Rest Time Ruminations

Just some things from the last few days:

• Bud's experience wearing a Yankees hat in MA (which I forgot to post): Bud wore his Yankees hat up to our minister's cabin in MA and even before we crossed the state line, he was getting grief. Three people at the doughnut shop in Winsted commented on his hat. And not in a good way. "Don't you know you're in Red Sox territory?" they asked. Such is the rivalry, I guess, except he doesn't know there is one. Or, for that matter, any other baseball teams. Luckily, we were only visiting!
• Revisiting the scene of Bud's accident: We went to the park with Gommie and Mama yesterday, THE park, where Bud fell. He actually asked to go, though he said he wasn't going to go on the crooked steps. That was pretty much his only issue. Fine. For him. I was traumatized and ended up crying on the playground (though, I think only Gommie and Mama noticed). Hopefully, we're all cleansed of the incident now and can enjoy that park again. But I was glad to have Mama and Gommie there for our first trip back, even though I didn't expect to get that upset.
• Meeting my first hedgehog: We went to another birthday party yesterday (by my count, we have 2 more summer birthdays to go). And there were lots of animals: an angora rabbit, a tortoise, a bald python, a bearded dragon, a chinchilla, and, best of all, a hedgehog! I had never seen a real hedgehog in person before, though I'm quite the fan of stuffed, animated, or otherwise cute renditions of hedgehogs, dating back at least to my 1999 trip to England but specifically my 2002 trip, when I visited York and bought a crossstitch pattern of a hedgehog at the cathedral (that also started me on crossstitch. Ironically, I haven't done the pattern yet, waiting . . . not sure what for, though. Maybe to be really good?). Anyway, real hedgehogs don't really look like cartoon ones but are still cute and move faster than I expected. And did you know that their spines feel like uncooked rice? I was really surprised.
• 7-11s as a male domain: Ever noticed that there rarely seem to be any woman at convenience stores? Why is that? Mama and I were there last night getting ice cream and in two trips (don't ask) we were the only women, out of more than 15-20 people there and about. Is the reason a safety thing? Is it that women will just go to the grocery store? I mean, what women do you know who will eat convenience store hot dogs, much less the accompanying chili and cheese out of a mechanical pumping machine? It's man food. Huge slurpies, beef jerky, weird power drinks. If women consume most of the food at 7-11, my guess is they buy it surreptiously so as not to seem gluttonous (whether they are or not, I'd say we all often like to give the appearance of eating healthy. But there seems like something macho about eating pure crap food). Yes, I'm stereotyping and essentializing, but that doesn't mean I'm wrong about it being a man store.
• My changing taste in ice cream: okay, about the ice cream, I bought Ben and Jerry's "Marzipan Madness," with almond cookies and marzipan, two of my favorite flavors, but I didn't like the busy, gritty, overly sweet ice cream. I think I'm becoming an ice cream purist. I used to love chunky, busy ice cream like NY Super Fudge Chunk or Chocolate Fudgie Brownie, but now I just like something simple: coffee (they were out), dulce de leche (with just the hint of caramel in the vanilla), Black and Tan (a B&J's flavor you never see anymore but Mama and I loved it), and last night's pineapple coconut. Is my ice cream palate maturing?
• How I want to make a pillowcase like Granny Q's: Gommie's mah jong friend Granny Q makes the kiddos wonderful, colorful holiday-themed pillowcases. They just got rainbow birthday ones. And I want to be able to make pillowcases like hers myself. They'd make perfect gifts for (all the birthdays of) our little friends. I don't know Granny Q's actual pattern but this looks similar; definitely worth trying, even with my minimal sewing skills.
• Bud and the urinal: at the birthday party yesterday, we had to wash our hands after touching the animals and Bud and I ended up in the men's room (it was a privately-rented space so no problem there). He desperately wanted to use the urinals--something I had been warned would become of increasing interest to him--since he never gets to use them with me. But these were too high and he couldn't reach by himself (and wouldn't accept any help). He was very disappointed.

• Children's books that can't be read aloud well: I don't like those little floppy tv- and movie-based books for kids, you know the ones that are sold from the round about racks. I'm not particularly against reading tv shows but the books are so poorly written. Not just that there's almost no plot coherence and it only makes sense if you've seen the show. The sentence structure, interactive questions, requests for motion and movement (like, whose kids get up and move around when they're reading a book . . . or watching tv?) make the books almost impossible to read well outloud. It's like an affront to English. To reading. To children's literature. Ugh. And yet, the books are easy to pick out at the store (with covers visible, instead of tucked away on a shelf), familiar in subject, a good fit for a lap, and light enough to carry/hold easily, so my kids always choose them. And so I read them. Grudgingly.
• "Book performance": And so today, before even asking me to read those books, my kids read them themselves. And to us. They sat on the "stage" and said it was a "book performance." Each with a copy, they flipped through the pages, telling us the stories (which they knew from the show and guessed from the pictures). They even started with the covers and asked "what do you think this book is about? can you tell from the picture?" Just like at story time at the Eric Carle. Then they'd read through and bow at the end. Brava! Bravo!
• The Three Pillars of Zen: Upon Momma Zen's recommendation, in a comment on my blog, I purchased this book, which is an introduction to Zen Buddhism. I'm looking forward to reading it. Mama would like a book on Theravadan Buddhism, the kind based on the Pali Canon and practiced by her family, so she can better understand her family's approach, but it's a start (especially since, as I understand it, Theravada isn't that popular in the US, while Zen and Tibetan are).
• Gommie's name posters: Gommie had made fantastical drawings made for the kids which incorporate their names. Sis's is a pink "love house" in which the word love is spelled out andhas a shower, a swing, a hammock, etc. Bud's is "guitar house" with musical notes as the grass. They liked imagining how they could live in their houses. We bought frames for them and will put them up on the wall.
• Being "-less": Have I mentioned this before? My kids like to add "-less" to words when they want to indicate lack. Like when they are lacking rest, they say they are "rest-less" (or, more specifically, "I'm not rest-less," aka "I don't want rest time!") When they are lacking play, they say they are "play-less." They add it to lots of things trying to explain what they want or don't want.
• NYTimes articles: assisted suicide (if your longtime life partner were dying and you could, would you choose to commit suicide with your partner, as a British conductor did with his wife of 54 years); cancer screening (how sometimes PSA do more to create panic and less to help patients by pushing sometimes unncessary or ineffective screenings). I think I'll do "being a baby bulimic" and the meaning of life (R Cohen) separately some other time.

Oops, rest time is over and it's time to go swimming. I'll get to these later:

• Going to see the train museum

• Unloading Mama's suitcases, with costumes, food, and Japanese toys
• Praying, eating, or driving--more details of Mama's trip to Thailand