Liner Notes 4/16

this little light of mine...

One of the greatest gifts of parenthood is the act of routinely falling harder and even more in love with one's children. If this comes off as saccharine and totally annoying, I don't care. It's true. And while I'll never understand how anyone can play favorites when it comes to their children, there are times when I'll take a look at one of my kids and fall over inside. It's equal parts, who are you and I'm not worthy. Like waking up in a hotel room where everything is perfect except for you.

I took Fable out of school on Friday so that we could spend the day alone just the two of us, except it was the biggest thunderstorm we've had in years and I forgot that LACMA doesn't open until noon on weekdays so we huddled in the cold for almost two hours and by the time the museum opened, were exhausted and grumpy and wanted to go home.

"I just want to go home and paint, Mom," she said. Which is all she ever really wants to do.

...And she's incredible at it and I refuse to throw any of it away and I'm going to need to rent a storage space just to accommodate all of this brilliance and I'm done now. I'm done. Fable, Fablefablefablefable. I'm done.

In heavier news, I spent much of last week convinced I was dying and I'm not a hypochondriac at all (on the contrary. It's been nine years since I've had a physical or seen a doctor other than my OBGYN.) That will change tomorrow when I go in to see about a string of migraines accompanied by vertigo and a bloody nose that had me literally choking on my own blood last weekend. Not ideal. And although, I'm pretty sure it's just a case of a sinus infection gone ignored, I accidentally googled "dizzy spell, migraine, bloody nose" and the Internet kindly informed me that I was either a. fine or b. brain-tumored. So? I promptly convinced myself that death was imminent. Cried myself to sleep only to wake up the next morning and call myself an asshole.

Anyway. I'm going to the doctor tomorrow to get, what I assume, will be, some antibiotics. So I can go back to living my life without calling myself names.

Meanwhile, my car is in the shop. My van's getting worked on by those sweaty mechanics and their greasy muscles. Oh yes. Dudes are waxing my Odyssey as I type... murdering out my whip with some gun-metal-paint-action and those vinyl family decals that go on the backs of windows so we can represent our people posse AKA it's finally getting fixed after our little fender bender which happened a thousand years ago and I'm the laziest person of all time so it took until now to actually get it fixed. Because Hal made me. Because it's a new car so he thinks it should look like one.

I personally care zero much. I see no point in washing (or fixing) one's broken car when it's just going to get rained on, pooped on and/or scraped up by someone (again) in the Target parkinglot. IT'S A CAR AND IT'S FOR DRIVING. And besides, it's a VAN. A scratch might just do it some good, no? Give it some edge? Some funky, funky edge?

Sorry. It's just that I'd rather spend the money getting my car detailed on something else: like... anything else.

In other news, Bo and Revi are officially army-crawlers. Archer didn't crawl until he was thirteen months old, Fable was ten months, so this feels EARLY. Henceforth, I'm stumped. I watch the babies equally horrified and amazed, recognizing that crawling babies are to sleep-deprived parents what Zombies are to people who are being chased by Zombies. Do not be fooled by the drooling and the very slow movements, they are COMING and they are going to get into stuff. (Poor Archer is doomed to build small cities in his bedroom from now until 2014.)

The only thing that keeps the babes from traveling are Archer and Fable's elaborate Gaga/Minaj dance numbers, Hal's guitar and/or puppet shows. The girls looooove puppet shows.

We've recently started reading the Bible at home. It was Hal's idea. Archer's questions had recently journeyed past the philosophical and into the theological as in, "what's the difference between Christianity and Judaism?" and "What makes the Old Testament old?"

Archer has always been particularly spirit-minded fascinated by life after death, by "God" and the "energy that controls the universe" but we're not religious people. Neither of us have touched a Bible since we were kids. So the fact that our child is suddenly so thirsty for theological knowledge is fascinating. Fascinating annnnnd slightly disconcerting because we're not exactly theologians.

So? Little by little, we're learning. Together. Reading and discussing and contemplating the morals of the various stories in both the Old and New Testaments. Party on.

Meanwhile, Fable's become equally interested with the book, Prince Siddhartha, a child's Buddhism resource which makes perfect sense in a way. She wants to do everything Archer does except, her version of. (This morning, she brought Siddhartha in the car so we could read it in the car before school. Peace out, Pinkalicious. Bienvenidos Buddha!)

Last week, while visiting my family, my mom gave us all the books she used to read me, David and Rachel when we were Archer's age. It was important to her to school us on all religions, especially since she grew up in a multi-faith household (and was raising us in one as well.)

For those interested, the books we are reading are: The Bible for Children, (summarized excerpts of the Old and New Testaments (Checkerboard Press) and Prince Siddhartha: The Story of Buddha as well as Parabola Magazine (a quarterly magazine that studies mythology and the world's religious and cultural traditions.) For those not interested, that's cool too. I realize that we all believe differently when it comes to God and religion but I wanted to share where we're at in our quest to inform and educate as not-so-much-religious-but-spiritually-inclined people with kids who have recently taken a genuine interest in theology.

It's getting dangerously down to the wire re: Esteban and I'm trying to keep it Zen up in here. We asked our landlords for a possible extension (so we're not homeless come July 1st) and they declined. Which means? It is extremely likely that we'll be moving our six-pack into the family van down by the river.

Sigh. I guess I'll have to get that shit washed.

GGC