electric boogaloo

Saturday night we sat outside while the sun went down. The little bit of wind was perfect. Kevin and the boys ran around catching fireflies, while I sat on a metal swing and watched them and thought about the wonderful stereotypes of summertime fun. While they caught and named and tried to make a pet out of insects, I worked on my sewing. Because — right? But no really, I did. A couple of weeks ago my crazy Oklahoma friend Kathryn suggested that I make play food for Graham’s little kitchen out of felt. She was sort of joking, because A) I don’t have enough free time for personal hygiene, much less new hobbies and B) I can’t sew worth a crap.

But once she said it, the idea wouldn’t go away. I bought seven dollars worth of synthetic craft store felt and embroidery floss, and started carrying it with me everywhere. So far I’ve made:
2 slices of bread
3 slices of lunch meat
1 slice of bacon which looks a little like poop
1 piece of romaine lettuce
1 tomato slice
3 pickle slices
1 slice of cheese
3 pancakes
1 sugar snap pea w/beans
1 strawberry

I’m working on some cookies now. Graham honestly doesn’t seem very interested in playing with the toy food, but he is fascinated by the idea of me making toy food. “Mama, now can you make another trawberry?”

No, sweetie. Strawberries are a perfect whore to make. Can I interest you in another pancake?

So I’ve been feeling domestic.

And! Last week I expanded the daily laundry concept and applied it to the rest of the apartment. Toys, floors, dishes, beds, etc. And the darndest thing — our place stayed sort of clean. When our home isn’t all messy, a lot of background stress disappears, along with the nagging feeling that I suck. It’s nice.

It’s nice too because most weekends my entire goal is: Clean this fucking place up.

But not this weekend! This weekend my entire goal has been to take a shower and wash my hair. Look at me, Miss Ambitious.

Oh and the other goal was to purchase gift on Saturday and attend Nicolaus’ friend’s bounce-house birthday party on Sunday. Do you see what comes of having friends? Now do you see??

The party wasn’t horrible, actually. First, it was really impressive to watch Nicolaus run and jump and climb and bounce like a human child. Only a year ago he refused to go into those obviously dangerous bounce thingies. Today he did come find me a few times to express safety and structural integrity concerns, but mostly he ran around like a wild man. Neat. Graham meanwhile, walked in and was Home. Whatever planet he is from (did I tell you? He keeps saying “I am! from a different planet.“) most certainly has bouncey things. And a lot of yellow. And pizza.

Then we came home and all felt very hungover and cranky, but also proud because we had done such a normal suburbanite thing with our weekend. Look at us!

Kevin and Nicolaus decided that what we need? Is Capsella. Lucky thing Kevin has a Capsella set. So they drove to our little store room and brought home Capsella, a bag of legos and a large model of the Millennium Falcon. I took a nap while they all did whatever boys do with all of those things, and woke up to the sound of a thunderstorm outside, and also the melodious sound of everyone griping at everyone else.

The boys went to bed early. Jumping in a giant yellow room is exhausting work. And now it’s time for a new week to start.