Tuesday, August 30, 2005

"i've got a blueberry for a daughter"

the boys sleep. at long last. ernie pulls into the drive with something for dinner. i had plans for dinner but, amazingly, i forced a confession out of ernie tonight: he does not like the vegetarian burgers that i concoct and smoosh into patties in the kitchen. and all of this time i've been on the search for the perfect glob of grain or bean or both to bake or simmer or fry into something bun and ketchup worthy. sigh.

i thought that i'd found it when i discovered the fantastic oatmeal walnut burger. he wasn't too keen on those but we'd only been married for about a year so he didn't want to say anything. i could eat oatmeal walnut burgers daily. they are drool-worthy. i'm telling you. i should post the recipe. no, you should all buy the book. do it.

several cooked bean burger failures (too runny) and one scary ground dried bean burger disaster (the whisper mill *is* the champion of the grain grinders! it grinds dried kidney beans and other rock-hard substances into a find powder!) later, i came up with something interesting and pretty: the parsnip patty. as one who has never shaved a parsnip and fried it with onion and tarragon before, i was pleasantly surprised that the whole house smelled fantastic and earthy for the rest of the day (i made the stuff at lunchtime to make dinner after students and during crabby time a better thing for everyone). and then the kids are crying and grumpy and ready to eat. they're filthy from playing outside with the favorite ben. we feed them their own quick supper. we bathe them. we send them to dream, to wish, to grow.

at about this time the parsnip patty has just about zero appeal to ernie and since he's suggesting that he'll cook, they're losing their rooty sparkle rather quickly (immediately) to me, too. "we'll have them tomorrow," ernie says, knowing that he'll be eating supper elsewhere tomorrow night. "i'm sending them in your lunch," i say, turning off the oven, putting the parsnip mush away. as if.

and now i sit here in the dark glow. the desk is a mess of small piles that have shifted into each other, on top of each other until they're no longer piles but one large mass of paper, book and folder, colored pencil, glue and sticker. my darling dearling fries chunks of a dead animal in the clean kitchen. and i will eat it and it will taste spicy, terrific, etc., and i won't feel badly, exactly. mostly i'll be glad i didn't touch the thing all raw and bloody in the foam packaging.

and there are pringles to eat, too! one artery at a time. sigh. what are we doing?



these boys are beautiful! amazingly these ordinary people gave birth to extraordinary fantasticness. on our early sunday morning walk to grandmamas in fancy duds with hair smelling of blueberries (blueberry soap, not berries themselves . . . ) i coerce them to sit on the steps for a few pics before they're dusty and grass stained. together they are growing strong and brave. the world is new to them and i forget this too often. "give me the grace to give grace!"

Thursday, August 25, 2005

nature's candy in my hand or can or a pie



i watch the neighbor squeeze a fresh peach to see if he can eat it. the peaches sit on the bricks of his driveway near to his truck. on his way to the back porch he picks one up and, sniffing it, says, "oh yea, this is ready," and does not put it down but swings it up the stairs with him. i hear the screen door bang shut. later, his wife fills a bag full of the peaches and hands them to me with a laugh and a boast about her son's green-thumb-luck. she waves at a waving jude and rushes into the house to finish something made of tuna. the boys and i walk home to wave sticks, to run crazy, in our own yard, gently placing the bag of peaches on our own driveway. the peaches on their bricks look over at the peaches in the bag on our concrete. they wave and roll their eyes about something made of tuna. the peaches in the bag try to see us with our sticks, to see the other peaches on the bricks, but cannot for the density of the bag and the crowding of the other peaches. later, much later, after dinner and baths and stories and bedtime, i remember the peaches in the bag on the step and retrieve them, piling them over the tomatoes and sweet potatoes in the bowl on the counter. i squeeze them, sniff them, but they are not ready.



a rainy day again! it's nice to not have to water everything that needs watering. the summer was dry and dusty. the topiaries died, much to my frustration. during a nap i victoriously ripped them from the pots and threw them in a pile of sticks under a tree. orange mums to take us out of summer and into fall, hopefully golden and healthy through an orange halloween.



jude's feet are too small for the yellow boots that henry wore at this age. but he wears them anyway, walking a funny walk and sliding in the grass. they wear raincoats and slide through mud.



puddles are for splashing and, as busy as it is, i feel my irritations of the day wane as we splish our way to grandmama's house. henry sings, "i'm singing in the rain!" with his umbrella, twirling it and trying to kick up a good jump. who knew gene kelly would be so emblazoned on his brilliant little mind?

our fabulous house continues to surprise us. i peeled back the funkily disgusting carpet in the downstairs bathroom (who carpets a bathroom? seriously, WHO ARE YOU PEOPLE? to those who are contemplating the laying of carpet in a bathroom: don't do it! but if you must, please DO NOT GLUE the wretched thing to the floor!) and, to my delight, found a hard wood floor (covered in the hideous glue) like unto that which sprawls from one end of this place to the next. who knows what is hiding under the kitchen linoleum?

and, speaking of household stuff, our shop-vac is fixed! thanks, dad. you and your large nimble fingers, electrified mind, and box of strange tools came to the rescue, yet again. my first shop-vac died by strangulation when henry's supersilk (cape) was caught in the fan of it after henry stood too close in front of the vent in order to get a little cape-wind. i love to vacuum. something in this house is vacuumed at least every-other-day, sometimes every day. how can i resist?

henry is nap-free today. i debate the goodness of this. the day is rough but the nights are bliss when he doesn't nap. when he does nap the evening is long and chatty. i say it daily and i'll say it here and now, it's hard to know what to do, particularly when it comes to routine and slumber. it makes me tired just thinking about it.

Tuesday, August 23, 2005

on the shoot





a squeak and a bounce and a few dollars (of course) and we've the ultimate in cowboy gear. he's been fed and watered and covered in a blanket to sleep. he's been named scout.







he's galloped from "bad guys" with a gun toting unmasked rider who is shouting, "look at me!" and, less frequently, other cowboy lingo, such as "whoa!" and "heigh-ho, silver!"







two can ride but one falls off and there is always a fight for the front-most spot -- grasping reins and mane are better than tail, apparently.






we discovered a delicious cookbook to enjoy with henry (and jude of course). the illustrations are terrific and the food (thus far) is delicious. henry loves to cut and shred and pile and smear and butter. and jude loves to watch and listen to henry's running commentary while munching on pieces of sweet red bell pepper. this food slump dissipates and i buy food that takes longer than twenty minutes to prepare. a re-read of certain chapters in laurel's kitchen and the discovery of the fantastic crescent dragonwagon has inspired and has pulled me out of the "i wonder what my mom's making for dinner" (read: "let's walk down and see if we can eat with them.") funk. henry made quesedillas with spicy beans, cheese and peppers. he assembled. i cooked and flipped. we all ate it. it took about eight times as long to make lunch as it would have had i done the work but he loved it and wanted to help came dinnertime, too.

the sun backs off a bit and the night air chills the house. the green pants were giddily pulled from the bottom of the pants pile in the closet to wear this morning. the coffee was perfect. the cats are not annoyingly sticking their fur to my arms when i pet them. the boys wear jeans. the water in the shower is twisted into the hot position. tempers mellow along with the temperatures.

the school bus roars by and i pour more coffee and settle in with something new to read. something little and pleasing to hold in the hand. barnes and noble has a whole collection of books in this size and shape. they even smell read-worthy. and for under six bucks can one go wrong?

Thursday, August 18, 2005

star-crossed



happy anniversary to us.

Wednesday, August 17, 2005

"if you wanna dance, find you a big fat man"

a late afternoon nap overtakes us all. dreams of an early childhood bedtime shattered and i snuck away for a few minutes of quiet to find the latest and greatest rendition of the greene bird studios web page (thanks, love!) register! enroll! everyone should be musically educated!

we missed a pic of a dairy dream during the heat of july (17). two (three?) nights ago (i was not at a disco) we dairy dreamed again (18), having taken an "ice cream really sounds terrible tonight" break until it sounded good again. i think we've learned that there can be too much of a good dream. today is the first day of school and the dream will now close at nine instead of ten at night, the first sign of winter pushing her way once again through the cracks around the doors and windows. we ate this last bowl of melting cream wondering why 1% milk can't taste like cold, melted vanilla soft-serve. can anyone tell us this?



a new pot of coffee perks in the kitchen. a day of laziness is catching up to us so it's time to vacuum the crackers off of the kitchen floor. something so simple and yet so unappealing at the same time. we've new books to read and an evening walk to meander, making such crunchy trivialities as crackers on the floor seem impudent. sigh.

Monday, August 15, 2005

perchance to dream

rain at last. a weekend of cold nights and soggy grass. we had a wet, dead bird, mirage like, on the front steps. somehow ernie disposed of it appropriately when no one else was looking. how does one do this? before i checked to see if it was still there this morning i wondered about the location of rubber gloves and black garbage bags, disinfectant and wire brushes.

the boys boast green gooey coughs throughout the day, ever constant in the dark of night. they drink juice and take vitamins. some nights we dimetapp them into a hard, cough-less slumber and everyone has relief.



we are all behind on sleep and have stupid and critical conversations, grumpy and sleepy. and yet, when the boys sleep, we, their parents, do not, trudging on through projects that are difficult to accomplish with small children lending (dragooning?) helping hands. i do believe many people sleep more than they need to sleep, letting something opaque and murky wash over them as they lie still under the sheets, mouths hung open, a navigable cave of gums, the teeth stalactites, stalagmites; cavities, dried out tongues relaxing until breakfast, eight or more hours of dark dreams to think about, to forget completely until the buzz of a new morning yanks them out and up, up and out, once again. and although i do not wish to sleep too much, i need more of the wretched thing or the days go badly. "a little folding of the hands to sleep," ruinous poverty or not, i must have, kicking and screaming all the way, if need be.

berio, the black and shiny, is scheduled to be clipped and snipped and neutered into tame-hood next week. with a $25 purple animal fixation voucher from the humane society and grandmama's cat carrier on loan we will take this recently-started-peeing-on-stuff cat to be emasculated. do they care at all, cats? would it matter if they did?



henry has discovered the insatiable deliciousness of being a yard sailor, purchasing this and that for spare change and a smile. we hit the shark-lover, crocodile-hunter jackpot last week, books galore we gathered together and marched down the street. hours of toothy enjoyment, a noisy godzilla, spikes and all, a croc that has already eaten toast and string cheese, melting ice-cubes at a slow and steady puddling speed on his ruby red tongue. hooray for the end of summer and other people's junk!

Friday, August 12, 2005

"that old musty cheese that we are"

the last bits and pieces of family reunition have driven off into the sticky haze of morning. weeks of cousins and a few days of uncles and aunts, people who look like us and yet no longer seem much like us come and go. we feel as though we are ever the same, wrinkling here, there, hands that look older, smiles that crinkle a shadowy recollection of the children we once were. and yet we all are not the same, not at all. bitter? sweet? ever so.




henry wields new light sabers, the purchase of which became necessary as we realized that henry believed we had lied to him when we were merely pretending to order light sabers by telephone. he diligently watched for the mailman on a near-daily basis. "the mailman is bringing light sabers -- grandmama called on the phone." such faith should not be squashed. so we who love the internet purchased two, a red and a blue, so that the fighting could be force-fully fabulous.

in other news, thank you, america, we had faith in you! go kaysar! as we sit late in the night in the cold drinking limeade we rejoice in your good grooming and subsequent eyebrow perfection. we realize that you would not be as appealing were you abandoned in guatemala unless you were allowed a complete waxing system as a luxury item. we are rooting for you and your winning smile!

welcome friday and the weekend that follows. this morning we woke cold, with noses that crackled from the extreme change of temperature. the synthetic air for which we will pay dearly is not our panacea, it's good for sleeping but not much else as we lousily start the day only thinking of coffee, something hot to remedy our habitual late nights and early rising.

let me have a draught of undiluted morning air. morning air! if men will not drink of this at the fountainhead of the day, why, then, we must even bottle up some and sell it in the shops, for the benefit of those who have lost their subscription ticket to morning time in this world. but remember, it will not keep quite till noonday even in the coolest cellar, but drive out the stopples long ere that and follow westward the steps of aurora.

Saturday, August 06, 2005

i'm not the only one staring at the sun

the heat wave has broken. we don't understand the mechanics of the heat wave. when the sun beats down on us we do not care to find the why, we only care to run from the product of it. when the sun is gentler, when the breeze of summer sneaks on tiptoe through the shade-giving trees that surround the house, the yard, the neighborhood at large, we find it near-shameful to even consider the recollection of the sun's wrath.



we've yet to be billed for the recent usage of our air conditioning units. i really feel nearly sick about it. on a morning like this one, the robin singing "cheerio!" outside the study door, the sounds of the house breathing in and out, creaks in the floor, and cicadas and their shick-shick-shick pulsing in the trees and the leaves and the hedge, the steady flow of saturday traffic zipping down the street, no fans or motors white-noising a buzz throughout the house, one can only feel that the usage of air the past week or so, on and off, here and there, through speech and snore, was entirely an unfortunate, impatient, blunder on our part. how can it have been necessary when the sun burns a silver shadow-dance across the yard, the windows, the car asleep in the drive? was the need to enjoy the morning coffee, the afternoon espresso, in the cold of the house worth it? was the hot itch of the wooly mashad on the bottoms of my feet bothersome enough to merit an outlandishly large cips bill? were the damp hairs of jude's head, the sweating curls of henry, the sticky purple strands on the back of my neck, unbearable enough to justify exchanging cash (that could have been blown on books or cds) for cold?

of course we shout yes! it is august, after all, the month of poppy and peridot. school starts in a week and a half. we will once again enjoy excursions to the park, as the parentally unattended, cursing and fighting children will be bussed off to school and i won't have to worry about henry picking up undesirable behavior or language from a seven year old smoker. we will remove sweaters from the closet, shoes will again be somewhat desireable, socks, jeans, and other autumn whatnot. a week or two of air-conditioned living will be nearly forgotten by both body and book.

Wednesday, August 03, 2005

fresh milk delivered daily

it's world breastfeeding week, huzzah! in celebration i will be breastfeeding all week long!



although i do not consider myself an expert on either the subject or practice of breastfeeding, i have breastfed for what sometimes seems like a very long time, from henry's first mewling, through jude's first fluttering and (gasp) beyond. and because i continue to deliver fresh milk daily to boy and baby i give you, "what we believe about breastfeeding."

breastfeeding is normal.
in a country and culture that is obsessed with the bosom, where flaunting breasts is acceptable for fashion, fun, and folly, and where children are recognized by many as bothersome and manipulative, claiming that breastfeeding is the most normal, most natural way for babies and small children to find nourishment and comfort is no small claim! down with the horrible tent draperies (no matter how chic!) that mamas and babes have endured in this generation! away with all hiding away in bathrooms (eating anything while in a bathroom is revolting!), back-bedrooms, and hot, parked cars! a woman should never have to hide herself and her babe because some other person is so breast-obsessed that he or she is offended! i've gone to other rooms, gone to the car to nurse before. but only because i felt uncomfortable, not because i didn't want someone to feel weird because my baby was eating. breasts are first and foremost for breastfeeding. and people need to recognize this! educate your children, educate yourselves!

breastfeeding is best.
apart from the extremely rare occurence that a woman and her babe are unable to enjoy a breastfeeding relationship, breastmilk is the best for all babies. we believe that it's not only the best right after birth, but is highly beneficial through the toddler years and beyond. studies have shown that babies who are breastfed longer are smarter, healthier and more attached than their bottle-fed and prematurely-weaned peers.

additionally, breastfeeding is best for mama! studies show that breastfeeding not only reduces the risk of post-partum depression but also reduces the risks of ovarian, uterine, endometrial and breast cancers and osteoporosis in women.

breastfeeding is wonderful.
in our house breastfeeding is a cure-all. it soothes wounded spirits, it calms restless, wild bodies, it lulls babe and boy to sleep, and it primarily nurtures a healthy attatchment between all of us.

for more information on breastfeeding and extended breastfeeding, read!

Monday, August 01, 2005

john daker jingleheimer schmidt



exactly WHAT is going on here? musicians everywhere can thank reva unsicker for something that astonishes us all.

download. wait. laugh. cry. enjoy.

thanks, camille!