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Jonah boy - crashed 

The title of this post has been changed due to a very persistent spammer.  The original title was:

Technical Difficulties

I tried to post last night, but the website crashed about four times.  Finally it sent me a note; it was having technical difficulties. 

It's not the only one.

I wanted to tell you all about my trip to the library, but my own technical difficulties were getting in the way.  Without the library, though, my story makes no sense.  So here it is...

The library is amazing.  It's like someone giving you a big ol' gift card to Barnes and Noble, and grabbing any book you are even remotely interested in, taking them home, reading them, and returning them no questions asked.  I go bonkers at the library.  I go to my favorite shelves and just grab any book that calls out to me.  When the pile in my left arm gets so heavy that I can't manage another book (which, by the way, is a lot of books now because of my new buffness), I stagger to the children's section, and ease my ridiculous pile onto one of those shorty tables.  Then I sit in an itty-bitty chair with my butt cheeks hanging off the sides and go through my pile, flipping through the pages and sorting the good ones from the duds like a fishmonger sorts halibut.  This time around I got books on building fountains, watercolor painting, one on raising daughters in an appearance obsessed culture, a couple about the science of water energy, a book on beading, and an amazing little book called The Creative Family... Oh, it will be a string of late nights and long visits to the little girl's room. 

It had been a strange, beautiful rainy day.  A summer storm had rolled in, humid and heavy, and it felt like a day that had been plucked out of early October.  I walked through the library feeling grateful for all of the brave people who took a chance at putting their thoughts down on a page, and then had the faith that someone would publish them, all so that I could be inspired.  And I was.  Am.

Thus inspired, when I got up yesterday I determined to do something amazing with my day.  I exercised, did a little house work, and was just finishing up our family 3-minute patrol when I heard a voice calling.  "Mom...could you come here?".

Enter technical difficulty #1.

Ethan was in the garage.  He was orange.  "I'm sorry..." he started.  Somehow he had managed to knock a small plastic container of oil painting pigment powder off of a shelf.  It broke.  He picked it up.  It dumped out all over him and the ground.  Then he had nervously paced back and forth trying to figure out what to do.

For five minutes.

In the orange powder.

Most unfortunately, the powder also happens to be very toxic.  It needed to be cleaned up carefully.  I called my PHD brother to get clean-up instructions.  I had Ethan strip down right in the garage before hitting the shower.  I had to trust him to clean the nooks and crannies, but the mama in me wanted to get in there with a luffa.  I created a sort of haz-mat suit for myself, and armed with gloves, a mask, plastic booties (Ok, Safeway bags and rubber bands, but they did the job), and some special clean-up supplies from the hardware store, I spent the next four hours in the garage, working until not a trace of orange remained.  After the mess was cleaned up, I remembered that the washer repair guy is coming today (more technical problems), so of course I had to tidy up around the machine.  Once I got going out there it was hard to stop, and it just made sense to drag out all the baby clothes to locate the toddler-sized summer duds (yes, he's that big). At 11:30, I finally stopped (not finished...stopped).

It wasn't the day I planned, but I had a lot of time to think as I schlepped around in my plastic suit.  I thought about how much I wanted to protect my children from anything that would hurt them.    I thought about chocolate (I always think about chocolate).  And I thought about the paintings I would never paint in my life because I chose to have five children.  They will be my only chances at making masterpieces, so I gotta get it right.

The orange pigment was a total loss.  I probably wasn't going to need it anyway.