The Clothes May Make the Man...

But it's shoes for this girl.

For my birthday, I bought myself the tallest pair of heels I've ever owned, in black leather, almost a boot instead of the typical heel that cuts right at the toes (which I hate, and which I've realized is the reason I hate heels). And I got myself a pair of somethings by Born, these plain black leather clog-like shoes but with a back to them. A big chunky heel. I've been wearing them constantly through this weather we've been having and they've given me something I needed.

In high school, I was a grunge girl and wore combat boots. In college it was Converse All Stars. And then I grew up and got married and got a job and wore sensible shoes and cheap shoes, alternately, until Maeve was born. Target specials and Ecco Shakers (oh how I miss those shoes, Ecco).

After Maeve was born, I developed plantar fasciitis and that was the end of cheap shoes for Bridgett. I got fitted for orthotics (talk about making you feel old!) and bought stock in Birkenstocks. My Birkenstocks changed my life. I was able to walk to the bathroom in the middle of the night without holding onto the wall. I didn't hurt anymore. It was amazing. I wore them non-stop, except in the winter when I put on walking shoes with orthotics. I wore no heels, no fun shoes, no flip-flops, nothing. Birks and orthotics.

And there's something about this that is good--it helped my feet, it took care of a degenerative condition that sometimes results in surgery. But there's something about it that was just depressing. But they did the job and allowed me to sometimes wear heels or something else for a few hours without pain (as long as I slipped them back on when I got home). And then last fall Sophia went shoe shopping with me and burst into tears when my foot didn't fit into the dark green suede chunky heels she had her heart set on (I took off the thick cotton sock, duh, and they slid right on and I bought them). Sophia would give her eye teeth for me to be more, as she puts it, bonita. She will never live that comment down--and she said it to me 3 years ago.

So last week with birthday money burning a hole in my pocket, I bought these new shoes. They make me two inches taller. They're thick-soled and easy to walk in. Even run in short bursts to keep Maeve from walking out into the street. And it's changed something about me. I am standing up straighter and walking more confidently. They don't hurt my feet, even without orthotics...and I'm finding that in the mornings, it doesn't hurt to walk down the steps like it has for 6 months (barefoot I mean, after a day of walking in those). They're magical, and not because of that. Because for some reason, I'm doing something with my hair most days. I'm wearing my wedding ring. I'm wearing jeans that fit instead of sag. I'm rejecting sweatshirts when I put them on thinking "I'll just wear this today" and finding something that doesn't make me look 40 pounds heavier than I am instead.

It's weird what these shoes have done. Maybe it's shoes + vitamin D + thyroid medication, but my guest room is clean, halloween costumes are made, the living room is photo-ready, I picked out two-handed "Silent Night" on the piano from memory this evening, I mean, it's like that song about the rooster: we got our eggs back, just like we used to, ever since that rooster came into our yard. Suddenly, I'm back. I'm on top of it and I look like I'm 5'9" and I'm getting the job done.

100 Species: 31-40

What is this? Here is the first post: 100 Species. Today, mostly weeds, and a few garden plants:

31. Tomatoes: I planted a random assortment this year. In better years, I grow black tomatoes because they are smoky.

32. Jalapeno peppers

33. dandelion: I like dandelions.

34. plantain--not the banana-like fruit. The yard weed with broad leaves and the weird cone-shaped flowers.

35. Indian strawberry (aka "wild" strawberry): invasive foreign weed that tries to take over my lawn every year. It is Indian, like, from India. It has berries which have no taste, but they are not poisonous. Pesky little plant (especially considering that I wasn't too great at growing the real strawberries...

36. Wild violet: when I tell people I'm fighting wild violets, they often give me an "aww" look. "I wish I had violets in my yard!" They'll say. But they don't know what they're talking about...

37. basil

38. parsley: I plant the flat leaf variety. The second year (it's biennial, I believe) it is always way too strong.

39. Virginia Creeper: often confused with poison ivy, this has five-leaflet cluster leaves (but young shoots sometimes have three), climbs vigorously up any surface, and nearly took down my back porch from the inside out. It can grow in the dark.

40. morning glories. Once upon a time someone planted morning glories and the seeds got into my compost and now I fight them all the time. At least, like the violets, they have flowers.

That was a quick easy dash off. Next time, I'll do some lesser known weeds and some trees from Tower Grove Park.

100 Species: 21-30

What is this? This is a listing of 100 species of plants within walking distance of my home that I can identify. Here is the original post.

21. Gingko biloba: the maidenhair tree. This tree has no living relatives. It is the only tree with veins that all start at the stem and move up through the leaf like a fan--all other leaves are either like maples, spreading like a hand, or like an oak, coming off a center vein like fish bones. It has stinky berries, but not every tree has them. They turn a uniform yellow in the fall. I may yet fall to temptation and plant one when I take down the silver maple, but I'll probably go for a river birch instead.

22. Acer saccharum: Sugar Maple.

23. Acer rubrum: Red Maple. I am intensely interested in oaks, but maples are probably a close second. This on is indeed flame orange red in fall. It's another street tree which may prove to be its downfall, since they have wide spreading roots. But it is hardier against harsh conditions than the silver, and definitely prettier.

24. Holly: I don't know what kind of holly my neighbor has in his front yard. But that's what it is. Not a big fan--I wouldn't plant one myself, although I think I remember they are bird friendly. Still.

25. Vinca: aka periwinkle. This is my favorite ground cover because it doesn't climb. It is a ground cover, only. And the little purple flowers are nice.

26. Liriope muscari: "Monkey Grass" as Grandma Penny calls it. All of my liriope is from her stash.

27. Stella D'Oro Daylily

28. Peony: mine is a Sarah Bernhardt, which is part of the reason why I planted it.

29. Sempervivum ("live forever") Various little succulent plants around my garden. I have Autumn Joy pink ones and little yellow flowered ones that my grandmother calls hen and chicks but the noble internet disagrees.

30. Hosta. Hosta, hosta, hosta.

Meat Hand (For Kate)

The Meatloaf Hand on the site "Not Martha." Not Martha, indeed.

Ten on Tuesday: 10 Ways I Waste Time Online

Like that will be hard.

1. I can has cheeseburger/lolcats. I used to waste a lot of time there catching up on the old ones but now it's just every few days for a few minutes.

2. Cakewrecks. Ditto that.

3. Research about Sunday's readings when I have to do children's liturgy of the word. Seriously.

4. Learning way way too much about ___________ (pumpkin carving, saltwater fish, dyslexia, Robert Earl Keen, the TV show "Soap", native Missouri trees, and so forth)

5. watching stuff on hulu or netflix

6. Reading blogs of folks I don't know "in real life" but now know better (at least know their personae better) than I know many people I do know in real life.

7. Looking up words like "persona: plural?" on google. Some of my latest define: searches include anagnorisis, bogan, inordinate, maird, in media res, petard, sandwich board---all words that I thought I knew but really, I just needed to be sure before I used them too much more.

8. Planning our next vacation

9. Reading tabs that Mike leaves up for me. Recently, a meatloaf shaped like a human hand. Sometimes they are really cool links--like color photographs from turn of the century Russia, or a cartoon from xkcd. Other times, well, they are meatloafs shaped like human hands.

10. Finding a house for my sister!!

Fishy Fishy

We have a fish tank. It's a 55 gallon monstrosity. Once upon a time, we had a variety of fun little community fish in there, fresh water, a couple of plants, even. The kids liked it, people watched them, the cats were intrigued.

At some point we wound up with some female guppies to match our male "fancy" guppies. Then, within 6 months or so, all we had in the tank were generations and generations of guppies. Oh, there were a few ghost shrimp at the bottom, and one molly that refused to give up, but the rest of the tank was guppyland. Oh, and a huge nasty population of those slimy brown snails. Yummy.

I hated the fish tank at that point.

And I realized over time that I was really the only one doing much for the fish. Mike would turn on or off the light, but we didn't really engage with it/them anymore.

So I let them die. I stopped feeding them regularly. I would forget to turn the light on. I didn't like the fish and I didn't care. Nobody else took up the cause.

I checked the fish tank this morning. Two guppies left. I sucked them up with the water vacuum along with all the water. Dumped the rocks in the path of the fenced in garden. Cleaned out the tank, scrubbed down the sides. Threw out all the stuff from the insides.

Now it's back in its place, empty and waiting. Soon.

Halloween Part One

Last night we were graciously invited by Ann to attend her halloween party in her neighborhood--they don't celebrate halloween on the date, but on the Saturday before. The whole neighborhood. On Halloween proper, they all roll up the sidewalks and take away the oxygen or something along those line. But if you know about the event, your kids go and get themselves some good candy.

Maeve went as Water Woman, a superheroine of her own invention. Sophia was a ranger in the Lord of the Rings style (she is highly enamored with the idea of rangers, and Aragorn in particular. Just like her ma the first time she read the books). We had dinner and treats at Ann's house and then the dads and the kids (oh, Leo was dressed in this cute gold Chinese baby outfit--not quite a costume, but at least something festive) headed out to trick-or-treat.

For those not from the St. Louis area (and I think there are some other pockets of this around the country), we trick-or-treat door to door at dusk, until about 8:30 or 9 (that's when my street shuts down, at least), and most houses require a song, a joke, a skit, or some sort of feat to earn the candy. The simplest, I remember my mother teaching me: trick or treat, smell my feet, give me something good to eat. One year Maeve and Sophia sang pumpkin songs. But most kids tell jokes. Really really bad jokes. Bad puns, knock-knocks, all variations of why did the chicken do this or that. But two were worth retelling:

Raggedy Ann 8 year old girl: why did the man cross the road?
Adults holding candy: I don't know, why?
Raggedy: Well, who knows why men do anything?

And my very favorite, by a young boy Ann knew who lived nearby, probably around 8 or 10:

Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker were talking. Darth Vader told Luke, "Not only am I your father, but I know what you are getting for Christmas."

"How do you know?" asked Luke.

"Because I feel your presence."

It was the highlight of the night, trust me. If you didn't get it, Bevin, say it out loud.

More Halloween coming soon enough. The girls are going as Mei and Setsuki from Totoro, and Leo as a totoro. Ha! Cosplay already. We're doomed.

Chugga chugga chugga choo chooooo

Been busy. And negligent--I know I promised photos of various things and a recipe to boot. Recipe to follow tonight unless I get too tired and then it'll have to wait. Here's the juicy gossip and updates from our lives...

*The head of Sophia's school was fired. I have mixed feelings about this. Well, not really. I won't say anything else here except that I think it's probably, in the end, a good move for the school.

*I got a leather chair on Craigslist that I love, that Mike loves, that the girls love, that the cats love. It replaced the old glider rocking chair that was undersized for my living room. Now, finally, with two cabinets, a gate-leg table with the leaves down, a large couch, coffee table, end table, two lamps, dresser with a TV on it, and this big chair and ottoman, my living room finally feels appropriately furnished. Oy these rooms are big.

*Bevin still house hunts. But things are looking positive.

*Leo is saying "ma ma ma" with regularity. And he's developing some signs of his own (like "I want you to hold me" that involves hitting his chest with his fists in tandem). His hair is curly, there's no doubt now. And he's 9 months old somehow.

*I will be 35 soon. Wow.

*I had dental work done (I posted about that already) and my tooth and jaw still hurt like crazy today. Yesterday they were fine. But today it rained all day...maybe that's part of it. I don't know.

*Maeve, being 5, got to start open studio hours at SCOSAG. She went today for the first time. Shivering with excitement. Need to keep that girl busy...

*Sophia was supposed to go in for dyslexia testing on Wednesday but instead developed a fever and vomiting thing and crashed on the couch all morning long. Gone by 2 in the afternoon, but totally wiped her out. So it's scheduled now for next Tuesday.

*Finished Little House in the Big Woods with Maeve the other night and cried at the end. I'm such a baby. Now we're reading some old school Bobbsey Twins books. Sophia and I are three chapters from being done with Fellowship of the Ring. Awesome.

All for now (time to read, in fact).

Ten on Tuesday: 10 favorite movie moments

Hmm.

1. When Farmer Hoggins dances for Babe in Babe.
2. The rehabilitation speech in front of the parole board in Shawshank Redemption.
3. The chase scene in Raising Arizona
4. Grace Kelly on reconnaissance in Rear Window while the other two watch her, unable to get a message to her.
5. In Clue, Colonel Mustard: I just can't take anymore scares!
6. Both times the Catbus appears in My Neighbor Totoro.
7. When everyone in the gallery stands up as Atticus Finch leaves the courtroom and the minister tells Scout to get on her feet in To Kill a Mockingbird.
8. The ending voice over ("I hope") in Shawshank Redemption.
9. Dr. Evil's explanation of his childhood in Austin Powers.
10. Rodents of unusual size? I don't think they exist.

There are many many more. But those came to mind most quickly.

Woo Woo Woozy

I have bad teeth.

I have great gums, but bad teeth. Always have.

Last visit to the dentist, she replaced a crown that needed it. And told me to come in soon to put a crown on the tooth in front of it (30, I think). A tooth with more filling than tooth left, really. So I went this morning.

I have two crowns already ("a tooth for every baby"), both root canal teeth, one on top and one on bottom on the right side. This one doesn't have a root canal. I was worried. How the heck does this work, anyway?

Well, she shot me up twice with the novocaine and let me sit a moment for it to take. My tongue was half numb but nothing else, really. She started working and I came out of the chair at her. She gave me two more shots in the same general area and waited a few moments. Still nothing.

She mumbled something that ended with "caine" at the dental assistant and she then gave me three more shots that I couldn't even feel going in, but I could hear, sort of, the grinding sound of the needle getting down into the tissue. Into bone? I don't know. But I'm such a baby about tooth pain so I was all for this.

She did the work, put on a temporary crown, and sent me on my way. All was well. I took 3 ibuprofen as I left the office, about 10:00. I was still numb while I talked to the psychologist about Sophia. It wasn't until we met up with Mike for lunch that the pain started. It was time for more ibuprofen, but it wasn't doing anything anymore at that point. Throbbing red pain. I called back.

Various back and forth tag messages and finally Target had a prescription for me. I wasn't expecting narcotics--just a topical, maybe? Something a bit stronger? Any advice?

Nope. Vicodin. Lots of vicodin. And it works. It takes all the pain away all gone. and makes me absolutely loopy. Whoa. Shouldn't drive a car kind of loopy. But I don't hurt.

She thinks it'll be ok by tomorrow. I think so. It's already less when it starts to break through. And until then, well, I guess I sometimes wonder why people get addicted to prescription pain killers (meaning, people who aren't in pain). This feeling isn't exactly a good one....

Dyslexia is cool

That's pretty much what the tester said today. She was looking at Sophia's writing sample that Miss Anne handed me to take along. Sophia was in the waiting room with Maeve--turns out I didn't even have to bring her this time, which sucked, but our appointment Wednesday is involved and detailed and I have a placement for Maeve for the afternoon and whew. Anyway, Stacey was hunched over her coffee table in the office looking at Sophia's paper and she said, "This is so cool."

I didn't know what she meant. So she showed me. "She wrote 'tomorrow is my birthday' but what it says is tomorrtomorrow is my birthday. She must have been copying the word tomorrow off a notebook or scrap paper, something like that. And then, look, the next line, she misspells birthday even though she has it correct above. And this last line, I can't make any sense of it."

Cool.

I think it's terrifyingly dreadful. I look into the future and I try not to panic. But this woman says it's cool.

She asks me about Sophia's strengths. "Higher math, I would say," I start. "She can see things in her head pretty well. She's decent at Irish dance, which is kind of involved. Very artistic, wants to try new things. Likes to learn crafts and isn't afraid to jump right in. And she's extremely empathic--she is a good friend, you know?" I go on to explain what I mean by that. Sophia is a good friend. She works well with younger and older kids. She's a good hostess and helper. She's gracious and lovely and sweet. She is never the one to start the snitchy-cat games that girls her age can get into (and I hope I don't say that as some benighted parent oh my kid is so wonderful because she can be bossy and overbearing; and Maeve is snitchy-cat through and through).

"That goes hand in hand with this, you know," she tells me like it's a conspiracy. "Spatial, athletic, musical, friendly, good-natured, higher math functioning is all part of dyslexia."

The idea that certain strengths go with certain weaknesses hadn't occurred to me. I hadn't seen them as related--I was seeing Sophia has good at these things because she was good at them, and the spelling, handwriting, phonemic awareness, and left-right confusions were just swiss cheese holes in her abilities. I didn't think about it as a give and take. But then again, thank goodness there are strengths, too.

I liked Stacey. Sophia goes Wednesday for a 5 hour testing session (one of those hours is lunch with me away from the office). I didn't want to do this. With my whole heart I didn't want to do this. But now, it's ok. I was starting to lose the whole person of Sophia in this one issue and today it started to merge back together.

I need to remember this if and when Maeve's first grade teacher draws me aside and says, "About Maeve..." She's bigger than her total lack of impulse control and her emotions. And Sophia is bigger than her tomorrtomorrow.

My Girl Scout Weekend, the prelude

We went to Babler State Park on Friday afternoon, into evening, to get a sample of an outdoor trip. It was more for me than the girls: could I remember everything we needed to pack?

At Babler, you can't light a wood fire at the picnic sites. Charcoal is fine--we use it a lot at GS camp, actually--but the grill was up high and hard for girls to work with. At camp, they learn to light fires. But here I did that. My co-leader did assembly line meal making. The girls went on a walk, played at the playground, shared flashlights, and came back to the shelter, pretty much. It rained a bit and they saw that, yes, you can still do things in the rain. The shelter had its own bathrooms but no electricity and nobody complained about the bathroom in the dark. They cooperated with each other remarkably well and there was little, if any whining (I have two whiners, and one of them was quite subdued and the other I've learned to answer plainly and move along).

We had a rededication/investiture ceremony that I think went well--it could have been made better with bigger candles on the table, but it was nice. I would have liked to have sung some more songs but the time worked out just right that the one parent who dropped girls off and went away just got back as the ceremony ended. So that was good. I feel like we're finally at a point with this troop that we can do meaningful things and start really progressing quickly. I have some ideas for our December trip. Lots, actually. But I digress.

So (names are changed) Paula's dad left with his four; Ginger pulled away with her daughter only (as was the plan). My four were in my van and Jenny had three in her car. And Thousand Boxes of Cookies Mom was gathering up the last things for her car...and I wasn't going to leave until she did as the registered leader. She saw that I hadn't pulled away and came up to me. I got out of the van to talk--girls are nosy and I didn't know what she had to say. She had tears in her eyes.

"I saw that you changed the camping date to the next weekend," she started. "And I can't go." She sounded heartbroken. "I can come Friday night and stay but we have plans for that Saturday."

"It's ok," I told her, trying to reassure her. "I have five volunteers already and we're staying at Wohl and I don't think there's much room, frankly. Not if all or most of the girls go. There's a leaders' room but it only sleeps 4 to begin with. We've got it covered."

"But I can go Friday," she protested. "I just, I'd have to leave mid-afternoon on Saturday. And I can come back on Sunday morning! I can! But I can't stay Saturday night. I hate to leave you in a lurch like that."

"You're not," I try again. "Really. I have Jenny and Sarah definitely, myself; Ginger volunteered, Kara--she's not a mom but a girl scout volunteer I know and trust and she's a great camper--"

"But it's so much fun! Do you know how much fun it is? And I'm going to miss it!"

"It's ok. We'll talk about all this as it gets closer."

She got in her car and I got in mine and shut my mouth tight. Tighter than tight. My girls and I sang along to a Girl Scout CD of campfire songs I'm trying to inundate them with so we can sing more than the Brownie Smile song and Make New Friends. And the whole way home, and most of the night, I tried to think of how the heck I was going to let these moms on my right hand go, but this one mom on my left not go. Sigh.

Wohl Lodge is small, and there really is a leaders room that only sleeps 4. I have to go, as the registered camper. My cookie manager is going because I have a feeling her daughter won't go without her, but also because we're good friends and I trust her and she knows how to camp and she's a teacher and knows how to handle girls. My co-leader is going because she also knows how to handle girls. The girl scout volunteer I mentioned to TBOCM (thousand boxes of cookies mom) is actually Maeve's preschool teacher, who would be great to add because she's highly energetic, knows half the girls on a teacher-student kind of level, is eternally happy and good-natured and fun. As for the fifth, I have several choices--or I don't have to bring anyone if nobody else sticks their hand up and says pickmepickmepickme I want to camp in December in a lodge outside of Pevely, Missouri. You know? She'd have to be a registered scout, which gives us four choices, and I have a feeling one or more will want to go--but we're also going in March and in the later spring, so we can spread the wealth. Mary Beth could go this time, maybe, and Rodnee in March and Kate in May. Or not! It's up to them--I don't want to force this on anyone.

And I know I will probably eventually have to face the music and either tell TBOCM that I can't take her (for what diplomatic reason I cannot fathom right now), or suck it up and take her along. But not this first time. I really want this first time to go well. Maybe I'll take her in May when we'll not be in a lodge, such close quarters and her fussing all over the place trying to overhelp.

At least I have written rules about the hayride in November--our district is putting it on and they're actually limiting the number of adults we should bring. Whew.

In the end, it's good to have these problems. Heck. Everybody's relatively happy and healthy, my troop is big and I have so many parents and other folks who want to help out. It's kind of exciting. We'll see.... :^)

My Girl Scout Weekend

Once, when I was 12, I went on the girl scout Outdoor Adventure Course at Camp Tuckaho. The leaders were hardened butch unsmiling women with short cropped gray hair and rain gear.

This isn't quite the description of the women who ran the camping weekend I just went on to learn how to troop camp with my girls. But almost. They smiled more.

But I know now how to:

*light a fire in the drizzly rain
*organize a kitchen shelter
*divide up jobs
*wash dishes at camp
*cook IN A CARDBOARD BOX
*cook in a dutch oven (well, I learned this in July in the Rockies, actually)
*clean an ET (Environmental Toilet--which is a newfangled latrine and much much nicer)
*sweep out a permanent tent
*tie a bowline knot
*tie a clove hitch: my favorite knot thus far, I will say
*hang a hammock with a clove hitch that will not fall down
*pitch an old-fashioned pole tent
*sharpen a pocket knife
*make a weatherproof bedroll
*use a bow saw and an axe, although really just in theory
*plan a flag ceremony
*help plan a Scout's Own ceremony
*set up a clothesline (with a clove hitch that will not fall down)
*how to use the emergency contact radio at camp
*split girls into patrols
*break down a kitchen shelter, sweep a fire pit, put out a fire the Girl Scout Way (tm)
*several new songs and hand motions to Taps
*Why we should never stay in the "Pods" in the summer time
*That, while at camp, girls do the work to learn to do the work to feel confident at camp to come to plan their own trips
*That too many mothers on a troop camping trip is never what you want (I'm aiming for 5 adults this December: myself, my co-leader, my cookie manager, Maeve's preschool teacher who joined our troop to help out, and another parent that will become apparent soon enough--but NOT Thousand boxes of cookies mom).
*How to make a dump cake. Oh my. I want to make one right now.

It was worth it, in the end. I forgot the breast pump parts I needed to relieve engorgement away from Leo all day--he was FINE but I was a little stressed out by the end of the day. It was ok, though. I recovered and life goes on. And now I'm ready.

But at the start of the day as our patrol, cold and wet, tried to get started on a fire, I looked up at the three women running the show and I flashed back to that weekend at Tuckaho. They must go to a specific class to learn how to have that look on their faces that says "you're doing it wrong and wasting our time." Because, wow, were they good at that one.

Existential Garfield

You may have gone there already, but Kaylen sent me this link: Garfield without Garfield. It's kinda creepy, but interesting. And in a good way, over all. Just a little something for your morning. Onward, now, to the girl scout council.

The Winters Are Different

Today is Blog Action Day, I found out via Nancy's Baby Names, which is one of those blogs I have no reason to read except that I love reading about other people's name choices and mistakes, frankly...anyway, the theme this year is Climate Change and I wanted to join because I'm a big old joiner and thought maybe it would be good to type about a topic assigned to me.

Climate change is not one of the issues I sink a lot of thought, time, or, frankly, money into. I do what I can to use fewer resources, I try to make good choices about fuel use, consumption of goods, and so forth. But to get me up in arms about something, well, this one doesn't do it. Not that it can't--oh, climate change troubles me deeply when I think about it--it's just one of those issues that feels like I can't really change much about. In comparison, I feel like I can have a strong voice about, oh, say, my neighborhood. My parish. My daughters' school. And some things touch me directly, like health care. Climate change is like those little floaters in my eye that I can't look at right on, just notice in my peripheral vision and either get stuck on or try to ignore.

And I did that for a long time. Weather in Missouri is temperate. St. Louis especially so--our summers are hot and humid with breaks, our winters are icy but never too cold. Fall is fast, spring is long. I haven't, myself, noticed much of a change living in a city that already has the donut effect of weather (we don't, for instance, get the blizzards that central Missouri gets--either the three rivers meeting here or the urban environment or the valley or whatever keeps them at bay).

But what struck me, about two or three years ago, was standing in my kitchen for a moment with Mike and his parents. They were talking about geese. About how for as long as Jeff (my father in law) could remember, geese were plentiful down at Horseshoe Lake every fall. Thousands of geese migrating from Canada and Minnesota and wherever on their way to their wintering grounds. They would stop off at Horseshoe Lake. And get shot.

They're gone now.

Not that there aren't Canada geese in the world. I haven't heard anything about depopulation of that species ("them's good eatin'" Mike would say). It's just that they're not migrating in the numbers they once did. Some of this is due to corporate parks and lakes with fountains that never freeze over, I'm sure, but part of it, as Jeff summed up, is that "the winters are different." They (and we) have thunderstorms in January now. Mild, breezy days are the norm. And while my cold cold hands and feet and my hypothyroid "cold is pain" reaction is glad for the mild winter, it made me stop and think. If Jeff noticed that winters are different, they are. Jeff isn't political, he isn't strident about, well, anything. I've known him for 16 years and I could sum up everything I know in about three paragraphs. But if he knows anything, he knows Southern Illinois, the rivers, the land, the animals, the weather. That moment in the kitchen was my version of the canary in the coal mine.

But from that, I don't know where to go. I don't know what to do except to keep talking. And I keep getting distracted by, oh, learning all about Missouri's special education laws or febrile seizures. So I can't find a place right next to my brain or heart for this. But it's getting closer.

We're Going There

Miss Anne at school (Sophia's lead teacher) and I have made the decision and the appointment is set for Monday. Sophia is going to a dyslexia testing specialist for a battery of tests to see if she qualifies for a 504 plan or an IEP. I know. I said I wasn't going to do this. But then I thought about it a little more. And the following two things happened.

1. At Kumon, Ann (not Miss Anne, and not Ann who knits and blogs, but Ann who runs Kumon--it's as bad as Marys in my life) gave Sophia a little card to help isolate separate lines on a page (like a word finder kind of thing). They had different colors of cellophane in the cut out, and she asked Sophia to play around with them and see if one color or another was helpful. Blue was the winner. I asked Sophia (I have grilled her on this, actually) if it really worked or if she was just humoring Ann, and she said that she thought it did work. She felt like she read faster and the words were easier to see. She would not elaborate. I think she was embarrassed and I let it go. But it got me to thinking that maybe yeah, maybe we need to have something documented for the future.

2. That night, we snuggled into bed and read two chapters of The Fellowship of the Ring by JRR Tolkien. I'm reading it as a bedtime story. I love this book. I read it the first time in 5th grade and have read it again and again since then. I find the next two books increasingly excruciating as they progress (the beginning half of Two Towers is ok, the second half annoys me, and the Return of the King makes me want to crawl in a hole and never read again). But this book is in my top ten or fifteen books. And she loves it. She listens and keeps track and that night, she guessed (correctly) what was going to happen next. She saw clearly who the good guy was in the chapter. She laughed appropriately at the bits of humor in conversation. And she said, "why is it that everything seems to happen on Mondays in this book? It's like they never mention a Saturday or a Sunday or a Thursday--it's always Monday when they talk about when things happened."

I don't know if that is true or not, but it made me stop and look at her. Was she really listening and comprehending the story so closely to catch detail like that? I think she was. I think her listening comprehension is on a Tolkien level and her reading decoding skills are at Dick and Jane. Well, to be fair, more like Junie B Jones. Not quite Beverly Cleary. You know? It's not that she has educational gaps or is a "slow" reader. She could write the musical of Fellowship and design the sets and cast the actors but she can't write the word "said" even if we practice it all week long. Forget about the mystery of silent E.

So I told Miss Anne the next day about these two things. We decided it was time. We don't want her to get to high school and have some rigid teacher not meet us halfway on the same things Anne does without asking.

This morning we talked with the director of the school. She gave us tips on which hoops to jump through first. I went to the library yesterday and hoovered up every book on special education advocacy and IEP overviews and dyslexia I could find. The director this morning let me in on a weird little fact--dyslexia isn't a learning disability, at least in Missouri. She won't have an LD IEP if we get that far--she'll have an OHI one. Other health issue. Bizarre. Law and school are such strange friends.

Words pour out of my fingertips in a flow I cannot control; I can spell just about any word (7th in state my junior year); I have been literate as far back as my memory goes. But my oldest daughter is cut from a very different cloth. As a people, as a race of humans, we have been talking to each other for 50,000 years. We've only been writing for a tenth of that time. Hmm. So much to ruminate upon.

And so I guess we'll see how this goes.

Ten on Tuesday: 10 Guilty Pleasures

Ok, I thought I'd written this one before but it was specifically about television so I guess I'll have to come up with a broader list...

1. Nintendo. I mean the old gray box with the cartridges the size of a paperback book. I love tetris and zelda and super mario brothers.

2. In that same spirit, Katamari Damacy. Oh my if you've never played this game, well, then I guess you're not a big dork like me. It involves controlling a little tiny person who is pushing a great big sticky ball all over the place. Things stick to the ball and make it bigger. Then you roll up as much as you can. And so on.

3. Frozen milk chocolate chips. There are better chocolates, I know. But these are just what I want sometimes.

4. Delilah on KEZK. Have you ever listened to this? Sometimes, especially when we're traveling south for the weekend, I'll turn this on just to listen to the outlandish "I miss my boyfriend so much he's in jail but I'm visiting him next week and I broke my foot and got swine flu and my sister moved into my one bedroom apartment and I love her but she's a drunk" and so on.

5. Cakewrecks, Lolcats, awkward family photographs, all those blogs that have no reason to exist except to make me happy.

6. Lemon loaf at Starbucks. I try to limit my out of house coffee experiences but when I do hit a Starbucks (the siren call of iced coffee combined with a DRIVE THRU is sometimes too much), I will often succumb to lemon loaf.

7. Fabric and Craft Stores. These days, I'm taking Sophia to dance on Mondays and not taking other kids with me. I drop her off and have an hour and a half. And there's a Joann Super Mega Fabric store nearby. Sometimes I just wander around looking at everything. Or I flip through pattern books.

8. Dilbert, Dave Barry, Lileks' photo books, all those completely benign humor books, basically, read after everyone else is asleep and I'm up with the baby.

9. Law and Order reruns. Specifically, the first 5 or 6 seasons of SVU, the first 5 seasons of the regular show, and the Mike Logan seasons of CI (5 and 6?). I do not tire of them.

10.Thrift stores. It's in my blood. There's nothing better than finding a twin bed sized afghan crocheted in good yarn, in great condition, for $2. Or the sweater I'm wearing right now, a merino wool aran cardigan, for $3. All of Sophia's uniforms that are not gifts from grandparents are from Value Village. Craft supplies, occasionally a shirt for Mike, baby stuff, the girls' awesome sleeping bags--thrift. But I have to careful not to go crazy. Like I said, it's in my blood.

Conlocutio Bonus Track

As you may or may not know, I have kept a daily writing blog for several years now. First it was a tribute to 365 people I knew (each in 32 words, the number of years old I was that year). Then it was 365 songs. This past year was 365 snippets of conversation. I just finished it last week, but oh my, I needed to add this bonus track.

"Oh," I say to Sophia, lifting one of her soft Waldorf dolls. "You've done her hair."

"Yep. Rose's, too!" She holds out another one from behind her. I love these dolls; each girl has a few and Leo has one on the way for Christmas.

"You know," I sigh, "one day you two girls will be all grown up and these pretty dolls will all sit on the guest bed." I have this cozy flash into the future, post-child-rearing but pre-grandchildren, Leo maybe in high school, the girls on their way, all these lovely little things...

"And you'll be dead!" Maeve says with a frightening amount of glee. She's sitting next to me, grinning, her little dimple puckered deep. Sophia's look is not of happiness but instead horror and panic.

"No!" she says quickly. "That's like, 14 or 15 years from now. Not like 50 years. Mom's going to live, like, when you're in your 80s, right?"

"Maeve," I start, calmly. "It's not nice to point out to people that they will be dead." But then I think, why is that? We'll all die. And Maeve sees the weakness in my point.

"We're all going to die!" she protests, still grinning. "But I won't be a grown up for a long time." This is her way of making it better.

Sophia calmed down. I picked up the story I was about to read for bedtime. I thought about the conversation I'd had with Sophia when she was 3. Maeve was a newborn and we were visiting Cairo for Thanksgiving. We were walking through Mike's grandmother's house (the one that just sold at auction) and Sophia asked why Grandma Stout had died.

"Well," I'd told her, "she was sick, and she was old, and when old people get sick, they sometimes die."

She looked at me like she understood. She always had this piercing gaze when she was trying to work the words out in her head.

"But we're new," she reassured us both.

Yes, we're new. Some of us, in fact, are quite new.

Where Did I Go, Again?

Thyroid medication plus vitamin D, baby. It means I get something done during the day...that I don't just sit at the computer. I guess I never realized how much sitting I did, because I was so exhausted!

What's been happening? A summation of the week:

*Maeve's birthday and friend party: very cute, but very very hectic. Good, though, and we came through all right.

*the kitchen: progress. There are vinyl clings up on the walls (I am so hip, just wait til you see what I did). Marmoleum is ready but the woodwork needs to be finished before I put down that floor.

*Girl scout training. I now know how to camp. Except I already did. There were some good things. More to come.

*Girl Scout Troop 66 is registered with 18 girls and 8 adults!

*An amazing lemon cake: recipe to come soon

*craft try outs for our winter camping lodge trip. There may be a winner. Picture later, maybe...

*Bevin tried to buy a house but the sellers were, well, I'll just say they weren't interested at this time in her offer. Maybe later. Or another house. It's so reminiscent of our house hunt 11 years ago

*Mike's grandmother's house went up for auction today. It sold for $9100. That's Ninety One Hundred Dollars, people. Probably less than you paid for your last car and this house is twice the size of mine, a big farmhouse style with a wrap around porch, three stories, a parlor, you know, the works. I have heartburn thinking about this.

*My mom had her other knee replaced. Haven't talked to her in a couple days--she's home, and it's always hard on your own post-surgery.

That is all for now. I'm off to watch DVDs in bed and fall asleep. Ah, the life I lead.

Ten On Tuesday: 10 Things that make me feel old

That's easy.

1. My ankles hurt in the morning. Less than the did a few months ago, thanks to better thyroid medication and vitamin D supplements. But still.

2. Taking thyroid medication and vitamin D supplements.

3. Having a 3rd grader. It's no longer the hazy half-remembered early childhood. I KNOW what it was like to be in 3rd grade. I remember 3rd grade. And now Sophia's in 3rd grade. Oy.

4. Saying things like "I've been in the parish for 11 years" or "I've lived in my house for 11 years" or, even more: "I've been in St. Louis for half my life" and half my life is 17 1/2 years.

5. I've always been the youngest person in gatherings and groups. I skipped first grade and thus I was always a year younger (or half year, but you get the point). Now, though, well, umm, not always. I go to coffee, sure. I go to Worship Commission meetings, sure. But girl scout meetings (I'm not counting the girls, I mean the parents!), the Irish dance waiting room...I'm not always the youngest anymore.

6. I have no idea who all those young actors are. SERIOUSLY. I used to see so many movies and now I don't. Part of that is circumstance of having a baby in the house (which makes me feel young...). But part of it is that it just isn't important to me anymore. Not like reruns of British sitcoms are important.

7. My sister Bevin is looking to buy a house. She's like, what, 21? No. It turns out, she's going to be 27 this December. My youngest sister just turned 24. Oh no.

8. Steve got married in March. Pete gets married next summer. They were like 9 years old at my wedding. Maybe 10. I think 9. They were worried that they'd have to dance. I think they cried. Oh my. These last two (#7 and #8) are like I'm standing still and all these kids are catching up and becoming adults.

9. Speaking of Worship Commission, I was at that meeting or another like it recently and I was the voice that said how something used to be. It must have been art and environment because the retired deacon would have been that voice normally and he doesn't always attend A&E. But I was the "no, that was this and such back when so and so was doing that" person. NO!!!

10. I really really like my minivan. It's old and cruddy and falling apart and I don't care. I like my minivan. And I think that makes me exceptionally old. Worse: I always liked my minivan. But now that it has the not so graceful patina of age (wabi sabi, anyone?) and not so cute foibles like a broken gas gauge, I like it all the more. I like that I can keep driving a 9 year old van around and not have to pay for a new car yet and ha ha! It doesn't quite mortify Sophia, but it's close. Soon. I remember being mortified by our Buick. And by the station wagon soon after. Having friends who pretended that wasn't their mom waving at them from the old beat up panel van. It's here. Soon enough. And then? I will really be old.

In The Groove

So we're back to school. I know, we've been back to school for 6 weeks. But I have a handle on it now. I have the weekly schedule in my head. I have the morning routine down. I know where everyone should be when and why.

I cleaned up the front yard--now, our front yard is definitely shabby chic, with a whole lot more of the former. All former, actually. Our front porch is really a deck. It would look great on the back of a house. But on the front it looks odd. Alas. I can't paint it this fall since I ran out of time, but I've cleaned it up and taken out the weed trees and dead rose bush. In the next few weeks, maybe, we'll take down the silver maple and put in a more rational tree.

The backyard is stunning in its chaos. But even there, I'm making small amounts of progress. The kitchen floor is on the back porch. Mike is taking it a load at a time out to the dumpsters so we aren't the Worst Neighbors on the Block, filling all the dumpsters on a weekend. The pool is flipped over. Some of the other stuff is cleaned up. This week, Tuesday and Wednesday evenings, I'm going to clean up the beds and the play area. Hopefully I'll put down more mulch (we have a mulberry tree's worth of mulch in the parking area). Some of the yard will be rounded up (is that how one would conjugate the use of round up?). Some of it will be dug up and transplanted. The sun keeps changing in the yard.

The girl scout troop is going camping and having a cookout at Babler State Park and going to Shaw Nature Preserve for an overnight. A hayride is also very probable in November, and horses come in the spring. Whee. I have the year planned, with some things still tentative, but most things hammered out already. Registration for the troop is Thursday and I have a zillion phone calls to make to get everyone signed and paid and so forth, but it's working. Last year, I didn't register until December. Loser. I'm taking Troop Camp B this week (and next week, and next weekend). I'm set and excited--this is why I signed up, you know? I wanted to camp and do things with these girls, and now we have girls the right age and have enough money to get it done.

The van is clean, inside, I mean. I shampooed it today and got rid of all of Maeve's nest in the back seat. I moved her to the middle, which is a separate chair and therefore harder to hide detritus beside and under. Sophia will sit in back on a clean seat with a clean floor. Ah.

Kitchen floor supposedly comes today.

Bevin might have found a house.

All the laundry is clean (except yesterday's actual clothing).

I'm going to go play katamari damacy and then pick up Sophia. Dance tonight, and Kumon (which is complete and graded!). It's good.

In the groove.

Things I wonder about II

Today's sources of wonder:

Why would anyone think you needed two 50 ounce bottles of coca-cola to wash down dinner? The billboard says "enough for your meal." One hundred ounces is just over 3 quarts. What marketing guy at Coke thought "enough for your meal" was a good tag line?

Will Bevin be able to find a house in her price range that is both in a decent area and isn't scuzzy beyond all repair? Will the house on Grand do it? What about that new one that just came up on that street I've never heard of?

Speaking of streets, why does St. Louis have an Alaska Street? Wasn't south city laid out before Alaska would have been a state? Did Alaska Street have another name at one time? There's no Hawaii Street (or Guam Avenue or Puerto Rico Place...). For that matter, I don't think there's an Arizona or New Mexico.

Speaking of St. Louis streets, what is the difference between Ojibwa and Chippewa? Is the latter just a bastardization of the former? Are they different concepts? Is one a language? We have a Chippewa but no Ojibwa street.

What is that defunct church at Hebert and Lismore in north city? Could it have been Catholic at one time? (I just looked it up: St. Augustine's. Sad).

Which made me wonder if I needed to contact the archdiocese about finding records from St. Michael's church, which, if he were baptized as an infant, would be the most likely place I'd find my great-grandfather's baptismal record...and his mother Jenny's information, if she has any...

And then, pulling up in front of my house after the trip to deliver girl scout information for a class I'll be taking next week, I wondered if THAT GIRL FROM ETSY WILL EVER GET MY STUFF TO ME. But then I took a deep breath, let that go, and took Maeve and Leo inside.

Syrup: An Ode

I grew up on faux syrup. You know, the corn syrup with maple flavoring. Mrs. Buttersworth or Log Cabin or whatever. Well, when I dumped high fructose corn syrup lo these many years ago (three years? four?) I realized everything I really liked I could get another way--usually more expensively, but still pretty much the same, which definitely helped the waistline because I am more cheap than I am filled with willpower. I can make a rule and follow it, but it helps if I also save money.

But syrup did not translate. Of course it did, you are probably thinking. Maple syrup. Duh! Yes, we switched to maple syrup. But I didn't like it. I didn't really like it at all. I went so far as to stop using syrup at all--powdered sugar went on the french toast or pancakes, and peanut butter on waffles. We didn't eat those sorts of breakfast foods very often anyway, so it wasn't that big of a deal.

At some point, though, I decided maple syrup was ok. Just ok. Just like how the switch from margarine to butter took a couple of years, the switch from faux to real maple syrup took time. I think we received some as a gift from Mary and Maloki after they got home from Maine. And we had it around, because the girls liked it just fine (having been raised on it).

Then the CSA started carrying it. I though, Missouri? Maple syrup from Missouri? But it was. Like the other stuff I'd had, it was thin and watery. And I realized that was what I didn't like about it. Faux syrup didn't soak in and disappear into a pancake. It was gooey and sticky and rested on the plate. Mmm.

Well, Indigo Bunting recently did a more than fair trade with me. I sent her two jars of peach salsa and she sent me a jug of syrup. Jug. I was happy to get it because, like I said, the girls love the stuff and it's not cheap, after all. And it's, you know, ok.

Mike made french toast out of the loaf of sweet potato bread we got in the CSA this week--we are notorious for forgetting about the bread when we get it, and then there's nothing we can do with it but make croutons or crumbs. But we used this the second day, used it up and put the leftovers in the freezer. We had it for dinner with pineapple and bacon on the side. And we brought out the syrup (even though the traditional Blake way of eating french toast is, in fact, with powdered sugar). I had myself a few slices of the stuff and poured the syrup out of the jug.

It poured like the fake stuff. Thick and gooey and resting in the center of the bread, not sinking in and disappearing. It pooled just a bit on the plate. I tried it. Oh.

I had 3 slices.

Photo Friday: Fast Food

Maybe it should be "quick food" instead. This is a photo from last year's fair shares, early in the year. This week, we had in our bag:

A chicken
tortillas
sweet potato bread (which was already made into french toast)
two sweet peppers
4 tomatoes
red cabbage
eggplant
green beans
radish shoots
arugula
umm...I know there was something else. Onions, maybe? The weeks blur together. I love the CSA.

How I Got Away

sometimes I think you want me to touch you
how can I when you build that great wall around you
in your eyes I saw a future together
you just look away in the distance

We were sitting on the Brazos River County Park boardwalk. You had your hand on my thigh, tentatively, while we stared out at the river and the bugs in the overgrown swamp in front of us. It was mid-August, 1993, and we knew we were at the end. You're right next to me, but I need an airplane. We'd come to the park before, with my sisters back in the late spring, to walk around with them and fight with each other. We fought a lot, especially for people only 19 years old. What, I think now, could we possibly have had to fight about?

This time we didn't fight. We sat. I put my hand on yours, and it automatically flipped over and grasped mine awkwardly. I traced the scars on the inside of your arm and you pulled away.

"Come on, let's head back, it's fucking hot out here."

You dropped me off at my house. I was packing to leave, to head back to St. Louis the next morning with my family. You called once that evening, but I had my brother take a message. When I called back, your mother answered since you'd already gone to work.

Tori Amos' Little Earthquakes played on my walkman in the van on the 14 hour trip the next day. Funny how the cracks don't seem to show. I broke up with you over the phone two weeks later.

The One That Got Away

From MamaKat's writing prompt: Tell why you're ecstatic "the one that got away" got away.

I read that and thought to myself, I'm the one that got away.

And he should be glad.

Not that Mike doesn't have it good. It's just that, the first boy I was engaged to, well, he wouldn't have had it good. We weren't well matched. We were a good high school couple but would not have made it for the long haul (obviously). We would have married for the good times and when the bad times came along, we wouldn't have lasted.

Put it bluntly: it would have been a disaster.