Pollywog Holler still has the best ones

Stair porn

mr potter

C obviously is enjoying hearing the Potter series (earlier books for now until he's older). Sarah is reading them out loud in the evenings... (in case you can't read what he wrote under her "Beware of Voldemort" it's "I can easily counter Voldemort.")

happy code talker day

An early morning conversation today:

Me (just having gotten up upon hearing C coming upstairs). "Good morning!"
C: "Happy Code Talker Day Daddy!"
Me: (stares sleepily; does not quite compute yet)
C: "Argghh! Don't you know what Code Talker Day is?!!"
Me: "No, I don't, but tell me about it"
C: (some additional angstful noise) "Why didn't you know it was Code Talker Day today?!"
Me: (now waking up slightly) "You mean the Navajo Code talkers?"
C: (calming down finally) "Yes...Code Talker Day honors the Navajo Code Talkers who served in the Pacific in the war against Japan.."

Later on in the morning:
C: (holding his Code Talkers book from the library) "In 1982 the President awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor to the original 29 Navajo Code Talkers... In 2002 the others were given the silver cross [I'm making that up; not sure what medal they got, wasn't as big as the 29 got posthumously]...There were over 200 Code Talkers total during the war... (etc. etc.).
Me: (thinking it was typical of our government to finally honor native americans after many of them were dead)"Cool! What should we do to celebrate?" (He ended up setting off "fireworks" in the afternoon, which in this case were water balloons and various containers of water he dumped on the heads of A and her playmates out front--they liked it though at least).

-Dan

bikes

Last Wednesday I contemplated biking into work, but the thought of packing up extra clothes and digging up the key to my U-lock was just too much for 7 a.m. To avoid having any such excuse in the future I brought in clothes/ towel on Thursday. So today I had no choice but to give it a try.

Traffic was low since I was out early and everyone’s on vacation, which made it less nerve-wracking than it might have been. I avoided the problem I have with exercising in the morning (can’t eat when I first wake up or I feel sick; can’t exercise until after eating or I’ll get dizzy) by taking my time and not particularly exerting myself. (There are only two uphills of any significance on my way to work. The route home is harder.) My only issues:

a) I could really use a side mirror. I can’t keep from drifting while looking over my shoulder, even for a second.
b) I couldn’t get in to the showers here until after 9. I did without today because it was a cool morning and I don’t have any meetings, but I do sweat buckets and will normally have to shower when I get in. I need to find someplace that will copy keys that say “do not duplicate.”
c) I suspect that if I rode home my quads would be unhappy with me. Obviously that problem will solve itself if I commute regularly.
d) Rumor has it that I’d be much happier with road tires than my current mountain tires. I’ll consider switching them out if I start riding more.

I’m probably not riding home because it looks like the thunderstorms are not going to clear up as I’d hoped. But we’ll see. (I was very much wishing I’d ridden last Thursday, when I sat in traffic for an hour on the way home due to flooded streets.)

C can ride surprisingly fast. On short stretches I can only overtake him by using higher gears. (Dan claims this is cheating because I have 21 and C has 10.) Unfortunately his bursts of speed doesn’t translate to getting places faster- he was taught at school to dismount the bike and walk while crossing intersections. Dan has been regularly biking the kids to the pool (2-ish miles) and it definitely slows things down. He’s starting to feel more comfortable staying on his bike past small streets at least.

Dan has been biking more and is starting to get disenchanted with having A’s bike seat permanently attached. In addition to looking dorky it prevents him from using the toe clips on the pedals. However, besides being useful, I also see it as a good theft-deterrent- if you’re about to steal a bike, you don’t want the one with the bright blue toddler seat on it, right? We’ve decided not to invest in a removable one for that reason and because we expect that she’ll be ready to use the tagalong bike next spring. (She won’t be able to help Dan by carrying six-packs of beer for him anymore but he’d have space for a bike rack to use instead.)

I'm so dull that I blog about what I ate for dinner

I’ve had the hardest time planning meals since I started working. I used to figure out what I was cooking for the week, carefully maximizing efficiency (planning double batches of grains or beans or tomato sauce to work for several different meals) and minimizing monotony (the extra rice would go into a casserole rather than another stir-fry). Maybe because what little intellect I have left is devoted to other things or maybe because I’m now only responsible for 3-4 dinners a week rather than 5, I just can’t motivate myself to do it anymore.

So we end up with dinners like last night’s which, despite their eclecticism, actually work. I got beans going in the pressure cooker. Next step- figure out which vegetables from the CSA need to be used up most. The answer, unfortunately, was a large eggplant. I’ve never understood the appeal of eggplants; they have a funny texture and not much flavor and generally if they’re tasty it’s only because they’ve been slathered in something else that’s good. Why trouble to grow it when you could just plant zucchini instead? But eggplant it would be since my antipathy toward food waste far outweighs my eggplant prejudice (1). I wanted dinner to be ready within 20 minutes, so none of the methods described in the first two cookbooks I searched would do- there would be no salting or soaking and there was no way I was willing to leave the oven on for 30+ minutes for roasting on such a hot day.

But- a recipe for broiling! Which will only require the oven to be on for three minutes per side! That’s my speed. I’d never actually used the broiler before but I figured it out and slid in the eggplant, sliced and splashed with tamari. And it came out FANTASTIC. Still not quite enough flavor, though the soy sauce helped a lot, so I made a sauce with lemon juice, peanut butter, parsley, and some sugar to tone down the lemon.

Made a vinaigrette for the beans and cut up some CSA carrots and green beans for color. All I was missing now- a grain. I’d rather overused bulgher lately in my last-minute cooking so I went for the obvious choice- popcorn. (Do most families of four devour two batches of popcorn in fifteen minutes? Everyone with their own bowl, since we’re not good at sharing?)

And dinner was a hit. Or at least it got eaten, which is good enough for me.


(1) I’m not really an eggplant-hater; I dressed up as one for Halloween one year. But I still maintain that their good looks are hiding a dull interior.

maybe for A's birthday?

"The nice thing about a pi scarf is that you can really make it as long as you want."

a geeky way to disturb your children

A: We can make pyand sometime.
S: What is pyand?
A: No, PI END.
S: (?)
A: It doesn't have to go on forever. We can write the whole thing down.
(Loyal readers may recall that we discussed pi with the children about a month ago. A has voiced frets over it several times since then.)
S: Well, um, in a way you're writing the whole thing every time you draw a circle.
A (thankfully ignoring my last statement): We should make pi end. Let's do that now.
S: Well, usually people shorten it, so we can just decide to stop after three digits and call it 3.14.
A: (displeased)
S: The rest of the numbers after that are so small that they're not very important anyway.
A: Why aren't they important?
S: Because they're so small compared to the first three numbers.
A: But I want it to stop at 9.
S: Oh, so you want it to be 3.14159?
A: Yes!!
S: OK, sounds good.
A: What is it again?
S: 3.14159.
A (after taking a bite of dinner): What is it again?
S: 3.14159.
A: 3.14159?
S: Yes.
A (very pleased): Oh!

wheat prices again

The last time I bought a 50-pound bag of organic whole wheat flour I thought it was expensive at $42.50. That was up from $26.50 the previous year. This time- $69.50. Ouch.

But hey, the Research Foundation gave us 3% raises, so we only took a small pay cut in relation to inflation.

luckily no kudzu

Abandoning a garden for more than a week is a dangerous thing to do in July. We came home to three ripe cherry tomatoes, five sugar snap peas from the one plant that’s still hanging on through the heat, and a pumpkin plant trying to take over Earth. While we were gone it snaked five feet across the garden (putting down roots ever 18 inches or so) over the chives to an unsuspecting tomato plant, and pushed up another four feet through the tomato cage. It grew more than a foot a day. Now that’s scary.

Monday night I wrestled it down. The plan was for the pumpkins to grow along the fence abandoned by the sugar snap peas and I redirected it that way. Looks like I’m going to have to monitor it daily to keep it in check. The tomato plants are having enough trouble finding places to grow without intruders; they’re wending their way over their neighbors’ cages and one has made a dive for the basil.

Lots of little zucchinis also greeted us, and only one foot-long. We ate it yesterday and it was still incredibly sweet. I made a tabouli-ish salad, only with beans and raw zucchini and without tomatoes, utilizing the mint plants which three people donated to us following the mysterious demise of our patch. C was hungry a few hours later so I offered him a raw yellow squash and a knife to cut it up with. I’m so glad he has become willing to eat much of what we give him. This is the first year I’ve even considered serving raw summer squash to my family and no one’s complained yet. (I think Dan has been tempted to but he knows better.)

Oh, and raw beets are pretty fantastic too. The first recipe listed here http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/02/dining/02mini.html (but we don’t have fancy ingredients on hand so ours had walnuts instead of pistachios and no goat cheese). A mistook it for our Thanksgiving cranberry sauce. I feared she would burst into tears when she took a bite and the taste didn’t match but she didn’t bat an eye.

Twin Trees play-by-play (warning- long)

Day 1: The kids are so badly behaved in the car that Dan and I aren't speaking to them by the time we arrive. It rains as we unload the car. Dan and A go raspberry picking but A doesn't like to walk through the tall wet grass. Dan, whose packing responsibilities were limited to his own needs, finds that he brought no socks or underwear. We break out the Twice 55 songbook (1) and argue about whether there is ever any merit to drawing out the last three syllables of each line of the Doxology (2).

Day 2: We go to North Creek in search of groceries, sunscreen, and socks. C is unbearable. There are no socks to be found, though a Rite Aid employee suggests we try the deli (?!) next door. Alas, it is closed, and Dan considers rifling through a rafting company's lost-and-found. We stop by the beach at Ski Bowl on the way home. A leech attaches itself to A's ankle and its removal involves squishing it. (Refraining from jumping up and down and screaming EW EW EW, and instead smiling and telling A about the cute little "snail" that liked her so much, took all of my will.) At home we realize C never ate his breakfast; once he finishes it he remains unbearable but in a cheerier way. At least until he slips into the brook and scrapes up his leg. I distract him from the pain by musing about how Bactine has gotten away with falsely advertising its "no-sting formula" for so many years. A says it's been so long since we've been at our house that she doesn't remember what it looks like.

Day 3: I decide to go for a run, but think better of it about five yards up the hill on Cemetery Road. My parents join us for a hike around Thirteenth Lake and we pick lots and lots of blueberries. C loses his wallet on the trail and is distraught (3). We give up on the local map puzzle; while only 400 pieces, it consists solely of contour lines. Dan finds NEW socks for $10 at a rafting company and invests in a single pair (4).

Day 4: We head back into town for building supplies, ice cream, and TP. I steal an unguarded wireless connection in the Grand Union parking lot to ensure that Friday's work snafu didn't escalate. We bribe the kids to play together (5). We stop at the swimming hole again (in the rain) and are surprised to find a teenaged lifeguard on duty, accompanies by two friends loudly discussing the quality of their weed and Husker Du. I dirty every pot in the kitchen to make dinner while Dan tries to learn Spanish. We utilize the military songs in Twice 55 to convince C to sing with us (6), and find that despite the limitations of the house dictionary, it is able to define "caisson" for us.

Day 5: Rain postpones our beach plans so we sing "If I Had a Crowbar" while taking out a defunct piece of drywall from the Rose Room (7). My parents arrive with a new sheet and we commence grumbling about our ancestors’ building techniques (8). My mother walks the kids to the larger creek and I revel in the silence. Dan and I replace the terrifying pictures of puppies and kittens to the repaired wall, thinking that way no one will notice the expanse of white among the fake wood paneling.

Day 6: We trek up to Raquette Lake to see the work my parents have done on their cabin and to enjoy Golden Beach (9). My kids forgot to take their smart pills- A asks where she can fill her bucket with water at the beach (uh- the lake maybe?) and C cannot grasp the concept of floating in an inner tube. We decide to forego dinner out to avoid child-meltdowns ruining an otherwise good day and head home for the lasagna Dan had made in the morning before I got up (10). Dan coats the seams of a leaking roof with sealant and hopes it does the trick.

Day 7: C demands a trip to Hooper Mine and we comply. There are red raspberries and coyote scat on the trail. I encourage C to descend via the scary rocky cliff face (11) and rip my only pair of shorts (12) accompanying him. Dan and A drop us off at the driveway so we can lie around and read while they refill the water jugs and play by the river. I manage to create a reasonably tasty dinner utilizing the last of our food stores (13) and replace the lightstring leading upstairs with an equally antique and knotted drapery pull. We have a campfire after it stops raining. C escorts A into the woods to search for birchbark and, shockingly, refrains from pushing her into the ravine.

Day 8: I yell at people while packing and cleaning. And we’re off! Pictures to follow.

(1) Which really should be named "Twelve Dozen" based on its song count, but anyway.
(2) Especially since they still pronounce "'nly" as only one syllable.
(3) Dan and I both advised him not to bring it to no avail.
(4) He continues to save his lone pair of sorta-clean boxers for special occasions.
(5) Not for the first time, but this time was notable because it actually worked.
(6) Our enthusiastic rendition of The Battle Hymn of the Republic may have frightened away the rodents for the next few weeks.
(7) We are surprised to find that the fake woodgrain pattern was factory-applied to the drywall. The lumberyard, alas, doesn't sell it anymore. How shocking.
(8) The studs were rotated 90 degrees, so there's only 2" between the bathroom and bedrooms, and they were installed 4' apart. We don’t like to wonder what’s holding up the roof.
(9) An especially fun beach for kids, because it’s nice and sandy and stays shallow a long way out. It is always windy, however, which only my mother considers a benefit to a swimming beach. This also means there are lots of waves which produce ripples in the sand underwater. My cousin Rebecca told me that they were snakes lurking under the sand and I fully believed her.
(10) He planned to bring it with us to Raquette Lake but I forced him to rethink that when he had no plan for how we would cool it and then reheat it at dinnertime.
(11) I thought it would be an exciting confidence-building adventure, and I went first so I’d break his fall if he slipped. (I’d like to say I’d catch him, but chances are I probably couldn’t.)
(12) Peter Harris and the church thrift shop have failed me this summer.
(13) The 1935 Fannie Farmer Cookbook was no help in telling me how best to combine turnips, lentils, and feta but I managed.

vacation in review

we enjoyed a much needed week away from our house and work up at Twin Trees in North River (which now consists only of rafting companies as the sole businesses, but at least they sell socks for those who forget to pack them, like me :).

Even though there was a thunderstorm virtually every day, we still managed to fit in fun hike around nearby 13th lake where we picked wild blueberries, lots of swimming in various bodies of water--C is improving by the week with his swimming endurance and confidence, a day on Raquette Lake (the only sunny all-day day) with Jim and Shelley where the kids played in the sand on Golden Beach and in the water most of the day, our traditional short hike with a good view up to the old Hooper Garnet Mine--this year A was big enough to go to the high cliff overlook too and we fit in some red raspberry gathering there as well, some fix-it projects at the cabin, a campfire one night in between rainshowers, local walks and playing in the yard and brook by camp, and lots of reading and indoor time while it rained. Here are a couple pictures, below. Click to enlarge.

-Dan

more raspberries

I have at least 16 quarts of whole black raspberries frozen now. As the season winds down it’s getting hard to find freezer-quality berries (there are still some that are firm and of perfect ripeness out there but they’re few and far-between) so I relaxed my standards yesterday and picked a batch to make jam with. We now have two quarts of very tasty preserves. I was too lazy to can them (it was HOT yesterday) so they’re in the freezer, but we’ll still be able to enjoy it all winter if I can keep people from eating it with spoons.

Raspberry season will likely just be beginning in North River while we’re there next week. Alas, I don’t think I’ll be able to convince my family to maintain their enthusiasm for long picking expeditions any longer. Especially amongst blackflies.

In which the last decade of my social life is accurately mocked

Weekend Plans

furious

A bawled for twenty minutes after she saw the tree limb with her brand new swing being hacked down. Dan spent a whole day installing the swing two weeks ago, replacing the baby swing and giving her a treat to help compensate for her broken elbow. Our next-door neighbor Sue, who owns the trunk of the tree, didn't trouble to tell us she was going to have the limb cut off. (And given that it only overhung our property, we strongly suspect that she only did it out of spite. We wonder if she watched Dan working on it, chuckling to herself.) We're friendly with all of our neighbors except her. She dissed Dan the day she moved in; we've been nothing but pleasant to her, but she just plain doesn't like us.

Now I'm so angry that I can't stop shaking, and am trying to figure out how to turn the other cheek rather than exact revenge. And trying to figure out where on earth we can re-install the swing so A won't freak out over its loss every day, which is going to be a trick because all the other potential tree limbs on our property are like 40 feet up.

Edited to add: Just learned that when Dan went over to confront her, the tree guys offered to re-install the swing for us on a higher branch. Sue said "no way." It wouldn't actually have worked anyway, but her attitude is totally ridiculous.

watched pots

We keep staring at the green cherry tomatoes but it doesn’t seem to make them ripen any faster.

steampunks love peak oil

Dirigibles might make a comeback.

we are not alone

The gmail quick-reply box decided about a month ago to randomly default to reply-all. This is extremely hard for me to remember and decidedly not ideal. I've inadvertently sent replies to lists of people a half dozen times now- luckily none of them extremely embarrassing, but half committed minor social faux pas. Oops.

CDTA just isn't as fun

The boys and the subway.

CFCs be damned

The air conditioner in our car died (on the way to the party A broke her arm at- a decidedly ill-advised trip). This has of course led to the kids bickering over who has which window rolled down how far, but my biggest mistake in attempting to ameliorate the situation was to give them each ice packs on Saturday. A decided she was done with hers about five minutes into the trip and dared to put it down next to her carseat. C is offended if anyone other than himself dares to use that space, so the two of them argued over the precise placement of the ice pack for the rest of the trip. I had been debating whether we should fix the A/C but now I’m pretty sure it’s necessary.

the song remains the same

We braved another concert outing with the whole family. (C was convinced to join us voluntarily by the lure of kettle corn and advance agreements to only attend from 10:15 to 3:45 and to stay home on Sunday.) We actually shocked him into dancing when we first arrived, but after he remembered that he hates music, he spent much of his time reading The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers (occasionally asking me to help interpret tables for him; who knows how much he's absorbing about the 1950 per capita GNPS of the G-8, but it's somehow holding his attention). Except of course when he was taking breaks to beg for lemonade, antagonize his sister, or ask if it was 3:45 yet.

A, meanwhile, sweet-talked her father into spending an inordinate amount of time doing crafts at the kid tent and playing in the sandbox. I eventually managed to lure her away, but she was fairly cranky and wholly uninterested in the music, so after a while we let her paint in the kids' tent while we sat elsewhere (in view).

We heard a decent amount of music and saw a lot of friends, but like our last venture to Falcon Ridge when Alyra was a baby, we're not quite sure whether it was worth it given the constant child-management required. We considered bringing a friend along for C which might have helped- maybe in a year or two we'll be able to bring buddies for them both to keep them entertained. They each had friends over on Friday afternoon which was fun for all. Hopefully we'll be able to do more of that this summer to keep them distracted from each other.