impromptu haircut

this afternoon wyatt and seth were happily playing with water guns on our deck when i came in the house just for a minute or so to check my email. it may have taken more than a minute, and i may have tootled around on the computer more than i'd planned. when i went back out to check on them, i discovered this little sight:

wyatt had "shampooed" seth's hair with bubble solution, drenched his clothes in the process, and had proceeded to give seth a haircut. and not just a little trim, either. this is the approximate length he cut off of seth's hair (and there was quite a bit of it on the deck):

i don't quite know yet what seth is going to look like with his new haircut. his hair was plastered to his head, and i sent him up to his room for Rest Time before it had time to dry. nevertheless, wyatt assured me that he made it look "really cool in the back."

we'll see.

g.k. chesterton is my homeboy

i've just joined a facebook group with the above name.

i am so in love with g.k. right now. i've decided to affectionately refer to him as gil (the g. stands for gilbert). i read some of his father brown stories years ago and thoroughly enjoyed them, but several months ago picked up his book the man who was thursday. he had me at hello. well, it was actually the, but you know what i mean. then a couple of weeks ago, i read orthodoxy, probably his most well-known work. oh. my. gosh. i need to re-read it (and probably will many times over the years--there's so much to take in) because i sped through it for the sheer joy of reading what he was going to say next.

after that, i spied a little treasure at our library--appreciations and criticisms on the works of charles dickens by g.k. chesterton. one of my favorite writers talking about another one of my favorite writers? oh, bliss! i didn't read the whole thing (i mean, c'mon), but i did read several chapters and thought his comments on david copperfield were rich, beautiful, enlightening, and enlivening.

now, i'm making my way through heretics and love it almost as much as i love orthodoxy. he is a poet and a mystic and an intellectual and a romantic in the truest sense of the word. i feel this undercurrent in his writings like he's enjoying his own--and the universe's--private, good-natured joke. chesterton, as he says of one of his characters in the innocence of father brown, "was, one felt, the most seriously merry of all the sons of men."

here are just some of my favorite quotes:

fairyland is nothing but the sunny country of common sense. it is not earth that judges heaven, but heaven that judges earth; so for me at least it was not earth that criticised elfland, but elfland that criticised the earth. i knew the magic beanstalk before i had tasted beans; i was sure of the man in the moon before i was certain of the moon. this was at one with all popular tradition. modern minor poets are naturalists, and talk about the bush or the brook; but the singers of the old epics and fables were supernaturalists, and talked about the gods of brook and bush. that is what the moderns mean when they say that the ancients did not 'appreciate nature,' because they said that nature was divine. old nurses do not tell children about the grass, but about the fairies that dance on the grass; and the old greeks could not see the trees for the dryads. --orthodoxy

and my haunting instinct that somehow good was not merely a tool to be used, but a relic to be guarded, like the goods from crusoe's ship--even that had been the wild whisper of something originially wise, for, according to christianity, we were indeed the survivors of a wreck, the crew of a golden ship that had gone down before the beginning of the world. --orthodoxy

joy, which was the small publicity of the pagan, is the gigantic secret of the christian. . .there was some one thing that was too great for God to show us when he walked upon our earth; and i have sometimes fancied that it was his mirth. --orthodoxy

the whole pleasure of marriage is that it is a perpetual crisis. --criticisms and appreciations of the work of charles dickens

in this degree the supreme adventure is not falling in love. the supreme adventure is being born. there we do walk suddenly into a splendid and startling trap. --heretics

romance is the deepest thing in life; romance is deeper even than reality. --heretics

people wonder why the novel is the most popular form of literature; people wonder why it is read more than books of science or books of metaphysics. the reason is very simple; it is merely that the novel is more true than they are. life may sometimes legitimately appear as a book of science. life may sometimes appear, and with a much greater legitimacy, as a book of metaphysics. but life is always a novel. --heretics

for romance consists in thinking a thing more delightful because it is dangerous; it is a christian idea. --heretics

every face in the street has the incredible unexpectedness of a fairy-tale. --heretics

if we wish to understand [a place] it must not be as tourists or inquirers, it must be with the loyalty of children and the great patience of poets. --heretics

the whole secret of the practical success of christendom lies in the christian humility, however imperfectly fulfilled. for with the removal of all question of merit or payment, the soul is suddenly released for incredible voyages. --heretics

and at the high altar of christianity there stands another figure, in whose hand is also a cup of the vine. 'drink' he says 'for the whole world is as red as this wine, with the crimson of the love and wrath of God. drink, for the trumpets are blowing for battle and this is the stirrup-cup. drink, for this is my blood of the new testament that is shed for you. drink, for i know of whence you come and why. drink, for i know of when you go and where.' --heretics

wyatt lately

here are a couple of recent pictures of wyatt that i absolutely love. he takes such deep joy in being outside, and i love seeing him all lit up from the inside out.

and just for good measure, here's a picture of seth, who takes joy in pretty much anything.

spring break '08

spring break isn't the break it used to be. i'm exhausted after logging over 40 hours on the road. (thankfully, only about half of those were with our kids. otherwise, i'd be typing this from the looney bin.)

we went to memphis first, where my mom and her husband live. they had some of their friends over one night while we were there, and i stood around with 5 of my mom's friends, laughing, talking, telling stories. I realized that this, this group of women with their vivid, warm, diverse beauty, looking for all the world like an exotic arrangement of flowers indigenous only to this southern soil, and with their strong southern drawls as thick and sweet as honey, this is what i love about the south. there was something so comforting about being surrounded by such women.

i have a love/hate relationship with the south, so when i stumble into moments or things that remind me why i do love this part of the country, i store it away like a treasure.

we left our boys in memphis for several days so that winn and i could go to charlottesville, va, to look for a house. oh, charlottesville is beautiful right now, all decked out in the profuse pinkness of cherry trees in bloom.

the housing situation is a wee bit discouraging because the cost of living is so high there, and what we will have to pay to find a home similar to what we have now is almost obscene. nevertheless, we did see a couple of houses that we liked, and we certainly became more acquainted with the neighborhoods and the area of the city where we'd most like to live.

on our second day, our realtor took us to main street market, a little brick building that houses several business. our first stop in the market was albemarle baking company, where i had a chocolate eclair that was. . .well, orgasmic. seriously. next we walked through the seasonal cook, one of those kitchen shops that is full of beautiful and delightful things, and then into feast!, a small gourmet market where i sampled the best goat cheese i've ever tasted. it's from spain, and it's called montenebro. if you ever see it, grab it. if you can afford it, that is. it's about $30 a pound. we strolled past the flower shop, the organic meat market, the fish market, walked through orzo kitchen and wine bar (and winn and i went back there for dinner that night), and lastly, visited the chocolatier. naturally, i had to have a taste. it was chocolate perfection. what a fun experience (and welcome respite) this was, in the midst of the craziness of house-hunting!

the day after that, back on the road to memphis to gather up our boys. we spent another full day in memphis with family (my sister, brother-in-law, and their 4 boys live there, too), and then headed back home to south carolina.

oh, did i mention that i came down with a case of shingles during this trip? shingles of all things! for the love. it's true what they say--it is painful. and i made the mistake of looking it up on the internet where there are ghastly photographs of people with severe cases of shingles. i used up the last remaining bits of my energy completely freaking out.

no wonder i'm exhausted. a nap! a nap! my kingdom for a nap!