Found a cute spring purse!
And Marvin Gaye’s Greatest Hits!
A tambourine!
A pot rack!
A screen door. (ok, actually, I pulled that out of someone’s trash the other day.)
And la piece de resistance: six porcelain Santa heads (and arms)!
It was a good day.
Excuse the screwed up images. . .too tired to fix them!
My excitement holds no bounds today. My friend Honey, my college roommate, is coming in town and staying with me for four days. FOUR DAYS. Sure, there will be kids and husbands and dogs underfoot, but I am so excited to spend some quality time with one of my dearest friends. Ever have a person that you know, deep down, realizes that you are not perfect and loves you anyway? A person that you know has your back? A person that isn’t scared to tell you what they really think? She is that person for me. (Well, leelee falls into that category, too, but this post isn’t about Leelee.)
Just wish this dang weather would clear up.
That picture up top? that’s me and Honey, sitting in front of my little dollhouse off of Milledge Avenue in Athens. It was the last place I lived in Athens, and this picture was taken the day after I graduated. I am pretty sure we felt really good that day.
And yes, you may have noticed I’ve been a little MIA lately. We’ve had houseguests (Todd’s cousin, Jenn, and her friend Brittany) in town. Jenn and Brittany are thinking about moving to Atlanta, so they came down to look around and get a feel for the city. (Nice weather for them, huh?) I’ve been doing a lot of stuff following the Dekalb County budget issues. Following local politics is damn time-consuming. And then there’s the kids. . . turns out they need to be fed and bathed and picked up and dropped off and you have to make sure that they don’t watch too much tv. I have been bad about that, and I am hereby vowing to be better. So, Dogwood Girl takes a backseat for a while. I have missed it, though. It keeps me sane.
So, I am the Pirate Queen. I know, I know. . . I should have told you all. But we don’t really talk about it.
That’s a lie. Todd finally told the kids about a year ago.
“Your Mother’s The Pirate Queen.”
I was a little miffed that he didn’t tell them i am The Bandit Queen, because i love her, but I guess Pirate Queen is pretty bitchin’ too. The kids were in awe. They scream and get that scared look when I play pirate queen. We even have an old trunk in our bedroom that belonged to my Aunt Lessie. Todd told the kids that they can’t go into the trunk because it contains a skeleton. In reality, it holds:
a couple of tees that belonged to the kids when they were babies
Love letters and crap from a couple of ex-boyfriends (guess i should get rid of them, but i think they are funny)
three old hat boxes
mardi gras beads
college diploma and cap and gown
pennies
photos
God knows what else. (I don’t open it! There’s a skeleton in there!)
So, the other day, Tiller and I were at Jason’s Deli. The cool thing about JD is that they have both ice cream and a salad bar. I can get healthy stuff and tiller can get diabetes. Win win.
So, we are sitting there. Tiller has her ice cream cone in one hand and her potato chip in another, dipping the chips into the ice cream. Her hair makes her look like a mental patient, because she cut it herself that morning with craft scissors. I am on my iPhone, getting my ass kicked in Scrabble by Jerry Kane, which is sad, because i have like a million hours to come up with a play while Tiller, the slowest eater in the East, finishes her Ice Cream Chips.
Tiller whispers, pointing a finger over my head, her eyes HUGE in her face: “Mama.”
Me, distractedly, because how am I going to overcome the damn EIGHTY POINT WORD JERRY KANE JUST LAID ON ME? “Yes, baby?”
Tiller: “Mama, look. It’s a pirate.” Her frightened whisper catches my attention.
Me, pushing her pointing finger down to the tabletop: “Baby, it’s not nice to point.” I look over my right shoulder as a man walks past. I watch him walk to his table, his back to us, then he pulls out a chair, sits down, and his face is revealed to me as he turns to his dining partner.
He’s wearing an eye patch.
The Decemberists’ The Bandit Queen, for reference:
Tiller and I were sitting on the love toilets this afternoon. (That’s what we call our Jack and Jill toilets, right by each other, but separated by a door. You can hold hands while taking a poo. Love toilets.)
Me: “What ya been doing?”
T: “I’m playing doctor with Snoopy.”
Me: “Are you going to be a Doctor when you grow up?”
T: “Maybe.”
Me: “You will have to study hard.”
T: “I will have to go to college.”
Me: “Yes, you will have to go to college and then medical college, too.”
T: “I can be anything I want to be.”
I nod my head, smiling.
Me: “Yes, you can.”
[Tiller sits there thinking, hand on fist, elbow on her knee.]
T: “Mama?”
Me: [wishing I could just read my magazine in peace.] “Yes?”
T: “What are you going to be when you grow up?”
Me: “Gosh, I don’t know. For right now, I am your Mama.”
T: “You can be anything you want to be.”
Me: “Thanks, baby.”
I think I mostly am what I want to be, but it’s nice to have her support. And it is nice that we are doing something right. She has gotten the message: She can be anything she wants to be.
Last night, Rollie chose a kids’ version of one of the Narnia Chronicles (the kids’ books are called “World of Narnia”) for Todd to read to him and Tiller. It is called Aslan, and Todd just said that it was “very abridged.”
After school, I let Rollie play some xBox, since it is friday, and he kept his four scoops, and he had no homework. I wanted him to go outside and play, since it is so nice outside, and we agreed that he would play 30 minutes of video games and then go outside.
Well, he got up and turned the tv off by himself. I did not know that kids were capable of this, but i did not show my alarm, but just rolled with it. He then turned to me and said, “Mama, do you care if I don’t play video games, but don’t go outside, and maybe read one of those wardrobe books?”
Um, does the pope wear a funny hat?!
“Of course,” i said, “where did you put your other ones?” I thought that he meant that he had another of the World of Narnia books and wanted to read it.
“No, I mean the ones with the numbers.”
Oh. He means he wants to read THE Narnia Chronicles.
(Side note: Yes, Todd and I are nerds. The series is on our bookshelves. Along with TLOTR, Harry Potter, and Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials series. You know, kids books for nerdy kids and their nerdy parents. Commence fun-making.)
Todd and I thought it was so cool he wanted to read the Aslan book last night, and we discussed whether he could read the real books and thought maybe they were too hard for him. But when he asked me i said, “Well, you can try one. Sure. It is a pretty big boy book, but I think you can try it and you let me know if you have questions about it, or don’t know a word, okay?”
Because i didn’t want to tell him that he couldn’t read it, if he wanted to try, but i also didn’t want him to read it and find it hard and then never go back and try to read it again, because let’s be honest, if you never read The Narnia Chronicles, there is a fundamental gaping hole in your childhood reading and, very likely, your soul.
So, here i am, working on some editing, watching him on the couch with a down comforter pulled over his legs, and his head on a pillow, and he is reading the first chapter of The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe, and I am about to die I am so nervous, but he appears to really be reading it, and . . . I think Todd and I could very likely explode at the dinner table tonight if we get to discuss Narnia with Rollie over dinner.
Update: He just asked me what “inquisitive” and “jollification” meant. Love that he is reading stuff that isn’t dumbed down. Makes me feel like we might be doing something right.
At least for today.
So, i like estate sales. Mostly, i dig old stuff. (Nikki, I know you’re with me.) I also love to dig through other people’s stuff. It’s a sickness. A goatman sickness.
I dropped Tills off at school last Friday, and it was supposed to snow that afternoon, and it was colder than a well-digger’s you-know-what, but I just couldn’t help it when i saw that sweet, sweet poster board with “Estate Sale” on it. I had to drop in.
They had some decent stuff, like the dollar Vince Dooley print I bought as a housewarming gift for my Daddy, and the awesome bird pillows (Yellow Warbler and Towhee!) But it was those magic words that really drew me in.
Free.
As in, “Honey, you can have anything in that backyard you want for free. You just have to haul it off.”
These words would strike fear in the heart of Todd if he heard them uttered in front of me. Me? I took it as a dare.
So, here I am in the low-30s weather, out in some stranger’s backyard, fighting an older Italian woman for garden ornaments. Luckily, our tastes really didn’t meet anywhere in the middle, so we were able to divvy up everything out there in about one minute, then we started figuring out how the heck we were going to get it out to our cars.
Those suckers were heavy.
I ended up having to go home, get a wheelbarrow, bring it back and get Todd to meet me during lunch to help me and Pina (my Italian buddy). He is a good husband. He puts up with me, and my junk problem, and he even enables, er, supports me in the endeavor. Most of the time, anyway.
This is what we got:
There is also a plant hook thing (one of those metal things you stick in the ground with two hooks, for holding hanging baskets or bird feeders), a beat up birdhouse, and a folk-arty looking set of wind chimes. Yeah!
Since then, I also went to my parents, where they gave me one of my grandfather’s old clocks (Pop collected clocks), Grandma’s old bread box (white-painted metal with a red trim – so cute!), and an old handmade rolling pin. (Yes, Annelle, I bake. Once a year. Christmas cookies.)
I think Todd’s patience is wearing thin. I better put all this stuff away before I bring anymore in. Wish me luck.
Just wore these babies out to walk the dogs in the snow at Pop’s house. Pop would have loved to see this snow. . . .
Evilly turns all Scully sometimes.
I’m making Walter Reeves’ recipe for homemade suet for my winged friends. Don’t want them going hungry in the snow, and i love the variety of birds a suet feeder gives me.
He also has a neat idea for making your own feeder. Not going to undertake that today. . . .
Things are a little crazy in DogwoodWorld today. Fun stuff like oil change, kid drop off and pickup, dry cleaning, canvassing the n’hood while getting a “run” in (it felt like some kind of Survivor challenge, where you had to put the flyer in each mailbox in the fastest time. Lots of run, stop, run, stop. People gave me some strange looks.
So, posting might be sporadic this week with all the things i have going on (Dekalb education cuts, school newsletter, parents needing help moving big stuff around, Valentine’s day parties. You know. Life.)
In the meantime, think Mardi Gras. Think of wearing the fun Mardi Gras hat. It makes everything feel festive.
Love,
Dogwood Girl