Happy Birthday!

The KitKatPandaBatWolf turns eight today. The excitement will be shared in her class with a boy who's also turning eight. Cupcakes and apple juice boxes for all!

Tomorrow night she's having a winter-themed sleepover. Pizza, and a movie, and a craft project and some games. No doubt there will be cookie cake crumbs all over, and voices long after I tell them to pipe down and go to sleep. I can't wait.

It should be a big deal, this birthday business, shared interest that I have in the original event. But I really don't feel anything very profound. I am aware how quickly the Offspring are growing up, but I'm not saddened by it; I don't feel that anything is lost. On the contrary. I've always loved them, of course. But each year as they grow, and develop more interests, make more friends, add more skills to their tool belts, I just find myself liking them more. Now they recommend books, and music, and movies, and I'm probably going to share their enjoyment in all of them. Goodbye and Good Riddance to Tinky Winky.

***

Yesterday the Spouse was telling me that one of the Jonas brothers had gotten married. "it's got to be Kevin or Joe" I speculate aloud to the daughter, as we conclude that Nick is 17 or so these days. "He's 23, I think" the Spouse adds to clarify. Definitely Kevin, then.

Here's the funny part: the Spouse comes bearing this matrimonial announcement, but he mocks me for knowing their names.

I guess it's Tinky Winky all the way down.

Witches in Fiction

I started Meg Cabot's Jinx last night, which in combination with Tanglewreck (which I'm currently reading to the Possum), got me thinking about the importance of houses in magic stories. And honestly, I can't think of a magical sort of story that doesn't make the house (or, in Harry Potter, Hogwarts) an important character.

In Bell, Book and Candle and Practical Magic, in Sabrina The Teenage Witch and Bewitched, women with awesome magical powers seem perfectly content to live in their wonderful homes, and occasionally help out a girlfriend. They dress well, look fabulous, and don't have to spend any time scrubbing dirty floors.

Guys with magical powers tend toward the grandiose and messianic. It seems to me the gals have it right. Ultimate power? Ultimate headache. Okay, sure, there's a strong feminist backlash to the assumption that a woman with great powers would be happy keeping house for some putz. But if I could opt out of doing all the drudgery associated with daily life, I'd bring the spouse along to enjoy the ride...

To our Addam's Family sort of house.

I Think I've Got It

In the week before Mother's Day, the Possum asks what I'd like. "Well," says I, "I'd like The Golden Compass, and I'd like to sit down and watch it, together." And just to be sure, I told the Spouse.

Happily, for Mother's Day, I got The Golden Compass, and movie candy (my favorites: Junior Mints, Circus Peanuts, and Whoppers), and the leisure time to sit and watch a movie I wanted to see with my family on the enormous sofa under the faux-mink throw of decadence. If life gets better than snuggling with the Offspring while watching armored polar bears fight, then I don't think I'm ready for it.

Also, it turned out to be a good choice, because I was too ill over the weekend to do much else anyways.

A Stair With a View

Architecture: Stairs Bookcase Actually Makes Me Want to Move to London Me, too.

Okay, everything makes me want to live in London, except my family.

Via Cville Words

A Domestic Manifesto

frontstepdesign: Manifesto:

"What I do, as an Architect and a person, is learn how to create a wonderful domestic life. 'Wonder' in this case, means not only pretty - and pretty* is very important! - but also helpful."

I am so there, only without the architecture training or the devotion to the cause or the creativity. It's an updated version of the William Morris quote I love:

“Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful”

As an only peripherally connected aside: now that we have a composting bin, it's really encouraging to see how much compost we generate. All those fruits and veggies we eat, are tangible, and useful.

Real Life

I'm tired. What I would like to do after work is put my feet up, eat cake or cookie dough, and read some Terry Pratchett that I got for my birthday. Someone bringing me slippers and a cocktail would be lovely, too.

What I do, however, is come home, run around the yard for an hour being a Spice Girl or a Sailor Scout or Shaggy (my Shaggy voice is pretty good, zoinks!), fighting evil with swim noodles and breaks for boogie boarding in Hawaii (because superheroes need surfing vacations too), fix a mediocre supper of some kind of pasta (I am still just learning to cook [I know], if The Spouse is working, or serve as chef's assistant if he isn't. Eat, put away the leftovers, dole out desserts and allergy meds to the Offspring, and then get them into their jammies, watch them brush their teeth and try not to crack up about something, apply fluoride, get them into bed (all three of us in Woof Woof Wolfie's bunk for books and it's crowded, all elbows and knees), read to them for an hour from two of the endless series of Henry and Mudge books (now with spin off series of Annie and Snowball) or the other new Rylant series, The High-Rise Private Eyes and either The Miserable Mill or Matilda or Thodosia and The Serpents of Chaos (the Possum's choices these days), after which I will put out the light and lie still, hissing like a goose occasionally when someone who shall remain nameless will not be still in that top bunk and is making an astounding amount of racket, contorting her body into impossible shapes trying to find a comfortable position and get the pillows just right. Finally, when I have just started to doze off myself, but have been jerked awake by an untimely mattress squeak, I will realize that Woof Woof Wolfie is out cold and I may find my shoes and creep from the room, after almost-but-not-quite forgetting to pass out the good-night kisses, and then I can retire to the screen porch for ten minutes of peace and a smoke.

Ah.

At which point I will realize that while still tired, I am no longer sleepy, and that there is a load of laundry that's been moldering in the washing machine for 24 hours, which desperately needs a rinse, and when I go to put it in the drier, I'll discover a load that's been wrinkling in there for 24 hours, and by the time I get that folded and weighted down (in order to replace the random creases with proper ones), I'll be too exhausted to read a word, but too wired to go to sleep without pharmacological assistance.

And somewhere in there I manage to fit in gathering whatever permission slips and checks are necessary for second grade tomorrow, bringing in the mail and Mom's newspaper, chatting with my beloved Spouse about the news of the day and upcoming special scheduling events and the weather (he's very knowledgeable about the weather, and just think how much more fun it will be when he gets his birthday weather station up! we'll be rolling in data and the exact time of sunset!) and movies we've seen recently (mostly animated and G rated) or twenty years ago when we both worked separately in theaters. And I'll have a conversation with Mom about her garden, and extended family news, and what a wonderful husband I'm lucky to have. And I'll feed the cats and pet them.

This is my life and it is exhausting and I love it. I'm insanely lucky to have all this.

Unclear on the Concept

HGTV is holding their annual Dream Home Giveaway. Apparently, every year they build some huge expensive resort home and give it away to some unlucky person, although this year, the recipient will be luckier than those in the past. This year they are giving away enough cash ($250,000) to enable the winner to insure and pay taxes on the beast until they can unload it.

You know, I've spent an inordinate amount of time thinking about dream homes. My math grades would have been higher in middle school, had I not devoted class time to drawing floor plans. Here's the fundamental flaw in HGTV's contest: a Dream Home is a personal thing, not generic. My dream home is designed for me. It does not feature an elaborate dog house. Currently, the mental version incorporates universal design, cradle to cradle* products where possible, and green, sustainable products everywhere else. My dream home is fully accessible to our disabled friends and family, and fun for our aging, unable-to-jump enormous cats. My dream home has a library for fiction and lots of bookshelves everywhere else for all the other subjects we like to read about. My dream home includes a separate-but-attached granny cottage. My dream home looks traditional, but is virtually fireproof and very easy to keep clean. My dream house is in my current neighborhood, and will enable me to stay here for the rest of my life.** My dream house has many windows on the south, east, and west sides, and few on the north, and all of those windows are shaded from the summer sun.

If HGTV would like to draw my name out of their hat, I'll be delighted to sell off their faux dream house, and build my own. I'm pretty sure I could have everything I want for considerably less than 2.5 million.



*Fun fact: the book Cradle to Cradle is waterproof, and itself recyclable

**I just realized yesterday that given my expected lifespan, I have even more years ahead of me for reading than I have so far enjoyed. And I don't have to waste four years learning to read.