Sundays with Stretchy Pants

And so it didn’t come with the internet all flowing through it. Or a phone. Or a dvr. None of that will be there until Monday. We moved in on Sunday, the 22nd and it’s been hard, dirty work, but completely sweet to have space and room to run. The kids have been outside more in the last several days than in the last 4 years. For realz. The cleaning is done, new floors are put in, there’s a roof issue that needs to be addressed, but I’m mostly in the putting stuff away phase. And there are places to put all of our stuffs.

Other than that, the kids and I snuggled up to watch and review the movie version of The Boy in the Striped Pajamas last night. It was so good and so terrible. We all sobbed and cuddled for a long time afterward. No happy endings in The Holocaust, FYI. Lena and Liberty have done their part of the review, but I still have to get it uploaded and posted on Kids Know Stuff. Maybe tomorrow while they’re at gym. But you guys should all totally go get that dvd. It’s the best. And the worst. I haven’t read the book, though, so my opinion is based solely on the movie. I wasn’t sure about having the kids watchit, but I decided that they would be able to handle it with the constant talking and going over everything that you know I like to do. And I think it’s ok to cry during movies about the Holocaust. Super ok in fact, and, while my instinct is to protect my children from sadness, I also know it’s important to feel those feelings and understand that time in history as it relates to racism, sexism, and heterosexism today. It’s important to be sad about it, to be disgusted by it, to be enraged by it, and to understand the slippery slope of THIS is right and THAT is wrong. It’s the slipperiest of slopes.

*sigh* It was a good movie.

I have to go back to my new house now and unpack more boxes. I’m going to skip all the way there, singing, “Tra la la!” Just so you know.

My brother does this thing where he plays his guitar and harmonica and sings good songs and stuff. He’s going to do it at Gresso’s in Columbus on April 10th or 11th. Do you wanna come see? I’ll be there! If that doesn’t sweeten the deal, I don’t know what will.

Here’s a mellow sample. He does less mellow, too.  And his own stuff. It’s all good. That reminds me, I saw a comedian once say, “I think it’s unfair that Neil Young can sing, play guitar, and play harmonica all at the same time and everybody loves it and he’s a serious artist and everything, but if he were to add a pair of cymbals to his knees, then he’d just be a moron.” Here’s my brother, sans cymbals:

Yes, the baby is fat, but look at that bathroom! Isn’t it gross? But still, I turned out ok. Sort of.  I say this because we’re buying a house with awesomely dated bathrooms. Maybe. You never know until you actually close. We have a closing date (March 19th), time, and location, so we’ll probably close. But still. It’s a great house, great location, just a little dated. The bathrooms are especially dated, with seashell-shaped sinks in one of them. The other one has a dark brown toilet. And those bathrooms always make me think of that old bathroom in that picture up there.

Oh, and! There’s a Florida room. My friends and I get to play Golden Girls in it. I get to be Betty White because she always had a story about back in St. Olaf and I always have a story about back in Chesaning. I’ll let those of you who know Lynne, Kristen, and Dawn guess who gets to be lusty Blanche, straight-talking, offensive Sophia, and steady-eddie Dorothy. It’s hard to pick because they’re all so slutty and offensive!

Anyway, I’m packing. All the time packing.

When it’s this dark in the morning, I can’t decide whether to spring out of bed and go on a crime spree, or just go back to sleep. One thing is for certain: I have Maya’s song in my head a lot more when I wake up to blackness. That’s probably not good. I think it’s worse at this time of year because it’s fun to see it get lighter a little bit earlier every morning and, just when it’s light at a decent enough hour, BAM! Stupid dumb ol’ spring ahead.

Anyway, here’s another installment of Disturbing Images. This time, Liberty is the artist and I think you’ll see that her art goes in a completely different direction. First, “Big Heart”:

From the artist: “I like to draw colorful hearts and I like to practice drawing my hearts.”

And the next one is called “I LOVE PEOPLES” (she typed the title in all caps when she saved it, so I assumed that was part of the art):

When asked about this piece, Liberty said, “I like drawing random stuff.” I asked her if she remembered what she was doing or what was going on at the time that made her choose the title and she said, “Um, no I don’t. Nothing was going on, I just love people.” Disturbing.

She makes me wonder how twinship changes birth order expectations. She is technically the middle child and technically one of the firstborns. She’s a peacemaker, but SHE LOVES PEOPLES and never compares herself or feels angsty about her place in the family. She’s easygoing now, but that’s only after years of occupational therapy for sensory issues. She used to be different. Still lovely and precious, of course, but she used to have a really hard time with life. The business of all of those unpredictable stuffed animals and real animals out in the world, for one thing. We couldn’t take her into the toy aisle in a supermarket without her covering her ears, closing her eyes, and crying. That was because she was afraid of the motion-activated toys. Non-animatronic stuffed animals were also not to be trusted. All that fur and those expectant eyes, pleading, “Hold me! Pet me!” Creepy. Don’t even get me started about the trauma induced by a Koosh ball. A Koosh ball could send this child running like nothing else. And when, as part of her therapy, she finally deigned to be in the same room as one, she would not touch it, but she would eat it. Weird.

Maybe the OT helped her cope with life, or maybe she’s just going along to get along and she’s going to stab us all one day. Who knows? I believe her brain was hard-wired to expect pain and suffering because of her traumatic birth (premie, c-section, aspirated amniotic fluid and had to be intubated) and then having surgery to repair the esophageal atresia and tracheoesophageal fistula when she was two days old, which meant that she couldn’t be held for a couple of weeks. She was in an isolette for 2 weeks before anybody could even hold her. So fucking sad. So that put her in a constant state of fight-or-flight, which led to some interesting coping techniques, which led to our nurse practitioner saying, “She does what? WTF? Get her to an OT!” And so we did(*cough* not until she was almost 3, though, because we were the parents and the parents just see that shit and go, “Huh. That’s weird,” and then go about their business. Parents are so dumb sometimes). Anyway, now she doesn’t think the world is filled with pain and trauma around every corner and her art reflects that. The end.

Maya isn’t awake yet so I can’t ask her about this series of art work. Lena and Liberty told me they were all made around Halloween last year. When Maya was 4. Apparently she made up a song to go with this first creation. The picture and the song are both called “Blood is Dripping” and the song goes like this:

Blood is dripping

Blood is dripping

Blood is dripping

The next one is called “Blood Before Halloween.”

And the last one is “The Forest of Death,” but, as Liberty points out, “It’s so pink and there isn’t really any death in it. Well, I guess that triangle’s kind of sharp.” I think she purposely made it pink to point out how our culture’s pre-defined gender roles and expectations for women can be a sort of death. *cough*