Recently in Real Life Category

The blog silence betwixt this post and this post was due to a vacation. Not mine, but the children's. They went off to Puerto Rico for two weeks with a pair of grandparents and H and I were left to our own devices. It was the longest we've been without children since D came along fourteen years ago.

An outsider might think we had ourselves a second Honeymoon...but they'd be wrong. This ship is set up for a crew of four and the absence of two left the First Mate (that's me) exhausted trying to keep this ship afloat. Thank goodness for a Captain who helped pick up the slack. So, while I did suffer a tinge of Empty Nest Syndrome, I was frankly too tired most of the time to pay it any mind.

While I was working like a pack mule, my girl got a chance to put her Christmas gift to use and came back with some lovely photos - if I do say so myself. These are three of my favorites:

Some more of D's photos are over at Flickr. As for the children, they're now home safe and sound and I'm nearly recovered from their vacation.

To my Dearest Love,

Today is our Fifteenth Anniversary and I love you much more than I did then. I loved you with a childish love, irrational and selfish; I love you now with a purer love, refined by adversity and maturity. You are my golden dawn and my silver moonlight. You are my true north and I am hopelessly, boundlessly, eternally devoted to you.

Happy Anniversary to my best friend, my knight-errant, the Captain of my ship.  

Today is the 5th anniversary of my foray into the Blogosphere (though, I did have a Geocities website long before 2005).

And what was that very first post of mine?

"Everyone Needs a Little Love":

These cinnamon mints I bought last week at Jo-Ann's Etc. are tasty but I really bought them for the TIN.

The accompanying photo has long since disappeared into the vapors of the internet, but the tin is still going strong in my purse as an impromptu (and inexpensive) pill box.

I seem to be celebrating important anniversaries left and right lately.

Last November, it was the 10th anniversary of this little homeschooling adventure of ours. Who knew that those early days of phonics and addition would lead to Dante's Inferno and polynomials?

And my husband and I will celebrate 15 years of marriage this summer. Phenomenal!

But today I fondly remember that single sentence that propelled me into the land of blogs and posts, of navel gazing and soapbox minutia. 

Hundreds visit my little part of the internet every day and I appreciate each and every one of you.

Thank you all for stopping by.

May your day be filled with...

It is very sad when a blogger must be reminded by her son to post. It's not really that I forgot, though; I've just been so occupied lately.

Spring fever has hit me and I keep thinking all the time about planting and growing.

Also, I've been terribly busy outfitting my rapidly-growing children. But I only enjoy shopping in theory, so let's return to the topic of planting.

I have this wonderful husband who actually buys me dirt. Buying dirt is an activity my children still find perplexing, but it is impossible to do anything much with all the sand we have lurking beneath the surface in this neighborhood.

My husband also bought me seed packets: True Lavender, Yarrow, Snow-in-Summer, Blue Flax, Mammoth Sunflower, and Black-Eyed-Susans. It is one of my life goals to grow my own sunflowers. It's another life goal to eat sunflower seeds I've grown. Kissing the Blarney Stone is yet another goal, but that's a tale for some other day.

In addition to all these seeds, I planted my Grand-MIL's amaryllis bulbs. Now, she said they were amaryllis, but it seems many bulbs of the Amaryllis family are erroneously called "Amaryllis". All I really know is that these bulbs grow lovely flowers.

This is what the flowers looked like when the plants bloomed back in April of 2006.

So, it's not that I've forgotten y'all. I'm just busy at the moment cleaning the dirt from underneath my fingernails. 

I'm home this Easter morning. A family member has come down again with the Spring Plague that is going around.  I'm home and there are so many other places I wish I was.

I wish I was in church. I wish we had a church. I wish I wasn't in constant pain. I wish I didn't have to take medicines that cloud my faculties. I wish I was not so impatient. I wish I didn't cry at the drop of a hat. I wish I could spend just one day healthy.

I wonder if Christ had wishes, that night in the garden, the night he sweated blood.

How much did he know about what was to come?

Did he know just how much he was going to suffer? Was it the pain of torture that hurt him so or the betrayals and abandonment? Which was worse: the nails or the broken heart?

I don't know, but I do know that when he exclaimed, "It is finished," on the cross that it wasn't. It was far from finished.

The story didn't end on the cross, in the darkness, in the midst of a coming storm. It looked like the end, but things are seldom as they appear.

And as much as we are persuaded that the story ends with sunrise services, with frilly dresses, with fancy brunches, with pastel eggs, with fluffy bunnies, that is not the end either.

The end has already been revealed; it is no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying. The end is no more pain.

Today is not the end; it is the remembrance of things past, the celebration of things to come. Today is the reminder of Christ's promise to those who take up the cross and follow him.

Our story doesn't end alone in the dark; it ends with jubilee. 

I've always wanted a Hobbit home. I think it has something to do with the round doors. I prefer round things, curvy things. They meander gently, without the sharpness of angles.

Knowing my fondness, my daughter made me a tiny Hobbit hill with a minusucle Hobbit house.

Isn't that so sweet? I'll completely overlook the fact that she made this whilst she was supposed to be engrossed in schoolwork. Ahem.

Really, though, who can be mad at her for long? She is such a sweet lass. And her left eyebrow always rises when she laughs. Just like her father.

He has very curly hair and promised she would too. He swore she'd have a head full of delicious baby curls.

Imagine my surprise when the midwife handed me a nearly-bald baby girl. But my husband promised me...and I've been bringing that up for fourteen years. 

Yet, the poor child still had nothing but straight hair.

Then, suddenly, these springy spirals came from nowhere. I still can't believe it and I can't stop making them go boing-boing.

What an obnoxious mother I am!

But, honestly, could you restrain yourself around such angelic ringlets?

It took quite a while, but my husband did indeed keep his promise and gave me a beautiful, curly-tressed daughter.

But I supplied the freckles.

Our backyard is ajacent to a trailer park. No offence against people who live in trailers, but that park is a continual source of problems. Usually, it's petty robbers. The largest problem was the teenage serial rapist. Thankfully, he's in jail now. But, we're back to robbers now. One neighbor was cleaned out. Another neighbor had a broken fence to repair, but nothing stolen.

Then, there's our house.

Two bikes were stolen.

But, I'm not that upset. One bike was much too small for my rapidly growing son. The other bike had such a brake problem that multiple people were not able to repair it. Both bikes were headed elsewhere. They just made it to "elsewhere" a bit sooner than planned.

I am a bit peeved that a fence slat is broken and my husband will have to repair it.

That someone entered my domain, however, makes me downright livid.

This is my home and my yard. How dare some pipsqueak bike thief enter my realm! I'm considering my options: gun, viscious dog, barbed wire, electrical fence, attack skunk. What do you recommend?

Perhaps, I can learn falconry like the boy in "My Side of the Mountain" and train one of the lovely hawks that like to watch the Dawn rise while perched on my back fence.

I hope the poet of succinct apologies will forgive: 

This is just to say -

Love means never sharing Strep -

Cough, Groan, Sneeze, Sniff, Moan

I think I might have actually improved upon the original, what with my homage to "Love Story" and inclusion of alliteration and onomatopoeia and all that. Please pay no attention to William Carlos Williams rolling in his grave.

I suspect this is just the sort of missive a pencil-pusher at the CDC sends to his loved ones. The royalties from Hallmark should come pouring in soon.

'Til then, I'm pushing pills and passing out tissues - as we all have Strep Throat.

For your St. Patrick's Day dinner, here are my favorite recipes for this day:

Colcannon

2 tsp. vegetable oil
3 tsp. butter, divided
1 leek, halved and cut in 1/2 inch strips
1 onion, halved and cut in 1/2 inch strips
8 red potatoes, baked
15oz. beef broth
salt and pepper
1 green cabbage, quartered, cored, and cut in 3/4 inch strips

1.  Heat oil & 1 tsp. butter on medium.
2.  Saute leek 7 onion until they start to brown.
3.  Add half the cabbage, stirring and turning until coated with oil and wilted.
4.  Continue adding cabbage and stirring one hand full at a time until wilted.
5.  Pour in half of broth and bring to a boil. Simmer until cabbage absorbs broth. Add remaining broth. Cook until cabbage is soft.
6.  Slice baked potatoes and add to cabbage.
7.  Add shredded or sliced corned beef.
8.  Salt and pepper. Add remaining butter.

Irish Soda Bread (from Martha Stewart)

3 cups all-purpose flour, plus more for dusting
1 cup whole-wheat graham flour
2 1/2 teaspoons coarse salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
4 tablespoons cold unsalted butter, cut into small pieces
1 2/3 cups buttermilk

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper; set aside. Whisk together the flours, salt, baking soda, and baking powder in a large bowl. With a pastry blender or your fingertips, blend in butter until it resembles small peas. Add buttermilk all at once; stir with a fork until mixture holds together.
2. In the bowl, pat the dough into a domeshaped loaf about 7 inches in diameter. Lift out dough; transfer to lined sheet.
3. Lightly dust top of loaf with flour. Cut a 3/4-inch-deep cross in top, reaching almost all the way to edges. Bake, rotating sheet halfway through, until deep golden brown and a cake tester inserted into the center comes out clean, about 1 hour and 20 minutes. Let cool on a wire rack.

Have you received your 2010 Census Form? Be sure to fill it out and send it back. Census records have always been an important part of genealogy and I want my descendents to be able to look me up in 72 years.

At my house, we have 2 White Puerto Rican guys, 1 White Puerto Rican girl, and 1 plain ol' White girl. In truth, we're a bunch of ethnic mutts here at my house - something we're proud of but something the census, unfortunately, does not capture.

So, here's my Census 2010 addendum:

1 male Spanish/French/Basque/African or Puerto Rican Indian

and

1 female Irish/Scottish/English/German?/American Indian

married with a boy and a girl

The census asks what color our skin is but I think the bigger question is whether America is a melting pot or salad bowl. I was taught by a teacher in high school that we are a salad bowl, but I am sure now that America is a melting pot. Why else would my little Puerto Ricans eat Colcannon on St. Patrick's Day?