Ten on Tuesday: 10 favorite musicals

I'm not a musical girl. I like them fine. I like to see them live and even as movies but I am not, as some of my readers probably are, an aficionado. You know, I just looked up aficionado because I was afraid I'd misspelled it but I got it right the first time. Unless Google is also wrong, of course. The OED is at my mom's house.

Now, I could talk about adventures with the OED. But I will write about musicals instead.

I'm going to say "10 musicals I've seen and enjoyed" instead of "10 favorite musicals" because seriously, I'm going to be a bumpkin here. And in no particular order.

1. Holiday Inn. The family tradition is that my grandmother saw this right before her first husband went off to the war (where he was killed) and so nobody ever sang "White Christmas" after that. I love stories like this. The superstition and memory and weird rules. So I didn't see this until adulthood and thoroughly enjoyed it.

2. Sweet Charity. My sister's high school put this one on. She wasn't the lead (she'd been the lead in that really hard play earlier in the year, what was it...Arthur Miller's All My Sons), but she was one of the other dancers. Fun.

3. Mary Poppins. I loved the version that came to St. Louis recently. I took the girls.

4. I know this isn't the same thing at all, but can I just put The Muppet Movie here? The original one, from my childhood.

5. Jesus Christ Superstar. This soundtrack? It was the soundtrack of my sophomore year of college. Who knows why.

6. Music Man. I never saw this until after Sophia came along. Sophia loves musicals.

7. Seven Brides for Seven Brothers. Absolutely. Ludicrous.

8. The Producers. What was that about ludicrous?

9. Chicago. Mostly because I use the line "and all that jazz" more than I should.

10. Meet Me in St. Louis. Of course.

Finally, all is made clear

So when Fiona was little, we watched My Neighbor Totoro so often that I really started thinking about this place it was in, the people who were minor characters, what was really going on. It was intriguing, how very little was explicit, how very much it was a child's eye view of the world and adult situations. I've talked about this before. A lot.

When Daisy was little, she wasn't as consistent in what she liked to watch. Totoro, yes, but also a variety of other Miyazaki and Pixar films. And Rogers and Hammerstein's Cinderella. And all sorts of things. So I never really got a chance to reflect on anything for long enough to come up with questions.

With Billy, he likes cars and trains and fire engines and so forth. We watch a little Bob the Builder. Occasionally Dinosaur Train. Sometimes we go off-script and catch something weird on Netflix. Like Pingu. Wha?

But his old standby is Thomas. Of course. Thomas the Tank Engine, the Really Useful tank engine who sometimes causes confusion and delay. And I think about the Island of Sodor a lot. And I talk to Jake. And I say things like:

It has to be an island near Britain, I mean, it's obvious they're British of some kind. And it is an island, but it's not big enough to be Ireland. The Isle of Man? Is that what it's based on?

Look, there's industry there. Towns. Stations. Docks. They have to be bigger than that stupid map at the beginning of the episodes.

How do the other visiting engines get there so easily? Wouldn't it be really expensive to ship an engine over to Sodor just for the summer? It has to be really close to a mainland. Or to England. Some place bigger.

I mean, Jake, they have abandoned lines. If it were only as big as the map at the beginning, everything would be KNOWN. And they'd never have to have eleventy-hundred danged engines on the place causing confusion and delay.

Sir Topham Hatt? What is that? Why is he a sir? What did he do? (To which Jake replies: obviously, he made the trains run on time).

They have a narrow-gauge line. Jake. It has to be big enough to need that.

Ok, we watch it too much. But just now, as I was debating whether I should call it a night, Jake called up to me:

"Bridgett. Wikipedia has an article on the Island of Sodor."

And I went there. And all was made clear. And you know what? I was right. Irish Sea. Bigger than the Isle of Man, smaller than Ireland. Right next to England. There's a bridge.

Now you too can know all about Sodor, including its actually rather benign etymology, by going to its article here.

Corners

Thanksgiving was Thursday.

It started at church, like the past 4 or 5 Thanksgivings, working on meals for the homebound. We counted a few pies and then I went upstairs to mass. Realized that this would be the last time I would say some of these words, like "and also with you". And I didn't really care, frankly. I mean, not in a bad way. Just can't get mad about the English language changes to the liturgy coming up this weekend.

Went back downstairs after talking with Jack for a minute, and Sr. Vanda stopped me at the door as I was putting on an apron. Sarah had taken my job. I glanced over at the counter and Sarah called over to me, "11 big, 11 small, cut into 8ths and 4ths will give us what we need." I realized I'd been replaced. Not a big thing in the grand scheme of, well, anything on earth. Anybody can divide pies. Sr. Vanda was worried and apologized to me, which was unnecessary but nice. I told her I'd go decorate upstairs. Needed to get it done anyway.

Jack was in back with the wreath and I made my way to the sacristry. Where I hid in the corner and cried. I just can't find my place at this church these days. Gave myself a pep talk and went back out to pull plants off the altar area and start bringing things together in back. Jack, Fr. Miguel, and I hung the wreath in about 3 minutes. I told them I'd put everything else together after meals were done downstairs. Feeling better, I went down.

The kitchen was completely jammed with people. Ann caught me as I started to put on an apron. She could read the weariness on my face and asked me what was wrong. And I started to cry again. We talked a moment. She told me to go home (nicely, appropriately). I went home and sent Jake to deliver meals.

I monotonously cleaned the kitchen and get things ready to make pies for my mom's house. Jake got home and told me that even with so many people, they didn't have their acts together very well. Probably because of so many people, I thought to myself. The kids were playing with friends and I sent Jake to clean something--anything--while I cooked.

I made a pumpkin pie. I made a chocolate custard pie. I took a shower. I made whipped cream and cinnamon whipped cream. We went to my parents' house.

There, I drank coffee and chatted with my sister and felt like I was turning a corner. I don't know what God is trying to say to me about all that's gone on at the parish for me this semester, but I'm not one to make rash moves. I'm not one to make moves. But there have been so many barriers and frustrations and stuff just grinding me down...it's hard to know what it means.

But dinner was excellent and we played games and Billy was crazy and it was all good. I went home that night and felt ok. Took a muscle relaxer and went to bed.

Friday we went to Cairo. Hard morning getting up and out the door but we made it down there only to realize we'd left the pork and beef trimmings we needed to make deer sausage and burger back home in the freezer. Some juggling with my mom and Jake's brother and aunt and it eventually arrived in time for Jake and his dad to process 3 deer. Most of that is in my freezer downstairs right now. In Cairo I made an afghan and almost finished a doll sweater. I watched cable TV. I slept 11 hours Friday night.

And today is a little different. I have children's liturgy of the word planned for the three weeks of Advent I'm in charge of it. I have an Irish dancer dress made for one of Fiona's dolls (she wants doll clothes for Christmas). The house is clean, the freezer is full, and my teeth all fit together when I close my mouth.

It's ok. Not great, I mean, I've got a lot of stuff to do in the next few weeks, not to mention the car business needs to get wrapped up. Christmas is very close. Cold is close. Art classes, my online class, sewing--lots of things need to be done and done soon. And I'm camping with the girl scouts before Christmas as well. Ha! But somehow, I feel like Thanksgiving morning was this corner.

Reflecting on the past year, I realized that my life runs on a liturgical calendar. It was the Friday before the first Sunday of Advent that Daisy had her seizure. It was that week that my brother and his wife found out their baby had down syndrome. The year that followed, from Advent 2010 to the end of this liturgical year, has been really really busy and hard and angst-filled. Now that it is after dusk on Saturday it is a new liturgical year, 2011 has begun, year B in a three year cycle.

It's my favorite season. I missed it last year--I was too busy being worried and sad. Perhaps it is time to turn a corner and see this year differently. I don't know if that's the way things work but that's the way things seem to work for me. So here it goes. Faith in a better tomorrow.

Thanks

It's been a hard 3 months or so.

The school year started off with a bang. The night of the first day of school a parent told me he used Daisy as the example of how not to act when he was teaching his daughter how to do the right thing. And then he said how he hoped he could help me become a better parent over the course of the school year together.

Many things about school are upsetting and frustrating this year; none of them have to do with the teachers or head of school. Who are fabulous. But things did not start well and so.


I never got any tomatoes. Neither did Zelda. It wasn't me.

Bleys died. The day after my birthday.

Jake had two root canals. I had a tooth crumble in my mouth. Crumble. Teeth aren't supposed to crumble.

Jake had a minor car accident. But it was an old car and it totaled it.

Billy was diagnosed with apraxia. There is no way to know right now whether this is childhood apraxia of speech that will go away with intensive (also expensive) therapy, or if this will be a lifelong condition.

But on the other hand...

The family that hated me and my daughter so so much moved away.

I'm volunteering 5-6 hours a week in classrooms at school teaching art and practical life.

I figured out how to play my professor's game and now have a 96% in her class.

I have gallons of salsa verde in the freezer.

We have a decent dentist, and the pain I was feeling that I thought was a tooth going bad turned out to be an inflamed jaw/cheek muscle from stress and tension. Flexeril seems to be working, although I overdid it yesterday and my speech was slurred (I took 1. The dentist suggested 1, or perhaps 1/2. I will do 1/2 from now on). It was amazing, the morning after I took the first one. I could close my teeth together on both sides of my mouth. I haven't been able to do that...I don't remember when.

The car may be totaled, but I have so many friends and relatives who have volunteered to help us with transportation, including my parents who are giving me their truck for a whole month. We'll replace the car in late January or so. The car was worth a lot more than we assumed it would be. And we've been overpaying the note on the mazda for two years, such that they've decreased the amount we owe each month. We're going to take advantage of both these things and get a small loan on a decent used car and take a deep deep breath.

I miss the cat, but there is no longer any poop on my dining room hearth. The other two cats seem to fill the space left, too, and I don't think we'll get a 3rd for a long time. Perhaps after Hickory goes (she's the same age Bleys was, but you'd never know it).

And Billy? What will be will be. He doesn't have autism or something else global and mystifying. The apraxia mostly involves just speech, with a little fine motor, but he's started to imitate. The professor was very positive, and not in a "we'll see" kind of fake way. She thinks he will probably be done with therapy before kindergarten (when, ironically, it would be free through the public school instead of $400 a month this semester).

It's been a year since Daisy's seizure.

Fiona is fine. She's upstairs with her sister playing with Bree, who is probably her best friend, and we are so blessed that they live two houses away.

The treehouse is 99% done. A friend on the next block is giving me the parts of her son's, now outgrown, to use for the swingset extension on the side.

Jake is scheduled and billable through late January already.

I will be certified again to teach at the end of this semester; I will be certified K-9 to teach art next semester.

Weather has been mild enough we didn't turn the heat on until last week. I will probably turn it back off; it's going to be 60 today.

I have often said we are the luckiest unlucky people in the world. My brother pointed out that this runs in the family, and I suggested we needed to translate it into Latin and make it our family motto. Using google translate, back and forth and tweaking it as best I can, I came up with this:

infaustum familia maxime fortunata

It's not a bad thing, really. Whatever doesn't kill you...makes a good story over bourbon slush.

Happy Thanksgiving. Here's to a good advent.

Sweet Little Daisy

My friend from school who is also Daisy's teacher called me last night to tell me a Daisy story. That one. You know, every gray hair on my head. Well her class spent a part of the day brainstorming and making some sketches of their vision of the playground and outdoor space at our new school building which will be our home next year. I suspect there were many good stories, but Daisy's idea was something she called a "miss you tunnel."

"What's a miss you tunnel?" I asked her teacher, who told me she asked Daisy the same thing. And Daisy had just kept repeating the title, as if that made any sense at all. Finally her teacher told her she needed to explain it.

"Well, it would be a tunnel on the playground big enough to sit in and you go into it and on the inside walls are pictures of all the people who used to go to our school but moved away or changed schools. And you go there when you miss them."

And since of course it's all about me, I thought about this and how many miss-you tunnels I would have had my picture in growing up. How different it must be to be the kids who stay instead of the kids who move. How their stories will begin "When Jenny was in our class back in 3rd grade" instead of "Back when I was at St. Martin's in 3rd grade with Jenny and Chrissy and all those girls".

We've chosen the better part.

Stress Fail

So I'm kind of a mess. This autumn has gotten the best of me and I had 4 days in a row of excruciating tooth pain and went to the dentist yesterday. My teeth are fine. But then my dentist pinched the muscle of my right cheek and I almost came out of the chair at her.

I'm not clenching my teeth or grinding. I'm setting my jaw. Basically making a fist, but with my jawline. She suggested a muscle relaxer.

I got my hair cut last night and then went over to Target to the pharmacy. I stood at the counter with my big bag I use as a purse/knitting bag/diaper bag and started hunting through it for the prescription. Then I called Jake. Yup. The prescription was at home on the phone table in the front hall.

It felt all very symbolic. There I was, so stressed out my teeth didn't meet anymore in my mouth because my facial and jaw muscles were so inflamed, getting a prescription for a muscle relaxer, and I didn't have the prescription.

So I went and picked up at the CSA and came home. Jake had dinner on the table--he made french toast and bacon and fruit salad and it was lovely. And then I went back to Target.

I took it last night and was hoping for the muscle relaxer version of, say, vicodin. Something that would knock me flat. But no. It's a long-acting version, and so I still took some ibuprofen before bed. I was worried. Worried that the muscle relaxer isn't going to do the job is really the peak of worry. Things are going so far into a nose-dive in my life that this is my focus. I know my life is crazy, always, I mean, there's 5 years of proof on this blog, and yet I've never resorted to tensing my jaw until I hurt so bad I thought I needed a root canal. COME ON.

I went to bed and realized when Jake got up to go to work that I'd slept ALL NIGHT LONG. I don't know if Billy did or not. He sleeps right next to me still, for a few more months, and maybe he took a cue from mama that it was a sleepy night. Going into the bathroom to brush my teeth and figure out what to do with my hair, I realized I could close my teeth and they all touched at the same time.

For the first time in I don't know how long.

I'm a mess. I need to find some outlets for this. And I need to take this muscle relaxer for the next few weeks and try to be better.

This weekend, I am doing nothing. Maybe loading the dishwasher, perhaps I'll fold some towels. But nothing. I'm going to make my sister come over today and give me her Hulu+ membership login so I can watch this season of Parenthood. And maybe I'll shoot my bow. Do some knitting. Stop freaking out.

Stop freaking out.

Right Now. A semi-regular post.

Right now, Billy is downstairs watching a terrible Brazilian knock-off of "Cars" while recovering from the tantrum he threw in the fabric store today which I only went to because the field trip I was supposed to drive on, well, only one teacher thought I was driving and the other was actually doing the scheduling and I'm trying so hard to keep my own act together that I don't have a lot of tolerance right now. Nor does Billy, which resulted in tantrum #1, followed by #2 and #3 pretty close behind. So he's downstairs and I'm upstairs and trying to breathe.

Right now, Daisy is at school with an infected finger. She banged it in a drawer on Friday night after the two girls were so terrible for the babysitter I don't suspect she will return my calls. Ever. And although we took care of it and it seemed ok, now her teacher has called to let me know it is purple and the pus is right under the skin.

Right now, however, the insurance company's calculation for how much Jake's car is worth is far far higher than Kelly blue book was thinking. So that's happy news.

Right now, all the plants at church are dead and I'm pretty sure it's my fault and this edge of crazy I'm balancing on really doesn't allow for much time to run up to church and get things done. Even if I wanted to, frankly.

Right now several friends and relatives have stepped up awesomely and offered me the use of their cars and I think I have it covered until mid-January. When we will buy a car.

Right now, some fat sassy doe is tramping through the woods in southern Illinois because Jake didn't kill her. Or any of her friends. We'll still have deer from his dad and uncle, and we're negotiating second season.

Right now the dishes in the dishwasher are clean. It is a total mystery why sometimes the dishwasher gives up mid-cycle and just turns off. Seven out of 10 times, it works. But then it suddenly will just get tired.

Right now, Fiona's room is completely clean. This is a first in probably a year.

Right now I almost have Christmas all figured out.

Right now, it is an hour until school lets out and then tomorrow is a half day and then I can turn off my alarm clock for a few days except not really. I just don't have to get kids up with me. Just me.

Right now, the piano teacher wishes me good luck with Daisy's finger and we'll see her next week.

Right now, I just realized I've run out of "Parenthood" to watch on Netflix, although I hear there are episodes available in other places, the current season being where I am.

Right now Hickory the cat sits close to the keyboard, inching closer to the Enter key and the 0 on the ten-key pad. She likes to make the computer beep.

Right now, her compatriot Bleys' ashes sit in the dining room in a white box. Picked them up today. I really miss that cat.

Right now I'm beginning to suspect I'm that girl and I have that family. And that the teachers are just being nice when they let me volunteer and really everyone sighs when I leave the building. Not just at school.

Right now, I am so sick of my life being a train wreck.

Afternoon on the porch

I stand in my kitchen, eating leftover brie with little crackers that taste vaguely of rosemary and sugar. Blackjack, the fat brown tabby, sits in the windowsill, well, perched sort of over the sink, stretches so his head is in the window. The typical little tiktik noises are coming from his throat as he stares out the window. I see the mourning dove, fat, dumb, sitting on the porch railing.

"She doesn't care about you," I tell Jack. I put some lunch together for Billy and take it into the living room. When I come back, Jack is still there, his tail flicking about with excitement. I look out the back door and see what's really got him going. The mourning dove is just resting, but in one of my pots I didn't clear out yet, there is a pair of cardinals and a junco. The juncos are back, I think to myself. And they are feasting, with the plump cardinals, on the basil seeds left on the potted plant I failed to harvest in July but instead let go to seed and just picked leaves off here and there through the rest of the summer. No pesto this year. Too busy.

The happiest little birds are standing in my chores. The happiest most frustrated tabby is now in the bathroom off the kitchen, getting a better view. I'm standing in socks on my clean kitchen floor with nobody bothering me and nothing on the agenda.

Pere Marquette State Park

As much as I can say in 10 minutes

Ok, I have 10 minutes. Then I go teach art. We're doing Sumerian cylinder signature seals--little barrel shaped clay hollow tubes that are etched so that when you roll them on wet clay, it leaves an imprint. Remember the rolling pins for Pla-Doh that had patterns worked on them? Same idea but 2 inches long and made of sculpey-covered copper pipe. Then I bake them this weekend and bring them back next week and we roll them out. I'm looking forward to this one. I've really done research and I've got everything prepped. I feel like I have a handle on art class.

I am taking the Praxis (teacher test) to be certified K-9 in art, in fact, in the spring. The test looks a tad daunting. Plus it is completely unclear how many questions I need to get right. 120 questions and my score to pass is "158"? What does that mean? My sister Bevin is going to tutor me in art history a bit. I am completely self-taught but in Missouri, if you have a valid teaching certificate in a basic level (elementary, middle, or high school) you can test into certain certifications. It is now my plan to do as many as I can. My facebook pages lists my job title as "Jill of All Trades" and really it's just teaching but I can teach just about anything, save foreign language or perhaps music. But anything else? I can teach myself and then teach you.

So why the technical difficulties?

Jake wrecked his car. He's all right. No injuries. Fine. He's fine. The car, while just appearing to be dinged, is obviously made of styrofoam and peanut butter on the inside because it was totaled. For my foreign readers, this term means "the insurance company isn't going to pay for the damages because the car is worth less than the cost of the work needed to get it back to road-worthiness." It's a 12 year old car so I think if I sneezed on it, it would have been totaled. One step forward, two steps back. We were at a good place, finally, after months of tweaking expenses (and look: I'm taking a class to be reinstated as a teacher, taking a test to get certified in art, guess what, I'm going back to work next autumn if at all possible and Billy is ready for preschool and all that jazz) and now this.

Now this.

So the car is totaled. And that means we either live on one car or we buy something.

We could live on one car. If. Jake is a computer consultant and therefore doesn't know, day to day, if he's going to the office in the county, or to the client 10 blocks from us or the client 35 miles away. Or Rolla. Or Peoria. Ok, we usually know when those are coming. But he often starts the day in Webster, goes to Earth City at lunchtime, and stops by south city before he comes home. He likes his job a lot and that's not the problem. The problem is we live in a schlumpy city that has miserable public transit and therefore he needs a car to do his job.

Everything I do on a non-emergency day, during the work day, happens within 3 miles of my house. I'm the one who would have to tweak her life. More than a bit but it could be really good for me. School is 10 blocks away; the grocery store is about that. Church is about that. The farmers market is 15 or 20 blocks. Speech therapy is tricky only because the direct route is under construction, but if I were biking, I wouldn't take the direct route anyway.

So it sounds ok, and if I were sitting pretty in March or April, I would dive right in and tell Jake not to worry for now. But it's November. January is coming. February. We don't live in Michigan or Vermont but it gets cold here. Icy. Freezing drizzle kind of icy. Bleah. Bike in that? I don't think that will work. Bus, sure. Borrow my sister's car on a Thursday morning. Borrow my neighbor's. Borrow Ann's. Borrow my mom's. Carpool. I could do it. If I had to, I could. I would. I would be willing.

Jake is less convinced and probably with good reason. It would make my life a huge hassle every single day except perhaps Mondays. Assuming no one gets an ear infection or croup or so forth. If everyone stays healthy, if we use the crock pot 5 days a week, if Billy and I decide to spend most of our Tuesday and Thursday mornings on a bus.

So then the question could be answered with a new car. Or rather, an old car. Someone else's old car. We've had awesome luck thus far with used cars--the one Jake just had the accident in and the Mazda are both used cars. And they're good. But our budget is small enough that I'm not sure we'd be able to repeat that luck. And we really need something to get us through the next 2 years until Billy is established in school and I'm established in school and the Mazda is paid for.

It's been a hard 5 days. I'm knee deep in Christmas sewing. The SCA (Society for Creative Anachronism--a medieval reenactment group) is coming over this evening to talk about archery to my girl scouts. It got cold last night. Kaboom. A lot of stuff.

So I'm going to drink the rest of this coffee, pack up my copper pipe and sculpey clay, and run run run to school to teach a group of 1st graders about merchants who lived 5000 years ago. The absurdity of it all.

Treading Water

So much to say

And yet somehow I can't say anything!

I've been watching a lot of "Parenthood" on Netflix, a show that was highly recommended by almost everyone I spoke with and yet I hadn't managed to focus long enough to find it. I'm not good at following things on TV; much better at the Netflix or Hulu options later on.

Sometimes I see something or read something and it strikes me as novel and interesting and worth continuing to see or read. Sherlock on BBC comes to mind. Law and Order UK on BBC also comes to mind. I liked Hotel Babylon (ahem, more English). I liked the Riches. News Radio. And I do read--there are books I have devoured because they drew me in and entertained me and made me think. Marquez comes to mind first. But I'm embarrassed to say I never read Anne of Green Gables until last week when I started reading it to Daisy and Fiona. The Secret Garden, too. There are others but it's late and I'm trying to reach some sort of point.

The point is, Parenthood is not novel and interesting and fun to watch. In fact it is often excruciating in its portrayal of reality. I keep thinking about arguments I've had with Jake, back when his sister was starting to go through major problems with her husband, and I said, in front of both of his brothers on the way to Cape Girardeau, "WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU?"

His reply was simple and measured and everything that he is that I am not. He said, "Because my siblings and I are not as emotionally entangled with each other as you and yours are."

That's what this show is, for me, to watch. The siblings are in their early 40s down to mid-30s (Jake calls it Gen X's Thirtysomething). And it makes me flinch and look away. It's not my life. But I am Adam, I am Sarah, I am Amber, I am Kristina, I am Haddie. I see my brother there, I see both my sisters. Yes, it's about parenthood, and neither of my sisters have children. But they're emotionally entangled.

And so the last few days (I've been watching them for 3 days while I cleaned house, sorted fabric, laundry, ironed, and then at the end just sat and stared) I have thought about my siblings and our emotionally entangled lives. I thought about moments in the car with Bevin. About the phone call I had to make to Ian this past January. About driving Colleen home from Columbia this past visit--and all the times I drove her home from high school as my car overheated and we just smiled and waved at everyone pointing at us because the car had to make it home because we couldn't get a new one because we had lead paint to clean up at my house. I thought about apraxia and explaining to my aunt and grandmother today what that meant. Apraxia and dyslexia and seizures, new jobs, old jobs, new boyfriends, old boyfriends, recessions, care packages, glimpses of future, hauntings of past.

It's all so much, and watching this show, it is eerily familiar, like when I started dreaming in Russian back in college. Something here almost makes sense.

Like I said, my aunt and grandmother came to visit today. I talked to Jake on the phone last night about the impending visit and found myself saying somewhat profound things about nature and nurture and where we are and how we came to be here and how people mellow and how our voices sound the same when we sing and I look at my aunt Kay and I know that's where I'm headed, that is what I will look like in 20 years' time.

We were talking about dentists and teeth and braces and typical things. Penny (my grandmother) said, "Well, your grandfather had the smallish mouth, and I had the biggish teeth," implying that the combination was doomed from the get-go.

I replied, "There are a lot of things I just sigh and blame my dad's family for."

"Rightly so," Kay nodded with a smile. "Rightly so."

Conlocutio moment

I had this blog a few years back where I recorded a conversation each day. Some with family, some with strangers. Some overheard. Most with me involved. I liked it, it might have been my favorite daily writing thing I've done. I might return to it someday because it was fun and a good way to record life as it goes by. But here's a little teaser for now.

I was teaching art, a few weeks back, in the upper elementary classroom. I was sitting next to a 4th grade boy named David while we drew the still life in the middle of the room. Some of these kids were ready for this. Others were not--but most everyone showed progress over the course of the two months. David sat next to me, with a long way to go to get to the point that he would draw what he was seeing as opposed to icons (a bowl looks like a half circle; eyes are at the top of the forehead, etc).

"Man, you draw so good," he said, pointing to the clipboard I was working on as we sat on the floor together. I was in the middle of the recurve bow I'd brought in to lean up against the table in the center. Most kids' drawings included the bow if they could see it from where they sat.

"Well, David, there are two reasons why you probably think that," I responded, not looking up from the top point of the bow as I put it onto paper slowly. "To begin with, I am going very very slowly and drawing only the edges my eye runs along. And the other reason is that I took my first drawing class in 1987."

"Wow, that's a long time ago," he nodded. I looked over at him and smiled. He went back to trying to imitate me, looking up at the objects and adding little bits to his paper.

"Was that like, when World War I was happening?"

I glanced over at Sophia's teacher, a taciturn young man who does not let his emotions betray him, ever, and I see just the tiniest bit of a smile.

"No, David, it was well after that."

Little white dove repost

I know, I know, you've been bit by a mean old crow
Carried your heart, carried your heart off in his beak
So what's in your mouth now, baby, come on, talk to me


Entangled emotional lives. On the way to Cape Girardeau to see a movie while we were staying at my inlaws this Christmas, Mike and I were, well, it wasn't a fight, because we were on the same side. But many times, we have these discussions that an outsider might get nervous with, somebody afraid of confrontation, for instance. And I was using a lot of swear words and demanding to know what was so different about us, about our lives with our families. And he said, "Bridgett, you and and your siblings have far more entangled emotional lives than I have with mine."

It's true--my brother told me that his girlfriend was pregnant before he admitted it to my parents. My sisters complain to me about each other, about each other's boyfriends, about my parents. I'm sure they complain about me to each other. And like I've said, we are an outspoken belligerent lot. We don't suffer fools for very long, and we can be viciously unafraid of confrontation. There aren't a lot of heartfelt moments, though, nothing for a greeting card, nothing I would carry around and ruminate upon later how sweet or poignant or open this or that was. But as we age, I suspect these will happen more. Adult siblings, you know, they've been through all the same bull I have. And they see through all mine right now. In my pocket, take it from me.

On the couch the other evening, watching Law & Order reruns on DVD and knitting, folding laundry, drinking coffee too late in the day, my sister Bevin says to me, "I was trying to think back. I think it was 2004 that Jesse was killed. For a while I'd convinced myself it was 2005, but I think I'm messing that up." I confirmed it--I was pregnant with Maeve when it happened.

We sat there quietly for a moment. I paused Mike Logan and Phil Cerreta. I wanted to ask her how she was holding up, with the new trial coming and probably being a witness again, with her friends spread far afield--I know I am nervous about how it will go this time--but I felt weird saying it. So I stopped knitting, looked at her as she chewed on the inside of her cheek a bit. So what's in your mouth, baby, come on, talk to me.

"I guess I'll have to take off work," she said. "I think by law they have to let me."

"Yeah, they certainly do." I know that much. We sit a bit more, and then she picks up the remote, turns the police procedural back on. Entangled emotional lives. Hearts break, birds fly.

Night moves repost

And oh the wonder
We felt the lightning
And we waited on the thunder
Waited on the thunder

Funny how you remember. We had this big screened in porch in Georgia, the whole back of the saltbox house. Porch swing, concrete floor, ceiling fans, picnic table: the best part of living in Georgia was that porch shaded by the giant white pines in our huge backyard.

Lark was over, like she was most of that summer. It was easier to be at my house than hers, with her mother, the weird neighborhood, the sketchy people who lived in the house, divided up into a rooming house. One of several only children of single moms I befriended over time, each one with this unspeakable hurt she carried with her and showed in the tracks she left, but never outright, never so that you could see. Oblique.

Rain was coming in, not impressive like something building in the gulf, lying on the back of my car with a single mom's son in a couple years, or later watching green clouds moving through the prairie with a single mom's daughter in college. But you could smell the electricity in the air, and we saw the lightning.

One one thousand two one thousand three one thousand four one thousand five one thousand six one thousand, thunder. It's a little over a mile away, I heard her say. I'd learned it in grade school sometime along my way. I nodded. My dad taught me that, she said quietly. I kept rocking in the swing, letting the rusty chains squeak against each other. I knew better than to say anything else.

Art So Far (Lessons 3 through 7)

I am teaching art in two different elementary classrooms (in Montessori, elementary means 1st-3rd) and one upper elementary classroom (4th-6th). My older kids just finished a long term drawing unit and are about to start color theory. The younger students are making their way slowly through art history. We started with cave paintings and painted pebbles (making our own paint). Here are our last 5 lessons:

3. Megalithic monuments in miniature. Using pebbles, a bit of sticky-tack (the stuff you hang posters with when you can't use pins or staples or tape), and a cardboard base, each student created a megalithic monument, drawing from the examples found in Britain, western Europe, north Africa, and a few other locations. You know: Stonehenge. Some built cairns, some built gathering spaces, some built temples. It was really really cool. Really.

4. Lunulae and torcs. Learning about examples from Ireland and France, students then created crescent moon shaped gold foil necklaces and copper foil "wire" torcs on a pipe cleaner base. How do we know the lunulae were necklaces if they weren't found in burial locations? Why were there so few of them? I thought they looked Egyptian. Didn't the torcs choke people if they couldn't take them off? How did they get them on? And so on. It was probably the most in-depth discussion we've had.

5. The Royal Game of Ur. This was a break from more complicated projects. It was a coloring sheet--a board game from Ur found in tombs dating back to the bronze age. It's a race game, like Sorry or Parcheesi, and after learning about it and how to play, they colored the game boards and little paper or wooden pieces, and sat down to play with each other. One mom: "My game-geek son is still playing the royal game of ur. I don't know whether to thank you or strangle you."

6. Animal Amulets. The earliest examples date back to the bronze age in Mesopotamia, but of course people have been creating animal amulets ever since. We used sculpey, a polymer clay that bakes in the oven, as well as a low-temperature terracotta that honestly I will never use again. This lesson took three weeks. Introduction and making the figures; painting the figures; stringing them onto bracelets or necklaces with beads. Some of the girls in one class wore them to school even a few days ago. It was a popular project even if it took a long time and created more chaos than I wanted. One dad: "My son loved this project. He keeps saying, 'dad, let's make some animal beads' and I tell him he'll have to talk to you instead."

7. Egyptian name cartouches. This is another coloring project on paper, but more complicated than the Royal Game of Ur. We learned about hieroglyphics, which they were already aware of for the most part because of popular culture but also because they've had the lesson on the origins of language and written language. They each received a transliteration alphabet, which would have been used for names. They had to trace and cut out an oval, a cartouche frame, and glue these down onto a background before transliterating their name and copying it into the cartouche. This went over like gangbusters. Kids and secret codes and cute little letters and all that. Maeve's name has two birds in it and I cannot stop looking at them and their personalities shining through. Rachel's mom: "Rachel came home and made cartouches for everyone, including the dog."

From here until Christmas? We are definitely doing a tomb painting class project that will take 2 classes, and a Mesopotamian cylinder signature seal out of sculpey. But this week I'm stymied. I want to teach scarabs and soap carving, using Ivory soap and a bamboo skewer. Maeve is able to do it. But I showed her teacher and the reaction? "No way. No possible way. That will never work. I remember that project when I was a kid." Part of me wants to dive in and prove her wrong, but another more prudent part of me wants to listen to her and do a Draw Like an Egyptian project instead. It's a toss up. We do a lot of 2 dimensional work, but we also do a lot of 3-D--including the cylinder seals that also involve carving to some extent. It's not like every class is a coloring page. We could do a drawing lesson instead. On the other hand, that will mean that their entire Egypt art experience will be flat. Scarabs are already very close to the shape of a bar of Ivory soap. It would mostly be details. But she was so so so adamant about it. Hmm.

Of course I could split the two classes and teach soap carving to the 14 kids in the one class (it is a growing classroom, new this year) and do the drawing lesson in the class of 31. Or I could skip it. The smell of Ivory in my dining room is making me woozy. Still thinking (I have tonight to think!!!).

Starting in January, we leave Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa and move to the Americas and Asia for a while. Giddy. Did I mention that?