GEISHA TO DIVA: The Kimonos of Ichimaru at The National Geographic Museum (this is a traveling exhibit, and it’s gone now)

This one is pretty, but I wish I had taken a picture of the one to the left, with the blue flowers. I am totally digging it.

MONGOLIA: Traditions Reborn

This guy totally had his eye on me as I was walking down the hallway to this exhibit. I crouched down to take his picture, and half felt like he was going to come clobber me for presuming to take his picture.

He freaked me out. She made me feel a little better though.

What I REALLY dug though, were these caligraphy thingees:

?

While my folks and my brother were in town, we managed to go into DC and see some sights. My favorite, which I’ve seen many many times, and always see again when I go into DC for siteseeing, is James McNeil Whistler’s The Peacock Room.

I think the history of the room is why I like it so much.

Whistler’s patron, Leyland, was redecorating his dining room, mainly he wanted more shelving on which to display his porcelain collection. Whistler’s painting, “The Princess from the Land of Porcelain” was hung over the fireplace, and the designer consulted the painter about whether a certain color on the walls would clash with the painting. Whistler asked permissiong to retouch the walls, which Leyland agreed to.

Then Leyland went out of town, and in his absense, the creative spirit overtook Whistler, and he really went to town on the room, making all sorts of changes and embellishments, like putting gold leaf on the ceiling and painting the shutters over the windows with beautiful plumed peacocks.

Well, he told Leyland about the changes and added that it wasn’t done yet, and not to come back home until it was finished – all the while he brought his friends and even the press through the room to show it off. Leyland was kind of miffed, because he had only agreed on the minor changes and wasn’t prepared for the additional cost of these embellishments, which he hadn’t even signed off on. When it came time to pay for the painter’s work, Leyland voiced his displeasure, and finally agreed to pay for HALF the total Whistler wanted for payment, and then to add insult to injury, he paid him in pounds, instead of guineas. A pound is worth 20 shillings, and is considered the a tradesman’s currency, while payment to artists is usually made in guineas, which is worth 21 shillings.

Obviously, Whistler was upset and insulted by the quibbling over money for his fabulous work of art, and so he took the liberty of adding even more embellishments to the room. A large mural was painted on the wall opposite The Princess, and he depicted two peacocks in a fighting stance. One of the peacocks had feathers sticking out along it’s neck, which points him out as representing Leyland, and the ruffled shirts he always wore. He is in a position of dominance over the other peacock, and has coins scattered at his feet, showing the money that Leyland did not want to pay. The other peacock had a feather sticking up from his head, which was similar to a lock of Whistler’s hair (cowlick maybe?).

(The only photo that actually looks in focus! Wowee!)

He also made other changes to the room, taking the valuable leather hangings and painting them a brillian prussian blue, which I suppose could be considered ruining them. The sad part is that the painter never saw his room again, after he finished.

The room was bought and passed through several hands before it came to Charles Lang Freer, who left it to the Smithsonian upon his death. I beleive it had to go through some major rennovation at this point, as it had been taken apart and put together so many times.

It makes me happy to go sit in the Peacock room and look around, it is so beautiful. But it also makes me sad. Obviously, it is good that it is in a museum so that so many can look at it and enjoy it, but it still saddens me. I wonder about the parties that Leyland must have thrown in the room when it was in his house, and the comments that must have been made about it’s ornate embellishments. I wish I could see it back then, with the shutters thrown open and sunlight flooding in, the door to the kitchen opening and closing with servants bustling food and plates in and out. What would the colors look like with the daylight shining in? In the musuem, it is very dark, obviously the low light protects the room, but I just wish I could see how it would be, functioning as a normal room, with people sitting down to dinner, or milling around with a cocktail in one hand. Leyland telling the story about the room, and what his guests must have thought of it all. I can’t help thinking that Leyland probably got a good deal of enjoyment out of telling the story, since he kept it just as it was for twelve years (until he died). I wonder if years later, after the sting had left the situation, if he was sorry he hadn’t paid Whistler the full price asked. I bet he got his money’s worth out of the story alone.

Now that I’ve told you the story as I remember it, I found a link that has the official story – be sure to read it, as I have omitted some of the details (glad to see I got a good bit of it right, though 🙂 ) Also, their pictures are much better than my fuzzy-low-light ones. And I hope next time you’re in DC, stop by the Freer Gallery and have a peek into the Peacock room. I always do 🙂

I showed you one of the canker sores I got.

What? I didn’t?

Oh fine, here you go:

That was in mid March.

Since then, I had a double canker sore (2 of them VERY close together, just inside the corner of my mouth), and then about a week or 2 after that cleared up, I got another one on the other side of my mouth, and NOW, I have one in front, behind my lower lip. It started out as just a wee sore spot, and then it was a teeny tiny little white spot of a canker sore, and now it’s a full on raging canker sore and it’s driving me crazy. I THINK it’s on the decline now.

So what happens? MY TONGUE IS STARTING TO FEEL ALL SORE AND CANKERY AND SOMEONE JUST SHOOT ME NOW.

Seriously, this will be my sixth canker sore this year. In fact, I think I had one or two before I took that picture of my tongue, which means even more than that.

That is SO NOT RIGHT.

I’m beginning to think I am eating or drinking something that is causing these fuckers. I hope it’s not my gum. (Trident, and Juicy Fruit) I love gum. I hope it’s not diet coke. I love diet coke.
WAAAAAHHHHHHHH.

the end.

I went into Ethan’s room this morning and he was sitting up putting on his socks. He gave me a little grin and we exchanged the usual “good morning!”s and “did you go to the bathroom yet?”

me: Guess what!
him: what?
me: Today is your birthday!
him: *gasp of excitement!* I’m four now?
me: Yup, you are four today!
him: I’M FOUR!

The rest of the morning was spent with him saying, “I’M FOUR TODAY!” every few minutes.

I will always be thankful that he was born just in time for me to be a mother on Mother’s day. Even if it means that there is always more birthday excitement going on than Mother’s Day excitement 🙂

june 2002

may 2003

may 2004

September 2005

April 2006

And of course, see the top of the page for this month’s all-ethan-all-the-time-banner.

Somehow, I neglected to post my very favorite photos from our friends wedding:

I was sitting on the outside of the row, and after the ceremony managed to catch this very sweet scene. The ring-bearer’s Dad took him aside and told him what an awesome job he had done. Can you see the look of joy on his face as his dad praises him? He just looked like he was going to bust, he was so proud.

Ring-bearer getting a high five from Dad. I just wish it was in better focus.

My favorite of the set.

WAR!! HUH! WHAT IS IT GOOD FOR.. ABSOLUTELY NOTHING…
Except when it means you have clean clothes.

James declared war on the laundry this weekend and I gladly enlisted. Battle 1 (consisting of about 5-6 loads) has been WON, at the cost however of staying up until 11:30pm. Battle 2 (about 2-3 loads left) will likely be waged tomorrow and my hopes are high for VICTORY!

I wish that it really was a war, and once won, it would stay won. Unfortunately laundry haunts us and will return to battle again in the not so distant future.

GEEKY THINGS

I started out the weekend feeling pretty cocky and straightening my imaginary “geek grrl power!” hat, because I installed a new hard drive in my desktop and copied over my original drive and it all booted up beautifully and there are no issues whatsoever.

Then the fates frowned on me when I started with my laptop. I have an IBM T42 and IBM puts a super secret itty bitty partition on their drives that has a copy of the original setup / OS from when it was straight from the factory. So, I thought it might be useful to keep all that and wouldn’t it be handy if I could make 2 partitions on my new drive and copy both the boot partition and the super secret partition and everything would be hunky dorey? In a nutshell, it’s not as easy as all that. After trying a few things myself, and finding some pretty spiffy software, I called IBM and got instructions to burn 6 CDs and let them do all the work. It did work, made the partitions, copied stuff to the super secret partition, rebooted and was about to start on the main partition when it just popped up with a failure message. Called IBM back and they said, “what sort of drive is this? third party? Oh, yeah, we forgot to tell you, only works with IBM drives.” Grrrr.

So I guess it’s no biggie, who needs the super secret backup partition? I guess I don’t. Fished out my Win XP cd and deleted all partitions in favor of one big partition and installed a fresh OS on that. Thought I would run into trouble when driver time rolled around, but IBM does have a handy utility that checks the drivers of all the hardware, downloads and installs them all. I’m at this stage now, it installed them all and I understand that the computer is going to be pretty busy configuring everything, but when I booted it up, everything was running very very slow.

I do have some misgivings about the drive in general, first, I thought that I would need 5400 RPM, but it turns out the original drive was 7200 RPM. 7200!!! I could have bought something way faster! DAMMIT! A part of me is a bit wary of not having all the IBM crap that IBM puts on there for you, and I think I would have liked to have had the backup super secret partition, but I guess it’s not the end of the world. Dang, 7200. I should return it and get the 7200, shouldn’t I? (Ha. Now that I’ve finally got everything working. Grrrr.)

Anyway. The “Super Geek Grrrrl Power!” hat fell off, and got trampled into the mud by a herd of feral dogs while I scurried up a tree panting and my heart beating a hundred miles per hour and geeky grrl? Me? Shhaaaw! As if! And monkeys might fly out of my butt!

AND THEN THERE WAS IDEAS AND PLANNING AND CRAFTINESS!

Ethan’s birthday party plans are underway, and I have latched on to a theme that I must say, I’m pretty excited about. Cars is the theme, and yesterday Ethan and I were busy with scissors, glue and poster board / construction paper making big road signs that we will put up all over the house on party day. Last night I made up little reversible “stop” “go” signs on popsicle sticks that can either be handed out when kids arrive, or put into their goody bags.

For an activity, I’m going to get paintbrushes, little wooden cars, and paints and let the kids paint their own race car. They had kits at Target but I shunned them for several reasons and will see if I can collect all the stuff myself at Michael’s or AC Moore.

I wonder if the theme is too “boy” as there are some girls invited to the party. I’m not dwelling on it too much however, and I don’t see why roads and cars have to be “boy” things. Still, hoping that aspect won’t be an issue.

James took Jocelyn to go scope out bikes. The original idea was to get one for Tuesday, the boy’s actual birthday, but we’ve put it off too long, so whatever one we buy, probably won’t be ready until later, so we’ll probably just get it for Saturday.

MARITAL BLISS

The weekend started in a pretty pissy mental state, due to the game which is World of Warcraft and my insane irrational jealousy of said game. James and I talked it over by Sunday, along with a lot of other things and we’re both doing better.

AND A PROMISE OF MORE TO COME

I have a project skinny post that hopefully I will get out tonight. I have lots of thoughts twirling around in my head and it’s time to get them out, hopefully get some clarity, and definitely get going on the road to skinny.

-amy is scattered.

First off, I’m pleased to announce that when I rolled over in bed this morning and took a quiet little peep at the new banner lying there, it’s pixels all akimbo, I was relieved and pleased to find that I still liked it. We won’t have a May Banner #3. I know you’re all relieved too, and find my wild fickle fluctuations terribly upsetting.

Secondly, what is going on? Hello? Did everyone take the day off or something? My commute to work with the PKR at my side was DISTURBINGLY QUICK AND EASY. First there was the usually stop-up at Linton Hall and 28, and there was no backup at all. After I picked up the PKR and hopped on 66, the usual parking lot until we get into the full 4 lanes was not too eye-gougingly painful at all. Before we hit 28, I pointed out that there were actually more cars in the HOV lane that in the other lanes! Then we hit the place right before 50 that is usually where everyone puts it into park, cranks up their radios, and hops out onto their hood for a quick smoke before it’s time to get back in, move up 5 feet, and then repeat. We managed to keep going about 45 MPH throughout that spot. Then when we took our exit (Nutley) and beheld the 2 lights we needed to go through to turn left onto 29.. There was nothing. Maybe a dozen cars, if that. It was just clear sailing and smooth untrodden on asphault as far as the eye could see.

WHAT IS GOING ON, PEOPLE? YOU ARE ALL STARTING TO WIG ME OUT JUST A WEE BIT!

Seriously did everyone take Cinco de Mayo off? Has everyone just left town for a long weekend and nobody told me they were going? What the fuck?

Someone let me know, or I’m going to assume that aliens have abducted two-thirds of the commuting population.

I’ve kind of not written in this here space (is it just me that noticed I’ve not really been writing and everyone reading is like, “huh? what? you’ve been half-assing it? Didn’t even notice. Later.”) because I wanted to write about all the stuff that has happened already before I write about current things, or even things that are rolling around in my head, and part of why I haven’t written about past things is because I wanted to post pictures along with it, and that requires me getting the photos into some semblence of post-a-bility, and so instead of sitting down and writing, I’ve been sitting down and photo wrangling. Then I’m like, “well, damn where has the time gone? Well I’ll just put up some pictures since I didn’t have time to write” which is why there have been a lot of posts with just photos instead of words. Which I’m kind of liking anyway, now I just need to post some words too, and I’ll be happy. So, in a nutshell, I may never talk about the things I was going to, in the past, because a) it’s been like 2 weeks now and I’ve forgotten a lot of it, and b) i haven’t had time to write much anyway and now it’ll take forever to catch up to the “present.”

WE HAVE CATS. OH DO WE HAVE CATS.

Trinity our cat has always peed everywhere, and last year she finally starting peeing everywhere with a little reddish hue and we woke up and thought, Hmmm! Gee! maybe she’s doing this because something is wrong! We took her in, and yes, there was something wrong, and it was bladder stones, and she had surgery, and we paid astronomical fees and took her home with the instructions that we had to change her food.

The thought of “but how will we change just her food and not the others and oh this will be so difficult to orchestrate” as well as some vague directive that the other cats might be ok with eating the food too but have them tested anyway, kind of made it all sink into the background and we never got around to it.. and so now, she’s REALLY been peeing everywhere lately and so I took her into the vet and sure enough, she has red blood cells in her urine and the vet recommends an ultrasound to check for more stones. We suck as kitty-parents.

But she is back home now, and on antibiotics, and we seem to have gotten the feeding cats separately part down, and have EVEN managed to give her her pill without forgetting even once (SO FAR!) (OH MY GOD WHY DID NO ONE EVER GIVE US A “PILLER” BEFORE THEY ARE SO EASY!) and now we just have to schedule a sonogram and get the other cats in for their yearly shots and we MIGHT be able to remove the “sucky kitty-parents” sign from off of our backs. I will always kind of have that sign, because… now don’t hate me… I would be much happier if we just didn’t have any cats at all. I’ve said it before, and now I’m saying it again. I’d love to not feel the grit of litter on my laundry room floor, and not have to scoop out poop and pour out food into bowls and the level of effort has now just gone way up what with the separate foods and all, so you may now all hate me as I hate myself for wanting to shirk my responsibilities as a cat owner. Anyone want a cat? Or three?
Ethan’s birthday is next week, which means we have to go find him a bike this weekend, which is what we decided we’d be giving him for his birthday. Then he is having a birthday party next Saturday with the 8 kids from his class all invited. Eight. 4-year-olds. In my house. I haven’t even figured out what to do for it yet. I have gotten a few suggestions – a camping theme, with flashlights for the kids and toasting marshmellows and hotdogs over a fire and tents and camping games and camoflaugeyness. I read about a dinosaur theme where the kids can find “bones” (dog bones) in the sand like in an archeological dig. Honestly, that sounds neat and all, but I think ethan would rather just play in the sand with his tiny loader and bulldozer like a normal kid. Plus, we have a pretty small sand table and I don’t think that would work. One game I heard is to tie a prize/treat on one end of a string/ribbon and give each kid an end and work their way to the prize, which could be fun. I will probably end up doing the tried and true, “procrastinate until the last minute and just let them play with the toys we already have for a while, then have pizza and cake and ice cream and call it good.”

So, yeah, I wish I was all Martha Stewart with the ideas and the time for super cool execution, and honestly, I would make a pretty good effort if I hit on the right idea, but the procrastination thing is starting to creep up and be the party theme by default. So if you have any wonderful fantazmagoric ideas for me, I WOULD LOVE TO HEAR THEM. Even something for the goody bags, for Jocelyn’s I bought the random plastic crap that is in all the goody bags you see, but I also made marble magnets with simple shapes and colors that can go on the fridge. This time, I’d like to do more handmade and less plastic that will be trashed, or at LEAST get some plastic that will be used. I’m thinking something to drive all the parents crazy – like kazoos. The kids would LOVE them. Parents, not so much.

I am totally going to steal this idea for Ethan’s fifth birthday party.

Anyway, enough with the typing for today. Some things I want to spill (this list is more for my own reference than yours: yard photos and plans, how i killed all (almost all) my little baby seedlings, other things I did NOT kill (but almost did), project skinny starting over AGAIN (really, i mean it this time, no REALLY), environmental anxiety and guilt and How This Might Be The Straw That Brings Divorce Papers, and remind me to tell you about the Dawn and Drew Show and how I was ON IT.
The End.

-amy hopes the traffic is also non existant this afternoon.

I wasn’t liking the old one the morning after. Oh yes, morning after regret, how I know thee. I loaded it up all bleary eyed with that pounding headache from all the booze and drugs, and the banner looked all dark and smudgy and not at all the way I remembered it from the night before. So I dumped it (but I still love your lamp, Tamara!) and went with this all-Ethan-all-the-time banner. He was mugging furiously for the camera and James was snapping away, and I thought it would look pretty nice as a banner. Pretty sure that tomorrow morning, me and this banner will still be on speaking terms. Hit reload if necessary.

Plus, Jocelyn needs more fodder for when she is a sullen teenager, and she point at this and holler, “YOU ALWAYS LOVED ETHAN MORE! YOU JUST DON’T UNDERSTAND ME!” before stomping off to her room and slamming the door with the violence of .. well, a sullen teenager and then cranking up the 2019 version of The Cure at top volume.

-amy

SOME CUTE AND ABNORMALLY LARGE ANIMALS:

Tai-Shan, the nation’s capitol’s DARLING! He is pretty cute, isn’t he?

a freakishly large frog or toad.

SOME CUTE KIDS:

Jocelyn didn’t want to leave, and threw herself to the ground when informed that it was time to go.

Everyone was tired after our trip to the zoo. Jocelyn fell asleep in the car, which is saying something for Miss I Am Such A Good Sleeper That I Require My Bed For Any Sleeping Activity.

someday i will stop posting photos instead of actually TELLING you how life is going, but … I guess today is not the day.

-amy

Made a trip to the dentist this morning. The last time I went was when I was pregnant with Ethan. He’ll be 4 next week, so… it’s been a while.

I had a faint pain in one of my molars and had a sneaking suspicion I had a cavity. I’ve never had a cavity before, and I was kind of sad that I would lose my streak.

So. I went.

I was told, “Sure enough, you have teeth!”

Teeth were x-rayed.

Teeth were scraped.

Teeth were cleaned.

With my tongue, I can now feel the definition between each of my bottom teeth, rather than just one smooth surface. (*cough* ok, i need to floss more)

Then, I left.

The streak continues! Wahoo!