Yesterday our AC unit was out (fixed today, thankfully the compressor was under warranty so it was $800, rather than $1300 to fix) so we decided to escape the heat by going to the mall. Starbucks for mom and dad, play area for Ruby, boom. 

I love/hate this play area. I love it because it's free and Ruby can run around like a nut, burning off energy, while I drink coffee or let H watch her while I run to check out the clearance racks at the Gap. I hate it because even though there is a height limit parents let their kids play there anyway so there are 9 year olds doing parkcour off of the ducky while Ruby and other much smaller toddlers are around. 

But anyway.

Yesterday Ruby had tried a couple times to cross from one side of the rattle to the another using the narrow handle. She fell but got back up and tried again. The third time she made it across. Good job, Ruby! (giving thumbs up) High five! I didn't think she'd run over to me, I thought she'd just go back and do it again, but she ran over to my and gave me a solid high five. smack!Then she ran back over and did it again. This time once she got to the other side she held up her hands, jumped up, and down and let out the most excited, high-pitched, horror-movie-esqu, scream EVER. It was awesome. 

Then she ran over to both of us and gave us double high fives before going back and doing it again and again. During this one minute moment in time I was the proudest I have ever been of her. And fuck, that smile on her face and that squeal of pure delight....damn. 
 

This morning we decided to cook up some scrambled eggs. This is just as much of a documentation of how adorable Ruby is and the fact that we actually cooked something! When I'm in the mood to let Ruby help (a.k.a. when I actually cook and I am not just throwing something quick together after coming home from work and I am exhausted) I let her. She was very excited about the eggs and broke one while I had my back turned for .003 seconds. I gave her a whisk to stir the eggs and then Heath stepped in to show her how it's done. Well, I should say that he tried to show her how it's done. She wouldn't have any of that and insisted on doing it herself. 

Then it was time to add the cheese. She's very good at adding way too much of something. 

I'd love to say that the eggs tasted good but they didn't. Maybe too much cheese too early? Meh. I ended up picking out the mushrooms and then eating them with some avocado. Eh. Can't win them all. 

I should have been in the studio today but instead I gave myself the day off. I have a wedding tomorrow and I just wanted to chill today. So I went thrifting. Back to Peddler's, the place where I have the best luck. Today was awesome. I scored a ton of books for Ruby, none of them more than $1 and like 7 of them for only a quarter! 

I was especially psyched about the Charlie Brown Encyclopedia for fifty cents. I had the whole collection growing up and perused them often. My mom still has all of them up in Minnesota, I'm sure. Every night as I'm brushing Ruby's teeth I'll say, "No cavities!" and she'll repeat it back to me with much more enthusiasm. Now I can show her some visual representation, lol. 

Okay, so you're probably thinking, WTF. I have no idea who this is, I was just looking at the fact that they are stacking dolls. First check out this post by artist Ben Rumback. Back? Now here's what I'm thinking. I commission him to do one of Heath, Ruby, and I. How adorable would that be????? Oh, and they were only $3. Sc-ore. Sorry OSU dude.

I squeed a bit when I saw that this old crate was only $10. I have been looking for a crate like this for a while but they are always super pricey. There were several crates around the various boothes today but most of them were in the $30-$40 range. This one appeared to be the oldest, and therefore, coolest of them all. What will I do with it? I dunno. I wanted one purely for aesthetic reasons. I just think they're cool. 

And of course then there's the stuff that I liked but didn't buy. I'd like to thank Weebly mobile for making it super easy to upload these photos from my phone into this draft. HUGE time saver!! 

I totally dug this burger sign. It was made of a sort of rubbery plastic (not hard like I thought it would be) and there were three of them. One said Burger, one said Sundae, and one said Chicken. When I was moving them around, I kid you not, you could still smell the greasiness of the restaurant. That's both kind of cool and a little disgusting at the same time. At only $23 I wanted the burger sign so I emailed Heath a photo. Alas, he didn't think it was as cool as I did. 

I have a confession: last year I completely dropped the ball on Father's Day and did pretty much nothing for Heath. I had originally planned on making an adorable Firefly cross stitch (from this Etsy shop) but like many other crafty projects it fell by the wayside. Even worse, for Mother's Day he had gotten me a massage package. Yes, I am totally lame. So this year I had to make sure that I wasn't lame. 

Heath is a big fan of the Ren Faire but me, not so much. This past weekend was Steam Punk Weekend so I asked if he wanted to go, he said yes, so we did. I don't know if either of us really had all that great of a time (other than checking out the cool costumes) at least until the last 20 minutes that we were there. I asked Ruby is she wanted to get her face painted. She said, "yeah!" but I could tell that she was kind of like, "I have no idea what you're talking about!" She picked out a bee from the board and I sat with her while the lady painted on her face. She sat perfectly still, I was amazed. 

When it was finished she looked in the mirror and immediately touched it and smeared it. No surprise, really. Then she looked at me and declared that I needed a bug as well. 

Then apparently ONE cheek with a bug on it wasn't good enough so she picked out the spider for her other cheek. The face painting segment of our trip alone was worth the trip up to the faire, the price of admission, and the $6 for the face painting itself. 

Lastly we picked out some little horns for her to wear. The guy selling them kept insisting on giving her pink ones when she kept asking for blue (which I then vetoed because it was too Big Blue Nation for me) and then he kept making creepy remarks about how mommy needs to wear just the horns and a smile to thank daddy. Ugh. Really? 

After a couple of hours at the faire we drove on to Louisville for a trip to the Cheesecake Factory. The last time we were here Ruby was 6 months old! That is far too long between CF visits.  It was after 5 when we arrived and Ruby had not napped at all. She was pretty good considering, but she was still a little nutty. This picture below cracks me up. That is butter that she in nomming and that was Heath's reaction to seeing her nomming butter (and wiping it on her arms). 

For dinner I had the Bang Bang Chicken and Shrimp, my favorite, and for Ruby we got mini corn dogs and fruit. Besides using her food as maracas there wasn't much else going on in the way of her actually eating it. In the end we basically paid $6 for a strawberry and an all beef hot dog. This is why 99% of the time we just make her share with us. That's like a piece of cheesecake right there! (red velvet cheesecake? don't mind if I do!)

Normally we wouldn't let her keep her feet on the table but I could tell that meltdown was getting closer and we really just wanted to get through our meal. In the end the meltdown never came and she made it all the way home without falling asleep. This meant that she'd stick her thumb in her mouth and start dozing off and we'd talk with her or mess with her so that she wouldn't fall asleep. Anything to ensure that we could put her to bed as soon as we got home and she'd sleep her usual 12 hours without waking up! 

It's been over two months since Oliver died. How does that both seem like forever ago and yet just like yesterday? As I tossed and turned in bed a few nights ago, somehow totally awake after being exhausted all day, my thoughts turned to him. It's rare that a day that goes by that I don't touch the little wooden box on my bedside table and think of him. I also realized that I never talked about that thing I mentioned I would talk about later which mainly was about how we found someone who would come out to the house and help us say goodbye to him. 

Initially I had wanted the vet who treated Oliver to do the deed but he wouldn't come to our house citing staffing reasons. The thought of bringing him back to the vets office for his final moments just did not sit well with me. I could feel in my soul that it just wasn't the right choice. I called two mobile vet clinics in town who, according to the websites, did perform in-home euthanasia. The problem? The first seemed like he could care less that I was calling to put my cat to sleep. He referred to Oliver as "the animal". Maybe this is par for the course but it just didn't sit well with me. He wasn't just an animal. The second seemed a little too enthusiastic for me. No, "I'm sorry" or anything just a cheerful, "Okay, so when are we looking to do this?" No thanks. I called several other vets in town but they would not come out to the house without a prior examination.

I didn't think it would be so difficult! The last thing I wanted to be doing in my super-sensitive, emotional state was to be repeating the details of the situation over and over again. (did I mention that all this was going down while I was on break at work?) Finally, I Googled "in home euthanasia Lexington" and eventually found a couple pet hospice places located in Louisville. The first I called was A Friend's Farewell. I talked with Dr. LeMay and asked if she knew anyone in Lexington who would be willing to come to the house. After expressing her sympathies she asked me what my kitties name was and then said, "Tell me about Oliver." Of course I started to cry. Long story short, she gave me a few names to try and said that if I couldn't find anyone to call her back, that she would probably have time to come down. Needless to say I ended up calling her back and she drove all the way from north of L-ville to help us say goodbye.

As I wrote in the post that day-and I still can't really find the right way to say this-everything went well? It was  good? That just doesn't seem to right in this sort of situation. I guess I'll say that it went as well as I could have hoped for being the situation that it was. We were home, he was comfortable, and we were able to go at our own pace and say goodbye to him in our own way. I will always be so grateful that we found someone passionate enough to do what she does and compassionate enough to drive over an hour each way to help us. It made a difficult situation a little bit easier to bear. 

Here are some more pictures from Amanda and Derek's beautiful wedding at the Bell House. Amanda and Derek (and Liz, Lyle, Ashley) you were all SO much fun! Thank you for letting me be a part of your wedding day. (if you haven't already you can see the sneak peek here)

Last Sunday the fam went out to the St. Elizabeth Ann Seaton country fair. Our neighbors go to EAS and have long been responsible for helping organize and gather donations for their giant rummage sale. I've gone to the sale a few times but have never spent any time at the midway. This was officially Ruby's first fair so I was excited to see how she would handle the rides. Really, she was technically too short to ride any of the rides but the nice folks monitoring a few of them let us go anyway. 

Despite the look of horror on her face in the picture below she actually LOVED the giant slide. Once she got to the bottom the first time she jumped up and immediately tried to climb back UP the slide to go again! We ended up going down with her three different times and then had to carry her kicking and screaming away from it when we ran out of tickets. I think when she's tall enough to go on all the rides an Unlimited Ride bracelet will be a good investment. 

The next ride we tried was the spinning strawberries, kind of like the spinning teacup ride. Ruby was okay with it for the most part but near the end, after Heath had been spinning and spinningspinningspinning the wheel she said very quietly, "I wanna stop....." I was not surprised that she was wanting to stop, I myself was feeling a bit nauseated as well. Heath slowed down and immediately she said, "I want to GO!" 

There was also a petting zoo. Does anyone else feel bad for the animals at petting zoos? They sell the feed for people to give the animals and they gobble the shit out of it. I picture them starving the poor animals leading up to an event just so they'll nom the hell out of the food people are giving them. But I guess some of them were eating grass so they aren't really starving...I'm sure they're fine, they just seem so desperate! Anyway. Ruby loved feeding the "GOATS!!" and although we bought several cups of feed for her she managed to charm a random dude out of his feed as well. I'm amazed at how tolerant people are with random little girls who come up to them and demand their feed. 

It's all fun and games until a goat tries to nom your hair... Thankfully she wasn't at all traumatized by this betrayal ...and I fed you all those pellets! and after a quick cry and a visit to the bunny cage she went right back to contributing to the (probably) rising rate of farm animal obesity. 


Last but not least was the pony ride. I will not go on and on about what a racket this is. But, damn! $3 for like a 50ft walk on a pony? Yeah. But likes most parents I paid it because, dammit, I knew she'd love it. And she did. And she wanted a pony. I told her she'd get a puppy before she'd get a pony. 

And last but not least, how cute is the little goat?? Come on!