redecorating

I've been redecorating the ol' blog, here. I'm liking the new colors and layout, but there are some old posts that are a little hard to read. I'll fix that eventually. I love having a photo at the beginning, though, and I'm sooooo happy that I figured out how to get the text to be readable over the pic (note to self: insert shape, transparency, fade edges). Ha! Now I can even do it again!

I'm slowly collecting a tag-list for the eight weird things game. I have a feeling the way I'm playing the game almost counts as a weird thing - everyone else seems to stick all their things in one post. Convenient, but it would take me all day to do something like that. I just can't resist explaining. If you've been counting and reading in chronological order, this should be number five, but I'd have to check to be sure.

Mirror and I had a conversation about weirdness just this morning. Mirror thinking I'm weird is definitely one of my weirder traits. I'll have to find a good pic of him to explain that, but in the meantime, here's a couple links to sites regarding Radical Faeries - the first is a very tame, Wikipedia link, the second is a link to pix from this past Beltane and may contain a small amount of Adult Content, if you look hard. Now you know something about Faeries, Mirror is one. I suppose I'm one, too, but there are differences of opinion to be had on that matter. I'm fine with that. I may or may not be a faerie, depending on the definition. Works for me. I stuck the wiki link over on the sidebar for future reference - I seem to use it a lot.

Anyway, the conversation wasn't about me, per se, but about Coco, who is absolutely the weirdest person I've ever met. I wonder if he has a blog? Hmmmmm. Coco is weird, in my significantly less than humble opinion, because there doesn't appear to be anything strange about him at all. Ever. He blends in seemingly effortlessly wherever he goes - if he chooses to. I mostly see him choosing to blend in. He's a Stealth Freak! But he's not so much sneaky about it as genteel.

I'm not genteel, but I don't think people look at me and think "radical faerie" either. Maybe "dyke" in the winter, when I break out the flannel, but these days I think I primarily look like a mom. Mostly Harmless. I don't really know why that would be strange, but Mir assures me I'm an utter wacko. Maybe he's trying to flatter me.

teeth

Mo lost her first tooth!

It took four carefully counted days of wiggling from the time she first noticed the loose tooth. It was quite the event around here. Her latest self-portrait includes the missing tooth as a feature (as well as her name written backwards). She's thrilled. She's also nearly 6! Just a few more days, but birthdays are kind of weird in our house (hey, can I use that for one of my eight weird things? whynot!)

For the past couple years Mo hasn't wanted to do anything about her birthday. She accepts presents, of course! but has been adamant about not having a party. This year I can't even get her to talk about it. She said she would like a cake, but she always says that... I made one yesterday just for the heck of it, in fact. And she's already got one "present" - a fishing rod "just like Iris has". I didn't see any reason to wait when I finally had cash. Actually, there's a second present, but she doesn't know about that one. I got a k'nex set with some gears in it, since she keeps asking me to build this gears project in her "physics for fun" book. Ever tried to make one gear, much less a set of different sized gears that actually work? Darn book has No templates whatsoever, just says "make these gears out of cardboard". Bwahahahahahhaha!

Ahem, where was I? oh, yeah, k'nex. I probably won't even give them to her on her actual bday, although it could happen. Most likely, I'll wait for a day when she's looking for something new and exciting and then pull it out TADA!

I don't know why Mo doesn't like birthdays. She seems to enjoy Savannah's bday parties - well, who wouldn't? Savannah's mom holds the most sensible kid parties I've ever seen. Once the kids arrive, Whammo! cake, presents and then free-play until things start to wind down a little and a trip to the local pool to finish. Virtually stress free for guests, and very little work for Luan. We have been to other kids' parties that weren't so ...er... kid friendly. Lots of waiting. Adult-directed games and crafts. Totally not Mo's scene. That may be why she's not excited about parties. Or it may just be her. I don't like to make a fuss over my own birthday, either.

Its not a getting-older thing, for me or her. She's been telling people she's six since January, and now alternates between saying she's four and 10. Go figure. So many of my friends are older than I am, I've started telling people I'm "almost 40" just to fit in! So its not about age.

Reading back over that last bit...go figure. The difference between four and ten is six. Mo's six. We've had a couple conversations about that - one where she asked me, "if I'm six how many years until I'm ten?" and another, more a bit of mathematical free-association involving the numbers 4, 6 and 10 that I won't try to relate since it was kind of confusing to me. Morgan definitely thinks more, and more deeply, about numbers than I ever thought a kid her age would do. She finds patterns between numbers and shapes and ideas and words that I can sort of understand. That's not weird, though. I have a feeling that a lot of that kind of thinking is perfectly normal and it gets trained out of kids in the course of "edumacation" and the ways concepts are grouped for "educational" purposes. That was one of the things that drew me into Montessori, where the criss-crossing of different "subjects" is sort of an ideal. Too bad its an ideal that isn't often realized, but that's a whole 'nother subject.