Pencil

I found this in Ella's pocket.  

Machinery

Depress this button and observe the delicate steel arm swing up with an immediate satisfying click.  Now the paper is changed forever. Steady snapping from brain to page.  Look child, this is how a machine works. Before vacuum tubes and silicone circuits and plasma screens and 3-D printers this is how pulleys and levers changed the world.

I'm glad you said you liked the font.

Polar Ham

It's eighteen below zero, that's -39° F with the wind-chill. School is closed. The dog refuses to go outside to pee and I'm not even mad about it.  I'm going to bake a ham today for a really long time in the oven.  I'm putting it in at 11am and putting a can of 7up on it like my Mother-in-law used to and then I'll put it on low and slow and often go in the kitchen to lean against the stove and see how it's doing.

What I Wanted

I wanted to write a piece about what it might be like living as an artist in a socialist nation.  I wanted to make five tins of fudge and fold all the laundry.  I wanted to sand that slice of oak from my grandparents' forest until it was smooth and soft and glassy. I wanted to send out letters telling people what happened all year and I wanted to make it to the gym and to give blood and have a new key made and get stamps at the post office. I wanted more day in this day.

How Poetry Works

You have some lines that roll around in your head against the rough edges of your thoughts until they're polished into a shiny little gem... or turd, depending.

The toaster lasted

Longer than the marriage

In my defense

It was a damn good toaster.

I made him wear mittens

Reasons My Son is Crying

I Boo these Boots

I have some lovely knee high faux leather biker boots I usually wear in the winter.  They're pretty beat up and I retired them this fall.  I wanted to spend a little more and get the exact same boot but in leather this time so they'd last more than the seven years I had the last ones.  I could only find them ankle height.  My feet hurt and they've been cold.  Tonight I went out to shovel the walk and move the car into the driveway and I threw on the old boots.  That was when I realized how much the new ones suck.  Having warm feet for me is everything in the winter.  After today I said I'd like to wear two little snuggly fuzzy baby bears turned inside out and dipped in whale oil on my feet if that's what kept my toes from going numb with cold but tomorrow I think I'll set out to look for some nice rubberized fluffy synthetic somethings instead.  Hopefully I'll find something that doesn't break the bank.  I may shop in the men's department.

Self Made

Among the busy bustle of the everyday living of one adult and two kids my son decided to potty train himself.  He and his sister are different in so many ways.  She was content to hang out and quietly color, play with small toys and/or join in the adult conversation.  He wants to chase the dog and climb tall and dangerous things and in general keep me on alert every minute of the day.  But it's incredible he decided he wanted to be done with diapers and then ever more that's how it was.  No effort from me.  It's how he is, when he decides something he figures it out and just does it for himself.  He can load his own dvds into the computer - starting with turning it on, he can pour a bowl of cereal (milk supervised), he can get dressed all on his own and I imagine soon he'll have how to drive the car figured out.  I think he'll be one of those guys people say is a self made man, but hopefully the kind that looks back into the camera and says "Hi Mom!"

Lottery

Sure, I could stop worrying how to make ends meet and I'd have way better health care, but I'd still live right here, I'd still drive my same car, I'd still eat my favorite breakfast ever - toast and coffee, I'd still fold my own socks when they come out of the dryer and I'd still be trying to get the kids to eat more vegetables.  I think I would travel just a little more to some prettier places and maybe I'd have a second car to zoom around town in, something small and red perhaps, and I could give a little more to the charities I like.  I'd still be looking for a reliable babysitter for my family to fall in love with.  For sure I'd have a bigger bathtub and a fluffier bed.  But mostly, you'd find me here, raising my babies, typing posts for this blog and getting the good pen out to draw and paint things for people I love, just like always.

Rainy Autumn Wednesday in the Midwest

We are in the house playing with rediscovered toys and books, realizing how funny we can be contorting our faces into monstrous imaginings after shouting "Hey! Watch this!"  We eat toast and milk and oranges.  We wish for snow.  We chase the dog around in the big circle of open space on the first floor and squeal at the clickitty clickitty noise her nails make on the wood, through the kitchen, the dinning room, the living room, the entryway, the hallway and back again to the kitchen, times ten. We stare closely at a house spider before giving her a one way ride in a drinking glass out the backdoor.  We fold some laundry and watch an episode of cartoons.  We make animal noises and talk about all the colors in the rainbow.  We count each other's toes.  We watch out the window for the school bus to go by heralding the arrival of another playmate.

First Attempt at an Apple Swan

#ThingsMyKidWon'tEat

Boots

Of five shoe stores in town I found one pair of boy's snow boots toddler size 10 for $39.99 and got a lead on another pair at another store for $69.99.  We looked at literally walls of girl's boots by the hundreds all sparkly and lighting up, full of characters and exotic furs in every color, lacing, zipping and velcro-ing this way and that in a veritable playground of fasteners.  For boys, the aesthetic choices dwindle to a meager; cars, super hero, or camouflage pull-on style and if you narrow that down even further to an actual size the choices were none and none.

When I got in the car and called the place with Footwear in the name of the store, the clerk offered the only pair of boy's toddler boots they had on the shelf, but they were a size too small and would I like to put a hold on them anyway?...  I declined to pounce on the idiotic opportunity to have her take something I could never use and hoard it behind the counter awaiting my desperate arrival.  I'm not sure if she expected me to buy boots too small for my boy and jam his foot in there anyway or if she was just on autopilot but I was clearly the only one bothered by the suggestion.

He's going to wear them for four months tops if he doesn't outgrow them first.  They need to entice him enough for him to want to wear them.  I just want him to have a fluffy pair of mukluks in a racy red for sledding in.

Mummenschanz Breakfast

Pecatonica Library Art Gala Auction

These Packed Days

I had another one of those nonstop days packed with doctor's appointments, grocery store errands, leaf raking, sick tree diagnosing, scheduled after school activities followed by open house, book fair and a 7:30pm cooking of three different dinners for my picky people, with a liberal dose of dog hair and some potty training and the day felt as arduous as this run on sentence.

It all moves so fast I hardly have time.  I keep taking photos, hoping at some point I will be able to sit down and see what happened.  I imagine, the day after Jack goes to college looking through seven hundred thousand photos and laughing at how busy and frazzled it all was.  And then I'll sleep for a week.

I'd like to give Rainfall Films some money

http://rainfall.tv/

Short Order Cook

"Nope"

Damn You Fake Cheesemakers

I accidentally bought two pounds of fake cheese. I'm pretty pissed off about it.  It was in the cheese aisle and it said "SHREDDED imitation MONTEREY JACK"  Then I was at home preparing a home made pizza with insane mounts or vegetables on it and I grabbed handfuls of this stuff and thought "that doesn't feel right."  After spreading it, I tasted it and went back to the label to read that it's great for salads but doesn't melt.  I had to throw the whole uncooked pizza in the garbage.  I just couldn't see a way to scrape handfuls of shredded imitation cheese off an uncooked pizza.  I was so mad, I resolved to return the rest of the bag t the store and chew someone out for even selling the junk.  Can you imagine how crazy I'm going to sound?  But damnit someone must pay.  With the amount of ingredients in it, I can't understand how this stuff is easier to make than cheese and it still has whey in it so it's not even like it's good if you have a milk allergy.  Again I say Damn you fake cheese makers and seller - you suck!

Accidental Waxing AKA Things I Shouldn't Post But*...

So whenever my three year old get's water in his eyes, or a bit of a runny nose he get's all OCD and has to wipe it off immediately.  This makes his top lip my top worry when he has a cold.  I have to follow him around trying to sneak coco butter onto his face when he's not paying attention. Ever try to sneak something onto someone elses face?  Usually you have to wait until they pass out... only instead of drawing funny moustaches or putting shaving cream in his hand, I'm trying to just moisturize his chapped lip.

Anyway this OCD of face wiping also makes me nervous as hell while swimming.  Why?... What's the nearest piece of fabric for him to wipe his water splashed face with in the pool? The front of MY swim trunks. Let me tell you he's not dainty about it.  He grabs a big hand full of nylon swimming suit and yanks it towards his watery eye.  Packed into that hand full of swim suit is all the normal short curly things hidden behind an adult's swim trunks.  Yeaaah... so he's got this hand full and he yanks it towards his eye and I try real hard not to scream.  The first time it happened we were swimming at the lake and it was soo fast I yelled "WTF!" only not the letters, the whole schlemiel.  This only made people turn around and look to see if I was getting eaten by a shark, or losing part of my swim suit; which are the only two reasons anyone yells at the beach (and in fact, the later was happening to me.)

So, I learned very quickly not to draw attention to myself when the kid is trying his best to yank everything between my bare skin and the sunshine off in public.  Now, every time some little snot from the YMCA day camp yells "Cannonball!" and takes a flying leap, I have to either have to throw my body in the path of the splash destined for my toddler's eye, or dunk down low enough to ensure my tankini top gets clawed off instead of an impromptu crotch waxing in the shallow end.  Go ahead and add this to the list of things things you can't put in the baby book.

*A lot of times I don't post stories about the kids because I know, eventually, they'll be fifteen and not want their stories out floating around the interwebs, but when one of them repeatedly makes my eyes water with pain like that, it's no longer about them. It becomes my story to tell.  (Sorry kid.)

photo by nikoline

Rambling

We planned a beach party and it was supposed to be today.  It's 66 degrees today and overcast with a chance of rain.  Last week it was in the low hundreds and the kid had to wear pants and cowboy boots for horse camp.  Apparently I had my weeks switched.

I had to dig back into the back of the closet for the boxes with sweatshirts last night before we went to the movie in the park.  We only made it half way through "Brave" before we packed up and went home because we were shivering.  I'd like to see the end of "Brave" one of these days.  It seemed like a super good movie.

My leg hurts when it gets cold.  Like a giant foot cramp hurt.  I hope it's not like that all winter.