A multipurpose room: dreaming

A link to this article about an "origami apartment" featured in the NYT was posted on Laughing Squid today, and really activated my imagination. By creating a single cabinet with moving panels, hinges, folding surfaces, and storage spaces, a tiny room has been made liveable. From the architect:

"A single oversized custom cabinetry piece is inserted along one wall. The cabinet is packed with all of the functional components of a larger apartment including a bed, a nightstand, a closet, a home office, a library, kitchen storage, and most of the lighting for the room. An endlessly reconfigurable series of doors and panels can be opened and closed to create the spaces of the apartment."

This got me thinking about my ideal office/work space. I have an office and never use it because it's just got a big, immobile, uncomfortable, heavy desk in the middle of it. I want to chuck the desk and have multiple tables to set up an art space instead. I am so ADD when it comes to creating; I can't decide what craft or media to stick with because I want to do them all! Call me a multi-media artist, if you will. I want a sewing table and cabinet for sewing, a drafting table for drawing, a large flat surface for screenprinting (or stringing beads or setting up a lightbox to photograph work), a comfy chair to sit in to knit, a surface to set down my laptop to design/blog/surf for ideas, and tons of storage nooks, crannies, and containers to store all the supplies. On top of that, I want to be able to roll, fold, tuck, angle or flatten all of the surfaces to fit my needs OR best case scenario, be able to shove them all to the side in case I need floor space.

On top of that, I want to be able to cover all the stored items with curtains as needed, so there's no visual clutter from other projects when I'm focusing on one in particular.

A pipe dream? Of course! But, I can imagine it, so I know it's possible, even modified.

A furniture flashback: when I was a child, my room had this one awesome piece of furniture. The bed, dresser, and side table changed, but my "hutch" was always there. It was a large, shiny, white rectangle, possibly six feet high, with a seam horizontally splitting it at the center by a hinge. If I grabbed and yanked a nested, hinged piece that was attached at the top, a table would swing down and the piece I grabbed would become a table leg, with the table originating from the horizontal hinge. Once the table was down, the hutch revealed its nooks and crannies inside where I stored all sorts of stuff. I have tons of memories of opening that hinge when I was much too small to really be opening it, then praying that I caught the edge or jumped out of the way in time, so the table didn't crash down on me!

I want all my tables to be like that, to fold down from the wall, then tuck back in when I don't need them.

The article also made me think of a science fiction story written by Robert Heinlein, Citizen of the Galaxy, where a poor soul, Thorby, finds himself on a spaceship. He's spent all his life as a slave, then is freed and rescued to find himself in a small prison: a room with no windows, no door, just four white walls. After hours of frustration, a member of the ship's crew comes through a sliding panel (a door!) to check on him. By just waving his hand over a space near the door, drawers pop out of the walls and close, a small bunk raises up out of the floor, a sink is revealed, as is a table and chair that slide out of the wall. It wasn't a prison at all, it was a palace compared to what he was used to. Waving the hand again stowed all of these items away, leaving Thorby with just four walls again; but, he was now empowered to bring them out whenever he wanted and leave the room at will.

Can I have sci-fi now? That is the room I want. The origami apartment from above is getting closer to Heinlein's vision, but his visions of the future were so far ahead of reality, it's stunning. I need to read that story again! And dream of furniture shopping.

Wax on... wax off. Wax on... wax off.

Dash started taking karate lessons in July 2010 (over a year and a half ago) but I only put him in one class a week, was inconsistent about making it to all the classes, and then I took him out for the summer. Not the best way to learn something as complex and skill-building as karate, but necessary. With summer camp eating up most of our discretionary funds, it was a budget thing. When he went back to classes in September—twice a week this time!—most of his buddies from the previous class were already blue belts and he was still a white belt. Not a big deal, except occasionally when he saw that he had better form than the blue belts. Then it rubbed a bit.

HIZA GERI! (knee kick, to you and me)

Fast forward to this past week, when he told me that yes, absolutely beyond a doubt, he did want to take the promotion test for blue belt. I was dubious, because while he does have good form and can punch and kick with the best of the blue and white belt students in class (yellow belts, not even close yet, sorry), he has absolutely no recall for the Japanese terms that Sensei uses or the patterns in the kata. He watches the other students and faithfully does exactly what they are doing. I'm concerned that he won't be able to perform solo or be able to answer questions that are directed at him. He'll be required to announce the kata that he's performing, "tai kyoku sono ichi!" and to perform it solo without error, which he hasn't done yet. I decided that it was a good idea for him to go for the promotion, if for nothing else but to have the experience of taking the test under his belt (a hopefully blue belt, sometime soon enough). Sensei will let him try again and correct mistakes that he makes until he gets it right at a later time.

Dash has got the right feet and hands up, the blue belt doesn't.

He may have had a breakthrough today, though. I've been trying to figure out the best way to activate his memorization skills, and realizing that we are utterly failing with the flash-card method. The blocks, punches, turns, and steps in the kata have been confusing, and I floundered to give him something to visualize: "Imagine the shape you're following is like a capital I!" I told him. But the rest didn't make any sense.

Working on fighting stance (Dash has the right foot forward)

In the car ride on the way home from class today, I'd been really trying to figure out a way to break down the kata in a way that Dash could practice it in his head, anywhere. A pattern came to me and I got him to repeat it with me. There are 20 steps in the tai kyoku sono ichi and three stages with hands and feet working in unison.

The arm movements are:
1. block, punch, block, punch, block, punch, punch, punch (ki-yai!)
2. block, punch, block, punch, block, punch, punch, punch (ki-yai!)
3. block, punch, block, punch, block (end)

The leg movements are:
1. turn, step, turn, step, turn, step, step, step (ki-yai!)
2. turn, step, turn, step, turn, step, step, step (ki-yai!)
3. turn, step, turn, step (end)

See the pattern? So easy to repeat once you get into the rhythm of it. Dash got so good at the repetition that once we were home, I pretended like I was a puppet and had him call out the moves while I performed them! I'll get him to practice himself a few more times every day before Saturday as well as get one more class in before then, and here's hoping he does well on his test!

Hey do you all remember what else is going on for Saturday? Rosie's bowling party! I've also got a cake to bake, goody bags to pack, and balloons to obtain. Can I have a clone for Saturday? I will definitely need two of me, for sure.

Portrait of sixth cousins! (I'm a geneology nerd)

Our family had dinner with some distant cousins last night. I originally discovered these cousins while I was doing some serious geneology research on Monkeyrotica's family a few years ago and we've kept in touch through email, blogging, and Facebook. When they scheduled a vacation in DC, Dees (Monkey's cousin) emailed me to let me know. I was so happy to hear from them and schedule a meet up!

Rosie and Ann are only two months apart in age and became fast friends. Don't they look like first cousins and not sixth cousins, once removed? I introduced the idea of "pen pals" (very foreign concept) and am encouraging Rosie to write to her cousin. I lurved writing pen pals when I was her age and might still have some of their letters. They were often fast friends I made while I was on vacation with my family, too.

I'm looking forward to a Chicago vacation in the near future with my family so the cousins can meet up again!

Nymphs and other unnecessary things I know way too much about...

This weekend, in the midst of struggling to juggle so many activities I had a few brief moments of clarity, wherein I am a savant. They were very brief.

Friday night, I saw X-Men: First Class at a local theater with my friend Staci who dearly needed a break from reality. I had such a blast watching the film, connecting with the prequel history of the X-Men franchise characters, as well as actors that I'd loved in other movies. Our evening wound down with a walk through Old Town and a mint julep-fueled movie discussion at The Majestic. The weather was gorgeous and the soft, cool summer breezes made me wish I could stay out all night.

Saturday was Rosie's last soccer game of the season, the earliest in the day—so at the very least, we got it out of the way first thing! Got changed out of soccer gear, and rushed Rosie over to Staci's to play with her BFF MEO and a whole mess of second-grade-classroom-raised chicks (see photo!) that Staci was keeping for the weekend. I barely remember lunch and getting Dash to ballet, but I'm so glad my brain clicked on enough to recall that I needed to buy Rosie new tights for her recital costume while I was at the studio. I had forgotten the third activity of the day: Dance Studio Photo Day. I remembered it about two hours before our first photo session, which gave me enough time to shower, put myself and Rosie in stage make-up, do her ballet bun, dig up the kids' costumes and mine out of various bags, closets and car trunks, and warn Dash over and over that he was wearing white pants, do not jump, kneel, or brush up against anything. All photos were done by 6:45. Whew. I had enough down-time left over to commune with my new guilty pleasure addiction: Netflix's five seasons of Ghost Whisperer.

Sunday, I fit in an aerobics workout, and we all went to the pool for a delicious picnic lunch. Highlights of the pool: the West Potomac Crew was having a party there, and many of the high school students were swinging on swings and playing on the playground equipment (intended for the 5 to 12 age set). *Snicker.* Rosie and Dash socialized with a couple of pool friends.

When was I a savant? My brief moments of non-floundering parental glory were when Rosie asked me what a Nymph was. I was able to educate her on my semi-exhaustive knowledge of dryads, oreiads, hamadryads, naiads, and their respective residences and anti-social habits. Also, while I was talking with a friend about seeing X-Men, I dazzled her with my ridiculous knowledge of the actors in the movie, all their previous roles in other movies, and the backgrounds of the various X-Men characters and how they relate to each other. Actually, strike savant. I think I can solidly be labeled a GEEK.

Portrait of the Artist

Rosie portrayed Georgia O'Keeffe at
her 2nd grade "living wax museum"
(complete with blue sticker "buttons" to
activate their speeches) on Friday. 
Based on facts from an O'Keeffe
biography, I coached her to say,
"I burnt my early works because they
were derivative," and "I wear all black
so the critics will take me seriously."
She was excellent! Looking very
serious in this photo... She painted her
O'Keeffe-esque prop all on her own.

My Totoro Plush Is Done!

Almost three months ago, Rosie and Dash enjoyed watching Toy Story 3 on video. The one thing in the movie that stuck with Dash more than all else was that little Bonnie had a Totoro doll in her toy collection. Having never seen Totoro in doll-form before, but immensely adoring him from the fantastic Hayao Miyazaki film, My Neighbor Totoro, Dash wanted one. Badly. He knew I was capable of making dolls, and started asking me to make him a Totoro doll—and continued asking persistently, for weeks. I finally sketched it out, bought fabric and started at the beginning of November. Here's the initial sketch:

I cut out the parts, got a little burnt-out on the hand-sewing/embroidery necessary for the boomerangs on the belly and the smile, and put it aside for a few weeks after getting a little more than this far:

At the beginning of December, I'd sewn on and stuffed the belly circle, stitched the arms up and painted the pupils (with black & white nail polish) onto the buttons. All that was left was making the claws, the ears, stitching it all together and stuffing, so this weekend, I decided to finish it. Here's the final result:

And this is the happiest boy ever.

Flash Cards for Kid's Lunches

I was reading an article on Asha Dornfest's Parent Hacks blog asking parents to discuss a topic dear to my heart: How to get your child to eat more of her school lunch?

Dash just started Kindergarten and while we don't yet know if he will be too busy socializing to eat his lunch (likely!), we do know that Rosie has brought home many an uneaten lunch. We have taken some steps to keep this from happening, but it's just frustrating as a parent to find that your lovingly packed lunches get ignored or discarded. I was reading through the insightful comments and saw some parents were recommending that your child pack his own lunch. My first reaction was, forget that! My kids are too young/irresponsible/unmotivated and then I stopped myself.

While they might not yet be able to physically pack their lunches, they can certainly get involved! Since Rosie eats about 50 foods total (not including variations on chocolate), we have already been to a nutritionist. I have detailed lists [OCD-alert] of her foods broken down by their nutrient content. I decided that my best option would be to make flash cards with delicious-looking images of the foods on them (because Dash is not reading—yet)!

I took my lists, my graphic design skillz (practically applied—I'm just making usable items here), and made some decisions on how to structure the cards for the kids' use. Then, I stayed late at work to print them out. Pictured is one of three pages from my layout. While the food pyramid at USDA's website is helpful, the group-breakdowns weren't set up for balancing a lunch for kids. There is a lot of information there, go look if you want.

Here's my structure. I set up five categories for the kids to pick one or two each (with guidance that they needed to have at least one from EACH number group), color-coded them, and added where they fell in the USDA Groups set up:

1. main course items, purple; my main course foods have the most protein, come from the USDA's meat/beans/nuts/seeds group and will help to keep my kids' energy levels high.
2. fruits and veggies high in vitamins, red for fruit and green for vegetables; many of these foods are raw, just how my kids like them.
3. side items, orange; are often from the grains group, but might also be a vegetable with a lower vitamin count.
4. snack foods, white; treat items with higher sugar, mostly chocolate-flavored for my kids (#4 will be first to get eliminated if a previous lunch has #1-3 come home uneaten!).
5. drinks, blue; my kids drink white or chocolate milk or water, no juices, so easy pickins here.
   

The kids were super-excited about the cards last night and wanted everything, but remember where this post started? They weren't finishing what they were getting. In fact, Rosie hadn't eaten her main course from the prior day (edamame, which is a favorite), so she didn't get a #4 today. Here's what they picked for today's lunches, with a quick addition of pizza for Dash:



**DISCLAIMER** These cards are for my personal use; I am not selling them and many of the images I used are FPO and not licensed. Were I to sell them, I would either shoot new images or legitimately purchase the photo licenses from the image owners.

Constructions

Dash made this for me out of Tinkertoys this morning. He explained to his Grandma and me, "it's the drill that the Romulans made in Star Trek to drill a hole in planet Vulcan before they dropped the red matter in and imploded it."

Yep, I'll go with that!

Early Adopter: Gadgets!

As I was fruitlessly rampaging through drawers and closets for an item that never came to light, I found a decade's worth of powered-down, abandoned gadgets of mine.

In 1999, I chose the Handspring Visor (top left) for a PDA. It had a stylus that required that you learn a shorthand peculiar to the device. I loved it! It was like using a secret code.

Based on the recommendation of the late James Kim on TechTV's show "Fresh Gear," Monkeyrotica & I both purchased early smartphones, Hiptop Sidekicks (top right), in late 2002. I adored my Sidekick, updating to a color model when available and used Sidekicks almost exclusively for seven years. I switched to the T-Mobile Sidekick LX (bottom right) in 2008 and used it for one year, and although it was super-cool... (skip past the Helio blurb for current gadget)

When I said almost exclusively, I had a 30-day trial period in 2007 with the Helio Ocean (bottom left). I didn't get the hang of the thing in those first few weeks, and it ended very badly. Helio can rot in he11.

In February of 2009, Monkeyrotica gifted me the iPhone. At first, I didn't know what to think, as I was all googly for my querty keys and wasn't sure about the touchscreen tapping. That's still the thing I like least about it, but I've grown to use it with ease and love, love! all the apps. I even got rid of our landline and have my work number forwarded to it, I have so much enthusiasm for my iPhone. I use it regularly through the day to check traffic, check email, check my calendar, twitter, SMS, facebook, take photos; oh, and make phone calls.

My kids use my iPhone whenever they get a chance (E got an unintentional SMS message from Dash a few days ago!). They both love the games (I only have Dice, but Monkey has more), sending EMOJI to everyone and occasionally sends email to friends through mine and parents' addresses. It's amazing how easily they picked it up. The next generation is going to amaze us!

"Why Do Paired-Off Women Get Fat?" Australia asks

This question seemed ridiculous to me after getting a few paragraphs into the article I read today on NYTimes.com, and I thought that maybe, somehow, my crystal-clear vision wasn't obvious to these researchers. Here's what the scientists from University of Queensland, Australia discovered:

"After adjusting for other variables, the 10-year weight gain for an average 140-pound woman was 20 pounds if she had a baby and a partner, 15 if she had a partner but no baby, and only 11 pounds if she was childless with no partner...There is no reason to believe that having a partner causes metabolic changes, so the weight gain among childless women with partners was almost surely caused by altered behavior. Moreover, there was a steady weight gain among all women over the 10 years of the study."

One of their suppositions was that with a partner comes a circle of friends; socializing leads to eating out at restaurants with fatty foods and large portions. Hm, possibly contributing. I have a different take on it.

Factor 1: Other people in your life demand your time. This is a good thing, and goes both ways. When I was single and on into early stages of dating, I had a membership at an awesome gym. I went to the gym for hours, several times a week; I love studio classes. When I wasn't at the gym, I was going on long, challenging bike rides, training for biking events, or going for local/regional hikes. One of my partner's biggest complaints, early on, was that I was spending too much time at the gym and not enough with him. In the interest of compromise and making the relationship work, I significantly cut back on my workouts for my spouse. When children are added to the family, your personal time is even more popular with them.

Factor 2: Caring for children and eating their food doesn't burn calories. After having kids, sure you gain lots of weight during pregnancy and trying to get rid of it seems simple: go to the gym! But, wait. Who will watch the child while you go to the gym? Will you entrust your newborn to the gym nursery that never gets cleaned? Do you even have the cash for the gym membership, or has your diaper budget taken all of your thin margin? Also, with small children, you're basically doing a lot of cooking, cleaning, and sitting around entertaining them. Not much cardio. AND, once kids start eating solid food, they refuse to eat healthy things! You wind up stocking more and more junk food in the house to keep them fed, and start eating it yourself. I was reading somewhere that a major cause of weight gain in moms was during meal clean-up, eating the food your picky kids leave on their plates, rather than toss or save as leftovers. Don't get in that habit.

Factor 3: There is no more spare time. Available time is an issue. I work full-time, I am married, I have two kids, hobbies, friends, and responsibilities. Finding hours or minutes to fit in cardiovascular activities, indoors or out is tough.

All said, it's tough to avoid weight gain with major lifestyle changes. When you're single, you can be as active as you want; you're not accountable to anyone but yourself. Is weight-gain when partnered metabolic? Probably not. I think that when you make compromises in your lifestyle to accommodate other people, you might gain weight without realizing it. If you want to take the weight off, it takes awareness of the changes that occurred and an effort to be as active as you were before, or to eat less of the kid-friendly foods and find healthier options for you. Fitting cardio activities back in wherever possible (I changed my schedule to work out on the lunch hour) can really help, too. Best case: find an activity that your collective family enjoys and can do together!

Any Entymologists out there?

I found this gorgeous, large, and unfortunately very dead moth outside my front door yesterday. Anyone know what sort of moth it is? It's a really beautiful light green with a fluffy white body and brown-yellow accent colors. I especially love the feathery antennae. Its wingspan might be about 5-6 inches across.

UPDATE (from Little Max): It's a Luna Moth! Wikipedia says the adult stage of the Actias luna lasts only 7 days and they emerge from the pupa solely to mate (adults have no mouth—all their eating was done as a caterpillar).

This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 2.5, Attribution ShareAlike 2.0 and Attribution ShareAlike 1.0 License. In short: you are free to share and make derivative works of the file under the conditions that you appropriately attribute it, and that you distribute it only under a license identical to this one.



What a strange world we share; imagine suddenly being a fantastically beautiful winged creature with one goal in your short life: finding a sex partner to fertilize eggs (then lay the eggs and die)? Anyone have a short story for this plot?

Blob's Park Maifest Celebration! Mit Alphornspielen!

(Hi to all the visitors from Blobspark.net!)

Here we are with friends M, RM and baby-V at Blob's Park in Jessup, MD. I made sure to leave their building's new mural (dedicated the same day!) of the Maibaum and Neuschwanstein Castle inside the crop. We arrived just in time to experience the Blob's Park Maifest celebration.

I don't think I've ever seen an authentic Maypole dance before! It was fascinating to watch, as all the dancers were weaving in and out, the ribbons formed a lovely pattern on the pole.



















There is so much to love about this musical performance with these girls playing bells! First, the traditional dress just rocks; they are so adorable from their braids down to their dancing shoes. Then, they just look like they're having a blast, you know? As if they really can't believe their luck that they get to perform with bells in front of an appreciative crowd. The accordionist and the guy playing guitar in hat and heels are just icing on the cake.



They are the Schuhplattler Verein Alt-Washingtonia Bavarian Dance Club, and it weren't for them and their amazing entertainments, we would have had some crazy screaming kids while we waited over an hour for our food to arrive. Thankfully, the German fare at Blob's Park was excellent and our waitress was sweet and very cheerful.

Check out their alphorn performance below, as well.

Jewelry sale, weekend recap.

SANY1856
Originally uploaded by nylonthread

Well, the jewelry sale was a bit of a bust. I had one sale by the woman who told me about the event (I think she took pity on me) that helped me break even with the cost of the booth. The few that stopped at all and offered any thought to what they were looking for wanted items under $10 that they could give as gifts to the under age-8 set. So, cheap and durable.

Not my forte. More later!

Adding On:
The rest of the weekend was a bit of a blur. We were invited to three parties the evening after the sale, one in D.C., one in Maryland, and one two doors over. Since Monkeyrotica was committed to smoking a pork shoulder in the Kamado for our work party on Sunday, I went to my neighbors' party with the kids and he stayed in. It was fun, an annual pre-Halloween party that we'd been to a few years running. All the kids are getting older, many teenaged, so there were much fewer of them in costume this year (which is A-OK with Rosie). I forgot to photograph my kids' costumes! There will be other opportunities, you'll be seeing my princess and pirate soon enough.

Sunday was the video screening party for my coworkers. The office had just finished a 30-minute training video for U.S. Marine Corps customer. Since we have a 120" screen for our home theater, the video team asked me if I'd host the party. Sure! And since Monkeyrotica had been instructing the DCist.com crowd on how to cook the best bratwurst, I offered brats as the main dish (pulled pork came later). A couple of my coworkers surveyed the abundance on the spread and said, "I'm just going to eat until I'm uncomfortably full." Rock on.

The video was fantastic! I work with some very talented people. The subject was a sad one: evocative training for Marines, preparing them to inform next of kin that their loved one had died (several folks were in tears throughout). Everyone there had participated, from direction, scripting, filming, editing, post-production, scoring, scheduling, scouting, and casting. It was a great gathering and we were all very proud of the final cut after it was screened.

We picked up some pumpkins: here are the kids in the patch, looking squinty on a very sunny day. AH, there's the pirate!

Ready for the Storm

I loaded my iPod shuffle with music to get me pumped up for my couch-to-5K training. The playlists are full of high BPM tunes by Public Enemy, Jane's Addiction, Breeders, Pixies, and others to keep me moving while running.

While I was setting up the library, on a whim I added "Ready for the Storm" by Dougie MacLean, thinking it might be good for cooldowns. In practice? It's exactly the opposite. The beauty and stark emotion in this acoustic guitar piece by the Scottish songwriter gets my adrenaline running even higher than JA's "Ocean Size." Seriously, just listen! And turn the volume up to feel it build. (and excuse the crappy video production.)

Almost by coincidence, I have seen Dougie perform "Ready for the Storm" live three times. I'm probably remembering the live experience, which is energizing and participatory, while I listen. He is famous for not leaving Scotland, so it's practically a miracle as I've never been there. Ach, enjoy his wee little tune already.

Getting a new table today!

These are "before" photos of the living and dining rooms; as soon as we have the space set up with the new table, I'll post the "afters."

We've been talking for years about how our dining room table is just too small for our dinner parties. It seats four comfortably, but beyond that, you've got a table leg jammed in your crotch and you're a little too comfortably close to your neighbor. I was bored at work yesterday and checked craigslist for tables, then sent prospects to Monkeyrotica. He dissed most of them, but only one got a WANT! response. I contacted a few people with queries, and fortuitously, his WANT! table owners gave us the callback.

We will have to move around just about every piece of furniture in the living/dining room to accomodate the new, larger table. In fact the dining room will become our living room and vice-versa. Good for the feng shui!

Wish us luck! We're picking it up this morning (gotta snap up craiglist stuff immediately) and while they told us the table wouldn't possibly fit in a minivan, we are stubbornly heading over in a minivan.

UPDATE: The table fit in the minivan!! We spent about 3 hours moving furniture around and have the rooms 80% set up. Woo!

6 of ms. nylon's quirky-quirknessess

Dear Kelly O tagged me with this meme, so I will take this opportunity to explore some perhaps unmentioned weirdnesses.

1. I carefully scutinize people's shapes all the time and believe that I can guess what primary childhood (to adult) activity shaped them that way. For example, a swimmer vs. a runner, etc. has a different build based on the muscles they've developed most.

2. I can wiggle my ears.

3. Stories like O. Henry's "The Gift of the Magi" where a great deal of effort amounts to nothing but emptiness/loss but are somehow ultimately supposed to be uplifting really piss me off.

4. (Changing this one, sorry) I'm exceptionally good at getting through crowds; I'm small, light on my feet, spot openings and don't hesitate. This upsets family & friends trying to follow me in airports, for example, so I really only exercise this skill well when alone.

5. I feel strange/self-conscious when I wear light-colored clothing, pastels, or gold; like I'm wearing a costume or am breaking rules.

6. If you have an accent, after a while of talking with you, I will begin to pick it up semi-consiously. I don't decide to mimic, but once I'm aware that I'm doing it I consider it an effort to help you understand my speech and don't stop.

I tag:
unfit mother
on the curb
up from sloth

Buy lumber, Check!

The "build-a-projector-screen" is officially underway! AJS had asked me last week if I knew a carpenter, and when he explained why he wanted one, I answered, "Pshaw! We can build that ourselves." To that, he said, "No, you will do it. I'm hiring somebody, or it's all on you."

After checking a couple descriptions of DIY screen jobs online, I decided to go with a combination of two plans. I made a 108" by 58" frame from 1" by 4" pine, cut the corners at diagonals with a saw (by eye, I didn't have a miter), and while carefully applying my t-square (yay tools-of-the-trade!), drilled and screwed in squaring corners and brackets. It is as square as squared wood can be!

The next step is to trim out and stretch black felt over the wood in front, to make a nice contrasting surface for the frame. I'm using a staple gun to affix it, and am not done as of today. My wee hands aren't really staple-gun friendly and sadly, it's not an after-the-kids-go-to-bed activity; too noisy!

Once that's complete, I'll also be stretching and stapling black-out fabric over the frame as well. And the frame will be complete! All that is left after that is to mount it on the wall, which sounds potentially easy, but the space AJS picked for it includes a windowsill with a 2" lip. I'm going to need to go back to the hardware store to purchase longer nails to accomodate the spacers I'll be adding.

Wish me luck! I'll post pics soon.

OMG, that thing's HUGE!!!

AJS realized a dream this week.

His dream was to have a projector TV in our rec room.

I understood the concept, but really only had the vaguest visual impressions of what he was talking about. I think I was imagining that it would kind of send out a wide-screen image, like on a flat-screen TV, you know? The screens on those types are, oh, I don't know, 3 feet by 6 feet? Big, right?

Not like this, oh no. We are talking about building a screen for the projector that is...

wait for it...

ONE HUNDRED AND FOUR INCHES BY SIXTY INCHES!!!!

I'm only 62 inches tall!! This projector sends an image out that is as tall as me and almost twice as wide! We have a movie theatre in our basement.

WOOOOOO-HOOOOOOO!!

Here is a shot of Mulan II playing on the projector. I've marked-in the tape-corners on the wall showing the final dimensions that AJS wants for the screen.  And for scale, our ceiling is about 7.5 feet high. Yow.

What to do with our old television? The Sony Wega Trinitron? Maybe there's space in our bedroom... After 15-plus years of only having one TV in our household, we now have two.

Freaky dream

AJS woke me up this morning because I was making some strange noises. When I caught my wits, I asked, "did it sound like this?" and did my best imitation of the sound I was making in my dream, a breathy squeaking mini-scream. In my dreams, when I'm most terrified and trying to scream at the top of my lungs, I can only seem to squeak, and now I learn that it's actually audible? 

I was dreaming that I was a girl alone in my parents' house in Illinois, a split-level. There were some boxes of chocolates that had been delivered that seemed strange, like they were moving, so I took one down to the basement (which was finished with shag carpeting). When I opened one box, it appeared to be brownies, but then one of them turned into a worm-like thing that craned around and started throwing pieces of itself toward the bathroom in the corner of the room. This is where I got that awful blood-drain-out feeling, backed away and started the wheezy-squeak-screaming. I heard noises in the bathroom, so creeped past the growing pile of not-brownies to see small green creatures  (like evil versions of the green alien toys in the "claw" game from Toy Story) coming out of the bathtub.

I reeled away, screaming, and backed up toward the stairs, not taking my eyes off them. As they reached the pile of not-brownie, they ate and quickly began to grow into large, well-muscled orc-type creatures!! As I stumbled up the rest of the stairs, I had a brainstorm: like the green Wicked Witch of the West and the green aliens from Signs, these green creatures could be killed with WATER!

A bucket appeared nearby, I grabbed it and added water from the kitchen sink (not filling fast enough!!!!). Running back toward the basement stairs, I saw the frightening orc already half-way up! Screaming, I threw water at him!!! He yowled and started to fall.

And that's when AJS woke me up. Aieeeee!

Rosie saved the day!

This afternoon, we were a little out of our usual weekend groove. I had to run an errand in Georgetown; my usual supplier of Weegee's Harrison's pellets couldn't fit us into her order, so the only local animal hospital that sells them is over there, across the Potomac. On our way back, we planned to eat lunch in Arlington, at a restaurant called Whitlow's on Wilson, that's better known for its packed happy hours than family friendly weekend lunches. But no mind, the meal was pretty uneventful and the kids were awfully cute marching around with us on the urban sidewalks, waiting for traffic lights to let us cross the street, and so forth.

Here's where the potentially awful situation happened: while I was putting Dash into his car seat, he saw my carkeys in my hand and said, "Mommy, share those with me, please!" so, I let him mess with the keys while I finished clipping him in. He managed to make the car's panic button go off with lots of honking and flashing lights, so I grabbed it away from him, pushed one of the buttons (eh, lock, maybe?) and the honking stopped. He started crying, so I tossed the keys onto the driver's seat, out of view, and talked him down. AJS had just finished clipping Rosie's seatbelt, so he and I stepped back, shutting their doors almost simultaneously.

CLICK.

All the doors locked by themselves. And remember where my keys are? AJS left his in the glove box.

Dash started crying again and AJS and I started babbling at each other about what to do. While I started thinking about calling AAA, he began trying to talk Rosie into helping. That was a great idea!! Only, he was anxious and almost yelling. So, as I'm usually the calmer element, I shushed him and stepped in.

I said, "Rosie. Unless you can help us, you're going to be stuck in the car for a while." She nodded. "Can you try to push the red button to release your seatbelt?"

Rosie answered, "Uh, okay." She gave it a few unsuccessful tries, and while I considered what instructions to try next, she popped the button. Beaming, she looked at us to see what to do next.

AJS chimed in with, "Great, now climb into the front seat and get Mommy's keys." I was going to ask her to open the passenger door, but keys would do fine.

I said, "Okay Rosie, now press the blue button on the black keypad." Rosie pressed it once, and again, when I asked.

The doors were open, we got in and were on our way.

CRISIS AVERTED!!

On the drive to my parents', I was thinking that we should have taught her how to unlatch her seatbelt a long time ago. But she was so excited to show off her new skill. She asked us over and over to let her know when it was time to unbuckle at Grandma and Grandaddy's house, and she'd unbuckle all by herself!! Only, waiting till we stopped driving was hard and she unclipped at least once while we were driving.

Even so, I'm so proud of her!