Sunday, July 27, 2008

Note to self.. Blog about the Museum Penis(es)

Carly thought this would be a good title, since I wrote it on the fridge. In my autumn years I frequently forget the things my kids say.
I took Sophie to the NC Museum of Art (our great local state art museum) while Will was at school camp (a week long summer program at his school). She is just old enough to take, and it was great. We sat down in front of a couple portraits with a box of crayons and her notebook, and we both had a good time.
One area she was particularly interested in was the small Antiquities section which included several ancient Greek statues. As commonly happens many of the statues were missing arms, one as missing a head, and several of the male sculptures were missing their members.
Sophie was intrigued by this.
"What happened to his penis?"
"Someone knocked it off, or it broke somehow."
She needed to be reassured about this more than once. The missing arms and heads seemed quite natural, but the missing penises (peni?) was perplexing. But eventually, she drifted to other topics.
[I'll see about getting some of her art up on the site]
We had a good time,good father-daughter bonding.
Good stuff.

Well for the last few days, Sophie has found multiple opportunities to explain this phenomenon. "Will... in the museum people chop off the boys' penises!"

No mention of the extensive collection of African Tribal Headdresses.

Monday, July 21, 2008

Blinded by the light

You know the song "wrapped up like a douche another runner in the night."

Of course, those are not the lyrics, but if you didn't have the lyric sheet in front of you, you might as well guess that anything else.

Well, the kids just completed another week of Y-camp this summer. As part of the Body - Mind - Invisible Ghost training they get in addition to swimming, doings crafts, and the like, they have "devotions" which are comical ways of saying grace. (I am sure the invisible cannibal flying incest zombie appreciates it). This week they did a lively copyright infringing version of the Superman theme song with lyrics they added. 'Thank you God! for giving us food..."
Long time readers will remember this entry:
There but for the grace of who now?

This year we didn't do anything to prep the kids. Still, they enjoy the "Amen? That's nuts!" Shtick, so we figured they were fine. In fact, it worked out better than that.

When you have some teen camp counselors instructing many return visit campers in the song, and introduce some unfamiliar terms (like "god") you can expect the kids to do their best to find the right words (hence the intro to this post).

Will sings "thank you guys! for giving us food!"
Sophie sings "Thank you dog! for giving us food!"

They fight vociferously over the correct words.
Either way, we are pretty pleased. I like the dog version myself.

Just in case you thought they only mangled religious tunes... Sophie has this grate version of "Feliz Navidad" It goes something like this:

"Feliz loveydad, feliz loveydad, munahnah, munanana, munananah." The full version is very long and very repetitive. When I sing (what I can remember) of the actual version, she tells me that her version is the dance version. Mixmaster Sophie.

Thursday, July 17, 2008

Dr. Horrible - Update

This is over. Now you need to pay itunes big bucks (well $1.99 per episode) to see it.



Joss Whedon Directs (and writes with his brothers).
Neal Patrick Hariss - The Mostly Evil Dr. Horrible
Nathan Fillion - Captain Hammer

Go my friends, go before it is gone. From the master.

All acts will stay up until midnight Sunday July 20th. Then they will vanish into the night, like a phantom (but not THE Phantom – that’s still playing. Like, everywhere.) -JW

Wednesday, July 02, 2008

Nice Neighbors

I am sitting here typing, instead of brainstorming dinner ideas, because today we are scheduled to receive our fifth (of eight) dinner prepared by another family since having Ruby. This is pretty cool. We've had baked ziti, bacon and cheese quiche, nacho-casarole, and froze a chicken pot pie. Tonight is a mystery.
I really like our community. Carly went out for a lady's night last night, we are having a parade (with fire trucks) Friday for Independence Day, and in general people are friendly and outgoing. I think having the community pool helps this by having a place where we are all likely to meet on a regular basis during the summer.
In the less than a year we've lived here so far we've made more friends than the entire time we lived in the old house.

Tuesday, July 01, 2008

In other news...

Sometime between getting the newspaper and mowing the lawn this morning, the little rabbit that lives near our house got hit in the street right in front of our house. Not wanted the kids to see its torn up body, or having dogs and other scavengers picking at it, I got the shovel and scooped it into a bag (triple bagged that bunny). It is now in the freezer in the garage awaiting tomorrows trash pickup.
It was unpleasantly fresh and bloody. But, it is done.

An hour or so later the kids were doing a craft and I noticed some movement outside. A half dozen buzzards came a calling. They were flopping around in the street, our yard, the neighbor's roof looking for the road kill. Sadly for them, there were only a few bits in the road. They sniffed and scratched around for a half hour or so, then took off. They are pretty interesting and BIG birds t o have cavorting on your lawn. The kids, especially scary-cat Will really wanted to go out and play with them. We resisted.