•every so often•

I think, I'm doing it. The sun breaks through the clouds, the pavement shines with promise. It's a good feeling. xox

Penn's "habitat."

"Can I sleep in my habitat?"

•artichokes•

I told Penn "True Blood" is not a movie. It is a television show about artichokes. 

Later, amidst the usual bedtime tears, my suddenly-five-year-old wanted to know,
"Are you gonna watch an artichoke show? I don't like artichokes, but if they're not going in my mouth I want to see it." Then, "You get to watch stuff and I don't!"

Well, yeah. And perhaps the eventual slumber of a five-year-old is better for it. 

Recently, a friend lamented having showed her daughter an animated film about dragons. The movie introduced the verb "killing" into the toddlers vocabulary. Another friend, the mother of a boy who I've credited with teaching my son the art of constantly pretending to have a gun in his hand, recently mentioned that her husband is very anti-gun. So. File all of this under no-matter-what-we-do? We've tried to relax about the gun obsession, in an effort to give it as little energy as possible. And we've started "Movie Nights" with Penn, in an effort to have a little bit of popcorn-riddled fun. A part of me wonders what he would be like, raised instead in the woods with hand-hewn chess pieces on a stump covered in checker-board moss. That I painted on, chia-ball style. What if. What if we raised our child with select omissions? No guns, killing, Darth Maul, black teeth, poison, or even that bad man who sent the planes with the bombs.* What would a five-year-old Penn be like, without his tart awareness of the world? Awkward though it may be, it's an awareness. 

Just musing. What is it that you wish you'd kept to yourself? For just a little longer?

xox
*Penn's description of Hitler.

•trust your feelings•

I'm watching Star Wars for the first time with Penn.  After the usual stalls--popcorn, dishes, drinks, cat shoo'd away from my spot on the couch--we finally started the movie.  10 minutes in, I took him in my lap.  He was trembling, he was so excited.  Teeth literally chattering.

We skipped some scary parts (aunt beru-bq, trash compactor), but now it's full speed ahead to the Thai fighters and that two-meter sweet-spot Luke has to hit to 'splode the Death Star.  Penn is now on his feet and blasting the screen with his EZ-squeeze toothpaste tube squeezer.

The whole reason I've been putting this off, I realize, is me.  I'm the precious one, not my four-year-old.  Somewhere, it became important to me that he feel the sanctity of these movies... so I kept falling back on "he's too young."  Today was one of those I-can't-believe-I'm-that-Mom days.  Wherein I finally realized what a dork I've been.  It's nice, sitting here and watching this clunky old movie with my kid.  I'd forgotten how awesome, Alec Guinness.

Just now, from the couch--
Me: He shut off his computer, because he's using The Force!  He's just using his feelings!
Penn:  (holds up toothpaste thing) Did I break this?

xox

•shh, shh, little kitty•

Well, shame on me. Nothing soothes the soul like actually voicing one's concerns--and having them put to rest. I spoke with the director of Penn's preschool, and not only are those offending un-foods *not* being served, they probably aren't even the property of the school. Ahem. < chagrin! >


This is a developing story... but I wanted to do a teeny post to make up for completely flying off the handle on Friday. So charged, these issues of food in our day and age. So available, these bloggish tools! (So, too, like a double-edged sword.) I am humbled by the kindness of others who, in spite of my hot-headedness, took the time to comment, to take my side, and to subtly tell me to stand down. xox

•poison apple•

They're baa-aack! And just in time for Halloween! To my utter dismay and horror, Otterpops and Skippy Peanut Butter have returned to Penn's preschool. So now, since I'm no longer on Prozac, do the gloves come off? Do I merely protest by making all of Penn's snacks again, or do I pull him from school? Do I get all the parents to sign a petition, entitled For The Love Of Common Sense, Please Don't Feed Our Children Poison And Tell Then It's Snack?

I asked an afternoon teacher today, point-blank: does she feed them Otterpops. Occasionally, she said. I clarified: Instead of snack? I mean, as snack? She hesitated. Yes... as a treat. When it's hot.

We live at the mouth of the Central Valley in California. It's hot. A lot. You're telling me when the temperature spikes, instead of the usual afternoon offering of water, milk, plus green beans or cheese, they're substituting a 25-calorie frozen stick of high fructose corn syrup and chemically-derived food coloring? What about vodka? Would they feed them vodka, if I put that in the snack-donation box?

I'm seriously heartsick over this. I don't know what to do. Are my only options to remove Penn from the school, or alienate him by Penn-only snacks, or take money I don't have and buy all the right snacks, crowding as best I can everyone else out of that damn snack-donation box? Just the idea of having to have another conversation with the director about why this is important, or even why I won't let Penn eat that garbage, makes me want to crawl into bed, cover my head, and sob for my son's future. How on earth is a child to learn healthy habits, if school teaches you that brightly-colored water is food? Unschooling should not be the only sane option. xox

•when up is down and down is up•

In spite of the relative bubble of wealth, education and privilege that insulates our little town of Davis, my son's preschool served Otterpops instead of afternoon snack last week. Yesterday, one of his teachers told my husband she believes raw cashews are poisonous (their shells are, but they don't make the raw nut toxic). I'm starting to get a little disheartened.

If you read no other blogpost for the rest of the year, please look at this brilliant one from KristenM at FoodRenegade.com.

•when are they going to come out?•

When you are an adult...
and you find someone you love very much...
like Mommy loves Daddy...
and Catrina loves Laurie...
and Michael loves Karl...
you might want to use your seeds, then, to make a baby...
to start a new family, your own family.

•buzz rush•

Your life, in your own hands. How many more blinks of an eye?
"When will I die?"

•if this were a photograph, it would be a bottle of pills•

Piles of drawings, unopened statements. Placemats and napkins, not yet dirty enough for the laundry. Colored pencils, in varying states of unsharp. A graveyard of curb-ables, another for Craigslist.

Read more »

•tether•

If I tiptoe around, hush every chore, stifle even the thought of the toddler I've been begging to sleep, eventually I just sit. All that strain to keep a slumbering person slumbering. I stop, and burn through naptime in my head.

Put down accomplish; pick up rest. xox

•the art of art•

(In which our heroine spares us, please, the definition.)

I'm thinking today (a period there would be so funny) that my songs are the greatest gifts I've ever given myself. Bear in mind, I have spent *more* time wishing those songs didn't exist... but. At some point, a person does manage to shove aside her own internal censor (oh, move OVER!). At some point, a person does manage to be in the moment, to let things go, to see what there is to be seen. It's just art.* There, in the world, for us, for anyone and everyone (for ever and ever, amen).

Yesterday: I was reading Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. Then I found my music on Pandora. Then I picked up my toddler by bike in the shimmering sunlight, and on our ride home we watched sheep, racing in their paddock. We picked kumquats, and ate every last one. We went to dinner (brussels sprouts, pasta, cake), and the adults talked about blank space in literature.

Today: I played my fancy guitar for the first time in months. My fingers knew where to go. My voice knows the words, still. My horse knows the way to carry the sleigh, through the deep and drifting snow.

xox

* This reminds me of a magnet my aunt Jane gave me. It's a cartoon of two obese women, huddled over a whole blueberry pie, with the caption, "It's only fruit." That, in turn, reminds me of a particular cooking-class evaluation from work. It was written by a teenage girl, "Instructor should be more relaxed. It's chocolate! CALM DOWN."

p.s. It's art, no matter what we do. (Couldn't resist a definition, after all.)