Art, Books & Breakdown

Driveway moss + fallen camellia
Awesome mail day

February is winding down and this is where I start feeling a little sad.  The first two months of the year are such a great time for hunkering down, watching movies, reading books, organizing the house, preparing my taxes and cooking lots of meals for our family.  As we near the last days of February, it makes me long for just a few more days of winter.  It always feels like it went too fast.

Jesus is Grady's code name in Spanish.  This cracks me up.
Our computer calendar.  Blue for me, red for Grady, green for Steve.  What a rainbow this week!

I looked at our calendar at the beginning of last week and thought how in the hell are we going to get all of this done without a meltdown by one (or all) of us?  Well, we almost did it.

Steve took Grady on an 11 mile bike ride in Santa Rosa, only to be followed up by an extended basketball practice in order to prep for this weekend's playoffs.  The 3rd/4th grade boys' CYO basketball team is playing for the championship this Sunday.  They've only lost one game the entire season.  Monday was a holiday, but it was sports-filled and we were starting out the week with a tired kid from the get-go.  I was mildly concerned.

Letter in a Bottle by GSH
The Bianchi's Jersey Cows were my roadside traffic companions this week

Tuesday was the after-school chess club and this has been such a positive addition to our schedule.  Grady quickly learned new strategies and came home and challenged SL to a match.  He beat his father in three swift moves.  SL was dumbfounded.  Grady was beaming.

For reasons I don't understand, Grady wanted to create a message in a bottle and throw it out in our local ocean waters.  He asked Steve what our longitude and latitude coordinates were and jotted them down, along with a few facts about himself (like his birthday and love of Legos).  

Painting has become a very soothing morning activity for me.  I've been making a few note cards and painted a few wood blocks were primed with watercolor ground last weekend.  This makes me very happy and calm.  It's no wonder I made time for it this week.  It helped.

Angry Art
Top of the hill or punishment hill as it's now referred to
Our Marin Library haul

Wednesday, all hell broke loose between me and my son.

Grady can go for a long time with no problems, no meltdowns, no back-talk.  He's such a good kid, but every once in awhile we get these little surges of attitude.  And I know it's a healthy sign, but they always blindside me and need a proper punishment in order to redirect the behavior.

I met G at the mobile library after school and he quickly identified the teen graphic novel section on the top (read - out of reach) shelf.  I told him they were not appropriate for him just yet and to move on.  He proceeded to argue with me and tried to convince me that he was indeed old enough for the books and already had read a few.  I had to quickly decide that this was not up for debate and told him we were leaving.  He was shocked, but that didn't stop him from yelling at me in front of a bus full of people, crying and pleading with me to let him stay and check out books.

Now I know my boy's weakness is books and sometimes, as a parent, you have to use whatever you know is the child's weakness to enforce a punishment.  I had to act swiftly and not hesitate, because I was done with his tone with me and the way he was speaking to me in public.  Just done.

He wailed the entire way home and I finally just told him that if he said one more word, I would make him run to the top of the hill behind our house, twice.  Because, you see, I already made up my mind that he would run it once for the way he was talking to me on the mobile library.  He quickly quieted down and knew I meant business.

He ran to the top of the hill, fell down and worked out his anger by the time he reached the bottom of the hill.

We talked.  He apologized.  We hugged.  It was over.  He wiped the hot, angry tears from his camouflage-colored eyes with the sleeve of his turquoise hoodie.  The attitude stayed at the top of the hill.  My Grady was back.

Art.  Oh, how I love my boy's art.  I picked up four prints that we had made of some of his best watercolors.  He plans on selling them locally in order to fund his summer mad money fund.

I also picked up two of his masterpieces that we had framed at a local professional frame shop in Forestville.  They turned out great.  I plan to hang this week and will reveal the results on a separate blog post.

Our kitchen table has been doubling as our make-shift art studio.  We're experimenting on wood, rocks and paper.  I'm playing around with some vintage drawing inks and using white as a foundation for some birds I've been thinking of turning into postcards.  It's been fun and satisfying.

I had a date with Jill on Friday to make chicken liver patè.  It's not beautiful to photograph (it looks like cat food), but it tastes divine.  We used the same recipe as our batch last month, but used shallots instead of green onions and sweet vermouth instead of chardonnay.  We used an immersion blender and blended in my dutch over, instead of blending small batches in my mini-food processor.

My new found love of patè is surprising to me.  I only recently tried it and quickly decided I had an affinity for same.  Learning how to make it and doing so alongside Jill has been a fun and easy way to work on listening to my food senses and tweak a base recipe.

Duck livers are next.  Yes, duck livers.  I never thought I'd want to do this, but I'm loving the process and end result.

Rohnert Park Library & the aftermath in my living room

Grady stuff.

We watched The Odd Life of Timothy Green this week and G teared up and shared that a girl, Grace, in his class had kissed him on the head at school last week.  She confuses him and he didn't understand his feelings and why he was crying.  My sweet boy is in the beginning stages of 4th grade spring fever.  I better saddle up.

I've always had a struggle on my hands when it has come to feeding Grady.  It's a long story, but I know I was my own worst enemy when it came to dinner time and the rules/parameters for him.  It's bean a long haul, but he has recently stopped resisting and generally eats what we eat.  For the most part.  People told me this would happen, but I never believed them.

We shared a lovely dinner of roasted beets, cauliflower and red onions over a bed of sauteed braised greens that was lightly dressed in an olive oil, champagne vinaigrette and honey concoction.  He didn't love it, but he ate it.

The next night I steamed up fresh green beans and used the dressing to lightly coat the beans.  He ate every single one and then ate a reheated crab cake.  I almost fainted.

It's about damned time.

Saturday morning Grady rose at 7 am.  He made his bed, got dressed (twice), set the table and made breakfast for himself.  He even had seconds.  He did his chicken chores, brushed his teeth and was waiting for me by the front door at 9:30 am.  I promised him a library visit and he wanted to get there as soon as they opened at 10 am. On the dot.

We arrived shortly after the doors opened and he high-tailed it to the children's literature section.  He quickly maxed out his library card and had to use mine for the overage.

Upon leaving he told me that the library is awesome because you always find something unexpected.  It feels like anything is possible.

It was the perfect way to end our week and start this weekend.