You are currently browsing the monthly archive for June 2007.
Right, so, with that disclaimer out of the way, check these out.
One of the quickest ways to get my attention and interest is to combine art, humour, and optical illusions. I LOVE optical illusions! I’ve seen a couple of individual pictures of Julian Beever’s sidewalk art on the internet before, but never on a site that said who he was, and never a collection of his work. I just recently managed to find his actual site, so if you’re at all impressed or intrigued by these, as I am, then visit it and see more of his talent, including some photos of how it’s done.
Our eldest son, Ari, has an amazing ability to be able to see or imagine something, and then create or re-create it in various dimensions and from countless angles and perspectives. Me? I’m lucky if I can draw a box to scale on a sheet of graph paper. I have a huge amount of respect and appreciation for people who can twist their brains and visualize like this.
Something I’m experimenting with on this new blog is linking to miscellaneous stuff that I find interesting. I very rarely did it on the old blog because… well… I get so bombed with so many emails from so many people telling me the same jokes, or sending me the same YouTube links, or just generally passing along whatever was passed along to them regardless of what they know about me, that I’m reluctant to do that to others. I usually just forward my faves to my husband and a pal or two who I think might have personal interest, but otherwise the chain breaks when it hits me.
And I’m good with that.
But sometimes I stumble onto something that makes me say “Coo-ool!!” out loud. Often, I’m WAY behind the times and everyone else has seen it ages ago (another reason I don’t pass things along). But it occurs to me that if I didn’t get sent multiple emails about it like I usually do, or see it plastered all over in my blog travels, then maybe – just maybe – it’s not quite as old hat or as well known as I assume.
(Of course, maybe my particular sources are just behind the times, too, and/or holding out on me. Whatever.)
So… anyway… I don’t plan on linking/posting about miscellaneous finds very often, but if y’all find me doing it to a tedious degree, or about stuff that you’ve seen a dozen places already, please let me know.
Thanks.
p.s. I’d be remiss if I didn’t at least mention my sometimes embarrassingly atrocious short-term memory. It makes life interesting because I can be delighted to “just discover” something more than only once. But if you see me doing THAT, for gawd’s sake, say something. Probably several times over, so I remember.
I don’t believe in ultimatums. It seems to me that if someone is doing something so serious — so drastically hideous and intolerable that it’s a total deal-breaker for you — then the deal has already been broke, and there’s no going back.
I learned a long time ago that trying to make someone else change is a hell of a lot of work. And I’m lazy. I much prefer to change something myself (my perspective, my expectation, my proximity to them, my future involvement, etc). Issuing ultimatums seems way too… clunky… for every-day practicality. It’s slow, and ugly, and never, ever genuinely useful.
But what I particularly can’t relate to is issuing ultimatums in marriages. Personally, I promised to love/honour/etc for better/worse/etc — I didn’t promise “with conditions”. The only thing that I can imagine me (and this is just me, remember) drawing a line in the sand over, would be abuse of my children or myself (my own rough definition of ‘abuse’ being something that causes significant harm, or that puts one in line of same).
But, hang on, if I were ever in a situation that incredibly significant that I’d seriously consider leaving my husband, would I honestly want to issue an ultimatum to him, or would it just be game over, right then and there, the first time it happened?
Fortunately, I don’t know. I’ve never walked in those shoes and unless I ever do, my postulating and $4 will get you a cup of coffee. Meanwhile, I can speculate ’til the cows come home and say that I’d be out of there so fast, his head would spin. On the floor. And it wouldn’t be a surprise to him in the least, because he knew this about me well before we married. He would expect it from me. Just as, if some brain injury ever made me change and I became a legitimate danger to him or our kids, he knows he’d better damned well leave me pronto and not look back, because the woman he married — the me who would be trapped in that fucked-up person — would kick his ass to kingdom come if he ever let me be abusive.
Hmm, somehow that didn’t come out quite right… Oh, well.
What’s my point? I’m glad you asked, because I’m pretty sure I had one when I started this. Now where did I leave it? Oh, right.
We, as a society, have gotten COMPLETELY stupid about what we won’t tolerate and what we will. Learn to piss or get off the pot, will ya? Don’t do that ridiculous hover thing that makes ya spray all over, fouling up a huge area for a lot of people. And then, as if that’s not bad enough, when you do eventually walk out, you act like you don’t know better or like you had no part in it, but you expect somebody else to have it cleaned up by the time you get back! Puhlease….
What prompted this rant was a copy of a letter to the “Dear Miriam” advice column that is making its rounds in email, being sent as a funny thing. And it is amusing in some ways, but it’s also sad and fucked up.
If Miriam’s responding advice was deliberate, though, it gives me hope.
Cob’s social life pretty much exploded this last year, much to our relief. He had several friends in the small town we used to live in, but since we moved to the ‘big city’ five years ago and gave homeschooling a shot, he hasn’t had as much luck.
NOT because of homeschooling — so don’t even try to go there with me. He had plenty of kids he met through homeschool activities and could socialize with, but he found he quickly outgrew them, or didn’t have much in common interest to start. One of the benefits of homeschool is that he didn’t have to compromise and be friends with people he didn’t like, just because they were the same age and stuck together in the same classrooms for six hours a day, five days a week.
We’ve been calling our son a “40 year old midget” since he was very little, as he’s always acted older and gravitated to spending time with bigger kids and adults, more than with his chronological peers. He enjoys hanging out with us, his family, which we see as an accomplishment as parents, although it gets a bit tricky at times when he wants to treat his dad like a friend and we have to re-establish boundaries.
But a wonderful thing seems to have come with puberty – the gap between Cob and other kids his age appears to have narrowed a bit. He now has a group of about a dozen friends who he chats with constantly online, and more and more frequently they’ve been getting together for movies, swimming, and just to generally hang out.
“Can I go to the mall tomorrow and meet Tom?”
“Which one’s Tom again? The one in Ranchlands?”
“No, that’s Mike.”
“Oh, right, the one who’s dating Judy.”
“No, Mom, that’s Connor. Tom lives out by Ben and his dad is a teacher.”
“Who else will be there?”
“Maybe Felix, and Alex, if they can make it.”
“Hang on, you’d better write this down for me…”
I need a freakin’ database to keep track of all these kids who are suddenly important in my son’s life. My brain wobbles trying to sort out where they live, and which is their cell phone number, their parents’ names and phone numbers, who’s got only a dad, who lives with their grandparents….
You’re only laughing because you think I’m joking.
We don’t know any of these families personally so it’s tough to let go of my “baby” and let him fly. But I’m trying. No, really, I’m trying. Just look at the stack of empties in our garage — I’m giving this serious effort.
Cob went to a birthday party sleepover last weekend, which has always been an issue for me as a parent. But that’s a rant on its own so I’ll save that for another post. The point is, he and five of his closest buddies had a blast, and he pulled his first “all-nighter”, which was particularly entertaining for us when we picked him up the next morning. He tried to tell us all about the evening, in his squeaking boy-man voice, still juiced on adrenaline and cheetos. But he was pretty punch-drunk from lack of sleep and slurred his words and practically nodded off mid-sentence. He had involuntarily fallen asleep for about half an hour at 7:00 in the morning, but he was woken up by his buddies seeing how much stuff they could pile on his head before he noticed. We told him he should be glad that the birthday boy, who hosted the party, didn’t have an older sister with make-up. He chuckled and said he was aware of that, but it wasn’t make-up that scared him so much as Sharpie markers!
Yesterday morning we drove him to the writing centre where he wrote his last final exam. Afterward, his pal Mike came to our place and they celebrated the first day of summer vacation by killing aliens, drinking pop, talking about girls, and blasting Cob’s stereo.
I was in our bedroom which is right above his room, and voices and music drifted up through the open windows. Two teenage boys laughing and unabashedly singing “You gotta know when to hold ‘em, know when to fold ‘em…”
I hope they were playing poker, and not talking about the hamper full of socks and underwear I put in Cob’s room the night before. But there are some things a mother just shouldn’t ever ask.
This is an entirely different way to browse Flickr pics!!
http://color.slightlyblue.com/
You may have to wait a bit as the page loads.
Wrestling with this %$#!*ing laptop again.
It’s still winning.
This is getting really old. (The extended frigging hassle - not the computer, which is less than a year old and shouldn’t be causing me this much grief)
Our youngest child, Cob, will be 15 next month and is now taller than his big sister. He loped into the room the other day and asked, “Mom? Can I ask you a question?”
“I believe you just did.”
“Mo-om….”
“Okay, okay, what?”
“What if your destiny is to fight destiny?”
“…”
Smart ass kids make my head hurt.
And the scariest part? I already consented to letting him join a debate team.
This morning I remembered a brief – very brief – conversation that I had with my mother about female orgasms. (I’m telling you this primarily to illustrate the bizarre paths my brain routinely wanders, taking me along as hostage.) I was a married woman, early twenties, a couple of babies, we didn’t have the Internet or “Sex Files” on cable, Mum and I were working together in the garden, I had questions, she was at a complete loss to know how to deal with my candour, let alone come up with any answers…
Fairly typical of our entire relationship, actually. My mum is as traditional and old school as you would expect from a 79 year old British woman. She’s incredibly smart, strong, and brave, and one of my all-time heroes - for many reasons beyond the obvious one of trying to survive having a stubborn, passionate, big mouth like me for a daughter.
Today is the second year anniversary of my step-mother-in-law’s death.
How many years, do you suppose, is it appropriate to keep marking it on the calendar?
Doc’s mother, Joyce, died of cancer less than a year after we were married. Desperately lonely, my father-in-law met Grace and they married a little over a year later. Joyce was, technically, my mother-in-law for less than six months, but she felt like a second mother to me from the first day I met her. Grace was my step-mother-in-law for seventeen years before she, too, died of cancer. I loved her, but somehow I could never quite skip that ‘step‘ in my head. A part of me will always wonder if I should have apologized to her for that.
Our daughter, Jan, will be 18 in a couple of months, and is just finishing up her high school diploma. We had gone shopping for a graduation dress for her but we couldn’t find anything that she liked, that fit, and that didn’t make us both snort at the price tag. I had recently sewn myself a summer dress – the first thing I’ve sewn since I made a three-piece ring bearer suit for our son when he was three (he’s 19 now). Somehow that was enough to make me muse out loud, “Well, we could always just make the dress you want…”
I seem to have this quirk that when a major life event is about to happen, and suitably impressive clothing is required, I feel compelled to volunteer to try to sew it from scratch, even though my entire pitiful seamstress experience can be summed up as “Grade 10 Home Ec.”
Jan came upstairs the morning of her boyfriend’s graduation, made tea for both of us, and sat down beside me. Her gown, just-barely-finished, hung from a nearby light fixture to keep it away from our mischievous kitten.
“How late were you up last night?” she asked.
“I was in bed by three, but the last half hour was mostly just cleaning up the threads and scraps I had all over the place.”
She leaned over and put her head on my shoulder, softly said, “Aw, thank you, Mom,” and we sat watching HGTV together for a bit.
During a commercial, I asked her something that had been niggling at me all week since we had impulsively ditched the boutiques and gone to the fabric store instead. “Is Ben upset that you’re going to be wearing a homemade dress to grad instead of a designer gown?”
Jan’s longtime boyfriend buys $200 shirts and shops at places like Diesel, Billabong, Tommy Hilfiger….
“No,” she said, “he’s just really stressed about it. When I talked to him on the phone last night after I finished helping you, he asked if it was done yet and when I told him ‘no’ he kinda freaked out a bit.”
He’s really stressed about it? More than the girl who’s going to be wearing it? Interesting…
“Well, you can call him and tell him it’s done now, so he can breathe again.”
“Oh, I already told him that this morning,” she said.
“When?” I asked, confused. “You didn’t see your dress until you came in here just fifteen minutes ago.”
She shrugged. “Yeah, but you said it would be done in time, so I knew it would.” She unfolded her long graceful legs and got up from the couch, then gave me a hug on her way back to her room. “You’re my hero,” she said in her half-breathy, half-singing voice that only a teenage girl can pull off naturally.
I know it’s almost Fathers Day, but today my head seems focused on mothers instead – I guess because of the anniversary of Grace dying. That “Impostor” post I wrote about my day job could just as easily be applied to my other, real job – the one I’m not entirely convinced I would’ve taken on had I had any idea what all I was in for.
Kids don’t come with diagrams or instruction manuals, goddammit, and most of those advice books are a load of useless and redundant crap. Parenting is a “dive into the deep end” kind of thing. You gather together all the material and equipment you think you might need, but after that, you’re pretty much just stepping off into the abyss, winging it and praying a lot, sometimes cursing in the wee hours of the morning and wondering what stupid thing your big mouth is going to get you into next.
Somewhat like trying to sew a formal gown in three days when you had to look up on Google what “baste stitch” means. Sigh…
But, ya know, there really is no feeling to describe having your child look you in the eye and call you their hero. No reward greater than knowing that they have faith, beyond any doubt, that you’ll come through for them somehow, even when THEY know better than ANYONE how much you’re in over your head and just faking it, completely clueless!
If I’ve done nothing else right, that moment with Jan, right there, made me feel like a huge success.
I’m extremely fortunate that I’ve had, not one, but three wonderful and very different mothers to learn from. Our kids are all to the age now where the bulk of our parenting is done. I’d like to hope that if my daughter ever comes to me and asks about female orgasms, I can discuss it with her confidently and meaningfully.
And, hopefully, without blushing like an idiot or passing out.
p.s. a blue gown that Ben had wanted Jan to buy was worn by at least half a dozen girls at the prom, and another dress that she considered buying was, according to her, “on every fifth girl she saw”. Oh, how we laughed… Well, after we caught up on our sleep and regained our sense of humour.
I apparently didn’t have “allow comments” checked off.
Doh.
My husband and I have been taking our puppy/dog to obedience training once a week for the last few weeks. Allie is a boxer/shepherd that we got from a rescue last October.
The classes have been an exhausting but fascinating look into human-beast psychology and communication. The whole thing is quite complex, but I’ll try to break it down into basics. Essentially…
- I get Allie’s attention (usually with the help of copiuous amounts of boiled liver, which incidentally, is a smell that takes three days and several handfuls of patchouli sticks to get out of my house).
- Allie sits and looks at me expectantly and lovingly, her thoughts clearly displayed on her expressive face:
I’ll do it, sure I can, whadda ya want me to do, anything for you, just tell me what you want, I’ll do it, c’mon just name it, go ahead tell me, FERFUCKSAKES WOMAN WHAT THE HELL DO YOU WANT FROM ME?
- Doc looks at Allie empathetically.
