Gina started breaking down the Christmas tree this evening and I protested, saying we hadn’t shot our annual family Christmas portrait. I use “annual” loosely here. So I got all my pitchure takin’ junk out. In hindsight, it would have been better to think of this earlier in the season. I would have shaved and worn a decent shirt and we would have combed Abby’s hair.
We had us a whole mess of Christmas this year. First, we moved to another city a couple of weeks before the big day. Then for the big day loaded up and went to Branson to see Mimi and PawPaw. That’s where I gave Abby the jack-in-the-box that has apparently been giving her nightmares ever since.
With a contingent of family in town for the Christmas thing, we went to the Flying Fish in the Little Rock River Market district for some lunch. It’s a chain but it has pretty good catfish. I had what the menu calls the catfish poor boy loaf. It was just your regular po’ boy sandwich. I don’t know what the loaf part is all about. I’m a fan of catfish and central Arkansas is loaded with catfish places.
We got a late start, what with the moving and all, but we finally put up our Christmas tree. I don’t know what the deal is, but Little Rock has a dearth of your tradition Christmas tree lots. And by dearth, I mean none. We finally ended up at Cantrell Gardens where word was the trees were grossly overpriced. But one of the advantages of waiting until three days before Christmas is that you can get a $60 tree for half price. And a $20 tree stand for half price, too. Sweet.
Our tree is only five feet tall, much shorter than what we usually get, but this year it seems like we have enough ornaments to properly cover the tree.
I set used the Strobist’s recommendation on how to light a living room for these types of family events but I think I put the flashes in the wrong places. (It worked a lot better for Thanksgiving dinner.) Plus I had the camera on the focus mode where it chooses what to focus on. I thought that would make it easier for Gina to get some shots of me and Abby. The camera invariably focused on the tree and not on the people. I need to get this right before Christmas Day.
Day 5 of the Atay-At-Home-Dad Experiment dawned bright and warm. Hallelujah! After another round with the cable company, Abby and I set out to see the other end of the Little Rock River Trail. The pedestrian bridge over the Murray Lock and Dam is the centerpiece of this part of the trail.
We got to the top in time to watch a barge lock through to the upstream side of the dam. Abby nearly had a tiny heart attack when the big horn blew to signal the opening of the lock, but later when we had made it back to the truck she said, “I was brave when the boat made that loud noise.”
Day 3 of the Stay-At-Home-Dad Experiment dawned gray and dreary, just like days 1 and 2 but not as cold. Abby and I got up about 10 and ate grapes and apples for breakfast. We’d been cooped up inside all the day before, so we were itching to get out of the house. We hit the bank and then Panera Bread for lunch where I had the asiago roast beef sandwich and Abby had baked potato soup. Her jacket had most of the soup until I took over the spooning duties.
One thing you don’t want to see on your first official day of house husbanding is ice dangling from the eaves. That means you’ll be stuck inside the house with a television-addicted kid. “Can I watch one Dora, please,” is printed on the official seal of the Dailey household.
Fayetteville gussies up its downtown square every year for Christmas. The city makes a big deal out of it. We’ve never been so we thought we ought to go before blowing this popsicle stand. I have to say I was underwhelmed. It was fairly pretty, but it was tough to find a good photo. Maybe if I had my tripod and I weren’t doing a family outing and the wind weren’t blowing about 50 mph, I’d have got some better photos.
Abby had a cookie with blue icing on the way home from school today.
I love checking on what search terms people used to get here. My favorite so far: “crossdresser peeing.” Well, I mentioned seeing a cross dressing biker in one post and I’ve mentioned potty training Abby a couple times, so I guess that’s how Post Irony pops up in that search.
A few other people got here by searching for “sexy crossdresser” and “little cross dresser.”
My second favorite of them all: “grilled plecostomus.” Who wants to grill plecostomus? I actually put this one into Google and Post Irony comes up fourth. I looked through a couple of pages of the search results and didn’t see anything that addressed actually grilling these unappetizing fish.
A couple of posts chronicle my adventures in photographing my Abe Lincoln bust, so it makes sense that searching for “abe lincoln yelling” would get you here. I just don’t know if searching for Abe Lincoln yelling makes any sense.
One post mentions me seeing a middle aged woman getting an airbrushed tattoo in the middle of her back, which drew these searches: “star tramp stamps,” “best place for a woman to get a tattoo,” and “sexy middle aged women.”
In the same post I mentioned the mannequin legs used to advertise the tattoo stand, which match the search terms “sexy legs” and “disembodied legs.” Who’s searching for disembodied legs? Maybe somebody else will do that search, get this post in the results, come here and explain why they did that search.
