Bits o’ Ben

Ben ran up to me this morning and said “knock, knock!”

I asked “who’s there?” and he dissolved into laughter. I love that, for him, “who’s there” is the punchline.

. . .

We’ve caught him singing a lot in the past week, but as he neither gets the words nor the tune 100% correct, it takes us a minute to figure out the song. On Sunday, it was the Itsy Bitsy Spider. Last night, Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star. This morning, Row, Row, Row Your Boat.

. . .

“I’m on my tummy!” is a phrase we hear often. He likes to narrate.

. . .

Animals and water are still the bestest things in the universe, so he was pretty much in heaven when we went over to the Finlaysons’ house last weekend. He was amazed by the fish tank. (We really gotta get that kid to an aquarium.) He was less pleased with Casper.

“You put that parrot back in that cage,” he told Liz. Casper was less than pleased with Ben, too. Probably insulted because he called him a parrot.

While I interviewed Mario, Kris and Ben got in the pool. I’m told he absolutely loved the waterfall. And we were not allowed to leave until he put his feet in the hot tub.

. . .

His favorite bedtime story is a Little Golden Book from one of Kris’ clients called The Jolly Barnyard.

. . .

I find it interesting to see how his language develops. Two weeks ago, a seven year old at the thrift store asked him if he wanted to race.

“I love race!” was his response. Not “racing” to “to race.” That’s what makes it cute.

But earlier this week, he wanted to play with the coins on the dashboard of the truck.

“The thing is, Ben, you threw them up there when I wasn’t looking and now I can’t reach them.” (They aren’t lodged between the glass and the dash, so they slide annoyingly while driving but are too far in for fingers to reach.)

Ben tried to get them out. “I can’t reach them either,” he concluded. It was the inclusion of the “either” that got me.

. . .

He can be very bossy sometimes and I wondered why that is. Then I listened to myself making muffins on Sunday. “Grate this zucchini,” I instructed Kris. When he finished, I told him “next I need three eggs.”

Kris and I understand that if we issue one another directives that it is a delegation of tasks. We are making breakfast. I’m reading the recipe, so I instruct him on what task will help further the muffin cause. But maybe Ben just hears me telling his dad what to do.

by
LBC
on 1Jul09
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Stitch-witchery

(You really need to click on this one and see it larger; you may see it even larger on Flickr under All Sizes>Original)

The living rooms of the Newtonplex are hella small. When I realized a dozen people were seated in one on Saturday, I knew I wanted to stitch together a photo like this.

No, I have no idea why Liz is making that face. But she thought it was funny and so declined a do-over.

by
LBC
on 29Jun09
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Recycled Art Show opening

When I first heard about the Gadsden Public Library having a Recycled Art Show competition, I scribbled the date of the opening reception on my calendar and considered entering. Kris and I have scads of things collected in our basement just asking to be made into art!

And then I let the application deadline pass me by. But wait, at the Not-For-Children-Only Book Club meeting in May, Carol handed me a flier for the Recycled Art Show. It had been post-poned (moving the library to the mall can really put a kink in things) into June.

By that time, library shenanigans had become my “beat” at the paper, so I wrote an article about the show. I figured that meant I shouldn’t enter the show, so I encouraged Kris to do so. He was all excited and made sure to turn in his entry form.

Then, as will happen, he got really busy and pushed for time and knew he would have but one Monday to work on his projects.

“Don’t worry,” I told him. “You’ll have the grace for it.”

He didn’t believe me. (As will also happen — so easy for others to say “You’ll be fine! You’ll do great!”)

His skepticism aside, he pulled together two awesome pieces for the show. I was secretly hoping he would win something.

As we entered the show’s opening reception last night, we saw one of his pieces front and center. First place! If you make it by the mallabrary this weekend, the art will still be on display.

I’m so proud.

My grandmothers are, too. GJ called Juanita to make sure she saw Kris’ art in the paper. Juanita then called me to chastise me for not telling her about it. She also went on and on about how great and wonderful Kris is and how she tells everybody how lucky I am to have him. See? My grandmothers and I can agree on something.

by
LBC
on 26Jun09
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Moose A. Moose and Zee vectors

Somebody, I’m not saying who, made a vector version (a.k.a. an EPS file) of the Noggin channel mascots Moose A. Moose and Zee. This same somebody uploaded the file to the Brands of the World site.

Such a vector file would probably only appeal to those who, like me, are graphic artists who watch a lot of Noggin. Or maybe like an Etsy mom who needed a template for some sweet plush incarnation of these characters.

by
LBC
on 25Jun09
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Rockin’ the Mall-abrary marquee

From author Joshilyn Jackson’s blog:

Now I Have Arrived.

This KILLED me. I had a library date in Gadsden. A few weeks before I went, the library sprung a BUNCHA roof leaks, and they packed up and temporarily moved to THE GADSDEN MALL. They call the branch “The Mallibrary.” It was cool – I spoke in a big open hallway in front of a department store. We had a good turn-out, and several people who had not come on purpose got caught up in passing and sat done and listened and then went down to the way-cool Gadsden Books-A-Million (they were so nice to me there) to give one of my books a try. YAY.

On the way out of the parking lot, I saw that for the first—and probably last—time in my life, I was on A MALL MARQUEE. Like, in between the Sear’s sale announcement and the TIME AND TEMP. The last line of the message was still UNFOLDING when I took the shot (you know how they animate those messages) but it is readable. HEE! I AM A FEATURED MALL ATTRACTION. Like Dip-N-Dots.

I’m so glad Jackson came to Gadsden and that my be-fri happened to mention it to me, because I would have hated to miss her appearance. I got to see the “fic-fact” art quilt from The Girl Who Stopped Swimming in person, learn what Bernese does after Ona Crabtree’s death and get my copy of Gods in Alabama signed by the author.

When Amanda (library honcho, doncha know) gave an introduction, she said meeting authors is, for her, akin to meeting rock stars. I have to agree.

While I was at the Mall-abrary, I scoped out Kris’ pieces in the Recycled Art Show (opening reception tomorrow night, 6pm!) and snagged a copy of Paper Towns, which I have been meaning to read since attending the Nerdfighters presentation.

by
LBC
on 24Jun09
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Dem boys is gettin’ older

Eric’s birthday is today.

Nathan’s was yesterday.

Consider this a birthday fonting.

by
LBC
on 23Jun09
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. 1 Comment

Things that sneak up on me

The need to order new checks
I pay so many bills online that it takes me a long time to go through a box of checks. The Hello Kitty checks in my purse still have the duplex address on them. I noticed on Saturday that I don’t have any extras in the check box. Neither does Kris.

When to renew my license
I memorized my driver’s license number when I was 16 and that’s all cashiers usually want. When I bought Kris a Father’s Day present on Saturday and the lady behind the counter asked to see my actual license, I was surprised to see what an old photo it was. And then I realized it expired on the 11th of June.

The anniversary of my mom’s death
It wasn’t until I wrote the check this morning at the courthouse to renew my license that I realized today is the anniversary of mom’s death.

Ben pretending to be Swiper the Fox
He’s pretty sneaky. (Or at least I let him think he is.)

by
LBC
on 22Jun09
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Evolution of the Boardwalk Bash logo

Last weekend was RiverFest 2009. I’m proud that a city the size of Gadsden manages to host an outdoor music festival every year. I just never go to it, for one reason or another.

This year, they had something called the ZeroMeth Boardwalk Bash for teens. Youth. Whatever you call those whippersnappers these days.

Venture Marketing was promoting the bash and asked me to design a flyer and logo. The following is an exercise in the pitfalls of e-mail only communication.

Could you please come up with a logo for us to use on the flyers outlined below. It’ll also possibly be used on cups and other promotional items. Needs to be edgy, fun, and appealing to teens. You’ve got the ZeroMeth logo, right? Think you can handle this?

I responded sure! For reference, here is the ZeroMeth logo (which somebody else designed):

Before I began working on the design, I asked “Does the Boardwalk Bash logo need to incorporate into the ZeroMeth logo or be more like a companion piece to it?” and the response was a companion piece to it. So here is what I sent them:

And they said:

I like the boardwalk font a lot. But I think we’ll have to leave the ZeroMeth logo alone and find a cool way to incorporate it under it.

So I sent this, thinking one could just remove the ZeroMeth part completely:

But what they were really getting at was not to alter the original ZeroMeth logo in any way, so they asked me to:

find a cool way to incorporate the boardwalk bash font you’ve come up with underneath it. Make sense?

Which means really all they needed were the words “Boardwalk Bash” in a cool font.

The font is Lt. Chicken Hawk, which looks rather a lot sweeter “out of the box,” don’t you think?

Since I didn’t make it to RiverFest, I have no idea how the Boardwalk Bash “logo” was used in the end. But I hope it rocked. Like Bret Michaels.

by
LBC
on 20Jun09
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Cat drownin’ barrel

I spend a lot of time in our laundry room. I always seem to be folding or ironing something, putting a load in the wash or the dryer, feeding the kitties… And I love my laundry room. With a window on two out of four walls, it’s nice and sunny. There’s an air vent. There used to be a rug.*

I know cats don’t like change. When we re-did the kitchen, there was a lot of change. The cats’ food and water bowls were moved to the laundry room. Another change was I became pregnant and couldn’t empty the litter box anymore. Whereas two people shared this task before, only one does it now and so it fills up faster.

Distressed by possibly these changes (but really, who knows why cats do what they do?), Satine peed in the laundry room a few times.

When it was in the dirty laundry in a basket, it was gross but easily dealt with. You wash the clothes and wipe out the basket with disinfectant.

When it was on the rug, under the basket, it was a bigger problem. You can scrub that rug, the wood beneath it… it’s always going to smell faintly of cat urine. Especially so when, say, the weather warms up and the air hasn’t been running.

But the kitchen is complete now. And litter box be damned, the cats are free to go outside whenever they please via the pet doors. Didn’t stop Satine from peeing all over a pair of Kris’ jeans that he left in a pile under the ironing board.

In a laundry room, that’s going to happen. There will be dirty clothes in heaps. Sometimes in baskets. Sometimes not. It is not an invitation to pee on them, Satine.

I was furious. I had Kris remove the rug. I was willing to give Satine away. Jaimie and Eric volunteered to fill up a “cat drownin’ barrel” for me.

If you’d told me a few years ago that I would be willing to give away my cat because she kept peeing in the laundry room, I probably wouldn’t have believed you. Also, I’m probably not really going to give the cat away. But last Saturday I sure felt like I could.

Anyway, this week I ran across Freakonomics author Steven Levitt (he’s the economist in case you forgot) talking about a similar situation with his cat.

He suddenly stopped using the litter box, preferring instead rugs and piles of our clothes.

So Jeannette took him to the local vet, who advised the following plan of action:

1) Add an extra litter box.
2) Make sure all three litter boxes are scooped at least twice a day.
3) Never leave piles of clothes on the floor.
4) Pet him a lot.
5) Get rid of the rugs he has been using as a litter box.
6) Switch the type of litter in the box.
7) Give him one dose of Prozac per day.

I’m happy to say that Zach is now using the litter box again.

But here’s the problem: we have no idea why. Was it the petting? Or was it the constant scooping of the litter box? Maybe it’s the new type of litter. Or possibly it was just the trauma of going to the vet that snapped him out of it?

Does it really matter? The problem is solved, why worry about exactly what worked?

It matters for two reasons. First, some of the solutions above impose ongoing costs. We’d rather not scoop the litter box seven times a day if we don’t have to. His Prozac prescription was $29.95. Do we need to renew that until the end of time? Second, if we knew what worked this time, it might help us know what could work in the future when other similar problems arise.

I’m a bit floored that the Levitt family was willing to follow all seven of the vet’s suggestions. I was mad enough that we had to lose the rug.

But this morning, as I sat with Kris eating French toast at 5:30am because Ben got us up at 4:44am, I had an epiphany.

Satine is a pet that Kris and I got the year we got married.

The Levitt’s cat is a family pet rescued together:

We found our cat Zach at the beach as a tiny kitten, hungry and flea-ridden. We brought him, four kids in tow, to the anti-cruelty society (which we now refer to simply as the “cruelty society”), but they told us that he would almost certainly be put to death if we left him.

Not quite ready to give that life lesson to the kids, we let him join our family.

Would I give my cat away because I can’t take the stench she has wrought upon my household chores? Perhaps.

Would I give away my children’s pet because it was being an animal and acting out? No.

I wouldn’t purchase Prozac for it, though.

*Don’t even ask if the rug “really pulled the room together.” You know quite well that it did.

by
LBC
on 19Jun09
in blog
. 7 Comments

Typography matters

Via GadsdenTimes.com, I noticed that Etowah County has put property parcels online. I visited the site to see if I could figure out who owns the lot of trees across from our house. I couldn’t, but I did notice that whoever was in charge of putting the parcels online used Papyrus as the font choice.

My guess is that the person responsible for getting the parcels online doesn’t know much about choosing fonts. Maybe they thought Papyrus was pretty. I do. I don’t hate on Papyrus the way I do Comic Sans.

I Tweeted about the Papyrus find when I saw it, thus opening the following dialogue with Liz:

woodlayson@DameCatoe Oh, everyone has a Papyrus phase in the youth of our aesthetic development.

DameCatoe@woodlayson I got nothing against a good Papyrus. But you gotta use it right!

woodlayson@DameCatoe I dunno, it’s kind of dated now. I think it’s damaged goods.

DameCatoe@woodlayson Sounds like a challenge!

woodlayson@DameCatoe Consider the gauntlet thrown.

So I had to make a design where Papyrus is a good choice. I thought about a recent conversation where there was a suggestion to have a tiki-themed birthday party where all the foods would be on sticks. The invitation to such a party is above and features none other than the lovely Papyrus font, in an environment where it blends.

I absolutely love a well-chosen font. Typography conveys so much, but it’s the kind of thing the viewer often takes for granted. You may not notice the “right” font the way you would a “wrong” one because a well-chosen font does not stand out. It blends in to the design, becomes a part of it.

Yesterday was my second visit to the Not-For-Children-Only Book Club that Carol is hosting for a coworker on maternity leave. The meeting was at The Grind, and as we stood at the counter to order some food, we looked at fliers and business cards people have left behind.

“Did you design this one?” Carol asked.

“Nope. I so would have used that illustration, but I never would have chosen that font. Too Flintstoney.”

I held up a business card. “Try and read the web site.”

“I can’t,” she confessed. (It was illegible because it was white text over a yellow background.)

I flipped the card over. At quick count, four different fonts. Hey, it’s what green designers do; I did it. But further lack of consistency was found in the phone number, where there was a dash after the area code but a period between the prefix and last four digits.

Lastly, I pointed out the use of the Cracker Barrel menu font on the final flier. I knew Carol had met the guy the flier is for.

“He’s just so not a Cracker Barrel font kind of guy, right?”

I’m a total font snob, aren’t I?

by
LBC
on 18Jun09
in Portfolio and blog
. 2 Comments