Fie on Root Rot, Crabgrass, and Blog Spam

Into June, John and I could be found looking at the giant tulip poplar by the back fence, willing it to live, and exclaiming, "Oh, there's a bud, up there! At the top!" "Aren't the smaller branches looking a teensy bit greenish?" When another month had gone by, and no leaves yet, we had to admit the truth. We called the tree service, and learned that our massive tree had died of root rot. The roots had probably had this for years, and then suddenly the tree was just not getting enough nourishment. It seemed fine last year . . . Because the root rot may cause instability, they need to bring in a crane instead of just having people cut off branches while standing in it. That's why it will cost $4,000. Sigh. At least Jack and Will will have something fun to watch.

Finally it has been less hot, so the other morning Will and Jack and I (emphasis on "I") weeded half our side garden, which had been woefully neglected for at least a month. I wonder why crabgrass finds it necessary to amass such a giant root system, if it isn't even going to grow that big? Why can't it be like that extremely tall thick weed with practically no roots?

Another really noxious weed, blog spam, has appeared on my blog twice in the last five days. I've never had any before, in all nine months of its existence, and so this seems like an ominous development. I limited my comments only to registered Bloggers, but that didn't help, as the next comment did technically come from a registered Blogger. GRRRR!

And now for something completely pleasant . . . . We have an extra share of peaches this week from the CSA, due to someone accidentally taking too many shares and then redistributing them incorrectly. But instead of hogging them all for ourselves I'm going to make a big peachy something for our potluck out at the farm tomorrow. The farmers are Amish, so this is a really special treat. We're not allowed to take pictures, of course. The children, of which no doubt there are many, will take us for a tour of the barn. Everyone is making a different dish. Then we taste brie from an Amish cheesemaker and can buy Amish stuff. That reminds me that I have a whole blog entry in my head about the romanticization of the Amish and the Amish aesthetic. I have a feeling it will be born after Saturday. So stay tuned.

Big-Box Shopping and the Integration of the Self

Great title for a conference paper, eh? I was telling my friend W. the other day about how I've decided to do a lot of my shopping and errands in Media, because I like the energy of a downtown and try to use independent merchants whenever it seems reasonable. (And Swarthmore is great if you need earrings, sandwiches, or a haircut.) She said, "Oh, no, it's big-box shopping for me until the kids are older!" I could tell she wasn't really taking in my recommendation for Deal's, an old-fashioned general store with very good prices. W. continued, "I try to do everything on my list, and when it's all done for the week, then I do what I want or shop where I want."

It's that work/leisure split again, surfacing in the life of a stay-at-home mom, for whom the split, I would think, is pretty difficult to sustain. It's easier when you work for a paycheck during the week and go off sailing on the weekend. Her life strategy certainly is more efficient than mine. But I couldn't do what she does because it doesn't feel quite right to split life into the Obligatory and the Fun, two dreary and soulless categories (to say nothing of Obligatory Fun). The way I figure is that everyday life is full of blessings if we are ready to see them. Take the endless project of food shopping. Supermarkets are usually boring and that music drives me nuts. So I go to farmer's markets, Trader Joe's, an independent butcher, a great fish market, the Swarthmore Co-op, depending on what I'm getting. It takes time but I feel better about my choices and I've enjoyed the transactions much more. And while I'm in the neighborhood I'll pick something up at the place next door. I like to feel I'm in a place.

I choose to shape the "have-to's" into something joyous whenever possible, instead of trying to get them over with. Does that make sense?

Down East Days

Back from the cool and breezy and into the hot and sticky. A bumpy transition yesterday, what with Will's loud whining and wailing in Trader Joe's, and his pushing a lady's cart in front of her, and the lady muttering "Jesus!" and Will refusing to apologize until she was too far away to hear. And the gorgeous yellow and green bowl I got at Isleford pottery was broken by the cat today, still in its box and wrapped in a bag. And John saying "You shouldn't have left it on the counter." So I now realize I've got to write up something about the Maine trip before it becomes completely erased by the dog days of a Pennsylvania August, and its attendant grumpiness and whininess. And no camp or school.

Our cottage was near Southwest Harbor on Mt. Desert Island. We could take a little path down to a rocky beach, where the boys loved to pick up crab claws and shells that had been dropped by seagulls. In the distance we could see several islands and a couple other harbors of Mt. Desert. Great Cranberry Island was the closest. (Isn't that a great Roald Dahl kind of name?) We heard the distant clinking of buoys, the occastional hum of a motorboat, gulls arguing as they wheeled close by, and a dog barking across the bay. We smelled the brininess of the sea, but also a fresh wind blowing through the wild roses by the shore. At low tide we could wade a little in a tiny bit of sand.

We went to Sand Beach and were amazed that some people were actually swimming in the 50-degree water. We did swim a little in Echo Lake, though, and Jack and Will dug the biggest hole in the sand ever with some French children. We ate at several lobster pounds, a restaurant at the Atlantic Brewery, and a couple other places with great food that didn't mind kids around. (No fast food on the island, and no chains of any sort. How do they do that?) We rented bikes and rode around Eagle Lake and Witch Hole. Jack was on a trailer bike and Will on a child seat that he was a little too big for. Another day we took the passenger "ferry," just a small boat really, to Little Cranberry Island, which was peaceful and quiet. Children sold us lemonade and cookies out of a wagon. I got some napkin rings at an artists' co-op there, and the ill-fated bowl.

It's not a Maine cottage without a quirky collection of books. For children, Burgess's Animal Stories, E. B. White's Trumpet of the Swan, Franklin's Secret Club (which we had to read to Will about four times a day). For adults, a book on raising pigs, the Foxfire books, a bunch of thrillers, and a book called Gay-Neck, an Indian story about a pidgeon. Really. There was even a Victrola, but no records, and it made excruciating shrieking sounds when you turned it on or off.

Could it Possibly Be Any Hotter and Stickier?

And to top it off, our new air conditioning system broke this morning. So my legs are sticking to the chair and I'm sweating. Not merely glowing.

Will has a new friend, Noel. It's really his first friendship, and he's infatuated. He and Noel run around all morning together in preschool camp. We've heard several times how Will and Noel spotted a cat in a tree the other day. Will brought a half-deflated Trader Joe's balloon to camp to show Noel, asked me if Noel could come to Maine with us, asked if Noel could come over to see our cat, and said he'll miss Noel when camp is over. Conversation in the car on the way to camp:

Jack (skeptically): He sure talks about Noel a lot now. How did he make friends with Noel?

Me: Well, since he's sitting right next to you and not doing much, why don't you ask him?

Jack: Will, how did you make friends with Noel?

Will: Well . . . I went to camp. Noel and William (Noel's brother) were there. And now we're friends.

So there ya go.

Tomorrow I'll be busy packing, and we leave Friday morning. Wouldn't you know the heat wave will break just as we go Down East. Murphy's Law, and all that, whoever Murphy was. Have a happy week, dear readers.

Wild Blueberry Bushes in the Sun

Wild blueberry bushes in the sun have a certain spicy scent that I love, less cloying than lavender and utterly envigorating. You always know you can reach the mountaintop when you come across that scent. On our Maine vacations, when we weren't hiking we were clambering over the rocks on the beach, for miles. Who needs sand, anyway? We felt like we could go on forever, that we would never tire of the perching, jumping, and climbing up again. And again and again.

And when it rained? The old cabins we rented were full of the owner's discarded treasures and books. The very best was a cylinder Victrola. We listened to songs from the 1930s on it, especially "Catch that Tiger" and a song with the words, "Yabba dabba doo, the monkeys in the zoo." As a child I always read anything I could get my hands on, and the musty books were always entertainment enough for me, whether they were the original Pollyanna books, obsolete Girl Scout handbooks, or P. G. Wodehouse's Bertie Wooster series, all of which I remember reading.

The town of Ellsworth, on Mt. Desert Island, had a blueberry pancake breakfast one Saturday, in which cheerful volunteers scooped cupfuls of batter out of garbage cans to splat on the griddle. Pancakes eaten outside are always delicious, but with Maine blueberries, they are just too good. Look away, vegetarians, but every vacation we had to boil the obligatory lobster. I don't remember the lobster crawling around on the kitchen floor a la Annie Hall, but it was all quite a delightful ordeal of delayed gratification. Crack the various parts. Carefully, tediously, extract the tender flesh. Dip that little piece in butter. Now you can eat it. Do it all over again for the next little piece.

Even the leaky rowboats and bee stings have a gauze of nostalgia over them, I suppose because my mother and my brother David are gone. Did I tell you that we forgot our bickering on these vacations? And that we all helped with the dishes and the sweeping?

Eight Days until Maine

Joe Miller, here's the recipe for the Apricot-Almond Cobbler. And we've gotten two more pounds of apricots this week. I'll make some other apricot dessert this Saturday for when my brother and father come over.

A big thanks to Scrivener for recommending my blog here (see #4). I think I may have a couple more readers now. Blogging away in obscurity is fine with me, but welcome aboard, everyone. He nows says he did that so that I would post more often. Jo(e) is right, he is a pest.

Here's a list of things that I was thinking about last night.

A Few Things I Dislike

When Jack puts his lips on the kitchen countertop and blows, creating a loud farting sound

Having to admit that the child yelling "My penis is peeing!" in the swimming pool is mine

Camp that is only 2 1/2 hours long

Taking two kids to two different camp locations for camp that is only 2 1/2 hours long

When my declawed cat scratched a visitor's bare legs, drawing blood. The hind claws still work just dandy.

Knowing that we have to clean out bucketsfull (is that a word?) of ancient cedar shake debris from our attic. (We neglected to cover our stuff up there when we got two old roofs taken off and a new one put on.)

A Few Things I Like

My husband putting away the dishes and loading the dishwasher

Jack and Will kissing and hugging each other

Friends who will drive five hours or more, with two small kids, just to visit us for 24 hours

The anticpated coolness and fresh air of Maine in August

Memories of childhood vacations spent in Maine

Having a DVD player in the van (so much for those simple vacations of yore)

Fantasizing about going here next summer

Two Pounds of Fresh Apricots and Two Geeks

Two pounds of fresh apricots are waiting patiently in my red Pyrex bowl (like the bowl my mother used to have) to be made into an apricot-almond cobbler today. The apricots just arrived in the CSA on Wednesday, and our friends Scott, Kathy and their children are coming to visit today from Virginia. The convergence of the apricots and our friends makes me giddy, since all are so delicious and rarely experienced by us.

I had a post all written the other day but then I lost it when I tried to save it because we were having DSL problems and I ignored my geek husband's advice. It was about how John (geek husband) wanted to go to the Tyler Arboretum last Sunday. This shocked me, but I soon learned it was so he could try out his new GPS tracker. Hmmpph. Did I say he is a geek? It wasn't as horrible a distraction from nature as I had feared. I think he got it for our trip to Maine in two weeks, although I might find it handy if I ever go to the King of Prussia mall again. I'd like to not have to use the car's alarm function just in order to find where I parked. Even better, though, is my plan to never go to the King of Prussia Mall.

Speaking of geeks, I have to tell you that when I was in college in the late 1970's "geek" meant "not Greek," as in not affiliated with a fraternity or sorority. That was all it meant. And "nerd" was a new word, I guess, which is probably why the Roches spelled it wrong on their album "Nurds," which came out in that era (like James Beard spelled "pasta" "paste" in an early 1970s cookbook, instead of just calling it "macaroni" like like all the other Americans). And yes, I was a geek in that non-Greek sense of the word, along with the Indian students, pimply ROTC members, gay artists posing as straight chemistry majors, and confused malnourished transfers who smoked. Anyway, what are the students at my college called now if they're not in a frat or sorority? PWSHGACs? People Who Should Have Gone to Another College?

Well, it's back to those beautiful apricots.

Not really, that last sentence was an awkward attempt at closure. Sometimes I forget this is a blog. What I'm really going to do is throw the dead lightning bugs out of Jack and Will's bug catcher, which is on the kitchen table next to the cat. Then I'm going to push the cat off the table. Then, yes, I'll clean the table. Give me some credit.

Meet Our Imaginary Friends

I have an imaginary son named Bill, who always washes his hands quickly before dinner, using just the right amount of soap, and who trots obediently up to his bath when he's asked, never lying down on the stairs or insisting that I carry or drag him. Or so I told Jack when he asked me if I had any imaginary friends. Jack and Will share their imagary friends, Jubie Vicdaria (a boy) and Christopher Zero (a girl). The other night all four of them, Jack, Will, Jubie, and Christopher, all visited yet another friend, Asworth, who lives in Hawaii. They took me with them, which was nice. A significant part of the visit involved Will and Jack lying on top of me on the sofa. There was some confusion as to who got to be Asworth, so each boy played their own Asworth. It all worked out, Asworth being a rather sketchy, amorphous character, a kindly host residing in the shadows. At some point it was revealed that he is Aslan's cousin (from the Narnia stories), but none of us quite knew what to do with that information, so we disbanded the game before returning home, so I guess that means we're still all in Hawaii.

Jack will often tell me about "Jubie's World," where instead of green traffic lights they have purple, and where they speak a special language. In Jubie's world, children are permitted to do lots of things they can't do in our world. Last night John was asked to give Jubie a bath, which he was pleased to do. The IFs don't seem to eat, but Jack and Will's bunnies do, so they sit at the breakfast table propped up against the wall, and we give them tiny bowls of cereal. (The boys both sleep with their bunnies, but I don't know where the IFs sleep.)

Realism does rear its ugly head now and again. Will, as he was finishing his lunch yesterday, remarked, "We're meat. We're built out of meat." As he cheerfully polished off a piece of ham.

Next to Godliness

No matter how good you think Ben and Jerry's ice cream is, it is not "homemade." And neither are the vast majority of products you can find in the supermarket, as everyone knows. The word did well with focus groups and that's why it is slapped liberally on food labels. One of the great things about web commerce is that you can actually buy homemade stuff because the artisan can market the product directly. To just randomly choose one of these entrepreneurs, oh, hmmm, let me see . . . let's take my brother Dan's Southside Soap. He really makes this in his home and has done so for years. Big, textured herbal-smelling chunks of real honest soap that clean ya real good, I can testify. He has also made ale, beer, mead, dog food, yogurt, lamps out of PVC pipe, and curtain rods out of copper tubing, thankfully none of which are offered for sale on the web. The mead is fermenting on his kitchen counter now, in an enormous bottle, to be consumed by knights and ladies in the mid distant future.

So if you're dirty, or if you're clean but running out of soap, or need to restock your gift supplies with unique but inexpensive consumables, then what's not to like about my brother's soap, eh?

Summer: Chapter One

I'm going to try to not think about last week. No preschool, no camp, no patience, and I had to get the house ready for weekend guests, no small feat. My routineless boys bonded a lot, let's say a whole lot. Jack and Will have developed their own shorthand. "Oh-ee, oh-ee, oh-ee, oh,ee," when yelled by Jack in the house seems to mean "Run around throwing things while yelling. When Mommy and Daddy show anger, laugh maniacally." Another one of these coded commands is "Jane has cut the pie too small." No idea where this came from, but when proclaimed at loud volume, while spinning around holding a potentially dangerous kitchen implement, it seems to indicate "Let's stop Mommy and Daddy from having a conversation by doing whatever it takes. Anything goes."

Last Tuesday when John was at his class (Why ever did I have to give him those clippings about grad program open houses last fall, anyway?), Will pooped in his underpants and peed copiously on their bedroom rug. Poop in the underwear must be dealt with immediately, thoroughly, and carefully. Jack was instigating mayhem and throwing his clothes up into the ceiling fan, and running into the bathroom where I was with Will and flailing, causing poop to smear in unwanted places. I cursed something awful, loudly, which Jack decided to repeat for several following nights whenever I was in the bathroom with Will.

I've been reading my grandfather's letters now and again, and in one letter to my mother, who was home with me (toddler) and my brother David (infant), he assures her she is a good mother. Sometimes I need that assurance, too. Now that the boys are excited about their half-day camp, we have more structure, and I've got some time to myself. Except for Will pushing all the neatly folded laundry off the dining room table yesterday and me screaming bloody murder, it's been a good week so far. Last night when they were getting crazy, I started playing my yoga DVD and they were mesmerized. Jack was even doing some of the positions, especially Warrior Two.

About that Weird Fish Paste in a Tube they Sell at Ikea

Don't buy it. That picture on the tube of a child smilingly taking a bite out of a cracker loaded with the stuff? Why do you think they used a drawing instead of a photo?

Anyhoozy, I want to share a poem with you that I wrote in sixth grade, April 27, 1970, to be exact. I found it going through family papers. I was attending Augusta Country Day School in Augusta, Georgia that year, and only for that year. That year I had two fabulous friends. Hilary was English and Chris was another Army brat, from Massachusetts. The rest of the girls were Southern belles in training. Hilary, Chris and I climbed trees, eschewed the blue eyshadow all the other girls were wearing, and got straight A's. It was my last year of childlike oblivion. A month after writing this poem we moved to Germany, where I soon attended a large American school with grades 7-12. Mannheim American High School was a place where I was certain I'd be crucified for wearing saddle shoes and white socks, and the innocence such clothing signified.

This poem must have been the result of an assignment on "something you learned from your mother." I do know my mother had slammed a few doors by the time I wrote this, contrary to the poem's claim. This poem is filled with lies, fake dialogue, clumsy versification, and drift of thesis, but at least I make fun of my own attempt in the last line. The footnote is original. Don't know why I had to make my brother Dan sound like a demented fairy. (On second thought, maybe I wrote this just for the hell of it, because there's no grade or mark of any kind.)

Patience--A Lesson Learned

Patience certainly is a thing I admire my my mother for.
For I have never heard or seen her madly slam a door.
Once my brother got his glider stuck up in a tree,
He kicked and screamed and yelled quite loud, and also bruised his knee.
My mother just then came rushing out
To see what all it was about.
"Why Dan, your glider's in the tree!"
"I know, I know, painfully said he.
My mother suggested then and there
To send a rock into the air
And that is just what he did do,
And hit the glider that 'twas brand new.
The glider then turned round and round
And soon fell, twirling, to the ground.
"La, la, de, da, oh happy day!"
That's what I heard my brother say.
And the moral of this story is,
Don't fly your gliders near the triz.*

*In other words, trees.

Sum Sum Summertime

Montessori is out for the summer, so I took Will out of his part-time child care as well. I started off the season by getting pinkeye in both eyes and twisting my back a little.

Yesterday we rescued some great chaise-lounges from my Dad's. He was going to have the "junk man" take them away before closing on his house. After we clean the heck out of the chaises, which are moldy and dusty, and my eyes and back are all better, I'm going to restart summer.

Summer for us is so all about the pool. Every community around here has its own pool. You have to live within strict geographic limits to join. So ours is, natch, the Swarthmore Swim Club. It's not fancy by any means but it's very pleasant indeed. A friend of mine, who just moved out of Swarthmore to West Chester (to pursue the dream of a large suburban house on a cul de sac, with one whole acre of yard) used to complain that the Swarthmore Swim Club was clique-ish. To which I say, of course it is, it's the Swarthmore Swim Club, for Pete's sake. We go for the pool, and we see a number of people we know, and the number is higher every year, and I really don't care whether there are cliques or not. I don't want to be in a clique myself, but if other people do, that's their problem. There was a time when such things would have bothered me.

Our routine is this: we plop our stuff down on the grass kind of behind the best spots, which are inevitably covered with other people's towels, clothes, newspapers, and other detritus. The boys take their shirts and sandals off, and we all go in the "big" pool (shallow end). Then someone migrates to the baby pool, they go back and forth between the pools, etc. At their ages, 3 and 5, I need to watch them to a certain extent, but I can socialize a little or read something light.

After a while comes the request that I dread: "Can we play Battleship?" The swim club has seen fit to keep lots of board games for the members to use, bless their souls. So one of the boys gets the game, we set it on the towels, and I pretend that we are actually going to play this in a civilized manner, following the rules, until someone wins. Will's too young to focus, but he likes to move the ships around randomly on the board, which is no good. Jack likes to play, and could probably play a whole game, if only he wasn't playing against Will and me. I try to keep things together, but sitting on a towel for a period of time moving little pegs around on a little board that is constantly tipping over gets old. So I try to find a distraction. "Hey, there's Alex! Wouldn't you like to get back in the pool with him?"

Some of the mothers don't go in the water, but my rule is to get completely wet at least once every hour. Otherwise, what's the point? My mother had a helmet-like "hairdo" that she got every week at the hairdresser, and so she never put her head underwater. You couldn't splash anywhere near her, either. It was hard to for all of us to live with her tenous, fragile hairstyle. I believe I think of her every time I dunk my head under.

Another joke for you, this time from Will:

What did the turtle say to the banana?

Nothing.

Boyz at the Pool

Husband and sons at the pool and I just got home early from the Philadelphia Writers' Conference.

Yesterday: two sessions were fantastic. Jane Eisner was the keynote. She writes the syndicated column American Rhythms. Another very interesting session was on publishing nonfiction books, which was given by Foster Winans. Winans was writing for the Wall Street Journal in the early 1980s, when he got busted for insider trading. After 8 1/2 months in prison, he dusted himself off and wrote a best-selling, well reviewed book on . . . insider trading (Trading Secrets). A few years later he wrote fictionalized sequels to The Little House on the Prairie. Next? A memoir called From the Big House to the Little House. Har. I made that up.

Then an abysmal, condescending session on memoir that I want to forget as soon as possible, and a useless, sleep-inducing one on magazine writing. Thank goodness I came back, because all of today's sessions were great. Jonathan Maberry, who heads up The Writer's Room in Bucks county, and who has unpredictably become an expert on vampires, talked about how to get editors to read your magazine queries and book proposals. He's pragmatic, efficient, ruthless, and persistent. Whereas I've been dreamy, inefficient, tentative, and sporadic. Also attended a session on literary short stories, in order to avoid another memoir droning session, and attended one on writing for children in order to avoid the magazine writing zombie.

Ah, Dear Readers (as Charlotte Bronte would say), when I said I would keep writing, I meant for publication. The blog remains occasional. Yes, Jo(e) and Scrivener, I've thought quite a bit about whether or not to read more blogs. I do read yours every few days or so, and, as you know, hardly ever comment. I guess I feel divided about the blogging and how much I should do it. I'm afraid I'll be distracted by blog-reading, commenting, and linking when I should really be doing my own writing for publication. On the other hand, blogging certainly counts as something that can be valuable. A great way to network, to "publish" in a way, to get exposure, and contribute to an online community. Guess I'm trying to define my boundaries and that's why I come across as fickle or inconsistent.

But here's another thought. Since blogging is actually a great way to hash out ideas that may go into print, I've considered just writing one entry a week and structuring it more. Readers could expect to read a new entry, say, every Wednesday, and that would be stated up in the description. Other days I could focus on reading and commenting on other blogs, or other writing. Any thoughts? Thanks for reading, everyone. Maybe someday I will write my Blogging Manifesto. Blogifesto?

We're having a pastoral candidate preach at church tomorrow and meet with the congregation. People will bring their show-off dishes to the potluck. I'm bringing a spinach salad with strawberries, mainly because we get a giant bag of spinach every week in the CSA and it's a little hard to know what to do with it all. But not as difficult as the virtuous and prolific "Asian greens," whose season is thankfully over.

Oh, hey! Here's a joke from Jack.

"What did the turtle say when the truck drove away?"

"There goes a butt."

That's it. That's the joke. Because the word "butt" is funny in any context, apparently. When I was reading Prince Caspian to him (of the Narnia series), it mentions a "water butt." Have no idea what that is, some kind of rock formation? It was funny, though, you betcha. And when butts become cliche you can always say "fart," also funny. Once John told a bedtime story about a farting leaf, very very funny.

My 25th College Reunion and How I'm Blowing It Off

It's this coming weekend but I backed out about three weeks ago. My college is a couple hours away, and John was going to stay home with the kids. Very nice of him, eh? But then I thought, hmmm . . . is this really how I want to spend a weekend without the kids and husband? So I decided to go to the Philadelphia Writers' Conference instead this Friday and Saturday. In 1990 I went to a college reunion to see if any good men were single (two, but then I wasn't sure how to follow up) and in 2000 I went to show off John and baby Jack, who could be transported adorably in a backpack carried by John, but this time? Without a clear, self-interested motive, what is the point of a reunion? It's so often not quite the right people who show up, anyway.

Yeah, I'm really supposed to be writing, but I've been procrastinating for a few months. I suddenly got motivated a couple of weeks ago, and I've sent a query letter out. I'd like to write an article about the future of this estate in Rose Valley. Mike, who wrote this plea to save the estate, doesn't know much about what's happening, but the pictures are very good. It's private property, and you can't see a thing from the street, so I don't know how he got them.

It's funny how I got into journalism. I taught at a small college in Virginia for a few years and one of the first classes I had to teach was "Newswriting." Ha! I was a literature professor, but at a college like that you have to teach many subjects that are almost completely foreign to you. Newswriting, Beowulf, whatever. I expanded the course to "News and Feature Writing" and after a couple of semesters I had thought of so many interesting features myself that I started proposing ideas to the editor of the local alternative newspsaper. She took me up on almost every idea I had. I wrote about community-supported agriculture, urban renewal in my town, modern-day jousting in the "hollers" of Virginia, life on a rural bookmobile, and more.

My most amazing experience was writing the article about urban renewal. Several blocks of black businesses, churches, and homes in my small city had been razed in the early sixties as a "slum clearance" project. Most of it had been blacktopped over, with one white-owned store reopened and a few other stores constructed. Mostly it was a pretty nondescript zone by the time I lived there. Most people who had sold their property to the city couldn't afford to buy anything, so they had to move to a newly constucted housing project, and no one had enough money to reopen their businesses. (This story could be told, unfortunately, for many cities and towns in the US at that time.)

Due to the growth of a large university in the town and a number of demographic and cultural changes, the history of this clearance was only kept alive by a handful of people who lived in the historically black neighborhood, most of whom were quite elderly. But when I worked as a census taker in 2000 I met a woman who knew all these people, and through her I met them and talked to them. I found pictures of the old houses and shops in a file at the housing authority and used some of the woman's family pictures. The story was on the cover of the paper with all these incredible photos. It created quite a wave of interest, I was asked to speak at the college and for a local activist group, it spurred some college students to embark on their own related history projects, and people were constantly asking the paper for reprints. Finally they even reprinted the whole thing in 2004. Working on that was about a thousand times more gratifying than writing an academic journal article, and I knew I could never go back. (Remind me to tell you a story about a blind date and a journal article I wrote.)

So anyway, here I am up here north of the Mason-Dixon line trying to start this up again. Oh, I'm working with a journal editor on publishing one of my blog entries. So stay tuned, and don't let me stop writing.

Suicide and Damnation

This post really is about suicide and damnation; the title contains no hyperbole or metaphor. It's a switch in tone from the Trader Joe's post, but that's the way life is: Happy, sad, happy, sad. No, wait, it's more like happy, mundane and boring, sad, mundane and boring, happy. I just try to keep the mundane and boring parts out of my blog as best I can.

My friend Bill's brother Matt (both pseudonyms) died of an overdose in West Hollywood on Saturday. He had been suicidal since the 1980's and had threatened suicide a week before his death, when his other brother had refused to give him money for crystal meth. Matt had lived in L.A. for many years and had been alienated from his family for a very long time. I had a brother like that, too, only in San Francisco, only he didn't kill himself; he died in a fire when his life was actually looking up, sort of. But this isn't about my brother right now. Bob and I used to talk about our brothers and what to do about them and always came up with this conclusion: nothing.

Matt was found by his landlady, his apartment filthy and littered with needles. He had been a user for years, and had finally overdosed. Was it a suicide? For Matt's family, this question is critical because they are all devout Catholics. Matt's eternal fate hinges on the answer to this question, but apparently prayer can tip the balance from hell to purgatory. So Bill says in his email to me,

". . . The question of suicide will most likely remain unresolved mainly because no one can now know for certain what thoughts were going through his head as he lost consciousness. I believe so fervently all that the Church teaches that I've found myself praying all the more for Matt and asking others do so so. Thanks for those prayers. "

I don't believe that God punishes people for being depressed or for trying to kill their pain with drugs. I am disgusted at Bill for letting his theology blind him to the realities of mental illness. Bill is an attorney, very bright, who also has an MA in English. But he hasn't read any contemporary (last 50 years) books in a very long time "There are so many good nineteenth century novels to read, why should I read anything new?" Bill had never heard or read the word "vegan" until I told him last year, and I had to spell it. Sometimes I think his mental world is filled with dust and cobwebs. And lots of Catholic theology. The older I get, the more aware of the world's mysteries I become, its paradoxes, ironies, sadness and joy together. But Bob is as dogmatic as ever. It's possible I'm not being fair.

Reading this post was like eating a brick, wasn't it? On a lighter note, Will is peeing quite well in the potty now, albeit with dubious aim, John dented our car this time, NOT ME, and Jack wants me to teach him to knit and my Dad had a sarcastic, sexist comment about that. Roofers coming Monday. I'm trying Neutrogena Self-Tanning Lotion on my legs, since they are incapable of tanning on their own. Sad, happy, mundane and boring, there you go.

The Righteous Truth about Trader Joe's

So when will Trader Joe be beatified, anyway? Ever since St. Joe's, I mean Trader Joe's, came to Media last year--and I hesitate to say this because I'm going to sound like a lobotomized housewife--it has changed my life. I shop there at least two times a week because it's so convenient, I know the entire lovely staff, from the almost sarcastically cheerful 20-year-old man who asks too many questions about what I did last weekend (Can't remember) or what I'm going to do that day (Laundry? Don't know, really) to the red-hat-wearing lady who finds Will's songs about the bottled water charming. I love them all. And the parking situation is nirvanic at 9 AM on a weekday and they have balloons for the children. Plus immaculate wood floors, handwritten happy signage and, of course, low prices. AND healthy food. I mean, what more is there to say? For Pete's sake, what more would it take to convince you? Let me share my newly evolved theology with you.

1) Heathen: people who have never heard of Trader Joe's and don't know what they're missing. I hope they'll be saved nevertheless because it's not their fault. But I don't care that much because most of these people aren't American and probably wear socks with sandals.

2) Seekers: People who have seen the light but do not live within 100 miles of a Trader Joe's and so cannot reasonably be expected to stock up there. Most of these people live with a Trader-Joe-sized hole in their souls. What can I say to these folks? Have hope. Pray, even. I believe they are still expanding. Or, just move.

People who do live within 100 miles of a Trader Joe's and do not shop there: Two subcategories.


3) Ignorant Due to Extenuating Circumstances: If you're institutionalized, or under 3 years old or over 100, then your ignorance is pardoned.

4) Willfully Refusing Trader Joe's Grace: Two sub-categories.

a. Nonbelievers Who Don't Like "Strange" Food. Upon death, off to a Super Wal-Mart with you and no looking back. Never another chance to eat Trader Joe's Red Pepper Spread.

b. Nonbelievers Who Think Whole Foods Must be Better Because it's More Expensive and in a More Exclusive Neighborhood. Jane Cohen, I'm talking about you. Your wickedness is revealed in the blogosphere. As of NOW.

And just in case you think I'm in serious need of deprogramming, I know TJ's is not perfect. Especially the mayonnaise and the pumpkin-filled tortellinis. And sometimes the staff's cheerfulness and enthusiasm for the products is just a tad grating. And no, red-hat lady, when my kids are running around grabbing all the chocolate off the shelves I don't give a rat's ass about trying the Citrus Hand Lotion, thank you.

The Party's Over

I'm still trying to pick myself up off the floor. We had a party for 25 people on Saturday, one reason I haven't been blogging. My advisor from Temple has just retired, so I invited her and all her graduate students from the last twelve years (not everyone in her classes, but everyone who either has or has had her on their dissertation committee or people who are clearly her acolytes). I got most of the guest list from her. Sally is an eminent Victorian scholar, which sounds much more dull than it actually is in her case. Sally has long gray braids to her hips and has walked with a cane for many years, I think because of some kind of scoliosis. She is very petite but has a bellowing laugh that comes from deep inside her. I love it, but others find it annoying. In the early nineties she had us actually compile a collection of essays by Victorian women, which was published and well reviewed. It was the most exciting work I ever did in graduate school, the most thorough immersion in historical research I ever experienced. We were sleuths and it was great.

For her retirement we got her a beautiful duffel bag from Levenger, which she admired greatly. I had ordered her a cake that said "Thank you, Sally. Happy Travels." Because "Happy Retirement" sounds like "Happy Death" to me. Everyone gave a tribute to her. It was fun and unstuffy, mainly because no faculty were invited to this party. Nothing against faculty per se, it's just that their presence would have added a networking element, with its attendant mood of insecurity. Plus, I would have felt even more incompetent for having upended the whole container of maple glaze on the floor in the kitchen and having to dredge the salmon in it, right there on the floor next to the dishwasher. As it was, it was an enormously sticky mess for a few minutes, but it all ended up on the grill anyway, and was delicious, and everyone was happy, and hardly anyone knew.

A Little Housekeeping

Well, I finally changed my comments section so anyone can comment, not just people with Blogger accounts. Plus, I get emailed if someone comments. I should have done this months ago! Well, back to an improvised saag paneer I'm making. It's gray and I not unreasonably expected it to be green . . . It tastes sort of okay but the premixed garam masala I bought doesn't pack much of a punch. Must stop doing this makeshift Indian and use my cookbook.

Then my mom's group is hosting a "wine and dessert" evening. If I start out the week with wine and dessert on a Monday, then what on earth will I be doing on Friday? Something illegal? Nah, probably just checking compulsively to see if I get any more comments. Wait, I don't have to do that if I get emailed now. . . guess I'll have to do something illegal, after all.

One Fine Old Dixie Recipe

I found a cookbook my mother gave my grandmother for her birthday in 1941, Fine Old Dixie Recipes. The cover is wooden, with a picture of a Southern mammy bearing a platter of chicken. I was going to copy the recipe for Kentucky Burgoo but I found someone has beaten me to it. It saves me the work, but still, it's a deflating experience. Anyway, here it is.

Hula Heaven

I was thrilled to see that my dad still has my mother's indestructible 1940s-era Viewmaster and her box of reels. It's all ours now, along with another Viewmaster dated from the 1960s. The boys can each use one. As a child, I remember looking at reels depicting the Seven Wonders of the World, but we don't seem to have that one any more. We do have many reels of Europe, but my favorites are of Hawaii and Oklahoma. The pictures in the Hawaii reel (from the 1950s) are entitled "Dancing Hula Girls," "Girls Dancing Hula," "Hula Dancing," and so on, but one is "Eating Poi." The "Hula Dancing" picture has about ten shapely young women in grass skirts posing in a perfect semi-circle, with a brawny shirtless young man kneeling in a stylized football-star pose in the center. I told Jack to show it to Daddy and say "Welcome to Hawaii." He did, but not before changing the picture to "Eating Poi." Oh, well.

The Oklahoma reel has a picture of Oklahoma A & M College at Stillwater (now Oklahoma State), with some swell co-eds posing on the lawn in their long skirts and bobby socks. A number of other slides depict farm machinery, cows, and buffalo. When we lived in Oklahoma, we did see some desultory buffalo behind a metal fence. It was hotter than hell there. That's about all I remember, because I was three when we left. My grandmother and mother lived in Hawaii in the early to mid 1940s, so that's probably why there are three reels of Hawaii. (I haven't looked at the other two yet, I've got to savor them slowly.)

I had to explain to the boys that we don't know anyone in the pictures, and that people didn't take Viewmaster pictures themselves; they bought the reels of places they wanted to see or places they had already visited. Will likes to say "That's incredible" when anything surprises him in the picture, whether it's a large fish on "Wonders of the Deep" or the Brandenburg Gate.

Good News, Circa 1961

More capital letters for you, dear readers.

My brother Dan and I went to my Dad's house the other day to take memorabilia home with us. We found a darkly yellowed telegram announcing Dan's birth (1961, in Oklahoma) to my grandfather, who lived in Pennsylvania. (My grandmother was visiting us in Oklahoma.)

"BABY BOY 6 LBS 14 OZ ALL IS WELL LOVE NANCY"

The paper is so fragile and ancient-looking. You had to pay per word to send a telegram, which is why they almost always read so terse and factual. Yet those few words held such great joy. In these days of cheap long distance phone calls, email, baby blogs, mommy blogs, and daddy blogs, it's shocking to remember that words of joy, or sorrow, could be sent only at great cost, and only to one address.

That's why I love that my grandfather lavishly returned a message,

"CONGRATULATIONS LOVE PAPA."

HE CLAIMS WIFE LEFT HIM FOR A NEW YORK STRIPPER.

This is what one sees when, working out on the elliptical trainer at the Y, assiduously reading the May 9 New Yorker, one looks up, on some unexplainable whim, at the television. One is assaulted by several waves: The ceaseless capital letters of closed captioning; the faux shock of this sentence, since the man in question appears to be a typical high school jock turned flabby couch potato; and the way one finds it difficult to stop reading the closed captioning when one knows one should. Just something addictive about reading Jerry Springer dialogue in bald capital letters . . . the desperation, the opportunism, the tawdriness of it all . . . back to that article about Alvin Ailey.

The in-law visit is proceeding well. I don't have much privacy, so blogging when they are around is out of the question. Much of the furniture I got from my Dad has been mended, window boxes are repaired and rebuilt, light fixtures have been hung. Grammy has given the boys many treats and a few new toys and I have been called mean. Grammy and Grandpa watched Jack's "Developmental Baseball I" practice yesterday. John took Jack's training wheels off his bike and he rode halfway around the track at the local school.

My dad came over for dinner last night. I like for him to spend time with John's parents. My dad was amazed at how easily the rickety furniture could be repaired. My family usually just lives with quirks and irritations instead of trying to fix them. I grilled some fresh yellowfin tuna and we had that on a cous-cous salad with mint, lemon, spring onions, Kalamata olives, and capers. The mint was from our garden. For dessert I made an angel food cake from scratch using powdered egg whites that you reconstitute with water. It wasn't nearly as high as the angel food cakes my grandmother made, but then she used mixes. It was delicious with strawberries. A wonderful low-fat dinner. Pat me on the back!

Yesterday afternoon we were going to go to a historic house a mile from us that we've never been to, but it was closed for a private function. There used to be a quarry by this house, which closed a half century ago. The fieldstone on our house came from that quarry, according to the all-knowing neighbor Hazel. I love the stone with its myriad shades of gray, gold, and rust.

The whole family is going to church (we go to church in Germantown) this morning, and afterwards we are going to a Mother's Day brunch (which I arranged, of course) at the Valley Green Inn, in the middle of Fairmount Park, the largest city park in the world, so eat your heart out, New York. I find some of the Inn's FAQs to be rather amusing.

In-Law Panic

The In-laws are Coming. Today. The refrigerator has been cleaned and mystery foods thrown out. The "guest" bathroom, which I use when we don't have guests: scrubbed up and down. Next: all the boxes and oddments that have accumulated in the guest bedroom in the absence of the last guests. Then the dining room. We have had a whole lot of stuff (booze, candles, paintings, things that don't belong there) stacked on the table since we got my mother's antiques. Need to put all that in the new chest and the corner cupboard. Finally the living room (we don't have a family room) will be reclaimed for adults and children to use.

I still marvel at the thinginess of life. Especially life as a parent and homeowner. Where did all this stuff come from? The toys. The clothes. The paperwork. The food. For so many years I had a tiny apartment, a meager publishing salary, or an even more meager graduate stipend, and I was fine. Now, the stuff is here, along with a lot of joy, commitment of the best kind, and I suppose this is what it means to be grown up in America.

It's hard to get really excited about cleaning and organizing and maintaining stuff. I've been some zen-oriented books about this sort of thing: Sweeping Changes by Gary Thorpe, which is charming to the point of being odd,with lots of zen. I'm also reading The Zen of Organizing by Regina Leeds, which is more practical, the zen being just a trendy topnote. What I'm getting out of it so far is that sorting through and maintaining your things is a spiritual exercise in understanding the unity of all things. You leave guilt and judgement behind. You respect every thing that you have and give every one a chance to perform its proper function.

Cleaning frantically for one's inlaws is not in the plans of either Thorpe or Leeds, of course. Mervin and Marilyn are coming this afternoon. Serenity goes out the window today. Not that my inlaws are judgmental or anything. They're "salt of the earth" folks coming to the big, bad East from Indiana. They come here to see us and aren't interested in city adventures. I cook for them, Marilyn watches the children and does miscellaneous jobs (John inherited his admirable laundry-folding skills from her), while Mervin builds shelves, does electrical work and carpentry of any sort, and fixes simple plumbing problems. He gets the floor muddy and Marilyn scolds him.

Will is up. Breakfast time.

The Laws of Birthday Parties

Ever since moving from the Shenandoah Valley almost two years ago back to the Philadelphia area, I have been an astute observer of the local birthday party sociology. In Virginny, we pretty much did 'em all at home and knew everyone purdy darn well. Here are some working hypotheses I have arrived at, some compared with our own family's backward practice. This list is not well organized, but hey, it's only a blog. I'm trying to write more and be more sloppy.

1. The less well you know the birthday child's parents, the more expensive the present should be. You're pretty safe spending a little more than twenty dollars.

I spent $7.00 on Model Magic for a girl in Jack's class last year whose name I can't recall.*

2. The less well the hosting parents know the families of the invited children, the more likely they are to have the party in a professional party place, such as a gym, etc. My theory is people don't want to reveal much about themselves to strangers. Only part of it is the convenience. Just a hunch.

I invited Jack's whole class (at the horrible fake Montessori school he went to in fall of 2003) to his fourth birthday party because I couldn't decide who to chose. It was at our house. "Only" eight kids came. The parents all stayed and did not eat a single bite of anything. Not even the chocolate cake I baked from scratch (Richard Sax's Classic Home Desserts)and decorated myself with a frosting firetruck! What in all heck is wrong with people?

3. The youngest child in a family with three or more children gets dropped off at a party before any of the other guests, the parent speeds off gleefully, not to be seen again until three minutes after the official end of the party.

4. There are always exceptions to every rule. It's most unusual, nay truly remarkable, for parents to invite fifteen children to a party in their house filled with antiques and breakables, and have the party last four hours instead of the universal two. Yet it happened today. Went surprisingly well. The Spiderman face paint will need another scrubbing before it comes off completely, and Jack's balloon broke, and some cake got smushed in their carpet, but no catastrophes.

5. When you try to be "green" and wrap the present from your child in the Sunday comics, you feel like a total loser when you compare it with the rest of the gaudily wrapped beribboned presents on the table.*

6. For parties at someone's house, girls wear dresses.

Jack wore his baseball shirt and torn jeans today. *

7. The party favor is not supposed to be just one thing, rather a bag full of things.

At the joint party we had for Jack and Will, there was one favor per child.*

8. Moon bounce, moon bounce, moon bounce.

9. When planning a party for your child, there is no polite way to encourage simple inexpensive gifts. You can only limit the number of children.

10. When dropping off or picking up your child, don't park in the driveway, unless you don't mind being parked in for thirty minutes.

*We could use a little work in these areas.

Hair Salon: The Blog

Now that I've had two haircuts without any color, the gray jumps out. I could see it in the mirror at the salon, even without wearing my glasses. For a "heavy myope" like me, you know it had to be a fairly blinding field of silver.

You ask, "What about that bitchy colorist who told you you would look fifteen years older?" Well, HA. Not only have I cast a wicked spell on her, causing her eyelids to sag, skin to wrinkle, and inground pool to spring a small but consistent leak that the pool specialists won't be able to locate until August, but I am also poised for defection. I'm taking my business to a salon in a neighboring town. I said to the owner of the new salon, "I need to have my hair cut by someone who supports my decision to let my hair go gray." I mean, I actually said that. You'd think I was switching therapists.

One time several years ago I switched salons because my "designer" Danny (you can't call them hairdressers any more) was taking up to 3 1/2 hours to cut and color my hair. In the meantime I was forced to listen to very loud house music as well as unfunny slightly off-color jokes that weren't off color enough to protest without feeling prudish, prim, and priggish (what's with words that start with "pr," anyway?). And occasionally his highly pierced friends would give me free advice on what I could do with my hair. Like not wash it that often and put blue stripes in it.

The breaking point came for me when Danny split up with his girlfriend, who worked in the same salon. They had had a son together, who was a year old at the time of the breakup, and had lived together. The child wore a Hilfiger hat and his room had a Dr. Suess theme. Whenever Andrea came into the room, to get orders for lunch, borrow a dryer, or whatnot, the air crackled with tension. They didn't talk to each other, they spit. I couldn't stand it, and thought he was a jerk, so I left. But not without having him write down my hair color "recipe."

Then there was Dominic, who ran a salon called "The Abbey" in Center City Philadelphia. He had trained to be a priest, but decided to come out instead, and then go the whole nine yards and be a hairdresser. But he was still sentimental about all things monastic, so he had huge photographs of cloisters all over the walls. But the other day Will and Jack had their hair cut by a guy planning to train for the priesthood. So, no pun intended, it all comes out even in the end.

Now Where Was I?

Boy, I just can't shake my loyal fan base. The longer I go without writing the more guilty I feel and so I avoid it. I'm also supposed to be blogging for a Mothers & More blog, and I haven't done that either. Spring happened, I guess, and what with all the pressure to mulch, I've just been doing that. Not really.

I'll just jump into this post, but I've no idea what it will be about.

My dad is moving to a retirement community in June, and my brother Dan and I have been carting off stuff from his house that we want. We have agreed very amicably so far. My mother, who died six years ago of a brain aneurysm when I was six weeks pregnant with Jack, had collected a number of antiques. What a bizarre sentence I just wrote. Like with my knitting, I don't believe I will go back and "rip it out." I'm a beginning knitter, and the scarf I am creating has the craziest knots and holes, and how the heck did they get there? Anyway, our house now has the following furniture:

A rustic "farm table" that we eat on now instead of the Ikea

A drop leaf table that my family ate on every night during my entire childhood and adolescence

An old but not antique bureau with drawers that don't stick (for the boys)

A cedar chest from the early 1970s that was in my room as a child, that I hid a number of dubious things in

A very small drop leaf table that we're going to use as an end table

A "butler's table" with a top that the "butler" just lifts off with the silver tea set on it, I suppose (we'll have to anchor it down in some way that is reversible and doesn't compromise its value)

A small table with glass knobs and a drawer darker than the rest of the wood (which I find strangely compelling)

A fancy table on wheels that also has drop leaves that we have in the entrance hall. My mother loved drop leaf tables.

A small chest with three drawers for the table linens

Enough table linens to need a full-time laundress

A rustic corner cupboard for the dining room (my brother lives in a geodesic dome; therfore he has no corners for it to live in)

An antique chest that used to have the aforementioned linens heaped up in it

A Vienna regulator that doesn't work

Four assorted antique mirrors of various sizes and with assorted visibility issues

Two oil paintings that my great grandmother painted

Two 1940s-era marble lamps

A needlepoint footstool

A needlepoint "fireplace screen" on a wooden pole on a three-legged base

A "fireplace screen" for in front of the fireplace, to keep sparks and ashes in and children out. (The above item and this one are completely different but seemed to be called the same thing. Why is our fireplace accoutrement vocabulary so impoverished, I ask you?)

To come: lots of dainty little china cups, finger bowls, and salt and pepper shakers that my great grandmother painted, boxes full of incredibly beautiful and moving photographs that my grandmother took of us, my mother, and other people, which she developed herself and that desperately need to be properly archived, a massive silver service, a set of Limoge china.

Our house smells like my parents' house now, John says, but I haven't noticed.

The Mad Mulcher: Busted!

We turned into our driveway on Sunday after church, and we almost hit her. There she was with her wheelbarrow, our next-door neighbor Hazel, mulching our yard, just the skinny strip between her metal fence and our driveway. "Hazel!" I said brightly, "You're mulching our yard!" "Yes, well, it looked terrible," she scolded us. "You know," she admonished, "hardwood mulch is only $2.00 a bag at Home Depot."

This favor, or interference, or whatever you call it, is . . . well, I guess that's the problem, is that I am not sure what to think, and it's really so minor in the scheme of things that I believe I'll just pass over it completely. So, never mind. Nothing to see here, folks.

Anyhoozy, we had Hazel, who's about 74, and her daughter Rebecca for dinner tonight, along with my Dad, who comes every Tuesday night. We were talking about the fussy and fickle eating preferences of small children. Will had pronounced loudly, "I don't like rice!" And even "I don't like cold!" when presented with ice cream, his favorite food. Hazel, who can tell a great story and has many to tell, told about when she was about five and wouldn't eat her oatmeal for breakfast. Well, her mother re-presented that oatmeal, reheated just so over the stove, at every meal until even stubborn little Hazel broke down from hunger, at the 36th hour. The Depression explains this standoff at least as much as the iron will of the mother and daughter. Hazel still hates oatmeal, and is still very stubborn.

By the way, she has a great wine cellar and brought some sparkling wine for us, a little over the top for a Tuesday dinner with the family, but it was accepted eagerly. My dad and Hazel reminisced about Majorca in the fifties, traveling by ship, icebox tongs, and other generational esoterica, while the middle generation sipped and listened. On other occasions Hazel has provided us with much detailed lore about the neighborhood's characters, where property lines actually are, who owns which trees, the reason why our house smelled like dog pee for a couple of months (non-housebroken dachsund lived here for ten years), what the landscaping of our yard has been like in every era, how much our old kitchen cabinets from the 1930s were actually worth and why we should hang onto them, the best auctions for antiques, the best place to get a variety of cheap wine, you know, stuff like that. Mulching incident, what mulching incident?

Adventures of Dumpster Carrot

Every night John and I take turns inventing a story to tell the boys. Yes, one of us makes up a story every single night. Not our idea. Theirs. It’s much easier than it seems. Here’s what you do:

MENTAL PREPARATION: Get ready to make a string of snap decisions that have little or no basis in reality or logic. A story will emerge almost of its own accord. Stories will do that, and humans are hard-wired to tell them.

1. Choose a creature or object to be the main character. It could just be the first thing you think of. We have done stories about stones, forks, racecars, trucks, chameleons, and, in tonight’s case, a carrot.

2. Give it a name. Objects may and should be personified. Names are funnier when they are incongruous with the character’s size or nature in some way. Tonight’s name, “Dumpster Carrot,” contributed by Will, gave us the character’s identity and setting, as well as tantalizing superhero implications with a comic slant.

3. Choose a setting, any setting. Don’t think hard about it. All the better if your setting doesn’t make “sense,” because then your story line can focus on doing the backstory: How Dumpster Carrot get into the dumpster? How will he get out?

Now, if you aren’t too sleepy, your brain is kicking in to get your character (and yourself) out of this mess.

4. Your main character wants something, to go somewhere, to have a new friend, to learn why he or she is in this silly story, or whatever. Invest your character with motivation and a goal. Tonight’s carrot wanted to get out of the dumpster because he wasn’t rotten. He had been pushed into the trash by a thoughtless cat, no doubt a plump gray tabby now that I think about it.

5. To propel your story, you will probably need to add a secondary character who aids the main character, as well as some kind of barrier or obstacle or “enemy” that must be surmounted/outwitted/escaped. Tonight’s barrier was the trash bag he was in, then the high dumpster walls.

6. Get to the climax as quickly as you can, within reason. Increase the conflict, and then resolve it somehow, preferably through elements you’ve already introduced and not through some magic character that you’ve never mentioned before. It’s tempting to cheat when you have to pee and are desparate to end the story. Dumpster Carrot’s buddies in the trash bag, some rotten zucchinis and a razor blade, agreed that the carrot was too young to go to the landfill so the razor blade slit the bag and the adjoining trash bags, and rotten fruit and vegetables climbed out and make a big vegetation ladder for the carrot to climb up. Did you ever hear me claim that this was a good story?

7. Make a happy ending. The best endings for very small children are ones in which all the main characters go to sleep. But not like that creepy poppy field scene in The Wizard of Oz, normal going-to-bed sleep. We don’t do a whole of these any more, though. Dumpster Carrot really just wanted to go back to Ralph’s apartment and be cut up by Ralph and eaten. So he was, and everyone was happy. Don’t think too hard about this ending, OK?

8. Say “The End.” That’s “Thee End,” not “Thuh End.”

Goodbye, Raffi

John has mercifully taken out the Raffi CD we've been listening to in the van for the past few years. He replaced it with Honest Bob and the The Factory-to-Dealer Incentives. This is the best way to get me to listen to new music. Jack and I both really dig "Dinner with Laurie," where a guy runs into Laurie Anderson at the supermarket. It's sung/spoken in the inimical Laurie Anderson style. Jack asks to have it played over and over again. He has the refrain memorized.

And she said ooh, it isn't very hard
The cellar's in the attic and the attic's in the yard
And she said ooh, try it now and see
The ocean's in the kitchen and the kitchen's on TV.

They also have a song in which the lyrics are taken from this website by a "Dr. Gene Ray." You have to stop to admire the guy's tenacity, verbosity, tortured syntax, and liberal use of underlining. Not to mention the consistently fevered pitch of his rhetoric and the almost total lack of explanation. His site is very popular, and you can understand why. "Dr. Gene Ray" doesn't have any terrorist or counter-terrorist agenda, or any particular leanings even toward Republican or Democrat, and he doesn't ask for money, as far as I can see. He only asks that you believe, but believe what, exactly? Dr. Ray's got a case of good old-fashioned crazy going on. It's refreshing.

That said, it's possible that "Gene Ray" is actually Laurie Anderson taking performance art online. Or maybe David Byrne? He's done a bunch of weird stuff with PowerPoint. Whoever you are, Dr. Ray, great site. Keep the faith.

Y! M! C! A!

It's been a long rainy spring vacation and it's still going on today, both the rain and the vacation. Anyway, we got a family membership to the Y in January and not only am I becoming incredibly buff, but I have a place to go in which the boys can do their thing in "kid zone" and I can do mine. And I've already paid for it. Woo-hoo. We've been trucking over there with great frequency. It saved our sanity this past week. After I'm done with my workout I try to slip past the "family lounge" but it never fails that we have to stop there to play foosball and air hockey.

Foosball. Back when I was in what they used to call "junior high school" my family lived on an army base in Kaiserslautern, Germany, and there the "teen club" had foosball, ping-pong, pool, and . . . that was about it. Oh, soda for a quarter and Reese's Peanut-Butter Cups for a dime. When I was grounded I would hand my best friend Kathy a dime through my window and she would get them for me. The phone was very expensive to use, so we would just go to other kids' houses or apartments and throw gravel up at the window and pretty much undermine the whole concept of being grounded, which was the Ineffective Punishment Du Jour. Back to foosball, it was so popular at the teen club I hardly ever got a chance to play. But now's my window of opportunity! There certainly are a lot of dead zones in that game, like between every row of players. Jack and I are both such novices that the ball either meanders slowly between the players, goals being scored by accident or by the wrong team, or the ball is "kicked" with great violence, slamming into a player on the same team.

Only one more afternoon left--we can make it, right? It really hasn't been too bad a week. We had company for Easter dinner and most people brought a dish. All I had to do was the ham, and I made a balsamic red pepper sauce for it. We drank beaujolais and I believe a good time was had by all. I'll try to think about that, and not the projectile markers zinging around the halls with the caps gone, or . . . The Note. While I was cleaning the bathroom on Saturday I heard something land on the floor, and the scurrying of little feet. I turned around and saw a pad of paper with writing on it in marker. It said

MOMMY
YOU ARE DISKUSTIN
G

A few minutes later we had the following discussion:

Jack: (eager) Did you read the note?

Me: (with studied nonchalance) Yes.

Jack: Are you sad?

Me: (breezily) No.

Jack: Why not?

Me: (knowingly) Because I know the tricks that little boys play.

Jack: It wasn't a trick. It was the truth. I meant it.

I couldn't think of what to say, so didn't say anything. Later I remembered the conversation we had had coming back from the Y, and I thought I knew what prompted The Note:

Jack: Mommy, do grown-ups cry?

Me: Yes, sure they do.

Jack: When do they cry?

Me: Lots of times, like when someone dies, or when the person's feeling are hurt.

Jack: (offended) Well, I cry then, too!

Me: But grown-ups don't cry at little things, like when they have to stop playing foosball.

That probably ticked him off. It was a cheap shot.

Have to go, trashbaskets are being flung. Jack just called Will "you disgusting nipple," so maybe it's nothing I said.

Sauce, Legos and Videotape

Yesterday after dinner Jack asked me, "We can have a party any day, right? It doesn't have to be someone's birthday, does it?" "Um, no, why do you ask?" I answered, a bit suspicious. Does he want cake? Presents? "Let's have a party for Daddy tomorrow, because we love him."

So Jack, Will and I made John gifts from Legos when he was away at his class (in Database Management, if you must know), mainly robots, that we propped up on his desk. Will also wanted to add a subscription insert from Cooking Light. Will and Jack made "newspapers" from creating manuscripts in Word with 72-point webdings. Will screamed delightedly while making his. One stroke of the keyboard and . . it's a truck! A strange little man wearing a tux! A thick diagonal line! Whatever!

Then we made a short video, in which Jack and Will admired themselves greatly. Will would show a book to the camera and say solemnly "It's at your wocal wibary." I really should have wiped that pizza sauce off his mouth before we made it, oh well. Then today, after much ostentatious, highly audible whispering in front of John, the boys and I hid in John's office and he was so "surprised" to see us when he came in.

So Big

On Monday I took Jack, who's five, with me to my three-hour drawing class. It was my last class, and I really didn't want to miss it, and Will had a place to go, but Jack had vacation. I packed markers, his own pad, and a banana for him and hoped for the best.

I set his pad up on an easel, which made him feel so grown up. The class members fawned over him considerably, especially the grandmothers. He smiled shyly and didn't talk much. First he drew a set of emergency vehicles and a horse, using his markers. Later he drew a rainbow, asking me the order of the colors and then numbering them. He did use some of my pressed charcoal,and drew othe objects on the table like the rest of us, a vase and a crane figurine (the bird, that is). At one point, he decided to see what the medium could do, so he grayed his paper like the rest of us had done, and rubbed the side of the charcoal over it so many times the whole thing was almost black. Then he got his eraser and made white lines, forming a grid. Very Mondrian.

I pinned his drawings to the wall like everyone else when it was time for critique. Cavin, the teacher, said, "See how Jack didn't leave out any elements of this vase." It was true; the pedestal was there, the stem, the rim around the lip. As far as I know, he has never drawn an object that is sitting in front of him before. His crane even had the feathers on it. Later I could hear him telling John what the teacher had said about his drawing, verbatim.

Then lunch at an Indian restaurent nearby. He ate pakoras, naan, some chana dal, and tandoori chicken. He didn't care for the mango juice, though, so he got apple. Every so often he would say to me in a stage whisper, "There are real Indian people here!"He was sitting there at the table, so civilized and proper, and then he would suddenly puff his cheeks out and pop them with his fingers.

The One About Poop

Not for the faint of heart. Please visit some other more intellectually or spiritually elevated blog for today's reading, if you cannot stomach the earthy nature of this post. That includes even the ghost of Jonathan Swift. Thank you kindly.

Because Will drank a quantity of Jack's juice this morning, which was spiked with a little Miralax, which Jack needs and Will does not, there emanated from his bottom a quantity, consistency, and forcefulness of poop that caused John and me to marvel exceedingly. (And yes, the child still wears a diaper. That's for another post you can look forward to.) When we were done washing off his heels, penis, and knees, and when we had put his shirt, left sock, jeans, and changing pad in the laundry tub to soak, we reminisced fondly about the old days. . .

J: (soft, hushed, reverent voice) "Wow, he hasn't had a poop like that since he was a baby."
L: (enthusiastically)"It was a blowout! Remember those?"
(Pause.)
J: "Ah, yes . . . . those were the days, weren't they?"
(J and L hold hands and gaze into each other's eyes.)

And just the other day we were saying how great it is that we don't need to worry about Jack's poop any more. We don't even need to wipe his bottom. A few months ago we were having dinner guests, and during a comfortably quiet lull in the conversation, whilst we were sipping our pinot in the candlelight, Jack yelled "Wipe my bottom!" at a decibel level fit for a referee. We still need to check to make sure he has flushed, but in general we seem to be almost entirely absent from his pooping experience.

This return to the "blowout" of infancy takes me down memory lane. I remember the time Jack, at 11 months, pooped in an empty box shortly after his bath. Very handy. Then there was the time he squirmed and kicked violently in mid diaper change, flinging a medium size turd somewhere----where? How could we lose a turd? Oh, there it was, behind the bureau. They are so much easier to pick up when they've had two days to dry up, don't you know. When Jack was 16 months old, he pooped in his bathwater. When he saw the long brown coil that had come out of him he screamed in terror. We could not get that child to sit down in the bathtub for about eight months after that.

And then there was the time I found a large fresh one in the sandbox. "Gee," I thought to myself in a Pooh-like way, "I don't remember seeing a large mammal defecating in the sandbox in the last 10 minutes." Then I observed that the heaviness of Will's diaper had gotten the better of the Velcro fasteners, and the diaper had slipped mostly through his shorts, some of the contents having escaped.

One time in grad school we had a contest to see who had gotten the most disgusting substance on their dissertation, and the father of a baby got the prize. People who don't have children tend to find baby poop disgusting, but I don't any more. I almost kind of miss the yellow newborn kind . . . . Someone please stop me.

FIFTEEN-MINUTE PAUSE

I'm back. I'm so inspired by this post that I just told a bedtime story about Sir Poopie Poopsalot, a poop inside Will who begged to be set free in the toilet, to spin downward in that beautiful spiral, which all poops deserve, not to be squashed in a diaper and thrown in the trash! Dignity for poops everywhere!! HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!!!!!! Gurgle . . . gurgle.
(Loud flushing sound)

Housewife!

Apparently, from what I read and see in the media, the term "housewife" is being reclaimed by younger women. Check out this retro-ly hip shirt, for example. But a couple of weeks ago a doctor I had to see for my back called me a housewife. Coming from a fifty-something professional woman, it sounded harsh and insulting. I had explained "I'm home with my children now." and quickly she said, "Oh, so you're a housewife."

I'm not going to get my knickers in a twist about something like that. I have a doctorate. I am forty-six years old and I'm so fortunate to have even had two children over forty. Hell, I'm on the edge of menopause. It isn't worth my time to feel personally affronted. Yawn.

However, what interests me is the ways in which this stay-at-home-mother role is interpreted so differently by different generations. One friend of mine, a fifty-year-old anthropologist, upon hearing what I am doing with my life right now, said to me "You are your mother." Of course, she never know my mother, but I knew what she meant. Back to the 1950s, and all that. (There's a reason why those hip housewife t-shirts re-use the old graphics.) The multiple feminisms in our culture right now create a dissonance on this subject, and I feel it because my age puts me with late boomers, but my young children put me with women in their mid thirties or younger.

It seems women who are intentionally at home with their children for the long haul (I don't include myself in that) need some ideology to prop that up, be it conservative Christian values, natural living, attachment parenting, whatever. Other women will say "I'm home with my children for now" like I just did, even if they don't know when and how they'll get back into the work world. Because it's just very difficult to claim a "homemaker" status as your identity without some more transcendent values that justify doing that.

I do think we're feeling our way toward an enlightened domesticity, as the popularity of Home Comforts by Cheryl Mendelsohn indicates. Jean Railla has a lovely essay about domesticity here. It's the introduction to her book Get Crafty: Hip Home Ec. The introduction is the best part of the book, as most people don't have any interest in knitting a bikini or making large volumes of limoncello. Anyway, the book seems to be a significant gesture towards redefining and reclaiming the domestic. Read Railla's intro and let me know what you think.

Of Beet Greens and Memory

In my oil painting class (yes, two art classes) I must finish my painting of the latest still life presented by our instructor. I choose the beets. They repose on the table, exposing their curling tails, the most charming part. "They look like mice," commented my neighbor in the class, but that's what I love about them. The problem is that between the class from two weeks ago and last week's class, the greens wilted to an ugly little heap. Not the luxuriant outgrowth of curly-edged leaves I had seen earlier. I might have known that would happen, but I guess in my mind the beets seemed eternal, like Keats' urn. So last week I painted them from memory. It was stressful and uninteresting to me. Part of my deprogramming from literary theory involves simple observation, and the object having decayed presents a problem. I'll carry on.

On another note, I bought Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried for my father for Christmas. He started it and "didn't care for it." He told me last night he prefers straight military history. The O'Brien stories, um, certainly aren't that. My father was an officer in Vietnam in 1959-60 and 1966-67. He reads many volumes of history every year, nothing on Vietnam. Behind this decision is a world of small and large denials: personal, generational, historical. At least I convinced my father to try reading it again, because I'm reading it for my book group in the summer, and "I thought it would be nice if we could read the same thing."

Study in Charcoal

Yesterday, I had my penultimate Basic Drawing class. Almost everyone has improved tremendously. We did charcoal. Charcoal is so dirty and fun to use. You can crumble it and smear it with your hands, or rub it on its side, erase it with the gentle kneaded eraser, or with the harsh whitening rectangular eraser. You feel like you are sculpting the picture instead of drawing it. We drew a cup, a vase, and a small pitcher sitting on a windowsill. The morning light made it look like they were glowing. The sun kept going behind a cloud and muting the effect, though, so we couldn't take the light for granted.

We were quiet, as some of the chattier members of the class were gone. Lisa, a guidance counselor at a Quaker school, who has breast cancer, left for a much-anticipated trip to France with her husband. I don't know where Eleanor was, the retired Quaker school librarian who spins, weaves, makes baskets, and talks a blue streak. Quakers aren't as silent as you would think.

We also have an incredibly well-dressed young woman who teaches at a Christian college nearby. I can't believe she works with charcoal in those clothes. She is one of those people who is careful and neat by nature, so maybe she enjoys the challenge. Her drawing has come a long way, but she still tends to draw the concept of an object instead of the object itself. (And no, I'm not going to put quotation marks around "itself.")

I just turned off a small toy SUV that had been going around our little racetrack on its own for a few minutes, with no one to observe or interfere.

Bless the Day

Some quiet, unassuming lives have great power and scope, but you only learn this definitively when they are cut short in their prime, one day talking and laughing, the next day in the morgue.

My friend Miriam was such a person. At the age of fifty, she had sent more encouraging notes, cooked more meals for others, taught more children, and blessed more people with her attention, than most of us would do if God were to give us 100 years. Her funeral yesterday, at Woodland Presbyterian Church in West Philadelphia, filled up the sanctuary with all kinds of people, her colleagues at her elementary school, her students, her fellow members of her Mennonite church, her neighbors, even people who rode the 6:15 bus with her every morning. She had blessed us all.

During the ceremony I felt the immense power of Miriam's kind and humble spirit. I'm now in one of those rare times in my life in which, instead of being mired in my own plans and dreams and memories, I am attentive to the present and grateful for each conversation with a stranger, moment of sunshine, whiff of coffee, kiss from my husband, and cowlick on my boys' heads.

Marilynne Robinson writes in her latest novel Gilead, in the voice of the dying preacher who narrates the book,

". . . .There was a young couple strolling along half a block ahead of me. The sun had come up brilliantly after a heavy rain, and the trees were glistening and very wet. On some impulse, plain exuberance, I suppose, the fellow jumped up and caught hold of a branch, and a storm of luminous water came pouring down on the two of them, and they laughed and took off running, the girl sweeping water off her hair and her dress as if she were a little bit disgusted, but she wasn't. It was a beautiful thing to see, like something from a myth. I don't know why I thought of that right now, except perhaps it is because it is easy to believe in such moments that water was made primarily for blessing, and only secondarily for growing vegetables or doing the wash. I wish I had paid more attention to it. My list of regrets may seem unusual, but who can know that they are, really. This is an interesting planet. It deserves all the attention you can give it."

What She Said

So, anyway, I have decided to eschew hair color, as I said in an earlier post. I went to have my hair cut, just cut, and just as I was paying the almost small bill, the owner/prima donna colorist, Pat, comes in and says, looking upon my hair, "I'm thinking we need to adjust the color." She saw my silvery hair creeping in on my temples, is what. "She's growing it out," Vicki the haircut lady said quickly. "Fifteen years!" taunted Pat. The owner's daughter, Helen, upon whom Pat tries every new Aveda color trick on her perfectly fine chestnut mane, smiled at me pityingly, in silent agreement with her mother.

Plainly, it's a cult. "Fifteen years for the infidel. And may her gray hairs become yellowish and frizzy. And may she grow a beard, which we'd be glad to wax for a cool $50.00."

Blogout is Now Over

My blogout, a period of time in which I totally forgot about blogging, is now over. Until the next one, that is. My "back went out," and I am doing some physical therapy, had to do some committee work, bla bla bla. No reason, really. Blogging is either a total waste of time or a great new creative medium, and my brain can't decide which so I just go back and forth in a manic way.

Only it's too late for me to do any writing now . . . . but I'll tell you soon the catty comments my hairdresser made about my hair going gray. Excuse me, I meant my colorist.

The Parsnip Has Been Vanquished; Or What We Do for Love.

Back in "The Beet Goes On" I said that the next root vegetable to conquer would be the parsnip as big as my arm lurking in the basement. Its size and viciousness posed a threat to the cats, and one cat has already died so I thought, better cook this thing up.

My father has fond memories of my mother cooking parsnips in a most tasty way that he can't exactly remember. My father isn't one of your more observant people, and his memories of my mother and my memories of her can diverge significantly, shall we say. So we cling to any shared recollections. And I do heartily concur that my mother did cook up parsnips one Thanksgiving, and that they were quite good.

So, for my Dad's 76th birthday (Feb. 14, celebrated Feb. 15), I made Parsnip Cake. I found it to be insanely delicious, but wait, I did change a couple of things. Emeril says to slice the two 9-inch layers in half. I didn't do that because I didn't feel like it. Also, I did not use all the simple syrup he used. Remember the man is Southern and those folks subsist on sugar and put it in every possible dish. Sugar makes sense in a cake, especially a parsnip cake, but I used only about 2/3 of the syrup. I also used black walnuts, which added more bitterness than regular walnuts would have, but I toasted them first. What with a cup of black walnuts in the cake and another cup in the frosting, and the parsnips, and the cinnamon, this cake had so much depth and interest that it was completely satisfying. Plus I served it with coffee ice cream, which was perfect. (We must have Breyer's ice cream with cake at every birthday party in our household, even if it's overkill.)

The other large hunk of food that I vanquished with great success was a 4 1/2 lb. eye round cut of beef. I'm not vegetarian but not excited by indecent slabs of beef, but my father does love his sauerbraten, and who else is going to cook the guy sauerbraten. It was a bit labor-intensive but totally worth it because I confess it was a lovely way to do up a hunk of cow flesh. It calls for gingersnaps, and even though I had just made them for church fellowship hour, I forgot about the sauerbraten and ate them. Oops! Anyway, Dan made egg noodles. We feasted, except for Will, who kvetched about shapes, textures, and presentation. Nothing new there.

Another Reason to Love Anna Quindlen

I sweat bullets when I think about sitting it out at endless baseball and soccer games, ever since that fateful ultrasound when we learned our first was a boy. And now there are two! Anna Quinlen has opened a window to my soul.

I passed on the weekend roundelay of kiddie-league sports so our three could hang out with one another. I told people I hoped it would cement a bond among them, and it did. But I really wanted to be reading rather than standing on the sidelines pretending my kids were soccer prodigies. Maybe I had three children in the first place so I wouldn't ever have to play board games. In my religion, martyrs die.

"The Good Enough Mother," February 21 Newsweek

On Dreaming

I used to have better dreams. In late winter I would dream about flying (not in a plane) over verdant valleys, running and somersaulting through fields of daisies, etc. Well, maybe once or twice I dreamed that, but I think I'm due for another spring dream. I'm tired of dreaming that I'm looking for an apartment, trying to find the room where I'm supposed to give a presentation at a conference, trying to find one of my sons who I've left at a day care center whose location I can't remember, or trying to take a train home only I don't know where home is.

Did you know that you can sometimes create your own dreams by thinking about them right before bed? So I talked to John about the spring dream I want to have. Then I did indeed dream that I was outside. I think it was spring, at least some kind of plant life seems to have been growing. But I was running away from someone. I need more practice.

My Hairdresser, My Extortionist. First in a Series

Five weeks ago, as my hairdresser poured my customized mix of dark brown and auburn over my hair, she murmured, "Next time I'd like to do some highlights." Getting into the spirit I said, "I guess there's a certain point where dark hair doesn't look that great on women?" "It just needs a little brightening," she clarified ominously. This will probably be $60 over the $45 I pay every five weeks for the color alone, the cut itself being $40. "Okay!" I said in a cheery, dimwitted way.

A few days later, though, as I looked at my 46-year-old face in the mirror, the truth came to me in an epiphany. I am a slave to my hairdresser. "This will not stand," I declared to myself. "I do not exist to pay for my hairdresser's swimming pool maintenance." That remark about my needing highlights was the tipping point. Coloring my hair is no longer worth it. Am I part of a trend?

So. I'm doing it. I'm going gray. I haven't seen my hair color in five years, so this could be a revelation. So stay tuned, Internet.

Glamour Princess, R.I.P

Our beautiful kitty died of cancer yesterday. My husband, who is answering my blog with a blog of his own, has some great pictures and comments here.

I thought that when I quit my job to be a "stay-at-home" mother (HA!) that I would have time. But I stupidly filled up my time with too many commitments, including three committees (church, moms'group, Jack's Montessori). What was I thinking? Now all three committees are simultaneoulsy clamoring for my attention like one-year-old triplets awakening from their nap.

Must go placate them now.

Warning: This Post Contains Ambivalence Towards the Super Bowl

In about 25 minutes we're going to watch the Super Bowl. I guess. Until we get bored half an hour later. I broke down a few weeks ago and bought Jack a gray Eagles shirt, not the zillion-dollar jersey, which the woman in front of me was buying three of. Even Jack's Montessori, that bastion of high-mindedness, has Eagles Day every other week or so this year.If you read the Philadelphia Inquirer today you will note that absolutely nothing else is going on in the world, other than the Super Bowl.

Our house does not abound with Eagles pep, however. Jack and Will and I got an Eagles sweatshirt for John on his birthday, and he refuses to wear it out of the house. He says they don't have Eagles Day at Villanova University's Master's in Technology Program. Geeks. Maybe because he is from Steeler country and considers Philadelphia to be "New Jersey"? Grrrr.

Last year Jack started out at a fake Montessori (any preschool can hang out a Montessori sign, beware) whose cutesy holiday pageant ended with the little tykes singing the Eagles anthem. Just in case you needed any more proof that football is a religion. Transferred the kid out right away, phew.

But, still . . . go, Eagles.

Jack's First Recipe. I'm So Proud.

"Cakimischres" (Cake Mysteries)

1/2 cup baken sodue (baking soda)
1/9 cup makoronee (macaroni)
1/3 teaspoon bakenpoawtr (baking powder)
2/3 cup flawr (flour)
6/1 can tonufish (tunafish)
2/3 cup honee (honey)

"You cook it. And eat it. It's delicious. What if I said "'suspicious?'" --Jack

"Oh, oh, oh," said Sally.

Lately Will has been wanting us to read him a Dick and Jane book he got for Christmas. Actually, it's three Dick and Jane books that were reprinted recently. Obscurity was a better place for them, I thought.

My question is, how do you read "Oh, oh, oh" out loud? Who the hell ever says that, anyway? Does it register surprise, dismay, shock, amusement? Or what? And what about "Oh,oh?" In one place it can be read as "uh, oh" but not the others. And what is the difference between "oh, oh" and "oh, oh, oh"? So far I have been using that sardonic bland Dick and Jane voice (you know the one I mean) that does not seem appropriate for reading to young children. It's too arch and knowing. Help me, Internet.

P.S. How do you read the pages in Where The Wild Things Are where Max and the beasts engage in their wild rumpus, and there are no words? I sing "Rumpus, rumpus, rumpus" two times and jiggle the book from side to side in an annoying manner.

Mothers Who Blog, and the Major Newspapers Who Spell Their Names Wrong

We pretended we were snowed in today, because being snowed in on a Sunday is fun, as we learned last Sunday, when we were really snowed in. Today there was a pesky one inch of snow on the driveway, so . . . . Watercolors! Waffles! "Helping" Daddy shovel! Reading the New York Times and seeing this, which featured some of my favorite Mommy blogs.

OK, so two of the bloggers' names were misspelled . . . and all right, the writer criticizes blogging as a product of self-absorbed, anxiety-ridden parents. Bloggers get the last word, ha, ha, such as here and here. The writer, David Hochman, is oblivious to the high spirits, ascerbic wit, vulnerability and honesty of the particular bloggers he mentions. If the mainstream media loves to criticize mothers, and and if they feel threatened by blogging, then I guess it'll be a while before they cover blogging mothers with any depth.

On to more important things, like me and and my anxiety and self-absorption. The boys and I did some watercolor painting this morning. Will's paintings feature much black, puddles of water, and idiosyncratic brush strokes (applied with much pressure, creating multidirectional bristles). Jack's paintings actually include distinct fields of color. I bought extra brushes the other day so I could paint while they do. With the same paint. The palette is limited. And the yellow is adulterated with dark colors beyond any reasonable hope.

Our snow day good will is about to start to unravel; whenever the boys begin laughing a certain kind of laugh, and putting baskets over their heads, and throwing things, then someone is going to start crying or yelling very, very soon. Listen. Can you hear me?

Zoo Story

Yesterday we went to the zoo. We had special passes to go behind the scenes. First we looked at baby terrapin turtles who had hatched at the zoo after their mother's eggs were taken out posthumously by a wildlife expert of some sort. She had been run over by a car somewhere in New Jersey.

We also got to look at some zebras up close, but zebras get frightened by looking at "two-headed" people (John carrying Will) so John had to whiz past the zebras hoping they wouldn't see him/Will. The one "dominant female" zebra always has to nurture all the other zebras, making sure everything is safe for them, no predators around, and so forth. Why don't dominant males do that? Another thing, if the typical zebra herd has one male and six females, what are all the other males doing?

It was frightfully cold, and Will, who weights 38 lbs., insisted on being carried the whole time, so things were not always as enjoyable as one might have wished. But Will did greatly enjoy seeing the huge silverback gorilla pee in the cage and then step in it. The gorilla didn't actually didn't step in his pee, but he walked so nonchalantly close to it that Will thought he did. And what with Will being in the mood he was in, we were not about to correct him.

Last time we went to the zoo, the hippo pooped, and we were appropriately placed to have an excellent view. This time the hippo plunged into his pool, causing huge waves, I was going to say a tsunami, but I think not.

Jack didn't want to leave and pouted quite dramatically. His pace going back to the car was erratic, because he couldn't decide whether to run ahead and annoy us or lag behind and annoy us, so he did some of both. The combination was not in the end as annoying as either one would have been if practiced consistently, which annoyed him.

Sometimes I really don't feel like going to the zoo, but I'm always amazed every time I go. This time I noticed that anteaters just have necks and snouts, with no perceivable heads. Most animals are highly improbable, including us. We set up zoos! How weird is that? Nature is so amazing. Oh, we also got to see a small cart filled with zebra poop.

Questions to Ask the Internet

1. I got a Ph.D. in English in 1995, for which I had to wade through much contemporary literary theory. I have since been informed that theory is dead. Can I get a tuition refund?

2. How many banana bread recipes does the world need, anyway?

3. Has anyone actually called that 800 number on the back of trucks to answer the question "How's my driving?"

4. How did The Five People You Meet in Heaven ever get to be such a bestseller? It would save time and money to just buy a Hallmark card and read it five times.

5. Will "left-wing" and "right wing" Christians share the same afterlife? If so, who will make the best banana bread at the potlucks?

Oh, Internet, please respond not in a still, small voice, but in my "comments" section. That means you, dear reader. The Internet lives within all of us. Blessings and peace to you. You may go now. And please have some beet cake on your way out.

The Beet Goes On

I'm still here.

Here's something. Beet Cake. I suddenly have developed an obsession with making cakes that call for obscure, disagreeable, or old-fashioned fruits and vegetables. Yesterday I made Beet Cake, or, more exotically, Gateau aux Betteraves. I beg you, make this in a tube pan and not the shrimpy 9-inch cake pan it calls for, unless you love cleaning ovens. It was quite good, although it's one of those things that are Better the Second Day. The children didn't touch it, so my plan to give them vegetables unawares failed. The churchgoers will eat it at church fellowship hour. They eat anything there.

(I decorated the beet cake with crystallized ginger bits from Trader Joe's. They could be baked into the cake too.)

Next: Parsnip Cake. We have a gargantuan parsnip as big as my arm in the cellar that must be wrestled onto the kitchen counter and mutilated in the food processor soon, or it will eat the cats, who spend every night in the same room as the parsnip. That must be why the cats have been thin and nervous lately.