My guess is that today was the most gorgeous day Minnesota will see this fall.  It was about 65 degrees and pretty sunny and I had to get outside and enjoy the crap out of it.  So, I presented the Max with a folded up piece of paper which stated:

This is your mission:  You must take pictures of the following items.  If you choose to complete this mission you will be greatly rewarded.

Luckily he bit.  We drove downtown Minneapolis and wandered around for about three hours, looking for the random items on the list (a traffic light, a neon sign, a bridge etc.).

His reward?  It was a toy he has been salivating over for months.  Though, I made him use some of his saved allowance and tooth fairy money towards the cost of the prize.

Here’s a few pictures of our adventure.

We headed first to the Sculpture Garden at the Walker Art Museum.  There are signs just about everywhere telling the guests not to climb on the statues.

Max and the spoon bridge.

And, here’s my child looking less than enthused.

OK, none of these pictures are items from the scavenger hunt list.  But showing you the picture Max decided would pass as sufficient to mark off the “tall building” requirement would be a fuzzy blur on your computer screen.   I also took a bunch of great shots with my camera that still requires film.  Someday I will get them developed.

P.S. I was fully planning on doing the blog for a month thing as the novel sounds really scary.  But I have flipped flopped my status on this issue and have dug up old web documents from two years ago when I only made it 6785 words into the 50000 word goal.  I’m going for it again.  But my goal is the end of December.  And if I only double my six thousand plus pages I will be satisfied .    In other words.  I may not blog a ton this month, or next.

Christmas, it’s not one day a year anymore, it’s a season.  I’m part of the ‘problem’ in that I already finished half my shopping and cannot wait to decorate my house much longer.  I just might not wait.  See, I need to buy a new Christmas tree this year, and I saw one on sale for TWENTY DOLLARS this week.  Sure, it’ll probably smell like plastic and be so thin I can see straight though it.  But I want it.  If I choose to buy the item of the week, I am going to want to put it up.

It’s November 4th.  My goal is always to wait until Thanksgiving.  I don’t know….   I might crack sooner.  So, I am going to use the least used feature of WordPress.  Here’s a poll.   Take it twice.  Be nice.  Three blind mice.

I love camping.  Despite how much I enjoy it I never make it out more than once or twice a year.  Here’s my problem, I’m female and I do not own a gun.  In my head, each of these things makes camping alone and/or with my eight-year-old son less than safe.

I do have a good friend who indulges me and is usually the person I head out to the sticks with in order to rough it.  Last summer we were collecting sticks or something and I thought out loud, “I should do this for like a year, think fo all the money I’d save.”  My buddy tried to convince me that not having a warm bed would get old faster than it takes to run a hot bath.  But I wasn’t having any of his hubbub.  I was convinced I could do it.  Then I remembered a movie I’d watched on PBS a few years back, Alone in the Wilderness.

This guy, Dick Proenneke, moved up to the Alaskan wilderness and built a cabin there almost entirely from things he found there.  He ate what he grew or found or killed.  Dick did this for the better part of thirty years.  And though he had visitors from time to time, he was living there all alone.  Dang.

I wouldn’t want to go at it alone, but I would love to get away from everything for a bit.  After my camping trip I went and watched that movie again, on a website found HERE.

Or, if you don’t have an hour to spare, here’s a clip from the movie from Youtube.

Someday, I’m gonna do it. I know I will.  And I’m going to write about it, though you will have to read about it after the fact since I bet I won’t have high speed in the woods.  But I’ll try to hold off my sabbatical until after the solar powered laptop is invented.  Cause I can’t go back to writing on paper, I just can’t!

I began this month by rising out of bed way too early.  I was having a dream that I had trapped a rat in the garage.  But it was not my current garage, it was the garage in the house that I grew up in.  I didn’t feel like dealing with it, so I woke up.  But, I woke up to NOVEMBER!

I kinda crapped out on October.  I even bought all these Halloween Mt. Dew aluminum bottles and never wrote about them.  Too late though, It’s NOVEMBER! November the 1st.  All Saints Day.  The day the Irish call the first day of winter.

Of course the big day isn’t until the end of the month.  I was at my families house last weekend.  My aunt was discussing the Thanksgiving holiday, which is always held at her house.  I blurted out, “I’LL MAKE THE PIES!!!”  See, because every year I want the pies and I get stuck with the dinner rolls.  Until last year.  I got the pies and my mom ruined it by heading to the bakery and BUYING Thanksgiving pies.  Shame on her.

Oh, and it’s Movember. I will perfect my ’stache.

Finally it’s National write a Novel month or for those as myself who fail at that each year, we just write a blog.

So, get into your local Target and stock up on your plastic tombstones and dancing skeletons for next year.  They will be replaced with nativity scenes and Santas before the end of the week.

This conversation took place a few years ago when The Max was about five years old

Max: (to a friend of mine) When are you going to have a baby?

Friend: Not sure, I don’t know if I am ever going to have kids.

Me: (to Max) That’s not something you ask people sweetheart, it’s personal.

Max: (to my friend)  You cannot hide your shame forever.

Max’s most recent birthday.

Ahh, the wisdom of a child in Kindergarten, it is unafraid.  Max is unafraid.  From the time he was mobile and jumping off the back of the living room couch to when he could hold up his hand and silence his pre-school class in order to gain their attention so he could make an announcement I have wondered why I was given such an amazing and outrageous son.  One time all he said  after all eyes were on him was,  “I would like for all of you to meet….MY NEW RUBBER BAND!” and he held up an the rubber band he’d swiped from my office.   His words were met with three and four year olds giddy over Max’s new trinket.  Now, Max astounds his grade school teachers with his verbal skills which they all admit are unlike any they have seen in such a small body.

“The kids don’t get his jokes.  I think he’s hilarious! …but…”

Golly, it’s the ever present ‘but’.  We recently had our fall conferences with his second grade teacher.  Bless her soul for taking on my son and all of his energy.  I always get THE SAME report from his teachers.

-Max is one of the best math students.
-Max is reading above grade level.
-Max is an on par writer, he could be better if he did not create each letter of all his words into a picture all it’s own.
-but…

His most referred to buts are talking non-stop and refusing to participate in classroom activities he does not enjoy.  He also has what have been described as, “outbursts” where he will hurt someones feelings.  I am told, by his current  teacher, that he is immediately repetitive for his words.  But forgiveness is a learned character quality, and most second graders cannot understand it fully.

Also, each place we live and each school and/or daycare he attends he is given a free pass of sorts being as he is the ‘new kid’.  I was the new kids for four years in a row  in school.  Unlike Max I was terrified of my father and his punishments so I would say I was on the shyer more reserved side as opposed to the acting out type of child.  Maybe I should become more scary.

So, from the pluses and minuses I see coming out of my son, I am trying to figure out how I can take this little guy and steer all that verbal ability to a place where people will see him as an effing amazing man someday.  As much as I fight it, he is going to be gone from me so soon and is nearly half-way through his childhood.  I’ve allowed all his schools to do the “special tests” they have requested to figure him out.  It was determined at age four he was not ADD, at six he was labeled “gifted and talented” and last week the experts decided he was not eligible for Special Ed.  (Thank you Jesus!…and duh.)  The most recent suggestion was (being as I refuse to drug him) : Max might benefit from seeing a family therapist for regular sessions where they can place him on a mini-couch and ask him about his feelings or whatever.

Y’know, maybe that would help.  But, I am trying one last thing before the shrinking begins.  I read an article. It may have been a biased one, but for sanity’s sake (and my fear of therapists) I am going to try it.  A boy, who was a bouncy guy and difficult to control who was always in trouble was put on a completely natural, organic diet.  His behavior improved and the teachers were relieved and all that mushy stuff.

I imagine I will have to wait until after the Halloween candy is devoured.  I guess I’ll have to help him with  the consuming.   He isn’t very fond of Jr. Mints or the candy with nuts anyhow.  Neither of us like coconut candy.  So,who wants the Almond Joys and Mounds?  Otherwise I just nibble the chocolate off the outsides and that’s kinda gross.

This is what my fridge looks like:

Sexy.

I woke up a whopping seven minutes before I had to leave the house today.  When I got home, I reheated leftovers for dinner, threw a load in the wash (still yet to be dried), and considered my chores done for the day.  I spent the next three hours between wearing out crayons in a coloring book and watching a reality show for the purpose of squeezing tears out of my eyes.  Then, I sat here at my disturbingly messy kitchen table:

and began writing four blogs…this being the only one I will finish…before deciding a Fuzzy Viking sounded better than thinking clearly.

It was a good day

Now, play “Guess That Food Item” while staring at my fridge.

I’ve decided The Pilver needs an official anthem:

So, the parents who launched the aluminum mushroom are insane.  There’s no need to further dissect this topic, but it will be done on TV shows and newspapers for at least some time.  Only until another nut does something really stupid.   Instead, let’s enjoy a parody video which touches on this story.

I have spoken of him before, Nick P., who used to come into the coffee shop I had in a teeny town in Po-Dunk, MN.    Nick was always clicking on his laptop and told me he was going to film school.  A few months later he left and has since joined with other folks and creates funny short films.  He and his buddies made a video about the balloon craziness, and somehow (I did not ask how) it ended up on MTV.  Good for you guys!

Here’s the film, enjoy!

Last spring, I saw the preview for the movie that enters your local theaters tomorrow.  I cried.  I am a wuss.  How it ALREADY opens tomorrow makes me realize that the summer passed really fast and a lot of wonderful and weird things happened this summer. Wait for my bought, sold, and produced screenplay to see what I mean.

Anyhow.  Tomorrow it comes out.  I usually talk about kid’s movies when I see them on The Pilver.   I don’t know if I will review this one.  I am going to see it for sure.  But, I have heard so many discouraging things about it.  By that I mean I have heard it is maybe not for kids.  It is not lighthearted.  It does not have a happy ending.  It is scary for little kids.  So, I am expecting something that will make me walk away slightly disturbed.  Those are my least favorite movies; the kind that make you sad.  We’ll see though.  By this time tomorrow, I will have  watched it and realized whether or not it makes me happy.  But I imagine that for sure, I will cry.

When I was your age…

Just kidding, I have no idea how old you are.  However, when I was younger I recall chowing down various food items that were of the generic variety.  True generic.  White background with black lettered writing stating nothing more than what was inside of the package with no promise of a guaranteed decent taste or quality.  The food my mom usually went generic for was cereal or canned vegetables or potato chips.  And I ate those corn flakes just the same as I would have if they contained a prize inside.  I did not care of the difference.  I knew it was the cheapo version of national brands. I just thought we were somewhat on the lesser side of the spectrum as far as family incomes were concerned.  I was gullible.

Please understand, we were not amazingly wealthy.  However, I think my parents tricked me into thinking we were poor so I would not assume material things were going to be around when they were not.  I did have everything I needed, and more.

I guess, if there was one thing I would say my parents did ‘right’ when my sisters and I were growing up, we did not get handed to us things…ever.  I remember one time, my mother told me I could a new bed to replace the one I’d had since I left the crib.  She took me out and we picked out a FOLD OUT SOFA!  So, I was probably fifteen, and not only did I get a new bed, but a couch in my room! It probably cost her a few hundred dollars and I though I was the most spoiled child in the world.  I felt badly because my sisters were laying around on their daybeds and I had a grown up bedroom!  If only I could have convinced me to get a phone with a cord and I think I would have become Catholic from the guilt I felt for the luxury.

I am guessing every generation feels the same way, so scoff if you like.  But I feel as though I spend more on The Max than my parents did on the three children in my family combined.  He’s into these toys, Bakugan.  And I succumb to his desire.  Why?  Two reasons.

#1 I want him to be able to play with the boys on the block whos parents but them Bakugan to brawl with.

#2  He really gets into the things, and I like buying him things that he actually uses.

But what if…what if I didn’t buy him Bakugan, or clothes I feel are trendy enough or shoes that he considers cool  for walking through the second grade hallways?  My fear is that he would be considered a weird kid.  I mean, he is weird. All kids are.  But, he is ‘in’ enough because of my purchases that I have prevented him from becoming a social outcast because of fashion or play-thing rules?

Why can’t we all, as parents, get together and say, “ENOUGH!”  Let’s not waste our finances on making sure our kid feels hip enough for grade school and buy a decent car for the family or pad college savings a little more or take a vacation or something more worthy or our labor.

How to I start this petition?  Where do I get other folks to sign up for my generic mission?  Even if you head to your local Target, you no longer receive a handsome black and white container of chips, but an Archer Farms bag of coffee or bottle of ketchup.  Possibly, when I decide The Max ought to try his first beer, I will seek out the worst of the worst:  BEER beer.  I fondly remember selling this as a cashier in high school.  It came in beautiful white cans with plain no nonsense writing:

There was a lady who bought a six pack of these puppies EVERY DAY.  At $1.99, why the heck not?

To end this rant of blabber, I understand that society levels and status will be around for eternity.  I just hope for my own son, that even if he participates, he understand that when he was a kid, he too, ate dirt.  And he loved it.