Tag: Thing2

A Tale of Country Kitties

One of the facts of country life is that other critters live in the woods with your pets. Snoop, our fat black feline god of pleasure found out in August that fishers weren’t as easy to escape as bears, and we saw him no more.

We all mourned him – especially Thing2 who spends more time on the floor with the animals than anyone else in the family.

The house mice tried to feign sympathy, but there was no mourning period in the nooks and crannies behind the walls. We knew we needed a new mouser.

Thing1’s girlfriend’s (yes you read that right) family owns a few barn cats who, in addition to being excellent mousers were prolific breeders this summer. So a few Saturday ago after I got off work, we decided to see if any of the kittens could be coaxed into the slothful life of a housecat.

We had two semi-willing takers (bribed with a bit of catnip) and named them Lady Jane (because she was so grey and seemingly dainty) and Gentleman Jim who seems more like Jim-Bob now.

We got them home and Jim-Bob promptly swatted Katy-the-Wondering-Dog’s nose, confirming her opinion that cats are freaking crazy and making us wonder if a barn cat could be happy as a housecat.

It took them less than an hour to convert.

Jim-Bob unlocked the age-old wisdom of cats that tells them that humans are bad hunters but excellent servants and sampled every lap and couch. Jane — not sure if she or Katy would be the bigger wimp — held back a bit, waiting until bedtime to snuggle up with the human of her choice (Thing2 in this case).

There’s something magical about an animal that can live in the wild but still prefers to occupy the laps of very unmagical humans. I don’t know if it was magic or just the vibration from the purring, but it didn’t take us more than an hour to realize how much we had missed having cats, even if only for a month or two.

Decisions, Decisions 


Like most families in the US with a high school senior in the house, we’ve acquired an impressive stack of college brochures over the last few months since Thing1 took his SAT’s.  

T1 is very methodical in his evaluations of potential schools, but when we opened a flyer from the University of Chicago, Thing2 introduced a foolproof criterium for putting a school in the ‘must apply’ pile.

As it happens, the library at U Chicago looks strikingly like the dining hall at Hogwarts when photographed in bad light.  Recognizing that life is full of difficult decisions, Thing1 is still reading the fine print and trying to figure out if it goes on the ‘more research’ pile.

Thing2 is trying to decide if he wants the school put him in Slitherin or Gryffindor.  

Process and Procedure


“Dweezil’s Big To-Do” is the working title of a kids book that started as a way to learn the procedure of storyboarding and laying out a children’s book.  As it happened, it was also a way to document the processes by which Thing2 manages to avoid ever truly cleaning his room.   

I’m planning on offering signed copies of the book using grey ink to match my hair.

Here and Now

 

Watercolor Sketch, 5×7, SOLD

 

We’re vacationing this week in southwestern Michigan along the great lake. I had big dreams of spending the week painting the water and the weather which never fail to inspire.
Thing2, however, was also inspired. The absence of glowing screens combined with an abundance of immediate and extended family helped Thing2 rediscover the joy of corralling parents and grandparents into card games and rounds of Monopoly highlighted by rules he makes up as he goes along.
When we finally got down to the beach, I was happy just to soak up the surroundings. I did a few quick studies and photos of things that may become paintings later. I’m starting to think, though, that the most important part of painting the landscape may be actually experiencing it — and the rest of life — while you’re in it.

Thing2 seems to agree.

Prints can be purchased on Etsy here.

In It Together

DSC 0039

My sons are the center of my life.  They are the center of my husband’s life. 

Today, Congress began changing the future drastically for my eldest son by endangering his ability to obtain insurance when he is an adult. 

Today Congress rolled back Obamacare, and with it, protection for millions of people with pre-existing conditions (replaced with high risk pools).  My son is one of those people. He was diagnosed with an autoimmune disorder (a lifetime diagnosis) that requires medications that would be unattainable for us without insurance. 

He’ll be a man soon, and, again – through no fault of his own –  he may find it more difficult to get coverage or possibly even job, since he will have to evaluate the laws in each state and not every employer will want to cover hires in his situation. It will  Even so, he’s lucky compared to the millions of Americans who will lose insurance outright. He’s still on our insurance plan, and we’ll keep him there as long as the law allows.

Jimmy Kimmel hinted at some of this the other night in his emotional monologue. He briefly touched on the fact that, prior to the ACA, a child like his would have reached his lifetime insurance cap before he left the NICU. If that child had appendicitis, or a broken bone, or cancer, that cap would have left many parents bankrupt at best or burying their child at worst — even if they had insurance.  

I have thought a lot about those other parents in the months since our son was diagnosed. When we get our meds, I silently thank our company for making it possible and then shake my head that anyone in a country as rich as ours might have to watch their child suffer or even die.  I shake it when I wonder how many people die prematurely because they don’t have access to the same healthcare we do, and I wonder how we benefit as a society from treating children and poor people like disposable objects. 

I call my representatives. I donate. And I shake my head. But today I’m done shaking my head.  I’ve thought about moving our family back to a country with stronger healthcare, but I’d still be shaking my head at the drugstore, wondering how people back home were managing without access.  

So now I’m still calling my representatives and donating, but I’m also looking for new ways to show solidarity with my son and with all the other people who are being pushed out in the cold. Because, as Jimmy Kimmel so beautifully stated, “We need to take care of each other.”  

Save

Pea Picker


i’d like to tell you I have a veggie garden because I’m really into organic everything, but the truth is there’s nothing quite as satisfying as watching my kids fight over fresh greens.  In my defense, I have stopped telling them the peas were candy.

You can buy prints and cards of this painting here

Jitter Bug

Jitter bug medicine blog 4 8 2014

There’s a bug going around the school this spring.  I usually resist the urge to pump my kids full of unnecessary antibiotics, but last night Thing2’s nose was runneth-ing over, and I got out the purple stuff.

Literally taking his sniffles in stride, Thing2 came limping over to me (apparently this particular strain of flu is being sponsored by the American Branch of  the Department of Silly Walks) and opened his mouth.  I popped in a spoonful of grape-flavor.  He danced on one foot and then the other quickly and then looked at me and smiled.

“I’m just making sure it gets everywhere, Mom.”

“The flu?”

“No, the medicine through my body.”  His legs regained functionality as he slid around the floor, jitterbugging to his internal iPod.  “And, I think it’s working, Mom.”

One of us clearly doesn’t understand how the purple stuff is supposed to work, but it might not be the guy dancing around the kitchen in his jammies.

If Everyone Jumped

Windpower Apr 1 2014

“Mom, I have a new superpower!”  Thing2 barely had his seatbelt on.  “I can create wind!”  That neatly explained seven-year-old Thing2’s energetic,  skyward gestures as he hopped off the bus.

“What do you mean?” I asked.  Thirteen-year-old Thing1 smirked as he tried not to inject eighth grade into a heretofore innocent and imaginative conversation.

“I can,” Thing2 insisted, launching into an explanation of how to get the weather to bend to your will.

We quickly figured out that the weekend’s Frozen marathon – halted when Thing1 threatened to get a court order to get Thing2 to stop playing it – had inspired the afternoon’s flight of fancy.  It’s the result of a pattern that’s threatened to force us into using the worst parenting platitude ever devised.  It’s one I prayed I’d never use, but here we may be.

Thing2 had zero interest in Frozen until last week.  He, along with the rest of the boys in his class, were left off the guest list of a girl’s slumber party (a story unto itself).  Discovering the party’s theme and certain he was off the list because of his ignorance of the plot’s complexities, he promptly began begging to see it.

“I’m the only one in my class who hasn’t seen it,” he told me, digging out the other most over-used phrase in parent-child relations .

“Where have I heard this before?” I asked, resisting the temptation for a traditional answer. The question was rhetorical – I’d heard the complaint two weeks earlier.  It was before ‘Everything is Awesome’ from The Lego Movie became the newest tune Thing2 used to torture Thing1’s highly sophisticated musical ear and he’d been the only kid whose parents were keeping him in a cultural wasteland devoid of talking Lego characters.

I was a teeny bit curious about Frozen, however, so when the Big Guy and Thing1 were busy with homework  hit the download button.  The rest of the weekend was history.

I’ve avoided completing the other half of the ‘Everyone else is doing it’ equation for thirteen years not because I’m a parenting genius, but because Thing1 is a born skeptic.  If his friends were jumping off the proverbial bridge, he’d ask if they had insurance and a rope.

Thing2 is a different matter.  He doesn’t go along with the crowd just to go along with the crowd.  He goes where the fun is.

When we got back from the bus stop,  Thing2 offered to demonstrate his wind powers.   I fetched firewood as Thing2 climbed to the top of a snow drift, raising his hands in the air and gesturing to the clouds.  The top of the pine trees continued to sway.  “See?”

Weather control soon bored him and he began jumping from drift to drift.

“You’re going to get hurt,” I said.

“No I won’t. Look, Mom,” he said as I filled the canvas wood carrier again.  “I’m jumping over the Grand Canyon.”

I stopped and watched him leap between two solid snow drifts.  He really did look like he was getting ready to jump over a gorge, and I realized I’ll never get to ask the oldest, most-overused query in parent-child relations.  The answer was already there in his flushed cheeks and every new story he was imagining with each leap.  More jumpers would just make it more fun.

 

Be

In my inner world, I fight dragons. I take on armies and villains, triumphing over any challenge with wit and courage. Did I mention this was a fantasy?

In the real world, I've wrapped myself in the notion that my dreams are the result of an active imagination. Lately, though, as I look at my life and the things I haven't achieved or the real demons I've been afraid to fight, I've come to an uncomfortable admission. It's not just the inner triumphs that are fictional. Everything in that world is imaginary – especially the courage.

Before thirteen-year-old Thing1 was born, I never thought of myself as especially kind or patient or even steadfast. When he came into our world, however, right away he needed me to learn all of those things and, for him, I did. My kindness or patience still wouldn't win me any awards, but because of him I learned to keep trying when the breast milk wasn't flowing right away. I learned to stick by someone who was screaming in my face and to put someone else's needs before my own.

Right now we're navigating the first year of adolescence with all the pitfalls I'd expect and some I didn't. And even though he's getting stubble on his chin, I still look at him and feel the same powerful push to be better. He needs me to be brave now. So, not just for him but because of him, I will be.