Wednesday, March 30, 2005

I can't talk...

No, really I can't talk. My voice left me tonight. It has been fading all day, getting raspier and raspier, I just can't win with this virus! I couldn't even sing Adelweis to the Artist or Six little ducks to the Stuntman when I tucked them in. Oh, well. If you want to talk with me, better email instead.

Went on a "hot date" with the two most handsome guys I know. Okay, I took my sons to see Robots on Monday night, and we had a lovely time, fun movie, by the way. I think I enjoyed the humor more than they did, but it was great "eye-candy" and the soundtrack is excellent.

Monday, March 28, 2005

Rain, Rain, Go AWAY!

It's been raining for days and days, not constantly, but consistently it has been damp and cold. It is great sleeping, tea-drinking, and feeling blue weather. I think I am coming down with a cold. Sniff. Yuck. I wonder why it is that my mood seems to reflect the weather, perhaps this is so for most people? When I am stuck in-doors due to inclement weather, I want to sleep and "veg", and when it is sunny and bright outside I am motivated and energized. I really need to do some big-time Spring cleaning. The clutter is beginning to take over and I can no longer see the surfaces of my desk, microwave, dishwasher, dresser, and kitchen table. My closet needs an overhaul and I need to determine where and how to store the kids out-of-season clothes. The boys room has been in a constant state of disarray. I would love to have an indoor yard sale and get rid of some of their junky toys. There are heaping piles of laundry to wash, fold and put away. Ironically, if it were sunny, I would feel like tackling all of these tasks, but it is not. I did however, muster enough gumption to sift through L's baby clothes for my expectant sister-in-law while K and D played educational computer games. (I now have four pregnant sister-in-laws! I already have 13 nieces and nephews plus 4 (no multiples are expected) makes 17!) It pours down rain as I sit and type, and instead of getting dressed and getting to work, I am fighting the impulse to climb back into bed and get lost in slumber.

Friday, March 25, 2005

Good Friday and Tree

It seems weird to me that today, Good Friday and the birthday of my beloved friend whom I call "Tree" are today. Christ died on a tree, and today Tree was born. I would wish her a happy birthday, but I know it isn't so I will only say, "Tree, I love you, and I am sending my squeezes and will bring the markers and paper tomorrow."

More Spiders and shopping

There have been more gross, disgusting, humongo spiders in my house. Last night, I had the boys almost asleep and was about to go to bed myself (I've been quite run-down) when I spied a huge arachnid by my coffee table. I let out a stifled scream, because as I started to shriek, I remembered that the boys were practically asleeep. Well, they perked right up when they heard me, and wanted to see the nasty beast before I sucked him up into the amazing vaccuumous Oreck. ( I am so thankful for the long attatchements.) All the excitement rejuvenated me a little, but I still turned in earlier than usual.

Rumor has it that a Borders is coming to Timonium/Lutherville. I am quite excited by this prospect, as we don't have a decent bookstore north of Towson. I just paid homage to the great OLD NAVY which has just recently appeared in town too. Now I don't need to drive 20 minutes to get to there- it is almost walking distance (depends on the day and the shoes) from my home. There may even be another mega bookstore coming to the new shopping center in Hunt Valley as well as many other shopping opportunities. It will be one of those fake small-town-like malls, all outdoors, but it is a big improvement to the run-down has-been of a mall that was there before it. Ahh, suburbia, (cough, cough).

Monday, March 21, 2005

What I believe

No, I don't believe in the Easter Bunny, but had that Hip hop Easter B. sent to me by a friend and thought it was too cute to keep to myself. We, as a family, don't get much into the hype of the holidays, but I do like to do something a little different on the days that are significant in my faith. This week is Holy Week, and it is called such because it is the week leading up to (as we recognize it in the church calendar) the death and ressurection of Christ. At Bible study tonight, again my beliefs were challenged about Christ actually descending into Hell. I had to look it up, and I found that I, and not he who spoke otherwise was right, at least from a reformed point of view. This is what I believe in a nutshell:

I believe in God, the Father Almighty,
the Creator of heaven and earth,
and in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord:

Who was conceived of the Holy Spirit,
born of the Virgin Mary,
suffered under Pontius Pilate,
was crucified, died, and was buried.

He descended into hell. [See Calvin]

The third day He arose again from the dead.

He ascended into heaven
and sits at the right hand of God the Father Almighty,
whence He shall come to judge the living and the dead.

I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy *catholic church,
the communion of saints,
the forgiveness of sins,
the resurrection of the body,
and life everlasting.

Amen.

Friday, March 18, 2005

The Easter Bunny Cometh

This was way too cute and funky to not pass on: www.grayace.com/dex/bunny.html check it out, and crank up the volume. Hoppy Easter!

Wednesday, March 16, 2005

Monday, March 14, 2005

Wu-name

"Expert Desparado" (married name), "Phantom Dreamer" (maiden name), or "Bitter Lover" (first name only) are my Wu-names, what's yours?

Thursday, March 10, 2005

Sew tired

I was up late last night working on my mock-ups for the pattern making and development class I will be taking this weekend. I finished the third and final one around 11:30pm only to discover that I hadn't done the dishes, laundry or other tedious chores around the house. Stayed up until after midnight trying to catch up a little. What a week! I have much respect for all the single moms/dads out there who are forced into positions of full time work on top of their full time mothering/fathering. It is simply exausting.

Class starts early tomorrow morning, and I still need to gather up some supplies. Looks like a trip to the Office Depot and Jo-Ann's are in order today. I am excited to be nurturing this part of myself, to revive those dormant creative juices and get them flowing once again. I hope to complete the class with two (possibly three) well developed and perfect fitting patterns.

*Seasonal update* A huge, I mean ginormous, spider was in my kitchen yesterday, and a smaller but equally disgusting one in my bedroom the night before. Why now? The huge ones should all be dead, it is only 20 degrees outside. The eggs can't be hatching this soon, can they? Perhaps they sneeked out when I was in the attic last Saturday. Ooooh, it's just gross.

Saturday, March 05, 2005

May the Force be with me...

...Frantically prepping for the party of six-year olds I am having tomorrow. The Artist turns six next week and he wished for a Star Wars party. I've been busy building an Evil Emperor bean bag toss, drawing Yoda (for pin the ear on Yoda), and making "moon rocks" for the moon rock hunt. Trusty Star Wars fanatic, Greg, will bring by some music and cool "decor" to go with the theme. Thanks Greg! I still need to bake the R2D2 cake and shop and clean. Oh dear, what am I doing sitting at the computer!? I need to go!

Thursday, March 03, 2005

First Thursday, again!

SlideShow at the BMA was a real treat, at least to me. The boys liked some of it, mostly Projection 4, by Peter Fischli and David Weiss, the huge one of nature scenes that morphed slowly into different overlapped images of mushrooms, snails, ferns, rotten apples, etc. Actually I think my favorite was one I didn't check to see the artist or the title, as the boys were yanking my arms to keep moving through, "Come on mom, let's go," they kept saying as they tugged. Anyway, this one was the first one (I think) you see when you come into the exhibit. It is just slides with words that say things like "Muriel and Uncle Fred's cabin" or "This is us by the seashore" or that kind of thing, which is fun because the slides magically appear at suggestion in my imagination. I was giggling to myself as I read some of them. They were exactly the kinds of things people say when they are showing their own slides, which I found amusing. My other favorite was titled Real Estate, but I missed the artist for this one too, it was simply a room with slide projections of three windows with vertical blinds. The lighting and size of the room made it feel like the bedroom to a flat. I immediately began to "envision" the space as one does when looking at real estate. Ah, the power of suggestion. Another that the boys liked was Land/Sea by Jan Dibbets, portraying an image of the sea on one wall and a grassy field on the adjacent wall. As the slides progress, the horizon line moves downward until there is nothing but sky on both walls, and then the horizon line moves upward again. It shows a beautiful contrast between the texture of waves of ocean and waves of meadow.

After viewing this exhibit, we proceeded to look at some other parts of the museum that I often overlook. The furniture, Tiffany windows, silver and then over to the Modern Wing and (my favorite) the Cone Collection. The Cone Collection, as I have mentioned before feels very much like home to me. Matisse and I are old friends. I find his work comforting, inspiring and challenging all at once. At five-thirty we went to do the Family Fun craft, which was inspired by the SlideShow exhibit and there were many slides from the museum collection free for the taking. Oh, how I would have given a limb for some of these when I was teaching art, free exemplars were hard to come by. I snagged a few of the Matisse slides I liked and a Van Gogh I happened upon. I am hoping to copy some Matisse images on my bathroom walls, eventually.

It was fun to spend some "alone time" with the boys, they rarely get me all to themselves, but since we left L with Oma, they each got to hold one of my hands.

Tuesday, March 01, 2005

Weaned

Little Prettiness is now 16 months old and is totally weaned. She after only five days off the breast, outright rejected it when offered, so that job is now done. The Stuntman was much harder to wean, he had begun the nasty little habit of biting, so it was time, but he faught me for it. Each morning he would attempt to lift my shirt, and when I wouldn't let him, he would throw a fit...Prettiness, doesn't seem to miss it one bit, it makes it a little easier for me that way. I am now freer to leave for longer periods of time which allows me to travel to San Diego in April and possibly Japan in August! Just this past weekend I was able to go up to Philly again to see TT. I got to see the cool fabric printing studio where she works in Manayunk, aquire a brown suede coat (it was free!), window shop on Main Street and have the only hot chocolate that she will drink this side of the Atlantic. (Once you spend a year in Austria, you become a bit of a hot-chocolate snob.) It was delicious, made with real milk, real cocoa, and not much sugar. We thought the only thing that would make it better would be real whipped cream on top, but it was too good to complain about a little detail like that. The twenty-four hour leave flew by, and I anxiously await her next visit to Balto, when the D.C.'s cherry blossoms are in bloom.