My parents flew in from Denver last weekend to check out our new digs and enjoy the perfect weather with us. So much fun. On Monday, we all (except poor Scott, who had to work, sniff) went to the zoo. It was every bit as wonderful as I’ve heard. Who doesn’t love the San Diego Zoo?
We didn’t make it to the pandas because we spent so much time with the reptiles and monkeys. But that’s okay, because my fabulous parents bought us an annual membership for Christmas. For a family our size, the membership costs about as much as one and a half trips to the zoo. It comes with guest passes and other discounts, plus a zoo magazine. It’s a perfect arrangement: now we can drop in for an hour or two whenever we feel like it, without feeling pressured to see the whole thing in one swoop.
The first year we lived in Virginia, I bought a family membership to the Frontier Culture Museum, which was about 40 minutes from our house and five minutes from our church. I took the kids at least once a month, often dropping by for an hour on our way home from Sunday Mass. We got to know the costumed interpreters by name, and when new lambs were born that April, we got to cuddle them on our laps. Going by numbers, the membership paid for itself in two visits, but its real value to our family would be impossible to tally. My girls would don their bonnets (purchased at another living history museum* before we left Long Island) and make-believe their way through barnyards and thatched houses, having the time of their lives. They got to spin wool, card fleece, shell peas, and chase hoops. Best fifty dollars I ever spent.
The zoo membership promises to be just as much fun. We got a real treat on this first visit—we happened into one of the aviaries just as a zookeeper was beginning to feed the birds. She was carrying four or five little tubs of food: crickets, worms, peanuts. She’d cluck and call the birds by name, and they clustered round her in anticipation of their particular favorite tidbits. My girls clustered round, too, and the extremely kind zookeeper told them all about the birds. It was a glimpse behind the scenes, and we were thrilled.
When she finished, the zookeeper told us she was about to feed the flamingos, and did we want to come watch? You bet we did! She told us the best place to stand, and on our way to the prime spot, she opened her access door to the flamingo pool area and invited us to the threshold for a quick meet-and-greet with some of the birds. We were charmed by "Handsome," a flirty scarlet ibis who likes to stick close to his zookeeper friend. My kids can’t wait to go back to visit him. Our plan is to scope out when the feeding times are for all the different animals, so we’ll know where to go whenever we drop in.
This year, when relatives ask you what the kids would like for Christmas, I highly recommend that you drop a hint for a membership to the zoo or museum or science center closest to you. Charlotte Mason encouraged mothers to take their children to the same park or woods on a regular basis, so that the place and its denizens would become familiar, and changes in season easier to observe. The same principle applies to places like museums and zoos!
*Readers of the Charlotte books may be interested to know that the hatmaker in Charlotte’s village was inspired by the hatmaker at Old Bethpage, the place where we got our bonnets. Bushy eyebrows and all!
Took me a month, but I finally got our trip photos off the cameraphone and onto Flickr. They aren’t very good pictures—most of them were taken through the van window—but there they are. Some of them are out of order, and I’m still working on captions for them. It’s a work in progress, like pretty much everything in my life right now.
(By the way, in case you missed it, Alice live-blogged the trip with me over in the Cottage.)
They’re tiny, they’re shiny, and they love to boogie. They jitter and jive their way around the world in the company of my college pal Kristen, and yesterday they danced right into my house and won my children’s hearts. Before that, they trotted off to Japan, and we’ve had a ball seeing the sights with them: it’s the world up close and miniature, and the result is poetry in pictures.
We hope they’ll dance back down this way very soon!
To one of my favorite bloggers. You’ve brought an extra zing to my Bloglines list, and I thank you!
Yesterday afternoon I sat down on the floor to change the baby. As I lingered there, playing with her, Wonderboy came up behind me and leaned against me for a little while. He loves to supervise my baby-tickling. Then he began—oh, it was so sweet!—to gently stroke my hair. For several minutes I sat there enjoying the soft touch of his hand on the back of my head. He was chuckling softly, and I was just melting.
Then he touched my arm, and his fingers were slimy. Startled, I turned to look at him and there he stood with a big happy grin, one hand glistening with goo—and an open jar of Vaseline in the other.
My hair is very shiny today.
Well, the great success of the Carnival of Breadmaking sure did come as a shock to me. Lots of traffic. People love bread!
Here are some more recipes, contributed by my wonderful readers. I’m going to put them in separate posts for easy reference, and I’ll link them from the Carnival as well. Check the bottom of the Carnival post for new links to more contributors. Don’t miss the little present Danielle Bean shared with us as a postscript to the bread conversation!
Here’s a recipe from loyal reader Haley. Thanks so much for sharing it, Haley. We can’t wait to try it.
EASY FRENCH BREAD – 2 LOAVES
Haley adds: "I’d love to see more pictures of different recipes as you and your kiddos continue your bread-making adventures. Happy baking!"
This bread is not hard to make but it is not
quick bread. It’s kind of old world and takes time and prep, but it
does add a rhythm to your life. You can fit this in and the joy and reward
of this process – for the making of bread can become a way of life – is
unimaginably fulfilling. I would think that someone who wove her own cloth would
appreciate this approach, at least for a time. As soon as I am done typing this,
I am going to go make a new starter. My boys have not experienced this kind of
bread making. All they know is that the sister get in the kitchen and amazing
things happen. A boy ought to know how to cook real food.
Joann, thanks so much for letting me share this!
Y’all were so helpful with the bread recipes (and I have more links and recipes to add to the carnival, just as soon as I get a chance!) that I thought I’d throw a new question at you. My old vacuum cleaner was one of the things that didn’t make the cut when we moved. This house has all hardwood floors, and I want a lightweight vacuum to save me from having to sweep every day. Any recommendations? I want something that won’t scratch the floors but will pick up the crumbs and can handle area rugs too.
I do use a Swiffer broom a couple of times a day, and that’s great for dust but not crumbs. Has anyone tried the new Swiffer vac? It seems like basically a long-handled Dustbuster with a Swiffer pad mounted behind it. Looks promising, but wouldn’t work on my area rug. Hmm.
I don’t want anything big that will take up a lot of room in the closet. I know Orecks are small and light. Are they worth their salt? Will they scratch hardwood floors?
The thing about moving is that when you get there, you’re busy for weeks. It isn’t like a vacation, where you come home on Sunday, and you spend Monday doing eight loads of laundry and a massive grocery shopping, and then you’re pretty much caught up and can get down to the serious business of forcing all your friends to ooh and ah over your photos.
With a household move, you have So Much Work to do when you get there. Who has time for photo-sharing and storytelling? And yet, there are all those stories from the big adventure of Getting There, all those landmarks you passed and wanted to write about so you’ll remember them forever.
We’ve been here three weeks now. That seems hardly the blink of an eye, and yet in the eyes of the DMV I’m already in penalty territory for not having registered the car. I did try, yesterday. After two hours of waiting in line and wrestling with papers, I left with no car registration and a temporary driver’s license which has my name spelled wrong. Sigh. I’ll try again next week. Dear DMV, Thank you for providing my five children with an important life lesson. I call it, "Red Tape is Like a Spider’s Web and We Are Hapless Flies." Signed, Merlissa.
Three weeks. We’re mostly unpacked, the girls are already immersed in ballet and piano, and I refer to the freeways the California way ("the 8, the 52") without having to think about it. But part of my mind is still reliving our trip. I think I’m a little in shock that it went so well. I was braced for more misadventure in our adventure. Apart from a couple of rough moments when Wonderboy objected (loudly, stridently) to my going out to the car to bring in our bags—because these spaghetti arms can’t handle luggage and babies at the same time—everything went quite smoothly. No getting lost in strange cities, no serious injury, no breakdowns (neither vehicular nor mental), no moments of panic.
Except when those dogs were charging toward us.
It was somewhere in New Mexico, or were we already in Arizona? Already, I’m forgetting the details. I was on the phone with Scott (handsfree, of course, THANK YOU BLUETOOTH) who had an airline ticket agent on his other phone. It was the day the movers unloaded our furniture here, and they finished surprisingly early, and Scott and I were regretting having scheduled a cushion day into our plans. He was booked to fly to Phoenix on the Wednesday, planning to meet us there and bring us into California himself. But I was making great time, and the movers were gone, and both of us were wishing we’d booked his flight for Tuesday instead. Hence the two-phone conference call with the ticket agent, who said she could indeed move his flight up a day and it wouldn’t even cost anything.
"She says she can get me to Phoenix at either two p.m. or five p.m.," he said. "Which one works best for you?"
"Oh, definitely the—" I began, which is when Jane started shrieking. Then Beanie started shrieking. Then Rose started shrieking.
"WHY ARE YOU SHRIEKING?" I shrieked.
"OOOOOOHHHHH MOMMYYYYY GROSS HE’S THROWING UP!"
And then I could hear the retching noises over the shrieking. Poor little Wonderboy. After 2400 miles, his tummy had had enough. So he was vomiting and the girls were screaming and Scott was on the phone wondering if we’d had a car accident, and the ticket agent was on the OTHER phone wondering if we were all crazy people.
"Two o’clock! Arrive at two I gotta go BYE!" I shouted. There was an exit just ahead, so I took it. It turned out to be one of those nothing-there exits, just a frontage road in the middle of lonely fields scattered with rusting cars and old tires. I pulled over to the side of the frontage road and released the girls from the foul-smelling van. Wonderboy was sobbing. Or maybe I was. Hard to tell in all the confusion. I cleaned him up—experience has taught me to keep the minivan well stocked with cleanup supplies—and was bagging his icky icky clothes when I noticed something moving toward us. Dogs. Four of them, no, five. A pack. I think five dogs pretty much qualifies as a pack, especially when they’re a motley assortment of shapes and sizes and they are glaring at you and your small children from not very far away.
Oh, look, that’s a junkyard, said my brain, which has a habit of chiming in with helpful information about five minutes too late. Also, that’s a very low fence. Those dogs could jump that fence in a heartbeat. Look, they are coming this way.
Thanks, Brain. I’d picked up on that already. Eyes beat you to it. And actually Adrenal Gland was way ahead of you both.
Those dogs do not look friendly, said Brain. I couldn’t help but notice that Brain was sounding decidedly panicky. And Heart seemed to have chosen this moment to stop beating.
The girls the girls the girls!!! Are standing by that fence! shrieked Maternal Instinct. Heart executed a double backflip, landing in Throat.
Don’t just stand there you idiots! hollered Adrenaline. Get those kids in the car before those dogs—
Oh they are really close now, observed Eyes.
Myyyyyy baaaabieeeeeees! wailed Maternal Instinct.
Adrenal Gland delivered a firm kick in the pants to Nervous System. The impact jarred Vocal Cords loose from the stranglehold Heart had put on them.
"GIRLS!" I roared. "INTO THE CAR NOW! FAST!"
Bless their beautiful little hearts, they obeyed without questioning me. Or rather, they were asking lots of questions but they were obeying as the words came flying. All three of them piled into the car as I shoved poor Wonderboy back into his seat.
"Mommy, is it those dogs? Are they coming to get us?"
"I don’t know, sweetie. Probably not. I just don’t want to take any chances—"
Oh dear God they’re almost here!!!!! howled Brain.
Yup, really close now, Eyes agreed.
Hey! We hear growling! said Ears.
Brain and Muscles managed to coordinate efforts well enough to get me into my seat where Fingers, oh so eager to help, pushed the buttons that closed the van doors.
Did you see that, guys? We had the most important job. Little old us! Fingers! We saved you all!
Hush, scolded Ears. The children are saying something. Screaming it, actually. Hold on, I’ve almost got it…Ah. "The back door is open." That’s it.
Wha-huh? asked Brain.
The—back—door—is—open.
Of the van, put in Eyes, returning from a trip to the rear-view mirror. You know, the trunk.
We don’t have a button for that, said Fingers.
Oh my Lord, whispered Maternal Instinct.
You know we’re going to have to get out and close that, said Common Sense, making a rare appearance. Everyone else stared at it blankly.
Who are you? asked Brain.
Don’t get distracted, scolded Common Sense. We must close that door. FAST.
AWESOME! shouted Adrenal Gland. WOO WOO WOO!
Um, guys? Small problem, stammered Legs. We seem to be having a malfunction here.
Don’t look at me! protested Nervous System. It’s Heart’s fault!
MOVE IT, MAGGOTS! bellowed Adrenal Gland. GET! THAT! DOOR! CLOSED!
The dogs are at the fence now, chirped Eyes.
My BABIES! sobbed Maternal Instinct. But even as she wailed, she was joining forces with Adrenal Glands to yank Heart up out of Stomach where it had slunk away to hide, the sniveling coward. That seemed to jostle Nervous System out of its stupor, and in a flash Legs leapt out of the car and hurtled to the back of the van. Arms knew what to do. Fingers screeched in triumph at having been saviors once again. By the time Legs returned the rest of the gang to the driver’s seat, Brain was just finally catching up.
I think we should go now, it offered timidly.
You don’t say, said Maternal Instinct in withering tones.
DRIVE DRIVE DRIVE shouted Adrenaline.
Wow those dogs sure bark loudly, said Ears.
They’ve reached the fence! reported Eyes. That was a close one.
Actually, remarked Common Sense, as Fingers turned the ignition key and steered the van back onto the road, I doubt they would have jumped the fence after all. We probably weren’t ever in any real danger at all.
OH SHUT UP, snarled everyone else.
Humph, sniffed Common Sense. I can see I’m not welcome here! Fine! It stalked off, sulking, and hasn’t been seen since. Which probably explains how I managed to show up at the DMV yesterday without having had the van smog-checked, which is why I was not permitted to register it. Stupid touchy Common Sense. Humph indeed.
So anyway, that’s what happened with the junkyard dogs. Heart and Stomach still go into convulsions whenever Brain hauls the memory out of storage. Fingers are happy, though, because they finally got to tell the story.
(We are the coolest, interject Fingers. We can interject that because WE CONTROL THE KEYBOARD bwah-ha-ha-ha! FINGERS ROCK!)
