Flossie

It is still and muggy, with low clouds passing overhead. Our people on Maui have all fallen silent as cable and Internet and power have gone out. "We can hear thunder, and branches breaking," was the last report. The last big storm in Hana tore away the preschool and broke apart the bridge, so they are a bit nervous. We aren't too worried, here - not being on a beach or under big trees - but the anticipation has kept us indoors on a day we would have been out at Gordon Biersch toasting the man's birthday. We have filled oil lamps, topped off the water purifiers, charged our readers, and eaten pot roast with cheesecake, instead.

It will be a stormy night, and we might have a lot of cake to eat in the morning if the power goes out again. 

We can handle.

flame suit doesn't fit well

The baby is sleeping and happy again after a few days of fever and crying from her 4 month shots. After I mentioned it, a friend of mine posted a passive-aggressive article about autism and immunization on facecrack; an article without any citations to actual research, starring the scientist who was discredited for faking his data. I will believe in a link if a link is established - that is how science works. In the meantime, I will accept the hypothetical risk of a percentage of autistic children with the shots, against the known percentage of dead babies without them. I'm not going to get into a wank-fest with someone I like - not on medicine, food, politics, or money. I once offended a good friend by saying that photos printed on canvas were tacky and stupid. I still think they are, but I kind of like having friends. And to support these people I care about, I'm making an effort to be more vocal when confronted by sexism, homophobia, and racism. I turn purple and look like Marty Feldman when this happens, but I'm working on it.

This is one of the duties of the no-longer-idiot-20-something-year-old. Along with wearing big earrings and drinking expensive scotch.

eff you, too, sewing machine

My cousin was in the hospital for breathing issues. The power went out for 18 hours. The car battery died. I cashed out all the coins in the house for $60 but then had to spend it on food and diapers. It was a harsh week. But the thing that chewed my biscuit was my sewing machine.

Most of the damage sustained by sewing machines is probably hammer-related. Repair shops very likely have garages in the back for body work. When I take my machine in, I want it back with sparkle paint and flames.

YES

The damned thing snarled up my sewing into a big rat's nest, gnawed the fabric into pulp in spots, and made pissy clunking noises, rocking back and forth like an old Ford Ranger. I took it apart, cleaned it, rethreaded everything, and it rewarded me with silent, perfect, gliding stitches - causing a surge of wonderment and joy - and then GNAW GNAW CLUNK, it was a clattering mess of balled up thread again.

My main purpose in sewing is to achieve that mental in-the-nowness that results from concentration on a skilled task. And this still managed to fulfill that goal. I was wholly present in the moment, and the moment was wholly filled with growling and banging and fleeing cats.

After a general appeal to my betters on facecrack, I got the cussed thing to work long enough to finish my projects, which I here present in the manner of serene mom-blogger. Oh this little thing? I just sewed it up while she was napping, lalala.

BEHOLD MY SEWING PROWESS

My first attempt at smocking went pretty well. Except when I was done, someone said something about how neat it was that I did it without a "pleater", leading me to suspect I have once again learned something by doing it the unnecessarily hard way. Research? Pfft, I am a librarian. I can look it up when I am mid-way through completely fucking it up. 

McCalls 3573

The best thing about this design is that it will fit for YEARS. The long sleeves turn to half sleeves, and the hem lets out 3". I love you, practical-children's-clothing era.

I have a problem with sewing clothes out of non-garment fabric. Pillowcase dresses look like pillowcases to me. Quilt fabric screams OH HI I'M HOMEMADE (not that it's stopped me). But gauze is cheap and airy and looks good. I bought a lot of it. So I made a little sundress out of my remnants from the smock-top.

Simplicity 1921

In a fit of broke-assedness, I bought the digital pattern and then had to print it out. I used my mother's printer. Now it is out of ink. Nobody tell her.

I didn't make the bloomers. Was too mad at my machine by then.

While all this trying-on was going on, I tested Zenny's annoyance levels with the knitting I made for her last fall.

stop now

I just need a u-pick and some refurbished thrift store furniture, and I'll be on my way.

Deft hands of smockery

I am doing it! I am smocking things!

Contemplating practical applications of new skill. Smocked motorcycle nets. Smocked jelly bags. Smocked... beards. I'm working on it.

Summer rain and a rattling cough for the middle child have driven us inside. I am not the sort of mother built for science activities and kid's craft projects. I set up tables for board games and clear areas for lego play while juggling the baby, doing laundry, and making fudge pops. Gavin lays and reads and listens to music, Leif makes incessant sound effects and follows me around looking for snacks while blasting apart the kitchen with imaginary fireballs.

Sometimes they come together on Minecraft while the baby naps and I work on my stitching. Then they start stealing each other's sheep and yelling, "OW" at jarring intervals, and I make them go scoop kitty litter and vacuum, instead. We will get along, or we will clean, damn it.

Zenny has escaped this, so far, owing to her terrible coordination and pleasant disposition.

The foggy depression I had been struggling with lifted at some point, and the scale ticks down half a pound at a time. Regaining my sense of self, and enjoying the long days of kiddie pools and frozen treats and early sunrises. Leif and I have been trolling Pinterest for birthday ideas, because he has decided he must have creeper confections to mark his 5th year. With three birthdays spread through the months, summers are made of cake in this house.

Cat's away

I do not recant my previous opinions about George R. R. Martin - his writing is still a bit affected and he doesn't know how vaginas or albinos work - but I've fallen into the Game of Thrones books anyway, because they are complicated and offer war, magic, dragons, and motherfucking zombies all in one satisfyingly long package. Also, you can make a drinking game of every time he describes food in excruciating detail or kills a baby. Shit, nobody has died or eaten honey-glazed capons in two chapters, I'm losing them - quick, kill a peasant's baby! I've been gifted with my granddad's old Nook (which was broken and replaced - then plugged in and discovered to have just been out of power), and lay in bed with the night screen glowing, my own baby breathing safely against my breast.

My mother has flown off to adventure in Canadaland with her dad. At some point, Canada became sticky about invading Americans and decided everyone needed passports at the border, so my mother pulled out her passport and discovered it was a liiiittle bit expired. 

1977 - 17 years old

We replaced it, but I forgot to photoshop out her bra straps in the new headshot, so she will be forced to show them at customs to prove her identity, probably. 

I love my mother. I love that she is picking cherries in Point Roberts and driving off to British Columbia in search of hot springs and wineries with granddad. I also love that she is away for a bit, so I can clean up the house and blame her old houseguest for anything that might be missing when she gets back. We are also eating a lot of garlic and salad, which have hitherto been banned as non-foods. My mother is not anti-vegetable, but she considers a pile of raw leaves a poor dinner. Poor dinners are what gets me back into tiny pants, though, so I am on board with chewing leaves.

We were loading up with forbidden foods when the man discovered bottles of beer shaped like Buddha. "It is not $12 for six beers," he rationalized. "It is $6 for beer and $6 for awesome homebrew bottles." Now he has to decide which sort of beer is appropriate for drinking out of Buddha without karmic repercussions. Probably not an American Ale.

And the book illustrations are DONE. DONEY DONE DONE. I celebrated by applying for a newly-listed library position, and getting a "thanks but the position has been filled" email 20 minutes later. Not off to a good start. I didn't gnash too much about it, though, because it would have meant chucking my baby into full-time childcare, and my heart clenched painfully just at the thought.

OWWW.

Besides, I kind of neglected to teach her about bottles, so she wouldn't have been able to eat anyway.

So now there is time, before I start the next book and nail a library position. Time we have so far been spending grilling, paddling in the kiddie pool, making yogurt pops, and reading gory novels.

Bananas, strawberries, and greek yogurt, 

dipped in chocolate melted with coconut oil to make a hard shell. 2 pts. All I will be eating until September. 

I've been eyeing projects. Leif has come over all asthmatic in the past week and we've been medicating him and shoving his head in the freezer to keep him breathing, so knitting is out for now, just to be on the safe side, fiber-allergy-wise. Besides, I dressed the infant up in some of my knitting, and discovered that everyone was right when they teased me about knitwear in Hawaii being too hot. THANKS A LOT, EVERYONE.

There has to be something else I can make for her that is more time-consuming than is practical and will result in something too precious to let her barf on.

HAND SMOCKING.

Probably not as high on the post-apocalyptic skill-set as making sweaters, but maybe it will be vogue when we're all dressed in old sheeting.

Besides, my mother made them when I was small and wee, and now it is Something Moms Do, like making jelly, or decorating cakes, or never opening mail.

me with cousins and aunt

More on this soon. Wait on tenterhooks.

Trip to Maui

Success. The only person who got a tooth knocked out was Gavin.

Traveling with infants is like waiting for someone very indecisive to slam your head in a door repeatedly. Fortunately, Zenny is pretty good-natured, and we got off with minimal lumps, despite having added a stolen 10 year-old girl to the mix.


We were put up in a house overlooking the ocean, with high wooden rafters and and an arched granite shower. It was kind of amazing. “It goes down to the ocean,” our friend the rental manager said. We ran down the hill through the flowers and discovered that it did, indeed - vertically. Took pictures of the cliffs and ran (walked, crawled) back up the hill to lay on pillows and talk smack with the tweens.


The kids all met in a mass in the yard where the ex-manfriend's family was staying. There was an enormous tent set up behind the house, and all the children crowded into it. We left them with pajamas, blankets, and supervising adults grilling hot dogs. In the morning they arrived with matted hair and puffy eyes to eat all our pop tarts. "Did you have fun?" "Yes!" "Did you eat?" "Um, no." "What? Did you sleep well at least?" "We had no blankets. Gavin rolled up in them all like a hamburger." "WHAT? We borrow a child for ONE DAY and we starve her and make her sleep on the ground with no blankets?!" Great. For the rest of the trip, Gavin was dubbed "Hamburger" by the girls. The dreamy visiting cousin from the city with Bieber hair was called "Dallas". There was some disparity between the two nicknames, it seemed to me.

At 4:00am on the second day, I woke to a rustle by my head. I squinted into the darkness and a figure materialized, staring at me as I slept. "AUGH. GAVIN." "I woke up early." "Early? This is night. Night is for sleeping." "My tooth fell out!" "I think the Tooth Fairy is off-duty by now." "I'll find out." He did. She was.

Later that afternoon, the boy explained at length about his intentions for the tooth fairy, and went off on a tangent about Christmas elves. The borrowed girl listened attentively, excused herself, and sidled up to us in the kitchen. "Before you have a conversation with him about the Big Things," she murmured, "You may want to wait until he resolves this." I love her.

The tooth fairy made good that night, and the cows woke us up with Taylor Swift impersonations. Mike made it through another day of visiting without punching anyone, I got to know the bio-grandmas, many episodes of Game of Thrones were watched after the kids went to bed, and we got through to the last day in good shape.

The plane ride home tried to unmake us. The man and I had different airlines, and mine was delayed an hour. A sympathetic employee bumped us up to the earlier flight, which was also an hour late, so we should have been getting out at about the same time. Except it broke, and a mechanic was called in. 20 minutes later, we were rolling down the runway and Zenny was getting agitated. As soon as we lifted off, she had a blowout. Poop on her clothes, her blanket, my legs, the seat. She objected to this. I carried her, stinking and screaming, down the length of the plane to the bathroom, which was occupied OF COURSE. People leaned away in horror. I went back to our seat and changed her on Gavin's lap. The flight attendant threw a garbage bag at me. "Take it with you! Don't throw it out here!" Thanks. The plane tipped down and began descent. The moment the "fasten seat belt" sign blinked on, she blew out the new diaper. And the new outfit. And I laughed, all the way down. 

So we are home. All is well, my duty fulfilled. Next time: more meat and beer, for mental health.

Pictures:

The way over - less poop.

The boy, before disappearing into his audio book for the rest of his time around us.

Maui - on fire.

D'aww.

Wending our way through the seam of the island.

Trouble, AHHHHHH

Shirts are not for vacations.

Sunrise. Note: no tooth fairy.

First trip to the beach for the dumpling.

The house we stayed in, abusing my panorama feature on my phone.

travel and nervous drumming

The nightmares keep crowding in, I have imaginary arguments while driving, and I punch the radio and shake my iPod in search of some song to articulate my discomfort with flying back to Maui and taking a 2-hour drive with a 3 month-old to visit people I am not sure I am ready to see yet.

I don't have a song for this situation, or that place. I used to play Fuck You on the way to work when problem patrons were acting up, but I never bothered to hunt out a song for anything else. Mostly I am indifferent, except when I am not. It's like being indifferent to the color orange, until someone pelts you in the face with a bucket of orange paint.

My solution has been to throw all this over my shoulder and remind myself that we will have a cabin by the beach to hide in if it all goes down the crapper. I can lock everyone out and eat bbq in my undercrackers all weekend if I want.

Intrigue and terrible sleuthing

There is a woman who walks the road every day as I'm driving by, dressed in full hula regalia, with a little dog wearing leis on all four ankles. She dances and waves to the cars, no matter the weather. She's a bit well-groomed for a crazy person. Maybe she made a promise to someone. Maybe she's a ghost.

I took a picture of her as I drove by.

Yep, right there behind the window frame. Or maybe she doesn't show up in pictures, because GHOST. It is a mystery.

Also mysterious, the crowd of crunchy yuppies gathering silently outside the dialysis center across the street every Sunday evening. We passed by with the stroller on our walk last night, as women in wrapped skirts and Starbucks cups arrived on foot. They stood with men wearing hemp pants, everyone well groomed and beaming whole-food spirituality, clustered in a group facing inward. At the center stood a man with puffed lips and a tight tanned face, hands outspread at his sides, gazing serenely into the middle distance. Nobody spoke. There were no cars in the parking lot. the dialysis center was closed. We squeaked through the silence and around the corner, questioning each other in the language of eyebrows. Cult? One of the holy ancient alien landing spots? Prancercise gathering? I KNEW I needed to order ankle weights.

At the store nearby, I spotted our neighbor. He had to have walked by the strange gathering, as well, so I called to him. "Hey!" "...Hey?" "Did you -?" He had hustled away awkwardly. I felt rejected, then walked across his path, into a trail of pot smoke. Aha. Undeterred, I asked a cashier. "What do you know about the group of crunchy people in yoga pants gathering over by the dialysis center every Sunday?" Nothing, it turns out. As we walked home, I peered into the karaoke bar, hoping to see guru stretchy-face and his band of vegans warbling along to Blueberry Hill. If it was a bar crawl meet-up, they weren't starting here. By the time we wheeled back around the corner -only 10 minutes later - the crowd had dispersed. A sunset meeting around a silent man with plastic surgery and yoga pants. My google-fu yielded no answers. 

Next time, will put on athletic gear and sneak into the group. 

Car seat pad tutorial

I made a thing. FINALLY. My sewing machine was covered in a shroud of dust, rusted like a minibus, and it ran like a jackhammer, but it worked.

I ordered a car seat pad with a gift card someone got us, then found out we already had one in a bag of baby clothes someone else gave us. And it's only poofy on the sides, not under the back and butt, which is stoooopid.

So I made my own. 

First, I got into my stash and found big enough pieces of fabric for front and back.

Then I traced the poofy pad onto fabric with a washable marker. If someone wanted to do this without a poofy pad, they could probably trace their baby like a big gingerbread man.

Then I remembered about ironing. Probably, it would be best to iron before tracing. 

Then I cut the thing out with half an inch sewing allowance, one layer at a time so I didn't screw up all my fabric on the first go.

Then I cut two layers of batting.

The baby made sleepy murmurs on the monitor. HURRY.

Layered up for the inside-out no-binding method; batting, top fabric facing up, back fabric facing down.

It feels like it should be wrong in that order, but I pinned it like that anyway. Sewed all the layers together, leaving a 4-inch gap at the end, for turning it inside out.

Stuff it inside itself and birth it through the opening hole. I started with the legs. 

RAWR. EXPLETIVES. The man took it away from me and did it in about three seconds.

Fine. Show off. I stitched the opening shut, and DONE.

"Beautiful!" said the man, "Except it looks like she has her period." 

Damn it. 

I may add some hand quilting, but it's fine on its own.

Add baby, and -

Hang on.

She liiiiikes it!

Feeling very accomplished now. 

Summer

There is sitting. A bit.

And standing. Sort of.

And no rolling, but plenty of swimming on the carpet. 

I squeezed in some knitting while my mother told stories about goats and kings and sieges.

In two weeks we visit Maui for the first time since I abandoned ship. Mike has been manically lifting weights. I have been semi-manically dieting, to steady and unremarkable success. It takes about a year to get back into my old pants, and I'm trying to be relaxed about it, but there are folks in maui who will feel very pleased to see that I've gained weight. I know these people are assholes, but I hate it when assholes are not wrong. Need bigger sunglasses, to make head look smaller. Because nothing is as slimming as a tiny head.

Will stop thinking about all that, and go back to making up captions for my cat.

INVISIBLE HOSE SPRAY

I am not good at captions.