Left-Handed Housewife

2012-02-09T16:30:00.000-08:00

Sawtooth Star quilt top

I continue to enjoy good health, you'll be happy to hear. Will, on the other hand, upon learning that the University of Carolina had been defeated by Duke in basketball, developed a stomachache and couldn't be convinced to go to school. Both universities are near our home, and people in this area tend to love one and hate the other. Will, like his dad, is a Carolina man. Jack could not care less.

I did finally get Will to school, an hour late. It's hard to know what to do with a stomachache, unless the child is actually throwing up, in which case you send him to school as fast as you can. But Will was not throwing up or doing anything else icky. He was crying, though, and tears are tough. I let him go back to bed for an hour, and then sent him on his way, where I'm sure he was razzed mercilessly by his Duke-loving friends and took it like a man.

I made some pillows; aren't they nice? You can find the pattern for the envelope pillow case here: http://www.curbly.com/users/diy-maven/posts/892-how-to-make-an-envelope-pillow. Each case took approximately five minutes, from the cutting out to the sewing up.

When I took this picture I didn't realize my laundry basket was in the frame. It sort of spoils the House Beautiful effect of my fancy new pillows, doesn't it? But maybe it makes you feel at home. Do you mind when you go into somebody else's house and it's messy?

Pilates with Sarah tomorrow! If you never hear from me again, that's why.

Start Over

2012-02-07T17:38:00.001-08:00

Vines. I'm in love with vines! This year has been the best year
for vines on record.What is it about 2012 and vines? I just don't know.

Okay, I feel like I'm finally getting a foothold on 2012. January turned out to be kind of a wash. First there was this to do, and then there was that to do, and then Will got sick, and then I got sick, and last week, when I said I was better? It turned out I wasn't. I had a fever all week and had no energy at all.

But now, my dears, I am really and truly better. I have energy! I'm almost done with a new (small) quilt top, and I made two pillowcases that are just darling (pictures soon), and I've been to the gym twice this week.

I'm back, baby!

So, my friend Sarah has joined my gym, and now she's forcing me to go to classes with her (Just kidding, Sarah! I'm going of my own free will!). The thing is, Sarah is very young, and I am very old. When she hears that there's a class at the gym titled "Dance Fusion," she thinks, "Fun!" I think, "Oh, my poor knees!"

But she made me go, and you know what? It was fun! We did a lot of hip gyrating, that's for sure. Maybe next time I'll take a video and post it. I'm sure Sarah wouldn't mind. On Friday we're going to try Pilates, and maybe the cycling class afterwards. And then who knows what else Sarah will talk me into. Zumba, probably.

I would like to report that I have lost five pounds in 2012. I'm halfway to my 2012 goal, with almost eleven months left to go. I might actually pull this off ...

I think that's it for now. I'm feeling very sleepy after all that gyrating. Imagine!

Monday

2012-01-30T06:49:00.001-08:00

I think I'm finally over the bug. It got progressively worse Friday and Saturday, then yesterday it started to fade. The good news is that I got a ton of reading done, which is always nice. I finished The Forgotten Garden by Kate Morten, which I enjoyed very much, and read a moving memoir about parenting a special needs child, The Boy in the Moon by Ian Brown.

I also spent time with The Wind and the Willows, which has been visiting me on its tour around the States. As far as I can tell, it's a book of poetry masquerading as a novel. Strangely, I think the playfulness of the language is one of the reasons Jack and I didn't love it as a read-aloud. There's all sorts of lovely bits that, reading by yourself, you go over several times just for the pleasure of it. But I remember reading it aloud at bedtime, how slow it all felt, and I remember that sensation from childhood as well--not enough was happening. As an adult, I'm fine with the slowness--better to savor the language, my dear--but as a child it made me feel impatient, and I recall Jack being impatient as well.

Old Jack. He's in the throes of it again, cranky, grumpy, no fun to be around, holing up in his room for hours. He got a report card a couple of weeks ago that wasn't too impressive. It wasn't the grades so much, but his effort scores, four out of six of which had fallen in the six week period. He got a C+ in Science, in spite of getting an A- on the exam, because he'd missed two assignments. Turns out it's hard to recover from two zeros in the grade book.

So we've put him on probation. He has six weeks to bring up his grades to all A's and B's and bring up his effort scores to all 1's. If he doesn't, all sorts of dire things happen to his computer.

***

Travis and I are back in walking mode after a short break due to illness. We are enjoying spring-like weather this winter, which leaves me with mixed feelings. On the one hand, it's nice as can be to take a walk in late January wearing only a jacket over a warm-up jacket and a hat. On the other hand, it's unnatural to have birds singing and crocuses blooming this early. It feels out of whack. It is out of whack.

Because I spent much of last week either tending the ill (both Jack and the Man got Will's bug after I caught it) and being ill myself, this week is going to be the Great Vacation that I was supposed to have last week. In a few minutes I'm going to comb my hair and trot off for a cup of coffee at Fosters, journal in hand. Wednesday, I'm having lunch at an art museum, and Thursday I'm off fabric-shopping with my friend Sarah in the morning, then taking a walk with another friend in the afternoon. By Friday, I'll be socially exhausted and ready to get back to work.

***

I read a piece in yesterday's New York Times Magazine about how our computers and smart phones act as a kind of second brain for us, storing information and memories. The author told a few horror stories about people losing their hard drives and as a result losing years of work, photographs, music, etc. In a sense, losing their memories. She herself lost all the photographs she'd taken of her child since birth when her hard drive crashed.

I love my computer. I find it a very handy machine. But I don't think very many people think critically about our reliance on our computers. We've just accepted the technology. Those of us with preteen children accept that they will live most of their lives totally plugged-in and shrug it off--what are you gonna do?

But what does spending 24/7--or close to it--on a computer do to our brains? How does it affect our ability to connect in real life. How does it affect our ability to think? Is gaming or surfing the Web addictive? I think it can be.

And what happens if the power goes out? As oil supplies diminish and we need to power down, how will we live? When the storms of global warming hit and the electricity is out for weeks, how will we get along? Those of us past the age of forty will do just fine, I reckon. But how about our kids? How will they live if they're forced to live unplugged?

Better, is what I think, once they get used to the idea. More alive in the world. But I know a lot of people who would disagree with me.

***

Okay, enough. Off for coffee, then some volunteering at Jack's school, and then errands and chores, errands and chores. So it goes. How does it go for you?

Fever

2012-01-25T16:32:00.000-08:00

Will brought home a bug, and now I have it. Nothing terrible--fever and general lack of zippity doo-dah. I can function, but I probably shouldn't use any sharp tools or drive heavy machinery. I feel a bit fuzzy, is all.

Mind you, I'm not complaining. I sent my editor a draft of a new book earlier today, and I have nothing--nothing!--on my calendar for weeks. Well, there's my book club meeting tomorrow, and I'll hate to miss it, but the girls will understand. Folks who pay you to come speak to them are less understanding about these sort of things, but I don't have any speaking engagements until March, so I can have all the bugs I want until then.

Really, the reason I'm not complaining is sometimes a girl just needs an excuse to sit on her couch and read. When I was younger, before husband and kids, I needed no excuse to read at all. I read whenever I wanted to, which was pretty much all of the time. But now I have to be at the beach or with a temperature over 99 to read during the day with impunity. So I've got a bug--yay!

I have lost three pounds since I wrote about my goals two weeks ago. I've been going to the gym three times a week and keeping my carbs to under 50 grams a day. I'm eating a lot of roasted broccoli. Also: deviled eggs. Yes, my diet is Frances's Roasted Broccoli and Deviled Egg Diet. I should write a book, shouldn't I?

The last two days have been sunny and fairly warm, and so I myself have been sunny (and with this fever, fairly warm). Tomorrow it's going to cloud over again, and therefore I probably will, too. I am a very simple girl, ruled by the weather and the cycles of the moon. I actually don't know about the moon part of that, but it sounded poetic.

Okay, I'm getting rambly; time to go read some more. I hope you're feeling sunny, not gloomy, and are living a life where you don't have to make excuses to sprawl across your couch with a good book. Cheers!

***

P.S. My latest book made this list today: http://www.ala.org/yalsa/bfya/2012. Hurray! It's a very nice list to be on, indeed.

Hello, I'm Back

2012-01-23T14:25:00.001-08:00

Where have I been? Floating around, mostly, though I did take a trip down to Atlanta to give a speech. It was a quick trip--I left on Thursday, came back on Friday--but any kind of travel, especially travel that includes flying, makes me anxious for a couple of days beforehand, and so I just sort of wander around the house and worry about everything. I'm a terrible homebody, and though I know many fellow moms who would swoon at the thought of their own hotel room, even for just one night, I get very lonely when I'm out on the road by myself.

But I'm home, and I've finished a draft of a novel, so I actually have a little time to do this and that before starting on another project.

The weather has been gloomy. Some winters January is a bright and cheerful, even chirpy, sort of month, but this year it's been overcast and gray. Today I went out to have coffee and write in my journal, just because I knew if I stayed home I'd feel blue. I like being around other people and eavesdropping on their conversations.

Yesterday I went to church by myself. I ended up sitting next to a woman wearing jeans and these great cowboy boots with flowers painted on them. I was wearing my cowboy boots, too, as I usually do. I am a graduate of Killeen High School in the great state of Texas, which means cowboy boots count as formal wear if I want them to.

Anyway, I liked this woman immediately, as she smiled a friendly smile as I slipped into the pew a few minutes late and later greeted me with a cheerful "hello!" when we passed the peace. She left right after communion, which is easy to do when you sit in the back, because you take communion by the back door (I go to church in a huge Gothic cathedral, and there are always lots of folks, which is why some of us go to the rear for our bread and wine). She took communion, tucked her bulletin in her back pocket and was gone.

We only exchanged two words--she said "hello!" and I said "peace!" but I really liked her, and I was sad to see her leave. It was like we'd spent an hour being friends in a quiet, comfortable way, admiring one another's cowboy boots and wishing each other well.

That's all I have to say right now. I hope to have more to say soon.

Friday Report

2012-01-13T05:42:00.001-08:00

The beginning of a new quilt

I've been trying to have a good think all year, but without much luck so far. It's been too busy, too much picking up and dropping off, too much cooking and cleaning and writing. Every day I tell myself this is the day I'm going to sit down with my journal and figure everything out. Where is my life right now? Where is it going? What do I hope for? What do I want to happen next? I'll be fifty in two years. What do I want fifty to look like?

A couple of posts ago I mentioned that I don't make New Year's resolutions, and Deborah commented that she didn't either, though she did make goals. I like that idea. One thing I did get written down this week is a list of goals for 2012, which includes ...

1. Finishing the three sweaters in my knitting basket. One is only lacking a sleeve and a half (oh, but sleeves are so boring!), one is two-thirds done, and the last I just cast on two weeks ago. Two of the sweaters are for me, one is for Will. I feel quite the dilettante for not following through and finishing up. But I shall, I shall!

2. Establishing an herb garden. I fooled around with flowers last summer and enjoyed them, although my garden was pretty messy-looking by the end of August, probably because Will was my co-pilot and wanted to plant a lot of stuff that didn't necessary go together.

A lot of herbs have very pretty flowers, and even better, they smell great and they often make food taste great. Many of them are perennials, which is good for a lazy gardener like me. Useful and low-maintenance: that's my kind of plant.

3. Remodeling the master bath. We've got a new sink picked out. The Man has re-grouted the tub. Now all we need to do is call the electrician and the plumber and figure out what to do about the floor ...

4. Painting the master bedroom. No brainer. Just need to pick a color and put it on the calendar. I'm voting for periwinkle blue, my favorite color. The Man's not sure. He likes periwinkle blue, but what if it comes out purple? I can live with purple; the Man? Not so much.

5. Straightening up the attic once and for all. Yes, I can hear you laughing. But this is the year, ladies. This is the year.

6. Losing 10 pounds. I need to lose twenty, and any doctor worth his salt would tell you I really need to lose twenty-five. But ten sounds so manageable. I lost ten pounds last year (and didn't gain it back, thank you very much). Ten pounds a year is less than a pound a month. I should be able to pull that off. And who knows, maybe I'll lose ten more. But let's start small. Small is good.

Those are my goals, and modest and humble goals they are, other than the attic, which is pure fantasy. Ah, well, we should all reach for the stars every once in awhile.

***

Weekend plans: Will has a sleepover tonight, and a basketball game tomorrow. The house needs cleaning. Jack and Travis need grooming. I have lots of required reading--for my Bible study, for the middle school book club that I help out with, and for Pom Pom and Mags. The Wind and the Willow boys have arrived, and they're hoping I'll show them a good time this weekend. First, I must read their story. I've tried before. I tried as a child and I tried when Jack was five. Third time's the charm, so I'm told. More on that anon.

So, what are you doing this weekend? And those of you who lost weight in 2011--and I know at least two of you who did--what's your big secret? I'd love to know!

2012-01-10T10:24:00.000-08:00

We had a nice weekend, all and all. First, the Man and I went to Classic Treasures, where I purchased the above--well, what it is? Dresser? Chest of drawers? Bureau? I'm not sure, but I like it very much. It has serpentine drawers. I didn't know that's what those curvy-type drawers are called, but now I do.

I used my parents' Christmas check to buy my serpentine ... er ... piece. My parents always send a nice check every year, but usually I use it to pay bills. But this year they were fairly insistent that I not use it to pay bills, but to buy myself something nice. Well, I've been wanting a nice ... er ... item for the front hallway, and when I saw those serpentine drawers, I knew they were exactly what I was looking for.

Really, they were. The day before I'd been in Crate & Barrel, and I saw a nice--chest? Would you call it a chest? No, I don't think it's a chest. I saw a nice piece, and it had serpentine drawers (though I didn't know that's what it had; I just thought they were curvy drawers, silly me), and I liked it very much, but didn't like the price tag at all. Pricey there at the Crate & Barrel!

But it gave me an idea of what to look for, and for that, I'm thankful to pricey Crate & Barrel. Because when I walked into Classic Treasures, I knew what I was looking for, and there it was. Oh, we looked at all sorts of bureaus/chests/dressers before we came across the above-pictured item, and many of them were lovely, but as soon as I saw the above-pictured item, I knew that was it.

And it was.

***

The Man's birthday was quite nice. We started it off by attending a birthday party for Millard Filmore, who as you may or may not know was the 13th president of the United States and our last Whig. Our neighbors, Amy and Anthony, typically have a New Year's Day Waffle and Champagne brunch, but they were out of town on New Year's Day, so this year they had a birthday party for Millard Filmore, which I'm pleased to report also involved waffles and champagne.

We've just gotten to be friends with Amy and Anthony this year. They live way down on the corner and have chickens and a great big garden. We've been friendly for years, waving and chatting for a few minutes, but it hasn't really been until this year that our friendliness gelled into friendship. This year, Will and I started chicken-sitting for Amy and Anthony, and chickens will often cement a friendship I've found, haven't you? (I'm making that up, but I like the way it sounds.)

Now, if you have read this blog for any length of time, you know that everyone in this family besides Jack is an extreme introvert, and Jack doesn't like to get up before noon if he doesn't have to and this party started at 11 a.m., so we were all a little wary about going, as much as we like Amy and Anthony and their chickens. We feared the small talk. We feared the awkward silences our bon mots often engender. We feared we'd meet the folks on the neighborhood listserv who really drive us crazy with their constant emailing about whether or not you should kill a copperhead in your yard (the answer to that question, if you're curious, is yes, though some of our neighbors think that it hurts the copperheads' feelings and therefore should be avoided).

But you know what? It was great fun, and everyone but Will had a good time (no one was playing football or throwing food, so it wasn't Will's kind of party). I finally met my neighbor who has all the glorious sculpture in his yard, and Clifton got to talk to Anthony about gardening, and Jack did very well on the Millard Filmore Quiz, though sadly did not have the highest score so did not win the big prize, a box of chocolate truffles.

We left feeling happy and uplifted (except for Will, although he did find the communal box of chocolate truffles toward the end of the party, so it wasn't a total bust for him). We have nice neighbors! We know more about Millard Filmore than we thought we did! Champagne in the morning is fun!

***

That's it for now, I believe. It's 50 degrees and beautiful here, but tomorrow it's supposed to rain. I went to the gym yesterday. Does that cover it? Yes, I believe that about covers it. Cheers!

Friday Report

2012-01-06T06:24:00.000-08:00

New quilt in progress.

Just back from a chilly walk with Travis. It's 36 degrees outside, not so bad, really. Especially since I was wearing my brand new J.C. Penney fake rabbit fur ear muffs! Which is to say I look even more insane than I usually do.

My typical walking gear: An old LL Bean knit cap with a hole chewed right at the top, courtesy of puppy Travis. My dad's old black cashmere coat that needs a trip to the tailor's, as the lining has become unhemmed. Three scarves. Black leather gloves with pink and purple fingerless knit gloves over them. Jeans, tennis shoes, sunglasses. And now fake rabbit fur ear muffs over the holey knit cap.

It's a wonder my children haven't disowned me.

***

I've been thinking about the difference between fast social media and slow social media. Fast: Facebook, Twitter. Slow: Blogs. I think I'm too slow for the fast social media. I have friends who love FB, friends who Twitter all the time. I'm not against them. But my brain's pace is glacial. I need too much time to ponder. I'm not good with 140 characters--I need more! More, I say!

When I start paying attention to Facebook and Twitter, I turn into the rat tapping the lever for another pellet. I can't stay away. I have to know who said what and when! And if I've left my own pellet? Then I must know: Who likes me? Who tweeted back?

I'm not built for this sort of stuff. It doesn't bring out my better angels. It brings out the part of me that's compulsive, addictive and attention-seeking. There are some people who can have potato chips in the house, and some people who can't. Come look in my pantry: not a chip to be found.

***

My dream: To plant my front yard in lavender. Wouldn't that be nice?

***

Disc 2 of "Cranford" arrives today! Season 2 of Downton Abbey starts Sunday! The Man's birthday is tomorrow! So it will be a weekend of English countrysides and cake. Some quilting, some knitting. Grocery shopping. Cooking and baking. Reading? I just picked up The Forgotten Garden by Kate Morton. More English countryside! I read Morton's The House at Riverton in December and thoroughly enjoyed it. She writes highly entertaining historical fiction, filled with well-developed characters and crisp, clear sentences. The pages practically turn themselves.

So, yes, a bit of reading as well. What about you? What does your weekend hold?

Sweet Peas, etc.

2012-01-03T05:33:00.000-08:00

(Bento Box quilt, made for my mother-in-law, Christmas 2011)

I feel sort of bad about writing in my last post that I didn't much like Christmas, and I want to make clear that I had a very nice Christmas indeed. My favorite part of Christmas is December 26th, when we live on leftovers, Chex mix, and Christmas punch. We play games, and I spend a lot of time reading. This year I cast on a new sweater on December 26th with Christmas yarn from my MIL, and have been knitting on it a little bit each day. I hope I finish it before next Christmas.

So it's not that I had a rotten Christmas, just that the season in general is exhausting, and the meaning of it tends to get lost in all the errands and chores.

Okay, then, that's enough on that topic. Just wanted to say.

***

It's very cold outside--25 degrees at 8:37 a.m.--and our heat isn't working. We've been having trouble with it for a week. It must have gone out near dawn, as it's 67 degrees inside the house, which is just a touch chilly. Our furnace is only a year old, so it's a bit distressing that it's gone out, but I have a space heater in the room where I'm writing, and a fluffy dog snoring by my side. All to say, could be worse, but I really do hope the repairmen can figure out what's wrong. I won't be so sanguine if the heat is still off tonight!

***

We've had a warm fall and early winter up until now, which means our garden has stayed fairly productive--we've had lettuce, spinach, collards and bok choi since late fall. Looking out this morning, I'd say everything but the collards has called it quits. We'll plant more lettuce and spinach in February. The Man planted sugar snap seeds yesterday, so we'll have those to look forward to later in the spring.

Yesterday I ordered sweet pea seeds from Bakers Heirloom seeds. I planted sweet peas last year, but I planted too late, and by the time they started to bloom the weather turned hot. Sweet peas like cooler climes than North Carolina, but I hope that if I start them inside in January, I can at least have a month or so of sweet pea goodness outside in May.

***

A year or so ago, I picked up Lark's Rise to Candleford: A Trilogy by Flora Thompson, about village life in the English countryside circa 1880, but I put it down after a few pages. I was afraid of what it might do to me. I was afraid it might make me nostalgic for a past I never had and that would never come again. I feared becoming dissatisfied with my own life, with its combustible engines and iPods.

But I picked it up again the other day (I found a nice, hardback copy on the Friends of the Library sale shelf for four dollars) and decide to give it another try. I've been thinking a lot lately about trying to slow down and simplify. I've been thinking about trying to spend a little more time with my neighbors. I love the Internet neighborhoods that I roam through, but sometimes I think the Internet takes us away from our real, live neighbors, who might not be as easy to get along with as our blogging cohorts, but are still worthy of our attention.

It's a beautiful book, and I don't think it sentimentalizes village life at all. You get a feel for how hard people worked, how worn out their bodies got from lives spent in physical labor, how circumscribed their lives could be. I wonder if I'd be happy living in a small village, where books and art were scarce and where everybody knew almost everything there was to know about me. I wonder how much time I'd spend thinking about how happy I was.

When I read books like Lark Rise to Candleford, I wonder if I lived in that place, during that time, if I'd actually appreciate it, or if it's only from a remove we can appreciate something fully.

By the way, I'm watching the BBC series "Cranford" right now, and it's marvelous. It's another story about 19th century English village life, and the characters are funny and fabulous. Worth a look!

Happy New Year!

2012-01-01T16:50:00.000-08:00

Travis, recovering from the holidays.

Okay, I'm back.

So, every year Christmas kicks my butter, and I've decided to come up with a plan for next year. Actually, I just got some help from Debbie, who left this comment on my last post:

No wonder you haven't had time for blogging! I've finally learned the secret to a relatively stress-free Christmas; buy presents all year long, don't send any cards, keep decorating to a minimum, don't put the tree up too early, and have everyone that's coming to Christmas dinner bring several dishes. This makes Christmas a piece of fruitcake or at least a plum pudding!

Great advice! I'm thinking about running out tomorrow and buying wrapping paper, ribbon, and boxes and storing them for next Christmas. And this year, I'm definitely going to buy presents in May and take a break (maybe) from homemade gifts (unless they're made super-early). And make Christmas cookies early and freeze them.

These are things I think of every year, but for some reason, when I have a fleeting thought in October that I ought to start on Christmas, I tell myself it's really not that much work. I also resent the idea that Christmas preparations should take half the year.

Can I be honest? I really don't care for Christmas much. It's just such hard work, and it doesn't let up for weeks. I never feel the deep spiritual feelings I think I ought to be feeling; I just feel cranky. I would love to celebrate it as a religious holiday, with minimal decorations, food and gifts (though I do like gifts, don't get me wrong). As things go now, I give up a month of every year to making sure Christmas is everything it's supposed to be.

But we're not stopping Christmas here; the Grinch will not be slipping and sliding down the mountain to steal our roast beast. So I will start buying gifts in February and make address labels for the boxes I'll mail in December. Maybe it'll help. Fingers crossed.

***

My best gift this Christmas? It was the Christmas miracle of Jack's presence. He came out of his room and ate snacks and listened to Christmas carols and was in general cheerful and good company. This went on for days. He was nice to Will. He chatted. He made conversation with our neighbors when we went over for a Christmas Eve visit.

Jack's very sad that Christmas is over. He observes Christmas better than anybody I know. He loves it. He's already counting the days until next Christmas. 358. Time to get to work!

***

My New Year's Resolution: Stand up straight. It's the same one I make every year. One year I'm really going to do it. I'm going to have excellent posture. Maybe it will be this year. Maybe 2015. Who knows. I'll just keep resolving until I get 'er done.

What's you're resolution? Have you ever made a resolution you kept? Do tell!

A Childlike Christmas #4, Plus Quilts

2011-12-21T16:51:00.001-08:00

I've not been blogging much this month, mostly because I've been making quilts--and getting ready for Christmas, which as you know, is a huge undertaking, one that often leaves you muttering, "Bah! Humbug!" under your breath as you roll out yet another round of cookie dough.

I never muttered "Bah! Humbug!" when I was a kid.

Christmas was a much dreamier affair for me way back then than it is now. The days between December 1st and the 25th seemed a million years apart. My brothers and I counted them ... a million days until Christmas, nine hundred and ninety-nine thousand days before Christmas ...

And every day, it got darker a little earlier. When I was a kid, I didn't know anything about the Winter equinox, so I didn't understand why the sky started darkening around four o'clock. I must have thought the darkness meant the mystery of Christmas was closing in. Christmas does seem the most Christmas-like when the sun goes down and the lights in the windows you pass on your way home burn all the brighter, and the lights in your own window burn brightest of all.

Now my Christmases are filled with lists and errands, and two weeks before Christmas I tell all my friends how much I hate it, and they tell me how much they hate Christmas, too. I calm down once the shopping is done and the out-of-town presents are mailed. But the fact is, I don't really start enjoying the season until right about now. When I was a kid, I enjoyed it all December long.

***

I have been making quilts for Christmas presents, and I wanted to share two of them I've finished (I'll post a picture of the third soon).

This quilt is called "Razzle Dazzle," and it's for my sister-in-law, Jessica, who sent me the fabric last year for Christmas. She didn't send it so that I'd make her a quilt, but these are definitely her colors:

And this is the finished pinwheel quilt, for my editor, Caitlyn:
I finished a third quilt last night, and now I'm not sure what to do with myself!

A Childlike Christmas #3: Presents

2011-12-14T14:33:00.000-08:00

(Me and my little brother seeing what Santa brought us, circa 1969)

We put up the Christmas tree on Saturday, and immediately Will went to work making presents to put under it. Actually, I think he's been working for a while, drawing things and cutting out pictures. Will is a big believer in homemade presents.

I was, too, when I was his age, mostly because it was fun to put gifts under the tree, especially in the early days of the season, when you wanted that space to fill up quick! I still like making gifts, come to think of it--check this space soon for pictures of the quilts I've been working on and just might have finished in time for Christmas.

I'm actually not a great gift buyer. Mostly what I like to receive is books, and sometimes it's hard for me to imagine that other people like gifts they don't have to read. I still give a lot of books, but I also fill boxes with handknit socks and quilts, and lots of pink stuff for the nieces, since my boys don't much appreciate pink stuff.

In third grade, I took lots and lots of quarters to the post exchange, where there was a vending machine with small plastic NFL football helmets inside clear plastic domes. That's what I got for my brothers that year. I think my brothers liked them.

Every year at Christmastime, I had a 6" tree on my beside table that my mother made by wrapping pink tulle around a Styrofoam cone. I wrapped up small white cardboard jewelry boxes and matchboxes, put them around the little pink tree, and imagined what might be in them.

***

How old was I when my grandparents started sending me money instead of gifts? Second grade? Third? Ten dollars--a huge amount! I never wished they'd sent a gift instead, and yet I still can't bring myself to send my nieces and nephew gift cards, no matter how much I suspect they'd like them.

***

My parents gave us all sorts of presents via Santa Claus, but probably the best present they gave us was the gift of family traditions, many of which I still keep. Today I spent the afternoon making small loaves of bread for the boys' teachers. Will, coming down the stairs as if drawn by the wonderful smell of good things baking in the oven, asked, "Is it time for banana bread already?" I thought it was nice that he knew the scent of banana bread by heart. My mother made banana bread for friends and neighbors every Christmas, and it's what we nibbled on as we opened our Christmas presents on Christmas morning. It is one of the most distinctive smells of Christmas I know, and now Will knows it, too.

A Childlike Christmas #2: Magic

2011-12-07T14:40:00.000-08:00

My younger brother and I used to sit in front of a lit Christmas tree in a darkened room and tell each other stories about Santa Claus and Christmases past. We were transported from our living room to some place larger, grander. When we were really little and talked about what would happen on Christmas Eve--Santa landing on the our roof and bringing presents through our sliding glass door (we didn't have a fireplace)--we would get all shivery and exited. Magic was about to happen in our very own house!

What I loved at Christmastime: how pink the sky got around 4:30 on the shortest days of the year. Driving through other people's neighborhoods to look at the lights. The smell of banana nut bread, my mother's traditional Christmas gift to our neighbors, baking in the oven on the day before Christmas Eve, what my brothers and I called Christmas Eve-eve.

I loved the holiness of Christmas, which is what people are really talking about when they talk about the magic of Christmas. I loved running my fingers over the ceramic figurines of the manger scene my mother set out every year, lightly touching the folds in Mary's violet-blue dress. I loved lighting our Advent wreath on Sundays, each Sunday a new candle adding its glow to the table.

I loved when my father put Christmas tapes on his reel-to-reel player. Did you have a reel-to-reel tape player when you were little? Do you remember the smell when the motor heated up? And the loud click of the buttons as the reels were set into motion? Those were Christmas sounds and smells to me, just as much as the smell of the tree and Christmas cookies baking.

Mostly I loved sitting in front of the tree and dreaming, all the lamps turned off. It's still my favorite part of Christmas, and I think that's why I'm always a little sad after all the presents are opened on Christmas morning. Ah, the possibilities that exist in a wrapped present! That's a wonderful moment, isn't it--the moment you lift the package toward yourself, test its weight in your hands? The moment right before you open it, and everything is possible?

Awakenings

2011-12-04T16:34:00.001-08:00

Today at church our preacher was Sister Helen Prejean, best known for her book Dead Man Walking. One of the perks of attending a university chapel is that you get amazing guest preachers, and Sister Helen was quite moving. Part of her sermon touched on awakenings, how grace awakens us to God's purposes and plans. It can start with just a nudge--her work as a counselor to death row inmates started as a casual suggestion she be a pen pal with a prisoner--followed by another nudge, and another.

That is how my faith life has seemed to me--a series of awakenings. A chain of nudges. People showing up in my life unexpectedly. Angels stopping by to be entertained unawares. The other day I prayed to be more obedient, and five minutes later I got a phone call from someone who needed my help. Took me half an hour to make the connection. A year ago, it would have taken all day. Maybe I'm a little more awake this year. Maybe I'll be even more awake next year, and it will only take me five minutes to figure out why the phone rang.

I don't know if we're ever fully awake in this lifetime. I imagine that in the coming kingdom we will be astonished by we did not and could not know during our time in this world. All the angels unawares will be revealed to us. All the things we called coincidence. All the wake-up calls--the ones that we heeded, and the ones that we ignored because we wanted to sleep for five more minutes.

Day 30: A Childlike Christmas

2011-11-30T17:48:00.000-08:00

It's nice that my last day of daily blogging coincides with the first day of Pom Pom's A Childlike Christmas Blog Party. Today and every Wednesday in Advent, a whole lot of folks will be blogging on our notions of what makes for a childlike Christmas and how we ourselves can be a little more childlike about the season.

When proposing this idea for a blog-along, Pom Pom asked, "Do you want a childlike Christmas?" Which leads one to ask, what is a childlike Christmas? We're speaking of "childlike" in the most positive way here, as opposed to the way I sometimes think of it, which is to say muleheaded, unreasonable, boorish and irritating.

What are children good at? Well, they're good at believing, for one thing. I believed in Santa Claus so much that I kept on believing him even after my mother told me he didn't exist. I was a champion believer, as most respectable children are.

Children are good at looking at the stars and wondering who else is looking at them at the very same time. They are good at wishing on stars, and they are good at thinking that stars are winking at them personally.

Children are good at thinking that plain, even ugly things are beautiful. They will love the bejeebers out of a stuffed animal that has lost its eyes, its nose, and half of one ear. They will whisper to it, "Hey, gorgeous" while they feed it pretend dog biscuits.

Children are often astonished by very mundane things on a daily basis. Ants, for instance, and shaving cream. They are astonished by sticks, and leaves that are half red and half brown. They are frequently astonished by interesting gravel.

Now, I'm not sure I'm up to being astonished all the time. I don't have the energy that a child has, and I think astonishment calls for a good deal of energy. But I like the idea of spending the Christmas season astonished at least once a day, preferably by something small and rather quotidian.

So that would be a childlike Christmas for me, a Christmas where I take time to look around in wonder and remember to be delighted.

***

Thank you, my dears, for putting up with my on a daily basis this past month. I've had fun, but I think I'm ready for a bit of a rest. Just for a few days, to collect my thoughts. Now, off to read all my fellow Childlike Christmas bloggers!

Day 29: Game Day

2011-11-29T17:14:00.000-08:00

Will has made up his own card game, complete with cards he drew himself. The game very much resembles Stratego, except that unlike Stratego, I understand it. In fact, I believe it was my inability to comprehend the rules of Stratego that forced Will to create a game I'm actually able to play.

Anyway, he made up the game yesterday afternoon, and we've been playing it nonstop ever since.

I love that Will makes up his own games. I love that 78% of the rules for his game make perfect sense, and the 22% of the rules that don't make sense to me don't make sense to anyone else, either, including Will. I love the fact that Will's a self-starter, an imaginative thinker, a creative human being.

And that is why I keep playing the game. It is tempting to burst into flames instead. It's tempting to melt into a puddle of dust. But I don't. I say, "Yes, sure, I'd love to play again." Because I want him to keep making up games and drawing cards and coming up with rules that make sense 78% of the time.

And, okay, it's the only game I can beat anyone in this house at. There's that, too.

Day 28: Inarticulate Fish of the Heart

2011-11-28T17:44:00.000-08:00

I've been listening to Van Morrison in the car lately. If you're in the mood to feel spiritual or vaguely enlightened, Van's your man. Not so much the "Brown-Eyed Girl" Van as the "Astral Weeks" Van. In fact, "Astral Weeks" was one of the cds I brought into the delivery room with me when Jack was born. I liked very much the thought of my newborn child coming into the world on the strains of "Cypress Avenue" or "Sweet Thing."

Today I was listening to a somewhat more recently minted Van, and as we pulled into the driveway, Jack leaned forward and asked, "Is he singing 'inarticulate fish of the heart?' Because if he is, I don't get it."

I explained to Jack that no, Van was singing "inarticulate speech of the heart," not "inarticulate fish of the heart." But you know what? I very much like the idea of an inarticulate fish of the heart. I find it filled with all sorts of metaphorical possibilities, not to mention a boatload of charm.

Is there is an inarticulate fish in your heart? What do you suppose he'd say if he could only articulate it? Would he say something about love, how he always knows when your beloved has walked into the room, the way your heart pounds so loud he can't hear a thing?

I checked YouTube for a video of Van Morrison singing "Inarticulate Speech of the Heart;" unfortunately I couldn't find a good version. But if you wanted to hear Van the Man sing that most beautiful song "Cypress Avenue," you sure could. Oh, my goodness, it will do your soul good. Yeah, my tongue gets tied every time I try to speak, Van sings, and the inarticulate fish of my heart nods his head, because he knows exactly what Van means.

Day 27: Advent Begins

2011-11-27T17:48:00.000-08:00

We lit the first candle in the Advent wreath tonight, and I read a brief passage from a book about what the Advent wreath symbolizes.

And then the Man, who is a Southern Baptist down to his toes, said, "You boys should know that there are no Advent wreathes in the Bible."

I was very good and refrained from mentioning that there are no Christmas trees or Santa Clauses in the Bible, either, and that Jesus never had to get up on Sunday morning, put on a nice shirt, and go to church.

The boys will figure all that out soon enough.

I brought up my Advent plan in Sunday school this morning. The class I'm taking is on Food and Faith, and something about asceticism came up. I said I was going to try to eat simply in order to enjoy the Christmas feast later, and someone pointed out that once upon time Advent practices more closely mirrored Lenten practices, and people did indeed fast as a way of preparing for Christ.

We'll see if I stick to it. I often have grand Advent schemes. I have lots of Advent books with daily readings, and I'm pretty good about reading them for the first two weeks. And then the Christmas craziness kicks in, and I'm lucky to get my teeth brushed and remember to pick up the children for school.

Jack asked if he could skip youth group tonight, so he could be there to light the Advent candles before dinner. This could have been a scam, and might well have been a scam, except Jack loves Christmas more than any child on earth (he's almost thirteen, and he still counts down the days, starting November 25th--"Only one month until Christmas!"), and he likes traditions and rules and ceremonies. So we let him skip youth group. After all, there is no youth group in the Bible.

Some folks in our neighborhood already have Christmas decorations up. In the past, pre-December Christmas decorations made me grouchy and grumpy and had me writing letters to the editor, at least in my head. But this year I've decided to let it go. I won't resist. If people want to celebrate Christmas year-round, let them. None of my beeswax.

There are bees in the Bible, by the way. You could look it up.

Day 26: Almost Advent

2011-11-26T18:06:00.000-08:00

Advent begins tomorrow! Look for the light!

I've just posed this question to Tracy over at Beyond My Picket Fence, but I'll bring it up here as well. I know a number of you who read this blog live outside of the U.S., but you have gamely put up with a multitude of Thanksgiving postings from your U.S. blogger friends these past few days. So now it's your turn: What holiday do you celebrate that's particular to your home country that you think we here in America would love every bit as you do?

I know that when my friend Kathryn, originally of Belfast, Northern Ireland, lived next door, we had a bang-up time celebrating Boxing Day with her family (mostly because the celebration included bangers!). Should Americans adopt a rigorous Boxing Day observance?

So as not to leave my American friends out, if there's a foreign holiday you think we should adopt, speak up now. Or maybe your family has its own particular holiday that we all can observe? My family celebrates Travis the dog's birthday on February 2nd of every year, and though mostly it consists of getting Travis special dog food, it's lots of fun. So you might consider celebrating Travis's birthday, too.

I've been thinking about feasts as we approach the Advent season. One of the things I want to do in the days leading up to Christmas is to eat simply in order to truly enjoy the Christmas feast when the time comes. I won't fast--fasting is more of Lenten project--but I do plan on eating lightly as a kind of discipline. A preparation of sorts. I fear that because of my love of food and my tendency to eat in response to any sort of emotional trigger, every day is a feast day for me. So I want to be intentional about my eating as we move toward Christmas. I don't want to start the party too early, before the guest of honor arrives.

I will keep you posted on my progress. More anon!

Day 25: The Day After

2011-11-25T17:48:00.000-08:00

I tried not to do too much today. It was hard, because I have such a long list of things to do. And okay, I did clean one of the upstairs bathrooms--in fact, it's the one we're all using right now, so it was pretty bad. But I also spent time quilting a quilt and walking the dog--oh, and I slept in.

It's hard to take it easy. The fact is, the only time I don't have any chores to do is when we're on vacation--or at least when we're on vacation and staying in a place without a kitchen. If there's a kitchen, then most likely I'm cooking. I don't mind, actually. Fixing dinner is one of the few times during the day when I have time to think.

I didn't go shopping today at all. My friend Danielle and her best pal Susan are Black Friday shoppers, so I get to live vicariously through them. I honor their fortitude and courage. I envy them getting big chunks of Christmas shopping before December 1st. But I can barely make myself shop on the best, least stressful shopping days. The biggest one of the year? I believe I'll stay home and scrape toothpaste out of the sink, thank you very much.

I have five days of daily blogging left. You know, it's sort of been fun, and it will be interesting to see how it affects my blogging when the challenge is over. Mostly I think it's given you some insight to how dull my daily life is. Roast beets! Bathroom cleaning! Whooeee.

Sad to say, my children have been fairly well behaved during the duration, although Jack seems to think that sleeping fully clothed is a fine idea, even when I instruct him in a very direct manner to put on some jams. I don't know if it's laziness, rebellion or that he just forgets. What is it about twelve-year-old boys? Having never been one, I really have no idea.

Okay, time to get Will to bed. He's refusing to go. If he has a really interesting fit, I'll write about it tomorrow. See you then!

Day 24: Thanksgiving, Done

2011-11-24T18:47:00.000-08:00

I'm very sleepy as I write this, and I don't think I'll write much. It's almost 10 p.m. The turkey has been roasted and et, the pumpkin pie has been thoroughly devoured. We watched "A Christmas Story" after dinner, an annual family tradition, and then played "Blurt." Will and I won. Now we are listening to music, and Will and the Man are playing the silliest round of slap hands I've ever witnessed. Jack is looking on, amused, as though he can't believe anyone he shares DNA with would be so goofy.

And tomorrow's Friday. It's like a whole free day to do nothing or everything in. I think I'll take a walk and quilt a quilt. Maybe play some more Blurt. And write here, of course, at length, to make up for this short and sweet post. See you then!

Day 23: Still Hanging In There!

2011-11-23T17:47:00.001-08:00

Earlier today, I thought I felt the early signs of paralysis coming on--the droopy eyelids, the slurred speech--but it turns out that's just me waking up in the morning. Now I really did feel like the botulism was setting in around lunchtime, but it passed. If I'm still alive by 5 a.m. Thursday morning E.S.T., I think we can safely say I successfully canned a jar of spaghetti sauce without killing myself or my loved ones.

I have my list of Thanksgiving prep on the fridge: Turkey breast (our oven is too small for a whole bird--have I mentioned how much I hate my oven?), stuffing, cornbread dressing (I made the cornbread yesterday, and it's sitting on the counter getting stale, and yes, I will proudly own up to the fact that it's Jiffy cornbread, forty-five cents a box), fruit salad (wonderful concoction, my mother's recipe, made with pineapple, maraschino cherries, tiny marshmallows, and whipped cream), LaSeur baby peas, mashed potatoes, cranberry jelly (from the can, ridges in tact), pumpkin pie and apple pie. Jack is in charge of the apple pie; Will and I will bake pumpkin pie in the morning.

We're staying home for Thanksgiving, did I mention that? I'm sorry to miss out on any extended family fun, but I'm glad not to have to travel. I like being home, and this will be our first Thanksgiving at home since Will was born nine years ago.

So what are you thankful for? I'm thankful for my good husband, my fine children, and my silly dog. I'm thankful to live in such a beautiful place. I'm thankful for my church, my health, and my car that starts every morning. And I'm thankful for you. I look forward to the day when we're all gathered together. Won't that be something?

Day 22: So Far, We're All Still Alive

2011-11-22T17:29:00.001-08:00

Tonight, we had spaghetti with sauce I canned last summer. The sauce has been sitting in my pantry since July, daring me to open it. Whatcha so afraid of, it's been whispering when I walk past. Think I've got botulism spores in here? Yes, I tell it. That's exactly what I think.

Well, it takes botulism symptoms eleven to twenty-four hours to manifest. I'll be waiting for my eyelids to droop and the sides of my face to feel tight. Oh, and to drop on the floor dead. That, too. If you never hear from me again, you know what happened.

The good news is the jar was tightly sealed--I had to use a butter knife to pry the lid off--and the sauce wasn't at all discolored or weird. To be on the safe side, I boiled it for ten minutes (reducing it quite a bit in the process), just to kill any bad stuff that might be in it. Then I tasted it and waited to see if I felt funny. And sure enough, my eyes started twitching and I could feel my muscles go slack and simultaneously get rigid. Have I ever mentioned I'm very suggestible? If you tell me the flu is going around, I immediately feel like I've got the flu. If you mention you've been down with Hepatitus A, my liver starts to hurt. It's just how I am.

So far, so good. And speaking of good, the sauce was mighty tasty! I want to grow twice as many tomatoes next summer, and make twice as much sauce. I've still got a lot of frozen tomatoes in my freezer, and some frozen sauce, but I've only got one jar left. If I survive tonight, who knows? Maybe we'll open it tomorrow. Live dangerously, I always say.

(ETA: For a fun post on food memories, go check out what Tracy recalls from her Australian girlhood on Beyond My Picket Fence.)

Day 21: Day 21

2011-11-21T16:29:00.000-08:00

It seems I have been blogging now for twenty-one days straight. I'm getting dizzy. As I sit down to write tonight, I don't have any particular subject in mind. As with most days, I'm just hoping something comes to me.

So after posting about sleepovers the other day, and getting so many wonderful responses (to see a nicely expanded response, go over to Betty the Wood Fairy's site and read her post), I thought someone should put together a collection of essays about sleepover memories, the good, the bad and the ugly. That idea reminded me of another idea I had not too long ago for a collection of essays--babysitting memories.

Did you babysit? I started babysitting for our next door neighbors when I was in fifth or sixth grade. What amazes me now is how much responsibility people were willing to give me at a very young age. It wasn't unusual for me in eighth and ninth grade to spend the night or even a weekend babysitting while the parents went out of town. This was when we lived on a small Army post in Germany. I suppose it was a safe place, because I often babysat until midnight, got paid, and then walked home by myself. Yikes!

I wasn't the world's greatest babysitter. Mostly I was in it for the cash and the snacks. I didn't particularly like playing with children, though I was always willing to sit down to draw, color, do puzzles and read aloud (I was the same with my own children, by the way). I snooped around, looked for salacious reading materials, and talked on the phone. Nobody ever got hurt on my watch, but plenty of children got vaguely neglected.

After writing about vegetables yesterday, I came up with another subject for yet another anthology of essays I'd entitle What My Mother Made for Dinner. My mother made creamed chip beef on toast; did yours? In the 1970s she made Hamburger Helper casseroles, which we all loved, especially when they were "pizza" flavored. The funny thing is, she was a good cook. When she cooked for company, watch out! She could make Beef Wellington and cheese puffs to die for. She made a mean French onion soup.

But in general, my mom tended to cook the foods of the day. Lots of casseroles, lots of meatloaf. It wasn't unusual to have hot dogs for dinner. We never had pasta, because no one outside of New York City had pasta, or if they did, it was considered weird.

On Sunday nights we had steak, french fries, and french cut string beans. The french fries were frozen (almost always crinkle cut), but my mom deep-fried them, and they were delicious. Sometimes she deep fried onion rings, too.

Here's the interesting thing: My mother's father was a gourmet cook. This was a man before his time. He lived in Louisville, KY, where he was an architect. He knew about wine, he knew about cheese, and once when he came to visit he made us our first homemade pizza. Before that, the closest thing we got to homemade pizza came out of a little Chef Boyardee box that included a small can of tomato sauce and some sort of dried cheese. My grandfather's pizza was a revelation.

I wonder what meals my boys will look back at and giggle about. I cook mostly from scratch, so there'll be no Hamburger Helper to mock. But I'm sure they'll find something to shake their heads over. "Remember how she made us eat whole wheat pasta?" "Yeah, man, what was she thinking about?"

Day 20: Roast Beets, Anyone?

2011-11-20T18:04:00.000-08:00

My latest culinary deal is roasting vegetables. Until recently, I only roasted potatoes, which I only started doing correctly after my friend Kathryn told me that to get really good roasted potatoes, I needed to boil them first, to soften them up. Now I find the trick is not boiling them too long; otherwise, you get roasted potato crumbs, which are still delicious but trickier to get from your plate to your mouth.

Then a few weeks ago, I stumbled across a recipe for roasted broccoli, and I thought I'd give it a go. Well, my dears, it turns out that roasted broccoli is divine, as is roasted cauliflower and roasted red onion. Roasted vegetables taste so good, I don't see how they can be good for you. In fact, I got so suspicious the other day, I googled "nutritional aspects of roasted vegetables," expecting to learn that roasting vegetables transforms them into the nutritional equivalent of a chocolate sundae. What I found instead is that not only are roasted vegetables as good for you as raw vegetables, sometimes they're even better.

I was at the store the other day and went a little crazy. I bought orange beets and a rutabega and a turnip, all for the roasting. When I got home, I googled "roasted beets recipes" and found one for carmelized beets. Now how good does that sound? I'm going to try it, and I'll let you know how it turns out.

By the way, beets were yet another vegetable we didn't eat growing up (I'm telling you, all we had was frozen peas and carrots, vegetable-wise; they were dark times there in the suburban 1970s). And my first experience with beets was not good. The Man and I attended a dinner party where the guest of honor made a beet salad. The beets were beautiful, but there was some thing about the texture that made me want to spit them out. However, you do not spit out the guest of honor's beets, so I ate as many as I could force down and then tried the old trick of cutting the rest into very small pieces and then hiding the pieces under a roll.

It wasn't until a few years ago, when my friend Amy shared with me a marvelous beet salad she'd made that I realized beets could be my friends. And it wasn't until yesterday, when I saw those pretty orange beets at the grocery store, when it occurred to me that maybe I should take some home with me and roast them.

Have you discovered new ways of cooking old favorites? What veggies did you hate growing up that you love now? Oh, I just remembered! Every once in awhile my mom served canned asparagus, and boy did I hate that. But now? Well, I still don't eat canned asparagus, but baby asparagus in the spring? To die for!

Day 19: Today's Soup

2011-11-19T12:27:00.000-08:00

Sweet Potato-Chorizo Sausage. And man, is it good. It's a pretty simple and straight-forward soup, though you can throw in a little spinach to jazz it up, which I did. My only regret? I forgot that we have spinach growing in the backyard and used some from the store. Arrrgghh!

***

The sleepover ended well, though there was a rough patch around 8:30 this morning, when Ethan thought Will should have let him win at a game they were playing, since it was a game Ethan had never played before. Will disagreed. Ethan insisted. Etc.

Now, personally, I think it would have been nice if Will had let Ethan win a game or two, Will being the host and all. On the other hand, Ethan is almost nine, and that may be a little old to expect other people to let you win the way you might have when you were five.

But it occurred to me that Ethan has a little sister, and it might be the rule in his family that you let the underdog win one game out of three, so he expected that rule to apply here. I don't recall that we ever pushed Jack much to let Will win, though I'm sure we took him aside from time to time and asked him to cut his brother a little slack when things got too uneven.

***

I'm beginning my Thanksgiving preparations. Thanksgiving is one of my favorite holidays. All of the feasting but none of the stress of Christmas! Just don't let me forget to make cornbread on Tuesday; it needs to sit out and get stale for two days before I turn it into stuffing.

Okay, well, I just got back from the gym, and I seem to have made the mistake of sitting down, even though I very much need a shower. Okay. Yup, I'm going to get up. Any minute here. Getting up now. Here I go. Just one more minute ...

Day 18: Sleepover

2011-11-18T16:58:00.000-08:00

Will's friend Ethan is spending the night tonight. I picked up both boys after school, and they've been playing nonstop ever since (it's 8 p.m. now), with a brief break for pizza eating.

Having a sleepover guest in the house made me start thinking about how different families have different sleepover styles. We tend to take a hands-off approach when the boys have friends spend the night. Jack and his friends are marathon gamers, so they hole up in Jack's room with their computers and have at it. Will's buddies like to play--board games, sports, rolling around on the floor type frolicking--with an occasional movie or televised sports event thrown in. Either way, the Man and I usually show our faces from time to time, order pizzas, and enforce bedtimes. Otherwise, we leave them alone.

But I remember as a kid attending sleepovers that were really invitations to join someone else's family for awhile. You were asked to help set the table before dinner, you ate whatever the mom was cooking that night, and after dinner you might play a game of Monopoly with the whole clan. You didn't get to spend private time with your friend until bedtime, but somehow that private time was more special than if you'd gone off on your own all evening. You'd earned it.

When I was a young adult in college, I spent several minor breaks and holidays at friends' houses (I went to college in North Carolina, and my parents lived in Texas, much too far away to drive for only a few days), and that's when I was most involved with other people's families. Parents would sit down to have serious conversations with you about your future plans (for some reason, this was much less irritating than when your own parents wanted to have those conversations with you), and after dinner you might go out to a bar or a club with your friends' siblings. For a few short days you felt intimately connected with these families, witnessed their dramas, did their dishes (I had a reputation as a good house guest, in case you were wondering), walked their dogs.

The big deal about sleepovers when I was a kid was how different other people's houses smelled, how foreign other families' habits were. As I got older, the exciting thing about staying at friends' houses was seeing how people who seemed outwardly a lot like me could have very different ways from my own. Other families' habits seemed exotic, thrilling. My father turned on easy listening radio first thing in the morning; what an eye-opener to stay with a family whose father turned on Mozart.

I hope Ethan has a nice time tonight. I hope he doesn't think our house smells too weird. It's nice having him here. That's the flip side, as an adult. You have a kid spend the night, and all the sudden you're looking at your life through his eyes. What does he see? A house where tidiness is not prized, surely, but also, hopefully, a place where people are creative and have hobbies and listen to music and like to laugh. I hope he sees that, too.

Day 17: Really, Is It Day 17 Already?

2011-11-17T16:36:00.000-08:00

Jack stayed home from school today. He has a bug. My children never get defined illnesses; no flu or pneumonia for them, no ear infections, no Hepatitus. No, they just feel sick and have mild fevers and stomachaches.

Now, considering the possibilities, I can't complain. I'm glad that when they get sick, they usually only get a little bit sick. However, their vague illnesses do make it hard to decide whether or not they should go to school. It doesn't help that their regular temperatures tend to run low (mine, too), so it's almost impossible to tell when someone around here has a fever unless they're really burning up.

Jack's particularly hard to diagnose, as he is always pale and somewhat lethargic. Yesterday morning he came down saying he felt hot and nauseated, and he did indeed seem on the warm side and looked rather ill, though Jack always looks ill in the morning, like he could twelve or thirteen more hours of sleep.

The Man's rule of thumb for whether or not a child claiming illness should go to school is simple. Are you still alive? You are? Well, then, have a great day! Tell your Algebra teacher I say hi! The Man, it could be said, is a stoic. He's never, ever sick, or if he is sick, he refuses to admit it. He landed in the hospital once because he stoically believed what he had was just a little cold, when it fact it was a major sinus infection that made him an ideal candidate for several days of intravenously administered antibiotics.

I, on the other hand, have a reputation, for dramatically taking to my bed at first sniffle. So the Man doesn't consider me a good judge of a child's fitness for schooling. He thinks I'm wimpy mom, ready to send a child back to bed at the first, tiny sneeze. And okay, I sort of am. But I know a hot forehead when I feel one, and Jack's forehead was hot. Or at least sort of hot. No, it was definitely hot.

Really, I might have sent him to school, except for visions of angry moms dancing in my head. It's a week before Thanksgiving, and the last thing anyone wants is a sick kid in the backseat of the minivan as you head out to Grandmother's house. So yes, I let my vaguely sick child stay home. I did it for the mothers and the grandmothers. I did it for Thanksgiving turkeys and cornbread stuffing. I did it for America.

Mothers of Our Fine School, you can thank me later. Preferably with pie.

Day 16: More Food

2011-11-16T16:33:00.000-08:00

The pinwheel quilt, with borders,

A couple of you commented on yesterday's post that you didn't know what collards were, and I realize now I'm not sure how to explain them. They are a green, leafy vegetable related to cabbage and broccoli. When you cook them, they wilt much like spinach, but when raw they're a lot tougher than spinach. They're popular here in the Southern states, in part because they're cheap and you can grow them in the cool months. They have the same effect on children as cooked spinach--lots of "Ewww, gross" and "Who would eat that?"

***

I was thinking this morning that my favorite times of year to cook are early winter and early summer. In early summer, you have lots of tender, young vegetables that make you happy to be alive (not to mention strawberries), and in early winter you get stew.

I love stew. I made a beef stew tonight that started--as all great recipes do (see yesterday's post for cross-reference)--with frying up some bacon.* Around step four, you pour in 12 ounces of amber beer, and the smell is divine. The great thing about stew is that it fills up the whole house with its wonderful aromas and makes you feel that life is worth living.

***

I did something totally out of the ordinary for lunch today. No one in my family but me likes Indian food, so I never make it. But the other day I was going through the humongous pile of recipes I've pulled out of magazines but never actually tried and stumbled across a recipe for chicken thighs in a curried yogurt sauce made in a slow cooker. So this morning, I chopped up onions and garlic, mixed them with some tomato paste, cumin and curry powder, threw in some chicken and cooked it on high for four hours. When the chicken was done, it fell of the bone in that wonderful way chicken does. I stirred half a cup of Greek yogurt into the tomato paste mixture, and wah-lah! Lunch. Wonderful, and no one to complain about the curry smell. Even better, there's enough for at least one more lunch, maybe two.

Well, I better go cook some more bacon; it'll be breakfast before you know it.

*I thought Pom Pom made an astute comment yesterday about bacon, how it makes the house smell marvelous in the morning, but as the smell weakens over time it's much less pleasing. This underlines the importance of cooking bacon at every meal, so that the smell always stays fresh and at its bacon-y best.

Day 15: Basketball & Collard Greens

2011-11-15T15:19:00.000-08:00

Will's first basketball practice is tonight. You know how excited he is? He came home and immediately got to work on his homework. Practice is at 7:30, and he wants to be focused and not worrying about some stupid spelling test, thank you very much.

As I write, I have collards cooking on the stove. I didn't grow up eating greens, did you? We mostly had medleys of frozen mixed vegetables, the favorite being peas, tiny cubed carrot bits and corn. Oh, wasn't that a treat! My mom also enjoyed serving up a nice tasty dish of French green beans, with almonds when she was feeling fancy. I don't believe fresh broccoli had been invented in the 1970s.

We're growing collards in our garden. They are beautiful, sturdy plants that should last through our mild winter. To cook them, first you fry up some bacon. That's always the sign of a good recipe, when you start with bacon. Then you saute onions in the bacon grease--another good sign--add some chicken stock and peeled garlic, and then your chopped up collards.

Cook 'em for two hours--as I said, they're sturdy little suckers--and what you end up with is a symphony of flavors. Oh, my goodness, I forgot to mention the ham hock; you'll need to throw one of those in, too. This being the South, you can pick up a package at any grocery store, whether it's a bargain basement sort of joint or a high falutin' gourmet place.

Do the boys eat this delicacy? Of course they don't. But you know what that means? More for me and the Man. We don't mind a bit.

Day 14: Communications

2011-11-14T13:55:00.000-08:00

Well, our phone lines are down and now Earthlink is down, so no phone calls or email for me. Actually, I do have my cell phone, and I guess now I'll finally be forced to use it. But no matter what, you can't make me text.

More funny Jack news: He went to the dentist today and has no cavities and his plaque score is down. More disappointment! How are we going to get this boy to floss if he's not getting cavities and his plaque score has dropped by two? (Does your dentist score plaque? This is new to us, as we are going to a new dentist these days--at least the boys are--and I don't know how I feel about it. On the one hand, it gives the boys something to strive for--get a 2 or less and you get a prize--on the other hand, it's one more thing for me to potentially feel badly about, as a poor plaque score surely reflects badly on the mother, don't you think?).

In any event, like Jack's report card, this good dental report has left me at a loss. Where are the grounds to nag? Nowhere that I can see.

Oh, really, it's all good news, isn't it? We had a conference with Jack's adviser, Miz E, last week (a regularly scheduled event at Our Fine Middle School), and she was very funny and kind about Jack. As a student at OFMS, you meet with your advisory group first thing in the morning--it's like home room--and you eat lunch together in your adviser's classroom (no cafeterias at OFMS). Well, oftentimes at lunch, Jack sits off by himself and reads, which comes to no surprise to them who know him well. The rest of the kids pull their desks together and have a good old time. And it turns out, they often cajole Jack into joining them. Miz E says she thinks Jack likes being cajoled. She thinks sometimes he sits off by himself just so the rest of the kids will start cajoling. That just tickles me.

She also said that Jack is always paying attention to people's conversations, and he especially listens to the girls, because of course the boys are all doofuses and have nothing interesting to say. This doesn't surprise me, that Jack is listening. For years, whenever I had a friend over during the day, Jack would park himself close by with a book and pretend to read, but I knew he was eavesdropping on the conversation. He's always paying attention.

So it's all good news, which is good news. I'm glad Jack's classmates make him join in, and I'm glad that five pounds of Halloween candy were not enough to ruin Jack's teeth over the last two weeks. The only thing I'm not glad about is that I need to make an appointment to have my teeth cleaned. Can't tell you how glad I am that my dentist doesn't keep score.

Day 13: Church

2011-11-13T12:12:00.000-08:00

The whole family went to church today. Will wore jeans, Jack wore khakis and his sweat jacket, which has a rip in the arm (he doesn't know how it happened), both of them brought books. I'm embarrassed to tell you that this is the first time in months we've all gone to church together. Lately it's just been me, yelling, "See ya later, ya big bunch of heathens!" on my way out the door.

How did that happen? Summer, I think. The season of slack, lackluster church-going that usually finishes up when school starts, only this year it didn't. Plus, we have an adolescent now, and dragging him out of bed on Sunday morning is such a production that sometimes we just give up (and anyway, he goes to youth group, we tell ourselves, which is gathering of believers who talk and pray together, so that's pretty close to church; may in fact be church).

Will has never been enthusiastic about church (Jack actually was until the Sleep Monster took over his body--okay, "enthusiastic" maybe be painting it on a little thick, but he went without complaining most Sundays). It is a long time for an active kid to sit and look at the back of grown-ups' heads; I get that. Oftentimes on Sundays Will has just a touch of a headache and doesn't think he should go; he doesn't want to spoil it for the rest of us by writhing in the pain through the service. The Man, being a former small boy who wasn't always excited about church himself back in the day, always generously and selflessly offers on these occasions to stay home and keep an eye on Will, just in case the headache turns out to be a developing case of encephalitis or leprosy or some such.

So we got slack, but I've been feeling badly about it, so last week the Man and I decided that this week we were jumping back in, and we did, and I have to say I was very proud of my small brood. Although Will brought a novel with him and a drawing pad, he actually spent most of the service reading his illustrated Bible. And Jack said all the prayers and sang all the songs and actually listened to the sermon (he usually does). The rest of the time he read, of course, but I didn't much care. He participated about seventy percent of the time, and that's not too bad for a sleepy, jaded twelve-year-old.

The Man, of course, looked awfully handsome, and it's always nice to share a pew with a handsome man.

This of course is a wonderful time to get back into the church habit. Advent is around the corner, after all. And I think it's really important for all of us to go as a family, for the boys to see their dad taking all the singing and praying seriously (which he does), good for them to see all these people coming from all over to worship together. As they get older, there may be lapses in their church-going--I say this as someone who skipped church for twenty-some years--but like so many people who went to church as children, they'll be pulled back in.

And fortunately, nothing I've read suggests that Jesus minds it all that much when a twelve-year-old boy shows up to church in a jacket with a ripped sleeve. It's the showing up that matters, as far as I can tell.

Day 12: Unpost

2011-11-12T13:24:00.000-08:00

I have two seconds to write this. It is essentially an unpost, a non-post, a post non grata.

It's Saturday, and I've been shopping and cleaning all day. I went to the farmer's market and bought a whole chicken. It cost four dollars more than a whole chicken would have cost at the grocery store (specifically, what an organic whole chicken would cost). I think I can live with this. I would rather eat a happy chicken who had a happy life not too far from where I would live. I think it's worth four dollars to me. I'm going to ponder it some more.

I've been thinking a lot about meat lately. I like meat, and since I'm trying to keep a fairly low-carb diet, and furthermore since I seem to do better with a little extra protein, it would be hard to pull meat from my diet. But there are ethical concerns about how the animals are raised, and I've been thinking a lot about that over the last few years. As I said, I'm going to continue pondering. I'll let you know what I come up with.

I hope you have a good Saturday night. Saturdays in early winter are nice, when the cool weather still feels fresh and novel. Saturday nights in February and March are often sad. Well, maybe not for you. I hope not for you. I hope all your Saturday nights are alright for fightin'. Get a little action in. Etc. Et al. Goodbye.

Day 11

2011-11-11T16:17:00.000-08:00

It is possible I'm running out of things to say. How about a random list of fascinating Frances facts?

1. I like eating mayonnaise, but I do not like seeing mayonnaise. Blobs of mayonnaise on the kitchen counter are particularly troubling.

2. I felt vaguely ill as I wrote the above sentence.

3. Once, when I was six or seven, my cat birthed a litter of kittens on my lap. I had no idea what was happening at the time, and I have yet to recover.

4. The first love of my life was Bobby Mudd. I was seven. He didn't know I was alive.

5. If I didn't dye my hair, it would be almost entirely gray.

6. When I see women my age (late 40s) who have entirely gray heads of hair, I think they look really cool.

7. That doesn't mean I'm going to stop dying my hair.

8. I am helpless in front of a bag Doritos.

9. It's only been in the last year or so that I've stopped wondering if the people in the pews around me at church think I'm a good singer.

10. This is only because it finally occurred to me that I'm really not that good of a singer.

Okay, that's it for this Friday night! See you tomorrow with more fascinating tidbits!

Day 10

2011-11-10T17:00:00.000-08:00

I spent two hours cleaning Will's room today. It looks beautiful. The only problem with cleaning Will's room is it allows him to find his stuff again--his coin collection, his baseball card collection, his key chain collection. Yes, that's right, his key chain collection. He'd forgotten all about it! But now he remembers it! Because I uncovered it under all that junk.

So he's been a busy little bee all afternoon, exploring all the wonderful things his room holds, now that he can actually see them. He likes to take them off the shelves I've so carefully placed them on and ponder them, mix and match them, draw pictures of them, cut out the pictures and tape them to the wall, leaving little teeny tiny scraps of leftover paper on the floor. And so the cycle begins again.

That's Day 10 in a nutshell: My life on the Sisyphean Merry-Go-Round. Or escalator. What's the correct metaphor here? Whatever it is, I'm dizzy and need a cup of tea. More soon!

Day 9: Soup

2011-11-09T16:30:00.000-08:00

That handsome man on the steps is the one and only Colin Firth AKA Mr. Darcy, who is sitting next to his co-star Emily Blunt. They're making a movie in Raleigh and were filming across the street from the Man's office. Since he knows I'm awfully fond of CF, he played the paparazzi for me and got this shot. Fun!

I made broccoli soup today, and it was good. The recipe called for light cream and nutmeg and swiss cheese. The nutmeg was an especially nice touch. I find myself throwing nutmeg and cinnamon into all kinds of things for a little kick. It's especially nice in the fall.

I'm not from a soup family, are you? My mother took a Chinese cooking class in the 70's and a French cooking class as well, so we occasionally had won ton soup or French onion soup, but my guess is my dad discouraged it. He definitely wasn't a soup guy. When my brothers and I were home on snowy days, my mom made Campbell's Tomato Soup, and when we were sick, we were served Campbell's Chicken and Noodle, or my favorite, Campbell's Chicken and Stars. What's the difference? Who knows, but the stars made me happy.

It wasn't until my roommate in grad school made me homemade chicken soup from scratch that I realized soup was something you could get excited about. That it could be a whole meal by itself. That it didn't have to be super salty, which canned soups almost always are.

Recently the fall weather has made me want to eat more soup; also, the glut of junky food that comes with Halloween and Will's birthday. Last week our house filled up with candy and cake and other junk, and although I tried to stay away as much as possible, I'm only human. So this week I felt an overwhelming desire to eat light. Not fat-free or low cal, but light--food that doesn't take up too much space, food that fills you up but doesn't have any aftershocks, the way that heavy and sugary things do.

So soup it is, and soup it will be. Soup is good, and soup is enough. Do you like soup, too? What's your favorite kind? When do you like to eat it? What's the best month for soup? Could it be November, or is February better?

Day 8: Just Posting to Post

2011-11-08T12:12:00.000-08:00

Hello! I'm not sure what I have to tell you today. It's a beautiful day outside. Travis and I took a long walk this morning, and then I sat down to write for several hours. After lunch, I went to the bookstore to get the new Christopher Paolini book for Jack and picked up a book of vegetarian soup recipes for myself.

Then I lifted weights, walked some more around my neighborhood, and went to pick up Will. Now I'm home, and in a few minutes I'll leave to get Jack. When I get home, I will probably put the borders on my pinwheel quilt and make dinner.

I'm reading The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Euginedes--so far so good. I loved Middlesex. Reports are that this novel is not as good as Middlesex, but that's okay, because Middlesex was brilliant, and we can't expect novelists to always write brilliant books. It's unfair.

The Marriage Plot is set in the early 1980s. In an early scene, a young woman and her parents are eating bagels at a cafe when the song "Tainted Love" comes on the radio. I remember that song. It was a very exciting and new kind of song in 1982. I was eighteen and lived for very exciting and new songs.

And that is all I have to tell you. Was it worth tuning in for? Don't answer that! But you could tell me what your favorite song in 1982 was. I'd be interested to know.

2011-11-07T07:49:00.000-08:00

This weekend I went to a thrift store and picked up this pot for ten bucks. Then I came home and filled it with sticks. I love sticks. I may end up decorating my whole house with sticks.

It was, overall, a good weekend, though when I was on the treadmill at the gym on Saturday, I started panicking about the fact that our family doesn't do enough together. Lately, Jack lives in his room. Really, I think if we put a port-a-potty and a mini-fridge in there, he'd never come out. And there's no guarantee that family outings will go well, as one child is always miserably low on enthusiasm.

Here's the interesting thing: Whenever I start get worried about family life, or lack thereof, I can almost promise you the Man is also getting worried. We are usually in sync in this area (and many others). And Sunday afternoon, he was on it. He had Jack out in the yard messing around with the radio-operated helicopters, and Will working on a model car. And then Jack made two Key Lime pies to take to school today for his advisory group, which made me happy. Jack is very quiet and reserved, and I'm so glad he's found he can speak through pies. Everyone likes a boy who speaks through pies.

So it's not like we had a great family outing, but the boys were doing things that didn't involve screens, and Jack even spent time outside, which is always a miracle. So I felt better. I wish we were the sort of family that took happy camping trips together, but we don't. I wish my children were best of friends, but they're not. But they make pies and gingerbread (that was Will's baking project yesterday) and fly helicopters and build model cars, and that's good. I can live with that.

Day 6: Will My Attic Defeat Me?

2011-11-06T09:50:00.000-08:00

I fear it will. It's like a wrestling match every time I go in there. There's one corner in particular that keeps me in a painful half-nelson, hissing at me in a menacing tone, "Do you give? Do you give?" This corner of my attic is populated by layer upon layer of toys that have broken or never worked in the first place (an expensive race track that lasted for two laps, for example) and boxes of school ephemera dating back to 2002. If only I had the wherewithal to chuck it all. None of it would be missed. No one even knows what's there.

I find it difficult to throw things away, not because I'm a hoarder, but because I'd rather recycle stuff than trash it. The problem is, I don't want to give away broken toys. Believing that one day a magic toymaker will come to my house and make everything good as new, I leave the broken- down things in my attic, where they breed with each other and make more broken-down things.

I need to throw the broken stuff away, don't I? Please make me. And convince me that a few math sheets and one spelling test saved from each year will suffice. I can take pictures of the art projects and then put the real deal in the recycling bin. Right? That's okay, isn't?

I'm taking a break from the attic for the day, but will get back to it tomorrow afternoon. A little bit at a time, one day at a time. No saying "Uncle." No rolling over and playing dead.

Day 5: Pinwheel Edition

2011-11-05T09:50:00.001-07:00

Here is a picture of the quilt I'm working on right now. I just bought two beautiful pieces of fabric for the borders, which I hope to sew on this afternoon. Or tomorrow. Or in the next couple of weeks ...

This is one of three quilts I'm making for Christmas presents (it's for my editor). I've finished the blocks for the second one (finished them last summer, actually; they've been lounging about waiting for me to do something with them ever since), and just ordered fabric for the third. Can I do it? Can I actually have three admittedly smallish quilts done by December 15th, in time to mail them?

Yes. If I completely forgo all housekeeping between now and then, I most certain can--and will--finish them. I may have to quit cooking, too. All in the name of Christmas love. My family will understand.

Okay, I'm off to eat lunch and then get to work on the attic. And then go to the gym. And then work on quilts.

Notice how cleaning the bathrooms does not make an appearance on that list? The bathrooms are on their own this weekend. And every weekend, for that matter.

Really, if you ever come over to my house, stay out of the bathrooms. Really. I mean it.

Day 4: Report Card Report

2011-11-04T06:22:00.001-07:00

I'm almost disappointed to tell you that Jack's report card was good. All A's and one B- (French). I feel this report card doesn't adequately reflect his bad attitude and lack of effort. It doesn't reflect all the time he spends reading online gaming forums instead of real literature. It doesn't reflect how miserable he's been making us all fall. Sigh.

You know what I think Jack's report card reflects? The fact that Jack is a quiet and well-behaved child. This is a rare thing in a seventh grade boy, and Jack is getting rewarded for it. Several teachers' comments referred to the fact that Jack never presents a discipline problem in class. They don't care that he's rushing through his homework so he can play World of Warcraft. All they care about is that he's not popping bra straps while they're calling roll.

Anyway, I'm looking for creative ways to punish Jack in spite of his good grades. Let me know if you have any ideas.

***

Weekend! What are you doing? I'm going to be working on some quilts and knitting and maybe, yes, working in the attic. Here's my plan: I'm going to go to Home Depot and buy five brand spanking new boxes, and then I'm going to fill them up with attic junk. There is a charity pick-up scheduled for next week; all I have to do is call the organization and tell them I'm leaving five brand spanking new boxes on the front porch, and they'll come get them.

So you see, I haven't given up my dream of a Pristine Attic. The high temperatures of summer just put it on hold. But I'm back, baby, I'm back, so watch out attic! I'm comin' after ya.

Day 3

2011-11-03T06:23:00.001-07:00

I'm afraid I'm going to forget to blog on the weekends, when I have a different routine. Remind me, will you?

***

Okay, so Day 3 of this blogging juggernaut. Thanks to Tracy for her succinct definition of the word "druthers"--it is essentially a very contract contraction of "would rather," as in "what would you rather have, applesauce or chocolate cake?" (Cake, please).

I've received disappointing news from Angela: It is illegal for her to send me sausages from the UK. Apparently, they comprise a terrorist threat. She did ever so kindly send me pictures of what real sausages--"bangers" I believe is the proper term--look like, and that is helpful. Okay, they sort of look like hot dogs, but that can't be right, can it? My friend Kathryn, who is from Belfast, made me real sausages once, and they were nothing like hot dogs. They were like heaven. They were my druthers.

***

I'm reading a marvelous book called Food & Faith: A Theology of Eating by Norman Wirzba. The chapter I'm now is entitled "Life Through Death: Sacrificial Eating." There's a lot in this chapter about living sacrificially, that is making your life a gift to others. I'm very bad at sacrificial living. I'm self-absorbed and self-centered and like to do what I want to do, not what other people want to do. Motherhood tends to balance these tendencies out somewhat, but nevertheless, most days I come up short.

So I've been looking for ways to live more sacrificially, and yesterday I decided to do this by playing checkers with Will. I didn't want to play checkers. I wanted to work on the quilt I'm making for my editor (pictures soon). But Will was downstairs at loose ends, so I thought I'd give of myself, give of the very inner core of my being, and ask if he was up for a game. Of course he was, as Will is always up for a game of checkers.

I could have told you before I even sat down it would be a terrible game. First of all, that's always the way when I try any sort of abnormal sacrificial giving for my kids. Folding their laundry, cooking their dinners, making their beds--never any problems there. But whenever I think "I'm going to do something nice for my children, something special," it almost always backfires.

And this was true with my checkers game with Will, because Will is coming off a long birthday weekend, in which he went to a big football game and had a sleepover and collected tons of candy on Halloween (which is his official birthday, by the way), and he's cranky and out of sorts. So our game ended in tears (his, not mine) and vows to never play checkers again and stomping off up the stairs (Will, not me).

So much for sacrificial giving via the checkerboard. I will have to find another way to give sacrificially. Maybe make chocolate chip cookies? Because that would be an awfully big sacrifice on my part. Really mammoth sacrifice. One for the ages. Hmmm ...

Day 2

2011-11-02T06:08:00.000-07:00

Ta da! Will's quilt!

For those of you keeping score at home, this is Day 2 of my month-long daily blogging experiment. If you haven't read yesterday's entry, please do so now, especially if you're Angela, who may have no idea that she's supposed to send me sausages at the end of the month.

It's a beautiful autumn day here in lovely North Carolina. Sometimes I'm torn between Spring and Fall: which is my favorite? It occurred to me today that we tend to get longer stretches of loveliness in the fall. Our springs are gorgeous, but they heat up quickly.

Did I mention that I organized Will's classroom Halloween party this year? Yep, I did. Will's teacher is new to Our Fine School and has been a little taken aback by our party atmosphere. We will party at the drop of a dime at Our Fine School, and Halloween is the biggest party of them all. When I asked Mr. B what his druthers were, he begged me to keep the sugar to a minimum, which I thought was an excellent idea, and so we did. One of our activities was donut races, it's true, but that was the big sugar event of the party.

Other than that, we had mummy races, where the kids wrapped each other up in toilet paper--a huge hit, by the way--and pumpkin decorating, and Halloween story writing (my idea, and less of a big hit, but pedagogically speaking, quite sound), and a spider making activity. It was all good fun, and the kids seemed to enjoy themselves.

Here's the trick to having a good classroom Halloween party: Get dads on your party committee. First of all, it's good to have a male presence in the classroom; it keeps kids on their toes. Second of all, the dads totally lack that Martha Stewart impulse which makes some folks use the annual Halloween party as a way to exorcise all their decorating demons. So we had tablecloths and balloons, but that was it for decorations, and it was great. Other classrooms were the Taj Mahals of Halloween. They were glorious, sumptuous, absolutely aflutter with Halloween spirit. But, you know, who has the time? Or the money? And if you're decorating on this level for the third grade Halloween party, what's the Sweet Sixteen going to be like? Outrageous. And silly.

So it was a good party. And later that day, at pick-up, Mr. B pulled me aside and said that the other third grade teachers spent the lunch hour moaning and groaning about how wild their kids had been, how out of control. His was the only classroom where the kids had had a rollicking good time, but didn't self-destruct. So the party was a success, all is well, and Halloween is done until next year. Thank goodness.

Okay, tune in tomorrow to read more scintillating tales! I'll be here--will you?

Crazy Idea

2011-11-01T16:51:00.000-07:00

Will, taken a couple of weeks ago. He looks like a little boy in this picture with his rosy lips, but yesterday he turned nine. Nine!

I'm thinking about posting every day in November, just to do it. Just to see if I can do it. I've been very sporadic in my blogging this fall, and I haven't meant to be. It's just been that sort of fall so far. But now I'm ready to settle down. I don't have any travels, any school commitments, any anything except a life to live here on the homefront.

I've been going to the gym, so I could write about that. Mostly I work out on the elipticals and lift weights. I find the elipticals more or less boring after fifteen minutes, but I love weight-lifting. I find it very meditative, to breathe through my nose and pretend to be strong. The funny thing is that I have no upper-body strength whatsoever. I sit down at a machine and have to move the weight key to the lowest, lowest weight. Like, one-tenth of a pound or something. It makes me giggle. I'm like the before-picture in the old Charles Atlas ad, except chubby.

Or I could write about how we've decided to stay put in this house for the next ten years, even though we don't love it. We like it a lot, but it's not our dream house. Still, it's close to the boys' schools and we have nice neighbors and the only backyard in a twenty-mile radius that gets at least six hours of full sun a day in the summer. Woodsy around here, is what I'm saying. So I guess we better hunker down and get out the DIY manuals and start saving up for a new oven, as I have the worst oven in the developed world. Tiniest oven ever, and horrible for roasting things in. An Easy-Bake oven would be better.

Jack's report card comes home next week. That should provide fodder for several days' worth of blogging. I think it will be an eye-opener. I predict straight B's at best. But could it be worse? It might be. Stay tuned.

So let's give it a whirl. We'll see if I can do it. If I do, what's my prize? What will you give me if I blog every day for the month of November? Think about this. I think Angela should give me sausages, since her blog has essentially become sausage central. Pom Pom could give me a pixie. Jody could give me a sheep. Really, you all have something to offer. Let's make this blogging thing worthy my while!

Okay, I'm getting silly again. Back tomorrow with pictures of Will's quilt, which I finally finished. Amazing!

Driving and Smiling

2011-10-19T06:15:00.001-07:00

Shovel. Photo by the Man, taken on his new iPhone using some sort of funky filter app that makes your pictures look like Polaroid shots.

I can be a pretty snarky driver in the morning. It's hard not to be when dropping off children at Our Fine School, with its signs posted every five feet that announce "This is a Cell Phone-Free Zone! Please hang up your phone so you don't run anyone over, you moron!" (or something to that effect), and all the moms in their SUVs chatting away on their cell phones.

That gets my goat, and I feel I must express the fact that my goat's been gotten. The boys think I'm hilarious, but I suspect I'm not setting a good example. I've written about this before, I think, and I still haven't mastered myself.

So today I tried something new. I plastered a smile on my face and kept it there. It felt really weird. I've read that if you want to cheer yourself up, just smile, and there seems to be some truth to this. I felt oddly cheerful and full of good will. I also felt somewhat medicated in a Stepford Wives sort of way.

Sadly, my happy smiley feeling did not stop me from wanting to plow down the guy in his tiny MG who whipped around me in the drop-off line to get a prime piece of curb territory. No smiles for Mr. Mid-Life Crisis, no sirree bob.

***

I'm fighting off a cold. I've been taking zinc lozenges that are supposed to lessen and shorten my cold symptoms, and they seem to be doing the trick. I expected to wake up this morning feeling horrible, but I actually felt fine, aside from the fact that I couldn't breathe with my mouth closed.

I think that's it for now. I am smiling as I write this. It makes me like you very much.

Friday Report

2011-10-14T07:24:00.000-07:00

Who am I? Do you recognize this bird? It's got some of the markings of a thrush, but that red spot is distracting. Help! Photo Credit: The Man

I have joined a gym. In fact, I'm just back from a session where I learned how to use the various weight machines. Given that my arms are little more than limp noodles dangling from my shoulders right now, it's quite remarkable that I'm able to write this entry.

I've joined a gym because I'd like to lose twenty pounds, and though I walk Travis five mornings a week for forty-five minutes, it's not much of a workout. We meander. We ramble. We pause often to mark fire hydrants and mail boxes with our personal scents. Well, at least one of us does.

So off to the gym it is! I have to tell you, there's a secret part of me that dreams of being Super Workout Woman with lots of muscles and incredible endurance. Believe me, that would be total makeover. Of course, when I envision myself as Super Workout Woman, I'm always about 5' 10", lithe and lean. In real life, I'm 5'4" and highwaisted and sort of chesty. I could lose thirty pounds and none of that would change.

Anyway, even if I don't turn into Super Workout Woman, I'm pretty sure I'm going to turn into one of those babes who wears workout clothes wherever she goes, because, honey, they are comfortable as all get out.

The best thing about my gym? It's not really a gym. It's the fitness center in the new Jewish Community Center, which is just a hop and a skip from my house. When I go to work out, it's me and a lot of other middle aged folks with creaky knees. No pounding music. No young bucks. It's the most peaceful gym I've ever been to.

I'll keep you updated on my progress, and will definitely let you know if I get any taller. In the meantime, I hope you have a lovely weekend and that I'll regain the full use of my arms before it's time to fix lunch.

How Do You Slow This Thing Down?

2011-10-05T18:27:00.000-07:00

I was looking for a picture to give this post some color. Here's an old one of Jack taken on my MacBook. I'm looking forward to the day when he's in a smiling mood again ...

I love the autumn months, but they always seem to speed by so fast. I've got one thing, and then the next and the next, and they're all wonderful things. They're lunches and walks and coffee with friends. They're working on quilts and books and sketchbooks. They're online classes on design and creativity and in-person classes on food and theology. It's all good, and it's all a bit too much.

***

So do you have your Christmas shopping done yet?

***

I'm giving a speech at a conference on Sunday, so the last few days I've been walking around the living room, talking to the dog. The dog naps through it. Is this a bad sign?

***

Can you tell I'm feeling silly? I just wanted to post a post and say hello. To say life is good, but I wish I could slow it down a little bit.

***

The online class I'm taking is called The Artist's Toolbox. It's through Quilt University and taught by the reknowned art quilter Lyric Kinnaird. It's a process sort of class, and it's good for me to be creative for creativity's sake.

A friend and I were talking recently about journey people v. goal people. My friend is a journey person. She's interested in what happens as she walks down the road and isn't so concerned where the road is leading. I'm a goal person. I like to know where I'm going and what's going to happen when I get there. There are benefits and drawbacks to both ways. And sometimes you can be a journey person and set goals, and sometimes we goal-oriented folks do stuff just for the heck of it. But it's hard for us.

It was hard for me today to sit in a cafe and draw textured wallpaper, but that was my assignment (to draw something textured) and so I did it. Just to do it. No goal, no grade, no finished product other than a piece of paper with a lot of hashmarks signifying texture.

I don't know how I feel about that.

***

Here's what I feel good about: The fall garden! The Man has planted spinach, lettuce, and collards. He's ordered bok choy and garlic. We long for broccoli, but have had icky experiences with green broccoli worms that you're lucky to catch sight of right before you put the broccoli in your mouth. So no broccoli for us.

***

I guess that's it. Just stoppin' in to say hey, as we say down here. Hey. Now you are free to go back and look at colorful Jack. He is a lovely boy, isn't he? He got an A on last week's history test. Yesterday he laughed at one of my jokes. I guess we'll keep him after all.

***

ETA: Pom Pom was surprised to hear that I'm a goal person. It is surprising! It might be easier to think about it like this: I'm a project person, and I tend to finish my projects (even my knitting projects, except for the ones I give up on because there's no use going on). Really, I'm the sort of girl who needs a carrot dangling in front of me. It's the only way I get things done. Also, setting goals gets me energized. I love the process of doing things, and I'm not at all about doing things perfectly, so I'm not Type A. But I do like having a goal to work toward. It's because I spent the first twenty-seven years of my life being absolutely worthless. Now I'm self-correcting!

Friday Odds and Ends

2011-09-30T06:31:00.000-07:00

Some of the leaves Will and I found in our travels.
Photo credit: The Man.

What I meant to write: "Her skin was flecked with little pieces of grass."

What I accidentally wrote instead: "Her skin was flecked with little pieces of grace."

***

There were ten million things I was going to accomplish this morning, but here it is almost noon, and mostly I've been fooling around. I've been writing a picture book manuscript for no unearthly reason. I don't write picture books. But this morning I had an idea, so I started playing with it. It reminded me of writing a poem.

I don't know if I ever mentioned this, but I used to write poems. I have a graduate degree in poetry writing. I love poetry and poems, but for some reason, in my mid-twenties, I found it too hard to do anymore. I don't know why. I went to a therapist to talk about it. She said maybe I would write poems again later. Maybe there was something else I needed to be doing at that very moment. She said not to be too hard on myself.

She was a good therapist. Shortly after I finished my sessions with her, I started writing children's books, and that's worked out well for me.

But I miss writing poems. I miss polishing sentences and playing with words that way. So writing a very small story this morning was nice. It reminded me of the kind of fun I used to have writing poetry, minus the cigarettes.

***

Nothing going on this weekend. Nothing going on this weekend! And it's going to be a beautiful sixty-five degrees. I think I'll be taking some walks. And buying new walking shoes for the 5K I'm doing in a few weeks. I'll be sniffing the air a lot, and finishing up the sweater I'm knitting. And making spaghetti pie for Jack's youth group on Sunday. And reminding Jack to make pumpkin pie.

***

And who knows? Maybe I'll get an idea for a poem. It could happen.

What are you going to do?

Where Did Last Week Go?

2011-09-27T05:45:00.000-07:00

(Last Sunday, Will and I took a walk with the goal of finding ten interesting things. We called this stick we found "Singing Opera Lady." Photo credit: The Man)

It is a strange thing to lose an entire week. Where did it go? Is it hiding under the couch? Did the dog chew it into little pieces?

I have no answers. What I know for sure: I did a school visit. I didn't do much cleaning. I wrote in the mornings. The weather was wet, humid and gloomy, inviting armies of mushrooms to invade my front yard.

What happened to last week? What happened to fall? Where is my cool, crisp air? Why are mushrooms so disgusting?

The funnest thing I did last week was make lists of interesting things I saw throughout the day. This is a good exercise if you feel a need for minor league delight. Given the icky mushrooms in my yard, I needed all the delight I could get. It takes a lot of delight to counteract a mushroom attack.

Some of the things I saw as I made my way through the week that disappeared:

1. A periwinkle blue mailbox.

2. A private street sign that read "Blue Dog Road." (Isn't that a great street name? I wish I lived there.)

3. A little girl on Our Fine School's playground twirling around in a red, sparkly skirt.

4. A license plate that read "FishFndr." Is that Fish Finder? Or Fish Funder? Or maybe Fish Founder?

5. A woman wearing big curlers walking her dog.

6. A crow eating a potato chip.

These are not especially amazing sights, but they cheered me up and made me glad I'd taken the time to look around. Did you know there's a carport in my neighborhood with a chandelier hanging from the ceiling? I've walked past this carport over a hundred times in the last few years, but only noticed the chandelier last week, and only because I was actively looking around, wanting the world to delight me, if only for five minutes.

So that's sort of what happened to last week, that and mushrooms and really bad allergies that made me feel sleepy all the time.

I am going to leave you with the last stanza of one of my favorite poems, "I Am Waiting" by Lawrence Ferlinghetti. If you want to read the whole poem, you can go here.

(And don't worry, this week doesn't seem to be going anywhere. I guess it likes it here.)

I am waiting
to get some intimations
of immortality
by recollecting my early childhood
and I am waiting
for the green mornings to come again
youth’s dumb green fields come back again
and I am waiting
for some strains of unpremeditated art
to shake my typewriter
and I am waiting to write
the great indelible poem
and I am waiting
for the last long careless rapture
and I am perpetually waiting
for the fleeing lovers on the Grecian Urn
to catch each other up at last
and embrace
and I am waiting
perpetually and forever
a renaissance of wonder

All a Boy Wants

2011-09-15T17:19:00.000-07:00

This is the quilt I'm making for Will. All that's left to do is the actual quilting. Will picked out the pattern from the book Layer Cake, Jelly Roll and Charm Quilts by Pam and Nicki Lintott. This is the third quilt I've made from this book--it's a marvelous collection!

Tomorrow is "No Nag Friday," my favorite day of the week. On Fridays I don't remind Jack to brush his teeth or floss, I don't boot him into the shower, I don't even tell him to get off the computer when he's been on there way too long. I take Fridays off, and it feels great.

Interestingly enough, he seems happy about it, too.

Jack's favorite thing to tell me right now is, "I just want to do what I want to do." Which of course makes me laugh and laugh. Oh, honey, I think. Oh, little baby sweetie pie. Your days of getting to do what you want to do are so over. You're twelve. You don't even have any good Christmases left. You're going to start getting shirts and wallets for Christmas. You're going to get pajamas.

Oh, where is Santa Claus when you need him?

I just want to do what I want to do. Well, that's true for all of us, I suppose. And growing up is one long lesson in realizing that you get to do what you want to do after you do your homework and study for your Latin quiz, after you walk the dog and call your grandmother and go to youth group and make polite conversation at the dinner table and floss your teeth. In the ten minutes that are left of your day, you get to do what you want to do. Ain't life grand?

I should be honest here: I had very little self-discipline until I was in my late twenties. For much of my life, all I wanted to do was read, and that's pretty much all I did. I did what I wanted to do, and for the most part my grades reflected that. Sometimes when I worry about Jack, I remember my twelve-year-self and think, "He's not half the idiot you were."

And that's why I don't nag him on Fridays.

An Alphabet of Dreams

2011-09-07T16:06:00.000-07:00

(I made these kitchen curtains in July. If you click on the picture, you can better see my barnyard animals, which are there so I can pretend I live on a farm. A tiny, tiny farm.)

Today I rearranged our bedroom furniture. Which is to say, I've tipped the first domino. Now that the bed is in a pleasing new spot, we will have no choice but to a) paint the bedroom; b) go back to IKEA and buy the other chest of drawers to match the lovely dresser we bought in August; c) replace the bathroom sink and mirror; d) put in a new bathroom floor; and e)paint the bathroom.

Then we will naturally want our bedroom to be extra neat at all times, so we will f) weed out all the clothes we haven't worn in over a year and sweep all the dust bunnies out of the closet. Peeking into the hallway we will be overcome by the desire to g) organize the linen closet; h) put my office closet to rights; and i) take boxes of boxes of books to the library donation bin.

By this time the weather will have cooled, at which point I will go back into the attic and j) sort through all the games and puzzles and donate 98% of them to Good Will; k) go through all the last day of school bags the boys have brought home over the years, replete with math folders and paper mache moons, bags I've chucked into the attic with the thought that I'd make lovely scrapbooks out of their contents (it will never happen); l) make an honest effort to go through the bins of fabric and table cloths and sheets and honestly assess how much, if any, of it I'll use; and m) burn all the Lego.

Okay, that's only half the alphabet, but you get the idea. I have been bitten by the organize/makeover/make lovely bug. It's a fall thing, I think, even though we haven't had any true fall weather, aside from a few mornings that have been pleasantly cool. I have gotten two books out of the library about organizing and unstuffing and decluttering. One of them is taking a very psychological angle, giving quizzes and asking me about my values. Really what I'm looking for is a stern taskmaster to say, "You haven't worn that skirt in five years, and you've gained twenty pounds since then--out with it!"

I will keep you abreast of my progress. It might not always be pretty, but at the end of it, my life will be totally perfect. I know!--I can't wait, either!

***

Today I picked up a copy of Where Women Create. Have you ever read it? Essentially each issue profiles ten or fifteen women artists and crafters and shows lots of yummy photos of their studios. I normally don't buy this--it's way too expensive--but I thought it might be inspiring, given my current mood, and besides, one of the profiles is of the artist Susan Branch, whose blog I found via Pom Pom. It's quite wonderful and cozy and homey, as is Susan's art, and I enjoyed her profile very much.

I mention this because I know we have several Susan Branch fans in our midst, so if anyone wants to borrow the magazine, please let me know. We can even do a round-robin. It really is a fun magazine to look at, and I'm happy to share. Drop me a comment if you're interested.

The Buddha Goes to School

2011-08-31T08:27:00.000-07:00

Last week I forgot that I was a Buddhist.

Instead of being an impassioned, detached observer, I lost my head and thought I could control things. All I had to do was post lists of rules, yell a lot, and keep my nagging at a constant and steady rate.

Have you ever lived with a twelve-year-old boy? I know many of you reading this have, and so you have felt my pain. Try getting a twelve-year-old out of bed in the morning, especially one who spent the summer sleeping until noon. Try getting him fed, clothed and into the car by 7:40. Try making him floss his teeth.

Oh, Lord, try making that child floss his teeth.

Well, I tried. I nagged. I lost it. And then I gave up. Here's what I have had to tell myself: I can't make Jack happy. I can't make him organized. I can make him turn off his lights at night, but I can't actually make him fall asleep.

What I can do is make him suffer. Er, I mean make him suffer the consequences of his own actions. If he oversleeps, he gets to school late. If he doesn't do his homework, he'll get bad grades. If he gets bad grades, his computer will be taken away from him until his grades come up.

My problem is that I'm afraid. I'm afraid my very bright twelve-year-old son will end up living in a basement apartment with stained wall-to-wall carpet, surviving on bowls of dry cornflakes. The only light will be from the glow of his computer, where he spends all his waking hours playing World of Warcraft. He never bathes, and his breath is so toxic moths who get too close flutter to their deaths.

You think I'm kidding, but I'm not. I really fear this.

Still, what I know for sure is that nagging doesn't really work in the long run, and yelling doesn't do a thing but make everybody upset. I yelled at Jack on Monday, and it ruined the rest of the day for both of us. So no more yelling, no more nagging.

That's why, when Jack was doing his French homework in the car this morning, even though he'd told me last night he'd finished all of his homework, I didn't say a word. Didn't mention that children who want to go to Harvard (which is where Jack says he wants to go) tend to get their homework on time and do the extra credit. I didn't take away his computer time or threaten to throw his iPod out the window.

I just drove calmly on and, loving mother that I am, hoped he wouldn't finish it in time.

Let his French teacher nag him. Me, I'm done with all that.

Summer Report No. 6: Back to School

2011-08-23T18:16:00.000-07:00

Frankly, we are all worn out.

In a blink of an eye we went from being the laziest people on the face of the planet to being A Family on the Go. Yesterday was Open House at Our Fine Schools, and I managed to get through both sessions without saying anything too outrageously stupid. In fact, I'm proud to report that I only said moderately stupid things all day. It helped that during Our Fine Middle School's open house I hid in the library with my friend the middle school librarian the whole time.

I'd planned to spend this morning writing, and I did write some, but mostly I felt sleepy. I yawned a lot. I kept waiting to be interrupted. It was very quiet.

After lunch I drank a cup of coffee and sat down to a good writing session. I was writing up a storm. I was getting 'er done, son. And then, suddenly, WHAM! A bomb exploded. A helicopter landed on our roof. An army kicked down the backdoor.

Whenever this sort of thing happens to me, my first response is to, well, panic. So that's what I did, but quietly, and with great dignity. Then I walked around for a few minutes trying to figure out why my house was shaking. Finally, I got my act together, grabbed the dog and the phone and headed outside.

The thought crossed my mind that we'd had an earthquake, but this is North Carolina and we don't have earthquakes here. After I'd walked around the yard and ascertained that there was no S.W.A.T. team on my roof, I went back inside and sat around feeling freaked out. What on earth had just happened?

A few minutes later, Sarah called. "Did you just have an earthquake over there?" she asked. As it happened, she'd had an earthquake at her house, too. I felt hugely relieved. All of Durham was having an earthquake--it wasn't just me having my own private earthquake!

Turns out the whole eastern seaboard had had an earthquake. You may have read about it in the paper. If you live in California, you've probably spent most of the day rolling your eyes. Don't get snarky with me, you California people! Let's just see you drive in snow! (Okay, I can't really drive in snow, either, but still; snarky people just peeve me.)

So that was the first day of school. Both of the boys seemed to have had a good day. They both had homework, which is how I like it. Will fell asleep as soon as his head hit the pillow, which is how I like it even more. Neither of them felt the earthquake. Sensitive little fellers.

That's it for me. I guess this is my last summer report. I thought it was funny that nobody commented on my last post that they were ready for fall, too (Tracy was too polite to point that she lives in Australia, where it's no where near close to fall). This morning when I took Travis for his walk, it was cool, almost crisp. I'm readier than ever. Bring it on.

I hope it stays summer (or winter) where you are for as long as you want it to.

Summer Report No. 5

2011-08-18T10:06:00.000-07:00

(My newest quilt, Shoo Fly Pie. Photo credit: The Man)

School starts up in less than a week. Following our grand and very slack household tradition, I'm granting pert near all requests that come my way right now. A little extra computer time? Sure. A fifth bowl of Shredded Mini-Wheats? Go for it! Just one more episode of "Scooby Doo"? Why not?

Yep, that's right, it's Slacker Week in Slackerville.

It's quite delicious, this habit of letting loose the reins the week before school starts. Nice to forgo negotiations, ignore the time, say "yes" for once.

Even nicer knowing that next week, the whip comes down. (Please imagine right now, if you will, a middle-aged woman dressed as a dastardly villain of yore--yes, I'm wearing a top hat and spats--rubbing her hands together and muttering, "Heh, heh, heh!"). Up and at 'em, boys! Do your homework, boys! Of course you can't have extra computer time! It's 7:30; go to bed!

Sweet.

***

(The rough draft of a Dresden Plate block I'm working on for a Sampler quilt.
Photo Credit: The Man)

We had a nice trip to Kentucky last week to visit my parents. It was my father's 75th birthday, and the whole family gathered to celebrate. Right as dinner was about to be served on Saturday night, a huge storm whipped through, knocking out the power all over town. The Man and my brother had to go back to our hotel in the dark (with a flashlight, natch) and gather everyone's things to bring back to Grammy and Pop's.

The cousins were ecstatic. Family sleepover! I myself slept on a loveseat, perhaps somewhat less ecstatically. Fortunately, it was a cool night with a nice breeze. In the morning, the Man and Pop rode over to a McDonald's that had power and brought home coffee and Egg McMuffins, which are, if you were wondering, sort of gross. My dad kept apologizing for the power going out, and everyone kept assuring him we didn't actually blame him.

On the ride home, we got chased by a tornado and then landed in a traffic jam caused by a seven-car pile-up. The Man was valiant, the children were troopers, and I was resolute: I will never leave home again.

***

(Still Life with Sock and Melons. Photo Credit: Yours truly)

I've been knitting a lot, which is what I do when I'm ready for fall. I am ready for fall. Are you ready for fall?

Blog-a-versary #4 (Two Days Late)

2011-08-09T12:06:00.000-07:00

"He had never felt that ministry--or God--was about making things happy. He'd long felt that the heart of ministry--and the heart of God--is about making things beautiful, even when they can't be happy."

~~ from Living Without Enemies: Being Present in the Midst of Violence by Samuel Wells and Marcia A. Owen

I just started reading Living Without Enemies last night. Its authors are people I know--Sam Wells is the Dean of Duke Chapel, where I attend church, and Marcia Owen is the director of The Religious Coalition for a Nonviolent Durham, a group that seeks to end violence in our community. Once, a few years ago, I stood on a street corner downtown with Marcia and another woman, praying for peace in our city. It was one of the strangest things I've ever done, but I was glad I did it.

The funny thing is, when you do something like pray on the corner of a busy intersection or fix lunch in a soup kitchen, you feel good, but not the way people think you do. You don't feel good because you think you're this great, altruistic human being. Your feelings aren't about yourself at all. You feel good because for thirty minutes or an hour, you lived your life in the kingdom of God, right here on this earth, and you were actually paying enough attention to realize it.

***

I continue to feel unconcerned for my children's happiness. This came in handy today when I dropped Jack off at the chapel so he could put in a day's work with his youth group, a day which began at the St. Joseph's community garden downtown, followed by lunch--prepared by the youth--with the homeless gentleman who congregate there, and then more community service this afternoon. Tomorrow, more of the same, all of it in blistering hot weather.

The worst part of it all? I wouldn't let him take a book.

And while I don't care in the least whether or not he's happy today, deep down in my heart, I hope he is.

ETA: Just picked Jack up from St. Joseph's. He was hot, sweaty and complaining mightily about having spent the morning gardening in the heat. And he spent the whole trip home chatting away about the day's activities. In short, I think he had a great time.

***

As of today, I've been blogging for four years and two days. I am ever thankful and grateful for the community I've found myself a part of and the friendships I've made. Whenever I get cranky about the role of technology in our lives, I remember that the all-consuming Internet has brought into my life all sorts of wonderful people I'd probably not cross paths with in the regular course of events, and in that way modern technology has been a blessing to me. As have you.

Summer Report No. 5

2011-08-03T14:49:00.001-07:00

This summer is the summer that I've found the secret to surviving the summer: Don't go to the pool. Counter-intuitive, I know, but it works for me. Let's look at why the pool may not be my natural habitat: I hate direct sunlight, I hate sunscreen, I hate chlorinated water, and I don't much care to swim.

I'd managed to stay out of pools for the twenty years between high school and Jack's third birthday, and I felt no loss. But when you stay home with small children, the pool is the only way you survive the hot months, and so off to the pool we went every day from the end of May until the start of September.

But now my children are no longer small. Jack's interest in the pool is waning, and Will's is entirely dependent on whether or not his friend Gavin will be there. Often Will ends up going with Gavin's family (thank you, Sarah!), leaving me to enjoy the long afternoons at home quilting, reading, canning, and--ever so rarely--cleaning.

Turns out, summer's not so bad when you don't spend everyday standing in the middle of a throng of splashing, screaming children who are all surreptitiously peeing in the water to their hearts' content. Huh. Who would've thunk it?

***

Really, it's been a nice summer. I've enjoyed the garden, enjoyed watching the hummingbirds and butterflies that are drawn to the flowers, enjoyed canning and freezing the tomatoes and the beans. I've had fun blueberry picking and attending fiddle conventions. The beach trip was marvelous. Lots of things to feast on this summer, visually, gastronomically ... lots of good sights, good smells, good eats.

But you know what? I'm about ready for it to end. School starts in three weeks, and while the boys have been phenomenally not-all-that-irritating this summer, I am ready to miss them again. Ready to feel nostalgic for their presence, sad in their absence.

In short, though I will miss the quiet, no-rush mornings, the aimless afternoons and evenings fragrant with honeysuckle, I am ready to have the house to myself.

Really, it comes down to that.

Bits and Pieces

2011-07-28T12:39:00.000-07:00

(Now bring us some figgy pudding. Photo credit: The Man)

I can't believe I haven't posted all week. Maybe it's just because I have only tiny things to tell you. Will, for instance, has learned how to make friendship bracelets, and he's started collecting the Mint 50 States quarters. My older brother collected coins, as did my grandfather, and its neat to see Will lugging around those little blue Official Whitman Coin Folders.

Jack doesn't seem to have the collector gene, but Will's got it in spades, which is how I came to spend ten minutes yesterday dusting the tiny plastic NFL and NHL helmets that Will keeps displayed on his dresser. Housekeeping at its goofy best.

***

We have figs! The two fig trees on the south side of the house have come to fruition, and boy are they ever fruitionating. So far I've canned two batches of fig jam, but the lids on the first batch didn't seal--I think I filled the jars too full--so I'm going to use it to make fig jam-filled cookies. The second batch seems to have come through in tact.

It's tempting to make more fig jam, except I just don't know how much fig jam one family needs. It's quite tasty, not unlike strawberry jam but with a deeper flavor--what's the word for it? I almost want to say "earthy," but I don't know if the phrase "earthy strawberry flavor" will elicit the right response. You might hear it and think, Lovely, I must try some, or else, Sounds like strawberries covered with dirt, and who needs that?

I was telling my friend Amy the other day that I need to come up with a balanced food philosophy when it comes to preserving the fruits of summer. The perfectionist in me is feeling like we should pick all the figs and can them all and ... and ... have dozens of jars of fig jam that we'll end up throwing out after they've sat in the cupboard for two years. The Zen Buddhist in me says: Birds like figs, too. It's okay to leave some for the goldfinches.

***

I finally finished watching the HBO series "John Adams." I've watched the first four episodes at least three times, but for some reason never made it through the rest. At last, I have done it, and now I have a confession to make: I have a crush on Thomas Jefferson. Oh, we've always been friends; after all, I lived in Charlottesville during elementary school, visited Monticello numerous times, and had a hermit crab named TJ Crabbe.

But something more serious has been brewing since our trip back to Charlottesville last spring. And now that TJ's lima beans and crazy, out-of-control marigolds are blooming in my garden, well, it would appear that a deeper affection has bloomed as well.

Have you ever had a historical crush? Do tell!

By the way, I'm learning how to save seeds this summer, and have lots and lots of Thomas Jefferson marigolds seeds, which I started saving after Gretchen-Joanna asked for some. If you'd like me to send you some as well, let me know, and I will.

***

After my last entry, Leslie from Wayside Sacraments sent me a link to a great article in Atlantic Monthly called Caring for Your Introvert. I would recommend it to anyone who's an introvert or knows one. It spoke to my heart, this article, it truly did, and even made me feel a touch of introverted pride. Introverts of the world, unite!

Hmmm ... that doesn't seem quite right. How about, Introverts of the world, sit quietly in the corner and read!

Yep, that's more like it.

Have a great weekend!

Summer Report No. 4

2011-07-22T11:19:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I received a thank you note from the head of a group I recently spoke to. It was a lovely note, and I appreciated it, but I was a little startled when she quoted me back to me. "I loved the part where you said, 'I like people in theory, but in reality I find them rather exhausting.'"

Do I really say this sort of stuff out loud? I mean, I think it all the time, sure. But maybe I ought not to say it in public, especially not in front of large groups filled with people who might quote me later.

I was in a large group last night. I went to a community meeting about local food. When I got home, the Man asked me how it went (after I said, "Aren't you going to ask me how it went?"). My reply--but don't quote me--was, "I hate people."

Isn't that sweet? Isn't that oh-so-very Christian?

Actually, when we broke into small discussion groups (I especially hate people who ask other people to break into small discussion groups), I liked my discussion partners very much. In general, I find individual people quite wonderful. But in groups? Applauding and cheering and yelling out "yeah!" when someone says something like, "I don't care what my neighbors think, I'm growing vegetables in my front yard!"?

I'm really not fond of them in that context.

Oh, that's the problem with groups. Someone's always preaching or cheerleading or telling me why eating local means becoming a vegan. And when you start discussing a topic like eating locally and growing your own tomatoes, the levels of self-righteousness and self-congratulatory hoo-hah is out the roof.

So I came home feeling cranky. And feeling the way I always feel when I've had some group time, which is that I don't really fit into groups very well. I never have, but I keep hoping. I do very small groups okay, as long as they're limited to five or six. But beyond that? I get a headache.

I'm jealous of the people at that meeting last night who felt affirmed and confirmed and a part of things. When asked to report our responses to the films we watched ("Nourish" and "Homegrown Revolution," in case you're wondering), people said things like, "I feel really good about the decision I've made to buy as much as I can at the farmer's market!" and "I really want to start a community garden now!"

My response was, "You've just shown us two films made in California showing a lot of young people eating beautiful salads at long tables. Where is the film about people eating parsnips boiled in water with a little salt in the middle of Iowa in January? Why aren't we talking about the fact that you can buy all the produce you want at the local farmer's market, but if you don't know how to cook it or preserve it, you're up a creek without a paddle? Why don't we talk about my sister-in-law Danni, who no matter how much you tell her that it's so, so important to support small farmers, is not going to spend $8 a pound for heirloom tomatoes? You are a tiny, liberal elite minority with absolutely no idea how most people live, and I find you insufferable and possibly insane, even if I too do my best to eat locally and think community gardens are pretty cool."

Okay, I didn't actually say that, but I did look around for people whose expressions suggested they were thinking those very thoughts. Didn't find them. Maybe they'd left already.

So there's one more group I'm not going to be a part of. Maybe I'll be part of your group instead--as long as it's just the two of us.

An E. B. White Summer

2011-07-19T07:32:00.000-07:00

I thought it was going to be a Eudora Welty summer, so imagine my surprise that it's turned out to be the Summer of E.B. White. How do these things happen? Oh, the best laid plans ...

I suppose it started when the Man and I visited a used bookstore on Broad Street in May and I found Letters of E.B. White for three bucks and scooped it up. This book has been a fine companion all summer. I open it in slow moments and read a little, and suddenly the quality of my thoughts vastly improves.

(The critic Harold Bloom once wrote something to the effect that reading novels doesn't improve us morally, as some would have it, but improves our imaginations and interior lives, which is not to be undervalued. This is a broad paraphrase of Bloom, but I've thought about it a lot, and ultimately agree, though I do think some novels have improved me morally.)

I was at the library Saturday when I came across The Story of Charlotte's Web: E.B. White's Eccentric Life in Nature and the Birth of an American Classic by Michael Sims, which was published last month. I'm about a hundred pages in and completely hooked. The description of White's childhood, which was by all accounts idyllic except that White was shy and prone to melancholia and susceptible to all the usual childhood terrors--which is to say he was a sensitive child--is worth the cost of admission alone.

I haven't even gotten to the part about how White wrote Charlotte's Web, but I'm tingling with anticipation. After all, isn't Charlotte's Web one of my very favorite books ever?

Yes it is, and you know what? It is so much one of my very favorite books ever that when I'm asked to list my favorite books, I rarely answer Charlotte's Web. Why is that? I pondered this yesterday, and yesterday the answer came to me: To say Charlotte's Web is one of my very favorite books ever is akin to saying I have dark brown hair (or did), or that I'm left-handed, or that I grew up in the Army. It's so much of a part of me that it doesn't occur to me to mention it. Did I mention to you that I breathe? That I blink every few seconds?

I nominate E.B. White as the perfect summer literary companion. Who would you nominate?

Summer Report No. 3

2011-07-14T14:49:00.001-07:00

This is one of the flowers Will planted--I believe it's called a Mexican Sunflower. All of his flowers are orange or blue. The blue ones are Bachelor's Buttons, which we know now to plant en masse; otherwise they just kind of flop over and look at you with these pathetic, sadsack expressions. Photo credit: The Man.

As I write this, Jack is cutting an onion into wedges. He's making pot roast for dinner. I know, I know, who makes pot roast in July? But our deal is that when he cooks his weekly meal, he can pick what he wants to make. So pot roast it is.

He made two pies for the 4th of July--strawberry lemonade and Key Lime--but has slowed down on pie production since. He says the two pies for the 4th put him ahead a week. He did make wonderful popsicles yesterday, chocolate and vanilla swirls that called for many bowls, much melting, and a long grocery store search for plain, whole fat yogurt. You could spend years looking for that stuff. Low fat is everywhere. It's a shame.

***

I tried making mozzarella on Tuesday, but failed. I thought maybe I didn't get the temperatures right, or maybe added too much citric acid, or didn't get the rennet diluted enough.

But as it turns out, the problem was much simpler. Turns out that I don't know what a gallon of milk is. I bought a half-gallon, called it a gallon, tried to make mozzarella and ended up with something like ricotta.

But you know what? Whatever I made, it tasted delicious. Last night I ate it with blackberry jam spooned over it. And then I bought a gallon of milk. Turns out that's a lot of milk, cowboy.

***

Canning update: Today, blueberry jam. Saturday, tomato-basil sauce. Yep, I have eight pounds of ripe tomatoes, thanks to our neighbor, Mr. Eddie, who gave us several plants in early spring that he'd started under lights in January. We've had to ripen a lot of our tomatoes on the porch, to keep them out of the clutches of the squirrels, but they seem to do just fine.

Looking out across the garden, there appear to be approximately 900 tomatoes about to come to fruition. It is possible I will soon feel overwhelmed by the sheer tomato-y goodness of my life. Is there such a thing as too many tomatoes?

No, no there is not.

***

Pot roast. It's what's for dinner.

Preserves

2011-07-12T09:23:00.000-07:00

(Blackberry jam, canned by Yours Truly. Photo credit: The Man)

Summer has always been my favorite food season. Two words explain this: Tomatoes and basil. I can't get enough of either, and they grow all summer long right in my own backyard.

But this summer the bounty is even larger. With the help of my friend Melissa and the good folks at the County Cooperative Extension office, I've learned how to can. This weekend I canned blackberries from the farmers' market. I now have seven lovely half-pint jars staring at me from my mantle. If the food supplies run low this winter, we'll survive on jam.

My deep freeze is starting to fill up, bit by bit, with produce from the backyard and local farms. This morning I picked lima beans, blanched them, and popped them into the freezer, where they joined the strawberries we picked mid-May at a nearby pick-your-own place, green beans from the garden, and all that lovely spaghetti sauce I made last week.

Later this week, I'll be canning blueberries and, if I have enough tomatoes, tomato-basil sauce.

This makes me so very happy in so many ways. I feel self-sufficient and practical, not to mention thrifty (all those beans from a $2.99 pack of seeds!). And, very importantly, it all tastes amazing.

My taste in food runs to the simple. A salad with freshly picked lettuce, homegrown tomatoes, and a few leaves of basil leaves me humming for hours after eating it. I love bread and cheese, unsweetened tea, and peaches. There are very few things I love to eat that I couldn't make or grow myself, with the exception of Fritos.

I currently have in my possession the supplies I need to make mozzarella cheese. Which is what I might do this afternoon, since nothing else is going on, and it's going to be 100 degrees outside and a cool 76 degrees inside. I have a recipe that claims I can make mozzarella in thirty minutes. Just think, thirty minutes, and then I can have some fresh mozzarella topped with a slice of tomato and a basil leaf. Doesn't that sound like a marvelous snack?

***

(This is a marigold we grew from seeds from Thomas Jefferson's garden. The plants themselves are about three-and-a-half feet tall and quite unruly, but I've grown to love their sprawling, awkward ways. Photo credit: The Man)

I am continuing with my campaign to put aside all concern for my children's happiness. It's very liberating, I must tell you, and they don't seem to be suffering from my lack of interest in whether or not they found their doctor's appointment to be a jolly good time or if their playdate was all they dreamed it could be.

The trick now is to keep in mind that any job I am currently engaged in--folding the laundry, say, or weeding the garden--is actually one my children could be doing. I keep forgetting. But I will get better at remembering, fear not!

Happiness--or Not

2011-07-06T13:14:00.000-07:00

I am no longer concerned with my children's happiness.

That, of course, is the Zen Buddhist me talking.

But it's true. I'm concerned with the boys' physical and mental well-being, their general education, their spiritual formation and their personal hygiene. If they are injured or appear to be unduly sad or anxious, I will seek treatment for them. If they appear ignorant, I'll hand them a book, and if they seem spiritually waylaid, I'll say a prayer.

If they're unhappy? Well, that's just tough.

Here's the thing: I don't even think it's good to try to make your kid happy. Okay, maybe on his birthday, you ought to bend over backwards, but every day? Looking back over my parenting career, I have spent too much time worrying about whether my children are happy. And here's my question: How much time have they spent worrying about making me happy?

Not enough, ladies, not enough.

It is time for the tables to turn. It's time to make Mom happy. Plan No. 1: My children are going to do all the chores I hate to do. Plan No. 2: They're going to quit saying, "But that's not fair!" whenever I ask them to do a chore not on their regular chore list.

My goal is no longer making my children happy. It is to ensure they are not a burden on society. Or me.

Stay tuned.

***

Yesterday I made spaghetti sauce out of fresh tomatoes. I added garlic and basil from our garden. I processed the tomatoes with my new food mill, and I kept stealing spoonfuls of the tomato juice as it collected in the pot. Heaven!

Today I'm making curtains and working on a quilt. And making my children do the chores I don't want to do. You know what's weird? The more I make them do stuff they don't want to do, the happier they seem. Go figure.

Home

2011-06-30T13:19:00.000-07:00

Pom Pom's most recent post was about things that made her glad. It has inspired me to make my own list of gladnesses, in no particular order.

1. I am glad, oh so very, very glad, to be home. Home! Dirty, messy, scrungy, scrubby, germ-laden, sticky-floored, dust-covered home!

2. I am glad to have my dog's company again. When I was in New Orleans, I saw a commercial with a dog in it. I wept like a baby. Once you are used to getting your daily dose of unrequited love, it's very hard to go without it.

3. I am glad that I'm not going anywhere for a good long while. I want to stay put--except for my trip to IKEA, which is going to happen, and soon, and how.

4. I am glad that the tomatoes are coming in like gangbusters. For one thing, it makes up for the rabbits eating my beautiful greenbeans and all the radishes and some of my pinto beans as well. (I am researching organic ways of keeping rabbits away. The Man is researching how much damage a BB gun can do to bunny.) We do have squirrels eating tomatoes, but we have so many tomatoes, it doesn't much matter.

5. I am glad that blueberry season is here (local friends, let's go blueberry picking!) and that I've found a recipe for spiced blueberry jam. Let the canning begin!

6. I'm glad I've become a zen Buddhist for the summer so that I don't have to worry about whether or not my children are happy. Jack is in drama camp this week, and I found myself overly-concerned earlier in the week about whether or not he's having a good time. Then I remembered that I am a Buddhist now. I have no control over Jack's happiness. Maybe being happy is not what this week is about for Jack. Interestingly enough, as soon as I stopped worrying about whether or not Jack was having a ripping good time at camp, he started talking about how much he was enjoying it (before, all he said was that camp was "fine").

7. Did I mention that I'm glad to be home?

All my travels were pleasant and pleasurable. There were points during our stay at the beach when I wondered how hard it would be for a 47-year-old woman to disappear into thin air and never be found again (and yet still retain use of her credit cards). Which is to say, all that family togetherness can get to a girl after awhile. But overall it was a good vacation.

New Orleans was fun and beautiful and quite exhausting. I got to attend the Newbery and Caldecott book awards banquet, met some very famous children's book authors (who were nice, because just about everyone in children's publishing is very nice), and best of all, ordered room service for breakfast. I believe one of the loveliest things about visiting New Orleans is drinking the coffee. Oh, and the natives are so hospitable they ought to be named honorary Texans.

So I'm glad to have gone, and I'm glad to have come back. It's lucky when things work out that way, isn't it?

P.S. I was in New Orleans for the American Library Association. If you follow this link, you will find a picture of me (scroll way down) with a bunch of other Simon & Schuster authors. I'm right under the picture of Molly Shannon, the latest Celebrity-turned-Picture-Book-Author; imagine that.

Summer Report No. 2

2011-06-22T07:08:00.001-07:00

Greetings from the Outer Banks of North Carolina! That's where I've been hiding away since last Friday, trying to get this summer kick-started.

It has been a strange summer so far. I spent the first few weeks of it revising a novel, a process I enjoy, but one that takes up a lot of space in my head. It's hard to get your summer mojo going when your brain is focused on other things, especially imaginary things that only exist in your own little mind.

(The pink house across the street from where we're staying.)

We're here on Ocracoke Island until Saturday, when we'll head back to Durham. On Sunday, I leave for the American Library Association's summer convention in New Orleans. I'll return home Tuesday evening, and then Phase II of the summer begins. I sort of hope it's the boring phase of summer, the part where I don't do much at all except learn how to preserve figs and make mozzerella cheese and eat a million tomatoes from our garden.

To recap the summer so far, for those of you keeping score at home, here is what I've done since the boys finished school:

1. Gone to a fiddler's convention in Mt. Airy, NC, where I learned that Bluegrass fiddlers and Old Time fiddlers are the Hatfields and McCoys of the contemporary age. It was a scene worthy of a master's degree thesis in sociology, group psychology or anthropology.

2. Taken a canning class over at the local County Extension Agency, where I learned more about botulism than I ever cared to know.

3. Finished revising a novel, which you'll be happy to hear my editor has accepted with open arms and says there are only three or four (or five or six or seven) tiny things that still need working on.

4. Spent a week getting ready for vacation. Which I am now enjoying, though I am living with the underlying dread of going home and immediately turning around to go somewhere else, where I will be expected to be extroverted and charming, something I'm only occasionally capable of. And then turning around one more time (I'm getting dizzy!) to come back home and deal with the unpacking and cleaning and all that.

The best thing about this vacation so far, other than the opportunity to enjoy the beauty of one of the most beautiful spots on the eastern seaboard, has been watching Jack on his bike. We are staying in the village, which is one of the more bike- and pedestrian-friendly places I've been, and has a wonderful bookstore and plenty of places to stop and get a Dr. Pepper or an ice cream cone. Jack has been out and about on his bike for hours every day, breathing what may be his first real breaths of independence. It has done my heart good to see him thus.

I hope that starting next week I'll be a little more regular in my blogging. With any luck, I'll be back frequently updating you on my efforts at cheesemaking and preserving figs and peaches and posting many, many pictures of my tomatoes. Ah, tomatoes. They do my heart good.

Summer Report

2011-06-07T12:20:00.001-07:00

(My wheat crop is in! I think we have enough for a cup of flour. Photo Credit: The Man)

I have survived the first week of summer. Barely.

Much credit goes to my friend Sarah, who keeps whisking Will off to the pool and the river and her backyard. I have to finish up a revision in the next two weeks, and having Will out of the house and fully occupied helps. A lot.

Jack just sleeps until someone drags him out of bed. By the way, he was measured at a doctor's appointment today, and we are now exactly the same height. I imagine he'll be towering over me by the end of the summer. I still outweigh him by thirty pounds--why isn't that a comfort?

Here are some of my hopes/plans/dreams for the summer:

1. We will all get through it physically, emotionally, psychologically and spiritually unharmed.

2. I will be serious about canning my garden bounty, and my children will share my obsession. We will spend many a happy afternoon in the kitchen, laughing and singing as we make blackberry jam. We might even dance a little, just because we are so, so happy about jam.

3. I will not be in any way or form tempted to sell my children to the lowest bidder.

4. I will continue to get up early (6:30ish; I'm shooting for 6:00) to read on the porch and weed the garden, and enjoy the peace of a quiet house. Moreover, Will, sensing that I'm up, will not decide that he, too, will get up at 6 a.m. so he can play computer games.

5. I will sell the computer--and all gaming systems--to the lowest bidder.

6. I will not give up on my garden in mid-July just because it's too dang hot.

7. I will not give up on my children and sell them to the lowest bidder just because it's too dang hot.

That's my list for now. I'm also pondering making this not just the Summer of Pie, but also the Summer of the Southern Biscuit, and also the Summer of Eudora Welty, whose letters I'm reading right now. It's good to have several set themes for one's summer, so that one does not lose heart.

I will not lose heart. I will eat biscuits and jam instead.

Buddhism 101

2011-06-01T08:18:00.000-07:00

I have decided to become a Buddhist this summer. My Buddhist practice will not replace my Christian practice, but merely overlay it, like a nice piece of lace, or a veil, or a double-dose of Valium.

Buddhism, as I understand it, is the practice of letting go of expectations and judgment in an effort to diminish suffering. And since my children have already made it very clear to me that I will suffer this summer if I don't take drastic action, and since I don't have a Valium prescription, Buddhism it is.

As a Buddhist, I will focus on what is in my control and what is out of my control. For instance, today is the first day of June, and it's almost 100 degrees outside. Instead of getting anxious about it--my normal reaction to high temperatures at the beginning of summer--I tell myself I can't control the weather; it is what it is. I make no judgment upon it. I make no judgment on the radio announcers who seem almost sadistic in their excitement as they report the rising temperatures. I let go of all the negative thoughts I have about radio announcers who have never learned to simply report the facts instead of editorializing. I resist the impulse to tell them to shut up; we already know it's hot, you morons.

I am letting go. I am letting go of my children's boredom, their ennui, their stunning slothfulness, their inability to entertain themselves sans electronic devices. I am letting go.

Instead of freaking out over the fact that for the next eleven weeks, I will hardly ever have a minute to myself, I am meditating on jam. My friend Melissa generously spent last Thursday morning showing me how to make strawberry jam and can it, and on my birthday a few days ago I received a Presto Pressure Canner. So this summer, instead of suffering, I will make jam, and I will can it in those cute little jars, and I will think about all the nice folks I will give the jam to at Christmas, and I will do my best not to throw the cute little jars of jam at my children when they drive me crazy.

Because I am a Buddhist, and that's how we roll.

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas

2011-05-25T16:54:00.000-07:00

(Coral honeysuckle. Photo Credit: The Man)

My friend Danielle once said May is the new December, and I've been quoting her ever since. I feel like I've been running around like a mad woman for the last two weeks. Teeth cleanings, annual exams, this errand, that errand. And, of course, the second grade poetry festival.

Just when you think it's safe to get out of bed without brushing your hair, they spring the second grade poetry festival on you. We were this close to school being over and done with, this close to saying no more hot lunches, no more classroom theme parties, no more field trips. I thought I was done. But no. Yesterday Will comes home from Our Fine School with an invitation to spend the first thirty minutes of my Wednesday morning enjoying poetry.

Well, I love poetry, and there is little poetry finer that penned by a second grader, but the second grade poetry festival--the idea of having to find somewhere deep inside me that last bit of school rah rah cheerful mommy-ness--Reader, I thought it might kill me.

Fortunately, it didn't. And once I was there, all was delightful and amazing. It was just the idea of having to go, you know? The idea of one more thing. The idea of having to comb my hair before 8 a.m..

It's the little things that undo you.

(The garden, with a view of the porch. Photo credit: The Man)

So summer is a-cumin' in. The Summer of Pie. The summer where Jack cooks dinner once a week, and the boys and I begin our quest to find the best hamburger in town. We're going to go to lunch at a new burger joint each week. We're going to take notes. We're going to compare and contrast.

Really, it's all I can think of. That, and going to the pool.

(Jack's latest pie--Strawberry Lemonade)

Tonight, I made the last school lunches of the year. My last night of feeling guilty for being such a lame mom and packing pretty much the same thing every single time. I have no lunch imagination. I eat the same thing every day for breakfast (scrambled eggs) and lunch (salad with walnuts and avocado). I'm boring that way. And now my children will be boring that way, too.

But I don't have to worry about it for eleven more weeks. And maybe next fall, I'll make the boys make their own lunches.

That'll show 'em.

The Attic Diaries, Day 2

2011-05-18T14:46:00.000-07:00

(My friend Sarah gave me a bunch of Swiss Chard today--isn't it gorgeous?)

I am making progress. Teeny tiny progress.

What keeps me going? Your comments help, especially comments in which you share that your children are grown and you still have Lego in your attic.

Does the Lego-less attic even exist? I don't think so.

Today I had three small projects: Put all the party stuff in one box, all the arts and crafts supplies into one bin, and make a neat pile of the Legos boxes. Actually, my plan had been to chuck the Legos boxes into the recycling, but then I realized that they weren't empty.

I thought about pretending they were and sort of kind of accidentally throwing them away.

(By the way, I'm sorry that I had to cut the bat footage from the video. He's a really cute bat.)

Below: a picture of the pie Jack made last week. He hasn't made this week's pie yet, though he has made the crust (his first!), which is chilling in the fridge. This week it's double apple pie. I can't wait until we get to strawberry lemon pie. I love strawberry-anything and lemon-anything.

Tomorrow I may take a break from the attic, but on Friday I'm going to attack the corner with all the comforters that need to be washed and the old curtains that long for windows but are far too old and faded to hang up in public, and a bunch of other stuff that's really hard to fold neatly and I don't have any place to put.

But right now I'm going to plant some mint in a pot. Doesn't that sound nice?

The Attic Diaries

2011-05-16T15:29:00.000-07:00

I have made an attic video. It is, as videos go, pitiful, but it should give you an idea of the state my attic was in when I started cleaning last week. You can view it below.

So far I have gone through all the clothes I'd "stored" (i.e. threw onto an ever-growing pile of outgrown and worn-through garments) in the attic and now have two huge bags to take to Good Will. I've donated three boxes of picture books to the library. I've hauled out boxes of my books (i.e. books I've written) and put them in my study, where, for a fee, Jack is going to organize them and shelve them on the bookshelves I bought for $15 today at our local ReStore store.

The attic, I'm sad to report, looks worse than ever.

But that's how it's going to be, isn't it? It's always darkest before the dawn. It's always messiest before the Attic Fairy comes and waves her magic wand over the world's largest collection of Scooby Doo jigsaw puzzles and makes it disappear.

Before I post another video, I promise to learn how to use iMovie so I can properly edit my videos. Until then, this trainwreck will have to do. Enjoy!

The Healing Power of Pie

2011-05-10T13:57:00.000-07:00

Yesterday morning Jack came downstairs and planted himself in front of my rocking chair, where I was reading the newspaper online. He had on the sort of mopey, sad-sack expression only a twelve-year-old boy can muster. "I feel nauseous," he told me. "Am I hot?"

I sighed. I'd been back in town for less than twenty-four hours, and I was still weary from my travels. "Let me feel your forehead," I told him, and he slumped down in front of me. He was definitely warm, verging on hot. But feverish? Hmmm ... I'm not sure I'd call him feverish.

Normally when one of my children claim to be ill, I tower over him like a marine sergeant, spittle flying from my mouth as I yell, "UNLESS YOU HAVE A 104 FEVER AND AN ADVANCED CASE OF LEPROSY, YOU WILL GO TO SCHOOL!"

But that's not where I was yesterday. I waved a limp hand at him and said, "Fine, go back to bed, we'll see how you feel in an hour."

In an hour, he actually felt hotter, and he looked sort of pasty, so I felt like I'd erred on the side of good judgment. It would be nice in situations like this to have a thermometer that works, but I have bad thermometer zen. I can't explain it.

He came downstairs for a bowl of cereal around 3 p.m., and the Corn Chex seemed to revive him some. "Did you get all the ingredients for the pie?" he asked me, leafing through the book he'd given me the day before for Mother's Day, Southern Pies. Jack is our family pie maker, and he'd already decided the first recipe he was going to try was Black Bottom pie.

"You can't bake pies when you're sick," I reminded him, and he nodded. And then, I swear, the color began to come back to his cheeks.

"I'm starting to feel better," he announced. "I'll make the pie tomorrow."

And, dear reader, he did, the minute he got home from school. It's chilling in the fridge right now, and it is gorgeous. I helped him some, but it really is Jack's pie. The Pie that Brought My Child Back to Health. How could it be anything other than delicious?
***

I'm working on my attic video. I made one today, but it was five minutes long, and it would probably take you an hour to download. I'll try again tomorrow. Be prepared to be shocked, I tell you, shocked!

Hopes and Dreams

2011-05-03T15:20:00.000-07:00

(The porch in the morning.)

Tomorrow I'm going to Chicago, where I hear it is cold. Here in North Carolina it is warm and rather gorgeous. The peas and sugarsnaps are in, and it's hard not to eat them straight off the vine. I suppose we should wash the pods first, but we are, after all, organic farmers. A little organic dirt never hurt nobody.

I have finished the revision I've been working on all spring, so when I come back from Chicago on Sunday, I will have a wide-open road until the end of May, when my children will be hanging out full time in all their glory. Don't tell them, but we're putting the boys to work this summer. I'm calling it Homeschool Summer Fun Camp. Have adventures folding the laundry! Test your your dexterity as you spend the morning weeding the garden!

But in that little stretch of three weeks between Sunday and May 31st, I have my house to myself and for the most part my time to myself. So you know what I'm going to do?

I'm not sure if I should tell you. You'll scoff. You'll raise your eyebrows and roll your eyes. You might even smirk. Okay, no, not you. You would never smirk.

But you'll take it with a big grain of salt when I tell you that I'm going to organize my attic.

Yes, yes it is true.

I even plan to use Jack's flip video camera to make a before-video for your viewing pleasure. Just please don't send people from reality TV shows to my house after watching, no matter how great the temptation.

Here's the thing: for so long I've told myself I just can't do it. That the only way to tackle the attic is with professional help, which might include the administering of professionally-prescribed drugs, but would most certainly entail hiring a professional organizer.

At other times I've thought, 'Why not leave the mess for the children, after I've dearly departed? It's mostly theirs, after all.'

But I have decided to toss out my defeated-even-before-I've begun attitude and say, Yes, yes I can. I really can. Really, really I can.

Stop smirking! Remember how I said you weren't the smirking type? It doesn't become you at all.

So that's my big plan. It's not exactly grand, but I imagine once my attic is put to rights, the rest of my house will follow suit. Suddenly I will be living simply, almost austerely. Everything in its place, everything peaceful, calm, serene.

Is it just a crazy dream?

***

Speaking of crazy dreams, I dreamed about the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge last night. That's it--no more BBC America for me!

But wasn't her dress to die for?

Random Thoughts

2011-04-26T12:15:00.000-07:00

The other day I looked up a book in my public library's online catalog--The Joy of the Snow by Elizabeth Goudge. It's her autobiography, and frankly I didn't expect the library would have it, but I thought I should check before I bought a copy on Amazon.com the minute Lent was over.

Much to my surprise, the library had a copy. But what was downright shocking is the fact someone had it checked out!

Who is this person who finds Elizabeth Goudge as compelling as I do? Is it the same person who requested The Scent of Water when I was halfway through with it, forcing me to track down a copy to buy? Are there just two of us scrapping after Goudge's books, or is there an entire posse?

If only the library had a way to let you contact the people who have been reading the books you've been reading--or want to read--especially if they're books that you assume no one else is reading or has ever heard of (heck, I'd never heard of EG until Jody mentioned her earlier this year over at Gumbo Lily).

I would love know who my fellow Goudgians are--I imagine them as elderly Episcopalian women, much like my own mother, who have downy soft cheeks and smell of Chanel No. 5. But maybe they're like me, middle-aged women who wandered back into church in mid-life and swoon over novels that are a heady mix of C.S. Lewis and Rosemary Pilcher. Or they might be anglophile teenagers who've already worked their ways through Jane Austen and E.M. Forster. Whoever they are, I want to know them!

I'm not sure how this library program would work. Maybe when you checked out your books--and nowadays, we check them out on the library's computers, no need to have contact with an actual human being--you could put an X in a box that said you were willing to let your email address be released to anyone who had also checked out any of the same books in the last six months.

I know, I know, it's probably unfeasible, and you'd probably get emails from creepy people who had also just happened to have checked out Your Money or Your Life or Yoga for Dummies instead of Karl Barth's Apologetics or The Collected Poems of W.H. Auden.

But it's killing me to know there's someone out there who's reading The Joy of the Snow and I have no idea who. I want to know!

***

We went to a beautiful Easter service on Sunday. We attend a university chapel, which means we get to hear from an ever-changing roster of hot shot preachers--N.T. Wright, Barbara Brown Taylor, Walter Brueggemann, Shane Claiborne, just to name a few who've come through in the last year--as well as our own beloved Dean of the Chapel, who is from England and awfully cute for a balding, middle-aged man.

This was our first Easter at the chapel, and it was grand--and really, really crowded. We decided afterwards that perhaps next year we'll try the 9 a.m. service instead of the 11 a.m. My mother, ever-practical, suggested we just go to the vigil the night before. We are a family who can do a midnight service, no problem. Or stay up all night and go to the sunrise service bleary-eyed and cranky.

As the temperatures outside rose to the high 80s, the temperatures inside were quite steamy as well. The chapel--"chapel" is a misnomer; it's a Gothic cathedral--holds 1,800 people, and we had that and then some. The typical 11 a.m. service hosts a mix of students and people from around the community, but Sunday's service was student-heavy, and most of them were dressed for a big cocktail party. It was fun watching the Man--who gallantly gave his seat to an elderly woman--having to avert his eyes through the entire service. A serious amount of naked flesh, I'm just sayin'.

And yet, it was lovely to see everyone, nice to see the kids, the old folks, the families, all of us nearly prostrate with heat stroke, most of us coughing and sniffing with spring allergies and colds. There were trumpets and bells and lots of loud singing. I let the boys take off their jackets and ties and unbutton their top buttons. I mean, everyone else was naked, why not them?

As we all drained from the church, it was amazing to see how many people automatically took out their iPhones to check to see if Jesus had texted them during the service. Touching, really.

***

I have good news about our friend David, who I wrote about again in my last post. His doctors opted for a serious round of antibiotics, which did the trick. He's home, done with chemo, and will go in next month for a bone marrow transplant. Thanks for your prayers, positive energy, white light, white heat. I promise you that David appreciates them.

Prayer Request for David

2011-04-22T09:32:00.000-07:00

Back in January I requested your prayers, positive thoughts and good energy for our friend David, who was diagnosed with a rare form of leukemia. Since that time he's done remarkably well with chemotherapy, and about a month ago made the decision to undergo a bone marrow transplant in May.

Today we received scary news--David went into the hospital last night with abdominal pain and needs surgery. The problem is, surgery would put him at risk for infection, and it could prove fatal to take that risk. But it could also prove fatal not to treat the blockage which is behind his abdominal pain.

As I write this, David's doctors are trying to decide what the next step is. So again I request your prayers, positive thoughts and good energy for David. Pray for healing, for guidance for his doctors, for courage and strength for David, his wife Becky and their son Isaac.

Thanks so much. Easter blessings to all. He is risen indeed!

A Walk Through My Garden

2011-04-20T06:33:00.001-07:00

It has been a busy week here on the farm. We've got seeds sprouting and flowers blooming in containers and a whole lotta of garlic. And as you can see from the above picture, there's still much work to be done.

We've expanded the smaller garden by the garage, because doesn't every family need sixteen heirloom tomato plants? Of course!

The Big Plot is for pole beans and lima beans and kidney beans and pinto beans and watermelons and pumpkins. I believe this is the summer when I will finally have to learn how to preserve food in jars or else become the crazy neighbor lady who leaves baskets of produce on your back steps in the middle of the night.

Right now we're eagerly awaiting the spring peas, which you can see here unfocused in the foreground. I'm worried that the summer-like days we're having are going to do my little peas in. Note to self: next year plant early spring crops much earlier!

While I'm waiting for the Big Plot to be finished and fenced, I'm growing some flowers in containers--dianthus, snapdragons, phlox and lobelia. I love dianthus to extreme. As pretty as roses, but a lot easier.

Once the Big Plot is done, I'll have eighteen feet along the fence for flowers. Will's claimed four of those feet, and has already planted bachelor's buttons, marigolds, sunflowers and four o'clocks. I'll be planting cosmos, stock, and coneflowers, and various herbs hither and yon.

More flowers in containers. Columbine and phlox.

This is my strawberry pot. I got it at a thrift shop for five bucks and bought the plants from White Flower Farms. Now I wish I had more.

Plants in waiting, including three hydrangeas, some zinnias we started from seeds, and zucchini.

Now: who will do the weeding? Any volunteers?

Little Altars Everywhere

2011-04-13T13:19:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I was told a story about a young pastor visited at home by an older pastor. The older man told the younger man that every table in his house should be an altar. By this, he didn't mean the young pastor should have a chalice and a silver platter of communion wafers on his bedside table and TV trays. Instead, he was preaching a kind of mindfulness. Pay attention, he was saying. Keep God in mind whatever you do.

This story appeals to both my love of order and my love of beauty. I believe God also loves order and beauty, and it is nice to be in accord with God from time to time, instead of always lifting my eyes to the Heavens and saying, "Huh?" or "Do I have to?"

(I will say, after my initial positive response to the story of the young pastor and the old pastor, an irritable thought nudged its way into my brain, whispering, This way madness lies! What if it starts with tables and ends up with sinks? Who could make an altar out of sink? Think of the globs of toothpaste, think of all those little hairs!)

So when I came home, I worked on turning my tables into altars. I straightened my sewing table and the coffee table. I neatened up the dining room table, which is currently being used for quilt-making. I never quite got to the kitchen table, but I eyeballed it a lot and thought about how un-altar-like it was, covered up by recycling and library books.

Looking around as I write this, I see that some of my tables have been re-cluttered, and so I must go make altars out of them again. I suspect making altars out of tables is a daily practice. But here's the funny thing: once you make your little altar, you look at it differently. An altar, after all, is a place for communion with God. And here's one right in your living room! There's one over there where you put your coffee cup while you're reading the morning paper.

Little altars all over your house. Like maybe God lived there or something.

Lent

2011-04-06T12:33:00.000-07:00

This is the next step in the quilt. Last you saw it, it was laid out on pieces on the floor. In the above picture it's been pieced and is waiting to be basted. Since this picture was taken, the quilt has been basted and stenciled in preparation for quilting. At this very second it's sitting in my little quilt hoop, where it is in the process of being hand-quilted.

The problem: I don't know anything about hand quilting. I've hand quilted a very small wall hanging before, but I was just winging it. Now, for some reason, I feel like I should now learn how to hand quilt properly. I am becoming a respectable quilter in my old age, giving thought to to the rules, conceding they might prove useful.

I'm in a bit of bind (quilty pun), however, because I've given up buying books for Lent. I have a book habit that I feed pretty regularly, though I'm good about buying used and trying to find a book in the library before I lay down cold hard cash. Nonetheless, I suspect if I kept records, I'd find that I averaged a book a week.

Oh, but there are so many books I find myself needing! Right now! Like The Quilter's Album of Patchwork Patterns by Jinny Beyer and The Pastor: A Memoir by Eugene Peterson and Free Some Day: The African American Families of Monticello.

And right at this very second I need Hand Quilting with Alex Anderson. I really, really need it.

I could get it on Sunday, because Sunday is your "free day" in Lent, when you are welcome to indulge yourself. I don't know why this is the case, but it is. The problem here? I don't buy things on Sunday. That's my Sabbath practice, with the occasional exception of going to the grocery store. Otherwise, no shopping.

Would it be cheating to ask the Man to buy me Hand Quilting with Alex Anderson?

Probably.

I suppose this is the point of Lent: to give something up and then to want it back really badly and be forced to ask yourself, What is it that you really need? You know what you want, but what do you need?

I know the answer is God, but I feel like the answer is Hand Quilting with Alex Anderson.

Jesus wept.

Family Night

2011-03-30T15:54:00.000-07:00

(Because it's fun to lay out the pieces of the quilt I'm making
on the floor and watch the dog walk all over them
even after I've told him a million times not to ...)

Tomorrow is International Family Night at Our Fine School. It is not a night for international families, but rather a family night with an international theme. The evening starts with dinner and ends in the gym, where a plethora of international delights will be on display. I don't know what said delights will be. I imagine they will involve lots Plaster of Paris and a few dozen informational posters with pictures of the Eiffel Tower drawn on them in purple marker.

International family night is an annual event at Our Fine School, and in the seven years that our family has been sending its youngest members to matriculate, we have yet to attend. It's not that we're not international types, it's more that ... well, we don't have anybody to sit with.

Isn't that sad? We are most poorly socialized people I've ever met. Oh, the boys are fine. It's me and the Man. The idea of walking into a room with our plates of spaghetti and garlic bread and scanning the room for a friendly face ... oh, it's too much. It's just too, too much.

***

The good news is, Will no longer seems so sad. Although given the gloomy weather we've been having, I can't imagine why not. We're in the middle of a week of rain and cloudy skies. My garden buzz is gone. My chocolate buzz is full-on.

***

I'm really just checking in. It's a quiet sort of week. I'm revising a novel and doing laundry and working on a quilt that seems to be more or less making itself. I'm writing letters. Is this the stuff of blogging? It would be if I could tell a story about it. But it's raining and the dishes are calling. No stories here. Just chocolate.

All of the Second Graders Are Sad

2011-03-24T15:58:00.001-07:00

(The view from my bedroom window. Aren't those blooms amazing?)

We don't know why the second graders are sad. They have been asked, but they aren't telling.

At first I thought it was just Will, and I was worried. The Big Sadness runs in my family. It hits some members harder than others, and mostly manifests itself first thing in the morning. I have dealt with it all my life, and am happy to report that having a dog has helped enormously. But I worry about my children. Will they get it, too?

For the last week, Will has been quick to anger, a fast-draw on the pout, easily moved to tears, and a little bit on the irrational side. I've asked him if something was wrong at school, but he says no. Did anything happen at recess, at lacrosse practice, when he was over at a friend's? No, no, no.

Do you think it's just that you're tired, I ask, and he says maybe that's it.

So I've been worried. And then I talked to my friend Sarah, and her second grader is sad, too. Not only that, she talked to another mom--same thing. Sad second grader.

Is it the time change? The increased pollen count? No one knows.

(Oh, by the way, I finally finished that quilt I started last summer.)

Now that I know that it's not just Will, but that all the second graders are sad, I feel better. Perplexed, but better. Yet and still, what could it be? What is it about spring and being eight, or very close to eight, that would have you mopey and prone to crying?

(Did I mention that I machine-quilted this quilt? All on
my own? By myself?)

There are no answers here. Just questions. Just mysteries.

Oh, and I finished a quilt. Did I mention that?

Gardens, etc.

2011-03-22T07:19:00.000-07:00

(Overlooking the valley from Monticello's gardens)

It's 10:23; already the morning is getting away from me. I'm sitting on the back porch and listening to the chatter of birds and the racket of machinery down the street--someone is having a tree cut down. The yard is a mess. We're about to build the new beds, so lumber and shovels and hoes and rakes and hoses are everywhere. I'm happy to report that my sugar snaps and green peas are growing like crazy in what I've started calling "The Little Garden." I'm building them trellises to climb on.

There's lots to write about, but it would all come out hodgepodge. I'm in the process of planting seeds in containers--sweet peas and bluebells, for starters--so I can have flowers growing against the garage wall. The dirt next to the garage is no good, so containers it is. I've also started seeds in eggshells; they're in the downstairs bathroom getting their little starts on life. They're heirloom seeds I ordered from Bakers Creek Heirloom Seeds out in Missouri. Zinnia, 4 O'Clocks and Canterbury Bells.

I've always wanted to grow flowers, but have always been lacking in something or another--land, money, time, direct sun. This year I have enough of what I need to get started. Start small, they say, and I'm trying. I want to plant everything, of course. A packet of seeds cost $2; why not buy the whole catalog?

So there's the garden to write about, and the quilt I'm almost finished with. This morning I scouted out the laundromat near my grocery store for oversized washing machines, which they have and cost $5.50 a load! Ah, the price one pays for beauty. Then I went to the library and picked up more books about gardening. I'm supposed to be working on a revision of a new book, but I just want to read about flowers and watch my peas grow.

I have been working on mastering myself during morning drop-off at Our Fine School. Remember how in Little Women the girls all thought of themselves as pilgrims on the path to Paradise? They had burdens to carry (Jo's, if I recall, was the fact that she was a girl) and things about themselves they needed to master--bad tempers (Jo), vanity (Amy), and the like. I don't think this is the paradigm most people live their lives by anymore. We're too busy trying to lose weight and get into great physical shape. But we're very accepting of our greed and lust and bad tempers. It's funny. I read somewhere that we've turned the seven deadly sins into virtues, and I think it's true.

Anyway, I have a very bad attitude at morning drop-off. I could justify it by saying that everyone but me drives like a total idiot, and that's true enough, but when one is trying to master oneself, self-justification might not be the best route to take.

Sadly, I'm so much like St. Paul, always doing what I would not do, and failing to do what I would. Yesterday, as I took the right turn onto campus, I told myself I would only think loving, kind thoughts about my fellow drivers, and I did such a good job--until I just couldn't stand it anymore and yelled, "Move it, sweetie!" at some hussy in a Ford Explorer. Sigh. She couldn't hear me, but still. My words were not said with love.

Today I tried a breathing exercise. "Breathe in God, breathe out irritation. Breathe in God, breathe out resentment." Etc. That seemed to work fairly well, and I'll try it again tomorrow.

So that's where I am right now. Expect lots more garden talk in the upcoming weeks--and hopefully pictures as well. I was planting some seeds yesterday and thought, "Oh, my goodness, I'm turning into a little old lady." But you know, I don't think that's such a terrible thing to be, do you?

Back from Monticello

2011-03-16T06:47:00.000-07:00

(Thomas Jefferson's vegetable garden, very early spring)

Ah, it was grand. Chilly, windy, but grand all the same. We toured the house, which was lovely and filled with interesting things, as Thomas Jefferson was a man possessed of an interesting mind, and then we toured the grounds. Not much in the way of flowers this time of year, but the early vegetable gardens were inspiring. On our way out, we stopped at the gift store and bought packets of seeds.

You leave Monticello feeling larger than when you came. Maybe that's what happens when you've spent time in the presence of genius--or, in this case, genius preserved. What I love about Jefferson is that he was a man who invested his considerable intelligence and passion for life in everyday things. He cared about food and he cared about gardens. He thought--and thought and thought--about houses and rooms and windows. He worked on Monticello, which he designed and redesigned, his entire life.

Of course, it's impossible to tour Monticello and not think about the slaves, who were the ones who cooked Jefferson's famous French cuisine (he took one of his slaves with him to Paris--James Hemings, I think--so he could learn the french style of cooking) and built and rebuilt his house and worked in the garden. Maybe that's why the slave quarters were to me the most fascinating part of the house. That's where the real work of the house got done. And everything was done--cloth was woven, buttons were made, butter churned, nails forged--right there. Monticello was a world unto itself.

When we got home, the Man and I spent the weekend expanding our garden plans and ordering blackberry bushes and planting seeds in peat pods. I was almost inspired to organize the attic, but at the last minute decided to take a nap instead.

***

It is a gloomy Wednesday. We've had a beautiful 2011 so far, lots of clear skies and warm days, but the last week or so the more typical late winter weather has set in--cool temperatures, cloudy skies, rain. We need the rain, so I'm trying not to get too mopey about it. Besides, tomorrow it's supposed to be sunny and 70 degrees. Help is on the way!

In my garden, the sugar snaps, green peas, spinach and lettuce are all popping up, and we've got six or seven varieties of tomatoes under the grow-lamp in the kitchen. It's all very fecund around here. Birds everywhere. Sentinels of spring, I hope!

Not so Much a Post, More Like a Letter

2011-03-10T06:05:00.001-08:00

Dear Friends,

Goodness me, where am I? It's the boys' spring break, which means it's the first rainy, gloomy week we've had all year. I started it out with a stomach bug, but it wasn't too bad, and I'm better now. It gave me the excuse to spend Sunday watching "Downton Abbey" from beginning to end, a virtual and visual feast for the anglophile that I am.

Oh, my dears! If you haven't watched this, you must! You can download it instantly from Netflix. Wonderful period piece--England, right before World War I, Jane Austen-esque in its premise--landed gentry, a family of daughters, who will inherit everything? Not that horrible distant third cousin? Oh, no!

(But perhaps he's not so horrible after all?)

Watching "Downton Abbey," I was beset with letter lust. A footman walks into breakfast bearing a silver tray piled with mail. "First post, my lady," he says. Which suggests there will be a second post--and who knows, maybe a third. All those letters, folded into their lovely, small envelopes. I was salivating!

I have been reading collections of letters, which I enjoy, especially when you have both sides of the correspondence. I'm almost through with As Always, Julia, the correspondence between Julia Child and Avis DeVoto. It's wonderful, and has had me running to my copy of Mastering the Art of French Cooking again and again. You should taste my scrambled eggs!

I'm also dipping into Two Gardeners: A Friendship in Letters, which contains the correspondence between Katharine White (wife of E.B.) and Elizabeth Lawrence, a well known garden writer and native North Carolinian. It's a perfect book for this time of year and should be read with the latest copy of the White Flower Farm catalog by your side. Oh, I have big dreams of flower beds this year.

We're off to Monticello with the boys this afternoon. I've been studying Thomas Jefferson with Will, in effort to make sure he'll get something out of the trip, and now I'm eager to see the old place myself. I spent some childhood years in Charlottesville, and I'm looking forward to driving out to see my old house. As an Army brat, I don't have a lot of opportunities to go back to my childhood haunts.

So that's it for now. I hope this finds you well and enjoying the first glimmers of spring.

Yours ever,
frances

Invisibility--Some Thoughts

2011-03-03T12:10:00.000-08:00

A couple of years ago I was driven around suburban Chicago by a book sales rep in her mid-fifties. She had a funky salt and pepper crew cut and wore cool Wilma Flintstone beads, a crisp white shirt, black trousers, and comfortable flats.

I told her how much I liked her hair, and she told me it was her post-cancer 'doo. Before breast cancer, she'd had long, flowing locks, but once chemo made it all fall out, she'd said to hell with it. The fact is, she told me, once you're fifty, you're invisible. Nobody sees you anymore, and it's liberating. Why bother spending thirty minutes every morning doing your hair? Why ruin your feet with stilettos?

Mind you, she was attractive, her clothes fit well, she looked great. "I dress for my friends," she said. "We dress for each other. It's more fun that way."

As I said in my last post, I, too, have joined the ranks of the invisible, and I don't mind a bit. In fact, I never liked being looked at. Some of this, I'm sure, stems from having a father who was always checking out women in a way that made me feel uncomfortable and embarrassed. You can do the Freudian math on that one. And I'm a self-conscious person in general, so the last thing I need is a lot of eyes looking me up and down.

Besides, for a natural born people-watcher, invisibility rocks. It is the state that you aspire to.

***

Lately I've been putting a lot of product in my hair and making it stick out all over, sort of like Laurie Anderson in the early '80s. When you're invisible you can do this. You make your hair stick out, you put on your cowboy boots, you get in your minivan, and you turn up the music really loud. I probably won't dye my hair red, though some might consider that the logical next step.

***

I see some women fighting their impending invisibility tooth and nail. There are some moms at Our Fine School, attractive women, in great shape who are over forty and in big-time rebellion. They dress like they're twenty-two, wear skirts like they're eighteen, have long hair and very perky bosoms. They look scared to me. I want to take them aside and say, "It's okay. You needed to develop some hobbies anyway. Let's go get you a library card."

The rewards for being good-looking are so great, but it's like a career as a professional athlete. Sooner or later you've got to buy the car dealership and get on with your life, accept the fact that there are younger kids coming up behind you, and they're fast and really good, and no one's looking at you anymore.

***

One more thing about that sales rep I met in Chicago--her husband's seventy, a retired cop. He thinks she's a hot, young babe. All you need is one person whose eyes light up when you walk into the room. The rest is gravy.

At the Grocery Store--Some Thoughts

2011-02-25T14:25:00.000-08:00

You always end up with a shopping buddy, someone who either started two minutes before you did or two minutes after. You are going up the canned food aisle, she is coming down. You are going down the laundry detergent aisle, she is coming up. At some point you acknowledge one another with nods and awkward smiles. Yes, we are shopping at the same time, your smiles say. You are each others' shadows for the next thirty minutes.

I always avoid getting in the same check-out line with my shopping buddy. It would be too much. We have been so intimate, our fingers touching the same cans of beans, our eyes meeting over the bananas. And yet we will never see each other again. Small talk would be awkward, painful. Impossible.

***

I fully believe that everyone in the checkout line is judging me by the contents of my shopping cart. They care if my meat is organic and local and notice if my cereals are sugary. They raise their eyebrows at packaged cookies (I made two dozen chocolate chip cookies at the beginning of the week, I want to tell them, and I often bake my own bread) and think well of me when they see all the fresh produce.

***

At the same time I understand without a doubt that no one cares what's in my cart. I am a forty-six year-old mother and housewife who drives an ocean blue Honda Odyssey minivan. I am the most invisible person on the face of the planet, and my food choices are of absolutely no interest to anyone. That's why I spend my time in line reading People and Us instead of Newsweek. You can get away with that sort of thing when you're invisible.

***

Last week a carton of grape cherry tomatoes was 3.99. This week it is 4.99. Which is to say, my relationship with cherry tomatoes is officially over until July, when I will pick them from my garden, and they will taste so much better than they ever did plucked from a plastic carton.

The Marvelous Capacity of the Soul

2011-02-22T12:17:00.000-08:00

(Our new compost bin, built and photographed by the Man)

"The Marvelous Capacity of the Soul"--don't you love that phrase? It's from Teresa of Avila, and I just came across it yesterday, after spending all day thinking that my soul needed feeding.

With the care and feeding of my soul in mind, I bought a CD of modern poets reading their own work--T.S. Eliot, William Carlos Williams, e.e. cummings, Langston Hughes, et al--and have been listening as I drive here and there, here to drop off the boys at school, there to the grocery store, here and there, here and there. These are the poets who made me love poetry. Waiting to pick up Will from school a few minutes ago, I listened to these lines from e.e. cummings--

My father moved through theys of we
singing each leaf out of each tree

--lines I loved when I first read them at age fifteen, and lines that I love now.

Today I've had all sorts of thoughts about sticks. There's a North Carolina artist named Patrick Doughtery who makes sculptures out of sticks, and for awhile he had an installation about five minutes from my house. I went to look at it all the time. Really, a stick is one of the most beautiful things you can see.

Here is a video of an installation he's done at Wheaton College:

It's funny to think that sticks can feed your soul just like poetry can. But it's true. The marvelous capacity of the soul. It sees beauty everywhere.

Quiet, Very Quiet

2011-02-15T18:07:00.000-08:00

I am being quiet right now. It's a February kind of quiet. It's a reading lots of books and working on a quilt quiet. It's a writing a new book quiet.

And it's quite possibly an I don't have much to say quiet.

***

We are having a lovely stretch of days here in the Tar Heel State; tomorrow the high is supposed to be in the 60s. I'm a little nervous about this fine weather. What happens if you don't spend February in a funk because the skies are gray and the wind is bitter? Will February's funk come back to bite you in April?

***

Tonight Jack whipped out a list of supplies he needs for a school project. Do I even need to mention that the supplies have to be brought into school tomorrow? Does that just go without saying? Ah, but Jack is smart, very, very smart. In Language Arts, the students are making books about their personal heroes, and Jack has picked his grandmother, my mother-in-law, for his. So he can pull stunts like remembering at 9 the night before that he has to bring in acrylic paints and foam brushes and Elmer's glue to school the next day and get away with it.

Because it will please his grandmother that someone is finally giving her her well-deserved props for working hard all her life, for making sure her son had the college education she never had (and which she would have loved), for being the one who showed up at the sick bed and the nursing home, who took care of her granddaughters while their mother went to nursing school. And it pleases me and the Man that Jack recognizes these things as heroic and important.

So when Jack whipped out the list, we helped him find the stuff, and we didn't fuss at him.

I wonder how many of the other kids will choose their grandmothers for their heroes?

***

It's February, which means it's time for a little Bluegrass. Here's a video of one of my new favorite bands, The Rye Mountain Boys. Enjoy!

Warm

2011-02-07T10:17:00.001-08:00

(Will's Hands. Photo credit: The Man)

I am warm.

I have been warm before, but now I truly appreciate my warm-ness. Our furnace got very funky last week, and for the last few days, we have had to do a hoodoo voodoo dance to get it to run, and sometimes the dance didn't work.

Lucky things: That temperatures during the day have been hovering in the 50s. That our fire place and portable heater have provided sufficient heat in small areas. That a cool house at night isn't such a big deal, body heat being what it is. That Will runs around so much he usually has an excess of heat. That Jack had a sleepover this weekend and a day-long science fair, so he didn't have to suffer too much.

Today the furnace guys came and brought us a new furnace. The new furnace cost less than the parts to fix the old furnace would have cost. Go figure.

Being warm reminds me of something I've been meaning to tell you. If you live in a place where it gets cold, go get yourself some silk long johns. I ordered mine through Campmor; they cost about forty bucks, and they add very little bulk, so you can wear them and still snap your jeans. They have made me about as happy as a pair of long underwear can, and I wear them all the time. It's my little secret of warmth!

I also wanted to tell you that last night I started reading a book called The Scent of Water by Elizabeth Goudge. I had never heard of Elizabeth Goudge until somebody mentioned her on their blog--was it you, Pom Pom? This book is magic. It was published in 1963, takes place in post-WWII England, and concerns a middle-aged woman who inherits a house in the countryside. I am completely enthralled.

So I am warm, and I have a good book, and my children are home, and dinner is leftovers from last night. That's all my news for today, but it's good news indeed.

The Worst Thank You Note Ever

2011-02-01T09:13:00.000-08:00

(The Man made his own camera this weekend. Yeah, that's just the sort of thing he does. This is a picture he took of our lovely and invasive bamboo out back.)

I was feeling a little glum right before lunch today. It's a gray day, on the cold side, and we've got a week of rain ahead of us. February, right?

I made a hummus wrap and sat down at the kitchen table to eat. I noticed Will's pile of Christmas thank you notes (I know, I know, we're running a little late on the thank you notes this year) and picked one up. Here's what it said:

Grammy and Pop,

Thank you for the gift cards. I don't remember what I used them for.

From Will

It is the worst thank you note ever. My children are barbarians. I cannot stop laughing.

Friday Report

2011-01-28T08:46:00.001-08:00

(I've been saving eggshells to plant seeds in. The Man has been playing around a lot with his new camera and thought the shells would make an interesting picture.)

I just want to make clear that I am a very responsible dog walker. I never leave home without a roll of biodegradable green bags--poop bags, for the lack of a more poetic term--in my jacket pocket, and I always scoop.

Well, almost always. Sometimes this time of year, if I'm not paying close attention, I lose sight of things. The grass around our neighborhood is faded and brown, often covered with leaves. From time to time when Travis is done doing his business, I simply cannot find it. I look and look, and it's like it disappeared.

I am only willing to devote so much of my day to searching for missing business. If I can't find it after a minute, I shrug and move along.

Today was one of those days. Travis did his business, I searched for it, couldn't find it. Only today there was a neighbor backing out of her driveway while Travis was going, and I felt like I couldn't just walk away. She'd probably seen Travis doing his business--you can't miss it, after all, when a dog's got number 2 on his mind--and if I just walked away, she'd think I was one of those terrible people who does not scoop.

And then what would happen? She'd probably post something on the neighborhood list-serv. To the woman in the red jacket with the adorable Cockapoo, PLEASE SCOOP YOUR DOG'S POOP. Well, I walk my dog every day, and every day I wear my red jacket, so everyone would know it was me, and I'd probably be forced to sew a huge P to the back of my coat.

Unbearable. Untenable. So you know what I did? I scooped a poop-sized portion of leaves. Scooped 'em right into my biodegradable poop bag, waved to my neighbor, and I went on my merry way.

I mean, what else was I supposed to do?

Soldier On

2011-01-25T06:53:00.000-08:00

(My house, taken with the camera I gave the Man for his birthday--the camera is 90 years-old, and I like how it makes our house look 90 years-old, too. I got the idea for the camera, by the way, after reading the book the Man gave me for Christmas called Folk Photography: The American Real-Photo Postcard 1905-1930. I found the kind of camera a lot of the real-photo photographers used back in the day, the Kodak 3-A, on eBay.)

I have probably mentioned before that I'm pretty much a wimp. When I get sick, I am not stoical about it. I try not to whine, but I don't act the martyr, either.

The Man, on the other hand, refuses to admit when he's down for the count. He got the Something That's Going Around on Saturday. All he would admit to was that he might be getting something. That's all he admitted to on Sunday. Yesterday, he contemplated taking a sick day--only because he has hundreds accumulated, mind you, not because he's sick--but ultimately decided against it.

Today, although his cheeks are definitely hot and his eyes are definitely glassy, he has declared himself perfectly fit and healthy.

Jack, it would appear, takes after me. He got the Something That's Going Around on Friday. He did not deny it. He didn't milk it, but he owned it. Then, mid-afternoon on Sunday, he began asking me every five minutes if he still had a fever. I saw where this was leading. He was making the case for not going to school on Monday. And the fact is, he still had a fever, so we didn't make him go, though he probably could have sucked it up and gone.

Again, yesterday, mid-afternoon, the asking every five minutes: Do I have a fever? And yes, he was still warm. That is the way of this bug; the fever lasts and lasts. It's not a rock 'em, sock 'em fever. More like a 99.5 fever. But it's the kind of fever that likes to kick back and put its feet up. It's in no hurry.

This is a tenacious, pernicious bug. At some point, you just have to soldier on. Even me. I still felt bad on Saturday, but I decided it was time to get on with my life. I went to the store, I made pasta for Sunday night dinner. I decided I would go the next afternoon to the Mother/Daughter book club I'd been invited to by one of Jack's classmates to discuss my books. I swept the kitchen floor. I made pizza.

And so today it was decided that Jack needed to soldier on, too. We sent him to school, right after we gave him the Oscar for Best Performance from a Child Who Really, Really Wants You to See How Much He's Suffering and Realize What Cruel Parents You Truly Are. I promised I would come get him if he started to drag and needed to come home. I suspect he'll be fine. I suspect he will be surrounded by a bunch of other kids whose parents kicked them out of the house feeling not feeling 100% to the good.

Oh, but you should have seen him dragging his backpack and his trombone down the sidewalk at school when I dropped him off. Oh, that poor boy. I almost called him back to the car, almost took him home again and tucked him in his warm, comfy bed.

Almost.

***

Thanks for all your prayers for David and Becky. I'll keep you updated.

Also: postcard people--I finally got some more sent out yesterday. Look for one in the mail soon!

Prayer Request

2011-01-23T10:33:00.000-08:00

A dear friend of the Man's, David, has just been diagnosed with Acute Lymphocytic Leukemia. He starts chemotherapy tomorrow. David's been having some troubling health issues for a while now, but his doctors haven't been able to figure out the cause. Recently, David starting wondering if he had diabetes, so went to get tested, and that's when it was discovered he had leukemia (and, oddly, the leukemia appears to have nothing to do with his other health problems).

David has asked me and the Man to pray for him. I know many of you who read this blog have been known to say a prayer or two, and I would ask that you hold up David for healing and courage, and for God's mercy upon him. His wife is named Becky, and I'm sure she would appreciate our prayers as well. David will be treated at UNC hospitals.

I know, too, that some of you who read this blog probably don't pray in the traditional sense (or in the nontraditional sense, for that matter), but I hope you might not mind sending out some positive thoughts into the universe on David's behalf. He can use all the energy and light we can send his way.

Thank you! Blessings!

Let's Pretend

2011-01-22T10:31:00.001-08:00

I am sitting here pretending that I don't still feel sick. But I do. I feel tired and ill. I'm not completely out of energy, but I don't have much to spare. I've been grocery shopping today, and have just spent some purgatorial time dealing with Will's room, and it feels like time to nap, but weirdly enough, napping doesn't help. In fact, it seems to make things worse.

So I thought I'd take a break to blog, and then I'm going to go put groceries away and maybe make some soup while I watch my new favorite soap opera, Grey's Anatomy. I've been hearing about it for years, and when I saw I could download instantly via Netflix, I thought, 'What the hey.' Now I'm hooked. It's your basic hospital soap, but it's fun and likable and fairly preposterous. Lots of pretty people.

I've spent much of the week just sitting there. Also becoming addicted to other people's blogs. Sara over at Shiny Red Houses has culled her blog list to her absolute favorites (I am proud to say that Left-handed Housewife made the cut ). I decided to check out a blog she likes called Irretrievably Broken, and oh, good goobily moobily, I'm hooked. I swear, it's like reading a novel. In fact, over the last couple of days I've read the entire thing. This woman can write, baby. And even though her situation is so different from mine (essentially her blog is about life post-divorce and trying to co-parent with your ex), it doesn't matter. Amazing.

Then, through Irretrievably Broken, I found a blog called Here be Hippogriffs, also addictive. I just jumped right in with the most recent post, then began reading backwards compulsively. I have no idea who this woman is or quite what her deal is, but I landed on a post about her first husband that actually turned out to be about her turbulent early twenties and could not stop reading.

It's a little weird, I have to say, to land in the middle of these strangers' lives and get so caught up in their stories. I don't know what to think about it. Is it good to know so much about people you don't know? Is it in some way akin to watching a soap opera, in which other people's lives become your entertainment? Or is like checking out a good book of nonfiction from the library, in which you become involved with the characters (who are in fact not characters, but real people) and feel connected to them and somehow enlarged by their story?

I don't know. Do you? Does it matter? Is this the fever talking?

Time to go put away the groceries.

Edit (upon re-reading later): I should say that with many of the blogs I follow, I don't feel that soap opera feeling, but a lot of blogs I follow are more like slice of life/domestic diaries--here's what we ate, here's what I'm making, here's something funny the kids said. It's more like checking in with friends (and many of the authors of these blogs feel like friends, there is a back and forth, and sometimes snail mail) than reading a book. The blogs I mentioned in this post have a much more confessional feel to them, in which the whole life is brought out and presented for inspection.

Just a Little Quilty News

2011-01-18T07:40:00.000-08:00

Although at this very minute I feel like I've been hit by a truck (there's Something Going Around, as there usually is this time of year, and as usual, Will brought it into the house, and as usual, I get hit twice as hard as he did), I did have a very quilty weekend. I started the above-pictured quilt last summer, then put it aside to work on another quilt, and then got caught up in some knitting projects.

But now I'm determined to finish it. And I'm almost there. Except for the fact that simply writing this blog post has me longing for a nap. That's getting in the way of further progress, yes indeedy.

I think I had other things to say. But the nap is calling me, the nap is calling ... Somebody send chicken soup. Somebody send ginger ale and crackers ...

Winter Storm Warning

2011-01-12T07:03:00.000-08:00

(My fiddle and its fabulous red case.)

I had big plans to go to the fiddle jam over at High Strung last night (per my New Year's resolution), but it got iced out. Like much of the Southeast (and now the Northeast), we've just had a lovely winter storm blow through. Not much accumulation here, but enough ice to get school canceled yesterday and delayed today.

***

It's a good time to think about spring gardening and cookouts and going to baseball games. It's a good time to get deeply involved in hobbies. Right now I'm working on one quilt, three pairs of socks, and a sweater. I practice my fiddle every night after dinner, and have been making homemade postcards (more on those later). I'm hoping to keep myself so busy and amused I'll forget to be miserable because the sidewalk is crusted with ice and the sun gives up around 4:45 and heads off to some place more interesting.

***

I've been thinking a lot lately about my old letter-writing days. I actually wrote a letter on Sunday, to my friend Kathryn in Alabama, who I'm always meaning to call. Early in the morning I think, 'Oh, let's call Kathryn today and have a nice chat.' Then I completely forget until around nine o'clock at night, which is eight o'clock at night in Alabama. Kathryn has three children; the oldest is 4, the youngest is not yet 1. Eight o'clock at night is a terrible time to call a person with three children under the age of 5. I resolve to call the next day, and the vicious cycle begins again.

It occurred to me on Sunday that I could write Kathryn a letter. As far as I'm aware, letters are still legal, although I'm expecting the Postal Service to go out of business any minute and that will be that. So I tore some blank pages out of a journal with paper that I especially like and wrote. Then I folded up the pages, stuffed them in an envelope, looked up online how much stamps cost these days (they seem to go up a penny every few weeks), and slapped that letter in the mailbox. Easy as pie.

I miss letters. I miss getting them, I miss writing them. I used to correspond with tons of people. Sunday night was my letter-writing night. I'd sit on my bed and gather my writing things around me, and sift through the pile of letters I'd received that week. On Monday morning I'd take the letters I'd written to the copy shop and make copies. It was the closest I ever got to keeping a regular journal.

I have one correspondent left, our old babysitter, who's now a senior in college. She's an English major with a thing for Jane Austen, so she's totally into letter-writing. And she has lovely handwriting, a bonus.

So I was thinking that maybe this year I would combine my resolution to draw more with my love of corresponding and see if I could interest anyone in a postcard exchange. Is anyone interested? You don't have to do homemade postcards (though it would be marvelous if you did), just promise to write back. If you want to, let me know. Leave your email in a comment, and I'll email you for your address.

***

Thanks for all the chicken feedback. I'm studying up on it. From what I've been reading, there's not a lot to it other than keeping the predators away. Oh, and convincing the Man. I'll keep you posted!

***

Chicken?

2011-01-06T16:09:00.000-08:00

For a year now, ever since it became legal to raise chickens in this neck of the woods, people have asked me if I was going to get me some. And for a year, I've said probably not. Amy asked me just a couple of weeks ago, and I raised my usual concerns: What do we do with the chickens when we go out of town, and how do we keep predators out of the yard? Our wooded suburban neighborhood has copperheads, our own fox family, and, oddly enough, coyotes. I'm sure there are a few raccoons galavanting around out there as well.

But I've been emailing with my neighbor Anthony, who's had a coop since last year, and he says he's only lost one chicken, to a hawk. I'm going to go visit his chickens this weekend if the weather's good, and then I'm going to think about chickens. A lot. Real hard.

I mentioned this to the Man tonight, and he did this thing he does when I bring up an idea he doesn't think is so hot, which is to smile and look interested while signaling total lack of enthusiasm with every friendly nod of his head.

So I did the thing I do when he does his thing, which is to sound oh-so nonchalant, like, "Well, I'm not even sure if this is something I want to do, and certainly not right at this very minute. In fact, I'm completely losing interest as we speak."

Then, despite his initial lack of enthusiasm, the Man will start thinking about chickens and get kind of excited. And in spite of my initial excitement, I'll start thinking about chickens and wonder if it's such a good idea.

Who knows where we'll end up. A new goldfish, maybe.

I have to say that I am excited about visiting Anthony's coop. It's good to know a neighbor who has chickens. You never know when he'll need to get rid of some extra eggs ...

***

Just a little more Travis. Here he is yesterday, his grubby old self:

And here he is after his grooming today, King of the Prom:

It's hard when your dog is prettier than you are.

An Ordinary Day in Winter

2011-01-04T09:40:00.000-08:00

This was my view this morning as I sat on the couch and wrote. Do you see my poor little dog stuck outside? Why won't I open the door? Because I'm taking a picture, silly.

(Edit: I write a lot about my dog in this post. I think it a reaction to Jody's post about her dear departed Jessie, an ode that had me in tears this morning.)

It's Tuesday. The children are back in school, suffering. Jack is already asking how many days of school are left this year. I don't think they mind school so much; what they mind is having to get out of bed. Me, too.

My alarm went off at 6:55 a.m. The barest hint of light outside, not enough to make you feel like it was time to be up and at 'em. I have to tell you, the thing that undoes my farm dreams is the idea of having to get up early to take care of animals. I would love to have animals, but I want the nocturnal kind. Owls, maybe. Cows with a yin for late night TV.

Travis, badly in need of a trip to the groomers, is my sole companion during most of the day. After I drop off the boys at school and have breakfast, he and I trot around the neighborhood. We're usually out for about forty-five minutes. When it comes to mid-winter walks in the early morning, I have no pride. I look ridiculous, wrapped up in my many scarves and seventeen layers. But I'm warm, and that's all I care about.

When we get back, I make a cup of tea and sit on the couch to commence writing. I have a study upstairs to work in, but Travis isn't allowed upstairs, so I work downstairs. After Travis gets a bite to eat and a sip of water, he sits next to me on the couch and snoozes for the rest of the morning. He is either full speed ahead or napping. This dog has no in-betweens.

The porch is always a little sad in the winter, though I swept it the other day, so it looks more presentable than it has been lately. Sometimes, when it's warmer, I write at this table, Travis asleep at my feet.

I think the word for our yard right now is barren. See the big empty space in the middle? In a couple of months we'll be plowing it up. Mr. Eddie next door is lending us his tiller. We're going to do a big garden this year. I'm about to put in my order to Johnny's Seeds for potatoes and garlic and Bok Choi and all sorts of good stuff. Peas. Maters*. All of it. Winter is a fine time to think about spring gardens. You forget about mosquitoes and weeds and your own sheer laziness. It's all gravy when you're dreaming about your garden in winter.

(*Maters=tomatoes, in case you're unfamiliar with this pronunciation)

The winter garden, as such, has suffered some with our recent snow and the cold snap before it. The collards have risen to the occasion, but the lettuce pooped out, and the carrots didn't stand a chance. I'm going to try planting some more carrots in pots in late February. I really love the idea of growing carrots in pots. We have heavy clay soil around here, and carrots grown in a regular bed come out stunted.

I wrote for two and a half hours this morning, and I'll sit down for an hour this afternoon after I pick up the boys from school to pave the way for tomorrow's work. I'm revising, and so I'm taking out big chunks and putting new stuff in. I have to be careful. If I take out too many chunks too soon, the whole thing collapses and I'm not sure how to rebuild. But a little bit at a time is manageable.

In a few minutes I leave for my fiddle lesson with my new fiddle in hand. I love my teacher, but I sort of dread my lessons, because it's a very nervous-making thing to play for someone else who's actually paying attention. But usually once I get to my lesson, I have a good time. My days are often pretty devoid of people, so it's nice to have company. And to play music with someone.

Winter days scare me a little. There are long stretches of time where I'm not tethered to much but my own imagination. This can make a girl squirrelly. I do a lot better now that I have Travis. Who is, I believe, outside trying to eat my compost pile as I write this.

An experiment: a music video from YouTube--Mr. Guy Clarke singing "Homegrown Tomatoes," to get us through this winter's day. The sound's not great (I think this footage was taken in the '70s), but the song is a personal favorite:

New Year Book Report! (& other miscellaneous stuff)

2011-01-01T06:47:00.000-08:00

I'm finally out of my pajamas. The day after Christmas, I stayed in my jammies until 4 p.m. But the last couple of days I've gotten dressed first thing. This is how I know Christmas is winding down. Suddenly I feel the need to do constructive things with my time. Long hours of reading are no longer psychically possible--the guilt factor (I'm not getting enough done!) has kicked back in.

Oh, but what reading I have done! I got a bodacious number of books for Christmas and have been dipping into all of them, too greedy to just stick with one. Here's a partial list:

*As Always, Julia: The Letters of Julia Child and Avis DeVoto (marvelous!)

*The Dirty Life: On Farming Food and Love by Kristin Kimball (a wonderful book, but has totally disabused my notion that I could ever be a farmer--too hard!)

*The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration by Isabel Wilkerson (history that reads like a novel--thoroughly compelling)

*Picture This by Lynda Barry (my favorite comics artist; I asked for this book because I would like to draw more)

I also got books on cheese-making (I'm going to give it a try!) and generating your own electricity (through pedaling, mostly), and playing the fiddle.

We've had a very nice Christmas, but the boys are starting to self-destruct, another sure sign that it's time to return to regular life and send their sweet behinds back to school.

Resolutions? I've made a few. The annual resolution: Stand up straight. I have lousy posture, always have. I spent most of my childhood slouched over a book and have my own little dowager's hump to prove it. Essentially, I have been slouching for 46.5 years, but when I remind myself to stand up straight, I always feel immediately energized and much, much taller.

Otherwise, I would like to lose 25 pounds without dieting. I hate diets. But when I cut out sugar and up my proteins, I find that the weight comes off, slowly. I had a good run with this last fall, but for some reason I was psychologically overwhelmed by all the Halloween candy and fell off the wagon. Now I'm back on. I'll let you know what happens.

This year, I swear, I promise, I'm going to go to the fiddle jams at High Strung, our local music store. The jams are geared toward beginning fiddlers, and I've been told I would by no means be the worst. I really, really want to do this, but I've felt shy about it. But not this year! In 2011, I will jam.

I also want to draw more this year. I love to draw. I don't have any particular talent, but I enjoy it, but for awhile now I've had a hard time letting myself do stuff that wasn't productive. I haven't been very good at playing. I'm going to try, though. I'm resolved.

Well, it's time to go take down the Christmas decorations. You know, if someone put a flyer in my mailbox for a Breaking Down Christmas team, I'd hire 'em.

Happy 2011, everyone!

Advent Journal: Season's Greetings

2010-12-23T05:38:00.000-08:00

The other day I heard a woman say that she decorates her house for Christmas on the Friday after Thanksgiving and then takes everything down on December 26th. While I think people should observe the season as best they see fit, I have to say this approach to the holidays strikes me as supremely wrong-headed.

I know, I know. If you've had a tree up since late November, it's a definite fire hazard by the day after and you need to get it down. I get that part.

And I also know that a lot of folks celebrating Christmas are not religious, and so they're free to say "Game over" whenever they want. I get that, too.

Still, the idea of Christmas skidding to a halt at midnight December 25th is depressing. To me, Christmas really, truly begins on Christmas Eve. Before then, you might have some Christmas moments--feelings of good will when someone lets you cut into traffic, small moments of peace, especially when you hear Nat King Cole sing "O Holy Night" while you're making Christmas cookies--but not that deep, holy feeling of Christmas.

Do you know the feeling I mean? I was not a particularly religious child, but I remember getting that holy feeling as my brothers and I delivered loaves of banana bread for my mother late in the afternoon on Christmas Eve. The sky would be that glorious pink sinking into purple as we set out, and you could see the neighbors' trees in their windows. My brothers and I would sing Christmas carols and wonder outloud how we'd ever fall asleep that night. It would be dark by the time we got home. We'd turn out all the lights in the living room and sit in front of the tree until dinner, everything hushed and magical.

I don't think you have to have religious faith to get that holy feeling. I think it's there for everyone, free of charge, a gift from God. We may have given up on church, call ourselves "spiritual but not religious," call ourselves nothing at all, but we still seek out those moments where our souls feel at peace.

In my family, we begin decorating two weeks before Christmas, but the true desire to decorate doesn't hit me until the 22nd or 23rd. Yesterday I hung tinsel in living room. It felt like I was getting ready for a party. Which, I suppose, I was. The party will really begin Christmas Eve and will go on for days after Christmas, as we feast and celebrate, sing and play.

I will think of that woman in her naked living room, her life gone back to normal, her party already over.

***

Yesterday, I started thinking about the books I got for Christmas as a child. Little Women, A Little Princess, Mandy by Julie Andrews, Island of the Blue Dolphins. I think my father--it would have been my father who bought the books--went to the bookstore and said, "What are the best books for a girl to read?"

I still get lots of books for Christmas, and the days after Christmas are a reading fest for me. The food is cooked, the house is cleaned, I'm not doing laundry. I'll take breaks to play games with the boys and to grab some more Chex mix, but mostly what I'll do is read, read, read.

Bliss.

***

I expect this will be my last post before Christmas. I hope your Christmas is lovely, filled with light, joyous, holy, healing, and, of course, merry. Rejoice!

Advent Journal: The Purge Continues

2010-12-14T14:52:00.000-08:00

I just finished making the boys' lunches for tomorrow. I fear I'm not a very good lunch maker. I tend to make the same thing over and over until the boys beg for something new. Except they rarely do. Like me, they are mostly monogamous lunchers, seemingly happy to eat the same thing everyday.

(I fear their teachers judge me harshly on the monotony of my children's lunches.)

Still, it seems like I should try harder to put a little more pizazz into their midday meals. Well, maybe next year. Right now I'm looking forward to Christmas break and its attendant cease-fire, lunch-wise. I'll wait til January to figure out how to fit a leg of lamb into a Star Wars lunch box.

***

Last week was my busy-busy holiday week. I made lasagna for Jack's advisory group at Our Fine Middle School and close to a hundred glittery blue and gold stars and moons for the Very Beary Breakfast for Lunch party at Our Fine Lower School. Somehow I managed to sign up for two things, at two separate schools, on the same day at the very same time. If you've wondered why I haven't been posting much, there you have it.

***

The purge continues, but I'm running out of steam. I wish I could in good conscience just throw everything out in the trash, but I can't. Too much good stuff, or at least useful stuff. The problem is, it's hard to find a place to donate gently used toys. Most places only take new toys these days. Apparently there's a spot by a nearby Catholic church where you can put out a box of toys and they'll disappear like magic.

Anyway, there's been a lot of going through stuff and making the Pirate Ship Ahoy game has all its parts and the Fast Trax race car tracks has all its tracks and Mouse Trap has all its traps. This will wear you down after awhile. This will get you drinking very early in the day. Or at least thinking about it. "A glass of Cabernet would hit the spot right now," you think around 9:45 a.m., stranded in the middle of ten million Hot Wheels.

So I've got my heart set on straightening out the closet in my study and our bedroom closet, and then calling it a purge. The attic is too cold. And too out of control. Just too dang much.

When will I admit it: The attic will never, ever be purged? I need to accept this and move on with my life.

***

Last week I stood in the middle of a music shop called High Strung Violins and Guitars and auditioned fiddles. I am not a person who happily plays fiddle in front of other people, especially not in a store filled with accomplished musicians, so you can imagine this was all I needed of Hell. My fiddle teacher, who looks almost exactly like Santa Claus and is very dear, came with me, so that helped. He's used to how badly I play.

So that's my big Christmas present: A fiddle of my own. I've been playing for about a year now (I took a break last spring when I was traveling so much), and I'm better than I used to be, but still not much good.

My New Year's Resolution: To start going to the Tuesday night fiddle jam at High Strung. I've been saying I'm going to do this for over a year now, but now I really mean it. I'm gonna jam.

***

I've been good about keeping up with my Advent readings, but as with purging, I'm running out of Advent steam. This happens every year, though. I start out the Christmas season feeling spiritual as all get-out, and then by mid-month the craziness sets in. Santa Claus starts edging out Jesus.

I would spend more time ruminating on this, except I must go wrap presents. And bake banana bread. And run to the post office and the art supply store and get some stocking stuffers.

You get the picture. Sigh.

Advent Journal: The Purge

2010-12-06T12:06:00.001-08:00

(The winter wheat survived its first winter storm.
Photo credit: The Man.)

I've done it. I've gone through the cupboard with all the orphaned tupperware lids and, yea, I have taken out the lids and verily I have put them in the recycling.

I have accepted that the mates to these lids are gone. They have run off to the wild rumpus, which is where wayward, wanton lids go.

I have kept the three or four containers that have lost their lids. They have some potential to be useful, and besides, there is something about a lidless container that makes you feel sorry for it. They're like men whose wives have left them for the milkmen. They've been duped, dumped, taken for granted. I am willing to give them a home until they decide to take a swim in the dishwasher and get melted into weird, unhelpful-for-food-storage shapes.

I have gone through the cabinet with the bowls and the 47 candlesticks we got for wedding gifts and the collection of candle stubs that I'm holding onto because ... because ... well, why am I holding onto those candle stubs? I finally forced myself to throw away the chipped cereal bowl that I've kept for years because one day I might make a mosaic table top. Really, I might.

I have been hating the clutter of these cabinets for well over a year, probably closer to two. Guess how long it took me to straighten them out? Fifteen minutes, tops.

(I believe the marigolds, a few days ago simply past their prime,
are now very much over. But didn't they go out pretty? Photo credit: The Man)

So, anyway, yes, I'm doing an Advent purge. We have too much stuff, and I'm tired of it. How can I prepare a straight path, as wildman John the B would have me do, if my pathways are stewn with candle stubs and chipped cereal bowls?

I spend most of my purge time today in Jack's room, going through his closets and taking out stuff he no longer plays with (or, in some cases, never played with--my kids have too much stuff!). Why, I ask you, why did he have one entire closet shelf piled with EMPTY Lego Starwars boxes? All the models have been built (and probably destroyed, their pieces dumped into the massive ocean of Lego flowing through our house), and yet, the boxes remain, gathering dust in some prime storage real estate.

Sometimes I do not understand my own life. Time to purge! Make straight the paths!

***

Jody asked what Advent book I was reading. It's a quite wonderful collection called God With Us: Rediscovering the Meaning of Christmas. It has readings for every day of Advent. Last week all entries were by Richard John Neuhaus; this week we hear from Scott Cairns. Other writers include Kathleen Norris and the poet Luci Shaw. There's a marvelous introduction by Eugene Peterson. It's a book I've thought about buying for years and am so glad I finally did.

Advent Journal

2010-12-01T10:46:00.000-08:00

(The marigolds, almost done for, still delight me)

A storm blew through last night that swept the last of the leaves off the trees. Now the sky is bigger. Now the light pierces everything.

I'm trying to pay attention this Advent, which is something I try to do every Advent. Usually it's a lost cause by December 10th, when all the hurry and the stress sets in. But for these first four days at least, I've done the daily readings and written in my journal, and kept a candle lit as I've sat at the kitchen table and worked on a revision.

We'll see how long it lasts.

(Lettuce and greens in our messy garden)

"Forbid that we should stumble through this day oblivious to the wonder in the ordinary," pled one of my readings this morning. The same author informed me that finitum capax infiniti is the Latin for the finite is capable of the infinite.

This afternoon, driving to pick up Will from school, I glanced in my rear-view mirror to see the woman in the car behind me laughing and talking a mile a minute. A second glance revealed her audience, a chocolate brown Lab in the backseat. It was just the two of them in the car, and they both appeared to be having a grand time. It was absurdly cheering.

I am grieving today for my friend Jamie, whose father died yesterday. It's a strange thing, to feel grief on such a beautiful afternoon. And strange to laugh at the woman and the dog in my rear-view mirror while grieving. I didn't know whether to laugh or cry, she said, and so I did both.

(There are carrots growing in this here pot; there are a couple right
around 3:00--look for very skinny green leaves)

Another excerpt from my reading: "Christmas forces us to deal with all the mess of our humanity in the context of God who has already entered that mess in the glorious birth of Jesus."

We expect so many wonderful things from this time of year, but year after year what we get is mess because what we are is a mess. Some of it's funny, but there's a lot of grief and sadness, addiction and depression, lack of love, lack of affection, just a lot of mess we'd rather not deal with, and feel somehow like we shouldn't have to deal with, not at Christmas.

But what better time? In the middle of our grief, in the middle of all our human messes, a reminder that the darkness doesn't win. The light wins. Watch for it.