School ended last week, and so far we are having what you might call a blissful summer vacation. The weather has been gorgeous -- sunny, warm but not hot, with enough rain to keep things green, and a few nice thunderstorms. The kiddos are playing outside daily, and are fairly committed to their daily chore schedule. Mostly they're happy because I'm being more permissive about video games and computer games.
We really started our summer fun before school was out though, with weekend activities like strawberry picking, a Father's Day visit to the science museum to see some nature films, Father's Day brunch at our favorite diner, and two or three trips a week to various parks where Greg and I have been playing lots and lots of frisbee.
Greg is busily preparing for his defense, but his schedule is much more flexible and relaxed now than it was in the weeks before he turned in his thesis, so we're all enjoying spending more time together. He's arranged to keep working at the university once he's officially done, continuing to do research for his adviser, but with a significantly higher salary and more regular hours.
The expected increase in income has us shopping already. We recently bought a new camera, only to discover after bringing it home that our computer and printer are both so outdated that they aren't compatible with the camera's memory card and software. Luckily Greg's laptop is compatible, although it's going to be a bit of an inconvenience to upload all of our photos to the laptop and then transfer them to the desktop. (In other words, no photos for the blog for the time being.) This has gotten us thinking about upgrading to a new computer in the near future as well.
We've also started car shopping. We've had our current car for five or six years, but it's a 15-year-old vehicle and we've had to make a lot of repairs and replace a lot of parts in the last couple of years, so we're finally upgrading to a car from this century. Interestingly enough, looking at new cars has made us value our old wagon even more: our two requirements for a new vehicle are that it has at least as much space as our current vehicle, and gets the same or better gas mileage, two criteria which are surprisingly difficult to find in one vehicle.
Even car shopping has been a lot of fun though. The first place we looked was at a tent sale at the local mall, where they served free food, and where a clown provided free balloon hats, candy, toys and face paint for our kids. Another chain of dealerships is running a special where you can get free tickets to a local amusement park just for test-driving a vehicle. They must be getting desperate to sell cars in this economy, but we'll take it.
I don't expect to be blogging much this summer -- there's just too much to do to spend much time inside at the computer. For once I'm actually feeling ambitious, and I want to take advantage of that while it lasts, as ambition is not one of my stronger qualities. I hope you're all enjoying your summers as well!
29 June 2009
summer
16 March 2009
catching up, again
So soon after my return to blogging, I disappeared again. But there was actually a reason this time. The last week in our house was full of sickness. I was the only one who didn't get sick at all (knock on wood), so I got to do a lot of caretaking. Poor Evan got to experience vomiting for the first time in his life, and poor James was out of commission for 3 days, an all-time record in his short little life. And poor Greg, who turned 30 on Thursday, had to spend a very subdued birthday with no real festivities to speak of.
Luckily my mom came out to visit over the weekend, enabling me to emerge from the sickhouse for the first time in days, to have lunch with a friend and to go running. All of a sudden there are signs of spring in Rochester, and the mild temperatures and blinding sunshine have encouraged all of us to get out in the fresh air. The weather has made me so happy, despite the illnesses plaguing our home, that I feel as though a weight I didn't even realize I was carrying has been lifted. It's not that I was sad or depressed over the winter (most of the time) but spring has unexpectedly elevated my mood beyond where I though its peak was.
We've had other things going on lately that are probably contributing to my high spirits: Evan got into the class we wanted at the preschool we applied to (another cooperative preschool, which appears to be less hippie-ish than the school James went to, but still looks like it will be a good fit for us), and we joined a CSA. I'm sure both of these items will be covered in great detail on the blog once they've actually started, but for now, suffice it to say that we're all pretty excited about both.
So, as soon as we're all healthy, and provided Mother Nature doesn't surprise us with a late March (or April, or May) snowstorm or ice storm, it looks like we're going to have a pretty good spring.
28 February 2009
weekend recipes: this is why you're fat edition
So have you all seen the website This Is Why You're Fat? It's simply a collection of photos of some of the most unhealthy foods known to humankind, most of which have been deep-fried. It's equal parts fascinating and revolting.
It inspired a weekend recipes post, though, in which I'm going to share a few of the reasons why I'll never be a size six again: foods that are terrifically fattening and unhealthy, but, to me, deliciously irresistible. If you know me at all you'll be unsurprised to learn that they're all chocolaty.
The first is my current obsession, homemade chocolate peanut butter cups. They're pretty easy to make, and incredibly difficult not to eat all in one sitting. Way, way better than Reese's. Oh, but a word of advice: if you think this will be a fun project to do with the kiddos, you're wrong, unless you think chocolate messes and sticky hands are fun.
Next up, homemade peppermint patties, which I made for Christmas gifts this year. Not as easy as the peanut butter cups (figuring out how to coat the patties in chocolate without making a mess was a little tough) but very tasty anyway.
Next we have chocolate truffles, which are very easy to make, fun to decorate, and actually not a bad candy project for kids. I think I've done these for Christmas presents as well. And do I need to mention how delicious they are? I'm sure you can imagine.
Lastly, another recipe that's become a favorite around our house: the best chocolate pudding. I will never make chocolate pudding from a box again. I first made this as the filling for a chocolate cream pie over Thanksgiving, and it was a big hit. Since then I've made it a few times just to eat plain, and it's remained good despite various improvisations on my part (using skim milk, part soy milk, cocoa powder instead of bar chocolate, brown instead of white sugar). I've never used a double boiler to make it, and I've never strained it, and it's still one of the finest desserts I've made.
So there you have it, some of my favoritest unhealthy foods. What are yours?
27 February 2009
friday photos: january edition
It's been a while since I posted any Friday photos. I mentioned before that our camera had been broken for a while, and it also has some crazy issues with the image quality, so I don't actually have very many photos from the last few months that are both in focus and in realistic colors all at once. So there are not many photos here representing January, but at least there are a few good ones.
I made a hat for Evan. It's supposed to be a crab, but he wouldn't let me round out the top, so it's a square crab. Or, alternately, just some kind of square red monster with beady eyes and claws.
We've done a lot of sledding this winter; the weather has been just perfect for it. Greg and James at one of our favorite sledding hills:
James' birthday occurred during my not-posting phase, and while I did manage to write the annual birthday post, I didn't post many photos. So here are a few extra birthday moments.
First, James putting together the Lego ship he got from Grandma Kathy and Papa. (SO! EXCITING!)
With the finished craft (for a moment there I was almost disappointed with myself for not remembering the name, until I remembered that I don't really care), which he put together all by himself:
One of the treats we had instead of a real birthday cake was a birthday sundae. Candlelight is really not adequate to illuminate the staggering amounts of sugar on top of the ice cream in that bowl. It was truly impressive. And naturally he ate every bite.
The photos don't show it well enough, but it was a pretty good month.
25 February 2009
catching up
Looking back through my recent posts, I realized that I haven't written much about our lives in a while, so I thought I'd write a brief (though probably not very brief) post about what we've been doing over the last couple of months.
I'll start with Christmas. I wrote about our ridiculous holiday travel experiences, but then completely neglected to write about our actual vacation. We were at Greg's parents' house for about ten days, and it was wonderful to spend so much time with his family after a full year without seeing most of them. We did all the usual holiday stuff -- played games, watched movies, lazed around, ate a LOT -- but probably the most remarkable thing about the vacation was snow. Snow! In the Pacific Northwest! As someone born and bred in upstate New York, spending seven Christmases in green, snow-free Washington state never felt quite like Christmas. But the Pacific Northwest got hit with some unusual weather this winter (luckily, not affecting our travel on that end at all), and we were able to play in the snow, to build snowmen and have snowball fights and go sledding in a place with real hills.
It's always hard to say goodbye to Greg's family, knowing we won't see them again for a long time, but this year we're hoping to visit again in the summer, for the first time in three years, thanks to the travel vouchers and frequent flier miles the airline gave us after all the trouble we had. I didn't realize how long it had been since we'd been to Washington in the summer until the boys and I were watching an episode of Blue Planet about tidal areas, and James, when asked, told me he can't remember exploring tide pools in Washington. I had to stop and think that the last time we were there, he was four, so he probably wouldn't remember much about it. Hopefully that will change this summer.
I say hopefully, because the biggest thing going on with us lately is that Greg is in the final stages of writing his dissertation, really pushing to finish it within a month or two, so by the time summer rolls around, hopefully Dr. Schmidt will be employed. And hopefully whoever employs him will be willing to give him a little vacation time over the summer. We could all use a vacation -- with Greg trying to finish, he's working ridiculously long hours, and we don't see him nearly enough. I've been feeling lonely and overworked on the domestic front, and the boys are even losing out on weekend playtime since Greg is going in to work most Sundays. To give you an idea of how things are, today is Wednesday and James hasn't seen Greg since Sunday. We'll all be glad when graduate school is over and done with.
James is still enjoying first grade, as much as he can enjoy doing a bunch of work that's too easy for him. He brought home another perfect report card a couple of weeks ago. Evan and I are going to more community classes for preschoolers, and we're looking into real preschool for the fall. Last week was winter break, in which the boys and I spent waaaay too much quality time together, which made me incredibly grateful for public schools and birth control.
There's not much else to tell -- we're all healthy (most of the time), we're all content. Pretty boring sometimes, but nothing to complain about.
11 January 2009
evanisms
Evan says so many funny, ridiculous, and unexpected things that I can't help but share them. He constantly makes me laugh.
A few days ago we were playing a game where he was sitting on my lap, and I was wiggling my legs, throwing off his balance, and saying, "Oh no! Don't fall!" Evan slid off my lap and landed on the floor on his feet. He stood up, looked down and said, "Well. It's a good thing I have legs."
This morning we were playing a high-five game. You know, up high, down low, in the middle (pull your hand away), too slow! Evan likes to say "Too slow, Joe!" at the end, but this morning I said, "I'm not Joe. You're not Joe." So the next time around I try to slap in the middle and he exclaims, "Too slow, Hobo!"
Lately he's been saying "No way, Jose!" all the time. A day or two again I said something to him and he thought it fitting to reply, "No thanks, Ho-zanks!"
He's recently learned the word privacy. Not the definition, though. He will insist on having privacy in the bathroom... right up until he needs someone to come wipe him up. Nor does a need for privacy prevent him from parading around naked after a bath.
When he's surprised, Evan will exclaim in an incredulous tone, "What the?!?" Sometimes he adds on a little something: "What the holy cow?!?" is common, and we've also heard "What the holy mustache?!?"
And he still has a flair for the melodramatic. It's pretty common in our house, once the kids are bed, to hear little footsteps running around upstairs, and for Greg or me to yell up the stairs, "Back in bed!" A couple of nights ago Greg was putting Evan to bed and told him to stay in bed so we wouldn't have to yell at him. Evan burst into tears, crying, "You don't love me anymore??"
He keeps us laughing, alright.
04 December 2008
bankrupting ourselves with holiday travel
Okay, I mentioned in my last post that I wasn't going to complain about airfare prices, among other things, but this is less of a complaining post and more of a startled observation. With math.
Get Rich Slowly linked to an interesting site yesterday: Cost To Drive. You put in your starting point, destination, and what type of car you're driving, and it calculates your estimated fuel costs. The site finds the lowest prices for gas along the way, so it's really more of a minimum cost, but it's still fun to play with.
So this morning, as I was playing with the site, I dusted off the seldom-used math part of my brain and did some additional calculations. Because the site uses the lowest prices, I rounded up (waaaay up) to reflect potential fluctuations and the fact that one might not always find the lowest-priced gas around. I learned that, even with my rounding, our plane tickets for Christmas break cost more than five times the price of fuel for a drive across the country and back.
Then I figured that if we were to drive from New York to Washington, even if we were to stay in decent hotels and eat out, we could easily do the round trip for less than half of the price of our plane tickets. By driving, we save ourselves at least 4 days of travel (assuming that somehow we'd be able to drive pretty much non-stop), which means that we are spending at least $250 a day for those four extra days with Greg's family. Ouch. Not that they're not worth that, of course, but still. Ouch.
01 May 2008
just quiet
I haven't felt like I've had much to say here lately. Things are good; we've been busy. We've been enjoying spring and seeing lots of friends, but none of it seems worth reporting on at the moment. I've been lazy lately, yet am still not getting enough sleep. Go figure. So what have I been doing? In case you're curious:
I've been listening to NPR a lot lately, trying to stay informed, but finding it hard to care about the endless coverage of the Pope's US tour or which presidential candidates wear American flag lapel pins. I thought NPR was supposed to be the good news source. And then, I don't know whether to laugh or cry when I hear news items like this: "Gas prices have reached an all-time high, with an average price of $3.76 per gallon of regular unleaded gasoline. This is one cent higher than the previous record, which was set... yesterday."
Saw a couple of good movies recently: Velvet Goldmine (about '70s glam rock in the UK) and Kinsey (about the famous sex researcher). Just don't watch them with your mother; that could be a little awkward. Unless you and your mom like seeing full frontal nudity together, and if so, who am I to judge?
I've started reading a book about the Rwandan genocide of the '90s (We Wish To Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families) and it's helping put my life into perspective a little bit. I may feel bored and useless sometimes, but at least I'm not being hacked to bits with a machete. There's always that.
I've been following news of the worldwide food shortages, while simultaneously trying to pretend that it will not affect us that much. Just when I've gotten good at economizing on food, prices of even the most basic things are going to skyrocket. Oh, while I'm on the subject, let me direct you to this article at Cheap Healthy Good: The Ultimate Guide to Understanding the Food Crisis, which lays out the causes, effects, and potential solutions in handy list form. A good read.
The big news in the world of children is that James has a cavity, which makes me feel like a failure of a parent. Though it's not all my fault: "James, have you been brushing on the back side of you teeth?" "Nah, it's too hard." So we're re-establishing good brushing habits, and stepping up the flossing as well, which is hard, because I would rate flossing my children's teeth as one of the grossest things I've ever done as a parent. This is more a weird thing about me than anything about my kids' mouths, but I would rather change a thousand dirty diapers than floss someone else's teeth.
That's all, I guess. Hopefully I'll wrangle up some photos to post tomorrow.
18 April 2008
spring spring spring
Now that it's spring, things are getting busy. It was spring break this week, and gorgeous weather too (right now it's 80 degrees. Eighty degrees! In April!) so we have been spending a lot of time outdoors, going to the playground, riding bikes, taking walks, having playdates.
I've also decided to start running again. Periodically I decide that I'm going to be a runner, and I enthusiastically go running a few times and then lose interest and watch the dust accumulate on my running shoes. This time I've actually kept it up for almost a week, which I think is a new record. I'll let you know if I'm still at it once James is back in school and I have less of that needing-to-get-out-of-the-house-by-myself motivation.
We're going on a mini-vacation this weekend -- renting a house in the Finger Lakes with some friends. You see, a month or two ago Greg and I decided, after years of not really paying attention to our finances, to track our spending and work out a budget. We discovered that we have less money than we thought, and we are totally poor, so obviously the first thing to do with that newfound knowledge was to buy the most expensive video game on the planet. The next step in our financial plan is to go on a vacation which, while cheaper than most vacations, what with being off-season and splitting much of the cost with other people, is still more than we should be spending right now.
In totally unrelated news, we've recently decided to make our kids pay for college themselves. To teach them about responsibility. Build character. That sort of thing.
(Kidding. Maybe.)
So I'm spending much of today running around like a chicken with her head cut off, trying to get everything ready so that once we get to the lake, we can just relax, and play. Hope everyone else has a good weekend!
07 April 2008
food, glorious food
It was a good weekend. We got our car back on Friday and I was able to go grocery shopping and I can't even describe to you how wonderful it felt. It seems that both of my children, especially James, chose the Week of Dwindling Food Supplies to have a growth spurt, so we were getting pretty desperate toward the end of the week. Compare to the state of our fridge after shopping, which is much closer to its usual state: Yes, I've probably reached a new low here by posting before and after photos of my refrigerator on the blog. I do think it's interesting, though, to peek into other people's refrigerators. A person's food choices can tell you a lot about that person. I'd write about what I think my refrigerator says about me, but now I'm too hungry, so I'll let you speculate if you wish.
On Friday, when I left for the store, our fridge looked like this:
It may look as if there's still a good amount of food in there, but it's pretty much all condiments. With a little milk and beer. We love condiments, but what good are mustard and maple syrup and salsa and jam and sour cream when you've got nothing to put them on?
Yogurt! Eggs! Apples! Orange juice! You can't see into the drawers, but they are similarly stuffed, with cheese and fresh produce.
03 April 2008
not what i'm used to
Apparently I live in the sort of neighbrohood where, when an allegedly rabid raccoon is reported to management, a maintenace guy sits in his car below the tree in which said raccoon is hiding, and shoots at the raccoon with a BB gun. I'm not sure whether this was before or after Animal Control was called, but it definitely happened before they arrived. We have yet to discover the fate of the raccoon.
Also, this afternoon I was talking with a neighbor who's coming down with a cold. She told me she's been using lozenges that have a lot of vitamin C, zinc, and euthanasia. She continued talking, completely oblivious of what she had said, and it was a very difficult task, my friends, not to start laughing.
02 April 2008
housebound
We have been more or less housebound since Friday afternoon, when we inadvertently killed our car's transmission and had it towed to a repair shop that wasn't open all weekend, and which took one day to diagnose the problem, and is taking another three days to fix it. Oh, the joys of being a one-car family! But on the bright side, by not driving, we are saving a lot of gas money, and we are sparing the atmosphere a miniscule amount of pollution. I'm patting myself on the back as I'm typing this.
It's okay, really it's okay that we're stranded at home, because we now own Rock Band and we are putting it to constant use, annoying our neighbors and giving ourselves sore muscles from the intensity of our rock and roll. Our neighbors retaliate by blasting bad '80s music and Celine Dion at unpardonable volume levels (really, any volume is too much for Celine), but I suppose that makes us even.
Being carless has really not been so bad. Greg has been working from home, and the kids and I have been finding more to do around the house. It's been nice enough to play outside the last couple of days (though windy and muddy -- James and our neighbor were playing a game yesterday called "Scooby Doo and the Tornado Swamp"). This afternoon I played Candy Land for the first time in ages, albeit with Lego people instead of the plastic characters that come with the game. Okay, I know that really has nothing to do with not having the car this week, but I'm on a roll, here, and this is my first post in a while, so let's pretend it's relevant.
The biggest problem we're having actually, is that we're beginning to run out of food. This is partly because we're too lazy to walk the mile and a half to the grocery store for whatever food could fit into a backpack, but partly because I am viewing this situation as a challenge to see how well I can feed our family on the odds and ends now in the cupboards and refrigerator. I've been managing the dinners pretty well -- thank goodness for canned and frozen foods! -- and we have plenty of breakfast stuff around (even stuff that doesn't require millk, which we're almost out of), but I'm starting to run out of ideas on lunches. Today's fruit-and-vegetable-group offerings for my children's lunches were banana yogurt and pickles. They love those, sure, but it's a good thing we're getting the car back tomorrow.
Of course, when we get the car back we have a bunch of errands to run, so it'll probably negate all of the good anti-global warming karma we've been accumulating over the last week. But I feel like I've learned some kind of lesson this week, something about simplicity and not taking things for granted and being resourceful and adapting to unfortunate circumstances, and maybe some other things that I can't quite grasp in my current tired state. It's been a pretty good week so far.
20 March 2008
more food talk, and a vacation
First order of business: Several people asked how the Guinness Corned Beef turned out, and I can happily recommend it, with the caveat that you make sure to choose a beer you really like, because it will rather taste like beer. But not overwhelmingly so -- our kids ate it with no complaint. I served it with this Irish Champ (I tried to convince the kiddos that the green onions were delicious Irish confetti, to no avail) and cooked up some carrots and cabbage with the beef, and it was most delicious with the beefy-beery sauce spooned over everything. A pretty satisfactory St. Patrick's day dinner, overall.
Second: While I'm on the subject of food, I have to also enthusiastically recommend these homemade granola bars. I lightened up on the brown sugar and honey, and used a mixture of craisins and mini chocolate chips in place of the raisins, and they're maybe my favorite snack ever.
Third: I'm leaving tonight for a visit with my sister and her family, just as Greg is getting over an illness and James is coming down with one. I almost feel bad about leaving them in their various states of ill health, but then I ask Evan to put some books away and he suddenly loses all the bones in his legs and the screaming starts and I remember that OH MY GOD am I ready for a vacation. Yes, my vacation will be with small children, but they are not my small children, and I'm not the person primarily responsible for them. So I'm loading up my mp3 player with good music (music with swear words, even!) and happily anticipating all the quiet time I'll have to read in the airport and on the plane, and I don't feel that badly anymore.
There's one thing I'm sorry about missing this weekend. Not anything Easter-related, oh no. Due to Greg's competent electronic repair skills, we recently acquired an XBox 360, and there is a tentative plan to purchase Rock Band this weekend. Now there's something I'll be glad to come home to. Oh, I suspect I'll miss my boys after a couple of days, and may even want to see them more than I'll want to be playing Rock Band, but at the moment I'm really looking forward to loving them from a distance.
11 March 2008
otherwise occupied
Greg has been out of town since Saturday morning, and we've been trying to keep busy in his absence. We've had friends over to keep us company, we've baked, we've watched a movie, we've played with Play-doh and we've played outdoors, thanks to a healthy snowfall and a few sunny days. The kids were enchanted with The Never-Ending Story and spent a surprising amount of time crafting creatures from the movie out of Play-doh. James invented a version of chess involving Lego blocks, which, true to form, sounds convoluted and unnecessarily complicated. But imaginative, to be sure.
But most of our time has been spent in two ways. The boys have decided that all of their stuffed animals are various Pokemon -- I'm pleased that for the first time in either of their short lives, they are acknowledging the fact that they have several dozen stuffed animals in their bedroom, and that some of these animals are being played with for the first time ever! -- so they are spending hours on Pokemon games. The best part is that these games keep them occupied in their bedroom.
And me? In Greg's absence, I've fallen in love with a serial killer. Er, a fictional serial killer, that is, by the name of Dexter. The last thing I need is to be addicted to yet another TV show, but I can't help myself! The murderer with a heart of gold is just so charming. When you're spending several nights in a row by yourself, with high-speed internet and all kinds of shows freely available for viewing or download, it's more fun than reading a book, or doing housework, or going to bed early.
You can tell things are pretty boring in my life right now when I write an enthusiastic post about Pokemon and television, but I was feeling neglectful of the blog, so this is what you get for now.
06 March 2008
random happiness
I've been kind of cranky lately, so I thought I'd write a post on some of the good things that have happened this week, however small, to try and get myself out of this funk a little bit.
- Finally, for the first time ever, I made really good homemade hummus. And I think I owe it all to getting a new food processor. There was nothing wrong with the old one, really, it just wasn't cutting it in the hummus department texture-wise. But the new one? Perfect. (Kitchen successes or failures can really make or break my day, sometimes.
- I got a package from a friend today: a copy of the film Once (which I've been wanting to see for quite some time) and its soundtrack. Those, along with the copy of The Fountain that's waiting for me to pick it up at the library, should give me something to do when Greg is out of town next week.
- I made these cookies today, and they are good. Reeeaaaally good. I was having issues with them at first -- they were sticking to the pan and crumbling all over the place -- but I did manage to get enough whole, undamaged cookies to make it worthwhile. And they're good. Reeeaaaally good.
- I don't want to jinx myself or anything, but Evan is maybe, possibly starting to consider becoming a little bit interested in the potty. He had this weird skin problem going on, so we let him go diaperless on a few different days, and he used his little potty every time he had to go. Every time. As the parent of a toddler, sometimes I don't ask for much more out of life than this.
Okay, thats all I've got for now.
29 February 2008
friday fun
No Friday photos today, but thought I'd share a couple of fun things I came across recently. (Found both of these at Shakesville, by the way.)
1) I've never been a big fan of Garfield. In fact, since I was 9 years old or so, I've found that cat pretty annoying. But some genius out there has removed Garfield from Garfield's own comics, and the result is brilliant. As the site says:
Who would have guessed that when you remove Garfield from the Garfield comic strips, the result is an even better comic about schizophrenia, bipolor disorder, and the empty desperation of modern life? Friends, meet Jon Arbuckle. Let’s laugh and learn with him on a journey deep into the tortured mind of an isolated young everyman as he fights a losing battle against lonliness in a quiet American suburb.
Some examples:
2) Finally, someone thought to explain popular songs with visual aids! Charts, graphs, and handy illustrations make your favorite songs easy to understand. See the flickr pool here; see a few of my favorite examples below:
Ah, good times. What are your favorite time-wasting, pointless sites?
27 February 2008
random snippets of the last week
Scene: We are in the car, talking about a classmate of Greg's who has completed her Ph.D. **** Now I have to post a photo for Greg, so that he can have it online. This is Gradient Index Jell-O, which causes light to bend when it shines through the Jell-O. This is the stuff Greg does for fun -- he spends hours tinkering with Jell-O, adjusting ingredient amounts, until he can use it to bend light. Now that James wants to be a scientist too, I sense a lot of this sort of stuff in our future.
Greg: Now she'll be a doctor.
Me: But not the kind of doctor you go to when you're sick.
James: Oh, I know -- a veterinarian!
Greg: No --
James: A dentist?
Greg: No... [begins to try to explain Ph.D.s in six-year-old terms]
James: Excuse me, Dad?
Greg: Yes?
James: Did you know that dogs can hear things that people can't?
****
01 February 2008
odds and ends
I have not been on the ball lately for getting interesting photos. Or, really, any photos. Sorry -- someday you'll see my kiddos' beautiful faces again. Just not today.
We've had some weird weather this week. Windstorm on Wednesday, and freezing rain today, during which we had to drive -- or should I say crawl, through slush and heavy traffic -- to the other side of the city to the insurance company-approved auto shop, to have our bumper checked out, only to find out that the cost to repair the bumper is greater than the value of our car. I guess 14 years really lowers the resale value of a vehicle, despite having awesome mileage and being in otherwise fine condition. So this place will not fix our bumper, but instead the insurance company is cutting us a check. So... I guess that works out for us? I'm so over this car business by now; I don't really care.
We've had intermittent power outages over the last 15 hours. No idea why. All I really have to say about that is 1) I'm so grateful we didn't lose power before the season premiere of Lost was finished, and 2) I'm also grateful that our Nintendo DS has an alarm function. Not that the kids ever let us sleep too late, but it's always good to be certain.
So now it's February, and tomorrow that famous little groundhog in Pennsylvania will tell us what to expect from the rest of winter. I'm hoping he tells us that at least once before spring, we will have enough snow to go sledding. Other than that, I'm pretty well over winter too.
Happy weekend, everyone.
03 September 2007
relaxation
This weekend has been the first since July in which we haven't been moving or traveling, and I cannot properly describe how nice it has felt to be able to sit around the house and relax. And it has been a really good weekend. Simple, but nice.
Saturday we had a lot of errands to run -- this is the first opportunity we've had to shop for things for the new apartment. So we ran around in the most extensive and inclusive commercial district I've ever been to (seriously, name a chain store and you will find it within five miles of our now-closest mall) to purchase things like new shoes for James, coat hooks, an air filter for the car, and extra storage bins. This wouldn't have been much fun, except that we discovered a farmer's market in the mall parking lot. The promise of farm-fresh fruits and vegetables sped us through our boring errands.
There is little I like better than a farmer's market. And I haven't been to one in a while, even before we moved. We stopped going to the Public Market (the huge and wonderfully chaotic market in downtown Rochester) after returning to our car one morning, laden with produce, to find that directly across the street from where we were parked, a car had driven over the curb and somehow flipped itself over onto another parked car. Right across from where we parked. The insane traffic and crowds had always been the worst part of the Public Market experience, and this close call -- how lucky were we that this lunatic driver had veered left instead of right! -- was the last straw for us.
But now we have found a new market, one where people park in the mall parking lot, where there is plenty of space for everyone, unlike the Public Market, which has one parking space for approximately 70 cars and you frequently end up parking on a sketchy side street several blocks away. Anyway, so I went a little crazy at the market, and we ended up with tons of zucchini, yellow squash, tomatoes, nectarines, and eggplant. I hadn't been intending to buy eggplant, but I saw a really amusing eggplant and couldn't resist:
Worthy of Saxton Freyman (I have a Saxton Freyman calender which I adore).
Greg, of course, had to get a little more creative:
And because of farmer's market prices, I couldn't buy just one. But I did put our excess of vegetables to good use. James has been begging me to make Ratatouille ever since we saw the movie this summer, and to my surprise, he actually liked it. Evan didn't, of course, but we were expecting that.
Hmmm, I wasn't intending to write four paragraphs on produce, but I guess that tells you a little something about me and my priorities in life. I'll try to be a little more brief about the rest of the weekend. Yesterday we took a trip to Mendon Ponds, so that Greg could practice orienteering in preparation for another Adventure Race he's doing this fall. So Greg went traipsing off into the woods with some friends, while I took the boys to the nature center and on a hike that was supposed to be short, but ended up being a lot longer than planned due to the fact that I have no sense of direction. I wasn't expecting it to be much fun -- my kids on hikes are sometimes fine but often very whiny -- but we did have fun, though we were tired by the end (except for Evan, who I carried on most of the hike).
Today I think we're going to try to go canoeing. We've been fortunate that our first weekend at home in more than a month has been sunny and warm without being hot or humid. Today I will also do some baking, because my several pounds of zucchini won't eat itself.
Other highlights of the weekend include movies (The Departed, about which I don't really understand all of hype or the Oscars, although I liked it, and Little Miss Sunshine, about which I totally understand the positive reviews -- I loved it, and I didn't think it was possible, but I love Steve Carrell more than ever), dinner out at a restaurant with friends (where Evan informed the waitress, "I'm Megatron, lady!"), Planet Earth (which we've borrowed from the library, and which has only increased my adoration of David Attenborough, whose Life series -- Life of Mammals, Life of Birds, Life in the Undergrowth, etc -- my kids and I totally love), and just having time. Free time. Sigh.
And still the bulk of this post is about produce. Oh well.
01 May 2007
a conversation in lieu of a real post
[Heidi is rambling about possible career paths.]
Heidi: Maybe I should be a park ranger. I know! We could live in Yellowstone and I'll be a park ranger there. That way when the supervolcano blows, we'll be killed instantly instead of having to suffer through the aftermath for years and years.
Greg: Yeah, I can't wait to go flying through the air, being burned by hot cinders and probably suffocated by the gasses, then falling and getting smashed by gravity.
James: I don't like the dying part.
Heidi: James, what do you think Mama should do?
James: Mmmm... you should be a veterinarian.
Heidi: Oh yeah? Why should I be a veterinarian?
James: Well, you've been to the doctor a lot.
