Ah. The Holidays are finally over. We can now pack up the perennial familial misunderstands back into their specially labeled boxes and safely store them in our vacuumed attics until next year. Peace on Earth.
Predictions for 2010 are that I will turn 35, finally. I've been soooo looking forward to that one, for like 30 years or something. I predict I'll really enjoy the sensation of time and youth slipping from my finger tips like a child I'm trying to save from falling off a cliff and being dashed innocently against the jagged rocks below while angry ocean waves foam at the mouth. I can already feel the sensation of failing at that. And hearing the baby scream all the way down and then the sickening thud of my youth. Dead.
I also predict lots of other fun games too. Like the one where the cows get out and dance in the streets and the neighbors knock on our door and tell me how much better they are than me and then inform me that all of my supposedly domesticated animals are loose. Although the freshest patty of miscreant bovines is only hours old, the story feels much much older than that.
Luckily I've got legal equity and lawyers that still love me. One of them looked up Spokane County's policy and found we live in a Live Stock Containment Zone, where any Live Stock outside it's fences should be shot on sight. Live stock, my ass! Tell me what you think: to my untrained ears that kind of sounds like a low tolerance policy. So... that game's getting a little old.
I also predict that we will play until puking the 7 games we feverishly unwrapped last week.
Christmas produced a Pokemon playing frenzy that lasted 6 hours and ended in fisty-cuffs (that was the children!). Pokemon? You ask. Pokemon? At Little Green Gables on the Prairie? Let me explain: Santa thought that our kids were getting a little TOO FAR OUT of the main stream and he thought a Pokemon game would be a way to give them some pop cultural sensibilities to discuss around the tot-sized water coolers.
That evening the ultra-NW-style passive-aggressive game of "Sorry" issued forth even more insincere apologies than my family usually lavishes on our gatherings. That was followed up by a humiliating pummeling by Huckleberry at Farm-opoly. The thing about that and all Monopoly-esc games is that you don't just loose, you are disgraced and shamed, forced to stand on the corner of Sprague and Wall in a sandwhich board that reads "I fully suck at managing money". It's not like Sorry or Uno where your loss is fairly impersonal. Monopoly is where one player serves up a plate full of shit and makes everyone else eat it. At least that's how we play.
Then Coyote and Blue learned how to play chess and Coyote has won it about 20 times now. This is good because he's a very poor looser. In fact, if I were him, I'd question all my wins... they might just be due to the likelihood that no one wants to deal with a loosing Coyote.
Example: after 34 years of loosing, I finally won monopoly (the farm version, again) yesterday. I kicked ass. I mopped up the floor with them and it sucked. Coyote fell to the floor screaming. He threw acreage and barns. He hit. He roared. He whimpered. The Lamentations of Coyote are Category 5 with gusts up to 180 mph. And I couldn't help but feel sorry for myself. I've hated Monopoly and it's relatives. I've never won. I've always been the one to eat shit. And here was Coyote, absolutely ruining my one success! Being a mom can be so unfair.
I honestly didn't even try to win. The second I saw it happening, I started back pedaling. I gave discounts on rent. I forgave loans. But I kept winning the manure pile. And with all that money, who wouldn't put up some big red barns!? I love red barns.
That's the way life is, kids. Success is a double edged sword. That's what Monopoly has taught me; the costs of winning are too great. Better to loose, all the time, at everything. Better yet, lets just not play. Playing sucks.
And so I'd like to wish us all a Happy, Loosing-full New Year. May we never win anything, or succeed at anything, or even try.
Saturday, January 2, 2010
Wednesday, December 23, 2009
Damnestic
My family is due here in just a few hours and I'm cleaning like crazy (except for I'm blogging my pants on fire for one last moment here before invasion). You know, I would feel so fake if only the parts you could see were clean, so I've organized the closets, vacuumed the attic (seriously), and toted a few loads from the storage closet too Goodwill. All that's left is the kitchen, glittering with a universe full of glass slivers.
I screamed and the pyrex 8 x 10 exploded. There's this historic problem with making tea before having any. The wrong burner, a messy kitchen, and the pan from last night's roasted veggies. Blue glass shot all the way down the stairs, around two corners and melted carpet. Sine and co-sign co-mingled somehow with longitudes and latitudes, speed and velocity, and out of this science and math orgy in Huck's brain popped 175 mph shards of glass. Whew. I was only three feet away and fully survived with only a barely burned toe and a prick of glass. If you're going to be randomly executing a series of catastrophic coincidences, make sure you do yourself a few favors, like piling cookie sheets on top of the pan at such an angle that the glass can't shoot into your backside. Nice. I admit I'm a domestic catastrophe. But I've got the cleanest closets full of broken glass that you'll ever see.
As far as the kids chores go, Santa's got long coat tails and this mama's gonna ride them all the way to Christmas. This morning I spent two hours answering the same question, "What else can I do?" Seriously. I ran out of chores so I had them scrub the banisters and spindles. I wondered what could possibly cause this unprecedented spirit of helpfulness. Then Blue asked, "Do you think Santa would really leave a switch or a lump of coal in some one's stocking?"
The chickens have also been further domesticated, although much less willingly. Their free ranging days have been cut short. We all discovered this week that the neighbors scatter chicken scratch all over their yard... for quail. Not for our chickens. They were sour pusses about the clucking visitors. And once the girls knew there was a candy store next to our health food aisle, they started Bee lining first thing in the morning to their yard.
My chickens. My responsibility.
And yet there's something here that seems not completely fair. I mean, wouldn't you wonder about my psychology just a little if I set out dog food for coyotes and then whined that the neighborhood dogs (who are free range) were snacking at my door step?
Without any spare time, incessant darkness closing in, and a budget without wiggle room, I installed a quick and dirty chicken yard. It's saggy and ramshackle and genuinely ugly. Those are the neighbors that always remind us that our yard and house are their view and so I hope they enjoy it.
The chickens moved through the seven stages of grief fairly quickly, however. They seem happy to consistently know where they are. Recently they'd been utterly lost... on the back porch. I found them huddled in the dark, crying. They could see their red lighted coup, but couldn't figure out how to get to it. (Hint: try going down the stairs directly behind you!) King Louis le Cat is thrilled that he can wander outside without getting his eyes pecked out. And although I miss spotting them in the most unusual places, I'm all enjoying my poop-less deck.
In other heartbreaking domestication news, Sukey's halter caused a Satsuma sized callous on her face which made me cry. She has to be tethered otherwise she escapes the "fence", which looked fine when we moved in but has since been revealed as a hoax and/or a hologram inadequate to contain tumble weeds, much less a wild calf. I applied a new halter, one that will hopefully rub differently. But Huck found her last night, slipped free and dancing beneath those million disco balls in the night sky. I tied her again. A bull moose crashed through the neighborhood last week, destroying otherwise good fences and devouring the rosarium. The last thing I need is a well-insured calf to blame it on.
Taming isn't my strong suit. Caging, tethering, time-outing, boiling watering. Ick. It's the wild in us all that resonates in me, that calls my curiosity, that gains my compassion. It's those scribbles outside the lines. But I've somehow elected myself as animal husband. And I suppose it's now my duty to keep my animal... um... wives, in line, safe from themselves, those cars and the entrapping neighbors. oh well. I'm off to scrub the drawers of the fridge. I wonder what I'll shatter and burn this time. My own free spirit, perhaps?
I screamed and the pyrex 8 x 10 exploded. There's this historic problem with making tea before having any. The wrong burner, a messy kitchen, and the pan from last night's roasted veggies. Blue glass shot all the way down the stairs, around two corners and melted carpet. Sine and co-sign co-mingled somehow with longitudes and latitudes, speed and velocity, and out of this science and math orgy in Huck's brain popped 175 mph shards of glass. Whew. I was only three feet away and fully survived with only a barely burned toe and a prick of glass. If you're going to be randomly executing a series of catastrophic coincidences, make sure you do yourself a few favors, like piling cookie sheets on top of the pan at such an angle that the glass can't shoot into your backside. Nice. I admit I'm a domestic catastrophe. But I've got the cleanest closets full of broken glass that you'll ever see.
As far as the kids chores go, Santa's got long coat tails and this mama's gonna ride them all the way to Christmas. This morning I spent two hours answering the same question, "What else can I do?" Seriously. I ran out of chores so I had them scrub the banisters and spindles. I wondered what could possibly cause this unprecedented spirit of helpfulness. Then Blue asked, "Do you think Santa would really leave a switch or a lump of coal in some one's stocking?"
The chickens have also been further domesticated, although much less willingly. Their free ranging days have been cut short. We all discovered this week that the neighbors scatter chicken scratch all over their yard... for quail. Not for our chickens. They were sour pusses about the clucking visitors. And once the girls knew there was a candy store next to our health food aisle, they started Bee lining first thing in the morning to their yard.
My chickens. My responsibility.
And yet there's something here that seems not completely fair. I mean, wouldn't you wonder about my psychology just a little if I set out dog food for coyotes and then whined that the neighborhood dogs (who are free range) were snacking at my door step?
Without any spare time, incessant darkness closing in, and a budget without wiggle room, I installed a quick and dirty chicken yard. It's saggy and ramshackle and genuinely ugly. Those are the neighbors that always remind us that our yard and house are their view and so I hope they enjoy it.
The chickens moved through the seven stages of grief fairly quickly, however. They seem happy to consistently know where they are. Recently they'd been utterly lost... on the back porch. I found them huddled in the dark, crying. They could see their red lighted coup, but couldn't figure out how to get to it. (Hint: try going down the stairs directly behind you!) King Louis le Cat is thrilled that he can wander outside without getting his eyes pecked out. And although I miss spotting them in the most unusual places, I'm all enjoying my poop-less deck.
In other heartbreaking domestication news, Sukey's halter caused a Satsuma sized callous on her face which made me cry. She has to be tethered otherwise she escapes the "fence", which looked fine when we moved in but has since been revealed as a hoax and/or a hologram inadequate to contain tumble weeds, much less a wild calf. I applied a new halter, one that will hopefully rub differently. But Huck found her last night, slipped free and dancing beneath those million disco balls in the night sky. I tied her again. A bull moose crashed through the neighborhood last week, destroying otherwise good fences and devouring the rosarium. The last thing I need is a well-insured calf to blame it on.
Taming isn't my strong suit. Caging, tethering, time-outing, boiling watering. Ick. It's the wild in us all that resonates in me, that calls my curiosity, that gains my compassion. It's those scribbles outside the lines. But I've somehow elected myself as animal husband. And I suppose it's now my duty to keep my animal... um... wives, in line, safe from themselves, those cars and the entrapping neighbors. oh well. I'm off to scrub the drawers of the fridge. I wonder what I'll shatter and burn this time. My own free spirit, perhaps?
Friday, December 18, 2009
Mommy, I need a tissue!
Whew. I just breezed in from my time travel experience. Wow. Sure am glad to be back in this decade again. I went into the past about 60 years, and then caught a glimpse of the future in the next 30, and let me tell you: this is the time to be a woman.
I went through the entrance of a place called Toys R Us (although my computer won't let me do that adorable little backward R). I'd heard that other people with kids make pilgrimages. I think I went once, to return something. Our kids have toys, I assure you (is anyone from CPS reading this?). And some of them are indeed plastic and occasionally trendy. Today, however, instead of entering into a toy store, I seem to have wandered in to a time machine.
After I passed through the corridor of zinging lights and red and green, I found myself smack dab in the 1950's.
There were the pink aisles. And the blue aisles. In the pink aisles I found miniature domestications. Strollers, cribs, easy bake ovens, dolls, dolls, dolls, dolls that made Barbie look progressive. Dolls that poop and pee. Dolls that cry: "Mommy I need a tissue!" (SOOOO cute!!!! Right?). Not wanting risk any misconception that some toys could be gender neutral, they applied thick layers of pink plastic to everything. Pink radios, pink computers, pink guitars, pink micro-scopes (those were the special edition super-weak ones) and pink vomit (that was mine!).
And then on the blue side of the store (divided by an impossibly wide crevasse of aisle) there were all sorts of cool toys, toys that used batteries for something more interesting that crying, toys with buttons (and if those buttons caused poop it was COOL poop), toys without toy diapers, toys that vroomed, toys that built, toys with courage, toys with balls, really.
Call me an old fashioned femi-nazi, but I found this array of crap to be so disheartening, so disgusting, so frighteningly back slid, that I almost started crying myself, "Mommy! I need a tissue!"
What the hell is going on here? I'd seen some glimpses of modern culture through the fingers I've had slapped over my eyes this past decade, but holy crap. Do girls really find changing a pretend diaper to be the most exciting thing they want to do all day? I would expect there to be some girls like this. But that's all there is. That's it. There aren't any other options. There's nothing exciting about girl toys. AT ALL.
I want boy toys myself. Yo, Santa, get me a remote control ANYTHING!! I love that shit. But DON'T GET ME AN EFFING REFRIDGE!! I'm sure I speak for many stifled little girls right now.
The only truly gender neutral thing I found was the McDonald's kiosk, with plastic patties to flip, and a dorky little visor. So, both boys and girls can proudly cross the gender divide, equally earning minimum wage and pimples galore. Thank god it's not all going to crap.
Tuesday, December 15, 2009
Art-eries carry blood from the heart to the body
During teacher conferences a few weeks ago I mentioned to Blue's teacher that Blue is less than thrilled with the art "class." This is taught on Fridays, not by a trained, enthusiastic certificated teacher, but by the regular teacher. She's brilliant at teaching math and reading, but like all of us, she's not perfect at everything. Her art instruction is less than inspired and rather control-freaky. Anti-art. I mentioned being a couple credits short of my art degree (I was a double major until that pink cross appeared on the dip stick, then I shortened my elongated college career by finishing up just the one philosophy-esc major) and so art was kind of important in our house, and Blue probably had absurdly high expectations of art at school. And the teacher burst forth with a plea for me to help her, readily admitting it wasn't her forte. I was impressed she knew herself and her limits so well.
I've been careful with what I involve myself. I'm planning on staying here for an absurdly long time and I have immense difficulty un-extricating myself from volunteer work once I've begun. I've chosen surgical precision infiltration into activities. And people. I want everything I do to ring true. No time fillers. No people fillers. Just people that get me and work that touches me. And until that happens, I'll be fine alone-ish, with my family.
This seemed close enough. So I decided to try it. With the caveat that if it doesn't make my heart sing, I don't do it again.
My heart is still belting out an aria.
To match their Sioux studies, I suggested a shield decorated with a dream animal of protection and festooned with feathers and beads (this I pulled from a book about the Sioux... it's not just some stereo type I gleaned from Tonto, rest assured). We discussed, improvised, planned and developed the project. And then we began.
Where I went during those two hours astonished me. I was there, in this hectic class room. I wasn't overwhelmed or frazzled as I suspected I would be. I was fully present, asking each child if the animal resonated with them. If when they looked at their drawing they saw something they loved. If they felt they were done, or if they wanted to add more. Nothing was bad. Nothing needed erasing, unless they felt it wasn't their best. I encouraged drawings so big and powerful and protective that the plate could not contain them. I wanted them to feel safe enough to be big, and free enough to express the big world within each small child. What I wanted them all to know was that art is about personal expression. And in this there are no rules except: do your best. Art is about our best and truest selves. Whoever you are is beautiful and wonderful and that is the story that art tells, first and foremost. And I got to help them hear their shields tell that story. I took each shield into my hands and praised it for it's specific strengths. And while I did that I explained about colors and textures and dynamics. I got to speak about artists using the unique qualities of their materials, such as the ruffled edges of our paper plates. As long as a teacher is present, art is a collaboration with that teacher, with her values, with her ideals. What I valued and expressed became part of their work. I felt it was my responsibility to guide them to a final work they felt proud of because it was theirs and it was good.
I honestly fell in love with every student and every shield they created. And I was free to do this because the teacher was attending to the business end of 24 3rd graders. The class buzzed with beauty and enthusiasm. I was not overwhelmed with kids, I was overwhelmed with love for 24 perfectly cherish-able beings. My heart could barely contain that much love.
When the students left, the teacher and I pawed through their plates and I tell you, I have never seen such beautiful work. We were both astounded at what they accomplished with some pencils, paper plates, yarn and a little instruction. Such a humble project and such glorious and divine rewards.
Most schools have cut real art programs. Teachers, untrained in this crucial spiritual work, have had to roll up their sleeves and get to it. Some probably love it, relish it as their favorite part of the day. Others welcome help. And I will. I will.
I've been careful with what I involve myself. I'm planning on staying here for an absurdly long time and I have immense difficulty un-extricating myself from volunteer work once I've begun. I've chosen surgical precision infiltration into activities. And people. I want everything I do to ring true. No time fillers. No people fillers. Just people that get me and work that touches me. And until that happens, I'll be fine alone-ish, with my family.
This seemed close enough. So I decided to try it. With the caveat that if it doesn't make my heart sing, I don't do it again.
My heart is still belting out an aria.
To match their Sioux studies, I suggested a shield decorated with a dream animal of protection and festooned with feathers and beads (this I pulled from a book about the Sioux... it's not just some stereo type I gleaned from Tonto, rest assured). We discussed, improvised, planned and developed the project. And then we began.
Where I went during those two hours astonished me. I was there, in this hectic class room. I wasn't overwhelmed or frazzled as I suspected I would be. I was fully present, asking each child if the animal resonated with them. If when they looked at their drawing they saw something they loved. If they felt they were done, or if they wanted to add more. Nothing was bad. Nothing needed erasing, unless they felt it wasn't their best. I encouraged drawings so big and powerful and protective that the plate could not contain them. I wanted them to feel safe enough to be big, and free enough to express the big world within each small child. What I wanted them all to know was that art is about personal expression. And in this there are no rules except: do your best. Art is about our best and truest selves. Whoever you are is beautiful and wonderful and that is the story that art tells, first and foremost. And I got to help them hear their shields tell that story. I took each shield into my hands and praised it for it's specific strengths. And while I did that I explained about colors and textures and dynamics. I got to speak about artists using the unique qualities of their materials, such as the ruffled edges of our paper plates. As long as a teacher is present, art is a collaboration with that teacher, with her values, with her ideals. What I valued and expressed became part of their work. I felt it was my responsibility to guide them to a final work they felt proud of because it was theirs and it was good.
I honestly fell in love with every student and every shield they created. And I was free to do this because the teacher was attending to the business end of 24 3rd graders. The class buzzed with beauty and enthusiasm. I was not overwhelmed with kids, I was overwhelmed with love for 24 perfectly cherish-able beings. My heart could barely contain that much love.
When the students left, the teacher and I pawed through their plates and I tell you, I have never seen such beautiful work. We were both astounded at what they accomplished with some pencils, paper plates, yarn and a little instruction. Such a humble project and such glorious and divine rewards.
Most schools have cut real art programs. Teachers, untrained in this crucial spiritual work, have had to roll up their sleeves and get to it. Some probably love it, relish it as their favorite part of the day. Others welcome help. And I will. I will.
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