Hatching out

Liam thinks all baby animals come from eggs.  I haven't seen my way clear to really get into this with him at this point, but maybe I'm wrong.  I correct (gently and without fanfare) most other fundamental misconceptions.  I guess it just seems like a slippery slope.  Also, the baby animals hatching from eggs thing is sort of priceless-ly sweet and funny.  So genuine.

Tonight on the way upstairs to brush his teeth he was a baby tiger, newly hatched from an egg: "Mommy...Look...A baby Tiger.  It's hatching out!  Watch it.  Tap, tap, tap.  Creeeek.  It's hatched!  Awwwah.  It's so sweet.  Such a sweet baby Tiger."

Apple Trap

 I'm trying to get just a little, tiny bit more serious about the food production here in the yard this year.  This means getting the garden in on time for a change (even though Spring has yet to cooperate in any way) and working on the apple tree.  (Also raspberries have been almost organized, more on that some other time.)

The apple tree.  What to say.  It's lovely.  It's huge (taller than the house).  It's over a 100 years old.  (The house is 110-ish, this year.)  It makes a ton of apples, all of them inedible and infested with various bugs.  So this year, a hard pruning.  (Thanks Ananda!)  And, "apple traps" as Liam likes to call them.  Red plastic "apples" painted with something that seems to be basically Vaseline and hung in the tree as soon as the flowers start to come out.  Check, check, check.  Fingers crossed.

After one apple traps, one swings, of course.

Easy

Pizza Friday this week featured the new pizza stone (Thanks Auntie Chris!) rigged up to accept the pizza with a combination of lots of cornmeal and a flexible plastic kids placement.  Pizza peel is in my future, I guess; although this seemed to work pretty good for something MacGyver-ed up.  Also featured vegan melty-cashew-nut-"cheese" (which is so much better than it sounds, you really must try it), made and waiting for me when I got home (Nice!).  Come to think of it, my only role in the pizza production this week was to make the dough (on Thursday night), and show up and drink a beer.  (Perfect after two super long days at work.)  And I toured Dave-the-Old-Window-and-Door-Superhero around the house to look at how to (maybe) fix our old, old windows.  Jeeze I hope we can somehow make that work.

While Dave measured windows and I watched him, Liam helped with pizza production downstairs; it was so funny to listen to.  "Wait, wait, what about over there on that part of the pizza, doesn't it get some garlic?"  "How about the mushrooms now?  What do you mean you don't like mushrooms? Oh, come on, let's eat one, see?  Good." "No, we don't have any fish right now." "Okay, let's wash your hands again."  (And again, and again.)

After pizza we went for a walk.  Down the hill, along the busy road, park on the beach, discuss the big ship (at length), pick lots of small daisies, up the nature trail through the woods, along the back alleys to home.  Chance meeting with old neighbors.  "Hi. . .you two. . .again, so nice to see you.  Yes, he's graduating next week; yes, mechanical. . .No, she's in Philadelphia now. . .Look how big Liam is."

Easy.

Happy Mother's Day

Happy Mother's Day.  I hope all visitors to this space have a day filled with love -- given and received.   Know that the women in this world, by their acts of love and endurance, peace and compassion, can and must change the courses of lives, communities, and nations.   Mothers own your power today, and bring it to the world.

From Julia Ward Howe, the Mother's Day Proclamation:

Arise, then, women of this day! Arise all women who have hearts,
whether our baptism be that of water or of fears!

Say firmly: "We will not have great questions decided by
irrelevant agencies. Our husbands shall not come to us, reeking
with carnage, for caresses and applause. Our sons shall not be
taken from us to unlearn all that we have been able to teach
them of charity, mercy and patience.

We women of one country will be too tender of those of another
country to allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs. From
the bosom of the devastated earth a voice goes up with our own.
It says "Disarm, Disarm! The sword of murder is not the balance
of justice."

Blood does not wipe our dishonor nor violence indicate possession.
As men have often forsaken the plow and the anvil at the summons
of war, let women now leave all that may be left of home for a
great and earnest day of counsel. Let them meet first, as women,
to bewail and commemorate the dead.

Let them then solemnly take counsel with each other as to the
means whereby the great human family can live in peace, each
bearing after their own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar,
but of God.

In the name of womanhood and of humanity, I earnestly ask that a
general congress of women without limit of nationality may be
appointed and held at some place deemed most convenient and at
the earliest period consistent with its objects, to promote the
alliance of the different nationalities, the amicable settlement
of international questions, the great and general interests of
peace.

Julia Ward Howe
Boston
1870

Pizza Friday

 

Pizza Friday has re-established a toe-hold at our house.  We'll see if it continues.  In the meantime, any suggestions for getting good pizza out of a regular 450 degree-ish max kitchen oven are welcome.  In a "wow, universe thanks for paying attention" moment, last night was our first pizza Friday and today in the mail arrives a pizza stone as a mother's day present from Auntie Chris. (Thanks Chris!  I hope to have perfected pizza by the time you get here in June.)

Pizza was Liam's second dinner.  First he ate fish, broccoli and raspberries, proclaiming that he didn't like pizza.  But then (an hour later when the pizza was finally, finally ready) he was prevailed upon to try some and proclaimed it "yummy!" 

Mommy? Are I really Liam?

This happens once a week or so, and has for the past few months.

L: Mommy?  Are I really Liam?
M: Yes sweet, you are really, really Liam.
L: Really?
M: Yes, really, I promise.

No idea.

May Day

Please excuse the crummy photo, taken with my (also crummy) cell phone. 

Today Liam and I came home (late, I had a work dinner) to May baskets on the front porch.  So. Very.  Sweet.  Did you do that when you were a kid?  Make May baskets?  We did and ran them all around the neighborhood every year.  So, Liam learned the May Basket Song, and I had the following conversation with our across the street neighbor when I went out to get the mail and he was getting in his car to go somewhere.

(Shouted, in a neighborly way.)

Me:  Hey!  Do we have you to thank for our May Baskets?
Him: May Baskets?  Don't look at me.
Me: Really?
Him: Wait? Small baskets of flowers? I might have heard something about that. You ring the doorbell and run?
Me: Exactly, it's good practice for all kinds of things.  Thank you.

I love my neighborhood.  I am so blessed and lucky and thankful to live here, with these good people all around me.