Sunday, December 6, 2009

"mishmallows"

My dear in-laws kept my 6 kiddies for me on Saturday while I made my fortune selling bread at a "boutique" on a residential street corner in front of someone's house. When I returned to fetch them I was greeted by a row of ginger-bread style graham cracker houses each created with different levels of skill and creativity. They were covered with candy (of course) and mini-marshmallows.

I managed to load everyone into the car with their houses on their laps except my 3-year-old boy. When I went in to fetch him Grandpa told me that he'd gone to the toilet down the hall. There he was, little bum hanging into the toilet, balanced on the front edge of the seat. This is his conversation with me;

Adam: "I'm having poops...and it's hurteen' my neck. The poops are hurteen' my neck when I'm pushing them out."

Me: "It hurts your neck when you poop?"

Adam: "Yep. The mishmallows are hurteen' my neck when I poop because I ate too many and now I have a tummy ache."

He is so right about that. When I eat too many "mishmallows" I get a tummy ache, too, but I'm not sure I've had a neck ache from them as well.

Saturday, October 3, 2009

Hold On



This is my latest achievement. I saw the reference photo for this piece in a local news story. The subjects are the wife and newborn of a fallen soldier. He was killed just days after returning to Iraq after being home for this birth of his baby girl and this is wife as his body is returned to American soil. This is an 11x14 color pencil portrait on a smooth Bristol paper. I titled it "Hold On."

Sunday, September 27, 2009

Antiques

My three oldest daughters and I were looking forward to meeting a family friend at the Tempe Center for the Arts yesterday (Saturday) to be her guests at a pre-show reception. After the reception the girls were going to be treated to their first theatrical performance by the the Child's Play Theatre. We were on time and thirty seconds from the building waiting at a tricky intersection for the light to turn green when I noticed a little white haired old lady peeking over the steering wheel of her late model orange Mustang in the lane to the right of ours.

Since the street that we were both on ended there we were both required to turn right when the light changed. I made a mental note to give the Mustang as wide a berth as possible recognizing that her turn would be sharper than my own. Just as I turned into the new lane I saw the orange of the Mustang get really close before she hit my 2003 Chevy Suburban and shoved us up onto the median. She proceeded to gun it enough to propel her car up over the median until her Mustang was straddling the median where she finally found the brake.

Mavis (as she later introduced herself to be) got out of her car unharmed and asked me what happened. I explained that she ran into me after crossing into my lane. She had no idea that there had been two right-turn lanes and was expecting to just make a wide turn. She called 911 from her cell phone while I called John (my husband) from Brad's (the name of the younge man who had witnessed the accident and kindly stayed around to help).

After wating for about 10 minutes I got my girls out of the Suburban and the whole lot of us walked across the street into the shade of a nearby building to finish waiting for the police to arrive and tell us what to do with our cars. Brad called the police one more time after we had been wating for about 20 minutes. After a total of about 30 minutes two police cars arrived. The second about 5 minutes after the first.

It was about 105 out there in the sun. I was wearing black slacks and was dying. I don't know how the police do it with an entire black uniform. Leah was dying of thirst, she assured me numerous times, and Hannah was complaining that we were missing our food and fun. The police asked me to move my car to a nearby parking lot and there I filled out all of the necessary paperwork. John showed up to take the girls down the street to the arts center to meet our friend who didn't know what had happened to us.

We missed our play but when I finally showed up an hour late the kids were happily eating leftovers from the reception in the lobby and we were given the option of another group of free tickets to another showing of the same play. So all turned out well in the end. At least, it did for me. Poor Mavis Boyle's 66' Mustang was stuck on the median. The policeman offered to back it off for her but the median was too high and grinding the innards with every inch so a tow truck was called. I guessed my attacker's age to be around 75 but I was 11 years off. Mavis Boyle in her 66' Mustang was born in the Spring of 1923 which makes her an 86-year-old woman driving a 43-year-old classic without power steering. It was an accident waiting to happen.

Tuesday, September 8, 2009

9 on 9/9/09

I just now realized that my daughter is turning 9 on 09/09/09 I find that very interesting. I am posting this in case anyone else finds that noteworthy.

When our first daughter was born on 09/02/99 we were very mildly disappointed that she hadn't been born on 09/09/99. I now feel closure to that hope of so long ago as our second daughter is having her 9th birthday on 09/09/09.

Wow. I feel like I should do something grand to commemorate the occasion like, I don't know, put 9 candles on her cake and choose an ice cream flavor with 9 ingredients. Maybe I'll make sure she has 9 presents and 9 people at her party? Who knows, the possibilities of 9 are endless.