Art Appreciation

Ever since the Olympic games, logos have been catching my eye.  Some of them make total sense, but every now and then one catches me off guard and I wonder "Who had final approval and didn't see THAT?"  For example, we've all been privy to a joke or nine about the Trump/Pence logo.  I mean, that one kind of begs the question of intentionality.  The whole campaign honestly feels like it's one second short of a bad practical joke, so the slogan...Meh. 

But harder to explain the logo for a business specializing in treatment of addicted and binge eating disorders.  The logo, as one drives by, appears to be a whale surfacing with water spraying from the blow hole.    I have been assured by two passengers on separate drive-bys that it is in fact a woman standing at the top of a mountain, arms raised in victory,  and not a mammalian size reference, but I'm not convinced.  It's just so "there". 

And take the school crest that was emblazoned on a sweatshirt I stood behind the other day.  I kept pondering what the frilly bits were, and then I realized "I've seen that same layout in the obstetrician's office".  If you are going to use a shield design, perhaps reconsider the triangular shape with two sprays of *something* that really only look like fallopian tubes to me.  I can't unsee it.   And in the same way that a sport's team should consider the virility and fight embodied in their mascot, (because non of us is all that intimidated by the Fighting Doormouse, or the Raging Luna Moths), we don't want to be recognizable by the reproductive line-drawing on our letterhead or marching band banner.

So here's the thing.  The classic illusion of the two women.  I know they are both there, but once I've seen one, I always see it first.



Now I have these misviewed logos stuck in my brain.  Taking up useful space where something like my parent's mailing address could live permanently.  (See, I used to know the address, but then 911 address changes came into play, and now I have to look it up.  Every time.  True story.)  So until something else comes along to take it's place, these images roll around in my brain and I am reminded of a piece of good advice: "You only get one chance to make a good first impression."

Which brings me to this week in general.  My children are going back to school and I will meet my new students.  We get one chance to start on the right foot.  No matter what else I do this year, the first hello is what will set the tone.  No matter what my children go on to do, they get one initial chance to meet their  teacher.  As a parent, I get one chance to open a relationship with the classroom teacher, although many opportunities to tend and nurture it.  Our first meeting determines how safe we feel asking questions and having input into their classrooms, and they into our homework habits.

This is big stuff.  I can only hope that at the end of the day, none of us are left scratching our heads and wondering "What WAS that?  Did it look like a surfacing whale to you?"

Much love to all of my teacher families out there.  This is our Superbowl.  Minus the advertising premium and the cheerleaders in perfect peppy unison.  I know many of you will be up until the wee hours the night before, prepping your room and tending your anxious, jittery, brains and bellies.  I know that first day outfits are being chosen and reconsidered in an effort to start out looking and feeling smart.  And if you are like me, the siren song of 17cent notebooks and 50 cent crayons has lured you in more than once.  Weekly.  (Damn you Walmart!)

Good luck to all of you, teachers, parents, students, bus drivers, cafeteria crew.   And encourage at least one person you know to go into graphic design.  Because honestly?  It appears they could use the help.

Let's Get This Party Started!

When your two year old requests a "fandindingo cake" (right after you intrepret that she wants "flamingo"), you get busy making one for her third birthday. 

This inevitably leads, as all roads do, to Pinterest.

Which leads, as one might imagine, to a LOT, (seriously you guys), a LOT of rolled fondant. And sculpting with rice krispies, and the frightened realization that there is no way...really none...to make a flamingo beak that will not send your husband into fits of juvenile hysteria.  

Which at the end of the day leads to a freezer holding the chilling carcass of a fadingo and the disembodied neck and head portion lying in frosty repose on the shelf above, supported by a bag of peas.  And of course, lots of opportunities to shout "Don't open that door!"

However, in a fit of crazed over enthusiasm, you have also committed to making danfingo masks too.

  
If the sight of fondant beaks had the Mr. in fits, the notion of donning a mask on his own face, complete with slightly ding-dongular floppy beak has him in near paralysis.   Cannot. Catch. His. Breath.

And in this world of one size fits none, each glamfingo beak is different.  Color.  Size.  Position.   This is really and truly a challenge for him, because every time I hold one up for inspection upon completion, it begins all over again.  "That looks...*snort*..really..*HA*..good job...really, really good.  *snort*"

And there you have it folks. I don't feel I need to say anymore do I?  

So years from now, when my youngest asks "Why would you do that to me?"  Please remind her,  she asked for it and I tried to make her little dream come true.    

And that my friends, is why I can never go to the zoo with my husband again either.  He's scarred for life.

Saving My World, One Fruit At A Time

In the same way that a trip to Walmart almost always forces me to question my life's decisions, as in "Do I need this in bulk?" and "Why haven't I had pork rinds before?",  lately I find myself  yearning for a small farm. Growing my own food.  A fully stocked root cellar.  I feel the need to process something in a hot water bath on a daily basis.

This may or may not relate to my sense that the world is on it's way to hell in a handbasket, but I digress.

It starts every season when there are two simultaneous occurrences. First, harvest season is upon us, and while here at home our garden is wearing the sad cloak of a too hot, too dry summer, the farm stands are bursting with things that cry out for saving for a winter night.  And second, school vacation has reached its apex and I am  filled with the sense that winter is not far behind with its long nights, monochromatic color scheme, and the pace of our life will once again be frenetic.  Our meals will once again come about through luck and happenstance rather than  careful thought and preparation.  We will be fed, but without the care that comes during full-on farming season in the Northeast.

My grandparents come from farming backgrounds.  Hard lives, hardscrabble times, and few luxuries.  Growing up, in admittedly less trying and more comfortable times, my grandmother taught my mother to can, and she, in turn, taught me.  As a teen, I canned alongside my grandmother.  Peaches.  Pears.  Tomatoes.  Beans.  Pickles.  In her basement was a fully stocked pantry of canned goods, groaning with summer spoils, and a feast for the eyes when one ventured into the clanking darkness in December or January to retrieve a jar of pure joy.

The shelves in the root cellar were such a treasure that long after my grandmother passed away, the family wouldn't open the last jars of peaches and pickles.  As long as we had them, we hadn't lost that moment.  That experience.  Sadly, over time, they become lost to all of us due to time and the increasing risk of botulism as time ticked onward.

This week I made raspberry currant jam with my children.  Small batch doesn't even begin to describe the scope of my "putting food by".  Five pints.  But my children glow with the pride of having made something.  They keep making lists of people to give this treasure to.  And it is a treasure.  It is history and love and forethought all in one little glass jar.

In the same manner, my children perused the garden last night and asked if there is anything else to can.  At the moment, there isn't, but I reminded them of the pesto we have in the freezer that we made earlier in the season.  The strawberry and raspberry jam in the pantry.  And, if the season and time cooperate, the applesauce and tomato sauce that will soon find their way to a jar with a snappy little label in the coming weeks.

So it really comes as no surprise that as we drove today, the readers in the car noted a sign that boasted PYO blueberries and peaches.  In a flash of nostalgia, I remember standing at the sink with my grandma, dropping peaches into a bath of boiling water and then submerging them in an ice water tub, all to the end of being able to rub the skin off in a nearly complete sheet and commentary on their rather anatomical appearance.  Slicing them into a mason jar, spooning syrup over them and setting them to process.  Yes, today we will can peaches.

But, as many things nostalgic go, we arrive at the stand to find that there are small boxes of peaches at a preposterous price.  Surely this was the price for the labor done for you?  We were here, in slightly rainy weather to "PYO".  Alas, the woman at the stand said, in a slightly weary voice that resonated with "This is the 500th time I have said this today..." that s a result of the summer weather we have had, there are no peaches to be picked in New England.  These peaches had been brought up from, (and here she added a slight shudder), Pennsylvania.

"You may want to reconsider the "Pick Your Own" sign at the end of the drive."  I offered, I thought helpfully.

"It's the sign from last year.  We didn't have paint to get rid of the PYO.  Do you want to pick blueberries instead?"

Actually, I had very little interest in replacing peaches with blueberries.

"Or perhaps you would like to pet the goats?"  Yes, I'm certain that will lend my sugar syrup a little je ne sais quois in place of the peaches.  I'd like to say that I refused the peaches on the basis of regionally procuring my food, but the reality is that I refuse to pay roughly two dollars per peach, in order to labor over them and can them, bringing the cost per bite to somewhere near minimum wage.

And so, we returned home without peaches.  And we made jam nonetheless with the plums that I bought upon request of my children, but which have sat untouched once the battle was won.  Plum preserves with vanilla bean.  ( Please note, I feel the need to procure a great deal more plums in the near future. ) Even if they do come from Pennsylvania.  Or even *gasp* New Jersey.

Just Wait A Martha Minute

I call a timeout.  I'm flipping through a magazine and there is modern-day Superwoman with her perfectly pressed clothing and her pitcher of orange juice.  The kids, so evenly spaced they look like a picket fence surround the table beaming and clearly enthralled with whatever masterpeice she is about to put down on the table.  But wait, let's not be sexist or parentist, or whatever...Dad is actually friskily trotting to the table with a platter of pancakes and a crstal decanter of syrup, (probably infused with some little known herb that creates perfect children is my guess).  But here is where the actual call of "y una mierda!" comes into play....There is a vase of flowers in the middle of the table.  Nope.  I may be led to believe you got up at the crack of dawn to put together a breakfast buffet for your impeccable family and ironed your clothing just to dish up their nutritious meal, but I don't for one Martha Minute believe the flowers sat there unmolested.  Pod people!  Robots perhaps.  But not children.

Now contrast this with my reality.  I have items of clothing I have not worn in TWO YEARS because I cannot iron them.  Despite a recent statement implying  that it was assumed I don't own an iron, I do own one.  I know where it is.  I just haven't got the five minutes it takes to do it.  Okay so my wardrobe is not all that natty lately.  I can live with that.  If I'm coming to your wedding, I will drug the children and iron.

The kids in my house are too far apart to like each other all the time, and too close together to be helpful to one another.  The only pickets are in our backyard and even those are poorly spaced.  Unless there is rum in the banana bread, they are never beaming with anticipatory glee as meal time descends.  Two often look like they are preparing to be waterboarded, and one is actually gagging like a cast member on Survivor.

And this morning, in the span of time it took to take muffins, Mr. Unscripted disappeared next door to cut down a tree.  Using the car.  Yup, you read that right.  The car that I get grief for parking too close to shopping carts and cart corrals is being used as a tether point for a tree in the process of being less upright and more "relaxed and in repose" as we speak.  So there is no frisky prep of breakfast  "a Deux" this morning in this household.  And those beaming children of mine?  Well , they managed to both encrust themselves in mud while being "supervised" outdoors, as well as in one case, befoul themselves.  Glory be!  

Pass that juice Darling won't you?  And be a dear and dabble a little spirits in there for me?

And back to the flowers.  When was the last time flowers sat anywhere in my house undisturbed? I hearken back to ten years ago.  In the meantime, any and all flowers have been part of the collateral damage.  Within seconds of their landing, someone has pulled out their favorite, tried to add more water, or move it to another location, (often the edge of the table or as close to an important document as possible.) 

And the final quote of the magazine interview reeled me back in..."I just like to use unconventional colors to make my room pop.  I like the unusual and unexpected."   Me too sister.  Me too.  So please, try not to sit on the most recent installment of Mount Washmore in the wingback, we're going for avante garde.  And the Rorschach  that is my dining room rug?  That is my nod to the unconventional...dinner and a diagnosis.  And finally, the flowers?  I'm not even bothering with faux floral at this point.  Come with me to my phone, I'll show you a picture of some flowers that I saw once on a glorious three hour trip without my children.  Try to ignore my wrinkled and out of date clothing.

Velociraptors On Vacation

My brain is broken. 

 I both want summer to be here now, (as in right now!), and am filled with anticipatory dread about keeping these velociraptors,  (that I have given birth to), busy.   This is the first summer when everyone is going into the summer testy and irritable.  And it has gone on long enough that I don't even know if liberal applications of increased sleep, watermelon, Popsicles and water will help.

I am filled with feels.

This was yesterday afternoon.  I left work and flew to the local dollar store to buy a kiddie pool.  Rather than schlepp the entire pool into the store, I looked for a tag to take in to the cashier.  I was greeted at the register with eye rolling for not bringing in the whole pool.  Mind you, I was buying the "BIG" pool, not the one that you can serve salsa in on graduation weekend.  So, yes, why don't I bring in this monstrosity.  Wrestle it over your display of festive charcoal and lighter fluid and mardi gras beads and try to somehow get it facing you so that you scan the tag I brought in to you in the first place.  And then balance it, half on my head, while I attempt to pay you for it.

I wrestle the pool into the back of my sizeable vehicle, folded somewhat loosely into a taco shape as that was the only available option.  Drive home and fling it into the yard and fill it.  Race to pick the v-raptors up with "Coolest afternoon ever...Thanks Mom!" in my brain.

For the entire ride home there was complaint about whom would get in first.  Whom was big enough.  Whom might be too big.  Whom might accidentally wee in the pool.  Why we couldn't just go somewhere with a "Real Pool"....And here is a lesson for any child reading this over a parent's shoulder.  Choose your timing wisely.  You may not want to drop that last line in the car with your parent when the outside temp and air quality is equal to the internal temp of your parent.  You may not want to drop that line when your parent is confined in a car with you while  a construction crew rolls pavement flat.  You may want to remember that your five minute ride home just became a twenty minute ride home by virtue of road construction and just stifle the urge to be nasty.

At home we skip to the children sheathed in bathing attire and sunscreen.  Two of the three are in the pool.  There is room for at least two more.  I only need one to be able to get in.  While I am not a math devotee by nature, I can say honestly, this equation was seemingly simple.  Just get into the blessed pool and swim in the space designed for you and your imaginary sibling.   The one that you are never, ever in a million years going to have.  Because this.  Right here.  This moment.

But no.  Cue the "She's touching me!" chorus.  Cue the Mama losing her hot and sweaty patience and aborting the kickoff to summer weekend and sending all three children into the house dripping and shocked that pool time is over.  Cue the sniveling whimpering best exemplified in an old Bill Cosby sketch.
 

 Cue the Mama cradling a glass of precious wine and her last stitch of precious sanity.  Now sniveling a bit herself.  Counting the days this weekend when she will be called on to keep separate these v-raptors.  Counting how many precious days of school there are left and how many summer camps one can afford this year.  Contemplating when, exactly, she lost the reins and her mind.

Cue the Mama hoping that while bedtime is predictably going to be a fright, these raptors will wake up as the fluffy and evolved chicks they typically are.  And that some magic will occur in the a.m. leaving them kind and compliant.

And so I tip my hat to you homeschooling parents for whom Monday is just the day after Sunday.  I tip my hat to my paternal grandmother and her eight children.  I tip my hat to those who manage to grocery shop with multiple children without looking like a small explosion is about to happen.   Or has happened.  Or is destined to happen again.  To those who can actually pull this off without appearing to have lost your ever loving mind.