Wednesday, February 20, 2008

dilemma

I like the idea of having my home filled with beautiful things. I dislike knick-knacks and don't even care to have a lot of things on our walls, so it makes sense to make/ purchase functional things that are also aesthetically pleasing. This unfortunately conflicts with my unwillingness to fuss over care and maintenance. We spill food on our tablecloths, drop mixing bowls, wash everything in the dishwasher, and let our friends' kids bang things on the furniture. If I made (or spent a lot of money on) something like this hand-embroidered quilt, it wouldn't be long before the stitching was unraveling from the kids digging their fingernails into it and it had greasestains from the potato chips we eat in bed. And I'd be heartbroken over the destruction of something I put so much into. Bringing more art into our home would be decidedly easier if it weren't all so breakable....

Tuesday, February 19, 2008

no-VOC paint

We'll probably try this stuff the next time we paint. There's a Sherwin Williams in the Hannaford plaza on Delaware Avenue.

Monday, February 18, 2008

lyrics

It's hard to differentiate when A intentionally changes song lyrics (as we often do) from when she improvises because she can't remember the originals. But I've caught some funny ones lately.

There was a cat who liked to swim and Bingo was her name-o

There's a clean one and a dirty one and a pink one and a yellow one and they're all made out of ticky-tacky and they all look just the same

Oh give me a tree and I don't need to pee (tune of Home on the Range)

Away in a manger no crib for a bed, worked hard all my lifetime no help from my friends

Oh Christmas Tree, Oh Christmas Tree- how lovely are your friendships

Blocks of wonder, blocks of light, blocks of royal beauty bright

(I defy even those Christmas-ends-at-Ephiphany sticklers to phase out carols with a three-year-old.)

Sunday, February 17, 2008

geeks and obsession

C has been playing these games during his computer time for a while. (My personal favorite is the one where you try to get cats to do the same thing simultaneously; he's more of a fan of the ones involving projectiles.) This morning he ran from his room shouting, "I made a top score! I made a top score!" and indeed he'd entered his name into the Top Score list. He was thrilled, and played some more and got his name in twice more (I wonder if the top scores are reset occasionally so it was easier for him to make the list today?) before running out of time.

We were especially amused because we'd just watched The King of Kong (Dan thought it would be a romantic pick for Valentine's Day). It's a documentary about people who are still trying to get top scores on 80's video games. Halfway through I said, "This is so weird maybe it's actually a mockumentary." Dan pointed out, "it's so weird it has to be real; no one could make this stuff up." It's a little too easy to picture C in that scene.

Saturday, February 16, 2008

our house is on Google Street View

Apparently the pictures were taken while the contractors were here.