Hey blerg. It’s the 4th of July, my social media is filled with Gloom and Doom re: election year, and our whole family is sick with a summer cold! Let’s GO!

To begin with, let’s travel back to the night that I FINALLY SAW THE NORTHERN LIGHTS FOR THE FIRST TIME IN MY LIFE. At my HOUSE! In my PAJAMAS! I didn’t have to get on an airplane and fly hours and hours away to some remote freezing cold country to see these beauties. Although, I still might. They didn’t look this glorious to the naked eye, mind you. This, as it turns out, is the “secret” of the Northern Lights–they look way better in photos than to your eyeballs. Darn! Still worth it though!

In spite of having some sort of illness on Mother’s Day (a cold? I don’t even remember now), Josh still made my day nice by buying me flowers and donuts. I put on the pretty new dress I bought myself from Pact (long enough, full skirt AND pockets) and snapped a few photos with the boys. Here’s a shot of me not with my boys, as I have removed them from the Internet (pretty thoroughly I hope).

My very sweet and creative husband also carved this bear family out of wood, awwwwwww. With a heart! I love this kind of stuff (to quote RuPaul). He says he’ll stain them someday. I say you betcha.

The aqua hair dye at Sally’s PULLED ME IN (as it does) and this time I decided to go for it, Eddy! Life is short and if I can dye my hair aqua at 20 years old and love it, why not 20 years + later? Some call it a mid-life crisis, I call it mid-life FUN. It faded so fast that I had to dye it again before…

…we went to the Gorge to see the Red Hot Chili Peppers! Talk about bucket list items, seeing these guys live has been on my bucket list for decades. Truly. I had poo-pood buying tickets in the past, saying over 100$ for concert tickets was TOO MUCH. Well, guess what? That’s what all artists are charging these days, and considering we go to concerts ranging from once a year to once every 3 years it seemed well worth it.

My lovely sister-in-law agreed to watch the boys for the Friday night of the concert, and my mother graciously agreed to watch Rosie dog, well into her second heat, at our home. Two crazy kids plus a bleeding dog was a little too much for Brenna. I get it! I get it! We left so early Friday morning that by the time we were driving on the road to the Gorge, there wasn’t a single car in front of us OR behind us. I was beginning to think we somehow screwed up until we saw the giant sign for the Gorge.

We had plenty of time to chill out before the concert started, in the grassy parking lot surrounded by other people just chilling. I had lots of time to apply blue eyeshadow (important) and Josh tried to take a nap (of course). The weather was absolutely gorgeous that day–raining all week and pouring the day after–it couldn’t have been nicer. The Gorge is much prettier than I had imagined. I always wanted to go, but I haven’t enjoyed the Dave Matthews band since I was about 19 years old and they seemed to be the only band playing there for so long.

Josh initially chose a nice spot on the grassy “steps” with a great centered view of the stage, but unfortunately there was a group of 20-something “bros” sitting close to us and I couldn’t handle even 10 minutes of their bro conversation. So we ended up moving over to the left, in front of some 40-somethings (my age!) from the “tri-cities” who, once the music started, didn’t move, dance, clap or sing the WHOLE NIGHT. Huh?

I had a blast! I wore the silver raver pants I made for Josh for Burning Man, a new halter top I bought from Gap, an original “Kandy” bracelet from my party days 20 years ago, and some newer “evil eye” jewelry that my Aunt Lisa made. My pelvic floor has been bothering me again this year (ugh), but we were seated close to Porta Potties and I was able to ignore it, for the most part. The food was CRAZY expensive so we split a cheeseburger and fries. I bought us “soft serve ice cream” which did not come on a cone as expected, but squeezed out of a tube, which was weird.

The opening act was a rapper we had never heard of, and he was pretty awful. His beats were good, the bass was nice and heavy, but he mostly just chanted WOH-OH over his pre-recorded audio tracks. What? The audience was not stoked. The contrast to that child (he’s probably 30) and the RHCP was like night and day–when they came out, the whole atmosphere changed.

Someone hot boxed the porta-potty I used during the RHCP performance, so I had a nice little high from that. It made me hungry and relaxed. I can’t even recall the last time I inhaled pot smoke…2012? Who can say. The RHCP from start to finish were INCREDIBLE! Flea wore a skirt and walked out on his hands, Anthony spun around the stage like a whirling dervish on his walking cast, and of course they encore’d the show with “Under the Bridge”. It was one of the best concerts I’ve ever been to, easily. I was very grateful that Josh and I were able to go…without the boys!

Here’s Joshy and I the first day that I dyed my hair aqua. So bright and fresh! So high maintenance! We were going out to a dinner to celebrate working for a woman I’ve worked for for years who owns her own therapy company. Casual dinner at a pub. I ordered the chicken pot pie…yum.

I’ve been painting a lot this year. Even when I say things to myself like “It’s summer! Take a break!” I still paint almost every day. This was a lil axolotl inspired by Goo, who is obsessed with them and wants one for a pet (nope). They are Mexican salamanders who live in rivers–the wild ones are brown, but the bred ones are pink and are so adorable, I couldn’t believe I was looking at a real animal when I first saw a picture of one.

Not the clearest picture blown up, I can see, but still: more recent paintings. The pink grasshopper was inspired by a photo of a pink “nymph” grasshopper I saw in one of Goo’s bug books. The four little mushroom paintings were for a fun game called “Game of Shrooms”, a worldwide event in June where you can post a location on an online map, hide your mushroom art, and then leave little clues on social media where to find it! I had never heard of it until this year, but I will do it every year! I love mushroom art! I hid these little guys and four friends found them together and posted them on IG to let me know they had been found. Josh and I took the boys to one of their favorite local parks and we found two original pieces of mushroom art–a cool mug and a small painting–to take home for free!

For Father’s Day I told Josh that we would do “whatever he wanted” (haw hawwwwr) and he wanted us to weed the backyard (OF COURSE!) so that’s what we did. Later on that day we got dressed up and went over to GG’s and Lew’s for a nice Father’s Day dinner, where I snapped this picture of the 3 mens together.

Lew and Shirley are celebrating their 75th anniversary (!) this upcoming weekend. Bob and Fleeta were supposed to come over from Spokane today, but Fleeta called this morning and said that Bob was in the ER for some sort of prostate issue involving a catheter, and they wouldn’t be able to make it over. During the writing of this post, Josh texted me that they were moving the party to a different weekend. Makes sense.

Welcome to my gracious, uh, coral bathroom. I was dressed up to go out to sushi to celebrate Goo’s last day of first grade. He chose the sushi place! He also selected these shoes for mama and took the picture. When he’s not yelling at his brother he’s one cool dude.

Finally rounding out the highlights of June, PRIDE! You know me, I gotta celebrate the LGBTQIA++++. We took the boys to a local park where they had a kid-friendly Pride celebration, with dragoons busting out tunes, booths with merch, lots of free stuff for kids like bubbles and stickers, and face painting! The anger I see on the Internet always makes me a little wary of attending Pride events involving kids, but this day was perfect. Thank you, Washington State.

It was hot, so I did a quick rainbow eye using the new Trixie Mattel palette my friend Stephanie sent me, wore my old old old OLD rainbow hat, a rainbow shirt that I bought to match the little redhead’s, Josh’s swim trunks and my Pride tennis shoes, designed by an artist I follow on IG. What a relief to hit middle age and not give a shit about looking “hot” anymore.

My old man wore my floral bucket hat and maroon Adidas, his “Hoeing Ain’t Easy” shirt and some fun socks. He’s never been a fan of parades so I was happy that I got him to engage in a Pride activity during the day time that was more active. Anyway, could we ever top the Pride parade from last year in Palm Springs? NO WAY!

This hair brings us to the present. Last week we thought we were going camping, so I took the boys to Sally’s and bought them the hair dye of their choice–bold blue for Goo, bright pink for the redhead, and I let the redhead choose my color (I wanted peach): “blood orange”. As soon as I started putting it in the dye bowl I knew it wasn’t going to be in the peach family! And I totally have PTSD from dying my hair red two years ago with Overtone. I added pink and a lot of conditioner and it’s faded to this nice shade. Kind of sherbert, kind of peach-y.

The little redhead ended up running a fever for 2.5 days, then Goo got sick, then I got sick, and now Josh is sick! Just in time for the 4th of July! COUGH COUGH COUGH. Catch you laterrrrrrrr. Dude.