Good Plant, Evil Plant

I'd like to begin by giving thanks for the God-given, science-driven, ANTIBIOTIC.  I'd also like to thank Him for stretching out His mighty right hand and blessing us with steroids in their many forms.  Fear not, friends, this is not about to become a fire and brimstone post fueled by 'roid rage; I'm talking about the steroids that help those of us with immune systems that insist on acting like a stereotypical teenager (Daughter excluded, of course):  either too lazy to do much of anything or losing it in a fit of pique when something barely brushes its arm.

What I mean is this:  I went to the doctor.  I think we're going to be getting along just fine, given that she ordered up a couple kinds of steroids and an antibiotic because infection had set in a patch or two.  She also more or less said, "HEY, DUMMY- you are severely allergic to these plants.  Do not go near them.  Do not try to burn them off lest you inhale the smoke and do some real damage.  Get someone else to clear your yard of it."  The line, "I already know all that, Mom," did run through my head, but then reality snapped back into focus:  I was, in point of fact, sitting in her office covered in what my sister is calling "boils" because I was dumb enough to work up a good poison oak lather, this despite spending multiple childhood summers sidelined due to poison ivy.

So.  Yes.  My boils are improving.  I am still waking up throughout the night having already scratched myself half to death, but my days have significantly improved, where I'm able to move through the hours in relatively good humor, without falling asleep in public spaces because of Benadryl fog.

When not obsessing over "the devil's touch" (online poison oak sufferers are a hilarious but scary- and scaly- bunch), I've been working on making our house habitable!  For many this might mean unpacking or something equally practical, but unfortunately for my family, for me this means staining wood and planting flowers.

What I eventually want is a profusion of coneflowers all along the front of our white picket fence.  Coneflowers because:  they spread, they're pollinators, they come in a bunch of colors now, and they'll give me that cottage garden look I think a picket fence calls for.  For now, however, we'll just have to use our imaginations that the 10 clumps I've planted so far will be fruitful and multiply.  For you coneflower people, I've got Cheyenne Spirit Mix, PowWow Wild Berry, Virgin, and the original purple.  For you non-flower types, I've got, well, the usual purple, plus red, orange, yellow, pink, and white.  We'll see how many of them make it; I've had mixed luck getting anything but traditional purple to come back after a couple years.  I'll get a whole mess of bulbs in there this fall for spring color, and then I'll need to think of something for fall color. 

Cheyenne Spirit Mix

The wood staining has been done in our scary basement WHERE I BELONG (sorry, like I said, the poison oak is still able to seize control from time to time).  The layout of our kitchen is more than a little confounding, but my sister suggested tearing down the upper cabinets in the middle of the room so I asked Derek to do whatever she said (well, I omitted tearing out the back wall and putting in a sliding glass door because Budgets), and as soon as he got them down the room felt markedly improved.  The wood- ha, you'd forgotten the point of this story, hadn't you?  Me, too!- is for some open shelving we're putting up, because although the square footage of this house is similar to that of our previous, it's laid out quite differently with a notable lack of storage space, excepting the basement.  For this reason we've found ourselves at IKEA (because Budgets) three times in the last week looking at shelves!  And wardrobes!  And sideboards!  And other ways to hide our crap!

 
Tomorrow I can almost promise not to mention poison oak again, but there will be plenty of cemeteries!  Old cemeteries!

This Pie is Delicious with Zithromax

I've been knocked flat for the past week by bronchitis.  Of course, I didn't know it was bronchitis until Derek ever-so-gently nudged me out the door to see the doc Saturday morning (thank you doctors who have Saturday morning office hours- THANK YOU) after a week of listening to me cough-choke-splutter-hack all over the house, and that's in addition to picking up all my slack because I have been USELESS.

It was one of those things where not only did I feel like I could lie down wherever I stood and fall right asleep, but my brain just wasn't working right.  It felt like a big barrier had been erected in the middle of my brain, and if my thoughts originate at the back (we're playing it fast and loose with brain physiology tonight, okay?), they had to get over this barrier to reach the front, where they were accessible and communicable.  But it was one of those army obstacle course-type barriers that you have to jump and climb and wriggle your way over, so all my thoughts had to do that.

So during one of my few hours at work when a patron would ask a perfectly reasonable question like, "What's the newest James Patterson?" I would stare blankly for a no doubt alarming length of time while the biggest part of my brain asked itself, Who's James Patterson? and the answer struggled over the barrier toward the front part of my brain pan, all while that jerk spectating part of the brain sat there watching the whole spectacle with popcorn, chortling, "'Who's James Patterson?' LOL."

Oh, and I looked terrific all through this.  Reeeaaally smashing.

Like this, except about a million times less adorable.

I know I was in good company, as there were a whole mess of people not feeling so great over the past week and a half.

But!  I am now on an antibiotic and already feeling so much better.  My cough is still present-it just chased Derek away from an NFL game and right up the stairs, as a matter of fact, so now I'm struggling not to let the power go to my head.

And cheer up, my fellow Americans, both coughers and non-coughers alike, for we have pie to look forward to this week!

Or, you know, don't cheer up, if you're not ready yet.  I support you and your feelings. *says this while petting your head in a distinctly non-creepy way*

Running and Food and Illness and Gardening. Oh, my?

It's that time of year again, where early Saturday mornings are dedicated to a long run, prepping for some fall race or other.  It's not yet hot or humid enough to be a slog and I'm not yet burnt out or fighting injury as I surely will be late in the summer.  In short, because I gave up any aspirations of a spring distance race, I'm in a sweet spot of my running season.

Good morning, forest preserve entrance.  I wish I could wake up looking that good.

But come, let us speak of more important matters.  Like cheese.

My mom gives first-aid kits and fire extinguishers as wedding gifts.  I give box graters.


Much of our week was spent in this fashion, because apparently that's just what we do now:

Thankfully we somehow managed to keep Atticus from infecting the rest of the family, so he was the only one with the fever and vomiting and extreme lethargy.  Oh, and congestion, leading me to look around one morning and say, "What is that noise?" thinking it was some kind of machinery outdoors.  I used my Indian tracking skills to chase down its source.

Then I took a video and laughed at my sick kid who, for four straight days, kept dropping off to sleep within seconds anytime he went horizontal, because I am a compassionate, nurturing, decorous mother.  Don't forget to turn the volume up on that video.

Other ways I am a delight to live with:

I eat the edges of any brownie pan, because the edges are the best part:  Chewy in the middle, with a nice, crunchy crust on the edge.  Perfection.  I've thought about getting one of these

but first of all, those pans are expensive, and more importantly, I would no longer be able to blithely say, "I left you a big piece of brownie," to Derek, knowing full well it's only the inferior middle of the dessert.  There would be no pieces left to offer Derek with a pan like that.  I do not need a dessert enabler like that in our house, however brilliant a concept it may be.

I spent more time in the garden, and emerged with its usual offerings.

Clockwise from the upper left, that's a piece of glass, a rubber tube with very sharp pokey wires inside, a dirty piece of porcelain, a nail, a screw, and a hunk of metal there in the center.  All marvelous things to find whilst digging around in the soil with your bare hands.  I've heard that in some biker gangs you get a tough nickname; what with all the metal and glass I've encountered, I feel like I've earned the right to the same with my dangerous forays under the surface of our yard.  It's, like, extreme gardening.  What kind of nicknames would an extreme gardening club/gang even have, though?  "Thornbush"?  "Poison sumac"?  "Spade"?  

Tell me now:  Are you a pre-packaged shredded cheese sort, or dyed-in-the-wool grater?  How do you feel about the geography of a brownie?  What would your gardening nickname be?

Sick Kids Watching Baking Kids

Two out of three Crisler children are home from school today, because Derek and I love them until they are literally sick.  Or something.

Lots of prone bodies and glassy stares in this house.

I am the consummate homebody, but even hermits have to escape their shell from time to time lest they start to say things like, "Wow, that relentless moaning you're doing obviously serves a terrific purpose.  It must be making you feel so much better because you've been doing it for forty straight minutes.  I also don't want to smother you at all."  Then Daughter begins to cry in self-pity, and I lock myself in my room to write a blog post.

I told Adelaide she was an over-achiever when this was her temp.  Unfortunately her sense of humor evaporates when she's sick.

It's not all whiney daughters and sarcastic mothers around here, though; I've been trying to make the best out of being stuck in this house for so many days running.  (Had the temerity to run to Wal-Mart this morning for some essentials.  School nurse called before I could even get out of my vehicle to walk into the store.)  I'm trying to remember that Derek and I don't have to make the tough choice as to which one of us has to miss work, or worry about losing my job because our family has been sick so much.  I'm allowed a small pity party, but only streamers are allowed; absolutely no piñatas.

I've been doing all the things I've put off doing, like making and trying out some new laundry soap-

Okay, so quick side note:  I've used the Duggars' recipe for the past couple years, and although I always added a ton of lemon essential oil, it was never strongly-scented enough for Derek.  I found this new recipe for a powdered soap, and it contains two whole bottles of those scent-boosting crystals, and after using it on ten loads of laundry in the past two days, I've been really pleased.  It's smelly enough for Derek, but not so smelly to give me a headache, which I'm prone to, because my olfactory sense is crap right up until it smells something too floral or perfumey, at which point it morphs into a diva and the head-pounding begins.

-switching out all our flannel bedding for something not quite so sweaty, hemming Caedmon's too-short pants into shorts for summer, then transplanting some of my seedlings that were getting too leggy for their tiny egg carton containers.

"Nice stems."

And then, because we all know what happens when you're all work and no play, the kids and I sat down to watch

and you guys, it is so good.  First of all, you get to see all these frighteningly competent children throw around terms like pâte à choux and watch them make things you've never even attempted, but they're still kids, so they're dropping things and helping each other and happily saying things like, "The ice cream's a little over-churned, but I'm just like, 'I'm eleven years old, I just made ice cream!'" 

The two hosts/judges- Duff Goldman and Valerie Bertinelli- are also quite well-cast, (yes, even Valerie), because they're so, so good with the kids:  Kind and encouraging but also honest when the food isn't what it should be.  There's only one season available on Netflix, and that's only four episodes, which is my sole complaint.  Yes, we tried the show because I thought the kids would enjoy it, but I'd absolutely watch it on my own.  Here's hoping they'll get over this crud in a jiffy and feel inspired to bake me something amazing.  (The only other downside to watching these kinds of shows:  You get real hungry and wonder why you don't have any lemon tartlets or an abundance of gruyère cheese in your house rightthissecond.)

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.

Munchausen the Gardener

I am terrible- TERRIBLE- at knowing when to keep our kids home from school.

On the mornings when they're lethargic and kind of puny, I send them anyway, because we all have mornings like that, right?  It doesn't mean we're sick... except for all the times I get a call from the school nurse telling me a kid has a temp of 102.1/ is pale and droopy and complaining of an excruciating headache/ has vomited all over the library (all calls I've received just this school year).

When I do keep them home, though, because they weren't doing well the evening before?  They run around like a prisoner who has received a last-minute pardon (which is kind of what they are, I guess), no fever, no lethargy, no pain.  It's like some kind of miracle!  [Heavy, somewhat bitter sarcasm.]

Such was the case Wednesday morning.  Atticus has been fighting a cold, and that coupled with night after sleepless night made me decide to keep him home so that he could sleep in, because that makes sense, right?  He'd get the extra sleep he needed, and a little extra rest to help his ailing body fight this cold.

Except he didn't sleep in.  He got up ten minutes after the time I usually have to drag him out of bed, and was up to joyously wave his sister out the door to the bus.  Forget "Man plans, God laughs;" around here it's "Mom plans, children cackle viciously."

Still, because Atticus loves to help and he obviously wasn't as sick as I'd been led to believe, he got to spend a glamorous morning learning how to properly scrub toilets, clean his own mattress, and plant egg carton seeds.  Believe it or not, he appeared to enjoy all activities equally, although he was a little concerned when he found out that I put one of my favorite cleaning agents in his food regularly (baking soda, so just calm down, DHS).  I tried to explain how I use it in different ways and keep it in different containers depending on where I use it in the house, but he remains unconvinced that I'm not perpetrating a terrible crime against our family.  I think the next time he questions me on it, I'll just shrug and tell him, "Have it your way, bud, but that means no more cookies- I use baking soda in 99% of my cookie recipes."  There's no chance this could backfire like all my other plans.  [Heavy, somewhat bitter sarcasm.]

Somehow I didn't get a picture of the scrubbing or the cleaning, but I did get one of the planting.

What's in our cartons this spring?

Long Island Cheese squash, apparently named (according to the back of the packet) because they look like a wheel of cheese.  I love Seed Savers Exchange, as they're dedicated to preserving heirloom varieties of plant species.  In a perfect world, I would only buy my seeds from SSE, but as I am a deeply flawed human being, that never happens.  I also tell my children, "NoOooOoo, there aren't any sweets hidden in special, precious pockets of this house!"

The sinful, mass-produced seeds that we planted were

because how the heck am I supposed to resist a squash bearing the name "Turks Turban"?  (Although I keep questioning whether or not there should be an apostrophe somewhere in that name, and where.)  Also some sunflower seeds from last year, because I always have a couple different varieties of sunflower seeds tucked away, and then some pumpkin seeds that allowed me to feel extremely superior, having harvested and dried them myself.  

And now, because I'm too lazy to find a way to tie the end of this post up with a bow, here is a picture of Caedmon I took mere minutes ago.

Pretty sure we were talking about superheroes, as that is his superhero stance.  This hero's genesis story would no doubt talk about the tragic loss of first his parents, and then his neck.

If You're Happy And You Know It

The past several days have been very exciting, although keep in mind, "very exciting" for me includes scoring 2 gallons of vinegar for $3.48 (Sam's Club.  Get you some.) and gathering 90% of the ingredients for a new recipe for homemade laundry soap I'm making next week.  Also, this:

Anderson Erickson half-gallon of chocolate milk is on sale for 99 CENTS at Fareway this week, local friends!

But really?  The most exciting part of the past week?

That is dirt from my flower beds under my fingernails, and I couldn't be happier about it.  Last weekend our highs were in the fifties, and I was so happy yanking hunks of Creeping Charlie out of my warm beds that I didn't even think to look for those things I make you look at every spring until yesterday- but after clearing away several inches of winter debris, there they were:

Tulip shoots!  In February!  Yes, these are actually tiny, as I had to almost bury my phone in wet and frozen leaves to take this picture, and yes, there are only a few dozen so far because the rest are still resting under solid blocks of ice (as my poor fingernails discovered yesterday after getting a little over-excited trying to uncover all the tulip shoots), but still!  I squealed and did a little dance and said a prayer over them to ward off demon rabbits- you know, normal pre-spring rites.  Please also note I've decided to think of this time of year as pre-spring instead of late winter as it's exactly 78% less depressing.

Other fun things include the illness wending its way through our community, including our family.  Why "fun"?  Because this is strep throat/coughing/low-grade fever-type illness, which includes zero, I repeat, ZERO puking.  Remember the insane amounts of vomit I had to clean up only a month ago?  Yeah, I'm still not over that.  So when all our kids need to limp through this sickness is some extra rest and sugar-free hard candy to suck on to soothe their throats?  I'll take it.  Adelaide is old enough where all I had to do was make her a couple cups of tea and remain within touching distance for much of yesterday.

The above is a pretty normal sight when Daughter is under the weather, as she slowly inches her way around the room, body prone except for a single questing foot looking for some physical contact.  Sure, I could have helped her out and met her halfway, but I couldn't.  I was laughing too hard.

Instead I stayed right where I was and made her come all the way to me, although once she made it, I made sure to rub her head because I'm not completely heartless, plus she almost never lets me play with her hair anymore when she's well.  It reminded me rather strongly of the penultimate scene in To Kill a Mockingbird when Scout tells Boo, "You can pet him, Mr. Arthur, he's asleep.  You couldn't if he was awake, though, he wouldn't let you," in which case Adelaide is Jem and I am Boo.  Which brings me to something I found that I can't stop laughing at:

Derek laughed, too, when I showed it to him, albeit in a resigned way with which I am very familiar, because he is not on the winning side of this piece of relationship advice.

Teaching Our Children Initiative So They Don't Die

I got sick.  So did Derek.  At this point we're both recovering, as we fell like dominoes, one sick right after the other, but man, it's been a rough few days.

The result of our periods of overlapping illness was that, yesterday morning, when I emerged from my stupor better-ish, but still shaky on my pins, the house was a rat hole.  You know all that stuff I just posted about how much I love to watch our children do chores?  Well, it turns out they only do those things if I'm there to play Chore Maestro.

To be fair, Adelaide mostly took care of her own stuff, such as cleaning up her own dishes, hanging up her wet snow gear, etc, and Atticus wasn't completely disgusting, but Caedmon?  He had the nerve to act like a five-year-old boy with little adult supervision *clears throat* which, I suppose is exactly what he was, but still.

As a result, starting yesterday afternoon we began discussing initiative.  Initiative, as I lectured told my precious sacks of filth darlings is seeing that something needs to be done and then doing that thing.  It's going to throw a container of yogurt away, seeing that the trash can is nearly overflowing with refuse, and not carefully perching the container on top of the pile, nay! but rather, pulling on the magic strings of draw that are so handily built into the top seam of the trash bag, hoisting it out, and taking it out to the dumpster.  It's getting one leftover enchilada out of the container for your supper, then putting the remaining enchiladas back into that big white thing with cold insides that keeps food delightfully fresh for so long, rather than leaving the dish of meat and cheese out on the counter to rot.

We're starting small, as I soon realized that our boys don't even seem to see when some things need to be done.  So I'm pretending they're troglodytes- not much of a stretch today, friends- and leading them gently around the house, adding extra sarcasm-infused syrup to my voice as I ask, "And what is this, sweet boys?  That's right, it is a bowl!  Very good, boys!  And what is in this bowl, sons of mine?  Why, I don't know what it is, either!  Sometimes it's hard to identify food when it's been sitting out for two days, so don't feel bad.  Now, here is the important part, future men of the world (GOD HELP US ALL):  [Insert highly detailed instructions of a simple procedure including water and a sink that I will not put you through].  Now, who can repeat what I just said?"

Just eating my lunch with a wooden spoon because every other piece of silverware was dirty and our children didn't ever see that as a problem.

We have done the same thing with the toilet, with hats and mittens, with snow boots, with the trash can, and on, and on, and on.  Today I'm noodling over what kind of system to put in place (chore chart?  But I don't really like those or think they work that well.  Jar that we fill with stuff or take away from that I'm pretty sure I saw on Pinterest?  I just don't know yet.), that, most importantly, I can follow through on, because in general, the more complicated and labor-intensive a system is for me, the more likely I am to abandon it/throw it against a wall until it shatters in a highly satisfying way.

I don't really have short-term specific goals for this, either, but if I did they'd probably fall between "takes out the trash without being asked" and me no longer having to scrub around the base of the toilet while quietly singing Janet Jackson's Nasty to myself with increasing hysteria.  Somewhere in there.

The Sights

Sights that fill my heart with joy:

Our children doing chores.  [Insert evil but sincere laugh here.]

Because each of our children are unique, individual human beings, they're each good at different things- including chores.  Caedmon is my go-to mopper, as he's thorough and careful to scrub when needed, something that his two older siblings can't (WON'T) seem to grasp.

Plus his dimple comes out when he's putting some muscle into the job.  If that isn't added incentive to give him this particular task, I don't know what is.

Atticus, on the other hand, is the kid I call upon when I have a mountain of towels to fold.  It's not his favorite chore, but I tell him that not everyone can be a master of the tri-fold.  He is very comforted by this.
He's also my head snow shoveler.

I took this picture on Christmas Eve, after we'd been to church and he'd had to sit still and listen to adults for close to an hour.  As soon as we got home, he begged to go out and shovel, as he had energy to burn.  This had the added benefit of making me look like a monster to our neighbors, sending our seven-year-old boy out into the cold to do manual labor on the night before Christmas, all while I watched in my fancy holiday clothes from within the comfortable warmth of our house.  I thought about making a big sign to hold up to the window: "HE ASKED FOR IT," but I decided there was a faint possibility that could be misconstrued.

::Right here you'll have to fill in your own image of Adelaide taking out the trash or unloading the dishwasher, as she seems to find it insulting when I take pictures of her doing chores while I sip my iced tea and nibble delicately on lemon cookies as I recline in my easy chair.::

Only kidding.  I don't much care for iced tea.

Other sights I always enjoy:

Is this or is this not the most perfect coffee receptacle you've ever seen?  It's from The Awkward Yeti, and let me tell you, if you've ever felt like the only thing missing in your life is a hilarious comic featuring cartoon internal organs, then get ready to achieve nirvana.  I follow him on Instagram, because I am not a fool and I never underestimate the effect of a well-executed gall bladder joke.

And finally, despite all my attempts at visualizing a vomit-free weekend, last night was... well, let's just say it was decidedly malodorous.  As of now, this illness has felled 60% of the residents of this household, and although I'm hoping Derek and I will emerge unscathed, given the amount of times my person has waded through a quagmire of germ juice over the past few days, it's not looking good.  So far, though, it only seems to be a 24-hour bug, where it hits its victims with uncalled-for violence, but then more or less leaves them alone to sleep it off and emerge more or less back to normal.  

This morning Adelaide and Caedmon were making up for hours of action last night.

These still count as joyful sights to behold, as the visage of our sleeping children makes my twisted little heart glow on any day, but when they've been sick?  Those sleeping babes make me whisper-yell, "HALLELUJER!" (so as not to wake them, see), because that means it's finally break time, and by "break time" I mean time to wash every piece of bedding or clothing  you can sneak out of their rooms without waking them, lighting candles in every room, and opening any and all bedroom windows, because the outside temp may be below freezing, but at this point, fresh is fresh air, man.

Please note that she surrounded herself with all the things that comfort her:  A bag full of library books, a coloring book and pens, and there under her head you can just make out the little pink pillow I made for her to take to kindergarten.

So!  What sights fill your heart with joy these days?  Do, do share, as I could use a few extra merry sights during this bleak, colorless time of year.

Sledding and Slow-Cooked Bananas and Wishful Thinking

Temperatures soared into the teens this week, which means Caedmon and I dragged our sleds to the bus stop to pick the kids up after school most days this week.  We then enjoyed going down the little hill there over and over and over and over and climbing up the little hill over and over and over and over, fulfilling my real motive of wearing the kids out a bit and burning off any post-school day crankiness before they even walked in the door of our house.  Raise your hand if you've ever asked God to enrich the evil genius residing within you in order to aid in your parenting.

Adelaide affirmed my belief that youngest siblings generally have it made, at least if your eldest sibling is an indulgent sister whose name rhymes with Shadelaide.

His Indian name is Cute But Heavy.  Hers is Dotes Upon Caedmon, which sounds more like the name of an English village, so never mind.


Then we all went home and did the only thing you can do after sledding, which is drink hot cocoa.

Yes, I'm still using my Christmas mug.  I'm also still listening to Christmas music, although only in our vehicle.  I took all those exhortations to "Never change!" inscribed in my yearbook seriously.

Last night I made banana ice cream for the kids after supper, which is always curious, as whipping frozen bananas in my food processor tap dances on just this side of triggering an allergic response in me, despite the fact that I'm not actually ingesting any of the allergen.  I noted this with interest, then got to further my mental notes when cleaning regurgitated banana off nearly every surface of the bathroom later that night.  Apparently seven years old is not the age when you're able to hit the toilet when sick- well, not the inside of it, anyway, or even within a few feet of its easily flushable inside.  Seriously, it was like an episode of NCIS: Vomit in there.  I'm sure if I had the training I'd be able to identify all kinds of things in the splatter patterns.  Good news, though!  Apparently stomach acid "cooks" the banana enough- thereby denaturing its proteins- that even skin contact doesn't elicit a response in this allergy sufferer.  Motherhood is teaching me so much!

After a night like that, I kept Atticus home from school, and although we enjoyed a lethargic morning, he now seems to be back to normal.

Please excuse the mess.  We actually live here.

Balloons have saved our bacon more than once during a long Iowa winter:  They're cheap, after a couple days they do a Roberta Flack and kill themselves softly, and the children lose their minds over them.  I don't know why tag/keep-away/ every single other game is so much more fun when played with balloons, but according to our progeny, this is a truth universally acknowledged.  

I'm going to copy a friend of mine now and attempt to visualize my preferred future:  A vomit-free weekend, laden with running, good food (I'm making a cheese ball!  And crockpot Maid-Rites!  And yes, this is exciting enough to warrant an exclamation point!  It's possible that my life is somewhat sad!  I don't even care because CHEESE BALL!), with a liberal dose of Jane Eyre and maybe some Mancala.  Amen.

Coughs and Promises

Last week our family got hit with one of those colds- nothing terrible, just the kind where you feel a little rundown and it often seems you're sporting as many bodily fluids on your outside as you have on your inside.  In other words, we were all very, very pretty.

At this point, we're mostly over it, except for a few lingering sniffles and sore throats, plus I'm noticing less mouth breathing and glazed expressions both in our children and in the mirror.

Except, that is, for Caedmon.  

Poor Cade.  I don't know if it's that his lungs are smaller, or that he's just more prone to these things, but he cannot seem to shake this cough.  This means he had to miss preschool again today, and if someone could please make him see reason that would be great, as my explanation of "You can't go to preschool when you're coughing 'til you dry heave" seemed to carry no weight with him.

There are short periods where The Cough leaves him in peace, lulling me into false hopes of "We're finally over this!  Time to wash all the bedding!  I can replace everyone's toothbrushes!  Let's have a knob- and handle-disinfectant party!"  Then he starts coughing until he's staggering around the house clutching his sore transverse abdominals.  That's how we wound up here:

I call this one "Picnic in the Bathroom."  Because it was a picnic.  In the bathroom.

What, you don't eat your lunch within feet of the toilet?  I'm sorry your life is so provincial.  We Crislers have our toast while enjoying a nice steam from the hot shower I will only run for two minutes because not even a sick kid can impel me waste water and cents.  It was still enough to generate a semi-tropical environment, especially with the space heater helping things out and bumping up the temp.  We enjoyed an almost cough-free thirty minutes.  Worth it.

As of now, I haven't heard Caedmon cough in nearly an hour, causing him to repeatedly walk in here, lean against me beseechingly, and attempt to wrangle a promise from me that I will let him attend preschool tomorrow.  He seemed to think his announcement that, "And if you let me go, I'll wash my hands every time I walk by the bathroom at preschool!  With soap!" was going to clinch the deal.  I'm thinking of adding a rider to this contract along the lines of "And I'll shower every day, even if I think I don't need it, especially if I think I don't need it, and I'll hug my mother every day, too, and I'll start paying attention when I pee and for the love of God AIM," but that last one makes me realize I've floated off into fantasy land, and I would do well to agree to hand-washing with soap- it's changed the world before, hasn't it?

 

Never Again: A List of Consequences

Reasons Why I Will Never Announce What a Bouncy Happy Healthy Family We Usually Are to the Internet and/or Universe Again:

• Adelaide will get sick for the first time in forever, and because her school has a 24-hour fever-free policy before she can return, she will miss an extra day when she is perfectly fine.  

• I will then get sick, which could be because two of our children were just sick and they like to do their level best to sit on/lean against/burrow into my body when feeling unwell, but I think we all really know it's because I lost my mind and went all, "Deedle-dee, we never get sick, doo-dee-doo, yessir, healthy is what we are!  All the time!  Beware, germs!  You are no match for us!"  Germ Jihad will then be leveled against our family.  Three out of five of us (so far) will lose.

• We will take a trip to the eye doc which I suspect will end in glasses for daughter but instead freaks both me and Adelaide out because that's just what happens when the doc uses words like, "Pediatric Ophthalmologist," "Surgical consult," and "Omaha," in conjunction with your child's eyeballs.  This will then cause yours truly to send out a text burst to a number people that basically reads, "Hey, your kid has glasses:  Who do you trust with a tiny thing like your child's eyesight?  Because at this point we need a second opinion and I need a shot of valium to settle me down."

I get it.  Consider me humbled.  

A Sickly, Juicy, Kaleidoscope-y List

Last time I posted I finished with "Next time I'm going to write about this picture here," but I swear to you, the best way for me to guarantee a specific topic will NEVER be written about is for me to tell you that it will, because when I do that I think about it and I think about it and then I think about it some more, to the extent that by the time I have a chance to sit down and actually write about the promised topic, I'm so bored with it that I can't force myself to dedicate another minute to the now-dreaded post.

All that to say, here is instead a list of what's going on around here.

• I need to give a big fat prayer of thanksgiving to the Head Honcho, because we are a healthy family.  So healthy, in fact, that when one of our children gets sick, it's such a novelty to me that I almost get excited about it.

Before you turn away in abject disgust, let me clarify by saying that he wasn't super awful sick.  He wasn't vomiting or writhing in pain; he just had a fever and was a little clingy and cuddly and the whole thing lasted less than 24 hours over the weekend.  It was Sick Lite, just enough for me to let go of my weird tv thing and introduce our children to the first Harry Potter movie, after which Adelaide proved that she is sometimes my exact twin:  "I liked it.  I think I liked it.  But they left out so much that was in the book!  And they changed some things!  Maybe I didn't like it.  No, I did.  The book was just SO MUCH BETTER.  I need to go back and read the first one so I can review all the things they did wrong in the movie."  I'm not saying that's a perfect opinion, but I am saying it's identical to mine.  (IT'S PERFECT.)

• Now that I've alienated everyone with my "I love it when our children are ill and miserable!" (WHICH I DON'T, OKAY?), let me remind everyone that one of our kids suffers from severe night terrors, meaning Derek and I have been chronically short on sleep for years.  (That's right, Judgey McJudgers, you just let that guilt soak in.  Wear it like a blanket- no, like a Snuggie!  A Guilt blanket with sleeves:  How dare you judge us?)  Anyhoo, we've tried anything and everything, dah dee dah, but that doesn't stop my ears from perking up anytime I hear magical words like, "Such and such absolutely 100% helps me sleep."  So when Lauren Fleshman, a pro runner, said that tart cherry juice has become a sleep aid for her pro triathlete husband, I sat up a little straighter in my chair and click, click, clicked my way to the available research.

NOW:  Is most of the research being trumpeted by cherry producers?  Yes.  I'm well aware of that and going into this eyes wide open.  I'm also not thinking that tart cherry juice is a magic elixir and our son will now stop his nocturnal screaming forevermore; what I am thinking is that a little juice every evening isn't going to hurt him, it's healthy anyway, and it's worth a shot.  Plus it was at the grocery store, which means it was meant to be.  (Or that grocery stores stock things that they believe will make them money.  Whatever.)

• One of our children's- as well as my own- favorite things about our local public garden is this:

Really, why is it that the simplest ideas are so often the best?  The plantings are changed out regularly, and we never fail to delight in looking into those microscope/kaleidoscope things, twisting them to change the view of design and color.

The Bounty of Spring

This has been an odd week.  Not because of odd happenings, but because I've caught some kind of bug that has made my head an odd place in which to reside.

Normally when I'm sick, all of my emotions are flat.  I can't summon the motivation to care about much of anything, and all my senses are dulled.  We've all been there, right?

This week has been different.  I've had some kind of bug that several people in the area seem to be likewise suffering from- nothing major, just mild, persistent nausea, nagging headache along with aches and pains, and a general feeling of malaise and run-down-ness.

What makes this bug special is that, at least for me, it has included heightened emotions.  And no, I am not pregnant.  Just so we're clear.

Case in point:  Last night, while gathering ingredients for the supper I had in mind, I couldn't find the ground ginger.  I tore my spice cabinet apart and found THREE containers of thyme, but no ginger.  I even found a small pot of sage, which is completely useless to me, as I can't stand the smell or taste of sage.  But ginger?  None.

Is this worth crying over?  It almost was last night.  I really wanted beef noodle bowls.

Once I got over the devastating ginger-related loss (my life is so hard), I decided to make quiche.  I was refreshing my memory on how to make PW's pie crust, and her instructions included not the usual phrase involved in the making of pastries, "combine until it resembles coarse meal," but "gradually work... until it resembles a coarse meal. (Emphasis mine)"  Just the inclusion of that little article "a" filled my brain with images of a plate containing asparagus and maybe chicken telling me dirty jokes and inappropriate stories.

Naturally this filled me with such mirth I laughed until I was almost too weak to wield the pastry cutter.  I didn't think much of it- everyone laughs at the jokes their brain tells them, right?- until Caedmon came over, laid his little hand on my arm, and asked, "Are you okay, Mommy?"

It's possible I've come across as a trifle unbalanced this week.  Is it possible for a germ to generate symptoms of mild manic depression?

Episodes of feverish hilarity aside, there were plenty of high points this week.  My peach hyacinths bloomed:

The tulips are also beginning to open up:

I also finally got my lettuce in, the only cool season veggie I plant.  I turned the compost heap and it produced a prodigious amount of beautiful, black, hearty compost to nourish the garden with this year.  I went to my first garage sales of the season and came back with nice garments for Adelaide and Atticus both, including tennis shoes for Atticus for just a few bucks that should work for school in the fall.  I had no idea how such nice shoes could possibly have so little wear, as any shoes our six-year-old tromps around in look like they've been through a wood chipper after a mere three or four months of use.  The very nice lady who lived in the McMansion where the sale was located swooped in to explain, however, that she had bought them for her son, who refused to wear them because they weren't the exact right shade of blue.  I said a prayer of thanks for her kid's brattiness and its indirect benefit to our kid, who was pleased as punch with the shoes.

Germs, flowers, and garage sale finds:  It's finally starting to feel like spring!