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Yesterday evening as Laylee evacuated her bowels prior to retiring for the night to her bedchamber, she informed me that she was “goin’ to the pod.”

Me: Oh, really?
Laylee: Yeah, I’m goin’ to the “pod” because, well, I’m sitting on the pod-EE. So, it’s like I’m goin’ to the “pod.” Yeah, it’s like that.

I will grant you that around our abode, I frequently speak highly of Dan’s “bod” and it only stands to reason that over time, she would pick up this colloquial abbreviation and begin to incorporate it into casual speech with her peers. However, she seems quite puerile to be adapting adult lexicon in such a creative fashion.

On that self-same day, she had me quite enraptured with a detailed treatise on the etiquette of flatulence and the spasmodic ejection of stomach gases. According to Laylee’s hypothesis, the idiom “excuse me” must only be directed at a specific personage if the nature of the emission is noxious in its pungency. Otherwise, the plea for pardon should merely be expressed to the world as a whole, no actual apology being needful as no one person has received harm.

The spiders of Washington State have teamed up with the haunted forest behind my house to ensure a spooky good time for everyone who lives here. Giant spider webs stretch from every tree, column and fence post around our yard. In the morning, the dew clings to them, making them appear thick, white and stiff.

Sitting in the center of each web is a huge female spider who, according to a thoroughly freaked out woman in Target, will do anything AN-Y-THING to get inside my house or crawlspace and lay her bazillions of eggs at this season of the year. I used to get excited when one of the spiders disappeared from the yard. Now I find it moderately disturbing.

Dan and Laylee watched a male and female spider do a “special dance” last Saturday in the front yard until Dan sent her in to tell me that the daddy spider had gone away to “dance somewhere else.” Um, yeah. I’m sure his dissected corpse is doing tons of dancing IN HER STOMACHE JUICES. If she’d eat her own mate, what would she do to my grey matter as I’m sleeping and she crawls in my ear to hibernate?

Sudden change of topic:

What are you gonna be for Halloween? How about your kids? I blogged a few costume ideas last year at this time but here are more:

-The cast of Prison Break. Simple. Understated. Hope your kids don’t mind shaving their heads.
-Characters from Napoleon Dynamite. Got a thrift store? Got a costume.
-The different things the old lady swallowed. Dress your kids as a fly, a spider, a bird, a cat, a dog, a horse and a cow and then see if anyone can figure out what you’re supposed to be.
-Green.
-The Wiggles. Easiest costumes ever if you have a family of 4.
-The Seven C’s — I once heard of a group of seven all wearing matching outfits with the letter C written on their shirts. Silly, but fun.
–Freestyle rappers.
-Gum rappers. Wear the bandanas, hoodies and low-rise jeans and a necklace made of Bubblicious. (I think this will be me and Dan this year)
-Charlie Brown characters. Magoo plans to be Charlie Brown this year. You’ve got to capitalize on your strengths. With a noggin like that, he’s got it made.
-The Invisible Man. Stay home, eat ice cream, and when people ask you why you didn’t come to the party, tell them you were there but you went as the invisible man.
-Not a princess.

Now share yours. Creative, weird, practical? All suggestions are welcome.

Photo courtesy of Mary K. Baird, posted at morguefile.com

reasons: hard hats in children’s sizes, string cheese, visits from family

I drove behind a semi-truck for a couple of miles that was either full of freshly cut evergreen trees or Vicks Vaporub.

I heard bells chime on a classical recording yesterday morning.

Last week I could see my breath….

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I shed a little this week. Okay, I shed a lot. Laylee said, “You look like somebody else’s mom.” I wasn’t sure I was happy with the result until I walked past a mirror yesterday. Staring back at me was my face with Fräulein Maria’s haircut. This I like.

I’m not Austrian. I can’t speak with a British accent. I prefer the name Dan to Georg. I only know four chords on the guitar. I never wanted to become a nun.

But I like the hair, and I adore bursting into song while Dan and I are making out in a solarium full of blue studio lighting meant to simulate moonlight. So, I’m pretty much Julie Andrews reincarnated. Is she deceased? If not, she probably wants her hair back.

I am relieved that I like the hair. You may remember the last time I drastically changed it and it wasn’t pretty.

On a random side note, I came into the living room the other day to find my guitar case laying on its side. I asked Laylee if she knocked it over. She said, “No, I didn’t. I was just jumping on it and singing a song.” I haven’t had the heart to open the case yet and survey the damage. Fräulein Maria probably wouldn’t confront Laylee openly either. She’d guilt her into bawling about it at dinner, causing a tremendous bout of indigestion.

reasons: crazy 8’s

Today’s topic is brought to you by Jessica of Sweet Mama Entropy, who gave some great tips on how to organize and store toys back in March. The toys truly do seem to multiply but I don’t see them doing much to replenish my home.

My number one favorite tip is to get rid of stuff. Consider happy meal toys and party favor novelties disposable. Once their charm has worn off, send them packing. If the charm has worn off for you but not your child, and if it’s within her field of vision, send it packing in the dead of night.

My mom used to go through our toys with us every few months and let us keep a certain number of stuffed animals. The rest had to be donated to Goodwill. We had a really great Christmas one year where we were heavily involved in a used teddy bear donation program. We gathered the bears and helped wash and brush them to be given to other children. It really helped us feel better about giving up our toys.

Integrate some toys into the decor of your home, rather than letting them become the decor of your home. Buy nice baskets or storage ottomans or even cover cardboard boxes with pretty fabric. If you can keep your entire house from looking like the Romper Room while still allowing your kids to feel like they can play somewhere besides their bedroom, I think you’re on the right track.

Then a tip for another day is getting your kids to clean up their toys. At this point, I am using the old “you clean it up or I’ll clean it up into a trash bag in the garage” shtick. I guess it works for lots of people. One 3-year-old in Laylee’s ballet class picked up a toy in the waiting room today and said, “We have this! Well… It’s in the trash. Well… Actually it’s out in the garage because we were in trouble of it.”

Hmmm…. So I’m not the only one to use this tactic? I once used it on a college roommate. No joke. We would put all of her stuff in a garbage bag in the laundry room. I don’t remember what we exactly thought gave us the right to do this or how she accepted it but I do remember that rather than clean up the stuff out of the laundry room, she would go in there and retrieve one item at a time as needed. Then she’d leave it on the floor, the kitchen counter, my bed, and I’d put it back in the garbage bag. Very strange.

Please share your tips for controlling toys, forcing your children to clean like slaves, or tormenting your college roommates.

I can’t explain why. I needed this boat to come back.

Picture of my favorite house between here and Seattle, nowhere near the water, taken through a dirty windshield while driving.

Where have you gone, little sailboat? Every day I would drive by your house, a small piece of wreckage, seemingly washed far ashore in our little section of suburbia. The tall grass lapped against the peeling paint of your ancient grey-blue mariner’s hideaway. There you floated on the sea of grass, next to an old colorless Impala, its soft top only visible above the waves.

There was a calmness about you, still among the commotion of grain. No one ever left the house. No one ever came. Your sea of grass was stopped abruptly by the road I traveled on and I knew you could never sail away.

One summer day you were gone. Perhaps you set sail at dawn on a patch of thick fog, searching for the ocean you’d left behind. Perhaps you were shattered on the rocks concealed beneath the dense blanket of vegetation surrounding you. Perhaps you were never there, an illusion I invented so the small sea shanty would make sense in the pastoral landscape we inhabited together.

You never said goodbye and I mourn your loss. The windows of the house seem to squint, blocking out your very existence. It is a sad house now, a house in denial. Will you ever return? Will you take me with you in the night?

So it’s Wednesday! What could be more fun than doing tips since I didn’t get to them yesterday? Scuba Diving maybe or laying completely alone in a flowered valley at the top of a lonely mountain while birds fly overhead and I am never ever woken up by a three-year-old asking me not to smell bad. By the way, she needs to get her nose examined as badly as Magoo needs a new tuning knob. I smell sweet as a peach.

And I belong to a book club.

Tess has asked for a Tip Tuesday where we discuss the ins and outs of setting up a successful book club. Here are a few things to focus on:

1. Who? Who are you gonna invite? If you are drowning in friends, are you going to limit membership to make the group more manageable? If you’re new to the area (notice I did not say you have no literate friends), how will you find like-minded readers to join you? Do you even want like-minded readers?

The group that I helped set up 2 years ago had an open enrollment. I emailed everyone I knew who I thought might be interested and told them to pass the word along. It was sort of a shotgun blast approach because it was more important to me that everyone felt included than to invite only my bestest friends. We ended up with a really nice variety of members and I got to know people with opinions vastly different from my own, something that I think makes a great book club.

You might want to consider handing out a flyer at your local moms group, church or bookstore.

2. What? What do you want your book club to be? Is it a social club with books on the side? A dinner group, where the book may or may not be mentioned? A 500-level graduate class in English literature where you must own a complete print copy of the OED to attend? Set clear expectations early on for what the book club will be.

Ours was about the book. We got together for 2 hours, eating and socializing for the first half hour and then once book discussion began, we got down to business. It was an escape from mommy life and a chance to stretch our brains. Personal anecdotes were shared only in relation to what we were reading. We decided to save the poop stories for play group.

3. Where? Do you have a church or school room where you can meet or do you prefer a more homey atmosphere? Should one person always host to maintain a sense of consistency or do you want to rotate houses?

We rotated on a volunteer basis. The person hosting was not necessarily the discussion leader.

4. When? How often? Do you meet weekly? Monthly? Bi-monthly? Annually? Everyday on the internet? When is enough? How busy are you?

We started out meeting every other month but went to a one-book-per-month format. We felt that most people were cram-reading the book during the last few days before the meeting anyway so we might as well have twice as many opportunities for people with scheduling conflicts. It worked nicely to pick a standard night so we always knew when it would be. 2nd Thursday of every month. Be there or be square.

5. How? Set up clear guidelines for the group so you know what to expect and someone doesn’t unknowingly violate some unspoken law, upsetting the tender feelings of Bertha the book club Nazi who thinks she knows exactly how things should go.

Our group chose the books together. At the beginning of the year, everyone would offer a couple of suggestions. We’d anonymously vote on them and assign them to a particular month. If your book was chosen, you were the discussion leader for that meeting.

We set up rules for how long the meeting would be, what type of books we wanted to read, what type of discussion we should have, how stringent we’d be on membership requirements. Basically we weren’t stringent. Our main rules were that every opinion needed to be heard with respect and that anyone could come whether they’d read or not, as long as the discussion stayed on the book.

Food was always low-key and potluck. The person whose home we met in would provide drinks, dishes and utensils.

What has worked for you in your book clubs?

I think you’ll enjoy this awesome talk on children and education if you have an interest in um…children or education.

Speaking of creativity, I have evidence of ballerina class. Please don’t look at these pictures unless you’re prepared to yorch from the cuteness. Please also bear in mind that these pictures were taken through a small dirty window using digital zoom, the window only made dirtier by my head pressed up against the glass. Thanks to the fabulous Kimbo for watching destructo-Magoo so I could enjoy the class.

 

Someone is so witty and fabulous on the phone that my family was late for our most recent class. Must not speak to Jeana on Ballerina day. Must not speak to Jeana on Ballerina day.

reasons: the man I fell in love with 5 years ago who has carried me through my hard times

I hate it when people type “pic” or “pics”.  I just thought you should know.  Pictures, photos, shots, anything but “pic”? I don’t know why that abbreviation grates on me. It just does. I’ve tried it a few times. It seemed like a cool thing to type but once I saw it there on the screen, knowing it had come from my keyboard, I was sickened by the result.

Okay. So, it turns out that someone noticed I’ve been a tip slacker this summer. Please feel free to go over and give that someone mad props for bringing back this magical Tuesday tradition or you could just go and burn her blog down if you hate Tip Tuesday and my cutesy blogeriffic alliteration makes you want to hurl. Either would be appropriate. (I just noticed she didn’t leave a URL. Oh well, no internet flames today.)

This portion is completely unrelated to the tip — Magoo frequently wakes up 30 minutes after falling asleep in a state of panic, a piteous wail escaping from the baby monitor. Sometimes it dies down quickly but other times, like tonight, he becomes frantic in his screaming and one of us goes to check on him. I was folding laundry while Dan read mommy blogs for me. I said, “That cry is so sudden and so sad. Whenever he does that, I think there’s a bug in his crib…or a rat…or one of those worms that crawls in his ear and eats his brains out.” Dan’s response as he went up to check on him? “Oh come on now. We all know what that cry sounds like and this isn’t it.” He’s a keeper.

Today’s tip topic is photography. I rarely claim any sort of authority about the tips we discuss but today is an exception. I am qualified to lead this discussion because I took a photography class in high school, took several people’s engagement photos in college, including one couple who paid me in the form of a Red Lobster coupon. I took at least one photography class while working on my film major, found a great wedding photographer, and I have many pet peeves where amateur photography is concerned. I see these pet peeves crop up in my own photography so frequently that I have become an expert on them.

Here are my 4 best tips for beginning photographers. I hope you like them and add many more. (Please do not say “pic” or “pics” in the comments section or I may be forced to delete you.)

1. A little less wall please — When you’re taking a picture of something, take a picture of that thing and not the 10 miles of nothing that surround it. I refer to all the unnecessary junk as “wall”. Many times I have asked some unsuspecting stranger to take my picture at an event or tourist attraction and spent 10 minutes explaining to them about “wall”. Here is an example of too much wall:

The remedy:

Now sometimes you can break the wall rule on purpose:

But it also makes a very pleasing close-up:

2. The magical rule of thirds (which can be broken, but it should be on purpose) –
It’s often beautiful to divide the picture up into imaginary thirds and line up the major elements of the photo along the thirds (eyes in portraits, distinct lines, the major action). This rule is really important with horizon lines. I have rarely seen a decent photo where the horizon was right in the center, even if the horizon is only in the background.

 

3. Perspective and framing — When you’re taking a photo, just like when you’re writing, you want to think about the perspective you’re taking it from. There’s no real right or wrong answer here. Do you want to be an observer?

Part of the action?

An ant about to be crushed by the giant monster baby ?

Frame your shots in an interesting way. This hallway going on and on out of focus is a gorgeous background, much better than if I’d shot it against a plain wall.

4. De-light-ful — If available in abundance, natural lighting is best, giving the most true-to-life colors. The very best light comes from a bright overcast day, where the clouds act like those giant umbrellas in a portrait studio, diffusing the light perfectly. The shot above was taken with only natural cloudy light through an open window.

Here is an example with a flash:

Without:

Notice the improved color, depth of field and facial expression when the flash is absent. Some shots do look better with a flash fill, especially if they are back-lit.

Without the flash-fill:

With the flash-fill:

Decide which you like best but don’t forget to remember to choose:

*Bonus tip — Lay off the antlers – Look closely at the background of your picture. How many times have you taken a great picture, only to notice later that the giant tree in the background makes your brother look like he’s got antlers sticking out of his head? Just last weekend we took this photo of Magoo that looks like he has a great manicure and a sleek cell phone.