Setting sail and home defense.

"Why is there a broom sticking out of your couch?" you may ask. And I would answer, "What broom?" You may think you see a broom, but what you're really glimpsing is the forward cannon, and that isn't my couch: it's a brigantine. That smallish person perched atop the vessel is Pirate Captain Sharkhead, displaying his most furious scowl.

"Pirate Captain Sharkhead?" you ask.

Indeed. He's the scurviest rascal ever to sail the seven seas.

He never travels alone. Meet Captain Sharkhead's first mate, Monkeybrains:

 

 They're the most fearful twosome ever to command a brig.

They fear no sea creature, no matter how horrible.

When creatures attack, they are at the ready!

A smattering of Nerf bullets at short range will surely deter any foes. And if that doesn't work, Pirate Captain Sharkhead will not hesitate to fling his entire weapon at any dastardly creature foolish enough to advance!

I can rest easy at night knowing that I'm fully protected. Captain Sharkhead himself assured me last night, as I tucked him into bed, "Mommy, if any monsters or creatures try to get into our house at night, I will karate chop them. Or probably just shoot them."

Yep. Now that I've seen what the kid can do to an Imaginext lobster, I feel pretty secure.

 Don't let the adorable grin fool you. He's ruthless.

In other, not entirely unrelated news, I should probably spend some time with other adults soon.

Worth the read.

I just finished Jeffrey Eugenides' Middlesex. Highly recommended! It's the story of Cal (born Calliope), a person who is a chromosomal male, but with indeterminate genitalia. Assumed to be a girl at her birth, Calliope is raised as a girl by her parents, but comes to realize the truth about his identity as a teenager and soon comes to live his life as the male Cal. It's a great family saga, spanning three generations of the Stephanides family. It begins "I was born twice: first, as a baby girl, on a remarkably smogless Detroit day in January of 1960; and then again, as a teenage boy, in an emergency room near Petoskey, Michigan, in August of 1974." And with that line, the reader is thrown into the confusion, the guilt, the shame, the secrets, and the insecurity that attend not only Cal but his parents and grandparents.

Cal is a great protagonist, and it felt like a privilege to be there, hearing him unravel the story of his and his family's past. It's as though the telling of his story is what allows Cal to make sense of the whole thing himself.

One of my favorite passages:

Emotions, in my experience, aren't covered by single words. I don't believe in "sadness," "joy," or "regret." Maybe the best proof that the language is patriarchal is that it oversimplifies feeling. I'd like to have at my disposal complicated hybrid emotions, Germanic train-car constructions like, say, "the happiness that attends disaster." Or: "the disappointment of sleeping with one's fantasy." I'd like to show how "intimations of mortality brought on by aging family members" connects with "the hatred of mirrors that begins in middle age." I'd like to have a word for "the sadness inspired by failing restaurants" as well as for "the excitement of getting a room with a minibar."

I also liked that the end of the novel is not perfectly resolved; everything isn't packaged in a perfect bow and made to feel nicey-nice. There is resolution, and a satisfying ending, but not at the expense of the integrity of the narrative.

Next up on my reading list? Possibly Lord of the Flies, which I've never read. It's been sitting on my shelf unopened for some time. Any other suggestions for me? What do I absolutely have to read this year?

Worth another watch.

"That was the summer of 1963, when everybody called me 'Baby,' and it didn't occur to me to mind. That was before President Kennedy was shot, before the Beatles came, when I couldn't wait to join the Peace Corps, and I thought I'd never find a guy as great as my dad."

Oh, you just have to love Dirty Dancing! I had a dream a few weeks ago with Patrick Swayze in it, and when I woke up I had the soundtrack to this movie playing uncontrollably through my mind. So many delicious scenes and fabulous quotes:

"Oh come on, ladies, God wouldn't have given you maracas if he didn't want you to shake 'em!"
"I carried a watermelon."
"Nobody puts Baby in a corner!"

Has there ever been a greater coming-of-age romance story? *sigh*

It's amazing I get ANYTHING done around here when the adorable quotient is so darn high.

I'm working on collecting my thoughts for a post about my work (the job that I actually get paid for, that is), but of course, it has to be perfect, so it hasn't materialized quite yet. While I'm crafting that piece, look how adorable my son is:

Eliot and Steven taking pictures of each other taking pictures...lol.

Mommy trying to stitch something up, but getting distracted by silly boys.

Our next door neighbor requests Eliot's assistance with plowing the snow...

...AND lets him work the control lever.

If I stick my tongue out long enough, I'm sure to taste a flake.

Etsy favorites.

I am completely enamored of everything handmade, so naturally, Etsy is like a drug to me. So much wonderful eye candy in one spot! I actually warned Steven the other day that I may need him to use parental controls to block the website from me because I can get in so much trouble browsing and finding things I can't possibly live without.

Lately I've been drawn to embroidery and other stitching type crafts, but I always love vintage, letterpress, scherenschnitte (paper cutting), pretty much any kind of paper craft. So today I'm sharing some of my most recent favorites. I love looking at them arranged together in a collage. I'm not sure how to describe my style. "Eclectic," maybe? But that's just a cop out. Anyway, here are some of the items I'm loving to look at. I might even have purchased a few of them. I couldn't resist. ;)

I need an embroidery floss organizer more than I need a cable subscription.

The Ball jar is beginning to get crowded, and I have many more projects in mind for this year.
Currently in progress: Unibrow Girl. I'm so addicted to these little patterns from andwabisabi. They're adorable, and they take no time at all to stitch up.

(pattern from andwabisabi)

 I can lie on the couch and work on these while watching TV. Steven and I just finished the Six Feet Under series, and have started on Dexter. It's more than a bit disconcerting to see Michael C. Hall go from David to Dexter. I'm rather more a fan of David...

I don't know whether I'm going to like Dexter, but I've only seen the first two episodes so far, so I suppose I will give it a few more episodes to win me over before I give up entirely.

I don't subscribe to cable or satellite, so the only time I really watch TV is through Netflix or DVD rentals. So I've pretty much missed...well...a lot of TV over the last thirteen years or so. Ha ha! As far as I can tell, I haven't missed much. Six Feet Under was a gem, and I do adore The Office and 30Rock.  What other series have I missed out on that I should know about?

Cold days, long nights.

It was a bone cold, dreary day today. Eliot and I got out of the house once this morning for a play date at a friend's house, where he acted so abominably, I was embarrassed. He wasn't terrible, terrible, but he was rude. Embarrassingly rude. And of course, none of my empty threats garnered any response. I've really got to step up the discipline. I'm not good at putting my foot down; part of the problem is that he's so damn cute all the time, and part of the problem is that I'm a notorious pushover anyway. Gah! Lately, he has been calling me "Mr. Butt," an admittedly semi-funny, but most disrespectful moniker that irritates me to no end. I keep telling him, "People don't call their mommies, 'butts!' We don't do that; it's rude." He pouts and says, "Sorry, Mommy. I will try my best. I will try my best, but sometimes I just have to say Mr. Butt."

"Fine. Then sometimes, I just have to put you in time out."

Sigh. And then he hugs me and kisses my face and says, "I love you, Mommy. You're my favorite best friend."

See why I lose every time?

Steven hasn't been around much lately; with the shifts he works, he sleeps late, leaves during Eliot's nap, and comes home late, so Eliot hasn't even really seen him for a few days. Tonight he asked me when Steven would be home, and I said it would be "late, after the sunshine goes to sleep and after you and I go to sleep too." Eliot thought about that, and replied, "Okay. So he's kind of like Santa Claus, huh?" LOL.

Today I started reading The Wonderful Wizard of Oz to Eliot. I realize he's pretty young for it, but I've been making up longer and longer stories to tell to him at bedtime and he always begs for "more, more, more," so I thought maybe we would try working on a chapter or so of a longer book each night before bed. We pitched his igloo tent in his bedroom this afternoon and crawled in and read the first chapter, just as a test run. He seemed interested, though I know a lot of the description went over his head. After reading a few paragraphs, I stop and explain what's happening with the plot and what some of the words mean that he hasn't heard before (like "cyclone"). I couldn't tell if he was all that into it this afternoon, since after we finished the first chapter, he wanted to read Mickey Mouse instead, but then as I was putting him to bed tonight he specifically requested "that book we were reading in the tent, with the little girl and her dog." So we went through the second chapter, where the house lands on the Wicked Witch of the East and Dorothy makes the acquaintance of the Munchkins and the good Witch of the North. She's given the silver shoes (not the ruby red slippers of the film version), and is told to seek out the Wizard of Oz, who may be able to help her return home. So that's where we left off this evening. We'll see if he wants to continue tomorrow. It might get too creepy for him; I'm not sure.

And now that the son of "Mr. Butt" is tucked snugly into bed, clutching his stuffed Pluto dog and a Halloween eyeball ring, it is time for me to get back to work. My classes resume on Monday, and (since it isn't yet late Sunday night, ha ha) I haven't quite finished putting my syllabi together.

I'll probably be having dreams tonight of the Wizard of Oz as Moliere's Tartuffe and Dorothy as Dorine...