This school year, I don't particularly know what Will was doing on her first day, as I was busy helping Syd figure out HER first day of navigating a school-issued shitty laptop, Canvas, Microsoft Teams, and a schedule of live and asynchronous lessons that, I kid you not, completely changed every two weeks for months.
It continued much like that for the entire school year. Will worked mostly independently while I gave most of my emotional and mental energy to supporting Syd. Will worked her butt off, kept to her schedule, and completed her tasks, more or less off of my radar. It's not how we've ever homeschooled before, it's not how I like to homeschool, and I hope it's not how we'll homeschool next year, but Will made it work.
Now that we're both fully vaccinated, though, I was SO ready to surprise my hard-working kid with a trip to the Indianapolis Zoo on her last day of eleventh grade!
I think this might be the first time that I've ever taken Will to the zoo without her sister along? It certainly never happened when I was homeschooling two kids, and thanks to the pandemic, none of the field trips I'd hoped to take with just Will this school year materialized--we didn't so much as go to the art museum across town together, much less that trip to Florida we'd been planning and looking forward to, sigh.
I reminded Will, then, that SHE was in charge of our day. She decided where we went, what we saw, and how long we stayed at each exhibit. This meant, of course, that we went EVERYWHERE. We saw EVERYTHING. And we stayed in front of each exhibit for a completely interminable twenty minutes, at LEAST. I mean, you apparently have to read the signage, then watch the animals for a billion years, then read the signage again, then watch the animals before. Maybe check out that sign again. Maybe peek just one more time at the animals. Then walk fifty feet and repeat with another set of animals.
For instance, we probably hung out at the touch tank for an hour. Field trips and families came and went, splashing and screaming obnoxiously and scaring the Chondricthyans over in the other part of the tank, but Will and I camped out at one quiet end, where she leaned over quietly and calmly and proceeded to pet every creature in that habitat:
We had to skip ahead to the penguins and then circle back to the sea lions because there were too many unmasked breathers our first time through:
We were pretty sure that some scientist stole these from the macaques they were studying, and we're pissed on their behalf:
Apparently, Will has grown out of wanting to sit in the splash zone during the dolphin show, but I haven't grown out of laughing with delight every time a dolphin so much as moves its flipper:
At the flamingo habitat, there was a zoo employee running a virtual field trip on his phone. I was VERY impressed at his ability to livestream flamingos, see all the tiny Zoom hands raised, acknowledge children by name, and ready-reference various facts... on a PHONE. These days, I have to push my glasses down my nose and peer nearsightedly just to read my email on my phone!
The rock hyrax was my favorite animal on this day. Look at its silly little munching face!
We were watching the lemurs when it started to rain, and it was absolutely hilarious to see them run for their indoor enclosure as fast as the humans running for the awnings!
This tiger is very impressive because there's a toddler right behind us, and the tiger wants to eat it:
There were places in the zoo where I was anxious about our safety, because vaccinated or not, I don't want to cram in with a bunch of random people all breathing in the same space. Will and I got ourselves trapped under the tiger awning when a bunch of people with strollers rolled in right after us and took up all the walking room. I was pretty cool about it until a preschooler, stumbling around and touching all the things, coughed directly on Will's... knees, I guess, but still. I might have panicked a bit because all I really remember is covering Will's mouth and nose with my hand, taking her arm, and marching her straight out of there, double strollers packed with babies be damned. We were several feet down the path before I realized that I was literally smothering my uncomplaining child and let her go.
We also had a bad time hanging out inside with the orangutans, thanks to a hundred thousand adult breathers who felt like masks violate their civil rights. I saw one woman who was wearing a a face... veil, I guess? It was made of something gauzy and only tied at the top, so every time she leaned over to tend her two toddlers it simply floated out of the way of her and all her mouth germs. One of her toddlers sneezed without covering its mouth and I dragged Will out of there, only barely remembering not to smother her this time.
But look at the outside of the orangutan habitat!
Way up there is an orangutan looking down on us!
We were much happier in the desert, where Will could lean against the rails and admire every animal individually for twenty minutes at a time while all the other breathers wandered by without stopping:
My nerves might have been a little bit shot by this time, because I came closer than I ever have in my life to screaming at a stranger in front of the meerkat habitat. Will and I, both unused to public outings, had been low-key irritated by every other human at the zoo for a while: why do they all talk so loudly? Why do they insist on shouting at their children to look at some particular thing, and then as soon as the kid gets interested, work just as hard to wheedle the kid away to go look at some other thing? Why do they all scream the name of every animal's cartoon counterpart when they see it? Why do they all wear their masks under their grossly breathing noses?
So there Will and I were, minding our own business quietly watching the meerkats go about theirs, when a family rolls up next to us. Of course they've got a double stroller, and of course they're talking super loudly, and of course when the dad sees the meerkats he starts to scream, sort of attempting to be tuneful, "MOVE IT, MOVE IT! MOVE IT, MOVE IT!"
Then, when nobody in his family responds, he screams, "Get it? Like the movie!"
Oh. My. Gawd.
First of all, THAT IS NOT THE CORRECT MOVIE. The movie with the "Move it, Move it" song is about LEMURS. WHICH ARE ALSO IN THIS ZOO. He could go obnoxiously sing that song to the lemurs and at least be accurate, if still unbearable.
Second of all, meerkats HAVE A SONG. FROM A DIFFERENT MOVIE. WHICH IS MORE FAMOUS THAN MADAGASCAR. Seriously, have you never heard of, oh, I don't know... THE LION KING?!? He could still sing an obnoxious song to the meerkats! Surely he knows at least the chorus of "Hakuna Matata"?!?
Here's Will sharing a commiserating look with a meerkat who I bet knows all the words to "Hakuna Matata" by now:
The cheetahs are also my zoo favorites, ever since the day after a family trip to the zoo we found out that one of them had escaped its enclosure! Cheetahs really just love to lay around and be comfy, and this cheetah (one of the brothers below), saw a comfier spot above his habitat and hopped on up to it. He happily napped there until a zoo employee just happened to spot him.
Here's another set of cheetah siblings who also love each other:
Okay, my other OTHER favorite part of the zoo is when we come during the spring and summer and the butterflies are in their pavilion!
After visiting with every single butterfly, we had just enough time to see every single flower in the outdoor gardens, too:
This thing is so cool! It's a super heavy ball that you can roll around the sand to make prints themed to the current season:
The balls for the other seasons are stored on pedestals around it:
We were waiting at the front gate the second that this zoo opened, and we did not drag ourselves out until five minutes after it closed. I'd say it was a successful last day of eleventh grade!
Check me out! I'm kicked back with my feet in the MOST DANGEROUS SPOT in a car (who needs an unshattered pelvis in the event of a crash, anyway?) reading on a genuine road trip!
And after Syd is two weeks past her second vaccination, we might even go on another!
Spring was the type of busy that I'd forgotten about, given that we spent last spring entirely on our own property, homeschooling on our own timeline. This spring, Will had big tests, Syd had big tests, there are suddenly meetings and extracurriculars and trainings to attend myself and/or chauffeur teenagers to, Matt's extended family wanted to see us up in Michigan, and I took nine Girl Scouts camping smack in the middle of it. I'm pretty stoked that we have a life outside of just the four of us again, but setting my alarm and putting on my hard pants and talking to strangers and leaving the house every day instead of once a month is definitely something that takes getting used to!
Weirdly, I think I might get a lot more reading done when I'm out and about. At home, there are always a hundred chores and projects vying for my time, but cooling my heels in my car for four hours while Will takes her AP exam in a town an hour and a half away where it's also raining so I can't even go for a walk? Turns out that's a great way to get through my latest non-fiction! Sitting in the passenger seat for that six-hour ride to Michigan? Might as well read all the comic books!
Such as these!
I was THRILLED to see the second volume of Check, Please! available! I stopped keeping track of new releases when my public library was closed for several months last year, and I'm still discovering treasures that I didn't know got published. Not gonna lie: I read Book 2 cover to cover, then turned back to page 1 and read it cover to cover again. Because, you know, the first time through a graphic novel you're focused on the story, so you've got to hit it up a second time so you can appreciate the graphics.
There are a lot of reasons why I love this graphic novel series so much. First of all, there is very little hockey fiction out there in the world. There's some good hockey non-fiction, but I'm a lover of hockey AND a lover of stories, and so I'm primed to love good hockey storytelling. And the hockey storytelling here is SO good! But even if you did not like hockey at all, I think you'd love the books and these characters. And the romance sub-plot doesn't even really hit until Book 2!
It's possible that I have taken to buying my own holiday presents, because sometimes life partners seem to forget that gift-giving is a convention. It's also possible that I will be buying myself this Samwell Hockey hoodie for my birthday.
Oh, dang, I just discovered that site also carries Carry On, Simon merch, which is even more relevant because I also recently read THIS graphic novel adaptation!
I may well just be a person who lives in hoodies that rep pretend institutions.
In case you thought I might be over my obsession with people risking their lives, I present the following evidence to the contrary from my recent reads:
I hadn't read The Right Stuff since I was a teenager, and I think I missed a lot of the snarky, damning with faint praise, sarcastic descriptions that Tom Wolfe peppered his book with. It is VERY peppery! I loved the insider-esque info, but some of Wolfe's opinions-masking-as-hearsay don't age very well. Gus Grissom is one of my favorite astronauts (his memorial is nearby, and the Children's Museum of Indianapolis had his ship, Liberty Bell 7, on loan for a few years so I could go by and stand in awe of it whenever I wanted), and I didn't love how even though he didn't SAY Grissom blew his hatch prematurely, he sure spent an awful long time saying how everyone else said it!
There's also an interesting controversy in Into Thin Air. Jon Krakauer is more direct and takes better ownership of his opinions, which I appreciate even though some families of the people he writes about do not (say what you will about the actions of the guides on that particular expedition, there IS a real problem with amateurs ascending Mount Everest, and their presence DOES put lives in greater danger), but in his original first-person accounts, and his original article about this expedition, he apparently made a really big mistake and misidentified a guy who later died on Everest. Everyone looks alike in a giant down snowsuit and goggles, I guess? I'm not one hundred percent sure why people are so super upset with his mistake, because whether he saw the guy in one place and so the guy must have died there, or whether another guy saw the guy in another place and so he must have died there, doesn't seem to make a huge difference, and anyway nobody's totally sure exactly how the guy died in either story. But now it seems more likely that the guy, already hypoxic, probably died trying to haul some oxygen canisters further up the mountain to help a couple of stranded climbers, and not, as in Krakauer's original telling, by walking off a cliff on his way back to Camp 4. But it's also possible that the only reason the climbers were stranded so that they needed oxygen hauled up to them is that they hadn't tried to come down because this same guy had been standing there with the canister stash for half the day telling everyone there was no more oxygen, even though there totally was, so does that kind of negate the heroics?
I dunno, but I'm sure as hell not climbing Mount Everest!
Anyway, I also read some good fictional horror this spring!
Bunny is more a combo of weird, dark magical realism with horror, and I got super into it, because grad school is INDEED a cult! Finally, someone came out and said it! The book reminded me quite a lot of We Ride Upon Sticks, with feminism so subversive that it cycles back around to women literally hitting dudes with sticks... and they don't even deserve it, for a change!
Horrorstor, on the other hand, is a pretty cut-and-dry haunted mansion story, but the book's design, particularly the faux IKEA catalog pages and the found first-person manuscripts, made it so much more immersive that now I want to see the same concept handled a hundred more times in a hundred more different ways.
Same. With. BIGFOOT!
One of my favorite things about teaching AP Human Geography this year was how readily it lent itself to living books. Will and I read so many interesting studies of human geography, and we're likely going to continue to do so all summer. Here's what I've read recently:
I actually think I've read all of these particular books before, but The Hot Zone, in particular, made for an excellent--and terrifying!--pandemic re-read. Every single paragraph, in my head I was like, "OMG we are all going to get Ebola and die," even though I know this book is older and we haven't all died of... well, we haven't all died of Ebola.
Want to read even more non-fiction about huge projects that are grossly mis-managed, but at least this time nobody dies of Ebola? Here, read this:
I just... this book is epic. I loathe every single person in it except for the actors and the author's poor family--those people I just feel sorry for. Like, I have read a lot of books about how Broadway musicals are created, and a lot of memoirs written by people involved in the creation of Broadway musicals. They all speak of the thoughtful, painstaking process of artistic creation, of the team that works together to make the musical happen, how every detail, no matter how small, is put under the microscope and reworked until perfected. Anais Mitchell rewrote single lines--her favorite lines!--of songs because her dramaturg didn't think they added to the overall mis-en-scene of the musical. The smallest aspects of Orpheus were tweaked to lend him the proper characterization.
And then here comes these assholes, just throwing together a Spider-man musical any which way, not giving the slightest fuck about characterization or plot or even if what they were creating was literally possible for actors to physically do eight times a week. The characterizations were a joke. The plot was baffling. Oh, and the actors broke a lot of bones, got a few concussions, and they're lucky as hell that nobody actually died.
And they didn't listen to any constructive criticism from anybody. And they fought constantly. And they were foul to their employees. And the whole lot of them basically just behaved like conceited assholes who were utterly baffled every time their unworkable plans didn't work. And Berger tried to portray himself as the victim/hero of the story while being SUPER gross and writing a lot about flirting with people who weren't his wife.
I hate him SO MUCH. Here, watch this bootleg of his musical:
The performances are brilliant. Do you see my favorite set of actors, Reeve Carney and Patrick Page, in there? The one redeeming factor to this musical is that Julie Taymor discovered Reeve Carney playing in a band and convinced him to be an actor, as well. She cast him and Patrick Page in Spider-man, and now they're two of the main characters in my all-time favorite musical, Hadestown.
And because you know how I love my Broadway bootlegs, here's my other favorite Hadestown actress in her previous starring role in Miss Saigon:
In my world, YouTube exists almost entirely for Broadway bootlegs and hockey highlights. Maybe next month I'll show you some clips that prove that the Vegas Golden Knights are a bunch of dirty cheats!
As you can see in the image above, all you need for this refashion are:
a pair of pants that fit well at the waist. They can be as ripped, stained, or ugly as they need to be in the legs, as long as they're well-fitting in the waist. This is a great way to refashion pants that are too short after your kid hits her latest growth spurt, or winter pants that you know will be too short next fall. It's also great for those carpenter/bootleg/skinny/whatever style of jeans you've got that used to be trendy but are now just laughable, the poor things.
an A-line skirt whose diameter at some point matches the hip measurement of your pants. The waist on this skirt doesn't matter at all, as long as at some point its flare has the same measurement as the hip measurement of your pants. That's because you're going to do this:
1. Line up the pants and the skirt at their matching measurements. As you can see in the above image, I've drawn a chalk line exactly where I want to cut the pants--see how this allows me to keep the entire waist and pockets of the pants? You can sew a well-fitting skirt without knowing how to set pockets or sew a waistband or use a zipper foot or make a button hole!
Line up the skirt (or dress--in this tute, I'm using a very sketchy-looking thrifted dress whose fabric my kid loves), so that the point at which its flare matches the length of that chalk line are exactly lined up. Here is where you also make sure that the bottom hem of the skirt is exactly parallel to that chalk line--you don't want your skirt to hang weird!
2. Cut the two pieces of clothing along the marked line. Hold them down firmly to keep them from shifting, then cut them both at the same time.
3. Sew the skirt piece and pants piece together. Turn the skirt piece inside-out, then pin it, right sides together, to the pants piece so that the raw edges are lined up. Sew the two pieces together and then finish the seam.
My daughter and I used this skirt as part of her design for this year's Trashion/Refashion Show in our town, which is why it has Christmas lights safety pinned to it:
She paired it with a hooded shirt that I sewed from another pair of pants and a dressy blouse, and a cape that she cut out of an old fleece blanket, but I'll tell you about those another time!
That doesn't mean that I LIKE to make business cards--it's tedious, you have to make, like, a thousand at a time, and all you're going to do is give them away so you can't even enjoy them AND you have to go and make a thousand more, sigh...
So I am a huge fan of handmade business cards that take as little time as possible to make. And these watercolor business cards may be the quickest!
I cheated a little with these cards, as I usually prefer to hand-cut my business cards from recycled cardboard, such as cardboard food packaging or old record album covers. But I scored a half-used stash of these Avery business card sheets (thank you, Freecycle!), and the fact that these cards are white, for a change, is what makes this tutorial work.
To make your own watercolor business cards, you will need:
white heavy cardstock or business card printer sheets. If you don't mind seeking out one store-bought supply, these printer sheets made for business cards are the poop! Get the kind that are uncoated and come away with clean edges, and your life will be so easy. Otherwise, look for a super-heavy cardstock or upcycle some thin cardboard that's been bleached white.
watercolors. You can use solid watercolor palettes and a paintbrush, but in these pics I'm using liquid watercolors, both in miniature spritz bottles and with eyedroppers. Yes, we ARE still using this DIY liquid watercolor spray paint that I first set up for my kids six years ago!
printed or stamped business card information. You could print your business card info onto the back of your sheets, but I use this customizable stamp set for all of my handmade business cards.
1. Watercolor your business cards. I spritzed a little paint onto my business card sheets as a background, then used an eyedropper to add more drops of color. I let some colors bleed into each other, and I inclined some of the pages so that the colors would run. Just go for randomness and let the chaos take control!
My darker colors, when dropped heavily, left a very light shadow on the backside, where I'm going to put my business information. I like this effect, as it carries over the watercolor theme, but if you're using a different type of paper than I am, you might want to test it first to see how much color the backside shows.
As you're working, you're going to think that what you're doing does NOT look cute. Just carry on--I promise it'll look cuter in a minute!
Leave the pages to dry.
2 Seal the card fronts (optional). If you're going to use these cards at craft fairs or otherwise out and about, give them a quick coat of your clear sealant of choice, and let them dry. Watercolor is water-soluble (duh!), so you wouldn't want a customer to pick up your business card, walk out into the rain, and then get paint all over their hands.
3. Separate the business cards. Don't they look a LOT cuter now? The chaos of the random watercoloring translates very well to a small canvas. I especially like how the color carries over to the edge of the cards, so that they look pretty even from the side.
4. Add your business information. If you didn't print your business information onto the printer sheet, then add it on now to the backside of the cards. This leaves the front side as its own miniature work of abstract art!
I do NOT understand why sewing machines are impossible to repair!
I mean... obviously I DO know why sewing machines are impossible to repair. If the sewing machine company (*cough, cough, all of them, cough*) makes its sewing machine using plastic parts, then your sewing machine will inevitably break before too long, because plastic isn't a good material for a hard-wearing, hard-working sewing machine part. And when that two-dollar piece of plastic that makes up some crucial part of your machine's operation cracks and renders your sewing machine inoperable, you can't buy a new two-dollar piece of plastic to replace it, because the company doesn't sell its parts separately.
It is SUCH a racket. Even my old metal sewing machine is just about impossible to repair these days, as its replacement parts are now vintage and therefore also hard to find.
I just really need somebody with a 3D printer and an entrepreneurial spirit to start a business copying and selling sewing machine parts. I'll buy the snot out of your products before you get shot down for patent infringement!
Speaking of stealing another entity's intellectual work... I 100% created my sewing machine cover by cutting the cheap-looking cover that my machine came with apart at the seams and tracing it.
Where did I get that cotton blanket that I found at the very bottom of my stash fabric bin? No clue, but I love it as the base fabric of my sewing machine cover.
Where did I get that vintage quilt top, also found at the bottom of my stash fabric bin? No clue, but it's perfect for embellishing that cotton blanket!
I used my wood star template to make a couple of stars to embellish the cover, and I love how they look patchwork without me putting in the effort!
I zig-zag stitched them to the cover, although I should have put some interfacing under them first:
Just don't look at how the applique is a little wavy. Instead, look at how nicely my sewing machine is protected from dust!
Let's hope this sewing machine lasts longer than the last four!
This year, my soon-to-be eleven-year-old is having a fairy tale-themed birthday party, so we made each invitee a party invitation in the shape of a royal scroll. It was easy to do, used mostly stash, and was a great way to introduce the party's theme to all the little guests.
Here's how we did it!
1. Obtain a couple of thin dowels. Because this was a royal decree, the kid wants the scroll handles to look nice and finished, so she vetoes my suggestion that we use twigs found in the yard. I maintain that twigs would look adorable, however--perhaps for a woodland fairy party?
Dowels are sold in several widths--we chose the narrowest, for these small scrolls, but you could just as easily obtain one wide enough for the largest scroll that you could handle.
2. Paint the dowels. The kid claims that a royal scroll would obviously have gold handles, so I leave her to it. Unfinished wood takes paint easily, so she is able to make the dowels beautifully gold with two coats of paint.
3. Compose and design the text of the scrolls. Because I am a mad genius, I compose an invitation in poem form, with an ABCB rhyme scheme. My shining moment is when I am able to rhyme a request for an RSVP with my email address. You'd think this would encourage people to actually RSVP, but be assured--it doesn't.
My husband lays the poem out in fancy font, with two invitations to a page. My kiddo reminds him that the invitation should be long, so that you have to unscroll it to read it, and so he indulges her by leaving a little more space between stanzas. If she ever gets married, she's going to spend a LOT of time planning her wedding.
4. Cut the dowels to size. The scroll handles should be longer than the scroll, so the kid measures them out at a couple of inches past the scroll on each side, and makes sure that they are even:
My older kid has just finished earning her Woodworker badge in Girl Scouts, and so she delights in "offering assistance to a younger Scout," as she puts it, by cutting the dowels to size:
5. Attach the scroll to the handles. There are several ways that one could do this--pretty washi tape, double-sided tape, hot glue--but I'm stoked that the children have taken over the project, and so I hand them the simplest solution, Scotch tape, and move on with my life:
Super cute, right? Also in the planning stages are games of Pin the Kiss on the Frog Prince and Toilet Paper Princess (I'm banking that most of the young guests have never been to a bridal shower before; they are going to flip OUT over this game!), sandwiches cut into the shapes of crowns and ponies, and the ubiquitous castle cake.
That castle cake, by the way, is going to need all of your positive intentions sent my way!
