I am a Walmart shopper, this I freely admit.

I did not start out being a Walmart shopper, it just sorta happened to me, sort of in the same way I got pregnant — I have no idea when it happened,  I didn’t plan for it to happen, it just did. One day I wasn’t and then one day I was.  And I still kind of can’t believe it.

Prior to having a child, I had never been in a Walmart that I can recall.  I was a boutique grocery store shopper. I did not buy my t-shirts at the same place I bought hamburger.  I liked the little grocery stores that stock 37 kinds of mustard.

But then I had a child and I no longer needed cranberry sherry mustard. I needed preemie diapers and formula that cost $25 a can.  And as though divinely orchestrated, just before Sean was born a super-Walmart sprang up a short distance from my house.

I understand that some people have issues with Walmart and I even see their point of view.  However, I needed cheap diapers and formula and hamburger all in one stop and there they were, so what was I to do?  My economic ideals are not all that sturdy when it comes to cheap baby formula.

So then, that is my Walmart back story.  It does not relate to anything hereafter other than to say that I have a history with Walmart.

All that to say, not too long ago I was at Walmart, not buying exotic mustard, unless you think French’s is exotic, and as I was strolling down the big wide center aisle, my cart automatically turned into the baby department where I have been a regular for many years.  For almost seven years, that has been my zone – diapers, formula, little socks, adorable little rompers, play clothes, lavender baby shampoo, crib toys, the occasional lullaby CD and other first-time-mom impulse purchases.

Now perhaps you are wondering how I managed to stay in the baby department for six years and I’ll tell you:  Walmart caters to a big baby.  Sean is a string bean of a boy and when he was five, he could wear 2T. Although, admittedly when it came to long pants, a 2T on a tall 5-year-old  makes for a Steve Urkel fashion statement.  But then, we are Walmart shoppers, so obviously fashion is not a huge concern for us.

As it were on that day, I stood there in the baby zone, in the middle of all that luscious nougat baby stuff with my six-year-old who comes up to my shoulder and I realized I was in the wrong place.  The baby zone was no longer my zone.  I glanced across the aisle, towards my new zone, the boy zone with all those big not-adorable clothes, and I dropped my chin to my chest and wept silently. No I didn’t weep, because for Pete’s sake, it is just clothes, but I was sort of stunned.  The thought of crossing over to the other side rocked my boat just a little.  I could see from clear across the aisle that there were no cute little socks or luscious anything over there, just big boy stuff, and I knew that I wasn’t going to like the new zone.

And I don’t like the new zone.  Unlike the baby zone, there is nothing impulse-purchase worthy to be had. One t-shirt is the same as the next.

As a mother, this sixth year has been one of many changes, firsts and milestones.  Most mothers wistfully remember the day they sent their baby off to 1^st grade.  I remember the day I had to cross over the aisle in Walmart.

When Sean was two I put him in a Mother’s Day Out program at the church we were attending.  The fact of the matter is that Sean did not really want to go to MDO. He wanted to stay home and play with Lego’s with me, but I felt some sort of societal pressure to put him in a MDO.  And because I was young and stupid, I did it. It was a mistake.

On his second or third visit to this MDO, after he’d been there about an hour, he told the teacher that he was ready for his mommy to come pick him up.  She told him that I would come pick him up after lunch. He said, “Okay then, lets have lunch.”

Up through Kindergarten, he went to school from 9-1. Which was perfect.  By 1pm I was more than ready to go get him and he was more than ready for me to come and get him.  I’ve discovered that if I can’t get it done between 9 and 1, it probably doesn’t really need to be done.

First grade, however, is a whole new ballgame. Now he goes to school from 8am to 3pm and that has been a bit of an adjustment.  For both of us.  In case you did not know, the longest span of time in recorded history is from 8am to 3pm, it’s like 72 hours.  This was true when I was in Sister Luke’s 3rd grade, it was true when I worked in an office and it is still true.  The fastest span of time is from the moment your child is born until the day they enter first grade. That is actually about 60 seconds.

I walk Sean to school every morning, and then I come home and do a few little chores and by about 10:15 I’m ready to go get him.  I’m looking at my watch and eyeing the big plastic bin of Lego’s that has been left unattended in the den.

On the second or third day of school, I walked him to school and took him to his classroom, and as I bent over to kiss him goodbye, he looked up at me and said, “Mom, go ahead and come get me ’bout noon, okay?”

“Okay, that sounds great!” I said.  No, I didn’t say that.  Instead, I just kissed his forehead and reminded him to be respectful and be obedient, as I always do.

“You know I will,” he said.

“I know,” I said. “See you later.”

Half-day kindergarten worked for me and half-day first grade would work for me too. And half-day high school. And college.

He oughtta be able to crank this assignment out by noon, don’t you think?

I started writing this blog in July of 2005. In that time, I’ve published over 1,000 stories about my life as an older mother of a little boy.  And I’ve got another 1,000 stories that I have sketched out in notes but have never gotten around to writing and yet another 1,000 stories that were never written because I thought, in that moment, that I would jot down a note about it as soon as I could find a pen and I would write about it later.  But in the distraction of life I never found the pen, never wrote the note and I simply forgot about it.

Or worse, it’s not entirely forgotten, just mostly forgotten.

Often at the end of the day as I burrow into my pillow waiting for sleep to take me away, I want to turn to my husband and tell him about some remarkable thing that Sean said or did that day.  A small, sticky, persistent gnat of a memory buzzes around the dark perimeter of my brain, taunting and annoying me.  It won’t be shooed away and it won’t light long enough to show itself.  All I know is that something happened that day that I want to share, but I just can’t quite reconstitute the memory.

So I turn to AD and I tell him, “Sean said the funniest thing today.”

And he says, “Really? What? Tell me.”

And I say, “I have no idea. But it was really funny.”

By ‘The Artist Currently Known As Sean’

In this composition, the artist addresses the tension of post-modern life. Here, he uses loose strokes to invoke a sense of chaotic energy that falsely reads as a peaceful night sky, perhaps a reference to the uncertain economic conditions that are the backdrop to everyday life.

The artist creates a sense of orderliness out of the chaos by containing it in fractionalized spaces which likely symbolizes the sort of compartmentalization of life spaces – dark and light, public and private, internal and external, on-line and off-line. The deliberate use of green in places to depict the night is no doubt a nod to Remington. The brightly lit harvest moon refers to a distant hope, perhaps a statement of faith or perhaps a reference to the fall elections.

The loosely interconnectedness of the vines talk about the condition of modern man and the effect of the internet and modern technology on the human condition; connected at all times but ultimately small and alone, as represented by the mouse which appears to be sliding off the pumpkin.

Washable Markers on Notebook Paper (2010)
Currently on display on his mother’s refrigerator
Available for purchase

Hi everyone! I’m just going to write some stuff down here, not edit or make the words pretty or tie it up nice and neat at the end or that kind of thing, so go ahead right now and lower your expectations. Okay, just a little lower. There.

Now.

First, thanks so much to all y’all (Texas to English translation: everyone) who noticed my lengthy absence and sent notes and emails inquiring as to my whereabouts and well-being.  That makes my day.

I am well, thank you very much, and I am here. I’ve been keeping myself busy enjoying this last summer with my favorite six-year-old before 1st grade begins. I have this feeling that we are about to step through a door, into another time and space, and I don’t want to forget what it was like to be here, where it is so wonderfully bright and secure and easy. There’s going to be no coming back and visiting this little hollow in time and that’s a shame.

2006, the summer of three.  Oh how I’d like to book a week’s vacation back to three. I’d pay just about anything for a little more of that.

What exactly have we been doing this summer?  We have been swimming. A lot.  Last year, Sean was still not so crazy about the water, still wanted his water wings and preferred the baby pool, which kinda made me a little crazy. I swam when I was three! How dare he not be like me?! This year, he is a fish. Which confirms my theory on parenting: Don’t over-manage — they will walk/talk/potty train/swim/read when they are darn good and ready. Chill out and enjoy your kid exactly where they are. Everyone will be much happier that way.

We also do some school work every day. There. Now you you can tell your kids that you are in fact not the meanest mom ever, Antique Mommy is. Yes, I know, it’s summer, but here’s my deal: I don’t care.   Because I am just mean like that. After Little Dude completes the math and phonics worksheets I give him (which he secretly enjoys, I’m quite sure) and a little reading, he gets 30 minutes of approved-TV time or Angry Birds time when the sun is nigh and land of Texas miserable. If he does it without complaining, he gets 40 minutes. If he tells me I’m the prettiest mom in town, he gets 45 minutes.

What else? We play a lot of Legos, we cook, me make costumes, we make stuff out of boxes, we read, we swim, we make it up as we go along and then we start over the next day. Boring to some, perhaps, but it’s all the ingredients we need for a magical last summer before we walk through the door to 1st grade, maybe one that we’ll remember and long to visit again some day.

What are you doing with your summer?

This “painting” is from a photograph I took of a little girl playing with her doll in a puddle at Golden Gate Park.

One of the new features of Photoshop CS5 is the “mixer brush” which allows one to mix pixels in very much the same way you mix paint so that you can easily achieve a painterly effect. Even when I was painting with real paint in a studio, I usually worked from a photograph, so I have totally fallen in love with this new feature — all the joy of painting without the mess and expense of paint and canvas and brushes with the bonus of unlimited do-overs!

Lynda.com has a good tutorial on using the new mixer brush which you can find here, and it’s kind of fun to watch in a Bob Ross sort of way.

Earlier in the year, Scrapblog contacted me to do a product review. Heretofore, I had not been much of a scrapbooker, had never ventured into the world of digi-scrapping, although as one who loves photography and the like, it did hold a certain appeal. But, sort of like knitting, I thought it was one of those things I wanted to do but figured I’d never get around to doing.  Nonetheless, I checked out Scrapblog and really liked them. A lot. And now I’d like to work for them but they only pay in stickers.

Soon thereafter, I somehow ended up being in charge of the Kindergarten memory book for Sean’s class and I investigated a lot of different ways to get that done. What I found was that Scrapblog was hands down the easiest and least expensive way to accomplish that task. But more than that, they offered me 1000 times more creative horsepower than anyone else. All the stickers and backgrounds and stuff I used in that sweet little book was free. Free! My only cost was the printing which is on par with all other sources who do this kind of thing. All the moms were really happy with the book and I wish I could show you how cute it turned out, to show you some of the cool tricks I learned.

So then, here are the top 10 things I like about Scrapblog and I think you will too:

1. I don’t have to buy a program – it’s all on-line.
2. I don’t have to download a resource intensive program to crunk up my computer – it’s all on-line.
3. I don’t have to buy paper and other stuff that would occupy space in my house – it’s all on-line. (Bonus: I don’t have to go to a scrapbook store which overwhelms me.)
4. I can move stickers around and change backgrounds to my heart’s content – it’s all on-line.
5. I can work anywhere I have an internet connection because – you guessed – it’s all on-line.
6. Lots and lots of free stuff!
7. I can have my scrapbooks printed or just share on-line (you can set your Scrapblogs to private or invitation only).
8. I can earn points in their marketplace to buy stickers and backgrounds just by buying from some of their partners, whom I buy from already anyway.
9. They offer lots of printing options from books to note cards, all the standard stuff.
10. It’s just plain fun.

If you want to see a Scrapblog I made recently (using all free stuff) to sort of recap Sean’s first six years, you can see it here (I recommend full screen view so you can control the speed).

This is the aptly named Mirror Lake in Yosemite Valley.  The last time I saw it, around 10 years ago, it looked a lot different – it was bigger and less “mucky”.  Through natural processes, the lake is filling in and will someday disappear altogether and become a meadow.

In this photo, I applied an HDR affect which gives it a surrealistic quality, although Yosemite is surrealistically beautiful all on its own without the aid of Photoshop.

Here’s one of Sean climbing El Capitan. Hoo boy did he take to mountain climbing. I could hardly keep up.  Of course I had to carry the camera, so it was a bit more challenging for me what with my bad knee and all.

Yeah. No, not really. But I did have to carry the camera. And it was heavy.