Camera remote: $14.99.
Skill and patience required to take self-portraits with a toddler and roaming dog and a wish for sunspots: more than I have.
Adorability of my kid, anyway: a billion units. A billion units of adorbs.

When I was little my cousins lived right across the road from my house (<— as in the former, and the latter’s husband, and their little brother). They lived in the bottom between the creek and the road, and I lived on the hill above them. I spent a lot of my time at their house following my boycousins into treacherous situations and falling into – or willingly entering – the creek. I genuinely loved this kind of play, but in retrospect I wonder if I spent so much time with them to keep myself – and my freakishly long hair – away from Jessie and her Dreaded Caboodle. She ALWAYS wanted to “do my hair”. The closest I’d ever come to “doing my hair” was tucking it into my shirt so it didn’t get wound up in the back wheels of my big wheel (…ever again).

Anyway -

Oftentimes when I’d fall (/jump) into the creek, my aunt would put me in Doug’s dry clothes and I’d wear them home. This thrilled me to no end because then I got to wear – and keep – BOY UNDERWEAR. Constrained to the land of hearts, stars, mermaids, and pink, I lived for the motorcycles and GI Joes making their appearance in the laundry cycle. My parents let me wear them (thanks parents!) and I distinctly remember sporting the motorcycles one day in first grade – the same day my friend Joey showed up in a brand new puffy painted MTV denim jacket.

Anyway -

That kind of stuff – the day I walked into the kitchen with a golfball stuck down the front of my (Doug’s) GI Joe briefs and said “look Daddy, they have a pocket!!” – that’s kind of the epitome of my mentality as a child. I wanted to be a boy. They had more fun, easier clothes, better toys. I went through phases as a pre-K aged kid where I made everyone call me Kevin, and then Josh. I wanted (and got) Tonka construction toys instead of Barbies. I wanted (and got) my first pocket knife at age six. I wanted to wear boy underwear, flannel shirts, and converse. No pink. No dresses. And don’t ever touch my hair.

When Meggan and I became friends later in elementary school she was always trying desperately to fix my hair. “Please just let me fix your bangs! They look funny! They are falling out of their clips!” She was a girly girl and couldn’t fathom my tomboy ways. She hooked me up with her cousin Greg in fourth grade (ha!) She sighed (in a loving kind of way) when I showed up for the first day of fifth grade in brand new mini hiking boots that matched my dads, she in her bright white cheerleading shoes with the colored tabs that you can switch out to match your outfit (which was red and white… on our first day of fifth grade). She did not understand things like my rock collection, but loved me anyway. I did not understand things like curling irons, but I loved her anyway. She was the first one to notice and freak out any time I adopted any new little bitty femme habit.

So she, more than most of my friends, giggled hysterically and completely understood the disconnect when we showed up at her parents’ pizza shop on Saturday night with Hazel sporting the new shoes she’d picked out and suckered her grandpa into buying for her (my dad cares very much that his granddaughter is well-dressed and that her hair is combed… it’s kind of adorable, but very weird to me). Sometimes I don’t know where this kid came from.

Hazel is lucky to have an Aunt Meggan to school her in the ways of makeup-wearing, getting poker-straight hair to do anything but, and everything other girly thing under the sun.

Except nailpolish. I do love nailpolish. But usually only… brown. Brown glitter. :)

I brought you to the river to watch the fish swim by
and lay around that grassy bank and breathe in that blue sky
I brought you to these waters to see what you could see
the difference in the two worlds can’t help but frighten me…

- The Avett Brothers

Autumn has arrived… at least at my parents’ house, where trees started shedding their leaves and seed pods simply for Hazel’s amusement and collection, it seems. Time to listen to cool-weather music, button up, cut off all of my hemp bracelets until time to make more next summer.

…because of bowls. Mixing bowls, not the smoking kind.

It’s genetic. I blame my mother. She does mixing bowls. Her best friend does chairs.

Both of these things gave me near-death-experiences in goodwill this week. I spotted each one from far away when there was another customer equidistant from and approaching The Bowls in the opposite direction. In both cases the person wasn’t even looking at the same side of the aisle, nonetheless, I freaked out internally and had to make myself walk calmly towards the prize instead of making a mad dive to close the gap. My heart stopped beating for those few moments. I swear. I don’t want to end my lifetime record of No Broken Bones over a mixing bowl, but I might have some heart issues that need addressed.

On the left is a delicious green pyrex for $2.99. I want a set just like my Ma’s (it’ll make my cooking better, right?) and I already don’t have the right colors in the right sizes but that’s okay. The green bowl’s maiden voyage in its new life was whipping up some blueberry muffins and they already tasted better than any blueberry muffins I’ve ever made (i.e. more like Ma’s.)

On the right is a 49-cent stainless steel beauty that is going to be… if you can guess… perfectly in.every.single.way what I’ve been scouring thrift shops for all summer…

…Hazel’s kitchen sink! Yip yip!!

I daresay that, aside from some accessories that I can’t resist, I might actually pull of the entirely-thrifted-destashed-or-handmade-kitchen. So far so good in the construction department. I have thrifted or pilfered every single thing.

Our friend Eddie is leaving shortly for a Jesuit seminary, and he is allowed to bring ten books and ten CDs (and an ipod, but that’s beside the point). Since he told us this last week I’ve been fixated on my ten. I can’t even fathom ten books, because really, if you tell me I can have only ten books you’re really saying “you can choose three.”

But ten CDs – that I can do. Because it’s not forever. He can switch them out whenever he wants. So let’s just pretend. Pretend I’m going to be a Jesuit, because truly, if I had the required parts and was called to be a priest SURELY, if there is some rational god, I’d be a Jesuit (but not he icky conservative kind – I’d be the kind that gets arrested like it’s a bodily function).

Here are my ten. Right now. On the brink of autumn. These are not necessarily my ten most important or favorite albums of all time, just Ten For Now. For pretend seminary. Peace be with you.

Iron & Wine – The Creek Drank the Cradle
Paul Simon – Graceland
Neutral Milk Hotel – In the Aeroplane Over the Sea
Gillian Welch – (Time) The Revelator
Neil Young – Live at Massey Hall
Nick Drake – Five Leaves Left
Joanna Newsom – Milk-Eyed Mender
The Avett Brothers – The Gleam EP
Ryan Adams – Cold Roses
Bruce Springsteen – Nebraska

What are your ten?

Sometime shortly after we moved home last November I started noticing that Hazel played with her toys more if they were organized. I couldn’t just keep everything jumbled in a couple of open bins – she would ignore them unless all the blocks were together, yada yada (surely this is surprising no one – she is my child in SOME ways.) I started scouring goodwill and other places for some low shelves that were deep enough to work well for toys and found nothing. I suppose I could have built something but I would have just gotten very angry in the process, which was not a good thing to do during Shining Time up on this mountain. So after christmas when things were way on sale, I bought a set of these shelves in white and some fabric bins for them on the cheap.

I don’t even know how long I stood in target looking at them and feeling disgusted with what I was about to do, both because I was buying something I knew I could probably EVENTUALLY find used or make with some effort, AND they were boring. But whatever – I bought them.

And then I bought some spraypaint. And scrapbooking paper. And these wee adorable frames from the dollar bins and Michael’s. And ribbon. And I spent way too long obsessing over all of it. And I went home joyful about my big box-store purchases.

A week later we had an astounding thaw, and so one night after dark I put the garage door up, assembled the shelves, and started spraypainting them right at the edge of the rain pouring from the sky. The light was pitiful down there, and I didn’t even think about it, I just went to town with my petrol blue destashed from Erin, and had another new can waiting on deck. After about ten minutes of bliss I realized that some of the paint was beading up. I almost lost my mind. I left the whole thing in the garage and didn’t touch it again until… two days ago.

In the meantime I picked up a can of plastic primer for the cheap plastic-ey veneer – totally ingenious – and sanded off all of the bad paint. (Dear mouse sander, I love you forever.) Second paint attempt went on like a dream, I wrapped some ribbon around the bins, drew some labels and covered them in contact paper, then popped the (painted-to-match) mini frames on top. After the spraypaint was dry I cut the scrapbooking paper to fit the four cube openings that had backs, and after Hazel went to bed… I organized. Organizing might be more fun than spray painting. I just don’t know.

Either way – Hazel’s boring target toy shelves are no longer boring. And I only had one fit of anger.

Back in 2007 I posted this entry. I thought of it a couple of months ago when a flickr friend posted the insanely minimal contents of her own bag, and started daydreaming all over again about the polaroids-of-everything-in-women’s-bags project. I thought about how the contents of my own bag have evolved from Childless City Person to Country Mom. And looking through the comments on that post: Kelly no longer has braces and accessories, Jenn has also added babythings to her bag, so has Virginia, Kathy’s Leo has grown out of one of the allergies that required an epi pen, Jess has more kids and we never farkle anymore, Maggie has added two little girls’ things to her bag, godmama-Kelly has another kid (and another on the way) and no longer requires a map of New Jersey…

This also reminds me that last week I washed Hazel’s ergo carrier for the first time since we moved home. I don’t use it daily anymore – it mostly just rides around in our car waiting for my arms to be overloaded with packages going into the post office or something – and when I emptied the pocket there were a whole bunch of TTC transfers from the weeks before we left Toronto. I had to give myself a little “get a grip” peptalk before I threw them in the trash.

Anyway – here is my bag nowadays. An Etsy birthday bag – thanks Claire! I can fit tons of junk in it!

- changing pad, wetbag, cloth dipe, disposable dipe, wipes
- mini-magnadoodle
- little cloth case full of notebooks, drawing utensils, and stickers
- Hazel’s water bottle
- keys
- tiny cow
- Clif bar
- pouch of business cards
- 3 pens
- 3 lip products
- wee pot of lotion
- wallet
- zippy pouch full of painkillers, bandaids, dental floss, tiny sunscreen, hair things for both of us, etc.
- camera
- phone
- gum
- measuring tape (H kitchen plans and dimensions are in my phone – still hunting for some things I need)
- knitting
- moleskine planner

I usually also have: more Hazel snacks, a playsilk or two, a sunhat and sunglasses if we’ll be outside, and a bunch of receipts and gum wrappers and junk that I just happen to have cleaned out this week.

I usually do not have: that much child entertainment, but were in a restaurant the night before, and I only carry my knitting if I’m out and am going to be hanging out somewhere for awhile (we went to Angie’s after eating out).

Sorry about the formatting of that old post. Something happened in a server crash or transfer a few years ago. Every few weeks when I can’t sleep I’ll sit for half an hour or forty minutes and slowly go through tidying them up one at a time. It’s very satisfying when I’m feeling frazzled :)

Now YOU!

…I’d say crazy devil in-laws are a myth. Mine are awesome. I got to see every single one of them this week! Mikey and Andy (and Dave, Dallas, Clint and Walt) opened for Will Oldham on Monday night, so everyone descended on our town for some vis’tin (and babysitting so Angie and I could both go to the show – yay!)

Also, a whole little crew of people from my hometown came to see Mikey play.

Brain-bending things happened. I saw people I haven’t seen in four years (Claire!), I saw people that I have only been around in totally different contexts (most excitedly with the lovely attached to this arm), and almost every single one of my “worlds” was all mingled together in the same bar. I am very George Costanza about this happening.

I feel like I woke up on Tuesday morning in some alternate universe that looked exactly like the old one but was somehow different in microscopic ways that I can’t pinpoint. We thought Janet’s cell phone had gotten left behind in the old one, but really Hazel had just “put it away” in her puppet tub.

In New Universe I am somehow way more motivated to GET RID OF SHIT BECAUSE WE’RE MOVING IN FOUR WEEKS. Yeehaw.

Hazel pushed aside her “I don’t totally enjoy getting my hands dirty” attitude to make you some art :)