A Road Less Travelled

Several months ago we celebrated Funny Hat Day as a rebellion against gray days and bad moods. We liked it so much that yesterday we decided to do it again.

I made banana blueberry mulberry muffins and served them upside down. Arianna made cinnamon mini-muffins which exploded all over the muffin pan so she called them mushroom muffins and we served them upside down. We ate off of funny dishes from the kitchen (I got to use the butter dish) and drank chocolate milk from pitchers and jars. While we ate we played “I’m Going on a Picnic” wherein you collectively pack for the strangest picnic imaginable by taking turns naming a thing you pack that starts with the next letter of the alphabet. I’m not sure where we were planning to set up for this picnic, but I can tell you we would need a gigantic basket to hold it all.

After we ate we reenacted Jack and the Beanstalk. Samuel was Jack, Isaac was the Giant, Arianna was everything else (including the beanstalk) and Noah and Justice were in the way. I was the narrator and the director. And I was the voice of the giant. Our performance got interrupted by two phone calls and someone coming to the door so it was a tad disjointed. The acting wasn’t as nuanced as I might have liked, but the sets were beautiful and the directing superb. We all took our bows and bid farewell to yet another Funny Hat Day.

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It was getting on towards morning. I was on the edge of sleep, just dozing, drifting. As in a dream (and let me say this about dreams) I thought I heard someone call my name. My mind struggled towards wakefullness, searching for the one calling my name. I surfaced from my well of sleep to find that someone was actually calling my name. There was a quiet knocking at my door and a small child calling for me in his small voice. I opened up the door and he told me he was scared of the storm. It was then that I realized that there was a monster storm raging outside. So I pulled the toddler into bed with me and we snuggled until the thunder faded and the storm moved on. Then I put him back to bed and went back to dozing.

And yet I managed to sleep through two gargantuan trees crashing into our backyard. Go figure.

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Technology is a frightening thing. It’s a useful thing, but it’s frightening sometimes.

I post regularly on Twitter, which is a website where you can write short status messages that go out to everybody who’s following you. It’s a nifty tool to keep up with what people are doing. Some people post once a month to say they haven’t posted in a while. Other people will post every time they take a sip of coffee. I fall somewhere in between these two styles, posting when something interesting happens and I happen to be at the computer. Using Twitter has led to some interesting happenings.

I was making dinner one day while the Lansberrys were gone. I had my computer on the counter and so I posted a Tweet saying that I was making a honey glaze with no honey in the house. A few minutes later I get a phone call from James. He says “We have honey at our house you could use.” I didn’t end up using the honey, but the offer from several states away was… odd.

The Lansberrys got home on Saturday. I know this because I got onto Twitter Saturday afternoon and saw that James had posted “We’re home!” just a moment ago. So I ran out onto the front porch and yelled and waved down the street. I got a few odd looks from some people walking by, but I also got Theresa’ and Raquel’s attention and they waved back to me.

So, Twitter’s a little frightening, but at its best it’s doing what technology should and helping people connect to each other. From several states away or right down the street.

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Note- This was written on July 7th.

So, Raquel has been sleeping on my treadmill for the past week or so. Not only is the treadmill a treadmill, but it is also directly beneath my air conditioner unit making it the coolest place in the room. While I’ve been all cozy warm in my soft, comfy bed Raquel has been cold and shivering on a hard, slightly inclined treadmill. Okay, it wasn’t that bad, but my hostessing sensibilities were on a full blown guilt trip. So last night when I mentioned it was hot where I was and Raquel said it was cold where she was I suggested a trade. I would relinquish the bed and suffer through the night on the treadmill. Okay, it wasn’t that noble or humble of me, but I did end up on the treadmill. It wasn’t so bad. It was a little hard, but it was just cool enough. We said goodnight and settled in to sleep.

I started out having a hard time falling asleep. I was still learning how to sleep on a treadmill and this must take up a lot of brain power because my mind was wide awake. I thought about this and that, always trying to find the switch that would turn my brain off, but always it eluded me. Eventually, I started to drift off into sleep. I was floating between worlds, my mind detached from my body. We were separate, distinct, yet together as we fell asleep. Drifting, floating… Until we both of us got yanked back together and down to treadmill by Kitty scratching at the door. I know this doesn’t sound like much, but my door is hollow and I’ve decked it with, among other things, two sets of bells. So when she comes scratching it sounds like the boogy-man is breaking in with a full, high-liturgy entourage. I hid under my pillow and waited for her to go away. She eventually did and I started drifting again….

Only to be startled out of sleep by a thunderclap exploding right outside my window. It was like a firework and a cannon ramming into a brick wall packed with explosives right outside my window. Thankfully, I don’t sit up when I jerk awake because I was still in the tutorial stage of sleeping on a treadmill and sitting up safely hadn’t been covered yet. So I just closed my saucer-shaped eyes and tried to convince my body that I was neither being eaten nor running a marathon.

Now, I’d mentioned that the treadmill was right by the air conditioner unit. To set the scene with more accuracy I’ll now tell you that the bit of the a/c unit that hangs into the house was right over my head. This unit has never tried out for Ninja School, but if it did it would fail the stealthy test before it even began. On a good day the poor dear sounds like an air conditioner unit who’s smoked all it’s life and is now trying to swallow a small bird. I’ve learned to deal with it and hardly notice the noise, but then I’ve never tried to sleep directly under it before. I’d almost gotten used to the noise when the thunderclap went off right outside the window most of the asthmatic air conditioner was sticking out of. It must have seriously startled the a/c unit into actually swallowing the bird it’s been working on because while the fan was still blowing the a/c motor had momentarily stopped and was now trying to huff and puff its way back to life. It took me a while to figure out that this is what was going on. I thought that my trusty air conditioner was choking on something so while it was trying to wheeze back to life I was helpfully thumping it. It went something like “Huff, huff, wheeeeeze,” and then I would jump in with “Thump, thump, thump”. “Huff, thump! Huff, thump! Wheeeeeze! Thump, thump!” It was almost symphonic.

Lovely as it sounded, I tire of some things easily and thumping an air conditioner in the middle of the night is not as diverting as it sounds. So I gave up my half of the overture and left the poor thing alone to it’s wheezing. Eventually the motor kicked back on (which is what it had been trying to do all along) and the a/c unit went back to its normal wheezing and choking sounds.

Finally, all was quiet. The night was still. I closed my eyes and tried to settle down for sleep. I was way wound up at this point, but I had to try. So I took a couple deep breaths, closed my eyes tight and almost howled in frustration when Kitty attacked the door again. “What does it take to get some sleep around here!” I wanted to yell, but if I made a noise the dog would know I was awake. Plus, I had Raquel to think about. One needs to be hospitable, after all.

So, that was my evening on the treadmill. Tonight is Raquel’s last night at our house. Maybe I’ll be a gracious hostess and surrender the bed again. Or hey, maybe I won’t.

Editorial Note: I did end up sleeping on the treadmill. It went much better than the first time.

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One thing I realized while Raquel was here is that I am very unused to sharing my space with someone else. There were only a few times that I actually felt invaded, but those few times took me by surprise. I would open my door and my room wouldn’t be what I expected in a way I couldn’t figure out. Sure, the treadmill was made up like a bed, but that was funny. Besides, I hadn’t had enough time to get used to the treadmill in my room before it was a bed. And sure, I’d taken to knocking on my own door before I went in even when I knew Raquel wasn’t in there just to get in the habit. But I normally knock on closed doors; it’s a compulsion. I think what struck me as different and strange every time I opened my door was the smell.

Okay, that sounds bad. I’m not saying Raquel smells bad, you understand. I’m sure on most days she smells nice. I haven’t made it a practice to smell my friends so I’m not an expert on Raquel smells. I do know that she doesn’t smell like me. So, since she’s been spending so much time in my room, my room is starting to smell like her and not like me.

It’s weird to me how important this is to me. I don’t really think about how things smell until they smell good or bad. But there have been times in the past that I’ve felt my space was being invaded and both times it was because my room was starting to smell like someone else. There are certain smells that I associate with good memories and other smells I associate with pleasant places- baking bread, cinnamon, my mother’s smell when she just woke up, campfires, fresh cut grass, coffee brewing. My room doesn’t smell like any of those things; it just smells like me. I guess I smell like home and sanctuary. I should be a scented candle.

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A note to all those who have had, do have or might have a babysitter in their home-

If you must have ice cream in the house please make sure you have enough for the sitter. If you will not have enough for the babysitter to eat some without having to throw an empty container away thus revealing to all that she’s been raiding your fridge either eat the last bits before she arrives or bury the ice cream under frozen leftovers. If you know your babysitter is tenacious enough to find even hidden ice cream please don’t have scrapings from two containers. A babysitter who has been given free rein of the house can throw away one empty ice cream tub without shame, but no self-respecting babysitter will throw away two empty ice cream containers. So, please, do us babysitters a favor and empty the containers before we arrive. Better yet, buy us some ice cream of our own.

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I went outside in the back today and picked berries! We have a few mulberry bushes that are so huge that the term bush is a grievous misnomer. The bushes resemble trees more than they do bushes. I’m surprised that the mulberry trees still produce berries at all because I had always thought that a plant can either grow big or grow fruit, but not both. Plants don’t multi-task very well. But the trees have been producing berries all season and show no sign of stopping.

The children have been enjoying going outside and eating food right of the tree that made it, but I haven’t really had the burning desire to go pick berries. But today I happened to be outside and I noticed there were a bunch of berries they were growing mostly at my eye level and above. I thought “I bet the kids can’t reach those.” And then I thought “I can reach most of those.” And then I thought “Hey, maybe I could pick those!” So I got a bowl and picked berries right in our backyard. I went from having no interest in picking berries to wishing we had a ladder so I could reach even more berries.

I can see why people get such a buzz from gardening. We live in the middle of the city with a concrete slab covering half of our backyard and I was able to find food out there. Not much food, but I saw a lot of berries that should be ripe in a day or two. And when they’re ripe I’m gonna go pick them.

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Whew! That was some weekend. We had a full house and I mean full. My sister Adiel, her husband Josh and their three children come to visit us. They got here Thursday and left Monday. We had a really nice time, but it had an edge of insane the whole time they were here. Adding to that, because we didn’t have enough going on, the Lansberrys went out of town and left Raquel kinda with us. She was sleeping here and spending most of the day at her house luxuriating in the quiet. Also, my brother Jonathan was over a bunch because his wife is visiting her family in Pennsylvania so he had time on his hands. It was loud, we stayed up way too late and Evangeline who’s one and a half only warmed up to being here right before they left. I love family.

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So, I was changing Justice’s diaper the other day. I whipped his pants off and handed them to him to hold. He laughed and tossed them onto the floor. So, I picked them up and set them aside. He asked for them back, but I knew better. He was just going to toss them to the floor the minute he got his tiny hands on them. But then he looked sad and he asked very nicely. So I handed him his pants and, wouldn’t you know, as soon as he had them he grinned really big and threw them onto the floor. I was conned by a two-year-old!

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I have something new to add to my resume. I’m not sure exactly how this would be described as a job description, but I can cut a sandwich into the Omnitrix symbol. And it doesn’t matter what kind of sandwich either. Cheese, pb and j, some sort of meat sandwich, I can cut them all. Who wouldn’t hire me?

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