Playing Island

Patti docked in the shallow water.

My kids don't play house, they play island.  I'm not exactly sure how this came about, but it seems an important game.  If you want to play it at your house, here's how it goes.  Take a few but very important items: towels, a trash can, storage baskets, bowls, which you will then miss if they are not in their usual place.  Then in the middle of a room, usually in the middle of a main passageway, like at the entrance to the flat, in the hallway, or in the middle of the kitchen, put a towel or basket on the floor to mark the island.  Then take some dolls and set up a home for the dolls on the towel.  For some reason, there is always a toilet on the island and some beds, but the toilet has been an important part of this game for already two years.  I know this because my kids used the trash can from the bathroom, so it was missing for the better part of two years and no-one was allowed to use it to actually throw trash into.  Only dolls and stuffed animals were allowed to poop in it.  After the set up, which typically takes several days but could take up to a week, you can start to play, so at night before you go to bed, you put the dolls and stuffed animals in their island beds, in the morning you wake them up again and get them dressed.  Shoes and slippers become boats and the dolls or stuffed animals sail to other parts of the house.  Shoes with shoe laces are particularly good as boats because they can be tied to other items of furniture so that they won't float away.  Each rug has a different depth, so that sometimes characters can get out and swim or actually touch the ground of the water.  Some of them can't swim and the swimming lessons begin.  There is a lot of feeding and cleaning going on on the island, which makes me think it's really a version of playing house.  So now you know how it goes.  I'm so glad my kids are so creative and don't play house the normal way.  Either it has something to do with how I play house, or don't.  On the subject of playing house, with one my English classes we are reading "Revolutionary Road", Richard Yates's critique of fifties America which has been recently made into to movie with Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet.  The wonderfully truthful and therefore mad character of John Givings, puts it into words for me:  "You want to play house, you got to have a job.  You want to play very nice house, very sweet house, then you got to have a job you don't like.  Great."  So like I said, I like that my kids play island.
Aloha for now,
Mrs Crocodile 

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Warning: Contents of my life may be exhausting

Here is the fine print:  Why is it that raising healthy children, gently insisting that they eat enough vegetables, do their homework, then taking them to some activity outside of school which is good for them therefore fueling a certain passion for life, working as an appreciated and energetic teacher, writing, I hope, a sometimes inspiring blog, helping English speaking theater in Basel out with their costumes and loving it, working in the evenings as a dresser at the Theater Basel and loving it, sticking the very interesting and informative fish stickers in the Migros underwater sticker book in the right places with the kids and reading what they are in German, and saying "Oh, it's an elephant fish, I didn't know that", trying to find ways to cook as fast as possible, but still feel like I've eaten something more nourishing than just melted cheese on toast, fixing jeans with holes in them, trying to find the hours in which to sleep as much as possible, keeping a nice boyfriend, carving out time alone, having the song "Cry Baby" by Janice Joplin stuck in my head, letting peace reign between two ex's, organizing who can take the kids in the evenings, doing my homework from drawing class which makes me feel good when I see my progress, looking forward to dumping all my cares and woes on a therapist, canceling appointments when there is Terminkollision, keeping up with the e-mail in-box, oh and cleaning the house, thanking my lucky stars that's it's not a bigger house, making sure three people have clean clothes to wear every day, making sure we don't look poor and trodden down, making sure I don't feel poor and trodden down, trying to write in a diary to keep it all straight and trying not to become an alcoholic which would otherwise wash it all down quite nicely, be cheaper than some drugs, but still on the expensive unhealthy side, so instead styling my hair for ten minutes and trying to find an appointment with a good friend for coffee in between her busy life and mine...why, I ask, is this so incredibly exhausting?

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Jump!

I have been told I should read "the Artist's Way", by not one, not two but three people, who incidentally, don't know each other.  You don't have to hit me over the head.  I got it now.  Either this is a really good book or I really need it.  I can't tell you as yet, because when I ordered the book in a well-known, very large book shop in downtown Basel, they said the English version could take a few weeks to get delivered.  Now they sent me a notice that said the English version is un-deliverable at the moment.  I don't know how long a moment is in the Swiss German speaking world, so I am left to speculation about what the book is actually about:  I have an inkling that this book covers the spiritual side of the flowing energies of creativity, helps us to tap into them and thank the powers that be as we shed our fears of being creative and as life would have it, lessons are learned only when we are ready, but we could tweak them a bit.  I got that from skimming the German version, but it could be totally off.
So today, my point: a lesson is actually much easier to learn when I have already internalized it, in fact when I have already actually learned it.  And then I just need some time, a person's wise words or a book's gentle way of opening a world to me, it makes no difference if it is fiction, non-fiction or science-fiction.  Because actually we know our lessons.  Sometimes of course one does need to be hit over the head and jump into the pool of fears.
Yours, with life-vest on,
Mrs Crocodile.

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Aslan, my new favorite hero

Aslan is a very special kind of lion. This is the kind of stuff he goes on about in his regal way: "Do not dare not to dare. Touch me. Smell me. Here are my paws, here is my tail, these are my whiskers. I am a true Beast." This is taken from The Horse and His Boy by C.S. Lewis.
Okay, you think I've been away from the blog-o-sphere for so long and now I come out with this: a child's book?  Well, one of the perks of motherhood (since they need to be counted and recounted again and again, least the actual work of it all overshadows the perks) is that you get to read all those stories you loved as a child over again and really get into them this time because you kind of understand what they are going on about.  Many discussions are spent mulling over the ins and outs of the plots and characters with my children to an extent that I find really very satisfying.  I have even been known to read farther into my son's book because I couldn't put it down after he fell asleep.  But my point is completely elsewhere.  It is with what Aslan said: "Do not dare not to dare".  The last bit of that quote I also love: "I am a true Beast".  It seems, although this explanation would be daring in its simplicity, that one has to be a Beast (with a capital B) to dare to dare.  Since Aslan is about the closest thing they have to a god in Narnia, you are just going to have to take his word for it.  And this week I take as my mantra: "Do not dare not to dare".  It's a good change from the usual: "I move forward with confidence and ease from Louise Hay.  "Do not dare not to dare",  which always makes me take a deep breath in, since the sentence when said outloud is somewhat forboding, I'm looking forward to the adventure it brings...
Yours, daring and true Beast
Mrs Crocodile

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The next most exciting thing...

Photo courtesy of Upstart Entertainment, by Sascha

http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=5601853&id=652256572
It's been an exciting year costume-wise, not to mention the other activities which have made it so I have not sat down for two months.  If you don't know what those are, just use your imagination.  So on the subject of sitting and the subject of making costumes, the next most exciting thing I did this year  after dressing the girls in the chandelier costumes was to make underwear for a singer/actress in the Café Brel show with "I heart NY" on the bum.  So when Mariann Böhler lifts up her skirt while she's singing the Bourgeouis with Nina Meier-Bradlin and Lena Tamini, she gets a laugh from the audience.  Oh!  did I forget to mention the words to the song are pretty good, too. 
Directed by Krista Jacquet and also starring Dany Demuth, Andrew Fernandes and Norman Koeth, they are accompanied by Christine Archer on the piano as they sing their way through the fantastic compositions of Brel, serve you drinks and basically make you feel like it was well worth getting off your seat and out of the house and into the theater again.  So it's too bad that the show is only happening for two more nights, and most likely already sold out.  No, actually it's wonderful that so many people can see my creations and are ready for a real night out but keep tabs on the upstart entertainment site http://www.upstart-entertainment.ch/.
They are good.
Yours with I love NY underwear on,
Mrs Crocodile

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The mating habits of the Abalone

I am not a scientist, unless they do a lot with scissors, then I have missed my calling. But this is the background to the continuation of the story I started sometime earlier about the boxes and it fits into this animal's mating habits.  When I was a child, my parents came home with lots of abalone, and after beating them with a mallet that's only other use must be for beating dead horses, and since these poor crustaceans are almost extinct, I feel responsible.  So don't eat abalone.  The poor things, the male abalone sits on a reef and spews out his stuff in hopes that a female of mating age and fertility may be somewhere in the vicinity.  Tough luck if she's just out of spewing reach.  And I really think writing in those little boxes on Facebook or sending a tweet is something similar: you spew it out over the reef and you hope a female might be waiting.  If you go to Facebook now, you'll see that the story is taking shape in my little boxes there.  It's wildly fun to think of one sentence a day, maybe by the time I'm 60 it will be a book!  But what I'm also sure was wildly fun was my brother taking this picture of an abalone off of Catalina Island.  Can you see it?  They also marvelously blend into their surroundings so you almost don't notice them, except for the feelers wiggling around.
Thanks for this picture, brother!  Don't eat it!
Mrs Crocodile

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The shoe does fit, but you can't wear it out the house...

Here's another collage for you. Please don't ask me when I have time to make collages, I force my kids to make them. The real story is this: I wanted to get some work done in the office and had the kids with me, so in order to work un-interrupted on the computer for a few moments, I opened my file with all the really good cut outs I was saving for myself and gave them very reluctantly, with some glue, to the kids. They came up with this one.


I like the extremely high heel, could you really even walk out the door in that? Or stand at all? And then on top of the pedestal? Never mind, who needs to leave the house with that reverse snowman chubby tummy look. "Is it about to melt?" I asked. Moving on up from there, it's the mouth which is a woman's mouth but decorated with a moustach on it. And instead of hair, she (or is it a he?) has an enormous eye-lash. I wondered if the whole scalp could bat an eyelash.

I wish I could fit all of life onto this wall and all my musings and cuttings up but I daresay, I censor myself too much, but also there's a whole lot of TMI around here. The nice thing about this collage is although it looks quite precarious, it is not really about to fall. And I daresay that is sometimes the nice thing about life, too. Even wearing flat shoes, you can walk on the edge, but don't fall.


Yours,
Mrs Crocodile

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