Strange portents...

The ancient Romans were full of superstitions, seeing both good and bad omens in such things as flocks of crows, the entrails of sacrificial animals, and the way the clouds passed in front of the sun. If there's a modern equivalent, it's like those folks who read their newspaper (or internet, for you young'uns) horoscopes every day and then tiptoe around looking for it to come true. I have nothing against internet horoscopes for pure fun if that's your thing, but seriously, if you want to be all superstitious about it at least understand that those mass-published horoscopes are so generalized they mean about as much as the slip of paper you pull from a random fortune cookie.

If you want to get all weirded-out after you have a full natal chart drawn up by a professional astrologer, then that's your prerogative. Just understand that when you tell me you can't go out drinking when the moon is in Pisces because Pisces is your rising sign, I'm going to grin a little bit. I might go so far as to laugh, until you give me a hurt look at which point I'll try to behave myself.

Your natal chart consists of all the planets in the solar system, set at certain degrees of one another and you when you were born, in the present, and in the future. To pluck out one planetary aspect to focus on as "you" is like pulling one hair from your head and saying it wholly represents you. With an internet horoscope, or a single planet in Pisces, you're getting a single hair.

At any rate, I had an odd "portent" if you will happen to me today. I was driving home after dropping the eldest at school. Coming up our street I saw a mourning dove in the road, just sitting there. Ok. Silly thing will fly up right in front of the car when I get to it, right? I get closer, and closer, thing isn't moving. I know it sees me because it turns its head to look right at me. So I slow down, and now I'm a crazy person talking aloud in the car. "Fly away birdie, come on. Come on, dumb birdie, fly!"

Even though my heart wouldn't break if I ran it over (although I would cringe a bit at the teensy bump of the tires crushing it to oblivion), I really don't want bird guts on my tires. My kids run barefoot in the driveway. The car is at a crawl, but by then I am rolling right over where the bird is still dumbly sitting. I don't see it fly up, but neither is there a crunch. So I drive a little further on, almost to my driveway, then stop the car and look back.

The bird is still sitting right where it was. The car apparently passed right over it, probably scaring the heck out of it, but that turned out to be a good thing because it froze in place. Then while I'm pondering this, a scrawny red fox trots out from the yard nearby, heading right for the bird. Oh man, this thing is about to go all wild kingdom on me, so of course I keep watching, waiting for the shriek, and the crunch, the feathers, and the blood. The dove then decides it knows how to fly, takes a few running hops and takes off. The fox kind of stops in the road, looks after his escaping breakfast, then at me as if to say "wtf?", and trots off down the street. You're asking me?

What does it all MEAN??

From Chicken to Juggernaut

Yes, I finally did it. I sewed the bow tie. Two, in fact, because once my youngest saw his brother's bow tie he had to have one. Despite a couple mistakes on each (including making the ends too short, *choke*), the boys loved them and insisted on wearing them the rest of the day. With their t-shirts. I can see a lesson in fashion-sense coming up soon. We do not wear bow ties with t-shirts. Well, ok, you can in the house. But don't go outside. I don't want the neighbors to think I let you out dressed like that.

My youngest ended up wearing his for his First Communion, which was a hit. A teenage girl saw him in it and immediately told her boyfriend that he should start wearing one. My boys may have started a huge bow tie trend now, so if you see teens suddenly interested, it started here! I just have a few adjustments to make to the pattern and it should be near-perfect, with only my stitching skills to practice on. I need to learn to leave myself more of a seam allowance than an eighth of an inch. Trying not to sew off the edge of the fabric on a curve is challenge enough without a teensy space to maneuver in.

The First Communion was a big deal for all of us. I was afraid my youngest would make odd faces and act up, but he went through with flying colors and despite appearances to the contrary, said it was "fun". (Of course the rest of the service was "boring".) He's happy he can go up with the rest of us now and not just settle for a blessing. I give this novelty about two weeks, after which time he'll be groaning and squirming in the pew, anxious to bolt out the doors again. But at least he's a part of it all now, which is important to him.

So now I have a washed piece of flannel fabric waiting for me to obtain a pattern and cut it for my (eventual) pj shorts. I have to finish the fabric edges, then sew seams, including inseams, and put in elastic.I washed the fabric two days ago, and folded it neatly to await the scissors.

I started crocheting another amigurumi yesterday, for a popular priest that's leaving our parish in June. Have to get it done before he leaves, right?

I'm such a chicken.

Here Comes the Sun...

This morning I awoke to sun again, glorious, warm golden sun. After it raining for two days straight here I was ready to start building a large boat and collecting animals. I know, wimpy, right? It rained for forty days and nights in the famous Ark story. Two days should be nothing. But when the grass on the lawn starts squishing underfoot something is seriously whacked.

My new plants seem to have made it through the two-day deluge relatively intact, if a little bedraggled. The dose of sun should do them good today. I know it lifted my spirits. I left my weekly job search all to today, putting undue stress on myself to get five contacts. I was resolved to just close my eyes and point at the screen and shoot resumes off wherever my finger landed, and I am ashamed to say I did do that for two of them. But I found actual prospects for the other three, so I feel better about that. But I determinedly enjoyed the rest of the warm sunny day by going out and driving around in it. The radio station obliged by playing the Doors and Lynyrd Skynyrd, so I blasted the radio with the windows open and annoyed people I'm sure.

Other people were enjoying the sun too; there was lots of traffic, particularly around the garden stores as people bought plants from the new shipments. I didn't get more plants today but I did go get fasteners for my sons' bow-ties (which I haven't sewn up yet...I'm such a chicken) and elastic for the waistband of my (eventual) pj shorts.

My computer decided to act cranky and lock me out of my profile for a few hours, which had me near panic...I'm one of those people who talks the good game about always backing up your stuff, and then never does it. Yeah I deserve what I get. But I'll still cry if I lose all those photos. On the agenda for this weekend; discs to back up my junk!

After the kids were home my husband and I decided to go out shopping together; my younger son needed a shirt and tie for  his first Communion, plus we needed to find wonton wrappers for Italian nachoes. The nachoes came out awesome, yum. And as a bonus the bank was giving out coupons for the local ice cream place so we went and cashed one of those in.

Then, while we were enjoying our ice cream....my cell phone rang. It was my elder son, panicking over something he had done on my computer. He had asked to play a computer game before we left, and I told him to go ahead, but that the computer had been cranky. Sometimes he'll play a disc-based game, and sometimes he'll play one of those browser-based games. Instead of loading a game, he decided to take a dare put to him by some kids at school.

I imagine you can see where this is going. And no I'm not revealing the link he typed in or what he saw when it loaded. These were 12 year old boys daring him. Suffice to say that my biggest worry, a virus on my computer, did not happen. If it had, my son might well have been buried in the back yard garden bed up to his neck in the dirt for a week. As it was he was a blubbering wreck when we got home, and apologized profusely. My husband then had the unenviable task of ferreting out what he saw and what he thought about it, and did he need more info to clear some confusion. A couple of times I had to stifle laughter as I eavesdropped on this delicate conversation. "Do I like girls? Ewwwww, no!"

My son is now banned from my computer indefinitely, a punishment which he took meekly without the usual eyeroll or groan of protest. He's been told not to take dares before because generally they're designed to get him in trouble, but he claimed he "forgot". I think he was curious. It's fine to be curious, but be curious on your own computer, not Mom's un-backed-up relic that is so senile that sometimes it can't even load its own Windows program.

Yesterday this really might have bothered me a great deal, but with the sun still glowing on my skin it was hard to be mad for too long. And it's going to be a whole week before there's rain in the forecast again. Time to break out the sunscreen and shades and go for a long, long stroll. Come on Summer, I'm waiting!

Bugs!

By nature I am wary of bugs. They come inside the house despite your best efforts, and just when you think you're safe and happy BOO! there's a beetle crawling across your pillow! Or a moth fluttering near your yarn (that really drives me right off my nut), or a silverfish eating the glue binding your book spines together, or a wasp buzzing against the window glass trying to get out (how did it get in in the first place, is there a nest, eek!).

I can't even talk about spiders. Yes I know technically they're arachnids and not bugs, but if you want to get technical spiders make me crazier than a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs. Just. don't. go. there. The way they move, all spindly-legged, or far, far worse, hang in the air on a thread....eeeeeyeck!(Oddly enough, I don't bat an eyelash at tarantulas. I've held them and let them crawl on me. No freak outs. It must be that they're so huge it doesn't register as a spider anymore. More like a fat mouse with bristly fur and too many legs.)

So tonight my younger son was in a concert at school. A concert about bugs. The second graders have been studying the life cycles of various creepy-crawlies all year and this was the culmination. At least they gave my son the ant to study. Some kids got cockroaches, eck. I'm sure their parents are very proud though.

As soon as they walked on stage the audience was eating out of their hands. Half the kids had bug "antennae" on their heads, the others had green visors (I'm not sure what type of bug this was supposed to represent....maybe a praying mantis' large green eyes?). We'd been instructed to dress them in colorful clothes, and some girls were wearing ladybug polkadots and flowing butterfly type dresses. It was all so cute it almost, almost made me appreciate bugs a little more. That's still gonna take some doing.

Some kids got to speak lines indicating what type of bug they were. One little girl was a stinkbug, poor thing, and all the other kids, er bugs, held their noses and told her to go away. It was a standout part though. She got sung to by butterflies, telling her it would get better. Possibly the best song of the night. Of course I loved the fireflies song, where the kids were given little wands and walked back and forth across the stage in the dark waving the lights, weaving in and out. My younger son got to be in this group, and I got a few shots, though the light was low.

Haha, I just noticed the kids' eyes glowing, kind of spooky. I didn't see that at the concert.

Halfway through the show, in between numbers, some poor kid passed out in the back of the audience and EMT services were called. The show was halted and all the second graders behaved very well while the emergency was handled by the adults. We were all very impressed by the kids' maturity. The poor kid is going to be alright, he was just severely dehydrated apparently.

After the show we were invited into the school halls to check out our kids' bug reports and see what they had been up to during the year. I discovered my younger son is quite the conversationalist in written media. He breaks the fourth wall, makes it entertaining by cracking jokes about himself and his subjects, and basically stretched the idea of a formal report on ants into a comic commentary on daily life. Now if I could just get him to write out his book reports the same way....

My little guy hamming it up with his ant report. He's still wearing his antennae, cute stuff! After the mini-reception was done, we ran through the rain....and it has been raining all day here today, how dreary...to the car and back home. Once he was done with supper I sprang a surprise on my younger son and offered him a treat he'd been salivating over for almost a week, ever since I won it in a basket of goodies in a silent auction.

And of course, like all the best treats, it turned his tongue strange and awful colors while he was eating it.

Sweets for my sweet little bug.

Dancing in the Rain

Tonight I had to go pick up my elder son from a Boy Scout meeting, which is usual on a Tuesday night. What's unusual is the spectacular lightning show I got to drive through. Oh I'm used to a few flashes here and there, thunder, rain, the works. But tonight, it's ramped up several levels from "the usual".

While driving, my younger son and I saw several bright, clear bolts, large ones, streak from the sky to the ground, and it seemed they were not far from us. The entire sky lit up around us, not just in the vicinity of the lightning. The bolts, or lines as I've always called them, were lavender and pale blue and white, stark and dazzling against the night sky.

There's been little if any thunder, and only a little rain, no downpours. Just the sky all around us putting on a light show better than any rock concert for it's unbridled wildness. Several bolts fell all around us as I ran into the hall to retrieve my son. I imagine they were at least three miles off, but it looked much much closer. As we were driving home the lightning decided to skate sideways through the sky in branches and forks, making both boys ooh and aah in delight. I was asked several times if the car was safe. I responded with a short lesson in the conductivity of various materials (punctuated by woo!s and wow!s), and soon everyone was calm again. Journey's "Wheel in the Sky" came on the radio, and that was just perfect so we blasted it all the way home and yelled with the flashes of lightning.

I love storms with thunder and lightning, especially in the summer. When I was eight (my younger son's age), my parents would sit with my sister and I on the porch of our house and watch the sky and the lightning, oohing and aahing if we saw a line. Once the lightning faded or stopped we were allowed to run out in the warm rain on the sidewalk, in our bathing suits, enjoying the earthy smell and the water.

My grandmother lived in a second floor apartment that had a huge bay window overlooking a large undeveloped hill, so the sky was wide open above it. My sister and I with our three cousins would often sit in the window watching for lightning when storms rolled through, loving our unobstructed view. My grandmother would fret at us to not sit in the window, fearing we'd get hit by the lightning, but of course it never happened.

When I was a teenager growing up part of the time in a coastal town, fierce storms would roll down the nearby river in the summer, heading out to sea. Those were always great for rain, lightning and thunder, but with the houses packed so close together, you'd have to go out by the river to see the full show, an action that was dubious at best. Lightning struck the steeple of the old church across the street from us one afternoon when I was watching my two year old brother. A crack of thunder like I had never heard before shook the windows, and everything lit up at the same time. I did run outside then, after repeating to my little brother to stay inside, just to see if our house was on fire. But the fire trucks showed up at the church quickly, and though there was smoke, the small fire didn't get far. My little brother was a bit freaked; he actually stayed inside, at the door waiting for me, till I got back.

Years later, as part of the SCA, I'd be camping out in a tent in western Pennsylvania in medieval clothes, enduring downpours, thunder and lightning that were leftovers of a hurricane moving up the eastern coast. Seems like that would be quite far inland to get hit with hurricane remnants; it was a powerful one. Rather than be afraid of getting hit by lightning, people were sitting under the communal area pavilion, raising their mugs at cracks of thunder and screaming "Odin!", and if there was lightning, adding "Thor!" It seemed hysterically funny at the time, probably because we were drinking.

Situated in a safe spot, dry, and with friends, I could watch a summer lightning storm all night. Every one is different, and every one is beautiful. Even in one of my most tension-filled moments, in the midst of driving through Iowa at night, in pitch darkness in a downpour, one part of my mind was registering the lines striking the earth unobstructed and with abandon, wishing for one moment I could take my eyes off the road and enjoy the unrestrained dancing of the light.

Close to the Perfect Day

Yesterday was Mother's Day, so to all of you Moms out there, I hope your day was as good as mine.

First my boys took me to breakfast after church, in the parish center. The church gave out carnations after each mass, so I asked for and got a red one. Carnations are probably my favorite flower, even over roses, because of their scent. So fresh, green, and slightly spicy. And they last much longer than roses. Roses are lovely but oh so fussy. I've grown rose bushes from year-old canes, and they were nice, but entirely too delicate and too much work, not to mention some pretty serious thorns. Those things drew blood.

My grandmother had planted carnations along the side of her condo driveway, and those flourished with relatively little care needed, until the next-door neighbor ran them over with his lawnmower. Anything marring the teeny strip of grass was an offense, I guess. He was kind of an odd person.

After breakfast, the day was warming so we headed home, where I got some cards (including a craft store gift card, woohoo!) from my family and the instructions to "do whatever I wanted to do". My favorite. I thought about what I wanted in my garden bed, then took a nap. I likely should have gone early to the garden store, but it was a day for relaxing. By the time I did go out a few hours later, they were well picked over, and still busy.

Still, I picked up a tomato plant, a mini pepper plant, and some seeds. I am nothing if not optimistic. Then it was time to grab the hoe and decapitate the little weeds that had dared to sprout in the month since my husband had turned the soil for me. That really took less time than I thought it would. I think I complained about having to do it longer than it actually took. I even found the tablespoon we had left in the garden last year after planting my younger son's seeds that he had started at school.

That is a whole other story in itself. The tomatoes and cukes I planted last year never flowered or grew. I planted these spindly little seedlings he brought home from school....squash, corn, and pumpkins. I thought to myself, "He's happy they're planted, if they die, they die." Then, we left on vacation for two weeks.

We came back to all my plants dead in the bone dry dirt. But my younger son's plants had invaded and taken over the garden. The single corn stalk was huge, and growing an ear of corn! The pumpkin and squash vines had gone crazy and were all over the garden, taking over, and growing fruit! I still cannot figure it out. But he was very proud of the pumpkin we harvested in the fall.

Hopefully, my garden will do better this year.

The tomato and pepper I bought as plants. I also planted cucumber seeds, summer squash, and radishes. The radishes are a quick grow and very satisfying, a benefit to children. While setting in my plants and seeds I discovered two plants already in the garden were coming back.

 Lemon balm, and spearmint. Of course the mint is trying to cover the whole garden, because that's what mint does. I had to chop the advance back with the weeds. But once I was done planting, I enjoyed both plants...

...in an awesome cup of iced tea. And after that? It was time to get serious with the boys.

Happy belated Mother's Day, and Happy Spring.

Life Moves Pretty Fast...

...if you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.

Today was kind of a waste of a day, except I put the cucumber on the needles and committed to a knitting project for a friend that I may not be able to finish, but in which the design possibilities intrigued me. I've already printed out graph paper for charts. We'll see what we get from imagination and practiced techniques.

The ice cream man never showed, again! My younger son is in high dudgeon about it, and clearly the ice cream man needs to learn some better customer service, or he's going to lose his fan base. It's not like my kids are the only kids on the street. That, and he needs to lower his prices. Over three dollars now for the same cheap stuff he was selling me when I was a kid? What a rip! At these rates I'm going to need to take out an ice cream loan for the summer.

We all soothed our collective grumpy souls by watching Ferris Bueller's Day Off. This is a movie that never seems dated to me, even if the hairstyles and clothing are. John Hughes took a risk by making the lead actor break the fourth wall to speak to the viewers, but it works, and more.

It lets us feel like we're part of a smartass kid's world, a really cool smartass kid. One who doesn't need cell phones and texting, but prefers to get out and experience the whole of the world, filling his eyes with art, dining in fancy restaurants, and just going to a ball game. Ferris' mind is so full of things he wants to do that he skips school to do them, but that doesn't seem like such a bad idea to us, in fact it seems like a better idea to us. Don't just read about the world in school, go live it! Ferris isn't a bad kid, he's just a smart, curious kid who wants more than teachers dryly droning on to themselves about mind-numbingly boring subjects with no flavor. He does want to learn, he just does it on his own terms. I can get behind that.

Hughes' commentary on the school system here isn't exactly subtle; the teachers are either clueless, boring or vindictive. The parents aren't much better, although they at least show (some) caring for their kids. I think Ferris can see the way this is going to go and wants to get in as much excitement as he can before he has to become an adult and necessarily buckle down to life and work. His friend Cameron is already on the path to following in his parents' footsteps, with all his neuroses and anxiety. Ferris helps him break out, even if just for a little while, and we know that even though his dad is going to freak out on him for the damaged car, Cameron has changed and will be just fine.

I like to think Ferris will never completely give in to the routine; that he will always be a rebel in the system, showing us all that we should slow down sometimes and experience life instead of watching it flash by.

Watching the movie reminds me of that. I'll never be a rebel, but I will sometimes just sit on the front lawn and knit in the sun.