Lovelihood

Difficult to tell, but that's a tiger, a scavenger hunt prize picked out by The Boy earlier this month at a friend's annual Independence Day shindig. He filled the cage up with water, was several times reminded that it would take a few days to grow into full tiger size, and tucked it in a bucket where other little toys are sequestered, out of the way and forgotten. Tidying up the other day, he pulled out the cage, tiger now fully grown, and was so excited about its growth you would have thought a living, breathing animal had actually made its way into the cage, instead of the bloated mass of whatever that material is, shedding murkiness into the water that helped it grow. Boy wants to attach it to his backpack. I rather like it on my shelf.

I tried, last week, to instill in The Boy my love of school supply shopping. Armed with our modest list of items a Kindergartener needs to attend school in this town, and warnings not to deviate from the list, lest it turn into a novelty pencil popularity contest, we bombed out at every school supply purveyor we hit up. Who knew a 12 pack of Crayola washable markers would be so elusive? So with more than a little bit of shame I ordered the neccessary accoutrements online. To ease the sting a bit, I also snuck two sweet little bento boxes into our order, to be filled up with lunchtime goodies when the big day arrives.

In about a month, The Boy will commence with pre-Kindergarten activities at his new school. Are we prepared? Physically, phychologically, intellectually or otherwise? Most likely not. But during some downtime today, I sat him down while I worked through some things on the computer, and had him read to me from this gem of a book-grab find. He slogged through a good chunk of it admirably, all that Montessori phonetic learning kicking in. And when he tired of that, he opened up the little goodie bag notebook he scored from yesterday's birthday party and took down some notes from the reading. Vampires.

Took the last of that Echino laminated linen, paired it with the last of my gray wool felt, and whipped up a gift bag for yet another in a seemingly endless line of birthday parties. That laminatted fabric was such fun to work with, I'm tempted to grab up some more in, like, every pattern available.

The other half of yesterday's haul, the proof press, sat in the trunk of our little car until we worked up the energy to heft it out and into a cool corner in the basement. I've been saying it's the heaviest thing I've ever carried (with help). And while I'm not entirely sure about the veracity of that statement, I do know that the car, when I took it out to the store afterward, was notably happier for not having the press weighing the trunk down over the rear axle. In the press' near future will be a good deep cleaning.

There's irony here. I've spent my entire career working in print media. And while the modern (you might call it dying) era of print is far removed from the days of metal type and hand-cranked presses — I mean, my relationship with it is through a computer screen, fercryinoutloud — it's still, you know, the same basic concept. Ink and paper and reproduction and all that. Mr. New Media, on the other hand, has spent his entire career parsing out lines of code designed to erradicate my entire line of work. And somehow it was at his work that he came across a back-breaking boxful of headline-sized Helvetica bits and an ancient beast of a proof press sitting in a forgotton corner next to the garage. And he knew enough to call me down to haul it away, with the proper permissions, of course. Because what were their plans for it? Sell it off as scrap metal, to be smelted down for, I don't know, computer parts or something. I guess that's not ironic at all.

It turned summer on us just in time for our late-ish lunch today, so we took our proceedings to the back deck, hauling out our once-a-week guilty pleasure lunch of chicken tenders and frozen waffles, our own prefabbed soul food. A bowlful of blueberries and pitted cherries rounded out today's lunch.