Harvesting the silk

Splinter can be a very sensitive boy, so I wasn't sure how he'd react to harvesting the silk from the cocoon, an act which inevitably involves the death of the pupa. They are either killed during the process or in preparation for it (think about that before you buy a silk purse or shirt). I chose the latter method, baking the cocoons in a 200-degree oven for 20 minutes prior to boiling (and while the kids were out of the house). Those puffy white cocoons looked just like a sheet of meringues.

The actual harvest only held his interest for about 3 minutes, leaving me to spend the better part of an hour untangling the cocoons. It's definitely an art I have not mastered. Sometimes I got a very fine, single thread and other times I found myself winding a much thicker thread- something that looks like dental floss. In theory, Splinter is going to embroider a cloth which will be my Chanuka present. Of course, this gift can only be made with a great deal of my help....(Super DH, you want to take this on?)

Hopefully the next, and perhaps final, silkworm report will be about moths hatching out and creating new life in the form of hundreds of eggs. I say hopefully, because I'm not sure I found a dark or quiet enough place for the pupa to morph. We should know by the time December rolls around.

Love Thursday: Even more adult halloween fun?

This seemed like an appropriate photo with Halloween just passed and my 20th high school reunion just around the corner.

It's me in my 8th grade cheerleading uniform! Lest I get too excited that it still fits, my mother reminds me, "You always were a little chubby."

But why the post on Love Thursday (albeit an hour early)? Well, the bookish DH never got to date a cheerleader when he was younger. *wink, wink* Gotta go.

The Invisible Mom goes to the Women's Job Fair

Read it and weep here.

The New Blog

Honey, I've started a blog!

DH rolled his eyes at my enthusiastic announcement. I could see the wheels turning in his mind: How does she have time for a blog, when she doesn't have time to clean the kitchen?

Ah yes, the clutter in the kitchen, the mounds of papers on the mail table, the notes, papers and clippings (mostly all mine) that seem to cover every horizontal surface in the house. Who am I to fight entropy, the tendency of all things in the universe toward a state of disorder?

Anyway, my boys were intrigued. What's a blog?

DH tells them it's a web-log, like an online journal.

Why would someone have a diary online?

An excellent question really. Why indeed?

I think of John Mellencamp's song, "Check it Out" from his Cherry Bomb album. "A million young poets, screaming out their words, to a world of people, just livin' to be heard...." This song, BTW, will be on my CD compilation Music for a Mid-life Crisis, should I ever get around to making one.

I see this blog more as a place for making and building connections than baring my soul to the world or filling up cyberspace with the mundane aspects of my life. (BTW, honey if you are reading this 6:30 concert at school tonight!)

The main topics I'll be addressing in my blog are: parenting, education/gifted children, stay-at-home moms returning to the world of paid work, chronic illness and some vague category I'll call "chick stuff." I hope to inform/enlighten or amuse others with the help of some great guest bloggers. So visit often!

Leave a comment so I know you've been here. My Husband left one comment and I left myself the other "just to try it out" or maybe to make myself feel legit. Leaving visitor comment on my own blog reminded me of a story of a girl from my high school who supposedly rigged up her vacuum cleaner with an attachment and held it to her neck to give herself a fake hickey so that she could convince people that her made-up boyfriend was actually real. Do you think this is true? Can a person give herself a hickey with a vacuum cleaner--is this even possible? Or did a story like this circulate at every high school?