Swearing With Your Finger

Jane squished her finger in the door.

Not a mangled bleeding smash but a decently painful squish. She came to me, crying and holding it.  I did the concerned mom thing, “Are you alright? Let me see it?” Jane did the woeful child thing and sniffled as she held out her, seemingly fine, hurt middle finger.

Then she looked down at her middle finger extended toward me and cried,

“I’m soooorrryyyyy! I think I just swore at you with my finger!” and collapsed face down on the bed.

It was good that she was face down in a pillow while I worked on controlling the middle schooler trapped in a mom’s body thing so that I was able to get back to the concerned mom thing by the time she picked her head up. I gave it a kiss and told her not to worry about it and that her finger was going to be fine and that was the last we heard about it for a few hours.

Later the subject of swearing with your finger came up again. That was when my suspicions were confirmed. The kids might learn things like reading and math facts at school, but the real learning happens on the bus on the way home. Jane relayed the story of the boy on the bus telling her all about how to swear with her finger then looked at me with a grin and said,

“Mom, wanna see me swear with my face?”

Middle schooler in a mom’s body showed right back up. “Well, Yeah!”

“Just kidding Mom,” Jane said with a laugh, “You can’t swear with your face.”

Priorities

I wake up to the radio because I’m less likely to smash things that don’t beep at me in the morning which means that occasionally I wake up to the day’s news report.

Yesterday morning was one of those days. I went from soundly sleeping to hearing the news that Stephen Hawking had died.  Slightly stunned I was still half in dream world contemplating the loss of a renowned physicist who’s physical limitations had inspired so many while the radio man jabbered on.

Artwork by Tooks. Did you know we made a book together? Link in the sidebar!

It seems there was another newsworthy death in the world, Sheela, the local zoo’s 25 year old camel, had died.  I sleepy blinked at the ceiling befuddled by the juxtaposition of deaths.  I wondered at the oddness of the pairing of world famous scientist and author’s death with that of Sheela the camel, as well as wondering what an average camel life span is*, when the radio continued.

This is not Sheela the camel.

I was then informed that “the saddest” news of the day was that Jordy something-I-already-forgot-and-I-only-remember-his-first-name-because-my-cousin-named-a-dog-after-him wouldn’t be playing for the Packers this year. Since I give less than a rat’s behind about football, I got out of bed mind reeling. Really news?  Hawking- dead, Camel – dead, football guy going to play somewhere else. These are my three bits of news you deem important for my day? This is the state of the world that I’m going to start my day with? These specific things are the things you think I need to know?

Jordy the dog who was ever so much cuter than Jordy the football player. (photo from cousin Emily)

I continued to ponder this through making myself tea and ritualistically spilling it on myself as I drove down the driveway (I am my mother’s daughter) on the way to school. I was just coming to the conclusion that people value different things, and Sheela the camel and football are super important in other people’s eyes. Though, obviously, those people are lesser, ridiculous people with messed up priorities because who cares about a game where the ball bounces funny and you stop every three seconds when there are physicists learning new things about black holes…  When there was a cry from the backseat.

“GOGURT DOWN! GOGURT DOWN!”

(I kid you not, that’s exactly what the girl yelled!)

And then I forgot all about the scientist, the dromedary, and the athlete because there was yogurt spilling in the back seat of the vehicle. And that is some seriously important breaking news.

Priorities.

We all have ’em.

*Stephen Hawking says be curious… and so… the average bactrian camels life span is 20-40 years in captivity but up to 50 in the wild. That gives me a whole new pile of things to be curious about, how about you? 

**In other news, while editing this post, John became curious and asked Google “What is the most difficult punctuation mark to get right”… he is a smart ass but I feel vindicated because it’s commas and apostrophes because they have seven jillion rules apiece and who can remember all that?    

The Jack of Ruin by Stephen Merlino

The Jack of Ruin is the much anticipated…

(You know, when people say that I always get belligerent wondering just who these “people” are that were waiting with bated breath. So, I’ll tell you. It was me. And John, and likely other people, but I don’t know them. So, yeah, I’m making that grand statement on the authority of my own feelings!)

…sequel to The Jack of Souls. If you took my advice three years ago and read The Jack of Souls with it’s goodish guy and it’s new worlds and magics, culture clashes and ideals, angry immortals and horses and general epic fantasyishness, I’m excited to tell you that this installment did not disappoint. The epicness continues, the good guys have a tendency to be a little grey rather than white and it seems vows were made to be broken…

And if you didn’t?

What are you waiting for, get reading!


Would I recommend it? If you are a lover of epic fantasy read The Jack of Souls, then have this one ready because it picks up right where the previous leaves off!

 

 

A Dubious Purchase

I did something recently I’ve never done before. Something I would have never guessed I would have done. Something that I still can’t believe I did.

I bought a bag of makeup.

This might not sound so ridiculous to you so let me be more clear. I, whose makeup purchases in the last 10 years begins and ends with two identical tubes of mascara, bought a bag of totally random makeup. A bag of makeup that, I might add, didn’t even have single tube of mascara in it.

The woman selling it was very good, very sneaky saleswoman, she caught me at my most vulnerable, in the toy aisle of Walmart. You see it happened like this…

Ivy needed a birthday gift for a friend. I needed printer ink and tortellini. Walmart was the place to go. I met the girls in the driveway after school, so we could all go shopping together. This was mistake number one. The girls (well everyone really) are at their worst at 3:45 in the afternoon.

Everyone knows that at 3:45 you should either be taking a nap or just getting up from one. Not a single one of those girls is either sleeping or has just slept when they climb off the bus.  I, waiting in the truck, was also not sleeping, and I hadn’t taken a nap either. That was probably mistake number two.

After school is also the time when everyone is hungry. I’m sure this has something to do with the fact that Ivy keeps growing and is a bottomless pit, Jane eats slower than a snail in February and always has at least half of her lunch left and Clara, well Clara eats a snack at school at 2:30, I have no idea why she’s starving when she gets home but she is.

So I took those tired, hungry and therefore cranky children, who I knew would be tired, hungry and cranky and loaded them up in the truck anyway.  All the other mistakes pale in comparison to that decision and all things that came after this point were directly related to that decision.

Now, Walmart is the closest place for us to buy these three random things but it’s still just about a half an hour away. And remember how the kids are always hungry when they get home from school? Good, because I forgot. So Jane’s leftover lunch parts were fought over, Clara performed a random feat of magic and pulled half a bag of veggie chips from her backpack (I have no other explanation for it’s appearance) and then all the available food was declared boring and fighting erupted. The backseat food wars escalated until the truck pulled over and children were separated in such a way that no one could stay buckled up touch anyone else.

And you wonder why we drive such a big vehicle.

Now before you envision me as the wild haired frantic mother yelling “Don’t make me pull over,” I just want to say that, on this day, I handled everything with a remarkably calm and cool attitude- on the outside.

Approximately 23 grey hairs later we pulled into the park lot. Parking lots, if you don’t know, are triggers for kids to start begging for snacks. Me, evil monster mother of ridiculous expectations said, “No.”

Repeatedly.

There was crying, there was begging, there was the slowest putting on of shoes ever. And then we went into a Super Walmart.

Miraculously, and in a way that you may only understand if you also have young children, the girls all became angels. They held hands and stayed close and smiled and giggled with one another. They happily tried on super freaky looking giant animal heads. My mind reeled with the sudden change of attitude.  And then we hit the toy aisle.

Ivy was looking for a Smooshy, or a Mooshy or a Squishy or some sort of weird smash-able toy. And while they all maniacally ran up and down the aisle asking if they could get toys of their own, (No!) Ivy tried to educate me on the differences between Smooshys, and Mooshys, and Squishys and Smashies and Gooshies and… Under the guise of looking for a Mashy-Smooshy-Smush I threw one last “no” over my shoulder and snuck off toward the LEGO mini-figures.

That’s when she pounced.

Targeting moms in a Walmart toy aisle. It’s either the cruelest act ever or complete stroke of brilliance. Just wait until those mothers have said “no” so many times to their kids they don’t have any resistance left. Then use normal adult language without even a hint pouting while you show them your wonderful shimmer powder and bag of makeup that they can buy, right there between the LEGOS and the Barbies…

I didn’t even protest, I didn’t even fight, I just handed over some cold hard cash and walked away with a small bag of makeup products half of which I’ve never owned and had no idea what to do with.

When I got home I looked at what I had bought, saw that it included a pair of false eyelashes, panicked and did what every girl faced with a bad day and a pile of makeup does. I called my friends.  I had to let them know I was probably having some sort of traumatic crisis and I was in need of help, support, love and makeup tutorials.

 

Selective Color

Hello!

This is Smoke. He let me take pictures of his iridescent feathers for a long time while I figured out my selective color camera settings.

John had no idea he had purple and green feathers. He’s color blind. He says his “world is drab.”

Smoke on the other hand can see things in the Ultra Violet spectrum. And he’s turning into a bit of ham for the camera.

Pigeons- cooler than you think.

You can try and argue with me on this one but be warned, I have 3,456 more pictures of pigeons and I will use them!

 

Rotten Brothers

My brother and I used to get into terrible fights. Little arguments turned into wrestling matches, he was scrappy and strong and didn’t know how to give up. Fortunately for me he was late to grow. Unfortunately for him his big sister was super mean.

Maybe it was when he did finally grow bigger than me and I had to be nice to him, or maybe it was just that once we didn’t live together and fight over the radio station everyday that we discovered we actually, maybe, sorta, liked doing things with one another.

But, somehow or other we’ve gone from no-holds wrestling to me purposely subjecting myself to multiple hours in the car with my kids just so our families could spend the weekend together.

Rotten brothers change.

My brother and Trip.

Well, some rotten brothers change…

Trip (my dog) and his litter mate Sunday (my brother’s dog) got into their first real fight when they were about 12 weeks old (prior to that, I didn’t know puppies ever did that).  Things have improved since then but I still wouldn’t call them “friends”. We all survived their adolescence, when they both went looking for a fight, with minor wounds and have settled into a more mature phase where, while supervision is always necessary, they can co-exist and hunt together and so long as they are busy they don’t feel the need to beat up on one another.

Except for when they do.

While out for a long run in the woods, while we skied, the boys were mostly ignoring each other and things were going fine.  My brother ahead and I behind, the dogs had all come together on the trail between us and paused. Maybe it was the inactivity, probably it was the presence of a girl dog (Yeah, I’m totally blaming the boys’ terrible behavior on a girl. It’s a thing!) but they went from happily coexisting to, snarling, snapping monsters.

This was not my first dog fight rodeo with the two of them but it was the first time that I had to separate the two of them while wearing cross country skis and poles. After quite a lot of ineffective pole waving (I do not recommend ski poles as an effective prop for dog fights) and yelling, (I always yell. I have no idea why, it does zero good) I was able to ditch my poles, side step into the deep snow off the trail and grab a dog in each hand.

Disclaimer: Don’t try this at home. Sticking your hand into a dog fight is a terrible idea. Breaking up a dog fight on skis is an even worse idea. It must be done strategically, quickly and it helps if you are strong enough and the dogs are small enough to hold them in the air at arms length if necessary while balancing on skis.  Did I mention this wasn’t my first rodeo with these two knuckleheads?

The dogs, once in hand, calmed down immediately and simply stood and looked at each other as I held them apart. Thankfully I saw that my brother was coming back through the woods towards me so I would not be stuck in the woods holding the tiger(s) by the tail, so to speak. I sighed and looked back down at our two trouble makers to assess damage.  Sunday had a small tear under one eye and I could still feel him growling and grumbling. I looked over to Trip, who was bleeding from a scratch on his nose, and saw that he was wagging his tail to beat the band as he cheerfully looked at his brother.

It reminded me of fighting with my own brother as a kid. Those few shining moments when he started it, came out on the worse end of it and he got in trouble for it… well, if you’ve got a rotten brother of your own then you know that’s enough to make any sibling gleeful.

My brother and I shook our heads, put a little distance between them, and headed the boys back down the path toward home. They went back to happily running through the woods as if nothing had ever happened.

Brothers…

What can you do?

I’d also like to note here that Goose (my dog) and his litter mate Buster (my brother’s dog) have so far gotten along fantastically.  Let’s just hope it stays that way! 

Life Begins When The Kids Leave Home and the Dog Dies by Barb Taub

Barb Taub has another book out!

Though I must say this collection of essays is really more of a…. pick it up and hide in the closet with some chocolate and read it when the dog just threw up on the carpet again and the car died and your kids have gone on a hunger strike so you know that you aren’t alone in the wild world of parenting and family drama…. rather than a sit down and read it cover to cover with a nice hot cup of tea kinda book.

‘Cause when you laugh that tea is gonna come right out your nose, and it’s gonna hurt.

Would I recommend it? Of course!

Zoom Burst

You know how some people say, “… then life happened.”

Well, this last week capoeira happened.

It’s basically the same thing.

Except that after your Contra-Mestre comes to town for a week and it flies by in a whirl of workshops, performances and rodas, all followed by plenty of food and friends and late nights, your legs hurt more than you would like to admit, you are pretty sure your feet might fall off and you have a constant stream of songs in Portuguese running through your head. But in either case nobody has done the laundry (well except for your capoeira whites of course) or gone to the grocery store or, you know, slept.

But that’s okay. Because when life and capoeira happen, sometimes you’ve just got to embrace it, tape up your feet and enjoy the ride!

I had no idea what a zoom burst was until this week’s Dogwood Photo Challenge. I had experimented with some nice colorful flower shots but this picture of my capoeira cord on the group’s drum (with a tiny string of lights for extra fun) seemed much more fitting.