m & finn pancakes
Thursday is pancake day for the girls. As one of her tenth birthday presents, Finn’s grandmother gave her some customized candy covered chocolate treats that featured pictures of Finn and slogans like “Finn Rocks!” This week’s pancakes featured some of those candies, or as Fallie put it, “we are eating Finn’s face for breakfast.”
when the same interval passes again
She was born in the second month of the twenty-first century, and with luck she will see all of it. I enjoy our time together, trying to make moments she will remember fondly, but sometimes I struggle with worry, wondering how it will all turn out. Does the world really get better, or worse? What can I do to prepare her and what do I prepare her for? I am not ready. When the same interval passes again, she will be grown.
gratuitous picture of a disembodied mumblelarm
field trip
I took the skull girls to the ice cream factory yesterday so they can have a good mental picture of where I spend most of my time now. We did all the standard stuff. They sat in my desk chair, drew on the glass walls of my office with dry erase markers, and I arranged for a few portraits via the motion sensitive security cameras. Then they raided the snack cabinet for cheezy puffed corn snacks and candy covered chocolate snacks, and I taught them how to mix a cocanade* from the communal soda fountain.
Once they were appropriately snacked up and jacked up, Finn played Up on the game console machine while Fallie watched and laughed. In general, we made a bunch of noise and mocked the accounting nerds who were actually working on budgets or taxes or some other deadline driven general accounting nerdery.
I was going to make them skull girls identity badges, but the junior identity badge officer must have changed his password from the one I shoulder harvested, and I couldn’t log into the machine. The girls had very few questions, but I am sure that they will have plenty of comments over the coming week. Despite the fact that I was in the office on a Saturday, it was a pretty fun morning.
*cocanade is two-thirds cola product and one-third high fructose lemonade product. It should probably be called crackanade because of its brief effective window and its tooth-grinding moreish qualities, or maybe methanade because it is produced in a slightly creepy communal kitchen, but cocanade is a more natural portmanteau.
the alligator is a conservation success story
…I am large, I contain multitudes.
(image via the skull girls okefenokee liberation council)
southern snowstorm
Archival photograph from the biggest snow day we have had in Atlanta (even better than this one). It was not good sledding snow, but it was perfect for rolling huge snow man torsos and crunchy exploding snowballs. The dirty dirty is supposed to get wicked cold next week, so maybe we will get to do it again.
(left to right: floyd, orangina, mumblelard, fallie, finn)
finishing touches
…and then a bath, a small dinner, a christmas eve present, some wrestling, a christmas movie and popcorn, girl children bedtime, stocking assembly, adult bedtime, ;) , sleep, and it is the big day. happy solstice feast day observed eve! -mumblelard
finn and fall
Their names do not have a really clear etymology or a good anecdote with a satisfying hook. The discomfort that this lack of explanation causes some people is one of many things I didn’t anticipate. The names are the explanation and any elaboration is doomed, but …
They are not common names, but they are not bizarre. Even people who consider them strange at first can’t help but see that they are right and natural. They can be read and pronounced by almost anyone.
The shape was the most important thing and the hardest to explain. They fit certain twitchy rules or preferences for the composition of words in terms of spelling, shape and sound that I have wired into me.When I learned to read, letters fought battles in my head. Some won and some lost and words were the diagrams of these conflicts. “Finn” and “Fall” are battles that haven’t happened yet. The forces have been rallied, but it isn’t clear what happens next.
They are short and monosyllabic and punchy but they still have room for a double consonant. Double consonants tickle me for some reason.
The letter F is soft but strong to me. It bends in the wind.
They have associations with feminine names like Ann or Holly, but they still have an androgynous edge to them. A tiny bit of freedom from expectations.
My grandmother is Finnish. She never called herself a finn, but it did help. Twain did not really have anything to do with coming up with Finn’s name but it was probably supporting evidence once we did. One of Fallie’s other names was Auli which might have something to do with us often saying Fallie not Fall, but I don’t know. Likewise, Fallie’s name did not come from her autumn birth but it probably helped after we came up with it.
I have associative stories in my head that give the names the feeling of exhortations of warriors to me but I could not explain the stories clearly. They are pictures and pictures of words but not made of words. It has something to do with Finn to fin to end to end times and Fall to fall from grace to cast out to the beginning of life outside of a paradise to the life we all live now and them carrying the strength or power to start and end human history or one cycle of it so addressing any that challenge them will only require the effort of their smallest finger, if that. Everytime I read this paragraph it gets further from the truth. I don’t know.
That is the best I can do explaining it. I am not trying to sound vague, but the truth about this is vague. I wish I had a good quick story because people get the impression that I am being evasive when I just shrug my shoulders in answer to this question, but really a shrug is the best I can do.
finn will soon be ten
It was a cold, wet day on Sunday, but we entertained ourselves inside with playdates, projects, couch forts, cameras, soup, and grilled cheese sandwiches. Finn took a bunch of pictures of me, and she even let me take one picture of her.
long fallie couch fort
my lovely girls
They have been making fun of us for taking so long to finish one book. Floyd is trying to prove that it is a difficult book to read quickly, but they are not convinced.
thanksgiving
We had planned to drive to Tennessee last night to spend Thanksgiving weekend with Floyd’s family, but the runt has been sick since Monday night. Her fever has been over 102 and was still as high as 101 yesterday, so we called off the trip.
This will be our first Thanksgiving alone since Floyd and I have been married, the first Thanksgiving that the four of us have ever spent at home alone together. We are disappointed that we aren’t getting to spend the holiday with family, but we are making the best of it.
I made brown sugar postmodern pancakes for Floyd and hershey crunch bar chocolate chip pancakes for the girls for breakfast (Thursday IS pancake day.) Now, Floyd and I have been putting together a Thanksgiving dinner out of the pantry and whatever we could get last minute at the holiday ravaged market. Our turkey will actually be a chicken, and our cranberry sauce will be canned, but Floyd is making rolls from scratch and we have fresh green beans cooking in the crockpot with a nice smoked hamhock. I am getting hungry thinking about it.
Now I am taking a break and drinking my second cup of coffee while listening to the girls work on their projects. They are in charge of decorations, and their first project was this sculpey centerpiece that is just about to go in the oven. I am not sure what else they have planned, but they have raided the basement twice already for additional supplies.
So far, despite the change in plans, it is a very good day.
gratuitous picture of the double piggy back takedown banned in seven states
Obviously they forfeited the match and I won by default, but my back is still saying that I lost.
appalachian olympians
as they contemplate transmogrifying another impertinent mortal.
Beware their wrath!
floyd was actually downstairs before the girls on a saturday
They consoled her with a long hug. After breakfast, we are heading up to the mountains for the day. We are planning to go to Fort Mountain and hike around the stone walls and the overlook, but we may wind up stopping at Amicalola or any other place that catches our eye.
