Poetry, Sheer Poetry

April is National Poetry Month, so the library is sponsoring Game of Tomes, where you stack a pile of books so that their title makes a poem when you read it top to bottom.

I never actually got that picture to the library- oh well. 

If you ever wonder why this blog doesn’t get updated, it’s because this is my current life process with computers/social media:

Step 1- Check e-mail on phone maybe every day, maybe every two or three days.  Spend most of the time deleting junk e-mails from The City of Houston (We don’t even live in your county, people!).  It’s faster to hit “delete” than to hit “unsubscribe.”

Step 2- Get on the computer once a week to type any longish e-mail replies.  Twitter?  Instagram?   Facebook?  Whatever else the kids are doing these days?  Nope, I have more pressing online issues.  Spend the rest of the time looking at pictures of William and Kate.

Step 3- Consider how much time it would take to get pictures from the camera or my phone to the computer.  Decide to turn off the computer and move on with my day. 

If some magical, non-hacker, person can get our Saturn V Rocket pictures off my phone and onto the computer, I could probably produce a real post.  Trent’s probably the only person who falls into that category right now.  Until that happens, I’m off to get a snack.

Never Go With A Hippie To A Second Location

The problem with democracy is that everyone gets a vote, regardless of if you have any idea what you are talking about.  Everyone getting a vote is also the beauty of democracy, but not the beauty of the internet.  The top Google search results for any question is a list of forums and no one ever has a clue what they’re talking about.  I might type in “What happens if you don’t remove a splinter?” and the answer is always a forum where the first person to answer, without a doubt, starts her answer with “Honey,” then gives the most dramatic answer possible.  “Honey, you better save yourself a lot of pain and suffering and head straight to the emergency room to let a surgeon remove that splinter.” 

Fun fact:  If you have a splinter that you can’t get out, you can leave it alone for a few weeks and your body might magically push it to the surface where it will fall out.

I was making cookies earlier and remembered that we were out of vanilla extract.  “Honey, you better stop what you’re doing right now and head straight to the grocery store, because there is nothing that will substitute for vanilla extract in a chocolate chip cookie.”  Correction internet:  Disaronno can be substituted for vanilla extract, submitted by I'm Going to Eat All These Before My Children Wake Up Test Kitchens. 

Photo caption- Statler and Waldorf, doing what they do best: swinging and bickering and plotting the demise of any kid who messes with them.

It’s probably okay to eat that whole batch of cookies, because I made up the fact to post on an internet forum that being outside burns more calories than being inside, honey.  We have been outside a lot, 2 1/2 hours in the cul-de-sac this morning alone, because I want to start the weekend with a clean house.  A clean house means no one is in it.

Yesterday we reached a milestone  in the American parent/child relationship.  I tried to buy Rush a regular pair of tennis shoes and he refused to try them on, searching and searching the racks for a cooler pair.  Rush Williams, age 4.

To kick off your weekend, please visit the world’s greatest blog, Becoming Leona.  It’s hot off the presses and if there were ever a good thing to jump on early, it’s reading that.

The Leaves Burst Out, The Flowers Burst Out

Every Spring, Trent and I look back and laugh about how much we dreaded the day we would have to work in the yard.  Now we bicker about mulch and the proper green/brown/wet/dry ratios of compost.  How many little oak trees growing from the abundance of acorns can we leave in the front bushes (me: all of them) and how many should we pull out (Trent:  most, but he gave in to leaving them all.)  My plan is to eventually pull the biggest few into pots, then the biggest and strongest from the pots into the backyard. 

We have two thriving, little avocado trees, started from avocado pits.  The process of getting them to grow, including failures, took a year.  I hope they make it.

Trent made two bird houses out of gourds, which, to prevent nauseating swinging in the wind, have been tied more closely to the branches since this photo was taken. 

We were excited to see the first ever buds on the grapefruit tree, which turned into flowers.  Bees visited, and now very tiny grapefruits are starting to grow.

The same process is occurring for our newly planted Satsuma.  

My brother gave us a bag of daffodil bulbs for Christmas, and I quickly planted them all one day in between Christmas and New Year’s.  Each one grew into one beautiful flower.  That was it, so I guess that’s the way bulbs work.  But next year they will come back and multiply…?

That is either a palm tree starting to grow from a seed that fell from one of our trees, or it’s a weed.  We moved it to a pot to see what happens.

You Are What You Eat

I didn’t think we had any bleach in the house and I thought that all our cleaning products were locked up securely.  But one day during what I thought was naptime, due to the quietness that followed book reading and tucking in, there was an Episode involving two children and some bathroom cleaner that evidently contained bleach.  Among other casualties was an orange waffle knit shirt of Trent’s that was minding its own business in a laundry basket.

Slight damage to Trent’s clothes is a bummer for Trent, but an opportunity for a big piece of often interesting fabric.  Sometimes it doesn’t work out, like the holes in the supposedly 100% wool black sweater that I unsuccessfully tried to turn into felted black cats.  Misleading label Gap, because although I’ve made unusable any number of wool items accidently by getting hot water near them, that sweater would not shrink. 

So after being frustrated/annoyed that bleach was sprayed on a basket of clean, folded laundry, I immediately though about making carrots.  But who wants a stuffed carrot?  Maybe a baby rabbit?  Rabbits like carrots and if you are what you eat, I could make a rabbit that looks like a carrot.

I made a vague pattern for the body, head, and ears with newspaper and wax paper, but made the arms and legs sock monkey style.  We had recently seem lop eared rabbits at both the zoo and the rodeo, so these two bunnies needed floppy ears. 

As it turns out, and this is not new information, I’m terrible at sewing on faces and embroidery in general.  So the night before Easter I was sitting on the floor in the living room, watching Austin Powers –which really stands the test of time- on VHS and cutting out embroidery floss while trying not to cut the rabbit faces open.  Of all the bits and pieces in my craft supply, the bag of felt scraps gets pulled out most often and it helped create the faces.

A few weeks ago, I was in a friend’s garage looking at a piece of furniture she was painting.  She said it didn’t look the way she imagined when she started, but it looked like her style to me.  Maybe because I don’t always start with a crystal clear picture in my head, my projects don’t end up exactly the way I imagine them at the beginning either, but at least at the end –for better or worse- I can tell that I made it.

Alleluia, Alleluia

Thank God for Easter morning.  I just wanted to sit and cry through the whole service, in part because I was so relieved that Lent was over.  The Israelites in the desert for 40 years, Jesus tempted in the wilderness for 40 days, prayer and fasting, yes, but can’t we just start every morning of the year with the Halleluiah chorus?  

My theological friends are mentally pulling out copies of sermons to send me:  How Fasting Brings You Closer to God or How Burying the Alleluia Makes Easter Even More Glorious or Living Every Moment Like Easter Morning!  Great. But the Penitential Order just doesn’t encourage me through the everyday as well as a rousing hymn of Alleluia, Alleluia, Give Thanks to the Risen Lord does. 

I’m now realizing that I should be spending the other 325 non-Lent days of the year much more joyfully, much more Alleluia-y, much less grouchily. 

So Alleluia, Alleluia, the Lord is Risen Indeed!

Untimely

Getting photos from the camera to the computer is 75% of the battle and I’m never on time for that battle.  Please enjoy these photos from Valentine’s Day.  Happy Easter, Alleluia, Alleluia.