aquarium drinkers
May 24, 2008 | Filed Under ordinary | 2 Comments
lots of us, we three siblings have birthed many children, eight born, two to be born at the end of the summer, the oldest barely eight years of age. !
the family has gone back to california, the week is over, the weekend is here and next week we go to charleston for beachy-ness and sunburn. we will celebrate henry’s birthday in the sand and will not want to come home. i have a motherly bathing suit (though not anything this . . . motherly) and the boys have flotation gear and buckets for castle construction. i am looking forward to the aquarium, wearing a big hat, boys in waves, people in sun, lazy afternoons, freckling here and there, keeping everyone from drowning, stars by night, the water heard from the windows, being neurotic about getting the moop bag bleached and sandy and / or losing the moop bag somewhere (i love this thing!), lola in her bathing suit, sunglasses in all sizes, beach umbrella-ness, food of all kind, the glint of jude’s hair in the sun, card games, movies every night, henry laughing that delicious laugh of his, music, sunshine, the long drive there and back again, the ocean wide and deep, ours for a time in blue and gray and salty green.
glorious known triads
May 18, 2008 | Filed Under ordinary | 6 Comments
ernie finally finished laying the floor in his studio. the boys were busy all day yesterday, helping out with all manner of woody floor laying. last week, during a totally unrelated and quite impromptu hammering project, jude had his thumb smashed with the claw end of a hammer (!) and still he wants to fool around with all manner of blade and tool.
i’m relatively camera-less the last couple of weeks so i’m scrounging up pictures that have nothing to do with anything i’m writing about. if i had a camera on hand i would be posting pictures of baked beans. instead, lola, who is prettier than any baked bean, and quite a bit more delicious.
my brother and his wife and their lovelies are in town for two, three tiny days. i’ve not seen them for two and a half years, which is quite wrong and should not be so. last night i was up late making sinful baked beans that use a frightening amount of bacon and brown sugar. i say that i baked them for clayton and stacie but they really are my favorite thing to eat, except for maybe chocolate something or other. we spent the afternoon with lots of family around, eight children and two more coming along, my brothers and i all adult now, fat in the face, old and parental. we ate the baked beans, anyway, and too much of everything else. our kids, all muscle and stretched long, thin, ran around like we used to run, fast and tireless. it wasn’t that long ago, even though it seems like a dream.
it rained today, puddles on the plates that were left in a hurry as we ran into the house. “it sounds like popcorn out there,” samuel said, his ear at the door. everything green and growing, the leaves on the trees drooping, soggy, holding gallons divided, water in droplets cold, sweet.
i in my kerchief
May 15, 2008 | Filed Under ordinary | 1 Comment
a week since the last time i posted. i want to be one of those girls who manages to do it all and blog spectacularily every day. alas, i am not so. i barely manage to make it through most days these days, let alone be spectacular.
ernie and the boys did their best to appreciate me on mother’s day and they did a terrific job of it. flowers that are still opening up, new surprises every day in that vase of flowers that annie made for ernie and henry to pick up and bring to me early in the morning. a new bag arriving soon, a bag i’ve been longing for since christmas, coffee i didn’t brew, a large coffee mug with a proper handle (ernie hates the fiestaware mug circle handles, at least in the hand. they do look nice on the shelf…), a sunday paper, food i cooked, food i didn’t. a general day of feeling loved is nice and i recommend it to everyone. i’m looking forward to father’s day because i’ve got ideas early . . .
i’ve been spending my spare moments (fleeting, few) in the sunporch making things and leaving the mess to pile up on the floor. it’s heavenly. we vacuumed in there today because we wanted to, not because we had to, and that was nice, too.
henry’s kids 4 truth class sang last night and we went to hear him. he was first in the line walking onto the stage. he knew we would be in the balcony because we were there last time, so he looked at us and i waved at him, not knowing that he had recently been lectured about keeping his hands to his side (the entire class lectured, you know how it is). he blew me a kiss and waved multiple times. later he told me that he had been rude and i wondered if they had told him this before he had done it or after. i like to hope that it was before and that he did not get a “you were rude” lecture. sigh. it was my fault, you know. i’m the immature one smiling and waving in the balcony.
at the end the pianist played “jesus loves me” for the kids to walk off the stage gracefully and what to our wondering ears did we hear? but a miniature whistle soaring up over the people and the carpet and the organist who had a hard time playing in e flat. lovely whistler, that kid. this was the best part, that whistling meander while everyone else walked off (being on first, he was off last, of course). i like to hope, too, that there was no judgement cast upon him for whistling along. it seems that’s the kind of thing that jesus meant when he talked about the children coming to him, as annoying as they are and can be, even those kinds of things that drive us all insane are part of what it is to be a small child that jesus wants to come. i wish i thought this way during the day and in the thick of the noisemaking. it’s easy to think those kinds of thoughts when the boys are dreaming of sugarplums and the like, quiet, mouths open and noiseless, arms still between the sheets.
fly through my window
May 7, 2008 | Filed Under ordinary | 2 Comments
ernie is out buying the crab rangoon, The General all sticky in his foil box. my head full of allergies and i can’t bring myself to cook. the kids want to eat snacks, as usual, and i am torn between making them eat normal meals and letting them eat when they want to eat. we live a pretty mellow life here, no strident schedules to follow for anyone, easy routines for all. i don’t know if i could live a clockless life but i did daydream about taking a nap after reading about living one.
new, improved
May 6, 2008 | Filed Under ordinary | 6 Comments
i’m typing in a sea of clutter, silver thread, a new apron pattern (yay!), a plastic killer whale. mess runs a river through the house because we did little but play today. animal yatzi (anyone else have a hard time figuring this out? maybe i’ve lost more brain cells than i thought. of course, i’ve never played ordinary yatzi, so . . .) and several other games with small pieces and mess-up-the-board-with-wild-three-year-old-hands appeal. i cleaned out the wading pool which had been left for the fall, the winter, to swim and drown in the leaves of the pecan trees. sticks, bricks, a long metal stick, a truck, and leaves that were a gory black, all inside the pool while the boys stood by, hose in hands, bathing suits and bare feet. yuck!
annie came by with a wonderful dress she stitched late into the night. i am glad that i have a girl to dress in clothes made from sheets and velveteen ribbon. and i’m glad for annie: thanks!
also new, design by humans t-shirts. i’ve been especially enthusiastic about this one since chris‘ awesome zine hit the scene. it could only be better if i had gotten a new bicycle with a bell for ringing and a basket for filling and emptying.
a double drip, in pink, of course, as seen at goodwill, the one with the extreme prices on records . . .
ernie brought home the prize for all of that game refereeing playing and pool scrubbing: a stainless steel french press! goodbye with a meaningless kiss blown to you, countertop drip machine! my last press died with a long crack in the glass that made the coffee seep slowly all over the place. no more cracks or accidental chips and smashes. tonight the first pot steams and stays warm on the counter while the boys (”i’m exhausted,” henry yawned as he burrowed down in my bed . . . nice trick.) sleep in dreams that splash in glittering drops that mirror bulbous and carry them into the impossible and back again.
it’s fun to have so many new things in one day. i hardly know what to do with myself.
it’s easy to love
May 5, 2008 | Filed Under ordinary | 1 Comment
boys and birthdays, what about this do i not love?
wishes and possibilities follow:
henry (may 29)
bike & gear
walkie talkies
puzzles, 60 to 100 pieces
tetherball (wanna play me?)
face paint
new costumes (robin hood greens, crouching tiger tunic, star wars cloak . . . can i sew these in time? aaaah!)
kite
books from this list
greatest robin hood movie ever
jude (june 6)
bike & gear
books from this list
apron with pockets for kitchen work
dinosaur or monster costume of some kind (overwhelmed screaming yet again)
fizzy lifting
May 4, 2008 | Filed Under ordinary | 1 Comment
sunday, lazy and slow, the trip to church successful in every sense of the word, everyone learning and worshipping as they should, no altercations, weeping, gnashing of toothless gums. we ate scallops today, little scallops that the kids didn’t want to eat. it was sad when i dropped the last one on the crumbly floor.
we’ve a new table for the dining room which means the old one will move into the sunporch for all of my royal mess making and stitchery. hooray! i will be sharing the table with henry’s legos, which will be good since lola is wanting to crawl (though she is still quite stationary) and there are lots of things like marbles and soldiers and pirate treasure that are just waiting to be eaten by a little pink mouth that is covered in nerves that zap and tingle curiously.
this week we’ve been enjoying whipping cream whipped silly in the mixer and as many strawberries as we can eat before sick.