The Barefoot Kitchen Witch

Pawsox Game and Fireworks

When I was in Junior High, there was a math teacher, Mrs. Smith, who was tiny and smart and tough.  She had a steely voice, steel-gray hair, and a no-nonsense, no fooling around attitude, tempered with a sense of humor that she allowed to peek out from behind her stern facade every now and then.  During class, when we'd work on problems out loud and she'd call on us for answers, if someone gave a very wrong answer, she'd kind of roll her eyes and tilt her head back a bit, like she was reeling from the awful wrongness of that student's attempted answer.  And she'd say, in that grim, steely voice "Ah, you're way out in Pawtucket!"  I went to school in the southern part of Rhode Island, and Pawtucket lies northeast of Providence, far, far from us.  (Relatively speaking.  It's Rhode Island, after all, and nothing is really THAT far from anything else.)  But that was her way of telling you just how VERY wrong you were.  So far off that you were way out in Pawtucket. 

And that's where the family and I were the other day.  Way out in Pawtucket.

The Lesson of the Carrots

Summer vacation started off with both a bang and a whimper.  Actually, not so much a whimper as lots of weeping.

Last Tuesday was the last day of the school year for both my husband, the teacher, and my son, Alex, the first grader.  Very exciting. 

After school, our kids went across the street to play with our neighbor's/friends' son.  Bill and I sat in the living room (when it hadn't yet been filled with furniture and stuff) and just hung out and talked, enjoying the relative peace and quiet.  The next day would be the big Move Everything From the Second Floor day, to be followed by the whole Sanding and Polyurethaning event, so I think we were just taking this last moment to rest on comfortable chairs with our feet up before the final upheaval began.

Anyway, Bill asked if anyone had fed the lizard and I remembered that I'd asked Alex to, but then he had to go to the bathroom and he forgot, I guess, and so did I.  So that would be a no.

By this point, the kids had moved from the back yard across the street to our back yard, so Bill called to Alex from a window and reminded him to get a worm or two for the lizard.

We went back to discussing the game plan for the next several days.

A few minutes later Alex came in, hand behind his back, and said glumly, "Well, no worms.  The only thing we could find was this."

And out came the hand, and in it, a very young carrot he'd pulled from the garden.

I cringe, even writing about it now.

Bill told Alex that the carrot wasn't ready to be pulled, and he (Alex) needed to stop showing off in front of his friend. 

You know how kids are.  They behave differently with their friends around.  They cross lines they know they shouldn't.  They stop thinking.  They walk on the wild side.  They pull an underage carrot from the garden.

Bill told Alex in no uncertain terms that he'd better not do that again, and to toss the carrot onto the compost heap because it was no good to eat yet and it couldn't be replanted.

Don't mess with the garden, kids.

So we sent Alex back out to find a worm.  We have PLENTY of worms out there, in gardens, in the compost bins.  They practically hang from the trees.  There was no reason a worm couldn't be found.

A bit later I looked out the window to check on the kids, and I noticed it looked like it was starting to rain.  (We've had mostly rain here for oh, most of June, so of COURSE it was starting to rain.  Again.)  I went out the back door just to confirm it and yes, rain was, indeed, falling.

I called to the kids and said they needed to play inside, and as they arrived at the back steps, something made me look down.

And there, on the driveway, right next to the back steps, were two carrot stalks.  No carrots.  Just the long, green, distinctive stalks.

I felt a sinking feeling in my stomach as I picked them up and looked at the three little faces.

"Who did this?" I asked calmly.

Our neighbors' son said he didn't eat any of the carrots.  Both boys pointed at Julia, who just stood there, her face a mask.

Carrots?  PLURAL?

I flew across the yard to the corner square in our 15' x 3' raised bed.  Where the carrots had been planted this year.

And I gasped as I beheld the horror.  The carnage.  The ugly slaughter of innocent baby carrots.

There were stalks and stalks with little remaining bits of carrot and some entire tiny carrotlings with their little ferny stalks...all of them scattered on the brick walk that surrounds the garden.  There were one or two carrots still remaining, and there was a deep hole in the dirt.  Oh, this was not good.

(This photo was taken several days after the carrot slaughter.  After the casualties had been cleaned up and the ground evened out a bit.  But you get the idea.  There USED to be a lot of carrots in there.)

The three kids were still standing in the driveway, just watching.  I forced my voice to sound nice as I suggested to our neighbors' son that it was time for him to go home, and to look both ways as he crossed the street.

And when I summoned my own two children, my voice was sort of strangled and choked as I planned my speech and tried to banish thoughts of Bill's reaction when he found out.  At the moment, he was inside, on the phone, ordering Chinese food for dinner from the really good place up the street. 

I don't even remember what I said. 

Something about DO YOU KNOW HOW MUCH WORK YOUR FATHER PUTS INTO THESE GARDENS?  SO WE CAN GROW FOOD?  THESE CARROTS AREN'T READY TO BE EATEN!  WHY DID YOU DO THIS?  DO YOU KNOW HOW UPSET DADDY IS GOING TO BE WHEN HE--

And then there he was, coming into the yard, still unaware of the carrot massacre, but very aware that SOMETHING was very wrong.

"WHAT HAPPENED?" he bellowed.

When he saw what they'd done, he ordered Alex and Julia into the house and up to their beds.  I hollered after them to go into OUR bedroom, so they wouldn't step on the area of the floor where the patch job was.  They were in enough trouble without stepping on a fresh coat of polyurethane.  Julia hadn't committed her sin yet - that would happen the following day.  Yeah, it was a good week.

Anyway, to say Bill was angry is to say Everest is a speed bump.

He gathered up the carrot casualties and slammed them on one of the compost piles, swearing and raging all the while.

And the thing is, this story and the Julia-stepping-on-polyurethane-after-she'd-been-told-not-to-go-upstairs episode are SO rare in our house.  I'm the one more likely to yell about something.  Bill doesn't yell much.  So when he does, you'd better dive under the house.

Anyway, into the house he went, and up the stairs.  And he gave the kids an earful about his hard work and time spent in the garden, and so on.  I went around shutting windows and doors, just so we wouldn't draw a crowd.

He.  Was.  Angry.

After he was done, he came stomping through the house and went outside to relive the horror and slam some things around out there.  I stayed out of his way. 

I tiptoed to the foot of the stairs after a little while and I heard two things:

1)  Alex sobbing.

2)  Julia chattering away and giggling.

And this is the way it's going to be, I think.  These are their personalitites, in a nutshell.

Alex takes things to heart.  Raised voices are crushing to him, and it takes him a long time to get past it.  He will remember this. 

Julia...well, she's five, and Alex is seven, so there could be some sort of "the conscience isn't fully developed or even in existence at age five" thing in a child-rearing manual, which might account for her lack of tears.  Or maybe she figured Alex was carrying around enough guilt for the both of them.  Or she didn't care.  Who knows.

But when I went upstairs to check on them, Alex was curled up on the edge of the bed and Julia was basically trying to get him to play with her and annoying him in the process.  She wanted to know if they could get off the bed yet.  She was clearly unfazed.

And I would bet my pink KitchenAid food processor that she did the majority of the carrot pulling and carrot eating. 

Bill came in just about then and flew upstairs for a reprisal of his earlier lecture/tirade, just to make sure Julia, in particular, was getting the point. 

Soon after that, he drove off to pick up the food, I set the table, and when he came back, the children were summoned to dinner.

Julia came down the stairs, chattering happily about the food and basically sucking up to Daddy in her very obvious way.

Alex puddled his way into the room and insisted on pulling his chair right next to mine at the table.  He wasn't done crying yet.

And all the while Julia kept up a jolly little monologue of "Oh, thank you Daddy for getting this food!  I love Chinese food!  This all looks so yummy!  I'd LOVE some soup!" and on and on and on. 

It was nauseating.  I am ashamed to admit it, but I glared at her a few times. 

Alex stopped crying but didn't want to eat.

Eventually, though, he had a nibble of something and a nibble of something else, and realized that even though the world was about to end, his stomach was growling and the food was good, so he might as well eat.

And the rest of the night was relatively quiet.  The kids went to bed early, and we moved on.

But it was not over.

It's one thing to tell your kids "this is a lot of work."  It's much more effective to let them discover that for themselves.

And so, over the weekend, the children were introduced to a little thing Bill liked to call Hard Labor.

On Saturday they spent an hour in the 80+ degree heat weeding one of the gardens in the front yard.  It would have been longer, but they had their final T-ball game of the season to go to, and we had to stop. 

Julia kept saying she was thirsty.  Bill said too bad, this is what Hard Labor feels like.  You keep working EVEN WHEN you're thirsty.

(No, we didn't deprive them of hydration.  Julia just kept asking every thirty seconds in a rather transparent attempt to take a break from the un-fun task at hand.)

So that was Saturday's taste of Hard Labor.

On Sunday we had no obligations, so while I made cheese and jam and bread indoors, Bill and the kids worked in the gardens outdoors.

A lot.

The first thing they did was harvest the garlic.  Julia and Alex took turns.

 

I set them on a tray on some newspapers to dry for a few days, and Bill and the kids planted new things where the garlic had been.  We've now got dill seedlings there, along with bok choy seeds, scallions, lettuce, and...

carrots.

After that they also helped plant flowers in the window boxes and in the shade gardens, and eventually, after about 4 hours of work (with water breaks, don't worry), they were done.

They worked hard, and I think they have a better understanding of and appreciation for how much effort goes into a square foot of carrots.

~~~

Now, there's a funny side note to all of this.

The morning of that same Tuesday when the whole Carrot Saga began, Bill was getting in his truck to go to work, and I was getting in my car to move it out of the driveway so he could leave.  He stopped just before climbing in and yelled back to me "There are carrots growing in the lawn!"

I took a look after he'd left and sure enough, little baby carrot leaves were scattered through the grass, right at the edge of the driveway.  Weird.

We've had things grow in odd places.  We have tomatoes and cilantro that reseed themselves every year and we never know where we're going to find them.  This year we've got a pumpkin plant that showed up along the front walk, amid the hostas and irises and tulips, and there are two other squash-family plants and some tomatoes that have shown up where the woodpile was on the other side of our garage.  The side where we don't have a garden.

So baby carrots near the driveway?  Sure, whatever.

We later found out that Alex's teacher had given all the kids carrot seeds some time ago and without telling anyone, Alex sprinkled them in the grass there. 

Kind of perfect, isn't it?  So in addition to planting new carrots, Bill and the kids also carefully dug up some of these tiny carrots and transplanted them to the scene of the crime.

And you know, I think they'll be pretty safe there. 

Please Send My Nephew to Antarctica!!

No, really.  I mean it.  In a good way.

When I married Bill and married into his family, I gained, among other things, three more nephews and another niece.

I've mentioned Joe before, in this blog - he's the only one of them who lives nearby.  The others are scattered - a nephew out in the Seattle area, one in the DC area, and the niece is in Florida.

Well, today I'm talking about the nephew in DC.

Meet DC Rainmaker.

He competes in marathons and triathelons and all sorts of other "thons" and "elons" here, there and everywhere.  He also cooks, is an awesome photographer, travels extensively, and blogs about all of it. 

He also does stuff like this.

Anyway, he has entered a competition sponsored by Quark Expeditions to be the official blogger on an expedition to Antarctica.  The winner will be announced on September 30th, 2009, and the journey to Antarctica will take place in February 2010.

And I want him to win because A) it would be extremely cool (no pun intended), and B) he's my nephew, after all, and C) he'll do an awesome job blogging and photographing the trip, and we can all live vicariously through him for a few weeks.

So.

Please go vote for him.

All you have to do is register here (to prove you're a human being) and then log in and vote. 

Quick, painless, and free.

I'd be ever so grateful.

And it Begins

Or ends, depending on your point of view.

My point of view is from a dark and achy tired place.

Oh, the ups and downs of the past couple of days...I'll get to them.  Or some of them.

But today?  Today is three things.

1.  Brew day.  Nothing all that new or different - we have them periodically.

2.  Sand and Polyurethane the Floors Upstairs Day.  The day we've been eyeing on the calendar with increasing tension and franticness and, okay, yes, occasional bad moods.

3.  ........I don't remember what the third thing is.  Maybe it's Begin Our Nomadic Existence Day.  Except we're not nomads - we've got a place to crash - THANK YOU EM AND JOE!

But to back up a bit...

You may or may not remember what I did with Alex's bedroom, so here's a picture -

That was done using three different colors of paint, a sponge roller, little sea sponges, and of course gobs of my own special brand of artistry.  (I'm tired and silly today - bear with me.)

So the question on everyone's mind, I'm sure, has been "What will she do on Julia's walls?"

So here's what I did:

And no, that tv cable taped to the window isn't part of the decor - that's to keep it off the floor while the sanding and stuff is done.

Anyway, that's Julia's room.  It's not completely done - I'm still planning to have a few butterflies fluttering across the ceiling, but that can be done later.  A.P.  (After Polyurethane.)

I found the stencil in a book I've had for years called "Border Designs:  Cut & Use Stencils."  It's put out by Dover press, and I have a ton of books of theirs that I bought for quilting ideas and who knows what else.

Anyway, I'd been originally thinking of putting flowers all over her walls, but I couldn't find a stencil I liked of a rose (her middle name) and then I saw this butterfly as part of a border grouping, and that's the one I settled on.  I made copies of it in various sizes and settled on these two - the small is the original size - about 4 inches long - and the big one is the original enlarged 150%.

You can see the stencils, cut out of the heavy duty paper in the book, hanging from the window.  They're drying.  I will need to use them again, on the ceiling and probably on a bookcase that I'll repaint in the colors of her room and then stencil some butterflies on it.

Anyway, that's Julia's room.

She loves it, by the way. 

~~~

So that's one thing.

Another thing - one of the good things these past few days - is Julia is now riding her bike without benefit of training wheels OR Bill running along beside her, hanging on to her shirt collar.  Yay!

~~~

Another thing...Bill and I moved nearly EVERYTHING down from the second floor.  It's in our living room and our dining room, and there's very little space left.

Sorry it's out of focus.  Anyway, that's our living room.

Funny story about all this.  See that window?  It's also got two little windows, one on each side.  Those little windows open.  Yesterday I'd opened them, like I'd opened many other windows around the house.  And then we piled everything into the living room...and then it was time to go to bed...and the little windows were still opened.

Now, they're skinny little windows, and they face the street, so odds are no one would come along and decide to break in and steal any of our stuff.  But I knew I'd lie awake much of the night if I knew they were still open.

I'm like that.

And so, while Bill was in the bathroom, I somehow (don't ask me to describe it) managed to climb over all sorts of things including the side support things from the kids' beds, and get up onto the arm of the couch and close the near little window...and then I had to get to the far window...and...I could hear one of our neighbors across the street talking to someone outside, and all I could think of was here I go, like some caged lunatic, making my way across the back of the couch, kind of pressed up against the big window, half tilted sideways, just - oh I have no idea what I looked like, but I'm sure it was not pretty at all.  I managed to get to the window and close it.  And then I turned around and stood there, kind of helpless, trying to figure out how to escape from my predicament without embarrassing myself further.

Bill came out of the bathroom and saw me standing there.

"Do you need help?"

"Um...no..."

I managed to get out of that predicament without injuring myself, which was pretty good, considering.

~~~

And I think I'll end this now.  We've got to move mattresses and a few other things out of the bedroom and then I need to vacuum and clean the floors upstairs so they're ready to go when it's time to sand.

I'll fill you in on all the other insanity around here later.  Oh...it was not pretty....

Just the Highlights

I lost internet access for about 24 hours, starting yesterday afternoon, and it's thrown me off my stride.

~~~

Speaking of strides, this morning I participated in the 20th annual MS Walk in Narragansett, RI.  A 6.2 mile walk.  The weather was gorgeous.  I've got 3 friends who have MS.  I walked with one of them, and parts of her huge family, friends, my sister - and that was just our team.  Lots of people were out, either walking or biking it.  Good day.

~~~

Still have a ton of pictures from yesterday's Opening Day of T-Ball to post.  I'll get there.

~~~

Our nephew, Ray, will be running in the Boston Marathon on Monday.  He and The Girl are staying with us this weekend.  Last night there were 8 of us for dinner - me, Bill and the kids, Ray and The Girl, and Joe and Emily.  Bill cooked ribs.  'Nuff said.

~~~

Joe is helping us split one bedroom (Bill's & mine) into two smaller rooms, which will become the kids' bedrooms, and Bill and I will move into the one they currently share.  He (Joe) and Bill put up the framing for the dividing wall this morning while I was on the MS Walk.  There's some business going on with electrical wires now.  Lots of running up and down the stairs.  Possible drilling through the floors may be involved.  Our room is sawdusty.  Next weekend will be the MAIN weekend of this project.  I'll be glad when it's done.  The kids are excited, and seem to have actually reached an amicable decision regarding who will get which of the two new rooms.  No fights.  I recognize that this is a miracle, and I am thankful for it.  I am also incredibly thankful to  Joe for helping us out with this project. 

~~~

I think Julia has eaten 4 popsicles in the past 3 hours.  It's that kind of a day.

~~~

That's it for the moment.  Time to check the seedlings and water any that have dried out. 

~~~

Normal (or close to it) posting should resume tomorrow.

Brass

Years ago, back when Bill first got hired as a middle school music teacher, he was told he'd be teaching band.  So the summer before that first school year, he gathered an assortment of band instruments so he could familiarize himself with them enough to start teaching them to students.  Then, maybe a month (if I remember correctly) before the first day of school, he was told he'd be teaching chorus instead of band.  So a huge change of gears ensued and the assorted band instruments were loaned to a colleague who was teaching elementary school music in Connecticut.

Recently Bill got most of the band instruments back, and he trotted a couple of them out so the kids could see them and try to make sounds come out of them.  A clarinet.  A trumpet.  They're both already familiar with guitars and keyboards a bit.  Both of them liked the trumpet best.  Julia, in particular, her little cheeks puffed out huge like Dizzy Gillespie, managed to achieve some nice, loud, clear notes. 

Yesterday Bill brought home a trombone, just so the kids could see one and try to get some sound out of it....

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I can't even begin to describe what our house sounded like.

Oh, and wait - there's me!

 

Wait.  I'm upside down.

 

There.  That's better.

Where We Went

So the four of us (Bill, kids, me) went up to NH for a part of this past week (school vacation week) so Bill could give his new skiis a good workout.  The kids were booked for all day lessons on two days, which freed us up a bit.

We stayed right in Laconia, near Gunstock Mountain, where the skiing took place. 

And what did I do?

Not a whole heck of a lot, really.  I mostly hung out in the Lodge while Bill and the kids were outside.  I read, I sent IM messages back and forth with my sister, and I met Bill for lunch mid-day both days.  I've never skiied, and I should.  I would like to take a lesson, but this past week I had trouble just finding a shoe I could put my right foot in comfortably, so ski boots weren't on my agenda.

The kids had a great time, and by the afternoon of the first day, Alex was actually riding up the lifts and skiing a couple of small beginner trails with his class.  He continued doing that the second day as well.  Bill skiied with him or behind him a couple of times, too.  Alex said later he could ski all day.  So he's definitely hooked! 

Julia went down a green trail once, with her class.  She was thrilled (this was on the second day) because Alex had gone the day before and she was feeling a little left out, I guess.  But she got to ride up on the lift, just like big people, and snowplow down the shallow incline with the rest of her little group.  She's getting the hang of it.  I watched her in the little beginner practice area and she maneuvered through the little turns very well.  And then, when she was supposed to slow and turn and get back in line to ride the "Wonder Carpet" back to the top, she just...kept going.  Right past me (she didn't notice I was there) and for another oh, twenty feet, until she fell over.

And just stayed there.  She wasn't hurt, or upset, or anything like that.  She was just...hanging out.  So I watched her.  She rolled up into a sitting position...then leaned over and ate some snow.  (That's how the little kids stay nourished through the day, I noticed.  They eat snow.  Must be dusted overnight with vitamins and minerals.)  Then she sat up...then she flopped down and looked at the sky.  She didn't even try to get up; she just moved her little body to various positions, patiently waiting for one of the instructors to come get her.

And then she noticed me. 

"Mama?"

"Hi, Honey."

"Mama!.........Could you help me get up?"

So I went over and picked her up, and while I was doing that, one of her instructors arrived, laughing, and reminded Julia about the whole slow-down-and-and-stop thing they'd been working on. 

Julia waved bye-bye to me and headed back to class.  I watched her a bit more and the next time she did just great, slowing and turning gently and taking her place in line.  And then she fell over.  No problem.  She just waited as one of the instructors came over to help.

After the kids' all-day classes were over Bill and I would meet outside nearby and go pick the kids up together.  The instructors gave us an overview of what they'd done that day and how well the kids had made out.  The first day I almost laughed out loud when Julia's teacher said how well-behaved and sweet Julia had been.  But I guess it's good that Julia saves all her less-desirable behavior for her parents and spares her teachers.

After getting the kids, we'd troop back to the truck and ride home, listening to the high points of the day (Alex saw a porcupine in a tree while riding up the lift!).  Then, back at the hotel, we'd change into bathing suits and go hang out in the pool for a half hour or so.  The pool room also housed a hot tub, which the kids grew to love.  Julia took to it right away, but it took Alex a bit longer to trust that the water wasn't going to burn off any important parts of his anatomy.

Then, after pool and hot tub time, we went out to eat.  All three nights we ate at the same place - Patrick's Pub & Eatery.  Wonderful place - great food - especially their chicken and the Friday night Rotisserie Lamb special.  The employees were all friendly, the beer and wine were good, and the atmosphere was warm and comfortable.  It was close by - right across the street from where we were staying - but that wasn't the only reason we ate there.  We just liked it.  It became "our" place.  If you're in Gilford, NH and need a place to dine, I highly recommend it.

OH - and speaking of food. 

The #1 reason we stayed at B. Mae's?  The waffle breakfast.  Alex LOOOOVVVVVED the waffles there when he and Bill went last year, and in the days leading up to this year's trip, he kept telling us we'd love those waffles.  In fact, he was looking forward more to breakfast than to skiing.  So we were all pumped up for waffles.  

The first morning we got up around 7, got dressed and trooped down the hall to the other end of the building where the continental breakfast was set up.  The waffles were make-your-own.  Two waffle irons going  - and a LINE.  Everyone (or mostly everyone) was there to ski, so pretty much everyone was up at the same time, trying to get their waffles before heading to the mountain.  So I made the kids' waffles while Bill got us seats at one of the long, crowded tables and poured juice for the kids and coffee for us.  Then Bill made his waffle and I didn't bother because the line was too long and we needed to get TO THE MOUNTAIN.  I finally had a waffle on our last morning.  It was...well, it was a waffle.  But Alex is insanely enamored of waffles and pancakes, so I can see why it would be a way bigger thrill for him than for me.

And I think that's about it, really.  Now for some pictures.

Oh, and for whatever reason, I didn't take ANY pictures until Thursday.  (We arrived on a Tuesday and left on Friday.)  I think I spent Wednesday alternately being mad at myself for not being able to ski and feeling wistful because even if I wanted to take a lesson, my foot wasn't going to go into a boot.  Wah, wah, wah, poor me.  Annoying.  I got over it.

Snow began to fall - heavily - on Wednesday afternoon and continued overnight and into late the next morning.  It was beautiful to watch - not so great to ski in, according to Bill.  He'd been hoping for a nice, light, fluffy powder, but it was a little too warm and the snow was wetter and heavier than he liked. 

Here's the view from the upper level of the Lodge:

 

(those are reflections of the lights inside the Lodge - not cool shots of alien spacecraft.)

 

I believe a total of 9 inches fell during that afternoon-to-morning time period.

  

The moisture layer is so heavy that you can't even see the higher peaks. 

 

Ah - must be around 10:00 now - here come the kids in their ski classes.  Julia's in that picture above.  Here's a better view....

 

Sorry for the sloppy drawing.  Anyway, Julia's the girl in the foreground - pink jacket, lavender snow pants, and a dark helmet.

 

That's better.  They all get dropped off in that building to the left - Base Camp - and then in groups they head out to the Wonder Carpet area to practice their snowplows (pizza wedges) and turns and so forth.

 

And here's Alex going by...heading back to the lift.  That's him with the red (rented) boots and his arms kind of reaching in each direction. 

 

Here he is - a little later - after going down Misfire (one of the few gentle beginner slopes).

Alex absolutely LOVED skiing.  Loved it.  He didn't want to go home.

 

Oh, and while I'm standing here shooting pictures of Alex, I was also waiting for Julia to appear.  I'd been way up in the lodge when I saw her little group actually head over to the lift.  She was going to ski on an actual trail!!  I grabbed my stuff and raced outside and then stood for oh, it seemed like an hour, waiting for her to appear SOMEWHERE.  I met up with two other moms whose daughters were in the same group, and we're all there squinting up the hill looking for our own pink-clad snow bunnies.

 

No Julia yet, but there goes Alex, back to the lift...

 

Annnnnnd...here's Alex, just coming down Peepsight - one of the steeper beginner trails.  Still no Julia.

 

Yep, there they go, back to the lift again.  He's having a blast.

 

THERE SHE IS!  She made it down Misfire.  Yay!  My big girl!

   

The teachers and kids assemble at the foot of that slope and then head back to the Wonder Carpet area.  So Julia only went down one trail one time, but still, she DID it.  Good for her!

 

Yay, Julia!

Actually, yay both of them.  They had a great time, they learned a lot, and Bill's already talking Olympic trials.  Okay, not really about the Olympics.  Still, it's hard to leave those days or even these pictures and not think (as a non-skier) - My kids are awesome! 

Anyway, that was our trip - the highlights, anyway.  I probably should have taken more pictures, but oh well, I didn't. 

There's always next year.

Don't Blink

 

Meet Vincent.

 

Vincent is a Hermit Crab.

 

And that little crumb on the paper plate above is there for a reason, not just because I was too lazy to pick it off.  It's a distance marker.  Vincent is doing sprints.

You see, Vincent - who belongs to my niece, Natalie - is in training for the Hermit Crab Summer Olympics, which are to be held this summer in Rhode Island, of all places.  Why this year?  Well, they chose to hold them on odd-numbered years so as not to steal attention away from the regular ol' human Olympics.

  

I apologize for the blurry shots - Vincent is just way too fast for my camera.

 

Vincent runs sprints every morning, and then does weight training in the afternoons.

 

Every other day he runs a couple miles to build up his endurance. 

 

Because he's in training, his diet is rather strict.  Fortunately for him, carbs are approved.

 

Anyway, I hope you'll cheer him on this summer.  The seats are sold out, but of course the games will be televised.  Don't forget to set your DVRs!

Morning at Wachusett Mountain

Yesterday morning we drove up (early) to Wachusett Mountain so the kids could have a ski lesson and Bill could see how his knee would hold up after the bit of surgery he had a couple of weeks ago.  (Long story)

I've uploaded all the pictures from our adventure to flickr, so feel free to head on over and take a look.

Here, though, are a couple to tide you over...

 

Blurry sunrise. 

 

Alex (no, I don't have an explanation for the facial expression)

 

Julia.  She loves the camera, can you tell?

 

I edited this one to zoom in more on Alex as he goes nicely down the hill.  Julia's to the left in pink and purple, waiting her turn.

 

Julia, having successfully made it all the way down the mini mountain.  I think that's a hot cocoa stain on her left knee.  From snack time.

She fell asleep within moments as we headed home.

Good day for all.

A Few Pictures From Christmas

I'm being lazy today - I've cooked and baked and cleaned and hostessed...and today is my day (I decree) to do as little as I want.

But I had to post a few pictures from yesterday.  The best parts of the day, however, were not capturable on film (or digital imagery). 

Things like my son, when he unwrapped a book about Arctic Creatures (which he'd specifically asked Santa for) he looked up at the ceiling (I guess) in the corner of the room and hollered "Thank you, Santa!" with the sincere and unselfconscious gratitude only a 6-year-old can express. 

Or Julia - when she opened the brown-and-white stuffed animal horse SHE had specifically requested - sighing "It's just what I always wanted!"

Santa and the Mrs. done good this year.

The highlight of the day, however, did not come from Santa, but from Mrs. Santa's parents, aka "Grammy" and "Papa."  Papa carried in a huge white plastic bag containing a very large - VERY large - wrapped item that Julia opened (with help)...and when she unwrapped it sufficiently to realize what it was, I swear her head nearly popped off her little princess-outfitted body.  She gasped audibly and yelp/shrieked "I always wanted this!"

And here IT is:

 

Yes.  It's an enormous pink horse.  E.  NOR.  MUSS.

Bill brought it downstairs to make some room for the humans in our living room, and later on Julia dragged it upstairs by the reins, all by herself. 

She slept with it on her bed (and all her other - much smaller) stuffed animal horsies - though I'm thinking maybe the Big Pink Horse will sleep elsewhere tonight - Julia ended up in our bed at some point, probably crowded out of her own by all her equine companions.

This morning Julia was (uncharacteristically) the last one to wake up.  The rest of us were in the living room, Alex and Bill looking at Alex's magic kit and me looking through yesterday's photos on my laptop.  And then suddenly, the Big Pink Horse came hurtling down the stairs, followed by Pinky, Julia's much-loved and flattened pink elephant.  Then Julia made her appearance. 

I'm just waiting for her to ask to bring it to pre-school one day.  Um...I think not.  The axle's broken on our horse trailer - Big Pink Horse stays home.

 

Scratchy had a Merry Christmas, too.  Here is is, chillin' in the empty box Santa brought him.

 

 

And then, of course, there was the concert. 

Originally Julia was suppposed to perform, too.  She has two "songs" (exercises, really) she can play on her pink ulelele, but sudden-onset shyness took over both Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, so Alex went on with the show without her.

   

 

And then, finally, after all the wrapping paper had been cleared and the applause had died down, it was time to eat.

I only snapped this one picture - right after I set the two Yorkshire Puddings on the table (before the collapsed).  You can see a platter of sliced roast beef behind them.  And, of course, Alex is there, ready to dive in.

 

We also had a green bean casserole, sweet potatoes, turnip, and (for the non-red-meat-eating contingent) grilled chicken with a Greek-style tapenade marinade over rice. 

Next year I'm making 3 Yorkshire Puddings.  There's never enough, in my opinion.

Christmas Eve was a feast as well.  (We do Christmas Eve with Bill's side of the family, and Christmas dinner with mine).  For Christmas Eve, Bill made a FABULOUS paella, with 5 different kinds of seafood, chicken, chicken feet (yes, really), edamame instead of the traditional peas, and it was supposed to have sausage, but we both forgot it - the pan was so crowded with everything else, there were no gaps to remind us.  And we also boiled up some lobsters.  All the big claws and tails were consumed - we saved the bodies and little legs for other things.  Like, oh, the big lobster omelet Bill and I had on Christmas for breakfast.  The kids weren't interested.  Oh well.  The legs - I'm thinking little lobster cakes for dinner tonight.  And the rest of the roast beef.  Fancy-schmancy Post-Holiday Surf 'n' Turf.

And now...I think it's time to bake some bread.  I haven't in a while - all those cookies, you know.  And I'm really wanting the smell of bread baking...and, of course, the taste of the finished product.

Inside a Treasure Chest

 

Didn't do any baking today.

For one thing, I got hit with a sore throat and congestion and aches and fatigue late yesterday afternoon and I was down for the count.  And annoyed about it - I still have so many cookies to do!!!! 

But whatever.  The cookies will get baked.  I'm feeling somewhat better now.

But apart from all that, today Bill and I took the kids to the Providence Performing Arts Center to see The Nutcracker.

It's the first time we've brought them to something this special.  We take them out to eat...we have taken them to the movies...things like that.  But this is their first time seeing a LIVE!  PERFORMANCE! ON A STAGE! 

I have to be honest here - I was a little worried about how Julia would behave.  One one hand, I thought - she'll be absolutely enthralled with all the ballerinas and their pretty costumes, and we'll be obligated to give her ballet lessons and let her audition next year.  (Hee hee...that would be so cute!)  But on the other hand...she's Julia, and she's four-and-a-half, and she sometimes gets in these moods where she oh, doesn't want to do something and it doesn't matter how angry you look or how red your face turns or how much smoke pours out of your ears - she just laughs gaily and continues to do whatever it is that you don't want her to do.  That's the part I was worried about.

Alex?  Well, yeah, it's got ballerinas...but there are boy dancers, too.  And the Nutcracker himself is male, right?  Turns into a prince?  And there's Herr Drosselmeyer, the wacky mysterious godfather.  He's a major player and he's a boy, too, right?  So that's something.  And, as I told Alex excitedly this morning, there are rats, or mice!  Rodents!  Yay!

Bill took a more mature approach and talked to Alex about the music the orchestra would be playing, what instruments they'd play, some of which they'd heard the other day while watching a videotape of Disney's Fantasia.

This morning, while I was cooking breakfast for someone, Alex was going over the game plan for the day.  "Julia's going and I'm going and Mommy's going to the Nutcracker...Daddy, are you going to be in it?"

An image of my husband in tights, leaping across the stage while tutu-clad girls twirled and pirhoueted behind him, flashed into my mind.  Thank you, Alex.  You made my morning.

But it was really because of the music.  He wondered if Bill might be playing guitar with the orchestra.  No.  Sorry.  They won't have any guitarists in the pit. 

We got dressed nicely (Alex:  "I have to wear a button shirt???"), and arrived at PPAC early enough to purchase a big chocolate chip cookie for Alex and a pretzel for Julia in the lobby.  And then, after the snacks, and the all-important trips to the bathrooms for the kids, we found our seats.

When I bought the tickets, at first I was going to be frugal.  So I checked out where we'd be sitting if we bought the mid-range price tickets.  And sure, we'd be better off than the nosebleed seats, but...what if...what if we paid a bit more.  Where would that put us?

Turns out, it put us where we sat today - row M, house left, on the aisle.  We walked into the theater and walked, and walked...getting closer and closer to the stage.  Great seats.  Well worth the splurge.  And besides - I figured if we were going to bring the kids to something as new (to them) and grown-up (for them) and expect them to sit still for two hours or so, then they should be able to really see what all the fuss was about.

We took our seats, took off our coats, and the kids looked around.

Go here for a view from the balcony.  It gives you a really good look at the ceiling.

And here's a look from the back of the auditorium.  We were over there on the left somewhere.  Near the front. 

The kids looked up and up and up, their mouths open and eyes wide.  Alex summed it up:

"It's like we're inside a treasure chest!"

Fabulous, Alex.  You're right.  That's exactly where we are.

Bill and the kids played "I Spy" while I skimmed the program and looked around at all the other children - mostly girls - in attendance.  Wonderful.  I looked over as Alex was spying something...yellow...and Julia was pointing at the coiffed and shellacked hair of the woman in the row in front of us.  Julia's finger was about an inch from the hair when I pulled her arm away and gave her a look.

At long last, the lights went down and the curtain rose.

And I would like to say that the kids were, in fact, enthralled and spellbound through the whole shoe.  But they weren't.  Julia couldn't see, so she and I switched seats so she could be on the aisle.  No shellacked heads in the way.  And then she stage-whispered her questions as the party guests skipped and glided across the stage. 

"What did that girl do?"

"Where are they going?"

"Who IS that?"

"What are those boys doing?"

After I hissed each answer and shushed her, the next question bubbled up.  Oh, please don't tell me the whole show is going to be like this.

Julia knelt on her seat and turned around to look at the people behind us who, by the way, were eating peanutbutter crackers in the NO FOOD BEYOND THIS POINT auditorium.  I wanted to turn around and ask if they'd brought enough for everyone.  Instead, I turned Julia around and gave her a good, firm, meaningful glare.

Meanwhile, to my left, Alex is bobbing back and forth, trying to see between the heads in front of him.  At least he was interested.  And then, while all the guests at the Christmas party were dancing and playing and carrying on, Alex leaned his head against my shoulder.  And then he was rubbing against my arm, like the cats do when they pass by the furniture.  What the heck?

"Your sweater is nice and warm, Mommy," he purred. 

Sigh.

Things actually went pretty well, really.  I relaxed a bit about Julia - she wasn't, after all, the only four-year-old in the place, and I heard little murmers and peeps and squawks from other kids during the course of the show.  And it was pretty cute when she spread her arms and then gracefully drew them up above her head in unconscious imitation of the dancers on stage.

Julia moved to my lap during the fight between the Mouse Queen and the Nutcracker and their assorted cohorts.  I kind of expected that.  And it worked out nicely for the rest of the show; Julia snuggled on my lap, whispering her occasional questions.  Alex rubbed his head against my shoulder now and then.

They both asked "when is it gonna be done?" a few times, but since they had no idea how long something like this would last - or any real concept of the passing of time if it didn't involve commercial interruptions - then their questioning was understandable.

The ballet ended - and it was wonderful, by the way, though Bill was disappointed that there was no live orchestra - and since the kids were huuuuuunnnnnnnnnnnnnnggggggggry, and because they had been well-behaved overall, we told them we'd go out to eat at a restaurant.  Yay!

As we buckled the kids into their car seats, I asked Alex if he liked the show.  "Oh, yes!  It was very musical!"  Julia liked all the ballerinas "and the fairies and the princesses" and liked the Sugar Plum Fairy the best.  Probably because of her purple costume.

A treasure chest indeed.

A Weekend of Cookies and Snowmen

 

It was a fun, busy, chaotic weekend.  This is the weekend BEFORE this current one.  I'm late in posting. 

On Friday I baked off the rest of the short dough I'd made, in a variety of kid-pleasing shapes:  snowmen, trees, reindeer, bells, angels, cats, birds, and squirrels.  Yes, squirrels. 

But because I never think there will be enough, I had to make more.  Plus it's nice to have a variety of flavors.  Originally I was going to make gingerbread cookies, but then, in my email, I got a link from Epicurious to "25 Days of Christmas Cookies."  So I clicked through the slide show, and came right back to the very first one in the group:

Chocolate Roll-Out Cookies.

I skimmed through the recipe, thought it sounded like what I wanted, and printed it out.  And that's when I noticed it.  The name in the top left-hand corner.  The recipe was published in Gourmet Magazine in December 2007.  And guess who wrote it?  Yep.  The Ubiquitous Dorie Greenspan.  I had to laugh.

And then I had to make the cookies.  I doubled the recipe, because, you know, that whole "might not be enough" thing.  And the dough - the dough smelled fabulous.  Good enough to eat right then and there, but I thought of the kids who were coming, and I refrained.

But really.  Cocoa powder AND melted bittersweet chocolate in the dough.  You can't go wrong there.  Oh, and a bit of cinnamon, too.  This recipe is a keeper.

With this dough, I cut out teddy bears, lions, more angels, bunnies, guitars, snowflakes, dogs, and cows.  Yes, cows.  In two sizes.  I love cows, and my cow cutters are actually stored with my December holiday cutters, not the animal cutters. 

 

All the kids present had a great time decorating (and eating) the cookies, both on Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning before it was time for them all to go home.

Oddly enough, I didn't take any pictures of the kids' finished cookies, which was rather stupid of me, because those are way more entertaining than the stuff I did.  Ah well.  Here are a few pictures from Saturday's decorating party...

 

This is my nephew, Calvin.  Despite his advanced years (he's 16), he seems to really enjoy doing stuff like this with the kids.  Later on, he taught them to play Guitar Hero.  He's great with children.

 

 

And, of course, we all know Julia and Alex. 

 

And this, this is Natalie, my niece.  She is an AWESOME cookie-decorator.  I mean, they all do/did a great job, but Natalie just really has a knack for it.  She made a teddy bear with a little sweater on him that LOOKED like a real sweater. 

Saturday night, Bill made paella for dinner.  It was phenomenal.

 

The next morning we awoke to snowfall.  Alex and his friend Jack, who slept over, were the first ones awake, and the first ones to look outside.  They came in and told me, and I sent them downstairs to tell Calvin and Natalie.

After breakfast, everyone went outside to play in the snow.  There wasn't a lot of it, but there was enough for a mild snowball fight and the construction of three snowmen.

 

 

   

 

 

 

All in all, a pretty near-perfect weekend.

Oh, and just to keep things on a baking theme, here are a few pictures of the cookies I decorated.  Because, you know, it's all about me.

  

 

 

 

 

 

   

 

 

Oh, and in case you're wondering about that not-decorated little cow in the front...look closely.  He's got an eye.  A little tiny clump of cocoa powder, probably.  Anyway, I felt he didn't require any further embellishment. 

And then I ate him.

All in all, a great weekend.

Apple Pickin 2008

 

Every fall we try to go apple picking, and we include my sister's kids in the adventure.  It sort of became a tradition a while ago, and when we go I take photos of the four cousins all together.  Sometimes the photos come out well, other times not that great, but it doesn't matter really, as long as we go. 

 

This year we went on a recent Sunday, which was also the day the Thomas and Friends cake was due.  It was a drizzly, cold, slightly foggy day.  But that didn't stop us from going, of course. 

 

We went to a farm in Smithfield - one of dozens - that we had gone to several years ago.  Got a plastic tote bag for each kid, and the guy working there showed us a map and told us where the choice apples were right now. 

 

"Follow the dirt road til you get to the power lines," we were told.  So we headed down the dirt road (once we'd located it) in search of apples.

 

There's a small family burial plot in the orchard - it's designated as Historical Cemetary #49 in the state - many of the original Knight family (who still own this orchard, I believe) are buried there.

 

I love these old, small, family plots.  Not sure why, exactly.  Just something about them that appeals to me.  Especially on overcast, drizzly October mornings.

 

Oh - and there was (on a sort of related note but not really I guess, but oh well, here goes the segue anyway) this tree stump that was all wet and dark from the rain...and every time I saw it out of the corner of my eye, it looked like a large black dog sitting there.

 

Doesn't it?  Kind of?  Well...maybe you had to be there, and in my Octobery state of mind.

Anyway, the kids and Bill picked plenty of apples and sampled a few to make sure they tasted appropriately orchard-fresh.

 

Here's Calvin trying one.  Unfortunately, I think he was eating one of Julia's apples.

 

As you can imagine, that didn't go over so well with Miss Julia.

 

So he tried to give the apple back to her.  What was left of it.

The apples themselves weren't much to look at - a lot of discoloration on the skins and weird shapes and these tiny black dots that - according to the guy we got our bags from - were because they had sprayed some sort of organic polish on them and the rain messed it up. 

 

Looks like it could use some sort of deep cleansing mask, doesn't it?

Anyway, I've run out of things to say about the apple picking.  I'll just leave you with a few more pictures from that afternoon.  And if you want to see the whole batch, you can go here  to my flickr site.

 

This is Alex sampling an apple.  You'll notice he's kind of gnawing on it with one side of his mouth.  He's got a loose tooth - top left front one - and it hurts to bite on that side.

 

Natalie and a teeny, tiny apple.

 

Julia insisted on carrying her own bag the whole time. 

 

Calvin.  He is taller than his father now.  And quite pleased about it, too.  Of course.

And one last one - all four of the cousins.

 

They all keep getting taller....

The Soundtrack Of My Life

Here's what I'm listening to right now, while I wait for the water to boil so I can cook pasta:

Alex is watching Sponge Bob on the tv.

Bill is playing guitar and singing "Landslide" - he doesn't sound quite like Stevie Nicks.

Julia is enthusiasticly honking on a duck call device that Bill keeps among his toys at the bar downstairs. 

Now he's trying to sing "Silver Spring." 

It really isn't meant to be sung in falsetto.

The Family That...

One by one, we all fell this weekend.  Well, Alex had already had his moment on Friday.  I also had a sore throat that day, but it wasn't as important to me as Alex's breathing, so I tried to ignore it.  By Saturday, I was the more miserable one, and then on Sunday - the day we had a yard sale, of course, Bill woke up sick.  Setting up and manning a yard sale when you're both congested and achy and miserable isn't the most enjoyable way to spend a weekend day, but it had to be done.

Fortunately Alex was greatly improved and mostly back to his normal cheery energetic self.  The kids wanted to have a lemonade stand, so we got that set up once the sun was a bit higher in the sky and the air was warm enough for people to actually want a cold refreshing glass of something.  They charged a quarter a glass (though Julia tried to sell it for three dollars at one point) and made $2.75.  I think they would have made more than that, but there were lulls that lasted a bit too long for the attention span of a 6-year-old entrepreneur and eventually Alex lost interest and went across the street, with Julia, to play with their friends. 

It was a beautiful day - perfect for a yard sale, or anything else outdoors - except that as the sun crept higher in the sky, my shady sitting area on the west side of the house grew smaller and smaller, and eventually I had moved the chair way back beside one of the recycle bins.  I was hot and my own entrepreneurial enthusiasm had disappeared along with the lemonade crew.  The last straw walked up the street in the form of two very-limited-english-speaking maids from the hotel way at the other end of our neighborhood.  They had apparently wandered all the way down my street on a break just to pick over my remaining junk and talk to each other in Spanish. 

I wish I was fluent in another language, but if it's not something said frequently on Dora the Explorer, then I don't know it.  Unfortunately neither of these ladies was saying goodnight to the frogs ("Buenas noches, ranas!") so I was definitely in the dark about whatever they were saying.  One of them spoke about as much English as I speak Spanish, so she occasionally would ask me a price or some other question and then translate to her friend.  Actually, she wasn't really asking - it felt more like I was being interrogated.  But I figured maybe she was just in a hurry. 

And then she pointed at the lemonade stand and demanded to know something, so I said "a quarter...twenty five cents," thinking they were thirsty after their hike from one end of the street to the other.  it was mid-day, and the sun was beating down.  It seemed a logical question.  She said something to the other woman and then looked back at me, pointed at the lemonade stand again and said "one."  So I obediently poured one glass of lemonade and brought it back.  She looked up from my table of kitcheny stuff and glared at me, shaking her head.  She didn't want it.  Her friend didn't want it.  I have no idea what she wanted, and my head was starting to hurt more and my shady spot was gone and I didn't like being ordered to do things that I couldn't understand.  So I stalked away with the plastic cup of lemonade and resisted the urge to throw it up the driveway.  That would have attracted yellow jackets, and I've had enough of them this year.

I'd also, clearly, had enough of the yard sale.  I don't enjoy yard sales.  It's probably why I don't have them all that often, and probably why I started dragging my heels as time drew me closer to the actual yard sale date.  I don't like haggling, I get annoyed when people try to talk me down on the price of something - it's ALREADY cheaper than dirt! - and smiling politely for any great length of time makes my face hurt.  Combine that with the feeling that someone was inflating a balloon inside my skull, and it really wasn't the best possible scenario.  But I tried.  I had remembered all morning to say "Hello!" in a friendly manner to the people who stopped by to pick things up and put them back.  I was gracious and grateful when someone actually bought something.  And a few people were genuinely nice to talk to.  But still.  As the day wore on, the yard sale got old.

At long last, the women settled on some stuff to buy, and the bossy one glared at me again and said "Bag!  Bag!"  I scurried inside the house to see if we had any kind of a bag big enough for her to tote her stuff with, and brought out the largest paper bag we had.  Was I supposed to provide bags?  No one else had demanded them.  Oh I hate it when my head hurts - I get stupider and stupider.  And it was when she ordered "Bag!  Bag!" again, so her uncommunicative friend could carry HER measly purchases that I realized I needed to close the store.  I stomped inside, grabbed one of the paper bags from where I'd tossed them earlier in my frenzy of obedience.  I stomped back outside and handed the bag to Bossy Lady.  And then I stood there and scowled until they disappeared up the street. 

And then I went inside (Bill was lying down) and suggested we leave some of the stuff at the foot of the driveway with a big "FREE!" sign and bring the rest of it inside.  I was pretty much done.

So that was Sunday.  Bill got up and helped me pack up the store, and then we both went inside and did little else.  I don't remember what we made for dinner.  I think the whole thing was a la carte, with whatever looked edible in the fridge. 

And Monday morning, early, it was Julia's turn.  She woke up crying around two, and when I went in to check on her, she felt pretty hot.  Lovely.  I brought her downstairs, gave her some Tylenol, and we sat on the couch and watched two hours of tv.  I brought her back to bed at 4 and kept her home for the day.  Bill stayed home.  I was - of course - home.  Alex went back to school.

Today both kids are at school - Julia, in fact, has become an adult somehow and miraculously dressed herself without asking for help, brushed her own hair to the best of her ability, and marched herself into daycare without a goodbye kiss.  I had to grab her head and kiss it just to prove I was still boss.

Bill's home for one more day.  And I'm on the mend.

So weird for all of us to get sick together like that.

I choose to blame the yard sale.  Yeah, I know, the timing doesn't line up.  I don't care.  I still blame the yard sale.

~~~

P.S.  My Tuesdays with Dorie post and pictures will be up later today.  Some time after I've baked and photographed this week's recipe.

Detour

Oddly enough, it was the expression on Bill's face that started the whole thing.

I had steeled myself against any emotions, any bending of will, any...softness. 

But then he looked over at me with that...that look. 

All my steel crumbled.

And things spiraled off in a very different direction from any we could have imagined this morning.

But that came later.

First thing today, we set off, with the kids, to go pick yet more blueberries.  I picked around five pounds or so this morning - not as many as last time, but we didn't stay as long, either.

Next, big treat for the kids, we got Ronald McD food and ATE IT IN THE CAR.

Yes.  Ate it in the car while we drove to Attleboro to go to the Capron Park Zoo.  The kids and I all had our cameras, naturally, and what a sweet little zoo it was.  Kind of like our own beloved Roger Williams Park Zoo, only smaller.  And their big draw, at least at the moment, is that they have a white lion.  He's not purely white, but definitely white in comparison to his two tawny female cohorts. 

 

His name is Ramses.

The lionesses are Nyala and Kayla.  I don't know which is which.

There were also the usual (I'm so jaded) emus and kangaroos and tortoises (tortoi?)...and a really nice little Tropical Rain Forest with all kinds of interesting looking birds...

Like this one...

And this one...

And especially this one...

Not to mention these two...

The most entertaining creatures (besides the two pictured above) were the sea otters in the North America section.  They were playing and splashing about in the water, just having a grand old time. 

I kind of wanted to jump in there and play with them...

Anyway, after we saw all the animals, Bill and the kids had some lemonade.  Bill had your traditional lemon-flavored lemonade.

Julia had cherry...

And Alex had raspberry.

Scary, I know.

And then the kids played for a while on the Capron Park Zoo's huge playground.  Bill and I hung out in the shade. 

And then we all trooped back to the car.

As we were leaving, Bill asked if I wanted to stop at the gardening place and I said no, because I thought he meant the little garden area on the Capron Park land.  Then I realized he meant this organic gardening supply store, and I said okay.  I love the smell of farm stuff.

The store was just a few minutes' drive from the zoo, so we were there quickly.  We all got out and headed in.  The store is in a big old barn, and with all the hay and feed and seed, it smells pleasant (to me) and earthy and inviting.  The main "store" part was through a door to the right.  Inside, they had organic pet foods, wild bird seed, and, over by the cash registers, canning supplies.  I didn't even get a look at the rest of the store - who knows what other goodies they had in stock.

We wandered up an aisle, and I tried to keep the kids close by - they had zipped up the aisle to my left.  We met up at the end of the shelves, near a rustic, spiral staircase in the corner.  And build into the underside of the stairs was a large cage.  And down at the bottom of the cage, the kids saw these:

Alex wanted to take a picture of them with his camera, so I took one with mine, too, as a backup, in case his didn't come out okay.  Of course, no one was there to back me up, and mine isn't all that great either, now that I look at it.

Bill went back out to the seed n feed area to read organic fertilizer labels and a few minutes later the kids wandered around a corner and discovered these guys:

(Again, I took a picture in case Alex's was blurry...but mine isn't so sharp either.)

I kept telling him, it's not a zoo!  You don't need to take pictures!  But he didn't listen.

The two kittens were more interesting anyway.  Probably because they had more room to move around.  The bunnies - there were five or six of them - were in a pretty small cage.

Bill still wasn't back, and I was ready to get going, so the kids and I went looking for him.  He wasn't out there in the sweet-hay-smelling outer area, so we went back in, peeked up and down the aisles, and then the kids lost interest and went back to watch the kittens.  I told them to stay put and went back down one aisle to look in the wild bird seed room.  And that's where he was.  Just standing there.  He's decided to go completely organic with the lawn (we're already organic in the vegetable gardens and about 90% with the flowers, so this was inevitable, but he has to make these DECISIONS sometimes).  I said "Great.  We didn't know where you were, by the way." (I'm sweet, I know) And headed back to make sure the kids hadn't been sold to a traveling circus.

Bill, he of the longer legs, moved on ahead of me and saw the kids playing with the kittens, their small fingers poking through the chicken wire.

And that's when it began.

That's when he turned, and looked at me, and gave me that look.

The look that said "They're so unbearably cute!"

And I looked back at him sympathetically, because yes, they were.  The kittens.  And the kids.  And especially the kids IN COMBINATION WITH the kittens.

And then we had an entire conversation with our eyes and eyebrows. 

It went something like this:

Him:  They're so cute!

Me:  I know...sigh.

Him:  Wouldn't it be fun to bring them home?  The kittens, I mean.

Me:  Yeah, it would.  Ah well.  Some day.  (Inside I was all "ohmygodohmygodpleasepleasepleasethey'resoCUTE!!!")

Him:  Yeah, you're right.

Me:  Why...were you thinking of...?

Him:  Mmmmmmmmmmmm...wellllllllllllllllllllll....I don't know maybe................

Me:  Well if YOU want to...

Him:  Hmmmmm

Me:  We'd have to take them both.

Him:  (no expression, but I found out later he'd thought the same thing from the start)

Me:  They're probably brother and sister (by way of explaining why we would need both)

Him:  (I must be losing my mind) Mmmmmmmmmmm

Me:  ??????????????????

Him:  I can't believe we're going to do this.

Me:  HEE HEE HEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  Me either.

Really.  Okay, NEARLY all of that was done with eyes and eyebrows.  The actual whispered words started with me saying we'd have to take both.  Also, at some point, the kids came over, chattering about the kittens, and we shooed them away so we could hold a terse, loudly whispered conference.

And that's what happened today.  Totally out of the blue.  Bill went over to talk to the people behind the register, and I hung out with the kids, giddily not saying a word about what was going on.  It was so much fun.  The KNOWING and their NOT knowing what was to come.  I love that feeling.

The owner of the store came over to where the kids and I were, and he had one of those little red laser things - he directed the little red spot of light onto the floor in front of the kittens and we watched them bat at it with their tiny paws.  Alex begged for a turn.  And then Julia did.

And then Bill came over, and right about then, Alex turned to say he WISHED we could bring one of the kittens home.

And we said "Okay.  How about both?"

And his eyes and mouth became enormous Os, and I'm telling you that look of stunned joy already forgives any damage the kittens do to my hands and legs as they learn when to use their claws and when not to.

Alex told Julia, but it took a bit longer for the message to sink in with her.

Next up, time to get the kittens - they are brother and sister - out of their cage and into a couple of boxes for the journey home.  The owner picked up the little gray one - the girl - and brought her into the room where the cash registers were.  She was bundled into a cardboard box with some slits cut into the sides, and the top was taped shut.  Another man came over to get the white-with-assorted-spots-and-patterns one.  That one was the boy.  And that one was NOT pleased AT ALL to have his routine interrupted.  He flailed his legs out, kind of like a lobster splaying his big claws and stretching out his tail right before you put him in the pot of boiling water.  His little claws were out, too, and he ripped the man's hand pretty deeply a couple times until the man let go and the little guy scurried behind a barrel of dog biscuits.  The girl behind the register came around and got the kitten by the scruff of his neck, and he didn't scratch her at all.  He, too, was popped into a newly ventilated cardboard box and locked in with a strip of packing tape.

I filled out paperwork while Alex and Julia laughed at the selection of greeting cards in a rack nearby.  Bill stood nearby, a dazed look on his face and a free bag of kitten food in his arms.  The kittens have already been seen by a vet and have had their first round of shots.  We got vouchers for about half price for their future spay and neuter adventures.

And home we went.  The two kitten boxes on my lap.  I tried to send out soothing, loving thoughts to the little male.  The girl behind the register had told us he tended to be a bit shy at first.  That's okay.  I'm good with shy kittens.

We drove home and along the way asked the kids what they thought they might name their pets.  You may have already surmised that the boy kitten is Alex's and the girl kitten is Julia's.  You would be right.  Anyway, I told the kids they didn't have to choose names immediately, but they already had names picked out.

So, without further ado, I give you

Scratchy (the boy cat) (named by Alex)

And Softy (the girl cat) (named by Julia - "because she's so soft" - and because Julia's four and that's how she names everything.)

They're about 9 weeks old, and AREN'T THEY CUTE??????????????

Sorry.  I tried to control that but I couldn't help myself.

We let the cats out of their boxes in the kids' room after we'd put out food and water and set up a temporary litter box.

They both beelined under Julia's bed and we all sat on Alex's bed waiting for them to start to explore.

Softy is the bolder one.  She's already friendly with us, rubbing up against our ankles and mewing her tiny, squeaky little meows at us.  Scratchy hangs back a bit, checking out the situation before venturing forth.  After they got a bit comfortable, they started playing together.  And oh, it's been SO long since I've watched kittens play together.  They're hysterical!  Stalking and creeping and leaping...running and then skidding out of control across the hardwood floor...tapping at the kids' stuffed animals with their dainty front paws...Scratchy boldly attacking the laces of Bill's sneakers. 

We originally planned to keep them in the kids' room for a few days before introducing them to Blur, my seventeen-year-old one-eyed tabby,

but then I figured Julia would probably wake up at three in the morning, as usual, and forget about shutting the door behind her and the kittens would be out anyway.  So after dinner we opened the door.  Blur had a look at the little varmints and wasn't all that interested, although later she kind of skulked away nervously when Softy ventured into the basement.  Scratchy, to my knowledge, is still in the kids' room. 

Alex is a little concerned that Scratchy isn't as chummy as Softy, but we're explaining that it's such a big, scary experience for such a tiny kitten...he'll come around when he's feeling secure.  But I have to give Bill credit for coming up with the best analogy - he asked Alex "Were you a bit scared on your first day of kindergarten?"  Alex said yes, a little.  And Bill said "Well, this is kind of the same thing for Scratchy.  But just like you, he'll be fine."

It's a quarter to ten now, the Sox and Angels are playing and unfortunately we're losing.  Our kids made a couple of trips downstairs after Bill put them to bed.  The kittens apparently didn't that lights out means "stop playing and go to sleep" and their noisy acrobatics were keeping the kids awake.  But Julia's last visit was a while ago, so I'm thinking both sets of brother and sister are sleeping now.

Our family has grown - completely unexpectedly.  I believe it was fated.  We weren't seeking a pair of kittens, but we could not have left them behind.  We can play lots of "what ifs" - I wasn't even going to go with Bill and the kids originally, but the white lion kind of dragged me by the camera strap.  What if I'd stayed home?  Would Bill have decided to get the kittens?  He was definitely planning to stop at that garden supply place, so he'd have seen them....

Ah well.  Who cares.  They are here.  And after a bit of Buyer's Terror, Bill says he's glad we have them.  And so am I.  And of course the kids are.

I'm not so sure about Blur.

Anyway.  That's what's been going on here today.

Food-related posting will resume tomorrow.

Fireworks, Farmers' Market, and the Fourth

 

Wednesday night our family and another family (my son's best friend and his parents) went to watch the Pawtucket Red Sox play the Syracuse Chiefs (we lost 6-5) at McCoy Stadium. 

And there were fireworks after the game.  It's a four night event that runs, I think, the 2nd through the 5th.  It was sold out on Wednesday, and we had free tickets, as that night's fireworks display was sponsored by Dave's Marketplace, and each store had 300 tickets to give away.  Woo hoo! 

They were general seating/bleachers tickets, and we should have gotten there earlier than we did - we ended up walking all over the place looking for 7 seats together or 3 and 4 together...no luck.  So we ended up sitting on the bleachers out near right field.  And that was probably for the best, as the kids could get down and run around a bit and work off some of their excess energy.

 

Scupcakes

Earlier this week we went fishing off the rocks - the East Wall in Point Judith.  Bill actually did most of the fishing, as it's a little dangerous for the kids to be reeling fish in and standing on the wet rocks while the waves crash against them.  But the kids played on the sand and calmer water on the other side of the wall and occasionally Alex would get to reel in a fish part way, and then Bill would take over so the fish wouldn't smash and scrape against the rocks.

Niche-less

I've been thinking about this for some time now.  I'm still not sure what I'm going to do.

I was thinking of splitting this blog in two - one for JUST food-related content, and the other for JUST family/kids/my own silly thoughts.

But.

It's not so easy to peel them apart. 

It Sure Seemed Like a Good Idea

We spent a couple of hours at my sister's house today.  My kids like playing with their older cousins, or at least playing nearby while the two cousins play Guitar Hero.

 

I just wanted a few minutes of peace and quiet.  And to drink a whole cup of coffee without having to reheat it.  I brought down the last of my Bittersweet Chocolate and Poached Pear Tart as payment for both.

My sister said Alex and Julia could get some markers and color the big empty cardboard box in the living room.  Both kids thought that was a great plan, so Mere showed them where the markers were and soon they were busily creative.

At one point Julia came into the kitchen wearing Calvin's hat.  She looked cute. 

And while Alex played with my sister's practice nun-chucks, Julia held aloft my sister's bamboo practice bo.  I imagine in her mind she had just defeated a few classmates.  Or her brother.

Eventually they both went back to coloring the box, and with the exception of the Guitar Hero noise, the living room was fairly quiet and Meredith and I actually got to hang out and chat a bit. 

At one point Mere left to go upstairs, and as she passed the living room, she did a double-take and said "Um...Jayne...come see what your kids are doing."

That's never a good thing.

She wouldn't have said that if they were, oh, dusting the bookshelves or sweeping the floor.

So it was with some trepidation that I approached the living room.

Both kids were in the box.

They were laughing hysterically.

And here's what I saw.

Can you see it?  Did you look at their faces?

They weren't just coloring the cardboard.

In fact, when my sister had walked by, the kids were facing each other, markers in hand, each gently drawing on the other's face.

 

I should have switched to color for these shots, but I was too busy telling them to STOP IT!  MARKERS ARE FOR COLORING ON PAPER!  OR CARDBOARD!  NOT EACH OTHER!

These lines on his face were blue...and there were also blue marks on Julia's face.  And red and blue on their ankles and bare feet.  And Julia's hands.

They really didn't care what I thought at all.

But just to placate me - or shut me up - they resumed drawing on their cardboard canvases.

At least while they thought I was watching.

Thanks, Mere.  Thanks a lot.  Hope you enjoyed the ganache.

Some Pictures from Sunday

  We went to my cousin's house for Easter brunch, as we've been doing for the past bunch of years.  They have two Easter egg hunts, actually - one for the little kids, and one for the older kids. 

The number of little kids has been dwindling - there were 3 of them this year - my two and another little boy around Alex's age.  So each kid makes out pretty well in the candy department.

And we all make out well in the overall eating department, too.  My cousin's wife, like me, I suppose, cooks with the notion that too much is not really quite enough, so better to make more.  Other people contribute food, too, but even if they didn't, we'd have more than enough to eat.

Anyway, here are some random shots taken throughout the day yesterday.

My Dad, the Young Photographer

I've had this monstrous project looming over my head.  Well, maybe not looming, because it's not a scary evil project.  Just a long-overdue one.  And it's big.  VERY big.

I have not put pictures in photo albums (with the exception of small albums of my kids' photo shoots when we go to the zoo) since, oh, before Bill and I started dating.  Which is going on eleven years ago.  Actually, since, oh, since my sister's son - her firstborn - was born.  So that's fifteen and a half (sorry, Mere) years ago.  So you may or may not be able to imagine the tons and tons of photos throughout the house, just sitting in their envelopes, chatting with their negatives, waiting patiently for me to get my act together and put them some place where people (including myself) could actually sit and look at them from time to time. 

And now that I've gone digital, which is going on...wow, two years this July...there are also all sorts of images in my laptop and the external hard drive I bought JUST SO I'D HAVE SOMEWHERE TO STORE THE PICTURES BECAUSE MY LAPTOP IS CONSTANTLY FULL that no one looks at but me because I don't print enough of them or upload to flickr on a regular enough basis, because I am disorganized or lazy or something.

Oh, and in addition to the pictures in all their envelopes, there is a good-sized box full of a huge melange of pictures and negatives that were caught in the flood in our basement in August of 2003.  Yes.  Four and a half years ago.  There were pictures down near the floor - a box of them or something - oh, yes, I think I had begun to attempt to try to think about to hope to organize them back THEN.  And they got wet along with anything else on or close to the floor.  So I spent a bunch of that afternoon/evening laying out all those pictures on the furniture and floor in the living room and our bedroom, and fortunately they really didn't get too badly damaged...but they did get totally mixed together.

So anyway.  On Sunday, I started working on this.  I sat down on the floor in my bedroom and started just sorting envelopes of prints and negatives into boxes loosely categorized thusly:  Before Bill.  With Bill But Before Kids.  With Kids.  Black and White.  Bill's Family Way Before My Time.  They're broad categories, but it was the easiest way to begin, rather than with years, for example.  And so far that's all I've done.

But while I was going through things, I came across a small envelope of some black and white prints my father gave me - copies of prints someone sent him, actually, of him (my dad) when he was a young photographer with a big ol' camera and before he had a wife or daughters. 

Here's one:

 

And here's the other:

 

Aren't they cool? 

Anyway, I just wanted to share them.   

I'll probably be posting other pictures, too, as I go through the mess.  So be warned!

Elbows In

Today is my Dad's birthday - Happy Birthday, Dad!

I've mentioned this before, but my father is a photographer (retired) and he is responsible (or at fault) for putting a loaded camera in my hands at a young age and letting me loose on the neighborhood.

It was one of those boxy little cameras that used a flash cube...I shot the roll of black and white film in a matter of oh, seconds, probably, and went back to the basement door in our kitchen and called down to him "Now what?"

He stuck his head out of the darkroom and answered "You're done already?"

And I haven't changed a whole lot since then.  Too bad the digital age hadn't hit yet - my parents probably could have bought a summer home in the mountains with the money they'd have saved on film and flash cubes.

But then, if it had been the digital age, I would never have learned how to process a roll of film - including how to load that roll of film in complete darkness, just by touch.  I would never have learned to print contact sheets, with all my little images in nearly-neat rows on a single 8 x 10 sheet.  I would never have encountered the pure magic of printing a picture and watching the paper as it rested in the developer tray, waiting, rocking the tray gently, practically coaxing the hidden image to slowly appear.  My picture.  That I took.  And processed.  And printed.  Myself.

So in honor of my father, and to give him a good laugh as well, probably, here are a few old pictures I dug out, pictures I took (as evidenced by every single flaw you can see).

This is our back deck, and in the back you can see the grill...and in front of that - some buckets, and some little tiny blurry things.  Those are some of my little plastic farm animals and my little tiny Fisher Price people.  Note the...well, the blurriness, and the crookedness...it was ART.

Next up, my younger sister.  Even then she was interested in karate...that must be some sort of kata she's doing.  And of course, THAT would explain the blur of the picture.  Nothing to do with me.

That's the vegetable garden behind her.

Since I'd mastered black and white so handily, I was quickly promoted to color....

I specialized in group photos of both people and animals.  Here's a shot I took in our kitchen (see the wallpaper in the back?  I love that wallpaper.  I wish I had some.  Just to look at.  All different kinds of flowers all over it.  Sigh.).  Note how EVEN THEN, I was rather, um, overly organized, and if you look closely, not only are all the animals grouped by species, but also by color.  Especially over there on the right.  I don't even know what all the little black and blue and red things are, but at least they are grouped by color.  Very important on a farm.  And see the happy Fisher Price family in front.  Not dead center - no, it's a much more visually interesting image BECAUSE they are off center.  I was quite the prodigy. 

The one good thing (well, one of so many) about this shot, is that it's not as blurry as the previous two.  Clearly, I was improving.  I remember my father's mantra - "keep your elbows in" - keep them tucked against your body, to steady the camera.  If you can keep yourself still, even in the middle of a strong wind, the picture will be the better for it. 

I could go on and enlarge that to mean something more universal, but I've got to get the kids ready for school, so I'll leave that up to anyone else reading this.

Anyway, Happy Birthday, Dad.  I'm keeping my elbows in!

Love,

Jayne

The Hats

My sister finished Alex's hat and we picked it up yesterday.  Here are the kids this morning, getting ready to go outside and play in the snow.  Wearing the hats that Auntie crocheted for them...

Aren't they nice?  The hats, I mean.  Thanks, Auntie!

Before I Forget (Again)

My sister, Meredith, is not only a first degree black belt in karate, but she is also an up and coming crocheting ninja princess.

She crocheted a lot of gifts for family and friends this year, and one of the things she made was this hat for Julia.

Actually, I need to get a better picture of it so you can see the top of it with the four crocheted chains that sprout from the top and dangle down.  But I wanted to at least MENTION it, finally, because I keep forgetting to and I really like braggin on my sister.  So take a look.

 

The blend of colors in the yarn are (00ps) is perfect for Julia, and she loves the hat. 

Mere also made scarves for Bill and me - I'll take pictures of them soon.  She's also working on a hat for Alex, and I'll post a picture of that when it's done, too.

Thanks, Mere!

Bits and Pieces From the Past Week or So

Alex has "discovered" cartoons.  The old ones.  The real ones.  His favorites?  Hands down, it's Tom and Jerry, and the Pink Panther. 

I swear to you I have never heard him laugh SO HARD in his entire five and a half years as he does when Jerry gets the best of Tom in some evil, painful way...or when something blows up and that little large-nosed man who gets annoyed by the Panther is turned briefly to soot. 

Today it's Christmas all over for Alex - there's a Tom & Jerry MARATHON on TV, and he is soaking in as much as he can.  Every so often I hear this burst of helpless, happily horrified, chortling laughter burst out from the basement.  Sometimes he'll see the gag coming and let out a little "oooOOOHHHHHH!" before the guffaws take over. 

And watching him - he can't sit still.  The mirth flows through his blood and makes his legs dance and his arms flail about in blissful delirium.  If he's on the floor, he's jumping up and down.  If he's on the furniture, he's either wiggling unstoppably or jumping up and down (until I catch him and tell him to cut it out). 

This is enormously fun to watch.  Alex, I mean.  His blossoming appreciation for physical humor and cartoon violence....it's a coming-of-age thing, kind of.  And it's priceless.  That sound, his laughter.  There is nothing better.

Julia watches too, and she laughs sometimes, but she's not as enthralled as her brother. 

~~~~~

The kids have been playing against Bill at some little memory card games - the kind where all the cards are face down, and you have to turn two over and if they match, you keep them, and if not, you turn them back over.

Bill has lost most, if not all, of the games they have played.  And he's not LETTING them win, either.  Oh no.  He's not that kind of person AT ALL.  So it's particularly amusing when a five year old and a three year old beat him repeatedly.  Alex tried to console him one day by offering to help him do better next time.  "How bad is that when a five year old practically offers to let you win???"  He was visibly upset.  hahahahaha. 

Last night they were playing and I was folding laundry - I was sort of around the corner in the basement and couldn't see them, but I could hear.  Julia had just won the most recent game.  Alex had won the game before.  And Bill had come in third both times.  Alex helpfully pointed out what the problems might be.  "Daddy probably doesn't win because he's not in school any more.  Maybe they didn't HAVE memory games when Daddy wasn't in school!"  on and on like that, until Bill actually cried out, anguished, "Alex, shut up!" 

They play Go Fish also.  I watched the end of a game when I was done with the folding.  It's pretty funny.  The kids are finally learning to hold their cards up so the other players can't see what they've got.  But still, there are tactics they haven't quite mastered.  For example:

Julia:  "Does anybody have any flowers?"

Alex:  "Nope."

Bill:  "Go fish!"

Julia: (as she leans over and everyone can see the cards in her hand.  She picks up a card from the pile) "I have a turtle!"

Alex:  (who has a turtle in his hand) "Does anybody have a turtle?"

Julia:  "I do!" (she hands it over happily and says, laughing at the coincidence) "Alex wanted a turtle and I HAD a turtle!  Wasn't that funny!?" (and she does a Homer Simpson-like "doh!" kind of thing).

Bill:  (says nothing.  Just opens and closes his mouth a couple times and shakes his head.)

Alex, no surprise, won the game.

~~~~~

Julia had asked Santa for a baby doll for Christmas.  She got four.  One from each of Bill's brothers, and two from Santa himself. 

One is a "Baby Alive" that drinks and wets and came with only three spare diapers.  The manufacturer apparently has never had a newborn for longer than an hour and does not realize that three diapers is not gonna cut it for long.  That baby also makes sad noises when she's hungry, happy noises when she is content (i.e. drinking her water) and then restless and fidgety when she's wet. .

Baby number two is, I believe, the biggest baby of the crew, and she sounds frighteningly real.  So much so that if she's crying in another room, I have thought that it was Julia crying.  The baby says "Ma-Ma, Ma-Ma" when you squeeze her cheeks, and I think she laughs when you tickle her feet.  Interesingly enough, Bill dropped her on her head one day and she didn't cry at all.  After Julia had opened this one, she carried it around just like a real mommy would carry her real baby, offering the baby her bottle when she cried, and ferociously telling Bill to "Go Away!" when he came anywhere near the baby.  She is already quite the mother tiger.

Baby number three is a Cabbage Patch newborn - her second, and a boy, and black.  He's very cute.   The lone blue-clad baby in a sea of pinks.  He gets along  nicely with her other Cabbage Patch newborn.  I don't actually know what color her clothes are - they're most likely pink or purple, but Julia strips her children naked early on and those clothes have long since disappeared.  Baby Boy, so far, has not suffered this treatment.  But he will.  She just hasn't gotten around to it yet.

Baby number four is all cloth and came with a little sling kind of thing to sleep in and a backpack so Julia can tote her around.  She arrived with pink clothes, but she's down to her skivvies (sewn on) now.

Julia also got a set of Princess baby accessories - a high chair, a stroller, and a playpen.  The playpen can be disassembled and stored in a cylindrical fabric case that zips closed and has a fabric handle.  A day or two after Christmas I saw Julia load one of the babies into that cylindrical case, zip it closed, and lug the child around like that for a while.

These four bring her baby total up to ten.  I thought it was eleven, but apparently Dressy Bessy isn't a baby, so she doesn't qualify for inclusion.

One afternoon in order to break up a squabble in the making, I did my idiot-mother thing of gasping in surprise and delight, widening my eyes and announcing "I've got an idea!"  They stare at me and forget about wanting to hit each other, and I will say something like "First, you guys have to get ALL the BABIES and bring them UPSTAIRS!"  So they dash off on their scavenger hunt and this keeps them busy for a bit.  Alex is still happy to play with the baby dolls sometimes, which is nice for Julia, until he gets tired of it and she gets mad at him.  Kind of like practice for when they're married to other people and have kids of their own....

Anyway, all the babies were rounded up and brought up to the bedroom.  I'd been using the old changing table as a storage area for stuffed animals, but I cleared them off of the top two shelves and grabbed some baby blankets and made up two long beds.  I called for the babies, and arranged them in two rows of five on their new bunk beds, then covered them with a couple more baby blankets.  Ta-da!  Mommy's so clever.

Yesterday the kids were playing in the room and all the babies were lying on their bunkbeds but with no blankets covering them. 

"That's okay, Mommy,"  Alex told me, before I had even said a thing.  "We put baby spray on them and that keeps them warm.  They don't need blankets."

Baby spray.  hahahahahaha.

~~~~~

Don't know if you remember, but several posts ago I mentioned that Julia is now being treated for Lyme disease.  I mentioned the red splotchiness on the side of her face, between her red left ear and her left eye.  That's subsided, but last night a new symptom appeared.  I was taking a bubble bath and Bill was bringing the kids to bed.  Julia banged on the bathroom door "I wanna give you a KISS!" she hollered at me, so I wrapped up in a towel and opened the door.  She stood there in her pink snowflake jammies looking coy, just half a grin on her smug little face.  Or so I thought.  Turns out she's got a partial paralysis of her left cheek going on.

At first I thought maybe she had a canker sore and it hurt to move that side of her face, but no.  I had her close her eyes, and sure enough, her right eye closed fine, but the left eye - well, the lower lid wouldn't rise up to meet the upper lid, so I got the creepy experience of seeing the left eye roll up, leaving a bit of the white exposed.  When she's asleep, the eye closes completely and she looks fine.  But if you just ask her to shut her eyes, you get that partially opened thing happening.

I looked it up and that's actually one of the symptoms of Lyme disease in toddlers.  It goes away, but at the moment, it's a little disconcerting.  I want her to have her whole smile back.

Sure, it's a cute half-grin...

...but it's not quite the same.

Always

This post is for my Mom, in a way.  It's her birthday today.  She's always been a wonderful mother, except for that time when we were little and she told us we could eat AS MUCH CANDY as we wanted.  That frightened me.  But apart from that...she's done a damn fine job.  From her I've inherited a love of books, and of cooking, and of music, and, hopefully, decent mothering abilities.  Time will tell.

Happy Birthday, Mom.  Mind how you go....Love, Jayne

Not long after my mom's father passed away, after the funeral was over, and we were supposed to start to "get back to normal", I was in my old bed at my parents' house, and I dreamt of him. 

In this dream, I was sitting on a bench in a park - I don't know where, I didn't recognize it.  And he, Grandad, came over and sat beside me.  He didn't look like he had looked toward the end - tired and gaunt and shrunken and sharply angled.  Instead, he was tall and healthy and hearty - full of "vim, vigour and vitality" as he used to say.  He looked as he had when I was younger, when I looked up at him always in awe and admiration and love and a huge desire to be with him all the time. 

I was so blessed with the lives of all of my grandparents when I was a child.  I knew each of them. I have separate and distinct memories of them.  My dad's parents moved to Arizona when I was nearly 4, and they came east once more when I was in the 6th grade.  I never saw my paternal  grandfather - Grandpa - again, but I did see my grandmother shortly after Grandpa passed away - Dad and I flew out to California, where they had moved, and we visited and I met other family members for the first time.

My mother's parents were constants in my young life, especially after I turned 7 and my grandfather had retired and the two of them moved up to Rhode Island and into a house on the same block as ours.  I was 22 when my grandfather passed away - so that's a huge chunk of my life with him in it.

Anyway. 

There I was on the park bench, and him sitting beside me.  And he was wearing a thin maroon windbreaker sort of jacket.  He used to walk down to Healy's News Store on Sunday mornings to get the paper.  He'd pick up two and drop one off at my parents' house before going home.  I can see him coming around the corner of Main street, newspapers rolled and tucked under an arm.... 

He walked at a purposeful, destination-bound pace.  He neither sauntered nor meandered, and I think this was true in most aspects of his life.  I remember sleeping over at my grandparents' house and wanting to get up to get the paper with him.  I knew I had to be up and ready to go on time, so I slept in my clothes, just to make sure he wouldn't leave without me.  I was young and small; he was larger than life.

When he sat down on the bench beside me, he spoke to me in his strong, London-laced voice.

And he said "I always love you."

It was a strange phrase.  Not "I will" or "I have...loved..." - but more of an "I do...."  Not "when I was alive" or "looking down from wherever I am now" - no - it was a constant, uninterrupted thing.

I woke up in tears. 

Days later, back at the house I shared with some college friends in CT, I told one of them - the one with the most religious upbringing - about the dream and asked if he believed that the dead can visit us in our sleep.  It had been so real...I could recall the feel of cool nylon jacket on my palms and fingers as I clung to him in a hug.  He felt solid.

My friend said no, something like that was more likely the work of the devil.

And since I had no way to prove otherwise, I let the subject drop.  With him.  But I didn't agree.  How could that dream be an evil thing?  How?  If anything, it was...uplifting, and joyous, and beautiful.  I didn't discuss it again.  But I still think my dear, wonderful friend was full of crap that day.

Someone larger than life leaves a huge gap in the lives of his family when he is physically no longer present.  The fallout, I think, has never stopped, though the vibrations have softened.  We all handle things differently.  Sometimes wisely, sometimes not.  Regardless, time continues on, oblivious.

I don't visit the grave where both my grandparents now lay.  Well, the physical part of them.  I don't really think they are there.  I think my grandfather, wherever he is, continues to move purposefully and with some destination in mind.  I think he visits libraries, and opera houses, and small amateur boxing clubs where the fighters are there to fight and not just for spectacle or ear-biting. 

For a long time, I kept the green vinyl recliner that had been his.  I actually had it before he died - my grandmother or my mother or someone wanted to get him a new chair.  I couldn't bear the thought of them throwing this chair away, so I claimed it. He'd had the chair when they lived in New Jersey.  When we went down there to visit, my sister and I would sit on his lap on that chair, listening to the soundtracks of "Oliver!" and "My Fair Lady." 

The chair smelled faintly of pipe tobacco.  Borkum-Riff Whiskey blend.  It came in a black and white and silver tin, and there were tall-masted sailing ships on the top and sides.  Even when the chair was no longer in his house, when he hadn't smoked a pipe in many years, especially since the heart attack, I could, if I pressed my face against the vinyl in just the right spot, still smell the tobacco.  I inhaled it like a drug. 

My husband and I have now lived in our house for just over 6 years now.  The whole house had been refurbished before we bought it - so much of it was like new.  It smelled of paint for months.

A couple of times, upstairs here, I have caught a whiff of that pipe tobacco smoke.  Unannounced, unexpected, unexplained.  (I don't have the chair any more.)  I wondered at first if maybe someone in a nearby house was smoking that same pipe tobacco, and that the wind had carried a bit of it in through an open bedroom window.

But I have dismissed that idea.  It didn't last long enough to have come from anywhere outside.  There was no more of it than a fleeting olefactory glimpse.  It was an eye blink of a smell.  There and gone.  But definitely there.

So he has stopped by, I believe, to check in on things.  And I'm sorry the books aren't in better rows, spines flush with the edge of the shelf.  And that I sometimes dog-ear the pages.  But I don't think it matters much.  I think so many of the things that matter to us on a daily basis, things we worry about and obsess about and torture ourselves with and bury - as if that will make it go away when all it does is hide if for a while - I think they don't really matter at all.  They just keep us busy.  And moving.  And distracted.  And we do them anyway.  Because we must do things.

Monday night - two nights ago - I was watching TV with my husband.  The program he had been watching ended, and I took up the remote and began to scroll through the programming guide to see what else was on.  I  am weird like this: no matter what channel we are on, I need to scroll to channel 2 - to the beginning - and proceed from there.  So I did, paging back from wherever we had been until I reached the beginning.  And there, on channel 2 - "Carreras, Domingo and Pavarotti in Concert."  I hit the info button - it was the 1990 concert in Rome.  I hit "Select" and settled in for the night.

My grandfather died in 1988 - two years before the concert took place.  I'm sure he was there, floating above in the night sky, eyes closed, index fingers twitching, perhaps, as he conducted along with Zubin Mehta.   He would do that.

I know the whole concert by heart.  I know some of the songs in Italian, or French, German, Spanish...and what I don't know that way, I "know" phonetically.  I even sing along with the orchestra.  I'm sure I'm quite annoying to be around, but I don't particularly care.

I thought about my grandfather while I watched and sang in my chair.  I thought about my Mom, his only child, and wondered if she knew this was on, and if she was watching.  The holiday season is tough on her, I know.  But then, the season is tough on so many people who have lost loved ones and must celebrate without them in a chair at the dinner table. 

I sat there and kind of waited to feel tearful.  I really did.  I waited for emotion to well up in me, perhaps while Domingo sang "e lucevan le stelle", and pour from my eyes.  I waited to feel them sting a bit, and for my nose to feel prickly as it does when I'm going to cry.  But none of that happened.  I just listened, and sang along softly, and groaned and rolled my eyes whenever the program was interrupted because the public television station was in the middle of their fundraising.  And I got annoyed with this one woman who kept pronouncing Pavarotti "pavarot-tay" - what is that?  Get over yourself dear, you sound ridiculous.

And while there was singing, I also wondered if, maybe, I might suddenly smell some pipe tobacco.  Of course that's asking a lot, I know.  He could be watching this from anywhere.  Actually, he could be hanging out with Luciano instead, discussing other great tenors of the past and which arias were their favorites.  But still...I wanted something to happen.   

I've been watching Lisa Williams / Life Among the Dead.  I thing she's fabulous.  First - because she seems genuine.  And because she's got a great smile and funky hair and a cute little blond son and an English accent.  And because I have always been interested in the other side.  And according to Lisa, yes, they do communicate - though not always in the ways you expect them to.  So you have to be open to it, in whatever way it comes.

Well, I sniffed the air - quietly, so my husband wouldn't wonder what my problem was - on and off for a while.  Nothing.  I physically tensed as I tried REALLY HARD to - I don't know - squeeze pipe smoke from thin air through sheer force of will.  Didn't work.   

During one of the breaks, when the smiling, unblinking, fund-raising folk returned, waving CDs and DVDs, I went upstairs to move our son out of our bed and into his own.  He falls asleep on our bed because if both kids go to bed in the room they share, neither one falls asleep.  So this is how we're doing this for now.  It can't go on forever.  My son is five and a half, and growing taller by the minute, it seems.  It's a production picking him up off of the bed - sound asleep, so he weighs twice what he weighs when he's awake.  I lean in and hug him to me and then bend my knees a bit and lean backward to shift his weight onto me instead of the bed, and then straighten up so I don't fall over backwards.  I lug him as gently as I can from our room down the short hall to the kids' bedroom, trying not to whack one of his dangling legs against the door frame in the process.  Then I heave him up so he's somehow horizontal in my arms and then gently - in theory - set him down on the bed.  Cover him with the sheet and blanket and comforter, kiss him on the cheek, whisper "I love you" in his ear.  Sometimes he stays right where I put him, other times he sits up and slowly lays back down against the pillow, rearranging himself into a more comfortable position than the one I dumped him in, or he sometimes  mumbles or babbles in his sleep. 

So I got him settled in and whispered "I love you" and kissed him and was on my way toward the door when he spoke - perfectly clearly, as if he was awake, except that his eyes were closed.

And he said "I always love you."

I was so focused on not waking him or his sister up that what he said didn't really hit me until I was sitting on the couch watching the last portion of the concert, where all three tenors are on stage for that one grand and glorious and fun medly of opera and musical theatre and folk songs. 

And then I suddenly thought - huh?  What did he say? 

He said "I always love you." 

Not "I will..." or "I have .... loved..."  - future or past...

It was more like "I do" - something constant, in the present - in the ever-present tense.  The always.

And I watched the remainder of that concert lying on the couch, snuggled under a blanket, smiling.  I felt...happy.  I didn't feel sad at all.  My nose refused to prickle; my eyes would not cry. 

And - that's a good thing, I think. 

I don't believe we are supposed to cry forever.  I think we are supposed to live our lives - really live them - not wasting a single moment if possible.  I think that is the best way to honor those we have lost.  "Every day an adventure," as Grandad was wont to say.  Our time here is precious.  It's wrong to waste a minute of it.  I think we are supposed to love and cherish those around us - hug our loved ones tightly - and work hard and play hard and laugh and yes, remember, and move purposefully toward our destinations, wherever and whatever they may be.

Sure, maybe my son saying what he said, that way, that night, was a coincidence. 

But I don't believe in coincidences.

I do, however, believe love is endless.

Always.

 

Mission Accomplished

I spent the majority of yesterday making birthday cakes.  Well, technically one was a pie, but it was for birthday purposes.  I'll post pictures tomorrow probably.  I haven't uploaded them yet, and right now I just want to SIT.  I need to get some kind of cushiony matt or something for the kitchen floor.  Tile just isn't all that comfy after a while.

Yesterday was also fun because I had to have Sears send someone out to figure out why items in our refrigerator were frozen solid.  Not all of them, mind you.  Which was pretty weird.  A jar of my sister's pickled peppers was frozen, but a bottle of water on the same shelf wasn't icy at all.  Weird. 

But thanks to the wonders of computer technology, the men figured out the problem, and after hacking off my left arm and right leg and giving them Alex (my firstborn), they replaced the broken part (a baffle wasn't working in the cooling thingy and so it wouldn't close when the fridge was too cold.  Just kept blowing the cold air in.) and went on their way.

So yes, it was a day of many events. 

I'm tired - forgive me if I make no sense.

Tonight is dinner at my parents' house - the double birthday dinner for my sister and her son.  Two of the cakes are for them.  I wouldn't post pictures of those today anyway, because they're surprises.

I'm so glad it's Friday. 

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO MY BABY SISTER!!!!

We called her house earlier this morning so the kids could sing to her.  No audio, but here's a picture.  Happy Birthday, Meredith!! 

The cat was indifferent.

Father and Daughter Stuff

Don't know if I ever mentioned this before, but when I was pregnant with Julia - before we knew she was a she - Bill firmly believed (or hoped desperately) that our next child would be another boy.  Because, according to him, his side of the family only produced boys.  The oldest of the three brothers had two sons.  The middle brother had - well, a son...and a daughter.  But somehow she was dismissed as a fluke, and we were bound to have another boy.  According to my husband.

I didn't care one way or another - I was just looking for a healthy baby.  If it was another boy - fine, they could share a room and toys and hand-me-downs.  If it was a girl - fine, we'd eventually need to figure out the bedroom situation, but in the meantime, they could share a room and toys and hand-me-downs. 

When I was somewhere around the half-way point, we went in for an ultrasound to find out if the baby was developing okay and (Bill's choice) to find out the gender.  I got my way with Alex - I didn't want to know.  So, to be fair, if Bill wanted to know this time, that was okay. 

I remember lying on the table twisting my neck around to see the screen during the ultrasound.  I loved ultrasounds.  I loved seeing the tiny creature growing inside me.  Didn't love the two ultrasounds that gave me bad news, of course.  But this was now, and my baby was growning and moving and - presumably - healthy.  The woman doing the ultrasound was a pro - quick and efficient and calm.  She showed us various bones and said everything was developing normally, everything looked good, right on track, and so forth.

And then - "Did you want to know the sex?"  Yep.  She was silent for a moment as she moved the scope around, and then - "It's a girl."  Not open to discussion or debate.  She was certain.

I burst out laughing.  Healthy, first and foremost, and - a girl.  I looked over at Bill who, fortunately, was sitting in a chair to my left, not standing.  If he had been standing before the announcement, he would have been falling at the word "girl."  I know it's a cliche, but he really had that deer in the headlights look about him.  I laughed more.  The radiologist pointed out the proof - where something might have been right there between the legs, it very clearly wasn't in this picture.  And she'd been doing this for something like 20 years, so even though there was certainly a possibility that she'd be wrong, she was pretty damn sure she was right.

Bill continued to look shell-shocked for the whole drive home, and remained terrified for the rest of the pregnancy.  And several months after Julia was born.  She didn't have boy stuff, she had girl stuff, and girl stuff is scary to men who think they will only father sons.

He got over it, in a way, though I think there is still a part of him that will always be terrified of having a daughter.  Not so much because of her, but because fathering a daughter is a whole different ballgame from fathering a son. 

As another Bill sang in "Carousel" - "You can have fun with a son, but you gotta be a father to a girl."

It's scary stuff.

Flash forward a few years. 

This morning is foggy and occasionally rainy.  A slight breeze sways the treetops, but otherwise all is calm, still.  A perfect morning to go trout fishing.  Originally Bill was going to take both kids and give me uninterrupted time to type or whatever.  But Alex didn't want to.  I told Bill to go alone if he wanted to - I knew he was itching to go.  He went downstairs to get a couple of freshwater poles from the racks and a moment later, up came Julia with her pink Barbie pole. 

"What are you doing?" I asked.

"I'm going fishing!" she announced, in her Dora underwear and her ruby slippers.  "I'm going fishing with Daddy!"  I told her she'd need a few more articles of clothing on first.

Bill came upstairs and, yep, he was taking Julia with him.

I used to go fishing with my father, and with his father.  I was Julia's age - Julia's age! - when I caught 14 choggies - little saltwater fish related to blackfish.  I seem to remember a photo of me standing with all my catch laid out on a cookie sheet or something.  I need to check with my father to see if he has a copy somewhere....

Anyway - this morning.

Bill got Julia dressed warmly and ready to go...

And I took pictures (big surprise) - because this is what I knew would happen, ever since that day in the radiologist's office when I laughed and Bill quaked.  Because this is the wonderful part of fathers and daughters. 

And I know - it's not always like this.  I'm doubly blessed - as a daughter, and now, watching my own daughter and her father. 

Take your daughter fishing.  Teach her to use a hammer and a screwdriver and a saw and a wrench...and how to throw overhand and how to catch with a glove, and how to catch a football and how to shuck scallops and clams and oysters, and how to bait a hook and gut a fish.  Or to play guitar.  Or whatever.

Not that mothers can't teach their daughters these things as well.  Of course they can.  But I'm not talking about that right now.

I'm just smiling here, to myself, because my baby girl and my husband have gone fishing.

And though neither one of them may realize it right now, or for many years, these are special, precious, important times.

  You can have fun with a daughter, too.

Pickled Peppers

From my sister.

42 Across

"Don't worry, Grammie, I'll tell them you did the whole thing by yourself."

July 7th

My husband's eldest brother, R, and his wife, N, were here for the first week in July.  They were here from Seattle - their first week was spent in CT seeing N's father and siblings and their families, and then they came to stay with us for the second week.  It was a great week - I wish I hadn't had to work through most of it.

Anyway, toward the end of their stay, the older of their two sons flew up from DC to visit for a couple of days, too.  We don't get to see him too often, so that was a treat.  On their last night at our house, we went out to eat at a Japanese steak house/sushi bar near our house.  We've had sushi there multiple times, and a few months ago we brought Alex and Julia and sat at one of their grills to watch the chef perform and cook for us.  Alex ate a fortune in raw tuna...Julia was kind of scared of the fire.

So we went there, the seven of us, and I actually brought my camera.  I never used to bring my camera to restaurants - I always felt self-conscious and, well, weird, at the thought of photographing my meal.  But in the past year or so, I've decided I don't care if I am being weird, so I sometimes bring the camera. 

It was pretty dark inside, and I didn't want to use a flash, so bear with the grainy quality and the blur....

This is, of course, Alex, goofy with anticipation.

And Julia, enjoying some soup.  That thing that looks like a snakeskin dangling down in front of her bowl WAS a decorative paper orange wrapped around her straw until she destroyed it.

Ooooh, fire!  That's a little sliced onion volcano and slices of zucchini to the right.  This is Julia's least favorite part.  Never mind the show - just cook me my dinner!  Actually, before we even got to this part of the evening, she had to go to the bathroom about 4 times, just so she could hide.  She ended up sitting on Bill's lap for this part, mainly so I could take a picture.  I shouldn't have cut the flame off at the top like I did...but oh well. 

Action shot.  All the grilling vegetables (zucchini and onion) are being shoved around and chopped and cooked at high heat and blinding speed.

Alex watches the show.  He's seen it all before.  It's all very well and good, but I'd really like another side of tuna now, please.

Meanwhile Julia wields her chopsticks like a little pro.

After dinner we brought the few leftovers home and Bill and his brother and the kids (big and small) played whiffle ball in the back yard.

Gotta go cook breakfast for my kids now.  Back later with more of July.... 

Wild Blue Yonder

This past Saturday Bill and I took the kids to the Rhode Island National Guard Open House and Air Show.  I've never been, and it's been a few years since Bill has gone.  His nephew was going to be working there as well (he's a Load Master in the Air Guard) and we hoped to see him while we were there.

We went early, which was our smartest move that morning.  We got to park relatively close, and buses driven by guardsmen and women drove us to the air field and back again later.

I would have liked to stay longer (we were there for a couple of hours) but the kids were getting tired of walking around and staring at the sky after a while.  (Alex:  "Mommy, why do we have to walk and walk and walk and walk and walk and walk and go down the slide and walk and walk and walk?")  As a result we weren't there long enough to see the really big shows, like the Blue Angels.  (I did, however, see them fly over in tight formation while I was on my way to the grocery store later that afternoon.)

Anyway - I brought my camera and both lenses, and I took what pictures I could.  It was a little difficult at times - hard to focus or change settings with one hand while carrying Julia with the other arm.  But whatever.  It was fun.  And it was a perfect day - comfortable temperatures and nice puffy clouds in the sky.

If you are so inclined, you can see the pictures here.

Clambake - An All-Day Affair

A couple of Saturdays ago, Bill and I took the kids and some clam rakes and metal baskets and gloves and the kids' plastic gardening tools and my camera down to Galilee to dig clams.  Bill had bought about four pounds of soft shell clams, or steamers, earlier, but in order to do the clambake we needed rockweed (a type of seaweed) and since we had to get that, we might as well dig for more steamers while we were there.

Walking the Wall

On Saturday morning I got up early (though not as early as I'd intended - Julia was up several times and when the alarm went off at 5:15, I said to myself "um...no.") and took my camera and my cell phone and drove down to my sister's house to get her, then get coffee, and then to to the end of the Sea Wall in Narragansett so we could walk the wall.

The Wall is basically the sea wall on one side and Ocean Road on the other, and you're on the sidewalk on the ocean side of the road.  Many people are there every day, to walk the wall, or run it, jog it, rollerblade it, or just sit on the wall with coffee and the newspaper, breathing in the salty fresh air.

We were in luck - there was a parking spot close to one end of the wall - the non-beach end - so we parked and just sat on the wall a bit with our coffees while I geekily changed lenses a couple of times and my sister laughed at me. 

It was probably not even quarter to seven yet.

Way off in the back of that photo above, that's Narragansett Beach.  We ended up walking there too.  But first things first. 

My sister thought it was about time we set off,

and since she knows karate, I didn't argue.  You can see the killer look in here eyes, can't you?

So off we went.  And you know, all through the morning I found myself taking huge breaths of air and sighing contentedly on the exhale.  It was a morning of freedom.  No one asking me to make breakfast, no squabbles to referee, nothing.  I was just me.  With my sister.  Who is also probably my best friend.  We have the same sense of humor.  It's often cruel humor - if you trip over something or fall down or slip on the ice and fall into a snow bank while you're with us, please understand that deep down we DO care about your health and well-being, but first we have to laugh hysterically at how funny you looked in your moment out of control.  That's what we're like.  And it isn't just strangers - we laugh like that at each other and at ourselves.  We have a whole slew of "falling stories" that still make us laugh, even if they happened when, say, I was in junior high or something.

But I digress.  My point was, for the morning, I was just me.  With my sister.  And that's it.

If you look down over the wall, you see that it is "lined" with zillions of rocks, in all sizes.  They are soft-edged from the ocean's constant and rhythmic caresses.  The ones higher up and closest to the wall are pale and kind of sandy with pale gray and terra cotta hues...

And as you get closer to the water, they are dark and slick and wet and covered with seaweed and barnacles.

As you walk, you can see The Towers ahead, and on the right, The Coast Guard House, a restaurant that has survived hurricanes and has the little brass plaques - indicating how high the water got inside - to prove it. 

(And please forgive the tilt of this photo - I was leaning out over the wall to get the shot and I didn't really pay attention to how it might look all askew...)

The morning was kind of hazy and cloudy at first...but then the sun started to push through...

We passed the Towers and The Coast Guard House, and my sister noticed an Object of Interest on the ground near a bench.  She said "Take a picture!" So I did.  Here, Mere, just for you:

Ants on Cheese

Right after these two buildings (and the ants on cheese) we got to a mass of beach roses just before the edge of Narragansett Beach.  I love beach roses.  I have a white one in my garden at home.  Here's a pink one:

As the wall curves around and becomes more of a beach wall than a sea wall you come upon a couple of beautiful metal sculptures...here's one (with the re-furbishment-in-progress of the condos across the street as a backdrop):

And here's the other.  I'd like them in my front yard...

And now, Narragansett Beach.  My favorite time of year to walk the beach is actually the middle of winter.  There's a lot more interesting stuff washed up on the sand then, because the town isn't trying to impress the tourists at that point.  But we still managed to find some interesting things to pick up or look at...

First of all, these interesting animal tracks:

Looks like a few giant slugs were playing tag.

Ah...this is more like it...

A little blue nugget of beach glass amid the rocks and shells.

And sunlight on the waves... 

I took pictures of just about everything.  Digital cameras were made for people like me who go out and just are possessed with the desire to capture everything and then go back and weed out the junk later.  I have always been like this and I don't think I am going to bother trying to change.

The mantra of the day, as I snapped off continuous shots of waves rolling in while on the "sports" setting became "because I can!"  I'm taking a zillion pictures of these waves BECAUSE I CAN!  I'm taking a picture of this seagull feather on the sand BECAUSE I CAN.

Of course, my sister, being my sister, had to mess with my IMPORTANT PURSUIT OF ART.

That's her big ol' foot about to stomp on the delicate white feather against the rough and tumble backdrop of beach sand and rocks.

She has no respect for ART.

But I showed her, eventually.  This is a picture of her head as she bent down to pick up a rock or something.  She crocheted it herself.  The hat she's wearing, not the rock.

 

Cool, huh?

Well, I continued trying to take pictures of things along the beach that would capture the feel, the essence, the spirit of the place.  Like the lifeguard chairs, all white and clean looking...but she just kept...

INTRUDING!

Fortunately, she didn't intrude on EVERYTHING...

Doesn't this make you heave a big sigh of peace and serenity?

It certainly works for me.

Here are a few more from the walk.  We walked the entire length of the beach.  All along the way I'd stop, squat down, and photograph something on the sand, or shoot more pictures of the water, the birds, the building, the lifeguard chairs (without Mere's head in the way) or whatever....I'm posting some more here, and I'll probably upload more to my flickr page.  There were a lot.  BECAUSE I CAN!

Here we go...

See her trying to intrude there at the bottom left - sneaking two-and-a-half toes into the frame.  She's my younger sister.  It's such typical younger sister behavior...

Look at her, laughing evilly at me...

 

She laughed at me because I would stop and take pictures of things like a stray mitten...

or a beetle...

or a crab shell fragment...

And she laughed when I said "oooh, erosion" softly to myself before shooting this one...

well, I guess I did sound a little goofy with that.

But not half as goofy as I did when I spotted something lying on the sand up ahead and shrieked out "OOOOHHHHHHHH!" in my most excited tone, with a little squeal at the end.

Was it more beach glass?  No.  A pretty shell?  No. 

It was

A young - or "schoolie" - striped bass carcass. 

We both burst out laughing about this - not about death on the beach, but about my response to it.  "OOOOOOOHHHHHHHH!" 

And then we saw this next thing and she shouted out excitedly "A Beach Fork!"  And here it is:

Everything was funny.  I think I was giddy with salt sea air and freedom.  Or just giddy.  Who knows.  But it was such a fun, silly, relaxed way to begin my weekend.

Here, we have reached the end of the beach.  There's a little inlet off to the left, and also to the left (for some reason I actually DIDN'T take a picture of this) a roped-off area where the endangered Piping Plovers were nesting.  I suppose I was giving them their privacy.  But anyway - we've walked the length of the beach...

And now it's time to head back, because I told Bill I'd be back by ten because his friend John will be coming over to take away (in Bill's truck) a bunch of toys and things the kids have outgrown.  Things like Alex's crib and the bouncy chair thing that both kids used, and Alex's first two car seats, and an umbrella stroller, and I don't remember what else.  John and his wife are expecting their first child in August, and we're just happy to be getting this stuff out of our garage.  If they can use it, great, if not, they can toss it.  We are just grateful for the space.

But back to the beach...here's the view as we start back.

The sun has burned through the cloudy haze and people are starting (down the other end, where there is paid public access) to lay out their towels and slather the sunscreen on their children.  It's the Saturday of Memorial Day Weekend - the official start of summer - and soon this beach will be PACKED.  Time to get going.  I much prefer the beach when it's not full of people.

I say I'm not going to stop and take so many pictures, since we kind of need to hurry (so I can go back to her house and take pictures of her flowers before I go home) but then of course, in the next breath I say "I lie" and start finding cool stuff on the sand again.

Actually, Mere noticed these - three tiny mussel shells in some seaweed:

And I saw this interesting little seaweed blobby thing - looks like maybe an alien embryo or something...

We hurry, and hurry, and I take fewer shots...and we're getting closer to the other end...

There are the towers...

And we're off the beach and walking back along the wall...

A look back...

And suddenly I spot it...all alone...abandoned...

Poor little boat.

We walk quickly back along the wall...

I take one last random picture - BECAUSE I CAN!

And we were done.  We got in my car and headed back to her house so I could take pictures of flowers.  And I'll post them, too, at some point.  But for now - big inhale...big exhale with a loud sigh.  Ahhhhhhhhh. 

I really need to do this more often.

P.S.  You can see more from this batch here. 

Summer

Bill called me at work yesterday afternoon - he'd picked up some sushi-grade tuna steaks and would be grilling them (just ever so slightly) for dinner, along with some zucchini.  And he'd make rice.

It's a lovely thing to have someone else decide what to make for dinner.

Anyway, I got home with the kids, and dinner was just about ready - just waiting for the rice.

I changed into more comfortable clothes, and put the kids in bathing suits and we watched them play in the pool their Uncle Bob recently gave to them as a joint birthday present.

They had fun:

And after a lot of screaming and squealing and laughter, we ate dinner outside on the deck.

When they were finished, the kids went back to play in the pool some more, and I wandered around taking pictures of flowers and pea tendrils and whatever else looked interesting.

I especially like this:

That's it for the moment.  I'm home right now - I'll be taking Alex in for his pre-K testing in a little while, then dropping the kids off at daycare and going in to work. 

It's warm.  Summer's here.

Getting Back to Normal

It's been a rough couple of weeks.  I'll go into that another time - I just don't feel like starting right now. 

Meanwhile, though, spring rolls along, and here are a few images I took this evening...

Blossoms on the sour cherry tree...

Bleeding Hearts...

Narcissus...or is that Narcissi?  Or are they Daffodils?  Whatever - I love this variety.

And the tulips.

I've also posted a few new pictures on flickr - you can see them up there to the right.

I'll write more another night this week. 

Easter Recap

We had a nice little kid-oriented Easter.  Julia woke up around quarter to seven.  I thought I could get her to go right back to sleep after she used the potty, but then - amazingly - Bill was out of bed and ready to go.  So down the stairs we went to see what the Easter Bunny had brought.

Bill recorded the hunt for the Easter eggs on our little DVD camera.  The kids were very cute - shrieking "I FOUND ANOTHER ONE!" every few minutes.  Alex helped Julia at first, until she got the hang of it.  He'd find two eggs and give her one.  He's a good little man.  Eventually she got into it, and they both scurried from room, in search of. 

Bill (Mr. Easter Bunny) got them some MAJOR bubble-blowing contraptions, and despite the wintery temperatures, we went outside after breakfast so the kids (big and small) could "do bubbles."

Pretty cool stuff.  But very cold - we didn't last for very long out there.

 

Later on, we went to my cousin's house for a late brunch, preceded by their annual Easter egg hunt for all the kids on both sides of the family.  This year there were only three little kids competing for the eggs in the front yard.  The older kids had a separate hunt in the back yard.  Alex was off and running.  He had scoped out the yard a bit when we arrived, so he just bee-lined from egg to egg, a man on a mission.  Julia did well for herself - she had some help, but hey, she's the very youngest.  Alex found a total of 29 eggs, and Julia a respectable 21.  I don't know how many the other little boy found, but he did well for himself, too.

Brunch was great - as always.  It's one of those annual gatherings where certain people are basically required to bring the same dish every year.  My cousin's wife makes a couple different pans of stuffed french toast...someone else makes a pan of potatoes and eggs and chourizo...someone else brings the baked ham...someone else - the seafood lasagne.  Ahh.  There are other things too - bagels, a couple of quick breads, fruit salad, devilled (deviled?) eggs, chocolate covered strawberries (my kids loved them) and carrot cake cupcakes.  And wonderful coffee.  Lots of coffee.  And mimosas.

My son ate a couple platefuls of food - I didn't even see what he had, but I know he went back, on his own, to get seconds.  He also consumed many strawberries.  Julia didn't want much of anything - she was busy being shy, which meant she was stuck to my upper body like large and weighty brooch.  But.  She eventually tried some of my seafood lasagne, and she basically ate most of it.  Then she went into the kitchen and asked for some on her own.  She is tiny.  And she's standing there looking at my cousin, Steve, who is holding a plate and giving her a questioning look.  He looked at me - "She wants seafood lasagne?"  Yep.  Load her up.  She ate all of it.

   

On the ride home - about twenty minutes or so - she was asleep in maybe two minutes.Zonked right out. 

We were all tired - except Alex.  We all took naps - except Alex.  I woke up listening to him playing in the living room...I think a T-rex was chasing a stuffed bunny rabbit or something like that.  All I could hear were sounds like "aarrrggghhhh!"  "ppppkkkkkttttt!!!"  "DOH!"  "kkkkkkkaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhh-ssssppppppttttt" "NO!" and so on.  It was pretty entertaining, actually. 

And that was about it.  This week has been busy for me at work...the weather has been nice but we're supposed to get snow/rain/sleet/who knows what starting later tonight.  Which means who knows when the peas and broccoli rabe will poke through the ground.  I wouldn't if I were them. 

Bill transplanted some of our little seedlings on Sunday as well, and he had them outside for a few hours the other day, to start hardening them off. 

I guess that's about it for the moment.  This Saturday is my husband's  High Holy Day, as I have written about in the past.  So he and his best friend, John, will set off on their quest to catch their limit of trout.  I haven't decided what I'll do that morning.  I'm quite sure it won't involve sleeping late, since my kids invariably wake up three seconds after Bill and his fishing partner (whoever it may be) drive away from the house.  I'll see.  Many possibilities, since I'm in kind of a clean out the house frame of mind.  So...who knows.

Princess

This past Sunday morning I brought Alex and Julia down to my parents' house for a visit.  My sister and her kids were there, too.  Part of the reason for the gathering was so my sister could trim my kids' hair.  But that's not what this post is about.

I'll get to the point in a little while....

We always had at least one dog in the family when Meredith and I were growing up.  In fact, I'm not really the first-born.  That honor belonged to Bonnie, a Standard Poodle, on the smaller side of Standard.  She arrived 3 years before I did.  I remember her as gray, dark gray, with white around the mouth as she got older.  She was a pistol.  She was feisty and opinionated and she wasn't all that thrilled when I showed up.  She mostly ignored me or at least avoided me, as I understand it.  By the time my sister was born, two years after me, Bonnie had relaxed and was more tolerant of her furless two-legged baby sisters.

When Bonnie was around 8 years old, our number increased again.  Thistle came home wrapped in my Dad's jacket - a birthday gift for my mother from her parents, I think.  I remember we were at my grandparents' house - my parents and my mom's father had gone to the breeder's house so Mom could pick out a puppy.  Another Standard.  Mere and I waited impatiently by the windows in the living room, hoping a new puppy would come home with the humans.  Thistle didn't get named for a couple of days, actually.  Mom couldn't decide on the name.  I remember one night in our house - Mom was at a ceramics class or something like that, and the rest of us were gathered in the dining room, watching the puppy frolic and chew on things, and trying to come up with a name.  I remember writing the list as we went through the alphabet.  I'm not sure how far we got...I don't even remember if we thought of Thistle or if my mother did.  But that was the name.

Thistle tortured Bonnie like all needle-toothed younger sisters torture their older siblings.  When she matured, Thistle was taller than Bonnie and had a showy kind of swagger in her gait.  They were both intelligent, spirited animals - very different in personality - they didn't always get along - much like any other sisters.

Time passed, of course, and Bonnie lived to an impressive 15 years. 

Our next dog was a birthday gift for me.  Stormy was a gorgeous Doberman, so named because the night we brought her home a tremendous thunderstorm shook the house and everyone ended up in my bedroom at some point during the night to wait out the worst of it.  Her full official name became "An August Night Storm."  She slept with me until she grew too big to share my twin bed.  To carry on the tradition, Stormy nipped at Thistle's long ears with her sharp teeth, and they got along at times and didn't get along at other times.

Taking care of the dogs was my job, I think.  (Mere?  Did we take turns?)  I fed them their dinner after we humans were finished eating.  I'd mix some of the leftovers in with their kibble.  I would scoop the kibble from a big 50 pound bag into the two dog bowls.  Thistle's was red; Stormy's was blue.  The two dogs would sit near me as I mixed string beans and bits of chicken and warm water in with the dry food.  I'd put Thistle's bowl down first, in her spot near the stove.  Then I'd get Stormy's bowl.  She would stand up on her hind feet, like a trained circus animal, and hop backwards as I carried her bowl around to the other side of the dishwasher.  Her eyes never left the bowl.  She'd down her food in about three gulps - no chewing - and then wait at the edge of the dishwasher for Thistle to finish.  Then the two dogs would trade places and lick each other's bowl, and then they'd cross back around to give their own bowls one final sweep of the tongue, just to make sure nothing was overlooked.

The other main job in taking care of the dogs was cleaning up the large piles of poop in and near the driveway.  We didn't let the dogs out on their own unless we were taking them into the back yard and were able to watch them.  Our house was on a corner of Main Street, and we had seen plenty of animals crawl into our front yard to die after being struck by traffic.  When the dogs needed to "go out," we'd let them out - one at a time - on a chain that was hooked on the rail of the back steps.  That changed eventually - when Stormy was full grown, she actually pulled the stairs off of the house.  Really.  I took a picture.  I'll try to find it if you need proof.

Anyway - the driveway was out behind the house, and so when the dogs went outside, their poop radius mostly covered the driveway, with a little bit of the side yard that ran along beside it.  Navigating the land mines in the driveway or in that side part of the yard was always an adventure.  Dog poop gets in the nooks and crannies of the soles of your sneakers and is pretty hard to get out, even with a stick.  Scraping your foot on the grass gets the surface stuff off pretty well, but nothing really works on the nooks and crannies except a strong spray of water from the hose and a lot of patience, or time for the poop to dry out and shrink enough to be pried out with the stick that wouldn't work when it was fresh.

I know - fun topic, huh?  Not the typical bill of fare on this blog.  But I've got a story to tell, and the poop is a part of it.

Fast forward a whole bunch of years.  First Thistle and then Stormy went on to those big back yards in the sky.  They're probably trading dinner bowl licks even now...

When my nephew Calvin was a baby or a little toddler, my parents got another dog.  Our current canine sister is another black Standard Poodle.  Her name is Rosie Lea. 

She's kind of a change-of-life baby.  Much younger than the rest of the litter, she is the princess:  pampered and doted upon.  We used to groom and bathe the other dogs - my father clipped their toenails...but Rosie?  She goes to the groomer's once a month and comes home freshly coiffed and adorned with a seasonally appropriate bandana around her neck and a couple of matching bows clipped to her fluffy ears.  This month, of course, she's got shamrocks around her neck.  When we were kids, we were not permitted to wear green or celebrate St. Patrick's Day - our maternal grandfather was half Scottish, and my mother felt that anything even remotely Irish would be met with disapproval.  It's probably why green is my favorite color now...But - Rosie wears green with abandon.  She can.  She's the princess.

When Thistle and Stormy were alive, they were absolutely NOT supposed to get up on the furniture.  Stormy would get up on this one rust-colored chair in the living room and fall asleep.  She was incapable of deceit - when we would come home, she'd slither off the chair and slink out to greet us - ears back and teeth bared in a pathetic grin of shame...her little stub of a tail wagging back and forth like a windshield wiper making the jump to hyperspace.  Rosie, on the other hand, sits wherever she damn well pleases.  And feels no guilt, no shame.  She is not a dog - she is not even a person.  She is the princess.

Stormy and Thistle ate some kind of basic kibble that we bought in bulk from the pet shop across the street.  Scraps from the table, mixed into the food, were a treat.  Rosie dines on one of the big name designer dog foods out there that comes in small bags and is so expensive my parents have been forced to take out a second mortgage on the house.  Every week or so, my mother cooks a chicken or some tenderloin and shreds that up to add to Rosie's food.  Rosie, unlike her predecessors, does not vacuum the food down her throat.  She picks.  A bowl of food will last hours as she delicately nibbles at a choice morsel or two before hopping up onto the couch and clicking through the channels to see if there's anything good on Animal Planet.  The water she drinks is imported.  Of course.  She's, you know, the princess. 

Well, back to the beginning.  We were at the palace this weekend.  Rosie was outside strolling around the grounds.  Julia was getting tired of being in the house with the rest of us, so Dad offered to bring her outside.  I followed, with my camera.

First they inspected the rhododendrons.  No buds on the lower branches - the deer snack on them after school.  Julia's had enough of budless branches, so she's off in search of other adventures.

It's funny - this picture.  I looked at it a few minutes before I started this post.  Big wave of nostalgia crashed over me.  When I was Julia's age, my Dad's father used to take me for walks and little trips around town.  He'd bring me to feed horses at a couple of different local farms...or we'd go fishing off the docks in Galilee.  He'd also buy me candy - lemon drops - and Twinkies - much to my mother's consternation.  My paternal grandparents moved to Arizona for the better climate shortly before I turned four.  But I remember those little jaunts with Grandpa.  This picture brings me full circle.  Funny how life does that sometimes.

Anyway.  The back yard at this house (which my parents moved into the same year Julia was born) has a huge back yard.  Dad bought a riding lawn mower for it, and he gives the kids bumpy rides around the house in a little trailer hooked to the back of his John Deere.

As I mentioned earlier, Rosie was already outside.  Just about the only thing she has in commmon with the previous canines is the fact that she has to go outside on a chain.  Hers, however, is sterling silver.  The maid polishes it every Saturday.

There's Julia and my father going over to say hello to Rosie.  She's hanging around by the bird feeders next to the flower garden.  She likes to sing arias with the song sparrows on late spring evenings.  On Tuesdays she has art lessons.  Currently she's working in oils.

While Dad and I discuss thinning out the overgrown flower beds, Julia heads back to Rosie, who has meandered away a bit.  Gardening is tiresome.  All that dirt. 

Looking up from the iris leaves poking up from the ground, I shout out some words of caution to Julia as she tramps across the yard.

"Watch out for the poop!"

It's been a couple days since the local prisoners on work release have come by to clean up the back yard, so there are land mines about every square foot in any direction.  You need to be pretty damn good at hopscotch to navigate without a mishap. 

Look!  There's some now!  Julia points with one hand and prepares to point to the next batch with her other.  It's everywhere.  Rosie just stares at Julia, looking stylish in her St. Patty's Day neckerchief.

Funny thing about Rosie, though.  None of this poop is hers.  Nope.  She doesn't poop, apparently.  I've asked my mom about this, and it's true.  Rosie didn't do any of this.  No - it was the OTHER dogs.  The OTHER dogs in the neighborhood who come into the back yard for the express purpose of pooping on Rosie's perfectly manicured lawn.  (Okay, the manicurist has had the winter off.)  But anyway - all this poop came from OTHER dogs.  I don't know what Rosie does - it's a big secret.  Mom just smiles mysteriously and won't say more.  But it must be true.  After all, Rosie's a princess.

And no, Julia's not showing off her dainty ankle here - she's checking for poop in the nooks and crannies.  You can't teach 'em too young, I figure.

One last look at the back yard before she goes back into the house.  She's never seen so much poop in her life.  Poop done by OTHER dogs.  Not by Rosie. 

She's a princess, after all. 

Tournament

My sister (above) and my nephew competed in a karate tournament this past Sunday.  I went and took pictures.  Here are a few more from that day...

My sister got her black belt this past October after too many physical setbacks for anyone to need to deal with.  But she never gave up or gave in, and I would call her my hero but she'd probably beat me up for it.

This is her bo kata - Shushi no kun. 

And her open hand kata was Chinto.

She also competed in sparring, but I wasn't thrilled with how the pictures came out, and I also want to ask her which one she thinks would be a good one to post...so for now, I'll post a picture of her feet, taken at the end of the day.  Her right foot is explained here.

And then there's my nephew.  He started karate when he was five (I think) and he's currently a second degree black belt.  Here are a few of him from that day...

His open hand kata was Itosu Passai.  He competed with a bo in weapons too, but I couldn't decide on a picture.  So here are two of him during sparring competition:

That's him in the gray tee shirt and red gi pants.

He won sparring for his division.  There were between 15 - 20 other kids in that competition. 

He's 14...he was my first "baby" - I learned all kinds of things with him and his sister...it's amazing how fast the time goes...but anyway...

My proudest moment as an Aunt was when he came over to where I had gone to sit with his sister and my parents after the match.  He was carrying his trophy...

And he said:  "Jayne, can I borrow a dollar?  Maybe a quarter too?  I'm really thirsty."

I wept, of course, and handed over the money.  He handed the trophy to his sister and went in search of a vending machine.

This is Natalie.  She did karate for a few years, but it's not her thing.  She plays clarinet now and is pretty happy with that.

We all watched the last of the team sparring...

 

All in all, a good way to spend a day.

 

Me Time

At this moment I'm in my bed, laptop on my lap, the bedroom door CLOSED, and my husband on duty.  Yesterday was "his" day - he spent the day brewing beer and I watched the kids - so today - at least for part of the afternoon - is "mine."

I need this.  I need the door shut and no one in here except my cat.  And she doesn't say "mommymommyMOMMYYYYYYYYY" in a whining voice.  Ever.  Nor does she wake up at 2 in the morning wanting to sleep in my bed.  She's already on it anyway.  And she doesn't try to come into the bathroom while I'm taking a shower.

Last week, two mornings in a row, I was trying to take my shower.  Weekday mornings are carefully choreographed chaos.  My husband and I each have our roles in getting ourselves and the kids ready to go.  I do stuff while he takes his shower, and he does stuff while I take mine.

Friday wasn't really so bad - just one interruption, but on Thursday, I was taking my shower and all of a sudden there was a banging on the door and a loud boy's voice yelling "MOMMY CAN YOU LET ME IN BECAUSE I NEED TO GO POTTY!" 

We have two bathrooms.  I love the fact that we have two bathrooms.  It usually prevents this sort of thing from happening.  But as luck would have it, my husband was in the bathroom downstairs.  I told Alex to hang on a minute and I'd be done.  No dice.  "MOMMY YOU NEED TO HURRY UP BECAUSE THE PEE IS STARTING TO COME OUT OF ME!"

So fine, I unlocked the door (the bathroom is the ONLY place I ever get to escape) and in he came, bee-lining for the toilet while I tried to hide behind the nearly-see-through shower curtain.  He doesn't need to see Mommy naked.  It might frighten him.

So he's over there peeing, and I'm trying to finish up...at one point he announced "I have a lot of pee!" (yay, good for you) and then I could hear Julia calling for me as she came up the stairs.  She wanted to come in too (since Alex was in there and obviously there was some fun being had and she'd been left out of it)...Alex stood there sort of staring at me while I hid behind the water, and I told him - in a sort of frantic I'm-losing-my-mind voice "You can get out now!"  He zipped his jammies back up and let Julia in.  "Mommy, you takin' a SHOWER?" Alex left and Julia stared at me, very obviously.  Like "good god, don't tell me I'm going to look like THAT when I get older!" - and she continued to chatter away while I rinsed my hair and shut the water off.  I said "Julia, why don't you go downstairs and get dressed now?" and she said "I just wanna give you a kiss."

Okay.  I'm putty in their hands when they say stuff like that.  So I stuck my head out from behind the shower curtain.  Julia very obviously took a good luck at the rest of me before giving me a kiss, and as she was finally leaving the room, she said "I love you Mommy!" and I said "I love you, too, Julia."  And then she said - and I don't know for sure if there was sarcasm in it but in my paranoid state I sure heard it - "I love your chest."

Oh yeah?  Just wait til you nurse a couple of babies, missy.  Then come talk to me.

Squash Pie Night, Turkey in the Mornin'

My hands still smell faintly of Bell's poultry seasoning. 

I went early to my mother's house to do the traditional Stuffing of the Bird.  She had already chopped the bread.  I got there and chopped celery and onion...measured out herbs...mashed and browned breakfast sausage...and after a lot of struggle, I also managed to pull that plastic thing that holds the legs together out of the turkey cavity.  Why is it there?  Just to annoy people, I think.  I wonder how many people have cooked it by mistake.

This Stuffing of the Bird is pretty traditional with my mother and me.  Sometimes my sister has come over too, but as she has said on occasion, "Jayne is the stuffing girl."  Yep.  Stuffing is my favorite part of the meal.  I am a starch addict - I freely admit it.  I don't need turkey at all to be happy - just the stuffing and some gravy and I'm all set.

We just do a pretty traditional bread stuffing.  The "plain" stuffing goes in the cavity, and then the browned sausage gets mixed with some more of the plain stuffing and is then stuffed into the neck cavity.  Mom couldn't find her little skewers, so we secured the skin with a lobster pick.  Whatever works.

The bird went in at nine.  I came home shortly after and have been home with husband and kids since then.  We'll head back to my mom's house around one thirty and dinner will be around three with my parents, my family, and my sister and her family.

Last night I baked my contribution to today's meal - pumpin pie.  Well, no - squash pie.  My father prefers squash.  He is the only one who notices any difference, I think.  But still - we buy the canned squash rather than the pumpkin.  Because he will know.

Alex was my sous chef.  I'd told him earlier that he could help me make the pies (one for dinner today, the other for "leftovers" at our house) and he was looking forward to it.  So much so that he burst into tears at the prospect of eating dinner before we got started.  Reluctantly he ate half his meatball grinder and then after I cleared the table and he washed his hands, we began.

Julia wanted to help too, of course, so both kids dragged chairs from the dining room into the kitchen and positioned them on either side of my main work table.  I had my huge white ceramic bowl out to make the dough.  The bowl is nothing fancy - just plain white - it's made in Italy and there are chips in the rim from where I've banged it against some sinks over the years.  I love it.

I'd already measured out the flour and salt.  Next in was the chilled butter, cut into little cubes.  I couldn't find my pastry blender - I'm sure I'll find it some time in January - so I used an old one that Bill's mom had had.  It's just two metal blades attached to a single handle.  Takes a bit longer to get all the butter worked in, but that's okay.

Julia wanted a turn.  Since it was nearly her bedtime, I let her go first.  She mashed away at the butter and I scraped off any that stuck to the blades...Alex repeated that he wanted a turn and I reassured him that he would have a turn soon.  Bill got out the DVD camera and filmed a bit of our activity.  Then he collected Julia and took her upstairs and Alex and I continued.  Once we got the butter worked in, and the mixture "resembled coarse crumbs" it was time to add the shortening.  We worked that in until "it formed cysts" or something like that - I don't remember the wording.  Anyway, Alex and I took turns with that process, and then we added in the ice water - a little at a time - until the dough came together.  I separated it into two balls, wrapped them in plastic and put them in the fridge to chill.

On to the pie filling.  I had two cans of "One Pie" brand pie filling, and I got out all the other ingredients - sugar, cinnamon, salt, ginger, nutmeg, eggs, and milk - and set them out on the counter.  Then I read the directions to see what temperature to set the oven at.  Now.  I've made squash or pumpkin pies for some time now, and the directions seemed wrong.  They said to bake the pie for 20 minutes at 375.  And I could have sworn that I remembered it as starting out the process with an oven temp of 425, and then lowering it to 375.  I read the back of the can again, just in case I had read something wrong - or not at all.  Nope.  Twenty minutes at 375.  Weird.  It just isn't right.  I checked the other can - same deal.  Okay fine, maybe I'm losing my mental faculties.  It's quite possible.

I opened the cans and dumped the contents into my big (washed out) white bowl. 

"Yucky!"  was Alex's reaction.  I told him what it was, but that didn't matter.  He still thought it was yucky.  I told him he'd feel differently once it was transformed into pie.

In a separate bowl he mixed the sugar and salt, and then I showed him how to measure the spices out with a measuring spoon.  He carefully leveled off the contents of each spoonful and dumped them into the sugar and salt.  He whisked them together and we poured them into the bigger bowl with the pureed squash.  Then he and I (taking turns) mashed the sugar and spice mixture into the pumkin squash until they were "combined well" (per the directions.)

And then I taught him how to crack an egg. 

First I showed him how I do it:  I crack the side of the egg on the table, and then gently open the shell and drop the egg into the bowl.  I gave him one to try.  First time out he tapped the egg too lightly and nothing cracked.  A bit more force, and it cracked perfectly.  I told him to go ahead and open it into the bowl - and he basically gripped the egg in the middle with both sets of fingers and then smashed his fingers through the egg and pulled the halves apart.  Yolk and white and shell fell into the bowl, onto the table, and onto the floor.  "But that's okay, right Mommy?"  Right Alex.  Successful egg cracking takes practice. 

Round two.  New bowl, new eggs.  I did one again, and this time I showed him how you only need to push against the cracked part with your thumbs, and then pull them away at an angle to the rest of the egg (this is difficult to describe - I keep wanting to lift my hands off the keyboard and demonstrate) and let the contents drop into the bowl, which is directly below your hands so nothing ends up on the floor.

His turn.  Not bad at all!  Broke the yolk, but who cares?  It's going to get mixed with the rest of the filling anyway.  Want to try again?  Yes!.  This time - perfection!  "The round part didn't break!"  And same with the fourth egg.  Yay!  He did it! 

We added milk and whisked that together, and then added it to everything else already in the bowl.  Then I took out the dough and showed him to roll it out.

Now - I should have let it chill longer, but since I wanted Alex to have the whole experience, I took the dough out too soon.  Ah well.  No harm done.  We rolled out one ball of dough and set that into one pie pan, and did the same with the other ball of dough.  I crimped the edges of one of them, and just left the other plain.  And we had a fair amount of leftover dough too - I always make more than I need because I never seem to have enough when I only make what the recipe calls for.  I know I must be doing something wrong if that's the case, but I haven't figured out what it is, so I just make extra.  Far less stressful that way.

Alex used a ladle to pour the filling mixture into each pie shell, and into the oven they went.  Now - what about the leftover dough?  We actually had leftover pie filling too (one of the pie pans was smaller than the other) so I got out a smaller casserole dish and pressed some dough into that - in a very rustic pattern - some sticking up higher, some lower, all around the edge.  Poured the last of the filling in, and into the oven that went too. 

And there was still some more dough left.  I dug around in my pantry - which, by the way, is indesperate need of reorganizing - and found a little round cake pan - maybe 3 inches in diameter - that I'd inherited from Bill's mom.  Perfect.  I pressed the last scrap of dough into that and showed Alex how to dock the dough.  Docking is just pricking the dough so it won't puff up.  You can buy a little gadget called a docker to do this - or you can use a fork.  Much more fun to use the fork, especially if you're a four-and-almost-a-half-year-old boy.  I popped that into the oven and let it bake for about five minutes while I cleaned up and Alex hung out nearby.  The timer went off - and - what to fill it with?  No more pie filling, and nothing else really ready to use.  So - half peanutbutter and half strawberry jam.  Back into the oven it went.  And finally off to bed went Alex. 

The whole time we were working on the pies I was remembering when I was little and my mother was making pies and I watched and helped and learned.  She'd give me little scraps of dough to make my own creations...inedible though they may have been.  The main thing was, I was allowed to participate.  And it's a nice feeling to carry that into my own little family.   

And you know, I was quite right about the directions on the can being wrong.  Those pies (except the peanutbutter and jam pie) all took a lot longer than 20 minutes - as I knew they would.  I don't really know how long each one took - but I know that with custard pies, you bake until it's just a little jiggly in the center.  I feel bad for someone who hasn't made a pumpkin (or squash) pie before - it will still be soupy if you pull it out that soon, and crust isn't baked properly either. 

Alex had his peanutbutter and jam pie for breakfast while I was at my mom's house.  Half of it anyway.  Bill have the other half to Julia, but she wasn't crazy about it.  She opted for cereal.

And while I was at my mom's house I told her about the directions on the cans...and she went poking around in her mini-pantry/closet - and found an older can - same brand, same contents - AND - the directions were DIFFERENT from the ones on my cans.  HA!  I was right!  Bake at 425 for 20 minutes and THEN reduce to 375 and cook for another 40 minutes or so.  So there!

And that's about it for me.  I'll need to get Julia up from her nap soon - though I don't think she's sleeping - and get the kids dressed and me dressed and Bill can dress himself...and out the door and into the car and over the river and through the woods, so to speak.

It's cold and rainy here today - which doesn't bother me at all - I love this kind of weather.  Perfect day to eat a hearty meal.  And some really good pie.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Tonight

Tonight I'm going to see my sister receive her first degree black belt in karate.  She has been through hell this year, so the road has been a long and rough one, but here she is.  She's a strong, beautiful, tough, funny, kick-ass woman. 

I'm so proud of her I could pop.

No liquids or gels

It's early.  It's 4:36 am eastern standard time as I start this post.  I've been up at least an hour...awake another half hour or so longer than that.  I thought I may as well stay up and do some typing...but now that I'm settled in and have checked in on a couple other blogs, I feel the pull of sleep and my eyes want to close.  I suppose I could just type with my eyes shut...forgive me if I doze off though.  I'll try not to snore.  Or drool on the keypad.

We went to bed early, since we'd have to get up in the wee sma's...and it just figures that the kids somehow sensed when we'd need to get up and chose to start waking us up a good hour before that.  It started with Julia...I could hear her on the monitor:  restless, moving around in her crib, whimpering a bit, trying to get comfortable and go back to sleep.  I debated about just getting up with her, changing her diaper and getting her some milk, just so she wouldn't wake up later...but I didn't want to get out of bed.  So I just lay there, one eye on the clock, chanting "gobacktosleep, gobacktosleep" in my mind.

She did.  And so did I.

And then about a half hour or so later, Alex marched into our room and over to my side of the bed and said "Mommy I don't want to sleep any more I want to get up and go downstairs."  It was about quarter to 3 at that point.  I said no, it's the middle of the night, and let him get in bed with us.  Bill had half woken up and whispered hi to Alex, who fell asleep pretty promptly after that.  But Bill and I were awake.  We both tried to sleep, but we knew the alarm would go off soon anyway.  When it did, I hit snooze a couple of times (our clock is set fifteen minutes ahead of the current time...which is silly, I know, but...well...it is.)  Bill got up midway through the second snooze, awake anyway, so why not just get up and start moving.  While he was in the shower, I brought Alex back to his own bed.

Bill packed last night, so all he had to add to the bag were his toothbrush and hair brush.  He's not even bringing deoderant.  Not that it's a liquid or a gel, but why bother taking the chance.  And they sell deoderant pretty much everywhere nowadays (haha...predawn joke...not good but it's all I've got at the moment) so he can get some later.

We went downstairs, switched the coffee pot on and I cooked breakfast for him.  An egg sandwich with cheese.  It seems to be the breakfast for early mornings when he is going somewhere without me.  Usually it's a fishing trip, today it's a bit longer ride than the trip to Carbunkle pond...

While he sat at the table, yolk dripping from the sandwich onto his plate, Julia woke up.  I knew she would.  At least there was some extra time before we had to leave.  I went upstairs and got her - she was grumpy and wanted to go downstairs, and got pretty angry when I said she couldn't.  She wanted to go lie on the couch with me.  We haven't done that in ages, because I needed to break her (and me) of that habit.  But naturally this morning she was pretty set on it. 

"No, Julia.  You can come lie on my bed for a minute, or go back in your crib."

"Want to go downSTAYERS!!!"  Much wailing and gnashing of teeth...I brought her into our bedroom and stood there holding her while she expressed her displeasure.  She said she wanted to go lie on the couch (!!!) and I said no, we can't, because Calvin is sleeping down there.  This actually made her pause, and even though she continued to be unhappy, she stopped pursuing the couch idea.  She had her Dora the Explorer doll in her hand and flung that to the floor and grunted in anger, and then was pretty quiet after that.  Then, in a different, resigned voice, she said "I go back to my crib."  I asked if she wanted to bring Dora, and she nodded.  I picked Dora up with my foot and carried the two of them back to the kids' room and placed Julia back in her crib...elephant, Dora, and Herky the Pug beside her.  Turned on her music box/light show (fish swimming) on and said I'd see her in the morning.  And I went back downstairs. 

Bill was sitting in the living room with his coffee.  "I made you some, but I put some sugar in it by mistake."  We sat in the near darkness, silent, sipping coffee and just hanging out.  We could hear a few muffled thumping sounds from the room above - Julia was working her way back to sleep. 

"What time did you want to leave?"

He looked at his watch.  "How about we leave at four?"

We sat in the quiet again...sipping coffee from travel mugs.

A minute or so before four we gathered our things.  He had the carry-on suitcase, the travel mug so he could finish his coffee in the car.  And his itinerary print-out so he could get his tickets.  I slid my feet into sandals and got my keys.  We both looked around the kitchen, like there might be something perched on a counter, waving to us - "don't forget me!"  But we had everything.  Julia had settled down...Alex was deep asleep, and my sister's kids were asleep in the basement, on the fold out couch and the air mattress.  If my kids woke up, their cousins could take care of them.  It's handy having a  babysitter-age nephew and niece.

We went outside.  It's wonderfully chilly again this morning.  About fifty degrees according to the window thermometer.  It reminds me of being in college in Maine, years ago, when I had an 8:00 class on the Portland campus and had to catch the shuttle bus at 7:30...it was spring semester, which really begins in the middle of winter.  It was dark at that hour, and quiet, and cold.  Certainly colder than fifty degrees - sometimes my wet hair would freeze while I waited for the bus.  I was stupid back then too, and wore a secondhand black blazer as a winter coat.  It was not lined.  I'd get on the bus and sit down and feel the frozen strands of my long, straight hair push up as I leaned back against the seat.  It was a strange sensation. 

It wasn't quite so cold this morning, of course.  But so quiet.  The car doors seemed so loud, I figured Julia and Alex would both be awake and running around the house by the time I got back.

We don't live far from the airport.  It's good and bad.  I wouldn't have a long ride back home after dropping Bill off...but we got to the departure gates much too fast.

I don't like goodbyes.  Even just "goodbye, have fun visiting your brother, see you soon" goodbyes.  I have such an overactive imagination as it is.  And thwarted exploding airplane terrorist stuff doesn't help.  Even before September 11th, I was not completely nuts about flying.  I have flown, and in some ways I love it, but I sort of have to disconnect the part of my brain that screams "you're way way up high in the air!!!!!!  What if the engines fail?  What if?????" 

But anyway.  We flew to Florida just about a year ago - with both kids.  Julia's need for constant attention kept my mind off any other disasters that might occur.  Kids are good like that - they keep you in the now.  No time for paying attention to anything your brain might be working on.

It was quiet - not a lot of other people being dropped off.  It's a drive-by drop off.  Unless I wanted to pay for parking and hang out for nearly two hours with Bill while he waited for his flight to take off.  And I couldn't leave all the kids in the house that long, even though they'd probably stay asleep the whole time.  Because what if the house caught fire or something. 

So I pulled in near the curb, (kerb?  is that the Brit spelling?) and we said goodbye and I love you and I said have fun and he got his bag out of the back seat and walked away.  He waved once, and I had to leave, because if you linger too long, the airport police will come over and tell you to move.

I drove home.  The whole thing - to and from - had taken fifteen minutes.  I got my coffee and my laptop and went upstairs. 

And there.  I've written it all out.  Just to get it out of my mind, I guess, so I won't dwell on it. 

I wouldn't make a good military wife.  But maybe I'm selling myself short.  I guess you do what you have to do.  And besides, I'll have work and the kids to keep me busy and distracted while he's gone.  I am not a weeping and wailing kind of worrier.  It's more a quiet, high-pitched humming sound in the back of my mind.  It's there, but I work around it.

So Bill is bound for Washington state to visit his brother.  It's 5:19 now.  He probably isn't on the plane yet.  He will call once he gets to his brother's house.  I'll check on the flights occasionally, just to see if everything is running on time.

There is no great big point to this post...just that I hate goodbyes.  But I already said that, didn't I. 

I can't wait to pick him up at the airport next week.  I'll be able to exhale.  And the humming will stop.

Electricity

The plan was that after the kids were in bed I was going to bring my laptop into the (air conditioned) basement and post some recent cute/funny stories about the kids and some recent pictures and listen to the Red Sox game while Bill watched and made sure I didn't miss any good replays.

Bill made dinner - panini on the grill (lesson learned: don't put the bread DIRECTLY over the flames if you're doing it on the grill...all you get is black on one side.)  But after trimming off the burnt part, the sandwiches were delicious - prosciutto and fresh mozzarella and basil-from-our-garden.  He also made vishy-swah...which I know is spelled INCREDIBLY WRONGLY but I don't feel like stopping to look it up.  And he grilled zucchini-from-our-garden as well.  It was a yummy dinner.  Of course, Alex being in the mood he's been in lately, he took one look at cold pale soup and announced sadly that he didn't like any of that food and didn't want dinner.  He eventually dunked a pepper biscuit in the soup and ate that, and then ate some prosciutto (which Bill called "special ham" for Alex's purposes) and that was about it.

I blame the heat for that.  Yesterday was about 8 million degrees outside.  Hottest day so far this summer...ozone alert so the kids didn't play outside at daycare...I was actually glad to be at work because of the air conditioning.  Bill did crazy outdoor things like weed part of the garden...and crazy indoor things like make a chicken stock for the soup. 

So when the sky started darkening a little before dinner, we looked forward to whatever little cold front army was invading.  And during dinner, the fun started.  We sat and enjoyed the approaching flashes of lightening...and the thunder...and the cool breezes...and the RAIN!  And when Alex said that they wouldn't be able to go to the zoo because of the rain, I said it's only raining right now...let's see what happens in the morning. 

And then the power went out. 

Which was fun, initially.  All the better to watch the thunderstorm and lightshow with, my dear.  Julia occasionally pretended to be scared of the thunder, but I don't think she really was.  We finished eating and moved into the living room to watch the sky through the big front window.  I love storms. 

Eventually Julia actually asked to go to bed, so I brought her up to her crib.  The room was getting hot again, since the AC had shut off along with everything else, so I opened the other window in the room and hoped for the best.  It took a while for her to settle down.  I even brought her back downstairs for a little while, just to hang out with the rest of us, but she really wanted to go to sleep. 

Eventually it was Alex's bedtime too...we put him to bed in our room at first, but it was too hot up there by this time (the power had been out about an hour and a half at this point...so we let him go to sleep in the basement on the couch.  I read to him by flashlight for a bit and then went back upstairs and he fell asleep.

I read by flashlight and Bill played electric guitar without the electricity for a good hour at least.  Bill's been practicing Rush tunes...he and my brother-in-law get together on occasion and play a few tunes...Jacques on drums.  Bill had been practicing a solo guitar part for some song before the kids and I got home.  He's been playing a lot of Rush this summer...

Well...the power stayed out.  Bill went to sleep downstairs with Alex - I lifted sleeping Alex up while Bill folded the couch out, and that's where they stayed.  I went upstairs and slept in our bed...in the breeze-less heat of our room, so I could hear Julia if she woke up.  Which she did, several times throughout the night of stifling hotness and humidity.

I checked the time on my cell phone after each waking episode...we went to bed at about ten thirty...Julia woke me up at about midnight...about two thirty...about four...

And I dozed uncomfortably in between wakings.

And then a loud, long BEEEEEEP woke me up and immediately everything started coming back on - my alarm clock started blinking 12:00...the beep was the digital display on the stove coming back on...the fridge came on, probably the AC in the basement came on...

And then...loudly...at precisely five in the morning...out of the relative silence...(forgive me if I can't type it perfectly but I don't know how to type sound...)

Pseeeeeeoooooooooowwwwwwwwwww....(and some drum stuff here).....

A modern day warrior
Mean mean stride
Today's Tom Sawyer
Mean mean pride

(da-dom-pa-daaaaaaaaaaaaah, da-dom-pa-daaaaaaaaaaaaaaa)

Though his mind is not for rent
Don't put him down as arrogant
His reserve, a quiet defense
Riding out the days events.
The river...

I leap  out of bed and, laughing at the beautiful absurdity of it all, run downstairs and meet Bill coming up from the basement, a grin and a little look of sleepy confusion on his face. 

I shut the stereo off so the kids would stay asleep a bit longer, and opened some windows, and figured this was something to type about this morning.

And now I can hear Julia banging her tin cup on the bars of her crib, so it's time for me to go.

High Fives and Shouts of Encouragement

I've got a picture of Julia on my computer desktop at work.  Sometimes I have a picture of Alex.  Or sometimes both of them.  I change it every week or so.

But right now it's Julia.  It's the picture of her from my previous post - she's in her diaper, outside, with the ice cream in one hand...pointing somewhere past the whale pool with her other hand.  My favorite part of the picture, besides her beautifully chunky legs - is the look on her face.  Just look at that face.  She is a ball-buster.  She is an instigator.  I don't remember what that look may have been about...she was probably watching Alex do something wild and crazy.  It doesn't matter.  I just love the look.

She is a handful.  She will continue to be a handful, I know.  I can tell.  She is fully aware of herself as an individual, and she knows what she wants and how things should go.  She is sometimes bossy.  She orders Alex around and it freaks my husband out because Alex obeys.

She drives him crazy.  "Him" being Alex.  She also drives Bill crazy, but from a slightly different angle.  She is her brother's best playmate one minute, and his torturer the next.  One minute they are overcome with laughter - heavy, helpless belly laughs that make me stop whatever I'm doing just to listen and appreciate the beauty of that sound and how lucky we are to have these two healthy kids.  And the next minute they are both screaming - demonstrating enormous breath control as they fight over a toy.  The other night it was a stegosaurus.  It's technically Alex's, but he's got around 35 assorted dinosaurs, so in theory he should be able to share ONE.  But no.  Not at that moment.  Because he is four.  They scream with instant toddler rage - high pitched screams that summon all dogs in a 20 mile radius to our house.

They sing together in the car...Beatles tunes at the moment...Alex knows a lot of the words to the 7-10 songs they listen to each day to and from daycare...Julia chimes in usually with the last word of a line.  They each have favorites and songs they don't like.  Sometimes we skip around on the CD and I'll accept requests.  Other times I threaten to turn the music off if they don't stop yelling. 

"Wanna hear 'Ticket-a-Wide!' "
"Mommy I don't want to hear that, I want to hear 'It's Got to Be a Hard Day's Night!' "

They point out things they see on one side of the car or the other..."Alex!  Wookit!  Dirt Truck!  See?  Alex see?  Wookit a DIRT TRUCK!!!!"  And they - especially Alex - seem to consider it a win if the interesting thing is on THEIR side of the car.  "Mommy, the geese are on MY side of the car, not Julia's!" - like they had anything to do with where the geese chose to land....

Julia copies Alex sometimes.  She'll repeat things he says...and follow him around and try to do what he does...which is fun for him sometimes, and incredibly annoying other times.  But then there are times he will want her to play with him, and she won't want to...and he gets upset because she wants to do her own thing once in a while - without him.  Or he'll be very put out because she won't share a toy with him, even though ten minutes ago he hoarded all his zoo animals and wouldn't let her hold even one.

Siblings.

They are vastly different from each other, and yet they spring from the same family, and so they are linked together in a way they will never be linked with anyone else in their lives.  It is a for better or for worse thing - without their having had any say in it.  They did not choose each other as brother and sister...it was the luck of the draw.  Our luck and theirs.  They will go through this over and over I'm sure.  This love/hate...this "play with me"/"go away" dance.  I hope, once they get past all the tough growing up stuff, that they will go through the rest of their lives happy that they have each other.

I know I do.  My sister is two years younger than I am.  Just like Julia is two years younger than Alex.  Different dynamics, of course...different families, different zodiac signs, different gender combinations...different practically everything.

But still.  I watch them together, Alex and Julia, playing and squabbling and hugging and pulling hair.  And I am happy for them. 

I think back about Meredith and me as kids.  We played together...and didn't play together.  Sometimes I wanted to read...and Mere would want me to come outside and play...and I would tell her "As soon as I finish this chapter..." and I'd finish that chapter and go on to read the next.  I look back on that and think how horrible I was, because I now watch Julia when she wants Alex to play with her and I feel so terrible for her when he doesn't want to.  I won't force him to play with her, because if he wants to play by himself, he's entitled...but still...I'm looking at things differently now.  I can see both sides instead of just mine.

We had our share of squabbles as kids.  But for whatever reason, we really didn't rat each other out about stuff.  We closed ranks.  I remember us fighting or yelling about something in our bedroom and the door would burst open and one parent or the other would be there, demanding to know what the fight was all about...and we would clam up.  "Nothing!"

At some point during our childhood my mother told us that if we ever became like Grandpa (our Dad's father) and Aunt Anna (one of Grandpa's sisters) she'd come back to haunt us.  Grandpa and his sister didn't speak for twenty years and one or the other of them died before that fence could be mended.  My mother is an only child...and didn't ever have to share her toys UNWILLINGLY with anyone...so she didn't necessarily understand that bickering is normal.  You have to have heated arguments in order to learn how to have polite disagreements, I think.  But I think my mother feared that we would go to that same extreme that Grandpa and Anna, and so she didn't want us fighting at all...sort of trying to head things off at the pass....

We are different in a lot of ways, my sister and me.  But we are similar too.  We have the same sense of humor - heartless and inappropriate though it may be at times.  We can crack eath other up about the dumbest things...and we laugh - heavy, helpless belly laughs....

One day shortly after Julia turned two, we three were coming down the stairs.  Alex, then Julia, then me.  Alex got to the bottom of the stairs and then, instead of dashing off, he turned to watch Julia make her way down.  She had been going up and down stairs successfully for several months, but Alex seemed to become aware of it that morning.  He stood at the bottom of the stairs and exclaimed "Mommy!  Julia's going down the stairs ALL BY HERSELF!  Because she's TWO!"  He watched his baby sister with a look of wonder and pride on his big brother face...and encouraged her "Come on Julia!  You can do it!"  And as she neared the bottom, Julia called out to Alex "Here she comes!" and made her way down the last three steps.  When she got to the floor Alex shouted "She did it!  Julia you did it!  Good job, Julia!  High five!"  And the two of them slapped their little hands together...huge smiles on their faces.

I hope they are always like that.  HIgh fives and shouts of encouragement to each other.

My sister has been doing karate for several years now and has recently been accepted into the black belt testing cycle.  If all goes well, she will get her black belt this fall.  I am already so proud of her that my chest feels like it will explode sometimes.  (I am, clearly, the geeky, goofy, melodramatic one.)  I am so excited for her and about what she is doing...and I admire the fact that she does what she does without fanfare.  She just does it.  I talk things to death...and I don't follow through at times because maybe I spoke too soon...but she knows herself.  She does not over talk things.  She just does them.  I admire that.  I admire that she started doing karate as an adult.  I don't think I have the guts to do that.  I know I don't.  But I am so enormously thrilled that she does.

High fives and shouts of encouragement.

Her kids are around ten years older than mine.  So she has been through all of the things I am going through now.  We both have a boy and a girl.  The boys are the first borns.  The girls were/are the hellions.  I tell her what my kids have done, and she remembers hers doing that too...or I tell her I feel like a big LOSER because I can't get myself to exercise on any kind of regular basis, and she tells me she couldn't either when her kids were that age...and that at this stage of the game, you do what you can do, and don't beat yourself up about the rest of it.

High fives and shouts of encouragement.

We talk practically every day, in some form or other.  Emails back and forth while we're at work...a phone call or two over the weekend, or a visit.

We can speak in shorthand.  "Kidney beans" - just one of us sasying that to the other is hysterically funny but only to us and it's too long to go into and probably wouldn't be AS funny to anyone else, so never mind.  But you probably know what I mean.  You maybe do that with your own siblings, if you have any.  Or with your oldest friend...spouse...someone.  I hope you do, anyway.

Just now the kids were downstairs fighting about something...Julia did something to Alex but he probably did something to her first...who knows.  I separated them and told them if I hear anything more, I'd shut off "Shrek."  It was quiet for a moment, but then it started up again.  Bill just shut off "Shrek" and Alex is sobbing loudly.

But it will turn around.  It always does.  In a little while they will be playing together and laughing.  Heavy, helpless belly laughs.

Okay, maybe not immediately...but I can hear Julia trying to get Alex to stop crying.  She can be very sweet and caring at times...when she's not pinching or hitting or throwing his toys into the next room. 

*  Note...I just finished re-reading this post because I knew I'd spelled a few things wrong...and at this moment there are no more tears or screaming.  They are in the living room with my husband, building towers with Legos...and knocking them down. 

And laughing.

Spring Night

It is 7:40 pm as I begin to type this.  Julia is in bed, but not asleep yet - I can hear her rolling around in her crib and occasionally talking to one of the many stuffed animal friends in there with her.

Alex is on his way in from outside.  He and my husband were searching through dirt and the woodpile for food for our little lizard.  First they found a centipede, which scooted underneath the dirt and stone in the tank.  Where the lizard couldn't go.  So back outside they went to try again...my tall husband and my tall little boy.  Next catch - a grub.  Bill thought it was dead because it just lay there, curled up in grub-fetal position.  I said I saw it move.  But Bill has doubt, so back out again...Alex stopping to take a piece of candy from the pile on the kitchen floor of Easter Bunny Candy-Fest treasure from Sunday.  Alex tromping through the kitchen in a short-sleeved shirt, red sweatpants, and his snow boots.  Third catch - an earthworm.  I don't know what the earthworm is doing, but apparently the grub is still alive.  Both my men are nose to the tank, watching and waiting for the lizard to make his selection.

Alex just said "Daddy, do you want to check it out?"  He is nearly four...testing phrases he has heard but hasn't yet made his own.

"HE GOT ONE!" 

"OOh, he got the grub!  Oh, he's sucking it down!  Buddy!  He liked that one!"

"Yeah, he liked the grub!...Daddy...now the grub's all gone...MOMMY!  THE LIZARD JUST GOT THE UM...THE LIZARD JUST GOT THE GRUB FIRST!     AND NOW THE GRUB'S GONE!"

Wide, wide eyes.  He doesn't want to go to bed, though Bill has introduced the idea...Alex wants to see the lizard eat the worm....And now Bill...my kind and humane husband despite his attempts to make people think otherwise...is now bringing the worm back outside where he (the worm) can nestle down in the damp earth and live another day.

And now the men are sitting on the floor in the kitchen again, eating one last piece of candy. 

I can't explain how much this fills me with happiness, but as my son would say, it does - a lot a lot a lot a LOT.

The Way it Shoulda Gone Down

It was night.  Quiet, save for the usual night sounds:  the hum of the furnace, a tree branch tapping gently on the bathroom window, snoring at assorted decibel levels coming from each of the three bedrooms.

She was asleep.  Her husband and children were asleep.  This should have continued uninterrupted for another five or six hours.  It should have.  But it didn't.

Something woke her up.  She wasn't sure what she heard, but she knew she'd heard something.  Probably the cat, she thought, rolling over on her side and pulling the blankets back up over her shoulders.  She listened for a minute, but didn't hear anything more, so she tried to settle back into sleep.

There it was again.

What was it?  Not the cat, she decided.  The cat would have mewed anyway, she wouldn't have needed to do anything else, persistent - and loud - little creature that she was.  And the other cat was asleep on one of the kids' beds.  He liked his sleep and, like the rest of the family, preferred to do his sleeping at night.  He was a day cat.

So what was making that noise?

She listened again, trying to decide if it was worth leaving her warm flannel sheets to investigate.  Her feet were toasty warm, and the hardwood floors would be cold, so it would have to be something really, really -

- and there it was again.

Still hard to describe, even in her own mind and without words, the sound, whatever it was, came again.  She could tell - she didn't know how - that it was in the living room.  But she didn't think it had started there.  Maybe it was the cat.  Tulip.  Small in size but full of attitude.  She'd been spayed recently...maybe she was plotting revenge for the post-operative pain...

With a sigh, Meredith started to swing her legs out of bed.  She looked briefly at her husband, but knew it would take a good hour to wake him up.  So she would just get up and go have a look.

And then she heard a different sound.  Very faint.  And human.  Someone coughed.  Quietly.  Like they didn't want to cough but couldn't stop it from happening.  And it was definitely downstairs.  Not one of the kids.  Their rooms were on either side of her own - and she knew what their coughing would sound like anyway.

So who was coughing in her living room?

Without another thought, she slithered from under the blankets and touched the floor with her toes ever so gently.  One inch of skin at a time, she gradually put her weight onto the balls of her feet and crept to the door. 

She had lived in this house a long time now, and knew exactly which floorboards creaked and which ones didn't.  She would be careful.

Softly, slowly, she turned the doorknob and opened the door, just enough to peek through.  Nothing.  The hallway was dark, lit only by the yellowy pink glow of a night light plugged into the outlet near the floor to her left.

She crept softly from the room, on the balls of her feet, barely touching the floor as she crossed to the stairs.

She paused to listen.  She could hear something...she just wasn't sure what it was.  It sounded almost like something scraping along the floor. 

She breathed deeply, trying to slow her racing heart.  She stood at the top of the stairs, focusing on her breathing, on her pulse, on the adrenaline surging through every cell in her body.

She crouched in the darkness and placed her right foot on the first step.  Silence.  She slowly poured her weight onto that foot and set her left foot down on the step below.  Down the stairs she went like this, noiselessly, almost weightlessly, as she tried to float.

She was nearly at the bottom now, and she peered through the darkness toward the living room.  Someone was in there.  She could see a dark shape crouching near the television set at the far end of the room.  What was he - she? - doing? 

She took another cautious step down, still watching, more curious now than anything.  What was of such interest over there?  DVDs?  Her son's video games?  What?

She had nearly reached the landing.  Three more steps and she would be in the hall.  A stone's throw from whatever was going on in the living room. She stepped down.

And the old wood on the landing shrieked in protest.

She froze.  The dark figure spun around.  Another figure appeared to the right, and then another to the left.  Three of them! 

Without any further thought she leapt from the landing and was airborne.

Years - well, a few years - of martial arts training and multiple viewings of the Matrix movies took over and she was suddenly spinning through the air - a human bullet - she exploded into the living room and sent the first one flying backwards across the room.  He crashed into the wall and slid to the floor.

She felt the other two - one on either side - lunge for her.  She jumped toward the ceiling and heard the CRACK as one skull made contact with the other.  The two slumped to the floor and lay there, moaning.  As she landed, she saw the first one coming at her again.  With a loud animal cry, she dove onto the floor, rolled, and came up spinning like a propellor.  Her feet made contact - first the right foot, then the left - she felt the crunch of bones and heard a shriek of pain.  Something had broken.  Probably his nose.  He dropped to the floor and lay there, unmoving.

She landed and felt an excruciating jolt from the middle toe on her right foot all the way up to her hip. 

But she ignored it for now, and went to get the phone.  She would need someone to come out and clear away the debris from her living room.  She was annoyed.  She had vacuumed and mopped the floors that afternoon, and now she'd have to do it again.

She hated housework.

~~~~~~~~

But that's now how it really happened.

Strip Tease

Julia has learned how to remove her diaper.

Last night I had changed her diaper and hadn't put her pajamas on yet because at that moment the dryer stopped running so I went over to that part of the basement (on the other side of the child safety gate) to fold the laundry.

While I was over there, Julia, after playing with the little tabs for a few minutes, ripped off her diaper and proceeded to race around the room, grinning triumphantly.

Bill caught her (no daughter of mine is going to run around shamelessly like that!) and re-diapered her and headed back to the TV part of the basement.  I was watching in between folding the shirts and pants and matching the socks.  And I saw Julia, after Bill dusted off his hands in triumph and left her standing there, modestly covered up again.  And she had a look in her eye as she sauntered off to where the toys are.  A look, I tell you.  One that does not bode well for us when she hits her teens.  Or before that, at this rate.

And the next second - there she was - racing out of her hiding spot near the Home Depot Work Bench - diaper in hand. 

And I confess:  I turned away, laughing to myself, to wait for Bill to see her.

"Oh Julia!!"  He corralled her and got the diaper away from her - at this point she was having a grand old time - what a fun game!  He told her to come over and get her diaper back on, but instead she sat down, a little out of his reach, legs TOO WIDE APART, and she just grinned.  Proudly.

But he won that round.  Got her in her diaper AND into her one-piece blanket sleeper.  But this will be a short-lived victory for him...she already unzips her own coat...this new zipper won't take long to conquer at all.