We spent the weekend actively re-charging our mental energy, which sounds like a new age load of crap but really means that we ate good soup at Panera instead of cooking at home and rested and watched movies together and restored a nice level of clean to our apartment.

Two days into the week, yes – it all helped.

I’m trying to formulate updated thoughts on the CPSIA madness. The level of freakout in the crafting/small business community has reached DEFCON 1 which is the freakiest level of DEFCON. People always think it’s five which is weird. Didn’t we all see War Games?

The formerly united People’s Front of Artsy-crafty has now split into factions:
1. People who have no idea that the laws are changing
2. People who know about it but aren’t worried because surely the law doesn’t apply to them somehow or will be changed or will turn out to have an easy loophole
3. People who take it seriously but are deliberately and noisily refusing to comply
4. People who are shutting down their businesses because OMG
5. People who are on hold, but will shut down if nothing changes
6. People who are trying to comply with the law, take it seriously and yet not freak out
7. Even though holy shit you guys. Have you read this thing?

#3 and #4 hate each other and think that groups #1, 2, 5, and 6 are all pathetically uninformed.

There are also people who say that all of the outcry is just a bunch of hysterics from those silly mommybloggers who have this crazy notion that the toy police give a crap about hand-knitted baby blankets. Some of those people, in fact, work for the agency in charge of enforcing the law.

I’ve read a lot of press releases, interview transcripts, and memos from the Agency of Consumer Protection and Whatnot. The message I see over and over is: “Our hands are tied. We have to follow the law as it was written unless it changes, and we are charged with the task of enforcing it.” but then in the next breath they will say “We are aware of how much it sucks” and “Do not freak out.”

I could almost swear that they are trying to wink at us and say Shhhh we can’t say this but don’t worry about it, we aren’t going to target small businesses.

But as Walter Olson over at Forbes says, we don’t want to fly under the radar and hope for the best:
“The thing is, few librarians, eBay sellers or knitters want to be told that they’re outlaws but at too small-fry a level to attract the authorities’ attention. They want to be legal.”

I do want to be legal. That’s why I’m scrambling to figure out testing for all of my stuff. For me it’s more than a simple matter of principle: I want to spend 2009 cultivating wholesale accounts. Many small retailers will not accept my products unless they are certified or otherwise fully comply with the law. And bigger catalogs and chains will be too exposed to take any chances; Amazon.com has already informed all of its vendors that they will require full certification on all products intended for children under twelve.

So as much as I’d like to shrug and say fuggit, I have to pay darn close attention to this thing. Exemptions are being considered and discussed, but they are weird and convoluted and mostly unhelpful. Thrift stores have been told to relax, they don’t have to certify anything that they re-sell. They had better be damned sure that everything complies with strict new standards or their asses will go to jail, but other than that they have nothing to worry about.

It’s hard because on the one hand I don’t want to go buy Thomas the Train Poison Edition at Goodwill. But on the other hand, it seems pretty rough to burden teams of volunteers at a nonprofit with the job of carefully researching the thousands of children’s items that are donated to them each day. Clothing, toys, books, jewelry, anything.

If you think I’m being a crazy hysterical mommyblogger, please check out these two articles in Forbes this month:

Part I
Part II

and this from Bloomberg.com

I don’t know. My stuff is easier than most to bring into line — almost all of it is made using only non-toxic materials that were made in the USA or Britain. It mainly limits my ability to expand into Nerdy Baby bedding and clothing, but we’ll see.

This isn’t some passionate call to action, though if you have a minute to call your local TV station and ask them why in the fucking fuck they aren’t researching and reporting on this issue, that’d be very cool. But really, I’m just venting and feeling hopeful it will be fixed, worried that it won’t, and bummed to see the normally kind and wonderful community of independent artists turn on each other for their business decisions, threaten to turn each other in, belittle those who have decided to shut down now rather than drag out the stress and anguish of discovering piece by piece that they can’t possibly comply.

I wasn’t a very good mother today. This week was full of all the snot and sore throats and resulting needy crankiness, and I don’t know – those are reasons maybe why by Friday I’d be overloaded. But they’d also be reasons to throw your weight behind this mothering thing and work extra hard to be wonderful when your kids are sick and need you most. Or something.

In the olden days I worked at a software company where we spent all day in frustrating meetings with people who wanted the result without having to do or understand or even hear about all the stuff in between. I’d stay there 10 hours and then come home with my head buzzing. Mouse would greet me at the door and Kevin would chat with me about his day and about funny stupid people and – it was all interesting, but I barely responded. Not that I didn’t want to be with him, but conversation felt like too much. Saying words back was too hard with all the talking noise from the day.

It wasn’t a creative time. My drawing table sat in a cluttered corner while I spent long night hours thinking about nothing, watching sitcoms I’d already seen.

I’m very, very lucky that Kevin was nice enough to stick around because I was barely a wife those days. It makes me sad to think about it now… what wasted time, what energy I spent on people and things that did not matter. It was the dot-com days I guess; we had stock options and there were free sodas in the break room. Everyone was a little nutty.

So that’s sort of the same kind of way that I wasn’t a good mother today.

I did do some of the things that good mothers do. I put pants on the one that was half-naked. provided four (4) complete, balanced meals plus snacks in between. Gave one child a bath. Put shirt and pants on him afterwards. Encouraged both to draw with chalk all over a chalkboard wall. Scrubbed the bird’s cage, dishes, toys, and perches because holy Christ birds are nasty. Helped children with various potty-related activities. Played a computer game with one. Did two hours of school work with the other. Put pants on — oh my God, Graham where are your pants? Took them outside to play. Watched a library video about rocks and minerals PLUS the single greatest movie ever made. Managed orderly and thorough hand-washing before dinner. Served dinner. Refused to give in to 3-year-old’s unreasonable cup-related demands. Politely overlooked his partial nudity at the dinner table. Helped them brush their teeth. Read stories. Hugged them goodnight.

But I was also irritable and disengaged. Distracted. I caught myself in a stupid power struggle to make Nicolaus read a page because I knew he could read it and he was being all silly and acting like a five year old. I barked at him: “Pay ATTENTION. You need to focus here.” Hi, Kettle? It’s me, your ADD mother.

This went on for awhile before he gave it to me straight, “Mama, why are you acting like this is the most important thing in the world and if I don’t read it we will all DIE?”

Well, you never know when knowing how to read the words little, friend, animal, please, doctor, bigger, and better might save your life. According to some of the spam I get anyway.

But he was rightly picking up on the fact that I was being a freak for no reason. We finished the page, then I let him go run around and be grumpy for awhile. The next time we sat down I gave him a handful of pretzels to munch on while he read. No games, no if you read a sentence I give you a pretzel. Just hey, wanna snack? And hey, wanna read? He did, and it was better.

After that I fell asleep, using the pile of clean laundry for a pillow. I woke up 30 minutes later to the sound of my own voice saying, “NICOLAUS! Didn’t I just tell you to STOP YELLING??”

I vaguely remembered telling him to stop stuff many times during my nap.

The table was covered in cut paper and pear juice because hey, mom’s asleep and our insurance deductible started over this month! Let’s get out sharp things and open metal pop-top cans by ourselves.

That was the sort of day it was. I’d hug them, then I’d yell at them, then I’d take care of something they needed, then I’d ask them why they were being so dang rude today. Then I’d hug one, put pants on the other, and keep going.

If you’re a crafty type, you know what the itch feels like. Once a new idea or desire to try some new thing gets stuck in your brain, you can’t relax until it is done. It’s got to be closely related to OCD, only instead of checking or grooming? You buy art supplies.

Lately the thing that nags me is print making. It’s not something I know very much about, but there’s something satisfying about working backwards to move forwards. You draw the reverse of what your picture will look like, or you carve out the negative space. Then you dump ink everywhere and make a mess — it can’t be that closely related to OCD.

On my birthday, there were parades. Fancy dinners which I did not attend but understand were quite nice. The president gave a speech. Thousands of people poured into the streets all over the world to celebrate, some of them wearing shirts that said things like January 20th: The day the world changed.

It was a little over the top this year. I did think the flags were a nice touch though.

So while the world paused to contemplate the glorious occasion of my birth, Kevin took me to the art store. Not Michaels; the real art store. We spent a $50 gift card and holy goodness I love my new art supplies. Not like those 20 boxes of lame art supplies I have stacked in our laundry room. These are new and are wonderful and I love them.

I haven’t had time or energy to do any serious block carving – mainly because it turns out that block carving is difficult to do – but the urge to do some kind of printing was making me cranky, so I tackled monotypes.

MMMmm… monotypes.

Mono is latin for “one” and Type is latin for “type”.

The way it works is: You paint onto a plate that doesn’t soak up ink. Then you press a piece of damp art paper onto the plate and peel it up. There’s your print.

Kevin saw me at work and said – so then why don’t you just paint directly onto the paper? Shhhhh!! Quiet, you! I’m PRINTING.

What’s neat about it is that even as you’re printing the same image, there’s no way to have it come out the same every time. The ink spreads out and swirls around and does what it wants.

Then you let it dry and fill in details with chalk. Here’s my first attempt:

And here’s my second. This one is based on a photo of Graham at about 18 months old, taken by my dad. I put the photo down on the table, then taped a transparency over it. I traced the photo with ink and then print! print! print! These three turned out nice, but check out how different the vibe is in each one:

Here are the ones that didn’t turn out. I should’ve tossed them but it was interesting to me to see what happens when ink goes wild and takes its shirt off and starts yelling wooooooo spring break!

Paper wasn’t wet enough:

Paper was too wet:

Ink dried too much before I printed:

Too much ink, too dark in general:

Ahhhh. The itch was satisfied but man, I want to do more. Block prints, more controlled prints, but also – more messy messy monotypes. Not now. Right now my children are climbing on the actual kitchen counter trying to teach each other how to cook. Time for lunch. But later! Print print!

I know we live in a first world country and are therefore pampered every minute of our silly lives, but relative to most of our days: today was crappy.

I’m too tired to detail it, and I want to wake up early tomorrow so we can refresh the week by having waffles or something but just believe me. There was griping and rushing and yelling and spilling and peeing and loading heavy things and embarrassing and driving and a social kind of multitasking that needs a word… the kind where you are trying to have a conversation with adults you don’t know well and are also talking to your kids like a crazy person. There was cold weather, there was a kid who hates jackets, there was a guy at the post office who yelled at the kid for not wearing a damned jacket. There was another, smaller kid, whose face is all red from having a cold and it makes everyone feel sorry for him and everyone thinks I’m a bad mom for taking him out on a cold day when he’s obviously level 10 sick. Even though really he’s only level 2 sick, but they don’t know that because he looks awful.

I said I wasn’t going to give you all the details but that’s the thing. I didn’t.

The day ended with Graham throwing a level 98 tantrum because I made him get off the potty. Remember his creative poop interpretation? He’s taken it to the next logical level, which is – oh god, this is what people mean when they say that mommybloggers are abusive just for posting what they do because of one day – artistic planning and creation. The realization that his own mother doesn’t understand that when a kid says he needs two more poops to come out, it isn’t some kind of base physical need for a bowel movement. It is a creation in the postmodern deconstructive tradition of ephemeral art, to be admired briefly before it is flushed away, in the words of the artist, “to the ocean.”

So yeah. He was trying to make the shape of a castle and needed two more poops for the towers. He wanted to sit there and wait for his body to digest dinner I guess? I don’t know, but I really needed the day to be over.

I picked him up, got him cleaned up and ready for bed. We had what my dad calls a lively exchange of ideas over this outrage, and then he went to sleep. And now, me too. More after the jump sleep.

All of this talk about peanut butter in the news is making me crave peanut butter candy, cookies, and other junk. It’s pretty mean. The media knows how easily influenced we are.

Today was one of those days where I feel like a mama possum. Do a quick Google image search if you need a visual – we were just like that except the baby possums would have a laptop in their tiny paws. The boys did not achieve simul-Savage voices; bummer. But they did both reach maximum pathetic misery this afternoon and I tell you what. It was sad. It was a long, weird pathetic day where I got almost nothing done… Nicolaus was sad because it hurt to talk but he wanted to talk, so he talked and then his throat hurt, which made him sad, which he told me about. Meanwhile Graham tried to play with bristle blocks and cried when they didn’t stick together the way he wanted them to. I suggested that he do something else, but he said “But when I’m sick, the only thing that makes me feel better is building. And watching Shrek number one on your computer. And medicine. That’s all that makes me feel better.”

I can’t wait till my kids are old enough to see The Jerk so they’ll get why we laugh whenever they do that.

So the three of us piled up on the couch and watched Shrek number one on the internet. My poor children don’t know that movies aren’t supposed to have Chinese subtitles, but hey! This is a good age to expose them to other languages, right?

Shrek is a better movie than I remember. Good music, characters are funny but not aggressive and obnoxious, and they don’t dwell on the inappropriate stuff – just quickly say the word “butt” and move on.

Nicolaus watched it intently and was very curious about the whole true love theme. We’ve been reading fairy tales lately, and he’s been paying close attention to marriage and love in general. One morning last week he came in and said, “I’ve noticed something funny. When people get married, it’s almost like they think that the other person they’re marrying? Is like the king or the queen of the whole world. After they get married, they just always treat them that way, like they are seriously that important. But that’s so ridiculous! It’s so funny! Because – lots of other people probably got married on that same day, so? How can there be more than one king of the whole world?”

Tonight when Shrek was over, he stood up and said, “I think there might be something wrong with my body. Because it doesn’t know how much it could ever love a person.”

What?

He explained that like – Fiona and Shrek fell totally in love like that, and the dragon and the donkey did too, and it’s a little bit like how much he loves Lovie but not really. And he knows he loves all of us a lot, BUT. There’s something different about that kind of love and there’s something wrong with his body because he doesn’t have that or know how far his love for another person could every go – you know?

I’m paraphrasing because it took a few tries before I figured out that he was talking about romantic love, and that he was worried that he doesn’t feel anything like that or cant’ even imagine what it feels like. So — how’s this for a Full House ending moment? — I explained that oh! See, there are chemicals in grownup brains that make that kind of love work, and kids don’t have those yet. This explanation either made him feel much better or made him realize that I totally wasn’t getting it; either way he dropped it.