Thanks for showing up and visiting awhile. We appreciate being able to see you, so did our garden, of course. In fact, my chickens really thank you because it's a nice 76 degrees or so. Oh, front yard and backyard lawn say thanks. So come back soon, we miss you.Stay as long as you like!
For now I am happy. Sunday morning is a cool 80 degrees. It actually feels very refreshing. Having breakfast on the patio with my mother and brother, it's sweet potato pancakes and maple syrup, the birds are singing, a very, very weak breeze blows the scent of my Maid-of-Orleans jasmine our way. It's so cool compared to how it has been. Even the hens are softly cooing and preening themselves. That means they are happy.
Yesterday, everywhere I went was within walking distance: Austin books (I *heart*), Titaya's (um,tres delish!) and Half Price books where I managed to read most of Diet For A Dead Planet: How The Food Industry Is Killing Us while and found some Trini Lopez records. If the weather had been nicer I could have walked to these places but it was just too hot. Triple digit.
Ages ago, there were a few days of triple digits and I bought an orange blossom hydrosol at Sabia's. I'd keep it in the fridge until I had to go out into the heat. Then I carried it in my purse and made sure I never ran out. I rode around in an old 1974 BMW 2002 without AC, smelling of orange blossoms. How did I do that?
I'm willing to join a rain dance. Anything to make the heat stop. Thankfully the backyard doesn't creep past 100. I can get it to 99 if I hose everything down and plug in the hurricane fan. Glad we have all that shade. The heat index is 112!
Tomorrow should be 106 with a heat index of 114?
Only morons jog in this weather.
I'm really hating asphalt right now.
Why don't more people build homes out of adobe in Texas?
Why would anyone wear synthetic fabrics right now? Wearing linen and cottons feels so right, ahhhhhhhhhhh.
Are your crocs melting yet? I remember Jellies becoming so soft you couldn't walk in them right in Mexico once when it was 110. Who knows what the heat index was then.
When I watered the backyard, the bees, wasps, butterflies and all sorts of birds descended upon it. It's a nice lil party.
Made mud puddles for the hens. They look absolutely muddy but it all comes off and they remain Clorox white.
Thankful that our AC is a nice, strong, fine working piece of machinery right now. I sincerely hope yours is too.
We watched some silly Sinatra films this weekend. The Tender Trap has an awesome intro but it's a silly Debbie Reynolds romp. This is Trini Lopez from Marriage on the Rocks. At first it seems silly but it's really a well written comedy. Definitely better than say Sex and the Single Girl.
Trini Lopez is a Texan, hails from Dallas (I tought it was Corpus). He totally reminds me of someone I can't place and it's driving me nuts. Definitely in Austin and within the past ten years. Hmmmmmmmmmm maybe it's just that he is a Texan. Sinatra discovered Trini.
Three days of triple digit temperatures, ugh! That totally ruins my pleasant, Austin summer streak, sort of. It was actually a pre-summer streak. This is what summer is all about in Texas. Hmmm if this keeps up for the next three months I guess we will have that swimming pool built in the backyard. In the meantime I'll join William, he's been chillin in his cool guayaberas and drinking gin and tonics.
We saw Our Man in Havana last night, I highly recommend this film based on the Graham Greene novel of the same name. It was filmed in Cuba five years before Soy, Cuba. Triple digits actually enhance summer movie watching.
We had lunch at Reales recently and not only was it yummy but all they played was Sinatra while we were there. Thank you, Reales. They really have the best cannolli, hands down, the absolute best. JT, I'd FedEx you some to compare but it's just too hot.
We saw Leave Her to Heaven and Laura back to back tonight. I first saw Gene Tierney, with her perfect bone structure and page boy hair, in The Razor's Edge as a kid. I loved her overbite so much I tried to mimic it. I thought by taking my upper lip and raising it as much as I could over my own overbite to show my upper front teeth and feeling like Gene, I would also look like her. One look in the mirror should have put a top to it. But it felt like I looked like Gene so I continued to do it and got laughed at of course. So I stopped trying to even feel like Gene Tierney.
We had never seen Laura and really dug the fast paced film noir. After the movie I showed William my "feeling like Gene Tierney" face and yeah, he laughed. I looked in the mirror again, hideous, but it feels just like Gene Tierney.
Tierney's hair styles in the films made me want to finally break down and purchase Bobby Pin's vintage hairstyling book. I just discovered a new second edition is out. Since Daniela Turudich seems to be either extremely afraid of success or is locked in a basement somewhere unable to print more of her gorgeous books, thank goodness for Lauren Rennells and her second edition!
Summer in Austin is fun, the heat kills but the extra elbow room is much appreciated. Students are gone, people stay indoors, still it makes a significant dent in the population. The heat isn't quite so bad under a canopy of shade trees. It really is tolerable with a glass of lemonade or iced tea in the shade. Once evening descends, it can be dreamy. It's always nice at the movies.
I love that Magnolia's still serves mint-hibiscus tea. It tastes just as it did twenty years ago when I had it for the first time. It was August 1989. I can't believe so much time has passed. Walking down South Congress feels like a carnival midway. The The Airstreams parked on gravel give it that feel for me. Colorful boutique signs glow, lots of happy people. A stop at Hey Cupcake reminds me of the 70's because that was the golden age of cupcakes for me. They were a huge part of my childhood. En route to Magnolia's I passed some kiosks selling snow cones and frozen bananas, more from what seems like summers upon summers past. My current mood is a direct result of these sights.
Meandering in and out of stores along the sidewalk, I wanted to remember something but I can't quite put my finger on it. It's many things but that moment was searching for something more specific. I become nostalgic when I enter South Austin. That was where my life in this town began. Those first four years were spent living in South Austin.
South Congress is so alive and worlds away from what is was. Mostly it was desolate. Only a few antique stores, Lucy in Disguise, the St Vincent De Paul's thrift store and the western shop were the only destinations. Tons of posters and flyers for bands would hang on posts and cover the windows. I used to wonder what was going to happen to the old, empty store fronts. We are all looking happier these days. No space is left empty.
At home there are a few mix tapes and old New Wave bands on cassettes in a small box. The other day I found a short, black tulle petticoat I'd wear under short skirts. I used to wear black fishnets and combat boots with those skirts. Then we used to take the #1 to Lucy in Disguise and buy more short skirts. I still own the combat boots. It never felt quite safe on South Congress after dark. The street walkers and squirrely men would emerge and the shops would close, all but Lucy in Disguise. We'd take the #1 southbound back to the dorm and listen to music and paint.
The drive back home was nice and breezy. Spectators on the Congress Ave bridge waiting for the bats to emerge. Crossing the river, passing West Campus, passing Red River, passing Hyde Park, each year I would move further north. I've stopped moving north. Where we live now is considered Central Austin. It's been twenty years, am I an Austinite yet? I don't know.
The end of analog but the start of pirate television?
Pirate radio lives on despite the comfy availability of owning your own online radio station. It is easier today to have your own personally programmed online station, yet, the ionosphere is still very alluring. If having your very own, personal radio station doesn't carry a fine of $1,000 to $100,000 and up to one year in jail plus confiscation of all gear, then where is the thrill? Nothing more romantic than receiving some cool tune through a transistor radio.
Hold on too the vintage TV sets, pirate tv could be really awesome.
I can't wait to watch this series! William ordered the DVD set and it should be arriving soon. Now, if I could only get the entire season of Dobie Gillis on DVD, I'd be in retro television heaven.
If you have never seen this film, correct that soon.
The clouds look like they could produce rain. Did the weatherman say it would rain? The barometric pressure reminds me of Del Rio on those summer afternoons before evening tornados. I remember that we'd be playing outside and suddenly it would feel weird like the sky was getting ready to smash you down. The sun would be out, sometimes not a cloud in the sky but it felt weird. Things would begin to get still, you'd notice a dark cloud you swear wasn't there five minutes ago. By evening we'd be in the bathtub with the radio on. You go through this a few times in your childhood and you never lose that sensitivity to the barometric pressure.
My chickens refuse to stay out of their coop. I guess that storm in Dallas is heading our way soon. They are really sensitive to barometric pressure so I watch them. It's going to be a big storm if they don't want to stay out of their coop right now. Tornadoes and hail I am sure. I hope lots of rain. Now I need to go back outside and start putting things up.
Between Buddy Morrow's version of Night Train and Sam Butera's, the sexiest of the two is by far Sam Butera's. In my humble opinion of course. James Brown did a knockout version but hands down, the sexiest, most orgasmic version of Night Train is still Sam Butera's. I once had a short conversation with Sam on the phone and he was by far the coolest cat ever!
