October at home

 

The life is going on here. The little guy needs to go to the zoo. He is an animal expert. I went to the zoo for the first time when I was 8. He already knows everything. The other time he taught his class that lamas defend themselves by spitting. The teacher was amazed. She didn't know, too.On top of everything he can read what I am writing here. He is sitting on my lap and is reading everything out loud few seconds after I write it. It gets annoying. He is a sweet guy.

1. missing tooth
2. remembrance of summer, a pie from the Chod country
3. a present, wrapping is the little guy's work
4. a bag with a patchwork applique that I made
5. poster for the theater play Michelangelo from the 1970s - on that another time
6. kid's drawings
7. hidden life inside of the toy box
8. hidden life inside of the book shelf 

TIe-dye batik

I got inspired by these pictures on Fine Little Day blog. Tie-dye batik. They look better in real, I tell you. They are so big and the patterns on them look like x-ray pictures or insects, row of bees and sawyers, you can watch them endlessly. Well, before you finally get tired of them. I am sure the Czech Hindu people living across the street from us are envious now..

June

The last day of school today. Domík got all ones. Good. But all the kids got all ones. So we still don't know whether he is clever or stupid. But I think that he is clever, I am his mother and I must know that the best, right? We are leaving for granddad's tomorrow and we will lead a small town life till the next week. I have a secret batik project. I have a secret not to do any work, not to even think about it. Bye bye.

Room

I got a wrapping paper that is a too nice to use it that way. The little guy does not care when I decorate his room. I don't do it too much, I like better when he does it, his touch is more fresh. There are still lot of stuffed toys around, they are actually more favorite then Legos now. He replays the real life with them, I think, they act like people and animals at the same time. It is kind of surreal to play that way.

3 magi

New apartment

We redesigned the apartment. New wallpapers, painted with pencils. Giant mushrooms in the room. Plants growing from sea shells. The plants throw shadows on the wall and create faces. Or one face. And one sea shell.

Yeah, yeah, I know, those mushrooms, my greatest sculptural achievement ever, that I have to include into pictures every now and then, so there is no way you would believe me I was showing you something life size in the first picture. Mushrooms, they are great props for photo shoot of any theme and subject.


I was actually getting tired of our handy craft weeks with Domík during his sick time. He is in school again and now I can start missing it from the beginning.

Nativity scene

Improvised nativity scene. Little abstract and that is what makes it. All family contributed. Domík came up with the light. I was proud. We thought we would have it for Christmas instead of our normal nativity scene. Then Domík accidentally kicked it and then he kicked it little more, not accidentally. That was the short life of our new and theatrical Bethlehem.

Advent

Some cookies. I bothered with the icing only this time. The rest comes from, guess where, IKEA.
I met with my cousin there and we had a nice and little hectic chit chat. I am working on some books (for work) and I received an article published in German Zeitschrift, it is part of my doctorate work. I am supposed to finish the school this year, I am not sure about that. I am reading another Fred Vargas. Apart from other stuff, that is more boring.

So I am making this little resume here for you that could be actually longer and might slowly transfer first into more intimate stuff and then into phantasmagoric and surreal ideas.

I will save that for next time.

What did we do in summer?

I guess, I owe some explanation on the pictures from the last post. We went to a little summer camp, private and cozy, at my friend's. Lot of kids, kittens, dogies and a teacher for the kids. It was nice but we survived only two days. We went on to see the cousins. We actually did a big route at the time. Berlin - cottage - cousins. We had a lot of time on the train together. It was a good summer. Now it almost does not seem that I was busy working.

Much

There is not much going on on this blog these days. I cannot say that the real life is more interesting either.

Holiday

Trip to Barcelona is coming soon. We are reading in a little Catalan vocabulary in our guide book. It does not have words as polar bear or kangaroo and it disappoints Dominik.
I want to take "Spanish reading" with me since I have always had a strange habit of taking something completely out of place with me to read during my holiday, as books in Italian to America or Polish and depressive essays to the Greek coast. I might end up reading Borges. It is close, anyway.
Oh, and travel books by Čapek from 1930s, they are pretty neat, fresh and nice, and interesting after all, Spain was so different ..., one can say.

Green and Gray

I work in the office few days a week now. The office neighbors with a recording studio. So I am writing some boring e-mails while at the same time voices of a woman and a man from behind the door sound, discussing an existential crises of their lives, over and over. I feel funny. Then the owner of one of the voices walks in, the studio has to be entered through my office, ha, I almost say hi because I recognize him, he gets in and says thirty times in a row: Run through the forest, lets meet at the car, I ll beep twice, OK? And he walks out and I keep writing existential emails to my boring addressees...

Cake was good

Today I wanted to go to the castle, out in the mountains but Domík is still down with antibiotics so we did not. We stayed at home and played a pharmacy. Poor thing, too many doctors lately, it has affected his playing. I like the game when he was a doctor I was a nurse and after the shift we went home together because we lived together. And we slept in the same bed. Cute.

I am having a reunion on Saturday, too many years after the high school. I do not know if I am looking forward to it or not.

Four Lines

- And when you want to turn, do you have to go straight?
- Yes. Or you have to turn. It depends on how you take it.

Sometimes our dialogs resonate with Winnie the Pooh thinking.

But sometimes we show more social awareness and responsibility. On both sides.

- This is oil. It is being used up. (while looking in a kid's book...)
- But not here.
- Everywhere. It is everywhere the same.
- But I am very careful.

Summer Vibes

Yesterday I saw my cousin, the one I used to play with as a kid. We agreed that the most romantic and film-like summer holiday was the one when we were 13 or 14 and we spent it with a friend of us, Lenka, at her grandma's on a farm. Oh Lenka, she had it so good there! We just showed up one day and stayed few days and had the nicest time. It was on the edge of being little girls yet allowed to go out on their own, we were running around like kids and we imagined we had adventures in what we though was the real world. The setting was perfect, farm house, geese, pond, striped blankets in the window, great grandma on bed in the kitchen, rich fields and the cloudless sky. We were completely free and we had each other.

I do not see my cousin so much nowadays but she has a good influence on me, I always get some positive vibe from her. Maybe it is a feeling of security of home.

(I did not mean to be pathetic today.)

...

Thanks for the care and response on the last post. In the end, as I think about it, it is mostly the independence that I have been weeping for, some kind of endless freedom that I rediscovered while being and playing with my kid and that resulted from having no other responsibility. So it is not about time with little guy in the end. He is growing up and he needs other activities and mainly other kids and he has that at school. So it is mostly my complete freedom that I have had and that is now turning into being hooked in the work process. But it could not have lasted forever, so what. I can get by with that. I actually do not weep so much.

Edited:
O.K. I put a picture of butterflies twice in a row, last post and this. It was unintentionally. I guess, there is a meaning to it, though, going along with what I have said here.

...

Today my little guy stayed in the kindergarten till three in the afternoon. Then he wanted to visit with his little friend from upstairs and he spent the rest of the afternoon there. I was at home by myself almost all day. He said he wanted to live there, too. I could not figure out when it was last time we did something together, something like cutting up paper, modeling with a clay. (Yes, I know the last post...) I am starting to be more work oriented, a real work. And I am having a job related meeting tomorrow, the job might steel good part of my time. I suddenly started to miss my time with little guy. The job is my field but I have been so happy at home. I have not realize that before I agreed to go to the meeting.

...

There is nothing like knowing that you have only five pages of translation left. I have thousands things on mind that I want to do. And I know that when it comes to it, I will mostly sit and stare, unable to decide which pleasure to choose first. Mainly, Domík will have his mummy completely devoted to him again. I am afraid I will be building up a marble machine or some craziness like it. I appreciate his interest in how machines work but I do not want to build one. I bought him marbles, though, and we play with them. I thought he might simply abandon the idea one day but so far it has not happened. Is it because I have been neglecting him lately and he stuck to the idea? The translation is good, I tell him, I can buy some toys. It was not very smart but he liked it. What would not I do to please him? I need to look how these marble machines work....