Call Me Crazy (or Ishmael or something, I really don't care)

I mentioned some time ago that I have been taking a mosaics class at the nearby Flint Institute of Art (FIA--NOT the Flintstitute, as Simon thinks it ought to be named) for over a year. So far, Simon's reaction to all my pieces has been lukewarm at best. I finally challenged him to think up a theme that he would admire and appreciate and, unbelievably, he said, "This!" pointing to a page from a comic book printed in 1974. (So Grandpa didn't manage to incinerate ALL his prized treasures after all!) So, after much thought (WAY too much thought) I came up with a plan to make a replication almost 4'x4' in size. Here is the piece of plexiglass on top of the pieced sections of the picture:

The above picture gives some sense of scale, but here it is, slightly closer, so you can see the image:

And here are the so far uncut pieces of glass that will produce this thing. (And I mean that literally, as it's The Thing. But I am sure some of our readers knew that already. I didn't. I, I must confess, never heard of The Thing before a month ago.)

So tonight I will get started cutting these pieces down into more manageable size (about 1/4" x 1/4") and start getting them in place. I won't bore everyone here with daily updates, but you can find out more on my other blog (woolly-thinking.blogspot.com).

Water Park

Tomorrow morning Thomas is leaving for a 3-day trip to a camp on the other side of Michigan. He is a bit nervous because he believes he will be required to climb a 100-foot climbing wall. So we took him to a nearby park (next to the e coli lake which is filled with huge, gross, slimy carp) which has this climbing wall. He's still nervous about going, but now his main reason is because he is convinced he will committ some unforseeable social gaffe and the other kids will cruelly ostracize him. I'd like to be able to promise him that no such thing will happen, but based on my experiences of childhood I think Thomas's anxieties are completely reasonable.
Meanwhile, here is Frederick (sans shorts, socks and shoes) heading off in his own direction, both literally and metaphorically.

For reasons we don't understand, the water sprays suddenly started working and Thomas and Frederick had a wildly good time running in the sprinkling fountains. Simon and Frederick have been here dozens of times before and there wasn't even a trickle. It was very strange and magical, having the entire place to ourselves with the machines starting up and shutting off seemingly randonly.

And here's Frederick, now without any clothes, enjoying the ridiculousness of it all.

Frederick Jumps for Joy

School is still going well and so, it would seem, is everything else for Frederick.

Simon Wants a Hidey-Hole

Simon has been moaning and groaning about how much he wants a little shed of his own, where he can get away from it all. (Us, I suppose he means.) After much debate (read: heated disagreement), we settled on this back corner of our yard. The pond and tree stump will stay, the compost will have to resettle elsewhere. (No problem, Thomas is too creeped out to go there to drop off our kitchen garbage anyway. I think a big pile right next to the house will be much more convenient and educational, given the variety of lifeforms we support with that heap.)




But here is the problem: While Simon is strong of back and arm, he lacks the, shall we say, wisdom and insight to pull this project off by himself. If ONLY we knew someone with years of experience in shed/shelf/workshop building who could DIRECTLY supervise the project...

Baby Book vol 1

Last year, Thomas was given writing time during the school day. His writings were always interesting and off-kilter, and varied from space journeys to Indiana Jones-like islander adventures (involving the appropriately named Illinois James) to underwater escapades to haunted house mysteries. But I was surprised to come across an entry called Baby Book vol. 1. This is what I found:

Matt the cat was up at bat when a fat rat sat on his hat. Matt swatted at the cat with a flat mat. But that rat was a brat so he spat on poor Matt the cat, who was at bat.

Mail will be brought by a male quail, who likes to flail. He will not fail. He hit a rail. "I will not fail!" he wailed, as he flailed his tail. He gave his mail to a snail, with a boat with a sail, with a loose nail. The snail failed. The mail quail bailed.

Gary the merry fairy carried berries to a scary prairie. Barry buried these berries. Gary then brought cherries to that scary prairie, this time by ferry. Gary was soon very weary, so he went to the ordinary library.

Kate went to the gate to get a crate. Kate will wait. It got late. "This is not great! Where is my crate?" asked Kate. Just then eight crates came through a grate. "Great!" said Kate, no longer frustrated.

Chinese cheese was put on skis. It began to freeze. Suddenly it saw peas and bees. The cheese landed on a trapeze. It began to sneeze and wheeze.

Bob's pet was wet with sweat. Bob's pet will get a jet. The pet is no threat to the vet yet. The pet will forget the duet with Paulette. The pet plays the clarinet.

If only P.D. Eastman was still alive to illustrate these, I think we'd have a best seller.

What Is Thomas Up To?

Here is Thomas, busily working on a Wombat article after school yesterday. The Wombat is his school's newspaper, and he is one of the writers for it. He told me last week that he desperately wants to be picked by Mary, his teacher and the director of the newspaper, to be her co-editor. Apparently she told him that she would pick someone who is willing to work hard, enjoys writing, and is dedicated to making the newspaper an excellent literary piece. Ever since that Thomas has been doing backflips to get her notice--he writes an article every day after school, he speeds through his lunch to race back to class to work more, he skips his recesses to get to his articles in progress--he even wanted to stay after school the other day to do more work. I asked if anyone else wanted to job and, according to him, no one did. Trying to ease his anxiety a bit (without getting his hopes up only to be dashed--been down THAT road before!) I said, "Well, then your chances of being picked are pretty good. I think you can relax and just enjoy your writing. You don't want to burn out." He disagreed, saying that he had to prove to Mary that he knew how to work really, really hard. [Aside: Just so there is no confusion, Thomas is 10 and this is a "newspaper" for the middle school only, is published about 4 times a year, is about 4-6 pages long, and is filled with articles about recent school events, cartoons and such. He's already prduced enough material in this past week to fill 5 editions.] I had visions of him losing sleep (and he is--he stays up in bed writing until midnight or later every night) until this gets settled. I then asked when Mary is going to make her decision. "January," he replied. SHIT! We'll never make it!

MEANWHILE, his percussion teacher, Alyssa, emailed me last night to ask if Thomas would join the Flint Philharmonia, the orchestra for middle and high school age kids, run through the Flint Institute of Music. It seems that percussionists are in short supply and Thomas's sticking is desperately needed. Thomas was flattered, and excited but also a bit nervous. (And I didn't even tell him the part that they will tour in Spring and have a series of performances in Chicago--I'll leave that off until the night before.) Orchestra practice will be on Thursday, from 6:30-8:30 at night--and this is on top of his weekly piano, percussion and bassoon lessons. How will he survive? There's only so much Thomas to go around!

House Number Plate

I have been messing about with glass mosaicing for about a year now, and decided to replace our small, ugly house number plate with something I made up myself. Here it is:

The glass pieces are attached to plexiglass because I wanted something light, that wouldn't break and wouldn't decay in the rain and snow. As I was working, I tried to think of a way to backlight the thing once it was on our house so the glass would be illuminated (much, much prettier that way). But I couldn't figure out how it could be done. Then, when it came time to remove the old plate and attach the new one, I found this hidden behind the old number plate: a small hidey-hole, with a lightbulb wired up for illuminating a number plate! (So THAT'S what that switch in the front hallway is that we thought didn't do anything!) How's that for a coinkeedink? Now I have to find a replacement bulb and/or get an electrician to update the wiring. Here it is:

And here is the houseplate in situ. (The unpainted patch is where the old mailbox was. Now it is in the garage waiting for someone to strip 10 layers of paint off it and then rehang it.)

In Which We Are Entirely Surrounded By Water

It's still raining.  Here, again, is a picture of our backyard at around 5 pm, looking like the middle of the night.  You can see our yard furniture is slowly sinking into the muddy pit that was our yard.  I have had to redirect our pond fish away from the grass and back into the pond several times in the past few days.

Here is one flowerbed next to our house, this one only 6 inches under water.  The dehumidifier is running 24/7 in our basement, but I am sure we will be bailing water soon.  Is it possible for a to go insane listening to the sound of heavy non-stop, heavy rainfall for 8 or 9 days straight? I am starting to think so.

Fall Is Here

I started taking down the pool this past weekend and since then we have had hours and hours and HOURS of rain, which just filled the damn thing back up again.

This is the back of our yard at about 5 in the afternoon yesterday, though it looks more like 10 at night.

And here are Frederick and Simon heading off to the park, in the pouring rain, to get a bit of exercise before dinner.

Fortunately, this came in the mail today for me all the way from John Lewis, Sheffield England (finally!!) so now I have something to keep me amused during the (ever longer) evenings.

Thomas makes YouTube movies...

This is Thomas's new hobby: making little videos of the kind that he likes to watch on YouTube. Here's one:



Personally I have NO idea what's going on. I think he video'd himself playing his DS, and I think it was to demonstrate how to get to a particular, possibly secret, part of a game. But your guess is as good as mine, really. Does this show he's a future Spielberg? I think there can be no doubt.

Lock Down!

Well, it had to happen. Frederick and I arrived at his school this morning, perky and feeling fine, when a police officer shooed us off, telling us the school was in "lock down" because someone had been murdered nearby. Annoyed and bewildered, he and I walked back to the car when I heard two mothers take the opportunity to teach life lessons to their kids. One said, "See? Bad people mess up everything for everyone else." and the other said to her child, "Killers make mommies and teachers very annoyed." Ain't it the truth!

Frederick Goes To School

Yesterday was the first day of school for both Thomas and Frederick. After spending weeks (in Thomas's case) and months (in Frederick's case) trying to figure out where they should go and how we could possibly finance it all, we decided that Thomas should stay at The Valley School (which, on the brink of financial disaster in May was flooded with new students in August--weird)and that Frederick should go to Manley. For those with good memories, Manley is indeed the same school Frederick tried two years ago and, after 8 or 9 months of low-level misery, it went horribly wrong and we pulled him out. But now he is starting kindergarten and will have Miss Perkins as a teacher, and all the school officials you could stand to talk to at any one time assured us that everything will be fine this time around. Simon was too afraid to take him yesterday, so it became my job. And yet Frederick was not in the least anxious--he sang the whole way to school (a tune he must have invented because no one knows what else it could be: "In the summertime, maybe, baby. In the sunny time, baby, baby. Anytime, maybe, baby. All the time, baby, baby."), skipped into the building and into his classroom, and then happily waved me off as I left. All day I was a mess, imagining meltdowns and despair...But apparently the day was great: he loved circle time (he was the loudest and most enthusiastic singer), loved playing with toys (the dollhouse the best), and loved lunchtime (ate a large slab of ham (argh!) and then stole his classmate's deli bun and polished that off with gusto. Today I took him to school again (Simon claiming that he "just can't") and again I feared the worst...but again nothing bad happened. He skipped into the classroom, went straight to the library, got a book, a few toys and went right to his chair for circle time. Here he is waiting patiently for his classmates (who ride the bus) to arrive so class can begin:



Here is the art center:

Here is the "wind down" area for venting stress and anxiety:

I try not to get my hopes up, but maybe Frederick will really like school.

My cell phone ("mobile") takes crappy pictures

I've had this phone for at least six months (as you can tell from the range of weather depicted) but have only just managed how to work out how to get the photos off it without paying to email each one individually. Turns out it wasn't really worth it, as the post heading indicates. However, the wildlife photos are at least interesting...


This creature was on a flooded path in a big park that Frederick and I like to walk through. Jami thinks it's an escaped pet lobster, but it was only about the size of the width of my hand.


He is indeed.


Mmmm. That's good eatin'.


Frederick climbed up this himself (with a little boost) but was at a loss how to get down. This park is by a lake near us. It's only occasionally closed down because of e coli scares.


Yes it is a fawn, and no it isn't dead. I think it was feigning death so we'd go away.


I looked up this device online - apparently it's used to catch frisbees. I kid you not - we were walking around here once and people showed up to play Frisbee Golf. They had professional grade Frisbees and everything!


This is the other side of the e coli lake, both geographically and thermically. Yes, those are picnic tables embedded out in the ice.

Pac-Man follies

I know this isn't family-related, and I should set up a separate blog for this, but I found the following two items strange and amusing. For the uninitiated (can there be any such?), Pac-Man was THE game of 1980, and the first hint to the west that people in Japan were completely unhinged: you are a happy face that eats dots and is chased by ghosts, which you can eat if you eat one of the special "energy dots" in the corners of the maze, whereupon the ghosts turn blue for a short while. But be careful, because when they start flashing, they're ready to turn on you again. Periodically a fruit of some kind (usually a cherry) appears for a time in the middle of the screen and you get bonus points for eating it. Strange but (so we thought at the time) completely entrancing. Anyway, apparently some of those people who encountered it at the time were permanently marked by it, and it has influenced their creative endeavours thereafter. First, a clever shift of perspective from Pac Man - the Movie:



Or, from a less ghost-centric viewpoint: