ingrid

I felt accomplished this year that I had such a successful summer garden.  It is still sort of successful, if those 13 tomato plants ever decide to ripen.  They are ripening, just not all at once like I imagined.  It is somewhat inconvenient as I intended to can those tomatoes.  I’m not going to be able to can one at a time though.  Ripen, ripen, ripen!

The weather is weird around here.  The season is changing.  The mornings are cold, but then midway through the day, you are sweating in your wool socks.  I put on a sweater, take off the sweater, contemplate turning the furnace on but then see that it is still 67 degrees.  Fall is here, but it is sauntering in.  We’re having showers in the morning, heavy clouds and then bursts of sun.

In the garden, the snow peas and beets gave way to lettuce, chard, and cauliflower.  We’ll see what makes it.  The napa cabbage is looking troubled.  I see that maybe I do have slugs after all.  If you can believe it, I have seen very few slugs on our property here in Portland.  I don’t actually think that is a good thing.  I think the soil is just so dry and poor that it doesn’t support egg growth.  So even though I don’t miss the suckers, I do sort of mourn their absence.  I think our soil sucks so much that even the slugs don’t like it, but anywhere I put down chicken manure, straw, leaves and mulch there are now signs of tiny little slugs.  That’s okay.  There is enough to share for now.

And what is this?  Peeking around the side of a tomato plant, these buggers looked me in the eye.  Begone deadly nightshade!  I love that it has “deadly” in its name.  Makes you think, “Now wait, should I eat this?”.  I think I should have deadly in my name.

I had an ill-fated couple weeks for all things coffee and tea.  Just when the weather changed and I wanted more of both, I broke my coffee pot (knocked it on the sink), broke the spout of my teapot (dropped it while washing it), and suffered the loss of my milk frother (Zephyr swept it off the counter and then imbedded a piece in his foot for good measure).  Sigh.  Ill-fated.  This tea pot was so cute and useful.  Brad’s aunt gave it to me along with this excellent little tea cozy.  I couldn’t part with it,even though the spout is broken down the back in a quite irreparable way.  You can’t see the break from the front, especially with the plant in it.  I’m going to keep it on the front porch to announce my priorities to the world.  I planted a corsican mint in it.

Yes, at the big purple house, things are indeed growing well.

7 Comments | In: food, My super freakin' cute kids, Projects That I Do With My Clever Little Fingers, urban farming | | #

Francis started school last week.  Not a moment too soon is what I say.  I love my daughter dearly.  She is super smart and fun and creative.  Unfortunately, she drives me like a mule.  She can think up a million projects and games a minute and for some reason, most of them involve me.  She would also make an excellent lawyer.  She wants a 2 page document with high lighted reasons for every decision, as well as cross-referenced accounts of relevant past cases.  (“Why can’t I bring a toy to school?  You let Zephyr bring Dog to school, why can’t I bring something?  Gracie brought a toy just last week!  Why would her mom let her do that if she knows the rules?  Are you sure that the rules are the same this year?  Can you show me the place where they put the new rules?  Maybe they changed……).  Off you go!

Zephyr started preschool today.  He was thrilled.  Absolutely.  That kid has absolutely no issues with heading off into the world alone.

I think preschool will be good for him.  Like many self-involved toddlers, he thinks “But I love to” is a good enough reason to do whatever he wants.  He has truly used that response after doing all sorts of naughty things.  ”But I love to kick the chickens!”.

And, here is the classic third child left behind.  It won’t be long Inez and you can be shuffled out into the world just for a bit each day, little steps at a time, testing that fleeting, giddy, joyful independence.

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When I was a kid, I desperately wanted to ride the Zoo Train at the Oregon Zoo.  It is expensive you see, and being from a family of modest means, we could never afford to do the train after getting into the zoo.  It is still expensive to this day.  Even if you are a little kid, they expect you to shell out $4.50 to ride the train for 20 minutes to the Rose Garden.

Last week I was contemplating how different things are for my kids.  It is tempting to romanticize your childhood, to make assumptions that the way you experienced things made you a better person, when in fact we don’t really understand the factors that form an individual’s character and values (nor do we know that you are much of a great person now!  Ha!).  We have a human tendency to try to reassure ourselves that hardships were formative, that they had purpose.  I think we want to be sure that we didn’t suffer for nothing.  I had this conversation with a young man struggling to put himself through college while his peers have scholarships and family support.  When I was in college, I remember being vaguely jealous that some kids had their school paid for, all while I presented as fiercely proud that I was putting myself through.  Now I look back and think, did that really make me better somehow?  More appreciative?  Not really.  Would I change places with someone with a full-ride in a heartbeat?  Hell yeah!  (At this point I would like to thank Brad for putting me through graduate school, and for issuing me a retro-active partial scholarship for undergrad.  Yes, I “did it myself” and exiting school, I had the loans to prove it.)

Anyway, back to the Zoo Train.  No, I didn’t suffer because I couldn’t ride the Zoo Train as a child, but I always longed to ride the Zoo Train.  Now I am an adult living an easy and luxurious life.  I am raising three very privileged children with college accounts and such.  When I say no to the Zoo Train, or anything really, I can’t honestly say that it is because we can’t afford it.  We can afford all sorts of crap that we don’t really need, so I have this new existential struggle that involves privilege, fear of creating nasty spoiled children, shame over conspicuous consumption, worry about what other children can have, worry about waste and the shit that people give their kids right and left just because, and other issues that probably come from my Catholic upbringing.  It isn’t just the Zoo Train; it’s a train wreck.

So, back to the Zoo Train. (Man, I have to move this post along.  I will try short sentences because the long ones are pulling me into some sort of philosophical whirlpool).  I was at the zoo last week.  I spent the first hour thinking about the zoo train.  Should we ride the zoo train?  Should we not ride the zoo train?  Man, I really want to ride the zoo train.  Why NOT ride the zoo train?  We could ride the zoo train!

Finally I decided that we were going to do it.  We were going to blow $13.50 on a stupid ride on a miniature train.  I walked up to the ticket booth, scanned the prices and saw:

RAIL TO RAIL: present your Tri-Met Max ticket for this day and ride free round-trip on the Zoo Train

Holy Crap!  The Zoo Train is free if you take MAX to the Zoo.  I ONLY take Max to the Zoo.  The Zoo Train is free for the rest of my freaking life!  I am so happy!  I am going to leave it all and go LIVE on the Zoo Train!  Who knew?  See you on the Zoo Train suckers!

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My family did another Sunday Parkways.  Holy Crap!  I love it so much.  I love living in freaking Portland Oregon!

Sunday Parkways is where the city shuts down a 7 or so mile loop of neighborhoods to cars so that bikes, walkers, skaters, and runners can take over the street.  It is like the street becomes one long stretch of park where you can ride and play without worrying about being run over.  Brilliant.

The first Sunday Parkways was last year in early summer and the route went right by our house.  We did that loop through North Portland with me fairly pregnant and Francis rattling along on her bike with training wheels.  15,000 people joined us.

This year the city of Portland planned three Sunday Parkways.  Brad and I skated the North/North East route and Francis rode her “two-wheeler” without training wheels.  It was her first major biking outing.  I can’t describe how proud I was of her biking, and I am so pleased to be able to share something I love with my daughter.  I am not a major biker in terms of doing miles and miles of riding, but I truly love the freedom of being on a bike.  Being on a bike feels pure and joyous.  It is like dancing.  It makes me feel like a kid.  In my mind, I am screaming, “Woooooo hoooooo!” the whole time I am riding somewhere.

After a few years of sharing our biking/skating pictures, I have come to see that they are mostly the same.  There is one of a kid sleeping in a baby jogger.  There is one of Zephyr sucking his thumb and looking tired.  This time we add this:

Our girl looks pretty confident on her "Jet".

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Did you know that you can break open these little whirligigs and stick them to your face?  Me neither.  The babysitter taught the kids their new favorite trick.

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Bouquets $1.

Cucumbers 2 for 25 cents.

So goes the world of commerce at the “stand” in front of our house.  The kid made $5 in about 1 hour.  Maybe she will quit asking for Playmobil now that she can buy it herself.

4 Comments | In: family, My super freakin' cute kids | | #

It’s freaking hot here.  So hot that you wish you could peel your skin right off and toss it by the door.  So hot that you would like to crawl in the tea bags sitting in the sun tea jar on the porch and pack your pores in camomile.  So hot that you wish you were a little green worm on the basil plants.  So hot that the dark hole under the apple tree looks like a welcome place to pop in.  So hot that you want to grab hold of one blade on the fan and just ride it around and around all day.  So hot.

I don’t tolerate the heat well.  I spend most of the day walking from room to room trying to gauge where the absolute worst and absolute best places are in the house.  I open windows in the morning and then try to close them at exactly the right moment to preserve optimal coolness.  I take showers.  I splash my face a lot.  I think about November.  I whine.

This evening the kids crashed out in the basement (the one comfortably cool place in the house), and I put Inez down to sleep in the portable crib in our room, which is considerably better than the sweat box that we call the kids’ room.  Inez fussed for a while and finally dropped off to sleep.  I thought maybe she was uncomfortable, but when I went to check on her, this is what I found:

Nice!  I felt like a big meanie putting the diaper back on when it is so freaking hot, but some things have got to be done.  Stay cool folks.

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I know that everyone is eager to hear how the fashion consult came out.  I ended up wearing the pink dress, because as Angella and my mom pointed out, it was my big chance.  Thank you all for the ego boost of compliments about rocking the flapper dress.  I do appreciate those comments, believe you me!  But I did figure that I could sort of wear that dress any time, whereas the pink dress, while lovely, is not something that I will whip out for the next big event.  I made it work by altering a better undergarment that would leave me feeling more comfortable (although I did need to hold in my stomach, damn it, and I still needed to leave the wedding to disrobe completely and nurse Inez.  Such is life.)  I got a lot of comments about my dress and the old ladies at the wedding all agreed that it is most likely actually from the 1920s.  Awesome.

Oh yes, and I did cut off much of my hair.  Not just for this event.  That was a happy coincidence.

Here is how cute we were:

kids on the hotel bed before the wedding

My gloves are glowing... something is wrong with our flash here

Oh this sweet girl in her dress that Grandma Sue made

The ribbon actually stayed in, but the kid broke my pearls and I had to pull my earrings off midway through dinner.

It was hard to get everyone looking one way, especially while the band was playing

Some looks are just too devine. There's my Nez-nez in a dress made for Francis (also by Grandma Sue)

Wedding was great and we loved staying out at Edgefield.  Super, super fun!

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Why do I like this photo so much?  I think it is awesome.  I’m glad we gave that girl an expensive camera!

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Do you remember when you learned to ride a bike?  I don’t, but I think I might have been pretty old.  And I think that my cousin Greta taught me.

Francis has finally learned how to ride a bike.  It has taken forever (it seems).  I had this idea that a father is suppose to teach these things to his children, but Brad has no such ideas.  I am not sure where I got this idea as I don’t think that my dad taught me to ride.  I kept trying to get Brad to take charge of this task and he kept dodging it.  Despite confused intentions, Francis finally learned how to ride out at her Grandparents’ house.  Who did it?  Me, and her Grandmother Sue.

Thank God.  I had sort of selfish reasons for wanting Francis up on a bike.  Mostly it is because I like to bike myself and felt sort of fettered by three kids needing transport.  Francis was too heavy for the trailer, (we have a Trek 2 kid model), and too slow on training wheels.  The training wheels make a kid tip over when going up and down off sloped sidewalks.  I didn’t want to go through the whole “trail-a-bike” phase as it didn’t fit in with our trailer investment nor with our investment in the “big kid” bike.  Those things are spendy and I want to continue to get my money’s worth out of them.  We couldn’t do an xtra-cycle as Inez is too young to hold on.  And I was sick of the clattering training wheels on Francis’ bike.  Plus she was slow.

She finally learned.  I am so proud.  And Zephyr?  Maybe another day.

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