That Iconic First Day of School Photo

Ah jeez, our first-day-of-school photo came out a little weird, I took at least 15 photos and this was the best one, he is squinting because he's preparing for the flash, the only way he will look at the camera is if the flash is pulled up. It was muggy and pouring rain, which helped us discover his summer sandals and his raincoat are Spidey matches!

As for school, he loved it! He gets lots of teacher attention and by the time I picked him up he was in his glory in the school's enormous sandbox. No tears from Mom, not that there couldn't have been plenty, but I was strong and denied my feelings once again, a capital survival skill indeed!

Festivalia

Logistics kept Jimmy and me from watching Daddy's band perform at today's Whoopie Pie Festival in Dover-Foxcroft, Maine, ayuh. So, yassou, Jimmy and I went to the Greek Food Festival instead.

The old me would have walked to this festival, but the old me also lived 3 blocks away. And didn't have Jimmy. We weren't superhungry, we kept it small.

I really thought the Kataifi was interesting and delicious,

...but Jimmy was a little weirded out by the texture and took over the salad's bread roll.



A little word from the sponsors...

...and we had great fun! I was sorry that we missed the traditional Greek dancers, I think Jimmy would have really enjoyed that, and we missed having hubby and his foodlove there, but since he was having fun at the Whoopie Pie Festival we didn't mind. Festivals all around!

Yum-MEEEEE

I just had to share tonight's dinner, it was too yummy!



The rest of the day was too embarrassing to admit, I spent it on the Frontier,



...which is something I said I wouldn't do, I recently heard someone describe what life is like on heroin, and these games are the same, it becomes very important to spend all your time and resources on fake crops aiming to 'level-up!', meanwhile your kid is drinking bleach inside an abandoned refrigerator, somewhere. Still, after planting little crops for 24 hours I got a kick out of the little crops in our own backyard.

Cute! These are the last few days before Jimmy starts preschool, we've been meaning to give him a "school haircut" but everytime it gets mentioned I see this:

and convince myself that summer preschool is "hardly real school" and therefore no need to harvest all those summer surferboy curls. (Or has hubby calls them "His girl hair." Pbfft. Whatever.) Hopefully real strawberry picking tomorrow!

Why having a toddler is like being at a frat party...

This is from Brenna at Suburban Snapshots, I just thought it was funny*
*judging by that one frat party I've ever been to, having gone to a Major Frat Party College.

Why Having a Toddler is
Like Being at a Frat Party*

Thursday, June 10, 2010

*That one frat party I've ever been to, having gone to a Very Serious Arts College.

10. There are half-full, brightly-colored plastic cups on the floor in every room. Three are in the bathtub.

9. There's always that one girl, bawling her eyes out in a corner.

8. It's best not to assume that the person closest to you has any control over their digestive function.

7. You sneak off to the bathroom knowing that as soon as you sit down, someone's going to start banging on the door.

6. Probably 80% of the stains on the furniture contain DNA.

5. You've got someone in your face at 3 a.m. looking for a drink.

4. There's definitely going to be a fight.

3. You're not sure whether anything you're doing is right, you just hope it won't get you arrested.

2. There are crumpled-up underpants everywhere.

1. You wake up wondering exactly how and when the person in bed with you got there.

Happy Solstice!

It was a bit of a scorcher today, 85 degrees, and since we don't have an a/c unit at the house we instead took our little family unit back to nature's own air conditioning: the ocean. It was more like 75 degrees at Kettle Cove, the water was divine (so thought our ankles) and since it was the first day of summer it made me wonder what the temps were like in Iqaluit, Canada.

Iqaluit's weather came to mind because this morning my dad emailed me an unexpected photo of an Inukshuk sculpture who appeared in his Maine backyard (he didn't explain how...) (...and I hope he doesn't mind me sharing...)

We've all seen the "image of man's spirit" as the mascot for the Vancouver Olympics, but there's also one on the Iqaluit/Nunavut flag.

I've always harbored a soft spot for Canada and other northern countries, because of the whole "cold" thing. As much as I haaaaate freezing, I just loooove warming up by a cozy fire and I'm fascinated when humans thrive in cold climates. And Iqaluit being a newish city in the Arctic circle: Freaking awesome.

And their Summer Solstice temps: 37 degrees Fahrenheit. Ouch!!! I suppose I do like the 4 seasons afterall (ahhhh, Maine!) Happy Solstice, all!

Coming soon, maybe to a fairground near you, maybe not

I'm very excited that my babydaddy and his band are going to be appearing at the Nateva Music & Camping Festival, we are going to be a load of camping fools, can't wait!!

Oh, and HAPPY FATHER'S DAY to all you groovy dads out there!

The Costume Department

The other day I made a FB post about how Jimmy flipped his shirt around and how it ended up looking like an elaborate (gay?) Cecil B. DeMille character, or a Kevin Sorbo spartan:



...and he did it again this afternoon, only today he wore it differently, the look was less cape-y and more Tony Dovolani bullfighter-y:

He also made a new costume out of Wally's t-shirt, we weren't sure what to make of it, was he a little Muslim girl...

...or was it the chainmail part of a knight's armor.

Whatever it was, it was pretty cute. Moments later we caught him applying my compact makeup, this is when Daddy threw in an "alright, alright, alright, enough!" but this mama is pretty pleased with her talented theatrical son!

The Pot Calling the Kettle Cute

Yesterday we went to go strawberry picking, but oops, they don't open until Thursday, so we hung a left and went to Kettle Cove. Father and son's harmonized sense of balance was too cute for words.

I'm so thankful that Jimmy is so outdoorsy, I'm thinking that someday when the shit hits the fan I'll be able to lean on his survival instincts, cuz I don't have none!

Summer is...

...molded food season!

All's you need is a KitchenAid,



and some gelatin,



and a host of other ingredients, then even Jimmy can't resist a mold's congealed charm.



Happy pineapple lime cheesecake mold summer!

Black and White and Enlightening All Over

Betwixt the points of Section 8, Interstate, and City's Main Artery sits a 1/8th acre property, a Beatrix-Pott'd plot of greenery and woodland creatures which I like to call our land. As a family we work toward our dreams of natural sustenance and we acknowledge our home's relationship with squirrels and birds and chipmunks and mice (thank you, Stephie Kitty) and groundhogs, all the while receiving the headlines of chemical pollution and genetically altered foods and oil spills. Sometimes today's headlines make us feel like it's a mistake that we human beings share the planet with the rest of nature.

Tonight while Wally was working and after Jimmy went na-nights I took a moment of me-time into the back yard and soon found myself face-to-face with a skunk. I was shocked, I hadn't been near a skunk in quite a while so after he passed me and slipped around the corner of the house I hid behind a chair. Thirty seconds later he returned, presumably to check our back porch for catfood, but he stopped for a half moment as I squicked out a 2nd "holy shit!" attack and then turned around and hugged the fence as he ran towards the compost pile. Phew, thankfully not 'p.u.'

And then I started thinking...how nice it is, that here we regularly deal with bland, earthy-colored but personally harmless wild rodentia, yet when it comes to a real threat, like a squirty skunk, that a skunk's coloring is unmistakable. Deer and meese and bears may also wear brown-tones, but they also have the size to indicate their danger---but these Black and White skunks who are so easily identified by day or by night...they really set a level playing field, like a warning sign to all us jerky territorial humans to back off, or else. A symbiotic understanding of power. After a day of reading about government lies and oil-drenched pelicans and how the American Cancer Society's aim isn't actually to eliminate cancer, the skunk encounter really illuminated the natural relationship that we have with animals and with the land, and it made me feel a little bit better about being here. Kumbaya. (but we still need to do better, gawd!)

Attack of the Rachels

This has been bothering me for a while. I have this "classic" name that the babyname books tell me will never go out of style, I have a love/hate re-laysh with it, I always thought it was pretty looking, but as a child I had this neurological aversion to the "ch" sound so it was difficult to have CCCCHHHH in the middle of my first name. I'm (sort of) over the "ch" thing :minishudder: and I admit to many years of school happiness with just one other Rachel in my class, and that Rachel was my first grade teacher Sr. Rachel (a wretchel!) so I got to avoid the whole "Rachel L." thing. In the 90s I enjoyed the obscure Take Him Back, Rachel song. I liked that the name wasn't overexposed (Hi, Jen) and it wasn't tooo unique and it didn't force people into having to climb over some kooky situation (Hi, girl named Michael.) (Sorry, but.)

Since January 2010, the Rachels have been exposed. It's making me a little mental, I'm developing another neurological aversion. There's been an influx, an explosion of celebrity Rachels, an explosion of fictional Rachels, Rachels in the news, Rachels posting in your friends' Facebook comments, Rachels dominating the blogs, Rachels saturating the talk shows, Rachels invading the internet, Rachels being born, take a look they are EVERYWHERE. Rachel is the new Aiden, the name is losing whatever specialness it had, where did they come from?? I'm hoping maybe like how Aiden mutated into Caden, Braden, Jaden, Hayden, Zaiden, that the heat will back off all these RACHELS and we'll get Kachels and Braytchels, Jaychels, Hate-chuls, and Zaitchlz. Please, new mommies. Ration the Rachels, consider a mutation, if not for the future of the interplanet, then for ME!

Ok, no, wait. That mutating thing is a horrible idea, nevermind.

The Good News, Or The Bad

I customarily prefer the Bad News first, many thanks to anyone who voted, but hubby's band didn't win Best New Act in the Portland Phoenix's Best Music Poll, BUT they came in 4th (not bad for a write-in) and the band who did win, Dead Man's Clothes, is a band that Wally records in his studio, so congrats to those guys, er, woodland animals~!

Also good news, my brother Mark's band Twisted Roots won for Best Heavy Music/Metal Act, it is evidently their first win for this category, wtg!

First runner-up for Best Heavy Music/Metal was Ocean, my brother John's band, but that's o.k. because John's other band Sun Gods in Exile pulled in first for Best Rock Act, wheeeee!

I'm pretty sure that no one I'm related to was present at the ceremony to pick up their awards, but I'm sure the recognition is nice, congrats to all!

Lady Luv

Today Jimmy was showered with lots of female attention. First he received an Irish knit blankie handmade by his British grandmother, then my stepmother surprised us with a supercute Tinkerbell satin pillow, and it was after that at my 8th grade nephew's school band performance where things got totally berserk.

At the performance Jimmy was being his normal squirrely self so I took him out of the auditorium's row seating and into the lobby where some other little girls were playing footloose and fancy free. Jimmy of course noticed them and was shy, but intrigued. This is a little boy who is an only child and has spent his first 3 years at home, so I was pretty fascinated with the turn of events, another onlooker marveled at the natural instincts of such a young child, that he is "hard wired" to understand that these were girls, not species precisely the same as he. Jimmy found himself engaged with 3.5 yo girl, I watched lots of flirting, lots of dancing around one another, lots of attempts to test and secure acceptance, this was way beyond peek-a-boo, it was crazy! And then once Jimmy was "in" with her, she kinda threw herself at him and he took a step back. What a playah! But then they recalibrated their "dance" and Jimmy was so gentle with her, he was interested in what she was like, what she could offer, and she was just as interested in him, it was soooooooo cute! Eventually her dad swooped in and took her back to watch the performance, but Jimmy shrugged it off, turned around and busted his way in between two 5yo girls wearing identical pink tutus and wrapped his arms around the waist of each one, completely macking on them. These two weren't ready for him and flashed me looks of "WHAT IS GOING ON," it was pretty funny, but I enticed Jimmy away, and it was time to go. Watching his respect and virility and interest in these girls really made an impact on me, and makes me even more anxious to get him into preschool, his first day starts June 28!

Once home Jimmy snuggled into the couch as I did laundry, he sunk under his grandma's blanky and paid particular attention to Tink's velvety silhouette.



I think he figures this was a good day.