Here is where I post pictures of the ebullient first hours after a vaguely dismal four days.
I have lots of questions for my doctor tomorrow, a few directly about my thyroid NOT really operating at capacity. And about those dreadful emo days that just make me want to go ahead and cut myself as I recall them in the joyful days that follow.
I think I need to upgrade.

THIS, this is the quilt I made with Ford’s kindergarten class:

I kept all 20 of the students after school one afternoon and we monoprinted like mad with little bottles of fabric paint, 5 plastic plates and one very popular brayer.

It rocks!!! Surprise for the teacher tomorrow, just to let her know we’ve enjoyed those daytime hours this year, all free of sibling rivalry and backtalk. It’s been awesome!

Still, I spent this afternoon drafting a master plan for next year, and may lightening strike me, it involves homeschooling!

Tags: quilt, quilting, Ford, psychosis, hormonal crap, whatevs

Tags: ChasSicore, Seth Whitman

I spent time today in the sunshine, running a fast 4 miles, mulching the flower bed under sweet grapefruit blossoms, listening to the quail, admiring the profusion of blooms and bees, only to feel like complete and udder feces. We all have “off” days, when our perspective is skewed; I’ve had about three off days in a row, wondering where this is coming from and waiting for it to pass.

All the while, Chas has been enduring a restless bout of coxsackie virus, leaving him whiney, demanding and without neither appetite nor humor to pull him through.

But I’m helping him, and he is wrapped around me like Silly Putty, molded to my pores. His heightened nipple fetish is getting most annoying of all. It was also our 7th wedding anniversary.

I finally sit down to write, and the clock tells me it’s midnight. The nerve!

Above are my latest pages for the Moleskine exchange group. We each are sketching wildlife outside in our backyards: Hawaii, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Montana, California. Everyone in the group is a nature nerd and has spent a little time this past month capturing his or her native flora and fauna in the pages of an accordion-fold Moleskine notebook. I’m loving all the entries so far! It’s a great group.

My notebook’s going in tomorrow’s mail on a jet plane to Hawaii! Bon voyage, little thrasher!

“What are you singing?”
“Oh, nothing.”
“What were you singing?”
“Nothing.”
“Don’t give me that, what were you singing?”
“It’s stupid, nothing you’d like. Really.”
“What was it?”
“Seriously. Nothing interesting. Shut up already.”
“If you don’t tell me, I’ll bash your head into the dashboard. Now tell me what you were singing.”
“Why do you want to know?”
“Because I want to know what you were singing.”
“I don’t know the name of the song, but it’s by the Dixie Chicks.”

“Oh God. I don’t know who that was more painful for.”

PROBOSCIS is such a funny word. I think what has happened is that I’ve heard it used inappropriately too many times, so that I’ve now become conditioned to think dirty thoughts when I hear the word. SO. Here’s Ford and his, um, proboscis. Uh, getting to the nectar?

Chas is mastering the lepidopteran art of mimicry and nectarology and proboscism.

Wha?

OPERATING INSTRUCTIONS for Teal Green 2004 Baby Jogger Deluxe Twinner

Congratulations! You are the new owner of a four year-old piece of crap jogging stroller made by the Baby Jogger company, subsequently bought by the Bag Boy Company, bought later by Dynamic Brands, in the quest for monoply over the heavily sought-after niche of value priced men’s, women’s and junior golf and its associated running products. RANDOMBRANDING!

You will notice the following improvements in your model that are unavailable in any other double jogger on the market:

• the right tire has an incipient leak which not only adds to the uniqueness of the product but increases your average 5k time by approximately five minutes as you will need to refill this tire nearly every time you set out for your jog
• the foam handlebar cover is now infused with the unmistakable tang of black mildew, which, on its own or in combination with the mildew recently added to the bottom basket, contributes significantly to seasonal allergy responses in most individuals
• for your convenience, the sunshade has been removed permanently, as it is nothing more than a windsail when open and Black Widow spider collector when retracted
• in the mesh baskets behind both seats, I have left one two-month old copy of the Saratoga Times, three miscellaneous advertisements for home improvement service providers in the area, five pieces of recyclable plastic bottles, an assortment of plastic candy wrappers and one Monterey pine cone.
• both child seats are closer together in this model, fostering plenty of sibling rivalry, which means more fist fighting between siblings than ever before possible, and these fights will climax just before you hit a wall in your workout or race
• for this reason, constant overstuffing has left ample room in the baskets behind each seat for baseball bats and clubs with which to pacify quarrels so that you may focus on your workout or race
• in the basket under the carriage, you will find one (1) furry ball that was originally thought to be an owl pellet worth picking up on the sidewalk (to later dissect with the boys, duh), but which, after one month and several sideways glances, suggested itself as a hairy dog turd. I believe this only enhances the owner experience, but you may remove it if inclined. I was too intimidated to decide for you.
• also intended to enhance user satisfaction is the puke-impregnated ballistic nylon seat fabric itself, on not one but both seats of the stroller

I would like to personally commend your ballsy nature in managing to walk into our backyard in the middle of the day and rip off this sunbleached, haggard piece of rotten baby gear. In doing so, you have liberated me from having to push two screaming boys up and down our neighborhood hills while simultaneously whining to a husband who tunes me out to the drone of indie music on his iPod.

Thank you!

When Chas was a day old, asleep in my arms, I ran my fingers through his strawberry hair and furrowed my brow, wondering where the hell his red hair came from. Neither Damon nor I have red hair. Luckily, Chas has the Sicore nose (read: funky nose that only Sicores have, both in appearance and ability, capable of detecting fabric softener within a one mile radius), so I rested knowing I wouldn’t have to prove paternity. But the red hair had me completely perplexed, and a little worried, too; Damon has always made fun of redheads and freckles, and it appeared we’d managed to spawn little orphan Annie.

But months passed, and Chas’ hair changed. Some babies lose their hair, but Chas only grew more of it. The red paled to a towhead blonde, like Damon’s childhood hair. And while the front half of his crown grew straight, the back half grew wavy and wild. With each day, whether brushed or not, it began to tease itself into little blonde dreadlocks, and to this day it would appear that Chas, even ten minutes after having his hair combed, looks like he just got out of bed, or maybe scrubbed the bathtub with his head.

Everybody seems to love this head of hair as much as he does; in fact, Chas will grin and tousle his hair after I brush it, just to prove I’m ineffective. He loves his hair like a loose tooth, eager to reward compliments with Bruce Lee-inspired side kicks and leaps off of chairs, which make the gold dreads bounce and fly. “I wish I had hair like that!” is an acceptable compliment, less creepy than “I want your HAIR!” Perhaps the one person who would never tire of seeing Chas’ proud display in light of these gestures, besides Chas himself, is Damon; Damon, in all honesty, would actually love to have Chas’ hair. Which, every time I hear him say it, kind of makes me cringe. I always wonder how Chas perceives this strange compliment, being a three year-old and not entirely versed in the full play of our language.

So it happened last night, at dinner, while the four of us were in a booth waiting for our food and talking about the day, that Chas’ hair was catching the falling beams of sunset in a glorious flaxen halo. While he could have asked Chas to pass the chopsticks, or the soy sauce, Damon was stunned by the vision before him, and instead he asked,
“Chas, can I have your hair?”

Chas bashfully tucked his chin into his chest and grinned at Damon, telling him “Nooooooo, daddy, you can’t have my hair!” and I sat there before my empty place setting, looking for my chopsticks and wondering why it always feels to me like Damon’s asking him, “Chas, can I have your spleen?”

But I smiled instead, and before I had the chance to ask Chas to pass the chopsticks, I looked up to find Chas reaching across the table to Damon, stretched beyond the limits of love, grinning and holding in his stout little hand a rather large lock of fine golden hair.
“Here you go, daddy.”

evening run, originally uploaded by young@art.

I’ve switched to running in the evenings, now that they’re longer. 4.1 miles of solitude. This is my favorite part of the year, when I can run at evening twilight. The frogs are concentrated in huge creekside communities. To approach them is like coming to a college football game at fourth quarter; they are loud, gregarious and totally in the moment, ringing a million musical cheers at the moonrise.

I love the dark silhouettes hugging the landscape, alive with busy little yellow kitchen windows and spiked with crow-topped tv antennaes and the sound of children playing on dewy grass.

sumi ink on watercolor, Moleskine sketchbook.