A Haiku a Day

I decided I wanted to try to write a Haiku a day. It's more complicated than three phrases of 5, 7, and 5 syllables, as some people assume.

From Wikipedia: In contrast to English verse which is typically characterized by meter, Japanese verse counts sound units (morae), known as "on". The word on is often translated as "syllable", but there are subtle differences between an "on" and an English-language "syllable". Traditional haiku consist of 17 on, in three metrical phrases of 5, 7, and 5 on respectively.

The word onji (音字; "sound symbol") is sometimes used in referring to Japanese sound units in English^[5] although this word is archaic and no longer current in Japanese.^[6] In Japanese, the onkana character count (closely enough that moji (or "character symbol") is also sometimes used^[6] as the count unit). corresponds very closely to the

One on is counted for a short syllable, an additional one for an elongated vowel, diphthong, or doubled consonant, and one for an "n" at the end of a syllable. Thus, the word "haibun", though two syllables in English, is counted as four on in Japanese (ha-i-bu-n).

Most writers of literary haiku in English use about ten to fourteen syllables, with no formal pattern.

I have been reading in a book about Haiku and they suggest that English language Haiku can mimic the Japanese Haiku by having an accented pattern of 2, 3, 2.

So......... here goes.

Squinting eyes
Six toothed grin
We laugh

On Santa's Lap

Here are Alexandra and Madeline on Christmas day. I will have to get us all together for a photograph because I made us matching hats.

Clayton sure liked the soap from my mom to me. I unwrapped it completely and found teeth marks.
Clayton went to see Santa today. He finally made it on his lap after a 1 1/2 hour wait.

Rascal kid and project

Ab0ve, is one of my latest projects, a tiny sweater. I've made a few more,too.

Oh, no, Clayton! I was putting away dishes and Clayton crawled off. I called his name and then found him in the bathroom. He loves to pull out toilet paper and dingbat, Mom, left the toilet cover up. He enjoyed splashing around! Yech.

Projects

So, along with setting up the house after our move, I am working on projects, as usual.
I got most of the Christmas cards filled out and ready to mail. I managed to get a couple of pretty good pics of Clayton and an okay one of the three of us. I am cataloging my jewelry and slowly adding it the my Etsy site. (see bulletin on the right and see what's for sale) I'm going to hang curtains and I hung a lot of paintings today. I am getting together some paper projects to do on Christmas eve in Denver. I want to make some crocheted mini sweater in the Christmas theme as ornaments something like these and the one pictured here by Marci Senders. I think I could make something cuter with some accents such as lace, ribbon, buttons...I will post pictures if I get to them. I have started Clayton's stocking:
I would love to make some baby booties and shoes for Clayton and Sarah's twins. I have several patterns and they don't look too difficult. I planned to make some glass slide Christmas ornaments, too. Here are some examples from http://www.artchixstudio.com/mall/x027.asp
I was thinking about embellishing a boring coat with felt that I'll make, beads, buttons... Here is a nice dressy coat from Vintage Threads, but I want to be more colorful and crazy. I have a drab gray base for the coat, so I'm sure I will include white, magenta and pink, at least.
Another task I must do is work on my blog labels and eliminate some. Notice the list to the right. It's a little to long and some of the labels are strange and aren't general enough to connect posts.

Clayton, The Cute

Clay is doing the cutest things:
lays down for naps and bedtime, hugs his teddy and rolls over on his belly, sticks up his butt, and snooze
pulls on the toilet paper roll, unraveling yards of it and he likes to chew on it, too
hands you things like toys, food and his pacifer (puts it in your mouth, too)
points to the ceiling fan and lights above
waves to people, the cat, and stuffed animals, more like squeezing his hand
turns the pages to books and catalogs and doesn't eat them
still eats papers and magazines
has fun looking at his reflection in the dishwasher
giggles like crazy
dances when music comes on

Holidays

He're a pic of the apple pie I made for Thanksgiving. Yummy!
We put up our tree last weekend and it's a beautiful Fraser Fir. This is the first time I ever used one color of lights.

Photo Session

Today, I attempted a photo session to make Christmas cards. There were lots of rejects mainly because Clayton wouldn't sit still. He's quite a cutie in the sweater from Grandma Hallock. Clay has a new front tooth that popped out a couple of days ago. I don't think you can see it in this picture.

'Tis the Season

We went to Old Colorado City to see a tree lighting which wasn't at all spectacular; quite disappointing actually. We put up our tree on the weekend, after the craft show.

Rockrimmon Elementary Craft Show

I changed my set up a bit by putting the earrings on white cards.
I made a bunch more monster t-shirts and onesies. I wasn't successful at this fair and I am trying to keep up my hopes. I have added some shirts to my Etsy.com site and will put some of my jewelry up soon, too.

Laundry Helper and Trash Picker

I carried Clay from the dryer to the living room in a bin full of clean clothes. He loves to throw everything out of the hamper anyways, so he had fun being IN the basket, too. His hair got a little crazy.
Later that day I was working in the kitchen and found a pancake I had left on the counter from breakfast. It was dried out, so I threw it in the trash. Next thing I knew, Clayton was eating it. He must have seen me throw it out and went in to retrieve it. Geesh!

Craft Show at the Air Force Academy

I had another craft show last weekend and did better than my last one. I was still disappointed and think the economy is keeping people from buying. I hope it's not because my work is stinky. I have plans to make some more monster onesies and even some toddler shirts. People seemed to like those. Oh, I put the painting of the dahlia behind the table to show off my 3rd prize at the Air Force Base contest. I won a 1st place trophy for a fused glass beaded necklace and earrings I made. I have to pull those out and photograph them for the site, too. The lighting wasn't great, so I am thinking about getting some battery operated lights for venues that are not well lit or don't have electric power available.
P.S.- I did pretty well with sales when my mom took some jewelry to her work. Thanks, all you nurses!
Well, I need to get going on 2 pies for tomorrow and I didn't exercise yet! Matt will want to use the kitchen when he gets back from running with a friend. He's making eggplant parmesean. I planned on making it, but he volunteered so, I'm all for it. And he may make homemade rolls for tomorrow, too.

Recent move list

Good things about the house

1-Two showers, neat drains (pic to come)

2-Double sinks in the master bathroom

3- Huge bedroom, but not really enough to fill it, too bad we don’t have a king size bed

4- Microwave over the stove

5- Gas stove, with an easy clean up surface

6- Studio upstairs with lots of light

7- Huge basement, room for a workout spot

8- Strange carpeted closet off the living room- making it into our cd and album collection and various books and games, misc. Cooking ware like roaster pan, wok, and pressure cooker. It also doubles for a play room where I can put up a gate and keep the little monster from escaping

9- One car garage with garage door opener (that’s a first)

10- When you are sitting in the living room you can’t see neighbors, just the hill and the mountain behind.

11-First floor laundry hookup with cabinets.

Things that suck about our new house

1-Lights by front door and on garage outdoors: bright enough for landing planes to go by. These lights and ones from the neighbor and the parking lot light up the house inside. There’s barely a need for lights inside. It kind of looks like lights from an alien landing.

2-No room for a car to park in the driveway

3-Strange neighbor who doesn’t say “hi” when you say “hi” to her

4-Matt had to add lighting to the laundry closet.

5-No bathroom downstairs where Clayton sleeps and it makes it inconvenient to dump and rinse poopy diapers.

6-The telephone wires weren't ready for service and Matt had to drill his own hole. The maintenance man came 2 minutes later and drilled one without knocking on our door. He drilled it in the wrong spot and then just drove away.

7-The hallway stairs light isn't working and we can't replace the bulb because it's too high. It's a little dangerous at night if you want to get to the baby.

8-Same as the last house, you can't attach the Direct TV dish to the house, so Matt had to move his contraption he made for the other place. He filled a bin with Quickcrete to hold up a pole. This time he dug a hole to set it in because even though it weighed a ton, the wind would move it and we would lose HD channels. Poor us. :)

Visit to Grandparents

Clayton and I went home to New York to visit Grandma and Grandpa Hallock. They were missing him a lot and wanted to see how he changed since the end of May. We got to see other family, as well. I wish I had taken more pictures and not missed some of them (Erika, Pam, Kim, Stu, and Corey).
Clayton had a challenge in getting down the step to the living room at my parents' house. He crawled face first off it a couple of times and then started to turn around to get down it after I showed him several times. What a smarty!
He sure loves to remove the contents of drawers away and at home.

Family Resemblance

Clayton
at almost 10 months
Matt (Daddy)We're not sure how old he was in the first picture, but he's 4 months old in the second picture.

Tamara (Mommy) , we think, at 10 months. One pic was marked June 1968, but the other one said 8 months.

Weekend fun

Yesterday, we went to the Denver aquarium and then visited Aunt Joyce and Uncle Tom. We went out to eat at a restaurant called Venice and it was excellent. Clayton behaved well and even munched on some delicious bread.

Halloween

Clay was dressed as a bunny for Halloween.
I dressed as the Joker nurse from the Dark Knight. Clayton was scared of me for a few minutes and started crying.