It'll be living statues next "On the eve of the adjudicator's arrival, some travelers moved into Callaghan Park. Before you could say 'gypsy scum' we were knee-deep in dog muck, thieving kids and crusty jugglers."
The week of the weird carnival we had a game every night of the week. One was canceled for weather, apparently even Lacrosse cancels for gusts of 50mph and above. Go figure.
Those games were significant because they were good for the kids. They stood out and I hope they are the games they remember this season by.
Leif played a long and very close game that went into an extra inning. What made the game so great was that Leif won the game with an RBI. He had no idea what that meant or what had happened until easily an hour after we were home and it was all over. He was just frustrated that he made it to 2nd base only to be told the game was over. However, the parents and crowd all went around him and he was given the game ball which all the players and coach signed. That felt really special and I think it endeared him even more to the game as he has even started checking out baseball themed books from his library.
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| Pitchers are cute, especially when they are mine |
Queak's games were the usual everyone wins in T-ball. My favorite moments being when Queak forgot twice what team he was on, even though the other team was green and clearly different. Once while running to a base he saw a ball go by, so he ran off the baseline, caught the ball and threw it back to the pitcher. Another time when running home the ump was shouting "tag em out tag em out" so he grabbed the ball at his feet and turned and tagged the two runners behind him. I was torn between laughing and hiding my head in shame. I decided on laughing. Really, it was genuinely priceless. Other favorite moments were when the little girl on his team in an effort to not be tagged out just kept dodging the catcher's advances, this went on for some time because he wasn't sure to what extent he was supposed to advance upon her with the ball and she wasn't going to go by him till he quit trying to touch her with it. Followed by the little boy on Queak's team who stopped right in the middle of a run to get down on his hands and knees and inspect the white line, he felt it, let some blow in the wind and smelled it before getting back up to run to his base. Or the little boy who in the outfield just lay down to take a nap during an inning that was taking too long. Some of the teams are definitely better defined and it is obvious Queak was placed with the star-gazers (to put it mildly). It is all just as well because they are all very sweet and suit his shy sort of bewildered personality.
In other sports news, Celia made a similar show to Leif's for her Lacrosse game, winning the game with the last 2 goals. She has always claimed she played well but she sprained an ankle early in the season and has rarely been seen to be playing looking like anything other than a slow moving zombie. So it was nice to see her, ankle un-swollen, at the top of her game quick before the season ends this week. It was also nice to show up to the game late, only to hear shouts of "GO CELIA GO" and cheers as I came around the side of the field. It felt weird knowing no one knew that was my kid but me, while hearing everyone on the sideline was shouting her name just then.
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| The other team's mistake here was probably leaving that number 6 unguarded |
The school year is drawing to a close and I am wondering how long it will take to break the will of my children and mold them back into people I can spend an entire day with. For someone who spent so long homeschooling I've begun to lose my energy earlier and earlier in the day. I have noticed that they have way too much energy when they are off school and I spend a clear half the day threatening to sell them to the circus. Today, a Sunday, I knew we were in for a long day when I was already making circus threats by noon. I was preempted by saying it even because the kids upon seeing my face asked "is it circus time, Mommee?" Therefore, rather than my regularly scheduled chores we spent half the day at
Tingley Beach, which is an open fishing pond by the river. We freed our minnows that we'd taken last fall and we sat wishing we'd brought bread for the ducks and we promised them we'd be back with some maybe next week. It was nice to be by water.
As for the gypsy carnival, or city celebration or whatever the heck they called it, it was as I made it out to be. Bizarre.
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| We found this in the park flying about, I suspect it was intended to be posted to our and our various neighbor's houses. However, whoever had that job must have thought it was too much like work. I mean we did eventually find the notice, so their work there was done. |
We left the house to go check it out, walking across our street and there were throngs of people. There were park benches that had never been there before and there were people lounging on picnic blankets.
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| I couldn't decide if I liked the magically appearing picnic benches or the impromptu fire extinguisher more |
There were hoards of people who all looked like they knew what was going on, they were all milling about acting like it was any other Sunday. Brian looked at me and said he felt like an impostor. I said I did too. I felt like the universe had been pod snatched and we were all that was left and we were the only ones who knew that we weren't aliens.
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| My children are great for doing actual size food photos |
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| I can see my house from here |
Brian bought me a huge snow cone, which the children ate, so he bought us a second smaller snow cone. We had a miserable time at the climbing wall which was run by bitchy 16 year old girls intent on going home and not watching their job or the harnesses. They were chatting so much that they didn't do anything when a kid got stuck, fell onto Queak and knocked him off. Then, rather than see if his fingers were okay, or let him go back up they shunted Queak to the back of the line and ignored the kid that had fallen all together. I took pictures of them and filed a complaint with their company, and of course, it being ABQ there was no response. I do get tired of the lackadaisical it-is-okay-to-treat-people-like-crap business attitude of this place. I really do. There were other incidents at the same climbing wall.
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| It doesn't get much cuter than the 6 year old in a climbing harness |
The upshots were the kids got their faces painted, Buttercup in particular spent her time with a young boy who incited an argument when with myself and my husband who was adamant that it was a girl. I wouldn't let Brian call her/him a girl within his/her earshot. Not that he/she won't be used to it by now and they have a lifetime to get used to other people's gender confusion. Meanwhile, the sweet boy made a huge fuss over how cute he found the Cup and and how incredible her name was. The proceeds of the face-painting booth were to send the kids to music and or art camps. My boys cried when they woke up the next day to realize the faces didn't make it to show off to their friends at school.
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| My favorite part was that without being asked her brother held her hair back from the wind |
We spent the rest of the time hanging out with the old magician who taught Celia to juggle and let Buttercup hold the bunny from the magic hat. She gave the boys her chips from her lunch and we talked about the answers to the quiz they were running from the dancing floor stage. Neither of us could remember the names of all the Beach Boys. She didn't creep my out like most clowns do, she just seemed like she had wandered away from her pot-smoking gypsy/hippy caravan a little early in life and she was wondering when they'd come back for her.
We lay on the grass in front of her act, talking to her between sets, and then when the wind picked up we wandered home and pretended it had all been a dream. Sure enough, the next time we looked outside, it was all gone. Like a bad stage play. Impressively - there wasn't even a wad of trash to prove it had been real.
The next week (this last I think though it could have been any, it seems so long and distant) was just taken up with Pesach and me pushing myself too far physically and too hard mentally to get caught up on various tasks. The kids dealing with things at school, Celia had ACT's. Which head longed us into this weekend where I felt like doing nothing. Leif had a birthday party and a game. Eventually, today, I got tired of fighting the tide and blew the rest of the day off which is where we came in.
The rest of the time we tried, we tried, to take it easy.
Celia fell on an obstacle course at school and looks like she's been beaten up as she keeps bleeding from a scrape on her face. I need a real break though. I'm hoping Summer will step in and be there to catch me. I can't keep up with knocking the kids back for all their ill advised comments and actions or Queak just not being able to deal with the fact that he's not allowed to climb across the tops of furniture or Buttercup trying to perfect the loudest scream on the face of the earth because someone made a face at her.
More and more I wish we just had a huge house and a huge piece of land and more time to be ourselves.
On that happy note, I'm off to start the next week. Mostly because in the 5 minutes it has taken me to write this I have been interrupted a total of 13 times - I counted. That's why I specialize in incoherency.
