November Rain

Holy Daughter dressed as Snoopy the Red Baron - Halloween night

Holy Daughter dressed as Ugly Betty - Halloween Day

What a busy month. Whew.

I haven't been blogging nor journaling nor writing much - just mostly handling what's in front of me and taking this time to be introspective. The daily grind of listening to economic and mortgage doom & gloom as yet more crumbling pillars of corporate society take their place in the ever-growing soup kitchen line and beg for change, not to mention reading of certain disillusioned voters who are already quick to blame Obama before he's even taken office ~ it's all made me want to tune out of the whole blame game.

My personal favorite though is the Palin lovers, whose continued devotion to her has this stomach bug of mine sticking around longer than normal. It just serves to remind that the only normal is of the snafu variety.

Creation Theory
I've been up to my assets in alligators with studying creativity this fall. The fine art of it as well as my place in it. More on that later. In the midst of all this creative thinking, I wrote a kid's book, which I plan to market here in the near future. Sung to the tune of this little bookie went to market. Wish me luck...and a Newbery Honor.

I've also been pretty busy this fall spearheading my Artist's Way group at church. Our 12-week journey is almost complete and it has gone really well. I gauge this success based on the fact that I have only had 3 drop out - one because she felt too young, and the other two because of work demands. Given the intense, psycho-therapeutic nature of this work, having only 3 drop out is rather amazing. The other nine ladies have proven to be very committed to the journey and we have become a very close-knit group of creative types.

My job, apart from keeping us on task and on time with our verbal sharing and insights, has been to come up with creative exercises during the second half of our sessions, based on whatever the chapter theme happened to be. And so, in the course of the past several weeks, I have schemed various activities ~ ranging from drawing our muses, to making shadow self tarot cards, to playing an art auction game, to making play-doh gifts ~ to this past week's activity for the theme of Self-Protection, which involved creating a recipe for creative living card and asked them to come back with all the necessary ingredients and a way-forward list of instructions for how they can begin to manifest this in their daily lives.

This was my art auction creation, Tutti Fruiti - I decided to buy her back.

Said recipe for creative living is not to be confused with the cutesy, sprinkle in a dash of joy and add a pinch of variety and spice crap that you see in vile, errr virile e-mails. These recipes are more abstract and methodical, and are very much personal statements that resonate with each individual "concerning all acts of initiative" and creativity.

I have a more general instruction list for living that I've created for myself but I've noticed - because I stare at it each day such that I'm reminded when I am or am not living my list - that I haven't been heeding the first rule on my personal instruction list (a.k.a. the holy grail, secret to my universe stuff that got thrown out with my placental matter but has since been reclaimed in the netherlands of interplanetary, most extraordinary lost and found).

My first rule is to breathe.

How many short shallow breaths can a person take before they finally have to stop and, in Cheech and Chong "oh wow, man" fashion, breathe in the big kahuna? It will be nice for time to tick slower this week. I love how Americans have carved out this entire week practically, where life comes to a virtual halt. People are remiss to schedule things on the Monday and Tuesday prior to Thanksgiving, or so I've noticed. And that's fine by me.

Many Happy Returns
Holy Son played in his last soccer game of the season and scored a goal. That was a big deal. He's usually good for one a season, but not always. He mostly plays defense and has yet to really hone his offensive skills. He's almost a foot taller than some of his teammates, so it's a different game watching him run those long strides of his across the field with the ball.

He's gearing up for his jazz band concert tonight ~ last week was orchestra (yes, he's both a jazz spaz and an orch dork). That means we scrap Irish Dance and Scouts and watch him be the bass guitar dude. And he is beginning to look like a dude. Scraggly, shaggy blondish hair that spends most of its time in his eyes. He likes to brush it forward. He thinks the look becomes him. I fantasize about getting the clippers out in the middle of the night and shaving it all off.

He turns 12 this week, and as usual, we have to ownplay-day the age-ay ing-thay in front of all his 13 year old friends. Even though he towers over all of them and runs circles around them socially. Middle schoolers amuse me. I'm at his school every day to pick him up so I get my fair share of seeing them in the action. He's mostly oblivious to all the groupies he has until an adult happens to point it out. Like his former International Studies teacher, who is fond of stopping me in the hallway and pointing out conspiratorially, how my son "always has girls around him. They follow him everywhere!"

But as I say, he's clueless to the attention. He has one particular girl that he likes. I saw her in the school play. She is exactly his "type: - tall, leggy, long blondish hair and is 12 going on 22. He asked her to the upcoming Snowflake dance and she's all excited. She wants them to dress matching - she'll wear a bright fuschia dress and she's hoping he'll wear a matching fuschia tie. I said welcome to the world of girls, buddy. He bought her a snowflake necklace and his all excited to give it to her that night. Age eleven and already a player.

Cheater, Cheater
Holy Daughter has her own drama. She's been hanging with a certain boy in class who is the son of one of the most senior elected officials in this state. They are just friends, of course, but the whole class teases them about their chumminess. He's very smitten with her, on account of her being an animated, fearless and captivating extrovert. And she's extremely amused by him. He confessed to her that he was going to vote for Obama, despite his father being a staunch Republican. And he admitted that he stuffed the ballot box with 11 dirty ballots during their class Halloween contest. She thought that was pretty funny. So did I. If his father only knew.

She had a meltdown last week and decided that she's just way too busy with too many extra-curricular activities. Mwah-ha-ha. My evil plan is working. I've been desperate to dump a couple of these for awhile now. Brownies will likely end this year. I'm not sure we'll carry on but we'll have to see how that goes. It's only once every couple of weeks and is right after school, so that one is no biggie. And soccer season is over now, thankfully. That one was 2-3 times a week, although we never did make both weekly practices. The problem with dropping something like soccer is that it's the only aerobic exercise kids that age get. Gym is only once a week for 1/2 an hour and they usually only end up doing lame games and activities.

Ballet is the big issue. She wants to drop it. She isn't enjoying it, mostly because it's so repetitive and her instructor, the studio owner, is always a no-show. Ballet is the one activity I'd like to see her hang onto for awhile longer. She's agreed to see this through until the Nutcracker performance is over and then in the new year, switch studios to a more challenging class and see how that goes.

But during her meltdown she confessed that she's cool with dropping Irish dance, and that tickles me. Irish dance requires insanely high leaps and kicks, neither of which she's been able to muster to a competitive degree. And competition is where it's at in Irish dancing, unfortunately. Not to mention that it's pricey and we're at that stage of having to invest in soft and hard shoes, both of which can be awfully expensive. So, I'm holding the vision that by the new year, Irish dancing will be a thing of the past in this house.

Pumpkin Eater
Time has flown since Canadian Thanksgiving. I'm so glad we're not doing the turkey and pie thing again. This year for Thanksgiving, we're heading to our church potluck. It's a great way to be in community with our 'fellow Americans' and best of all, have an opportunity to enjoy the fun and feast without having to deal with a huge kitchen mess.

I'm grateful for the time to relax a moment or two. It's been a hectic fall with little time to chill out and breathe. Big fat sigh.

Home, Home on the Range

So, we're in the new house - if you can call 30 years old new. It smells new with the fresh paint job it just had.

We've been moving things over in dribs and drabs, starting with the kids crap. We did a Clean Sweep with pristine daughter's room....emphasis on her pristine nature as diabolically opposed to her room's. We first thought of calling Haul Yer Junk to come in and suck out her toys and schtuff into the vortex of its pit. But ultimately, we ended up emptying out all her toys onto some tarps and blankets in our outdoor courtyard and separating them into the Junk, Donate, Keep and Sell piles.

I think we have an invisible critter in our courtyard though because at least a dozen times yesterday, I would mysteriously find that something that I had placed into the sell or donate pile would somehow end up back in Keep. Very strange. As were the stuffies I found my daughter sleeping with last night....all were eleventh hour salvages from the same outcast toy piles.

I tried to cut her some slack but not much because she is a Toys 'R Us outlet store waiting to happen. So it's not as though getting rid of a toy or two or five hundred is a hardship for her. And yet the tears flowed anyways. What if no one will love my (insert useless toy name here)? They will, honey, we'd assure her. They may even love it more....(sentence left dangling to infer that perhaps pay-it-forward child may only have 1o or less toys and may thus, be able to devote way more time, care and attention to the toy rediscovered in the Clean Sweep that had previously been buried in the bowels of her bedroom for God knows how many months).

The kids brought a couple of neighbor pals over (current, old place neighbors) to the new pad last night and they all sat in the hot tub. Which wasn't quite full. And I had no idea how to work it. But it was hot. And it was a tub. But it was not full nor bubbly. However, it seemed to appease their desires to sit in a hot tub. Mother of same neighbor children let the cat out of the bag last night though and I was none too impressed.

She called me over and commented how our 10-year old son had mentioned to her something about how peeing in our hot tub will cause the hot tub to shut down and necessitate a visit from the friendly, neighborhood repairman, an incident we all wish to avoid at all costs. So moral of the story? No peeing in the hot tub. That's what toilets are for.

But she thought perhaps he was serious (which he was - it was the story I was sticking to after all and I told it with my ultra-supremo straight face - the one that is de facto seriouso and which alleviates any/all doubts on matters from whether there is a supper policeman who shows up at the door to haul away children who don't finish their dinner, to what happens if you get caught picking your nose in public).

So she outs me publicly, by laughingly assuring her kids in front of mine that this was simply not true. And so I then had no choice but to chide and chastise her equally as publicly, by advising her that I didn't know what hot tub she had ever sat in, but this is how our particular hot tub works, said in my best nudge, nudge, wink, wink tone, and it literally will shut the motor down if it detects pee in the system. I then looked over at my son who was eagerly awaiting the verdict, and somehow managed to steadfastly hold his questioning gaze, thereby reassuring him that mom was not telling him a grand fib. This neighbor mom finally got it, but only sort of....because she then admitted that she prefers her kids to pee in the lake so she doesn't have to haul them out and run them to the washroom.

Too much information.

This is the same mom who thinks nothing of letting her snotty-nosed toddler run around with green boogers dangling from his nose. Which is fine if that sort of thing doesn't bother you. I happen to have a different tolerance threshold and tend to be the type that thinks nothing of wiping other kid's noses, if need be. And this is the same toddler who just projectile vomited all over our outdoor courtyard last week, scant millimeters away from an Afghani kilim carpet we are rather partial to. Thankfully, his mom had the good grace to come clean it up, hose it down and Lysol disinfect the heck out of it.

Anyways, long day short, we got through it but it was a painful process sorting through Polly Pocket pieces. Who the hell invented Polly Pocket? More to the point, I would like to meet a girl who keeps her Polly Pocket pieces together in one spot. Or clothes on her Barbies. Or wheels on her buses. Or feet on her Bratz dolls. Feetless Bratz dolls with minute waistlines, huge hips and monster eyes and lips freak me out.

The saga continues this week. Demolishing rooms...our closet, the kitchen and this office will be the next biggie events. We're making two-three loads a day over to the new haus and then these next two weekends, we'll do the big furniture loads. I won't be here the second weekend. I'll be in Oregon on the first annual SSBM blogger getaway with Becca, Tanya, Jeri, Christina (the Beast Mom herself), her sister, Grace, and her college roomie, Chris.

I didn't exactly plan our move to coincide with this Oregon coast girlie getaway but it would be a drag to have to cancel plans that have been almost a year in the making. So, I'm hoping we'll get the bulk of the move done, save for the bulky and heavy furniture, done prior to my exodus from the state. The only thing I'm good for when it comes to moving big furniture is either (a) getting in the way; or (b) making annoying suggestions on where said furniture should be placed in a room.

In between packing and moving, we're also furniture, appliance and window-blind shopping. We just bought a new Bosch washer and dryer. The appliance sales guy was a turd. Why do people, people who hate people...work in people-oriented industries? Gets me.
And our son starts summer school tomorrow. Which he's dreading, especially because he is now the proud dad of a Webkinz panda so he'll miss spending every waking moment with his new pet. Thanks, Brenda and Hollie, for fostering yet another cyber addiction for my children. Actually, it's perfectly good, safe, cyber fun. My daughter loves it. It's her first time really hanging on the computer and the games are perfectly geared to her age. She has a yorkshire terrier and a polar bear.

So that's my moving story and I'm sticking to it. I'll be counting back and forth trips for this, our first in-town move in a million years, just for fun. So I can write a book. How to Move in 83 Easy Trips.

In the Outhouse

Guten tag und velcum to das outhaus.

This may, for a time, feel like a place at the far reach of civilization - like a last known outpost or relief centre. The wind has been known to howl here on this stretch of barren land that surrounds the schmidt shack. And when it comes in slant as it's be known to, it whistles a weird song through the cracks of the barnwood, the open-air window, and the moon cut-out above the door; and sets the door flapping in its gusty coattails.

It's at odds with its natural surroundings, this little haus here on the prairie. This reality brings an eclectic assortment of critters who come sniffing around, looking for signs of life and death. But stop by occasionally and you'll see - it's really quite the in place to sit, sloth, purge, graffiti, and ratiocitate. Not necessarily in that order, of course.

Which is really just a quaint way of noting that if you hang around awhile, you'll begin to notice that schmidt is gonna happen here. You can be sure of it.

Because walls talk. Always have. Beyond the graffiti lives tales as agitated as poltergeists. Even in the quietest moments. And philosophical brilliance is born in such moments and in such places that seem to crop up in the middle of nowhere. Out of nothing.

This is a nice segue into what led me here to this little blight on the blog prairie. I had this other outhaus in the netherlands of the prairie regions but it was starting to get a little large and cluttered. And there were long, slow lines to get in the door and passwords to be whispered and it all got rather tedious.

An outhaus is as sacred a bit of profane space as there ever was. It needs to be a place where you can get in and out quick before anyone gets hurt. And I don't know about you, but my feeling on outhouses is simply this: if you're going to own one, you need to keep it clean. Simple. Organic.

So without further ado, I'll finish nailing the Welcome sign to the door go pick some wheat stalks and bundle some wild flowers for the window shelf vase.