Wednesday, December 06, 2006
Okay, so it’s been since May
And there are always excuses, there will always be reasons not to get on with it, so here we are. Hopped up on jam tarts. Sounds like a song title. Need to go to bed now.
Posted by Alexandria at 9:35 PM 0 comments
Saturday, September 09, 2006
Spiders shed?
A spider recently set up shop inside my kitchen window and owing to the mutinous fruit fly population that was threatening a coup I was happy to have her. She moved up to the window jam and became inactive for a couple of days so I thought she may be laying an egg sack (not part of our arrangement.) I came down one morning and found this shed ‘skin’ on the ledge below; she was still up at the jam but looking spiffy and much larger. Thought it was pretty neat so I took a photo and thought I’d share. I have since ushered her out of the open window because I think she’s probably looking to multiply and I’d rather that didn’t happen indoors.
Posted by Alexandria at 8:56 PM 0 comments
Monday, August 28, 2006
Really Rosie
I’m not sure if I’ve raved about one of Gabriel’s favorite videos, Maurice Sendak’s "Where The Wild Things Are" (also includes the Nutshell Kids series with Pierre, Alligators All Around, Chicken Soup With Rice, and One Was Johnny.) They take still frames from the original books and set them to simple piano music with Carole King singing the words. So very cool (and more than a little psychedelic.) Anyway, I just stumbled across the soundtrack for Really Rosie by Carole King on iTunes which includes all of that and more. So totally geeked. And a welcome alternative to the Veggie Tales G has put into high rotation of late (if I have to listen to Bob & Larry sing "I’ve Been Workin’ On The Railroad" one more time….)
Posted by Alexandria at 4:22 PM 0 comments
Labels: children’s music
Thursday, August 17, 2006
Slurbuck’s
I wish 7-11 had patios so I could take my laptop there for a Slurpee. Better yet, I wish Starbucks had a frothy summer drink that wasn’t, like, a million calories. "Slurbuck’s". Okay, maybe it’s that Frap calories, all milk-fat-saturated, somehow feel more caloric that sweet clear fluid sugar calories. (You tried mixing the new Vanilla Slurpee flavour with Coke? Yum!)
Give yourself a break today. Stay in your underwear!
Posted by Alexandria at 1:45 PM 0 comments
Labels: Slurpee, Starbucks
Tuesday, May 30, 2006
Eggceptional
So my son exercises these little obsessions periodically and sometimes they involve an object (such as an acorn squash. Recently it’s been eggs. Not for eating, not for breaking and whipping, but for placing on the table as part of an ever-changing installation art piece that lives on his placemat. Yesterday, to my surprise and delight I discovered that one of the resident eggs was sporting a plasticine face. Naturally I took a photo. A little later I came through the kitchen again and found that egg-guy had grown a goatee and sideburns. Grand. I took another photo; check it out. While it may seem like simple youthful whimsy to many, for the parent of an autistic to finally see connections between unrelated objects, to see this kind of processing going on in his head, priceless.
ps: It grieves me to report that egg-guy met an early end yesterday evening. Gabriel was just trying to make sure his parts were secure… He will be sadly missed.
Posted by Alexandria at 11:24 AM 0 comments
Labels: autism
Monday, May 29, 2006
Psychosomaticism
So why is it that the moment someone mentions an ailment like Norwalk or head lice you immediately begin to manifest symptoms of said condition. There’s a rotovirus (sp?) going through my son’s school right now and his aide (he’s autistic) and teacher both have it. Now, toileting is coming late to my dear boy and the handwashing thing still isn’t quite ingrained. So the prospect of the kid picking something up at school and bringing it home to share makes me positively crawly not to mention the accompanying psychosomatic nausea. I’m not one for Lysol sprays and such, but I think I’ll be hosing the place down with ’em for a few days.
Posted by Alexandria at 9:39 AM 0 comments
Thursday, April 13, 2006
Serenity
So I buy this little desktop fountain, one of those tranquility-makers with faux rock waterfall. Damn motor drowns out the soothing-water-trickling-sounds. Stupid thing just makes me want to pee.
Listening to The Walls live on KCRW’s Morning Becomes Eclectic podcast from March 14 — worth checking out. (I just taught my blog spell checker the word "podcast".) (And then I taught it "blog".)
Posted by Alexandria at 10:18 AM 0 comments
Tuesday, April 11, 2006
Eagle Cam
Oddly obsessed with the Eagle Eye Cam on Hornby Island, watching and waiting for something to happen. Not much happens when an eagle is working on hatching eggs in a nest. Not much at all. Fascinating.
http://www.infotecbusinesssystems.com/wildlife/default.asp
It strikes me that Loretta Lynn, by virtue of her experience and longevity in the industry, exercised a rare type of power when she elected to team up with Jack White on "Van Lear Rose". I mean, they met and next thing you know he’s producing and arranging for her. No whiff of managers and A&R types constructing a great meeting of one of country’s finest with one of contemporary’s hippest and most innovative ‘it’ guy. They just did it. It was magic. Music needs more of that. Everything’s so damn over-thought these days.
Posted by Alexandria at 11:21 AM 0 comments
Monday, April 03, 2006
Bangs and other things
You’d think time was far too precious to kill but here I am, unable to change mental gears, waiting to interview a Vancouver punk rock chantuse for the local paper here in "it’s a bit of an armpit but it’s getting so much better" Nanaimo "The Harbour City" B.C. Yeah, it was getting better before the high-speed downtown passenger ferry went belly up. Now I’m not so sure.
I have this rule when it comes to hair, particularly bangs: no major changes authorized without intense continued need for such change over 14 consecutive days. Recently broke this rule (heck, my mom was dying) so I decided to forgo the "model bangs" (sideswept, soft, and sexy) in favour of a full fringe, straight and thick. Think Zooey Deschanel in "Failure To Launch", a movie I had (not uncoincidentally) seen the evening before. Maybe it wasn’t just the look I was emulating but something more akin to the thick-skinned vaguely alcoholic misanthropic character she played. Perhaps cross her with Ms. Deschanel’s portrayal of Trillian in the "Hitchiker’s Guid To The Galaxy" remake — softer, intelligent, pragmatic.
At least I’ve started to write again. It was scary as hell to have lost that need, lost the compulsion to form words into thoughts. Getting on with it.
Posted by Alexandria at 11:04 AM 0 comments
Food themes
I think we have a theme for the day… Frosted Flakes on the brain care of Gabriel, my little boy, who kindly deposited a box in the grocery basket yesterday thus eliminating any guilt I might feel about buying sugar-coated crap for myself. Does this make me a bad mummy? And a news story care of the CBC: "An amateur chef’s diary of her attempt to cook all 524 recipes from Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking has won the first literary prize devoted to books based on blogs. Julie Powell, a secretarial temp from Queens, N.Y., told the story with such charm and humour on her weblog, or blog, that it eventually became a book, Julie and Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen." Maybe this is all a product of having had popcorn and apple turnovers with coconut ice cream for dinner three days running.
Posted by Alexandria at 10:38 AM 0 comments
Sunday, March 05, 2006
Does this thing work?
I think I’m here by mistake. Is this thing on? Spell check seems to think that things are alright. I’m trying to watch the Oscars, on the couch covered in cat hair, watching the battery life drain away. Let there be.
Posted by Alexandria at 3:54 PM 0 comments