How to Have a Good Weekend

I'm a little late with this, seeing as the weekend was a few days ago, now, but I have to say, it was a pretty good weekend. Friday night I finally made myself start a book I had been given by a friend (along with an exhortation to please read it already!), and it was so great to start one that was so good so fast. Sometimes I have to work my way into a book, and this often has the result of me not reading any books at all, despite wanting to and enjoying it when I do. More on that book when I finish it up, probably in the next few days. I have to add, though, that I love the way a good book stays in your head. The whole next day I was trying to remember what show I had watched on Friday night, but no, it wasn't TV, dummy!

On Saturday morning we made oatmeal cookies together (yum!), then headed to our friends' house for a play date, which means we got to hang out with our nice friends who have two daughters very close in age to our own (while the kids ran around with very little involvement on our parts), talk about Kindergarten choices and what it all means, and then hit the dim sum place. If you ever go to dim sum with us, please, be assertive, because Jim is the bossiest dim sum foreman in town. Not that I don't like everything he picks. I had some quiet drawer tidying time while Muriel napped, and Jim and Naomi hit the Home Depot (we're in the market for a new ceiling fan). Wow, drawer tidying! But really, it was fun.

Sunday we got up so early, we somehow found time to make (and eat) pancakes and have a fun, leisurely bath (the girls) before church. Usually baths are in the evening, and rushed, and lately also screamy, due to an impatient mother dousing already tired and whiny children when they are not ready for it, incessant quarreling over bath toys, and a slate of recurring scoldings for this and that. Delightful! But Sunday's was all mellow and playful and cooperative. Church involved no Sunday school teaching, and I remembered to pick up my cake pan (I get a lot of pleasure out of very small accomplishments!). Lunch at the Chinese bakery! Yes, we do eat a lot of Chinese food.

During Muriel's nap, Naomi and I went to the Bellevue Art Museum, which seems to lean toward fantastically artistic handicrafts, rather than straight up art, whatever that means. There were four main exhibits: ceramics, glass, wood block prints, and wood carvings. This was Naomi's first visit to a museum (as a sentient person) outside of the categories of "science" or "children's" (or "flight," since she has been to that one a handful of times with her dad). How did she like it? She loved the revolving door into the museum, going up the long, gentle stairs, giving me the impression she was about to touch something despite my repeated admonishments, rolling the wheel on the kinetic sculpture-benches, and riding down in the gigantic elevator. She recognized a dodo bird on one of the woodblock prints, and informed me that they are extinct. One of the wood carvings included an anatomically correct male torso, and there was some excited discussion and (ahem) pantomiming of how this anatomy differs from her own. Yep!

Oh, and that night, too, Naomi tried her hand at reading, and realized she could figure out some words, especially in books she already knows pretty well. It was funny to hear her brag about how great she is at reading, even though of course I countered her with how cool it's going to be to practice it and get better and better, blah blah focus on the process blah blah.

This is a long lead-in to the thing I wanted to tell you guys about, which is this DIY how-to website I found (www.instructables.com) when, inspired by our visit to the artsy craft museum, I did a search that night on woodblock printing. 'Cause woodblock prints are neat! I will confess I am a lazy internet user, and I don't find myself going down a lot of paths. But this site, I think, could keep me interested, not only because it tells me how to do stuff I will probably never try, but because all these interesting people are out there actually doing these things. And telling me about it! I love it.