naked

i've decided to reveal some identities on this here blog-o-mine. i don't know why, maybe it's the five year anniversary. i'm craving change. feeling daring. here goes.

my partner in crime, formerly the mysterious figure known only as "m," is actually mark.























my world-traveling seventeen-and-a-half-year-old daughter, known by many aliases but herein referred to as "bean," is really zoë.


















my sweet and funny almost-fourteen-year-old-boy "boo" is, in reality, isaac.























and "minnow," the dog named for a fish, truly is named minnow.























i really do, in real life, call them bean and boo. i have ever since they were born. zoë was a little bean when she was a baby, and it stuck. isaac was more of a baked potato (it was a hot summer in baltimore). i have no idea where "boo" came from, but there you go. i have never called mark anything but "mark." or "sweetie." i won't even start with the nicknames i have for my dog, because it would be a little bit humiliating.

days go by

art magically appears on the chalkboard door in the kitchen.























i go to the post office, where my favorite thing is checking our box. i think the post office boxes are gorgeous and kind of mysterious.























boo acquires additions to his wardrobe. some of these items are green.























i take minnow to the vet for his lyme vaccine. we both love her, because she sits on the floor with him, lets him lick her entire face, and says, "who's the best dog in the whole world? you are. you are."

my day, continued

more scenes from mother's day (or is it mothers' day? no, it's mother's day.). bean gave me a beautiful flower ring, and boo made me a lovely card. m, bean, boo, max, and i went to arabica for coffee and toast.


i told her i coveted it and then did my very best to forget i'd asked for it. she chose the color.























bean's hand is max's palette. it surprises me every time what a great artist he is.























hot chocolate on the orange sofa.























you should hear them laugh together.

dear mom,

happy mother's day! i've always felt like mother's day is yours and no one else's (i remember being a kid and resenting so much the implication - or instruction - that i should be calling my grandmother on mother's day, even though i adored her, because she wasn't my mother). also, ahem, you just happen to be the best mom ever. you set the standard, and you've made it so easy to be a good mom, because mostly i just try to do the things that you did. and i love knowing that if you weren't my mom, and we randomly met, we would be great friends (just like we are in real life).

i am trying to broaden my mind, though, and also think adoringly of my other favorite moms today, including m's sweet sweet mom; my very best friend; my wonderful sisters-in-law; mama d; the dancer lady; and so many more. but my very favorite thing is being with my kids on mother's day. i can't believe my luck in being their mom.























above, little boo, around age four, at the brand new casco bay books. below, baby bean and me on the ferry to block island, summer of 1994.

mental health day

one last mental health day for boo as he nears the end of middle school. we spent the morning part of it walking on willard beach with minnow (which we can only do before nine a.m. now that it's may).




























i took the above photo to demonstrate something that boo and i realized suddenly the other day while standing side-by-side in front of a mirror: he is taller than i am. yes, that's his shadow on the left and mine on the right.

also, his feet are bigger than mine, although that's not a new thing. and my feet are pretty gigantic. i wonder how tall this boy will be? he has one parent of average height, one of average/shortish height, a couple of tall uncles, and some tiny aunties and great-grandmothers (with teeny tiny feet, i might add). and m's mom, grandma nancy, is a tiny lady too!

fire

the illicit-but-completely-safe-i-swear fire pit continues to burn (periodically) in my backyard, thanks to max who is single-handedly shrinking our unsightly pile of brush, one cozy little fire at a time.
















m took some gorgeous photos yesterday around the fire, and i have stolen some of them. above, boo, not just about to poke his eye out with that stick. below, max in the best gas station-purchased t-shirt ever.
















and beautiful bean.

removable

so, boo went back to the arm bone doctor and got his cast made into a removable one. they just snipped it off with scissors, cut it a bit and taped it, applied some velcro strips, and voila: a removable cast! forgive me, but i keep finding it places and thinking of it as his prosthetic arm.

ouch

i'm sure you've been eagerly awaiting a closer look at boo's arm bone! yesterday, he got a stylish blue cast, which he will wear for a couple of weeks, and then it will be replaced by a "removable" cast. i'm picturing a plastic thing that snaps open and closed, but i actually have no idea.

on a completely different note, this craigslist ad*, sent to me by enoch, made me laugh.


*aw, it's been removed. it basically said, "my son found this rooster in a tree. i don't know anything about it. please take it away." and there was a photograph of the offending bird.

happy cast day!

maybe. at least he has an appointment with the orthopedic surgeon this afternoon. but look what a cheery face he's putting on the whole thing! also, i forgot to show you this:

broken

on saturday i gave boo a ride to happy wheels (which i now propose we all refer to as "scary wheels") with his friends anthony and mackenzie. three hours later, anthony's dad returned him...BROKEN! yes, it's our first broken bone ever (including m and me - none of us has broken anything before). while skating, some big guy knocked into anthony, who knocked into boo, who went flying and landed weird on his arm.

m took him to our local not-quite-an-emergency-room, where they took an x-ray and found that he broke his arm and his wrist. they splinted him up and sent him home. he'll get a cast on later this week. oh, and yes, it's his right (dominant) arm!
























we all went to dinner at max's dad's house anyway. max's brother oliver loaned boo the above getup for some outdoor activity ("going to look at the train," i believe they said). i think he looks like a wes anderson character.
























we ate a delicious meal cooked by max and bean and chatted with max's dad, matt. it was a really fun evening, despite the broken limb in our midst. even though boo was achy, he managed to have a good time. oliver has a pinball machine in his basement lair. we also watched most of the chris rock documentary good hair, which i highly recommend.
























fun hijinks with the broken arm, above.

anthony's mom, karen, came over with presents and hugs later - not necessary, but so sweet. it really made boo happy.
























she certainly knows the way to a broken-armed boy's heart!
























the boxes of movie candy fueled our homeworking, which consisted of boo dictating and me writing (in the case of his language arts journal) or graphing (in the case of math). i'm still not sure how he's going to get through the next six weeks of school with no right hand available. he can type on a keyboard fairly well, but math is a serious challenge.

(note reese's pieces box used as impromptu ruler, below):

'hodgepodge' is a good word

my-can't-look-away fascination right now is hoarders, featuring stories of people whose entire houses look even worse than my basement. i got mom hooked on it too when i visited last week. which reminds me of this.

as i stubbornly await the reopening of the kind of brand new library on april fifteenth, i have been catching up on my mountain of new yorkers (but i'm not a hoarder -- i recycle them when i'm done), and reading random books i find on our shelves (currently a collection of short stories by f. scott fitzgerald).

hey, did i ever mention that boo scored a ticket to see president obama when he came to town last week? what happened was, boo was pretty mad at me because i wouldn't let him stand in line (in the rain. instead of going to school. for hours) to possibly get one of the free tickets being given away. in fact, he was basically furious about it, and i actually felt quite regretful that i hadn't let him do it. i didn't stand in line myself because obama and i were going to be like two ships passing in the night, me on my concord trailways boston-bound bus, him in his motorcade. after i left for boston, m came to the rescue, scouring twitter until he found a guy who actually had an extra ticket to give away. "best story gets it!" the guy said. and, as it turned out, boo had the best story. several hundred people with tickets did not get in - tragically, including the man who gave boo his ticket - but boo himself managed to sneak forward in line where he spotted a friend from school, and he made it in!

secrets

this isn't really a secret, but bean has started hearing from colleges in the last week or so, and i'm afraid if i say anything about it she'll fear that i'm jinxing her. so i'm going to wait until all the votes are in to issue a full report on the college thing. which should happen within the next two weeks!

also, her gap year plans = unknown.

also, i'm not allowed to say here that she is smitten.

ahem. onto the boy, who has such a cold and who coughed all night monday, causing bean to stumble into our room around four a.m. and say, "will you please take him to the hospital so i can get some sleep?" when boo came downstairs late on monday morning, he moaned, "all of my face holes hurt." he is starting to feel better, and we even sent him to school today for the last hour so he could collect mountains of homework.

it snowed a little bit today, so i refused to go outside or look out the window.

back to the sweatshop, where i'm stitching up a brand new color of scarf! and we have two new print designs. i'll show you later.

1,3,7-trimethylxanthine

seventy degrees on saturday. i know, again with the weather report, but may i remind you that i live in maine? and that it is march?

friday and saturday were outdoorsy, with stops at arabica for coffee.
























m and boo went on long bike rides all weekend, and bean and i took lots of long walks.
























we were pleased by bard's sidewalk sign showing the chemical formula for caffeine.
























the low point of the weekend was when m, boo, and i went to see the ghost writer, which was okay, but not as good as i'd hoped (and left me with the nasty sensation of just having seen a movie directed by a creepy old man, not because of its content, but because i'd conveniently forgotten that it was a roman polanski film). and we emerged from the theater at midnight to find that our car had been towed. i'm not blaming anyone, but let's just say that i was not the one who was driving the car that night. we had a short mental list of people who might be available at 12:30am to drive us to south portland to retrieve our car, and number one on that list was bean's friend max* who just happened to be hanging out with bean and who gallantly came to our rescue.
























the above photo was taken inside the theater by boo. this current series of movie trivia makes me crazy: it is full of grammatical and punctuation errors, is bizarrely written ("thick-gummed"?), and check out that font at the top...










*i doubt i am permitted to say anything more about this.

sunshine

this weekend truly felt like spring -- like spring in baltimore in fact, which is appropriate since we've basically had baltimore's winter this year, while they've had our winter. which is a-okay with me. on saturday, m and i went to see an education after we sat in the sunshine for a while sharing a latte from bard.
























and then on sunday, while boo was skiing with some friends (i can't tell you how weird it feels to say that, not being a skier myself. it's as if he were playing polo with some friends. or. something exotic and expensive like that), bean and i took a long, leisurely walk all over the place. we paused to eat bagels from the works in the sunshine. i could've fallen asleep.fifty-five degrees.
























and then it was time for our oscar party, complete with ginger beer floats and tiny samosas. if you haven't already watched this trailer for every academy award winning movie ever, i really think you should.

A Trailer for Every Academy Award Winning Movie Ever -- powered by Cracked.com

in my kitchen

my sweet mom gave me this beautiful bird bowl (jeeze, what's with the alliteration lately? i can't seem to avoid it). it's such a lovely shade of reddish-brown, and...those birds. three birds, three pears. bean came into the room and said, "wow! that bowl really ties the room together!"
























this is just about my favorite packaging. anything that involves an elephant on the label is okay with me. plus, pad thai. and i have recently figured how to not have the rice noodles stick together.*
























there you have the highlights of my kitchen. we have our boy home from his amazing trip to the west coast (he learned to snowboard and ski and hung out in san francisco and flew both ways solo, and if he could do it again tomorrow he would), and we're all getting re-adjusted to the school week schedule.


*after cooking or soaking (following the package instructions), i rinse in cold water til the noodles are clammy and pale as a sick person. then when i'm ready to stir-fry them, i run warm water over them until they relax and give each other a little space.

the learning shack

boo found out yesterday that he did get a spot in the learning shack's class of 2014! hooray!

lapin vs. girafe

boo has been working on a video for a school project. yesterday, with the help of his friends anthony and enoch, he finished filming while i documented with MYphone.
























anthony is in the giraffe mask, boo (of course) is wearing the beloved rabbit head.
























enoch helped up the awesomeness factor.
























i have always allowed my kids to go on the roof, if it fulfills an artistic purpose. or even if they just ask really nicely. i can't wait to show you the final product, which is a french music video. the concept is basically a dance-off between the giraffe and the rabbit, shot all around our neighborhood, with a bit of dialog en français. here is a sneak preview.

pardon me while i brag

bean is officially the "how student of the week" (how = "habits of work") at her school (did i ever tell you that she refers to her school as "the learning shack"?). she is the only student at her school (ever) to simultaneously take three ap classes and a college class at usm. "also," said her principal, "she might be a jayhawk!"

meanwhile, boo made his official high school choice for next year. he chose none other than the learning shack! however, there were so many applicants that there will be a lottery to fill the seventy spots available. his second choice is also a great school.

assaulted by salty pete

we brought the sass to the portland pirates game last night. salty pete came by to ruffle our hair and generally harass us. this was my first hockey game ever; we went because bean had an intensive for school that involved selling tickets to the game. it was bizarre and fun. there was only one fight, and the crowd seemed pretty disappointed, especially when the pirates lost to the lowell devils in the end.

offspring

i guess i'm feeling pretty sentimental about these two.