School library book / My son the fashionista

It's beginning to make sense to me, the intense emotions displayed during our almost-daily squabbles over what constitutes appropriate school clothing.

Reading more reviews

About Songs of Innocence and Exp., this is funny:
And even when some of his juxtapositions seem a bit far-fetched, such as the finale's bloated Reggae pretensions ("I Shot the Sheriff" versus "Also Sprach Zarathustra"), at least Bolcom knows when long enough is long enough.

Thoughts from thankless Thursday afternoon

1. Ask not what your mother can do for you; rather, what you can do for your mother.

2. I'd drink a second cup of Good Earth Tea for Tension with Valerian and Hops if I could be certain it wouldn't give me a second round of explosive diarrhea.

Interesting review of Songs of Innocence and Experience

This is mainly for Mr. Bickerson who I know is steeling himself and trying to find ways to cope with sitting through the upcoming 2.5 hour concert. He's my biggest fan but he really likes to be there in spirit more than in person.

This might encourage him (as well as make a couple of you locals consider purchasing a ticket for yourself):

Review for DJs

Happy Wednesday :-)

Are you in the mood for a poem?

Text from rehearsal last night. The sung version gives chills.

The Little Girl Found by William Blake

All the night in woe
Lyca's parents go
Over valleys deep,
While the deserts weep.

Tired and woe-begone,
Hoarse with making moan,
Arm in arm, seven days
They traced the desert ways.

Seven nights they sleep
Among shadows deep,
And dream they see their child
Starved in desert wild.

Pale through pathless ways
The fancied image strays,
Famished, weeping, weak,
With hollow piteous shriek.

Rising from unrest,
The trembling woman pressed
With feet of weary woe;
She could no further go.

In his arms he bore
Her, armed with sorrow sore;
Till before their way
A couching lion lay.

Turning back was vain:
Soon his heavy mane
Bore them to the ground,
Then he stalked around,

Smelling to his prey;
But their fears allay
When he licks their hands,
And silent by them stands.

They look upon his eyes,
Filled with deep surprise;
And wondering behold
A spirit armed in gold.

On his head a crown,
On his shoulders down
Flowed his golden hair.
Gone was all their care.

'Follow me,' he said;
'Weep not for the maid;
In my palace deep,
Lyca lies asleep.'

Then they followed
Where the vision led,
And saw their sleeping child
Among tigers wild.

To this day they dwell
In a lonely dell,
Nor fear the wolvish howl
Nor the lion's growl.

(You can find it on iTunes if you are so inclined.)

YMCA

I've been complaining about how all the fees have gone up this year but this article reminded me that it all goes to a pretty good cause:

Business volunteers dive in

Hank's team swam against this one in a couple of meets this season. Those meets were the long ones. They are a big team. And they had cool swim cover-ups (like Batman capes) that everyone else envied.

Noodles

Why don't we all make our own noodles like this?

Rainbow Foods broke my heart today

The only grocery store in the Twin Cities that had FREE CHILD CARE just closed its FREE CHILD CARE. Something about an "incident" and "insurance issues." Bah. I loved that grocery store and the kids loved the play area. You all know how heavenly it is to grocery shop sometimes without the assistance of children. That was the one store where you used to be able to do that. No more...

That did not take long!

I might have to call this my "Bolcom Bag" since in real life the colors match the Bolcom picture on the right side of this blog.

Tote

The book is 8"x8". The tote is huge but shrinking in the washing machine as we speak. And although the tote pattern came from this book, it was not made from only "one skein," nor was it "quick." But it was fun. Check back for the follow-up picture. (How small can we make it?)

Hope (in general)

This post isn't about our daughter even though she has that meaningful word for a name. She's got her own little, good thing going on today; her daddy brought home the long-awaited, library-copy DVD for Snow White. We were on the waiting list forEVER and so when he brought it home we popped it in and it was all scratchy. I buffed it up and she got to watch it this morning. Since the moment the movie ended she has been fluttering about, quite obviously acting out every scene from the movie. Peggy is lucky (?) enough to play all the supporting roles. I think she's serving as a stand-in for almost every dwarf, the witch, and Prince Charming. Hope is dancing all over the house.

Setting her Disney-induced happiness to the side for just a sec...

There has been a lot of major and minor sadness and worry in the lives of several of my friends and relatives recently. As I was searching for music online this afternoon, I came across a song cycle by Jocelyn Hagen. I was lucky to be singing with our church choir when the choir performed one of Jocelyn's choral compositions. Anyway, this song cycle is set to poems by Emily Dickenson. The series of songs is called, Hope, so it jumped out at me. The third song in the set has these words:

I shall know why
when time is over
and I refuse to wonder why
Christ shall explain each separate anguish
in that fair schoolroom of the sky.

You can go to her publishing site and listen to samples and read the other texts.

The next VocalEssence concert

The seasoned soprano sitting next to me last night said that singing with VocalEssence is like Forest Gump and his box of chocolates; i.e., you never know what you're gonna get.

Such is the case with the last concert of the season.

Attention choral music fans: IT MIGHT BLOW SOCKS OFF.

Read up here and call Orchestra Hall (or me) if you would like tickets.

Bittersweet

For dog lovers:

Every dog has its day

I LOVE her

SHE. GIVES. EVERYONE. GOOSEBUMPS!

I'm 42. I am not the American Idol demographic but I am texting my first ever AI vote for Lakisha Jones tonight. She deserves to win (imho).

Mr. Bickerson said it

Muttered to me during the last few seconds of 24 last night:

"I think they dropped a boredom bomb instead of a nuclear one."

Shine on you crazy diamond

Nothing prepares you for a weekend with the relatives like a good cranium-polishing session with Hope.

Scenes from a birthday

Use you imagination:

1. The Water Park of America is probably responsible for 50% of the hearing loss in the Midwest since 2006. Holy frijoles, it is LOUD in there.

2. Exhibitionists or victims of swim top malfunction? There was a large crowd of people watching the surf ride (they call it the "Flow Ride") in the water park. The lifeguards have a tall stack of towels to drape across the chests of girls wiping out on the surf. How dumb (or exhibitionistic) do you have to be to realize that there is a 90% chance of your top coming off (unless you happen to be a professional surf-boarder) when you fall off your boogie board??

3. Hope has inherited her father's devil-may-care attitude when it comes to tube slides from 10-stories high. Hank has inherited his mother's attitude of there is no good reason for any human being to be persuaded to hurl herself through a tube of water that involves G-forces of unknown intensity.

4. This was Hank on March 17, 2000.

5. This was Hank having a little chat with the OB.

Happy Birthday, Hank! We love you with all our hearts!

Hope's gonna make a great paramedic and maybe pitcher

She's been shooting and me and Peggy all day long with Hank's grocery store pistol. Wouldn't quit. So, I did like my mom used to do and played dead. I thought she'd do what I used to do: cry and yell, "Wake up MOMMY!"

Not our daughter.

She slapped me across the cheek as hard as she could. She has a very strong right-hand slap.

Hmm.

That was quite the temper tantrum that I myself indulged in yesterday, wasn't it? I calmed myself down (in case you were worried about me). I'm chalking some of this up to spring fever.

I am this close to biting the !@#$ cable in two!!

Is anyone else's first grader throwing a king-size temper tantrum in his bedroom because he snotted off to his mother and she has revoked TV privileges for the day? I need some empathizin'. How can a SIX-year-old be this miserable? If somebody told me my punishment was that I couldn't watch Letterman tonight, you know what I would do? I would get THE HELL OVER IT! I would find something the HELL ELSE TO DO!

(Child psychology is pissing me off today I don't mean to take it all out on all of you.)

Wondering about sleep

I curse thee, oh Daylight Saving Time. I cannot sleep and I am wide awake yet I know that Hank and I will rise with a scant 70 minutes before the school bus arrives. Hope and her father will have been up partying since 6 a.m. They are relatively unaffected by the inconvenient DST change. They are so lucky but they don't appreciate how unaffected they are. So I feel I must curse THEM as well. Whatever. (There sure is a lot of crapola on TV. I suppose I could read a book or something. Eat a pint of ice cream, maybe. That might make me drowsy...)

Wondering about sheep

I've been having a good time learning about and doing felted knit projects. It's highly entertaining to knit a loose, floppy wool sack of yarn, toss it in a hot washing machine and turn it into a firm, sassy purse.

But. I can't stop thinking about the sheep. Do they feel an uncomfortable pull on their skin after they've been out in a soaking rain? Maybe it feels like a massage? Maybe it hurts a little or a lot. Maybe I shouldn't care. Or maybe I should see a psychiatrist!

Tote as seen at the Y

Tote
Originally uploaded by Mrs. Bickerson.

Another project from Mary's knitting book recommendations (Alterknits and One Skein). The felted totes are fun and fast to make. Almost instant gratification. I jokingly asked Hope's swim teacher if he would like me to make him a tote and he (I don't think he realized I was kidding) said he would -- if I could make it in blue and white -- his school colors. Aww. Gary reminded me tonight that knitting isn't the first crafty kick I've been on; I did sew sweatshirts for several people in my family the week before Christmas 15 years ago.

This is for Steve...

...our French-speaking, statistics-keeping, corn-growing brother-in-law:

French performance art in the news

Gary's comment after I read him excerpts? "SACREBLUE!"

I'd like to thank The Academy

Hank was awarded "Most Improved Swimmer" for the Boys 8 and Under at the swim banquet. But even Hank agrees; who else is more deserving of the "Most Improved" award than the swim team member who pretty much went from not swimming to swimming this season?

Thinking summer

Yes, please.

Arm and a leg

Note to friends and family with phones

Our home phone is down and out for unknown reasons. Thank you, new Comcast digital phone package. You may reach us on our cell's or by email until the problem is fixed.

UPDATE: It is fixed. Sorta.

Chinese Language Immersion

It's all my friend Mary's fault.

Like her, when I first heard about the new Mandarin Chinese immersion school in our district I didn't give it much thought. Why would Hope go to any other school besides the local elementary school her brother has primed for her? And by "primed" I mean has already visited the principal's office. Because I know my sweet princess WILL VISIT THE PRINCIPAL'S OFFICE. (Did I ever? NO! I did NOT.) (GAH.)

Then I started reading about language immersion. You'd think as a speech pathologist I might have been mildly interested, but I'm all about convenience these days and it is highly convienient to be able to walk to school or run right over there when someone forgets his library book, or something. The new school is several miles away.

As I read more and talked to more people I realized this might be a great opportunity for my little kid. A part of me (a big part) misses small-town Iowa where these choices weren't even up for consideration. There was no language immersion but you could walk almost everywhere in town when you were in grade school. But the bigger part of me is realizing that it is an opportunity that is too good to pass up.

Wouldn't you appreciate being fluent in Mandarin Chinese? I know I would. I loved high school Latin and the toga party that went with it. (Who didn't?) But later I struggled through French in college. The first semester was fine. It certainly didn't hurt that our instructor was a 6'5' dreamboat fresh out of the Peace Corp in Cameroon. And he sang to us every day. He sang the Cameroon National Anthem. Or something. It could have been Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star. He was fantastic. But by the third semester my grade had sunk to a C. And the teacher was not so gorgeous. Nor male. There was little motivation. My fourth semester of French was taught by the chairman of the French Dept. Come on. That was awful. Plus, I'm pretty sure he was from France.

So my point is languages later in life kind of sucked. ASL was a little different. I feel like I would have been okay if I had had the option of ASL as my B.A. language requirement. What happened was I dropped my 4th semester of French (because I was a loser/quitter). You needed 4 semesters to claim your B.A. I was in The School of Music and, thank God, they had an option for language losers like me....(Drum roll please...........) I earned a Bachelor of Music. Abbreviate that one. I earned a B.M. in college. A B.M. Laugh amongst yourselves.

I hope for a less embarrassing undergraduate degree for Hope.

AWESOME!!

CLARINET HERO!?

I stole this from the Shyest Violet

Read my VisualDNA™ Get your own VisualDNA™

You can find her here.

Kid quote of the day

From somebody else's kid

Silly me I assumed we were immune

The good thing about a loft bed is that it frees up functional space in a child's small bedroom. The bad thing about a loft bed is when the stomach virus finally hits your household in the middle of the night it's a long way down from the loft.

Why isn't there a mechanism inside a mother's brain that immediately identifies that high pitch, late-night cry as the "run as fast as you can and get the bucket" cry? It woulda helped.

It pays to have a neighbor who is a nurse

Hope was lying on the kitchen floor this afternoon, perfecting her temper tantrum skills and having a fit about needing sugar to make her (totally fake) hiccups go away. My good friend Katherine was here to pick up Sami The Labradoodle who had been at our house for a playdate. (Yes. A dog playdate. Be quiet.)

Katherine inquired, "What is she crying about?"

"She wants a spoonful of sugar to make her fake hiccups go away."

Hope takes a break from crying and writhing on the floor, "THEY'RE NOT FAAAAAAKE!"

Katherine, bending over to look Hope square in the eye, "Hope, you know that I'm a nurse, right?"

"Yeah," (totally assuming the Katherine The Nurse will prescribe a large spoonful of sugar to make the hiccups go away).

Katherine: "Sugar will ROT YOUR TEETH DIDN'T YOUR MOTHER EVER TELL YOU THAT?"

Hope, " ."

(That's my representation of silence. Blessed, quiet, peaceful, chagrined silence.)

Flickr and knitting

As you can see by my previous post I am back to knitting. Last year or so I made a billion scarves, two hats, and three lousy sweaters. I became disenchanted with knitting but my friend, Mary, over at Circuslunch, got me all excited about knitting with her recommendation of the book, Alterknits. I went searching on Flickr for knitting groups and pictures and happened upon this:

The Knitting Project

You are supposed to post a photo of yourself and the person who started the group will (maybe) knit you a hat. There are hundreds of submissions and a set of portraits of lucky people with their handknit hats. They look like happy people. Isn't that a cool way to spread a little joy?

Knitting with wire

Knitting with wire
Originally uploaded by Mrs. Bickerson.

Well, this is certainly interesting. It beats knitting the six hundredth scarf.

Apartment Building

By Hope

New TV show

I read about this in the news this morning:

Paul Reubens to star as an alien in NBC sitcom

Me: "I'm excited. I think an alien sitcom is a little overdue, don't you?"

Mr. B.: "Nano, nano."

Cabin Fever? Cured.

Shack Nasty (costume party at the Fine Line) was fun. The theme was music. My costume was lame. I went with a bunch of rest signs pinned to my shirt. I was well-rested. Get it? No? You were not alone. Roxy, our hostess was the "OH" in "8-6-7-5-3-OH-9-ee-eye-ine." Britney and K-Fed were there. Britney needed a shave. (No offense, Brit.) There were several "D*** in a Box(es)." The Bare Naked Ladies were there. I saw two Bjorks, four Devo, 2x2 Captain and Tennilles, one disco ball, two church choir members, one Prince, one Glen Campbell (mugshot style), one Jesus, several members of the B-52s, inexplicably Sheriff Buford T. Justice was there. What the? But by far the best costumes were the Schoolhouse Rock Conjunction Junction Engineer and Figure Eight Ice-skater and the Elton John, Pinball Wizard version.

Oh. I almost forgot. Truffles with dinner! We ate at Bulldog N.E. which is a beer and hamburger joint but not the average kind. I had a hamburger with Kobe beef. It was good but the fries? Oh. My. There were three varieties to choose from and I opted for the "truffled fries with Parmesan aioli." I've never had anything with truffles or truffle oil. I've read about it. Now I know. One truffled French fry is all you need. It is hard to describe the flavor and how good it is. It's more than flavor. It was so good. It was kind of like a drug and/or kind of religious experience. I highly recommend having truffles with your French fries.

SNOW DAY!

Even Mr. Bickerson gets a snow day today. He mentioned this morning how anticlimactic a snow day announcement is in the age of the internets. When we were little you had to turn on WHO 13 and wait and wait and wait as they slowly made their way through the school closings in alphabetical order. And you prayed the whole time: PLEASE let there be no school today please let there be no school today PLEASEEEEE!!!

Was it more fun that way? You bet it was.

Aim high

"I have an idea. Let's have a contest to see who can make the best guess about how much snow there will be on the ground tomorrow when we wake up. I will guess four inches."

Gary: "I say two."

Hank: "I say fourteen inches. Hope, how many inches do you guess?"

"I say EIGHTY-NINE!"

Today I am thankful

for indoor plumbing