From the mighty OK

Robby was tending the crops of his facebook farm. It’s a silly little diversion… we both have little farms. Jack loves them. He likes to help us “plant” crops and “harvest” them, etc.

So tonight Robby was getting some help from Farmer Jack. One of the on-screen prompts gave an option of  “OK” which our Nearly Reading Jack read as “Oak.”

A few years ago I remarked occasionally on the little explosions in his vocabulary– how, suddenly, he would add dozens of words or phrases to his repetoire. Now it’s sight words. He’s delighted in “Exit” signs and ramps. He takes glee in the word “Jackson” because it has his name in it, too. He studies road signs: “stop” and “Do Not Enter” and “No Turn on Red”…

And, like his earlier additions to his spoken vocabulary, I sit with my breath caught near the lump in my throat that is my heart– awed and excited.

Tonight, at church, my 12-year-old friend Anthony was thisclose to finishing Dan Brown’s Angels and Demons and I delighted that my Jack might also tote a book around some day eager to tell others what his story is about.

Walkabout

I’m trying to walk in the mornings. Trying to make it part of a routine. I haven’t been entirely successful… but baby steps.

I take Jack to school and get him settled. This is easier with each passing day for both of us. He’s getting less anxious and more excited. He really, really likes his teacher Mrs. R. I do, too. We have a little ritual where he kisses the palm of my hand and I kiss the palm of his and then he trots off to his little table. Mrs. R. starts the day with little activities at each table. Every day it’s a surprise as to what the activity will be.

I head out to the lonesome car and then drive to the park where I walk two circuits. I listen to my little plaid iPod. I’m trying to make my walk benefit my mind, too, so I’m listening to a daily podcast of the Bible. This nice man reads a chunk of the Old Testament, a chunk of the New Testament, a Psalm, and a Proverb. I’m still in Genesis because there are days I’d rather listen to The Proclaimers sing “Sunshine on Leith” or Bono wail about it being a “Beautiful Day.”

Every week the nice Bible reading man switches to a different translation. This week it’s The Message which I don’t usually care for… it’s a little too contemporary and the language is all dulled and ordinary. But, in the Psalm, there was a phrase, “everyone talks in lie-language” that stood out. I like it. It made me imagine a great skit for Will Ferrell.

The park was pretty empty today– it’s misting a cold rain so I imagine the local mall is pretty crowded with indoor walkers. The people in the park today that braved the foul weather were extra friendly. We joked with each other, in the passing, of the “lovely day.” My glasses were a mess– constantly wet and fogging.

It really was, despite the cold, a lovely day– the swamp grasses are frosted over and autumny-looking. The geese are brazen. They seemed to like the rain. They waddled lazily across the walking paths barking at each other and completely oblivious to the walkers. Their litle feet made slapping sounds on the wet pavement.

Still. I’d rather be walking near Kensington waiting for the V&A to open. Sigh.

What’s up Dock?

This is the dock. But it's misleading because this is only half of the dock. Still, you'll get the idea.

We spent the weekend Up North for a last hurrah! at the cottage. In a few weeks Robby’s folks will close it up and declare the 2009 season over… Poor un-winterized little cottage must be shut up for the winter months.

This weekend we enjoyed the cool nights with fires in the fireplace and Lady’s delicious spaghetti sauce. The weekend was gorgeous– lovely September blue skies instead of the rain that the weathermen had warned.

The weather was a slight balm to the wretched task of pulling out the dock for the year. We have a great dock– it’s wooden and long. It ends in a nice platform. The neighbors have a fancy aluminum dock that is so long we once staged a “Dock Walk” that mimicked the Mackinac Bridge Walk. We had t-shirts printed up and we pretended to take a rest at the halfway point. When we reached their platform we celebrated while they sat, bewildered, in their boat. Their dock has lights strung along the length so that, at night, it gleams like the cliched necklace of jewels on the water.

Our dock is more simple. More homey. It is sturdy and straight and practical. The wood planks sometimes bow and bounce unexpectedly. The sections are, for the most part, worn smooth with an odd splinter here and there to keep the danger alive.

This weekend we pulled the dock out. We envy the floating docks we’ve seen in the south where the water does not freeze. Our little lake will be frozen by Thanksgiving and any docks left lazily in will become spinters pushed up against one of the shore banks.

Robby did the bulk of the heavy lifting. The rest of us– Lady, Padre, and me– pitched in to pull out the sections and lug them up the ever-shorter remaining dock to the shore where they are neatly stacked for the winter. The sections requred two of us at a time. One person can handle the standards. The trick is in the timing and trying not to end up crossing on the dock when someone is hauling in a piece.  Trying to keep Jack off the dock was also a challenge. He’d tied two of his little plastic boats together with a long string and was floating them in the inch deep water left near shore. The lake is so low at this late date that Robby had to walk the standards out to deep enough water to rinse off the muck and mussels from the flat bases. (Meanwhile I calculated whether we could get the neighbors to cheat their fancy aluminum dock towards our cottage splitting the difference between their lot and our’s on the neighbor in-between so that we could avoid this unpleasantness next year.)

It didn’t take us long but we were all sore and achey afterward. None of us are used to heavy lifting and so our shoulders especially took a hit. Lady made us her ridiculously good BLTs and spaghetti to assuage our moaning.

The lake can freeze now. We’re done with it.

Lunch Lady

Jack’s freaked out by the hot lunch at school.

He doesn’t eat the hot lunch– I pack him a lunch every day– but, nonetheless, it scares the heebies right out of him. I’ve tried to explain to him that there are some days he might want to get the hot lunch– the menu sometimes features pizza and grilled cheese sandwiches and cheeseburgers. But Jack is steadfast in his rather unreasonable fears.

He’s also convinced that there must be something wrong with the milk there.
Me: Jack– you know there’s cold, cold milk in the hot lunch line. If you want you can buy a milk at school…
Jack: No, Mommy! There’s only brown milk and red milk and blue milk. There isn’t white milk. I like white milk.
Me: Jack I’m positive that you can get regular white milk at school.
Jack: No, Mommy. (And he says this with his eyes closed and a sad, sad look on his face while shaking his head slowly.)

Today I got permission from the principal and the secretary to come and eat lunch with Jack. Jack was very excited. He thought this was a great idea. He couldn’t wait for school to start today so that it would “hurry up and be lunch time.” All morning he rushed me, “Mommy! Is it time to go to school yet?”  Consequently, we arrived at school about 20 minutes early to be early. We ran up the road to the gas station and picked up treats to kill some time. Jack trotted right into school announcing to everyone we passed, “My Mommy packed me a lunch but she’s going to come and eat a hot lunch with me.”

I came back at his lunch time. Jack’s school does recess first– so the secretary invited me to go out and see Jack. I watched him for a while behind the door– I don’t get to see him that way very often. He looked like every other little boy on the playground– running and somewhat dissheveled and calling out to his friends. It’s good to see him like this. To know that he’s having a good time at school. That he’s making friends. That he’s not like the little boy in his class that has a perpetually tear-stained face from being separated from his mother. Jack spotted me and waved me over. There are about a dozen balls being kicked and thrown about by the boys (the girls seemed to be content with the sidewalk chalk and swings. Things haven’t changed). I greeted his little friends and made small talk with the kids in his class that I’ve met. When it was time to line up for lunch Jack and I got into the line towards the back. He held my hand and commentated the walk into the lunchroom.

At his table we sat across from each other. A little Indian girl sat next to me. She’s chatty. We met on Monday when I took treats into Jack’s class for his birthday. Her mother comes to school in beautiful saris. The little girl has a disappointingly American name. She showed me her pink Hello Kitty lunch box and her disappointingly American lunch– a prepackaged peanut butter and jelly sandwich. The kid next to Jack had a sandwich, a container of tuna salad, crackers, fruit, and cookies. Jack had a piece of pizza, strawberries, milk (in his thermos), some Apple Jacks, and a cookie (at least I’m honest).

I got into the line with the kids for the hot lunch. There’s a Purell station, too. The children liked that everything was new to me. They were full of information on what would happen next. I was the last one in line so by the time I got my lunch– grilled cheese, tomato soup, carrot and celery sticks, fruit salad, and milk– there was only about 10 minutes left to eat.

Jack looked suspiciously at my lunch.
Jack: Mommy! What is that? Is that bread?
Me: Jack– it’s a grilled cheese. Look. See?
Jack: Is that celery? and carrots?
Me: Yes. And this is fruit. And this is soup. And this is (chomp, chew) an amazing sandwich. Do you want a bite?
Jack shook his head: Will you open my cookies?
Me: No. Eat your pizza.
The kid on Jack’s right, left, and to my right and Indian Michelle parroted, “Jack! You can’t eat cookies first!”
(This was explaining the leftovers in his lunch some days…)

The lunch lady came out to ask, “How’s your lunch, Mom?” I thanked her– for the lunch and for taking such nice care of the children. She’s a nice lunch lady with a teeny, tiny kitchen. It’s just crazy, crazy small. And she seems like a very squishy, kind woman. A perfect lunch lady for small children. I told her my Mom was a lunch lady when I was small. She liked that. “I volunteered one day, back in when I was in junior high, to work in the cafeteria– who knew this is what I would be doing now!?”

Lunchtime flew by. I almost couldn’t finish my soup. It was a great lunch and, by the end of it, I’d almost convinced Jack that the blue milk was really just plain, regular milk. (The brown milk turned out to be chocolate and the red milk was strawberry flavored.) Jack gave me a big kiss before he left to get in line and his little buddy Alarik gave me a hug. I got a lot of high-fives, too.

I know that Jack won’t always think it’s neat for me to come to school and eat or work… so I’m soaking this up now while I can.

And I’m definitely going back on grilled cheese day.

Party of One

It’s so weird to have Jack gone during the day. I miss having him near by. He misses me, too, but he’s settling into school.

Every afternoon I ask him, “What was your favorite thing about school today?” and it’s usually a variance on what he played on the playground or a story that the good Mrs. R. read. And then I ask him, “What was your least favorite thing today?” and his answer is always, “Missing you.”

That will change. One of these days it will be a different response– his least favorite thing will be the thing in his lunch he didn’t care for or some activity that wasn’t to his liking.

I’m being redefined. And trying to find my own routine. It’s slowly dawning on me that I can tackle bigger projects– the ones I’ve put off for the last 5 years. I can sew again. I can paint the family tree on the upstairs wall. I can rearrange the spare room. Clean the attic. Organize the basement.

I can read. During the day.

I can cook– not just throw-together-meals– but real meals. Ones that involve a cookbook and multi-steps.

The last real refining came when Jack was born. I had to wrap my brain around being his mother and what that meant. The last five years– over 1800–days have been spent with Jack as my primary focus.  I’m really grateful for that I was able to have those days with “Just Jack!” as my To Do List. I’m sorry that we’re already passed that stage–but I’m grateful that I didn’t miss any of it. Now– for seven hours a day– his needs aren’t solely in my hands– and I’m not sure what to do with my hands.

I’ll find my groove again. Just haven’t yet.

Meanwhile… I had to take my little truck, Alex, in today (Jack named him that after we saw Madagascar 2.) The belts are squeaking and when I turn the steering wheel there is squealish rasping. That can’t be good. I dropped off the truck at the shop– the owner is a friend of our’s and he does good work. He’ll take good care of Alex. And then I trekked downtown on foot. I looked like a baglady– new sling-tote bulging with bags of popcorn from this morning’s PTO sale, a seperate tote with library books. I returned Jack’s books (and he’ll be angry about that. He doesn’t completely understand the concept of the library. He’d check out the same four books over and over if I didn’t force him otherwise), put MadMen: Season 1 on hold, chatted with the library girl who turned me on to a great sweater pattern, and then picked up lunch at the little shop down the street (a 1/2 veggie wrap if you’re curious. And it was amazing).

I couldn’t have done the above easily with JackRabbit in tow. So, to look on the positive side of things, I guess there’s something to be said for the public school system.

London calling

An old acquaintance is traveling around Europe this week. She’s posting her status on Facebook. Today she was heading to Bath, England.

I’m so jealous. To see the things she seeing. To muse the Museums she’s wandering in. To eat the foods she’s eating… and oy! the bookstores and markets and parks!

I’m glad for her– I really am– she’ll appreciate the trip she’s taking.

But I wish it were me.

And that’s crappy and ungrateful for all the things I have that she doesn’t. Husband. Small son. Little pup. House.

I wish I were on the Isle of Man tonight with plans to visit London for the weekend. I wish I would wake up in a small cottage near Ramsey with a view of a rolling green pasture. Or the gray, choppy sea. That there would be, in my pantry, scones and clotted cream and damson jam. A pot of hot tea. A box of jam tarts. A Rumer Godden novel. And something delicious on the BBC.

And nothing to do but watch Jack run in the green, green pasture.

Julie & Julia & Terri & Trisha (part 2)

I'd meant to stage a pretty, pretty shot. I'd intended to have some of the Boeuf Bourguignon perfectly plated. Maybe garnish it. And then, in the frenzy of finishing it up and dishing up plates for Trish, Keegan, Maddie, Robby, and myself I forgot. So here's a picture of a very, very happy husband and his nearly empty bowl.

So, apparently, being trendy has its rewards. (At least, in this case, eating my words is delicious…)

I didn’t like jumping on the “I’m going to make Julia Child’s Boeuf Bourguignon because I saw the movie…” bandwagon but I’m glad I did.

Turns out its worth the effort. The meat soaks up all that yummy wine and stock as do the onions and ’shrooms. It’s a rich, rich dish yet not heavy or cloying. Trish declared it “a good summer time pot roast” or “an anti-gravy pot roast.”

Robby lapped it up, too.

Julia recommends serving it with noodles. We thought that sounded rather shrieky. She also suggested boiled potatoes– but we all like mashed better. It was a good combo. I tried to make some braised carrots because Julia’s recipe is pretty scant on carrotage… but I was distracted by the Just Home From School Jack’s antics and nearly turned the carrots into charcoal. Next time I’d add more carrots in at the beginning. You can’t have too many cooked carrots. Especially when they are in stock and wine.

I’m putting Mastering the Art of French Cooking on my radar. Hopefully a nice hard cover copy will turn up at the library sale this fall?

Bon appetit Julia. Thanks for a great dinner.

Julia & Julia & Terri (Part 1)

The “lardon” which is the oh-so French way of making bacon sound elegant.

Slicing the vegetables and cubing the meat. Fun! Fun!

At the half-way point. The big red thing in the middle would be the rind of the bacon I had to slice off… That was super fun. (And yes, read that sarcastically…)

I’m not a trendy person. I do my best to avert them. Step around them whenever possible. Like goose poo on the walking path at the park.

I didn’t read The Bridges of Madison County when the rest of the world was swooning. (I did read it several years later because my coworker’s philosophy of life at the time was somewhat based on whether the annoying female protagonist should have gotten into the truck of the equally annoying male protagonist. Let me save you the three hours it took me to read it. It ends. Then ends again. Then ends yet again. There aren’t words to describe how excrutiatingly I wanted to run both of them over with a truck.) I didn’t hairspray my bangs against a wall in the late ’80s. I didn’t memorize the soundtrack of The Phantom of the Opera (which, much like Bridges of Madison County  is terrible.)

I don’t like doing the thing everyone else is doing.

And today I eat those words.

I’m attempting Julia Child’s Boeuf Bourguignon recipe. I read Julie Powell’s Julie & Julia a few years ago– it was an enjoyable read that made me put Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking on my List of Books I Should Read. This week my sister and I went to see the movie version with the endearingly made-homely Amy Adams and the Meryl Streep in easily one of her best portrayals ever. Julia Child’s Boeuf Bourguignon is another character in the movie. And it looked amazing. The burned version looked amazing. Trish and I could imagine the rich aroma…

None of us had the cookbook and I was prepared to hit the library for a copy but found it on google. The good people at Julia’s publisher, Knopf, posted it. (The moment in the movie when Julia recieves word that Knopf will publish the book is precious. She squeals. She jumps. She and her sweet Paul celebrate. And they wonder how you pronounce Knopf– is the K silent? or pronounced?)

Julia’s cookbook was prefaced that it was for the American cook. The American servant-less cook. But apparently it’s for the American servant-less cook that has someone else doing the laundry and cleaning and childcare because french cooking is proving, today, to be pretty intense.

I’ve used two cutting boards (I should have used three), four knives, a vegetable peeler, a wooden spoon, two spatulas, a slotted spoon, four bowls, three measuring cups, measuring spoons, three skillets, and a Dutch oven.

It required a trip to Meijer, the butcher shop, the farmer’s market, the grocer, and my garden.

So far so good– my kitchen is smelling amazing. My sink is full of the fall-out.  And I’m about half-way through the process…

At least there’s a little chianti left. Stay tuned.

September 20, 2009

Dear JackRabbit,

It’s beyond my imagination how it is already the eve of your Fifth Birthday. Never, ever have five years flown by so quickly!

This has been such a great year– I’ve loved Four-Year-Old-Jack most of all– this year we discovered your imagination and creativity. You tell us stories now. Your wildest dreams are bigger– and so are your nightmares (though thankfully you are still small enough that you’ll crawl into bed with us to chase the monsters away again. And, by the way, you are a hoot to sleep with– you scrunch, then sprawl, then flip, then, suddenly, flop… You’ve managed to simultaneously slap me in the eye and knee Daddy in the groin so that both of us are groaning and “ow!”ing while you sleep through it all…) You make us laugh every day– you’re a ham, through and through.

You’re frustratingly stubborn, too– you have an independent streak that defies our best attempts on some days… It still makes me crazy that there are so many foods you won’t try– but, just when I start to despair that your palate will forever be limited to grilled cheeses, pizza, and “chicken” sticks you turn around and pop a brussel sprout in your mouth and declare it, “Good!” You surprise us all the time.

This has been the Year of the Map– you have poured over maps of Michigan, Ohio, the United States, Europe, and the world… you’ve learned your state capitals and every major sea and lake on any map you’ve looked at twice. I hope it means you’ve liked the places we’ve taken you to– and that, like your Mommy and Daddy– you long to see more of the world and to revisit the parts you’ve already seen.

We took some good trips this year, kiddo– kicking off your year with the trip to Ireland with Momma and Eric. You aren’t supposed to remember as much as you do– I love that even now, a year later, you’ll suddenly find the familiarity or similarity in something here with something we saw on our whirlwind trip around the Emerald Isle. We’ve been  Up North and to Ohio and to a “waterpark,” and aquarium, farmer’s markets, the zoo, and to the beaches of Family Camp.

We’ve read books– your favorites this year are I Know an Old Lady, The Kissing Hand, Hug, Curious George’s Big Book of Curiosity, “The Learning Book” with Daddy, your big Animal book, and Green Eggs and Ham. You still love Cars and now you love Finding Nemo. You love to play pretend– restaurant (where what we order is never, ever available– but your suggestions always are… such a weird restaurant and yet Daddy and I come back again and again…), or pirate sword fights (with teeny playmobile swords), and with the little wooden village set from Ireland, “Mommy, this is the pohb.”

You’re a whiz at puzzles. You love church. You sing “I Am the Church” and the “States Song” all day long. You do a great impression of the “music truck” (other people would refer to that as the Ice-Cream Truck…). You can say the Lord’s Prayer and your own little prayers that are so earnestly honest that Daddy and I are utterly convinced that our God is a joyful God.

Your hugs are fiercely wonderfully squeezey. You give “mah!mah!mah!” kisses or dole them out in “4– because I’m 4″ amounts.

I couldn’t love you more if I tried, JackRabbit. Everyday you make my heart bigger and make me look at the world around me differently– I’m kinder. More tolerant. Less ready to judge. Kudos, kiddo, on that.

I was hoping this year that you’d have a little sibling to love. You’ve asked about one and you love the babies around us… and maybe we’ll still have a littler person one of these days. I hope so. I’m not ready for this to be my last night with a four-year-old in the house.

Still… I can’t wait to see what Five-Year-Old-Jack does. You’ve kept us on our toes and each year has been impossibly better than the one before it– so work your magic, Little Man–.

We love you, so awfully much,

Mommy

BentoBox with a side of Catch-Up

Michelle is my oldest friend. We met in pre-school. The legend now is that there was a kid named Terry on the teeter-totter and that I pushed him off so that Melle and I could teeter-totter together. Maybe it’s true. Maybe it’s not. It was 35 years ago. Regardless– we’re still best friends.

We used to celebrate our anniversary every September– but life has intervened. She has three children. I have Jack. We have husbands and jobs and churches. We don’t get together as much as we’d like… even to celebrate another year of Us so I appreciate it all the more when we do.

Today we met for lunch. All of our kids are in school now so it’s possible to meet where the two of us can actually talk. Carry on a real conversation uninterrupted by the children or husband or life. We found a Japanese place and ordered some bento boxes with a side of catch-up. (Sorry. Couldn’t resist.)

We lead entirely different lives. Melle has a passion for children and families. She and her husband have made a deliberate choice to live in a neighborhood that is riddled with drug houses and gang activity… so that they can be a good example and make a difference in the lives of the people around them. Their dining room has bullets in the wall from a drug deal gone sour. The stories of their surroundings are usually kept to age for 6-12 months so that, when told, they are safely in the past tense. Otherwise her mother and I would be driving tanks into her “‘hood” to get them the hell of out of there. By the time we hear the worst of the situations there is enough distance and injection of Melle’s humor that it’s harder to worry.  (Though we still worry.)

The nice thing about visiting with Melle is that there is no pretense. We have so little memories of life without the other in it somewhere that it’s really easy to find each other again under all the outer layers. The older we get the easier that seems to be accomplished, too.

I’m grateful that we found each other in pre-school. That we lasted through all the years of different classes and friends and boys and colleges and marriage.

If Teeter-Totter Terry really did exist– than oh, I owe him an apology. He probably ended up friendless, in the corner, alone. I got my MelleBelle.