aerin all cirque-y
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

Because it is her birthday today. She didn't look like this today – this was from a workshop over the weekend with Serenity where they experimented with different looks for stage makeup and performances.

We've had her for fifteen years. Who'd of thunk it?

Jan 14
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

An even dozen different ways to hold down a blue circle.

That was fun.

Kids bring home all kinds of stuff from school. Alice had several deeply mysterious songs including one where she stated she was proud to be a cow, and another about the stegasaurus (a funny looking dinosaurus). But I was very taken with a new one yesterday. Zeb, Serenity's son, was singing a song that went like this:

And I realized there were not very many places in the US where your run of the mill kids in public school kindergarten would know what a damper was. It had to be Vermont or Alaska, or possibly Minnesota. This happened to be Vermont. Leave a comment if your local kindergartners would understand this song. Or if anyone has produced something incomprehensible…

Well, that was interesting.

Alice won a spot in an open casting audition at WGBH, Boston's Public TV station and one where a lot of programs get made including Arthur, Fetch with Ruff Ruffman, Nova, Zoom (both the show of my youth and the show of my children's youth) and tons of other great stuff. It was a surprise to get in. It was fun to go. There were nearly 2000 kids (two thousand – I did not bobble the zeros) and they took them in groups of 10 and 11 and lined them up and took them off to do….  something.

Alice says the something consisted of telling them their name, age, where they're from, and answering one question. I heard from one kids she was asked what it was like being a cat, and that others in her group were asked super hero questions. Alice said she was asked about her new job. Her group was gone for a long time, but when she came back she ate everyhting in sight and some of my lunch and requested to visit the Science Museum. Which we did, since we were close, and not many people were out on account of piles of snow falling in the night.

The Museum had a special exhibit on mythical creatures and how people might have come up with them and whether there were any antecedents for them. There was some mention of how the Chinese developed their images of dragons based on bones of dinosaurs in the Gobi Desert, and how the Greeks developed ideas about giants and cyclopes from bones of mammoths around the Mediterranean. There was also a nice look at how ideas about the shapes of mythical creatures developed – the conflation of snakes and water goddess in Western Africa and how mermaid figureheads on European ships gave that idea a different form, and Mami Wata morphed into a mermaid BUT – she has to have a snake too, or she isn't Mami Wata.

Anyhow – there were sea monsters, land monsters, air monsters and many funny models, and we had fun until I felt faint from hunger, so Alice found the way to the food and made me eat, and then the place was closing so we paid our respects to the dinosaurs and headed home. The T. Rex has a cheerful scarf for the season.

Alice stated, after a completely mediocre supper at one of the identical rest stops on the Mass Pike, that this had been a most satisfying day – what with seeing the inside of WGBH, and then the Museum, and the mythical creatures – life was pretty good.

We will have a silent moment of gloating over what feels remarkably like sucessful parenting.

I am taking some time off. Not from the day to day part of life, but from this blogging part of life (I know, how are you going to tell, I've been so lax about posting.)

Christmas is coming. The holidays mean a gigantic flurry of parties (yay), end of year shows and recitals (mostly yay), a tiny amount of shopping (modified rapture) and some tree and house decorating (potential for fun). I have no time to sit and talk. I can't think, I can't make, I am knitting socks and reading and driving children to things. I'll check back after Christmas with the TIF for December done. Until then, imagine me in my car moving children around, with my knitting ready to distract me until I bring them all home again.

Later, gators

My kids were treated to their mother cavorting about the living room singing "I got my rug I got my rug I got my rug…" I was worried it wouldn't make it before the end of the day Friday, and since UPS doesn't deliver on weekends or holidays that would mean the room project was on hold until Tuesday. How to make my head explode! But it is here, and and going to be installed, and on Tuesday I am headed on the long trek to Ikea to get stuff to hold up tables.

My large daughter very kindly helped me paint the trim in the room Thursday. We agreed that it was a classic example of a project that had spiraled WAY Out Of Hand, in a mom kind of way. Really, all I wanted, at first, was a new table to work on.

I'm holding onto that thought.

And going to find Al so we can do the rug thing.

My brother is a year-rounder on Monhegan, 12 miles off the coast of Maine between Rockland and Damariscotta (you know, go down one of those thumbs to the very end, and catch a ferry).  Since the weather is dreadful much of the year, and I am a stone cold wimp, we only visit in the summer, when it is lovely except for water issues. We are headed out tomorrow for the long drive and ferry scrimmage. We’ll touch down for the end of the day around 4:00 pm, having left before 7:00 am tomorrow morning.

For all that I dread the trip, I look forward to the island part. I stop wearing a watch, and we make sure to catch the sunset at least once, and we let the kids stay up late, and we walk everywhere. The island is tiny, about one mile by two, and all the houses are on one side. The rest is hiking trails and coastline.

I’ll bring pictures.

reading tiger
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

I found this on the couch the other morning.