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So you want to join Craft Night at The Compound

I’ve heard this wish before, and not just from Marika. But shouldn’t you know what you’re getting into? Oh, sure, you’ve heard it’s paint and glitter and hot glue and Starbucks. There can be knitting, BeDazzling, and Barbie fashion. There’s laughter, conversation, and sometimes cake. But not always.

For example, tonight. Snacks?

Crickets? SIGN YOU UP!

I wasn’t quick enough to document Tom trying the Salt N’ Vinegar. But Lindsey was willing to offer up new versions of Lindsay Face ™ for Sour Cream & Onion:

Fear:

Resolution:

I can’t believe I ate the whole thing:

Chaser!

And Ricker was worried about blindfolds?

Magnetic Poetry 365:104

The Right Stuff–the book by Tom Wolfe and the movie–are favorites of mine. In the movie, I can never decide if I’m fonder of Chuck Yeager (as played by Sam Shepard) or John Glenn (as played by Ed Harris). But I do know that among my favorite scenes is the one where test pilot Yeager has to bail out of his jet before it crashes. When his best friend Jack and another man come upon the wreckage, they think they see a figure walking toward them. The other guy squints and asks, “Is that a man?” Jack recognizes Yeager and answers, “You damn right it is.”

I was thinking about all that when I wrote today’s poem.

When I promise an armadillo….

….I deliver.

This is my meager store of armadillo lore.

Armadillo is a Spanish word meaning “little armored one.” Its fancy name is “Dasypodidae” and it’s part of the “Cingulata” order. I added that last part for the benefit of Kathy S. The Brides will understand.

I read a novel one time in which a little boy called everything a “rattlesnake,” including an armadillo who peed down his daddy’s neck while in the little boy’s grip. Then the little boy stumbled over a real rattlesnake. The child lived. No memory of what happened to the armadillo.

I once dated a man who gave me the phrase, “There’s no such thing as a live armadillo in Alabama.” That’s because the only way we ever knew there were any in the state was when we saw them four-up next to our roads.

Lynne’s husband’s aunt once painted a pair of ceramic two-stepping armadillos. They were…interesting.

There’s the red velvet cake in the shape of an armadillo in the movie Steel Magnolias. Lindsey baked some cupcakes last week that had the same effect on the inside. On the outside, they looked like this. I wish I had one now.

When I got to Texas, I learned that it’s against state law to keep a live armadillo in captivity. I have never broken this law.

Then there’s the Giant Armadillo Who Watches Over Kirby Drive. My first experience with this guy was when I went to Goode’s Armadillo Palace back in 2007 to hear presidential candidate John Edwards speak. We all know how that turned out, though as far as I know, Giant Armadillo wasn’t involved in any baby-daddy scandals. It took me a while to find information about GA, but then I read this article. Apparently Jim Goode and his son Levi bought the concrete-and-mortar armadillo from its former owner, a Wyoming restaurateur, and after obtaining wide-load permits, had it transported to Texas.


The armadillo is fourteen feet tall and twenty-two feet wide.


It’s not a tall tale that everything’s bigger in Texas; it’s a long tail.


Not just any armadillo, of course, but a longhorn armadillo.


When they say the eyes of Texas are upon you, sometimes they mean red glowy eyes.

Oh, there’s also a Giant Seal!

Kidding.

I am not resigned

As noted previously, April is National Poetry Month. Today, Tim tweeted a link to this evocative blog post by Megan Mayhew Bergman about Steepletop, home of poet Edna St. Vincent Millay. An exchange between Tim and me in reference to those dreadful stairs made me want to read some of Millay’s poetry.

This collection is from my late mother’s library, so the first thing I did was open the book to the page the ribbon marked. One never knows if that’s random, or is meant to provide quick access to a favorite poem, or was just a stopping place for a reader. But as I’m one to want to find meaning in even the simplest acts, I can easily see my mother reading this poem. Stopping to look away and think. Reading it again. Dreaming over it. Remembering. Being moved by it and relating to it.

My mother and I are alike that way.

Dirge Without Music

I am not resigned to the shutting away of loving hearts in the hard ground.
So it is, and so it will be, for so it has been, time out of mind.
Into the darkness they go, the wise and the lovely. Crowned
With lilies and with laurel they go; but I am not resigned.

Lovers and thinkers, into the earth with you.
Be one with the dull, the indiscriminate dust.
A fragment of what you felt, of what you knew,
A formula, a phrase remains,–but the best is lost.

The answers quick and keen, the honest look, the laughter, the love,–
They are gone. They are gone to feed the roses. Elegant and curled
Is the blossom. Fragrant is the blossom. I know. But I do not approve.
More precious was the light in your eyes than all the roses in the world.

Down, down, down into the darkness of the grave
Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind;
Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave.
I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned.

My mother, Millay, and I are alike that way.

Doodling

Are you a doodler? I doodle when talking on the phone. I don’t talk on the phone a lot, because I mostly don’t enjoy it. Especially when I worked for That Major Corporation and often had to be on conference calls. To keep myself from becoming agitated, I usually played games of solitaire on my computer while enduring those bouts of torment. But then management had IT run a program to see what all the employees were doing on their computers, and I got in trouble for playing solitaire. That was, oh, a LITTLE annoying, since at the time, I was working sixty-hour weeks and filling in WITHOUT COMPENSATION for my manager, who was on maternity leave. So I asked IT to take solitaire off my computer, and also take away my access to the Internet. No temptations for me! I went back to the old-fashioned pen or pencil means of doing something with my hands while being forced to listen to phone conversations in which I had no interest and that had nothing to do with my job.

Even though my phone use these days is limited to being on hold while calling businesses and waiting for a real person to talk to me, or having conversations with people I actually enjoy talking with, I still like to doodle while I’m on the phone. I figure I may as well make my doodling worthwhile, so I keep my angel books and a container of colored pencils nearby.