Testing My Ability to Ruin Anything

We are T minus 20 days to the Iowa State Fair.  This is important and glorious news for those of us who feel this way about corn dogs:

And when your whole family feels this way about corn on the cob:

Why, yes, that is Caedmon at the Iowa State Fair, five years ago, not quite one year old.  Be still, my corn- and baby-loving heart.


I entered a number of items in our sad, local county fair a couple years after moving to Iowa, and while I won first place in open class for my cookies and placed in a few other categories, as it turned out, they don't give out ribbons here, but instead stickers that merely look like ribbons.  See?  Sad.

So this year, I began looking into entering items into the state fair- the huge, gigantic, competitive Iowa State Fair.  The one that has more than 65,000 entries per year, according to the fair's website.

That information kind of scared me away- I mean, I know I make a decent cookie, but against 65,000 other people who also believe in their cookie-making abilities?  Yeesh.

I then, however, made the mistake of calling my grandma, who was all "Wonderful!  Yes!  You should do it!"  And then an envelope arrived in the mail from her a scant two days later containing entry money for Adelaide, so that she, too, could take part in the madness.

So we've been practicing.  I even went out and bought a cookie scoop, so you know I mean business.

Really, though, I have zero expectations for this whole fair-entry-competition experience.  We're in it to try something new, and to stretch ourselves a bit, plus it's a handy excuse to spend more time at the fair.  I am determined not to let myself freak out about any of it, and to treat it as an excuse to have fun, and be adventuresome!  Sooooo basically suppress my whole personality.

What could go wrong?

Going Wrong, Going Right

It's been a rough couple weeks around our house, as Derek and I have been sick.  While I won't subject you to the pitiful details of our recent collective existence, I will say it was a never-have-I-identified-with-roadkill-so-strongly-type illness.  We were flattened, and it was ugly.

Naturally, this all coincided with any number of activities in which our family was expected to be present, and while we did all we could to stay in our hole and keep from breathing on innocent bystanders, sometimes it just couldn't be helped.  This led to fun interactions such as the one where my pregnant friend approached me for a hug and I was like, "DON'T!  Don't touch me!  Don't even come close- you do not want this!"

Still, life goes on, even when one is staring at the ceiling and asking oneself, "Which do I feel more like:  A human carcass or a flesh sock?"  I found evidence of this ongoing life when I stumbled outside only to find my tulips were blooming!

Adelaide also had a couple music things, including her piano recital.  She performed beautifully.

Atticus had his first soccer practice of the spring.  Other, better, healthier parents stood outside and watched their progeny; I grabbed mine before he could jump out of the vehicle and said, "Listen, I am not leaving this van.  If you need me for some reason- like if you get hurt or anything- you will just have to crawl over here and get in, because I am not getting out.  I will push the button to open the door if I happen to see you approaching, but that's as good as it's going to get tonight."

In my defense, it was in the forties and very windy, and hello, I was sick.  Side note:  I don't want to sound judgmental or anything, but if you're not using a photo of your grandma as a bookmark, you may or may not be doing life wrong.  And if the previous anecdote makes you think that I probably shouldn't be judging anyone, well, you're right, but I stand by the bookmark thing.

I also felt well enough one day to pay my yearly blood debt to the rabbit fence surrounding my vegetable patch.

Two pertinent pieces of information related to this photo:  My tiny, feeble strawberry plants have now been weeded, and I will never be a hurdler.

To sum up the past sickly, illness-ridden few months we've had:

At least something's going right for us; I mean, you did see those tulips up there, right?  Oh, and the daughter.  Yes, the daughter is what's going right.  She's suddenly not allowed to read this post.

Quiet Catching Up

It's been over a week since I last posted, and as such, I have so many things to tell you about I'm completely overwhelmed.  I'm hoping to dedicate a bit of time each day in the coming weeks to sharing all the things you've missed (snow storms!  amazing books!  poop pillows!), but for today, it's just going to be both whatever floats to the top of my consciousness and I manage to get typed before all these children of ours stop doing whatever it is that's keeping them quiet at the moment.  I'm afraid to check on them for fear of what I'll find.

I do know what the youngest is up to:

Ten minutes ago I found him in our bed, asleep.  I'm not sure why he felt it necessary to unmake a bed that isn't even his, but then, the mind of five-year-old boys can be difficult to understand.  Knowing Caedmon, he has a detailed rationale he'll explain to me later, hopefully after a nice, long nap.  

We're all a little tired today, after the assorted merry-making that accompanies Christmas and Derek's birthday yesterday (Happy Birthday, Husband!), and a visit from my mom and Mark.  Among other things, Mom addressed the items on my list mentally titled Things I Need Mom's Help With.  She looked at the zipper on Atticus's coat that stopped working two weeks after we bought it a couple months ago, and voila!  Presto, needle-nosed-pliers-oh, it is fixed!

Aside from a now-working zipper, please note my solution to the problem:  Hand-sewing thick velcro patches on the coat (the velcro's other side is on the inner lining of the coat on the opposite zipper-side, if that makes any sense) so that our son could close his coat throughout the winter if the zipper proved to be unfixable.  Now it's just a fabulous fashion statement, like those tiny pockets you sometimes see on the upper arms of women's shirts, which I can only think must hearken back to when men rolled packets of cigarettes in their shirt sleeves?

Mom also took a look at my right hand and wrist, which has been bothering me for a couple weeks now, generally when I put any weight on it or use it to lift anything even slightly heavy.  She messed with it a bit, spoke some of her nurse-hoodoo over it, listened when I showed her that, "See, it isn't swollen at all," before showing me that it actually was swollen, just in a different spot, and suggested the possibility of a small stress fracture.  Being somewhat, um, accident-prone herself (hey, sisters, remember when Mom cut herself with a chainsaw?  Or maybe it was the tree limb that hurt her so badly.  Either way, a chainsaw was definitely involved), she understood when I couldn't recall any particular incident that might have caused this.  She did suggest compression immobility...or something... and to avoid yoga for a while, so I called her a mean, mean lady.  (Kidding.  I wasn't going to anger the woman who had within minutes just fixed a zipper that had been galling me for weeks.)

I have been following nurse's orders, avoiding yoga and wrapping my hand before I spend hours outside shoveling snow, because she said nothing about not shoveling with this hand.  It's possible she expected me to be smart enough to work this out for myself, in which case the joke's on her!  I am most certainly not that smart!  Hahahaha...ha.  My hand hurts.

In other fun news, our dishwasher has been gracing us with offerings of screws in the bottom of its basin, which I now find with disturbing frequency upon opening the door after running a load.  I can only think it has something wonderful planned for us.

Now I have not one but three children awake and clamoring for a mother who apparently does things, like fixing an already worthless pencil sharpener and reading endless Berenstain Bears books.  I hope you're all enjoying a lovely recovery time after Christmas, or at the very least you have a good book to read.  

Flat Stanley, King Tut, and my Mother

Yesterday, for approximately the 500th time, Adelaide did this adorable thing where she says, "Oh, I almost forgot!" then went hunting through different backpack pockets and coat and jacket pockets until she finally unearthed a crumpled piece of paper.  Last week the paper was her latest standardized test results that she had previously thought lost until she remembered that "Oh, yeah!  I forgot I put it in the toe of my shoe so that I wouldn't lose it!"  And sure enough, there it was:  Folded into the smallest possible size and stuffed into the toe of a shoe in her backpack.  Because... folders are for losers?  She's the Anti-Franklin Covey?  Please do not ask me to explain this, because I can't, despite the fact that she gets this penchant for, ahem, non-traditional organizational methods from yours truly.  You should see the top of my dresser.  It causes deep despair in the heart of my husband.

Last night's unearthed document was a letter from Adelaide's teachers to parents.  In it, there was a request for the name and address of whichever family member you most want to exact revenge upon, because the person you volunteer was about to get a homework assignment from some random teacher in Iowa.  (Note:  Not the exact wording used in the letter.  I'm translating its message into the Language of Truth.)

Had I seen this paper anywhere close to the time it was first sent home, I would have been able to ask various family members if they pretty pretty please wouldn't mind receiving a "flat child" (don't ask) in the mail from our daughter, then carting this thing around different places in their area, taking pictures with it, and sending the pictures and a letter describing the "flat child's" vacation back to us.  (See?  HOMEWORK.)  Because I only saw this last night and the name and address of an out-of-state family member was due TODAY, I wasn't able to call around and grovel and beg; instead I did what you do when you don't know what to do:  I scribbled down my mom's name and address.

I probably should have felt a little more guilty about this, but instead laughed and burbled with relief:  I didn't have to do anything, wheeeee!  Please keep in mind it is March which means I am SO DONE with school projects and forcing myself to care about our children's education, something I will have to hide during this week's Parent Teacher Conferences.  Also remember Adelaide came home two days ago and announced she had to pick a pre-1950 historical figure to research and create a costume for, and her choice, from which she would not be moved, was Tutankhamun.  My grand plans for her metamorphosis into King Tut so far involve copious amounts of black eyeliner and that is all, because they did not cover ancient Egyptian royalty in either the Psychology or in the Spanish I studied in college.  Could I interest her in Carl Jung?  Perhaps Quetzalcoatl?

Step One:  Spray paint her face gold.  Step Two:  Pierce and insert guages into her ears.  Step Three:  This is an impossible costume.

I soothed my twinging conscience over volunteering my mother for this project by telling myself that it's good for my mom to have periodic reminders as to why this stage in her life- that of kids out of the house, grandkids coming for visits- is so wonderful; not that she seems to need reminding- she frequently tells my sisters and me that this time in her life is SO GREAT, grandchildren are so much easier than actual children!  I would feel resentful of this, but you see, I was there for my childhood and adolescence, and I think Kelli and Steph would agree that Mom has earned these years.  (Hey, Kelli, remember that time we went down to the old highway and I taught you how to play "Chicken" with passing cars and, to break up the tedium of risking our lives in front of motorized vehicles, I coaxed you into tight-fitting drainage tunnels?  Remember how a neighbor ratted on us and told Mom, whose face turned a color I can only describe as "puce"?  Good times.)

Really, though, Adelaide and her class are lucky- God only knows what kind of photos my mom will send back!  They could be of local landmarks, like... um... the statue of a sad angel outside of mom's school?  Or they could just as likely be of whatever injuries have come into her office that day; Mom seems to forget that not everyone appreciates a good infected open sore as much as she does.  It's like Russian Roulette:  The Pus Edition.  You are welcome, Iowa schools.

The Snow Day Box

One week ago, the older kids had a snow day.  Cold day.  Whatever.

What this meant was that as soon as breakfast was over our children started obsessing about the Snow Day Box.


The Snow Day Box was an item my mother brought on her last visit along with the admonition to her grandchildren that it was only to be opened on a snow day.  This gave an otherwise ordinary brown cardboard box instant mystique, a magical luster that was reflected in our children's eyes as they asked increasingly fevered questions like "When are we going to open the Snow Day Box?" and  "Where have you been hiding the Snow Day Box?" and "YOU DIDN'T LOSE IT, DID YOU?"

I hadn't lost it, but I also wasn't going to open this box until each child had completed their list of chores on that snow day, a proclamation which was met with astonished dismay, as though they didn't have chores every single other day of their lives.  I never worry about our progeny being mentally slow so much as when I hand them the full compost bowl or gesture to a dishwasher full of clean dishes and their reaction is one of hurt and surprise.  "Hang on, you want me to take out the trash?"  WHO COULD HAVE SEEN THIS COMING?

Thankfully, the Snow Day Box spurred them toward quick chore completion, with very little motherly harassment needed on my part.

Then the speculation began.

The boys guessed that the box contained train parts, because playing trains with Grandma is always such an education.

"Oh, no, the bridge collapsed!  KDOT says that'll be 3.2 million dollars."

"Unfortunately Sam Brownback will never pay to have that bridge fixed.  We'll have to find another way around."

"Now, Atticus, it's very nice that you want to send the hurt cow to the hospital, but what you should have done is send him to the butcher so we could all have a nice steak." *

*Actual statements I heard my mom say while playing with our sons.

Anyway, with a grandma who plays like that, nobody really knew what to expect from the Snow Day Box.

They still weren't sure once it was opened:  Empty band-aid and cocoa powder boxes, pens, play money?

I had to explain to them that they had the makings of their very own store.

Ten minutes later Atticus was charging fifty bucks for a box of cupcake mix and trying to up-sell pads of post-its.  Our middle child appears to have the heart of a capitalist.

All three played quietly, more or less by themselves, for 45 full minutes, before Adelaide tired of the boys asking for ten bucks for a box of oatmeal but giving 100 dollars in change.  The boys were less worried about pesky little things like dollar amounts and more interested in handing the green pieces of paper back and forth as often as possible.  

At the retailers' request, I took a few turns as The Customer.  I bought a box of latex-free band-aids for $20 and a box of BZK towelettes for $1.  (This sounds like a spin on one of those jokes: "If you send your grandchildren empty boxes of Benzalkonium Chloride Antiseptic towelettes and surgical masks- you might be a school nurse.")

I received excellent service on each of my visits, although I've never been to a store where the employees hid behind the counter stage-whispering, "Ring the bell!  RING IT!" then popping up like smiling jack-in-the-boxes at the sound of the merry ding!  I bet their secret shopper scores are awesome.

I packed the box and its contents away at the end of the day, to be pulled out the next time they have an unexpected day off from school.  I've never heard so many prayers for mass amounts of snow before.

For Derek's Birthday I Didn't Buy a Useless Antique

Yesterday was Derek's birthday.  The Vikings were gracious enough to grant him a birthday win, I made him a giant birthday cookie, and my mom and Mark, since they were in town, offered to watch the kids while the birthday boy and I went on a date.

We enjoyed a nice dinner out and Derek tortured himself at a golf store, but in between those two we went to the Brass Armadillo, antique mall extraordinaire.  (If you click on that link back there, brace yourselves:  There are painful spelling and grammatical errors galore on their website.  Hear me now, friends:  "Isles" DOES NOT equal "Aisles."  When they write "Stroll through isles of..." I, naturally, picture hopping from island to island of antiques and quirky vintage treasures, not, as I can only assume they mean, walking through aisles of the same.)

The thing is, I love the Brass Armadillo.  It's where I adopted Hermione.  I almost always find super creepy dolls and marionettes to snap pictures of and send to my traumatized sisters.  I found a beautifully illustrated old hardcover copy of one of my favorite books there for two dollars.  (Just like this one, actually.)  When I visit that place, I like to take my time, examining any items that catch my eye (read:  half the things there, taking upwards of two hours.  I recognize that this is crazy.).

But when Derek and I went yesterday, he had a stern talk with me before entering, reminding me that we were on a mission, that we were looking for a specific item, that I needed to focus.  I did spectacularly well the first three steps in the door, until I saw a Christmas tree full of truly tacky old ornaments.  I faltered for a few seconds before muttering "Get behind me, Satan!"  (I couldn't tell if the lady manning the welcome station by the front door heard me or not; interpreting her facial expression was rather difficult due to the bold decision to paint her eyebrows on her forehead.)

Thereafter I was a model shopper, whipping up and down aisles in search of a coat tree, pausing only once in a moment of weakness caused by an antique bed warmer.  This is precisely the kind of thing that calls out to me at antique stores, begging to be taken to its forever home.  I knew Derek would ask ridiculous questions like, "What exactly are you going to do with it?  Where are you going to put it?"  Because "Smile at it," pretty much never satisfies him, I tried to frame some kind of persuasive response.  I mentally appealed to his logical side:  "Use it for its original purpose!"  Unfortunately we don't have a ready supply of coal and I had a sneaking suspicion that Derek would veto potentially burning our children alive, anyway.

Still in search of a loving home.

So it was with great sadness that I moved past the bed warmer, sending out psychological messages of "It's not you but it's also not me, it's my husband," which is probably a common refrain in there; rational spouses ruin all the fun but also save lives.

Thankfully I had this fun little trinket to console me when I got home:

My mom ferried this up to me from my grandma.  If you don't have a grandma who buys you random old stuff at auctions, I feel sorry for you.

It's a small tin grease pot that's a little dusty on the outside but immaculate inside.  It makes me wonder if it was ever used, given its purpose.

Actually, what is its purpose?

There's a removable strainer that sits just under the lid, then another at the inner entrance to the spout.  I'm assuming you pour the grease from your bacon or beef or whatever into the top, through the first sieve, then it gets strained a second time when you go to pour that same grease... where?  All over your food?  (retch)  I don't really understand the need to strain and then pour grease onto anything.  I pour our excess grease straight from the pan into an empty can and keep it in the freezer until it's full and ready to toss.  

Still, I like the look of it, and every time I walk by it I find myself singing "Grease is the word, have you heard, it's the word..."  Plus I just found the exact same thing on an ebay auction; it sold for $26 + $10 shipping, and I can promise you my grandma didn't pay that much.

I've also been throwing lots of smiles in its direction, although I've yet to find a good place for it.  I've had it in the kitchen windowsill, but that's a dangerous location as it's right in Derek's line of sight.  It'll probably end up where everything else does: on one of the piles of books scattered throughout the house.  Hey, it's smaller than a bed warmer, right?

Back to the Future, Food Edition

I spent a solid hour Monday after school doing panicked winter yard prep.  The afternoon high was 60 degrees, but I could feel the temperature rapidly dropping and the wind picking up as I planted front porch mums, dumped potting soil into divots in the flower beds, turned the compost heap, and stacked terracotta in the shed.  These are all things I've been meaning to do for weeks now, preferably at a leisurely pace, enjoying the last of the year's pleasant temperatures, not running in actual circles around my front yard with a rotting jack o'lantern under my arm because I can't decide which chore is the most urgent and thus must be done first or my life will just be over, do you hear me, over, but nothing motivates like the promise of a 40-degree drop in temperature from one day to the next.

Sometimes I attach too much importance to the mundane.  But you already knew that.

I got the most pressing of the outdoor needs squared away, and retreated indoors.  Yesterday morning we woke up to snow.  Just a dusting, but still- snow.  In November.  BLAAARGH.

The one good thing about cold temps- aside from drawing in those deep breaths of cold air, I love that, but not the kind of cold that makes your lungs feel like they're turning into brittle shards of ice and makes your throat wonder just what it ever did to you to deserve this treatment- aside from all that, the good thing is, of course, baking.  Temperatures plummet and my oven beckons.  But not in a creepy, come-hither way, you understand, more of a slide-some-apple-pie-into-me-baby way, which gracious sakes, is still creepy.  I don't understand what I've done to this post or how I've managed to violate my own oven.  I'm beginning to think I shouldn't be allowed to write after 11 p.m.

Right.  Baking when it's cold out.  Let's focus.

All this cold weather is rather fortuitous, as while we were in Kansas over the weekend celebrating a wedding and eating an early Thanksgiving meal and fighting over whose turn it is to hold the babies, my mom also passed on a recipe book my grandma picked up at an auction recently.

About 3/4 of its contents are dessert recipes and include titles such as Inspiration Cake (above), Peach Luscious, Plain Cake, Sugar-Saving Icing (to get you through all that pesky sugar rationing), and Saucepan Cookies.  It contains instructions like "bake in a slow oven" and enough shortening to choke a whale.  

My first thought had been to slowly bake my way through the dessert portion, but even I can't stomach the thought of feeding my family that much shortening- do any of you know if butter can be equally substituted?  Only one recipe cites its source- McCall's, May 1950- but the few savory recipes only serve to reinforce my opinion of mid-century American cuisine (ooooh, the salad molds):  Deviled Frankfurter Filling, Salmon Loaf, Cottage Cheese Salad (it involves cooked prunes and mayonnaise.  You don't want to know.  Save yourselves.) and Dressing Mold for Left-Over Fowl ("When preparing dressing, fix an extra amount.  Grease salad ring mold and fill with dressing.  Store in refrigerator.  Bake it next day, and fill the center with the remains of the fowl, creamed.  Garnish with greens."  GACK).

And somebody, PLEASE, shed some light on this untitled recipe:  "Mix ground coffee, unbeaten egg, salt and enough cold water to mix easily- corn bread batter- Heat water until steaming- add coffee mixture and bring to rolling boil- Simmer 10 minutes then remove from heat- Add 1 c cold water and let stand 5 minutes.  Ready to drink- Dip off carefully.  Coffee isn't done until foam breaks."  

Ice Box Cookies!

My sister Kelli and I were also both a little disturbed to find "B.M." as a common ingredient, but our combined sleuthing prowess led us to conclude that she meant Butter Milk and not, um, something else.  (Hey, this thing contains "Mystery Cheese Ball & Crax."  Anything seemed possible.)

Once I solve the shortening-to-butter conversion, I'm not sure where to start.  Devil's Food Whirligig Cake?  Sea Foam Fudge Cake with Sea Foam Frosting?  Or go more seasonally appropriate and try the Pumpkin Chiffon Pie?  All I know is I'm staying completely away from the pages labeled "Attractive Salads."

Maybe Five Things Fridays?

A while back I stumbled across a blog who regularly has posts entitled "5 Things"- if I remember right, five things she currently loves.  I did not bookmark or otherwise write the name of this site down in any way, assuring myself that I would remember, because it would appear that I will never learn.  I loved the idea of this "5 Things," because it's in a list format (lists!) and encourages gratitude, something I can always use to combat my inner cranky old woman.  Because I can't find this blog now, if anyone has any idea what blog originally had this idea, I would like to know so I can give credit where it's due.

So!  Onward!

Five Things For Which I'm Currently Grateful:

• T-shirt Capes!  I found this idea on Pinterest, and I loooove it because it was cheap (Goodwill t-shirts) and took right about a minute per shirt.  Our boys are currently in the grip of an all-consuming passion for superheroes, which means I'm asked to tie their beach towels around their necks as makeshift capes approximately four dozen times a day.  But no more- these slip on and off easily without my help, praise the good Lord.  

Adelaide also got to pick a shirt out at Goodwill, and she chose the red cardigan, which is 1000x sparklier than the above photo lets on.  Once we were home, she instructed me to cut off the sleeves (which you also can't see in the photo), so that the cardigan became a vest with detachable sleeves, which naturally allowed her to become Firegirl, who appears to shoot fire at any and all ne'er-do-wells.  

• Mild summer weather.  We're enjoying 70-degree days, which makes it criminal to spend any time indoors at all- matter of fact, I'm typing this on the front porch.  The Japanese beetles have yet to appear, the humidity has finally gone down, and it is gorgeous, gorgeous, gorgeous.  This is the type of weather and time of year I try to keep in mind when I spend day after frozen, snowy day trapped in the house and staring forlornly out my kitchen window throughout our long Iowa winters.  

No, Adelaide is not engaged in an impressive-looking yoga pose; she's coloring with chalk while I type on the porch and Viktor watches over us all (see him there, in the background on the left?  Our ever-vigilant viking Viktor).  

Speaking of Adelaide, she just found out her name means "noble, kind," and she is pissed, not to mention royally jealous of Derek and Atticus's shared middle name, simply because it means "dark warrior."  I'm grateful for her, too, so I can include it in this list.

• This book:

One Thousand Gifts:  A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are by Ann Voskamp.  I've spoken to a number of women who couldn't really get into it because of claims like "it's too flowery" and "just not really my style."  While I can certainly see what they're saying, I am loving this book, possibly because I'm treating it like a devotional, so I only read two to three pages per day.  I'm finding more meaning and connection to God in the smallest moments of my day because of this book, and where some have called Voskamp's style of writing "flowery," I think it's poetic and beautiful.  I'm only about halfway through because I've been taking it soooo slooooowly, which is really hard for me- I've had to bank several urges to race ahead- but I think it's definitely the way to read this book, at least one time through- maybe after you speed-read it the first time, if you just can't help yourself.

• Flowers.  (OF COURSE.)  The peonies are just about done, but the blue delphinium and various colors of poppies I just planted are blooming already (every time I see the poppies I have no choice but to croon, "Poppies.  Poppies will put them sleep," a la everyone's favorite wicked witch) and the yarrow is just starting to show its colors.  I also had one of the iris my grandma dug up for me last summer finally bloom:

She described them as "bronze-colored," which pegs their color just about perfectly, although they look a little more peachy in this photo.

• We finally got rid of the ants that have been plaguing our house for weeks now.  They do their level best to invade our living space every spring, but this year they just wouldn't go away.  I finally found this recipe for homemade ant-killer via a google search (ten spoonfuls of jelly plus half a spoonful of borax- which we already had; it's one of our laundry soap ingredients- mix well, spoon into bottle caps and set around your house wherever you've seen ants), and it was one of those things that, while I was doing it, I was just sure that it was a mindless prank that some idiot with too much time on his hands put on the internet just to see who'd fall for it and put blobs of jelly all over their house to drive away sugar-loving insects.  But it worked!  I did it two days ago, and have only seen one ant in that time, as opposed to the entire ant families who were not-so-subtly trying to claim some kind of squatter's rights.  I'm super grateful for this one.

Desperately Seeking School

See this guy?

This guy is desperate- desperate- to go to school.

He tries to hide amongst the other preschoolers when I drop Atticus off.  He listens with ill-concealed envy to his siblings' stories of school, then makes up fantasies about his own school that he attends daily (it's a magical place where all you do is eat snacks, read books, and play... wait a second, that sounds like real preschool), and says things like, "Batman has to go to school!" because he still self-identifies as Batman.  

It's at times like this that I'm especially thankful we don't live on a farm in 1940's Kansas.

Let me tell you a little story about my grandma, her little brother- who, like Caedmon, was dying to get to school- and a special adventure said little brother forced upon their family one fall day.  

I actually called my grandma before writing this, as my memory of this piece of family lore was especially rusty.  Sometimes there's just no improving upon the original telling of a story, so interspersed with my diction will be direct quotes from Grandma.  You can thank me later.

Once upon a time- the 1940's, if you must know- there was a farm in southeast Kansas.  On that farm lived a delightful little family, one member of which had recently started school.  ("I was in first grade, and Wayne was used to having me around; he was awful attached to me.")  Her little brother didn't seem to see any reason why he shouldn't also attend school, and one day he took it upon himself to accompany his big sister there.  

This was a problem because 1) he was four years old, 2) he lived miles from the nearest town and school, and 3) he decided the best way to get there was walking.  He saw no reason to inform anyone of his departure.  

I have no idea if he set out in the right direction, but clearly he was persistent.  ("He made it two miles!")  Right about that two-mile point a woman happened to look out her kitchen window and saw a little boy walking along the road.  ("She thought it was one of her own, which wasn't strange, I mean, she had eight kids.")  She went out, saw it wasn't, in fact, one of her own offspring, and brought him back to the house.  Fortunately, she wasn't the kind of woman who stuffs errant children into her basement as extra labor, although with eight kids, I guess she had plenty of "help."

While all this was happening, this little boy's mother- that would be my great-grandma- realized her four-year-old boy was gone.  Missing.  Nowhere to be found.  She found her husband, together they alerted various neighbors, and a search on horseback commenced.  ("The corn was 20 feet tall at the time, which didn't help matters.")  

After realizing the little boy walking by wasn't one of her own, the fertile mother packed Wayne and who knows how many of her own children up and went into town.  ("If you can believe it, Brazilton had two grocery stores back then!")  She took him to a grocery store, asking around if anyone there knew him.  They tried to ask him what his name was, where he was going, etc, but didn't get much out of him.  ("He called me 'Sissy,' but it sounded like 'Tussy,' because he was a late talker.  So all those people heard him saying was, 'Tussy!  Tussy!'  Well, they didn't know what 'Tussy' meant.  Oh, I had to stick up for Wayne plenty of times in school because he couldn't speak plain.  Then, of course he went on to work at the Johnson Space Center"- that's NASA to you and me- "traveled all over and won all kinds of awards!")  

At that point, the people at the grocery store started calling around, asking if anyone was missing a kid, and they eventually managed to connect my frantic great-grandparents with their school-bound son.

Now, you could argue that today's world is a more dangerous place, and if Caedmon were to set out for school on his own, he may not be returned to us so quickly, safe and sound.  That might be true.  But I also know that we don't live around dangerous farm equipment, and we have these handy little things called "cell phones," marvelous inventions that probably would have cut that search short all those years ago.  Not to mention our local small town police force, to whom I speak periodically when they drive by our house to admire our children's sidewalk art and ask if I've seen the pet dog/cat/whatever they're searching for.

All the same, I won't be mentioning this little story to Cade anytime soon.  We don't need to be giving him any ideas; I have no desire to take part in a panicked search for our son, on horseback or otherwise.