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Call me miserly, but I was dreading trick-or-treating. No, I don’t go for myself. I’m not into the whole dressing up in costume thing. Never have been. Young Son #2 wanted to go, but didn’t have a gang of friends to go with and his sister and brother weren’t interested, either. Father is in school, so couldn’t take him. I sure as heck wasn’t going to let Young Son go alone, so that left moi, the mom, to take him. Halloween wouldn’t be so unpleasant for me if it was during a warmer part of the year. Most of the time, there’s a wicked wind or bone-chilling cold and I have to dress like the Michelin Man to stay warm.
Steeling myself for unpleasant weather, I was pleasantly surprised to find the whole exercise pleasantly pleasant. Young Son dressed as the Tax Man, guaranteed to scare adults right out of their socks. He made for a cute Tax Man, though, so he wasn’t too scary. We made a plan and covered several blocks in not much time. And it wasn’t overly cold, so I stayed comfortable. There was one little concern that struck right when we left the house. Three young men, trick-or-treaters about high school age, headed to our house as we went to the next block. I didn’t recognize them as friends of Daughter or Eldest Son, who were in the house handing out candy. I saw the young men enter our house, but not come back out. I dashed back to the house and went in. One of the young men was in the kitchen and I immediately introduced myself and asked who he was. After taking names and determining that they were acquainted with Eldest Son, I felt satisfied and returned to Young Son. Daughter later told me that the young men were not “friends” of Eldest Son in the closest sense of the word and that she had flipped the fire lock on the door after they left. (She tells me this after we finish trick-or-treating!) Other than this little incident, trick-or-treating went without a hitch.
Young Son got quite the heavy haul in his white pillow case. He was a successful Tax Man.
The shampoo SNAFU I mentioned in my last post could do nothing to quash an unabashed and outrageous joy I felt most of the day. It was a sidewalk-skipping, kicking dry leaves in the forest kind of joy. While I didn’t do any sidewalk-skipping, I did have a chance to kick dry leaves in a forested area during a break from work. I wasn’t even pretending to be quiet so as not to bother the woodland creatures. Funny thing is, I have no idea where the joy came from. It was a day like any other – nothing out of the ordinary really. I was just high on endorphins, I guess, the body chemistry working for me. And I enjoyed every minute of it. I came home from work singing, “Deedle, deedle, blah, blah, blah, deedle, deedle, blah, blah, blah.” Completely nonsensical and the blahs were merely a placeholder sound, not a reflection of my mood.
Has this ever happened to you? Joy appearing from nowhere and tickling you with its presence?
While showering this morning, I accidentally washed my hair with body wash instead of shampoo. I knew something wasn’t quite right when the stuff wasn’t lathering properly. When I realized my mistake, I actually said rather loudly, “Well that was f***ing dumb!” only I didn’t say asterisk three times in that word.
As I scurried around in my getting ready mode, I took note of the time on about four different clocks around the house – no, make that five. None of them agreed with each other, which made me wonder which one to trust. Inevitably, I chose the one showing the latest time, as it made me scurry just a little faster.
I constructed a new page for The Woo Woo Teacup Journal. It is called “Sestina” currently, but will change depending upon what I post there in the future. I read a quote by a writer recently that was something along the lines of . . . If what you write never gets read, then it’s no more than black squiggles on a page. That’s a paraphrase, folks. For the author who said this, please forgive me. I’m sure I haven’t done the quote justice.
In any case, I’ve got quite a backlog of writing that hasn’t been read much, so I’ve decided to post a few things on a separate page of this blog. While I’m not a poet, sometimes you’ll find a poem here, like the sestina. Sometimes you’ll find a short story or essay. I’ll keep items up for a while and then take them down on a whim. Let me know what you think.
Here in Minnesota, we have a fabulous thing. Well, we have lots of fabulous things, but I’m going to talk about one particular fabulous thing. We have the Arts High School. It is a part of the Perpich Center for Arts Education and it’s located in Golden Valley. Hubby and I took Eldest Son there for an information session this past weekend. You see, Eldest Son would like to go there for his final year of high school.
The Arts High School enrolls 310 students per year – all juniors and seniors. Each student concentrates in a particular art form – visual arts, music, dance, theater, literary arts, or media arts – with a chance to take classes in another form if desired. Along with their artistic concentration, students get a balance of academic classes, which are taught in relation to art when possible. The school aims to create well-rounded students who can work effectively and creatively within their chosen art form and other academic disciplines. It’s a great method for teaching and even better for learning. I was so impressed with the program that I wanted to raise my hand and say, “Can I sign up?”
Because the arts are considered the least important of all academic disciplines (which you can see by how quickly they get cut during funding shortages), I got the sense that the Arts High School is doing its best to be taken seriously, to prove that artists aren’t flaky and impractical. They don’t have to prove this to me, but I can see where it might have to be proven to the larger society. It’s a rare thing to have a place where like minds can work together – and we have it here in Minnesota.
This morning I saw the moon while full sun was lighting the sky. In this state, the moon looks like a chalk smudge on the blue sky. And I wonder. If I can see both the sun and the moon, what are the people on the other side of the earth seeing? Is the moon visible to them?
My husband spent the better part of this past week on the couch, immobile. Sick with a fever and sticky, icky, mucus-y cough that was so strong it made his shoulders ache. He’s finally on the mend, but he’s been sharing again. Now Young Son #2 and I both have sore, sandpaper throats. Add a cough and drippy nose to my list of symptoms and you can see I’m heading for the couch and days of immobility if I continue along this path. I’m babying myself with lots of cough drops, vitamin C, and tea (naturally tea!) Oh, and a joint birthday party with my husband. It’s tomorrow and I just made two batches of cupcakes. Because we both reach a monumental age this year, I thought it’d be appropriate to host a party. It makes a good excuse for feeding our loved ones. We’ll be serving all-meat chili (Capital Punishment chili from the Chili Nation cookbook), a crusty bread, chips & salsa, and cupcakes and ice cream cups. We’re going for the cupcakes and ice cream cups in the interest of low fuss and easy clean-up. No cake to cut. No ice cream to dish. We’re having chocolate cupcakes with chocolate frosting in honor of Hubby, who can’t get enough chocolate, and white cupcakes with strawberry frosting in honor of me, whose favorite cake as a child was angel food with strawberry topping and piles of whipped cream. Altogether, we’re expecting around 25 people. Should be a good time, except that now Young Son and I will be sharing a little germy something we don’t really want to share.
As you can see, yesterday I added most of the links I had in my sidebar over at Filter & Splice. When I looked over the list tonight, I realized I missed one – Joanne’s new blog, Bebellyboo. For shame! My daughter noticed right away and was going tell me, but I discovered the oversight on my own. All fixed now. Whew!
I’ve been messing with my blog for a couple of hours, moving the couch here, adjusting the lamp shade just so, trying to get my Reddit list to come in, but it won’t. Turns out that WordPress doesn’t allow Java Script in the side bars, or on a Page, for that matter. I know, I’ve tried. And the FAQs confirm it. No Java Script. No exceptions. So I’ve linked to Reddit instead. If you read the first page of news, you’ve got most of what you’re going to hear all day.
I’m still working on the image thing. I had to download a new photo editor, as my previous one was misbehaving badly. Then I discovered that my teacup picture was waaay too big for the header, so I’ve had to reshoot. I’ll get it eventually.
Who’s a what’s ism? What a weird word – hylozoism. My spell-checker doesn’t even like it. I found this little gem on page 134 of the latest issue of Wired magazine (November 2007 ). It means, and I quote, “the belief that all matter has life.” What a great meaning. But define “life” for me. Does it mean “atoms whirling around and unifying into ’solid’ matter” or something else? If life is merely atoms whirling around and unifying into ’solid’ matter (I use ’solid’ here lightly, as there is more space between atoms than atoms taking up that space), then I can see everything being alive. But, then, what is death? For example, how does a rock die? How would we know? With this definition of life, does anything truly ever die? Matter simply shifts around after decomposition; it changes form; it doesn’t go away. Hylozoism – it’s the mystery word of the day.
A full moon is coming this Friday. The nursing homes will be battening down the hatches. Why? Because nursing home staff learn very quickly on their job that a full moon does crazy things to the residents. My grandma, who has Alzheimer’s, gets incredibly grouchy. She doesn’t sleep well during the full moon and if you try to talk to her during this phase, she snaps and growls. It’s not pretty. I expect it’s the same for the other residents with mental impairments. My mom and I would never have known how this helping of full moon crazy juice affected nursing home residents, except that the staff warned us. This forewarning keeps us from taking my grandma’s mood personally. It’s just the moon.
