This Here's My Opinion

So - I've been meaning to write this post for awhile. In fact, it has been such awhile that it is bordering on irrelevant - except that it isn't really. Ever. Irrelevant.


Here Goes:

This is to the Texan Guy who called in to NPR in regards to Obama winning the Nobel Peace Prize (and no, this post isn't about the Nobel Peace Prize). Mr. Speakin' for All of Texas - I won't quote you per say - 'cause I was driving and all and didn't write down word for word what you said. And what you said was a quickie - you just left a message that they played back on the air - don't even remember which show....All Things Considered, maybe? Anyway, you said (and I am paraphrasing here) that here in Texas, we can't stand Obama. I do know that you used the words "can't stand" and "we" and "Texas" and "Obama". So maybe I got it down just right, after all.


I am fine if you can't stand Obama. Really. I am. More power to you and all that. But you didn't say that you, personally, as in, I Am Only Speaking For Myself, couldn't stand Obama. You said "we". And buddy? You don't speak for me. In fact, you spoke kinda funny. Suspiciously funny. Like maybe you weren't born and raised right here in the Lone Star State. Course I can't prove that. And there ain't nothing wrong with that. Some of my best friends are transplants and (ahem - I am whispering now) my daddy is a former Yankee.


But me? Born and raised here. And I'll die here. 'Cause Texas is Totally The Best State in the Entire World. I bet you and I could agree on that one. Although, I'm also bettin' that you think Texas would be a bit better without the likes of me. And that's where we're different.


Here in San Antonio, we have a right neat place called The Institute of Texan Cultures. Cultures. With an "s". As in plural. 'Cause, dude, there is more than one. And there's gonna be more than one way of lookin' at things, considerin' problems, and findin' solutions. That means that some of us voted for Obama, and some of us voted for that other gal - the one with the colorful family values - and the old guy who mistakingly chose her as his running mate and is seriously regretting it.



Anyway - Mr. Speakin' For All of Texas.....This here's my front yard:


And this here's my mama and my granddaddy.

And they ain't riding for show, neither. See them cows back there? See them chaps? When's the last time you wore chaps, Mr. Speakin' For All of Texas? By the way, we called my granddaddy "Daddy Jim". That's what all of his kids and his grandkids called him because we are That Kind of Texas.


You don't speak for me, Mr. Speakin' For All of Texas. And I would never in a million years dream of speakin' for you. Because you have your own voice and are entitled to it 100%. You see, I don't want to take that away from you. I want your voice here. I want everyone's voices here. 'Cause this here's a big state and all. We need lots of voices. Please don't presume you can be any more Texan than me by drowning out my voice. 'Cause, Buddy? There ain't nobody more Texan than me. And I support my President. And I also support your right to not do the same. That there idea, which came down from the Greeks, is what we like to call a democracy. It is all about everybody havin' a voice and all. As opposed to, let's say....a dictator.




It is also a little bit of common courtesy. Which is nice to have in the old Friendship State. It is the kind of courtesy you don't find at them fancy tea parties in which you're probably participatin'. We have tea parties here on our ranch. We invite our friends, even the ones with bumper stickers that do not quite gel with our own. We hold our little pinkies out and say please and thank you and would you please pass the sugar. No swastikas at our tea parties....no burning effigies....none of that there nonsense.


But Mr. Speakin' For All of Texas? I support your right to your kinda tea party. I won't go....'cause I am of a more genteel nature and all.....but if anybody tries to take away your right to congregate and hold ridiculous signs.....I will be the first person to call in and tell 'em to leave you the hell alone. This here's a big state, like I said. And there's room for all of us.


But you don't speak for me. Let's just be clear on that.

And for governor? I betcha you're going for that Good Old Boy, Rick Perry. Good for you. I love Good Old Boys. I even dated one named Bubba, once. That boy was smooth as velvet on a sawdust dance floor and some kinda wicked fun at a pasture party, let me tell ya. But for governor? I'm votin' for that there Palestinian fella. The one who invented the Chi Flat Iron he manufactures right here in Texas. Because I love my Chi. Anyone who can straighten out my massive mess of hair could certainly straighten out Texas.

Signing off as The Lone Star Mama

Come On. You Know You Wanna Look.

This post has been edited. Some of the original content has been removed due to my being informed that one of the blogs I had referenced had been dumped for reasons totally beyond me....not the fact that it was dumped....but the REASON it was dumped. Which is dumbfounding. And I'm grateful it was dumped. And that's all I'm gonna say about that.

Ha! So I follow a bloggista who is a Homeschooling Raw Vegan Foodie. I am not vegan, nor am I a foodie, for the most part. Although I do love my food. And I love looking at pictures of food. So I love her blog and stalk it regularly.

This bloggista, Green and Crunchy, should be a food photographer. The chick likes to arrange her food all pretty and take pictures of it. MAJOR. And she has adorable children. Five of them. Just like me! Only hers are more photogenic than mine. Anyway - she has a bad ass blender and an awesome dehydrator and she likes section plates. She takes pictures of her section plates loaded with raw food. And I want section plates. She also uses glass straws. And I want glass straws. And she uses something called tippins. I want tippins. And I'm not sure what tippins are. But I want to be the proud owner of a tippin or two. And her photogenic five children apparently gobble up whatever she sets on their adorably lovely frickin' section plates and I want that, too!! Because I deserve it!!

Anyway - so this crazy vegan foodie chick posted pics of her refrigerator. THE INSIDE OF HER REFRIGERATOR. And I looked. And I liked. And I found it interesting in the way you find basically anything interesting when you are procrastinating. It isn't as interesting as vampire porn (a tool of procrastination of which I am quite fond) but its nowhere near as boring as flipping through the phone book (which I have been known to do in order to drag out lunch). So, like I was saying, I found the contents of her very clean refrigerator quite fascinating and couldn't tear myself away. Green and Crunchy has labels and everything in her refrigerator. I want to label everything in my refrigerator. By now? If she's reading? I am probably creeping Green and Crunchy out a little bit.

I'm not going to post pics of the inside of my fridge. But I will tell you what's in it. And you will find it interesting and fascinating because you are probably trying to avoid doing something lame and boring and unfulfilling....so be prepared to be amazed.....by my refrigerator.


We'll start with my top shelf (yes - we are going shelf by shelf - you can just settle that rear end of yours down into the chair). On my top shelf is my Big Dog Emergency Sized The-World-Is-Going-To-End-In-2012-And-Who-Wants-To-Be-Sober-For -That? Margarita Bottle. And it is good stuff. It is not a mix. I cannot stand a margarita mix. It isn't quite as good as a homemade margarita with fresh lime juice...but it ain't half bad for a bottle and it gets the job done on a weekend. The brand is Salvador's Premium Margarita. I highly recommend it.

Next? Wheat germ. Three large jars of wheat germ. You're probably thinking we eat a lot of wheat germ. You're wrong. We eat it so rarely that when a recipe calls for it I go, "Wheat germ? We don't have any of that. Let me go buy a great big jar." Then I get it home and put it into the refrigerator and say, "Looky here - we already have several jars of wheat germ." The fact that I am sharing this story with you will not stop me from buying more wheat germ a week or so from now. That is the sad truth of it.

I do the same thing with canned sweet potatoes and cranberry sauce. I don't serve either one. But every year at Thanksgiving I say to myself, "What if we run out of homemade cranberry sauce or sweet potatoes and I've nothing to serve my guests? Let me go to the store and buy back-up canned sweet potatoes and cranberry sauce. Then let me bring it home and put it in the pantry next to the 20 or so cans I already own because I have this exact same panic attack every single Thanksgiving...." Again. Some things I can't control. I will not be able to avoid performing this holiday ritual.

So where were we? Oh yes. Top shelf. Is loaded with 2 big gallons of milk. Milk! Do you hear that my Vegan Sweetheart? It is right next to the liquor. My kids love the milk as much as I love the liquor. And the kefir. And the yogurt. And the cheeses of every variety. We are considering switching to raw milk. It is just so dang expensive.

Jasper is currently living on kefir. He hasn't chewed anything in weeks. When he was 3 I took him to the doctor for I honestly don't remember what. And I saw a different doctor than we usually saw. And he wasn't prepared for me. So he couldn't quite hide his shock over the fact that Jasper was still breastfeeding. "There is a narrow window of opportunity to introduce him to solid food!" he'd said. "Geeze," I said. "He's been introduced. We said, Jasper, this is solid food. Solid food, this is Jasper. They just don't care for each other." And the doctor? Was stunned. So I kept going, "We put stuff in his mouth. It makes him drool." The doctor was not impressed. "He spits it out. But," I added proudly, "he sorts it, first." The doctor was speechless. So anyway, here we are, Jasper is 5, and he still prefers his food to be in liquid form. And even though he is fully weened (that is not me in the you tube video of the woman breastfeeding an 8-year-old - I PROMISE) - he shows signs of being a breast man. But anyway, maybe we missed our window of opportunity with the solid foods, after all. But please don't tell that jerk of a doctor.

Jasper has several Big Stories in his background, and one of my favorites is the time he ordered breast milk in a restaurant. He immediately caught himself and became embarrassed, it had just been a knee-jerk reaction, sort of like last year at Halloween when he ran to the first house and screamed "Happy Birthday!" instead of trick-or-treat. But anyway, it was interesting to watch the waitress while she obviously considered just how far she'd go for a tip.

See how I keep digressing? So also on the top shelf - a 2.5 pd bag of spinach. We lika da spinach. We go through one of these bags a week. Spinach blueberry smoothies, spinach salads, sauteed spinach, spinach wraps, spinach juiced with lots of stuff......Camille is my only non-spinach eater at the moment (Jasper, of course, drinks his).

The next shelf has butter, cottage cheese, sprouts, avocados (like Green and Crunchy - we LOVE our avocados over here), leftover salad, 2 jars of organic natural peanut butter, 2 jars of organic jellies and preserves, and some refried black beans. The black beans are dehydrated and marketed by the Santa Fe Bean Co. They're really good and really fast if you failed to plan ahead and cook your own dang beans.

The next shelf has some soaking chick peas for a raw chick pea salad I'm making tomorrow (recipe of Green and Crunchy), tomatoes, feta cheese, eggs from our Rhode Island Reds, and some leftover pasta and asparagus.

The bottom drawers are full of fruits, salad fixin's, ginger, squash, carrots and some celery. My doors are mostly condiments, sauces, and salad dressings. However, the best salad dressing is olive oil, lime juice, and garlic. Yum! We try to avoid high fructose corn syrup if at all possible. I'm thrilled to see it making an exit from the shelves of my grocery store!!

My freezer is full of our summer garden's sweet corn, tomatoes, and coffee and nuts of every variety. I also keep my flour, oats, and rice in the freezer. There is a big huge Costo box of Morningstar Veggie Burgers (I know! Processed soy products!!) and some breads. Other stuff, too, can't even tell what it all is.

Our outside freezer is almost empty at the moment - ready for another load of beef that we will process after Thanksgiving. We don't eat commercially raised meat. Our kids are backwards from most kids. Most kids won't eat anything if they can freely associate it with what it really "is". For example, a hamburger is a cow, a pork chop is a pig...they really don't want to know this information.....whereas my kids won't eat anything they haven't personally seen walking around wagging its tail or spreading its tail feathers :).

On the floor of my kitchen sit 2 huge baskets of freshly hand-picked tangerines from Aunt Maxine's farm next door. Can you say carrot/orange juice in the morning?? Sweet. Might throw some pineapple in there, too.

There are bananas and organic apples on my counter. Onions, potatoes, and garlic hanging on the wall.

There now. Wasn't that a fine way to waste 10 minutes? What's in your fridge? Really! I wanna know!! I've shown you mine. You show me yours.

Sardine Mama - who, quite ironically, seems to have no actual sardines on hand. Just a coupla cans of herring :).

The State of Things

All the stuff I blog about? Has been getting in the way of my bloggin' time. It is hard to blog about a lice infestation, sick kids, a food poisoned husband, a father with a re-fractured femur, and other things I can't even remember, because I have been BUSY dealing with all of the above mentioned blogging topics.

First of all - YES, I SAID LICE INFESTATION. Dang.

I really thought we were immune to this particular form of vermin. Seriously. Not because we're better than you, or anything, but because I have, over the years, received many phone calls that began with, "You're going to hate me...." and ended with "we don't know how long he/she has had it..." and WE NEVER GOT LICE. Ever. Even when the little victims had been sharing a pillow with my kids. So I thought we were just unappealing to lice. But I was wrong.

While I was at my dad's (where I have basically been living with various combinations of my kids) I noticed that Jules was frantically scratching his head. Frantically. And he is a rather frantic sort just regularly, so the fact that I noticed an increase in his franticness indicates that he was REALLY VERY frantically scratching his head. And I had a sick feeling and a "knowing". Jeff - otherwise known as the Irritating Optimist (and my husband) said, "He must have a little dry scalp."

If Jeff were watching an approaching tsunami - a BIG one with houses, cars, and cows riding the top of the wave, he would grin and say, "We might get a bit damp." Life's experiences (and we have collected a few during our almost 24 years of marriage) have not lessened his highly irregular and somewhat annoying habit of always expecting the best possible outcome no matter what. Sigh. Then again, if there were two of me running this house we'd have slit our wrists long ago. Which is basically unproductive.

So I had to make phone calls that began with, "You're going to hate me....." to a bunch of gracious friends who acted like it was no big deal but who were so loudly screaming The F Word in their heads I could hear it all the way over here.

We ordered a product called Lice Off that is supposedly non-toxic blah blah blah and takes 3 DAYS TO ARRIVE. Excuse me? WE HAVE LICE!! WHERE IS THE OVERNIGHT BUTTON????????

Now how did Jules handle all of this? Well, this is actually embarrassing but he seemed to enjoy the entire thing. Poor middle child will take his attention where he can grab it. Jeff sheared him and he looks adorable. Olive oil treatments seem to have taken care of the adult lice. And his hair is nicely conditioned. And he's speaking with an Italian accent. And I kind of want to put Parmesan cheese on him. And the dogs are following him around, drooling.


When I dropped him off at Chess Club with his new buzz cut I was like, "Oh no! I forgot to tell Jules not to brag about the head lice!" Yes. I said "brag". Because he is weird that way. And he's homeschooled and occasionally unaware of the things that freak public school (ie normal) kids out. But he didn't have time to blurt out the reason for his new haircut because his friend yelled, "Thanks for giving me LICE, Jules!!" Yes, I cringed. To which Jules grinned and replied, "No problem!" Just spreadin' the love.

When I picked him up from Chess Club he was scratching his head with his 2nd Place Trophy so it was a good night for Jules all the way around....bragging rights for both lice and chess.


And where is Joel in all of this? Hiding. His. Locks.



Joel looks like he doesn't care about his hair (because that is how it looks....believe me....like a feather duster that hasn't been touched in centuries) but the reality is that he cares very much. And he is either using nerves of steel to avoid putting his fingers anywhere near his scalp to scratch....or he really doesn't have lice. Doesn't matter. The kid is using lice shampoo. Just. In. Case.

Joel has some braggin' rights, too, by the way. He earned his Brown Belt in Tae Kwon Do!


This is Ginger. She is awesome. And she could NO DOUBT kick Joel's rear in a millisecond. I honestly don't know how she resists the urge. Massive self control, I guess.


And Ellie? Where is she in all of this? Out of the house or sitting at the piano. She has a solo recital in 2 weeks and it is a very big deal and hundreds of hours of practicing have gone into this Big Event and we just hope people show up. She's also been babysitting a ton. And teaching a ton of piano lessons. She's been invited to participate in a piano immersion institute in Seattle and it costs what amounts to Big Bucks and we're making her pay for it, herself. (Character building and all that - plus? We don't have the money.)


The Little'uns also do not appear to have lice. But they are still disgusting. Because they have colds. Bad ones. Jasper is making the most disgusting sounds I have ever heard. I would almost rather he just quietly have lice. He told me that he coughed so hard he coughed up his bones. We had a brief discussion of anatomy so he would understand that it is impossible to cough up a bone. But he assured me that he is missing several bones. Camille has not coughed up any bones that I know of.


HALLOWEEN. We came and we conquered. The little'uns wore a variety of thrown-together costumes and Joel bought himself another ridiculously expensive mask. If you saw the mask from last year, you'll recognize that there is a Gene Simmons theme going. And to all the mothers of toddlers and pre-schoolers??? I am so sorry. The wake of crying children Joel left behind was embarrassing.


First stop was the neighboring farm where we traditionally stop to scare the poop out of Great-Aunt Maxine. Joel is holding his leaking mask with the swollen tongue with a chain through it. Ellie left us at this point to go to the movies with friends. Sadness. 'Cause she is big and all. And I can remember every single stinkin' Halloween costume I ever made for her. Because I did make hers. Because she was the first one....and she was a wicked witch (a vikkid vit, she said), a princess, a butterfly, a spider, a pumpkin....And Camille and Japser? Are wearing whatever they could throw together on short notice :)


I must take a brief moment to bore you with the conversation I had with the teenage sales clerk at Party City as she stuck Joel's mask into the bag.


"Yuck," said I. "It is leaking something all over the bag!"


"That's blood," said the teenage clerk. "You're lucky 'cause we usually charge extra for it. But this is the display mask and you're getting the blood for free."


The red gel-like stuff was pooling into the lower right hand corner of the bag.


"But what is it?" I asked, you know, concerned about toxicity and the possibility of permanent staining.


"It's blood," she said.


"I know," I said. "But what IS it?"


To which she replied, very slowly, "It's BLOOD."


She handed me the bag and added, "No refunds on masks. Happy Halloween."

I told Joel that this was definitely his last year to Trick-or-Treat. He is too hugely gigantic and old. And by the end of the night his bucket held 1/3 of what the little'uns had so that was The Public's way of agreeing with me. Here he is looking sad over "the lame bag of pretzels".


And here is Jasper after a fix. Because he has a little problem....with sugar. We are thinking of going entirely sugar-free with him (well, all of us).


So here is The State of Things:


My house is a mess. This is the hallway that leads to the kids' bedrooms. See the floor? This is the "old" part of the farmhouse. I HATE THIS FLOOR AND IT WILL BE WITH ME UNTIL THE DAY I DIE. IN FACT, I COMPLETELY EXPECT SOMEONE TO LINE MY COFFIN WITH IT!!



This is the boys' room but they don't sleep in it.


They sleep here. They are the two colorful lumps in the grass. The weather is cool and they have moved outside and this is a good thing because JULES HAS LICE for crying out loud. The fog rolls in here every morning off of the San Antonio River....so the boys always wake up wet. Last night the coyotes were howling so loudly I swore they were less than a few feet from my sleeping babies.....who were loving every minute of it. And they often sleep in when they are sleeping out. So Ellie's piano students will be driving up and getting out of the cars....the little'uns will have friends over running all about....and none of this disturbs the boys snoring in the yard.


And this is the Little'uns' room but they don't sleep in it.



They sleep here. In MY room. Which is annoying but not worth a "plan" or anything that would require "stick-to-it-iveness" which is something I have never been good at. Eventually they will move outside to brave the coyotes. And yes, that is toilet paper. 'Cause we are out of tissues. And it is recycled TP so they are basically blowing their noses in sandpaper. That will teach them to get sick.


And this is the door to Ellie's room. And she DOES sleep in there. Without crying or stumbling out or asking for water or a back rub or anything. Because even though there is a humongous industry that has sprung up around teaching parents how to get kids and babies to sleep in their own beds (as if this is a necessary life skill they will not learn if we don't teach it to them)....all kids grow up. Even without interference, nobody grows up to be a 40-year-old man or woman sleeping between two stressed-out 60-year-olds who haven't had sex for 40 years. It doesn't happen. Ever. So....hey...everyone with tots out there.....STOP FREAKING OUT ABOUT IT! Your kids will soon not want to be in the same room with you. That is the sad/happy/normal/developmental truth of it. They will one day march down the hall and close their doors and mark off their personal space and you will need an invitation to get in. I promise. So let the little guys snuggle down with you while they can and throw away those stupid books!!Okay. Well, that was my little Attachment Parenting sermon for today.

Signing Off as Sardine Mama, or, The Mama You Hope Doesn't Call You Saying, "You're Going to Hate Me...."

According to My Big Ass Utensil Drawer

God. That felt good. I just murdered a plastic storage container. And dumped the body (into recycling, of course - not a land fill - because I am a conscientious murderer of plastic storage containers).

Last week I cleaned out the cabinet with all of the plastic storage containers. I had ninety-billion bottoms with no tops. I had ninety-billion tops with no bottoms. And I got rid of them all. Every. Last. One.

And then today I open up the cabinet and there sits a topless container. Taunting me. So I slammed it with a meat tenderizer. I probably should have left it lying about to discourage other topless containers from trying to sneak in here...but I have little kids and can't just leave mangled and bludgeoned plastic lying about.

While I was murdering the container (which was harder than it looks, by the way) - Ellie poked her head out the door, took a quick look, and closed the door. A couple of other kids walked through the kitchen, gave a quick glance, and kept on going. Nobody said, "Oh Mother, why art thou banging a meat-tenderizer-sledge-hammer-thing into the plastic container?" Nobody said a word. Which is an indication of the way things work around here.

I often think that at least one of these five kids is going to grow up to write a book but I'm not sure any of the little blokes are aware that anything is ummmmm....out of the ordinary. Because that is how crazy works. Someday one of them will say, "You mean your mother didn't beat up plastic bowls with a hammer while shouting How The Hell Did You Get In Here You *#$!# Piece of Plastic!!!! ? Hmmmmm......." That could open up a humongous Pandora's Box of Things Our Mother Did that Other Mothers Didn't. So maybe there will be a book, after all.

The meat tenderizer, by the way? I don't use it. Ever. So, of course I have two.

Last week was Tupperware, today is the Big Ass Cooking Utensil Drawer....and next week is the God Forsaken JUNK drawer.

I found all sorts of things in the Big Ass Cooking Utensil Drawer. How many sets of chopsticks is one non-Asian family supposed to have, by the way? Not to mention the 10 PAIRS of training chopsticks I found. Training chopsticks!! Because chopsticks were apparently freakishly important to me at one time!!! And I felt it was necessary to train my children in the ways of the chopstick with actual training chopsticks!!! And I have no memory of this!!!

If my Big Ass Cooking Utensil Drawer is any indication of my mental stability then I am a Total Wreck of a Woman. Oh my God. That would be an awesome title to the book one of my kids will surely write: Total Wreck of a Woman.

Also? To go along with the meat tenderizing weapons I don't use because we rarely eat meat? I have these nifty braising or basting or glazing or whatever you call them brushes. Which are obviously hard to clean. And fairly disgusting. And I think two of them might be actual paintbrushes.

And what the HELL is this? Joel says it is a peanut cooker.

PLEASE....I am begging you.....someone give me permission to throw my husband's baby spoon away. Anyone. The first person to respond to this plea for help will receive the beautiful peanut cooker shown above.

And I will throw in a lemon zester for good measure. Because I have 3.

And 3 ice cream scoops. That I am keeping. Because sometimes I dish out that much ice cream.

And 3 garlic presses.

I would like to tell you how many corkscrews I found but I'm afraid you would draw some sort of conclusion or make some kind of incorrect assumption or inaccurate correlation between the number of corkscrews I own and the amount of wine I consume. And that would be alarming.

And by the way, People? I would like some comments. More followers would be nice, too. And yes, I am casually tapping the meat tenderizer against my leg while I type this.....not that I'm making any threats....

Signing Off as a Heavily Armed and Over-Equipped Sardine Mama

Classic

This has been an awesomely busy week for my big girl - and because I am insanely attached to the big girl in every way - an awesomely busy week for me. And because I am also insanely attached to the big boy, the medium-sized boy, the little girl, and the little boy - awesomely big doesn't quite represent just how gigantic my week has been. And it ain't over, folks. Not by a long shot.

I have miles to go before I sleep.

My big girl is an exponential firstborn. That means she is an over-achieving perfectionist super-driven maniac to the nth degree. Living with her is like living with a tornado. Luckily, her brothers are at the opposite end of the spectrum. Recently, they had a friend over. I had left the house for something and had returned to find the friend not with the boys.

"Where's Harlan?" I asked.

"He left," the boys replied while staring slack-faced at the screen on their television.

This was alarming. Nobody was supposed to pick Harlan up until the next day.

"What do you mean he left? Where did he go?"

Silence.....it takes awhile for the words to make their way through the hair, to the ears, and then way down deep into the language processing core of the brain (where it is momentarily hung up) before one of them said, "He went to the bathroom."

What a relief.

"Why did you say he had left if he's only in the bathroom?"

And then Ellie says, "Mom - to the boys he might as well have gone to the moon. When's the last time they left their room?"

So, yeah. Thank God for that. Because Ellie is always leaving her room and going places and it keeps me busy.

So let me tell you what she did when she left her room this week. First of all, this is the week of the San Antonio International Piano Competition. Really cool. The competitors come from all over the world, the judges are world class, and it is a fantastic week of music. Ellie was chosen to be a junior juror - which means she is judging the competition (although the junior judges don't actually pick the real winner - which I'm sure is a huge relief to the pianists).

So she's at Trinity University pretty much all week. In addition to that, she had to take her PSAT (without studying....dang) and she also had some activism work where she had to video people making statements about genocide....and she was scheduled for one audience-attended Master Class with Gustavo Romero.

Initially, when she auditioned for the Master Class, she had hoped for Santiago Rodriguez because she has his recording of Alberto Ginastera's Sonata No. 2, which she is currently playing. But she was told he was only doing a class with a semi-finalist in the competition (ellie isn't in the competition). But then, Wednesday night at 10:30 they called her and asked if she could do a Master Class with Rodriguez, after all! So yesterday, she had a Master Class with Rodriguez at 2:00.....and then another Master Class with Romero at 7:30. It was just a delicious day for her all the way around and that makes it a delicious day for me although everyone knows I'd rather be listening to the Red Hot Chili Peppers.

Here she is with Gustavo Romero. Even after the class - he kept teaching! I have sat through a few Master Classes....and I have never seen someone give so much energy throughout the entire time. Ellie played last, and often the masters are a little bit tired by the last performer.....but Romero was like the Energizer Bunny.

Here she is with Santiago Rodriguez, who she was thrilled to death to meet, much less spend one on one time at the piano with!

Tonight she'll be at the Finals with her other junior jurors....tomorrow is the Awards Ceremony and Reception.

As for next week? I haven't the energy to think about it. Maybe we'll just take it easy. Or let me re-phrase that....maybe all of us but Ellie will take it easy. Whew!

Signing off as The Classically Tuned Sardine Mama.

Peanuts and Pumpkins...Turkeys and Trade-Offs

We are having a drizzly, cool-ish (for us) Sunday morning. And we even had an extra hand at breakfast!


Halloween is around the corner. The kids are begging for me to get the Halloween decorations down and they are the same Halloween decorations we've had for 17 years and they are not so scary, anymore. But the kids really don't seem to notice. They hang the sad little ripped up plastic bats around the house....put up that nasty spider-web stuff even though we have real spider webs lurking in every corner. The little guys will make lots and lots and lots and lots of construction paper pumpkins that they will tape on every surface. The big climax will be the carving of the pumpkin, of course. And let me tell you - Ellie is a master pumpkin carver. Look at what she did last year!
It really is a jack-o-lantern. If you look closely you can see the outline of the pumpkin. She downloaded a pattern off the Internet. The funny thing was - it looked like NOTHING until we lit it up and turned out the lights. Then we were like, "Wow!!"

We live on a farm and so we get no trick-or-treaters. So we always haul our jack-o-lantern to my sister's on Halloween. She has a very old, very adorable little house right in the middle of town - she gets lots of trick-or-treaters. She proudly put our Barack -O - Lantern on her porch. Nobody messed with it. Now, if she lived out in one of the residential neighborhoods with the big houses and the lots-o-cars and the signs in their yards that say things like the Jesus-Inspired, "Home of the Free - Not the Free Hand-Outs!!" then it is quite possible that someone would have smashed (or at least blown out) our Barack-O-Lantern.

Now if you happen to live in a nice neighborhood with lots of cars and a sign on your yard that says "Freedom Isn't Free!!" - I am not accusing you of possibly smashing a pumpkin. Most people do not smash pumpkins. I acknowledge this. I am asking you to acknowledge that I am acknowledging this. I'm just sayin....well, let's just say that my kids and I enjoy lots of friendly one-fingered salutes around here when we're driving around with our "I Support My President" bumper sticker. Often, from people who have fish symbols and/or some other religious insignia on their cars. And that sucks.

Anyway - enough about the pumpkin smashing that never happened.

Fall is my favorite time of year. It isn't always cool, though. We have trick-or-treated with half-naked sweaty children dragging their discarded costumes in the dirt - their buckets full of melting chocolate. With us, it is all about whether or not a cool front blows through on the right day. Sometimes we're freezing our candy corns off - sometimes we're not.

Right now it is cool and delicious. The kids are wanting to bake some pumpkin bread and I think that sounds like a brilliant idea.

Our town's Peanut Festival was this weekend. We managed a trip down to the town square for a couple of hours. We have a delightful little town square.

Joel and Jules played chess in front of the courthouse with their chess club (of which they are new members). Joel says, "I wasn't attracting enough chicks with my other interests....Star Wars, Runescape, etc.....so I decided to join the Chess Club." He is so funny. And he did attract a "gang of girls" as he called them.

"Hey Boy!" they said. "You're hot!" (yes these are teeny boppers) and then one of them, bless her heart, tripped and fell! To his credit, Joel did not laugh. Very Much. On his way to the Chess Booth.

I grew up here and the Peanut Festival was a Big Deal to me. My husband's father was a peanut farmer, as were his uncles, grandparents, etc. We have a royal court and his family has held every position in the court. My husband was a Prince one year. I was a Page...and a Duchess. We both marched in the parade or rode on floats or walked with various groups/clubs pretty much our entire childhoods. In fact, he and I had our first kiss at the 1979 Peanut Festival...right on the courthouse steps (and we still stop and kiss there every year because it makes our kids so dang happy...you should see them when we do it....they are thrilled to death).

So I was a little sad when this year's festival snuck up on me. If Joel hadn't mentioned playing chess I'm not sure I would have thought about it at all! I think that our decision to homeschool and do things differently than most locals has made us a little non-local - even though we live here. Our kids aren't ever going to be in the Peanut Festival Court....they're not going to march in the band or ride on a float. And they don't care at all.

They love to go down to the Square to eat cotton candy and see people - but they don't even want to go to the parade because they claim it is long and boring. Ellie hasn't gone with us at all the past two years.....her life is elsewhere and centers around other things.....

"I can't go, Mom, I already have plans. We're trying a new vegan restaurant in San Antonio and heading to the movies...."

"Really?" I said. "You don't want to go with us?"

"I'm sorry, Mom, but not really."

And she's happy. They're all really happy. They have roots and family in this town (that was one of the reasons we moved home - we wanted that for them). But they have roots elsewhere, too.

Their lives are so different from Jeff's and mine when we were kids - which is strange because they are growing up in the exact same house that their dad did. Camille and Jasper sleep in his old room. I cook in his mom's kitchen. Their grandfather built this house with his own two hands. But yet, they've not spent the past few weeks getting ready for the Peanut Festival as have their local peers.

Ellie's been getting ready for the International Piano Competition - she is honored to be a junior judge and she's performing in a Master Class with Gustavo Romero - that is what has been on her mind. Joel, Jules, and Camille have been focused on Odyssey of the Mind.

Their lives are different - but not better or worse - than the other local kids' lives. We chose this difference for our family and we're happy with the results. But it feels odd to take the children to this Big Festival as visitors. And that is what they often are - visitors in their own community.

Oh well. Everything is a trade-off. And they seem unaware of the trade-off. I'm just not always as unaware, that's all.

So Thanksgiving is just around corner, it seems! My FAVORITE holiday!!

And here sits our Thanksgiving Dinner - roosting on the roof of the hen house - they like to be up high.

Except for one. Who likes to sneak into the hen house every night. He climbs up on the roost and says, "Don't mind me! I'm just sitting here....a laying hen.....ya know. Yessirree, ain't nobody here but us chickens!"

Happy Fall Y'all!

Signing off as a Fallishly Frisky Sardine Mama

Vampires and Other Vagueries

Since I am unable to think of any astoundingly interesting subject matter - I'll just do a little week-in-review. Why would you want to read my week-in-review? I have no idea, really. Oh! I know why! Because you're PROCRASTINATING!! You got online to pay bills or meet some deadline or other and here you are.

Let me see if I can make it worth your while.

I'll start with Friday - even though that was technically the end of last week - and I would think a week-in-review would start at the beginning of a week. But since we're not to the end of this one, yet, I am taking liberties with the whole time is linear thing.

Where were we? Oh yes - last Friday. Was Gandhi's birthday. Mahatma Gandhi. I learned this impressive historical fact from somebody's facebook status. Yesiree, folks, I get my news and information through the Internet. So - it was also the night that we had promised to take Joel out for Indian food (his 15th birthday had been on Wednesday). Coincidence? I think not.

Joel, by the way, does a fantastic Gandhi impression.

Then we went to see the Old Man in Rehab - not the Betty Ford Clinic - just a plain old physical therapy rehab. If you are interested in reading about that whole fiasco - go down a couple of posts to Healthcare Crisis!!!!. If you are not even vaguely interested but are trying to avoid unloading the dishwasher - well, it will help you put off the inevitable for another 4 minutes or so, depending on how fast you read.

So while at Rehab, Ellie performed a little concert on a horribly out-of-tune piano. I would like to say that this moved the residents to tears....but mostly they just wanted her to stop so they could hear the TV.

On Saturday (still with me?) we did yard work. Well, WE did not do yard work. I holed up washing clothes and reading vampire porn, an activity of which I am wholeheartedly ashamed.

I read Laurel K Hamilton's Anita Blake series. I don't like them. They are poorly written. The sentence structure is often awkward - the characters are almost schizophrenic in their inabilitiy to maintain a constant and non-conflicting persona, the characters all speak in the same voice so you often can't tell who's doing the talking - the men are so effeminate (and I don't just mean the long hair - they are overly sensitive and basically act like women in every sense of the word). But the woman can knock out the novels. She can weave a tale. Involving several long-haired vampires and shapeshifters and one vampire hunter woman. And all that entails.

Now how did a nice girl like me end up with vampire porn? I'll tell you how. I have a wicked friend. Who reads vampire porn. Although, truly, I think she quit somewhere around book 6 or so and I am on book 15 or so because I apparently have the vampire porn monkey on my back THANK YOU WICKED FRIEND. I thought I had kicked it. Really, I did. I did not "wait" for this last book, Skin Trade, to come out. I didn't pay attention to the publishing date. I didn't look for it, anywhere. But it found me.

"Look, Mom," said Ellie while we were browsing through the library. "Isn't that one of those awful vampire porn books you read?"

"Used to read," I reminded her. "And they're not porn."

"Sure they're not, Mom," said a smirking Ellie. I hate the smirk.

What was I supposed to do? Walk away from it? What if it was fate? What if the Universe Herself was trying to give me some important message via vampire porn?

Bleh. I finished it. It was awful. Good. Awful Good. Occasionally just awful.

On to Sunday. Are you REALLY still with me? Great! Who wants to fold socks anyway? Let's keep going....

On Sunday we drove to Austin to take our daughter and her friend (the son of the infamously spiritual Grilled Cheese Chick) to Austin City Limits Music Festival. It is a 3-day festival with a great line-up. The kids bought 1-day passes so they could see The Arctic Monkeys, Jack White's latest band, and Pearl Jam. It had rained all day on Saturday, so we dropped the kids off at a MUD PIT and I am not kidding. One columnist wrote that the organizers had thoughtfully dropped loads of hay on top of the mud to try and help, resulting in the formation of adobe bricks that stuck to shoes and feet. Oh well. Leave it to youth, music, and the cannabis wafting through the air to ensure a good time - no matter the weather.

We dropped our pair off, had a wonderful Thai lunch while surfing pics of the festival and the mud, etc and then we then met a friend we hadn't seen since 1980 (I am screaming in my head!!!!!!!!!!!!!) for a few beers. We sat and talked until we were hungry, again. Then we went out to dinner. The plan was to continue sitting on our asses in a late movie but the kids called and said they had had enough of the mud. Party poopers. Really. They are. So we headed home earlier than planned. (I do not know why the mud picture is so small....I am basically a lazy person who just learns enough technology to get by....so I got it on here but that is the extent of my abilities.)

Monday was Odyssey of the Mind. My high school team meets here, as does the elementary team. This is all very hush hush and secretive because God knows there are Odyssey spies everywhere.....but I MUST say that Camille is trying to figure out how to make herself a pork chop costume. She is going to be a pork chop.

Monday evening found us back at the ballet school - Camille inside dancing - me outside feverishly finishing up the vampire porn book. In the car. So nobody would see me.

Tuesday was a "home day". We did some school work. The boys are doing some much-needed grammar.

The sentence they were analyzing was, "Everyone, but Candy, went to the movies." So for the rest of the day the boys talked of butt candy. Sheesh.

On Wednesday I took Joel to tae kwon do, and started a little Flylady de-cluttering. Did you know that I am the proud owner of a butter churner AND a pressure cooker? I didn't know, either! And I was freakin' going to BUY a pressure cooker! The pressure cooker I found had a piece of masking tape on it that had my mom's name and "$15" on it. Apparently I had saved it from a garage sale fate - a save I do not remember. The butter churner? Was my mother-in-law's. It came with the house. Cool. Because I am going to make some butter. The announcement of my butter-churning intentions elicited a smirk from the ever-smirking 17-year-old non-reader of vampire porn, and therefore a much better person than I am, daughter.

Today is Thursday. And I am blogging. Then I am shopping. Then I am washing. And then I am heading to ballet, which is probably going to be rather boring an uneventful, seeing as how I am out of vampire porn. Sigh.

Now go change your sheets or whatever it is you've been putting off for the past 10 minutes.

Sardine Mama