February Notes and Miscellany

• I had to give myself a blog time-out last week in order to finish a book review that was supposed to be due "the middle of February."  After Valentine's day passed, I realized so had the middle of the month, and I hadn't gotten much done.  I was able to sneak some alone time at a cafe between work and knitting Thursday night, Saturday afternoon I sent C and the boys away for a little while, and by Sunday morning, I just gave in and worked with the chaos around me.  The process (of writing) was very much like wrestling an alligator.  I felt very blocked the whole time, but I think I finally worked it into submission.  Anyway, my editor gave me good initial feedback, so that made me feel better.  So, go ahead and ask did breaking through the blockage inspire me to sit down and write the short story that buzzes through my brain on at least a weekly basis?  No.  Still finding excuses to avoid the written word (many of which you can see below).

• This was the view from my desk Sunday:

This little guy made it hard to concentrate.

          I had to take a little break and sketch the scene:

• M has been away with relatives for a few days, which may have contributed to my ability to work Sunday morning.  Not that his demands would be as insistent as his brothers; when they were done with Lego's and ready to play Frog Juice with me, I knew there was nothing to be done but hit "send."  M on the other hand, would have just been standing reading over my shoulder, or playing his guitar in my ear.  When I called to talk to him, I could hear him playing Axel F on the piano.  I surmised, and it was confirmed, that he had already played it approximately 11,000 times the first two days of his visit (he'd also learned to play the opening bars of Let it Be).

• C gave me this necklace (from here) for Valentine's Day.  One egg for each of my nestlings.  I love it. 

•  I made this sandwich this weekend.  It's a big slab of bread from Stoneyfield Cafe with pesto, mozzarella cheese and tomato jam:

• I had to make a new clothespin bag over the weekend because this is what our old one looked like:

It's actually looked like that since November, when a mouse or something decided to eat it.  And it must not have looked exactly pristine since at least last May, because after my mom visited us, she sent me a package of new clothespins (apparently our blackened, broken ones were also not up to snuff) and some material left over from when she made a clothespin bag somewhere around 1980.

I finally got around to it this weekend because C said, "Is a clothespin bag something you can make, or should I be looking around for a new one?"  The situation was dire for C to contemplate shopping (He recently took his first trip to the grocery store in, I'm gonna say at least nine months, last week because he finally ran out of homemade maple syrup).  So I finally gave in and made it, using Mom's strawberries, lined with green gingham.  I used some wire I found lying around the basement to hold the opening open and C punched in two grommets.  The hanging wire from the old one was in perfectly good repair.  The whole process took about half an hour. Good thing I put it off so long.

• E and Z have been in a serious fantasy-play phase, where their Lego guys all have distinct personalities (Tom Lighthouse, Tom Tooey, Tee, Captain Ceratops, Captain Wilson, and King Alligator are just some of the characters I've been able to pick up on).  Then they'll move on to the dollhouse, where the dolls are moot, but all of the dogs and cats represent various pets they have known (including our own plaster cat, Snowball, and C's old dog, Cooper, who's been dead at least 12 years), and then to the plastic castle and pirate ship, incorporating a variety of wooden "Waldorfy" animals, dinosaurs and knights and cheap plastic soldiers into this whole complicated world where the above-mentioned Lego characters appear again in new guise.  I love just eavesdropping on them.

• And, despite the whole winteryness of February (yucky black snow banks, treacherous sidewalks and driveways), there have been some signs of spring hereabouts.  I heard a great horned owl hooting one morning when I was unfortunate enough to be wide away at 4 a.m.  I smelled a skunk near my office (skunks, not groundhogs should truly be the harbingers of spring).  I have no idea how it tunneled out of 3 feet of ice-hard snow.  The first day it got up above freezing, the carpenter ants appeared.  I don't know why the ladybugs that inhabit our home all winter bother me not at all, but the ants make me insane.  I did remember a large paper bag of sugar in our cabinet and sequestered it in canisters and jars before they could find it.  And, I found myself at the Patagonia outlet sale the other day and bought three sun dresses.  Would you call that Spring Fever?  Perhaps even Summer Fever?