The first day I thought I would let the kids touch and mess around to their hearts’ content.  It is sort of  hard for me to turn over control when I only have 10 weeks of instruction, but it seemed wise to let them mess around now before we launch into real building.  I gave them the assignment of making a magical place to go on vacation to.  They needed high places and low places.

This is a cliff with snake holes (complete with snakes!).

Here is an arch with vines and a tree.  Zephyr was in class that day, although he won’t be for the rest of the term.  The kid is only 5 and can’t handle that we will be smashing some projects.  I’m moving him to theater!

This is a savanna scene.  Obviously, none of this would hold up well if fired, but experimentation was the goal here, not end product.

The students really enjoyed playing without much guidance.  The room became relatively mellow, with most of the conversation just expressions of excitement for each other’s inventiveness and desire to show off their ideas to me.  I know the days will come when there are tears of frustration and heartbreak at the limitations of clay, but for now, it is all good times.

Really, I do have students in there besides my kids, but until I get formal permission to picture them, I am cropping those babies out!

Best thing about the new class?  I get to work in the art room.  The teacher gave me two whole shelves!  Imagine that!  She totally needs every inch of storage she can get, but she generously gave me two whole shelves!  There is a sink there.  Yeah, really, I know!  Don’t I sound like a public school teacher, rapturous about a sink?  And I hate to admit it, but the teacher there is messier than me, so I don’t have to worry too much about annoying her too much.  Anything I do in her room is seriously making it cleaner, not messier.

Worse thing?  Ummmm… see that clay there?  I got two huge bags of it for free a few years ago.  I knew that it was some fancy clay from Georgies, but I didn’t do my research before having the kids do an actual project with it during week 2.  I thought I was saving money, being prudent.  Turns out that : “The coarsest of all our sculpture clays, this body contains two types of coarse sand plus nylon fiber. The character of this clay comes from the basalt sand that bleeds out when it fires.”  That is code for “this clay will spit out chunks of melty stuff that will stick all over your kiln shelves when you fire it”.  It requires a process called “wadding” which I have never done and am not really sure how to do.  Well, crap.  I’m so glad I got it for “free”.  Now I need to hop off to the store and buy kiln wash and wadding material which sounds like a chemistry experiment.

All the same, clay is awesome.

I don’t know what it is about singing—maybe just a bunch of oxygen gets into your brain and lights up those foggy areas—but I know it makes me really, really happy.  And I don’t just mean that I enjoy it and feel basically good, I mean that it ignites all the pleasure cortexes in my brain and makes me ELATED.  Really.  I go to gospel choir once a week sort of tired and down, but the minute I start singing I feel full of energy and life.  I went to a karaoke party for a friend a few months ago and suddenly it was 2am.  I had a huge smile plastered on my face that didn’t fade for days.  Happy.  And my birthday party?  Well I am still sort of high off it.  I love to sing.

I don’t think I am alone in this either.  Some people just gotta sing.

Singing in our culture is sort of hard sometimes.  We tend to lump it into a whole host of things that you are either “good” at or not good at, and if you are not good at it, we surely don’t want to hear you…. I don’t care if you are only 7 years old.  I’m not sure what makes a person a good singer.  Is it genetic?  Is it exposure?  A combination of both?  And what about those people who have really nice voices that are just sort of boring?  If their noses were a bit longer or their larynx a touch shorter, would they have awesome voices?  It is sort of sad to me that we Americans don’t let everyone just experience the joy of singing without worrying about being “good”.  It seems clear that we are only focused on the performance aspects of singing, not on the communal aspects or the mental health aspects or just the spiritual aspects.  There is a lot of singing to be done in the world; very little of it for an audience’s entertainment!

Check out my braces!

What would I do if I couldn’t sing?  Something else I guess… but I can not imagine not singing.

At the beginning of the party, only my immediate family was there, exactly on time, which was sort of funny. We are a prompt bunch.

Here’s to another year!   (And here’s to Brad’s grandparents Elsie and Elmer Werth who gave me money for my birthday which I used to throw myself the BEST BIRTHDAY EVAAAAAAH!)

I don’t know what it is about reminiscence.  As I was busy being a teenager, I had no sense that my era had much to offer.  I remember dressing up for “50s Day” during spirit week.  My dad still had his letterman sweater from the 50s and he let me wear it.  Now there was a decade!  And the 60s!  My mom had such cool clothes.  My mom STILL has cool clothes.  There is a leather dress hanging in my closet right now, but I can’t wear it without my ass hanging out.  (If I were but as willowy as she was in her late 20s, then I would be wearing it right now and looking awesome.  As it is, I just look obscene.  Speaking of obscene—-holy cleavage Batgirl!  I swear that dress did not look like that when I bought it).

Anyway, we went to prom in an NE artists’ studio space festooned liberally with crepe paper.  I ratted my hair.  I dressed Brad up and gelled his hair exactly like the teenage me would have loooooooved.  He was super cute.  (I wish you could see all his Russian pins on his lapel.  He had about 5 of them.  So AWESOME!).  And it was fun.  Really, really fun.

Three days later I got braces…. just like the teenage me probably should have done in the 80s.

I met Anne last week for a little “boring” shopping and fit

1. Two tents
2. Four glass casserole dishes
3. One replacement CO2 canister
4. One stock pot plus vegetable steamer and lid
5. Five pairs of water proof pants
6. One really big purse
7. One bag of clothing that Anne had borrowed

I loaded it all on the bike and then headed up Interstate Avenue hill.  Whew!

$20 Chair from a Rummage Sale!

Nope, I didn’t take a picture.  I was too freaked out about biting it while riding the 2 miles home. Hey, I made it!  And check out my awesome chair!

On the stairs before leaving for the big show

I have fond (if fuzzy) memories of being in every talent show that ever happened in town.  Mom was quite the mover and shaker and moved and shook most of these shows into being in the first place.  They were classy acts, complete with big chorus numbers to finish out.  I don’t know what to say—there wasn’t a lot to do in Willamina, so when we did things, we tried to do them well.

My sisters and I (pre-Anne!) usually dressed up completely adorably and sang some show tune or other.  I remember “Lullaby of Broadway”, “How Ya Gonna Keep ‘Em Down on the Farm”, some song about clowns (but not that “Send in the Clowns” one!), “In the Mood”, and “One” from chorus line.  Did we practice a lot?  Did we love it?  I just can’t remember, but I have vague memories of it being sort of fun and maybe even good for us.

Last month Brad and the kids and I saw “How I Became a Pirate” at Oregon Children’s Theater.  Our neighbor is the artistic director there and gives us free tickets.  It was so funny!  Absolutely brilliant show—even for adults!  Anyway, a major part of the show was about how to sing sea chanteys.  My kids being who they are, quickly asked if I knew any.  I KNOW that I know lots of sea chanteys, but all I could think of at the time was “What shall we do with the drunken sailor”.  It seemed like a lame one, but this song completely charmed and enchanted the kids who started singing it everywhere.  When Francis heard that there was to be a talent show coming up, we decided that we needed to debut our act.

So we started getting ready by singing it in the living room every morning.  Oh but practice is miserable for the under 7 set.  Francis has energy and focus for it, but Zephyr could only do the song once a day before collapsing in a pile of complaints.  ”I’m tired!”  ”I already know it!”  ”I can’t sing it again!”  ”My voice hurts!”.  Inez of course was a wild card from beginning to end.

Even pirates get exhausted

All the same, we did it—-not a whole lot better nor worse for all our practice.  See the end product here:

What SHALL we do with the Drunken Sailor?

(I am trying to figure out if this is the most meaningless or the most brilliant thing I have ever heard.”

BUT LOOK EVERYONE!  A GAME!

Last week on family art night, we decided to drag out all the playmobil and create stories on our dining room table.

CAN YOU FIND…

1. an aerial arborist?
2. a girl street fight with saws, pitchforks and apples?
3. a giraffe foster mother?
4. Santa on clean up duty?
5. a wounded donkey being auctioned off?
6. a farmer’s market of small rodents?
7. a unicorn acrobatic group?
8. a badger doing a yard sale?  (Crap, it looks like the badger got cut out of the photo!)
9. a reindeer stunt group?
10. kids jumping off a barn?
11. a violent unicorn being subdued and trapped?
12. a group photo!

GOOD WORK TEAM!

TOWARDS, not away from him/her.

Because

1. they always have ground up tree clippings—MULCH right there for the taking!
2. they are always happy to give it to you if you ask nicely
3. there are USUALLY corn-fed boys from Damascus (okay, total generalization here) working the chipper and they will usually offer to carry the garbage pail full of mulch to your garden.  I have no issues with carrying my own mulch, but I do admit that I have to drag it down the sidewalk, while they can hoist it on their 23 year old shoulders without even knocking their ball cap off.
4. I love mulch!  Don’t my garden paths look nice and weed-free?  This stuff will break down nicely for next year when all the rows rotate too.

It is a red-letter day when I can get me a little mulch.

I love it.  I am a dork about it.  I can’t get enough of it.

I remember just a couple years ago I went down there by myself.  It was my first real outing alone without THE BABY, which must have been Inez.  I was sort of dazed and tired and yet totally elated to be free of her for a couple hours while I dreamed of what I could be making.

This is a pretty fabulous show.  And if clay doesn’t do it for you, the bead people, the glass folks, the wood workers PLUS the weavers are all doing their exhibitions at the SAME TIME!  Holy crap!

If you are in Portland, check it out.

Oregon Convention Center – Portland OR
On the Max Light Rail Line

– Free event admission –

Opens 10-9 Friday & Saturday
10-5 on Sunday