Weird Bird in Love

Zag and I, and our new neighbor G and her three-year-old daughter W, had some very successful garage saling on Saturday. Actually, it was just one sale, and that one was at a school, not in a garage. School sales are good because there’s lots of stuff in one place, much of it tends to be kid-oriented, and they’re indoors (Saturday was quite rainy). We were probably there for 45 minutes or even an hour – which worked because it was a relatively enclosed, safe space where Zag and W could just wander around playing with stuff, while G and I shopped. Zag got so absorbed in something or another that he wet his pants, but that could happen to anyone. (more…)

I’m glad my readers have been amusing themselves commenting on my last post, since I haven’t had breath to say much for a few days. Thursday evening is the beginning of my weekend – such a relief to arrive at this point. Here are a few miscellaneous thoughts that are drifting through my busy head as I wind down. (more…)

My son gave me Communion today. (more…)

So it looks increasingly like we’re in the middle of a Big Sleep Transition with our Zagazoo. Throughout most of his 30 months of life, he’s gone to sleep with one of us present – in our laps, on our shoulders, at my breast, next to us in bed. Now he seems to be transitioning to wanting to fall asleep on his own. (more…)

This morning, I was helping Zag use the potty. We pulled his pants and undies down, and he sat down on his stylin’ vintage cowboy-themed potty seat, the living room potty. He looked down at his pants and remarked, “My pants keep me company.” After a moment of reflection, he added, “My undies keep me company, too.”

I’d never really thought of it that way before. But now, as long as I’m wearing pants, I need never feel lonely again.

I love Sock Dreams so much. Look, they have different photos (often artsy) of every color of sock they offer! And they have lots of plus sizes! And their label is made in the U.S.A.! And, well, they just sound like nice people. I discovered them last winter but never got around to ordering anything. Maybe this year… if I can figure out an ensemble that would show off some cool stripy stockings.

Do other people – e.g. you, my reading audience – putter around online shopping sites, fill their shopping carts with stuff they might kind of like to buy, then at the last minute decide it’s totally not worth it and just close the browser? Or is it just me? I’ve done that twice with Old Navy in the past week. I try not to buy  new clothes (unless they’re made in the U.S.A. or other places with some kind of labor standards), but I was tempted by this red pintuck shirt they had on sale…  and then , you know, they have a flat shipping rate, and I like their men’s and kid’s clothes too, so I filled up my cart with $60 or $70 worth of merchandise… and then I bailed out… and then the next day I decided what to cull from the cart and waht to actually buy, but when I went back in, they didn’t have the shirt in my size anymore. And if they didn’t have that shirt, none of the other stuff was worth buying. (I do that in stores, too… there has to be one thing that’s worth the hassle of standing in line and paying, and then maybe I’ll buy some other stuff too…) So I was saved from buying things from Old Navy. Yay! Buying things from Sock Dreams, someday soon, will be more fun and cheaper too.

Speaking of my reading audience, I got emails this morning from TWO girl friends who I hadn’t heard from in a while and had more or less figured I’d lost touch with… in both cases, with regret, because L and K are both very interesting, very cool women. And they both say they read my blog! L and K, you rock. So glad to hear from you, and so glad you’re here.  I’ll try to email you back soon, for real. And all the other people I owe messages to, as well. I have kind of a list. Sorry, y’all…

 

It’s been a nice couple of days. I haven’t touched my schoolwork, but there’s nothing too pressing on the horizon anyway. I cleaned off my desk, purged my closet, and made a few shirts I’ve been wanting to make – the robot one is for Zag, the other two are mine. We had dinner tonight with my old friend E and his family, which was fun. Zag thought E’s daughters, 5 and 7 years old, were just amazing. He chased them around the house, laughing hysterically. (At the time, they were chasing each other around the house laughing hysterically, so Zag fit right in.) (more…)

We don’t have TV at our house – we sort of pick up a couple of stations with our antenna, but they mostly suck. Since I was pregnant with Zag, we’ve been using Netflix to get various TV shows on DVD, which we watch episode by episode when we happen to have an evening free once the kid’s in bed. We’re out of Dr. Who episodes to watch for a while, so last night we watched the first two episodes of Jericho. It seems pretty good, but possibly too intense for me. I don’t think it would have been too intense, three weeks ago, but now I’m in CPE. (more…)

Finally I have a moment or two to post about this past weekend. Zag’s godpapas were here from NYC, which was lots of fun. There are very few people with whom we can wax so technical and opinionated about liturgy with. Plus they’re crazy about Zag, and vice-versa. We spent Saturday afternoon, and some of Sunday, enjoying the Honk! Festival of Activist Street Bands, a genre we hardly even knew existed before. Now we want to start our own… Here are some pics from the festivities.

A dancer from the New Orleans band, the Original Big Seven, rocks out while the Kakalaky Thunder, a North Carolina band, plays.

Zag dancin’ with godpapa T and half of Somerville. Somerville is so much cooler than Cambridge….

The Bread & Puppet band and some various Bread & Puppet folks came down from Glover for the occasion. This was one of their street-theater bits in the parade down Mass Ave on Sunday: riot police versus street sweepers.

More Bread & Puppet artistry: this was a giant mobile-soft-sculpture boat, which says, “WE ARE ALL IN THE SAME BOAT” on the sides. The tree banner was sort of a sail, I guess. It was preceded by an iceberg…

Some of the March Fourth Marching Band. They rock so hard. Great music and amazing showmanship. None of my photos come close to doing them justice. Tilt and Zag and I came within inches of selling the dog and running away to join this band… If their tour brings them close to you, go.

So I don’t think I was fair to our Zag the other day, when I said he was tending towards terrible. It’s true he had a rocky few days at the beginning of last week – seriously cranky and willful. He was also feeling kind of rotten, which we knew, but we weren’t sure we could just attribute the bad mood to the rotten-feelingness. Well, apparently we could. (more…)