I did a painting of Kumbhakarna fighting monkeys.
Three monkeys are swinging on a vine.
Four monkeys on the ground.
Kumbhakarna is in the jungle.

Field Trip from the Week of Camp Mom

This week has been a relatively calm week, as Nimue is not signed up for any camp, we have no trips, and we have no visitors. Nimue and I have been calling it the week of "Camp Mom", as there has been an awful lot of intensive Mommy-Nimmie time.

In addition to art, a trip to the pool, games, tandem rides, and room cleaning, we took a cultural field trip. Nimue has been bugging me for a while to go back to the Asian Art Museum up in San Francisco, so we took a train adventure up there. To get to the Civic Center area in SF from our house, one has to walk to the Caltrain station, take Caltrain to BART, and the take BART into the city. Among other conversational diversions, Nim renamed all the train stops; e.g. Sunnyvale = Bunny Kale or Mountain View = Mountain Stew. My favorite was San Potato (San Mateo). So very six/seven.

At the museum this time, her favorite object was 15th century Korean ceramic turtle, but she was clearly fascinated by many other things as well. A chorus of "Look at this! Hey look at this Mom!" "Oh, look at this!" followed me through the museum, especially in the many sections where there were sculptural items. Delightfully odd kid :)

After three hours had passed, we finished pretty much the whole museum and she was tired, until simultaneously discovering her second wind and a little room full of hands-on stuff for kids downstairs. She took over the kimono dress-up play area and danced and danced and danced until Mean Ma finally dragged her away.



She needed to veg on the train on the way home; I can see shades of the teenager to come...


This morning, I found her out on the patio painting; upon a query regarding what it was, she answered "Kumbhakarna fighting the monkeys." She had noted a couple of images of this part of the Ramayana in the museum yesterday because we have the same scene in the form of one of Faith's excellent batiks hanging in our TV room. I like my quirky kid.

Eyeball Bender

When I was a kid, we used to get GAMES magazine, and one of our favorite activities every month was the page of "Eyeball Benders". Above is one for you. We'll send a piece of Nimue art to anyone who figures out what it is.

Hint: I was very, very bored at the impromptu stop at the park; the answer is visible in this picture of Nim.

Weighty matters

Chad got another new bike. Never mind that the most decrepit bike in the family bike stable is my road bike and, being both thrifty and attached to this particular bike, I have deemed that I can eke a couple more years out of it. We should have been free of bike purchases for a while.

Ha. He found a stellar deal on a swoopy new bike with a carbon fiber frame in his size that was way too good to be passed up, and now there is another Chad-sized wheeled denizen of our garage.

For his birthday, he also got a hanging scale for the garage that can be used to weigh things like bikes.

Chad's new bike: ~15lb (the whole bike. It must be made of toothpicks.)

My typical load of groceries and library books coming home on the tandem with Nimue: 37 lb
Note that this is just the cargo and does not include the weight of large bike and kid, snacks, coats, water, locks, etc...

The moral victory is clearly mine. I will be very strong. Slow, but very, very strong. However, I can't help but covet the shiny new object in the garage, especially after he raves about how well it rides...

My glasses

I got new glasses.
They're really cool.
And I really like them.
They have pinkish-purple on the outside,
and gold-green on the inside.
They have a blue stripe to separate the purple from the green.
They even have a red case!
My glasses help me read.

My, how she's grown

San Francisco zoo, August 2006 vs August 2009. When I pulled the picture from yesterday off the camera, I had a curious sense of deja vu that perhaps I had seen a picture of her in lavender on the lioness statue already, so I had to go search for it.

 

 

Mom, there's an enormous bread blob mess!

 

Argh.

Lakes Basin Camping

For all you friends and family who made it on the camping trip this year: Thank you for making the weekend of Juy 23-26 such a great time for all! I've put all of our pictures in a Picasa web album here; please let me know if you can't get to it. I could apologize for all the goofy pictures of Nimue, but hey -- she's my kid and I think she's pretty darned cute :)
Robert and Kathleen's pictures are here; I will continue to add photos as I get them.

For all of you who missed it: Nyah-nyah! You missed an excellent weekend full of camping, hiking, kids gone feral, good food, beverages a-plenty, lightly toasted marshmallows, swimming, mountain bike bushwhacking/rock climbing, and assorted other fine experiences. We missed you.

Stay tuned for the plan for next year (I've got to get through the next two rounds of visitors and get Nimue off to second grade before I even think about it...)

Glug, glug, burble: A nasty pool.

 

Glug, glug, burble. Strange noises from the shower. Glug, glug, burble. Strange noises from the toilet. Hmmm. All coming from the master bath, everything seems to drain, many visitors coming imminently. Ignore.

Five visitors arrive. Yay, fun! House now contains eight people and one cat. Next morning master shower no longer drains. Toilet no longer flushes. Argh. Bad timing. Pour Drano in and defer until later as it is still only the master bathroom.

Visitors head off to the park while we plot a mesh house to protect the veggie bed from the vile squirrels. Go to water plants in front yard. Note big puddle in unusual part of front yard despite dry summer weather.

Looks like puddle is rimmed with toilet paper. Ew. Ick.

Chad flushes guest bath toilet inside. Puddle turns into geyser and dribbles out across the front yard. EW. ICK!!!!!!!!!!!

Call plumber. In an unusual display of good business sense, plumber points out that if the problem is between the sewer clean-out port and the street, the city will take care of it for free so we should call the city first. We liked this very helpful plumber the last time we had a problem and this is just another example of why.

Call City of Sunnyvale; fear long wait and destruction of front yard. Four kids coming back from park imminently. No working toilet. Hmmm. Ride bike to park very fast to warn everyone that they need to use the bathroom there before they come home. Use park bathroom myself.

Ride home. Sunnyvale truck has arrived! Water from puddle has soaked into ground revealing long-lost sewer clean-out port underneath! Problem is between port and street! Very Large Motorized Snake deployed!

 

Time between problem discovery and repair: one hour. Cost: Free. Yet one more reason to like the City of Sunnyvale :)