Garden :: Grows!

 Beans, yellow squash, zucchini, pumpkins, strawberries....

 cucumbers....

greens....

Not pictured: tomatoes, spinach, kale...all growing just out of the line of sight from these photos.

Gardening for me is at once a leap of faith, confirmation of the physical laws of the universe, irrefutable botanical science, and yet a completely magical and mysterious process.

The fact that each of these things was a seed, mere potential, not four weeks ago? Plus the fact that these have grown by no less than 35% in the few days since I took these pictures, standing barefoot in my backyard?  This plus that equal awe, every single time. It never gets old.

On Father's Day we had dinner at my mom's house. Standing in her garden, troubleshooting tomato death, marveling at her beans and the way the hummingbird sage starts I propogated from the native  beauty in my front yard are now so huge they need to be transplanted...AGAIN...I could very nearly feel the thread that connects me to her through the roots of those plants, and then through her, connecting both of us to my grandmother.

One thing I'm pretty sure Grandma Dot never asked my mother to do, however, is hop into a 50 gallon garbage bin and jump up and down on it (holding onto the eave of the garage for balance) to make room for a final bag of garbage. That crazy is so patently Mother that I couldn't help but remember the time she had dad's gray bomber truck loaded sky high with pruned branches from, among other things, a dozen rose bushes ambling around her property. When she ask me and my brother to hop in the back to "pack it in", my brother raised his eyebrows at me and shook his head ever so slightly. Thank you, no he seemed to be saying. 

He's been in every kind of pickle imaginable because of that woman, so I didn't question it....my turn, I thought to myself.  I climbed on the edge of the truck bed using the wheel hubs as a makeshift step ladder and scooted toward the cab. With one hand on the top of the truck, and my left foot planted on the edge of the bed, I toed my right foot around until I found my footing and I lept onto the top of the branches. It was no less than a 40 inch vertical leap, and I can't remember exactly what I was thinking when I fell through the tower of branches, cracking and snapping my way as I plunged hip deep into the thorny wood that scratched and gouged first my ankles, then my knees, and finally my thighs...but I'm pretty sure it was something like GODDIZZLE.

My brother shook his head and gave me a (not unkind) I told you so look before my mom started nagging at me that I need to do more I hadn't packed it in  enough and there's plenty of room just start jumping. So I did what I can only hope my own kids do one day...I started jumping.

Black Thumbs

 Backyard

 Front yard

Side yard

Geraniums aren't fancy (neither am I)...they are a bloom-where-you're-planted kind of friend (so am I)....You can't kill them. And? If you do? If you do, they are a break-off-a-piece-and-start-over kind of cat (as am I).

There are dozens of geraniums, in various stages of transplant and growth, around my yard. I think 90% of them are offshoots from the pink and red trailing variety that have lived for 4 years in the giant pot next to a raised veggie bed in my backyard.

I love them because they were Grandma Mary's favorite flower. She had a bit of a black thumb. "I kill them with kindness," is what she would tell us, as she watered everything in her yard....to death. But geraniums don't mind if you over water them. Or under water them. Or anything else. They will produce (and reproduce) their happy little blossoms until time out of mind.

Really now....I kind of love them.

Love Notes

In a box, somewhere in my house, I know there are two treasures: a note and a card. Both are from my husband. The note was written to me in a college English class.  We did not go to college together, but when we were a-courting, he was taking a night class to finish up his degree and I, besotted and unreasonable, basically audited the class by sitting there mooning at him so we wouldn't have to spend one waking moment apart. I am a constant, attention-mongering pest when it comes to him; this was true from the moment I laid eyes on him, right up until I sat down to write this. For nearly 20 years, I've been poking at his neck and whining at him to talk to me, what are you doing, why won't you talk to me, and his response in 1992 was to drop everything and talk to me.  In 2011, his more measured response is a small smile, a 'what is it honey?', and usually a pat on my head to let me know he's about to move on to more pressing matters, like, I don't know, living his life. But in the early months of our love affair, he reluctantly wrote me a very silly, one page, passing-notes-in-class-kind-of-note, during an English class that he did not want (and I did not have) to take.

The card is a small field of pinkety-pink-pink flowers with no sentiment inside except the one line he wrote to me, the week before we were married in 1998.  What it says is between us, but I promise you, it is a love note.

I am a total sucker for a love note.  For reals. Erik has a set of love letters from me, written pages at a time, every day, from a one month return trip to my beloved Mexico that I took the summer after we started dating. This entire blog feels like a love letter to him and my boys, when the truth be known. He isn't moved to write me love letters (drats!) so I keep my treasures and gratefully accept the many tokens of affection that he does offer.

 I get dozens of love notes from my students every day. 

(I'm going to be totally honest, and tell you that some people ought not a be teaching; some people are damaged and unyielding and angry, and they should turn and walk away. It was one of the most humbling experiences of my life, when I walked into one such teacher's classroom, early in my own teaching career, to find a proliferation of love notes taped to her desk. Teachers are given such a precious gift ~ a child's heart, for a whole year, and maybe even for a lifetime ~ and these love notes are a touch of humility, a reminder of the great responsibility that goes with that precious gift.)

When I had to explain to the students first, that I needed to be gone for a couple of days because my grandma was very sick, and then, that I needed to be gone for a couple of days because my grandma had passed away, I began to receive such an influx in love notes and sympathy cards that I had to actually take some home.  There simply isn't any more space in my classroom to house the sentiments. They go from the profound ("Sorry about your grandma hope you get better so you will rember (sic) her in all your heart xoxoxoxoooxxooooxo") to the sublime (a grave, with "RIP grandma rest in heaven" splashed across the tombstone, with the words, "Get Better Soon" headlining the note). A common theme is a student and I, holding hands and or ambling companionably over hill and dale, or through a field of flowers, a bright yellow sun our constant friend. I get books (Super B!) and drawings and notes and missives.

They are treasures.

Gram

When my grandma died last Monday, May 23rd, I sat down next to her and stared out the window, tears spilling down my cheeks....hands in my lap....lost in my thoughts.  My hand went to my head, my head went to my childhood, all my memories wrapped up in the woman lying next to me.  43 trips around the sun, and the next one had to be done without her, for the first time.

I lost my hero, and as I sit writing this, I'm crying again for the first time since I stood up and walked away from her room that day. It's hard to be sad when you think of Gram. She was bigger than life, and as I have stared at the ceiling this week, at 2, 3, even 4 in the morning (more times than I'd care to talk about), overwhelmed by this loss, restless from my helplessness, I have been thinking about all the things that I learned from her.  For right now, I'm recording them old-school in one of my (many many many lol) paper journals. But I can tell you that the one that bubbles up and calls for most of my attention, the one string I keep pulling at that continuously unwinds into more and more thoughts and memories, is that I learned that family is the most important thing in our lives....and that family includes everybody we love, whether we are related to them or not.  Orphaned at 14, she spent the rest of her life reaching out to the abandoned children who were most lost. I learned that there are a lot of them, that you can never run out of love (patience? that's a whole other matter :), and that when you open up your heart and your home amazing things happen.

When I came into the kitchen at Aunt Barbara's, this is the scene that greeted me. I had to laugh. I've seen this exact tableau a hundred thousand times in my life; dudes at one end and chicks at the other, food everywhere, hillbilly folk accounted for, and laughter. The stories were already being told. The old ones that have been perfected over the years and MUST be told by the appropriate person (my family will stop you mid-memory and say, "No, no! Let so-and-so tell it!" haha; new ones that are unfolding and require the input of everybody at the table, and when those stories feel complete and just right, they'll be wrapped back up and trotted out whenever we need them. And we need them a lot. If you had to die, you'd want to do it in my family, because we really do believe (and put into practice) the idea that as long as somebody remembers you and tells your stories, you will live in their hearts, forever, and that's what immortality looks like.

I love her. I know everybody does, she's universally adored far and wide, but there's no other way to say it. I love her and I will miss her. I already do.

At Night...

 At night, I've been practicing the 'piano' and crawling into bed with a little crochet and a good a ton of good books**.  I picked up the acoustic guitar around Christmas, and Erik showed me a few chords.  I have such short little stubby fingers though, that playing was a bit painful.  I could either strum or place my fingers, but doing both at the same time was an exercise in futility.  I had just decided that learning guitar was for the young, who will play for hours every day, having nothing better to do with themselves, when I remembered that we also have an old-school keyboard and a "beginning piano for adults" study book, and I think I may have found my calling.

I play for 20 or so minutes every night, and it is too too too much fun!  I've taught myself to read music (it's a cinch!) and I can now regal you with rockin' renditions of Down In the Valley, Clementine, When the Saints Go Marching In, Lavender's Blue, and Merrily We Roll Along (in my mind, "Mary Had a Little Lamb").  Somewhat more laborious, due to the out-of-middle-c finger positioning, I have finally also mastered "For He's a Jolly Good Fellow".  

I'm available for your bar mitzvahs and weddings!

** I'm totally the kind of person who reads about 10 books at the same time.  When I was in college, my friend Ron asked me, in total seriousness, how many books I've read in my lifetime.  I had never contemplated such a thing, but the math-geek in me quickly flipped through some averages and statistics, and I was past my elementary school days (when I would spend the summers devouring a "chapter book" a day, my favorites being Charlotte's Web, Island of the Blue Dolphins, and Tuck Everlasting) and through the middle school years (when I met Jack London and Black Beauty and went down a rabbit hole with Lauara Ingalls Wilder) and then high school where honors English brought me Hemingway, Catcher in the Rye, To Kill a Mockingbird, a Vonnegut spree, and I also read everything Stephen King wrote, espionage thrillers, the entire Planet of the Apes (original series) and anything else I could get my hands on...often going late into the wee hours of every night, unable to stop reading.  I was just beginning to mentally catalog my college textbooks, plus I was heavily into biographies between 1988 and 1994, when my friend Ron asked me "if I thought it was more than 10 books".  

And then I died.  

"No, no, I mean, I know you've had to read books, like for school and stuff, but do you think you've read more than ten books for just, like, fun?"  It had never occurred to me that there were people in the world who could literally list every book they had ever read.  It turns out, there are a lot of people like that...my dad is probably one of them!  Not counting maps and travel guides, I bet he hasn't read more than 20 books for pleasure since graduating from high school!  That would be unlike my mother and me.  I definitely get my love of WORDS from my mom, and she got it from her mom before that.  (Tommy, I'm happy to report...a nose-in-a-book kind of fellow.  The legacy lives on! :)

On my nightstand:

Painted House by John Grisham

Hideaway by Dean Koontz

Still Alice by Lisa Genova (recommended!  deeply emotional book, and so wonderful!)

The New Starting With Bees published by the A.I. Root Company

Little Bee by Chris Cleave (oops, this one is done!)

Bel Canto by Ann Patchette (surprisingly funny for a terrorist/hostage plot line...)

Lies My Teacher Told Me by James Loewen

The Four-Shaft Loom by Anne Field

The Friday Night Knitting Club by Kate Jacobs

Holidays on Ice by David Sedaris

On Beauty by Zadie Smith (re-reading, very worthwhile)

Mirror Mirror by Gregory Maguire (I think these re-imaginings of classic fairy tales are just fascinating!)

And you?  What exactly are you reading these days?  What instrument are you practicing?  Did you learn as an adult, as I am doing, or were you a child prodigy?

Sunny Sunday

This weekend was so beautiful.  Beautiful-beautiful-beautiful.  Sandals and t-shirts; soaking up lots of vitamin-D at the baseball fields; standing outside at 5:00 am in barefeet and a tank top, waiting for our pup to...do her business...it was glorious!  It won't last (and I'll be grateful when the rains come, I am so sensitive to drought-like conditions!) but it was amazing and wonderful to throw open all the windows, and settle into our home.  The weather dictated spring cleaning, and I obliged, in-so-much as I cared to. :)

(There was a moment, after the sun went down, when it reminded me so much of being a teen-ager, I swear...I'm going to try to describe it, but it may be particular to my own memories:  if you've been at the beach all day, and then you come home and it's not a hot summer night, it's just a regular summer evening that cools down, and then you realize that your shoulders and your cheeks are still warm from a day in the sun, and you're still wearing a beach cover up and a swimsuit with flip flops, but it's colder now, and the cool evening air only seems colder than it is, because of the salt water from the ocean drying on your sunburn...that feeling?  You know that feeling?  I totally had it last night! ~ and yes, I totally thought of my friend Tracy :)

The "teen" feeling quite stopped there, my friends, as I spent most of the morning in my kitchen!  I stocked my jars and my buckets with flour and sugar and oats and seeds.  I made pancake mix and muffin mix and corn bread mix.  And then I cooked...

 I'm pretty sure I've perfected my Laurel's Kitchen granola recipe.  We LOVE it with LOTS of nuts (this batch has walnuts, almonds, and sunflower seeds) and LESS wheat germ.  It is crunchy and beautiful, and absolutely perfect with Greek yogurt and a teaspoon (read: tablespoon) of honey.  One of Tommy's favorite treats is to dip a banana in honey and then roll it in granola.  He calls it 'banana pop crunch' and I am so glad to have a fresh batch.

 As I was pulling the granola out of the oven and cooling it before storing it, I was also browning some ground beef with a jar of our summer-tomato-sauce to add to the calzones (below), and I was also getting ready to rinse some assorted soup beans and cut up potato and carrots for the crockpot.  (The soup was finished for lunches today, and it was yummy!  No recipe, just throw any root veggies and dried beans you like in the crockpot with either 6 - 8 cups of chicken or beef broth ~ a mix of both, for us, because we didn't have enough of either, plus some plain water, because we really didn't have enough of either! ~ some salt and pepper and a couple of bay leaves with oregano and whatever spices you like, then cook it on low for 8 - 10 hours (9 for me!).  I added chicken sausage, heated through at the end, for Erik and we loved it.)

 My favorite pyrex bowl.  But I say that about them all...

 I used the calzone recipe from Gina, and it worked like a charm!  (If you're at all interested in learning to make for the first time, and/or expanding your bread repertoire, I highly recommend her whole series that she's been writing!  I've made the Miracle Bread too, and you better believe I'm dying to try her sweet dough and the freezing method she describes...)

 They were really just for the boys, and while they cooked, I whipped up a dressing for the grilled ahi salad Erik and I had for dinner...AND lunch.  :-/  The dressing is delish ~ just equal parts lemon juice and dijon mustard, a few tablespoons of olive oil (I guess; I don't measure), salt and pepper to taste, and some diced onion (red is better, but, theme here, we didn't have red so I used white) all whisked together.  I use the same dressing for most salads, with some added crushed garlic.  

It was the perfect meal for the sunny day.

I could have added the obligatory long-shot of my completely destroyed kitchen, as you know that I cannot cook even the simplest meal without a total catastrophe from top to bottom, but the calzones were so beautiful...let's leave it that, shall we?

Tell me...what's happening in your kitchen?  Are you enjoying your weather...whatever it looks like?!

October!

I'm already loving October!  The heat wave broke on the first, leaving us 30 degrees cooler than we were in September.  I sent off my manuscript on September 30th at 6:30 in the morning...two hours before it was due!  And I don't have any consulting work due until late October, and just so you know, that work is just about done already.  Me!  Ahead of schedule! 

I spent this weekend mostly with my family, doing some sewing, some crocheting, some partying (of the kid variety...happy birthday Niece!) and even doing some chores around the house.  It just feels good.

On my to-do-list, and officially done:

These turtles were the one thing I asked for after Marie died...and her wonderful, sweet children agreed.  So my mom brought them back from Healdsburg on Wednesday, I picked them up from her house on Friday, and I floated them around the house all weekend before hanging them in the very first spot I had considered.  Isn't it always like that? 

I may have told this story, but it's worth repeating because it's so very Marie, but right after she was diagnosed with lung cancer, my mom and I headed up to see what's-what.  Marie was showing me some things she had brought back from Hawaii with her, after Glenn died, and these turtles were hanging on her wall.  "These are for good health and long life...." then she turned to me and deadpanned, "And you can see how well that's working out for Glen and I!"  She was so funny!  So twisted and funny.  I miss her.  :(

I love love love turtles myself, and so I was so happy when my mom let me have them.  I know she would have gladly accepted them herself, so it was very (uncharacteristically) sweet of her.  My own sweet dear childhood friend Tracy had sent me these just last week, and I've been so grateful to wear one or the other daily....

My students love the silver one (his legs and head wobble!) as do I, but I am also quite enamoured of  the mother of pearl...it feels so heavy, and it reminds me every day that friendships that last a lifetime are precious.  I love you, Tra!

I was also so happy that both Jenny and Michael wanted the blanket I had made with their parents' clothing and pictures.  My told me that they agreed to 'share it', trading off who got to keep it at their house.  Love!

Kings and Queens

So this last weekend, Tommy starts yapping at me about how I need to make him these things, for this idea he has.  This kid can talk.  Did you know I was voted "Most Talkative" in my Junior High School yearbook?  Um.  Yeah.  I now know how everybody else on the planet felt about me yammering nonstop about nothing.  I feel like finding my 7th grade pre-algebra teacher, Mrs. Walker, and sending her a cookie basket. 

People of earth:  I am sorry.  I am so, so, so sorry.  Rest assured that I am suffering for all that I put you through.

Where was I?  Oh, yes, Tommy had this idea, where he rattled off nonstop directions and specifications for this army of knights and peasants that I need to make him and even horses for them to ride because there needs to be a good king and queen and a bad king and queen and there's going to be a war and can the horsesbewearingthosebannersyouknowthatareroyalandthepeasantsneedtobe....OH MY GATO!!!  Zip it, why can't you?

Instead of losing it (or was it in addition to losing it?  I can't remember...) I suggested that he might want to write or draw the details, so I wouldn't forget them all.

(For the record?  How much do I LOVE the way he wrote "random" when he didn't care about the colors?  SO MUCH, that's how much I love it!)

So, in sum:  6 knights, 2 kings, 2 queens, 6 horses (3 brown, 3 black, and "make sure they can stand up and the people can ride them"), 5 boy peasants (green) and 5 girl peasants, plus two horses for the kings. 

I haven't put the arms on this Evil Queen yet, but you need to see the depths of my commitment to this project.  She has an evil face and a felt crown and she's knitted and stuffed so she can, eventually, ride a royal pony.  I am using (and so thankful for!!!) this free pattern from Wee Folk Art.  And if you have an hour or two to kill, their free pattern section is wonderful and inspiring and, of course, completely free.  Love you, Wee Folk Art!

So far he adores it ("put the arms on!  and i need a horse!"  I can hear, son, I can hear.)  but Erik and I got a big laugh tonight when we decided that, by the time I get around to finishing twenty of these that he will have long forgotten about the idea anyway!  haha  Oh, how we laughed!  So, to hedge my bets, I'm making just enough for a battle to get underway...a good queen, an evil queen, two knights and two horses.  For the horses, I'm going to use the pattern from Alicia Paulson's book because, unbelievably, she has a stuffie horse pattern in it.  You just never know.  We'll see how he gets on with that ensemble, and then we'll make a decision about moving forward!

Versatile Blogger :)

Miss Carmen has given me an award!  How sweet!  It's for being a "versatile blogger", which kind of cracks me up...because I think that's about the nicest way you can say that I lack focus.  *cough*

The rules for this award are simple. Thank the person who gave you the award (thanks Carmen!), tell seven things about yourself and pass the award along to some bloggers you love.

1.  Next year, I took a job teaching at one of my favorite schools in our district.  My class list boasts 31 third graders and 5 fourth graders.  la-la-la-la i can't hear you!

2.  I can't stand to be wet.  I often wash my hair by hanging my head over the tub after I leave the shower, just so I won't have to be completely wet all at once.

3.  I am trying really hard to remember my cloth grocery bags at the market.  I occasionally leave them in the pantry after the last haul, but I often leave them in the car when I go into the store!  Currently, I punish myself for this by insisting on not taking any bags at all...I juggle my purchases across the parking lot.  That'll learn me!

4.  My cars are always filthy.  Inside and out.   And almost always out of gas.  I have also locked the keys in my car so many times, that I ended up giving my colleague a set of extra keys, so that she wouldn't have to keep calling her Triple-A insurance.  *blush*

5.  Speaking of keys?  I also routinely lock us out of the house.  There are many (very generous) people in my life who choose to interpret my ridiculous behavior as a form of "genius"...like, "oh Mia is so full of lofty thoughts, there's just no more room for the mundane details of life."  I wish those same people could have seen me the day I fell into the bath tub after climbing through the tiny shower window at the top of the stall.   The window is roughly the size of two gallons of milk; I managed to thread myself through, but crashed to the bottom, breaking the built-in ceramic soap dish and tearing down the shower curtain on the way.  I wonder what those (very generous) people would be thinking if they had found me, amidst all that property damage, laying very still and trying to figure out if I had also broken a bone or two?

6.    For reasons I'd rather not disclose, I never know how to answer the question on a job application re:  "have you ever been convicted of a felony".

7.   I am a procrastinator.  See, I even put off saying that until the last possible second!

Whew!   Now, that was actually kind of fun...I would love to pass the Versatile Blogger Award on to my cousin, Kelly, and her aunt, Betty...plus I'd love to hear from Michelle (but I know you don't have "that kind of blog", so I understand if you choose not to share!  ooohhh, or, you know what, you can put it in the comments here!) and although I just found the blog of "La" when she left a comment the other day, I'd love to hear more about her, too!  I think anyone with the word "potpourri" in their blog title would have to fall under the versatile flag.  :) 

Bees!

So, I had to try to get some pictures of the inside of the green bin bee hive.  They've been pretty tolerant of me so far; I try to spend a little time with them each day, so they get used to me hanging around.  I'm pretty sure that last scene was some kind of...mating something-or-other.  They don't usually hang out on the outside like that.

Indeed, why would they ever leave, when this wonderland exists?   So for this photo, I got down low and carefully, slowly lifted the top of the bin.  Look at all that honeycomb!  Are you kidding me?!?

Nope. You are totally not kidding me.  I think it's so beautiful.  I showed it to Erik and he said it was "disgusting".  I'm trying to understand that view point.  Is there something creepy about it?  Something alien-like or disturbing?  I just can't see it that way!  I love these dang bees.

I've been hesitant to buy a hive, because I have no idea what or how or anything else.  But I went ahead and ordered a hive from Mann Lake.  Tommy is quite excited about the netting that comes with this kit!  He anticipates becoming quite the beekeeper.  I also contacted a lovely woman from Alameda Bees who will swing by when my hive arrives and move them over for me.  She charges an hourly rate, and says it'll take a couple hours or more.  I talked to her on the phone for some time, me quite panicked (will they die?  am I killing them?  are they dead yet?) and her quite calm (ah, yes, the green bin takeover...happens all the time.  No, it won't get too hot.  They like heat.  They aren't going to leave.  They aren't going to die.)

I am nervous about moving them (though she claims it's no big thing at all) because I feel like they've done all this work, and if they have to move, do they what, do they just start all over?  If somebody did that to me, after all that work, I think I would just curl up and cry.  But she seemed very non-plussed by the whole thing.  It's just what bees do.  (The whole conversation reminded me a little bit of a conversation I had with my OB/GYN when I was pregnant with Scotty.  She found his heartbeat and we sat listening to it for a second.  Then I asked, "Do you think he ever gets bored?  You know, because there's not much to do in there?"  And she openly stared at me before saying, slowly, that nobody had ever asked her that before.  She thought about it for a minute and then said that she thought he might not get bored at all, because there was a lot of growing he had to do, which would take up a lot of his time.  I thought that made some sense, too.  I think she thought I was weird, though.  I never did shake that feeling!)

Okay!  Bees!

Also...Happy 4th of July!

On Sunday, we packed up the van and headed up to Anna's lake house.  It's a condo actually, which I can't recommend with five children under the age of 9.  You know, because of all the loud and all.  But, I do highly recommend having a family friend who lets you use her lake house condo for free on a holiday weekend.  The property is just above Strawberry, so it's about 2 and half hours.  Or, if you're traveling with my sons, around three years.  Stop talking.

 

I wanted Tommy to jump off the dock.  He was a little hesitant, so I showed him how it's done...

...then I did it with him....

...and here we go!  Once he was off and running you just couldn't stop him.  It sure made me miss the 4th of July's from years gone by (Tra:  We drove right past Don Pedro on the way up!!!) but it was also nice to be on such a small private lake, with no motor boats allowed.  It was incredibly safe and serene, with a sandy beach and surrounded by the mountains.  Heavenly, really.

Scotty was pretty excited too!  I also remember riding on my dad's back like this in my Aunt Patty's pool when I was little.  (Yep, Moose, it's true!)  He would swim down to the bottom,  and we'd wrap our legs around his tummy and go down there with him.  I used to pretend I was riding a dolphin!

Seeing Erik playing with the boys in the water reminds me of how safe it feels when your daddy is around, making everything all right. :)

Lucky for me, my daddy was there too!  My mom and dad surprised me by coming up with my brother and me.  My dad has been working so much (he's on this crazy Solyndra job, and it's nuts; the most time off he got was when the President came and they shut everything down for five hours!) and my mom has turned into a hermit.  Getting her to leave the house is like prying teeth.  She'll trot to the grocery store...if she has to, but forget everything else.  She had a rental for three days when my dad's truck went into the shop.  She returned it with 20 miles on it.  It's 8 miles to the rental place.  Each way.  

So, anywho, it was a treat to have them out and about!

Good times.

So  many new experiences!  Scotty just didn't want it to end.

Oh my goodness.  That nose!

Flying Higher

You can baaarrrreeelllyyyyy see him, flying there in the center...an enormous hawk, sprawling and majestic, but he looks like a tick here.  Actually, he looks smaller even than the tick I pulled out of Scotty's tummy last night when he came out of the woods at the little league playoff game.  Yes, you heard me, a TICK.  *shudder*  If you've started to itch after reading this, imagine my world for the past 24 hours, after plucking that thing out.

Here you go, for perspective, the gray matter in the middle of this one, just hovering** over the mountain, is actually a plane.  It's landing at the Oakland airport.  From where I'm sitting, taking this picture in my backyard, we can watch planes land**** at the San Francisco airport, across the bay there, and here in Oakland, just past that tree on the right, and also at the wee little executive airport in Hayward, to the left of where we are sitting.

I liked these two pictures together because they kind of define where we are living...high on this hill, you can watch the cars and trains pass below you, but the sounds are so distant, it's more like waves crashing on a beach.   Just the rural beauty of a hawk, juxtaposed with the modern mechanics of a Boeing 747...it kind of makes me smile.

**  I once told Erik that he was pronouncing "hovering" wrong, because he was saying it like huv-er-ing.  I told him it was supposed to be said like hoe-ver-ing.   After a full five minutes of this, exasperated, he sputtered out, "But, look, don't you say hover craft?!?"  And I said, willfully and blatantly forging on, even though I agreed with him the whole time, "Don't you say over?"  This was before I had any real hobbies, so irritating him for no reason was the closest I got to entertainment.  This is why I often tell a friend, "Yarn saved my marriage."

****  My treadmill is in the garage, and I used to open up the door and pretend like I was running outside.  I often ran at 10 pm, when the kids were asleep and everything that need getting done had finally got done, and I'd leave the lights off in the garage.  It was quiet and peaceful and I'd watch the planes land to pass the time.  I thought 'mill running was so boring, so I'd play little games with myself, like, when a plane came into view, I'd watch it until it disappeared behind that tree on the right.  If another plane came into view on the left, before the previous one disappeared on the right, I had to watch that new one until it disappeared...and I'd repeat all this, if another plane had come into my sight in the meantime.  But, but, and here's where the excitement kicks in, if no plane broke the event horizon on my left before the previous plane exited on my right, well, then I allowed myself a peak at the time on the treadmill, so I could check how long I'd been going.  Since I'd run for 5 or 6 miles at a time, without this little game, I'd be obsessively staring at the time...and just like a watched pot never boils, a watched timer never ends.  In the 45 minutes I'd be running, I'd only get to look at the timer a handful of times.  Seriously, a lot of planes are landing, all the time.  Except, right after the World Trade Centers were attacked, all air travel stopped for several days.  That was so eerie!  I think it was the first time I realized just how many planes pass through here, on those few days when no planes passed at all.

Tribes

When I went up to Mamaw's memorial service last weekend, I got to spend some time with Marie's kids.  I've spent time with all four of them, in various singletons and configurations, over the last six months.  But this was the first time I was with all four of them at the same time.

My older brother and I grew up with Michael and Jenny (on the right in the photo).  Jenny was a few months younger than my brother, and Michael is a few months younger than I am.  Boom-boom-boom-and-boom.  Just like that, two best friends were married and had four kids between them by the time they were 22 years old.

Toby (on the other side of Jenny) came along right around the time my little brother Jason did.  Freaky, right?  Then, sweet Jake, oopsy-daisy!  Jacob was born shortly after Mimi's tubes were tied.  D'oh! :)

Looking at them is like looking at a warped, slightly "off" mirror.  Boys where there are girls, girls where there are boys, but they are just like us...if we were wildly attractive.  They are our "tribe".  I've had that thought many times over the last few months, as we go down the bitter path of Mimi's illness.  It's not just her kids...I have a baby blanket made by her mother-in-law for me when I was born.  One of the speakers at the service was talking about how "all the grandkids" called Mimi's mom "Mamaw", and I realized that's what we called her too.  Mimi's own brothers and sisters are woven into our family history, even as my own aunts and uncles are. 

You could split in two from laughing so hard when everybody gets together...From "Close Call Albert", who has accidentally shot every person (guns, arrows, you name it), and wrecked every car (boat and bike) anyone ever owned or borrowed; to my godfather, Glenn, who was Peter Pan ~ for real! ~ to all of us having to survive the trauma that was Mimi's second marriage...the stories are dark and twisted and, truly, hilarious. 

This is Michael John.  He looks exactly like his father.  It's...unnerving, honestly.  He is, and always has been, a total honey.  I adore his wife and their son.  Their son?  Almost exactly the same age as my Tommy!  What the what?

Anyway, once when our parents were younger, Glenn had this idea to move his whole family to a commune.  He thought it would be the best thing, ever!  Everybody chipping in, living in teepees, and going off the grid.  He spent his whole life chasing that dream, in one form or another, but Mimi was far too bourgeoisie to ever be as enthusiastic as he was about such a lifestyle.  This was a woman who color coded the kids' clothes in their dressers.  She was not going to live in a teepee.  But, as Michael grew up ~ and out on his own ~ he and Keiko were part of the SF Mime Troupe for YEARS and lived the bohemian lifestyle Glenn so adored.  They were broke and happy.  The dream, indeed.

Still happy, but having moved on to more "vagabond" than "bohemian" (they bought a 'fixer-upper' in San Francisco that has them jumping from temporary housing to temporary housing) and now gainfully employeed and even, for Michael's part, considering giving up his actor's union card and fees, I can't help but think that Glenn would still approve.  Glenn was happy when you were happy.

You know what this picture reminds me of?  It reminds me of when we were little, and the four of us were playing a game...maybe it was "Kings and Queens" or something about a castle?  Anyway, George (my older brother) and Jenny were going to be the King and Queen (of course, as the oldest, they always got to be The Boss!) and I know for a fact that George was stoked to be playing opposite Jenny in this role because Jenny was, is, and always will be, so sweet and adorable.   But I secretly thought that Michael must be so disappointed to be saddled with me, as I was dumpy and freckled and, well, let's just put it right out there, I was filthy.  A real dirt-magnet, no matter how many wet washclothes my mom toted around in tupperware, seconds after being hosed off I was literally covered in dirt.   I was like that until high school, dude.  Who knows?

Anyway, there was no sense of "pairing off", I mean, I was like six or something at the time for heaven's sake, but there was still this impending sense of disappointed that (at least in my head) Michael must have been feeling.  But you know what he did?  He and I had gone downstairs to get something from our mom's, and as we came back, he put one hand on the doorknob and he gave me this exact same look that he's got in this picture, and he said, "Let's go, princess!" and in that moment, I felt...beautiful. 

Plus, as I recall, we kicked their butts in the royal battle. 

Flowers for Mother's Day

These flowers were made for me by Tommy (left) and Scotty (right).  Tommy used watercolors and wrote our names and "I love Mom" in the middle of the flowers.  Scotty used his handprint and tissue paper.  Inside Scotty's card, he drew me a "spaceship".  It's just that...wait, I have something in my eye.  WHAT? 

Tommy used yarn to "embroider" this burlap drawstring bag with my name.  (It says "Mom", obvs.  :) 

Scotty and my mom stopped at Trader Joe's last Thursday, and he put these in the cart, insisting that they had to get them for me.  When he gave them to me that night (so proud of himself!) he said, "These are for you, because I like you so much."  Swoon.  Apparently, he talked about how much he "missed" me all day.  I get it, kid, I missed us too.  (Last week...was challenging.)

My mom and dad gave me a dozen lavender roses.  Gram, Aunt Barbara, my cousin Kathy, and my brother and me, all went to my mom and dad's house.  We had a big barbecue and, since it was rainy and cold, all us MOMS sat in my mom's cozy dining room while all the GUYS hustled the kids into the yard (kids just do not care how cold it is!) and made up our plates and delivered them to us.  We ate and laughed and enjoyed the quiet and each other.  Afterwards, we passed my mom's laptop around the table, enjoying youtube for reminiscing (do I have the only family that listened to CB radios and The Streak in the 1970s?) and Auntie Barbara got teary-eyed (one of my favorite songs...reminds me of my mom and dad) and then my mom got teary-eyed (one of my favorite songs...reminds me of me and my dad) because some songs just make you sigh.  Gram did some swing dancing from her seat and clapped at the end of each song.  Be still my heart.

I sort of "accidentally" scored these beautiful roses, too, and Erik got me an iTunes gift card (My Precious!) and two pounds of See's chocolate.  Nuts and chews, do you really need to ask?    (Most frequently asked question of the day?  "Mommy, can I have a piece of 'your' chocolate?"  :)

I also collected these gorgeous cabbage roses from my mom's garden.  They are sitting in my favorite vase (gorgeous, cobalt blue, blown glass, and given to me by my friend Tracy the day she married her love, Travis) and they smell like roses should.  What is it about roses from the florist?   They just don't "stink" the way garden roses do! 

Mother's Day is for everybody...so I wish a Happy Mother's Day to everyone who is or has a mother!   This weekend we'll head up to Healdsburg to say goodbye and honor the life of Marie's mom (Mamaw, who died at 81 years old) and it was the start to a very hard week when my mom had to tell Marie ~ in her own hospital bed, unable to get stabilized blood pressure and lungs filling with liquid ~ that her mom had passed away.   Marie is home now, and expectations are being adjusted... we've moved from "kicking cancer" to "let her make it through the summer" to "she just wants to get out of the hospital".  Every day is a gift, and when my dad and I drove up last weekend to get my mom, I was very aware of how much it cost dear, sweet Marie to put my dad at ease.  He hasn't seen her since she got sick...and I do declare, despite the feeding tube and the hospital bed in her living room and the constant iv of medication, that he has not seen her sick, even yet.  So much laughter.  If you close your eyes and just listen, it's like none of this is happening at all.  Love her.  Wish she wasn't dying. 

Sorry.  Didn't know this was going there.  I guess it's just what's on my mind, though, and that's life...  sweet, beautiful, and so sad, all at the same time.  All we can do is gather around the table and make our memories.

Old-Fashioned Kids

Last night, I made two loaves of bread and I took one over to my neighbors.  I love to cook, and I especially love to bake, but I've lost 30 pounds since October and so I don't eat most of what I make.  Well, most of what I bake, I eat what I cook or you know, what's the point?  Anyway, I love my neighbors, and I send them food just about a couple times a week.

When I went over last night, it was especially charming because I brought a loaf of whole wheat bread, and it was the one thing that they had forgotten to get at the store, and they were just trying to work up the energy to head down off Walton's Mountain to go pick some up.  Lucky coincidence!  I've said many times that one of my most favorite things about cooking from scratch is the ability to avoid the store; I love that I can make tortillas, cookies, bread, granola, etc. and usually faster than it would take me to go buy it.  Certainly cheaper.

Before I left, I remembered that I wanted to ask Lior if he he knew of a place where I could buy a small piece of granite or marble, to put on top of my new table.  I just want to put something there that  I can roll out dough and knead on without destroying the wood table.  It's been working fine, but if there's a castoff from one of his jobs, or a way to buy a tiny amount, I thought I'd just ask.  It's my new policy, after all.

Guess who happened to have a perfectly wee slab, right there in his house?  It doesn't cover the whole table, but it covers just about half, and it's certainly bigger than any pie I'll ever make (sorry, Erik, but it's true) and it's plenty big enough for kneading dough.  Happy day!

When I was there, they were laughing and telling me that they were just the other night talking about how "old fashioned" my kids are.  Oh?  Were they....what?  Were they dressed as hobos?  Were they fishing with bamboo poles?  Were they...whittling?  Um....no.  They were playing outside.  That now qualifies, apparently, as old fashioned!  I kind of know what they are talking about, though.  They're basically the only kids you see running around outside on our whole street.  We live in a secluded court, at the top of a hill, so I know we are totally lucky to have such a fun, safe-from-cars spot for them to play catch, play kickball, and ride scooters with abandon.  Still, it's interesting that it's notable that they are outside.

Still, do I need to even mention that we, as children, were out from sun-up until sun-down on most days?  Up until second grade, we lived at the deadend of a street in Fremont.  Our court was the spot where neighborhood kids tended to congregate, so a pick-up game of hide-and-seek or Pickle was always in the works.  When we moved to the farm in Pleasanton, we'd disappear on our horses or our bikes and we'd stop by the house to get sammies for lunch (eaten on horseback, usually) and off we'd go again.  We were never alone, but we were never with adults, either.

I consider myself to have had an amazing childhood, but there's this other side of this, too.  My brother, Jason, used to ride his Big Wheel (obsessively!  crazily!) and there was this creepy kid, William, who lived at the end of our court.  Jason always did this in "full gear" (my dad rides motorcycles, and we grew up with an abundance of helmets, goggles, and gloves at our fingertips) and one day, William tucked a lit firecracker between his goggles and his helmet.  I could not make this up.  But here's another difference:  the gentleman who lived across the street (I almost wrote "older gentleman" here, but ha!  haha! he was probably about my current age now that I think about it :-| ) was outside and saw this happen.  He removed the firecracker, gave William what-for, and informed my mom.  All the adults agreed that this would have "scared him" but it wouldn't have "hurt him".  I have no idea what information they were basing this on.

(Side note:  When I was in high school, for some unfathomable reason, my friend Mary Kelley and I drove to that old neighborhood and found William, smoking pot, and living in his parents' garage.)

Besides our court, the other popular place to hang out was at the Severin's house.  They were six totally wild kids (the third oldest was my older brother's best friend, the youngest girl was my best friend) and their mom was "a divorcee" (the scandal!), which meant that they were under the supervision of the oldest girl and boy.  Um, they were about 16, I guess.  That was the house where we put Jason in the dryer (that poor kid!) and it was the house where I ran into the brick fireplace.  I was out on the porch with wheat stalks from the field behind our houses stuck to a gaping wound in my forehead (Johnny was a boy scout, and he swore this would stave the bleeding).  Have you ever cut your face?  Blood.  I had to sit on the front porch so we wouldn't get in trouble for getting blood on the carpet.  I still have a scar from those stitches, right between my eyes.

So, when I see people overprotective of their kids, part of me sort of "gets it".  We were not overprotected, and we got hurt, got in trouble, and got bullied once in a while, too.  But there was this other thing...we learned stuff.  Important kid stuff.  Like, we learned which older kids smoked, or were mean, and truthfully, we learned to avoid them or head the other way when we saw them coming.  If we had met these same kids as middle schoolers, we may have thought they were "cool", and made a beeline straight for them.  But, because we met them when we were young enough to think they were...scary, frankly... we weren't so fascinated by them growing up.  I truly think the whole experience was what made us capable of making better choices as we grew up.  My older brother is excluded from this statement, as he was the scary dude you tried to avoid on the street corner, but that's another story altogether.  As for me, all my bad choices were made when I was old enough to know better.  haha!  Totally not even kidding.

So, what the heck? That was a real rabbit hole.  Anyway, the point I wanted to make was, I think it's totally normal to play outside.  What I don't understand is this:

Why do my kids insist on putting their scooters directly inside the front door?  We have a small house, with no foyer at all.  But here we have shoes kicked off and scooters parked, and hello, are you trying to kill me?