July 29, 2012

• at our house

  At our house someone dropped the big laptop and its recently replaced screen cracked, making ghoulish colors and shapes.   It is not working any longer.  Hello, my friend Paul at Software Emporium.  I am here again with the Toshiba of the broken screen.

  Someone else dropped the big frying pan with the nice glass lid and the good strong handle broke off. 

  Someone else takes things apart and doesn’t know how to put them back together.  Like his plastic trike.  In a hurry to clean up the yard, the pieces and screws and tools to take it apart got thrown into a laundry basket.  The basket is still sitting on the porch a week later.

  One night Victoria made white rolls in the breadmaker to go with the stew instead of the usual whole wheat ones.  I ate two and afterwards patted my tummy and said, “one too many white rolls” and Dan added, “….make one too many white rolls.”  Ahem.  Yes dear.

  Last night at the park I was giving my own and a bunch of other little children underducks on the swings.  (Surely underducks are known nationwide?)  After I had pushed him many times,  one little blond freckled fellow asked me, “Why do you have your jammies on?”  It was my favorite teale floral dress handed down from my sister in law Lori.  I am rethinking our Mennonite dress style.  Did it look like his mom’s robe or something?  This of course reminded me of the time a few years ago when I still wore a cap style covering and heard a little guy in town asking his mom why that lady had a bucket on her head.

  The Laura Ingalls Wilder books read by Cherry Jones are doing a re-run at our house.  I have to say that Laura knows how to grip me.  I want to cry every time over the year where the grasshoppers ruin the wheat crop when they built their beautiful new house on credit.  I get a huge lump over the year they leave their cabin with the glass windows and their sweet little garden and say goodbye to Indian territory.  “All’s well that ends well” and “No great loss without some small gain” says Pa.   Right now I hear the part where Ma settles into the new straw tick and sighs “I declare, I’m so comfortable that it’s almost sinful.”

  How DID those people do it?  I was thinking of that when I was picking beans this week.  How did those homesteading women make it?  They couldn’t call their moms on the phone or find out when their sisters were pregnant, let alone sit and read about an online friend’s birthday party for her daughter.  They couldn’t  go shopping and get away from it all for a few hours.  Were they healthier emotionally than we are today?  Were they happier?   I’m sure that some of them went crazy and we never heard about them.  But I admire them.  They were tough as nails.

  At our place we’re gardening.  Rows and rows of peas to pick.  Rows and rows of beans to snap.  I was out picking the other day and thinking about life and prairie women and iced coffee and whether this whole gardening thing is worth it.  I like to putter about and weed and I even like to pick.  But I hate canning and freezing.  I’m sure I’ve told you all that before.  Get me out of the hot kitchen or I might come after you with the colander. 

  But.  Dan likes a garden.  He helps a lot where he can.  It gives the children work to do.  It tastes better than what you get out of the freezer at Safeway.  It gives me a chance to be outside.  The tan is a definite side benefit.   I don’t think it’s for everyone, but it kind of works for us.  Even when I’m tiredly blanching beans at midnight.

  

   

   

  Someday I’ll have a little weed free vegetable garden and putter around with my glorious petunias and drink iced coffee in my English gardens when I’m tired.  Dan will pick the beans for our dinner and I’ll water all the cucumbers so they don’t get bitter.  Or maybe we’ll have a huge weed-free garden and give out big buckets of produce to needy people.

  The wild rabbits are alive and well, thanks to the people in this house who persistently feed and care for them.  It has become a bit of a chore for others.  The bunnies need a bigger cage. Soon. They are cuddled and squished and loved on many times a day.

  

  They eat banana bread crumbs from the table.

  

  Andre turned 5.  He’s a sweetheart.  He is not a brave son.  He hates new experiences and dentists.  He is interested in how things work and how they come apart.  I love him from the tip of his round face to the bottom of his white toes.  White because he likes socks and shoes and hates to be barefoot.  He likes to fowm (exactly how he pronounces “farm”) and doesn’t want to try vacation Bible school tomorrow because there will be children there he doesn’t know.

  

  Victoria is playing the Music Box Dancer by Frank Mills on the piano right now and it is so delightful.  Her current fad is to read aloud for Librivox, which is a free online site for listening to audio books.  She is working on the book of Philippians and pieces from Black Beauty.  She’s always loved to record books on our old tape player and it’s like a dream come true for her to kind of publish something.

  

  Tori is also responsible for the turtle cake above.  She is the kind of daughter that I am afraid to tell people about because she’s a model child in many ways and I feel like I’m boasting.  I pray that in her hardworking, perfectionist nature she will also be accepting, kind, and aware of her limitations. 

  Today instead of roast beef and potatoes we had pancakes and sausage for dinner.  I planned this earlier in the week and looked forward to it for many days.  Mennonite tradition usually involves a nice Sunday dinner, often with company around the big farm table.  I don’t always follow that tradition, but there has to be SOMETHING to eat when we come home from church with at least 8 hungry people and often guests as well.  Shari Zook inspired me with this post. (But now I can’t find it. )  But I will still link to her very worthwhile reading blog:  http://shari.zooks.us/ With fresh raspberries from the hill behind the house and the blueberries I splurged on yesterday at Co-op, it was a wonderful lunch.  More wonderful than this photo shows.  The sausage looks…too sausage-y I guess.

  

  I’m planning to teach VBS this week. Could you pray for me… for all of us?

  It’s so much fun to read about the new babies and babies to come with my xanga friends.

  Enjoy the last weeks of summer.  I feel badly for those of you scorching in the heat.  It’s warm here, too warm for most northerners.  But not for me.  And not anything like the heat of the east and south.

  Later then, Luci

  • 7:43 pm
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