manicure

I hope you are in the mood for something variegated, and something fritillary, because that's what we came across in the alley. Hopefully it will look like this before long.

Relaxing the neck

Nora's dancing bird, a drawing I found leafing through a sketchbook yesterday.

Insweeticide

Centipede design inspired by a book called Hello Cupcake, a gift from my mother.

Kitchen Nebulas

Russell got a day off school Friday because he convinced me that he wouldn't be able to write because he'd jammed his finger playing ball the previous day. I wanted to be convinced...he seemed to need a day off. I think the pollen may be getting to him, he's had a short fuse this past week.

We spent some time looking at the different nebulas and marveling over their forms and names. Eagle, Horsehead, Cat's eye, Rorschach, Crab, Helix (his favorite, looks like an alien's eye), Orion, Lagoon, Trifid, Eskimo, Cresent, Carina. I know so little about them. He views them as "the eggs of stars." I tried to tell him that they are also the product of an old star's decay, but he didn't want to hear about that. It's a big topic for little ears.

We read about how once a star forms other particles in the nebula are drawn to it by its gravity, that immaterial adhesive. Whether a nebula is a star nursery or funeral pyre, I enjoy looking at them as astral velvet paintings, or stellar flock boxes.

P.S. 107 Science Day

At one of the the local Public Schools in South Slope Brooklyn Beekeeper John Howe taught about bees. In the picture he's playing "robber bees" with my daughter Sophie. I'm in love with John Howe, who is Winnie the Pooh in human form. See the gorgeous creature in back? She's not a bee, she's Jody of Pistols and Popcorn, and if she writes about the day then I can't wait to read what she says. She and her brother are both up for Bloggee awards, whatever that is.















That's Vinny Voltage who transfixed my son with his science magic for an hour. He owns the best tie known to man, and also a large red crayon.




I don't remember the name of the young man from the Roosevelt Sanctuary who had a remarkably calm and sensible demeanor and puffy pink lips. He presented a domesticated rabbit, a rescued California King Snake, and this Harris's Hawk, who is retired from keeping an airport in Connecticut clear of birds. Anyway, I had no idea hawks were used that way. The only thing I know about Falconry is that you need to have a big big glove.














































That's Dr. Dan and the Biobus. Doesn't he look like Ralph Fiennes? He told the kids that they were made of cells more numerous than the stars in the sky. Applause to the Science Committee, not only for stocking the school with attractive and knowledgeable men and women but for fabulous work putting together the best Science Day on record. And the kids, how can they be so young and so wise and articulate at the same time? They way they talk...

Lice, Red Belly

Please take these photos as proof that the Red Bellied Woodpecker has no red belly. Obviously, it has a red head. Birdists, kindly explain.

If I could have gotten this red head to come home with me it could have helped a great deal. We got the call last night around 6 that a bunch of kids we know had head lice, and it turned out that a bunch of us had the scourge too. Yes, that includes me. But I'll have you know I have very sexy, sophisticated lice throwing a swanky party behind my ears complete with acrobats and dancing bears.

If I could only train a woodpecker as a nitpicker when I get a little tired of the clingy squatters. Our Brooklyn nitpickers charge a pretty penny, you know? Anyway, there were none around to help me last night, and alas, nary a woodpecker or sister wife to come to my aid when the skeeving hit me hard. Alone, in the shower, I probably lost a quarter of my hair to the steely fine-toothed comb pulls lubricated with copious pantene.

A few things I hope I remember if this ever happens again.
• If you're head itches a lot, especially behind the ears and at the nape of the neck, you might have lice.
• Keep extra combs for family infestations so you don't have to stop and do the 15 minute comb boil.
• 30 minutes in the hot dryer will kill lice dead. So maybe I don't have to wash pillows and bedding over and over again every day while the problem continues. You can also freeze things to kill the lice.
•your comb is your best friend.
•don't skimp on the pantene.

Any other hot tips for sexy lice welcome. I'll be reviewing the CDC guidelines sent by my mom. Happy snow day.

A Wolf in Wolf's Clothing

There's lots you can do with strips of cardboard and a hot glue gun. This mask that looks like a demon pig but is actually a wolf results from a collaboration between Nora and I. After Halloween she developed an avidity for costumes, immediately demanded first a bat getup, and then a wolf disguise. When I told her I didn't know how to make a bat costume, she said "Just think about it." When I told her I didn't have anthying to make a wolf's costume out of, she said "Get on a train." Man, I get no quarter from the peanut gallery.

Instead of thinking, I went online and viewed a post from a costume designer's blog which gave me the guidelines for constructing with cardboard strips. When I finished, if you can call it that, my daughter was a little disappointed, I think she was expecting something less raw, but then she spent an hour on all the sharpie drawings you see, so I guess she came to terms with the product. She drew primitive designs all over it, but began with a line of t's across the top and then a line of s's on the back of the head. Curious. I suppose that's a 4 year-old's way of bringing cardboard to life.

In the Split Pea Soup

More work with my son's hypersensitivity and tactile defensiveness. Now back to work on the 8 billion things I'm defensive about. I can barely stand to look at the peas stuck to the foot, for instance. I get queasy. How about you?

An explanation of the bizarre practice here.

He'll Never Forget....Friday Night

Because I made him step in ketchup. This is part of my kitchen occupational therapy series. All other weeknights have been for homework lately, but Friday I reserve for flooding the senses.

He never would have done this footwork had his little sister not happily led the way. Once his feet were in the condiment booties, he got very quiet. The reason for the fun here. But does fun really need a reason?

Footwork

For 9/11, it seemed like such good morning today, the struggle of getting 3 kids out the door for school smooth as all critical elements fell into place, until....

Until my son said that no, actually, he couldn't wear the shoes that his father had somehow managed to coax him to wear today, the shoes that were bought in August for school, the shoes that he'd worn for about a week before he informed me that they were suddenly too small. I convinced him to wear them since it seemed too cold for sandals, so once again, he consented to wear them, but without socks.

Stupidly, I let him. My punishment and his was the small blister forming on the place where the heel bone rubs up against the back of the shoe. So I left him at school and walked the 9 blocks home to get him different shoes. Then I walked the 9 blocks back. All the while carrying a seriously heavy load of SLR on my back. 27 blocks even before the arduous work day started, in which I would need to figure out how to take attractive pictures of large lacquered case goods in terrible lighting situations.

Some of my kids seem to suffer from Tactile Defensiveness, a condition of hypersensitivity to touch that can make finger painting your child's private hell, and which can turn the seam that runs across the toe of the sock into a menacing lash of doom. When my oldest was in Pre-K her teacher noticed it in her so I took her to "Occupational Therapy" where the occupation we undertook to reduce her sensitivity was brushing up and down her hands and arms with a hair brush. I had instructions to brush her hands every day, and also to expose her hands and feet to slime, goo, dough, and to let her stand in pots of things like dry beans. She loved it. I'll have some fun with my son's feet soon, I think, I plan to exact my revenge by spraying them with whipped cream and then binding them with some twine. I'll brush them and brush them. I'll make him special shoes from reinforced tissue boxes full of dry chickpeas. Then, when he goes to put on his Sketchers or whatever, they should feel pretty good.

My kids have this condition only slightly compared to many others I think, from what I just read, here. These few paragraphs help inspire me to be more compassionate with my little torturer...

Many children with tactile defensiveness will only use their fingertips (if they even DO touch certain things) when playing with sand, glue, paint, play-doh, food, glitter etc. Consequently, their play is limited and so is their ability to engage in learning experiences.

Children may become fearful, avoid activities, withdraw, or act out as their body responds with a "fight-or-flight" response.

Why does this happen? It's all about the way in which one's nervous system interprets touch sensations and stimulation. I suspect you too would react with a "fight back" or "flee" response if any of the above listed items to YOU felt like sandpaper rubbing against your skin or 10 spiders crawling up your arm that you can't get off.

It is not their fault! It is absolutely 100% about the WAY in which their nervous system interprets a tactile stimulus! Please don't blame them or punish them...be proactive and help them get the treatment and accommodations they need!

I'm so tired now, at least I could leave work a little early and sneak into Windsor Shoes to get him a pair he might be able to wear, but do I dare to hope? I got 2 pairs there for him to try. Meanwhile, I have this tiredness, nothing like the tiredness of rescuers running up and down the World Trade staircases like Jacob's angels, nothing like the exhaustion of those trying to find survivors before time ran out, nothing like the enervation of the living waiting to hear about their loved ones, nothing like the weariness of the dead trying to find their way home. Somewhere I read the account of a rescue worker who after leaving the disaster site at the end of a day's work found himself wandering up to Grand Central for a train to Connecticut, even though he didn't live in Connecticut. There are people like that, I think. They pick up stowaways.

Saturday not-so-still Life

Middle Boy's Monkey Bread

This stuff, balls of premade biscuit dough coated with a mixture of cinnamon and sugar and baked, which I've developed the bad habit of calling Monkey Balls, is the first thing that my 6 year-old son's cooked almost completely independently. I like the fact that it looks like a monarch's thorax in this picture, but of course less immaculate.

I hope I will remember to foster and support this new freedom and ease with cooking which was beautifully facilitated by his experience as a day camper at Beth Elohim. Maybe tomorrow I'll place an order for homemade pasta for dinner...but of course I'm the one that ultimately has to clean up the disaster zone we're all familiar with. Disaster! Yay!

In Paddle Boats

For all the complaining, sometimes I think that we just don't have enough hard times to bring out the best in us. We loll around thinking, hmmmm, what do I want right now, what would perfectly reflect my individuality and sensibility at this moment, making ourselves or other people sick. Secretly longing for the cure to complacency and self-involvement, the blackout or other interruption in the usual order of things.

Case in point: yesterday, the kids were very excited about the paddle boating until we were actually in the boat. Then they were too hot and it was boring. Clearly, they don't know anything about hot, and they don't know anything about boring. One child says, "you know it would be perfect to do this on a cold, rainy day." I'd love to see how that would go. Soon, they got tired of paddling. They wanted to pour water on their heads. Maybe paddle boating is something you have to be in a very specific mood for.

A boat filled with an Orthodox family chugged by us and I amused myself by demanding to know where they'd hidden the treasure. They kids answered that they wouldn't tell, while the father's look indicated he'd identified me as a loose cannon capable of god knows what.

If I had passed out on the boat at that moment and fallen into the water, it would have been quite a spectacle for everyone, and the girls would have had the mutiny they secretly desired, they are ready for so much more challenge than this civilized tableau allows them. Not that they don't love me, but they need a chance to be brave.


I know the park's been trying to get rid of the phragmites to allow native plants to grow. I saw a bed that was covered by black plastic next to one that was thriving. I love the way those grasses look, it always seems like they hold so much mystery between the stalks, mystery staunchly protected by those most exacting snipers, the skeeters. What I don't know is what might grow there in their stead. But it doesn't look like the Parks Department will win the battle against the phragmites. Not without a WPA to tackle it anyway, or perhaps we could start thatching the rooftops.

Mommy Camp, Day 3

The Rapa family who owned this house prior to us left a box of those green dishes in a closet. They got them from Bishop Ford years ago when they worked there, where the fastidious and jocose Maria Rapa polished the gleaming floors in the Catholic school whose red glazed surfaces are part of a blend of 50's American architecture and chinoiserie. I found the reason for that here.

Mommy Camp, Day 2

When we got to the Salt Marsh Nature Center my daughter said to me "Is this the same place I told you was full of trash? They've really cleaned it up around here!" I was amazed that we'd finally made it given the reviews she gave it after a class trip, and the price to pay, a visit to Puppy Paradise, was hardly a toll.

Walking the gravel path we heard little but the wind blowing through the mugwort and phragmites and watched abundant monarch butterflies that rarely settled down. We stopped by a lookout where a smiling shirtless man pointed out the excellent view of the highway bridge in the distance. How funny, that's the last thing I wanted to look at there. Why was he so excited about the bridge? I liked imagining that I could see a windmill instead.

We got to the small beach at the turn around point on the trail and saw a dead horse shoe crab in the grass. It fascinated my son even though he's easily scared by morbid things these days. At the marsh, he touched the animal's carcass, even removing a claw. He asked me if I thought that was really brave. He asked me if I'd take a picture. He asked me to put it on this blog. He seems to understand blogs innately, and suggested I blog my whole life, so the page goes "down, down, down."

More marsh elements here, here, and here.

Mommy Camp, Day 1

Monday, school shopping at the Atlantic Terminal, where the sunshine melted the soft serve so violently that an old woman sharing our bench had to walk away from the carnage.

Picnic dinner in the Nethermead. We almost got mowed down by a fascist biker getting her speed-gasm on coming down past the 16th St. entrance. She'd probably waited all day for that high. I watched a patrol SUV chase after her with sirens blaring. Is there a speed limit for bikers? Can they get penalized for wreckless endangerment?

But the gateway to paradise has always been guarded by monstrous creatures. Why am I surprised? We will not be deterred.



I'm pretty relaxed about the mommy camp, it's not much of a boot camp really. The only parameter is no highway travel, until this weekend when we drive to Virginia to visit my father and the Shenandoah County Fair. If you have any suggestions for places to visit while here in Brooklyn, I would love to hear them. I'm hoping to get to Added Value, the Jewish Children's Museum, and the Waterfront Museum. But we'll see.

Tingles on Fifth

I got new glasses today from Eyewear on Fifth. When I went in the first time, I was reminded of that NYT article about Park Slope where someone complains that Park Slope is filled with English teachers. That was because the man being helped ahead of me told the proprietor that his name was English. And when asked, he had to admit, that yes, he was an English teacher. My friend calls that nomen est omen, she's the only person I've ever heard use that phrase.

Today I went back and picked up my glasses and put them on. I was with my three year old who gave me a look of disgust and told me in no uncertain terms that she didn't like them. My oldest said the same thing, pretty much, in a much more tactful way. I like my new glasses, though.

Kids are pretty harsh critics of their moms' appearances. I was wearing overalls the other day and my son asked me why I was wearing those weird pants. And I told him I was wearing them because I looked adorable in them. He said no you don't, you look horrible. I insisted that I looked adorable, but he maintained that I was nothing short of a disaster. And I have to admit, I don't think I'll be wearing my overalls again any time soon. Unless it's time to be a disaster, and sometimes, it seems, it is time for that.

After we got my glasses today we went into a bargain store on 5th Ave to find a new backpack for my daughter. They didn't have those. They did have this:


















Never heard of that before. Then I got a little transfixed in the figurines aisle, as I usually do in the 99 cent stores. I was taking a picture of all these black jesuses when they started to play "Papa Don't Preach" over the loud speakers. I got the tingles. Then I realized that Madonna gives me the tingles more than any other artist, I think. She and Martin Luther King.

I wouldn't have used that word, tingles, even though it's the perfect word, if it hadn't been used by Tracy Collins at the excellent blogade hosted by Adrain Kinloch aka BIB Sunday. Adrain and Tracy were kind enough to address the group regarding photographers' rights and run-ins with censorship. At one point Tracy spoke of how certain photographs gave him "tingles," and I immediately wanted to see those pictures. All of them. Each one. And I wanted to get tingles, too. Well, I can thank Madonna and the black jesus for that. For now.

13th St. Cactus Flowers

Whoever lives at 409 13th St. has an unusual front plot bedded with sand and hosting an abundance of succulents and the most beautiful flowering cactus I have ever seen. The garden looked so hot and dry and prickly I was surprised not to see an iguana in it.

I sort of remember the first time I saw a cactus with flowers, it seemed so odd that those delicate and exuberant blooms emerged from something so treacherous. But isn't that how it always is, intense joy bringing with it the pain of its retreat.

That's how a lot of us felt today when we picked up our kids after their last day of nursery school. If we hadn't really liked the teachers much, it would have been a big relief to bid them farewell. That wasn't the case at all, and I'm one that will really miss having these loving, warm, careful, intelligent and down to earth people spend time with my daughter. She's been in a very testy mood lately, and I think I know why. About an hour after I picked her up, she was telling me that they were having a party at school and all her friends and teachers were there.

It's been a fantastic year. Thank you Aileen, Ryan and Carmen. You are too awesome for words.

The Reflex

These two have gotten far too quick for my lazy lens.


















I've found more docile subjects on the F train.

Pre-K and Irises

My head's been spinning from how bizarre things have been lately. My daughter got an acceptance letter for a Pre-K program, but when I went in to confirm her spot, I was told she might not wind up with it in the long run. The poor parent coordinator was so aggrieved that she might have to take away the "lollipop" the board of ed had just served us.

Ugh.

...But aren't the irises lovely these days? This one was growing on Matthew's Court in Victorian Flatbush. There were some at Lonelyville so purple they nearly broke my camera.

I'm off to a weekend in Wildwood for the wedding party of a High School friend. And already feeling toasted.