Weird Bird in Love

Things that are amusing me today: 

Zag watched his first Scooby Doo episode yesterday, with the kids he’s staying with in the mornings. He was entranced and talked about it all afternoon. “There was a mummy! And do you know who it was, under all the bandages? It was a real, actual live person!” It’s funny to see him so blown away by something that’s so cliched in my grown-up, raised-in-the-’70s mind. 

I turned on NPR briefly this morning and heard a short segment on the QuiverFull movement, which holds that it’s God’s will for Christians to have as many children as possible. (Their homepage assures you that you’re welcome, whether your quiver is large or small.) Let me say at once that my reaction is doubtless unworthy of my position as a pastor and scholar of religion, but I immediately thought of the famous apocryphal Groucho Marx line, to a woman who had 20 children: 

Woman: I love my husband.

Groucho: I love my cigar, but I take it out of my mouth once in a while!

Snopes.com assures me this risque exchange probably never happened, but this one, which is almost as good, did – when Groucho was interviewing a woman with sixteen siblings: 

Groucho: How does your father feel about this?

Woman: Oh, my daddy loves children.

Groucho: Well, I like pancakes, but I haven’t got closetsful of them…

Well, we’re around the halfway point of Tilt’s trip – a week over, a week to go. We’re hanging in there. Zag and I are getting along pretty well, and we’re managing to eat and sleep. I’m even sort of keeping up with the dishes and the laundry. Zag loves the folks he’s staying with while I work, mornings. I guess I should be pleased enough with all that. 

I had a vision that, without socializing with my spouse as a distraction, I’d work along on my dolls – which I haven’t touched in a week and a half. But the project just isn’t grabbing me. I’m worried about losing steam and never getting back to them, even though they were going well. Ah, well… I seem not to feel like crafting at all, so at least I’m not starting other projects, which is usually fatal to the project abandoned. 

This is a really boring post. I guess I should download some photos, so I can add some visual interest, at least. 

A project I finished a couple of weekends ago. I really like it. The picture frame came from my grandmother’s hous in Maine. 

Here are the dolls that I’d gotten farthest along with. The one with the moustache is named Reginald. The other is an as-yet-unnamed wizard. At least, I think so. 

Tilt is out of town – in Tanzania – left yesterday afternoon. Zag and I are on our own for two weeks. We’ve got some good help lined up & I think we’ll be OK, though I’m sure I’ll have some weary moments. Today went OK. We’ll plug along.

After dropping Tilt off to go catch his plane yesterday, Zag and I sought solace in a trip to Target. I spent more than I intended, as one does… goofy Easter junk for the kid, a small Lego kit to hold in reserve for some day when we’re going crazy and need a diversion, a cute coat for next fall on clearance, $25 for a year’s supply of the conditioner I like. (I hate those decisions… I know it makes more sense to pay $25 for the 1 L bottle than $14 for the .4 L bottle, but the $25 just seems like so much cash. It really will last me most of a year, though.) 

Scoping out the random-junk-on-clearance aisle, we found a kit for decorating two plastic bugs. They came with a motor that would allegedly make them scoot around the floor. It was $2.48. We bought it, and Zag unpacked it and set to work while I made dinner, back home. 

We discovered immediately that the motor didn’t work. Doesn’t do a fing, as my baby brother used to say. I thought grouchily, Well, you get what you pay for, and momentarily fantasized about snarling at Target’s customer service people. But Zag was already over it. (more…)

Zag has been pronouncing titles for things lately. Sometimes there’s a story too, or a plot synopsis, but often it’s just the title, pronounced with great solemnity. This post’s title is one from this morning, while I was getting him dressed to go play in the new snow. Last night he suggested another one I like: Peter and the Wolf and the Monstrous Swell and the Bee. (more…)

Zag has a knack for asking questions at bedtime that invite a whole conversation… which, because it’s bedtime, we can’t have at that particular moment. Sometimes we get back to them; sometimes not.

Tonight at some point during the bedtime routine, he interrupted a lullaby to ask me, “What shall we name the sun and the wind and the clouds?”

Speaking of books to read once…

I’ve finished Twilight, and I’m unimpressed. Worse, I’m a little troubled. (more…)