awkward stage

Dear Jannalyn,

Aren't you glad we got out of our awkward stages?

To commemorate this fateful time, I made you some Muddy Buddies, hurray!

I'm so glad you come back "home" now, to play cards and drink made-up-cocktails with me every night,

and for even bringing your sweet little pup with you.

Let's go through many other stages together, okay?

Love,

Ruth

Tell me: do you look back on your awkward stage fondly?

horses + children

These pictures are clearly from last weekend when it was sunny and 60 degrees, as it's currently raining jungle cats and wild dogs and the wind is blowing my hair up out of my barrettes today, but this is the only post I had saved in my drafts so it'll have to be a placeholder today. (See: I have no power with which to upload photos/blog at home)

Do you like horses? I still can't decide. I mean, of course I like them, but I don't know if I really REALLY like them. I don't think I would want to own one, or learn to ride one, or take care of one.

When I was little, my best friend Lauren had horses that she and her mom kept at a stable up the street. That's her, in the picture below, with her horse now. I'd often go to her riding lessons with them, following them around the stable with sugar cubes in my hands for the horses I thought were pretty. Her mom rode Max, and Lauren rode Huck. They'd take them out of their stalls and brush them till they shone and hook them up to all sorts of contraptions like bridles and lead ropes and stirrups and I'd stand by idly, watching. I distinctly remember being told that if you stand behind a horse, it will kick you. Hard. I used to make sure I left a five-foot radius between me and any horse's behind so as not to get knocked out. I was petrified.

I'd hang around outside the ring as Lauren had her lesson, watching her go in circles and getting distracted by butterflies and whinnying from the other, lonely horses from the stable. It looked pretty easy. But when she'd ride over to me after her lesson and ask if I wanted a ride, I'd usually decline. It was a feat just getting up there, anyway. The rare times I would accept, I'd hold on for dear life and slump from side to side awkwardly as Huck meandered his way around the ring one more time, impatiently, for a small girl who barely knew the difference between a trot or a canter or a gallop. I was pretty sure he wasn't doing any of those things, and that was fast enough for me. Visions of being bucked off and getting stepped on danced through my head (which actually happened to Lauren--I remember her ankle swelling to the size of a softball) so when I got down, I was usually very relieved.

Eventually Lauren's horses were moved to the pasture behind her house and one summer when they went on vacation, her family asked me to take care of Max. (Huck had been put down. Which always seemed a lot more alarming, since they're such big creatures. That was one sad bus ride home from school, when Lauren cried the whole way and I didn't know what to say. Poor Huck.) Anyways, waking up at 7am for a week of your summer vacation and traipsing all over a field scooping horse poop into a wheelbarrow probably scarred me a little bit. Big horses make big poop.

Moral of the story: Horses are really big, and a little scary. Maybe that's why little girls ask Santa for ponies for Christmas, not thoroughbreds. Either way, I never wanted one. I asked Santa for bunnies and guinea pigs, instead.

(Note: I do love Lauren's current horses in these photos, Ryan and 2Sox. I'm not a horse-hater, I promise. Just a scaredy-cat.)

a tidbit.

Getting ready for work this morning, wearing one black boot and one brown boot:

Me: MH, which do you think looks better--the black or the brown?

MH, scrutinizing my outfit: The black. Definitely the black.

Me, looking in the full-length mirror: Are you sure? I kinda like the brown. I think I'm going to wear the brown, actually. Would that be really bad?

MH: Well, yeah, it would be.

Me: I'm wearing the brown.

MH, as her face contorts into a look of disgust: Okaaaay, but like I said . . . the brown's pretty terrible.



Children can be so honest sometimes.

(Photo via JennyLeigh)

a tidbit.

During my afterschool class yesterday, trying to teach the kids how give their opinions, take a survey, and then graph our results:

Me: For example, we could ask what everyone's favorite singer is, and the make a bar chart of our answers.

Eight-year-old male student: Oh, I have a favorite singer. It's a woman named Selena. But she died in 1997.

gingerbread villages.

Awhile ago, some friends and I made our very own gingerbread villages (yes, we bought kits at Target, pretending they were for some kids or something, when really they were for ourselves). We put on the Christmas music, tried to believe there was snow falling outside the window, and rationalized building gingerbread houses before Thanksgiving (yes, I'll admit it--it was before we should have really been getting into Christmas hype).

My team (ahem, the better team, ahem) ended up with this, "The Candy Cane Crossroads:"

The other team, ended up with, um, this (appropriately self-titled "The Christmas 2012 Aftermath"):

Now, if you'd please be so kind, could you please settle a bet vote on your favorite village?

Much appreciated! Now go make a gingerbread house/village/city of your own and do share!

a tidbit.

MH and I were just sitting on the floor of my bedroom, hanging out and chatting like good sisters do, when the Imogen Heap song "Hide and Seek" came on my iTunes.

For those who don't know (it's been remade into a ridiculous remix and is all over the radio), the line that's repeated over and over is, "Mmm whatcha say?"

MH commented, completely seriously and slightly irritated-ly, "What, can they not hear her or something?"

carving pumpkins.

Before last night, I hadn't carved pumpkins in years. We dragged these in out of the rain, dried them off, and started scooping.


Mine started out in my head as a pretty pumpkin-girl with bangs--and ended up like this . . . . .

As we were starting, I said to MH,

"You know, I don't even like carving pumpkins very much. Everyone else always comes up with a much more creative design than me and then I always feel embarrassed. I'm not creative enough."

Her response was only,

"Ruth, that's my line."

And hers was MUCH more creative than mine (she did the cat).

Kids.

a bunch of rambled thoughts because i can't figure out how to form them together into a coherent post.

Last night, while driving through town with my mom, we came across a couple of cars pulled over to the side of the road. A few men were hurrying around, shining flashlights into the nearby woods and shouting to each other.

My mom slowed way down. "Uh oh. Do you think someone lost control and went off the road?"
It sure looked like it could be something serious. The sight of beams of lights jumping off the trees and lighting up the men's faces made me think of some crime TV show episode. Maybe they were searching for a body or something.

We were wrong. It was a stray cow, escaped from the farmer's pasture and wandering the roadside, eluding the men's grasps and causing obvious frustration. One man even had a huge branch he was trying to herd it with. My mom and I laughed so hard our bellies hurt.






MH (my nine year old sister, for those who don't know) is getting to that age where she's really starting to care what she looks like. And usually, that involves looking like me. When I got bangs, she wanted bangs. It's actually kind of comical.

Her new thing is wanting to wear my clothes. My clothes. And headbands. And shoes. And she's about . . . sixty-five pounds and I'm about . . . a little more than sixty-five pounds. Needless to say, she's been grasping at straws.

Today, she left the house for school after shopping through my closet. At first she wanted to wear this long, olive green, toggle-buttoned sweater--you know, one of those "dusters" that were popular when I was about thirteen and now just functions as my bathrobe. "All the girls at school wear long sweaters though, Ruth--and with leggings! I can just roll up the sleeves!" I politely declined, deciding not to tell her that said "girls at school" were probably fourth-grade brats who would make fun of her for showing up to school looking like a stocking-ed hobo.

Instead, I pulled out a blue and white striped button-down and asked her if she wanted to try that instead. (Hey, I know what it's like to be a little sister that just drools over every single thing your older sister owns, just because it's an older sister's. I'll placate her.) She readily agreed, put it on over a little-girl t-shirt (remember those?!), tied a white belt around it, and paired it with white leggings that had lace at the bottom. I think she even posed in front of the bathroom mirror for a few minutes, clearly happy with her decision.

Of course, she ruined it by wearing clunky white sneakers with it all (this little girl's got big feet and spindly little legs, and she is just nine), but it still made me smile. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, right?




Today is my boss's birthday. I made a card and had all the other teachers sign it, and my kids made her their own card, and I brought her these cherry-red alstroemeria all wrapped up with a bow (even though I would loooove to have them on my own desk!).

She said in the past she hasn't ever really worked on her birthday, always taking the day off. Today though, she said her boss remembered her birthday, everyone at Central Office was wishing her a happy birthday, and now she got flowers and cards.

She said maybe working on your birthday isn't so bad, after all.

I hope my birthday won't be so bad, after all, either.




Happy Tuesday!




(Photos via ClothPaperString)

Little Yogis

My third-graders in our after school program fell in love with our yoga class.

Precious, no?

Barcarole

MH's Barcarole from Ruth Writes on Vimeo.

So much for having a "little" sister

First day of kindergarten vs. first day of fourth grade

Valentines in August

Why not?

Oh the Places We Go

Science museum? Check.


(Also: note MH's striped skirt. I think I'll call it "Helen.")

Bring it on, I can take it

Today, I was kindly told by a five-year-old that I "probably weigh about one-hundred-thousand-million pounds." Okay, so George Little never knows what he's talking about, but c'mon. Just bash my ego with a stick. SuperTooth guessed better at one hundred pounds (or so I'd like to believe . . .)

We went to this cool park/zoo/hiking place today. My weight seemed to be the subject of conversation all day long, somehow. The wit of little children, really. As we were looking at the emus, Mary read the sign that said they can weigh up to one hundred pounds. She leaned in to the emu through the fence and whispered extremely audibly, "Hey emu, you and my sister almost weigh the same--except my sister weighs more!" And then she turned to me and said, "See, Ruth? You're not alone. Emus weigh a lot, too."

I almost skipped lunch today.

But hey, I can take it. Bring it on, little kids. I may not be four-and-a-half feet tall and sixty-five pounds, but hey, I'm not in a booster seat anymore, either.

This all happened while I brought all three kids to the park, all. morning. long.



What was I thinking? My three-and-a-half mile run/walk from the day before (yes, I finally did it!) was kicking in and my poor muscles were tired. Wrangling three loud children through a park/zoo was not such a good idea.



I always used to judge moms who seemed like they weren't doing anything to discipline their children when they acted out in public. Now I get it. I can't tell you how many evil stares I got as George Little whined and cried while I calmly tried to tell him that he had to sit for one minute (the horror, I know) after kicking his sister down the slide and making her cry. Now not only were surrounding parents judging me for obviously being a ridiculously young mother of three (riiight) but now they were glaring at me for making this child cry. If I had reprimanded him and put him in a real time-out like I would have done if we were at home, I surely would have been been tied to the monkey bars and beaten with the swings. Disciplining in public is intimidating.



Anyway, we had fun at the park. It was a long day. Tomorrow I plan on forcing them outside (please God, don't let it rain) and making them actually use their imaginations. If tomorrow is anything like today was, I just may be one sad, unemployed college graduate tomorrow afternoon. Just kidding.



I was happy when we finally pulled into their driveway and I could release George Little and SuperTooth to their mother.

Until tomorrow, that is.



PS
I had a silly little movie to show you, but Blogger is being even sillier and won't let me upload it. Maybe I'll try again tomorrow.