Surprise Party!

Yesterday was my mother's 50th birthday, so we celebrated her by surprising her with a lot of people, a lot of food, and homemade ice cream. It transpired thus:

My mom was planning on dinner with just her children, and it was going to be later because the little boys have football practice til 8:30. So we all played along and let her make call in and make a reservation. But before then Nik took her out for ice cream with his girlfriend, who couldn't come to dinner but had still gotten her something (a likely story). Then while driving my aunt called Nik, completely frantic and concerned, "Nik! Grandma has fallen down and we can't get her up. We need your help! Where are you?! Can you come?" So Nik and Co. headed up to my aunt's house.

Meanwhile, the rest of the party was in my aunt's kitchen, doing last minute preparations. We all stationed ourselves in position and then Teeny got a sudden idea. "Let's really have Grandma on the ground!" and though most people didn't seem to think this was a good idea (she is 99, after all, and already broke her back this year) Teeny was insistent, and with the help of several gentlemen they lowered Grandma onto the floor in the front entryway. They gave some pillows, dumped her walker strategically, then turned her wig so it was just askew.

When my Mom and Nik entered Grandma started moaning in great pain (she is quite the actress, that lady), escalating in pitch. Teeny and my mom fumbled, explained, and suggested for a minute, then Teeny said, "She's just so hot. Could you go get her come ice or a cold rag in the kitchen?" (My uncle was all for saying, "Go boil some water!" or "Grab some towels," but we opted for something slightly more logical) So my mom dashed into the kitchen where she met a crowd of people who shouted "SURPRISE!"

Ahahaha! She was shocked. "That is cruel!" she said, "You guys are so mean." She covered her face, and Grandma came walking in, her wig on straight and a very satisfied smile on her face. Mom had no idea. It was wonderful. Nik was laughing, as was must every one else. A few were disappointed there were no tears. Teeny thought she ought to have milked the tragedy a little more, but it was all good. After the initial shock wore off she was delighted.

*Chuckle. I am very satisfied.

Grandma runs me over

On Thursday my great-aunt hired me to take my great-grandma out for a little while. These two charming women have somewhat of a Mrs. Bates/Miss Bates relationship, not quite that extreme but sometimes close.

My darling great-grandmother is turning 99 (that's right, ninety-nine) in just a couple weeks, so getting her around in not exactly easy, and neither is talking to her since she can't quite hear and her short-term memory is suffering somewhat. But still I love her, and so was glad of the opportunity of taking her to pick up her hearing aid, getting some Arbie's, and do some grocery shopping. My great-aunt packed a cooler full of ice, cups, and coke for the trip.

The visit to the grocery store was by far the highlight of the adventure. We got grandma into one of those jazzy scooters with a shopping cart attached and just let her go. She insisted on following me though, so for most of the trip I was ghosted by an old lady on a scooter.

Down one aisle she said that we needed some coke, so I picked up a box of cans and said, "Grandma, I'm going to put this in your cart instead of mine." She responded "Ok." Then rammed me over with her scooter. She just held down the go lever, pushing me back while I've got this big thing of soda in my hands. "Grandma, stop! Stop!" But she didn't really hear me, so I had to reach over and pull her hand off the controls.

Then we had a big debate over marshmallows. Growing up during the Depression made my Grandma very conservative with money and food. She needed marshmallows but couldn't stand the fact that a bag was almost $3. Thank goodness for Western Family.

After settling on which bag of marshmallows (I was able to convince her that the fruit kind, already horrible [hence the reduced price], taste particularly nasty in chocolate) we found the rest of the aisle a-litter with new merchandise and carts (and one poor bloke who was having a real tough time deciding on pasta).

So I said, "Grandma, we'll have to go back that way. Do you think you can reverse straight all the way back?" She looked at me and said, "Yeah." then clenched her fist around the reverse lever and shot backwards, without even looking, straight into the jell-O and cake mixes. And she just kept pushing reverse so the scooter kind of scratched and skidded along the shelves for a bit before I was able to get her to stop. "Grandma! Whoa! Stop!" When she finally heard me she just put her hands in her lap and waited.

I started cleaning up the wreck, but a real nice employee came over and said, "I'll take care of this, don't worry." Which, if we analyze the subtext, would sound more like, "I can see she's a handful, so keep a closer eye on her and stop wrecking my store."

The whole fiasco was fun though. I'm glad I went. I love her dearly. Maybe I'll get her a jazzy for her birthday.

It's a matter of taste

A few days ago my mom had a catering job and she called me on her way over in a moment of panic and requested my mad catering-skills to come and assist her before the party started. So I went on over and she handed me some frozen concentrate, countrytime powder, real lemon juice, and a large orange cooler and told me to make some lemonade.

Now, unbeknownst to my mother I have never mixed such things to make a drink. I am a very much a one- or two-ingredients per drink kind of girl, but she's the boss so I just started mixing some stuff, tasting along the way to see how I was going. When I thought it was nearly there I had my mother taste-test it, and her reaction was not what I was expecting.

"Whoa! Wow. That's... that's, well..." I was kind of surprised because, I mean, how wrong can you go with lemonade? Especially when there's powder and mix for you? I guess I must be really talented or something. Mother continued, "You put that much lemon in? Ok, well... hmmm...." She then took the Costco sized Countrytime powder mix and dumped half of it it. "Hopefully that will do something." She said.

Somewhat abashed I abandoned the lemonade and moved over to the caprese and lettuce-wraps. My mom ended up fixing my bout of creativity and the lemonade was fine. But, lesson learned for next time!

I made a bag!

Look at this!

Hidden in the depths of 50 lb. flour bags and enough rice to feed a chinese village, not to mention a sizable box of ties, a partial drum set, and shoes of various kinds and sizes was this! It happens to be my grandfather's sewing machine, sewing table, I think, technically. I had no idea we had it until I was organizing and tried to move this surprisingly heavy nightstand. I explored and found a sewing machine within its bowels.

SO (sew)

A day of furious planning, pinning, ironing was immediately necessary.

After digging through boxes of fabric inherited from my grandmother, and after doodling all over my sketch book, after debating color schemes and my actual talent with a sewing machine, I made this!

It's a purse! And it's just the perfect size (big enough for a notebook and novel, plus other normal purse things, but without being too cumbersome).

And look inside! That is correct, it is lined with adorable fabric and given pockets too! A pocket for a pen, my sunglasses, chapstick, and then a couple extra for girly things, I suppose. Or my pocket knife. I should get a pocket knife.

It was hard, but satisfying. Those little flags were... let's just say it didn't take long for me to hate them. And attaching the lining and the outside together was also difficult and in need of restitching a couple of times. But we all made it through, and I am glad.

Ode to Neil Gaiman

(illustration by Tom Gauld)

I kind of have this thing for Neil Gaiman. He is an author that really bends his genre and does fantasy in a refreshing way that reminds me that fantasy can be good and enjoyable without being cliche or trite.

I just got a collection of short-stories he helped compile (along with Al Sarrantonio). In the intro he described very well my reason for reading, "We wanted to read stories that used a lightning flash of magic as a way of showing us something we have already seen a thousand times as if we had never seen it before... It's the magic of fiction: you take the words and you build them into worlds. It seemed to us that the fantastic can be, can do, so much more than its detractors assume: it can illuminate the real, it can distort it, it can mask it, it can hide it. It can show you the world you know in a way that makes you realise you've never looked at it, not looked at it. G.K. Chesterton compared fantastic fiction to going on holiday--that the importance of your holiday is the moment you return, and you see the place you live through fresh eyes."

A lot of other people seem to think so as well, because they keep making his stuff into movies.

Coraline

This one is just good. Unexpected, slightly creepy, but good for many reasons.

Stardust

This one is just enchanting, clever, and highly enjoyable.

Sandman

This one is a graphic novel series, not actually a movie, but it's cool

Good Omens (Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett)

This one is also not a movie, but a really fun book. This is an adaption by some kids and I actually think they did a really good job, considering their budget. They remain true to the book (huzzah!). Plus it reminds me of these book projects we had to do in high school.

So there is some inspiration, to get me to use my pen to capture a snippet of the vast expanse of my mind.

Firework!

I really like this song, even though I'm not a usual fan of Katy Perry. I think it is just good, with a good message and a good feeling.

I chose this video because her music video is, not gonna lie, totally freaky and bizarre. It tries to be uplifting and encouraging, but I think they pulled only minimal success through that forest of flash, shock, and misdirected creativity. Plus this one, you get to see the words!

Surprise!

Here is a spider:

And let me tell you how this spider ended up at my house, in a plastic bucket with a saran-wrap lid.

First, I was at a baseball game (which really isn't an important factor, but fun nonetheless, especially because Noah made a home run, and an excellent catch). Then I rode home with my mother in my brother's car. We couldn't take the rest of the kids because the car was full of Ben's fix-it and build-it gear and other miscellaneous junk that accumulates in the cars of the American Youth.

On our way home we stopped to buy some plants (another non-important though interesting fact). We crammed the plants between the build-it and fix-it gear and on top of the junk. Then we headed towards the freeway and just as we were turning onto it I saw our friend from Image no. 1 come crawling out onto the dashboard with some business in mind. In my panicked mind I believed that I was its business, since it crittered right over to me, as though it had something important to discuss.

Naturally I pushed back into my seat as far as I could and started jabbering, "Mom! Mom! Mom, there's a spider. Spider! Spider! Mom, there's a spider." and I started into some hysterical laughter.

She looked over from the driver's seat. "Where? Oh! Oh! Spider! Spider!" Instinctively we both started looking around for something useful. We found a half-empty bottle of water, sandpaper, nails, ruler, box, plants (tomatoes, sage, etc.), buckets, full-length red down coat complete with hood, cookies, baseball helmet, mini soda, purse, but nothing really help this spider problem. No paper for mushing, no cup for catching. We thought about catching it in the bottle, but the spider was too big for the hole (now isn't that frightening?).

But we really wanted to catch it because this spider was too big to kill. There's a certain point where a spider becomes a trophy for the ordeal of finding it and being clever enough to capture the monster.

Mostly, though, the problem was that we were driving at this point, over 50 mph with a whole trail of cars behind us. The spider changed his route from me to my more attractive mother and she really started to panic. "Brianna! Brianna, find me something quick!"

Everything within my arm's reach was useless so I took my seatbelt off and went through the rest of the junk, berating Ben the whole time for not having the proper kind of trash in his car.

When the spider got to the other side of the dashboard and climbed up to Mom's eye-level (no doubt in the hopes of some romantic and sultry endeavor, or perhaps murder to the face) she decided the spider had more precedence than driving, so she pulled over to the side, though we had to pause our spider-dealings for a moment and figure out how to turn on the hazard lights (which was surprisingly tricky).

In the end we got a bucket and a pack of sandpaper. Slowly and gently my mom slid a baseball photo behind the spider (trying not to alarm it into fleeing into the crevice) and after several deep breaths she flicked it towards herself and I caught it in the bucket and slammed down the sandpaper.

Once the spider was contained we put our seatbelts back on and re-entered traffic, chuckling to ourselves, as though this was a typical event, and a typical way of dealing with it.

But of course, halfway home I wanted to make sure the spider was where he was supposed to be. So I peaked a look and found him right at the edge of the bucket, staring up at me, waiting. So I slammed the sandpaper back on, though by doing so almost dislodged the bucked from my legs. My mom screamed even though I caught it. No worries. Spider remained contained and is now enjoying some light and attraction.

We're pretty sure it's a kind of jumping spider, perhaps a bold jumping spider, kinda like this. The internet authority claims that jumping spiders are "completely harmless", but come on. A face and a look like that is very harmful. And even if they're not poisonous, per se, there is still a very probable psychological harm that comes from an encounter. So there.