clerihew in a glass box

Marcel Marceau,
as far as mimes go,
achieved international fame,
while rarely speaking his own name.

You'll Never Walk Alone

C likes to make newspapers. I don't know where he's getting that idea from but he likes me to make a banner, something along the lines of "C's newspaper," and then he fills in the rest with what looks like binary code (a whole lot of 0s and ls). This is all fine, except that after, he wants to distribute the papers. The neighbors have all been gracious to date, Dave even went so far as to display one on the side of his house at C's suggestion. The problem was when he wanted to get up early in the morning and deliver the newspapers to our neighbors without me, "like a real newspaper."
I explained that he couldn't go downstairs and leave the house without me knowing "for safety" and that it's my job (among other things) to know where he is when he's at home. I said he'd be in trouble if he went out without telling me or without me knowing. I said they'd be "consequences." None of this was effective. He had some kind of preschooler rational to debunk all my reasons.
Finally I gave up.
"If you go outside early in the morning, the coyotes will get you."

song: You'll Never Walk Alone • soundtrack: Carousel

a mother's bouquet

Dandelions in spring
my children bring.
Daisies in summer
in great number.
Goldenrod in fall
given me by all.

If Ever I Would Leave You

Sometimes I buckle my kids into their car seats and then go back in the house to use the bathroom before getting into the car to leave.
Sometimes I use the bathroom, transfer my cup of tea to a travel mug, and apply lip gloss before heading back out the door.
Sometimes I use the bathroom, transfer my tea, gloss lips, check my e-mail, and then hang out the laundry. I leave the drivers side door open and look out the window every now and then. They get along better when they're strapped into the car waiting to go somewhere than they would if they were in the house with me.
We all know the stories about the terrible things that can happen when children are left alone, even for a minute.
I heard about a mom who left her sleeping baby in the car while she and the child's older sibling attended music class. I read an article about a mom who was chastised by strangers for leaving her sleeping children in the car while she went inside a farm stand. By now everyone's heard of Kate and Gerry McCann, the English couple who left their three kids alone in their Portugal apartment house while they dined with friends. Their daughter Madeline is still missing.
We take our chances with our kids every day. Some of us take more chances than others. Some take chances that others of us couldn't conceive of, but we all take chances.

song: If Ever I Would Leave You • soundtrack: Camelot

Little Red Corvette

How come you never see any mini vans in candy apple red? If I can't drive a cool car, can I at least drive a car in a cool color? Instead there's blue mirage metallic, silver pine mica, silver shadow pearl, and arctic frost pearl. The first three are basically silver, the last, white.
On a different note, I was remiss in my tomato recipe. A friend who tried it reminded me that tomato pie, like good soup or chili tastes even better the second day.

song: Little Red Corvette • artist: Prince

Simply Irresistible

There are a lot of ripe cucumbers in the #2 greenhouse at Coonamessett Farm which compels me to share another great recipe, this one is from the Moosewood Restuarant's Low Fat Cookbook and it's one of the few recipes (along with tuna casserole) I have committed to memory; probably because it has only five ingredients

Cucumbers Vinegarette
Two cucumbers sliced paper thin
mix together and pour over cucumbers:
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp mustard
2 tbsp sugar
1/4 c cider vinegar
chill

song: Simply Irresistible • artist: Robert Palmer

Vineyard

The four of us went to the Vineyard yesterday on the Island Queen's noon boat.
I've never been that impressed with the Vineyard. It seems like the only reason to go there is to buy t-shirts - and there are lots to choose from over there, it's a regular island paradise of t-shirt shops. At least downtown Nantucket has a library, a whaling museum, and a historical society. Granted in repeated visits to Nantucket I've never stepped foot in any of those spots, but I feel more cultural when I'm playing darts in the Chicken Box just knowing they exist.
I guess if you stay for the day you could go out to the-town-that-used-to-be-called Gay Head, or eat ice cream at Mad Martha's (it was good enough for Bill Clinton), check out the bridge that brought down a presidential hopeful (except that it's been rebuilt), and visit dead celebrities (John Belushi) in the event you don't spot any real ones (Carly Simon).
Or you can do what we did and ride the Flying Horses in Oak Bluffs. Ken scored a brass ring, earning C, whose arms weren't quite long enough to catch any rings himself, a free ride. Then we had chowder in the kite-flying park and caught the bus to Edgartown. Unfortunately we forgot to pick up t-shirts.

song: Vineyard • artist: Jackopierce

Every Which Way But Loose

This week a different police officer was directing traffic around the 28A roadwork. Instead of a big stinky stogie hanging out of his mouth, he was drinking a bottle of apple juice. Much Better!
Unfortunatley now they are also doing work on Quaker Road down by Old Silver Beach. That policeman looked disinterested in the whole business of directing traffic but he wasn't eating or smoking anything so I'd best leave him alone for now. I just hope no big crimes are being perpetrated town down while the police force personally directs me and my children as we come and go from preschool.

song: Every Which Way But Loose • artist: Eddie Rabbitt

Time and Time Again

The kids covered the living room windows with Halloween decorations this week, more than six weeks before the holiday. I let them do this - me - the irate mom who wrote the nasty letter to Stop and Shop two years ago when they had snowman snow globes and fake greens on sale in September. I noticed last year they managed to hold off on selling Christmas until almost after Halloween. Maybe I wasn't the only annoyed mother who spoke up.
But back to the Halloween decorations in September, I just needed something for them to do for 15 minutes that wouldn't result in screaming.
So far C's settled on a pirate costume for Halloween. This seems a bit more doable than the Titanic or Mount Vesuvious, his first two ideas. Sinking passenger liners and erupting volcanos, when is my son going to become obsessed with dinosaurs like a normal five year old?

song: Time and Time Again • artist: Dusty Springfield

Angry Anymore

Just to prove that my kids will fight over anything: last night they were fighting over who got to hold the plastic bottle of lime juice.
This type of behavior makes me long for the dreaded minivan we're going to have to buy in the near future. At least I can put the two of them in the way back.

song: Angry Anymore • Ani DiFranco

Nothing from Nothing

Hey Liz,
Too bad we missed this installation it opened this week in Boston. It makes fart art look like the Sistine Chapel. Ken said I was ranting last night but really - is this art? I'm pretty big fan of art, even modern and conceptual stuff, but this isn't art - it isn't anything. "I love the subtlety of the piece," says the gallery owner in the Globe. You have got to be kidding. Of course it's subtle, there's nothing there. It's just blinking lights! Hello! The emperor has no clothes on!
The artist (if you want to call him that) even admits as much. "I don't think it's provocative," he's quoted as saying, "It's just the lights going on and off. What's provocative about that?"
What indeed.

song: Nothing from Nothing • artist: Billy Preston

Beautiful In My Eyes

At an office visit last month the doctor proclaimed I had a "perfect uterus." A week later at Brigham and Women's, the doctor checking my ultrasound said I had a great cervix for carrying twins. Ken told her that's exactly why he'd married me - nice cervix.
The whole episode reminded me of dialogue from The Mikado, where Katisha, the "elderly lady" from the Mikado's court, explains that though her face may be unattractive she has "a left shoulder-blade that is a miracle of loveliness," and her "right elbow has a fascination that few can resist."
On a different but related topic, how come the women in the catalogues modeling the "power panties," "higher power panties," "torso trim," and the "midriff-smoothing miracle, hide and sleek camis," never look like people who actually need any extra support?
So what visible attributes do I actually possess? Well, my high school boyfriend once told me the acne scars on my face were sexy though I highly suspect he was just being kind. I think Ken really married me because I had the shiniest lips of anyone he'd ever met, but that's only a lip-gloss induced attribute. There's a mole on my face in approximately the same spot as the one Marilyn Monroe had.
It will probably turn out to be cancerous.

song: Beautiful In My Eyes • artist: Joshua Kadison

Storm Front

Hey! how about that, the cat came through.
I guess a broken oar in a hurricane is still better than no oar at all.
Poor Templeton.

song: Storm Front • artist: Billy Joel

fall couplet #2

When leaves fall
I feel small

fall couplet #1

Cooler nights
Fall delights

Rat Trap

When there's a mouse in the kitchen, having a 16-year-old cat is about as useful as having a broken oar in your rowboat during a hurricane. The mouse keeps sticking his head out from under the dishwasher and I expect him to speak in the voice of Paul Lynde: "Hey! all ya got under here is cereal crumbs! Hows about droppin' down some cheese?" As you can see, mice don't have very good grammar.
But of course Templeton was a rat. He wouldn't have fit under my dishwasher.

song: Rat Trap • artist: The Boomtown Rats

Big Yellow Taxi

The Plymouth Farmer's Market disproved my theory about seedless watermelons. I had thought a seedless watermelon was just a small watermelon that hadn't gotten big enough to have black seeds in it. So we bought a small melon at the market, and, what do you know - seeds. I had forgotten how much fun seeds in a watermelon are, my kids (and I) spent a few afternoons spitting them all over the yard. But now I don't want to think about what they are doing to genetically alter supermarket watermelons to make them seedless. It's just another good fruit gone bad.

song: Big Yellow Taxi • artist: Joni Mitchell

The Waiting

Has anyone else noticed how the library renovation project is cruising right along but I'll be lucky if the high school is completed by the time my five year old is a freshman?

song: The Waiting • artist: Tom Petty

Darkness on the Edge of Town

Despite having acted like a big baby brat all day, I still took C outside at 7:15 last night to see the bats flying over the back yard.

song: Darkness on the Edge of Town • artist: Bruce Springsteen

Leave Me Alone

C acted terrible all day yesterday. It was one of those days that, before you were a mother and had kids, you couldn't understand how those mothers could stand it; kids screaming at each other a dozen times a day, good grief, what kind of life is that?
It was the exact opposite of what you'd expect. Not the usual little brother annoys big brother routine. Every time H would get involved in some project, C would drop what he was doing and hone in on him. He'd immediately ask, "can I have the hose, can I have that rock," or, "can I have that truck." Inevitably H would say, "no" and then C would grab it away from him, claiming, "he never shares!" Then H would start screaming.
It happened over and over and over again despite my best efforts to remind C that if he'd just let his brother alone for five minutes H would eventually want C to join in; and in reality he's very good at sharing, at least for a two year old.
It was all making me long for a day in the not too distant future when H will be able to beat the cr–p out of his older brother and I won't need to intervene on his behalf.

song: Leave Me Alone (Ruby Red Dress) • artist: Helen Reddy

Angels Want To Wear My Red Shoes

On Wednesday I picked C up at preschool and on the way home he asked me if grownups ever cry. I said yes and then he asked me if I ever cried. I was thinking that I'd been crying behind my sunglasses on my way to pick him up a mere ten minutes ago but in lieu of that I reminded him of how I cried when we read Charlotte's Web.
On Thursday he asked me why, in books, people who are dead are always drawn with their eyes closed. This is what I get for reading books about the Titanic and Pompeii with him. So we had a big discussion about that.
On Friday he came home from being with my parents all day with two drawings. One he explained was a fire truck driving on the road and "here's the house that's on fire."
"What's this one," I asked.
"An angel," he said.
Now, I'm not someone who believes in angels or spirits or the paranormal in general but this was a bit much.
I kept the drawing.

song: Angels Want To Wear My Red Shoes • artist: Elvis Costello

Sandy

Remember when you were a kid and you went to the beach and collected interesting shells? Now my kids go to the beach and collect interesting bits of plastic. I took them to Old Silver on Thursday and they gathered the following: one plastic army guy with a really big gun that I tried to twist off but couldn't, two red plastic straws, numerous screw-off plastic bottle tops, the broken top of a blue plastic shovel, the broken bottom of yellow plastic shovel, and lots of other plastic items I couldn't identify.
None of these items could be thrown away because the town, in it's infinite wisdom, has locked the trash cans, thus discouraging any serious beach cleanup.
From the natural world they did manage to bring home two smelly crab claws and three rocks.
On the plus side, I found a post card in the sand of Virginia Beach. Just the kind of irony that I delight in. I haven't decided yet who to mail it to.

song: 4th of July, Asbury Park (Sandy) • artist: Bruce Springsteen

Gee, Officer Krupke

Maybe I'm becoming more narrow minded in my old age and pregnant state, but I thought it was completely inappropriate for the policeman directing traffic around the 28A road crew to be smoking a cigar. He's suppose to be setting a good example for my kids! He's the guy who, if they're ever lost, they are suppose to approach for directions:
"Excuse me officer, could you put out that butt and help me and my brother get home?"
"Oh you're lost son, that must be why your younger brother is crying."
"No. He's crying because you just dumped some ashes on his foot."

song: Gee, Officer Krupke • musical: West Side Story

Yesterday When I Was Young

I took the kids to the Plymouth Farmer’s Market on Thursday. I take them to all the best theme parks.
To my astonishment one of the vendors was selling strawberry tomatoes. I bought two pints and seemed to be the only person there who knew what they were. The stand was wisely giving out free samples to attract attention.
Strawberry tomatoes are a perfect anecdote for a week that I’ve spent navel gazing my own history between ages 16 and 21, because strawberry tomatoes were in my life even before then. My grandmother grew them in her garden. She only had a few plants; they grew wild and haphazard on the edges of her more cultivated rows. I would pick them individually and eat them immediately, peeling back their little dried jackets, which made them look like Chinese lanterns. My grandmother’s garden seemed enormous to me when I was little. I found out later, when my cousin sold the property, that the whole estate: house, garden, and all, was only .66 acres.
I would spend Sunday afternoons roaming through the garden while my mother visited with my grandmother after church. It seemed as if they were inside the house for hours; probably it was more like 15 minutes.

Song: Yesterday, When I Was Young * artist: Shirley Bassey

If You Don't Know Me By Now

They were whispering about you in the little library, and they weren't whispering because it's a library.
I wanted to scream, "you didn't even know him!" But then I thought that maybe I didn't really know you either.

song: If You Don't Know Me By Now • artist: Harold Melvin and The Blue Notes

Fire and Rain

One night last week C was crying in bed because we can't go to Cataumet Gardens anymore. We haven't been able to go there in a year and a half because it closed but he picked last week to get upset about it. First he was crying because he remembered that we used to go there and see frogs. I assured him I knew other places in town where we could find frogs (our back yard for example), but then he countered with, "there's nowhere where we can go see peacocks."
He had me on that point, there is nowhere else that I know of, within a five-minute drive of our house, where we can view peacocks.
I thought it was weird that he was having this meltdown 18 months after the fact, but then isn't that the way things are sometimes? Feelings can take months to process. Someone can die and for a while it just seems like it's been a long time since you've seen them or maybe they've been out of town. Then finally it hits you that you'll never see them again.
You can move or chance jobs and then months later realize with regret that you'll never be at that place in your life again.
But those aren't things C should have to grapple with yet, so damn you Cataumet Gardens for closing and making my five-year-old cry. And damn you too, Tom, for making me cry; because I always thought that I'd see you again.

song: Fire and Rain • artist: James Taylor

Eat A Peach

Here's the kind of thing that might happen if you couldn't understand what the heck your toddler was saying. You might accidentally eat the piece of sliced peach off his plate that he thought looked like a sailboat, causing him to burst into tears and continue crying until his older brother danced around the dining room with his plastic pretend shopping basket over his head providing enough distraction to stop the waterworks until you ran interference by putting leftover birthday cake on the table.
Miraculously I made it through another year without having to throw C a birthday party that included a bevy of his peers. Cake and presents at Coonamessett Farm's Cajun buffet was enough. Even though I might be an inadequate mom for not being able to pull together a real party, I did make him a cake that looked enough like the Titanic that he was able to identify it as such without reading the alphabet pasta letters that spelled out RMS Titanic on the ship's bow. Candles were stuck into the Yodels that I used for smokestacks, plus one extra ("it's the lookout," I told him) to make five. I haven't bought a box of Yodels since I was in college and would buy them and eat the entire box in Kenmore Square while waiting to see a film over at the Boston University movie theater.
Of course C did ask, "where's the iceberg?"

album: Eat A Peach • artist: Allman Brothers Band

backyard haiku

play in the backyard
toy trains, buckets, nets, and bats
in the rock garden

What Have I Done to Deserve This?

The sign in the bathroom stall said no diapers, tampons, or depends in the toilet please. Guess that about covers all the bases. What's the deal with restrooms that have the hot water faucet turned off? Why am I not worthy of hot water? I didn't flush anything verboten down the toilet.

song: What Have I Done To Deserve This? • artist: Dusty Springfield

It's Not Unusual

What's more of a cliché, that I was sweeping the kitchen floor without any shoes on (barefoot and pregnant), or that I scarfed down a roast beef sandwich from the Mad Platter (unabashed commercial plug), while sitting in my car in the parking lot of Deer Crossing?

song: It's Not Unusual • artist: Tom Jones

Just Can't Get Enough

People requested this so here it is. The credit for this goes to Margie, who, though I doubt she came up with the recipe, first coined the phrase, "it tastes a lot better than it sounds."
Tomato Pie
crust: 1 3/4 c flour, 1/4 tsp. salt, 1/2 c butter, 1 egg
Stir together flour and salt. Add butter and blend to meal consistency. Add egg. Press dough into 11-inch pie plate. Chill for 30 minutes.
pie: 1/4 c Dijon mustard, 1/4lb gruyere cheese (grated), 3 large (1 1/2lbs) tomatoes (sliced), 2 Tbsp minced fresh parsley, 1 Tbsp minced fresh oregano or thyme, 1 tsp. garlic (minced), 1/4 c olive oil.
Spread mustard over chilled pie shell and sprinkle with cheese. Arrange the tomato slices over the cheese. Sprinkle with herbs, garlic, and oil. Bake in 400° oven for 40 minutes.
comments: There's just no way to make this taste bad. I've been using prepared crusts and substituting Swiss cheese for gruyere. I've also made it in the winter with all dried herbs. It's funny because I hate mustard on sandwiches, but I love it in this recipe.

song: Just Can't Get Enough • artist: Depeche Mode

All I Want is You

I feel that I'm missing out on the true pregnancy experience because I've yet, in two-and-a-half pregnancies, had to send Ken out to the store at 2PM for pickles and ice cream. Instead, this is what I've been craving: waffles (which I also craved in huge quantities when I was pregnant with C), tomato pie (which is a lot better than it sounds, trust me, I made one yesterday and it's half gone today), and corn on the cob (but who doesn't crave that, pregnant or not). We've managed to keep all these foods on hand for the most part so, alas, no midnight runs to Tony Andrews Farm Stand. I'm glad to be craving relatively healthy foods (crust on the tomato pie - not so healthy) and not Yodels, jelly doughnuts, and Oreos, but the corn is a bit of a problem since I can't floss my teeth due to a heightened gag reflex. If someone would let my dentist know maybe he'd make a midnight run to CVS and get me a water pick.

song: All I Want is You • artist: U2

Nights in White Satin

What's worse than playing checkers with a four-year old? Playing chess with a four-year old. In a way it's good that we've moved on to chess because he kicked my butt in checkers last week, I didn't know what hit me. Chess, though, is worse because there's no room for chance or dumb luck, just pure strategy. When Ken and I were first dating I bought him a chess set. As I recall we played once and then I couldn't take the pressure. I enjoy cribbage, a game where skill and luck both play a part. Luckily we squirreled away the pieces for ten years and miraculously were able to find them after my dad taught C to play. I've managed to win all the games we've played so far but I don't know how much longer I can hold out. I'm hoping he scores a Chinese checkers set for his birthday.

song: Nights in White Satin • artist: Moody Blues

New York, New York

I know what you're thinking, "good grief, how long does it take her to read one book?" Answer: a long time.
I just finished the "Here is New York" essay in my E.B. White book and I know I'm not the first to point this out, if you google "Here is New York," E.B.White, and September 11, about 1,000 hits come up.
Nevertheless, it was new to me; keep in mind E.B.White wrote this in 1949.
"The city, for the first time in its long history, is destructible. A single flight of planes no bigger than a wedge of geese can quickly end this island fantasy, burn the towers, crumble the bridges, turn the underground passages into lethal chambers, cremate the millions. The intimation of mortality is part of New York now; in the sounds of jets overhead, in the black headlines of the latest editions. . . . All dwellers in cities must live with the stubborn fact of annihilation; in New York the fact is somewhat more concentrated because of the concentration of the city itself, and because, of all targets, New York has a certain clear priority. In the mind of whatever perverted dreamer might loose the lightning, New York must hold a steady, irresistible charm."
The paragraphs were underlined in my copy of the book so I couldn't miss them, no doubt by Marshall.

song: New York, New York • artist: Frank Sinatra

Say, Say, Say

I don't know what I'll do when preschool starts and I'm left without a translator for H three mornings a week. C now tells me what his younger brother is saying without me even asking. Thursday night they were in the tub and H held up his washcloth and announced "be ge fa!"
"It's his big jelly fish," said C.
Then H turned over on his belly and utter some more toddler nonsense. C copied him and said, "I'm a fish too!"
Yesterday morning H took one of Ken's Gatorade bottles, mumbled something and started carrying it around the kitchen.
"He says daddy's juice is big and heavy," yelled C from out in the living room.

song: say, say, say • artist: Paul McCartney and Michael Jackson

Can't Keep It In

I'm thinking that I should start putting notches on the bathroom wall, like prisoners do, to keep a record of how many times I get up at night to use the bathroom. Last night it was five. Maybe I should just start sleeping on the bathroom floor.

song: Can't Keep It In • artist: Cat Stevens

Harden My Heart

No doubt everyone reacts to a new pregnancy differently and in a hundred odd, idiosyncratic ways. One of the things I began doing immediately was squirreling away a third set of commemorative state quarters for the new baby. H and C each have a set in the works, both are neatly ensconced in deluxe government-issued folders.
So one of the funnier things that crossed my mind last week when I was driving home from the doctor's office, after I got the car turned around and headed in the right direction, was that I'd better get going on a fourth set - right away!
Can't you just see my kids 30 years from now?
"Isn't it great Mom saved all these quarters for us?"
"Sure is. What'd you spend your $12.50 on?"

song: Harden My Heart • artist: Quarterflash

Eat It

This morning C examined what we had on hand for breakfast cereals (Cheerios and Honey Nut Cheerios), and announced we didn't have very much in the way of selection.
"When is Daddy going to buy some raisin bran?" he asked.

song: Eat It • artist: Weird Al Yankovic

Everything I Own

It's strange the things you crave when pregnant. Ironically it's not the fresh lettuce you've been growing by the bucketful in the garden all summer. Friday night it was bread sticks for dinner. They came in an innocent enough looking cardboard box but inside there were five individual hermetically sealed plastic sleeves with five bread sticks a piece in them. These plastic sleeves were all inside another clear plastic bag - no humidity was getting to those babies.
Thankfully at the check-out line I had at least declined the offer of a plastic bag for my two purchases.
I'll tell you what I really crave: less packaging.

song: Everything I Own • artist: Bread
song: Pieces of Eight • artist: Styx

Don't Do It

So, one day in late June you find yourself pregnant. And you're not entirely surprised, after all, you're old enough to know how babies are made. You tell your husband and he's not shocked by the news either. He knew you were in the running though he is a bit amazed that all the equipment is still working.
After this personal revelation who is the next person to find out that you're pregnant? A total stranger, naturally. It's the receptionist at the ob/gyn when you call to make an appointment with the doctor. And even though she says "congratulations," it's hard not to have the feeling that she says that to "all the girls."
Then there's having to tell your parents you're pregnant, which always makes me feel uncomfortable.
When I was a senior in high school I went with a friend to the city to an open house at Boston University. The last thing my mother said when we went out the door of our house was "don't have an accident."
Of course we had an accident.
After Amy had gotten off on the subway to an aunt's house and her car had been towed out of the street, I went up to my boyfriend's dorm room. I told him there was no way I could call my mother and tell her about the accident and miraculously he offered to do it for me.
Unfortunately young love is different from married life and this time around I was out of luck. Ken declined and I had to make the call myself.
Telling your parents you are pregnant is basically admitting to them that you've been having S E X; even though it's with your husband and you've been married almost 8 years, and it was bound to happen sometime. Not to mention that it's not like those first two kids were conceived immaculately. Nevertheless, I'm sure that for parents, the thought of their children having sex is about as uncomfortable for them as it is for us to imagine our parents "doing it."

song: Don't Do It • artist: The Band

Ironic

Hey Liz!
You know what having twins at 39 is?
It's inane!
That is so ironic.

song: Ironic • artist: Alanis Morissette

30 years ago (death week couplet #2)

When Elvis died,
all the girls cried.

It Takes Two

So I was planning to tell you today that we're having a baby in February. But after having an ultrasound today, it looks as if we're having twins in January. So either after the first of the year I'll never have time to write these posts again, or it will be all I have time to do since I won't be leaving my house for the next five years.
Good thing I was already lying down when the doctor told me.
Then she asked me if I could drive myself home. I said that I could, left, and proceeded to get on the highway going in the wrong direction.

song: It Takes Two • artist: Marvin Gaye & Kim Weston

It's Not Easy Being Green

Rounding out our trip to Maine was a stop on the way home at the Brunswick Diner. What a great diner! They served breakfast all day (which we all ordered), the place was very clean, and the waitress did not seem repulsed by the fact that my son brought in two large, green, monarch butterfly caterpillars in a plastic blueberry container and perched them prominently on our table. They are now on our dining room table, I guess the logic being they will to do better if they are around people who are eating. They are ensconced in a terrarium and have already formed two small, green, chrysalis.

song: It's Not Easy Being Green • artist: Kermit the Frog

death week couplet #1

Here's to the King,
he sure could sing.

Another Saturday Night

Ken is working the next four Saturdays in a row. Saturdays are the worst because the kids don't have any of their usual activities going on, plus it's too ridiculously crowded to go into town or to the beach so we end up hanging out in the backyard. Today we hung out in the backyard until it was time to go to Clayton and Lydia's wedding. It took me all morning to make this card I wanted to make them using scrabble pieces. It would have been less time consuming to just buy them a present. Then I had to clean yogurt off H twice, leaving him in his diaper (so he couldn't get dirty) while I went upstairs to change my outfit four times. When I got back downstairs he'd pooped in his diaper, stuck his hand in it and smeared it on his belly. Then the phone rings and it's my cousin calling from the family reunion I'm not attending this weekend and I have to practically hang up on her to prevent further poop smearing, plus it's 1:45 and the wedding's at 2PM and I'm the only one dressed so far.
From the wedding we went to the Falmouth Mile Invitational at the high school track. The mile is actually my favorite road race weekend event because it's over in four minutes but even more so because you can see the whole drama of the race unfold from beginning to end. With a road race you only get a small snippet of the race depending on where you're standing along the course: the finish line, the five-mile mark, the start, whatever - you rarely see anything dramatic happen.
Then we stopped to check our community garden plot where we harvested two lemon cucumbers, two carrots, and a handful of tomatoes, most of which were suffering, tragically, from bottom rot.
Finally we went to Courtney and Carolyn's for spaghetti dinner which I didn't feel I deserved since I wasn't running Sunday's race, but I ate my share and topped it off with two cookies anyway.

song: Another Saturday Night • artist: Cat Stevens

It Sure Was Better Back Then

We've got Plimoth Plantation and New Harbor Maine has Colonial Pemaquid. Never heard of Colonial Pemaquid? I'm not surprised. As far as early settlements go, it wasn't exactly a success. The settlement was sacked by just about everybody: the Abenakis, the French, and even the pirate Dixie Bull who made off with a load of the supplies and ammunition.
In order to protect the settlement a fort was built. It's known today as Fort William Henry though that was the fort's second name. Originally it was Fort Charles, and for 30 years after it was Fort William Henry it was Fort Frederick. Fort William Henry, despite being named for the current publisher of the Enterprise as well as one of the kings of England, was a miserably ineffective fort. It was destroyed by Native Americans and their French allies a mere four years after it was built.
One of the fort's towers has been reconstructed, and history buffs (and the rest of us) can climb it and visit the museum housed next door for just $2 each.
On the other hand, the Pemaquid Point Lighthouse is a success story. It's the lighthouse featured on the Maine State quarter. A tour of the lighthouse keepers home (now a fisherman's museum) is also $2.

song: It Sure Was Better Back Then • artist: Steve Forbert

lament: a couplet

I wish I could write
like E.B. White.

maine couplet

i hear the waves outside our door,
crashing against the rocky shore

Sweet Dreams

Chamberlain Maine is one of those tiny summer vacation communities where everyone knows everyone and all the houses go back two or three generations in a family. If your family doesn't already own a home here your only hope of getting in is to marry someone whose family does.
Chamberlain is the kind of summer resort town on the water where all the houses have names. The one we're staying in is very accurately referred to as the Yellow Cottage but we're surrounded by less descriptively specific homes with names like Sea Owl, Gray Gull, and Shore Leave.
Chamberlain is the kind of place where the next-door neighbor's have a son who is also four years old and the boy's mother, whose name is Patsy, invites your son over to play and makes him egg salad for lunch.
Chamberlain is a place where the stars blaze at night and the milky way is visible like a reverse rainbow which ends at a distant lighthouse instead of a pot of gold.
Inside the Yellow Cottage none of the plates or silverware match. The assortment of drinking glasses contains one of the old Archie jam-jar glasses just like my aunt used to have. My personal favorite is the mug with the chinook salmon on it that I've been taking my tea out of for the past three days.
The Yellow Cottage is full of shell art and painted rocks created by grandchildren long since grown up.
The Yellow Cottage has an outhouse. Actually, because the Yellow Cottage is really two cottages put together, it has two bathrooms, but Adria said today during the power outage that the outhouse was always available should we run out of water for flushing. The outhouse comes equipped with two back issues of The New Yorker - just because one doesn't have indoor plumbing doesn't necessarily make one a primitive thinker.
And - the Yellow Cottage has wireless access! No doubt that's because next-door-neighbor Patsy is a lawyer who used to work in Washington DC but now works from her home in Maine; which just goes to show that one should never underestimate people named Patsy.

song: Sweet Dreams • artist: Patsy Cline

Too Darn Hot

Weather like we've had the past two weeks makes me miss the air-conditioned comfort of full time office work.
I know I shouldn't complain about the weather, it's such a boring topic and it is much hotter other places, but it's really been hot in my house lately! Too hot to answer e-mail. Too hot to plan the story list for Fall Home and Garden. Too hot to cook up all the zucchinis we've been harvesting, too hot to weed the garden or fold clothes. Too hot even to read in bed; not to mention showering before bed to cool off means that my wet hair drips all over the pages of the book.
Thankfully we're going to Maine tonight, where, if it's not cooler at least it's not my house so I don't have to worry about mold growing on Uncle Cabe's table, or too much humidity in the computer room.

song: Too Darn Hot • musical: Kiss Me Kate

When Will I See You Again?

C met a new friend at Coonamesset Farm on Monday. She was quite taken with C and followed us to pick raspberries, she and C yucking it up all the while over things that only preschoolers find funny. Then she sat with us as we waited for our grilled cheese sandwiches to come. As she left with her family she recited her address (in Washington D.C.) to us in case C might be able to "take a plane" and come visit her.
He gave it some serious thought and then answered.
"I can't come next week because we're going to Maine."

song: When Will I See You Again? • artist: Three Degrees

Flood

C gave a dramatic retelling of the story of Noah's ark today, complete with sound effects and props. In his version Noah instructs all the animals to go down below and watch out the windows for pirates.

album: Flood • artist: They Might Be Giants

Love Letters

Whenever you find this note know at this very instant I am thinking of you, at this moment our minds have united even if our bodies are distant. I am always there right outside, knocking, waiting to be thought of, and then rushing to your side and sojourning with you. I love you.
It was signed "Marshall." I was not his designated recipient. I found the above note in the middle of a book of essays by E.B.White that I bought at a used book sale earlier this month. I doubt she ever found Marshall's note, surely she would have taken it out of the book and saved it. Not only did she not find it, she dismissed the book entirely, donating it to the library book sale. Marshall probably bought the book for her. Perhaps he should have put the note further toward the front of the book, instead of half way through. Poor bookish Marshall, professing his love in this handwritten note and then assuming the object of his affection would make it to the middle of this 364-page volume. Could she not even read a page a day for him? Then she would have found the note in six months.
On the other hand maybe they're together still; the romantic and the non-reader.

song: Love Letters • artist: Nat King Cole

Beach Baby

It's evident that Grew's Pond in Goodwill Park is a kid's beach. There are slightly more band aids in the sand than cigarette butts.

song: Beach Baby • artist: First Class

Don't Leave Me This Way

H got stung by a bee yesterday - three times. As if it weren't enough that C's afraid of coyotes in the back yard, now he's got bees to worry about as well.
The worst part was when I brought H inside and the bee was still in his clothes, so I inadvertently released it in the house.
Just about this time my mother showed up.
"H was stung by a bee which is now loose in the house," I told her. "I'm going to work. Have a good afternoon."
And then I fled.

song: Don't Leave Me This Way • artist: Thelma Houston

Rocket Man

Are there no decent role models left for children? Now I hear that our astronauts are all drunk in space. What's next? Will they also admit to doping?

song: Rocket Man • artist: Elton John

The Children's Hour

Hi Kelly,
I'd be happy to expound on the books we've read to C. There's nothing I like better than weighing in with my opinion. A lot of these we read simply because we had them in the house - they were mine when I was a kid.
The first chapter book I read to C was Winnie-the-Pooh, followed by House at Pooh Corner. I had not read either of these before and we borrowed them from the library but then ended up buying our own copies. Books for children fall into two categories in much the same way as movies for children do. Movie reviews always note whether or not the child's respected adult will find something to like in the show; because even though it's not geared towards us they know that we'll be there. The same goes for read-aloud children's books. They are written for kids, but it's a bonus if the adult involved enjoys reading them as well. If we enjoy the books we might even ham it up the dialogue a bit instead of rushing through, skipping descriptive paragraphs. The Pooh books, and I was surprised by this, were quite fun to read. We even read a bit of A.A. Milne's Now We Are Six which is a book of poetry.
Then we read Stuart Little, E.B. White's precursor to Charlotte's Web. I was thinking our next read would be The Trumpet of the Swan his last book for children and one I didn't read a child.
We've read Uncle Wiggily's Story Book, which C enjoyed thoroughly but both Ken and I found annoying. Uncle Wiggily, though his name implies that he could be a porn star, is actually a do-gooder rabbit who lives in a hollow stump bungalow with his muskrat nurse, Jane Fuzzy Wuzzy, and thrills to go on adventures which usually involve helping some child in distress. Howard Garis, who wrote Uncle Wiggily and lived in Amherst, MA, interestingly enough, also wrote some of the Bobbsey Twins books under a pseudonym. Uncle Wiggily was not just my book as a child, it was my mothers, and in Ungle Wiggily's defense I loved the books as a kid.
Along the same lines as Uncle Wiggily (those lines being more animal stories), Ken is now reading Mother West Wind's Children by Thornton Burgess. I don't think Ken would recommend it, his initial reaction was more like "how the heck did I get stuck reading this?" but it's got an interesting local connection in that Thornton Burgess was from Sandwich.
Books that Ken enjoyed reading C include Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Pinocchio, and James and the Giant Peach. There's a sequel to Charlie, it's called Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator, but it's not as enjoyable as the original and seemed to be over C's head.
I read C The Wind in the Willows, yet another animal adventure book. It's considered a classic so I'm glad we read it, but there were some parts that dragged, all the parts that weren't Mr. Toad, as far as I was concerned. And talk about a book with a tough vocabulary - make sure you have a dictionary handy if you decide to tackle it.
We've read Alice's Adventures in Wonderland which I wouldn't recommend unless you enjoy explaining inexplainable things such as why Alice keeps getting bigger and smaller, why the Duchess's baby turns out to be a pig, and why the Queen of Hearts keeps yelling "off with his head."
We tried The Story of Dr. Dolittle but C lost interest and we had to return it to the library. Later we listened to it as a book on tape.
Up next, in addition to Trumpet of the Swan, I'm thinking of getting him Beverly Cleary's The Mouse and the Motorcycle, which I had to read for a Children's Literature class. I was also thinking of reading him some of the Pippi Longstocking books, which I loved as a kid. I'm also looking forward to adventure books like Swiss Family Robinson, and Treasure Island. I haven't read either but I suspect I might have to wait until C's a bit older though I'm always amazed at what he understands: more than I give him credit, that's for sure.
Jim Trelease has a book called The Read Aloud Handbook, that has lots of book suggestions, more current stuff than what we're mostly been reading. Sorry to go on and on about this, I guess to sum it up, C has liked stuff that I would have thought was too old for him so if there's something you were thinking of trying on your son, I'd say go ahead and give it a try. Sorry to have ruined the end of Old Yeller for you, I remember my mother reading that as a short story in a book of American Short Stories. The other books I mentioned were all ones I read myself when I was older. Turns out, I was a real geek as a kid.

poem: The Children's Hour • poet: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Any Day Now

Some say the past and the future are always with us. On the way to evening church last week at Grace Memorial Chapel, I was walking across the manicured lawn, leading H by the hand, and I saw clearly the not too distant future when he, a head taller than myself, would take the lead and escort his old mother into the church sanctuary.

song: Any Day Now • artist: Ronnie Milsap

Flight of the Bumblebee

Here's what's causing the nation-wide disappearance of all those bees. The poor devils are getting tipsy on blazing star in my back yard, stumbling into our plastic wading pool, and drowning themselves. We pulled out four of them this morning.

song: Flight of the Bumblebee • artist: Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov

Cry, Cry, Cry

All over the country articles are appearing in newspapers and parenting magazines giving adults advice on how to help kids cope if Harry Potter is killed off in this, the last book in the series. Some of the experts see this potentially fictional death as a good thing. It affords parents a "teachable moment," a way of talking about death in abstract terms and not in the wake of the actual death of a loved one.
C and I were face to face with such a moment last night when I read the end of Charlotte's Web.
Spoiler warning: If you happened to spend your childhood under a rock, as my husband did, and consequently don't know how Charlotte's Web ends, you might want to stop reading here. For the rest of you, I can tell you know the story because you're getting choked up already. Things might have gone better if I'd been able to get through the last two chapters without crying myself but I couldn't. It's one thing to read a sad story, it's something else entirely to read it out loud.
So I cried, and then he cried, and then he said he didn't want Charlotte to die and I said I didn't want her to die either. Then he said it was sad, and I agreed. Then he said we should throw the book away and I figured we'd better turn this into some kind of "teachable moment" lest he develop a childhood aversion to good literature. First I started with, "it's not a true story," which didn't help. Then I countered with, "Charlotte was old," which lead to a discussion about how a great many insects only live for short amounts of time. He seemed to be feeling a little better or at least somewhat distracted at this point. Then I said that sometimes books end sadly and he wanted me to name some other books that end sad. Not wanting to spoil Bridge to Terribithia or The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe, I didn't name any. Upon reconsideration however, I don't think those books are anywhere near as sad as Charlotte's Web. I think Charlotte's Web is perhaps the saddest children's book of all. In Bridge to Terabithia, the Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe, The Hobbit, even The Yearling and Old Yeller, it's possible to explain and thus understand why a character dies - Old Yeller had rabies (opps, sorry, don't tell me you haven't read Old Yeller either), the yearling was eating the crops. To say that Charlotte was old - despite being a valid reason for her demise, is not a particularly satisfying one. If Harry Potter gets killed off you can bet it's going to be in a blaze of glory, saving the world from evil, and not all alone at the county fair.
Perhaps E.B. White was just being true to the nature of spiders, but I believe the real reason Charlotte dies is that in her death, E.B. White has created an unforgettable character. Charlotette's Web was chosen for this year's Three Apples Book Award, a children's choice award. Not bad for a book that's over 50 years old. If Charlotte crawled back into Wilbur's crate and returned to the barn to live happily ever after, sure it would be nice, but it wouldn't be memorable.
Maybe Mr. White wrote it that way to torment future generations of parents who would find themselves tearing up over a gray spider. As I recall, Mr. White had no children of his own so having to read the story aloud to a young audience, for him, wasn't an issue.

song: Cry, Cry, Cry • artist: Johnny Cash

Stuck On You

My fellow belly dancer, Laura, commented not unkindly on the stickiness of the conservatory's floor the other night. Dance floors are sometimes made sticky deliberately so that ballet dancers do not slip and fall while performing plies. But while ballerinas wear ballet shoes, belly dancers perform in their bare feet. This is a good thing in many respects, tacky floors aside, it means one less thing I need to remember to bring to class.
Anyway, I told Laura the sticky floor was nothing. I'd walked about my own house bare foot that day and compared to my kitchen and dining room, the conservatory floor was clean enough to eat off.
Mid summer is the worst for floor cleaning. Everything is too moist to sweep up which means lugging out the vacuum cleaning in the searing heat. You can't wash the floor because it never dries, and if the bite-sized crumbs under H's chair are left unattended overnight, by morning they've grown mold.

song: Stuck On You • artist: Lionel Richie

Whistle While You Work

I was thumbing through books on the fifth shelf in the computer room the other day and found this journal from the summer I worked at Peach Tree Farm. If the blogosphere had existed back then, here's a sample of what you'd have been hearing about instead of the antics of my cute children:

Monday, July 19, 1993
Today we ate very possibly the last sugar snap peas of the season. Brenda told me to mark it in my journal. I think she was only kidding though, I don't think she knows I really do have a journal.
I learned the name of the most tenacious weed in the garden today. It's purslane. I also learned and witnessed, in case I didn't believe it was true, that purslane is edible.
After asking Joe what kind of weed it was, he answered, said it was edible, and promptly popped some in his mouth. It was all very impressive but I didn't try any. Joe says it tastes like okra. Who needs another plant that tastes like okra? Maybe all battered up, fried, and served with ketchup; I can eat just about anything that way.
Later in the day, Brenda's friend Margo, who worked at Bourne Farm last season, came to visit. She also remarked that I was weeding purslane and did I know it's edible? I course I acted like I'd known it for years.
It's interesting how many things are edible in the garden besides the vegetables. This weed, the tiger lily buds - did I mention Beth ate one of those for us during lunch the first week I worked in the garden? And lots of other things I imagine. I was reading tonight in Organic Gardener that you can eat tomato flowers. I bet Joe knows a lot about other edible weeds, he knew about some weed that the Indians used in their pipes as a hallucinogen. I like Joe much more than Jamie. He seems to know everything about everything and doesn't make you feel stupid even though you know nothing about everything, and to my knowledge he hasn't drown any raccoons. He also sings while he works which makes me feel like I'm working down south on the plantation.

song: Whistle While You Work • soundtrack: Cinderella

Fast Car

Again a reminder to the landscape trucks and to the vacationers zipping down Quaker Road to get to the beach - please reduce your speed; this road is heavily traversed by walkers, bikers, joggers, and even people crazy enough to walk their children on it. I would especially like to direct this appeal to the man in the silver sports car with the vanity plate that reads QUICKIE. And to remind him that one needs to slow down, even for a quickie.

song: Fast Car • artist: Tracy Chapman

My Favorite Things

This morning at swimming lessons the instructors sat the kids in a big circle for roll call and told them to "tell us your name and what your favorite television show is." The other day it was their names and favorite color but today they must have been collecting data for the Nielsen ratings.
As choruses of SpongeBob and Scooby Doo rang out, I panicked. What would my son say? That his favorite show was A Charlie Brown Christmas - a video we own only because I bought for Ken ten years ago? That it was the Big Space Shuttle, a library rental? Perhaps he'd say it was watching the baseball game with daddy.
I need not have worried. Without batting an eye he answered, "Clifford." I don't know if I should be annoyed with my parents for letting him watch PBS or happy that at least he wasn't the loser kid at swim class who doesn't watch television.

song: My Favorite Things • musical: The Sound of Music

It Ain't Over Yet

I've been playing checkers with a four-year old all afternoon, and have decided there's no way to actually win a game of checkers. You get down to one or two pieces each and then you can chase each other around the board indefinitely.
It's maddening really.
And then he wants me to concede when I'm the one with the two pieces left, since he's perfectly content to keep moving his one piece around the board for the next hour.

song: It Ain't Over Yet • song: The Allman Brothers

Do it Again

Today was my son's second day of swimming lessons. C couldn't comprehend why he had to lie on his stomach at the water's edge and practice kicking again, because they did that same move last week.
I don't understand it; repetition is a four-year-old's raison d'etre. He who asks me the same questions over and over, wants the same books read and reread, and can watch The Big Space Shuttle every day for two weeks straight can't abide having to furiously kick his feet twice in a seven-day period?

song: Do it Again • artist: Steely Dan

garden haiku

Garden in July
wild, unkempt, and overgrown
Rebellious children

Happy Days

So Chachi's still single? Big deal. Call in Joanie. I'm sure she's ready for a comeback.
What's next? Laverne & Shirley search for an assisted living facility in Milwaukee as affordable as their old basement apartment?

song: Happy Days • sitcom: Happy Days

Mad World

The desire to pick on someone or something weaker than oneself is practically inborn. It's why, during the dust bowl, grown men cornered rabbits and clubbed them to death. It's why bigger countries invade places we've never heard of; and it's why at Abu Ghraib military personnel let prisoners around in dog collars.
Here's how it starts. One evening an older brother, mad because his mother suggested he help clean up, hits his brother. The mother, horrified, later tries to explain to her son that it's unacceptable to hit his brother, "for no reason."
"It wasn't for no reason," he contends, "it was 'cause I was mad."
The next morning at breakfast the younger brother kicks the cat.

song: Mad World • artist: Tears for Fears

Both Sides Now

Children get you coming and going. Most jobs either wear you out physically, or they are difficult mentally. Two kids can cover both those bases. H is physically exhausting. He can get from the back yard to the front yard it mere seconds. In fact I think he teleports himself there since I never see him actually leaving the back yard, I just look up from weeding or watering and he's gone.
C wears me down with his constant questions that I either can't answer (why can't you see air?), or that I've answered a million times already (do bulls have udders?), or both (when will the sun die out?).

song: Both Sides Now • artist: Joni Mitchell

Walk a Mile in My Shoes

The shoes I mail ordered arrived last week. These were shoes I loved in the picture. I carried the catalogue around for months planning to order them; but when I opened the box I was immediately struck by how much they looked like bowling shoes. Black bowling shoes - but still - bowling shoes.
Then running guru Tommy Leonard enlightened me. "They look like biking shoes," he said.
Phew. I feel much better knowing that I'm impersonating a biker rather than trying to dress like a bowler. What a relief.

song: Walk a Mile in My Shoes • artist: Elvis Presley

Look Out Any Window

The Goodyear Blimp hovered over the house today, beckoning to me like something from Close Encounters of the Third Kind. It was novel for a while but then it caused radio static and I couldn't hear the Car Talk guys.

song: Look Out Any Window • artist: Bruce Hornsby

Somewhere

My four-year old went to art camp this past week. Art camp, doesn't that sound so indulgent? It was two-and-a-half hours, five mornings a week, and led by one of his preschool teachers. Anyway, now that he's done I need an addition built onto the house to display all his creations. I can see why parents encourage music lessons over art classes - less clutter.

song: Somewhere • musical: West Side Story

It Ought To Be Easier

I had to buy a new toothbrush for C as well as a box of band aids for general household use since we finally used up all the Christmas-themed ones. For most people this would be an easy errand, a quick trip to the pharmacy, but for a let's-stay-away-from-all-character-endorsed-products mommy like myself, having to buy these items was a big problem. All the electric toothbrushes for kids have licensed characters on them - Spiderman, Disney Princesses, Shrek, Cars, etc. The band aids aren't much better, the selection includes: Dora the Explorer, Barbie, and Care Bears.
For the toothbrush I settled for one shaped like an ice cream cone: two scoops, one vanilla and one strawberry, with colored sprinkles. It's ironic, I thought, that the only alternative to a super hero toothbrush is a toothbrush shaped like a food item that's sure to cause cavities. But I went with it anyway.
For band aids, my only option besides beige was a box of neon colors which I had to pay an extra 20¢ for because they were treated with "plus Antibiotic," - which I didn't even want. It was like being penalized for not supporting Disney.
I couldn't even find a suitable birthday card for Ken.

song: It Ought To Be Easier • artist: Lyle Lovett

Light My Fire

I don't understand why we celebrate the fourth of July with fireworks. What does setting off Roman Candles in one's backyard have to do with independence? I swear someone was lighting a cannon over in Pine Bay last night. Good thing the British didn't have as much fire power as my neighbors, we would have never won the Revolution.

song: Light My Fire • artist: The Doors

Shipoopi

Ken and C are going to Highfield Theater tonight with my mother to see The Music Man. Since we have the soundtrack, I’ve been playing it for C before bed, in place of his usual bedtime CD: Guys and Dolls.
After listening all week, yesterday he asked me why the play had a song in it that used “bathroom talk.”
“What song has bathroom talk in it?” I asked.
“You know, they say ‘Sha Poopie’.”
“Oh no, they’re saying, ‘shaboopie,’ honey. She’s ‘the girl who’s hard to get’.”
At least he didn’t ask me what “hard to get,” meant.
This morning I brought the CD downstairs so we could listen in the living room and I looked at the song list and you know, it is bathroom talk! The song is Shipoopi, which is close enough to bathroom talk for any four-year old. And you thought The Music Man was good clean family entertainment. I’d have a little talk about it with Mr. Meredith Willson but unfortunately he died in 1984.

song: Shipoopi musical: The Music Man

Downtown

This spring C took both T-ball and tennis on Saturday mornings. With just over an hour between the end of T-ball and the beginning of tennis I didn't know what to do with the kids in the interim. The first few weeks I took them over to the coffee shop but that got messy and was costing me a lot of money. Finally I had the idea of crossing the street at Guv Fuller Field and walking them around Morse Pond.
I haven't been back there since I was a student at the school, and I didn't really remember anything about it except that there was a path from the school around the pond and we used to take it to get to Guv Fuller Field for field day festivities. Once our class was the country of Kenya.
The path is a wild, overgrown place in the middle of downtown Falmouth. I described it to Ken as the forest primeval and made him accompany us on one of our trips. When you look out over the water, the pond is all you see, no buildings are visible. Only the voices of parents encouraging their young T-ball players remind you that civilization is just through the trees.
There's a large field to the right of the path before you get to the school. Walking out into it the first week, I felt like I was discovering a secret place. It was even more of a surprise than the seclusion of the pond. The grass was a foot high and there was a horseshoe pit in one corner and some rusting sports equipment in the other. What a great field for butterflies, I thought. But the next time we came, someone had mowed.
Even the back of the school looks overgrown and abandoned. With the front of the school remodeled, I expected the back to look different as well, but it's just the same as it was in the late 70s when I was a student there. The exact backdrop of my 5th grade class picture was, from what I remember, unchanged. And coming upon the school from the leaves and hanging vines of the path reminded me of the scene in Logan's Run when the runners come above ground and see the Capitol, all overgrown with vines. Can you believe I'm referencing that movie again? My metaphors could surely use some work.

song: Downtown • artist: Petula Clark

Surrender

Check it out. I'm writing this post from the coffee shop. I feel like jumping up and shouting, "this is my first time going wireless!" It would sound something like the virgin scene in the Rocky Horror Picture Show. But I'll refrain because I think the guy sitting across from me is doing actual work.
Sometimes it's so cool to be the old dog learning a new trick.

song: Surrender • artist: Cheap Trick

Clerihew for the Lizard King

Jim Morrison
The only man to ever
look good in leather
passed away
on this day

Here and Now

Everybody's doing it. First it was Alisa Smith and James MacKinnon, then Michael Pollan, and now Barbara Kingsolver. Everybody's talking about their efforts to eat locally, or grow their own food. It all started with The 100-Mile Diet: A Year of Eating Locally by two resourceful and thanks to the diet, much thinner, Canadians: Alisa Smith and James MacKinnon. Barbara Kingsolver's new book, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life is on the best seller list. Michael Pollen's book, The Omnivore's Dilemma was mentioned in many 2006 year-end reviews. So heck, if everyone's so interested in what these folks have to say and to eat - why not me too? What's Barbara Kingsolver got that I haven't got? Better writing skills and a publisher? Who needs 'em. I can eat locally too.
All I needed was a gimmick, some rules to my self-imposed local eating campaign. I couldn't spend a year eating only food I'd grown or raised myself (that was Barbara's angle), so I decided to start as easily as possible, this summer I vowed to eat at least one locally-grown item per day. How hard can that be? Not very, provided one enjoys lettuce and lots of it. At my disposal is our backyard garden, currently a major source of lettuce, our plot at community gardens, a second source of lettuce and future source of carrots, sugar snap peas, tomatoes and zucchinis. Bay End Farm's CSA provides us with a biweekly source of whatever they decide to put in the bag. Coonanmessett Farm is my source for basil, among other things, and later in the season Tony Andrews provides us with corn.
So let's recap, that means one locally-grown component per day in any meal. Aren't you interested in how it's been going? Well, wonder no longer, I've been keeping a record and thought I would periodically provide you with some highlights.
The odyssey began on June 9 when Ken and C went shellfishing and brought home steamers which we had for dinner along with pesto made from Coonamessett Farm basil (an odd combination to be sure), the potato salad had chives from the backyard and the barley salad had backyard radishes. A pretty good effort.
June 11: Made quahog chowder from quahogs gathered by Ken and C.
June 12: Strawberry rhubarb crisp made from both local rhubarb and local strawberries. Despite having a friend who offered to counsel me in homemade pie crusts, I think I'll stick to my crisp.
June 15: Already there are problems. Do leftovers count? I had some of the spinach quiche and a handful of strawberries Tony Andrews Farm kindly dropped off at the front desk of the Enterprise this afternoon, but I didn't actually make anything. I guess leftovers count. Leftovers have to count.
June 19: Today was tough. I had leftover salad for lunch and I chopped up something green and leafy from last week's CSA bag and added it to the chicken lo mein we had for dinner.
June 17: Father's Day. Salad with CSA greens and pesto made from Coonamessett basil, topped with tomatoes, also from Coonamessett. Garlic bread was made with CSA garlic and I even threw in some chives for good measure. Everything's better with chives. It was all well and good but I've come to realize that which I already suspected - my cache of locally-grown meals is somewhat limited, salad and pesto being the top two meals.
June 20: The worst local food day yet. Leftover chicken lo mein with that nameless CSA green was all I could muster. Ken took the kids out for dinner and I ended up eating Steve's pizza leftovers when I got home.
Yesterday Glenway came by and I loaded him up with lettuce to bring to my sister. We also gave lettuce to Jim who vowed to give us some arugula. That would be good because I got some in the CSA bag but didn't used it and it wilted beyond repair. I was going to try an arugula pesto. I've heard you can do that but when I mentioned it to Alex he didn't think much of the idea.
June 23: Tonight we went to Conamessett Farm for Cajun night. I have to assume something I ate had locally grown ingredients in it. I should have had more from the salad bar as that would have cinched it. This morning and yesterday morning we put strawberries on breakfast; yesterday on cereal, today pancakes.
June 25: Here's a caveat, just because it's local doesn't mean it will taste good. I made the blandest spaghetti and clam sauce ever, using the clams I'd frozen after the shellfish outing. The sauce I normally make, which features canned clams, tastes much better.
June 26: Just lettuce.
June 27: Had to throw out pea tendrils, arugula, and the rest of the nameless Chinese green, which turned out to be joi choi, along with some store-bought cilantro in order to make room for this week's CSA pick up. It included more cilantro and more arugula. Guess there's still time to make that pesto. Kale in the bag will go towards kale soup and the very round zucchinis will batter and fry up nicely. It won't exactly be healthy, but it will taste great.
June 29: Total failure! At least I bought my lunch at a locally-owned shop on Main Street. Unfortunately it was the least satisfying chicken salad with walnuts and cranberries I've ever had. Usually it's delicious, to die for actually, but today it was unusually dry. Yesterday we brought salad to Alex and Laela's to accompany dinner which was met with high praise. We also added some peas from the backyard, peas that I'm now convinced are snow peas after originally thinking they were sugar snaps. I kept telling C not to pick them because they hadn't fattened up yet but they never fattened, they just kept getting bigger.
June 30: Today I fried up those zucchini rounds for dinner but nobody would eat them but Ken. For the most part H dined on spoonfuls of ketchup and C had six pieces of watermelon. How does that factor in to the equation? Does everyone have to like my locally-grown creation?

song: Here and Now • artist: Letters to Cleo

Jenny Appleseed

This is for my coworkers who are slipping, slipping I say, in the recycling department. On Friday I picked a Stonyfield yogurt cup and the former plastic container of what, from the description on the label, sounded like a really delicious salad, out of the trash can in the kitchen; a trash can which is mere inches away from our blue recycle bins.
Yes, I pick through garbage. I cannot help myself; though in my own defense the items in question were on the very top, I didn't have to dig. Do your part to cure me of this somewhat disgusting habit and recycle your plastic.

song: Jenny Appleseed • artist: Malvina Reynolds

Hey Babe, What Would You Say?

My friend Christine, the world traveler, is moving to Prague. It's all for the best really, the people at the post office never knew where Slovakia was when I was trying to mail her packages.
Perhaps, along with her latest teaching certificate, she'll learn Czechoslovakian, to go with the other languages she's proficient in, including Spanish and Japanese. I envy her ability to learn foreign languages. After many years of high school and college French, and despite having French Canadian-speaking relatives, all the French I can muster is asking Monsieur Jean Claude if he'd like to have lunch with me, which I learned off a record in junior high school. And if he says yes, well what then?
Recently though, I have become fluent in "toddler." My older son spoke very clearly from the get go, but his younger brother is more cryptic in his vocabulary.
The other morning he greeted me with "Dee, dee off." I speedily translated this to mean, "Good morning, mommy, my diaper is falling off, please change me quickly."
"Puppy sweep," doesn't mean that the dog is doing domestic chores but that his stuffed dog is lying on the floor somewhere covered with a dishtowel "blanket." Said puppy is "sleeping."
Just this afternoon we were outside and he demanded, "foo ah." This one was pretty tricky and I was baffled until C translated: "mommy, he wants you to take his shoes off." And that's exactly what he wanted. As soon as he was rid of his sandals he climbed into the wading pool with a tennis racket and started hitting balls. I think what threw me was the request itself. Here is a child who, Houdini-like, can get himself out of sneakers tied in double knots, why would he need my assistance to remove a pair of velcro sandals?
I can even speak toddler though I don't like to. As with any foreign language, it makes me uncomfortable to try my pronunciation at something that's not my native tongue.
The only problem with learning toddler is that there's a lot of different dialects. Just because I understand one toddler living half-way down dirt road in West Falmouth doesn't mean I'll understand another toddler, even one that lives in close proximity. It's a language that's always evolving.

song: Hey Babe, What Would You Say? • artist: Hurricane Smith

under the couch (a list poem)

1 penny (real)
1 quarter (pretend)
1 cup and saucer (plastic)
1 magic marker (brown)
1 airplane (paper)
1 book (Curious George)
1 lobster (sculpey)
2 cars (metal)
4 beads (wooden)
unmeasurable amounts of dust

Good Day Sunshine

Hey! What happened to the 60% chance of rain that was predicted for today? I took down the tent, collected up all the plastic toys in the back yard, and was looking forward to not having to chase my screaming children around while trying to apply sunscreen to their scrunched up, pouty, faces.

song: Good Day Sunshine • artist: The Beatles

Welcome to the Machine

Having recently reminisced over past computer purchases, I realized I've owned a Mac of some kind or another for the past 19 years. I wish I still had the first one I ever bought, the one with so little memory you had to insert a three-and-a-half-inch disk just to save a word document. If I still had it I could prop that baby up on the bookshelf and use it as a bookend along with my collection of antique typewriters that I use for the same purpose. Is antique typewriter an oxymoron? I wonder.
Yesterday I bought a new computer. The first time in 19 years that the size of the computer has gotten smaller instead of larger. Incidentally, the price as remained more or less constant over the past two decades, I just keep getting more and more computer for my money.
And if that's not a blatant plug for Apple I don't know what is. Maybe they'll read this blog and send me a nice fat rebate check which I could put towards the purchase of an iPod.

song: Welcome to the Machine • artist: Pink Floyd

twilight haiku

twilight approaches
as I water the garden
refreshing us both

Crying

Now that I let the kids play upstairs unsupervised while I make dinner or perform endless cleanup tasks, I've become an expert on interpreting different types of crying. This is an important skill to hone because otherwise I would waste a lot of time climbing the stairs to investigate which cries were serious and which merely crying wolf.
In the beginning I had to stand at the bottom of the stairs straining to listen to the intensity of the cry and trying to gauge how long it would last, that is to say, would they still be crying by the time I got to the top of the stairs or would they have stopped, only to start again when they saw their audience had doubled.
The most common cry is the "he's not sharing with me," cry which, if executed by my older son is often followed by the "he just grabbed what I was playing with away from me," cry coming from his younger brother.
Then there's H's, "I've crawled under my crib and forgotten how to back out," cry and C's "I've been tormenting him for the past 10-minutes but I can't believe he just hit me," cry. Often followed by the lyrical, "you're stupid!"
There's the "he's got me by the arm, leg, chest, and won't let go," cry, and the always popular, sometimes in tandem: "I was jumping on the bed and slammed into the headboard," cry. That one sometimes even gets my attention.

song: Crying • artist: Roy Orbison

Tattoo You

Yesterday, for the second day in a row, H insisted I draw pictures all over him with the face-painting crayons. A football, baseball bat, house, fish, dog, flower, boat, and even an octopus, though that was my suggestion. His brother joined the cause by drawing what I'm told was a rocket ship on H's back.
When he was in just his diaper the effect was a bit startling: The Illustrated Toddler.

album: Tattoo You • artist: Rolling Stones

Trapped

We resurrected the bug hut from the garage this morning and immediately filled it with two spiders, one grub, and a gravely injured beetle.

song: Trapped • artist: Bruce Springsteen

If You Leave Me Now

Our neighbor reported seeing a coyote in her backyard recently and as a result my older son is now afraid to be in the backyard without me for any length of time.
It used to be that I could run in the house and go to the bathroom, stir the mac and cheese, or obsessively check my e-mail, and C would be down right vigilant about ensuring that his younger brother didn't leave the backyard.
Now he trails after me wherever I go, no matter how briefly I plan to be gone, or how adamantly I insist no coyotes are going to get him in the interim. Consequently, when Mommy goes in the house, everyone goes in the house.
What's most disheartening about the whole thing is how willing C is to completely abandon his little brother; leaving him in the backyard to face what in C's mind at least is an imminent coyote attack.

song: If You Leave Me Now • artist: Chicago

I Will

Saturday was beach cleanup day at Washburns Island. As is often the case, the island was mostly clean and disappointingly litter free. It's funny how when you go out for a cleanup you're hoping to encounter some kind of toxic waste heap, the mother lode of all litter piles, just to make it worth your while, instead of being glad that there's at least one spot in town where people aren't dumping their trash indiscriminately.
I wonder if anyone went to the outer beach. Jayne had everything organized and each stretch of beach was preassigned so we couldn't fight like rabid dogs over who got the ocean side; knowing that the most trash would be on the beach facing open water.
But, as it turned out, the closer we got to where the campsites are, the more trash we encountered - including lots of broken glass, a plastic bucket, and a small wooden sign that read: WILL.
I put the sign in my back pocket and wondered out loud who had lost WILL and whether or not it would interfere with their ability to have the WILL to do things.
I, on the other hand, felt extremely fortunate. I have found the WILL. Now I had the WILL. And as you know, where there's a WILL, there's a WAY.

song: I Will • artist: the Beatles

Life in One Day

Washburns Island, the Clam Shack, ice cream sundaes, and Cajun buffet. It's great when out-of-town friends come to visit and together you fit in most of what's great about this time of year into one long, perfect day.
If we'd only made it to a Commodores game with the kids we could have called it a summer.

song: Life in One Day • artist: Howard Jones

Missing You

Greetings! It is I, the worst mother ever! The mother who brought her two children to a birthday party twenty-four hours and fifteen minutes late. And I thought the fifteen minutes was bad. There I was, standing on the doorstep of a total stranger's home, my oldest son in tears, and me holding my younger son in one arm and his shoes in another like some hillbilly who can't keep her kid dressed.
How could this have happened? I must have checked the invite 100 times reading and rereading the directions. I was so sure the party was today! So sure in fact that originally I was going to take the kids to Waltham to the Charles River Museum of Industry but then cancelled that outing because I realized it conflicted with the party.
It was worse than the time I brought C, clad in his pajamas, one day late to "pajama story time" at the main library.
I know what you're thinking - why didn't I put two and two together? I was late, and yet there were no cars in the driveway. I should have caught my mistake before getting out of the car. But here's the rub, there was a line of cars further up the road and the invite said there would be walking in the woods, so I thought maybe the on-time parents had been instructed to park near a path or something.
Luckily, while at the toy store this morning, I purchased a backyard Wigglin' Water Sprinkler along with the party gift. The party gift, as always, was a challenge. I never know what to buy, my only direction coming from my son in the form of: "I think Logan likes Spiderman." So I purchased this souped-up water sprinkler for the backyard and then immediately regretted it. I ran through the regular water sprinkler when I was a kid, shouldn't that be good enough for my kids? I was going to return it but it sure ended up coming in handy. It helped cheer the kids up and eased the trauma that comes with having a mother who can't read a party invitation.
To his credit, Logan's grandpa was extremely nice about it and even gave the kids party hats.

song: Missing You • artist: John Waite

Somebody to Love

The backyard is fast becoming an airplane graveyard. Scattered about is the debris of three balsa-wood airplanes, the ones that retail for $1.99 and fly once or twice before splintering on impact with some super-rugged crab grass.
Then came the plastic one from the toy store that lasted a week before it was overwound, causing the nose to snap off under the pressure of 200 twists of a rubber band.
Next are the foam planes that we allow to be flown in the house. All three pieces to one of them were lying on different steps of the stairs the other day before H brought them to me for reconstruction.
In an effort to save money (we charter our own plane to Kitty Hawk on the money being sunk on flimsy aircraft), I bought a glossy pamphlet entitled "The Best Paper Airplanes You'll Ever Fly." Now I can fold my own planes using the stash of outdated Enterprise stationary I brought home to run through my printer and hand out to C for "projects." The paper planes fly pretty well, especially if you're anal about folding them symmetrically and follow the explicit directions regarding trimming. I'd say they fly as well as their commercially-made counterparts and last equally as long.
I've had little experience in the paper airplane making department prior to now. How is it I'd lived 39 years and yet been incapable of folding a Balcony Bomber? Guess that's what good clean living and paying attention during school assemblies gets you - a dearth of practical experience that could come in handy as a mom. What use is knowledge of the quadratic equation when what I really need to know is how to launch a paper airplane from the back deck and get it to fly into our plastic wading pool?

song: Somebody to Love • artist: Jefferson Airplane

old silver couplet

sand crunches
in beach lunches

It's a Man's Man's Man's World

We (the kids and I) went to Bristol, RI last Monday. We met up with my friend, the one who ploughs the seas, at the Audubon Center and later watched a tanker go through Narragansett Bay from Colt State Park.
"Where is that ship's lifeboats," asked my son, the Titanic enthusiast, who picked me a nice bouquet of wildflowers at the Audubon Center - roots and all. I saw no signs forbidding the picking of wildflowers, but I sensed that sort of thing was probably frowned upon.
I didn't lock my keys in the car this trip though I did miss the right into downtown Warren and when I finally turned around I was headed the wrong way up a one-way street. But it was only for a split second. Is going the wrong way up a one-way street an improvement over locking one's keys in one's car? It's hard to say.
The best exhibit at the Audubon Center was the free show in the parking lot. While we sat outside snacking on watermelon, a mother woodchuck moved her three cubs, one at a time, from the underbrush at one end of the parking lot, to the underbrush at the other end.
Personally I thought the cubs looked more than old enough to walk across the parking lot themselves. The mother was carrying them by the scruff of the neck and they were practically dragging on the ground they were so big. It's obvious they were just milking their mother's good naturedness. They must have been male woodchucks.

song: It's a Man's Man's Man's World • artist: James Brown

and one for ken (a couplet)

On Father's Day, go out! It's all about you.
So long as you take our children along too.

Sea Fever

My aunt wrote the following piece many years ago about her father, my grandfather. I hope she won't mind that I'm running it today in honor of all the Cape Cod fathers and grandfathers who have taught their children and grandchildren to know the ocean.



Memories of My Father
By Janice Horne

My father, Arthur Warren Studely, was born loving the water, yet he never learned to swim. He fished in the ocean and river from Waquoit Bay. He always said if you knew how to fish, you would never go hungry.
My father always wanted a boy, he had four hopes and they turned out to all be girls. I loved the water as much as Father did. When he wasn’t taking Ned Hagen, John Harlow, Eddie Geggart, or Hollis Wright in his boat on Sundays, I would go. When I was asked if I wanted to go, I would be up, lunch packed, and ready to go, before anyone else was even up.
We would either go crabbing, fishing, or clamming. I was never asked to go eeling at night, or scalloping in the fall. Being a girl had its crawbacks, if I had been a boy I would have known all the secrets of the river.
The best time to crab was early in the morning. It was important to beat the other crabbers to the still water. Dad was so graceful standing in the bow of the skiff, holding his nets loose, pushing along the river’s edge with the pole of the net. Crabs were very fast and could move in any direction.
I used to sit very still in the stern of the boat, not making a sound. The least bit of noise would send the crabs into hiding by darting into the seaweed or by covering themselves in the mud. If they covered themselves, it would make the water cloudy and you had to wait until it cleared to find the shape of the crab at the bottom.
Poling and drifting along the shore ever so quietly, we would come upon crabs lying in the sun. Net in hand, Dad would place it in front of a crab, knowing that the crab would dart backwards. Dad would make a quick circle with the net and bring it out of the water, with the crab, seaweed, and sometimes the muck from the bottom, which was quickly washed away by dipping the net up and down in the water. He hardly every missed and sometimes he would catch two crabs at once.
After he had caught his limit he would let me try my hand. It took a while, but as time went by, and after many trips to the river, I was a pretty fair crab catcher for a girl.
We’d have our skiff filled before the summer people can and riled the waters. They missed more often than they caught. While we anchored our boat, the newcombers would ask “How many did you catch?” Dad would say "about 30 or so," all the while still picking up his catch and putting his nets in the truck.
I remember many people asked Dad where he caught so many crabs. He’d always say “Down by the old pine tree.”
“Where is that?” They would ask.
Dad would smile, and say, “That’s what an old timer told me, and I’m still looking, but I’ve found mine and you’ll find yours.”
When Dad was 62 he retired after many years of working as a mechanic in Falmouth. He spent most of his time fishing. In the summer the young children would gather at the beach, where he tended his boat. They were there when he came in from the bay with his catch. The children would help him put away his equipment so they could listen to some of his stories.
My father could tell you a funny story with the straightest face. The children loved his stories, especially the ones about his youth, and his memories of the old timers who fished when he was a boy. They loved to hear about all the secrets he had learned from the old salts. I think after a while Dad went to the bay looking for the young, for he had time on his hands, and it must have made him feel young again, telling them how it was.
Times goes on, but never changes. The young listen and take over when the old wither away. My father is gone now, but the young will still tell their stories of their beloved friend the fisherman.
I can still see my dad standing in his boat when I was young. Waves slopping against the sides, the sound of the wind upon the water. Coming into the lonely shores, soft breezes blowing salty kisses upon the cheek, while drifting in the silent water. Listening to a bird in flight, an oar lock echoing far away. It was the close of a special day.

poem: Sea Fever • poet: John Masefield

Too Many Fish in the Sea

At the library-sponsored program about "the sea around us" last week, one woman kept the attention of a room full of preschoolers for an entire hour, which is no small feat. She taught them all sorts of interesting things about ocean creatures, things I'm embarrassed to say, I didn't know.
Take starfish for example. Did you know they have five eyes? One on the end of each of their five arms? They would at least if there were such a thing as starfish but alas there isn't any longer. Scientists have decided that since starfish, in reality, are not fish, we now need to call them sea stars. These must be the same random scientists who decided to pull the plug on Pluto. No kidding a starfish isn't a fish! Do kids really think they are given that they don't look anything like a fish? What about cat fish? They're not cats. Dogfish? Wolf fish? Sea horses? How about jelly fish? I'm pretty sure they're neither jelly nor fish. Maybe we should call them sea blobs.
The people who brought us Cheddar Goldfish have a new, albeit misnamed, product out: Cheddar Starfish. Of course it's not really a new product, it's the same old product. For those consumers who don't like Goldfish, Pepperidge Farms has remade them into a new shape. And voila! Could you would you in a house? Would you could you with a mouse? Try them, try them, here they are. Surely Dr. Seuss had a sarcastic streak a mile long.
However, lest you think I hate everything corporate food related, Ken accidentally bought Reynolds Plastic Wrap in the exciting color of purple instead of just plain old clear. I love it! If I wasn't already sold on plastic wrap, when I'm not putting those reusable plastic covers all my closest friends refer to as "shower caps," over my salad bowls, I would be out there stocking up these babies.

song: Too Many Fish in the Sea • artist: The Marvelettes