Category Archives: Recreation

Art Every Day Month – Day 9

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My sister-in-law and brother love Paris. Bean’s godparents (why isn’t there a better term for atheists? Our other phrase, Emergency Backup Parents, is kind of bulky) recently went and loved it. Another friend also visited Paris a couple years ago. And I? Well, I stayed in an unremarkable hotel on the outskirts of Paris overnight on my 15-countries-in-2-weeks tour back in 1999. I visited Marseilles; toured Fragonard parfumeur; waved at the Eiffel Tower; toured (by bus) the Boulevard de Clichy (past Le Moulin Rouge) and the Arc de Triomphe on the Avenue des Champs-Élysées; breezed past Le Jardin de Tuileries; toured (in person) the Basilica of the Sacré Cœur and Notre Dame; and ate an incredible meal at a forgotten restaurant before riding on through the countryside on the way to whatever country was next. Maybe someday I’ll go back there for a longer visit, with Bean when she is older. I need to update my passport, though.

always paris - art every day month 2009 - day 9

Always Paris / 2.5 x 3.5″ collage

Mmmmm, Meyer Lemons

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When we moved here five years ago, I bought a little Meyer lemon tree and put it in a container. Meyer lemons are thought to be a cross between a lemon and a mandarin orange, and they are sweeter and lighter tasting than regular lemons. The tree yielded meagerly until this year. Yesterday I picked two dozen lemons off the tree, and more are coming. Mind you, this tree only stands four feed high!

What to do with all these luscious lemons? I zested and squeezed them, and put it in the freezer. I have a total of three cups of lemon juice, which I am freezing in ice cube trays. There’s a cup of zest. This is all great for baking and cooking. The next task (probably tomorrow), is to roast the little pie pumpkins we bought and puree them. Bean still loves to eat plain pureed pumpkin, and it will be great for pumpkin bread and pie. And again, I freeze it in ice cube trays to make just-right serving sizes for Bean.

meyer lemon harvest 2

Art Every Day Month – Day 1

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This is my fifth year participating in the monthlong event. I’ve been ambivalent about it this year; every year I feel a butterfly rush in my gut, but this year I’ve waffled about doing it at all. What stymied me is my personal requirement that I create one complete piece every day. AEDM is not structured this way — Leah (the originator of AEDM) particularly encourages rule-breaking — but I don’t want to relinquish this one goal. However, with travel in late November, how will I create and upload daily? Well, I decided to break one rule. Since I will be gone the last 8 days of the month, I’ve spent the last 8 days of October making art for those dates. This way, I will have made art for 30 days and still have work to share for the month.

I decided to work in a very small format — 2.5 x 3.5 inches, also known as Artist Trading Cards or Art In Your Pocket. These mini canvases call for simplicity, and one would think they would be quick to make, but they aren’t for me. Just as writing a short, concise document requires careful thought and editing (and therefore time), working with space constraints presents challenges that take time to work on. As Leah said,

“A lot of people have mentioned being a little nervous, a little jittery. Me too. It happens every year. And I think it’s interesting, but also telling because I think those things that give us a bit of the jitters are also those things that are very important to us. So notice if you feel those jitters and know you’re on the right track. And then go create.”

Without further ado, here’s my first piece.

art every day month 2009 - day 1 - house

Home / 2.5 x 3.5″ collage on card stock

Princess Bean

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We went out and covered a few blocks. Bean had fun and got lots of comments about how cute she is. She was a little shy about saying “trick-or-treat” at first but soon got the hang of it. People were very generous! She became obsessed with a giant spider decoration. We had to walk back two blocks to see it a second time; she named it Mike.

winkie wendy & princess Bean
princess Bean
a spider named mike

Happy Halloween

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I ended up carving a pumpkin after all. Bean named it Wendy because it is winking — Winkie Wendy. Bean is doing much, much better. Her fever broke yesterday. She’s still tired and has a cough, but she is well enough to say she wants to go trick-or-treating, even though I suspect she really doesn’t know what that means. I’m not sure we will go, but if we do, it will be for a very brief outing. She doesn’t really want to wear a costume. Perhaps we’ll don her in one of my blouses (long enough to be a dress) and costume jewelry, and she can go as a “lady.”

She has been waking at 5 and 5:30 a.m., so we’ll see how early she gets up tomorrow after we fall back an hour on the clock! (Please please please sleep; don’t wake up at 4 a.m.!)

winkie wendy

An All-Pajama Day

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Bean was better last weekend and on Monday. Then on Tuesday, she screamed and resisted going to music class, which is unusual because she adores going. But she said, “Please no music class,” and I honored that. We went out for a walk around the block but otherwise didn’t go anywhere. Yesterday I kept her home from preschool; she had a cough again, and generally had no energy and was clingy. We stayed inside all day. She got to watch more t.v. than usual. I called the doctor, who suggested that if she’d gotten well for any period of days and now has symptoms, that it’s probably a whole new entity (and not another secondary infection). I’m following the usual protocol. Bean woke at 2 a.m. with a fever of 102, and it’s not varied much. I’m not bothering to change out of my pajamas. We won’t be going anywhere. I feel sad for her when she’s sick.

I harbor a hope that Husband will get home early enough for me to get out to the local yarn store to hang with my friends and knit. I’ll need it. And now, here’s a rare photo. (This child never sleeps anywhere but her own crib, and in nearly all photos I take of her she is moving.)

an all pj day

The Big Pumpkin

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I had intended forgo the large pumpkin this year, but when Bean and I were at the grocery this one caught my eye. It was so round and such an appealing shade of orange. So it came home with us. I still doubt I will carve it for Halloween (famous last words!), but we decorated it with stickers (mostly I peeled and she stuck). I plan to cut the top open and scoop out the seeds to roast. Bean can have a classic taste of fall.

big pumpkin

Less Mess

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While I love getting the paints out for Bean, sometimes the paint cups are more ambitious than I want to tackle. They are spill-proof, but they are big and messy, and I am constantly moving them around so she can reach them. The other day we took a preschool field trip to a pumpkin patch where she got to paint a mini pumpkin; they used small plastic boxes with dividers in them to hold paint. The boxes held many colors and yet contained most of the mess. So we went to Michaels yesterday in search of something similar. I looked at the bead storage boxes, and most of them had moveable dividers, which meant the paint would seep into the other spaces. But I did find one that had 12 little containers, each with its own screw top, all of which can be nestled into a box. I filled them this morning and look forward to using them frequently.

paint box

Pumpkin Fun

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When we went to the pumpkin farm a couple weeks ago, I decided not to buy big pumpkins. Bean picked out a teeny one for herself. Since literally no one comes to trick-or-treat at our house in this town home complex, I haven’t carved a pumpkin — especially since my last attempt (in 2007) ended up with a slashed thumb due to my overtired condition.

I want Bean to have the fun of pumpkin carving and lighting, but I’m not sure I’m “up” for it yet; besides, she’s still young. The other day I saw pie pumpkins on sale, so I bought four for Bean to paint. It’s washable paint, which means after Halloween I can wash, bake, and puree them for pie (and for Bean, who really likes to eat plain pureed pumpkin).

She is still a little under the weather — she got an ear infection in the past week — so she spent the day in jammies and stayed inside. Here are the results:

painted pie pumpkins

A Rite of Passage

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For the last 10 months, each morning Bean sits with her Dad on the sofa, watching PBS shows while he works from home for an hour, giving me a break to shower and prep for the day. One of her first and favorite shows has been Between the Lions. It’s a show with a muppet-style lion family that runs a library. Many stories are read, and vowels and consonants are explored. It’s a really creative show. (The pun between the lions refers to “reading between the lines” and to walking between the lions at the entrance of the New York City public library.)

On the show they talk about getting a library card; for the past couple of months, if you ask Bean, “What do you do with a library card?” She answers, “You bring the books to the lady and she lets you take them home.” In recent months she’s been talking more about going to the library. (We had not gone to story hour since she turned 1, because the librarian who runs the story hour for ages 1-2 is a stickler for making the children sit still, and has been known to chastise mothers if their children don’t follow the rules. So we haven’t been.)

Today, because we stayed out of preschool so as not to share any lingering germs, we went to the library to get Bean her very own library card. She was very proud of it and told her Dad all about it when he got home from work. She picked three books for herself, and we’ve read them each about a dozen times already. I’m sure we’ll be making regular trips from now on.

Bean's library card!

Open The Heavens

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I’m excited. The rains are coming.

Now, you have to live in California to appreciate my enthusiasm. The weather is subtle here. When I speak of rains, I don’t mean the hair-raising, eardrum-splitting drama of a Texas thunderstorm. (Oh, how I miss those!) Even my hometown, Syracuse, is capable of stormy antics. No, the rains here are often mists or light drizzles, though it has been known to pour heavily and steadily here (spring of 2006 was an example). Rare is the thunderstorm here. About a month ago there was a thunderstorm in the middle of the night, the first in perhaps a year — nothing to write about, but still one that woke me — and it generated many comments on among my Facebook and Twitter companions. It was kind of pathetic, and therefore funny.

Here the earth receives no precipitation of substance for about six months each year during the hottest season. The ground shrivels and shrinks up like an O-cello sponge that escaped its packaging. Bean would not nap today, not even in my arms, so I took a long country ramble. As I drove through the hills, I noticed the boar-bristle landscape, the grass stiff and scratchy and looking as though it ached for rain. The stoic trees clutched their leaves, desperate for the the cleansing shower of drops. The air was a gauze curtain of dust and smog. We are parched and poised. And on Tuesday, the meteorologists say, we will be drenched and quenched.

From Weather Underground:

Heavy rain and potentially high winds expected to accompany a significant storm expected to hit late Monday into early Wednesday of next week…

A potent storm system… especially for October… will move into central and northern California beginning late Monday and continuing through Wednesday morning. This will be a very dramatic change from the typical late Summer pattern the area has been experiencing. The origins of this storm Stem from a western Pacific typhoon named Melor that hit Japan a few days ago.

Rain and increasing wind will begin in the North Bay Monday afternoon… spreading south Monday night. Tuesday and Tuesday night should see the heaviest rainfall and the strongest winds. Rainfall amounts could reach 1 to 3 inches along the coast and in the valleys. In the hills… rainfall amounts will range from 2 to 4 inches in the North Bay… with 3 to 6 inches in the Santa Cruz and northern Santa Lucia Range near Big Sur. Local amounts up to 8 to 10 inches are possible in the Santa Cruz and Santa Lucia Range. Winds Tuesday and Tuesday night will increase to 20 to 40 mph along the coast and in the hills. Gusts to 60 mph are possible in these areas. Strong southerly winds may develop in the northern Salinas valley and southern Santa Clara valleys with this storm.

Potential impacts from this storm system include:

  • possible mud and debris flows from burn scars from last Summer and this Summer. Persons living near these areas should pay close attention to updated forecasts.
  • Urban and Small Stream flooding and ponding on roadways and underpasses.
  • High winds that can down trees and thus power lines producing power outages.
  • Hazardous driving conditions due to very slippery Road conditions from a buildup of oil over the Summer and debris such as leaves accumulating on the roads.

If you want me, you’ll find me inside with my face pressed up against the window, tracking the raindrops as they wander down the window and watching the trees dance. If Bean is over her cold, you’ll probably find us outside in rain gear pouncing on puddles. The crumpled hills will soon turn emerald green. W00t!!

rain on leaves

A First Step

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Husband and I are homebodies. We aren’t big travelers, and we particularly don’t like to fly. We haven’t flown since 2006. In fact, we have never flown anywhere with Bean, and have only had one overnight away from home with her — in Monterey, in August. She was not the type of baby who slept in the stroller if I hauled her all over town. If she was out, she was awake and stimulated. She is inquisitive and curious.

We think about flying east to see my folks, but the length of the trip and the three-hour time shift daunts us. So we decided to try a shorter jaunt, to see Bean’s aunt and uncle in Austin at Thanksgiving.

We just booked our tickets. We actually found flights that were reasonably priced, although we’ll still have a layover in Colorado, and it will be a long day of travel. But it’s done! So this will be an adventure.

So now I need to know: What do you pack for a two-year-old on the plane (total travel including layover is 9 hours) that doesn’t offer meal service either? What do you pack for an eight-day stay somewhere? Any suggestions are welcome.