My friend Maria turned me on to these napkins that I think explain themselves.

They are sold out in Joss & Main where they are on sale for $19, but you can still get them at the Petit Coterie site for $35. Yankee swappers, take note.

Dash went to the dentist today. He was scared of the drill and so the dentist gave him nitrous.

He liked it so much he said he wanted to take it home. We all laughed, haha so funny, a kid has never said that before but inside it made me very nervous. It’s a little too easy to imagine him stealing Redi-Whip from Quickcheck to do whippits when he hits Montclair High.

After the gas wore off they gave him a token to get a present out of a gumball machine. He got a blonde mustache.

The visit felt a bit too prophetic for a drizzly Monday.

urbanoutfitters.com, $34

And even possibly this 2012 calendar from cuteoverload.com

Last week in the Sunday Metro section the NYT times featured a story about my grandfathers butcher shop in Flatbush. Its 80 years old and still going strong because my second and third cousins who continue to run it, long after the grandpa Mike died, have adapted with the changing neighborhood demands from Italian, Irish and Jewish to Carribean. I grew up my whole life with a first course of pasta and a second of steak or chicken or both, now maybe he’d be bringing home goat.

“At Michael’s, a woman carrying two shopping bags pushed open the door on a recent afternoon and asked, in a Caribbean lilt, for the price of the oxtail. It was $6.29 a pound, she was told. “Lord have mercy,” she said, backing out the door.”

The other spot-on gift Dashiell got for his birthday was an EasyBake Oven. It was from our neighbors and us, and I picked it up at Target and while I was pretty sure he’d be down with the cooking, I was worried that he would be put off by the packaging that had a tween girl big bake-off meets sleepover scene on the box. Why they couldn’t make it gender neutral turquoise is beyond me, but anyway its all purple and pink and swirly. I wrapped it in Batman shopping bag and hid it under the barcart in the dining room. Earlier I had also told the boys that I was getting some girl toys for the house so that when their friends sisters came over for dinner they have other things to do than torture Asta by dressing her up in her winter coats. (It was an extra long hot summer for our dog where little girls were concerned.)

Before his birthday dinner I left the boys with Joshua our sitter. They were tasked with decorating the dining room but apparently while they were wrapping streamers around every table leg Dashy found the Batman bag and opened to find the Easy Bake Oven. When I came he ran up to and demanded to know why I got the girls an oven! I was so relieved he had snooped. I looked at him and said, “Maybe the oven is not for the girls, maybe its for someone else…” Later that night when he finally did get to open the bag he hugged the over as if it was teddy bear. Since then we’ve made two batches of red velvet cupcakes and a batch of chocolate chip cookies. The treats are mouse-sized and wonderfully tasty.

Dashy turned 6! And I don’t know about other families who have kids who are the same sex and close in age but the younger kid seems so hard to buy  for. Even Dashy senses this. For weeks family members have been asking him what he would like for his birthday and he kept saying, “I have to think about it.” But as his big day drew nearer he wasn’t any closer to figuring it out.

Even all the good themes seemed to be already played out in Conrad’s 8 birthdays. When I asked him what he wanted for his party theme, Pokemeon or Batman,  he said, “We’ve done all that. I want a money theme birthday?” No. He pushed it. “We could give money in goody bags, tie money to balloons and you could make me a money cake?”  No.

Then the Oriental Trading Co catalog arrived and he started carrying it around and circling items he wanted me to order for Halloween. Watching him carefully draw rings around the glow in the dark teeth reminded me of one of my favorite gifts. When I turned seven—a year before my dollhouse—my mom gave me a box filled with streams and streams of hair ribbons, grosgrain, double-faced satin, organza, silk, even ricrac. She had made a special box for me to keep them in covered in pattern of oversized flowers. It was a pony-tail wearers dream come true.

I realized for Dashiell when it comes to gifts we need to give him the very thing he didn’t know he wanted most. Conrad is always going to beat him to the punch—he already has in the world of Lego. We needed to splurge on a whole lot of nothing to give Dashiell his version of ribbons: a secret freaky treasure chest. I called OTC and chatted with a lovely man in Mumbai who made a number of helpful suggestions and ordered a gross or I should say grosses of plastic glow in the dark teeth, fingers, spiky bracelets, bugs, snakes, skeletons, windups, hairy monster fingers, jeweled rings, glow in the dark stars and gargantuan tarantulas. When the package came Conrad helped me fill the chest we found at AC Moore and had coated in varnish. It looked fun but I was surprised that all the plastic didn’t add up to a whole lot, and thought I must be crazy if I think I need to go to a toy store after all this. Then, Conrad said, “I can’t believe this but it looks like the chest needs more, like coins or necklaces.” Clearly we were headed to Target.

The next day I added jeweled necklaces, an Angry Bird stuffed animal, Star Wars patches, duct tape with Jolly Rogers on it and a few rubber snakes and a boa for dress up. Later that night Conrad helped me put everything in the chest and when he looked at it, he said, “I have to say, I kinda wish I was Dashiell.” Finally, a gift that was all his own.

A few fave pics/post from Fashion Week S/S 2012.

The Fug Girls on ingenious seating at Carolina Herrera

Solange Knowles fashion controversy on femail. I don’t mind the outfit but I do wish she wore a bra.

Beer trumps bubbly. DVF worked up a thirst but is it me or is the can dented? The cut.

That was their fashion week. Mine starts Tuesday @ 9am. I’ll be in the first in line for the launch of Missioni at Target.

My mother-in-law Christine is a real estate agent but she has a Ph.D. in Home Economics. Her cookies are so delicious she gives them to clients every Christmas and I suspect people list their houses with in the hopes they’ll get another batch every holiday. She can identify unusual birds as if she is bumping into an old friend. The other day she told me she saw a Gila woodpecker at her feeder. (Apparently Gila’s have the red cap head, Downy’s don’t.). Her garden beds are lush with lavender, Montauk daisy, hydrangea and autumn joy and her mulch is as manicured as her Berber living room carpet. When I was younger her talents intimidated me. Now I just try to watch and learn as fast as I can.

There is a natural precision to the Moore family that never fails to impress me [see previous post] and having been voted clumsiest camper six years in a row at camp Chinqueka I pray the boys are more Moore than Castagnoli when it comes to the arts.

Her craftiness has been a comfort to her in these past months. Next week on the 17th, it will be three months since Tony died. It will also be his birthday. It was not an easy summer, for her or for any of us, but mostly for her. She has good days and bad and she is trying to keep herself busy. Her latest project was to paint the attic staircase in a pattern that was a replica of an elaborate knit afghan her grandmother made. She was going to do one step a day but being a Moore she did it in a week. The results are below and they are amazing.

Miraculously all the water in our yard drained in 24 hours. Monday I was able to get out there and clean it up and when I was done it went from this…

to this. But other friends were not so lucky, our pals Stacie and Aly lost two big trees. Apparently a healthy looking tree can have its own kind of cancer where it looks sturdy on the outside but is actually hollow on the inside. Their seemingly green leafy trees were actually filled with sawdust rather than solid oak and they both came crashing down. The tree first fell at 2am. They heard the cracking, Stacie ran downstairs to see what had happened, she flicked on the backyard light and she said it was like a scene from Jurassic Park, the fallen tree looked like a huge monster mangled and strewn all over her yard. Fortunately it slid between the neighbors houses breaking a fence but not much else.

The second tree fell twelve hours later at 2:00 in the afternoon. It fell across the street crashing into her neighbors fence. Again they were lucky in that it missed their neighbor’s house but Stacie said the trauma and fear of seeing them crash was overwhelming. Both of them are  pretty cool-headed but she started screaming and crying when she realized a big gust was bringing it down and she had a complete flashback to the second tower falling on 9/11. She ran into her neighbor’s yard to tell her to get out of the way, grabbed her neighbor and the two of them held onto each other and sobbed as branches and leaves fell all around them.

The yards are almost clean now that it’s Wednesday. When things calm down a bit, I am calling a tree guy to come have our enormous oak checked, though I’m sure I’ll also get busy and forget until the next storm.

Our backyard at 8:30 am. The driveway.

The basement flooded but David was a total champ with the shop vac. One branch fell off our big tree. It was scary to hear it rattling down and not know where it was going to land. It eventually came crashing down past the kitchen window. I screamed but it didn’t do any damage other than crush a few shrubs. Now the sun is coming out. Perhaps we can have dinner at the beach club?