I have a quiz for you today. If you are the mother of a daughter, at what age do you expect her to start talking to you like she's a sullen teenager and you've been put on this earth simply to annoy her? At what age does a question such as "Are your feet cold?" get, through clenched teeth, "YOU ALREADY ASKED ME THAT!!!" Nevermind that it was YESTERDAY that I dared ask her the same STUPID question and nevermind that said child insisted on wearing her new pink flip-flops to school, when it's only 36 degrees as we walk toward the classroom. At what age does she come down the stairs in the pajamas you made for her, sleepy-eyed, mussed hair, and runs into your arms, requesting to snuggle....and then not 20 seconds later does her best Hannibal Lector impersonation when you have the audacity to ask how she slept.
Seven. That's when. Approximately 6 years sooner than I'd expected.
The other night I heard a line in a movie that I could SO relate to: "Kids. One minute you think your heart is literally going to burst you love them so much. And the next minute you want to get a cardboard box, punch some breathing holes in the top, put your child inside and drop them off in a park somewhere."
sigh.
Friday, April 11, 2008
Thursday, April 10, 2008
She's back!!
Man, I missed this kid! I kept her home from school yesterday because they didn't get home until 11pm; there was no way I was going to attempt to send her to school the next morning.
So we spent some qualitity time together, and I learned a valuable lesson: when your daughter suggests that before you can do anything else, you must go outside to crack open the geode she brought home from the desert, it is important to make sure the lock on the door knob? The one you never, ever lock? Did not in fact somehow get locked. Because if you don't, you may GET LOCKED OUT OF YOUR HOUSE IN YOUR PAJAMAS AT 8:30 IN THE MORNING before you've even had your coffee and you'll have to wait an hour and a half for the lock-smith (the one who said he'd be there in 20 minutes) to show up, shivering on the front porch while your daughter who has spent the last week basking in the Arizona sun complains bitterly about how cold it is, praying to a god you don't believe in that those nasty black clouds don't mean snow, trying to talk your dog into opening the front door. And you'll look like a crazy person.
Tuesday, April 8, 2008
gocco printing
So in college I majored in art. Yeah, I know. Fucking brilliant. Anyway, one of the classes we had to take was screen-printing. This involved painting photo emulsion onto a screen, coming up with a design, putting the screen with the design (a photo or drawing) into a gigantic light-table thing that would burn your image onto the screen, and then you apply ink to the screen. The idea is that you then print your design onto fabric or paper. This allowed you to make multiple prints of the exact same design. Cool huh? Only I SUCKED. I could never get my registration right (that means getting your lines to line up and the colors to go where you want them to go). I DREADED the days we had to show our work to the class. I felt like I was in 7th grade all over again. After flailing through the entire semester and never getting the hang of it, I vowed NEVER to attempt screen-printing again.
Fast forward, well, let's just say more years than I care to admit. I have learned about a mini-printer called a Gocco. It used to be that nearly every home in Japan had a Gocco printer, on which they could print their own cards, invitations, art. Gocco has been around for a long time; it is a much, MUCH simpler version of the barbaric screen-printing I took in college. The main difference is that the Gocco prints only a 4x6 image. But it's perfect for printing cards or other small images. There is a flickr group specifically for art created with Gocco printers, and it's amazing what people are doing.
Of course I had to own one of these little buggers! I purchased one a month or two ago, and I can't tell you how easy and fun it is. Obviously, after looking at all the wonderful talent on flickr and etsy, I have much to learn, but I did print our Save the Date cards the other day.
First, you create your design. I found a font I loved and typed the text. Then I found an image of some orchids, which I thought appropriate since we're getting married in Hawaii. Then you photocopy them and "burn" the image onto your screen.
Then you lay on the ink and just press down to print as many cards as you need, without having to re-ink the screen at all.
And viola! Custom-made (and so easy!) cards. Cool, huh?
And, it's so easy even a 7 year old can do it! She drew a picture of herself with her name and "first grade" and then we printed cards into which to put her first-grade picture to send to friends and family.
Yep, definately cool.
Fast forward, well, let's just say more years than I care to admit. I have learned about a mini-printer called a Gocco. It used to be that nearly every home in Japan had a Gocco printer, on which they could print their own cards, invitations, art. Gocco has been around for a long time; it is a much, MUCH simpler version of the barbaric screen-printing I took in college. The main difference is that the Gocco prints only a 4x6 image. But it's perfect for printing cards or other small images. There is a flickr group specifically for art created with Gocco printers, and it's amazing what people are doing.
Of course I had to own one of these little buggers! I purchased one a month or two ago, and I can't tell you how easy and fun it is. Obviously, after looking at all the wonderful talent on flickr and etsy, I have much to learn, but I did print our Save the Date cards the other day.
First, you create your design. I found a font I loved and typed the text. Then I found an image of some orchids, which I thought appropriate since we're getting married in Hawaii. Then you photocopy them and "burn" the image onto your screen.
Then you lay on the ink and just press down to print as many cards as you need, without having to re-ink the screen at all.
And viola! Custom-made (and so easy!) cards. Cool, huh?
And, it's so easy even a 7 year old can do it! She drew a picture of herself with her name and "first grade" and then we printed cards into which to put her first-grade picture to send to friends and family.
Yep, definately cool.
Friday, April 4, 2008
dispatches from Arizona:
"Mama! Know what? I got a new t-shirt and we heard a canyon wren and we saw 3 lizards, a chipmunk, 1000 year old Indian dwellings, a great-horned owl sitting on a nest, a 12 inch long fish, the tallest cactus daddy's ever seen, and lots of Japanese people!"
things i have learned
I know:
...that I am incapable of maintaining an exercise routine for more than two weeks.
....that I can eat 27 Bit o' Honey candies in one day.
...and speaking of candy, I know that the average 9 year old can pack 7 Tart n Tiny candies into each nostril. If you don't know what Tart n Tiny candies are, you were not a child of the 70s.
...that when packing for a trip, it is wise to pack for more than one type of weather. I know this, and yet I ignore this wisdom pretty much every time I go somewhere.
...that deciding, when very intoxicated, that you could dance so much better if you were barefoot can lead to a trip to the emergency room. A very expensive trip to the emergency room. That I am still paying for.
...that yelling at a crying child oddly does not make it stop crying.
...that your common house-hold vacuum does not double as a wet/dry vac, no matter how much you need it to because 20 gallons of fish-tank water are flooding your new family room.
...that no matter how hard it is, I need to refrain from giving my ex-husband dating advice. It's just that I could save him SO. MUCH. TROUBLE. if only he'd listen.
...that I can never again live somewhere that it rains 300 days of the year. It's raining right now for the first time in weeks, and I am fighting the urge to kill someone.
...that "less is more" does not describe me in any way. And the odd thing is, it used to.
...that I will never again attempt to be someone I'm not just to please my partner.
...that I am so, so lucky to have met a man who loves me for who I am, and that he loves my daughter as if she were his own.
...that I am incapable of maintaining an exercise routine for more than two weeks.
....that I can eat 27 Bit o' Honey candies in one day.
...and speaking of candy, I know that the average 9 year old can pack 7 Tart n Tiny candies into each nostril. If you don't know what Tart n Tiny candies are, you were not a child of the 70s.
...that when packing for a trip, it is wise to pack for more than one type of weather. I know this, and yet I ignore this wisdom pretty much every time I go somewhere.
...that deciding, when very intoxicated, that you could dance so much better if you were barefoot can lead to a trip to the emergency room. A very expensive trip to the emergency room. That I am still paying for.
...that yelling at a crying child oddly does not make it stop crying.
...that your common house-hold vacuum does not double as a wet/dry vac, no matter how much you need it to because 20 gallons of fish-tank water are flooding your new family room.
...that no matter how hard it is, I need to refrain from giving my ex-husband dating advice. It's just that I could save him SO. MUCH. TROUBLE. if only he'd listen.
...that I can never again live somewhere that it rains 300 days of the year. It's raining right now for the first time in weeks, and I am fighting the urge to kill someone.
...that "less is more" does not describe me in any way. And the odd thing is, it used to.
...that I will never again attempt to be someone I'm not just to please my partner.
...that I am so, so lucky to have met a man who loves me for who I am, and that he loves my daughter as if she were his own.
Wednesday, April 2, 2008
peanut
(you must click on each picture to fully enjoy the unbearable cuteness)
My friend Greg, who lives in the small ocean-side Oregon town where we lived for 8 years, sent me these pictures the other day. His wife owned an art-gallery next door to our bookstore; their daughter was exactly one year older than Anna. This is Annika and Anna, sitting in the old rocker where I used to sit, every day, and rock Anna to sleep while looking out at the Pacific ocean. Look at Anna's gorgeous blue eyes and white-blond hair. Such a cutie. Such a sweetie-pie-peanut-snuggle-bug who is in Arizona right now with her daddy and she's only been gone for 24 hours and it feels much longer and my GOD it was quiet in the house last night. But I don't miss her or anything. Nope. Not at all.
Tuesday, April 1, 2008
Not exactly sunny today and I don't mean the weather
Holy crap. This story has me on the verge of tears this morning. This isn't a blog I normally read, but one that I do, Whoorl, linked to this story. Obviously I'm not the praying type, but if you are, feel free to add this little red-headed punkin' to your list. I'm fond of the saying "Two hands working can do more than a thousand hands praying", so I donated. Feel free to do that, too. : )
Also, on the way to work this morning, I heard an interview on NPR with a young woman (35, that's young to me!), Jessica Queller, who lost her mother to ovarian cancer. She (the daughter) took a genetic test (BRCA) to determine if she had the breast cancer gene mutation. It came back positive, which meant that she had a 90% likelihood of developing breast cancer at some point. She was single, wanted to get married and have a child, and yet, at that young age she took the drastic step of having a double-mastectomy as the only way to prevent the disease. She will also have her ovaries removed, but has opted to wait until the age of 40 so that she can have a biological child first.
Breast cancer runs in my family big-time. At least one of my grandmother's had it, and one of my sisters, Jodi, is already a two-time breast cancer survivor. Hearing this story this morning got me thinking: do I want to know if I have the breast-cancer gene mutation? If I take this test and it comes back positive, what would I do? Would I live my life differently? Would I grab David and Anna and a handful of credit cards and go travel the world? Would I take the drastic step of having a double mastectomy? My daughter is only 7 (although as Lala pointed out, once you're a mother it doesn't matter how young or old your kids are, you can't imagine leaving them).
Jessica Queller (the gal who was interviewed this morning) has written a book about her decision and experience. I'm going to read it, and I'm also going to schedule this gene-test. I don't want to know, but I do.
What about you? Would you want to know if you have the gene? If so, what would you do about it?
Also, on the way to work this morning, I heard an interview on NPR with a young woman (35, that's young to me!), Jessica Queller, who lost her mother to ovarian cancer. She (the daughter) took a genetic test (BRCA) to determine if she had the breast cancer gene mutation. It came back positive, which meant that she had a 90% likelihood of developing breast cancer at some point. She was single, wanted to get married and have a child, and yet, at that young age she took the drastic step of having a double-mastectomy as the only way to prevent the disease. She will also have her ovaries removed, but has opted to wait until the age of 40 so that she can have a biological child first.
Breast cancer runs in my family big-time. At least one of my grandmother's had it, and one of my sisters, Jodi, is already a two-time breast cancer survivor. Hearing this story this morning got me thinking: do I want to know if I have the breast-cancer gene mutation? If I take this test and it comes back positive, what would I do? Would I live my life differently? Would I grab David and Anna and a handful of credit cards and go travel the world? Would I take the drastic step of having a double mastectomy? My daughter is only 7 (although as Lala pointed out, once you're a mother it doesn't matter how young or old your kids are, you can't imagine leaving them).
Jessica Queller (the gal who was interviewed this morning) has written a book about her decision and experience. I'm going to read it, and I'm also going to schedule this gene-test. I don't want to know, but I do.
What about you? Would you want to know if you have the gene? If so, what would you do about it?
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