Visit the Kelpforest (pt. 2)

try this again... all I want is a stupid link, dammit! 

Hmmm, new icon.... 
courtesy Illustration Maker. This is as near as I could get to me, and it's overly flattering, I think.

Shortly after I joined Bookcrossing, I got a notification that someone had released a book at the high school a block from my house. I missed it, but I sent the person who had released it a notification that was interested in the book she'd released, and I'd be looking for future ones. Her user name was Cookie Dragon, and I asked if she'd ever seen Pocket Dragons® and sent her a link - she thought they were cute and she'd never seen them before. I thought I might send her a picture of mine, since one of them is "cookie dragon."

Actually, the title is 'Cookie? What Cookie?'

Hard to see here, but he has an Oreo, with a big bite taken out of it.

After we got that gigantic squid a couple of months ago, I used my personal camera to take pictures of it, downloaded them to my work computer, then sent copies of it to one of my bosses in La Jolla. Later, he emailed me back with the following:

"Is that your cookie monster as well?"

Oops. Somehow, I guess I must have clicked on that picture too, and accidentally attached it to the email. My explanation:

To: Dale
From: Leeanne
Re: cookie monster

*red face*

Umm, that's our Pocket Dragon. He lives in the sampling truck, and survives on dropped muffin crumbs and the occasional corner of breakfast burrito or bagel.

He also demands we stop at Starbucks on the way back from the docks. He has a bit of a caffeine problem. It makes it hard to drive when a tiny dragon is buzzing about your ears and threatening to set your squid sample sheets ablaze.

Leeanne (who obviously needs more caffeine herself)

...and speaking of Pocket Dragons®, I would dearly to have this guy on my desk.... ;)

My mother grew up in the village of Andover (pop. 1100) in upstate New York, a very small town where the only stoplight was actually outside the village limits (and it was only a blinking stop sign, not an actual signal. In the nearby town of Almond (pronounced "Elmond" if you live in those parts) is a very old, white, two-story house by the side of the road. My mother's great-great grandfather lived there - we have a rocking chair in the living room that he made by hand, and there's a gouge in the seat where my mother's grandfather carved a hole with his pocketknife, when he was sent to sit there as punishment.

The family that lives there now operates a pottery studio in a small building adjacent to the house. They were kind enough to give us a tour of their house last time we visited back there. This teapot is from their studio. It has pattern of dark irises on it, but blue and gray mottled glaze is dark as well, so they may be hard to see. My father dropped the lid and busted the handle, so it's been glued back together. I need to find a new bamboo or reed handle for it.

By coincidence, my grandmother went to nearby Alfred University when she was young, and majored in ceramics.



My grandmother was quite fond of antiques, including antique dishes. After their retirement, she and her husband bought and sold them as an income (what an internet business they could have nowadays). After she passed away, we found a large collection of Fiestaware, all different colors. My father sold most of it to our neighbors several years ago, but I kept a few place settings, including the tea service. I don't use this one all that often - the placement of the handle looks pretty, but it's hard on your wrist if the pot is full, and my hands are really too big to hold it comfortably.

Bleah. Four emails with viruses waiting for me at work this morning. One of them from my home computer, supposedly. I have scanned and checked several times and I'm sure both my work and home computers are clean. I bugged my brother about checking his machine, and making sure his definitions are up to date, but I don't know if he has yet.

I put the last of the dimes in the ashtray into the gas tank, and it barely got me 3/4 of a gallon. Not enough to even turn off the "You'd better get gas pronto!" light. Yep, I'm submitting that bus pass form today. I can't afford to drive that gas hog to work if gas is going to get up to $3/gallon this summer. I'd love to get a Sparrow or a hybrid at some point, but John is holding out for a fuel cell vehicle, if they ever start mass marketing them. Not that we can afford one, right now anyway.

Mother's Day was a little bit blah. I wasn't expecting anything, since I know we're broke. I had wanted to go to a craft fair in Sunset Beach, if only to window shop, but I just could not work up the motivation. I wound up doing four loads of laundry in the new machine - darned if I could only find four pairs of Angus's underwear - what the heck is that kid doing with them? And I actually got them folded and put away - that's a big step for me, since they often get folded, but never quite in dresser drawers. And I got started on the swamp that is the kids room - I about kill myself every time I go in there, and that's got to change. I didn't get very far, but that'll continue - the rack of bins I got for them is starting to get filled up, and later it will get sorted.

The kids brought me a bunch of Candy Cane roses from my bush in the backyard, and a solitary calla lily was stuck in the middle of them. John had put them in a white glass vase that had been a wedding present to my parents. I stupidly set it on the computer desk (not the most intelligent place in the world) and it got knocked over by the spinning chair - twice. Luckily the vase did not break, but the poor flowers were the worse for wear.

At one point, I was just sitting on the bed, watching cartoons without them really registering. John had come in from the garage - he's still working the box for my friend because it needs to be done by Thursday - and asked what was the matter. I made a non-committal noise. He looked at me for a few minutes, and then asked gently, "Do you miss your mom?"

I swallowed, and suddenly I felt a pang, and felt tears well up in my eyes. Of course. I hadn't really thought about it, but this is the 9th Mother's Day since she's been gone. My eyes sting even now as I'm typing this, and my stomach hurts.

John picked up the remote, flipped channels for a minute or two, then looked at me, and said, "She still comes around, you know."

I looked back at him.

"Yep, she has to check every once in a while. She likes to stand at the corner of the hallway, and look in the kids' room. I think my brother's been coming by too, but I'm not so sure about that one."

I'm never quite sure what to say when he comes up with these things. He's third generation Irish, pretty much on both sides of his family, while he's not religious, he takes ghosts and such very seriously. He swears his grandmother's house in Michigan was haunted. Shortly after Ben, my brother's Italian greyhound, was hit by a car, John said he saw him in the living room, curled up next to his box, looking up at him. He said it was the first time he'd seen an animal, after it was gone. He tells me usually when he feels presences, he tells them forcefully to go away, because you can't be to sure exactly what it is. It may be something you don't want. He must feel fairly sure about my mom.

It's comforting to think that my mom might be checking in, but myscience training only reinforced my native skepticism. Too skeptical, my brother would say. He's talked to psychics about her on more than one occasion. People who do that kind of stuff for money just seem to smack of The National Enquirer, and it seems to me they're very good at telling people what they want to hear. However, I can't completely give up on the idea that there may be an afterlife. It's too intriguing, and too much of my fantasy life is tied up in it to say I completely disbelieve. The truth is, I don't know, and I won't know until it happens to me. In any case, my mother is probably coming back to gripe about the state we've let her house decline to.

Ah well.

John's mom and grandmother came over to visit, and John decided to barbecue. I hadn't planned on anyone coming over for dinner, but it was not too bad. John's mom gave me a little heart-shaped china box with shamrocks on it, and I gave them some pretty notecards and a notepad, that I'd bought at her birthday in February, but set aside. I'm glad I did.

I let the kids stay up way too late, and fiddled around with the timer on my camera. I showed it to John, and he joked, "I'm never in them," to which I replied, "Bull, I'm usually the photographer."


Why is my face so red? Maybe because I was trying to jump over the side of the chair and get in behind them before the camera went off. I think Avalon was hypnotized by the blinking red light or something.

Friday morning, Angus's class had a "Mother's Day Tea," for which John signed me up to make banana bread. I skipped my book group (well, I hadn't had a chance to read Bimbos of the Death Sun anyway) to make it because we had to drop it off Thursday - along the something-relaxing-Teacher-Appreciation-Week gift (for which I used a smelly votive I'm no longer able to burn because of John's allergies, and put it in a seafood cocktail cup with some rub-on transfers I already had), and the drawing Angus made for the same. Friday's gift was a booklet of drawings by all the kids - Angus made a bunch of scribbles with different colored crayons and said it was abstract art.

I had asked for Friday morning off; even though we do not see eye-to-eye with Angus's teacher, I didn't want him to feel left out. When I dropped him off at 10:20, there was a big sign on the door - No Moms Permitted Until 10:45. I went home to make my lunch (I hadn't had time to earlier). The flyer for this said "No siblings, please get a babysitter." but I heard one mom ahead of me say "I can't get a sitter for one hour. I'm bringing her and she can just deal." Walking behind her, I grinned.

Now Mrs. K. is one of those ultra saccharine women, who decorates every newsletter with cuteness, and just generally makes me feel as if I'm developing diabetes. Quite a few of the other moms just eat it up. I felt nervous standing around with all those other women, some of them with their designer clothes, perfect hair and cell phones ringing every five minutes. Maybe I should have worn a dress. Nah. Then she opened the door and had our kids seat us at the kid-sized tables, one by one. I sat sideways - my legs didn't fit under the table.

She had the kids bring us a cup of ice tea (with an orange slice and a mint leaf in it), and a cookie, Angus brought me a Madeleine. Then she opened it up for the kids to grab cookies, although admonishing them to only take one at a time. I saw Angus go back and forth 3 or 4 times. He sat by himself near the door and didn't seem to interact much with the other kids. I guess he was pretty focused on the cookies. I chatted with the moms on either side of me. One had grown up in the country and was telling stories of how she had goats for pets when she was a kid. One time they got in the house and ate all her mother's houseplants. Then she started finding them dead by what she thought was dogs chasing around the tree they were tethered to, and strangled. She didn't find out until years later her father was doing it and turning them into jerky.

Then Mrs. K. explained that she had had the kids make portraits of their moms in the style of Picasso (she's kind of an art snob). Then she had each kid tell her why they loved their mom. Everyone had to stand up one at a time with their picture and read their sentence. I couldn't hear most of them, including Angus's, and one little girl was too petrified to speak (that would have been me, in kindergarten). The woman who'd been telling me the goat story son stood up and proudly showed his picture. I think the crayon had gotten smudged, and the picture looked like it had frizzy black hair (hers was brown and straight) and a 5 o'clock shadow. She turned bright red. Apparently I have straight hair, bangs and wear lots of pink lipstick. Heh. Angus brought me my picture - it turned out he'd said "I like my mom because she is my mom and she likes me." He did draw me a purple shirt, my favorite color, and gave me long dangly earrings, which I do wear quite often. :)

It was about time to go, but Angus had to show me the pretend kitchen in the corner. He was quite pleased to show me everything in all the little cupboards. As I gave him a hug and went out the door, I passed the table where the snack were. The banana bread was at the back and completely untouched. I guess it didn't look as appetizing as chocolate chip cookies. I hope she took it to the teacher's lounge or something and didn't just pitch it (john voiced this to John, and he intoned serenely "A gift once given is given from your heart, and whatever the person does with it is completely up to them.").

John phoned me later and told me that the teacher made a snide remark to the woman who brought her daughter (never mind that the little girl sat on her lap and never made a peep the whole time). That particular mom turned around and went straight to the principal's office.

Anyway, Angus's art:



I'm quite flattered, really.


This is Angus riding to school on the scooter, with his dad. John was really proud of this one.


You know, I was going to ask her what she was planning to do for Father's Day

To whom it may concern,

This is the second notice I have gotten for licensing an animal named Stimpy. Apparently, you are still under the misapprehension that Stimpy is a dog. While he has had an operation that might arguably be said to have changed his gender, I don’t believe we have the surgical technology yet to have changed his entire species. He is, always has been, and will remain, a Felis domestica, smoke tabby in color (although he may appear black on first glance), green eyes, and absent a tail, as evidenced by the following photo:



If you require further evidence, please contact the Seacliff Animal Hospital at 714-555-XXXX, as they have performed surgery on him fairly recently, and have fairly detailed records on him.

I called the number on the card on the first notice, and the person I reached told me I could disregard it; however, the record has obviously not been expunged from the database. Please update them?

Thank you,

Leeanne

Were you serious about the teapots?

It's Teapot Tuesday! (Well, for the next twenty minutes, anyway...)

This one is one of my favorite teapots. It's just so spherical. The glaze has sort of a metallic color to it, which is hard to see here. It feels lovely in your hands, filled with hot tea. I got this at Crate and Barrel; it was part of a dining set which there was nothing left of.



This is my tea kettle. My dad and I always disagree about how to heat the water for tea. He's quite content heating in the microwave (brrrr!), while I like the ritual of filling the kettle, waiting for the water to boil, and then putting the tea in the pot; one for each cup and one for the pot. I picked this one because it looks like a curling stone and it could just slide along the ice. Part of the porcelain is broken off on one spot where my dad dropped it, but it still works fine.



Until next Tuesday....