Winners finish last.

The last day of the LA County Junior Lifeguard program coincides with the International Surf Festival around here. Part of the surf festival includes lifeguard competitions, with lifeguard teams arriving from all over California and even Australia. No reason to keep the mini watermen/women out of the fun! The Taplin Relay consists of a six-kid running relay, handing off to a six-kid paddling team and then handing off to a six-kid swimming relay team. Jack qualified for the paddling portion of the Taplin relay race. And, if I may... the first running portion left Jack's team in sixth; the second part, the paddling part, Jack's part--those kids brought his team into first place with a 30 second lead!

Anyway, Jack's Redondo Beach team placed third! Third! That's good enough for a t-shirt! A t-shirt! A free t-shirt! I'm pretty stoked. Jack is a pretty athletic kid, but he consistently finishes fourth. All-city track meet...soccer...bike rodeo...fourth, fourth, fourth. Fourth is great. Fourth is better than fifth and tenth and twenty-seventh... But I don't think fourth even gets recorded officially, right? There's gold, silver, bronze and then the rest...fourth and twenty-seventh...and so on...

But in this event, the kid that comes in very last gets the very best reward. A Tunnel of Love made up of about two hundred kids. Just making a team is an accomplishment. And then to finish this exhausting race is pretty amazing.

Made (in) the shade.

Hello friends! How is your summer going? I haven't been very productive. The great thing about having my own studio/office is that it is outside of the house. The bad thing about having my own studio/office space is that is outside of the house. I really cannot expect the kids to spend but a few minutes hanging out whilst I do my thing. Just what it is. And summer isn't forever and the kids won't be kids forever. So we'll do summer and worry about being productive later.






I did manage to put up the curtain panels in the Jackitat (Jack's recently redone room). I took your advice and used the orange swirly material. The curtain panels look great, but really cut the light into the room...so I found these groovilicious old lamps on the ye ole Ebay. The lamps have Honduran tikis carved on all four sides. The lamps make me so happy. These lamp shades, however, do not make me so happy. From the outside looking in, how hard can it be to spray a lamp shade with spray adhesive and lay a piece of fabric over it? I know, right? Yeah, right. Drove me about out of my mind.


Have a beautiful day!