Casual Observances

My old college roomie called me last night and asked me to help her with something. She wants me to help her design a tattoo. She says she’s always admired my work and would love to get some ideas from me. Naturally, I’m very flattered, and agreed to work with her.

Here’s the thing, though. Frankly, I’m more than a little nervous about it. I have always been artistic, and have designed many things for many people, including a few tattoos. But it’s been eons since I designed anything. I got out of art and into accounting more than ten years ago because the “starving” part of “starving artist” wasn’t working for me. Hence, I only do creative stuff for fun anymore, and there are often large spans of time in which I’ve done nothing creative. I’m a bit rusty.

Still, we’ll be getting together to noodle around with some ideas. I love her, she’s one of the few people I would call a life-friend. I just hope I will not disappoint.

In cuter news, Incrediboy did something a few days ago that just killed me. He’s approaching two, and hasn’t had much opportunity to see the night sky. He goes to bed at eight, and in the fair weather months the sun is rising as we leave for our day. Now that winter is creeping up, it’s still pitch black when we head off in the mornings. He’s been learning shapes and objects at a rapid pace while we indulge his love of books, and he’s taken a liking to celestial objects (just like mom). He gets very excited when he sees a moon and stars in a book and will always holler it out. MOON! TAWS!

The other morning we were leaving for the day and the predawn sky was very clear. The stars gleamed on the coal black blanket of night, and the boy tipped his head back and took them in. This time last year he was still a baby and didn’t really notice the stars, but now as a toddler, he notices EVERYTHING.

He pointed up and made his noise which means, “What’s that?” While he recognizes the moon, as it is sometimes out during the day, it occurred to me he’d probably never noticed real stars, just the ones in his books. So I said, “Those are stars!”

He looked at me with those gorgeous big blue eyes of his. “Taws?”, he repeated. “Yes, stars!”, I confirmed.

He tipped his head back again, gazing up at the sky - and in the sweetest, breathy dreamy voice, he sighed, “Wwwwowww.”

Maybe you had to be there, or maybe it’s just a mom thing. But it was the cutest thing ever, and I’m still grinning like a fool about it - hearts popping out of my head like Sally on Peanuts.

This last observance is in honor of my blog friend, Stephen. Stephen posts brilliant and poignant observations about race and culture in his blog. My following cultural anecdote is neither brilliant nor poignant, really – but it is kind of amusing.

The hub called me yesterday and asked me, “What’s a cracker?”

“You mean, as in, ‘You’re a cracker’?”, I asked. “Yes!” he said emphatically, obviously relieved that I could enlighten him.

The hub’s not a stupid man, but he just didn’t know the term. I explained to him that it was slang for a white boy – kind of the new - er, replacement phrase for? - “honky” (he was a teenager in the seventies). Apparently he had to stop by the store on his way to the office yesterday to pick up coffee creamer. While he stared at the multitude of choices in the coffee aisle, he accidentally bumped into an elderly black man. When he turned to apologize, the man groused, “Watch where you’re going, you dumb cracker.”

The hub didn’t even know what he meant by that.

Poor hub. He was the victim of a driveby slurring. Luckily, he didn’t feel a thing.