Friends, neighbors, countrymen: It’s time for an official Supafine hiatus.Possibly (and probably) a sunset, though I hate to say goodbye — so I’ll just say so long.

I want to thank you all for reading me for nine years. In fact, I don’t know how to appropriately thank you guys for such a weird thing: reading my words, understanding me, becoming, in some instances, a real friend. Leaving thoughts of your own in the comments. Some of you just came here for the free sewing tutorials, and that’s OK, too.

There may come a time or a medium in the future when I can write freely again, but that time is not now. I have a facebook account that is mostly private, and a twitter account that is totally and embarrassingly public. Please feel free to follow me there, or just give me a sad hug and a mock salute and we’ll each let a single tear track down our cheeks.

It’s been very lovely working with all of you.

Sincerely,

Supa

Too busy catching up on The Walking Dead.

Hi! Today I:
1. Bought cow shit at Lowe’s like a sucker
2. Pruned a tree poorly
3. Pulled clods of dirt out of my baby’s mouth

Pretty typical doings.

To the boy who screamed into my world six years ago today and changed everything: Happy birthday, I love you, you’re amazing. To answer your questions:

1. Every minute of every day.

2. Because we didn’t realize your initials would spell “O.J.”

3. To Pluto and back a million hundred million hundred times … plus one.

4. No, it’s not the Lego Hogwarts Express, and I’m sorry to break that to you.

5. Go ask your father.

Of all my children, you got here first, and you’ve been showing up on time for things ever since. Your preschool teacher said you’d be President some day; I think you’ll carry in the family footsteps and be an engineer, or a teacher, or a professor. You have an analytical mind, my son, yet you love people, and sharing (sometimes, I regret to confess, ad nauseum) your interests with others. Right now, age six, you are a lego constructor extraordinaire, obsessed with instructions, features, and surprising architectural elements like breakaway walls so prisoners can escape. You all of a sudden know how to read. You asked me this afternoon if it was all right if you had a girlfriend at school. You love to wear T-shirts and you cock your handknit hat at an angle in order to look “like a dude.” You use phrases like “deadly awesome” and if I didn’t know firsthand how left-brained you are, I’d think you were a surfer reborn. You’re my right-hand man, useful beyond your years while we adjust to Miss Molly, able to leap Mackies with a single bound, patient and, for the most part, kind. (You are six, after all.)

Thank you for the last six years. You don’t know this, but I still check on you every night, touch your forehead, pull up the covers. I imagine I’ll keep doing it until you move out of the house. But remember, you promised me you’d always live in town. I just might hold you to it.

Thank you for being who you are and for teaching me all you know.

Love,

Mom

You may ask yourself, Did she really camp out at the bus stop 32 minutes early the next day, doggone determined her son would catch the bus with plenty of time to spare?

And you may answer yourself, Yes. Yes she did. In 90 degree heat, nine-point-five months pregnant, pouring sweat, reading the paper in a camp chair on the street corner while her kids played around her. (And while she mentally shook her fist at the sky, “As God is my witness!” etc, etc.) And you know what? Owen caught the bus. With plenty of time to spare. And his socks matched.

I like to think his faith in his chronically late mother was restored.*

*Until today, when the bus driver was 10 minutes early again and we did miss the bus altogether and we learned an important lesson called  You Win Some, You Lose Some.

This 2008 link made a swift recent tour of my facebook acquaintances recently: Idle parenting means happy children. The idle parents’ manifesto:

• We reject the idea that parenting requires hard work
• We pledge to leave our children alone
• That should mean that they leave us alone, too
• We reject the rampant consumerism that invades children from the moment they are born
• We read them poetry and fantastic stories without morals
• We drink alcohol without guilt
• We reject the inner Puritan
• We fill the house with music and laughter
• We don’t waste money on family days out and holidays
• We lie in bed for as long as possible
• We try not to interfere
• We push them into the garden and shut the door so that we can clean the house
• We both work as little as possible, particularly when the kids are small
• Time is more important than money
• Happy mess is better than miserable tidiness
• Down with school

I like this. Except for down with school; I’d rather have my kids in public school than “unschool” them or homeschool them (see: lazy). (I pay taxes so that well-educated people like my husband can take them away from me for 7 hours a day and teach them all the stuff I have forgotten.)

And it reminds me of a great little 1886 piece by Jerome K. Jerome called “Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow,” which you can read here via the Gutenberg Project.

Hey, some of my best friends are Type A go-getters. But I take comfort in the knowledge that there are plenty of other lazy folk like me; that there is more than one way to, uh, skin the … cat of childhood.

Too lazy to find a good analogy, that’s me. Happy Thursday, Supa out.

Brudders. They walk alike, they talk alike, at times they even dismantle their PB+J in the same manner.

Oh hey Internet. What’s up? We’re just hanging out, being a family, ninja-chopping our way through this humidity. I’ll give you a brief update.

I am six months pregnant and constantly stopped by store security guards, who demand I hand over the pumpkin stuffed under my shirt (HINT: NOT A PUMPKIN. 15 LBS OF FETUS. NOT READY TO HAND IT OVER YET).

Owen is done with preschool (for all time! sniff) and pretty into Mythbusters and ninjas right now. He’s super sweet and helpful and we get compliments on his blue eyes and responsible behavior all the time.

Mackie is super psyched to be starting preschool in the fall, and is also a fan of talking into my belly button (“HI IN THERE BABY!”). He is, strangely enough, pretty into Mythbusters and ninjas right now. Go figure.

Iain is counting down the days/minutes until summer vacation. I am looking forward to Summer Bearded Iain and all his manual-labor type help in fixing up the house for the baby. And of course his charming company. I sound like I’m kidding but honestly, summer is the best 12 weeks of the year because we can be together all the time. I’m one of those rare wives who look forward to when their husbands can retire, because I do like having him around.

Speaking of retiring, I got a new job. Did I tell you guys that? I’m back in the newspaper biz after a two year hiatus. As with all my jobs, I’m not going to write anything about it here, except to say that it keeps me quite busy and out of trouble.

I think those are the highlights. I’ll save you the allergic-reaction blow-by-blow (Owen is allergic to mosquito bites OH YAY) and pregnancy-symptom bitchfest (STRETCHMARKS! They suck). In fact, with very, very few exceptions, life is good. Really good. To the point that I had to ask Iain: “Is my life really this awesome or did I just get good at appreciating it?”

Regardless. Hope you and yours had a lovely holiday. I’ll try to poke my head in here a little more often. Smooches.

Old ladies love Supa MB.

Is it my denture? My love of quilting? That I wear orthopedic shoes only half-ironically? That I know what a mangle is? That I enjoy wearing aprons and criticizing the youth of today? I don’t know what I got, but I know I got it.

We’re having tea and banana bread and just pencilling some Batman comix of our own invention(s). I haven’t decided who the villain will be in my story; but I’ve just invented a character called Sad Nun who’s super easy to draw, so I’m pretty sure she’s going to figure in somewhere.

Hanging out with a five year old is … it’s a lot like living in the honors dorm at college, actually.