There is no Ali, there is only Zuul

Ali, the baby formerly known as Darth, has dropped her signature deep breathing habit and the contemplative 'ko'. Now when considering the dark side of the baby force she screams like a Nazgul closing in on a juicy ring-bearing Baggins for breakfast. These outbursts are at at such an ear-splintering frequency that everyone in the vicinity experiences a sudden compulsion to hand over valuables and jump into moving traffic to make it stop.

Rebel yell.

Apparently this is called 'crowing', although to my ears it is more eagle-on-steroids than piffling chicken. The rare Genghis Khan victory shriek never used to bother me, but Genghis has now taken over and installed new sound amplification equipment. And it is a driving hazard. When Ali deploys sound-weaponry from the back-seat as I pull into a huge convoluted roundabout with seven exits (a 'WTF roundabout' in American parlance), my brain-radars are instantly jammed, and I fear not only for our safety, but for the entire local area.

Sometimes I can cut a screaming session short by handing her a hairbrush, which inexplicably causes her to drop the vocals and play quietly for several minutes. But the threat of hair-brushing, funnily enough, is the one thing that makes her big sister Ana react like a Sam Raimi deadite, so I have to be careful.

Sometimes I wonder, rather wishfully, if I will be deaf by next Tuesday. Bearing two children has left me with super-acute hearing. Walls are no longer sound barriers; I can hear my kids breathing through floorboards and crying across town. I would be able to hear them over oceans and across continents too, had I not sworn off travel for the foreseeable future. Earplugs are now placebo and I don't have the time to attend metal concerts, but there is a flicker of hope growing in my mind that Ali's Nazguling might just be the cure for my over-active ears.

Hearing aside, I'm not sure how long my nerves can survive this. Ana crowed for a short time and then stopped. Screaming, like Darth-breathing, will surely migrate into the ever-expanding cupboard of things that have passed. Till then, I remain in aggressive negotiations with Genghis and Gozer for the return of my sweet little baby.

Pure boy

In response to my recent inventory of Monster Dog's victims, the lovely and eternally wise Oma sent me the following story about her very own Monster Puppy. 

Scott's bedroom (wood) floor is a chronicle to his many different phases, probably a better one than any baby book could be. 

There was the spur marks from his cowboy phase during which he refused to take the boots and spurs off, and wore them even to bed. Before that we thought he'd never get past the hammer-a-nail-into-everything-wooden stage. After the cowboy phase came Machete Man with lots of collateral damage to not only the wood floor, but also window screens, bushes, trees and everything else that looked like it might benefit from some pruning. 

There are pocket knife gouges, Gorilla Glue chemical fusion experiments, battery acid burns and counteless other insults to the once beautiful pine planks. Looking at the floor I'm so thankful that we humans have the ability to heal!

Boy meets world. 

My advice: keep St Jude around, give him a place of honour in your house! You will need him, since I suspect Monster Dog and Little Sister are working on their next stunt as we speak. Oh, by the way, I looked at the floor in Scott's room the other day and briefly thought that I should sand it down and re-varnish it, but then I looked again at all this evidence of my little boy exploring his world and I decided that it just might be a very, very long time before I need a shiny new floor in his room. 

~Oma

Remember

Tonight is Bonfire Night. Ana checks her window for 'fidaworks' every time there is a pop or a crackle outside. The increasingly drunken firecracker enthusiasts setting off explosions in my street are not very coherent, but I think what they are trying to say is:

Remember, remember the 5th of November 
The Gunpowder Treason and Plot,
I know of no reason 
Why the Gunpowder Treason
Should ever be forgot.
Guy Fawkes, Guy Fawkes, twas his intent
To blow up the King and Parliament.
Three-score barrels of powder below
To prove old England's overthrow;
By God's providence he was catch'd 
With a dark lantern and burning match.
Holla boys, Holla boys, let the bells ring.
Holloa boys, holloa boys, God save the King!
And what should we do with him? Burn him!

Combustible.

November 5th is a flammable peek back to the mean and unpleasant land of 1605, full of nasties like drawing, quartering and lighting your enemies on fire. The wildest celebration is in Lewes, Sussex, where bonfire societies march on smoky streets gripping burning crosses, chanting and yelling like something out of a nightmare. Then they go and burn effigies all night. It's frankly terrifying. 

Life on this island has become much less of a fire hazard since 1605. It's easy to remember that on Bonfire Night.  

In memoriam on el Día de los Muertos

To mark the Day of the Dead (and because I watched 'An American Werewolf in London' over the weekend), I am pausing to remember some recent victims of the Monster Dog. This is not an exhaustive list, just a handful to illustrate Monster Dog's capabilities.

Day of the dead-tired Mama.

First up is the long-suffering Molly Dolly, kidnapped months ago by the Monster Dog and imprisoned in the bathtub. Here she endured aggressive hair-washing and decorative bath-crayon-tattooing at the paws of her captor. Her plastic eyes glazed over with limescale cataracts and even more distressingly, she developed a mullet. I rescued her this week, and she now lives under an assumed identity at an undisclosed location in the lounge.

The sinkable Molly.

Next up is the lovely little Sugar Pixie, who once perched atop a pretty pink Madeira birthday cake with dignity. Monster Dog absconded with Sugar Pixie while a roomful of witnesses were too busy stuffing cake into their faces to notice. By the time I found her the next morning, she was beyond help.

Before: confident Flora.

After: twitchy Merryweather. 

But it's not all doom and grisly gloom at Monster Dog headquarters. St Jude and the Plaster Family, both residents of my bookshelf and former victims of the Monster Dog, have gone on to lead productive lives after undergoing reconstructive surgery and glue therapy.  

Jude's troubles began when Monster Dog scaled the bookshelf and dragged him away to her lair. Having once previously lost his head en route to becoming the patron saint of desperate causes, St Jude is pretty used to this sort of thing. That said, decapitation remains annoying no matter how many times you are faced with it. Monster Dog only managed to rip off Jude's halo and give it a good chew before I could intervene. With a little help from modern medicine and some quality wood glue, the halo was beatifically restored. 

 Take some wood glue and make it better.  

While in the business of pawing the shelf over for victims, Monster Dog also sunk her teeth into a Plaster Family. Although Plaster Papa attempted a brave defence, Monster Dog left his disembodied head in the living room as a direct warning to other decorative statues not to cross her path. Usually decapitation has a poor prognosis, but in this instance I was able to stem the plaster flow with glue and reunite the head with the happy family. 

The dreaded Monster Dog still roams these parts. I fear the curse will not be lifted until she hits adolescence at least. And even then she has a little sister. So as the faithful say to St Jude: pray for us. 

52-card Mama pick-up

Ana just scaled the bookshelf in spider-girl mode, found a full deck on the top and flippantly cascaded it, card by card, to the floor.

"Okay Mama, you pick it up now."

Wild card. 

I get no respect. Somewhere the ghost of Rodney Dangerfield is smiling.

The dragon and his boy

Mama is terribly excited to announce the first-ever Mañana guest blogger: the one and only OneArmGirl. In addition to being one of Mama's longest-serving friends, OneArmGirl is a wonderful writer and an exemplar human being. Thank you OneArmGirl for taking the plunge. You will receive a complementary Molvanian cake and two free psychotherapy sessions with a seal of your choice. 


Elijah is distraught. Toothless the dragon has gone missing. Eli’s looked everywhere...in his bedroom, the playroom, the kitchen. He’s even sung a special dragon song to no avail. The only thing left to do is cry. Little Gen and I happen upon this unfortunate incident because we’ve come to my best friend Audra’s house to do laundry. Eli is Audra’s five-year-old son. Just when he’s accepted his sad situation, Little Gen finds Toothless, a four-inch plastic dragon with wings that flap, lying innocently next to the couch. The universe has been righted.

Dragon in distress.

This episode is only one of many in Eli’s world; where it’s not at all odd to find a dragon eating Cheerios next to you at the breakfast table. As Audra is tucking Eli into bed one night, he sits up in alarm,

“Mom, you’re stepping on my dragon’s tail!”

“Well, tell him to pull it under the bed, then.”

I love her for this. She makes the intersection of Dragon World and a world where little boys still need to go to bed delightful and seamless.

Gathered with girlfriends in my living room one night, Eli suddenly runs out of a back bedroom where he’s watching a cartoon, and plops into his mother’s lap. “Mom, I need to tell you something,” he says solemnly. Something indeed, as Eli is reluctant to pause a movie even for a potty break.

“My dragon has been waiting outside and he needs to get in.”

“You can go let him in,” Audra reassures.

“But, I’m watching a movie.”

“Well, I guess you have to choose your priorities.”

Oh, the moral dilemmas of an imaginary world; life hits hard so early. But I think it might be a good idea for every kid to get a dragon before trying a puppy.

Puppy-training.

There have been other worlds: the 'Toy Story' World where Eli told every new acquaintance for a year that his name was Buzz, and I was constantly being shot with lasers from his outstretched arm; the 'Cars' World with Lightning McQueen leaving a trail of race car pyjamas and bed sheets; and the Thomas World, wherein I felt consistently silly for not knowing the name of every tiny engine I accidentally stepped on while naively walking barefoot across the carpet.

But we’ve been in Dragon World the longest. And I’m not complaining; this is my favourite world so far. Turns out, I’m a huge fan of dragons. What is it about these giant lizards that we love? Though dangerous and sometimes fire-breathing, there seems something majestic and beautiful and lonely...a creature in a world not fit for it, where courageous knights are constantly sent on missions to seek its life and save the village.

Stopped at a red light, I try to explain to Eli, sitting behind me in his car seat, that in addition to having swords and fighting dragons, brave knights also follow a code called ‘chivalry’ that requires them to save damsels in distress and open doors for little girls. His listens quietly, processing. Then, “But knights go to fight dragons with swords and shields and...” Apparently I don’t have Audra’s touch.

And I never know if I’ll be met with a sword or a growl. Lately, Eli’s taken to coming within inches of my face, emitting a surprisingly deep-throated roar, sometimes accompanied by a shower of saliva. Have to admit, it is a little scary. Walking down the supermarket isle with Little Gen, Eli suddenly squats down. “I have to lay my eggs,” he informs her. Unprepared, she smiles awkwardly to a confused woman passing by.

Bring him strings and sealing wax and other fancy stuff.  

“I’m getting tired of this dragon thing,” Audra groans on the phone last night.

Recently, Eli ran into her bedroom: “There’s a dragon or a monster in my room!,” he cries, quivering
with terror; real or imagined, Audra’s not sure. But she decides it’s time to draw the line.

“Ok, Eli, there are no dragons in your room. Dragons are imaginary; they don’t exist in our world.”

This morning after blueberry pancakes and much growling and flying about the room (me rather awkwardly with only one and a half wings), Eli suddenly tells me, “Listen, there’s no such thing as dragons in this world.” I’m crestfallen.


“Really?” I ask. Is Dragon World over? Are my days as a dragon-sitter really done?

Then reappears a mischievous smile on his pixie face: “What that means is dragons DO exist.”

Ahh...I get it; they’ve just gone underground.

~OneArmGirl

Autumn reading and what really happened to the dinosaurs...

It wasn't a comet. The dinosaurs, as I discovered Wednesday, were actually chased down by a rabid mob of half term children and cornered in the Natural History Museum, like something out of 'The Day of the Locust'. The Mama Unit narrowly escaped with Stuffed Triceratops and a badly injured copy of 'Danny and the Dinosaur' in tow.

Run!!!

Now that we are safely home again, I want to pass on the warm glow left by some very kind commentary from This mid 30s life. So here follows an eclectic handful of my autumn addictions—some new, others well-established, all good fun to read.

Firstly, I like velociraptors, but I love Hyperbole and Half. I had so much fun reading dispatches from OneArmGirl that I started a blog of my own (more on OneArmGirl to follow shortly). International gastronomers Cinnamon and Truffle are my official advisers on all things delicious. I've added 'karmageddon' and 'cashtration' to my vocabulary thanks to Mum-on-a-Wire (courtesy of The Style Invitational at the Washington Post). I very recently discovered a blog about the world of children's books by a talented illustrator called Rafael López, which touches on the WPA amongst other causes close to my heart. And I absolutely love Susan Orlean's Free Range, quite possibly the best writing you can find on the internet.

Next half term the Mama Unit will shun museums for the safety of the fully stocked underground bomb shelter. All dinosaurs, plush and imaginary, are welcome to join us and avoid the crush.

Forget the two-kid army

A 12,565-strong Oliveria army is coming soon to a shire near you, and there ain't Jack you can do about it.

Wave an olive branch.

Half term blues

Schools and pre-schools in my corner of England shut their doors with a terrifying crash on Friday for half term break. Half term is the longest week of the season, a time when parents across the land huddle together for warmth at local petting zoos and museums, grumbling in queues to show solidarity, before amassing gratefully back at school gates on the Glorious Monday after. If you listen carefully on Glorious Monday you just might hear—over the parental 'Hallelujah' chorus—David Attenborough's soothing voice declaring an end to the great journey across green and pleasant museum-land.

Wildlife corridor.

But Glorious Monday is a week off and the great migration is in full swing. Two short people can't turn the tide, so today we are off on the museum current. I want to show Chaos and Destruction what some real monsters look like.

Speaking of off the beaten track

In my old life as a world championship sleeper who had time to read more than safety hazard labels, I used to love reading folklore. And for my money, the best stuff comes from America's Great Depression of the 1930's (that other time of banking whoopsies) when America's federal government actually paid—not well mind you—unemployed writers and bog standard folks off the street to walk around collecting life histories from other bog standard folks with stories to tell. Of course at the time there was an avalanche of criticism directed towards all this rather pinko-plot-sounding stuff, but the Federal Writers' Project actually 'uncovered something valuable and lasting' (words of David Taylor, author of 'Soul of a People') that still makes for good reading now. The American Guide Series is still interesting and various folklore transcripts in state collections and at the Library of Congress are priceless. Taylor's 2009 book, 'Soul of a People' and an accompanying film produced by Spark Media tells the story of the story-collectors themselves. Fittingly, the film and the book spend a lot of time out on the open road. So if you are lucky enough to be in Atlanta or New York, I highly recommend stopping in to say hello and learn more about the WPA and the Federal Writers' Project here:

Atlanta, October 27th: 'Soul of a People' presentation with WPA writer Stetson Kennedy and director Andrea Kalin at the annual meeting of the Oral History Association.   

New York, November 21st: '1935 and the Enduring New Deal' panel discussion at the FDR Memorial Library, 4079 Albany Post Rd, Hyde Park. 

Tales from on the road.

More to follow on the WPA, mañana. Promise.