One thing I’ve been trying to work out these days is finding the right balance between work and socializing and totally alone work-free decompression time. I’m about to jump head first into making content for the new book and I’m going to have to make pages at an alarming pace to meet the deadline for my first draft, and it’s going to be tricky because fall is filled with all sorts of great distractions. It’s my favorite time of year hands down, so I’m going to have to be really smart about my time management and finding the right balance for everything without getting totally burnt out.

Organizing stuff for the new book, which is called Little Fish and is based around my zine, List. It will be published by Zest Books in San Francisco in Fall 2013.

 

One fun social thing I’ve been doing is having (nearly) weekly dinners with Mike and Mikey (and usually other people too, but sometimes not). This week we planned a taco night at Mikey’s house.

 

It was loosely themed around a long running inside joke about this movie called Howard the Duck, mainly that I think it’s sort of terrifying and gross, and Mike H. loves it. So he always teases me about having a Howard the Duck movie night, and we finally made it a reality. It became a duck themed night, and Ryan ended up bringing mock duck to make as one of the taco fillings. Sort of ew but mostly delicious.

 

Aside from Ryan (who was at our last dinner), Abbey and Will joined us too. Mikey’s housemates, Sara and Ciera had Maddie over for a dinner of their own, so it ended up being a multi-dinner table. It was fun.

 

Maddie, Ciera and Sara had soup.

 

Rover came too. I think it’s very exciting for him to have another house to visit all the time.

 

Settling in to watch Howard the Duck, just as creepy and gross as I imagined. Luckily I fell asleep within the first fifteen minutes.

 

The daily grind consists of nannying for Asa on Monday’s and Fridays, and both Asa and Will Tues-Thurs. The middle three days of my week are terribly exhausting right now but I know they’ll level out a bit in a couple months. Both little dudes are really good, easy going kids, babies just need a lot in the beginning.

 

Will and his mom, Naomi. I’m lucky to have always found such great families to work with.

 

Will, mid-yawn, probably right before the big nap routine that is pretty tiring. Babies are super enraptured with the world around them and at a certain point try really hard not to sleep because they’re so stimulated and fascinated and suddenly self-aware. But, they need to sleep or they get cranky and disoriented and zombie-like. It’s a delicate struggle.

 

Sleepy Rover, always nice to come home to after a long work day.

 

A squirrel on a rainy walk home from the bus, which I took to work a few times last week because of all the rain.

 

On Friday night I went to a show at the Mitten, which is where Mike H. lives.

 

I only ended up taking photos of Radiator Hospital, who were really great.

 

Carni was here for the weekend. He asked to hold Sam’s guitar for a photo because it matched his coat. Haha.

 

Porchin with Carni, Mikey and Rover

 

Saturday morning trip to Satellite for coffee, with Mike H., Will and Mikey.

 

My tattoo was itchy and healing that morning and I kept poking at it, so the dudes taped a paper bag around my hand as a desperate measure.

 

On Saturday, Mikey and I had a long, full day of work. We both have a lot of projects going at once usually and I’m glad we share that trait or I would get to see him a lot less than I’d like.

 

Cute mid-day cuddles.

 

Checking on my fall balcony “garden.” I plan to make a big flowery, vining garden from my balcony next spring, but wanted to grow something in the meantime. I just threw in some fall mixed greens and sugar snap peas as a test to see how good the sun is on my balcony. Seeds sprouted within two days so that’s a great sign. I need to collect a lot of pots and containers to grow things in in the spring, and some stools and boxes to prop pots up on to give him height so they can grow over the edge. That will be a winter goal.

 

We called it a day around 9pm and decided to go do something fun. We went to Little Babies for fancy ice cream.

 

I’m back to having tired eyes all the time again. That’s what happens when you wake up at 6am every day. They don’t go away.

 

On the way home, we tried to stop by the site for Open Air but didn’t want to spend time finding parking since it was almost turned off for the night. We’re going to bike over sometime soon. Open Air is a really big light installation happening in Philly right now. There are 14 search lights programmed to react to audio recordings in specific ways. You can call and leave a voicemail message and it goes into a queue of messages. Or you can go to the main site and record a message there and if you’re on site it will bump your message to the front of the line so you can see the lights move while you’re there. If you leave an audio recording by phone or online, it will send you a message just before yours is about to play.

 

You can go to openairphilly.net to hear messages people have left and leave your own message. It’s pretty fun and interesting to listen to.

 

Sunday morning, Albert and Rover sharing my bed. They’re pretty good buddies. The other cats hate Rover but our house is big enough that they have a lot of distance from each other. Rover never seeks out the cats but when they cross paths in the hallway the cats aren’t happy with him.

 

Albert is a very charismatic funny cat. He’s such a little rascal but in a big dopey way. I’m always chasing him out of my rooms because he tries to eat all my stuff, but I love him a little too.

 

Mikey and I were about to start another day of work, but after getting brunch at the Diner we decided to be like a “regular couple” and just have a relaxing nice weekend day together. We laid in his porch hammock for a good while. Luckily we’re both small.

 

Big West Philly porches are the best. Mikey’s house has a wrap around porch. When you’re on it, you don’t really feel like you’re in the city because of how green and tree-lined his block is.

 

Mikey plays the shy cool card but he’s actually real silly.

 

Tired and disheveled but I like this picture. I don’t get many pictures with me and Rover.

 

We ran around with Rover in the yard for a while. It was a really beautiful spring day.

 

Mikey had my camera for a little while.

 

Rover with a leaf collar.

 

Mikey’s house feels like summer camp. Their neighbors have a huge backyard and have campfires pretty regularly so it even smells smokey a lot, in a good way.

 

Ciera inside, baking cookies, looking like a painting in the nice light.