Every night I read Erik a book and tell him a made up story. He is a strange child in that he refuses to listen to the same story twice. He won’t read the same book twice, either. He cries if he realizes that we’ve read all our library books. Don’t most kids like to read the same thing 29348484839339 times? He did when he was a toddler. I could probably still quote you all these little board books about school buses. But now it’s all about the new.
Most of the time my stories are really lame. I’ve gone through all the standard fairy tales that I can remember, so I’m left with my own imagination. Sometimes I pull from movie plots and make them kid friendly. Erik is going to be in for some major confusion the first time he watches Princess Bride or Forest Gump. Which, by the way, I hate. But Erik heard me say “Run, Forest, run” and wanted to know what that was all about. He really liked a story about a guy just running and running and running.
Every once in a while I come up with a story that’s really quite good. Last night was one of those nights. It was about a snotty princess who ate cupcakes all day. One day her baker was sick and she was really angry because she couldn’t have cupcakes. She went out on a walk and met a little girl who told her to suck it up and then the little girl went to the castle and taught her how to make her own cupcakes.
That’s at least as good as half the books I read to the child.
Problem: picture books for kids are really made by the pictures. The words are important, true, but it is all about the pictures. How cute would it be to have the princess in the story be a little girl who is obviously just wearing dress up clothes and her castle is just a regular ol’ house and all that? I can picture it, but no way can I draw it.
We read a book a few weeks ago called something about an Ordinary Day. The words were all very boring. Mary got up in the morning. Mary ate breakfast. Mary rode to school. The pictures, though, they were wonderful. I can’t remember the particulars, but the girl rode a dinosaur to school and flew around on a big bird. Stuff like that.
I also told Erik a series of stories about a big brown dog who wants to do good deeds, but everyone thinks he’s a wolf. He tries to tell these three little pigs that their houses aren’t safe, and even proves it by blowing two of them down, but they just run from him. He tried to help a little girl deliver cookies to her ailing grandmother and she just ran away.
I have ideas. I just have no time for execution or skills to make them come to life. I know many publishers provide an illustrator, but so much of the picture book is about the right picture that I’m not sure how you would even start to write a children’s book without drawing skills.
Yesterday I was a rabble rousing community organizer.
You probably don’t remember, but a few months ago I sent an e-mail to our HOA manager about our play area. The trash can had been removed and the rocking squirrel was broken. They immediately came out and replaced the trash can and put a big cone over the jagged piece of metal left by the rocking squirrel. One of the boys, Mr. Safety Patrol, was impressed when he found out I had e-mailed them and they came out and fixed it. He asked me to e-mail and ask if they could put in some swings and a twirly slide. I never did because it didn’t seem likely.
A couple of days ago they came out and replaced the rocking squirrel with a cute little pony.
Mr. Safety Patrol remembered what I said about the e-mail and asked what they said about swings. Ummmm. Whoops.
I ended up telling the kids that if they really wanted a new park they needed to get as many kids as possible to write letters and I would mail them in for them. I thought that would be the end of it, but Mr. Safety Patrol went and got a load of paper and a bunch of pens. I helped give them some direction about what to say and I now have 12 letters to send in. The letters are very varied. Everything from a 4 year old’s drawing of a perfect park to a really nicely written letter by a tweenager, along with a chart of brainstormed ideas. Have I ever mentioned that I love my neighborhood?
Elsa is feeling much better. I haven’t been puked on in over 24 hours. I even got a little sleep last night. Things are looking up! Except for the copious amounts of snot running out of my nose. That’s not so up.
Beck suggested I get Carbonite for all my back-up needs. I looked into it and am going to do it. Seems like it is well worth $59/year! I know technically I can and should just back up my own files like a fancy computer person, but let’s get real. That’s not going to happen.
Thankfully I had a fit of daughterly guilt in July and uploaded a ton of pics to Wal-Mart and had them sent to my mom’s local Wal-mart. She always gets a thrill when she gets a call from their photo department. I’ve not used their photobook services, but I guess I’m about to find out if they are as nice as Shutterfly books. I have all our Vancouver pics on Flickr, so I guess I need to figure out if I can make a book or easily download pics from there. Sadly, the picture of Elsa licking her chicken paprikash plate is lost forever.
I finished two things that were stressing me out big-time yesterday. I finally remembered “templates!” for the flyer I had to make, and that helped. I used to be pretty good at making stuff, but it requires a lot of time and fiddliness and I don’t have time or patience any more. In fact, yesterday my patience were worn so thin that when a girl knocked on my door I opened it and said “I’m closed” before not-quite slamming it shut. There are two girls in the neighborhood that have no boundaries. They’d already been in my house asking for food, but I kicked them out. I’d had enough, so I was done. They wanted to use my bathroom! Seriously? They live three houses down. They do not need to use my bathroom. I think I need to get a big sign for my door that says “I’m closed. Do not knock. You can’t borrow Erik’s bike, have food, use the bathroom, or get a drink*. Go find your own mommy, daddy, auntie, or babysitter.”
Some days I have patience. Some days I do not. I definitely do not have patience for wild hooligans who live three houses down and seem well fed. If only they were well mannered. . .
On the agenda for today: new library books, haircut for Erik (this will be almost impossible because he decided he wants “big hair” like his hero: see below), Airborne for me, and maybe a nice new shirt for the first day of school for Erik. Except he refuses to wear any shirts with buttons and if I let him pick a new shirt, it will just be another Star Wars/Transformers/Phineas and Ferb/Avengers t-shirt. And what’s so special about that, my friends?
*I only give food and water to the crack house kids. They claim the water in their sink is brown. I’d rather give them a cup of water than have them go home and drink a soda.