Not Calm (dot com)

mini break

Busy beyond belief

computer unhappy due to virus

back soon

going to the kite festival in Berkeley on Sunday

Funny

I have a feeling that in fifteen years I'll be sitting in the front row at the Improv listening to Nate make his funny observations. At the dinner table he said, "They shouldn't call it Star Trek, they should call it Planet Trek, cause all they do is go around to all these different planets and bug people." In the car today we passed a guy on the street corner dressed up in a huge foam rubber suit made to look like a drink with a straw from the sandwich shop he was advertising for. All you could see of him were legs coming out from the bottom of the cup. "That poor guy must be hot," I said. "No! He's probably freezing his butt off in all that cold icy soda," said Nate, without missing a beat.

We are looking for

If you have ever watched bblues klues then please read this post (dated July 26). I am so proud of Steve; it must be one of the most successful breaking free from typecasting stories ever. I'll have to get Lex the cd for his birthday.

Before I forget, there are two new photo albums in the sidebar to your right. One is John's most recent drawings (six) and the other is a bunch of photos of the kids and John playing in the sprinklers. I am so creative that I named that one, "summer 04."

Today Auntie D came over bearing veggies and peony infused linen and body water and swank coloring books and a teddy bear and chocolate and pomegranite and mango juice. No you can't have her! She's my friend.

Time to sleep so I don't get John's summer cold. Poor guy.

Good day to you

This is where John works in the mornings teaching science camp. It's also where we had our wedding.

This is geeky, but you can click here to see photos of some of our tattoos!

My Boys

Lex and Nate with my brother a couple of years ago.

We washed the outsides of the vehicles today. A rare event. Willow had a fine time stomping and splashing in the nasty puddle at the bottom of the driveway. I cooked lots; pancakes and eggs for breakfast; lentils with rice and carmelized onions, cornbread, sliced heirloom tomatoes, green beans (and chicken for the kids) and chocolate chip cookies at supper time. I love cooking when John is home to watch the kids and eat the food.

The computer is really hobbling along, so I'll go post. If Willow will go back to sleep I'll join her.

Last July

This is Willow last July; just a little bean. It's hard to remember her like that. Didn't she always yell, "Daddy Daddy Daddy!" whenever she heard the sound of the front door opening? Hasn't she been toddling around for ages, pointing at trees and at the place in the sky where she last saw the moon? It's weird how time seems to fly by but it's hard to remember a life without her.

I'm sleepy and goofy. Hey! I cleaned out the van today. It was the dirtiest car ever ever in the history of things with wheels. Seriously.

Today we made it to the park for a short while. I huddled in the shade of an infant tree while Willow slept and Sophie wandered up to a stranger and told him that she was lost and her mama was in Toronto. The man crossed over to my little shady spot to give me the mother of the year award and ask if I had a daughter named Sophia. She needs one of those leashes. But then she'd drag me everywhere.

John's friend M was over the other day while I was lamenting the fact that I had no Elton John albums and wondering what kind of childhood I was giving my children if they were going to grow up not knowing Rocket Man and Benny and the Jets. John and M went to Oakland to see a show and when John came home he brought me an Elton John cd that M bought me. Yay! So now Lexy sits slouched in the chair closest to the stereo speakers, listening to the same songs over and over while commenting that he's too old to go to the park. He's a teenager! The power of Elton John should not be underestimated.

For me the best thing was hearing Daniel. For some reason I had this great memory of riding in the back of my Grandmother's (on my dad's side) Chevy Nova hatchback on the way home from getting groceries in the summertime and laying on my back watching the telephone poles go past. All I could see were the phone poles and the blue sky. Nothing to do with the song and not a memory of anything, really, but for some reason it made me feel really good to go there again.

Quick, post before the computer dies! (And no, I wouldn't put Sophie on a leash. It's a joke. But, when the boys were younger and Sophie was five months old and I was planning a trip right after the air attacks where I was going to fly without another grown up, I did buy harnesses for the boys, because the airport logistics put fear into me. I didn't use them, but the boys are forever walking each other or torturing stuffed animals with them. Sophie likes to wear it and pretend she is a dog. Okay, goodnight.)

Disgustingness

Not my planter guy, I love him. The gross will come soon.

I really like it that my boys are so moved by the story of The Velveteen Rabbit, and I'm grateful to my mom for saving the copy my parents gave me for Christmas when I was tiny.

Nate just got up and peed in the hall. Grrrrrr.

When he took his shoes off earlier I almost hurled. The stench. His tennies went into the washer, alone, for two cycles on hot (I never use hot) with lots of soap. His toenails looked yellow, so I thought he had some kind of fungus. Icky. I made him scrub his feet with a washcloth in the tub, but they still reeked. So, after his bath I held my breath and trimmed his nails. Then we got out some cottonballs and toner (the trader joe's stuff I use on my face), and cleaned his feet some more. Then, much to his dismay, I slathered some Burt's Bees coconut/peppermint foot cream on and put fresh socks over that. He decided that it felt very nice, so of course Lexy had to have some, too. The yellowness seems to be gone, so maybe it's just his refusal to wear socks that is the problem. He will have to wear them now to see if it helps. At least the boys both have lovely smelling feet.

john just got home
night

Two years blogging

I've been blogging for two years. I wrote a big entry earlier, which I lost when the computer shut itself down without permission. In it I wrote that John brought me flowers today, and said that I should have taken a picture to post. So, while the computer (hopefully) got its shit together, I took some photos.

Here's the first post I ever wrote, (edited a bit awhile back to protect me from any unpleasantness):

I have a new reason to hate Barney. Nathan, who is three and a half, has a fantastic imagination. He makes up his own words, will usually only answer to 'Carmen' or 'Super Big Kid,' and is all day long saying, "Mom, pretend that. . . " The other day he was crying and I asked why. He said it's because he doesn't have an imagination. I finally figured out that he thinks that since he can't travel into space like the kids on the Barney video he picked out last week his imagination is not functioning properly. We don't have cable in our house, maybe it's time to chuck the videos, too.

Poopy stoop is his word. He learned to say 'stupid' awhile back and would walk around the house when he was mad muttering 'stupid, stupid, stupid,' like some sort of anger-focusing mantra. Then he added 'poopy.' 'Poopy stupid,' became the curse of choice. We finally got through to him that he needed to quit using stupid all the time, so he quickly learned to say 'poopy stoop.' Of course, that is the favorite adult curse at our house now.

A few nights ago, Nathan and his brother, Alexander (five and a half) had their first ever game of tag with the neighborhood kids. They've had other, more obvious, milestones of leaving their babyhood behind; things like preschool and underwear and dental appointments. So why did this game of tag hit me right in the gut and make me feel like it's all going by too fast? Even their sister, Sophie, at thirteen months, was trying to play. She'd walk a little in their direction and then get distracted by tree leaves or grass blades.

Today Lex made the grocery list, "Sponge, notebook, 6 oz chocolate." We walked to the market and he read from his list, carried the basket and filled it up in order. When we got home he wrote me probably fifteen love notes with his new pink mini notebook. I told him he was going to use up all his paper and he said he loved me more than his new notebook. He tried tofu and said it was delicious. This is a huge step for the boy who eats maybe six different things. He sends email to his preschool teacher who moved to Arizona. He writes poems. I'll have to post some when I have them.

Written to Low, 'Things We Lost In the Fire'

posted by Jenijen | 12:04 AM comments(0)

I'm not going to press my luck.
Goodnight.
I think the hard drive is failing, if I'm not around for awhile that would be the reason. Hope I'm wrong.

Something new everyday

I think I learned how to do strike thru. Now I can baffle you with my crossed off to do lists. But now, I have to go get Willow. Why do they always wake her up?

I'm lucky

that he's my little brother and she's his girlfriend.

A couple of days ago I could tell that one of the snakes was going to shed, and I just noticed it did. Knowledge I never expected to possess.

The mama and baby dove are still in the back yard, away from the house and against a fence.

If you are baking cookies and the baking soda is lumpy and you don't smush it up before the kids measure it and dump it in, it will stay in little lumps even after being beaten by the kitchen aid mixer's butter paddle and your cookies will be flat, crispy, and chewy. If you always double the vanilla and 1 & 1/2 times the chocolate chips like we do, it won't matter so much. And if you decide to try and watch what you eat for a couple of weeks after seeing a photo of yourself in a tank top and wondering who that old grey-haired fat lady is with your husband and baby, then making a sandwich out of two of those cookies using peanut butter might just depress you. In my defense, I've never done that before and it was just the one. And also, yum.

Purty

I happened to look out the right window at the right time tonight. I hope that's an omen for other things that need to happen for us at the right time.

The mourning dove nest outside the sliding glass door looked quite sparse this morning. It was missing most of its dry grass messiness. Not great nest builders, those doves. Up until yesterday the mama was sitting on it, and I wasn't sure if she had eggs or babies. Today we discovered that she has a baby, which fell out of the nest. The pair spent the day snuggled up against the side of the house, and I kept a pretty constant watch for cats, bluejays, squirrels, possums and raccoons. We get all sorts around here, and have seen raccoons during the day more than once. I put a birdhouse that Lexy made awhile back near them. (When I called animal control later, she agreed that that was okay, but confirmed that I shouldn't do anything else.) I don't think they went into it, but by dusk they were gone.

I have a soft spot for mourning doves. I hope they do well.

I ought to go. It's only a matter of time before the computer shuts itself down and I want to read blogs before bed.

Baby Genius

When we sing to Willow, "old mac donald had a farm. . . " she says, "EEE III OOO!" It is so cute that I badger her about it all day and she often looks at me like she's bored. She has learned the power of the push and the loud NO. Farewell, sweet sweet baby. Snif. Hello troublemaker.

The boys have way too many possessions. That happy meal toy from 1999? Priceless. The broken (insert one of many things here) that Santa himself brought? Cannot under any circumstances be parted with. Ever.

So, their room is stuffed with a bunch of crap and I have been knocking myself out cleaning it up for them "one last time," for years. Finally we put about 2/3 of the stuff into big plastic bins and boxes and put it in the garage. What is left in their room they can manage alone. They clean their own room. Without me. This will give me a whole two or three extra days a month of time to do other things. Like clean their sisters' room or do the dishes. Every Friday they can exchange some of the stuff in their room for some of the things in the garage. It is a very good thing, not only becuase of the decreased mess, but now they will play with what they have more. Why didn't I do this a long time ago????

I've been wanting to subscribe to two magazines, The Sun and All Round, for many moons. I got an offer in the mail from each of them, and yay! if I finish my list of things to do today (on it is "send in subscriptions for Sun and All Round and call for Boomerang subscription"), we'll be subscribers. It's the little things.

Handsome boy

It's hard to get a good picture of Lexy because he's at the age where he always makes a goofy face. He's also really loud today and just woke up Willow from her nap. My computer time is now done.

Social weekend (shocking but true!)

Tomorrow afternoon we are going here to see Lila Downs. My cousin and his girlfriend are going to meet us, which is wonderful because we love to see them but rarely do. The woman performing with her sounds great, too. There was an article about her in the paper. I hope Willow lets me see the show!

Tonight we packed up the kids and some towels and sweatshirts and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and a big old Peter Max sheet that I used to sleep on when I was little and went to Capitola beach (only a forty minute drive --even on the weekend-- thanks to knowing the super secret way that bypasses highway 1 altogether) to eat supper and play. Nate didn't want to go, and wouldn't admit that it was fun until right before bed. We had a good time anyway, except I kept hearing myself gripe at the boys not to go too far into the surf because it was all cross-currenty and drop offish and I prefer they splash in the sort of surf that is mostly straight across and flatish. I'd post pictures, but the memory problem with the computer won't let me.

We didn't get to eat the pb&js or the chips because of the fucking seagulls who ripped into our grocery sack and stole them while we were not looking. I should have known, but I forgot. We saw about five pelicans fly overhead. They look so huge, like they are too big to fly. And they fly slow, with powerful flaps of their wings. Sometimes at that beach we see dolphins offshore, but today there were about twenty fishing boats anchored about a hundred yards (? I'm so bad at guessing distance) out. We ate crackers, carrots and oranges and then got ice cream. We didn't leave until nine, so the girls fell asleep in the car. The boys stayed up and had pizza with John at home, then a bath. I tidied up the kitchen, washed the towels and sandy clothes from tonight, mopped the floor, made the boys' bed. It was nice to see that when the girls are just a little bigger doing those things will not be so. very. very. difficult. Right now I find that I'm often in tears because it is so incredibly frustrating to not be able to do dishes since Willow climbs into the dishwasher or needs me elsewhere. Then when I want to cook, the sink is overflowing and I have to do all kinds of work just to drain pasta and sometimes (like Friday night) the boiling pasta water spills out of the colander balanced in the sink and burns my foot and I say the f word in front of my boys and then say the s word cause I said the f word in front of them and then I'm glad I didn't burn Willow, too, and, well, AHHHHHHHHHH! I just want to do the dishes. And I know that when Willow is too big to bug me while I do dishes I will feel sad about it. I'll look back on this time and gloss it over and long for it. It is hard right now, though, when I'm dealing with the daily reality of having four kids under age 8 without any gloss.

Willow is starting to talk. She says Daddy, Lexy, Natey, doggy, and copies other words, too. Our bedroom door sticks and makes a scraping sound when we open it. For her whole life, John has worked nights and she knew that around lunchtime when she heard that scrape that he was awake and she'd see him. Now he is up and out of the house before we wake up, so when she gets up she thinks he's here asleep. If I open or shut the door, she yells, "Daddy daddy daddy!!" and goes running all over the house looking for him. They're so cute together. She always wants to be with him, and he's so amazing with her. He even gives her his last bites of ice cream. I love my little family.

What? Huh?

The computer problem has a memory problem. We were made for each other. I wish I, too, could get rid of stuff or add to my brain to fix my memory deficit.

I had the oddest dream last night. (Feel free to skip to the next paragraph where I describe how I was insulted (!!) outside the grocery store the other day.) In the dream, I was in New York with Allison. She was taking me from where we were working to the part of the city I wanted to be in. I'm skipping lots of stuff, but the main part was that we ended up at a subway station. It was only a very wide flight of concrete steps, with the middle section of steps painted yellow. The yellow stairs were for people going down to the subway, and people came back up to street level on either side. It was dark, and there wasn't a platform or anything except the steps and a dark, dank, filthy, old, square shaped tunnel, also cement, leading into the ground at just a slight downward angle. It was too dark to even see the tracks. There wasn't a train yet, but I knew one was coming and that I did not want to get on it. I'm super claustrophobic. I am afraid to get boxes out from under the bed, even. The fact that I rode on a subway in Toronto was a BIG DEAL. Very big. So I asked her if we could leave and she said that we couldn't, it was too late. I asked her what they did if someone totally freaked out on the train, because I knew that I would, and she said that I'd just have to do it, that there was no other option. I was petrified and kept trying to figure out how to leave. Then I woke up.

Yesterday John and I put Willow in the stroller, which she loves to ride in now that she has mastered walking (smart girl!), and walked to the grocery store to get milk. A woman was watching Willow from afar and came to tell us how cute she was. She started out by saying that her eyes were so, so blue. They are. They're lovely, and I had her in an old denim shirt of Lexy's that is faded and really makes her eyes look purty. Anyway, the woman looked at John's eyes (sky blue) and then mine (brown) and told us about seven times how lucky we were that she got blue eyes. The woman had green eyes, and told us that her kids had brown (Oh, the horror!) and she repeated, again, how lucky we, not Willow, were that her eyes were blue. I was offended. I mean, really, she's telling me that my eyes are ugly and that Willow is a better person because she has blue eyes. I wanted to point that out to her, but sometimes it just isn't worth it and I secretly thought that because she was really skanky looking in her too-tight clothes and no bra, that she wouldn't be smart enough to get my point. Heh. I can be petty, too.

It was cool and windy here today. I love it. Tomorrow we are going to all go visit Lexy's former teacher. He was in her class for kindergarten and first grade. We *love* her. John is coming, too, which is good because a) I love to spend time with my husband, and b) our hostess is always pouring an oversized glass of wine with little fluffy girly decorations around the stem. I can't say no to that. Especially after the past few days of sleepless children and biting, biting, seven and a half year olds. "I didn't bite him that hard," he had the brass balls to say to me. They lost the planned afternoon at the park and two days of television. Our version, anyway, which is just videos and no cable. But that still gets his attention.

When the memory issues are solved, I'll post more pictures taken with our new little camera.

Finally

We finally have a digital camera. Yay! It isn't super fancy, but it's nice and I am impressed with what it can do. Now to get the computer to behave better so we can really put the camera to use. Today I got to work on the computer, the bathroom sink and the ice and water maker in the door of the fridge. Handywoman. That's me.

Tech support??

We're having some tech issues around here and all my attempts to post have been eaten. I'm trying to fix things, but since I don't know what I'm doing it may take awhile. See you shortly.

In the middle of checking my email,

Sophie came into the bedroom saying, "LOOKIT I BOOOTEFULL!"

I should have seen it coming.

She put her hands in her oatmeal at breakfast and was crusty up to her elbows.

I guess she likes the tactile kind of play.

About now I'm really happy we made the whale water scooper out of an old milk jug. Water was scooped. And scooped.

I don't know what she's so surly about.

Why yes, that did prompt a call to my mom!

See the goo. Appreciate the thickness of it.

Witness her teaching her little sister how to be evil.