Treating Myself

It seems I went a long time this past year without any "me" time...and now it seems I'm making up for it in spades. Last week I had Monday to myself (good family friends came by to hang with the boys) and I went to Bath where I picked up some knitting and felting supplies and got a little ridiculously excited about dishcloths and unbleached mini muffin cups at a cooking store. I even did some writing! Thursday night I spent at a friend's knitting/craft evening. Saturday I met a friend at the fantastic fine craft show they hold every November at the State Library/Museum. I bought myself this gorgeous necklace from Atlantic Art Glass:

I was having a hard time deciding between a necklace with the single orange bead, and one with the green, the purple and a red. Linda Perrin, amazing glass blower, very sweetly offered to switch the red bead out for the orange one and I got all my favorite colors on one piece.

I also bought this stone vase for our nature table (note the Halloween decorations still out):

Then Sunday I spent the day with a good friend in Belfast, halfway between our respective homes. We had a great time browsing the stores and I got a few items out of the way for Christmas (trying to ignore the fact that my bank account is woefully empty) and went for a brisk walk in the incredibly (for November) balmy afternoon. And next weekend, I'm getting away for the whole weekend!

I would be tempted to feel guilty about this time away, but I am sooo much happier to be with my boys when I've had a little time away (absence makes the heart grow fonder, and all that....)

First Snow--Army Woes

It snowed lightly throughout the day Thursday and continued into the night so that Friday morning we were greeted with a good four inches of wet and heavy, which was surprising to say the least (while in Colorado, where I grew up, you can get a foot or more anytime between Labor Day and Mother's Day--which usually melts in 70 degree weather in a day or two--here our snow usually doesn't fall until Thanksgiving or Christmas, but sticks around--or is turned to ice --until Earth day).

E and Z were soooo excited to see the snow when they woke up, that I couldn't possibly feel negative toward the snow, even if I were inclined to. Z kept saying "It's so exciting!" and E couldn't wait to get outside and start shoveling. M, on the other hand, started crying as soon as I woke him up with the news. He had plans, you see, and snow didn't fit in with those plans. He had a sleepover scheduled at his buddy's house after school, with lots of cammo-clad army action on tap (and not snow-cammo). I'd had great hopes that he'd moved on from the army obsession after he dressed all week in a striped t-shirt and jeans, being Joe Hardy, as portrayed by Tommy Kirk on the original Micky Mouse Club Hardy Boys, which we'd checked out from the library. Apparently obsessions do not fade so easily.

In an effort to cheer him up (and get him out of bed and ready for school), I pulled a book off the shelf called The Last Ridge, about the 10th Mountain Division--the ski troops of WWII--(which I own because I went to a writing workshop a few years ago at which the writer was one of the instructors, which is a funny story in itself that I need to blog about sometime). It did the trick and restored M's good humor. I thought he'd look at the pictures, become convinced of the snowiness of army battles, then return it to the shelf, however it's become his home reading for school, despite being an inch and a half thick (and despite the fact that I only made it halfway through it myself). I'm not sure if I really want him to get into the nitty gritty of this particular element of the war--if I recall correctly, the 10th Mountain Division, made up of Olympic-caliber skiers and other bright, talented young men, were basically sent to the slaughter on the slopes of the Italian Alps, at a time when the war was effectively over, but no one had sent these boys the memo. Likely he won't get that far into the book, but in the meantime, I can claim responsibility for shattering some of the eight-year-old innocence that he should possess.

Saturday afternoon after returning home from the sleepover, M asked if I had any olive-colored fabric, with which to sew a German Army jacket. He said it needed an iron cross as well, at which point I made it clear that he was under no circumstances going to be allowed to dress as a Nazi, and then, to drive the point home, I gave him the two-minute synopsis of the atrocities committed by the Nazi regime--6 million people murdered, concentration camps, gas chambers, mass graves and all. By the time I was done he had burrowed under the couch cushions, crying. I never intended to alert my third-grader to the horrors of genocide and this dark side of human nature, but I wouldn't want an interest in World War II and the Nazi Regime to lead to identification with that regime, before he really understands what it stood for. Do I really think a youthful fascination with all things war will Neo-Nazi? I doubt it; at least I hope we are raising him with values exactly opposite of Neo Nazis, yet I don't want him to have the impression that there is anything cool or appealing about this part of history. I wonder if I have been wrong to let him explore and express his interest in war...and I wonder if I have made a mistake in trying to impress on him the idea that there are no "good guys" and "bad guys"...while everything about war is terrible to me, certainly there is no doubt that the Nazis were bad guys (however, the point I was trying to make to him, was that the leaders are the bad ones; innocent civilians and 18 year old kids conscripted in the army are not--I believe this is even true of Germany in the 1930s). I feel at a loss as to the best way to deal with the topic. I'm sorry I made him cry (though I'm sure the tears were at least 75% due to staying up too late at a slumber party), and I'm sure I could have introduced the subject in a more careful, gentle manner. What I wish is that he would be completely in the dark about the whole topic until reading Anne Frank in Seventh Grade, but it's too late for that, now, isn't it?

Late Fall Books

I have two conflicting problems. One, I am out of control buying books and two, I don't have enough space to store books. I don't even want to try to count up all the books I bought in the last two months, but I'm sure it's well into the double-digits. Granted, a few of them were or will be gifts, and a number of them were used, but many of them weren't. I was doing so well with getting everything at the library, I'm not sure where this recent book-buying blitz came from (three words: Scholastic, Dover and BetterWorldBooks), but I think I need another Buy Nothing Year before we're overrun with books we don't have time to read and, like I said before, have no space to store.

When I was doing a bit of reorganizing in the kids' room earlier this fall, I emptied a shelf of books to make room for toys and moved the books to milk crates, which I prettied up with Undercover Crates, which make them look somewhat less like college dorm decor (someday I'll be old enough to own real furniture, won't I?), and protect the dust jackets from being snagged in the slats of the crate. As you can see, I still have one more to make:

Three of my recent purchases have been late-autumn books, for when I'm done with reading Franklin's Halloween and the Berenstain Bears Trick-or-Treat for the mazillionth time.

Woody, Hazel and Little Pip for that Waldorf-wannabe obsession of mine, and because my two little ones seem to be growing up soooo fast (I think that's the Older Brother Factor), that I just want to preserve a bit of the magic and wonder of believing in fairies and gnomes as long as possible (although after reading the book we went for a walk and I said, "Watch out for Wood, Hazel and Little Pip hiding under the oak leaves" and E said, "They're not in real life." Awwww...they've never said that about The Children of The Forest, for whom we're always looking for a cozy home). The other two, 1621: A New Look at Thanksgiving and Squanto's Journey are for introducing a bit of less-Euro-centric history into the holiday. We haven't read them yet (last year we had checked 1621 out from the library, but only got a bit read before we had to return it--it's much more M's reading/age level, if I could convince him to read something other than The Hardy Boys). 1621 I got used, as a library discard. I can't figure out how libraries decide to eliminate books, but there are so many almost-new books available from libraries it floors me.

To store all our autumn books, and because I've been dying to find a way to use Flower Fairy fabric in a house of boys, I made another Undercover Crate. (You can see I did the embroidery free-hand; next time, perhaps, a ruler will be in order. And there will be a next time; there are Flower Fairies for every season. And perhaps I will measure properly next time--the first two were too short and a bit snug while this one came out quite baggy!):

Previously I kept the seasonal books on one of those preschool bookshelves where the books face out, and I kept our library books in a basket, but we kept forgetting to read the library books, so I moved them to the bookshelf, so that we hopefully will remember to read them, without forgetting to read our seasonal books.

One of our late fall/transition to winter books that I got at a library book sale some years ago is Now That Days Are Colder, which appears to have been made as part of a series for schools or something, but which has the coolest illustrations, I love it:

The landscape, plants and animals are very New Englandey, so it's very relevant to what's going on outside our home right now, and the houses in it look just like the Victorians in our old neighborhood in Gardiner. Besides, how awesome are those Very Brady clothes?

Hankie Curtain

While digging through some fabric boxes recently I ran across the curtain I had made from brightly colored vintage handkerchiefs for our bedroom in the apartment we lived in when M was a baby. It was somewhat tattered and faded (I had gone through a phase of making curtains from hankies, because they look so lovely, but have finally learned my lesson that UV rays don't do the old fabric any favors). Anyway, it occurred to me that this one had a bit of life left in it, so I washed and ironed it, removed the bottom row of hankies and replaced a damaged one, and affixed it to a length of muslin with buttons along the top. And, voila, now the open cabinet (which was an afterthought and thus never got a door) above our washing machine, where we store our detergent and cleaning stuff, is no longer an eye sore.

Tiny Bird, November Light

November has been a real treat so far--two beautiful sunny days in the 60s. I could totally get used to this kind of November.

Sunday morning we all went for a walk down to the river, C forging ahead with his scythe to clear the vegetation that had built up over a summer of disuse (too buggy!); boys in the middle thwacking vegetation with sticks; me bringing up the rear trying to focus on staying in the present moment, enjoying the colors and sounds and light (I didn't even bring my camera--just trying to enjoy the moment!). We had a small picnic by Owl Tree, visited the river, saw some poop (apple-eating coyote? bear?).

On our return, the boys found this poor little Golden Crowned Kinglet dead in front of the house. It had apparently flown into our bedroom window and fallen three stories to the rocks below. I got out my nature journal, for the first time in more than a month and did a little sketch of it (which reminded me to also write down that I had seen a Barred Owl sitting in the middle of our road Thursday night on the way home from knitting group).

E and Z joined me with pen and paper. Their drawing skills are just emerging and they get very frustrated at not being able to draw exactly what they see, but they forged ahead anyway.

Look at the amazing fluorescent orange of the crest feathers. This is when I get annoyed at the term "natural colors" in reference to bland tans and sage greens...any color you could cook up with chemicals in a laboratory has already been done much better by Nature herself.

After we were done drawing, I ignored C and M's suggestions of keeping either the feathers or feet, and E and Z's pleas to add it to the nature table, and laid it to rest on this polypore mushroom growing on a tree just in the woods next to our house. Something will find it there and feast upon it, continuing the cycle of life.

Later that day M and I went to go see Where the Wild Things Are with friends (you can never predict what the weather will be like when you plan something two weeks in advance...oh, and I would totally NOT recommend that movie...monsters with severe neuroses and depression and abusive/codependent behavior...I found the whole thing a bit disturbing, but M seemed to like it OK) and on the drive home the almost-full moon was rising ahead of us, with the sun setting behind. All of the red and yellow and gold and orange leaves have fallen from the trees, leaving the browns and bronzes. The most amazing golden light illuminated hillsides below the moon in a bright, coppery glow. I kept telling M, "look at the moon! Look at those trees!" and he would say, "Mm-hm, I saw them."

Traditions

This year we carried out our second annual Halloween Hay Ride, by which I mean my father-in-law towed us behind his pickup in a dump trailer decked out in hay bales, which makes hitting our rural "neighborhood" possible without the inconvenience of buckling and unbuckling seatbelts. Still, it took us three hours to hit about 15 houses. Literally. The problem being we know everyone on our route, so each stop involves a five-to-ten minute conversation about costumes and candy and reminiscences about C when he was the little trick-or-treater. It makes it fun and homey too, and since we do know everyone, there are no qualms about snacking on the haul as we go (and as for the haul, since we're probably the only trick-or-treaters most people get out here in the boonies, we get plenty...my exhortations of "please take only one" being resoundingly ignored by my kids and those passing out the candy). The weather was downright balmy for a hay ride. Next year I think I'll order a pizza ahead of time so that when we stop in to trick-or-treat at the General Store, it will be ready to go, and we'll consume something other than candy and cookies and brownies (did I mention that when you know everyone on your route you can eat baked goods without fear of razor blades or strychnine?)

And it really wouldn't be Halloween without a visit to a chainsaw massacre, now would it?

This year we started a new tradition: C read us a ghost story (called A Ghost Story by Jerome K. Jerome) by candle- and jack-o-lantern-light.

At the end of it all, Z declared, "This was the best Halloween ever!" So he stole the line from "Corduroy's Best Halloween Ever," but the sentiment was right-on.

Halloween Sneak Peak

To make up for my extreme verbosity this week, just a few pictures today...I do just want to say that, despite the military-heavy emphasis of the costumes this year, I was very happy to not be up till midnight every night this week sewing butterfly wings. All I had to do was make E's vest and facilitate M's papier-mache helmet construction. Yay!

The Soldier

The Marine:

And the Cowboy: