something like this

This morning

This afternoon

This morning was more than grey and rainy. This morning was downright surly. The rain sheeted down and gusts slapped at our legs. It wasn’t pretty. This afternoon, the day was all, “I’m so, so sorry! I just – I don’t know what got into me. Honest, I didn’t mean it – here, I made this bright sparkly for you.” And just like that, we forgave it, like it won’t do the same thing again tomorrow. We’re such suckers sometimes.

My bike had a new first today – check it out!

As I rolled away from school, a dad called out, “Hey, is it legal to have a volcano on your bike?”

Christmas Eve gingerbread house construction at Sherri and Rik’s house

There’s something about all those small bowls filled with twisted red vines, ruby red hots, sparkling sugar gumdrops… it’s a story, a fairy tale. We had such a beautiful Christmas Eve, warm and bright, with amazing friends.

Holiday boats

Every December, we make sure we take a night drive to look at the holiday lights. It’s particularly fun when you live near water.

Marshmallows

Don’t believe me?

Yup, homemade! Right until about a month ago, I never even imagined that you could just up and make marshmallows. Here’s a confession – I don’t even like marshmallows all that much. The taste, that is. I’m nuts about their shape and powdery softness – they’re gorgeous. But the only way I can eat them is perfectly toasted and squashed between graham crackers and chocolate. (You could probably make just about anything taste good with that method.) These were really fun to make, though, and the kids ate them for me so that was a win-win.

Santa Bags

It wouldn’t be a proper Christmas without one crazy 11th hour project on my part. This year, it was making bags to leave out for Santa (we’re all about saving Santa some time on a busy night). So there I was, two nights before Christmas, whipping up random bags out of old shirts, pajamas, dresses, you name it. The good news? They’re super fast to make, they work, and Christmas morning cleanup is a snap!

Resolution #1: Stop ignoring blog.

Holidays are the best and worst times to have a blog. They’re overflowing with all the kinds of activities I like most, which means I have plenty to talk about but no time in which to say it. We were a whirlwind of seasonal festivities. My lists had lists.

Now that the wrapping paper has settled a bit, I’ll put up a few posts with highlights and nonsense from the past couple of weeks.

CHRISTMAS COOKIES

Say no more, right?

Double chocolates (some with sea salt for an extra bit of happiness).

Gingersnaps

Ginger trees (Hot Wheels helped me ice these with white icing and sparkling sugar to look like they had snow on them, and then we stood them all over a chocolate cake with white frosting sprinkled with coconut to make a woodsy scene. Lesson learned: ginger and chocolate? YUM.)

Christmas cookies in process.

Christmas cookies in action. And upside down. And on a plate. And in a house. This is fast becoming the Dr Seuss cookie edition.

Absent on photo day:

- massive chocolate chips

- meringues

Let me tell you a quick story about those meringues, actually. They were my Christmas Miracle Cookies. (You’d think if they were that significant, I’d have gotten a photo of them, but no.) I’ve been having bad meringue karma around here. For years, I made them without a thought. Just whipped them up when necessary and never had a problem. Lately, I haven’t been able to make them work; I’ve been cursed by the sticky meringue gods and every attempt has been a flop. Or a glop, if you were to try them.

So when I found myself the night before Christmas Eve with three egg whites and no plan for them, I thought, “Don’t do it, Laura. You’re setting yourself up for disappointment.” But it was Christmas, by gum, and I was armed with my new Baker’s Illustrated cookbook. I followed the instructions to a T. The meringues actually held their form while I attempted to shape them into little trees (for the aforementioned cake tableau). I baked them super slow, and didn’t open the oven until it had been off for about 5 hours. I tasted them… sticky. Rrrgh. I went to bed Scroogily.

The next morning I complained to Tom that yet again, I messed up the meringue and didn’t know how. “Where are they?” he asked. “In the oven. I’m not talking to them.” Tom pulled them out. “They look good!” he said hopefully. “That’s what they want you to think.” I grumbled. He snapped one in half.

He snapped one in half. It snapped!! It was dry, and light, and just right – cue the choir, people, we have liftoff! What’s Christmas without a (albeit very very small) miracle?

Here’s a shot of the table from our Christmas Day open house:

Holy potato chips, Batman! That’s a big bowl. I didn’t realize how huge it looked. Of course, they were gone in a heartbeat, leaving that poor glass jar of celery and carrots to wonder if they’d every be asked to dance. Seriously, though, I don’t know why I ever bother with celery. Does anyone eat it? We put it out just to feel noble, I think.

What you can’t see, on the very edge of the table, is the ricotta pie. Oh yes, I did it, and it isn’t even Easter! (For those of you who’ve never heard about Lena’s Ricotta Pie, you can check it out here.) We never used to get this treat on a non-Easter day, but I broke that tradition wide open, I tell ya. A couple of our guests asked me what was in “the giant pop tart,” which momentarily offended my childhood sensibilities, but then I was forced to admit the resemblance. Poor pie.

I hope you also had a wonderful holiday filled with sweets and relaxation. Hmmm, that said, it looks like celery might just have its day, after all!

Today’s post is just a small collection of random notes and observations from around our house the past few weeks. Bits and bobs. Let’s start with this guy:

Fall in Northern California means it’s humungo spider time. Spiders all over the place in sizes perhaps not rainforest-worthy, but nonetheless substantial. Spiders that turn the garden into one massive, intricate obstacle course. Spiders whose webs take the unsuspecting by surprise, sending them into fits and seizures, swiping at the air all around them. Walking into one of these webs is sticky, but the real issue is that you know the web maker is around somewhere and you do NOT want it in your hair.

One afternoon I was sitting on a toy box at the end of Honey’s bed and I turned to see this one right outside the window. I love the line quality of the web (and of the screen separating us).

While the kids were sick a couple of weeks ago, I was sitting on Hot Wheels’ bed and I snapped this picture of his wall.

He loves putting his drawings all over the wall. Almost the moment a vehicle is down on paper, he’s dashing for the sticky tape. We finally bought some magnetic boards for his room, so he can have a rotating collection. We’ll probably get them hung sometime before he’s in high school.

Then one afternoon I opened the cupboard door in the kitchen to find this message:

Obviously this would be a little more successful if she’d rearranged the words a bit, or at least put a comma after ‘eat,’ but we get the point. Hands off my cookie crisp, Daddy. I can’t remember why he bought it for her (repression is a wonderful thing), but clearly he was violating the terms of their agreement.

The next two photos I’ll call “The Take.”

We’re looking at the morning after Halloween, here. This is the meticulous classification of candy species. The top image is Hot Wheels’ collection, the bottom is Honey’s, after they’ve finished trading all the candy he can’t eat (dang allergies) for the kinds he can have. Honey is generous and unhesitant to swap him for anything he can’t have, but you’ll see here that it’s clearly all in her favor. Who gets all the A-list candy? She does. Fortunately for him, he’s never had them, so he really doesn’t know what he’s missing! If he ever gets to try a Reese’s peanut butter cup, he’ll have to follow it up with some kind of therapy for sure.

Well that wraps up random-hour I think. Now back to your regularly scheduled programming…

Well things have been creeping along out here. Honey’s not exactly on the express recovery train, but I guess it’s to be expected given all she’s been through. Last week she started back to school, thanks to my new best friend, Motrin. Friday was her first full day back and it went pretty well, and over the weekend it seemed we were out of the woods; she still had pain but it was manageable with medication. This morning, though, it flattened her again. Was it the classic equation, Pain + Monday = Misery? Quite possible. But the last time I brushed off her jaw pain she had raging infections and emergency surgery, so I’m a little hesitant to step down that path again.

Then there’s Hot Wheels, who woke up this morning looking mostly grey with a slight flush to the sides of his cheeks and complaining of a ‘liquidy mouth.’ I took a look, and there was the swollen red throat with the red spots all across the top, looking all too familiar. That was a drag because we’ve already done our tour of duty in Strepland this year and are meant to be on leave. Who’s handling these assignments, I ask you?

Finally, for the full set, we have poor Tom who cricked his neck something fierce on Saturday afternoon and has been doing the Frankenstein walk since then. Poor guy – it’s one of those injuries that deliver amazing levels of pain and inconvenience. (I’m sitting here at the computer, looking from side to side, just because I can. In fact I think I’ll just sit here for a while, turning my head and eating incredibly crunchy food, in sheer appreciation of being well.)

It was quite the scene in our house at 8 this morning. Honey was bawling at the table, Hot Wheels was picking dejectedly at his breakfast and making thick throat noises, and Tom was lumbering around and wincing. I thought about the lineup of calls to school (they really should have given me a dedicated line by now), the doctor, the orthodontist and the parents of the girls who ride with us to soccer practice in the afternoon. I considered the white paper drifts of homework piling up in the corners of Honey’s room. I added up all the days I’ve been out of the office this month. I walked down the hall to the linen closet to find the thermometer.

As I passed the bathroom, Tom was standing in front of the sink. He asked, “So what do you think?” I said, “I think I’m going to find a dark corner and cry quietly for a while.” Tom replied, “Before you do that, could you help me stick this heatwrap on?”

We have lived on our street for twelve years. It’s not a long street, about .2 miles, but still there are 45 houses on it. Like any neighborhood, it’s always changing slightly with people moving in and out and houses getting remodeled, but there’s still a good number of families who have been here for a long time and give it character. Each home has stories and we’re lucky enough to know lots of them – of those 45 houses there’s only a handful of families we don’t really know.

I think it has something to do with the weather and the fact that we walk and bike all the time. We’re out on the street every day, and the houses are just too close to each other not to say hey as you pass by. Plus, once you get to know some of the long time neighbors, well, they’re your rosetta stone to the histories of all the other houses, current occupants and past. That said, we’re lucky that our street is friendly without being overwhelming; everyone seems to mostly care about each other and not get too nosy.

Not too nosy. That’s a fine line, sometimes.

Marilyn grew up in the blue house right across the street from ours and many years ago fell in love with the boy who was raised in our house. One of our other older neighbors told me once that it was an illicit romance; their parents didn’t approve, and they’d meet secretly at the bend in the road and take off in his car. They married and later divorced, and eventually she moved back to her family home where she began.

In all of the years we’ve lived here, I’ve spoken with Marilyn few enough times that I could count them. To say she was reclusive would be an understatement. She rarely left her home and never took us up on our invitations to visit with us, although I certainly didn’t push that one since I figured our house might not hold the best memories for her. On the rare occasions that we visited her, it was like stepping back in time; she kept the furniture exactly as her parents’ had it. Every surface of the house had a patina of cigarette smoke and the air was oppressive. She kept the windows and blinds closed all the time.

We knew Marilyn was not well. She wasn’t well from the day we moved here. She had a whole suite of complicated issues, and I never could figure out where the line was, in terms of trying to help her out. She clearly did not have any family or friends checking on her – no visitors save the occasional talk with us or Susan next door. Last year I spoke with her and became very concerned but she turned down offers for assistance or even connections to services that could give her a hand.

This afternoon, the police came and knocked on her door. We were in the kitchen when they came over to tell us that Marilyn had died. It had been some time. It breaks my heart to think of her in her last days and our not knowing. It makes me wonder if we should have been more nosy, if we could have charmed our way into giving her more of a hand. What is the line between respect and neglect in a story like this? I wish I felt sure we’d done everything we should. What a horrible loss, in every sense of the word.

As if our week hadn’t been interesting enough, Hot Wheels decided to throw us a curve on Friday morning. He came out to the kitchen in the morning with a quirky look on his face and told us he “didn’t like swallowing so much.” That led to not wanting to eat breakfast, and shortly thereafter, the announcement that he was not going to school that day. Why not? “I’m just not right.”

At first I thought – Baloney! He has no symptoms: no fever, runny nose, cough. Does not liking to swallow qualify you for a day off? What sort of precedent would we be setting? But then I watched him, and felt he wasn’t trying to get out of anything. He really just wasn’t right, as he explained. We let him stay home. (I’d be lying if I said I didn’t have some doubts about whether or not we were getting played.)

By about 11 am, however, we had the evidence – 101.5 fever, stomach pain, red spots across his throat. By 1:30 pm we had the diagnosis – strep. By 5 pm he had relief – one dose of the antibiotic down, and he was already feeling like himself again. Now we just have to keep up the twice daily song and dance to get him to down the amoxicillin that tastes so horrid. Other than that, he’s completely repaired. We try not to use antibiotics unless we have to, and when we do, I’m profoundly grateful for them.

When we were in the pre-miracle drug portion of our Friday, we played board games and read and he moaned a bit. And we watched Nike commercials on YouTube. Recently I came across this one over on SwissMiss, and I’ve been addicted to it ever since:

I would have loved to be in the meeting when the creative team presented the idea of city-wide tag. Absolutely fantastic.

We watched another Nike ad for the Men vs. Women running challenge from the beginning of the year, and Hot Wheels is absolutely stuck on it. He describes it in detail to people and we showed it to our friends Amy and Andy when they were over this evening – afterwards he sighed and said, “I love that movie!” When Amy asked him what he liked about it, he replied, “I don’t know; it just makes me feel good in my body.” I’m thinking it might account for the 20 laps he felt compelled to run around our house this afternoon. The competition’s over, dude!

I was standing next to the playground after school with some other kindergarten parents yesterday. These are new acquaintances, so we were chatting, getting to know each other a bit. Suddenly, Hot Wheels ran up.

“May I please get a drink of water?” he asked.

“Sure – go ahead!” I said.

There was a slightly awkward pause. I turned to the other mothers and said, “We have strict water rationing in our household.”

Thankfully they laughed and one said, “When we were at camp this summer, my son ran up to me and said, ‘Mom – can I play?’”

So what’s with the kids, eh? They won’t ask if they can roll one of their bikes down the ditch behind your retaining wall, or climb the tree with the skinniest branches, but they’ll ask if they can drink water? Instead of even answering the innocent requests, we really should be looking around wildly for whatever nefarious plot is really happening in the background.

And now for something completely different: I had some surprise visitors today:

I don’t know their names because they had collars but no tags. As I rounded the bend to our street on my bike today, they were poking around the bushes by the restaurant on our corner. I started up the street and saw a woman heading my way with a concerned, ‘where are those dogs’ look on her face. Thinking they all belonged together I told her the dogs hadn’t gone far. She replied that they weren’t her dogs, but she’d just seen them running across the super busy street together and was trying to nab them before they got hit.

One thing led to another, as it usually does, and once we’d rounded the dogs up it made sense to put them in my house as opposed to her car. Turns out the rescuer was my neighbor’s sister, which was fun – I’ve heard her name for so many years, it was great to finally meet her.

After I called the humane society and gave the dogs some water, I had that funny feeling you get with a baby that’s clean and fed… just what do I do with you now? I couldn’t put them in the yard, because our fence is more decorative than secure. I closed all the doors to the other rooms, since the lab was still young and interested in chewing on the kids’ toys. So they just followed me around as I put things away and tidied up.

That border collie was sweet as anything. She was clearly the older one and just so gentle and beautiful. Too bad whenever she sidled up for some scratching, the lab would jump all over her and shove her away. He was such a pup – all wiggly and pushy and eager. I hope their owner gets reunited with them quickly, and buys them some tags!