A house does not feel like home to me until the walls have art hanging on them. We moved in here ten years ago. Two young kids, new house, we didn't have a lot of money. Still, art popped up here and there, covering our wall. Print outs of Impressionist masterpieces by my favorites - Van Gogh, Monet, Degas. We grew our collection of larger pieces slowly, and a few years ago began adding a couple pieces of "real" art.

This year, Luis started pestering me to start putting some of my photographs on the wall instead of those old printouts and lithos purchased off eBay all those years ago. I have been transitioning the pieces slowly.

I have to say that I'm so glad he got a bee in his bonnet about this. I love walking into the dining room and seeing the canvas of a photo I took at a friend's farm. I makes me smile to see my photos of espresso and onions in the kitchen. I love seeing Vincent sitting in a culvert and Simon's crawling tush in the dining room, a rock cairn in the library.

I've always loved taking photos, and this is a continuation of that. I do not consider myself very artistic, but this...it makes me happy.

"All around you, people will be tiptoeing through life, just to arrive at death safely. But dear children, do not tiptoe. Run, hop, skip, or dance, just don't tiptoe."
— Shane Claiborne

I saw a version of this quote at a friend's home this evening. I loved it so much that I had to look up the original, and the original is even more wonderful that what I had seen.

I have been looking for a quote to put on my kitchen wall for a few years now. Nothing has ever resonated perfectly without being boringly cliche. This might just be the right one.

I saw this on StoryPeople today.

It's an invention, he said. What's it do? I said. I don't know, he said. It's not finished yet.

It reminded me of Vincent.

Isabella had a slumber party over the weekend, and I love listening to the girls chatter away in the next room when they don't know I am listening.

All ten girls were playing some convoluted imagination game involving neighboring countries and their governments when I heard my favorite quote of the party:

Girl 1: Attack!!!! Let's invade!
Girl 2: Hey! Don't invade us. We are a peace-loving country.
Girl 1: We know. Why do you think we are invading you??

The politics of war, boiled down to the bare minimum.

I made the strangest cake today.  The only ingredients are eggs, sugar, ground almonds, baking powder, and five entire clementines - skin, pith and all - topped with dark chocolate.

I found the recipe in Green & Black's Chocolate Recipes, a cookbook that I swear makes me gain weight just by reading it.  No photos, just a simple ingredient list and short set of directions.  The first step of simmering five entire clementines for two hours intrigued me.    

I cheated a little bit and cut in before it sat overnight.  The recipe did say to let it sit so that the flavors could mingle best.  It was truly yummy, and I can't wait to see how it tastes tomorrow. This one is so very easy, but would make a unique party dessert.  It will be made again.

Later this week - Italian Venison Agrodolce from the same book.  Can you tell what cookbook I was reading this last week?

I must have company soon so that I can also try the Salted Caramel Tart.  Luis is not a big chocolate fan, and I don't dare make many of these recipes without others here to eat them with me.  The Clementine Cake here is an exception.  It is practically healthy what with only 1 cup of sugar and one 3 oz bar oc chocolate to balance out those clementines and 3 cups of ground almonds with their healthy proteins and fats.

At least that is what I am telling myself.

Fortune Cookie revelation

Long time, no blog, eh?  I keep meaning to get back on the wagon.  I even have wonderful posts all composed in my head.  Alas, I sit down at the computer and do something else instead. 

Tonight, though, I am sitting down and am writing what I intended to.

So, about a month ago, my mother brought down a bag of fortune cookies.  I have no idea why she had an entire bag of fortune cookies, but she did and so we were gifted with them. What does that have to do with tonight's spaghetti and meatball dinner then? 

Luis opened the cupboard after and saw these fortune cookies.   He immediately pulled them out and lamented the fact the we forgot them last night.  Last night, we had fried rice, pot stickers and spring rolls for dinner.  So, Luis handed out the fortune cookies, and the three older children ripped into them. 

Simon, on the other hand, had a little difficulty.  He struggled and strained to crack the cookie apart.  He tried setting it on the table and hitting it.  No luck.  He simply could not get his cookie to crack apart.  Finally, Luis held it on edge so that when Simon hit it, the cookie cracked.  Simon very seriously handed Luis his fortune to be read. 

What did it say? 



We've struggled with helping Vincent learn to speak in an understandable manner for years. Goodness, back when he was two, we just struggled to get him to speak. He was such a master of non-verbal communication, and truly he still is.

His inability to properly say some sounds has impacted his reading ability. While I've asked others for advice on and off over the years and have searched the web for help too, this spring was enough. We reached out for help from a speech therapist. His speak has improved tremendously. While I am occasionally frustrated because while honestly, she does not a thing differently that what I had been doing, Vincent listens to her and follows her direction like he never followed mine, I am very happy with the results.

He is more understandable, and now his reading is starting to blossom.

The other day, I had the best proof of his burgeoning abilities. He wrote me a note asking for two pizzas for dinner with a picture of a pizza and the word "to" which he sounded out and wrote all by himself. He had occasionally wanted copy work to jot things down, but he had never attempted creative spelling at all before that. bliss

I love seeing little notes from him with things like "to tls" (two tools) and "misin baj" (missing badge) written down in occasionally backwards letters. This is such a huge milestone, and I am so thrilled that my little man is finally here.

Notice that it is midnight and I am posting something. The is a little one sleeping in my arms, and I found our conversation just now too funny not to record for future smiles when I reread this.

Simon: (awake and crying)
Me: Ohhhh, what's up?
Simon: Meeeee.
Me: (laughs)
Simon: (gets up and starts climbing out of bed)
Me: Where are you going?
Simon: On your lap. (sound asleep twenty seconds later as he sits on my lap on the floor next to his bed)

I do enjoy how preschoolers are completely literal. Such concrete little thinkers, even when more asleep than awake.

If it is nine hundred degrees in the kitchen and everything in the kitchen is sticky, then it must be peach season.

Three more canners full of peaches have been put up. That makes twenty eight quarts so far this year. I think it might last until mid-winter if I'm lucky. Considering that Simon finally tried a bite peach in syrup tonight and promptly gobbled up half of the peach, I think I might not be so lucky. I have a quarter of a bushel left, and I want to make an utterly divine peach salsa out of that. I should have bought another half bushel from the peach delivery people yesterday. I will just have to hope that the fruit guy can give me a good price on another box or two. One bushel so far, and I have not even made a peach pie yet.

On a related note, I have been trying to get Vincent to expand the fruits that he will eat. Last year, it was only sliced apples, bananas and grape jam. This spring, he added strawberry jam and alpine strawberries. Doesn't that figure? A fruit that is the size of an m&m and not very prolific, he decides that he will eat. I'm working on expanding that patch in the garden.

Yesterday, he had to eat five spoonfuls of applesauce with dinner, and he acted like I was torturing him. Today, he had to eat one slice of a fresh peach (not even a quarter, just a slice). After eating the peach, he declared it horrible, but then said that he loves applesauce.

Go figure.

I'm going to keep on the forced fruit trying for a while longer. I need him to eat something more sustainable than bananas (oh, it kills me to buy a bunch imported, monoculture fruit every week!) and while apples are great in the fall, to buy them in the spring and summer means I'm getting imported fruits or the tail end of last year's stored harvest. I want that child to eat a little more seasonally. At least with applesauce, I put up quarts of that every year, so it is a more sustainable option.

I wonder, could I get him to eat blueberries or even pears?

Conversation with Simon last night:

Me: Time to be quiet and go to sleep, bop.

Simon: I quiet. I no talk. See, I quiet, mama. Lay in my bed; I quiet now mama. I no talk.

Me: Shhhh.

Simon: Mama, I wiwy* quiet, see? I no talk. Lay with me now, mama. I quiet!

Repeat three more times. I think he misunderstands the meaning of "quiet", eh?


* wiwy = really for those of you who do not speak Simonese.

I'm thinking about names today.

Limburger cheese is received with turned up noses. Semi-soft, stinky "artisan" cheeses are placed on tasting trays and given respect.

Sauerkraut, gross. Kimchi? Intriguing and exotic. Both are fermented cabbage.

Can I interest you in a pair of shower shoes? How about these cute flip-flops from Old Navy?

Would you wear a tummy shaper or Spanx? Grandma did too, but she just called it a girdle.

Dinner might be carne macinato e tagliatelle or perhaps we'll just call it Hamburger Helper.

"What's in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet."
~ William Shakespeare

A few years ago, I was sitting in the kitchen eating lunch with the girls when I looked up and saw the neighbors' large, old oak tree fall over. It was not a stormy or windy day, and the tree looked healthy with a full crown of leaves. Yet it simply collapsed, like an antebellum belle in full swoon, the rustle of leave hitting the house replacing the whisper of skirts and crinoline.

I'm not sure where I am going with this, but I was thinking of that tree fall tonight on my walk. Thinking of how something can go from appearing sturdy to becoming frail in the blink of a firefly.

While waiting to pick up the girls from their community theatre play rehearsal tonight, I was talking with another member of the group. Gloria is in her eighties, and physically, she is becoming much more frail than sturdy. Yet she adores the theatre and is an active member of the guild, acting in many productions. I was knitting a sock while waiting for the girls and she started talking about how she took up knitting when her children were younger, knitting soakers for them. Funny how life twists, as, after a couple decades of throw away diaper use in our society, I had used soakers for my children, and my neighbor recently knit some adorable ones for her baby-to-be. Gloria went on to talk about crochet and how she tried to teach herself that "oh, in the sixties sometime." I loved the offhanded way she referred to it. As a lifetime spans decades, individual years matter less.

I have been noticing that as I work my way through my fourth decade. A firefly flashes, another day passes, a year flits by. A little boy gets his drivers license, a toddler becomes a young woman, a newborn learns to walk and talk. I age, crystallizing into the woman I am, growing comfortable in my skin.

This thing called life is an interesting journey.

Unbeing dead isn't being alive. ~e.e. cummings

The Year of the Bucky Book

For the last few years, Luis has come home with a Bucky Book every fall. Bucky Books are fund raising coupon books. They cost about $35, and if used, they will save the purchaser many times that amount.

The one problem with Bucky Books, in my opinion, is that we live an hour away from Madison and most of the coupons are for Madison businesses.

The first year Luis purchased one, we were in the middle of Simon's car screaming year. We didn't travel up to Madison very often. The book languished in the drawer, completely used.

The second year, we remembered to use some of the local coupons. The third year, I got smart. I put the book into the van, which is the primary vehicle we use to go to the city. We actually used some of the coupon that year and recouped the costs of the book at least.

This winter, I pulled the Bucky Book out and told Luis I was christening this "The Year of the Bucky Book." Every time we traveled up to Madison, I pulled the book out on the way and started reading through all the coupons. Free pizza for the kids at Sole Sapori, a wonderful Italian restaurant in Mount Horeb, along with buy one, get one espresso drinks a Crossroads Coffee in Cross Plains started our Year of the Bucky Book off with a bang.

On our recent "vacation in our backyard" (an overnight trip to Madison), we had a free entree at Bellinni's (amazing Sicilian food and fab service), free supplies from University Book Store, free latte from Victor Allen's, freebies at PDQ, and free $10 from Tellus Mater and more. We should have had a free ice cream cone at The Chocolate Shoppe, but I forget to pull out the coupon. Oops.

For Father's Day yesterday, Luis stepbped up to the "#1 Papa" title and chose to celebrate at Little A-Merrick-A*. Out came the Bucky Book. Two buy one, get one coupons along with their Father's Day special (fathers ride free with a paid child) resulted in a half price trip. The Bucky Book paid for itself yesterday alone.

I like The Year of the Bucky Book so far, but we have a lot of coupons to use up before September 30. Anyone going to the Dells? There a bunch of coupons for there that we probably won't use this year.


* For those of you not familiar with the area, Little A-Merrick-A is a delightfully cheesy small amusement park. It is a fun place for the younger set, though angsty teens would certainly pronounce is lame. Carousel, roller coasters perfect for the 6-12 year olds, toddler rides with fire trucks and helicopters, monorail, train ride through the country, bumper cars and bumper boats, a ferris wheel. It is a fun time, and even without the coupons, the price is reasonable.

Spread some mayo on me; I'm facing the sandwich years

Apparently I am thinking a great deal about the elderly lately because the idea of the "sandwich generation" is on my mind.

To be perfectly honest and blunt, I find the idea of a sandwich generation to be a creation straight out of the egos of the baby boomer generation.

It seems like the baby boomers have always had the idea that their generation is the first to deal with issues. That is a load of horse pucky. Sex? Drugs? Strange music? Weird lifestyles? Redefining roles of women? Sorry, boomers. Generations before you also dealt with these issues in many ways. The suffragettes were trailblazers too. Drugs were a cultural issue one hundred years before the boomers came of age. Sex, well, that has been experimented with for centuries. Alternative lifestyles have always been around too.

It seems like every time the baby boomer generation encounters something new for them, it is suddenly new altogether and requires a name, a definition and advice on how to deal with it.

The idea of caring for aging parents as well as children is nothing new. For goodness sake, in 1936, my grandmother got married and moved in with her new husband to start their life together. She immediately began caring for her new father-in-law and sister-in-law, and she was their caretaker about the next twenty years, throughout the years of raising her family too. This wasn't anything she defined, anything that she went to support groups on, anything that was written articles about. It was part of being a family, it was what people did. Was it easy? No. Mom asked her about it once, and grandma clearly replied that some days were very, very hard.

Here's the thing, though. Life is not meant to be easy all the time. Doing the right thing isn't always fun. Sometimes in life, you have to suck it up, doing what it takes for the people that you love, and keep moving forward. Period.

We can keep on doing that things that our foremothers did without having to resort to self-help books and fancy labels (Club sandwich? Open face sandwich? Oh yes, people are even defining different demographics within the new idea of a sandwich generation). Smaller family sizes and being spread out geographically are added challenges, but this is also nothing new. I guarantee you that pioneer families or immigrant families were spread out, and even if a family had six kids survive to adulthood, only one or two cared for the the aging parents.

I'm not looking forward to having to care for my in laws or my parents some day, but you know, I'm prepared for the idea because I know it is going to happen. It is kind of a no-brainer, people. People age, they need help in the end of their lives.

I think we need to stop looking for what makes us so very special in our place in time and look instead at historical connections and similarities. The idea that the generations currently alive in the US are so very special is kind of like the idea that more than half of the kids in a school are "gifted". Sorry, not buying it.

A few years ago, my uncle was telling me a story about his mother. She was at the very end of her life, days before she passed. He was visiting with her, and she questioned him about his jacket. She felt it was not warm enough for the day, and she wanted him to put on a thicker one.

I was reminded of that story yesterday when I was driving through downtown. I saw a woman who appeared to be in her mid-80s. She was walking with what I assume was her grown granddaughter. The younger woman was in her late 20s or early 30s. As they approached the corner, the older woman reached out to grasp the younger woman's elbow and restrained her at the corner until it was safe to cross.

Maternal instincts never go away.

Special Delivery

*ding dong, ding dong, ding dong, ding dong*
"Mamam MAMAM" shouted through the open front window.

I opened to door to see my little cherub bringing me a fistful of daisies he picked himself.


Moments like this make up for all the three year old power struggles.

MIghty Life

My friend, Bonny, was recently talking about finding her dreams again, creating a Mighty Life List. Yeah, it is kind of like a bucket list; you can read about it on Mighty Girl.

It got me thinking about what I might put on my list of dreams.

In this life, I'd like to...

...watch a sunset from the Shoodic Peninsula in Maine.

...learn to spin yarn.

...hold my grandchild.

...enter a photography contest.

...dip my toes in the Mediterranean.

...own another business.

...learn to drive a motorcycle.

...dance with my husband.

...attend a live music event every week for a summer.

...shop only at independently owned businesses for an entire year...or six.

...make soap.

...make cheese.

...wave sparklers with my children.

...gather enough confidence to actually carry on a full conversation in Spanish.

...attend the wedding of a stranger.

...give a child at a lemonade stand $50 and tell the child to keep the change.

...own a full set of encyclopedias.

...donate a Knitting Basket at heifer.org.

...downhill ski somewhere larger than Tyrol Basin.

...ice skate.

...laugh more.

...visit real mountains.

...take a schooner vacation with my husband.

...invite people for dinner frequently.

...take a trip with friends.

...try making all the recipes from a single cookbook.

...eat crab oceanside in the Pacific Northwest.

...nap in a hammock.

...turn my entire front yard into garden.

...learn to do yoga.

...wear lovely hats.

...find a wine I like.

...help someone achieve their dreams.

...live in the moment.

...hug.

...always take baked goods to neighbors.

...be open to spontaneity.

...make bagels that are actually good.

...smile when I am old.

...learn to drive a stick shift.

...go on a bike ride that is more than 10 miles long.

...play Frisbee.

...take a class somewhere like San Fransisco Baking Institute or Chocolate University.

...one semester, take all the community education classes at the local community college that sound interesting.

...walk 5ks again.

...skip with children.

...see the Iberian peninsula.

...never pass by a free art exhibit.

...find joy in exercise.

...grow old gracefully.


To be continued.

Hello again, Christopher Robin

Childhood is a short season. ~Helen Hayes

I have my last child going through the Christopher Robin phase.

The Christopher Robin phase, to me, is the time when my children lose the baby chunk and when shorts start landing above the knee instead of mid-calf. The little legs look skinny for the first time since the newborn age. The child runs around independently on skinny little legs with knobby knees. Add in a pair of white socks with brown shoes and a pair of blue shorts and all I can think of is Christopher Robin from the Winne-the-Pooh books. Switch it over to yellow rain boots and dark blue shorts, and it makes me want to buy the toddler a vintage floppy rain hat and black umbrella.

The realization that this is my last child going through this stage fills me with more sorrow than the final days of nursing, giving away the diapers or the packing away of the baby clothes. I wonder why that is?

Maybe it is because I see this coming down the pipeline:

Christopher Robin: But what I like most of all is just doing nothing.
Winnie the Pooh: How do you do just nothing?
Christopher Robin: Well, when grown-ups ask, "What are you going to do?" and you say, "Nothing," and then you go and do it.
Winnie the Pooh: I like that. Let's do it all the time.
Christopher Robin: You know something, Pooh? I'm not going to do just nothing anymore.
Winnie the Pooh: You mean, never again?
Christopher Robin: Well, not so much.

I am all for ethical treatment of animals in this world, but I tire of people advocating for humane treatment of animals.

Word Origin & History

humane
mid-15c., variant of human, used interchangeably with it until early 18c., when it began to be a distinct word with sense of "having qualities befitting human beings."

Online Etymology Dictionary, © 2010 Douglas Harper

Until we can treat all humans on this earth in a humane manner, I will not advocate humane treatment for animals. It is probably a small distinction, given that I do believe that we have a responsibility as omnivores to eat food raised ethically and that as pet owners, people have responsibility to insure they are providing for the animal's needs. Still, animals are not human, so please forgive me for dismissing groups that worry about inhumane things like trapping of feral cats.

Another Vincent story

So Vincent had surgery last week to put tubes into his ears again. He did extremely well with it all, and his recovery from the anesthesia was much better than last time, thank goodness.

Last time, he was truly pitiful laying there in the recovery room, all confused as he was dozing and snuggling with the new Webkinz toy we had brought for him. Expecting something like that again, we picked up another new toy for this time, a Webkinz Lava Dragon. He was sitting up, smiling and watching the television in the recovery room as we came back after his surgery, and he was practically wrestling with Simon in the bed before he was released.

He did enjoy his new Lava Dragon, though, and has been having fun playing with the newly christened Fire Breath. Saturday morning, I was walking through the upstairs hallway when he suddenly threw Fire Breath right at me, hard. I tossed the dragon back, and Vincent did it again. Wondering why on earth he was throwing things at me, I asked him about it. His answer?

"Oh, I'm giving Fire Breath flying lessons."

I love the way this child's mind works!