Gracious Goodness

Here is my excuse for my lack of posts lately:  "........"

I have none.

Mostly it's just that I've been so busy enjoying the embarrassment of riches this time of year brings, I haven't made time to write about it.  Which is a shame, so I've made an internal deal with myself to post with a certain frequency throughout the summer.  I'm not going to tell you how often that is, because the end of spring/ beginning of summer always turns me into a foolish optimist ("We're going to do a craft every week!  And go on many educational excursions!  And do two separate library summer reading programs!  And volunteer this many hours!  And blog every day!" whoops); not to worry, come mid-July, the children will have whined/bickered/ground me down into submission, and I will be back to my somewhat cranky self.

Still, it's not July yet!  It's spring, and it's Atticus and Adelaide's last day of school- as a matter of fact, they'll be home for lunch- and my mom and Mark are coming for a visit, and we're eating at Zombie Burger tonight, and I have so many things blooming in my yard!  Exclamation points!!!!!!

So, what haven't I told you about that May brought to us in all her glory?  First off, these gorgeous petunias, courtesy of Derek's mom:

Adelaide was with her grandma when they walked by these at a nursery, and Daughter was immediately besotted, saying they looked like a starry night.  And wouldn't you know?  

Becky then generously got them for us.  Thank you, Becky/Grandma/Mom/Flower Enabler!

The rhubarb has been plentiful, but because my rhubarb is somehow always very green with little lovely, traditional red coloring, the desserts I make with it end up tasting delicious but appearing very questionable indeed.

That rhubarb cheesecake bar is topped with rhubarb sauce, not salsa verde, as it might appear.  Señor Google informs me that my rhubarb is most likely green because of the cultivar I have, and that if I want red rhubarb, I will need to plant a different type, which means I need to get that in this year, as we all know of the cruel constraint that requires you to keep your dirty gardener's mitts off of rhubarb until the second year after you've planted it.

Other May happenings:  Adelaide turned 10.  TEN.  DOUBLE DIGITS.

That is the long bow Caedmon made as a gift for his sister out of a tree branch, twine, and kebob skewers.  More on Adelaide and sharp objects soon.

Speaking of Adelaide, Caedmon was organizing our art cabinet (Caedmon loves to organize spaces- drawers, corners, whatever, if you have a mess, he will have a blast organizing it for you.  I can only think he gets this from Derek, because it sure as heck isn't from me.), and found some old coloring and activity books.  One was Adelaide's that she filled in when she was four, maybe five years old, and it sure brought me back to that fun-yet-always-morbid stage went she through.

It reads, "Pinkalicious Likes to Sing- Can you make up a song?  Write the words here."  (Adelaide's words edited for clarity.)  "I love Jesus I pray the Lord God to keep me safe when I'm scared and when I think my family's dead."  

If I had a time machine, it would behoove past Me to go back a few years and tell myself, "DON'T WORRY.  She grows out of this."  Except according to Back to the Future and Albus Dumbledore, those time-traveling sages, one should never meet up with oneself.  Paradox!

And speaking of our resident Organizer, he graduated from preschool.

Cute as a dang button, both of them.  Adelaide there in the background, well, she's also cute, but in a ferret-y kind of way, at least in this shot.

We do still have an Atticus.  He's been lying the grass, responding to my queries of, "What shapes do you see in the clouds, Bud?" with answers like, "Mostly cirrus.  Wait, there's a nimbus cloud!"  So much for sweetness and whimsy.

He's also getting ganglier and bigger-footed by the minute, I swear.  

In other good news, apparently today is National Doughnut Day, a made-up holiday I can actually get behind.  Here's to grossly unhealthy rings of doughy goodness I plan on consuming with wanton abandon!

A Sunshiney List

• As some of you know, I regularly treat Halloween as a competition with Ghosts of Kristy Past (Ghost of Kristys Past?  Ghost of Kristies Past?  I see a 'y' at the end and desperately want to turn it into a plural 'ies,' but as I've explained to countless people over the years THAT'S NOT HOW YOU SPELL MY NAME.  What is the proper plural of the Dickensian term?) to see who can spend the absolute least amount of money on costumes for our children.  With three costumes completed, I can happily report that I am winning.  Detailed, self-indulgent report to come.

• With the knowledge that glasses will soon be gracing the face of our daughter, I did what I do and turned to books and a beloved librarian for help.  You see, I had all manner of picture books featuring bespectacled protagonists ready for her when she was younger, the Arthur series and such, because I had no doubt that our children would need glasses, given the appalling eyesight Derek and I are in possession of.  But then they got older and older and had one astonishing report of 20/20 vision after another, and I grew a little lax in keeping a mental catalogue of "glasses in books for our poor, nearly-blind children."  Now Adelaide is, ahem, less than pleased about the idea of wearing glasses, and I have no books ready for her!  (The horror.)  Enter beloved librarian:  "CathyIneedyourhelpAdelaideandglassesandwretchednessandNOBOOKSPREPAREDandanguish!"  She, in turn, calmly reached out to ALL THE LIBRARIANS IN THE STATE and is even now compiling a list of books for me, because she is magical.  
• Note:  This is aaaallll aside from Harry Potter.  Of course I thought of Harry Potter with his glasses, but Adelaide has read all of those, so I need books in addition to HP.  Preferably a female character, who is not stupid, or insipid, or annoying, or too age-inappropriate.  Honestly, I don't try to be difficult to please, it just... happens.

• You would think that, after one particularly memorable night of watching rerun after rerun of Unsolved Mysteries years ago, I would have learned that there are just some shows that you don't watch alone when the darkness outside your windows is concealing God only knows what.  Last night, however, I decided that since I had some sewing to do and the kids were in bed and Derek wasn't home, it would be a positively splendid idea to watch an episode or three of The Twilight Zone.  I mean, I LOVE that show!  What could go wrong?

Sometimes I am a slow learner.

Many things, friends.  Many things could go wrong.  Granted, most of the wrong things were happening within the confines of my own brain, but as Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore said, "Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?"

So comforting.

I Must Have Missed That Memo

 I recently began to notice that the siding on the outside of our house was looking a little dingy, specifically on the front porch, because most days it's absolutely gorgeous outside right now, and so I sit in the rocking chairs and I read the books and I watch the kids and I notice the siding is filthy.

I didn't think much about it at first, because really:  Is this a thing?  Is washing siding a thing that people do?  I don't remember my mom ever washing the siding on our house.  That's not to say she didn't, but I never saw it, and I don't think I've ever seen anyone else washing the siding on the outside of their houses, so I just decided to ignore the grime.  I am very good at this.  You might even say I have a knack.

After a few days, however, it was all I could look at anytime I wanted to walk in our front door; not Hermione, not my flowers whose beauty I surely need to soak up now that their days are numbered, but the dirt on the siding.  And I began to wonder if this was one of those things that could be filed under my Adulthood Orientation conspiracy theory.

First of all, I have a number of conspiracy theories, and like all crazy people conspiracy theorists, I love to talk about these.  The one pertinent to today's topic is Adulthood Orientation, namely that such a thing exists, and that I was purposely not invited upon entering my own adulthood.

How many times have I been struck by sudden inspiration- You can stuff newspaper in your wet shoes so they'll dry out faster!  Meat should be thawed before you attempt to cook it!  Camping is nearly always a terrible idea!- only to have someone else say, "Well, yeah.  You didn't know that?"

How do all these people know all the things?  Where are they getting this information?  I was a perfectly adequately informed child and adolescent; it's only upon achieving adulthood that everyone else suddenly has all this useful information stuffed in their brains while I'm left floundering:  How is everyone always so organized?  Why can I still not understand the concept of escrow, even after countless explanations by myriad helpful people?  What is going on?  Osmosis?  Simple learning?  Or a class dedicated solely to subjects useful to adults- an orientation, if you will- that everyone but me was invited to? I think we all know what the answer is, here.

Apparently regular siding washing in spots not reachable by rainwater was one of the topics covered, because I'm pretty sure I wasn't supposed to let the siding get to this state:

Left:  Clean.  Right:  Embarrassing.

At least we'd only lived in this house, ahem, six years before I finally noticed that perhaps, perhaps, something should be done.  You know, by an adult who obviously knows about these kinds of things.

Look, a bucket of water, pre-siding cleaning!  Looking all clean and watery, just the way water should!

Look, a bucket of nastiness!  And this is only a quarter of the way through!  Heavens!

The truly scary thing is that Derek is such a terrifyingly capable adult that he has to have been one of the instructors in these classes.  And yet I was still snubbed?!  What have I married?





Seriously, though:  Escrow.  The first person to attempt to explain this concept to me was an English teacher in high school, and the last was Derek for the fifth time.  My brain simply refuses to understand.  Send help, or maybe a flow chart?  Are flow charts something that could be used to explain escrow?  I wouldn't know.

Three Books

The Slow Regard of Silent Things by Patrick Rothfuss

I did not expect to like this book.

Yes, I loved the first two books in his Kingkiller Chronicles, but the author freely admits- both on his blog and in the foreword of the book itself- that this book is not for everyone.
Now, I'm hoping that if you're any kind of fan of the fantasy genre, you've already read his first two books, and if you haven't, I'm actually a little jealous, because you now get to experience them for the first time.  They're also a kind of prerequisite to any understanding of this book, because although not really a full volume within the series, it still exists within the world of Kvothe and Denna and the Four Corners, except this one is... different.  It's strange and dreamy and Other.

But if you like beautiful language, and words being used in an unexpected, playful, evocative way, and are able to unclinch enough to try a story that doesn't flow within the normal banks of storytelling, then I'd highly, highly recommend this one.  I finished it, then flipped right back to the beginning, just to wallow in the wordplay and mystery.  It's not for everyone, but perfect for a few.





Small Victories:  Spotting Improbable Moments of Grace by Anne Lamott

What will I ever do if Anne Lamott stops writing her essays on tiny things like faith and prejudice and hypocrisy and surviving life?  Just... quit, I guess.  Go on strike?  A life strike?  I like plenty of other current Christian nonfiction authors just fine, I guess, but when you're trying to not only identify but also extract eye-planks, tweezers just aren't going to cut it; no, you need Lamott-shaped pliers.  A curious thing happens when I read her stuff:  I simultaneously feel as though I've got a long way to go, like I've got my work cut out for me when it comes to this Jesus stuff, but also like I maybe shouldn't be so hard on myself.  I checked this one out from the library, but have already decided I need to go and buy a copy of my very own so I can underline a word or thirty here and there.








The Man Who Mistook His Wife For a Hat: And Other Clinical Tales by Oliver Sacks

When I started reading this book, I imagined it was going to be an intriguing if relatively detached romp through the annals of some doctor's case histories.  Loopy but fun, right?  Well.  Dr. Sacks shamed me with the depth of his compassion and empathy for his patients, relating their, yes, highly unusual symptoms and behaviors, but never without giving the reader context, a brief look into the life of the patient.  He is unabashedly fascinated by his own work, but the part that struck me was the overall teaching tone, that of a striving to educate the reader, give them a glimpse into what it must be like for those suffering from these unique but not always rare diseases.  I enjoyed every piece, and it actually helped me a bit; at the time I read it I was at the height of my own (slightly insane) belief I was going to lose function of my right hand at some point (I had absolutely no reason to believe this aside from my own completely unfounded but deceptively charming paranoia), and I was doing as many things as possible with my left, all of which did expand my ambidexterity, with the notable exception of putting my contacts in my eyes, which turned out to be frankly dangerous with my left hand.  Aaaaaanyhoo, I felt much less crazy after reading this.  Whatever it takes, man.

Just Trying to Save Lives, Here

Earlier this week I got a bad paper cut and discovered that if I'm ever in any real trouble and Caedmon and I are the only ones home, we're both pretty much screwed.

I got the cut while reading a book with unusually heavyweight pages, and while it didn't hurt much, by the time Cade and I left to get the kids from school I'd been bleeding for close to an hour; I just couldn't get it to stop.  Upon disembarking from the bus, Adelaide and Atticus took immediate notice of the blood-soaked kleenex wrapped around my hand, and on the short walk home, Adelaide took what I think was rather perverse enjoyment from musing about whether I had lost enough blood to lose consciousness (I hadn't.  Not even close.).  That, of course, reminded me that we hadn't done any Mom's-Unconscious-What-Now? Drills lately- incredibly irresponsible of me; I fall and accidentally start small fires in our home too often for me to shirk these kinds of duties.

Adelaide and Atticus only needed a brief refresher course on how to use my phone and how to dial 911 and how to call anyone else on my phone, plus what to do if my phone is missing (I can't find my phone half my waking hours.  I used to keep it in my pocket but it kept falling out and into water and under the wheels of my van.  Really, it's safer this way.), which is basically just going from neighbor to neighbor until someone answers the door.  

Caedmon, however, decided to obsess about which house he was going to first, what technique he was going to use to bang on their door, and whether or not there might be any cookies in each house that could possibly be shared with him.  When receiving a tutorial on how to call 911 on my cell phone, he wouldn't stop gazing fondly at the photo of himself that is my phone's wallpaper to listen to his sister's impatient instructions.  I'd like to think she would have eventually gotten through to him, but Atticus started crying, apparently getting freaked out because I'd been lying unresponsive on the floor a bit too long for his comfort, especially when blood started to pool under my outstretched, limp hand.  (Hey- when you're doing Mom's-Unconscious-What-Now? Drills you go big or home.  And by "go big" I mean collapse as realistically as possible and answer zero questions from your useless offspring, because how else will they learn?)

I did eventually stop bleeding, but haven't made much headway in the days since while trying to educate our youngest in the ways of Saving Mommy's Life.  He does well with the practice EpiPen (aside from that one little incident of pretending to stab it in my temple- but we agreed not to bring that one up), and I know I can count on him to at least save himself by running to a neighbor's before getting distracted by toys or dust motes, but he's never going to be on one of those recorded 911 calls where the plucky preschooler calls in, saving their guardian's life.

And just a little side note:  If you're having trouble teaching your kids to care enough about you to dial 911, do yourself a favor and DO NOT google "dog calls 911" because apparently ALL DOGS love their owners more than Caedmon loves me.

Hello, NARCISSIST.

Of Mind Games and Manipulation

I need all of you today.  Every last one.  (Every last one except you, creeper, who keeps finding our blog by searching for "kids sleeping feet."  Your services are not required.  Begone.)

The rest of you, gather round.  I want you all to pretend you were good at group projects in school even though those were the days you knew you should have held the thermometer against the bathroom light bulb to fake a fever.  (All together, now:  Group projects were the worst.  Who knew that working together would lower the collective IQ of all these people your grade suddenly depends upon?  And by the way, I was an absolute jewel to work with in those settings.  I definitely didn't close my eyes and massage my forehead in lieu of screaming "GET THERE FASTER!" a la Chandler Bing at my classmates, nor did I silently cross out every other word in thick black Sharpie on the piece of shared butcher paper we were supposed to be using for a brainstorming session because misspellings are against my religion.  The only class in which group work should be allowed is upper level Spanish, because it takes every single brain available to figure out when to use subjunctive verbs and to make sure you're not calling the Pope a potato.  But I digress.)

Here's the problem I need every last one of your minds to noodle over:

I think Adelaide is messing with me.  But she might not be.  Except she probably is.  Or not.


A little back story might be helpful.

A few years ago, Adelaide got off the bus all upset because several kids had been tossing a dirty, dirty lie around about Santa Claus.  Namely that he doesn't exist.

She asked me why they would say such a thing.  I hemmed and hawed and tried to distract her with shiny things and cookies but she kept pressing me.  I tried "If you don't believe you don't receive," but because she is inconveniently bright this was an unacceptable response.  She hounded me so much I tried filing harassment paperwork with management, but it turns out I'm management and have no filing system.  All this ended with me admitting that All right, FINE, there is no, no, NO SANTA CLAUS,  ARE YOU HAPPY DAUGHTER?

She wasn't happy.  She cried.  I was exasperated but relieved that she finally knew.  I gave her a stern lecture on not ruining it for her brothers.  The earth once again spun on its axis.


But now?  Now... she's acting like she believes in Santa again.  At first I thought she was just putting up an altruistic front for the benefit of the two younger believers in our house.  The other day, however, I said something about a gift she had received from Derek and I one Christmas, and her response was, "What?  I got that from Santa, remember, Mom?"  And I just kind of looked real hard at her, trying to divine her thoughts from her facial expressions, but MY GOSH her face is all innocence and earnestness.

She's in third grade, which is definitely in Santa-Disbelief Territory, right?  Except that she's more immature than her classmates in certain ways, one of which is continuing to play make believe games, and isn't Santa the ultimate Make Believe Game?

But... we talked about this.  She knows he's not real.  Doesn't she?

So now we're at the point where I'm asking her all kinds of testing questions like, "Isn't it funny how Santa always uses the same wrapping paper I do for all the rest of the gifts under the tree?" and "I find it extremely curious that Santa's handwriting and mine are so similar you might even call them IDENTICAL."  But then she comes back at me with, "Mom, Santa's been doing this for centuries, don't you think he's intentionally using the same wrapping paper parents do, and by now he's got to be some kind of hand writing expert to mimic each parent's handwriting, all just to throw the older kids and adults off."  She continues on in this vein in such a calm, reasonable tone of voice that I find myself looking at gifts I'm 99% sure I purchased for the kids last summer, but hang on, my memory of buying this lip gloss set is actually pretty darn fuzzy and I don't really recall getting this toy for Atticus at all ohmygosh SANTA?

So, tell me, friends and comrades minus sleeping-kids-feet guy:  Is my daughter even now laughing at me on the school playground while she devises her newest strategy to undermine my hold on mental wellness?  Should I be searching her room for notes titled something like "The power of suggestion and my mother's psyche:  A case study."  And most importantly- SANTA:  REAL OR NOT REAL?

Look at her, lulling you into a false sense of affection, like all she's doing is reading To Kill a Mockingbird and eating oatmeal like our own little eight-year-old old lady.  DIABOLICAL.

A Sigh For Help

I've made no secret of the fact that generally, when I'm the lone adult in the house and I hear a foreign noise, my brain decides it's clearly someone trying to break into our house or someone creeping through our basement or someone about to attack our children slumbering in their beds or aliens.

I've gotten used to this.  I know exactly which items- in a pinch- could be used for weapons in each room of our house.  I (along with Adelaide's help) have plotted different escape routes from different areas of the house, depending on where the threat is originating from.  I have spoken with our children about how bad guys often wear good guy faces, about what to do and where to go if they feel threatened or even slightly suspicious.  We have passwords.

Still, sometimes a new threat emerges.  Something that I'm afraid is threatening the safety of our family.

There's a new sound in our bedroom.


It happens almost every time I walk in the door of the bedroom.  One to two steps in, and I hear what sounds like the sigh of a human being.

The first couple times I heard it, I walked all the way around our bed, expecting to find one of our children hiding there, because to my mind, there's really nothing else that could be capable of that sound- a single, faint sigh of a person.  When I didn't find one, I did not freak out, thankyouverymuch.  (That came five trips/five sighs later, and has been steadily increasing every time I hear it.  So if I seem a little, I don't know, twitchier than normal in my own house, don't be alarmed.  Or do, I guess.)

I have talked to Derek about this.  He kept the resigned, Why Did I Have To Marry A Crazy Person look that often appears on his face relatively reined in, walked into our bedroom several times, listening carefully, while I hovered nearby.  He didn't hear anything, because when he walks in, there's nothing to hear.  (I DON'T KNOW WHAT THIS MEANS.)  And I never hear it when anyone else is with me.  (I DON'T KNOW WHAT THIS MEANS EITHER.)

I would just like to insert here that I'M NOT CRAZY.  And yes, I realize that that is a statement that often characterizes crazy people.  I'm a little anxious and perhaps a trifle paranoid, but I have no history of auditory hallucinations- when I say I hear a person sighing when I walk into my bedroom, I mean I hear a person sighing when I walk into my bedroom.

Now here's where you come in:  Please, please, please give me a rational explanation for this.  I've checked all around the bedroom door, to see if it's brushing against anything when I walk in.  I've walked and bounced and hopped across the floor to check for squeaky or, um, sigh-ey floorboards.  What else could it be?  Aside from some technological contraption Derek set up to freak me out?  Or ghosts?  (Which I'm 99% sure I don't believe in.)  Or aliens?  (Which I'm 98% sure I do.)

Suspicious Previous Owners

Four years ago, I became convinced we had a dead body in our backyard.

Four years and two months ago, we moved into this house.


It's August of 2009.  In the short time since we've moved into our house, we've been doing normal cleaning and moving in-type stuff, mostly focused on the interior of our home.

One day I venture into the backyard to investigate the compost heap the previous owners so kindly left behind for us (<---- I've tried typing that statement several different ways and it always sounds sarcastic, but it's not- I really was happy that this was a feature of our new yard), digging through it a bit to see what they've been piling on there.

Then I notice the giant black trash bags.

There were at least a dozen of them, and they were piled high in the small space between the fencing of the compost heap and the corner of the fence that surrounds our yard.  They all seemed to be hugely full.  I tentatively grabbed the drawstring of one, pulled to test the weight, and discovered that it was absurdly heavy.

Obviously there was a dead body in there.

In my mind, there was no other possible explanation.  Yes, those were the huge black yard waste-style trash bags (big enough for a body), but why on earth would you put grass clippings and such in bags when you have a two compost bins, a fire pit, and miles of flower beds that need to be mulched?

I poked at the top layer of bags a bit with a stick, and while it didn't feel like poking a dead body (because I have so much experience in the "poking corpses with sticks" field), it was more than conceivable to me that they filled the top bags with leaves or whatever and buried the body somewhere in the morass of supposed yard waste.  It was quite brilliant, really.  The compost pile would help disguise the smell of decomposition (or so I'm led to believe based on my considerable knowledge gleaned from murder mystery books), and after a few years it would all be more organic nutrients for the garden, anyway!

This is really not where I meant to go with this post.


I decided a dead body was way more than I was willing to deal with and, thanks to my possibly unhealthy ability to compartmentalize, willfully ignored those trash bags for four years.


Until a few weeks ago.

I finally decided it was time for me to grow up and find out exactly what was hiding in there.  Astonishingly (to no one but me), there were no humans anywhere in that mess, dead or otherwise, although I did have a bad moment when one of the bags broke open when I was dragging it into the open, it burst open, and thousands of roly polies came swarming out.

I got the corner cleaned out.  The bags contained grass clippings, leaves, and pine cones.  And the roly poly family reunion.  And an earthworm that was so big I thought it was a snake at first.

Maybe in another four years I'll have screwed up enough courage to clear away the cinder blocks piled out side the back of our fence (why would they have left a pile of those things in such a strange, out-of-the-way location?  CLEARLY something is afoot here).

Why Not Dad?

Summer vacation has begun.

We're only two days in, and most of it has been fairly predictable.  Our living room floor looks like a library exploded on it.  I'm perpetually astonished by just how much three children eat all at the same time.  The kids are outside right now because "you can come back in when I'm done writing this post, now get away from that door or so help me I will lock you out!  Again!"

The one slightly jarring note exists during their imaginative play time.  I say that like it's a set time of day:  First we eat a hot, nutritious breakfast that I arose early to prepare, then we practice math drills lest our brains turn to sludge, then we engage in Imaginative Play Time.  (I hope you realize that every single piece of that previous phrase is so ludicrously false that I giggled madly the entire time I typed it.  "Imaginative Play Time" is code for Get Out of This House Before I Kill You All, I refuse to prepare anything more complicated than cereal before 10 am, and math drills?  I don't think I even need to explain the joke in that one.)

In general, Adelaide is in charge of any imaginary play.  If the boys are pretending to eat mushroom stew, it's because Adelaide wanted to play Indians.  If the boys are following her around, yipping, it's because Adelaide wanted to play Dogs (although she did let them choose their own names; Atticus chose Ruffy while Caedmon went for the slightly less conventional Hay Bale), and if Adelaide is sulking it's because the boys found their spines and revolted.

Whatever the game, there's one constant that runs through them all:  At some point, usually toward the beginning, while they're still setting up the basic parameters, one of my three darlings will dramatically turn toward the others and announce, "And let's pretend the Mom's DEAD."

This stipulation is, without fail, met with grisly satisfaction from the two other siblings.  It's also said louder and with more emphasis, almost like they want to be completely sure I hear that one detail, even if I miss everything else.

"Hey, let's pretend we're Indians, and I'm the medicine woman, and you're a warrior, and Caedmon's a papoose."
"And let's pretend the Mom's DEAD."
"Yeah!"

"Okay, I'm the nice robot, and you're trying to fix me, but we can't find all the right parts."
"And let's pretend the Mom's DEAD."
"YES."

"Let's all pretend we're cheetahs, and I'm the fastest so I always get all the prey."
"I'm tired of playing that game."
"And our cheetah Mom is DEAD."
"Oh, okay."


I've tried to stuff my ears with feeble explanations like "Well, I'm just such a constant in their lives they can't imagine life without me so the fact that their favorite game is pretending I'm dead is clearly just evidence that our level of familial bonding has reached a new and higher level in the basic hierarchy of human needs."  Which is such a serious crock you'd almost think Freud had come up with it.

Don't worry, though; it may bother me a little bit now, but give me another couple weeks of summer vacation and I'll be begging them to play the "Mommy's Dead" game, so long as they do it outside.

The Lazy Composter

You just never know about people.

Walking down the street, that person you pass by could be an axe murderer.  They could have a person walled into a corner of their basement.  They might not compost.

Okay, so maybe that one isn't that big of a deal.  Having a person in your basement, I mean.  Maybe you're a hardcore Edgar Allan Poe fan.  Maybe you've completely thrown yourself into the recent 'vintage' fad and have taken on an indentured servant.  Maybe you were lonely.

People who don't compost, though?  Oh, man.

Now, I'm not saying that if you don't compost we can't be friends.  We can.  Probably.  Especially if you live in the city/ have a yard the size of a postage stamp/ have 3+ small children in your home.  Then I suppose I can understand it.

Otherwise?  Why the heck aren't you composting already?


You know what composting is?  It's throwing your trash in a pile.  That's it.  Sure, you can make it super complicated.  Some people (like those who write entire books about composting) can make anything difficult.  I am not one of them.



How about a quick Composting for the Completely Inept and/or Lazy tutorial?

Step 1.  Pick a spot outside.  In your own yard would be preferable.  Wherever, it should be a sunny location.  We need our special trash to get nice and warm.

Beware:  This is where nurseries and seed catalogs and basically anyone trying to take your money will try and sell you one of those drum-things with a handle that you can turn.  If you feel your life won't be complete without it, go ahead.  But don't feel like you need anything remotely fancy to compost.  Our compost pile is comprised of four stakes surrounded by fine-gauge wire, with one side up against the fence for stability.  I know several people who just have a free-standing pile in their yards or garden.



Step 2.  Find a large bowl or pail or something, and throw your kitchen scraps in (banana peels, orange rinds, eggshells, etc).

Beware:  This is the step where people will try to sell you special composting pails.  This is a glorified trash can.  It does not need to be pretty.  Just make sure your two-year-old can carry it; I'm all about avoiding as much work as possible around here.



Step 3.  Start throwing the kitchen scraps onto the spot.  Any kind of fruit or vegetable waste is fine.  Eggshells are also great.  No meat or bones.  Paper and newsprint is also fine, provided it's shredded and isn't super heavy on the colored ink or has any kind of plastic anywhere on it.  Dryer lint, hair, and the gunk from your canister vacuum is also great.

Beware:  This is where you'll get people telling you things like, "Don't put citrus peels in your compost," and "Always wash out your eggshells before throwing in."  These are I-Live-To-Make-My-Life-As-Difficult-As-Possible kind of people and if you don't plug your ears and start singing "Abba" to make them run away, they'll make your life harder than it needs to be, too.



Step 4.  Throw some yard waste on, too.  I throw some leaves on in the fall, and grass clippings every once in a while.  I know a lot of people throw their weeds in theirs, but the big weed in our yard is Creeping Charlie, and if I throw it in there, it'll just make a giant mound of more Creeping Charlie rather than beautiful compost to put in my flower and vegetable beds.  My advice:  skip the weeds altogether.  Just burn 'em.  Also avoid thick sticks or twigs; they take too long to break down.  I don't put large pinecones in mine anymore for the same reason.

Beware:  This is where that same person will start talking about "hot composting" and "cold composting."  Just walk away.



Step 5.  Turn the pile, basically whenever you think about it.  For me, that's about twice a year.  Maybe you should do it more often than that.  I use a small pitchfork to do mine, which makes me feel all American.  And Gothic.  Put together.  (Who gets it?!)

Beware:  This is where that guy will try to talk you into Vermicomposting.  If you're that desperate to get fancy with your compost heap, dig a few worms up in the yard and throw them on.



Step 6.  This is the best step, because it's the one where one day you turn the pile and discover that there's beautiful, crumbly black compost in there, ready to add to your vegetable gardens and flower beds.  I try to add a scoop anytime I'm planting something- particularly perennial flowers- because hopefully they're going to be there a long time, and they need a healthy start.  Super easy, practically free.  You can't beat that.




Okay, my fellow composters:  What am I forgetting?  Any cheap and easy tricks I don't know about?

Adelaide's Having Yet Another Birthday

On my children's birthdays, I like to torture myself by looking at their past birthday photos.

 Ah, yes.  Adelaide's first birthday.  I went all crazy-first-time-mom on her and didn't let her have any sweets for that first year, with the exception of that one time her Daddy let her have a single taste of his ice cream cone and I half-convinced myself she was going to get instant diabetes.  

Because of all that, by the time her first birthday rolled around, she had (almost) never had any sweets, and had certainly never had the pleasure of tasting the deliciousness that is a Funfetti cupcake.  

Allow me to narrate.

Wondering just what this mysterious object her mother is unwrapping for her is because the previously mentioned overprotective psychopath has been withholding cake for her entire life.

But hey, she's brave.  She'll dive face-first into this thing that looks and smells nothing like the nasty pureed vegetables Mommy's been stuffing her with.

At this point she sat up, a little confused, because there's obviously crap all over her face, and she hadn't yet tasted it.  

Shortly thereafter, however, she drummed up the courage to take a little taste.  Then the feeding frenzy began.

I really wish the sound were better on this video, because what you can't hear is the crazy nostril-panting she's doing the whole time she's cramming that cupcake into her mouth (but you can certainly hear that over- achieving diva bird), and what you don't see is that every so often I have to wipe cake and frosting off her nose; she refused to take the cupcake away from her face in order to engage in such meaningless exercises as breathing.

I was looking for a decent recent photo of Adelaide to stick in here, but this is how she spends half her time, anyway.  I'm calling it good enough.

Happy 7th Birthday, Adelaide!

Do Androids Dream of Electric Flowers?

Since moving into our house a few years ago, I've been able to identify most of the existing flora.  There are a few, however, which continue to mystify me.  It also turns out that I'm not so great at describing my flowers to Google:  "Purple... uh, flower-shaped... flower.  And it's little."  Turns out "little purple flower" doesn't give that specific of results.  I had a teensy moment of irritation that Google couldn't just read my mind, but then I realized that if it could, it would mean the machines have finally taken over, which led to the malignant suspicion that maybe thoughts like "Jeez, Google, just read my mind already!" are how it all starts and maybe Google planted that thought in my mind and I should recognize it as the beginnings of the inevitable AI coup.

Terrifying robotic overlords aside, I'm going to be asking you guys for help throughout this growing season.  I'll be posting photos of unidentified flowers as they bloom, and maybe you guys- real human beings- will be able to help figure out what they are (and yes, I do see the irony of this whole conversation/ paranoid rant taking place on a blog hosted by Google).


So!  First flowers of spring, and I have no idea what they are.  That's a promising sign, right?

They're a darker purple than they appear in this photo, and small, and uh, flower-shaped.

See 'em in there?  Really small.

In other exciting flower news, two of the three drumstick primroses I planted last summer have survived the winter!  They didn't bloom at all last year, so here's hoping for buds sometime soon.

Any ideas as to what those little purple flowers are?  (COME ON, HUMANS!)

UPDATE:  Big thanks to Cassi Renee, who determined those mystery flowers to be Glory of the Snow!

Greenstick Fractures!

Yesterday afternoon.  It's been a normal day.  I'm helping Atticus lower himself to his bedroom floor.

 He performs this weird, sideways twisting motion on the way down, because he is physically and emotionally incapable of making normal motions; he must insinuate extra hops and twists and gyrations no matter what he's doing.  I'm not sure if this is a boy thing or a four-year-old thing.

I'm not sure when it happens, when the strange twisting motion turns into a cringe of pain, but suddenly he's on his stomach, screeching and trying to lift himself up, only to find that his left arm can't support his body weight.  He collapses, then fruitlessly tries to crawl into his bed, doing his hurt cry the whole time, while I gape in astonishment.  I honestly have no idea what has just happened.

I help him into this bed.  He's lying on his back, his left arm stretched out by his side.  The slightest movement causes screams of pain, and he freaks out anytime I give the slightest indication I'm going to touch it.

Now, Atticus is not my hypochondriac child.  I have one of those.  She acts like her leg is broken when she stubs her toe and begs to visit the ER when her stomach hurts.  If this had been Adelaide, I would have waited until I left the room to roll my eyes, heated up a rice pack, and robotically patted her head while muttering, "There, there."  (Depending on how hurt she has decided to be, she either begrudgingly finds this funny or is severely insulted.)

Atticus doesn't do that.  When he does his hurt cry, I know he's actually hurt.  So the fact that he was doing his hurt cry and couldn't move his arm, hand, or fingers kind of freaked me out.

So I called my mom.

After describing the situation, she said it sounded like it could be a greenstick fracture and recommended getting him in to see the doc for an x-ray.  (Do you know how rare it is for my mom to mention the words "Doctor" and "Go" in the same sentence?  That alone was enough to get me moving at warp speed.)

I got Cade up from his nap, and hustled him and his sister out to the van.

I very gingerly helped Atticus get out of his bed, and we made it down the stairs and outside with only about a dozen pained outbursts from Mr. Greenstick Fracture.

On the two-minute drive to the doc's office, I call my friend Shayla.  She offers to come pick Adelaide and Cade up, and calms me down after I semi-hysterically wail something like, "My mom said it sounded like a greenstick fracture, and I think that's the fracture that shows up in forearms of children suffering from child abuse and now I'm about to be arrested for child abuse I didn't commit!"  She's also a nurse, and reassured me that a kid has to come in three times with something like this for the parents to be arrested.  Which was comforting.  And terribly depressing.

We get to the office.  They get us in within two minutes.  We see a nurse and doctor within ten minutes, which is amazing given that our boys' regular doc is off that afternoon and another doc is squeezing us into her schedule.  I love small towns and small-town clinics.

The nurse is suitably impressed with my magazine-and-Ace-wrap splint.  I tell her my mom's a school nurse, and she coached me over the phone.  The nurse nods as if this makes more sense.  I may have been exhibiting a bit of the crazy eye at this point.

They do an x-ray.  Atticus gets a sucker.

The doctor comes back into the exam room.  There are no broken bones.  (HALLELUJAH!)  He has nursemaid's elbow.  The doc does that little twisting thing that I could have done at home, Atticus writhes in pain while it's being done, but once she feels it click into place, our son is miraculously fine again.

I feel a little foolish until the doc says that it really wasn't presenting like nursemaid's elbow (that Adelaide has had four or five times): he wasn't cradling his arm the way they usually do, he was complaining of pain in the wrong place, he didn't seem to mind when she was manipulating his elbow.  So it wasn't only me that was fooled.  Or maybe it was and the good doctor was just nice enough to pretend otherwise.  Either way, I'm satisfied.

I call my mom back.  She says that no, it's a spiral fracture that is indicative of child abuse.

All I remember is seeing two x-rays side by side in one of my psych textbooks, one greenstick and one spiral, and that one was a red flag for abuse and one wasn't.  Evidently all I took away from that was BROKEN FOREARM BONES (that's a technical term, friends) IN YOUR OFFSPRING MEANS YOU ARE THROWN IN JAIL AND YOUR CHILDREN ARE TAKEN FROM YOU.

All in all, it was an unnecessarily traumatic afternoon.  But I am extremely grateful that Atticus doesn't have a broken arm.  And that I'm not in prison.

Survival of the Fittest

It's inevitable that parents are going to screw up their kids.  We just are.  We're human.  It can still come as a bit of a shock, however, when we're faced with the specifics of that passed-down disfunction.

After Sandy Hook, Derek and I both talked to Adelaide about what had happened.  We knew she was going to find out about it at school (it was interesting to talk to parents who decided not to talk to their children about it- a decision I have absolutely no problem with and understand completely- who were then astonished to find that their kid had then heard a garbled version of the truth on the playground).  Obviously, the story as we related it to our daughter was heavily filtered, but still: she knew what had happened.  I then went on to talk about what I expected her to do if, God forbid, an armed gunman were ever to enter her elementary school or our church.  We talked about available building exits, which windows open and which don't, and the relative merits of hiding vs fighting vs fleeing.

We've continued in the vein of this conversation several times over the past few months; just the odd discussion here and there.  Every once in a while, though, something she does will take me by surprise.

At church a couple weeks ago, I was hanging up our coats and the boys were changing out of snow boots and into shoes when I noticed something strange around Adelaide's neck.

"Adelaide- isn't that the strap to one of your purses?"

"Yes."

"Why are you wearing... you know what?  Never mind.  Just take it off and put it in my bag.  You can put it back on after church."

"But Mom!  I need to wear this in my class!"

"Why would you need to wear a purse strap around your neck in class?"

"Because if a bad guy comes into my class this is my weapon!  See, I'd use this little hook thing to scratch his eyes out and then I'd loop the whole strap around his feet so he couldn't escape!"



Then yesterday she and I were making cookies when the conversation underwent a rapid shift from M&M's to home invasions.

"Hey, Mom, do you know what I'd do if a bad guy broke into our house and wanted to rob us?"

"Um, no."

"I'd tell him that there was a pearl necklace up in my room, and it would take him a few minutes to get up there and realize that the pearls aren't real, and while he's doing that we could escape."

"Uh, yeah, I don't really-"

"Or if there's ever bad guys that come in the house and we hear them coming before they see us, I have our escape routes all planned out.  (Goes on to detail a complex but well-thought-out plan.)  Then, Daddy could lift me over the back fence first, because I'm a really good climber and could help him, then I would be on the other side to help catch the boys."

I wasn't really sure how to respond at first.  I was torn between wanting to praise her for her forethought, the need to correct and point out the flaws in each plan so that she could correct them just in case the need ever does arrive to employ these plans, and subtly inquiring after her mental health.

I went with mental health.

"Adelaide, do you think about bad guys coming to get you a lot?"

"Of course I do!  Don't you?"

Oh, tricksy, tricksy.  Because the answer to that question is a resounding "Yes."  But I'm also not really comfortable with the idea of saddling a six year old with my personal brand of paranoia.  Alas, honesty won out.

"Yes, I do."  Now how to tell her that not everyone thinks this way and not make her feel like the freak she is?  "But you know, not everyone does.  In fact, I think the majority of people don't think about this kind of thing nearly as often as we do."

"Well, that just means that if something terrible happens to a whole bunch of people, we're going to be the ones to survive, and they're going to wish they'd made all kinds of great plans like I do every day."


Hard to argue with that.

A List. For You. On Monday.

I'm tired.  I bet I know what will make me feel better:   A list!  (Obviously.)

• Derek got back from his annual ESPN Golf Extravaganza Saturday night.  No, it's not something sponsored by ESPN; it's a little vacation he takes to Florida each January with a bunch of his former ESPN co-workers where he gets to golf his big heart out.  I didn't mention it last week because... well, because I'm not crazy.  I'm not sure if you had noticed, but this blog exists on a little something called the internet, which means just about anyone can read it, which means advertising the fact that my husband isn't home is on par (geddit?) with draping our house in neon and issuing an invitation to home invaders everywhere to come pillage to their crooked souls' content.  NO THANK YOU.  Anyway, the kids and I survived the week- it's actually getting a lot easier the older they get, shocker- and he made it back home safely.  Derek and I have also discussed that in return, I'll get to go see my sisters and their families some three-day-weekend soon (which I just remembered I haven't talked to them about yet- Surprise and You're Welcome, Kelli and Steph!).

• Adelaide has a new love:  Checkers.  She's gotten to the point where she can beat the computer 10 times out of 12 on the Easy level, and I can only win against her by a increasingly-narrow margin.  This is partially due to the fact that she played a whole bunch with her Daddy over Christmas break, and he gave her helpful instructions like, "Strategize:  Always think at least two moves ahead."  Which she, of course, took to heart.  So when she plays me, who thinks about strategy for the first five moves but then gets bored with checkers and just wants it to be over as quickly as possible, I begin to seem like a less than worthy opponent.  I'm terrified Chess is next.

• I looked down at both Adelaide and Caedmon when we got to church yesterday and realized that there was a two- to three- inch gap between their socks and the hems of their pants, and the sleeves of their shirts ended far above the wrist.  They appear to be going through a growth spurt.  AGAIN.  (Who could ever have seen this coming?)

• Does anybody know what the story on Downton Abbey is?  I know it's a BBC show that I think airs on PBS around here, but what I want to know is:  What is with the obsession?  Is this something I should be watching?  Does anyone have any idea?

• I've started getting seed catalogs in the mail, which makes me anxious for spring.  (Only 5 more months 'til my final frost date!  Holy cow, that's depressing.)  I cannot wait to get back in my flower beds.  They look so sad right now, all blanketed in white, a few spindly pieces of brown spearing up through the snow here and there.  I keep telling myself the snow is good protection for all those bulbs I planted in the fall, and that hopefully these low temps will help kill off more bugs for this summer- particularly the Japanese Beetles.  

• I just started my Christmas Thank-You's today.  Does this make me a terrible person?  I'll just think of it as me doing my part to extend the holiday cheer well into the new year.  Yeah, that's it.  

Some Things Should Just Be Banned

Most weekdays, Derek gets up super early and goes to the gym to work out before heading off to work.  Then, in the evenings, after we've put the kids to bed, I go for my walk.  Thus we both get some kind of physical exercise in on most days.

Last week, however, Derek missed a couple mornings at the gym.  This might be due to the fact that he was getting up at night with Atticus more than usual.  I guess being screamed at throughout the night kind of kills your motivation.

To make up for those missed mornings, as soon as I walked in the door from my evening walk, he left for the gym.


So there I was one evening last week, post-walk, sitting in the rocking chair, laptop in my lap, tv on to drown out all the scary things I hear when Derek's gone and it's dark outside.

Out of nowhere, I heard a whistle.

I don't mean a lifeguard's whistle or a train whistle; this was definitely human, more the kind of little three-note whistle you might give to catch someone's attention.

And I had heard it

in my house

downstairs

somewhere close to me

from a human being.


I flipped out.

BUT, to my credit, if you were watching me, you would never have known that I was flipping out.  Checking my vital signs, sure, but just looking, nope.  I stayed completely still (even though my heart was racing), continued to click my finger on the mouse at random intervals (even though I had no idea what was on the computer screen; I was too busy straining to see movement in my peripheral vision), glanced up at the television every once in awhile (to increase the range of said peripheral vision).

This is my standard protocol when I think a home invasion has occurred:  act natural, continue doing whatever you're doing even while your ears are straining for the slightest abnormal noise (don't worry, they'll find plenty of fodder to give you heart attack after heart attack), then casually make your way to whatever stations you have in your home that house weapons against just such a situation- preferably something heavy or poisonous or pointy or that involves gunpowder.

I was following the protocol beautifully, especially for someone convinced that there was a man in the front room watching her.  I had just moved to get up and retrieve my something poisonous (hairspray) along with my something heavy (favorite cast iron skillet), 'cause I'm a two-handed warrior.  You have been warned.

Then Atticus started crying.

If you know us and/or have read this blog for any length of time, you know that Atticus crying/screaming/thrashing throughout the night is pretty normal around here.

I thought about going ahead and retrieving my weapons, but I was afraid this would tip the intruder off; wouldn't a normal mother go straight upstairs to comfort her crying child?

Instead I walked as calmly as I could toward the stairs, expecting a blow to the head at any second.

I made it to the stairs.  (I know, you're shocked, right?)

I also made it up the stairs without harm.  (Surprise after surprise today.)

I settled Atticus back down, then stood at the top of the stairs, listening intently.

And I heard it again.



THIS GUY WAS TOTALLY MESSING WITH  ME.  Obviously, what was happening here was that some guy had broken into our house, saw me on the laptop, whistled in a menacingly friendly manner, you know, just to let me that he was there, waited to see what I would do, watched me go up the stairs but didn't do anything because that would be the obvious kill, and this guy was evidently a subtle homicidal maniac, and when it became apparent that I was waiting him out, he whistled again to let me know that the game was still on.

(By the way, I didn't call the cops on the off chance that I was wrong about the whole there's-a-deranged-killer-in-my-house thing; if I called the cops every time I thought someone was out to get me, our kids would have been taken away a long time ago.)

Eventually I walked down the stairs (I would have crept but there is no creeping down our stairs- our house is 112 years old, no one seems to have done any home repair on them in all that time, and I kind of think they just like to make you feel like an elephant as you walk up and down them).  I had a sudden burst of bravery (or sanity, I often confuse those two), turned on the light to the front room, and encountered...

no one.

Apparently he had slunk into a different room of the house.


At that point, Derek walked in the front door, I said something like, "OH MAH GAH!" and babbled out the entire story to him.

He then told me that the whistle was the iPad that he had brought home from work.

"Your iPad was whistling at me?"

"No, it means I had an incoming message."


So my question now is this:  Who does that?  Who makes technology that makes pseudo-friendly human sounds specifically designed to freak people out?  Or perhaps if not specifically designed for that purpose, then with that being the obvious byproduct?

One of these days someone's going to have a real cardiac episode or stroke and there's going to be a lawsuit.

Because I can't be the only one freaked out by that stuff.

A Perfectly Normal "Honey-Do" List

You know how sometimes you just get completely overwhelmed by life in general and things start to spin out of control and you feel like your brain is melting and you start checking your shoulders to make sure it's not oozing out your ears?

Come on, now.  I know it's not just me.


I had one of those days a couple weeks ago.  I don't even really remember what was so overwhelming about that day- it was probably just grocery day or something.  Something about hauling three small children around three different stores trying to get everything on the list, not losing the list itself, trying to get the best possible price for everything, and keeping those same children from burning down the store sometimes makes my pulse pound in my ears and sets off an adorable little tic under my left eye.

I'm pretty sure this was one of those days.

Toward the end of this particular day, I went out to check out our vegetable garden.  Last year, Derek's mom helped me build a fence around a small section of the backyard that's a good 3 1/2 feet tall, and also extends underground several inches to keep out those adorable, fuzzy-wuzzy little heathens that I have fantasies about burning on a homemade pyre set up over our fire pit (you may know them as rabbits).  Shortly after erecting this fence last summer, I planted zucchini and pumpkins and watermelons and basil and I don't remember what else.

I got a lot of nice basil.  I also got about a dozen little pumpkins, a few zucchini, and zero watermelons.  All because of the squash bugs.

Rabbits make me see red and feel like I should be on blood pressure medication.  Squash bugs wither my soul and make me want to curl up in the fetal position and suck my thumb.

I'm not sure which I hate more: rabbits, squash bugs, or Japanese beetles.

There's just something so discouraging about putting all this time and effort into a garden, then seeing it eaten away by insects.

So this year, I decided I wasn't even going to bother with the garden.  I had given it love and affection last year, and it had given me so little in return.  If it wanted to be that way, I would shun it.  I would paint a scarlet "A" on its breast and turn my face away.  I would plant nothing.


Except some watermelon.  And a few tomato plants.  I had to give it one last, tiny chance.

After I planted those seeds and seedlings, however, I made good on my promised neglect.  I did no weeding.  I did not thin the watermelon seedlings.  I did not water.  I did not stake the tomato plants, but let them sprawl along the ground.  I let the other 2/3 of the fenced vegetable patch go wild, so that it looked like I was growing a crop of creeping Charlie and grass.


On the brain-melting day, I went to go check out the little garden I'd been so studiously ignoring.  And guess what?  Those little plants were thriving.  (As were the grass and creeping Charlie, in case you were wondering.)

Then I made the mistake of counting all the under-ripe fruit in there.

I counted seven watermelons.  Then I started counting the tomatoes.  When I got to thirty, I started freaking out.

I'm not really sure what was going on in my head.  I somehow took that whole crazy day and put it onto the garden.  And guess what?  Things were going well in the garden.  And that was not good.

I don't know why, but when things are going really well, I panic a little bit.  If I can't find anything wrong with a situation or a day or whatever, I become all gloom and doom.  Here we go, I think.  Things are too perfect, which means there's a tornado coming.  Or someone's about to die.  Or that tree is going to spontaneously fall onto our house.  

It's like I take the whole "calm before the storm" cliche too far and apply it to my entire way of thinking.  There's probably a fancy psychological term for this, but I don't know what it is.  All I know is, I don't like it when everything is just right.  Something needs to be just a little bit off, or you're just begging for some calamity to befall you.


Anyway.  I'm in the backyard, muttering about counting chickens before they hatch and tomatoes before they're ripe when I hear Derek's car pull into the drive.  The kiddos and I race into the house in time for him to come in the front door and me to announce, "YOU NEED TO GO PEE IN THE BACKYARD.  RIGHT NOW."

He was a little bewildered and made me repeat myself like ten times (possibly hoping he was just mis-hearing me), but I finally explained that I had recently read something about human urine helping keep vermin away from your plants, and that he had better equipment for aiming right around the perimeter of the garden, and then I tried to explain my little meltdown, but the entire time I'm talking my voice is getting higher and higher and I'm talking faster and faster and I'm starting to sound a teensy bit manic.


This whole post has gone on way longer than I intended, so let me just tell you that I did eventually calm down, Derek did not relieve himself in our yard (something about  laws on indecent exposure and not feeling the need to "go"), and Derek's mom told me about a delightful little insecticide that keeps squash bugs away- which is thus far working.

I have ventured into the garden one time since then- to pick our first, perfect tomato- and managed to keep the crazies at bay.

For now.

Oh My Goodness, I Love You

Yesterday, Adelaide and I got to go on a Mommy-Daughter Date.

I don't know if it's because I'm usually busy corralling her brothers or I just can't hear her when she does talk, but it's been awhile since I spent a day really focusing just on Adelaide and paying sole attention to what she has to say.

I had forgotten how funny she is, and just how delighted I am with half the stuff that comes out of her mouth.

We started at Chili's for lunch.

"Mom, I highly recommend the quesadillas, but you can get whatever you want.  But you should probably get the quesadillas.  And you should probably go ahead and look over the menu before we start talking so that you can pick what you want to eat.  Then I'll tell you why I think they named this restaurant 'Chili's'."

"Oh, my goodness, Adelaide.  I just love you."



After lunch we went to a couple stores, browsing and looking around.  Upon entering a clothing store, Adelaide picked up the sleeve of a shirt hanging next to her and asked, "Mom, what is this?"

"It's a peasant blouse."

"Well, it looks like a peasant blouse exploded all over the inside of this store."

And it did.  Everywhere you looked, peasant-hippy-wear.

"Oh my goodness, Adelaide.  I love you."



Right before we went to the theater, we went to a gas station to pick up some sweet contraband.  Adelaide spent nearly ten minutes perusing the candy aisle before finally choosing a giant, swirled, multi-colored lollipop.  As we exited the store, she happily told me, "I chose this one because it will make me feel really old-fashioned while I'm eating it and I can pretend to be Laura Ingalls Wilder while watching a movie.  This is pretty much the best day ever."

"Oh my goodness, I love you, Adelaide."



Then we went to see the movie "Brave."  We got there a little early, and Adelaide was inspecting the curtains covering the screen in the theater while we waited for the previews to start.  When the lights dimmed and the curtain began to rise, she scrunched down in her seat next to me and whispered, "I'm a little bit frightened of those curtains because I keep thinking something scary is hiding behind them.  I thought the same thing with the curtains at The Nutcracker, but I didn't say anything because I didn't want to alarm anyone."

"Oh my goodness, I love you.  Also, I'm sorry."

"What are you sorry for?"

"Genetic paranoia."

Oldies But Goodies... One Last Time

    --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Cast Iron 
(Originally published 04/18/2011)



I love my cast iron skillet.  It was a hand-me-down from Derek's mom.  I feel that used cast iron cookware is usually better than new because it's already been seasoned, so I don't have to mess with any of that business.  I love to use my skillet for upside-down cakes, cornbread, and elementary home defense.

Perhaps I should explain.

Derek was gone on a business trip last week.  This meant I had to hold down the fort for a few days by myself.  Fortunately, it was warm and beautiful outside, so I let the kids run themselves into exhaustion in the backyard every afternoon.  This gave us all space during the day, and they slept soundly at night.

My nights, however, were a different story.

After I finally get the older two kiddos into bed, I bounce Caedmon around for awhile before laying him down.  Peruse the bookshelves for something to re-read because I haven't been to the library in a while.  Settle into the rocking chair in the living room.  Immerse myself in a favorite story.

Hear strange sounds.  Outside the window.  In the basement.  Upstairs.  In the laundry room.

I concentrate harder on the book and tell myself it's just the house settling.  It is, after all, an old house, and after 111 years on this earth I think she's earned the right to creak a bit.  Even if it does cause minor cardiac episodes in the chest of her owner.

After an hour or so of this, I put down my book, tidy up a bit downstairs.  Load the dishwasher, wipe down the high chair.  Grab the cast iron skillet out of the kitchen cabinet and carry it upstairs with me.

I wash up in the bathroom, change into my pajamas.  Nestle the skillet into Derek's side of the bed.

I really feel at this point that I should explain something.  I don't have a weird skillet fetish.  This piece of cookware just happens to be my weapon of choice- I need something in reaching distance when an intruder takes advantage of Derek's absence and breaks into the house.  We don't have any guns, and knives are out -our children often climb into the bed to wake me up in the morning.  Plus cast iron has a nice, reassuring heft to it.  I need two hands to lift it any higher than shoulder- height, (I had to practice, didn't I?) so it's pretty heavy.

I may or may not have read Fried Green Tomatoes At The Whistle Stop Cafe one too many times.

And seen the movie once or twice.

But I promise, if I ever do whack the boogie man over the head with my skillet, I will not chop him up and serve him to you barbeque-style.

Although I do think Head Country barbeque sauce could make just about anything taste good.  Maybe the secret really is in the sauce.

I did not end up having to use the skillet in a defensive capacity.  Derek returned home, and I returned the pan to the cabinet, where it will stay until I make an apple cake.

Or my husband leaves again.