Yes, A Sheep and Wool Festival

It was so early. It was dark. I do not do things in the morning when it is still dark. The last time I was up for good (as opposed to talking to children in the middle of the night or visiting the bathroom in the first trimester) before it was light, I was at the monastery trying to make bargains with myself--if I go to morning prayer and mass, I'll come back for coffee cake and then nap.

We stood outside and waited for Ann's van. Loaded everybody up and we were on the road to Bethel, Missouri, which is a good 3 hour drive. The girls watched DVDs on the portable player. Ann and I chatted and looked for a place to stop for coffee once it got to be about 7:30 or so. The Bowling Green McDonald's sufficed, where we made all girls use the restroom as well. In there, helping Maeve touch nothing, don't touch anything, I heard another mother talking to her daughter in the next stall. But I didn't understand anything she was saying. Washing our hands together, I realized why. She was Amish, or conservative Mennonite, perhaps, and she was speaking Pennsylvania Dutch. I was so excited. I love creoles and dialects and little remnants like that. They went out to the minivan, driven by a woman with a cigarette hanging out of her mouth while she washed the windshield, and they all piled in like a clown car in reverse--mom holding baby, older sister holding another younger child, everyone crammed into the van.

We got to Bethel and checked in. Ann and I were both entering the wool fiber arts contests this year--last year we looked at the winners and thought, really? So this year, I got my pink sweater and Ann brought a hemlock afghan and a cable knit scarf. Didn't know how we'd do, but wanted to try. I haven't entered a contest since high school. Really.

Then we did things like watch sheep shearing demonstrations. Sheep dog trials. Went shopping at various vendors who were offering all sorts of stuff--I bought a boat shuttle for the loom and, later, a roving of blue faced leicester wool so Ann can, gulp, teach me to spin. Come full circle, I suppose: knitting, crochet, weaving, spinning. And quilting...kind of an outlier. Ann's friend from the knit shop, Rachel, got there and we had some lunch (lamb, of course). Walked around looking at sheep and hoping to see mutton busting. Someday I will get a photo of mutton busting (essentially, small children in bike helmets and life preservers, riding sheep like they're in some mutant runt rodeo).

Did some people watching, too. Lots and lots of Amish. I say Amish but they could be simply close relatives religiously. I didn't ask them, although Maeve asked a woman in her 50s if she was a prairie girl. It was taken well. I find religious sects so fascinating, and any subculture that requires a dress code even more so. I didn't walk up to people and take their pictures, but the two here are zoomed from far away and taken from behind, just to demonstrate the two options. The first seems to be long dresses, conservative, like Pentecostals or other late 19th century revivalists. But half of them had the headscarves as well. And poodles. They seemed to be a requirement.

And then the slightly more foreign-seeming Amish, the men in blue or gray shirts with suspenders, beards without mustaches, hats, black boots and shoes. The women were in gray, or purple, or brow, or green, or blue, with the little starched white bonnet. Boys looked like miniature clean-shaven versions of their fathers, and girls over 10 looked just like their mothers. Little girls with stiff double braids and no bonnet.

We didn't run into the clown car of Amish from McDonald's, though.

Went back to the judging tent. My sweater came in second, 96/100 points. First place was deemed perfect, at 100/100 points. I was happy with this, although a bit bewildered that a cable knit sweater was beat by an American Girl's sized backpack. It was unique, though, and done in entrelac knitting. But the one that was really puzzling was Ann's second place hemlock afghan--essentially, a doily pattern taken to the extreme, done on fat wool with big needles instead of thread with toothpicks. The piece that beat hers was the VERY SAME PATTERN, but done in a cheapy cotton blend sock yarn. Ah well. It was one of those "well, next year I'll..." moments.

Because, in the end, I walked away with a second place ribbon at a sheep and wool festival. I don't know why this makes me happy. But it does!

Oh, and then we went to the Bethel festival and saw their quilt show. Umm. Yeah. I'm entering that next year, too. Although my quilting style doesn't lend itself towards cutesy prints and simple rectangles...the woman in charge told me the quilt police weren't there. To, essentially, bring it on. So we'll have to see...

Got home in time for dinner. Read too much information on Hurricane Gustav. Went to bed worried, but now it looks like things won't be as bad as they feared. My ankles last night were HUGE with so much standing around and being out in the heat all day. Still big today, even with elevating them and drinking a ton of water. It was too hot and still to think about a bike ride, but Tuesday after I drop off the kids, I'm going to try to get the circulation pumping and get this swelling down (even if the water pushing and elevating works--I need to get on that bike, and, no, I'm still doing ok with the bike...).

So yeah--fun in the sun with sheep. Ann, let me know when it's good for you to let me come over and learn even more stuff I shouldn't allow myself to do....

Early Morning Tomorrow, Not In Bed Yet

I got 10 hours of sleep last night. Without sleeping till noon. Must be first week of school. Tomorrow I leave the house at SIX in the MORNING with Ann to go to Bethel, Missouri for the Sheep and Wool Festival. Taking the girls. Yes, Ann has a DVD player. I already feel sick about how early it will feel when the alarm yells at me at 5:30.

Got some vague queasy I can't chalk up to pregnancy. More nerves than anything (maybe it's just the early rising tomorrow...). But I still go through this list in my mind: is the the house? No. Money? Not right now. Kids? Not really, school seems to be going fine. Family? Maybe...not sure yet... World Events? Been turning the radio off, so probably not. What am I missing? What have I forgotten to do? Is it just being pregnant? No idea.

Eh. Maybe it's just late and I should be sleeping. That just seems too easy. I hate this kind of mood.

Maybe I'll blame the cats.

Stuff Portrait Friday: You're So Vain

I take very bad pictures. I mean, I am pretty good at photography. But I am an awful subject. Bleah. It takes a good photographer to catch me without my nose wandering all over my face and obviously not in line with my teeth. I usually have to take my own pictures to prove I was at this or that event. Or I hide behind my kids, partially or totally. Here I am, almost totally behind Maeve at the Royale on Kingshighway last year.

Photo Friday: Exercise

Stopping for a break on Grant's Trail last September.

No, not a euphemism

I really meant "warping the loom"...it is taking me forever. I'm further than this picture, but my written instructions are vastly different from how I was taught in person. Alas, I can't remember why they were different--like, why it matters that I do this or that step first. Plus, of course, my loom is a beautiful maple wood bastard hybrid that bewilders everyone I describe it to. I'm on weaving mailing lists and they keep saying...hmm..metal tie ups? How does that work? Are you sure it's a (countermarche/jack/counterbalance)? Because the only one I'm sure it's not is counterbalance. No one knows Ullman looms and no one can help me. But this is ok! Because I'm figuring it out! And there is one person who knows, a lovely woman in upstate New York who rebuilt one last year.

Like the painter's tape? I am so very much my father's daughter. Can't figure it out based on the directions? Fake it!

Fair Shares Update

The last two weeks:


First: roasting pepper (I don't believe it's sweet...), banana peppers, a bell peppers, tomatoes of two kinds. Rolls from Companion (toasted with butter is fabulous). Peaches, eggs, corn. Sunflower and pea sprouts, thyme, ground beef, figs, and tortilla chips.



This past week (yesterday): Tomatoes, ground lamb, tarragon, mushrooms, potatoes. Spaghetti squash, watermelon, garlic, more companion rolls, pasta and coffee. This is actually the lightest week in a while, but it is denser than it appears. The mushrooms will be brown mushroom soup; the tomatoes are destined for salad (see below for why). The lamb I'll probably combine with last week's ground beef for burgers or meatloaf one night, with this week's potatoes and a few we have left over from two weeks ago. Spaghetti squash I'm pensive about...the garlic gets dumped in with mine drying in the downstairs kitchen closet/former bathroom. Pasta never goes to waste here, and watermelon? Duh. I'm eating our sad storebought seedless one right now (not the whole thing, but about a good 1/3. It's one of those ones smaller than a volleyball that fits in the fridge without panic).

And tomatoes? We had Fair Shares set some aside for us (they sometimes wind up with more of something than they can use, and last week it was tomatoes). Mike picked them up after the feis on Saturday, and by Saturday at midnight when I went to bed, they were freezer sauce. A lot of freezer sauce, with onions and garlic, celery and pepper, and of course basil, oregano, and parsley from the yard. It doesn't look like that many tomatoes there in the cooler, but it took up all the freezer containers that were piling up from LAST YEAR'S sauce. Now the drawer where those go can close again. On a related note, I am down to 8 drinking glasses now that we've canned again...only the "real" glasses are left.

The Boundless Ennui

I hate it when Mike travels. I love the money he makes (they pay for all his living expenses and travel, plus it's all commission work the whole time he's there--can't beat that with a stick). But I hate single-parenting. Especially, I realize, on the first week of school. With exhausted girls who refuse to sleep. And a van to take into the mechanic and pills to pick up at the vet and all the normal stuff that comes in an average week.

He gets home tomorrow in the morning. Goes straight to work, but at least I will know he's in town and will, some time, be coming home for dinner.

Tonight it hit me--I'm trying to switch my own sleep schedule, the kids are pushing every single button, the ants are back in the kitchen, and it was still 2 hours till bedtime. Boundless ennui. There was no overcoming it. There was no going around it.

So I took the kids to Ted Drewes. Yeah, the intestinal yuck I keep getting on and off probably has a lot to do with milk (agreement from doctor, hunch on my own, etc). So I got a mini. Ate mostly only the pineapple goo on top anyway. Maeve had strawberry and Sophia had, gross, a mint sundae. Mint. Which means the gooey mint sauce, like marshmallow or butterscotch, but bright radioactive green, coats the whole top of the sundae. Totally unappealing, but she likes it. We sat in the lovely evening and wasted, get this, a WHOLE HOUR going there, consuming frozen custard, and coming home.

Bath, whining, out of bath, whining, talking to my sister-in-law (she wasn't whining although they didn't have any electricity so I know I would have been), cleaning the room, whining, scratching itches till they bleed (Sophia), more whining, lamentations, story, prayers, good night.

Now I'm going upstairs to warp the loom.

What do Dreams Want?

Pregnancy dreams. Some of them I understand--forgetting to give birth (that's always a good one for me), giving birth to the wrong kid, leaving the newborn at the hospital because I can't be bothered. Just new forms of the standard anxiety dream for me. Like all those surrounding air travel. And I understand the weird food dreams, and even the horrible, deeper anxiety dreams involving Mike hiring someone to kill me, or my OB becoming a veterinarian and attacking me with dobermans. These make sense, even if they freak me out.

When I was pregnant with Maeve, I had a lot of dreams about abandoned industrial spaces. Like factories. And the ghost town surrounding Chernobyl. The building was always on fire and there were bodies buried in the basement. Mary's sister-in-law, a psychologist whose specialty always escapes me, made total sense of those. But they still bothered me a lot.

Now, there are no guns and no rusted factory equipment, but there are arguments. Last night, I argued with my neighbors about politics. I made one of them cry. As a rule, I don't argue politics, and I certainly don't argue anything long enough to make someone cry. Or, I'll be at a block party or some other gathering, and out of place people will start arguing with me. Crazy people, people I don't know, people I haven't talked to in years. My sisters will show up at my grandmother's house with me, and we will argue over who gets to inherit stupid things, like dish towels. My father, someone I might argue politics with, doesn't start in on that, but on things like gas mileage. Nobody in my subconscious mind agrees with me anymore.

I haven't gotten a handle on this one yet. I'm a firm believer in the idea that dreams want something. They are sometimes just random reshootings of the day's events, but recurrent themes are trying to tell me something. Something part of my brain has already figured out but can't explain yet. But just like those little floaters in your field of vision, when you try to focus to hard on them, they dart away to taunt you from a different angle.

For now, I'm just going to try to keep peace.

School Begins

Maeve put her shoes on the shoe shelf and slipped into the little blue crocs she wears in the classroom. Went straight into the new, beautifully rehabbed room and went straight to work.

Sophia was impatient. I handed off some old classroom books for the library to the kindergarten/first grade teacher and hurried into her new room, which is her old room from last year, but reorganized to seem vast and expansive. Friends were already there sitting in the circle. She put her lunch up, put on her inside shoes (gold crocs in this case), and went to sit right next to the new teacher in the circle.

What is it about Maeve that makes me know she'll have a great day and a great year, and what is it about Sophia that makes me worry every moment?

I went to the library. All. By. Myself. Now I am home. I'm not pushing it. In fact, I'm about to go lie down for an hour or so and try to be well. And read the Dave Barry guilty pleasure books I checked out of the library. Unless, of course, I fall immediately to sleep.

Sick Even Just One More Time

I was going to title this "Sick Again" and then I realized I've already used that title. This month.

Pregnancy is doing me in. I need to just become a vegan for the rest of it. I walk past raw eggs and get sick. I couldn't get out of bed this morning. Like, at all. Like, I was too weak to envision standing up long enough to take a shower.

And it's going to be another one of those weeks. I can feel it. Don't even have to feel it--I just have to look at the calendar. School starts tomorrow. I'm supposed to take photos of St. Monica's Church on Wednesday. The van needs to go in ASAP. The dog needs pills. The house, the yard, the garden...and someone integral to all this is leaving town. Within hours.

This is stupid. But, whatever. I need to go take that shower and go back to bed.

Irrepressible Maeve

"Mom, can I go on stage with that little girl?" she asks out loud while one of the under-6's dances her first jig, all alone. I of course do not let her. "But mom, I want to be at the feis, too."

She walked up to everyone at the feis with a small child in tow, holding up three fingers. The international symbol of "I'm three years old. Does that mean anything to you?" One dad asked her if she had any proof of that, like a driver's license? She looked at him narrowly.

At home, she tells me she's going to move out when she's 14. I tell her that's not going to happen. She thinks a moment and asks me how old I am. "Can I move out when I'm 33?" "Certainly." Thus ending that conflict.

We're making tomato sauce to freeze downstairs in the kitchen. Out of context, I ask Mike if he wants it smooth or chunky--smooth means running it through the blender at the end of cooking. Mike says, "smooth." Maeve, hearing this, throws herself on the floor and DEMANDS chunky. "I want chunky! Chunky! Can't I have chunky?" When Mike shrugs and says he really doesn't care, Maeve says, "What's chunky?"

She is continuing to insist that we moved into this house within her lifetime. She gives me the party line: "When I was two, we moved into this house." I explain, no, she was born here, that we've lived here ten years. "Well, when I was one we moved into this house." Finally I just have to tell her that I know best, really. This conversation is over.

And my favorite. Maeve never used bottles. Maybe one, one time when Gran watched her at Christmas break when Mike and I saw a movie. But she was breastfed and weaned to a cup, not a bottle (I was uninterested in weaning her TWICE). We went totally native that way for a number of reasons, mostly due to Sophia's birth story (most of my parenting decisions stem from that story). Sophia, who did use bottles for a whopping 3 weeks until she weaned onto the breast, likes to bring up to Maeve that no bottles ever happened for Maeve. Well, as enamored as Maeve is with the idea of breastfeeding, being a baby = bottle use in her head. So she repeatedly comes up to me in tears, telling me that Sophia told her she never used a bottle. "That's true," I sigh, knowing I'm in for it. A half hour later, after telling her all about breastfeeding and babies and so forth, she's smiling through her tears and ok again.

The third time this happened, I finally cornered Sophia in the kitchen. "This day is the last day, in fact, this is the very last moment, you will ever talk about baby bottles with Maeve. Never ever again."

Sophia's world is run by rules. She nodded at me. And it's been smooth sailing.

Wait till Maeve hears she never had a baby bed.

Saturday Continues

Renaissance Hotel by the Airport...Sophia's in two dances. Under 7 Jig and Under 7 Reel. We look up at the board and see that reel is first.

"Mom," she asks me, "what's the first step of the reel?"

Oh. Crap.

I wind up asking another mom from our school, whose older daughter says flatly, "Hop heel step." THEN I remember. Sophia practices in the hall. She does reel, but doesn't end it when it's over--she repeats step two because one of her fellow competitors (who is dancing her own school's steps) isn't finished. Ah well,I think. Good experience.

Sophia KNOWS the jig. She gets up and I think she does well, except that flipping through the booklet, I realize she's the only one in this competition, out of 4 girls in beginner class under 7, who is only in these two dances. The other three are also in slip jig and treble jig and one is in a team dance. So...they're going to win. Ah well, right? She'll place 4th and go home with two ribbons just like last time (4th out of 6 and 4th out of 7, I think it was...). No big thing. We weren't even going to go to this feis until we saw how small her group was.

We go down to the results room. They have the reel results up but not jig. Fourth Place. She gets a green ribbon and we go up to the cafe, which Maeve refers to as a "tiny starbucks" (side note: last time I was in the drive through lane at Starbucks, Maeve said she wanted to work there when she grew up and "cook coffee for mommies"). Apple danish, mini cinnamon roll, bagel, and a coffee for me (the pastries we split--I didn't eat all that, pregnant or not).

After Sophia finishes her bagel, we decide it's time to go check the results room. We go down there and I already see it as we walk in and see the big board. 522, her number, IS IN THIRD PLACE. Oh my, if I was ever going to be an annoying stage mom, it would have happened right then. Maybe it did. We went to the table and Sophia signed her initials in the book next to her place and dance. She actually got a little bronze medal! I'm so goofy I could smack myself! We had the dang thing engraved with her name, dance, place, and date. Dork! But she was really happy. And I was too. A little gold and green ribbon snapped on and it's sitting on the mantel downstairs next to her other ribbons. On the way home, I picked up some orange sweetheart roses. I mean, this is her last feis until February. And I expected not a thing to come of it.

And now, Sophia and Mike are heading out to pick up some extra tomatoes at the CSA. Maeve is asleep on the couch. And I'm going to go nap myself.

Saturday Begins

..early. Feis today. It's 6:50 and I'm thinking, dang, this is what Monday will feel like when school starts. Except I won't have to take out 4 dozen curling spikes and arrange a torture device headband on Sophia's head Monday morning.

I better get busy.

Four for Friday This time

Ok, LisaS, this is just about right for my brain this morning. So sleepy. Sleep schedule so out of whack.
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Four places I go to over and over: St. Pius V. Cairo, Illinois. Rock Eddy Bluff Farm. Target.

Four people who e-mail me (regularly): Sr. Mary. Mary W. The Other Mary. Mary Helen.

Four places I would rather be right now: Rock Eddy Bluff Farm. Arches National Park. Big Sur. Clyde.

Four TV shows/programs that I watch over and over: Law & Order (first 5 seasons only). Firefly (alas). Law & Order SVU (first few seasons only). M*A*S*H.

Four things I have for breakfast: Coffee (again! Whee!). Cereal. Leftovers. Waffles.

Four animals I like best: Norwegian Forest Cats. Barn Owls. Goldfinches. Luna Moths.

Four beaches I've been to: Quintana (Freeport TX--sticky gulf but home to shark eye moon snails). Galveston County Park (sticky gulf but home to some high school memories). Corpus Christi (mass on the beach on retreat). Andrew Molera State Beach (Big Sur, sand with big crashing rocks in the surf. Like nothing I'd ever seen).

Best of SCM: No, He See Me!

Just one more and then I HAVE TO go do something else with my hands. Like knit.
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Ok, more cutesy stuff.

Maeve and Sophia watch TV. But they don't watch network TV--we don't have cable and get really bad reception, including channel 9 (PBS). So they've never been exposed to any number of inane--umm, I mean educational--programs that PBS has to offer these days. Including Sesame Street, and I could devote an entire blog to the reasons why that show sucks now. Most posts would be entitled "ELMO".

For some reason, though, we have a small Cookie Monster beanie animal thingy. It's about 6 inches tall and has the requisite blue fur and big eyes on top of its head. We recently cleaned the girls' room so that Sophia could start sleeping on the top bunk and Maeve on the bottom bunk (which is working like a dream, dear readers). But in the process, I found this little Cookie Monster and tossed it on Maeve's bunk.

Two nights ago, she kept creeping out of her room well past the bedtime, a little anxious. We were trying to watch "Thank You For Smoking" and kept having to pause to have her go back to bed. Finally Mike came down laughing. He'd put the Cookie Monster on her pillow next to her and she'd freaked out.

"No onna my bed! No onna my bed! Onna Seuss bed." (Seuss would be her name for Sophia)

So Mike picked it up and put it on Sophia's bed, so that it was peeking through the mesh bedrail.

"No! He see me!" she yelled.

He hid it away.

I'm hoping to use this to terrorize her into good behavior. Wait, did I just write that? Just kidding.

Best of SCM: Three Days Deep

Since I'm not thinking of anything new or interesting lately, I thought I'd shamelessly repost a few that I like from the past two years. This one is from the blackout in July '06.
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I’m not very heat-tolerant. I’m like one of those little Christmas trees in a pot from the Carolinas—can’t get too cold, can’t get too hot, or else it will not make it. I don’t think I was heat-tolerant when I lived in Houston, either, the Land of Air Conditioning. Marguerite Hall, where I dormed in college at SLU, had no A/C back then, and it took me awhile. Of course, in St. Louis, the big heat breaks the first week after Labor Day, pretty much without fail. So it wasn’t so long.

The first night of the power outage, I did ok. I was foolish and stayed up late reading a book by Fr. Dominic, the Benedictine priest who had the show on public television about bread. Yum. The second night, I gave in and stayed at Mary’s house. The third night, we were ready to go back to Mary’s, when the power came back on for us. The weather also broke that day and we probably would have been fine.

I had Mike go and stay at my parents’ house Friday and Saturday nights—they were without power still, and we were reaching the end of civil society, which I mark as 3 days. The first day is an adventure, the second is busy adjusting and getting tasks done, the third starts to make you lose sense of day and time. By the fourth, you’re in a different place.

I read—don’t ask me where—about this spiritual & nature guide who would take stockbrokers and lawyers and other stereotypical tied-to-urban-life sorts out into the wilderness for 1 and 2 week excursions. The first 3 mornings after sleeping outside without much more than a bedroll, they would talk about what they’d dreamed of the night before—phones ringing, the bus, making coffee, the office. Then the 4th morning, they would consistently report dreams about owls, wolves, walking under the pine trees, campfires. This guide theorized that our modern society is only 3 days deep in our psyches. I read this about a year ago and thought, oh, that’s interesting, and thought nothing else about it.

Then I was at my in-laws last August, watching CNN coverage of New Orleans as Hurricane Katrina arrived. At first, it had that voyeuristic thrill, like driving past a car wreck and looking-but not looking-but glancing. But then it just made me sick. It was about the third day after the levees broke that the reporters lost any sense of detachment; riots for water in the street broke out; the superdome imploded. I remember staring at the TV, and Mike, sitting next to me, said, “remember what you said? Society is only 3 days deep.”

On Thursday night, “celebrating” Trisha’s birthday, I mentioned this theory to our neighbors, amidst other concerns about looters and hooligans. Brent stared at me unblinking and said, “Well, that’s because 3 days is about how long hope lasts.”

That’s been percolating in my brain a few days. As it turns out, our looters here in St. Louis are lazy or heat-intolerant. Nobody bothered us, although a couple of sketchy characters walked by, and my friend Ann got asked more than her fair share of nosy questions about her electric service by other sketchy people. The quiet darkness was unnerving, and I know a couple of instances of break-ins nearby. But overall, probably because we could still go to the bank and grocery store and work and the movies, we did just fine. Hope didn’t have to hold out for us because we really didn’t need to rely on it so much.

But hope lasts three days, Brent said. It made me consider something. Three days of waiting, seeing if what is promised is going to happen. Three days of sitting, holed up in the darkness, more than a little afraid. You’re not even talking anymore because there’s nothing left to say. Three days alone with your thoughts, and then early one morning, the women come in, breathless, telling you a tale you cannot believe. A few of you walk to see, but Peter, his hope is still there, what if it’s true? What if this is what he meant? And he runs.

Liturgical Year Turns Around

I went to the worship commission meeting tonight. It isn't my favorite, I must admit. I've been at ones that required large amounts of alcohol afterward. But a couple of key players that make me crazy weren't there (aren't there anymore), and the one who is left, well, I believe makes many people crazy. So I let it slide.

I'm still amazed I'm invited to worship commission meetings. I mean, I'm just this girl. Really. I'm bad at modesty most times (I really like my banners, for instance) but this one I don't understand. I don't give a lot of opinions while I'm there, though, and nothing we talked about tonight was super-controversial. So no big thing. It was actually a good baseline to start from. If most worship meetings were like this, I'd probably go more often. I say this in full knowledge that a few of the attendees read this blog.

Towards the end of the meeting, we were talking Advent. I think Sr. Mary pointed out that I'm pregnant (which was fine, I was trying to figure out how to, in light of Christmas planning) and we talked about evening prayer. Think we're going to do some this Advent, since it's unlikely we'll have a concert this year (our choir director is undergoing chemotherapy). Before this, November was lightly hashed out, with the Mass of Remembrance and Thanksgiving and the Harvest of Justice. January was on the agenda, an ecumenical prayer service.

More than the breezy cool nights, more than school starting Monday (whee!), more even than this pregnancy ticking down the weeks, suddenly it felt like I'd been asleep all summer and oh my, time to get started again. Time to gear up for fall, for Advent, for Christmas, for winter, Epiphany, Lent. My mental clock won't get all the way to Lent until Christmas is here, but suddenly it felt like I was at the top of the roller coaster hill. Or maybe like standing on the beach in the sand and moving my toes and sinking further in. Whatever the analogy, who knows where the time goes.

Found my calendar, by the way. The planbook, not the liturgical calendar. And I only missed one thing in the three weeks. Not bad. Poor Dara will have to get her teeth cleaned later. I guess in April or May, because, frankly, I'm booked.

What I Read On My Summer Vacation

Thanks, Indigo.

Made in American by Bill Bryson
Becoming Fully Human by Joan Chittister, OSB
You Remind Me of Me by Dan Chaon
Learning to Weave by Deborah Chandler
Redwall by Brian Jacques
Dave Barry is From Mars and Venus by Dave Barry
Illustrated Book of Trees by William Carey Grimm

Yup, it's like me in a nutshell.

Biking Again

We went down to the River des Peres trail this afternoon after a 3 week break from biking--busy, Mike out of town, I was sick, etc. It was good to get back on the bikes, although I can tell it's been a while and things have gotten away from me (17 weeks away from me in fact). We've been home a half hour and I'm still on this mild endorphin high...good to bike...feels almost like fall...feeling like I'm successful at the things I do...ah.

Every time we set out on a ride, whether it's the 6 mile loop with the hill from hell in Forest Park or the gentle imperceptible slope of Grant's Trail for a full afternoon, I think, my goodness, why am I getting on this thing again? We bike with the girls behind us. Mike's bike gets a contraption that makes it into a tandem, with Sophia half-heartedly pedaling behind him, but spending most of her time seeing if she can ride with no-hands. So he gets some balance problems with her wiggling, but it doesn't add too much drag. Mine, though, is a bike trailer, which doesn't make me have to concentrate to stay upright like Mike's, but does add 30 pounds of Maeve plus 30 pounds of trailer dragging behind me. So every time we lock up the van and start down a path I think, this is stupid. I should be home knitting.

But of course, 3/4 the way through, I can't even do the math to remember how much extra weight is back there, some stupid Southern Rock song about trains to Georgia is stuck in my head, and my brain is turned off. It's a present moment kind of feeling--there is no past or future, only this hill.

Attic Sprites

Sophia came home this afternoon with two neighbor girls. They all went up to play in the attic, which always makes me worry because the girls on this street, mine included, are very bad about cleaning up at each others' houses. But I went up to check on them a few hours later, and they were cleaning the attic.

CLEANING THE ATTIC.

One of them, an older sister perennially in charge, was directing traffic. The other, a middle child, was bribing Maeve with stickers to help them. Sophia was probably doing the least, although she was creating elaborate rules for the stickers, essentially turning them into Eagle Stamps ("once Maeve collects 10, she can turn them in for a prize! Or save them for a bigger prize!").

I left them at it, and later when it was about time for the two to go on home so we could go to Target, they had broom-swept the place, too. The bottoms of their feet were filthy (it's still bare wood floors up there, soaked up with coal dust--the girls are supposed to stay on the area rugs, but that's no fun when you have a broom). I gave them leftover pizza to reward their efforts. I think I'm going to velvet-rope off the whole place. It hasn't been this clean since I moved the girls' stuff up there.

Piano Change

Sophia's been taking piano for 2 years. Our teacher was Sanja, from Sarajevo, not Bosnian, she made it clear early on. She was wonderful. We loved Sanja. She came to our house. She and I would talk about child development and global politics and, obviously, Sophia. Sophia had her first recital in May. I figured we'd be with Sanja until she and her molecular biologist husband moved to the next university.

But she had Sophia on her homeschool schedule. The first year, we were about 80% homeschooling, so she could come anytime. Last year, Sophia came home early on Wednesdays and had piano at 2:00 before everyone else was out of school for the day.

But this year, school gets out at 3:30. Sanja and I looked at her schedule. She starts MWThF at 3:00 and goes until at least 7:00 each evening. Later on Wednesday, even. On Tuesdays, she starts in the morning and goes until late evening (that's her adult and homeschooler day).

Her only open time was 7:10 on Friday evening. Nobody wanted that. I imagined what Sophia would be like by that time. It wasn't going to happen.

So I went back to trusty Craigslist and found someone new. She's meeting Sophia right now. I think it'll be just fine. It's almost identical, actually--same price, same book, same location. And maybe a new teacher will shake things up for Sophia. She was getting a little headstrong with Sanja. Driving everyone crazy. So I'm hopeful.

And now...postponement

In 2004, Bevin's friend Jesse was killed in Columbia. May, 2005, Steven Rios was convicted of the crime. I sat in that trial, each day worse than the one before. Lots of twists and turns in the lives of those two men that led one of them to choke the other into unconsciousness, lay him on the ground and slit his throat. The tragic flaws in personality and circumstance so seamlessly put together to produce this tragedy. I have written about this before, especially about a year ago when Rios got a chance at a second trial.

That trial was supposed to start this coming Monday. It would have been impossible for Bevin or me to attend--I'm not even a player here, just the sister of a friend kind of role. The girls she lived with don't live there anymore. Nobody to support, nobody to report to. But I've seen it this far. It was hard to think I wouldn't be there to see it happen again.

It's been postponed at the last moment, to December.

I have complete faith in Morley Swingle and his ability to woo a jury to his side, to present the evidence, to convince. Rios has a new set of lawyers, one of them who reads the news on TV down in Baton Rouge. Smooth, probably. His last lawyer was so unremarkable and unlikable, it seemed to be a slam dunk. She just wasn't that good.

I need to stop the hand-wringing on the sidelines and let justice find its way again this time.


Our Lady of Guadalupe, Pray For Us

Another Quick Little Post

Things I like today:
*The Black Crowes: Listening on seeqpod right now. Brings me back to college for just a minute. Don't you think I want to/Don't you think I would

*Bon Ami: my sink is shiny. Hasn't scratched yet.

*More With Less: Just sat and read it waiting for dinner to cook. It's the only cookbook that makes me emotional. The full belly says a ripe guava has worms/The empty belly says let me see.

And then, alone this evening, everyone else in bed, I'm indulging in that bad habit of nostalgia I'm prone to. Ever since I completed the 365 songs project, I've been pretty nostalgia-free. Kinda purged all that. But put on the right music in the right quiet, and there I am again.

Modern westerners think we face the future--we are striding forwards always, leaving our pasts behind us. Ancient Greeks thought we were always facing backwards, studying the past. The future is behind us, creeping up and surprising us.

Two Quotes from the Week

"I want to take gymnastics," Sophia tells me Sunday night, just like every little 7 year old told her mother Sunday night.

"There are a lot of olympic sports," I tried to dissuade her. We watched diving and swimming and, earlier, we'd seen three American women take the medals in sabre. Sophia looked unconvinced.

"I don't want to BE in the olympics, I just want to be able to do everything they do." How true.

(By Tuesday night, she was less enamored with gymnastics and more interested in swimming, which is good, since swimming is a given in my house).

At Target:
"When Baby Loki is born [that's the name Maeve's given the new one], he'll ride in the cart. I'll have to walk."

"That's right," I tell her, glad to hear it. "Are you ready to do that?"

"When I'm eighteen."

Sick Again

Food-borne illness? Just bad luck? You decide.

I had food-borne illness at least 3 times when I was pregnant with Maeve. I don't know why I'm more susceptible to them when I'm pregnant. But here I am again. It wasn't eggs this time. Who knows.

Zucchini Recipe

For those with too much zucchini and tired of primavera and quickbread:

Auntie Gracemarie's Zucchini Appetizer

3 cups thinly sliced zucchini
1 cup Bisquick
1/3 cup oil
4 eggs
Dash garlic powder (Bridgett note: or a clove, perhaps? That's my plan tomorrow)
Generous dash black pepper
½ teaspoon oregano
1 tablespoon minced onion (or onion flakes)
1 cup parmesan cheese

Mix all with beater

Pour into greased 13x 9 pan.

Bake for 30 minutes or until golden.

Serve hot or cold.

------
I remember this dish from my late childhood when I was old enough to attend women's functions like showers. I'm making it tomorrow for dinner. Seriously. This and the leftover magic spaghetti and meatballs Mike made Saturday night while I quilted.

Jam

My neighbor Mary grows blackberries. She had enough for jam. She invited me and my canning supplies over today to make jam. We did. We added some blueberries to stretch the blackberries--not quite the full 5 cups of berries that we needed. It is so much easier to can when two adults work together. Her kitchen is better set up for it, too--the stove and sink on the same wall separated by a counter. Mine is one of those "work triangles" that creates a space both too big to be comfortable workspace and too small to do anything else with (like eat in).

It's good jam. We each had a spoonful from the leftover 1/4 cup or so. Every jar snapped down and down to the basement pantry it goes to await the store-bought stuff to disappear (which, in my household, happens fast).

I think I'll have enough hot peppers for jelly this year, too. I don't think my tomatoes are going to pan out for nothin' though. Basil, of course, and the garlic. I'll have pesto pasta this winter instead of marinara. Life's tough.

Think I'm going to try pumpkins, too. I haven't been to the grocery store in...over a week...we're out of regular fruit...there's no one to barter with for nectarines. But we do have zucchini at least.

Sock Monkey Quilt

Project Complete

No picture, though. Elizabeth?

It's a baby quilt that the neighbor girls (meaning adult women) pitched in with. It's our second quilt as a "bee." This time, instead of scrappy sampler, it was again a sampler, but done completely in sock monkey fabrics! It is beautiful, if I do say so myself.

I've finished part II of Ordinary Time banner as well--hung it in church Friday afternoon. It looks more complete now that there's more to it (duh!). The third part will go up in mid-October. I'll take pictures the next time I'm up there. Sr. Mary has wisely and thankfully handed plant care over to a FLORIST in our parish. I am so relieved. I'll stick to fabric.

So suddenly, I'm done with the panic quilting. I worked on both projects off and on all week--mostly off, feeling guilty about that. Now they're out of my house. But I do have something I should work on. Sophia has a beautiful blue and purple batik sampler quilt on her bed; Maeve has a mostly purple, with some blue and orange, batik sampler quilt TOP folded on the bench in the dining room. I think it's time to get it quilted and on her bed before birthday. And then there's the strawberry shortcake Chinese Coin quilt done in flannels...and the dark blue four-point stars my 7th graders made in 2001...and...I have plenty to do.

Procrastination Queen

I've got a project I need to finish by tomorrow.

It is 1:15 in the morning and my stomach hurts because I'm tired.

I'm 9/10 the way finished. I want to go to bed.

This would be stupid.

So instead of finishing, I'm writing this.

Ok, I'll go finish.

A little something in the air

I called my mom this evening before the girls went to bed. So, in order to be protected from the breathing down my neck let me talk to her who is it can I talk, I stepped outside on the front porch. I've been doing this for years. Sitting on the top step of my worn out wooden porch, staring at the neighbors' houses, listening to one voice or another talk to me on the phone. Arguments, laughter, important conversations, and a lot of preaching to the choir.

In the wintertime, I hide in my bedroom to talk. But if it's not actively freezing, I'm on the porch. I watch neighbors get home, visitors leave. People go the wrong way. And I talk.

Tonight, the promise of fall was there with me. It may be only the end of the beginning of August, but there was a whisper that someday soon, it will be 65 degrees at noon and the air will be like a cool drink of water. It didn't taste like a beer when I breathed in (Anheuser Busch just a short bike ride east), the humidity level only about 50%. A breeze, and, lo, could that be one of the few stars we get to see in the city?

I went in and turned the air conditioning all the way off--our brick house holds heat in its walls and it takes it a while to realize it's cooled down. Opened the open-able windows, which we have more of every year, and turned on the box fans.

It's like something I don't quite remember. Something I can't quite look at in my head. I remember this, right, sleeping to the sound of the box fans and window fans on the cool summer nights? I don't know for sure. So much amalgamation of memory and childhood and place. Is it a story my parents tell, my Aunt Sarah told, my husband tells, or is it mine as well? It feels like mine. Clean percale, soft pillows, a light blanket, whirr whirr whirr. A glow in the dark holy family statue on my dresser; my brother, or my sister, sleeping nearby.

September coming soon, the song by REM goes. Sooner than I want, sooner than I plan. But not soon enough.

Any ideas?

My neighbor Elizabeth blogs at From Bankrupt to Baby. Here is her latest post, which describes her dilemma. Her daughter has been denied health insurance because she is adopted and has pre-existing medical conditions. None of which are life-threatening. And not just in the areas of the conditions (hearing loss, cleft palate). Across the board denial.

When are we as Americans going to wake up to the realization that private insurance for health care, tied to our jobs, is holding us back as a nation? How many would-be entrepreneurs don't try because they fear health care costs? How many corporations (GM, for instance) are in dire straits due to health insurance premiums? Why are we so stubborn? It's not even that health insurance is that good anymore--the plan I have through Mike's work is abysmally bad. Ever since I got married 12 years ago, each insurance plan change through my work or his has made it worse and worse for us. I love it when they deny things like prenatal care and then I get a brochure from them suggesting which prenatal tests are important. They aren't going to pay for a CF screen or the quadruple scan, but they want me to know how important they are.

Tangent.

Go visit Elizabeth and look and the beautiful little girl they've brought home to a better life. If you have ideas about what she might do next, please share.

Photo Friday: Rough

Tufas at Mono Lake, California.

What to Expect When You Expect Me

McSwain just wrote a little meme...and I love little memes because they get me thinking and writing about something besides crabby kids and the end of summer. It is Four Things You Should Know About Me Before You Invite Me Over To Your House:

1. I'm bad at knowing when to leave. My personality is a bit sticky. If conversation is good and the kids aren't crawling all over me, I will linger. Kick me out. I do not get offended by this because I know I am deficient at this art of leaving.

2. Unless it is the middle of winter and I have complicated shoes on, I will probably automatically take my shoes off. If it's the middle of winter and it's slushy, I obviously will as well.

3. I will look at your bookshelves. I may silently make judgments about you without meaning anything by it. Books are important to me. If you have no books...then I'll look at your DVD collection. If you have no movies...then I'll look at your photos. If...well, then we probably don't have enough in common to be sitting in each other's living rooms anyhow.

4. If I compliment something about your home, I really really mean it. If I don't, it doesn't mean I don't like it. It just means that I am bad at small talk. If you live in an old house like mine, I will attempt to commiserate, which may or may not go over well. It usually does so it's something I use a lot. If you've done rehab, give me all the details. All the gory details.

Food Cost Cutting

I am no frugal maven. I do some things by instinct and others are learned--but some things I still think are not worth my time (washing aluminum foil, for instance, which my grandmother does religiously). I don't use my dryer lint for any useful purpose. But I do use a clothesline and cloth diapers and a zillion other little things to try to live more cheaply. Lisa just wrote a nice little entry about cost-cutting considering that food costs are, for real, going up. I almost left her a comment that was 6 paragraphs long and then I realized that would be annoying, so I decided to post instead.

Some things are just obvious. Don't buy food on a whim. Don't grocery shop when you're hungry. Don't shop without a list, because otherwise you will always forget the baking soda and keep having to go back (and buy other things while you're there). Don't buy things you will only use once--really truly consider whether you need to make the recipe that calls for capers. Don't buy things your family hates just because they are on sale. And so on.

Buy in bulk. Space is not at a premium at my house, so I do buy the big packs of toilet paper and multiple cans of whatever when it's on sale. I don't, however, spend the gas money to go far away to the big bulk stores. My time counts for something, too.

Learn sales/prices. If Schnucks always has canned tuna on sale every other week, there's no reason to stock up. But a wild sale on frozen turkey breasts or something like that, well, it only makes sense to stock up, again. I also have, in the past, kept a price book. When gas was cheap and it made sense to go to 5 or 6 stores (Trader Joes, Schnucks, Aldis, Dierbergs, Shop N Save), knowing by a flip of a page what the price of peanut butter is all the time at Shop N Save will tell me if the sale price at Schnucks really is a good deal. Sometimes little places, like Viviano's on the hill, have interesting things to offer (like bulk pasta really cheap).

Don't ignore Target. Sometimes I find things at Target way lower than other normal prices. My sister stores certain things in her head this way. She knows she buys frozen soy stuff at Target because it is always cheaper.

Join a CSA. Lisa talked about this, and how at first, it doesn't seem like a deal, but it really has been for us, now that it's summer. Looking at Wednesday's bounty and trying to figure out what to do with it all has made me resilient, reliant on in-season produce, and spend less at the grocery store. I went three weeks in July without going to the store, except one run in for bread and nectarines.

Eat beans. Dry beans are stunningly cheap, and a wonderful protein source. We try to eat them every week. It does take some planning. Gosh. You put some dried beans in the bottom of the crock pot and fill it with water in the evening. In the morning, you turn it on and walk away. It takes some trial and error, of course. But they work well the next day and the day after that. I do go through a lot of cumin...

Most of these Lisa mentioned, but one seemed to be missing--never say no to free produce. Really. Even if you are so tired of zucchini you could vomit. Because you can shred and freeze it for wintertime. If you have a big freezer, there's no reason to say no to any produce that comes your way. Think a pumpkin sounds like a stupid thing to try to eat? Stretch your horizons. Heck, for one August, we ate beets every friggin week.

We spend more on food than perhaps we could--but I do have some standards regarding meat, dairy, and some produce in regards to hormones and pesticides and whatnot. I could do it cheaper, but not smarter, in my opinion. I am happy to spend more for good milk or cheese and make up savings somewhere else where I'm not so concerned.

So I guess I'd better head down to the kitchen and shred the heck out of some zucchini and try to figure out how to use a cabbage bigger than my head.

I love NOAA warnings

I know, it's not a laughing matter. Big storms are scary. But sometimes, even when I'm waiting for the snowstorm to knock out my electricity for a week, warnings like DO NOT BURN CHARCOAL INDOORS FOR COOKING OR TO KEEP WARM just make me smile. You shouldn't burn charcoal indoors. But is it NOAA's job to tell us that? And if I'm burning charcoal indoors for light, is that ok, as long as I'm not warm or eating anything?

I was reading up on Eduoard's impending arrival where my brother and family live, and caught this line of the current warning. After reassurances that evacuations are not being called for, even in Galveston, the next line is

ABANDONED VEHICLES ON HARRIS COUNTY TOLL ROADS WILL BE TOWED.

So, abandoned vehicles elsewhere are just fine. My brother abandoned his car during the last downpouring tropical storm several years ago, but thankfully, it was on highway 59 and he did not get towed away. Can you imagine being the tow truck operator? To hell with that, it's dumping 10 inches of rain and you want me out there towing cars?

I haven't been collecting them long, but here's a few others I like:

CONDITIONS WILL DETERIORATE RAPIDLY...SO SLOW DOWN AND ALLOW EXTRA
TIME WHEN TRAVELING. PRACTICE WINTER SAFETY RULES...KEEP AN EXTRA
FLASHLIGHT...FOOD...AND WATER IN YOUR CAR IN CASE OF AN EMERGENCY.

It's the...ellipses...that are my...favorite. Like Forecaster Matthews was thinking, hmm, what else should they have in their cars? Food...umm...

THE SEVERE WEATHER WILL BE OCCURRING AT NIGHT WHEN MANY PEOPLE WILL BE ASLEEP.

Except for my kids. And the neighbors' kids. And the dog. And me with my kids. Might as well have an impromptu block party, frankly.

LIGHTNING IS ONE OF NATURES NUMBER ONE KILLERS. REMEMBER...IF YOU CAN HEAR THUNDER...YOU ARE CLOSE ENOUGH TO BE STRUCK BY LIGHTNING.

Nuff said.

Hot

Yeah, here I am complaining about the weather. At least we don't have a tropical storm like my brother and his family are expecting down north of Houston. They've already lost electricity as of 7 this evening. Of course, things are deregulated and nuts down there.

Anyway, it was really hot today. And tomorrow, which, according to prophecy, is the night of the block party (National Night Out). Always the hottest day of the year, it seems. Even the year I was pregnant with Maeve, which was a beautifully mild summer, my ankles swelled that night. I was 7 months pregnant that time; I think I'm about as big as I was then, and I'm a little less than 4 months...ok, not true. But it feels that way today.

So we went to the Magic House this morning. It was on our summer list and I failed to get it done the week my niece was here. We went today, with ten thousand other parents who thought, "the zoo is hot...the Magic House is air conditioned..." I dislike the Magic House. I don't hate it, like I hate American cheese or something like that. I just don't like having to go there. Mostly because it is an ADHD nightmare. Kids of all ages, totally overwhelmed by too many choices, running around at random while their parents hold the camcorders and say, "Hannah, play with the sand some more!" I've got two little Atrium/Montessori/Charlotte Mason girls, and this is not that way. There is no time to really explore something because the information is incomplete, or some kid named Taylor is pushing you out of the way. Maeve stayed a long time at the sand table, pouring the same funnel full of sand out onto one of the water wheel gadgets. Kids with t-shirts that read, "my parents are exhausted" kept taking the gadget away. But Maeve, as you might figure, held her own.

The other thing I dislike is the two separate areas, which makes sense, which is why, again, I don't hate the Magic House. But there's the area that caters, sort of, to Maeve, and then the rest, which Sophia is ready for. We did both. I left there happy I'd used the free tickets from the reading club and even happier that I was scratching it off my list.

Went to lunch with Mike, and then to the book store to pick up a copy of my book club's latest (Made in America, which is a fabulous history of American English that yes, you may borrow in turn). By the time I got home, I thought I would never cool down. I put a sheet down on the couch and lay in front of the air conditioner vent while my kids made me crazy. I couldn't focus, I couldn't think. I tried to start reading the book and failed. It took a long time to cool down. And, like I said, I'm only in the 4th month of this pregnancy. I kept thinking, I'm too old for this. Or maybe better put, I'm too spoiled for this. Then later I read in the new book about the summer James Garfield was shot, and how he took months to die, lying in the summer heat in the White House. The navy was brought in with fans of some kind and ice water and terry cloth filters and produced the first working air conditioner system (not feasible for mass production, since they went through zillions of pounds of ice in two months). Got the temperature down to 81 in the room where he would eventually die. Eighty One. I'm looking at the thermostat at 78 thinking, I wonder if I can get it down to 76, just for a little while...75?

It's so hot the computer keeps shutting itself down in self-protection. I'd better go ahead and get that done before it tries again.

Stay cool.

Photo Friday: Beauty

Details of our pieta statue, St. Pius V Catholic Church.