DYI Paper Helicopter for Rainy Days with Kids

Are you inside on a rainy autumn day with nothing to do and an energetic child who  loves helicopters (and planes and trains and buses)?

Here's a tip for an activity you can do with him (or why not her?), old school or maybe Montessori: build something like a paper helicopter using sticks from ice creams you ate during summer and cardboard paper? Really easy,; I found this in a kid's magazine.

All you need is cardboard paper, 4 wooden sticks like the ones for ice creams (the "propellers" are from Magnum), glue, a cardboard tip from the separators inside the boxes in which eggs come in - goes under the propellers. My 3 year old was happy to cut, fold and crease (as instructed by me) and even happier to play with his new toy. There is room inside for a little toy friend.

PS. I also had a baby screaming for attention so I made a mistake and put the windscreen on the side - the green paper is rotated 90° - but I actually like it better this way, otherwise I would have had to paint a white square in front.

The Remarkable Rocket

My eyes were on the sky, my breath was almost still, I was standing there, transfixed. The cracking sounds that made their way to me felt like thousands of champagne bottles popping and letting the bubbly fluid out. And the skies were burning, the air was green. Yes, fireworks!

The people of Plzen seem really set on chasing daemons away, almost every week there is a firework some where in town. This time there was a really big one to celebrate the liberation of the city by American troupes on May 6th 1945, the only city in the Eastern blocks to have seen the freedom bringing American tanks.

The festivities usually last for a week : you see tanks, army trucks, veterans, fighter jets scene reenactments, and at the end, fireworks, maybe a reminder of the guns and cannons heard during the war, but this time, friendly fire only.

I was really sorry I couldn't take pictures, we were out for pizzas only so I had no camera. As pretty as a picture is and even thought it holds a thousand words, my glee is not encompassed in it. I am a kid looking at the fireworks. I love the sound and even the smell they sometimes leave behind. Lucky me, I live in a town with a huge firework budget. If they also had Auroras, I'd be in heaven (maybe literally; the Eskimos thought that Auroras where the time when the dead came back to communicate with the living).

While watching the fireworks I had in mind the discussions between the fireworks in the story by Oscar Wilde I read when I was a kid. But these fireworks were not as vain as the one in the story and ignited to make a whole town happy to be alive and for an instant maybe, feeling like they are living good times.

PS. This year I plan to go here.

The War in the Bedroom

I call on the intercom. No answer so I call again, this time longer and finally a disgruntled voice I barely recognize is heard at the other end "There's no need to call like that, you know". The door makes a buzz and I go up, I don't feel like talking much after yet another hard day.

Christmas shopping is exhausting, I think while opening the door to the flat, and I still haven't bought half of the presents I want to make this year. I go in, preparing for a, hopefully quiet evening in front of a movie. What will we have for supper?

As I walk towards the kitchen I notice it: it's quiet and dark, too quite and too dark. I prepare to say something when I see his face in the pale light of the lamp; sitting on the couch, holding something in his hand. He's just looking at me but with a grin on his face that at first I don't understand. Is he mad at me for ringing so loudly? Does he want to take me to the bedroom? Is he sick? I'm lost between being pissed, hopeful or worried.

"Pick it up!" he says. At first I don't understand the words but as I look down and as my eyes focus in the dim light I understand what I have to do. I throw away my bag and I pick up the gun. Damn it's not armed, I think as I try to shoot at him. By the time I arm and point, a rubber bullet flies by me, "Ha, you missed" and I head for cover shooting my only bullet on the pipe, only to miss him by far.

I reach the hiding place behind the sliding door : too late, I'm hit in the chest. I arm my gun with his bullet and dash through the doors in a desperate attempt to get at him before he arms his gun. Head shot! That was a lucky shot as my next rounds fly into the bedroom and living room but he manages to score points almost all the time.

The living room furniture makes for good cover between two shots, too bad I'm such a poor shooter and my bullets fly by while his almost never miss.

"Wait! I have to reload, I have no more bullets"

"Well that's because you can't shoot" and a bullet gets stuck in my wool jumper.

Time out while we search for the bullets all over the place. I prepare my ambush carefully: I have him where I want: on the other side of the bed, looking for lost ammo. I manage to fire twice before he launches his attack and comes running over the bed, shooting me in the arm.

I grab his arm and turn him towards me with a kiss "Great Christmas gift, sweetheart"