Carving Day

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Originally uploaded by super rachel zana.

Yesterday was the long awaited pumpkin carving day at our house. Sarah and I visited a pumpkin patch in early October, choosing three large pumpkins to carve and bringing home many gourds and a few small pumpkins to paint. Sarah has been waiting patiently for carving day all month, and yesterday was the day.

After nap I plopped myself down on the kitchen floor with a knife and a gigantic metal bowl in which to place the slimy pumpkin guts. I sawed the top of the first pumpkin and let Sarah see the strings of orange slippery goo and gobs of pumpkin seeds inside. Her eyes were huge. "Sarah just watches," She informed me. So I took a metal spoon and scraped all the guts out of the pumpkin. Wanting to tactilly stimulate my toddler, I invited her to touch the inside of the pumpkin, to squish the slime around in her hand, to make a very large mess if she wished. She looked at me, seriously, and said, "Sarah doesn't do that." I guess she takes after her Grandma Robin. I, for one, could never pass up a good opportunity to make a nice mess.

After the inside was clean, I let her instruct me on how to cut up her pumpkin face. She decided on a squiggly, worried pumpkin mouth, two ears, which are not visible on the picture (Sarah's pumpkin is the bottom one) and two eyes. I thought the ears showed special creativity. I don't believe I had ever put ears on a jack-o-lantern before.

After we finished her pumpkin, Gregory carved his, the one with the round mouth. He had ideas of it spewing pumpkin guts like vomit out of it's mouth, but I "accidentally" threw the guts away in the garbage before the pumpkins went on display on our front steps. My contribution was the pumpkin on top in the picture, with two leaves. The leaves took a great deal of time to carve because they had so many little edges.

When it became dark we lit our "scary pumpkins."

Disarray

In the last month of pregnancy it is normal to nest. I haven't done too much nesting. Instead, I seem to be consistent in cluttering up places I should be cleaning up. My kitchen is in disarray daily, even though I attempt cleaning up after my family at least five times during my waking hours (which really aren't that many . . . part of the problem in itself). The floor next to my bed is littered with socks and books I have finished reading but haven't put away faithfully. The laundry room is a disaster, and I don't even let that bother me because laundry is such a disgusting task in the first place it doesn't really deserve strict organization.

Perhaps the worst place is my desk, where I spend a considerable amount of time. My desk, despite its wealth of drawers and cubby holes, is strewn with debris. There are old letters from important people in my life on one side, an overflowing basket of retail receipts, mail that needs to go to the post office and Sesame Street DVD cases lying all about. A tube of blistex stands proudly next to a nail clipper on its side. A sales flyer from a craft store peeks out from underneath my address book. Sticky notes abound on all surfaces. Usually there are several glasses with dried, rancid milk in the bottom, but I did manage to get those to the dishwasher today. On the right side there is a huge pile of miscellaneous things that I would like to pretend doesn't exist, but I am convinced it reproduces in the fashion of spontaneous generation.

Every day I decide to clean my desk, but I only get half finished before I am distracted. I am thankful, extremely grateful, that I have a rolltop computer desk. Whenever I detect someone at the door, I run to the desk and close the cover. Everything is hidden and I can appear to be a genuine, clean, good stay at home mom who has nested sufficiently.

Orange

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Originally uploaded by super rachel zana.

Orange. What an interesting color. I can't say it melds well with my personality, as I much favor purple, yellow, or hues of blue, yet orange is so very interesting. It's bright. It attracts your attention, whether it be on a deer hunter, a construction worker, a parking attendant, or your daughter's bedroom walls (my daughter's are half orange and half yellow). It is kind of a cheery color, although it often wavers toward warning of dangerous conditions. I've never tried wearing orange much. It really doesn't go with my coloring at all, and while I was in college, I abhored the fact that our school colors were orange and black, yet a rusty orange is comforting to me, particularly if it is a color scheme in someone else's living room. I love subtle rusty orange cardstock paper, a good orange pumpkin, and the taste of juicy Florida oranges in the dead of winter.

Leaf Mountain

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Originally uploaded by super rachel zana.

Leaves. We love them. Yesterday afternoon was a chilly but still autumn day, and our whole immediate family played all afternoon outside making mountains of leaves, diving into them, crunching them, and generally creating a ruckus in our backyard.

There is nothing like leaves for cheap entertainment. Despite my neighbors' preoccupation with mowing their lawns four times weekly to clean up leaves as they fall on the ground, I plan on leaving mine there for at least a week until all the leaves have departed their tree homes. I like looking from my window at the leaves strewn about in changing patterns on my lawn. I Iike watching my daughter haul piles from one part of our yard to the next and pretending she is a bear hibernating in a leaf cave. My leaf habits probably don't make me a popular person to live next to, but my general peacefulness the other eleven months out of the year make me a stellar neighbor, even if my leaves occasionally blow out of my own yard into the territory of frantic mowers.

A List of Things I've Done Today

Because there are only 5 weeks until our new baby will be here, I have turned into a frequent napper. I've been exhausted. I've become the Queen of Procrastination. So, this evening, before I retire into yet another slumber, I am going to look POSITIVELY at the things I have actually accomplished today.

1. I unthawed breakfast for my daughter.
2. I took a shower.
3. I wrapped 7 Christmas Presents.
4. I cooked lunch.
5. I drove to Wausau and picked my husband up at the airport.
6. I opened the mail.
7. I purchased groceries.
8. I loaded the dishwasher.
9. I taught two piano lessons.
10. I sat by the fire in our outdoor fireplace enjoying the crisp autumn air.
11. I scrutinized a map of San Francisco for the first time ever.
12. I clipped my fingernails.
13. I took the garbage out.
14. I read aloud 17 children's books from the library.

Feeding the Geese

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Originally uploaded by super rachel zana.

Late this morning I discovered a sack of stale bread on top of my fridge. Last week after hauling my groceries home, I realized I had somehow managed to pick a sack of bread that had split open and was stale on one complete side. I threw it on top of the fridge (where I can't really see it) and forgot about it until this morning. Sarah and I decided to take it to the zoo and feed the crumbs to the ducks and geese.

We have a free zoo. It's small and wonderful. This morning there were hundreds and hundreds of geese and ducks on the ponds throughout the zoo. Although most of the birds are will fly south for the winter, they know, innately, I guess, that they are completely safe at the zoo. Perhaps they can tell because people bring them free lunch in bread sacks all day long. It's amazing they don't get so fat they can't fly at all. The geese will come right up to you and eat bread or corn out of your hand, or, if you prefer, you can toss the bread into the water or in front of you and they will race and chase to gobble it up, honking ferociously.

I have always loved poultry. I used to have my own ducks who followed me around the yard as I practiced French horn. I have never minded massive quanitities of organic duck waste or feathers strewn about. At the zoo, I sat right down and had a great time. So did Sarah. She found she was much more successful at feeding geese bread than trying to feed the squirrels in the park acorns.

We left the park for home, smelling bad, with suspicious, quite smelly green goo on our shoes and jeans, nothing the washing machine won't take care of.

Motherhood

When you are a mother you wear pastal blue Easter socks with giant bunny pom poms in the back during the middle of Halloween season because your daughter descended the stairs from your room, delighted to have found just the right pair of light blue socks to match your blue shirt. Wearing the socks inside your tennis shoes makes her grin.

When you are a mother you take your daughter to a special restaurant and then lament with her because the restaurant does not serve chicken strips and regular French fries like you thought it would. You feel guilty that you just didn't go to McDonald's in the first place.

When you are a mother you delight in the Thomas Train table at Barnes and Nobles, and the shopping carts at Kohls which let kids face forward as they zoom around because these things make little people under three feet tall happy and joyful.

When you are a mother you love driving home in the car when everyone else is asleep. But then you stop for a stoplight, and your two year old wakes up. Before she was supposed to. And she's grumpy. She insists her shoes don't fit. She is upset because the sun is in her eyes. She is angry because her potatoes came with skins at supper. She hurls her building blocks across the living room and you put her in time out. She throws a fit when you try to take her for a stroller ride and you scramble back to your house hoping your neighbors won't notice your out of control child.

You give up and put your daughter to bed a half hour early and let her cry herself to sleep. Then you read a good book for the next 5 hours and have a glass of 100% pink grapefruit juice, and consider that when she wakes up in the morning she will ask you for a glass of milk in a sippy cup and want to rock in the rocking chair with you, and you'll be friends again.

Guilt

I'm missing a choir rehearsal. Right now. I am not the type to miss a choir rehearsal. Ever. I understand that it is entirely my own fault that I am missing a choir rehearsal. I'd like to find someone to blame it on, but I can't. My husband is in Milwakee. My daughter is sleeping. Someone has to stay home with her, not that I could bring her to a choir rehearsal if she were awake anyway, especially since she has a terrible cold and has been tempermental all day. I knew my husband was going to Milwakee. I just forgot that he might not be back from Milwakee until it was too late to do anything about it. I don't have a ready supply of babysitters to draw upon, so I am hum drumming it at my computer, guilty, miserable, and feeling irresponsible. I'm imagining the music the choir is singing. I am missing out on making notes on the printed page with my mechanical pencil. Next time I will be more organized. I will look for a babysitter in advance. I will not forget to ask when my husband will be back from Milwakee, or anywhere else for that matter.

Philosophy on Hair

Once upon a time I had short hair, very short hair. Short hair that was shorter than a boy's hair. This hair had to be cut every four to six weeks. I liked having short hair, but I greatly disliked going to get my hair cut. I dread having to discuss the facts of my life with a beautician who really doesn't care about the facts of my life, but feels the need to make small talk. Small talk is inefficient, unproductive, generally all the time, but particularly so when you are holding a conversation with a beautician that you probably never will see again. (I am not the type to return faithfully to the same hair stylist).

When I began college, I quickly learned that getting my hair cut every 4-6 weeks far exceeded my limited budget, so I made a decision to grow my hair out to one length except for my bangs. It was a painful process. I looked very odd my whole freshman year of college, but since then, I have had basically the same hair style (I no longer have bangs). My hair is all one length. Sometimes it's shorter; sometimes it's longer, but it is always one length. I do not really do anything with my hair. Ever. I have come to the conclusion that it is just a waste of time. I wash it. I brush it. That's it. Plain. Simple. It works well for me, and the best part of all is that I have successfully resolved to only get my hair cut twice a year. Eventually the ends get stragglely looking and need to be taken care of, but I save tons and tons of money. And I don't have to talk often to beauticians, who incidently, always have very bizarre hair, if you haven't noticed.

Yesterday evening my husband stayed home with my daughter and I drove a few blocks to the cheapest place I could find to get a hair cut. (It doesn't take a lot of talent to trim hair all one length, so cheap is the way to go). It was raining. I looked like a drowned rat. I walked in and asked for an appointment, and they were very accomodating. I opted for the cheap option of not getting my hair washed, just cut. It was already drenched from the rain anyway. I sat in the little swivel chair and had the stylist chop off 5 inches of hair. When cutting hair, my motto is go drastic. At least you feel like you get your money's worth that way.

My hair is still all one length, but in a short phase right now. Someone once advised me never to get your hair cut when in the late stages of pregancy because you tend not to think things through and opt for an overly short style that makes your head look like a little pea on top of a large blueberry. I think they might have a point. My head does look peaish. It has taken me a day to get used to my missing locks, but I think things will work out just fine. Hair grows, and I don't have to go back to the beauty shop until next March.