turkey coma

I'll be lucky if this comes out in complete sentences. Oh look, there's one! and another!

Happenings, fun stuff, twitch twitch:

• my sister and her family stayed at our house for about a week during the thanksgiving holidays. It was so much fun, which I can say with a complete lack of sarcasm. The boys wrestled every day, played the wii till their arms hurt, and giggled uncontrollably while running circuits round the first floor. A success! D got a copy of Scene It for the xbox, which was loads of fun--my brother in law gave D a run for the money as a movie-trivia expert, so it was nice to get my ass kicked by someone else for a change. My sisters and I had a great time shopping and eating Indian food one night, and then we all gorged ourselves over deelissis food at Marmie's house.
• sufjan stevens is one of my favorite musicians now. He's quirky, a thinking Christian, and has that terrific melancholy I always gravitate to in my music (my good friend called my taste in songs "music to slit your wrists by" and that about sums it up). So I've wanted Stevens' Christmas albums for about a year, and finally got them. Among the lovely carols he adapts, he adds some of his own stuff to the mix like, "Did I make you cry at Christmas? (well, you deserved it)" and "get behind me, Santa!" There are a few writers who make me want to write (Vonnegut, Steven King, Dickens, JK Rowling), painters who make me want to paint (Corot, Thiebaud, Velazquez), and he's a musician who makes me want to sing. There are plenty of others who make me want to do the opposite, and take up banking or sort potato chips, but I just try to avoid exposure to them.
• Don't dress your daughter like a skank. An excellent article, and reminds me how lucky I am to have had a boy. Now how to avert his eyes from the skanks...probably a lost cause.
• friday, I'll be heading up to Albany for the Seven Deadly Sins/Seven Holy Virtues show, where 2 of my paintings are. Yay! After that, we're driving to Boston to visit dear friends we haven't seen in a long time. another busy weekend, but it will be a blast.
  
• check my flickr photos for the festival of trees and thanksgiving! They're fun.
  

my arms hurt

Today, for the first time in a verrrrrry long time, the bathroom is completely clean. D has worked tirelessly to plaster the cracks and uneven bits in the walls and wood, then sanded the whole thing--a very dusty business indeed. He primed and painted the room a lovely cream-white I picked out at Sherwin Williams (highly recommend their paint, I must say!), and today I spent the majority of the afternoon scrubbing every porcelain surface in the place.

Because we are perfectionists, this job started last November and was stalled, started and stalled over the course of the year. I was used to the grey spackle in the corner, the hole where the vent fan cover goes, and it matched how crappy everything else looked in there, especially with the window that needed a crowbar to properly open. When the new window was put in, like all clean new additions, it showed how glaringly ugly the rest of the room was. So D decided to buckle down and take care of the walls so I could finally clean the tub properly.

This week, I also got new knobs for the cabinets in there, and pried off the decorative scrolly bits the former owners were so enamored with. They also LOVED slat shutters, and nailed a few up on the window frame as well. Every aesthetic choice they made screams out, "OLD!! I'M REALLY OLD! I AM AFRAID OF COLORS!" So we got rid of those monstrosities. Bad design offends me. It just takes so bloody long to replace it with something I like.

The final step will be to paint the doors, cabinets, and trim. I am hoping to get a nice happy yellow(duckie colored) and a little bit of orange, and paint the insides of the trim with that for a nice accent. And then the duckie collection can go on some shelves above, and then we'll have all our ducks in a row, as is proper.

curse you, China...

...for acting just like Americans! Among the excellent gifts my son received for his birthday, Aqua Dots were one of them. If you have no children, you might not know that these were recalled this week for being coated with a toxic substance which, when ingested, chemically turns into a kiddie equivalent of the date-rape drug. Nice, huh?This pisser is (besides the obvious) that these products were heavily advertised on TV, so that when A got them, he was in transports of joy. I hadn't heard of them, as I don't watch TV, but they really looked cool, they glow in the dark, and they are teeny tiny (an plus for A, naturally). He had some of his many shark toys eating them, but luckily he didn't attempt it himself.The beads don't really fuse well together--they are spheres, so there's only so much surface area to cling to. So after an exciting hour of arranging them carefully, spraying them with water, and waiting, the end result was a slightly mushy set of aqua dots, most of which fell limply back into the tray. Ah, well. A wasn't too upset about it.Then the recall came, and I feared a crying jag, if not a "You can pry my Aqua-Dots from my cold, dead hands" response, but A was a real trooper. I told him that there are people who make toys and they don't really care about making children happy, just making a lot of money. And because they don't care about children, they put things on toys that are very very dangerous and could make him go to the hospital if he put them in his mouth. So we needed to throw away the aqua dots so he wouldn't be sick. He was so good about it, I told him we would go out and get some of those perler beads instead (the ones you iron, old-fashioned stuff). They have them at ikea for about 5 bucks, a humongous tub of them.
So last night, D, A, and I had a lovely time indulging our familial Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, each putting together a perler bead creation. Anyone watching from the windows might have been a little scared to see us all hunched over these peg boards, carefully sorting and placing hundreds of teeny beads. But it's better to have an OCD scare than to be at the hospital.

are you in my monkeysphere?

Here's an article I found very interesting, and mostly spot-on, about the reasons why we care more about our immediate friends and family than the rest of the world. Those people aren't in our "monkeysphere," the 150 or so people we can handle caring about. The rest are nameless, faceless others. The article is funny, well-written if slightly redundant, and pottymouthed.

the feeding frenzy

I feel as if I have sharks on the brain lately (rather uncomfortable, I must say!). I think, though, that the feeding frenzy is over for now. A's birthday has passed, 3 celebrations loaded with sharks and fish, blue icing and sugar, and tons of friends to enjoy it all with us! I am fried, but happy.

Right now, A is working on one of his presents, a "decorate-your-own treasure chest." It's very small, perfect for storing snoopy and his pals, and A is concentrating so much his tongue is sticking out. Unlike all the other times he plays, the constant stream of humming, songs, and conversations with himself have all stopped. He is completely quiet. I need to have him paint more often.

So a run-down of the festivities: the kid party was at Michaels craft store, where all his friends made cute sea-creature crafts--a mobile of model magic fish and so forth, and a little "aquarium" with sea creatures inside and lots of beads decorating the outside (all of which needed hardcore gluing to stay on). The kids were really focused, even in all the excitement, though they stopped everything when the cake arrived. My neighbors J and S, whose son was the vampire at halloween, pulled out all the stops. S's hobby is making special cakes and candy (molding chocolates, especially), and he made a shark-shaped cake for A. It was awesome! The kids all cheered when it arrived, and rightly so. The final surprise was cutting it open, to reveal RED cake!!! EEEW! So cool. I'm still cracking up over it. As if that wasn't enough, J made blue jello with gummy sea creatures suspended in it, which looked amazing too. We have very creative friends, truly. Good sports as well, as I know they had cake crumbs and icing bits all over their kitchen and dining room when it was over.

The family party was last night, for A's actual birthday. He woke up from his nap expecting everyone to be there already, and was beside himself for a while till everyone arrived. To pass the time, A and I looked at all my pregnant pictures, and his baby pictures. He's fascinated with the idea of babies growing in bellies, and hearing his own birth-day story. It's nice to tell him, too, now that he understands so much more and sees babies at church. Now that I myself have healed from all those traumatic events, I can tell him about it without crying. That in itself is a minor miracle. That was a dark time.

We had pizza, gifts, and one more cake (ugh, sugar coma) with sharks on it this time. It was great having everyone over, and now I'll be happy not to see another sugary shark for a long time. Thanks to everyone for making the birthday so special!

Thanks, friends, for an excellent birthday! (check flickr for all the juicy pics!)

halloween pics and my funny son

"candygram."the loot. A gave most of his candy to Aunt M, for some reason. Apparently he was into the experience of trick or treating instead of hoarding candy, like his mommy would.
"STINKIN' MILK DUDS??!!" A's buddy W shows his contempt for our measly treats. Today, his mom called and during the conversation, I heard her say to W, "You cannot have your vampire teeth in while you eat your sandwich." Words to live by.

Boo! Last night's celebrations went really well. Much better than expected, as D was home instead of taking care of kids at Alpha. There weren't any kids to take care of, so he came home in time to trick-or-treat with A and our neighbors. My sister and her boyfriend also came over, and helped pass out treats. I love talking to trick-or-treaters, and rewarding extra-good costumes with extra-cool prizes. It's like being a teacher again, without all the paperwork and planning.

This morning, not surprisingly, A woke up mega-late. It was lovely. He came into my room to wake me up, D was long gone at work, and A cuddled with me for a minute or two and we talked about halloween and stuff. He said something and then said, "Just joking. Dat's what Pop-pop says a lot." Then he said, "He's a difficult man."

I have NO IDEA who or where that came from, but I just about died laughing.

Then he tickled my face and said, "I love your chubby little neck." Aw. He must of learned how to charm a lady from his dad.