Drops of Awesome

Personal Blog of Author Kathryn Thompson

Archives for May 2013

I Taste Gross… RE: My Brains

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She’s not little because she’s BIG and BIGGER and she’s “a little bit six” but she’s still three until Subtember.

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Today we were walking to the park, when some neighborhood dogs came running up and licked her all over. She did not like this. Stiff as a board, her face lifted high and to the side, she scrunched up her eyes, her mouth and her nose until they were finished with her.

“Mom! Those dogs were licking me all OVER!”

“Yep. You must taste really sweet.”

“No,” she said earnestly, “I do not. I am GROSS! And I’m all filled with brains. Dogs do not like to eat brains. They like to eat food. That you throw at them.”

Mine

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One thing is certain. The Nintendo DS is mine. I purchased it with my birthday money a couple of years ago in a fit of My-Parents-Never-Let-Me-Have-A-Game-Boy-And-Now-Is-MY-Time exuberance. Dan said I wouldn’t use it and that I should just buy a couple of new games for my phone. He was wrong. I did use it. For about a month. Then I bought some new games for my phone so I’d have one less device to carry around with me.

Magoo has since adopted the DS and feels strongly that it belongs to him. I will say again. I bought it with my own dee ay em en birthday money. The DS is mine. If I have to battle vocally for it in the back of a hay wagon with Magoo, Michael Jackson, Paul McCartney, and all the surviving Beatles, I will sing with my dying breath, “I’m a lover, not a fighter, but she’s mine. The doggone DS is mine.”

Last week we were chasing the bus in the swagger wagon. We do this sometimes. It’s fun to walk up the hill and get on the bus, but it really gets the blood pumping to drive slightly above the speed limit in hot pursuit of a fleeing yellow vehicle full of bobble-headed school kids, stopping behind the bus at each stop, shoving your kid out the van door and hoping he can run up alongside it and get on before it pulls off to the next stop. Super exciting stuff there.

I kid you not. Sometimes it’s taken two or three of these attempts before the driver has seen Magoo running up to catch the bus so he has to jump back in the van and we squeal out in pursuit again. Radness.

Well this particular morning we caught up to the bus and as it slowed, I slowed and dumped my seven-year-old out the sliding door. He ran like his life depended on it and in his haste, MY Nintendo DS slipped from the kangaroo pocket of his baseball hoodie and crashed to the sidewalk.

DSs are not allowed at school. As per school policy.

DSs are not allowed in his kangaroo pocket. As per my policy.

He knew he was busted. He started moving in slow motion, staring directly into my eyes as he bent down and slowly picked up the device as though trying to hypnotize me into not seeing what he was doing with his hands waaay down there on the ground.

Always maintain eye contact. Never surrender. His eyes were super wide though and he had this half-smile that said, “Oops?”

Then he pocketed the device and ran for the bus, making it just in time for a swift getaway.

The thing is, after I dropped Laylee off at her bus stop, I still had just enough time to drive over to Magoo’s school in the pouring rain and stand be-umbrellaed, waiting curbside as the bus pulled up to the school. As he stepped off the bus, I smiled at him, my palm outstretched. He dropped his head in defeat and slapped the DS in my hand, knowing it would be a long LONG time before he would be reunited with his beloved again.

Hey wait – MY beloved.

Drops of Art

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So many great things have come from this Drops of Awesome idea. I’ve made real and true friends, heard stories that will forever change me, both in writing and in person, and I’ve gotten to speak to women in groups around the Pacific Northwest about how to be kinder to themselves. Every time I speak on the topic, I find myself surprised at how badly I need the message… again.

But one of the coolest things to come out of that post is this amazing artwork created by Brandon A. Miltgen, an artist and blogger at Drawing Faith:

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Ask me if he’s sending me a high-res copy to blow up huge and hang over the couch in my family room. Go ahead. Ask me. I love the creativity that went into designing and executing this piece and I love that he shared it with me. He should really sell prints of this one. Are you reading this, Brandon? You should really sell prints. Go check out his blog. There’s a whole bucket of awesome over there.

On Magoo’s Mind – The Crushing Weight of Monarchical Responsibility

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We’ve been going to Costco for the past 11 years lately and each time we go, we have to get our receipt “checked” by the receipt checking person at the exit. They don’t really check. But they are good with a marker. They look searchingly, even longingly into your eyes, swipe the marker down the receipt, and hand it back to you. Sometimes they mumble, “Have a good day.” Usually they seem to mean it.

I love Costco. They have lunch for $1.50 and ice cream bars as big as your head, if you’re into that sort of thing and… A NEW CAR!

Now if you are under the age of, say, me, and you hand them a receipt, it is unwritten or perhaps written Costco policy that the employee must draw a picture on the back of the receipt, unless you’re that guy in the blue polo shirt who hates fun and the laughter of babies. All other Costco employees will draw a smiley face if Wanda or Laylee or Magoo hands them the receipt.

Over the last 10 years, I’ve seen these drawings escalate to the point that I think you need to have previous experience as a caricature or police sketch artist in order to do the receipt checking at Costco. Lately, they always draw pictures of my actual kids, sometimes with cat ears or a pig nose or holding a balloon, but the pictures have gotten very elaborate.

Today, I was with Wanda and Magoo and we got this:

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It is Wanda as a princess, obviously, and Magoo as a prince.

Wanda: Look Magoo! I’m a princess and you’re a prince. It’s so NICE!

Me: Thank you for checking to make sure I got both cartons of free-range brown-because-brown-eggs-make-me-better-than-you eggs listed on my receipt, except, wait, you didn’t look at the front part of the receipt because you were creating the greatest Costco receipt sketch of all time.

Wanda: You’re like a PRINCE!

Magoo (shaking his head and rolling his eyes with an exhausted sigh): If they asked me to be a real prince, I would never do it, and not just because it’s embarrassing. You have to make so many choices about so many things. No way.

So, today, in the parking lot of our fair Costco, Magoo pre-abdicated the throne. I’m not sure what to do about this. He is my only son. But the crushing weight of monarchical responsibility has obviously weighed heavily upon his mind for some time now. He had his answer ready without a moment’s pause. It will not be he who ascends to the Thompson throne. We must seek another.

Alright With the Rain

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We were enduring a typical Pacific Northwest underwater baseball practice the other day. I was hunched under my giant umbrella, wearing a slicker, sitting on my Tommy Bahama chair. Wanda, on the other hand, was running around like a maniac through the field, kicking a ball, getting soaked and loving it.

She pulled down the hat on the slicker and just let the rain run off her skin.

“Do you wanna come sit with Mamma?” I asked.

“Mo-om!” she answered, “It’s okay. I’m alright with the rain.”

Sometimes I’m alright with the rain too. Sometimes I can be surrounded by all the junk that’s out there in the world and think, This will pass. I’ll just let it roll off my back. I’m alright with the rain.

Other times, I’m hunched down in a parka with my umbrella, afraid to leave my house, afraid to turn on the TV or Facebook because I just don’t want to hear one more depressing news story. Everything feels too personal. If it happened to her, it might as well have happened to me. I get mired in the false belief that the world is a scary place, that there’s more bad then good.

A friend recently reminded me that the news doesn’t report every time a plane lands. It only reports the crashes. For every hateful or fearful political post on Facebook, there are a billion acts of kindness that slip quietly by. The reality of my life is pretty blissful, if I can learn to be alright with the rain in my periphery, if I can make my heart understand the differences between the things I can change and the things I can’t.

A few days after the baseball practice, Wanda and I were driving in the Swagger Wagon. Suddenly the rain was not okay.

“Mom,” she cried, “There’s rain all over the windows!”

“It’s okay,” I told her, thinking, We live in Seattle. What else is new?

“It’s making me nervous! I don’t like it.”

“The wipers keep the windshield clean so we can see where we’re going.”

“But there’s rain here and here and here,” she said, pointing at the side windows and parts of the windshield the wipers couldn’t touch.

“But the wipers clear off just enough that I can drive safely and get us where we need to go. It’s gonna be okay.”

“But I want all the rain to go away.”

“Well that’s not going to happen until the sun comes out.”

“When is the sun coming?” she asked.

“I don’t know, Sweets. I don’t know. But for now we’ll be fine.”

I truly don’t know when ALL the rain will go away or when the sun will come but I do know it will and until it does, I know that enough of the rain will be cleared away. I can see enough to get where I need to go. And, we’re doing just fine.

Day of Moms

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Dan made breakfast for breakfast and breakfast for dinner. They made me presents at school and I set up the hammock Dan bought me right in the middle of the living room so it wouldn’t get rained on.

We read stories on it all morning, mostly Mo Willems. Wanda’s turn. Then Wanda’s turn. Then Wanda’s turn. Then Magoo.

He said, “My turn,” handing me a copy of Hooray for Amanda and Her Alligator.

“Do you want me to read this book to you?”

He cuddled up sheepishly.

“I wasn’t really listening when you read it to Wanda.”

Love that boy. Love them all. Mother’s Day morning makes me want to have babies forever. And then Mother’s Day afternoon and evening make me want to throw them all in the brig and drink things Mormons really shouldn’t drink.

But Dan’s putting them away and I’m back on the hammock, remembering the good morning vibe and the sweetness and knowing that every morning comes with a reset button and more breakfast.

I hope your Mother’s Day was lovely!

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Wherein One of My Wildest Parenting Fantasies is Fulfilled on Mothers’ Day Eve Courtesy of Martin Scorsese

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Some Mothers’ Day gifts are planned. A hand squished in cement and bejeweled with fish tank marbles. A scarf. The hammock you texted a picture of to your husband and he asked if it was lame if you picked it up while you were at Costco. (You said “no” because you really wanted the hammock and you’d really rather spend the night canoodling with your husband rather than sending him back into town to buy the item that you were standing right next to earlier that day.)

But some gifts come unexpectedly.

Tonight, we finally watched the movie Hugo and it lead to one of my wildest parenting fantasies coming to fruition.

I studied film in school. I initially had hopes of becoming a screenwriter or director, possibly even a cinematographer, but when I took my first documentary film class, I was hooked. I could imagine nothing more wonderful than making films about the beauty of real life, about actual human experience. My Hollywood dreams melted away and I settled into a burning passion for all things non-fiction, if there is such a thing in filmmaking.

This doesn’t mean I wasn’t more than happy to act as script supervisor for the occasional student vampire flick, or fumble my way through being key grip on an all-female crew woman power film, the plot of which I’ve long forgotten. I loved movies in all forms, especially fascinated by documentary and early film.

After graduation, I took a job at a public library with a gigantic, I mean truly remarkable, film and music collection. I was in heaven, every day working amongst the greatest films ever made, and Tommy Boy. I got to help develop programs to teach people about film history or a certain unknown-to-the-public-but-staggeringly-brilliant foreign film director.

I once led a man on a several month journey of film discovery, culminating in handing him what I believe to be one of the greatest films ever produced, sure to lead you to a place of self-discovery and religious transformation. When he returned the film, he brought it to me personally, with a thank you note. One day I’ll show that film to my kids, but they’ll need to work up to it. And Scooby-Doo ain’t gonna get them there.

I left the job after Laylee was born and have let the film world slowly drift away. There is more of Disney than Errol Morris or Zhang Yimou in my collection now. And for the past 7 years, struggling off and on with crippling anxiety and panic disorder, my film searches now have more to do with content than craft. Too many images I’ve seen in the past have become the raw materials for my waking postpartum nightmares.

But, I’ve always wanted to share my love of filmmaking with my kids. I keep a copy of Landmarks of Early Film, a collection of the first moving pictures ever captured and I think, One day my kids will appreciate these. One day I’ll show them Lumière brothers’ actualities and tell them about how and why they were made and they’ll be as captivated as my audiences of three at my public library programs. One day, they will beg to see A Trip to the Moon or anything starring Harold Lloyd.

I’ve brought the DVD out a couple of times and it’s been like a kale and turnips fiesta. You can make us eat it but you can’t make us like it.

Then tonight we watched Hugo, a quiet film about an orphan and a robot and a whole lot of film history, and when it was over, Laylee and Magoo were begging me to watch A Trip to the Moon and the Lumière actualities and listening with rapt attention as I spouted my rusty film history knowledge. They were AMAZED that I knew this stuff! They were thrilled that I owned these movies. They interrupted our family scripture study three times to explain new ways we could do our own special effects with Méliès-style editing.

It was an almost out of body experience for me, something akin to Wanda suddenly asking Dan to tell her all about how to write code… and soaking it up like he was the genius that he is… and then trying to write her own code all the way through family scripture time.

It was like Dan had paid them to do this for me, so I could cross one huge unimaginable thing off my parenting bucket list… and then they had suddenly transformed into the world’s greatest thespians and pulled it off. Now, tomorrow for actual Mothers’ Day, they can clog the toilet because they used it ten times without flushing, tell me to kiss off with their piercing eye daggers, and fight about a lollipop… because… MINE. You know? The usual.

I guess I want to thank Martin Scorsese for making a film to help me bridge the gap with my kids, to make them hungry to learn about one of my long lost passions, to transform the turnips into chocolate. I want to thank him for one of the best Mothers’ Day gifts ever.