(That’s based on Shirley Temple’s “Animal Crackers in My Soup,” in case you didn’t know.)

This post is brought to you by the eleventh orange I’ve eaten this week. Not the eleventh hour. The eleventh orange. I’m pretty sure that crime scene investigators could apply their crazy ninja forensics techniques to my laptop keyboard and uncover hard evidence of all eleven of those oranges, as careful as I am to avoid smudges.

Now, what was I going to share? Oh yes:

“A Giraffe totem corresponds to farsightedness and balance between earth and sky.” (Llewellyn)

I’ve been thinking that my so-called spirit animal must be the giraffe, since reading that quote has an oddly grounding, motivating effect on me. Now, when I close my eyes and envision the giraffe at the window of the safari bus in Arizona that one time, a feeling of centeredness comes rolling back. It works!

I remember when I thought that my spirit animal was the wild horse. I re-thought that whole thing when I discovered, not too long ago, that I’m actually kind of uneasy around horses. I’m still in awe of the wild horse spirit, but the reality of a horse and me standing together is just… I don’t know. It’s a hard thing to phrase, so, just to show you, here’s a picture of me with our neighbor’s horse in France back in April:

Pardon me. I just live here. Oh wait, this is a French horse, so… Je m’excuse. Now how do you say “I just live here” – “J’habite seulement ici?” Or “J’habite juste ici?” Not working. American slang doesn’t translate! Nevermind.

See the body language dynamic going on there? This was a candid shot of a chance encounter. Callaghan captured a spontaneous moment, and looking at this picture brings back the awkwardness of it. That horse and I were both, like, uhhh… yeah. I just didn’t know how to relate to that guy. Have you ever felt self-conscious in front of a horse? (Surely I can’t be the only person who’s ever been discomfited in the presence of a horse.) I didn’t connect with that horse on any level. It was like he was the reincarnation of someone I used to know. Someone who used to fluster me at cocktail parties.

So, yeah, giraffes.

Speaking of animals, the other night, I was reading to Callaghan about the liger (lion-tiger hybrid) and her baby liligers (offspring of a liger and a lion) at the Novosibirsk Zoo in Russia.

“Check out this liger,” I said, shoving my laptop under his nose. “They actually exist outside of Napoleon Dynamite!” We started flipping through the slideshow.

“Look at that! He’s got strots,” said Callaghan, pointing at one of the baby liligers.

“Strots?”

“A mixture of stripes and dots.”

The liger and her liliger cub at the Novosibirsk Zoo in Russia

In other animal marking news, my current favorite eye makeup look is sparkly pink shadow with a matte black overlaid on the lids:

Can you see it? (Don’t mind the hair. I had the front chopped and deep layers cut all around for growing-out purposes.)

While I’m at it, here are some pics of us goofing around before we left the house this morning:

A bonus cool thing that happened today – our state ID and drivers license arrived in the mail! Texas state residencies established, check.

Happy Summer Solstice, Everyone!