Just for Fun

I use the excuse of the middle school bus to walk Theo every morning. (I certainly can't be walking my 13-year-old to the bus, right?). So we head out at 7am and Theo and I walk with Garrick part way to the bus stop, and then Theo and peel off to join our neighbors and their dogs for an exuberant romp in a nearby field.

Just because it amuses me, here is a list of the dogs who were at the dog party this morning:

Ella
Another Ella
Trixie
Tabby
Dakota
Buster
Shula
Sarah
Roscoe
Daisy
Bailey
Lola
and Theo

Theo was good and tired alllll day.

Theo's World

It occurs to me that I've never shared with you Theo's unwitting tribute to Andrew Wyeth's most famous painting, Christina's World.





Slightly uncanny, no?

Unmask! Unmask!

Dudes, it's National Delurk Day! Come on out and say hi -- I promise not to bite. (I know you're out there, thanks to the Google Follow Feature over on the old sidebar over there. Hi Libby! Hi Rekha! Hi Donna!)


Many things occurred in 2009 that I never got around to blogging. Here are a few of them.


I bought a pretty:



It's a light green amethyst with two small diamonds set in gold, and I bought it at Benari Jewelers in Media. They're currently having a HUGE moving sale. They are terrific folks who have supported our PKD auctions with donations the last two years -- so if you stop in, tell them I sent you.


We put solar panels all over the front roof of our house:



It's currently providing about 20% of our monthly electricity, and anything we generate and don't use gets sold back to Peco. Sweeeeeeeeeet!




Theo has a new girlfriend:



She lives next door and comes to visit often.



She and Theo make sweet, manic love all over the sunroom.



It's quite adorable.



(Please to ignore the vaccuum cord strewn all over the joint.)

My Holidays In Photos

Because there are times when words utterly fail me.



World's tiniest cookies: before and after the oven.





Lighting the candles and horsing around with cousins.







Hosting an open house the day after it snowed 22". Luckily, people still came out.



Cheese and home-cured gravlax.



The dessert table.



Chocolate mousse cake.



Clementine-basil tartlets.



Pecan-jam shortbread cookies and chocolate-dipped gingersnaps.



Miniature cheesecakes. NOM.



Peanut butter mousse in chocolate shells, topped with peanut brittle.



Making scores of yule logs ("buche de noel") for the baking business.



Making a gingerbread house with the kids. I did the piping, they did all the rest.






Sleeping it off.

Chia Dog

Unretouched photos.

The Charity Fun Fair: Part Two, or, In Which We Sell Cookies and Receive Visitors

I found Michael across from our town's Borough Hall, with the table all set up and lookin' good. He used about half a roll of duct tape to secure the sign to the table, as it was a verrrrrrrrry windy day. Garrick didn't want to miss a moment of the cookie selling, so came along with me to relieve Michael.


(I'm inordinately proud of that sign, which was conceived and executed at about 11:30 Friday night, on no sleep and less energy.)

There is an aspect of last summer's bake sales that I had mercifully forgotten. It's the ten minutes or so that occur after you're all set up and jazzed and ready to go go go, and before the first actual customer steps up. It's murderous. Ten minutes of ohmygodi'vescrewedupentirely. Ten minutes of i'mnotgoingtosellasinglefrockin'cookie. Ten minutes of nobodylovesmeortheywouldbebuyingmycookies and whatthehellamigoingtodowithalltheleftovers? Poor Michael stuck around for that ten minutes, though I'm sure he wished (wishes?) he hadn't.

But the parade finished and the townsfolk started meandering about, and soon some friends showed up -- old friends of the family who've known me since I was a wee sprout, theatre friends and their adorable kids, family members, and very cool new friends. Lauren stopped by, and The Domestic Goddess, and MemeGRL. And we had a bone fide celebrity stop by and sample the wares:



I tried to get an action shot of our celebrity visitor enjoying her home-made dog biscuits, but she is too dang fast for me. But not as fast as her little buddy:


Bossy's Dane isn't just great, she plays well with doggies 1/100th of her size.

*****

We sold cookies and raffle tickets and dog biscuits and handed out literature and we did all of this before the rain came. In between making sure the cookies didn't blow away in the wind, it was lovely to socialize and catch up with folks. By the time the first (of very few) raindrop fell, it was time to pack up and call it a day. You can't ask for better timing than that.

The extreme windiness prevented me from counting our take until we got home, which was probably for the best. I had expected to make in the range of $300 ('bout 3x what we made on the daily bake sales last summer), and was mightily disheartened (at first) to discover that we only made $159. Now, a whole week later and with a little distance and perspective, that is actually a good haul for this event. Another booth-holder was excited that they had done so well this year ("We made more than we ever have -- $55!") so I decided to just shut my pie hole.

But if you have any facility at all for mathematics, you've realized that if we started with 360 cookies, 61 muffins, and 26 baggies of dog biscuits (at a buck each) and we only came home with $159, then I must have come home with one enormous car load of left-over cookies.

Two hundred twenty-seven cookies, 59 muffins, and 15 baggies of dog biscuits, to be exact.

I would have put my head down and wept, but we were late for a Passover Seder and had to get on the road. I threw the muffins and dog biscuits into the freezer and made sure the cookies were all airtight, and off we went to drink overly sweet wine and ask the four questions.

It is hard to enjoy a Passover Seder when you are feeling mightily disheartened. The amount of effort that I put into the cookie production was truly prodigious, and the thought of all that effort yielding such a small return was depressing as all giddy-up. In between moping through the drive to New Jersey and moping through the Seder and moping through my children's flirting with their little girl cousins and moping all the way home, I came up with one idea. I'd ask the manager of our local Co-Op (locus of last summer's bake sales) to let me put out baskets in the store in an attempt to sell off the leftovers.

*****

Monday morning, even before going to work, I hit the Co-Op with bribes free samples in hand. The manager was out but the assistant manager was in and susceptible to bribery gave me the go-ahead. We decided to price them to move at fifty cents each, because really, $1 per cookie is a little ballsy unless you're in a charity situation. Significantly cheered, I went about my day (NEVER OPEN A COMPANY IN MEXICO, YOU WILL THANK ME) and returned to the Co-Op on Tuesday morning with crisp signage and pretty baskets of cookies. Tuesday evening, they were ALL GONE, which cheered me even further.

All told, between Tuesday morning and Saturday night, we sold 181 cookies at the Co-Op, adding $90.50 to the take. Talk about making lemonade out of lemons. The remaining (slightly stale) cookies have found good homes in places like the kids' snack bags and down the street at my parents' house and occasionally stuck to my hips.

*****

I'm glad we did the Fair, but I'm feeling like my grass roots days are numbered. I just don't have the steam to push this hard for so little return (Exhibit A: the miserable cold that hit me on Wednesday last week and is still rattling around. Exhibit B: the condition of my house. Exhibit C: Michael who?). My dreams of ongoing bakerly glory will have to wait until the mortgage is paid off and the kids are through college. Until then, we will have a summer yard sale (date TBD), a cabaret (with raffle baskets), and I will annoy solicit friends and family for direct donations at the appropriate time. I will also put that damned grant writing experience to good use by seeking corporate sponsorship for the walk, and I'll go to some local chapter meetings to inspire other grass roots types to be creative and get enthusiastic about fundraising.

But right now, I need a nap. Or three.

I Think It's Cute

Theo sits with his knees splayed out. I find it very endearing, like kindergarteners sitting around in a circle indian-style.

Portrait of the Puppy as a Meercat

Separated at birth? You be the judge.

Because Y'All Are Too Polite to Ask

You're all so well-bred, but I know you want to know how I got the huge bruise on my ass. I fear that at this late date it will be somewhat anticlimactic, but a promise is a promise.

It was about an hour before the first of the Hanukkah party guests were due to arrive, and most of the prep was done. The house was presentable, the leg of lamb was in the oven and on schedule, and I had even remembered to stick candles in the menorah. All that was left was for me to jump in the shower and change clothes, with time to spare.

Theo had been full of piss and vinegar all afternoon, chasing the deck squirrels from the inside of the sliding deck door, begging for chopped vegetables, and generally making a nuisance of himself. When he started baying at the deck door, though, I knew something was up. Occasionally red foxes slink out of the woods behind our house -- they creep up the side of the deck, or up our neighbor's driveway, and are generally very camera-shy. It is quite a coup to spot one, and my antennae were up. I carefully opened the deck door about three inches to ease myself out and do some recon.

Big mistake. Theo lunged at the sliver of open door and barreled over me as if I wasn't there. The deck was a bit slick from an earlier rain, and I went ass-over-tit in quite the most spectacular way. I think you can guess what I landed on. Theo made tracks as only a 2-year-old goldendoodle on a mission can, and Michael and the kids scrambled after him while I regained my feet (but not my dignity).

(It is important to note that Theo's most egregious area of misbehavior is when he escapes in the Great Outdoors. He does not come when called, he deliberately eludes humans and evades capture at all costs. We have been very very lucky thus far that we have always been able to corral him, usually thanks to his inability to ignore other doggies that he encounters. Our extremely unscientific and marginally effective method is to use a little misdirection and pounce on him while he is busy sniffing the other dog's butt.)

So now I am unshowered, ass-bruised, with guests arriving in an hour, and have a dog on the loose in the wilds of Swarthmore. I jumped in the car to circle around to the opposite side of the woods while Michael and the kids gave chase on foot. Unfortunately, Michael didn't grab his cell phone on the way out the door, so we had no way of communicating. Imagine a high-speed chase with a pillowcase over your head, and that will give you some idea of how effective we were. I circled the woods twice, getting out of the car and calling for Michael several times, but I had lost them completely. I zig-zagged all of the streets leading to home, planning to check the house and then set out in the opposite direction, expecting and fearing the worst -- that Theo had made a break for freedom across the busy street two blocks away.

I cannot express my relief at seeing Quin in the doorway as I pulled up the house. I knew there was no way Quin would have given up mid-chase. And indeed, Theo had encountered some doggy friends one house away from the busy street two blocks away, and had stopped for a sniff -- enabling Michael and the kids to surround and capture him.

(It turned out Theo had seen a cat on our deck.)

I know we were lucky -- again -- this time. The only lasting damage was to my ass and dignity (and my ass eventually healed). But I'd welcome any suggestions for dealing with the Dog as Escape Artist. He is fairly responsive to the command "come" when in the confines of our house, but out in the Free World, we may as well be speaking Swahili to him. Or Hebrew.

Barukh atah Adonai, Eloheinu, melekh ha'olam
asher kidishanu b'mitz'votav v'tzivanu l'had'lik neir shel Chanukah.

Barukh atah Adonai, Eloheinu, melekh ha'olam
she'asah nisim la'avoteinu bayamim haheim baziman hazeh.

Happy belated Hanukkah, everyone.

We're Saving This One to Show His Prom Date

Crawling Toward the Finish Line

It is probably just the sleep deprivation, but I've been truly flailing around for blog topics this week. Thank god Aetna gave me something to rant about, or y'all would have been subjected to a week of pointless mumblings. But in Two! More! Days! NaBloPoMo will be over, and that particular pressure, at least, will ease.

SO. I was out walking Theo last night and banged into a neighbor/casual acquaintance who was out walking her dog. Theo luuuuuuuurvs her pooch, so we stopped to say hello and how-ya-doing. Turns out that M's husband is in the process of leaving her, and she's in that emotional state where it's impossible to answer a casual question lightly, so we ended up standing on the dark sidewalk and chatting for a good fifteen minutes.

Now, this is a woman with whom I am friendly, but we are not friends in any more than a casual way. But you know how it is sometimes with the raw wounds and the over-sharing, right? It turns out that M's husband of 25 years has been cheating on her for 23 of those years, with various other women. He has apparently finally found someone "worth leaving M for" and is making her (M's) life as brutally miserable as he can on his way out the door. Needless to say, M is devastated and cannot yet envision being able to pick up the pieces.

I was as supportive and encouraging as I could be while Theo was sniffing her dog's butt.

What gets me most, I think, is the idea that someone could live in the same house with you for 25 years and be living a lie, day in and day out, for 23 of those goddamn years. I'm no dewy-eyed romantic -- 17 years of marriage will knock that out of you pretty quickly -- but I can't imagine the sheer energy that went into all that falsehood.

I came home from the walk chilled to the bone -- I should have worn gloves, dammit -- and incredibly thankful for what Michael and I have built between us. There have been some dark and scary times in the last 17 years, but honesty has always gotten us through. What a relief it is to have a partner you can always trust not to run when you tell them your darkest, most hidden secrets.

I wish the same for you in your lives, dear internets.

SITEMETER GIVETH, AND SITEMETER TAKETH AWAY

Tracking my blog traffic is enough to give one vertigo. Now, I know the numbers are not terribly large (!!), but the standard deviation is outlandish. Look at those peaks! And today, all the way down below my normal average.

I can take a hint -- less bitching about health insurance, more cute puppy pix. The masses hoards dozens have spoken.




Theo's tennis ball had gone under the sideboard and he was DETERMINED to retrieve it. Isn't he cuuuuuuuuuute?

****

I am quite astonished to realize that there are only a few more days left in November. NaBloPoMo is almost over, and I haven't missed a day! Whoot! Of course, saying this out loud almost surely means that the Fates are going to conspire to dope-slap me hard enough to prevent my posting either TOMORROW or FRIDAY, but I'll take the chance.

****

In my very first blog post, back over at Cookies for a Cure, I talked about how I feel surrounded by writers. Well, the dynasty has officially expanded unto the fourth generation. Garrick, age 9, wrote a poem in school that has knocked the socks off of his teachers (as well as his family members), and I'd like to leave it with you tonight.

FALL by Garrick S.

September

The school bell rings,

we stop our play,

it's time for another school day.

Our teacher is the best of all.

She'll teach anyone, big and small.

These are the days that we'll remember,

When we're farther in September.

October

I spy the Devil,

A witch at most,

A skeleton, zombie, ghoul and ghost.

I see a mummy,

A goblin too -

I'll hate it when this day is through.

Turn your up-side down world over,

Have a good time in October.

November

Cranberry sauce in my eye,

turkey, stuffing, apple pie.

Everything, good or bliss,

has, no doubt, come up to this.

Not like October or September,

You can eat well in November.

Give a cheer for one and all,
Give a cheer for good old fall!

Self-Pity-Free Zone

Thanks to all for the comments and encouragement. Today I spoke with an Alexander Technique teacher, and while we decided that I'm probably a bit acute right now for Alexander to provide much immediate relief, she was helpful and encouraging and gave me the name of a good physical therapist. I just may take her home and ply her with baked goods in my gratitude.




So, progress will come, and I have determined to stop with the whining and find something else to post about. Look! A cute puppy:





Theo loves empty tonic bottles, yes he does. And I harvested the last of the garden bounty this weekend:



Celeriac, which I planted on a whim. Now, what do I do with it?......

The Halloween Post

(So sue me, I'm a little behind schedule. But I'm still on track with NaBloPoMo, which I consider something of a miracle...)

The boys opted for Harry Potter-themed costumes this year. Can you tell who's Voldemort and who's the Dementor?



Theo very graciously allowed us to dress him as Underdog. He had a blast trick-or-treating, too.



And I was a pastry chef.



Michael stayed home to catch the hordes of trick-or-treaters while my boys and I stepped out. I wonder how many more years I'm going to get away with tagging along?