Stained Glass, Exhibit C

This week at stained glass, it was a lot more of the same--tracing, cutting, grinding, more grinding, and recutting. Only a lot less recutting, thank goodness. I think I only had to recut one piece! And the others went so much faster. I figured out how to cut closer to the inside of the marker line so as not to have to grind down as much. I found a better grinder that was faster. And I just overall didn't suck quite as much. I also got to learn how to use a few new tools/techniques.

Here's how it went down...

Step 1: Start tracing and cutting.  I tried out a different model of glass cutter today and liked it way better. It has a wide grip, like a gun instead of a skinny one, like a pencil.  That way you can exert downward pressure with your whole hand instead of just the tips of your fingers.  Way easier and more accurate.  Yay!



Step 2: Grind some more.  I had a few background pieces I had cut that were way too big for some reason, so I had quite a bit of grinding to do.  Fortunately, I found a better grinder so it took less time.

Step 3: Search for glass.  I decided to change my design a little bit.  I had planned on using a bright red to make the little squares around the border of my sun design and use white for the long pieces of the border.  But when I laid it out, it was very blah.  So I swapped where the red and white would go.  However, there was a slight problem:  I could only find tiny scraps of red in the glass bins.  Nothing big enough for the long edge pieces, let alone the center sun piece.  And they were quite a dark red, like red wine.  I needed something brighter.  So my great teacher, LuJean, found a big panel of bubbly red glass that had been taken from an old building upon restoring it.  It was perfect!  It was transparent, had texture, and was just the right shade of red.

(Isn't it pretty?  It looks almost orangey, like fire embers, with the light shining through.  But from straight on, it just looks like a nice strawberry red.)

Step 4: Learn a new tool!  I got to the part of my design where there were a lot of long rectangular pieces and small square pieces, all straight lines. So I got to learn how to use the straight-line cutting thingy. It slides along a rod that is fixed to the table so it makes a perfectly straight cut. Once you use it on 2 sides of your glass, you have a right angle and all the other pieces can be cut off with the straight-line cutting thingy. It was very handy and saved a lot of time on cutting and grinding. 

Step 5:  Another new tool!  Once I got all the long strips cut, I had to make them the right length.  So I used this straight-line measuring thingy and a cutter to give them a perfectly flat, square end.  I marked the glass with a template, lined it up against the straight-edged lip of this tool, and trimmed along the other straight edge.  Voila!  Perfectly square!

Step 6: Progress!  I managed to get all my glass pieces cut!  (I accidentally wisely chose a design with very few curved lines and not very many pieces. Some of my poor classmates will be cutting little crescent shapes and arches until winter.)  So the last thing I did was piece it all together, see if any pieces were too big and would nudge the ones next to them, and grind down the offending edges.

Here is a sneak peak of what the finished piece will look like...




Next week:  Fun with 3rd degree burns! (Also known as, I get to start soldering).


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Stained Glass, Exibit B

This week's stained glass was a testament to my high level of determination.  Because...lets just say there was a big learning curve.   Last week, you may remember, we chose our design, picked out the glass we wanted to use, and cut the design sections out like pieces of a puzzle.  This week we went to work cutting the piece out.  Although I have cut stained glass before, it was a long time ago, probably 12 years ago.  Evidently I didn't retain ANY of that knowledge because I screwed up on at least my first 7-8 tries last night.  It's a lot harder than it looks!  Especially cutting curves with points on them (as in the rays of the sun surrounding the big round piece in the center of my design).  I kept accidentally clipping the tips off.  Or grinding them too far down.  But I'm getting ahead of myself.  Let me walk you through the fun:

Step 1: Get out your board where you laid out your design and glass pieces.  Try to remember which pieces of glass you had intended to go where. 

Step 2: Find all the instruments you'll need.  You know, that cutting thingy, and that plier thingy, and that other plier thingy, and that brush thingy.  (All technical terms I memorized from last week.) Oh, and a Sharpie.

Step 3:  Lay a paper puzzle piece on the glass and trace it with the Sharpie.

Step 4:  Start cutting the curve at the top. 
Step 5: Use the smaller plier thingy to break off the curved piece.
Step 6: Repeat steps 3, 4 & 5 since the first attempt ended in little tiny shards.
Step 7: Repeat steps 3, 4 & 5 since the second attempt ended in a snapped off tip.
Step 8: Repeat steps 3, 4 & 5 since the third attempt wouldn't come off at all.
Step 9:  Go find some new glass since you used up all the pieces you had.
Step 10: Start cutting (again).
Step 11: Go find the teacher to show you how to do it since you just ruined another piece.
Step 12: Success!  You finally got the curved piece off!  Now try the straight cuts down the sides.

(These are not my hands, by the way.  But seeing as how I couldn't photograph my own hands, thank you to whoever posted this picture on Google images!)

Step 13: The straight cuts are easier, but not a guaranteed success.  Take it slow, push down hard, keep your eye on where you're headed so you don't...oops, you just cut into the piece.  Start over!
Step 14: Use those bigger plier thingies to snap off the excess glass.
 

Step 15: It's a miracle!  You finished one whole triangle of glass in the last half hour!  Now lay it out against the design and see if it fits. 

Step 16.  It doesn't fit.  It's too long.  So go grind it down to size on the glass grinding thingy.

Step 17: Try a new piece of glass since you just ground down the tip too far.
Step 18: Honestly!  This is way harder than it looks!  But if you finally managed to grind down your 10th attempt properly, good for you.  Now do it all over again with the next 32 sections of glass.

So that pretty much sums up my evening.  A lot of cutting and a recutting until I got the technique down.  A LOT of close up grinding down of edges, hunched over the grinder.  Then walking back and forth to my design to see if the pieces fit.  Then cleaning off the marker and starting the next piece.  But I feel like I finally got a good rhythm, and next week will go way faster.

Here's how pathetically far I got this week:

My Weekend At Cheese Fantasy Camp

This weekend I had the chance to go visit my friend Mariella, who is a farmer/cheese-maker intern at the Rock Hill Creamery in Richmond, UT. My husband calls my little getaway "Cheese Fantasy Camp." He told all his clients, "My wife is away at Cheese Fantasy Camp." "Maybe she'll bring us back some great cheese from Cheese Fantasy Camp." Hmmm, maybe she won't if you say it like THAT. But he is right. I do have a secret fantasy about having a little farm where I make cheese, raise chickens, and keep bees for honey. It might even be more than a little fantasy. There is the slight possibility that when I can't sleep at night I lie there planning where the chicken coop will go and what kinds of fruit trees my bees will get the taste of their honey from. I may or may not think about what shade of yellow or green my little farmhouse's shutters will be, and how many sides of the house the porch will wrap around. And it's possible, but not substantiated, that if I lie awake long enough I might even dream about what my handsome, rugged, Nordic hired hand Sven will look like. But back to the cheese. The cheese at the Rock Hill Creamery, at least, is real.

Mariella has been our long-time babysitter, turned grown-up, turned friend. So I jumped at the chance to see just how hard (i.e. fun) working on a dairy farm might be. I drove up in the evening. We had a nice dinner at the one fancy-ish restaurant in Logan, and stayed up late chatting about boys and watching movies about boys (The Ides of March, yum. Incidentally watched ON the Ides of March. Weird.) We slept in her little studio apartment above the cheese cave.

But morning came all too soon, as it does on most farms. (On MY farm, morning won't start until 9am, but other farmers, it appears, are sadistic and like to milk in the dark). So at 6:25 we woke up, I ate breakfast in my sleep, got dressed in my fancy farm clothes in my sleep, and made it all the way to the milking parlor before I began to wake up. (Stripey overalls and rubber waders, how picturesque!)


We shoveled hay into the manger (they actually have real mangers on farms!) and called for the cows. Here you can see the girls eating their hay. All except Ingrid. She was being sassy and made us tromp all the way down into the pasture to make her come eat.
(It's still barely dawn out, and I wasn't about to haul around my tripod, so the pictures are a little blurry.)



Next was the milking. I have to say I was a little intimidated by the size of the cows. You kind of picture them as being about chest high. But in reality they were about as tall as I am or more. And they look at you really suspiciously with their big eyes and you wonder if they might not want to sit on you if given the chance. But since they're such creatures of habit, they marched into the milking room right past me, stuck their heads in the oat trough, and started munching. No killer cows on this farm, thank goodness!



I have to get a little real with you here. It kind of weirded me out to touch their, um, teats. I felt like I should have gotten to know them first, taken them out to dinner and a movie or something. Reaching down there and just grabbing hold made me feel like I was violating them just a little. It was made worse by the fact that their teats are warm and fleshy and pretty much exactly what you'd expect touching someone's teats would be like...only their somecow's teats, not someone's teats, and are 10x the size. STIll, it was a little bit creepy. But that creepiness got me to completely forget my fear of being stomped on while milking. So before I knew it, I had squirted milk all over my foot without even being scared!

(Incidentally, the cows are not milked by hand. They're hooked up to a little four-prong milking apparatus that sucks the milk through some big tubes into the milk cans. Watching it gave me sudden flashbacks of pumping bottles for my babies. The small scrap of self-dignity I'd managed to retain while being hooked up to a breast pump completely dissolved while watching these cows get milked. Yep, I had been a human cow, nothing more.)



After all the rich, creamy milk was extracted from the six cows, Mariella weighed it (I was way too weak to pick up those huge urns full of milk) and poured it into the giant refrigerated vat where it is stirred and kept cold until cheese making day.




I wasn't there for cheese-making day, unfortunately, but I was there for cheese cleaning and turning day. So we showered, donned our special cheese making clothes--aprons, hair nets, cheese clogs (not wooden, sadly) and rubber gloves--and headed to the Cheeserie (not its real name). I got to help Jen the Farmer's Wife turn the feta first. It's stored in these big rings wrapped in cheesecloth. They sit on a big sieve where the whey drips down and goes into a big bucket. (I asked her what they do with the whey, and she said a farmer with a much bigger dairy buys it to feed to his calves. I love how everything on the farm is used for something. Even the manure is bought by other farmers for fertilizer. Nothing goes to waste!) Anyway, the feta cakes have to be turned periodically to allow the cheese to become uniformly firm, and to allow the whey to get out. So we pulled off the rings, flattened out the cheesecloth, flipped the big square cakes of feta over, and re-wrapped them. I was amazed at how solid and heavy they are! And being a big fan of feta, I loved the strong, salty smell.



Next we went down into the cheese cave (its real name!). Pete the Farmer had made some new spruce planks for the cheese to sit on. They had to be tempered and sealed with olive oil, so I got to do that first. Next I helped Jen and Mariella with the affinage. It's a fancy French cheese word for giving the cheese some TLC. Mostly it means turning and cleaning the cheese wheels. They are massive! Each wheel weighs 13-18 lbs and there are 4 on a plank. The planks rest on two metal bars, one at each end of the plank. There is another rack of bars in the center of the room. So you pull a plank out and rest it on the center bar, then it becomes a sort of work shelf.
It is VERY scary to pull the planks out. They weigh about 60 lbs, and once you slide them past the back support bar, they're like a cheese see-saw! You have to balance them exactly to keep them from tipping and sending cheese wheels rolling in all directions. Once you have the plank balanced on the center bar, however, they are stable and you can begin the cheese cleaning. The Rock Hill Creamery makes natural rind, aged cheeses. This means they use raw, unpasteurized milk and allow it to cure for a minimum of 60 days (but up to 2 years!). They rub it with a special briney wash that causes a certain bacteria to grow and form a rind on the cheese. This seals the cheese in, so to speak. But like all cheeses, in which mold plays an integral part, there are bad molds. So we wiped the cheese with a soft cloth to remove any bad molds, flipped it over and put it back to continue aging. There were a few cheese wheels on which the rind was not yet forming, in the pictures you can see them as a beautiful golden color, like a giant cheesecake. So these we washed with the bacteria wash to get the rind to form.



Jen and Mariella cut, weighed, and wrapped some of the cheeses for sale at local markets and stores next. I was lucky enough that while Jen was cutting the cheese wheels into small chunks she let me sample all the cheeses. Oh my deliciousness! Every one was more yummy than the last. I got to try an Edam, a Gouda, a 1 year aged Gouda, a Tomme, the Red Desert Feta, a Gruyere, and a 1 year aged Gruyere. I thought I liked the Edam best until I got to the 1 year aged Gruyere. When it hit my mouth, it was like my taste buds exploded! (In a good way.) The cheese had such a wonderful flavor--surprisingly sweet, firm, nutty, a little sharp, and there was almost an effervescent effect on your tongue while eating it. I can't quite describe it to you, but if you ever get a chance to try a 1 year old aged Gruyere, do it!!



After all that, we were pooped! So we went with Pete to L.D's for lunch. Picture a greasy, small-town diner where everyone knows everyone and nothing has changed for 50 years and you have L.D's. Within minutes, I was in love with L.D's and everyone in it, especially L.D. himself, who came over to chat with us. He brought over a handful of photos of Pete eating in the diner about 15 years ago. He was younger, with fewer gray hairs then, but he's still just as handsome! The diner looked exactly the same as it had back then and probably since Pete started working there in 1957. Same wood-paneled walls, same kitchy decor. Including this gem:


That was my wonderful day on the farm. It was so fun, and I learned so much. I asked Jen everything I could think of about cheese and cheese making as we cleaned the cheese wheels, and she knew the answer to everything I wondered. Mostly I found out that taking care of cows and making cheese is a lot harder, more back breaking work than I had anticipated. But don't think that has discouraged me from my cheese and bees farm fantasy. Oh no. Afterall, that is what Sven is for!

Foresight is 20/20.

They say hindsight is 20/20. But my hindsight wasn't even close. 20/80 in my left eye and 20/550 in the right. 20/550...ya, you saw that right. Do you know what that means? It means virtually blind. It means serious coke-bottles. It means if you took, say, a TV and put it 550 feet away from someone, they would see it just as clearly as I would see it standing only 20 feet away. It means if you've ever run into me without my contacts, guess what? I had no idea who you were and just waved to be friendly. Sad, huh?

Whenever I have gone in for my eye exams, they'd ask me what the smallest line on the wall I could read was, and I say, there's a wall there? I couldn't even read that giant E on the top with my right eye. Which is why I have always longed for LASIK.

Mother Nature, however, has been toying with me for the last 15 years. Not only was I blessed with being the only child in my family to need glasses, my eyesight has gradually gotten worse and worse every year since I was about 23. About that time, LASIK came into existence. I asked my optimologomitrist guy if I qualified, and he said no. My eyes were not stable enough. But don't worry, he said, they usually stabilize by age 25. At age 25 I asked him if my eyes were stable enough. No, he said. But don't worry, they usually stabilize by age 30. At age 30 he told me that they'd be stable by 35. He said it with such sincerity, even though I know he'd already lied to me twice. At age 35 he finally stopped making up numbers and just shook his head. I figured I was doomed to always need glasses. But then by some miracle, at my next appointment a year later, my eyes had hardly changed. And the next year, again. Finally I was a candidate.

Now, the main reason I have always wanted LASIK, you might be surprised to know, is because of the end of the world. True dat. I mean, ya, it's a pain to put in contacts and stuff. And to need glasses first thing in the morning and at night. But contacts aren't that bad. If I thought they'd always be readily available, I probably wouldn't worry about it. But someday there may be a financial collapse. Or a major pandemic. Or a third world war. Or a run on Acuvue. Or some other reason why society (and the economy) as we know it might cease to exist. And really, the scariest thing I can think of is not being able to see if something should happen to my glasses. REALLY. I would be virtually blind, and that is very very scary.

So last week I did it. I got LASIK. It was not fun. WATCHING people cut open your eyes and pull back the cornea and do stuff with sharp instruments...actually watching it close up, despite the Valium they give you, is just not that fun, even if you can't feel a thing and it's all sort of blurry. BUT it is worth it, oh yes it is. The next day when I went in for my post-op...20/2O in both eyes!!! A week later at my check up, they've regressed a bit, to 20/25 and 20/30. But they may improve again, the doc said. They fluctuate for several months as they heal. But guess what? I don't even care! I can SEE!!!! From here on out, you can just call me "HEY, TWO EYES!"

A Little Slice Of Heaven

Kids at school

Baby in Bed

Chocolate Chip Oatmeal cookies, warm

Milk, cold

Say Yes To The Dress" on DVR.


Ahhhh....27 minutes of heaven.



What does your slice of heaven made of?

Sloppy Seconds

Here I sit, on my bed, reading blogs, eating leftovers. I love leftovers. Not my own cooking's leftovers. At least, not passionately. But I passionately love restaurant leftovers. How awesome is it to go out to dinner, eat a fantastic meal, and then get to eat it again the next day!? It's very awesome, that's what. Even if you do have to share some of your coconut-crusted mahi-mahi leftovers with your cat, who is suddenly on the bed next to you, staring at you pitifully with eyes that say, "I know I won't even look at dry catfood containing seafood, and I scorn even the Fancy Feast if it has fish in it, but if I don't have a bite of that coconut-crusted mahi-mahi right now I will jump into a tank of foaming pitbulls, I swear." So you share a few nibbles to keep her from such an awful fate, and you enjoy the rest yourself, grateful that you are eating something delicious that you didn't have to cook yourself and which, of course, contains ingredients you would never buy in a millions years anyway. And that is what makes leftovers so wonderful.

You?

Dream A Little Dream of Pee

Have you ever had a recurring dream in your life? One which happens the same or nearly the same over and over throughout a period of/your whole life? I have one. It's kind of gross. But it is one where I am in a public bathroom and I have to go. BAD. But every stall has something wrong with it. A door is missing on this one, no seat on the next one, only a rim. Most of them are full to the brim with nastiness. And usually the floors are covered too, making it impossible for me to find a place to go.

I have been having this same dream, with variations on location and number of disgusting stalls, my whole life. I always wondered why. And then recently (yes, it took me my WHOLE LIFE to figure this out!) I finally figured out what this dream means. It's nothing deep. Not Freudian. No therapy or dream books required. No, it simply means I have to go to the loo and my body is trying to keep me from doing it in my sleep!

I've been having this dream a lot lately. And I realize it's because I have been drinking more than usual. I'm not a thirsty person. Generally the only time I get thirsty (and also the only time water tastes good to me) is between the hours of 8-11pm. And with the extra intake of water to help with milk production, I tend to take in about 24-32 ounces of water right before bed.

I really need to work on drinking between the hours of 9-11 am, but water is just gross that time of day. What can I say?

How about you? Do you have any recurring dreams? And more importantly, when does water taste good to YOU?

Putting Down Roots

When we left our beautiful old Victorian house, we arrived here at our new house with so much promise and anticipation. It has some serious improvements over our old house--like no drug dealers for neighbors, or hoarders for neighbors, the ward doesn't seem quite so needy, and we have those wonderful 20th century inventions called air conditioning, a garage, and storage rooms. Really, we have a lot to be thankful for.

BUT...this house isn't IT. This house and neighborhood brings with it its own issues. There are actually fewer kids in the neighborhood than our old neighborhood. So the drama that occurs every day after school when my kids want to find friends to play with and there are none continues (especially for poor Beck who has four boys his age nearby and they are ALL anti-social with anti-social mothers who have no desire to make play dates). Also, a good portion of the neighborhood is still very rural, so there are smells you never bargained for in a suburb, flies galore, and even the crowing of roosters and braying of goats every morning.

The problems we had at our old house with heating and cooling are just as bad here! Hard to believe it for a house built in the 1990's compared to one built in the 1890's, but it's true. Our old house pre-dated vents, so radiators were our only source of heat. And they did OK in the rooms that had them. But several rooms didn't, leaving them freezing cold and requiring space heaters all winter. Then in summer, we had a swamp cooler, but it was noisy, required the windows to be open (i.e. more noise) and didn't make it to the main floor very well. Eventually we put externally vented a/c in half the house, but the other half remained 20 degrees hotter then the rest. Well, here we have a super crappy vent system so that the 3-4 rooms closest to the furnace get all the heat and cold air. And the ones furthest away are 20 degrees colder in winter and hotter in summer. JUST LIKE OUR OLD HOUSE. It's ridiculous.

Other little things include doors that don't seal, walls and floors that have no insulation or sound proofing, and the fact that our yard isn't fenced off, so I still have to worry about my kids when they're outside. Anti-social neighbors abound. And a newly-wed/mostly dead ward mimics our old one almost exactly. So, ya. A lot of the things I thought I was leaving behind seem to have followed me here.

But this time of year, the time when everything starts shooting up out of the ground, bursting forth out of buds, turning green, and flourishing, I want to plant. I want to plant strawberries and vegetables and flowers. I want to dig in the dirt and see my handiwork blossom and produce. But (beyond the fact that I'm not physically able to do it at the moment), I feel the futility of it here. Our lease ends in a year and 3 months, we're not likely to renew it or to buy this house, and so it just seems dumb to put all that effort into a yard where I won't be here to see the results.

But tell that to my gardeners instinct. It doesn't want to listen.

It's sad knowing that we'll most likely be moving again in less than a year and a half. But it's also exciting to think of what lies ahead--maybe we'll build our dream house. Maybe we'll move out of state. Maybe we'll find a place that's just right for us where there are lots of kids, and nice neighbors, and big shade trees, and a perfect space for a garden.

I hope so. I can't wait to put down deep deep roots.

I've Never

I don't know if you've ever played this game at a shower or party, but it's kind of fun to take stock of what things you've judiciously avoided in your life, what things you have gone for, and what things may have occured like-it-or-not. Anyway, I was thinking about it for some unknown reason while my children were creating mayhem in the McDonalds playland last week (my go-to activity for energy burn-off when Big Daddy is out of town and the weather is bad and I'm on the verge of committing double filicide--your vocabulary word for the day, look it up). Here's what I came up with:

I've never...
1. Had a manicure
2. Ridden in a limo
3. Had to wear a cast
4. Worn a diamond ring
5. Gone mountain biking
6. Worn fake nails (unless you count the fabulous set of Lee Press-On Nails I got for Christmas in 1985, which I don't because they only stayed on for 10 seconds at a time)
7. Died my hair black (how I missed out on this one, I don't know. I still think about doing it all the time.)
8. Slept out under the stars (Are you kidding me?? Hello, BUGS!)
9. Been Scuba diving
10. Shot an animal (Though I did kill a spider once by applying nail polish to it and then feeling guilty and applying nail polish remover to it. Probably more cruel than shooting it.)
11. Owned a dog
12. Been to a pro football game
13. Eaten an ice cream cone (even as a child, I only wanted it in a dish)
14. Shoplifted
15. Made out in a movie theater (although I've seen it more times than I cared to, ew)
16. Driven without my seat belt
17. Been to court
18. Had a cold sore
19. Owned a jean jacket (Yes, my high school years were sorely lacking here)
20. Driven the speed limit the whole way somewhere
21. Worn jeans with high heals
22. Read Harry Potter
23. Mowed a lawn
24. Lost my keys (misplaced? Oh yes. Truly lost, not yet, knock on wood.)
25. Actually committed filicide

What about you?

Total Freaking IDIOT

I am referring to myself here. Because who else makes it through the majority of a year thinking they're a different age than they are? AND NOT A YOUNGER AGE. I would at least call myself pleasantly delusional if I'd spent the last year thinking I was a year younger than I am. But no, I spent the last year thinking I was 37 when, in fact, I was 36. It was only today that I realized my mistake. My birthday is coming up in a few weeks, so I was thinking about what it was going to be like to be 38, so dangerously close to 40. And then I realized, WAIT. Big Daddy is turning 40 this year, and I'm 3 years younger than him. That means I am only 36 going on 37. WTF? How did I spend a whole year thinking I was older than I was?? I don't remember the exact moment after my last birthday when this dementia kicked in, but lets just say I can't actually remember thinking I was 36. EVER. What an idiot!

Well, at least I get to have another year before facing that awful 38. And I can still refer to myself as Mid-Thirties. Without lying about it. (Small consolation to what is evidently the early onset of Alzheimers.)

The Honeyguide Bird and the Badger

In case you don't know, my preferred method for sugar intake is mixed with flour, butter, salt, eggs, usually chocolate, and then some amount of baking. Frosting is also usually involved.

I'm not much of a candy eater. Certainly not milk chocolate. I think there was a time when I preferred milk chocolate to dark. I think I recall being pissed off when I got a Special Dark in my Halloween bag. But somewhere along the lines, that changed. And milk chocolate became too intense for me. But even back in the days where I enjoyed it, candy just wasn't my thing. And chewy, sour, fruity candy wasn't even close to being on my favorite treat list.

So come Halloween, I would usually dump out my pillowcase full of candy, organize it into groups: candy bars, gum, fruity candy, candy with little pieces, suckers, etc., then further break it down by name, count it all up and write it down to compare to previous years, and then retreat to my room to eat a few choice pieces. Usually the Almond Joys and Mounds first. Then a Twix. Maybe some peanut M&M's. But by the next day I was pretty much over it.

My mother's great idea for sparing our teeth from weeks of eating sugar was to demand that all candy be consumed within 24 hours, and whatever wasn't would be confiscated. And despite the fact that I neither relished my candy nor intended to eat much of it past the first day, I am, by nature, a saver. Mostly out of panic of not having something later when I really want it. So I would find secret places to hide away most of my candy so that it couldn't be taken away. In shoes. In coat pockets. In jewelry boxes and Barbie car trunks.

And then I would forget all about it. Ya, I might run across a small stash now and then. I can't remember if I would eat any of it. I just know that keeping the candy was very satisfying to me. Eating it? Meh. Christmas was the same story. Easter? You guessed it. One time I got a giant 1 lb Hershey's Kiss from a friend for Valentine's Day. After a small nibble, it went on a shelf next to my knickknacks until it eventually went stale and got thrown away. Or so I thought... But more on that later.

My sister, who bunked downstairs from me, was cut out of quite a different cloth. Her love affair with candy was not the patient, bashful one mine was. It was passionate, voracious, and all-consuming. She usually DID eat all her candy within 24 hours. Halloween was her fondest dream, as far as I knew. And any opportunity to spend money was always, always spent on candy.

So flash forward to years later. About 25 years later. My sister, brother, mom, and our spouses were sitting around one night playing games and laughing over old times when my sister confessed to me that she would secretly sneak up to my room following each holiday and hunt around for candy. She knew of all my secret hide-outs (even my mom never bothered to look in my snow boots, but Jennie did). She scoured every corner. She unearthed all my stashes. And ATE THEM. Ate every piece. Remember that giant Hershey's Kiss on my shelf I thought had been thrown away? Eaten. Slowly. Once tiny slice at a time over a period of weeks. Carefully, so that I would never notice.

Well, I didn't notice. Not with the Kiss. Not with the Easter candy. Not with my Christmas stocking. And certainly not with my many stashes of Halloween candy. I guess I pretty much functioned as The Candy Store Upstairs. I just never cared about candy enough to notice. (You're welcome, Jennie). I think, really, we had a symbiotic relationship. Like those fish that follow sharks around and eat the slime off their gills. Or those birds who live on Rhinos' backs and eat all their fleas. We worked well together, even if I didn't know it at the time.

So what now? What am I going to do with my sister living a thousand miles away and all this extra candy around the house?

I think today I found the answer hiding behind the couch....




Perfect. At least until the next dentist visit.

Expecting The Unexpected

When Daphne started school, I wasn't expecting to cry. I did.

When Beck started school, I was expecting to cry. I didn't.

When I moved away from my old house, I was expecting to feel heartbroken. I'm not.

When we got our trampoline, I was expecting it to be a pain. It isn't.

When we got a house with no upstairs, I was expecting the house to feel strange. It doesn't.

I was expecting to hate having an open backyard that we share with the neighbors. I don't.

I was expecting having more space to be awesome. But not this awesome!

I expected our garage would be so full of stuff we wouldn't be able to park in it for months. It isn't. (One of us is parking in it already).

I expected having air conditioning to be nice and cool. I didn't expect the basement to feel like Antarctica.

I expected there to be more kids in our new neighborhood than the last one. There aren't.

I expected the general population at church to be much younger. It isn't.

I didn't expect the neighbors and ward to be friendly and nice. They are!

I expected having to drive the kids 10 minutes to school and back would drive me nuts. It doesn't.

I didn't expect there to be horses, cows and goats living across the street. There are.

I expected the hot tub we inherited at this house to go unused. It isn't.



There are lots of things about my life lately that have been other than I expected. But I was NEVER expecting this...

119 Minutes

The mayhem starts around 10:30 every day...

Start fixing lunch (yes, at 10:30AM)

Get the kids to the table to eat lunch no later than 10:45

Cajole, threaten, beg, prompt, scream a little, and eventually bribe the kids to eat faster, faster, FASTER until 11:25 when you give up and just accept that it will always take them 40 minutes to eat five bites of food and they will never finish a whole meal as long as they live.

11:26 Quickly change Daphne's clothes to her uniform.

11:28 Madly dash through the house looking for Daphne's school shoes while shouting to Beck to find his.

11:29 Madly dash through the house looking for Daphne's school bag. (Still yelling to Beck to get his shoes on)

11:30 Madly dash through the house looking for Daphne's folder which isn't in her school bag. (Still yelling to Beck to get his shoes on)

11:31 Freak out that Beck still doesn't have his shoes on. Sit both kids down and put their shoes on for them since they are physically incapable of doing it when it's past time to go to school.

11:33 Drag kids out to the car to head to school

11:33:35 Realize that Daphne's hair hasn't been brushed and run back in the house to find the brush and some hair bands.

11:34 Realize that Beck has spaghettios all over his face and run back in the house to get a wash rag.

11:35 Finally start backing out of the driveway

11:35:15 Hear Daphne freak out because there is no snack in her school bag. Pull back in the driveway and run back in the house to find a snack.

11:36 Finally make it out of our driveway and on the way to school.

11:42 Drop Daphne off at school.

11:43-12:25 Try to kill about 45 minutes until Beck's school starts. (This might consist of shopping for things I don't need, wandering around the library for much longer than necessary after Beck picks out the first two books he lays eyes on, or using my free kids meal card to get a kids meal for my lunch since I was so busy bossing kids around that I forgot to eat at home.)

12:26 Drop Beck off at school


AND THEN THE MAGIC BEGINS.

I HAVE 119 MINUTES TO MYSELF BEFORE I HAVE TO LEAVE TO PICK THE KIDS UP FROM SCHOOL.


This was the first week that this happened, both kids in school and me with 119 minutes to myself. What should I do with this time? What would YOU do with this time???


Read that book that's been sitting on your nightstand unopened for three weeks?

Blog?

Work on fixing your mosaic table that a bunch of pieces of glass fell off of?

Plant some flowers?

Go to lunch with a girlfriend?

Sleep?

Organize your recipes for your new recipe box?

Watch all those House Hunters you have had taped for months?

Go shopping SANS kids?

Yack on the phone with your friends without being interrupted?


As it turns out, I was so caught off guard by having time to myself all of the sudden that I spent the first 15 minutes of my free time yesterday watching our pet caterpillar eat dandelion leaves . Oy vey. Then I mopped the kitchen floor and vacuumed the entire upstairs. I really need to work on finding more interesting uses for my free time.

Any suggestions?

Making Up For Michigan

It's 4:45. I'm starting dinner. Fried chicken, corn bread, and baked beans. I've been craving Southern food ever since I started reading The Help. I hear a tinkling musical sound outside in the distance as I shake thin strips of chicken in a bag of seasoned flour.

I grew up in a busy suburb just shy of Detroit city. But right in the middle of the sprawling, dirty, asphalt was a little oasis. A tiny, dirt road with a sign marked "Private" at each end. The huge trees were left undisturbed in large patches on the street, arching over and almost touching in spots. Little paths took off through the woods here and there. Lilac bushes bloomed on the roadside. Shrieking pheasants and bushy red squirrels ran zig zag across the street. This is where I lived. And this shady, forested lane is a big part of who I turned out to be. I loved it there. I loved wandering over the wooded slope that made up our back yard. I loved exploring the Rouge River that flowed by the edge of the trees at the bottom of the hill. I loved looking for snapping turtles under the mushy black leaves in the pond, halfway down. I pretended I was an explorer. I pretended I was an Indian. I pretended I was a Nancy Drew. It was heaven.

But there was one real downside to living on this little dirt road, aside from the huge potholes that would form after every heavy rain: No ice cream trucks ever dared venture down our street. We all dreamed of hearing the high tinkling sound of the ice cream truck coming. We fantasized about running out of our house on a hot summer day, our pockets jingling with coins. We imagined the taste of exotic ice cream concoctions oozing down our chins. But dreams of mobile ice cream were all they ever were. We never once saw the ice cream man's smile or tasted anything but the square cardboard box kind of ice cream, stale from our freezer.

And that is why, at 4:45, just before dinner, I am passing out two dollars and fifty cents in change to each of my kids as they run towards the tinkling sound of The Entertainer driving towards our house. I'm trying to set the Universe right, in my own little way.

A Crazy Irrational Hatred For Birdsong

I am a night owl. Always have been, always will be.

Having young kids has forced this night owl to adapt to being a late evening-owl, however. I'd still rather stay up late and sleep in late. But I don't really get that option. And once sleeping in late wasn't an option, staying up late went out the window real fast too.

When I was in college I lived my ideal schedule: Stayed up until about 3am, slept until at least 10am, if not noon. It's true, I missed out on a good portion of the morning (and on rare days where I had to get up super early, say 9am, I noticed that the world seemed so alive and fresh and golden at that hour. And that I got a heck of a lot more done in a day too). But my body has always ALWAYS wanted to sleep in late, no matter how early I've gone to bed.

Back in those days, when I was a true night owl, my only goal for going to bed was to be in bed asleep before the birds started chirping (which was usually about an hour before sunrise.) That may seem like an obvious goal, to be asleep before sunrise, but at that time it was not at all uncommon for me to be awake when the sun came up. But nothing, NOTHING is so maddening to me, so irrationally irritating to the point of hysteria, as trying to fall asleep when the birds start chirping in the morning. I can't say why it is, but if I hear birds in the morning, I CANNOT go to sleep. Instead I get irate. I want to get up and find a sling shot and bring down every one of those sweet, darling, innocent little birdies. Or at least a big bull horn that makes really loud cat noises. That would scare them away, right?

Why does morning birdsong bring out this blind rage in me?? I'm such a peaceful, animal-loving, tree-hugging type normally. I mean, I'm practically Snow White in the afternoon! Usually all my little squirrel and deer friends bring me my lunch on the couch while the birds and mice press the buttons on the TV remote. (They tend to choose Animal Planet quite a bit). So where does this crazy blood lust in the wee hours come from??

I suspect it isn't so much a dislike for my fine feathered friends as it is a distaste for being conscious before noon. It goes back to the fact that I'm not a morning person. AT ALL. And that the birds chirping their little hearts out reminds me that it is about to be morning, a part of the day which my vampirish body violently shies away from. I don't know. I can't say why it is. But if I am up and start hearing the birds, I am filled with such crazy hatred for tiny fowl that I can only lie in bed fuming. And, you know, fuming is sort of counter-productive to sleep.

The other day one of my kids woke up crying in the night. About 5:30am, actually. I helped him find the potty, use it, get back in bed, and then flopped back in bed myself. And then came the sound I hadn't heard in years....the chirping and singing of happy little birds, getting ready to greet the sun.

Let me just say, it is a VERY good thing that someone invented ear plugs. 'Cause my husband has an airsoft gun. And I know how to use it. Kind of.

Yes, I am a sick, sick woman. I need bird-related therapy. What is wrong with me?!

"29" Years Ago Today

I'm pretty sure my mother was completely knocked out, by request, for my birth. I always tease her that I could be a switched baby and she'd never know it. Except that I have (well, HAD) the Nicholes nose, the characteristic bump that everyone related to anyone from my mother's family has. Or I could have had a twin born and then whisked away by some evil nurse to another mother whose baby died, and she'd never have known it. I've always felt I had a twin out there somewhere. Maybe it's her after all. In any case, I have no real amazing or tear-inducing details from my birth. I was born at 1am. I think. And I was 7 lbs 14 ounces. And I was really long, like 20 inches or something. And I was, of course, a perfect happy baby who slept all the time and never cried and walked and talked when I was a week old and spit up gold nuggets. The End.

Thanks for giving birth to me, Mom. Even if you slept through the whole thing.


P.S. No need to add details, Mom. I think I've got all the pertinent ones here. No really. It's all good.



Daily Weight Loss: 0.6 lbs
Total Weight Loss: 4.8 lbs

I love the Ocean

I'm talking about Danny Ocean, not Billy Ocean, in case you're confused. And if you're still not sure who I'm talking about, you are obviously not a woman or a gay man and I feel sorry for you. Because it would be far better to be a woman or a gay man than to be anything else and not know the sheer heaven that is Ocean's Eleven, Twelve, and Thirteen.

Anyway, I figure they should probably be starting casting any time now for the love interests for Ocean's Fourteen (Please, God, say there will be an Ocean's Fourteen!) And I want to be at the top of the list. So I figured the best ways to get there are to drink more Coke Zero, blech, (and hopefully shrink my mothering hips down more to the size of a 13 year old Chinese gymnast's hips) and, of course, to learn to pick locks. I'm on it.

I give you Exhibit A.

I give you Exhibit B.

I give you Exhibit C.

Elapsed time? 28 seconds.

I think this automatically makes me a shoe-in. Those master thieves like a woman with skillz. I don't even care if they cast me to be Reuben's love interest. If I get to view Damon, Clooney, and Pitt for even 5 minutes up close, all my hard work with the Masterlock will have been worth it. It might even have been worth the Coke Zero.

Special thanks go out to Big Daddy, my own smokin' hot master thief, for hooking me up with the lock picks and the know-how. ;)

The Shark Cage

I have two major fears in this world.

One is a fear of open water. Any large body of water, fresh or salty. It doesn't even have to be that large. Anything larger than a swimming pool can do it. I'm not sure if I'm afraid of drowning or sharks or really cold water or people seeing my bikini line in a less than stellar state. When I think back to my youth--sailing the Great Lakes in my father's sailboat, occasionally running aground on large granite boulders jutting up from the deep lake floor, and hearing my dad calmly say to me, "Go below and see if the galley is filing with water"--it makes me suspect it might be the drowning part I'm most scared of. But then there have been the times that I've been in crystal clear, warm, tropical ocean water, and I've realized that I've felt very little fear. Because I could SEE what was coming at me. And that's how I know that it all comes down to sharks. Well, not just sharks. Sharks, swordfish, octopi, squid, and any other large, menacing, toothy, tentacled, beaked fish or mammal who might want to nibble on my dangling legs for lunch. So that's why the shark cage so intrigues me. It's a life-sized version of facing your fears close up. Coming inches away from a large man-eater and not being able to run. Or swim. Or even pee your pants. Just facing it.

My other fear is spiders. This is, probably, a less justifiable fear than drowning or sharks. Tiny, mostly-harmless little spiders, theoretically easily crushed, shouldn't be able to instill much fear in a person 1000 times their size wearing rubber soled shoes, right? But there you have it. I'm afraid of tiny, mostly-harmless, nasty, freaky, creepy little creatures 1000 times smaller than me.

So when Big Daddy said to me last week, "hey, come look at this huge wicked-looking black spider I found on the porch," you would probably assume that I went running in the opposite direction. Normally when spiders are mentioned, I do. But this time I didn't. Because I knew instantly by the sudden chill in my heart that no other spider could be described in that way but a Black Widow. And I was right. When I got close enough to see its jett black body with the over-sized round abdomen and it's robotic looking legs, I knew. Even before its half concealed red hourglass was evident, I knew. And a fascination for this deadly, fearsome, disgusting black spider drew me in and wouldn't let me go. I wanted to run. I wanted to scream. But I just stared at it. Then Big Daddy went and got a jar, ostensibly to trap the spider to show the kids.

So there it sat, in its sealed, airtight jar on our porch. For DAYS. I couldn't throw it away. And I certainly wasn't going to let it out to kill it. So I just stared at it from a few inches away, fixated and horrified at the same time. After a couple of days it built a web around the top, near the crack of the sealed lid, and hunkered down, almost daring someone to try to open the lid. So I would pick up the jar and shake it until the spider let go and fell to the bottom. Safe. Safer. For just a few minutes.

I couldn't believe I was getting this close to a Black Widow. Looking at it. Holding the jar. Turning it and hearing its thick body and pointy legs clank against the glass. It almost made me throw up. It almost made me faint. But I couldn't turn away. Because I knew...this was my shark cage. And it was as close to facing my fears as I was ever going to get.

Death's Door

I am sicky sick sick. I think I can say this is the worst cold or flu or whatever it is that I've had in a long long time. It's been six days and I still feel as sick as ever. I haven't seen any change in the amount of achiness, snot, coughing, plegm, sore throat or fatigue.

Add to that....

A visit from my least favorite aunt, Florence. (wink)
Bad news about the Cutterpillar
Bad news about the Florida mess
A poor sales month for my Honey
About 36 hours of crying and not sleeping and not eating for worrying over a friend in a major life crisis
And the fact that I can't find the match to one of my favorite pairs of flip flops

And now you know why I have been camped out on death's door. If I haven't read your blog, it's not you, it's me. If I haven't made comments, it isn't that I don't love you. If I haven't called, or dropped by, or made any contact with you in the last week, don't take it personally. I'm just having a really really bad week.


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Still Slightly P.O.'ed, 17 Years Later

My senior year of high school, I was pursued. He was a boy I didn't know. A year younger than me, went to a different school, was in a different grade, went to a different church. I wasn't looking for a boyfriend. But he liked me. A lot. He played basketball in our church gym with my best friend's boyfriend. It was Wednesday night, mutual night (church youth group), so we girls were around. And he was always checking me out from a distance. At first I dismissed the idea of dating a younger guy. But he didn't let it go. I started hearing reports through the grape-vine of how much he liked me. So eventually I let it leak back through the grape-vine that I might entertain the idea of him taking me out. So he did. And what do you know? We fell in love. Fast. Hard. It was awesome. He was tall, handsome, athletic, spiritual, sensitive, generous. He treated me like a queen. He called me, wrote me letters, bought me trinkets, invited me to dinner with his parents. When I got my tonsils out for my 18th birthday, he took good care of me, brought me soup. I went to his baseball games and practices (he was an amazing pitcher), he came to my school plays. Then school ended. And all that summer before I went to college, we spent in bliss with each other. We were together every single day.

The weeks before I left for the West were rough. We cried a lot. HE cried a lot. We clung to each other more and planned how to stay together until Christmas break, and then a few more months until I would be home for the summer again. We were going to make it, we knew it.

The week before I left, he bought me a necklace: black beads with painted roses on them on a black leather band. And he made me a mix tape. It was a mixture of songs we'd listened to together, and a few he thought I would like. He talked in between the songs of what each one meant to him and how it made him think of me. He wept about how much he would miss me. How I was everything to him. We were so in love.

I left for college. I spent two weeks on a road trip with relatives before arriving in Happy Valley for school. I was the first to move in to the student apartment my mother had picked out. The next day roommates began arriving. Just as the one who was to share my room started moving in her stuff, the phone rang. It was HIM. And he had bad news. During the two weeks that I was gone, he had met someone else. They were in love. It was over. To say that the timing was bad to hear something like this is an understatement. I was completely alone at school. I didn't know a soul within 1200 miles. My new roommate and all her family were traipsing in and out with baskets of clothes and linens and school books. I had no privacy in which to interrogate him on where all his tears had gone and what all the promises on the tape had meant. All I could do was clutch the necklace at my throat and sob.

I never saw him again. Don't worry. I got over him. Fortunately, college has a way of occupying you so that you don't think of home too much. But I still pulled out that tape once in a while and rubbed the smooth rosy beads of the necklace and let a tear fall. Especially right before I went home for the summer.

Flash forward 17 years. Somehow a jewelry box of old and discarded items fell into the hands of my toddler, Daphne. Among the items she wore around the house, a black leather band with black and red beads. I rarely thought about the necklace and its significance. It was dress up for her. And it meant nothing to me.

Then yesterday when I was vacuuming the playroom, I accidentally sucked that necklace up into the vacuum's spinning chamber. And out the pieces rattled, broken, twisted, pulverized.

I just stared at them for a moment.

And smiled.

It was extremely satisfying.



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