Lovelihood

It stands to reason that someone who regularly measures out bits of fabric with a pica pole might also use a program like InDesign to plan out a quilt's color scheme to present to The Boy for approval to move forward with the project. What's left to be seen is how eye-aching that high-contrast background proves to be. The book, Boo Davis' Dare to Be Square lays out the plans for a tonal orange backdrop to a blue-and-bluer robot, a schema completely down my alley. But there's a stack of gray cotton sateen bedsheets itching to be paired with the stack of baby blue flannels that used to be his receiving blankets. So today color theory will have to cede to the demands of my stash.

It was another one of those days where the forecasted rainclouds didn't arrive until after we were all done, for the day, with being contributing members of society. Instead, it was bright and, for Seattle, bare-your-legs weather. A circumstance I took advantage of for the first half of the day, until I glanced my legs in the mirror and cursed myself for not shaving my legs in the shower this morning. Now, of course, rain is on the books for the foreseable future, so why bother with the razor?

Having fully embraced this whole digital thing, we have no proper album in which to deposit photos. There's a box somewhere, overflowing with curling prints and little envelopes of neglected negatives. The Boy has offered up his own scrappy book of odds and ends as a home for these anachronisms. And they may yet end up there. But for now I'm happy enough affixing them to the wall with bits of artist tape. But, man, I'm not so keen for the reminder that my walls aren't as white as I'd thought.

Back when I'd ordered those lenses, I also picked up a package of Polaroid film for that relic that'd been sitting on a shelf for the last decade. At $23.50 (plus shipping) for an 8-shot, it's kind of like shooting with a non-renewable resource. Like a fossil fuel. It's like taking a picture with the last barrel of crude oil on earth. And while I can (and, believe me, I have) rattle off shot after shot of the kids playing in the dirt, and then delete them all for lack of clarity or focus or proper light, for just under $3 a pic, I'm pretty much locked into the deal. And, just like my usual pre-cutting paralysis at the beginning of a sewing project, I let the unopened package of film languish on the shelf right above the one I reach for every day to grab the Nikon. But the film itself is flawed, revealing a dark column staining the right side of each shot. And rather than being pissed that my money didn't buy the finest in reproduction film, I'm rather relieved that every picture already starts from an imperfect base.

There's no shortage of little things around the house bearing the name of our college town and brewer extraordinaire. It's a place whose water was so great as to merit sloganizing, and by extension, to inspire cheeky artwork purchased for a dollar and brought home to an ignoble berth in the jaws of a binder clip affixed to the wall next to the front door. Welcome to our home.

The plan. One for evacuation from The Boy's preschool in the case of, I suppose, some kind of emergency. Clearly his cartography skills require some work. I got official word (well, mostly official — in the form of an email response to a query I'd sent out last week to Seattle Public Schools as to where the hell our kindergarten placement letter that should have arrived by now is — but it came with an ID number, so I'm calling it official) that The Boy is successfully enrolled in kindergarten for the next school year. Yeah, I'm not so sure about the construction of that last sentence, either. But the important thing is that The Boy, with his continuing education, might be able to work on his mapmaking skills. And maybe help his momma put together some more readable strings of words.

The calendar arrival of spring actually coincided with a days-long break from the rain. We managed a bit of weeding and mulching and time spent picking out plants based on the purple (The Boy's favorite color this weekend) depths of their flowers. I tasked The Mr. with drilling some holes in the bottom of the old walker wagon, which having spent the entirety of its time back in Seattle sitting on our completely-exposed-to-the-elements back deck, had seen better days. But bedded with river rock and soil, it makes a perfectly charming mobile herb garden.