Bucket Man

This evening we went to Walmart to look for some items for our upcoming trip to the beach.  After striking out, I thought we'd go to Home Depot and get some sturdy buckets for catching fiddler crabs, jellyfish, and whatever other little items we might find at the beach.  We got four small plastic paint buckets (I thought the white would be better than the orange for pictures) and headed home.  My always entertaining son decided to carry the buckets to the car on his head, which would not have been a problem if he could see where he was going.  He conceded temporarily and took them off his head so he could cross the parking lot, but a few minutes later when we were driving, I saw him in the rearview mirror, sitting there serenely, with a bucket on his head as if he wore one every day.

Once we pulled in the driveway, he (somehow) vaulted out of the car and began stalking around the yard like a possessed zombie, calling himself Bucket Man, and reminding me very much of the Black Knight (ala, "it's just a flesh wound") from "Monty Python and the Holy Grail."

In between laughs with his sister, I ran in the house to get the camera so I could photograph the elusive Bucket Man for posterity.   I'm glad I was able to get these few pictures before he suggested his sister give him the remaining bucket for one of his feet.  She was happy to comply, but when he was standing up again, he inadvertently placed his bucket on her flip-flop shod toe, ending all the fun with her howl of pain. 

Thanks for the laughs while they lasted, Bucket Man, it's been a tough week.

Sunflower Seat - Teacher Gift

     About a week ago, Daughter Dearest decided she wanted to make her teacher an end of the year present.  "Can we got to Michael's?"  she aske me last Sunday night.  "Sure."  I am a sucker for Michael's Craft Store. 

     After about 3 tours around the store with me saying, "well, give me an idea of what you had in mind..." and my girl asnwering, "I don't KNOW!" she had only settled on a ceramic bobble-head dog that she was going to paint.  It would have a place of honor right next to the apple-shaped items, I thought.  On the 4th turn around, I suggested, "how about we paint a wooden stool and she can use it as a special seat in the classroom?"  

     "Oh, yeah!!"
      Finally.  A plan. 

     I remembered my girl saying how her teacher loved sunflowers.  How about we the top of the stool to look like a sunflower, and twe paint the legs to look like stems.  She liked that idea.  

     First, we found a few pictures of sunflowers online and printed them for reference. 

     Then I drew a circle in the center of the stool's seat where the sunflower's brown center would be.  I had my girl paint the edges of the seat with sky blue - where the petals would gap apart.  She also painte the underside of the seat this color as well, although, afterward I was thinking that maybe we should have painted it green, like the underside of the flower.  Oh well.   We went on to paint the legs darg green, and then the rungs a green that was slightly lighter. 

     Next came a row of petals - darker yellow/orange in color to give it some depth and make it stand out from the next row in front. 

     I added some squiggley lines down the stems in the ligher green (I might had painted a few leaves here and there if we had more time, but alas!  We are procrastinators!)  We added some more rows of petals in lighter and lighter yellow (and again, if we had more time, we might have...  but we didn't).  Finally, I dribbled black, brown and a bit of yellow paint around the center of the sunflower, and then dabbed it all together with the brush to make it blend.  Our internet picture was absolutely necessary for this part.   

And then, WALLAH!! the finished product.  She wrote a little message to her teacher underneath the seat.  

Unfortunately, the teacher was absent on the last day. 

:-( 

Hope she liked it! 



Harry Potter at Discovery Times Square

If you’re a Harry Potter fan, go see this exhibit.  The wizarding world of Harry Potter is filled with items you just can’t find in the muggle world, so this may be your only opportunity to see, for example, an issue of The Quibbler, or the pattern on the invisibility cloak.

The exhibit begins in a small room with a guide who sorted some of us using the famous sorting hat.  “What’s your favorite house?”  She asked each person as they sat on her stool.  The hat ALWAYS sorted the person into their favorite house hummmm… wonder how that happened…

The main exhibit began in a circular room suggesting platform 9¾ (the train seems to be just pulling in) with video screens playing snippets of the movies.  We walked through halls reminiscent of Hogwarts complete with moving-picture frames on the walls.  There was even a large picture of the fat lady attempting to break a wine glass with her operatic voice… There were props from all movies (with the last conspicuously absent, of course).  There were large items (Buckbeak), small items (Hermoine’s Yule Ball earrings), items critical to the plot (the time turner necklace) and others, not at all critical (a bottle of Pumpkin Juice, and an issue of a quiddich magazine that I can’t even remember the name of), but interesting to see up close.  What were all the proclamations made by Dolores Umbridge while she was the high inquisitor?  How about, “Girls and Boys are strictly prohibited from being closer than 8 inches to each other.”  I think we could use that proclamation in some other schools!

There was a hefty showing of clothing, and if you’re like me and you love costumes, you’ll really appreciate this.  The boys of our group breezed through this section.  Clothes?  What clothes?  While a fair amount of “regular” clothing is on display, there is probably a greater amount of unusual clothing items on display here.  You can finally see just how hideous Ron’s dress robes for the Yule Ball really are, and since Victor Krum’s outfit is even more dashing in person, Ron’s abject misery at the party takes on new meaning.  Want to see Dumbledor’s Yuleball outfit?  Did you realize that Bellatrix LaStrange has a custom fitted leather dagger holder on the side of her black leather pieced corset? Did you expect Hagrid to be quite THAT big?  Bet you didn’t realize that the Irish quidditch players looked like knights of the round table, did you?

But it’s not only about the clothing.   You can see the beakers and storage jars from the potions lab, the box of chocolates that cause Ron to fall hopelessly in love, every sort of quidditch item you can imagine including the Nimbus 2000 and  the Nimbus 2001, wands from every important character, and of course, horcruxes.  My kids are pretty big fans, so they moved through the exhibit at a careful pace, checking out everything and lingering on their favorite items.  My son carefully avoided the GIGANTIC spider with the hairy legs which was quite lifelike if spiders were the size of Smart Cars.  The kids who had not watched the movies as often zipped through the exhibit quicker and lingered in the quaffle-toss area, tossing quaffles through some sample quiddich hoops to test their skills. 

After wandering happily through the museum, we landed in the gift shop, which had some great items but most of the stuff I was really interested in was not inexpensive.  The wands, really nice and exceptionally realistic (although not realistic enough to conjure a Patronus), were all 45.00, as were copies of the Maurader’s Map (a large piece of paper? 45.00?), and the neckties for each house.  Much as I loved them I could not see spending 45.00 on a striped necktie with the Griffindor crest.  Still, I was able to find a nice mousepad for my desk at work, and my daughter got a miniature Hedwig in her cage with a mini Hedwig sticker book, and my son got a pen with the Griffindor griffin on the top.  Oh, and although we may have been able to get it somewhere else for slightly less money, we got the movie we were missing:  Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.  Now we can’t wait to go to Universal Studios to see Hogwarts. And I can’t wait to sew some more costumes.

Happy Mother's Day, M'Lady!

     You should always make it easy for the gift-givers in your life to determine what to get you for a given holiday.  If you TRULY want to be surprised that's one thing, but if you have a particular something in mind, don't be coy, tell them what you'd like.  For example, I hung a picture of a certain something on the computer screen one evening, before Mother's Day, and just for good measure, I showed the picture to both of the kids first. 

     So when a little package arrived in the mail the other day, I admit, I was not surprised, but oh, the joy, when I opened it up!

     Ohhhh yummy!  It looks even better in person!  I like this because it makes a statement.  Something like, "I'll look to like, if looking liking move."  Or "O no! it is an ever-fixed mark That looks on tempests and is never shaken; It is the star to every wandering bark, Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken."  Or maybe something simpler like, "M'lady, will you do me the honor of allowing me to dedicate my performance in the joust to you?" Or maybe I'm still a few centuries too modern.  All I know is, it doesn't say, "Let's order some take-out and watch T.V. tonight."

     I also liked the little romance card that came in the box with it.  Check it out:

     Like he made it just for me!  I"m not sure I like the quote, though.  "...like a night without stars..." ?

     But... the stars are the best part!  Hey, what does he know?

     His jewelry is great, as for the poetry, I'll stick to Shakespeare.  

"Mom, please try to behave yourself..."

     Tonight I took my dear son to an orientation meeting at the junior high, the school he will be attending in September.  As we were getting ready to eat dinner, he looked at me and said, "Mom, please try to behave yourself tonight..." with something of a smirk on his face.  He was kidding, but only half kidding.  "Why do you say that?  What do you think I'm going to do?"  "I don't know, I just don't want you to embarrass me."

     Ah, I've been on the other side of this fence, and I remember the view well.  Sometimes just the way your mother breathes in and out can be embarrassing.  I had thought this was more the territory of girls, though.  My mother, for example, tends to sing in public.  Unabashedly.  She sings long arias that go on and on for verse after verse.  Why not just a line or two?  I guess she has a pretty nice voice (I am her daughter, you see, so I can't be sure) but she sings the wrong lyrics... and a lot of the time, the wrong notes as well.  She also tends to tell people too much, or talk for too long, or act too friendly, or smile too much.  As a teenager, when I was out with her, people would ask if we were sisters.  After a while I thought, ok, so maybe she looks young, OR MAYBE I JUST LOOK REALLY OLD!  Then there were those times when she tried to be too much of a tough guy (cute as she was and still can be, tough guy is a role she played easily).  She would GLARE and POINT at me, and one year, when I was fooling around and talking too much with my friend in Italian class, she made arrangements to SIT IN ON MY CLASS.  She stalked into the class, sat down stiffly in the back of the classroom and fixed her GLARE on me until I could feel it boring a hole in the back of my head.  Oh, all of this took place in the same school building where my son and I were going to the meeting. Good times, good times!

     My son and I drove in silence, he worrying (I'm sure) and me, wondering. I broke the silence.  "I'll tell you what,"  I said.  "I promise not to break into spontaneous song, and I promise not to do ANY dance steps at any point, how's that?"

     Was that a sigh of relief, or was I imagining it?

     "Yeah, that's good."  He said, "That's what I was mostly worrying about."  

     Oh my.  I haven't turned into my own mother exactly (although, there might still be time for that), but apparently I'm just as horrifying in an altogether new and different way.

A simple vote...

     Ok, now that Mother's Day is over, let's put this to a simple vote.  Which one should I choose?

This...

or this?

Thank you very much for your input. 

Harsh Reality

     Some of you may remember that I asked a student at school, “Rose,” if she wanted to help me make some of the scenery for the school play.   She is a student I’ve been worrying about all year.  She seemed to like arts and crafts, and I thought if she participated in something like the play, she might begin to see that she can make different choices for herself.   

     Well, she did help out, and she seemed to enjoy herself.  She came a few times, and once after helping, the next day she told me, “When I got home and told my aunt that I was at school helping out with the scenery on the play she said, ‘YOU?’ and I said, ‘yeah, I know.’”     

     Once the play was over, I began to worry again about her grades – would she be able to pass her classes this year?  She was holding her tongue and temper, and therefore, not getting suspended (a miracle in itself, when compared to last year), but would she pass?  Whenever she stopped into the office, I offered to help her with her schoolwork if she needed help, but she always refused the help, even though she knows I can actually help her.  Then last week when she came into the office, I was finally able to see the big picture.

     She plopped into a chair just inside the door, looking tired, and a little angry.

     “Hey, haven’t seen you in a while, how are you doing, what’s up?”  I said.

     “Mr. ____ sent me in here.”

     “Oh, are you in trouble?” 

      She shook her head no. 

     “Did you just need some space?” 

      She nodded.  This teacher really gets her.  He can tell when she’s about to freak out, and he gives her the space she needs to cool off so she doesn’t get herself in trouble.

     The infamous temper started bubbling up… “He gave me work to do and I wasn’t doing it cause I just didn’t feel like doing it, and he said, ‘so you’re just going to take a zero for the day?’ and I was like, ‘yeah, I guess so.’  I felt like telling him, ‘you know what, I don’t give a sh__ about your work; I just don’t feel like doing it, you fat f___!’”

     “Well, I’m really glad you didn’t tell him THAT,” I said.  “Well, you can sit in here for a while and chill out then, that’s fine with me.”  After a few minutes I asked her, “How is it going in your other classes?”

     She shrugged her shoulders with a fatalistic attitude. “I’m gonna fail” she said.  “I’m gonna go to summer school.  It is what it is.” Still in my old mode of thinking, I wished for her that this wasn’t the case.

     “How is it going at home?” I asked.

     She shook her head negatively.

     “Why?  What’s going on?”   

     “My father was shot.”  I was momentarily at a complete loss. 

     “Is he gonna be ok?”

     “They don’t know.” Then she shrugged and said nothing more.

     “How do you feel about that?”  I tried to pry gently.  She had told me on a previous occasion that she hates her father, he is not a father to her since he was in jail for most of her life. “…cause I know you have mixed feelings about him.”

      She considered.  “On one hand, I don’t care, cause I hate my father, but on the other hand, he IS my father, and he’s the only family I’ve got right now.” That’s because shortly after her father got out of jail, her mother went to jail.

      We talked some more.  He had been shot seven times.  Yes, another relative was staying at the house with her and her sisters.  She was bored at home.  She did nothing but eat and sleep.  She missed her mom.  She left my office, and worried about her, I made sure the social worker knew about her situation, but Rose was already down there talking to her.  Thank God.  And then it dawned on me.  For her, summer school is not bad, but good.  She probably still doesn’t realize this herself, but it is.  Summer school is not the problem – vacation is.