Nutty

My son brought home a stuffed animal last night in a bag with a composition notebook. He excitedly pulled the animal out, cradled it, and introduced me to it ceremoniously, as if meeting a newborn for the first time.

"Mom, this is nutty, nutty, this is my mom."

His eyes didn't leave the plush squirrel. He was smiling as he gazed. Immediately his little sister lunged for the toy, sparking in him such rage that I feared the thing would be destroyed. Finding another toy to balance out the scene, my daughter sat plotting while my son explained;

"You see mom, everyone in the WHOLE class takes a turn taking nutty home with them and then bringing it back the next day!!! Isn't that cool?!"

The first thing that popped into my mind was the rampant flu virus that has been gripping the county; runny noses, younger siblings, bathrooms, toilets, vomit, diarrhea, cooties, and general, unfamiliar filth.

The amber fur was the same color and texture as the floorboards of my 4 runner, underneath the matts.

After washing my hands, I asked for the rest of the story with this nutty squirrel. My son looked at me, confused. He started to explain the "everyone in the whole class" thing again, and I interrupted him by asking what the significance was. What's the point? Just spreading germs or is there something else?

"OHYEAH! And nutty has a journal!!!!! Everyone gets to write about their visit with him in the journal and draw a picture! It's soooo cool! C'mon!!! LET"S GO"

I took the notebook and scanned through the scrawled graphite script. Most of the kids mentioned snacking, video gaming, and watching TV with nutty. There were some pictures; mostly of stick people sitting on a couch. One girl wrote about going to her mom's work and taking nutty. Below she drew a picture of the local gas station with a gigantic squirrel in the window. One boy said that he climbed a tree with nutty, then he fell out and had to go to the doctor's office for an X-ray, and the following day his mother had to get nutty out of the tree. He described the squirrel's fur as "cold and crusty" when his mother brought it back inside. His picture was of himself with a cast, and nutty with a diabolical, furrowed brow.

I asked my son what he wanted to do with nutty. His eyes glazed over and he sat perfectly still.

"We could go to the park" I suggested. "We could ride bikes. Nutty could ride on your handlebars".

"Uhhhhhhhhhhhh gaaaahhh!!!!!! I don't want to do that. Do I have to?" He groaned. "I'm so tired and kinda hungry" he said as he made himself as flat as he could, his face buried in a pillow.

"I was just trying to think of some things that might make a good story for the journal, and that you could talk about to your friends. What would you like to do? Cause it really doesn't matter to me" I insisted.

As soon as I had said it, I realized it wasn't true. That toy needed to be shown a good time. Not video games, crap TV, risky tree climbing, but something fun.

My son looked at me pleadingly. "Please don't make me go to the park or ride bikes. All I wanna do is pop popcorn and play with leggos" he lamented.

Ok. We went to the kitchen and chairs were immediately scooted up to the counter in *precisely* the spot I needed to be. The children got as close to the gas stove as they could get as I ignited the burner, set the oily pot on top of it, and dropped three kernels into it.

Nutty was positioned leaning against one of my canisters. My son was speaking to him about hot oil and the importance of jiggling the pot constantly.

The kernels popped, and I added the rest of the corn, covered and shook the pot. The kids were elbowing each other in attempts to dominate the chair closest to the burner. They were both in between me and the stove. It was like something out of a bad parenting magazine.

My two year old started cry/screaming, and my 6 year old pushed her face, knocking her off the chair and onto the floor.

Popping kernels hit the lid of the pot three at a time, rolling in the steam and oil.

I made no attempt at consoling my 2 year old; mishaps such as these usually resulted in a drastic, transitionary device, such as a bath, a walk, a nap or the like, and since there was a steaming pot of oil and corn on the stove, I knew none such diversions were possible.

Her wails became louder and more bitter. She stood back up, grabbed the chair my son was standing in, and shoved it sideways towards the stove. My son fell towards the wall and started yelling at his sister.

Sensing a similar story as the tree-climber, I raised my voice level to "pissed" and directed the children to "leave the damn room, NOW", and I threw nutty through the doorway to the dining room, clear into the living room.

They yelled and bickered for a while, then became quiet. I could hear the familiar crackling sound of falling leggos as I salted and seasoned the popcorn. I lingered in the kitchen for a few moments munching popcorn and listening to All Things Considered.

After an impossibly long quiet stretch, my son came sprinting into the kitchen with nutty.

"Mom! LOOK WHAT WE MADE NUTTY!! LEGGO SHOES!! HE REALLY NEEDED SOME SHOES!!"

Two large boxes hung from the toy's legs. They were made using gray, blue and white blocks, and they had a "new wave" style about them. I was impressed with the craftsmanship.

"That is awesome!" I declared as I herded the kids back into the dining room. I set the bowl of popcorn on the table and my son began digging in it. My daughter was holding nutty above the wooden table, bouncing it, making him tap dance.

"Mom I love nutty." My son uttered. "I don't know how I'll be able to take him back tomorrow. I wish I could just keep him forever"

"What about all of your stuffed animals? You have froggy, piggy, beary, foxy, spot, stimpy, kenny, wally and daddy bear. What about them? Don't you love them?" I asked.

"No" He replied pitifully. "I hate all those toys" He whispered, looking down at the table, slowly chewing popcorn, one piece at a time.

the hunt

AAAhhhhh! Spring. Everything looks good again and my lease on life is renewed. I'm slowly becoming convinced that it is, in fact, spring. Cautiously, I remove myself from beneath the rimy ice anvil that has been hanging above my head since moving to Illinois and stare at the blooms in disbelief. The calendar peeled from March to April, and suddenly it's time to file my tax extension again. It's official.

So often my perception of time is like this; my birthday is here, then christmas, suddenly it's three days after Jason's birthday and no one said anything, then Rainer turned 2, and it's going to blow my mind how fast July comes, bringing with it Fox's 6th birthday. Like a rock skimming the rippled surface of water, time careens onward. Oh wait; maybe it's me careening through time. No, then what would represent my experiences? Maybe my I am the rock, time is the pool, and the ripples are my experiences. But if that's the case shouldn't the pool be my life, the ripples my experiences, and the rock time? No. So what, I'm a rock skimming over my own life?

Anyway, the bottom line is this: Time flies in retrospect. Pausing and recollecting memories forces a person to not only abbreviate the extent of the situation, but to minimize "unremarkable" periods of time, which can account for the skimming sensation.

Spring makes me evaluate these ideas. It just seems to come so often, and each spring my family and I set out on search of morel mushrooms. It's something we all enjoy enough to have fun, and it gives us an imperative to spend lots of time outside in the emerging forest. Those of you with families know how tricky it is to find things to do that everyone enjoys. Spending time together can become another job if there aren't common interests and passions.

Morel mushroom hunting is an antidote to the cruel, skimming rock of life. Searching for morels involves lots of patience, attention, and stamina. Spending three hours in the woods just looking around you; silently searching and noticing, remembering a tree, a creek, following a bird, straining to hear voices whisper in the wind... These activities do not fly by, but command a level of experience that actually communes with time face to face; the unchanging changing, the things which remain constant, yet change,that aren't relative to age or dates, unparalleled with any human construct.

We began hunting very early, despite our assessment that Illinois would be at least three or four weeks behind what we were used to. There were five or six trips before we found the first mushroom. As an adult I am able to enjoy these fruitless searches, but as you can imagine the children didn't share my attitude. The second trip was the hardest for my 5 year old son. He remembers the gleamingly abundant times in our past hunting trips at the mention of the word 'morel', so he compares every trip with those embellished times. Looking for hours and finding nothing is a paradoxical torment for a child. We can only hope that these are exercises in patience and stick-to-itedness for the kids, otherwise I expect to have two future city dwellers on our hands.

Hunting in Illinois was such a change from Tennessee and North Carolina. Granted, we had patches in the southernmost states which we knew well; close in proximity to our homes so we could check them in a matter of minutes and know if it would be worthwhile to drag the kids out. As new residents we started looking in the only public forests we knew of. Homer Lake, Crystal Lake Park, Kickapoo state park, and other urban parks. We searched and found so many interesting things that weren't mushrooms. While searching the littered woods of Chief Shemauger park we came across the East Lawn Cemetery; a large garden which was evidently established in 1927. We found very old markers that had eroded to the lowest trenches of the yard and were being used as retaining walls in some sections. There were many gravestones that were overturned and smooth with age and abrasion. There were stones from the early 1800s. Much of the trash in the wooded area of Chief Shemauger park consisted of gravesite decor blown over from the cemetery. The wind makes a dump of any wooded or brushy area up here. People help, but it is amazing at the number of plastic bags and bud light boxes out in the middle of a prairie.

Since Homer Lake is the closest to our residence we checked it most. The most remarkable thing about this place was the number and variety of condom wrappers in the parking lot. I noticed one the first time I ever went there. The next visit just a few weeks later I noticed another, then yesterday when we went there was another, different condom wrapper. We ended up finding about 10 or 12 morels on the river bank above the lake, then another 10 in the meadowy forest above the banks. We were thrilled. The first place we found morels in Illinois was at the Kickapoo State park in Vermilion County. As we approached the park from the west we noticed a huge wind farm was being built on the prairie. The parking area was a small gravel lot set off of a county road, and the place really reminded me of East Tennessee. Especially this place on the corner of Hank and Bocephious:

The parking area was littered, as seems to be the norm, but this time with surgical gloves. An entire box of them had blown out and were all knotted up in the grasses. The area we explored was established as horse trails and the path lead through apple trees around a ridge, then went steeply into the river ravine. It was really lovely. We searched the area meticulously and found nothing. Rainer and I were heading towards the river since she was tired of being lugged around, and as I set her down on the clearing at the river's edge I saw the first crummy morel.

We found 15 or 20 there. That was our third trip to Kickapoo this season, and the first two visits we parked in other places; with 2,842 acres of reclaimed strip mines there is lots to explore and see there.All the pits have been filled with water by the river and springs and are now big recreation areas. One of our prior visits Fox found a near complete deer skeleton. He was entranced. We hiked down the hill and found a few more large bones and blades that had been dragged off by animals. Fox became obsessed with reconnecting the remains. He ran up and down the steep bank with his arms full of bones. Yelling directions to the rest of us, speculating on the animal's death... He is a little science nerd.We didn't find any morels that time. We did see some guys fishing with a radical homemade slayer decal made using electrical tape, though.

We didn't hit it big till we came home to Asheville for Easter. My husband (that's Dr. Jason Robinson PhD to you)had to be in Knoxville the week before to defend his dissertation at the University, so we decided to blur the appointment with the Easter holiday and go straight from Knoxville to Asheville. He had planned his defense according to last year's morel calendar, so we were expecting to hit our old spots just in time. After striking out in our "sure thing" patch, we proceeded to our neighborhood spot and looked there, also unsuccessfully. We went to another place and found some shitty remnants of morels that looked to be a couple of weeks old. Morels bloomed 2-3 weeks early this year almost everywhere. My typical gauge is to start looking when the dogwood flowers open, but with the early heat, all notions went out the window. One of our patches in Knoxville is in the woods beside the house our friends used to rent, so when we go we are trespassing. There is a close-knit community who rented the house to our friends, and they reside on down the gravel road beyond the rental. There are many children between the houses, and when we used to hunt we would run into their hideouts and secret, creek places. This is their newest instillation:

I was impressed not just with their resourcefulness, but their workmanship. As I recall there were two smallish girls, probably 8 and 10 years old now. They did some heavy lifting and over-head hammering to construct the roof on their shanty.

After striking out all over Knoxville, we were feeling defeated. During our brief spell in Knox we did, however, get to spend some quality time with our friend Lee, and his sidekick, Terry.

Had I realized how much I would miss Lee after our move I would have savored those last few weeks living next to the guy. As we pulled up, I saw Lee in his yard with his friend Terry, who has dialysis three times a week nearby and usually comes to Lee's house afterwards and sits on his porch swing. Lee looked up and recognized my truck, and he started laughing and tore the hat off his head. I hopped out, momentarily leaving the kids strapped in their safety seats, and met Lee in an embrace in his driveway. It was so great to see him.

The next day, after Jason's defense, he and I went to see Lee again and to talk to the guy renting our house. It was as if nothing had changed, and no time had passed. His cousin came over and visited with us for a while, another friend, Duncan came by. Lee had a fire and moonshine in the middle of the damn day. As we were standing around talking Jason (naturally) noticed a ton of bees in Lee's yard, and realized that there was a rogue queen bee in the grass. She was huge, and all the other bees were swarming around her, just 10 feet from where we were hanging out. Lee has everything, even a swarm of bees. Lee's bees. Lee's cousins keep bees, so he called them and told them to get them suits an come over here quick! They weren't able to come immediately, since it was in the middle of a workday, but they said they would come out after work if they were still swarming.

We went to Asheville and spent lots of time with our awesome family and ate ham and chocolate. After getting an Easter basket from my mom, Fox opened a hollow chocolate bunny and broke it in half. Inhaling deeply, he stuck his nose inside the hollow bunny head and said "Mmmmmm it smells so good in there".

Jason's Aunt hosted an easter egg hunt for all her sister's grandchildren in Burnsville at her home, and we went a little bit early so we could look around there. We went up in the woods on the mountain side where an old lumber road was cut, zig zagging across the steepest parts. Hunting for morels became just picking morels! We dragged the kids around for an hour or so till Jason's parents arrived and the egg hunt started. They took the kids back down to the house and Jason and I stayed on the mountain, raking in morels as fast as we could. As I would spot one and kneel to pick it, I would spot five more! Careful attention to footing was necessary not to step on them. In two and a half hours we picked 650 morels. Two Ingles bags full. We have never seen such an abundance, and I think it was the high point of the break for Jason, outranking hustling a Jamaican pool shark AND earning a PhD.

After a trip like that it will be very difficult for Fox to simply enjoy the hunt in the future.

Hello Kitty's house on fire

This afternoon as my daughter was waking from her nap, my son pondered aloud; "I wonder what Rainer dreams about?".

We considered the possibilities; dreaming of flying, running, playing ball, climbing on rocks... Then it occurred to him; "I think Rainer was dreaming about Hello Kitty and her friend and they were playing at Hello Kitty's house and it caught on fire."

"Uh-oh" I replied, surprised at the sinister twist, imagining bubbling pink plastic and noxious, green flames engulfing Hello Kitty. Billowing black smoke. Melting sugar...Faces dripping in flaming globs... "Hopefully no one was hurt in her dream" I said, wrapping up my own daydream.

"Well Rainer and Hello Kitty were ok but their friend got a little bit hurt. She was running away and fell on the carpet and got a little burned. Hello Kitty fell down the stairs, but Rainer was ok." Fox assured.

"So Hello Kitty fell, but was ok?" I asked.

Fox shook his head and looked downward. and walked out of the room. Maybe the friend, but Hello Kitty? Essentially that's what an unnamed friend is for. Raw!

Having a hilarious child is truly one of life's blessings. Despite having zero non-relative friends here, I manage to laugh and have a good time.

Yes, it rates good on a completely different scale of good times, but currently, everything is relative to that same scale.

If I were using another good time scale, say, for instance, that from my college days, my present good times would rate much lower. Probably a 1.5 or 2 out of 10. According to the scale from pregnancy, my current state would rate very high if either A. I lived in Asheville, or B. I had friends here in Illinois, but still would score a solid 5, maybe 6. If I were contrasting my experience with the scale I used between the years of 2002 and 2005, my rating would automatically sound alarms and sirens. Strobe lights hardwired to the infer structure would illuminate, and emergency party patrol officials would deploy.

Honestly I am trying not to whine and complain too much. Everyday is busy and I'm able to go outside, exercise, eat decent food and sit down if I feel like it. To continue my path towards contentment, I have been working on a few paintings and drawings. Some are landscapes, and some are general expressions of positivity. According to me, of course, so I'm not sure if they will come off particularly "happy", but the themes therein are uplifting or somehow inspiring to me. I wonder what other people without friends do? Especially people without children to eat up all their otherwise idle time. My guess is computers.

Leesearch

Ever since we told Lee that I was expecting he has sorta disappeared. I still saw him around, but he was definitely keeping a distance from me and Fox during the day. Peace settled into my yard, and I relished my newfound ability to exit my home without facing an emotionally charged monologue about flying helicopters in Naam. He did flag me down one day as I was pulling out of the driveway; he handed me a change purse full of pennies and asked if I would go to the tobacco shop to get him a pack of Red Cap tobacco. I asked "Red Hat"?, and he turned and yelled;

"CAP, RED CAP, not hat, CAP"

as he pantomimed putting on and removing a hat. Other than that one occasion I hadn't encountered him on a conversational level in weeks. This all ended yesterday.

Fox and I were outside playing in the yard when I noticed smoke billowing into the tree tops around me. Since Fox has really made progress with mastering a bic lighter, and since the smoke was so near I figured Fox was responsible for the fire. I hopped up and assumed my "angry face", heading towards where Fox was huddled, and realized that he hadn't started a fire. I peeked over the shrub and saw Lee fanning a massive pile of leafy brush with a piece of poster board. It was popping and snapping, emitting opaque smoke which spanned the entire street, but was concentrated in Lee's immediate vicinity. It looked like he was in music video.

He did the thing where he just starts talking as if you were already engaged in conversation, and I smiled and nodded to keep up. I realized that he was inviting me to his house to see a clock he made out of a sprocket and beer caps. Fox was going nuts trying to get into the fire, so I pulled him away and into Lee's house to see his creation. Basically, Lee had bought a clock, removed the hands and attached them to the center of a bicycle sprocket. Sorta like this:



First he showed me the sprocket clock, then he called attention to the "parts" clock which he had painted hands onto the face frozen at 4:20. He was equally pleased with that clock.

We left his house and Fox and I returned to playing, and Lee to burning green branches.

A few minutes later Lee returned and asked me if Jason had ordered a book for him. I asked him about the book, and he told me it was written by a woman named Moore, and it was about her pictures of mystical orbs. I told him that I would look it up for him.
I was about to use that as an excuse to go inside for a while when he abruptly asked me another research related question.

"Did'jew listen to that Coast to Coast radio show last week? Tha'n bout th' Trixters?"

I had no idea what the hell he was talking about, so he started telling me about it.

"See they had dis guy on ere as uh guest name Chris O'Connor, or Chris O'Neal er somethin, but he got on the air an started a'makin fun uh me! Back in the 80s he was lookin' for all th' Ghost Dancers an Skin Dancers out west and he ask me t'take em, so I told em that I would do th' Ghost Dance an he could see for himself, but all he wanted t'do was all this decibel stuff with recorders an stuff. Ye'know he was like one uh these professor types not wantin' t'do the work jus wantin' tu write some big book! So I told em that I'd take him to meet some shamens and medicine men an he was givin' me a hard time, a callin' me a shafe shifter an some kinda weekend warrior an got mad an so I said "fuck this" so I went t'town tu that Goodwill store an bought $50 worth uh stuff: I got sum deer antlers an clear packin'tape an plastic wrap, so I put flour in th'plastic wrap an put it over my face real tight, an taped them antlers to my head, and got this piece of blue fabric wrapped'round my shoulders. See, I waz tryin' t'camoflage in with th'storm an fog. Then I got up on his roof with a brick on a rope an started walkin 'round the roof lettin' that brick bounce on the wall, then I stuck my head in his window an scared him so bad he come running naked out into the snow. I figgured that'n needed t'be scared."

I was thoroughly confused as to how this had anything to do with the radio show, and I asked;
"So the guest on the show talked about you on air"?

Lee excitedly replied
"Hell yeah he did! He was callin me all sorts uh shit some kind uh 'shafe shiffer' weekend indian! He was pissed off an all I was tryin t'do was help em out! After we wuz there I took em up Arizona where them people were diggen in walls makin houses, called 'cwiff dellers' er sumthin. Back when I wuz workin in commercials an TV an stuff I did all kinds uh shafe-shiptin' an was turnin into animals an doin photoshoots
an all. Hell! You SEEN one of um when I wus turned to a wolf! Remember that magazine ad I showed you? I done that an I done a car commercial as a bear that breaks in th' car an eats th' doughnuts...I don't like doin' it much though.
But I need you t'get on th'internet, look up google, an punch in Coast to Coast, and Trixters, an see if you can't get that episode loaded on a CD for me cuz I need t'listen to it again."

I was itching to go inside, so I acted real urgent-like about it and told him I'd check it out pronto:
The Tricksters - Shows - Coast to Coast AM

Shared via AddThis

I haven't had the time to listen to the stream yet, but I'm really looking forward to
putting the pieces together. I looked up the book he was referring to and this is the author, Rochelle Moore:







I'm not sure what it all means, but Lee is definitely into the mystical realm of existence. If I can pin down which book he is interested in, and it's available on Amazon I will definitely get it.

Lee cracks me up so much! He is always asking me to search for bizarre stuff on the internet for him, and he scours the South Knoxville library's adult non-fiction section, which probably consists of fewer than a few thousand books.

the most unfortunate name

Last weekend my sister-in-law came to visit and brought a big bag of VHS movies for Fox to watch. Included in the sack was Walt Disney's Robin Hood, a film that my brother and I watched millions of times during the 80s. Since Robin Hood is portrayed as a Fox, I assumed my son would love it, but I had no idea that he would want to watch the movie twice a day, starting the moment he awoke.

It has been frustrating, but also fun to relive the humor and music. Tons of details emerge which I didn't notice as a child. For instance: the name of the man responsible for the voice of the Sheriff of Nottingham's name is Pat Buttram. What an unfortunate name. What a shame that my brother and I didn't notice that in the credits, as we weren't big credit readers at that time. Buttram. That's just plain awful.

Lee hadn't exited his house in four days when I saw him draw back the hot air balloon-printed curtain and peek out his front door at Fox and I, quickly releasing it when he saw my glance. Three minutes later he stepped onto his front landing wearing an unbuttoned shirt and a knit toboggan. The shirt seemed like a tiny rag hanging from his shoulders, gathering under his arms framing his protuberant belly.

A week ago his hot water heater stopped working and he came over to my house to take a "whores bath", which we called a "bird bath" in my house, but when you think about the key body parts in the process, "whores bath" is a more apt title. After he had rinsed his hair and put his clothes back on, Lee opened the door while he shaved and chatted. He hadn't put his belt back on yet, and I was shocked to see the impossible angle his belly created where it returned to his hip. The bottom of his overhanging belly was parallel with the floor, and created a sharp, right angle with his hip bone. Don't worry. I didn't stare. One glance and I will never forget the sight. Even when I was carrying a nine and a half pound baby Fox in my belly it wasn't that big. Why do some men have such off the chain bellies?

Lee scratched and stretched, then disappeared back into his house, reemerging with a steaming cup of coffee and a "rolly", which is a hand rolled cigarette. He slowly approached Fox and I, stopping here and there to look around at the wind blowing the trees. He had buttoned his shirt and I could tell that that particular shirt was soon becoming an openly wearable only type; the buttons were all mismatched colors at the midsection and they seemed to be under a great deal of strain.

I was pushing Fox on his swing and he was screaming so he didn't hear Lee approach. I noticed that Lee had something shoved in his back pocket that was making him walk funny.

"So do yall have one uh them VHS players or what?", Lee barked as if he had already asked me twenty times before. He pulled the item out of his pocket and it was a cover less VHS tape entitled "Winterland Scooby Doo" I told him that we did, and he went on to explain that he had bought that tape from "a guy who was hurtin with his rent" for Fox.

"It's pretty cool. I done watched it. Thares a few stories on 'at one tape an one's a Christmas-type story, an the rest are, well I wont give it away. It's CLEAN anyway"
Well that was a relief! I was wondering if he meant that it was a physically clean tape and relatively germ-free, or if he was referring to the content of the movie.

Fox had realized Lee was amidst and had began yelling Lee's name over and over. Lee pushed him for a while, then proclaimed, "I sware I could'uh cut'chore hair straighter with uh pan-knife than what 'at woman did! An how much you paid'er?"

I told him that we had traded goods for services, and he seemed satisfied. After I got my hair cut he started calling me by a different name. Something that sounded like "Asian-ninine". I had no idea what he was saying, and he was drunk. After realizing that he was doing it on purpose, not of disorientation I finally asked him why.

"You look like 'at spy Agent 99! You know! From 'at ol spy movie Get Smart!?" I lied and told him that I knew what he was talking about, relieved that he wasn't being derogatory towards Asian people.

Lee asked us what we were going to do today, and I said that since we were both under the weather that we would likely stick around the house and enjoy the warm temperatures. He said "em doctors say y'need at least fifteen minits'uh sunshine per day or you'll get all..." Lee was making the universal sign for crazy; winding his finger around and around right beside his head, and I told him that I believed it whole-heartedly.

sicko

I'm sick. I'm ill. I'm spent. I'm all blah.

This is week 2 of my newest 2009 sickness and I'm fixin to loose it. Having the flu over Christmas and New Years should safeguard you from having it through out the entire next year, but I haven't so fortunate.
Last weekend the roof of my mouth started hurting and since I haven't been to the dentist in over a decade, I figured that I had finally gotten a cavity which would probably require a root canal or some crap. The pain continued, then my throat started stinging when I swallowed. Meanwhile Fox had started coughing and sneezing quantities of clear, watery mucus all over, so I thought he was having allergies, and I needed to make a dentist appointment.
The next day I woke up with the worst headache I have ever had, and my nose was entirely blocked. Fox was coughing, sneezing and acting like he was possessed by evil spirits, he was misbehaving so. Muscle pain, and the discomfort of trying to blow my nose and constant coughing kept me from getting comfortable. The sinus pressure and blockage took away my senses of smell, hearing, and taste, and made all of my teeth hurt. When I walked across the room my footsteps were silent, and I stopped eating. The sensations are similar to the effects of getting hit really hard upside the head. Poor Fox fell asleep on the couch and woke disoriented, confused by his sore body and the setting sun.

That was last week, and we haven't improved much since then. Taking Ny-Qul and sleeping is the only reliable relief of a sickness such as this. Fox seems to feel good in the bath tub so he has been getting at least one bath each day. How torturous for a small child to be so sick without an adequate vocabulary to properly complain. All he can formulate is; "Foxy sick! Got mucus up'dere"

And he can't blow his nose yet! Sometimes he will accidentally blow it when no one is prepared with a handkerchief, but never on command. There will be so much goo in his nose that it cascades out and onto his upper lip while he, evidently, has no sensation of it. I feel obligated to stand behind him and wipe his nose every three to five minutes, and he writhes and whines whenever I do as if I were armed with a weapon. Needless to say the two of us are a sorry sight.
Hopefully we will improve with the weather. We have been going outside every day but our excursions haven't lasted long in the freezing air. Fox's water table was frozen solid this morning with a bunch of toys trapped under the surface. Fox peered at the toys, then looked at me with frustrated disappointment, as if it were my fault. We decided to swing instead which thrilled Fox, but when I got him out of the swing his face was lined with channels of snot all the way back to his ears, and I felt like a bad mom. We came inside and had leftover vegetable soup and read books.

Potty Training insanity

My two and a half year old son has been potty training for months. I began the process without a dogmatic approach in mind. I decided to approach the process rationally by talking him through it! That made perfect sense to me since Fox (son) listens and comprehends what I say, and although I don't remember myself, I imagine a diaper feels god-awful. After the first suggestion of using a toilet instead his pants Fox would certainly be converted, right? Wrong. Dead wrong. I have make that suggestion every six minutes of waking hours since the beginning of January and Fox continues to whine about the potty.
Last Christmas Fox was dazzled by the gift of a plastic potty chair and it instantly became his favorite toy. It functioned as a Hot Wheels car holder, a water toy and a step stool. He was still too young to comprehend complexities such as urination and zipper-fly pants, so we held off on our encouragements till his second birthday. At this point in time Fox was obsessed with the bathroom and insisted on taking his dirty diapers to the diaper bin himself. The toilet was like a mysterious gateway to another land which made things disappear with it's magical waterfall. Hours would elapse as Fox transfered water from the bath tub into the toilet with the care and determination of a nuclear chemist. We talked about the toilet extensively, and I'm pretty confident that Fox could explain our modern metro sewer system better than most adults.
This seemed like the perfect time to reintroduce the potty chair as a functioning fixture of daily life.
I removed his diaper and set him on the plastic seat, explaining that he should try to pee-pee and poop in the potty instead of his diaper, and the pay-off was that he could carry the urine and crap into the bathroom and dump it into the big toilet. As soon as I had said it I realized how ridiculous it sounded; "Pee and poop in this bowl so we can go dump it into another bowl??" Great!
Fox looked at me like I was crazy, then focused on trying to go. He managed to leave a tablespoon or so of pee in the bowl which he promptly took to the bathroom to dump.
The allure wore off too soon, and Fox became complacent about the diaper situation. I needed a better bribe!
My sister in law came to visit us and brought a bag of candies to distribute. Instead of sharing with Fox we decided to put the bag of Gummi Bears into a mason jar and leave them on the mantle where he could see them. I told Fox that he could have one every time he used the potty, and that they were so delicious that a cartoon was created in their celebration. Before having a child I would have thought that bribery with candy was a horrible notion, both nutritionally and psychologically unhealthy. Now however, I realize that the entire parenting process can potentially be hazardous to your health and it is all about balance. Sometimes children remember the entire alphabet and count to ten, and sometimes they break a dozen eggs inside the fridge so they run down underneath the crisper drawers. Sometimes I reward my child with a trip to the bird sanctuary and a bag of stale bread to toss, and sometimes I give him sugary treats.
Seeing those Gummi Bears on the mantle is a constant reminder to Fox. The first day he mostly screamed and pointed at it, crying, but after using the potty chair and being rewarded with their tart, gummi-goodness, the jar became a thrilling part of his day.
After becoming more involved with the potty chair I realized that there was a battery compartment we hadn't noticed before. I found some batteries and now there are flashing lights and silly jingles to accompany this whole process. I know the entire dammed toilet paper song by heart.

7/17/2008 Illustration Fascination

OhmyGod I have been so busy lately I haven't had time to report on my busy-ness!
Last week I was in Highlands, NC taking a scientific illustration class and spending time with some of my favorite friends, Andy and Hilary. After hearing about this course I remembered that my friend Hilary was teaching kids 'nature drawing' through her local arts council, so I decided to call her up and tell her about the class. Miraculously, she was able to get off work and sign up for the class! She and her partner Andy spent the week at a nearby campground since they had two, 7-week old chocolate lab puppies in tow. (They didn't allow puppies in the dorm unless they were enrolled in a class)





Hilary and I spent the week drawing with more focus and attention to detail than we ever had before. We both remembered how in college we were encouraged to work quickly, on large tableaux, and without an attempt at direct representation. When we picked up our 3" by 5" scraps of paper and were told to draw any object we wanted, to scale, it took a while to shift into "meticulous mode". Hours flew by like minutes, and both of us ultimately got into it. With a total of 9 students, our class was small enough to participate in group conversations and have lots of time talking with the instructor, and we were able to hang out after hours since we were all staying locally. We set bug traps after dark and drank beer using our finds as subjects for illustrations. The Highlands Biological Station has a summer camp feel to it, and I think everyone in the class regressed to a happy, curious time. Everyone seemed to genuinely enjoy the class and felt inspired enough to choose projects that they wouldn't have before. I spent most of my time drawing from a microscope, for example.



So now I am back in Knoxville and still have the drive and inspiration to draw 8+ hours a day, but it simply isn't possible. Having a 2 year old running around really destroys any chance of focusing, and when nap time rolls around all I can think about is the mess in his wake. (Today Fox squeezed an entire bottle of sunblock out on the carpet in my bedroom, and I didn't know it till I slid in it. He painted the door jam, threw a perfectly good push up pop down the vent, and tried climbing up the chest o drawers.)

Since Fox was staying in the safety of his grandparents houses I was able to relax a little bit and get some work done in that class, and I realize more and more how lucky I was.

As I am still in "settling back in" mode I haven't been able to work on any cool projects or pictures. Hopefully next week will be easier.

Ohyeah-
My neighbor, Lee came over today and told Jason and I about how he had pulled a drunkard's tooth, once.
He said, "I went over thar an he id been a-drankin at Listerine warsh an he'as all drunk. We made em shuv is hands in is back pockets while I put my knees on is shoulders, an another guy held is jaw down while a differnt guy yanked is molar-tooth out with a pair uh pliars. After it uz out I told em to go ahead an take em another pull of at Listerine, an he said 'ok, Lee', an he ended up givin me ten dollars for it"