Riding In Cars With Children

Sometimes, listening to my family talk is like living in a movie with AWESOME satirical dialog–except you can’t rewind and listen to it all over again, no matter how badly you want to.  I was going to try to capture some of it here, but, well, forgive me.  It was a huge deluge of great and funny kid bits, and unfortunately,  I think there maybe be silken, hand dyed snippets of weirdness that are floating around my brain that will never truly become something.  It’s like being saturated in the potential for something really wondrous… these wonderful moments are just there, on the tip of my brain, ready for the taking, but they get sort of soddened over by the mundane moments that end up here.

*  Chicken went to a basketball game with her father and then texted me–she’d seen her Chemistry teacher tending bar, and she was embarrassed.  I told her not to be embarrassed for her teacher–be embarrassed for her country.

*  Zoomboy got a dictionary from his school today– one of the cool kind with the illustrations.  On the way home from school he looked up human extinction and filled us all in on the gory details.  Apparently global warming is a threat.  He has not yet looked up zombies or curse words.  We’re waiting.

*  Squish wakes up every morning and comes into the kitchen where I’m working, and thrusts her head under my arm like a cat looking for pets.  She looks up at me with her blue eyes scrunched and sleepy above her freckled little cheeks and tells me what she dreamed the night before.  I couldn’t tell you what she actually dreams– they’re actually very confused–but I could look at her talking forever.

*  Big T came home a little nonplused. He’s trying to put together a film for film class and was told by his film teacher that he had the general aura of a young Woody Allen.  0.0  You’ve seen the pictures, folks–YOU tell me how that works.

*  My newest addiction has been Words by Post with Mate– he’s been KICKING MY FRICKIN’ ASS.  So frustrating.  The thing is, I always go for the interesting word– “covey” instead of “convey”, when “convey” can be done for six-bajillion points and “covey” is like, ten.  I’ve sort of gotten over that–but I still don’t see the strategies he does.  I’ve got the vocabulary, he’s got the ability to unscramble letters, which is something I’ve NEVER had. But television time is fun.  I’ve got my knitting, and my phone, and sometimes my Kindle.  ADHD has never been relaxing.

* Mate still wants me to go see a King’s game.  I still want to stay home and knit.  I may have to go– he’s looking so disappointed every time I say now.

*  This was spirit week at the grammar school.  Yeah, I don’t know what they’re celebrating–who cares, it’s January/February and they’re SO glad to be doing something fun.  Yesterday was pajama day.  Today, we put Squish in her little Victorian Witch’s outfit, a shawl, and baby powder in her hair and called her 100 years old.  For Zoomboy, today was “crazy hair” day, and Chicken was impressed as I was giving ZB his faux-hawk.  “Geez, mom, that’s some SPECTACULAR hair glue!”  Yeah, well, only the best to subdue my own savage squirrel!

*Every night I sing to the little kids.  Some nights they get a bonus track of Death Cab for Cutie’s “You’ll be loved!” (video to follow) but mostly, it’s Patsy Kline’s “Dream a little dream” and John Denver’s “Sunshine on my shoulder”.  I get bonus points as a parent if I slip in the cat’s name as I’m singing.  “Dream a little dream of Steve…”  “Sunshine… on my shoulder…makes Steve happy…”  I never do it the same way twice, and when I was in her classroom before Christmas, I heard Squish brag about this like it was in the benefit’s package of being my kid:  “I get one story and two to three songs a night.  Uhm-hhm. And sometimes, even ice cream for dessert.”  I think she probably could have leveraged herself into a better company, but I’m not going to tell her that!

*  And finished my anthology story!  WOOT!  This is going to be a joint venture between myself, Mary Calmes, and Andrew Grey. Andrew was the one who came up with the concept: Something went wrong in the tapestry of the three fates.  Then we all took that idea and ran with it.  I like my story–it, like my favorite stories, evolved in ways I never thought of.  Hacon (does NOT rhyme with bacon–I was surprised!) and Leif are two of my most awkward, formal heroes–but they are also very sweet.  I also get to do a little bit of eye-humpin’ with Thor and Loki, and, uhm… *swoon*

*  And also in the realm of shared projects, I’ve teamed up with Aleksandr Voinov to write a little novella called Country Mouse.  This was fun– it started out as a dare, mostly, and I’ve enjoyed working with Aleks very much.  I’m editing the story today, and I’ll have a better idea for it, but I’ve got to say, working with someone living in England using google docs?  It’s a TOTAL RUSH.  You just watch the cursor move across the screen and then you pick up where the cursor leaves off and when you’re done you’re like, “Oh crap!  This is COOL!”  It’s like an intellectual amalgam of shit you wouldn’t have thought of adding.  I loved it.  And I got a virtual tour around London, just WRITING it, which was so much fun!  (You guys all KNOW that must have turned my key, right?)  So that will be out sometime in March, along with Super Sock Man.

*  And I’m going to leave it like that for the moment, and ditch out, leaving a video for your perusal.

So this is “You’ll be loved”– the video was cut from the SPN fandom that likes all the eye-humpin’ between Dean and Castiel… got to admit, it gives me a giggle and a tickle myself.  And, remember, if nothing else, just hit play and go on with your business and listen to the song: