What Would Freud Say About This?

Now here's an interesting study. It seems to be another study to show that liberals have more intellectual layers than conservatives, or some such nonsense, but I'd like to use it as a jumping off point to talk about my conservative husband's dream world.

There are a few common varieties of dream. There's the anxiety dream, where you think someone chasing you or you showed up naked to your Chemistry class. There's the sexual dream of course where you're doing something unspeakable with someone un-nameable. There's the spiritual dream, where you feel as if you've connected the dots somewhere and you can see the future or the other side. Then there's the action-adventure dream. What? Never heard of it? Well, I know all about it.

Action adventure dreams are the only kind of dream he seems to have. I personally think he writes his dreams before he goes to sleep. If he doesn't, he could at least write some B-movie screen plays after he wakes up, he could probably make some extra money that way. While I dream of three-eyed pomeranian talking dogs from the hood, he's dreaming of killing zombies in a retro-future post apocolyptic world. When he wakes up in the morning and I ask him if he dreamt, I usually ask first "What model of firearm did you use last night?" or "what caliber?" Often I ask how many zombies he bagged, or whether Nazis factored in this time. This year it's zombies. Last year it was basic Saving Private Ryan type stuff. He's added a few "layers".

I guess I'm not making such a good arguement for the creative and many-layered conservative, am I? But he could be one of those guys who dreams about his Mommy drowning him, or his boss making him smoke cigars with a busload of cross-dressing priests, or travelling to the end of the rainbow only to find the Village People waiting for him, or something like that. He's just too confident to let his dreams tell him what to do with his sleep time. Hmm. Now I'm envisioning him shooting Zombie Village People. I'll tell him about it tonight and ask him how it worked out in the morning.

Cove Park

People always ask me if they are twins. Sometimes they really act that way. I didn't pose them for these pictures. They were shifting around in opposite directions and building identical mounds in the sand. Later they played a game of "Bad Flower". Josie would pile sand up at Jake's feet. She would tell him to be a good flower and be still. Then he would yell "Bad flower!" and chase her all over the sandbox.

Will the Rain Ever Stop?

Just to let you know. I'm thinking of a good way to get on the roof. I will need four leashes. One for the dog, one for the cat, two for the kids. I'll need some cardboard too, so I can write something ignorant on it and wave it to passing helicopters.

Crikey, What a Kid

I recorded the Steve Irwin Memorial Service last night and me and the kids watched it this morning. Every time he's been on the TV since his death, my kids would say something like "He died." or "He got stung in the heart by a stingray" or "Jeff Corwin is still alive" They would mention that they knew he had kids. It's interesting to see a child absorb the concept of death.

It blew my mind to see Bindi Irwin read a memorial to her dad in front of thousands of people two weeks after his death. She was so full of energy and light and joy about her daddy.

In the days after his death, there were reports that his 8 year old daughter would carry on in his place at the zoo, and for his causes, and I thought that was cute that she could be a "face" for those things. Surely an 8 year old has no true concept of how to deal with these things. Now I'm not so sure. Of all the speakers at the memorial, she stood out as the strongest and most powerful voice. She never once broke, and left everyone smiling.

There's a daddy in heaven who is really proud of his daughter right now.

Here's an article.
Here's the Video.

For My Audience

The head of the CuttingSchool Fanclub called me very upset because I haven't posted since Saturday. Here's a picture we took in Cades Cove. He's poopin.

Flamingo by Josie

Note the attention to detail in the beak, and the proportions.

Weeding Out the Spinach-Eaters

Earthbound Farm Organic Spinach is marketed by Natural Selection Foods. Well, I think the E. Coli species is winning the evolutionary race, and Darwin is having a hearty laugh from the other side.

Note from Islam to Pope Benedict

How dare you call us violent and unreasonable!

Lost Sea

Went to the Lost Sea today, and it wasn't a disaster. Just let the kids know the rules of storytelling. Like, don't do it. And the rules of Loudly Exclaiming too. And I made sure they understood what a pertinent question was. This is a moonshine still. I didn't have to visit it today.
This is called the Devil's Hole. It's just a hole with a red light in it. But they say it's pretty scary when the maintanance man changes the bulb without warning. Supposedly a lady looked in there at the wrong time and thought she saw the devil, but it was some homely maintanance man who quit his job after the jolt to his self-esteem. I take these Tennessee cave stories with a grain of salt.



This is a thing whose name I can't remember, but in the Civil War soldiers would fill it with bat guano. After a process a liquid called "mother's liquor" would come out. They would take this substance outside and add a few more ingredients and boil it until it crystallized into gunpowder. We won't be doing this recipe at home. Well, unless Dad figures out how it's done. He'll definitely want to try it.

We also visited the glass blower's shop, and walked the nature trail. Josie got a necklace with a glass eagle pendant. Jake got a color changing pencil.

Mayan Corn Day

Here's our corn casserole.

The kids made it.

Recipe:
1/2 cup butter melted
2 eggs, beaten
1 box jiffy corn bread mix
1 can corn
1 can creamed corn
1 cup sour cream

Mix it up, put it in a greased 9x9 baking dish and cook it for 45 minutes at 350 or until the top is golden brown.

It's that corn casserole people often eat at Thanksgiving because it's just too dang fattening to enjoy more often.

Wouldn't It Be Good

I was 11 when this song came out. Still, I had healthy little crushes on the right pop stars. No Nick Rhodes for me. John Taylor (Duran Duran) and Nick Kershaw (especially when he was in that video with the static suit, and not dancing around on British Solid Gold.) And I always thought, "Yes! It would be good if you were on my side. Even if it was for just a day." Still love this song.

Wouldn't it be good if I could post this video on my actual web page? Been trying for too long to set up an account on YouTube.

Sabre Toothed Tigers and Revisionist History

This is Josie's saber toothed tiger. Eating a reasonable sized rodent. Pretty bloody. We learned that the proper name for this cat is smilodon.


This is Jake's saber-toothed tiger. He's the one in the back. The guys in the front are the "freaky rodents" that supposedly lived during prehistoric times. The kids thought that the saber toothed tiger probably ate these freaky rodents. They had to be some mighty big rodents for the tiger to need such enormous teeth to take them down.

Parade of Dead Bugs

Well, she's not dead yet. Actually, Josie is really pretty good at keeping predatory bugs alive since she really enjoys seeing them eat. It's the cricket in the foreground that will meet its fate today. Josie named the mantis Madison, naturally. She thinks it already ate its mate.

I should set her up a little bug coliseum, start giving all her little creatures Roman names. We can call this praying mantis Ceasar Manticus. The cricket can be Saul Goldstein.

What Was I Doing?

I was putting one chocolate fudge pop-tart in the right side of my toaster. It sat right beneath the radio. Josie was walking around the kitchen table doing three year old things. My mother called right when she saw it on TV. When I turned on my own TV, I remember thinking a helicopter had crashed into that building. I had no clue of the enormity of the World Trade Center. Certainly it wasn't a passenger plane. Well, I had to get off the phone at some point and get Jake fed too. He still needed help with that. He had just turned two six days before the whole world changed.

I wasn't watching TV when the second tower hit, although I'm sure I was trying to get back to it. My mom called me again to let me know. Then I thought "Oh my God, my kids are going to see WWIII." I never expected one of them to fall. I was on the phone with my closest friend when that happened. Then I really didn't think the second one would fall. And it did that while I was watching alone. Somewhere in there the Pentagon was hit, and I called Ray.

Josie wanted to watch Blue's Clues of course. I remember thinking "Blue's Clues" couldn't be on right now, or if it was there would be some sort of ticker on the bottom of the screen with updates.

I remember that day very well. Shock is like a camera flash for me. Things stand still and imprint on your brain.

I've changed a lot since that day. I know a lot more about Islam than I ever thought I would care to know. I also operate on the belief that terrible things will happen rather than won't, and more often than not these things can be traced to radical Islam. It's not paranoia, it's just common sense and hindsight. September 11th prepared me for what happened in Beslan in 2003. I admit I'm still digesting what's happening in Darfur. The misery is so big you have to travel to outer space to see it all, and once you get out there you can't see the individual people anymore. It's hard to connect. Am I making sense?

I also know when the media is avoiding the issue and I make it a point to be informed. Like in the case of the college student who blew himself up in Oklahoma. I wasn't surprised that it happened. I'm not surprised that many have forgotten that it happened, and I'm certainly not surprised that he is still not considered a suicide bomber. Just a suicide. That's the media.

I've stopped waking my husband up every time I read something showcasing the rampant idiocy, apathy, and hypocrisy that swarms around us. It's not news to me anymore.

I do have a deeper love for regular people than I ever did before. Some of that comes from what I saw in the days following the terrorist attacks, some of it is just the way I'm wired. Regular people don't seek martyrdom, or burn effigies of American presidents, or insult victims of terrorism. They don't carry offensive signs at the funerals of fallen soldiers, or spew filth at people with whom they disagree. Sometimes if I spend too long on the internet, I start believing that regular people are very rare. That's when I call my friends and laugh and get my priorities straight. All the pain in the world that I see just makes me hug my children tighter, and appreciate my family more. I know that's really all I can do. Be that regular person that helps keep it all together, when forces around us are trying to get us unglued.

No, We're Not Selling the House

I remember when I was in college a male friend of mine called me Polly Homemaker. It seemed to stick in my head for some reason. I guess the first reason it stuck was because he said it in a way that made me know it wasn't really a compliment. Of course I wanted marriage and family and all that, anyone that knew me at the time knew that too. My high school senior prediction was that I would have two kids and have taken them on a world tour with me by the the time our ten year reunion came around. It was actually a pretty controversial prediction, but the students convinced the teacher in charge that I would definitely consider it an accurate and positive one. But there is one very good reason that the name "Polly Homemaker" does not suit me. It's the "Homemaker" part. See, my good college buddy had never really looked at my kitchen sink, or peered into my closet, or noticed that the chocolate brown carpet in my apartment appeared to be jumping. I have gotten quite a bit better over the years, and have also decided that Polly Homemaker is not a name to be ashamed of.

Today I discovered Flylady. It's a Yahoo group. She sends us daily advice that after 28 days will help your be a more organized domestic executive : ) Today she told me how to clean and shine the sink. That was my only assignment. Well, the sink looked so pretty, I wanted my counters to look pretty too. Then the floor. Then the stovetop. My kids even got a good bath tonight.

Maybe at the end of this whole experiment I won't feel like I have to laminate my children.

Seven Years Old Today

You were a week old in this picture. We took the little mask off of your face and snapped this photo. They let me take you home the next day.