She Laughs at the Days

Residents of the castle were terrorized the other day by a giant baby troll. Experts are still not certain how the troll baby arrived at the castle on its own since the castle is thought to be far outside of troll territory.


The first to encounter the troll, armed knights keeping watch on the tower were flattened by the trolls initial onslaught. The troll then plucked the crown prince from his horse in the courtyard as he tried to raise the alarm. The prince endured many terrifying minutes of having his head sucked on by the baby troll. After his ordeal the prince commented, "It's just a good thing it was a baby you know. I mean, it was slobbery and stinky in there, but it didn't have any teeth. I'd have been a goner for sure if it had teeth."


The castle ogre bravely attempted to rescue the prince and found himself in the clutches of the troll as well.


The troll soon tossed him to the side and returned to the prince, apparently fixated upon his royal head.


Many brave…

I was talking to a dear friend the other day. She has just adopted a little baby girl and she and her family are making the sudden transition from one child to two. Her son, who is also quite small, has been acting jealous and tormenting the baby by taking her toys and hitting her. My friend was surprised by how angry she felt, at her son for the way he was behaving, at the baby for not being settled already and needing extra attention, at her husband because he gets to leave every day while she is stuck with two very needy little people and she feels guilty because of this anger. While I was telling her that I get angry all the time, I don't know anyone who doesn't, I realized that this subject is one that seems to be off limits for mommies.

Mothers get angry. There, I said it. It's true. We think that we ought to be graceful, gentle, understanding, sympathetic and filled with endless patience. And so, it seems, does everyone else. But it's just not the reality that we…

I was going through my photos the other day and noticed a few that don't remember taking. I realized that my kids had been playing with my camera, which would explain why the battery ran out last week. I found these taken of the Girl by her brother. I love the second one because it captures the sheer brilliance of the Girl whan she is being silly, and the fun they were having together. Sibling love is one of the greatest gifts. They will be with each other long after "best friends" have come and gone hundreds of times. I am glad that they like each other these kids of mine.


Happy Love Thursday

If there were a blogging post for which blogger you would most like to have been your parent I think Jewels at Eyes of Wonder would get my vote. She is the mother of many children, I'm going to say 10 but I may be wrong. I've only been reading over there for a week or two but all of her posts make me feel a sort of achy longing that one could almost call homesickness. She writes of aprons and laundry and meals and babies. Her posts are full of joy, gratitude, peace, faith, and simplicity. All of the things that I have in far shorter supply. She has this talent I think for plucking the true treasures out of the events of her day and sharing them with the rest of us. I was especially struck this week by her post called The Most Meaningful Matter of Motherhood.

Go and check it out. I'll be back with more later. (She has sound so turn your volume down if you are at work.)

The other day a cute little 8 year old girl came by my house wearing a cute little white tank top with A SPARKLY PINK PLAY B*Y BUNNY LOGO EMBLAZONED ACROSS HER CHEST!!!!!

Oh wait, was I yelling? For crying out loud, why on earth would a beautiful innocent little girl be wearing something that screams, "Look at me, I'm a sex object in the making?"

I asked her if she knew what the bunny on her shirt was.

"No, what is it."

"Oh, well it's a logo from a magazine called Playb*y. Do you know what that is?"

"No."

"Well," I paused, trying to figure out how to put this delicately. "It's a magazine that has pictures of naked ladies that some grown up men like to look at."

"Oh, gross!"

At first I wondered, "What are her parents thinking buying her a shirt like that?"

And then I realized that they speak very little English, they are first generation Americans and it's likely they don't know what the shirt is…

The boy spent the morning with his dad and his uncle. This is how he looked by lunchtime.

There were two houses in my childhood, though they both occupied the same plot of land. There is the house that had a trap door in the floor of one upstairs closet and when we opened it we could look down into the laundry room, and throw our dirty clothes down there too. After we had been in the house a while my dad installed shelves under the laundry door and we would crawl through and down the shelves into the basement. We thought it was the coolest sneaky trick ever. That is the house where my dad finished the basement and built me my own room next to the stairs. My little brother and sister shared the upstairs bed room. I remember painting it and selecting wall paper, navy blue with pink roses. Before that I remember finding a bolt of pink checked fabric with raggedy Anne and Andy on it at the fabric store and pulling at my mom until we followed me and then throwing my arms around the fabric and hugging it when I showed it to her. The fabric became the first curtains and bedsprea…

This has been such an exciting month for you. You've spent most of it hanging out on the floor, sitting up just like a big girl. Until you lose your balance and fall over that is. Then you lay on floor and kick and you've discovered that rolling can get you where you want to go. Some of the time. You're already working on this crawling thing. You get yourself forward and on to your knees and then you pause for a moment as the wheels turn and you try to figure out where to go from here. Usually you end up pitching forward onto your face and then you drag yourself forward with your forearms. Maybe you want to be in one of those BE ALL THAT YOU CAN BE commercials. Today you saw something you wanted, a twitching cat tail. In no time at all you had dragged yourself forward and had it in your hand. It was a very tolerant cat, he did not scratch you.

We've been working hard to keep the coins off of the floor, and the Lego have been put away indefinitely so that you can't …

For those of you who have been following the saga that is my Green Card application, (Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3) I have an update for you. I have a temporary work permit, and an interview date to see if everything I said on paper is true, and then I may get one. That means I've been able to take on a few writing jobs, which is exciting for me.

I realized this week that I never told the story of my immigration physical. I started to write it but never finished. So here for your reading pleasure is an excerpt from my account of what is involved when you are an alien who wants to live and work in the US.

*********

Once again I responded to a summons. This time it was to have my body examined by the branch of government whose job it is to decide whom among those “tired, poor, and huddled masses” is healthy enough and wealthy enough to be allowed to stay. A civil surgeon appointed by said branch of government performs the actual exam. I arrived early in the morning at the office of the q…

I want to chop off my hair. It keeps sticking to my neck when I sleep, I get a head ache during the day from having it tied up so it's not hot on the back of my neck, and I just keep thinking that it would be so much more comfortable if I cut it short at the nape of my neck. So why, you are asking, don't I just cut it instead of whining to the internet?

Well, I'm a little afraid, and therein lies a story that I have yet to tell.

When I was 19 I shaved my head. I cut off a long pony tale and proceeded to go GI Jane with the clippers. I was bald! This led to many things, like my great-grandmother at a Christmas gathering asking in her too loud hearing impaired voice, "Who is that man? Or is that, [gasp] that's Carrien!"

She later confided to me, "When I first saw you without your hair, I thought you were a man. But then I saw your chest and I knew you had to be a woman." And then she told me all about the time when she was young when she had shaved her h…

Mary at Owlhaven has yet another neat idea. This one is a meme about your childhood home, what things you remember from the home you lived in as a child. Everyone is supposed to post on July 20 which is a Friday and then she'll link it all together so we can read each other's. Sounds like fun right?

So to participate post on Friday July 20 and then go over to Mary and post a link and if you want a button let me know.

Hey guess what everyone. I have siblings. I know you're shocked. I never write about them, this blog is all about me

That's probably because they live so very far away from me and I never see them, and we rarely talk. They are busy people with careers and um...stuff, and are never next to their phone. But I have them, a younger brother, and a younger sister.

When I was a teenager my little sister and I would go and busk at fairs and street festivals and even craft sales. We picked up a little bit of cash, enough to keep us coming back. I was the more well trained musician, duh, I was older, and had a lot of lessons under my belt and some post secondary as well after a while. My sister was, well, she was just a natural talent. She could watch you do something and then repeat it back almost instantly. She did not thrive in a strict lesson type of environment, but she was good at this music thing. One summer I came home from university with my friend Jason's guitar and these gr…

Today I was walking home from the store with my kids and youngest brother in law in tow along with my shopping cart. I saw a guy walking out onto the median in the middle of the street holding a cardboard sign that read "Hungry, homeless, every little bit helps." His skin is a testimony to a life lived outside, deep brown and leathery with a myriad of deep lines marking it. He is tall and gaunt, a forlorn scarecrow precariously balanced in the midst of the rushing traffic. I know him, though I don't remember his name. He gave me money once.

Back in February when the Baby was a mere two months old I was standing with my shopping cart outside of Albertson's as the Girl pretended to ride on the mechanical horse parked next to the door. I never put money in those things for my kids, I let their imaginations furnish the excitement for a few minutes after grocery shopping before we begin the walk home.

I watched him dig through the ashtrays looking for cigarette stubs to sm…

I was standing in the bathroom using a Q-tip and some bleach to get chocolate ice cream stains out of a white pinafore and I wondered why it is that I do the things I do. Why do I make pinafores, clean stains, wash clothes, make beds, and try to make the space that we are in pleasant and inviting? These aren't essential. Life continues along fine without them, as I know from the many times when I'm too tired and let them slide. The answer of course is that I am a mommy and that's what mommies do, or some variation thereof.

I've been feeling a bit like the Pied Piper the last several days. The GH is away and it's just me and the kids, and the kid who lives across from us, and the two little kids who live on the end just around the corner, and the three kids that live across the street from the playground, and the bigger boys that live further away, the boys that don't even live here but their daycare provider is a friend of mine, and the little 2 year old girl wh…

We spent the day entertaining a new bestest friend ever for the Girl. We'll call her KK because that's what her daddy's girlfriend nicknamed her. I can't imagine hooking up with a guy who was divorced with two children and then spending all of my time taking care of his kids for him. She was about to explain it to me but just then I realized we were on the wrong bus and I had to interrupt her.

Wait, back up. We were entertaining KK who only comes to visit her dad on Tuesdays and Wednesdays because those are his days off and she apparently talks of nothing else but playing with the Girl the rest of the week. So we were sitting around at the playground playing when my SIL comes running over with a giant box of stuff. Not just any stuff, a wooden castle with working drawbridge and knights and archers and princesses and a sparkly dragon. (I guess some family member randomly passed it to my FIL and they were delivering it to us.) Then she came running over again with more bo…

The Girl comes running inside, scream crying at the top of her lungs.

“Mommy I bited my finger.”

“You bit your finger?”

“No I bited my finger.”

“That’s what I said you bit your finger.”

“NO! I bited my finger.”

“That’s not the right way to say it. You say I bit my finger.”

(Blank stare)

I hold my finger out in front of my mouth and say, “I’m going to bite my finger.” I put it in my mouth and say, “I am biting my finger.” I pull it out of my mouth and say, “I bit my finger.”

“See you already bit it so you say I bit my finger.”

“NO I BITED MY FINGER MOMMY. I’M TELLING YOU I BITED MY FINGER!”

I’m such a good teacher.

I have an audience. Well, I've had an audience for the past 5 or so years but I usually don't notice them, until they play back my performances for me; the highlights and the lowlights. I see myself in the way they get impatient over silly things, or boss each other around. I see myself also in the way they have a large vocabulary and make silly faces and sing what they want to say. (Yes, I often sing instead of talk, they think it's hilarious, and it helps me to not yell everything I say.)

The Genius Husband is out of town for several days for work. So this Shabbat was a potentially lonely affair as Beema's house was not an option either. I am committed to making this time special for my children, and so I baked the Challah bread, and cookies, and chicken cordon bleu. I promised them that we could go swimming once the bread was baked and the chicken was in the oven. When we came in from the pool and dressed for dinner I let the Girl put on her dry clean only princess d…

I had no idea until I had small children how much time is spent just waiting for them. Have you ever tried to hurry a two year old along on a walk, through an area he's never seen before? They stop to examine every single bug and leaf and blade of grass. They pick up every piece of trash on the sidewalk and show it to you. They speak in paragraphs instead of sentences, very repetitive paragraphs that they start all over again from the very beginning if they are interrupted halfway through. It's enough to drive a grown-up in a hurry mad.

Or have you ever sat with a 3 year old while she finishes dinner. She talks, she fidgets, she keeps sliding out of her chair, she nibbles tiny crumbs off of the side of her bun, she smears things on the table top, sometimes she smears food on you. It takes an eternity before she finishes dinner. Of course you can't just walk away and leave her to do it by her self or she will take even longer, or forget altogether and when you go to check on…

The Genius Husband and I were lying in bed last night, for once both awake at the same time. I had just checked my e-mail before going to bed. After keeping it to myself for a while I finally shared the good news.

me:I got a perfect post award.

GH: What's that.

me: It's something bloggers do. I was nominated for an award.

GH:How many people have to vote for you to get this award?

me:No one. It doesn't work like that. If you're nominated you get the award.

GH:(Long Pause)

me:It's really cool, it means someone likes my writing.

GH:(cautiously) Congratulations. One person somewhere out in the internet that you don't know likes your writing.

Thanks Organized Chaos for being that person. Here's the post she liked.

For more good reading go to Suburban Turmoil and Petroville.