Every once in awhile you stumble upon a piece of art that speaks to you in a hushed voice, asking you to tune out the white-noise of life and to just LISTEN.  Pino’s “Maternal Instincts” has done that for me.  And appropriately so.  I’m always amazed at life’s magical way of syncing with my Soul Song.

This morning was one of those rare and priceless Mommy-Daughter moments that will remain embedded in my heart and mind for all time.  We somehow got on the subject of dreams coming true and Cali asked, “What do YOU think about sometimes when you dream?”

I told her I thought about ways to be a better Mommy…a better wife.  A more soulful artist…a more revealing writer.  Then she hit me with:

“How do you know you’re an artist?”

Aha!  Big Life Teaching Moment!  So I immediately stopped what I was doing and sat on the floor with her.  The conversation went a little something like this:

ME:  I know I’m an artist because it’s what I HAVE to do.  If I don’t, then there’s a big yucky gunky pile of junk around my heart and I get sick.  I know because it’s the one thing I do that makes me feel complete (besides being your Mommy).  I don’t have to work at it.  I create because it’s my authentic self.  What do YOU do that makes you happy inside?  That gives you a warm oozy feeling in your belly?

CALI:  My music…and dancing.  That’s what I do when I’m happy.

ME:  Then you’re a singer and a dancer.  Right now, it’s what you have to do, right?

CALI:  Yeah, but I don’t wanna go to dance class anymore and be scared on the big stage.

(She’s referring to her Spring recital.)

ME:  You don’t have to be on a stage in front of people to be a singer and dancer, Cal-Belle.

CALI:  No?

ME:  No.  You just do it.  Who cares if anyone sees or hears it.  But don’t you dare stop if someone stops to watch or listen, okay?  Don’t ever be embarrassed to do what you love.

CALI:  What’s that smell.  Did you toot?  Nahhh…I think it was Tess.  Tess tooted!

Life lesson complete.  But the more I think about that conversation, the more I think the lesson was just as much for me as it was for her.  Maybe even more.

“You don’t really understand human nature unless you know why a child on a merry-go-round will wave at his parents every time around – and why his parents will always wave back.”  ~William D. Tammeus

I’m trying to think of a name for my “Creating Room”.  Haven’t come up with one yet.  One that I keep coming back to is “The Birdcage”.  Yeah, it’s a movie title, but who even cares.  Truth of the matter is, I’ve inadvertently accumulated numerous birdcages.  I didn’t set out to collect them…..I guess they followed me home.  OH hark.  That’s it!  I’ve decided my room is now officially “The Birdcage”.  So from here onward and overboard, when I make comments like, “I’m heading into the birdcage”….or “I was sitting in the birdcage the other day….”….don’t make rash judgements and call the goons in white jackets. 

So in honor of my newly appointed “Birdcage”, I’ve begun painting a boring old particle board cabinet like…what?!  A birdcage.  I realize all of this is out of chronological order and confusing to those with rigid, one-track minds.  But it makes perfect sense to me. 

Here’s what we started with:

This is what I have now.  Kinda looks like Cinderella’s pumpkin ride..but it’s supposed to be a birdcage…that opens.  Nowhere near finished:

Cali got nekkid and made cupcakes and had a tea-party with her plastic and furry friends a couple of days ago.  Eventually we’re going to have to tell her, “No, Cal-Belle….you canNOT go into the library in nothin’ but your draws…I don’t care if your Daddy goes outside in his boxers…YOU are putting some clothes on.”

Then she made “soup”.  Vile soup:

Captured this little gem of a photo after she went haulin’ down the alley dressed like this, with THAT banana, holding a trashcan and wooden spoon, hollerin’ about “Soup!!!”

One of her fave things is working in the yard with her Daddy.  He was trimming bushes…so what’d she do?  Trimmed some bushes.  With my scrapbook scissors:

…wonderin’ why I snatched them out her hands:

Anyway, that’s about it for now.  Gotta run..the kid is in school today and my painting time is grossly limited.

Cali spent the afternoon with her Daddy down in Sprankler Kingdom so I could finish some painting.   I don’t know that I like this whole showerin-with-dudes nonsense….

I took her to stanky McD’s playland a couple of days ago and was able to capture southern manners on film.  This little boy was in front of Cali..when he saw her, he stepped back and grandly motioned her to go first…with a little bow and everything! 

We’re making cupcakes tomorrow.  But first, we gotta make a run to the vet.  Our ignorant cat went and got a tumor or something on her back.  Not sure what it is….but it just popped up in the last day and a half.  Hope I don’t get my face scratched off in the process.

Cali’s been out of school two weeks now and it hasn’t exactly been a party for her.  Mainly because the entire two weeks have been a blur of frenetic activity getting us moved and settled into the new house followed by mass exhaustion.  BUT.  Now that things are slowing down, I’m looking forward to doing some fun, totally immature and irresponsible stuff.  For instance:  Cali has eaten a Popsicle for breakfast every day for the past week.  I figure, it’s water with sugar in it.  She makes up for everything by eating four hot dogs for lunch and man-portions at dinner.

What we HAVE determined this past week is that Pageants are not in Cali’s future:

An entire roll of toilet paper WILL comfortably fit in a toilet:

and 101 Dalmations like getting their hair did:

She starts her summer “school”  next week…but I have been daily reminded that Chuck E. Cheese had BETTER be on the agenda before REAL school starts.  I don’t wanna go in there.  It’s scary in there.  That giant rat….the mass mayhem.  The mysterious slime that has built up on the skee balls.  Those smelly plastic seats in those car racing machines.  My husband has already let it be known that he will NOT be accompanying anyone inside that place.  

Yeah, well we’ll see about that.

Okay…here’s what we’ve been up to.  I made some puddin’:

I asked the kid this one question:  “Hey, kid.  Were you taking pictures with my camera?”  Kid says, “Uh no.”  Right.

…and after the kid lied, she did a cannon-ball into the packing paper and nearly broke a foot and elbow.

Things are starting to slow down and the house looks like someone actually lives here.  My fave part about where we live is the chickens.  Roosters, actually.  I’m still on the quest to get a picture of them.  When we came here seven years ago to start looking for a house, we saw a pack of roosters go running past the car and we were like, “Whaaaaat?! was that?”  It was then and there that we decided we had to live here.  We simply HAD to live in a town where wild Roosters ran amok. 

The story behind the Roosters is nuts.  Once upon a time ago, some little old man had a fight with the town of Albany.  He got so fed up that he packed up his family and got up out of here.  His final act of retaliation was to sneak back into town under the cover of darkness and let loose an unnatural amount of Roosters.  The Roosters are still here.  Every morning at 5:00 am, they start to crowing.  We don’t even own an alarm clock. 

After we moved out of that first house, we lost sight of the Roosters.  When the realtor showed us this house and we saw the Roosters walking down the street and heard that familiar sound of crowing, we were overcome with a wave of nostalgia.  (Okay, that was a bit much, but we knew we’d found our new home.)  

So anywayhoo, I’m looking forward to this summer…hanging out with the fam, hitting the beach, having all of Cali’s 5 million friends over to the house (no child should be as social as this kid.), spending an inordinate amount of time at the Children’s Museum….before we know it, Cali will be back in school and I’ll feel another year older.  Did I mention that I’m blissful?  No?  Well, I am.  Blissful.  Full ‘o bliss. 

NOTE: To all of my anal-retentive English Major-Spell-Checkin’-Quick-to-point-out-mistakes friends…I am well aware that I capitalized the ‘R’ in ‘Rooster’.  The Roosters are cool.  And coolness deserves capitalness.

This is a totally lame and not-at-all interesting post…but it’s not possible to expound upon much of anything with a three year old on Spring Break. You know, because she needed a break from all the shenanigans associated with preschool.

So until school resumes, here’s a quickie. Recent photography.

I think I heard something yesterday about Facebook lifting the cap on the amount of friends you can have. Now you can add MORE than 5,000 people to your quasi-friends list! How ’bout that?! Titillating, eh? Mm. Not so much. Not for me, anyway.

I happen to know each and every one of my ‘Friends’ personally. I have recently become aware that actually KNOWING the person is in no way, shape or form cool. I’m seriously debating whether or not I should conduct a little look-see test. Just start adding random people…like 200 every day. We’ll see. I haven’t decided yet.

In my ever so humble opinion, I think these networking sites like Facebook, MySpace, Xanga….they’ve all diminished the true meaning of friendship. Ask someone my age what a friend is and you’ll get an answer like, “A friend is someone who may often demonstrate reciprocating and reflective behaviors.” Ask one of our 15 year old kids what their definition is, and you’ll get something like THIS: ‘Anyone who is on my list.”

What do you expect, really? You’ve got Paris out there BFF-ing, dropping her BFF, having a TV show trying to find a new BFF, fighting with the new BFF and dropping her like a habit for her original BFF. Whatever, man. I shudder to think what it’s gonna be like in ten years. As I sit here writing this blog, my three year old daughter is right beside me on another laptop playing a video game that I STILL can’t figure out. She has her own kiddie-iPod. It’s almost as if these kids are born with an invisible techno-chip implant, giving them the ability to master all things electronic.

By this time next year, I’ll probably have to send her an IM to tell her it’s time for supper. Times…they’ve done changed.

And so it begins. Since the day the child was born, Cali has danced. In the belly. In the punkin’ seat. She could care LESS about who is watching…she’ll bust out dancing anytime, anywhere, any place…if the groove is right.

So this morning she looks me in the eye and declares: “Mommy…I wanna be a rock star like the Ting Tings. I wanna play the eetar (guitar) like HER (Katie White of the Ting Tings).”

I told her to get on with her bad self and rock tills she drops. And you know what? If anyone was born to be a rock-star…Cali was.