Teaser

Couldn't resist throwing a teaser image your way from a project I'm working on. Here's Madeleine from Click LA. Hair, makeup, styling, and photography by yours truly. Check back soon for the whole shebang. 

I Store My Tweets In His Spare Pocket

Got into a lovely little discussion via Twitter today with Byron and Jen about cargo shorts. Conveniently spaced so you can read things top to bottom:

Oh, and I discovered that the H in Laurel H. Dailey apparently stands for Henrietta.

When Someone Great Is Gone

Call me ASAP.

That was the text from my Dad on July 2. I was at a BBQ, woozy with an alchemic storm of heat, people, and drinks. I knew what the voice on the other end would say, knew it was coming. Funny how it still socks the air from your stomach, though. My Grandpa was gone. I stared hard down the slope of Kent St, glared at a tangle of roses to my right. Somewhere, birds were singing brashly, unaware of their impending doom or mine, or anyone else's. I sipped my beverage and listened to the birds, as mellifluous and ignorant as ever.

Bob Hjort, a name only half as Norwegian as they come when you consider that his father's name was Halfdan Hjort. One can almost hear Vikings somewhere bellowing their approval. On July 2, 2011, he went to be with Jesus. Bob Hjort loved to garden--took utmost pride in it, in fact. As kids, we'd get lost in the orderly rows of marigolds, we'd rest in the shade of hydrangeas, we'd run our fingers along rows of corn and fill our bellies with raspberries. We'd forage through Grandma's dress up box, and once clothed in fluid chiffon, we'd gallop into the garden where another imaginary scenario awaited our full attention. 

Grandpa liked to beat the sun in rising every morning, finding it perfectly acceptable to take the dog for a walk at 4am and then retire with an English muffin and coffee to the living room where the sun would greet him listening to the police scanner for signs of life in Keizer's predawn hours. He had a copper mug filled with pesos, the exotic equivalent to gold doubloons to our young eyes, and he'd offer us a bounty if we refilled his water glass or returned his used dishes to the kitchen. I used to dream of Mexico and how I'd spend the money someday. 

I'll miss him, but I wouldn't trade every minute I spent at his house, in his garden, taking predawn walks, for anything in the world. While home this past week, I got to see a bunch of old slides from his younger years, when my mom and her siblings were itty bitty. When I saw the photo below, I audibly gasped because not only is it an incredible photo, but I feel it represents the way Grandpa lived: Freely, full of verve and life and humor and gusto. Exactly how a life should be spent. 

Oh, and the little girl on the right with the stylin' side pony at the beginning of this post? Yeah, that's me. 

Graceland (Paul Simon Cover)

There Will Be Snacks, There Will!

For those of you not paying attention, I've been doing a bit of road tripping over the past week with the usual suspects. We drove to Oregon and back, and a plethora of places therein. Around hour 14 of our drive north last week, after an extensive span of relative carpool silence,* Ashley spoke up from the back seat: "Do you guys think I should get LASIK?" 

There was a beat of silence while we individually tried to surmise the impetus for her question. One of us might have shrugged in the dark or maybe nodded in the headlights of a passing car because, taking it as her answer, Ashley heaved a monstrous sigh. 

"It's my one downfall," she stated. 

"Uh...sorry, what?" I (or someone) asked in bewilderment. 

She sighed again, this time impatiently. "If I were stuck on a deserted island or in the apocalypse, that would be my one downfall."

Oh. Of course it would be. 

"You don't think that maybe having a period once a month would also be a drawback?" I asked, ever the voice of feminine reason. We proceeded to spiral down a rabbit trail of apocalyptic hypothesizing until coming to a startling and ultimately disheartening conclusion: In the event of an island deserting or apocalyptic armageddon, I wouldn't make it fifteen minutes. Maybe not even fifteen seconds.

The reasons are myriad and each is more damning than the last. First and foremost, I have absolutely no skills that aren't strictly first world, Internet-age, entitlement-engendered Millennial hoo-ha. Seriously. Can't identify poisonous plantlife from its edible counterparts (Jon), can't run fast or climb or roundhouse kick my way out of anything (Ashley), can't yell loudly enough to create a diversion from a pack of ravenous zombies (Mike). I don't employ a great deal of logic in my thinking, so I would be the last person to know what to do if Wikipedia wasn't available for the asking. To make matters worse, I have terrible balance, and I don't think very quickly on my feet. Which are flat, by the way. As if it couldn't have been any worse. 

Think about it: What would I have to offer at the apocalypse? A quick wit? A perfectly made cocktail? Oh, I know: I'll take a PHOTO of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse shortly before they scythe my head from my shoulders. Great idea. Oh, and then I'll BLOG about it! Even BETTER! The Antichrist has unleashed a pack of killer zombies onto the scorched plains of planet Earth and what's my response to it all? Hysterical hyperbolizing in ALL CAPS on what's left of my melted iMac. 

The worst part is that none of my dearest of friends disagreed with me. At all. If anything, they were all too eager to heap yet another bit of evidence onto the pile of Why Laurel Wouldn't Last Five Minutes In The Apocalypse. Jon suggested with a chuckle that if it were an Antichrist kind of apocalypse, I'd meet my maker after the dark anti-lord requested a cocktail made with something silly like Baileys and, by way of a snarky comment, I sarcasm'd myself straight to the grave. Because that's EXACTLY how I'd meet my end, and we all know it. He Who Shall Not Be Named throws me a bone and asks me to mix him something fruity, and what do I do? I make a snide comment about it. 

But since Carmageddon is the worst of our worries this week and the calamities of 2012 have only come to fruition in a John Cusack-led stinker, I'll offer you one of my pithy skills by way of a few photos of our trip. Peep 'em while you still can, folks. There's no telling when the zombies will come growling up my front steps and I'm the idiot who asks them if they're on Twitter yet.

*Let me fill you in on an unexpected quirk particular to our jaunt up the 5. Those who adhere to certain psychological crazytalk are savvy to terms like "verbal-" or "internal processor." That is to say, I'd lend a considerable amount of credence to these ideas because it's been my experience that most people fall into one of those categories, so best know where your mind hangs out the most, right? Anyway, it probably won't surprise you to know that I have been crowned Prom Queen at Verbal Processor High for the past 28 years. In my thirties, I'll probably graduate to Mayor or maybe just Czar. By the time I reach my late-ies, I may as well be referred to as Most Immanent One Who Benevolently Presides Over Our Humble Land, Verballsia Processia. And I don't think that's overstating things. 

Well, I so happened to take a weeklong roadtrip with not one, not two, but three internal processors. That's three folks who are so content to hang out in the dew-glazed meadows of their minds that we'd drive hundreds of miles without so much as a topical exchange from front seat to back. Try and sympathize, if you can, because let me tell you: by day 9, I felt like every thought in my head had curdled into a petrie dish of OVERTHINKING EHHH-VERYTHING. What's that? Eat at Baja Fresh? CAN'T YOU TELL I'M IN THE MIDDLE OF RE-EVALUATING MY ENTIRE BELIEF SYSTEM? No? Well, excuse me while I pitch a HISSY over here in the Chevron parking lot!

So...something like that. Their minds are dewy unicorn-infested meadows of sunshine. Mine's sort of like the moldy back corner of the grossest fridge at the messiest bachelor pad you can imagine. Oh, and? The power went out like, three weeks ago. 

A Glimpse

Here are a few iPhone shots I took from my trip to Oregon this week. I brought the big guns as well, so stay tuned for more photos of lovely sights and lovelier people.

A controlled burn along the 5 North

Our first glimpse of a REAL mountain: Mt. Shasta

Exploring a lava cave in Central Oregon

A few of the Cascades

A painted street near SE Belmont

Tasting the goods at Breakside Brewery

Lineage: Norwegian, Swiss, and J's pronounced like Y's

Miles, Miles, Miles

We drew to the crown of a hill overlooking the Willamette Valley. Ash-grey clouds impressed crude bruises on the summer sky, deliberately sponging the vibrant greens from the ground below. Beneath the green, the dirt stained our shoes a bloody russet and congealed into muddy clumps around sparse grass. A single rosebush festooned the head of each grapevine which trailed behind it like the fingers of a comet. Row after row after row, neon streaks slashed into the ground, trails of thought interrupted only by ponds, and more rose bushes. I could see the thatched pattern of diverging rows of vines, and where those vines nipped abruptly at the feet of a new crop - wheat, this time. Other times, the rows bowed to a riot of blackberry brambles, thorny fingers and thorny hands folded in the lap of the hill. I could see the inky outline of fir trees in the distance, rendered nearly colorless beneath the overcast sky. I could see houses, roads, and still more crops, more ponds, more vines, receding from view.

The vines had yet to yield a crop for the season. Clusters of future grapes merely flowered bashfully from their buds, hinting at a Fall harvest, perhaps late October. I walked down a row flanked on either side by vines, and I crushed the pungent yellow heads of dandelions beneath my feet. Jon stood at the top of the hill, Ashley to my right, and Mike further along a neighboring row. Someone observed the skyline and asked if that was fog rolling in. Without looking up, I could hear the rain fluttering onto the leaves of vines thirty seconds ahead of us. It's not fog, I said, and with shrieks we turned toward the car. A curtain of water  nipped at our heels and we weren't four seconds to safety before the rain crashed freely on the windshield. 

I guided the car further up the hill, to the highest point, where we could see everything through the fogged glass, the rain eventually obliterating our view until the windshield wipers cast it aside. In five minutes it was over, and sunlight lanced the cloud cover at the base of the hill. We chased the sun, pausing to pick lavender, dandelions, daisies, queen anne's lace, and black-eyed susans. The blackberries aren't ripe yet, I said, and we continued onward to the base of the hill, to a wheat field, where we listened to the contented hum of grain murmuring its salutations to the sky. 

Mike said it was a first for him, being in a vineyard, and in a wheat field. I thought to myself it was a first for me, too, being grateful to see it rain. 

The Sacred

Amongst the tangled thicket of topics in mind today, I'll pull one out at random and ask that you simply try and do your best to keep up: There is nothing, and I do mean nothing, quite like an Oregon summer. 

The days are hot and dry with each possessing properties wholly unlike neighboring California's summers. The daylight is vast and in abundant supply with a languorous twilight following. There's a moment at the end of every day when the sun extinguishes itself in the inkwell of the horizon, before the stars flicker to life, before the shade of evening has insinuated itself into the ground, when the sky settles into a limpid, blown-glass shade of green. It's a moment of forced clarity when trees and houses and anything in the foreground recede bashfully into silhouette and all that's left is translucent green horizon and the smell of freshly shorn wheat fields. Very occasionally there's a summer storm. But mostly the sky shivers its final breath of daylight before that searing, neon twilight sputters to life. 

Tomorrow morning I'll be hitting the road with three of my closest friends, bound for Oregon. The past week has been a knot of various events, occurrences, highs, lows, and emotions. There are new faces, a shifting community, one roommate moving on while another one moved in, visitors from out of town, and in the midst of it all, the death of someone whom I love very much. I've been carrying the weight of it all with as much grace as I can manage, but when I pause to imagine where I want to be in order really process everything, I see myself in the passenger seat of a car, in a womb of upholstery and junk food and an unending succession of tunes slipping lazily from the speakers. There's a certain freedom in casting one's thoughts into the arms of foothills. There's something sacred about making confessions to the bright altar of the dashboard.

But there's nothing quite like an Oregon summer, on a scoliotic country road rendered by the roots of trees and undulating earth. If you ever find yourself in such a place, roll the windows down. Sing something loudly and freely, howl into the nighttime air. This week I'll be in just such a place. Safe, and home. 

Born In The U.S.A.

Words...insufficient...still recovering...from...the...

...weekend.

[The author of this blog has collapsed in a heap of exhaustion. I, the computer, have taken over the completion of this post. I hate adjectives so in the interest of brevity, I'll simply say this: There were four days contained within the past weekend and every single one of them was full of BBQs and activities. That is all.]