…would choose a killer vegetable theme for his birthday.
I’m not going to fuss with trying to post pictures on the blog right now, but you should go here to take a look at the angry carrot cake. Also assorted killer vegetables, and a token picture of children enjoying the party. (Don’t miss the blood artistically dripping from the killer carrot’s mouth. Now don’t try to tell me that’s not the scariest angry carrot cake you’ve ever seen…)
Last night we celebrated the Night of the Burning Plum. Many of us were nursing coughs or colds so the night was punctuated with sniffles, coughs and the hunt for the tissue box. And still it was delightful.
I went over to the Lansberry house early to help set up. Theresa commented that this was exactly the dinner party she always wanted to have. There were the regular folks- us, Lansberrys- and then there were the almost regulars- the Peiffers. There were the every-now-and-againers- the Creaths- and then there were the random people we kept adding in. Heather from Seth and James’s workplace, Ryan who we met at our previous church and have kept in contact with, and Ralph and Keith who started out Ben-Ezra friends and have become Lansberry friends, too. Altogether there were 27 people, 14 adults and 13 children. We feasted on pork raised by people we go to church with, mashed potatoes, salad and apple salad. For dessert we enjoyed the traditional ice cream with flaming plum cherry brandy sauce. When our hearts had been made properly merry we went into the living room to tell our stories.
Of the 27 of us only three adults and two children did not contribute anything to the stories. And even then there was lots of shouting, laughing and comments from the adults and joyous screaming from Margary. David Peiffer was really the only person who didn’t contribute anything, but he was asleep upstairs during the story telling. People told all manner of stories from wacky to serious to satire. I was impressed with how much most (most) of the children had improved from last year and definitely from the year before. There was a lot of audience participation even in the stories that weren’t designed that way. In fact, my voice was already going hoarse at the beginning of the evening and with all the shouting and laughing I have now lost almost all of my voice. I sound like a boy going through the worst stage of puberty. It’s kinda funny actually.
The night was a complete success. We had about twenty people packed around one long table and yet most of the time the conversation crisscrossed the table from end to end. James wrapped up the evening by talking about a family who’s life had been full of death. But then a baby had come to them and had helped to reawaken the joy and hope of the family. And he reminded us that that was what the Burning Plum was about. It was about love and hope together in a world filled with death and sorrow. It is our devotion to and our joy in each other that makes the Plum burn bright and strong. And it is because of evenings like last night that the Plum still burns. May its light carry us through this year and into the next.
So, recently Seth has been interested in improvisational theater. He found a book at the Bradley library about how and why to do improv. This has made life rather entertaining around here. At least, I think it has. Perhaps someone should ask Crystal what she thinks.
The book Seth read even has some exercises to help practice your ability to be interesting on the spur of the moment. One of the exercises in called Expert. One person thinks up some wacky, off-the-wall thing and then interviews the other person who pretends to be an expert on the subject. For example, I say “Seth, tell me, is it difficult to extract walrus tusks?” He says, “I’m glad you asked. When I first got into the field of tusk extraction I didn’t have many tools for the job…” and so on. Or, to pick another perfectly hypothetical example, Seth says, “Today on our show I will be interviewing Gabrielle Ben-Ezra, the leading expert in knitting with steel. So, Gabrielle, how did you get into the field of steel knitting?” Now, this is all very well and good, but sometimes you just want to have a conversation about something without the burden of a full blown interview. So we have adapted this exercise so that I will just be holding something and Seth will ask me, “Gabrielle, what is that?” And I will come up with some bizarre object and what it’s for such as, “This is my nose snapper. I collect noses you know.”
So last night the Lansberrys came over for dinner. Seth, Theresa and Raquel had already had a conversation about improv and some of the exercises. Theresa and Raquel both thought it sounded like fun. James on the other hand just thinks we are weird. Actually, I think he thinks that pretty much about everything. And Crystal, as usual, just watched with an air of amused detachment.
Right before dinner started Seth accidentally put something under the table which was very hard to kill. Seth tired to kill it with his crossbow, but I think it was some sort of slime monster, so that didn’t work. We managed to blow it up with the pin from a grenade and then dinner started. Somewhere in the middle of dinner Raquel asked if there was any more water in the pitcher. There was, but there was also a live beaver. When Seth tried to get it out he only got half of the beaver out so he had half a live beaver in his hand and there was half a live beaver in the jar. We managed to fish it out, but what does one do with two halves of a live beaver that rapidly change from ‘live’ to ‘not live’? We fed it to Justice who thought that was really cool. In fact, after I finally passed to water on to Raquel Justice cried until we brought it back and he could pretend to put something in it. Or maybe he was taking something out. Anyway, he was playing with us which is more than I can say about some people.
But the best part of the evening was after dinner. We’d cleared the table and I thought that we should take the leaf out to make it easier to maneuver in the dining room. So I unclipped the clasps on my side of the table and asked Theresa and Raquel, who were on the other side of the table, to unclip that side. Theresa then cleared off the glasses people were still using and flipped the table up on its side. She claimed that she was trying to find the clasps, but I know better. Seth had just put a basket on his head which looked like some demented sort of helmet so we decided he was in some kind of army. Naturally, this means that I am on the other side of the fight. So Seth leaped behind the table with Theresa and Raquel and I ducked out of the room and began returning fire first. We had a splendid little firefight between the dining room and the breakfast room. My weapons got bigger and bigger, but their fortifications were far more advanced than mine. I finally went down to whatever Raquel was firing (we don’t know what it was, but it made a cute, little ‘Pew!’ noise) and I died dramatically after throwing my last grenade. And then we all stood up and pretended we were mature adults.
I haven’t written a Dinner at Lansberry post in a while. I guess I just got kinda tired of writing them. When I plan to write a blog post about an event when I’m at the event it’s like I’m not really there. I’m just watching, taking notes in my head. Or I’m not taking notes and I am there, but then later, when I sit down to write, I have nothing to say. A conundrum. That’s why you haven’t read about our dinners in a while. We are still eating together, I’m just not writing about it.
Last night, however, I knew I would want to write about it. I knew I would want to a write a post about it for a week or more.
A little while ago Crystal was looking through her coupon fliers and came upon a coupon for Baskin-Robbins. On May 2nd as a fund raiser they would be selling ice cream for 31 cents a scoop. Crystal thought this was a fabulous idea. We’ve started alternating who’s house we eat at and May 2nd would be at our house. We would all be together and after dinner we could all go out for ice ream together.
So after a truly scrumptious, elaborate dinner (sausage gravy over biscuits, scrambled eggs with sausage and cheese, fried potatoes, homemade apple-cinnamon scones, coffee, and steak for the grown-ups. Crystal didn’t have time to make the buckwheat pancakes as she’d planned.) we cleaned up and piled into our vans. I got kinda lost as to which children went with whom. I think we ended up with Toby, Isaac, Moria, Noah and Justice. We also had Raquel, but she’s not a child. Whoever went wherever with whomever we all got there. There was a line trailing out of the small store and, as it was a fire-fighter fund raiser, firemen doing crowd control. The children each got a plastic fireman hat (I wore Justice’s) and a sticker (Justice tried to eat his and then smear it on me). The man giving away the hats also tried to give us a piece of paper to write our order on, but we assured him we had already had all the children pick their flavors at home and we had it all written down. He was very impressed.
We politely elbowed our way into the store and got our ice cream. Seth still wasn’t back from finding a place to park the van and Crystal was ordering so I ended up holding Justice and three cups of ice cream he was trying to get to. After we got our ice cream we elbowed our way back outside and found comfortable piece of ground. Justice did really well with his ice cream, always asking for the next bite and he didn’t throw a fit when the cup was done. I think he knew I had scraped it as best I could. For some reason Noah also wanted to sit by me. At first it was fine, but then he spilled the last bit of his ice cream on my leg. It tasted pretty good.
We managed to take both of our families out for ice cream for just over five dollars altogether. It was fun, crazy, tasty and sticky. But mostly fun. I’m glad we did it and hope everyone else had as much fun as I did.
Well, last night was dinner at the Lansberry house, but I wasn’t there. A friend of ours,John D, was in a car accident and though it wasn’t bad he hit his head and wasn’t feeling quite well. Right as we were sitting down to eat we got a phone call saying he needed someone to come watch their children so his wife could go with him to the hospital. Thank God he’s alright and that his head looks normal.
Last night was the second annual Night of the Burning Plum. It was somewhat less elaborate than last year, but just as enjoyable.
The evening was made a little trying by the fact that Justice had woken up from his nap badly and was just kinda mad at the world for the whole evening. It’s nice at times like that to have friends who have children and are very accepting of children because Justice’s attitude and noise bothered Seth and Crystal more than anyone else.
We, the Lansberrys, Kathey and Jon ate an enjoyable meal together of pork, mashed potatoes, Waldo Dwarf salad (Waldorf salad was so named by Toby) and a really yummy salad with two kinds of cheese in it. I love Kathey. After dinner the children were excused until dessert time and the grownups drank margaritas and talked. Kathey helped serve up ice cream while Theresa prepared the traditional cherry and plum sauce. When everyone was once again assembled she poured brandy over the sauce and lit it on fire. Watching someone spoon flaming sauce over ice cream never gets old.
After dessert we packed into the living room and the stories began. The children’s stories were, for the most part, much improved than last year. Moriah had written her story down and so read to us about how Wilfred’s mother was given a plum at his birth and what she had to go through when the plum went out. Also, she and Arianna had worked together on the first part of a story and I hope they remember the rest of it for next year. Samuel L. told us how the dragon got his fire and Elsie got up twice, but kept forgetting what she was going to say. I have no idea what Samuel B’s story was about, but he really had fun with it so I was glad. Even Noah went and stood in the story spot and said, “Once upon a time.” Crystal had put together a remake of “Twas the Night Before Christmas” featuring plums. James told us about Einstein’s greatest discovery which was that plums will burn forever. Before Einstein had a chance to tell anyone, though, he died. Jon told us about two families who had been feuding for years and how a plum brought them together and made them friends. My story was about a burning plum who was raised by a family of geese and found friendship and a home with them even though he kept catching their nest on fire. Seth gave us an encore of a funny story he had told last year about a plum that fell from the orchard of the Sun only to be eaten by a rabbit. And then he told a very sweet story dedicated to the women in his life about five knights who gave their lives protecting the burning plum from an invading army. At the end all of the knights died, but the plum was safe because things that are precious are to be protected and preserved. James ended the evening by talking about the meaning of the Burning Plum which is friendship and it was getting very serious and very sweet until he said something like, “Because the Burning Plum is inside of each and every one of us. Which is why we have heartburn.”
We ended the evening by thanking God for the friendships He has given us and asking him to preserve them through the years.
Yes, Virginia, the Lansberrys are crazy people. Just two days after a new baby is born into their home they have us over for dinner. I will grant you we brought a goodly chunk of the meal and one of James and Seth’s coworkers provided another bit and Theresa and Margary slept for most of the afternoon, but it was still a crazy thing to do.
James got out the special mead and we all drank to little Margary. We talked a little bit about our house issues. At one point I watched Raquel’s head almost explode and found out that she hadn’t been out of the house even just to step on the porch since Sunday. We made her go stand on the porch, but she didn’t think that it counted as getting out of the house. Something started dripping from the ceiling and Seth explained what a filibuster is. After dinner Raquel and I listened to Spamelot while she cleaned up and it almost made me like Broadway shows. Almost, mind you. We moseyed on home and so ended another dinner at Lansberrys.
 Last night before dinner Raquel inflicted upon me some choice Alan Sherman music in our never-ending quest to make sense to each other. I felt like I would have enjoyed more of the music much more if I actually knew the songs he was spoofing. It was funny, but I knew I was missing something.
After James dished out the food and we sang and prayed there was a slight disturbance over some green beans, but it got all sorted out. Raquel was insisting that she didn’t want any green beans because there might not be enough to go around and I was pushing some of mine onto her plate and Theresa was holding the bowl of green beans right under her nose and everyone was insisting she have the rest. When I say it got all sorted out I mean Raquel wisely bowed to our wishes, though not before I had to move my plate out of her reach.
Theresa’, Raquel’ and most of the Lansberry children’s One Good Things all had to do with the After Halloween sale shopping they had done that day. Peter had bought a My Little Pony basket and was wearing it on his head after dinner. It was a fine basket, but it made for a peculiar hat. Theresa was thankful no one had stolen anything out of the van though they all had forgotten to close one of the van doors when they went into a store. Crystal’s One Good Thing was that she beat the store in the game they play every week to find out who can get the best deal out of the other.
After dinner Seth went to work on the house and I chatted with Theresa’s and Raquel’s mother for a bit when she called. Eventually Crystal and I rounded the Ben-Ezra bunch up and headed home. After the little ones were in bed I walked back over and picked up Raquel to go work on the house. All in all, a fine evening and, Raquel, the Pasta Gloop was very good.
 Wednesday night dinner was not just any dinner at Lansberry’s. Wednesday night was an Upside-Down, Inside-Out and Backwards party. It was Raquel’s idea. The dining room was decorated with streamers around the floor, a bunch of balloons hanging down from the ceiling and all of the pictures were turned upside-down or sideways. There were “This Side Up” signs hanging around upside-down. We ate inside-out tacos (taco salad) and for dessert we had pineapple upside-down cake. All the Lansberry children were wearing their clothes inside-out and backwards. It was a lot of fun.
After dinner Raquel had some music to inflict on me. I mean, she had some music she wanted me to listen to. Harry Belafonte. I actually liked it. I ended up dancing in the kitchen with Moriah and Elsie. It was fun to be able to pass on the Kitchen Dancing tradition to another generation. When I was too tired to dance anymore I went and sat down to talk with Kathey. It was about this time that Samuel B. came downstairs with a head wound and James was on the phone with his father trying to figure out what the water dripping into the upstairs bathroom meant. The Ben-Ezra’s figured that it was about time for us to take our chaos and our head wounds home with us. Seth walked Kathey home and the rest of moseyed on home. Â
 Raquel cooked beans for dinner on Wednesday night and we also had fruit stuff and fresh bread from Great Harvest. At the moment I can’t remember exactly what we talked about, but I do remember doing One good Thing. Most of the children’s One Good Thing involved some form of the Ben-Ezras came over. A little before five I had gotten a call from Samuel L. who invited the three older Ben-Ezra children over before dinner. Isaac ended up staying home and helping Crystal put something together, but the other two went over and they all played several variations of tag. Theresa had made garment dividers for the clothes rack in their laundry room and we teased Crystal because now Theresa is more organized than she is. James served wine with dinner and I really enjoyed my glass, though I don’t remember what it was called. Riesling? Reisling? I don’t remember. After dinner James brought out a licorice liqueur. That was very good. After the liqueur I gathered up Justice and Noah and took them home. Once again, a delightful evening.
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