Some gifts are just scary

My daughter sent me a link to this story in the NYTimes: It brings back memories of walking into the hospital breakroom and finding huge tins of Danish butter cookies with giant multi-color stickers: "Prozac" or "Viagra" or something else that clearly was never meant to be ingested as food. I was rather leery of these "gifts" - although I really did (I'm embarrassed to say) like the pens that looked like hypodermic needles.

Ahhhhhhhhhhh

At 5:30 this morning I was burrowed into the comforter, enjoying the considerable chill on my nose when Bill came upstairs and said those magic words, "The power's back on." You can have your sonnets, your novels, your lyrics, your children's laughter... nothing could have sounded sweeter than those few words. We were 48 hours without electricity, which now looks like an adventure but I must admit I was getting prEtty bored with pioneer living.

The stove kept the downstairs warm when we closed off two spare rooms. Our room got darned cold, but thanks to the miracle of down, we only suffered that momentary shock of slipping into the sheets. So, it was 40 degrees instead of 60 - the temperature of a nice camping trip, right? And is there anything nicer than coming back to bed in the middle of the night (with cold toes because you're too sleepy to put on slippers) and sliding back into that cozy cocoon? Baby birds are sooooo lucky. Think of little penguins!

The hardest part of the power outage was losing connectivity. We watched in horror as our batteries ebbed and died...first the UPS on the computer, then the laptop, then the radio, then the cell phones...and we were cut off from all but the morning paper (snort!). Of course there was plenty of snow shoveling to do (repeatedly), wood to fetch, candles to change, books to read, walks to take and each other to pick on. We weren't bored.

The boys, who love the snow, also love to hog the best spot in front of the fire:



When the roads thawed Sunday afternoon, we picked up our nephew and went to town for supper, not because we couldn't find food, but we hoped they'd let us charge our phones. Alas, the only open outlet was up by the ceiling (for a TV?), and our hopes were dashed. Good fish, though! Yesterday we went in so we could both work a few hours, and brought home take-out from Willamette Noodle. We carried it in one of those insulated, zippered shopping bags, and it was still warm after we drove 11 miles at 30 mph. Mmmmm!

We won't thaw for another four days or so, but we'll just keep the bird feeders full and make fun of the cats until things get normal and soggy again. And take showers, and bake rolls and blog and, if we're realllly bored, clean house.

Merry Christmas to all.

We owned the night...

I've been reading a favorite blog; the post is about trick-or-treating, where the blogger posed the problem of knowing whether or not her apartment-house neighbors wanted/didn't want little gremlins knocking on their doors. There ensued the usual lengthy, and always interesting, discussion about how families work it out today.

The big question was, how do you know whether or not someone wants kids to knock on their door? In an apartment house, there may be a pumpkin-shaped Post-it on the door; in towns, it's often the porch light that signals "Gremlins Welcome Here!"

It used to be easy to tell. When I was in grade school, the week before Halloween, the teacher would ask, "Who needs a Maltese cross?" It was our responsibility to know who in our neighborhood should not be trick-or-treated. Miss Hager liked the kids to come around, but her renter, Miss Potts, was off limits; C. Madison Landaker was too easily confused; and the couple up on Walnut didn't speak English or understand Halloween. So, we asked for the orange stickers with the black cross:



The cool thing about this was that it was the kids who picked the houses to avoid, and who delivered the stickers, AND who defended those houses from any kid who tried anything funny. No parents went out with their kids. The neighborhood was ours, all ours, all evening.

In balance? Or teetering on the brink...

Happy autumnal equinox, everyone.

Astronomy Photo of the Day

Depending on your outlook, you may see that as delightful or ominous. For glass-half-full folks, it's the best of both worlds - warm days and cool nights, gardens still bearing and sheds full of firewood, the landscape mellowing into the richest palette of the year.

I try to be both the ant and the grasshopper: I make sure the shelves glow with jars of peaches; bags of tomatoes jazz up the freezer; and I see there are raspberries enough for a batch of jam, BUT I spend a good hour lying in the shade of the redwood, snuggling with a couple of purring cats, watching birds and animals in the amusement park that is our woodlot.

I like to think it's a matter of achieving balance in all things, but I know I'm just lazy and happy.

Skip this is you don't like snarky political digs...

Ran across this on http://blogs.suntimes.com/scanners/


Maybe it's funny; maybe it's mean-spirited and stupid.

You decide; I've listened to so much partisan claptrap that my moral compass is spinning out of control.

Free at last! Free at last!

I see a day when he can have his hotcakes without my having to make them! Check this out: http://www.batterblaster.com/

And thanks, Moxie, for alerting the waiting world to a life-changing product!
Never mind about the aerosol can; nothing's perfect, and at least the batter's organic and the propellant is ozone-safe.

Seriously, I think I love this, and I haven't even tried it. I know I'm a slow-food kind of woman, but golly, this is just too darned sweet! Be sure to watch the video; I can't wait to watch him shake it like they do in the ad...

I wanted it all, and I have no regrets!

This is a tale of trying to do it all and ignoring the tell-tale signs of impending doom.



First there was the sesquicentennial of the farm, celebrating Bill's family's 150 years in this place. The house was full of family for a week, and on the big day we had 117 guests, music, food, drink and general gaiety. Joy abounded, although man-colds kept husbands and the toddler a little down, which should have been a warning.




After the last houseguest left, I had a day and a half until the reunion of my cousins, on the Metolius River - one of the prettiest spots in Oregon. Joy again abounded, long walks and long talks and the first signs that trouble wasn't content to just lurk.



I only was supposed to have four days at home before leaving for Chicago to babysit darling grandson. But as my throat became searingly painful and I made foghorn sounds when I inhaled, I decided I wasn't invincible, after all, and dragged my sad ass home from the reunion a day early and took to my bed.

After a loading dose of antibiotics I can face life again, and my NP promises I'll be good to fly. I enjoyed sleep uninterrupted by bouts of strangling coughs, and greeted the dew-bespangled morn chastened, but grateful to have so many lovely people in my life.

Thank you all; this is a great summer!

I thought he was a goner

... but the cat came back. It just wasn't on the very next day. Or the next day. Or the next day.

While we were skylarking all dank, dreary weekend at the beach, he decided the rules (like being home before dark) didn't apply. The pet sitter called and searched, but nothing. We weren't really worried - he's got this odd sub-routine that makes us wonder if he's really, really deep or just simple. Something seems to click off and he goes into his own furry world, oblivious to everything but the iterations of the loop in his code.

But when we got home, he hadn't been seen for 24 hours, and Sunday turned into Monday, turned into Tuesday - and we gave up hope. I'd poked under bushes and peered into sheds, always fearing I'd find a puff of orange fur - wanting to know what happened, but dreading what I'd see.

The other two boys were, meanwhile, needier than they'd ever been - following us everywhere, refusing to go outside without us, and acting as if they hadn't slept since we left. I thought of the matriarch in "Cold Comfort Farm", who took to her bed after she "saw something nasty in the woodshed".

And then Bill came up the stairs this morning carrying the big orange doofus, who's a little slimmer (no harm there!) and VERY glad to see us. He's overfilling my lap right now, making me S-T-R-E-T-C-H to reach the keyboard, and making me type one-handed when he's too relaxed. I think his bones melt and he starts to ooze - and at 17 lb., that could be a real mess!

We'd been trying to console ourselves that at least we still had two cats, but we felt like the mother in Father Fox's Pennyrhymes,

I have seventeen children, and none can I spare.

A visitor from Alaska

When I went downstairs in the middle of the night, I thought it was a full moon, except (even without glasses) something seemed wrong. Sure enough, we woke up to





. . . in the middle of April!

It's not a record, but I can't remember snow after Valentine's Day. Out in the raised beds, the baby spinach, lettuce and chard are snug beneath their row cover and should be fine, but I'm not so sanguine about the pears and cherries; it's supposed to freeze again the next two nights.

The boys were delighted by snow when they were half-grown kittens, but they've decided, after a couple of early forays today, to pile up inside and wait for better weather. They'll be evicted soon, but we're not letting on.

We're keeping extra warm burning the scrap wood left over from the flooring. It's amazing how much heat you can get from kiln-dried oak tidbits - and how little ash it produces! Maybe we should start toasting our firewood in the oven. We'd only have to do a few sticks a day, and we could bake bread or do a roast at the same time . . .

I'm not grousing . . . really!

It's just that I was supposed to go to class this morning and a volunteer gig this afternoon, but stayed home because Corey & Kevin came a day early to start sanding and puttying the floors. That wouldn't have been a big deal, except that:

• they needed two 220v hookups, so I couldn't dry the last load of clothes for our trip tomorrow;
• then, it turned out that our flight was cancelled (yeah, American Airlines), so I didn't need those clothes, after all;
• Corey & Kevin ran floor sanders (LOUDLY), filling the entire house with very, very, very fine sawdust, including the clothes I had managed to dry before they started;
• so, I set up a table in the woodshed with my laptop, a cell phone & a giant latte;
  
• after four hours on the phone, I got a delightful American agent who got us booked for Friday instead of Thursday - disappointing, but not tragic;
• she suggested we could move our return a day, without charge, to make up for leaving a day late;
• I spent another three hours on the phone trying to make that happen;
• at 6 PM, I snapped and went out to Burgerville (you've got to try their Yukon Gold fries!);
  
• I got an automated phone message that my flight had been cancelled (the new one), and would I like this lovely one on Saturday? I said, "No!";
• Richard came on the line (by now it's 7:30 PM), and asked would I rather fly tomorrow?
• the new flight is actually better than the original one, for us and for our family;
  
• I said, "Yes, please!", opened a beer & started packing.
  

Where did you say we're sleeping tonight?

Once again, the queen-size bed is in the attic, and we're "sleeping" in the double in the spare bedroom/living room/den. I say "sleeping" because one of us is longer than the bed, and wakes us every time his feet encounter the foot rail - umpteen times a night - and the other needs an astonishing amount of space to throw off all covers, lie on her back and radiate excess heat (which apparently emanates from either the core of the earth or our wireless modem).

To go to bed, we move two easy chairs & an end table as far from the bed as they'll go (three whole feet!), and try to clear a path to avoid wee-hour collisions or stubbed toes. Then, to get dressed, the bed and chairs have to huddle together so we can get to the "dresser". (I hereby apologize abjectly for pretending that piece of furniture could have ever been adequate storage for a teenage girl's clothes! We're paying for that now.)

Our real dressers are in the attic - such a treat first thing in the morning when I really have to have that wool sweater. Bill's office is stuffed with furniture, filing cabinets, a piano, the houseplants, and a cat who thinks it's a perfect refuge. My office is the kitchen counter, which means a constant mess of bits of paper and magazines that Bill straightens up when it gets too overwhelming. We've moved so much, so many times, that we have to think where we are when we wake up, and can't DO anything without asking, "Where did we put the ...?"

I'm not even going to talk about last month when I shut myself in the laundry room while guys stomped in and out, banging and crashing for a week. (Well, I'll only talk about it a little...) It's all going to be worth it, and in a few weeks, we'll post the results of all this dislocation.

No more grousing

A long time ago, we had a fellow put in a new door and some windows and a few other odd bits. Generally, it was fine, sound work, but the trim he did just looked completely wrong to me. Since it didn't bother Bill, and there was plenty of other stuff going on, I've just groused about it all this time.

Today, in preparation for repainting the living room, we bought the trim that had to be replaced after the flooring went down. Bill put up it up around the door this afternoon, and suddenly, I'm at peace! Oh, the floor still needs sanding and sealing and the room has to be painted . . . but it looks right to me now. I know it was really a little thing, but it sure makes a big difference to me.

I wonder what I'll start grumbling about next?

It's great when it works

I just talked nonstop for three hours to the senior center "Introduction to Computers" class. You'd think I'd take a breath once in a while, but here's the deal - Dick & I decided it would be cool to have both the beginning and advanced classes at the same time. We figured the advanced ones could follow the manual and work most of it out between themselves.

With the beginners, there's a lot to explain, right? "What you see on your screen right now is called the 'desktop'. These small pictures on the 'desktop' are called 'icons'. The 'icons' with small arrows in the lower right corner are called 'shortcuts'..." Some folks have never heard this vocabulary, and some have misunderstood it. Most of them have questions - good ones.

And then, of course, the advanced students have questions, too, don't they? So, there I go, talking some more until they are ready to forge ahead on their own again, and I'm back to the beginners. It's a bit like juggling, but never knowing how many objects are in the air.

Could it be the sun?

Sitting here in the evening, I feel my cheeks glowing pleasantly. My default assumption is that it's just a hot flash or the beer, and yet... We were outside from noon until dusk, and it was t-shirt weather (well, if you were working, and I'm here to tell you we were). So, couldn't it be a little sunglow? OK, I know we're not supposed to ever let the sun's rays touch our skin, so I'll try to feel a little bit guilty. But truthfully, I just feel really, really good, because we got so much done.

There are now 20 Oregon white oaks across the north property line, and 14 new table grapes marching up the other side of the driveway. These are seven new varieties, one of which is supposed to make great pie. Grape pie! I can't even imagine it. We've selected more limbs in the locust stand for posts in the vineyard, and we figured out where the other 35 trees are going. We planted Nootka rose, ocean spray, cascara, snowberry and Western spirea along the roadside.

A lot of the rest of the planting (incense cedar, ponderosa pine and sequoia) is forbidden me because it's in the poison-oak zone. But thrills abound, regardless. Although we've already mowed once, it's time to go around again; the weeds are going gang-busters; and every bed on the place needs tending.

I can tell we're really having fun, because we have to run extra loads of wash so we'll have clean jeans again.

I don't see how that would help, really

Flying Up

A million years ago, when I was in Brownies, there was a ceremony in which we "flew up" to become Girl Scouts. It was my first inkling that ceremonies were human constructs, and (to my mind) therefore suspect, although not altogether bogus.

Last night, a dear friend's mother died, and my friend became, as I did some years ago, the matriarch of her family. She "flew up". And it's not a piffling thing to be the ranking woman in the family.

Not having been endowed with much in the way of "gravitas", I wear this mantle lightly. That's not to say I don't appreciate it. It just seems to me that taking it too seriously would disrespect the "office", and ill serve the daughters watching and wondering how we do this aging and dying routine.

Let's make it as much fun as we can, ok?

0 for 2

Strike One: I falsely accuse my dds of being ungrateful wretches (it turned out to be His sock!).

Strike Two: I jinx dd #1 by telling her how lucky she is her enchanting son has never really been sick. An hour later, he wakes up from his nap and (literally) tosses his lunch.

Time Out! If I'd known the cosmic pranksters had me targeted, I would have predicted, in smug pontifical tones, that there's no way he could learn to [read, say his grandparents' names, change his own diaper] at this age.

Hope you feel better, wee one . . .

How sharper than a serpent's tooth. . .!

Some thanks I get these days for just trying to be a good Mom! I innocently ask if anyone has lost a sock and One Of Them (guess which!) says, snarkily:

"what kind of a question is that? sure, i'm missing socks. probably including a brown one. you expect me to keep track of these things?"

To which The Other One replies, with a pathetic sympathy play:

"do I have some brown cotton socks without mates? Yes. But, after a recent sock drawer analysis, I have concluded I have more unmatched socks than I do matched ones. Sigh."

I give up! This sock is hereby offered free to the highest bidder.

Slept like a baby...

Once again, we're having howling winds and lashing rain. To watch Fox News, you'd think we're all pinned under collapsed buildings and fallen trees. But compared to the last storm or the one last year, this one seems less destructive by far. Easy for me to say, isn't it, when it's not my house that was crushed by a fir tree? Nor was my garage blown out onto a highway, as happened near Brooks.

Normally, when the wind sounds like a train going by, I can't relax and sleep is fitful at best. Too many huge limbs have fallen from the cedar tree and missed (or kissed) the house. But after beheading it last year (yes, I know it's sad and ugly) we're pretending it's no longer dangerous. Sure, the whole thing could go over - it's still fifty feet tall and five feet in diameter, after all. I think it's just that we did all we could to make ourselves safe, and now we give ourselves a pass on worrying.

Tempting fate? Maybe...