Being A Mom

"Whatever life brings, we'll share," she says,

"and I can do no more than the best I can."

-- Carol Emshwiller, Carmen Dog

Mother and child 8-31-14

"Being a mother is learning about strengths you didn't know you had,

and dealing with fears you didn't know existed."

-- Linda Wooten

Life is plenty challenging already, and as my boys press their way into manhood they'll have to strive and try and work hard to impress others, and win the affections and approval and acceptance of others.

Fuck the others.

I'm their mother.

I give them that shit for free.

My own two boys would probably be the first to say that when it comes to mothering, I'm no kind of nurturer.

I'm not the soft, homey, touchy-feely tender type.

They'd probably say that sometimes I get it right.

They'd definitely say that sometimes I totally fuck it up.

No matter what they say, I just hope that in my care, such as it is, they'll always feel loved enough, and safe enough and important enough.

Mostly, I just hope they'll always feel that they simply are "enough."

Friday Night Lights In A Small Town

"I used to think it too small to spend a life in,

but now I'm not so sure."

-- Mary Kelly

First Friday night game of the season 8-30-14

"Who you looking for

What was his name

You can prob'ly find him

At the football game

It's a small town

You know what I mean

It's a small town, son

And we all support the team."

-- James McMurtry, "Talking at the Texaco"

Home stands under the lights 8-30-14

'Round here, on any given Friday night in the fall, my whole town turns out for the high school football game.

Whether it's home or away, the fans 'round here are dedicated and diligent supporters of our home team.

'Round here, we all show up because we believe in our boys, our coaches, our school, our team.

Friday night football is just something we do 'round here.

'Round here, it's not so much about whether our team wins or loses. 

It's about everybody being a small part of something larger than themselves. It's about everybody doing their little bit to make the whole thing work, whether it's maintaining the stadium, making sandwiches, printing game day t-shirts, washing the man-funk off practice uniforms, patching up injured players, scheduling volunteers, or, as I did last night, joining the other moms at the post-game team feed serving line. 

I filled the water cups.

We fed both teams, our boys and our opponents' boys, all together. Big dogs gotta eat, and 'round here, we don't care whose dogs they are. We just feed them. After the game there's no "us" and "them." No "winners" or "losers." They are all just hungry tired boys and we're just moms who want to make sure they're all well taken care of.

'Round here, we even like our visitors to feel at home.

Football 'round here doesn't just unite our whole community for a night. It happens all week long, all season long. 

We're all in it together. We're all in it for our boys.

'Round here, football isn't just a game. 

'Round here, football is something good. For everyone. 

A Ride In A Hot Air Balloon

"Sometimes you get no second chance 

and it's best to accept the gifts the world offers you."

-- Paolo Coelho, Eleven Minutes

Hot air balloon shadow 8-29-14

"Considering the way the world is,

one happy day is almost a miracle."

-- Paolo Coelho, Eleven Minutes

Once-in-a-lifetime experiences come along, well, you know.

So when one does come along, it's best to grab it before it gets away.

Mine almost did.

Hot air balloon burner releasing flame 8-29-14

Over a year ago, my husband gave me a gift -- a certificate to ride in a hot air balloon. The certificate was good for a year. And then the year was gone and it expired. For a number of reasons -- weather, schedules, my fucked-up mental and emotional health at the time -- we kept putting it off. 

We put it off until it was too late. 

We put it off so long that our once-in-a-lifetime opportunity was lost.

Except for the fact that I am married to a tenacious man who petitioned the company for a re-do, which they granted, and yesterday, once-in-a-lifetime rolled around again.

This time we grabbed it by the balls. Well, by the balloon.

I was skeptical at first, when they said they were going to cram six people (some of whom obviously hadn't missed many meals) into a wicker basket the size of a bathtub, and then float it 1,500 feet above the ground for an hour. 

But as soon as we lifted off, my skepticism melted away with each hot, flaming blast from the propane burners.

Which, by the way, is loud as fuck.

I had this idealistic notion that ballooning would be a quiet, peaceful, sort of silent experience.

Oh, no.

It was like being trapped right next to the mouth of a fire-breathing dragon. A really loud fire-breathing dragon.

I could feel the heat like a blast furnace on the back of my neck and the top of my head as the dragon inhaled and exhaled, so loudly it drowned out all conversation -- so loudly that it spooked horses and deer and cows in the fields and pastures hundreds of feet below us.

And the breathing goes on the whole time. It has to. Because the breathing is what keeps the balloon and its little basket full of people filled with hot air so that the balloon doesn't crash to the ground.

But in between breaths, being lofted up above the earth with a basketful of oddball strangers felt something like a lovely little miracle. 

The view was unbelievable. The day was perfect.

My heart and spirit expanded with the warm, full feeling of lucky.

And then we landed.

The flight had lulled me into a reverie and I figured when we touched down, we'd lightly bump up and down and then come gently to rest on terra firma.

Oh, no. Again.

Hot air balloons 8-29-14

There are no seat belts in a hot air balloon. No helmets. Nothing to hold onto but the edges of the basket. And each other.

There is also no landing gear.

The balloon just lands when the bottom of the basket hits the ground. And it hits hard.

When it did, the basket tipped forward almost 90 degrees and I seriously thought we were all going to spill out. I fell onto the old lady sitting in front of me, who disregarded our pre-flight instructions and stuck her hands outside the basket to break our fall, as if she could stop a thousand pound moving object.

I thought she was a goner.

My husband grabbed the back of the old lady's jacket and I wrapped my arms around her waist as we bounced a second time. And a third. 

One of the very heavy propane tanks tipped up and landed back down on my toe. It hurt.

We skidded and bumped along as the ground crew -- a skinny 60-ish looking guy and a very small 50-ish looking woman -- tried to grab hold and slow our momentum.

Eventually we stopped. 

I felt a little shaken. And a lot relieved. 

Which, I think, is the real reason behind drinking champagne at the end of a balloon ride. 

The pilot spewed some mumbo jumbo about the history of ballooning and the reasons behind the cork-popping post-flight tradition.

Yada yada.

I didn't drink mine to salute history or tradition. I downed it to settle my nerves.

But seriously, I also toasted the fact that I'd just experienced something extremely special and rare and unforgettable.

I felt grateful and lucky that once-in-a-lifetime didn't forget about me, but came knocking a second time.

And that this time I answered before it slipped away into the blue.

Green Tea

"The perfect temperature for tea 

is two degrees hotter than just right."

-- Terri Guillemets

Frog teacup 8-27-14

"Having picked some tea, he drank it,

Then he sprouted wings,

And flew to a fairy mansion,

To escape the emptiness of the world ..."

-- Chiao Jen

I am trying to drink more green tea.

I've been steeping it in my coffee cup.

I've been drinking it hot and iced.

I've even been filling my water bottle with it on my bike rides.

I won't bore you with the details, but if you're interested in reading about the healthy benefits of green tea, here's a really sciency article where you can do just that.

Why green tea?

In a nutshell ...

Because it's good for me.

Planting Apple Trees

"If you want to make an apple pie from scratch,

you must first create the universe."

-- Carl Sagan

Homegrown Macintosh apples 8-27-14

"The best time to plant a tree is twenty years ago.

The second best time is now."

-- Unknown

Roughly 16 years ago, my husband and my son, Sam, planted two scrawny, skinny, leafless sticks in our back yard.

They said they were apple trees.

I was skeptical. 

They looked like dead twigs.

But ...

They were indeed apple trees, albeit in their infancy.

Now our two scrawny trees (I call them "Two Tree Orchard") are full and lush, towering over the backyard fence, their down-turning branches heavily laden with ripening fruit.

Yesterday I was mowing the grass under them and the branches kept whacking me in the head and apples kept dropping to the ground. So I harvested an armful. The apples are just a tad too green for eating yet, but cooked down with some sugar, cinnamon and butter, they made pretty good applesauce.

Later, when the apples are a little bit riper, I'll make as many quarts of sauce as I can so we can eat it all winter long.

And I have all kinds of plans for cobblers, crisps, breads, cakes and pies.

I like being a suburban farmer, with my tiny little orchard and my tiny little garden.

It makes me feel more than good to cultivate and feed myself and my family the freshest possible food on the planet -- fruits and vegetables that come in straight from the backyard mere minutes before they hit the plate.

It doesn't get any gooder than that.

Exfoliation

"You've got to exfoliate, you know?"

-- ASAP Rocky

Exfoliated Barbie 8-26-14

"I think the biggest mistake people make is being heavy handed," says Henriksen.

"A little goes a long way -- let the exfoliating particles do their job."

-- Dana Oliver, 

"How to Exfoliate Your Face and Get Smooth Skin in 3 Minutes,"

Huffington Post

My "beauty routine" is pretty much a bar of Ivory soap.

But I do try to exfoliate a couple of times a week.

I don't waste my money on expensive, fancy-schmancy scrubs, gizmos and "systems" though.

My preferred exfoliant is a couple of headache powder packets. It's crushed aspirin with caffeine in it. But instead of ingesting it, I dampen it with a little bit of water and scrub my face with it to slough off the dead cells and stimulate blood flow to my skin.

The aspirin is anti-inflammatory and the caffeine kind of tightens everything up, for the moment anyway.

It's cheap. 

It's easy. 

It feels nice. 

It's good for my skin.

And it leaves my face as soft and smooth as a Barbie's bottom.

Killer Tomato Sauce

"Taste this." 

Rick held out a wooden spoon smothered in sauce,

cradling the underside with his free hand.

"That's heaven."

Laney licked the spoon clean.

"When I die, bury me in a vat of that."

-- Emily Liebert, You Knew Me When

Plastic snakes, rubber eyeballs, applesauce, carrot sticks and a cookie 8-25-14

"It's pretty easy to cook pasta,

but a good sauce is way more useful."

-- Emeril Lagasse

Around here, the tomatoes in my garden have been fattening and reddening a whole lot faster than I've been eating them.

Make no mistake, I do love tomato sandwiches. But at this rate, I'd have to eat a dozen tomato sandwiches a day just to keep up with my bumper crop.

So yesterday, while I listened to the Indians game on the radio, I did what I do most every summer when the vast multitude of tomatoes ripening in my garden, on my patio table and on my kitchen counter threaten to take over my house and home.

I gathered them up and made my mean marinara.

I call it my "Killer Tomato Sauce."

It's a day long process -- pick 'em, peel 'em, seed 'em, chop 'em, cook 'em, stir 'em, cook 'em, stir 'em ... etc.

Killer Tomato Sauce 8-25-14

It takes hours until the pan full of watery red liquid cooks down and reduces into a thick, bubbly, glossy, rich, fragrant, tomato-y sauce. I add fresh homegrown basil, olive oil, salt and pepper, fresh Parmesan and a splash of hot sauce.

No garlic.

No onion.

I know.

But shut up.

It's my sauce, so I'll make it my way.

Onions and garlic don't agree with the delicate digestion around here, so why in Hell would I make a sauce we couldn't enjoy? Waddaya think, I'm stoopid?

Any self-respecting Italian would blanch at my brazen disregard. But hey, I'm Belgian and Irish. At least I put tomatoes in my marinara. If I made sauce according to my cultural heritage it'd just be a big vat of beer.

Now wait just a dadgum minute.

Aging Gracefully

"... life is about losing 

and about doing it as gracefully as possible ...

and enjoying everything in between."

-- Mia Farrow

Rose 8-24-14

"I wish the time hadn't gone so fast, though.

And sometimes I wish I'd enjoyed it more on the way,

and worried about it less."

-- Neil Gaiman

I've never been accused of being graceful.

At anything.

So when it comes to aging, I'm not sure if I'm going about it gracefully or not.

I guess I'm sort of tripping through it.

Stumbling clumsily, gracelessly, inelegantly.

Oh, well.

This shit is new to me, so give me some slack.

I'm trying.

It's like when a little kid rides a 2-wheeler for the first time.

It ain't pretty, but at least she's doing it.

A Thoughtful Gift

"Everyone has a gift for something,

even if it is the gift of being a good friend."

-- Marian Anderson

Bicycle with red blinking light 8-23-14

"May it be a light to you in dark places,

when all other lights go out."

-- J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

My farmer friend Bob is one of the good guys.

I ride past him nearly every day, him in his truck, me on my bike.

Bob always sticks an arm out the window and waves to me.

Bob is a very friendly farmer.

Yesterday when he waved, he motioned for me to stop. 

So I looked both ways, did a U-turn and swung over to the his side of the road.

Bob had a gift for me -- a little clip-on, battery-operated blinking red light that flashes on and off, on and off, on and off.

He clipped it onto the back of the tool bag under my bike seat and switched it on.

"It's just a cheap-o," he said. "But it's better than nothin'."

He hugged me there on the roadside, even though I was all sweaty and gross, and sent me on my way.

Bob's gift might seem like a little thing -- just a small, inexpensive item from the hardware store. 

But it was a very thoughtful thing.

And now, I'll think of my thoughtful friend whenever I switch on my new blinky taillight.

It's always a good thing to know someone is looking out for you.

And I was touched that my friend thought enough of me to give me a thoughtful gift that will help protect me and keep me safe out on the road.

They say it's the thought that counts.

I say the friend who thought the thought counts even more.

Banana Bread

"Oh, hallelujah, our problems are solved. We have banana bread."

-- Apu, "Eight Misbehavin," The Simpsons

Ripe banana 8-22-14

"What is happening to me happens to all fruits that grow ripe."

-- Friedrich Nietzsche

Banana bread 8-22-14

"When life gives you bananas you can't make juice."

-- Yahg Mushu, aka Isabel Truax

There's a drug store in my town that sometimes sets a basket of over ripe bananas near the checkout register with a little handwritten sign that says "Baking Bananas, 25 cents each."

It's their not-so-clever attempt at the reverse psychology of marketing rotting produce.

Nice try, guys.

First of all: Who goes to the goddamn fucking drug store to buy bananas?

And secondly: Who stands the fuck there paying for their Tylenol, shoe laces  and Winston Lights thinking, "Gee, you know, perfectly fresh yellow bananas are only 25 cents a pound today over by the cough drops, but I think I'll pass on those and go ahead and pay 25 cents apiece for these special baking bananas right here at the register -- these ones with all the black shit on the skin and the squishy spots and the swarm of fruit flies. It sure is a good thing I came here to this drug store, because otherwise, I'd have missed out on this really awesome banana baking opportunity."

In my opinion, they should pay me the 25 cents to take their rotting fucking fruit off their hands.

I've never had to buy rotten bananas, and I don't plan to start now because in my house, the fresh ones get overripe about four seconds after I bring them home from the grocery store anyway.

It's a good thing I make really, really good banana bread. 

Poor banana bread. 

Banana bread gets a bad rap as the thing you bring when you don't know what else to bring  -- when someone dies, or moves in next door, or loses their job, or at the last possible minute says "Mom, I have to bring something to the (fill in school/sports/church/scout function that you knew nothing  about here). 

Showing up at work with a loaf of banana bread doesn't communicate "Hey, guys, you are all so very special to me that I baked you something great!" 

No.

Banana bread communicates "Hey, guys, these moldy bananas were liquefying on my kitchen counter and I was going to throw them in the garbage, but instead I scraped them off the Formica and made them into bread. Enjoy!"

Banana bread doesn't feel special, or intentional.

It feels like a consolation prize.

Well, all banana breads are not created equal, and I happen to make kick-ass banana bread that tastes like I meant it to -- like something special.

I put tiny chocolate chips in it.

I don't unload it on unsuspecting neighbors or co-workers or strangers.

It's too good for that.

I make it on purpose. 

For people I love.

A Good Cause

"The challenge really has become a movement,

somehow become a celebration of life

even though the disease that has inspired it 

is such a long, slow, relentless death sentence."

-- Mike Lupica, New York Daily News

Me getting ice-bucketed 8-21-14

"Causes do matter. And the world is changed by 

people who care deeply about causes -- about things that matter. 

We don't have to be particularly smart or talented.

We don't need a lot of money or education.

All we really need is to be passionate about something important;

something bigger than ourselves.

And it's that commitment to a worthwhile cause that changes the world."

-- Steve Goodier

C'mon.

Everyone's doing it.

The "ice bucket challenge" is taking the world by storm. It was started a few weeks ago to raise awareness about Amytrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS.

And now, it seems like everyone from former President George W. Bush to LeBron James is in on the act.

It's like the ultimate game of tag. 

I happen to know some people personally who have struggled, or are currently struggling, with this relentless disease. So the least I can do is take a bucket of ice water over the head and write a check to support the fight for a cure for ALS.

Maybe you should too.

Go ahead.

Challenge yourself.

And then challenge someone else.

And then, if you can, please make a donation and learn more about ALS at ALSA.org.

The internet is flooded right now with countless videos of people doing the challenge. It's easy to get annoyed with it. But before you judge, or pooh pooh, or whatever, please take a few minutes to educate yourself and to understand.

Here's a video that might help enlighten you to what the challenge is really about, and what ALS really is. (Please watch the whole thing. You'll see why.)

C'mon.

Do a good thing.

Jump on the bandwagon.

Support a good cause.

I challenge everyone.

Lunch Notes

"Lunch hour is the loneliest hour of the day."

-- Charlie Brown

Lunch note 8-20-14

"At our school, the older you get, the stupider your lunch period."

-- Rebecca Stead, When You Reach Me

School sucks.

For my son Leo, the sucking started today.

It's true, school can fill a kid with lots of good things. But we all know it can also force feed him a shitload of total ass-crap.

That's where lunch notes come in.

I pack Leo's lunch every day.

On many of those days, I tuck a small note in along with his sandwiches, chips and applesauce.

The food is how I try to feed him what he needs to keep going physically. But the notes are how I try to feed him a little shot of encouragement, or humor, or understanding, or nonsense, or whatever kind of boost he might be hungry for that day.

In the middle of a long hard day packed with information, and peer pressure, and cliques, and competition, and grades, and questions, and hormones, and overheated classrooms and uncomfortable desks, a lunch note reminds a kid that someone outside the building is thinking about him and loves him.

The lunch note is a tiny thing, but it's a very good thing. On some school days it might be the only good thing that happens to a kid.

You can't eat them, and I don't think they're on Mrs. Obama's healthier school lunch agenda.

But they should be.

If you ask me, little lunch notes should be a required part of every kid's daily diet.

They're soul food.

Birthday Cake

"I like birthday cake. It's so symbolic ...

it's the emblem of childhood and a happy day."

-- Aimee Bender

Birthday cake 8-18-14

"I think they're going to force us to eat lots of cake 

and then take an unreasonably long nap."

-- Veronica Roth, Insurgent

My husband's birthday was yesterday.

And it got me thinking.

One of my earliest, deepest-seated memories from childhood is from when I turned four.

My birthday is in mid-July and everybody was in the sun-soaked back yard for a cookout -- my sisters, my parents, both sets of grandparents, and our yellow hound dog, Penny.

There's a jumpy Super 8 home move somewhere that documents the following events as they transpired that day -- it's like watching the Kennedy assassination with the sound turned down.

I was wearing a frilly yellow party dress and a cardboard Indian headdress lined with black and white stand-up feathers -- a look which sums me up pretty damned accurately.

I was gleefully riding on the whirly-bird with my sisters, spinning and laughing, when my parents brought out my birthday cake and called everybody over to the picnic table.

It was a bakery cake from Bake-A-Teria, where we always got our birthday cakes, with sugary white icing, my name and the number of years that had elapsed thus far since my birth, piped in baby blue.

I scampered across the lawn. My mother lit the candles. I inhaled a deep chestful of air. I clamped shut my eyes and leaned in to blow out the candles and make my birthday wish when Penny leaped from the grassy knoll onto the picnic table and devoured my entire cake, candles and all, in a series of giant, hungry, chomping, slobbery bites.

I was shell shocked. Stunned. The grownups laughed and tried to make it okay. But it was not okay. It was so, so not fucking okay.

And it wasn't about the lost cake, necessarily. The real tragedy was about the lost wish. Because without a birthday cake there are no birthday candles, and without birthday candles there can be no birthday wish. 

Then there was the time we were driving home from Bake-A-Teria with my sister Alicen's birthday cake. It was in the era before children had to be strapped into seat belts and Alicen was standing, holding onto the back of the driver's seat head rest. Her cake, in it's box with the see-through cellophane window, was on the seat behind her. When Dad had to suddenly hit the brakes, Alicen lost her hold. She let go and fell backwards and plopped directly onto her cake, crushing it with a precise imprint of her ass.

My parents served it anyway, with candles. I remember its sad lopsided-ness, the jokes about the butt-print in the frosting. But even a crushed birthday cake can still be wished on and eaten. 

When a cake is gobbled by the family dog, the wishes are gobbled up with it. 

Birthdays require a cake with candles. It's that simple. Although, if the birthday boy or girl requests it, a birthday pie can be substituted for the cake. Candles, however, are de rigueur if any wishing is going to happen. 

A birthday cake needn't be fancy. It can be homemade or bakery-made, from scratch or a boxed mix, decorated or plain, round, oblong, square or divided into individual cupcakes. What really matters is that there's enough cake for at least one candle to be stuck in and blown out and wished upon.

I don't remember much about what I got for childhood birthday gifts. But I do remember what I wished for. Most years I wished for a pony and a swimming pool. 

Except for when I was four. 

That year I just wished someone had tied up the goddamn dog.

The Kids Are Alright

"But the places that used to fit me cannot hold the things I've learned."

-- Sara Groves, "Painting Pictures of Egypt"

Sam's Radio Flyer 8-18-14

"Parents can only give good advice or put them on the right paths,

but the final forming of a person's character lies in their own hands."

-- Anne Frank

Saturday -- after spending the summer at home -- my oldest child moved his belongings into his very first, very own, apartment. 

He'll have the whole place to himself.

No roommates.

No rules.

He'll call his own shots.

He'll buy his own groceries.

He'll cook his own meals.

He'll make his own mistakes.

He'll be his own man.

He's so damn ready to fly this fucking coop -- this place that surrounds him with reminders of his childhood.

I'm not one of those "while you're living in my house you'll follow my rules" kind of parents. I only put the hammer down when one of my kids, or someone else, might get hurt.

Otherwise, I'm about the most permissive parent on the planet.

Still, after his freshman year taste of freedom and independence, this place, this house, this environment, is no longer "home" for him.

And it's not because he doesn't like it here. It's not because he doesn't like us. We get along swimmingly and have had a great, fun summer together.

He's simply outgrown this place -- like a bloom that has unfurled and can no longer reconfigure its petals back into the tight wrappings of the bud it once was.

What's that quote from Anais Nin? "And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom."

And that's perfectly alright.

It's exactly as it should be.

It's good and right and the whole point of raising a child in the first place.

It's the natural progression of the growth of a young man who is ready to leave the mainland and set sail into the choppy expanse of his own adventure, his own story, his own life.

I'll stay behind and be a white flag on the shore so he can find his way back if and when he needs to.

I'll be a lantern in the lighthouse to illuminate the coastline.

I'll be ballast in his hull to help steady his ship in stormy seas.

I'll be a gentle breeze to fill his sails.

I just hope I'll never, ever be an anchor.

Chocolate

"What you see before you, my friend,

is the result of a lifetime of chocolate."

-- Katharine Hepburn

Chocolate takeout with noodles, chocolate sauce, chocolate chips and candy bars 8-17-14

"Money can't buy happiness.

But, it can buy chocolate,

which is pretty much the same thing."

-- Hanako Ishii

"What kind of monster could possibly hate chocolate?"

-- Cassandra Clare, Clockwork Angel

Chocolate takeout with noodles chocolate sauce,
chocolate chips and candy bars 8-17-14

If I have to explain this one then I'm sorry, 
but we can't be friends anymore.

Beneficial Pests

"Hey farmer, farmer

Put away that DDT now

Give me spots on my apples

But leave me the birds and the bees, please."

-- Joni Mitchell, "Big Yellow Taxi"

Spider and web in an apple tree 8-16-14

"Fortunately, every pest has a predator,

and we can use that natural food chain to our advantage."

-- Debbie Hadley, 

"How to Attract Beneficial Insects 

to Control Garden Pests," About.com

"Spiders -- so needed and yet so misunderstood."

-- Donna Lynn Hope, Willow

I practice all natural, organic pest control in my garden.

I hand-pull the weeds. 

I rely on a small fence to keep out the rabbits.

I use natural remedies -- like milk to combat the weird fungus on my zucchini leaves -- whenever I can.

I let the bees and butterflies pollinate and do whatever else bees and butterflies do.

When the baby praying Mantises hatched in the shrubbery out front, I hand-delivered five of them to the garden and rested them on my tomato plants so they could grow up strong and fat eating the aphids and broccoli bugs.

I let Mother Nature handle the rest of the insects.

She's doing a good job. The garden plants are thriving and so far nothing is nibbling at them before we get the chance.

Yesterday I found this spider hanging out on her web in the branches of one of my apple trees. 

I don't love spiders, in my house anyway. But I have no problem at all with them loitering in my garden or in "Two Tree Orchard" (i.e. my tiny two dwarf apple trees).

After I checked out the spider, I checked on the apples. They looked pretty good. Red. Ripening. Plentiful.

A few apples had a few spots, but I'm not worried about it. I can cut those out with a paring knife.  

No pests is a good thing, whether I'm making tomato sandwiches, zucchini bread, basil pesto or homemade applesauce.

That's why Mother Nature heads up my garden staff.

She works hard.

I try not to be a pest.

The Dawn Chorus

 "And even the sun in dawn chorus sings,

a celestial melody to the earth below."

-- Tjaden

Robin and branches (cut paper) 8-15-15

"The best time to hear bird song is at dawn.

The dawn chorus is one of the marvels of nature."

-- Gareth Huw Davies, "Bird Songs," PBS.org

"And the songbirds are singing,
like they know the score."

-- Fleetwood Mac, "Songbird"

My bed is in the basement.

Which is great for keeping my erratic sleep habits, torrential tossing and night-time wanderings from waking the rest of the sleepers in the house.

It's a good environment for sleep.

It's very cool down there. It's very dark down there. It's very quiet down there. 

And if a tornado hits, I'm good to go.

However, there are drawbacks.

The only windows in the basement are two tiny high-up ones resting at the top of the cinder block basement walls, at the foundation of the house. 

They don't let in much daylight. They don't open. 

They're sealed shut, kind of like prison windows, except without the bars. 

I don't mind not seeing much from my basement bedroom. What I do mind, however, is not hearing much. Since I set up camp there a year or so ago, I've seriously missed falling asleep to the sounds of night -- rain, storms, distant train whistles. 

Mostly, though, I've missed the early morning wake-up call of songbirds in the treetops.

It's called the dawn chorus. 

It starts out simply. One bird calls. Another answers. A few more get in on the conversation, and pretty soon it's a cacophony of bird sound heralding the dawn of another new day.

The whole thing only lasts a few minutes, but it's beautiful, and it's the sound I've missed the most since I went underground.

My husband wasn't home last night, so there was no risk of waking him with my sheet-tangling "crocodile death roll" (as he calls it). So I slept in the big bed in the upstairs bedroom with both windows flung open wide.

This morning I heard it.

If I knew the bird call for "it sounded good," I'd tweet it.

And for all of you sleepers-in ...

Ding! Ding! Ding!

Time for a One Good Thing "How to hear the dawn chorus without having to wake up at the ass crack of dawn" bonus sound clip. 

Just click here!

Letting The Outside In

"Set wide the window. Let me drink the day."

-- Edith Wharton, 

Artemis to Actaeon and Other Verses

Toy window 8-14-14

"How does light enter a house? If the windows are open.

How does light enter a human? If the door of love is open."

-- Paulo Coelho, Eleven Minutes

Every summer a war rages in my house.

The guys like it cool.

I like it hot.

As soon as the furnace is turned off in spring, they turn the AC on.

On any given summer day, it's not unusual to hear one of them complaining, shirtless, about how "stinkin' hot it is in here," while I'm shivering in a sweater and jeans under a fuzzy blanket.

If it was up to me, I'd have the windows and doors open all summer long, except maybe during the most heinous heat waves. 

But the guys like to batten down the hatches, lock everything up and seal us in tight day after day after day after day -- like lizards in a terrarium. 

Maybe it's my claustrophobia, but I can't stand being shut in like that.  It's stifling. I can't breathe.

I like to let the outside in so I can feel the breeze, smell the air, hear the rain and the birds and the children and the lawn mowers.

Don't tell the guys, but sometimes, when I'm home alone, I leave the AC on and open the windows anyway. (In the winter, I do the reverse -- open the windows and jack up the heat. I do the same thing in my car.)

But then there are days -- days when the natural atmosphere outside matches the climate-controlled atmosphere inside -- when the temperature settles in at a perfect 70-something and a lazy breeze chases away the dampness and humidity -- when I can throw up the sashes and let the air out there mingle with the air in here.

We're in a stretch of days like that, and I have the place wide open.

These are the days when there's no need to battle and we can call a truce in the window war. 

Plus, I'm home alone and there's nobody here to tell me that I can't.

Fortune Cookie Wisdom

"Gods, spirits, cookies, whatever."

-- Andrea Lochen, The Repeat Year

Fortune cookies 8-13-14

"Fortune cookies are a good idea.

If the message is positive, 

it can make your day a little better."

-- Yao Ming