Life Lately | April
April is the cruelest month. And by "cruel" I only mean the mind-fuckery it plays with the weather, because it was otherwise totally fine. I'm just bitter about teasing us with couple 80ยบ days quickly followed up by a week of snow, right at the end, like a twisty knife. Since I'm a champion complainer, that's exactly what I did, but if I could look at the glass half full, it was actually a pretty good month. And those warm days? What a friggin' gift.
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So let's start with my affection for risk. If I wind up being the kind of old lady with a weird ability to remember a single month within a single year of my whole life, I'll always remember April 2021 as the time my hair had a complete identity crisis.
Listen, I know that I have no business playing chemical experiments on my own head, but here we are. First I bleached my hair and it was so hilariously bad. I waited a few weeks and bleached it again to fix some of the patchiness. Still not great, but also not as bad. Then, walking through Target, I exhibited zero self control and dropped a fun purple tube in my cart. It turned out a delightful, albeit short lived, lavender and I'm just glad I have photographic proof, because it only lasted about a week, and now my hair is back to "obviously DIY'd in a bathroom at 9pm" shade of mostly orange.
Here's the evidence, and also, happy birthday to my big sister, who I always enjoy celebrating, but extra when I remember she'll always be older than me. That burned when I was 7. Not so anymore.
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In between all that, we had Easter, which may be Duke's number 2 favorite holiday. The Easter Bunny went extra nuts at Grandma and Grandpa's house, as Easter Bunnies do, planting 70+ eggs just for Duke. No wonder he's into it.
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In reading news, I've been binging White House stuff. It started because I inherited Grandma Rachel's Kindle and I decided to download a book that's been on my list for years, Upstairs in the White House by JB West. He was Chief Usher in the White House - which basically means CEO of everything - from the late 50's to 1969. Lots of behind the scenes stuff and highly interesting.
After that, I picked up Mrs. Kennedy and Me by Clint Hill, the Secret Service agent assigned to Jackie Kennedy during the Kennedy administration and continued my binge right into Five Presidents, also by Clint Hill, about his time as a Secret Service Agent from Eisenhower to Ford.
What I learned is that our presidents have high loyalty expectations and a total disregard for the families of their employees. Oh and LBJ was a real asshat.
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But speaking of LBJ, I spent a week in his old Texas stomping grounds. A couple of days in Austin, kayaking Lady Bird Lake and the Colorado River, followed up by a trip down to San Antonio and altogether too much to eat and drink.
Came for the food (and drinks to go!) -
Stayed for the other cool stuff.
Torchy's Tacos is basically everywhere and I'd say it's basically two and a half clicks above Taco Bell. Definitely fast food, slightly tastier, definitely more expensive, but also they sell margaritas. We wound up here for the same reason I usually end up at Taco Bell -- it's drunk food -- and we just crushed it.
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And for a couple random highlights this month -
This cool graffiti wall. My SIL and I walked for four hours in drizzling rain for this. It wasn't four hours away, we just meandered around Austin for a really long time. Right after this, the sky opened up and it poured for the 20 minute walk back to our AirBnb.
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Happy Mother's Day weekend, you guys! This is what we'll be doing all weekend, or as Duke describes it "maxin' and relaxin'."
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