A Little Regression

Kate has been, for a few years, a complete and utter Star Wars nerd (don't worry - she loves that term - I'm not being mean)  Until this year.  Now, she's traded Han and Luke for Hawkeye and Thor.  A few weekends ago, she had some girlfriends over for a 12 hour (10am -10pm!) Avengers movie marathon; Iron Man, Thor, The Avengers,.... 
I said:  You guys cannot just sit on the couch for 12 hours and watch these movies.  You'll have to go for a walk or something.
She said: A walk? Mom. Really.
So...I went to the craft store, looking for something to at least engage their hands while they stare aimlessy at the boob tube (Kate wants to know WHY we call it that - the boob tube?  I have no idea) and I found these Avengers coloring books and little notebooks.  I set them out on the table with snacks and the girls spent time coloring and chatting and drawing and writing and chatting and laughing.  And it was wonderful noise - beautiful noise - that laughter.  These are thirteen year old girls being...kids!  They are girls and they are teens but they are also kids, just plain old crayon coloring, outside/spy-playing, laughing, laughing, laughing kids.  And it was the best day.
Sometimes a little regression is a good thing.

Door Knobs and Stick-Ups

First of all let me tell you that I was trying to fix our computer so that John could do his homework.  He's in a Chinese Immersion school and so our computer must also learn how to "speak" Chinese so that John can do his homework.  So after I helped it learn Chinese...John did his homework and later...went to bed.  Now, I'm sitting down to blog and I go to Blogger.com and the whole site is in Chinese.  -!-  Hmmm.  No other webpages - just Blogger.  Yeah, that's weird.  And I can't even figure out which buttons to click on 'cause...I can't read Chinese!  But, obviously, I eventually figured it out.  I thought about sharing a print screen so you could see how the blog looks in Chinese but...that would be whole 'other fiasco so...the doorknob.

The above pic is of the doorknob at my Grandparents farmhouse.  It was on the inside of the front door that led straight into the living room.  When I saw this last time, I kinda recognized it, like I knew it from somewhere else.  I know that sounds weird but something in the back of my mind was connecting the dots.  Maybe you figured it out already but here's what the dots came up with:

Close relative at least, right?  I should've been Disney!

After supper tonight, Kate and John were goofing around upstairs.  Kate has been sick all week so she's getting a little loopy and I heard her go into John's room and say, "put your hands in the air, Mister.  This here is a stick-up.  Quick, what is the most valuable thing in this room?"
And John answered...
"Me."
Oh, I love 'em!

I Know it's Probably Wrong, but...

A lot of people I know hide these "Elf on a Shelf" characters.  Then everyone in their family can delight in trying to find the little elf.  So, I know it is probably really demented, but we hide the disembodied bloody foot.  Someone found it here during the middle of the night potty break.  The thrill of the scare/surprise seems to spur creativity in the next hiding place and you find yourself (or at least we weirdos do) giggling in anticipation for someone to find it.

Here it was, waiting for Kate to come home from school.  Or hanging out in the kitchen with the fruit:

Kate even hid the foot in the fridge - scaring the bejeezers out of Mark in the morning.  Rocco was especially disturbed by it hiding behind the curtains:

In the laundry:

And, of course, hiding under the couch:

Snail Mail

I remember spending time, as a child, at my Grandma's house on the farm where my Dad grew up.  The barn, chicken coop, windmill, and fields were all still there but it was no longer a working farm, no animals.  My Grandma once asked me to go get her mail.  I walked to the end of the very long gravel drive to her mailbox with long grassy meadows on either side.  There were no house numbers then; her address was simply the family name, rural route 1 (RR#1), city, state and zip.  When I removed the letters (more letters than bills - how nice would that be?), I saw a chipped, but very pretty, china cup at the back of the box.  It seemed so weird.  I gently carried it back to the farmhouse and dumped it with the letters on the kitchen table.  My Grandma then made me march right back down the drive and put it back in the mailbox.  Apparently, the china cup was how she bought stamps.  When she ran out of stamps, she just put her letters in the box without stamps.  The mailman (it was a man then) would put stamps on the envelopes, put the remaining book of stamps (they really were little books of stamps) to be exchanged for money the next day via the china cup.

We have this little blue book of "things to do this summer" that the kids write in when they think of somethingt we just don't have time for right now but that can certainly fit into our summer schedule.  So far on the list are: make paper, stay up all night, camp out in back yard, and make ice cream.  I just added, "write snail mail letters".  It will be fun to see the mail truck pull up and know that there's a good chance of a letter showing up among all the bills and junk.  So, if we send you a letter, please write back!
Do you and your someone special have "a song"?  Ours is Bob Dylan's To Make You Feel My Love.  The Letter by The Boxtops is my parents' song.

Little Pail List

Our tradition for New Year's Eve includes writing in this "time" book.  We get one page each per year and on that page we list at least five things we want to do in the following year - not resolutions, more of a small scale bucket list - a little pail list.  Then the next New Year's Eve, we review the prior year list and draw smiley, frown-y, or straight-face faces by each entry, depending on what we did or didn't do.

On my list this year (besides "going to an auction" - hey, I said little pail list), I wrote "create five new menu items and perfect them".  Now by "create", I mean find the right recipe and make it myself.  And by "perfect", I mean make it so that (1) it tastes good and (2) I feel so comfortable making it that it becomes a go-to choice for me.

And it's April.  And I thought I better get going on this if I want that smiley face at the end of the year.  So, I've been making lasagne - something I love but have never been able to master.  This week I finally made one that tastes really good.  I think I have one out of five.  Can't be happy with just one.  Feeling a little cocky, I roasted seven pheasants (yeah, still trying to clean out the freezer!) the other day, mixed them with crushed juniper berries and fresh thyme, and was going to make pheasant pasties for dinner tonight.

Well,...I'm running around like a crazy lady today trying to get everything ready for all of our weekend activities so that tomorrow I can sit and watch ball games for six hours (yep, six!).  Other than the predicted forty-six degree high for tomorrow, I'm excited.  I have the stadium blankets in the back of the car, extra sweatshirts packed, hand warmers ready, and, of course, plenty of Muppet band-aids!  I'm not packing sandwiches 'cause part of the fun is buying nachos and hot-dogs at the concession stand.

And I'm thinking, I don't have time to make pheasant pasties tonight!  So, I put the pheasant in the freezer (I'll do it next week) and set out a container of home-made split pea soup, bought a baguette, and we're ready for the weekend!  (Except for that book club meeting tomorrow night that I'm not at all  quite ready for!)

A glass of Kombucha, a Game of Mancala

This is the first successful batch of kombucha, an ancient medicinal fermented tea - often called tea beer (it has a very, very slight alcohol content).  A friend gave me a starter kit from her own batch.  I waited too long on my first try but this second attempt is quite good.

I enjoyed a glass while playing a game of mancala with John after school before setting off for evening activities.  It was one of those afternoons where I thought, "Why don't we do this more often?"

Band-Aids Make Everything Better

It's funny how quickly we go through Band-Aids at our house.  I had to pick up more this morning to refill my purse supply and put some in the kids' bat bags and look what I found - Muppets!  No matter how big the boo-boo (or small - "where is it again?  This foot?  No, that foot?  No, wait, I think it is this foot"!), a Band-Aid always makes it feel better; makes you feel cared for and loved.

John has always loved Robert McCloskey books (Blueberries for Sal, Make Way for Ducklings, One Morning in Maine,...).  A little while back, I met a friend from Chicago in Green Bay for a girls' weekend.  Shopping at a used bookstore, I found a copy of Burt Dow; Deep-Water Man by Robert McCloskey which I brought home for John.  I hadn't ever seen the story before and it quickly became John's favorite McCloskey book - a great read-aloud book, kind of a tongue twister but really fun once you get going!  In it, Burt Dow accidently catches a whale by the tail with his fishing hook.  When he takes the hook out, he places a band-aid on the tail.  The whale is pacified but ole' Burt is soon surrounded by a school of unhappy whales, splashing their tails and nearly capsizing Burt.  Finally, Burt figures it out - they just feel left out; they want band-aids on their tails also.  You can see in this picture how happy they all are with band-aids on their tails!

Mahna Mahna!

Hand-made Gifts

                                    

Starting to think about Mother's Day and Father's Day gift ideas.  A few years ago, my brothers and I collected photos of our families hands and made a photo book for Mom.

Sounds of the Day

The windows are open and I can hear a steady drizzling rain. 
It has been a weekend of sound. 
Kate and I went to Orchestra Hall yesterday when it was sunny and brilliant to be downtown.

Playing boardgames during the thunderstorm this afteroon, Kate and John were giggling so hard with their friends that I couldn't distinguish whose laugh was whose.

Laundry Treasure

Everyone brought their laundry to the laundry room before leaving for school this morning.  Rule is:  rightside out and pockets emptied.  Well, my repeat offender strikes again.  Exasperatedly emptying pocket after pocket, I worked on the lecture to deliver when school let out.  But as the first load started washing and I looked down at the tray of treasures, I saw the beauty in these small stories of my son's life.  These are the things he brought with on his adventures; the things he found and saved for later; the things that make up the best parts of his day.
He knows he's supposed to clean out his pockets.  And I will remind him again.  But my wishes and reminders are sharing space in his brain with other, maybe even more important, things.