Archive for the ‘Family Adventures’ Category
I know, I know, I go dark for almost two weeks and then suddenly, what, four posts in one day. But if there’s anything I’ve learned in (ye gods) nine years and eleven months of blogging, it’s: if you have something to write, write it, and if you don’t, don’t sweat it. And following a related-links rabbit trail on the Huck post this morning led me through many moments I’m glad I chronicled. So here’s an entry for the memory vault.
Of course the main reason for my silence has been my pile of Cybils reading, as we’re rapidly approaching The Big Discussion right after Christmas. I gave up maintaining my sidebar and Goodreads reading logs weeks ago, but after the madness is over I’ll use my Cybils log to catch up. If you are stuck for book choices I can make suggestions, boy howdy.
(I love this committee. It’s so good for mah brain to consume a megadose of YA fiction every couple of years. And my fellow panelists are so darn smart. It’s the book club of my dreams—fierce but fleeting.)
The other occupier of my time has been a glorious stream of company. 🙂 ’Tis the season for visits from college friends. We had Kristen and her family for Thanksgiving (Krissy, did you get any good pix? Mine, not so much) and then a long-awaited, unremittingly delightful week with my friends Ron and Larry from Portland. I got to show them Balboa Park (the best part of San Diego) not once but twice: two long lovely afternoons there roaming through gardens and museums. One day with kids and one day without. Beanie and Rilla came with us to the SD Museum of Art, where the “Gauguin to Warhol” exhibit wowed us. I wasn’t surprised to be choked up by seeing a Frida Kahlo up close (Self Portrait with Monkey), but I didn’t expect the Jackson Pollock to move me the way it did. The scope of the thing, a whole massive wall of paint crammed with small stories.
Soon we’ll have my parents here, and Jane finished finals yesterday (with a paper on Prufrock, color me proud) and will be headed home in a few days. Fortunately she wasn’t planning on taking the train home today! Amtrak had to cancel the coastal train due to this crazy storm. Water, finally! More than this parched land can handle. Much worse in LA than here. We’re cozying up at home for now.
The other notable thing about our December is, of course, that it’s our biggest birthday month. So before I pour in a bunch of photos from Instagram and elsewhere these past few weeks, I’ll just leave you with this: Wonderboy is eleven now. Eleven!
before the rain
and during
genius at work: the making of the annual grasshopper pie
Rilla’s Stampy Longnose paper dolls
shockingly, this did not end in a trip to the emergency room
Museum of Man, Balboa Park
the mischief corner
“Roots + history,” swiped from Larry’s Instagram
impossible yet true
Our insanely busy summer is winding down, and soon we’ll be back to just regular busy. Jane took the week off her internship because she landed a short-term gig at a community college bookstore—the very college at which Rose is now taking a Spanish class, though the store is not on campus. Nearby, though, and Scott’s and my taxi powers have not been, er, overtaxed. (Ba dum bump.) And only three doctor visits in the past two weeks: one long scheduled, one unanticipated, and one follow-up. Considering the records we set earlier in the summer, this tally is positively yawnworthy.
(I just peeked at next week’s calendar, and there are NO. APPOINTMENTS. SCHEDULED. Which means somebody will probably break an arm.)
(Not funny, Lissa.)
With Wonderboy back in school and Rose uttering heretofore unuttered phrases like “Here’s my syllabus if you want to take a look” and “I finished my homework” (!), we find ourselves comfortably returning to our high-tide rhythms—with a few innovations this year. I’ve marked out blocks of time (cleverly called Block 1 and Block 2, which has my inner Anne Shirley rolling her eyes in disgust) to focus on Rose and Beanie (1) or Huck and Rilla (2) with some planning and deliberation. That is, I want to make sure we get to the Fun Stuff and the Important Stuff, and I’ve set aside time for the purpose. Four nice chunks of Block 1 and three of Block 2 each week, tucked into specific corners of the day.
Today’s our third day, and so far I’m tickled pink. Yesterday afternoon ended with Huck and Rilla literally climbing on top of me, chanting “More Block 2! More Block 2!” One excellent development is that Rilla and I now have a dedicated time to work on art projects. She picked this toucan painting to start with, and to my amusement I was not merely expected to facilitate her efforts: I was required to undertake a painting of my own. Our works are coming along nicely. Today we put in the skies.
Also chalked in on the schedule is a regular park visit, an extremely important addition in the eyes of my younger children. Huck and Rilla anticipated today’s outing all week long. Finally the appointed hour arrived—and thirty seconds after hitting the playground, all three of us melted into puddles from the fierce heat. Cue general despondency. In times like this, there’s only one thing to be done: find a shady nook under the fringe of pine trees and build ourselves a Roxaboxen. We each made our own little round houses with a nice path connecting them. We’re all in suspense to see what will be left of our realm next week.
Oh sure, I can write the date, but that doesn’t mean I can believe it. I’d have laid money we weren’t past the 6th or 7th yet. Blink. WB goes back to school on Thursday (!) and Rose starts a Spanish class at the community college next week (!!). I will probably wake up tomorrow and discover that Huck has enrolled in graduate school.
On the forums for my Phone Photography class, someone (possibly my friend Stephanie Elms?) recommended an app called Timehop that, once connected to your various social media accounts, will compile for you each day a look back at what you posted on this date in years past. Thus it was that I discovered today is four years since we (sans Scott) visited Rocky Ridge Farm, where Laura Ingalls Wilder wrote all her books.
In which we continue the family tradition of being unable to all smile for a photo simultaneously, unless Scott is standing behind the photographer working his magic.
It has been a BIG four years. Three of those girls are taller than I now, and that chubby little side of beef is a long, lean boy. There’s a lot less pink in the laundry these days (nearly all of it Rilla’s).
***
Here’s what we did this weekend: I was asked to be on a panel at WinkieCon, an annual celebration of the Oz books, which I grew up loving as wildly as I did Little House. You can imagine my delight, then, at encountering none other than Ozma herself.
Is that not the most incredible costume? She nailed it perfectly. In addition to being a talented costumer, Natalie makes wonderful jewelry and art.
And that’s not all. My young Polychrome was tickled to meet this fellow:
After the “Playing in Someone Else’s Sandbox” panel there was a booksigning for the authors (Edward Einhorn, Caroline Spector, and me). Look who kept me company at the table!
The convention was a delight for me and my girls, especially Miss Rilla, who dove into a ribbon-hunting quest with considerable verve. She had to seek out attendees with Doctor Who “Companion” ribbons on their badges and ask them to pose for a quick photo; for every five Companion photos she brought back to the game table, she earned a new ribbon for her own badge—starting with Dalek and working her way up through several levels, past Time Lord to a Companion badge of her own. She made a lot of friends that day, let me tell you. 🙂
One of the highlights of the convention was—I can hardly tell you how fluttery I felt, walking into this room—a collection of Judy Garland’s costumes. Meet Me in St. Louis, The Harvey Girls, Easter Parade—so many treasures there. And we met Judy’s son. Such a nice man. It was quite a day.
If you ever get a chance to go to an Oz convention (especially Winkie Con, which is such a class act), I highly recommend it. Fascinating people, gorgeous books and costumes and handmade wares, really interesting panels—Jane particularly enjoyed “Oz and the American Musical,” which I wish I’d attended myself—and all in a venue MUCH less crowded and overwhelming than, say, Comic-Con. Many thanks to Eric Shanower for the invitation to speak on the panel.
I’m wiped out. 🙂
Chris Gugliotti of Thicklebit fame
Lunch with Jock
Zander and Scott pretending they have a mean bone in their bodies
Entertaining ourselves with selfies while waiting for Stampylongnose to come onstage
The girls’ turn
Couldn’t leave this guy out
He’s finally here!
Back at Chris’s table, and this time we remembered to get a group pic
Whew, time to relax
And when I say “upon me,” I mean sitting on me in a squashing manner, because that’s what’s on the calendar today. So far, this has been a summer exceedingly full of running around.
Huck’s poor infected finger had been doing better, so it seemed, after he started antibiotics the week before last. By this weekend the antibiotics were done and the infection most certainly was not. Again I’ll spare you the ugly details. Of course it was a holiday weekend. We spoke to the on-call doctor at our practice on Saturday and he instructed us to take Huck to the ER at Children’s.
BEFORE
AFTER
A dose of Versed, several shots of Lidocaine, and one fingernail-removal later, and I had a very stoned little boy waving his mummified hand in immense delight, inquiring of everyone who passed: “Why can’t I feeeeeeel it?”
Happy to report the finger is looking MUCH better this morning. Healing at last, I think. And yes, the irony of the On Tide Mill Lane parallel is not lost on me. Very happy my boy’s infected finger occurred in 2014, not 1814.
Huck has an infected finger. I’ll spare you the gory details. Suffice it to say they’re gory, and I’ve added a new and entirely unwanted skill (pus drainage) to my maternal repertoire. We spent much of yesterday at the doctor, he’s now on antibiotics, and, proving there’s lemonade to be made even from a festering lemon, the two of us got to sit cuddled up until midnight watching Minecraft videos together. If I’m a little punchy today, you’ll understand.
Did manage to squeeze in some fun yesterday before the unfortunate appendage went from alarming to horrific: a bit of geocaching with the younger three at a lovely park we don’t visit often. At least, the first cache was at the park; the second one was at the dead end of a neighborhood street a couple of blocks away, a somewhat grimier location than expected. To Huck’s disgruntlement I wouldn’t let him touch anything, which means Rilla got the fun of the cache grab. WB doesn’t care who makes the find as long as he gets his turn at holding the phone/compass.
Today was piano and repaired hearing-aid fetching (happy is its owner, who can hear again) and finger-soaking and general collapsing, and nary a book did we read. But if you need to know how to lure zombies into an iron golem trap, Huck and I are your man.
Rose put up some NO TRESPASSING signs outside her house in the Minecraft world the kids and I share. My favorite was the addendum: NONE OF THIS NONSENSE.
Well, of course I couldn’t resist a throwdown like that. A LITTLE NONSENSE NOW AND THEN, I wrote back, when she wasn’t looking, IS RELISHED BY THE WISEST MEN.
And her reply, proving the student has surpassed the teacher: I AM NO MAN.
That’s my girl.
A dear old friend, two lively girls, a lovely gray day, beach frisbee, sand sculptures, geocaching, Dippin Dots: pretty much a perfect day.
There’s a mysterious world under the pier.
Scenes from our Christmas Day…
We took a drive north to Julian and stopped off to wave hello to the camels—an occasional tradition ever since the time shortly after we moved to California when we were enjoying a country drive and eight-year-old Rose exclaimed, “I just saw a camel!” We all thought it must have been a cow or a horse, but a rather indignant (and who wouldn’t be, accused of confusing camels with cows?) Rose insisted she knew a camel when she saw one. A few yards later, a large sign proclaimed OASIS CAMEL DAIRY. We apologized to Rose for our skepticism, turned the car around, and gawked. And now we go back every couple of years to gawk anew.
While we were there I took about fifty pictures of the six kids balancing on an old rail. Seemed an apt representation of our lives: precariously balanced, a bit off-kilter, and full of laughter.
Among Rilla’s presents from my parents was an adorable sewing kit. Pre-cut felt animal shapes for her to stitch and stuff, plus loads of embellishments. She worked all Christmas evening on this button-eyed elephant.
Not pictured: the moment Huck dazzled us with a sudden leap into real reading! First there was the “DO NOT BLOCK HORSE TRAIL” sign in the roadside pulloff where we were, in fact, blocking the horse trail while hastily scooping a carsick Rilla out of the minivan. (Too late.) Then, back at home, Rose was playing her new Wii game with the dialogue set to Japanese (verbal) with English subtitles. And Huck sat there and read the subtitles out loud. So that’s #6 over the bridge. What a journey!
and during
