Zucchini!!!

This is what I picked from my garden this morning. This is about the fifth or sixth time I’ve picked boy flowers from my seed ball garden. I cut the stamens out, filled each one with a little bit of shredded mozzarella, made my batter with flour, salt, water and milk, and pan fried them. Then I sliced these zucchinis, also from the garden. I know they don’t look that big, but there are many more tiny ones that need to also grow. I added them to the frying pan and when I turned off the heat, I sprinkled feta cheese. This was my lunch. The neighbor’s cat has also visited a couple times, checking out the catnip. 

 

Happier Days 🌞 😊

 Work is really dead, but me and Kevin are enjoying being around the house a lot.  We got a new account, and thought they’d want us to start tomorrow, but they don’t want us till the 15th!  I’m not worried about it, because:

I’ve been working on my writing and my sewing. I’ve been listening to a lot of music. With the book I’m writing about working with children, I’ve decided to now start to jog memories about the 7 or 8 some odd year period that I worked at the children’s museum. That was the only thing I did in my life to help kids that was very joyful and happy instead of hard and sad. I started there in the spring of 2006. I found out I was pregnant on October 6th, 2006, and worked there until I had my daughter in June, 2007 and then went back the following year up until she was about in first or second grade. It was not only a joyful job, but I had a very strong support system there. I went through my divorce in 2010, before my daughter turned three and I do not know what I would have done without the people at work and the people at her daycare. My daughter used to love what we called “Busman’s Holidays”. This is when you visit your place of employment as a customer. I never had to pay to get in. We always had free memberships. My daughter was obsessed with the museum. 

While working there, I saw a lot of “aha moments” in many children. I want to talk about as many of these that I can. I also want to talk about some of the activities that we did in the exhibits that can easily be adapted at home. My entire book will tell a story as well as raise awareness and be educational. 

I surfed the museum’s website today with my five subject notebook and jotted things down. From the pictures, it looks like the discovery guides (that was my position title) are now wearing chartreuse shirts!  When I was a discovery guide there, we had to wear khakis and turquoise shirts. The higher up positioned people who were called “educators” wore darker blue shirts. But chartreuse is literally my favorite color, and I would have loved wearing that. Even with khakis. 

The museum chapter of my life was such a significant one that it needs to be included in the book. If it’s not, then the book will be pretty much a bombardment of misery. It will only raise awareness of serious issues like abuse and childhood adverse experiences, and not simple things like fun games that actually teach them math and science. And the museum memories won’t make me sad and affect my mental health the way my other jobs working with kids did. Sometimes Kevin asks why I don’t go back to the museum. I mean I could. It was such a mistake to leave. I left so I could finish my degree, and that was catastrophic for me. But when I worked there, I was in my late 20’s and early 30’s. Most other guides were college age “kids and there were a handful of women who were grandmother age. If I went back now, I feel like I’d be one of the grandmother guides and the young guides would be calling me Ms. Danielle. In Texas, most younger people call older people Mr. Or Ms. First Name. No one called me Ms. Danielle back then but they would now. And we all called the 4 or 5 grandmother discovery guides Ms. First Name. If I did, I would get to wear chartreuse shirts too!  But I won’t. I would need a lot of caffeine now to get through a day with a gazillion kids running around. I tend to believe I had more energy for it in my 30’s, but I might could muster the energy now. I also feel a level of loyalty to the company I work for now with Kevin and have no interest in leaving. After all, that company not only brought me a husband but has been financially digging me out of the college hole at a pretty good rate. During slow times I can either do the apps if I need money, or mill around and do my interests at home. 

I made my mother a patriotic wreath and will ship it to her so I can have practice shipping wreaths. It’s gotta be tricky. I also altered my t-shirt that says “proud parent, class of 2025” for my daughter’s graduation. She is going to stay up here with me all next week because she only has school one day for one final and that’s it. Seniors get out a week early. It’s so surreal that my kid is graduating and will be a legal adult in five short weeks. Tomorrow we’re going grocery shopping and Kevin is going to mow and put up our “2025 Grad” lawn sign so my daughter can come home to it on Sunday when she gets here. 

Songs Taken Literally

 I was in a store this morning when on the overhead “Dancing on the Ceiling” by Lionel Richie was playing. I remember being a little kid hearing that song and thinking, “How is he dancing on the ceiling?”  In fact I asked my mom how dancing in the ceiling was possible and how that worked. I don’t remember what she told me, but she did have a quick response  when I asked her why George Michael was Never Gonna Dance Again. “Guilty feeling, got no rhythm.” She literally told me, “Because they chopped his legs off.” 

I was about five or six and remember feeling startled when she said that. Now I look back on it and laugh. 

I remember learning about that phase in child development class when kids take everything super literally. I think it was called “the concrete operation phase” but I might be wrong. I learned nothing in formal education, just memorized shit for tests. 

When my daughter was going through that phase, she heard the song “Sound of Silence”, which has a famous line- “And the people bowed and prayed to the neon god they made.”  My daughter asked me, “Mommy? How do you make a neon god?”  I kind of chuckled and said I didn’t know but she could take glow sticks and make them into a stick figure if she wanted lol. I don’t think she ever did that. 

Then she heard an Eminem rap song where one line was, “Like a fuck you for Christmas, his gift is a curse.”  My daughter got this confused look on his face and said, “How did he get a fuck you for Christmas?”  I facepalmed and reminded myself not to listen to Eminem in her presence anymore. I said something like, “He didn’t really. Someone just did something bad to him and he’s mad about it.”  My explanation made her more confused. 

Kids just have to outgrow the concrete/literal phase before you can really explain nuances, or things that are artistic/figurative to them. 

I “Kid” You Not 🐐

 You can’t make this stuff up. Today I spent the day in Austin doing my side jobs. There were just more of my favorite ones there and on the way.  But good lord, Austin seemed chaotic today. On my way from Elgin to Pflugerville, apparently there were no actual highways for me to take, and my gps took me on a wild goose chase down this two lane country ass road with absolutely nothing. A red SUV started tailgating the hell out of me so I sped up a little until I was going about 15 over the speed, and she was still on my ass. I said that’s it, I’m not speeding any more for her. She can pass me when the opportunity arises. But it never did. It was not only just constantly a double yellow line, but sharp curves in the road that had posted speeds of only 20. There was no way people, including myself with red on my tail, was only going to do 20. It was scary and irritating. This woman was very intimidating. 

Then, out of nowhere, I go around a sharp curve and a herd of about 10-12 goats start crossing the street. They just moseyed on by as if they owned the road!  Maybe they did. I slowed down for them almost to a complete stop, and the woman in the red SUV tailgating me must not have seen that I was slowing down for a dozen goats, because she angrily swerved into the other lane to pass me, even though it was a double yellow line. She came within an INCH of hitting one of the goats. I honked my horn and the goat that she almost hit gave her his own little “F You” by doing this little skippity run with his back legs and going “Baaa!” At that point, I am pretty sure I heard her car stall. She moved over more to the left, out of oncoming traffic, but didn’t pass me. Something happened that incapacitated her, maybe, because she didn’t pass me even after the goats were out of the road. She just stayed there. When the goats crossed I just drove on. It was a good thing she didn’t actually hit the goat, then I probably would have had to called the cops. 

I really really hate being tailgated on like that, especially when I’m speeding up to get the person off my tail. It makes me feel paranoid like someone is after me. It almost makes me feel like someone wants to pull a Princess Diana on me. 

No T-Shirt Quilting for Me!

 A while back, I decided I wanted to try and learn to make t-shirt quilts. So I bought a bunch on 25 cent day and cut them to make squares. I bought ten yards of fusible interfacing in order to stabilize the knit fabric. 

The other night, I finally got them out and tried to iron on the fusible web. It just wasn’t working. I tried a couple different things.  I did a damp cloth. It wasn’t working, and my iron phobia was starting to take over. 

I suffer a little bit of iron phobia due to an incident with my abusive aunt when I was a teenager. My mom was in the hospital at the time, and she stayed with us to “help”, even though she was actually the opposite of help. She was ironing my dad’s shirts and didn’t like something I said and blew up at me in a rage. I mouthed off to her a little I guess and she pulled the iron with her as she lunged at me to try and strike me with it. Of course it came unplugged from the wall, but of course was still hot. I started running all over the den and kitchen, and she ran after me, constantly yielding the hot iron. I was jumping up on furniture and knocking things over to get away from her. Eventually I got to the front door and just ran down the street to a grocery store about four blocks away. The store manager brought me into his office to call my dad at work. My dad ended up leaving work early to come and get me from the grocery store and take me back home. When we got home, the cops were there. My aunt called them because I ran away. I told the cop what my aunt tried to do and he didn’t care because I didn’t actually get burned. 

Being a seamstress requires ironing. There are some projects that I’ve overcome my iron phobia to do, like minor patchwork where you have to iron after every seam. I can iron new fabric purchases if they are small, but if they’re larger than half a yard I’ll either cut them or ask my mom to iron them for me. 

Fusible interfacing and this t shirt project just isn’t going to happen, and that’s ok because I have a lot of other things to work on. It’s perfectly ok to let go of something that’s not for you, even if at one time you really wanted it. 

I saw this picture on social media saying something to the effect of “This is motherhood”. I kind of don’t like things like this. The attitude behind them can lead to child abuse. 

I sent it to my daughter, thinking back to when she was that age. If she’d witnessed that happening to me, she would have lost her ever loving mind. Here’s what she said about it:

She would have freaked out. This kid not giving a shit that his mother fell down the stairs like that has two possibilities: 1. He looks like he’s just coming in from another room and didn’t see it happen. 2.  He’s too young to understand the gravity of the situation only seeing that his mom is lying at the foot of the stairs. Or 3. He did witness all of it and is a psychopath. 

No person, child or adult, who witnesses something like that is going to be “screw you, go do something for me.”  We will all run up to the person asking if they’re ok, including little ones like this.  Even an infant who witnessed this happening to their mom would probably start crying. 

This is not some accurate description of “motherhood”.  That’s my unpopular opinion for the day. Thanks for listening. 

 

6 Weeks From Today

6 Weeks from today my daughter turns 18!  I took her out to Olive Garden and heard all of the friend drama. 

Here’s a picture from my baby shower at the children’s museum, where I worked, in May, 2007. 

I’m anticipating her legal adulthood as much as I anticipated her arrival.