if my former self could see me now

If there is one thing I have learned in my strange life, it is that the word "never" should not be used (or should I say, never used?). I said with deep conviction, as I squeezed ridiculously huge SUV's into the carpool line at my former school, "I will never get an SUV." I have a moral obligation to not purchase a car that does more to support Saudi Wahabbism than an airstrike on Mecca. I will not load my one tiny kid into a cavernous backseat and ply him with videos as I drive him to his six afterschool activities. I will never talk on my cell phone 3 feet higher than every other car with a Starbucks in my hand (I don't like Starbucks coffee anyway...maybe Dunkin Donuts).
What I had not counted on was the generosity of my inlaws. After our highly unreliable Swedish Brick slumped into the shop for the second time in a week, my father-in-law said, "Oh, you can borrow the 4 Runner--well, actually I talked to J and we agreed we feel safer with A in the 4 Runner from now on, so we'll get the paperwork done to give you the car. We'll take the Volvo."

...geh?...

...um, sheesh, wow, are you serious?

They were serious. Now I am driving this huge car, amazingly clean (as my face reddens thinking about the funk in the Volvo), towering over all four-wheeled humanity and having difficulty parking the thing. But what can one do? One can only say thank you, feel deeply grateful, and not make a peep when one's son watches a Jaws Marathon on tv with Nana and Pop-Pop and eats nothing but candy and cheese puffs all day. There are worse things.

Next, I'll just have to sign up for Mommy and Me SAT-prep classes. I mean, how else is the kid getting into Harvard?

I also said that I would never ever get a pedicure. I hate my feet, usually, though I am warming up to them slightly as I get more flattering shoes and all. Well, in two weeks that resolution will be broken as well. A friend gave me a sortof half-day of beauty, which includes a Facial (yum!! and not like in hockey, mind you), manicure and pedicure. So we'll see. I mean, I am just now ok with D giving me a foot massage, after almost 9 years of marriage. I used to feel like barfing when anyone touched the arch of my foot, so we've come a long way, baby. Now it's off to mortgage the house for gas money.

the whirlwind

I haven't posted in quite a while. I have all these great ideas and events to share, but I'm too busy participating in them, it seems, to do them all justice in the blog-form. So I'll try to bring everyone up to date with the happenings.

• reading (on audio and otherwise): the Mind of the Maker, Dorothy Sayers. Very lucid, excellent thoughts on the creative process and how we reflect our triune Creator with our own works. Also I'm listening to the Last of the Mohicans, by James Fenimore Cooper. I confess that I am not as riveted as I would like to be. It's violent, for one, but also so ponderously written that I wish he would just come out and plainly speak, instead of beating about the bush and using what Mark Twain called "second cousins of the right word." --I must say how relieved I was to read Twain's criticism of Cooper. I thought I was just not used to a more archaic writing style, but now I find it's just bad writing that sounds so unfamiliar to me. Thank God for that. I am also a bit disgusted that Cooper only refers to women as "the females," like we are wholly other specimens, vastly inferior to his rugged mountain men. It seems that Cooper can't make up his mind whether he hates, loves, loathes, or reverences the Indians, because they are described with such revulsion sometimes, then he is awestruck at their ingenuity in others. I saw the movie ages ago, and would like to see it again (if nothing else but to drool over Daniel Day Lewis), but I am not super-excited about finishing the last quarter of the book.
• visited: Dafi Alpaca farm a few minutes north of hunt valley. Check out lella's blog for more details, and these pictures below (of a baby alpaca, the Anatolian Shepherd dog that was enormous and lovable, and an extreme closeup of an alpaca nose):
• 
• I also visited the 2007 Maryland Institute commencement exhibition. I was really excited about the MAT offerings, the fun graphic design pieces (below, re-packaging yarn and other incidentals in a better way), and also some pieces I'm considering buying, as they are right up my alley. The artist uses childhood craft supplies to make some really fun and sophisticated pieces. My friend whose expertise is intelligence ethics (! what a field!) thought the googly-eye explosion could be a comment on the surveillance culture, which I really think is intriguing. I just liked the pieces because they look amazing and fun. And I bet if you shake them they sound like a rain stick... I was a bit disappointed with the paintings, though. If they weren't purely abstract, they were either exploitative images of women by women, obsessive-compulsive detail pieces like you see on t-shirts all over, or littered with body parts and ominous soldiers. I didn't see the entire show, I think--maybe 7/8 of the campus-wide extravaganza, but I confess I was pretty sad to see not a whole lot of really interesting figurative pieces. It's not like they don't have amazing faculty to bring that about.
• saw spiderman 3. Loved it. Guilty pleasure at seeing Toby McGuire all goth and trying to act suave. The scene where the sandman emerges is pure beauty.
  
• remember my post about A Thousand Resurrections? Well, ever since I read the book I have wanted to help in some way there. Once again, there is no such thing as a coincidence, because a representative from their school came to talk at my church about 2 weeks after I read the book. I went, told him I used to teach art, and they were like "ART?? Really???" and had been itching to have an art teacher come. I visited the school and was so happy with what I saw, and the potential for doing something good and giving these kids an outlet for their creativity. It felt so much like the school I went to as a child, which was very comforting too. So this summer I'll be teaching a little art twice a week, and perhaps doing more in the fall with the faculty or the kids, not sure which. It was such a funny, seamless thing, with all the marks of God's orchestration. Now I need to write some lesson plans for the first time in years. Whew, I've gotten to be a lazy teacher lately.
  

There's tons more to share, but I must go to bed now. Here's a parting shot of my boys in yellow:

hello, my name is Simon...

and I like to do drawrings... Remember that Saturday Night Live spoof? Cheeky monkey. Anyway, I've been able to finally use my vast training in art education as I watch the drawing development of my son. I must say, art-wise, the first three years were a real wash. In other ways as well. He was a cute little bugger, but I much prefer the older, I-can-tell-you-what-I-want and occasionally-pretend-to-help version of my son.

So, at this point he is at the pre-schematic stage of scribbling, making global figures (read: lots of closed shapes, rounded a bit, that stand for anything from batman to "lil fissies"--fishies). He just started to be very interested in drawing about two weeks ago, from a ho-hum reaction to always wanting his markers and paper taped down, ready to go.

His usual method is to start with a giant shape on the paper, then make smaller and smaller shapes until the paper surface is full. Sometimes they are just shapes, and other times they become totally unrecognizable "guys," "batman," and "big sarks." Once in a while, though, the figure will sprout a face, lots of teeth, and maybe some appendages as well. These are the most exciting, and I wait anxiously for him to finish. Not for time constraints, but sometimes he will decide to color in his great drawing so that it is no more than a soggy blob of marker, with an eyeball or two more soggy than the rest.

Here are his latest, most brilliant drawings from the half-ream of paper he has gone through:
A made this during our trip to the Baltimore Museum of Art. They have a box of drawing activities for kids to use as they wander the museum, and it's quite nice. It's called "Bad Eyes on a Lion."
A lot of A's best drawings have been outside, with chalk. This one is of a dinosaur (6 feet tall?), which started out just as a long line that went around the potting soil bags, then turned into a dinosaur when A added sharp teeth (a common theme, actually. He's a boy, you know.) , angry eyebrows, claws, and some eyes.
This one is an alligator, with lots of spiky things on its body. He spent about 15-20 minutes on the drawing, which is quite a long time for a little guy. Usually you add 2 to their age, and that's how many minutes they can focus their concentration on something.
This photo shows one of the hundreds of lineups A makes of his favorite toys. Most of them are under an inch tall, which poses lots of problems if the toys make any field trips with us. If I had a nickel for every time A has cried, "Where's my Snoopy?" I could probably hire a nanny. Snoopy is the favorite of the favorites, and started his life as an eraser on the end of a novelty Christmas pencil. Yes, he's that small. And he's got a hole in his bottom, an added plus for my hole-obsessed son and an unfortunate place for everything from coffee beans to playdoh lumps. Poor Snoopy has been through the mill. So imagine my joy when A decided to draw his best little friend:
Now if you asked him, he would say it was a monster, not Snoopy, but it started out as Snoopy and is a very good likeness, I say. He "traced" around the Snoopy, then added all the parts and lots of toes. I got a little teary-eyed.