Lovelihood

It started before Halloween that the office became a staging area for holiday decorations. Then Christmas and all the fabric scraps strewn about from holiday sewing. Then we got a couch and were swept up in a frenzy of new furniture aquisitions and a fresh round of unpacking and home-decorating, the home-base being, again, the office. I finally cleared away all the clutter today, enough that I was actually able to vacuum. And I was proud enough of this accomplishment that a picture felt in order. Bear decided to intrude. Will they ever be an age and size that their hands cease to amaze me?

Normally, when setting The Boy up with paints, I let him go at it with packing paper, uncrumpled after weeks, months, protecting glassware from shattering, and now stacked in the craft closet. Today, I had a desk drawer unruly with unfiled bills from the last six months. Next step, I'm told, is to fold the sheets into paper aircraft. I might have to cancel paperless billing if we keep this up.

This ghost of Halloween past was painted at pre-school and brought home to be displayed on the windowsill above our kitchen sink. It sits there still because, well, it hasn't molded yet. Still hard as ever. It reminds me of the lemon that's still sitting in a box in the basement somewhere, which, instead of rotting sensibly like anything else left to idle in a Seattle kitchen, chose to petrify itself into a stiffly fragrant rock.

As close as we get to comfort food around here. Take cooked, unseasoned ramen, stir fry with okra and pan-fried tofu (extra firm, please). Toss with soy sauce and hoisin. Don't forget, when cutting up the tofu, to set some aside, before cooking, for children to swipe off the cutting board as a pre-dinner snack. What? Don't care for okra? No worries. Bear will scarf down any you leave behind in your bowl.

The Boy, amongst his considerable loot, received a pirate ship kit for Christmas, to be assembled and painted and given a place of honor on the mantle. It also came with a cardboard eye patch which we dutifully cut from the box and strung with elastic. The Boy played the part well, "argggg"-ing in response to every query for a weekend. Now it's time to make something a little more permanent, so freezer paper was cut to make a stencil and ironed on to some fabric. The Boy did the honors with some craft paint.

Fridays are me-time. I usually don't have to work. The kids, when it's not New Year's Eve Eve, are at school. Mr. New Media isn't home puttering around in his "coding pants," getting in my way. I log a nice long run. Take a leisurely shower (I can even shave my legs if I really feel like it). Crank up the iTunes and get in some quality time with the sewing machine. What to do about lunch is usually the biggest worry of the day. Today, I settled in with some semi-instant noodles, pan-steamed gyoza and an almost-due library book. Crazy in sodium level, sure (except for the book), but it's nice to have a meal I don't have to pick up from under Bear's high-chair.

Over the summer and through early autumn, the house still a wreck of half-unpacked boxes and furniture-poor rooms, I'd get the kids geared up on material-gathering expeditions. We'd pick up pine cones and sticks and newly-turned leaves and itty bitty flowers on the way to the playground. Mostly, it was to get The Boy interested in getting out of the house, and our spoils would sit piled up in a heap by the front door. I'd seen some nice yarn-wrapped sticks out there on the internet, though, and it ended up being a pleasantly low-key project, a way for The Boy to indulge his interest in all those balls of surplus yarn I generally don't want little kids tangling up. Now the sticks contribute to the sweet hodgepodge of found and made things on our narrow little mantle.