El Guapo is dead

Not the fighter, Bas Rutten, but his name-sake the fighting fish.  He had been dying for a while, not eating, then eating, lying on his side, then not lying on his side. He looked rather as if he had had a stroke except I really have no idea if fish can have strokes and if they can if they effect only one side etc. I kept feeling like I should be doing more for him. At one point I had decided he actually was dead just lying there on his side near the bottom, so I asked the Big Bad Bean, who came over and tapped the tank. I think it was rather like CPR for the little guy since he jumped up and was fine for a few days, then went back to his malingering.

Just to be sure, I left him there and kept feeding him until bits started falling off and drifting away. then I flushed his corpse. I'm not sure why I thought Deer Island was a better solution than being dug up and harried by the crazy neighborhood squirrels, but I did.

Humph.

Fit or unfit? [From last year about this time]

When people ask the Big Bad Bean about how best to get in shape, he always responds with, "in shape for what?"  This past week has made it clear that I am not in any decent shape to be a mom to the Bumble Bean.  We bounced Tuesday morning [ow, sore], went skating Tuesday afternoon (haven't done that in over a decade and never in hockey skates) [crippled, broken, swollen feet] followed by play ground running and climbing and sliding.  Fortunately the Bumble Bean noticed that I was broken and gave me kisses to fix me.  Maybe not so fortunate since he was so darn cute and sweet that I was inspired to keep going instead of collapsing like any moderately intelligent adult.  Then, Wednesday, we decided to take it easy and go on a family walk about at the Sheepfold.  Two hours later, we limped home and I took a bunch of glutamine.

My kid is Winnie-the-Pooh

The Big Bad and Bumble Beans went for a walk the other day.
The Big Bad Bean asked the Bumble Bean, "What are you thinking about?"
And the Bumble Bean replied, "Words that end in 'ing.'"
"Like what?"
"Like 'walking,'" replied the Bumble Bean.
Not to miss a teaching moment, the Big Bad Bean asked, "And what does 'walking' start with?"
"Home."
"And what does it end with?"
"Lunch," was the very firm reply of the Bumble Bean- ending in 'ing' forgotten for more important things.

Facebook is dead, and I'm not sorry

I finally killed my facebook account today.  Yesterday I got a big dose of scorn from the Big Bad Bean about still having an account even though I don't log into if it is so repellent to me.

Meanwhile, all kinds of silly things continue to happen to me.  The Bumble Bean continues to grow and be charming and ridiculous.  An enormous list of things continues to be not done.

Potty time with Pooh

Tonight, as the Bumble Bean was waiting for his bath to fill he was sitting on the potty and he said to me, "Oh bother!  Mommy, you can never tell about poops."

Muse

I am becoming utterly self-obsessed.  It doesn't feel like self-obsession, it feels like being driven, but I can see that the sensation of wanting to push everyone and everything away and just focus on what's inside certainly looks like self obsession.  In fact it is, but it's also described as in the grip of one's muse.  I don't recall ever having it this bad before.  I should ask the Big Bad Bean. 

I dutifully took the Bumble Bean to the beach for his solar system adventure.  Castle Island was full of police and people in silly green things, so we had to drive up to Revere which was mercifully full of nothing at all, not even much water as the tide was lower than I have ever seen it.  Revere Beach on an eighty degree day two days before the start of spring at very low tide dimpled all over with sand dollars, not white, but somewhere between milk chocolate and rust, with dog tracks and people tracks and seagull tracks and what the Bean decided were ocean tracks, the hollows full of sloshing water and what I strongly suspect was clam poop but the Bean determined were worms, the ridges crushing under foot and full of clams, some with grass growing from them and some with sea weed.  I pulled a few out for the Bean to see and he got very excited and silly about the "noses" being gulped and chewed right up with big teeth.  He also pick several enormous bouquets of seaweed, some to set sail in his crocs, some to weight down with sand and other ooze, some to stomp, some to release into the ocean.  It was fun and he was fun and I had fun, but I was really waiting to be alone with my...me? To write and draw and learn to draw and practice drawing and formulate Artemis Winter.

Today I went along so the String Bean could practice his driving.  He drives like an asshole and this is good for me to observe because he doesn't drive this way because he is an asshole, just because driving around here makes no sense whatsoever and he is inexperienced.  We passed a man who was getting dressed on the sidewalk.  He pulled up his pants just as we approached him, but he pulled them up no higher than the bottom curve of his buttocks.

Dutifully, I will meet tomorrow with the childish lecher at work and go for coffee and talk with interest and intelligence on whatever he wants to discuss.  Dutifully, I will meet with the angry mom on Friday, I will go to dance, I will go to science.  Saturday, my duty will take me to lunch with ... someone who i don't feel able to describe.  Sunday with the Bean again, then work again on Monday. 

I will not design half a dozen dresses.  I will not make much progress on my drawing or story.  I will get almost no house work or home projects done or even started.  Was waking up such a good idea?

Losing it again, but I don't care

I have again lost a piece of writing that I had scrawled on a random piece of paper.  It was about either the Bumble Bean or Artemis Winter as a cat apprentice.  I need it to complete the Early Adventures portion of the Artemis Winter book.  I will attempt to recreate it unless someone can tell me where I put it.  I have three more chapters to write: Artemis Winter writes a book, Artemis Winter decides to be happy, Artemis Winter's mom gets fed up and changes his life.

The reason I don't particularly care is very much the continued existence of the Bumble Bean and his infinite silliness.  I was gone from Sunday through Wednesday night at a Library conference in Albany, NY. It was beautiful in Albany and beautiful in Boston, but I was not in Boston with the Bumble Bean to enjoy the beauty.  So we made up for it.

On Thursday, we blew bubbles, we made pancakes, we met a new person, we made tortillas, we went swimming, we took a bath (actually he took the bath, with his little planets and when it came time to get out, he put them all in the drain so they could swirl around with the outgoing water and said, "look Mommy, it's the Milky Way." 

On Friday, we went to dance class, he danced by himself, he danced with his teacher, he danced with me.  Much silliness ensued.  As we left dance class in the rain, the Bumble Bean decided that he needed my shoes so that he could walk them across the street.  So there I was in my socks, cold wetness seeping in, and the Bumble Bean crouched in the cross walk, walking my shoes, one after the other, clomp, clomp across the street.  He was very pleased with himself, so we went home.

He becomes more fun every day.  Today is Saturday.  I am at work, not having fun with Mr. Bumble.

Next steps

Miss A (for anthropy) challenged me to write a book about the toys I make as a marketing technique and I admit that I have not until very recently made any headway.  The break was in part due to trying to find pictures to fill the echoingly empty walls of my office which led me back to James C. Christensen and his College of Magical Knowledge. 

So, I am going to combine my love of houses and buildings with my Windmill Tilting idea and populate the premises with dangling dragons, odd faces and parts thereof, octopi, starfish, mutant undersea air breathing things and just let go the scope of my imaginative life in a story book world.  I can’t imagine how someone is going to illustrate this to my standards, but there you go.

As a side note, in looking for the name of my school, I looked up “college” in my Roget’s thesaurus and the only synonym it had was “jail.”  Hmm.

Several cephalopods

Blogger dot com sucks when it comes to my spelling needs.  Couldn't find cephalopod at all.  Mind you, I had it very misspelled to start, but once I corrected it, this spell check insisted that I wanted sloped or scalloped or scalped.  Is scalped really a more popular concept than octopi and squid?  I suppose it is the scalping of tickets and not the forcible removal of the forelock with a tomahawk.

The liquor store that revels in having fun sayings on its sign as you drive north on 28 had its usual "Holidays mean family, we sell liquor" sign up until a few days ago when they replaced it with "and now without the octopus."  I don't know what it means and I didn't notice until I walked out so I could ask (and yes I would have) but it reminded me that I have a new design idea for the Octopus Obsession and possibly the Magical Starfish.  Also that I am without the squid that took up residence below my belly button.  Maybe it was the swimming?  Maybe I am not ready to relinquish swimming to the Big Bad and the Bumble Beans between them?

I should really get on with the next step of my toymaking career, but I think I need to rest a little first.

And possibly clean the house.  It needs it and so do I.