Yesterday was a rollercoaster.

 Yesterday was a rollercoaster. We were riding a lot building our strength back after recovering from injuries. Rootbeer is a clown goddess in the sun, so fun to ride with. We giggled a lot until we arrived upon a grizzy car wreck. In our years we have arrived at a lot of hidious scenes just after they happened. Lots of people die in Portland because people blow thru intersections far too fast. At the scene a lady recognised us and wanted to share warm fuzzies. She stopped after noticing we weren't in the mood at the moment (Rain check on that Mrs. Rando) Later we dumpster dived a derby hat, wrote a new bit, made a bunch of kids cheer and laugh then interviewed a family who are getting grief from the city for feeding needy people in their yard everyday. Got home with sore muscles and some sadness after seeing the car crash. Olive said "You have 45 min. to pick up our kid... Let's paint eachother's naughty bits up real quick ok?"

She sure knows how to cheer me up. I love deadlines!
Thats why 20 min. before picking my kid up from school my junk was dripping with green acrylic paint. I painted her chesticles and we hugged a canvas using one another as the paintbrush. We then rushed to the shower and ended up kissing. She was lovingly looking at me in the eyes when her face changed to concern. She asked if i was alright. "Your lips are turning blue...can you breathe ok?" She thought i was having a bad reaction. "Hon, it's your blue lipstick. I always get blue when you makeout with me." We laughed. I flew out of the shower without drying off and managed to get to my son's school in time to pick him up. He asked what I had been up to all day. "Nothing much my boy, how about you?"

We graduated from marriage counseling today.

 We graduated from marriage counseling today. Ever since last June,  almost a year ago we started meeting with Geena. It's every other week and usually lasts an hour. Plenty of laffs, crys, thrills and spills. Today after a half hour Geena says. "so....is there anything else? "Us. "Well now that we agree what way the TP roll should sit, we are good." We let Genna go to help others and said goodbye. 

That was a fun ride. Counseling doesn't keep your relationship together it just makes staying together a choice. 

We had the most normal day that we have expierienced in years.

  We had birthday party gigs that highly resemble our past pre-covid life.

The last party was for a family who decided to have the bday at their fave food carts lot.

Made a friend today.

I was looking at the gyro stand the whole time. I didn't notice that the gyro stand guy was watching us intently too. When i had a chance i popped over and asked for a gyro and fries for Olive.

He gave us a free baklava. OMG that baklava was made by hand, so buttery.

When the food was done the portions were immense.

The man had tears in his eyes. That happens sometimes. Usually when someone watches our show in tears it's because of some kind of child related tragedies that we remind them of. We remind them of people who would like our show. This wasn't the case. He said he just got his citensenship. He was formerly Iraqi now he is %100 proud USAan.

His eyes were teary with joy for his life and watching the children of his new country having a spendid time. We gave him our card, maybe we will be rocking gigs there again soon.

two concepts I never wouldda thunk went with quarantine

Two concepts I never thought would go with the concept of quarantine: "Days off" yesterday we took a day off even though I haven't left my house in weeks. We never stopped working and needed a break. We still delivered some masks to people but other than that it was all about RnR. Olive deserved a break after all that sewing and teachering. My son showed me his video game. Sounded religious so I wasn't into it (Halo) but I soon learned the controls. He asked if I like the game. I said "I would prefer a game where I wasn't shooting a gun at my son. He fixed that problem. "Lets play this game where we are shooting aliens on a distant planet!" Me: "Ethnic cleansing?! Eeff Off this game isn't for me Yo."

And the other odd concept I never wouldda thunk is "Homework" My son actually gets homework...to do in his room. His last assignment was memorize a monologue from the Book of Mormon musical. He gets to perform it for us today. I was so frikkin proud to hear him practice. He is better at crunching scripts than I am. Olive is a very strict drama teacher. Memorizing is just the beginning. She wants him to sound like the character, be the character, speak in patterns that don't sound like recitation. My boy's principal stopped by, dropped off his real world school work but we left it on the porch for a while to debug.

I just popped into a very busy cafe.

I just popped into a very busy cafe. I wanted to call everyone's attention and say "Hey does anyone here currently have the Covid virus?
 I would buy your coffee if you wouldn't mind hocking a loogie right in my eye." 
Sounds dumb I know but I wanna get on the other side of this mess so I can start helping people. 
That isn't really practical though because the whole idea is about buying time so hospitals don't get over full. 
I keep noticing symptoms and asking Olive if it's Covid. 
"Hey I'm urinating popcorn, is that the virus?" 
Her: "No you're a clown, that's normal." Thanks Hon.

I love that we are existing in a brief moment where farting is immeasurably less offensive than coughing or sneezing. Right on farts for moving up the social ladder (by default)

oliveanddingo.com/donate

I'm romantic like that.

Just got up, having coffee at 10:pm. We did an early morning balloon delivery to an adorable 3 y.o. (Gift from his P's) He was blown away having O&D in his house. 
He usually sits silently at the shows and then talks about us all week. Then we did a show at a cake shop and went home.
 Jan. and Feb are the leanest months for us so we never have any scratch for valentines fun so we did the cheap route. All day snoozing and cuddle-puddle. 
Olive is frikkin beaming. It's all she wanted in the first place. She keeps thanking me but I'm the one who is grateful. 
She's cartoonishly fine and really good at making me offers I can't refuse.
 In the dark haze I kept seeing us as paintings. She looks like a Frank Frazetta character and I look like the Squidbillies. 
We could have had some cash this month. 
We got asked to do a gig 4 hours drive away. Some hundreds for a 45 min. show. We thought "Do we want money more than we don't want to pollute the air with car for 8 hr.s?" Nope. 
So we spent the day barely conscious rolling around in sensual town. We have always had a very tactile relationship but I'm a high functioning hyper active person who only ever sleeps about 5 hr.s a night. I get uncomfortable spending lots of time proned out. 
Olive is the cuddliest buggle ever so reclining is in her wheelhouse. I hear our houseguest today is a German engineer who is soaking up some Portland before heading out into the countryside to work on wind turbines. 
Maybe if we befriend him he will let us up in one of those things. That is if it's not too far to drive. I would find it romantic to go to the top of one of those things and make out while throwing full beers at the ground(with attached Gopro) and eating milkduds. 
I'm romantic like that.

Only one family at our show today.

Only one family at our show today. This little cafe has been struggling to stay afloat for a long time. Pity because they (like us) are there mostly to make the world a better place. This cafe is dedicated to training baristas and bike mechanics.

They have been thru lots of managers (a different one every time) and this new leader has promised to do some good advertising.

Olive and I still had a blast. We can afford to be poor and famous so we put our show on just like it was a normal packed audience. We over did everything. At the start we were ready to apologize, make a couple balloons and tell them no show BUT they knew what to say.
"It's our last day in the United States"

The family was from Canada. They had seen us elsewhere and wanted to catch a show before they left back to Montreal today.
This was cool. As we did the show the Mom and grandmom were translating everything we said into French so the kids never missed a beat.
That was a very touching piece of parenting right there.
So the cafe made $6, we made $10 but money can't buy the joy in that place this morning.
Stoked that now I know how to do our act in Montralese.
I asked Olive if she wanted to go busk somewhere else today, she said "Bathtub".
Works for me. :) Our next show today is at Pie Spot Pie shop 4pm.

Arbiter Olive.

Busy day but we had time to stop for burritos.
As I was munching away, behind me I hear a man sit by a vid poker machine. He asked "Is someone here?"
The chair was propped backwards. That means occupied.
A middle aged black lady had been there and had got up to restroom and get her food.
Olive told him it was occupied.
The man put money into it anyway. I keep munching and soon the woman returned. She was livid. "Excuse me Sir, That's my machine, I marked it."
The man grumbled and said something to her in Spanish. She said "Don't grumble at me, get up, pull your money."
They start arguing.
I have my back to them but I was enjoying the Seagull fights...that is until I hear a familiar voice. Olive: "Yeah that was her seat Sir, ya gotta let her have her place." Then the man told the woman"I'm gonna shoot you in the parking lot."
That didn't have the desired effect as now the lady is screaming at him "Oh you gonna shoot me huh?" He added fuel to the fire by putting in more money while looking right at her.
Both Olive and the lady went to the front.
The lady was complaining Olive was being supportive...until the lady added "And you need to speak American!"
That is a great way to lose Olive support but she hung in there.
The man had several landscaper buddies with him. Anything can happen. I'm watching my food and trying to mow it down in case I gotta fight or dodge flying furniture.
I will have a great attitude until I lose my lunch. Times like this make me glad to be a Texan. I have a smile on my face but I'm easily the most ferocious person in the building. For now I'm just gonna watch (hear) the show. So the lady was grumpy, so was Olive (conflicted but still right is right) and soon the owner walks in.
He is about 300 pounds with the huge arms and no humor for this.
There was some more yelling and a little giggling (from me).
Pretty soon the man pulled his money out and slinked away.
The lady sat down and warmly thanked Olive for having her back.
On the way out Olive had a sour expression like most folks in the taco stand at that point. I sure didn't I was laughing my head off.
That was the most entertaining thing that has happened all day. It was also a triumph to see (hear) my partner relentlessly backing up a woman of color even when the threat of guns were involved.

patio baristas

Throw back Thursday! Once upon a time it was Thursday. I was painting a rubber chicken on the back patio of our old place.
To my delight my partner surprised me with a mocha drink she made up from scratch.
I didn't see her set it down because I was painting but when I did get a chance to look at it I noticed all the bells and whistles.
BOOYA!
Two kinds of chocolate even. It had a really exotic, robust flavor with just the slightest hint of nausea, great for rubber chicken painting.
When she returned I thanked her and asked "Where did you get the interesting spices and white chocolate?"
She said "I didn't include any white chocolate." At the same time we hear "CAW CAW CAW!"
At the same time we looked up above us at the phone wire to see two large crows sitting directly over the patio table. #naturalflavoring #patiobaristas