Pretending to Farm

Jumping for Joy

Did you ever watch “The Man Show” on Comedy Central? It was an overly silly, patently misogynistic spectacle hosted by Adam Corolla and Jimmy Kimmel who sat smugly on the stage and drank (and sometimes chugged) mugs of beer throughout the half-hour while being catered to by self-objectifying women in bikinis and lingerie. They cracked tasteless jokes and played Benny Hill-esque skits. Needless to say, David loved it. Me? Not so much.

At the end of each show came the grand finale. The excitement among the audience of overgrown teenaged boys was palpable, the noise deafening. It was time. Time for what, you might ask? Well, girls on trampolines of course.

Here is our own version starring Jessica (who is doing very well in college) and Robert (who is still on his “Bead Dude” high). In contrast to the now-defunct Man Show, I found it tasteful, entertaining, and just plain fun.

Happy Saturday.

Back to Taos

When last we met up with the arguably-dynamic duo of Robert and me, it was a beautiful Thursday morning in Taos, New Mexico. A good night’s sleep and an active chicken’s appearance had washed away the weariness associated with the road of unending construction and, showered and dressed, we ventured out of our room to see what a “hot entrée” entailed.

We were not disappointed. Whole wheat blueberry and banana pancakes dusted with powdered sugar, fresh orange juice, hot coffee, and an accompanying breakfast bar of fresh fruit, mild cheese, vanilla yogurt, and granola. Not only were we recovered after this, we were feeling better than when we had left home. Sufficiently sophonsified (sorry, I can’t remember how Margaret Atwood spelled it; see “Cat’s Eye”), it was time for our first workshop, “Spinning with Beads.”

I love workshops. In addition the scheduled curriculum, the classes are filled with at-the-least colorful and at-the-most interesting and informative people, fellow fiber fanatics who approach their craft in unique and, as I found out, far simpler ways than previously taught.

Most of us grasped beaded spinning quickly. It involves 30-pound test fishing line, the beads of course, and smooth roving (carded fiber lengths) to get the job done. String your beads onto the filament, break the roving you have begun making into yarn, and pop the beads on, holding them back whilst the wheel turns and then pushing them forward as the mood strikes. Gilding the lily is allowed and even encouraged.

One individual, however, had a challenging time. Marilyn, a cantankerous dynamo of a shepherdess from The Black Hills of South Dakota, Marilyn whose name tag identifying her name and home kept “Rocky Raccoon” playing in my head all day, could not get the beads to pop onto the bobbin of her wheel. Enter “Bead Boy.” Robert at his best as Marilyn’s assistant relished the attention he was receiving. He stood beside the increasingly grumbling spinner and manually moved the beads from the orifice (I know, it sounds filthy and way too anatomical) to the bobbin. He was her hero. He became everyone’s hero moving from spinner to spinner helping out as needed, stringing beads for the arm-length challenged, making decisions for the ambivalent, and more. As time passed, he graduated to “Bead Dude” and ideas as to his superhero costume were being thrown around. Robert was in his element and I joined in the revelry as his self-esteem blossomed and grew.

By mid-afternoon, we were about to begin another beaded project involving linen squares, crochet hooks, and fine beaded yarn, and I admittedly was beginning to feel the fatigue catch up to me once again. I was toying with calling it a day, heading back to our room, and taking a much-needed nap when a familiar scent wafted over me and a welcome voice whispered in my ear, “Now where is this “Eske’s” place?”

Fatigue, what fatigue? To the brewery!

Which one is more “gorge”ous? I know where my chad hangs.

Suck It Up

“You know you might just have to suck it up.” Those are the words that ushered from my husband’s mouth three nights ago, and I have been thinking long and hard about them ever since. They were not meant to be cruel or demeaning but came out of the frustration of dealing with a chronically ill wife.

I was feeling sorry for myself as usual. My joints were really bothering me and new painful lesions were popping up in record speed on my skin. My feet had decided not to work when I arose each morning, causing me to walk like Peter Boyle in “Young Frankenstein” and making it impossible for me to pick up a certain Pint-Sized Farmer who always wants to be picked up and loved when he sees me vertical. I was beginning to convince myself that life in a wheelchair was coming sooner rather than later and that old bones would not be reached.

And then there was Taos. Ever since I missed last year’s Wool Festival, I have been looking forward to traveling there to participate in the 2007 festival and drink in the atmosphere. I love it there, the crisp air, real trees, and unique people. Just about everything about Taos, I love. And now I was afraid I would not be able to go, just like I could not go to Minnesota, just like I have had to cancel my attendance at so many events and miss out on so much of life.

You see my hands don’t like to drive. After anywhere from five minutes to an hour, they seize up in cramped pain and protest their prolonged position. Driving the nine hours east to Albuquerque and north through Santa Fe and on to Taos seemed like an impossibility. So I felt sorry for myself some more and ate cry baby soup, lamenting the workshops I would miss and the people and places I would not see.

“You know you might just have to suck it up.”

I’ve decided to go. Armed with if-nothing-else pure stubbornness, Robert and I are making the journey this coming Wednesday. Since I waited too long to make a hotel reservation, thinking I might not be able to go and fearing the cancellation fees I would encounter, I had a difficult time finding a place to stay but then happenstance joyfully danced in and, for just a little more than a regular, generic hotel, I found a tiny bed and breakfast to call home for the four days we’ll be there. Our casita has a fireplace, sitting area, and private patio, and is about a mile from the plaza, forcing us into some much needed exercise and hopefully ordering my feet to once again work properly, dang it. Taos is said to be a place of healing after all, serving as the hub of the 86 mile Enchanted Circle winding through northern New Mexico. This year we will travel this circle. If the legends are correct and healing is there, I’m not passing it up for the world.

If by chance, any of you out there share the good fortune to be in Taos for the Wool Festival, after the day’s workshops have ended and our daily travels complete and before Robert and I head back to our little home away from home, we’ll be sitting under the giant elderly cottonwood trees at Eske’s Brew Pub sharing good company and a delicious meal. Robert will have a home brewed root beer; I’ll be drinking a well-deserved I-sucked-it-up pint.

Summer's Over, Except for the Whole Heat Thing

Tomorrow marks the first day of school. August 9th and on a Thursday? I think that’s criminal but, as both boys are excited to start, I can’t really vocalize my displeasure. “Guys, how can you be excited about going into 8th grade when it’s still early August? You could slack and swim and play World of Warcraft for three more weeks if you started after Labor Day like a majority of the country. Geez.”

Regardless of how I feel, it will begin and with it, the morning shuffle to get them up, fed, and out the door to meet the bus in time. After the initial excitement wears off, tears and excuses will flow and I’ll have to use our shepherd’s crook to roust them out of bed. All we like sheep will go astray.

Yet, all in all, my boys are well-behaved, particularly compared to some I see but they have their moments and have unfortunately inherited their parents’ raunchy sense of humor. I’ve gotten calls. So it is with great embarrassment that I have to admit that two nights before school started, we all watched “The Daily Show” together which guess-starred Andy Samberg whose parody song with Justin Timberlake, ____ in a Box is growing, so to speak, in popularity exponentially on YouTube. Although part of me wishes I could reverse the fact that we watched this together, the rest of me does not because of their priceless reactions.

They laughed until the tears ran down to their necks as they sang the chorus over and over. Hunky Husband, kid that he is, joined in with them and I was left hoping Hell would not be as bad as it is portrayed. To top it off, this morning my twin 13-year-olds cut a hole in a box and stuck their fingers, thankfully fingers, through the hole and sang the chorus to me. I guess I should be happy my boys feel open enough with me to do this but don’t think I didn’t feel groady. I did.

Back to school, I’m going to get calls.

“Tomorrow is another day.”

Yesterday, my day began with an endlessly screaming toddler and two dentist appointments for the teenaged wonder twins. This was our first visit to this particular dentist (David the Husband and Jessica had gone before us) and the waiting room was plush. No hard stackable seating lined the walls, begging for an impromptu game of musical chairs. Instead, we were greeted by an overstuffed sofa and cushy arm chairs, all full of numerous toss pillows beguiling a 2 ½ year old toddler with an arm like Randy Johnson to fulfill their moniker. Within minutes of being there, the Zoom teeth whitening display was broken and the waiting room looked like, well like my house. (I had to fill out paperwork and stupidly entrusted his care to the not-so-wonder-after-all twins.)

There were good things that resulted from this omnipresent chaos that is my life. David the Teenager has no cavities (Robert has one broken tooth only needing a filling to repair) and SR Jessica was being pampered at the Carefree Spa with a 45 minute sugar and spice scrub followed by an hour long massage, our birthday gift to her. The knowledge that she was being thus Tasha-ed (Backyardigans reference, you have to watch it) made my experience bearable.

Other than a short nap, Pint continued his demon mood all day, putting a damper on any festive birthday plans and forcing Jessica to escape the madness which is our lives in an effort to enjoy the rest of her day. I hope she succeeded, poor thing. She seemed let down and who could blame her. 18 is a huge milestone with expectations galore, many of which were not met. What’s a trying-desperately-to-keep-her-little-girl-with-her-for-the-summer mom to do? Nothing apparently as she heads back to San Diego today. Sob and sigh.

I did receive an email from Grammar Girl, a highlight of my day, that and the cat pin I am getting from Sara at Barking Biscuit but that’s another post. I probably should have listed Grammar Girl’s podcast in my favorites but, as I said, I was limiting myself to three. She and Mr. Manners (I listen to both) each run a podcast out of the QD Now network; and during each show, she answers grammar questions and offers examples of wrong and right ways to state things in a grammatically correct manner.

I had written her with an ongoing puzzle of mine, whether or not it is correct to end a sentence with a preposition. To avoid doing so, I find myself constructing stilted sentences in my writing and resenting the dismal results.

Below is her reply, no more for which-es to avoid the dreaded dangling preposition. I heart Grammar Girl.

Hi Lauren,

Here's a sentence that shouldn't end with a preposition:

Where is Claire at?

Here's a sentence that is fine with a preposition at the end:

What did I step on?

The important thing is that prepositions need objects. The quick and dirty tip is if you can leave the preposition off the end of the sentence without changing the meaning, then you should leave it off.

Thanks for listening!

Mignon

Now if I can only figure out the proper placement of a period when using parentheses.

As GG says, that’s all for now. And as Scarlett O’Hara says, “Tomorrow is another day.”

Thanks for reading, my friends.

Missing: Two Midsize Farmers

I miss my boys.  Typically, I look forward to the first day of school with exasperated gusto and breathe that big sigh of relief when the twins board that big yellow school bus but not today.  As they have gotten older, twelve and starting seventh grade today, they have become friends, helpers, and fellow farmers.  Not that they couldn’t use a swift kick in the rear now and then, but who couldn’t?  I probably need one or ten.  And not that I don’t appreciate the comparative silence afforded by their absence because I do.  Nevertheless, I miss them.  I feel a little lonely.

Of course, some of this is tempered when I walk into their rooms and witness the messes they have left behind and find enough glassware to cross it off my Costco list and fill and run the dishwasher.  My housekeeping skills, or lack thereof, have rubbed off on them and then some.  When I complain about this, my mother slyly smiles and stifles an interior chuckle.  Oh, what she went through with me!  Realizing this, I try to cut my own children some slack.  I am a firm believer in letting kids be kids and feel at times children in general have been thrown too far into the adult world of tight schedules and heightened expectations.  What ever happened to just heading out after school to play with the neighborhood, running in circles and skinning knees and pretending to be astronauts and princesses?  None of my kids go to soccer, though we tried with Jessica.  She liked it “except for all the running around.”  If my kids voiced a desire to join organized sports, I would gladly do the shuttling, but they do not.  Like their mother, they are all iconoclasts. 

Today, I will endeavor to catch up on things around the house and appreciate the fact that I can clean up the living room and not find it dirty an hour later.  I will try to find the inspiration for my writing that has been missing as of late.  Maybe I’ll take a bath in the middle of the day and run around the house naked.  Yuck.  This freedom is stifling.

I miss my boys.