So… that’s why they call you One-Eyed Willie… One-Eyed Willie.

Today’s Highlights

[FREE] Spearmint,peppermint,lemon balm & chocolate mint plants. I asked on Freecycle. I received.  I missed havng mint. You know, mint is an excellent deterrant to mosquitos and other pests. Everyone should have a potted mint plant in their patio area ( for easier access to mint leaves for making mojitos).

[BOOK]

Power and Glory by Emily Rodda

A fun read-aloud. A kid playing a new video game is continually interrupted by family members (represented by characters/monsters in the game) whle tryng to reach new levels. We noticed that no one n ths storybook family ever says please and they’re kind of rude…..sometimes a little bit like at our house.  Noted and will be worked on. Vibrant and kinetic illustrations by Geoff Kelly. Author Emily Rodda is most definitely a mother, probably of boys. I can tell wthout even reading her bio.

[Food] Curried Cauliflower & Chickpea Stew .Except I added broccoli,too.

[Family Movie]

[blog title from The Goonies]

House upon the hill Moon is lying still Shadows of the trees Witnessing the wild breeze

Across the creek that runs along the banks in back of our house, there’s another house. Down a long driveway that threads through  trees, it sits nearly atop a waterfall.  My view of the waterfall isn’t nearly as wonderful from where our house is situated. I can hear the roar of the creek from my bedroom after heavy rains occupy the space between the banks and spill over the falls  but I have to stand at the very edge of the bathroom window to see a glimpse of the pounding flow.

Our backyard is tiered into the banks of the creek. Rickety stairs that need replaced lead down to the levels but never quite reach the water. My children play among the trees, building forts from fallen branches and wind-blown objects. In warm weather, we venture down to the water to catch crayfish, swim and take surging showers beneath the falls.

On the opposite banks, our creek-neighbors can sometimes be seen, sitting in lawn chairs beside their house atop the falls.We wave but we aren’t close neighbors. I know of them ,rather than know them. The husband is well-known in our area as being an activist. Growing up, I heard my very conservative Grandfather refer to this man as “That crazy bastard” , just because the man was always getting arrested for protesting outside the nearest military base or for his public displays of protest as he walked through our village.

Last month, the matriarch of the house at the falls died. I knew of it in passing. In the library,the woman who knits all those blankets for Project Linus was talking to the woman who walks all those dogs everyday . I searched book spines on the shelves while they spoke behind me, carrying on their conversations dotted with ,”Well, it really was a blessings. She’s been hanging on for so long” and “It really was a beautiful service, wasn’t it?” I took interest, if only because I knew that one thing in my life this coming summer would be absent – the woman overlooking the falls and the creek as we played below in it’s waters.

Yesterday I came across her obituary in an older newspaper that hadn’t made it’s way to the recycle bin yet. I read it to myself and declared ,”This is the best obituary I have ever read in my life”. I commandeered my husband’s attention away from the game he was playing and read it out loud. Nearly a nun, this woman chose instead a path that included babies and a house at the top of a waterfall.  By our societal measures, she didn’t do anything extraordinary. No stellar education and framed degrees.  No successful career. No landmark discoveries or contributions to a field of study.She was merely “heroic in motherhood”.

I  remember clearly a day from my early motherhood. I was still chronologically a teenager and a high school student, recently accepted to Tisch School of the Arts at  NYU . A group of female friends and I were talking about that time period “after school”, that had yet to be and couldn’t happen soon enough  from my perspective. I said,”I don’t really know what I’m going to do. I honestly just want to stay home and be a mom.”  The reaction was horrified gasps. I was told by friends, female but not yet mothers, that this would be a waste of  a person. “You’re too talented and smart for that, ” stated one friend, as if that was to be my defining moment that would save me from the enslavement of “just” being a mother.

I saw the disappointment and the looking down upon me  as I closed the door on one opportunity and chose to be  what I honestly wanted to be. They are all mothers  now,too. I wonder if they too look back on that day and realize now where I was speaking from and why I never saw the lending of my talent,intelligence and time as ill-invested waste when it came to raising little babies to become good people.  I’ve been careful to not lose my own identity in my mothering and not to be defined by it but it is what I am, along with all the other things.

I read my neighbor’s obituary and saw it as being a testament to the idea that being a success in life  does not depend upon being anything other than “just a mother”. Am I more than just a mother? Of course I am but if I die and my greatest achievement in life is that my  grandchildren remember fondly “her silky braided hair, back rubs, and being rocked to sleep as she hummed their favorite lullaby.  Apple slices, pancakes shaped like bears, and the best PB&J sandwiches in the world, only begin the list.”….I think I’ll die a happy and successful woman.  If I end up doing more than that…well…the rest is just gravy.

The house at the top of the falls is now for sale. You have no idea how much I want that to be our home now.

[title from:"Not To Touch The Earth", by The Doors]

Oh, my little honey bee I’m so glad you stung me You’ve become my weakness Now I’ve got your sweetness

These earrings, mentioned a couple of weeks ago as one of my WANTS, are now mine….thanks to some guy who reads my blog and seems to like me a little bit.

He calls these a Just Because present. I think he’s just trying to make up for impregnating me with Demon Spawn  four or so years ago. This week I have also received a tin of chocolate hazelnut Pirouettes, LUNCH that I did not have to cook, a non-Starbucks Pumpkin Spice Latte, a chocolate chip muffin and scones. Retribution for carrying the most adorable yet most monstrous child on earth often comes in the form of food, apparently.Because damn…the kid didn”t add nearly enough  extra padding to my ass!

The jewelry & yummies help. A little. Maybe dear Carlos would like to offer some other gifts of apology, like a case of my favorite beer ? Pretty please?

[title from "Honey bee" by Lucinda Williams]

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Current Media

::Watched:: Sunshine

Visually stunning, enthralling.Check out special features for commentary from Director Danny Boyle to help clarify some of those ,”Um…I’m not sure I know what just happened?” moments AND commentary from some science guy for those silly pragmatists  who watch sci-fi films and say things like, “Oh,THAT would never happen!This is SO unrealistic”

::Reading:: Mo Willems’ Elephant & Piggie books

The key is to read them with the right inflection, emotion and facial expressions. We love these books. Well, we really love all Mo Willems’ books but Elephant & Piggie are new favorites that are frequently read right now.

::Listening:: Underworld

::Making:: youngest daughter’s school is having a Mitten Drive & have a goal to collect 100 pairs of mittens to donate to charity. I’m going to make a couple pairs, recycled from sweaters,

Old Jack o’ Lantern’s grinning, Pointing jagged yellow teeth at me

I opened up the bathroom door to see a child standing in the hallway, waiting patiently, with this smile on his little face that I knew meant he had been up to no good, yet whatever it was he had done, he was proud of it.

“I made pumpkins!”

“You made pumpkins? Show me.”

He led my into the bedroom and pointed to the wall above his sister’s bed. A quartet of pumpkins grinned back with happy yet eerie jack-o-lantern grins.

“AHH! you’re not supposed to draw on the walls!”

The little imp, he gave me this little smile and put on those wide-eyes. “Oh,I’m not?” It was pure feigned innocence, which is both infuritating and adorable.

“No, you are not.”

“I’m supposed to only draw on paper?” More saccharine-sweet feigned innocence. Oh,this kid….

“Yes. PAPER ONLY.Got it?”

He looked up at his artwork and told me,”But paper isn’t BIG enough!”

I wonder if Diego Rivera started out with pumpkins on the bedroom wall.

[title from"It Must be halloween", by Trout Fishing in America]

Dear shadow alive and well How can the body die You tell me everything Anything true

“Look,Mommy! It’s my friend!”.

He thrusts his hand toward my face ,opening his palm to reveal what at first glance looks like a black pom-pom,detached from it’s throne atop a knitted cap.  I think,Great, my kid is making friends with pom-poms now. This can’t be good.

“It’s a very fuzzy cater-pitler!”. my son tells me,clearing up my confusion. I search the files in my mind to remember what a mostly black wooly bear caterpillar means.  Long winter? Warm winter?  I have no idea anymore. I no longer seem to know the Caterpillar Season Barometer like I used to.

The caterpillar isn’t moving.He’s rolled into itself ,into an “O”. There’s no indication that this new friend is actually alive.

“Hey…I think your  friend there isn’t moving. Is he alive?”, I ask carefully.

Death and bugs is a sensitive subject lately. The boy loves bugs. His fingertips hook under rocks and pulls them out of the wet earth with a zealous  slurping. “TREASURE!”, is what he says it is hidden beneath the dark underside of rocks. He handpicks some favorites, lovingly adopting them and naming them “Buddy”, Every millipede,centipede,worm, slug,grasshopper, moth…they are all universally named “Buddy”.

He loves bugs,much in the same way Lennie from Of Mice and Men loved bunnies and soft,beautiful blondes.

A grasshopper’s leg bent at a perfect right angle after he clumsily stepped on it  was his first lesson in his friend’s fragility. “He’s not moving. I should take him to the Grasshopper Doctor so he can get his leg fixed!”. It was a very practical solution and I had to matter-of-factly break the news to him that there weren’t Grasshopper Doctors to fix legs. It’s leg was broken forever. He watched the grasshopper faltering, struggled hops across the dirt finally slowed to a flopping skitter. The grasshopper lay on it’s side, it’s abdomen puffing out like a balloon being inflated,deflated,inflated,deflated.

Crouching to see closer,a wash of realization came over his face. He lowered himself to the ground,folding his legs underneath him and just sat quietly, holding silent,somber vigil over his green friend. “He’s dying?”.he asked for confirmation of what he sensed already Yes, I answered. There was nothing left for him to do but wait until the end, when he could see that there was no more breaths extending the little bug’s abdomen beneath it’s tiered spiracles.

To prove his current Buddy is merely sleeping and not dead, he screams into his hand,”WAKE UP!!”. His hand jostles,giving movement to the bristled insect . “See? He was just sleeping. I should let him take a nap”.  It starts sprinkling and I wrangle him toward the house.

Inside, my oldest son is sprawled on the couch, his philosophy book laying prone,spine up on his lap, groaning out loud over reading endlessly about Immanueal Kant.

“A manual cunt? Sheesh..some perverse philosophy homework there.”, I ha-ha at myself.

“You know what I love? I LOVE that my Mom acts like she’s in first grade!”. He’s only pretending to be disgusted and annoyed with me. Really, I can see the corner of his mouth twitching a bit, like it does when he’s trying very hard not to smile on purpose.

It isn’t until I hear the youngest  excitedly telling his older brother about Buddy the Cater-pitler that I realize he has successful smuggled his friend inside .He’s  used a clear plastic bowl from the Chinese restaurant. Wonton soup long emptied from it. It is now Buddy’s new home, or possibly his casket.

I look on as my two sons…brothers born 15 years apart. One adult,one just beginning…having their bonding moment over a cater-pitler. The younger rambles on excitedly about his new “friend” and the oldest says the unforgivable. “Dude, I think you’re friend is dead”.

“He is NOT dead, HE. IS. SLEEEEP.IIIIING!!!”, the little one insists. He places Buddy on the kitchen counter  in front of me and says,”You watch him.I’m gonna go play “, and he tromps up the stairs. Buddy entombed in plastic, my companion while I work in the kitchen. I wring the dishcloth out into the sink, the water tinkling down the drain. Balled in my hand,I sweep the dishcloth across the counter,capturing jam and peanut butter in my swooping path.

Out of the corner of my eye,I catch movement. No longer an “O”,instead a lowercase “l”, Buddy is crawling along ,his belly pressed against his new plastic home. I take a knife from the drawer and stab the top of the lid a few times so he can breathe.

[title from:"Tiger Mountain Peasant Song", by Fleet Foxes]

Jupiter’s Twitter Files: Peppa the Pig

Twitter is a fantastic microblogging tool but sometimes I’m just a big blabbermouth who feels the need to elaborate pass the 140 characters…

The Tweet

“I find Peppa Pig disturbing http://tinyurl.com/52oau2 “

10:47 PM September 27, 2008 from TweetDeck

Beyond the Tweet

We are not cable or satellite subscribers but we are geeks. We have a nice super long cord that runs from the computer to the TV, so any videos watched online , can be enjoyed in full capacity from the couch.

Thank you TV Gods for granting divine wisdom to networks ,giving them the genius idea of offering full episodes online. What would I have done without being able to hear those priceless words,”Sylar,I AM your mother” (or whatever the hell her exact words were). I really think she should have used a Darth Vader voice for that part ,though.

Nickjr.com has full episodes. I am not the type who uses an electronic babysitter but I’m not gonna lie. Segments of my day are easier thanks to NickJr.com.

One evening,

(apparently,September 27,2008,to be exact. But it was not 10:47 P.M. when we watched it. That was just when i Tweeted.Or Twittered. My kids are in bed at that time of night. )

Peppa the Pig was on. I had never seen Peppa and all her lopsided,snorting glory. The first 5 minutes,I did nothing but obsess about the placement of The Pig Family’s eyes. Note to animators: animals don’t usually have their eyes on one side of their face!

The  first time I heard the *SNORT* as a conversational punctuation, I sort of lost it and started laughing hysterical. This set off a chain reaction of laughter among the 4 children watching Peppa and every single *snort* out of a pig resulted in nearly-pants peeing laughter in my living room.

Then..THEN…they inexplicably just fall over and wibble-wobble like Weebles! Oh,god…cue the die-laughing fits.

It probably isn’t supposed to be this funny and it probably isn’t even that funny to anyone else but me but that’s how it is.

I couldn’t help but think that Peppa the Pig is one of those shows that would be awesome to watch while stoned. Not that I really,truly know what constitiutes a good show to watch while stoned…it’s just something I’ve deduced from hanging out with people who like to do that sort of thing. As for myself, my one and only time being stones was pretty terrible. I quickly concluded that I am entirely too much of a control freak to surrender inhibitions and am already delusional and paranoid enough without adding drugs to the mix.

And Peppa the Pig is weird enough all on it’s own

Jupiter takes the kids to the playground

The kids scatter to their favorite places on the playground and Jupiter is left to sit with the other Mommies. She scans the benches and their occupants, finding the most promising spot for the least annoying playground conversation. She mentally draws a thick black “x” across the Mommies who look the least relatable and opts for the seat next to the Mommy with the black frame glasses, the Radiohead T-shirt and black skirt. This one looks like she falls into the category of Thinking Mom on first glance and those are far more promising in her opinion than the other types.

They exchange their polite “Hellos”. Jupiter takes out her knitting and sits back.

“Are all those kids yours?”,the other Mommy asks.

“Yeah. Minus the 3 at home.”

The other Mommy bristles,clearly annoyed.She looks like she might refrain from comment but doesn’t.With open and clear judgment,she says.”My husband and I only have 1. We don’t think it’s really right to have more than one.The planet has enough people on it”

Jupiter smiles politely. This woman is like herself, opinionated. She likes that. She respects it.But it doesn’t mean she’s not thinking about arguing the point to defend the choices she’s made that have made her life what it is.

Mostly she lets the comments like these pass. The women at school functions that talked about her large family like she wasn’t even there, tossing around words like “irresponsible”,acting like her children were kittens born to an unspayed mother cat, overcrowding an animal sheltering . The lady at the library who stared at her newborn in the Maya Wrap and rolled her eyes straight up to heaven and said,”good lord, you had ANOTHER one!”.The strangers who have the nerve to ask,”Wow, don’t you know what birth control is?”. But really, she reasons,If someone is really bold enough to poke their nose where it doesn’t belong,don’t they deserve to have their nose tweaked a bit? It’s not really in her to say nothing at all but she never seems to say the “right” thing to make it feel better,so often silence is her solution.

Knit,Knit,Purl,Purl, works the ribbing of a sock.Jupiter looks focused on the knitting as she quietly asks her benchmate,”Are you pro-choice?”

The Mom stammers a “Uhhhhh…”. She suddenly realizes it may have been too blunt and that the other Mom has been blindsided and probably thinks she’s a Bible-Thumping Pro-Lifer so she quickly adds,”It’s ok if you are! I am too.I was just wondering.It was an honest question. “

‘Well, of course. Of course,I am.”, comes the response, like it’s the only reasonable thing a person could be.

Jupiter finishes the ribbing of the sock and pauses before continuing with the leg of the sock. “I’ve just noticed over the years that the more kids I have, the more flack I get from people who say they’re adamantly pro-choice. I just find it funny because I guess I would assume that if someone is in favor of supporting women’s reproductive rights,they’d be a bit more tolerant of a woman who chooses to have more than one child.I just wonder why they don’t say they’re pro-abortion instead if they aren’t going to actually support choices” She adds a laugh to relieve tension.

Inside her head, she’s saying “Shut up now. If you keep going, you’ll just be that Crazy Lady With All The Kids At The Park instead of what you’re trying to show her you are. You’ll just end up a character in an anecdote she tells her friends at parties to show how uneducated and mentally challenged those more-than-one child women are.”

It’s a problem she has,this talking thing. She tries not to talksometimes because once she does, it all comes out and god only knows what the it will be.She tells herself to shush but her mouth just doesn’t quite get the message in time.

“I just can’t figure out what people want me to do? Kill my kids to save the planet or just feel completely torn up with guilt over making them in the first place!”. Hahaha!

The Thinking Mom is quiet,for what seems like forever.She’s either considering grabbing her one-child and running for the minivan or trying to defend her one-child position. Jupiter isn’t quite sure. “Huh”, is all the Thinking Mom finally manages.

Jupiter surveys the playground for sight of her kids. Her boy stands on a platform, his arms raised high as he proclaims,”I’m the king of the world!” He’s made of pure sunshine and buzzes with energy.

It’s hard but she controls her emotions before trying to talk again. She hates more than anything when her voice shakes with emotion when she’s trying to speak. It seems to make the point less valid and as shaky as the vocalization. “I’m sorry….I’m used to the criticism and I DO understand. Trust me….I DO understand it …we love the planet too. We grow our own food, we recycle every damn thing, we don’t even have a car…..we’re a hell of a lot “greener” and sustainable than a lot of people….and sometimes it feels like when people think I have more children than is “responsible”…well, it feels like they’re saying,”Your kid should have never been born”. And that kills me and quite frankly,pisses me off.”

The Thinking Mom looks at her own child,joyfully plummeting down the slide with glowing bliss and seems to have some sense of what it would feel like if someone thought the world would be better off if he didn’t exist. “Yeah,I can see how it might feel that way.God,I’m sorry.I didn’t mean it to sound so harsh.I just… crap, I’m sorry.”

Mutual respect established,she continues.”You know what I am? I’m pro-birth control.No offense.”

“None taken.So am I.IAnd it totally pisses me off at what the asshats in Bush’s administration are trying to pull now.”, Jupiter says,trying to pull focus away from her own “mistakes”.

The Thinking Mom laughs,”Ok, fill me in. We’ve been in Cape Cod for three weeks and my husband insisted on no internet or TV. I must have missed something.What’d they do now?”

“Oh, they’re trying to expand the definition of abortion to include the Pill, IUDs and emergency contraception.“

“Holy shit…you cannot be serious!”. Thinking Mom is outraged, just as Jupiter is.

“Margaret Sanger is rolling in her grave,I’m sure.”, Jupiter muses out loud,more to herself than anything.

“Oh,wow…I haven’t heard about Margaret Sanger since …in forever. I didn’t even know who she was until I read something Gloria Steinem wrote about her and then I thought,’Wow, she’s got to be one of the most important people in history ever and probably hardly anyone even knows who she is’.”

Jupiter completely agrees. Margaret Sanger saw first hand the repression of women through lack of choice,witnessed the overburdened hips and weary defeat in faces of women bred like show ponies. She fought the law and made out better than Sonny Curtis and The Crickets or even The Clash did.

Both women banter back and forth about the implications of limiting birth control. The financial, the social,the whole picture.Both are boggled to the point of speechlessness sometimes at the idea that a bunch of men think they have any right to counteract Margaret Sanger’s crusade to allow every woman to be the mistress of her own body.

Jupiter knits the rounds,the purple yarn making perfect “v’ formation , like geese flying south. “I shudder to think how many children I would have if I didn’t at least try to use birth control.I’m the Poster Girl for failed birth control and just the general rule that Shit Happens.Ok,well….LIFE happens”

She shares without detail the rape conception as a teenager that she fought to not abort….. the twins conceived on The Pill (thanks to an error in prescription by Planned Parenthood,ironically), the Broken Condom Incident and the just plain lack of good judgment (aka “There’s no way in hell I’m ovulating right now. Cum inside me”) . Plus the two she herself was not biologically responsible for.

The children bound over to their mother with cries of “I’m thirsty!” and “Can we have a snacky?”. Jupiter doles out the Squishy Squash Muffins she brought along, passes around the water-filled canteen ,offers a muffin to Thinking Mom and her child who is named after a rock star. “They’re homemade…no bad stuff in ‘em and I swear, my kitchen is clean. Well, the parts that count,anyway”. Thinking Mom and Rock Star Kid accept their muffins and say,”Thank you”.