for dad...

Today is not just any other day in the long line of days that make up a week, a month, a year...

It's not just another day that the sun rises and sets.

Today is my dad's birthday and although he's had quite a few of those, I still feel the need to use this day as a cause for celebration.

Alas and alack my dad is not here to celebrate with so instead I'll have to make do with good ol phones and internet technology to wish him well.

You see once again I mailed his card late... that's just me. It's who I am. If I mailed it on time he might think I'd been taken by aliens and replaced by some little pod version of his child. I did mail it though.

What I can do is put up this post, call him, toast him over dinner with Mr. Kaos and K.

We can send him good wishes. Good thoughts.

And I can put up photos of him he might prefer the internet as a whole didn't see!

NO? You don't think he'd like that for his birthday???

Fair enough. I'll save the hand up the turkey picture and the permed hair photo for another time and today we'll celebrate my father as I see him... at least part of the time:


Happy birthday daddy.

We love you.

normal kaos

It may have been a while since I've covered this topic... but I think most of you already have an idea of how I feel about the man I call my husband.

I like him.

No, wait. I really like him.

I pink puffy heart him with a side of marshmallows.

I think he is made of win and sex and cherry coke to the 10th degree.

It isn't just because he's a good provider. It's not only the hot sex. It isn't the fact that he buys me tech gadgets to get in my good graces.

Nope.

It's also his kind nature, his wicked sense of humor and the way his hair looks all spiky and silly every morning.

There's more though, so much more... the biggest part of my love for him comes from the intangibles. The little things that make him who he is not just in our home, but in the world.

All of that stuff though... It's stuff I get to love him for... not even stuff we really share with the outside world.

"So" you may find yourself asking "Why the hell are you babbling on about it?"

Fair point. Good question. Why indeed.

Because right now I have something of him I can share with the world. Something I am so proud of him for.

When Mr. Kaos isn't busy being Mr. Kaos, he tends to call himself by another name. That's right... The mild mannered Mr. Kaos has an evil musical alter ego... and now you can share in the fun:

Doc Normal

strange love episode 012: Xithor

World meet my brother Xithor. Xithor (as if that's your real name) meet the world... or at least the minuscule portion of the world listening to the show.

Now I'm not talking about some blog brother or friend that I've known for so long he could be a brother... I'm talking about my real honest to bob biological brother.... For realsies....

What happens when my brother, his partner, my husband and I are locked in a studio for an hour? Find out on this weeks very geeky episode of Strange Love.



***

as always you can listen to the show here, download it or subscribe so that you can always be the first to know when we've put out a new episode...

On next week's episode we host the lovely and multifaceted Lindy from Chronicles of Squidgyboo!

She's a mommy, a crafty little vixen, she can shoot a mean photo and I hear she bakes up a storm... too bad she'll be all the way in the UK with her baked goods and I'll be in my basement drinking...

toon obsession

I really intended to just make a quick little post today to tell my mom "Happy Mother's Day"

but you know me... nothing simple so instead enjoy this little cartoon:




oh... and:

cami's nature: a new theory

I didn't want to taint the loveliness that was yesterday's post with more talk of animals throwing themselves at me so I neglected to get into the beginning of my Wednesday. The part before I ran about all over town with MissB and the mystery person who shall not be revealed.

The tedious part.

The waking up at 6:15 to shower part.

The getting K and Mr. Kaos ready for school and work (respectively) part.

The rushing out the door and walking K to school only to find something blocking our way part.

Blocking our way? What? No... that's not part of the everyday happenings on our way to school. Whatever could it be?


That's right. It's an opossum. K and her two friends gathered around it blocking the sidewalk so we couldn't get through. I swear I saw it's little eye close and then open again. They oohed and aahed. I told them not to touch it. The other mother? She told them not to touch it... but they were drawn in.

Kids: Is it dead?

Me: I don't know. It's possible it's playing dead. That's their defense mechanism.

Kids: NO!WAY!

Me: Yep.

Kids: IT'S SO COOL!

Me: It's a rodent. Do not touch it. Come on, we need to get to school.

Kids: BUT... LOOK AT IT.

Me: What if I take a picture? Then will you move along

Kids: YES YEAH YEAH TAKE A PICTURE!!!! PLEASE!

Me: Fine. step away from it.

and then... I took that picture. Wanna see it again? No?

No.

Yeah, I get it. Doesn't do anything for me either.

But there it was. The opossum that I was pretty sure was playing possum. I snapped the shot, I showed the kids and off to school we went.

They were still asking if it was dead and my only response was that we wouldn't know until we went back later. Another mom pointed out that if it was still there after we dropped off the kids we could be pretty certain it was dead dead and not just playing at it.

Kids? Dropped off. Me? In a huge hurry to get home and finish getting ready to go so I can meet MissB at 9:30, but still I walked back past the creature only to see one of the other mom's bent over the huge rodent with a piece of paper in one hand and a paper sack in the other...

She was going for it. It was dead. Her youngest daughter wanted to put it to rest so they'd decided to bury it in their back yard.

Yuck.

I stepped back about 3 paces and watched as she crinkled up her nose and wrapped the paper around the possums tail lifting it into the paper grocery sack. Against my own better judgment I began to imagine the weight of it and how much it would have pulled against her fingers as she held it by the tail.

Again. Yuck.

She folded the bag shut and tucked it into a bottom basket of her stroller.

Oh. My. Yuck.

We walked together until it came time for her to turn towards her house and then I sped up my strides to get to the house as quickly as I could.

I washed my hands 5 times when I got home... and I never even touched the thing.

All this happened within couple of houses of my raccoon occurrence last Friday. It was a block from the great snake attack *cough cough* of May 08.

Nature, Cami and that block have something going on...

That's when it occurred to me... not too long ago an acquaintance's daughter said I looked like Snow White. I won't lie. I was flattered. Thrilled. Tickled.

OK, totally stoked. With her smooth black hair, milky white skin and red red lips... oh if goth girls heart a princess Snow White is the one we heart (I'm so right aren't I Flutter?).

What if this little princess hearting girl was on to something... what if she's right.

What if.... What if I am Snow white? It would explain all the animals... I really hope 7 short miners don't start following me around expecting me to clean up after them... cause that's just not my gig...

No really it's not. Just ask Mr. Kaos or the dust bunnies under our bed...

a downtown kind of day...

Yesterday was yet another in a long line of Cami & MissB lunchtime get togethers... only this time it started at 9:30 in the morning...

Cami & MissB in the city... no we weren't 17 blocks from where we were supposed to be because she finds me soooo distracting... we went 17 blocks too far on purpose so we could see a crazy lady cross the street just to touch a light shade and listen to strange apartment dwelling man yell at us about TriMet's poor signage at PGE Park. It was carefully calculated I tell you... we didn't want to spend more than 5 minutes at the EcoTrust building anyway.

See how clever she is... SO clever. She can turn anything into Sex Ed.

These boots? Are made for walking. But we mainly rode around in stuff.

Look at us Holly... we're in front of some kind of shop... I wonder what they have inside...

They have walls of vibrators!

Now after all this walking and bus/train/streetcar/car riding in we were really hungry... so I kind of forgot to keep taking pictures... I wanted food. I needed food. So we went and had some pasta and then we felt much better. So after a quick trip to say hi to the lovely Mr. Burrows we decided to head out to do a little clothes shopping. After much hemming and hawing I got an absolutely fab little spring jacket...

But then? It was time to say goodbye... See that sad MissB? She is sad because I took this picture from the inside of the bus and she was waving goodbye... never to see me again... for 2 days. I listened to Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds all the way home...

Sigh. Downtown days are good... if only I could skip the dead animal at the beginning...

vote it out, bitch...

All over the country people have been voting. Making a choice. Saying who they want to make the run for President of the United States of America (because the president of the house of Kaos position has already been filled).

Voices are crying out loud.

The end is getting so very near.

I mean, the Oregon primary is in clear view so you know we're almost there. You know the Presidential Election is just around the corner.

The Oregon Primary Election is May 20, 2008 but if you're a registered Oregon Voter you should have gotten your Voter's Pamphlet and ballot by now...

Don't let the date slip by unnoticed.

Don't delay.

Get on it.

Vote it out, bitch.

***

This public service message brought to you by CamiKaos... I really want Obama to win the nomination, but I'll let you make your own decision.

cami's nature

Friday was by no means a normal day for me.

It started out OK but from there it quickly turned to pain and drama...

I don't know where to start...

Should I tell you about the birthday cake I baked for my brother? That I forgot to set the timer for? That took forever to bake? That finally came out of the oven completely perfect? That wound up in a shattered glass baking dish between the oven and the refrigerator? Or should I just tell you about the hour I spent picking up tiny splinters of glass and amazing smelling yellow cake crumbs? Or should I skip right to the part where mother nature told me to go fuck myself?

Yeah... I think we'll go with the mother nature part, after all thats the part that explains how I wound up bruising the arch and heel of my foot...

You can't do that baking a cake.

(no really you can't. I probably could but I didn't so let's skip ahead ya?)

After the cake baking debacle I had to leave to pick K up from school. The sun was shining with not a cloud in sight so I thought it was a sign that things were looking up...

I walked along at a leisurely pace following my normal path towards her school but when I was about 4 blocks from school I noticed something odd in a front yard.

There, at 2 in the afternoon in full sun, was a raccoon. A pretty big raccoon. Now I'm not a raccoon lover or anything but I was enchanted and amazed to see this big bushy raccoon in some one's yard in the bright sun. I noted to myself that raccoons are nocturnal so what is it doing and I watched it for a moment. It seemed to notice me and immediately froze. Thinking nothing of it I continued to watch it...

It didn't like that.

At all.

Apparently it took my staring at it as a threat and charged me.

Did you know that those little fuckers are FAST?

I turned and ran not wanting to be mauled by a raccoon or find out how painful a round of rabies shots actually would be. It chased me for a brief time... not long enough for me to panic or get winded but long enough for me to land funny on one foot. I think I may have stepped too hard on a rock or a fallen branch. I'm sure it was something lying between me and the sweet freedom of not being attacked by a raccoon.

(A raccoon, that I would later find out from a friend who lived two houses down from the scene of my incident, that just had babies... No wonder it was chasing me down... it was trying to protect it's kids. We're cool mama raccoon... we're cool. I don't want your kids... you keep em)

Then... and you know there's a then, as I was walking up to K's school passing by the baseball field, feeling thankful that the raccoon hadn't lept at me instead of just running, I was walking a little more carefully, tenderly as my foot was aching and I looked down to see where I was stepping only to see my feet placed astride


a very little snake nothing at all like the one above...

However... I'm a little nervous around snakes (whatever their size) so I screamed longer louder and higher than you could imagine. A woman getting out of a car behind me? Almost fell over and then gave me the stinkiest stink eye ever... I think she thought I belonged in a nut house.

It was a big scream.

It was a small snake.

Still. I believe mother nature was trying to tell me something and I took the hint. I collected my kid and after a very brief stop at the grocery store I headed straight home and I did not leave my home until Sunday afternoon...

For fear of loss of life or limb...

And also? Because my foot still really fucking hurts...

***

Have you heard the latest episode of Strange Love?