Calm as the Moon

Ohhh Karma!

This is a brilliant example of Eddie's sense of timing and knack for drama.

*No young children named Eddie were hurt during the filming of this video.

Sit -- version 2.0

While the four of us are riding in the car between Meijer and Natural Health Center...

Claire to Eddie: "Eddie. You're awesome."

Eddie: silence

Mommy to Claire: "Claire that is such a nice thing to say! You're such a good girl."

Claire smiling: "Thank you!"

Eddie: "Huh? Oh...you're welcome."

Sit.

Doug to dog: "Sit."

dog not sitting

Doug to dog: "Henry. Sit."

dog still not sitting

Doug to dog: "You're not listening tonight are you?"

Eddie (sitting two feet from Doug and dog at the table reading a book) to Doug: "uh...um...sorry."

Happy Freakin' New Year!

As the new year begins I tend not to make resolutions but more goals. What is the difference you ask? I guess I kind of see a resolution as an intention to fix a problem which might make one think that I have an issue that needs attending (which is likely true but that is not what I am trying to focus on right now). I prefer to approach the new year with at least an attempt at a positive attitude. The first step was to not have expectations for New Year's Eve (same goes for Thanksgiving and Christmas). I find that my depression  (mostly seasonal) really sets in pretty heavy from mid-November to a few weeks from now. It makes me feel very vulnerable and paranoid about everything which doesn't make for a very fun holiday season. (Side note: I'm sure most people have these feelings at times so I don't feel too unusual--I just don't always remember that I really am quite normal (painfully so) and that I'm just as screwed up as most people around me. So in the grand scheme of things I really am fine. "I'm fine.") Fortunately we have made it through another December and I seem to have made it through!

So to enlighten the Internet to the McKenna-Knudsen 2008 goals...Here is one major goal in our house.

It's time to make it our own. We have lived in this house for 2 years and have only painted one room and hung two sets of blinds. Yikes! I am thinking we are needing more color or at least better lighting. We need to invest more time and energy into making this space more of our own. This is going to be encouraged by the ever increasing need to get Eddie and Claire into their own rooms. Right now both of their beds are in the room across the hall from ours. Eddie needs his own space and Claire needs to not bug Eddie so much...so we have to rearrange our house.
The currently agreed upon steps to the reinvention of the McKenna-Knudsen household!
1. Clear out the throw the junk in that corner "storage area" in the basement. Soon to be home to the downstairs stereo/trainer/workout area.
2. Move the insanely messy "toy room" to the former stereo/trainer/workout carpeted area in the basement.
3. Move the "TV room" to the former insanely messy "toy room." Soon to be "Eddie's Room. Enter at your own risk!"
4. Furnish "Claire's Room" and "Eddie's Room. Enter at your own risk!" I'm convinced that Claire is waking up every night at 3:00 am because she keeps rolling into the side of her daybed (formerly her crib). Time to plan a trip to IKEA Canton! 
5. Invest in some proper furnishings for Doug's and my room! New dressers! This may lead to a greater desire on my part to actually put my clothes away. Ha! Right! I'm not fooling anyone! But at least my clothes will look great on the floor next to a beautiful set of cherry dressers that match our wonderful bedframe and bentwood sidetables!

There are more goals and all will get their due coverage over the next couple of weeks.

I hope very much that you are having a very Happy New Year! Here's to only 383 days left to go until the end of the insanity! May our country show some semblance of wisdom over the coming months in choosing our new leader and may he/she (I love that the "she" part is even a possibility!!!) find the sense to move us to a better way of being Americans.

Random Act of Kindness

Every Monday afternoon is the same old thing. I pick up Eddie from school and we head off to his occupational therapy appointment. I sit for an hour with my thoughts and watch people as they walk by--sometimes they go into that crazy pilates room. Then Eddie comes out and we negotiate where dinner will be picked up on the way home.

This fine evening, as we were driving down 9th St., I swore that there was more traffic than normal and it seemed like it was going to take forever to pick up some food. We pulled into McDonald's and found our way into the drive-thru line. The speaker asked me what he could get me...Two Happy Meals both with chicken nuggets, fries and chocolate milk...no sauce...one girl, one boy...that's it--Thanks. That'll be $9.22, please pull around to the first window. Same ol' same ol'.

I pulled up to the first window and went to hand my debit card to the young window cashier and he smiled at me and said..."The woman ahead of you wanted me to say she hopes you have a Merry Christmas and that your order is on her."

After waving to the woman and thanking her for dinner, I turned around to face Eddie and smiled at him. He was amazed that someone randomly did something so nice for a complete stranger. He asked me "Why did she do that?" I explained to him that she did something called "Pay it forward" and that it was now our turn to do something nice for someone else. He's pretty excited that we will get to randomly make someone's day like the nice woman who happened to be in front of us in line. I'm more thrilled that Eddie experienced this random act of kindness himself and I hope he remembers it for a long time and that it will guide him to help make happy memories for others in the future.

Eddie's Camp Mattawan Adventure

December 6, 2007 -- Eddie, in the yellow t-shirt seated all the way to the left, is once again in fine form for the Winter Music Program for Mattawan Early Elementary. Be patient for the antics as they are scattered throughout.

It wasn't enough...

Whatever they paid Christopher Walken to make this video...it wasn't enough.

I still laugh every time I watch it!

And if you look to your right...

I survived NaBloPoMo!! The really strange thing is that I feel a little compelled to write a post now even though I don't have to. Perhaps that was the point of the exercise...duh!

In any case...THANKS!! to everyone who was encouraging me along the way. It was very fun to try to come up with new and exciting ways to say something dimly interesting.

My next project that involves this site is located on the right...It's called "Movin' through the Moon." I officially started my concerted effort to train for the Steelhead Half Ironman on November 11th. Currently I am following an Olympic distance base training plan to build endurance so when I start the actual Half IM training I don't: 1) die and 2) have the constant need to sleep from exhaustion. Win Win. So for S&Gs, I am keeping track of my mileage as something to follow and motivate me. If you're curious, please feel free to check it out here.

The Wisdom of Crows

This past weekend, Doug and I were driving into town on West Main Road to go to Bell's to see our friends and enjoy some music. West Main takes us past our old sweet little yellow  house that I just love and the neighborhood that I had very little love for...but one really remarkable thing about that neighborhood was that at the end of our old road was the Valley One parking lot of WMU. Don't get me wrong the parking lot is not all that remarkable. What is remarkable is that the  area between Valley One and Valley Two that affords a small but dense lot of very tall trees (upwards of 2-3 acres) is a place were crows like to roost. Well that Saturday night, there was a roost forming as we drove into town. The color of the sky was changing as fast as the seconds were passing by and it was speckled and blurred with the black bodies of these birds.

If you have never witnessed a group of crows roosting in the fall and winter, you really need to make sure you do before the end of your life. There is something really intriguing to see tens of thousands of crows congregate together before heading off together to their final roosting spot for the night. They are calling and chasing each other around. It is a visceral noise that can't be duplicated. There is a feeling that you get as you watch all these big black birds doing their thing. They aren't alone. They are together. They have power and protection in numbers. They share information. They fight. They come together.

They are the color of night. It's almost like as they coalesce, the darkness of night encloses us like they are pulling it around us. They don't call it a murder of crows for nothing.  Johnny Cash has nothing on these guys. 

 

Sweet nothings...

When I first met Doug, one of the things that made him so attractive to me was that he was just so darn quirky. This guy has a heart of gold and a mind as sharp as Ginsu knives. He demonstrated his mental prowess to me pretty early on by reciting a series of things that were a memory game that he learned when he was in Boy Scouts...seriously like 10 years earlier. Come to find out now, thanks to the magical wonder that is Google...it was used in the 1940's as the "Announcer's Test" to check for speaking ability. I know that if I ever asked him to say it now he could rattle it off without a care while making jerky, doing a load of laundry or starting a fire with bare sticks, a little saw dust and two hard rocks in less than a minute. I gotta say...that's pretty hot.

Here's the game for your amusement...my personal favorite is number 9.

    * One hen
    * Two ducks
    * Three squawking geese
    * Four limerick oysters
    * Five corpulent porpoises
    * Six pair of Don Alverzo's tweezers
    * Seven thousand Macedonians in full battle array
    * Eight brass monkeys from the ancient sacred crypts of Egypt
    * Nine apathetic, sympathetic, diabetic, old men on roller skates with a marked propensity towards propitiation and sloth
    * Ten lyrical, spherical diabolical demons of the deep who hall stall around the corner of the quo of the quay of the quivery, all at the same time.

And in case you didn't know what propitiation means (I had to look it up), Dictionary.com says the following:
pro·pi·ti·a·tion  –noun 

1.	the act of propitiating; conciliation: the propitiation of the wrathful gods.

2.	something that propitiates.

Yeah I know...OK great...what does propitiate mean??

pro·pi·ti·ate –verb (used with object)  -at·ed, -at·ing.
- to make favorably inclined; appease; conciliate.

Ahh...I feel smarter already.