Here and Gone

Thomas arrived late Wednesday evening. I saw Marta waiting at the train station and wondered what she was doing there, when I saw Omid get off the train--he was coming home from college, too. A few seconds later Thomas got off the train--neither had any idea they had been on the train together for the past 3 hours. Oh, how we laughed. Thomas quickly settled into his routine of sleeping til noon, playing on his computer until night, and then coming down just before we were to head off to bed to either tell us the ways in which he is disappointed in us (Simon hasn't advanced in his career enough and I haven't made enough money off my mosaics ["When was the last time you worked on a mosaic? What's wrong with you?"]--that sort of thing) OR to tell us he had major problems at school that need to be handled that second. Just like old times!And then, just as suddenly, it was time for him to go. It was brutally cold that morning and standing on the platform left me chilled to the bone for the rest of the day. Thomas made it back, is set to finish up his semester in the next two weeks, and so we expect to see him blow back into our lives around December 20th or so.

Frederick's latest art interest

Frederick has always loved making things. If we had saved every single piece of art he has produced in his lifetime so far, we would need a monstrous barn to store it all. The latest interest is in 3-d sculptures. This is a dragon he made last week. It's made out of modeling clay, so we don't expect it to live long since, in our household at least, accidents happen. Often.

This was yesterday. It's a Christmas ornament (you can't start making Christmas decorations too early, says Frederick) made with sculpey, a polymer clay that can be baked hard. So, this one will probably outlive all of us.

This morning Frederick woke up really crabby (a growth spurt coupled with not getting enough to eat yesterday conjoined with a sudden migraine causing cold front that arrived yesterday afternoon is the most likely cause, since ordinarily Frederick is a sunny little so-and-so in the mornings). He crabbed about Simon not being home, about me opening up the curtains, about me handing him breakfast to eat in bed, everything--until I reminded him that he was going to be making more sculpey sculptures today. Wow--that was all he needed to hear. He grabbed his toast, sprang out of bed, ran downstairs and struggled into his clothes as fast as he could manage. Too bad we were not scheduled to leave the house for two hours. He is now sitting on the couch, doing time, waiting to get the hell out of here and get back to his sculpey sculpting.
Later: Here is today's creation.

Yard work

 When the weather turns cold, some are prepared to do their duty

...and some are not.

Cold snap

SUDDENLY it got VERY cold and all the leaves hurled themselves to the ground as one.

Up, up and away

Tyrone Power

As mentioned in an earlier post Frederick requested a Superman costume a few weeks ago. For the first time, the costume was a joint effort, with Simon designing the S logo on the chest while I did the sewing and planning. (I admit I would have put far less care into making the S, thinking just any S would do. Simon made clear that it would NOT.) We were all set for a Halloween party on Monday but Frederick was sick--again! And then Tuesday and Wednesday, both he and Ava were sick. Then yesterday, Ava was still sick. Today, finally, both were healthy and ready for Halloween. F LOVED wearing his costume! The cape flies nicely in the breeze. (Acetate, you know.) Emily is a dalmation and Ava is...I'm not sure. A new sort of super hero from a kids show I don't know about. They practiced flying in Emily's backyard.

Frederick has taken off the costume but wants to keep the eyebrows.

According to two sources, it's the best costume yet.

Is it a bird? Is it a 'plane?

While I stayed home to work on the red cape, Superboy and Simon set off for their Sunday walkies. It was really chilly today, but at least the sun was shining, a first this week.

Not much in the way of Fall colors as the weather has been too weird: vacillating between stretches of freezing rains and hot spells, the leaves got fried from the heat and are now rotting on the ground.

Not only is Frederick happy with his Superboy shirt, but he has taken a shine to Simon's knitted hat.  And that's Thomas's old jacket he's wearing, too.

Getting ready for Hallowe'en

A few weeks ago Frederick announced that he wanted to be Superman for Halloween. This being a Marvel household, it was a shocking and unsettling situation. Nonetheless, we decided to respect his (frankly, bewildering) preference and I set to thinking up how to make the costume. In years past I wasted a lot of time hunting down the foundational pieces for his costumes at various stores around town but this year, with plenty of time to spare, I did the smart thing and bought the sweatpants and sweatshirt online. They were the perfect size and color for Superman's suit. I bought felt pieces to make the chest S and plenty of shiny red acetate to make his cape. The only tricky part was his red boots. Apparently no company in the world makes red boots for men (Frederick wears a size 10.5 men's shoes) except for specialty costume boots for "cos-play" purposes--and those were almost $100 a pair. No thanks. I tried spray painting a pair of cheap wellies and that was an unmitigated disaster as the paint never dried and, after about two weeks, simply crackled off. So, I hunted down a giant pair of generic rain boots that were in European sizes. They took their sweet ass time getting here, but arrived in good condition and fit just right. Today I set out to put the suit together. The main thing was the S on the chest, and I roped Simon into drawing up the pattern. He did a really good job and it was easy to cut the pieces to fit together just right:

Frederick was super excited about the costume as is going to have a tough time waiting for Tuesday to wear it to school.