Evidently Blessed

Nobody sees a flower--really--it is so small it takes time--we haven't time--and to see takes time, like to have a friend takes time.

Georgia O'Keeffe

I've been thinking a lot about the awesome friends that I have and some of those moments when I've found myself thinking, "Wow. I just do not deserve to have a friend that superb." So I wanted to share. These are, evidently, a few of the ways I know a true friend:

• They keep their cell phone by the bed at night because they know I'm home by myself and pregnant out the wazoo.
• They send their husband over to rescue me from a dog food eating opossum.
• They are willing to change the kitty litter for me when my husband is unexpectedly out of town and I can't get close enough to it to scoop poop (even in a mask and gloves) without vomiting.
• I can spend three hours over coffee and conversation with them without realizing where the time has gone.
• They call just to check in. Or because they saw something random that reminded them of me. Or because they're stuck in a car somewhere and obviously I should be available to entertain them.
• They send hand written cards my first week in a new house, occasionally even awesomely hand made cards that I could never make myself.
• They possess that key quality of honesty, even--and sometimes especially--when it's regarding something I don't want to hear.
• They don't mind just getting in a car with me and driving and listening to music and talking. They even try to avoid making gasping noises and clutching franticly at the arm rests.
• Speaking of music, they gift me with multiple mix CDs that enlarge my musical horizons.
• They don't judge the state of my home, my hair, or my clothing. Neither do they judge (or penalize) my lack of crafting ability.
• They make me laugh so hard that I cry and occasionally pee in my pants.
• They're always up for adventure. Especially if it involves donuts, pizza, pudding, some form of international cuisine, or Bollywood.
• They make running errands together (including taking my kid to the doctor) fun and think that's a completely acceptable way to spend time together.
• When God teaches them something new, they want me to know about it. And vice-versa.

I'm missing some key memories here... but I blame the pregnancy. And I know that since you're my true friend (wink, wink), you'll forgive me and lovingly put whatever it was that I forgot into the comments section.

November Blurbs

A collection of miscellaneous (but potentially awesome) thoughts:

• Some women feel put together by putting on a little bit of lipstick. Earrings are what do it for me. I could be wearing yesterday's jeans and one of the Man's old t-shirts, and a pair of earrings would somehow make that acceptable.
• There is nothing quite like the feeling of spending an hour cooking dinner only to have Littles chew it up and then spit it back out on his tray. Yep. Nothing quite like that.
• Oklahoma makes a mean sunset.
• Evidently, small town America thinks that the day after Halloween is an early Black Friday. I'm pretty sure that every resident of our community was at Walmart today. I had no idea what I was getting into when I decided to make a "quick trip" to pick up toothpaste for Alex. 
• I'm so excited that it's November at last. November means so many good things: the Man coming home, Thanksgiving, NaNoWriMo, the end of Halloween decorations, my favourite nephew's second birthday...
• Trigger is a hazard to my health. I've tripped over him about 6 different times today and even stepped on him once (by accident, I promise!). The problem is that he's not the biggest of dogs and I don't have the smallest of bellies and Trigs (or as Little Man now calls him: TrigDog) likes to be physically affectionate at all times. All of these conspire against us and Trigger gets stepped on and I narrowly escape landing on my belly multiple times a day.
• Accomplishment is a good feeling.

And now I'm going to bed. Evidently with both pets. They are not leaving much room for me and not-so-Tiny, but I guarantee that they will both jump ship the first time I try to "roll" over in a vain attempt to get comfortable.

PS Adorable pictures of Little Man dressed up for Fall Festival to come after Josh gets home with the camera cable. msf

When Myths Evidently Aren't Myths

I picked up The Music of Dolphins by Karen Hesse at the library this week. The cover had a girl swimming with dolphins, and I'm a sucker for girl and dolphin stories, L'Engle's A Ring of Endless Light being a perfect example and Scott O'Dell's Island of the Blue Dolphins being the major exception to the rule. Anyway, I tried to skim through the synopsis, but it was hard to concentrate because I had Little Man with me and he was trying to do sprints between the stacks, so I just grabbed the book and checked it out.

It turns out that the book is about a girl who has been raised by dolphins from the age of four (she's in her teens when she's found and "rescued"). It's written in first person as she, Mila, tries to adapt to human life under the guidance of a group of scientists. Hesse does a fascinating job tracking Mila's discovery of language and emotional arc as she tries to understand what it means to be human. It's a quick, unchallenging read. What fascinated me was the idea of feral children, and that sent me into a flurry of internet research.

Most of us have grown up hearing the myth of Romulus and Remus, the twins who were raised by wolves and later grow up to found Rome. And of course, we've all watched (and hopefully all read) Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book where Mowgli is raised by a whole host of jungle animals. What I didn't realize is that there are actual documented cases of feral children being raised by animals and then attempting (and rarely succeeding) to acclimate into human community. Sure, some of them were hoaxes, but I was surprised by how many cases were genuine. Anyway, it peaked my interest. Hence, the blog. But now I'm going to go to sleep and have nightmares about what would happen if L.M. got raised by Trigger and Oswald. Great...

Weather Words

Tonight was perfect running weather...not that I was doing any running in my "delicate and extremely enlarged condition". No, I was just shooting jealous glances at all the in-shape militarians (wish I could take credit for this word, but I can't) who were jogging by without a care or distended belly in sight. Trigger, however, also got the "running weather" memo and spent our entire evening walk trying desperately to escape the leash so he could chase the ginormous jackrabbits that had come out to taunt him with their juicy haunches. I let him pull on the leash until he gagged himself and may or may not have told him that I was okay with him choking to death. But I refuse to turn this into another Trigger rant. He's already taken over the house; I will not allow him to dominate my blogging life as well.

Tonight was also the perfect weather for coffee and pumpkin bread. So I curled up on the couch with both pets and watched a quirky British TV show while enjoying a late night snack. The best part of it was that I didn't even have to make the pumpkin bread. My awesome across the way neighbor did and then gifted it to me because, luckily, her husband isn't a fan of pumpkin baked goods. I'm now questioning his sanity, which is funny because he's a psychologist.

This morning was the perfect weather for house cleaning and guests, and this afternoon the perfect weather for a long nap and legos in the living room and curry for dinner, and this evening was the perfect weather for reading a novel about feral children. Don't ask. Just go check the book section. Anyway, I guess in general it was just a perfect weather day. Although I should've realized that house cleaning weather is not the same as morning walking weather and put on an extra layer this morning instead of coming home with frozen fingers and a frost bitten belly (I had pulled on a pre-maternity jacket which doesn't button in the front any longer...it made sense at the time).

My main question is, though, when did a day that included temperatures between 34 and 62 degrees Fahrenheit become a perfect weather day? Do I credit three years of rooming with a Minnesotan who kept the windows open all the way through to Christmas break or merely the fact that I'm pregnant with a ten pound heating unit?

Reading Obsessions of the Little Man

I felt like Maurice Sendak deserved a follow up post, mostly because Little Man is now fairly attached to Where the Wild Things Are. He pulls it off the shelf at least once a day and loves to flip through the pictures, especially the ones of the Wild Things on the wild rumpus. And it's thanks to WTWTA that L.M. learned to wave and say "bye", can accurately identify a boat, and officially tried stabbing the dog with a fork. Kidding on the last one. That was me. Still kidding! But I think in L.M.'s case it definitely isn't a case of familiarity breeding contempt. Instead, the more I forced him to read WTWTA the more he loved it. He's definitely the type to enjoy something more the better he knows it.

In the same way, L.M. has developed quite an obsession (there is really no other word for it) with the book Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel. Sadly, I didn't have to work quite as hard to brainwash him when it came to Mike Mulligan, which just goes to show that, in a pinch, most boys will pick mechanical things with wheels over wild things, no matter how awesome they are. For those of you unenlightened (I was before becoming the mother of a little boy and being gifted this book by my in-laws, who have four boys), Mike Mulligan is the story of an out of work steam shovel who agrees to dig the cellar of a town hall in just one day (it would've taken one hundred men at least a week--whoohoo?). He is cheered on by the inhabitants of Popperville, who obviously have nothing better to do with their day, and in consequence, Mike and his shovel, lovingly named Mary Ann, dig a little faster and a little better. It's an absolutely fascinating commentary on the industrial revolution and small town life. I have to say that after this last move, I have now officially found myself in a town where watching a steam shovel dig a cellar would count as adequate amusement. It is rather entertaining, though, how entranced L.M. is by this book. Our morning walk is now filled with shovel searching (there's always construction on an Air Force base), and his fascination with buses and trucks is unparalleled. He's also pretty much memorized the book. How do I know? The Big Man tried to skip several pages once in an effort to speed up bed time, and L.M. absolutely would not have it. He knows that book backward and forward, especially when it comes to horses, "pop" (Popperville), bikes, and the key phrase of "dig a little faster and a little better" (he only says the last word). Incredible what a little repetition can do. Next, I plan to use this most excellent of books to teach L.M. how to do happy and sad faces. At present, all he's capable of when reading Mike Mulligan is a (very) happy face. And all I am capable of is being forced to read it almost every night at bed time. And by the end of the book, which is fairly long for a children's story, my now sizable belly has been rather rudely squashed by 28 pounds of Little Man.

Speaking of which, I'm soon going to need a new name for L.M. since we have another little man on the way. I would do Little Man and Littlest Man, but those are going to both end up as L.M. which always ends up reminding me of Lucy Maud Montgomery. And while I love Lucy Maud, she has very few similarities to my Little Man. Anyway, thoughts?

Lastly, and completely unrelated, I'm currently watching The Secret of Moonacre on Netflix, and it's making me really want to read Elizabeth Goudge's The Little White Horse. Hmm... I may have to put that on my Mersmas list.

Oh, Bloggish Day! (Not to be confused with "Frabjous")

It's one of those.

You know, the rainy days that start with a cup of tea and a quiet moment and inevitably end with some form of the written word. Unfortunately, in the middle of that, Doggy Dearest ate my favourite pair of boots, but that's merely a side note. Because as mad, sad, and melodramatic as I was about the boots, there were still parts of the day that were so incredibly beautiful that I'm not crossing it off as a complete loss.

For instance, Little Man is giving butterfly kisses now. It's my new favourite. Infinitely more favourite than a pair of boots, regardless of how awesome they were with their uniquely hand sewn buttons. And I've learned important lessons today: like never (ever, ever) go to Story Time at the library the week before Halloween. Because I would just rather skip stories about ghosts and skeletons and witches, and I will continue being the stodgy mom who makes my son skip them too. Other important things learned: Littles will eat his food five times faster if you ask him to share it with you. "No!" he says with a cheeky grin and shoves whatever foodage it is into his mouth. It's really pretty effective. Reverse psychology, perhaps, but in the long run he ate all his carrots and bell peppers. And there were some lovely snuggles and the chance to wear a sweater (after the Oklahoma summer, this has been extremely welcome) and fun pictures to look at and the realization that I email my husband too much (which made me perversely happy) and a yellow Gerber daisy in the front yard just basking in all the rain. And there was lots of Mindy Smith and the Weepies and Glen Hansard, accompanied by the perfect percussion of rain drops outside.

I love days like this. Because (and I feel like I say this all the time), it's a chance to focus on the lovely and excellent and true instead of the single piece of reality (admittedly, it is reality) that didn't turn out the way I necessarily wanted it to. It's good to keep myself from letting the beautiful be tainted by the occasionally inevitable. Although putting my boots back in the closet after I wore them yesterday would've made today's unfortunate reality slightly less inevitable... C'est la vie?

On that note, I'm going to take my cold, bootless toes to bed for a rainy day afternoon nap, perhaps stopping by the mailbox to check for mail. And yes, hand written mail deserves its own blog and that will come another day.

Delicious Is...

My book blog has been sadly neglected of late. I'd like to say that's all going to change, but I don't want to set myself up for failure. That being said, I read a new and delightful book this week thanks to the loving provision of Half-Price Books in San Antonio. Oh how I miss them--but I digress.

Pick of the week: The Search for Delicious by Natalie Babbitt, a charming and relatively short fairly tale that centers around a kingdom's war over the proper definition of the word "delicious". Seriously. Being somewhat food obsessed myself, I thoroughly enjoyed thinking about what I would put down for "delicious": would it be a cup of hot coffee on a windy autumn night or La Madeleine's croissant french toast with strawberries and syrup or an ice cold Dr Pepper accompanied by a handful of chocolate chips or fresh grilled fish and the sea scent of the Sunda Straights? There are so many great options!

At any rate, Babbitt's book is full of mermaids and dwarfs and good food options, and since the quest motif never gets old, pick it up and give it a look. If you manage to match my Half-Price Book price of $2.98 though, I'll be extremely surprised (Half-Price Books, I love you so much that if I'd met you before I got married things might've turned out differently...). Special shout out to Natalie Babbitt for doing her own illustrations--and doing them well. And no, I'm not going to tell you what the final consensus was on the definition of "delicious". Though I did find myself in agreement.

So, what do you think is the most delicious of all foods?