Le salon

Our parlor. I guess if I had a garage I could offsite some of this junk. But I don't. This is high Victorian mud room. It has 4 seasons:

1. Mardi Gras party & Girl Scout cookies- usually it works that we have our big party first, then the cookies arrive a few weeks later. Except this year the cookies arrived before Mardi Gras. I serve as the cookie mom for two troops and therefore we skipped the party this year (for many other reasons as well)
2. Christmas. This is the only room I decorate.
3. Fall birthday party zone. My kids are born in July, September and October (2) so we use this room to open presents, play games, work on crafts, etc. See picture below of Audrey's Top Chef birthday party where the girls decorated aprons.
4. The hold on to your hats time we are in right now- float trip/summer camp/back to school/vacation/go to the lake with grandma staging area.

About now. We're cramming all the above activities into a 21 day period. So why bother putting anything away? Here's some junk that will stay in the parlor until school starts and it's time for birthday parties. Counter clockwise from the cute girl in the purple shirt:

• collapsed Easy Walker jog stroller. Love it. Got it cheap. Mimi is getting close to growing out the stroller but we will take it to the beach to transport the cooler, towels, etc.
• that cool Japanese print? My grandmother doesn't care for Japanese art and gave it to me. Love it.
• I love that mirror too. One of our first antique purchases. Got it from Sambeau's in the Central West End when we were first married in 1998. Had to have the mirror installed later (Chippewa Glass). It's huge.
• Mantle is original to the house. It has a nice shell pattern. I have seen some mantle twins around town. I feel a special kinship with those other home owners. "OMG! We are mantle twins!"
• Back to school supplies. Young Mimi can go to Montessori preschool this year with her older siblings so for the first time I bought back to school supplies for 4 kids.
• Some bikes and scooters. Total city thing. Put your bike in the living room. Where else am I gonna put it?
• Busch Bavarian and Bud Select cans. Hells to the yeah. I told you I was floating and going to the beach. Gotta have cans in coolies. Needn't fear. I have some better beer for drinking in the house.
• Puked on booster seat. Gus got car sick onthe way to the float trip and barfed all over this booster. That was weird since it's been years since he's gotten sick. And then I remembered. He had Sunny D before we left. My mom is convinced orange juice makes his stomach queasy and car sick. She was clearly correct, assuming of course sunny D qualifies as orange juice.
• There's Audrey. She's packing her shower tote for girl scout summer camp. She's the second oldest and gets a lot of hand me downs from her older sister. She was so happy to get a new shower tote and watch her older sister get stuck with the old one.

Westport

I have personal boundaries. I like to stay away from certain parts of the St. Louis area. In general, I don't like it west of Lindbergh, south of Gravois, north of Delmar or east of the Mississippi river. Such ridiculous policies would explain why I've been writing badmansard for more than two years and just now made it to Westport Plaza. It is a mecca of badmansards.

Notes:

1. I was visiting a VERY IMPORTANT CLIENT out that way and it had a terrible mansard. But there are attorney/client privileges and one of them is that an attorney cannot make fun of her client's headquarter's roof.
2. I saw Modern English at Westport Playhouse in 1985 or so.
3. The girl scout store is out that way so now I have an excuse to explore the wonder of Westport's architecture style.

bitness trip

Took a trip to Wisconsin to visit a friend, entertain clients, go on a nice long run, eat great food and drink beer. If you're thinking "oh how nice to get out of the St. Louis heat"-- not so fast. It was 95 there today and Wisconsin seemsless adept at handling the heat (AC seems less powerful).

This tower of mansard madness is in Madison on the University of Wisconsin campus.

Sorry for the poor photo quality. I was driving with a coworker and he wasn't interested in slowing down so I could take a proper picture.

Where has the été gone?

Where has the summer gone? I've neglected poor badmansard. I've been busy elsewhere. Since I last posted: 4th of July madness, put the dog to sleep, soccer practices, orthodontist appointment, pastoral transition party (aka meet the new priest), work!, grown-up Pinewood Derby party, Mimi's 3rd birthday, my brother's family in town, sold a car seat and hopefully a stroller on Craigslist (totally annoying process), a little shopping, a kid with swimmer's ear, hosted an overnight, took audrey to a birthday party, a traveling husband, movies, and OMG! it's so hot I can barely focus on the next few days.

Speaking of hot and miserable. This mansard sit across 7th from the leveled Burger King on Park/7th (in my best Craig T. Nelson voice from Poltergeist, "you left the bodies and you only moved the headstones!). Click here if my joke makes no sense to you.

Sometimes I leave my van home with the babysitter and have my husband drive me to work. When it's time to leave work, I pack my purse and things in a backpack and run home from Met Square to Soulard pretty much down 7th to Russell and further to my house. Only about 2.7 miles but it is a terrible run. Hot because there is no shade, dirty, Cardinals traffic, pedestrians, 100 pavement changes, hobos, panhandlers, 18 wheelers, broken sidewalks, glass, human feces, some clothes and noise. This mansard and the lovely Sts. Peter and Paul church were the only attractive things I saw.