I keep trying to blog, since there are no end of blogging subjects these days, but I don’t like to blog without a picture, and while there are pictures galore, none of them are available at the moment.   So the picture of Jamie trying to use chopsticks, the gorgeous pregnant woman on the beach, and the “before” pictures of what is the wreck of my life right now… will all have to wait for a future time when my big kahuna computer is unpacked.

For now, suffice it to say that Jim tried (and succeeded) to poison himself yesterday with carbon monoxide (accident he swears ).  He is currently passed out in our new (halfway unpacked) room with an icepack on his head.   Apparently recovery is a bitch.
I in the meantime am keeping myself busy running Jamie to school everyday and trying to pack up our old house and move into the new one.  

I’m painting too.  It’s going to be gorgeous.

And lest anyone feel too sorry for me us,  I have a few life savers right now who have come to my rescue.

Peace out.

I had a purple lightsaber before Mace Windu did.

We are rewatching the original Star Wars trilogy and it is giving me flashbacks to my childhood when I spent hours and hours fashioning the perfectly balanced lightsaber with the main ingredient being pvc pipe.  Hardly the mystical process that is supposed to be a gauntlet of sorts for young Jedi, but in my mind at the time, no less important and certainly no less enjoyable.  I hope something captures Jamie’s and Charlie’s imagination the same way.  Who knows, maybe it will even be star wars for them too.  How can you beat John William?

Imagination is good. 

…But I pray that their imagination is accompanied by passion. .

We really don’t want well behaved kids.  Our goal is not a Normon Rockwell painting.   But you only have to work with one obnoxious adult in the real world, who acts like they’re still five, to realize that giving kids a free reign isn’t a good idea either.   I want things to move them to tears, make them laugh and make them angry.  I want them to love truth and act justly on behalf of the innocent.  Of course to even come remotely close to accomplishing such high ideals, I somehow have to keep them alive and healthy first.  They have to learn to read and write too I suppose.   Which brings us to preschool today.  Like the dutiful mom I try to be, I loaded up my boys in the car at an ungodly hour and took Jamie to school (quite the feat for this homeschooled kid)  Normally the people I meet there are very nice and friendly, so I couldn’t help but laugh at the poetic irony of being the butt of a racial slur today of all days.   I was waiting in the parents room which slowly filled up with other parents.  Normally we all exchange friendly hellos and chat about life, kids, the weather…the usual, but today I was a complete outsider.  They all spoke in spanish, introducing themselves to each other.  Nobody said anything to me.  The only notice I got was a glance in my direction and a derogatory comment muttered in a language I didn’t understand fully perhaps, but accompanied by snickers that were discernible enough.  I was in the middle with people on either side of me talking over me and around me for over an hour.   To be perfectly honest it was quite uncomfortable.  Charlie squealed and giggled, trying to get someone to say hello to him, but they just ignored him too.    I’d expound bitterly that it must be because they were Mexican or something… if it were a true generalization, but it’s not.  Normally we are a mixed group in there and typically no one gets left out.   I don’t know what was up with today’s crowd, but it felt rude and awkward, but…perhaps it was good for me.

I don’t know when this showed up in the Valley or how long it will last before the powers that be paint over it, but this propane tank is the Peutz Valley mascot.   We decorate it for holidays and such.  

This is for sure the creepiest rendition.  

Charlie is six months old today.  And wow, that was the fastest half a year ever.  Insane.

In celebration of this momentous occasion, the rats built a nest in the engine compartment, chewed up the hood liner, and gnawed on some rather important wires.  Max, the german shepherd got curious about the industrious rats and mauled our bumper trying to congratulate them.  The mice threw a party in the interior of the car, and I ripped off the bottom of the car on a rock. 

Marvelous day, happy half birthday Charlie.

We have a freaky neighbor. 
Unfortunately he also happens to live in my fairy land and this is the year I will muster up the courage to beg his permission to let me and my camera back into Camelot, since I’ve already met all the fairies on my side of the valley.

I know a lot of people do this (at least I hope so?), but I admit I’ve named most of the trees through Peutz Valley. Yes, they may be a crusty sarcastic group (this is california after all) although some of them are low on humor (a forest fire will do that to a tree), but once a year for a few months, their dark bark gets darker while the dusty green and brown  leaves transform into a lush green.   For .02 seconds it’s actually pretty here in SoCal, and then the heat comes and we all shrug, ignore the brown and trek happily to the beach or turn on our sprinklers.   There are three trees in particular that give me happy shivers every time I drive by them.  I tell Jim they completely inspire me for some reason and every time I drive by them I mentally promise to do a photoshoot there.  But one week turns into two and before I know it, Summer is here, my window of opportunity is gone and I promise to do it next spring.   That is until the end of last spring… I drove around the corner and one of my trees was gone, reduced to a pile of twigs being fed into the jaws of a chipper.  In its place, foundation footings were being dug for a new house.  A house.  The audacity… as if we don’t have enough houses around here as it is.
Peeved doesn’t do my feelings justice.  I still haven’t finished grieving for the darn tree, every few months I moan to Jim again and tell him what a travesty it was I never got to do my photoshoot with it.  

But all that to say, this year I absolutely have to do a photoshoot with the other two trees.  I owe it to fate or something.  Problem is both trees in question live on the property of a man in a cowboy hat who chased me and my camera off his property with a mini bulldozer looking thing two months after I moved here four five years ago.   The next day he plastered his fence with no trespassing signs and I’ve been perhaps slightly nervous about going back ever since.   He has a very long driveway and I’m not sure I’d make it all the way to the top before he shot me or something.  I think he’s from Texas.

I have to ask him though, I’ve already got the photoshoot mapped out in my head; A trash the dress shoot,  I just need a victim volunteer to be my Tim Burtonesque bride. (oh Lauryl?)

I’ve got butterflies just thinking about it.

Charlie and I get kinda bored at Jamie’s speech therapy.  We have to remain on the premises in case of emergency, but we aren’t a part of the actual ah-ah-ah’s and beh’beh’beh’s, so we have to find other ways to keep ourselves amused.   Most recently I decided to freak out that Charlie had no upper body strength and wasn’t getting enough tummy time.   (Something I reserve the right to do as a mother).   To allay both my boredom and my perrogative to worry, I signed Charlie up for a developmental assesment while Jamie was in speech therapy.   I guess it was a slow day because it took no less than three specialists to evaluate him.  People kept stopping by and staying.    Charlie is not the cutest baby in the world, what with his funny yoda ears, and wide eyes, but he acts like he thinks everyone is the coolest person in the world… no matter who you are, and it’s the cutest thing ever;  until you hold him and then he pukes all over you, suddenly it isn’t so adorable anymore.  Poor Charlie, he really does love to be held and cuddled but he has a major spit up problem.   We left a whole pile of toys that needed to be disinfected which paled in comparison to the paperwork he took out with perfectly aimed projectile vomit.

All that to find out that Charlie is…normal.  Not gifted, not delayed.  They say that all babies develop differently and that there is no normal, which is true, but if there is such a thing as textbook, Charlie is apparently it.  I wonder if it will stick?  Jamie taught me that having difficulties and not being the next child prodigy is ok, in fact it’s even pretty cool.  So I am not really worried, or even optimistic.   It just is. 

It was still fun though, I’m glad we did it and we got a bunch of ideas for tummy time since Charlie hates TT with a passion.   

But today at speech therapy someone came up to Charlie and I ( who was gnawing happily on his toes) and said…oh is this the curly kid’s brother?  

Poor kid, I wonder how long that will last.

This picture was from christmas, but I can’t blog without posting a picture.  It’s like apple pie without cheese. 

So it’s a new year.  I am ecstatic.  Obviously.

Since the dawning of the new year, Charlie has gone from woefully behind and slow, to contentedly average.  Jamie has gone to potty trained and then back to diapers.  I have gotten fat, then thin again, then back again, and all in all we’re blissfully happy despite the fact that Jim has no job.

(oh and Charlie can sit up now)

January is always hard for its own very apparent reasons.   Christmas is a hard act to follow.   My cousins and siblings all showed up from the four corners of the globe, and so many good times and memories were had, that it makes me sad my own kids won’t have the same experience (unless certain people get with the program).  Per Grandma’s request we got pictures of us all together since who knows when we’ll all be in the same place at the same time again.  We walked up to the old Monastery where my mom and aunt spent a large part of their childhood climbing trees and hiking around the waterfalls.   My poor Grandparents had two sweet, adorable little girls, and then somehow ended up with 15 grandchildren… who all grew up playing at the same Monastery climbing the same trees and hiking on the same trails.   Negligent person that I am, I’ve never taken Jim there, although I’m not entirely sure he’s telling the truth.  Surely he’s just forgotten, because I couldn’t possibly have neglected to show him such an important place.

The year remains unopened, and holds such interesting blank pages.  Just….God please… may it not go as fast as last year.