The Sound of Silence

My children are gone. They are at my mother-in-law's house for FOUR days. Count 'em with me - one, two, three, FOUR. It's my 10-year wedding anniversary this weekend, and she's taken the munchkins off my hands so I can get my hair done and enjoy a peaceful, long, glorious weekend and remember what life was like 10 years ago when I was all of 18 years old and had a flat stomach and time on my hands. One day you'll have to make me tell you the wedding story. It's insane. Truly.

So because my children are gone for four days, I am sitting here in my living room with three sleeping cats and two sleeping dogs and there are no toys being tossed around and no fights that need to be broken up. The only sounds I hear are the fan of my computer and the train whistle from across the way. There is an entire cat's worth of fur on the carpet because I have been refusing to vacuum until the children are gone, and now that they're gone, I'm not inclined to move.

I have, however, gone shopping. I started at Ross. I bought three tank tops - yellow, green, and white/blue - and a white skirt (skirt!) and a pair of Tommy Hilfiger capri pants because I love Tommy. He does good things for my figer... I mean, figure. And then... and this is the kicker... I went to the $1 jewelry shop and ACCESSORIZED. Those of you who know me well might die upon reading this. I should have put in a disclaimer asking you to sit down and check your pacemakers first. Most of the time my 'accessories' include my wedding ring(s), a waterproof IronMan watch from Wal-Mart, and whatever pair of fake pearl or cubic zirconia earrings happen to be in one set of the holes in my ears (my ears are pierced twice). I don't use purses. I don't shop. So accessories just. Don't. Happen.

Ever.

I bought three necklace/earring sets that actually match what I bought. And I had left the tank tops in the car while I did the purchasing. I impressed myself.

And now I'm going to copy some recipes out of some cookbooks that I'm getting rid of (not keeping cookbooks that only have one or two good recipes) and freeze some blueberries and generally sit on my expansive derriere and enjoy the silence.

Though come bedtime, I'll miss tucking my babies in. There's a price to be paid for everything.

But when I'm sitting at Starbucks tomorrow morning and don't have to buy a giant bottle of juice and a scone for a boy who is done and bored and starving again 30 seconds later, that price will be oh, so, wonderfully worth it.

Negotiation with terrorists

I do not, by principle, negotiate with terrorists.

Apparently, however, I negotiate with 7-1/2-year-old boys and 5-year-old girls.

Oddly enough, I find them to be pretty darn similar on most counts.

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Let's explore the similarities:

1. Terrorists and children both make highly unreasonable demands.

"Mom, can we sleep on the couches tonight instead of in our beds?"

Um. No. But thanks for asking! Run along now and clean up that tornado of toys you've got strewn over two bedrooms, the hall, the living room, and the kitchen, k?

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2. They both have something to gain by their demands, while you get the short end of the stick.

"Well, if we can't sleep on the couches, what other options are there?"

What do you MEAN, if you can't sleep on the couches, what other options are there? There are no other options! NO, you may not set up the tent. In the living room OR outside. No, you may not trade bedrooms. You may sleep in YOUR rooms. In YOUR beds. WHY do you even want to sleep on the couches or in the tent??

"Um... we want to talk. And stay up really late."

Nothing good ever comes of either of those. Good Lord, he must think I'm missing half my brain. See point #1. And point #3.

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3. They don't ever, ever give up. And they recruit others if necessary.

"But we both think it's a good idea, Mom! It's not just MY idea!"

Oh, good, drag your sister into this. She's supposed to be cleaning up her half of the tornado, you know... as are you, if we want to get back to the point *I* was trying to make. I'm also trying to make supper. You may NOT sleep on the couches. You may NOT sleep in the tent. You may NOT trade rooms for the night. Your rooms. Your beds. Heck, I'll concede that if you want to sleep on the floor, I'm okay with that, but YOUR floor in YOUR room.

"Can we sleep in the hall?"

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4. They're very, very good at skewing your words to their purposes.

OMG no. Not in the hall. Dear heaven, not in the hall. I'd rather you sleep on the couches where I could at least keep an eye on you than have you both parked in the hall doing God only knows what.

"So we can sleep on the couches???"

NOT what I said. And tell me again why you're not in there picking up your toys?? Oh, right. Point #5.

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5. They're both very good at dismissing anything they consider irrelevant to the conversation.

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6. If worse comes to worse, they'll happily throw themselves under the bus for martyrdom's sake.

Cue meltdown because I'm "not listening."

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In the end, Terrorist 1 and Terrorist 2 settled for getting to stay up half an hour later than their normal bedtime. I'm not sure how that made up for not getting to sleep on the couches since M1 can tell time but just won't take two seconds to look at a clock and M2 can't tell time yet, so as far as *they* know, it's 30 minutes past bedtime.... an hour early.

I do not negotiate with terrorists.

Roaches, with Love

This is my friend Nan's house. She just closed on it last week. It's a darling little place.

Did you like the additions on the floor?

Did I mention it was her birthday a couple of weeks ago?

Traditions run deeeeeep around here, and we couldn't let it pass without totally pranking up her new place. Thankfully, she's living with her sister temporarily, and her sister has no problems letting us hooligans into the house so we can create much havoc.


So we roached her. One of my Cohorts in Crime thunk up and created that cake.

We also decided to be nice and get her some actual stuff for her house. Other than roaches.

We put them EVERYWHERE. She'll probably never find all of them. When we left, the cats were hard at work hiding a few under the couch.

We had to throw a few near every drain in the house,

which meant all sinks, tubs, and even the dishwasher.

Figured a few in the fridge (and crisper!) couldn't hurt as well.

I just hope she found these before nuking something. I'm not quite sure these would survive the same nuclear holocaust as their live cousins.

I do love my friends. And it's a good thing they love me, too. :)

Snapshots of summer

Summer vacation may only be a week in, but already our to-do list is overflowing. There is just no way we're getting it all done in two months.

Of course, we're going to TRY.

Meet Jo. Named for Josephine from "Little Women," this bird is my baby. I had thought that Sophia and all the other Rhode Island Reds were going to be the queens of the coop, but boy, was I wrong. The Plymouths have outdone everyone else. Last night when Oz went out to close up the coop (I was off performing evil deeds and hanging out with the girls), the Plymouths were all parked on the top perch while everyone else was still huddled up in the bedding below.

These girls are go-getters, and Jo is the leader of the pack. She runs to me every time she sees me (she's a bit of a greedy girl) and lets me pick her up and hold her without the slightest fuss. When someone else finds a bug, she's right there to steal it. She's stolen my heart, too, and I can't wait to see how big she gets. They're all getting huge!

My garden is getting big and full already, too. Here are a few images:


Tomatoes, obviously


Bell pepper changing colors

Blue Lake green beans (already!)


Tiny cucumber (meant to stay small, for pickling)

Peas


Baby butternut squash


Blackberries!

We went down the back of the pasture the other day to check and see how they were doing since I've seen a few farms about that are starting to advertise blackberries already. Traditionally mine aren't ready till about July 4, and that seems to be holding true again, but I had to check. So many baby berries!

And speaking of babies, look what mine can do! He learned to ride a bicycle today, too. It's been a big week. :)

They both enjoyed a good evening catching fireflies, too. I helped M2, but M1 caught a few on his own. Oz can't see very well in the twilight, but he caught a couple, too.

They loved watching their catches. I put some bug-food gel into the jars and let the kids keep them overnight, though M2 got herself worked into a tizzy about how they weren't free and could we please let them go so they wouldn't die, and so we DID, and then she cried because she didn't have them anymore. She's a walking catch-22.

We've also hit up the splash pad and the pool this last week. Didn't take pictures in the pool for obvious reasons, but watching them splash in the water on the first *real* day of summer vacation was a huge treat.

Let the good times roll!!!!

Vignettes: Into the minds of kids

I love talking to kids. I can't help it. Most of the youngsters that I see and associate with are young enough that they don't care about whether they talk to grown-ups because we're not totally dumb yet. Yet being the operative word. My day will come. M2 is counting on it.

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Yesterday, we had some of my homeschooling friends over. I am grateful to have a very wonderful, caring group of ladies to be able to call associates in this wonderfully crazy adventure called homeschooling. Their kids are great, too, and since I love having any excuse for company, I was glad to be able to host.

I came into the kitchen at one point to hear M2 talking to the daughter of another lady. I'll call the daughter J. J is 9, I believe, though I'm sure someone will tell me if I'm wrong. She's very poised, considerate, well-spoken, and definitely has a strong love of learning. Her mom actually does speaking engagements, so I suppose none of this is any surprise, but I really like J and her younger brothers (and her mom). I should also note that J is quite petite and only an inch or two taller than M2. She comes by that honestly as well, but M2 doesn't realize that there's an age difference, I don't think, and it makes for a fun conversation. Let's see if I can reproduce it:

The scene: I walk into the kitchen to get some lemonade, and the girls are chatting.

M2: Mom! J has said I can come to her birthday party this year and she's going to make sure I get an invitation! Can I go???

Me: Oh? J, that's very kind of you. M2, if we get an invitation, I'm sure we'll work out a way to go.

J: It'll be [date on a weekend but during the school year].

M2: Oh. I might be in school. Mom, if I'm in school that day, can I skip???

J, looking quite confused: But... I thought you were homeschooled?

M2: No. M1 is, but I'm not. I go to private school.

J, still quite confused and looking at me now: Why can't you homeschool both of them?

Me: Well, I could, but M2 likes going to school and seeing her friends every day, and M1 likes being alone and not having other people around while he's learning, so we just do it this way because it makes everybody happy. If M2 ever wants to come home, I've told her she can. And if M1 ever decides he wants to go back to school, then we'll talk about that, too.

J: Oh, OK. [pauses, then leans forward and puts her elbows on the counter and puts her head in her hands] I wonder what it's like to go to school.

M2, doing what she does best and carpe-ing the diem: Oh, it's fun! There are centers and you can go to the science center and learn things there and there's dramatic play which is my favorite because you can pretend to cook and clean and there's blocks which is [a preschool classmate's] favorite because he likes to build things...

AAAAAnd that's when I interjected and had to explain to J that fourth grade would not, in fact, contain centers and would be much less exciting than what she was learning at home on her own terms. I think she got the idea and began expounding the virtues of the science curricula that she has. And then she moved onto the Great Debate of which animal she's going to try to talk her mom into: Lizard, Turtle, or Betta. I told her to aim for lizard. Though I don't know that J was in the room when I broke the mealworms out of their refrigerated container and half the kids thought they were the grossest things they'd ever seen. The verdict was that they'd NEVER feed their lizard THOSE. Crickets would be much, much better.

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Speaking of food, I like to occasionally blow M1's mind, too. He and M2 made dinner tonight. M2 "made" a pineapple upside-down cake (since she can't quite read that well yet, she helped measure, dump, mix, and put it all together), and M1 made some tostadas. I threw together some homemade refried beans (Best. Beans. EVER.) and supervised M1.

After we got done stuffing ourselves silly, M2 went to get ready for her bath with the new "farmer's market soap" that we bought this week and M1 and I sat around to chat.

Me: Thanks for making dinner, Bug-ling. You know, I could never have made dinner at your age. And certainly not at M2's age.

M1: You couldn't? Not even a quesadilla? (Quesadillas are the epitome of easy cooking for him, and he's been making them independently since he learned how to reach the 30-second button on the microwave.)

Me: Nope. Well, to be fair, at your age we didn't even have a microwave (there I go showing my age again), but even so, I couldn't have done it.

M1: But... you could have made things if you'd wanted, right? You had to have had recipes.

Me: Well, Granny had recipes, but I didn't get to cook them.

M1: But you helped mix ingredients? [Me shaking my head.] Measuring things? [Continuously.] What DID you get to do?

Me: I got to lick the beaters sometimes.

M1: That's not cooking!!!

Me: I know that. Granny just didn't really let me into the kitchen all that much.

M1: You could have peeked around the corner.

Me, laughing: I guess I could have. But our kitchen was kind of small and I was too busy pestering my sister.

M1, looking sheepish: Oh. So how did you learn to cook??

Me: I had to teach myself. When I got to be a grown-up, I had no idea how to cook. Daddy and I had to eat some really gross meals before I learned.

M1: But you're a great cook now (Little suck-up).

Me: Thank you. I just want to make sure that you know how to cook before you get to be all grown up and live on your own.

M1: Yes. I'll be a great cook someday, too, just like you. What do you want me to fix you? 'Cause I'll be able to cook everything.

M2 returned at this point to declare herself ready for bath and could she please, please, PLEASLES give herself a bath with the new soap? So I told M1 I'd think about it and answer him another time and would he please, please, PLEASLES clean up the sour cream mess that he'd made in the kitchen since cleaning is part of cooking.

The Home Place

While we were up visiting my grandmother over the weekend, we went to visit The Home Place. Well, not with capital letters. That'd be the local retirement/assisted living facility in the town where my grandmother lives. But THIS home place was home for my grandmother when she and my grandfather were married and built it, home for my mother and uncle when they were growing up, and home for my uncle after he graduated from college since my grandmother had remarried and moved out to her new husband's farm (my grandfather died when my mom and uncle were teens).

After my uncle died - 10 years this December, and it still seems like yesterday sometimes - the long-time family friend/hired hand lived there until he died in December of 2009.

Now the house is empty.

It's out on a dirt road, but even driving up to it, you can tell it's been well cared for. To be fair, the barns are still in use. M1 found a cow in one of the stalls and came running out to tell me, "MOM! MOM! They FORGOT a cow!!!!"

No, son, they didn't forget the cow. I don't think a cow would LET you forget it. They're kind of visible. And loud. Off you go. Don't irritate the cow and stay out of the hay.


It *is* a nice-looking house. There's something to be said for old construction, which is why I didn't hesitate to buy our current home that was built in 1965. If done right, these homes really can last forever.

The census worker, who had been by the house twice to try to catch someone at home, finally called my grandma last week to find out who was living there. She didn't believe my grandma when she said the house was vacant. "But... it's so well-kept!"

Yes, yes it is. Thanks for noticing.
This might be the back door, but it's the one I've always come in. I've never even opened the front door. I don't know if it even works, though of course it probably does. Grandma says it does, so I'll go with that. I have pictures of my uncle and his dogs and my sister playing outside this door. I took those pictures with an old 110 camera that I had when I was a little girl. I probably still had the negatives till I went through and pitched a bunch of those earlier this year.

Inside the back door is the wash room. I covet this sink and would love to have it in my own utility room. It's deep and big and wide and old and solid, and having a place to soak the laundry would be WONderful when you consider that right now I'm using giant ice cream containers (strawberry swirl, anyone?) for soaking, and those aren't big enough to hold a tablecloth.

And don't you love the Lava soap on top of the sink there? Lava makes the farm world go round.
Off the washroom is the kitchen/dining room. Grandma fully intends to put new linoleum and new countertops in soon. I told her the countertops were fine, but the floor is kind of scratched up. She said if she's going to replace one, she might as well replace the other. My kind of logic.

I hope she doesn't get rid of this, though. Even if it's just left in a room somewhere, it'd be so weird to go into that house and not find it. How old is it, you ask? Let's put it this way. If you dialed the number, you wouldn't reach the house. The area code isn't even right any more. And when I was little, I didn't even have to dial the first two numbers to call anyone. Just the last five would suffice.

Though I'm not sure if that says more about MY age or the phone's.
Off the kitchen is the living room (with the front door, of all things). I love how tiny that TV looks compared to our modern monstrosities. See the chair there in the corner? The rest of the furniture is about as old. It's all "vintage." I remember there being a beanbag in this room, too, that my uncle would lay on to watch TV. He always was a little boy at heart.

This was my mother's room when she was a little girl. Of course, the furniture wasn't the same, but the room was. My mom tells a story of one night, back before there was air conditioning in the house (central heat and air now), when there was a thunderstorm while the windows were wide open. Lightning came in both windows simultaneously and met right above her bed. She said she's never been so scared in all her life as when that happened. Can you imagine?!?

This was my uncle's childhood bedroom. I love how it has more of a 'boy' feel to it.

It's been empty for a while.

Some of the other stuff around the house reflects my uncle's personality. He was a character and really, really loved what he did.

I bet you can't guess what kind of cattle he raised:
Or where he went to college:

Or even what kind of warped sense of humor he had (Read the titles of the green book and the black book... I'm not sure why I found their proximity funny, but I did):

All in all, though, the house will no doubt last for another 50 years and become a gen-u-wine hundred-year-old farmhouse.

I just have to say it, cheesy though it may be... There's No Place Like Home.

Family heritage

I went up to visit my grandmother this weekend. I was in a little bit of trouble because it's been six months since we've been to see her, but she worked me to the bone in revenge.

Except that she wouldn't do that on purpose or ever try to get revenge for anything. She's a sweetheart. She just had a lot of stuff for us to get done, and I'm sure she's at least as tired as I am tonight! We went to visit several graves and put out flowers for "Decoration Day," as she calls it. I'd never paid attention before to how busy gravesites really are around Memorial Day since all my family is either still living or buried up where we visited this weekend... not quite local. Now I'll have a guilt trip forever because she kept saying things like, "When I'm gone, there'll be nobody to come here" or telling people, about me, "She hasn't been up here in six months. Her kids have grown a whole head since I saw them last."

Yes, Grandma. I get the message. Thanks for reminding me.

She might be a sweetheart, but she's not above a little bit of Mommy Guilt. It's an art form to make pointed remarks sound honey-sweet and passive-aggressive at the same time. She's got that one down pat. I think that mastery comes about the time you start having your hair done at the same day and time every week or two.

I digress. My grandmother, when she was younger and married to my grandfather, when my mom and uncle were little rugrats ripping around in the farmhouse that I'll show you later this week, looooved buying Frankoma Pottery. She thought it was the prettiest dinnerware out there, and she acquired a LOT of it.

But it's heavy-duty stuff, and she's had a lot of it stored underneath her counters. Now that she's getting a bit older - I say older... she's 86 and clearly still kicking - bending down and lifting it out is just getting to be too much for her.


That's just the stuff I brought home. The rest of it is still at her house. I got it because the reason that my family moved to Oklahoma all those years ago is because my dad got a job at Frankoma as the plant manager. When I got old enough, about 13 or 14, I worked there part-time, too, first mowing the lawns for a summer or two and then, when I could drive, in the factory itself, handpainting some of the ware that was contracted for other companies. Remind me to tell you about that job sometime. It was quite an experience, to say the least. So there's a history there.

I do love this old-time pottery.


The baking dish is just beautiful.

This honey pot is probably my favorite piece that I brought home, and even if I never put honey in it, that bee on top will ensure I'll never part with it. Isn't it darling??

Chip and dip tray.



Several serving trays

A pitcher designed to keep the ice IN the pitcher rather than splashing it all in your glass.

These are just the tip of the iceberg. I went through my entire kitchen and got rid of all my other dinner plates and quite a few bowls and replaced it all with this stuff. I know there might be a few folks out there who will be appalled that I'm going to use it for everyday rather than saving it for a special occasion, but I do have a whole china cabinet full of my great-grandmother's china that's nearly 100 years old, and this stuff is only about 60. It fits in my house, fits my personality, and more importantly, was made to last.

I'm proud to be able to have it in my home!


Happy Memorial Day, everyone!

The chicks have flown the... tank

*sniff sniff* Mah baybees is growin' up!

OK, so it's not all that sad, really. It means I get my freezer back, which good Lord, I missed being able to get into that thing! I couldn't get to my pesto! That's a tragedy when there are good pizza ideas calling my name.

The chicks are two weeks old now and still growing fast. They look a little funny right now because they're starting to get their back feathers in, which means all the downy bits that were so soft on their back are standing straight up because the new feathers are pushing it out of the way.

It makes them look like they're wearing little popped collars. I guess that explains all the attitude. I have teenage chicks. Geesh.

Honestly, though, we were about to have some serious issues if I had kept them in the tank. Battle lines were being drawn. They had divided themselves into two little colonies and were sleeping down opposite ends of the tank at night, which told me that not only were roosting quarters getting tight, I was very likely going to have territory battles on my hands for scratching room. And I was having to fill the food and water containers up once (or twice, and sometimes three times) a day. AND even with my best efforts, they were kicking bedding into the food and water all the time trying to scratch, which meant I was constantly cleaning something out.

We were all getting tired of it.

It was time to move.

So Oz and I got out the Big Girl Feeder and the Big Girl Waterer and put them in the coop with some bedding. I don't want my babies to freeze. Technically I'm supposed to keep them at a certain temperature until they're about a month old, but it was either this or find a bigger container with a cat-proof lid. This was way cheaper and easier. It's warm enough outside during the day, and the inside of the coop stays warm at night, too, after the windows are shut, so while I was worried, it was more for form than anything else. SOMEbody has to worry about everything.

We hauled the girls out after everything was set up, accompanied by a dog who either loves the chicks because his Corgi herding instinct is starting to emerge from the fat rolls or loves the chicks because he thinks his fat rolls need refilling with fresh chicken. I'm not sure. I really don't want to test either theory, if I'm honest.

The girls settled right into their new home. When I checked on them this morning, they were happily running around and talking and gossiping and nibbling food here and there. A few of them were even testing their wings and fluttering around a bit, something they couldn't do in the cramped confines of the tank.

Mah baybees is growin' up! And it's exciting for everyone.

I can't decide... you help

I can't decide whether today is going well or not.

On the one hand, Oz re-stapled together M2's box springs so the cats can no longer climb in the bottom and consider it a hidey-hole.

BUT... that meant I had to wash sheets today, and while I don't mind throwing the sheets in the washer and then into the dryer, I *HATE* folding sheets. I am fully capable of doing it, I just don't want to. It a specific point of laziness/OCD-ness. There is no piece of furniture big enough to really hold the fitted sheets well, and unless the floor has been recently vacuumed (which... haha... it kinda hasn't), I don't want to put fresh, nice-smelling, clean sheets on the floor, so I wind up doing this weird contortionist dance in the middle of the living room to try to get them folded as nicely as possible so they can fit into my overly-stuffed linen closet in just the right way.

Then again... I love sleeping on clean sheets, especially if I also happen to wash my hair the same evening.

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I got the garden weeded.

The down side of that is that I might have been pretending that every weed was my boss. She's not popular with me right now. She is probably doing her best, but there are times "best" is just not good enough, and this is one of those times. And if she doesn't call me back by Wednesday afternoon, matters are going to have to escalate. I've been waiting for five months for things to get fixed. That's the hibernation period of many animals.

Consider me a grumpy mama bear coming out of her hole.

Then again... the garden looks much better than it did first thing this morning, and M1 got to feed the chicks all the crickets I unearthed. That caused him great delight.

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I called the pediatrician's office today to get copies of M1's vaccination list and a new script for an inhaler to take with him to camp later this summer, and I was reminded of how much I truly love my pediatrician and her entire staff. Things are already done. It took less than 15 minutes.

However, in this ENTIRE metropolitan area, population approximately 385,000 as of 2007, there is NO playgroup/social skills group for children of elementary school age who have been diagnosed with Asperger's. Nothing. In German, if you like, NICHTS. In Spanish, NADA. Absolutely NOTHING.

Teens and adolescents (ages 12+)? Yes. Children who are pre-elementary (ages 3-6)? Yes. Elementary school kids? See previous rant-filled paragraph. I had really been hoping that the group that advertised itself as a group for "children and adolescents" would be the place for him to go, since it meets monthly, but apparently the word children is used to describe tweens. The lady did at least acknowledge the shortcoming, but come ON, folks... ages 7-12 get nothing?? These are formative years, when the kids neeeeeed to work on social skills. And I can assure you that an Asperger's child is getting very, very little help in the way of social skills in a school setting, unless you count being teased and being the odd one out as 'social skills' training. Which, obviously, I don't.

The only good thing that has come out of this is that I ate the last of the strawberry-rhubarb pie and the last of the vanilla-with-strawberries-in-it ice cream for lunch today.

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I'm a tad frustrated today.

Makes me want to do THIS:

and not come out. Thank heaven for cute children. :)