So the boys and I were watching "Blackadder Goes Forth," which is of course set during WWI, and which you should absolutely see if you've not yet had the opportunity.
Partial transcript from the episode "Goodbyeeee!":
George: All right, so, what do we do now?
Baldrick: Can I do my war poem?
Edmund: How hurt would you be if I gave the honest answer, which is "No, I'd rather
French-kiss a skunk"?
Baldrick: So would I, sir!
At which Rhys pipes up: "What's a French kiss?'
I am preparing an answer, when Fisher busts in for me, with an air of authority which is impossible to reproduce here:
"It's when you kiss someone on both cheeks."
Thank goodness for children who enjoy answering other children's questions.
(Wow. You can actually watch the whole episode in question here.)
Wouldn't that be a great, by which I mean awful, title for a fantasy novel? I think I'll write it, once I get done with the current (ha) one (ha ha). Which I did write almost 5000 words on yesterday, so shut up. (My new Cunning Plan: finish a book, sell it, make money from it, then be a stay-at-home mommy and spend some time doing genu-wine kid stuff, which sounds wonderfully tempting right now but would probably drive me crazy about three weeks into the actual endeavor).
It's been a rough few weeks here at Chez Newman, as I think I just typed in an e-mail to a recently-made-former colleague. Job loss, rain rain rain, Jim being asked not to come in yesterday because there weren't enough reservations to justify the presence of so many employees, a complete & total embargo on anyone ever calling me back about any job ever, and then as a capper I had to go watch 28 Days Later and Pan's Labyrinth in fairly rapid and entirely depressing succession. So now there are visions of Rage-infested Spanish Fascist soldiers dancing like so many blood-leaking sugarplums in my head. And I am sitting in a cafe working on a laptop computer with no functional battery and a keyboard that transmits signals about 4 seconds after I actually press the key, and there is an old deafish lady at the next table screaming "Memoir! MEMOIR!!" at her old deafish husband, which is a tiny shred of fabulousness in an otherwise grim outlook.
And now, an anecdote.
The place: Fisher & Rhys' bedroom, last night around 11 o'clock. (Bedtime, schmedtime.) The situation: both boys are tucked into bed; Fisher is sobbing loudly, having just recently fallen down the stairs, barked his shin and gotten scolded for yelling "GET ME A F*CKING JACKHAMMER NOW!" at me. (Get it? Jackhammer... so he can destroy the offending stairs? Get it?)
Rhys (holding Fisher's baby doll out to Fisher): Look, Fisher, it's Dr. Fraaaanklin... coming to fix you up and make you all beeeeetter! (makes tickling motions with baby doll) Tickle, tickle, tickle!
Me: Rhys, I don't know if that's the wisest thing to do when you're sitting next to someone with that much clobbering power. (N.B.: "Clobbering power" is said in a sort of faux-monster truck announcer voice... think "Sunday, Sunday, Sunday!!")
Fisher: (sobs degenerate into throaty howls, from which he will not be dissuaded, and so he continues to hide under the covers and cry while the rest of us "tell the day," i.e., share our favorite parts of the day with each other)
Me: (rubbing Fisher's back) Sweetie, are you sad because your leg really hurts?
Fisher: No, because you said a mean thing... you said I have pummeling power and I DON'T WANT PUMMELING POWER!
Me: (massive maternal guilt wave) Oh, Sweetie, I'm sorry... I know you've been trying really hard lately not to pummel anyone.
Fisher (face pushed into pillow): I have! I've been trying so hard!
So after some reassurances and my warm glow that Fisher is apparently disavowing all forms of violence... yeah, like half an hour later I was back in there making Fisher stop forcing Rhys' face into the mattress while Rhys squeaked in terror. Pummeling, no... smothering, yes, apparently. Sigh.
Also, what should my parents name this concrete-colored cat who appears to have adopted them?
So in the interests of attaining cultural literacy, the boys and I watched Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure tonight. Yes, possibly one of the stupidest movies of the '80s, but still fairly entertaining.
Afterwards:
Me (thinking this would be a fine opportunity for the boys to show off some of their homeschooled history whizkidishness): "So if you guys could go back in time and pick anyone you wanted to bring to the present with you, who would it be?"
Fisher: "Besides Baron von Richthofen? Ummm... probably Alexander the Great... and Pompey... and Joan of Arc, she's a pretty cool historical figure."
Rhys: "How far back in time does it have to be?"
Me: "I don't think there's a limit... who were you thinking of?"
The scene: the checkout desk at our local library.
It's two minutes 'til closing. We're the last people in line to get our books.
We step up to the counter. There are two librarians working; one is Native American, one is African-American. (This point is shortly to become salient.) We know both women by sight, since we're at the library two or three times a week.
One of the librarians is checking us out; the other is checking in a large stack of returned books and videos.
FISHER (loudly, as he says all things): Those are all kinds of cats, aren't they?
ME (distracted, dealing with toppling heap of books): What are all kinds of cats, honey?
FISHER: Toms... Coons... I don't know about Mammies, though?
ME (whipping head around with an audible snap): WHAT?
ME (feeling the eyes of the librarians, and everyone else in the vicinity, hot upon me): Uh Fisher those are names that were derogatory names for black people, you know, in history, that people used to use as insults, and now most people know that it's not OK to use those words, and uh...
FISHER: But it's like a Maine Coon, right?
ME: (honestly, I don't remember what I said at this point... my main objective was to get out of the library before I had to explain what a Mammy was)
So obviously what I said/did was probably what not what I would have said/done if I hadn't been embarrassed and flustered... but I guess I should be happy that Fisher had no idea that any of those were racially-related words, right?
the horrible pukey feeling I get whenever I see, hear or run
across a mention of Sarah Palin. I think I've figured out why I have
such a viscerally negative reaction to her--it has to do with the
perfecter-than-thou mommies at MOPS who offer up chunks of godly advice
like "if your three-year-old son isn't potty-trained yet, try sticking
him in a cold shower whenever he messes his pants"--but I'm trying
really freaking hard not to dwell on it.
feeling helpless and paralyzed about anything career-, goal- or money-related. Can't someone just come tell me what to do? I
promise I'll do it, or at least try.
freaking out over the smudgy light switches which have been
bothering the hell out of me for like four weeks now so you'd think I'd
just grab a Magic Eraser and wipe them down already. God.
the waves of self-loathing that wash over me whenever I look down at my big ol' muffin top jelly belly. Which I then try to push back into the generalized tide of dissatisfaction with the help of a nice big slab of cold leftover roast beef out of the refrigerator.
Worth it:
hearing Fisher and Rhys cracking up over the dopey homemade Lego Star Wars videos on YouTube.
snuggling up with the boys for our daily read-aloud of a chapter from the Landmark biography of Alexander the Great (how retro is that?).
listening to Rhys read through another Little Bear story (this time, my favorite: "Little Bear Goes to the Moon") with growing confidence and a genuine giggle at the silly parts.
having two boys (three if you count Jim) who genuinely appreciate my cooking and get all excited about corn dog casserole.
going for a solo stroll through the neighborhood on a perfectly beautiful almost-fall day, earbuds screwed into my ears, Beck's "Peaches and Cream" cranking, crows and squirrels scolding as I pass under their tree-limb stakeouts.
wriggling on my belly through the narrow spooky part of Ape Cave Lava Tube and emerging on the other side to a constellation of flashlights in my face.
lifting weights and doing pushups 'til my arms get all trembly and I'm reminded how good it feels just to move.
spendingtwo and a half days in Vegas with two of my favorite co-workers learning awesome stuff about Photoshop on the company dime... and picking up a stellar Betsey Johnson coat in the process.
getting Lightroom 2, Photoshop CS3 and Photomatix HDR tone-mapping software all working together in beautiful harmony.
waking up half an hour before I have to be out of bed and spending that half hour with my head snuggled up on my sweetie's shoulder and, um, ahem.
discovering that the boys have a previously-unsuspected love for the music of Kenny Rogers. (Shut up. Kenny Rogers rocks.)
moments like this (rooty hair, smudgy-faced boy and all):
And not a moment too soon. I was getting awful twitchy without them.
Tonight we returned to our regular routine. Jeopardy!, Simpsons, dinner. Except usually I make dinner while they're watching Simpsons but tonight it was the one where the family goes to the Frying Dutchman restaurant and tells tales of nautical adventure while they're waiting for their food to materialize. So I had to hang out and watch that one, 'cause it's freakin' hilarious.
Anyway, two things of note. Well, three.
1. We had all-Oregon pasta for dinner tonight. Cherry tomatoes and zucchini from our garden; hazelnuts from some local grove. All sauteed in butter, tomatoes slightly squashed so they'd lose their structural integrity and thicken the sauce thereby; hazelnuts roughly chopped and stirred in at the last moment; the whole mass served over capellini with plenty of grated Parmesan. (As Fisher helpfully pointed out, neither the pasta nor the Parmesan was technically from Oregon, thereby spoiling the all-local conceit somewhat. Thaaaaanks, Fisher.)
2. Fisher soliloquized during dinner tonight about his favorite bands. "I like Mastodon, and Black Sabbath, and Dethklok, and the White Stripes, and Metallica..." Me: "So you mostly like hard rock and heavy metal." Fisher: "Yeah, except for Of Montreal. Oh, and Abba. Money, money, money/ Always sunny/ In the rich man's world."
3. Speaking of music: we saw Radiohead night before last at the White River Amphitheatre located on Muckleshoot tribal land in beautiful Auburn, Washington. If you're thinking of seeing a show there for any reason: don't. A Citysearch reviewer summed it up perfectly: "I'm not sure if this is the Native Americans' way of getting back at
the general public for past wrongs, but if it is, it's ingenious." There was no tailgating allowed in the parking lots, and this policy was enforced by uniformed cops patrolling the aisles; the "beer garden" offered the opportunity to pay $8 for a can of Budweiser and drink it while standing around in a doubly-fenced-off cattleyard-style environment; the post-concert crowd management consisted of packing hundreds of people into a narrow concrete alley and not letting us move--of course, no explanation was offered for why we were being forced to stand there and when we would be allowed to go; the hordes of local cops who were unavailable for crowd management proceeded to direct us into a random detour that resulted in us inching along in bumper-to-bumper traffic for 45 minutes before rejoining the same traffic-clogged two-lane road we'd been on originally. Fortunately, Radiohead themselves were freakin' awesome and put on a super-swell show; that said, I'd tear out my own toenails with pliers before I'd go to another show at White River. And I made a set list, which I'll post tomorrow along with photos. Maybe.
Probably some of this just falls into the "you're a bad parent" camp as well.
1. Your kids yell "Five-oh! Five-oh!" when a police car drives by. (You taught this to them yourself, because you thought it would be funny.)
2. You wholeheartedly applaud the University of California's decision, recently upheld by the courts, to disallow religious curriculum from being used to fulfill science course requirements. Because "Goddidit" is not a scientific explanation. Also, since you used to work for a UC campus' admissions department, you are fully aware that any homeschooled student admitted to UC is there as the result of an Admission by Exception decision, and so it seems silly to you for homeschoolers to care what sorts of curriculum UC will or won't accept anyway.
3. When people post to the homeschooling e-mail lists to which you subscribe with missives such as this:
Hi ,
I recently joined this group.I have a one 4.5 year old Son and 2 year
old daughter and fairly new to the HS world.My son recently started
writing and he would love to have penpal too.We are in NE .If anybody
is interested pl email me too.
you think to yourself, "Ought this person really to be in charge of the education of other people?"
Because a good homeschooler would think, "Wow, it's so great that this parent has decided to take responsibility for her own children's education, and she'll probably find that she learns just as much as they do in the process." And a bad homeschooler thinks that learning alongside your kids works great for things like the details of World War I aircraft or the plots of the thirty-eleven Shakespeare plays you haven't read yet or heck, even the basics of organic chemistry... but not so much for the essentials of freakin' English literacy.
4. Your intended curriculum for the first year of full-time two-kid homeschooling: math, phonics, grammar, art history, geography, vocabulary study, science science science. Your in-practice curriculum for the first year of full-time two-kid homeschooling: Legos, math when they show an interest in it, library books.
Your intended curriculum for the second year of full-time two-kid homeschooling: Legos, high school geometry when they show an interest in it, library books.
5. You have a nanny. What kind of homeschooler has a freakin' nanny?
6. Your nanny is a pierced, tattooed, Orange County-originating, horse-training lesbian who's majoring in mortuary studies. Your kids adore her and are sad when she's not around. (So are you. She's lots of fun.)
7. Your kids already have their first tattoo designs picked out. (Fisher's: a heart with "Mama Didn't Love Me" written across it--he picked this up from Raising Arizona. Rhys's: a unicorn with a skull impaled on its horn--he made this completely up out of his awesome little head.)
8. You let your kids watch "Metalocalypse," but only the episode where Nathan Explosion tries to get his GED and Murderface competes in the Celebrity Spelling Bee. Because it reinforces the importance of education.
9. Your kids have memorized multiple Eddie Izzard routines. Especially the Death Star Canteen one, which I know I've posted here before but is really worth revisiting. (N.B.: When reciting this one, Fisher voluntarily, and rather inexplicably, replaces all the swear words with "bleep." Rhys does no such thing.)
10. You've been putting off buying a very cool-sounding chemistry curriculum because it costs $30, but you saw an iPod boom box for $50 in the Target ad in today's newspaper and think that owning it would add immeasurably to your kids' lives.
11. Your kids are never, ever home. Right now they're driving with Grandma and Grandpa back from Colorado. They've been gone for almost two weeks. They were gone for two weeks earlier this summer. They were gone this spring, and just before Christmas, and you think last fall too. And every time they're gone, it sucks a little more. (Maybe there's a glimmering of hope for you after all. Maybe you could still turn into one of those good homeschooling parents whose children are never more than three feet from the shelter of her denim jumper.)
Tuesday afternoon, we packed up the giant orange suitcase and the two crammed-full-of-books backpacks and the large stuffed cheetah (Schwarz) and the small stuffed jaguar?/leopard? (D.C.) and the seven-year-old blond kid and the nine-year-old brunet kid into the Land Rover and headed to the airport. And at about 6:03, roughly 13 minutes past the scheduled takeoff time, our boys lifted off... up, up and away for a week and a half in Colorado with Jim's parents.
That night was OK. We went to Ground Kontrol and played video games with our friends Howard and Suzanne. (Ground Kontrol is great... most of the video games are either vintage, e.g., Ms. Pac-Man and the thoroughly inexplicable Tempest, or hyper-violent; those are the only kinds I like.) It was Rock Band night, and Howard and Jim, performing as "Tri-X," nailed a Boston song (I can't remember which one it was; all Boston songs sound alike to me). I drank two Mike's Hard Lemonades (shut up and stop laughing), felt courageous and dragged Howard, Jim and some random drummer-type guy on stage to perform "Debaser." High point: a crowd of people I didn't know shouting "I am un CHIEN! ANDALUSIAN!" along with me. Then I was embarrassed and we left.
We went to Kelly's Olympian (best, and possibly noisiest, bar in Portland). We went to City Grill's late-night happy hour and ate delicious spring rolls and seared tombo tuna. Howard and Suzanne went home and Jim and I went and played Scrabble at Billy Ray's. A fine time was had by all.
And since then, it's been way.too.freakin.quiet.
No lengthy monologues on the merits of various WWI aircraft. No bickering over LEGOs. No one to eat dinner with. No one to play cards with. No one to read me "Little Bear" or to beg for just one more chapter of Redwall.
Today, I was out of bed by quarter 'til 8 (early enough, when you consider I was up 'til 2:30 again). Jim had a day-long photo shoot and was gone half an hour later. I cleaned up our bedroom. I washed the dining room table, which stays much cleaner when no one is smearing yogurt and cereal detritus over it every morning. I took out the recycling and scrubbed out the garbage can. I made dinner (our Used Meat steak is happily braising away in the Crock-Pot). I washed two loads of laundry. I did a bunch of work stuff, re-tidied my already fairly tidy desk area and caught up on some friends' blogs. And all that was over an hour ago and I've done nothing worthwhile since.
It is too quiet. I can't concentrate.
But I'm a good daughter-in-law for sharing my little crazymakers regardless of the negative impact their absence has on my sanity, right? Right?
Oh, and here's the real Pixies performing the real "Debaser."
So the bug of makingness has apparently bitten me, and things are being made as a result. Not useful things, such as houses or money; not lofty things, such as charitable donations or Life Goals. No; these are crafty things and crafty things alone. And since I am pretty much devoid of any hand-eye coordination or natural artistic talent, they are not necessarily--not at all, really--beautiful things; but still, I made them, or am making them, or plan to make them soon.
1. We own a pair of Pyrex measuring cups. One holds four cups, the other two. What they do not hold, though, is up well to regular dishwashing. (Can you parse that sentence?) So we were stuck with a pair of measuring cups with illegible measurements marked on them, which were just about as useful as a bunch of condoms run through a perforator. Then, as I was in the process of adding "measuring cups" to our Target shopping list, it occurred to me that I had a bunch of Vitrea 160 glass markers hanging around somewhere. "Hanging around somewhere" proved to mean, excitingly, in the well-labeled "Paints" drawer in my office; in other words, exactly where they were supposed to be. (So rare! So satisfying in a housewifely sense!)
I took marker in hand and traced over the faded remnants of the measurement lines; and now, rather than having to shell out $6 or whatever for new cups, we have amateurish-looking much-used cups with bright green and pink lines and numbers scrawled all over them. Hooray for thrifty progress! Now I can feel less bad about having paid $5.75 apiece for those markers however many years ago!
2. I scrapbooked! Dang! It's a point of pride with me to never ever scrapbook! And it's a layout for publication (illustrating the use of LumaPix FotoFusion, which is a really nice photo layout tool esp. for non-scrapbooky types), so I can't post it here (thereby giving you a peek at the ugliest layout to ever see print), but I did use a photo that's too swell not to share.
What a handsome, smiley guy. Chock-full of happy, that kid.
3. Tonight is, once again, Portland Spelling Bee night. And tonight those of us who are previous champions(polishes nails on shirt) are supposed to wear our official champion T-shirts. But the one I wanted to wear, 'cause it's black (the newer ones are white) is a size men's large and looks rather like a burqa when wrapped about my willowy (ha) frame. So I'm following the directions in the unfortunately-named but very inspiring book Generation T* to turn this blah-ish garment into a thoroughly styley creation. Cutting out the sides, poking some holes and re-lacing it up with some swell ribbon, which I still need to go and buy.
4. This is not my craft, but the boys': Fisher and Rhys gave Jim a Charger model car for his birthday. And today was the day to paint it. They all sat down with wee bottles of highly toxic Testor paint and started swabbing away. Then, for some reason, Jim decided to come check his e-mail while the boys were still painting. Not 30 seconds later, Rhys came running in and yelled "Fisher has a silver mustache!" Yes, yes; he did in fact have a giant silver swipe across his top lip. He'd scratched his nose with paint on his fingers. Probably would've happened even if Jim had been out there supervising... yeah, maybe. (The paint came right off. We'll let you know if he exhibits any brain damage. And I really hope we don't find him "accidentally" sticking more paint under his nose... ah, parenthood.)
*seriously, if you have lots of T-shirts hanging around that you never wear 'cause T-shirts are kind of boring and ill-fitting, you neeeeed this book.
(cool series, BTW) about volcanoes.
(how retro is that?).