The Bohemian Life Part IV

We haven't ventured far from the downtown area of Hot Springs yet, I think we both like it so much down there that the rest of the town just seems like every other town. We did make it out to ride The Belle though. The Belle is owned by a family in our church and they offered us a free ride. Now, we can't pass up a new experience, especially a free one, so we hopped on board! Even with the wind it was the perfect day and I think we got to see every obnoxiously huge mansion in the area all right there on the lake. Can you tell I fell in love with the freshly painted red benches?

"I'm king of the world!" yes I'm a big goob.

The Big-Ass Book Of Crafts is MINE!

Tuesdays have become my 50% break from motherhood. Lil' Spitfire goes to Mother's Day Out and Mr. Golden Curls and I have have some quality time together. I'm also able to accomplish some of the housework that just doesn't happen when a rambunctious 2 year old is reigning terror throughout the home. Today we went to Barnes and Noble for the four millionth, six hundred fifty four thousand, one hundredth and second time, what can I say, I'm lacking creativity in all areas of my life these days. Mr Golden Curls doesn't mind a bit, he's a man of consistency and routines. He gets that from his mamma.

As part of my routine, I picked up some books to look at while he played trains. This book has been one I've picked up every visit for the past few months. I often get hooked on a book but tired after a few visits when I feel I have it thoroughly looked at. Since this one seems to have stuck I decided it was worth taking home. It's filled with lots of wonderful random crafts and alot of rockin' cool paper crafts, which allowed me to justify it as a business necessity. Ever since I got it home I've been rubbing my hands together mischievously, already anxiously awaiting the boys bedtime so I can dig into making something wonderful!

The Bohemian Life Part III

Back out of the cave and into the light, lets take a look around the Bohemian's new neighborhood.

Oh, so that's where the very loud splashing noise that we can hear from outside the apartment is coming from! A drip that's echoing through the parking garage across the street. There is water all over this town, it oozes constantly from the earth, bubbles up boiling hot (hence the name of the town), drips down cliffs and leaves some parking lots in a constant puddle.

This building is apparently a residence but they often have open house parties with some pretty rockin' garage bands. I want to make it to one before the Bohemian moves and we are back to living in normalsville.The Poet's Loft is only about a block away and is one of our favorite hangouts. It is becoming more and more interesting as I learn about the quirky owner from one of my fellow AREtsians, Ekioart.

I'm very excited about the old theatre, home of the Documentary Film Institute that hosts yearly film festivals. How cool is that! I'm no film maker or actress but I likes me some obnoxiously artsy films and the Bohemian has dabbled in movie making, I'd love to see him get involved.

This is our beautiful new, very old church. You can see in the second pic that the lovely Howard Johnson is butted right up next to our gigantic Jesus mosaic.


Our church's other lovely neighbors down the street include T&A tattoo and the French Quarter, a "gentleman's" club. We are mildly intrigued by a sign on the French Quarter advertising strip karaoke!

Who doesn't start their morning with breakfast and chance encounter with a completely tattooed man with notches cut out of his ears and horn implants? This is our kind of celebrity encounter! Sorry, don't know the guys name but he's all over tattoo mags and other media, he was in town for inksplosion, a tattoo fest happening in Little Rock that weekend. I'm a little jealous that my hubby got to go to this event. We saw our tattoos celeb at the Pancake Shop, my now favorite place for melt-in-your-mouth pancakes and mediocre greasy spoon coffee.

Magical Origami Jumping Frogs

When I received my AREtsy recycled swap gift (a very cute apron made by Julie Anne of Diamondmeenuh with one of her husband's button up shirts) there was an extra surprise for the boys, a ton of brightly colored origami jumping frogs complete with diorama frog habitat! She told me this little concoction had saved her many times in her daycare job by entertaining little ones forever. I got the gift and immediately went out of town so the magic toy was set aside for later. This turned out to be a wonderful turn of events because about a week later we were all back home and I was getting sick. With no hubby I was wondering what the heck I was going to do with my wild children when (picture heavenly ahhhing and soft inexplicable lighting) I remembered Julie Anne's gift! It was a life saver and entertained the boys long enough for me to get a good rest and the second wind I needed to be able to feed them and put them to bed. Thanks Julie Anne!

The boys show off their favorite frogs.

Lil' Spitfire is trying to figure out what the heck a diorama is and how to get in on the action.

Mr. Golden Curls tells little bro all about frogs.

The Bohemian Life Part II

Last time I showed off pictures of the adorable outside of my husband's new bohemian abode but now it's time to enter the darkness. Here are the pictures of the inside, a place that has been affectionately nicknamed "the cave" by his co-workers.



This is the door to his room. It's a precarious entrance. The platform doesn't really meet up with the very steep steps so you kind of have to step over to get there. There's also a lovely water heater taking up part of the platform and you can see a gaping whole in the wall. Inside is a nasty mess of who knows what. The door didn't have a lock on it, which was fine with the Bohemian, since the outside door locked, but when an interesting neighbor moved upstairs and had to share his kitchenette/bathroom he decided to invest in a pad lock.



Here is my husband standing in his room. Stooping is a better word, neither one of us can stand all the way up in there! You can stand when you first walk in but then it steps up. To his right, going up to his elbow, is the bed's mega platform. It's built over all the heat/air ducts so when the heat kicks on we get to really experience it. We can hear and feel the rumbling. I have to get on a chair to climb up on the bed! That's why we get to cuddle with the restaurant upstairs.



Down down down the stairs. The green door on the right goes directly into the quilt shop. When the Bohemian first moved in they didn't have it locked, actually the door is too small for the frame, so we could have just roamed around the shop at night. We didn't have that desire though. They did add a lock after the interesting character moved in upstairs, hmmm, are you sensing a theme with this neighbor? The door to the left is the entrance to the kitchenette/bathroom. There is no lock, there is no doorknob and it is shared by the quilt shop! In between the doors are some lovely farm implements. I think they really add to the cozy feel of the place.

The kitchenette. Need I say more. This is not our mess but the one left by the owner, who clearly has trouble getting rid of anything. I just can't bring myself to touch anything enough to clean up. I would expect more from a gay man, honestly, where's that famed gay man cleanliness and style?

More of the same in the bathroom, none of this stuff belongs to us. Atleast the toilet and sink were clean. There is a shower but not one we want to step foot in so everyday we haul our stuff to the church and shower. We're such waifs.



Up up up. So many stairs in Hot Springs. Not just the apartment but all over town. I guess that's what happens when you build a town on the side of a cliff. One entire side of the main drag has a sheer cliff right behind all the storefronts and there are hills behind the buildings on the other side. I like it, this town is full of character and characters.

I have always had a thing for old buildings and old doors.

The Bohemian Life Part I

As I have written about before, my husband has moved to an artsy town four hours away to start a new job while the boys and I are staying behind to try to sell the house. On my last visit I was kicking myself for having left my camera at home but I got to visit again this week and this time my camera tagged along. So I have pics and here they are, a window into my husband's new bohemian lifestyle.

Hubby's apartment comes with a nice feature, the Exchange Street Cafe directly overhead. It not only provides wonderful food that we can run up on a tab, so quaint, but the added bonus of waking to the sounds of wooden chairs being shoved across wooden floor, the murmur of customers and the soft sounds of music wafting down through the ceiling. As you'll see in a future post, the ceiling is very short and the bed very high so that when laying down in bed you can't raise your arm straight up before touching the ceiling. So the restaurant sounds like it's cuddling up with us for a morning snuggle, or trampling us, that really depends on how busy it is.

Pretty cute from the outside. The brick part anyway. The rest of the building going off to the right is in a sad state of disrepair, as is much of Hot Springs. It's a strange town so grand and beautiful and run down and dirty and loved and neglected all at once. If you look closely at the far left of the photo you can see the Bohemian Man in his natural habitat.

A few words about what I associate with Hot Springs: dust, cold, stairs, water, old, doors. This is the apartment door, it is sunken down a foot or so into the sidewalk and for some reason I find this incredibly humorous and fun.

There is lovely art all over Hot Springs and everyone wants to be an artist of some kind. Here's the work of a blossoming graffiti artist who's work you can view all over the ally, classy.

Keep your eye open for future installments of The Bohemian Life. Next time I'll take you out of the sun and into "the cave". Sounds like a cosy home eh?

Mr. John Steinbeck Everybody

So, the other day I was tagged (the blogging equivalent of an email forward for those of you, like myself, who are ignorant in the way of the blog) for the first time. I've seen some tell-us-about-yourself tags but I thought this was a cool one: find the nearest book with atleast 123 pages, find the 5th sentence and post the next three. The closest book was a dictionary so I'll spare you that. The next one was East of Eden by John Steinbeck and it is one of my all time favorite books.

"I don't want to go to California."
"You are my wife," he said softly "I want you to come with me."
She was silent and did not speak of it again.

After doing this one I'm now a little obsessed with this excercise. I keep walking over to the bookshelf to see what other books have to say on page 123. I'm finding that alot of my favorite books sound horribly boring in this context and more than one sounded incredibly vulger, though I know the books on a whole aren't. And some of the worst books I've ever read sounded like literary masterpieces, full of sage wisdom, atleast through those brief three sentences. As interesting as this all has been, just like the forwards I receive in my email, I will not be passing this on.