As I mentioned in my first post, I am adopted.  My adoptive parents could not physically have children of their own, but they wanted to be parents, so they did the next best thing and adopted.  My brother (not blood related) came first.  He is six years older than me.  I remember my mom telling me that my brother was so proud when they adopted me that he took me to school for show and tell!  I cherish the few photos I have of my brother holding me and feeding me a bottle.  It wasn’t too many years later that he was chasing me around the yard with a stick in his hand trying to hit me!…brotherly love I guess.

My adoptive mother was a ’stay at home mom’, a rare but important position for a woman, especially in today’s society.  My father was a high school librarian.  Due to my father’s work schedule we would spend most holiday’s; Christmas, Thanksgiving, Spring Break, and summers visiting my grandparents.  They lived about six hours North of us, but six hours to a kid can feel like a lifetime!

My father would always drive…my mom sat on the passenger side.  I had to sit behind my father (something to do with the balance of the car), my brother sat next to me in the back seat.  There were always arguments between me and my brother during these trips.  He’d say I was on his side…I’d say he touched me.  My dad would threaten to ‘pull over’.  Yes, we got spankings in those days.  And you know what?  My childhoods fragile psyche turned out okay….imagine that?!

Besides the arguing coming from the back seat, the car was always filled with music!  Although my father chose the music – so it was always classical, big band, show tunes, musical theatre, sometimes even opera!  UGH!!!  Many times we’d all sing together loudly…driving my brother NUTS.  Ahhh, those were good times!

Most of our trips took place during the day time.  And many times the sun seemed to beat down on my side of the car onto my arms and legs.  My father, being the resourceful one, would fashion a window shade from an old piece of a cardboard box.  As a child I was embarrassed by this, as a teenager – I was mortified!  Imagine this; a crappy piece of cardboard cut out to fit the window frame just right…sometimes he’d even cut a flap into the cardboard so I could see out (a nice touch).  My problem was that I knew stores sold window shades…but my father was too cheap to invest in one…but that’s a story for another blog entry!

Overall, the memories of these car rides bring back happy thoughts…the music blaring, my father waving his arm as though he was directing the musicians and vocalists, my mother telling him to ‘turn it down’, my brother never having enough leg room to stretch out, and me sitting comfortably behind the home made cardboard window shade or peeking out the flap.

I love ‘em.

Not the money I have to pay for gas or the hours it sucks out of my day, but the other parts of it.  The idea that things like studying, hanging out with people, getting groceries, and washing residual dishes can’t be done and your brain has to admit it and not think about them.  The idea that you’re in an area alone with no one listening through the walls about what you’re talking, singing, or shouting about or quizing you about the general things of life that you’ve noted over and over again to others.  The idea that you’re in the car for such a long period of time that you cannot avoid really thinking about life, the things that are happening in it, and what our responses have been and should be to those things.  That I suddenly ‘have time’ to do things that I tend to put near the end of the list, but are so nourishing to my heart such as praying, listening to people speak who are wiser than I, and singing.

I think I put them near the end of my list because I feel as though I’m just doing lip service or checkin’ the box for Him if I take the time to reflect and converse, either that or doing it won’t really help or matter, it’ll just put me more behind with everything else.  Maybe this is just me and my worldview, but there’s something that happens when I realistically look at my life and where I’m looking to get my needs met; when I look at the things that are most pressing and important in my life; when I think about others and their situations (for once); when I am vulnerable and bring all of it to Him and allow Him to speak into them, I get out of the car freer, with more joy, feeling more loved and wanting to love others, and more confident He knows what He’s doing.  But that’s what He’s always wanted right?  For us to come to the sovereign, all-knowing, and trustable Father with everything?  Good and bad?  It’s not just Him waving His hands in the air at you, using fireworks and magic trying to get your attention.  It’s us choosing to really engage with Him.  Friendships take more than one person.

Maybe, just maybe, you could try it as well?  Not promising a MIRACULOUS experience necessarily, but an experience nonetheless.

]]> http://threedogstudio.wordpress.com/2009/09/04/music-music-music/ Fri, 04 Sep 2009 13:12:37 +0000 lightdance http://threedogstudio.wordpress.com/2009/09/04/music-music-music/

Mary, 5 years old with band-aid on elbow, at our wedding

The e-vite said Mary was turning fifty! How could it be? We guessed we’d better plan to drive the twelve hundred miles it would take to get us to the party and back, just to be sure such a thing could really be happening. Silly of us, because, who would say they were turning fifty if they weren’t?

Mary at nifty fifty

We planned a completely relaxing trip, no hurrying, no leaving before daylight, no racing to drive twelve hours in one day. Things start to slow down around fifty (we should know), so our plan seemed appropriate for the occasion. I charged up the long forgotten iPod, bought a new backseat cooler to replace the one my son-in-law packed fish in last summer (yuck!), dug the framed Wolverine signed by Bo Schembechler and Don Canham out of storage to present as a proper gift at a party with a U of M/Go Blue theme, rounded up suitable clothing to wear in maize and blue with block M on it, and we were ready to go!

It’s hard not to think of milestone events when you’re on your way to a birthday celebrating a significant number. Even harder when you’re listening to the music of your life. My iPod had been gathering dust for several years. Wow, how I’ve missed my tunes!

My iPod, ancient though it is, was so happy to be in use again that it simply outdid itself, playing music that alternately made me want to dance and cry, music so closely associated with certain events, that just hearing the opening notes flooded me with forgotten memories.  Memories even older than fifty years!

It first dawned on me that my iPod was messing with my mind when Peggy Lee started to sing. She isn’t my favorite, except for Steam Heat, but I added her to the iPod because my Dad loved her and all the Big Band songs so much. I could see him dancing his little waltz two step with my Mom in the kitchen, same as they did in high school when they listened to Goodman, the Dorseys and Count Basie. The iPod was making me weepy. Miss you, Dad.

Dad always loved the music of his youth, and wasn’t about to adopt the music of mine when it came along. He was openly contemptuous of Elvis, and tolerated the Beatles as they didn’t seem as sinister as Elvis the Pelvis. Chuck Berry made him think an entire generation was lost. I must say I couldn’t really understand any of Chuck Berry’s words after he saw Maybelline in that coup deville, but I loved the song. Dad and I didn’t part ways on many things, but music was one. Sam Cooke Havin’ A Party, Johhny Mathis and the make-out songs, the Platters My Prayer and You Who Who’ve Got the Maaaaa Gic Touch, the Beach Boys Catch a Wave, and the Coasters Yakety Yak and Poison I-i-i-v-y filled the airways of my youth. If you liked something on the radio, you could go to the record store and buy it on a new media type called a 45. Our record players had arms and the spindle released the discs one at a time.  Scratches on favorites always sent the needle skittering over the grooves, similar to digital pixels breaking up, I guess.

I watched American Bandstand on a tiny little TV screen, still black and white, feeling like I knew Arlene and Kenny, Carole and Nick as well as I knew people in my own high school. We learned the Hand Jive and the Stroll, but not much of the Waltz two step. The songs of that era played on my iPod, calling to mind penny loafers, cardigans buttoned backwards, pop-it beads and Fire and Ice lipsick, as we drove toward Virginia on I-40 fifty years later.

We covered the miles and the iPod shuffled. Suddenly Perry Como was singing, ‘Til the End of Time. There’s a sometimes startling mix on my iPod, but there is one Como song that is not programmed into it. In early December of 1965, my husband and I, married less than a year, left Marine Corps Basic School at Quantico, VA, and  headed for his first post with the 2nd Marines at LeJeune, NC. I was as homesick as a person could be, but hanging on because we were going home for Christmas. For the time being we were heading deeper into the strange land called the South, with bigger, gaudier Magnolia trees, even less intelligible accents and air that held the faint, sweet smell of decaying wood. I see things differently now, but at the time I was an alien in a foreign land. I remember sitting in the car while he checked into base. He got back in the car and said, as gently as he could, that there was good news and bad news. We would have base housing with a real heater, but Viet Nam was building up (a surge? everything new is old again!), and all Christmas leaves were cancelled. Then he switched the ignition on, and Perry Como was singing, There’s No Place Like Home for the Holidays, on the radio. I’d forgotten, but he remembered, as we drove along I-40 to Mary’s birthday party, that I had been holding an ivy plant in my lap from our Quantico apartment during the whole trip. I guess it got a good watering when the dam broke. Maybe I had forgotten the plant, but I’ll never forget how homesick feels, nor how that Como song can still call out the tears after all this time.

And so it went until the iPod batteries ran down, my favorite musicians singing my life with their songs. Patsy Cline Back in Baby’s Arms, Jackie Wilson with drama and crescendo, Keith Whitley, Aretha, Roger Miller You Can’t Roller Skate in a Buffalo Herd, Eartha Kitt, Carol King, Waylon Only Daddy That’ll Walk the Line, Neil Diamond Kentucky Woman and Sweet Caroline, Louis Armstrong, John Hiatt, Emmylou, Ray Charles, the Everlys, Etta James, Delbert McClinton, Lucinda Williams, Willie, the Tractors, James Talley, the Supremes, Statlers, Spinners, Shirelles Da Do Ron Ron, Always Sinatra, Kodachrome, Photographs and Memories, the Noir songs of Carly Simon, the Bee Gees and the entire Saturday Night Fever Album, Dancing Queen, Prine, Presley, Cole Porter, Les Paul, Dolly and Jolene, the incomparable piano poundng of Del Wood, Smoke Gets in Your Eyes, Blueberry Hill, Professor Longhair…………

We’re Five hundred Miles From Home, heading to Virginia where It’s Saturday Night and They’re Having a Party. Play That Funky Music and Get Down Tonight! We Are Family, so Happy, Happy Birthday, Baby Sister! When It’s Your Party, You Can Cry if You Want To. It’s All in the Game!

Am I old enough yet to play these drinking games?

When we were small, before there were four of us, of whom I am the oldest, we often visited our grandparents, our mother’s parents, in New Jersey. Usually my parents would set out for the twelve hour trip from Michigan at night, in the hopes that we would sleep through most of the trip. I usually did, after throwing up at least once, plagued throughout my childhood with motion sickness. The one particular memory I have of throwing up on one of these trips was the time I threw up all over a new doll–who fortunately was washable.

We would arrive sometime in the middle of the night, or in the wee hours, and wake slightly and grumpily as our father carried us in the door in our footed pajamas and someone tucked us into bed where we would quickly sink back into dreaming.

We slept in a bedroom adjacent to my grandparents, me in one bed, my brother in the next, and my little sister in a folding cot at the end of our two beds. As children we were all early risers, and there was a rule at my grandparents that we could get out of bed in the morning if we could play quietly, until my grandparents woke up. Of course we needed a way to know when that was, and it was hard to contain ourselves, especially if it was the first morning of a visit. To check whether they were awake, we would lie on the carpeted floor in front of their bedroom door, and trying to be quiet, we wiggled our fingers under the door. If they were awake, my grandmother would be watching for our fingers and would invite us in. If there was no response, we had to keep waiting and try again in a little while.

I’m sure we woke them up many times, either accidentally, or because we started squabbling about something, but the only time I can remember purposefully doing so was the time there was a hornet in the kitchen. I was terrified of bees, and insects in general, and although I had never seen a hornet, I somehow knew this went beyond the category of me being scared over something that wouldn’t bother me if I just left it alone.

I have other memories about trying to sleep, or getting up, at my grandparents: of lying in bed waiting for sleep to overtake me and watching the occasional headlights of cars sweep up and across the ceiling; of the stories my grandmother told about one of her uncles who was known to fall asleep smoking and setting the bed on fire more than once; and of the morning that the folding cot folded itself up with my sister still in it to the great delight of all of us, except, perhaps my sister.

In the past I have mentioned how much my kids enjoy storynory, a free podcast of delightful children’s stories, both original and classic.  A conversation with a friend about our other favorite audio books got me thinking I should post some them, in case you too have children in need of a quiet afternoon, or have a long car trip ahead of you.  Like I do tomorrow.  We’re off camping for a few days before our various school years begin.

Barefoot Books.  I can’t tell you how much I enjoy their books.  Unusual, thoughtful, and typically with great illustrations, we love many of their titles, but it is their audio books that really take center stage in our house.  My son especially enjoys their books.  Household favorites:  Knight Stories, Pirate Stories.

DK books.  Their listen series are great introductions to classic children stories.  They are condensed but not simplified versions of the “classics” which your children might not be ready to read on their own, or would turn their nose up to in favor of Diary of a Wimpy Kid or Harry Potter.  But my children will listen and listen and listen to these.  Household favorites: Peter Pan, Heidi, Oliver Twist (yes, even dickens!), Pinocchio and Black Beauty.

Jim Weiss.  I love that he is a working storyteller, and that these recordings can let my children in on hearing someone who has mastered the art of telling classic stories with intonation and some flair.  He has many, many recordings but some have been more popular in our house than others.  Household favorites: Sherlock Holmes (inspired my son’s Halloween costume last year), and Princess Stories.

Ay Caramba!.  We discovered this unique little recording through our local library, but you can download it right online!  These are funny, personal stories told by a gifted story teller, Leeny Del Seamonds.  A couple family tales, and a few folk tales, all told in mostly English, but some Spanish thrown in through out.  This was a huge hit in our house about a year ago, that I think is due for a revival.

Classic Stories for Boys and Girls.  This collection of original and classic, but tweaked, classic stories is hilarious.  Really.  I’ve heard these many times, and I still find them amusing.  My son was absolutely in L-O-V-E with this story collection for an entire year.  A little kid humor, great voices, and even a little cautionary moral thown in here and there.  What’s not to like?  Favorite Tracks: The three little pigs and The boy who hated pizza.

yellow room, originally uploaded by GinaMoe.

Safety plays a funny trick; if it were to manifest physically she’d be a teenage girl. She’d have a way of reaching up twisting her soft bland finger around your ear and when you least expect it jab the side of your face with a flick. I usually find that my whiny, self serving morose ramblings are boring and predictable but my luck lately…….what can I say good heavens! TERRIBLE!
I’ve had my fair share of misfortune but it’s important to remember that my good luck seems to show in ways of prevention rather then blessings. I have a tendency to not only misjudge my own clumsy body usually ending up with a bruise or a stitch when it should have been worse but I’m particularly good at finding myself in somewhat unsafe surroundings.
When I was living in Italy I spoke a broken combination of English, Spanish, and Italian a great combination for a strange new city. Sometimes to get away from the villa I would wander the street at all sorts of hours in the busy port section where the ship workers lived always cutting down the shortcuts where gloomy, heavily adorned women pedal their wares a few corners from a butcher with the best cuts of salami. I should have been robed, or worse but the only harm I came to in that city was inflicted by myself. Full of thought I was wandering in the middle of the afternoon when I turned quickly in reaction to a scooter that had backfired and ran full face into a glass bus station. I found myself in similar situations in Atlanta were on more then one occasion I stood at an early morning hour in a night gown or sweat pants staring down a drunk or dodging the ranting of a man that would scream at me but not to me.
It’s usually when I feel I’m sailing below the radar of danger or misfortune that I find myself unlucky. It’s usually when I decide to look again that I realize my memory had cleaned out the darker side of things. Buffalo is a poor city, one of the poorest in the country. I wonder now why I was surprised to see the windows bashed in and the dashboard ripped apart when I woke up Sunday morning after a quick visit with some old collage friends. It should have been no surprise that the only car that was robbed Saturday night was a white VW bug with Georgia license plates. The consolation however was fresh squeezed orange juice from Pano’s and a night out with beautiful weather in Buffalo.

I’d forgotten how friendly the people were in Buffalo, I’d also forgotten how desperate the city way. Pete is right. “Buffalo is poor but people just don’t care their living life and enjoying it.

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Yesterday the family and I picked a couple of gallons of pie cherries, and while Billy and I pitted them, we played a game called “Grandmother’s Trunk.”

Perhaps you remember playing it as a child?

My mother played a version of it with my siblings and I on long car trips…it helped to pass the time, and kept us from too-silly or irritating behaviors.

I think, too, that it was a useful stand-in for our regular homeschool program – something her natural-teacher’s mind found paramount.

Anyway, it was fun, and it proved a good choice for the hour that I was trapped pitting cherries with a talkative son.

The game goes like this:

Grandmother is going on a trip, and she packed in her trunk:

- and you say something that begins with “A”.

The next person has to remember what the first person said, and add something that begins with “B”.

And so forth, to the end of the alphabet.

Billy is not a linguistic genius, so we kept it simple, using almost anything that came to mind.

 

Here is the list we wound up with:

Grandmother packed…

…an airplane,

a broom,

a cherry,

a dog,

an elephant,

a fish,

a gorilla (this was Billy’s choice – we’d recently read a story about a gorilla family in a zoo),

a hat,

some ice,

jacks, the game,

a king,

a lion,

a “mike” (I think, the creature from Dr. Suess),

nothing,

an ostrich,

a peach,

a quail,

a row boat,

a snake,

a turtle,

an umbrella,

a violin,

a walrus,

some xylum,

a yak, and

a zoo.

As you see, when you play with a six-year-old, Grandmother must necessarily have a very large trunk.

As Billy grows older, we will, I suppose, play this game more frequently, and make additional rules to challenge ourselves.

But before I tell how my mother did this, I’d like to point out what merits the game has even with this very simple version.

First of all, it forces a child who is a bit shaky in the ordering or naming of his alphabet to improve. He must repeat the letters over and over in order to play, and, depending on how good his attention span is, may need to repeat it several times per turn.

Secondly, it improves memorization and organizational skills. If a child can’t come to a point where the mention of one thing triggers the next, he’s at a distinct disadvantage.

Thirdly, it requires the players to consider spelling, possibly grammar, and lots of vocabulary. For instance, Billy had a terrible time coming up with a “U” word. We’d just been talking about England, and finally I said, “I’m thinking of something that we don’t use much here, but that people use a lot in England, because it’s a very rainy and foggy country.” Instantly he said, “Umbrella!” I never give a word outright, but will present clues.

My mother used this game with our unit studies. A unit study is a method where you take one subject, say, insects, and build all your curriculum around it. You might, for instance, include history with older students by discussing the grasshopper plagues of the western U.S.  in the 1800’s, and you might include math by calculating how many flies might descend from one mother fly, from April to September. So when we did a unit study on the solar system, Mom played Grandmother’s Trunk one day, modifying it so that we were “Going to Mars, and taking”…only items related to the solar system or space travel. When I nannied my little cousins one summer, I played the game with the older one (an eight-year-old), and we challenged ourselves by only naming animals, or flowers, or places.

The main idea is to have fun, and constructively take up time when the going is tedious…every mother needs such a tool in her box.

Drop a coment and tell me how it works out with your own little ones.

Not to much to say, though my writers block might be because I’m sitting along the St. Lawrence River enjoying a cool NY evening and don’t really have it in me to stair at a computer all night. The image above is from the market located in the center of town in Kingston, Canada. Will write more next time, cheers!

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Sarah Ludwig Rausch is a mom of four and a freelance writer. Sarah specializes in parenting, children’s health, agriculture and family issues and writes a blog, “Parenting By Trial and Error.” She’s written for The Christian Science Monitor, The Progressive Farmer, Farm Industry News, Singapore ’s parenting magazine Motherhood, and a variety of other publications.I’m so proud of myself.

I drove over 2400 miles alone with my four kids last month to visit my parents, aunts, uncles and cousins, all without anyone losing any limbs or vital organs. I only lost my patience a few times — the incessant squabbling, whining and air-hitting took its toll, as did the inevitable question, “Are we almost there?” — and amazingly, the drive went much faster than I had anticipated.

We had some quite pleasant and interesting conversations. I learned that Cody is a truly deep thinker. The concepts he thinks about are way more complex than the typical 5-year-old. I learned that Rachel is crazy-in-love with Nick Jonas and that Andie worries more about life than I thought possible. I also learned, again, that Logan can fall asleep in a vehicle mid-bite.

It was a great experience. Not just visiting the relatives and getting away from the stress of everyday life, but the long periods of time spent with my kids, showing them the gradual rising and swelling of the land as we drove further west, and reveling in their awe at the mountains I had taken for granted growing up. It was like seeing the landscape for the first time again to see it through their fascinated eyes.

Showing them my grandparents’ old house, the house that my great-grandfather built, visiting my grandparents’ graves and the elementary school I attended was probably more interesting for me than for them, but the girls seemed excited to see parts of my past. It was fun to show them the things I remembered, even though old haunts, stores and streets were undoubtedly fairly insignificant to them.

Watching them getting to know my aunts and uncles and cousins, and particularly my 96-year-old grandmother, made me swell with happiness. At home, the only family nearby is my sister, so being around all of this extended family, as well as my parents, was bliss. I love my family to pieces and it has always bugged me that I live so far away from them.

So, it was with sadness and a few tears that we made our way back home. As the landscape became flatter and flatter, we knew we were close to home (though the hordes of bugs committing suicide on our windshield gave us a clue as well). And when we pulled into my in-laws’ yard at the last half hour of our trip and the kids all jumped out of the van with cries of uninhibited joy, I knew we’re in a good place here too.

Now that I know I can make that trip by myself, my family doesn’t seem so far away anymore.

However, the beautiful weather and virtually bug-less environment my family is blessed enough to live in now seems impossibly far.

You gotta love the good ol’ Midwest. Or at least use lots of mosquito repellent.

Hotel beds are made for JUMPING!

Cincinnati, The Queen City. At first I loved this city it just sprung up after the endless roads of Kentucky and was a welcomed sight. It had the charm of Buffalo and the hilly aesthetic of a port town. I was so excited to be there for a night and there were so many street festivals going on late into the night that I was able to walk Walter safely due to all the people and police around. While Walter and I were walking near the fountain square we ran into no other then SENYA! He was in town for a wedding it was a real shock (though it wouldn’t have been if I just called people back, opps).

I’m back from Maine and ready to continue blogging — And ready for summer vacation at home! The trip to Maine was good enough, except for the fact that it rained all week. Read on, and all will be revealed…

The long car ride up to Maine was mostly uneventful. When we stopped at a visitor’s center in NH and had lunch, we went into the refreshments center and got candy bars (a rare treat in this household), only to find that our family favorite, the vintage Sky Bar, had gone from the machine. A small disappointment, but it did little to dent our high spirits.

When we arrived at our cabin in Maine, we were greeted by a large amount of rain, fog, and clouds hanging over the pond. The dock was under a couple feet of water, and I couldn’t get out to it without wearing my dad’s chest waders; The waders are highly unfashionable green rubber overalls with rainboots attached. They looked hilarious on me, seeing as they are meant for a grown man. Anyway, once we went into the cabin itself, everything was fine, and I got right down to reading.

The next day, the weather was still yucky. More reading ensued, until I finally broke and turned on the ancient television. It doesn’t have a remote control, and the actual screen is about 6″ by 10″. It only gets three channells: The news, the news, and some random reality channell. The news wasn’t coming through, so I watched about 10 seconds of the other and turned it off in disgust: It was a take-off of Judge Judy called Judge Joe Brown (Justice…Honor…JOE). I watched the movie E.T. instead.

The next day it was still raining, and my mom was desperate to get out of “the hovel”. She took me to the local flea market again, and I purchased a few little things, as well as two cheap books that were still in great condition. After the flea market, we went back home, and guess what I did: more reading. A few days of reading, shopping, and wading to the dock came into the vacation.

One rainy day, we drove into North Conway, NH to do a little shopping and to eat at a restaurant. We went to a second-hand bookstore that took hand-me-downs from big stores and sold them for a low price. I bought two books: A School For Sorcery and City of Masks.We went to a little shop that sold sauces and preserves and a bought a few items for gift-giving. After that, we drove to one of our favorite restaurants and ate.

The last full day we were in Maine, the sun finally came out. My dad bought a cord of firewood that we all had to chop, haul, and stack neatly into the wood pile. Uphill, downhill, lifting, stacking…It was harder than it seems. After we were nearly finished with that, my dad took care of the rest while my mom painted the lawn chairs and I doodled around in the pond.

The ride home was pretty boring, since my MP3 player ran out of battery with one hour to go. I sat and watched the rain come down. Just as we were about to enter my home region, sideways lightning lit up the sky, and thunder crashed. That made it a bit more interesting!

Dear M & E:

What a busy week we had! A big thank you to both of you for being so great early this week while I tried to get things together for our trip to Columbus. I know you could tell that something exciting was going to be happening soon, but you were both very good girls while I was getting everything ready. On Wednesday afternoon, we were finally ready to go! I can’t believe how happy you two were in the van while we were driving. I feel like such a lucky Mommy to have such great little girls who seem to find some fun in everything we do.

We spent a long time in the van driving on Wednesday evening, but then we got to the hotel and had a little fun before bedtime. It was a cool suite with a separate bedroom, living room and kitchen. M, you had a great time running around a looking at everything. You even agreed to use the “new” potty – it was scary to try something different than you were used to at home and I am very proud of you for being so brave. I told you we were on a Potty Adventure, learning about new kinds of potties! E, you were having fun crawling around on the beds and the couch with Grandma while Mommy unloaded the van. New things for everyone to explore! Finally, it was time to settle down for bed. That was pretty tough because it was SO LATE. Everyone was very tired, but also a little grumpy. I was proud of you girls for settling down so quickly so we could all get some rest, even though things were different from being at home.

Lots of new things to see!

Thursday was another long day of driving in the van. Still, you two were such good girls! We ate breakfast at McDonald’s – pancakes and biscuits – YUMMY! That seemed to start everyone’s day off in a very happy mood. While we drove, we watched Dora movies and Finding Nemo and you both took a really long nap together. It was funny to see you talking and playing with each other when you were awake. I think when you’re bigger you will have even MORE fun together. (It’s my hope that you two will be great friends to each other as you get bigger. Your friends may change as you grow up, but if you treat each other with love and respect, you will always be able to depend on each other!)

This weekend we also got to spend some time with Nana, Papa, Aunt Melissa, Caroline, Zach and Uncle Ben. It was great to see family we haven’t seen in awhile! We’re celebrating Uncle Ben’s graduation from college. That’s lots of hard work and we told him we’re really proud of him. It’ll be fun for us to be here for a couple of weeks so you can enjoy spending more time with your Grandpa and Uncle Ben. You two love to be super-silly with them and they miss you very much when we’re far away.

It’s very late now and I’m sharing the guest bedroom at Grandma & Grandpa’s house with you, M, so I’m going to go to bed now so I can cuddle with you! You’re usually too busy running and exploring during the day to cuddle, but you’ve been such a cuddlebug at nighttime. I consider it a special treat to get to be with you a little extra! Can’t wait until BOTH of you are big enough to cuddle in bed with me. More fun times to come…

Sweet dreams my lovebugs,

Mommy

The Trip Home!

As I think EVERYONE knows by now I’ll be taking a road trip with Walter. We will be stopping along a zig-zag rout from Atlanta to Rochester in a number of cities and even taking a little side trip to none other then Falling Water (yippy! I have to finaly go see that place). I’ll be leaving Atlanta around June 24th so for you ATL kids expect a going away outing and for you kids along the way get ready for a very excited Gina and a year old puppy.

Here is the tenative trip and planned stops:

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Happy Memorial Day, readers! I’m back from Maine and ready to continue blogging. I had a great time in Maine–lots of adventure! We drove up to our cabin (it took at least 4 and 1/2 hours), and confronted something as soon as we stepped out of the car: a squished frog! Bleugh! Other than that, the place was in good shape: first of all, the place was still there (always a good sign), and the roof hadn’t caved in. The dock was fully intact and rearing to go, the pond showed no signs of flooding, and the kayaks hadn’t been stolen. The inside was perfectly fine as well. I was happy to revisit the upstairs bedroom (dubbed “The Lair”) and get settled into mini-vacation mode. The rest of the evening involved getting the water pump started, grocery shopping (we picked up a copy of Uncle Andy’s Digest, so get ready for some side-splitting posts in the future), and having a camp dinner of hamburgers and chocolate cookies for dessert; the cookies are a tradition of ours, all gathered round the wood stove with little plates full of cookies and glasses of milk.

The next day, we got up to a blazing fire (courtesy of my early-rising father), and some cereal and toast. The morning was just lazing around, then after lunch we went shopping at the local flea market and a nearby shoe store! The shoe store yielded a pair of sneakers each for my mom and I, which I am immensely happy about! At the flea market, I not-so-patiently waited while my mom painstakingly went through the booths searching for unbelievable finds. I was waiting for my favorite booth, one filled with magical paraphernalia. When we finally got to it, I discovered the place had been gutted and filled with sports junk! Not one to lose hope, I dug through it all and found a few traces of its fantastical history, and snagged a small glass bottle labeled “Dragon’s Blood” and filled with scented oil. We stopped for ice cream on the way back to the cabin, and the rest of the evening was rather the same as the last.

Today was our last day there, and I tried to take advantage of it. I read quite a lot in the cosy cabin living room, and went on a solo kayak trip across the lake. The vacation was over all to soon. But we’ll be coming  back right after school ends, in about three or four weeks. Can’t wait!

Recently the whole FringeFamily was in the car and my son attempted to play hangman with my daughter.  Slightly dazed and confused, my daughter wasn’t getting the concept of just guessing letters – any letters.

Impatiently FringeBoy prodded, telling her to “Just pick random letters!”

With all seriousness and bit of disappointment, my daughter looked at my son and said “I haven’t learned those letters yet.”

* Coming Soon *

The Random Alphabet according to FringeKid

Incase you’re upset thinking I forgot about Earth Day, please know that I have a plastic reusable grocery bag full of Diet Coke cans waiting to go back to the store for recycling.  Don’t forget I’ve made a commitment to be green in 2009! 

I am happy to say that we survived the twenty plus hour car trip and made it home from the family vacation all in one piece.  Granted, the return trip was not without incident — we never have a dull moment in my world!  After stopping overnight in Tennessee to catch some shut-eye, we found the traffic to be horrendous once we got back on the road yesterday morning.  My husband decided to take side roads to get ahead of the interstate “parking lot.” Unfortunately, these side roads were nothing but hills and curves, which we discovered the hard way do not mix well with five year olds and M n’ M’s. My poor son threw up a fountain of chocolate all over himself, prompting us to pull off the road in the middle of nowhere, Indiana.  As we were cleaning up the mess, a scruffy, rather mean-looking stray dog had made a beeline to our car in search of food. Apparently, my son must’ve smelled pretty appetizing because the dog had chased him around to the other side of the car.  It totally freaked me out because I suddenly had all those horrorfic images from the news flashing through my head about crazy dogs mauling small children.  Thank God this dog did not consider my son to be his idea of a tasty lunch, and we managed to get the dog to run off.  We continued to clean up the mess while I thanked my lucky stars that it was just a chocolate puke and not something more putrid, like cheese or milk.  It might sound odd, but I can deal much better with a faint smell of chocolate in a small, contained area for several hours than I can with the awfulness of putrid, sour milk (been there, done that).  After the barf-o-rama extraordinaire, we made it home without any further drama. And with a snap of the fingers, just like that, the days of lounging on the beach in the eighty degree temperatures were all but a memory….

In a nonstop deluge worthy of an ark, we drove up to Virginia to visit some friends of ours who have landed on the outskirts of Richmond.  Scott Simon kept us company for part of the ride, and when he left us due to WUNC’s declining signal, we relived our college glory days with R.E.M.  The kids didn’t seem too enamored with this musical choice and chose to occupy themselves in other ways:

I am all for raising glorious bookworms who can read in the car without getting carsick like myself.  They keep themselves occupied and entertained, and it sure looks hilarious to see your 22 month old daughter poring over a picture book like it contains the meaning of life.

A passenger view of French highways on Black Saturday

There are two totally different types of people on a long car trip and both require a very different menu of raw travelling delights. 

And from my recent experience, nothing fresh and raw whatsover is available from any of the highway pitstops dotted along the tarmac from London to the Alps.  So it is really, really, really worthwhile preparing ahead, particularly if you are dim enough to take that car trip through France on a February Black Saturday.

For drivers
You need lots of energy and obviously you need to be alert. 

1. Sugar up with lots of dried fruit, such as dates, apricots and prunes;
2. Also eat lots of fresh fruit, such as bananas and apples, cherries and grapes; and
3. Drink young coconut water and lots of H2O.  The extra water will force you to stop regularly so you can walk around, get your blood moving around your body and take in some fresh air. With the bonus electrolytes in the coconut water, your brain will also stay nice, fresh and hydrated to keep you thinking clearly.

For passengers
Unlike your driver, you need to stay as chilled out as possible.

1. Stay off sugars completely;
2. Swamp your system with magnesium and potassium to calm your nerves with vital salts. To do this, I suggest starting out with a tablespoon of Black Strap Molasses dissolved in a pint of warm water. A by-product of sugar cane production, and with more potassium than almost any other food, Black Strap Molasses is one of my absolute, all time favourite raw food superfoods. It is also a rich source of essential magnesium, iron and vitamin B;
3. Eat lots of avocado, carrots, nuts and celery to keep full. And make sure you share these with your focussed, hopefully wide-eyed driver.

This is a personal question, but when you use a public restroom, do you feel you need to buy something from the establishment  to pay for the privilege, if you get my drift?   (No pun intended there, Sport.)   

Years ago we were driving back to Wisconsin after picking Oldest Daughter up from her southern college.  The scenic backroad through the Blue Ridge mountains was a poor choice, for when I needed to GO, we had to ride for miles to find a bathroom, finally spotting an old gas/grocery store.    I walked inside as fast as dignity would allow only to see a disheartening sign on the single restroom door:  Out of Order.  I raced out to stop Dearly Beloved before he began pumping gas.

“Don’t buy it here!  Their bathroom is out of order!” 

He was obligingly returning the hose to the pump  when Boo, our oldest daughter, stuck her head out of the store door.  “Mom, the man says it’s okay to use the restroom!”

DB began filling our tank  and I went back inside the store only to find out that my sneaky daughter had gone in ahead of me.  

When it was my turn. . . how can I say this delicately?… I set about taking care of matters as quietly as possible.  It took awhile; I had been in misery for the last forty miles and the winding road had made me a little carsick so,  to use a driving term, there was backup.

I finished.  I flushed.  Nothing.

I flushed again.  Nothing… only the hollow rattle of the handle.  Not good!   Removing the lid from the tank revealed there was no water in it.   Apparently there had been enough for one flush and Boo had used it!  I jiggled anything that looked  jiggle-able, made sure the little rubber thingie was in place–the extent of my plumbing  knowledge–and replaced the lid.  I flushed again.  Nothing.

I dumped the contents of the trash can onto the floor with the idea of filling it  to pour into the toilet bowl, but it was too large to fit under the spigot.  Panic began to set in as I looked around the room for a vessel.  Nothing.  I didn’t even have my purse with me.  Yes, I’d have considered it!    In desperation I cupped my hands under the faucet and tried to sling water into the bowl, but that didn’t work at all.   I thought briefly of  making a run for it, calling to my family on the way out the door, but I could imagine the owner using our charge receipt to hunt us down, then putting  my photo on a poster declaring, “BATHROOM BANNED!!”

Enough time had elapsed that  my family had to be wondering about me.  It was obvious Mom hadn’t gone in for a quick tinkle.  There was only one thing left to do.  I cracked the door and hissed frantically at  Pogo, our younger daughter, who was standing close by.  “Pssssst…POGO!  GET YOUR DAD!!!”

This man has gone through many travails with me, but none were approached more reluctantly than this one.  He entered that bathroom like the condemned man making that last, lonely walk.    There was no seat lid and short of throwing my body across it, there wasn’t much I could do to hide my…transgressions.   Yes, DB, I have bowel movements!  

“SHEENGAH-HONGA , you did THAT????   I would never have BELIEVED that my wife …”  gagging noises and on and on.  Soon all three kids were knocking on the door wanting to see what was happening and who knows what the guys behind the counter were thinking.  Finally it came. . . the wonderful, wet  flush!    

In addition to the gasoline, we bought a bag full of snacks and made our retreat, swearing off further back road driving.  These days we make our stops at  fast food restaurants where  I cast logic aside and buy still another Diet Coke to replace the one that  necessitated the stop in the first place, then  I’m good for another hundred miles.    Back to my original point, however, we are not restroom freeloaders.  We always pay to play, so to speak. 

Yesterday we went out to lunch and afterwards Dearly Beloved handed me the keys and asked me to drive back alone. He wanted to walk down to the beach and then would walk home.  I had some errands to run, so I didn’t get home until a couple of hours later.   When I walked  into our  bedroom  I was surprised to see, laid out on the bed, a new jacket which was embroidered with the logo of the local fishing pier .

I found DB in the sunroom, watching CNBC.  “That  jacket is  for ME?  Is it a Valentine?”

He never took his eyes off the television.  “I had to use the restroom at the pier.  It was either the jacket or a granola bar.”

I’m not even going to ask.