Update

I'm still here. I've been working a lot. I've been running around with the kiddos a lot. I've been considering the direction I want my blog to go. I go through periods of being a wannabe food blogger, then a wannabe feminist parenting blogger, then a wannabe positive inspirational blogger, and then I just get busy and uninspired and stop blogging altogether for a couple of weeks.

I was hoping to have a new recipe to share. I tried making individual-sized cherry crumbles using the cherries from my tree. The recipe needs a little more work. And I'm out of cherries. So, that will have to wait another year or I'll have to bite the bullet and actually buy fresh cherries. Poor me, huh?

Lil' Schmoo is pulling himself up to stand as frequently as possible, which makes bedtime…. interesting. It goes like this. After our bedtime routine I put him into his crib awake. He starts crawling around and pulls himself up to stand. He then starts chewing on the rail and 'practices talking' which means he starts blowing raspberries causing spit to get everywhere. He then realizes that he's stuck and requests help in getting down. So I stand up to help him and I realize that I'm standing in a puddle of baby drool. How delightful.

Hope everyone is having a great summer and staying cool! Hopefully I'll get my blogging mojo back soon.

3 kinds of awesome

1. Cherries - From the tree in my back yard. Juicy, sweet, amazing.

2. Putting on an old skirt for the first time in a long, long time - a long, flowy type of skirt - and hearing my SchmoopyBoy tell me how beautiful it is, and I am.

3. Visiting with an old grade school friend that I haven't seen in about 15 years, and watching our children play together.

chris wind's collection - I want to read this!

I just discovered chris wind's collection of poetry, fairy tales, and more in a book called "Satellites Out of Orbit". I was able to preview the first few pages through Smashwords, and I tell you, I want to read this book (actually it's a collection of five shorter works, each of which can be purchased separately). The chris wind website describes the works as "feminist critique of the Bible, Shakespeare, Greek and Roman mythology, and fairy tales, with a bit of fictional women's history thrown in."

 Excerpt from the Note to Reader:

This is fiction catalyzed by fact. It is not fiction supported by fact. What I mean by that is that the fiction is totally mine—I didn’t conjecture a reasonable fiction based on the facts: these pieces are not so much what the characters really would’ve said but what I think they should’ve said. And at first I thought I was simply imbuing the past with a contemporary perspective, but then of course I had to qualify that it was a contemporary feminist perspective, and now I recognize that it is my own individual feminist perspective. So in light of historical evidence, I may have misrepresented some of the characters. To those who are offended by perceived misrepresentation, my apologies. But since history is, in these cases, scanty, suspect of masculist bias, and sometimes outrightly contradictory (see especially the notes for “The Dialogue”), it is hard to know the extent of any misrepresentation. These women might’ve said what I want them to have said!

I love this, the idea that these women of famous literature might have said what she wants them to have said. I also love the idea of telling the story from the woman's perspective, especially when the woman is only mentioned in passing in the official story, or not mentioned at all although it is understood that such a woman must have been in the background of the story (I'm thinking of Noah's wife and Cain's wife in particular here).

I'm excited to have discovered this, and can't wait to get a copy and read it.

Fun Facts

Lil' Schmoo (age 8 months)
… celebrated Memorial Day weekend by cutting his first tooth,
… is officially crawling,
… thinks paper is much more interesting than pretty much any toy that is put in front of him.

SchmoopyBoy (age 4 years)
… comes up with the most random sayings (I think people who say they want to take mind-altering chemicals to improve their creativity need to hang out with more 4-year olds. I do need to quote him more often.),
… makes me laugh and makes his brother laugh,
… likes to play with dinosaurs and trains, frequently together.

Both children
… fight bedtime like the dickens (absolutely maddening),
… like pears, which is funny to me only because I have never liked them myself,
… are affectionate and cuddly. I overflow with abundance of hugs and kisses for them.

Gratitude Post - 6/4/2012

It’s been a long time since I’ve written a gratitude post. Shame on me! So, without further ado, here are 5 things for which I am grateful this week.

1.       Peach season – I put a peach in my breakfast smoothie this morning, and my mouth did a happy dance.

2.       Indoor (i.e. air conditioned) play spaces – I took SchmoopyBoy to a birthday party at an indoor play space this weekend. It was 105 degrees outside and he still got to run around and climb ‘rock’ walls and swirl down slides to his heart’s content without anyone worrying about heat exhaustion.

3.       Visiting with old friends – I saw two of my dear old friends and their kids during Memorial Day weekend when we were in Southern California. So great to spend time with them.

4.       VPN – VPN stands for Virtual Private Network. It is what enables me to work from home two days a week. As the parent of young children, this contributes so much to my work-life balance.

5.        Husband led cleaning sprees – The clutter in my house was out of control. Out Of Control, I tell you. It was so bad even the husband couldn’t tolerate it anymore. So, this weekend we went into decluttering mode. It’s not 100% yet, but we made a dent, mostly due to his initiative.