earthquakes.
ELEVATOR IDEAS
1) Stand in a corner of the elevator, facing the corner, and rock very slightly, ignoring everyone that comes in.
2) Stand right in the doorway, with my back to the lobby, and ignore everyone that needs to get past me into the elevator.
3) Lie down right in the middle, face up or down, I haven't decided yet, and act as though it's perfectly normal. Greet new arrivals, etc.
4) Jump out and scream in their faces when the doors open.

I haven't done any of these (yet) but I stand there giggling to myself when I think about them. If the concierge is watching the camera feed, he probably thinks I'm crazy.

That's it. The busy part of my life, at the moment. I like it.

Good things are afoot

My friend and I have started a perfume business and it's doing surprisingly well.  It's also surprising that I've started a perfume business.  It started as a joke and now it's a source of income.  So, you know.  That's good.
The other super-awesome thing is the inclusion of The Kid in the upcoming trip to Paris.  This is very cool and I can't wait until he finds out that he's coming with us.  My trip was so long ago that it's as though I'd never been - I don't remember a single practical thing, like how to get to places.  It's going to be great.
I've finally finished uploading the photos from Hawaii.  They're all here and I love looking at them.  It was an amazing trip.

It occurs to me that for someone who is always complaining about a lack of travel in her life, I really get around.  Last year I was all over the U.S. and this year I'm going to Paris and Mexico City.  And that's only my plans up to May.  The summer will have a road trip to the Grand Canyon and at least another trip to Mexico.  I think there will be visits to the East coast scattered throughout the year and at least one visit to my grandparents in Missouri. 
It's going to be a fantastic year.

This is how it usually works...

The shiny new car came with damaged pinstripes so one week later I'm waiting here at the dealership while they fix the problem.  The whole thing was supposed to take fifteen minutes - I've been here nearly an hour. This isn't a Grumpy Post, though.  This is a Post, Interrupted. I know how things work, you see.  If you're waiting for something and begin to feel impatient, start a project. It could be anything: Paint your nails, build a canoe, blog, whatever. The second you really start to get into the project,  the thing you'd been waiting for in the first place will be ready and then you'll be annoyed all over again.  Now you're wishing the thing had taken just a tiny bit longer because you just want to finish that last bit of