Through The Looking Glass

I came downstairs from an attempt at getting Sam to nap and found this note:

Monkey–

Cassy + I have run away to TJ.
(note: this does not mean Tijuana)

xxo
–WK

What do you suppose it… oh, never mind. Here they are.

• Up before 7:00 a.m.
• Starbucks coffee run
• Detour to successfully avoid holiday traffic on the 405
• Yarn procured
• Toy Story 2 watched
• Twice
• Two-year-old on big kid swing
• Adult on child play structure
• Photos taken that mama ACTUALLY APPEARS IN
• French fries and cheesy biscuits
• No bedtime

As we prepare to embark on our Life Of Crime™, there are just a few loose ends to tie up and preparations to make.

• Yesterday we washed and vacuumed the car. OK, not exactly. We paid some very nice men to do it for us. It was a Splurge. It was worth it.
• Tonight I put Love & a .45 on while Will put Sammy to bed. It totally got me in the mood. For crime! Ahem.
• Today I made Sammy a little backpack to carry his loot in. I started making it about a year ago, messed up, and let it sit. Stupid! It is really too small now but I am stubborn.
• Made up business cards with our names and “We specialize in risk management.” (Not really.) (But I should.)
• Still to do: polish our boots, brush our hats, and iron creases in our jeans.

See you on the other side.

Photo by Will, taken August 2007 in Huntington Beach, CA

They made up their minds and they started packing
They left before the sun came up that day
An exit to eternal summer slacking
But where were they going without ever knowing the way?
                                                                                    –Fastball, “The Way”

Tomorrow morning we are going on an Adventure. Will has decided that he and Sam will get up and get ready, and once the coffee has brewed he will pour me a cup, wake me up, and use it to entice me directly into the car.

I told him that this is exactly how I envision starting our Life Of Crime™, and did we want to knock over a taco stand or a liquor store first? And seriously, why do so few taco places have liquor licenses? Do I really have to brown bag it if I want a fucking beer with my chilaquiles?

So anyway, we’re in negotiations for me taking a shower before we go. For everyone’s sake, I hope I win this one.

When Will and I lived in our first apartment, we had a hand-me-down Hoover vacuum. It was as basic as appliances come, and ancient, so of course it worked spectacularly. One day, not too long before we moved out, some girls knocked on the door and said they lived next door and were moving; they needed to vacuum to get back their deposit, and could they borrow mine? I said sure, and they did. When they had not returned it the next day and did not answer the door either for me or for Will, we called the management agency. They sent someone who opened up the apartment, which was empty except for my vacuum cleaner, broken literally in half in the middle of the floor. Those fucking bitches.

Yesterday afternoon there was a knock on the door. It was a woman from down the hall whom I’ve met a few times. She has a sweet baby girl and I think she is single mom-ing it. We say hello in the hall and in the laundry room, and I’ve told her to come by if she ever needs anything. Last night she needed to borrow my vacuum cleaner, as she’d put down some chemical cleaner before discovering that the new bags she bought didn’t fit hers. She was somewhat agitated, and I was in my pajamas. Part of me wanted to say no. Because we are on our last bag and it is nearly full and I need to vacuum. Because I no longer trust people. Because if anything happens to this vacuum cleaner, we absolutely can’t afford to replace it.

But I said yes.

An hour later she brought it back. She said, “I have to tell you, you are a very kind person. I have had an awful day, and I had to get up those chemicals before I picked up my daughter. Thank you.”

Universe, thanks for being good to both of us yesterday.

Do you ever google yourself? I don’t mean a straight-up vanity google to see if anyone has mentioned your name (damn right you do–I get google alerts for my name daily); I mean something a little weirder, and I hope I am not the only person who does stuff like this.

See, I read this post on first kisses. And I remembered mine, and for the first time in seventeen years I didn’t cringe. It was what it was. It was even kind of nice. That was, after all, the first night I saw Tarsem’s work (before the kiss we watched MTV, including the “Losing My Religion” video), and he went on to make my favorite movie.

But the kiss. His name was Barrett. He was three years older than me. He had ratty blond metal hair. I was way into him. I sincerely doubt that I could pick him out of a lineup now. (Not that I think he’s a criminal! I’m sure that at least 50% of kids raised in Saugerties, NY, go on to be law-abiding citizens.)

So I googled “barrett first kiss.” Why? I have absolutely no idea. I certainly wasn’t trying to find out if he was anyone else’s first kiss, though it would be kinda cool to find that someone else had written about him. No, see, I think maybe I was looking for myself. As if some other me had written about my first kiss. I told you it was weird.

Naturally, I got one gazillion results for Elizabeth Barrett Browning poems about kissing.

This is a passage from the book Learning All The Time by John Holt. He is discussing ways of exposing children to the ideas behind reading (letters stand for sounds, letters put together make words) while letting them figure it out in a way that makes sense to them. He is specifically talking about writing out simple words whose letters make the sounds that make up the word (not all of them do, as he points out)–and he uses Sam as his example word! I think this passage applies to much more than just reading.

It is neither necessary nor a good idea to be too thorough about this. It is not a lesson to be completely learned and digested the first or second time. This is not how children learn things. They have to live with an idea or insight for a while, turn it around in some part of their minds, before they can, in a very real sense, discover it, say “I see,” take possession of the idea, and make it their own–and unless they do this, the idea will never be more than surface, parrot learning, and they will never really be able to make use of it.

Mr. Holt’s ideas about learning have inspired my entire set of educational beliefs. Honestly, everything he has to say is so exciting to me! And I think his books are wonderful tools in raising children no matter what kind of education you favor.