Some Very Unrelated Things
My baby is a genius … at backwards writing.

… and also psychologically scarred at the thought that a jellyfish might one day eat a train.

Also, blood. There has been a lot of it recently and it is traumatic. Blood on his leg-elbow from falling over. Blood on his chin from being pushed over. Blood on his finger after he pulled off a hangnail, leading him to bolt terrified from the TV room, screaming “There’s red on me! There’s red on me!”
He seems not to care that Cars bandaids cost $1.89 a packet. He just likes to replace them.
Meanwhile here is a photo of one of my all-time favorite foods:

Just above a picture of The Daddy’s most hated food:

I have found away around his strict ban: Secret Rhubarb Lunches. With the windows open. Then I brush my teeth. He is none the wiser.
Unfortunately not possible on weekends. We all have our cross to bear.
This weekend, however, my thoughts strayed from rhubarb. First we had this:

Made more exciting by torrential rain when the new roof was not quite finished. We all know I love a little drama, so why not?
In the end, it was all good, by which I mean we didn’t have to strategically position any buckets. No workers slipped off, and only 3 small bits of plaster fell off the ceiling from all the banging and thudding up there. Our new roof looks good. You know, the same but … um .. blacker. Although I am assured it will now be much less likely to leak and also cooler in summer.
Saturday afternoon the children and I celebrated the completion of the roof with a trip to a Folk Life Festival organized by our local school district and sponsored by the Big Yellow Arches. I know, right? With a pedigree like that it had to be a sad cruddy commercialized affair and a waste of an afternoon. But I wanted to kill time and just the drive there and back would relieve me of a good 30 minutes, 30 minutes not involving TV or computers or shopping or eating or playing in the yard with the leftover building materials.
It turned out to be one of the best afternoons out I have had with my children, anytime, anywhere - and yet more proof that you should never judge a book. As if you need any more proof (and I obviously do). Just about every pioneer craft or activity you can think of was represented - corn husking, cheese making, black powder firearms, homing pigeons, blacksmithing, woodworking, horse shoeing, lassoing bulls, spinning, dancing, bee keeping, quilting, tin punching, cooking over an open fire… We chose to make rag dolls, paint gourds, mold models out of clay and write with nib and ink. We touched baby chicks and the kids each got to take an egg from underneath a chicken (the eggs have nothing printed on them, but still I am suspicious - surely their hens aren’t that prolific. The children don’t seem to care.) My favorite - we touched a snake and a baby alligator. My first time. The best description I could come up with for the way they felt was “handbaggy”.
Of course during all this I took exactly ZERO photos for posterity. Give me a break, I am a child wrangler, not a photographer. Someone give me a lasso and let me tie them to a tree and then I will manage a photo without losing one. Here are some pictures of the dolls instead. The one without the face is called “Really”. The one with the face doesn’t yet have a name but privately I am calling her “Scary”.
(Baby Sister may not grow up to be an artist…)


Not sure whose face is scarier here, but the doll is a big hit.
Oh, and you want to know where is the T-Bot’s doll? Well, he spent his time slaving over a love note instead. Immortalized by yours truly in grainy, blurry detail:

The big museums in town could learn a lot from today’s festival. Not at all a bad afternoon out for a grand total of $5. And in the end, there wasn’t even a Big Mac in sight



























