Once upon a time, a blog was started at AOL Journals. The scales fell from the eyes of The Creator and it was moved to Wordpress. Then Journals tanked and all old posts were moved here for safekeeping.

Tuesday, June 26, 2007

The Green Tent

At the swim meet last weekend, I was very covetous of the pop-up canopies people had.  Because this is America, I soothed my covetousness by buying my own.  I watched a family pop theirs up and lay down a big rug and throw pillows all over and a little table...I couldn't take it.  'Way back when--I don't even know when or where--I had a friend that belonged to a private pool .  She took me with her and I saw cabanas for the first time.  They were these three sided affairs, so that you could see in and see what you didn't have.  Each was decorated according to its owner's style.  I still remember one with a poodle theme.  They had these low gates in front to keep us riff-raff from wandering in.  Friend's family didn't HAVE a cabana (losers), but that image has stayed with me at least 30 years. 

I've always fancied little personalized spaces.  I actually kind of want an office cubicle to decorate.  No job, mind you.  Just a cubicle.  I long harbored dreams of driving an 18 wheeler b/c I loved that little cab space--just imagine all I could do with it!   And I wouldn't even have to share it with truck stop hookers!  I college, my dad built me a loft bed out of old KMart shelving.  It made my bed 6 feet in the air, which is bad news if you're coming home drunk (not that I ever did, of course.  Hi Mom!), so I reconfigured it so that my bed was on the floor (much better) and I had a little den about 3 feet up.  I surrounded it with curtains and put in my bean bag chair and stereo.   I loved it.  Yes, I even kinda love the idea of Japanese capsule hotels.  So I guess it works out well that I live in an old house with lots of tiny choppy rooms.  Yes.  well.  It's GOOD that I bump into walls all day.

Anyway...I got my tent.  I got it at the Everything-here-fell-off-a-truck mall, so god knows if it will work. But I have my fantasies of a tent like the Weasleys had at the Quidditch world cup.  On the outside, just a tent.  But inside, opulence.  And, just maybe, poodles.

Wednesday, June 20, 2007

The summer thus far...

We're only in the first week, but already I need to sum the summer.  And I'm the one who swore that summer would be spent doing nothing.  Well, we have, kind of, but I took pictures of it, so you have to look.

Last weekend, we had our mock swim meet (yes, go ahead and make a joke about mocking swimmers, god knows I do.  Make the joke, that is, not mock the swimmers.).  Can I just say that Julianna is blowing me away?  Last year she was...slow.  She was new to swimming strokes, so it was understandable, but it was certainly surprising the two times she won heat ribbons.  Okay, once she was against a really fat girl who clearly had some kind of learning disability.  I'm not kidding, so it isn't mean. It's just true.  And, well, funny.   But this year!  She is really burning up the lane.  Last year, I'd watch the other girls write "Eat my bubbles" on their backs and think, "Oh please, don't ask for that so I don't die of irony poisoning."  But she can do it now.  Perversely, when she could barely drag herself over the line, I was totally laid back, all "go have fun."  But now that she could actually do okay?  I'm all "You're breathing on every stroke!  You need to only breathe every other one or less!"  Yes.  It's true.  I can't swim and I'm all swim coach on my kid.

So anyway, she swam in the mock meet.  In this one she's next to Brooke, who is only 6.  She shouldn't be in the heat and was in by mistake.  No, she didn't only beat a 6 year old.  Geez.


And here she is, mid stroke.  Breathing.  Sheesh.



And here she is, eating muffins with Brooke afterward (Brooke is dancing to Brent's themesong):


No, she didn't have to show her boobs to get the beads, you sicko.  They were handed out to all the swimmers.

The best thing is that she just LOVES swimming.  She's so happy in the water.  She races for fun.  She even can hold her own against Oksanna, whom my friend Denise imported from Russia JUST to kick all of our kids' butts.  So we've been at the pool almost every evening (in addition to her morning swim team practice).  Ben is a totally different kid in the water.  Last year, he couldn't stand to have water on his face.  Now, he jumps off the diving board.  He probably could have joined the team this year, but I think he'll do better if he's had some more lessons and has even more confidence.  Lily loves the water, but still doesn't want it on her face.  It'll come, I'm sure.  We're there most nights from 4 or 5 until 8:30.  And, in case you're wondering, no, it doesn't make them go right to sleep.  Sigh.

Look, Lily is still cute!


Today, we went hiking.  The weather was just gorgeous, so we headed out to our usual trail at Cunningham Falls.  The cliff trail is just long enough (just under a mile) that we feel like we've hiked.  Lily is totally done by the end, but I never have to carry her.  Perfect.  We hiked to the falls and had lunch and the kids waded around.  My camera battery wasn't charged, so I have only a few phone pics.  Kids in the water:


And we found these huge ass millipedes.  I'd never seen them this big in the wild and we saw three today:


They were really cool and I got to be Cool Mom and hold them for kids who came along behind us on the trail.  It was hard to convince Lily that he had to be left behind and not taken home as a pet.  She's had joint custody of a cricket with Taro, a boy that lives up the street.

Then we went to the orchard to buy cherries.  And then to Candyland!
 I kept saying "Come on kids! It's Caaaandyland!" leading them to speculate what organ one might lose at Candyland.  Ben suggested that I distract the staff while they load up on candy, so that if anyone loses a kidney, it's me.  Rotten kids. 


Friday, June 15, 2007

teacher let the monkeys out!

Today was the last day of school.  I celebrated by coming home from dropping the kids off and taking my last morning nap until fall.  I even set my alarm wrong and overslept so that I had to dash out of the house still groggy and all sleep-mouthed.  yay!

I've been utterly worthless ever since.  I did manage to take my camera in and take end-of-year pics for comparison's purposes:








Look at the growth on those first two kids!  Lily has changed the least, I think.

And now there are like 30 kids in my yard.  Well, there were.  It's gone quiet.  I think I heard a "ready or not, here I come" so I"m assuming they're hiding on purpose.  Pizza's on the stove.  Taro and Maeve came over to give Lily custody of the cricket they caught yesterday and are "sharing."  Allie came home with Julianna after school.  Kaileigh is here from up the street.  Wolfgang is around here somewhere...So we've hit the ground running.  I'll get a big water cooler for outside and lay in a supply of bunny crackers.  We've got a "mock" swim meet tomorrow (you call that a crawlstroke?  I've seen better crawling on NEWBORNS!) at 7:45 am.  so let the summer commence!

Wednesday, June 13, 2007

Give 'em the finger

Yesterday, Lily's class had their end-of-year carnival.   It was an intimidatingly well run affair with 7 stations and bell-ringing to tell the kids when to switch stations...lists of things to check off...organized, color-coded groups... Anyway, I was manning the "decorate a photo frame" station, in which the kids got to stick stickers to a paper frame.  This took them about 3 minutes, leaving a LOT of time for me to distract them from wandering around the room.  This seems to be the theme of my life lately, corralling other people's preschoolers.  This time, I let them take extra stickers and put them on my face.  This was High Comedy, I tell you.  Then I showed them my secret disguise...the finger mustache.  I know it will be hard to believe, but the second photo is me, also.


This brilliant idea was shown to me by Michelle of Small Angels, who totally has awesomeness baked right in.  And, as she pointed out, the very best thing about the finger mustache is that it's got websites.  Oh yes.  I was all, "I have my tattoo.  How awesome would this be?"  Awesome yes, but common enough that tattoo sites will point out that it should be considered a "novelty tattoo" b/c that area of skin gets so much friction that it can mess up your tat.  Here is a very very awesome local news--FOX news, no less--story about the Finger Mustache Phenomenon.  I'm clearly sooo far behind the curve. 

And, as all things internet must, it turned to cats:


It's the internet exponent.  Anything funny is made that much funnier by the addition of cats.  And hell, you have 10 fingers, why not get an emo tear, too?



My kids reacted to my clever disguise as follows:  Ben nearly cracked a rib laughing.  Julianna thought I was telling her she had something on her lip and went into that panicked wiping-off gesture.  Lily said, "I know it's you, Mommy."

Personally, I'm partial to the handlebar finger mustache, but I suspect the Hitler would be a hoot as well.  Especially on a cat.  And then you could send it in to catsthatlooklikehitler.com .  I love you, internets.

Saturday, June 9, 2007

Your cuteness update

Sorry.  I've been lax in my cute-kid-photo-uploading duties.  I just haven't felt like sitting at the computer lately.  I KNOW!  It's probably just a virus or something.  I'm sure I'll be back to my monitor lizard status before long.

It's gorgeous today.  I've just been chased from my hammock by rampaging gnat hoards.  Spent the morning horseback riding.  Successfully.  Lily got to ride her own pony today, holding the reins and all.  Even got to trot on the long line.  Julianna's looking much better and really getting into this whole horse thing.  New foals all over the place.  Looky:


Phone pic.  Sorry.  But sooo cute.  No, this isn't the one Julianna camped out to see, but was born the day after that one was.

Last weekend was crazed.  Dance recital, school auction.  Cute will come, but first, auction report.  I helped the preschoolers in Lily's class to make a bird bath.  They mosaic-ed the basin and I traced their hands for the base:


With the kindergarteners, I had them make drawings of things they'd see outside ("fine, okay, yes, you'd see pirates outside.  Draw a pirate ship. Great. Just no aliens!") and I decoupaged them onto a trunk I painted.  I'd asked for gender non-specific dress-up items to put inside, but that utterly stymied the parents, so I filled it myself--cape, tunic, velvet slippers, hats, glasses, goggles, fake hair, leis, a feather boa, a dog collar.



I helped Ben's class put their quilt together.  Their teacher had gotten a quilt kitfrom Oriental Trading Company that just required tying squares together, but we thought it would look better with a border and a backing.  It's an Earth Day quilt:



And I donated a vintage-y apron and a fabulous Six Gables Original bag:


So I was a wee bit busy leading up to the auction.  Because heaven knows I didn't get started until everyone else was loaded into the car to leave.  Planning ahead is for corporate drones, man.  I'm an artist.

In the midst of all this was the dance recital.  You may remember that we went to this last year as well.  The cute has not faded.  Yea, I shall continue to attend this recital long after my own children have realized that their career in dance is not to be and moved on to other things.  Cute, I'm telling you.  Again, it appeared as if the dance teachers had just gone out and bought some costumes they liked, picked out some music, and then rounded up kids off the street.  And, now that I think about it...we aren't allowed to watch the practices.  I bet they aren't rehearsing at all.  I bet they have them in there knotting Turkish rugs.  Then they just turn the kids out on stageand the parents are convinced that driving in every week and paying 300 bucks a kid was totally worth it. hmpf.  But, well, it was. 

I chaperoned the first Act, since both Julianna and Lily were in the second act.  If, when they'd asked for chaperones,  they'd said, "We need people to hang out back stage and try to keep 12 five-year olds quiet for 30 minutes.  They will want to crawl all over you and you will sit on the cement floor in your pretty summer dress that you got at Goodwill for 4 bucks, even though the tags were still on," there's no way I'd have caved.  But I tend to step in when it becomes clear that no one else will (suck-er) and I ended up in the above scenario.  On the floor, covered in the spandex-bedecked spawn of strangers.  I survived.  Got them on stage to stand there and watch the enthusiastic teenager do their dance while they shuffled listlessly and scanned the audience for Mommy.  Then I got to see MY girls.

Of course, we can't take photos during the performance b/c this is a Serious Thing.  And it's just as well b/c I didn't stand in line at 5 am to get tickets (no.  Really.) and thus was in the balcony again.  After the show, until they got hustled off, the girls got to dance around on the stage a bit:



Not the best quality, but still...CUTE.  Having gone two years in a row, I think I could be a successful choreographer for this show.  There are two kinds of numbers the audience really goes for:
1. Songs we know accompanying adorable small children meandering around.
2. Attempts at actual ballet.  This is far more novel than you'd think.  Most of the dances had a...modern feel.  I feel I should write a letter that goes something like:

Dear YMCA dance people,
Enclosed please find 300 dollars and my commitment to drive my child to a lesson every week.  In exchange I demand the following:
1. a tutu, not some stupid pajama looking ensemble or, god forbid, a jumpsuit.  I want a tutu that either sticks out or hangs to the ankle.  It should be worn with white or pink tights and pink or black ballet shoes.  Hair in a bun.
2. Music that I can remember for either Music Appreciation class or Bugs Bunny.  No howling ballads from modern songstresses.
3. At least once in the dance, the children must hold their arms gracefully over their heads and twirl slowly--on tippytoes--in a circle.
That's all I want.  Thank you
Deana Greenberg




Oh, and here's me in my cutey tooty dress from Goodwill:

Friday, June 1, 2007

the payoff

You know?  Having kids is totally worth it when you get to see your 4 year old dancing around 1980s action figures and singing "Buffalo Soldier." 

At a yard sale today, Lily picked up a box of "Golden Girl" figures.  Sadly, they are not the likenesses of Bea Arthur and clan.  They're these He-Man looking gals with buff bellies and large, dangerous thighs.  And they LOVE Bob Marley.

: Buffalo soldjah!  Dweadlock rasta

: Hey yo yo!  Hey hey yo yo!  Hey yo yo, yo yo-yo yo yo!

: Fighting on arrivah!  Fighting for survivah!

Seriously, you should get yourself a kid.

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