Why I should buy coal RIGHT NOW

On the way home from a walk, during which we have discussed public drunkeness, dog poop, and the myriad wads of gum ground into the sidewalk:

S: There’s a lot of gum on the sidewalk.

Me: Well honey, not everyone makes the right choice, and some people choose to spit their gum out on the sidewalk where people can step on it. We don’t do that.

S: Well, when I’m a grown-up, I’m going to chew gum. And I’m going to spit it out wherever I choose. On the street, on the sidewalk, in the garbage can, wherever I want.

Me: …I’m so pleased to hear I’m raising you to make that kind of choice. Let’s go inside, Mommy has to get drunk now.

How to ruin and save Halloween in thirty minutes

A cautionary tale.

Let me start with this caveat: Every time I make something for Seamus, it is generally the first time I’ve ever made the thing in question (aside from some pants and lots of stenciled clothes). I never made a robot before, so Hobart required a lot of thought and planning. How would I make a robot? A round robot? Would he play with it, and how? And how could I make it affordably?

I’ve made a lot of stuff for the kid, all driven by his interests and my ability to figure it out. I love doing it, even as I remind him that we’re learning something new, and no, it’s not going to look like something we bought in a store. I want to teach him the value of the labor that makes the things we have and want, and that yes, if he puts that labor into a project, he can have things the way he wants them, and isn’t beholden to someone else’s vision of how things should look.

It works a lot of the time, so you can imagine how deeply this parenting-via-crafting routine bit me in the ass yesterday.

Seamus asked me to make him a robot costume, complete with head piece. I agreed, and found a cardboard box we could cut down after atempts to get a bike box failed, and I measured him and sized it while he watched. When he asked for it to be black, not silver, we painted the body together. We bought the components together, and I checked in with him at each step. The night before his school Halloween party I drilled tiny holes into the costume and inserted LED lights. Half an hour before we were to leave, I taped batteries to each light before pulling on my costume and assembling a quick repair kit (duct tape, crazy glue, a black Sharpie and spare LEDs and batteries. I got Seamus into his costume and he checked himself out in the mirror.

“What do you think, Buddy?” I was trying to fish out my phone and take a picture.

“I…think it’s too crazy for me, mom. I can’t wear it.” We’re supposed to be gone already, to the store to grab cookies (since I’ve packed the kitchen up) before heading over, and the party is only two hours. Patrick is stopping his work over at the new house in order to see Shay before we go, but the costume hits the floor before he arrives. “I want to be something else.”

Things get spacey after that. I know I told him “fine, you can be a pirate. Go sit on the couch while I figure this out.” I know Patrick came home right after that and I told him what happened and started crying and shouting. I told them both that it was too hard and unrewarding to keep trying to creatively parent, and that I was going to get a shitty job and put the kid in shitty daycare and he could have the shitty public school education he was entitled to and a shitty bland life, if that’s what he preferred. I know I felt really unsupported and unthanked and wanted to hiss at him like Ted Knight in Caddyshack, “You’ll get nothing and LIKE it.”

Then I stomped downstairs to root through my sewing projects and fabric stash while Patrick talked with Seamus, who’s worried about the move, it turns out. You and me both kiddo.

I found a pair of denim pants I made for Shay a while back when it seemed that he needed some elastic waist pants to help with potty use at school. The seams were a little pulled and they needed re-heming. I chopped off two inches from the leg and cut tatters into the bottoms. His striped sailor shirt was covered in food and playground dirt from the day before, but who cares? I used a batiked tenugui (hand towel) as a sash, and dug around in the kitchen boxes until I found Patrick’s baby cup. I scrounged some striped fabric for a head rag and some tweed yarn to tie the cup to his sash. He pulled on his hiking boots and we were out the door.

At the market, I grabbed a mesh produce bag and snipped off the tags after I was rung up. This was also tied to the sash, and made a decent loot bag/sword replacement. He got a lot of compliments, despite some obvious store-bought Captain Jack Sparrows in the house. It was agreed among the parents that he should wear the robot costume next year, and possibly ever year thereafter till he moves out.

I went looking for a sword this morning. Lotta knight gear, and one poorly-considered display of Crusaders costumes - sorry, but it makes my skin fucking crawl - but no pirate gear that was JUST a sword, and no wooden swords either. So I made one by dismantling a roll of wrapping paper, cutting down the tube, then wrapping it in tape. I found a 5-yen coin, polished it with Bon Ami, and used more tweed yarn to make a necklace for it before braiding a stronger lanyard for the grog tankard. I ironed and folded the sash so it should fit better, and trimmed the headcloth. And tossed the shirt and pants into the laundry.

He won’t be glowing in the dark, but he’ll be a decent replica of and AWOL sailor, looking for something better than salted beef and hardtack. Pics to come.

Mondays, menus, and Montessori

I meant to make that last post more rounded, to show how my personal life colored my working decisions and vice-versa, and more cyclical, to show how my working life repeats its options over the last decade. I didn’t get there, which is my own fault for composing a post during naptime.

But Seamus is a preschool right now so I have some time to eat my toast, drink my coffee and blather on a bit. Mondays are good for that. It’s my cleaning and shopping day, a day of prep today is special, since I’ll be playing with “lesson plans” - games and projects dedicated to slipping the kid some skill sets.

First the food. I didn’t do any resolutions this year, but about a week ago I found a blog from a woman in Australia who wrote about adjusting to life in their new suburban home. (And of course now I can’t find it, and therefore can’t link to it, so there’s the Monday in this post for you.) In one post she makes a tart from Patricia Wells’ book of Provencal home cooking, and I thought about how a good third of our cookbooks are French or Californian cuisine, how we’re eating mostly locally and seasonally and in tune with those books. Not only that, but I’d begun teasing out recipes from my copy of Paula Wolfert’s Mediterranean Greens and Grains that looked possible even with an appliance-climbing monkey in the kitchen.

So I decided to start playing around with Provencal/Mediterranean food, to make it the backbone of my cooking repertoire. We have region-specific cookery books, along with Julia and Jacques, so the rest is up to how well I plan and learn. And of course, adapt to my refrigerator contents. Based on what’s in there right now, this is how the week is shaping up, keeping in mind toddler pickiness and other disasters.

Omelets, roasted asparagus, salad

“Wild” greens torta inspred by Cretan scarf pies (I’ll be using the tops of my beets, turnips, and carrots, rounded out with some braising greens)

Carrot soup (just Seamus and I that night, Patrick works late)

Roasted chicken with root vegetables and sauteed greens

Leftover chicken, vegetables and cous-cous

We often spend Saturdays gadding about so I’ll prep some cranberry beans for the crockpot and cook them in the chicken stock I’ll make overnight from the chicken carcass. We’ll eat the beans soupy with salad or sauteed greens, and the leftovers go into soups or pasta e fagioli. I’d like a fish for Sunday, so I’ll have to start figuring out where to get one that’s mercury/PCB safe and sustainably harvested. I’ll shop for it on either Thursday or Saturday, and if need be, swap the Thursday menu.

So that’s the easy list. Now for the DIY preschool thing.

We’ve kicked around home-schooling Seamus if we ended up in a crappy school district with no money for parochial school (I say parochial because they tend to be cheaper than the private secular schools, and after 400+ years of practice the Jesuits seem to have their fundamentals down. The preschool Seamus attends has play-based pre-kindergarten curriculum, but I don’t know how my wee maurader experiential learner is taking to it. So I’m paging through my copy of The Well-Trained Mind, Elizabeth Hainstock’s book on Montessori at home for preschoolers, and the Exploratorium’s snackbook for replicating the museum exhibits in the classroom. I’m breaking things down into subjects like so:

Letters (recognition and eventually writing)

Numbers (counting and character recognition, writing)

Shapes/spatial stuff

Natural science (animals, plants, stars, weather, environment, etc.)

Physical science (haven’t figured this out just yet)

Art

Music

Life skills

Yes, this would be a lot to cram into a day. Which of course, won’t be happening. I want to create a block schedule with room for playdates, maybe a class, and a ton of outside time. It should get interesting, and I hope to have a rough draft up this week.

And with that, it’s time to clean before heading out.