More Worms:

"I have noticed," says my son, "that Star Wars is getting VERY popular."  You noticed, did you?

I woke up to find my husband standing forlornly in front of his dresser, half dressed, and I knew it must be laundry day. 

I want to thank all the parents who felt obligated to put full-sized chocolate bars in my children's trick-or-treat bags.  Because I felt obligated to remove them.  And hide them in dark corners around the house to eat bits of when no one's looking.  My sanity thanks you. 

Why do we seem to think socks are disposable?  I didn't buy disposable socks.

I'm having to keep my new box of Band-Aids on my person.  There is no place new Band-Aids can hide...

Just figured out how to play "Go Down, Moses" on the piano.  I have now reached the summit of civilization.  (It had to be done, my family was getting sick of "Shortnin' Bread".)

The kitchen and the schoolroom are in two different time zones, somehow.  Not lunchtime in here yet?  It might be in the kitchen...

It's not a fairy wand, it's a gun.  Never mind that it's got a pink star, sequins, and feathers.  It's still a gun.

I think I may have gained 1/4" in height just from all the modeling clay on the bottom of my shoes.

The ibuprofen I just took had a candy coating.  Seems like a poor choice. 

We need a silverware subscription.  Don't need fancy, don't need expensive, just keep 'em comin.  (Where do all the spoons go?)

"I snuggled up next to you last night because I was cold, but you were gooey, so I moved away again..."  Poison ivy is ruining my marriage!

I just found my copy of Seven Habits of Highly Effective People on the bathroom floor soaked with pee.  Seems...less than effective. 

That delicious moment when your feet are released from socks and shoes makes it worth having to wear them all day. 

My six-year-old daughter is writing a book about beauty secrets.  "But I only have three secrets," she says.  Give it time, sis.

This is the time of day I start eating chocolate chips.  By the handful.  Alone.  Locked in the pantry. 

Well, if Barbie didn't have such chewy feet....

Life lesson:  There will never be any red raspberries if you eat all the green ones.

My four-year-old wants to know if "dogs can smell your beer".  I honestly wouldn't know.

The fact that one of my little boys calls them "fireflies" and the other calls them "butterflies" doesn't really make them any less icky than the houseflies they really are.

Sweeping up 20lbs of imported Basmati rice.  I feel like such a gourmet!

Wondering if they sell body armor in my size...

If it doesn't stop raining, Home Depot is going to sell completely out of gopher wood.

I'm 100% convinced that hell is gleaming white, with a big, bright light shining right in your face.  And the devil doesn't have a pitchfork, he has a little round mirror and a tiny sharp hook, and he's laughing and saying, "Open wider, please..."

It has rained for a week, and plans to rain for another week.  It's all or nothing with you, ain't it, rain?

I know nothing about Fiona Ritchie except her voice.  Someday I will marry her because of that voice.

Poop on the floor is an accident.  Poop on the walls is an insult.

Words to live by:  If you're feeling down, maybe you just need to mop. 

I had a dream where I was trapped inside an orphanage, the only adult among hundreds of children whose parents must have been criminally insane.  Wait...that WASN'T A DREAM???

I just thought of a great joke.  What do you call a male black widow?  Sucker.

You can tell the time of day at my house by the nudity level of my little boys.  Fully dressed-8 am, half-dressed-12 noon, completely naked-5 pm.

My son says that the fact that, before Copernicus, people believed the Earth was the center of the solar system, "Sounds a little like pride."  Indeed. 

"No woman shall touch the man fridge."  A commandment I didn't know existed.  Don't worry, I know now. 

Coming out of the library today, my son sighed and said, "I have grown fond of those library workers."  I honestly don't know whose child this is.

There are teeth marks in my eyeshadow compact.  I'd be okay with it if I weren't sure eyeshadow is just empty calories.

Mint+eyeball.  A stroke of unbelievable stupidity.

Mint+ice cream.  A stroke of undeniable genius.

Did you see the meteor showers last night?  We sat out long after dark in the back of the truck, drinking lemonade and wishing on falling stars.  I couldn't think of anything to wish for.    

Photoshop 5.5 is like my old old old pair of sneakers.  I know they have holes and they're ugly, but they fit.

Fantastic Photoshop CS4 trial ran out this week, and I've been unable to get my tech crew to buy the new one or reinstall the old one.  So I can't tweak my pictures to show them to you.  Cracking my knuckles to go do some convincing, just hang in there...

Today most of the children in the county are going back to school.  Am I jealous?  My 8-year-old is sorting laundry in the buff.  It's a toss-up. 

2 little boys + 1 bottle of bleach + 5 minutes of less-than-100%-vigilance=1 biiig cleanup job.  (For tomorrow.)

Fixed dishwasher.  Widespread relief.

Has it ever occurred to the people who write "Do Not Eat" on little packages of silica gel that the only people who'd eat silica gel in the first place can't read?

Broken dishwasher.  Widespread chagrin.

The phrase raising kids is hard doesn't even begin to convey the difficulty of this thing. 

Do not eat raw cookie dough.  Do not eat raw cookie dough.  Do not eat raw cookie dough.  I try so hard to be good. But I fail.

My four-year-old calls makeup "wakeup".  Rather appropriate, I think.

My son says the pipe-cleaner creature he created has a mind control device.  I knew it...

I'm trying to figure out how to make one big sheet of toast so I don't have to butter-and-jam all those millions of little bread-sized pieces of toast.  Then I'll just butter it with a rolling pin and pour on the jam.  Sheet toast.  It's what's for breakfast.

I learn so much from watching my children.  Such as, if you don't want somebody to close a door, sticking your fingers right in the hinge side is not a good way to stop her.

If any of you would design diapers that lock onto a child's backside until I remove them, I would buy about a million of them from you.

Cleaning off the schoolroom shelves.  Something I'm always doing, but never getting done.

A definition from my 8-year-old:  Intro is what comes before.  Outro is what comes after.  Middletro is what comes in between.

Knight Rider reruns have given me back my lost naptimes.  Thank you, Michael Knight!

My laundry room table is empty of clothes.  That means I'm a good person, right?  Right??

I sharpen pencils every day.  Why are there never sharp pencils in my house?

Always shake out your boots before putting them on.  I just shook a daddy longlegs out of my right boot.  Last week it was a black widow.

The condition of my kitchen counters influences my state of mind.  I wish to high heaven it didn't.

 

Thursday
19Nov2009

Erin's three laws of motion

Isaac Newton didn't invent his laws of motion.  He observed them.  I, likewise, have observed the following three laws that children seem to follow:

1)  Children in motion tend to stay in motion, unless some external force (such as bedtime) stops them.  Children at rest tend to stay at rest unless some external force dumps them out of bed.  (This phenomenon has a direct relationship to age.  In very little children, inertia is always ready to convert instantaneously into momentum.)

2)  The more mass (and therefore age) a child has, the more difficult it will be to accelerate him (for instance, into helping with chores.)  The less mass a child has, the more willing he will be to "help".

3) Every action will have a loud and opposite reaction. 

I feel relieved, in a way, to know that there are at least some rules that they're following. Even if it is only three.

~MB~

Monday
16Nov2009

double jointed

Father Bird has straight thumbs.  No matter how hard he tries he can't bend his thumb knuckles past the 90-degree, stick straight position.  I, on the other hand, have double jointed thumbs.  Mine bend backward in a more respectable, more useful way.  Not circus-freak double jointed, just not...handicapped like him, with his poor, straight thumbs. 

Ever since we met, this has been a point of contention.  Which thumbs are better?  Which thumbs are right?

When it was one-to-one, there was no way to tell.  Or, perhaps I should say, two-to-two.  Both of my thumbs are my way, both of his, his. 

But, right or wrong, straight thumbs are apparently dominant.  Because he went and had a whole army of little people, who came into the world with eight straight thumbs.

I suppose being handicapped like they all are doesn't hurt them most of the time.  Until we decide to make Jam Thumbprint cookies.

And then, I am sorry to have to show them what perfection is like. What real thumbs can do.

See these cookies?  These are gonna hold some jam

~MB~

Friday
13Nov2009

cultural literacy

 ~MB~

Thursday
12Nov2009

button lamp

While shivering through The Long Winter by Mary Ingalls Wilder, we read about Ma's "button lamp".  When the family ran out of kerosene for their lamp, Ma took axle grease, put it in a plate, wrapped a scrap of fabric around a coat button, and stuck it in the grease.  She greased the upward-sticking tips of the fabric, and voila! a light to read by. 

We, of course, had to try it.  Anything involving fire is right up our alley.

We didn't have any axle grease on hand, so we used cooking oil.  Also, I expect Ma's button was made out of...something different than ours are, since if we took a big button out of my sewing box and lit it, it'd melt.  So we wrapped our wick around a quarter. 

We had a great time watching our "button lamp" on a gloomy, rainy afternoon.  Then we blew it out, washed the quarter, turned the lights back on, and went on reading.  Because we have to know.  Will the blizzard ever end?  Will the train ever come?!?

~MB~

Wednesday
11Nov2009

progress

When we moved to this house, part of the allure of the area was that it was so rural.  The roads ran along between thick, ancient forests, with branches almost touching high over the roof of the car.  We'd drive along the winding roads, relishing the flickering sunlight, the soothing mix of green, and the feeling of solitude.  Often the homes and farms here have the same quality as the roads; hidden among the trees, private.

I said once to a friend who had moved from Arizona to Georgia, "How can you stand a place where there are no trees?"  "How can you stand a place where there are so many?" she said.  All the trees make her feel claustrophobic, she explained.  How can you see where you're going with all the trees in the way?  "Oh," I said, before I could stop myself, "the trees are like a blanket, like your clothes.  How can you stand spending your whole life naked??" 

When we moved to this county, it was one of the fastest growing counties in the country.  Skyrocketing home prices everywhere made this humble place, where prices were still reasonable, attractive.  And we were part of that demographic.  Any time we felt to grumble about how many people were suddenly here, we had to remind ourselves that we were part of the growth.   We weren't stalwart old citizens of this county.  We were the new blood. 

So that when the development for the Target shopping center just up the road commenced, although we were heartsick to see the trees cut down and the ground scraped and gouged clear of anything but Georgia red clay, we had to admit that, in part, it was because we were here.

But as I drove past the construction site, and as I now drive by the shopping center, a couple of things bother me, and I'm not even sure why. 

There was only one house on the edge of the forest that was cut down.  Naturally the developers bought the house and razed it before construction began.  As we went up and down the road in front of that house, on our way to the library, to the grocery store, to church, we saw the signs of people moving out: first a garage sale, then the moving trucks.  After they were gone, the house sat empty for a few days, looking pensive and forlorn.  

And then the machinery dug away the ground all around the foundation of the house, leaving it standing on a funny, house-sized plateau.  And then the machinery tore the side off the house.  Work must have been called off for the weekend then, because I recall driving by that house several times when it was in that condition.  I was almost embarrassed every time I'd go by, and stare helplessly, because how often do we see a house like that?  Two rooms were gaping open, two private places where people had lived.  There was the blue-flowered wallpaper that someone had lovingly hung over a long weekend.  The light fixtures they had replaced when their children broke them.  A lace curtain flapped in and out of one open window.  This had been someone's home.  It seemed almost a sacrelige to display it to the driving-by public that way.

On the other side of the road is a little farmhouse that sits close to the crossroads, and faces the new shopping center.  Behind the house, acres and acres of that farm's pastures roll away, dotted with hay bales.  Before the shopping center came, this farm, like everything else around, was cozied down among the trees.  The view from the front porch was across the road, into the forest.  Now the view is into the front windows of McDonald's.

As I drive by this farm, with its tall trees reaching uselessly across the road toward the trees that no longer reach back, I watch the family there.  They don't seem to actually live in the farmhouse anymore.  Several grown children, with children of their own, come a couple of times a week.  They pull up in front of the house and help a feeble old man out of the car.  Then they mow the lawns and air the house while the old man, who must be the farmer, wanders aimlessly around the yard and barns.  

Just this week, I passed the farmhouse, and the old man stood alone under an ancient pecan tree, picking up pecans one by one with a little basket on a rod.  His back was turned to the shopping center and he worked methodically, picking up one pecan after another.  Was he imagining that the shopping center didn't exist?  If he looks the other way, all he sees is his pastures, which must have been the same for many years before now.  If he covers his ears, he won't hear the bustle and the busyness. 

I watched, with a twinge, as workmen pounded the stakes for a sign into the ground at the corner of that farm.  "For Sale, up to 90 acres" it announces.  And it only makes sense, because a farm across from a Target is a short-lived incongruity. 

My feelings are in a mad mix as I drive now between the busy shopping center and the once quiet farm.  I know that progress happens.  I know that I have, in part, done this.  I know that the only constant in life is change.  And I can't help but wonder what goes on in the life, in the mind, of one of the stalwart citizens of this county.  He has the "right" to grumble about the new blood.  Does he?

To be fair to the Target, (if a Target needs such things) I'm often glad that it's there.  There's much less pause now when Father Bird and I decide we need a quart of Ben and Jerry's after the children are in bed.  But I wonder, just a little, about the cost.  As I watch the old man's children guide him gingerly back into the car just before they drive away, I realize that the demographics in this area have moved from people like him to people like me.  That what I looked for when I moved here is quietly slipping away. 

I am sorry, old man.  I didn't mean to send you away.  I hope your children can find you a place, with a pecan tree, where you can stand in real solitude, without having to pretend I'm not there.

~MB~