Friday I'm In Love

I haven't been doing much in the Poetry Friday vein these days, but I just spent a couple of hours writing reports and listening to music on YouTube. It was like coming out of a really good yoga session, listening to all that music.

What started it all was seeing bits of the Brit Awards on the television. I caught this bit, and despite the best efforts of FDPG ("Are you going to watch ALL of that? Who is that man? Do you like his hat? Why are their heads so big? Are those men NAKED!?") I managed to hear almost every bit of it. And then I sighed and let her turn on Survivorand daydreamed a little. I spent a lot of time listening to those fellows.

So here's my Friday offering to you all. Consider it my Dance Music Friday post.

First, since it's Friday. I want to run screaming into the street I love this song so much. Not to mention this one. This band made my 20's so incredibly bearable (even if they did encourage me to do odd things at inappropriate times).

Then, the same boys, a little longer in the tooth. I love this version, even if I do feel a little teary at the sight of the older, sadder Mr Smith.

And let's not forget a modern imitation. I want that gold waistcoat.

What have you done to deserve this?

I once spent a week-end painting a mural on a kitchen wall and listening to this record (on a cassette tape I am so OLD) the entire time. That was WBKH (Way Before Kids and Husband) but I still have this one memorized.

Never noticed the armadillo before.

Heaven knows I am not miserable now.

Finally, my brother, when he moved into the basement and got all affected and miserable, used to play this song over and over and over and over. When my parents went out he'd play it loud. Really loud. The basement reverberated until I knew it forwards and backwards, even though I was so young and free of metaphor that I really thought the singer WAS talking about running. And after all those goofy Goths I felt like getting just a little rowdy. Well, that and I couldn't find Little Red Corvette on YouTube...

Back to your regularly scheduled programming, now. All of you.

Tag, I'm it!

Shaun at Red Sea School (a blog name I love, by the way), has tagged me for this photo meme. The idea is that you go to your photo cache and choose the 6th photo, post it, and include some explanation. By the way, when we were looking at the photo she chose, my boys both exclaimed, at the very same instant "THAT KID HAS A LEGO LIFE JACKET!"

So here's my sixth photo. It's a picture of FDPG (who has inherited her mother's penchant for faux leopard skin hats) pulling Dominic through Yaletown in Vancouver in a wagon. I'd forgotten how much time she spent towing Dominic, who at that particular age always seemed to be either tired, or grumpy, or just plain ornery, around with her. He'd plonk himself down on the ground and refuse to move. We experimented with his resolve many times: leaving him and going far far away (while keeping an eye of course), ignoring him, and sometimes doing this - heaving him into a wagon and dragging him around after us. FDPG was never bothered by this, err, personality aspect of his, fortunately, and she lavished all her maternal instincts on him willingly. Which was pretty darn lucky for him, because he really used mine up some days!

I love this photo. I love how disgruntled and incredibly floppy Dominic looks, and I love how patient and calm FDPG looks, in her lurid fuschia tights and red boots. I think they were about 3.5 then. How time flies.

So, there it is, my sixth photo. I don't know to tag (Suji? Samantha? Heather? Louise? Maureen?), but whoever you are, feel free to post. And let me know about it!

Is it a bird? A plane? No, it's Haku!

Or maybe it's just a really long balloon up in the sky and we've got really long overactive imaginations. Either way, Dominic's new game has the kids in a permanent state of hilarity. Some friends (the family of the man in the green shirt in the 8th picture down) gave him these balloons for his birthday last summer. At the time they were very fun, but they also spent a lot of time weeeeeeeeezzzzziing around the house, getting in my way as I slaved buying Dairy Queen cakes making sure the twins had lots of lovely sugary junk for their birthday. And what with all the people to play with and all the water to swim in and all the places to bike to, they were set aside until we came home from our holidays.

They came out once or twice in the fall, then the other day he hauled them out again. And set them off into the sky. The first time he did, I was in the back yard, digging and raking. Something fast and blue caught the corner of the eye, snaking high above the rooftops and over the trees. Then it dropped like a stone. Now, either my distance vision isn't so great or I do, as Richard contends, live in a little world of make-believe I have a really overactive imagination, but at the time I thought it was a large blue flying snake, so I raced into the front yard, to see where it had fallen. I know, I know, it sounds mildly idiotic now, but that's the way my mind works: anything is possible.

I ran into the front yard, still holding my shovel, where I was confronted with Dominic and FDPG, both in fits of hysterics. They were pointing to the Garry oak across the street, where something skinny, blue, and very latex was dangling limply from a branch. "Look! The balloon went higher than all the trees!" they both shrieked.

I didn't like to admit that I'd thought it was alive, so I merely nodded, and said "Wow. Cool."

Then I remembered why I thought it was alive. I thought it was Haku. Streaking across the sky.
Here's Dominic setting one off in the back yard.












And there it is vanishing over the rooftops.


















Look carefully. Now tell me, doesn't that look like Haku?

Plotting Land

It was another glorious day for the memory banks today: sunny, cloudless, almost warm, even. We discarded our coats as soon as we hit the car. And for the first time since fall, I had the car windows open during our travels. Even on the highway.

We were out getting sand and soil for the various expansions I have going on. Sand for the new brick work, and soil to fill in some terracing experiments. And either I'm getting weak and feeble or the sand is getting heavier, because I ended up filling the bags while they were in the trunk, instead of filling them then hauling them out to the trunk. At least Max didn't break one, like he did last year. It split all over the trunk. It was not a pretty sight, all that damp sand sitting stickily on the fabric. I had to wield a vacuum, even, so you know how much that must have hurt.
Here's the area where I put in some of the bricks. You see the tree in the middle, right? The brickless tree? With the strange straw-covered rectangle in front of it? Well, when we first moved in here that poor little tree was sitting in a heap of overgrown couch grass.

It's a Macintosh apple tree. The first year we were here it gave off 1 apple. It had a wasp nest in it, as well as a number of very large and very ugly caterpillar nests. I almost cut it down, because I got the willies from both the wasps and the caterpillars, not to mention the deplorable shape it was in, but one bite of that apple and I knew I had to save the tree. It was some apple.

I cleared away the grass (1st year), overturned the sod around the drip line, then heaped the area with compost to feed the tree, because it was looking a little sad (2nd year), and now I've enclosed the area with bricks, which are level with the ground so the mower can use them as a runway. It seems the most effective method of having a border that doesn't include me having to wield an edging tool. Now I won't have to lug out the weed wacker or move the bricks every time Richard mows. I'm all for a Less Labour Intensive Garden, well, less labour intensive in certain areas...
What's that odd semi-circle on the other side of the straw-covered box, you ask? (humour me here) Well, gosh, it's a new terrace I'm building. The twins are clamouring for garden space, and since I can't give them any part of the vegetable garden (it's already too small for my purposes), I decided to branch out into the areas the kids don't really use. The really slopey areas.




Here's one area I've terraced, albeit in a half-hearted way. It was a gentle grassy slope when we first moved in, with a small azalea on it and a massive old stump where the squirrels lived. Note my use of the past tense. There are currently no squirrels residing in this area. You can see where I'm using sod to build up the bottom wall. This is the shade garden, where the mint grows rampant (we eat a lot of mint), and where the hellebores, pulmonarias, lupins, huckleberries, pansies, heuchera, and mondo grass grow. It's a very picturesque area come spring. It's also where we did our One Small Square experiment last year.

Here's another area I terraced. It holds rhubarb. You can't actually see the rhubarb, because it's reclining under that terracotta pot, waiting for it's close-up (which will come any moment now, Mr DeMille).








And here's the latest in the Terrace Experiment. You can see the rhubarb in the distance. Not to mention FDPG in her favourite green pants (which she never takes off and thus which I never get to wash). I'm not sure what's going to go inside this one yet, but it will be helpful if I decide to start rotating my crops like all the garden books tell me to do. I've never rotated anything before, mostly because I've never had the luxury of space, but now I do, so I might try it. Wait for it: this will be the year I get all the flea beetles, carrot flies, and wireworms Rodale tells me are my destiny if I don't rotate! Sometimes ignorance IS bliss.

Another before and after. The vegetable plot. About a month ago. Bean trellis on the left, odds and ends everywhere else.















Leap forward to yesterday. Weird angle, I confess. I got a little nutty with the rotation on iPhoto. And maybe, just maybe I might have had a glass of wine to soothe my aching bones after a long day toiling in the sod, right before I took the picture. Tilt your head to your right and I guarantee everything will look fine.

I've extended the lower right corner along about 5'. You can see the cinder blocks at the end. After I extended that corner, FDPG showed up and demanded some garden time. So I turned over another corner, this time the one in the lower left corner, where that red brick border is. We wrestled about how many bricks she could use to border her space with, because she had some definite ideas that didn't really mesh well with how many of my salvaged red bricks I was willing to part with.






Here is her small square here.

FDPG is going to grow: pumpkins, strawberries, radishes, lettuce, and maybe a few sunflowers.

This area is perhaps 3' square.

She estimates that she can get all that into this area, although I should add that she wouldn't look me in the eye when she said this, so perhaps she's having me on. It's hard to say with this kid.

That FDPG, she sure is an optimist.




After I did that, I got a little more carried away with brick edging over by the blueberry patch (where the straw is on the left there).
And finally, an iris ready for its close-up. Those lines! With a face like that it oughta be in pictures, don't you think?

More Art Projects

Here's a van Gogh: Wheatfield With Cypresses. You might recognize it. I used to have a very cardboardy reproduction of it stapled (yes, stapled) to my wall, once upon a time. It was from the Sally Ann. Eventually even those staples wouldn't hold it up, sadly, and last I saw it was lolling in a corner at my parents' summer cabin. Nestled in the burnt orange shag. By the avocado green stove.

Anyhow, here was another pastel project. I got this idea from the very excellent Art Projects For Kids blog. We love the ideas on this blog: they're simple, they don't take all day to do, and they usually involve items I have on hand. 

Max's take on Wheatfield. Max was slightly annoyed that he'd been so caught up in one half of the painting and didn't leave room for the cypress, but I like the fact that he was so absorbed.

Dominic's take on Wheatfield.

FDPG's take on Wheatfield.

It's Times Like These

That I really really really miss living near a Trader Joe's. A friend of mine sent this link. I'm sure it was to drive me mad.

It's very funny. Especially if you know what the phenomenon known as Trader Joe's is.

Signs of Spring

It was sunny on the weekend, and since I had a few spare hours between watching Max do his speech for the 4H club, watching Max and Richard strip a bolt on a lawnmower Max is dismantling for his 4H project (oops), and doing 4,000 loads of laundry (absolutely hands down the highlight of my weekend, says Sheila the Diva Housewife), I zipped out into the yard to do some work.

And take some pictures.

And escape the laundry.

If I leave it all inside while I'm all outside, I can successfully ignore almost any household chore. Sometimes Richard even does the laundry. It's a Take Pity On Sheila Chore for him, I think, because he knows how much I hate doing laundry. It's just so darn repetitive. I have trouble with certain repetitive tasks. Eating, I can do over and over. Breathing, ditto. But laundry, dishes, and changing beds are way down there on the list. Gardening is way more amusing. Heck, almost anything is more amusing than laundry. Sometimes I wonder how I got into this SAHP role when I am so obviously not the right temperament for it.

I am trying something new with the brickwork around the herb bed. I'm sinking the bricks so that the lawn mower can roll right over them. I saw this in a landscaping book I have out from the library. I saw the picture and it hit me like a bolt from the blue. No more lugging that ancient, mouldering weed whacker around for this chickie. First of all, it's too heavy. Second of all, I can see the Popeye muscles bursting out as soon as I pick the thing up (seam threads FLY even). I don't know about you, but grotesquely defined forearm muscles aren't really my thing. I have my vanity to consider (which I tend to save for my teeth; they'll soon need all the vanity I can muster). And thirdly, well, I don't really have a thirdly, but I just thought the sunken bricks would be less maintenance. I even smoothed sand in the cracks. Fancy!

That ended up looking so cool that I repeated it under the Macintosh tree/asparagus bed next to it. This bed has a similar shape: a rectangular box with a half circle on the end. I thought this would impart some unity to my garden scheme, which up to now has been more in the Cheery Haphazard style than anything. A little unity would be good, I thought. It might even give me some organizational oomph.

Maybe.

Ah, who am I kidding. I think I was meant to have the kind of garden that all my neighbours could happily roll their eyes about, and say "It's quite the show over there, isn't it?" to each other at the same time.

After that, I got even more carried away and made tiers with some old double cinder blocks at the edges of the vegetable patch, after I'd extended it a bit of course. They look like little steps now. And I had to extend the garden: the strawberries got a little carried away themselves over the winter and sprouted madly everywhere, and since I'm of the opinion that one can never have too many strawberries, I'm being most accommodating about all this willy nilly procreation. I lengthened the bed by about 4' and nestled the new plants in with some compost and straw. I also noticed way too many slugs doing their own willy nilly procreating in the brick wall. Ugh. Guess I'll be doing some Slug Repelling soon. Me and slugs, we don't get along well. They're a little too, err, exuberant with my plants.

Then I hauled out some thyme plants and placed them in the cinder blocks. The concrete gets pretty hot in the summer; I think all that heat makes the thyme more flavourful. Plus, thyme doesn't mind being squished into those little squares.

Most amazingly, I saw the first bee of spring. Yes, I know it's not spring yet - try telling the bee that.

A Mason bee. A solitary fuzzy little body, intent on my chewed, bedraggled pansies (argh! the slugs strike again!). I took some pictures and hunched in the yard, staring. It seemed too incredible, too early, too strange and wonderful. A bee. In February!
Then there were the irises. They are just now popping up all over the garden. I planted 120 of them last year, and I think they might, just might, have multiplied a bit. Willy nilly, you might say.

I love irises. So, err, umm, so blue. (ooh, I'm full of profound comments today, aren't I?)

But really. The iris is such a gorgeous creature. So ephemeral. And such fabulous sharp contrasts between those yellows and blues and blacks. These dwarf irises were meant to be gaped at. No doubt about it.







I don't know why these crocuses (or is that crocii?) are so small. The package said 6" on it. I guess size isn't everything, though, is it. These are lovely, even if they are almost swallowed up by the ground.

They are tucked in between the lewesias. The lewesias that Dominic trod on when he was throwing a small plastic dinosaur into the pine tree. The lewesias that Dominic uprooted when he was trying to retrieve the small plastic dinosaur from the pine tree, after he'd thrown it there. He'd kicked them over in his haste to destroy the small plastic dinosaur. I saw them there, uprooted, upside down, three round green circles, like little green fairy dancers, lying there in the most undignified way. I stalked over, glared pointedly at Dominic, narrowed my eyes meaningfully, and very pointedly placed the lewesias back into the bed, where hopefully they will come back to life. I told Dominic, who was regarding me with an irritatingly fond benevolence (he never seems to take me seriously, a habit that both Max and FDPG think most suicidal but really, this is the essence of this kid because he lives on another plane from us all), that he would be providing me with new lewesias if my attempts at resucitation did not work, at which he finally took in my irritation. He stared, horror struck at the thought that he might have to part with some of his hoarded piles 'o' cash, and looked at the small plastic dinosaur. "How about I give you this instead?" he said.

Yeah, right, Dominic.

Floral Spelling Errors

FDPG is doing yet another badge for Brownies, and one of the requirements of this particular badge involves studying "a festival" from another culture. Being the little FDPG that she is, she chose the Hanami, or Cherry Blossom Festival in Japan, which happens close to this time of year. So we contacted a friend in Japan, we inquired about special foods that might be associated with that festival, and we tried our hand at some cherry blossom origami.

And then, the other morning, I spied this hastily scribbled message on the white board.

It should say "cherry." 

FDPG was most annoyed when I pointed it out to her.

"Argh, I KNEW it!" she scowled. She hates misspelling things. She really does. She never misspells anything twice. Sometimes I pass by her bedroom door at night and I can hear her, in bed, whispering words to herself. That's right, she gives herself spelling tests at night, after she's gone to bed. Gosh, the things this kid does for fun.

But you know, somehow "cheery" seems way more a propos. 

I might have to plant some cheery blossoms, this spring.

Little Panda

I have a guest review up at Jill's excellent kidlit blog:  The Well-Read Child. The book is short but charming and gorgeously sweet; it's called Little Panda. 

Check out her blog, there are all kinds of reviews there on all kinds of books.

Forgetting Happy

I haven't been blogging much lately, even though there's been so much going on. 

First there was that irritating matter of the tooth I had pulled out. I got an infection; I had much pain. Then, oh joy, I developed yet more tooth trouble: an old root canal flared up. Apparently a dentist (who shall remain nameless but lives in Vancouver and probably spent at least 3 weeks each year in Hawaii solely because of my crappy teeth on my dime) neglected to notice that I have extra roots in my teeth, and when he did the root canal he left one of them. My theory is that the ignored root developed a Sympathy Infection to comfort the other infection. My teeth are nothing if not joined in solidarity: if one of them falls out, so do the others.

Whatever.

My first indication of More Dental Woes was that I had, for several days, a very puffy face. Oh, and more pain. Let's not forget that (Sheila laughs with thinly disguised, bubbling over, desperation gay abandon). And when I tried to impress upon the dental receptionist my utter lack of funds and thus my earnest need for Cheap Solutions To The Puffy Face, she actually had the nerve to totally freak me out tell me that upper tooth infections can mean imminent death. Oops, sorry: IMMINENT DEATH. (she definitely said it in caps) So in I scurried. And her husband, my manic, nutty, crazy dentist, said "Oh yeah! You ARE going to die!" with a gleeful zest, until, that is, he saw the exhausted tears glinting in my eye, after which he said "But it won't be today." 

So now I await a reference to another dentist, someone who will perform the complicated surgery on my failed root canal.  I'm puréeing all my food. And taking antibiotics. And trying to keep up with all the things we have going on in our lives.

Like Max's 4H project.

And Dominic's motor-building mania (this book, flawed as it is, was written for this kid).

And FDPG's yen to really celebrate Valentine's Day in a really BIG WAY, not to mention help her prepare for her many many Brownie projects that involve me getting lots of little rice balls and helping her make a tissue paper cherry blossom branch and helping her learn a Japanese song, not to mention helping her make cards to send to her 4 zillion friends. (FDPG doesn't do anything halfway)

And lots of other mildly exhausting (but totally essential to my kids) things that involve being awake and coherent and even tempered. Home school commitments. Lessons. At least now I can open my jaw fully, although there are some here who might say that that was a bit of a mixed blessing for us all. Ahem. 

And, in between, I think of ways to keep my teeth from breaking up into little pieces.

Perambulating In The Garden

Today was one of those really, truly, lovely days here on the Wet Coast. At one point the thermometer on the back deck registered 23ºC. No kidding. Of course, it IS sitting in the sun and the deck IS pretty sheltered and it WAS only for about an hour, but still. I should've taken a picture of it, because I called Richard to tell him and he did not believe me.

We spent a large portion of the day outside, as a result, because it's supposed to cloud over in the next few days, and I wanted to get a little gardening in, now that my infected tooth seems to be recovering (only took two bloody weeks but heck, who's counting?). Max and I dug some fence post holes and relocated the raspberry bush over to the hill where the other berries are, because it was so squished up against the peach tree that we could hardly pick the berries last summer. It's everbearing and gave raspberries right into October, too, so I'd like to have it as accessible as possible. We put in the posts, attached some chicken wire to them in a sort of sideways trellis, then added the raspberry roots, just starting to sprout a bit, and covered them with heaps of compost and straw to keep them snug in case the weather turns cold. Then we put some edging around the blueberries and added a straw mulch to them too.

I've been hauling home gardening books, to get some ideas on how to redo the front yard. I want to make a stone path going down the hill from the road, and then get rid of some of the lawn. Then rework the Lozenge Bed a bit. I like gardening books, but boy, everything looks so easy, so expensive, so time consuming, and so consuming of pricey materials. I want that cobalt blue wall and that travertine flagging but I want it for free.

I also want 3 yards of sand, so if you have any kicking around, call me.

I took these pictures yesterday, when it was still pretty nice out. Not very sunny, but definitely light-coat weather. It all started when I was examining the slug damage in one bed. I got down on my knees and peered under the oak leaf mulch (which is more for winter protection because the dratted leaves take forever to decompose), and besides the vast quantity of slugs, I saw this:
The pulmonaria was BLOOMING! I'm not a long time grower of pulmonarias, so perhaps this is its Modus Operandi, I don't know, but yegods it's just turned February. Shouldn't that plant be sleeping?

After gaping at the loveliness of the colours for a few minutes, I decided that I needed to document my perambulations. My garden likes a little admiration.
The Coral Bark Maple reclining redly. I love this tree, even if it's driving me MAD watching it grow so
veerrrrrrrrryyyyyy
sloowwwwwllllllyyyyyyyy.

Impatient? Moi? Why do you ask?














The Bloodtwig Dogwood, a little less red, but still very colourful. I'm not sure I like this plant. I've never been a big fan of The Shrub, and I bought this one on a whim, so I am yet to be convinced that this plant and I will be compatible room mates.

Fickle? Moi? Why do you ask?














The Bells of Ireland, turning into leaf skeletons before our eyes. I grew this one for FDPG, who was shocked and amazed at the idea that there existed a flower that was ENTIRELY GREEN, because, as some of us know, green is FDPG's very favourite colour.
This is an awesome cut flower: it's massive, stately, long-lasting, and oh so green. There is the matter of all those sharp little spikes everywhere, but I figure it teaches my houseguests not to fondle the flower arrangements.









We'll skirt quickly past all my building projects, I think. Richard is getting to be quite the nag is a little anxious about what a packrat he thinks I am and how I tend to procrastinate about finishing all my projects how much room these treasures take up in the carport.

Bricks for a path? Or should I enlarge the vegetable patch?


Stones from the beach for another path in the front yard.
.Driftwood on a bench. Haven't decided what to do with all that yet.
Ah, here is my handy dandy system for preventing the back path from flooding every winter. The previous owners liked to lay concrete but weren't very thorough (or skilled) at it, and we have a large step with a large patch of mud below it. I haven't yet thought out how I intend to remedy this, but in the meantime I have this barrel under the drain spout, with a hose stuck into it so it can drain away from the area. I keep forgetting to take this barrel (which my Dad found washed up on his beach front) to the industrial plastics store to get a tap welded onto it, so I don't have to keep the hose like this.




























Some snowdrops. Heralds of spring around these parts.















The garlic patch. It's been an interesting experiment, this garlic growing business. I grew three groups of it: the first group were some pricey gourmet organic exotics from a place in the interior. The second group was all the same kind, and came from the local feed store. The third group was bulk bin growers garlic from the local nursery. What you see sprouting in front of you is the stuff from the local feed store. The gourmet exotics are measly little nubs and look most sickly, despite my finest compost. The bulk bin stuff is doing almost as poorly. If it weren't for the feed store garlic I would be almost affronted. I stood for a few minutes with my arms crossed over my chest, tapping my toes and giving that bed a very arch look, just to show it how affronted I really was.

And finally, a picture from an angle I like a lot. This is one of the nicest views of the yard, looking out across the yard and over the neighbour's yard, off towards the bird lake down the hill. You can see the sorrel sprouting in the vegetable bed in front there.

Alexander the Great Rides Again!

Last week we read some stories about Alexander the Great. A lot of stories, in fact. I learned more about Alexander and his family and battles and tutors and habits and horses and weird behaviour than I ever thought possible. And afterwards, with an eye to getting the twins to do something creative-yet-thought-provoking-not-to-mention-vaguely-intellectual, I had them each pick something from the stories we'd read and do a little comic about it.

Dominic picked the story of how Alexander got his horse Bucephalus. I drew four panels and left him to draw his story out, then typed out the words for each story box. As you can see, Alexander tames the skittish Bucephalus when no one else can, and rides him off into the sunset, large bottom and all.
FDPG picked the story about the Gordian Knot, where Alexander the Hasty cuts a knot that needs untying, thereby ensuring that he will rule all of Asia (I had images of Wayne's World come into my head when she said this: "It WILL be mine! Oh yes...").

What I find so intriguing about these comics is how both of them have such prominent suns.

(By the way, if you click on the pictures you can see the captions)

Seeing Stars

When we went up to the Waldorf Christmas Craft Fair in the fall I saw stars like these on the windows in the classrooms. They were so beautiful. Luminous. Ethereal. Glowing, even. I was quite taken with them. So taken, in fact, that I convinced my parsimonious wallet to part with $20 so I could buy The Children's Year, a Waldorfy book with all kinds of nice cosy crafts to knit, build, and fold. The star pattern was in this book. I could just see MY windows glowing with those luminous tissue paper stars.





We never seemed to get around to making them, though. I glanced at the pattern once or twice, but that was about it. Vague "start with a sheet of paper any size" instructions tend to fox me, even more so now I'm under the influence of Tooth Pain From Hell. There I am, jaw athrobbin' (sounds more interesting that way, somehow), and the idea of making 8 sections of something thin and easily ripped for each of the twins, not to mention the sometimes-all-thumbs Max, sounds way too complicated.





Then I thought, ah what the heck. It's so gray and miserable out there (or is it just me, feeling gray and miserable in here?).

So we folded. And cut. And folded some more. And cut some more (for the ones that ripped too easily got away).



And then I stuck them on the windows.

We admired the layering.

We admired the shading of the colours.


We admired our folding prowess.

We admired how they brightened up the windows, too.

Nice how such a simple thing change a whole mood.

Don't Forget To Floss

I am about to become a Zealot. A Tooth Zealot. I'm plotting many new posts reminding you all to floss and brush, as I obviously forgot to do all through my twenties, because now I am losing my teeth, one by one.

Okay, so I'm not losing ALL of them, just a few of them. And so what if I'm a little on the overly dramatic side. Where do you think FDPG gets it from, anyhow?

But I am losing teeth. 

I lost one 11 days ago. It broke. I went to see my dentist about it. And he, a very weird and extremely manic fellow, informed me cheerfully that it HAD to come out. It was unfixable. He saw another broken tooth and, with another, cheery smile, said "How bout I get this one at the same time? Oh come, on, please?" Then he chuckled at his evidently massive wit. If his fingers had been in my mouth I'd have bit him.

As it was, I declined politely. I can only take so much trauma in one day, I told him. He laughed delightedly, but I was perfectly serious. I don't do pain. At least, not very well. 

And now, here I am, 11 days later, still in pain from that stupid tooth removal. I've been to the dentist twice with emergency pain. I've eaten more Advil than I care to tell you about - and I hate taking anything that doesn't involve limes or ice and lots of tonic. I've not slept much either. I'm exceedingly irritable. 

Apparently I have developed...wait for it...Dry Socket. 

Sounds like something old ladies with osteoporosis get, doesn't it? Which makes it even more depressing. It's painful AND I feel old and dried out. Gosh, does the fun ever stop around here?

So, tell me something funny. Take my mind off my misery. And while you're at it, don't forget to floss!