Leaving Las Vegas

Vegas gave me a four day hangover. Is that normal?

Oh, we had such a time. Just being away for four whole days, with no one to worry about but ourselves (and each other…) and immersed in the hum of a city that has no business having fountains all over it was exactly the escape I was looking for. As one obviously inebriated woman cried out in the stall next to mine at the bathroom at Harrah’s, “I love Vegas, because here I’m just ME. I’m nobody’s mother, nobody’s wife, nobody’s daughter. Just me!” And then I think she threw up. But still, she threw up as herself. I guess that’s something.

Mary and Beth, my dear mother- and sister-in-law, are two of my most favorite women on earth. We laughed so continuously, it’s really a miracle I didn’t wet my pants on several occasions.

I was impressed with how friendly people were. If I worked in Vegas, I would hate tourists and tell them that through the gleam of hatred in my eyes. But I saw no hatred gleams, and met lots of really kind, seemingly-genuine people. I say “seemingly” only because I realize that it is their job to be nice and seem genuine, and I’m jaded and my heart is made of stone.

Vegas was a lot like New Orleans, but with a wider range of age groups, worse traffic, and fewer dark alleys. And more nudity. A lot of young women were apparently awaiting my call, because there seemed to be dozens who could be at my hotel room in twenty minutes or less. In New Orleans, there were a lot more people handing out religious tracts, but in Vegas, it seems they have given up, because the only things anyone handed me on the Strip involved strategically placed starbursts.

I understand the obscenity of the place: so much excess, all in the middle of a desert? How American. Buffets, fountains, 18-inch tall drinks, mardi-gras-esque parades on the ceiling...But that excess helps make the fantasy more believable, somehow, and I gladly embraced the obscenity of Vegas, at least for a little while.

The buffets alone were worth the trip.

I now have a compulsion to try to watch every movie I've ever seen that deals with Vegas. Here's what I've thought of so far:

Viva Las Vegas

Rain Man

Honeymoon in Vegas

Leaving Las Vegas

Ocean's Eleven

Swingers

Con Air

Mind you, these are just the ones I've seen, and I know (from preliminary internet searching) that there are dozens, maybe even a hundred more. Those of you who know what movies I've seen and want to recommend something to me, send it on.

I just need to talk Shaun into watching 12 Vegas movies now.

Here's the view from my hotel room, morning #3.

35

Yesterday was my birthday. I find birthdays really compelling…about 3 years into working at the University where I was before the one before this, I discovered I shared a birthday with the department patriarch. Immediately, there was this strange connection between us: I realized that when he was a child, May 23 was his most favorite day in the world, a day that seemed magically connected to him. And I had the feeling about the same day! (Yes, I know that with 6 billion people on the planet, 16,438,356 on average share any given birthday. So apparently I have a magical connection to 16.4 million people. But I’ve only met about 4 of them so far, so shut up.)

At any rate, we had a busy, lovely day, with morning shopping, lunch out with dear friends, a nap, supper out with family, and a Northern League baseball game to end the evening. Shaun caught me a foul ball, and after the game there were fireworks. A pretty good way to start the slide into the late-30s, I’d say.

To follow in a bloggy tradition of sorts, 35 things about me.
1. I dream of having a fancy, overgrown garden with high walls and wrought iron furniture and lots of vines.
2. Instead of #1, I have a chain-link fence and a lot of dandelions.
3. My favorite fruit? Strawberries. Or maybe kiwis.
4. I’m leaving for Vegas on Monday. Whoo!
5. My dad had a massive stroke when I was 12. My childhood effectively ended that day. He died in 2002, and I miss him everyday still.
6. When I was 8, I decided I wanted to be a poet when I grew up.
7. I like to play croquet sometimes.
8. I bite my fingernails, especially when I’m nervous. I wish I didn’t.
9. Nine is my favorite number.
10. I once bowled a 27.
11. I have carpal tunnel and sleep with braces on my hands. They are not very sexy.
12. My favorite drink is sweet white wine, or Southern Comfort. Depends on the day…
13. I would love to have a standard poodle join our family, particularly if someone else trained her for me. Or a miniature poodle. It has to be a poodle, though, because I’m allergic to everything else, which sucks.
14. My dad used to bring me home animal bones for my birthday. I have 3 deer jaws and a small-ish animal skull. This was my reward for having a birthday during spring planting, when all sorts of treasures got unearthed. My mother was not especially amused by this.
15. I love lefse with butter and sugar. There is nothing better than fresh homemade lefse.
16. I’m a horrible packrat. Not the “save every old newspaper and empty egg carton” kind, but just the general “heaps of stuff all around me” kind. This is a constant battle.
17. When I was 4 my cousins and I were playing cops and robbers and I slipped and fell on broken glass. A small piece got imbedded in the palm of my right hand, and it stayed there until I was 15 and my body decided it wanted the glass out. We had a doctor cut it out just before it pushed its way through (gross, right?).
18. I am a devoted coca-cola drinker, and I wish I wasn’t. But oh, sweet elixir of life….
19. I care for Swiss Chocolate Milk a great deal.
20. My favorite color is red. I like orange and yellow a great deal, too.
21. The redwing blackbird is my favorite bird.
22. It drives Shaun crazy that I have a favorite everything.
23. I am afraid of squirrels. Very afraid.
24. I like to take pictures of fireworks. It's more difficult than it seems.
25. My family still prays in Swedish on special occasions.
26. Shaun sometimes talks like the Muppets’ Swedish chef after we say our family prayer.
27. The trees that held my childhood tire swing were both cut down a few weeks ago.
28. I’m very sentimental about things like #27
29. My two favorite animals are the turtle and peacock. And standard poodles.
30. My favorite kind of pizza is pepperoni and mushroom. Especially fresh mushroom.
31. I sometimes dream I can fly, and when I do I wake up very very happy.
32. Despite #31, I have only flown in an airplane 3 times (well, 6, because each was a round trip). Monday will be my fourth time. Whoo, Vegas!
33. I love my job. I mean, I really love it.
34. The best sign I’ve ever seen was a hand-written one in the bathroom at Ralph’s Corner Bar. On one of those orange and black signs, someone had written in the blank center:
Remember: No Drugs in Your ‘Gina.
35. I try to live by #34, and so far, it’s served me well.

Hope your Memorial Day is full of sunshine and soothing memorially things. Did I mention I leave for Vegas on Monday?

Farmer's daughter

My sister and I grew up in a small town, as mentioned yesterday, with both sets of grandparents within two blocks of us. On our street alone (a whole 3 blocks long) four houses not counting us were direct relations. So, you know, that explains why I liked to hang out in cemeteries for excitement (and privacy). But in many ways our youth was kinda idyllic, and having my own daughter has made me nostalgic even more than usual for my girlhood.

On Sunday, I took some photos of equipment that now belongs to my uncle. Until I was 12, though, it was also my father's, and I spent a lot of time on tractors, in combines, and sliding across the bench seat of a sugarbeet, grain or pick up truck.

I have not been in or on these vehicles for over twenty years, but when I opened the truck door, I was right back at grain harvest alongside my dad, bouncing in the truck across the field all afternoon. That old-truck-cracked-leather-pipe-tobacco-farmer smell lingers, I tell you.

When I was about 8, I devised a plan. I knew we were not wealthy farmers, and I knew that tax season made my dad really, really cranky, and I knew the president made $200,000 a year. So I decided to write to President Reagan, and explain that the newest truck my family had for our farm was already almost 30 years old. One of the trucks was older than my mom. If he could just see fit to pass some laws that would help us, I was sure we could afford a better truck and Dad would be less cranky, and if Mr. Reagan really wanted to, he could just send us a check.

The truck bed on the GMC truck didn't look this bad back then, though it was already showing signs of decay. One of my favorite daydreams was the idea of taking a big long trip in the back of the GMC (because it had a wooden bed, as opposed to the Ford's hot, unforgiving [albeit less sliver-y] metal) with Jeanie and Dixie and Lauri and Shannon and me. I figured we could put the tail gate on, throw in a bunch of blankets and pillows, and let my dad take us all the way to Minneapolis while we ate sandwiches and sang songs and laughed and stuff.

Dad never went for it, and in retrospect, I guess he was right. But man, I wanted that kind of adventure. (Clearly I had not spent much time riding in the back of the grain truck, blankets or no...)
The dash of the Ford. Looking at it now, those two knobs on the bottom look a lot like doorknobs. Hm. I mean, I don't know much about driving a truck, but somehow I doubt those are factory issued parts.
Speaking of which, here's a lovely example of my dad's favorite tool. If our family had a crest, it would certainly involve at least two vice grips: he used them for everything. This is the inside driver's door of the GMC truck. As long as I can remember, it's been missing both the door handle and the window handle, and the practical solution was to just attach a vice grip and leave it there. Twice. He also used vice grips to control the garage door and do some basic dentistry*.

Almost a year ago now, when I was replacing our toilet, (scroll down if you wanna know more about the toilet), I had to ask my sister for advice. The first thing she said was "Where's your vice grip?" Um, I dunno. I don't think I have one. "WHAT?" I mean, here. I found one. Here.

I think she was about to erase my name from the family bible. Whew.

*just kidding about the dentistry. for the most part.

Mother's Day in Eight Photographs

We went to Myra's, where Jess and Will and Mary and David and four dogs all convened for a beautiful day together. Yesterday it snowed enough to accumulate, so the plan to have a picnic in our backyard was scrapped by my mother ("Jen, it's BLIZZARDING" she insisted yesterday). So we went to her house, ate the easiest dinner I've ever provided...we bought 3 rotisserie chickens, 1 lb each of 2 different salads, Mom made jello, and Jess cleaned strawberries for shortcake. Then we spent the rest of the day chasing toddlers and dogs all over the place.

We had sliding (the cousins are so sweet together. They are just starting to pay close attention to each other, and today they kept saying "My turn! Now your turn!" to each other).

Then we had a little banjo

And Shaun won the croquet game. He was so excited and classy he showed his belly. And I'm so excited and classy I put it on the blog.



We walked to The Station (yeah, Myra lives in a town where each business/location is just called "The [insert noun here]" The Church, The School, The Station, The Bank, The Park, The Bar...) where they had free sundaes for moms, and we bought ice cream for the dads and kids too (because we're such generous moms). I adore the picture of Will because 1. He's just filthy, which illustrates the excitement of the day, and 2. He looks so much like my sister. I love the picture of V because 1. she just has this look of adoration on her face, gazing on her ice cream cone, and 2. it's also obvious by the background that we're at The Station.

We walked home across the field that, when I was a child, held our family's lumberyard. Well, it had been a lumberyard (we pronounced it "lumbry-yard," by the way) but my grandfather, dad, and uncle had bought it and had been using it as a giant garage when we were born. It's a lot prettier (and safer and less rat-infested) now that the lumbry yard's gone.

When we got home, Shaun went out shopping for gifts (because he usually plans ahead like that), and said V had told hm what she wanted to get me on two separate occassions, so he was confident in his excursion. I thought maybe there would be Coca-Cola, or a Backyardigans Video, but V felt strongly that for Mother's Day, I should have Birthday Cake. So Shaun had the DQ write "Happy Birthday Mom" on my cake, and V and I each enjoyed a piece. At first I thought he'd just bought a cake on sale, since my birthday is 2 weeks away, but he explained that V had been very specific that I should have not just cake but birthday cake.

Best present ever.

Second best present ever? Shaun got me the book Bonk by Mary Roach. A few years ago for my birthday he bought me Stiff, and I adored it...Bonk is her latest venture. I love Mary Roach: she has a way of writing that is fascinating, informative but not dry, and laugh-out-loud funny. My only complaint about Stiff was that it was not comprehensive enough, because apparently I want to read more about death than just over 200 pages. I'm just starting the foreword on Bonk, but already I'm so excited to read it I can barely imagine having to still grade for the next week before I can really sink into this book.

So there's our day. We are so lucky to get to spend a whole day with both my Mama and Shaun's parents, not to mention my sister and her son and four crazy dogs. And birthday cake.

And a banjo.

Hope your day was swell too.

Oh, baby, where art thou?

I wanna have another baby. I wanna pee on a stick and feel my palms get all sweaty while I wait for that excruciating two minutes. I wanna drink ginger ale for three months because I’m too queasy to consider anything else. I wanna feel the quickening, this time sooner because I know what it feels like. I wanna have to haul my giant body over the edge of the bed and hate every stitch of clothes I own because none of it fits. I wanna go to the hospital with my dear man with that anticipation of meeting a whole new creature that we made. I wanna smell that magic baby smell; I wanna feel my breasts get heavy with milk and be all a little life needs, at least for a moment.

But I don’t know if we will. All the excruciating debate before we ever decided to have children is fundamentally different now: we’ve got one. Why would we tempt fate and try for a second? She’s fabulous, funny, empathetic, silly, musical…she teaches me something new every day, and just when I think I've figured her out, she totally reverses course and keeps me from complacency. She plays the harmonica and dances in circles and loves hopscotch beyond reason.

While I love V beyond what I ever expected, beyond anything I have ever known in my whole life, and I know I could love another child like that, too, I’m not sure we should have another baby. I turn 35 this month, and I know we’re not ready yet. If fertility and life expectancy were not issues, we’d have another baby in maybe 4 or 5 years. But by then I’ll be 40, and…I know lots of women have healthy babies at 40, and there are fertility treatments and adoption and…I don’t know if we were meant to parent two babies. I thought we were (or at least that I was); I had always imagined I’d have two or three babies. (Of course, until I had a newborn I thought twins would be fun, too, and clearly I was a moron). It was just how I’d imagined things for eons.

I’m not sure of anything. It’s a new idea to get my brain around, this possibility that we are three and we will stay three. I feel a little like, if I’d known, I would’ve spent more time loving all the sensations of pregnancy and nursing and newborn baby smells. I would’ve complained less about the lack of sleep and just savored more, if I’d known she was my last chance.

Maybe this fall we’ll get a wild hair and start a new baby. Or maybe I’ll just learn to savor the smell of a near-three year old, all pineapple and dirt and carrot sticks and farts and pudding and finger paints. She can play her harmonica for me, and maybe I’ll dance around in a circle with her tomorrow until we both get dizzy and fall down. I never imagined anything like her before she was born. Heck, that’s half the fun.

Now for the darker side

So yesterday's post was all happy shiny parenting/crafty places. Today, a couple from the other direction.

These dolls inspired my own voodoo-esque rag dolls. I gotta take pictures of those. Until then, enjoy these. http://www.flickr.com/photos/mamayaga/sets/72157594564134429/with/2021961111/

Do you think the neighbors would notice if I did this in our yard? http://www.flickr.com/photos/mymsie/sets/1144128/with/2035397558/

I know it's not right. I don't care.

Blogs in which I enjoy partaking

I know the last post was kinda cryptic, but that's how it will stand for sometime. Sorry. I will tell you this: when fear permeates every single cell of your body, you get really tired.

So there you go.

Since I can't say more on that, I thought I'd distract you with shiny objects. Here's a list of my top 9 favorite blogs, in no particular order.

1. Soulemama. I have talked about her before, but seriously, folks, if you haven't checked her out yet, you oughta. Unless you don't have kids and/or hate nature. She has a daughter just 4 days younger than mine (plus two sons) and is the author of The Creative Family, a book I whole heartedly recommend. (In the interest of full disclosure, she is also one of the reasons I took a break from the blogosphere, because her life appears too perfect sometimes.)

2. Garden Rant. Because it is spring, and I need inspiration, I sought out gardening blogs, and this was one that I found that I really enjoy. It is not area specific, which isn't so cool since I am on the border between zone 3 & 4 (i.e. 45 day growing season, practically), but it is anti-all kinds of ucky things, like pesticides and too-perfect gardens and stuff that makes me crabby. So I like it.

3. WantNot. Mercy, I almost forgot WantNot. This is a blog that leads me into temptation, but I'm learning to resist. Mir (the author) brought me to V's birthday pedal car last fall, so she's got a guaranteed place in my heart forever.

4. Inside a Black Apple: though she hasn't been posting quite so often lately, Emily Martin has my dream job, if I could paint or was at all self-motivated.

5. Doll: To a woman who aspires to be a doll maker someday, Mimi Kirchner is a tremendous inspiration. Check out her tattooed men.

6. My Handbound Books: As with #5, to a woman who aspires to be a professional bookbinder someday, these books totally make me feel like a giant slacker.

7. Sweet Juniper: Sweet Juniper is written largely by one of my favorite Stay at Home Dads. He lives with his kids and lovely wife in Detroit, and takes pictures, and writes really effectively about the joys/challenges/disgustingness of parenthood. I wish he would come here and hang out with me for awhile.

8. Sew Liberated: A Montessori teacher living in Mexico who is crafty and has an eye & ear for the poetic.

9. Wee Wonderfuls: Though her posting has been more sporadic since the birth of her second child, Hillary still stands as one of the most creative, consistent, and amazing soft toy designers I've ever found online. I heart Wee Wonderfuls.

So there you have it, my top 9 blogs. These are the ones I will miss the most if armegeddon should come and we lose the internet. What are your favorites?

PS: I'll also tell you this, those of you who have asked about an occasional commenter here: Sam is a former student of mine, one of a handful who have turned into friends. A small handful, actually, now that I think of it. He's in grad school in London right now, and yes, I take full credit for that. Wouldn't you?

Pushing back the walls of ignorance

Lately I've been trying to write here about things besides V, though I know she is why many of you come here. It just helps me to remember that I'm not just a mama. Which is not to minimize mamahood, mind you...

Anyway, I haven't talked much about work here, mainly because 1. I'm not yet tenured (June! Hopefully!) and 2. I have an irrational fear of getting dooced, so named for Heather Armstrong of Dooce (you should totally click on her link, because right now she's got a video of Prince covering Radiohead, and that is worth clicking, if you ask me). It's funny, really, because I have nothing negative to say about this job 99.99% of the time. I love teaching, love my students, love my colleagues, love our administration. But lately, things have become excruciatingly difficult. Teaching, colleages, administration is all good. Which leaves, of course, students. Student, really...anyway, this is the hardest thing I've encountered in ten years of teaching. Ten years! Think of how many students....a thousand?

In light of the excruciatingness of all this, I thought I'd post this poem I wrote a few years ago about why I teach. I wrote it as an example for students who were writing a "this is the way" poem and didn't understand how to do it. As such, it still reads like a creative writing exercise, but I'm comfortable with that. Today, I need to remember why I do this job.

THIS IS THE WAY
And this is the way you worry about your lisp and enunciate to correct it; and this is the way you think hard before getting a visible tattoo; and this is the way you stay awake at night wondering if they’re learning and trying to finish your grading and thinking up new assignments; and this is the way they don’t know how to spell; and this is the way they lie to your face and you have to hear the truth somewhere inside; and this is the way you learned how to tell the difference between morning sickness and a hangover; and this is the way you teach birth control and prenatal care even though it’s a writing class; and this is the way you ask the girl with the finger-mark bruises on both arms who did this to her and she stares at you blankly and says “Did what?”; and this is the way you see their hurt and wish you could take it away; and this is the way you mourn students who’ve died of meningitis or in a car accident or who hung themselves in their dorm room; and this is the way you care about students beyond what you ever expected; and this is the way they see the world completely differently from you; and this is the way they make you feel alive and this the way you want them all to be healthy and joyful and kind; and this is the way your friends have jobs they leave behind on the weekend and you don’t; and this is the way they race around your brain and make your head and arms and heart ache all day long; and this is the way you push them to think for themselves, and this is the way your tires get slashed, and someone threatens to blow your head off with a shotgun; and this is the way you keep your phone number unlisted and try not to love them too much; and this is the way you hold them too close sometimes; and this is the way you need summers off; and this is the way they show up in your dreams almost every night; and this is the way, in the end, that you teach.

My next tattoo

I had a dream the other night that I had an enormous tattoo from my right hip to my ankle. It said "Elvis Presley" in red "Wonder Woman" print. What do you think that means, exactly? It was sort of empowering and strange at the same time. Now, I'm in the market for another tattoo, since my last one was over 8 years ago, and my first was 8 years before that. I seem to have a weird every 8 year kinda addiction. Hmm. Anyhoo, I like this peacock for several reasons. Here, let me list them:

1. It's a peacock, and I lurve me some peacocks. (I have a peacock room in my house. did you know that? it's a long story)

2. It's an old-school-flash tattoo. It is a bit dark for my tastes, and I kinda like that gorgeous blue real peacocks have all over the place. But I do like the 50s-esque look of this one.

3. I don't know anyone with a peacock tattoo. (of course, I don't know anyone with a leg-sized Elvis Presley tattoo, either, so perhaps this isn't the clearest criteria....). I have a cousin with a bird of paradise on her upper thigh, but no peacocks that I know of.

4. It would look pretty on my ankle or my arm, the 2 spots I'm considering.

I also love turtles, and butterflies have a mighty significance in my family...and I'm seriously considering a fancy letter V. So I have a lot of choices, and in all honesty, I suppose in order I'm considering a butterfly, then a V, then a turtle or peacock. Which means, let's see, the turtle/peacock won't be on the schedule until 2024.

Maybe I need to change my 8 year rotation. OR: get this...I could find a picture of a peacock-turtle-butterfly with the letter V prominently involved. Wow. Sometimes I even impress myself.

Send your recommendations & art submissions, won't you? I can use all the help I can get.

What we've been up to lately

Remeber this post? To mock me in my optimism, spring has come and gone already. I'm glad we got outside to play last weekend, because last night and today we got about 8 inches of snow. Maybe 10. I don't know. The wagon in the backyard is just a ribbon of red between the snow on the ground and the snow heaping on top of it. But to prove we did have spring, I offer the following evidence (photographed from just behind the first hung out laundry of the year).





V set up most of this on her own, including empty tin, terracotta, and plastic pots. Then she found two perfect sticks and sang and drummed and drummed and sang. I love to watch her when she thinks I'm not paying attention: she plays with her whole body (as these pictures show) and just sings from deep inside herself. I hope she never loses that pure joy of play. I'm grateful she's helping me find mine again.

While we were enjoying the weather, I broke out the sidewalk chalk. I don't know who decided to market big fat chalk sticks to use outside, but I love him or her. I introduced V to hopscotch, and though I'm no good at it, she's mildly obsessed. At least she was until it got covered in snow. To hop, she bends her knees and throws her body up in the air: it's awesome. Not all that effective, mind you, but fun to watch.




Our collective family has been suffering from what I thought were allergies, and maybe it was, but now we all have nasty colds. You may recall that when V has a cold, she mostly wanders around dull eyed and listless, occassionally yelling "Mama! Boogers!" It warms a mother's heart, really, to be so needed.

The reason I suspected allergies first, though, is the seedlings V and I planted several weeks ago. Mostly tomatoes, but you'll notice an enthusiastic pumpkin there, too. I'm really pleased at the progress they've made, just being left alone in our upstairs south window. I keep them watered and rotate them about once a day, but other than that it's been really cool to see things grow so quickly, and V seems to genuinely care about the "upstairs garden." It's too bad we'll never get to plant them outside though, since winter has already returned.

(V's face here is her new interpretation of "smile." I blame Dora the Explorer.)

Because we are country folk, and this is our way.

One day a few years ago, a deer bounded through our backyard. I know for many of my family members this is not that odd, but we live a good 15 blocks from the city limits on all sides (well, 12 blocks on one side) so it startled me. Shaun said I was hallucinating, but I ran out into the backyard to check and our neighbor to our west was doing the same. We totally had a "Did you see that too? Dang!" moment together. It was lovely. Though it's not likely safe for the deer, I wish it happened more often, really.

In only mildly related news, I had a nightmare once about being attacked by wild birds, prompted by the flock of turkeys that live by the Georgetown Bridge. I dreamt I stopped to take pictures of them (which I have done on several occasions) and they turned on me, and up from under the bridge came chickens and hawks and loons. The loons were the fiercest, and bit me repeatedly, even as I tried to close the car door without hurting them.

You'd think that would make me dislike this story, but actually I love wild birds, and it makes me really happy that no one is talking about how to get these beautiful creatures out of town.

But if a loon shows up at my front door, I'm not opening it. Just fierce, I tell you.

At least she hasn't destroyed the temple. Yet.

Dear Samson,

Look, I understand why you’re upset. I know you didn’t see this coming: frankly, neither did I. I mean, I kept hearing all this conflicting information: some people adored your long hair (my mom, your mom, little old ladies in the grocery store). Others, like your father, thought it was just getting in your way. All I know is that the snarls you woke up with on Saturday couldn’t have been worse if they’d been made my actual squirrels. Three combs broke just looking at those tangles.

Even before you were in the chair, I apologized to the hair professional for the mess she was about to encounter. And perhaps your screaming, which brought no fewer than 4 other stylists over with offers to help, is what made me finally decide. (Well, that and the knowledge that your hair grows faster than you talk, which is near the speed of light). At any rate, I hope you don’t look back on this weekend angrily in the coming years. I promise you can grow it out again, if you want to. It just had to be done.

Love,
Delilah

That one time when we did that crafty thing

I was beyond thrilled to get this book by my favorite blogger, Amanda Soule, this week. She has inspired me many times, and this lovely book is no exception. At Ms. Soule’s suggestion, I sat down with my 2 7/12 year old daughter to do some painting. Here is a transcript of yesterday, our first formal attempt at family creativity.

Me: Hey, you wanna do some painting?

V: Painting! Yay! Yes! Let’s paint!

Me: (glowing at her enthusiasm) Okay then! Let’s put down some newspaper, and lay out some wooden dolls and a couple of blank wooden boxes, and some small plates for pallets, and some brushes, and a damp cloth to wipe our fingers, and turn on the lights, and set out all 30 bottles of paint.

V: (rocking back and forth in her chair excitedly) Yay! Painting!

Me: I know! Cool, huh. So, what do you want to paint first?

V: This one! (she selects the biggest wooden doll form, which is okay, but it’s, erm…the most expensive, and one of only 2 that I ordered special from the internet)

Me: (Remembering Amanda’s chapter on “Using the good stuff”) Cool! What color do you want to start with?

V: Blue! Yay, painting!

Me: Right! Blue! (Pouring a quarter size dollop of blue metallic acrylic onto the aforementioned plastic plate) There you go!

V: (giggling as she blobs blue paint on the head of the Expensive, One of Only Two doll figure)

Me: Um, hey, do you wanna spread that around at all? It’ll dry faster.

V: (ignores Mama completely. Continues blobbing)

Meanwhile, I’m carefully painting 6 other figures, and trying to use up some of the metallic blue paint before she puts all of it on this poor doll figurine.

Me: You can paint that box, too, babe. I thought maybe our dolls could use those boxes as little houses.

V: (Smacking her paintbrush absent-mindedly inside the wooden box) I made a butterfly!

Me: Wow, that does kinda look like a butterfly.

V: I’m done now. I want some cheese.

Me: What? We’ve only used one color. And it’s only been 4 minutes since we started. What do you mean you’re done?

V: (louder) Cheese, please.

Me: But you painted that cool butterfly…

V: (much louder): CHEESE!

Me: If I give you cheese, will you paint some more?

V: No.

Despite this, erm, mediocre beginning, I feel good to be trying new things and letting go of my ideas of right/pretty/good a little bit. In fact, we painted again today, this time for about 7 minutes. If we keep this up, by May we’ll hit 40 minutes easy! As to the book, I am only halfway through it, but it’s already been worth the price: we’ve never had a weekend with so little TV. In a few months, I hope V’ll be up for embroidery, too: that’s one of my favorite sections so far, and includes, for those over 3, some burlap in an embroidery hoop, a blunt needle, and some thick floss in 5 inch stitches. Sort of a “no rules” approach that I would’ve loved as a kid. In the meantime, I gotta work on making her some sewing cards. Plus, sewing is a lot less messy than metallic blue paint.

Winter's last hurrah

Photos by Myra

Hey brother, can you spare a coupon? An epic tale of urine & finances.

I like the internet. I like to look stuff up on it quickly & make snap decisions on whether it’s reputable or not. I like to discover different points of view, ideas I’d never thought of, and stuff that might improve my quality of life. And videos of singing cats.

Three years ago, one such search (well, not the singing cats kinda search) led me to make all of V’s cloth diapers. All of them. 3 sets of sizes, in various configurations (some didn’t work at all, but by this last round they are pretty close to perfect for her). Initially I just wanted to learn about where one might purchase cloth diapers if we decided to go that way, but a Google search led quickly to the Sew Your Own Diapers website, and I was gone. I spent over ½ my pregnancy at the sewing machine, zigzagging fold over elastic around waterproof bum covers. I dreamt about diapers. I talked about them at family gatherings. It was embarrassing for everyone, really.

In the process of researching sewing my own diapers, I ran across information on Elimination Communication. (that's the actual site I first found. Weird, huh?)I was intrigued: I’d never even HEARD of such a thing (and I’ll bet most of you haven’t, either). What fascinating life was this? Let me say now that though I may sound disparraging, I really do think parents should do what feels most right when it comes to raising their babies, most of the time, and that includes EC. Just as a side note.

So I found this whole idea totally FASCINATING! How did I get to be 32 having never heard of this concept? At this time, Tenessa and Dan’s son Linus was about 8 months old, and I was about 5 months pregnant. Tenessa quickly assured me that Elimination Communication was not going to be my way: “That way lies madness,” she said, over and over. And thank goodness: my house is enough of a mess without having my infant daughter pee in the sink.

I tell you that story so I can tell you this story: it’s happened again. I’ve fallen in with a crowd of people I accidentally found online. I was searching “Frugality,” because, you know, we don’t wanna run out of milk money around here, and I found a seedy underbelly of coupon-clipping, obsessive clearance shopping maniacs. Dave Ramsey seems to be their king, and a lot of them have websites with lots of ads and e-books on how to save money that I can buy for $9.95 or less.

Clearly, this way lies madness, too.

Now I know the basics of economics: if you spend more than you earn, you’re screwed. There’s no way around that, and I have a good grasp of what we make (I see the paystubs) and what we spend. I also know that nearly every American is about 2 zillion dollars in debt (or so it seems) and if you don’t have at least 2 maxed out credit cards, you’re probably doing something wrong. I also know (mostly from watching people struggle, like my mom's struggles after my dad’s stroke) that not having a handle on money, even if you have good intentions, can be disastrous and take years to repair.

We have no credit card debt, except one interest-free jobbie we found at the dentist-who-will-eventually-own-my-first-born-child. We will pay that off this shortly with our recent tax return, and then our only debt will be student loans and the house mortgage. So we’re better off than a lot of folks, obviously. Most of that comes from my white-knuckled terror of high-interest debt, but some of it comes from the fact that I make pretty good money pushing back the walls of ignorance. It is not really due to stellar money management skill on our parts, though.

Cue the internet: I want to know how to do more with what we have. Shaun and I have worked on an allowance system for years: we each get a set amount each month to do as we like (usually it’s been $150, sometimes only $100, and on rare occasions below that), with the other not allowed to criticize however we spend that amount. It’s how I buy fabric without him muttering about it under his breath, and he buys yet another handheld video game. It also needs to cover any fast food we chose to eat, or vending machine snacks, or any new shoes for me. And it worked pretty well, overall. But in recent months (the last year? Maybe more…) we’ve gotten lax, and as my income increased slightly, our leftover cash did not. Turns out we were both overstepping our allowances/being more frivolous in other areas, and that quickly ate up what we were supposed to have leftover each month.

My research turned up some really interesting sites with helpful if repetitive information. Let me sum up: “if you don’t control your money, it controls you. If you’re not sure who’s in control, it’s not you. Now go pay off your debt.” Most of it is aimed at people with several credit cards, but still I’ve found helpful things. We’re starting a savings account this month at each of our banks…but you don’t care about the details. It’s really amazing, frankly, that you’re still reading after all this time. My point is, I found a lot of stuff that we can think about all from a mundane online search. And I’m utilizing sites like Hot Coupon World (sexy name, eh?), where crazy people sit around all day and look at ads and coupons and match them up for me so I can just go “Oh, look, tuna’s on sale this week and I got those tuna coupons in January, so they’d be free.” I don’t have to think too much. I get my mom to bring me her spare coupons, and I keep them in a binder like a dorky 3rd grader with a baseball card obsession. Why, just last week I got 6 free boxes of Pasta Roni.

Now, who wants to come over for supper? Pasta Roni’s pretty tasty, and I promise none of us are peeing in the sink. If you have any coupons laying around, why don’tcha bring them along?

For when she is famous for musical something or other

"I Peter Criss, Mama!"

"I play pyano!"

No words here: just a sweet face with poor lighting.

Right now, she's wearing some red flowered tights, her sneakers, and nothing else, performing a play/tapdance routine for her imaginary audience. I would film and post this, but I'm pretty sure the talent agents would never stop hounding us, and we really have a lot of important stuff we need to do instead.

Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.

I love the alphabet. I love when my kid sings abcdblahblahblah… you get the idea. I love typewriters, too, and though the words were never that compelling to me, I used to like typing “The quick brown fox jumps over a lazy dog,” because it used every letter in the alphabet. I think the first time I learned of this miraculous thing (called a pangram, for those of you who care) was in an Encyclopedia Brown book. To solve the crime, he used that sentence to check everyone’s typewriters to prove who had written the ransom note. Oh, Encyclopedia, what don’t you know?

One day while enjoying some free time on the internets, I came across a list of other pangrams (also sometimes called holalphabetic sentences, though my spellchecker prefers pangram). The goal, apparently, is to come up with some grammatically correct sentence that uses as close to just the 26 letters as possible, with duplicates being frowned upon. Still, some longer pangrams make me happy. At 61 letters, it’s not all that efficient, but I really like “The July sun caused a fragment of black pine wax to ooze on the velvet quilt.” Any sentence that uses “ooze,” “velvet,” and “quilt” is a good sentence, if you ask me.

It turns out “the quick brown fox jumps over a lazy dog” is a pretty mediocre example, actually, with 33 letters and no images I find especially striking. My favorite, which is the subject line, sounds ominous, doesn’t it? I imagine James Earl Jones booming “Sphinx of black quartz, JUDGE MY VOW!!!” Tee hee. At only 29 letters, it’s the shortest pangram without proper nouns, acronyms, initials, or odd punctuation. Besides, I never realized just how much I like the word sphinx. It’s fun to type, it’s fun to say. Try it for yourself! The quick brown fox can just keep jumping over lazy dogs, for all I care.

A River Runs Through It

V and I were driving along the river today (we had to take an underpass because I hate trains and V loves tunnels) in town and I pointed out the river to V.

"There's the Mighty Red River," I said.
"Where?"
"Right there." I pointed.
"It's white," she said. Which it is. 'Cause it's March.
"Yes," I said,"because it's winter. But the river's name is the Red River."
"No."
"Yes, it is."
"Nooo."
"Yes. You don't get to name this river. Go discover a river, and you can name it whatever you want."
"It's the Black River."
"No. It's the Red River. Sometimes it looks brownish, and right now it's white, but it is not black."
"ORANGE RIVER!!!!"
"Seriously, Black River was better than Orange River."
"ORANGE RIVER!!!!!!!!!!!!"
"Okay. It's the Orange River."
"I knew it."

She's almost 30 months old, and she wants to rename geographic entities and act like she is right and I'm an idiot. I see a long, long adolescence in her future.

Pajamas

Oh, the joy of a newborn baby: that soft, soft skin, the fuzzy hair, the cute little outfits. When V was first born, I didn’t mind much at all when she’d wet through or spit up, because there were 2,000 sweet baby outfits she was never gonna wear out anyway. Each clothing change was an opportunity! Look how cute she is! Isn’t that daaaarling? Dresses with ruffles and flowers, tartan skirts with black turtlenecks and knee-high biker boots, tank tops with shiny lettering: the kid had the most stylish (and diverse) wardrobe on the block.

Now, when it’s time to get dressed in the mornings (10 am or so, ‘round here), I usually ask V what she wants to wear. In the last few weeks, her answer has consistently been “Pajamas.” Sadly, that’s usually what she stays in: with no daycare, V is free to wander the house for days at a time, wearing the same jammies as the day before. Essentially, we’re too lazy to dress the child, and she doesn’t seem to mind.

Sometimes, though, a good song comes on the radio, and she’ll gaze up lovingly at Johnny Cash, pull on her pink cowgirl boots, and dance until her hair gets frizzy. Despite our best efforts, our daughter is discovering her own style. And though it scares me a little, I kinda like it.

Yer slacking on the blog posts, hey.

My sister said that to me yesterday, so here I am, caving to her pressure and posting. That is pretty much how we talk to each other, too. At any rate, if this sucks, you can blame her.

A couple years ago, I was looking out our kitchen window in mid-April and I felt this huge weight lift from my shoulders. I just suddenly felt this immense relief, and I realized it was the coming of spring. I know about Seasonal Affective Disorder, and I know winter sucks, but it wasn't until that April day that I felt it so concretely. That sense of relief is something I'm anxiously awaiting, now. The end of February is in sight, and then brutal March, and then wet crappy April...

Well, I'm not cheering myself up at all. Harumph.

Here's a picture my mom took a few weeks ago. This time of year, when we sometimes have heavy morning fog which leads to this beautiful crystal white frosting, can be quite lovely. I drove V to Hendrum one such morning, just after the fog lifted, and we watched the sun melt the frost from the treeline. It was really kinda magical.

Speaking of frost, here's evidence that fatherhood is impacting Shaun. The white beard is less noticable if he keeps it trimmed, but this grizzled look is more his way. He's so cute.