Bleeding and covered in paint

It is 10 o'clock and I am bound for bed so I can get up at the crack of dawn (actually well before dawn even thinks of cracking) and put in a few hours of work so I can spend the remainder of the day with the Bumble Bean.  This evening I tried very hard to get through my list of all the things I need to do to be ready for Christmas.  I tried very hard to give a damn about Christmas and my list. 

I added "taste test Lemon Drop Martini recipes" so I could cross it off the list because I was going to do that while I "made shopping list for Christmas food."  While attempting to open the nip of Limoncello, I cut up my hand, but no matter, the alcohol content of  the martini soon made everything better.

I decided to cross off the entry for "wrap Christmas presents" because the Big Bad Bean is right that it is a shameful waste of resources...including my time.  The Bumble Bean's presents are in plastic grocery bags inside a huge box.  Works for me.  And I know he won't care.

Then, even though it wasn't on the list and I was too lazy to add it just to cross it off again, I decided that I would paint the little wooden hinged snake I got the Bumble "just because" not for Christmas.  With two tiny tiny containers of paint and a brush the size of a toothpick, I managed to get it all over my hands and some on face.  Some spark of brilliance, possibly due to the taste testing, led me to paint both the top and the bottom of the snake.  I'm hoping it will not permanently adhere to the table as it dries. 

"Send Christmas email invitation" will have to wait for tomorrow so my recent insanity paired with the dutiful recipe-tasting doesn't cause me to make some incredibly stupid and embarrassing error in the email, like the wrong date for Christmas or the wrong address.  Considering  the frequency with which I make these kinds of mistakes, you'd think I wouldn't bother to feel embarrassed any more.  Perhaps I'll add that to the list so I can keep crossing it off: "practice not feeling embarrassed when doing stupid things."

Felix the Fractal Faced Bug

A friend of mine, who I don't know nearly as well as I would like to, recently wrote to tell me that she is away on an extended basis because her mother has been diagnosed with cancer.  I don't know how to respond to that.  Do I tell her that my Mom died of cancer?  Do I tell her how I felt when my Mom was diagnosed?  I wanted to fight...absolutely everyone...and though I like to think I have grown since then, I still feel my fists curling and rage welling and tears spilling, wanting to punch the doctors and nurses and social workers and second husband who just handed in their dicks at the door and gave up since it was cancer and there was nothing left to do really except to make sure that whatever time she had left was as unpleasant and humiliating as possible.

Somehow that doesn't seem terribly supportive.

On the other hand, I would feel like a fraud if I were to say something along the lines that it's great that they caught it early! It's great that it's post menopause breast cancer, the best cancer to have after prostate (which she isn't qualified for) and colon!  Because of course it's cancer and cancer kills.  Unless you die of something else first.

So this is what I have instead:
Once upon a time, not so long ago, there was a beetle named Felix.  Felix was a very special sort of beetle because he had a very special mouth: it was infinitely large.  This is not a nice way of saying that Felix was loud, because he wasn't loud.   He was very quiet.  He was very quiet because he did not dare to open his mouth.  When your mouth is infinitely large, you must be very careful to make sure you don't swallow the world.  Poor Felix.

Berg, the non-epitaph

The Berg kitty almost died this morning.  While he was trying very hard to choke himself to death on a piece of plastic pilfered from the trash, I realized that while I can't ever define what exactly it is that he adds to our lives, I would be sorry if he died.  It would be appropriate if he died due to his own plastic munching stupidity.  I wouldn't be sorry to lose the vomiting or the tripping me up to get more food once he has hurled on the Bean's toys or even the truly aggravating way he has of attacking my feet when I have any kind of Traditional Chinese Medicine on them.  I wouldn't miss him drooling on me or "petting" me with all claws extended.  I wouldn't miss him darting through any door that opens (this includes the oven!) or the way he eats any plastic we leave around, including the shower curtain.

Hmm.  What would I miss?  I would miss his fuzzy goofy soppiness and his habit of sitting on the crack of the freezer door so he falls out when I go to get ice.  I would miss him carrying the bean's toys around in his mouth and singing at great volume.  I would miss booting him from the changing table when it's time to change the Bean.  I would miss the way he chews on his feet when he has been around catnip.  He actually is quite a nice lap kitty if you can convince him to settle down, not be all wiggly and ecstatic, and not drool on you.  He'd be an even nicer lap kitty if he would groom himself from time to time.

Anyhoo, what ever he adds to my life I would miss it if he died, so I'm glad he didn't choke to death this morning before I had even had my coffee.  Now I just hope that the bloody groove he made in his esophagus doesn't get infected.

Insomnia and no heat

It's 4 a.m.  What am I doing awake?  I got up at two, half asleep, to pee.  I crawled back into bed all warm and cozy and became progressively more and more awake.  The Bumble Bean came to snuggle and sleeping Bean snuggles usually have a hugely somnolent effect.  Not this morning!  Bing!  I am not only wide awake but thinking about work.  What a waste this insomnia is. 

Also, I am cold.  Our heat is not working again.  This time it is not because I blew up the boiler in a pregnancy induced haze of bad judgement.  This time it because of something called a Limit Control Switch which may be a valve rather than a switch and which needs a plumber to do something about.  We finally discovered this after having the heating guy come (who by the way should have been a plumber) and giving the Big Bad Bean a ridiculous song and dance about the boiler being fine (I'll accept that) but the problem with system actually being the air pressure release valve on one radiator in the kitchen.  Pshaw!  However, radiators are not the province of the Big Bad Bean (who is actually in charge of Zombie Destruction) and he dutifully recorded this and told me later.

So, if the radiator is fine, it must be the thermostat.  I don't know much about thermostats.  Quick, look it up.  Hmm.  Electrical.  Not good.  Electrical in our house is a disaster.  Big Bad and I changed a light fixture when we first moved in and found that the old one was attached to 7 wires, all of them brown.  We did actually manage to figure out which ones were supposed to do what and dutifully re-wired the new fixture.  Turned on the breaker, threw the switch, started a fire, blew the switch out of the wall, turned off the breaker, called electrician. 

Since we fired that electrician, I wandered through the Yelp reviews and called a new one.  He came out and said the thermostat was fine but that the Limit Control Switch needs to be replaced.  Apparently this switch, or valve, translates the thermostat setting in conjunction with the thermostat's temperature reading and tells the boiler when to fire.  I had never realized there was an intermediate step that did that.  I assumed it was the job of the thermostat itself.  Middle management is really getting out of control when it invades your heating system.

No help for 5 more hours until the plumber comes.  I love this plumber.  He replaced our hot water heater in August because it stopped working.  Hot water heaters are also in my responsibility range rather than the Big Bad Bean's.  I traced the water line from the street to make sure I had the right one, entirely missing the giant number 2 written on the side which told me I had the wrong one.  I couldn't trouble shoot the problem (because I had  the wrong the bloody water heater) so Yelped a plumber. 

He was also confused, but given the age of the water heater we decided between us that it should be replaced.  Fortunately, when he came with the replacement, he noticed that the one we were talking about replacing had hot water in it, became more confused, traced the water line more accurately than I did, and discovered that I had been trouble shooting the wrong one.  He was very gracious about it and replaced the actually broken one (ooh nice hot water) and fixed my water pressure problem that I hadn't even told him about.

The Big Bad Bean was home when the electrician came and wrote down what the thing was called and that we needed a plumber.  On Wednesday evening when the heat stopped working again, I asked him if he had called the plumber and before he could answer, the Bumble Bean said, "of course not."  Hilarity ensued.  Anyway, I wasn't going to call the plumber on Thanksgiving when it was our own damn fault we hadn't called him more proactively.  So I called the day after Thanksgiving.  When I gave him the address, he said, "Oh, I remember you." 

I wonder what that means.  Does he remember the idiocy of my wrong hot water heater diagnosis?  The side saddle next the hot water heaters?  The basement full of miscellaneous weaponry?  Is he going to be laughing at me when he comes tomorrow?  Oh well.  As long I get heat again, I think I can stand to be laughed at a little.  It's not like it doesn't happen all the time as it is.

Loving life, loving the holidays...why am I not in Bermuda?

I think my sense of humor has been ruined by too much time spent with college children.  Yes, children.  They are shallow and self absorbed and don't know anything and haven't done anything and think they are interesting enough to be tracking their every move on social networks and insecure about everything.  Mind you, I'm talking about college kids I actually like.  Smart humor is lost on them.  Puns are unintelligible.  The games they play are mind numbing and they don't think about anything at all.  Except of course how insecure they are and how they can't ever let anyone know that they are not exactly as good and smart and secure as they perceive everyone else to be.  It's exhausting.

My Reference teacher in Library School told us that everyone gets only 3 exclamation points at birth, so use them wisely.  I wonder if the excessive use of exclamation points to soften the essential flatness of electronic communication has dulled the excitement sensors of our current time and it is more noticeable in the young either because they have used email and texting for a greater percentage of their lives or because they have had fewer actual experiences to offset the hectic happy-face-ness of it or if those are the same thing.

Poor Bumble Bean.  On the one hand he has a speech delay compared to normal children his age in this country.  On the other hand his parents actively reject most of the normal experiences that define other normal children.  There really never was any chance that he was going to be normal. 

He taught himself to read when he was three.  That's not normal.  But not something that needs intervention.

He is over four feet tall and not yet five years old.  That's not normal.  Also something that requires no intervention.  (If this changes, I wonder if we would be encouraged to starve him or shave off his toes or make him sleep in a box?  For his own good you understand.  He needs to be average.)

He is happy and a boy and four years old.  That's not normal.  Interesting and should only be tampered with to make him like other children.  Not really intervention, just pruning.

He enjoys himself and does not show any signs of experiencing himself as flawed.  That's not normal.  Every kid needs to experience himself as flawed.  How else will he develop the really acute crisis of self assurance when he gets to college?  How will he ever learn the crucial skill of sitting through boring lectures at school?  He needs that skill to endure a life of meaningless and self-unfulling work so he can have whatever the fashionable mid-life crisis is.

See what I mean about my sense of humor?

Holidays are coming up and that means family.  Not so much that family will be around as that family will intrude and tetchiness will ensue.  There's the whole question of gifts and travel.  There's the whole question of getting together and enduring each other's company.  The early part of this month marks the beginning of the 3rd year of family rupture.  First there was the hugely hubristic, overbearing and frankly not very intelligent husband of the cousin who started a fiasco based upon his credentials as an Occupational Therapist.  Occupational Therapists are not qualified to hold opinions about diagnosis.  No therapist ever is allowed to treat someone without consent.  He did.  See the not-very-intelligent bit above. 

Close on the heels of that, the Big Bad Bean, the Bumble Bean and I went to spend the first ever holiday with my siblings and their families.  Hmm.  Not so bad for me or the Bumble, but excruciating for Big Bad.  Then Christmas with recriminations and the Big Bad Bean expected to be the grown-up and make everything right with the cousin's husband (even though no part of it was Big Bad's doing) since no one had high expectations of the cousin's husband: his intelligence, his ability to be decent human being, his ability to be rational, his ability to shut the f__k up to protect life and limb.

Ringing in the new year with the aunts nagging and worrying and giving advice.  Summer came and went, no family.  Another holiday season, gifts exchanged, no attendance necessary.  More lines drawn in the sand.  Family members taking sides without talking.  It turns out the sand was wet concrete.  The lines are now step-on-a-crack, break-your-mother's-back.

My brother's 40th birthday.  The Big Bad Bean stays away.  After that party a family meeting is convened without me.  Concerns are aired.  A memo is drafted.  I get a letter.  I assume they are concerned about the Bumble Bean's other-than-normal development.  Not true.  It turns out they think he's fine.  They think we are lousy parents.  My sister asks if this offends me.  As I write this, I think "strange but true, it doesn't." 

As a life-long holder of less-than-flattering opinions of most of the people in the world and judging them for those same opinions, I am relieved.  If I give myself leave to behave this way in my head, then I can be generous and permit them the same privilege.  In return, I think "Duh.  Obviously our goals for the Bumble don't include him sleeping with us in diapers when he gets to college age." 

Though if he does that may catch him up with his normal peers in terms of crippling self doubt and anxiety.

How Artemis Winter learned to teach

This was more red wine than martini, but the concept is still there.

Artemis Winter was a flexible little fellow.  He was flexible physically and flexible in his pursuits.  He was endlessly curious, and since he rarely encountered opposition to his exploration, he was very confident in his abilities.

As mentioned before, Artemis Winter lived with two cats, a ferret, a cockatiel and a fish (in addition to all of the people he lived with) and these animals gave him lots of insight into other ways of being and other ways of exploring.

From the cats, he learned to stand in the way of anyone sweeping, to take the vacuum cleaner as a personal affront, to hate having water flicked at his face, to crawl between people and their reading, and to sit in the midst of puzzles and other piece-work .

From the ferret, he learned to pounce on people from unexpected quarters, to lie flat on the floor and pretend that he was invisible, and to hide in the back of the sofa, poking people in the butt when they sat there.

From the cockatiel, he didn’t learn much except that he couldn’t fly.  He did pick up the habit of pecking other people’s noses with his nose and a sort of shuffling sideways head-butt.

From the fish, he got nothing.

Artemis Winter was really quite fond of fish in many forms: he had stuffed fabric fish, he had small plastic fish, he had squirty fish for bathtime, he had magnetic fish for catching with a magnetic pole.  He even had fish sticks for dinner sometimes.

The fish, named Ubiquitum, puzzled him for a long time.  He was fascinated with its swimming.  He liked to watch its water being changed.  But he didn’t really see anything to learn from it.  He seemed disturbed by the inequality of this pet experience. 

Then one day, while Artemis Winter was in the Dragon Park, he saw someone teaching their dog to do tricks.  Right then it came to him!  If he could not learn from the fish, the fish could learn from him.  He, Artemis Winter, would teach the fish to do tricks: to swim in circles horizontally, to swim in circles vertically, to do flips out of the water, maybe even to dance.

Artemis Winter had been learning Capoiera with his father and swimming with his mother, so he felt fully confident that he could accomplish the task he set himself.

He convinced his mother to build a shelf over the couch for Ubiquitum’s bowl, then convinced her to getter a larger, more shallow dish for the fish.  In the new dish they replaced the green gravel with blue and red gravel to match the fish, replaced the plastic plants with living bamboo, replaced the fake coral with a little carved gingerbread cottage.

Then Artemis started his training routine.  In the morning he would do 100 front flips off of the left arm of the couch.  Then he would do 100 back flips off of the right arm of the couch.  Then he would push the coffee table flush against the edge of the couch and run in 100 circles to the left.  When asked why he ran in circles only to the left, he would reply with "left is ubiquitous, hook off the jab."   Since no one was entirely certain what this meant and Artemis Winter was unwilling to elaborate it was allowed to stand as the reason.  Then he would do a tap/hip-hop dance routine with wild abandon (sometimes he fell off the coffee table) on the coffee table and be done for the morning.  He would repeat this each afternoon and often in the evening as well. 

On the 22nd morning of this, Artemis Winter gave up in defeat.  Ubiquitum showed no interest in doing flips, circles or dancing at all.  He would usually come to the front of his bowl to watch, but he was not learning at all.  Artemis Winter did not despair for long however.  He thought long and hard.  He stared long and hard at the fish bowl.  He looked through glasses from the inside to see what the view might look from there.  He dragged his blackboard in front of the couch and drew diagrams and plans. 

The next morning, he decided he had a new training regimen for the fish.  He never started it though.  The ferret intervened.  It seems that after all, Artemis Winter had taught someone to do front flips and back flips, run in circles to the left and dance with wild abandon.  At the time Artemis Winter usually began his flips, nothing much was going on so the ferret (named The Midget) crawled onto the left arm of the couch.  She did 100 front flips off of the left arm of the couch.  She did 100 back flips off of the right arm of the couch.  She looked at Artemis Winter until he pushed  the coffee table flush with the edge of the couch.  Then she ran in 100 circles to the left.  Then she did the most spectacular dance anyone in that house had ever seen.  She tapped all four feet at once, she writhed, she squirmed, she flipped and flopped and then she stopped.

Artemis Winter made no comment at all.  He put away his black board.  He moved the coffee table back.  He left the room quite stoically.  But then he broke down in a storm of giggles that wouldn't stop until he had eaten three bananas and a peanut butter sandwich.  The fish stayed where it was in its new and improved home.  But, sometimes Artemis Winter and The Midget would put on a show for it.

Morning conversation

This morning the issue was raised that my recent Facebook status about unasked-for cleavage viewing was confusing or vague or something.  Not being someone who takes criticism without a fight I responded that it was my day for excessive boob-age.  The same afternoon, while swimming with the Bumble Bean, a woman who was close to 80 got in the pool and at first I thought "good for her" then I looked down from the pool deck into the deeper end and there she was floating and there were her enormous bosooms floating free in front of her: each one larger than her head and covered with sun-spots and freckles so they looked like a pair of friendly octopi swimming along with her.

After firing off that reply, and utterly defeating both the Big Bad Bean and the String Bean, I commented that today is the 24th anniversary of my dad's death and I feel absolutely nothing about it.  We (really I) went on to discuss that the previous day was a doozy in terms of bad things: a co-worker's partner going to a funeral for her aunt, the same co-worker finding a message from her brother's social worker that he was being evicted from public housing, just released from the hospital for an alcoholic withdrawal induced seizure and schizophrenia, the same co-worker with flash-backs to her sister's suicide coinciding with her own eviction, the insanity of my boss, the shallowness of several of my other co-workers, the potential horror of the annual conference we are hosting tomorrow, etc...

Then I left for work.  That will teach them to say anything, ever, about my Facebook status.

Still trying to define the question

Still working on ways to be independently wealthy.  Still trying to arrange the Bumble Bean's social life.  Still running into my own inertia.  Why?  I know what I want.  I know why I want it.  It's unbelievably valuable to me.  Is it hibernation kicking in? Is it some deep-seated depression?  Tomorrow is the 24th anniversary of my Dad's death.  Last month was the 16th anniversary of my Mom's.  I don't seem to feel sad about that.  The more I hear about the difficulties my peers are having with their parents, the more I feel it was a blessing (disguised at the time).  On the other hand, January 10th marks the 10th anniversary of the Horrible Bitch Woman's death and I may actually celebrate.  Actually, it's a Monday so I probably won't.  Just a glass of wine or two.

So what's my question?  What's my problem?  Why am I antsy and irritable and cranky?  Why do I feel like my skin is too small?  Am I just impatient?  Then why is that not motivating me do something about it?  When I talk to people about this, about this apparent hard-wired or conditioned malaise of the middle-class mind, they tend to become immediately defensive.  And not just people I consider moon-fodder or small-minded or Taoistically asleep.  My sentence structure is going to hell but I'm not going to fix it.

Why can't I finish the Artemis Winter Story?  I went to the beach with the Magical Starfish on Sunday and she said it was just getting harder with age and I countered with "no, there's just more baggage we're dragging around," but I wonder if she wasn't right.  Is it getting harder?  Or are we just more tired so it seems harder?  Is that the same thing?  The octopus is done.  Why can't I use 5 minutes to finish the fish?  Or 10 minutes to finish the frog?  Is it because everything is so disorganized and crazy that I can't be sure anything will work or be findable once I do take the time to start it?  Do I just have a bad attitude?

Oh well.  A great deal of complaining without accomplishing much.  Perhaps it will clear space to do some non-circular work now.

Ecstasy in Boots

I checked my email for the first time yesterday very late at night.  I was very tired and still had a pair of pants to hem before morning.  There was a subject line in my inbox that said Entrance Ecstasy and I wondered why my spam filter hadn't got it.  Then I noticed it actually came from someone I knew and that I wouldn't put it past him to send me an email with Entrance Ecstasy as the subject.  So I opened it and he was asking me to review an essay for his application to law school.  I didn't notice until I closed it that the subject line was actually Entrance Essay.  Bummer.  I really was interested in what Entrance Ecstasy might consist of.

On another note, the Bumble Bean's winter rain boots arrived today.  He tried them on because the last pair didn't fit.  Now he won't take them off.

Adventures at the Boston Public Library

I had to use the bathroom at the Boston Public Library today.  It was rather like one of those normal sort of weird dreams you have in which you suddenly realize even though it is a dream YOU ARE ACTUALLY PEEING!!! and it turns into a nightmare that you jerk yourself awake from and rush to the bathroom hoping you haven't actually wet the bed.  It was just like that except I didn't wake up and I was (as far as I know) actually sitting on the toilet and not just dreaming it.

It had the makings of a very nice bathroom but smelled horribly of old urine and had poo crusted onto the seats.  Also, all of the handles of things were sticky.

I also found out today that the "Main Entrance" of the BPL is not the imposing facade with granite steps and sculpture facing Copley Square.  The "Main Entrance" is actually a mundane and pedestrian wall of glass doors on Boylston Street.  Disappointing.

I was criticized by the Book Delivery people for having full bibliographic information on my request.  That actually made me more sad than the bathrooms or the entrance.

I also had to duck quickly behind a column to avoid the gaze of Mr. Bobble-hat, one of our public patrons who was escorted from the law library due to having a false ID.  It turned out later that he was a nude model for the art department.  I have no pictures of him in his bobble-hat so you can be spared the horrible image that the idea of him posing nude inflicts on your inner eyes.

My weekend with the little giant

On Friday afternoon, after the Big Bad Bean left to teach all weekend, the Bumble Bean stuck a small letter "t" to the television screen.  When asked why, he said, "Tee, tah, tah, tah, tee.  The Great Gonzo" and then would giggle quite dramatically.  Over the weekend, it was added to and became "tov" then "tovel" then "towel" then "to sit" all having something to do with the Great Gonzo.  Who can say?

Then the String Bean's girlfriend came for a very brief visit.  He decided to make her a romantic dinner of grilled cheese sandwiches and fruit punch.  He used a table cloth and candles and everything.  he even asked for parsley sprigs to adorn the plates.  I directed him the luxurious growth outside.  he first brought two sad sprigs of cold damaged moss rose.  Then he brought two sprigs of some kind of weed.  So I took pity and went out with him to pick parsley.

Mind you, this is the kid who just completed an outdoor survival weekend course.  I guess it's a good thing they brought their food.

Saturday was the Pumpkin Party.  We went to the park across from the Bean Blossom's house.  Then we went to the party.  Early.  We left the party after an hour.  Early.  We went back to the park.  We went back to the party.  We went back to the park.  We finally went home.

Sunday was the street festival.  The Bumble Bean refused to leave the house.  We played in the bedroom for three hours.  We finally left the house.  Late.  We finally made it to the street festival.  Late.  The festival was a wasteland of empty street.  We left the street festival.  We lost the otter.  Most of Sunday should probably be forgotten.

When I got to bed, the Bumble Bean whumpled over for huggle snuggles almost immediately.  He snuggled so hard I almost fell out of bed.  When he woke up he was his usual silly, sweet self and I really did not want to go to work.

Ribs bruised, belly sore

Not really, but it feels like someone has been pummelling me in the upper belly region.  I guess I had an upper ab workout Friday night.

I wasn't feeling particularly great but took the Bumble Bean to the Therapy Pool at the Malden YMCA since it has a ramp so you can walk in.  One of my goals for the winter is to get the Bumble Bean over his fear of water on his face and hopefully start him on actually swimming.  I suspect he will take to it like a fish once he gets started. 

So we got there and it took 25 minutes to get through the registration process.  He was very good and patient and only reminded me every 30 seconds or so that there was water on the other side of the glass and that we were going on a swimming adventure.  Once we finally got in, of course, he wouldn't go near the water.  So I had to be over-the-top silly to coax him in the water.  When he finally consented to go in, we did everything and kept doing everything for an hour and a half.  He kicked around while I held him, he waded up to his chin, he jumped off all of the walls to test the various depths (I caught him of course which is why my belly hurts.)  There was a little girl there who was six years old and came up to the Bean's shoulder.

Out of charity with the 4 legged fiends

I just stepped in a pile of cat vomit.

Yesterday I took the Ding Kitty to the vet because she has been grooming her hair away.  I was imagining that she had swallowed a string and it was tangling and tying up her intestines and causing her to rot slowly from the inside.  The discomfort of this was causing her to lick away the hair from the outside. 

It turns out she has fleas (which means that Berg has fleas) which means she will probably develop tapeworms (which means that Berg will develop tape worms).  She was overdue for her rabies and distemper shots (which means that Berg is overdue for his rabies and distemper shots).

So, $500 later, I step in a pile of cat vomit.

Miscellanea: my daughter

This is a category because one of the people who reads this blog has already taken the tag heading "This Life."  I always thought it would be fun to give Miscellanea as a middle name to a daughter of mine.  Perhaps we are all lucky I never had a girl child.  Perhaps I will name a fish Miscellanea. 

Really though, the reason my miscellaneous posts about life and other random things is called "Miscellanea: my daughter" is because I thought "miscellaneous" was too boring and ordinary.  There really is no great, deep meaning here.  I might make up a great reason, given enough time, but at its inception, I simply couldn't stand the mundane-ness (mundanity?) of it.

Artemis Winter at play

Artemis Winter’s favorite thing to do with his time was to cross the street, walk around the corner and go into the Dragon Park.  The park was not actually named the Dragon Park since it was dedicated to a war veteran, but Artemis Winter’s mother had named it the Dragon Park and that name stuck. 

The park ran next to the train tracks or perhaps the tracks ran next to park, but either way it was a great place to watch trains and race trains and make train noises.  It also had lots of grass.  Most parks in the city had only bark mulch or gravel or concrete, but the park nearest his house had lots of grass to run on and roll in and finger comb and pretend to eat.  The grass invited many other interesting things that the other parks did not tempt to them, most especially soccer players of all ages and cultures.  Since Artemis Winter rarely spoke it was especially fun to be permitted to join in rambunctious, confusing play in which no one expected to understand anyone else but everyone was running around and tripping over a variety of games and children and dogs and things.

However, to cross the street, Artemis had to hold an adult hand attached to an adult body so he could only go to the Dragon Park when there was an available adult to accompany him.

His second favorite thing to do, therefore, was to play in his own backyard.  Behind his sprawling house was a sprawling garden which contained one magnolia tree, a lilac hedge that had over grown an entire corner, a hammock, a couple of flower patches, a small pool and an old cast iron, claw foot bath tub.  When Artemis Winter’s parents had first moved in, before he was born, the corner not taken up by the lilac hedge was taken over by a forest of mile-a-minute grass supporting an intricate network of some sort of alien cucumber vines.  These cucumber vines in turn freaked out Lulu to the extent that she pulled it all out and burned it at midwinter.  For years thereafter she couldn’t figure out what to put in place of the freaky space cucumbers so it was left as a bare-ish patch of earth that Artemis Winter used for mud pies, mud clouds, mud balls, etc…  Materials mined from this area played a large part in his outdoor bath tub play which then resulted in an even more comprehensive indoor bath tub play-time.

On horrible weather days, when his parents would not permit him out of doors, Artemis Winter would play with his toys.  He would start by picking out a group of them and play with just those for hours on end.

Often his play centered around his doll house made in the style of a tree house.  A great deal of this play was based on his experience of the various boarders who lived in other parts of the house. 


There was the couple who were slightly unhinged and yelled at each other a great deal, though not in an angry way, they were just loud.  They left notes for each other on the door into their rooms which Artemis Winter found very fascinating.  He represented them in his play as two people and a frog who rarely had spoken conversations.  It is unclear if this was because Artemis Winter himself did not speak much or because the normal conversations they had didn’t leave an impression on him.  It is even more unclear where the frog came in. 

In his play, these people would do acrobatics, have food fights and leave each other notes.  The female person (sometimes represented by a wooden girl doll and sometimes by a half chewed Pretty Pony Artemis Winter found in a storm drain) would leave notes only for the male person.  She may have been pretending the frog didn’t live there or perhaps she hoped it would leave or maybe she didn’t think it could read; quite possibly she was a little insane.  Perhaps she didn’t leave notes for the frog because it didn’t use the bathroom (it lived exclusively in the dining room and kitchen even though it had a handsome bedroom of its own in the tree house) and most of the notes she left for the male person concerned the fact that she had clogged the toilet and he should consequently not come home but go somewhere else to use the potty.  The female person’s name was Gladys.

Mind you, during this period of his life, Artemis Winter was still in diapers.  He had given the whole potty training thing a try and decided he wanted no part of it.

The male person’s name was Max and he was represented exclusively by a tube of Beaudriard’s Butt Paste that Artemis Winter had picked out on one of his shopping adventures with Lulu.  Max would huddle with the frog and they would pass a slate back and forth with messages- written, erased, replied to, erased- so quickly that no one but the two of  them could tell what they were conversing about, not even Artemis Winter.  When pressed for more details, Artemis Winter would suggest that it was private and it was rude to pry.

Meanwhile, Max’s notes to Gladys were often reminders about grocery lists and things to not forget.  Sometimes he would write scraps of lovely verse to things like her right eyebrow, her bunion or the smudge on her cheek.  However, since she quickly covered these with a deluge of strong warnings about the potty it is doubtful that she ever read them.

The frog was either unnamed or refused to share his name, and Artemis Winter, being a sensitive boy, didn’t like to crowd him.  Other than his unknowable and transient words with Max, the frog left no notes.  However, from time to time, at no regular interval, he would go into some sort of frenzy and tear the whole tree house to pieces.  After such a frenzy Artemis Winter could count on him sleeping for a whole week.

While the frog slept, Gladys and Max would disappear from doll house tree house play and be replaced with an enormous man, both tall and wide, who had a continuous litany of, “sorry, so sorry, pardon me, excuse me, oops, so sorry…” and who had been named The Apol-o-giant by Artemis Winter.  The Apol-o-giant was usually represented by his anatomically correct boy doll (named Titus by the manufacturer) who would randomly knock over all the furniture and eventually trip hugely over the whole tree house doll house at which point Artemis Winter would fall over himself and giggle until he couldn’t breathe anymore.  That was usually it for the Apol-o-giant, though sometimes Artemis Winter would take him swimming in the real kitchen sink and make an Apol-o-giant mess.

At some point after being stuck inside, Artemis Winter would stop playing with his toys and go through the house systematically, one room at a time, and remove everything from its proper place and spread it all evenly across the floor.  Then he would go to bed.

Potty training adventures

The Bumble Bean is now really interested in potty training.  Specifically, the potty training DVD I picked up as sort of a joke.  It has really catchy tunes like, "You've got to wipe, wipe, wipe your bottom, after going poo" and "scrub the bottom, scrub in between, scrub the top and get them really clean" which get stuck in your head and repeat endlessly during meetings at work. 

He has taken up the practice of carrying his potty chair about from room to room and putting his anatomically correct male doll, Titus, in the potty when he is not actively playing with him.  He has also started lifting his shirt to show you his belly, then dropping his pants to show you his knees.  We assume that this is going along with the song about how you know when you need to go, "it may feel like a push or a squeeze, just below your belly, just above your knees, it's your body's way..."

He is now tummy surfing on the back of the couch with his potty chair asking for hugs so I will go. Toodles.

Library Celebrity

I was told today that I am a Library Celebrity.  I wonder what that means?  Is that a good thing?  I think immediately of the Inquirer and Star which I know only through grocery checkout lines but I become wary.  I wonder what he meant?  I have an appointment with him tomorrow at  noon.  I'm going to ask.

How Artemis Winter overcame his fear of dogs

Artemis Winter always liked pigs.  Before he was born, his mother got him a pig named Hana Buta (that's Japanese for Flower Pig) with petal-like ears and black velvet feet and a curly squishy tail.  What he always liked about pigs was their wrinkly, grippy noses and snorty, grunty sounds, their blissful scratching and wallowing, their general spotty-bristliness, and their silly, curly tails on their huge round bottoms.  He was quite fond of cows as well for their spottiness and big slobbery noses.  He didn't like donkeys at all, with their indifference and creaky door sounds.  Sheep were OK in his book because, while they are dumb and vacant and urinate in a passive-aggressive, uselessly defiant sort of way, most of his experience of them was with baby sheep who still had their tails, all wiggly and shaky like white fuzzy worms.  He felt that he could put up with a lot of stupid for white fuzzy worms-like wiggly tails.

Birds of all sorts were fascinating to Artemis Winter.  Including chickens.  Despite their very apparent stupidity, he liked the way they walked and nestled and quietly scolded the whole world, at least the tiny part they understood of it, and he somehow tapped into their dinosaur heritage.  He wouldn't roar at them in person, but he would at pictures of them.  Artemis was usually a very sensitive boy and didn't like to scare things that couldn't take it.  He liked to hunker down and walk with them, make their little noises back at them and flap his elbows just gently since neither they nor he could fly.

Cats, of course, he liked and had spent some time as their apprentice thinking that he would like to be a cat when he grew up.  Of dogs he was unsure at first.  He liked their floppy, sloppy tongues and their utter disregard of personal space or rules of etiquette.  He liked to bark at them since, unlike chickens, it didn't seem to scare them and they tended to respond in kind.  Unfortunately, all possibility for his communion with dogs, for the next several years at least, was ruined in one fell swoop.

His mother, in an unfortunate charitable moment, volunteered to take care of a friend's dog for a few days.  It was a small dog, well behaved in a completely self-obsessed sort of way, and utterly hairless.  It was in fact a hairless dog.  Though predominantly black, you could tell by its legs and its snout that it was a white dog with black spots, one very big spot covered its entire back and most of its head. 

The first time Artemis Winter saw the dog (her name was Fluffy like the marshmallow stuff), she was playing fake-ferociously with her favorite ball: throwing it up in the air, dropping it, pretending she couldn't quite get it, and snurffling a good deal.  Artemis Winter gazed at her for several minutes with an expression of mounting horror on his face.  Finally, he turned to his mother and was moved to ask in disbelieving and undisguised dismay, "Pig?"  To which his mom replied, "No, Artemis, she's a dog.  Her name is Fluffy.  She is named after Marshmallow Fluff."  At which Artemis Winter began to bark at her in a hopeless and unending manner.

For several years thereafter, Artemis Winter would bark at pigs and run away from dogs as if they were particularly evil creatures.  He became confused in other ways too, most notably that he would meow at dinosaurs and insist that they were cats.

Now, Artemis Winter's parents responded to his fear of dogs in two very different ways.  His father, who was a famous sword master, would threaten to kill the dogs as their owners were about to let them off their leashes.  They were actually supposed to be on leashes at all times and there were orders posted to this effect throughout the city.  Artemis Winter's mom on the other hand would hold him and point out to him how small most of the dogs were, how they were barely bigger than cats and not even as smart.  At least, that is what she would do with small dogs off their leashes.  If a large dog was off his leash and came running up to jump at them she would turn it upside down, hold it that way on the ground and flick its nose if it showed any signs of objecting to such treatment.  You can imagine that dog owners who used the parks around Artemis Winter's house tended to know him and take evasive action.

One cold fall day, when he was between  four and five years old, Artemis Winter was visiting his friend Clementine Gaia Leila Moonshine Saghirah who lived in a much more rural area.  As they always did when visiting, both families went to a glorious park nearby.  It had big fields of short grass to run and roll on, it had wooded areas to dodge and trip in and it had a broad, shallow, slow-moving river.  Naturally this made it a great place for dogs as well as children.

As Clementine Gaia Leila Moonshine Saghirah and Artemis Winter were playing an elaborate game of chase, tickle, tumble, cavort, a huge dog decided that his life would be a dessert unless he knocked over a little girl and snurffled her all over.  The children were in sight of their parents but not in easy reach, so when Clementine Gaia Leila Moonshine Saghirah was knocked over there was not a readily available adult to handle the situation.  Realizing this, an important change took place in Artemis Winter.  His fear of dogs put down its head and hid and his knight-in-shining-armor self woke up and exploded.  He tackled  the dog from the side, flung it onto its back, held it down by the throat, knelt on its chest and leaning over it, bite it firmly on the nose.

Lulu, finally catching up to the all of the action, was laughing so hard she was quacking.  But after that, Artemis Winter was never afraid of dogs again.  And he stopped barking at pigs.

The Cat Apprentice

This will probably end up being a book written by Artemis Winter.

Once upon a time, a long time ago, I was born.  I don't remember it very well for it was very long ago.  I am four now.

All my life I have lived in a house full of stairs and mysteries.  There are lots of places to go that just end and lots of places that are just there to go through.  Outside the house is a world of sidewalks and curbings, long narrow rivers and puddles... lots of puddles.  I am a great destroyer of puddles.

I live with 2 cats who teach me things (sometimes I teach them things) and a Mommy and a Daddy.  The Mommy and Daddy belong to me.  They love me and take care of me.  I belong to the cats.  I love them and learn from from them; I keep them entertained.  They are teaching me the "way."

The way to always be in the way.  The way to be unhelpful.  The way to suddenly change direction and dart across some one's path.  The way to stand in a pile of sweepings.  The way to come between someone and their book.  I am learning well.  I am a cat apprentice.  Soon I will learn to take on dogs.

What the cats don't know, the thing that is my secret power: I am a great Destroyer of Puddles.

Tomorrow I will be a dinosaur and his side-kick the smoky-voiced cow.

The End

I wonder if he meant this?

I'm reading The 4-Hour Work Week by Timothy Ferriss and overall I would say that he is a complete prick.  That may be overly harsh and judgemental, but this is my blog so I can be.  One of the things that he is suggesting is that you only check your email twice a day and that you put up an auto response telling people that this is your practice.  In his book, he suggests that you send a message to timothy@brainquicken.com for a great example of one of these messages.  I just did and in return I got a permanent failure message.  From reading his book, this could be something that he meant or something he carelessly overlooked.  Hmm.

This writing thing

Transcribed from a notebook dated Thursday, September 23rd
Since I've started writing again I become oddly discontent and restless when I haven't written for a while.  The Scarlet Runner Bean made (as usual) a very astute and acute point when she said that not having time to think to process life and write the processing down leaves you feeling hollow and itchy inside.

So I can't sleep unless I get this down.  I'll have to enter it at some other time sine the Bumble Bean is restless.

We went to the playground by the Library today.  While we were there 2 different preschool groups came and went. 

The first group consisted of 18-20 kids and 4 young women.  The women looked happy.  They were engaged with the children, referring to them ans "my friend."  As in, "M friend Ben is having some alone time. Why don't you see if my friend Ezra wants to play with you?"  The children were happy and silly and reasonably exuberant.  If they became too exuberant, like taking off their shoes or climbing the slide, they got a time out.  The time outs were published across the playground, as in "My friend Elijah would rather have a time out than put his shoe on."

The second group consisted of 10-12 kids and 3 prematurely middle aged women.  The women looked as if they had seen what life had to offer them and it was nothing so they just had to keep busy with the drudgery until they died.  The children walked.  They did not play on the slides.  They were restricted to one end of the playground where they could play with bark mulch in baskets and bowls brought for that purpose, or they could draw on the concrete with sidewalk chalk.  They were not allowed to write on the chain link fence with the chalk.  While I was observing, that was the only prohibition I heard.

The Bumble bean was sufficiently freaked out by the second crew that we had to go swing instead.

Life is good

Not to say that there isn't room for improvement.  The Bumble Bean got up at 4:30 this morning which means I did too.  Then he wanted to go back to bed, seemingly just to be more comfortable as he wiggled his way through the next hour and a half.  Now we seem to be up for the day and he is playing a very silly game with the Ding-kitty which includes dancing a string, throwing it, trying to get her to bring it back to him while she thinks he's trying to pet her and occasionally interjecting, "Oh, my toes!"

Yesterday, the Apol-i-giant made his first appearance.  The Bumble Bean quickly corrected him into the not very interesting apologize, but we are keeping him alive.  He may make his way into the Martini Manuscript except that I am out of vodka.  Maybe I'll switch to gin martinis.

Meanwhile, the exceptionally pitiful Berg-kitty is sitting in a ball on the puzzles looking forlorn.  I'd feel worse about it if he wasn't such a drooling, vomiting, non-grooming fur ball.  I think I will make him a three-eyed catnip fish.

Talking up a storm

We have been up for just over 2 hours this morning.  So far, the Bumble Bean has:

• warned me to "Stay right where you are!  I'll be right back."
• advised me, "Oh, you in trouble now."
• directed me to, "move, move, move," and when I reminded him of "excuse me please," he responded with, "move, move, move, excuse me please."
• asked me, "Where is Daddy-cakes?" and I replied, "California.  He'll be back tomorrow," he reaffirmed, "Daddy-cakes home tomorrow.  Weasel-ball, please.  I want Weasel-ball, please."
• I said, "but Gammy and Grandpa will come over this afternoon, he sang, "Grandpa, Grandpa, Grandpa! Frog, frog, frog!"  I'm not really sure of the connection there or if there is one.

Comments

I have not really explored the whole "blogger" site due to limited time, attention and the Bumble Bean's opposition to my using the computer.  Also, to be perfectly honest, beacuse I haven't cared that much.  However, just now, I clicked the comments tab to see what it would do.  (Yes, the Bumble Bean does get some of his investigatory techniques from me.)  Thank you for your comments.  I appreciate the feedback.

Hats and Weasel-balls

This morning while I was priming the back stairs, fixing the door and figuring out how to replace the window, the Bumble Bean went exploring in the basement.  He found a stack of empty boxes which have no reason for being there except that they have not been thrown away.  He found a lot of spider webs.  He found the box of extremely ugly tiles for our first floor kitchen.  He also found the Little Tykes basketball hoop.  We dragged it out into the backyard.  He threw the ball through the hoop.  Once.  Then he experimented with different ways of knocking it over.  Finally, he called, "Hat, hat, hat. Mommy, hat, hat, hat!"  I looked out the door I was trying to fix and there he was with whole thing leaning against his head.  He was very pleased with himself.

Once we came in and showered we went exploring through his old toys.  We found many things, but most especially the Weasel-ball which he is now crawling around after calling "Here, kitty kitty!"  Off to the What the Fluff? Festival!  I wonder what adventures we will find there.

Why is life so utterly full of s__t?

The back stairs have needed to be patched and painted since before the Bumble Bean was born.  We are working on the 4th year with no light over our table.  The house is a disaster.  Spell check isn't working; no surprise since the computer isn't working either.  I suspect that our bathtub is about to fall into the clinic.  Still no dehumidifier in the basement which makes anything that goes there become trash.  Did I mention the house is filthy, the yard is full of weeds and general detritus, nothing is ever put away, thrown away, cleaned, fixed, maintained.  Argh!  I think I'll move to Australia.

It's all a crock

I am 99.9% sure that diagnoses for the Bumble Bean are useless.  The sad part is, he can't get services without a diagnosis, the worse the diagnosis the better.  On the other hand, since the services tend to be one size fits all and the specialists agree that they have never encountered a little boy like the Bumble Bean how useful can the services be?  Can they actually be harmful?  Can they shake his confidence that he is perfect the way he is?  Can they make him feel like there is something wrong with him?  Of course they can!

I have complete and absolute faith in the Bumble Bean.  He is an amazing little boy and he will grow into an amazing man: tall and strong, wise and kind.  It will be a journey not a destination as we have journeyed to where we are.  We will keep on.

The Guest House

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they're a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.

Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

~ Rumi ~

(The Essential Rumi, versions by Coleman Barks)

My Urban Gardening efforts to date

• 1 very healthy rosemary plant
• A couple dozen healthy Nasturtiums
• 3 very sad and droopy lettuces planted from a paper strip of seeds (KMart)
• 2 green peppers from 4 orange and yellow pepper plants (also KMart)
• 2 dozen tiny tomatos (delicious!)
• A parsley hedge
• Spearmint monster growth
• 2 4" eggplants (still growing)

By the time of our first frost (a few weeks away) I should be able to make a tiny meal of eggplant parmesan!

I think that next year I will hang my tomatoes from the second floor windows where they will get a lot more sun.  Meanwhile, this fall, I am going to spread some manure on the 2 raised beds in my front yard so it can winter-in.  I may seed clover for the first crop.

Dong Quai = Da Guo

That's all I'm saying.

Amphibians

I am on idea 4 for designing a mass-producible octopus.  I threw away the first 2.  The Bumble Bean has been bashing the 3rd one around. The poor thing has needed first aid on many occasions since he was a test and I had not expected him to need to stand up to the Bumble Standard.  The problem is that I have no time, the Bumble hates the sound of the sewing machine, and I want to design a fish, frog, lizard, sting ray, and any number of small leggy ocean critters thanks to Ponyo.  With problems like those, I can't get started so I sit and write about it instead.  I may attempt to post pictures one of these days.

Ambiguous, agnostic, ambidextrous

Friday night I dreamed I was working for the Red Lentil taking care of her pet goat.  When I awoke, I thought, "It makes sense that the Red Lentil would have a pet goat.  No way in hell would I ever work for her."

I related this dream to the Big Bad Bean and the String Bean.  After their initial expressions of horror, Big Bad Bean asked, "Aren't goats exceedingly stubborn?"

To which I replied, "And smart and tricky."

Big Bad Bean shared a LOOK with String Bean and said, "You've just described the Red Lentil."

"I know.  That's why I think she would do well with a pet goat.  They'd get along like a house on fire."

The conversation veered on from there as conversations in our house tend to.  We covered such points as:

1. Goats are very loyal to ONE person.
2. Dibble, the goat I grew up with, adored my dad and hated the rest of us.  She would snuggle up with him and climb into this lap: a lap goat.
3. She once chased me into the narrow space between our house and her barn, knocked me down and trampled me.  I was three.
4. We ate her children.  Twice.

Hopefully that will be it for goats and I will not have to make a tag for them in my tag cloud.

First chapter, part 2

The man was a teacher and a healer, a philosopher and a poet.  His eyebrows bristled like a pair of animals leading a separate existence on his face.  He was terrible punny and an excellent dancer.  His name was Asterloa and he had an uncle twice removed named Artemis.

The woman was a librarian and a sculptor, a handyman and a klutz.  She played the mandolin and had a habit of quacking like a duck when she was happy or excited.  She danced with the man, but not as well.  Her name was Lulu and she had an uncle twice removed named Winter.

The boy was their son named Artemis Winter after his two uncles three times removed.  He was long and lean, strong and sweet, and he was happy.  Everything he did, he did with exuberance and intensity.  He was as tall as people twice his age.  He could wrestle grown men.  He loved to snuggle and hug and give kisses.  He had no brothers or sisters and didn't spend much time around other children.  Which is not to say that he was solitary.  He had three best friends, all girls. 

Lily Marvel was one year older than Artemis Winter and almost as tall, though not as strong.  She was smart and peppery and just as fond of GI Joe as she was of Princesses, though she liked Fairies best of all.  She talked without stopping and always thought she knew everything.

Clementine Gaia Leila Moonshine Saghirah was the same age as Artemis Winter and stood as tall as his armpit.  She was solid and pointy and wiggled and giggled and squirmed, even when she was asleep.  She was enormously silly and never stopped asking "Why?" unless it was to ask "Why not?" 

Aislinn O'Toole was not quite a year younger than Artemis Winter and not quite as tall, but had an unruly mop of brown curls and bright green eyes.  She liked to run and run and run and jump and wrestle and tickle and do flips.  She talked and talked and talked, but she would stop talking if someone else had something to say. 

Artemis Winter, it should be made clear, hardly ever talked at all.  He taught himself to read when he was 2 and would read bedtime stories aloud to his parents to avoid going to bed himself.  He taught himself to write as well and would play very silly word games with his mother.  But words of his own from his own mouth he used most sparingly.

The world is full of bad jokes

I was walking past a staircase that I have walked past at least a hundred times before, and every time I walk past those stairs I notice that the last step is twice as high as all of the others.  What I had never noticed until today is that the stairs lead to the Braille Press.  That seems unnecessarily cruel.

Losing fat

Tonight for supper I am having a martini.  I am having a martini because it is fun to have a martini after a ridiculous day at work after a blissful long weekend with the Bumble Bean.  Going back to work sucks.  I am having only a martini because I am trying to lose fat.  I don't really give a damn how much I weigh, I want to lose fat because I don't want to have to buy new bras.  At this point I am sticking out over the top, under the bottom and around the sides of my bras and I'm talking about a double D here.  I'm also talking about run-on sentences but if you reference the earlier martini you will see why I don't try to edit this post.  My boobs are now so large that when I roll over in bed I pinch them between me and the mattress.  I have switched to water now so that I can continue to play with the Bean and not pass out in a heap of enormous boobage.

Structure

It is commonly understood to be true that children need structure to thrive.  I wonder where this came from.  Is it like the understanding of a century or more ago that children were naturally bad and had to be beaten to turn out good?  Spare the rod and spoil the child?

I was lying in bed thinking about it.  I couldn't stop so I got up to write this down and hopefully I will be able to go back to sleep since I have to drive 2 hours tomorrow to visit the Bean's friend and then who knows how long home in Labor Day traffic.

I think the idea that children need structure to thrive is partially true, especially in today's world.  So many of the parts of their lives are structured that if the whole thing wasn't structured, the children would completely fall apart.  Also, parents need children to be structured so they can go about the business of making enough money to pay the bills.  If I didn't have to go to work in the mornings, I could stay awake with the Bean until he was ready to go to sleep around midnight, sleep in with him 'til 10 then gradually start our day.

However, if we accept that structure is necessary to some degree, the next questions we should be asking are "what kind?" and "how much/", not just accept that structure is always good regardless of its quality.  I think that "how much?" can be easily answered as "never more than strictly necessary."  On the other hand "what kind?" moves very quickly into the realm of discipline and what we, as individual parents, feel our role is.  Personally, I feel that all of the structure should be supportive rather than restrictive, should be developed rather than enforced.  This is a tough line since children, lacking key components necessary to use good judgement, need to be kept alive long enough to develop those components. 

It also means that parents have to be much more involved with their children.  They have to stay in tune with changes in ability and growing needs for autonomy.  They have to be sufficiently aware to stand back and let the child become entangled in the rose bush and then be there to untangle him when he realizes it is beyond him.  They also have to reinforce the lesson they want the child to learn.  In my case, the lesson I want the Bumble Bean to learn is: Try it and see. If you can't do it, ask for help.

I'm not sure any of this makes sense, but I'm feeling sleepy again, so I will leave it for now.  There is something here between Attachment Parenting and John Holt's admonishment to TRUST CHILDREN.

Is that a pig? No, it's a dog!

The Bumble Bean and I went to Beaver Brook Reservation on Saturday and then again on Sunday at his insistence.  There is a very nice sprinkler deck there, one of the best we've seen.  It has natural rocks secured in the cement and is not painted a hideous antiseptic greeny-white.  The water is chlorinated and it all makes a nice balance between being natural and being sanitary.  There is also a playground structure and bathrooms.  Most of the children gather there.

However...

Just down the hill is the actual Beaver Brook.  It is not at all sanitary partially because it is natural despite its urban existence and partially because of the dogs who, also leading an urban existence, let off the leash in a huge field with lots of other dogs and a brook go a little insane and engage in the doggy equivalent of a royal rumpus.  It is good practice for the Bean to get over being afraid of dogs, not because they are particularly well behaved, but because they are sublimely not interested in human beings in the midst of their little doggy bliss.

Naturally, the Bumble Bean is attracted to the stream.  There are many rocks to throw, many slippery spots to fall down and get wet and covered with slime, and of course many opportunities to experiment with physics.  This means that we always spend several hours ankle deep in the brook.  But this weekend, after the "hurricane" the stream was particularly high and either because of that or because his world view and spirit of adventure are growing, the Bumble Bean decided that we had to walk all the way up stream.  This is actually not an easy thing to do.  There are many signs that other people simply don't do it. 

Not that such a thing would ever stop the Bean since Mommy will figure out the logistics for him, never interfere with him getting filthy and save Kermit when he slips over waterfalls and gets tangled in debris.  Mommy of course does this because she feels guilty that she is raising him in a confined urban environment (see the doggy bliss above) and her childhood adventures and magic were centered almost exclusively around the stream that ran along the bottom of her hill.  When the time comes, she will undoubtedly foster the Bean in tree-climbing. 

I think the urge to go up stream, the urge to find the source is actually much stronger in humans than the urge to go down-stream and find where it ends.  There may be some deep mystical reason for this concerning our own mortality, our seeking for union with something greater or maybe it's just that things get more civilized down-stream and we're not very good at civilized.

On Saturday, there was a whole flock of dogs from extremely large Saint Bernard type dogs to Corgies and Jack Russells.  There was also a hairless dog which the Bean regarded with horrified fascination for quite awhile and then turned to me and suggested "pig?"  I replied with "No, it's a dog" at which he promptly started barking at it.  The dog was small enough that he could have probably launched it half way across the field, but for the entire visit (except when we were lost in the tangle up-stream) he was especially wary of the hairless one.  I wonder if he will try barking at pigs the next time we see them?

A couple of years ago when he had made another leap in some aspect of mental development, we went to the Museum of Science via the T and came past the T. Rex.  We had come that way before, but he had never noticed the giant lizard.  On this particular occasion, he saw it, stopped and considered it for quite some time before turning to me and saying (as if he really didn't believe it but was going to give it a try) "Kitty cat?"  Thereafter, for almost a year, he would say "meow" when gazing upon a dinosaur.

Once upon a time

Once upon a time there was a house.  It was a rambling house that rambled in a rambly, though not ramshackle, way in its very small park in a largish though friendly city.  This house had a lot of character which means that you could see places where the walls had been patched and places where the walls had not been patched; some rooms had been renovated and some just had grand plans; people going down the stairs from one floor to another often found themselves facing at least 90 degrees from the direction they felt they should be facing.  Going up was a similar experience, sometimes in the opposite direction depending on the confused state of the person climbing.

The house was furnished in a very eclectic style, most closely resembling one of those used bookstores in which the sole clerk seems unwilling to ever sell anything.  This house had more space and more light than such places but just as many books just as determined to stay, stacked any which way, and just as many cats determined to do whatever was least convenient at any time.

The people who lived in the house were varied and constantly changing but not in a hectic way.  The house was owned by a man and a woman, married to each other, who lived there with their son.  They shared the house with two cats, a ferret, a cockatiel and a bluish-red fish in a bowl as well as an ongoing assortment of boarders and guests.  The borders were mostly international students, or students of the man or friends or (when it couldn't be avoided) family.  The guests were friends and students and teachers, sometimes all three in one person.  It was a very happy house, didn't make much sense, but happy and the people in it were happy too.

None of the rooms was very large, so all of these people were rarely all together at any one time.  If they all decided to eat together, at Thanksgiving for instance, there was no place where a large grand table with the fine china and silver could be set up.  Therefore, they got rid of the table and silver and consistently refused the efforts of family and friends to give them fine china.  Instead they made food that people enjoy eating and ate it off of paper plates usually with their fingers while standing or sitting around in an ever changing organic sort of flow.  Dull people tended to all end up together in one place with not much conversation and usually did not come back which served everyone well: the dull people didn't feel excluded and the interesting, engaged people didn't feel glumpily dutiful about trying to include them.

This may be the book I am writing.  We will see.  Perhaps I will only write it while I am drinking martinis and call it the Martini Manuscript in a very pretentious sort of way.  I already see the influence of Winnie the Pooh and Mistress Masham's Repose, also Dr. Doolittle.

Epistemology

Prefatory note: Epistemology is the study of how we know what we know (what we know is NOT to be confused with scholarship).  Episiotomy is a surgical intervention for pregnant women in which a doctor cuts the flesh between the vaginal sphincter and the anus to keep it from tearing during birth.  I always confuse these two words: the knowing and the mutilation.  I wonder if that means anything?

Some people, mostly scholars, are now saying that Lao Tzu (popularly understood to be the founder of Taoism) is mythical and the work attributed to him, the Tao Te Ching, apocryphal.

Some people, mostly most people, are still saying that Georges Bataille (author of Story of the Eye and Blue of Noon) was one very sick puppy.  Though some scholars are willing to admit that his work has more merit than originally granted.

Most people are willing to agree that both the mythical mystic and the actual deviant were archivists or librarians.  Some people are born sociopaths, some people are born librarians, and librarians spend their lives recording, preserving, organizing, cataloging and sometimes indexing anything they can get their hands on.  They have even been known to cross-reference!  Librarians stand on a shifting, devious landscape between all that has been endeavored by the human intellect and all that is unknown.  It is no wonder then that people of this persuasion would turn to philosophy, be rendered cryptic and have an abiding interest in transformation.

If one accepts that the Tao Te Ching was written, and most people do, then it requires no great leap to assume that the person who recorded it and made copies was of the librarian persuasion.  It is therefore no surprise that an archivist, faced with the ephemeral quality of a spoken tradition, would write something down and organize it.  Whether the archivist in question was the mythical Lao Tzu who took off into the desert or another archivist with the same name is probably not of very great importance. 

What is of importance is that it was preserved and we have it today to read.  And read it we do because it gives us the feeling of being in an E. H. Shepherd painting, drifting happily down a river in a dream where anything can happen and everything does all at once but not in a hectic way.  Just reading it, even in translation, slows down the brain, empties the head and leaves a feeling of alert euphoria behind.

On the other hand, reading Bataille is viscerally wrenching, emotionally devastating and has the long lasting effect of making one wonder, years later, what it really would feel like to sit on an eyeball fresh from its skull.

Conclusion: What do knowing and mutilation have in common?  They are both transformative.

Co-sleeping = World Championship Wrestling

The Bumble Bean was in rare form last night.  He fell unconscious horizontally across the bed, which is not unusual, but shortly after two in the morning he sat bolt upright, scanned the bed topography and whumpled to me.  He had to climb over the herd of pillows that I routinely sleep with, but climb he did until he was wedged between me and the slumbering beasts.  Then he started hurling them over one another until he had enough to room to start what turned out to be a monumental sparring experiment. 

He tried the heart-to-heart snuggle in every possible arm and leg configuration.  He rolled over and tried the spoon snuggle in every possible and some impossible arm and leg positions.  He tried various drape-over-mommy snuggles across my side, then rolled me onto my back and tried the various drapes across my tummy.  He rolled me the rest of the way over and went back to the heart-to-heart, both of us on our other sides.  Finally, after several hours, he settled into the ball-snuggle, nestled in my arms with his knees tucked up into my tummy, my thighs under his feet, my knees supporting his bottom, wrapped around the little Bean with my heart.

Experiential Learning

Yesterday I was assigned to the Experiential Learning Committee.  Today I started a quick survey (via google) of the most popular or common stuff.  There is Kolb and Kolb and Kolb who apparently had a big old stick up his butt and did not feel it was important to review the theories or ideas of other disciplines.  He did however come up with a very nicely balanced model that makes perfect sense while having very little reference to reality.  Going further, I found Kurt Lewin who's work is characterized as "Little read now because of his tortuous pseudo-mathematical style, but the grandfather of many current ideas."  What a foot note to one's life work!

More recently, we have Phil Race and his ripple theory, a sort of intersectionality approach with recent focus on assessment.  His ideas seem cogent enough but he obviously has trouble with power point and should perhaps refrain from publishing power point presentations.  We run across Peter Jarvis, Peter Honey and John Dewey (who is credited with the congealing the underlying philosophy that the subjective experience of learning determines what is actually learned.)  Also Confucius and Aristotle but not in any meaningful way.

My conclusion after this very short survey is that Experiential Learning, the field of education in educational settings, is as pointless as large class lectures.  Somehow I feel that my fellow committee members may not be very open to my ideas and suggestions.  I did find Dewey's objections to "free" learning quite interesting in that his premise seems to be that people "naturally" learn through experience but that the experience has to be carefully crafted to have any value.

I was excited.  Now I'm feeling rather grim. 

• ATHERTON J S (2010) Learning and Teaching; Experiential Learning [On-line] UK: Available: http://www.learningandteaching.info/learning/experience.htm Accessed: 31 August 2010
• http://www.learningfromexperience.com/
• http://wilderdom.com/experiential/elc/ExperientialLearningCycle.htm

All the world is empty. Everything's dead.

Paying the bills really shows up how excruciatingly pointless my whole existence is.  I work, work, work the prime years of my life away.  I work instead of enjoying the Bumble Bean.  I work and have no energy to make indecent proposals to the Big Bad Bean.  I work to make money.  I pay the bills.  I have no more money.

I also went shopping today...another pointless and soul-destroying effort.  At least with the Bumble Bean along it is an adventure.  But adventures are not efficient and I work my life away so I have to be efficient.  Yesterday we played; today efficiency cracks its whip and we suffer.

What is wrong?  Am I Russian?  Has Dostoyevsky wandered into my head?  I sat down to blog about how much fun we had yesterday and my silly idea for an article about the similarities between Lao Tzu and Georges Bataille (there aren't any besides that they were both archivists, so I was going to make up something and draw a vast conclusion about Librarianship being the only path to true enlightenment or some such.)  I should probably go watch a silly movie or have a drink, but I'm too tired.  Perhaps tomorrow I will have better heart.

John Holt and Joint Fatigue Pills

Almost a week ago, I was crossing Atlantic Avenue and my knee went squish and started hurting like mad.  Once I had safely reached the curb, I looked and it was about the size of my head and taking my weight in a very grudging manner which suggested that it would give up at any moment.  I sat for awhile and then went to get pastries which is what I was doing crossing Atlantic Avenue in the first place.  I bought pastries at a strange pastry shop, mourning the week long vacation of Patsy's which has many advantages: it's on the way to work, they never ask me to make difficult choices, and everything is unbelievably good.  Limping back to work an hour late, the pastries were pretty good, but strangely had lemon in curd in ALL of them.  Except the eclairs.  Which were awful.

The Big Bad Bean, upon learning of my knee troubles, gave me stinky stuff to rub on it until we both had time at the same time for him to look at it.  This did not happen until Friday when he started giving me joint fatigue pills.  I have to say that the pills are a huge improvement over the JF wine but are still rather nasty and have this terrible habit of making me very alert and energized and then dropping me on my butt 4-7 hours later.  I have stopped taking them now that my knee has mysteriously stopped being a problem.  Since I stopped, my feet hurt all the time.  I wonder what that's about?

As for John Holt, he blew my mind again today.  "Next to the right to life itself, the most fundamental of all human rights is the right to control our own minds and thoughts.  That means, the right to decide for ourselves how we will explore the world around us, think about our own and other persons' experiences, and find and make the meaning of our own lives.  Whoever takes that right away from us, as the educators do, attacks the very center of our being and does us a most profound and lasting injury.  He tells us, in effect, that we cannot be trusted even to think, that for all our lives we must depend on others to tell us the meaning of our world and our lives, and that any meaning we may make for ourselves, out of our own experience, has no value."

It is resonating with two recent occurrences.  First, on the way down to Deirdre's wedding, I asked the Big Bad Bean to read Michel Foucault's Hermeneutics of the Subject to me.  He didn't even finish the first half of the first lecture and I'm still reeling.  Care of self, the pursuit of soul-development, being central to any effort of value and all effort being valueless without it.  Second, was a recent visit the Bumble Bean and I paid to a Teacher friend.  She was so completely into teacher mode that she left no room for him to reach her: the communication allowed was her to him, no feedback from him was allowed.  No input from him was valued without her valuing it for him.  In an hour and half, the Bumble went from a happy, exuberant explorer, to actively dis-trusting her to finally dis-liking her and requesting to leave her presence.  That's pretty strong for the Bumble Bean.  He generally has a pretty high tolerance for other people and the things they do.

Anywhoo, the String Bean arrives tonight and his bed is not made.  I must dig up some pillows and linens.

Failed but fun

This afternoon's stated intention was for the Bumble Bean and me to bring all my craft accessories down and gather his and coordinate them into a cohesive, orderly system in the book room while the Big Bad Bean learned the rest of the Eagle Form.

What actually happened is that the Big Bad Bean learned his form (super sexy) and the Bumble Bean and I played with rubber stamps and then rediscovered the water colors and spent 2+ hours water-coloring the wooden storage bins from IKEA.

Not quite sure how that happened, but we had so much fun and encountered his very determined and individual aesthetic sensibility. He started with the typical mud-toned-camouflage-after-a-blood-bath theme, transitioned through a rainbow confetti look into his blue period.  We now have 2 boxes in beautiful shades of blue with some green highlights...also some purple splotches.  I wonder if those were indicative of how cold he was the day before at the pool party.

He couldn't stop talking about his experience at the pool party yesterday, especially while he was painting his blue boxes.  When you consider that this is a kid who doesn't talk, you have to admit that must have been one incredible party.  He refused to get out of the water even though his lips were purple, his fingers were blue and he couldn't stop shaking.  I finally hauled him out using brute force (lots of silly tickles) dried him off and bundled him up in sweat pants, wool socks and a sweat shirt.  I really felt for him.  When I was a kid, I could never see any reason to stop doing something just because I was cold.

Unable to delete other blogs

I am abandoning my other (very pitiful) blog efforts and plan to focus my attention here. However, I couldn't figure out how to delete the other blogs in their entirety.

In this blog, I intend to record all of the cute/crazy/funny things that my son does, rant about general stupidity, and explore my ideas about education into a comprehensive education model which I may then try to turn into a business. I may also try to write a book...working title at the moment is Research Guide to Life.