Lean Dog Traveling Pendant Goes Mad as a Hatter

Time for an update on the Lean Dog Traveling Pendant. It's that time of year: Mardi Gras, St. Patricks Day, the opening of the new Alice movie is just days away and most important my son's 12th birthday is coming up soon too!

While most do not consider traveling to the mall as much of an adventure as going bull riding or skydiving, I consider it more perilous than falling the proverbial rabbit hole I live in. I know this to be true since I worked at the mall for 15 years back in the 80's and early 90's.

But this half Alice/half Mad Hatter was summoned to the mall by the great Rev. Blackthorn to hold court at the store known as LUSH for free goodies of things that smell good. And smell good they did!
Trust me when I tell you, the men folk around here need all the help they can get smelling....better??? Taking me and my youngest offspring's life into my own hands we go to the land of MALL and find the store called LUSH. But I feel as if I am not properly dressed. I am missing something.

Proper attire was required and the first thing I could think of was of course my hot pink converse sneakers. I then grabbed my jeans, a black cashmere sweater and a lovely vintage chocolate velvet blazer. Then of course, the traveling pendant. You wish you could rock it together like that!

But what did I need.....
What any little mad hatter must have....a new hat! Off to the land of Hot Topics and sweaty teenagers. This truly was a mission requiring a great deal of courage. My son was thrilled with his new Linkin Park hat and I found myself a nice little steam punk mad hatter hat with corset front. Blaze!

We decide after Rev. Blackthorn's run at the store known as LUSH that we are all very hungry, but all of the nearby restaurants by Land of MALL are heaving over with people (ew.) So we make a run for the river and the historic district and to one of my favorite restaurants, Prince on Delaware.

My son is turning 12, we are in a 5 star restaurant, what do you think I am going to do? Wear the hat through dinner, of course. With pendant. He begged...but that made it all the sweeter.
He had been a bit of a cuss lately, so this was revenge time! The hat is flat black, the flash for some reason just made it look gray or silver. Also accounts for my lack of facial features. So our own little tea party we had...

I usually run down into the kitchen after dinner to give Prince a hug and kiss. I get all giddy when men cook for me. Especially men who have cooked for the likes of the great late Luciano Pavarotti and Cheryl Crow. Now I get to design his campaign ads and menus and gobble down his goodies. He is also family in the fact that he too has a son with autism and hosts our monthly parent autism coffee hour. Now that does not make him my favorite chef for that reason....we use to have it elsewhere. But the man just understands how to engineer a crab cake! And in our state, if you cannot make a good crab cake, you might as well not even bother opening up a restaurant.

Here I am with Prince down in his kitchen. I have no idea what that look is on my face. Trying to talk while getting my photo taking I suspect? Burping? He is grabbing my buns? (Nah, he would never do that! He has a most lovely wife and good friend of mine also named Marsha who keeps his butt in gear!) We decided to go the appetizer route so Rev. Blackthorn could try out all the goods in the house of Prince. So we had scallops, shrimp, chicken, ribs, and at my request a crab cake was brought up for us to split up too. Bless him. He does not understand the word "appetizer" very well. The three of us could not move after our dinner and Rev. Blackthorn now understands the significance of the word "Prince" when mentioned in Delaware. :) www.princeondelaware.com

I also have a proper hat to go watch Alice in next week! Cheers!