Tuesday, July 26, 2011
Monday, July 25, 2011
July in Brief Review
July is drawing to a close.
Another busy month.
We went to the 4th of July Parade on the 2nd of July. Leo enjoys parades. We went with Zelda and Travis and their family. Sat in the shade. Parked too far away (assuming it would be as crazy as St. Pat's Parade, but it was not). Below, our neighborhood babysitter who will too soon be all grown up and not our babysitter, is waving on a float:
Basil Lemonade and homegrown carrot snack while I did some sewing:
Trip to Powder Valley with Miss Bridget, on the most humid day in my lifetime:
And we went to the Botanical Gardens to look at treehouses, none of which were actually off the ground. Strange. But flowers. And fun.
I should submit this one above to Awkward Family Photos. Leo in the background all creepy like that. And below, Leo lost amongst the iris.
I did a lot of cooking. Mike and I have challenged each other to not eat out until mid-September (after he was gone for 2 months and I kept grabbing stuff to-go and he had to eat meals out and we're both just tired of it). I learned how to make paneer. I love the internet. Paneer is a farmers cheese. More on my other blog, the one about urban homesteading or whatever you want to call it. Here is an entirely homemade Indian meal: saag paneer, butter chicken, some sort of aloo (potato) dish, naan. Everyone was happy. Which is rare.
It was Sophia's birthday this month as well. Ten. Wow. She had a friend party and cheesecake with the family. I made the cheesecake, my first attempt. And it was pretty durned good.
I played a night of mah jongg. Girls went to horse camp and circus camp. We went to Cairo for the 4th of July weekend (Saturday night through Monday afternoon, post-Saturday parade). I watched some Law and Order. Mike didn't travel anywhere. Sophia went to our school's feis and didn't do so hot. She kind of knew, getting off stage, that she hadn't done so hot. So there will be other chances. But we did start looking and thinking about a solo dress. This will be a very slow process. Mike and I celebrated 15 years of marriage by not being struck by lightning.
I sat in Ann's living room, too, quite a bit, as she was homebound and lonely recovering from hip surgery. This was not a sacrifice. I did some knitting. And some sewing. Genealogy and bitching. Typical July.
Actually, not. Better than the last 4 Julys, at least.
Sunday, July 24, 2011
Genealogy Mistake (TMW)
(TMW? Too Many Words)
I have made a mistake. If you don't care about my family history, stop reading now. Otherwise, feel free to let your eyeballs glaze over while I describe in too much, bordering on Geschwind's or Asperger's Syndrome level, detail how I made this mistake.
To quote Donald Rumsfeld: The Known Knowns:
1a) I am the great-granddaughter of Edward R. Blake. His father is Edward D. Blake. Edward D's father is Edward Blake. Ironically, this is not where my confusion/mistake stems from.
1b) Edward D's death record lists his hometown as Kansas City. I remember oral tradition regarding this as well, that the Blakes were from KC before they moved to St. Louis, for whatever reason. Teamsters? Cops? No one was quite sure anymore. Turns out there is an Edward D Blake, in 1870 Kansas City, living with Ellen and Pat Cronin, a Richard Blake who is a couple years older than he is, and an old woman named Mary Dwyre.
1c) Mary Dwyre's occupation is "lives with her daughter" which makes me assume, probably correctly, that Ellen Cronin is her daughter. Further investigation leads to a Kansas City 1860 census with a Mary Dwyer living with Richard Blake, ages match the 1870s, but Richard's parents are Edward and Bridget Blake.
1d) Then I found a marriage record where ages and dates match, in KC, for an Edward Blake and a Bridget Kidney. Yes, Kidney. What? There was some talk that the Irish name Duane was sometimes anglicized to Kidney, and then I looked and Dwyre and wondered about it. But I assumed that Bridget Kidney was sister to Ellen, and either Ellen was a Kidney or a Dwyer or Bridget was married to a man named Kidney before moving to the US (she was fleeing the Potato Famine, so a husband back home may have died or left her or who knows what).
The Not-So-Sure-I-Knows:
2a) Since Edward is not a Dwyer/Dwyre, but rather a Blake, I assumed that Bridget and Ellen must be sisters.
2b) I find no record of Bridget and Edward in 1870, but in 1880 they appear in East St. Louis running a saloon. Regular readers will remember how this story ends: they adopt a niece named Mollie Toohey/Tuohy, whom I always assumed to be the daughter of Edward's sister, or another of Bridget's sisters. Then Edward, in 1886, kills a man in his bar. The more I learn about East St. Louis the more doomed everything seems (1886 was during a major period of upheaval, wait, like EVERY period in East Saint). A week after the murder, Edward commits suicide by ingesting rat poison. Gah. Mollie takes the name Blake and in the 1900 census (there is no 1890 census, for pretty much 90% of the US population due to a fire) Mollie is married to William Rigden and Bridget is living there with them as mother-in-law.
So all this seems knit up pretty tight. I'd made the further assumption that due to the Irish Diaspora combined with the Penal Laws, that was the end of that. Edward was probably from Galway and Bridget was harder to trace: there are Dwyers here and there, Kidneys elsewhere. Whatever. There are few Irish records around and I wasn't prepared to go visit there and start digging.
I moved onto Mike's family and that's been going well. I found an ancestor with the last name of Hearley/Hurley/Herlihy and was researching that. In a google search, I found an online site with all of the Belleville Illinois diocesan records, well, a lot of them, up to the 1950s, some dating back to the mid 19th century. I found some good information on the Hearleys, proved that Mary Hearley's father was indeed David Fitzgerald, as I assumed, when it STRUCK ME.
East St. Louis is in the Belleville Diocese.
I clicked over to my Bridgett Dwyer Kidney Blake Stew (yummy) and picked up some dates. They were mostly buried in St. Louis cemeteries, so I cross-referenced and decided to start hunting. The records aren't searchable, they are simply microfilmed and stacked by parish and date. Whee. But I found stuff. Good stuff. Or bad, considering now I'm totally caught in an assumption. That is wrong.
So Mollie's wedding was first. She's there, getting married to the right guy on the right date, and her parents are listed. Edward Blake, which didn't surprise me because I'm pretty sure she was adopted as much as they did that back then, but the Bridget that is her mother isn't Bridget Blake, or Kidney, or any permutation of Dwyer, but TOOHEY. Mollie's birth parents, Mr. and Mrs. Toohey, are related to Bridget. And not Bridget's sister, but Bridget's brother. And it's not like Bridget was dead and this was a misremembering on Mollie's part. Bridget Kidney Blake is somehow a Toohey.
Now, there are Tooheys buried in the same plot as Edward Blake, before and after his death. There are other Tooheys buried with other Blakes elsewhere in Calvary. It made sense that they were on his side. But I was wrong.
And then I found Bridget's death record. It was 1904 and luckily the parish had given up on some sort of churchy pig latin and just wrote the facts out in English. She died of la grippe (the flu), which I knew, and the dates matched and all that. Her parents? Michael Toohey and Eleanora Houlihan.
Wha?
More searching led to the cholera epidemic of 1873 where the parish priest, his hand obviously tired from so much blessing and recording of deaths, wrote less information down about those who died than the usual records. 1873 in Calvary Cemetery saw more than its fair share of Tooheys, and there's a ****** Toohey buried in 1873 near Edward Blake, and a Catherine Toohey, who also died in 1873. The no-first-namer is 85. I glance through the 1873 East St. Louis church records and in the cholera epidemic find Catherine in one month and "Mrs. Blake's Mother" in another.
And then there's an 1860 census record with a Mathew and Catherine Toohey, living with a young man named Hogan (also buried in the Blake/Toohey areas of Calvary) and an Elenor Toohey. Who matches the no-name Toohey in age. No Mollie yet--she was born in 1866.
So. No matter what, Mary Dwyer is Ellen Cronin's mother and is connected to Edward D. Blake, who is 100% known to be my ancestor. His parents are 99% certain to be Edward Blake and Bridget Kidney.
And then? One or a few of the following is true:
1. Bridget Kidney/Edward Blake of KC are not the same people as Bridget Toohey/Edward Blake of East St. Louis, even though the first two disappear after 1860 with no trace and the second set don't show up anywhere at all until 1880. I find this to be unlikely.
2. Bridget Kidney is not Mary Dwyer's daughter. If she is the same person throughout this tale, which I am pretty sure is true, she is NOT Mary Dwyer's daughter. She is Eleanor Houlihan and Michael Toohey's daughter. My first assumption was based on extrapolations from census records. The corrected situation is from self-reporting on Church records.
3. As the Toohey in the family, she is the connection to Mollie Toohey, and her brother is Mathew Toohey, married to Catherine, both dead by 1880 along with Eleanor Toohey. Thus taking Mollie in and raising her. Don't ask me why they never went back for Edward and Richard after moving to East St. Louis. Go back to #1. Maybe they're not the same folks after all.
4. Then why is Mary Dwyer living with Bridget and Edward and Richard in 1860? Could Mary Dwyer be an elderly aunt? Could she be Edward's mother, remarried after Edward's father, Something Blake, died? If so, then is Ellen actually Ellen Blake (since it seems clear that Mary is Ellen's mother)?
5. More important than that, WHAT IS KIDNEY? Could it be that Bridget was Bridget Toohey, married someone named Kidney, as was my first guess with Dwyer/Kidney, and then survived him to marry Edward Blake? These people's lives make me sad and tired. I have the handwriting of the priest in the Missouri state record and I know it says Kidney. Definitely Kidney. And he made no notes about widows or named her as "Mrs. Bridget Kidney" or anything useful like that. Just Bridget Kidney.
So I'm at a crossroads. I obviously need to change a few things, but it's hard to figure what exactly to change.
So step one? I'm writing to the Kansas City Diocese. Edward and Bridget (the ones I'm definitely related to, if they are different couples) were married by Bernard Donnelly, who was essentially the founding priest of the KC diocese--his first "parish" extended throughout KC and up to Independence. He is known as a visionary and historian, so it is likely that his church records contain something more than their names and date of marriage--which is what he reported to the State of Missouri. I'm including as much information as I have in the hopes that the marriage record, or the baptismal record for Richard or Edward D. contains her maiden name.
If it's Toohey, then the Kidney thing is solved. She married someone in between and there ya go. It also means that Mary Dwyer is unconnected to her--since Eleanor Toohey is the listing for her mother in East St. Louis. Mary Dwyer...connected to Edward her husband? An aunt or other elderly relative who happened to live with them?
And if it's Kidney, especially if it continues to be Kidney in the baptismal records, then I have a dilemma. They are related to me. But I have a feeling that Bridget wouldn't have said "Kidney" to the priest in KC and "Toohey" to the priest in East St. Louis. If it's Kidney, then the whole sad story of Edward and Bridget Blake and the saloon and the murder and all of that, well, it isn't mine.
I don't know which one I'm hoping for more.
I have made a mistake. If you don't care about my family history, stop reading now. Otherwise, feel free to let your eyeballs glaze over while I describe in too much, bordering on Geschwind's or Asperger's Syndrome level, detail how I made this mistake.
To quote Donald Rumsfeld: The Known Knowns:
1a) I am the great-granddaughter of Edward R. Blake. His father is Edward D. Blake. Edward D's father is Edward Blake. Ironically, this is not where my confusion/mistake stems from.
1b) Edward D's death record lists his hometown as Kansas City. I remember oral tradition regarding this as well, that the Blakes were from KC before they moved to St. Louis, for whatever reason. Teamsters? Cops? No one was quite sure anymore. Turns out there is an Edward D Blake, in 1870 Kansas City, living with Ellen and Pat Cronin, a Richard Blake who is a couple years older than he is, and an old woman named Mary Dwyre.
1c) Mary Dwyre's occupation is "lives with her daughter" which makes me assume, probably correctly, that Ellen Cronin is her daughter. Further investigation leads to a Kansas City 1860 census with a Mary Dwyer living with Richard Blake, ages match the 1870s, but Richard's parents are Edward and Bridget Blake.
1d) Then I found a marriage record where ages and dates match, in KC, for an Edward Blake and a Bridget Kidney. Yes, Kidney. What? There was some talk that the Irish name Duane was sometimes anglicized to Kidney, and then I looked and Dwyre and wondered about it. But I assumed that Bridget Kidney was sister to Ellen, and either Ellen was a Kidney or a Dwyer or Bridget was married to a man named Kidney before moving to the US (she was fleeing the Potato Famine, so a husband back home may have died or left her or who knows what).
The Not-So-Sure-I-Knows:
2a) Since Edward is not a Dwyer/Dwyre, but rather a Blake, I assumed that Bridget and Ellen must be sisters.
2b) I find no record of Bridget and Edward in 1870, but in 1880 they appear in East St. Louis running a saloon. Regular readers will remember how this story ends: they adopt a niece named Mollie Toohey/Tuohy, whom I always assumed to be the daughter of Edward's sister, or another of Bridget's sisters. Then Edward, in 1886, kills a man in his bar. The more I learn about East St. Louis the more doomed everything seems (1886 was during a major period of upheaval, wait, like EVERY period in East Saint). A week after the murder, Edward commits suicide by ingesting rat poison. Gah. Mollie takes the name Blake and in the 1900 census (there is no 1890 census, for pretty much 90% of the US population due to a fire) Mollie is married to William Rigden and Bridget is living there with them as mother-in-law.
So all this seems knit up pretty tight. I'd made the further assumption that due to the Irish Diaspora combined with the Penal Laws, that was the end of that. Edward was probably from Galway and Bridget was harder to trace: there are Dwyers here and there, Kidneys elsewhere. Whatever. There are few Irish records around and I wasn't prepared to go visit there and start digging.
I moved onto Mike's family and that's been going well. I found an ancestor with the last name of Hearley/Hurley/Herlihy and was researching that. In a google search, I found an online site with all of the Belleville Illinois diocesan records, well, a lot of them, up to the 1950s, some dating back to the mid 19th century. I found some good information on the Hearleys, proved that Mary Hearley's father was indeed David Fitzgerald, as I assumed, when it STRUCK ME.
East St. Louis is in the Belleville Diocese.
I clicked over to my Bridgett Dwyer Kidney Blake Stew (yummy) and picked up some dates. They were mostly buried in St. Louis cemeteries, so I cross-referenced and decided to start hunting. The records aren't searchable, they are simply microfilmed and stacked by parish and date. Whee. But I found stuff. Good stuff. Or bad, considering now I'm totally caught in an assumption. That is wrong.
So Mollie's wedding was first. She's there, getting married to the right guy on the right date, and her parents are listed. Edward Blake, which didn't surprise me because I'm pretty sure she was adopted as much as they did that back then, but the Bridget that is her mother isn't Bridget Blake, or Kidney, or any permutation of Dwyer, but TOOHEY. Mollie's birth parents, Mr. and Mrs. Toohey, are related to Bridget. And not Bridget's sister, but Bridget's brother. And it's not like Bridget was dead and this was a misremembering on Mollie's part. Bridget Kidney Blake is somehow a Toohey.
Now, there are Tooheys buried in the same plot as Edward Blake, before and after his death. There are other Tooheys buried with other Blakes elsewhere in Calvary. It made sense that they were on his side. But I was wrong.
And then I found Bridget's death record. It was 1904 and luckily the parish had given up on some sort of churchy pig latin and just wrote the facts out in English. She died of la grippe (the flu), which I knew, and the dates matched and all that. Her parents? Michael Toohey and Eleanora Houlihan.
Wha?
More searching led to the cholera epidemic of 1873 where the parish priest, his hand obviously tired from so much blessing and recording of deaths, wrote less information down about those who died than the usual records. 1873 in Calvary Cemetery saw more than its fair share of Tooheys, and there's a ****** Toohey buried in 1873 near Edward Blake, and a Catherine Toohey, who also died in 1873. The no-first-namer is 85. I glance through the 1873 East St. Louis church records and in the cholera epidemic find Catherine in one month and "Mrs. Blake's Mother" in another.
And then there's an 1860 census record with a Mathew and Catherine Toohey, living with a young man named Hogan (also buried in the Blake/Toohey areas of Calvary) and an Elenor Toohey. Who matches the no-name Toohey in age. No Mollie yet--she was born in 1866.
So. No matter what, Mary Dwyer is Ellen Cronin's mother and is connected to Edward D. Blake, who is 100% known to be my ancestor. His parents are 99% certain to be Edward Blake and Bridget Kidney.
And then? One or a few of the following is true:
1. Bridget Kidney/Edward Blake of KC are not the same people as Bridget Toohey/Edward Blake of East St. Louis, even though the first two disappear after 1860 with no trace and the second set don't show up anywhere at all until 1880. I find this to be unlikely.
2. Bridget Kidney is not Mary Dwyer's daughter. If she is the same person throughout this tale, which I am pretty sure is true, she is NOT Mary Dwyer's daughter. She is Eleanor Houlihan and Michael Toohey's daughter. My first assumption was based on extrapolations from census records. The corrected situation is from self-reporting on Church records.
3. As the Toohey in the family, she is the connection to Mollie Toohey, and her brother is Mathew Toohey, married to Catherine, both dead by 1880 along with Eleanor Toohey. Thus taking Mollie in and raising her. Don't ask me why they never went back for Edward and Richard after moving to East St. Louis. Go back to #1. Maybe they're not the same folks after all.
4. Then why is Mary Dwyer living with Bridget and Edward and Richard in 1860? Could Mary Dwyer be an elderly aunt? Could she be Edward's mother, remarried after Edward's father, Something Blake, died? If so, then is Ellen actually Ellen Blake (since it seems clear that Mary is Ellen's mother)?
5. More important than that, WHAT IS KIDNEY? Could it be that Bridget was Bridget Toohey, married someone named Kidney, as was my first guess with Dwyer/Kidney, and then survived him to marry Edward Blake? These people's lives make me sad and tired. I have the handwriting of the priest in the Missouri state record and I know it says Kidney. Definitely Kidney. And he made no notes about widows or named her as "Mrs. Bridget Kidney" or anything useful like that. Just Bridget Kidney.
So I'm at a crossroads. I obviously need to change a few things, but it's hard to figure what exactly to change.
So step one? I'm writing to the Kansas City Diocese. Edward and Bridget (the ones I'm definitely related to, if they are different couples) were married by Bernard Donnelly, who was essentially the founding priest of the KC diocese--his first "parish" extended throughout KC and up to Independence. He is known as a visionary and historian, so it is likely that his church records contain something more than their names and date of marriage--which is what he reported to the State of Missouri. I'm including as much information as I have in the hopes that the marriage record, or the baptismal record for Richard or Edward D. contains her maiden name.
If it's Toohey, then the Kidney thing is solved. She married someone in between and there ya go. It also means that Mary Dwyer is unconnected to her--since Eleanor Toohey is the listing for her mother in East St. Louis. Mary Dwyer...connected to Edward her husband? An aunt or other elderly relative who happened to live with them?
And if it's Kidney, especially if it continues to be Kidney in the baptismal records, then I have a dilemma. They are related to me. But I have a feeling that Bridget wouldn't have said "Kidney" to the priest in KC and "Toohey" to the priest in East St. Louis. If it's Kidney, then the whole sad story of Edward and Bridget Blake and the saloon and the murder and all of that, well, it isn't mine.
I don't know which one I'm hoping for more.
Friday, July 22, 2011
Maeve is in a Show
Earlier this summer, we went to see Circus Flora, which is St. Louis' own circus. One ring, very old school, really quite amazing. We sat in a side box right under the high wire and it was indescribably tense and wonderful. Maeve loved every minute, but afterward was melancholy because she just didn't know why she couldn't be in a show.
A show.
"Sophia gets to be in shows," she pointed out. Irish dance. I explained that Maeve was welcome to return to Irish dance to be in shows again, although the last time she was in a show, she wouldn't go on stage and pouted in the hallway. Let me just sum up the conversation here: Maeve was sad and felt small and insignificant. And I filed it in my "how can we help her to fix this?" file and kept my ears open.
My neighbor Zelda told me, just a few days later, that her son Noah was going to go to a circus camp. Now, there is a circus camp in town that all of you know, but I always feel uneasy when I go to the place where it is located even if it is spectacular and awesome. There's just something really dark and "Carnivale" about it. If you're not from St. Louis I know I've just talked in code but I think I'm clear in that I wasn't going to send Maeve there.
No, Zelda told me. It's at another place, nearby, called Bumbershoots Aerial Arts. In fact she'd taken classes there, which totally floored me (I love when I find out something new and unexpected about someone). And I checked it out. There was room in the camp. I signed Maeve up.
When we walked in on Monday, I fell in love with the place. It's an old warehouse, pristine rehab, with big windows and all these trapezes and ropes and fabric hanging from the ceiling. We were told that there would be a show on Friday and they could wear costumes. Maeve knew immediately what she wanted to wear. Maeve--she was born to do these things. She wants to be on stage. She wants to do real things and show people what she can do. And she knows the difference between fake kiddie stuff and the real deal.
This place was the real deal.
A show.
"Sophia gets to be in shows," she pointed out. Irish dance. I explained that Maeve was welcome to return to Irish dance to be in shows again, although the last time she was in a show, she wouldn't go on stage and pouted in the hallway. Let me just sum up the conversation here: Maeve was sad and felt small and insignificant. And I filed it in my "how can we help her to fix this?" file and kept my ears open.
My neighbor Zelda told me, just a few days later, that her son Noah was going to go to a circus camp. Now, there is a circus camp in town that all of you know, but I always feel uneasy when I go to the place where it is located even if it is spectacular and awesome. There's just something really dark and "Carnivale" about it. If you're not from St. Louis I know I've just talked in code but I think I'm clear in that I wasn't going to send Maeve there.
No, Zelda told me. It's at another place, nearby, called Bumbershoots Aerial Arts. In fact she'd taken classes there, which totally floored me (I love when I find out something new and unexpected about someone). And I checked it out. There was room in the camp. I signed Maeve up.
When we walked in on Monday, I fell in love with the place. It's an old warehouse, pristine rehab, with big windows and all these trapezes and ropes and fabric hanging from the ceiling. We were told that there would be a show on Friday and they could wear costumes. Maeve knew immediately what she wanted to wear. Maeve--she was born to do these things. She wants to be on stage. She wants to do real things and show people what she can do. And she knows the difference between fake kiddie stuff and the real deal.
This place was the real deal.
Monday, July 18, 2011
10 Recipes I No Longer Use
Things I've rejected in the past 15 years. From My Green Vermont, where her list was going so well until she got to the words "ice cream"....There are things on this list that might make me seem like a hoosier (non-St. Louisans can translate this as "poor white trash") and other things that will make me seem, now that I don't make them, like an insufferable snob. I'm actually probably both of those. I still make naughty things like Lemonade Pie, all cool whip and frozen lemonade concentrated-up, but I do a lot of things from scratch, inspired by my CSA and my foodie neighbor Zelda. Why make chicken and dressing if you can't make your own dressing from leftover bread? Why make bad spaghetti when you can easily learn, a bike's ride away to the Italian grocer, how to make good spaghetti? And so forth. So with that warning:
1. Chicken and dressing with canned soup. Sorry Helen, I use canned soup for one recipe (green bean casserole, which I do out of sheer laziness because I can make a mushroom sauce, frankly). I don't use this recipe anymore for several reasons: 1) I don't buy just chicken breasts anymore; 2) I don't like dressing out of a box; 3) the whole thing reeks of high sodium and lack of expertise. A college friend told me how to do this and I remember it being a go-to hot dinner choice when we lived on Compton. That was a long time ago.
2. Lipton onion soup mix beef and broccoli. Same idea, although it does use more real ingredients at least. You have to chop carrots and broccoli, for instance. But it's strips of beef, pieces of carrot and broccoli, simmered together in a lipton onion soup mix base. Sigh. This was our "Chinese" night served with white rice. Living 3 blocks from the best Vietnamese food in St. Louis, I would never do this again. Never. But when we lived on South Grand in that apartment with no clue and even less money, this seemed like a good idea.
3. Tuna in a can plus rice plus mushroom soup. Again with the mushroom soup. This one I NEVER liked. It smelled like cat food and looked like what happens when Hickory doesn't like the cat food. Mike liked this fine. I don't think he would now.
4. Cheater spaghetti. This involved a couple cans of plain tomato sauce poured over browned Italian sausage from a tube. It tasted, if you didn't think too hard, like it had simmered all day under the loving care of Nana, but really it was slapped together in the time it takes to brown sausage and boil pasta. I'm not Italian; Mike is a bit--I know Baudinos, any of them, turned over in their graves when we made this.
5. Rice a Roni. The San Francisco Treat. Yum. I love Rice a Roni. My parents would doctor this up with ground beef or leftover chicken, spinach from the freezer, peas, whatever. I did for a while until I learned how to make risotto. It became a decision of prepared food in boxes vs food made on my stove with my own skill. The latter won.
6. Fish and Noodles. Another dish from my childhood. Take one brick of frozen imitation crab (thawed), combine with a lipton noodles and sauce and frozen peas. Bevin LOVED Fish and Noodles. I liked it fine. Now I think about it and want to wash my mouth out with Joy Soap. And Bevin is now a vegetarian. My parents do cook--my dad is an awesome cook--but 4 kids and quick get dinner on the table led to a lot of rice a roni and instant noodle-foodle stuff. Nowadays they wouldn't go there.
7. Banana Bread. This one isn't because of some shameful mockery of my early attempts at cooking. I like banana bread. I like quick breads in general--I make an awesome fresh strawberry bread that makes me jump up and down with glee. But Sophia's allergic to bananas (actually to latex, but bananas are one of those crossover foods, like me with whatever tree I'm allergic to and then voila peaches make my mouth burn). And I don't like bananas enough to eat a WHOLE LOAF of banana bread by myself (Mike's indifferent, Sophia's allergic, Maeve doesn't like quick bread, and Leo is disappointed that it isn't actually cake).
8. Red Velvet Cake. Again, not because I don't like the stuff. Man. I like red velvet. But a whole bottle of artificial red food coloring doesn't sit well with my conscience anymore. When my mother-in-law makes it, sure, I'll have a piece. She does the cooked icing, not the cream cheese, and it is perfect. I'm tempted to make brown velvet, frankly, and leave out the color, but it's not high on my cake list at the moment.
9. Inside Out Ravioli. This is bowtie pasta, red sauce, sausage or ground beef, cheddar and parmesan, all kind of mixed up together. It's yummy, but it doesn't look at all appetizing. It looks like you scoop it up with a #10 scoop and plop it onto your cafeteria tray. The last time I made it Sophia asked me what the glop in the pot was. We eat a lot of pasta, but we don't do this one anymore.
10. Yellow squash with butter, salt, pepper. I was tired of the tears. I love this (yellow squash and several other foods were on my father's "Never Have to Eat This Again" list and so I never had it until college). I slice it, boil it, drain, mash a bit, and eat. I could eat an entire yellow squash by myself this way. But Sophia hates yellow squash. Maeve and Mike look at this sad runny lump on their plates and reject it. Leo doesn't even see the danged stuff. So now I do other things to yellow squash. I bake it or pan fry it or put it in pasta primavera or stuff it or anything except make a yummy buttery salty goodness out of it. Ah well.
It is very hot here. I am sure I've forgotten something extra special bad but I will leave this as it stands. Tonight's dinner is green beans from my garden, mashed potatoes from my garden, pork chops from the CSA (meaning from a pork farmer with a name instead of a corporate label and a football field sized pit of pig excrement), and canteloupe from the CSA. Eating is good these days.
1. Chicken and dressing with canned soup. Sorry Helen, I use canned soup for one recipe (green bean casserole, which I do out of sheer laziness because I can make a mushroom sauce, frankly). I don't use this recipe anymore for several reasons: 1) I don't buy just chicken breasts anymore; 2) I don't like dressing out of a box; 3) the whole thing reeks of high sodium and lack of expertise. A college friend told me how to do this and I remember it being a go-to hot dinner choice when we lived on Compton. That was a long time ago.
2. Lipton onion soup mix beef and broccoli. Same idea, although it does use more real ingredients at least. You have to chop carrots and broccoli, for instance. But it's strips of beef, pieces of carrot and broccoli, simmered together in a lipton onion soup mix base. Sigh. This was our "Chinese" night served with white rice. Living 3 blocks from the best Vietnamese food in St. Louis, I would never do this again. Never. But when we lived on South Grand in that apartment with no clue and even less money, this seemed like a good idea.
3. Tuna in a can plus rice plus mushroom soup. Again with the mushroom soup. This one I NEVER liked. It smelled like cat food and looked like what happens when Hickory doesn't like the cat food. Mike liked this fine. I don't think he would now.
4. Cheater spaghetti. This involved a couple cans of plain tomato sauce poured over browned Italian sausage from a tube. It tasted, if you didn't think too hard, like it had simmered all day under the loving care of Nana, but really it was slapped together in the time it takes to brown sausage and boil pasta. I'm not Italian; Mike is a bit--I know Baudinos, any of them, turned over in their graves when we made this.
5. Rice a Roni. The San Francisco Treat. Yum. I love Rice a Roni. My parents would doctor this up with ground beef or leftover chicken, spinach from the freezer, peas, whatever. I did for a while until I learned how to make risotto. It became a decision of prepared food in boxes vs food made on my stove with my own skill. The latter won.
6. Fish and Noodles. Another dish from my childhood. Take one brick of frozen imitation crab (thawed), combine with a lipton noodles and sauce and frozen peas. Bevin LOVED Fish and Noodles. I liked it fine. Now I think about it and want to wash my mouth out with Joy Soap. And Bevin is now a vegetarian. My parents do cook--my dad is an awesome cook--but 4 kids and quick get dinner on the table led to a lot of rice a roni and instant noodle-foodle stuff. Nowadays they wouldn't go there.
7. Banana Bread. This one isn't because of some shameful mockery of my early attempts at cooking. I like banana bread. I like quick breads in general--I make an awesome fresh strawberry bread that makes me jump up and down with glee. But Sophia's allergic to bananas (actually to latex, but bananas are one of those crossover foods, like me with whatever tree I'm allergic to and then voila peaches make my mouth burn). And I don't like bananas enough to eat a WHOLE LOAF of banana bread by myself (Mike's indifferent, Sophia's allergic, Maeve doesn't like quick bread, and Leo is disappointed that it isn't actually cake).
8. Red Velvet Cake. Again, not because I don't like the stuff. Man. I like red velvet. But a whole bottle of artificial red food coloring doesn't sit well with my conscience anymore. When my mother-in-law makes it, sure, I'll have a piece. She does the cooked icing, not the cream cheese, and it is perfect. I'm tempted to make brown velvet, frankly, and leave out the color, but it's not high on my cake list at the moment.
9. Inside Out Ravioli. This is bowtie pasta, red sauce, sausage or ground beef, cheddar and parmesan, all kind of mixed up together. It's yummy, but it doesn't look at all appetizing. It looks like you scoop it up with a #10 scoop and plop it onto your cafeteria tray. The last time I made it Sophia asked me what the glop in the pot was. We eat a lot of pasta, but we don't do this one anymore.
10. Yellow squash with butter, salt, pepper. I was tired of the tears. I love this (yellow squash and several other foods were on my father's "Never Have to Eat This Again" list and so I never had it until college). I slice it, boil it, drain, mash a bit, and eat. I could eat an entire yellow squash by myself this way. But Sophia hates yellow squash. Maeve and Mike look at this sad runny lump on their plates and reject it. Leo doesn't even see the danged stuff. So now I do other things to yellow squash. I bake it or pan fry it or put it in pasta primavera or stuff it or anything except make a yummy buttery salty goodness out of it. Ah well.
It is very hot here. I am sure I've forgotten something extra special bad but I will leave this as it stands. Tonight's dinner is green beans from my garden, mashed potatoes from my garden, pork chops from the CSA (meaning from a pork farmer with a name instead of a corporate label and a football field sized pit of pig excrement), and canteloupe from the CSA. Eating is good these days.
Monday, July 11, 2011
This. Week.
It's going to be 96+ degrees from here until Sunday. That is all I have to say. Maybe forever (at least until Sunday). We are limp wet rags here in St. Louis. Hope you are cooler (ALL OF YOU ARE I KNOW IT).
Sunday, July 10, 2011
This Week
This week we went to the botanical gardens to look at treehouses and were confused that the treehouses were on the ground. It was mystifying, actually. We'd been to the botanical garden down in Huntsville during a similar exhibit and they were actually in trees. So it didn't really inspire us, although a few were cute.
This week Mike took the girls to the Science Center to be in a large group of people during the last shuttle launch. I watched at home in the living room with Leo.
This week the kids and I met Miss Bridget at Powder Valley in what must have been 100% humidity. We hiked. Then we went to another pool after taking Sophia to a lark (girl scout program) about magic tricks. We were the only people in the pool at one point. The clouds were moving in but no lightning.
This week, though, there was lightning while Mike and I paddled around the Forest Park Lake. I made him beach the boat and we waited out the storm, which was a "pop up" thunderstorm that fizzled with no rain--but very very close lightning. We obviously survived and went to my favorite Irish Pub afterward to listen to music and eat hot wings.
This week, in spite of hot wings, I lost another pound.
This week the girls went to MONKEY JOES for a party. It's an inflatable crazy house. I was glad it was for a party and when it was done, they were done with MONKEY JOES.
This week on the 3rd of July I sat in the cul de sac in front of my sister-in-law's house and watched fireworks somewhere over the Ohio River.
This week I made saag paneer and butter chicken and some sort of potato (aloo) dish. I even made my own paneer (farmers cheese). The funny thing was that except for the chicken thighs, everything else either came from my pantry or fridge or were things that usually were in one of those places (for instance, I bought a can of tomato paste; I bought half and half). I have a collection of Indian spices from Penzey's, which has done more for my cooking than they will ever know. And my saag paneer, which is usually a spinach dish, was about 1/3 spinach and 2/3 KALE. And it was, in a word, awesome.
This week I also made a tomato pesto alfredo fusilli that I served with pan fried zucchini and cippolini agrodolce. I love Italian food names. Cippolini agrodolce, fyi, are small onions (the funny looking flat ones, we get them from the CSA) browned in olive oil and then cooked in a balsamic vinegar and sugar reduction. My kids call them onion candy.
This week we started building the treehouse. For real.
This week I noted our first baby cucumber, our first 5 baby watermelon, our first 2 baby tomatoes, and our first baby jalapeno. I picked carrots and beans and sweet peppers and harvested the potatoes--meager on those, kind of disappointing, but Zelda's were similar so we're chalking it up to a bad potato year and trying again.
This week, due to the treehouse, I moved a euonymus bush, 3 hostas, and a fern, to more hospitable climes. I debated just getting rid of the euonymus. Eh. They seem to attract flies during the hottest part of the summer. I don't think either of them (my grandmother gave me one as well) is long for my yard. Debating still.
This week Sophia decided it was time to get her ears pierced (10 is my cutoff and it is coming up fast and furious). I waltzed into the place where my sisters have gotten all their piercings, because I trust them to do it right, but alas, their cutoff age is 13. I was kind of devastated because taking my kid to the mall and having another kid, essentially, shoot her earlobes with a gun is not what I have in mind. And then the guy behind the counter at the piercing place confirmed my suspicions about how clean those guns are (which was super frustrating: he said one option is bad, but didn't offer an alternative). I know, I know, we ALL had ours done with guns back in the day, but back in the day I don't think we knew as much as we know now. And I certainly didn't get mine done at a mall kiosk with giant cinnamon buns and cell phone hawkers to distract--but I had the darnedest time finding anyone else who would do it. Everyone suggested the mall. I even called my pediatrician's office, who gave me the SAGE ADVICE: "Try to find a mall kiosk run by an adult." Really. I'll get right on that (eye roll). So I hunted around and around and finally found a "medical day spa", you know, the kind of place that does things like botox injections and body wraps and microdermaflamajamambrosia. Ridiculous things. But qualified to handle a surgical needle instead of a plastic "sterilized" gun with a stud. But this is really scheduled for next week, not this week. So perhaps we'll see in an upcoming episode how it goes.
This week, I cleaned house folded laundry hung laundry on the line took laundry off the line washed dishes paid bills cleaned up cat vomit tried to pick a paint color for the front porch.
Done with this week. Whew.
This week Mike took the girls to the Science Center to be in a large group of people during the last shuttle launch. I watched at home in the living room with Leo.
This week the kids and I met Miss Bridget at Powder Valley in what must have been 100% humidity. We hiked. Then we went to another pool after taking Sophia to a lark (girl scout program) about magic tricks. We were the only people in the pool at one point. The clouds were moving in but no lightning.
This week, though, there was lightning while Mike and I paddled around the Forest Park Lake. I made him beach the boat and we waited out the storm, which was a "pop up" thunderstorm that fizzled with no rain--but very very close lightning. We obviously survived and went to my favorite Irish Pub afterward to listen to music and eat hot wings.
This week, in spite of hot wings, I lost another pound.
This week the girls went to MONKEY JOES for a party. It's an inflatable crazy house. I was glad it was for a party and when it was done, they were done with MONKEY JOES.
This week on the 3rd of July I sat in the cul de sac in front of my sister-in-law's house and watched fireworks somewhere over the Ohio River.
This week I made saag paneer and butter chicken and some sort of potato (aloo) dish. I even made my own paneer (farmers cheese). The funny thing was that except for the chicken thighs, everything else either came from my pantry or fridge or were things that usually were in one of those places (for instance, I bought a can of tomato paste; I bought half and half). I have a collection of Indian spices from Penzey's, which has done more for my cooking than they will ever know. And my saag paneer, which is usually a spinach dish, was about 1/3 spinach and 2/3 KALE. And it was, in a word, awesome.
This week I also made a tomato pesto alfredo fusilli that I served with pan fried zucchini and cippolini agrodolce. I love Italian food names. Cippolini agrodolce, fyi, are small onions (the funny looking flat ones, we get them from the CSA) browned in olive oil and then cooked in a balsamic vinegar and sugar reduction. My kids call them onion candy.
This week we started building the treehouse. For real.
This week I noted our first baby cucumber, our first 5 baby watermelon, our first 2 baby tomatoes, and our first baby jalapeno. I picked carrots and beans and sweet peppers and harvested the potatoes--meager on those, kind of disappointing, but Zelda's were similar so we're chalking it up to a bad potato year and trying again.
This week, due to the treehouse, I moved a euonymus bush, 3 hostas, and a fern, to more hospitable climes. I debated just getting rid of the euonymus. Eh. They seem to attract flies during the hottest part of the summer. I don't think either of them (my grandmother gave me one as well) is long for my yard. Debating still.
This week Sophia decided it was time to get her ears pierced (10 is my cutoff and it is coming up fast and furious). I waltzed into the place where my sisters have gotten all their piercings, because I trust them to do it right, but alas, their cutoff age is 13. I was kind of devastated because taking my kid to the mall and having another kid, essentially, shoot her earlobes with a gun is not what I have in mind. And then the guy behind the counter at the piercing place confirmed my suspicions about how clean those guns are (which was super frustrating: he said one option is bad, but didn't offer an alternative). I know, I know, we ALL had ours done with guns back in the day, but back in the day I don't think we knew as much as we know now. And I certainly didn't get mine done at a mall kiosk with giant cinnamon buns and cell phone hawkers to distract--but I had the darnedest time finding anyone else who would do it. Everyone suggested the mall. I even called my pediatrician's office, who gave me the SAGE ADVICE: "Try to find a mall kiosk run by an adult." Really. I'll get right on that (eye roll). So I hunted around and around and finally found a "medical day spa", you know, the kind of place that does things like botox injections and body wraps and microdermaflamajamambrosia. Ridiculous things. But qualified to handle a surgical needle instead of a plastic "sterilized" gun with a stud. But this is really scheduled for next week, not this week. So perhaps we'll see in an upcoming episode how it goes.
This week, I cleaned house folded laundry hung laundry on the line took laundry off the line washed dishes paid bills cleaned up cat vomit tried to pick a paint color for the front porch.
Done with this week. Whew.
Wednesday, July 06, 2011
Dyslexie: A modest font proposal
I showed the video to Sophia and she nodded, especially at the c/e confusion part and how the font changes the letters to make them less confusing.
And then she said, "that's why I like Comic Sans."
I had always thought she liked Comic Sans because of the word "Comic" in the title. Seriously. Or because it looked like handwriting, less formal. She ALWAYS types in Comic Sans. Always. And then I looked at it more closely.
At the top is Comic Sans. Then Helvetica, and then Arial, both known for being easily readable and nice to look at. Even I can see how Comic Sans is easier. It doesn't march together vertically, for instance (I've learned that's a problem I have that not everyone has, like when I eat peaches and my mouth burns). It is more relaxed and, as she pointed out, the lowercase c looks nothing like the e or o. I and J are very different. The pbqd problem still looks like it could cause difficulties, but she says it's easier than other standard fonts. The letters "stay put".I love that, when I showed her the video, she looked at it, looked at me, and then started in with her typical "but it's so OBVIOUS" tone when we talk about these things. OF COURSE Comic Sans is the font she uses because she can READ it. It was a moment of "Duh, Mom" when I realized that the lack of language required to talk about dyslexia creates a huge gulf between our understanding. It is like talking about "red" to someone who is blind. She can't articulate what she sees because I don't see it. And I can't explain how things are because the way things are is the way things are. I can't say it any plainer and she needs it more plain.
So Comic Sans it is. Or maybe I'll download Dyslexie when it is available and give it a try.
Fifteen
Fifteen is a triangular number, a hexagonal number, a pentatope number and the 4th Bell number. Fifteen is the double factorial of 5. It is a composite number; its proper divisors being 1, 3 and 5. With only two exceptions, all prime quadruplets enclose a multiple of 15, with 15 itself being enclosed by the quadruplet (11, 13, 17, 19). 15 is also the number of supersingular primes.
15 is the 4th discrete semiprime (3.5) and the first member of the (3.q) discrete semiprime family. It is thus the first odd discrete semiprime. The number proceeding 15; 14 is itself a discrete semiprime and this is the first such pair of discrete semiprimes. The next example is the pair commencing 21.
The aliquot sum of 15 is 9, a square prime 15 has an aliquot sequence of 6 members (15,9,4,3,1,0). 15 is the fourth composite number in the 3-aliquot tree. The abundant 12 is also a member of this tree. Fifteen is the aliquot sum of the consecutive 4-power 16, and the discrete semiprime 33.
15 is a repdigit in binary (1111). In hexadecimal, as well as all higher bases, fifteen is represented as F.
Fifteen is a William Stafford poem, one of the many bits of poetry that get stuck in my head, the line being: "I stood there, fifteen."
Fifteen is a good number of girl scouts in a troop, a great number of students in a classroom, a bad number of cats in a basement.
Fifteen means you mean it. It's not just tooling around anymore. You're here and guess what, you're probably here for life. You are not waiting and seeing. You have worked out the kinks. Your arguments have moved from important topics to the meaning of that Paul Simon song, or whose turn, really, is it to change that cat litter. You have a favorite cake and a favorite movie and a favorite babysitter and a favorite city to visit and you're settling in but not settling for.
Fifteen. And we stood there, fifteen.
And as always this time of year, a story:
It's warm outside, probably midsummer like it is now. They're in the van together, traveling down to his parents' house. He's driving; she's looking out the window. Suddenly, she laughs, to herself, really, not even realizing she's audible.
"What is it?" he asks her.
"Oh, I was just thinking about the Bohr Model of the Atom."
He nods, she smiles at him, knowing he probably understands. And they drive on into the evening.
15 is the 4th discrete semiprime (3.5) and the first member of the (3.q) discrete semiprime family. It is thus the first odd discrete semiprime. The number proceeding 15; 14 is itself a discrete semiprime and this is the first such pair of discrete semiprimes. The next example is the pair commencing 21.
The aliquot sum of 15 is 9, a square prime 15 has an aliquot sequence of 6 members (15,9,4,3,1,0). 15 is the fourth composite number in the 3-aliquot tree. The abundant 12 is also a member of this tree. Fifteen is the aliquot sum of the consecutive 4-power 16, and the discrete semiprime 33.
15 is a repdigit in binary (1111). In hexadecimal, as well as all higher bases, fifteen is represented as F.
Fifteen is a William Stafford poem, one of the many bits of poetry that get stuck in my head, the line being: "I stood there, fifteen."
Fifteen is a good number of girl scouts in a troop, a great number of students in a classroom, a bad number of cats in a basement.
Fifteen means you mean it. It's not just tooling around anymore. You're here and guess what, you're probably here for life. You are not waiting and seeing. You have worked out the kinks. Your arguments have moved from important topics to the meaning of that Paul Simon song, or whose turn, really, is it to change that cat litter. You have a favorite cake and a favorite movie and a favorite babysitter and a favorite city to visit and you're settling in but not settling for.
Fifteen. And we stood there, fifteen.
And as always this time of year, a story:
It's warm outside, probably midsummer like it is now. They're in the van together, traveling down to his parents' house. He's driving; she's looking out the window. Suddenly, she laughs, to herself, really, not even realizing she's audible.
"What is it?" he asks her.
"Oh, I was just thinking about the Bohr Model of the Atom."
He nods, she smiles at him, knowing he probably understands. And they drive on into the evening.
Tuesday, July 05, 2011
Ten on Tuesday: 10 favorite herbs
Ten favorite herbs? All righty then.
1. Basil. Always basil. Basil everywhere. Pesto. Shredded in salad or pasta. In lemonade. Basil.
2. Thyme. Thyme goes into every stew and everything with chicken as an ingredient.
3. Cilantro. It wouldn't be Mike's guacamole without it.
4. Lemongrass. Spring rolls. 'Nuff said.
5. Parsley. Mike's a big parsley fan. I see it as what happens if basil and grass has a lovechild. But it's essential. Sometimes.
6. Garlic. I know, not an herb, but an allium, although we use the greens so I still think it counts. It would be second on this list except I feel like I'm cheating.
7. Dill. Essential for garlic dill pickles. And dill dip. And I love potato salad with dill. Mmm.
8. Fennel. It means pizza and sausage to me. I don't grow fennel (I grow, or have grown, all the others on this list) because I find the dried seed to suffice. Mmm.
9. Oregano. More pizza right there. I prefer it dried, is that weird?
10. Rosemary. Better fresh, best if it's sweated a bit in oil before adding whatever else is going in. I've had a rosemary "tree" indoors through some long winters. I need another one this year...
Runners up: chives, mint, sage, lavender, fenugreek, mustard. But those ten are far and away my faves.
1. Basil. Always basil. Basil everywhere. Pesto. Shredded in salad or pasta. In lemonade. Basil.
2. Thyme. Thyme goes into every stew and everything with chicken as an ingredient.
3. Cilantro. It wouldn't be Mike's guacamole without it.
4. Lemongrass. Spring rolls. 'Nuff said.
5. Parsley. Mike's a big parsley fan. I see it as what happens if basil and grass has a lovechild. But it's essential. Sometimes.
6. Garlic. I know, not an herb, but an allium, although we use the greens so I still think it counts. It would be second on this list except I feel like I'm cheating.
7. Dill. Essential for garlic dill pickles. And dill dip. And I love potato salad with dill. Mmm.
8. Fennel. It means pizza and sausage to me. I don't grow fennel (I grow, or have grown, all the others on this list) because I find the dried seed to suffice. Mmm.
9. Oregano. More pizza right there. I prefer it dried, is that weird?
10. Rosemary. Better fresh, best if it's sweated a bit in oil before adding whatever else is going in. I've had a rosemary "tree" indoors through some long winters. I need another one this year...
Runners up: chives, mint, sage, lavender, fenugreek, mustard. But those ten are far and away my faves.
Monday, July 04, 2011
Not Much, You?
What do you know?
We spent Saturday evening through this afternoon at my inlaws' house in Cairo. First time we've been down since the flood--first time since March, actually--and driving through East Cape was stunning. A little strip of road like a gray ribbon on a giant green sea. But Cairo is dry (the sand boils are still there, still giant mounds of gravel and sandbags in a field). We spent Sunday at Mike's aunt Carol and uncle John's house, playing games, eating ribs, swimming in the pool.
We went over to Mike's sister's place Sunday evening to watch the fireworks in the distance. His aunt Sheila was there, the one whose house burned last summer. Obviously the watershed moment of her entire life, of her son's and daughter-in-law's, her husband's lives. We talked about quilts. Since the house was a total loss, I knew she had lost her grandmother's quilts, but while this is true, a few were rescued because they were in a cedar chest. They were charred and stained, smelled of smoke, but she was able to get them to someone she knows through the insurance business (she works for a local agent) and they were returned to her almost good as new. No smoke smell, which seemed to be the biggest thing. The blanket her grandson came home from the hospital in was there. I start getting verklempt just writing this out again. She said, "It's not the furniture, it's not the stuff I got myself. Hell, it wasn't even my wedding ring--I never wore the dang thing, Bill couldn't wear his at work anyway--but it was these things, the quilts, the baby blanket, the fleece blanket Bridgett made. " And I understood. And was glad we were sitting in the dark because I was crying.
Today Mike's sister brought her girls over and the cousins played together and no seizures and no asthma and no fights (the last is the big surprise). We drove home on a surprisingly clear interstate for a holiday weekend. Ordered pizza for dinner and I started on this year's Christmas projects. It's going to be table runners and place mats this year for the adults and quilts for the kids again. Leo and Sheila's grandson are getting trains. I don't know about the 5 girls on my list. I started Steve and Mary's tonight. I think I have a good idea.
Now I'm up, everyone else is asleep (I had more coffee when I got home). Beans are soaking for tomorrow's chili. Listening to the illegal amateur firework displays (and wondering how many will be visiting the ER tonight). Boom.
We spent Saturday evening through this afternoon at my inlaws' house in Cairo. First time we've been down since the flood--first time since March, actually--and driving through East Cape was stunning. A little strip of road like a gray ribbon on a giant green sea. But Cairo is dry (the sand boils are still there, still giant mounds of gravel and sandbags in a field). We spent Sunday at Mike's aunt Carol and uncle John's house, playing games, eating ribs, swimming in the pool.
We went over to Mike's sister's place Sunday evening to watch the fireworks in the distance. His aunt Sheila was there, the one whose house burned last summer. Obviously the watershed moment of her entire life, of her son's and daughter-in-law's, her husband's lives. We talked about quilts. Since the house was a total loss, I knew she had lost her grandmother's quilts, but while this is true, a few were rescued because they were in a cedar chest. They were charred and stained, smelled of smoke, but she was able to get them to someone she knows through the insurance business (she works for a local agent) and they were returned to her almost good as new. No smoke smell, which seemed to be the biggest thing. The blanket her grandson came home from the hospital in was there. I start getting verklempt just writing this out again. She said, "It's not the furniture, it's not the stuff I got myself. Hell, it wasn't even my wedding ring--I never wore the dang thing, Bill couldn't wear his at work anyway--but it was these things, the quilts, the baby blanket, the fleece blanket Bridgett made. " And I understood. And was glad we were sitting in the dark because I was crying.
Today Mike's sister brought her girls over and the cousins played together and no seizures and no asthma and no fights (the last is the big surprise). We drove home on a surprisingly clear interstate for a holiday weekend. Ordered pizza for dinner and I started on this year's Christmas projects. It's going to be table runners and place mats this year for the adults and quilts for the kids again. Leo and Sheila's grandson are getting trains. I don't know about the 5 girls on my list. I started Steve and Mary's tonight. I think I have a good idea.
Now I'm up, everyone else is asleep (I had more coffee when I got home). Beans are soaking for tomorrow's chili. Listening to the illegal amateur firework displays (and wondering how many will be visiting the ER tonight). Boom.
Saturday, July 02, 2011
Some Leo For You
Ah, child of countless trees.Ah, child of boundless seas.
What you are, what you're meant to be
Speaks his name, though you were born to me,
Born to me,
Cassidy...
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