Monthly Archives: April 2010

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At this moment

Tiny is sitting at the table eating her blueberry yogurt by dipping a Tuscan Herb cracker into it. Hey, whatever floats your boat. She is wearing a “rella” (translation: dress, so named because Cinderella wears a dress). She has worn a “rella” every day for the last week. If she’d had her way, it would have been the actual Cinderella costume, but that costume is too big and she trips in it constantly unless I bustle it up.

So “rella”s it is. The dress she’s wearing today is a striped polo dress – it makes her look like a little Margot Tenenbaum, minus the eyeliner.

If I had my druthers she’d wear striped polo dresses every day. Both girls would. Alas, there aren’t that many striped polo dresses to be found.

Z has dressed herself in an oversized Cars t-shirt and blue comfy pants. She and Tiny are now playing out on the porch, admiring her flowers.

I admire them too. Except for the dying grass. I don’t admire that. What you can’t see, on the left hand side of the picture, is a gigantic, towering Chinese cabbage plant, overflowing with yellow flowers. It’s really pretty.

I’m still wearing pajamas, but that will change soon. We may have a little friend coming over to play today, so I should get myself and my house whipped into company shape.

Later today I’ll finish up working on a project I’m really enjoying- one that’s just for me. ME! :) I found a bunch of gorgeous 1920s themed papers, and wanted to do something with them, but really I just wanted to LOOK at them. So I’m making a themed spinner.

It’s getting close to finished, but still needs work. It’s got me all inspired though, and combined with paintings like this from the exhibit we saw at the museum yesterday,  it has me wanting to pull out my couple years old murder mystery novel manuscript (set in the 1920s) and take another look at it. We’ll have to see about that.

Huh. I thought I had more to say, but apparently I don’t. I’m going to go get ready for my day.

What’s going on with you at this moment?

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Random thoughts

Are you ready for summer? We are.

She would wear this everyday if I’d let her. She won’t be so eager once she starts swim lessons, but that’s a fight for another day. :) Our “summer” starts in a couple of weeks- preschool ends and swim lessons start- I’m excited. I love our preschool and the fun things we do with our friends for adventure days, but it will be nice to just have time to be outside and play. (Of course, seeing as I have to have everything organized, we still have a “schedule” for the summer – lots of pool days and park days and beach days and adventures. But it’s a lot more open  than the non-summer months have been.)

I really think my Auntie (and my favorite Uncle and cutie pants cousin too…)  should come visit me for a weekend (at least) and go to the beach with us…. I’m just sayin’….

I really feel like I should be heading to bed, it’s late (for me) but I totally scored today and took a 2 hour nap, which I think may doom me for falling asleep at any normal time. But who knows, maybe it won’t.

I’m reading some really interesting books right now- Come Be My Light by Mother Teresa, which is fascinating- I’ve not read much about her before; and Keeping House: The Litany of Everyday Life by Margaret Kim Peterson, which is hands down one  of the best books I’ve ever read. It looks at the spiritual implications and ramifications of homemaking and housekeeping, and as  my dearly loved Brandy expressed about it- it’s extremely validating. Peterson puts into words so many things I’ve felt, and explores connections that I immediately recognize as truth.  My favorite part so far – when speaking about the scripture in  Matthew about feeding the hungry and clothing the naked, and “as you did it to the least of these my brethren, you did it to me” :

“There is a tendency, I think, on the part of those of us who are well fed, clothed, and housed to imagine that the needy people to whom Jesus refers in Matthew 25 are people we don’t know- the sort of people who are served at homeless shelters and soup kitchens, at which we ought therefore to volunteer at least occasionally. But housework is about feeding and clothing and sheltering people who, in the absence of that daily work, would otherwise be hungry and ill-clad and ill-housed.”

Isn’t that stunning?

Oh, and this too:

“God’s own presence with his people is mediated through dwelling places and domestic activities. In the book of Genesis we read of how the Lord appeared to Abraham as he sat at the door of his tent beside the oaks of Mamre. God’s appearing took the form of a visit from three strangers whom Abraham and Sarah welcomed by preparing and serving a meal of bread and meat and curds, and as they welcomed these strangers they welcomed God himself and became recipients of God’s promise and blessing.”

I love it.

Truly a random thought- did you know I never actually learned to type? Like I never took a class or anything. I just wrote hundreds of papers in high school and college and by the middle of my freshman year in college (I’m fairly sure), my fingers had the muscle memory from all the hunt and peck. I have no idea how fast I type now, but it’s not too shabby. Like I said- random.

We just started watching Modern Family- it’s cute. And we’re catching up on Doctor Who, which is fantabulous. I love that show. Not at all convinced I’m going to love the new Doctor, but I thought that about David Tennant too, and I absolutely adore him.

Ooh, I’m also reading poetry by Kay Ryan, current U.S. poet laureate, and absolutely LOVING it. I’m not huge on poetry- it has to hit the right tone for me- but she’s awesome. Snarky, smart, slightly biting- perfect.

Polish and Balm

Dust develops

from inside

as well as

on top when

objects stop

being used.

No unguent

can soothe

the chap of

abandonment.

Who knew

the polish

and balm in

a person’s

simple passage

among her things.

We knew she

loved them

but not what

love meant.

So lovely.

I bought new sandals. They’re awesome and my toenails are painted red in their honor.

I really want another s’mores cupcake like the one B brought home for me the other day. It was super yummy. And it had toasted marshmallow frosting.  That’s just awesome.

I really don’t want to plan out dinners for the next week. Anyone have any great ideas of new (fairly easy) recipes I can try?

I’m running out of random thoughts, so I will tie this up with some cuteness.

All I will say about the contents of that cup is that while it should have kept her awake, it did not. Thank goodness. :)

She is not, in fact, re-inacting the Monty Python Silly Walks sketch, although I can see how you’d think that.

Really, I think this is the absolute cutest, to die for picture ever of all time:

Grandpas are just the best. :)

Hopefully that was sufficiently entertaining and didn’t bore anyone to death.  I think I may be ready to fall asleep. And I want to get my booty out of bed tomorrow morning and do some yoga, so I better get to it.

What’s going on with you? :)

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More pictures, which feature Tiny to a disproportionate degree.

Easter dresses

Little miss in her dress

She’s a proper lady even when she’s not all dressed up. Check out that raised pinky!

This was from yesterday when it was raining. Notice how she’s crammed herself in between those flower pots to get as close to the rain as she can. She’s a crackup.

Today the girls found the only puddle left from yesterday to splash in.

How’s your day?

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Getting outside

Over at my other blog, I’m documenting my participation in a challenge related to Children and Nature month. The challenge is to get your kids outside every day and post a picture each day from your time outside. I started yesterday.

Here are some pictures from our time outside today in the rain. Tiny discovered the joy of splashing in puddles, Z found a leaf bigger than her head, we met a worm, and Z bonded with a snail.

And yes, my daughter is a tree hugging hippy. She can’t help it.

I love getting out in the rain, and the girls have been loving getting outside. And it makes for some very entertaining pictures. :)

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Bookity bookity books

I feel like I haven’t written about books forever, and it appears that, in fact, I haven’t. And I’m not really in the mood to do so now, so we’ll just see how this goes. :)

Exterminate all the Brutes by Sven Lindqvist  : I think I may have written about this before, but I can’t remember. It was Excellent. And I do mean Excellent with a capital e.  Lindqvist traces the roots of the Jewish Holocaust back through the history of European colonization (specifically in Africa) and sheds light on a long, bloody tradition of genocide. Reading it, you can see the environment that made such a ghastly idea (the Holocaust) make sense- not just to a warped mind like Hitler’s, but to a country full of people. They were “just” doing the same thing that had been done many times before, and it was “acceptable” all the other times; it just hadn’t been smack dab in the middle of Europe before…. It was fascinating to think about how we classify some events as horrific and others as just parts of history, depending on where they took place and to whom. This would have been a great book to have discussed in college, but back then I hated colonization theory, and probably wouldn’t have paid attention.

Horns by Joe Hill : This is the 3rd book by Hill and it exceeds his previous work by about a mile and a half. His previous work showed a lot of promise- this gets really close to fulfilling that promise.  It’s the story of a man who wakes up one morning, after visiting the site of his girlfriend’s gruesome murder (a crime which everyone assumes he committed, but he didn’t), with horns growing out of his head and the ability to make people speak the truth. He decides to use that ability to solve the mystery of her death, and learns all kinds of things he didn’t want to know in the process.

Hill is the son of Stephen King, and I can’t help but wonder if his writing is reflective of what his father’s would have been without the copious drugs and alcohol. The horror elements, the sense of the fantastic is there, just as in King’s books, but there’s a measure of control that King’s earlier books lack. As such, King’s books have an edge, a feeling of being just …this close… from careening out of control, which lends an excitement to the reading.  But Hill’s craft is dead on, and if his horror scenes are missing a touch of the “icky icky icky, but the book down now!!” (yes, that’s a technical term), he more than makes up for it in his depictions of interpersonal relationships. I kept having flashes of Jamie S. Rich’s books as I read Horns – the young romance, the relationship between brothers – to a degree, this book is Have You Seen the Horizon Lately gone horribly, horribly awry. (And that’s a huge compliment- Rich sets the benchmark for believably written romance as far as I’m concerned.)

Overall, I highly enjoyed it. I’d recommend it very conditionally to some- lots of language and the gruesomeness you’d expect in a horror novel about a man with horns growing out of his head.

The Screwtape Letters by CS Lewis : I read this for book club, and goodness, why hadn’t I read this before? It’s seriously so good. I marked up a good 95% of the book; honestly, it would have been easier to just mark the things that didn’t stand out.

Writing Motherhood by Lisa Garrigues: This is also excellent. It’s basically a writing course in a book – about writing about motherhood. Full of really insightful ideas and prompts, it makes me want to get out a notebook and start writing every day. Not that I’ve done that, but it’s coming. :)

We Never Talk about My Brother by Peter S. Beagle: This is a collection of really solid short stories. The first, Uncle Chaim and Aunt Rifke and the Angel is absolutely breathtaking. It’s the story of an artist who is visited by an angel, sent to be his muse, as told by the artist’s young nephew. It is such a gorgeous story of forgiveness and forgiving oneself. Without giving things away, I’ll just say that the following quote comes after one of the characters says that the cold someone felt after touching them is the result of the (literal) hell they have been inhabiting.

“I touched you. I touched your shame and your grief- as raw today, I know, as on the day your love died. But the cold..the cold is yours. The loneliness, the endless guilt over what you should have done, the endless turning to and fro in empty darkness… none of that comes from God. You must believe me, my friend.”

Goodness, I love it. The rest of the stories are excellent as well.

The Remarkable Soul of Women by Dieter Uchtdorf : This is really just a printed version of Pres. Uchtdorf’s awesome conference talk about creation and compassion, and as such it’s only about 45 pages, but it’s awesome. The book design is lovely, and it’s one of my favorite talks ever.

Calm and Compassionate Children by Susan Usha Dermond : I love this book passionately. Really, I do. It’s full of great ideas about how to help kids learn to be calm and relaxed (even in the midst of strenuous activity) and how to teach them compassion. It’s so much more than just a parenting philosophy book – inspiring but ultimately hard to put into practice- Dermond provides concrete, practical steps to incorporating these concepts into every day life. We’ve already tried some of them, and at least today, saw a drastic change (in whininess levels, fit throwing, overall negative attitude) . I can’t help but think that will continue.  I HIGHLY recommend this one.

I keep thinking I’ve missed a book, but I can’t figure out what it could be. I think it’s because I’m STILL reading Positive Discipline, I may be reading it until I die. Anyway, this brings me up to 17 books this year, which is further ahead than I need to be on my way to my 50 books goal. I have at least 5 anxiously awaiting my attention, as well as a book club book, so I need to get reading!

Tell me, what are you reading?