Shhhh...

No one's home- I have the place to myself. I'm supposed to be working. But I just had to share this story with you:

This morning, for reasons that I won't go into detail about, I put myself into a time out. For the record, I had not done anything wrong, but before I completely blew my cool, I thought I would step outside for a few minutes and breathe deeply. I headed down the stairs off my deck so I wouldn't see the two little pouting faces wondering where I was going without them and sat on the bottom step overlooking my yard and the field and woods behind our house.

In the five minutes that I sat there, I saw:

Four bright red male Cardinals
A party of five Blue Jays (so much cheerier than a murder of crows)
Various and sundry sparrows and chickadees
A Great Blue Heron flying overhead towards the river
Two Turkey Vultures soaring in the wind
A little Red Fox who has built a den in the scrub I think
And A sharp-shinned hawk who flew into the view, causing the jays to lose their minds. He sat in the tree watching the fox and then followed her closely in case she left some food behind somewhere.

I had a National Geographic special in my own backyard.

Ok I gotta get back to work.

Lend Me A Tenor

Apparently, this is old news (circa 1993) but this is the first time I've read this:

Scientists have determined that Black Holes sing in the key of B flat.

57 Octaves below Middle C.

You can return to your life now.

Excuse me, there's a dinosaur in my soup

Over the past few days, a baby pterodactyl has moved into our house. She spends her days shadowing me, following close behind with her little, stompy, lilting gate, wings dragging behind her, shrieking her non-verbal demands. It’s not that she’s particularly upset- although the shrieks do get louder as her frustration level increases; it’s just that delightful stage of toddlerhood where they recognize that they can actually manipulate the world around them through verbal communication. Of course it has now backfired on her. On the first day, I would come running every time the shrieking started because I was sure she had somehow managed to climb her way onto the kitchen counter and cut off her own toes with a knife. Now, as she stands on a stool announcing herself and pronouncing whatever point she is trying to make over and over again, I just go about my day. When she feels like she has said enough, she gets down off the stool and follows me around again until some new thought occurs to her and the shrieking begins anew. If it weren’t for the sheer continual repetition of the noise, she is actually quite adorable as far as baby pterodactyls go.

She sounds a little like this.

Pickle had a very short pterodactyl phase if I remember correctly- maybe a couple of days. I don’t think that’s going to be the case with the Pepper.

Pickles and Peppers are not the same vegetable.

Pickle was a very laid-back, take in the world kind of kid. She was, and still is, extremely cautious about new situations. It takes her about twenty minutes to warm up to anything new at all – once she does, she heads into it full of confidence and understanding. And although you’d never know it now by the fact that her personal volume is set at eleven, she’s actually quite sensitive to noise and stimulation.

Pepper on the other hand is very, very busy. She is total kinetic energy. She moves and climbs and dances and flops and falls and runs and twirls through her day. She acts first then thinks about her plan if it doesn’t work. She is the physical manifestation of impulse. Pepper thrives on activity and noise.

The real issue, besides the non-stop splitting headache, is that it makes any contact with the outside world a little shaky. People at the grocery store come whipping around the corner into my aisle, relieved to see that I am not actually repeatedly running over my daughter with my grocery cart. And I can tell the moms who’ve been there. When they see me, they have the telltale “I’ve been there. Boy am I glad that phase is over” smile on their faces. And of course, it’s virtually impossible to make any sort of phone calls. No one quite believes me when they hear her and I explain that she isn’t in distress. To be fair, it does sound as if a snapping turtle has her by the leg as she is trying to take flight. But really, there’s nothing wrong. She’s just testing and enjoying the power of her own voice- and as much as I can stand it, I’m inclined to let her figure out that her voice is a powerful tool. She’ll need to know that later on in life. So if I owe you a phone call, remember, it’s not you, it’s me.

I Left My Heart in Oswego

6 feet of snow!

Another foot coming this weekend.

And people think Maine gets too much snow.

I may have to make a pilgrimage up there in the next couple weeks.

I'm not kidding.

Yeah!

You Can Reject Me Or Be Jealous Of Me But You Can't Do Both

Variety announced today that Studio 60 is being shelved after tonight. Sigh. Although I'm trying to remain optimistic, it doesn't look good. I should stop right here and say that if you don’t watch the show, you may want to just skip this post all together because it’s all I’m going to write about today. I may not get the chance to do this again. People feel very strongly about this show. They love it or they hate it. Or they very strongly want to love it but find themselves hating it.

Studio 60 turns me on. (For which the Land Baron is eternally grateful.) And not just because I have had a thing (and by thing I mean a full blown obsession) for Bradley Whitford since the first time he walked into the White House.

I love the show. I love the pacing and the humor in the conversations. I love that they steamroll right along so if you didn’t get the joke, you don’t have time to think about it and have to go back and re-watch it on TiVo until you do. I love that it’s about the industry. When I watch the show it makes me hurt to be back out in Los Angeles. I love Matthew Perry’s character and his obsession to be perfect at his writing. When his character is on the screen I feel like I’m looking at who I was supposed to be, who I still am hidden underneath this façade of suburban stay-at-home mommydom. Matt makes me stop breathing every time he tries to find the right word, the right sentiment, the right theme that will tie everything together. His character is who I am in the deepest corners of my soul.

And yet, the show is still finding it’s footing. Although many people cannot, I can forgive this because so many things are going right in the show. The ensemble is amazing- you won’t find that many talented, well-honed actors on one sound stage anywhere else in Hollywood. I think up until now, Matthew Perry has been one of the most underrated actors in Hollywood. (Although, he did appear in a brilliant, three-episode arc on The West Wing during the last days of Friends.) The writing on Studio 60 is smart and fast and doesn’t cater to anyone. It is not a show for the masses. The masses won’t get the Gilbert and Sullivan jokes. And that’s ok. Now if we could just convince the execs at NBC of that…

So maybe to some of you, Studio 60 is just a show; but to me, it’s an alternate reality. It rekindles that other part of me- the part of me that gets lost among the playdates and the preschool and the laundry- the part of me that struggles to survive these years of toddler identity theft. That’s why I’m rooting for it’s survival. That may be a lot to put on one television show. But I think they can handle it.

Update

This is what I was hoping for:




This is what I got:






Then there was this:



Because, clearly, there isn't enough dog fur on our clothes already.

Yippee!

It's supposed to snow around these parts today.

Well, it's not exactly what I would consider a "real" snowstorm- only a couple of inches. But with this weird winter we're having, I'll take what I can get.

I'll keep you posted...