terror in a onesie

Originally published at Live Granades. Please leave any comments there.

I think a lot about other people’s artistic styles–about how I wished I’d thought of what they’ve created. Or maybe I wish my stuff were as cool as I perceive theirs to be. Maybe my work is cool and maybe it isn’t. I’m not writing this down to garner praises or sneers for what I do. At this particular minute, I’m not even sure what it means for my stuff to be cool.

As with different kinds of style, it seems that craft work can be a bit faddish. Things look nifty and everybody wants to jump on the bandwagon. Looking at artist’s magazines really emphasizes this. I love them and look forward to my monthly trip to B&N to sit and troll the mags while Liza plays with the trains. I even buy one occasionally. What I’ve discovered from looking those over for the past year and cruising 100+ blogs a day is that there a whole lot of people doing very similar things. I’m not saying that what they are working on is bad, I’m just saying I’m starting to see the cycle. And oh boy, does the internet feed that beast.

Here’s the thing: when I look at what’s swirling around out there, I realize that my stuff doesn’t look like that.

A few weeks ago I found a set of videos of a well known artist journaler explaining her process step by step. (Incidentally this is the same blog where I first found out about artist journaling.) I was really excited to see how Teesha made her own notebooks out of sheets of watercolor paper. That bit of info solved a problem about my own journal that I’d been working on for a while.

I immediately got a sheet of watercolor paper and, just for kicks, decided to follow her process. Wow, was that hard! Staying inside of her lines was nearly impossible for me. And what I ended up with only bears a passing resemblance to what she does. As a copy of her work it stinks. But what a learning experience it was for me! And hard! So much harder for me than my own process. So I came away armed with a solution to a problem and also a bit of security in what I do on my own.

So my angst comes down to this: I want to grow as an artist. I want to find my own style and be more comfortable with it, be willing and able to claim that style. I want to proclaim, “I am an artist!” And I never feel as if I’m quite ready to do that. How can I call myself an artist when I don’t have a body of work? I can’t stay focused on one thing. I want to try every little thing that catches my eye. (Maybe that’s where my contribution to the fad kicks in.) One week, I’m all about ATCs. The next week, I’m all about artist journaling. I make notebooks and cross-stitch. I want to try traditional bookmaking and printmaking. I want to do better graphic design. I want to start drawing again like I did in college. I want to figure out how to combine some of this stuff and cook up something awesome. I’ve got so many irons in the fire, I don’t know which one is hot.

After the holidays, I’m gonna sit down and come up with a plan. Christmas has depleted my Etsy store stock. I’ve been making custom-order notebooks for a couple of people for Christmas and also making a few personal gifts. I want to get my store up and running ASAP after the first of the year, and then carve out some time to start working on all this other stuff.

Maybe all of this is just part of what an artist experiences. The desire to figure our our artistic selves. The search for the idea that opens up our life’s work. The time spent working on every little thing until the big thing grabs our attention and doesn’t let go. Maybe I’m more of an artist than I’ve ever given myself credit for before.

Originally published at Live Granades. Please leave any comments there.

Yes, I’ve been working on Etsy shop stuff but I’ve also been taking care of other things. How is that whenever I decide to embark on something kinda big the whole rest of my life decides to be busy and awesome and crazy and full at the same time?

The kids both have colds this weekend so we’ve been quarantined at home to keep from being contagious. I’ve spent the past 10 days reading the Sookie Stackhouse books (Gigantic thanks to Megan for having them all including the last one that she’d checked out from the library and loaned me!) I’ve also been working on Ladies’ Bible Study at my church that I am leading this semester (gulp!) and I’ve had to work pretty diligently to stay one tiny step ahead of the bright ladies in my class.

But for those of you who might be curious, here’s a photo of my notebooks that I’ve been working on:

The sheep notebook on the left stack is already spoken for but the rest will be up in my shop shortly.

Originally published at Live Granades. Please leave any comments there.

A while back I asked you all if I should open an Etsy store. A couple of you replied that I should. I talked to Stephen about it (more than he ever wanted to hear, I’m sure) and I decided that I would go for it. My goal was (and still is) to finish the lighthouse cross-stitch piece before I jump into the Etsy pool. But I’ve been dipping my toe in the water for the past week just to see how the water is.

Step 1: Research is for Scoobies
I’ve been doing research. It feels like I’ve looked at every page on the Etsy store front. I know this is impossible, but I’ve looked at a lot of people’s shops, their mastheads, what they charge and what they’ve sold. I’ve been looking for that magic bullet that makes some stores so successful. The good news from all this research is that I’ve not really found anything quite like what I do. But does that mean the bad news is people won’t be interested?

I’ve read articles on getting up and running and how to get in with the Etsy folks so that they might feature me. I’ve joined a ton of flickr groups, which seems to be one of the ways you promote the goods in your store. I’ll be adding a link on this site so you, my faithful readers, will be able to easily access my store for all your notebook-buying needs. I won’t be placing any ads just yet, but I’m hoping I’ll get a mention or three on friend’s blogs so more folks can find me.

I’ve got a good idea of the categories of products I’m going to offer. I’m trying to make myself stick with what I do well for now and see how it sells. But I keep thinking, “I could make THIS for the shop!” “THAT will definitely sell!” “I should make 50 of those!” But then I look at the short list I’m trying to focus on and remind myself that I need to make the few things that my friends have enjoyed and not be distracted by new possible crafts.

I need to do a bit more work figuring out how to set up my payment options. I have a Paypal account, but I need to hook it to my business checking account. I need to figure out the shipping part of the shop and have all that stuff in place. Basically, I just need a giant block of time to sit down, go over my options, and get it all typed up.

Step 1a: Panic

Step 2: Graphic Design for Shop Girls
I have the name I’m going to call my shop. No, I’m not quite ready to share it yet. I have no idea for the image(s) I’m going to use for my masthead and product labeling. I feel like a big ol’ dork since this is what I do, but I think I have performance anxiety. I want it to be exactly right yet I’m unsure of what note to strike to make it awesome. I’m hoping inspiration will hit me. Barring inspiration, I’m hoping once Liza is back in school, I’ll have some time I can dedicate to figuring it out by good old-fashioned hard work.

A side bar to the graphic design work I need to do for the shop: I also really want to get my graphic design portfolio online. It’s something I’ve wanted to do for a long time but have put it off and put it off until it’s just ridiculous. I’d like to be able to mention it in my Etsy store so that folks can potentially hire me for that as well. I don’t know where this is going to fit into the schedule since Stephen is deep into Dragon*Con and is unlikely to be able to do the work for our site before the middle of September. I suppose I could figure out how to do it myself, but have you seen this plate I’m currently carrying here? Full, full, and full. Of course, I’m supposing I’m going to have the shop ready before then. Maybe I’m crazier than I thought.

Step 2a: More Panic and consider chucking it all to read the latest Suzanne Brockmann instead.

Step 3: I can haz prodkt?
Thursday, I wanted desperately to start making pieces to put in the shop but my first attempt caused me a massive round of performance anxiety, again. Yesterday, I cleaned off my desk and I am going to concentrate on finishing the lighthouses for the next few days before I start again. It’s hard though because my brain is screaming, “Go. Go! GO!” I’ve been shopping and have a ton of supplies. I feel like now that I’ve made the decision, I need to work. Then the rational part of me remembers the things that need to be in place before all that. I think the ideas for making things will be there but the shop needs to be in good shape before people get there. I can always add more and more product but I only have once chance to make a good impression with the business end of it all.

Seriously, there were more steps when I started taking notes on this process a few weeks ago. Now I’m starting to panic about the time I’ve spent writing this when I could have been: a: Working on the lighthouses, b. Making new crafts for my store, or c. Panicking some more.

Originally published at Live Granades. Please leave any comments there.

We rushed home from our weekend visiting with Stephen’s family to attend open house at Eli’s school.

I expected the school to look like the elementary school I attended: one very long hallway with second grade at the end nearest the offices and stretching to fifth grade at the far end, and Kindergarten, first grade, and sixth grade outside the building in trailers for reasons I never quite understood.

I started Kindergarten in a trailer near the cafeteria. It had dark paneling (I did start school in the 70s) and the bathroom was in a separate building. I remember this very clearly because every day at nap time, I cried so hard I had to go to the bathroom to pull myself together. I don’t know now why I cried. I enjoyed the other kids and getting to go to one of the first grade rooms for reading. It’s true I didn’t get along with my teacher but that doesn’t seem like the reason in retrospect.

I carried all of those memories with me into Eli’s classroom. His is bright with giant windows. There’s a rug at the front of the room near the white board. There are more books in his classroom than in the children’s department of the public library behind our house, maybe more than is in the whole library. There’s a pretend kitchen and a corner that looks like a shrunken mad-scientist lab. The teacher’s desk is a low table. She has three lamps at different locations; it looks as if you could curl up and spend the day reading if you needed to take a break. Like the mom in Tom Goes to Kindergarten, I’m pretty sure that I’m going to want to continue going to Kindergarten after the first day.

In those first few moments as I was taking in the place where Eli will have his first formal educational experiences, I have to admit I teared up a little. Because without even knowing I wanted it, I know just from looking around that room and meeting his teacher that he’s going to have better memories than I do. It makes the transition a little easier for me to bear.

Originally published at Live Granades. Please leave any comments there.

I’ve been working diligently on the lighthouse cross stitch. And everything was going great until today when I sat down to begin lighthouse #3. I completely miscounted and stitched for an hour only to have to remove all but about 20 stitches and start over. I was so disgusted that I put my tools away for the afternoon. I did take a photo though before I started work this morning.

In other news, on Friday night we had a sleepover for Ashley’s birthday party. Ashley, Jessica, Sheila and Wendy came over. We painted our toenails and watched “Mama Mia!” (Most of which I missed except for the part about Colin Firth playing a gay man. I just about cried.) We ate and talked and in the end decided to go to bed at 1:30 because I knew that Eli and Liza would wake everyone up at six o’clock. It turns out sleepovers in my 30s are exactly like sleepovers in my teens. With one giant exception: I had no idea in my teens I’d spend so much time in my 30s talking about reproductive issues, poop and breastfeeding.

Lastly, New Kid Pictures!
Here’s Liza doing her new thing of dressing herself from the dressup drawer. And of course, what is the one thing you must do once you have on your backwards sideways swim top and wearing one leg warmer on your arm? DANCE!

Geof came over last week and took some photos of the kids as well. We waited until the sun was heading down and then I attempted to art direct but the kids were having none of it. The photos are still awesome anyway.

Click the photo to see more of Geof’s photos.

Originally published at Live Granades. Please leave any comments there.

The list is long but boils down to this: trying to acclimate to Eli’s last summer before school starts.

In an effort to keep things light this summer, I didn’t schedule any camps or lessons of any kind for the kids. Ironic, since this is the first summer Eli’s been old enough to be eligible for most activities that run in the summer. Instead I opted for just hanging out with our friends, especially the ones with pools, and getting Eli extra time with Josh before they go to separate schools in the fall.

We’ve gone and developed quite the schedule anyway. Mondays we play at church. Tuesdays are my morning off. A girl from church is coming over to keep the kids so I can run errands or grocery shop alone, which is a mother’s nirvana. Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays haven’t quite settled out yet but will be some order or combination of going to the Botanical Gardens, spending time with Josh and his family or having Hallie over so the two of us can experiment in the kitchen.

This summer is already more bittersweet than I expected it to be. Eli is so ready for school, I’ve been saying it for a year now. And yet. And yet. It seems a giant corner to turn. A street he will go down mostly without me. I thought I would have NO problem with that. I’m looking at the couple of months until school starts and I’m wondering what else we can pack in before he goes.

The big news around here is another dishwasher leak. The first one, Stephen and his dad repaired in a day and cost less than $20. This time, the part wasn’t in stock so today marks a week of me washing dishes. It’s still not going to cost very much to repair the dishwasher and Stephen can do it. The bad news of the story is the slow leak ruined the kitchen floor. I had the folks who installed the hardwoods send someone to look at it and he gave us an $800 estimate. We’re thinking about replacing the hardwood with tile since this is the third time in seven years we’ve had water damage somewhere in the kitchen.

In crafting news, I’ve been working on a cross-stitch for hire job. It’s a lovely set of lighthouses that I need to get done before October.

And making notebooks for folks. I’ve made and given away a few and made a few more. I especially like making them now that I have an actual paper guillotine instead the 1-sheet cutter I used when I first started the process.

(Yes, I know Narwhal is misspelled. They’ve sent me a new card to replace that one.)

So all in all, shaping up to be a really busy summer. I’ll make sure to take my camera to the gardens this week so I can post some new photos.

Originally published at Live Granades. Please leave any comments there.

When Eli was Liza’s age (around 2) he was decidedly uninterested in coloring. He did not want to play with paper or crayons or markers or paint. You can well imagine how sad this made me. But I dealt with it, thinking he would learn to be creative in other ways.

I got the book The Creative Family: How to Encourage Imagination and Nurture Family Connections for Christmas. And while it has some fabulous projects, I’ve still been a bit stymied on how to encourage Eli and Liza’s creativity.

This week I think I’ve finally figured it out.

My side of the office looks like the craft tornado hit it. I’ve been on a new tear of making Artist Trading Cards so there is paper, stamps and stacks of materials on the floor and I have tools all over my desk: watercolor pencils, glitter glue, paper cutter and drying cards. Several times this week Eli has asked to work on a ‘project’. (Wonder where he’s heard that word?)

So what I’ve figured out is: what encourages them to be creative is to see me be creative on a daily basis. If I’m working they want to get in there and make something as well.

Check out Eli’s feet in this photo!

This afternoon Eli wanted to make a picture for his best buddy Josh. He got in the office (behind the baby gate–Liza is never allowed in the office unsupervised) where all the gear is spread out and started working:

Liza and I sat in the hall so she could draw with markers:

Sitting in the hall with Liza telling me what color each marker was, I had the moment where I wondered why all of our days can’t be like this.

While I was writing this post, Liza pulled a flower pot off of the piano and made a giant mess. So the moment has completely passed and we are back to normal around here.

Originally published at Live Granades. Please leave any comments there.

by Eli

Once upon a time, there was a green-headed robot. He was lonely and very sad. But…he had no friends. But then one day, he met a purple-headed robot, Joe.

“How do you do, Joe?” said Sparky. (Mom, the purple-headed one is Sparky.)

“Good!” said Joe.

“Good!” said Sparky.

“But we don’t have any more friends!”

“You’re right!” said Sparky.

“We better go to the enchanted grove to get one.”

“Let’s go!” They said. And off they went.

When they got there, they found two other robots. The yellow-headed robot was Speedy. The blue-headed robot was Eddie. So they became best friends. Really best friends.

The End

Thanks to Kat for the cool make-your-own robots. (Boy do you know this kid or what?)

Originally published at Live Granades. Please leave any comments there.

I’ve got six graphic design projects going right now and most of them are paid work. I’m working on making way too many Christmas and birthday presents.

It is possible that in October I got a little overly ambitious about Christmas. I’ve made it so I’ll be working every night on hand crafts from now until Christmas Eve. It’s fun. I enjoy it. And truthfully I think I’m more productive all the way around when my plate is full. The downside is that I’m so busy I don’t have any stories to tell and I can’t show photos of what I’m working on because everyone I am making presents for reads this blog.

That’s what I’ve been doing. What about you?

Originally published at Live Granades. Please leave any comments there.

We were outside at the playset one afternoon this past week and Eli requested I tell him a story. He’s always making up stories so I guess he decided he needed a break from all the work and wanted to hear someone else’s made up stuff.

I might be crafty with a glue gun and paper or even upon occasion fabric or other materials. I think I can cook decently and do a few other things nicely but I am not a storyteller. I guess it is the practical gene in me. Don’t get me wrong, I love to read. I just don’t seem to have the ability to make this stuff up.

So I started telling him the story of a boy named Kreeli who fought a dragon and saved his friends, LukeDuke and Burwill, and his sister, Bliza. Yeah, after that story I was out of juice. I didn’t have much to begin with but I was tapped out after the dragon.

But as in all things with kids, the thing that you most want to disappear becomes the most favoritest thing they can imagine.

Every night this week I’ve had to tell a Kreeli and Bliza story. Sometimes I slip and say Eli and Liza and he reminds me that these kids names are Kreeli and Bliza. I guess he has to maintain the wall or something. I’ve tried to keep the stories fantastical but the last couple of nights they’ve deteriorated into rehashes of the day or previews of the next day. He doesn’t seem to mind as it netted him pancakes this morning since Kreeli had pancakes last night in his story.

The nicest part of this is that it allows me to reinforce stuff we’ve discussed during the day. Kreeli never kicks other kids on the soccer field. He’s kinder than that. Kreeli always watches out for Bliza and takes care of her. Kreeli always does the brave thing, the kind thing, the smart thing. So while in the beginning it was annoying for me to do, it’s starting to grow on me.

Originally published at Live Granades. Please leave any comments there.

Remember the bad old days? The bad old days weren’t so long ago. That last part of sleep training was posted May 20th, so only a few months ago.

In the past week we’ve had another step forward in Liza’s sleeping. She is now able to tell on her own when she needs a nap. She starts grouching and putting her head down on every available surface. I ask her if she needs a nap, if she wants to go get her baa and blankie (pacifier and blanket) and take a nap. She all but runs to her room and waits for me to get a baa down from where they hang. I ask her to close the door. She shuts the bedroom door. I turn on the music and close the blinds. I rock her for about 30 seconds and sometimes not at all. I put her in the crib still awake. She does a face plant on the mattress and waits for me to cover her up. I sneak out of the room. Liza goes to sleep on her own. And at night, she stays asleep all night long.

Those last two sentences are not ones that I thought I’d ever get to write down.

Shhhh.

I’m going to take a nap now too.

Originally published at Live Granades. Please leave any comments there.

I knew there was a good reason to hate Mondays. Rainy ones are even worse. Vomit and poop make it uglier. 30 minute naps all around after all of the above equal the kind of pain associated with giving birth.

Say, when is Daddy coming home?

Originally published at Live Granades. Please leave any comments there.

I’m feeling a bit overwhelmed today. I realized this afternoon that I have about 17 frying pans in the fire and I’m trying to keep my hair from burning as well.

School has started back and I always forget that, even for pre-school aged children, the wheel starts turning again come fall. Eli and Liza had their two days of Mother’s Morning Out this week. Things were great except for lunch time, which I always thought was the easiest subject. We bought everyone bento boxes while we were in Japan. Cool, right? Wrong. Eli’s cup leaks so bad he isn’t allowed to return to school with it. The teachers in Liza’s room were confounded today by how her bento box stacks. I’m only slightly worried about the stacking training Liza is receiving from these sweet ladies since her box is keyed and will only fit together one way. I guess next week I’ll just go back to good ol’ American plastic bags and hormone-coated sippy cups.

This week also brought our first week of soccer practice for Eli. We returned home on Monday from Kansas City and Stephen took Eli straight to soccer practice. I took him tonight since Stephen needed to do some work at home. I think Eli’s going to have fun and I’m completely impressed that the coaches are teaching them actual fundamentals of the game, but I can already tell that the schedule is going to kill us. Games are on Saturday — wait for it — at 8:30 a.m. Everyone groan in chorus with us. I know that soccer is going to be great for him and he will make some friends that he will hopefully go to school with next year, but holy cow, 8:30 on a Saturday. And that’s what time the game starts. We have to be there between 8 and 8:15. I guess it’s also good practice for getting him up for school next year.

We also brought a lovely parting gift from our trip. All four Granade children have colds. Liza had it first, so I’m guessing it’s from when she licked the floor at the Nashville airport. Now Eli has it, and even Sam and little Noah have it. When I talked with Joy today, she wondered if we would be able to get together and not share germs before the kids are 15. I’m guessing it ain’t gonna happen. When Eli sneezes he sounds like a squeaking mouse. When I told him that in the car on the way home from soccer practice this evening, he nearly fell out of the car laughing.

Stephen is preparing talks for Dragon*Con. His involvement gets larger every year. I expect in about five more years he’ll have staged a coup and taken over the whole system. I’m guessing that when that happens, there’s going to be a sharp increase in the number of SciFi authors invited. I’m proud that he’s found his niche there and is having a good time, but the alternate schedule around our house for July and August while he is prepping makes for some crazy late nights. That schedule in combination with the above mentioned children’s colds is not a good thing. You might ask, “Misty, why are you staying up with him? You aren’t going to Con so why not get some sleep?” My answer, this Con anyway, is “Michael Phelps and Beach Volleyball.”

Next is work. Wha? Yes, I have some work going on right now. Some is Dragon*Con related; some is regular church stuff. Today I spoke with some folks for a new short term freelance job which I’m hoping, if I do a bang up job, will turn into more freelance work. Regardless, this first piece is cool and I’m excited to get to work on it. I actually used this morning while the kids were at MMO to do work. I sat at the computer for multiple hours in a row and worked. It’s amazing how much I can get done when I’m not tending my chicks.

Lastly, I have turned into a one woman craftapalooza. I’m working on the birds. Still. I made the first batch and then realized that I wanted to give a few more. Then I added to that list and then I just wrote down the names of pretty much every woman I know because I thought it would be a nice gift to get so I wanted lots of you to have one. So if you haven’t gotten a bird yet, you probably will. Be patient with me, though. I’m working on them off and on since I am also making a purse (pictures forthcoming as progress is produced), cloth bookmarks, paper bookmarks, storage containers from recycled tins (if you have any, I want them!), a new DIY planner for myself, and I’m in the process of updating my work portfolio so it looks a bit more cohesive. My latest brainstorm is to collect plastic lids off of bottles (soda, OJ, milk, etc.) so that I can carry them to Eli’s school for an art project. (OK, so I saw this on one of the crafting blogs, but I don’t remember which one so don’t yell at me for not having a link.) I’ve always found it funny that when I am busiest, I feel energized to work on projects for myself.

If I have two coherent thoughts to string together after all of that (and my usual child rearing and house chores) all I want to do is watch Dr. Who or sing songs from Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog. I find it really funny that my two favorite actors right now are men with very expressive foreheads. I’m sure that says something about me but I don’t think I want to examine it too closely.

Anybody else out there obsessing about anything or enjoying their own chaotic life?

Originally published at Live Granades. Please leave any comments there.

On Thursday we drove the kids to West Memphis, AR to meet the grandparents. After lunch, we hopped back in the car and drove to Nashville, TN and spent the night with my college roommate, Terry, and her family. We had dinner with them and got our trip off to a great start by hanging with friends we haven’t gotten to spend a lot of time with lately. Friday, Terry drove us to the Nashville airport so we could fly to New York.

Friday evening, after a fantastic dinner with Fahmida’s family, we had the brilliant idea to stay up late so that we’d sleep on the plane on Saturday. Yeah, ok, that idea was less than brilliant, but we didn’t have our children and we really wanted to go see a movie.

We got on Japan Airlines at 11ish am on Saturday. Thirteen hours later we were in Tokyo.

We landed about an hour earlier than we were scheduled. We started by going to the Japan Railways office to redeem our JR pass. That pass was the best investment of the whole trip, btw. It allowed us to ride all over Japan on the JR line as much as we wanted to for seven days. We got on a subway-like car to take us to the station where we could catch the bullet train to Osaka.

I was thinking to myself, “10 minutes on the tram thingie and then we’re on the Shinkansen.” Nope, it was more like 45. Yeah, 45 minutes of riding through Tokyo. It’s that big. Once we got on the bullet train, I wanted desperately to watch the scenery but I could hardly stay awake. I dozed and tried to keep one eye open for my only look at the country side. I missed my only chance to see Mt. Fuji on that train ride.

About two and a half hours later we were in Osaka. Then we got on the subway for 30 minutes, carted our luggage up and down about 900 stairs and then spilled out onto the street in Osaka. We were so tired we were barely standing upright.

These are some of the first sights we saw:

We found our Ryokan and gratefully fell onto our futons and passed out.

The next morning we woke up to this:

and this:

The first day, we wandered the streets and got an idea of what city life is like in Osaka. Theater is big:

and so are castles:

The whole day felt magical. I guess that’s what you get your first day in a foreign country. I spent the better part of the day refraining from the we’re-in-Japan happy dance. I’m sure the folks in Osaka appreciated my restraint.

Click on any of the pictures to see all of the photos from Osaka.

We ended the day by bullet training to Kobe to have dinner.

It was pretty Westernized but the cachet of being able to say we took the Shinkansen to Kobe to have Kobe beef was too awesome to pass up.

Originally published at Live Granades. Please leave any comments there.

Tuesday was the hardest day. I knew intellectually what had happened at Hiroshima. But there was no way to know until I stood there. I would have thought that I’d be telling you how sad the city of Hiroshima is. How there is this cloud that hangs over it, darkening the mood. But there isn’t. It feels like an upbeat place with school children and young people everywhere.

This was the most revered spot we stood on during all the time we were in Japan. Where we were there, multiple Japanese came and bowed and prayed. And I felt as an American, I had no right to be there. It was humbling. Thinking about what I saw brings tears to my eyes now. Going through the museum made that feeling both better and worse.

I’m not really sure how to describe the museum. If I spend a lot of time talking about it, it becomes a point-by-point walking tour, which can be supremely uninteresting. I’m much more interested in giving my impressions and the feelings I had. I was fascinated by Japan’s timeline of events for the war. Having only ever read the American descriptions of World War II, seeing it from another nation’s view point was interesting. Seeing articles pulled from the rubble was amazing: glass bottles melted together, shards of glass embedded in concrete, melted and warped steel beams. The human mementos were harder to deal with: blood-stained clothing, a child’s school books with no remains of the child, a pile of skin and fingernails a mother saved from her dying son. At the end of the museum I felt emotionally rung out, dazed and empty.

Despite it all there is hope here. A Japanese legend says 1,000 folded paper cranes make a wish come true. It that were true, millions of wishes would have already been granted to Hiroshima.

After lunch, we continued on to Miyajima.

I told Fahmida that this was the Japan I was looking for. Temples, shrines and pagodas. They are the mystery and beauty of the culture I’d been reading about and seeing all of my life.

It would have been perfect, except for the 1,000% humidity. We didn’t walk around Miyajima so much as swim. But hey, we got to see some truly amazing things that day so I’m not complaining.

Click on any of the pictures to see all of the photos from Hiroshima & Miyajima.

Originally published at Live Granades. Please leave any comments there.

We’re headed to Japan tomorrow on vacation so I’m not sure how much internet we’ll have.

But now I’m looking at that sentence and I’m laughing because I’m quite sure there will be a lot of internet in Japan but I’m not sure how much access to it we will have.

So while we potentially take a few days off from posting, I leave you to read the notes I made for the grandparents on caring for Eli and Liza. These notes are not because I think that our family is unable to care for our children, but is an attempt to make their lives easier while they are caring for them. It is mostly a list of our methodology to keep from hearing Liza make the screech of melting doom.

This post is at Chris’s request because he swore to us last night at dinner that he once left a longer set of notes on caring for his cats, so he was sure that it must be humiliating to have our parenting reduced to a few paragraphs of notes.

Read the rest of this entry »

Originally published at Live Granades. Please leave any comments there.

Over the past several weeks, I’ve been slowly upping the temperature in our house to see what the maximum comfortable temp is for working, playing and just plan ol’ living inside our house.

This past week, I’ve been working on 77°. Now last summer while I was nursing Liza, this place was regularly down to 73° and if I was having a particularly hot moment, 71°. By comparison, 77° is practically desert heat. Well the past couple of nights have shown me that 77° is actually too warm to sleep in.

Friday night I dreamed that I lost Eli and Liza in a mudslide. I survived but they didn’t.

Saturday night Stephen dreamed he punched Eli in the face.

Last night I turned the thermostat down to 76° and I dreamed of moving into a new house with two kitchens and beach access in the basement.

Does being too hot make you have bad dreams too or are we the weird ones?

Originally published at Live Granades. Please leave any comments there.

Thanks to Amy for this link on how to figure both the name of my band and the title of my first album. Also, I get cover art out of the deal. I’m glad this is now taken care of because it was weighing on my mind.

Update: I didn’t realize I faved the photo in flickr: macrisbruse.

Originally published at Live Granades. Please leave any comments there.

Summer shouldn’t need a schedule. It should be days of waking up and deciding if we’re going to get motivated enough to go to the pool or just play in the water sprinkler in the yard.

It should not require a shared Google calendar to pull off. And yet for the second time in about three weeks, Stephen and I have had our wires so crossed that we didn’t know what we were doing.

So now our family has a giant Google calendar. Everyone has their own color and every event is now being meticulously added for the greater good. Greater good in this case is marital harmony.

May is full of family visits to celebrate Liza’s birthday. June is full of Eli’s camps. He’s taking swimming lessons for two weeks and then going to soccer camp for a week. July is shaping up to be our trip to Japan. August will bring the school schedule with it.

I’m already exhausted and school isn’t even out for summer yet. But better this schedule than the one from last year! This time last year I was beginning my two weeks of off and on labor before Liza’s birth. Let’s just say I’m looking forward to the 20 hours of flying to Japan way more than the 20+ hours of labor.

Originally published at Live Granades. Please leave any comments there.

This morning as I was showering I was thinking of this website and feeling the pressure of not having made a post in a couple of days. I wondered what to write about and decided to see where the day would take me.

Eli had a dental checkup this morning and all went well except the dentist insists that Eli now give up his pacifier. He started to whinge about it before we even got to the car. I struck a deal with him. If he could do without the binky and the bulk of the moaning about the binky for a whole week, then next Wednesday we’d go to the Pizza Rat, a.k.a. Chuck E. Cheese’s, for lunch. He agreed to it and was unusually silent during the ride towards home. I asked him a couple of times what he was thinking and he said he was thinking about going to Chuck’s.

About 3 blocks from home he started coughing. I asked if he was ok and I passed him a napkin just in time for him to throw up all over the napkin, himself, the car seat and the backseat.

I don’t know if you missed the post from this weekend but I’ve already had my quota of vomit for a while. Also, Stephen and I struck a deal back four years ago when I was pregnant that he would deal with the vomit and I would deal with the blood. Yeah, so far that deal has not worked out in any shape or form.

I’d just like to let the universe, and you guys, in on a little secret: I hate vomit. I hate to do it myself, I hate to smell other people’s and I most especially hate to clean it up. Even more so when it’s to clean it out of the car seat, the crack of the backseat, and the seatbelt.

I suppose I should be thankful that I’ve had to deal with more vomit than blood but is it too much to ask to not have to deal with either one?