Pointillist Life

My life is a mess. I don't say this melodramaticly. I think most people's lives are a mess. Entropy is a principle of physics, after all. Who can keep his life from disintegrating into a tangled mass of details, to do lists, and minutiae? That person is a mutant or a recluse or both. If you are willing to participate in society and its pressures, you've probably felt the pull to count your dollars, your minutes, your undone chores, and tally it all up to calculate the quality of your life. Our whole society is one giant vortex sweeping us up in this maelstrom of modernity. A hundred years ago, no one worried about being on time to the minute for an appointment, needed a Blackberry to keep their project lists, nor had to keep their personal finances straight with a spread sheet. It seems like modern life is sentiently designed to keep us confused about what matters. So if the messiness of life is close kin to physical law, why not embrace it? Case in point: you should see my kitchen countertops.

Why am I waxing philosophical about this? Not merely to annoy you, although that is a bonus. I introspect a lot without telling anyone about it. Most recently, I asked myself, "Why am I driven by certain things?" Why am I driven by laundry and dishes in the middle of the night? Okay, well, that's easy to answer: it's difficult to cook and dress when you can't find anything clean. But why am I driven by ad copy and flourescent store lighting to dislike my physique? When I look in the mirror at home, I usually feel well enough.

And why am I driven by unseen forces to think that I have to accomplish something other than keeping my family healthy and whole with my life? Why do I think I will have failed somehow if I never write a book, or publish some poems, or get my name printed next to the title "Ed?" When I look in my mental mirror, I'm content being a sometimes-crafting, house-keeping, kid-chasing, naturalist-dabbling, amateur-philosophizing, blogging library lacky.  

         

The upshot of all this is that I realized that what drives me most is the contrary philosophical urge to resist all this other stuff that's driving me. It's why I will stop at the side of any road anytime to take pictures of flowers and bugs, and it's partially why I have set aside Wednesday of every week for the boys' and my Once-A-Week Adventures. Because really, who cares about laundry, and editing, and looking bad in a bathing suit when you can take a few bucks and a few hours and create delight in small boys? If my life is going to be a mess, then I'd rather it be a mess somewhat like a Van Gogh painting, with lots of little bits of chicory-flower blue, Abraham-strawberry blonde, and Charlie-freckle brown.

Parky's Pirate Cove at Miami Whitewater Forest

If I get really close, my days look like a mess. But when I back up and gaze at my life, a picture resolves out of it. It's a picture I'm painting of lives, learning, and priorities; mine and hopefully theirs. I hope that my boys, when they're men, look back on days spent chasing butterflies and going to the wet playground,  and see that they were not days spent in hedonism, but rather days spent with them.

Water. See, it's wet!

No, I don't know why he's letting that cannon spray him in the head, either.

Abraham finds some shade.

Incoherent Ramblings of a Really Tired... Oh, Look, A Turtle!

Because I think it is an excellent practice in life to engage in as many daily excercises in futility as can be found, I stayed up until after 2 a.m. this morning trying to get ahead of the game with my housekeeping. You know who really bugs me? Efficient, organized mothers. Who are these wack jobs with their neatly groomed children, their lawnicures, their play dates, and their day-planners? Alien invaders, that's who. *subsides into disgruntled muttering*

 

Oh, where was I? Um, I folded laundry at 1 a.m. while watching the world's stupidest movie featuring the Rock. At least there was a joke about his head referencing Easter Island. That almost made it worth it. Now the betting pool can begin as to whether this laundry will actually make it into drawers and closets before being worn again... Hey, I just realized I'm blogging about laundry! Please don't sue me for damages if any of your loved ones fall into irreversible comas while reading this! I don't have any money anyway!

I had to get up this morning for work. Pesky work... I had to get up kind of early because I had to make crockpot venison and roasted fresh vegetables for lunch. Not my lunch. Joe's lunch. What? You don't get up at 6:30 a.m. after going to bed at 2 a.m. just to cook lunch? Wimp!

Hey, the vegetables turned out pretty good. I took one smallish zuchini, one smallish yellow squash, about six carrots, and about six potatoes, chopped them all up into largish pieces. Par-boil the carrots and potatoes. Toss all the veggies with about a 3/4 of bacon drippings or butter, some garlic salt, and a bag of Flavorite parmesan cheese. Bake at 400 degrees for... Heck, I don't know. Until it looks edible. Do this at 6:30 a.m. and the experience takes on a whole new degree of domesticity. It's like Thanksgiving in June!

On the way to work, I stopped to take a picture of a snapping turtle about a foot in diameter who had come out to the road to sun him or herself. I love snapping turtles. You get down at eye level to take their picture using your shoe for size comparison, and they turn towards you to kick your butt ve-e-e-e-ery slo-o-o-o-owly... I know, you don't do this sort of thing, but that's because you don't know what's really fun in life. Getting your Birkenstock bitten by a snapping turtle while holding up traffic is a great way to kickstart your day. Especially if it began with roasting vegetables at 6:30 a.m.

Postscript: If you're wondering what possible connection the photos have to the paragraphs they inhabit, the answer is none whatsoever. I'm really tired and I feel no compulsion at all to make sense. Thpbbt!

The children and the flowers

Are my sisters and my brothers.

Their laughter and their loveliness

Could clear a cloudy day...

(And no, that is not me behind Abraham. I look bad in a swimsuit, but not that bad...)

Cyrano DeButterfly

Whatever you do, don't make fun of his nose.

Congratulations Beth And Jon

We live on front porches and swing life away.

We get by just fine here on minimum wage.

If love is a labor, I'll slave 'til the end.

I won't cross these streets unless you hold my hand....

A Love Affair With Thistles

You're going to think I'm demented. You're right. But darn it, thistles are pretty and they have so much more character than many other flowers. A thistle is pretty, and it will kick your butt if you step on it, suckah! For that matter, Goldfinches like thistle seed. And look at this Musk Thistle growing with this Chicory. You can tell God had fun with that. So who cares if it's called a weed? That's what I want to know.

I don't suppose anyone would buy a hand made greeting card line featuring pictures of thistles and delightfully curmudgeony messages? Then I have a deep and abiding passion for milkweed. You'll never see any sissy geraniums growing straight up through blacktop, by George. And the butterflies like them. That has to be a sign of class. (See previous entry wherein butterfly voluntarily climbs up my pant leg and try to ignore my shameless self-aggrandizement.)

Wild onion sprouts some funky blooms too. And you can chop the whole thing up and put it on top of your baked potato. That could be a cafe theme! The Artsy Potato. You'd eat there, right? Don't tell me if you wouldn't.

Is that a silver birch off to the right there? I passed that thing driving in the morning, and I am not kidding: it looked like the silver tree that grew on the first day of Narnia in "The Magician's Nephew." If that is an obscure literary reference, well, that is not my fault. I've read the entire seven book series 20 times. Why haven't you?

Okay, well, besides drawing stares by stopping at the side of U.S. 27 to take the above pictures for you, I've been occupying my time this past week while Charlie was at Grandma's by harrassing Killdeer(s?) and stalking butterflies and other bugs as follows:

Kildeers are a Darwinian anomoly to me. In the days of foot travel, particularly when shoes were a luxury not necessarily afforaded by everyone, I can see how hiding this single egg in the stones would be a good idea. But honestly, it's time to adapt: now the only places you find rocks like this are roadsides, parking lots, and the desert. How are there still Kildeers in the world? Don't all their eggs get run over? It's not as if that whole "broken wing" trick lures away the 18-wheeler baring down on the nest. As a matter of fact, vis-a-vis the following insect pictures, I have to wonder that animal camouflage works at all...

 

This is the only buggy I tried to photograph who managed to hide from me, and then it was only because my zoom wasn't strong enough. What is the etymological world coming to?

Should Be Called Flutterby's

Having perused a lot of butterfly guides in recent history, I have concluded that all the really colorful ones are in Asia or the jungle. I like to show the boys cool bugs in the wild, but figuring I wasn't likely to get a chance to take them to Japan to see butterflies, I did the next best thing. I took them to the Krohn's Conservatory Butterfly Show in Cincinnati. If you think that taking two small children to see lots of fragile insects in a greenhouse during the hotest part of a June afternoon is a bad idea... phooey on you.

The first nifty thing about this trip was that I discovered a whole new part of Cincinnati that I never knew was there. How could I have lived in Cincinnati for as long as I did without discovering Eden Park!? It has a gigantic tower thingie the purpose of which I never really did figure and a scenic overlook from which you can see the whole Kentucky side of the Ohio River and a ginormous fountain and all kinds of fun places to wander. If a person is not averse to 700% humidity, the sky is the limit.

   

Krohn's Conservatory itself is open all year long: a free jungle paradise complete with a waterfall, turtles, and fairy houses. The fairy houses provided a fun opportunity for me to lie to a small child.

Me: Charlie, look: fairy houses!

Charlie: Are there real fairies in them?

Me: Sure! They're not here now because they're really shy and they hide when people are around.

Charlie: Where do they hide!?

Me: Under leaves and stuff.

Charlie *looking under all the tropical bushes*: I want to find them!

Me: Well, they're really fast too, and they zoom away before you can lift up the leaf.

Charlie: Why!? Do they think I'm gonna eat 'em?

Me *relenting*: I was just kidding, honey. There's no real fairies.

Charlie: Mom, were you teasin' me! That's mean!

There goes my mom-of-the-year award.

Anyway, this year's butteflies were from Japan, so the first room of the butterfly show contained no actual butterflies but, in a move designed to mistify small children, lots of little, tiny trees. Here's a picture of Charlie, not with flowers sprouting out of his head, but in front of a flowering bonsai. The expression on his face clearly communicates, "Mom, quit taking my picture with the little trees. I want to see butterflies already." Okay, okay, so into the butterfly room we go...

Our nature walks have been paying off. Charlie shows off his first passenger of the day, and his ability to be gentle with delicate creatures. The kids were allowed to pick the butterflies up on silk flowers provided by the show, but in this case, Charlie rescued this seemingly-injured fellow from the floor. Of course, then he wanted to keep it.

There were about 15-20 varieties of butterflies at the show. Some were more camera-shy than others. As you can see by the blurring in the photo there, this butterfly was saying, "I am a flower in the wind! These are not wings, they're quivering petals! Stop looking at me!" The striped one below page left practically posed for me, whereas the Morphos wouldn't sit still with their wings open. That awesome red, black, and yellow one was illusive, but I got him at last. Mwahahahaha... Ahem... anyway....

Did you know that what most people call a Monarch butterfly is actually a Viceroy? Where's Chancellor Palpatine? This is an actual Monarch butterfly:

Okay, I won't subject you to a species identification of every one of these. They were just pretty.

This little fella liked me so much he climbed up my leg to sit on me. He's lucky he didn't get squished because he tickled my ankle and I had one of those ack! reactions and almost slugged him...

Eventually, we got sweaty and hot and decided to visit the rainforest portion of the Conservatory to cool off. I'm only being a little bit facetious. Out there they had what I really hope was a bench and not a scupture because I told my kids to sit on it.

Then some obliging woman offered to take my picture with the boys by the waterfall. What she didn't know is that I'm the one who takes all the pictures for a reason. Hey, you'd look like that too if you'd just finished making two small boys look and not touch the butterflies for an hour and a half in a greenhouse room in June. See how we're color coordinated so that we know what group we belong to? I think I'm going to keep that idea from now on...

After we left the butterfly show, we had a picnic by a giant fountain called the Mirror Pool. This fountain is 1/3 mile around, and no, I didn't have enough sense not to walk all the way around it carrying a cooler with two small boys. But I did have enough sense not to let them climb in it, so maybe only their feet will fall off... There was a sign by the pool that said something about skating only when the flags are up. I feel a January day trip is in my future...