Charcoal Pudding Tastes Like Charcoal, not Pudding

So yesterday morning I drank coffee, I made peanut butter cookies with the girls, I did my cardio workout with YourselfFitness, I worked on my Valentines while the girls drew some dinosaurs for a book list we're putting together, I wrote, I fixed lunch for the girls (salad, swiss cheese, and faux bologna in a pita), I went to tell them lunch was ready, and I found them both crouched in the hallway, having scaled the linen closet shelves and defeated the child-proof cap, downing an entire bottle of store-brand children's Tylenol.

Dr. Schechter said call National Poison Control. National Poison Control said call Indiana Poison Control. Indiana Poison Control ran some numbers for me (while Willow, who tends to get a little overwrought, ran hysterically weeping from room to room, on each pass shrieking out a new lie to me about how much Tylenol she had consumed--"I only drank one and Sydney drank six!" "I drank six, too!"), and decided that even if Willow had drank the entire bottle of Tylenol, she was still at a non-toxic level, but Sydney?

Sydney and I were taking a little trip to the emergency room.

But of course, since being a stay-at-home mom means that even an emergency is filled with chores of mind-numbing suckage, I first had to call Matt to come get Willow, get both girls dressed (face washed? clean shirt? Cause I seriously might get a visit from Social Services this time), call my bestest mom friend to ask her to pick up Willow after preschool, move Willow's car seat to the other car, take down the two stuffed dinosaurs (T. Rex and pteranodon, in case you're keeping count) that I'd hidden away for the girls' birthdays and give them to them to stave off future hysterics, grab the backpack of car toys, and remind Matt no fewer than 18 times to sign the form in the office giving someone else permission to pick up Willow after school.

Compared to that, the ER was a little relaxing, frankly. If you want service, you really should walk in holding the hand of a cute little red-cheeked, bright-eyed girl in a teddy bear coat and say, "Poison Control sent us." Because you get all kinds of service then.

You get to eat charcoal pudding and drink (non-organic!) milk off and on for four hours:

You get to play with floam and magnet games and color in your sister's(!) coloring book that Momma grabbed my mistake (which said sister actually had the nerve to give me crap about this morning and I'm all, "Lady? You don't even want to start that with me"):And you even get teddy bears! Well, the first teddy bear is free. The second one, however, you must pay for in blood:

To recap, if you keep over-the-counter medicine (children's Tylenol is a crock anyway, partly because accidental overdose is so common (ahem) and I basically only kept it to give Willow a taste as a placebo whenever she gets hysterical because she feels sick (she's gets a little overwrought, remember?)), it's a good idea to make a mental/physical note whenever you dispense it of how much is left in the bottle--that's important to know. It's also a good idea to always know a ballpark number of how much your kid weighs.

If your kid is an idiot and drinks your Tylenol, Poison Control needs those numbers, as well as how much is left undrunk (I used a measuring cup), to do their math. If they send you to the emergency room, you'll have to wait there for four hours, guaranteed, before they can do the blood-draw, since that's apparently the length of time it takes for Tylenol to peak in the bloodstream. You'll also have to feed your kid chocolate pudding spiked with charcoal and non-organic milk. They warned me that kids sometimes vomit up the charcoal, but Syd has a stomach of iron.

So the arbitrary number of Tylenol toxicity in the bloodstream is 100. Syd was a 30, so we got to go home (I tell this to Matt, and he's all, "I wonder what the number for normal is?" I'm all, "Well, dear, since it's a measure of how much Tylenol is in your bloodstream, I'm thinking that the number for normal is, you know, ZERO.") In retrospect, I imagine he meant what is the number for one normal dose, and that is 7.

But of course, I don't only have the sucky chores of a stay-at-home mom to do--hanging out in the ER for five hours, organizing pre-school pick-ups--but also the sucky chores of a working woman, so Syd and I got home just in time for me to upload a couple of handouts to my class Web site, print out some sign-up sheets, change my shirt and brush my teeth, call my mom friend and organize a Willow transer (in a Village Pantry parking lot, on the way to the other kid's violin lesson), and get back in the car and over to my class so that one kid can come up to me crying because she accidentally erased the final version of her paper and only has the rough draft to hand in, and one kid can ask if he can handwrite his Works Cited page because he forgot to do it before, and one kid can ask, "Are we getting out early today?" and then huff grumpily back to his seat when I say, "Um...no."

Because if you want to annoy your instructor, you should make sure she's just spent five hours in the emergency room with her small child, and then you should ask her some whiny question trying to get out of learning and be mad when she informs you that no, come hell or high water, there will be learning done tonight.

At least I got that one thing accomplished.

The Book Begins Thusly

Let's see...today I drank hot chocolate with my girls, I did an upper body workout with that bitch from YourselfFitness----I caught up on Battlestar Galactica while working on some more comic book Valentines, I made the girls' room all spic-and-span----I held office hours and the hands of many students as they bravely (or not) voyage their way through their first paper; I admitted that my cell phone, three times washed, has died and must be replaced by another; I gave my camera into the hands of one beautiful daughter so that she could capture with her own photographic eye the sublime beauty of another daughter-- --and, friends, I began my book:
It's a how-to and a manifesto treating upon lifelong learning as it applies to the family: essentially, the desire to learn and engage with our world is a lifestyle that we can model for our children and participate in with them. I'm interested in exploring not just ways in which we can offer our children enrichment in traditional (and non-traditional) academic areas, but also how we, ourselves can still learn in these areas with our children, and can enjoy learning.

The hands-on, DIY ethic is integral to this process, as is our responsibility to our community and our environment. I plan to include lots of projects, activities, and tutorials, lots of ideas for engaging in these areas within our larger communities, and an overarching premise of self-sufficiency and sustainability.

And, if possible, I plan to make it sound a little more entertaining than what you just read--I'm saving all the witty remarks for the book itself, apparently.

Now, friends...any advice on obtaining a literary agent?

Do You Know Your Joe?

I had a peaceful time today to work on some Valentines that we'll be sending out to friends and family (Christmas newsletter? Hokey. Valentine's newsletter? Fresh and original!). To make these Valentines I'm using some old comic books that Matt finally admitted I could have from his childhood collection. I think this set will be smaller and much simpler than the last set of Valentines I sent out, just because the comics are so cool in themselves that adding too much stuff would just kill it. Here, for instance, are some close-ups of my Valentines in progress. Can you tell what comic book each is from?

1) Spider-man 2) Wonder Woman 3) G.I. Joe 4) Captain America 5) Iron Man 6) X-Men

More interesting, perhaps, might be to try to figure out why I chose each particular image to be a part of a Valentine--usually a very obscure sexual reference that probably only I will find funny.

P.S. Check out the treasury that I'm featured in on etsy! Treasuries are only up for a limited time, so peek sooner rather than later.

The Concert Outfit and the Concert

The concert outfit: Pelvis pendant by sushipot; skulls tank top by Torrid; crocheted shirt from Goodwill (I very carefully cut it away from an old-lady cream-colored pink shell that it was supposed to lie over, because, come on--if you're going to wear a black crocheted top, you're going to wear it over bare skin. Duh.); jeans from Goodwill (awesome, ass-hugging jeans that I hemmed yesterday morning with bias tape made from the cut-away part of the jeans); vegan blue boots from Vegetarian Shoes.

The concert: The music was hot, tight, and just right
some guy made a pass at Molly (twice!)
and I got into a fight.

In other words, it was perfect.

Barbie Gone Wild

We all know that Ken ran into some seriously hard times, emotionally, after the break-up of their too-brief love affair, but Barbie?

Barbie seems to be doing alright.

P.S. My Old Crow Medicine Show concert at the Vogue is tonight! I mentioned to the girls yesterday (while having another marathon button-making session; y'all know how I feel about making buttons with the girls) that Miss Molly and I would be going out on an adventure tonight, and based on all the "Oooh, where are we going?" rhetoric that followed, getting out the door tonight might be...interesting.

But I later realized something that I'd never realized before, on account of I'm never actually on the door end of the getting out part: once I actually get out the door, I bet I won't be able to hear them scream anymore! Not, at least, over the hot rocking of Ketch on the fiddle.

Critter Caps: A Momma + Baby Tutorial

Will wasn't feeling well, and basically napped the morning away, leaving me as Syd's only playmate. Then, just after Will had rallied and gone happily to school (no snow day today!), Syd decided that a half-hour nap was quite sufficient, thank you, and wandered into the study to find me, just having wolfed down a veggie burger and another half-cup of coffee, setting out to grade my second student paper in a stack of probably 93.

You absolutely cannot grade papers with a small child around, but fortunately, as I discovered years ago, they do incorporate well into any manner of the home arts.

It's a funny throwback to my early parenting years, this collaborating with Sydney. Willow has always been the child I've collaborated with the most, from her babyhood when it was the only way to both work and parent, to Sydney's babyhood when it represented the special time Will and I would spend together during Syd's naps, to more lately when Will has turned into a kid who is able to do so much stuff--hot glue, handle a hole punch, work a cordless drill.

But as Syd gradually gives up her afternoon naps and I lose that very last bastion of time to myself in the day, I imagine that she and I will do much more inventing and working together.

Here's what we invented and worked on today: I call them Critter Caps.

You will need: some recycled or stash fabric that has a little horizontal stretch to it--cotton jersey, lightly felted wool sweaters, faux fur, etc.; a sewing machine with a wide zig-zag stitch or a serger; embroidery thread or yarn in a color matching or complementing your fabric.

1. Measure the circumference of your lucky hat-wearer's head and the distance from the crown of her head to the bottom of her ear. Fold your fabric in half and cut through both to make two rectangles whose length is twice the distance from crown to ear (plus a seam allowance) and whose width is half the circumference (plust two seam allowances). Remember--the circumference should have a little stretch to it.2. Stitch the hat, right-sides together, around both sides and the top, and finish the bottom brim however you'd like (zig-zag, serged, bias tape, or having taken care to cut the bottom brim from the finished bottom of a sweater).
3. You now have a big rectangular rectangle hat. Fold up the brim a couple of times (tack it into place if you want) and try it on your lucky hat-wearer. You can either pinch out where you'd like to gather your critter ears while your hat-wearer is wearing her hat, or you can use that crown-to-ear measurement.
4. Gather each top corner into a critter ear shape and tie some tight knots around it with embroidery thread or yarn. Get it really tight!
5. Try it on your critter. Does she like it?
6. Repeat until you have a critter for every member of the family. Don't forget to document important occasions:
P.S. I wrongly assumed that Matt would find faux fur too girly, and instead made him a critter cap out of a much more sedate felted grey wool. This, however, is the kind of man who orders mixed drinks that come with colored sugar and big skewers of fruit and fancy straws, so he totally wants a faux fur critter cap, too.

Snow Day

No school.

No work.

No teaching.

No grocery shopping.

No library.

No post office.

No crafting.

No alone time.

Just this:

Best. Day. Ever!