this little finger on the right
July 30, 2006 | Filed Under ordinary | Leave a Comment
changing cloth diapers with pins and all takes a lot longer than changing a hazardous (though extremely convenient) disposable diaper. at least, it takes me a lot longer using cloth to go from soggy to sweet with a wriggling two year old. in order to take jude’s mind off of his need to wriggle, i normally distract him with crazy antics and silly songs. six months ago jude and i played the, “what’s that sound, jude?” game in which i would gasp and ask the question in my most excited voice, which would follow with a very quiet jude who would listen to all ambient sounds and then report back, “dog.” sometimes we would mix things up by singing, “there’s a spider on the floor, on the floor!” or “one, two, three, four, five: once i caught a fish alive!” i’ve not been very diligent about it, but we’re also learning the shorter catechism for children which is really cute (and often convicting) to hear coming out of the mouth of a two year old.
and sometimes it’s just funny, as was the conversation the other night, after a dinner, after a bath, while jude got dressed for bed.
me: who made you, jude?
jude: God made me.
me: what else did God make?
jude: mac & cheese.
me: mac & cheese?
jude: no, unker [uncle] josh made mac & cheese.
it should also be noted that jude (joshua jude) is somewhat obsessed with a photo of his namesake, ernie’s brother josh(ua), and daughter chloe which is magnetized to the fridge, and that, having eaten mac & cheese unhealthfully, jude wanted to hold the picture of unker josh. instead, he pointed and repeatedly said, “please, unker josh?” as though josh and chloe would ignore my forbidding and float on over to be held by cheesy fingers.
many little wild wishes
July 27, 2006 | Filed Under ordinary | Leave a Comment
the morning student, the only one, the only student who comes on a weekday morning, the student whose arrival is anticipated by a flurry of clean-up and an annoying rush down the sidewalk to grandmamas with curious, though short, explorers, climbers and stick picker-uppers, this student is late. nineteen of her thirty minutes have expired. today was to be her last lesson before she finds a new teacher, before we sell our piano and drive away. sad to miss the last lesson, though i’m not her favorite person, as she has noted at least twice. “i don’t need to learn to play the piano,” she pules. “i’m going to be a nurse. or a cheerleader.” it’s also sad to have had to rush in from the mud-slinging of tori’s backyard to clean up before responsibility overcame.
inspired (although first baffled, then frustrated, then irritated) by claims from a waldorf loving mama that she and her children spend seven hours outdoors every day, even in the rain and snow, i realized that we had a serious outdoor time spending deficit. on monday we managed to log six hours, tuesday, only five, yesterday, perhaps two since i can’t read a book from a chair while it’s raining. today, only one, but the day is not yet over.
i’m still a bit baffled – when am i supposed to clean the house? do laundry? stare at the computer’s haze blue screen? seven hours is too many, at least for this mama. four is reasonable, if no one fights, if no one runs off, if no one repeatedly requests snacks from the kitchen.
the boys are happier for it. they sport blackened feet and sweaty curls. they run and rumble, and when we come inside they actually sit. well, they sit more than usual. and sitting is more like pretzel twisting of leg and limb while doing somersaults across the floor, the bed, the couch.
eager as the great morning . . .
preparation on earth (take two)
July 25, 2006 | Filed Under ordinary | Leave a Comment
i’m not exactly sure what happened, but the last time i posted this entry there were all kinds of issues and problems and disasters. i’m trying again. if you commented, your comments have disappeared, too. feel free to re-post . . . )
saturday i turned 31, no turning back at this point, dead set in the thirties. jude and i celebrated by rising early and sorting through miscellaneous wadded up pattern pieces in shopping bags in the basement. shortly after we went to the farmers market to buy zucchini and plums, summer staples in this kitchen. after our saturday morning students left, the boys took naps in preparation for a trip to peoria for birthday dinner. we ate at the longhorn steakhouse and i very much wish i’d brought my camera to photograph the garlic buttery deliciousness of the skewered shrimp, the earthy wonderfulness of the button mushrooms, the creamed and butteredness of the mashed potatoes, and the square of steak and its melt-in-the-mouthedness. not to mention the bread and its crustiness that came first.
“i want to eat dinner and then get a coffee for the ride home,” i said as we looked for a parking spot. it’s my birthday, good coffee must be a part of the day. but after we ate rich food until we could eat no more, coffee sounded terrible so we saved it for the next day, for the ride home from church.
we went home and opened various requested presents as well as a few unrequested surprises, including money to spend as i wish from great grandma who, observing the pink wrapping paper around the packages from my family, engaged me in the following conversation:
grandma: is pink your favorite color?
mollie: no.
grandma: it’s not! what is it then?
mollie: green(e).
grandma: IT’S NOT PINK!?
mollie: what’s your favorite color?
grandma: blue.
mollie: IT’S NOT PINK!?
grandma: well, no, it’s NOT. i like blue.
ernie: my favorite color is clear.
on sunday ernie and i, along with the enthusiastic francisco from church played handel for all three services. it was inspiring and exciting to play the piano again. most of my personal encounters with the piano these days, sadly, involve loud protests from the preschool critics in the house and i eventually end up performing dissonant trios with a half naked child on either side of the bench. sigh.
we did get coffee for the ride back.
after eating grilled food, corn on the cob, and tomatoes we ate the enormous chocolate cake that my mother (who is back to blogging again, the memory of my birth and scream being too much for her to bear without writing. tell her you’re glad she’s back in the blogosphere again!) made for me. the thing was tall and beautiful. i don’t know how she does it. there were a few more presents from the blues band goers of the day before who missed the original opening ceremonies.
the birthday weekend ended with henry and i playing in the dirt with tori. henry played more than i did, filling his yellow boots and pirate hat with dirt until darkness sent us indoors for bed.
excitingly, one more mystery gift is arriving today. the thing, being late, is now the most curious. when jude wakes from his nap we head to my mother’s house to watch with anticipation for her mailwoman to thunk up the steps in her black shoes.
underwater light
July 20, 2006 | Filed Under ordinary | Leave a Comment
it was black this morning when we emerged from the cold of the sleeping room. the humidity had lifted some, so it seemed, since we didn’t feel like crying when we stepped out and pressed our bodies into the sludge of it. later, it began to rain. heavy sheets of rain that concerned the boys as they stood near the windows, waiting for, jumping at, the thunder. the coffee was hot and i didn’t mind. we sat on the star-porch and watched the gutters dump great bursts of water onto the patio.
the cicadas in the tree outside the study door swell with the traffic, one, then another. in the morning jude will stand at the door and look for rabbits as he does most mornings since the day we saw a rabbit staring at us from the hedge. he remembers, watches, waits.
tonight i carefully fill in the boxes on the order form for new birthday birkenstocks (thanks, lydia, scott, the rest!). i’m terribly afraid of m. kurfess. i’m afraid she’ll send ugly shoes to me and won’t let me exchange or return them.
henry finds new things to do with mr. potatohead, such as give him a thin head, rather than the traditional fat-faced potato that we’re accustomed to. notice the knife in the back in picture number 2. honestly, he wasn’t stabbing violently at all. henry likes the words “buck teeth.” here we have a buck-toothed, thin-faced, potato fireman in shoes that are too big (courtesy of m. kurfess).
the house is a wreck, boxes in piles, toys to step over, hiding under places where they won’t be found until we take the couch to goodwill and roll the rug up to place in a corner spot of a truck. “you’re a very private person,” my mother observes, and i realize that the words burning across my forehead, my chest, the palms of my hands, must only be visible to me as i scuff down the bricks wearing my flip-flops, my poker face. these greenes are nomadic once again, moving towards azaleas and the cabbage palmetto.
pirate poppy
July 17, 2006 | Filed Under ordinary | Leave a Comment
henry’s gary is nearly as near and dear to all of us as any of us are. when lost we search until we can find him, with flashlights and rain boots if need be. he has spent days at the roadside beneath the mailbox, nights squished under the mattress. he’s traveled to grandmamas, he’s slept in a boot, a hat, a drawer. did i mention that he speaks french? oui, il est à l’aise en français!
this day henry rides on scout, his faithful steed. he rides with a baby in his pouch to keep him safe from “bad pirates.” normally, henry chooses to be a “bad pirate” but this time, he’s a “pirate father, keeping his baby safe.”
we’ve had a few rough nights with henry, sleep issues and whatnot. we don’t feel like we’re very nice people when it’s over and done with, when at last he relaxes and sails away. we don’t feel like we’ve taught henry that parents mean safety, sacrifice, and love. but, gracefully, he’s picked that up. and, armed with resolve and walking in mercy, we plan to do, to be better, inasmuch as we faithfully can.
savvy?
July 15, 2006 | Filed Under ordinary | Leave a Comment
dawn cracked, and so the day, the weekend, begins.
henry fell asleep last night while ernie was reading a story about a pancake that did not want to be eaten by seven hungry children and thus hopped out of the pan and rolled away. (i like it that he will sit for long stories now, stories with many pages and only a few pictures.) and so, because the sun was still high in the sky and because last night it was only six-twenty, six-thirty, when he drifted away, he woke me up at five asking me to make a tiger mask for him to wear. we did not make a tiger mask and i managed to get a half an hour of sleep before we came down to make coffee (me), start laundry (also me), don zorro gear (henry) and pour cheerios (also henry). at six jude blinks down the stairs for his own bowl of cheerios to carry and drop and crunch through the house.
last weekend jude had his first experience with a sitter other than someone related to him. emily has stayed with him once before, but my brother joe and brother will were there and it was at grandmama’s house, so it wasn’t so bad for him. last weekend emily and her mother came over, bringing wee orphaned kittens to feed by dropper. both boys were napping when they arrived and ernie and i zipped to the van of my parents, who took us all to see pirates of the caribbean, dead man’s chest.
fantastic it be. i don’t care if they call it “cartoonish” and i think that they’re crazy to note that it’s “too long.” it was cold and salty and i feel like i need to sew myself a long piratey jacket with deep cuffage and pockets. we saw it digitally, we ate popcorn in gigantic “collector” buckets that we brought home to the sleeping pirates. i love “the big movie,” as henry calls it. every large and dark and loud minute of it (with the exception of joe’s repeated accidental sipping of my drink).
and i was very relieved that i remembered to shine my spectacles before the ocean began its octopused churning. it would have been sad to realize there were thumbprints and dust midway through.
boy fantastic
July 11, 2006 | Filed Under ordinary | Leave a Comment
my favorite costumes that henry wears are a mod-podge of things from his costume basket. marvel could not come up with such heroes and villains as run daily through this house, down these sidewalks, scaling these walls.
do notice, please, the right foot smashing my mom’s resilient hosta. . .
medicinal wine from a teaspoon, beer from a bottle
July 8, 2006 | Filed Under ordinary | Leave a Comment
the details of the event anger me, scare me, so i’m not going to write about them at all. the important thing to know is that everyone is well, save for the car, who has an ugly display of bubbles, wrinkles (cellulite?) on her back side. sad for one so young.
on tuesday night, drunken patriots were thrashing around the city in a duct taped together piece of scrap. they smashed into a car, who smashed into our car, sending everything flying forward.
ernie asked if henry was okay and henry replied, “let’s get out of here.”
henry told me, over the phone, “i was a brave boy.” he enjoyed talking to the police. my parents went to pick him up along with my brother who was also in the car. ernie stayed behind to observe incompetent policework (we’ve seen COPS, we know. . .), and to be given false insurance information.
so today, although what really matters is that everyone is okay, we’ve got a $500 deductable to pay to fix the car because we’re responsible citizens, while the illiterate with open beer and steering wheel in hand had no insurance whatsoever and will have a small fine to pay and his license temporarily revoked. his mama owned the car and didn’t insure it, either. two generations of selfishness, and more likely to come.
“can i go over there with a baseball bat?” ernie asks our insurance agent. “you can drive by, throw eggs at him, yell obscenities, that kind of thing,” he replies with his peppery voice. ernie drove by and took pictures.
we want him to pay, we want him to hurt, we want him to wish his mama was a teetotaler. instead, we photograph and imagine how much it would hurt him to have those piercings ripped right off of his chest.
whipped
July 7, 2006 | Filed Under ordinary | Leave a Comment
call me inspired. we need to get up and do this stuff! i recently came across the beautifying blog called “whip up.” i was reminded of crazy sewing nights with noel a long time ago when i was giggly and brash and wore flowers in my hair. we’d sit at the terrible walmart sewing machine and we’d “sew for tomorrow.” the craftsmanship wasn’t the greatest (how could it be with the pedal pushed to the floor for maximum sewing speed?) but it was fun. and we always had something new to wear.
whip up’s subtitle, “handcraft in a hectic world,” as well as the crafty genius contributors of the blog really leave no room for excuses. everyone is busy, some of us just do more in the minutes in between the busy-ness.
i really hope to join in on some of these whiplash competitions, as well. gracen should do it, although she’d probably win every time. at the very least, the irresistable fabric stash in my basement would transform into things wonderful, no?
pam short has broken both of her legs
July 6, 2006 | Filed Under ordinary | Leave a Comment
a (wince) thirty-something birthday is looming in my sky. since there haven’t been any greene eggs for some time now, i’m posting some wishes here for your shopping pleasure.
for instance, who can live without this luminous owl night-light? perhaps someone will buy two and then send one to me as a thank you for the enlightenment. we can click them on at the same exact time each night. cause for a dimly lit smile, no?
it is well known that coffee and tea is better when the water comes screaming through this.
although one might assume such a thing would be for jude, the large wonderbag in earthy leaf batik will make my life easier and less cluttered with spare walmart bags. seriously.
i’ve got one willow that weeps, but really should have three.
the always growing book list should dwindle a bit, shouldn’t it?
and while the library grows, i think we need to stick these animals all over the place, too.
mostly buzzing around the house on espresso . . .