Still Life And Rock Stars

We took T to a rock concert last night to help celebrate his birthday on Wednesday– he’ll be twenty, and I can’t hardly wrap my mind around that, since he’s still my ginormous baby!

Anyway– I’ll get to that that, but we’ve also had plenty of busy-ness to keep us occupied, and some prime moments of family weirdness that I shall try to entertain you with.

Let’s start with Mate, shall we?

So, Mate and I were cleaning house yesterday, and had the following conversation:

Me: You know, you don’t always have to try to fix something when I talk to you.  There’s two kinds of conversations women have with men–the kind where we actually want you to fix something and the kind where we just want you to listen.

Mate:  Yeah?  Well there’s two kinds of conversations men have with women– the kind where you need us to fix something that we can actually fix and the kind that NEVER SHOULD HAVE HAPPENED!

I forget why I was talking to him in the first place because I was laughing too hard by the time he said this.

And another Mate thing– this one’s long, and it’s sorta gross, so don’t read it if you’ve got a weak stomach or just don’t find icky shit funny!

So, one of my cooking mainstays these days is stir fry.  Some teriyaki sauce, some pre-cut veggies, frozen chicken strips, a little rice–BAM!  Something that’s not horrible for us, and that I can make REALLY quickly.  Anyway, I don’t know about you guys, but I remember eating when I was a kid.  It was like wild kingdom.  We had to sort the rice through a sifter to make sure there were no crawlies, and we had to wash the veggies in a colander to make sure all the tomato worms and what have you were gone, and I hadn’t realized how much that sort of thing left a scar until the other night.

Mate got a piece of snap-pea fiber stuck in his throat.

We didn’t know that at first, because first there was the retching and then there was the running to the bathroom and more awful sounds followed, and I’d run after him to make sure I was okay, and if the poison was slow acting enough for an antidote or if I was keeling over next (let’s face it, it would be good to know!) and some more gagging and then…

He turned around with three inches of snap pea hanging off his finger, and he wiggled his finger.

And I SCREAMED and jumped back about five feet (well, three, we were standing in the hallway by the bathroom) and he said, seriously, “It’s snap pea fiber!  Isn’t that huge?”

And I pushed my heart back into my chest and said, “It’s not a worm?  OH THANK GOD, IT’S NOT A WORM!”

And then he looked at his finger and started laughing, because he realized that without meaning to, he’d scared the holy piss out of me.

Anyway, we couldn’t linger over his near death by snap pea, because we had to take the kids to go make ornaments at a school function– which was really cute by the way.  But in the cafeteria, as they were both busy, I asked him if he was okay, and he said, “Yeah, but my stomach still hurts from trying to get that thing out.  I could still breathe, but I guess you’re just not supposed to have anything in your throat like that.  It’s not natural.”

0.o Okay.  Uhm.  You guys have read my books, right?

So I almost said something about, well, things in the throat, and how most men seemed to think that was pretty natural.  But we were in the school cafeteria.  So I didn’t.

But I texted it like mad to Mary, who responded with, “Yeah, I had a friend in college who gave ten blow jobs a night.  He could have fished that out of his throat no problem.”

I laughed so hard I couldn’t breathe.  I showed the text to Mate, and he smirked, and I think the general consensus was that as long as it wasn’t snap pea fiber and food, that sometimes it WAS natural to have something in your throat–as long as it wasn’t scratchy and you weren’t trying to actually eat it, there were exceptions to the rule.

And about that school function–

What the kids had to do was make Christmas ornaments.  It was really cute– there were different stations and each station had a different ornament and the place was just overflowing with tempura paint, hot glue, and glitter.

And one thing became clear.

Zoomboy is very clever.  He knows about primates, Diary of a Wimpy Kid and Star Wars.  He can make puns, tell jokes, put together puzzles and get cosmic connections.

He cannot, however, make art.

Squish, on the other hand, can.

We set them loose in the same room with the same materials and told them to go to town, and Squish came back with balanced, aesthetically pleasing, pretty ornaments.  Zoomboy came back with glitter and glue.  It’s important to remember, because Squish is NOT as clever as Zoomboy, but she wakes up every morning, stretches in the sunshine under her blankets, smiles, gives me a hug and says “Good morning mommy!”  Zoomboy huddles under the covers and pretends the world WILL go away until he’s ready to crawl out of his hole and demand Spongebob.  They are very different children.

Squish will go outside and search for the outside cat, Shulamonster (who has decided she wants to be an inside cat, and that Steve is now her minion.  That is not going over well.  No.  No it is not.) While Zoomboy will bring people into his room to introduce them to his fish, Greg.  (The babysitter was very impressed.  Of course, the babysitter is Stevi, and she seems to like us just as an extension of Chicken’s family.)

Zoomboy will go to ridiculous lengths to entertain you.  Squish will snuggle on your lap and allow herself to be entertained.

Interesting children (to me) and, like I said, very, very different.

And that includes Big T.

Now see, we went to the Not So Silent Night festival in Oakland–and it was AMAZING.  Teegan and Sara were good, Passion Pit was awesome, M83 was an EXTRAORDINARY club band but…

But The Killers.

Oh. My. GOD.  The Killers.

There we were, after the techno-industrial-pagan-club-gasm that was M83, sitting in the lighted stadium, thinking, “Well, there’s people up on the stage, and they look almost ready, but the stadium lights are still on.”

And then the guys picked up their axes and BLAM!

Comin’ outta my cage and I’m feeling just fine…


Mr. Brightside, just THERE!  They would turn off the lights after the first number, and they’d do the special effects and the lighting and the exploding confetti and the fireworks… but that first number?  All rock, all driven, all JUST THEM.

And I was… I mean, they’re one of my favorite bands anyway– Lady Cory listened to them in Rampant, and I’ve just enjoyed the hell out of them, but…

Wow.  Just wow.

And Mate and I danced–stood up and bounced and waived our arms and clapped and just flew through the entire set.  (Okay– all this aqua aerobics?  Hasn’t made me any faster on land, hasn’t made me a supermodel, hasn’t even made me slim down.  But dammit, I can hold my hands over my head for almost an hour during a rock concert, and that’s GOTTA be a good thing!)

And we looked next to us, for our son, whom we had been so excited to bring, and there he was.  Sitting.  Watching the concert but not dancing, not flying.

At first we were concerned–sensory overload, it’s not just for old people!  But we asked him and he was happy– he just wanted to watch.  I said, yes, there ARE a lot of things going on up on the stage, aren’t there?  And it was okay.

But it did remind me once again– there are a LOT of different kinds of kids.  I have four very very different kinds.

And yes– Chicken is coming home next week, why do you ask?  And speaking of…

She posted her final in image manipulation on her tumblr account.  I’m going to share it with you because, well, you may recognize one of my former blogs as her storyboard, and this tickles me to no end.  The Author’s Daughter  –and you can see some of her other college adventures there, as well.  (She’s going home with a scanner that she was SUPPOSED to take with her in the first place.  You may see this get updated a little more often after Christmas.)

Oh– and the yarn?

Recycled Sari Silk.  I’m gonna make a cowl.  Isn’t that wild?