I was once called a Breastfeeding Nazi.

Jesus was breastfed, but then again so was Hitler. If they hadn’t been, they’d have probably died as infants.

Scary when my mind wanders like this.

I’m hot.

I’m tired.

I’m thirsty.

I’m hungry.

No, it’s not my kids whining, it’s me.  Plus I have too much to do. I am supposed to be packing / packed for a camping trip tomorrow but instead I’m blogging about how whiny I am.

How can it already be 8 PM?

I drove up to the swim club specifically to water my new little garden and found out (much to my dismay) that a pipe had just broken and the manager had to shut off the water.  Thus, couldn’t water the garden. Actually he offered me a bucket and said I could get water from the creek and shlep it to the garden, but frankly, the garden did not look all that desperate for water.  Plus I’m still hurting from my compost schlepping so there was NO way I was going to schlep water.

Well that excursion meant a required trip to the Pet Food Store to visit the adorable rescued kittens for adoption (which we aren’t going to adopt because we already have three cat). It wasn’t a total indulgence of the kiddies because in fact we were out of cat food and I was able to buy a bag of it; $3 off, no less!

All of that meant a two hour chunk of the evening was dipped like a cookie into milk, and crumbled away.

Now it’s 8:10 PM. I’m still hot, tired, thirsty and hungry. But. At least now, you know that too.

I just convinced my children to stay in their beds. Neither one wanted to - the older one said she could feel her legs getting ready to jump out of bed if I left her. She also said, “If I’m awake, I need entertainment.” I told her she should go to sleep and let her dreams be her entertainment.

Then I hustled her younger sister off to bed, and convinced her to lay down and rest a bit. She asked me to go make cookies for tomorrow. She wants Snickerdoodles. “I’ll stay here,” she said, “not like when I was three.”

So I went downstairs, through the chaos that is my living room and plopped down here at my laptop on the dining room table. Having shirked cooking dinner (we got pizza & calzone), I now am considering penance: making Snickerdoodles. But I’m not getting started til I am sure there’s silence up above.

Mind you, there are plenty of other things I could be doing with my time. But making cookies is pretty pleasant, and it’s a nice cool evening.
Oatmeal Snickerdoodles
2 c Flour
1 t Baking soda
1/2 ts Salt
1 t Cinnamon
1 c Butter; or margarine
Vanilla extract
3/4 c Granulated sugar
3/4 c Light brown sugar; firmly Packed
2 Eggs
1 1/2 c Oatmeal; old fashioned
2 T Granulated sugar
2 t Cinnamon

Mix all ingredients well about 5 minutes. Place by rounded teaspoons 2
inches apart on greased cookie sheet. For topping, mix together sugar and
cinnamon and sprinkle with a teaspoon over the cookies. Bake at 375~ for
10-12 minutes. Cool.

The Old Woman and the Red Pumpkin, by Betsy Bang, is the latest in A’s slightly obsessive book reading streak. It’s a charming Bengali folk tale about a clever old woman who tricks three large carnivores into sparing her life. We read it twice today, and the way that A likes to do it is to “read” lines of it to me (she’s memorized it) — we trade off back and forth. There’s a part where the old woman sings and I made up a little tune and it really knocks me out that A sings it just as I do. She’s got a good ear!

I’ve read this book about 8 times in about half as many days. At first, I didn’t enjoy reading it because it has a lot of repetition (probably why A loves it so much). But after a few readings, it started to really grow on me. Then, having virtually memorized the text, I was able to appreciate the many intricate details in the illustrations. They are beautiful and quirky, possessing an imaginative and playful energy.

All in all, I’d recommend checking this one out of the library if you have a pre-schooler and if you ‘d like to increase the diversity of your kids’ literature. See if you can get a hold of the edition that is illustrated by Molly Garret Bang, the author’s daughter. The illustrations are really clever (the image above is the cover of the edition to which I am referring).

As for grown up books, I’m now reading A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini, author of NYT Bestseller The Kite Runner. Both novels take place in Afghanistan and are well written, gripping stories that also introduce a rich and diverse view into Afghan culture and customs.

But of course, I’m exhausted because I CHOSE to exhaust myself. Obviously I must have gotten hooked on the high that comes with not enough sleep and trying to do too many things in one day, which comes with having small ones to look after. Now that they are slightly less demanding than they once were, I am forced to continually come up with new ways to achieve that exhaustion high.

I’m Exhausted by Choice! (3rd edition! with new photo! snappy new layout!)

Today D and I began to shape and plant my little veggie, flowers and herbs patch up at the swim club. As C pointed out, I barely had any time to swim.  There was much soil to turn, and we added peat moss and coffee grounds to help improve the soil. A wet layer of newspaper topped with peat moss covered the surface where we planted beans, eggplant, marigolds, and sunflower seeds. I also planted “Big Max”– a handsome name for what we hope will produce a handsome pumpkin.

I forgot to take a “before” picture of the plot, but I’ll be going back there tomorrow and  will take some pictures of dry, hard, heavy dirt that’s largely clay so I can remember what I started with.  But the lovely mounds we left as we parted from the garden today, as the sky darkened with rain clouds and thunder rumbled in the distance, those mounds were as lovely and rounded as… anything nice you can think of.

Hey, commenters! Care to help complete the simile?

To get us through the hot summer, we’ve joined a swim club, a pool, that is co-operatively run. Sure, there are paid lifeguards and a single full-time employee who manages the lifeguards, and takes great care of the pool and its massive lawns, wooded picnic groves, tennis courts, playground and more. But other than a handful of paid employees, what makes this swim club great and different from all others, is that volunteers put in a tremendous amount of energy to make the club so enjoyable. There are crafts and nature walks and swim lessons and clay projects and organized volleyball games, all manner of community organized entertainments for all ages. I’m not just repeating the marketing materials when I say, “It’s so much more than a pool.”

This year, I’ve rented a 10 foot square plot in the newly rototilled organic community garden on the grounds of our swim club. I stayed up last night til 2 am scouring the internet for organic gardening tips and to figure out what I’ll do with a 10′ X 10′ garden. Read the rest of this entry »

I haven’t finished The Human Story yet, but since I own it and its really quite large, I am in no hurry. I just read one of the Sandman comics, A Game of You, a graphic novel that D brought home from the library and suggested that I read. It’s the fifth book in a series, and I’d not read any of the first four, but each book is apparently quite readable on its own. It was fantastic. I am not super into graphic novels, or comic novels or whatever you want to call them, but this was superb. Then again, Neil Gaiman is in fact, my favorite author.

We finished reading C Time Cat and now we’re reading the Cat Who Wished to Be a Man, another gem from Llyod Alexander. Alexander passed away very recently, following his wife in death by just two weeks.

A’s obsession with Skippy Jon Jones has decreased somewhat, and she is enjoying hearing C’s chapter books, while also reading a great deal of Dr. Seuss classics. She’s especially fond of Horton Hatches the Egg, Horton Hears a Who, and the Grinch .

A little birdhouse in our soul, er, mulberry tree

Read the rest of this entry »

If you are a Sesame Street fan, you might remember a song that Oscar the Grouch sings: “I love trash!”  I couldn’t agree more.  I am an inveterate trash treasure hunter, it’s something I just can’t help.

Last night my dreams were all about getting rid of stuff, though, which is an appropriate thing to dream on the eve of trash collection day. In my dream I was finding all kinds of old stuff and piling it up to be discarded. In real life, I usually try to recycle, donate, re-use, and otherwise responsibly get rid of things rather than just throw things out. But in my dream the heap I was making was destined for the trash truck.

And in my dream, much like in real life, D (husband) was telling me to keep the stuff, not to waste it or throw it out. It was so frustrating, I kept making so much progress with clearing out our excess of stuff and he kept putting it into his own “keeper” piles.

So it’s funny that today while on my way home from dropping off A at pre-school, I did my usual garbage day scoping and ended up picking up a couple of things — a full length mirror and a picture frame-ish thingy. I am not sure what the thingy is, but it looks perfect for making a mosaic in - like a wooden box where you could put the grout and then place your mosaic tiles, stones, beans or other cute junk into. I have a mind to do just that!

As a matter of fact, I am always astounded by the vast quantity of things we as a society throw out. Today I saw a not too shabby adult bicycle get tossed into the trash compacter. That was really sad… I also saw dressers, and couches, rugs and more. It’s always kind of sad to me.  Do we really have to have everything new? Can’t we just take care of the things we have? Everything’s so darn disposable.

Yet I’ve saved many a thing from the landfill, including a sand box turtle, a kids’ slide, two kiddie swimming pools, two kids’ bicycles, two strollers, a snare drum, several basketballs, and now, a full length mirror and a… um, wooden frame-like, um… thingy.  Sometimes I regret my choice of junk but then I also realize, hey, if I don’t want it anymore, I could just leave it out on the curb and send it on its way. After all, that’s where it was headed before I rescued it.

After the phone rang AGAIN today, for the fifth time in a row interrupting my train of thought, the telemarketer asked me how I was doing.

“Pretty much sick of receiving zillions and zillions of sales calls while I’m trying to concentrate, how ’bout you?”