Go Go Go Go....Crash

I'm having a do noting kind of day. As in, I really, REALLY want to do absolutely nothing today. I'm not very good at doing nothing, much as I might want to. I've never really learned to pace myself when it comes to all the sewing, crafting, house renovating that I find myself doing these days. Mondays I'm gung ho. I get a ton done. I clean, I cook, I make and work and write and play. Tuesdays I get almost as much accomplished, still working hard. By Wednesday or Thursday I'm paying for it. I'm tired and just DONE. But there are still things that need doing, so I chug on, slower, inefficiently, but still on. By Friday I've usually recovered enough to do a big end of the week house clean, but I never find myself a whirl of activity on Friday the way I do on Monday.

There is a long list of to-do's today. I need to unpack Will and Evie's suitcases, wash and dry and fold and put away the weeks laundry. Outside there is a big pile of mulch, a small pile of cardboard and a bag of chicken hay just waiting to be put to work as our future garden beds along the newly installed fence. There is a review to write for another blog, there is dinner to start, beds to make, chores to do. But here I am, sitting outside watching Evie swing in her red stripy tights, because it's finally cool enough to wear tights and sweaters and long sleeved shirts and boots. And there is a new book sitting on the arm of my chair next to my coffee. I'm sure I'll get to that other stuff in a little while. I'll start feeling guilty sitting out in the autumn sunshine reading and playing while the chores wait and I'll get up and do them.

But before I curl up in my favorite Adirondack Chair and get to my book I'll show you what it was that kept me dizzy busy this weekend. Will and Evie went to Dallas for four days, and as a surprise for him I thought I'd tackle the grotty, grungy, outdated bathroom upstairs that he hates but that we have not had time to work on yet.

On Saturday the bathroom looked like this

























On Saturday night I pulled out all our junk, ripped out the sink and the mirror and painted the tile and tub =with some truly nasty epoxy paint.














Sunday Night I painted the walls and put in a new medicine cabinet and installed flooring

















Monday night I put in the new sink and curtains and doo-dads so that now it looks like this.




















It's not done. I ran into difficulties trying to install trim around the mirror and I haven't put the new outlets in, just the covers, but now instead of going in and thinking "yuck!" I think "ahhhh...."

It was a busy couple of days, what can I say. Maybe reading a book all day today would be excusable after all....

A TIny Eden

I'm not great with house plants. OK, I'm terrible with house plants. I kill them so quickly that I've pretty much given up altogether. The only success I've ever had is with a hardy little plant that my grandmother gave me, I forget the name at the moment, but I think it was the kind of thing that people work hard to kill in some places, so 'm not sure that I was keeping it alive so much as that I wasn't spraying it with pesticide, thus it did fine. I'm trying my hand at an orchid (I know, cause those aren't hard to keep going or anything) on the window of the kitchen and since the thing hasn't died yet, I've gone on a succulents. Which is probably where I should have started, but oh well. I bought several pots of succulents at Lowe's for another project I'm working on and had one left over that was sitting on my counter for a week looking lonesome. So I decided to give it a home.

A few weeks ago I stumbled onto a blog entry about pickle jar terrariums and decided to try it out, but on a much smaller scale. The idea is to fill the lid of a jar with moss and some little wild, grow in the cracks of sidewalk type plants, water it well and screw the jar on over the plants. The sealed environment keeps the moisture at a good level and the plants live happily in their little glass homes.

Since my plant was very small and I only had one, I used a baby food jar (it felt a little weird to be hanging out in the baby food section again!). I picked up some moss on a walk I took earlier this week and when I got home I put it all together. So now it's been sitting happily on my windowsill for a few days and I have to say, I think it's going to work. It's just enough green to perk up the white white windows and makes a good contrast to the grey sky that's been looming over Charlottesville for the past few days. I want to find something to do with the lid since an upside down Gerber logo isn't really my idea of pretty, but for now I'm enjoying my little tiny terrarium. Keep your fingers crossed that I don't kill what should be a happily self sustaining little world. Stranger things have happened.

The End of and Era

Our house is, it seems, officially a nap free zone. (Insert sighing smiley face here:)) I know I've been a little nap spoiled for the past three years. When we first moved to Charlottesville Evelyn was giving me two- two and a half hour naps every day. Sometimes two three and a half hour naps. There was so much napping that I thought, "hey, now would be a good time to get my PhD!" That whole plan went south when, right as I was turning in my application, she switched to one nap and I began to see the error of my ways. But for the past year and a half she has continued to sleep for three hours every day, down at noon, up in time to get the bus at 3:15. Time enough to clean up and do some writing and get the laundry folded or the bathrooms scrubbed or whatever chore was on my "today's To Do" list.

This summer her nap shifted, later and shorter, 2-4 maybe, more often 3-4, but it was still a nap. I was in denial that the end was near. Sure it would be nice to be able to run errands or have play dates past 12, but I NEEDED those precious naps. But ever since school started the naps have been infrequent and rough, and this week they disappeared altogether. S0 now instead of spending my afternoon writing in peace, I'm standing at the kitchen counter squeezing in a few minutes while she is playing with her brother, checking every few minutes to make sure she hasn't crashed out on the couch which would mean a horrible struggle at bedtime.

But I do admit that Ive been spoiled. By comparison, Briton had pretty much dropped any sense of a nap by the time he was two. TWO. Of course, back then I had a three hundred square foot apartment to clean, which took all of ten minutes to do, and no other child to deal with. So the lack of nap really just mean more time to be out in the city riding trains and buses and visiting museums and shops and popping in on friends.

So the big dinners that I start at nap have gone by the wayside. Tonight we are having tomato soup and grilled cheese which I can work on between sentences. There will probably be a lot of crock-potting in my future as well. And while I'll miss the "me" time, I'm actually looking forward to having some of the "we" time that I so cherished with Briton. The after the chores are done, go out and have some fun times. Because next year is preschool,and after that is Kindergarten, and then I wont have any stay at home kids to stay at home with. Which is another end of an era, but not one I'm anywhere near ready to deal with. Not quite yet anyway. We'll see how I feel after a few more weeks of no naps.

Once a Cook, Always a Cook

While unloading seventeen boxes (and counting) of books yesterday into our newly assembled build in bookshelves (pictures coming soon!) I ran across a cookbook that my mother had transcribed for me once upon a time. I'm guessing I was about four or five since teh drawings are almost intelligable but I wasn't writing yet. It's pretty freaking hilarious to read now. It features recipes for Roast Rabbit, Peanut Butter Cookies, Banana Sundae and Chocolate Strawberry sundae, Snowman Cookies, Turkey Chicken (you didnt know this but it was really ME who came up with the whoel TurDuckIn thing. What can I say, I was a child culinary genius!) Peanut Butter Sandwich and Fruit Salad with Tomatoes. They are all pretty silly but my favorites are for the Banana Sundae and the Roast Rabbit. I'm sure you'll all enjoy cooking these exactly as I wrote them.

Banana Sundae

Buy a Banana Sundae.
When you buy it, then you can eat it

(hey, I was nothing if or logical)

But this one is the best best

Roast Rabbit
(complete with a drawing of a rabbit pinned down with nails)

Cook the Rabbit and eat it.
Feed the bones to the dog.
But we dont.

The Lioness and the Lamb in Me

Part of being back to school mean back to dealing with childhood emotions. Not that my children, and mostly I'm talking about Briton here, didn't have emotions over the summer, but it's when school is in session that I see them most clearly. Will they like me, will they want to play, what do I do when I'm left out, what if I do something wrong, something stupid, something that people make fun of?

And the thing is, that never really changes, does it. People can be mean. Even when they dont mean to be. I'm not talking about anything that's happened recently, it's just something I've been bracing myself for as an inevitable part of having a child in school. But thinking about it in the context of my son got me thinking about how it happens to me even as an adult. Not as often, to be sure. Adults are, superficially, nicer. But it does happen. And the girl inside me, the one who had just a little too much imagination, a little too much wackyness, to be cool, still feels the sting every now and then. I say something or do something and that little zing comes flying back. Nothing big, nothing direct, just a little zing, like a bee's sting. you almost don't know it's happened until the throbbing pain hits a moment later.

There is nothing worse, though, than watching your child crumple with sadness when it happens to them. There is nothing that brings out the inner lioness in me quite so fiercely. That makes me want to scream and shake the offender and tell them "dont you know how GREAT my kids is??" Because he is. I know all parents think their kids are great. But mine really is. He might have an over abundence of energy at times, but he genuinley loves his sister, he always makes sure to include people, and he has a tender, sometimes easily broken heart. I want to yell this at the kid who makes him feel bad or sad or left out. But you can't do that. Can you? All you can do is offer the same words of comfort that your parents offered you. "If they don't know what they are missing being your friend, they arent worth being friends with."

It's not enough, though. It wasn't ever enough as a child to hear those words, it didnt solve things. And now as a parent I can see that it doesnt make me any less mad to say those words. But what more can we do. Just as we had to learn to fight those battles, so to must our children.But I suppose the only thing worse than having to watch your children fight battles they wish you could battle for them, is realizing that they no longer need you to fight, that they are old enough to handle it themselves. Old enough that they might not even tell you about it at all.

Isn't It Fall?

Last weekend, Briton made one of those, melt your heart, I love you so much kind of statements you get to hear when your a mom. "Mom, your the best cook EVER! Your even better than the television cooks! Can you make me some of your pumpkin bread because it's sooooo good."

Now before I go on I should clear two things up. First. I am NOT the best cook ever. And I am no where near those gurus of the cooking channel. Last night I screwed up a chicken. A chicken! I'm still mumbling over that one. All I can say is it sucks when your instant read thermometer go haywire on you.

And second, my son is the ultimate complimenter. Don't get me wrong, he's a genuinely sweet little man. We've worked hard to teach him to be kind and loving and to always try to say nice things to people. And he's taken to it like a duck to water. He compliments women's shoes, he tells people they are wonderful. He used to kiss babies and shake hand when we got on planes. For a while we feared that he was heading toward politics with his smooth attitude. He;s good. He's very good. And when he frames a request for something with "your are the best!", it's hard to refuse.

So, with my boy in mind I went to the grocery store to get myself a can of pumpkin yesterday and found...none. Now, I know it's still September and so we are not officially into pumpkin season but, seriously? No Pumpkin? It's FALL PEOPLE! My kid wants pumpkin bread!!

I looked everywhere, I asked and got shrugs, I even went to a second store. No luck. In the end I had to buy a boxed pumpkin bread kit. That is how much I love my son. I'm willing to make boxed bread.

Now along with his request for pumpkin bread came this little nugget of hilarity. "And mom, can you add your secret ingredient? Because it makes it the Best!" Well yes, yes I can. My secret ingredient being zucchini. Which he knows very well. What kid asks you to add zucchini to his food? I know, weird isn't it?

And they were pretty good, for a mix that was all powder (I thought for sure there would be one of those little cans inside the box, what do they do, freeze dry the pumpkin and bash it to a powder, ugg!) it worked out surprisingly well. The chocolate chips helped of course (another secret ingredient, hey, it can't all be healthy!)

But really, grocery stores of Charlottesville, bring out the pumpkin! I'm ready to get down to some serious autumn baking!

Plywood Free

Will and I made yet another slog up to IKEA yesterday to get the remaining piece needed to finish the counter top. You'll notice that the photos I posted before did not show the island, well, now you know why. The concrete was finished, the counter top wasn't really.

When we poured we calculated for a good bit more concrete than should have been necessary but somehow still came up short. But since we had split the island form into three chunks we decided to pour two for the island and fill in the missing space with butcher block. It has turned out to be a blessing in disguise since I've had two of my trusty cutting boards fall to pieces since we moved in. And since you aren't supposed to cut on concrete the block piece of the counter will be a savior when it comes to all the cutting, rolling, chopping and kneading I tend to do. So phew, good thing we screwed up!

While we were up at IKEA we also picked up bookshelves for the living room which looks like it will be the next indoor project round the house. And for the record, I think we shoudl have won a prize for most crap shoved into a station wagon with two kids in tow! While it's not strictly a "must do NOW" project, the books pining away in boxes in my basement will be much happier (as will I) up stairs and away from the spiders and sawdust. I've also got a big old pile of mulch just waiting outside for me to get to work. And I will...I hope.

In the mean time we are moving into a busy month (I know, like our lives haven't been busy up till now) with plans for the Halloween Party in the works, invitations to make and pass out, fall decorations to put up, a list as long as my arm of small crafts I'm working on for other writing gigs, costumes to make, and oh yeah, more renovations (hello bathroom! I'm coming for you!)

By the way, anyone have a dozen or so Osage Orange balls lying around their yard that they want to send to me? I need them for something and I don't know where to find any around here..... Here's hoping someone on Freecycle has some!