Can I Live At Grandma's?

She got stung by a bee at Grandma's house.

It was her worse fear, next to tornadoes.

I know Grandma and Grandpa felt bad,
as if maybe they could have prevented it.
But they couldn't, it was just bound to happen sometime.

And I'm pretty sure they did everything they could
to treat the injury.

For example:

They googled bee stings,
they put ice on it,
they put an onion on it,
they put meat tenderizer on it,
they gave her a baking soda bath,
they gave her Benadryl,
they gave her ice cream,
they helped her limp downstairs to the big screen tv,
they gave her a pillow and a blanket,
they checked on her in the night to be sure she was still breathing,
and then her cousins down the street
gave her crutches.

They gave her money even though her job was interrupted by the bee,
and called it "worker's compensation".

But she is home now,
and she is no longer on disability.

She had to clean the bathroom for no money at all.

I am an ogre.

*

Big Barn Jazz

Last Sunday a band I'm in played at the Big Barn Jazz series,
which is basically a bunch of couches in the basement of this big barn
where people come and play jazz once a month,
and other people pay ten bucks to come hear it.

It was fun because the singer who we opened for, Sunny Wilkinson,
had a huge crowd.

She was really super nice,
the piano player (her husband) was so good,
and their cool bass player called me, "girl,"
which made me feel very hip.

That's me the third from the left in the pink shirt,
along with my band, iZwicky.
Sunny is tall and blond and her husband/pianist
is right next to her.

At the last minute iZwicky asked me to talk,
so I did most of the talking between songs
and introduced our band.

I pretended I was somebody who does stuff like that
all the time. :-)

*

Carbon

Twin Girl is working very hard, doing odd jobs for anyone who will take her,
trying to save up enough money for an iPod Touch.

So I told her that she could straighten the bookshelf and I would pay her.

I told her that my two shelves were already done, so to leave them be.
I told her that all she really needed to do was to look through the books for any
that we might want to get rid of, and put them in a pile for me to check over.
I told her to straighten up the rest.

Now this is the girl who is so much like me.

Instead of taking 15 minutes to do a quick straighten,
she pulled every single book off of every single shelf,
including my shelves,
and put them in a huge pile in the center of the room and then left
and forgot about the whole thing.

Later she put them all back on the shelves,
this time in alphabetical order,
not by author but by book title.

We have Magic Treehouse books mixed in with
Annie Dillard and Mark Twain.

It took her hours.

But she was pleased and I paid her,
sighing,
acknowledging the genetic footprint I have left behind.

*

Weird and Happy

Today at Walmart the grocery cart guy was standing near my car,
grinning and basking in the sun and he said,

"I'll take your cart for you!"

I said, "hey thanks!"

Then he said, in his thick Mexican accent,

"Glory Hallelujah, Jesus Christ, dju are wonderful!!"

haha. It was such a weird and nice thing to say.

I don't know if he was talking to me or to Jesus!

Either way he seemed really happy.

Stuff like that can make my day. :-)

*

Space Laundry

Well now I am officially a geek because I watched a
video of Ken Bowersox doing his laundry in space.

And I thought it was cool.

Where do astronauts get water?

What's it like to sleep on a space station?

How do you take a shower and use the restroom in space?

These are questions that plague me and keep me up nights.

I found the answers here.

Brushing off my ham radio license to listen in on the astronauts conversations.

I realize that this is either

a) creepy
b) geeky
or
c) super cool

*

Cool Space

Just saw the International Space Station pass over.

We stared with mouths open and quiet oohs and ahhs for a minute
and then,
as if we all had the idea at the same,
we jumped up and down waving and hollering.

Silly. :-)

If you want to see it in your area, look here.

Lansing friends, don't miss it tomorrow night at 8:50pm!!

*

Song

It's my ya-ya nickname.

I got my name because I'm always making up songs.

Mostly little things like lullabyes and half-thought out melodies.

For the past two days though I've been finishing up a real song,
and it's been hard and life has been a blur.

I feel like when my children talk with me I am so far away,
and my brain won't stop,
and the pressure to finish moves me past mealtimes and bedtimes and people times.

I have been with pencil and paper
and looping machine and bass and keyboard
for two days now without much of a break,
and I feel numb.

The thing is, I am past the point of thinking it is very good.
Now I am just to the point of getting it done.

For someone like me, who chases butterflies
but doesn't like to catch them,

who begins books and projects and resolutions and to-do lists and new adventures
but abandons them when the first wind of change turns my head,

it is a task of elephantine proportions.

*

The Good With The Bad

Today I was inspired by my cousin to get off my duff and write,
just write.

No matter if I'm brilliant or boring, I gotta get out of this funk.

To see how she puts it, look here.

And what I have to say today is that Mockingjay was released,
and I was ignorant about it,
but Twin Boy let me know.

So we set off for Tuesday Books at 3,
and he sat down with a bunch of kids who were strangers to him
and talked excitedly about the first two books,
and frosted cookies and did a trivia challenge,
and shot water guns at targets that dripped colored marker down the side of the building.

And he and I split the cost of the book,
because he only had half.

He never has any money because
he always buys ice cream.
One for himself, and one for whatever lucky soul is with him.

And the other thing that happened today
is that I had a fit when I found all of my best books
piled in the middle of the front room,
bent and folded up where someone had tossed them.

Only I didn't know that a teenager friend was playing video games at our house,
and I didn't see him slip out until his car was pulling away.

I would have left too.
sigh.

So every day brings a little pride in myself for doing good
and a little shame at myself for doing bad.

I hope it evens out.

If not, there's always ice cream.


*

Back To Glue Sticks

I miss rubber cement.

I miss cardboard pencil boxes.

I don't miss covering my textbooks using old grocery bags.

I miss back-to-school shopping.

All four children begin school September 7th at the same building.

There will only be one drop-off point, which is good for me because I can tend to forget about the second one and drive right past the elementary school amid cheers from the back seat.

Two sixth graders, a high school freshman and a high school senior,
all housed in the same building in our little town.

And they don't need much, not like yester-years.

We have all of the rulers you could ever hope to own,
thin markers are starting to become childish,
and the 10 cent notebooks that we stocked up on last season
will last us well into the 22nd century.

Nobody needs a pencil box anymore,
and now they have sturdy backpacks that will take them through college,
without any "character" designs to date them.
School lunches are bought, not carried,
so I walk right past the new cool fabric lunch totes
and recyclable water bottles.

But I still love to look at all of the school supplies at the store.
They're still fresh and new looking, and not messed up and
scattered around from frantic last-minute shoppers.

It makes me feel like I want something to organize.
I think I need some sort of polka dot index card holder
and of course a fresh pack of cards to fill it with.
I'm pretty sure that I need a Trapper Keeper,
filled with folders and tabs and things that can be labeled.

I want to pick out five shiny folders
with pictures of kittens and puppies and maybe
Zach Efron on the front.
I want to draw a mustache on him and
sharp pointy teeth from the kitten's mouth,
blood dripping down,
and horns on the puppies head and a text bubble
saying, "Feed me!" coming out of his mouth.

But instead, yesterday I bought a little plastic thing
with two drawers and a compartment for three dollars,
and I put it in my music room and filled it with
a bunch of small items that have been cluttering the place up
and now I feel better.

*