Spread a little cheer

I just want to take a moment to express publicly that my Aunt Missy is by far my most favourite aunt, if not possibly my favourite relative altogether. As we were daily collecting packages from the post office for Lena's birthday, a giant and heavy parcel arrived for me. Inside were two sparkly eyeliners that I admired on my aunt and cousin during their visit and TWO 6-packs of Cheerwine. Cheerwine, for you ignorant Yankees, is carbonated cherry-flavoured Robitussin. It is best served with fried chicken and deviled eggs.

Missy has always been my favourite aunt. I don't know if this is because she is the closest to my mother of her three sisters, or because she's just an all around groovy person. When I was a child I knew that Missy and (now ex-) husband Tim were designated to be my guardians should anything happen to my parents, and as a result I harboured a morbid fantasy that my parents would die (quickly and painlessly, I'm sure) in a car wreck. I didn't want to kill my parents, I just wanted to live with my fun aunt and uncle. Looking back, a lot of their "funness" then might be attributed to being childless and that my uncle was embezzling money from the bank at which he worked, but 18 years of raising my cousin Taylor and now being married to an upstanding citizen has not diminished Missy's cool-factor at all.

So, thank you, Missy, for being the Best Aunt Ever!

Comments:
N8 said,
3 September 2007 at 1:40 pm · Edit
Hmm… childless people are more fun? I can get behind that. ;)

Seventy Seven-Sided Sapphires

Well, Dad and a few others may not care about Harry Potter, but I officially finished my HP:DH* picture this morning. Technically, I finished it a week ago, but I was at that time using a Warner Brothers-copyrighted image of Harry, and that wouldn't fly if I wanted to post the finished image, so I had to stake out the real Harry Potter and get a candid photo. Fortunately for me, he lives in Brackley, just down the road, and goes to church with us. (Who knew that Harry Potter was LDS?)

Little factoids about the picture: In Book 6, Voldemort comments that making 7 horcruxes ("horcruces" for you Latin purists) would be best since 7 is such a powerful number. Therefore, there are 70 seven-sided sapphires on the diadem, and the issue of the Daily Prophet is "vol. 7." Harry Potter is played by James Cowey, serious HP fan. The text above the headline reads "The Seven Horcruxes (horcruces?) by JBWolfer. July 2007. Copyrighted. Do not steal." The diary is modeled on the HP book. The Hufflepuff Cup should have a third badger on the back, just peeking up, but I felt that it's little claws cluttered things up. Thank you to Ariel who pointed out that the locket should be gold and not silver. Nagini (the snake) is smaller than would be expected (she's been known to swallow people whole), but then it has to be assumed that she's a magical snake and can shrink down to fit into my picture since Voldemort carries her on his shoulders. Written as an afterthought in my own sloppy handwriting across the diadem is the Ravenclaw motto "Wit beyond measure is man's greatest treasure." The whole thing was an excuse to make the diadem which turned out to be my least favourite thing in the picture. I will never paint metal again. Never ever ever. No, you can't make me. Livia believed that I should draw a tongue on the snake because "all snakes have their tongues hanging out." I thought it was too cliché.

This brings me to Livia the art critic. The other day, just exercising my computer, I did this little picture of a Camel Boy. I based it on a real picture, but I didn't trace it or anything, just looked at the photo for reference. Lena was all impressed and commented, "Wow, Mommy, you're a real artist," to which Livia immediately responded, "That's not art, that's just copying." Now, I don't consider myself a "real artist" by a long-shot, but that's not because I like to use references. However, the opinion of my 6-year-old had a lasting impact on me, so when I did the "Seven Horcruxes," I made a point to make each item from my head. I studied photos of badgers and boa constrictors, various metals in various situations, but not a single item is a copy of something else (okay, the diary/book isn't very original). I was redeemed when Livia came back and saw me working on the diadem, and asked me if I was going to order one from the Internet. She had assumed that she was looking at a photo, and when I told her smugly that not only did I draw it but that I had made it up completely without copying, she replied evenly, "Impressive," and then walked off, disappointed that I wouldn't be buying her one for her dress-up box.

Today it's 82 degrees with a light breeze. Tomorrow, it's supposed to be 65 and rain. Summer finally arrived.

*Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

Comments:
EvilGM said,
5 August 2007 at 8:56 pm ·
I thought that Jenny did a smashing job on the picture. The real indication of her merit on this is when she presented a copy of the picture to James, who modeled as Harry. He was ecstatic and said that he really loved it. He was mightily impressed that Jenny did it all by hand, as was I. I’ve never had much of an interest in pursuing art, but know talent when I see it. Job well done.

EvilGM said,
26 August 2007 at 9:18 am ·
I was able to print out the graphic at work on a large plotter printer and it looks magnificent. Good job working the colors. Great to see it come to life in big print.

The Land that Summer Forgot

Last year, I whined (yes, I admit it was whining) about the aberrant weather. This year, I'm just spitting mad. There has been no summer. There will be no summer. There was just a lovely spring followed by three months of April Showers. Come September, the skies will clear and the temperature will rise to prepare for Autumn. We just returned from our summer holiday to Bournemouth on the south coast. It rained. And it was cold. And the wind howled. I think that maybe the floods have reached the US news. As we were driving, Livia shouted, "I see the sea!" I looked (even though we were close to home) and replied, "No, honey, that body of water is called Oxford." We have managed to remain lucky with the flooding. We still have power and water, and we don't take the trains anywhere, so we haven't been delayed. I just want one hot day (like last year when it was 95 degrees) so I can run all the fans and fuss about having no air conditioner, lie on top of the sheets at night and declare how much I hate summer.

Next year, when we're back on the North American East coast, quote this back to me.

But our trip wasn't a complete bust. We went to Monkey World, a primate sanctuary. The girls cackled with laughter at the antics of their furry cousins. One of the chimps even had a blanket which he hugged around him while he played just like my little monkey does. My favourite part was they had a huge jungle gym area for the homosapiens, and I had a great time climbing up the ropes and sliding down the two-storey slides. In that same area is Lulworth Cove where Dana and I went on her first visit, and though it was beginning to rain, I made us hike to Durdle Door and the white cliffs. Before we departed home, the girls and I had just finished reading James and the Giant Peach and when we got to the part where the giant peach rolls off of the chalk cliffs on the south coast of England, I told the girls we'd go see the place where the peach went over. So we had to go. There are a few points to be made here: Ariel hates rain, I hate suggesting things that people hate, Livia hates hiking, and Lena doesn't care about anything. Once we were on the trail, the wind started blowing the rain and seawater with such velocity that it stung our faces. Also, it was blowing against us. We made it, and then Lena went the whole way down to see the pebble beach, the stone arch, and of course the white cliffs. Livia cried. We were all soaked to the bone and probably looked dreadful when we checked into our hotel.

The next day was scheduled to be beach day, but Bournemouth's 7 miles of sandy beaches were a bit grey and cold, so we walked around the town, and the girls spent their mad money on a carosel ride at the pier. Then we went back to the hotel room to wait out the rain which the weatherman had predicted would last for the rest of our trip. Then, while we sat huddled in our room, the most amazing thing happened! The sun came out. Despite Ariel's complaints that the best part of Harry Potter had just begun, I made him put it away, and we went down to the beach. The wind was still howling, but the girls swam anyway. We ate ice cream and went to the Oceanarium, and had a very beachy day. Finally we collected shells and came home via the long way through the New Forest, past its famous ponies. (No, I had never heard of the New Forest ponies before, either.)

And because this is my blog and not a newsletter, I will keep the text short and the pictures small but clickable.

EvilGM commented: I didn’t mind the hike up the cliff so much. I had on my new Uncle Sugar special rain shell. It cost the ridiculous sum of $400 (XCR Gortex) and did a fabulous job of keeping me dryish. Over time the whipping winds even found that jacket permeating some water. There were times when it would not have surprised me to see one of our kids literally lifted into the air. Shear craziness.
To clarify a point, I don’t mind the rain so long as I don’t have to be out in it. I detest cold rain and could think of several things I would rather do than be out in it, including plucking nose hairs and getting my legs waxed.
I was pleased the way that the pictures turned out on this trip. Even the one that Lena took of Jenny and I on the cliffs where we appear to be drugged. All in all, the trip worked out well, mostly because the children didn’t complain about everything.
We tried something new this go around. We gave each of the girls £10 for the duration of the trip and allowed them to spend it on anything they wanted. They learned soon enough that if they spent it all, they would have nothing left to spend it on. Each of them found something that they really liked in what the other one had, and there was some disappointment overall, but I think that it was the beginnings of a great life lesson to learn. There are teaching moments everywhere.
We’ve already discussed our next trip, which will likely be to the Canary Islands in December for Christmas. We will be warm at some point on a holiday, we just haven’t gotten there yet.

The Boy Who Lived

Ariel went on a trip today and tried to convince me this last week that when the book came, I should save it for when he gets back so we could read it together. I found this request to be wholly unreasonable. This morning the postman handed me a package saying, "Here's your Harry Potter," and before the girls had gone to bed, I had finished it. The first 50 pages I read to Ariel before he left, but before I could even do that, I just sat there and giggled. I was terribly excited that on the first day of it's release, I was holding the last book in the series -- shipped directly from JK Rowling's house (if she lives in a warehouse on the M1). I felt that maybe I should save it, read a little bit every day, but let's be serious.

So, I thought it was good. Spoiler: everybody you know dies and the whole ending of the book is about people you've never heard of. It was not the best book of the seven, mostly because it's a fight from day one, so there's less room to laugh and explore the wonders of the wizarding world. But it was good and as an ending, it was complete. One of the great flaws of a long series of books is that by the end, you've invested so much of your time and emotion into the books that the end feels like the death of a friend. This was really tidy, unhurried, and instead felt more like the passing of an ancient grandmother who has lived the full gamut of life without regrets, finally giving up the last of her secrets before giving up the ghost. There was peace at the end. And the smell of mothballs.

I normally buy my books from Amazon.com and wait the week it takes to come from the US, but I wasn't willing to do that here. So I bought from Amazon.co.uk so I could (fittingly) get a UK version. It seems that those of you in the US get a translation of the book. It's actually written in JK Rowling's native language -- English. The other exciting thing was that I had a choice between the Children's version and the Adult version. I expected that the adult version would have more sex in it, but I was disappointed. The difference was only the jacket illustration: the children's version has cartoony people on it, while the adult version has naked people. Just kidding. It has a picture of the Slytherin locket.

So that's done. Livia says she's glad to have her real mommy back now. Lena wants to know how it ends without reading it, but I disappointed her and kept silent. Lena revealed today that she doesn't like to read. I nearly had a seizure. She looks so much like me, but on the inside, she is a stranger.

EvilGM commented:
I too thought that the book was tidy on the ending. Although you might have wanted there to be more, it would only be to see what happened to the survivors rather than any glossed over parts. It was pretty realistic in that the kids were fighting some very potent and real threats, and it ended in a way you should see coming (to a degree). No spoilers for you! People started dropping in the first 50 pages and the pace only quickened if anything.

Do you want to see our piggies?

Just a first post to show off my piggy doodle.