Overheard Coming from the Bathroom...

...in a belligerent tone, as if squabbling with his sister (except he's in there alone, washing his hands), Son insists, "Don't do what I do, Mirror Boy!"

Four Stores Later: Bathing Suit Achieved!

Many thanks to those of you who weighed in on my bathing suit dilemma. One thing I finally concluded is that, really, brands do matter. So to accommodate my frugal self while still satisfying my desire to wear something other than a garbage bag (or seersucker) to the pool at the gym, I decided to make a last-ditch effort at Marshall's before contemplating dropping more serious money at a swanky department store (cheap department stores clearly not making suits for tall people over the age of 17). The results? SCORE!

And because many of you are asking about the suit, and unfortunately photos of bathing suits on hangers just look like shreds of cloth, here are some photos...with apologies beforehand to anyone who finds the need to run away with burning eyes.

Calvin Klein and Michael Kors, you are my new heroes. I got not one, but two suits. A lovely chocolate brown courtesy of Calvin.


And a navy blue tankini that Michael Kors seems to have designed specifically for the woman with a long torso.

And the best part? The combined price of these two gems was $45. Which is why I obviously had to bring them both home.

Also [distract distract distract] isn't this antique mirror that we got for a wedding present really just the loveliest thing you've ever seen? I adore it.

How to Name a Town: First, Find a Barn...

The following was originally posted as a guest post on 'Twas Brillig. I'm archiving it here too, so I can keep it as part of what I think might become a little series on local history.

I live in a Michigan town that was once generally known as "Podunk." I kid you not. The government website for my town records this fact on its History page, as an introduction to information about the official naming of the town. What the government website does not say is that the 1827 meeting to choose a name took place in the barn of one of the town's founding citizens, a fact which to me seems poignant and important. These were pioneers, literally, who were looking to establish the legitimacy of their little hamlet. They had no township buildings, no civic location in which to meet, and so they chose the most logical of places: large, roofed in, dry, and associated with the gumption of the very first settlers, the Tibbits' barn served as their town center. It does not seem a stretch to conclude that the impetus for that meeting was the desire to resist Podunk becoming the recorded name on maps and government documents.

At this meeting, I have also learned, there was much discussion in favor of the name Peking, in honor of the general interest in all things from China. There is, in fact, a town in Michigan called Canton, presumably for the same reason -- a reason which, in the 1820s, also inspired the Prince Regent (later King George IV) of England to decorate Brighton Pavilion (his seaside palace) with a crazily "Asian" room in which he placed everything that seemed like it was probably Chinese or Japanese, or whatever, he wasn't picky, including fantastical wallpaper painted with giant stands of flowering bamboo. I've seen it. The pink-and-ivory orchid-like flowers are enormous and lush. Bamboo doesn't actually flower at all, let alone flower like a Hawaiian orchid, but verisimilitude was not the strong suit of our 1820s forefathers. What they wanted was the fantasy of Chinoiserie. And so, in the case of my town, they -- stout settler stock that they were -- contemplated the name Peking.

For reasons that are unclear, despite its popularity, Peking was abandoned as the town's official name in favor of LeRoy. Honestly, I could not make this stuff up if I tried. With a perceptive forward-thinking apparently far beyond that of the eager settlers, the Governor of the Michigan Territory (it was not yet a State), chose to approve instead the second choice name that the settlers put forth. It was a name I am sure they felt was no where near as romantic and lilting as LeRoy. At least, I assume they felt that about LeRoy. To me, that name is practically synonymous with "junk yard dog," but presumably in this pre-rock-and-roll era, it sounded exotic. Or something. Anyway, thanks to Governor Cass's eminently sensible judgment, I live in a town with a perfectly ordinary name, one that the Puritan settlers of New England happily bestowed upon many towns -- a name like Portsmouth, or Salem, or Haverford.

I'm sure at this remove of time, it would not matter if I lived in Peking, Michigan instead. It would not be any different than living in Versailles, Vermont (pronounced VER-sails, with a nice hard "r" in there). Which is to say, I would still be a Michigander, and the name of the town would have no particular resonance, no specific connotations, except to occasion a wondering query, "What were they thinking?"

But I do wonder, now that I know this history, what life would have been like for those early settlers if Peking had carried the day. Would they have felt more worldly? Held themselves a little straighter when they announced with pride the name of their town? Felt secretly pleased that they had taken the public step of labeling their town as different from those already-old towns of New England? Would they have felt particularly modern to live in a town called Peking in the Territory of Michigan? Even though they would never travel to China themselves, would probably never meet a Chinese person, quite possibly never even speak to a soul who had been to China, would they have felt proud that they were doing their part to enter into the increasingly global economy, to participate in becoming world citizens, by naming their town after one halfway around the world?

A part of me thinks they would have. And admires them for it. In 1827, still ten years away from becoming the 26th state, Michigan was wilderness and farmland. Settlers worked long hours carving farms out of the fertile soil. Tibbits is credited with bringing the first pony to the area. Say what you will about the problematic dynamics between settlers and Native Americans (what you say will be true); life in such a place was certainly not easy for the new settlers.

Perhaps the fantasy of China, the dream of the exotic, glimmered in those settlers' minds for a while on that February night in 1827. Perhaps they, with their work-worn hands and woolen clothes, stomped their thick boots to keep warm as they discussed the choice of a town name and quietly hoped to grasp what little they could of the reported glories of travel.

In the end, they chose a name less explicitly foreign (LeRoy) and, as one might argue is endemic of Midwestern farmers, offered up a second choice that was incredibly safe. The Governor, of course, preferred the latter. But like the questioning speaker in Robert Frost's "The Road Less Traveled," I wonder what would have happened in the formative years of my town if boldness had prevailed. And I am pleased to be reminded again that however much we twenty-first century citizens see ourselves as responsible for the phenomenon of the "global village," that shrinkage was already beginning nearly 200 years ago through the hard work and gleams of vision that filled the lives of people who lived in a place that was nearly named Peking, Michigan.

Today's Bonus Post

As promised, today's installment of the Green Up Your Thumb series is right below this post. But if you've had it already with the flower photos, or you just want something different to read, go check out my guest post today on 'Twas Brillig -- an interesting little story about a town that officially changed its name from Podunk.

Brillig's got a lot going on right now, as she's in the middle of a move, so for the next month, she'll have a new guest blogger every weekday. If you want to meet some new people, her place will be a great one-stop shop for doing so. And stick around till she comes back, too -- she's one blogger it's worth waiting for.

Green Up Your Thumb, part 3

Deciding where to put the plants in your flower beds is something that can be directed mostly by your whimsy. If you choose plants that suit your growing zone, soil, sun/shade, and water parameters, then beyond that, you can do whatever you like. Make a whole bed of white flowers if that's what you fancy. But if you don't know what you fancy, or you like the look of mature flower gardens you see elsewhere, and you're not sure how those looks are achieved, here are a few principles that might help guide you.

Bloom time.
Think about keeping your flower bed as beautiful as possible for as long as possible. One way to do that is to include flowers that bloom at different times. The little tags in the pots will tell you if they are spring, summer, or fall bloomers. Aim to have some of each in your garden. For example, I have a bed in which both of the following are happening at the same time.











Because the tulips are waning, it's nice to have something else with promise.

And within a day or two, the iris bloomed fully, so that it doesn't matter at all that the tulips have all been trimmed back and are now just leaves.


Color juxtapositions.
Some people like to have whole beds that are filled with different textures and shapes of flowers that are all the same color. Personally I prefer juxtapositions of color. I put pink bleeding hearts next to blue forget-me-nots; red tulips springing up amongst clumps of yellow daffodils. If you are really interested in juxtaposing particular plants, they will have the best impact in clusters. Although single stems often look excellent in a vase, they tend to look lonely and sparse in a flower bed. So, rather than alternating a single daffodil with a single tulip, plant a large clump of daffodils, and accent them with three tulips planted close together.

Height.
Plant tall next to short, and take advantage of the natural shade provided by taller plants to include shade-loving low ground-cover flowers like Sweet Woodruff. In the same way that clusters of colors juxtaposed look nice, variations in height are pleasing to the eye.

Consider multiple focal points.
Unless your house is located inside a snow globe, chances are people will be looking at your garden from a lot of different angles: the street, the driveway, the yard, and -- importantly -- from inside the house out the window. Almost no flower bed, except one right up against a windowless wall, has a "back," so keep in mind multiple vantage points before you choose to position all the tallest plants at what seems to be the back of your bed.

Spread.
Some plants grow very quickly from bare root to full height. With perennials, particularly those in colder winter climates (up to about zone 7 or 8), it is very common for the plant to die back to the ground in the late summer or fall, and then to grow back bigger each subsequent spring than it was the previous year as the root structures gain in size. This is why the planting directions on little tiny starter plants will sometimes tell you to place those palm-sized plants 18" apart. If you've ever done this, you will know that your garden looks sparse and silly for that entire first year, and sometimes even throughout the second. There are two solutions to this: (1) plant perennials much much closer together than the directions say, and then divide the clump in a year or two, as it starts crowding itself; (2) plant them as far apart as the directions say, and then put annuals between them for a year or two, until they get established.

Be prepared for some slow starting.
If you plant mostly perennials, you may find that some of them take a year or two (depending on how big they are when you start, and how finicky they are as plants) to get well established. Translation: not everything you plant will flower the first year. Don't panic. Just let them settle in, and you'll be well rewarded. You may also find that some plants that are scraggly the first year(or even two) self-seed and propagate like crazy once they get established. Take my columbine, for example. For two years, I thought that they weren't going to make it at all. They were all the size of that little plant at the top. This year, they are so prolific that they are threatening (in a good way) to take over the whole foreground of one of my flower beds -- and they are giant like the lower photo.



Avoid too much symmetry.
It's a guideline for many visual things: odd numbers are more appealing than even. You will find that planting in groups of three of the same, or one "specimen" plant surrounded by a larger number of others, is most visually pleasing. Similarly, unless you live at Versailles or some other exceedingly formal residence, flower beds that are laid out asymmetrically are more attractive. Consider anchoring one side with a shrub, and the other with a large group of shorter more feathery plants for example.

Use foliage to your advantage.
All leaves are not the same shade of green. There are bright clear ones, variagated ones, ones tinted silver, ones streaked with purple, and some that have no green in them at all. This is worth keeping in mind to maintain interest in your garden even when nothing is blooming, or between bloomings. Paint with foliage, not just bloom. Juxtapose small feathery mounds with tall spikes, broad purple leaves with succulents that are green tinged with lavendar.

Don't be afraid to experiment.
I've planted plenty of things that have failed. I've planted others that barely survived, others that I have moved two or three times until they found a spot they liked. When things succeed, I always feel like it's at least half out of luck. Keep in mind, even if the plant grows and thrives: nothing you plant is in a permanent home except a tree. Anything smaller than a tree (or a very large shrub) can be moved in a matter of minutes. So if you don't like it, don't be afraid to dig it up and move it somewhere else!

******************
For the rest of the Green Up Your Thumb series, see here:
Part 1: Planning
Part 2: Selecting Plants
And on the next two Fridays, look for
Part 4: Gardening in the Shade
Part 5: Maintenance

To the large, goateed, shaven headed, tatooed man at my gym

who spent half an hour
doing volleyball serves
with a beach ball in the swimming pool
so that your son and my son
could chase after the ball,
tumbling over each other like puppies,
and laughing as they splashed:

Thank You.

I noticed how you very carefully,
without saying anything at all,
kept track of who had reached the ball first
and made sure to swat the ball next in a direction
the other one would be most likely to reach quickest.
Nobody had to remind them to share
because you ensured that they would pretty much take turns
coming up the winner.

I noticed how you let them work it out
when they began a squabble,
and I noticed how you matter-of-factly
thought to make sure my son
felt as much a part of the game as your son,
even while keeping a close hand on your toddler
in a life vest.

I don't know your name, but I do know this:
any child would be lucky to have
such a father,
and your sons are fortunate indeed
to have such a man for a role model.

Gratefully,

The woman in the brown bathing suit
who enjoyed a lovely playtime with her own toddler
in the kiddie end of the pool
while her older son had a ball.

Ten (More) Random, Useful Things

I've been compiling this list for a while, so I thought I'd send it on out there. Got any more tips to add? Toss 'em into the comments! We'll all thank you.

1. Soak pans containing cooked-on starches (rice, potatoes, oatmeal, etc.) in cold water rather than hot. The stuff will release from the pan much more quickly. (Thanks, Fawn!)

2. Make pancake batter in the blender. It's less mess to clean, since you can pour right from the spout to the griddle: no ladles or drips on the counter to clean afterwards. Also, if you want to sneak in a little extra goodness without the kids knowing, you can easily do so. Things you can add into pancake batter without anyone noticing, as long as you're using the blender: 1/2 block tofu OR one apple, quartered and cored (don't bother peeling) OR 1 medium sweet potato (steamed and peeled) OR 1/2 cup whole oats (you will need to add a bit more milk).

3. Use vinegar to help keep clothes colorfast. Add 1/2 cup white vinegar to every load of dark laundry, or use 1/8 cup in your hand laundry -- especially when washing sweaters -- to keep them from bleeding. (Thanks, Mr. Lady!)

4. Shake out, rather than vacuuming, small throw rugs and bath mats. They get much cleaner this way, and you don't have to fight to keep the vacuum from sucking them up. Instead, just take small rugs outside and give them a good shake and pounding. For really small rugs, you can shake right onto the floor if you're in the process of vacuuming anyway, and then vacuum up the crumbles.

5. Eggshells attract eggshells. If a little sliver of shell gets into your bowl as you're cracking eggs to scramble, don't use your finger to chase the sliver around. That could take all day. Just dip a large piece of the shell into the eggs, and you'll be able to scoop out the sliver in a jiffy.

6. Run your kitchen sponge through the dishwasher every time you do a load to keep it clean and fresh longer.

7. Your own spit will remove your own blood. If you can bear to spit on your cuffs when you've gotten a paper cut, go for it! (Thanks, I think, MIQuiter.)

8. Zippered, mesh lingerie bags made for the washing machine are your friends. You can keep one in each laundry hamper to receive dirty kid-sized socks, and then just zip it up and toss the whole thing in the wash. You'll never lose another tiny sock behind the washing machine drum again. Or, use one to hold all the bibs you have to wash, so that their velcro tabs don't snag up everything else in the load.

9. Use 1/3 of a capful of liquid laundry soap rather than the full cup the detergent says to use. The clothes will still get clean, but the soap residue will dissolve better and hence be less likely to form a film in your drain lines. The upshot? Less stinky washing machine parts (you know, that sweaty gym bag smell that sometimes plagues the washer? GONE.)

10. If your kids resist veggies... try simmering a pot of carrots, beets, sweet potato, squash, and/or other things orange/red in a small amount of vegetable broth until extremely soft. Then, puree the whole thing, and freeze in an ice cube tray. Keep the ice cubes in a ziplock bag, and toss in a few any time you make pizza, pasta, or anything else with a red sauce. (For reference, one Tablespoon / year of age = one serving of veggies.)

I know there's not a whole lot to say about a list like this. But I'd love it if you would give me your favorite cooking or household tip in the comments. Anything that will make my life easier or enable me to go to bed even 45 seconds earlier each day will be most appreciated.

Because the Best Thing about Prom is the Story

It's prom season, and you know what that means: drunk (on life, obviously; they know they aren't old enough to drink legally) and dressed up teenagers in various borrowed, midlife-crisis convertibles driving around with the wind in their corsages until it's dark enough to park by the soccer field and sneak under the fence into the (deserted) University President's House park so they can get pregnant kiss under the stars all romantic-like. Oh, yeah, and somewhere in there go to some lame dance the school is putting on so that they can take photos, and compare dresses and dates, and figure out who has the best stash of after-party booze Doritos.

Or, if you're less cynical and more romantic. It's prom season, and you know what that means: the perfect dress, loveliest shoes, most fragrant corsage, handsomest date, most delicious dinner, great dancing, best photos, most romantic afterparty, and a lifetime of "ohhh...Trey...you are sooo wonderful..." ever after.

I don't know about you, but in my experience, there is an awful lot of hype around prom that may or may not bear any actual relationship to the evening itself.

But proms sure tend to leave in their wake (in addition to the mascara covered, sobbing popular chick) a giant pile of fabulous stories...once you get old enough to see the humor in teenage "tragedy."

So, I'm proposing a little prom retrospective -- complete with side ponytails, and fluffy dresses, and blue eyeshadow, and all manner of fabulousness. Dig out the old photos, reminisce, tell the truth about what really happened that night (not the version you told your mom, but the version you told your best friend). Take the next week to think about it, and then on Tuesday, June 3, in honor of all that is lithe and lovely, or too dumb to know better, post your story for the rest of us.

Feel free to grab the button for your post. And be sure to tell all your friends it's prom season again! Then come back on June 3 (that's next Tuesday), and add yourself to the Mr. Linky you'll find here. And read everyone else's True Prom Story. You know you want to. All the cool kids are going to do it.

The Animals Have an Agenda at Your Local Zoo

The Zoo can be a very educational place, as long as you are willing to be open-minded about what counts as education. For instance, here is what I learned on our trip to the zoo yesterday.

We all know peacocks are very beautiful creatures. They know it too.


They prance around, and strut, and preen, and generally show off extensively. They also have an extremely loud and distinctive cry -- almost a shriek, really, but without the tone of panic. It sounds preternatural and disturbing. But all of this, I already knew, since we used to live across the street from a family that kept peacocks, emus, and other large birds. But what I did not know until yesterday is that if you put a shrieking peacock alongside a gaggle of interested ice-cream eating children, the children will shriek back at the peacock, imitating its pitch and cadence exactly, but half under their breaths as if they are not sure they should be doing this. And when a whole bunch of kids under the age of eight or so spontaneously and simultaneously make a peacock's cry back to a peacock, it is so hilarious you will choke on your ice cream.

Gorillas have strangely human looks on their faces. Yeah, yeah, whatever...primates are genetically close to humans, yadda yadda yadda, not news. But when you come home from the zoo, and start messing with your photos, you will realize that when the gorillas munching handfuls of grass got up and walked around on the other side of the huge rock to eat some more, and the crowd of people furiously snapping pictures of them eating then disbursed in frustration -- the gorillas weren't just moseying around. They looked at all those annoying people, and thought with some disgust, "Can't a gorilla eat her lunch in peace already?" and quite deliberately moved out of sight of the paparazzi.

Camouflage is the new black in rhino fashion these days. If it weren't for the few shreds of grass in the foreground, you could hardly see this rhino at all. And that's the way she likes it, see. Which is why she's wearing stone-colored tones these days.

Zebras -- and, really, a photo of this would send this blog right into another league it doesn't want to join -- that is to say, male zebras, have a member that's apparently a "grower." Because I've seen this herd of zebras on every visit to the zoo, and I've never noticed anything untoward. But yesterday, I saw all two feet long of it, after witnessing something that looks a lot like dancing, if zebras danced on their hind legs or men danced on the backs of women. And (in case you need more learning about zebras): the rest of the zebra herd likes to watch when all of this is happening. And apparently, zebras are no where near as prudish as "higher order" mammals, because even the little foals will stand around in that semi-circle of watching wonder and gape until the deed is done. Whereupon the crowd will disburse and go off to munch grass as if nothing extraordinary has just happened, and as if a male zebra, with a two foot long you-know-what hanging nearly to the ground, is not wandering around all wibbly in the knees and punch-drunk with love.

Thank goodness our children were still absorbed in the painfully slow process of digging frozen lemonade out of a paper cup with a plastic spoon that's barely strong enough to lift a bite of yogurt, so I didn't have to explain why that one zebra had five legs.

All of which has led me to conclude that the the movie Madagascar has it completely right. The animals in the zoo know exactly what people are all about. And they get their kicks out of messing with our heads.

The peacocks are actually running a betting pool: "Hey guys, watch this, I'll bet I can get this batch of kids to scream in unison!"

And the zebras are the ring-leaders: "All right, every body gather round; let's teach them a thing or two about voyeurism."

The only animals that didn't seem to be having a laugh at our expense were the docile giraffes.


Though, who knows, maybe this one is really thinking, "Suckers! They actually paid extra to feed us, when we were going to get fed either way."

Visit here for more laughs today.

Apparently I Need a Nanny to Dress Me

I always thought that this


and this


and especially this

were overkill. Silly. For wimps. Frivolous. Stupid expenses. For suckers. A ha-ha *snort* why would anyone buy it kind of gardening "tool." You know, for tools.

Until this

proved me wrong.

And the moral of this little pictorial essay is: just because it's the first warm, sunny day in weeks doesn't mean you ought to bust out the shorts for the Memorial Day Weekend Ivy Abatement & Landscape-Fabric-and-Mulch Installation Marathon.

Of course, I also chose this weekend to start purging my closet of pants. I know, not the brightest bulb...

The Pants in My Family

Look, I know it's a holiday weekend, and you probably have a date with some guacamole, chips and a beer, but can we talk about pants for a moment? Here's what I know about pants. They have the following options:


high-waisted a la Katharine Hepburn (good)


high-waisted a la Mom Jeans (bad)


pleats (bad) // flat front (good)



hip huggers a la Three's Company (depends on your hips)


low rise a la the hip and fashionable (depends on your hips AND your underwear--or lack thereof)





low rise a la the absurd (depends on your ability to stay perfectly vertical every second of the day so as to avoid Hot Fashion becoming Stone Cold Plumber's Butt (those first three links take you to girls who really just shouldn't have; the last is for the actual plumber's photo credit)


and then there are pants that are just a joke (one hopes)

Moving below the waistband (assuming your pants haven't already taken that liberty for you by removing the waistband altogether), the options include:

straight leg (good)

skinny leg (disaster. if you're below a size 6, you don't have a pants problem, so don't gloat. just wear your skinny legs if you must. preferably on a very bad hair day to be fair to the rest of us.)

boot cut (fine if you're wearing boots)

tapered (what is this 1985? if they have an ankle zipper, back away slowly)

flare (fine if you're yachting)

bell bottom (fine if you're Marcia Brady)

capri pants (once called cropped; long ago known as clam diggers; timelessly good for looking summery and pretending you're Audrey Hepburn)

cropped via rolled-up-cuffs (good for splashing in puddles)

very long with cuffs (elegant)

culottes/gauchos (good. if you've never heard of these, you were born after 1973; but you do know what they are; you just know them by the far less simple name of "those slighly swishy calf-length pants that look really great with high boots in the winter" -- doesn't roll off the tongue quite as nicely as "culottes," now does it?)










Here's what I don't know about pants:
what is in style right this very second?

As you can see, there are a lot of options, and I haven't even begun to get into the whole fabrics question. (No, the question is not to acid wash or not to acid wash; I do know that much.)

But here's what I really really really want to know about pants: do you think it's great when a woman wears the looks that suit her body type and personal style? Or do you think *sniff* how outre when I she shows up somewhere in tailored wide-legged cuffed wool slacks when everyone else is wearing the super-skinny stretch-wool pant?

Because it's clean-out-the-closet weekend here at Chez MommyTime, and I'm tired of tripping over fashion "dos" that just seriously don't on me. So I want to purge them all (which I know is good). But some of what I want to keep is not "fashionable" -- it's just "classic." I look good in Katharine Hepburn's pants. And those are the ones I prefer for work. I look like crap in boot cut (which are always too tight in the thighs). I know better than skinny jeans or bell bottoms or ultra-low-rise on me.

But do I have to pay attention to the catwalks and the magazines and choose fashion pants? Or can I wear what makes me feel good, even if it's cropped when everyone else is wearing drag-your-cuffs-in-the-dust long? Or whatever.

Honestly? Finding flattering pants is nearly as hard as trying to buy a bathing suit. But I did have this brainstorm: if you buy pants that are made to cover a whole pair of underwear, you can avoid the dreaded muffintop by actually covering it with a waistband. And you don't even have to buy mom jeans to do it. All you need is to do is channel Katharine Hepburn.

Green Up Your Thumb, part 2

So, let's say you've chosen the location for your flower bed--or it's been chosen for you courtesy of the previous owners of your home, or through the vagaries of temperamental grass that refuses to grow in that one shady spot, or whatever. And you've done a little observing of the soil, water, sun/shade, so that you have some idea of the parameters you're working with. And you've read some gardening books (or at the very least enjoyed a cup of coffee while admiring all the pretty pictures). And now Saturday is coming up, and you're all excited to go buy some plants.

Where do you go to spend that money? How do you choose which plants to buy? And how many? And of what size? Here are some things to keep in mind when answering those questions.

Where to Go
There are basically three types of places to buy plants: dedicated nurseries, garden centers that are part of big-box stores, and online. I buy most of my plants at Home Depot's garden center for two reasons: (1) I'm incredibly lazy, and Home Depot happens to be 1/2 a mile from my house, whereas all the nurseries are miles away; (2) I'm pretty cheap, and since most of what I buy is an experiment (it might thrive, or I might kill it deader than dead in a single season), I prefer to buy the more inexpensive versions.

It's no secret that big-box stores sell plants for much less than do nurseries. The internet is even cheaper. In general, here is the difference in quality for common plants at these three places: nothing. If you want to buy plants that are of your everyday garden variety, generally easy to grow and hardy in your area, and of a decent size, a big-box garden center is your place.

If you want specialty plants, shrubs (which are far more expensive than flowering plants), or young trees that are bigger than your Kindergartener, then go to a nursery. Why? First, because a nursery will have a big staff to help you choose. If you include the cost of killed-through-incompetence plants in your overall assessment of how much it costs to fill your beds, then a nursery can be a real boon. For example, a nursery staffer would have pointed me to willow bushes, which I didn't know existed, and steered me away from forsythia when I said I wanted something to plant in a very very wet spot, thereby saving me at least $40 in dead forsythia. Although you'll spend more per plant, you'll be far less likely to make a costly mistake such as purchasing precisely the wrong shrubs for your spot. Second, many nurseries have guarantees, so that if the things die within a year, they'll replace them for free. I still don't use nurseries for my general bedding flowers, though, because I find they are twice the price as the same plants at Home Depot, and I don't need that kind of security for a $3 plant (make that $6 at the nursery).

Plants online are generally the cheapest of all, but in many cases it's a false economy. Sure, you may get a dozen bleeding hearts for $8, but when they arrive, you will find that each plant is the size of your thumb. It's far better to spend $10 at a big-box gardening center, buying three lush plants that will flower this year and make your garden already look a bit filled up. On the other hand, I use online gardening supply centers for things like bulbs, which only come in one size anyway, since there is a far greater selection online than I can find at any local supplier, and the prices can't be beat.

How to Choose
I'll assume you will be choosing plants that suit the sun/shade requirements of your spot, which is the most important consideration for keeping them happy and healthy. But some plants are more finicky than others, and there are some important things to consider when making your choices.

For the most failsafe gardening, choose indigenous plants, or ones that naturalize easily in your area. Naturalize is a fancy way of saying they'll grow wild in the woods, or along streams, or in the ditch by the railroad tracks, if someone accidentally drops them there and no human ever does another thing to help them along. They'll be hardy, and they'll reproduce quickly and with minimal effort on your part (like my Lily of the Valley, to the left). The easiest way to find out what these are is to buy a Field Guide to your area -- you know, one of those books designed to help you identify plants on your nature walks. That will show you pictures of all sorts of things that thrive in the local soil. (Be careful, though, not to choose things that are just fancy weeds -- such as Queen Anne's Lace -- or you'll never have another thing in your garden again because they'll go so crazy reproducing. If you stick with things you can buy rather than things you actually dig up in the woods, you should be fine.) If that's too high maintenance for you, then at least use this link to look up your gardening zone, if you are planning to shop online. (Anything sold at your local gardening store will theoretically grow in your area, as long as you pay attention to its water/sun requirements.)

When selecting plants to put together in one bed, aim for continuous interest. Look at the little tags in the pots to see what the stated bloom time is. This is important because although many things you buy in a big-box store will be forced (have their timing tinkered with so that they'll be blooming when you're shopping), if you buy perennials, they will revert to their natural cycles once they are in a real outdoor climate rather than a greenhouse. "Aim for continuous interest" means choose some things that will bloom in early spring, others in late spring, some that bloom in summer, others in early fall.


In the picture above, for example, you can see that the pink Bleeding Hearts have prominence in this bed right now, and the little Sweet Woodruff (white flowers) and Forget-Me-Nots (blue) form a carpet under them. The Sweet Woodruff blooms almost all summer, so it makes a lovely border for this shady bed. The Forget-Me-Nots will last till mid-summer, then just be foliage. The Bleeding Heart will die back completely by mid to late summer. But by the time they do, the broad leaves you can just see in the background on the right will have grown into mature and very large Plantain Lilies. These in fact fill up the entire back half of the bed, and a few are planted very close to the Bleeding Heart in the foreground. That way, once the early plants begin to die back, the later plants are springing up. In late summer, as the front of this bed begins to look a bit thin, the rear of this bed has two-foot-high stalks of giant trumpet shaped white flowers...so you don't even notice that the earlier plants are gone. (And, by the way, I only figured out what bloomed when and died back when after about five years of gardening in this particular house, so don't assume you'll get that just right immediately. It's an experiment. But it is something worth keeping in mind as you're buying. Even though it all depends on whether the rabbits eat up every single shoot the minute it bursts forth or not, anyway.)

Perennials or Annuals? The Big Debate
I spend nearly all of my planting money on perennials, which I think of as plants designed for long-term gratification. It's okay to buy them fairly small, since each year they'll get bigger and better. To the right, for example, are two shots taken of the same plant (can't recall its name). I planted the lower one a year ago as a little bitty thing (the size that comes in those little plant six-packs). I took these photos from the same vantage point, so you could have a clear sense of the difference in scale. The bottom one has not only grown tremendously; it's also spawned offshoots including the one above. I planted six of these; only three survived, but there are already two new plants -- and the whole batch cost me about $3. Clearly, this will be a good ground-cover for this shady spot within another year.

One important thing to know about perennials is that many of them will not flower the first year, as they are busy building root structures and gathering strength. Also, since they can increase dramatically in size over time, you have to space them a bit further apart to give them room to grow -- or you have to be prepared to divide them up once they do get too crowded.

This is where annuals are useful. If you buy 2/3 or 3/4 perennials and 1/4 to 1/3 annuals in your first year, you can fill out the bed with faster-growing, fully flowering annuals to give some time for the perennials to take hold. If you are going to do this, intersperse them, so that next year, you can put new perennials in the empty spaces left by the annuals. Keep in mind, if you find a perennial in a gardening book, but that plant is not hardy (meaning it won't make it through the winter/summer) in your zone, you may still be able to use that plant as an annual. Snapdragons, for example, are perennial down South, but work just beautifully as a summer annual here in Michigan.

Don't be afraid of bulbs. Perhaps the most gratifying thing to plant is bulbs. Why? Because you put them in during the late fall, when all your other gardening tasks are about pruning and watching the leaves come down, and then they sit there working their magic over winter, and suddenly one day you wake up to glowing puddles of fabulous Crocus welcoming the springtime. Glorious. They are exceedingly easy to plant, especially if you get one of those little hand-held bulb planting gizmos which looks like a slighly cone-shaped tub with a handle across the top; you poke it down into the soil, and remove a plug, drop the bulb in, and then replace the soil. Easy as pie. (Hard to describe -- ask the folks at the garden center to show you.) Keep in mind that each bulb will produce one plant, which may mean one flower or multiples, depending on the plant. For the best impact, you should buy at least a handful of the same bulb and plant them close together. I flaunt the spacing directions for bulbs all the time. I dug big holes and put 20 or so daffodil bulbs in each when I was transplanting mine. The impact is much greater. Just don't crowd the bulbs in the hole -- leave at least an inch or two of space between each one -- and be very careful about how deep you plant them. Too much soil above them and they won't flower; too little, and they may dry out or freeze to death in winter, literally.

As for what specific plants you choose: pick the things you like. Choose color combinations that make you happy. Buy enough plants to form pleasant little groups, but don't feel the need to fill every square inch of the bed right away. Part of the fun of gardening is its continuousness. You put in a few plants, see how they go, add others to complement, move some around, add again, rearrange, till you get it the way you like it.

* * * * *
For the rest of the Green Up Your Thumb series, see here:
Part 1: Planning and Assessing the Flower Bed Site
And coming on subsequent Fridays
Part 3: Laying out Flower Beds
Part 4: Ideas for Gardening in the Shade
Part 5: Maintenance

If Dora the Explorer Drank Coke

Our kids aren't allowed to drink soda except on very rare occasions. Ginger ale when recovering from stomach flu is a given; anything else is a special treat. In addition, they know that they are not allowed to have any drink that has caffeine in it. There are plenty of other reasons we don't let them drink soda, but that's the easiest way to explain to them why they can't have Daddy's diet Coke.

Yesterday, while driving to the gym, Son exclaimed enthusiastically from the backseat, "Mama, Mama, I see a big red truck just like the one I saw yesterday -- the one with the caffeine sign on it..." He paused and considered, then added, "We-ellll, actually, I don't know what it really says, but it means caffeine."

It was easy to tell what he meant, though I hadn't spotted the truck myself. I replied, smiling, "It says Coca-Cola, honey."

To which he responded knowingly "Oh, yes, Coca-cola. That means caffeine in Spanish."

Want a Bite?

Know what I'm eating right now? BOTH heels (the best part) of a loaf of fresh sourdough bread, toasted, and slathered with homemade chocolate icing.

How much do I care that this is not exactly in my diet? This much. []

Besides, I worked out today. (You remind me of my meatballs and macaroni-and-cheese for dinner, and I remind you I had a very large helping of broccoli too, thank you very much.)

And also, nom nom nom -slurp- nom, sip of chammomile tea, nom nom.... sorry, must run.

You should try this sometime. Seriously.

Cleanliness is Next to...

...Procrastination? Insanity? Someone Else's House? You pick.

Those of you who have been reading here a while might recall a little survey I put up about household cleanliness. What? You don't recall the survey? Well, perhaps you are younger than 87 years old, since I think it's been about that long since I put up the survey and then promised a post right after the survey closed to reveal my own level of household chaos.

I could plead general busy-ness, the distractions of life, unexpected house guests, getting ready to teach summer courses, my newfound obsession with the greatest gym on earth... But the truth is probably somewhat simpler: I have been a little reticent to reveal my own abysmal housekeeping skills to what is clearly a crowd better organized, tidier, and generally more adept at this whole cleanliness thing than is my family.

The original poll question, for those of you who have only limited energy for recalling random useless information, asked how long you have to clean in preparation for a play date at your house. Here are the results:

I do no special cleaning -- my house is always quite tidy: 0 [with much gratitude to you all for your honesty, by the way; I think I might have died if most of you picked this one]
15 minutes or less -- just a quick toy pick up and sweeping: 8 (16%)
Up to one hour -- toy pick up, bathroom, floors: 18 (37%)
One to two hours -- toys, bathroom, vacuuming/mopping, serious kitchen tidy: 9 (18%)
Over two hours -- toys, house-wide tidying, floors, bathrooms, kitchen, and other panic: 4 (8%)
Clean schmean -- love us, love our mess: 5 (10%)
Don't ask, don't tell -- I pick neutral locations away from my house for play dates: 5 (10%)

So, as promised, even though 53% of you have a cleaner house than mine, and only 8% will admit to having a house messier (though 20% of you don't exactly identify how messy your houses are; you are just comfortable with the status quo), here is what you would find if you said you were coming over for a playdate at 10am but actually showed up at 8am (because it will take me darn close to two hours to get ready for your visit).

<-- Here's what the dining room looks like on a typical day. The costume bin has belched forth its contents onto the floor; the table is the receptacle for all manner of things that no one can be bothered to put in their proper places; the archway to the living room is adorned with festive silver beads and red-and-white ribbon (so what if these started out as Christmas decorations? They aren't that holiday specific.) And on the right, you'll find what the rest of the floor looks like on a particularly bad day, courtesy of The Dog Who Showed That Diaper a Thing or Two about Who is Boss.

Venturing into the kitchen, really the only thing you need to see is My Nemisis, The Pile:

Not much needs to be said about The Pile. It contains mail, kid art, markers, video camera tapes, photos, envelopes whose return addresses need to be recorded in my address book as soon as I find the book, and other Important papers that (hopefully) won't cost me finance charges if I don't see them again before a certain date. Though I should point out that this is really a Baby Pile or a Practice Pile. Clearly someone went through the real Pile recently, and this is just the seeds of what it will become in the next week or so.

Below, we find the typical end-of-the-day state of our family room. Not exactly a ferocious mess, just lived in, right? Where lived = rambunctious running, "spoon fights," fort building, and a general lackadaisical attitude towards the matching of containers with contents.

And here is what I will accomplish in those two hours, with a little help from the kiddos (if I'm lucky):

I did get Son into the act of cleaning this room, while Husband was on bedtime duty with Daughter. When we finished, Son got two Girl Scout cookies as a reward for his solid half-hour of work. "What about Daddy?" he asked. "Daddy didn't clean, so he doesn't get cookies," I replied. (Daddy is on a diet, but Son doesn't know that.) Son's eyes sparkled. "And," I said, "we still have lots of cookies left. So every night we are going to have a cleaning project, and whoever helps the most gets TWO cookies when we are done." He could hardly wait to go to bed so that he could wake up and it would be tomorrow and he could clean again.

This may constitute evil bribery in some people's books, but honestly, it's the only way I could think to try to keep the place tidier. In an effort to combat the need to clean frantically for two hours before visitors arrive, we've also instituted a cleaning chore during Daughter's naptimes a few days a week. Mondays are bathroom cleaning day. He looks forward to the excitement of spraying cleansers and scrubbing all weekend. I know this will change as he gets older, but for now, I'll take whatever help I can get.

If you were coming over to play, we'd tidy, and vacuum, and scrub for you. And we'd bake muffins or put some pizza dough ingredients into the bread machine, or make some other tasty preparations -- because we love eating, and we love eating yummy things with our friends even more.

What would we not do? Dust the knick-knacks.


We love you, but we just don't have that kind of time.

*** If I haven't alienated you completely with that last photo of my gross ineptitude, I'd love it if you'd leave a comment: what's your best tip for cleaning maintenance? You know, the thing you've got down to a science so that it always looks the way you want it to in that one little corner? I figure, if I pool everyone's tips, maybe by the time you come over for a play date, I'll be able to spend 1 hour and 45 minutes of my two-hour prep time cooking something extra fabulous and checking my email over coffee. ***

The Empty-the-Pantry Challenge

Husband and I both love to cook. On our second date, I went to his house for dinner, and he made me a delicious Thai curry -- with sauce from scratch. We spent our years in graduate school cooking together, cooking for each other, having dinner parties, and generally enjoying food every chance we could get.

Fast forward 10 years, and we have two children, two full-time jobs, and far less time every day than we used to. We still love to cook, but on a daily basis, we tend to do what I think of as "cheater cooking." We'll throw rice in the rice cooker, chop up some chicken and veggies for a quick stir fry, and then pour on some delicious organic sauce from Trader Joe's. Or we'll rotisserie a chicken and just have steamed veggies on the side. On "ambitious" days, he'll make a big pot of Tortilla Soup, which involves mincing all the random bits of peppers, corn, onions, or other appropriate veggies we've got lying around, sauteeing some chicken, and tossing it all together with crushed tomatoes, water, spices, and (of course) tortilla bits. It's a very good soup, but hardly up to our previous standards of curried squash or whatever else we used to do that was more complicated.

Please understand, I'm not criticizing your cooking here, simply lamenting the falling off of our own creative outlet. We are both toss-and-taste cooks. Which means that although we like to read recipes a lot, when it comes time to cook, we do so by feel and taste more than by measurements (except when baking): we toss into the pot whatever seems right, simmer a while, taste, and adjust with more tosses.

What all of this has translated to lately is that we buy a lot of shortcut ingredients -- packages of Japanese curry sauce cubes, jars of Mojito Marinade, organic pasta sauce, bottles of plum chipotle dipping sauce, and so on. Ever on the lookout for things that will enable us to cook lots of different kinds of foods quickly, while not compromising our food standards (no hydrogenated oils, no high fructose corn syrup, no empty calories except as an occasional treat), we have a tendency to buy lots of interesting looking jars that slowly make their way to the back of the pantry or fridge as new jars full of interesting flavors get put up front.

So, our fridge and pantry (and freezer; we're always stocking up on promising cuts of meat / poultry / fish that are on sale) are full to bursting. It's annoying. They're so full we can't find anything, and then we just end up buying a fourth can of coconut milk -- and no one needs that much coconut milk with no specific plan to cook a single recipe that calls for coconut milk.

I know that the food organized among us recommend weekly meal plans to combat this wasteful purchasing. But toss-and-taste cooks, even ones who find it necessary to prepare an entire meal from scratch in under 20 minutes because the children are melting down before their very eyes, get all twitchy when you suggest making a weekly meal plan. It interferes with their cooking mojo, which depends on spontaneity. (Nevermind that the kids are eating eggs and tortillas for the second time this week because of lack of time to cook something more complex. The last shred of our former love-to-cook selves is contained in this illusion of spontaneity. Let us keep at least that.)

So, because we are also a bit controlling, and we both love a good bargain, I started an Empty-the-Pantry Challenge with myself. (Yes, I know you have to be pretty type A to enjoy a contest with yourself. Whatever. I'm an oldest child.) The best part of this challenge's design is that it fosters creative cooking while at the same time reducing the excessive grocery hoarding that plagues our cupboards. Here are the very simple rules:

(1) Grocery shopping happens only one day a week. (Previously, we'd stop by the store while out doing other errands at least three times a week. This led to a lot of impulse purchases.)

(2) The only items that may be purchased on grocery day are fresh fruits and vegetables, dairy products, and staples that have been emptied in the past week or won't make it till the following Monday (e.g. flour, soysauce, coffee). In all cases except staples, purchases should reflect quantities that can reasonably be eaten in a week. After all, it's not like we won't be back at the store next Monday.

(3) The purchase of any more sauces, marinades, simmer mixes, fabulous flavor bases or novelty ingredients (dates? a can of escargot? we have both in our pantry right now!) is completely forbidden until the ones we've got are used up, even if this takes until next January.

(4) The purchase of any more meat/poultry/fish of any kind is completely forbidden until every last shred of a given protein food currently in the freezer is gone. So, no buying hamburger if there's any other cut of beef in the freezer, even if the hamburger is gone.

(5) Meals will continue to be well-balanced.

Now: COOK!

It's amazing what has happened as a result. For six weeks, I bought not a single bit of meat, fish or poultry, not a single sauce. I cut our grocery bill in half every week. I can see the pantry shelves. And, we got creative again. It's become a fun challenge to see what I can rustle up using a box of corn muffin mix, black beans, one pork chop, and two huge ripe red peppers. (The answer? A cumin-spiced stew, that also contained onion, garlic, lime, and cilantro and tasted great with a side of cornbread.) Now that I've been doing this for a while, the grocery bill has climbed up a little, as I have to buy some meat and canned goods. To help avoid the impulse buys ("it's on sale, buy several!"), I'm trying hard to make the first grocery shop of the month be the one where I restock the freezer and canned goods; then all other shopping trips follow the rules above. This way, things don't languish in the freezer for months, and I don't overbuy every single week.

So, if your grocery bill is getting you down, or you're tired of those packages of unidentifyable meat that end up at the bottom of your freezer, or you have 8 packages of half-used pasta on your shelves (which we did at one point!), try this little challenge. You'll save on gas by not running constantly to the store; you'll save money by eating what you've already got; and you might even find yourself inspired to pull down a cookbook again in order to find a recipe that features some ingredient you forgot you ever had.

But don't say I didn't warn you if an unintended consequence of this is that you have to spend two hours scrubbing down the inside of your refrigerator once you can actually see it again. I'm not the one who let the apricot jam dribble down the back of the shelves behind 28 jars of pickled something and three half-eaten loaves of bread. Honest. I'm not.

Letter to My Daughter from MultiplesMommy

To My Beautiful Ballerina,
As I watched you dance across the stage last night, more poised and beautiful than any almost-six-year-old has a right to be, I realized with painful force that you, my darling girl, are a baby no more.

Gone are the days of your first recital, when you toddled across the stage, all roly-poly goodness, spinning the opposite direction from your neighbor and forgetting where to put your arms. You were so excited that year to dance on stage. The very fact that you were going to have a real, live tutu like a “big” ballerina was enough to make you giddy. You told anyone that would listen that Mama was going to put real lipstick on you. The energy and excitement was beautiful to watch, and the sheer cuteness of you in costume made me laugh with joy. I cried through your whole performance and shouted louder than anyone when you were done. I was so proud of my baby girl.

Last year you remembered a few more steps, and delivered them in a sweetly crooked preschooler fashion. Auntie M came to watch, and she sobbed to see you in your pink tutu and crown, dancing with a fierce concentration that was broken occasionally by giggles at the friend dancing next to you. You clung to me a little as I left you in the Green Room, then ran to chat like a teenager with your friends. Perhaps you were not poised or polished, but you were having a ball. I made you a ballerina cake to celebrate your success, and it was all you could talk about for months afterwards.

And then came last night’s performance. I did not expect that much, I’m ashamed to say, having watched the disjointed practices you conducted at home, punctuated by “hmmm, I’ll just do four of these ‘cause I don’t remember how many we’re supposed to do” and “aaaahhh, I don’t know what comes next!” Sure, I watched the dress rehearsal, dutifully recording your efforts on film, but rehearsals are always a disaster. So when I settled in my seat last night, your sister on my lap, I expected another endearingly amateurish performance. But, my girl, you blew me away. The memory, as I write, brings tears to my eyes. You have achieved grace. Granted, only a glimmer of a smile showed through your focus and concentration, but unlike the other little girls, you held yourself like a ballerina, executing each step with determined precision. You spun. You sashayed. You pointed and tapped, and all the while you held your arms in a graceful curve in front of you. You are almost six, and you are a real ballerina. And though it makes my heart break just a little and tears fill my eyes to say goodbye to your babyhood, my first-born beauty, I am so incredibly, amazingly proud of the girl you have become. I love you so very, very much.

Your Loving Mama

On Being Four

If you try to explain to a four-year-old that it's really much easier to rip duct tape than cut it, he will not listen. Because he already knows it is "the strongest tape in the world," and obviously mere human hands will not be sufficient to sever such strength. And so he will INSIST on using the scissors. And you will be wise to let him work on this for a while on his own. You will probably be able to answer several emails or enjoy an uninterrupted cup of coffee while staring dreamily out the window before he finally wanders into the kitchen and presents you with this

and says, "Mama, can you help me? I've tried every kind of tricks and it just won't cut."

* * * * *

If your four-year-old accidentally pulls down a bath towel from a high towel hook, and you have trained him well, he will try to hang it up again.

If you just say nothing and watch, you may wonder why he is pulling over the bathroom scale to stand on. Just keep watching. He will probably stack onto the scale the little box that holds the wet wipes for cleaning unmentionable places when toilet paper is insufficient. Since that stack is only 8" high however, and the hook is a good six feet in the air, he will need to add something to what you will realize is his growing step ladder. Try to restrain yourself to silent laughter when he adds a very large baby doll to the top of the pile and then stands on her face to see if NOW he can reach up to re-hang the towel. (He can't.) Be suitably impressed when he chooses to put the magazines from the floor on top of the scale and under the box of wipes, as they are large and will indeed work best at the bottom of the pile. Do not wonder too hard why there is an icepack in your shower because you won't be able to answer that question. Do feel free to fall off the potty in complete hysterics when the icepack is added to the dolly's chest and he finds in frustration that even now he cannot reach high enough. But when the whole pile slides out from under him thanks to the slippery magazine pages and the precariousness of the dolly's chest as a resting place for an ice pack, do not make it clear that you are laughing at him. Obviously, you are only laughing at the one-legged baby doll that used to be your pride and joy when you were five, and that now must suffer eyelash-less as a stepping stone for domestic chores.

Beach Blanket Bingo, Anyone?

I tortured myself going bathing suit shopping yesterday. And no, this is not going to be an "ohhh, I'm soooo fat!" post; I have another point entirely. And that point is: why have bathing suit designers decided that all females are either sporting the adolescent aesthetic or grandmas? Seriously, I tried on approximately 1,487 bathing suits yesterday. This is not to mention the 3.2 million I left hanging on the racks as ones I would not touch with a ten-foot-pole. Can you say sparkly metallic horizontal stripes and butt cleavage on a one-piece suit?!?!? I can say it, but I sure as heck won't wear it.

So, if I leave the tramp suits, and the pre-pubescent-body suits, and the tacky colors in faux 60s patterns so hideous that I feel like my eyes are on fire just from looking at them suits, I am left with a very large array of suits with little skirts on them. Skirts that hit at precisely the wrong place, which is the point where my leg moves to because it is attached to my hip. And once you are out of diapers, your bathing suit skirts should be either a hair longer than that or shorter so that you can actually see the bathing suit panty -- because otherwise, you just look chunky. Well, I look chunky. And I'd venture to guess that most grown-up women's legs don't look nice cut off there either.

Ruling out tramp, teenie bopper, chunky and grandma suits left me with a sea of chocolate brown (which is a color I love, and one that loves me back) and one other suit.

I tried every permutation of chocolate brown I could get my hands on. They all looked classy, promising, sassy, mature-but-not-frumpy, or some other version of positive as long as I left them on the hanger. On my body, they were one disaster after another. I have a long torso. (Whatever happened to the simple, elegant one piece with the tag that said "long torso bathing suit" on it?) So the top half of most of the tankinis stopped in some awkward place designed to enhance the width of the rear view 100-fold. Three inches longer, and they'd have been flattering. As it was, I was afraid someone would start cracking Hindenburg jokes watching me walk across the pool deck at the gym. Or giraffe jokes. The one-piece suits were stretched uncomfortably taut with necklines that looked like a bad face lift desperately seeking to cover what was supposed to be covered.

Know what suit looked good on me? It was a green and white striped seersucker two piece with a halter-shaped top and hots pants with pockets for bottoms. Yes, it's true. Someone stole Annette Funicello's bathing suit from every 1960s beach party movie she ever made and tried to sell it to me. Why did this suit look good on me? In part because it is a suit designed for someone with actual hips.

But because my husband is not Frankie Avalon, and because bikini at the family swim time at the gym?, and because green-and-white seersucker?, I did not buy it.

So tell me, all knowing readers, how would you answer those questions? Do mothers of a certain age belong in bikinis at the indoor gym swimming pool? I'm not prudish, and I actually have a bikini that I like for the beach. But I'm in the market here for a suit that I can wear while catching kids who are jumping off the side of the pool and into my waiting arms, and somehow a bikini seems inappropriate.

And, seriously? Green and white seersucker? (That picture is so NOT my body; just a badly stitched together representation of the style of said suit. The green on the one I like is about the color of the inside of a real lime. And, in case you didn't catch this before, it's seersucker.) How quickly should I have backed away? Am I crazy? And where can I find a suit that's reasonable, not too matronly, and made of a fabric/pattern that a grown up who is not starring in any beach movies any time soon has any business at all wearing?

Oh, and that doesn't cost $100--because we're talking about a suit that is going to get some hard knocks at the swimming pool while chasing after two preschoolers and probably carrying them around and having the velcro on their sandals snag the fabric. Unless it's seersucker. Which doesn't snag like regular bathing suit fabric. Of course.

No Segues Have Been Harmed in the Creation of This Post...

...because none have been used at all. Fair warning. You may proceed.

Yesterday's Foolery post about a completely insensitive first-grade teacher sparked a little memory of my own. In first grade, it was a well-known rule that one was not allowed to have a pencil in the cafeteria. Adult me wonders "Whaaa?" and thinks that rule seems to have no purpose behind it. Child me thought, "that rule is stupid and has no purpose behind it -- and if it's a dumb rule, there's no reason I shouldn't break it." We had to sit in alphabetical order at the lunch table. My last name started with K, and my best friend's last name started with B, and even at five I was a dorky little serious geek, so I was pretty lonely at lunch time. One day I snuck a pencil into the cafeteria because I thought that when I was finished eating, I could write stories on my napkin till lunch hour was over. (Spell check doesn't think snuck is a word, by the way. What else could possibly be the past tense of to sneak?) There I was, happily starting to compose a little something on my napkin, when in swooped the teacher from behind and snatched the pencil, her long red fingernails scraping the back of my hand in the process as she hissed in my ear, "NO pencils in the lunch room!" I was mortified. And bleeding. And goody-two-shoes enough not to do so much as look her in the eye for the rest of the day let alone ever try that again. And adult me is still outraged. 33 years later.


Conversation at our house a few days ago
Son: More milk!
Me: [not looking up from computer] Excuse me?
Son: More milk please
Me: [pause while typing]
Son: Can you get me some more milk, please?
Me: Well, I'm right in the middle of something; I'll get you some in just a minute.
Son: [without missing a beat] Are you in the middle of camping, or working on your computer, or flying on a rocket?

Apparently, you can ignore a child into politeness, but you cannot remove the smartass.


THEOREM
To keep your computer mouse grease-free, do not eat leftover fried chicken while scrolling through your blog reader.

COROLLARY
Or, hire a cleaning service named The Dog Who Would Lick Anything.

Green Up Your Thumb, part 1

Having flowers around my yard -- purposeful flowers, not just volunteers on prickly stems -- makes me happy. Faced with a career that offers little in the way of completed-project gratification, and with the fact that children, no matter how often you cook and clean, WILL get hungry and WILL need those same clothes washed again, I find that gardening provides great rewards in the form of visual proof that I have finished something. Although flower beds are never truly "finished," there is a deep sense of satisfaction in seeing a thing you plant sprout, stretch, bloom, and yes, even fade. The cycle is blissfully short, gratifyingly repetitive. And so, I plant a lot. The kids like to get into the act too, helping with hand shovels, donning child-sized gardening gloves, learning the names of flowers, choosing plants. They can plant, water, and tend -- and they love to do so.

If you have very young kids, or if you have no real estate, flower boxes are the perfect option. Placed in a sunny windowsill, on a balcony, or even on the front stoop, they can provide a bright blast of color as well as a good activity for some together time. This spring, I gave each of the kids a flower box, and they've had fun choosing, smelling, and tending the plants.

But if you're like me, maybe you also have a little corner of yard you've been itching to turn into a flower bed, or you have a bed that's been too long neglected, or you want to take on some kind of bigger project. However, as I've found, ambition and reality don't always mesh in the world of gardening. In our first house, I spent days trying to turn tired, resistant topsoil into a flower bed. By the time we moved out, all I'd succeeded in doing was creating a very large, largely barren, spot with a few spindly stems in it. In this, our second house, I have been far more fortunate with rich, dark earth that will grow almost anything. The flip side, though, is that the beds surrounding the house (and there are flower beds on every side of the house, including four large ones out front) were almost completely overtaken by ivy when we moved in five years ago.

PSA: A word of advice to anyone considering using ivy as groundcover anywhere within 200 yards of a built structure or a tree: don't.

When we bought this house, it was 25 years old. And 25 years is a good long time for ivy to take root. I have been systematically removing it, one bed at a time. It takes hours and hours of backbreaking work to pull, untangle, pull some more, dig up, pry, and eventually uproot the stuff. It's stirs up a world of dust, which is a treat for my allergies. And it provides an arm, back and hand muscle workout not to be rivaled by anything in a gym. (What, you didn't know you had muscles in your hands that you could actually exercise? Come to my house this weekend, and I'll let you pull some ivy so you learn all about them!)

And then, once the beds are empty, you have to put something in them. This is the fun part, and daydreaming about this is the only thing that gets me through the ivy-removal stage.

I was lucky to have lots of daffodils, tulips, mums, and daylilies -- and once I got rid of the ivy choking them, they sprang to life. Of course, then I had to transplant most of them, since they were planted with exactly the same amount of forethought and planning as the ivy had been (read: precisely none). For example, the daffodils were on the borders of most of the flower beds. Which is gorgeous while they're blooming. And awful once they're done, since they are the very first things to bloom, and then you have to allow the leaves to wither on their own because that is how they feed the bulbs for next year's flowers. And trust me, when your summer flower beds are bordered with the slowly wilting, yellowing two-month-old remains of green daffodil leaves, you will be sorry: the border is the first thing anyone sees, and if it's an unkempt mess, the rest of the bed looks so too. (In the picture here, for example, the tall daffodil leaves are positioned behind the multi-colored hosta, which will be even taller in another week, by which point I'll be able to gently tuck the daffodil leaves down, so that the hosta takes prominence but the daffodils aren't cut back too early.)

I've posted pictures of some of my flowers before. And I've gotten "I wish I had your green thumb" comments. But the thing is, it's more trial and error than anything else. Every year I plant some things that fail and others that thrive. My yard looks better than it did five years ago, but nowhere near what I'd like it to be. Still, over time, I've amassed a collection of tidbits that serve me well in making planting choices, and I've learned a lot about what I like in a garden. I initially started this post to pass along a few of my favorite strategies, but, just like my garden is never finished, I found that really there were too many to digest in a single post. So I'm going to have a little series here. Because, frankly, anyone can garden. And you might as well save yourself some hassle and learn from my mistakes.

So for today, we'll start with the first important step: selecting and assessing the gardening site. Here are some things to consider:

* Start small and focused. It is so tempting to jump feet first into an 8' x 20' bed that will make a big impact running across the front of your house. But it takes lots of time to prepare a bed and do the work of planting and maintaining. And unless you have a fortune to spend on plants, so that you can buy nursery-grown mature ones, it also takes t.i.m.e. for plants to grow and fill up your bed. So you are better off starting relatively small. That odd triangle where the walkway meets the driveway, perhaps, or a modest square bed around the mailbox, or a raised kidney-shaped bed under a lovely tree. I'm going to assume that if you have to dig/create the bed from scratch yourself, you will read some gardening books that will give you tips on sod removal, weed abatement, tilling and enriching the soil, and so on, as those things take some time to get into. But what if you have a few neglected beds or spots already nearly ready to be flower beds that need attention? My advice: pick only ONE of them to tackle this year. With focus, you'll be able to make that one really shine, and then next year, you can take on another while easily maintaining the first. A smaller area, artfully planted and full of flowers always looks much better than a bigger area sparsely planted.

* Study the sun/shade requirements of the site. Make notes about the times of day your bed gets sun, and think, too, about whether that changes at different times of year (say, when the leaves come off that tree you're looking at right now). You need to know if your bed has:
full sun -- direct exposure to bright sunlight for at least three hours between about 10am and 4pm;
partial sun -- exposure to strong, filtered sunlight during those hours (say, because there is a high tree protecting ground-level plants from direct light), or exposure to direct sunlight early in the morning or late in the afternoon, plus more filtered light at midday;
partial shade -- protection all day from direct sun, but still receiving quite bright light; or
full shade -- the deep shade produced in a forest, for example, where multiple layers of trees form a canopy that prevents any bright light from reaching the low plants.

* Pay attention to water/dryness patterns. Is your bed in an area that gets a lot of runoff from your roof? Drainage from the neighbor's property? Or is it raised and not likely to retain water? Is your local soil heavy in clay or high in sand? (You can tell this by digging up a shovelful and checking the consistency -- if it has a lot of clay, it will be hard to break up damp clods of earth; if it has a lot of sand, it won't form lumps easily at all.) You need to know what kind of drainage the area has, since some plants prefer soil that is always damp, while others are good in arid conditions. You can always compensate by adding water, but you can't easily take water OUT of your soil (apart from adding sand into your soil mixture, to help facilitate faster drainage). In a single year, I lost about $40 worth of forsythia bushes that I'd planted, when I didn't register the fact that the area I was planting in was literally under water for a month each spring. The water table is so high here that 4-6" of water sits on the surface of the soil in that area, and even when it recedes, the soil is far far too wet for these bushes. I killed them all by planting them in that spot; their roots literally rotted out from under them. If I'd picked willow bushes instead, which grow on riverbanks and will suck up as much moisture as they can get, I would already have a lovely hedge along the back edge of my property.

The moral of that little story (apart from: think ahead) is that you don't have to believe the gardening books that tell you to amend your soil like crazy to make it perfect. Sure, once you know the basic parameters of your soil, you can always add a bit of extra peat moss, or fertilizer, or sand, or clay, or whatever you need for the texture. But you don't have to. There are plenty of native plants that grow in the native soil -- you just have to figure out what they are and stick with them. (More on this in a subsequent post, when I talk about choosing plants.)

For now, just figure out what kind of soil you have, and then prepare it for some planting.

* Remember, landscape fabric is your friend. If you have a lot of weeds to get rid of, you will be best off digging them up. If you have just a few, pull them. If you're somewhere in between, you may choose to spray them dead. If you do, read the directions on the bottle carefully, to be sure you don't plant new things too soon. Whatever method you choose, once you've got the soil free of weeds or grass, put down landscaping fabric to keep the weeds down. You can buy this in rolls, with little metal U-shaped stakes, at any home improvement store. For less than $10, you can cover a large bed with this fabric and "pin" it to the ground. It's porous enough to let rain through, but resistant to anything sprouting through it. It does an excellent job of keeping down weeds. And if you're intending to plant just several large shrubs or centerpiece plants rather than lots of small ones, you just cut an X in the fabric where you want locate the shrub, and plant it through the fabric. You have to mulch over the fabric for the bed to look nice, but then, you hardly ever have to weed anything ever again. (Note: this only works for beds that you don't intend to fill with lots of flowers which you hope will propagate themselves. Even if you do want that, you can still use this fabric to keep the weeds down while bed planning is underway.)

* Do some research. First, figure out what planting zone you live in. Things that grow back every year in Michigan won't necessarily do that in Florida, and the reverse; some plants require a deep freeze over the winter in order to germinate, while others will be killed by a light frost. So you need to know your planting zone to choose plants wisely. Although, generally, your local nursery will mark plants as annuals or perennials according to the local weather, when you move on to the next phase of research, the zone numbers will be handy. Second: buy some books that feature plants appropriate to your area. Better yet, go to your favorite bookstore, buy the biggest latte they have, and cozy up with the gardening shelf and browse lots of books for ideas. Look for plants that suit your planting zone, sun/shade, water, and soil conditions. Make lists of ones that you think are pretty. Smile a lot. Drink more coffee. Look at lovely photos. Read some more. Eat a cookie. Smile. Take more notes. The planning should be a delight. Go to bed, and dream about flowers. Repeat often throughout the process of preparing your flower bed to receive its plants.

**************
The rest of the Green Up Your Thumb series is forthcoming on Fridays.
Next up: Part 2: Buying Plants
Part 3: Laying out Flower Beds
Part 4: Maintenance

The Von Trapp Family Has A Rival

And to add a little levity to your day...

Big Sis' ballet and tap recital is this weekend. She's been practicing every afternoon, and low and behold, the twins have managed to pick up not only the steps, but the words of this astoundingly inappropriate song for a group of 5 -year-olds to be dancing too. But hey, what can you do...



I asked her on the way home from dance class the other day whether she wanted to take ballet again next year, and she said, "Well, Mama, I don't know. They make me move my feet too much, and my feet are really kinda' tired. I think I'll take gymnastics instead." Alrighty then.

Don't Let the Genes Get You Down

Have I mentioned that we are a family of over-extenders? Not as in ElastiGirl. As in Can'tSayNoGirl. As in, "oh, you need three pans of brownies for the bake sale? This afternoon? No problem." As in, "someone needs to supervise the class play rehearsals every day for three weeks for two hours without any other help? Sign me up." If not saying "NO" to a project were a superpower, my family's superhero uniform would have this on the chest:

If not saying "NO" were an Olympic event, there would be a serious competition between my sisters, our mom, and me to see who would win the gold medal. But know this: our family would make a clean sweep of that podium.

We don't just take on too many projects; we make the ones we have bigger. Need a birthday cake? Choose a shape and design that requires five colors of homemade icing. Getting married? Cook your own food for 110 guests. Feel like gardening and frustrated by the dirt patch where grass won't grow? Decide to move a 10 x 10 fieldstone patio from the sunny side of the backyard to the shady spot, including putting down the proper layers of rubble base and patio sand (twenty 50 lb. bags for each layer). And do it all yourself because your husband has two herniated disks and shouldn't carry flat slabs of fieldstone that are two feet in diameter. And, of course, need a Halloween costume? Spend two hours and $27 at the fabric store, and then come home and spend 6 hours building (that's the term costume professionals use -- they build costumes, not make them; make is for amateurs with glue guns) something that involves papier mache, gold braid, and pintucks and looks good enough to show up on Broadway.

Which is why I call THIS real progress:

What is it, you ask? Why, it's my proof that one can resist genetic predispositions and thirty-eight years of conditioning. In other words, it's the scraps from the "ghost outfit project" I did with Son yesterday morning.

Having fantasies of a long, flowing white robe, complete with a hood that had an insert of tulle for him to see through, I stood in my pj's in the kitchen, considered the hassle, and marched upstairs and pulled an already-self-destructing pillow case out of the linen closet. With two firm jerks, I completed the removal of the hem that was already coming loose. I pulled the case down over Son's body, marked spots with my fingers, and with a few snips of my good scissors produced eye and mouth holes. And voila! Son was thrilled. Truly. And three and a half minutes after I started, the ghost outfit was complete!

Trust me when I say that this was a world record in my family. When I waved the little scraps of fabric in his face and touted this as a major accomplishment to my husband, he replied, "Yes, and I do love a completed project."

Because if you're doing ten projects at once, it will invariably take ten months to complete all of them, rather than spending one month per project. Huh. Go figure. Maybe I'll have to start "ghost costuming" my yard. And my bathroom renovations. And all my new projects. Who ever said you couldn't teach an old dog new tricks?

On Acquiring Language(s)

I love language. (I know. You're shocked.) I love the sound of a poetic description, the feel of another's words in my mouth as I read aloud. I love the play of sound and meaning that comes from a well-wrought sentence. In college, I once wrote an essay about a book I have called Lost Beauties of the English Language, a dictionary of sorts that lists many of the wonderful words that have slowly worked their way out of everyday speech. Words like gloaming (the time just before twilight -- isn't that lovely?).

Now, I have a great time watching my children absorb new words and try to use them. Conversation on Sunday at our house:

Me: blah blah blah [can't recall what I was talking about] blah exuberance blah blah
Son: What does ex - u - ber- ance mean?
Me: It means when you have lots of energy and you're just so happy that you can't imagine anything else being better.
Son: [with a tone of complete understanding] Oh! Like how I felt today in the swimming pool.

And if you'd seen him swimming, you would know that exuberance is precisely the right word to describe that hour.

But (as we used to say down South where I grew up), there's a whole nuther issue of interest to me in terms of language, and that is the question of teaching kids multiple languages.

I have a grandfather whose parents spoke German to each other and who purposely didn't teach it to the kids so that they (the parents) would be able to communicate above the kids' heads, as it were.

I have a father whose parents spoke Yiddish, and went to the Yiddish Theater in New York to see shows, and participated in a whole range of conversations that none of the kids in my father's generation understood anything about -- apart from the occasional kvetch about someone's knaydeleh not being fluffy enough.

I have a husband whose mother moved to the United States from Japan when she was nearly thirty, and who purposefully did not teach her children Japanese because she wanted them to be good American kids. And my husband's father, whose parents emigrated here from Japan as a young couple in the early 19teens and who never spoke English, still somehow managed to leave behind children who were never fluent in Japanese. Sure, the first few spoke Japanese, but by the time they got to child number 5 or 6, the older kids were speaking English in school, and teaching the younger ones... And so my husband speaks no Japanese and cannot teach it to our children.

I am fascinated by this movement that seems to me to be a cultural shift. People in my generation are longing for the languages of their parents and grandparents, wishing for the fluency lost to generations -- while those older generations of parents thought they were doing the best thing possible for their children by resisting marking them as foreign through their speech. And it is probably true that speaking German in the early 1940s didn't make you a whole lot of extra friends in these parts. Japanese either. In fact, the latter was liable to land you in an internment camp right here in the United States. So you can understand where the hesitancy to pass on family language came from.

Nevertheless, when I hear Daughter point to a jacket in our closet and say, in her still-babyish voice, "That Ojichan jacket," I wish that she were learning Japanese right along with her English, and I am sorry that I cannot help her learn it. For if mastering the delight of one language can produce such exuberance, wouldn't two be twice as grand?

What about you? Do you speak more than one language? Are you teaching it to your children? Or is there one you wish you could pass on?

In Which I Try to Explain My Feminism in Under a Gazillion Words

It has been brought to my attention that my disparaging comments about The Man in my post about loving Kirtsy may be perceived as general man-bashing, so I'd like to set things right.

In terms of this particular controversy, I am sure there are plenty of men in the blogosphere, and the Internet more generally, who would be horrified over the actions Skirt! took and the means its representatives employed. And there are also certainly women who would think I am making a mountain out of a molehill and enough already with the feminist mommy stuff (though I suspect they don't read this blog).

In more general terms, it is because I feel so strongly that it is important to resist gender stereotypes that I chose "The Man" as a useful phrase to indicate a subset of the human species, the subset that believes deeply in hierarchies of power based on money and ruthlessness and the silencing of dissenting opinion -- a subset, I might add, that is not exclusively populated by males. Historically, resisting "The Man" (with capital letters, like a title) has not meant belittling all men, but rather resisting people who exploit positions of power...people who have traditionally been male, as masculinity was long a prerequisite for socio-political power in this country.

That is changing. Slowly. But I still think that there are a lot of ways in which the authority to speak, the right to assert the value of one's labor, the right to make choices about how publicly (or not) to live one's life are not granted fully equally to women. The recent ubiquitous discussions about whether or not mommy blogging is exploiting children is just one example. In everything from a scathing set of commentary on a not-so-nice article in Canada's Globe and Mail, to a somewhat snarky interview with Dooce on the Today Show, to a whole series of high- and low-profile blog responses to the accusations that women who blog are pimping their children to make a buck, the Internet has been ablaze lately with conversations about whether women have the moral right to write about their children online. I could write reams on this issue, but I will restrain myself to the following observations:

* When autobiographies first gained real popularity in the Victorian period, there was tremendous controversy over whether it was un-gentlemanly (women, of course, would not have dared enter such an indiscreet public forum as to "tell all" about their private lives) to reveal one's personal life in public. Male autobiographers resolved this issue by focusing largely on their career and personal development, and leaving domestic life out of the picture.

* When women started publishing autobiographies later in the 19th century, they tended to focus either exclusively on their domestic lives (as appropriate subject matter for women) or solely on their professional lives (if they were someone like Florence Nightingale, say), so that there was no untoward intermixing of personal and public personae.

* Although it's been 150 years or so since then, there is apparently still a terrible sinking feeling in the pit of many people's stomachs when they consider that one's personal life and one's professional life might, in fact, overlap.

Blogging is new terrain. Making money from blogging, even newer. It is normal, I think, for people to question and challenge what is new, normal to resent those who took the risk first and saw a big payoff, normal to rethink things that might have been done without due consideration for the consequences. But I feel that there is a certain level of vitriol that is sometimes aimed at women and that men in similar circumstances do not always suffer. Not a critical soul I've encountered, in this controversy I've followed, has mentioned Daddy Bloggers. And while they are certainly a much smaller number, there are plenty of them whose sites contain kid photos and potty training stories -- and who run ads and make a buck in the process. Dads who blog seem to get props for being involved in their kids lives ("look at that awesome story about a dad-and-me activity!") while moms who blog are being slammed all over the Internet for being exploitive when they should just be spending time with their kids already.

I'm not saying everyone slams moms who blog. I'm certainly not saying all the critics of those moms are male (a giant proportion of them are women, in fact). I'm not saying I don't like Dad blogs. (In fact, shout out to Jim at BusyDad and Jeremy at Discovering Dad for being awesome dad bloggers!) What I am saying is that it is still all too common to take women to task for putting themselves in a public spotlight or for not being "appropriately" domestic (where appropriate = some impossible June Cleaver ideal, which, by the way, was staged in a TV studio).

While there are certainly many issues to weigh and many things to consider carefully before choosing to post pictures and potty training stories of one's child online, lumping all mothers who blog into the category of "exploitative women who care more about buying new shoes than about their own offspring" is as irresponsible and ridiculous as it would be of me to say "all men wish Sk*rt would just go away and are annoyed that the rebranding as Kirtsy might make those uppity women even more successful."

And so, to get back to Sk*rt vs. Skirt!, I think it is still common for women to get the short end of the stick when it comes to power and litigation and rudeness. That doesn't mean all men are rude power-mongers, or even that all rude power-mongers are men. But it does mean that The Man is a thing (not a person) worth resisting -- whether you yourself are male or female.

I am not sorry for choosing that phrase which, even on carefully rereading my previous post, I think works in that context to describe accurately what was happening. (And, by the way, this was a series of events spearheaded by a magazine started by some women, who in this particular instance happen to be acting like The Man.) But I am deeply sorry if I caused offense.

And I hope if you've gotten to the end of these gazillion words, you understand that my definition of my own feminism is that I try to instill in my children, and to respond to the world around me, as if gender is not a fixed construct but a flexible one. As if our own masculinity and femininity are things we must work constantly to shape and define. As if we must embrace what feels right and true for our own gendered selves, and resist what feels imposed upon us by someone else's standards that--much like someone else's shoes--just do not fit us. Or, in terms that my Son might understand: Girls can be pirate captains, and some boys do like pink. And all of them should be smiled upon for making those choices for themselves.

Why You Should Know (and Love) Kirtsy

You know how you're reading a blog post you really like, and you get to the bottom and you want to leave a comment, and you find all these logos that seem to be asking (telling?) you to do something that involves Skirts and Digging and Stumbling -- which, if I were digging in a skirt, I would totally stumble, but that's because I am often not as coordinated as I like to think I am -- and you don't know what to do because you just want to leave a comment already? And then you wonder briefly what Sk*rt and Digg and Stumble (which I would link to, but I'm new enough at this that I can't even be sure I've found the right site to link -- sorry Stumble) are. But as you wonder, you remember all those long and lonely nights in college where your boyfriend insisted on playing Dungeons and Dragons, and you couldn't go out to get pizza until he became an eleventh-level dwarf with a frabjous mega-stick, which was just going to take one more roll of his twenty-seven-sided die...and then your eyes would glaze over and you would leave the room, and he wouldn't notice anyway because in his quest to become a better dwarf he was about to defeat the evil something-or-another... And all these terms at the bottoms of posts sound a lot like a grown-up version of some new game language that borrows from English. And you see a Technorati symbol in the sidebar, and your neck hairs stand on end from the stress of all this Tech stuff since, really and truly, all you want in the world is to be able to insert a picture into a Blogger post without the line-spacing going on wonky on you. So, you ignore all these terms that you don't have time to figure out, and you just leave your comment -- or not, because by now you've been so distracted by Dungeons and Dragons and fake languages and stupid boyfriends who broke your heart 15 years ago that you forgot what you wanted to say, and anyway, everyone else's comments are so witty that you just want to go back to bed. You know that feeling? Yeah, me either.

But I did always want to know about this Sk*rt thing, since I had a niggling feeling that it might have something to do with women and blogging (you know, since mostly women wear skirts). But now, suddenly the sites that used to offer you a Sk*irt no longer want you to have new clothes, or want you to donate clothes, or whatever Sk*rt was all about. Now they're all Kirtsy. Which is a funny spelling for a thing you might do in a fancy skirt. And it's starting to seem like when my bank changes its name every eighteen months getting bought out by another bank, and I just can't be bothered to care.

But before you sigh and think here's yet another term you don't have time to learn, or yet another network you can only half-heartedly be a part of because it's difficult to figure out, let me tell you that (a) it's EASY; and (b) it's important; and (c) you really REALLY want to know why Sk*rt had to become Kirtsy -- because even if you don't know it yet, it has everything to do with you and the potential power of women blogging. So here's the scoop, in case you don't know already.

Sk*rt was started by three amazing women who wanted to create a gathering place for excellent internet content, a place to go to find the latest and greatest information about a wide range of topics of interest to women. Content from high-traffic well-known news sites might rub shoulders there with content from a small-time blog, solely based on reader interest. And anyone can nominate content, and everyone gets to vote on what stays on the front page -- so it's dynamic, and democratic, and wide-ranging, and it gives women the power to consolidate their voices should they want to. Great idea, no?

Fast forward a few years down the line to sometime in the past month or so, and a publication called Skirt! that's apparently available free in some states (I've never heard of it, but it doesn't have a Michigan thing going on) got all ants-in-its-pants and threatened to sue Sk*rt for trademark infringement over the name. The story's complicated, and I don't know all the sordid details (which the rockstar-formerly-known-as-Sk*rt is too classy to publicize), but here's what it appears to boil down to: a print publication with some money behind it threw its weight around and threatened in some ugly ways a group of women who were trying to do some good in the world of the interweb -- and there's an awful lot of talk about how this smacks of yet another way in which The Man tries to squelch things when the power of women's voices gets intense and interesting (read: threatening to The Man's power).

I can't say for sure what happened, since I don't have all the info. But in the interests of righteous indignation (which is so much more satisfying than the wrongeous indignation we so often hear from The Man), go check out The Bloggess's forthright post about what happened. Or this one, which gives the outline of the turn-of-events that is the name-change-to-avoid-lawsuit.

And, please, in the name of all that is solidarity, and taking ownership of our forums, and supporting each other's voices, do what I did and go check out Kirtsy. I promise, it's fabulous. It's easy to join, to grab a button, and (unless you're a Blogger imbecile, as I apparently am) easy to add the "Kirtsy this" gizmo to the bottom of your posts, so that your fans can nominate your posts too. Your words could show up there. Or not. Your choice. But here's the thing: even if you don't ever send a post of yours to Kirtsy, or nominate someone else's, it's a site worth knowing about and caring about because it represents all that is strong and fabulous about women who blog: range, and vision, and multiplicity of perspective, and strength, and articulateness, and dynamism, and perseverance in the face of adversity. You will find mounds of interesting content there that's worth checking out.

So show Kirtsy some love and respect -- just like they dish out every day to women every where -- and prove to those silly litigious fools who try to stop a good thing that women will not be silenced.



P.S. Forgot to add: if you already knew and loved Sk*rt, don't forget to change over to Kirtsy, get new buttons, and all that fun stuff!

MomSpeak 101

I owe many thanks to PB&J in a Bowl, who posted this a few weeks ago. This video reminds me of my childhood, is freakishly like the motherhood I've had so far, and made me laugh so hard I had tears rolling down my face. Also, I thought after the sentimental tribute to mothering yesterday, it might be time for a dose of the other half of my day. I hope you enjoy it.





Click for more of today's hilarity.

Happy Mother's Day

My dear Daughter

I love you for your fine hair
tickling my nose
as your head lies heavy with sleep
in the crook of my neck

for your small fingertips caressing
aimlessly
over the curves within my ears
as you ride upon my shoulders

for your sweet bowtie mouth
puckered for a kiss
for no particular reason at all.




My darling Son

I love you for
the deep pools of wonder in
your eyes
as you tell me a story

for your endearing diligence
at learning to identify
plants in our garden
by the shapes of their leaves
even before
their flowers appear

for your dueling desires
to prove your growing strength and
to be still my little boy
clinging with long arms and strong legs to me
as I carry you up to bed.


My children, I love you for loving me back so fiercely and fondly. I am proud already to be your mother.

Picture of a Delighted Mama

The kids are in daycare twice a week in summer, and I tried to shuffle their schedule from Tuesday to Friday just for this week, so that they could spend another full day playing with their grandparents (who were leaving Thursday). Due to state-mandated ratios of adults to kids, the daycare told me there was no room for Daughter on Friday, unless another child called in and canceled. Son was fine. I was to keep checking back for a spot for Daughter.

But by yesterday morning, still no spaces for Daughter. So, I left Son with his preschool buddies and took Daughter with me for the day. Although I was a little grumptious about it (of course, it was my fault for the last-minute switch), it turned out to be a lovely day.

First, we went to my office on campus and did paperwork. I filled out forms, answered emails, filed, and she did her "paperwork" scribbling beautiful designs on the outdated phone list on my desk's pull-out tray. For TWO hours, she was a delightful child, coloring, playing cars on the floor, and smiling.

Then, she fell asleep in the car on the way home, and I popped her into her crib for her nap -- which lasted just long enough for me to read all the posts in my reader.

We danced to mambo music for a while, and then I let her watch a little bit of Classical Baby while I started prepping to make Delighted Mama Pizza.

With the dough in the bread maker, Daughter, Dog and I went for a four mile run/walk. I got serious exercise, and for incomprehensible reasons of happiness, Daughter never once tried to climb out of the jogging stroller and push it for herself--perhaps because I indulged her by humming mambo music for much of the run. Which is not easy, and might have convinced my neighbors that I'm crazy. But it was worth it.

Then we came home and assembled the pizza. She helped by sprinkling corn meal all over the table and then brushing it all onto the floor. ("I clean up!" she said proudly.) She patted dough. We layered on potatoes.

All in all it was a lovely day together that made me realize that one child alone is so much easier than two -- because not only are there half the demands, there are also no squabbles to negotiate, which means the demands are actually cut down by something like 80%.

And here's the kicker: after a lovely day of one-on-one time with Daughter, I got to the daycare to pick up Son and learned that they had sent home ELEVEN children from Daughter's classroom with fevers and explosive diarrhea. HaPpY dAnCiNg! HaPpY dAnCiNg! Thanks to those pesky state mandated ratios, we don't have the plague at our house for the weekend.

And THEN, I brought Son and Daughter home, left them with the sitter, got in the car with Husband and took my beautiful Delighted Mama Pizza to some friends' house for a long evening of fun drinks, fabulous food, great conversation, and no one sitting on my lap while I ate.

So here's the thing. If you make this Pizza, it won't guarantee that your family doesn't get a nasty stomach virus that's going around. But it will be impressive and delicious. And the name alone might make you smile. Enjoy!

Delighted Mama Pizza

For the crust:
1 1/3 cups water
1/4 cup olive oil minus 2 Tablespoons
1 15-oz can large black olives (minus the two you eat while cooking), drained
2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup whole wheat flour
1 Tablespoon sugar
1 teaspoon salt
2 1/2 teaspoons bread machine yeast

Put all in ingredients into bread machine, in order listed, and set on "dough only" setting.

For the topping:
3-4 medium sized Yukon Gold potatoes
5 cloves garlic, crushed
olive oil
1 cup shredded mozzarella cheese
3 Tablespoons grated Parmesan cheese
a nice blob of goat cheese would be a nice addition, too, if you have it
pepper and salt

To assemble:
Slice potatoes very thin. Put a tiny bit of olive oil in a non-stick pan, and cook potato slices in batches, in a single layer in the pan, until slices are tender and translucent. (Turn once while cooking.) They'll become slightly golden while cooking. Remove from pan to a plate.

Prepare a 14" round pizza pan by sprinkling with cornmeal. When dough in machine is ready, remove, knead briefly, and divide in half. Roll out one dough ball on a lightly floured surface until it fits the pan, and transfer over. Brush dough with a small amount of olive oil, and spread crushed garlic evenly over crust. Arrange potato slices in a single layer on crust, starting at the outer edge and spiraling your way in. Sprinkle Parmesan evenly over potatoes, then top with mozzarella (and goat cheese if you choose). Grind a bit of fresh pepper and salt over the whole (not too much salt). Here's how it looks ready to go into the oven:

Bake at 450 degrees approximately 15 minutes, or until crust is lightly puffed and cheese is bubbling. You can make this earlier in the day, and refrigerate (covered with tinfoil) so that the crust won't rise any more) until time to bake.

I brought this as my appetizer contribution to the party. As a dinner, you could serve with robust salad.

What do you do with the remaining dough? Make a pizza for the kids, of course. If you don't have kids, or they'll eat the potato one, simply double the quantity of topping ingredients, and make two Delighted Mamas. Or, cut the crust recipe in half.

"To Go or Not To Go" Is Not the Question

It's simply a matter of where and when. I'll explain.

I love to travel. I try new foods, walk new terrain, gasp over new vistas.

I do all of the above in new cities so that I can absorb their architecture, history, theater, restaurants, and museums. I do these things also in wide-open spaces so that I can wander new beaches and mountains, kayak new waters, show-shoe on new snow.

I could wax lyrical about so many places I've been, but for now here are the highlights of a few.

I fell in love with London when I went there on a three-week course to study Victorian architecture. There, magnificent, fading edifices such as the Midland Railway Terminus Hotel stand testament to an older, slower pace of life. Juxtaposed with the hustle of honking cabs (always ask the cabbies where to get your fish-and-chips; you will never be disappointed), and the thrill of last-minute theater ticket bargains, London is a walking traveler's dream. You can walk just about anywhere from anywhere if you have some fortitude and time. And if you choose to stay near the British Library, you will be rewarded by people watching, and fascinating peeps into Victorian home renovations, if you give yourself the opportunity for a casual ramble down to the theater district to take in whatever show will delight you. I saw four fabulous (and completely different from one another) productions in three weeks, and had I had more money, I would happily have seen twice that.

Tulum, the blip of a town on the coast of the Yucatan Penninsula in Mexico, home to fantastic Mayan ruins standing sentinel over impossibly clear waters that are the home to teeming rainbows of tropical fish. You can snorkle straight from the beach at points near Tulum, and if you tire of salt sea air (though I don't see how you can), it's a simple matter to turn your back to the ocean and dive into a fresh-water cenote -- a hollow formed in the limestone bedrock of the area -- cool and mysterious as cave-diving but without all the danger.

Florence I adored for its central market. Every morning there, I got my cappucino from the same wonderful 50-something barristo who liked to practice his English on me. By day four, he and I were old friends, and when he learned I was going biking in the Tuscan hills that day, he passed me the most wonderful of sandwiches over the counter as he handed me my morning coffee. "Something for now, and something for later," he said, as his hands eloquently refused payment for the little panini. Fresh bread, with a thick chewy crust, lined with the sheerest pinkest meltingest proscuitto to be had anywhere on that sunny summer morning. I packed the sandwich, and his good wishes for a lovely picnic in the hills, into my bag and rode off with a lilting heart.

New Zealand was all about vistas on a grand scale. Milford Sound, with its mile-high mountains rising over mile-deep waters, slowly awakening in the morning -- a rare vision for a human to witness, as we were two of only a hundred odd people lucky enough to sleep overnight anchored in the middle of the Sound on a boat... Abel Tasman National Park, with its glorious golden sands, green-tinted waters, a sea kayaker's dream... Hiking above Queen Charlotte Sound, looking out across mountains, and down through forests at the glittering water... Hokitika, the tiny town on the South Island's northern coast where a cave of glowworms glittered as brightly as the stars in the Southern sky.

I have been fortunate enough to go many more places than these...Scotland, Kuaui, Greece, Paris, Madrid, Acadia National Park, and Yosemite...yet no matter how many places I go, there are so many more on my list of adventures still to have. These are not places I have gone with lots of money; they are opportunities I have seized because travel to me is more important than brand-name clothes or brand-new cars. Most of these are places I went while still in college or graduate school, countries I visited clutching 2nd class train tickets or holding reservations to simple, faded B&Bs. On our honeymoon to New Zealand, for example, Husband and I stayed two different nights in youth hostels, and none of our hotels cost more than $50 per night. We both preferred to spend our money on a guided glacier hike than on a fancy hotel; after all, we weren't there for the sleeping but for the seeing.

And now that I have children, I fantasize about introducing them to the wonder that is stepping outside one's comfort zone. We have done that on a small scale, taking Son to Hawaii when he was 18 months old, still portable in a hiking backpack. And while we had to forgo sea kayaking on that trip, we did hike along Waimea Canyon and snorkel with sea turtles. To bob rhythmically in the waves above a shallow reef, feeling the current from a 200-pound turtle propel her way past your body, listening to the scraping crunch of turtles grazing on the reef's produce is nothing short of magnificent. While it might be even better with a snorkeling buddy -- the one currently land-locked keeping an eye on the toddler so you can have your turn with the turtles -- the fact remains that short of telepathy, talking about the experience while it is occurring simply won't happen underwater. And so individual diving in the name of a family vacation is a more-than-worthwhile trade-off.

But now, with two children, I find myself more hesitant. Do we risk a 6-hour flight anywhere? Especially since six hours of flying time means a 9-10 hour travel day, what with getting to the airport early, parking, security, reclaiming luggage, and so on. And so we plan travels to more local destinations -- the fabulous sand dunes in Saugatuck, a mere three-hour car drive away, where we can recline and swim and hike and dig, and still come back to the comforts of a big bag full of home's toys which are so easy to schlepp on a car trip.

And yet, even with my hesitations over airport delays, a fractious toddler in a cramped airplane seat, the fears that my children do not yet have restaurant manners suitable to unknown restaurants that may not be as child-friendly as I'd hoped, the stomach-cramping urgency of not speaking the language when the preschooler needs "the potty NOW, Mama!" -- even with all of these doubts, I find myself hankering for another serious trip. I want to expose my children to difference, to wonder, to accents, and languages, and "funny" foods, and art that will make their eyes open wide. I want them to walk on cool trails that nonetheless smell of the heavy heat of sunshine on evergreens. I want them to practice with snorkels in the bathtub so that they don't choke on their own delight when a wrasse brushes past their ankles.

It may simply be just a summer or two too early for this in our family. Perhaps having everyone potty trained, everyone more-or-less verbal, everyone sleeping through the night is a prerequisite for such travels. And certainly such travels will require a different sort of planning. Less "new hotel every other night" as we car-tour a country and more "plant ourselves in this suite with a mini-kitchen and have day adventures." It will cost more, with the extra tickets, extra food, slowed-down pace.

But, oh, won't it be worth it, if my children grow up with a treasure-trove of memories and a legacy of embracing what is new?

And so, the only question now is: when to go? At what ages will they be ready to embark on the first smaller versions of this? What are your parameters for deciding when, how, and where to travel with your children?

Recipes for Life

McMommy is having a birthday party today, and she wants everyone who's coming to post a recipe of a favorite party food. But the thing is, I just posted recipes for Salmon Fabulosity and Little Lemon Cake recently, and since the former is my party hors d'oeuvre par excellence, and the latter is my latest favorite dessert, I'm fresh out of ingenious food recipes to bring. But I did bake for the occasion:

And in recompense for not having any food recipes to share, I thought I'd offer the following observations. You are probably highly familiar with the first recipe, but the second (although perhaps obvious) is one that is worth recalling, and trotting out, as often as possible.

Recipe for Driving Mama Crazy
(served at my house last night)

Ingredients
1 Son, capable of roaring loudly
1 Daughter, capable of shrieking at a very high pitch
1 small, inconsequential object of no intrinsic value whatsoever

Directions
Son: NOooooo!
Daughter: whiiiine
Son: Nooo NOOOOOO!
Daugher: SHRIeeeeeeeeeeeeK!
Son: ROAOAOAOAOAOR
Daugheter: shRIEeeeeeeEEEEK
Son: ROARRRRR! ROAAARRRRRR!
Daughter: Nooooo. [sound of snatching]
Son: You're MEAN!
Daughter: MINE.
Son: ROOOOOOOOOOOAAARRRRR!
Daughter: SHRIEEEEEEEEEEEEKKK!
Son: ROOOOOOOOOOOAAARRRRR!
Daughter: SHRIEEEEEEEEEEEEKKK!

Repeat for 10-15 minutes, or until Mama's head explodes.

Recipe for a Peaceful Evening
(served at my house the night before last, and sooo delicious)

Ingredients
1 set obliging grandparents
1 or more grandchildren
1 basketball
1 soccer ball
1 set child-sized golf clubs
1 t-ball set with extra balls
1 child-sized baseball glove
1 sandbox
sunscreen
1 bottle wine

Directions
Apply sunscreen liberally to exposed skin of all humans. Mix greased people thoroughly with remaining ingredients, except wine, and toss all outdoors. Outdoor participation by Mama optional, depending on the state of laundry, floors, and bathrooms. After approximately 2 hours, refresh with drinks and food. Repeat.

If you follow this recipe carefully, and diligently use all the ingredients (except wine) in a single day, you will find that an incredibly early bedtime, with no protests, is the result.

Leaving you with one very long very peaceful evening in an extremely clean house. Enjoy your wine!

"My New Fishing Pole" by Son

I'm feeling rotten, with vague nausea like the first trimester (yes, I'm 100% sure I'm not pregnant), so I'm taking recourse in a guest post. (And I apologize for not responding better in comments the last few days. I plead exhaustion and the necessity of extra loads of disgusting laundry courtesy of Daughter's midnight stomach flu.)

So, for something more entertaining than stories of my laundry, here is Son, with some fishing tales. I have transcribed his words exactly.

First, a little story of an expedition from last fall.

We goed hiking in the woods, and the woods was a hiking place, and we found ourselves. And other people were fishing, so we decided to fish. So we got our fishing pole and we caught a fish and we moved it around. Really truly we moved it around.

Because there was a alligator turtle and it snapped and it tried to eat the fish, so we moved it around with Daddy and me. And the Pirates of the Caribbean fishing pole we moved around, and the fish we caught we moved around.

And we didn’t carry it home and eat it because it wasn’t delicious. We never tried it before. So someday we’ll have to try it if it tastes good. And Ojichan and Obachan like it, so we should try it. And we might say, “mmmm, that tastes good.”

(MommyTime's note: according to Husband, who is not prone to exaggeration, the turtle was over two feet in diameter. The best we can figure is that it was an alligator snapping turtle, as these are native to the Midwest. Sadly, he didn't have a camera with him. Photo credit.)

*****

Next, a fish tale from yesterday.

This is my Pirates of the Caribbean fishing pole, and I used it today. And the fish I caught was a bluegill and it was like this big:

And they were both squishy. And the other one I caught was little and the bluegill was a little bit big and they were both squishy. And I caught the first one from in the bridge, and the bridge has lots of fish in it.

I caught the next one from in the pond, at the bridge. And I put it in the water gently. And the bluegill Ojichan throwed, and it might have got hurt. The first fish Ojichan throwed was a bluegill.

* * * * *

Fishing: Portrait of Generations

Invite My Shoes to Your Next Party

You'll be so glad you did. Here's a little sample of their mojo:

These shoes can tango.



But if line dancing is more your thing, these shoes will figure that out.

The Charleston? No problem. These shoes have a little retro going on...

Or if it's a more demure and elegant party, these shoes are quite content to wait for an admiring pair of wingtips to ask them to take a spin.

The best thing about these shoes is that they know precisely at what moment to collapse in a drunken heap and leave toes and arches free to cavort unadorned for the rest the night


Well, that and they can fly.

Seriously. They usually only do that when they've had a few too many -- but I swear it's the best. party. trick. ever.

And besides, all the cool kids are inviting them. McMommy is having a fabulous birthday bash soon, and these shoes will be there. But not with bells on, because that would make them look ridiculous, and they aren't interested in becoming jester shoes, thank you. Even without bells, these shoes fully intend to be the life of the party. They've got big plans for something involving jingle-ball fringe and a lampshade, but they aren't saying more than that.

You'll have to invite them to your party if you want to see for yourself. They may not be the sparkliest shoes at your party. But they will be without a doubt the most fun.

As a bonus, if you invite my feet (as the inmates of my shoes), they just might lilt on over to your party attached to the rest of me, which will be bearing some Salmon Fabulosity or a Little Lemon Cake with your name on it.

So just let my shoes know the next time you have a party, won't you, please? They've been itching for a little social interaction with your party shoes for a while now.


P.S. Until your party invitation arrives, these shoes are trotting over to Scribbit's place for a little write-away contest party, where there are sure to be lots of fascinating shoes to meet...

Mother Nature May Hate Me...

...but at least my neighbors won't. And there is much, very much, to be said for being the sort of responsible neighbor at whom others on the street will smile.

For counter-example, this is the state of the yard next door to ours.

I know it's hard to see what's going on, what with the already-overgrown grass. But look closely, and you might notice the waving clumps of golden-headed glory...a.k.a. The Bane of My Existence... a.k.a. Dandelions stretching as far as they eye can see.

Here's my beef. I don't care if no one has lived in that house for five years; someone still OWNS it, and someone still has to MAINTAIN it, and unless someone wants to sell it, someone still has to PAY a different someone to mow the grass. And now the owner-someone also must MUST do SOMETHING to control those weeds. Because now THIS

is happening all over my yard, and my gravel walkways, and my flower-beds. And it's driving me batty.

Not to mention THIS.


And if dandelions are bad, thistles are approximately 100 times worse because they are so thorny that one cannot even remove them wearing gloves. No, it takes a shovel.

Or Round-Up -- a product with the proud word KILLS front and center on the label.

Which is why Mother Nature will probably hate me. Because I went all around the ivy beds on the side of the house--beds which I hate, by the way, and which once surrounded the entire house, but which I've been systematically dismantling each summer without the benefit of mind-numbing Mother Nature Hating chemicals, but with only old-fashioned elbow grease. Anyway, before that enormous sentence, I went over all the ivy that remains on the right side of our house--the side abutting the abandoned house whose yard looks like hair that has never been combed--and I drenched that ivy in Round-Up because the thistles have invaded the ivy. And since the thistles were KNEE-HIGH in disaster abandonment front yard last summer, I'm pretty sure I know where this year's crop in my yard came from.

Just to be clear: this is not a house that has succumbed to the recent mortgage-lending crisis or whose owners otherwise deserve pity, pies, and neighborly helping hands. This is a ranch house built in the 1970s, inherited by someone from his mother, and then someone chose not to live in it OR to sell it but to leave it empty, even though it is on a lovely street in a quiet neighborhood in an excellent school district where otherwise the yards contain flowers like these.


And, really, a homeowner can only live so long next to neglect before losing her mind and turning to Round-Up for help. In case you're unfamiliar with Round-Up, you spray this toxic chemical on the leaves of any plant, and the plant withers and dies in a matter of hours (practically). My long-time fruit-farming father-in-law swears by the stuff. His farm was at its peak during the time of pesticides that are now banned by the feds from any further use--pesticides with all sorts of nasty human side-effects that are only slightly less nasty than what happened to the bugs. So, I'm thinking if Round-Up gets his whole-hearted endorsement, it CAN'T be good for the environment.

And the only part of me that feels guilty for using Round-Up is the part of me that feels a wee bit guilty about not feeling guilty. Because, honestly, last year our yard had the odd dandelion which we had to pull. This spring, I put down "weed-n-feed" (which I did not do last year), and yet our front yard looks like we are trying to grow a crop hearty enough to start a dandelion wine business.

So after I doused the thistles and ivy in Round-Up, I used a whole bottle of some weed killing substance that is grass-safe, and I watered the front yard with it like there was no tomorrow. I also spent HOURS removing dandelions and thistles from two flower beds. Because I work hard to grow this

and I don't need thistles everywhere obscuring my view.

Since I know that the uncontrolled weeds to our right will keep sending their awful seeds blowing downwind into our yard, I also sprayed a hearty does of weed killer over there. I plan to get a longer hose and douse the whole front yard.

And then I'm going over there with my shovel to dig up all the tulips and hosta I want out of their abandoned flower beds.

(At least, in my fantasy rebel life I am. In fact, I'm probably too law-abiding to follow through.)

If all of this makes me a bad person as far as Mother Nature is concerned, I apologize to her. I will say this, though. The neighbors to the left of me? The lovely retired couple who spends about 30 hours a week gardening? I'll bet they would buy me ANOTHER bottle of Round-Up if it keeps those hideous weeds from invading their yard. And I think the Neighborhood Association is nominating me for a medal.

Hearing Aids Are Ovedrrated

Recent Conversations with Ojichan

Him: "Your birthday's on the 28th? And mine is today? So, you a Taurus too?"

Me: "Yes."

Him: [with a mischievous grin] "You know, they say Tarus is the best sign."

Me: "And the smartest."

Him: [cupping hand next to ear] "What's that?"

Me: [louder] "Taurus is the smartest sign too..."

chuckles from him and Obachan

Me: "...with the best sense of humor..."

[he clearly hasn't heard this last, but he continues to smile]

Me: "...And don't forget most handsome."

Him: [erupting] "Bwah haha ha ha ha!"

Handsome, he heard just fine.

* * * * *

Son: "Ojichan, I want to show you something."

Ojichan: [cupping hand next to ear] "What's that?"

Son: [louder] "I want to show you something. Come with me."

Ojichan: "I'm sorry, you'll have to say it louder. My ears aren't so good."

Son: [matter-of-factly and softly] "Well, maybe you should pop them off and get some new ones."

Ojichan: nearly falls of chair laughing (while I nearly die of mortification)

* * * * *

We keep urging Ojichan to get a hearing aid. But now I'm thinking: his ears are perfectly capable of picking up things that he finds truly funny. What an excellent kind of selective hearing. Who needs decibels when you have a built-in humor-filter?

Bathtime (PhotoHunt: Time)

Who Me? You think I need a bath?

*****

For more PhotoHunters' interpretations of "Time," see TNChick.

Little Lemon Cake

Let's say you have to take a dessert to a party. Or you're craving something light and refreshing in the way of a sweet. Or it's your birthday and you've done nothing but cook rich foods for other gatherings for the last week or so, and the last thing you need in your house is another cake -- except your child insists that it's not a birthday without cake. What do you do?

Make this Little Lemon Cake, of course.

First of all, it's small (for a layer cake, anyway). It bakes in 8" round pans, and the layers are only about 1" thick. Second, it's light but with a potent lemony taste. Third, it's insanely easy to make. Fourth, if you have to make something for a large party, you can simply double the recipe, bake in 9" pans that are 2" deep (bake approximately 35 minutes), and turn it into Large Lemon Cake. How handy is that? (I am sure about this doubling thing, for those of you who are serious bakers out there, and thus reasonably doubtful, because I have adapted this recipe from another that was twice this size and intended to be baked in just the manner I've described. The 2" deep pans will be a must, however.) Assuming you want a LITTLE cake, though, here's what you do:

For cake layers
¼ cup canola oil
¼ cup applesauce
½ cup vanilla-flavored soy milk
Zest and juice of half a fresh lemon
1 ¼ cups all purpose flour
¼ teaspoon salt
1 ½ teaspoons baking powder
1 cup sugar
2 large eggs

For berry filling
1 cup frozen berries (I prefer raspberries and/or blackberries and/or blueberries)
¼ cup water
¼ cup sugar
1 packet unflavored knox gelatin

For icing
2 1/3 cups powdered sugar
¼ cup lemon juice
4 T. butter (softened)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Oil or spray two 8-inch round cake pans, line each with a circle of wax paper or parchment paper, and then oil/spray the paper.

In a small bowl, whisk together oil, applesauce, soy milk*, and lemon juice and zest until well combined. In separate bowl, stir together flour, salt, and baking powder. In third (larger) bowl, combine eggs and sugar, and mix with electric beaters until creamy (about 1-2 minutes). Add flour mixture and oil mixture alternately to egg mixture in a few installments – starting and ending with flour – beating well after each addition.

Divide batter evenly between two pans and bake for 21 minutes or until toothpick comes out clean and cake is beginning to pull away from sides of pan.

*You could use plain soy milk if you don't have vanilla flavored soy milk, and this would be just fine. However, I would not substitute regular milk, as there is enough lemon in the recipe to curdle the milk given this preparation

Allow layers to cool 10 minutes in the pan, and then turn them out onto plates or cooling racks to cool completely. (You'll see the cake layers are very pale, and the outer edges are slightly golden. This one was probably baked for two minutes too long.)

Meanwhile, make the berry filling. Combine frozen berries, water, and sugar in a small saucepan, and bring to a boil. When water has 1/2 evaporated, and berries are soft enough to mush up, mush them with the back of a spatula, and then stir in the gelatin. Stir and cook for a few minutes more, and then remove from heat to allow to cool. Allowing the "helpers" to share the licking of the spatula is highly recommended at this point.

Spread berry filling over lower layer of cake once cake is completely cool, and while filling is still room temperature and has not completely set (it should be the consistency of slightly loose jam).

Put the second cake layer on top of the first, so the fruity goodness is the filling between the layers.

Then, make the icing. Stir together all three ingredients until smooth. Then frost the whole cake with a crumb coat (a thin layer of icing -- like the cake version of putting primer on before you paint). Refrigerate cake 1 hour. (Do NOT refrigerate remaining icing.) Then put on the second, nicer, layer of icing. VOILA! Little Lemon Cake:

Time-consuming application of multi-colored wild animals, one for each member of the family (or each guest) is completely optional.

Unless your children are all about input. In which case, wild animals may be mandatory.

Fortunately, wild animals, even when they aren't just made of icing on a cake, can be very very sweet.

Am Hoop, Will Travel

We picked up Husband's parents at the airport yesterday afternoon. Son and Daughter were sound asleep when Obachan (Grandma) and Ojichan (Grandpa) climbed into the car. It's been two years since we've been able to get together, and I was more than a little nervous about the stranger shyness both of my kids exhibit. I was worried that they would be stand-offish, refuse to engage in conversation, not allow themselves to be snuggled by these grandparents who have so longingly missed them and who have been prevented by illness, among other things, from the visits they've craved.

I was more than a little surprised, then, when within 10 minutes of being in our house, Daughter was gleefully playing racing cars in the hallway with Obachan, while Son chattered on about fishing with Ojichan. And by the time I was cooking dinner an hour later, this was going on:

Daughter is typically shy for a long long time around people she does not know, so the level of interaction she leaped into with her grandmother was a dramatic departure from her norm. And, of course, Obachan managed to teach her to catch a ball in about 35 seconds. Between the two of them, it was hard to tell who was more proud and delighted.

And as for this, well, I don't know how long it's been since Ojichan played basketball, but I think it's safe to say he watches it on television approximately 500% more than he plays. And yet, even without shoes on, he managed some sweet moves that kept Son laughing and chasing and begging for more.

Not only is he willing to play one-on-one, it turns out, Ojichan is the best possible basketball hoop we could ever have. It may not be the most challenging way to learn to shoot hoops, when the hoop obligingly moves to "catch" every ball you shoot -- but it sure makes for a fabulous reunion.

Unfortunately, it is caring for a very ill Uncle of my husband's that has brought my wonderful inlaws to our house this week. They were planning to come later in the summer, and changed plans for reasons that are sobering and sad. And yet I cannot help but feel grateful for this silver lining. If yesterday afternoon was any indication, the following week will be filled with the tremendous joy of children even amongst the sorrow of adult troubles. I am so very grateful for the fact that my children will laugh, and stretch out their arms, and toss and catch balls, and adore these grandparents who, this week, will need some pick-me-up.

And I am thrilled by the mysterious depths of familial connection, that indelible something that makes it possible for children who have no memories of interacting with their Obachan and Ojichan to reunite effortlessly and play with abandon. Love is a powerful thing.