groundspeed

Nobody Likes a Wet Dog

In highschool and undergrad I had equal love for poetry and prose. And then, like the rest of the world, I turned my back to poetry. 

Even so, when I taught at LeTourneau, a sort of basic intro to the genres class, I loved watching people who claimed to hate and not understand poetry come awake to it when we got to that section.

One of the poems I always taught was Dharma by Billy Collins.  

It's funny. It's accessible. It's about a dog.

Billy Collins was one of the presenting authors at this year's Key West Literary Seminar and he read another dog poem, a poem that came to mind this morning.

The skies opened up and I saw my dog not taking shelter under our covered patio but walking out in the grass, sniffing and licking at small pools of water, and I thought of the Collin's poem, "To a Stranger Born in Some Distant Country Hundreds of Years from Now."

My first thought was stupid dog, but my second went to poetry. And it's nice to think of poetry in the morning.

Taken from inside my house through the sliding glass door, because, unlike my dog, I had no desire to play in the rain this morning. 

So here's that poem:

To a Stranger Born in Some Distant Country Hundreds of Years from Now
Billy Collins 

Nobody here likes a wet dog.
No one wants anything to do with a dog
that is wet from being out in the rain
or retrieving a stick from a lake.
Look how she wanders around the crowded pub tonight
going from one person to another
hoping for a pat on the head, a rub behind the ears,
something that could be given with one hand
without even wrinkling the conversation.

But everyone pushes her away,
some with a knee, others with the sole of a boot.
Even the children, who don’t realize she is wet
until they go to pet her,
push her away,
then wipe their hands on their clothes.
And whenever she heads toward me,
I show her my palm, and she turns aside.

O stranger of the future!
O inconceivable being!
whatever the shape of your house,
however you scoot from place to place,
no matter how strange and colorless the clothes you
may wear,
I bet nobody there likes a wet dog either.
I bet everybody in your pub,
even the children, pushes her away. 

Talking and a Fish Face

For no apparent reason whatsoever Blue says, ""What smells like watermellon?"

So I say: "Your boogers."

And Kaden says, "Good one, Mom."

***

For no apparent reason whatsoever Blue says, "Sometimes I don't wear underwear."

***

For no apparent reason whatsoever Blue says, "Let's sleep the next 24 days and then wake up for Christmas."

***

Toby, who is entirely too tall for his age, reaches for my cell phone on the counter, which I thought I'd pushed out of reach. I say, "Who are going to call?"

Blue says, "He's calling Mary."

I say, "Who's Mary?" (I don't have any friends named Mary.)

Blue says, "You know, Mary and Joseph."

***

If you say, "Happy Hippo" to Toby he will absolutely answer you by saying, "Angry duck." (Thank you, Sandra Boynton.)

***

Toby also likes to walk around saying the word, "Goofbot" over and over. (Thank you, Mickey Mouse Clubhouse.)

***

Blue is always asking me, "Is this a fish face?" And then he makes some weird expression that is not at all a fish face, so today I told him to make a fish face so I could get a picture of one of his odd ball non fish face faces, and then he managed to make a fish face. Typical.

Ok. Still odd ball.

Dear Sock Monster,

Seriously?

I did ALL the laundry on Saturday and here's what was left after the final load of clothes was put away. Maybe sock monsters up their eating during the holidays too.

Starfish Wreaths

Our front door Christmas wreath wasn't nice enough to make the move. Christmas 2009 we were at my mom's. Christmas 2010 we were in our new home but TWO new wreaths (because we have double doors) wasn't in the budget, so our doors stayed naked.

This year it wasn't really in the budget either but...

Oh well. 

I wanted wreaths.

I wanted blue and white wreaths to match my blue and white house.  I wanted star fish on my wreaths but I wanted them to be Christmasy not just every-day beachy.

Surprisingly enough I haven't come across exactly what I wanted in a store anywhere.

So I set out to make wreaths. This was my black-Friday project.

I don't consider myself crafty and I've never made a wreath before, but I bought the plain twig wreaths and figured with a glue gun, how could I go wrong?

I spray-painted my wreaths white, bought a bunch of star fish and two shells at Shell Bazaar, a few blue ornaments and got out my glue gun. The star fish and shells are just glue gunned on. The ornaments are tied together and then on and then glue gunned in spots to be exactly where I want them. 

That's it. One afternoon and done.

Looking around most nice wreaths cost between $50 and $100 and I'd say each wreath cost me about $25. (It's only that high because I spent $29 just in star fish and the two shells!) Definitely a worthwhile DIY project.

wedding thank you

It's been over a month since my niece's wedding in Panama City Beach but about every third day we still have conversations with Kaden and/or Blue that go something like this:

Kaden or Blue: "When are we going back to that house? The one with the pool and the wii. For Mesa's wedding."

Kevin or me: "We're not. We just rented that house while we were there for the wedding. She's married. We're not going back."

Kaden or Blue: "But when Erin gets married we're going back." (Erin is another niece and she is engaged to be married - date set for next August.)

Kevin or me: "Erin isn't getting married at the beach. Erin is getting married in Tennessee."

Kaden or Blue: audible heartbreak

But we recently got a happy reminder in the mail of our super fun beach vacation week:

As Kevin wrote on Mesa's facebook wall, "got the best wedding thank you note (by far). it was very much our pleasure. we couldn't be happier for you two."

Go ahead. You know you want to pin it.

(As for me, it's literally pinned on a board we have in our laundry room for picture things.)

10 Year and 10 Days

I knew this was going to be an expensive anniversary because in addition to our Montana trip I wanted to do a family photo shoot - kind of a here's where we've come in a decade type thing. We had our photo shoot on August 28th, 10 years and 10 days from our wedding day, and tonight we had our sit down with our photographer to choose our prints.  Here's what we had to choose from:

Photo Slideshow

Our kids are too cute so we are now totally broke, but come over sometime. We'll have LOTS of great pictures to show you!

FREE Book

I bought this book because of the Fragile X plot line but haven't read it yet, so I can't recommend exactly but THE PRICE IS RIGHT.  

The author, Maureen Lang, just sent this message to a Fragile X listserv I'm part of:

I wanted to let everyone know that for the next few weeks (until Sept 24th), The Oak Leaves will be a free download for anyone with a Kindle, Nook or electronic reader (or you can download it to your computer or phone if you have an app to read Kindle books, I believe).

For those new to the list, this 2007 novel is about a woman who discovers her Victorian grandmother's journal and references to the "feeblemindedness" in her family - just as the modern day woman begins seeing signs of developmental delay in her toddler. It's a fictional story about a family just learning about Fragile X in their genes and told from two generations, one modern and the other Victorian.

I'm so glad my publisher is doing this promotion - right now The Oak Leaves is No. 1 on the Free Kindle download list (yippee!) so maybe it's attracting new readers who will learn about Fragile X as they're (hopefully) being entertained.

Just in the interest of full disclosure, I wrote the book from a Christian perspective, although it's more a story of how people with a Christian worldview handle the diagnosis rather than a story preaching Christianity.

So if you have a Kindle or Nook, the price is right to take a peek at this book. :-)

Here are the links:

Kindle (Amazon)

Nook (Barnes and Noble) 

Nieces!

Kevin's parents watched our kids while we were on our Montana trip.  The week before we dumped left our boys, Kevin's sister was down with her four and our trips overlapped for one weekend.  This was terrific because we got to meet two-month-old Bethan who was, at the time, our newest niece.

I informed Bethan that even though I didn't know her very well, she'd already surpassed Chloe in niece rankings because Chloe had just broken a lamp I loved and had hoped to inherit.  Bethan seemed underwhelmed by this news.

Meanwhile my other Stratton-side sis-in-law (also the aforementioned Chloe's mom) was already about five days past her due date with a baby girl.  Baby girl decided to debut on August 12 (11 days past due date!) so we got to see her yesterday before she even left the hospital.  

Welcome, Stella!

It's a good thing we're home and away from all these babies.  I so don't need the tempatation to try for our own girl!

 

Very Much Alive, Thank You

This time last year we were cleaning and painting and unpacking and cleaning and unpacking and painting and assembling and...

We closed on our house at the end of April last year.  We didn't get our stuff from out of storage till the second week of May and didn't move in until sometime after that.  But on May 23rd, Toby's 1st birthday, we had his party at the house, oh yes we did!  This meant that last year, whenever I bought something for the house, it was also considered part of the party decorations.  :-)

When I came home with this hibiscus plant for the front porch, Kevin was all like, why don't you just rip up our money and toss it in the air for the wind to carry away?  (I have a history for killing potted plants.) But here it is, a year later WITH THREE BLOOMS.

HA!

We Have Sand

One of the first things we did at this house was put up a playset in the backyard.  And since that day last May when the playset went up Kevin and I have been having the exact same conversation:

Me: When are you going to order the sand for under the playset?

He: Are you sure you want sand?  I think we should get mulch.

Me: Kevin!  I want sand.  I'm not changing my mind. Order the (bleepin') sand.  (The ! and the bleepin' only came after months of this conversation.)

10 months go by...

He ordered the sand!

And on Saturday he plans to move it under the playset where it belongs.

How many betters out there think that by Sunday when I'm sweeping a mountain of sand the boys have tracked in, that I sweetly ask Kevin if it's too late to go ahead and get mulch?