ingrid

This summer thing is working out just how I had hoped it would.  At the beginning of the summer, I sat down with the kids to brainstorm what they wanted to do.  In reality I wanted to lay down the law (and present what they wanted to do as the carrot).  They wanted visits to grandparents, bike rides in the neighborhood, playing in the sprinkler, popsicles and berry picking.  I want a quiet time every day where I can nap or read.  All has gone according to my (evil) plan.

Mid June we went out to my parents’ place in Sheridan.  The weather was only so-so summery.  It took a long time to warm up in Sheridan, which is even cooler than Portland.

As it was, the plan to “sleep out on the deck” with my childhood friend Maria became a midnight “haul the kids in out of the rain”.  My parents have two dogs who love nothing better than barking their heads off every night.  Mom and Dad don’t mind.  They claim to not hear a thing, which I would attribute to hearing loss if there weren’t complaints of city noise when they stay in town.  Anyway, midway through our sleep out on the porch adventure, I heard strange scratching noises on the scaffolding underneath the deck.  My dad had been pouring a new footing that day and had beams strung under where we were sleeping.  The dogs were freaking out, and it quickly became clear that SOMETHING was hanging out down there.  I jumped up and yelled over the edge and the unknown lurker tumbled down through the hop trellis, taking half the scaffolding with him (or her).  At that point, I was thoroughly freaked.  Although I knew rationally that a raccoon is not going to climb back up the deck and into bed with me, I felt vulnerable with all those kids strewn all over the deck.  And I guess I am afraid of raccoons after seeing them go after chickens so enthusiastically.  I was actively talking myself out of being scared of a raccoon when it began to rain steadily.  Thank you RAIN!  Now I could wake up my friend and tell her we needed to move inside without sounding like a scaredy cat city girl!  Yes!

Maria and I managed to move 4 sleeping children into the house without waking a single one.  Actually I am not sure that Maria was awake herself.

In the morning, this one slept on:

My dad is amused by us.  I love how relaxed my parents are about their hospitality.  Some people fuss over you when you come to stay, and in their fuss, make you incredibly uncomfortable.  I once stayed somewhere where the parents wanted to give ME their bed, which embarrassed me to no end.  My parents just figure that people can find some nook or cranny where they can be comfortable, and because they’ve been so flexible with their views, over the years I have brought scores of people out to crash on the floor.  Mom and Dad just flow along with it.

The next day it was a visit to a chicken breeding farm out in Sheridan.  Even though this farm had my same town as the address, it was so far in the hills that it took nearly half an hour to get there.  Once there though, the rewards were great!  I learned a lot from the farmers.  They were incredibly generous hosts and we saw some gorgeous birds..

In the afternoon we were off to Sheridan Days parade, which is sort of weirdly charming and strange at the same time.  It is mostly emergency vehicles with their sirens on and protestant church groups angling for more fish in a small pond, attempting to show you how much fun their youth groups are having by sitting in pick up beds singing along the parade route.  When I was a kid there were big log trucks with the biggest tree they had cut down that year, but those are mostly gone now.  Remaining are bagpipe groups and a smattering of rodeo queens from small towns, plus some freaky clowns from the coast and this really strange group of old dudes from Lincoln City who dress like devils, pull women out of the crowd, take them to their “float”, put them in a stockade and stamp “SEXY” on their cheeks.  I am not kidding.  They are called the “Red Devils” and I suppose they are a social group of some sort, (but I do NOT want to know what they do for fun at their secret meetings because their public outings already give me a heart attack).  Half my life I have been afraid of the Red Devils.  The other half I have been pissed at them.  Perhaps for this reason, I have never been picked by them.  They are not dumb, and surely they know to avoid the woman yelling “sexists!”.  Maria was picked though, and she, being a better sport than I, allowed a devil to escort her to where she was branded “sexy”.  He was polite about it, but I couldn’t help but be worried about her as she disappeared around the corner with the Devils.  For Maria’s part, I figure she knows she is sexy.  She is just allowing the Red Devil the mistaken pleasure of thinking it was somehow his discovery.

I need to not be so ernest, but that is a life long struggle for me.

The sun set on much candy gathering, and as you know, I am a gatherer.  I have taught my children my unique skill set.

Too bad you can’t make this crap into jam.

5 Comments | In: Chickens Are Super Fabulous, family, My super freakin' cute kids, on the road again | | #

It was a terrible time.  Children were coated in dust, choking on it actually.  The country had been thrown into a deep depression and families slowly loaded all their belongings on an old pick up truck and headed out to pick fruit in Califor—-

Oh wait.  This was last week on Sauvie Island.  Pickin’ strawberries.  It’s a wonderful life.

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My grandmother passed on last week, and the kids’ art teacher also left this world, and as with all deaths, it has made me introspective.  I have all these thoughts about life that seem so profound (but really aren’t).  I found myself in front of the computer, late at night, tears running down my face looking at pictures of the kids.  ”It’s just like that!”  I was thinking like a stoned philosopher.  ”One day we’re little kids AND THEN WE DIE!”.  Sunrise sunset.  Or something like that.

Anyway, I am sick of myself when I am like this, but this is my way of grieving.  I am fascinated and fearful of death, so I try to get myself right in there as close as I can to it.  Maybe then I will understand it better.

Anyway, my uncle asked me to write my grandmother’s obituary which has been a distinct pleasure.  I feel like I learned something about her while reflecting on how to depict her life (in 70 words or less!).  And I appreciate things about her that I never noticed while she was here.  For example, she was sort of a proto-feminist.  She had to fight to keep working, and she did keep working, even while raising 5 boys.  She believed in good manners and had high standards for society.  She knew what she wanted and she recognized what she needed to do to go out and get it.  And she knew the value of a husband who could dance!  Good job Grandma.

Here you go:

Frances Wilma Parmeter

Frances Wilma Parmeter was born in the dry grasslands of Eastern Washington in Eltopia, near Pasco, March 10th, 1916. Her parents, Newmaris and Grace Lloyd, were wheat farmers and Wilma along with her two brothers and three sisters, was well-familiar with farmwork. Perhaps this is why she devoted herself so enthusiastically to her studies. Breaking the mold for rural young women at her time, she graduated high school early and entered Eastern Washington College of Education, where she received her Special Normal Diploma in 1937.

At her first teaching placement in Nespelem, Washington, she met Silas Parmeter at a dance. She was the new teacher in a tiny town; he was the best dancer. This was the beginning of a long, affectionate marriage. Wilma and Silas began their family while struggling to eke out a living in the dairy business. Wilma continued to work throughout this time, and finished her bachelors of arts in education in 1950.

She had clear ideas of the quality of life she wished for her family and she knew that they needed the stability of her income. Plus, she was sick of riding in that old farm truck. In 1961-62, the Parmeter family moved to Beaverton and had their fifth child. Wilma and Silas joined the Beaverton First United Methodist Church. She taught at Bonney Slope and Vose Elementary.

Wilma was quite the social librarian, always engaged in what was happening in her circles, the loves and interests of her sons, and the fluxes of fashion and popular culture. She loved to shop and continued to buy Christmas presents for everyone even as the family grew with many grandchildren. She loved the coast, baking, traveling, and painting. Wilma was a loyal Democrat and philanthrophist, giving faithfully to Democratic campaigns. She will be remembered as quite a lady, with impeccable manners and commitment to decency. Her children consider her even calmness and good nature a great gift to the family.

Later in life, when dementia began to quietly claim her, she retained her sweetness, humor and enjoyment of people around her.

She lost her husband Silas in 2004 and was preceeded in death by all her siblings. She died July 2nd at home, 95 years old, and having lived a life worth celebrating. Survivors include sons Douglas, Stanton, James, David, and Richard, 10 grandchildren and 14 great-grandchildren. A memorial wake will be held July 20th at 5:30pm at the Parmeter residence in Beaverton.

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This is what the kids like to do all day...gallons of water later....

Summertime!  Or at least school is done.  My older sister has eagerly been awaiting school being out for summer, but I can’t say I share her enthusiasm.  It is nice to have less schedule, but the openness of the time sort of terrifies me for a couple of mixed reasons.

First of all, there are tons of kids on the block and they all LOVE our house.  This is cool, really, and I am pleased that we have plenty of fun diversions to offer on our tiny little plot.  I like being the fun house on the block… until I don’t.  That is, I have tons of patience and love and understanding for kids… until I don’t.  It is just that when I don’t, it is bad.  I am sort of a mix of strict and allowing.  I don’t mind kids doing things that might get them hurt, so in that sense I am lenient—Could break their arms?  So what.  Could fall off the roof?  Maybe they won’t climb there next time.  Wacking each other with swords?  Just make sure everyone is equally armed.

On the other hand, I am sort of a neat freak.  I don’t want the sand from the sandbox in my kitchen.  I don’t want the tools strewn all over the lawn.  Please don’t throw my pea gravel or river rock….it was hard to carry in there.  Did you just step on my poor, suffering wisteria vine?  Why, you terrible little kid!  (I don’t say this; just think it.)  And get out of my garden!  Or at least walk on the walkways and not the lettuce.  So what happens is that occasionally I just snap and need to shout, “Everybody OUT!  Time to go home!’.  Kids with nicer parents are freaked out and teary.

Yes, I need to RELAX a bit.  I am working on it, believe me, but I also feel like I need a little piece of the summer that belongs to me… and I am a tired, hardworking mother who needs a couple hours each day to just zone out and not be responsible for anyone.  Wherever the kids go, Inez goes trooping after them, and often they leave her in the dust.  Truly I want to take a nap without fearing for anyone’s well being.  I want my kids in predictable places where they are relatively safe.  And I don’t want to have to deal with anyone else’s overly-tired children.

In order to maintain a summer plan that works for me, I gathered the kids around the coffee table and put in place some summer rules.  First, chores each morning.  No arguments there.  The chores are quick and easy.  Second, quiet time, in their rooms reading each day from 1pm to 2pm.  No arguments there.  They like this.  Third, extended quiet time from 2pm to 3pm where they could play outside, but only in the backyard and no visitors.  Total UPROAR.  ”Unfair!” Francis protested.  ”That’s just another quiet time and we already did one!” Zephyr added.  ”I want to play on the swing in the front!  Why can’t we just be done at 2 and go play where we want?”.

Because.  Mom.  Is.  Tired.  And Mom likes to have the first hour of quiet time to do computer stuff (like this blog) and the second hour to sleep or read, because often the first hour gets sucked up with dishes or laundry or really boring things like that.

They eventually accepted my rules, or at least tired of arguing and got sick of being forced to sit at the table during our little summit.  It occurred to me that I have raised independent kids thus far which means that they are smart, expressive, and not afraid to be completely defiant and disrespectful.  Yay me, right?

I need to think of how to communicate this plan to the neighbors so that the two only children nearby our house are not ringing the doorbell at 1 and 2pm each day.  They are sweet kids, but being only children, their families are able to function each day with a certain level of flexibility.  I have heard their parents say, “What do you want for lunch?” and “Maybe you should take a nap” which are things that have never been uttered in my house.  My good friend across the street will be all on-board for our schedule, and I think some nearby neighbors will get it too, although I fear I will look like a total control freak for putting it into effect.  Oh well.  It’s best to accept who you are, right?

Zephyr with neighbor Ben. We need a bigger bucket.

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

A couple weekends ago I took a bas-relief clay carving class with artist Maria Simon. I had watched her work for a few years, always finding her at the Ceramic Showcase and checking out what new things she had come up with.  Her work is simple, elegant, and organic, full of movement and sensuality.  Each piece is carved from a slab of semi-dried (“leather hard”) clay.  She then fires it and “glazes” with a technique called Terra Sigllata.  It is a clay slip that achieves mellow, earthy tones rather than the shininess of mainline commercial glazes.  She then has her work mounted on black wood backgrounds and framed.  Sometimes the background is cut around her piece, (it looks arduous to me), which makes it appear to be moving toward the viewer.  In short, this is work for the wall that is jumping off the wall.

Her work is so gorgeous.  I find myself standing in front of it, wanting to dance, wanting to touch it, breathless with admiration for her skill and vision.So I took a class from her.

I had considered taking a class for a couple years, but the timing never quite worked.  Finally I saw a weekend course that would fit my schedule, convinced Brad to work from home Friday to cover my responsibilities with the kids, and signed up.

This was a really fantastic opportunity for me.  I keep doing my own art work, and I enjoy what I am messing around with, but I have few opportunities to really explore more advanced techniques.  My work continues to be pretty unfocused, and I accept that as a necessary part of where I am as an artist and mother.  It is okay.  All the same, it is such a joy to get away from my duties at home, to get to hang out with other artists and geek out about tools, and to get to stick with a piece for a chunk of time.

The technique that she led us through was pretty cool.  First we found objects that were interesting to us.  Here was mine:

Then we were encouraged to photograph and look deeply at our image.  She had us use digital cameras and then zoom WAY in to just a little piece that we would try to capture in clay.

Then the slabs came out and we roughed out our work.

Brad was asking about the consistency of this slab and as I was grasping for words, he supplied, “like really cold butter?”.  That is a perfect description.  It is easy to carve leather hard clay, but it also has an integrity to it, so you can use both traditional clay tools and tools more commonly used for stone and wood carving.

I wanted to capture the structure of this rhubarb stalk, but keep away from getting too tree-like.  I love tree images, but I tend to go back to that image a lot, so I wanted to focus on more of the ruffliness that made this look like a leaf rather than a large tree branch.

The process involved both carving down and building up.  Maria encouraged us to look closely and keep our images from getting flattened out, so I needed to build up as I went, which was interesting to me as it felt so different from the carving that I had done before in stone.  This was forgiving!  Did you take off too much?  Doesn’t matter!  Put it back!

Eventually I reached a place where I had to get rid of my image and start working with the spirit of the object.  It felt silly to be so nit-picky with where the leaf ruffled, where veins ran across, etc, so I tossed the rhubarb in the compost and just started looking at my carving.

It was so wonderful seeing how Maria worked with her tools.  She truly had both amazing sight and intelligent touch.  I found myself shocked at how she could make small adjustments to my work that were JUST PERFECT.  In that, I mean that she would point out somewhere that needed a slant, a line that needed to suggest where it started, a raised point or a terminating point, and those little touches made that tiny place on my work RIGHT.

This class was tiring because it was three 8 hour days of standing on concrete and carving, but it was just what I needed, and Maria was a very kind, gifted teacher.  It is such a joy to get to do art along with other people who are eager to learn and have interesting things to say about their process.  It was so nice to make something, rather than just do things that need to be redone tomorrow (i.e, dishes, sweeping, diapers, cooking, and laundry).

I came out with two decent carvings and one piece of crap.  I kept the piece of crap to practice glaze techniques in the future.  My better work will be dried over the next week or so, then fired, and you can check it out at my house in its finished form (I didn’t seem to remember to photograph anything actually finished!).  Here is my second project half way through and upside down because I needed to turn it a lot to get inside each petal.  Yay carving clay!

4 Comments | In: Projects That I Do With My Clever Little Fingers, The Arts | | #

Today I have been plagued with a  whole host of what a friend calls “First World Problems”.  First World Problems are all those things that have a first world mom completely at wits end, but upon reflection are kind of stupid.  I lost my debit card.  Inez wrote on the wall.  Francis has all these weird “developmental” dental problems that even though the dentist didn’t actual say were my fault, I can’t help but think mean that I did something wrong while she was in the womb.  Inez grabbed strawberries off the shelf in the store and dumped them on the floor.  Then I had to buy them.  I found myself saying, “This is NOT how you get strawberries” even while realizing that her method actually worked quite well because I got distracted and let her eat them.  Zephyr was late to school because of the slow dental appointment.  Zephyr can’t seem to walk through a store or down a hall without hitting or kicking something.  My son is a spaz.

Oh Third World Mothers, give me perspective!  Today I had clean water.  Today all my family had enough to eat (and have the energy to be naughty).  Today my children went to free public school!  Today my children are safe.

Bless you third world mothers.  Help me be less of a whiner please.

3 Comments | In: Current musings, family, General bitchin' | | #

Baby Medina is here, if a bit early.  Born at 29 weeks and weighing a bit over 2lbs, this kid and her parents really need your prayers, so if you have a moment, give a moment to thinking of this lovely child (and her mother whom I love with all my heart).

Thanks friends!

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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?

9 Comments | In: Awesome!, My super freakin' cute kids, The Arts | | #

“Some people are just gonna have to figure out that life is how it is.”

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

9 Comments | In: Awesome!, My super freakin' cute kids | | #

Our family loves playmobil.  We hate plastic, but somehow still love playmobil.  I don’t know how to justify it.  All I can say is that this toy line is just sort of strange all by itself and that strangeness brings delight in our family.

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!

3 Comments | In: Awesome!, family | | #