Outside Stuff

We live in that big swath of the country that's been getting rain, rain, and more rain.

This isn't unusual for us around here, as our spring is generally marked by more rain than sun, and thankfully we've experienced minimal flooding this year.  All these rainy days bring back memories of splashing in puddles and slipping around on the trampoline in a downpour and mopping water off the bare wood subflooring in the house my parents were building because it wouldn't stop raining and there was no roof yet and my dad was afraid the wood would warp, all while Mom sat in the car and watched because she was too sick and weak from a brutal round of chemo to help.  Ah, childhood.

I empty it and the sky fills it back up.  Every day.  

I got a few plants in before the rains came down and the floods came up, but not many, as it's also been a chilly spring and I didn't think the soil temp was warm enough for the flowers I'm growing from seed.

Sunflowers and zinnias and sunflowers and delphinium and more sunflowers.

Thankfully it warmed up a bit for my mom and Mark's recent visit, and the rain even abated for brief amounts of time.  Not while we were visiting the local public garden, of course, but that's what butterfly houses are for.

Atticus spent the first ten minutes in the butterfly wing clinging to me and quietly panicking anytime a butterfly brushed by him.  Five minutes later, he was mad because none would land on him.  I don't know how to explain this other than that it's just so Atticus.  Caedmon was less interested in the butterflies and more interested in making friends with the volunteer that worked in there, getting her to show him the supply closet and telling her all about his super powers.  That is just so Caedmon.


Today we're enjoying a respite from all the rain, so Caedmon and I did important outdoor things, among them beribboning Hermione and planting flowers.

I added it up and our children's teachers spent approximately one million hours with them over the past school year.  This means they deserve a beach house in which to spend their summers forgetting the atrocities perpetrated against them over the course of the past year, but what we can afford are flowers.

Step One:  Go to your small local hardware store.  Wander around their greenhouse, and by 'wander,' I mean turn in a tight circle because that is how tiny it is.  Step Two:  Ignore the nice employee's suggestion to get each teacher a $4.50 potted flower, because what am I, made of money?  Step Three:  Buy the $1 3-pack annuals for each teacher.  Step Four:  Go to Target and hit the dollar bins for buckets.  Resist the urge to buy all the cute things.  You must be strong on this step.  Step Five:  Get home and remember you don't have potting soil.  Dig around in the compost heap until you find the least egg shell-y parts, and fill the buckets with those.  Step Six:  Plunk the flowers in there on top of the egg shells and compost and call it a day.

 Fortunately I know that if anyone can understand living on a budget, it's public school teachers, and at $2 a pop, these fit nicely into ours.  Thanks, teachers, for all the wisdom and compassion and patience and kindness!  Here's a plant that will die in 3-4 months!  Love from the Crislers! 

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?

Not Actually an Anglophile

I don't know if you've heard, but there's an American holiday coming up tomorrow.

I've been feeling a little guilty about my level of patriotism lately, as Derek and I have been spending our evenings engaging in things that lean a bit more British:  We've been watching the BBC show Midsomer Murders, an English crime-drama (but still humorous) type show that Derek has identified as a kind of precursor to the wildly popular Sherlock (which we also love, but apparently Brits produce television episodes at a rate of around one per year, so we're patiently waiting for the next season with the rest of the world), which isn't bad in and of itself, but the other night I found myself alternately watching a British show while reading a book set in England (Maisie Dobbs, it was terrific), then the next night watching the same show while sewing a Gryffindor scarf for my cast iron chicken named Hermione (boy, if I had a nickel for every time I've said that, right?).  Plus I've spent the past week quashing a rather wild urge to bake scones.

Look how warm she looks, standing guard there over our snow shovels.

All this makes me feel like I need to meditate upon the image of a bald eagle, or maybe go throw some tea in the puddle in our backyard or something.

I think I'll settle for this:

I won't judge your pre-Thanksgiving madness mess if you won't judge mine, mmkay?

Homemade (by Adelaide, no less) pecan pie.  It's taking everything in me not to take a fork and demolish this baby right now, before any of my family or guests have a chance to partake.  But I'm an American, and sharing is totally American, right?

The Trail of Tears by Robert Lindneux

Oh, wait...

How to Name Your Chicken

It's been a busy week around here.  I've generally either been outside, gardening, or I've been running around doing things that are difficult to do with three small children in tow: getting my hair cut, going to the architectural salvage place, trying to give blood (I say "trying" because I was rejected again.  It was particularly pathetic this time; when I walked in, the lady up front recognized me and brightly asked, "Trying again?"  After checking me in, she said, "I'm pulling for you!"  The two ladies who were in the waiting area had overheard our conversation and politely inquired, so I explained that my iron levels tend to be too low and they won't let me donate- but I keep trying!  It turned out my levels were too low this time around, too- the nurse tried to let me down easy, but it was still sad to return to the waiting area and have all three women let out a disappointed collective "Awww!" when they saw me.  The young volunteer tried to cheer me up- "You can still have some cookies if you want!"  But really all I want is to give some blood.  SOMEDAY.  Someday it will happen!  Or I guess someday I'll finally go to the doc and get some bloodwork done to get this iron thing checked out, which my mom has not-so-subtly been encouraging me to do for the past couple years.  Okay, end of ridiculously long parenthetical story.), and going to one of my very favorite places:

The antique mall.

I love that place.  It's humongous, the prices are fair, and it's chock-full of just about every rusty, cute, weird, awesome old thing you could think of.  Creepy marionettes?  Check.  Antique goat bell?  Check.  Butter churn?  Check.  Old postcards that I could spend hours flipping through and reading?  Check.

I don't get to go through there very often-  it's not too far away, but some places really just aren't meant for little kids- but when I do, I could wander for hours.  And yesterday, that's just what I did.

I pored through a stack of disturbingly fascinating Victorian-era funeral photographs.  I'm not sure why they insisted on having professional photos of their loved ones in caskets taken, but they did.  Thrillingly creepy.


I contemplated purchasing the aforementioned goat bell.  I think it would be a quirky addition to one of those photo galleries you see so often on Pinterest.  A collection of framed photographs of family members hanging on a wall, all grouped charmingly together, plus a goat bell hanging somewhere in there to add interest and dimension.  People would ask, "Oh, what's this bell?  Is it a family heirloom or something?"  And I'd say, "Nope.  It's just a goat bell.  Because goat bell."

But really, I knew I'd found exactly what I needed about ten minutes after walking in.  I walked by it, and I just knew.

I walked away, trying to mentally talk myself out of the purchase.  I walked all around the building, trying to ignore it.  After I'd gone down every aisle and poked through nearly every vendor's stall, I went back to it and walked back and forth, circled it, then finally hunkered down and looked it straight in the eye.

That, my friends, is a cast iron chicken that weighs as much as one of our children.  As you can see, she's already found a home on our front porch.

I had a heck of a time naming her.  After wrestling her up to the counter to pay for her (where all the older people who work there admired her, as was her due- that's another thing I love about that place: the people who both work and those who apparently just kind of hang out at the antique mall are just about the nicest people on earth), then staggering out to the van with her in tow, I drove home happily, contemplating just what kind of name fits a chicken of her obviously distinguished pedigree.  

I had pretty much settled on Winston when I remembered she's not a rooster.  Sometimes I'm not the sharpest tool in the shed.

After that I decided that she was most definitely a Wilhelmina, named after one of my Grandpa's sisters.  But of course she'd only be Wilhelmina when she was in trouble.  The rest of the time she'd just be Billie.

Wilhelmina- Billie- just wasn't really working for me, though.  And that's when it hit me.

Hermione.  The perfect name for my cast iron chicken.  She's clever.  She's magical.  And sure, Derek pronounced her "Hideous" when he came home and saw what I'd done, but she's smart enough not to listen to that kind of criticism.  

Hermione the Hen.  Perfect.

 Between Hermione and those pillows- another project I managed to complete whilst the children were away- I feel like our porch is nearly complete.  All that's missing is a Boston fern.  And whatever other cast iron monstrosity just begging for a home I come across in the future.