15 million insane craft projects later


turkeys
Originally uploaded by Liz Henry.

We made turkeys with cupcake papers, pumpkin napkin rings out of paper towel tubes, paper plate Mayflowers… The craftiness overwhelmed me. I have to admit, these turkeys came out to be charming.

This afternoon Moomin’s grandma took all the cousins one by one on a special toy store trip to the place down on 116th Street. They came back with legos, bionicles, more legos, and a transformer. I advised them all to share as much as possible with the people who weren’t their siblings, since then the toys would leave town and might never be seen again.

I enjoyed the peaceful lounging around and putting together of robots and dinosaurs. And thought about the process necessary in building models as well as craft projects. The model-building needs exact following of comforting instructions, while the craft projects in my opinion turn out best when creative flair and new interpretations are put into play. “Mistakes”, with the craft project, often improve it… like the eyes at different levels on the jaunty turkey to the right.

Later on, my oldest nephew pointed out to me that you can’t argue that God created everything, because there are other planets a million light-years away. I pointed out that if you believe in an omnipotent god then of course she/he/it could have easily set things up to trick us by creating either the appearance of planets a million light years away or else the reality. But then said I was an atheist anyway and if you wanted to chew on a fabulous concept, consider the idea of infinite parallel universes that split off from each other every instant as things happen one way and also (in the other universes) happen another way or in fact every other way. He just sort of stood there blowing a gasket. I enjoyed that.

In general it was stressful but also really great to be in this house full of in-laws and so many rambunctious smart entertaining demanding kids. It made me think of going to the pet store and seeing cages full of very clean young rats all stepping on each other’s heads with vast bustling energy and cheerfulness as they chew everything to bits. But in a good way; just, from within, sometimes it is your head getting stepped on.

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