Just being kids (2012 edition)

The gang got together here last weekend.

Looking back at the pictures of them from just a year ago, the mind boggles at how much they've grown.

Thing One's friend M, back from his first year at MSSM, has really gelled as a person, it seems; another friend, T, is headed there in the fall to finish out the rest of his high school career.

They're all physically much bigger than I am.

They all have jobs.

But get them all together on a beastly hot day and they play Frisbee and soccer and capture the flag (with the sprinkler running at midfield) and have a campfire with S'mores and swing on the swings and go swimming in the lake with [most of] their clothes on and eat a shocking amount of food.

Monday morning we deposited Thing One on the schooner and we'll see him probably one night a week between now and mid-August.

Dammit.

Honeybees

Today is one of the first really warm, sunny weekend days.  Our usual two pairs of rose-breasted grosbeaks are back.  The chickadees, nuthatches, mourning doves and finches are crowding the feeders.  The ticks and black flies are out in force, but I decided to risk it because my front walk and flower beds have been taken over by crabgrass and dandelions and were long overdue for some attention.

It's been a very long time since I've seen so many honeybees as are out and about.  The dandelions were positively boiling with them.  This is a good sign.

I wonder if they're wild, or if someone nearby has gotten a hive?

They were placid and perfectly content to share their space, even let a nosy human get right up to them with a camera.

I confess, many times I paused and waited for one to finish burrowing in his blossom and shuffle off in search of another.

Then would I heartlessly dig the dandelion out by the root.

There are still plenty to go around.

Things I Have Inherited from my Mother

My mother was an avid houseplant person.

Me, not so much, but I took hers on a temporary basis that seems to have become permanent.  Kind of like the cat.

She had an amaryllis bulb which I perched on my sunny kitchen windowsill and tossed some water on every week, and it seemed perfectly content to sit there and send up green leaves.  

A few weeks ago, it pushed up a stalk with a bud on it.

And it bloomed on the anniversary of my mother's death.

Home Improvement Project du Jour

Behold:

Bookshelves.

This is the Ikea/office spares collection we had before:

And this is after:

Himself wrought this.

Max approveth.

Things I Have Inherited from my Mother

Now taking bets on how long it will take me to kill this thing.

Springtime yard cleanup

I recently shared how our backyard becomes a veritable minefield over the course of a winter. 

You whose households include two overgrown dogs with healthy appetites and a marked disinclination to venture any further than necessary from the house when nature calls and there are two or three feet of snow on the ground find yourselves, I'm sure, in a similar situation.

As soon as the snow melts but before the grass starts to grow - a window of approximately 45 minutes sometime in April - the wise pet owner embarks on some preliminary yard cleanup.

The wiser pet owner orders her children to do it.

Aren't they wonderful?

They hardly complained at all.

There's Thing One in mid-moan while his sister diligently shovels.

And here's an utterly disgusted Thing Two...

... very offended by the state of her shoes.

New family tradition:  the apres-poop-walk shoe care clinic...?

Adventures with Wildlife

So the really funny part about this is that just the night before, Himself was saying we were lucky we’d never caught a skunk.

We have a bit of a squirrel issue, you see.  The same birdseed which attracts that pesky flock of turkeys and more than fifty other species of birds to our yard is also an irresistable draw for red and gray squirrels, which are cute for a few minutes until they empty the feeders, at which point they become annoying.  Then the red ones get into the walls and ceilings of the house, which is super annoying.  

So a few years ago we put out a couple of live traps and began an annual Squirrel Relocation Program wherein we capture the squirrels from our yard and set them free in our friends’ yards in Camden.

(Just kidding.) 

This has been a fairly successful undertaking, so as soon as enough snow melted we put out the traps for the season and that’s when Himself said what he did about skunks.  Which was, as I mentioned, the funny part.

Ha ha ha.

We discovered our skunk at 5.30 on Thursday morning.  Thursday being the day I leave the house at 6.30 a.m. and return at 7.30 p.m.  The skunk was, therefore, Himself’s problem.

Himself used the Google and learned that it is theoretically possible to transport and release a live skunk without triggering its defense mechanism:

• First, one needs to sneak up to the trap and cover it up with something opaque which one doesn’t mind possibly having to throw away.  The theory is, if the skunk can’t see anything, it will not become alarmed.  
• I cannot help but be reminded vaguely of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal.  

• Next one should carefully and gently place the covered trap in one’s vehicle and carefully and gently drive to the release site.
• This is where Himself ran into a leetle bit of trouble.  A noisy, bouncy ride in the back of a pickup truck – I have recently remarked upon this spring’s epic frost heaves and potholes – was clearly not to our skunk’s liking.

• Once at the release site, one should carefully and gently place the covered trap on the ground, and – standing quietly and as still as possible – slowly open the door, whereupon the skunk will eventually (they are shy and retiring creatures by nature) amble out, blink a few times in the sunlight, snuffle about briefly and then toddle off to live happily ever after.  
• Our skunk was not shy and retiring at this point, and the capacity to stand still and quietly while a pissed-off skunk erupts from a live trap is not, we find, something my husband possesses.  

I would give anything to have had pictures of this.

Anyhoo, aside from a slight lingering odor in the truck, no lasting effects were suffered.  The skunk is, I trust, enjoying its new digs over on Bald Mountain.

We now return to our regularly scheduled programming….

Spring?

Maybe... this could be it...

Kitchen Gadget Appreciation Day

It has come to my attention that there is no such thing as Kitchen Gadget Appreciation Day.  This, in my opinion, is a grievous omission and should be remedied immediately.

The idea came to me yesterday whilst I was rooting around my shelves for this:

(n.b.:  Much as I try to repress them, occassionally I have these culinary spasms in which my Southern half makes its presence felt.  Usually the manifestation is mild and results in something harmless like cream gravy or overcooked green beans with fatback; other times, like yesterday, it bursts forth like a demon and takes possession of all reason.  Thus did we find ourselves boiling peanuts, fashioning a dessert from a tuber, and deep-frying poultry and onions.  I'll pause now while you look up the number for child protective services and make a quick phone call.)

While I'm looking for this thing - it's a slicer specifically designed to make a fried onion blossom; it was a gift from my MIL, okay? - it occurs to me that we take far too little time to acknowledge and celebrate the kitchen gadgets in our lives.  So I hereby proclaim today, April 3, 2011, the first annual Kitchen Gadget Appreciation Day.

Please take a moment to dig out and handle your gnocchi paddles and strawberry hullers and all the other little objects lurking toward the back of your kitchen drawers.  They're special.  Though we may not use them often, they're always there when we need them.  Let them know how much they're appreciated.

The season

Getting the Christmas tree is always an event. 

We have a vaulted ceiling in the great room, so we get a big one - say twelve feet.  Since the designated site is occupied forty-nine weeks of the year by bookshelves, there's a lot of work involved before the tree even comes in the door.  At the end of the season everything has to be done in reverse.

The logistics of managing a tree this size are complicated too.  It's friggin' heavy, for starters.  It requires a super-sized base.  We always anchor it to the wall, just to be on the safe side.  And the sheer number of lights involved?  Unless we win the lottery, we won't be switching to LED any time soon. 

It's a production, but by gorry when it's done it really feels like Christmas.

The kids are big enough now to help move heavy things, and this year it went quite smoothly.  We picked up the tree on Friday night.  Yesterday we brought it inside and decorated it.

It's a balsam, so the house smells delicious.  It's not the tallest tree we've ever had, but it's exceptionally full (it took the kids a full half hour to find the pickle ornament...). 

This morning's dusting of snow adds to the spirit. 

Now if I could just get inspired to write the annual family newsletter...

Doing our part to help the retail sector this holiday season...

We pulled the plug on commercial television early in the first Clinton administration.  This was before marriage and kids, and it wasn’t because we had any particular moral or aesthetic objection; we just decided the money we were spending on the cable subscription could be put to much better use.  

So far the children are growing up without any serious psychological scars.

We’ve always kept a television set, though, tucked away in cellar with the old living room furniture, which we use regularly for watching movies and the occasional TV show on DVD.  (Huge Big Bang Theory fans.  Huge.  And that whole Netflix on demand thing through the Wii?  Brilliant.)

And a while back we got to thinking that it was time upgrade the old set.  Current sale prices convinced us to make said upgrade the Christmas “family gift.”

So yesterday we loaded everyone into the truck and drove to Augusta to do some comparison shopping, and we came home with a new 55” LED HDTV, which is an vast improvement over the old set in about four hundred sixty-seven ways.  

Getting the thing up and running - between the wall-mounting device, the new Blu-ray player, the A/V receiver and surround sound, the Wii, the Interweb – was kind of an event.  You know something is complicated when Himself has to spend two hours on the phone with tech support; that was last night, and he’s still at it down there, but I think he’s almost done.  

It’s a school night but we might have to watch a movie anyway…

Pointless exercise

I purged the refrigerator today – just found out we’re hosting Thanksgiving for the extended family and assorted random old people that my grandmother collects (at least 18 guests, possibly as many as 26), and this is one of those things that needs to be done along with blacking the wood stove and vacuuming out the registers.

By “purge” I mean not just getting rid of the fuzzy science experiments in the back of the bottom crisper drawer.  I’m actually not bad at keeping ahead of leftovers.

No.  By “purge” I mean hauling out, sorting, consolidating, coming to terms with, discarding and/or keeping everything else that’s in there.  By the time I got everything pulled out and organized into rough categories, of the approximately quarter of an acre of counterspace in this kitchen, two-thirds of it was covered by jars, bottles and containers of stuff.

This is what went back into the fridge.  This is embarrassing.

Mustards:

Chinese hot

Dijon

Grainy Dijon

Gulden’s Spicy Brown

Horseradish

Jalapeno

Chipotle

Sweet hot

Raye’s Old World Gourmet

Hot sauces:

Louisiana style

Original Tabasco

Habanero Tabasco

Jalapeno Tabasco

Cholula Original

Cholula Chipotle

Asian sauces:

Teriayaki

Black bean

Sambal oelek

Plum sauce

Hoisin sauce

Duck sauce

Fish sauce

Oyster sauce

Red curry paste

Green curry paste

Salad dressings:

Chipotle ranch

Caesar

Chipotle cheddar

Italian

French vinaigrette

Two kinds of bleu cheese

Buttermilk ranch

Russian

Thousand Island

Jams & preserves (which we DO NOT USE EVER):

Grape jam

Grape gelly

Strawberry preserves

Strawberry jam

Pomegranate jelly

Blueberry spread

Pear jam

Apple butter

Ginger preserves

There were also six kinds of ice cream topping, assorted pickles and a number of random sauces and condiments.  

My fridge is still full, but at least it’s squeaky clean and organized now….