kids

Haircut, Again

Posted on June 30, 2009 by Debora

Elizabeth got another haircut today. She just had it cut three or four weeks ago, but I had talked her into just getting more layers instead of chopping it all short like she’d wanted, and she kept grumbling that it was too hot on her neck. Elizabeth’s hair is crazy thick and when it gets too long it becomes a hassle, but she’d gotten it bobbed short about a year ago and I didn’t think the look was all that flattering on her so I’d been trying to talk her out of doing it again.

Well, she didn’t get the bob again. This time she went even shorter, so that there was no possibility of any stray hairs heating up her neck for at least the rest of the summer.

It’s very cute. Here’s the before pic:

before

And here’s right after, while it was still wet…

after1

…and at home, after it had dried:

after2

Adorable! And she can just comb it and go, there’s no styling or fussing needed. That’ll make things a lot easier when she’s away at camp this summer.

I like it a lot.

Categories: Family, kids, Life | 1 Comment

It’s Funnier If You Read It Aloud

Posted on June 18, 2009 by Debora

Luke has picked up Elizabeth’s penchant for writing stories in comic-book format, and like her he populates his tales with characters from movies, tv shows, books, etc.

This is Otto Matic, one of Luke’s favorite “borrowed” characters:

OttoMaticPromoScreen

Otto was the hero of a cool game that was on my last Mac, and now he’s the hero of countless adventures on the pages of Luke’s comic books. What makes it really funny is that in Luke’s world there are shops that sell “Otto Parts” and Otto drives the “Otto-Mobile,” and so on. It always makes me laugh when Luke is playing or drawing and he says with great dramatic emphasis, “TO THE OTTO-MOBILE!!”

You know, because it sounds like automobile. I’m easily entertained.

But I’m not the only one! Elizabeth produced this awesome bit of commentary this morning:

Laceart006

Bwahahah!

Snarkalicious proof that she is a true child of mine.

Not sure which side of the family the wings, tail, ears and horn come from though.

Categories: Artwork, Comics, Family, Humor, kids, Life | Leave a comment

Regarding Elizabeth

Posted on June 9, 2009 by Debora

Last week I helped out at the kids’ school, making papier-mâché props for a musical production that Elizabeth was in. These are the two I helped build, “Sky God” and the tree:

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The play was last Thursday night. Elizabeth was in the soundtrack section, and did a fine job on the xylophone:

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Friday after school I picked the kids up from school and we headed down to Temec to run some errands. Elizabeth needed a haircut and some new boots, and we wanted to see “UP” (which btw is a fantastic movie). The whole afternoon was a lot of fun…except for the boot-buying experience, which was thankfully AFTER the haircut and movie and a very nice lunch at Souplantation. The boot thing? That was harrowing.

What happened was, Elizabeth saw these:

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You can’t tell from the pic, but they are covered in a fine glitter that makes them sparkle in the most delightful fashion. They were adorable and Elizabeth passionately loved them and I would have been happy to buy them for her…except that they weren’t available in the size she needed. They were available in the size she was already growing out of, and also in Much Too Big. I did not want to pay that much money for either of those sizes.

There were tears, and angry words, and finally what in Elizabeth-World passes for a full-on tantrum (which is intense but at least relatively quiet, much like Elizabeth herself), and finally I just picked out a pair of boots identical to the ones she was already wearing but a half-size larger and bought them and we got out of there.

Then there was fuming. That made the rest of our shopping so much fun!

Later that evening, when Elizabeth had gotten over the worst of her disappointment, we got into another squabble over some unrelated something. Since Elizabeth and I don’t usually squabble much at all, I’m pretty sure it was leftover grouchiness spilling over. At one point she actually frowned and declared, “Mom, you have spoiled me rotten and you’re just going to have to accept the consequences.”

I just sort of blinked and stared at her for a minute. Then I said, “You feel that I have spoiled you rotten?”

She shrugged in a rather cavalier fashion. “I’m a spoiled brat. It’s too late for me to change now. You’ll just have to get used to it.”

“Wow,” I replied. “Most eleven-year-olds, especially the spoiled brat variety, aren’t able to see that about themselves. I’m kind of impressed.”

The thing is…as eleven-year-olds go, I really think Elizabeth is near the lowish end of the brattiness scale. I mean, she has her moments, but I don’t know anyone who DOESN’T have the occasional moment, especially in that age bracket. And while she has most definitely inherited her father’s egocentric view of the world, I think for the most part she chooses to use it for good and not for evil.

And then sometimes she just digs her heels in and becomes the proverbial Immovable Object. Like with the parade float thing.

Around Easter our church’s youth music director put on a great production called “The Secret Of My Success.” Both Luke and Elizabeth had speaking parts and solo singing parts as well as singing with the group, and they both did really awesome. Now there’s another production in the works for July, and they were both given large speaking and singing parts. Which they were fine with, until they realized that being in the play meant that they’d also be riding, in full costume, on the church’s float in this year’s Anza Days parade. Elizabeth said she wasn’t going to be on the float, she was going to be on the sidelines watching the parade, and that was final. I told her that I’d be helping out with the float that day so if she was going to watch the parade it would have to be with her dad, and I do not know what his plans are for that day. She said she’d take her chances. No amount of discussion has changed her mind. Luke does what Elizabeth does, so if she isn’t going to be on the float then he doesn’t want to either.

Of course I could ORDER them to take the speaking parts and ride on the float, and they would do it, but that’s not the kind of parent I want to be. There would be no joy in the play for them or for me under those circumstances. So, as disappointed as I am that they won’t get to show off their acting talents this time, or ride in the parade, I’m not going to insist.

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And from the “What The Heck?” category, yesterday Elizabeth…wait, this one needs some backstory. Okay, a couple of weeks ago Elizabeth ate asphalt on her roller skates in a parking lot and got a big ugly scrape down one arm, near the elbow. Somehow THIS of all things is embarrassing for her, so for the past two weeks she’s been wearing long-sleeved shirts to school even on sweltering hot days so the other kids won’t see the scrape and ask questions.

So yesterday she wore a red shirt. While she was at school she cut out carefully-shaped pieces of paper and stapled them to the chest and sleeves of her shirt so that it looked something like this, but red:

startrekshirtcollage1.jpg

I just about fell out of the car laughing when she got off the bus wearing that. When I could breathe again I pointed out that she’d taken quite the risk, walking around in that shirt.

“I know,” she nodded philosophically. “I lived, though.”

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Ah, my girl. You are simpler and more complicated than Luke. You are simpler and more complicated than me. I’m pretty sure you’re more intelligent than I am, but so far I have the wisdom and experience on my side. I pray you’ll survive long enough to acquire them too.

But in the sweet name of basic self-preservation, leave the red shirts at home! There’s just no sense in tempting fate that way.

Categories: Artwork, Family, kids, Life, Star Trek | 7 Comments

Complications

Posted on May 16, 2009 by Debora

Tuesday afternoon I was on my way to check on The Mighty Herd before going to a worship meeting, when my car suddenly died. I pulled off the road and restarted it. It started right up, then immediately died again. Like I’d run out of gas, except I knew I had half a tankful. I tried four or five more times, and it always started easily and then quit.

I called the Auto Club and told them I needed a tow, then called a member of my worship group who lives in that area and asked her if she could give me a ride to the meeting while my car went to visit the mechanic. She said sure, and pulled up a few minutes later. The tow truck arrived about fifteen minutes after that, and the driver asked me to describe the problem I was having. I offered to show him, and got in my car and started it up.

Of COURSE it fired right up and stayed running this time. I took it for a test ride up and down the road, and it ran perfectly.

So the tow truck went on its way and Marie and I continued on to the meeting in our own respective vehicles. I had hopes that this was going to be like that one time my car’s electrical system went out for several minutes and it wouldn’t even try to start, and then it all suddenly righted itself and never gave me another moment’s trouble.

On Thursday my friend Jenny and I had planned to go see Star Trek in Temecula, but Wednesday afternoon she got a call from March AFB (Jenny’s in the Reserves) requesting a meeting of some sort, so she had to skip the movie. We made plans to meet up later in the day for lunch, after her meeting and my movie were over. Steve said he’d pick up the kids after school, so I only had to get home in time for my Thursday worship meeting at 4:30.

Just for the record…the new Star Trek movie is Made Of Awesome. Go see it, all of you. Yes, you too! Go! This is seriously the best movie I’ve seen since…I can’t even remember the last movie I enjoyed this much. And it’s been a VERY long time since I’ve felt this excited about the future of the Trek franchise. When I met Jenny for lunch she got to listen to me chatter on like a 13-year-old fangirl about how brilliantly the whole series reboot was conceived and executed with broad-spectrum appeal for old-school fans and newcomers alike. I can’t imagine anyone not being entertained by this movie.

After lunch Jenny and I parted ways again to run our various errands, and an hour or two after that I headed back up the hill toward home.

I got four or five miles out of Temec when my car died. I was on a narrow little two-lane highway with no shoulders, but luckily I reached a turnout before I ran out of momentum and was able to pull off the road.

Restart, die, restart, die. I shut it off to let it rest, hoping that would fix it like before.

Less than five minutes later my cell rang. Jenny had passed me on her way home and wanted to know if I was okay. I told her what my car was doing and she came back and pulled in behind me, to wait and see if letting the engine rest would help.

It did. Eventually it started up and stayed running. I decided to try and make it home, and then take it to the shop the next day.

Alas, it was not to be. Maybe a mile farther up the road the engine died again, and again I was lucky to be near a turnout.

This time resting didn’t help. After a while it wouldn’t even turn over.

SO, I called the Auto Club back, and they said a tow truck would be out within 45 minutes. Jenny waited with me, because she’s awesome that way.

As it turned out, we waited for over two hours. FINALLY the tow truck showed up; it was past five by then. No worship meeting for me.

AAA’s Roadside Assistance plan only covers the first seven miles of towing, so I had them take my car to a shop in Temec rather than the 60 or so miles to my regular guy in Idyllwild. Jenny came back to the shop too, knowing I’d almost certainly need a ride home. Which I did, because the garage closed at six and wouldn’t be able to look at my car until the next morning. So we transfered my groceries to her truck and headed back up to Anza.

At some point it occurred to us that if our original plan to see Star Trek together had worked out, the day would have turned out a lot worse. We had wanted to meet up at the local casino in Anza, where she would leave her truck in the parking lot and ride down with me. If we’d done that we’d BOTH have been stranded in Temec.

The fortuitous serendipity didn’t end there: Jenny had forgotten to bring a particular piece of identification with her to the meeting at March, and had to return the following morning to finish that bit of business. SO, I had a ride back down to Temec without putting anyone out. When we got there Friday morning the auto shop said they’d call me on my cell when they knew what the trouble was, whether they had whatever parts it needed on hand, and how long it would take to fix. So I had Jenny drop me off at the movie theater and I watched Star Trek again. And it was even better the second time around. Which is good, because that went a long way toward helping me keep my happy thoughts for the rest of the day.

And that’s saying something, because the rest of the day? Sucked pretty hard.

I learned that my little Saturn had basically suffered the car version of massive coronary failure and needed a new fuel pump, fuel filter and regulator.

I told them to go ahead and check the alignment as long as they were at it. The car had been pulling to the left a little for several weeks.

After the movie I wandered around the mall until Jenny got back, and then we returned to the garage. They said my car would be finished by five — it was a little past two at the time — so Jenny headed back up to Anza and I killed time wandering around other shops.

Steve was getting antsy by now; his band plays at Casa Gamino on Friday nights and he was supposed to be there by six. Parental duties aren’t generally allowed to interfere with his actual life, but in this case there was nothing either of us could do about it. I assured him that I’d rather be home with the kids than waiting around Temec for my car to be fixed, but that I had no influence in the matter and I’d get there as soon as I could.

It was nearly 6:00 by the time my car was done…to the tune of $905.91. Yeowtch. I had the money, but I’d been planning to spend it on corral panels and a bull. Now I’ll almost certainly have to dip into my savings account for those, which theoretically annoys the heck out of me. (It’s only theoretical annoyance because in actual practice I still have my happy thoughts because Star Trek was REALLY THAT GOOD.)

I got back to Anza a little past 6:30, collected the kids from Steve, and went home to discover that I had forgotten to shut off the horses’ water when I left that morning and had created a river through one end of the corral, the driveway and down the road. Yeah, that’s going to be a nice electric bill next month.

Long couple of days. And yet it all could have been so much worse — if Jenny hadn’t been there, if her errands hadn’t dovetailed so neatly with mine, if I hadn’t been able to get off that twisty mountain road both times the car died, if the garage hadn’t been able to get the parts so quickly, or if I hadn’t been able to pay for the repairs — that I can’t seem to feel very grouchy about the rest of it. All I lost was some money and a little time, nothing that truly matters in the grand scheme of things.

I wonder when Star Trek will come out on dvd. There’s a certain turbolift scene I’d like to have on hand to give me the happies whenever I need a lift. (Ha, pun not intended.) I wonder how long it will take them to make a sequel. CLOCK’S TICKING PEOPLE, MAKE IT HAPPEN! I haven’t been this fangeeky about Trek since the glory days of the Dominion War on Deep Space 9, and yes I know how nerdy that sentence sounds, and I don’t even care because the newest incarnation of the Trekverse is FREAKING GENIUS.

The last couple of days? Inconvenient and expensive but not catastrophic, thank Heaven. Downright enjoyable for a few hours here and there.

And now I need to head over to the rummage sale my church is having this weekend, because both kids need summer clothes and it may be a while before I can afford to shop for them at Target again. I’m glad they don’t care about stuff like that yet.

All things considered we’ve got it pretty good that way, you know?

Categories: Friends, kids, Life, Star Trek | 3 Comments

Gardening, Carpet Plague, Calves and Music

Posted on May 11, 2009 by Debora

I know, I’ve abandoned my poor blog again. Life is simultaneously busy and tranquil — my favorite combination! — and I haven’t felt the need to write in a while.

This time of year gardening takes up most of my time. One of the biggest reasons I’m shifting my focus to edible perennials is so I won’t have this frenzy of replanting every spring, but of course in the short-term it makes my spring even busier as I create new permanent beds and put in asparagus, sunchokes, currants, a bay tree, various perennial herbs and some unidentified “berry” bramble suckers someone gave me that I think are blackberries. But the strawberry bed I put in last spring is producing in grand style this year, and Saturday I enjoyed the first ripe strawberry of spring, and there’s a gazillion more coming along behind it. So that’s a good reminder that the results are totally worth all the work involved, even if it takes a while to see them.

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Another thing that’s been gobbling up a ridiculous amount of my time is The Battle Of The Creeping Spot.

Dude.

So three or four weeks ago our cats suddenly decided to spurn their litter box in favor of one corner of my computer room floor. We’re talking deep plush carpeting here, not some easy-to-clean laminate or hardwood. I ungraciously disposed of the piles of poop, but it gradually became evident that the real problem was the steadily-intensifying aroma of Eau de Cat Pee. I took way longer than I should have to attend to that (see: spring planting time, above), but finally one day I attacked that corner of the carpet with everything I could think to throw at it. Rug shampoo, spot cleaner, pure baking soda, a special “pet stain” removal product, the works.

The next morning that corner of my (very orange) carpet had turned a dark purple.

Clearly something had gone very wrong here.

I went back over the corner with more spot cleaner, and when that didn’t get rid of it I tried putting laundry detergent into my rug shampooer, and then I tried diluted dishsoap and then I just went over and over it with plain water until it was mostly gone.

But the next day The Spot was back, and twice its previous size.

I won’t go into all the tedious details of this battle. Suffice it to say that for nearly two weeks I used almost every cleaning product I could think of on this spreading purple abomination, alone or in combinations, and some days I would win and other days the Spot would win. It was like something out of Dr. Seuss, but evil. At its largest it was about six feet in diameter, and I was doing a pretty convincing Lady Macbeth impersonation.

Guess what the culprit was. Go ahead, guess!

Give up? It was the baking soda. Apparently when you put baking soda on my orange carpet and then get it wet, there’s some sort of freak chemical reaction that causes a dark purple stain to appear.

Guess how I finally figured this out.

It looked like I had just about defeated The Spot, there was only the faintest shadow left and I was confident that another hour or so of going over it with clear water would finish it off. But by then the carpet was beginning to smell just a bit mildewy, and I decided that the whole room could stand a nice deodorizing.

So, I filled my rug shampooer’s receptacle with clear water and a little baking soda, went over the whole room, and then focused on the spot in the corner — shaking some more baking soda directly onto it and scrubbing it in — until it appeared to be vanquished.

The next morning my entire computer room carpet was covered with purple smudges and the original corner was a solid, hateful dark purple swath.

I was ready to burn it.

Instead I spent most of another week going over and over the carpet, sucking all the baking soda out of it. As I type this I think I have just gotten the last of it out, but I won’t know for sure until tomorrow morning.

The good news is that the cats appear to have lost interest in recontaminating the war zone.

Or possibly they’re just waiting for the carpet to finally dry out so they can start over.

BUT my computer room doesn’t smell mildewy today, it smells WONDERFUL, because yesterday Luke and Elizabeth gave me the best Mother’s Day gifts I have ever received. They made them in Sunday school. They are apples with lots and lots of cloves stuck into them and silk ribbons tied around them to hang them with, and now as I write this the air is perfumed with the heady scent of apples and cloves. I LOVE it!

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In other news, a third calf has been born at Trinity. I need to buy some livestock panels so I can set the branding pen back up and set a date for my summer roundup. I may also spring for a calf table, since none of my new friends know how to rope (and neither do I) and it seems like a useful thing to have anyway if one isn’t of the Large Strapping Male persuasion.

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Speaking of things my new friends don’t know, they are also all tragically unacquainted with the awesome thing of immortal beauty that is Star Trek. Not a single Trek fan in the entire bunch (except for Pastor Bill who can’t go see the new movie with me because he’s married and that would be a little odd). Hello, this is CULTURE, people!! I was going to have to go see the movie all by myself, but my friend Jenny took pity on me and agreed to go with. So I think that’ll be Thursday. I can’t wait!

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Being a part of my church worship group remains one of the brightest joys of my new life. It’s amazing how fundamental singing with friends apparently is to my general sense of fulfillment. I don’t imagine that I’ll let anyone take that away from me ever again.

The group is still kind of finding itself. We had a magical combination for a while — two guitars, bass, drummer, three vocalists — and it was heaven. But then we lost our best guitarist and our male vocalist within a couple weeks of each other, and we’re feeling the loss. But there’s this nice sense of fellowship among the rest of us, a sweet sort of feeling that we’re all in it for the long haul and that one way or another the people we need will find us and the group will eventually be complete again, and meanwhile we still have this wonderful core group of friends to sing and play and worship with.

Tell you what though, last time we sang in church it was a train wreck. There’s a young boy who is learning to play the bongos, and from time to time he likes to join the group onstage. It’s not been a problem before, but this last time two things went wrong. One, the bongos had just been tightened so they were louder than usual, and two, he set them up between the drummer and our remaining guitarist, so they couldn’t hear each other well enough to stay in synch. It…wasn’t pretty. We have learned our lesson. Bongo Boy is still welcome to play with us, but from now on he goes down at the other end by the vocalists.

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I wanted to talk about how the Sunday school teaching thing is going, but I think that’s going to get its own post somewhere down the road.

So I guess that’s it for now. Life in my little green corner of the world is blooming, and keeping me busy. If that Spot is still gone tomorrow morning I will have nothing much to complain about.

If it’s back I may have to rethink my decision to give up profanity, because I have nothing else left to throw at the blasted thing.

Categories: Animals, Cats, Christianity, Edible Perennials, food, Friends, Gardening, kids, Life, Self-Sufficiency, Star Trek | 6 Comments

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