potty talk

Auden and I have this very weird recurring potty conversation. You know, the one that happens when you're helping your kid on the toilet? You don't have that one? Well, here, enjoy ours:

"What's coming?"
"I don't know, a train?"
"Maybe it's a slug!"
"A slug? Ew."
[poops]
"What was that?"
"I don't know, a snake?"
"A snake came outta my butt!"
"Gross, dude."
"I have a surprise for you, mom!"
"What is it?"
[gets off toilet]
"A POOPIE!"
"Wow."
"Is that just what you always wanted?"
"Uh..."

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journal art #3

 Any Thing

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train table

I got a great home-made train table from my cousin -- her boyfriend had built it years ago, and their kids weren't playing with it much anymore. I was running around like a mad-woman in the days before our move, but I'd been wanting a table for the kids for ages, so even though Jason was at the point of "LOOK AT ALL THIS STUFF, oh my god how do we have so much stuff?" I was happy to go pick it up and load it into the moving truck.

Once we were moved in and more or less set up, I hauled out my collage materials and dove in. It felt really good to have a project -- it had been about a month, the point at which I start getting a little itchy.

I don't have a good "before" shot, but you can see that it was white with your standard green-grass-blue-water-gray-rocks motif:

I pasted a bunch of different paper on it, including some cool topo-maps and Japanese train time-tables -- so, abstract but having a little something to do with land and trains:

Here, a rare shot of the artist at work (well, the artist's backside, anyway, along with loyal side-kick in underpants):

Auden was very helpful with the gluing part, but in general does not have patience for these kinds of projects. Specifically, the part where he's not allowed to play on it yet:

 OMGcaniplayonityet.

 Look out Sir Bevis, a T-Rex and a giant sloth behind you!

Next I did a layer of paint, sticking with quiet colors -- "desert hues" as Jason calls them. I added a few more scraps of paper, and a cool stencil that I'd made years ago from the shadow my plant cast on the wall:

And then there was another break in production to test out the surface. Suitable for cars and trucks:

It was interesting to work on this surface, because it's big like a painting, but is horizontal and doesn't have a top or bottom. The composition needed to be balanced but not too focused. I added some paper circles, and some curved lines in paint to create some more geometrical shapes, and that felt just right:

Then I painted the sides and the legs a dark honey-brown color, and then sealed it all with polyurethane. I wanted the whole table to blend in with our furniture and not scream PLAYROOM like the original paint job was doing. Besides, white gets so dirty, and this way you can't see all the paw-prints from the many beasties who come to play.

And play they do. It may be the single best investment I've made, for how much use it gets (although, I should point out, the only thing they DON'T do on it is build train tracks):

 Here's the finished table, in our front parlor:

 Now, carry on with your mock-battles and lego dismemberment:

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journal art #2

Deer Spine

journal art #1

Back in July I had this great plan that I would schedule a bunch of posts of images from my journal to go up during August while I was settling in and in a dark cave without internets. Of course I did no such thing, but it's still a good idea.

I try to let my journal be the place where I loosen up and try different stuff, but sometimes it just becomes a repository for left-over paint and odds & ends. I'm so frugal, I can't even waste little bits of ideas. Save them! They might be useful! I'm an idea hoarder.

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the play-by-play, the re-cap, the commentary

I do not recommend moving with small children. Stay put, if you can.

If you can't, rally all your friends and family to help you; you will not make it without them. (This is, of course, a huge THANK YOU to everyone who was there to celebrate and then cry a little and then toss a box into the truck -- and everyone else who made it so hard to leave in the first place)

Actually, packing up was way less stressful this time around, both because of all the help and because we got a realistically-sized truck. What, you don't remember? The move from Milwaukee, when I Tetris-ed all our belongings into a truck that was about 7 cubic feet too small? Okay, me neither. We're seasoned movers, now.

The kids were so excited about the truck, especially Auden:

Who was then devastated when he learned he wouldn't actually be driving it:

So we let him control some other things. Random, Canadian-rest-area things:

We stopped at Niagara Falls on our road trip, and of course it was breathtaking and appropriately rainbowed, but it was so hot, and the kids were so out of sorts, and it was SO PACKED with people, that it ended up being a quick and kind of hectic event. Not the least of my stressors: the fact that Isla kept wanting to climb over the railings and get a closer look at three billion gallons of rushing water:


Way more exciting than some ol' waterfall, THE CANADIAN MOUNTIE. "He's a CANADIAN, mom":

Also way more exciting, the Hotel room in Niagara. There was a PHONE. And a SAFE. (I swear, we do take our children out of the house now and then):

From there we went to Albany, NY, where we stayed with my brother & sister-in-law. They made us fresh pesto from their garden and took us to a little nearby lake to cool off. I drew a picture for them so they wouldn't feel too lonely after we left:

And I drew a picture for Auden, too, because he is now obsessed with knights and commands me to draw them or be subject to hysterical wailings:

Actually, this knight thing has bypassed "obsession," I would say it's more of a "lifestyle" now.

A little background: we took a trip to Chicago before we moved, where we saw an exhibit of suits of armor at the Art Institute. Jason saw how completely enthralled his son was, and made plans the next week to go to Michigan's little Renaissance Faire, where he could watch real knights, really jousting. Oh, friends, it's been All Knights, All the Time since that fateful day.

Which kind of works in our favor in some ways. Because the portable DVD player that we bought specifically for this trip? Not a hit. WHAT. WHY. I don't know. But the playmobil knight guys that we bought ahead of time to strategically release at the point of maximum road-trip boredom? LOVE. And the fact that there's an old armory in our neighborhood that looks like an honest-to-god CASTLE? Well, here, look:

Castle, your knight has arrived.

And Providence, your Danelys have arrived:


Our flat is the second floor of that enormous house, built in 1890. Right next door to a Guatemalan restaurant. Which sounds good in theory, or it did to me anyway, but in reality sounds like an awful squeaky exhaust fan right in our windows. I've gotten used to the carne asada smell (I suspect all our clothes and furniture have gotten used to it, too), but that damn fan... Grrrrr. Grrrmmmmppphh. Mrrrppphhhgg.

Before this turns into horror-movie-material neighborly resentment, though, I should say there's lots to love about our spot. There's a park around the corner, we're within walking distance of downtown, there's all sorts of urban weirdos and artist-types around, and the flat itself is really sweet. So we'll stay. And I'll figure out a way for the fan to go, because I CANNOT MOVE AGAIN ANYTIME SOON, DO YOU HEAR ME, FATE?

Ah, it's good to be settled in. How's your summer wrapping up?

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earthquake, hurricane

"Hello! Welcome to Rhode Island!" says the earth's crust. "Welcome to the east coast!" says the earth's surface air currents.

We made it through the road trip, through the move, and through the dramatic weather (no adverse effects from Irene, but incurred plenty of damage from two small dervishes cooped up inside the house all day).

The hardest part has been that we have no internet connection. It's embarassing to admit that because WOE IS YOU, First World Privileges. But it has made the myriad tasks of settling in and setting up that much more tricky and time consuming. For example, I'm composing this post from a Kindle, which is rather like pecking out morse code on a remote contriller. Oops, let me fix that typo with some white out, hold on a sec...

Those two paragraphs alone took 45 minutes!

So, there's lots more to say but Curious George is over and so's my carpal dexterity. Look for my next post: hammered out on a Smith Corona and stapled to a telephone pole in your neighborhood.

Up next, emotional aftershocks and tropically stormy thoughts!