Tag Archives: kids

Bedtime Cookbook

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How far shall we flash back this fine Friday?  More than a lifetime for some of you, and just a drop in the time bucket for the rest of us.

What is more delightful than two recently bathed children with shiny clean hair all ready for bed?  Sitting together, sharing, being super good so bedtime will be delayed.

This was not a rare moment.  My mom often remarked on how well my kids got along with each other.  That changed for a while in their teens, but really, underneath the growing pains, they have always remained good friends.

I know it looks like the reflection of a halo on my daughters head, but don’t let it fool you.  She had her un-angelic moments.  And I never realized my son had such expressive toes.  I think that might be our polar bear hide on the wall in the background.  Hard to believe now we ever had such a thing.  But this is the NWT in the late 1970’s.  We didn’t know any better.  And that awful brown colonial furniture was in every government house.

One other thing I noticed in this faded photo is that the book they’re reading is not a kids book (although they had lots of those I swear). It appears to be a cookbook.  My poor children.  Is this what I gave them instead of reading them a bedtime story?  I can imagine the two of them pointing at the pictures saying – what is this yummy dish called?Mom has never made anything this awesome for us!  Maybe she doesn’t know how!  Maybe she doesn’t really love us!

Hey, they’re alive and clean.  Looks like it was a good parenting day to me.

Sharing My World 25

Share Your World – 2015 Week #14

What type of music relaxes you the most or do you prefer silence?

Sometimes I think there’s no such thing as relaxing music.  For me it is never in the background, no matter how soft and sweet.  It feels intrusive.  It gets in my head and interferes with everything else.  I hope that proves that there are actually a few things in there.  I especially don’t like music playing when I’m on hold on the phone or loudly blaring at me when I’m shopping.  Or when the next door neighbors’ son starts his car in the morning. That kid cannot possibly have much left of his ear drums. Recorded water sounds (rainfall, waterfalls, waves) and weird and random nature noises just make me nervous.  A harp makes me feel sad.  Piano music grates on my nerves because I used to play piano and I am constantly listening for mistakes.  Even the sound of somebody humming annoys the hell out of me.

Okay.  I guess the answer here is that I prefer silence.  Or white noise, like a monotonous fan, which filters out everything else.  I will probably be the happiest old deaf person you have ever seen.

Show us a two of your favorites photographs.  Explain why they are your favorite.   If you are not a photographer, think of a two favorite scenes in your life and tell us about them.

Two of my favourite things are my adult children who both have families of their own now, although I still often think of them like this:

popsicle kids

The best place to enjoy a drippy popsicle is wherever the juicy stains are least likely to be noticed.

paint your brother

I apologize if the sight of this furniture damaged some of your brain cells.  If colour made noise, this couch would probably give you a migraine.  It came with the government housing in the late 1970’s in Inuvik, N.W.T.  It was not my fault.  My daughter painting my son was also not my fault.

What is your favorite tradition? (family tradition, church tradition, whatever)

It doesn’t matter what we’re celebrating or where or why,  just being with family is what’s important.  As long as they don’t have their music turned up too loud.

If you could go back and talk to yourself at age 18 what advice would you give yourself?  Or if you are younger than 25 what words of wisdom would you like to tell yourself at age 50?

When I was 25 I could not imagine ever being 50. Now that I’m well past 50 I can’t for the life of me remember what I was up to at the age of 18.  Maybe I would just tell that girl to enjoy the music, because one day she’s going to kind of hate it.  I would also let her know her kids are going to one day paint each other for no apparent reason other than finding it funny.  She should laugh too. There can never be too much laughter in your life.

Bonus question:  What are you grateful for from last week, and what are you looking forward to in the week coming up?

I love Netflix when they send me notifications that some crazy thing I watched for 15 minutes 5 years ago has new episodes.  Because how would I know that otherwise?  I love that I can take time off from writing or painting or thinking and sit down and watch six episodes in a row of whatever I want, putting off what I actually should be doing for another time when I might feel like getting it done.

I don’t know what I’m looking forward to other than putting something on a really beautiful background I painted. I promise I will post it soon.  I don’t know why I’m taking so long to decide on something.  Maybe I’m afraid of ruining it. Maybe procrastination is just my all time favourite thing ever.  I can almost hear my 18-year-old self yelling at me from my past to get the hell off my ass and get some things accomplished before there are no years or months or days left.  Sorry, my fan is on high and I can’t understand you.  Netflix sends me an email.  Maybe try that in a couple of decades.

share-your-world2

Ask A Silly Question

“Let yourself be silently drawn by the strange pull of what you really love. It will not lead you astray.” ~Rumi

Publicity photo of The Supremes from The Ed Su...

Publicity photo of The Supremes from The Ed Sullivan Show. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Daily Prompt:  When you were 10, what did you want to be when you grew up? What are you now? Are the two connected?

Art class was one of the things I loved most about elementary school, a close runner-up to reading everything I could get my hands on and making up long and involved (very loosely based on reality) stories of my own.  I remember the day our teacher gave us big blank pieces of art paper and told us to paint a picture which illustrated the answer to the question “What do you want to be when you grow up?”

In my short little life so far I had been asked that question about a billion times and was really sick of the people pleasing answers I felt compelled to come up with in response to it.  I usually said whatever I thought was most likely to get the adult harassing me to smile and nod and then go away and pick on somebody else.  It was my experience that grown ups really didn’t care what you wanted to be when you grew up, it was just a thing they asked kids when they couldn’t think of anything else to say.

This art assignment was less structured than normal, almost like being asked to paint whatever popped into our heads. So here’s what popped into mine.

I painted a stage across the bottom and a beautiful sparkly gossamer curtain across the back with lines and lines of flowing folds.  On the stage stood a beautiful blonde woman in a gorgeous white evening gown which looked like a wedding dress without the veil.  So I added a couple of gigantic red roses and a bow for clarification.  In her hands she held a microphone attached to a long black cord that coiled off to one side and out of the picture.  This was back in the day when microphones could be taken off their stands allowing performers to walk around trying not to get tangled up in a bunch of wires.  The lady’s eyes were closed and her mouth was a big round red O taking up half her face. There were musical notes floating around above her head.   It was a beautiful picture and I was incredibly proud of it.  Because that was going to me – drop dead gorgeous, blonde, dressed to kill and singing my heart out on the Ed Sullivan Show.

So how did that work out for me?  Actually, not well.  I can’t sing.  I don’t look so great with blond hair – tried it once and didn’t have any more fun than I’d had as a brunette.  Never in my life have I owned or felt the urge to purchase such elaborate formal wear. Or one of those big poufy wedding dresses either. Red lipstick makes me look weird.  I have never used a microphone or done anything on a stage where I was the center of attention unless you count being handed a diploma. And Ed Sullivan died before I could be discovered.  If he was alive today he’d still be waiting.

Today I work in the medical field and wear a lab coat at work every day.  Hey – it’s white!  So that part of my vision of the future was bang on.  The rest, not so much. Even as the picture took form all those years ago I’m sure I knew it was just a silly dream and simply an excuse to paint a beautiful lady in a stunning dress.

I try to make a point of never, ever, asking a young child what they want to do with their lives.  How can they possibly know?  What a kid does know is what’s fun, what makes them laugh the hardest, what games they like to play, which books are the best to read.  They’ve got years and years to live and so many things to experience and even then their life work decisions may never be carved in stone.

Now I’d answer the question by saying simply that I just want to be happy.  There’s time enough to discover all the ways there are to make that happen.