Sometimes I dance in the minivan

Usually when we are stopped at a long stop light. My moves are straight from the late 80's and are very entertaining for the kiddies and also, perhaps, random strangers sitting in the cars nearby.

 It's funny to me that several friends have been sent their congratulations when they've received emails "sent from my ipad." It shows that they understand me, their friend the Luddite.

 I still haven't packed a single box, and we move in one week.

 Here are some words that Helena pronounces in an especially funny way:

 1. "Minimals": minerals
 2. "Mr. Cardigan": Mr. Cardinal
3. "Smeh-smee Stree": Sesame Street
 4. "Messin": medicine
 5. "Stained up": stand up

 There are many more, and the big kids RELISH pointing them out, even though they each had their very own special speech impediments at this age.

 I'm sorry to report that I think I've decided to get a beige couch. I don't think my personality really screams "Gentle Neutral Color Scheme" but I decided I don't want red, and the navy is too dark. I sat on the green one for a while on Saturday, and tried to envision it in my life for the next 10 years, but I decided we just needed to stay friends. For its many virtues, Ikea does not offer a plethora of color choices. I did flirt with the idea of the white for a couple of days, but decided that it would be too stressful. I've discovered I really like ticking stripes, but thus far the only offerings I've found were at Pottery Barn and Ethan Allen. I don't exactly remember who Ethan Allen was in the scope of American (British?) history, but he was VERY proud of his furniture. My bedroom furniture growing up was a yellow set from Ethan Allen. My friend Stephanie Sue had the same set. Mine is, in fact, still in my old room at my parents' house.

 I have a few cute pictures from our last day of Classical Conversations. Maybe I'll figure out how to do pictures on this contraption and do a whole post about our year.

 The husband just got home from an evening at the gun range with a couple of other professors. He took the Glock for a spin and she (he?) apparently did mighty fine. We went to a ranch on Saturday (it's funny that this really does happen more than usual when one lives in Texas) and got to ride in a horse drawn carriage driven by a octogenarian. I realized that those ladies in the Jane Austen novels weren't just being ninnies when they complained about how taxing traveling by carriage was. There are no shock absorbers. And also I was sure I was going to lose Helena, who was on my lap, or Harper, who was to my right, or this sweet 8 year old named Lily, who was on my left, when we cantored down into a ravine. It was delightful all the same.

 I just found a slip of paper on my desk on which I had written, "Hudson: MOMMY! Can you come adjust Helena?? Because apparently, a little chiropractic care is just the thing for a pesky little sister.

 That will have to be all. I really need to go think about all of the packing I have yet to do. ***I promise this post had paragraph breaks in it. Blogspot is VEXING me by refusing to acknowledge my spacing. FIE on you blogspot. FIE!

Happy at you

This is going to be yet another rambling list of things I don't want to forget. Maybe after we move my brain will shift back into some semblance of cohesive thought. Perhaps not, but we can hope.

 1. The husband got a really nice honor on Friday night. The students and professors and administrators at the university where he teaches named him the Opal Goolsby Professor of the Year, which means that they like him. They really, really like him. (Sally Field anyone??). I'm not sure who Opal Goolsby was, but I am certain that her name is awesome. Anyway, he is excellent at what he does and we are proud of him.

 2. The crops are coming along nicely. Actually, just the corn is. The expensive heirloom tomatoes seem rather timid and finicky:

3. Harper looks a bit feral in that picture. Which, actually, is also how she has been acting lately. We've been doing very little school (there was The Sentence Dictation Nightmare of Early April that cued me that maybe it was time for a little break. The offending sentence was, I believe, "May I please play with that chain?" There were tears aplenty. An unchained melody, if you will.) and have instead been playing outside most of the day. Because the weather is in that sweet place of perfection, which generally only lasts a couple of weeks here in Houston.

 4. Helena has been sick off and on (mostly on) for the past month, and just when I think it might be time to actually trek across town to the pediatrician, she will rally and act completely well. Everyone has been pretty sniffly and sneezy and wet-hacky-coughy. Enough about that.

She spends lot of time wearing that ballerina swimsuit (or "bow-weena cossume" in Helenese) and she insists on also having a bun in her hair and socks with her ballet shoes. Please don't think you can deviate from this. Because girls who are in a cycle of sickness will see this as a tremendous affront to ALL bow-weenas and possibly the entire world. And there will be weeping.

 5. We went to the Arboretum one day last week. We saw herons and turtles and also a black fuzzy caterpillar:

They were watching a millipede in that picture. I really love seeing kids crouched over like that, investigating outside. It's exactly opposite to the way I feel when I see them slack-jawed in front of the t.v.

 6. The husband, after many months of threatening to do so, bought me an ipad on Saturday. I am not using it much because I am, quite frankly, afraid of it. And I also haven't figured out how to post pictures yet. I am secretly hoping that he will realize that he actually bought it for himself, and then I can be happily reunited with my three year old laptop that takes a comfortable 8-9 minutes to load my email. Walking into the Apple store (my first visit) made me very nervous. I usually walk by and glance in at all of those people with an emotion, I've realized is equal parts scorn and pity. Similar to the way I might feel while glancing in a methadone clinic. Everyone assures me that I will grow to love my heroin.

 7. I need to finish and go do something productive.

 8. Helena, when she gets in trouble, has started covering her face with her hands. I'd like to think it's real repentance, but I'm pretty sure she's just sad about being caught. She says, "Daddy going to be happy at me?" and then, inevitably, one of the other two will say, very lovingly, "NO! Daddy will NOT be happy at you if you disobey!" and she'll cover her face again and weep.

8. Blogspot seems to have changed some things around and is refusing to post my list with the appropriate spacing, which is annoying. Still, this will have to do.

Let's furnish this.

Well. At 41 years of age, I seem to be a homeowner for the very first time. Actually, the bank will be buying a home for us, as the case may be, and is graciously allowing the husband to give them a portion of his hard-earned income once a month (for an extremely low interest rate, which is why we are really doing this) to let us live in their house. This is a very big deal, considering that I've never even bought my own car.

We are moving in about three weeks and we've also decided to leave behind our living room furniture, which consists of a couch I bought 11 years ago for $400, and an extremely large red floral chair that came with an ottoman that we had to put out on heavy trash day a few months back because the foam was peeking out.
I was feeling a little stressed out about getting rid of perfectly good (though stained, slightly torn, sagging) furniture, then, a few nights ago, the husband and I were sitting on the couch, and my side of it suddenly groaned and gave way with a thump, listing starboard (or was it portside? coxswain? yar?) just like Titanic in the moments after the berg. (Which reminds me that I need to write about this Titanic book I read a few weeks ago. I enjoyed it, as much as an emotional basket case like me can enjoy a book that delves into what it must have been like to actually behold that horrible event). Anyway, the husband was able to prop the couch back up so it didn't look as though it was about to slowly sink beneath our living room floor, but its days are clearly numbered.

Which means I need to find new furniture. Which, per usual, is one of those things most normal people think is really fun, and I manage to turn into an exercise in philosophical ANGST. I decided that first, I need to figure out what I like. I looked at some blogs (the Nester, Young House Love, Pleated Poppy, LLH Designs) which, even though I had just read a blog post reminding me not to let other people and their magnificent talents and gifts as posted on blogs and Pinterest be debilitating, was a trifle intimidating and almost overwhelming. But it was ultimately helpful. It turns out that in general I like just about everything in Pottery Barn and Crate and Barrel. Which I believe can be vaguely categorized as Cottage-Style. (the husband actually likes a more modern aesthetic, but is willing to concede that clear plastic chairs that look like the Jetsons' might not be as comfortable as my choice). I like slipcovered couches and chairs, or, as I like to think of it, furniture that is wearing really comfortable clothes that can be washed if someone happens to mark on them with a crayon or throw up on them. It turns out that comfortable, well-made, slipcovered couches and chairs at Pottery Barn etc. cost more than I can BEAR. Then, the heavens opened, and IKEA revealed itself in all its affordable glory. So we went to IKEA on Saturday morning. And I found a couch and also several chairs that are affordable, cute, and also washable. But, because I wanted to make sure I wasn't making some sort of Epic Furniture Mistake, on Saturday afternoon during my Saturday Alone Time, I went to Highland Village to peruse Pottery Barn, Crate and Barrel, Quatrine (for people who think PB and C&B is a little too "mass-produced" for their tastes. The chairs were really lovely, BUT, and this was pleasant to realize, not very comfortable. There was an adorable little kid's slipcovered chair in a charming owl print that was ON SALE for $1100 DOLLARS. ), and Restoration Hardware. There was one chair in Crate and Barrel that made me a little wistful (so soft, it comes in colors like Poppy and Butterscotch and Sage and it Rocks and Also Swivels. It felt womb-like. Not that I remember being in the womb) so maybe we can save up for it, and make do with something similar from IKEA in the meantime.

While I was sitting in the womb chair, I had an existential crisis in which there was a very loud voice in my head that said this: "WHY ARE YOU SPENDING SO MUCH TIME AND ENERGY AND MONEY PLANNING ALL OF THIS SITTING DOWN TIME?? GET UP OUT OF THIS CHAIR AND DO SOMETHING TO CHANGE THE WORLD ALREADY. BUY SOME REALLY HARD CHAIRS POST HASTE!!"

That voice is mean and also does not understand me. That voice is the opposite of shabby chic.

So, I'll keep you filled in. Any advice would be appreciated.

Arose

I was looking back at last year's Easter post because I am nostalgic that way, and I was comforted that there are no dramatic changes. Harper and I both wore the dresses we wore last year (my wedding dress--the white linen, I noticed, is beginning to yellow a little. I'm going to look a little like Miss Havisham if I keep this up for much longer) and Helena's hair is slightly more voluminous. As you might be able to ascertain from her expression, Harper was not amenable to the photo shoot. In this one, she was pretending to be Brigitta in "The Sound of Music":
I like how she is choosing to disobey me by reading her Gideon Bible. Rich. Hudson was also irate about the memory making:

I don't know why my posture is so bizarre. I also don't know where we are going to take all of our staged group photos at the new place. I'm going to miss this old oak.

We are moving, and soon. To a house that we are buying and not just renting. It's exhilarating and also frightening. It's also possible I'll be posting more as a way to deny all of the packing and cleaning that needs to happen. So far, I've partially emptied one small kitchen drawer and put some winter clothes in a plastic bin. That just reminded me of this description of hell (or maybe it's just eternity?) in Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce. I can't remember it exactly. Something about birds moving single grains of sand from these mountains of sand to these other mountains of sand. That's kind of how it feels. Only the new mountain of sand is better than the old mountain of sand, in this case. And not sandy. We aren't moving to the beach, just the suburbs. It seems appropriate to end with a little Bob Dylan:

In the fury of the moment
I can see the Master's hand
In every leaf that trembles,
in every grain of sand.

The growing season

We went to Discovery Green with the S's on Saturday and happened upon an Earth Day celebration. There were tribal dances (descendants of the Aztecs, or so one of the dancers told us), a hula hoop tent, and booths offering vegan cinnamon rolls, among other earth-friendly delights. But the very best thing is that the Houston Parks and Rec Services were there giving away trees! We like trees! In fact, I had picked out a maple and asked the guy if we might have another to put in our new back yard (which is tree-less--more on this later) and he said he was sorry, but that there was a one tree per family limit. Then Harper got so excited about a red oak, he was touched by her Tree Love and said we could have two. Then the heroic Mr. S helped me get my two trees to the car because the husband was off acting in a movie (true).

We also planted corn and cherry tomatoes in some egg cartons last week. I won the science fair in the first grade with this exact project. I wish I could be one of those mommy bloggers who posts perfect how-to photos with my posts, but every time I'd try to get a picture, one of the kids would do something that would entail putting down the camera and digging around to see if Hudson had already put the corn kernel in the slot designated for tomato seeds etc. Plus the tomato seeds were so tiny and there were only 20 in the package (for $3.49! Dear me.) so I had to commandeer the seed packet to make sure there was equitable distribution.

What I suggested Hudson might write in his little notebook: "HYPOTHESIS: That the plants in the eggshells will grow better than the plants not in the eggshells." What Hudson actually wrote in his little notebook: "fiNN MCMiSSiLE."

The innocence project

I ran to the Galleria last week to pick up some summer clothes for the kids (mostly because that morning I'd realized Hudson was wearing a pair of cargo shorts that were size 2T and, though they still fit in the waist, length-wise they were starting to resemble NBA basketball shorts circa 1980) and, after having only a modicum of success (here's where I again insert my rant about the dearth of quality, affordable children's clothes that aren't emblazoned with sparkly logos etc.) I popped into J. Crew to see if I could grab a couple of t-shirts for myself. I overheard a mom talking to her daughter, who looked to be about Harper's age (which is 6, in case you've forgotten) and the mom pointed to a dress on a mannequin and asked her daughter if she liked it. The daughter said she liked it okay, and the mom said, "It's very Betty Draper, don't you think?" I was then overcome with the same judgmental feelings I have when people bring their small children to movies that are clearly for adults. Because Betty Draper is a character on "Mad Men," which is a show that no 6 year old should be watching. Or, even if she doesn't watch it, why would she want her daughter to even be comfortable recognizing cultural references from an R-rated television show? "Sesame Street" does this on occasion too--"Socks in the City" and there was something having to do with "True Blood." Ridiculous. Let kids be kids. Please.

Which reminded me of a novel I read about a year ago. It was written by a Rice University professor and was getting lots of attention. It should surprise you not at all that it was set in a post-apocalyptic not-so-distant future in which the humans that were left were forced to live in these huge, iron-clad structures to protect them from a dangerous non-human (well, maybe I should say vaguely human) enemy. When children were born they were taken to a separate section where they were lovingly nurtured and reared to know nothing at all about the horrifying wasteland that lay beyond the dome. It was like "The Truman Show" for kids. Then, on their 8th birthday, their parents told them the truth. BAM. And their childhood was over and they began studying and training to protect themselves against the enemy. Like a really macabre First Communion.

I guess we have a little of that going on here. The "Truman Show" for kids, I mean. For example, I got the movie "The Sound of Music" at the library this week (after Mrs. S loaned me Maria Trapp's The Story of the Trapp Family Singers, which I read over spring break and really enjoyed) and we've watched up until the wedding and then I stop it because it gets a little Nazi-intensive at that point and I just didn't want to talk about Hitler yet. One reason is that I get really emotional when I try to explain historical things that are upsetting, sort of like when I finally tried to read the crucifixion chapter in the Jesus Storybook Bible out loud one day during our reading time a couple of months ago and I started crying really hard and Harper ran to her room and Hudson went to get me a tissue. I did recover and tell them that the story has a happy ending, and that's part of what made me cry, but I'm not sure they bought it.

I've been recording this Discovery channel series called "The Frozen Planet" because I thought we might use bits of it to talk about science, then I watched a little of the first episode by myself and it is VERY circle-of-lifey (stole that from Ari J.) but beautifully filmed. There is an extremely plucky penguin who manages to get away from a lion seal after several close calls, but the most troubling thing is watching a pack (herd? school? I can't remember) of orca whales maim then toy with a seal until it gives up in exhaustion on a small ice floe, then they slowly pull it into the water and devour it. Orcas are Hudson's second favorite animal (after turtles) and he has a small fuzzy one in his collection of sleep animals. He has a vague idea that they are aka "killer whales" but he's never asked for clarification. He just knows they are very smiley and they make cute noises. I do not think it would be beneficial for him at this point to watch the cruel death dance with the seal. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe on his 8th birthday I'll let him watch it. And the Nazis. And maybe "Old Yeller." And we'll end the day with Where the Red Fern Grows.

Speaking of his birthday, his firm resolution to stop sucking his thumb lasted exactly one day. I told him I sucked my thumb until I was 7 and I think he saw that as some sort of permission to continue. It's okay by me. You should see how cute he is going to sleep.

Well, we got well and now the sickness has begun again. Helena has a cough that sounds like a seal trying to escape from a gang of orcas. I actually found myself getting annoyed at the sound of it today and telling her to "please TRY to stop coughing PLEASE," which I realize makes me a really great mother. I also had a mild psychotic break yesterday afternoon because of all the staying at home and the clutter. Then, as a reward, the biggest roach (he was 2 inches at least) I've ever encountered flew AT my head (that's right FLEW, AT, and HEAD) in the bathroom this morning while I was reading an article about Ted Turner in Garden and Gun. Did I mention that he flew? At my head? I really wanted to slay him, but I lost my nerve and instead opened the sliding door and he flew outside where he is presumably mating and teaching his progeny to torture me in their own special way.