post randomly

Our neighbors have spent the past 2 beautiful spring days riding around on their 4-wheeler spraying the hell out of their yard and gravel driveway with Roundup. It is seriously so bad that I can smell it inside my kitchen with the windows closed. So much for our “organic” garden not to mention the laundry hanging on the line. Ugh.

Yesterday I subbed in a 5th grade class with a boy named Alex. I’ve had trouble with Alex before. Every teacher has. But yesterday, after I reminded Alex what happens when he defies and argues, he resorted to sitting quietly in his seat, sharpening his pencil with his scissors. I didn’t care… he was quiet. The rest of the class finished their worksheets and were reading quietly as Alex sharpened. Alex sits at a table by himself at the back of the room, for obvious reasons and his chair was tipped impossibly back on two legs. Of course, I demanded he put it down and he complied but eventually, he moved back into that position. I shrugged it off and actually found myself thinking that if he would ever just fall when he did that, then he’d finally KNOW why all the teachers tell students not to do that!

And then he did. Crash went his chair, crash went Alex to the floor, clutching his head and, like a vacuum, all his classmates were pulled to his side. To their credit (because the kid annoys them, too) they were very solicitous and worried. One rushed to the nurse, one retrieved an ice pack from the refrigerator, one brought him a pillow. The nurse came up and checked him and we both remarked on Alex’s usual dramatic nature anyway. He was fine.

I somehow volunteered to walk home with Alex since his cousin lives on our way and so I stopped and told his uncle what happened. Maybe Alex will remember this the next time I sub in his class…nah. He’s probably leaning back in his chair right now, sharpening a pencil with his scissors.

I’d like to say I feel bad about this, wishing that on Alex, as if I myself conjured up his fall…but I really don’t. Is that bad? :)

Yesterday was a beautiful day, if a little windy, almost like Spring, so a walk seemed in order. Forget all the environmental implications of temperatures in the near-60s on the last day of January…it really seemed a shame to waste the sunshine.
Todd is working 2nd shift this week so I left him in bed and headed out toward my mom’s. I wanted to make sure that Barb was aware that Mom had passed out and fallen at church on Sunday as she and I keep a record of those instances. Sure enough when I got there and asked Mom if she’d told Barb how she got the cut on her forehead, her hand flew to the other side of her head and she asked, “What?”

But my walks are as much a vehicle for head-clearing as they are for exercise and it worked this time. I slept better last night and saw all sorts of interesting things during the walk. When I stopped on the bridge, a crane flew up and flapped slowly away from and then halfway back to where I stood. Calves navigated the mud around their mothers in the pasture. A deer had been caught in the barbed-wire and died hanging there and I entertained ideas about how I could’ve freed it if I’d seen it stuck. Also, I took stock of the spots where I’d tied red ribbons on the fence last spring to mark where wild asparagus grows…

But all that exercise after so much time on the couch really wore me out and I didn’t think I was going to make it home! I’ll have to get used to that long walk thing again…

So, I had a regular, yearly mammogram on Tuesday and then Wednesday, a nurse from the doctor’s office called and said they wanted to do another image, that there was a shadow on the film or something asymmetrical showing up. Something like that. How stupid is it that I can’t remember what exactly was said?
I called the imaging center and made an appointment for the next day, got the 2nd image taken and the radiologist looked at it right away then they came back in and said I could go but they wanted me to make an appointment to have another image taken in 6 months.
So what does that mean? I think I was in such a funk that I didn’t even think to wonder or question any of that…Did you see something or not? If you didn’t see anything, then why do I have to come back in 6 months instead of a year but if you did see something, maybe you should fill me in on what exactly that was and why I have to come back 6 months early?

So, if you care at all, you’re aware that I planned a fun morning Wednesday to make pies for Thanksgiving with my mom and sisters here at my house. This event had occurred last year in a more spur-of-the moment manner when Sarah and Mom just happened to show up while I was making the pies. I was procrastinating because I, like many, lose patience when making pie crusts and so I was genuinely happy to see them. We ended up making 2 pies, arranging some flowers for the tables and setting the tables. It was a really enjoyable time.
So this year, I thought I’d orchestrate this because we needed a way to make my mom feel included in Thanksgiving somehow since we can’t really rely on her to make meals or any food without help, let alone host the actual event. Barb, her friend and housekeeper who is now her caregiver, brought her over and they made the crusts while I artfully arranged pecans and mixed up pumpkin pie filling…and Emily and Sarah talked and drank coffee. Pies done, look yummy, tuck them away for the next day.
Aaaaaaand the next day, she showed up with 2 more pies. She got up Thanksgiving morning, somehow under the impression that she needed to make 2 pecan pies and mixed up the Jiffy pie crust (really? Jiffy pie crust?! this is the lady who used to win awards for her pies!) baked the pies, then cut a piece out of one and wrapped them in foil to deliver triumphantly to my house…where 2 pumpkin and one homemade bourbon pecan pie were already waiting. During all this time, she called Sarah 3 times and insisted she needed to get to the grocery to get some whipping cream or some Reddi-whip for her pies.
When she presented her pies to me, I was, to say the least, puzzled and a little taken aback and I obviously reacted in a way that threw her off as well. I think, however, that I quickly recovered and asked Todd to put the pies back in case we needed them. But apparently, that wasn’t enough as she kept harping on it all day, behind my back, that I should’ve told her I’d already made pies. Why didn’t I just let her know? blahblahblah And then this set off the insistence that she would be having Christmas at her house, ostensibly so she can do things her way (cuz that always works out so well).

?
I tried really hard all day to forget about this. I can take the pies to church Sunday and they’ll get eaten…but deep down, my feelings were really hurt because once again, this seemed personal. It became all my fault that I was hosting Thanksgiving and that she wasn’t told about the pies…even though we made them together!!! Why, of all things, can’t she forget her anger at me, for whatever reason, but she can’t for the life of her remember the fun morning we all had together making pies.
My mom has Alzheimer’s disease and sometimes I have a hard time dealing with it.

I arranged the bookshelf by color. I love it.

_{try as I might, I cannot get that picture to rotate and show up that way in this post…}

Did my mother-in-law just call at 8pm on the night of my anniversary to wish my husband Happy Anniversary and then ask if we were coming down to visit her this weekend???!
GOD! Yes she did!!! I can’t believe that!!!
For all she knows, we were out at a private romantic dinner right at that minute (I wish we had been) and why the HELL would we want to talk to one of our MOTHERS when we were out to dinner for our anniversary?! The truth is, we weren’t, of course…we went to lunch together. But I don’t think that matters because, no offense mother-in-law, but I don’t want to spend time talking to you at 8pm in the evening ANY night, especially on MY ANNIVERSARY! We just got finished with dinner and kids’ baths and we are trying to settle in to fill in school reading logs and unwind before bedtime at 8:30… and then she wanted to talk to Will!!! Jeez!
And seriously? are we coming down to visit you this weekend? Why? because our anniversary is all about YOU, mother-in-law? Are you supposed to be our first thought on our anniversary weekend?
Seriously, this is classic. I have always been rather annoyed by her seemingly self-centered ways but this one takes the cake. Wow.

We took sandwiches to the zoo yesterday and bought overpriced bottles of water for our picnic. I’m sure this is true for just about every zoo: the food is all overpriced and also really gross, so it is quite necessary to bring your own meal.

I found it interesting, though, as we walked around during the 2 hours or so considered to be lunchtime, to see the, uh, different things families brought for picnic lunches. Case in point: one family had a spread of leftover pancakes and a bag of pepperoni.

And we wonder about the decline of health in America when people don’t even know how to pack a picnic anymore…pancakes and pepperoni?!

Last night I made a nice light dinner. It’s not really that hot anymore but an easy meal is always appreciated. We had a crustless herb and vegetable quiche, a panzanella salad, cucumbers (you know, with the onions, sugar and vinegar), succotash and some pretzel bread.
As we were eating it, I realized that almost every ingredient had come either from our garden or from some other very local source. The vegetables in the quiche and the side dishes came from our garden: tomatoes, cucumbers, zucchini, onion, garlic, lima beans, corn, green pepper and peas. The herbs in the salad and the quiche came from our garden, too: basil, dill, thyme, chives, rosemary, parsley and oregano. The eggs came from my sister’s chickens and I bought the bread (for the salad and the loaf of pretzel bread) at the farmers’ market. So the only things that were store-bought were the butter, olive oil, vinegar, mustard, milk, capers, sugar, cheese, salt & pepper.
I know that if I put a little more effort in, I could get cheese, butter and milk locally and maybe even mustard (although it is made by a local company) but the main components of our meal were almost exclusively raised by hands I know (or my own!) and that was a great feeling…also made for a great meal!

I don’t have three dogs.

I wish my neighbors didn’t.