Browsing Archives for December 2008

He continued to suck on that thumb throughout his babyhood, into his toddler years and finally broke himself of the habit while he was in kindergarten.  He still sleeps with his hand covering his face, but his thumb rests on his cheek.

I am sorry to tell you this, but in my experience, thumb sucking babies are the most peaceful babies in the world. Drew was miraculously content as an infant, which was such a nice change from the utter and complete tyrant that Ethan had been.  Of course, Drew had a few advantages. He had two older brothers to entertain him night and day and he also had his thumb, his ear… and my ear… and anyone’s ear that came within his grasp.   

He sucked on his thumb and twiddled his ear… or any ear within twiddling distance… most often his own ear… which resulted in Drew having a very malleable ear.  He got into the habit of twiddling his ear and then tucking the upper part of his ear into his ear canal and walking around like this for hours.  We would be grocery shopping, or in line at Wal-mart, or at the park and suddenly I would notice other mothers giving my son sorrowful glances or looking at me with mournful eyes.  I would then look over at Drew and say, “Drew, take your ear out.”  

And he would.  

He would just pop it out and go back to playing. 

Then the mothers that had been giving me and Drew a mournful look would pretend that they were giving a mournful look to someone just past my left shoulder.   

A few years ago, I took Drew to see a doctor (not his dad).  The doctor gave Drew a well-child check-up and then looked at me and said, “So what about his ear?”  

I did not know what the doctor was talking about and looked at him with a confused expression on my face.

The doctor grew kind of uncomfortable and did not want to hurt Drew’s feelings, so he spelled it out saying, “uh… his um… his… L.E.F.T. E.A.R.”  

“His what?”  I asked.

The doctor continued stammering, “He seems to have a minor uh… problem… or uh… unusual uh… formation… with his left ear…”

“OH!” I said, suddenly realizing what he was getting at…”Drew take your ear out.”

Much to the doctor’s amazement and relief, Drew healed his own ear right then and there.  

I laughed pretty hard.

The doctor not so much.

Drew can only tuck one ear these days.

Have I mentioned the coldness? 

Have I told you yet that I am freezing? 

Hey guess what… IT”S COLD! 

Breaking news… CDW is freezing to death. 

This just in… it’s winter in Kansas! 

Did I say that it was chilly yet?

I can’t feel my fingers.

Forget the sofa, I am sitting right on top of the heating vent.  

Warm toasty buns…

Everything is freezing except for my buns.   

I hate winter…

I mean… uh… er… I am not particularly fond of winter.

So winter means having a roaring fire in the fireplace. With four sons in the house and a rare chance to play with matches, it’s not too hard to get someone to build a fire around here.  If there is a fire in the fireplace than that means that everyone wants to curl up beside it.

There are no televisions or video games in our living room, so to entertain themselves while sitting in front of the fireplace, the kids can either stare at the walls, play with the laptop, read a book, wrestle with each other, or play a board game.  Since they are way too familiar with the disastrous side effects of having a parent that stares into space and that same parent has zero tolerance for wrestling matches in front of an open flame,and that same parent is using the laptop herself, I often find my sons either reading or yes… playing a board game in front of the fireplace. 

Which makes us look at little homeschooly.  

Which we are not homeschooly.  

We are not homeschooly at all.

If we were homeschooly, my sons would be dead and I would be in prison for their grisly demise.  

So according to several of my readers… here is my third installment of what would appear to be a homeschooling blog… except we don’t homeschool.

Because… no.

This is my eldest playing Monopoly with my youngest.

Or you could also say that this is my eldest son circling my youngest son like wounded prey, just waiting for an opportunity to make him squeal like a little girl.

Which happens approximately every three seconds whenever these two are within thirteen miles of each other.  

  

Here is my eldest playing with my second son Ethan.  

Over the years, Ethan has grown wise to the ways of “The Calder”.   See how Ethan is staring him down.  Watching him… just waiting… he has learned to be prepared and to never drop his defenses.

He is wary.  He is ready.  He has learned his lesson well.

Back in the olden times, when I was in college, I saw the movie “Mystic Pizza” starring Julia Roberts. I was deeply moved by the film and came to the conclusion that “Mystic Pizza” was the best film ever made and that Julia Roberts was the world’s most talented actress.

Then I went back to my dorm and spent the next two years perfecting the Julia Roberts pouty lip thing, which I am proud to say, I eventually mastered.

Several years later, I saw “Remains of the Day” and I thought it was stupendously boring.

Fast forward twenty odd years – and when I say odd… I do mean odd.

At some recent point in those last twenty years, I rented “Mystic Pizza” to watch again in an attempt to bring back my misspent youth. I was shocked and appalled to discover that Mystic Pizza was not the sweeping romantic epic that I had remembered. Instead, I found it to be silly and spastic and out of control which perfectly matched Julia’s big frizzy hair and her quivering lips. I could not remotely comprehend why I had loved that movie so much.

Then a few days ago, I watched “Remains of the Day” again… and it was wonderful. I was deeply moved and I came to the conclusion that “Remains of the Day” is one of the best movies ever made and also that that Anthony Hopkins is one of the most beautiful people ever made.

Um… well okay… maybe not, but still really a great film and completely opposite of “Mystic Pizza”.

Which makes me wonder if I am completely opposite of myself of 20 years ago?

And if so, how did I do that?

Twenty years ago, I loved nothing more than watching people express themselves passionately in hugely embarrassing ways, while proclaiming their feelings to the universe! These days I love nothing more than watching people who are highly suppressed, seemingly made of stone, barely able to take a deep breath, attempt to communicate without ever displaying an an ounce of emotion.

Well…except for the tray.

In the movie “Remains of the Day” the tray is a symbol of love, respect, friendship, humility, loyalty, care and concern People are always putting things on trays. They put tea on trays, and sandwiches on trays, and crystal decanters of amber alcoholic beverages on trays, and cake on trays, and breakfast on trays, and late night snacks on trays. They even put the newspaper on a tray… but only after they IRON it first!

Something about putting something on a tray… carrying it to someone… placing the tray in front of them and then serving them from the tray… this tray thing… it makes me happy. It makes me want to live my life via a tray. I want to put everything on a tray. I also want everything brought to me on a tray. Please bring me my shoes… on a tray. I need a pencil… please place it on a tray and carry it over here to me. I would love to pet the kitten. Can someone please put her on a tray for me? Darling, could you please bring me the phone… on a tray… not that tray… the other tray… the nice tray… yes… thank you. I would like my breakfast on a tray please… in my room… shut the door when you leave. Shall I bring you that tire iron on a tray dear? Yes, yes I will be happy to bring you a light bulb, but first I need to get a tray. You need me to hold the flashlight while you screw that light fixture into the attic ridge beam? How exactly do you expect me to properly aim a flashlight when I am also balancing this lovely tray of tea and sandwiches? I am going to need you to bring me a tray of two tickets to Paris please. Right now please. I said now. NOW!

Feeling low… put something on a tray. Holidays got you down…. try making some cocoa, placing the mug on a tray and then serving it to yourself. Credit card debt? Uh…. Perhaps a mini-tray to keep your cut-up cards on as a reminder to spend less?

All I know is that a tray makes everything better.

That and having a butler that irons your newspapers for you.

It’s cold.

Really cold.

And nothing says cold like standing around the kitchen sampling bizarre tropical fruit with the kiddos.  

Let’s try some together!

This is my baby holding a baby pineapple.  

The baby pineapple was delicious and tasted just like a regular pineapple.

The only difference was that it was cuter and could fit in the palm of your hand.

Next, we slaughtered an innocent pomegranate.

To mixed reviews.

We moved on to the mango.

Drew did not much like the mango.

Persimmon

Very orange with a surprising star on the interior.

Jack slurped down that persimmon and begged for more.  

The rest of us were not so sure about it.  

It is very sweet in a kind of carroty way… with an extra dash of slime.

No this is not an alien egg, it is a kiwana.

Oh please no.

My two middle sons loved the kiwana!

It tastes like a green banana… but extra, extra, extra slimy with a pumpkin seed chaser.

Jack did not care for the kiwana.

At all.

And Calder… my oldest… while sampling the kiwana… well he just looked at me the way he always looks at me these days.  

Moving on… the pepino melon.

Which tastes like the cross between a watermelon rind and a very green cantaloupe.

Ethan liked the pepino.

Are you having fun?

Are you enjoying our little freaky fruit fest?

I have a feeling it is going to be a very long winter.

Then we tried the feijoa – an egg shaped tropical fruit that grows in Australia and South America.    

The feijoa met mixed reviews tasting somewhat like a kiwi gone wrong, but it does have a nice fragrance.  

It might have a future in candles.

Papaya

Stranger than it might seem. 

Again, reminiscent of other orange fleshed edibles like carrots and sweet potatoes but muskier and not so great.

The cactus pear

Kind of watermelony in texture, and bland in taste.

Hummingbirds are always pictured drinking from the Cactus Pear in the desert, but then… what choice do they have?

And lastly, the quince.

Yes this is the last fruit.

This post is not going to go on forever and ever.

It might kind of seem like it already has, but it is not.  

I promise.

Leathery in texture, the quince tastes like a dried, spiced apple.

We all liked the quince.  

Here are the taste results of our freaky fruit fest.

You can see that the first fruit, the baby pineapple and the last fruit, the quince got the most positive ratings.  

The feijoa and the kiwana got the most negative ratings.  

It was a fun activity, but I don’t think we will be adding any of these fruits to our normal diet.  

Still, in the course of normal conversation, the next time someone asks one of us what we think about the pepino melon… or the cactus pear… or the feijoa or the kiwana, we can say… musky with a hint of impending doom… or serious slime, with echoes of banana… or dry as dirt, sprinkled generously with sweet pepper.

And that is at least worth something.  

There is a bakery…

A bakery that I like to stop by on my way home from work…

And I like to pick out a scone or a roll or bun for my breakfast the next day…

It is my secret little pleasure that no one knows about and it is not hurting anyone.

I eat my secret pleasure breakfast after the kids are off to school and the Country Doctor has left for work.  

I pour a cup of coffee and get my secret pleasure bun or scone or roll and sit down by the computer and catch up on a few blogs and read my e-mail and enjoy the heck out of my little secret pleasure breakfast.

The problem is, that recently, my secret pleasure breakfast has been disappearing!

I get everyone off to school and to work and pour myself a cup of coffee and then I go to fetch my secret pleasure roll or bun or scone and IT IS NOT THERE!!!!

I tried to solve the case of the disappearing secret pleasure breakfast scone by choosing a trickier hiding spot.

Like deep in the depths of the pantry… or behind the stack of dishes in the hutch… or under the sink!

Then I had another problem.

I forgot where my better secret pleasure breakfast bun hiding spot was and I also kind of forgot that I had hidden anything at all… because of the four holes in my head where the babies came out… so I ate a miserable bowl of cereal instead and went to work feeling empty and alone.

Then a few days later, I found my secret pleasure breakfast stash!  Behind the cookbooks above the fridge!  But now my secret pleasure breakfast is very hard and dry and brittle.  Kind of like me… who is also hard and dry and brittle due to four gaping holes in head and also due to lack of secret pleasure breakfast.

So I made an invention!

I call it my secret pleasure breakfast, back to life, not so hard and brittle steamer doohickey thing.

I placed my secret pleasure breakfast re-activator device doohickey thing over a bowl of boiling water in the microwave.

I then sat my secret pleasure dried out ginger peach breakfast scone atop my secret pleasure re-activator hard and brittle personality inhibitor device and zapped it for twenty seconds!

 

Voila!  Secret pleasure breakfast brought back to sweet, soft and airy goodness!

Yes, even with four holes in my head, I am a genius.

Secret Pleasure Hard and Brittle Breakfast Bun Softener Personality Re-activator Device to hit a store near you soon!  Patent pending.  

But I might need to work on a catchier name.

Recently, I wrote a post about socks which was also a post about tea.  In this post I mentioned that socks were the bane of my existence and that tea was the elixir of life, except that all too often my tea was merely marginal and I couldn’t understand why…

Several readers tried to ease my laundry burden by giving me loving sock guidance, however, a small handful of readers were far more concerned about the merely marginal tea I kept making.  They offered me some helpful hints on how to make a good cup of tea.

I’m sorry to tell you this, but I was far more interested in learning how to make a better cup of tea than I was in learning how to better organize my laundry.

What does that say about me?  

Some of the tea making advice that was offered was directly contradictory.  One reader insisted that I should never pour boiling water over tea as this increased acidity.   Another reader said that I must pour the boiling water directly over the tea.  

Several readers counselled me to try loose leaf tea and some said I just needed to add more sugar or milk or grain alcohol to my cup and then I wouldn’t even notice the tea at all.

So I decided to conduct an experiment.  

I gathered three types of Earl Grey tea because we are Earl Grey drinkers around here.

I found some organic loose leaf Earl Grey in a local food co-op.

I found some hoity toity silk bags of Earl Grey in a local antique store.  

And I almost always have either Bigelow or Twinings on hand.  I will say that I really think Bigelow makes a better Earl Grey than Twinings.  But sometimes Twinings goes on sale and I buy it, than I wish I hadn’t because… blah.

For my tea making tools, I dug out this cast iron kettle with dragons on it that the CD gave me a few years ago for a birthday present.  I pretended to be excited that he got me a cast iron kettle with dragons on it in which to make tea… but no… not really into dragons.  

I will also be using a tea strainer for the loose leaf tea.

There will be two variables in this experiment.

1.  The type of tea – loose leaf, hoity toity silk bag, or regular old tea bag.

2.  The type of water – boiling water poured directly on tea or very hot but not quite boiling water poured directly on tea.

Drew was my collaborator in this experiment.  He loves tea as much as his mom.  We both usually pour milk and sugar or honey into our tea, but for the sake of this experiment we are drinking it black.  

Oh!  

The sacrifices we make!

We eventually prepared all the cups for the test.  

Then we tasted them.

We wrote down our thoughts about the taste as well as a rating for each cup with one being low and five being high.

More tasting…

More rating….

Occasionally, we cleansed our palettes.

r />Drew insisted that I include this photo in the story.

Then our tea party got crashed.

But we let him stay.

Here are the results of our little tea sampling party…

The hoity toity silk tea bags covered in boiling water.

Drew – “normal” 2 stars

Mom – “smooth, very nice, not bitter” 3 stars

Ethan – “really great, but strong” 2.5 stars

The hoity toity silk tea bags covered in water that is very hot but not boiling.

Drew – “not as strong” 4 stars

Mom – “tastes almost like hot water” 1 star

Ethan – “plain, terrible” 0 stars

The organic loose leaf tea covered in boiling water and steeped in the cast iron dragon pot.

Drew – “tastes like a leaf, tastes like a stick” 3 stars

Mom – “strange, earthy” 1 star

Ethan – “tastes like you ate it out of a dirt spoon” 1 star

 

Organic loose leaf tea covered in water that is hot but not quite boiling.

Drew – “bad after taste” 3 stars

Mom – “much milder than boiled, but less flavor, bland” 1 star

Ethan – “really great, but tasteless” 2 stars

Bigelow tea bag covered in boiling water.

Drew – “stronger taste” 3 stars

Mom – “more bergamot flavor” 3 stars

Ethan – “not the best tea in the world” 1 and 3/4 stars

Bigelow tea bag covered in hot water that is not boiling.

Drew – “very hot and thick” 4 stars

Mom – “tastes like hot water” 0 stars

Ethan – “tastes like hot water” 1 star

As you can see, our results did not amount to much cohesion, nor do they seem to make any sense at all.  My favorite cup turned out to be a Bigelow tea bag covered in boiling water, but the silk bag in boiling water was a close second.  The loose leaf variety that we tried was so vastly different from any Earl Grey tea that I have ever tried, that I almost wonder if the store placed the wrong tea in the bulk jar.  

Unsatisfied with the results of our test, I turned to my investigative journalism skills and found a good, concise, yet photographically satisfying article on how to make a good cup of tea on the BBC.  You can read it here.  

Now that I think about it… every once in a while I pour milk and honey in the bottom of my tea cup and then pour tea from the tea pot on top of it and well… that just might be the magic mix. 

So please disregard our research and try out the BBC version.  I imagine they are probably right being all British and everything.   Now I am going to go try and make a good cup of tea…

Cheers!

Spring

Spring with Show Cat

Summer

Summer with Beverly Nichols books

Summer with Show Cat 

Winter

Ice Storm 2007

BRRRRRRRRRR!!!!!

Why is there a live evergreen tree on top of three paint buckets strapped together with duct tape in my living room?

Oh yeah… because we went to Panera for lunch on Sunday.

And while there… someone in my family… who is not me… got aggravated because he thought the store was confusing and he did not know where to stand in line to place his order.

And then this someone ordered a “You Pick Two” but was disappointed to find out that a “You Pick Two” means you only pick two items and not three. Because calling it a “You Pick Two” is not very clear.

After that extremely confusing lunch, we went to “The World’s Most Depressing Christmas Tree Farm”.

Our family used to go to the same Christmas Tree Farm every year… and then it closed. So we switched to a new Christmas Tree Farm… and then they closed. So we went to a new one this year.

Which I imagine might be closing very soon.

Like maybe right after we left.

“The World’s Most Depressing Christmas Tree Farm” had about the same number of marketable Christmas trees that you might find in a horse pasture… or in a cultivated field of corn… or on a professional football field… or on the moon.

I kind of liked this one… but only in comparison to all the other trees… which there weren’t any other trees.

This strange lack of trees at “The World’s Most Depressing Christmas Tree Farm” gave the Country Doctor the perfect opportunity to re-introduce an idea that he has been wanting to try for a long, long time. He has dreamed of buying a living “balled and burlaped” evergreen from the Garden Center where I work, and bringing it home to use as a Christmas Tree, and then when Christmas is over… planting the tree in the yard.

What this means… is that I am officially changing the Country Doctor’s name to The Country Druid.

It also means that we bought a live tree… an actual living tree for our Christmas tree. The Country Druid is going to attempt to keep a living tree alive… inside our living room… for three weeks… and then re-acclimate it to the freezing cold winter temperatures of Kansas… and then plant it in the yard.

I absolutely vetoed the three duct taped paint buckets.

I also vetoed using the old accordion case with the accordion inside as the “tree stand”.

Eventually, we set the tree on the floor, inside of a plastic bucket that we have to keep filled with fresh water and we put the tree skirt around it.

The boys strung the lights.

It did not take them very long.

Speaking of the boys…

This is how my eldest looks at me now.

Pretty much all the time.

What does that mean?

And here is our tree.

Wow.

That is really quite a tree.

Yeah… I think when I look at this tree, my face looks pretty much the same as my eldest son’s does when he is looking at me.

But the Country Druid’s face is filled with joy.

So that should make for a peaceful holiday season around here.