Date: January 5th, 2010
Cate: House-of-Chaos, family, life the universe and everything, news, personal
Cate: House-of-Chaos, family, life the universe and everything, news, personal
Posts Tagged family
“Deck the Halls” at Stan Hywet
Akron is home to many things: rubber, LeBron James, the Zips, DEVO… Stan Hywet:
Stan Hywet Hall & Gardens is Akron’s only National Historic Landmark and Save America’s Treasures project. It is accredited by the American Association of Museums.
It’s a wonderful place and I’ve spent many hours wandering the gardens, conservatory and house.
During the winter holidays Stan Hywet holds an event called “Deck the Halls” and it’s a beautiful display of lights and decorations. On Saturday, December 6, 2009 Clan Darrington went to the annual pilgrimage of the display:
Homemade Butter!?!
Can we, at the Darrington Tiny House-of-Chaos make our own butter? I bake bread, but butter too?!? Oh, heaven: From Libby at ExoSkeleton Caberet:
Guns…or Butter?
from exoskeleton cabaret by libby
Holy Hot Pink Hummas, Batman…
From Libby at ExoSkeleton Cabaret:
No, really–not Photoshop. My hummus is that fuchsia. It matches my head.
Mittens the Kitten – In a dress
This is the new Chaos Kitty, Mittens… She’s wearing a pink frilly Build-A-Bear dress. Welcome Mittens…
ChaosKitty: Lucifer
This is one GOOOOOD LOOKIN’ kitty. Mee-yow!
How to Lure Wasps Away
From Clean Air Gardening by blair on August 14, 2009
Here’s an easy way to keep wasps and bees from bugging you while you’re outdoors. Take an empty plastic soda bottle and cut off the top. Poke two holes in the top, one on either side of the opening, then invert the top so that the opening is pointed down. Fasten a long, sturdy string through the holes, so that it loops from one side of the top to the other. Then put the top back into the bottle upside down so that it acts as a funnel, securing it with duct tape. Next, pour some sugar water into the bottle, and hang it in an out-of-the way corner of your yard. The wasps and bees will be attracted to the sugar water, leaving you alone.
Mia’s first “unaccompanied minor” flight
I did it. I did it without having an aneurysm or running after the plane screaming like a crazy woman.
Yesterday I took Mia to CAK airport and let her get on a non-stop flight to Denver, CO without me. Her first “unaccompanied minor” flight to have a weeklong vacation with her dad’s parents and all of their five grandchildren.
She’s been really excited for this trip. There was no reason to not let her go. So I muscled-up and did it.
Thanks to BG who kept me occupied and busy while my kid was in the air and thanks to flightview.com which let me track that airplane from CAK to DEN. And thank you for Verizon and Virgin cell phone service so I can be a neurotic mom while she’s away.
oh…they grow up so quickly.
Damn…but emotions are unmanagable
Sometimes…just sometimes I get hit by these waves of drowning emotion. I’ve read up and learned myself to know that this is all temporary. That “God grant me the serenity, to accept the things I cannot change. The courage to change the things I can. And the wisdom to know the difference.”
Right. I could change this. Really, I could. But I shouldn’t. I know this. I should just let it be and keep my damn mitts off of it and say the serenity prayer a million times.
It’ll get better. This is just a wave and I’m just journaling to get through that way.
I have a baby due this Friday, June 12, 2009. A baby I desperately wanted to have. A baby I miscarried in November. I felt dead after that happened. In a small, misperceived way, I felt the baby’s father was part of the cause of the miscarriage. I know it was what it was…but inside…my “other” mind recalls the conversation that happened 10 minutes before I began to miscarry, and I feel he had some responsibility for it.
Stupid. I know. We got counseling, not for the loss of the pregnancy, but because we were at each others necks all the time. Our communication skills royally sucked. I felt drained and I don’t know what he felt but he said I was always being unfair and trying to make him be something he didn’t want to be.
We never really nailed out the details.
But there was love.
Real love. Love like I’ve never felt.
I think he’s my other half. But I have no idea why we can’t talk through things and every damn thing being an issue. I learned to tippy-toe around things. I really tried everything I thought was possible. But still, every few days there was a blow-up. Every few days there was another notch on the ugly things we said to each other. I saw the movie “Hancock” and I thought that might be like us. Two incredibly powerful beings who love and adore each other….we’re madefor each other. But who couldn’t be in each others presence for more than 24 hours without causing BOTH of us to lose our clarity, focus and power.
It’s stupid, I know.
But there it is. I’m not scared of being stupid. I’m scared of losing my opportunity to grow and learn and develop.
I know I need space. I know he needs space. But what do I do with this stupid yearning for my Kismet. For my completion. “I am divided for Love’s sake, for chance of union.” Patients, that’s what I keep telling myself. But when I get the chance and I can’t even stay on an even keel. When he doesn’t even seem to realize the missteps he participated in. I don’t think I’ve heard him say “sorry for…” one time in this relationship. I’ve been taught that when you make an amend, you make it without wanting to hear “I’m sorry” from the other party. You clean up your side of the street.
But if he’s my other half, why can’t he see like I can see?
I don’t know. It’s a moot issue and I’m just ranting now. Venting. Trying to get it out so that I can stop sobbing and get back to life, parenting, work and all the other things I need to maintain while processing these complicated feelings.
I wanted more than anything to be with him and to have our baby together, this Friday or some day around that point. I’m going back home to mark that date, alone. To honor all the things that potential could have been, if we could have just found a way…
Buddhism: Your Daily Meditation
A family is a place where minds come in contact with one another. If these minds love one another the home will be as beautiful as a flower garden. But if these minds get out of harmony with one another it is like a storm that plays havoc with the garden. – Buddha
Mia reveals she’s a vampire
Originally uploaded by chinagrrrl
A video, taken by my 10 year old daughter, while alone in her room. She does *lots* of these where she videos (using a camera she didn’t know recorded sound!) and talks, as if she’s recording an expose for television.
In this one…she claims a red ink-stain, where the Chaos cats knocked a whole bottle of red ink onto the side of the sofa, is BLOOD…from her LAST VICTIM!!!
I love it!
MiaRecords_P&Ckissing
Originally uploaded by chinagrrrl
My daughter, Mia, is learning how to use a digital camera. I’ve given her my old Cannon to play with and she’s always folling us around and snapping hundreds of pictures and taking dozen of videos. Here she is in Mama’s bedroom where P. and China are innocently discussing various accupressure points (…really!!!)
What we didn’t realize is that the digital Elph has *SOUND*!!! Wow! Technology.
Mia in the Purple Bra
This is a photo from 2002. My daughter was three and I was in the bathroom taking a shower. When I come out…there she is, wearing one of my strapless bras which she’s tied around her chest! Hand on the hips and just SMILING!!!
Oh man! I’m going to be in SUCH trouble when she becomes a teen!
More on “Daddy/Daughter Date Nite”
Some more photos from my Flick’r account on Mia and P’s trip to “Daddy/Daughter Date Nite”. She was over the moon!
House of Chaos Cats
I’ve talked about the House of Chaos, where I live, and the Chaos Cats. Three bad cats; Griffin, Lucifer and Felize. Here are some images of the clan feline:
Chaos Cats on the Sofa
Chaos Cats on the Bed
What happens on a snow day…
Last Friday, December 19th, my nine-year-old daughter’s school reported a snow day. Cool for her, because she gets an extra day of winter vacation. Not-so-cool for me…because I still have to go to work. My beau, P, told me that since he had the day off, that he could stay at my place and watch her so she didn’t have to go to the hideous child-care center all day.
Very cool. That means video games, home cooked food and general rest and relaxation, right!!!
He asks if there is anything around the house that needs done and I tell him that a load of laundry through the wash might be nice.
During the day I send TXT messages and call every now and again, just to make sure all is progressing smoothly. The end of the year is a very busy time in my line of work and I had meetings pretty much clogging up most of the day.
But the “Phone-of-Doom” keeps me pretty connected. It can receive and send not only phone calls, but TXT, MMS, email from various accounts and alien signals. Going into a 2 hour and 30 minute meeting I TXT a status call to P:
“Everything still going smoothly”
About half-way through a very tense meeting, where coffee-cups are being slammed onto tabletops in frustration and eyebrows are flying and eyes are rolling I get a little buzz on my phone. It whispers to me “MMS message from P” I say “View” and this picture comes up: 
I can see it’s one of my “Shadowpeople” wall sculptures…but why is it curvy? I text back “What is that?”
I’m informed that they are dressing up my Shadowpeople…my dark guardians from the abyss and Hell realms, in my underwear.
Needless to say…the dark guardians were not amused. But it waspretty funny. Reminds me of when someone told me about Lon Milo Duquette evoking the Goetic spirits into Pokemon form. Little cartoon character versions of the Solomonic demons. Nice…but make sure you never mispronounce or stutter that true name. I’m sure that payback would be, most certainly, a bi-a-tch!
Happy Solstice and Yule and all that!
Brady’s – Unemployment [012202]
1/22/2002 10:15:09 AM
Sitting at Brady’s, trying to figure out what the next phase of the game is. I know that going back to corporate America would be only a temporary solution. The chronic itching has begun and I have to stay focused to know that this is only the first gentle window of opportunity that my higher power has provided to me to get off my lazy, corn-fed ass and GET MOVING. DO SOMETHING. I have the passion inside me that doesn’t seem to come equipped as standard equipment on all humans. Just in the simple web page that I’ve finally united to show both my personal work and my creative juices I’ve had comment after comment asking how I have the courage to write the way that I do. Make art on the subjects that I cover. It’s so natural to me. All of the things that others seem to think are so brave are the things that I have to scrunch inside myself so that it doesn’t come pouring forth at the board meetings.
That isn’t the way that I want to live. No sir.
But I have “responsibilities.” I’m not sure how I even have a conscious to know about such things, but I do. Can’t spend time wondering how or where it came from, it’s here now, so what do we do with it? I have two condos, all the crappy utilities, and phones, people who have expectations.
It used to be so easy to say, “Fuck it all.”
I think the reason that I’m so hesitant to do that again is because of the addiction thing. I have the ability to do everything TOO much. Way too much. Extremely too much. And I think that has spilled over into my responsible life. I’ve got too much.
Too much house. Too much stuff. Too much responsibility.
I don’t think, my daughter Mia would care one fluff if I decided to chuck it all and go into art. Live in a one-bedroom apartment. Work minimum wage.
But in a few years that may change. I was hoping that I could have something accomplished, and built and solidified by that time. I’m thinking that my best-laid plans can still run asunder due to no fault of my own.
I know what I am. I’m a passionate artist. So why am I making less and less art? My passion hasn’t gone anywhere
And there is this little tickle in the back of my head telling me that this is my opportunity to do something. Those if I choose to go back to the big brown box that is corpAm, that my passion and creativity may dissipate, wanes and turn into the drivel. I’ve seen people who stifle their natural talents and choose that safe road. I don’t want that to be the legacy I leave behind.