I couldn’t get a good picture of it glowing in the dark, but here it is in plain, old, daylight:

 

It’s a Christmas gift for my nephew and, oh, so Christmas-y, don’t you think?  Right in with the theme of the season.  I asked his mom (my sister, Jen) his favorite colors, and she said she wasn’t sure he had one, but he was “into skulls” right now.

Skulls it is, then.

Merry Christmas.  Good Will to all Men.

Let’s just say, in theory, that you ARE a boy.  And, at least at one point you were 11-years-old.

Would a watch cap knit with glow-in-the-dark skulls and crossbones be cool?

Because I put a lot of effort into this thing.

Inquiring minds want to know.  Preferably before Christmas.

Conscription starts early in the New Middle Ages:

If cute could be harnessed, Harry could move mountains.

(Photo stolen shamelessly (but with credit) from April of Kungaloosh)

My husband has added black fingernails to his new moustacheless, green skin, black tooth look.  Oh yeah.  Just keeps getting better.

But at least his feet will look good:

I finished the first sock in the pair I am knitting him.  No knitting these babies out of scrap yarn – in fact, I couldn’t even find a pattern big enough for his boats.   This is my first attempt at pattern drafting.

I kid you not, I was working on the cuffs for these during my flight to DC last month, and my seatmate turned to me, and  said; “Hey, that’s a beautiful sweater you are working on!”

With a few tweaks, that’s not a bad idea.

My husband came home from dress rehearsal last night, not only sans moustache, but green.  All. Over. Green.

But I will never say that it can’t get even worse, because, oh, my friends, it does.

His teeth?  Were black.

Green.  Black teeth.  No moustache.

He may need to suffer for his art, but me?  I didn’t sign that contract.

I didn’t write this yesterday, because I just reached the point of saturation with all the blogs about voting and candidates and elections.  As uncharacteristically excited as I have been about this particular election season and the voter turnout, I had a dull ache that had started to settle behind my eyeballs about the whole thing and the almost overwhelming desire to slug someone.

There was one particular personal episode that did. just. piss. me. off.

Our uncontested races are “lumped”.  That is you vote for either all of them, or none of them, as a slate.

I cannot tell you how much, in my not-so-humble-opinion, that practice sucks.

There was one uncontested race where I had pretty clear negative feelings against the sole candidate, and absolutely wasn’t going to give him my vote even if he WAS the only dog in the race.   

There was no mechanism to vote a write in. And that explained the scream of frustration heard from behind the little screen that caused the little blue-haired-election-lady to move in my direction.

I should have asked for a paper ballot right then and there, but I didn’t.  Considering the makeup of our election officials, the fact that they misspelled my name on the rolls – resulting in my being viewed as suspect to begin with – I am not sure that barking up that tree would have gotten me any apples.

I just didn’t vote for ANY of them.

So THERE!

(Insert the cricket-chirping silence of the Universe here)

As I sit here now, the annoyance of that moment is so entirely trivial.

I voted for Obama, not because of his race, but because I truly believed he was the better man to lead this country now,  at this time.

But I had tears of pride in my eyes to realize that, though we may not be there yet, the day is in sight, the day described in one of the most eloquent American speeches ever written:

I say to you today, my friends, so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal.”

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.

I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

~Martin Luther King, Jr.

The content of our character.  Five simple words that represent a right so profound and so basic – to be judged soley on the content of our character.

I hope that America today is one step closer to the content of our character as a nation.  And let us not be found lacking.

Before.

and After:

 

Scott Ian gone to seed, or maniacal djinn?

Or a little of both?

…or rather, a stranger man.

I woke up this morning and my husband had shaved his moustache off.   Apparently, according to the costumer for the latest opera he is in, his Evil Enchanter is more Evil-Enchanter-ish sans moustache.  So off it came.

My husband has been totally bald with a moustache and goatee for the entire 10+ years we have been together. I prefer him bald – I have seen him with hair, and frankly, it’s not pretty.

But without the moustache, he looks just plain odd.  Not bad, really.  But certainly not “better”, at least to me.

My husband points out that he looks like Scott Ian, the rhythm guitarist for Anthrax – only grayer,  not as buff,  and totally missing the rock-and-roll factor.  I added this last bit.  I will take the heat later.  As a measure of full disclosure, he does play mean Guitar Hero.

It feels funny to kiss him.  

There’s an old Scottish saying that kissing a man withouth a moustache is like eating porridge without salt.

I like my porridge salty, thank-you-very-much.

(PS – they wanted him to have a widow’s peak, too, but realized that there’s only so much the Hair Club for Men can do on short notice.)

It just seems to be about time for a little hit-and-run gratuitous cuteness:

We won’t talk about the ghost-that-almost-wasn’t, or the audience of fish, or what constitutes Harry’s functional definition of a “fun thing” just yet.  We will just revel in the magic of hay bale castles and tiny rejected Charlie-Brown-Pumpkins that nobody wanted; pumpkins that in a little boy’s discovering eyes are just perfect.

Joy is very often incidental.

Yesterday morning I broke my toe in a freak dog-boy-suitcase collision.  And yes, it was on “that leg“.

Thankfully, it is more funny than painful and looks far worse than it feels today – all eggplant purple and slightly swollen.  Couple of weeks, and it will probably be back to normal.

Comparing this to the broken fibula, which felt far worse than it looked, I have to say, all in all, I prefer the fractured toe.

But oh, the irony.  Life really is a series of little tragi-comedies, isn’t it?