I just finished the Fun Stationery Wardrobe over at Mighty Goods. So if you decided to pay rent instead of spending $350 on custom letterpress stationery, these cool birthday and note cards might be more your speed.

Meanwhile, at Mighty Junior, Melissa has been on a tear with baby shower guides. We have a lovely set of classic baby shower gifts to join the unique picks, and Melissa is hard at work on an heirlooms guide, which should be finished next week. Can you tell that everyone we know is pregnant right now?

Happy shopping.

When I close my eyes to sleep, I see flocks of sparrows in silhouette dodging thousands of multi-colored, oversized polka dots. In my dreams, I’m chased by forlorn children wearing hats with ears. I’ve almost forgotten that cupcakes were once edible. Also, if I have to look at one more handmade, semi-precious stone jewelry website, I may begin to pluck my own eyelashes to break the monotony.

These are cute though.

Wax Candelabra
Flat-Packed Objects
Heather Champ’s Original Jezebel Mug

library, originally uploaded by ~~ zorro ~~.

In honor of National Library Week, a few excellent images of libraries:

-Zurich
-Istanbul
-Berlin
-Portugal
-Vancouver
-New York
-Seattle
-Austria
-Holland
-1978

Links to library images and stories welcome in comments.

I spent Tuesday taking head shots for the folks at Adaptive Path. These are the portraits that won’t likely make the cut for professional head shots, but I love them nonetheless:

When we last left Mighty Girl, she was breathing into a paper bag and assuming yoga poses while Melissa gave her instructions on killing the hungry bugs in her hair. What will happen next?

Next we spent hours and hours and hours and hours washing with chemicals, combing with olive oil, blow drying with Cetaphil, rinsing with tea-tree oil, emptying our closets, washing and dry cleaning every fabric item we’ve ever owned, bagging everything else, vacuuming the entire house a hundred times, and smudging.

Bryan wouldn’t let me vacuum Hank’s head because he was all, “psychological trauma, blah, blah, blah,” but Bryan and the baby fortunately were not afflicted. After countless nights combing, and rocking in fetal position, we appeared to be bug free. Free of bugs at last!

It was about this time we decided to head up to the cabin — the blessed, lice-free cabin. We packed our lice-free clothes, invited our lice-free pals, and piled in the lice-free car.

We arrived to find the cabin infested with giant flying ants.

Flying ants chaining down from the ceiling! Flying ants, congregating on the moisturizer bottle! Flying ants playing poker and smoking tiny cigars!

I hung my lice-free head in our ant-infested living room. And after that I don’t remember anything, because I was drunk.

OK, I made that up. It took at least twenty minutes for the vodka to take effect, and in that time, Bryan suggested we crawl up in the attic to see if the ants were nesting up there or something. I nodded, considered that calmly, and then responded.

“Icannothandlethis! Icannotdealwithanymorefuckingbugsinmyhair,ormybed,orcrunchingundermyfeet! Iamcompletelylosingmyshit! I! Am! Losing! My! Shit!

…I will be out on the deck.”

So Bryan husbanded up and drove to the hardware store to explain our situation:

-We have a bunch of flying ants in the living room.

The counter guy nodded.

-Do you have anything to kill them?
-Yep. It’s that time of year.
-What the hell are they?
-Flying ants.

Bryan nodded.

Bryan returned home to kill all the crawlie things with hippie, don’t-kill-the-baby spray. It was made of organic lavender and vegan DEET. I downed a pitcher of greyhounds on the deck and apologized repeatedly to our eerily understanding guests. In addition to being extremely polite people, Bryan slipped some Valium in their drinks. Just to take the edge off.

Thanks to Bryan’s efforts, we ended up having a pretty relaxing weekend overall. And then, a few hours after our guests left, Bryan came in from the deck holding a plastic deli container.

Inside the container was a scorpion he’d found on the deck, where the baby had been crawling around all weekend. If you’ve never seen one in real life, they look kind of like this:

photo source

I’ll tell you what, friends. It’s becoming clear that my karma is aaaaaall out of whack. I clearly need to spend the next month meditating on wrongs I may have committed in past lives. It’s possible I offed some prophets or something.

Anyway, when we got home, we found our apartment had been overtaken by locusts and frogs. Weird, right? I guess it’s that time of year. Fortunately, I hear tea-tree oil is a natural repellent.

I’ll let you know how it goes.

So, there’s this thing going on where I’m allergic to everything. For the last year or two, I’ve been dealing with many bumps that look and itch like mosquito bites. Sometimes a few of them pop up on my face! It’s fun. It’s a 24-hour party with go-go dancers, and laser effects, and shirtless men who bring you martinis.

Unfortunately, we’re not here to talk about my allergies — mostly because I’m not 122 years old, and therefore have not yet exhausted all other avenues of conversation. I mention the allergies story as a precursor to the real story. The story about the bugs in my hair.

Yeah. You heard me.

A mom friend recently sent an email letting me know that a kid at school (probably a nasty, horrible bully who enjoys name calling and stealing decorative erasers) had given one of her utterly adorable, perfect children lice. Since we like to cuddle her adorable kids regularly, she thought we should check our heads. Of course, my head began to itch upon reading the first sentence of her email, so I asked Bryan to check my hair whilst I shuddered uncontrollably.

Nothing, he said. I bleated with anxiety. Please check again, I said. He agreed. Nothing, he said again, rather more impatiently.

The next day, still obsessing and still vaguely itchy, I insisted Bryan check my head again. He did. This time he did it with the forbearance of someone who must regularly deal with hysteria-induced itching. No, he said wearily. There are no bugs in your hair. I skulked away — a pouty, bitter, hypochondriac.

Over dinner that night, I grew reflective as the itching grew more intense. Clearly I have begun to get allergy hives on my scalp, I thought. I may crawl out of my own skin with the discomfort. Perhaps, I thought, I should stop eating all the things to which I am allergic. Farewell, booze. Goodbye caffeine. Wheat? No more wheat for me. And then I sobbed quietly over my pasta. My teardrops made concentric circles in my red wine, and be-salted my after-dinner tea. My desert, garnished with a fine dusting of crushed Vivarin, went untouched.

A while later, I was washing my itchy hair, and looked down to find bugs on my hands. Exactly two bugs, in fact. They were each 4 feet long and had jaws like Drill Baboons.

photo source

I’ve no idea how they’d been hiding so successfully. Perhaps I have a very large head.

I emerged dripping from the shower to email Melissa, whose kids had lice a few years back. I told her I planned to strip the family naked and use a flame-thrower to destroy our apartment and everything in it. She noted that using a flame-thrower without protective clothing was imprudent, and might raise eyebrows, even in San Francisco. I agreed naked flame throwing was more of a Burning Man thing.

So what happened next? You can’t wait to hear all about it, can you? Well you’ll have to, because I’ve been spending a lot of time with the washing machine lately. Not to mention all the hours I’ve wasted scrubbing my skin until it was raw.

Tune in tomorrow to hear more exciting adventures! To whom did I loan hats? The baby! Good lord! What about that innocent baby? Is this where the swarming ends? Don’t miss one action-packed minute of infestation!

The Mighty Goods Classic Stationery Wardrobe is up, and ready for your perusal. I warn you in advance, it’s all rather staid. The fun guide is coming next week, so if you’re more interested in color and cards, keep an eye out.

Meanwhile, choose your dream wardrobe of calling cards, casual flats, and creamy letterhead, engraved with your very own name. Your friends will be awash in letters.

Derelict library in Istanbul, taken by Omaar

Also, a school library at the Chernobyl disaster site
and the East St. Louis Public Library

Favorites from Chernobyl Tragedy — Ukraine, a flickr set by axiepics:

Classroom
Bumper car
Swimming pool

Favorites from Trespassing, a flickr set by nathansnider:

Not an Exit
Library auditorium
Machine Room
Inside the smokestack

I just put my Mighty Life list over there at the bottom of my links, as a reminder to get started on the important stuff. I mean, I could be hit by a bus any moment without ever having rewired a lamp.

Just by putting the list into words, I find myself working toward the goals without thinking. I’ve accomplished so much already without even consciously trying. It’s also eerie how situations are just popping up that help me cross something off the list. A friend wants to practice his portrait-taking skills, and voila! We have a family portrait. After the presentation in Austin, a woman approaches to ask if we’d be willing to do one in Canada. Voila! I’ll be crossing the Canadian border in the near future. I want to own land, and this anonymous benefactor leaves me an acre along the coast of Northern California.

That last one isn’t true. But still, eerie, right?

Anyway, here’s the other progress I’ve made so far:

-Identified the violin busker to whom I’d like to give $100.
-I’ve started the first baby steps on a novel. Also, I’ve taken up pipe smoking.
-Have the infrastructure in place to launch a new Mighty site! Awww yeah.
-Purchased the Apartment Therapy book so I can do the home cure for my “Make a peaceful living space for our family” goal. I’m starting with de-lousing.
-The friend who took our family portrait said he’d help me try to do one in the style of my grandmother’s photo. Except she was sixteen when her portrait was taken, so I may also need someone who has excellent Photoshop skills.
-Started putting aside baby clothes for a quilt. I have trouble letting go of anything, actually. Little, tiny footie pajamas! Eeeny beeny socks! Soon our house will be a solid wall of our possessions with only a tiny path leading to the bed, where I’ll be chortling over one of Hank’s old onesies. With a robot on the front!

Have you done anything because of your list? Do! Then tell us, immediately.