A Conversation With Ruby About Bunnies

Last night we played "checker" with Ruby's ugly plastic checkout stand.

Ruby: I'll be the checker and you go shopping.

Me: Okay. (shop, shop, shop.)

Ruby: No, don't look at me. Checkers don't look at shoppers until they come up.

Me: Okay. (avert eyes, shop, shop, shop)

Ruby: Why, hello there! What's your name?

Me: My name is Kristen.

Ruby: No, pick another name.

Me: Okay...my name is Bunny.

Ruby: Are you a nice bunny?

Me: Yes, I am.

Ruby: Do you have bunny ears?

Me: Well, no....

Ruby: Why not?

Me: Because I'm not actually a bunny. I'm a person with the name of an animal.

Ruby: But do you have bunny ears at home?

Me: Why, yes, I do, as a matter of fact. It's funny when I go to parties wearing my bunny ears, because my name is Bunny.

Ruby: Okay, little bunny. Can I pet you?

Me: I don't think you understand. I'm not a bunny. I'm a human. My NAME is Bunny.

Ruby: Okay, little bunny.

A Conversation With Ruby About Cashews

Me: Here are some almonds and cashews.

Ruby: I LOVE cushrooms!

Me: Not cushrooms. Cashews.

Ruby: No, cushrooms.

Me: Okay, then, take your almonds and cushrooms to the living room.

7 Things That Make Me Miserable

I'm trying this new thing where I try to put a positive spin on things. The other day when it was snowing and I was freezing my cojones off, I thought, "I'm freezing my cojones off, but the snow is very beautiful." I'm trying to do away with words like "hate" and "stupid" in my vocabulary, in addition to trying to clean it up in general. You think quitting smoking is tough? Try to quit saying "fuck" when it's your all-purpose go-to word:

• Where the fuck are my reading glasses?
• What the fuck is going on in here?
• Why the fuck didn't you let the dogs out sooner?
• How the fuck did my phone end up in here?
• When the fuck am I supposed to get the laundry done?

Anyway, so that's what I'm working on these days, and I've found that putting a positive spin on certain things is just simply not possible. Here are seven things that make me miserable, period. Stupid things that I fucking hate. 

1. Dog hair. It's all over. It embeds itself in the lining of my boots and makes my calves itch. It embeds itself in the inside of my pants and shirts and makes my whole body itch. I pull dog hair off of my eyeballs some mornings. Oh, you're suggesting that maybe I should try vacuuming once in awhile? Try nearly every single day. By the next morning the piled-up dog hair is a visual representation of any given room's airflow. 

2. Itching. I hate to itch, and I generally itch all winter long. Yes, I moisturize. It doesn't matter, because if I'm not itching because I'm dry, I'm itching because I'm cold. If I'm not itching because I'm cold, I'm itching because I'm being stabbed by dog hair.

3. Stepping in water in my socks. It just makes me angry. I'm asking my mom for slippers for Christmas, slippers with a rubber sole so that when the dogs track snow into the house, I don't have to change my socks six times in an hour to try to keep my feet warm.

4. Being cold. Do I need to elaborate? I think not.

5. Showering in the winter. Sometimes Gerardo has to ask me when the last time I showered was, and sometimes I can't quite count back that far. Showering in the winter makes me itch like a motherscratcher and it takes me forever to get warm afterwards, when my hair is freezing cold and wet and it's too humid in the bathroom to get body parts like my butt crack and between my toes dry. So of course I have to break out the blow dryer--not just to dry off, but also to get warm--which then dries my skin even more, making me itch even worse. 

5. An entire wardrobe that doesn't fit. Everything I own is too small. When you're 5 feet tall, 20 pounds will require a new wardrobe. Unless you're completely and stubbornly in denial like I am. Then you'll just keep squeezing your size 6 ass into a size 4 pair of pants and pretend like they fit. 

6. Exercising. Hence the 20 pounds that fill my clothes a little too full. I have hand weights, a treadmill and a yoga mat upstairs. They're all very dusty, even though I pretend every morning like I'm finally going to go in there and start taking care of business. But every day, I don't. I hate exercising. I hate that damned treadmill and I hate doing yoga by myself. I like lifting weights, but I don't do that either, just because. 

7. Not being able to quick! pop out for something in the winter. There is no such thing as popping out in the winter. Leaving the house is a process, especially if a certain three-year-old is involved. You gotta get dressed, put on some big clunky shoes, pile on coats and hats and scarves and gloves. You have to trudge. I never trudge in the summer, but I do it all winter long. A lot of times you have to scrape or sweep the car, and there is never a trip out of the house that doesn't involve being unbearably cold--UNBEARABLY COLD--for the five to ten minutes it takes the car to finally warm up. And then you have to turn around and do it all over again after you procure what you popped out for. It makes me miserable.

Originally, I entitled this post "10 Things That Make Me Miserable." The good news is that I could only come up with seven things. There are many other things that annoy me, like getting up on a cold winter morning to find that we're out of coffee, never being able to find both of my gloves at the same time and getting all the way across town to Super Saver for my weekly grocery shopping only to find I've left the list at home. But I wouldn't say those things make me miserable. Misery is a special kind of relentless annoyance that keeps on giving.

What makes you miserable?

Apparently, Decorum is Not a Birthright

Three-year-olds say the most inappropriate things, like little drunkards with no sense of propriety, just spewing whatever's on their mind. Yesterday in the packed Target dressing room, Ruby said the following:

"Hey! You don't have any panties on! That's silly, mom!"
"You're all naked, mom!"
"You have a cute little booty."
"I love your vagina."

At Super Saver an hour later, we followed an old lady into the women's room. After Ruby peed, she said:

"Hey, mom! There's one, two, three, four bubbles in my pee!"

I'm just waiting for the day when she REALLY embarrasses me. I work hard at saying only kind things about people in general, even moreso when Ruby can hear me. Still, things slip out, and one of these days she'll probably say something very wrong to the worst possible person. I don't know what, and I don't know who, but just you wait. I'll be posting about it soon, I'm sure of it.

Five Things

Here's what I got sucked into this week...

1. Beautiful but creepy animated 19th century zoetropes, phenakistoscopes and praxinoscopes.

2. Behind the scenes with Sesame Street, circa 1970s. I always wondered.

3. How to live a kick-ass life, based on quotes from Mark Twain.

4. Clever re-imagined slogans for products and companies.

5. Incredible footage of an ice shove. It would make a good horror movie: Night of the Living Ice

Five Things

Here are my favorites this week:

1. This ad campaign from UN Woman is pretty awesome. I tried their little Google trick and got similar results. We've got a long, long way to go.

2. Believe me, I've had experiences with collection agencies, most of them awful: Rude, abusive and demanding. But this company? Please, let me get these guys next time I get sent to collections.

3. "McDonald's doesn't want to pay its workers more. It wants YOU to pay its workers more."

4. Creepy and/or disgusting Halloween candy. I'd love to be part of a think tank that comes up with these.

5. RIP Lou Reed. This gorgeous, bittersweet animated video features one of my favorite Lou Reed songs.

How to Name Your Band

My new band is playing at an open mic tonight so we can get an idea of what the stage sound will be for our first real show in Omaha at the Waiting Room on November 7. The thing is, we don't have a name yet. Coming up with a name is excruciating. A long time ago, I was watching Jim Jarmusch's Mystery Train and when the Japanese chick put on her jacket on the train, I said, "Oooh! Mister Baby is a great name for a chick band!" And my significant said, "Well, then start a chick band." So I did. I wish this one would come as easily.

We've been throwing out band names like candy on Halloween, and we've gotten nowhere. The band consists of me on the ukulele and singing, my sister Meghan on the accordion, my niece MacKenzie on the singing saw and our friend Patrick on the bass. Patrick is pretty laid back about the name, but the rest of us? OMG. We're a bunch of indecisive hens. Just take a look at some of our excruciating texts:

September 24

Kenzie: The shiver twitches.

Me: I tried to think of a shiver name because that's one of my favorite words. There's a band called Shivaree, which is a great name. How did you come up with that? Are you shivering and twitching?

KZ: My co-worker made a weird face and it looked like a shiver twitch and I thought, "that'd make a great band name!" Like shiver twitch and the so & so's or something.

Me: Too close to the front of my teeth. The "sh" and "tch."


October 19

KZ: Pale Annie.

KZ: Dervish.


October 20

Me: How about raven 8?

Meghan: Reminds me of that's so raven.

Me: Garden Gods?

MG: It's okay, needs something.

Me: Archives?

MG: Archrival?

Me: That's a local ad agency.

MG: Really? I didn't know that. Something something band name something.

Me: We're screwed.


October 22

MG: Lucy and the killers?

Me: The foundlings?

MG: Too close to fondling. Gremlins. Something with gremlins.

Me: Too kitschy. Moon junkies. Jackpot moon.

MG: I like names with moon in it. I have to carve a jack o lantern now. I'll get back to you.

Me: Carvers.

Me: The carvers.

Me: Pumpkin moon.

MG: Fever carver.

MG: The plumes.

MG: The ribbons.

MG: Honey belly.

MG: The funereals.

MG: Killer peacocks.

MG: Penguin the killer.

MG: Dearly beloved.

MG: Honey grass.

MG: Riddley shears.

MG: Okay, I'll stop now.


October 24  

Me: The Mighty Collisions.

Me: The Ephemerals.

Me: Ephemera.

Me: The Collapse.

Me: Supergiant.

Me: Mighty Palaces.

Me: Cold Shivers.

Me: The Dark Matters.

Me: The Gamma Rays.

Me: The Magnetospheres.

Me: The Unearthlies.

MG: No to ephemera, mighty palaces, shepherd moon. I really like the collapse, the mighty collisions, dark matters, magnetospheres & unearthlies. If we can, make it so the first word isn't "the".

Me: Agreed.

Kenzie: THE IS IN FRONT OF EVERYTHING! I don't know why you guys are against it.

Me: The the thing doesn't apply to every name, just those that give off more cool without it.

KZ: The bulbs, the crooked bulbs, the atmospheres. I dig shepherd moon a looooot.

Me: I like the bulbs a lot. I also like the unearthlies a lot.

KZ: The unearthlies is too cartoony. Shepherd moon for the win!

Me: What do you mean, cartoony? I think it sounds like fog on a creepy lake.

KZ: It doesn't flow like fog over a creepy lake. It kinda gets stuck on the tongue before it comes out.

Me: Yes, you're right about that. And I really don't like Shepherd moon that much. Feels kinda boring and distant. I loved it when I first thought of it, though.

KZ: I loooooove shepherd moon. It sounds so mythical, like some massive cosmic dude with a fluffy beard and starry eyes keeping watch over the universe.

Me: Yeah, that's kind of why I don't like it. It doesn't feel accessible. It also sounds like the title of some bad romance novel. In fact, that's what I'll name the hero if I ever write another one.

KZ: That it's distant is a good thing. You said yourself that you want a name that gives us room to grow under.

Me: Yes, but I want it to be more exciting. Like the magnetospheres or the atomic fevers or something.

KZ: Fine. I just love it so much everything will pale in comparison now. Those sound so punky. We aren't punk at all.

Me: We need something inbetween. How about The Inbetween?

KZ: Gah, too deep.

MG: I can live with Shepherd moon. It's a little blah but a cool image. I googled it and it is the name of an Enya album, but otherwise not taken.

Me: OMFG that totally figures it's an Enya album. Well, that's out.

MG: Blah, like it makes me think of little boy blue sleeping in a haystack losing his sheep or whatever.

Me: Yeah, Kenzie is wild about it.

MG: I know, Kenzie you and Enya are like BFF now.

KZ: You guys are crazy. Enya and I know what's up.

KZ: The boo hags.

Me: LOL the boo hags!

The name I loved best from the beginning, when we first started thinking of names over Labor Day weekend, was Wretched Family.

Me: Can we just go with Wretched Family?

KZ: Ugh.

Me: Gamma Rays?

Me: Spider Milk?

KZ: Gamma rays is alright. I like it better than all the others, I guess. Spider milk is pretty awesome.

MG: Collision kid?

Me: Nah, too karate kid.

KZ: Blackberry sunshine!

Me: Hippies.

And here we are, six hours away from playing and still trying to think of a name. I can't remember who it was that used to call me "Last Minute Lucy." It was either my dad or an old boss. But it's true that I work best under pressure. If I'm in true form, the perfect name will just roll suddenly out of my mouth as I introduce us to the audience.

A Conversation With Ruby About Naming Her Frog

Me: What kinds of pets do you have on ABC mouse?

Ruby: I have a frog and a dog.

Me: What's the dog's name?

Ruby: Lulu.

Me: What's the frog's name?

Ruby: Fwa Fwa.

Me: Fwa Fwa?

Ruby: No, Fra Fwa.

Me: Fra Fwa?

Ruby: No, Fra Fla.

Me: Fra Fla?

Ruby: No, Fra Fra.

Me, coming to my senses: Oh. What other pets are you going to get?

How to Remove Sharpie from Your Kid's Skin

Does your kid ever do this? Tag her face with Sharpie? I learned a neat trick for removing Sharpie ink from the skin during my 11-year stint as a bartender in a music club. I can't count the times I stepped into the women's bathroom to find a gaggle of underage girls slathering their huge Sharpie XXs with lotion and wiping them clean off their hands. Next time your child gets creative with a permanent marker, do this:

Get some decent lotion. Nothing too full of fragrance, which is industry-speak for nasty chemicals.

Slather the lotion over the affected body part.

Wipe gently with a soft tissue.

All clean! 

Now, put the Sharpie back in your personal pen box and give the kid some watercolors to paint herself with. Comes right off in the shower.

10 Things Your Kids Should Be Able to Do by the Time They Leave the Nest

My hypochondria says I'll probably be dead before Ruby needs to call me from her apartment panicking that her stove won't light, or that she flushed her flipflop down the toilet. I might miss out on those little crises, and that scares me to death. But this post isn't about how badly I need to quit smoking in the very, very near future, but rather some of the things I want to teach Ruby by the time she's 18 so she's not fixing broken chairs with duct tape or driving around town on a bald spare tire.

1. Know the names of essential household tools and how to use each one. Screwdriver, pliers, wrench, hammer, level, drill, jigsaw, gorilla glue, clamps, etc.

2. Clear a drain clog. No child of mine will ever spend hard-earned money on highly caustic chemicals that often do little more than destroy the pipes and pollute the water. No, a clog needs a snake, period. Plumber's snakes are inexpensive, and snaking a drain is easy. Gross, but easy. Extracting the source of the clog is highly satisfying, as is not having to call a plumber or the landlord for something that is so simple anyone could do it.

3. Maintain the toilet. Toilets are simple, elegant machines. If there's a leak, it's easy to troubleshoot the cause. If you flush something you shouldn't, removing the toilet to get to the trap is really a piece of cake if you have the right tools (see #1) and have a little time to spare. Replacing the flapper, flush valve and flush mechanism is easy, and it's essential to know how to do it if you want to avoid having to jiggle the handle every time you flush or dig around in the tank every other day to put the chain back on the flapper. I don't know about you, but it's a lot of little things like that that add up to debilitating chaos in my brain.

4. Mow the lawn. This is a task best learned early, in my opinion. Probably because I learned it early. I'm a very good mower when I get around to doing it, and that's because when I turned 13 it was my job to do the yard work. Ah, the memories, blasting Rush on my Walkman, daydreaming about love, or escaping, or becoming a big star and saying "ha, ha" to the bullies... Teaching Ruby how to fill the tank, check the oil, mow straight, overlap the rows, switch direction every mowing and clean off the blades safely is something that will serve her well her whole life.

5. Do laundry. All the little laundry rules! Sorting the clothes, how much soap to use, remembering to clean out the dryer trap after every load, setting the most energy-efficient water levels and washing and drying cycles, etc...not to mention the best way to fold clothes to prevent wrinkling and save space. Included here would probably be basic sewing tasks like putting on a button or mending a seam tear.

6. Cook. For God's sake, if you can't feed yourself by the time you're a teenager, you're in for it. You'll end up eating fast food, microwave burritos and chicken pot pies, and that's not good for anyone. Oven and stove safety, flipping an egg, following directions, using measuring utensils, cleaning up after yourself.

7. Change a fuse or reset a breaker. Stuff is always tripping breakers.

8. Maintain the car. Check the oil, fill up the windshield washer fluid receptacle, put air in the tires, change a tire, use jumper cables. The basic things that keep your car running and help you avoid paying someone else to do what you're perfectly capable of doing yourself.

9. Address a letter, endorse a check, read a bill, understand a bank statement... all those lost arts that aren't nearly as necessary as they once were, but that will come in handy when the end of the world comes and there's no more internet.

10. How to read labels. Clothing labels, ingredients labels, warning labels, etc... I had to research all the symbols they put on clothes so that I wouldn't wash Gerardo's vintage stuff and shrink his fancy pants that can't go in the dryer. Navigating the wide world of labels is essential for getting shit done right.

Five Things

Here's what I've been skulking around looking at this week.

1. Chicago artist Nick Cave (not the musician) has a really incredible show up at the Denver Art Museum. Love.

2. "...Christ, fellas, you really can't complain when their first, last and only solution is to light everything on fire and call it done." More people need to vote in Texas.

3. Really cool animated gifs by artist Zack Dougherty.

4. Sculptures of appliances made of translucent polyester fabric. These look like X-rays.

5. Hoochieween!

Arts & Humanities Art Show - My October Picks

Gerardo is the art teacher at our school district's high school focus program, Arts and Humanities. On the second Friday of each month, he exhibits student work, sometimes drawing a couple hundred people. It's by far my favorite gallery in town. Many of the students are extremely talented, some with maturity beyond their years. These are my favorites from this month's show. Sorry about the glare on the frames. I need to be about 5 inches taller.

These are by Jade, whose research on vintage tattoos led to these remarkable drawings using black, red, yellow and green markers. You can see more of her work on her DeviantArt page, including some killer photography.

This looks like my little old grandma, sweet and prim. I love the background and the color of her hair. The flower pattern on the dress cracks me up. It's so totally something this woman would love. Whether or not it's intentional, I love the focus of her eyes, and how one eye is a little more open than the other. 

I wish I had gotten a glare-free picture of this one. It feels vintage. It's sweet and creepy, and maybe a little sad. The details of the porch behind the trick-or-treaters are great. 

This is the same artist who did the drawing above. I adore this: the orange roofs, the winding lane and that sky! I love the sky. 

This was done with a Sharpie. It's meticulous.

I'm not saying I want this in my house, but it's so full of emotion and movement that it's absolutely striking. I love the surreal quality of the lips and teeth, and how the eyeball on the right appears to be bulging out of its hole. 

 I love the details on this one--the wood door, the shapes of the clouds, the blades of grass cropping up, the perfect geometry of the shell. This is illustration at its finest. 

Five Things

Here's what I've enjoyed this week:

1. Mean Tweets: Celebrities reading mean tweets about themselves.

2. I love interesting cleaning tips, but I never use them. I should use them.

3. I have a few of these Really Annoying Facebook Friends. I know I'm not one of them, though, because I'm so afraid of being annoying on Facebook that I rarely post.

4. I often don't read this sort of thing on account of being a massive hypochondriac certain that I'm going to die either right now or within the next few months. But this was worth the fear of having to acknowledge that yes, someday I will die. Probably not right this moment, and maybe not in the next few months, but eventually.*  Kinda helps you see more clearly what your priorities in life should be in order to avoid deathbed regrets.**

5. I love stories like this and this.

*Right after I wrote that I had a tiny little panic attack and for about 4 seconds I was pretty sure I was going to drop dead right then.

**Warning: this article contains those annoying links that don't take you anywhere even remotely related to the content. One link is haphazardly attached to the random words "you do" and when you hover over it, it says, "Save money on you do! Offer ends soon!" and gives you a link to what is certain to be some crappy, spammy ad site or something. WTF? Some asshole is just attaching random links to random words, and he (or she) needs to be severely schooled in SEO.

McDonald's Wants You to Pull Up Your Pants

Sometimes I get sucked into my Yahoo! news feed, and click on articles I know I shouldn't click on for my own good. I did that today. Oops.

It's an article about two McDonald's stores in Texas that have banned baggy pants. I don't get the baggy pants thing, but whatever. I'm not offended by it. I do have a slight distaste for dress codes in general, but it wasn't the dress code itself that got me worked up as much as the sign:

"PULL YOUR PANTS UP or Don't Come In!!! Try to have some decency & respect for others, No one wants to see your underwear."

First, the three exclamation points. Isn't that a little excessive?

We're used to seeing this:

No Shoes

No Shirts

No Service

It's to the point, neutral in voice, reasonable. And now, this:

No Shoes

No Shirts 

No Service!!!

Ah, it changes a bit. It's emotionally charged. It's passing judgment on those who aren't wearing shoes or aren't wearing shirts. 

The McDonald's sign is shaking its finger at you with a big, disapproving frown on its face. "Pull up your damn pants, you disrespectful whippersnapper! You kids these days, with your underwear hanging out for God and your mother to see! Why in my day...!"

Why not simply this:

Baggy Pants Not Allowed

Just stating the rules, like No Left Turn or Employees Only.

OMG! No Left Turn!!!

Employees only!!! We're Serious!

Okay, so the exclamation points set my teeth on edge. Then I read the middle part: "Try to have some decency and respect for others, No one wants to see your underwear." Jesus, you already said that with your three exclamation points. We get it already. The word "try" here indicates that McDonald's feels that those who choose to wear their pants a certain way are completely void of decency and respect for others, and that having some decency and respect for others is something they will have to put grave effort into doing simply because they let their underwear-clad ass show. Boy, it must be easy going through life when everything is so black and white, no gray areas.

And seriously? Decency and respect for others? Really, McDonald's? How's that working out for YOU, you slimy bastards? Oh, right:

Let's not forget who's largely responsible for the public assistance bill we all end up paying because certain multi-billion dollar corporations don't want to pay their human workers a decent living wage. 

The baggy-pants crowd is better off without you, McDonald's, not vice-versa.

Update: this short video says it all. What a bunch of nasty pigs. 

Five Things

Here's what I found interesting this week while procrastinating:

1. If only I could grow facial hair!

2. Weekly illustration challenges!

3. Guy gets ticket for not riding in the bike lane. Proceeds to make a hilarious video of himself crashing into things blocking the bike lane.

4. Eerie photographs of things left behind in abandoned buildings.

5. Ten things Americans waste money on. I'm guilty of all except designer baby clothes and deal websites.

The Invasion of the Tiny Plastic Toys

I gathered up this little pile of meaningless garbage while I was going through Ruby's purses and backpacks and plastic grocery bags that she squirrels things away in:

Where does it come from? I never buy this crap, ever. It grows like mold in our house, multiplies like common kitchen pests. Can it even be recycled? I just Googled that and got sucked into watching this short video of a small beach cleanup effort that shows us what washes up with the next wave. Yikes!

Plastic toys in general are the current bane of my existence. They represent everything I hate:

1. Ugly stuff.
2. Clutter.
3. Toys with TV/movie characters on them (see #1).
4. Nasty chemicals disguised as things for little kids to play with and suck on.
5. Thoughtless, wanton consumerism at the expense of clarity, order and aesthetics (see #1 & #2).

One of the (many) reasons I didn't want kids in the first place was because of all the ugly crap that accompanies them, most of it garbage. Molded plastic toys, awkward talking books, cheaply-made stuffed animals, all of it made out of plastic, much of it with BPA, and none of it beautiful to look at. It gets played with once and then becomes another piece of clutter that attracts dog hair and dirt. 

I swore from the beginning that we wouldn't have it in our house. But then Ruby wanted that damned ugly plastic molded cash register so badly, and it was only $1.98 at the thrift store, and now it's in our living room.

I PROMISED MYSELF IT WOULDN'T HAPPEN AND I LET IT HAPPEN AND NOW IT'S INFECTING MY LIVING ROOM. Plus, you know, there's Christmas and birthdays, and our families are so big that the plastic ugliness adds up, and what kind of ingrate would I be if I wasn't thankful that Ruby gets to have new toys twice a year? And what kind of detestable, self-righteous bitch would I be if I insisted to my family that they only buy beautiful things for my kid? Ruby doesn't want beautiful things. She wants a doll that comes with a plastic bottle with yellow liquid in it and a shiny pink car seat with a hideous plastic cover and a tiny pacifier that never stays with the doll for more than a day. She wants a Batman figurine with a cape that comes off and a tiny shooter plastic thing screwed to his arm that houses a tiny little projectile that I find among the dog hair in the vent a week later. 

Fine. But the minute she's old enough to prefer fashion or whatever to toys, I'm scooping it all up and getting it out of my house, and good riddance to bad rubbish. Meanwhile, I try to keep it reined in, try to keep the ugliest stuff in her room, door closed, and the rest of it corralled neatly in the living room. It's her house, too, after all. But that doesn't mean I can't hate plastic toys with every mitochondria in my body and bitch about it to you, my faithful readers. 

Still, iffen I had my way, all of Ruby's toys would come from companies like B. Toys, whose offerings are mostly easy on the eyes, entirely devoid of the meaningless and the pointless, and just plain smart. Ruby loves these toys. I love the packaging. (Jesus, don't even get me started on the insanity that is toy packaging, with all the twine and wires and rubber stoppers and tape and molded plastic you have to open with heavy-duty tin cutters and cardboard inserts and advertising pamphlets and plastic bags with warnings on them...I CANNOT SHUT UP ABOUT TOYS.) And no, this is not a sponsored post. But I'll be happy to write one!

I could go on and on about ugly toys, believe me. But I won't. Because look how much she loves her ugly plastic cash register.

A Conversation with Ruby About God and Batman

Ruby: Why won’t you answer the door?

Me: Because those people want to talk to us about God.

Ruby: Is God real or pretend?

Me: God is real.

Ruby: God is in church.

Me: God is everywhere.

Ruby: What does God do all day?

Me: Well, God is in everything, so everything everything does all day is what God does all day.

A week later…

Ruby, watching Batman: Is Batman real or pretend?

Me: He’s a pretend character, but he’s real in our hearts and our collective consciousness.

Ruby: What does Batman do all day?

Me: Well, he’s the CEO of a huge corporation, so I imagine he goes to the office and works. Sometimes he hangs out in his Batcave waiting to help people who need help.

Ruby: With God?

Me: Sure. 

Scavengers Unite!

There was very little in the way of work for me on Friday, plus it was 75 degrees outside and sunny, so at 8:00 a.m. I opened all of the windows to air out the house, rolled up my sleeves and started cleaning from top to bottom to patio to garage.

Fact: The average household contains over 300,000 individual items. Because we're thrift store junkies, we have about twice that much stuff. I was in the mood to try to pare down to the average 300,000, so I went through the storage room and the closets and sorted everything into three piles:

1. Keep.
2. Stuff that can't be recycled, reused or repurposed (i.e.,garbage: Broken printers, old mops, etc.)
3. Stuff that can be recycled, reused or repurposed, just not by me.

I put away the stuff in the first pile, took the second pile out to the garbage, and set up the third pile in the alley on the handy concrete slab in front of our garage, a bunch of flotsam and jetsam and bric-a-brac for passersby to scavenge:

I seriously considered having a last-minute yard sale. The panic and adrenaline would be a rush after spending so much time in front of the computer, but as the morning wore on and I got tired and a little overwhelmed, I came to my senses.

Later that afternoon, the pile had dwindled somewhat:

The people in our neighborhood, us included, are vultures. We love picking through other people’s garbage. I’ve got all kinds of stuff around the house that I found abandoned in one alley or curbside or another.

By Sunday afternoon:

In the end, I only had to take a tiny carload of stuff to the Goodwill, and that was well worth not making $53.14 at an impromptu yard sale.

Ruby's Process

When Ruby paints, she likes to layer color after color after color and mix them and mix them and mix them with the paintbrush, and ends up with these really lush, cool paintings:

Today she was painting squiggly lines, a total departure from her norm:

"I like your painting," I said. 

She looked at me like I was nuts. "It's not a painting, Mom. I'm working on my process."

Fast forward ten minutes later, ten minutes of me gloating about my very own child prodigy, my absolute genius of a child, wondering if it was too early to start her college applications. She came into the room and wanted to perform "Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes" for me. The kid didn't get a single body part right. Where she should have pointed at her head, she pointed at her shoulders. Where she should have pointed at her toes, she pointed at her ears. And so on.

Thanks for keeping me honest, kid.

Overheard at the Grocery Store

"I think his lymph noids are swollen. I know quite a lot about lymph noids, so I'm going to get him to the doctor this morning."

Five Things

Here's what I got sucked into this week while roaming the Internet.

1. "It's like Santa! For your vagina!" Best commercial ever, from Hello Flo.

2. Pictures of goats on cliffs.

3. This woman is a dairy farmer in Finland and makes beautiful, colorful, enormous sculptures of cows out of old machinery and auto parts.

4. Another great edition of Bad Lip Reading

5. I love news bloopers. These are from last month, and there are some really nice gems in there. A few duds, too, but that's the price of voyeuristic entertainment.

A Conversation With Ruby While I Was Distracted

Ruby: Hey, Mom, wouldn't it be a good idea if I something, something, blah, blah, blah?

Me: Yes, that would be a wonderful idea.

Ten minutes later, she had cleaned the bathroom sink and mirror with Colgate: The penalty you pay when you don't listen to your kids.

How to Keep Your Little Kid Busy While You Get S**T Done

Summer's over. My BFF went back to work today, so it's back to business at home. By business, I mean trying to work and entertain Ruby at the same time. The television goes a long way toward allowing me to write in uninterrupted 25-minute increments, but I try not to plant her in front of it for too long, although she's become an official emergent reader as a result of watching Super Why. She recognizes most of the letters in the alphabet, and is beginning to understand that letters are symbols for sounds. She'll say things like, "S is for soap, Mom!" So yeah, keep up the good work, TV! Save me some time teaching my kid to read. She also watches Batman, Power Puff Girls and The Littlest Pet Shop, which aren't "educational" but introduce her to a wealth of popular culture.

When she's done with TV, I've usually gotten enough done that I can take a break for awhile and pick up the house or do a load of laundry, and Ruby helps a lot with that. (She loves to fold towels and clean the bathroom sink.) Or else she makes huge messes, but whatever. Her messes are usually easy to clean up, and they keep her busy in one place for a long time so I don't have to go looking for her and stumble upon some horrific scene that's going to cost me an hour to rectify.

Here are Ruby's favorite messes to make, and the ones that keep her busy for as much time as I can hope for.

Fun with Corks

We drink a lot of wine, and for some reason (posterity? habit?) we've saved wine corks for the last 12 years. They come in really handy nowadays. I fill a couple of big plastic bowls with corks and set then on the floor, along with a ladle, the blender (she loves that thing for some reason. She never plugs it in, of course.) and a few more bowls of varying sizes. She plays with those things forever.

Go Nuts with Art Supplies

The key to keeping your kid busy with art supplies is to not care if they break the crayons, drown the watercolors or make tiny confetti out of your old gas bill. I set up Ruby on the kitchen table (she sits on it, not at it) and give her the glue, some scissors, some popsicle sticks, a few odds and ends and some paper. She uses way too much glue and tries to mix paint with glue and pours glue into the paint water, but whatever. She's discovering, and she stays at it for an hour at a time.

Let 'Em Help You Clean

When it's time to clean, Ruby wants to help. Sometimes that's good, and sometimes that just means she wants to follow me around and make little messes in my wake. If it's the latter, I offer her a cleaning rag and the spray bottle full of water with 5 drops of tea tree essential oil. I always tell her to go easy on the spray, but she never listens. By the time she's wiped down all the lower kitchen cupboards and the fronts of the appliances, the bottle is pretty much empty, and there's a little river of water on the floor in front of the cupboards. When we're done, I throw down a towel and clean up the water with my feet, scrubbing as I go to get the wayward grime up as well. In this case, her mess turns into a cleaning tool.

Play Dress Up

Ruby is only now discovering dressing up. She never went through the whole princess thing or wanting to wear girly dresses or anything pink. Her favorite outfit since I can remember has been her black skinny jeans and her Batman shirt (Thanks, Mom!) She calls it her "awesome outfit." But recently, she's been caring about her appearance more. She's learning a lot from her big sister about clothes and about "getting ready." And that's what I call "dress up." I'll say, "Ruby, we're going to go to the store later. Why don't you start getting ready?" And she's on it. I filled an old detangler bottle with water, and she uses it to comb her hair. For fifteen straight minutes. Then, she brushes her teeth, which takes another 10 minutes. She spends a ton of time putting on her "makeup," which is some old crap I gave her, along with a clean mascara wand and some old lipstick that's really pale. No matter that she looks like a clown when she's done. We're probably not going to the store after all, and it'll come off in the shower later. Speaking of which:

Take a Play Shower

Whenever we can't find a kitchen utensil, we look in the shower. I know, gross, right? But that's pretty much where we keep our measuring cups and spatulas and whatever else keeps Ruby in the shower for at least a half hour. She loves taking showers, pouring water from container to container and finally over her head. She likes getting all soapy and making soup with her drippings and the like. I end up with a clean kid AND a good chunk of time to write an article or two. The shower floor is always covered with filled containers that turn cold and gross. I need to stay more on top of that mess. Out of sight, out of mind, I guess.

How I Make Money From Home

The writer Barbara Kingsolver once said something like her muse wears his baseball cap backwards and stands over her chair with a bat. I can totally relate. Working from home has its benefits, including the age-old favorite of not having to get properly dressed in the morning. That's a pretty big one for me, but it also creates its own problems: by the end of the day, I look and haggard and tired. I look old. Maybe if I got up every morning, brushed my damn hair, washed my face and put on a spot of makeup, I wouldn't feel so yucky about myself around 4 o'clock, when I finally get around to looking in a mirror.

Anyway, the hardest part of working from home for me is actually working. Some days I've got a cluttered house that clutters my mind, and I can't focus on writing. Other days, it's 72 and sunny outside and a perfect day to write some songs on the back patio or weed the neglected flower beds. I'll just work extra hard tomorrow, I think. But then I remind myself of the reality: if I don't work, the bills don't get paid. It's always impossible to make up a whole day of work without a lot of anxiety and misery. So I sit down and Barbara's muse comes to stand over me, and I work.

So what, exactly, do I do? I write web content. It mostly pays okay, sometimes very, very well. I work primarily for two companies: Zerys and Constant Content.

Zerys provides titles of articles they need written. I write the titles I like and that have higher pay. When the article is accepted by the client or by Zerys editors, they credit my account for the appropriate amount. Twice a month, my earnings are deposited into my PayPal account. The more articles I write, the more I make. The typical article I write fetches 3.2 cents per word, or about $11 for 350 words.

Constant Content works a little differently. I write articles about whatever I feel like writing about, then upload them to the database. Clients looking for content that matches what I've written are given the option to buy my articles. The more I write, the more I sell, so I try to upload as many articles a week as I can. I set my own prices, generally at the industry standard of 10 cents per word. So for a 500 word article, I charge about $50, of which I get $32.50. Not bad for the short amount of time it takes to write most of the articles.

Both of these companies are strictly legitimate, and I highly recommend either or both to anyone who wants to make extra money from home or who wants to make a living at writing content. It's not always fun, but that's what my blog is for. I like to keep in touch with my love of writing, and since I don't have time to get cracking on a novel, I write here instead when the mood strikes.

A Conversation with Ruby About Going for a Walk

Ruby: Mom, let's go for a walk with my stroller!

Me: No, not now. I'm tired! I'm just going to sit here and watch you play.

Ruby: Pleeeeeeaaaasssseee?

Me: Not now. We'll go for a walk later.

Ruby: But Mom, I want to walk with you in the quiet nice of nature!

(Who can say no to that?)

Five Things

Here's what I've been enjoying this week!

1. A beautiful commercial that won a gold lion at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity.

2. Online interactive maps lets you roam around the world with your mouse arrow and tells you where you are. Fun to play around with. Take the interactive quizzes to see how much you remember from Geography.

3. Anamorphic sculptures that make my brain hurt. You need a special kind of spatial awareness to create these.

4. I never get tired of this version of Aha's "Take On Me"video.

5. I'm really liking this Etsy shop.

By Way of Introduction

Call me a late bloomer. At the tender age of 37, I went back to school to get my teaching degree. Three days after I graduated, I made a visit to my OBGYN because my body had been doing strange things and my period had been abnormally light for a couple of months. I had just turned 42, and I was pretty sure I was going through peri-menopause.

My doctor laughed. “Quite the opposite,” he said. “I’d say you’re about three months pregnant.”

Preg-a-what? 

No, no, no. Babies were in no way a part of my life’s plan. If they had been, I sure as hell wouldn’t have waited until I was at an age where I could reasonably mistake pregnancy for menopause.

It was entirely too late to do anything about it, and one of the most terrifying moments of my life was having to tell my boyfriend of nine years that we were gonna have a baby. With three kids under his belt already, ranging from 11 to 21 years old, I knew he was going to go ballistic. 

“How’d it go?” he asked. I was smoking and shaking.

“Well, it’s not peri-menopause.”

“That’s good. So what is it?”

“A baby.”

There was a stunned silence. A very, very long silence.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“Sorry for what? This could be great!”

He said some of the sweetest things he’s ever said, pointing out that this would bind us and our families together for life. He said it would keep us young and on top of pop culture, a good asset for a couple of teachers. He said that having kids was the best thing that ever happened to him, and that I should have that experience.

I put out my cigarette and gave him the rest of the pack. I made a million lists. I started taking better care of myself, hoping it wasn’t too late.

Ruby was born on Elvis’s birthday in 2010. She was perfect. Despite having severely abused my body in my 30s and during my early months of pregnancy, she scored a 10 on the Apgar scale.

Ruby is 3-1/2 now, and I’m a work-at-home mom. It’s not easy balancing house with work and child, but stuff mostly gets done. I like to keep busy, and I like to start projects that are way over my head, and that sometimes take a year to complete. I’ll show you some of them.

I hope you find my posts helpful in some ways, maybe inspiring in others. Most of all, I hope you will feel free to comment, email or otherwise communicate with me if you have any advice, experiences or anecdotes related to my posts. I love to hear from my readers. 

Happy reading!