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July 20, 2007

Moved!

Okay, I've moved to http://stephs.com, time to update feeds.

Posted by Steph at 10:55 PM | Comments (0)

July 19, 2007

Moving over

I'm moving over to WordPress...hang on!

Posted by Steph at 04:06 PM | Comments (0)

July 11, 2007

The Young Man's Leisure Guide, Ch.1: On Enjoying a Driveway, Installment No. 1

Ford is practicing basic board maneuvers. He circumnavigates the driveway in rough squares of measured effort, propelling himself faster each time. His legs are slightly bent and his form conveys assurance and ease, but his arms carry some tension. They coil upwards toward lifted shoulders, bearing fear's weight in two invisible buckets. All the while, joy and satisfaction beams through his proud, young face.

Chas soars above the ground, speeding faster than the sound of his rolling bearnings. He clicks over twigs in the driveway, sometimes rolling over the board as it stops dead beneath him. He laughs, I laugh. His palms are black from asphalt soot and his nubby toes are fearlessly worn smooth and black, too. I can hear him acting out an action scene, his voice trails behind him as he flies across the blacktop, exaggerated cries of help and pleas for mercy, ending with a thud as he slams into the woodpile, throwing himself in a heap onto the ground. He lies spread-eagle beside his skateboard, looking up into the walnut boughs above him, swaying in the hot afternoon breeze.

After a three minute meditation, watching the leaves flutter and sway, he mounts his hovercraft and soars back across the driveway, his own little cosmos

to flail himself into the jasmine, in another utterly romantic gesture of bravado. His heart just couldn't beat any louder.

Ford and I laugh again. We follow no particular path, only minding not to run in to each other. Sometimes we glide just so close, knock knuckles, smile again. There is no two o'clock school traffic on our street to mark our passage through the afternoon. Chas is in his own world but he sometimes shows us where he's been. Sometimes he shows us where he's going. And then, like us, you can catch him just gelling with the afternoon. At that moment you know he's off any agenda and he's just somewhere in the middle of a summer afternoon in the driveway.

Posted by Steph at 06:38 AM | Comments (1)

July 06, 2007

Museum Possible

Above my expectations, the MOMA trip was something I can't believe we didn't try sooner. But our mental armor was strong that day. We pared the visit down to a Braque and that huge dog painting in the second floor foyer (hell if I remember; I was too busy trying to convince Chas that, even though the paint looked like dabs of toothpaste, he indeed could not touch it)...

And then, the Matisse exhibit. For both boys, a treat: nothing but nummies, in all dimensions. Having found our medium, our tether to real life, we were set. All we had to do was circulate smoothly without shouting too many body parts and we'd eventually hit the outdoor mezzanine. It was perfect! Couldn't have dreamed up a better recess.

After knocking out the ya-ya's, we had pizza downstairs.

The MOMA heats up a good pint-sized pepperoni pizza and the kids devoured it. We swilled a few pints of beer and then Damon and Dwight (Damon's brother) took the kids across the street to Yerba Buena Gardens so that I could see the rest of the Matisse exhibit in peace.

I think the kids, mostly Ford, would have appreciated that second half of the exhibit, being a bold departure from the previous body of work. Matisse had begun cutting pieces of paper to rearrange in composition for his larger paintings. And then, down the hall, the "Jazz" series of prints, all laid out on the white table--what have we all come to know better as the work of Matisse?

Still, what's best for the boys is plenty or room in the schedule for freeform fun. And fortunately, what's best for them worked out to be best for me, too. Thanks, D :)

Posted by Steph at 06:43 AM | Comments (1)

June 28, 2007

we're thinking of buying tickets to hell

We’re a little culture starved around here, snug within the benign mycelium of silicon valley. Granted, if I’d just know where to look around here, I’d find something interesting on exhibit. But the truth is that I’m just acheing to go to a fussy art museum where I can feel the music of terrazzo under my feet and experience air conditioning without a trace of retail and ride that fabulous chase from security guard to security guard, close behind Chas, always on the fringe of expulsion as he tries to weave fast arcs around freestanding sculptures. Art is, after all, mostly about the personal experience one has with the piece, and with Chas there is no exception. He loves sculpture, it FASCINATES him to discover giant colorful pillars shooting from the ground or brushed-steel geometry shining in the sun. OH! The joy! Must scream and run circles around them all!

There’s one exhibit in particular that I’m planning on taking them to see sometime soon, the Matisse exhibit at the SFMOMA. Ford is a collage guru and I figure it might provide a springboard for translating some of his 2D work into a new dimension; specifically, creating something 3-dimensional that his younger brother might be tempted to play with (especially if it’s made of paper or papier-mache). But again, really, I’m just sad that we haven’t been able to go for so long, for fear that we might die during the struggle to patiently corral our children politely through a quiet space for art.

I think it’s more important that they experience art from a very young age for several reasons. First, I think it’s fun for them to see how some people have translated emotions or themes into art. Secondly, I like for them to understand the value and purpose behind the art process. Thirdly, I want them to grow to respect the work of others as well as their own art, because the enduring value of art is that it has the power to change the future in many ways: it can alter a person’s perspective, create controversy, quiet a restless mind, you get the idea. Lastly, I want them to evolve quickly within the rigid confines of the art museum institution so that they naturally respect that paticular environment as they would a shrine, an that is mostly because I’d LIKE TO ENJOY THE MUSEUM, TOO.

So, this weekend I’ve requested we pay the MOMA a visit, take our chances, hope for the best. There’s a book I heard about that recommends certain tips for taking 5 year-olds and older children to the museum, How to talk to children about art: is the title. As an art teacher, I feel qualified enough to come up with my own suggestions (which, in all it’s conceit, is actually true) but I’m still curious about what it has to say and am ordering it anyway.

Wish us luck! Double that for the MOMA.

Posted by Steph at 07:00 AM | Comments (5)

June 19, 2007

Summer

Wow, what a hiatus. I've taken another mental health month, this time following a hectic family visit, and I am beginning to feel much better now, thank you. Your sympathetic messages have been a sustaining force and the only reason, I have to admit, that I'm sitting here at the computer now. It's one in the morning, I've been cutting fabric and thinking about the friends I'd like to keep, the ones like you whom I've met through this blog, who remind me that it's okay. Just keep writing. Keep taking photos. Don't say you're forgetful. Move forward.
Thank you.

So here we are. I'm sure you wanted more details, but here we ARE:
and watch out!

Summer is here, so very here. Each afternoon the hot winds off the valley blow through the garden on the way to Santa Cruz or wherever they go. Judging by the weary droop of the Lady’s Mantle, the Huecheras, the zucchini—I’d say an inch or two more compost would buffer tender roots from heatstroke. But the deer lop it all off and solve the problem instantly. Genius! Here's Chas, clearly offended by the marauding:

The deer. The wait until the tomatoes have sprung three tall feet and sprouted yellow flowers along the vine like christmas lights. Then they mow down the vines and pluck the hard green tomatoes, dropping them to the ground to rot at the bitemarks:

But the evening, it’s so summery. In the city, I have to wear fleece to dinner. In my backyard, however, I wear a tank top and feel nothing as the evening blues. The quail, scampering down along the fenceline, shepherd a new clutch of chicks. There must be twenty! I can’t see details without my glasses, but my eyes register fleeting puffs of down, left, right, then left, and the parents zig left then right, alerting the other of the dog by my side. Seti, mouthwatering, tenses and tracks their path.

When I water the zuchinni, it sounds like the heavy rain that I haven’t heard in months. A few weeks ago, the water pattered the mulch and the seedlings bowed under strain. Today, tall and turgid, the large uneaten leaves bat back at the downpour, an audible splattering, a hollow summer sound that I miss from Texas (and everywhere else I’ve lived in summers past, for that matter). I miss the moody days, shrouded in gray clouds, rain that evaporated off hot concrete, lightening that awoke a summer midnight. Puddles. Rainbows. Clouds.

Oh, screw it. Sunny days and starry nights rock!

Posted by Steph at 07:19 AM | Comments (5)

May 18, 2007

Found!

We are going camping this weekend, our first camping trip since we became parents. Although the campground is beautiful and luxurious and coastal, we are fortunate in that it is an hour away from home, forty miles as the crow flies from our house westward towards the Pacific.

I spent the entire morning searching for my sleeping bag. In the end, where would I find it? In the garage, in a tall box with the words written on the side in a black Marks-A-Lot:

WELDING JACKET
+
WEDDING DRESS

Of course!

Have a wonderful weekend, everybody. And may your clutter be so happily married!

Posted by Steph at 11:19 PM | Comments (8)

May 16, 2007

Mother's Day

An early morning trek to Santa Cruz, but we were still too late for swapmeet. The omen walked past as we were unlatching the children from the carseats: a teenage guy carrying a shiny aluminum tricycle. You just know the good stuff is going, going, gone. And for the most part, it was. But the garlic fries bufed the bitter edge, and we still managed to have fun poking around atticfuls of yesterday. Alis and I flirted with two cute plant geeks hawking boutique perennials from their watsonville nursery, and I selected a naughty little eggplant penstemon and another plant I still can't pronounce.

We lunched at the Saturn diner, bouncing on the vinyl seats and throwing quarters at the pinball machine, downing yummy amber pints and and more garlic fries.

Afterwards: Derby park. Just before the big kids started to file in, some of them hungover and sobering up atop sunny expanse of a wide blanket. Ford is getting more confident, now sliding down the bowls and taking turns with the highschoolers. Wide boards are the fashion here, with small wheels (not too Penskey!). They stand on the edge of the concrete and smile at Chas, who is playing with a notaLego skateboard (HELO, made in Mexico, bought for small change at swapmeet) atop his deck. I'm drawing in my sketchbook and Alis is chasing Seth. Jim is reading a magazine and getting very sleepy. Damon is with Ford. I'm heavy with satisfaction.

Posted by Steph at 08:10 AM | Comments (1)

May 08, 2007

5.7.2007

After a day-long playdate, when we are pooped and our eyes are closing and our tummies are falling asleep, one picture can say it all, as we quietly drift off into slumberland. Goodnight! I hope your day was as fun as ours!

Posted by Steph at 07:19 AM | Comments (4)

May 01, 2007

Monday, April 30

It's an inexpensive easel, Ikea sells them for twenty dollars and some stores sell them for as low as ten, but there's not a better tool in this house for creativity than it, save what the kids thrift from leaves and mud and berries within the matrix of their imagination (you'd be surprised to find what can be made into homemade paint and collage). I set the easel in the mudroom, facing due west and in full sun and bright light for the better part of the day. In the chalkbasin at the bottom of the board I let the children leave stubby black and white caran d'ache crayon segments, sometimes a random red or primary stump. Today there are two brush pens inside as well, painted black from another day's painting session, and now it's your guess which one is red and which is pale blue.

Chas is in the studio but I can't see him through the glass window. I am standing in the living room holding his shoes and socks, ready to find him and sit him on my lap and finish dressing him to play outside. He hears me and responds, I see a mop of strawberryblonde dreads bounce behind the table and out he emerges on the other side, slapping his fat little feet along the cold concrete floor like a happy hobbit running for high tea. He rounds the door and passes in front of the easel and skids to a halt, almost stumbling over himself. A piece he worked on earlier in the day: one large circle, spined like a black urchin, and two smaller circles in the corner. He feverishly grabs a red pen and scribbles away meticulously first, then faster and faster until he jolts to a halt and pauses with pen in hand. He mutters something that I cannot hear, looking at the page, a validation perhaps, nodding to himself. He caps the pen, sets it back into the chalkbox with matched intensity, and continues at a dead run into the laundry room where, by echolocation, he finds me.

I am holding a ladybug vivarium in my hands. It is a tall glass vase filled with quince branches and the dry twigs of a grapefruit tree, the diced green onion tips, shrouded with a black veil of aphids, and the contents of the ladybug bucket, those thrown in at the last minute and left to settle autonomously, which it has already begun doing, the ladybugs crawling over each other and the carnage of a week in captivity in a labryrinthine race braiding through bug and brush to the sunlight above. At the top of the vase I have taken a newspaper rubber band and turniquited the opening with a square sample of gauzy purple polyester. Ladybugs are scaling the top of the vase, their tiny feet gripping the fabric as they head the escape reconnaisance. To placate them, I slip four halves of soaked raisins, which they hone in on, with deft purpose as if by program, and begin to slurp up the sweet juice. Meanwhile, a drop of water placed atop the polyster floats with all structural integrity and maintains its globular shape as ladybugs descend upon it, dock and drink in the quiet silence of satiation.

Chas and I put on shoes and walk together into the garden, and I set the ladybugs down upon the grass. I open the lid and watch as fifty-odd shiny ladybugs whizz out the mouth of the vase, landing in my forearms, shoulder, eyebrows, knees. One bites me on the hand and I flick it off into the bush. Everywhere, crawling bugs, and the green onion remains a smorgasbord.

When enough have flown the terrarium, I stretch the rubber band over the fabric, spread it taut and drip another drop of water atop the lid. Thirsty ladybugs begin honing again upon it. And Chas continues to laugh in the grass, crawling himself with fifty-odd ladybugs as they roam his sunny toddlerscape. He giggles and drools accidentally. At his sooty bare feet, ladybugs congregate in a drying puddle of water, irrigation from hours ago, some with noses to the ground and tails pointing skyward, devout and transfixed.

Posted by Steph at 06:51 AM | Comments (2)

April 28, 2007

Friday

In the sleeping house at midnight I finish folding a load of whites on top the dryer, which is already humming to a new heap of wet laundry. There is a stack of dishtowels one foot high and I pick up a prefold diaper, still warm and soft from the basin, and I hold it by the corners and let it hang lengthwise, bring it to my chest and take either corner inwards, folding the diaper into itself. My muscles on autopilot after years of memory, I turn the top three inches or so down and then fold the entire thing in half. Now it is ready for a bottom and a snappi fastener, and I set it down onto the stack of towels and frown at the anomaly. Because Chas hasn't worn diapers in over six months now. And a small part of me frets that he never will again, a very small part of me called Insane. I pick the prefold off the top of the pile and sling it over my shoulder, walk into the kitchen and start to tidy the bar, a cuttingboard still wet with lime juice and cut spearmint, dribbles of rum on the white hexagonal tile counter, sticky now with mostly sugar remaining from the spills.

Outside the open windows on a windless fifty-degree midnight, a mockinbird hammers away atop some neighborhood perch, several doors down, hawking himself witlessly from every persuasion and to absolutely no end. After all these spring midnights since, filled with hours of mockingbird song in pitch black, and there are many in the expanse of fifteen springs, I always remember walking my bike from the architecture building on my way back home down the middle of an old college hill street in Providence, laughing and talking to a classmate about a project under the passing streetlights, to the swelling soliloquoy of a crazed mockingbird just days before finals. Tonight I am there again under pink falling blossoms, anticipating phantom critiques in the morning. My stomach is in giddy knots, I can't sleep.

Posted by Steph at 08:13 AM | Comments (1)

April 27, 2007

Thursday

The bucket of ladybugs is sitting on Ford's lofted bed in the cool north exposure, the hundreds of ladybugs awake now in the advancing daylight and ravenously crawling over each other in the mysterious nutrient-shavings the were packaged with. I lay on Ford's bed looking out the window now into the sunny patio as the boys flip pages in picturebooks atop the bed beside me in the quiet spot of our schedule just after lunch. At the top of a middle pane of glass, just under the white wooden frame, a bright red ladybud scales the perimeter and it is surely looking for that colony of aphids in that cluster of chives on the other side of the house. Or just a way to get outside, I reason. I roll my head back towards the bucket of ladybugs on the bed. Crawling as they ever were, teeming with purpose. A few unfortunate bugs are carelessly macerated between the clear lid and the bucket. Ford.

I pick up Island of the Blue Dolphins and leaf to the first page of the first chapter and begin to read. Words cascade off the page while I stand on a remote island in the Pacific northwest somewhere on a typically windy day, and I look out onto the glassy sea to find a ship with two red sails. But I know what a ship is. And I wonder what I would imagine this thing to be if I had never seen a ship before, and as I wonder out loud I ask the same question of Ford, who has begun to watch Seti ram his wet nose into the glass window at the foot of the bed in a senseless pursuit of a housefly. Chas is no longer listening either, and he has cracked a smile at the dog, along with his brother, as Seti continues to buffett the windowpane with ears all a tonic and the tenacity of an inbred terrier. I lay the book on my chest and the boys reel in delight as Seti smacks his lips and eats the stupid fly.

Posted by Steph at 08:24 AM | Comments (1)

Wednesday

Ford and Chas have two buckets of ladybugs in their hands at the local nursery and they are looking at the hundreds of them crawling inside the bucket. The bucket is filled with shavings and they tilt the container round like a gyroscope on some invisible axis before them, trying to see all those ladybugs as if in an effort to count them all the clear platic tub, behind the bilengual paragraphs of instructions and disclaimers and branding on the package's outer skin. I have found a boutique huechera, Key Lime Pie, and return to my own set of disclaimers with narrowed eyes for a few seconds before their intense excitement catches up to their awe. Chas has redefined priorities and the circular sprinkler attachment, the one he has been carrying around for fifteen minutes: brown plastic with ten black prongs, used in this manner as an alien spacecraft, is laid to rest momentarily on the nursery's potting table, beside eight other buckets of ladybugs. Ford has set a diode battery-powered dragonfly necklace with blinking red light on the table already. The area has become a still life, a shelf of curiosities for the young collector.

"Mommy, can we get some ladybugs? we really need a whole bunch of ladybugs for those aphids in the chives. Please, mom?" Ford pleads and Chas steps up behind him, "Yeah, dey're so tool! We got a WOT of wadybugs Ford, huh? Yeah! Wet's go put em in de aphids in a gawden now Arrrr! Jus wike in 'Bug's Wife' huh?! (begins to reenact a scene from said movie, very physically carrying the ladybug bucket into his character as he stomps down an aisle of shade-tolerant plants, splattering water puddles along the way. Ford continues to peer in through the clear plastic container while I watch Chas roam, half my face smiling and biting my lip at the same time.

Posted by Steph at 06:45 AM | Comments (0)

April 25, 2007

Tuesday

The winding drive down 92's western slope was typically satisfying, the exuberant decline through the winding fertile gap towards Half Moon Bay set me reeling for the low tide, earmarking time later in the day for the nursery that I breathlessly passed along the way.

We plop down immediately on the beach and the boys begin carving into the coarse, wet sand. In the distance, atop the rocks on the outer reef, gray harbor seal pups shimmy up to their enormous basking mothers and settle back down. The surging surf swells back into the ocean, returns seconds later, breaks upon the shining boulders and the seals hoist flippers above the white surf. The boys are building alien spacecraft and reenacting battle. I am sitting crosslegged, smelling a rotting rockfish that I hadn't yet noticed, which is drying in the noontime sun and it's close enough to where we are sitting that I can discriminate white swim bladder tangled in other viscera. We have so many bags, we just sat down, the boys are building. There is no sense moving yet, until they stop playing and notice the smell. I put my book down and walk to the upper intertidal pools.

You aren't supposed to pick up rocks. Beneath rocks, small animals hide during low tide. To pick up a rock undermines their efforts to survive; anything can come along and notice them in this hostile little pool, which is heating up by the minute, already a stressful enough for any small Pacific animal stranded in a small pool, and the salinity is heightening at the same time. It is a small, ragged rock perched in the middle of the very shallow pool.

Still, I pick up the rock. The kids aren't watching me. Nobody is watching me. I feel like I'm trying to rob a bank in this kind of stealth. I lift the rock gingerly about six inches above the pool. A small crab crouches, freezes. A serpentine fish slinks into the nearest algae frond. I take the half dollar-sized crab and transfer it to a neigboring pool so that it can hide again, and turn to examine the fish.

It's small, the length of my index finger, the width of a chopstick. It is brown, with a tiny tailfin and a cerebral noggin, eyes set close and undoubtedly fixed on me, perhaps my own eyes. I think it's pouting. In the dark shadow of the red algae I can barely discern other features, but I know enough; this is a monkeyface eel.

I search for a vacant space and set the rock down, a few inches from where it once stood. By this time, the kids are tossing sand at each other and before I can reach the dispute, Chas is screaming about the sand in his eyes that Ford threw, and Ford is laying a screaming claim on his innocence. Time for lunch.

Posted by Steph at 06:26 AM | Comments (2)

April 24, 2007

Monday

It is midmorning and the boys whine in disappointment as they watch the highschoolers slip quietly down and up again in the Sunnyvale skatepark bowls, their slaps, skids and rolls hushed behind the windows of the Golf. Why the kids weren't in school, I couldn't explain. Perhaps they were college students? Or homeschoolers? One thing was certain: I couldn't place my younglings in the bowl's bottom while a pack of adolescent men bombed around them at high speed, flipping boards here and there, sometimes missing catch, and pitching their whim against my maternal fear.

So we trudged homewards and took an unexpected left at the last intersection before our road, heading hopefully towards our neighborhood park, and when I was one block from the park I realized that my intuition rang true: It's the perfect preschooler skatepark because of a fifteen foot landscaped berm inset with a spiral sidewalk leading up to a bench on top, perfect for idly skating down and safe by all measures.

Three hours later we lie in bed, and I'm exhausted from reading to them but they are nonetheless climbing like cubs over me, ready for more stimulus. Mentally drained as well as physically, I shuffle down from their lofted domain and idly brew an espresso, that I might match their might, but in a half hour's time I'm merely irritable and tired, so we lived the late afternoon in a disharmonious rut; the boys, fighting not so much for the right of their individual wills but probably more for my undivided attention and I, weak from my own mental slump, puttering among household tasks and small ambitions. By five-thirty I have a glass of wine, amble into the garden with the boys, notice that the deer have mowed all but the basal eight inches off all the tomato plants and the entirely of the paprika achillea (they didn't touch the yellow one in the ground beside it). I handed Ford the pepper spray and he sprayed with robust purpose while chas whacked the potted ferns with a black plastic bat. Seti lay on the grass gnawing on a panel of redwood from the rotting firewood stack.

By the sun's setting I found myself serenely watching the quail out the studio window, nice benchmark that is for dusk, and detoxing on a second installment of bottled water while Damon and the boys skated at the elementary school across the road, by now empty of all children save mine. Peace found in the quietude of their silent grazing, I watch the quail weave their way darker into the thick of our hedgerow.

Posted by Steph at 07:36 AM | Comments (1)

April 18, 2007

Easter weekend

It rained last night, throughout the night and into the morning, until the sun poked through the snivelling stratus and proclaimed that it was no longer a time of grieving. So the rain packed up and moved eastward, I'm told. And in its wake, the starlings came back out of hiding among the ivy boughs, and the quail promenaded atop the dewy lawn, properly.

For the past three weeks we have had occasional rains, and each time the pitter pattering begins above our heads on this old roof, we tell ourselves, "This is the last rain of the season." That was the last rain of the season.

Speaking of proper, this is a blog where I am obliged to to log a chronicle of events, and I missed the holy weekend of Easter. I've been called on this, so let me indulge you people on what you missed, heretofore two weeks.

Alis threw Seth an Easter rager. Thirty-odd toddlers turned every stone and log looking for eggs and chocolate on the Whitman commons that straddle Skyline ridge. She spent the week beforehand sewing fleece easter bunnies and dying eggs in pots of boiled beets and onionskins and cabbageleaves. On other nights, she wrapped heirloom seeds in tulle and tied them to colorful tongue depressors, and when she was busy wrapping little pots of violas and wheatgrass with tissue paper and hand-painted yarn, she enlisted friends to string wooden beaded bracelets into the wee hours or, as in my case, stand in her kitchen, slackjawed and dumbfounded, to gawk at all the hard work she really put into this fete while she dyed yet more gorgeous eggs.

Which is all to say that my boys cared neither here nor there about any of this, on that particular day, the day of the hunt, as they poked and prodded through the Lamb's Ears and Lilies until they found all forms of chocolate, but that we girls, and by that I mean me( because I was trying not to notice my younger competition) secretly dashed through the garden like a pixie, collecting shiny glass beads and seed packets, purple-and-orange violas and wheatgrass pots, slipping them inconspicuously into Chas' easter basket while he gorged on his gold, his precious chocolate. Occasionally I'd urge him to pick up a seed packet that I'd found, and he'd probe the entire area first for chocolate, certain that I had scouted for nothing other, and finally reach for the only thing hidden in the foliage, which was indeed the seed packet and which he indeed picked up. For me!

And so, with seeds to plant, I'm faced by the bare patches of three quarterempty flowerbeds, spared just for such purpose, and the blank face of a front and back yard, freshly plowed by a thirty year-old and rusting tractor with a likewise rusted and ringing plow, just days ago before the rain fell. I see mounds upon which to plant two to three ppumpkins seeds apiece. Give or take a melon.

I have tenacious, hard callouses on my hands from three weekends ago, when we spent the rest of Easter weekend in Pebble Beach, playing drunk barefoot tennis doubles into the black of night. I'm not sure how I didn't bleed through my feet by bedfall, on those heavy, luxurious sheets; on the contrary, my feet tingled as if they'd been freshly shorn of three old inches of thick hide. Perhaps they were?. Indeed, the rest of me felt that idyllic; it's fun having rich friends with third homes nestled in the surreal beauty of California's monterrey bay peninsula. We drove home along the coastal highway bisecting the prim acres of golfing lawn and the rugged, emerald blue jumble of ocean and guano-stained rock and the white froth of my amazement. Acres upon acres of blooming artichoke and fruiting strawberries, laborers scattered along the endless rows that stretched inland, hunched over the produce like props. Surreal produce signs with enormous specimens that seemed to shine from the light of the sun itself, which glared down sternly upon us as we shook off the two day hangover that only an irresponsible weekend in someone else's mansion in someone else's neighborhood could bring.

Posted by Steph at 06:45 AM | Comments (0)

March 14, 2007

Full Tilt into Spring

On the way home from the beach, I stopped by my favorite nursery in Half Moon Bay (who doesn't have a website to google but I can give you directions, if you are interested) and bought plants. Not just any plants, but anything that could double its duty as both gopher proof and textural. So I chose a leaf in every shape: oval, circular, fusiform, serrated. And I picked up anything chartreuse and violet, wispy and hugging. In essence, I chose plants that not only worked double time but put in extra hours at playing off one another: purple huechera and silver helichyrysum, lenten rose and bronze fennel, waving yarrow and succulent prostrate sedum. They sit in congragation together on cardboard flats atop whiteplastic lawn chairs, in the shade of two towering cypress beside the house, waiting for me to finish digging vitality back into the cold earth.

A family of quail graze the ground beneath them, black and purple plumes gleaming in the afternoon sun, ebony bobbers wiggling like alien antennae atop their noggins. It's hard not to grin every time they pass. That's probably one of those beautiful things about Spring here, although for all I know the quail are permanent residents. But the Robin has started chattering at dusk with the scrub jays around the grapefruit tree's birdbath, the frogs start peeping soon afterwards, and nothing sounds more like an American Spring, to me.

As you start to spend more time outside, maybe gardening, maybe taking a brisk walk, what sounds of Spring are ringing in the air around you?

Posted by Steph at 11:01 PM | Comments (2)

March 13, 2007

SPC: Flickr tools #2

With little difference to the stiff neck I felt yesterday morning, I drove the kids down to the beach. All the elation that nearly winded me on the drive down to Half Moon Bay fizzled once I started lifting Chas out of deep tide pools and stretching to capture fossils embedded in the rocks. I remember the swirling panorama of beached seals and hungry surf, thinking, This is a very bad place to be with a stiff neck and two exploring preschoolers.

So I let both of the kids clamber their way back to the beach on their own (Chas is getting surprisingly nimble) and then rested in the tent while they bouldered and threw rocks at the incoming tide. This overexposed shot is taken from my little infirmary. I like the way it captures the heat, unforgiving light and pain (although I might be the only one to look at this picture and feel it). It also has a nice retro tint. What's your impression? I'm obliged to use these flickr tools for SPC's current challenge but I'm not sure I'd use these tools in my own. It lacks authenticity. Not sure I like that, although it has a home somewhere.

My advice to anyone waking up in the morning with a stiff neck is to traction yourself to a board for the rest of the day and hook yourself up to an IV and catheter. Don't drive a long, winding road to the beach, set up a tent, wrangle children across the rocks at low tide and then press reverse. That was a recipe for disaster. Damon says it wouldn't matter; that the muscle would spaz no matter what.
I wonder if he's right.

If you want to learn more about online photoediting tools , check out a gallery exhibiting some at SPC.

Posted by Steph at 07:32 PM | Comments (0)

March 04, 2007

Squinting in the sunshine

I am traversing the eastern slope of Fremont Open space, and I'm walking along a terrace once trafficked perhaps by laborers on this former orchard as they roamed from tree to tree during harvest. What kinds of trees? I don't know. Today their gnarled, leafless, stunted silhouettes stand arabesque upon the hill above me, black and static amid the flowing grasses, beneath the hovering falcon. Birdsong travels like a current over the terrain, bees are busy buzzing in the clover mats, hummingbirds fighting in the treelimbs. I stop along the trail while Seti sniffs the newspaper; it's Sunday and the weeds hang with dog pee here and there along the worn trail. The entire hillside is tense with new life. You can almost feel the warm ground quake beneath you, a mycelium overtaking winter's rot, aerating the bedrock, paving the way for shooting rhizomes and weeds. Little yellow wildflowers sway with glossy grass. If I were to try drawing three square inches of this space I might scream; beneath the mat of green urgency lies an even tinier world, a lilliputian army of plants and fungi working together to hold the soil firmly against the hillside. A linear delight, it reminds me of Dutch painting and discovering the architecture of dandelions and drawing for hours on end, without interruption. But today I'm plodding onwards, at times tugging the dog to urge him faster, so I might get back to unpack yet more boxes, and break down more boxes, making space in the mudroom for this naked and young morning light to pour into our house and penetrate the walls with its warm yawn.

Posted by Steph at 11:09 PM | Comments (1)

February 27, 2007

Composting in the Rain

Despite my occasional irritations with way the boys continue to remain so close by my side, there are upsides to their lingering dependence on me. I can still redirect muddles between them by simply leaving the room, a perfect curveball. This morning, I quelled an escalating feud between them in the living room, one I was almost ready to fuel with my own frustration, by halting mid-step, turning round and retreating to the mudroom, where I silently baffled them as I put on my socks and boots and headed out into the yard. They watched me from the stoop as I opened the shed door, near the garage, and began excavating hoes, cultivators and shovels from an ethereal matrix of dusty cobwebs, spreading them like battle artillery, single-file, to rest along a low-lying branch. And within minutes, both were eagerly digging into the understory of a giant oak tree in the front yard, heaving shovelsful of composted peat into random piles around me.

Chas soon began to look for earthworms. Crouching over the dugout, in the space I'd carved beneath the tree, he picked fat glossy creepers between his fingers and carried them around the yard, through the house for a little while, taking them on a helpless tour of distraction before returning to my side. As if he'd forgotten it was still in his hand, Chas would ask to take another bath (perhaps his third?), doe-eyed and head tilted, and I'd look down at his hand to find another gleaming, limp, pinched annelid. "I wanna put him in the bathtub," he'd say, quite matter-of-factly. And I'd have to disagree, smiling apologetically, as I turned the compost in the drizzling rain.

Posted by Steph at 11:14 PM | Comments (0)

February 19, 2007

Our Third Child

I read somewhere, ten years ago when we were puppy-surfing, that a Jack Russell Terrier is like having a perpetual three year-old in the house. Well, that's pretty true. Seti, our dog, is all about the "now" and the "me" and balls and toys. He doesn't always share; in fact, he's always hoarded his own ball at the dog park, fending off dumbfounded pit bulls and retrievers five times his size, just by the obnoxious tang in his snarl. And, just like any preschooler, you can distract him off the nasty scent of a dead rat in the backyard just by saying the magic words "where's your ball?" It's so easy.

Ball. Ball is life. Well, ball is second to frisbee, but we're out of frisbees right now. We have two chronically wet tennis balls (you can see why, above) and one racquetball (a far superior choice to all manufactured dog toys for the medium dog set). Seti will carry the ball around the house, right under your feet, hoping you will throw it. When you sit down to talk on the phone, he will drop it at your feet. When you try disapppearning into the bathroom for ten minutes, he'll unlock the door with his razor sharp Jack Russell perserverence and drop the ball at your feet. And certainly, when you slip into a nice warm bath, ready to erase the day's grime off your body and soul, Seti will come and drop the dirty ball into the bathwater. Then he'll sit and stare at you imploringly, his brown eyes now big obsidian orbs, penetrating their voodoo into your weariness, and there's no way to resist him: you find yourself throwing the ball this way and that, trying to outwit the bastard but damned if he doesn't catch your every curveball! He's a machine. He'll do this all day. And here he is, twisting Chas' arm in the new bath.

Posted by Steph at 11:07 PM | Comments (4)

February 18, 2007

35

Birthdays. They just keep getting sweeter. Alis and I celebrated our birthdays tonight by having a fondue party up at her place in the Santa Cruz mountains. I think we both might be missing the absence of the yearly Red & Chocolate party, which used to include a few more guests than just the ten of us that were there tonight. It's normally such a wet, cold time of the year here, especially up in the mountains, where the rain freezes and sometimes turns to snow. But the weather is warmer this year. I cut a quince branch, already in flower, and attached it to the bow on her present. Fruit trees along the Saratoga avenues are white with blossoms, rolling hills at the open space preserve, where I run, are adorned in special corners with tiny pink and white buds, showering petals along the path. It's already Spring and it's righteous.

Every time I think it's a beautiful day down here in the valley, I'm blown away when I step out of my car in her driveway up on Skyline ridge. For starters, there's the quiet outdoor air there that's almost deafening, like the sound of nighttime in the suburbs after two fresh feet of snow. After the birds have gone to roost, near dusk, I can almost hear my ears ringing (thanks due in part to Chas and to a lesser extent, Ford, the loudest children I've ever known). And then there's the view. The breathtaking view that, were it not for the fog, would include the Pacific, beyond Santa Cruz.

Birthdays are sweeter and sweeter. I can cook in the same kitchen with my college buddy, smile about where we are right now, and look into the living room to see benchmarks we've left over the years since we met: solid ties with men that became important to us along the way; the three beautiful, vibrant children that this love made possible; our two little dogs who are getting older, followed by the ghosts we've grieved to tell goodbye, recently: three other dogs, a horse; a mother, a grandfather.

Turning 35 this year is the sweet little nudge in the arm, reminding me about babies and books and other priorities that can't wait behind my hedonism. But I think this year I might start lying about my age. Alis and I made a deal: it's not important for anyone to know. Except for the clerks at the grocery store, but I'll tell them my age any time because they still card me when I buy groceries (which, I now realize, tells me that I buy entirely too much booze). 35 used to be old. But I've never carried myself better (thank you, yoga. why didn't we meet sooner?) and my smile, most often, has a careworn grace to it that I am proud of, suggesting achievement and the attainment of purpose. I think motherhood did it to me.
...The rest of time I think I'm frowning, though, and I can attribute that to motherhood, too ;)

Damon, thanks for the photos! You're getting gooood!

Posted by Steph at 11:18 PM | Comments (4)

February 06, 2007

We've Moved

The big difference I feel, being in this house, is the announcement I make with every move within it; the floorboards do most of the talking, try as I may to pussyfoot from room to room, as I imagine what will go where. Our belongings arrive within the week. I'm enjoying the graceful expanse of sunlight across the hardwood floors, this immensity of personal space, after being in a hotel room for one month.

Arranging our nature walk loot on a quiet surface in the sunroom, I look out the window to spy quail silhouettes scampering beneath the rhododendron and a scrub jay punctuate the clover in blue. Unknown bulbs peep through pine needles. These walls, this acre, is filled with hope for the coming years. I'll complain a lot about the Los Palo-Gato-Altos-View smog of silicon valley, but I'm amazed at how we manage to still smell grass and trees here in Saratoga, at the foot of the Santa Cruz mountains, who are (these days) obscured through milk glass. Here, the cleansing respite of a eucalyptus grove: towering twisted trunks with warping bark. Although the blossoms are brown, the hummingbirds are still fighting among the drooping boughs.

Posted by Steph at 08:16 AM | Comments (2)

January 25, 2007

Fitzgerald Marine Reserve

Ford is rediscovering the coast and he asks to go back, time and again, to Santa Cruz. However, I've blissfully started introducing him to different shoreline habitats and today I figured was the perfect time to indulge myself, and the kids, in a low tide experience along the rocky surf at Moss Beach. I'd actually never been before. As it turns out, the park is a refuge for the Harbor Seal, who swims between this beach and the harbor, in lower Moss Beach; and, during low tides, this is the safest refuge for them to rest, atop the black rock that crops up through the crest of low tide. In fact, the rangers set up construction cones around the rim of the beach to give the seals privacy. Otherwise, they might flee the beach and swim to exhaustion, unable to find the refuge they need anywhere else along this shoreline.
We had just reached the beach, at the end of a short trail, when the camera battery died.

Ford was so anxious to recall what we saw today once we returned to the hotel. He quickly synopsed the visit with a drawing of his favorite finds (which deserved better light when I took this photo, but this will have to do):

With a stick, we had turned over an organism in the sand that resembled an enormous, wide cow tongue. On the underside of the orange beast, a flat foot with a central groove, in the shape of a U. On the backside, a row of partially hidden plates under thick hide-like orange flesh. A chiton relative? A grapefruit from outer space? Actually, I was right: Cryptochiton or Gumboot chiton (named after the color and texture of its flesh). Way cool, but also very dead and intensely rank. Next!:

Ford's favorite of the day: the Green Sea Anemone. He discovered that he could stick his finger into the flowery nubbins and make them close up, squirting water out in a tiny little stream clear up to his nose. Very entertaining, he did this for the longest time until the tide started swallowing us. But not before we investigated Turban snails and rescued a parching Pisaster.

Posted by Steph at 01:58 AM | Comments (1)

January 23, 2007

Week Two

I couldn't properly toodle around until we found ourselves a home and signed the paperwork. Fortunately, we found a lovely home in saratoga last week. It's sunny and quaint and sits on a terraced acre where an orchard once stood. The road bisects the farm from the field. We live in its vestiges: a tower hung with vines, once for water, stands beside the driveway. What happened to the orchard? In the excitement of finding ground for roots I forgot to ask. There're more history behind the house, too. It was the retirement home for the owner's parents. I recognize the 50s mint cream bathroom tiles. A real breakfast nook. And it was home to two young boys, before we came along last week. There is a fading basketball hoop in the driveway with a piece of paper taped to the backboard, claiming "FREE." Two belay ropes hang from a large pine tree in the backyard, and as I look around, I see other swings hanging in other trees. A treehouse in an alcove of the lot, tucked behind soft green corners.

We move in february 1st. The owner, who lives next door, is my new town historian. She has a playground of her own in her backyard, standing attention under the eaves, awaiting her seven granddaughters. In her pool she has taught all the neighborhood children to swim. Ford is on her list for Summer 2007. She even has an Araucana chicken.
Home, indeed!

In the meantime, back to toodling:

Shoreline Park shenanigans

Natural Bridges driftwood

cleaning our lungs at Castle Rock SP

budgeting a membership

We lived here once and it was never so sunny. Kids change everything. Baker beach, the Presidio, SF

Noodles on Haight

Tired on Haight

all toodled out on Twin Peaks.

Posted by Steph at 07:42 AM | Comments (4)

January 16, 2007

Week One

The hotel is quiet and mellow, and the ebb and flow of Googlers from Sunday afternoon to Friday morning keeps me regular. Otherwise, our life is crazy and chaotic and loud. I come and go through the lobby apologetically, always on some pretense to avoid conversation with the concierge, but the reality is that they are all cool with our presence. They love the kids, and they laugh when Chas climbs all over the fancy retromodern furniture in the lobby, reaching out to grab bottles of wine from the rack on the wall. But someone has to hear them downstairs when they jump off the bed like kid goats or stampede across the room with the foam basketball towards the net I hung from the minibar closet. And if I don't get out of the hotel room by ten o'clock, all of us reach a critical mass and someone has to have noticed the screaming tantrums when we've missed that deadline. Half-dressed baby dolls on the floor in the corner of the room. Marbles in the toilet. Cream cheese on the rug. But every day we return in the evening, after a long day of house hunting, to find Petey and Baby (the boy's dolls) tucked properly back into bed, and a replinshing set of little toiletries standing in array in the bathroom, telling us to go ahead, shower off, relax. There's an apricot beer in the microfridge. This isn't so bad now, is it?

Friends. We return to very loved friends here. Alis is now a mother and I enjoy watching her on her home turf. She's beautiful and photogenic and while she may wonder why I chose this photo out of many others, it is because I just love it for some inexplicable reason. She's thinking about something while we wait for food at the Upper Crust Pizzeria in Santa Cruz. And this is Seth, Chas' partner in crime, so you'd better look out.

Jim is Alis' husband and is telling me that I have a sweet camera but that my fisheye lens is really not a fisheye lens. And I'm about to tell him that it is a fisheye lens, but that it cost less than $800, so it's just not an expensive one. Santa Cruz, at a popular local coffeeshop that I can't remember the name of.

Jerry, our best man, bester than ever. In counting our blessings, having Jerry back in our company is at the top of the list. We pick up just where we left off, just like that, and it's fun to watch him study our new parental habits and hurdle the chaos we create around him. Always benevolent, here he is with a peace offering for his girlfriend, because we kidnapped him for an entire day down to the beach to skateboard and watch clustering monarchs and buy panoramic cameras at SwapMeet.

Posted by Steph at 07:12 AM | Comments (1)

January 07, 2007

Waiting

We insisted that Chas poop before getting on the plane, and this saved our LIVES. The kids and Damon filled the row behind me on the plane, shouting out random data like "Look, Mom! Shit Pile crater!" and "WHOOOOOOOOOAA!" and "Look at me! Look at ME!" as the plane bounced through mile-high white clouds. Really, there was nothing sober about the flight; I think that these pictures just show our fatigue after dealing with the whole waiting-for-Chas-to-poop-while-fearing-he'd-still-wind-up-pooping-on-the-plane period. The flight was nothing but an amped riot and strangely, everyone near us on the plane thought it was all pretty funny. One man lost it when he heard Ford ask Damon,
"Daddy, what's this button for?"
"Don't touch that Ford, that's the Self-Destruct Button."
Just lost it.

Posted by Steph at 03:38 PM | Comments (2)

January 04, 2007

Goodbye, Austin

Posted by Steph at 05:20 PM | Comments (0)

January 03, 2007

Powerbook Shuffle

The process of moving has involved Damon spending much of his time in the office, rearranging bits and bytes among three or four different laptops, including mine. I've walked into the room numerous times only to stand in the doorway, slackjawed in fatigue, wondering in my little mind whether it may be wise to interrupt the binary flow and ask for my computer. Most of the time I pause there for a minute, holding my breath, until I decide that I'd rather go pick my nose or knit, or do both, in no particular order. Craziness becomes me when I'm in limbo, manifesting itself in peculiar ways.

I had a lovely photomosaic from the holidays which, after Damon looked sideways at my computer, got lost. Not that it was his fault. I blame it rather on my computer, for being there on the countertop, in his plain view. So intimidating was his glance from across the room that Safari just quit on him. On all of us, really. It took me about an hour to put together, so you can understand my frustration and the hesitation I feel trying to making another. And until I have packed. But first, priorities: blogging. After all, I've been such a prolific blogger the past 4 months, right?

For the record, I did get a Shuffle for Christmas and it's probably the coolest thing on my list of cool things on the planet, next to this really cool other new thing I got for christmas, called a FISHEYE lens! I still can't believe it. I must've been a good girl last year. Or something.

Posted by Steph at 03:16 AM | Comments (0)

December 29, 2006

Finishing Business

The act of moving feels second nature. We have been moving every two or three years for the past decade, Damon and I, so this time feels not unlike the rest. We know the drill: Before it's too late, one last taste of everything we love...Today, Magnolia cafe pancakes--without the kids; a muddy plod through the greenbelt basin; yesterday, skateboarding after dark at the top of Damon's old parking garage. Shotgunning Shiner beer and watching the weather change above us. I wish we could experience one more thunderstorm before we depart on Wednesday for the west coast; I'll miss the stratospheric drama we're accustomed to here, but we'll exchange all that for a new trove of earthly spactacles: quakes, geysers, hot springs and bubbling mud pits. Purple sulphur bacteria. And heaving kelp beds beneath tiny boats. I decided to unearth the kelp quilt I started several months ago and pack it with the hotel yarn stash, fodder for my late nights to come, once we arrive in Mountain View.

Posted by Steph at 05:56 AM | Comments (1)

December 15, 2006

Over the River and Through the Woods and Across The Mojave and Up the Empire Valley and past a bunch of those gigantic white windmills to Mountain View we go

Wow, this is awkward. That struggling for the right anecdotes when you're standing there with a towering armful of them, ready to topple over. An anxious pause in conversation with a long-distance friend, when you know there's something you're forgetting to mention.

Well, here it is, the big thing I've forgotten to mention: We are moving back to California. At the end of the month, a big tractor trailer will back into our bending driveway. It will rip off the lowest, brittle oak limbs that cover the stretch of pavement where Ford has learned to skateboard and park over the spot, near the garbage cans, where the chickens keep scattering leaves in their search for grubs. And somehow, when this all happens, I will be in a hotel room in Mountain View, probably still scanning Craigslist for a place for us to live.

It's not that we don't love Austin. We've managed to sink a pretty thick taproot into the limestone bedrock here, and bought a lot to build on and sunk our teeth through some great plans for our future here. And we're keeping that foothold here. Nothing changes that.

It's just that someone really needs Damon right now, enough that they found him, interviewed him 23 times over the course of 3 months and made it virtually impossible for us to justify staying here in Austin, when every fiber in our body was begging us to just stay put. One of his colleagues sums it up well: You'd have to kick yourself in the arse every day if you stayed. And I can't live with a husband who kicks himself in the arse every day; only one of us can do that in this household and I claim that right for myself. For reasons that aren't important right now and that vary from day to day anyway.

And because it's the holidays and I'm packing and making presents and freaking out, I've given and exceeded the five minute limit I put on blogging tonight. I don't have any new pictures. I do have so many things I regret not writing about over the past few months; the time has simply slipped through my fingers. I've instead been rewarding myself lately, at the tail end of the day, with a beer, a shameful tv program and a lapful of wool between busy but meditative needles.

Posted by Steph at 05:24 AM | Comments (4)

November 26, 2006

I'm thankful for...

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November 11, 2006

Blink, Wish

A double-take, and I see Ford drinking milk straight out of the carton; he is five going on fifteen. The array of cheerios on the table ground him solidly at five, though, harking back at two.

Chas, meanwhile, sneaks a few steps ahead of me when I'm not looking. Here, he is taking a break from sit-down longboarding in the driveway, elated with the feeling of being able to soar only inches above concrete, all by himself.

I have a cache of smiley moments to toss onto the page but not a lot of time to do it right now: the way the sun dappled through cool limestone shadows as we rambled through the canyon, grazing the chalky outcroppings with little fingers; laughing at the dancing chickens in our yard; standing on stools in the kitchen, cutting vegetables for a pot of soup and laughing at the carrots that kept rolling off the countertop and onto the floor. Despite the occasional headaches, this job rocks!

Posted by Steph at 03:55 AM | Comments (0)

November 01, 2006

Happy Halloween!

Ford, the White Witch from Narnia, along with Mr. Incrediboy, on the walk to the school carnival. Looking pretty tired already. But they perked up after each squirted a half-can of cookie icing into their mouths while we grownups weren't paying attention.

Chas, on Halloween night, decided to be the White Witch, too. But in battle dress.
It looks even better with the red lollipop hanging from the pelt, but I lost that photo somewhere.

Posted by Steph at 05:43 PM | Comments (0)

Happy Halloween!

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October 16, 2006

"Mom? Did You Like My Song?"

It took me a half hour to post my last entry because Ford was singing really loud downstairs in the garage with Damon and I kept turning an ear down the hallway and laughing. I wish I were this uninhibited:

If It's Nothing

Posted by Steph at 03:28 AM | Comments (1)

Elgin Sausage Stampede

On Saturday morning, we rediscovered our old college schedule of getting up early and hauling ass to class, except this time we went to Elgin for a Sausage Run. I loved the morning drive, creeping out of night across the hills, still blanketed in fog. It's so breathtaking, this yawn of daybreak. I usually sleep through it, as do my children; we are a family that wakes up twenty minutes before school starts, and somehow this works for us. But to see what I've been missing makes me want to curb my nocturnal habits. Passing by our neighbors along the road, little glowing windows inside each shadowed house reminds me of forgotten habits: frosty morning jogs along Balckburn avenue in Providence, cats on the prowl in driveways that I pass, concert flyers waving on telephone poles, and showering before breakfast; the opposite sequence to my current routine, a thousand miles south.

Ford, quietly pouting in the center of the universe, was disappointed that the race didn't include him. So we pulled back, letting him sprint every now and then through the old town streets and across train tracks. I even gave him my number, and trailed behind him through the finish line. I want to be the family that runs together. It's a lifelong sport. And my hip was killing me so this made good pretense. He ate it up.

A proper fun run, this race divvied up a kegger at the finish line along with steaming pork sausage (note: the best in Texas) and while I dislike eating pork, I couldn't resist pints of beer and hot sausage to follow the trail of woodsmoke that carried me from start to finish along the uninspired smalltown route. Even better: a bounce house for the squirts to decompress while we shotgunned refreshments.

Posted by Steph at 02:43 AM | Comments (0)

October 14, 2006

Horsing Around in the Moonlight

It's midnight and I can't sleep. The shelf above my desk retains a wall of towering fabric scraps, folded in assembly and ready to be all cut and sewn up. Into what? Perhaps a glow-in-the-dark circuitboard horse? Why not!

Cutting through thick wool felt is so satisfying, like the slow and steady joy of learning to cut through paper in preschool. And the way it sounds, like horses chomping on warm hay.

The surplus yarn in the office here is Fall-friendly and begging to be touched, wishing it were warm enough to get all knit up into scarves and pants and hats. Otherwise, it makes great manes and tales. But do you notice that Chas is wearing fleece?? After eight months of flip-flops I found myself wearing wool socks under my Air Jesus' and I felt so...back in northern California. Layering is fun. 60 degrees F feels so nice, so much better than 90 degrees in mid-October.

Posted by Steph at 04:26 AM | Comments (1)

October 13, 2006

Oooh, If the Dust Ever Settles in This House...

A circuitboard made of white foam and leftover yarn that Ford's friends made during his birthday party; Chas' wild volcano painting, originally with volatile sound effects; A featherwreath adorned by Betty and Boo; Ford's rock collection: "magic rock," amethyst geode, coral from Galveston, birthday geode from CZ...

Our Fall nature table. Little Ivy Elizabeth Walker, Ford's favorite character last year from The Village, sitting on the resting rock in the middle of a little Hill Country glade; Burr oak and Post oak acorns from around town; Edwards limestone; Ball moss from everywhere around town; chickenfeathers and unknown native grass, what I pretend is a White-Tailed deer...

at Ivy's feet: "HEXAGONS!" that Chas found on our walk through the neighborhood (courtesy of a sunbleached, long-dead armadillo skeleton)...

Gretel, another storybook favorite, plays cavalier atop Big Billy Goat Gruff; and no nature table in our house is grounded without a chicken.

Posted by Steph at 05:51 AM | Comments (0)

October 10, 2006

Quietly tumbling into the folds of my memory, like carded wool bundles, are little mundane moments gone undocumented. The smudged picture of Ford, placing a fistful of wildflowers atop his chick's small stickpile grave. Chas, smiling in the kitchen with a half-eaten stick of melting butter in his hands. The pit in my stomach as I scan the decay in Ford's dental x-rays while he squirms in the the chair and Chas wriggles out of my exhausted arms. The warm breeze lofting the sunlit red feathers on our chicken Betty, dead in the grass beside our driveway. Ford sitting before the nature table, arranging feathers and acorns and tiny baskets of glass beads. The electricity of change, orchestrating stifled conversations about not moving and interrupting my sleep. Like now.

Posted by Steph at 05:57 AM | Comments (2)

September 19, 2006

A New Laptop Battery is Just Like Having a New Laptop

I am waiting for apple bisque paint to dry on paper and listening to three seperate snores. It's allergy season. The windows are all open and neighbors just chunked two fireworks into the sky, exploding over the oaks, hissing sparkling arcs across the driveway. I imagine a handful of boys laughing a few doors down, high-fiving over a six-pack and rummaging the garage for more things to detonate. It's a window into the Sicore boy's future, enough to make me wince (Watch those fingers, boys!) but also smile. It's FUN to blow stuff up!

Damon and I went alone together to the gym this morning. We shared machines and grins. In the middle of the bustling gym floor I wanted to pounce on him. Watching him huff and puff drove me crazy. It was like a shot of Back in College, that undivided attention between us. So as soon as I picked up Chas at childcare, I scribbled down reservations for the rest of this week and next week--pencilling in about an extra half-hour for good measure, each day. Damon did the same. It feels like I've found a missing gasket and now I've replaced it, allowing the machinery to run smoothly again. This may have been one of those elusive missing things in my life.

We took the kids out on the lake again tonight. Austin is absolutely lovely right now, fresh out of the shower and sprinkled with joggers and children and rowers and hummingbirds. I've been dying to bring along a camera, but too paranoid that it might get wet (which it will); the setting sun just gilts everything on its way out. Chas and Ford shared the middle seat tonight, each dragging the little wooden boats that Damon made them, holding graham crackers opposite hands. The way it should be, we just coasted in and out of cypress coves, above illicit beds of Eurasian Watermilfoil and broad mats of Hydrilla, the boys humming Sonic Youth and we, the grownups, chuckling over cold beer. We ran a Great Blue Heron off its hunt five times, tracing its hunt by accident along the convoluted, wooded banks off the lake.

The paint is now dry. I'm daydreaming of graduate studies in painting here at the university. Priorities first, though. I close that window in my browser and step back to the table, dreaming up a series of paintings for a show. 'Self-taught' is satisfactory.

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September 16, 2006

Rain Again

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September 06, 2006

notblogging

Shorter, cooler days. A front on summer's coattails. Soft rain hides a full moon tonight and the chickens whisper chirps at me, asking for voice recognition, as I close the tractor door in the darkness. It's only me, I tell them. The neighbors mentioned a fat coyote crossing our road yesterday.

Before bed, Chas rolls onto his back on the bedroom floor, staring up at the swirling red snake mobile that I hung from the air vent yesterday.
"How do do dat?" he asks, smiling with wide, twilight eyes.

We are spending mornings, afternoons and evenings outside. I rarely am at the computer, these days. I wonder how I could make more time to write any more than I already do (in my journal), amazed at people who can ignore distractions and faithfully blog on...slacker that I am, I sit slackjawed in a long red canoe at night on the lake, breathless atop placid waters. Our city glows under the indigo sky, buzzing with the current of hungry bats, evening traffic whirring above us on the avenues. We slice through the coke bottle water, a parade of shrieks and babble as our children narrate a joy I'm too grown-up to blurt out. So I just paddle on, smiling, as Chas leans over the bow, dragging his little hand in the water, tiptoe on his flip-flips.

Posted by Steph at 04:50 AM | Comments (0)

August 30, 2006

Sidewalk Circuitry

Ford is really, really into circuit boards. Sadly, I'm not. But his father steps up to the plate in my stead. When I walked outside before dinner, he and the boys were elbow-deep in chalk dust, reviewing their designs. So pervasive is the circuitboard concept in his everyday speech that I'm unsure where to begin elaborating on this current fascination. (oh, I just did a funny, did you get that? Because I just did) And, seeing as I've already had a day chock-full of the stuff, I must admit that I really don't want to discuss it any further. Maybe another day. Or maybe I can transcribe something from the engineering mini, himself?...

At any rate, I thought the grandparents would really love to see some of Ford's creations and I wanted to mention that I, for my part, am thrilled that he's finally beginning to enjoy drawing and sketching more than he used to. This is so important to me, that he always feels comfortable letting go with paint or pen, whatever medium. You see, for a long time he seemed to have little interest in this kind of activity, preferring to flip through books or pretend he was blowing things up. I tried never to push it, while always having accessible materials. Somwtimes I'd try getting him to work through a freeform "assignment" but it still didn't break any barriers (of course, knowing me, you'll understand that I'm certain it only made them!) I think that his seeing me spend more time at the desk doing my own work (which has been more frequent lately, as well) may have something to do with his increased comfort in expressing himself on paper.
Whatever. This just made me smile.

Posted by Steph at 08:29 PM | Comments (2)

August 28, 2006

Home: A Collaborative Journal Project

I wish I had left the words out. Everything spoke a quiet abstract tongue to me without the embellishment, and the filigree is really grating my ribs of sarchasm right now, as I look at these pages I painted last night. I had planned on doing something completely different to weave the pages together, and then I got all sappy. I had a Hallmark moment. It happens. It might have involved wine, but I can't remember.

Edited to add: And I have obnoxious waves of sourness, too. Like last night, when I wrote this post.

Christina organized this journal project. I'm #2 in a big group of gals contributing to the book. It'll be fun to see the book once it nears completion, in all it's Flickred glory. For now, it's in a truck on the way to Houston....

What does 'home' mean to you?

Posted by Steph at 11:48 PM | Comments (3)

School Blues

As it turns out, Ford hates school. He dreads it like a fat set of immunizations, asking every night whether the next day is a school day, telling me that he’s already feeling sick; he asks me every morning if it’s a school day, and tells me that he’s not going to school; he runs away from the classroom on some mornings, bolting back towards the car. This is a lot to pay, on top of tuition, for the three hours each morning that he is in “school.” In his defense, Ford says he’s “bored,” and that he doesn’t like the teacher, and the schoolroom “sucks,” along with the toys.nThey, apparently, “really suck.” Straight from the horse’s mouth, four going on fourteen.

And I just don’t know what to do about it. I thought this would do him a world of good. After all, I loved my Montessori years: feeding the animals, teaching myself to ride a bike, learning about different countries and fiedltripping to cotton gins and post offices. In fact, the only school years I like to reflect on are those freeform, user-paced, friendly three foot-high days. Really, my heart is in unschooling him and raising him on experience and one-on-one “lessons.” But we aren’t able to freewheel it around the globe for years at a time, immersing ourselves in the daily rhythms of various cultures, learning to make our rope hammocks in Bali, build fishing boats in New Zealand and forge our own stainless steel toenail trimmers in Germany. Who has that kind of independent wealth? If you’re in this group, don’t bother raising your hand because it’s already pressing my angry buttons.

I also don’t know whether Ford is telling me the whole truth. When I ask him,
“Ford, what did you guys do in circle time, you know, right after I dropped you off?”
“We didn’t do anything. We just sat there and stared at the walls.” Is his immediate and nonchalant reply. And when I asked him about the red bump on his noggin, he told me he got hit with a rock, “and no teacher noticed. Nobody cared.” Yeah. And when I asked him whom he sat with at lunch, on the second day of school, he replied: “Nobody. I didn’t sit next to anybody. Nobody cared about me.” Uh, huh. He follows with this raised eyebrow, sideways-glance. It looks like this: C’mon, Mom. Buy it! I’m so convincing! And you’re soooooo gullible!
For the record, I sat in today and watched the little rugrat in circle time. Lo! He did sit and stare at the wall. Complete disinterest! And I’m beginning to see why. He’s the eldest in his class, eccentrically focused on resistors, capacitors, stratacone volcanoes and molecules. He could care less about “learning to roll a rug” (which, according to Ford, he has practiced in circle time three days in the past week) and “how to walk in a line” (today’s lesson—something I thought he’d learn if he ever entered public school).

So, I’m in a conundrum about what to do with him. I’m a neurotic, borderline schizophrenic parent who plays devils advocate with herself and her decisions. I can’t decide what’s best for Ford. I think I’m deciding for my own reasons, at this time, since those few morning hours are well-spent laughing uninterrupted with Chas, helping him learn to pour rice down a funnel and into empty cups, feeding the chickens, reading books and brushing little teeth. I like this time alone with him. But the situation is not ideal for all of us, and I’m left feeling guilty at the end of the day that I just can’t figure out what’s best for my child. After all, isn’t this really my job? I can’t seem to get the hang of parenthood; it constantly throws me curveballs.

I wonder, staring across the house while I do dishes: how do some parents exhibit such
conviction in their decisions? What makes me so neurotic? Is it all a matter of self-esteem, for my part, or is it just pigheaded perfectionism? With the huge parent market out there, it seems that keywords such as “THOSE CRITICAL FIRST YEARS” and “HOW TO BUILD YOUR BABY’S BRAIN” and “DON’T YOU WANT WHAT’S BEST FOR YOUR BABY?” have anchored in my brain, flailing wildly around the canyons of doubt, to echo, “DON’T FUCK THEM UP! IT’S ALL UP TO YOU! DON’T FUCK THEM UP!” Even though my teeny rational brain, tucked away in my frontal lobe somewhere in a fold, is meanwhile repeating the mantra in a soft whisper, “It’s not up to you, how the kids turn out. I mean, it’s your job to give them security and love, but they will evolve for themselves out of experience—it’s not what you hand them, it’s how they process what they’ve got to work with.” Or something like that. It's hard to tell, because I can't really hear it under all that screaming.

So...I guess the pivotal part of my job becomes clearer amid the conflict: staying sane.

Posted by Steph at 10:29 PM | Comments (11)

August 22, 2006

104 F

It's mid-August and we're roasting under happy white hot skies with evenly-spaced, cottony clouds. And it's dry. Natives hark back to the 1950s and dust storms and hectic farming, and they get giddy about gray clouds on the horizon but are too supersticious to predict rain. When the clouds pass overhead, they spit fat droplets that pat the pavement and vanish magically, evaporating before you can call it rain. And then you sigh and shrug your shoulders.

In the morning, I crawl downstairs to start a pot of coffee and let the hens out for the day. Almost immediately they run for respite in woodier shade, and I start watering the deer-picked, rabbit-picked, chicken-picked truncation of a summer garden: wrinkled and dark green, prostrate. Within minutes, the cicadas start humming a low, warm-up drone. Like dry beans shaking in a parched pod, the cicadas rattling trance intensifies as the heat sets in. I slink back inside.

Chas wants to be outside at all hours, so for him it's all a matter of being buck naked out there. I have no choice but to follow him with a tube of sunscreen in my back pocket and a narrow set of eyes, since the job mostly entails shepherding him out of direct sunlight. Which is difficult, really, because our yard is mostly sun. He glows in the sunshine, his white back reflects the entire spectrum of light as he examines a pillbug in the brown grass, something the hens must have overlooked; they're busy meanwhile under the boxwood, flinging dusty mulch onto the walking path as they burrow six inches into the landscaping. I re-pave the path with the broom as I return for cover, my feet now dusted with roasted umber dust. Chas runs in my wake, the chickens flurry from the hedge to follow him, but the door closes. From inside, Chas laughs at the unaffected triplet standing on the doorstep, wasting little time before they start scratching again and picking at the potted ferns.

Posted by Steph at 05:22 PM | Comments (2)

August 18, 2006

A Little Off

When it's too painful to write, it can be easier to draw or paint. In my sketchbook, this is one of the only pages recently that isn't a painting of a horse crammed into a small wooden crate. I think this means I might need a mental vacation. As if plugged into my psyche, my close friend randomly sent me this link today.

Posted by Steph at 04:24 AM | Comments (4)

August 12, 2006

Decisions

We bought a canoe. We needed a water vehicle and this is the perfect entry-level family waterpod. So we’ve been mapping the aquatic terrain around town and last night we tried putting in at Redbud Island, a popular dogpark not far from home. Only, we didn’t gauge the current well by sight and had a difficult time attempting to circumnavigate the island. Standing at a push against the current, over boulders and eddies, I sweated as Chas fussed and leaned out of the canoe. He wanted to swim off the starboard, and Ford wanted to lean over the starboard to watch Chas, and all I could do was pitch nagging pleas and breathe shallow puffs as I tried holding onto Chas’ lifejacket. I was so afraid of tipping, since we really haven’t practiced rolling safety with the kids.

The rest of the lake felt like satin and reflected the huge pink clouds above. A Chinese duck followed a trail of goldfish crackers left by Chas, who giggled and greeted him with a singsongy “Hi, Dut!” We paddled through a troupe of swans whom I was sure might attack us (for being so rude) but they just watched us compassionately, as if we were lost mental patients, wandering alone and down the lake and shouting out high-pitched nonsense. An annoyed red-tail hawk tracked us as we glided only a few yards beneath him and his cypress perch, taking off for a quiet place once we were too close. Bats, everywhere against the blue twilight and the greasy feeling of sunscreen and sand and sweat between skin and car seats.

…

Ford starts school on Monday. We found a way to pay for the neighborhood Montessori program, decided it would benefit everyone and enrolled him yesterday. I feel like a homeschooling dropout but the only thing that will likely be damaged by this decision is my pride. So while I busy myself preparing for next week, I think I’ll stay on this little blog hiatus another few days. I just haven’t felt like talking much or writing much. It’s time to reflect and be quiet amid the chaos so the boat doesn’t tip over.

Posted by Steph at 01:24 AM | Comments (6)

August 03, 2006

Garden of Earthy Delights

The chicks are hardy in the heat. This has been the hottest week this summer and they've spent the whole time outdoors in their new tractor. I'll return home at noon from the gym, walk barefoot to the edge of the deck, and peek down on them. Looking back at me are three chicks that are always an ounce heavier, more feathered and panting with open mouths. Every few hours I give them cooler, fresher water. I love the way they peep quietly as I move about, rinsing and rearranging.

We've been terrestrial lately, despite the heat outside, tending droopy plants, cultivating the soil, digging. We have a few good books to inspire more curiosity and garden-play: Diary of a Worm, by Doreen Cronin, and Thumbelina, by Hans Christian Anderson. Ford digs Thumbelina. Yak yak. We haven't yet made it to Microcosmos yet. Then, of course, we have all the nonfiction we could need at home. The huge sci/nature nonfiction library in our bedroom: that would be my fault.

This afternoon, Ford and Chas helped me pin together a 3x4ish compost bin out of some remaining galvanized builder's cloth. Once we'd finished, they helped me rake leaves and pile them into the compost bin. Somtimes they'd run through the piles and the lawn would look no different than it had before I'd organized the chaos, and a fuse would blow in my brain, but I've been more mindful of my wiring today. I'll have to write more about that later, about what it's like lately, ramming horns all day with the four year-old rebel. But right now I'm slipping like mercury through planks of burnout. And I'm falling asleep. But god, he has his Hallmark moments, too:

Posted by Steph at 11:35 PM | Comments (2)

August 01, 2006

Poolside Confessions

The other day, when I finished a lap at the pool, I cleared out my goggles and confided in the lady in the lane next to mine. "You know, learning to breathe on both sides is really hard!" I blabbed through upcurled eyebrows. To that one confession, she donated the rest of her workout towards coaching my bumbling, barge-like freestyle into bilateral breathing, tilting my body upwards, so that I felt as if I were gliding across the water an hour later. I love her. I wish I could be that helpful to someone else. Well, beyond the normal butt-wiping and nose-wiping that comes with motherhood.

The first lap felt like swimming in a storm today: the water spraying from the sprinklers into my face, my nose, my mouth; the traffic of the experienced swimmers. I stabbed the water with my arms at first, struggling to remember her pointers: head down, tilt head only as high as the inside corner of my mouth, gentle roll left, right, left, right. Don't think about getting air, just poof and it will return back automatically.

What I have discovered about swimming is that it may start out loud -- the bubbles and splashing assault me when I first get in -- but within a half hour, just like in running, everything gets really quiet. No music, no newscast-- nothing but the roving tiles and dancing sunlight on the bottom and the steady rhythm of puffs and rolls.

edited to add, with an embarrassed blush:
HOLY CRAP! It's (still, thank God) August 1st! Happy Anniversary, Mom and Dad!!! See you Friday :)
Love,
*s

Posted by Steph at 11:44 PM | Comments (7)

July 29, 2006

Roots

We've lived in this rental house for a year now, and the place is finally beginning to fit like a glove. Though a temporary rental (we begin building this year on a lot down the road), we have given it our patina. We have adopted and lost two pet fish here, but also begun raising the chicks, who have, for their part, done a tremendous job connecting us with the outdoors. In mid-July. In Texas. Which seems entirely difficult, given the heat, but by God we have learned to enjoy it and sweat it out. By the bucketsful.

Today in a tube dress, straw hat, pigskin gloves and flip flops, I cut and nailed rolls of galvanized builder's cloth to the pesto-colored poultry tractor. As I tatted away in the shade, the little chiquitas chased each other for earwigs, sometimes peeping quietly by my side, asking for a wing. Boo, the bold one (because they really do have different personalities), flit perch-by-perch to my neck, where she inquisitively pecked at my moles and freckles. The other two weaved around the timber, little Buffalo shortshanks they've become, content to scratch around my workspace, dusting themselves occasionally in a patch of dark topsoil, peeping their quick, velvety peeps of contentment.

I've gotten to know the deer, who rarely make themselves seen anymore, much less sleep with their twin baby fawns out in our front yard (they did this daily, last year) but still continue to eat the runner beans, flowerheads, morning glories, sweet potato vines and god-knows whatever gourd/pumpkin/squash seedlings I tried to grow from seed. They continue to surprise me, sometimes grazing feet from me as I jog along the trails, with their fawns stumbling close behind them and at other times, sneaking about like elves in the moonlight, grazing tiptoe across the lawn.

I am finally proud of the boy's room. Finally, because it has never felt, no matter where we have lived, to be their own-- it has always been a post between travels: en route from the bathroom, to fetch a toy before going to the living room; the halfway point between breakfast and brushing, where they can dilly dally five minutes while I clean, playing with forgotten toys. Never has their room been theirs in the sense of belonging until we added the bunk bed. That was two weeks ago.

In the time that's passed, since the purchase of the bunk bed, the room has taken shape into a sleep playground and a place to stay and play. The quilt my mother made during the 1972 summer Olympics (when she was pregnant with me) is now draped over the top bunk rail, making Chas' lower bunk the sleep fortress. Before naps I lay there and read to them as they scramble over me like lion cubs, and I, heavy with exhaustion, lay there and read. At night, I sit at the foot of the bottom bunk, reading Grimm and Anderson by the light peeking out of the closet. I'm surrounded by goose down and log pillows and quilting and childbreath and the warm pads of feet resting against my legs. Ford is content to lay in the bunk above while I read "because there are no pictures in the book" but also because he delights in his new space to sleep. The sleep king, who has to be awakened in the morning because he is so heavily renewing his energy during the night.

When I pause mid-Ugly Duckling, I ask "Ford?" and listen for an answer. Only the soft sound of a stuffed nose: slowly in, slowly out, waltzing in the summer nightmusic of the air conditioner, turning pages and other little snores here and there (I think Damon must be asleep, too, now). I reach over to rest the book under the bed. The floor beneath the bed has become a charter library: The Story of Pooh, The Story of Ping, Aeson/Grimm/Anderson classics, Baby Animals, Hedgie's Surprise, Make Way for Ducklings, Blueberries for Sal. Pilgrim at Tinker Creek makes a cameo appearance.

The place feels like home in the way I'm starting to settle in: a mixed bouquet the color of sunrise on the kitchen table; the way I can make stovetop coffee blindfolded; clothespin artwork to the back deck's lattice, and hang my jewelry to a piece of driftwood in a windowsill in the bathroom; I smile to see Damon shepherding his harware in the garage, replacing stagnant unused stuff with the stimulus of welders and grinders and routers and saws, all in singlefile attention. Some people settle in quickly to a new domicile, but I think we've grown jaded to constant change. After all, we lived for a year in a 22-ft. trailer. With a baby. We want a sense of permanence so badly against the the tech industry flux. Here, we can at least afford to stay; it's now only a matter of believing that roots are, beneath all our lingering doubt, indeed growing.

Posted by Steph at 09:11 PM | Comments (7)

July 26, 2006

Chicken Tractor Links

I'm sensing that a few of you may be brewing a little chicken ideas in your mind, dreaming up having a backyard brood of your own. After all, it's a great idea. Pest control. Companionship. Eggs. That cute sound of gossiping hens in the middle of the day. It's really cute. Well, if you are thinking about housing options, let me share a few links I've used.

We're building what they call a chicken tractor. It's a henhouse that you can move throughout the yard, so the chickens always have a fresh patch to scratch on. They're just as safe as a regular henhouse.
I like the ones below, which obviously required more time and labor to build. We don't have much of that around here, which is why ours is, well, amateurish. But the hens will love it anyway. Here's my thirty second link list:

Chicken tractors
Chicken tractor project idea
& etc

And here's an article about the benefits of using a chicken tractor to benefit your soil.

I'm sure you can google all you want and find a good clutch of ideas out there. I say go for it. And let me know if you, too, decide to get a few chicks. We're having a blast! Now, off to add the chickenwire...

Posted by Steph at 10:43 AM | Comments (2)

July 25, 2006

...Painted a First Coat...

I got a blob of paint in my hair. On top of my head it looks like green bird poo. How does one get exterior water-based latex paint out of hair? Or maybe I'll just have fun explaining to people how it got there. Any suggestions? It's just not silly enough that I got it while painting a henhouse.

edited to add: the paint came off after I washed and dried my hair. I was able to slide it out gently, running the globs down the strands of hair ;)

Posted by Steph at 10:39 PM | Comments (4)

SPC: Me As A...Farmer

No time. Gotta run. More SPC. More later.

Posted by Steph at 08:38 PM | Comments (10)

July 24, 2006

Getting the Chicken Coop Did

Damon thinks the chicks will be gone in less than four weeks. Such shallow hopes! Still, he spent another day grunting in the oven outside, throwing lumber around like an ogre and eyeballing his way through his final weekend project. Which was more a honeydo than a "project" in his queue. But the reality was that I was too preoccupied doing God-remembers-what inside with the kids, probably sitting inside under a ceiling fan with a child on each lap, sipping iced tea, laughing about how crazy Daddy was to be outside in the sauna, sweating over a heap of lumber.

When he'd thrown in the towel for the day, after completing the first phase of construction, I stood back and grinned at the expressive fabrication. I'm usually a perfectionist, but I found the artsy, passive-aggressive unevenness oddly charming. Or maybe I was just very grateful that he had spent his entire Sunday afternoon laboring over my whimsical chicken fancy.

This design is an A-frame chicken tractor. It has hanndles on the bottom so you can move it around the yard. Encircling this frame that he built will be chicken wire, even on the bottom, for predators. We'll find some scrap wood and I'll get the kids to help me nail together a ladder, so the hens can scamper up to the little roost at the top. And looking at it now, this will certainly be a feat--can you see what I mean? Look how steep that grade is going to be?! Oh, dear. And hopefully there will be enough room for three hens, but we can always add another loft, if necessary. We, meaning Damon.

So, this evening at the local DIY megaplexx he helped me wrangle children and pick out a buttery avocado exterior paint that will weatherproof the lumber. Such good taste. And all for a mere four weeks. P-sha!

Posted by Steph at 11:16 PM | Comments (3)

July 22, 2006

You'll Never Guess Who the Mother Is

On the drive home, as the kids fought over who would hold the chicken box on his lap, I began to doubt the success of the kids with the chicks. I figured it was a good idea I'd arbitrarily chose three versus two chicks: one would certainly meet its fate under one of the boys, and being left with two chicks is far better than being left with one.

But I may be wrong. In fact, the prognosis is GOOD. I watched them with a smile all day long, as they gently trod around the garden, the chicks weaving in and out of their footpath. They encouraged us outdoors the entire day, and I found time to rearrange the rosemary and trim the papyrus, harvest parsley bolts and this and that. Ford mentioned "I never knew there were SO MANY BUGS in our yard!" because the chicks: they never stopped harvesting them, too.

Ford is, to my surprise, the new mother hen. And he's a natural. To watch him cradle the chicks, or sprawl across the grass while the chicks scramble over him, for hours at a time, and compare this sight to the same child in a playdate full of little boys: one would never suspect the two images belonged to the one Ford. But it's true. He's come into his new role with all the fever of a new mother. Periodically, I'd have to come outside and feed him a yogurt or a half-sandwich because he was so preoccupied with shepherding the chicks.

But, as it turns out, they follow Ford everywhere; there's no need to chase them down. They believe that Ford is the mama hen and will run up to his feet, peep imploringly with pinched eyes, and all he has to do is pick them up before they drop their heads on a thumb and fall asleep. Ford looked up at me after his pullet, Abby, fell asleep this way. He had reddish purple circles under his eyes, his face flush with afternoon sweat, dry grass dangling from his knees. "Don't you just love the baby chicks? I'm not going to let anything happen to them."

He is drinking water from a glass right now, pausing after each sip to raise his chin to the ceiling and gulp it down, just as he's seen the chicks do when they drink from their shiny metal tray. He licks his lips and smiles, and I wink back. As I read him a new book at bedtime, he reaches over and pecks at my arm with his fingers. He's just so impressed with his new brood. For fun, I paint little glittery dots on his finger- and toenails, and we'll wait to see how the chicks respond tomorrow. But the young Mama Hen needs to go to sleep. And so do I. Tomorrow we build the coop!

Posted by Steph at 10:58 PM | Comments (11)

Baby Chicks!

Last weekend, the kids were so thrilled with the new chicks at the grandaparent's house that they insisted we get some of our own. So we did! Three Auraucana chicks. And when I get more sleep, I can talk all about them: Abby, Boo, and Betty. The kids named them i the car on the drive home.

Posted by Steph at 12:33 AM | Comments (6)

July 18, 2006

Free-Range

I was a free-range child, roaming on foot and bike throughout the neighborhood like most kids did. We were barefoot with scabs on our toes from the Big Wheels, flags forever flapping behind us on our bicycles. We came home for popsicles. There was a corner of the yard where we corralled box turtles, but we were always hunting for more. But we sold other reptiles: anolis were 10 cents; geckos I sold for twenty-five cents in class. I kept them in coffee cans. Back then, I thought the smell of the coffee cans was gross, like metallic urine.

Free-range days continued once we moved to Houston, but the experience matured quickly. I discovered perverts in four