If you're freaky and you like it say "Whee!"

Ever'body say "Whee!"

"Whee!"

Big Man, Mr. Three, Train Man, Big Friend, Big Friend's Little Sister, and Girl Friend

Bob: Kid magnet

Kid magnet

Big Man, Girl Friend, Mr. Three, and Train Man (aka "Juicy") decompressing after a tough day playing the in hay maze, exploring the Boo Barn, picking apples, and getting friction burns on the hay slide.

Ol' Chalk-face

Ol' Chalk-face
Originally uploaded by pwilnyc.

Hangover Street

Hangover Street
Originally uploaded by pwilnyc.

It's the late 80's, you can tell by the hair. It's Easter, you can tell by my dress. I'd say it's the first beer of the day after a late night, and there isn't a person in this crowd over 25. Joe and I had just started dating, and we clearly had a lot to say to each other.

Someone Googled a guy who isn't in this picture (he was in Colorado at the time) and wound up here and left a very nice comment, and I'm pretty sure she's the girl in the shorts.

If that's you, hi Cobi!

UPDATE: No, actually I know exactly when this picture was taken and why I'm in that dress. It was 1988 and Bob was visiting his brother Joe in D.C. (yes Bob husband Bob). I left work on Friday, dressed like that, drove to D.C., made eyes at my future (12 years in the future) husband across one of Joe's famous deck parties, spent the night there, then drove back to Baltimore because my boyfriend Joe and his roommates were having a barbecue the next day. And this would be the barbecue.

Regardless of the fact that I'm having a pretty good time in this picture, that night in D.C. pretty much ruined me for any other boy. I bombed back up 95 devastated. But he was leaving the next day and he lived in Seattle.

It took many such meetings (this wasn't the first) to convince us that we should throw over our otherwise lives in order to be together. Come to think of it, even then, our otherwise lives had ditched us first. How stubborn can you be?

The Underappreciated-Second-Children playgroup

The underappreciated 2nd child playgroup

We LOVE these kids. Look at them, aren't they lovable? Sweet dispositions, and they play well together, and they're SO affectionate! We cut our teeth on their older siblings, and their older siblings cut their teeth on us, you better believe it.

So now that the older siblings are in Kindergarten, sometimes we get these little doll babies together so that they can play cooperatively, share all toys, and take breaks to come over and hug us. The rest of the time, they play quietly on the floor so that mommy can check her email.

"To the memory of little Bernice"

A Little Pink Rose
copyright 1912 by Carrie Jacobs-Bond

(con molta espressione)

A little pink rose in my garden grew,
The tiniest one of all;
'Twas kissed by the sun,
caressed by the dew,
Oh little pink rose in my garden.
Oh, little pink rose, 'twas you!

[You see where this is going, don't you?]

Oh, little pink rose of your mother's heart!
Have you faded, and gone away?
Has the Gardener gathered my little pink rose,
For His loveliest garden today?
Did He need one more blossom of your size and hue,
And was that the reason the Gard'ner chose you?

Oh, little pink rose in your mother's heart!
Have you faded, and go-one away?

Gah! Found this gem in a big box of old sheet music that was in Bob's mom's house. I can't stand this morbid dead-baby crap, but I must say I love the accusation that GOD KILLED THE BABY for aesthetic reasons - God the Mad Ikebana Florist, that's a new one.

It made me think of those wackos with their "reborn" baby dolls - you know, very skilled and probably very deranged women who take high-end baby dolls, eviscerate them, and rebuild them from the eyelashes up. It's creepy. Here's one. The way that she describes every detail of the process, stripping the factory color and then applying paint in thin layers, rooting each hair, replacing the eyes, all this painstaking ritual - you know what it reminds me of?

Serial killers.

I mean, I like babies - now. Now that I've had a couple. But back when I didn't have any, I didn't really get the appeal. Even these "reborn" "angel" bleah bleah things aren't particularly attractive for the most part. Check this one out:


Compare to:

Big Man, 1 month old

Similar pose, similar age, though Big Man's got a mouth like a coin slot and the other one's got those poofy Shiloh-Jolie-Pitt lips. They both look pretty constipated. The fact is, a baby's mostly great because it's alive and warm and soft and is GOING TO GROW UP INTO SOMETHING MORE INTERESTING! Ok it's wild that it's so small and yet is still a human, that's also a neat thing about babies. But these aren't.

See? Not human, and not going to grow up. Not even warm. Creeping me out utterly.

Oh and you know what? When I checked A Little Pink Rose on eBay (I'm grossed-out, but I am not above making a buck on it), someone's selling a inkjet copy of that cover for five bucks. "Shabby Chic." heh heh heh.

Reverse engineering

I'm experimenting with a blog for the Big Man's school library. I thought, for a start, we'd ask parents to write about their favorite children's book (oh so original but if it worked for RIF it can work for us).

I kicked it off by doing the exercise myself, and it turned out that I had a lot to say about From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler by E. L. Konigsberg. Goddamn book changed my life. So here's a less expurgated version of what will go in the school library's blog (if we decide to do it).
This is my favorite book of all time. In it, two kids, Jamie and Claudia, decide to run away from home. Since they're smart and practical (not to mention snobbish and greedy) and don't want to end up on a curb in Times Square, they plan to run away to a place that's indoors and has some of the comforts of home. They pick the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Isn't that great? That's a thought process that basically makes sense. And you can tell right off that this is not going to be your hijinky plot-driven pratfall novel - they don't run away to the circus, they run away to an art museum. E. L. Konigsberg writes great books, with sharp characters, but this is her genius work. An unpleasant, geeky girl with a violin case and an annoying little brother goes into an art museum - and that's the premise for a successful, beloved kids book? Dag.

What keeps this book going, and what fascinated me as a kid, is the view of the off-hours museum through Claudia's eyes. Claudia is a pretty dissatisfied kid, and in the peace and beauty and mystery of the museum, she has a chance to get out of her crabby self and become absorbed in the beautiful, weird, storied objects that surround her. She gets to touch and examine precious things that are usually off-limits, and in the process, one object stops her in her tracks - a small sculpture of an angel.

When it was my turn, my object was Cupid and Psyche by Jacques Louis David.

I came around a corner in the Cleveland Museum of Art, looking for something to write a paper on for ARTH103, and this baby popped me right in the eye. It's enormous, for one thing, and very detailed, almost realistic. Cupid is climbing out of bed, smirking - yeah, he tapped that - and now he's trying to get out of there without waking her. I believe I met this painting before I met Bob, but this is kind of what Bob looked like when he was 19, when we met (minus the smirk, he would insist I point out).

Claudia wants to learn everything there is to know about "her" angel, and in the process discovers something that only the titular Mrs. Frankweiler knows (looking back, Mrs. Frankweiler had to be a registrar - registrars are consistently the coolest, geekiest people in all art museums I've come across). Though the angel isn't really Claudia's, this secret knowledge is. The process of discovery, the possession of knowledge, and her intimacy with the object change her, showing her what is best and noblest in her nature.

When I had my Art History classes in the basement of the Cleveland Museum, I would leave through a set of very high, very heavy double doors. I'd run down the wide marble steps that led to the Lagoon. I was usually the only person there, and at those moments, I always felt like Claudia - I felt like I lived in that museum, and that all the treasures inside of it were mine. Eventually, I spent so much time with those objects that, like Claudia, I did own them in a way. I sat in front of paintings and tapestries and Japanese woodcuts for hours, desperately hoping to find enough to say about each object to fill a ten-page paper.

I am not a spiritual person. Maybe I'm the antithesis of spiritual - I'm a physical person. I believe in the transformative power of knowledge, and I believe that firsthand observation is the best way to gain that knowledge.

When you can take time to absorb the textures and smells of an object, you can absorb its language, feel the actions that made it, and figure out which questions to ask. You can meet its maker.

Me, I know the political climate that Jacques Louis David painted in - I know why there are laurel leaves on Psyche's bed. I know what the missing letters in the Byzantine tapestry were, and I know what happened when the weaver was running out of room on the right side.

Don't get me wrong - it's not the trivia itself that I groove on. What I like is the way you can decode details of the artist's world backwards from the details of the work.

When I finally had a chance to decide what to do with my life, I chose to live in museums, like Claudia. That book showed me a place filled with intrigue and stories, a place where you could figure out things that nobody else knew.

I have spent a lot of time in Claudia's museum, both as a student and working there, and she was right -- knowing that place feels like having a big cool famous friend. It was a privilege every single time I went into the workrooms of any museum I worked in, from Birmingham to Brooklyn to Baltimore.

Maybe if I'd read a different book, a good book about a scientist kid, for example, I might have been a botanist (except I still would have flunked Calculus). But I read From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, and it changed my life.

sinus trouble

At the time, I was irritated that Bob had put his hands up like this as I was snapping the picture, but now I think it's funny.

action heroes

I'd be happier if this photo were minus the squirt guns, but both smiling and looking at the camera - I can call it a day.

Oddly, like the minute I posted this photo on Flickr, I got this comment:

"ei cine sunt, verisori de-ai tai sau copiii dintr-o curte???Simpatici oricum :)"

I finally figured out that the language is Romanian, but when I threw it through a Romanian-English translator, I got

"her who sunt verisori from - of tai or children tooth curte??? Simpatici either"

I could probably do better treating it like it's Latin - off the top of my head I would get:

"Who are they, family members of you or children from court? Either, I like them"

I assume "children from court" refers to their guns and the Big Man's striped pajamas. I am surprised how miserable the online translators were with Romanian. I am surprised how similar Romanian is to Latin. And who knows how this Romanian kid came across this picture?!

at the Lauraville Fair

The scarecrow we made together, and a great expression.