spark

imageless (if not wordless) wednesday

This is a picture I did not take of a seven-year-old discovering his third loose tooth and taking a moment away from his slack-jawed, finger-in-mouth, testing-tooth pose to send a text to his father with his announcement.

word of the day 180/365: childish

word of the day 179/365: home

Today is about going nowhere, barely lifting a finger (or a camera), wearing pajamas.  Settling back in, enjoying our home, getting back to old rhythms but also recognizing that we've all grown a little bit and figuring out what this summer will be for us. 

It's also about welcoming Dan's parents, who have closed on their new home in Richmond.  Reese is feeling his muscle at the ripe old age of 5 and insisted on helping to move some stored boxes out of our basement for them.  It's a new day for all of us. 

word of the day 178/365: survival

Kissimmee to Richmond in one day

763 miles

2 stops to refill the gas tank

2 smiley faces in the sky

heaven knows how many potty breaks

2 hours, 38 god-awful minutes of a Pinocchio audiobook

1 beautiful silver trailer reflecting the clouds

4 loud sing-along repetitions in a row of Mika's "Lollipop"

a handful of sightings of "the sneaky water tower"

plenty of goofiness

endless bottles of water

a few toys in the drawer that I held onto until now

1 torrential downpour

4 states to go before Virginia

13 hours on the road

1 determined mama

3 children asleep in the car

1 daddy to carry them upstairs and put them in bed

5 people under one roof once more

1 adventure well done

word of the day 177/365: spontaneity

This is the day when the wheels fell off the bus.  We arrived on Sanibel a day early and extended our stay a night past our original plan, giving us four nights on the island instead of two.  Perfect length of stay.  And really, we were still not quite ready to go yet this morning, but at the same time, the late bedtimes and absence of Dan, and hot sweaty days were getting to us all.  I could tell that everybody really needed to get back to their own beds and normal routines, even if they weren't crying for it yet.  So we checked out of our hotel...except that it turns out you can't just "check out" when there are three manic children involved.  Every time I turned around, the TV was back on, or a container of toys had been spilled, or somebody was unloading the cooler I had just packed, or dumping bags of beach toys.  Loading the car should have taken 30 minutes and instead it took 3 hours.  3 hours in which I didn't eat breakfast, didn't make as much progress as I'd hoped, didn't keep my temper nearly as well as I'd like, didn't check out, but did get very hot and sweaty and annoyed.  Xander ran away, Griff was mopey, Reese was a pain.  And then.  Ugh, then.  Well, I had tried to run a couple of errands the day before, but everybody had been tired and I had ended up refusing to buy the book Reese wanted and not returning the snake he had just bought at Tarpon Bay Explorers, whose seam had busted mere hours later...but come Saturday morning, I rather wanted that book and that snake, and I wanted postage stamps for Griff's postcards, and I wanted coffee and a bagel sandwich for me and OJ and oatmeal for the kids. 

So.  We bought ice at the grocery store. Painful.  We tried to get postage stamps, the lobby was closed, but a nice stranger had one, which we used to mail a postcard to Griff's first grade teacher.  Better.  We returned the busted snake and got a replacement.  Looking up.  We got the book.  Excellent.  We missed breakfast time at the cafe, which resulted in hideous shutting-down for Reese, and I called Dan in absolute tears.  Rock-bottom.  But we put juice in the kids and coffee in me, and I managed to deal with the over-long wait with relative grace and then took everything to go, and eventually even Reese ate something, and with our tummies full, we all felt much less grumpy.  And failed to find postage stamps twice more, but dealt with it.  And didn't get off the island until 1pm, which meant I wasn't going to get anywhere near Savannah (the half-way point on the route home)...

But then.  THEN.  I had an idea.  What if we didn't drive halfway home that day?  What if we ended our drive a little early, went a little less far, and had an evening in which to recharge?  Something different from the beach, something more fun than hours on I-95.  We could go through Orlando instead of Tampa.  We could hit "Downtown Disney" or the mini golf course there, get just a little taste of commercial, Disneyfied, mass-marketed fun.  Crazy?  I called my husband, who played impromptu travel agent and scoured the internets for possibilities.  He called me back: 1 night at one of the bargain-level Disney resorts.  Tons of water fun, shuttle to Downtown Disney.  Booked.

So, just like that, I was introducing my kids to Walt Disney World.  And you know, the restaurant I had wanted didn't have any reservations until 9:45 PM (no, thanks), so we checked into our room, skipped the shuttle, ate in the cafeteria, and found an arcade.  Played for a while, then hit the pool, then went back to the arcade for ticket-earning hedonism.  It was cheesy, it was Disneyfied, it was cheap (except for the food), it was totally different from anything we had ever done, it blew off steam and helped us transition back from zen island life to the real world, and it took our minds off our grumpiness and the long trip ahead for a while.

At the end of the day, our tickets were cashed in and we had fun memories, two plastic daggers, a bouncy ball, some mini erasers and stuff, and a mustacchioed photo strip in our pockets.  We had a carpet picnic in our room and I told them about another carpet picnic in another hotel room 13 years ago, when their dad and I got married.  The littlest one fell asleep in my arms, completely exhausted.  And as I tucked the other two in, I felt really full, really competent, really great about this week.  I can handle a long road trip.  I can handle single-parent vacationing.  I can pull us out of a tailspin.  I can be silly, flexible, resourceful, whatever it is we need.  Like the stone we left in South Carolina says, everything I need is inside me. 

And hopefully I can remember that tomorrow, when I attempt to drive from Kissimmee to Richmond in one day!

word of the day 176/365: animal

A word chosen by Griff, who couldn't possibly have had any idea of how many animals we'd actually see today.  We started out with a boat tour hosted by Tarpon Bay Explorers. When I set up the tour, I assumed two things: that we'd have more success sighting birds and manatees in the morning, and that it would be easy to make an 8:15 appointment with my early early risers.  I was right on the first point, and the kids did still rise early, but I had grossly misjudged how difficult it is to actually get people motivated and out the door by 8 AM when you have access to that wondrous, glorious, exotic treat, cable TV.  A million thanks to NickJr and Disney for refreshing my commitment to remaining a cable-free household.

So, anyway, once we had broken free of the clutches of early childhood consumerist indoctrination, we headed out to join the breakfast cruise, and made it to the boat just in time.  Waiting for us was quite the spread.  Donuts! Granola bars! Coffee!  Yum.  And that's all before we left the dock.  After that, we were treated to a plethora of nesting egrets and pelicans, ospreys and terns overhead, cormorants on oyster shoals, and some sightings of dolphins and manatees coming up for air.  The kids shared a pair of binoculars around and I enjoyed the information shared by our tour guide.  No spoonbills for me, but getting to see the manatees surfacing (sorry, the photos are completely boring) was exciting for this girl who, once upon a time, pored over National Geographic pictures of these animals and made them the topic of her 5th grade science report. 

When we returned to land, the tour guide opened up an aquarium section of the visitor center and explained a host of different estuarine critters to us.  My boys were the only children there aside from one other infant, and Reese was happy to stare at starfish in a tank, so Griff got a lot of attention from the guide and a chance to hold many of the touch tank critters.  Once again, Xander was anxious about the spider crabs, worrying that we might get pinched by them.  I am happy to report that no such pinching occurred. 

And yet, none of those animals merited word of the day status, because later we found THIS amazing creature right outside our hotel room door:

This grasshopper was ENORMOUS.  I mean, HUGE.  I took a picture of it next to my lens cap but it still failed to capture just how GIGANTIC it was.  I've never seen an insect this big outside of a museum.  Its body, not counting the legs extending behind it, was a good 4"-5" long.  And that color!  Have you ever seen a bright orange grasshopper before?  I hadn't. 

Now, I've handled a lot of bugs, but giant bugs kindof creep me out and I don't really want to touch them. I'm working on it, but not quite there.  While I was laying on the ground trying to capture this guy's image, he* kept turning and walking toward me.  No hopping, no flying away, just this slow, inevitable creep toward me.  With his palps (the thingies hanging down from his mouth) moving the whole time.  Super creepy.  But I was concerned for his safety, worried that another hotel guest might freak out and squash him, so I picked up two plastic Chinese takeout containers we had been using as beach toys and caught him to move him.  Well, once he figured out he had been trapped, he went crazy, leaping frantically inside the cups.  You do NOT want to feel a bug this big leaping inside a cup you're holding.  Yikes.  I moved him to a spot near the fish pond, off the path, where there were plants to hide in. 

The kids, of course, stoked the whole time, begging me to take pictures, checking out this awesome creature, cheering me on for "saving" him from dark strangers, and asking what kind of grasshopper it was.  So after relocating him, I ran for Google.  Apparently this guy is an Eastern Lubber Grasshopper, known for being huge and bright and slow-moving (check, check, check).  It's a good thing I didn't pick him up, because when disturbed, they can hiss and excrete a smelly foam that can irritate your skin.  My decision not to pick up something brightly-colored and big = aposematic coloration WIN.  Of course, I can't find a single video of a lubber hissing or spitting or foaming or frothing or poisoning local birds, and in this day and age, if it ain't on YouTube, it ain't happening, so perhaps these grasshoppers just have a zest for colorful attire and a good PR agent.  Moving on.

For the record, these are not locusts.  A friend commented that these bugs "turn into locusts".  Locusts are the swarming phase of specific species of grasshoppers, and Romalea guttata is not one of those species.  They're large, but don't eat much for their size.  They don't fly or swarm.  They don't associate with those Biblical plague-y types. They can, however, be damaging to gardens or crops when large numbers of them are present.  (I'm hoping I did the right thing in letting this one live.)

Finding this guy was the cherry on top of my vacation.  It has already been an excellent, spontaneous, adventurous, soul-nourishing time for me and the boys.  Add a giant bug...who could ask for more?

*male pronouns were used before it suddenly occurred to me (after writing the post) that I could check the sex of this insect.  The presence of an ovipositor suggests that this one is female.  That's what I get for submitting to the patriarchy.

vacation art

We go through phases of intense creative production and phases in which nobody is really all that interested in drawing or painting or other forms of creative expression.  At home, sometimes reorganizing things  - moving supplies around, changing the furniture placement in the studio - jumpstarts everybody's desire to create.  Sometimes having novel materials is the key.  Other times, the answer is location, location, location.  Last week, setting up a rock painting studio on the back porch did the trick.  This week, being away from our regular *stuff* at home, being surrounded by new experiences, and shaking up our schedule is leading to different kinds of expression than I've seen before. Fortunately, I had brought along a stack of plain white paper and some fine-point sharpie markers and colored pencils. 

The lamp above is a drawing by Griff, who usually does not draw from a model and also usually does not focus in his work on the small details in objects.  His attention was captured by a bedside lamp in our hotel room.  In the absence of other distractions, he focused on the lamp and created this image (the hot pink dots are bleed-through from a scribble on the other side of the page).

Xander was also inspired to draw by our trip.  He selected a turquoise blue sharpie and went to work on two pieces.  Both started with broad, spiraling strokes, which were followed by smaller, short scribbles and lots of dots. 

When I prompted, "what can you tell me about your drawing?" He told me that the first (on the left, click to enlarge) showed "sharks and fish in the ocean and in the James River." Last week we saw minnows in the James, and this week the boys are interested in bigger sea creatures (we have not, however, seen any sharks). I wonder if this art helps him to bridge the distance between home and here, and to provide a sense of continuity between the two. He also told me that "they're thirsty." Water, water everywhere, and not a drop to drink, right? Of the drawing on the right, he said it depicts "a man and a fish." Earlier that day we had seen a man catching and releasing a fish in the surf near our hotel. I enjoyed the deliberateness with which he drew the spiral in this picture. I don't know how deliberate his work is, or whether or not the smaller scribbles are carefully placed, but I can see the water, the man, the fish, and the sharks. 

Post-vacation he describes them as "one two three ducks" (left) and "a ball with a string" (right), which tells me that he is not yet purposefully drawing representational works, or at least not the way an older child or adult would.  I just heard a report, however, that he recently drew a careful representation of Griffin while studying his brother's face...but then scribbled all over it.  Alas! So much for ars longa, vita brevis.

word of the day 175/365: five

This morning I asked Griff what the WOTD should be and Xander piped up, "five!" So five it is.  Griff had expected to draw five of something (but got distracted, so no image from him today) and I wasn't sure what I would do.  I forgot about it as we explored the "Ding" Darling visitor center and sampled homemade ice cream, but as luck would have it, we happened upon the perfect shot in the evening. 

I love sand dollars.  My idea of the best shelling find possible is a perfect, wholly intact, sun-bleached sand dollar test.  I have found two in my life - one on Drake's Beach near Point Reyes, CA, in the mid-80s, and one on my last morning on Cumberland Island, GA, in 1998.  

Shelling suits my obsessive, detail-oriented personality perfectly.  It's tactile, it's meditative, it's goal-oriented yet also requires you to immerse yourself in the process.  I can search for the perfect shell for hours.  Literally, hours.  If not for the duties of parenthood,the irritations of sunburn and bug bites and darkness, and the necessity of sleep, I could hunt along the tide line and under the surf indefinitely.  Since starting our trip, I discovered the I Love Shelling blog, and Pam's nearly daily accounts of the myriad treasures found on Sanibel's beaches filled me with beachcombing lust.  Already I had seen how different two beach locations could be (West Gulf beach and Blind Pass), and I decided that we must also check out the lighthouse beach.  What a perfect pick - we arrived about an hour before low tide and left an hour afterward.  Sand bars stretch wayyyyyy out into the water and even Xander could wade or crawl far from shore.  After seeing some women with shelling nets, Griff and I had decided to pick up some of our own, and armed with one net per family member, we hit the sand bars and tide line.  

Very early on I scooped up a gigantic cockle. I quickly realized that it was still alive, so it wasn't a keeper (live shelling is illegal, and even if it weren't, I would put back any shell with an inhabitant), but we were able to inspect it and talk about the creature living inside, who had made the shell.  Soon afterward we found an apple murex shell - also still housing its creator - and quite a few hermit crabs and spider crabs.  At one point I found a brittle star in my shelling net, a great and unexpected catch.  I was surprised that all three kids were eager to see every new find, although Xander was a little concerned when the rest of us held the spider crabs.  He was less worried by the many, many living sand dollars we found.  You could pick one up almost anywhere by sifting your fingers under the top layer of silt and sand.  Some were as big across as my hand.  We examined their little tube feet (I'll admit, I was hoping to find one that wasn't moving so I could keep it) and Reese insists that one bit him with its mouth - although I'm suspicious of this claim, because their actual teeth are tucked up inside the center, underneath the animal.  I suspect he was feeling the roughness of the cilia and tube feet inside the anal lunule (one of the "keyholes"), which might look like a mouth to a person meeting an echinoderm for the first time. 

Living sand dollars are fascinating to me.  The combination of simplicity and complexity, the elegance of their radial symmetry (pentamerism, if you want to get technical), the fragility of the dead tests (shells) even while the living creatures thrive under our feet.  It's all so cool. While I didn't find a test to take home, I did manage to dig up a wealth of beautifully twisty, twirly other shells.  Best uninhabited find: a banded tulip.  I found a slightly battered paper fig as well and felt triumphant.  Oh, I could have dug there forever, with kiteboarders around us, Fort Myers in the distance across the bay, the setting sun casting golden light over Griff in the surf and Xander digging holes in the sand and Reese feeling shells in his hands right at the tide line. 

Like the sand dollars, today was simple, yet complex, and discovering it was intensely satisfying.

wordless wednesday

word of the day 174/365: surprise

Vacation art is in full swing here at the West Wind Inn, as Griff and Xander dig into a bag of fine-point sharpies and a stack of blank printer paper that I brought along on our adventure.  He is the one who chose the words with me for the past two days, and today, after a discovery he made, he selected "surprise" for today.

My favorite surprise of the day was a little ice cream shop - not the one we were looking for, but one we settled for after not being able to find the other.  Sanibel Scoops is tucked off to one side of the road, set back a little and without a parking lot of its own.  We parked (somewhat illicitly, I think) by the book store next door (which we visited later, so it's kosher, right?) and walked down and around to the ice cream shop, nearly melting in the heat before reaching the bright blue building.  To get to the door, we had to walk around the side of the house and across a courtyard reeking of rotting fruit.  Heaps of small, overripe, smashed berries were strewn around the yard.  I meant to ask the shopkeepers what kind of tree produced the berries, but forgot.  Why did I forget? Because the ice cream was so awesome, of course.  Frozen blended toffee coffee for me, possibly the best I've ever had.  Xander wanted banana ice cream, and surprisingly, they had it, and it was amazing, perfectly smooth and creamy and with just the right amount of banana.  Reese is a plain vanilla fan and Griff got adventurous with some melty but tasty watermelon sorbet.  But the best part? Eating it in the adorable front room of the house that was decorated with paper lanterns and colorful tile and had several vintage kids' coin-operated rides.  All four of us were taken with Dino, who cost only 25¢, had room for three boys, and played the Flintstones theme song while gently galloping.  Hanna Barbera and icy caffeination, I love you!

Griff's inspiration came in the form of a mysterious...thing...he found on the sidewalk outside our hotel room.  At first glance, we thought it was some kind of dead, dried caterpillar.  Then we hypothesized that maybe it was actually a lost lizard's tail (yeah, it was so dessicated and mysterious that we couldn't tell if it were reptilian or insectoid).  Our final guess was that it might be the abdomen (tail) of a dragonfly.  Who knows.  Certainly not us, at any rate.  But here it is, in all its enigmatic glory:

Other surprises today included an injured heron and horseshoe crab exuviae at Blind Pass and delicious chocolate-chip pancakes at our hotel's restaurant.  Other than that, it was beach time, pool time, a little grocery shopping, some cable TV sampling, shelling, and staying up way too late.  Which is just right.