I used to say that the fastest precursor to an emergency room trip in our family was hearing
"To Infinity! And Beyond!"

Today, I heard this:
"Queak's getting his ears pierced, and it's free!"

Me "when, from whom? Where?"

"Right now! In the living room!"
(one day my children will realize their mistake is telling me first - in the meantime I get to have the sunken heart by being their little rain cloud - even when they are ingenious little people.)

Me "huh, ha ha, ummm, no."

"BUT! We're using a yucca needle, it's totally safe!"

Me "what?"

"Yeah, that's how the real natives do it, and how it's supposed to be done - and we have the needle, and he's ready to go."

Me "This isn't a good idea - I mean - at the moment" (coward)

"BUT! We cleaned and sanitized the needle - and he WANTS this to happen - why not?"

Me "ummmmmmmm, welllllll, it has to be done very precisely, we'll have to read about the method before we actually attempt this, you can't just do the piercing"

"So I should untie him? What do I do with the needle and the towels?"

Buttercup "Well, I'll tell you what they do, those ear piecing girls. They pierce things, ears and faces. Here, here, here, here, here and here - oh and noses - he's safer at home."

This post is not a catch-up or excuse for where I've been.


I like blogger because I can flit from one blog to another and "follow" lots of bloggers that way. I am sort of fickle, and I get bored easily, so while if I find a blog I like, I'll scroll the beginning and read the entire thing like a book - I also lose interest and stop reading posts for a long time.
In the meantime, I've been toying with abandoning blogger and moving over to a wordpress format. 

I have times when I blog like that too. I seem to over-share or some such, have a bloggers regret and then stop blogging for long periods. Sometimes I have nothing to say. Sometimes, I have lots to say but I'm bored because no one actually reads this stuff. Sometimes the format feels wrong. Sometime facebook gets my attention instead - instant gratification.

So - I'm running a reader poll. For the 3 of you out there who read this - maybe 2 - what should I write about? Focus more on? Do less of? Etc..
My disclaimer is if I disagree with you, I'm going to ignore you completely.
In the meantime - tell me what you think?

It is the Ides of March, and I wish a happy one to you. Et tu.

I figured, this was a lovely day to get back into the blog saddle. Yes, I said lovely. Though, I'm a bit rusty on the ol' writing thing. So le's jus cut to the chase....

When I was younger, I had a bit of a classical education. I was brought up by my parents (imagine). Which sounds a bit obvious, except most people are also brought up by society, churches, synagogues, schools, extended family, etc.. Me not so much. I grew up in an island of my mother's making.
The classical education included my mother's (ahem - obsession) film collection. One such film was "Cleopatra." When we moved from Beta to VHS we bought "Cleopatra", which was a big deal because videos cost a small fortune back in the day. "Cleopatra" came on two tapes. Every time we watched it, I would endure the stories of watching it in the movie theater. Back when movies were real, and theaters were an adventure with velvet detail and proper aisles and whatnot. I did listen, I did find it interesting, I did appreciate being told but I was never sure what I was supposed to do with the information. I still have an image of the movie theater they watched "Cleopatra" in, in my mind.

When I got older, I realized I had no idea how many times I'd seen the movie. It was never one of my favorites, but it fascinated me nonetheless. I went through an Egyptology phase, as I believe all children do.
Normal children that is.
I had seen it often enough to have it memorized.

One day, for no reason, I was about 12 and sitting at the kitchen table with my grandmother having coffee, her mainline drug of choice. I asked, "what are the Ides anyway?"
 She said "the 15th."
"Of what?"
"Of March."
"Only March? Why is March so special that it deserves Ides? Did it become the Ides, and how?"
The question then became our theme of the day, and in the days before the internet had really caught on we decided to investigate. Which meant pulling a couple books off her shelves, not many books, she always knew where to look and I suspected she always already knew the answer and was just entertaining me.
The Roman calendar was investigated and we learned that the 15th was the Ides only for March, May, July and October.

These things entertained us greatly. You'd be right by guessing we had too much time on our hands, but it never seemed that way to me. It was a languidly sanguine education.
So we decided...to watch "Cleopatra." It was a nice day, and we had a good time and we would shush anyone who came home and into the room, as though it were hugely important that we take in every detail. This would be treated like the first time we'd seen the movie. This time, because we were being entertaining, my grandmother started in with all of her Hollywood gossip stories, which segued into her Egypt and Rome gossip stories. Which eventually segued into her childhood and how she'd come across it all (ancient history) herself. I remember realizing I'd aged enough to get it more both her stories and the movie, to know who the actors were. To feel differently from the times I'd seen it before.
From time to time after this I'd watch "Cleopatra" again alone. Sometimes, I thought Cleopatra was a spoiled brat. Sometimes, I found her pathetic. Sometimes, I found the entire thing supremely irritating. Once I cried for her.
Anyway, the Ides became our thing and every year on the Ides of March I would call my grandmother and wish her a Happy Ides. Sometimes I'd send her a card to arrive on that day.

In the alternate family universe, whenever family arguments would side against my mother, or she asked my opinion on something and my answer was unexpected she would utter in her pathetic tone (you'd have to know her to get the tone) "Et Tu, Brandi?"

When my mother died I stopped watching "Cleopatra." When my grandmother died I stopped knowing what to do with the Ides. No one else would get that. It was our thing. Every year it rolls around (in March), and every year I feel sorry for myself. Sometimes I still mime calling her and wishing her a Happy Ides. Sometimes I just say it in my head.

Today, for no reason, I wished my husband a Happy Ides, because often he doesn't let me down emotionally, and surely he'd say something pithy back. So he responded "Et Tu, Brandi." I told him that was my mother's pet phrase for me and he said she always got there first. Of course, anyone with half a consciousness would have been able to guess that, but hey, there ya go. I've wished other people a Happy Ides, and by and large I get confused, blinking stares.
So I said "Let's make the kids watch "Cleopatra" tonight!" and of course he said "Yes, lets's!"

What I hadn't predicted was how into it Celia would get for which reasons. I thought, because she'd identify with the romance, or the young queen. No, because she studied Rome and Egypt intensively before and has even some Latin to show for it, she was enthralled.
 And it made me happy. Because though they aren't here to lecture my children about proper movie experiences and over the top film productions, I can cast my mind to them as I lecture my children about my own classical education, and how this ties into the Hollywood version reality.
Thus far that's had lots of mutterings from me about the lack of CGI. "See those hundreds of people? They aren't copied. Those are real people! They really burnt those fires, they really did that, look at them all, look at their costumes. They filmed all this, think about the timing! Of course this is a fairytale version, but still."

If you haven't done so lately, I urge you to find a huge grandiose and outdated film. Something that lasts for 4 hours and you know every line. It will warm you, you'll see. Even if you can see visions of your 5 year old self with tears of boredom, waiting for intermission, dancing before yourself. (Unless, you were geeky, like me and detested intermission. In which case, have a glass of wine too - for good measure.)
And to you I wish a Happy Ides.

This is a post I've been meaning to write for a while and in a synchronous way I am continually reminded to write.

People have a love affair with villains. I never really thought about it before. I never really wondered what it was that compelled us to put monsters on our kids' clothes and fantasize about vampires. I mean the only reason I'd personally fantasize about vampires is in a vigilante way, I'd get to live forever and eat bad people. Really, who wouldn't want that? Though, I always worried that bad people would taste bad. 

In movies, there's a bad guy and growing up I often sided with the bad guy. I asked my mother why once, why do I side with the bad guy, am I bad person and she said "better character development."
The writer spent more time making the bad guy interesting and prosing on why he was bad, what turned him bad, than the writer spent on what turned the good guy good, or why the good guy existed in the first place. Usually, it was some hapless good guy that seemed to have nothing really going for him in terms of personality, other than he was a hero. Sometimes we're rewarded with anti-heroes. It makes us feel a bit less guilty about loving the bad guy. The bad guy deserves to be bad, because he's been wronged and really at the end of the day he's a good guy, righting said wrongs into writes -um- rights. To rights. Writing rights. Yes, anyway.

That doesn't bring us to why zombies own their own franchise and are by now the single richest (un) people on earth. They're obviously in on it with the vampires and the mutants. "Shaun of the Dead" - enough said.

It was only recently, when we developed a real live, household-villain that I started giving this stuff any thought.

One day I found scat in the back garden. I grew up in the country and I was 99% sure I knew what produced said scat. Occasionally we'd be left with other clues. Not just the scat. Like dismembered semi-digested bunnies on the patio (not ours) or, less sensory offensive, footprints
Then, one day, I heard the chickens ruckusing and the sheet metal on their shed shaking. I thought about it for a minute, until it got louder. I looked outside and saw all the chickens staring at the patio door, intently, and all huddled in one corner of their cage. I thought, "that's predator behavior, they're huddling for a reason."  I looked but saw nothing. I let the curtains shut and thought about it, the way the chickens were stood, staring at my door, waiting for me  and it bothered me. So I went out side.
I then saw, blended, perfectly behind the cage, a coyote. He was stood behind the shed, so I couldn't have seen him clearly from the window, but still, perfectly still and he was almost invisible, I think he knew that. As I approached him I realized he thought I couldn't see him. He had his snout pushed through the chain link and had obviously been checking to see how snatchable chickens were through the fencing and or how solidly built the fencing was. Had he had his wits about him he'd have started digging or climbing over. Maybe his hunger led him to snatch first, think later.

We routinely let the chickens out during the day and I was glad they were not out today. I continued to approach the coyote, and I shouted at him. "Shoo! Shoo!" Coyote looked at me like I was stupid. Pulling his snout back through the cage. I thought, "he's going to make me prove it." Sigh.

The chickens looked terrified, but possibly relieved to see me. I went back inside, and looked around. I saw in my immediate grasp nothing that looked weapony enough. The coyote began shaking the cage again, thinking I'd given up. Cheeky monster. I'd left the baby on the couch and she and the Cup and I were the only people home. I contemplated them, Cup looking out the window in fear and she asked, nervously "what is that? Will it eat our chickens? Will it eat us?" I think what bothered me about all this was the broad daylight aspect. I said, it's a coyote, he wants our chickens I won't let him get them. At which point, the Cup threw herself over the baby and shouted "I won't let him take our baby!" I told her she was a right hero, which is when I noticed the iron bar by the door.
So I went out and approached the coyote with the bar, shouting shoos and go aways.
He looked at me - again like I was stupid. I shook the bar in his general direction. Still I'm stupid. Fine, you cheeky thing, fine, I'll prove it.


I walked up to the coyote saying something along the lines of "you really need to leave now, go home, surely you have a home. This isn't your garden." then, I paused for a minute when I was about 2 yards away, reeling a little at his stench and thought, how did it get in? What if it fell in the yard from the fence and it can't get back out and it feels cornered and it goes for me? I don't feel like rabies shots. Then I thought, yeah, but I don't feel like dead chickens either and the guinea pig is out in his run too. So I lifted the bar like a baseball bat and began to swing it in the general direction of the coyote's head. The coyote sloped back a few feet and looked at me.
"okay," said the coyote "you are at least pretending to be serious - you win this round" then as I began to swing again, in the general direction of its head, semi-deliberately missing. Coyote jumped up onto the 6 foot cinder block fence and loped over into the back neighbor's yard -- with ease. It then stood, just out of my reach and stared at me. I stared at it. It stared at me. We did this for a while. I finally concluded it wasn't going anywhere and told it if it came back I wouldn't miss its head. I swung the iron bar at it again. It said to me"you're truly nuts, you are." Then it loped back another few feet and stared at me. "you brat" I said.

The chickens were hugely unimpressed and asked me why I didn't crush the coyote's skull when I had the chance. Well - I don't know, I said, I suppose I've gotten soft in my old age.

Brian contacted the city and after a week or so of phone tag with various departments he was told it was out of their hands but we were allowed to "do anything necessary" to protect our property and family. What does that mean anyway? The city advised us against leaving our children or any small pets available to the coyote in the garden. The city did not advise us explicitly with what deadly force meant in terms of coyotes. The city did not have an opinion on the ethics involved in this matter. The city is probably not available for a quote should this blog ever become famous. Though, you can ask them - tell me what they said.


By now, the coyote had stayed, in the heart and mind of my Cuppish. She began dreaming of him. She started drawing him. At first, he appeared in our family drawings.
"Who is this?"
"that's you"
"who is this?"
"that's me, holding our baby"
"who is this - up here, on the hill, with the big ears?
" "that's the coyote, watching us."
Then, the coyote came directly into the family drawings.


Later, the coyote began featuring in his own drawings. At some point, the coyote became representational in other aspects as well. Cuppish began collecting coyotes.

She has a Oaxacan wood coyote carving she began carrying around with her.



The coyote started making regular appearances in our house, peeking around corners, watching me when I was cooking.

The coyote appeared in my daughter's ears, as earrings.


The coyote appeared in her tribal drawings homework.

On a bag she was supposed to make as a homework project.

The coyote appeared, for real, a few more times in our back garden. Though as of the print date on this blog he hasn't in a while, and I think that he may have been fatally wounded in one of our attempts to dissuade him from eating our chickens. It breaks my heart in a way. He was hungry and the chickens looked tasty. The kids wanted to start leaving food out for him, but I was worried that would send him the wrong message. Coyotes do take kids from time to time. Not often, but my children are small, including babies. It bothers me that I can't leave my kids in the hammock on their own anymore. I can't figure out how to shore up the back fence, it is to zoned height on our side. I can't afford to make it much taller right now anyway. Maybe it's just as well the coyote has gone its own way.

I wondered how long coyote would appear as a household figure. I began thinking about our love affair with villains, monsters and fear in general. A friend of mine talked about how she loved the Cup's drawings, how they reminded her of the natural way a child deals with and processes emotions and fear. It was healthy she said. I liked that thought, it cheered me up. I hadn't thought of it like that.

Then, out of the blue, our favorite neighbor came over with our Hanukkah gift. It was a coyote. I asked him if we'd told him about our coyote. He doesn't have pets of his own, so I hadn't thought I'd thought to mention it to him. I doubted the coyote would bother him much. He said no, he just likes coyotes, so he had got this one for us. It was an iron sculpture of a coyote. That would probably not have appealed me to me much before our own coyote had appeared. However, odd it is that the monster that stood glaring at me, trying to snarl and snap my chickens had become a loved figure in my life -- to the point that I realized I loved the gift. I showed Neighbor Cup's earrings, she was wearing them just then - with the coyotes, and I told him we loved our gift. He looked at me like he wasn't sure.

We were though. The coyote will live, in a place of honor at our front door to greet guests from here on.
I have no idea, if we never see THE coyote again, how long this particular villain relationship will last. I think somewhere I'll keep it, as one of my Mommee moments, regardless of how - or even if - my children remember it.

"And Mommee, went out and chase it - with the iron bar - and she did swing at his head and he did jump back and she did tell him no to eating our chickens, and I did save our baby, I saved her, I held her down so the coyote wouldn't eat her and he will not come back to eat our chickens because Mommee did scare him off. She did. Yup. And he's gone now. Home. Maybe he will eat rabbits, on the mountain. Maybe."

In the interest of keeping this going and not falling back into blog/intermission/purgatory I'm doing Thoughts on Thursdays. I don't have many thoughts right now, so it will be either short or I'll have to pad it out with thoughts that aren't my own.

• This is Thursday right?
• If I think and therefore I am, if I don't think than what am I?
• I'm seriously thinking about doing a themed week like I talked about a while ago, thoughts on Thursdays, wordless Wednesdays, what else?
• I'd have to stop myself from doing Just another Manic Monday
• whoa oh oh
• Not like Sunday
• Why is it I have all my "thoughts" on days other than Thursdays and then on Thursdays I go completely blank. Maybe I should try this on another day, because quite obviously, it's the Thursday's fault. Thursdays' or is it the same Thursday on a continuous loop making it Thursday's or is it Thursdays's? No, not so much. 
• What do children have against folded laundry? 
• Do questions count as thoughts?
• I want a garden, space, lots of space, and more chickens. I think I've said that before. 
• The lizards are looking skinny, the kids need to feed the lizards more, someone remind me of that please. 
• Yes, it's your job - look, how is it my job? No, no, no, Okay look, I see what you're trying to say here but really, no, stop. Okay. Yes, see, your job.
• Head wounds? Because I had too little stress, I think.
  

"Celia will you help him clean his blood up please so we can get on with our evening?"
"sure" she replied and under her breath "now that's something you don't hear everyday."

I wanted to post properly today but I have many excuses. Of course, no excuse is really acceptable and having read my archives last night I'm bemused by just how many times I've used the "my computer is in the shop" excuse. So - the first thing I'm going to tell you is that my computer is in the shop. No seriously. Look people, I'm currently a commercial for why not to buy Dell. I'm hesitant to really brand Dell badly here because once upon a time I was very fond of them. However, their customer service and their attempts at fixing their own problem is bordering on being a spoof on computer lore. Though, I've taken it into consideration that my specific (3) model(s) that I have in my possession is (are) just a lemon(s).
That was as diplomatic as I can currently be. Oh wait, that's not counting the work laptop I'm currently using that is also a Dell. Though, you can blame its ineptitude on my husband's IT (ahem) "department."

So where was I? Oh that's right, I was in last year. I've updated this very little and the actual reason is I have a hard time fixating on one thing in my head and typing about another. So my superficial daily posts are distracting to me only momentarily and have become farther and fewer between. Last year, I was pregnant, and I was keeping that out of the blogosphere - well under this profile anyway.

I've already stated in this blog that I'm not great at throwing myself out there. I mean, this blog itself is already bordering on too personal for me. I'm shy, I'm a shut-in. I'm the kind of person who doesn't feel like a politician or celebrities' families should be fair game. Let alone innocent citizens such as ourselves.

Excuse number 3: I wasn't particularly well after the baby was born, and during the pregnancy I had the occasional malaise. I don't like talking about being unwell until I know the facts, all the facts, the full facts, etc.. I don't like people offering me suggestions or asking me to tell them not to worry about me. In my experience, people don't like worrying. They find out you're unwell, and immediately need you to comfort them. Them, not you, the unwell one. So why would I burden you with the weeks of bed-rest I had after this baby, or why would I bother you with me being down when even I didn't know why? Why would I do that? To share my pain? Yeah, no. I'm not good with the receiving empathy department. It makes me feel slightly edgy with unease and focal attention on me. You know me, the one behind the camera. So, there you have it, I've been unwell and it's still being sorted. The short of it is I'm lucky to have made it this far, with 5 glorious babies. Like winning the lottery 5 times over.
Also, I might at some point in the future start rambling incoherently about food allergies/intolerance. This isn't a promise to shift the theme of the blog. I'm not focused enough to be focused. I have an entire focused blog, stashed someplace else about the internet and if you're bothered I'll link you. In the meantime, this one is just pure d, unadulterated me - semi abridged. At this point you're thinking "you do ramble on, Good God woman! I'd hate to see you fully bridged!"

The thing I was thinking though, after I read myself last night was how sort of moody I've been. At least this last year. The baby was sort of a healing process for me, and not the baby herself (though she's some kind of salve for the soul, let me tell you that) more the process I went through to ensure myself a healthy pregnancy. I genuinely believe that stress and pain affect your baby and your pregnancy. I am positive it is true. When we decided to have another baby I made a conscious choice to alleviate my immediate stress. This put the genetically engineered Pollyanna character in me thrown into the nearest fire. It was painful at first. The guilt, I mean. However, I got used to it very quickly. "I'm sorry honey, I can't deal with him/her right now, it will cause me great stress and the baby doesn't deserve it." I kept my endorphins as true and clean as possible.

Now, I myself, was moody as all get out, as you can see in the lurid and languid, shiftless posts that lie herein. That was hormones and that was me wrestling with the massive snaking thought process and wonder about a 5th child. Everything kicked in from, "can I do this" to "what if I'm taking that much more attention from my existing kids" to "but I thought I was done" to "who doesn't love a baby?" From "I need a break, I need some down time as a new mom to I never want to stop having children and I'll be sad the day I'm "done.""
That also cast a light on how ill I was after having this baby. How could I feel bad about the possibility of not being able to cap us off at 6? Isn't each one perfect enough to be an only child?

Then, the wonder the kids themselves. How could I possibly imagine a 5th personality. They're all so different. They're all so the same. Where will she be on that scale?

So I became a hermit, a sleepaholic and a stressaphobe. Yes, those are real words, would I make words up? In the process though, I did manage to eliminate and identify a lot of broken things in my life. Like the house, the chaos, the people for whom I once worked. I am now reluctant to let them back in. I've decided not to. You know what that got me? That got me called "selfish" by the people are famous for once dropping an urn of my mother's ashes in the trash. Result!

The stress and the vitriol this blog has contained to now have been in a way, detoxifying. It's coming out of me, to oooze out into the vague memory of cyberspace where nothing older than 6 months is taken seriously on google.

I thought of a few things at this point (3am last night). Do I start over, scrapping this? Do I vow to make myself a better person? Do I just keep on keepin on and hope I learn to lighten up? Well really, you know I'd go for the path of least resistance right?  I truly don't believe in New Year's resolutions. For one thing, I have issues with the secular calendar. For another thing, I believe that we should endeavor to be better people as the mood strikes us and not once a year. For another thing, I think the fall-out rate of something you tell yourself when you're drunk and besotted at half past midnight on a holiday is too dramatic to convince me I should partake in said telling.
I think that people should be able to hear their own eulogies and that people should be able to decide from one minute to the next, on a Monday morning that they're never going to shout at traffic again, or never depress people in their blog again. I also believe that broken resolutions are easy to abandon. If I were to start a new bright blog and find I'm not quite ready to be that person, would I then abandon it? Yeah, probably.

This is a day later now. I'm writing at night again. I've struggled with this for a couple days and I fear until my schedule changes this might be the only time I have.
Along with not writing my blog, I've stopped following blogs. I can't put my finger on why, maybe I wasn't in the mood to see happy/bubbly people with ten thousand followers and praising each other. Or maybe the more I logged in and read them the more I felt behind myself. I don't owe anything to my blog. I'm not famous in the blogosphere. However, I do want some accountability, I want some continuity, I want to see the years and days documented in some way and this was why I set about this. So - I'm off to take my happy pills and go back out there. I might move this blog at some point, I'm not totally in love with blogger. We'll see I guess. In the meantime - Happy Ish New Year Ish, if you abide by this calendar and to each his own and same to you, Jack.


And now for something completely different - 

The Butterfly mentioned in past blogs, that only Leif had faith in and the rest of us thought was dead. Who knew they could take that long? Worth the wait.