Big Brutus

Sunday afternoon of our Kansas weekend was spent in the town of West Mineral, a place I can almost promise you have never been, being home to all of 185 people. 

Unless, of course, you have been to visit Big Brutus. 

Big Brutus is the (truly fantastic) name of the largest electric shovel still in existence.  It's no longer used for its original purpose, but there's a strip pit just beyond it so that when you sit in its... cabin?  Cockpit?  Whatever the name of the place where the driver sits, the strip pit is dead ahead of the windshield, so you can pretend you're about to strip mine the guts out of southeast Kansas, which is exactly what Big Brutus did in the 1960's and 70's.  After it was decommissioned it apparently just sat there, a big rusty hunk of metal in the middle of nowhere, just begging kids like my dad to come and see whether or not today was the day to contract tetanus. 

He didn't, thankfully, and by the time he and my mom took my sisters and I to visit it had been cleaned up and made relatively safe.  As a child, the only things I really remember about it was its massive size (hard to miss) and that our parents bought us slim plastic tubes filled with honey from the gift shop.  I also recall that we were allowed to climb up onto the boom, which I chose not to do because I was an intelligent child and risk-averse when it suited me to be. 

Nowadays those pesky insurance companies have stepped in and forbidden the public entrance to the boom. What's a boom on an electric shovel?  I'm still not sure- some kind of big metal thing that sticks even further up into the sky than the main part of the shovel. 

My dad, his wife, and their grandson met my sisters and their families plus my clan at Big Brutus.

It's hard to explain how big this thing really is in person, but to help you, here's a picture of it with our two boys circled in blue at its base.  It's sixteen stories high, not counting the boom.

One of my more interesting idiosyncrasies is that I frequently forget that heights are not my favorite.  Derek will suggest going ziplining in Branson and I'm all, "Great idea!"  The next thing I know we're on a platform attached to a tree way up high, strapped into a harness by some college kid who seems half-asleep and not at all concerned for my personal safety.  Thankfully I'm usually able to ignore that feeling of nausea in my belly that comes with being too far off the ground and do whatever is necessary:  step off the platform into nothing, walk out onto a rope at a ropes course, or in this case, climbing the open-air metal stairs that encircle Big Brutus and take you up, up, five stories up.  That did not save my brother-in-law Clinton from having to hear me chatter nervously behind him.  About what, I honestly don't remember, I just needed to make sounds until I was back inside the machine and couldn't see how far up we were.  

That body of water out the window up there is the strip pit, one of many that you'll find all over southeast Kansas.  My mom used to scare us with stories of machinery left in those from coal mining days, how you should never swim in them because they're so dangerous.  Also... something about the mob from Kansas City dumping bodies in them because they're a straight shot south from KC?  Sisters, is my brain making this up?

Both the boys wanted their picture in the drivers seat.  Adelaide abstained, for some reason.

That's Caedmon in the scoop and my dad kicking the tires, as it were. 


Requisite family photo in front of BB, which seems like a terrible nickname for Big Brutus, which is itself a nickname for the Bucyrus-Erie model 1850-B electric shovel- I'm just tired of typing Big Brutus.  We're missing two people in this photo, one because he sadly wasn't there and one because pictures aren't his favorite and I'd already shoved him in front of a camera many times that weekend.

My sisters and I haven't gotten a picture with our dad in quite some time, so we seized our chance in front of one of the many pieces of machinery on the grounds.  I knew what none of them were. 

And these are just two cute nieces.

And before you think this is all just some hick tourist attraction (which it totally is), NPR did a story on Big Brutus last year when it was turned into a museum and historic landmark.  When asked post-trip, Caedmon reported it as being "cool," Atticus liked skipping rocks on the water in the strip pit and spotting a turtle in the same, and Adelaide said that it was "a big metal thing that was slightly interesting, I guess."  She also liked hanging out with the babies, and crawling around inside BB.

 I guess that's one of the charms of kids; they usually get something out of your planned experiences, just never quite what you'd expected. 

Falling and Getting Back Up and Falling and...

Our family recently went ice skating.  It was the kids' third time ever, my second, and Derek's hundredth.  Or something.  The point is, he's been a lot, the children and I have not.

As such, Derek is very steady on his skates.  Adelaide and I actually skate quite well, for novices, whereas Caedmon takes a while to master his fear and let go of the wall.

Atticus, meanwhile, continually hurls himself across the rink at high speeds, inevitably falling in a flailing and sprawling of limbs. He is never seriously hurt, usually smiling as he gets back up.

Taking a break between skating/falling/skating/falling.

I, on the other hand, fell twice in the two hours we were there, and now have a bump at the base of one of my fingers, where digit meets palm, which hurts when pressed on, and which one of my friends has given a layman's diagnosis of a bone chip caused by these falls.  This is apparently the difference that 25 years makes in falling.

Just a few years ago I was pretty good at falling; I had frequent practice, tripping every few months while walking or running throughout my life, and had learned a way to not fall quite so hard.  With increased yoga practice, though, my balance has improved dramatically, to the extent that I can no longer recall the last time I fell.  Barring the time I strapped blades to my feet and went coasting along on a sheet of ice, of course.

I've been reading a lot about falling lately, in large part due to this book that we got at the library several months ago.

I don't think I'm within the intended audience age bracket for this book, but I can't help it:  I still found it helpful, and it's caused me to re-evaluate the way I do a number of things in my life.  I think my favorite part is that the author recruited a group of women, who call themselves "goldeners" and who are all over 70, all of whom went through Bowman's program and benefited greatly from it.  There are sections throughout the book written by these women, where they talk about what led them specifically to the program, or about things they found they could no longer do, and how the exercises or shifts in movement helped them, along with any number of other things that I can't think of without the book in front of me.  In short:  it is so good.

In the book Bowman states that fear of falling is just as crippling as actual falling and outlines a series of exercises addressing this, which I apparently need to incorporate into my daily routine.   Also, I want to take one of the classes featured in this New York Times article.  Do you think they'd let me in?  And who wants to pay for my flight to the Netherlands so I can fall with the elderly?  That's not a euphemism.  

For now I'll just treat every run as an opportunity to potentially practice my falling; we've been covered in snow and ice for a while now, with only a couple days above freezing to allow any melting.  I've tried running on the treadmill at our local gym, but anything more than ten minutes on those things makes me want to go full Office Space- Printer on them.

Yes, that is an imperfect analogy, as the treadmills don't enrage me by malfunctioning; I just can't abide spending copious amounts of time on them without being overcome with feelings of worthlessness and resultant, irrational anger, usually going something like this: "I'm not going anywhere.  I'm not getting any of the benefits of being outdoors.  This entire enterprise is utterly meaningless.  Life is meaningless." 

So, I run outside, even though yes, it is very cold out.

At that point I find I have exorcised what may be some underlying anger issues for yet another day.   Life once again has meaning!  Huzzah!  

Good, Bad, Good

Things have been good and then they have been bad and then good again.  So... normal life.


Good

We recently headed south for a quick Kansas fix.  Whilst there, we held babies.

We played with the other nieces, too, but they don't hold still long enough for me to take a picture, so here's more baby-holding.

Bad

Monday morning I woke up at 5:30.  It was one of those sleepy, coming-slowly-to-consciousness "Wait, what time is it?" before jolting upright and realizing you didn't hear your alarm or never set it or something, the result being you overslept by nearly an hour and left your friend standing alone in the dark at 5 a.m.  I felt terrible.  She insisted that it was fine, she needed a day off anyway, blah blah blah, lies lies lies to make me feel better.

It was too late to run, so I decided I'd go ahead and get a little work done before rousing the rest of the family.  I went downstairs to make my coffee.  Coffee maker goes on strike, won't dispense a single solitary drop of caffeine-nectar-goodness, and how do I keep breaking coffee makers?  I do not have fancy tastes, or the need of special gadgets or anything.  I use regular-people drip coffee makers (Dear internet people who spend a curious amount of time each day preparing a liquid that ends up tasting about the same as the stuff truckers buy at gas stations:  get a hobby.  Perhaps a high-maintenance tiny dog?), and regular-people coffee (cheapo coffee beans from Aldi that I do, admittedly, grind myself because cockroaches are gross), so why does my coffee maker keep breaking?

Anyway, after learning that I would not be getting any coffee, successfully suppressing the urge to rend my clothing and tearfully ask the universe why bad things happen to good people, I decided that I would move on, and get to working.  I booted up the computer, and there was no internet.  No internet means no work.  So at 5:50 a.m. I gave up on Monday.





Good

Our children are finally old enough that playing games with them doesn't make me want to die (I'm looking at you, Hi-Ho! Cherry-O and your ilk).  We love Qwirkle,

and Quiddler with the older two,

and Atticus will play chess with tiny Darth Vader when Derek isn't home, because Atticus and Derek love chess but I do not, because it is boring.

Bad

Yesterday afternoon Caedmon began screaming and running around even more than usual.  Bees again.  Atticus had those two bee stings last month, Caedmon got two yesterday, and Adelaide claims to have seen a line of bees going in and out of a hole in the ground.  Do bees nest in the ground?  I thought they built their hives up in, um, you know, places that are not holes in the ground.

It turns out neither of our boys are allergic to bees, so today Caedmon is just sporting an extra welt on his forearm and one ear is about 20% larger and weirder looking than the other, but who cares because ears are super weird-looking anyway.  I know this because I spent a solid ten minutes staring at one yesterday, trying to scrape a bee's stinger out of one of those folds of cartilage that make up the outer ear.  The pinna?  See above gif yet again.






Good

Atticus likes to pedal this knife-sharpening contraption that my grandparents have at their house.  You push one of the pedals- the other being currently non-functional- and the stone spins.  Atticus pushes one of the pedals, and Grandpa inevitably whips out a pocket knife to sharpen, and tells us about pedaling the tool as a boy, then as he got older using it to sharpen mower blades, and boy, wasn't that a pain!

Like Grandmother, Like Granddaughter

Last week was a rough week for many in my hometown.  Two dearly, dearly loved people passed away, one of whom was an age (nearly my age, actually) that makes you say, "But he'd barely gotten started on the best part!" and the other was older, yes, but still far too young to say good-bye to, because as far as I'm concerned, no one should ever have to say farewell to the likes of Larry.

[Edited to add:  And now I just found out Anna Dewdney died, the author of the Llama, Llama children's books.  This must be how other people feel when their favorite movie stars overdose, except people who write and illustrate children's books die from things like brain cancer, which feels way more tragic to me.  Getting pretty sick of this whole "people dying" thing.]

One of those hometown-many is my mom.  Last week was hard, and this week will be, too, as she goes through all the rituals that accompany death, and helps those left behind, as she's close to both the grieving families.  So we're going to talk about one of the things that makes my mother happy, which could be quilting or traveling or hand-washing, but will today be her grandchildren.

I could go full-on vain and talk about how amazing the three grandchildren that just so happen to belong to Derek and I are, maybe play a little Carly Simon in the background as inspiration, but instead I simply must show you this picture my mom emailed me a while back, one of herself and her sister Kay.

The back of the photo has a note written by my grandma:  "Dresses are gold checked with organdy aprons.  Lorri [my mom] was mad because she had to wear her bonnet.  I think it's pretty but she doesn't.  Have given Kay's hair a feather cut.  Sure is easier to take care of."    

Now, let's just pass right over the fact that I now feel like a failure for never dressing Adelaide in an organdy apron when I had the chance.  I suppose I could still try, but I have a feeling it would end in a storm of tears and shredded fabric.  Let us also skip over the serious cuteness of Kay's beaming little face, framed by a new feather cut.  

Instead we're going to focus on the my mom, the one year old on the left, who is mad because she had to wear her bonnet, a revelation that I am dying over.  Dying because how many times have mothers of girls dressed them in the most darling of clothing- like bonnets- only to have them pout over it in front of the camera.  She's like a chubby Laura Ingalls Wilder.  I'm also dying because when I look at this and other old photos of my mother, I see the face of our niece, sweet Elliot Ann.

The picture is a little fuzzy because I zoomed in on Ellie's face- the one on my mom's lap, there- so you could get the full effect.  The resemblance is even more striking in person, when you watch Elliot as she goes about her business, her tall, strong build just like my mom's, who infamously stomped the floor out of the playpen my grandmother cruelly placed her in to get something done or maybe catch her breath fifty-something years ago.  It would seem that toddler Lorri had trouble understanding why she was in prison when her two older sisters were not.  Her solution?  Break it to pieces, of course.  

I put that scowling picture up there to mark the resemblance to mom, but I don't want you to think that's all she does, so here are other, smiley-er pictures of her.

Look at how happy she is.  Elliot, I mean.  And yes, my sister Steph is pregnant again, with girl #3, as is my other sister, Kelli. There's a special place in my heart for three-girl families, and now both my sisters will have an estrogen trio!

And now, because I am one of three girls and know better than to go on and on about one of them while leaving the others out, here are some pics of my mom's other granddaughters, our other nieces.

Kelli's family, minus Kelli.  Hang on, let me see if I can find a picture of her.

Well, that's Kelli, all right- around 25 years ago.  Here you see she and I dressing a baby Stephanie for the day.  Notice Steph is not crying, or reacting much at all.  She was used to such loving abuse.  I thought it so charming that my parents were thoughtful enough to get me a living, breathing doll when I was 8 1/2.  This model had overactive tear ducts as an infant, so I got to wipe her eyelids with a warm, wet washcloth until they were once again able to open many mornings because they were sealed shut from so much gunk.  Take that, Baby Alive!  

And, of course, we mustn't forget Vada, Elliot's big sister:

That's her at my grandma and grandpa's house over the weekend, following the Adelaide up a tree.  We were down south celebrating Grandma's 80th birthday.  I now can't wait to become an octogenarian, as when I said, "Grandma, you don't have to do that," she informed me, "I'll do what I want!  You get to do that when you're 80!"  

Only 47 years until that magical day.

Inspirational Nieces, Uninspirational Quotes

Yesterday I talked about how fortunate we were to avoid any smoke or pasture burning while in Kansas.  Then half of the state caught fire.

Well, not quite half the state.  It would be half if we were talking about Rhode Island or one of those other states in New England, but out here?  Not so much.

Anyway, I've learned my lesson.  Call it paranoia, call it magical thinking, whatever; I'm going to be a little more careful about what I mention, because it would seem that I don't know my own powers.  I'm already half scared to post any photos of adorable children jumping ever so charmingly together, because surely next will come a call from my mother saying her trampoline didn't just wear out, it exploded in her backyard.  What?  Seeing causal relationships where mere coincidence resides is the new black.


When I wasn't driving and worrying about smoke and speeding and shysters, I was marveling over how far into spring Kansas had already bounded:  The forsythia and daffodils and dogwoods were in bloom, there was no snow anywhere, and we didn't wear our coats the whole time we were there.  It was beautiful, but did make me pout a little when we returned back home.  This morning's snowstorm didn't exactly help with those resentful feelings, either.

If you've haunted this blog for any length of time, you know that my two sisters married two brothers, and each of these two families have two daughters, but that strangely and wonderfully enough, those double-cousins are nothing like each other.  The girls in one family are petite sprites who want to have their hands wiped clean after every bite of cupcake and will give you shy smiles only after you have spent a solid hour proving yourself worthy of their affection.

She is this gorgeous in real life, too.

The other two are sturdy, stomping bundles of love who are more concerned with cramming as much cake in their mouth at once than maintaining a clean visage.

She is this gorgeous in real life, too.  

You know what they remind me of?  My mom's tendency to sort her friends into loose categories of "cat friends" and "dog friends."  Her cat friends are the ones that she usually has to contact, sometimes going so far as to drag them out of their houses to come socialize.  Dog friends are those that call and make the plans and host the parties.  I have nieces who bound to you for a cuddle as soon as they get out of the car, rolling around and frolicking and laughing- I'll call them "puppy nieces," as dog nieces sounds like I'm inferring they're ugly, which they most assuredly are not- and then I have cat nieces, who will approach only when they're good and ready, and who are fun to watch and pet and smooch, but only on their terms.  They are all equally lovable, and equally perfect, in large part because they're so different, rather than in spite of.

My sisters are pretty great, too, but somehow I didn't get any photos of them.  Perhaps I would have if they still listened to my mom's heartbeat with this face.

This was, of course, during the "Time to play with stethoscopes and blood pressure cuffs" portion of the gathering.  It takes me forever to hear that initial heartbeat when taking a blood pressure reading, so maybe don't ask me to help you out.  Don't all families do this?

We also did the obligatory "Everyone pile on top of Grandma and Great-Grandma and Great-Grandpa photo!" and I know all families do this, so I'm confident everyone can appreciate that we got 90%ish of the participants to smile.  Note which person's offspring was not even bothering with a fake smile (Small hint:  MINE).

 Still, it's better than the family Christmas gathering from a few years back when the Atticus stood wherever we positioned him within the group shot but presented his back for every single photo.  I couldn't even argue with him about it, as we were a good three hours into the party and my own shelf life for those kind of social occasions is two hours, max.  We have since learned that if you want a group photo involving children, you do it as soon as possible, not right at the end when everyone's tired and the masks are slipping.

Adelaide spent a good deal of the family day doing this sort of thing:

"Don't fall don't fall don't fall."

But then realized Vada's made of sterner stuff than that.

We also made sure to cuddle babies, because as I once saw on an inspirational poster, "Play to your strengths."

It's possible that "baby" is half my size.  That doesn't make her any less cuddly.

Speaking of inspirational posters, these are my favorite kind:

Turns out inspirational quotes aren't really my thing.  But I LOVE what turns up when people edit those moody, emo, hipster images!

Gifts Beyond Price

We don't make a huge deal out of presents at Christmas- or ever, really- but we do exchange a few things here and there.  This year, some of our favorite gifts were... well, they were interesting.

You know how, every so often, you receive an item that you didn't even know you needed?  I remember my mom giving me my now-treasured Better Homes and Gardens cookbook shortly before I got married, and I had no idea at the time what a great gift it was, how it would turn out to be the cookbook that contained some of our family's very favorite recipes, from Oven Roasted Potatoes to Peanut Butter Cookies to French Silk Pie.  It is simple, and it is the best, amen.

I'm assuming this gift from my sister and brother-in-law will turn out to be very similar.

No doubt in ten or so years Derek and I will be saying to each other, "What did we ever do without our beloved poo pillow?"  Our older two children lose their minds in hysterics every time they see it, while Caedmon still valiantly maintains that it is a chocolate chip with a face.  I should probably mention that we received this gift because when I joined the 21st century a few months ago and finally got a smart phone, I may or may not have insisted on sending a stream of poo emojis (must... resist... the puns coming to mind... do not sink to toilet humor... resist the urge...) to my sister's husband Aaron.  I will say it is very soft and squishy (OH HERE WE GO AGAIN), and perfectly supports my neck while I am typing this.

Speaking of hysterics:

Please note Derek's Christmas gift from one of the boys:  A neon green plastic foot on a strand of twine, which he wore all day with pride.

Yes, they do still make Rock Em Sock Em Robots, and yes, they do still delight boys of all ages.  I'm assuming there are girls our there who also enjoy them; however, our own Adelaide seemed to find little point to a toy whose only goal is to make a plastic head pop up.  She was much happier with her own gift:

This was what she wanted more than anything this year.  Included were verbal instructions from Derek and me to resist any urges to yell "This is a stick-up!" or "Put the money in the bag, and nobody gets hurt!" while wearing it.  Side note:  Do crooks still say, "This is a stick-up?"  Did they ever?  Or is that a phrase that only ever existed in old movies?

We also got the gift of time with various members of our extended family.  At Crisler Christmas, a few of the older girls were helpless against the lure of twin baby girls.

Adelaide and I had similar responses when asked if we wanted to hold one.  Well, kind of.  My response was something along the lines of, "Yes, please!"  Adelaide's was more like, "Is it my turn yet?  How about now?  Now?  Are you done?  When are you going to be done?  When is it going to be my turn?  I want to hold her, too!  How about now?  Gah, Mom, you are such a baby-hog!"  

For the record, she did get a turn.

Since tomorrow begins Epiphany, the tree will finally come down, and all the Christmas things will finally be put away.  Then I'll have the rest of winter to enjoy my paperwhites that are about to bloom, not to mention beautiful snowy runs that look like this at first glance:

Ah, so pretty.

Serene, too.  Don't forget serene.

But actually look like this.

Note the eyelids almost closed to protect against blowing snow.  Not pictured is almost falling every few minutes.  Yay, winter!

Because Sharing is Caring?

Yesterday I was attempting to go through my phone and figure out what was important and worth saving (very little) and what was extraneous crap that needed to be deleted (the vast majority).  Amongst all that, I found a number of things that I meant to share with you, but never did.  Stills and images from our family life of great importance, such as this one:

Remember Flat Adelaide, that school project our daughter did last school year, where she sent a flat version of herself down to my family in Kansas?  I never ended up telling you how that turned out, because I am a horrible blogger sometimes, but the above is one of my favorite images, sent from my aunt Sherry, who clearly appreciated the humor to be found in an overly amorous cow welcoming Flat Adelaide to their farm.

How about this picture that I remember taking on a run in a park twenty miles north of here?  I saw a bright swath of green through the trees alongside the trail, and I had to stare at it for several seconds before I realized it wasn't grass.

That is a body of water.  One I would never want to swim in, although it is possible you could walk across that thick layer of scum and make your friends call you Jesus.

This was from our last trip south, where my sister and her husband got our boys Nerf guns for their birthdays, and the adult men proceeded to play with them more than the children.  Here they are preparing for a good, old-fashioned duel, minus the holsters and Colts.  Real men use Nerf Zombie Strikes.

This one's from that same trip, where Adelaide and I discovered our new favorite piece of playground equipment:  A saucer that tilts and spins and whips you around if you can get someone strong and fast enough to get some momentum going.  Atticus was up to the challenge, spinning us until Adelaide began to experience dizziness and nausea, which I think is the object of any good spinning toy.  I do so love to spin.  

Another one from that trip:

Derek loves Ed, and Ed loves Derek, and I love reminding anyone who will listen that Ed is a cat so hardy that he survived being run over by my mom.  In a car.  The back of her property line butts up against he back of a vet's property line, so I remember her hollering for Kelli and I to fill a laundry basket with old towels from the linen closet (because even after running him over, she wasn't going to let us use the regular towels for him, a fact I now find hilarious), then we had to run poor, squished Ed across the long backyard to the vet's office.  When I think about how boisterous we were with our baby sister Steph in that same laundry basket while whipping her around the house, I feel bad for Ed, because that had to have been one heck of a rough ride.  My childhood was a series of one dead cat after another, with only two, Ed and his predecessor Pete, being sturdy enough to survive our household and the lure of the suicide highway that ran, temptingly, right in front of the vet's office.

I just took this one yesterday.

I'm a little worried about our neighbors; the two snowmen I found constructed near our house over the weekend were this semi-creepy one lurking right around the corner, and a full-on creepy one with apples for eyes and a gaping hole for a mouth two streets over.  I'm telling you, winter does strange things to people.

And I'll leave you with this one.

If Caedmon is home and Derek is home, this is a likely scene to stumble upon when coming around any corner, as I did here a couple Sundays ago.  Caedmon will tolerate a hug from most people, but from Derek, the man whose dirty laundry our youngest used to make nests out of to curl up in when his father had the temerity to be gone at work all day, well, Caedmon will cling to him as long as possible.