Through the Elephant

A year-in-the-life is a journey through elephant bowels. It is dark, you're all squished and surrounded by poo and all you want is to make it out the other end in tact, and able to see daylight.

The problem is, your travel companion for the duration is a year's worth of excrement, hopefully slick enough to at least make the exit pleasant. Happy New Year, enjoy the home stretch, and I'll see you out the other side.

2010 Almost a Wrap

This is where I'm supposed to wax poetic about the end of the decade, ushering in the new year, etc. Ah, that's kid stuff. I'm glad to have sort of figured out how to blog so I can post pictures. It seems a good idea to have a theme for the photos and update regularly. I may or may not take me up on that.

I would like to laugh more in 2011 and create something artistic. That's bloggable.

Happy New Year!

Another attempt at photos

The nest is not empty yet. Or as Phoebe Buffet would say: "Don't 'Aw Pheeb, that sucks' me yet!"

I've Been Meaning to Do That

Besides trying for "way too long" to figure out how to add copious pictures to my blog (unsuccessful), I have a jumble of things I've been meaning to do. Here it is--possibly in list form--so I can check off each completed goal, or more likely: later refer back to, lament how it’s still undone and contemplatively decide if it’s still worthy of my time.
1. Finish Sara's toddler clothes quilt I smugly started 12 years ago. (It waits, nicely folded in my art closet next to the sewing machine I bought myself for my 33rd birthday.) Happy graduation, Sara! Perhaps you could reach another milestone worthy of a toddler-clothing scrap quilt once I finish it!
2. Take photos outside early in the morning. (seems like a good idea for differences in light and shadow, but insert reasoning for not doing here:             )
3. Alter a book with all those gathered collage pieces I’ve meticulously cut out of magazines, and even purchased from the “ephemeral” section of ebay.
4. Organize my art room (formerly known as “the office”) so I can attack aforementioned projects.
5. Stop obsessing over dog and cat hair covering every inch of my home.
6. Get new carpeting to get a fresh start on the dog/cat hair thing.
7. The snow on the tree outside is so beautiful in the sunshine right now, that I shall take a photo forthwith. Brrrrr, got it. If I can figure how to post photos, check number 2 off this list even though it’s nearly ten-thirty.
8. Read more books from the Newbery winners and/or classics.
9. Become more technologically adept, or hire/cajole someone to turn my thoughts into words and pictures on my attempt at a blog. (Alexander comes to mind—he could make this blog thing work with his eyes closed!)
10. Sketch out funny thoughts as comics and try to soak up some of Sara’s talent for visual artistry.
11. Convince Sara to publish her exquisite drawings, paintings, comics and observations because she is a comic and artistic genius.
12. Always have Pandora music in the background—Pandora knows what I’m all about and will feed me inspirational sounds.
I will stop at 12 “Things I’ve Been Meaning to Do” (or is twelve Things-I’ve-Been-Meaning-to-Do?) Damn. There’s another thing on the list: figure out intricacies of punctuation and titling. bluurrrgghhh!

Goody, Goody Gumdrops

"Goody, goody gumdrops." It was the 1970's kid-equivalent of being too cool to care. Things we said and did, and where the expression or event even came from are sometimes nuggets of wisdom lost to time. But sometimes, they sneak up in memories and make you want to investigate... Notice anything familiar?

Detroit, circa 1972 via Uncle Joey:
(everyone puts his ratty tennis-shoed foot in the middle and then...)

Eenie meenie, dipsy deeny, high pone tusk. Tusk in, tusk out, tusk around the water spout. Have a cherry, have a plum. have a stick of chewing gum. My mother said to pick the very best one and you are not...it!

Detroit, circa 1974 via childhood friend Julie Walters:

Kindergarten babies, first grade tots,
Second grade angels, third grade snots,
Fourth grade peaches, fifth grade plums,
And all the rest are dirty bums!

On the way (skipping, running or jumping) to Stellwagen Elementary School 1970-1975:

Step on a crack: break your mother's back.
Step on a line: break your father's spine.

Is that why every detail in every square of concrete sidewalk is so familiarly etched into my memory even today? The sidewalks had their own personalities back then. I knew the various patches of concrete so well. Some had a friendly, smooth appearance and an inviting appeal to drag an old piece of chalk across for hopscotch. Some were more mottled, cracked, or heaved up with elm tree roots and were to be avoided when skipping, jumping rope up and down the block, or racing Big Wheels or Krazy Kars. Some had cracks or dents that resembled faces and were a comfort knowing they remained the same season after season.

I wonder if low-to-the-ground things and the ground itself are still familiar to today's kids, or if the concrete jungle I grew to know intimately, was just my own childhood way of feeling at home in my surroundings? Do kids avoid cracks and lines to save their parents, have jump rope songs about missing links and being out, or do put-your-foot-in-the-middle rhymes to decide who's "it"?

Maybe today's kids have new and improved singy-songs that have a basis in fact, or fair decision-making methods that are more articulate and modern. Well, you know what I say to that?

Goody goody gumdrops.