Sandra Tayler

Patches is a boy with distinct tastes. One of his favorite flavors is butter. Breakfast is not complete without buttering his french toast at least twice. In fact Patches has been known to finish off a soft butter if it is left unguarded on the counter.

Today was a new venture into butter flavorings. I came into the kitchen to find Patches industriously adding butter to his ramen noodle soup.

My kids are acquiring real garage sale acumen. Patches and Gleek went along for this morning’s trip. They happily played with toys at every sale and only made minor protests at leaving things behind. One of the reasons that Gleek was so willing to leave things is that she acquired a 2 foot tall American Girls horse at the first sale for only $1. The horse’s hair was a mess, so she spent all the travel time brushing out snarls. Patches did not purchase anything today, but he got a yo-yo for free merely by being so cute while asking the price. He also acquired a used cell phone out of a “free” box. Now I need to figure out whether the phone is safe for him to play with, or whether I need to make it quietly disappear.

So the morning wasn’t really the complete bust it felt when I arrived home.

One of the sales was truly amazing. I’m guessing that this person treats summer garage sales as a business, because the amount of stuff he had was amazing. He had 500 or more videos, 10-12 glass topped tables, 4 lawn mowers, 3 jumping horses, 40 soccer balls, two baskets full of baseballs, an array of tools, and loads of other stuff. Unfortunately the prices weren’t low enough for me. He has a prime location and prices accordingly. $5 is a good price for a brand new soccer ball, but not good enough for me to buy one that we don’t really need.

I stopped at 7 garage sales this morning. At the first sale (given by a neighbor) I acquired two pairs of tap shoes for free and a good pair of boots for Patches for $.25. At the remaining 7 sales I got nothing. This is normal and wouldn’t have been frustrating except at the next to last sale there was a beautiful set of bunkbeds. They were $50 and they’d already sold. Having missed out on a set of $50 bunkbeds soured the whole expedition. But that particular sale did not advertise in the paper, I just happened to drive by it and stop. If I’d seen an advertisement for bunkbeds, I would have gone there first.

So now I’m hot, hungry, grumpy and have little to show for 90 minutes, 8 bucklings of children, and however many miles of driving. Grr.

Our spring break schedule has been… irregular. I’ve been having a great time sleeping until I’m ready to get up. I actually think that getting enough sleep has been a huge factor in the amount of stuff I’ve been able to accomplish this week. Unfortunately when I sleep in, breakfast becomes catch-as-can. That generally throws the rest of the meal schedules off as well. The lack of schedule is hardest on Patches. I haven’t put him to bed at all this week. I keep finding him asleep in front of a movie. One night I even discovered that he’d crawled into my bed an fallen asleep. He put himself to bed when he was tired. It makes me a little sad and guilty. The kids deserve a true bedtime with stories and talking.

I definitely need to have a plan for summer.

Garage sale season has begun. Actually it began several weeks ago, but I’ve been too busy to pay attention. Since I need to clothe my children for the next year I really needed to start going and today I ventured forth in search of a sale. I took Kiki, her friend, Gleek, and Patches along for the trip. That’s more children than I usually want to take, but since they all had their own money it was less painful than I expected. The first sale was a bust for everyone except Gleek who fell in love with an anklet and toe ring. The second sale had something for everyone. The last sale only had a puzzle for Patches and an educational moment for Kiki and her friend. The education came courtesy of a box full of “Urinal deoderant cakes.” As we got back into the car Kiki told me about the box and asked what they were for. I got to explain what a urinal is, what it is used for, and why someone might want to use deoderant cakes for it. The girls were both fascinated and grossed out.

We came back to the house where Kiki and her friend went for another round of “The Queen’s Necklace” and I proceeded to clean out the family van. The van had not been vacuumed since sometime late last fall. This meant that the layer of crumbs and wrappers was thick. I hauled three grocery bags of garbage, two loads of toys, and a vacuum cleaner full of crumbs out before I was done. Now the car is all clean and pleasant again. Yay.

The rest of the afternoon frittered away and now I’m headed into the evening hours. Since all the kids stayed up way too late last night I intend to put them to bed on time. Spring break is nice, but I need to start reasserting regular sleeping habits so that the return to school on Monday isn’t too much of a shock to the system.

I’ve spent some time this week pondering the upcoming summer schedule. I have to find ways to put structure into the days. If I don’t have structure, nothing gets done. Fortunately I’m much better at self-imposing structure than I used to be. I’ll probably write up a summer plan in here eventually, but right now all the possibilities are loose in my head bumping around and waiting to be made into a real plan.

Well, the fairy houses came out quite well. The greenery will look wilted and dry in short order, but the structures are sound enough that new greenery can be supplied whenever the kids are in the mood. I may need to make one for Patches too. Although I suspect any “fairy house” I make for him will be more likely to be populated by cars and vehicles than by winged people. Kiki’s fairy house sports a peaked roof, a clothes line, and a “for sale” sign. Apparently her fairies are moving soon. Gleeks fairy house has a flat roof, a single stick for a “door”, and a nest bed inside made of grass clippings. Gleek clipped the grass herself with a pair of scissors. Cutting grass was facinating for both Gleek and Patches. They sat there snipping away for 30 minutes or more. I had visions of them snipping the whole lawn short. But somehow I don’t think “even” is something they could manage and they simply don’t have the persistence to do it all. More is the pity.

When the evening grew too dark and cold for fairy houses, Kiki and her friend started hanging around in the kitchen at loose ends. I took the opportunity to grab my brand new game called “The queen’s necklace” by Days Of Wonder. This game arrived just this morning in a package from the wonderful Hawklady. The three of us sat down and became gem merchants trying to out sell each other. I’d never played the game before and so we were all learning together. Unfortunately at 33 I absorbed the rules and strategies a lot more quickly than the girls did. I walloped them. I hadn’t played the game enough to know how not to win. Yes I throw games in favor of my kids sometimes. It is more important to me that gaming be a fun experience than that it be challenging. The next time I play, I’ll be in teaching mode where I’ll discuss strategies with the girls. I’ll help them quickly come up to speed on how to play the game. Once I’ve done that, no holds are barred and I can play full out. We’ve reached that stage with other games like Star Munchkin and half the time the kids beat me.

Right now the girls are watching Phantom of the Opera. Niether girl had seen it before. At first I sat down with them, but I discovered that with an expert sitting right there, they were constantly asking questions about motivations and other more random things. Most of what they asked would get answered later and was supposed to be a mystery. I decided to find something else to do and let them muddle through by themselves. Judging from the reactions I’m hearing, they’re doing fine and enjoying the movie.

Next I get to make them go to bed. Whee.

Eleven years old is still young enough to hear the siren call of pretend play, but it is also old enough that kids question whether they should heed that call. Eleven is an in between age. In Bedknobs and Broomsticks it is called “the age of not believing” and a whole song is devoted to the topic. For me at age Eleven all pretend play came abruptly to an end when I tried to involve a friend in an imagined game and she told me it was stupid. Never after that was I able to pretend unselfconsciously. I lamented the lost ability to pretend so well that I could truly see and believe what I imagined. After age 11, I fed my desire to pretend by writing stories, which was a socially acceptable way to live in imaginary worlds. As an adult I’ve come to learn of SCA and Larping and conventions which all provide formats for adults to play in worlds of their own creation. (This phenomenon is wonderfully chronicled in the song Rich Fantasy Lives on an album sung by Rob Balder, writer of the webcomic Partially Clips.)

Kiki turns Eleven this year. I’ve noticed her reluctance to play pretend games. With her siblings and younger friends she can seamlessly fall into imaginary play. With her peers it is much harder. The girls will look at each other and be interested in playing, but they fear being ridiculed. To pretend is risky in a world where today’s friends become tomorrow’s enemies. I’ve made a fortunate discovery though. Given the right structure, 11 year olds can still play pretend. I give them a box of scraps and sewing supplies and they can create a game about being seamstresses. I give them a cooking project and they can be bakers. The key seems to be providing an activity where they can just slide into pretending while neither of them are paying attention.

Today Kiki’s friend from school came over for a sleep over. This friend is very important to Kiki, but she isn’t sure how to relate without pretending. Formerly all her games have had a strong element of pretend. I decided to provide an activity that would open a door for pretend. So a couple of hours before the friend arrived I gathered Gleek, Patches, and Kiki. We went outside to build fairy houses in one of my flowerbeds. Fortunately my yard yeilds a plentiful supply of sticks and dead weeds from last year. We also had a plentiful supply of honeysuckle vine from yesterday’s project. I built a house for Gleek and then helped Kiki with the structure of her house. Just as the roof was built, Kiki’s friend arrived. Now they are out there happily furnishing and building rock paths. I don’t know if they’ll pretend, but it’s kind of hard to not use your imagination when you’re building a house for a fairy out of yard trash.

The weather finally provided me with a day warm enough to get oustide and do yardwork. This was good. Only now I am sore because all my weed pulling muscles atrophied over the winter. The highlight of the day was finding a hornet’s nest the size of a bowling ball. Fortunately it was abandoned. The nest itself was beautiful. Howard posted pictures of it: http://howardtayler.livejournal.com/159863.html It is hard to see in the picture the the entire thing is a swirl of differing shades of brown and gray. It is amazing to look at and unnerving to touch.

More yardwork tomorrow. I’ve got to get things under control before the busy hits.