the surge

We'd like to congratulate the month of March for being the sellingest month in DamestarBaby history.

Join the craze, thrillseekers! Your child earned you a tax credit, so buy them some new threads. It'll stimulate the economy.

Happy Birthday, Partner

"Partner"... it's such a loaded word. It used to be simple to define, and usually implied some sort of business relationship. Now when you use it people stop asking questions because their minds are bogged down with images of homosexuality ("...I thought she was married...") and political correctness.

This is one of the many reasons why I take such immense delight in calling Amy my "partner." Whenever I'm talking to someone unfamiliar with us and our friendship and DamestarBaby and all that, it goes a little something like this:

Them: "so, what have you been up to?"
Me: *(how, by the way, are you supposed to honestly answer that question?) "well, besides raising two kids and running a business, not much."
Them: "OH! you own a business, what do you do?"
Me: "I co-own a business, with my partner, Amy. We make kid's clothes."
Them: *(trying to keep their cool) "Wow! That's awesome, you must be busy!"
Me: "You have no idea."

Jokes aside, I can't find a better word. "Friend" isn't enough, "best friend" is like bragging, and I'm just not serious enough to say "business partner." So partner it is, and as a bonus I get the perverse satisfaction in leaving those obvious questions unanswered. I like to use innuendo at every opportunity. This is why I'm not very good at sales and marketing. I digress.

So, she's my partner. In crime and otherwise. To me, this means she's my support, my equal (maybe at my best & her worst), my confidant, the mirror that reflects back honestly, the person I can safely lash out at & with whom I can be comfortably silent.

Oh, and I'm gushing because it's her birthday today. The big 3-0 (is that rude?). We threw her a roller skating party on Saturday, so she wouldn't have to compete with St. Patrick.

But in the good Irish tradition, I've had my share of Guinnesses in her honor today as well (don't drink and blog!). So here's to Amy! who I am lucky to be able to follow around on all the trails she has blazed before me.

I hope the view is as good from up there as it is from back here.

Boogie Nights

This is what the last "Work Night" looked like. The band was rockin, although it was tough to sew and boogie at the same time. We'll have to keep practicing on that.

Feather

We're a little willy-nilly about big family decisions here in the Jones household, and our history of acquiring animals is sort of fast and furious: woops! i guess we're having a baby!; oooh, a cat would be fun; awww, who can resist a Rottweiler puppy; hey, I know what's missing! let's have another baby.

There was never much forethought about litter boxes and claws and potty training or vet bills or tracking dog poop into a house with crawling babies or the wisdom of adopting a large clumsy puppy while our baby was learning to walk. (Details, details.)

For Amy's family, however, the road to animal husbandry has been long and winding and mostly desolate. Never lacking in forethought, she could never come to grips with all the poop, and all Scarlett's dreams about kitties and puppies would have to be saved for sleeping.

But alas! Even Amy has moments of weakness, and there is finally a fourth member of the Woolant clan...

we proudly welcome Feather. Scarlett came up with that herself.

A little black bunny, the perfect "gateway" pet for someone with reservations about pets.

So far Feather is androgynous, because it's hard to tell when they're babies, but Amy thinks it's a boy because of his repeated attempts to "mark his territory" in a particular corner of her house. (I tried not to laugh)

Besides that, Feather is happy to hop around in his little garden home and play peek-a-boo with Scarlett and eat leftover spinach. Skiki's bedtime routine now includes a lantern-lit trip out to Feather's cage to tuck him in. (sweetness abounds) And I haven't talked to her in the last three weeks without first hearing a story of how silly Feather was this morning when we went for our morning walk and he kept trying to dig holes and eat flowers and he kept jumping in and out of his little house and sticking his nose out at me, and you know what he does when I pet his head? He closes his eyes, that means he really likes me.

Ah, moments of weakness.