Yeah, I realize that I am sort of going backwards here.  At this rate, I could post something about Easter next.  I figured that I needed to get up pictures of the kids soon though.  It has taken me a bit because my iPhoto is really bogging down.  Could it be the 9000 photos in there?  You know how the advent of digital photos made you take 10 pictures of the same thing instead of one decent picture?  The thought was that then you could go back and select the best to keep.  My problem is that I never went back.  I am starting at the beginning and deleting liberally, which is a poignant exercise as much of what I am deleting is my PRECIOUS LITTLE BABY photos.  I am not even through Francis and I dumped 1000 “not as good” photos.  I am keeping the best ones of course, but it is still hard to trash them forever.

ANNNNNNYYWAY……

Halloween.  The kids talk about Halloween costumes for months before October even peeks around the corner.  I think we are generally planning for costumes round about April, with final plans drafted early September.  We make everything of course because that is half the fun.  Plus it is one of the only times the kids think we are cool, so needless to say, we don’t want to throw that one over too lightly.

Brad has a great technique with the kids; one which he also uses when it is time to make pinatas.  He asks the same question each day for a week.  When the kid gives the same answer three days in a row, that is what he starts working on.

This year I had a freaking awful morning with the children one inservice day.  It was suppose to be great because we had nowhere to go, but as it was, we got trapped in a horrible maelstrom of whining and yelling.  (I tried to stop whining, really I did!). It looked like the whole day was bound to go to crap, but then we started digging through fabric in my studio.  In reality, I probably was trying to ESCAPE the kids, but they followed and engaged me and I made the best of it by shifting everyones focus to Halloween costumes.

Initially Zephyr wanted to be a clone trooper.  I sort of nixed that one.  It is the helmet thing.  I knew that Brad could do some paper mache magic, but you just never know in Oregon if it is going to be pelting down rain or 60 and balmy on Halloween night.  Next suggestion was a sting ray which was more my speed.

I learned something this year:  everything can be “poncho-ized”.  The poncho is the great Halloween costume middle ground.  Many a thing starts with a poncho, including sting rays.

Love the poncho.

Francis initially wanted to be a musketeer, which seemed super easy, if not too creative.  We had most of the elements of that costume already because she had been Puss in Boots a few Halloweens ago.  Or maybe it was for Mardi Gras?  Anyway, a musketeer is just Puss sans ears plus mustache.

Digging through the fabric though, we came across a bunch of (really tacky) stuff I bought a year or so ago when Zephyr said he wanted to be a mermaid.  Francis, in typical 8 year old form, said, “Ooooooooo!  It is beauoooooootiful!”.  So we started in on figuring out how to make her a mermaid.

I had a general concept for the tail—which she didn’t like.  When you are 8, you don’t care how you will walk down the street.  You want to cover those feet because of course, “mermaids don’t HAVE feet Mom!”.  She was close to tears, but I insisted that she must be able to walk.  I made a mid length skirt and then tacked on huge fins which then attached to black elastic that looped around her arms.  She could lift her arms to lift her fins.

Next problem wasn’t so hard.  I was not about to let my daughter run around in a bikini top.  I have nothing against bikini tops—I am not particularly modest myself— but bikinis belong at the beach or the swimming pool, not at school or trick or treating.

Going to Oregon Children’s Theater productions, I’ve really observed how the costume designers interpret and suggest features of the characters using textures and quality of fabric.  To make a chicken, they put a woman in tights and crocs and a square dance skirt with multi colored flounce.  The fluffiness of the skirts suggested the feathers and big butt of a chicken.  If they need to make a bug, they focus on color, crazy shoes and glasses.  Maybe a hat.  You don’t have to make the whole thing to make the viewer identify the subject.

Following these principles, I dug up this really cool crocheted top that my mom gave me.  I’ve worn it a couple times, but it has these drawstrings on it, so I knew I could cinch it up a lot.  Because it is crocheted, it suggests fishing nets, which to me suggests mermaids.  I think it worked.

We glue gunned a bunch of shells, broken necklaces, and nerd air beads to a fleece crown as the final touch.  (Air gun pellets are all over the pedestrian overpass most weekends.  They piss me off so much!  Don’t these teenagers realize they are LITTERING?  Anyway, I pick them up and this time glued them to the crown.)

Inez was a tag-team effort.  She wanted to be a shark.  I was tired of making costumes, so I handed it off to Brad.  Actually first I made her a poncho, then I handed it off to Brad.

Brad has some really great paper skills.  He sat down and figured this head out, then worked with craft foam sheets to make it more permanent.  I can’t say enough about those craft foam sheets.  I am sure they are some sort of environmental nightmare, but man, they work great!  You can glue gun them together and they sort of melt in the heat which can create a super clean bond (if you work fast and carefully and keep your mess on the inside of your object).  Here is the shark:

She looks a little pope-like from the front.

Brad made himself a star fish.  I was pretty impressed with his sewing skills, especially the care he put into making a pocket on his belly for candy (or his hands I guess),  but he was saddened by people’s guesses.  After a couple people asking if you are a banana or a penis, you would feel sad too.  (For the record honey, I don’t think you look at ALL like a penis.  I really don’t look at you and think “penis”….hardly ever.  Really.)

After all these costumes were done, I sort of threw mine together in less than 15 minutes.  I had wanted to be a creepy doll, but the execution on that one was sort of flawed.  I need to invest in one of those expensive theater make up sets, like the ones I remembered from high school.  Instead I had this greasy stuff from Goodwill.  It ran off my face in about 5 minutes and then I just looked like a Juggalo in a cute dress.  Anne joined us as a beautiful unicorn pony in a tutu (she found everything in our costume box—way to fit into a costume made for a 7 year old, Anne!).  Here is the group photo:

5 Comments | In: family, My super freakin' cute kids, Projects That I Do With My Clever Little Fingers | | #

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I’ve always liked sauerkraut.  I know my name is Ingrid, but I am not Germanic in the slightest.  My love of sauerkraut is a developed taste.  While I did volunteer work in Toronto, Canada, I had some somewhat late, wild nights in the exciting city.  As I was poor, I did a lot of walking (stumbling?) home from nightclubs at ungodly hours.  Yes, I was doing the work of God, but even so, I kept some ungodly hours.  Anyway, street vendors catered to the likes of me—you could always find a bratwurst vendor at 2am who was waiting to take your $2 and give you SERIOUSLY THE MOST PERFECT THING IN A BUN EVER— with tons of sauerkraut on it.  It was cold out, but bratwurst with sauerkraut on it tasted so perfect late at night.  Now I am in bed by about 10pm every night, but I still crave sauerkraut.

At first the goal was to find good sauerkraut.  Bubbies was a no.  Nalleys was a no.  Then I attended a Werth family gathering and had something so amazingly crunchy, so delightfully citrusy and light.  It was perfect.  The relative responsible for this culinary sensation told me how he MADE it.  I remember him describing a “stone” (huh?), the necessity to “weight” the kraut, the “crock” it sat in, how the crock kept you from needing to “skim” bad stuff.  I sort of half listened, or listened in a way that seems thorough at the time, but is woefully inadequate when I find myself trying to replicate someone else’s experiment.

I could write here about the health benefits of sauerkraut, but truthfully, others have done that and it is not the most interesting part of the whole undertaking for me.  I like the product, not the rationale behind it. If you are interested though….

I planted cabbage in the garden and watched it carefully until it was ready for harvest.  I got myself a food grade container.  I cut up the cabbage and salted it liberally (too liberally as it turned out).  I filled a jar with water to provide weight to push the cabbage under the brine, covered the entire thing and waited a couple weeks.

It was….okay.  It was….really salty actually.  And the white scum on top, while harmless, was sort of freaky to get around.

Fast forward a couple weeks.  The short comings of my procedure were pretty clear to me.  My jar had a narrow top which meant that the plate and jar that I used to push the cabbage down were actually too small to effectively do the job.  I did not dig scraping the white scum off the cabbage each day.  It just freaked me out.

So I got serious.  I got on-line.

I don’t really shop much.  I don’t buy clothes (at least not new ones) and I don’t have any expensive hobbies besides my chickens.  I don’t get haircuts or seek out fancy makeup or buy jewelry,(except from Brad’s cousin’s wife) so I feel justified in springing for cool toys every now and then.  My cool toy happens to be a sauerkraut crock.

It came all the way from Poland, so you know it is good!  It is a perfect cylinder, brown ceramic with a lid and this really cool air seal thing so that you know that bad germies are not getting in your goods.  Best of all, it has lovely weights that fit in there perfectly.  No fuss.

It is week three of my newest batch of sauerkraut.  The crock sits in our kitchen next to our refrigerator sort of out of the way.  Every now and then I hear a gentle “blub, blub”  of air escaping from the fermentation pot.  All is well in my crock.  Awesome.

The crock can ferment away for anytime from 2 weeks to 3 months.  I can’t wait to try our kraut!  Maybe in the dead of winter it will provide just that little bit of needed boost that only cabbage can give us.

6 Comments | In: food | | #

Back in July (?) August (?) summertime, I worked on a rummage sale for our school with my neighbor.  It was well-intentioned, but a little rough.  We couldn’t have it indoors.  They didn’t have any tables for us.  The bathrooms were locked.  Then it rained.

Suffice it to say, it sort of sucked the big one.  We made a small but respectable enough chunk of change, but not large enough to warrant the many desperate walks to find the nearest-neighbor-to-the-school-that-I-sort-of-knew so that I could ask to use her bathroom.

On a positive note, we priced things to MOVE, because, of course, we didn’t want to have to MOVE them ourselves at the end of the day when they didn’t sell.  One of the big bargains I picked up was a really ugly stick horse.  It had a shrunken head of stained blue upholstery fabric and orange yarn for a mane.  The cool part about it was that it was made of oak (sturdy!) and there was a wooden wheel on the end attached with a wooden peg.  I tossed it in my art studio thinking I might someday do something with it.

Fast forward a few months.  My eldest daughter is long on ideas and short on follow through.  Or more accurately, so full of ideas that she could not possibly create all the things she comes up with in one day…. so she makes me do things.  Here is her M.O.—she comes into my art area while I am working on something else (usually something boring and necessary like mending clothing or making cloth napkins).  She stands there really quietly for a bit until I have forgotten she is there.  I have poor peripheral vision and she tends to stand slightly back of my elbow where things get fuzzy.  Then, “Hey Mom, you know what you could do….” and then she proposes something REALLY HARD and seemingly impossible.  Then I sigh and say, “Francis… that is too hard!” or “I don’t know how to make a spiral out of fabric that flies with a basket attached that a toy mouse could sit in!” (insert parental whine).  The thing is, sometimes I DO know how to make things that she suggests.  Or rather, I can figure out eventually how to make what she suggests, but she has much more faith in my ability than I.

At Zephyr’s birthday, she thought I should make a fabric pea shooter toy from the Plants Versus Zombies game.

It involved sewing a sphere, which is sort of hard seeing as how I refuse to actually use math or measurement of any kind.  It kind of came out okay.  I forgot the frilly leafiness on its head which continues to bug me, but Zephyr was thrrrrrilllled.

Next Francis saw the stick horse and proposed that we make a better one for Inez.  ”Oh no Francis.  You see, that would need curves and stuff so it would be really hard!”.  But I sat down and started thinking and cutting and made a head that I was fairly happy with.  I shoved the old head up inside this one (weird, I know) and crammed a bunch of stuffing around it and felt fairly pleased with the result:

Inez rides “Angel” constantly now.  Truly, this horse has made about 30 trips to and from school.  Old people go gaga when they see a kid on a stick horse.  And Angel is pretty easy to ride because she has a wooden wheel at the end of her stick.  I keep waiting for Inez to tire of this toy, but she hasn’t.

Sometimes I feel pretty sorry for myself that I had a bunch of kids and could not “develop as an artist” or some such crap.  Other times I have to be honest and say that maybe having kids around and making things for them is some of the best inspiration I could find.

(This is almost too sweet for me—-gagging a little—but it is true.)

4 Comments | In: Current musings, My super freakin' cute kids, Projects That I Do With My Clever Little Fingers | | #

Photos 1, 2, & 3 by Inez

We have a chicken who can get over or under any fence.

Her name is Pumpkin Pie and she is a brave and capable one.

The other chickens are content to stay in the backyard, pecking at bugs and digging in the dirt.  Not Pumpkin Pie.  She wants to visit the front yard.  She wants to visit the neighbors.  She wants to eat apples two houses away.

If we leave the chickens fenced up in the backyard, but also leave the front door open on a hot day, Pumpkin Pie will hop in the front door and up the stairs.

Pumpkin Pie is Inez’s chicken, so I make her take her back downstairs and to the backyard.

Still it is kind of fun having a chicken come visit while you are pecking at the computer.

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So I’ve been running an awful lot lately.  After tapping out my insurance last winter on physical therapy that left me feeling only vaguely better, I figured out that running and walking and an occasional massage improve my back and neck pain much more than a huge copay.  Who knew?  With the help of some friends I am hitting the road twice a week for runs, and once or twice a week for fast walks.  Add that to my drill master duties at Zephyr’s soccer, and I am getting out and being active pretty often.

I’m not exercising to lose weight.  I have never lost weight purposely in my life,( I feel like I should say, “And I don’t intend to start”, but that’s silly).  Because I can’t or won’t diet I know that I need to maintain consistency in my movement and food choices.  To that end, I have two small rules to live by: DO SOMETHING ACTIVE EVERY DAY and NO POTATO CHIPS IN THE HOUSE!  The flip side of that is KEEP CHOCOLATE IN THE HOUSE AT ALL TIMES.

I have found that my body needs a certain level of physical activity to be happy.  Like a dog, I need to be run a bit each day before I really feel relaxed and calm.  And there are some jobs that I will always love like pulling weeds, mucking out the chicken coop or hauling firewood.  I wish that I were the type of person who just had an active day without  having to do anything consciously.  Conscious work seems hard.  Exercise seems dumb.  Why can’t I be a farmer or a land surveyor?  A peasant in China in the 50s—that was fun, right?*   I can’t help but continue to feel that going out and actually TRYING to exercise seems stupid.  It is indicative of where our culture has come that we need to plan to get the exercise our body needs.  It seems even worse that we city people need to GO somewhere to get exercise.

The only problem with this whole exercise thing is that in order for it to fit nicely into my day, I need to wake up at 5 and 6am.  Ouch!  I love to sleep, but more than that, I love my freedom.  Freedom, for a mom, seems to only occur before 7am and after 7pm, and after 7pm I am just too tired.  So 5am it is.  Luckily I have 5 really great women from church who are also rolling out of bed to meet up with me.  When it seems too awful, I have their smiling faces, interesting conversation and maybe a quick cup of coffee afterwards to look forward to.

Of course, the best thing about running really, really early is the deep sense of enjoyment that I get sitting on my ass the rest of the day.  This is living!

*  That was a joke.  I just finished a book about communes in China and famine during the Great Leap Forward, so I am thinking about Chairman Mao these days.  And it does not seem like it was that great.

3 Comments | In: Being Healthy and All That | | #

Every now and then I take a gander at my spam box for this site, just to feel better about myself.  Here is what I find:

“You’re so right!”

“This is so helpful!  It took me all afternoon to figure this one out!”

“Excellent ideas.”

“Very clever content!”

“I’m so glad I found this site.”

“I agree with you completely.”

and then the weird misspellings:

My spam box is overflowing with positive comments.  Spam loves me.  Spam thinks I am smart.  Spam says that I saved the day with my cleverness.  Is it sad that Spam knows what we are suckers for— secretly desiring a little obsequiousness, a little ingratiation?  Oh Spam, tell me more!

Photo by Inez

4 Comments | In: Current musings | | #

My insurance company cares deeply about me….I guess.  I just got this glossy catalogue in the mail all about dealing with arthritis.  They must look at medical records or something, so they know all about me.

You know how you can learn things from media without even reading the text?  Here is what I learned just by looking at pictures that are hoping to depict people dealing with arthritis:

Exercise, even if it is sort of lame and you are sort of shubby*, is good for you.

*  When I was teaching, a student wrote an entire essay about how her friend should feel good about herself even though she was “sort of shubby.”  This spelling cracked me up.  It sounds so cute, so non-threatening, so fuzzy.  I did not tire of reading it, ever.  Then I read it to Brad.  Then we started calling ourselves “shubby”.

You can have arthritis, even if you are Black!  Arthritis, not just for white people anymore!

Think of some good one-liners to use on your doctor when you see him/her.  You might even get better care if your doctor thinks you are clever!  Don’t forget, they don’t want to see you sad!

And finally:

Just because your body is screaming out in agony does not mean that there are not hot, romantic moments of SEX coming your way SOON.  It all starts with a little two step.  Take your aspirin so that you don’t miss out!

1 Comment | In: Current musings, General bitchin' | | #

Around here the first day of school was a little anti-climactic.  Only Francis went out the door that day as Zephyr’s Kindergarten had a staggered start in order to allow all the new students to come meet their teacher and visit the classroom.  It is a nice way to do it, but not something that confident little Zephyr needed.  He knew Sr. Siam and had been peeking his head in the kindergarten door ever since his first day in pre-K at Beach.  On his appointed day, he charged in the classroom and proceeded to show off EVERY LITTLE BIT of his broken Spanish.  He talked a blue streak.  His grandfatherly, mellow, Cuban teacher asked me, “Does he always talk this much?” not once but twice.  I was subsequently both proud and sort of embarrassed—-proud that he knows so much Spanish and is not afraid to try it out, embarrassed that he would not shut up.

I’ve certainly had my struggles with not shutting up.  Most of my embarrassments in life have been not in what I have neglected to say, but in those times where I misjudged the necessity to speak.  I should shut up more often really.

Zephyr seems like he will adjust just fine to school.  Like me, he charges right in bravely (and rashly), and in many ways this is a comfort to me because it is something I understand.  On the first day, parents were to take all kids to the cafeteria where the kids would meet their teacher and walk in a line across the playground to the Spanish Immersion annex building.  Zephyr was thrilled to be at school, proud of his lunchbox and excited to see old friends.  He got in line and was ready to go.  The only hitch in the walk-in-a-line plan was that the doors to the cafeteria are sort of narrow and many of the first time parents were sort of hover-y.  They ALL wanted to walk along with their kids on the way to the kindergarten classroom.  I found this slightly amusing and fell back from the crush of ADULTS pushing towards the door, because it was apparent that not everyone was going to be able to fit through following the line of kids.  When the doors finally cleared, I moved through with Inez.  Entering the playground area, it was clear that the line had totally disintegrated.  These kindergarteners didn’t know the first thing about moving in a line, and the hanger-on parents weren’t really helping much.  Sr Siam and the vice principal were busily gathering kids up and moving them back into the line.  I was chuckling at this chaos when I noticed that I couldn’t see Zephyr.  He was gone.

One nano second of panic and it seemed clear to me that no one would kidnap my son on his way out of the cafeteria.  None of these parents was organized enough for that.  They couldn’t even handle the kindergarten line.  I stood there thinking—-knowing my son, he is probably in the classroom.  And he was.  He hopped across the playground, in the doors and right to class where he found his name on the desk and started the assignment on the table.  He even turned on the classroom lights.  I think this kid is going to be okay in life.

Francis is in third grade this year.  Her class is a 3/4 blend which is a sort of different experience.  She was shocked that she doesn’t do all her classes in the same room any more.  Now she leaves for math, art, technology, music, and pe.  She was disappointed that math is no longer in Spanish.  On the whole, she has a lot less of her day in Spanish, and her literacy classes (writing and reading) occur separately in each language.  She says math is too easy, which we will be checking into when we are a bit further into the year.  It is a little early in the year to be a pain in the ass parent.

Inez is hanging out at home with me, picking vegetables in the garden, playing with the chickens, doing chores, and riding bikes.  We have started a new tradition of picking up garbage on our walk home from school each morning.  Inez is really into it.  I have to watch that she doesn’t pick up anything that is really gross.

It’s great to have the older kids in school, but it isn’t super easy like I had thought.  I have more time (sort of) but it is clear that I only sent the more independent ones off to school, so I still have the one who creates the most problems when unsupervised.  I kept the one around who picks all the letter keys off the laptop keyboard and then throws them (inexplicably) in the trash can.  But even Inez had a promotion of a sort.  This kid is now officially out of diapers.  Halleluia!  But still, when can she go to school?

3 Comments | In: family, My super freakin' cute kids | | #

I never tire of this.

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!

2 Comments | In: Awesome!, Environment | | #