Spitting Prohibited

witty title to be inserted here later

I'm sorry.

I know I've needed to post something for a while.  If for no other reason than to let all two of you who posted to console me in my pain that I am not utterly depressed or living in a state of perpetual sadness (which is probably the same thing as depression, but I felt I needed 2 things...writer's anxiety) that I am OK, although still sad about those boys.  Life is too short to not live in some state of joy, and God is too good.

(Wow, that came across as snarky didn't it?  Really, I understand that sometimes you read these sort of things and don't know what to say and so say nothing.  I understand.  And some of us have already discussed this on another site.  Let me rephrase:)

I am not weighed down with sorrow, although I'm still praying for the Lenese boys and their family.

(There, much better.)

It's just that I'm sinus headached right now.  I keep thinking it will go away soon and I don't need to go to a doctor, it's just a silly cold.  And now it is the weekend and I will have to wait until Monday, so of course this is the day I choose to believe I should have gone to the doctor yesterday, which frankly does me no good at all to decide, because what the heck can I do about it now, anyway, so excuse me whilst I prattle on about nothingness.

(Perhaps I should have begged your forgiveness before writing that last paragraph.  Now I have to apologize for being snarky and for having run-on-sentences that make no sense and are replete with grammatical errors.)

I'm almost done with costumes...yay!

Just in time to start on more costumes...boo.

The costumes are in various states of awesomeness if I do say so myself.  Jon's is nigh on perfection.  That is if Tom actually finishes his Speed Racer car this weekend.  Which I suspect he won't and I will be working on on Monday, but whatever, all I'll have to do is paint it, I can do that easily enough.  At least he did the engineering aspect and designed it.  He put crumple lines in it.  Which is completely cool and I don't mean to diminish his brilliance in thinking these things through. As it will probably have some collisions to undergo (it is part of a costume for a 8 year old with 2 brothers).  So now it will give in places he'd like it to give, instead of just any olds wheres.  And the Mach-5 has those bumpy curvy lines in it (this description brought to you by the non-engineering parent in this family), so if it gives it will give in ways that supports the overall design of the car.  He's so smart.  

But seriously, it's made out of Styrofoam and a cardboard box.  And it has crumple lines to help it survive impact. 

...

I will not be sewing with vinyl again anytime soon.  I curse the day I rejected the pathetic Indiana Jones costumes available at Target for $20. 

Actually, it wasn't so bad.  Until I got to the collar.  I was actually quite proud of myself.  I figured if I was going to all the trouble of making him a jacket I might as well line it so it would be warm and wearable at least until he outgrows it.  And then I got to the collar.

If you sew you know that a collar has 2 layers, and usually interfacing, but I figured why the heck bother with that if I was working with such a stiff fabric as vinyl.  It's basically a rectangle and you sew around 85% of it.  You turn it inside out and you get those nice crisp corners of your collar.  You leave the middle open on the bottom side to sew one side to the back of the jacket and one side to sew to the back of the lining.

(If you don't sew, you probably can't envision that as well, but trust me, it is just as I have told you. And I refrained from saying "...it is just sew".  You're welcome.)

This is all well and good.

The trouble comes when you attempt to sew the ends opposite end of the nice crisp collar to your jacket.  With the front of the jacket, the facing of the jacket, the lining and the 2 layers of the collar, all folded in on themselves, you are attempting to sew through 8 layers of vinyl! 

I ended up having to hand sew it on, to my aching fingers complaint.  My machine just can't handle that much.

So now my gorgeous not quite leather jacket for my son has an ugly collar, that, true, you can't tell if you don't flip up the collar, but I will always know it is there.  I will forever look at it and say I HATE that collar.  He would be so cute in his Indiana Jones costume, if the collar weren't completely screwed up.

It's ruined.

Forever.

...

Brooke's costume was a complete breeze, although I'm afraid that her tigress ears look more like panda ears.

...

Grant wants to be an injured man.  Easy-peasy.  Except he wants to shred the ends of one leg of his pants.  Is he insane????  Does he know how long it took me to find a place that carries size 14 Slim pants????  (psst...walmart and the gap, both on-line only, and if you still have a Boscov's (sigh) they stock them in the store there...you're welcome again)  There is no way I am shredding a pair of his pants!  NO.FREAKIN.WAY.  We're heading to Goodwill today to see if we can find an alternative.  I don't care if they fall down to his ankles.  He can wear a belt.

OK, I would care if he was walking around and his pants fell down to his ankles, I'm not a completely heartless mother.  I will do everything in my power to make sure his pants do not fall down.  Everything except shred one of his precious 14S pants.  Not that.  Everything except that.

...

The reason I'm finishing up costumes only to start on more costumes is this:

                                                                     

                                                                            Mulan, the Mussical

Remember last year, when Brooke was in a Suessical?  Remember how they lost her fabric and I ended up having to make her costume into the wee hours of the night so she would have a costume for the show?

Remember?

I felt sorry for that lone costumer, the night before the show, looking harried and stressed and realizing she not only had some fixes to do the night before the show, but had a complete costume to manufacture (even if it was just a sack dress).  When I volunteered last year to make Brooke's costume myself, I saw two emotions across her face.  The first she told me, "Thank you!"  The second she didn't tell me but I know it was there, "If you can sew, why didn't you volunteer to help before?????!!!!"  (Yes, it had that many superfluous question marks and exclamation points).

I was so guilted by that unexpressed emotion last year, that this year I volunteered to help.  Really I just want to make sure my daughter is awesomely appareled, but I figured I can sew, I should help. Plus it's just fun to be doing something theatre-ish again.

Well.

A pox on all the mothers who didn't teach their daughters to sew, so that now they are the parents of children and get to use that excuse of "I don't know how to sew" (you have to say that out loud in a really whiny and smug voice to get the full effect of what I mean.) and get to sit on their hiney's eating bon bons or popcorn or Ben and Jerry's or something would stain fabric if you dared eat it while sewing, and know that I will be making sure their little preshy is costumed.

Especially a pox on the woman who is complaining that kimonos are not Chinese.  How China is a complete different country and why should the Chinese Mulan should not be dressed in a Japanese costume.  How this is an important historical character in the culture of China and we should not be perpetuating stereotypes that all Asian cultures are the same.

blah.blah.blah. freakin blah!

Look lady I would love to give the kids authentic Chinese costumes.  It just so happens that I cannot buy an authentic Chinese McCall pattern for 99 cents at JoAnns right now.  I cannot buy an authentic Chinese wardrobe pattern at all.  I have no costume budget and have  over 50 kids to costume. I'm using the freaking unauthentic unChinese pattern I can get.  I doubt it's even an authentic Japanese pattern either if that makes you feel any better. 

Not to mention Wikipedia says "Whether she was a historical person or whether the poem was an allegory has been debated for centuries—it is unknown whether the story has any factual basis."  So there.  I reserve the right to costume an allegorical character anyway I so choose.

You, however, can volunteer to figure this all out.  You can probably find rather vague and difficult to understand directions off the Internet.  Maybe you already know the basics as this appears to be an important issue to you.  You can spend your money, time and energy.  I will gladly back out and hand over the position to you.

What's that?  You can't sew?

Well isn't that convenient.

It's probably good I am not the head costumer, and only an assistant, because the head costumer responded much more nicely than I would have.  Although, she did manage to put in a plug for the authentic Chinese costume wisher to come in and help us get it right.  I'd like to think that it was a more subtle version of what I said above.

...

Isn't it nice to know I'm not wallowing in sorrow?  And I have instead moved on to a much healthier perspective on life?

...

and, lastly:

Take the Quiz and Share Your Results!

You are thoughtful and care very deeply for your family. A loving home is of great importance to you and you always try to make people feel welcome. Although you have a great capacity to love, you also have a great capacity to hurt, so at times you can be sensitive. You're firm when you need to be, but people trust your judgment and appreciate the kind way you always handle things.

Sad today...

This morning I opened my email to find a story about a boy who lost his life this weekend.  He was in Third Grade.

Jon is in third grade.  In just the past few weeks I've been with he and his classmates several times.  We had a breakfast with the group.  They took pictures, I can't wait to see the "silly" shot.  They looked like they were having so much fun.  Laughing, happy, kids.  I've also been volunteering to help with the after school basketball program.  It's been fun.  I get to hearken back to my basketball days past...I really need to work on dribbling with my left hand, it's gotten so weak!  And play with the kids, I mainly work with the little ones, how fun is that?  And of course there was the walking tour we took.  They're just kids.  Good kids.  Naughty kids.  Laughing and happy.  Disgruntled and whiny.  Attention grabbing and goofy.  Kids.

His father had recently purchased some hunting rifles.  He was planning to resell them at a flea market.  He had them in his home for less than a week.  He kept the rifles in one part of the house and the ammunition hidden in his room.  Short of purchasing a gun cabinet for the week, he really did seem to take most reasonable precautions.

My boys love guns for some reason...well any weapon really.  Any stick or wand or wrapping paper roll or Lego set becomes a sword or a gun or a dagger.  When we went to Gettysburg and toured the museum.  The only way I kept their tired feet moving was with promises of the armory.  Let's find the cannons!  Let's find the weapons!  In fact I stayed with the boys in the "gun room" so that Tom and my Mother-in-law could actually enjoy the rest of the museum.  It was the only place they were anything approaching happy. 

When we went to Fort Necessity, they had a small reenactment.  The rangers and volunteers were there with muskets for the French and Indian war.  They got the opportunity to try to hold them under our watchful care and the eye of the "soldier".  We got to see a demonstration (without the actual metal ball) of shooting, we saw how the smoke  from the rounds filled the field of "battle".  They were fascinated.

It's easy for me to imagine how they would be if for some reason we brought home a gun home.  Too easy.

The twin boys found the guns and I guess they went looking for the ammo.  They found it too.  They decided to load the gun.  I can imagine they knew they weren't supposed to be doing this, but it was too cool not too.  I might be able to count on Grant's worrying instincts here, or perhaps in the past couple of years he's just gained a little more cognitive thinking skills than the other boys.  But I can only all too easily imagine these boys fascination with the hunting rifles their dad had brought home.

While loading the gun it went off.  With the brother standing directly in front of it.

His father heard the blast from the living room where he was reading.

He ran back to the room the boys were in and found his sons.  One shot in the head and one who will live the rest of his life knowing he shot his brother.

My heart is breaking for them.

I know there are situations where people could point to, stories where guns saved lives, maybe their children's lives.  I don't own a gun.  But I'm not rabid about it.  I suppose there is a risk either way.  I hope and pray there will never come a day when I will wish we had a gun in the house.  I know the effects of that choice could be tragic.  I try to mitigate that risk by choosing only safe communities to live in, good neighborhoods, low crime.  But still, I know, bad things happen in good towns too.

Somehow, however, the risk there seems to me easier to take than the risk of this pain and suffering.  The pain, the grief and worse of all to me, the guilt - I don't know if I could be strong enough to bear it.

If anything, this only shows how you can never take enough safety precautions with guns in the house.  You can never teach your children to fear them enough, never teach them to respect them enough.  There is no investment opportunity or hobby or peace of mind or inconvenience or...anything, worth this pain.

Dear Heavenly Father, bless this family.  Bless Christian, shelter him in your arms, hold him tightly until the day comes that he can reunited with his family.  Bless his parents, comfort them in their pain and grief.  Give them that peace that only comes from thee.  Bless the family and friends and community so effected by this loss, comfort and help us too.  But mostly, dear Lord, bless Steven. Comfort him, console him and uphold him.  Let him feel of Thy love and of our love.  Bless him, oh Father, in the ways that I can only guess at, but of which Thou knowest.  Bless him as you look upon his heart according to his needs.  In the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.