Ah, Christmas On The North Coast

Four years ago, when we moved to Crescent City in the fall (for the first time), we stayed here for Christmas and spent Christmas day on the beach. Darcy still had curls (I miss them!!) and she played with a stick on the beach:



So today we made it into a tradition: Every time we move to Crescent City in the fall, we're going to spend Christmas day on the beach and take a picture of Darcy with a driftwood stick:

Yes, it was warm enough to be barefoot on the beach. I didn't even bother to bring shoes at all. She's taller, her hair is straighter, but she is still our beach-loving girl. With an afternoon visit with friends, she got her feet in both the Pacific AND the Smith River for Christmas. Life is pretty darn good.

Merry Christmas to all, and I hope you are making great family traditions, too.

Second Grade Photo!

Our girl is in second grade and I love that our KRECR community includes a parent who gets conned into taking great school pictures:

Brrrrrrrrrrr!

It's been unusually cold here on the far North Coast. As you can see, we've had very hard frosts the last three or four days and they are claiming that we might actually get accumulations of SNOW tonight. IN TOWN. On the coast of the great and mighty Pacific Ocean.

I think this has caused some problems here and there. This water-whatever-it-is shares a campus with Darcy's school and there was a worried looking plumbing person looking at it this afternoon when I arrived to pick her up.

Luckily for us, this weather did not arrive until after our Thanksgiving guests had come and gone. The nights were chilly, but the days warmed up nicely. This allowed Darcy to introduce her cousin to some of her favorite things:

Playing on the beach

Finding tide pool creatures (in this case, a BIG sun star)

It's The Most Wonderful Time Of The Year...

And I'm not talking about Christmas, although I love that, too. It's the last day of November and therefore, the last day of NaBloPoMo. I shouldn't have undertaken the challenge this year. Between blogging every day for work, moving, Thanksgiving, and everything else that was going on, I just didn't have time to do it properly. But I hope you liked a few of the pictures along the way at least, and it's always good to get back in the habit.

Here's one last picture of Darcy for the month. It represents what she missed so much when we were in Pennsylvania:

And The Move Is Almost Over...

Hurray, hurrah! The movers came today just after ten, and four and a half hours later, they drove away, leaving behind all our stuff. If there were enough moving trucks and people for everyone to have all their belongings delivered the day after Thanksgiving, we could cure the unrepentant consumerism that is Black Friday. Even though we always try to cull before a move, I am still overwhelmed (and not in a good way) by how much stuff we own. And while I am glad to have it all in the house we will now call our home, I wish there was a lot less of it.

So there it all is, in the place we will be calling home. For having a place to call home, I am truly grateful. 

But how do I cull so there is truly less stuff, permanently? I feel like we have gotten rid of all the easy stuff and even some small pieces of the hard stuff. I have dreams of scanning some of the grad school paperwork I feel I shouldn't/can't get rid of, although I have gotten rid of a LOT of grad school stuff already. I have streamlined my book collection -- even my cookbook collection has been weeded through twice! I got rid of a few kitchen things I was hanging onto more for sentiment than for the actual use I get out of them, and there might be a few more things I could give away or sell from kitchen cabinets (well, boxes, at this point).

I've pared down my closet, gotten rid of all my high-heeled shoes, and we aren't knick-knack people, so there aren't many dust-catchers that are being hauled from place to place.

We held a garage sale in PA, Michael sold stuff on Craig's List and gave stuff away via FreeCycle, and we have a few pieces of furniture at an auction house in Delaware Water Gap, waiting to be sold on our behalf.

SO HOW DO WE STILL HAVE THIS MUCH STUFF??

I Am Full

That's the overwhelming feeling for now. I am thankful for being with family today, and for having a bounty of delicious food to cook and share, and for a gloriously sunny day.

But now I am tired and full and too sleepy to write about all the wonderful things in my life. But they are legion.

So TIred...

Woke up at four this morning. I didn't mean to, but I did. By five, it was clear there would be no more sleep for me. I got up, drove to the back house and did the last bits of cleaning there. Then I went to spend time with my cat, who was needy and still anxious about being in a strange, empty house.

I'm now close to comatose and so this is the post you get today.

I hope you all have delicious menus planned for tomorrow.

Out Of One House And Into Another

We now have stuff in three different houses at the 
same time. What is wrong with this picture?

We are comfortably housed in a vacation rental for the next several days, anticipating the arrival of some family for Thanksgiving tomorrow. The dishes I hauled in my car from Pennsylvania are still at the house we've been living in for the past two months. So is a little bit of food. Our clothes and Darcy's books and animals and a LOT of food are in the vacation rental with us. 

But our sweet cat is in our new house, which we sort of, almost took possession of today. She's got her food and water bowls, her bed, the shirt off my back (literally), a scratching post, and a bunch of the stuff that we hauled from Pennsylvania in our cars. I worry that she's lonely, but Michael says she's a cat and she'll be fine. I hope he's right.

On Friday, all the rest of our stuff from PA will be delivered. We tried to pare down our stuff before this move (again) and I hope I will be less stunned by how much stuff comes off the truck. 

But mostly I hope that by the time we leave the vacation rental on Sunday, we can crawl into our very own beds for the first time in three months (for Darcy and me, anyway)!! I'm ready.

Hmmmm...

It's late and I'm tired. The day has been full of packing, moving, cleaning, more cleaning, and tomorrow will be more of the same.

But we all seem to be mostly healthy, we have somewhere(s) to move TO, and we got the news today that our stuff will be delivered on Friday. As in the day after Thanksgiving. As in a day that we have family guests. As in three days earlier than we had requested.

But it doesn't matter! Because what matters is that we should be able to have the carpets cleaned before the stuff arrives and then we will have somewhere to go when the vacation rental runs out on Sunday.

I delivered wine to our wonderful host/neighbors this evening. They have been unbelievably generous with their "back house". Darcy and I have been here almost two months and the only rent I've been allowed to pay is in wine. They live across from one of the most spectacular stretches of coast anywhere, and we've gotten to be one house away from that all this time. We have wonderful friends.

By the end of the day tomorrow, we will probably have belongings in three different houses. But by Sunday or Monday, everything will have gathered together into one house and we can start the process of settling in, putting up art, and deciding where everything goes.

And now I'm going to go blog at Growing Tables and go to bed.

One Up, One Down

So just in time for us to move to a different temporary place of residence (before moving to our permanent place of residence in a week and a half), Michael has come down with what Darcy had. So they're both in bed, she because a fun, active day after being sick wears a girl out, and he because being sick wears a man out.

And I'm here blogging about it, hoping that Michael recovers as quickly as Darcy did and that I don't get it.

Darcy and I drove up the coast today, to one of her favorite places: Bandon, OR. We had a good time, as the sun was shining, we didn't need coats, and we hit all the hot-spots, which now include a new cheese maker. I got a significant amount of Christmas shopping done at non-chain stores, which feels good despite the need to move the gifts a couple times. In speaking to a merchant, I actually built a great work connection and got a lead on a regional funder I didn't know about -- so yay for networking. 

The one downside was that we learned that our favorite beach-trash art group (and yes, we have one!) has opened a new and beautiful venue in downtown Bandon, but they are closed on Sundays! We could only peek in the window and dream of our next visit. The Washed Ashore Project is amazing and you should all check out their website to look at pictures. They collect trash from beaches (and accept donations, so I need to figure out a storage system so I can keep the stuff we pick up to take to them) and then sort it by color and material before making amazing sculptures out of them. The photos online do not do these things justice, but they're still worth checking out.

I'm hoping tomorrow brings us three healthy people, continued sunshine, and speedy packing.

It Was An Almost Perfect Day...

Sometime in the middle of the afternoon yesterday, I started thinking about what a great blog post I was going to have for last night. It was a gorgeous day, I had a very productive three hours of work in the morning, attended a lovely Thanksgiving potluck at Darcy's school, had a little free time while Darcy enjoyed herself at a birthday party, and then Darcy and I spent some time on the beach.

We wandered the sands and wondered about the odd arrangement of LOTS of seaweed, just in two small sections of the beach. And we watched an amazing sunset over Castle Rock.

It was all going so well. 

And then an hour after Darcy went to bed, we heard noises upstairs where there should be no noises. It was not a pretty sight. Poor girl was covered in vomit and we had a miserable three or four hours before her body was done getting rid of whatever had tried to invade.

That's my excuse for not blogging last night. 

And I'm blogging early-ish today because puking for half the night wears a child out and she fell asleep on the couch just before 5. I carried her up to bed without an eyelash moving and I will keep my fingers crossed that she can sleep straight through until morning.

Waiting For Downton

So Michael says that he might be "over" Downton Abbey because of the way they ended the last season. I agree that the fate of new parents on the show isn't fun, but I'm still looking forward to its return.

Today, I got a suggestion for something to while away the time until Downton returns. Broadchurch is a BBC detective series, something we often like. One of the more recent ones we've watched is Vera, with Brenda Blethyn as a detective on the moors. Apparently, there are more seasons than we've watched, so there's more waiting-for-Downton fodder. And in searching for a link to Vera (which is on Hulu), I found this article about Brit binge watching with a couple more suggestions including the UK version of House of Cards. Didn't know there was one.


(Had to make a new label. Apparently, I've never really written about tv before.)

Trees Of Mystery

So there's a slightly (?) cheesy tourist attraction just south of Crescent City called Trees of Mystery. There are good parts of it, but there's also a giant Babe the Blue Ox (anatomically correct) in front. I find it an odd place to go see redwoods, though, because there's beautiful old growth forest nearby, so I don't understand going to see named, not terribly old redwoods instead. But that's just me, and Trees of Mystery is a venerable institution.

The real trees of mystery are the redwoods themselves. I always appreciate them when I get to drive through them (as I may tomorrow). They are overwhelmingly ancient and wild and beautiful on an ordinary day. But then there are days when the sun and fog play together particularly well and people are able to get photos like this:

Michael was in the redwoods for such a day today. Pretty good for an iPhone, once again.

The Wonderful World Of Cheese

In true Darcy form, she has decided over the last six or eight months that she loves cheese. All cheese, of course, because she doesn't do anything by halves. 

At Halloween, she won the award for best girls' costume and got to choose a prize from a big basket of prizes. Her category was the first awarded. The basket was filled with chocolate bars of many kinds, games, toys, jars of olives. She chose the round of Humboldt Fog cheese, an rinded goat cheese with a layer of ash. And she loved that cheese.

As part of her birthday present, I found this magazine about cheese. It became her bedtime reading. Michael tells this story as if it is an odd choice, but this comes from a man who used to keep three encyclopedias of classical CDs by his bedside. 

Sunset

Moving across the country and back again in just over a year was never our choice of how life would go. But here are a couple reasons we did the "back again":

These pictures represent more than a gorgeous sunset on the beach. Darcy and Michael could go to the beach easily to enjoy that sunset because of our amazing social network here. When living with our friends became detrimental to Darcy's sleeping needs a month after we moved here, other friends offered their "one and a half bedroom" guest house for more or less as long as we needed it. The guest house is separated from this beach by one house and one road. So Darcy and Michael walked down the driveway, across the street, and there they were, on this unbelievably beautiful stretch of the Pacific coastline.

I'm A Bad Blogger

Apparently, trying to write two blogs daily is too much. I totally cheated and pre-blogged for Growing Tables so I didn't have to write over the weekend. But having done that, I justified not touching a computer for 48 hours.

We spent a good weekend running errands, walking on the beach, and seeing our friend's musical performed on the big, Crescent City stage. Now we're winding down the weekend and mentally preparing to move from our temporary lodgings to our house in a couple weeks. 

Many apologies for the missing blog posts and pictures that might have gone with them. I'll make it up somehow.

Books! I Love Them!

I've been reading a lot recently, both fiction and non-fiction. Finally got around to reading Salt, Sugar, Fat and was suitably horrified by what I learned. (Did you know that a half cut of Prego Traditional tomato sauce has as much sugar as three Oreos??) I'm in the middle of Michael Pollan's Cooked right now and enjoying it. I had been hesitating for some silly reason, but then saw it at the library.

But tonight, as soon as I finish writing this, I will open up a book I am very excited to start:

I love, love, love good speculative fiction, including some very dark dystopias. Margaret Atwood's trilogy, ending with MaddAddam, is definitely on the list of very dark dystopias. In anticipation of reading this final book, I reread the first two over the past couple weeks and found them just as good the second time around. (Might have been the third time around for Year of the Flood. Not sure about that.)

So now I'll bid you good-night so I can start reading! I just hope I can stop...

A Picture Is Worth A Thousand Words

Oh, But She'll Be SEVEN!

Three years ago, almost exactly, we went with Darcy for a hike around Mill Creek Campground. It's closed in the winter, and so empty, and we shared pictures of Darcy playing a leaf-tossing game and the amazing world of moss and fungus.

Yesterday, we took Darcy and a friend to the same spot for some scootering. It was sunny and they had a great time, and once again, there were mushrooms everywhere:

For one of the first times around here, we also saw lots of puffballs, long past their prime. The first batch were on this stump:

But then we were on the lookout for them and found them on the ground in several different places. There was some puffball-stomping; the cloud at Darcy's feet is the spore cloud:

But our girl isn't four anymore, like in the first picture. Tomorrow morning, she will wake up and be SEVEN. How did that happen? Our little girl is disappearing into a grown-up body, but at least she still thrills over seeing banana slugs and stomping on puffballs and riding her scooter through dry leaves. She's moving on to other things, too, like helping our friend Michelle-the-baker make the chocolate cupcakes with chocolate mousse filling, chocolate buttercream frosting, and chocolate shavings that are going to school tomorrow. (Sorry, KRECR!!) But here she is, two days from her seventh birthday:

A Cheat

I am amazingly uninspired to blog today. We had a good day. We scootered around a closed camp ground -- one of the many exciting things Del Norte has to offer on beautiful fall days. We saw stumps covered in puffballs, climbing banana slugs, and many other wondrous things. Unfortunately, all of the images of wonder are still hanging out on Michael's phone.

So for your enjoyment, I present the other blog I'm writing for daily this month. Because I am a masochist.

Apparently, She Just Needed A Bed.

Oh cats. They're cute and furry, and they purr and sometimes let you pet them. They're fun when they play. And then there's 4:30 in the morning. 

That's when Paige likes to let us know how desperately she needs our love, how much she misses us in the night, and how empty her bowl is.

But not this morning! Yesterday, before heading off to the deliciousness of our Requa Inn dinner, we bought Paige her very own bed. She's never had a cat bed before, not exactly sure why not, but she hasn't. She'll sometimes crawl in with us for a while, but she doesn't stay long. 

It took her a while to warm up to it and hop in (and I had to add a towel she's been sleeping on to coax her interest), but once she did, she stayed in! All night long. At NINE O'CLOCK, when we woke up (thank you, S family for keeping our other early riser overnight!), she was curled up looking very proud of her very own bed. No early morning meows. No kneading me in my sleep. No paws on the face. 

She just needed her own little bed to be a wonderful morning cat.

If Your Menu Said...

Matsutake mushroom. Stinging nettle. Smoked sturgeon.

That was how our fifth course of a tasting menu was described tonight. I was picturing a roasted (?) mushroom, sauteed greens, and a small piece of fish. 

What would you picture?

What I didn't picture was a small white pitcher being put on my plate. It was tiny. Like an individual pitcher of cream that might come with a cup of coffee.

There was a green foam hiding the rest of the contents, but as I dipped my spoon in, I found a velvety mushroom soup, with shavings of smoked sturgeon at the bottom. It was not at all expected, but it was so good.

It was maybe a quarter cup -- maybe -- of complete deliciousness that made me wish my tongue was long enough to reach the bottom of that little pitcher. I didn't try, although I wanted to. We were, after all, seated at a table for six and had just met two of our dining companions as the meal began.

Michael and I splurged for a late anniversary dinner and went to the Historic Requa Inn's Beermaker's Dinner tonight. (He was in Pennsylvania for the deal deal last month.) It was eight courses of magical cooking -- not a single miss on any of the plates, starting with a halibut fillet on top of creamy wild rice and ending with a panna cotta served on caramel sauce. I used a leftover piece of fry bread to mop up extra sauce from the family-style serving dish. I'm not ashamed -- it was the perfect end to a perfect dinner.

From Reading To Stage!

A couple years ago, Michael and I helped our friend Ruthe by joining other friends to read her fantastic play, This is Crescent City, out loud for the first time. It got some edits out of that reading, a few more suggestions from my helpful cousin Seth, tons more work and sweat and thought from Ruthe, and last night, it premiered on the stage with the Lighthouse Repertory Theater!

The play is about our town's history and present, and what makes people choose to stay here. Our local newspaper has given it good coverage and with luck, that will be just the beginning of the conversations this play will inspire.

We'll be seeing it next weekend and babysitting so other friends can go see it this weekend. If you're nearby, you should choose a performance and GO. 

(And if you were admiring the poster, that's good. It's Michael's handiwork! Ain't he great?)

A Trip Down Memory Lane

Next week, I get to talk about my previous life in paleoethnobotany. I'm pretty stoked. I'm giving talks to students at two schools ranging from K to 12. I'll be doing three lectures for high schools students: anthropology, intro to paleoethnobotany methods, and prehistoric agriculture in North America. For the younger students, I'll be doing just the paleoethnobotany intro and the prehistory.

Today, I was trying to figure out what images I have access to without having all the slides I haven't gotten around to scanning. I found a few of the micrographs of my seeds and enough photos of my fieldwork in Mexico to make me happy.

Looking at my seeds and beautiful chapatas, along with fields of huauzontle and trucks piled high with produce in the wholesale street market made me feel nostalgic for those lovely Mexican crops. And that's appropriate, given that one of my dissertation's themes was the role of nostalgia in maintaining traditional foods.

Bubble Gum

It's possible we are somewhat restrictive parents. Darcy didn't eat cake until her second birthday and then it was an applesauce cake with almost no sugar in the cake or frosting. (We've made up for that -- she's had more than enough sugar in her life, but we started out well.) 

But one thing she still hasn't had is gum. I think. Although now that I'm writing this, I think I remember someone saying that she'd had a piece on an airplane at some point? Not sure about that. She got a piece of bubble gum during the trick or treat bonanza last week. Tonight, she got Michael to eat it and blow bubbles for her. She was unreasonably tickled by the whole thing and tried to touch each bubble he blew.

It's worth clicking on the picture to enlarge it to see her tongue sticking out of her mouth.

Ah. The Return Of Our Computer To My Life.

You probably have noticed the lack of photos (and posts) over the past few months. In part, that's because Michael had both our main computer and the camera, so photo taking and sharing has been difficult. Now the shared computer is in California, so I'm just going to poke through the archives and share a few cute photos of Darcy. I know it's what most of you like best anyway. Also, I spent eight hours at a culinary and agritourism training today, with an hour's drive at either end, so it was a long day and I'm tired.

Maybe not as tired as this pair, though. Darcy and Paige take a nap together (or at least pretend to) on our deck in Pennsylvania. She loves her cat and her cat loves her!

And here she is just being plain old silly. There's a sequence of these close-ups with strange faces involving Darcy and her cousin, so I think it was a Thing To Do during this visit. Silly girl.

Michael's HOME!

That's pretty much the whole story today. Michael rolled into town this morning. We all got to sit down to dinner together tonight and he is singing Darcy's bedtime songs right now.

Life is good.

The iPhone's Connected To The...Other iPhone?

Look! I managed to add a recent photo. This is our small cowgirl on Halloween. I'm still not exactly sure why she wanted to be a cowgirl, but she was insistent for a few weeks and there she is in her hat and boots.

This picture is brought to you by the wonders of modern technology. A friend took this picture with her phone, sent it to Michael on his phone. He posted it to Facebook by request, and I was able to grab it from there and post it to the blog. Ain't science and social media great?

Our Girl!

It's a rainy day out there this morning and I thought I'd get my blogging done for the day before even getting out of bed. I have no idea how I'm going to entertain the girl today and I'm sad because my rain coat is out in the car, which is not helpful.

A few weeks ago was California Indian Day. Darcy had it off from school, but the day before, they had a great day learning about Yurok and Tolowa traditions. The newspaper gave it some nice coverage, including a great picture of Darcy on the front page. It was how a few people learned we were back in town! 

As I said last night, Michael's getting closer and closer with himself and access to cameras and such. Maybe tomorrow, definitely early Monday! So you won't have to make do with links to interesting things for much longer.

Oh, Why Not?

So I was not planning to do NaBloPoMo this year. I was toying with the possibility of trying to write a novel or even doing the academic version of writing every day for a month, which apparently now exists. But both of those things seem to require more preparation and thought than I've given them, while blogging can be done a bit more on the fly.

This is my lame entry for the first day, just so there's something here.

Michael is currently driving across this beautiful country so he, too, can rejoin the ranks of the westerners. I will have more time AND access to photographs when he gets here, so I'll try to post lots of pictures of our ever-growing girl.

In the meantime, here's some of what I've been doing recently:

We had a great four days of Food Day celebrations last week, ending with this day of DIY Food Workshops, which were a big hit. You can read about the bigger plans and see the great coverage our local newspaper gave us here and here. The first article started on the front page and the second was the front page, above the fold of the B section. It was a whirlwind to put this together in the first seven and a half weeks on the job, but we did it and did it successfully!

Rainy Places Should Have Something Like This

This is a very purposeful blog post. At the north end of the Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area (our current park) is the town of Milford, PA. There's a place there called Have a Hoot Family Fun Center and the times we've taken Darcy there, I am always overwhelmed by how much a place like Crescent City needs one of these. So I took a lot of pictures to show this point.

There are many elements at Have a Hoot. I spent one visit searching out manufacturers tags on some of them because, well, they're awesome. Most come from a company called Prime Play and, in fact, Have a Hoot is the featured photo on their Family Fun Center page. It's a better picture than any of mine for showing the overall set-up and a raised view of the high ropes course. But here's Darcy on the ropes course, too:

And a picture showing a few more of the high ropes elements from the ground:

There's a climbing wall in one corner that can be seen clearly in the linked picture, and then, on three walls of the building, is a multi-story human habitrail of fun. (If you don't know what a habitrail is, check one out here.) It's hard to show how completely amazing this is (I don't even have a picture of the trampoline part, for example), but here are some images:

Fun!! There's also a laser tag area (seen in the last picture; the top of it has more habitrail (or Ballocity, as it's properly called, I believe) and lots of arcade games, although they're definitely secondary attractions. Overall, it's an amazing, active, indoor play space that is even affordable! I think it's six dollars for a two hour session. This place also has a concession stand and a party area, so a lot of people have kids' birthdays here. For a place as rainy as the North Coast, it would make a world of difference!

The Missing Picture

Michael claims the picture was on the computer all the time. I still have my doubts. Either way, here is Darcy reading at the library on Monday afternoon:

And here's a picture from the hike Michael and I took a few hours before the library trip:

It's a little washed out, but that's a cute red eft hanging out on the moss. We took a "hike" a few weeks ago that ended up being a tiptoe through the over-200 efts on the trail. This time, we saw a dozen or so. Very nice amphibians they are.

Better Late Than Never? And Better Random Than Not At All?

So, yeah. I've been a little lazy with the ol' blog recently. Sorry about that. Moving to Pennsylvania and job-searching for months on end apparently does that to me. I know that pictures are the easiest path to forgiveness in this situation, so here are some recent stories and pictures.

Our small beast (feline variety) was recently ill. Last week, she was listless and stopped eating, and when I took her to the vet, her temperature was more than four degrees above kitty-normal. We didn't get an actual diagnosis, but the vet said that it happens frequently to cats and they DO know how to fix it. Paige got a shot of antibiotics and a shot to bring down the fever. It took many more days than I'd like, but she is finally back to normal, as judged by my 4:30am wake-up kitty snuggle today. In better times, Paige is very fond of bags:

Darcy, in the meantime, has turned into a full-time bookworm. She reads constantly and FAST. In truth, many of her chapter books aren't very long, but she often finishes one on the drive home from the library. Or in the library, as seen here:
(Well, you would see that here if Michael had sent it to the computer from his phone, but since he didn't, you'll have to wait patiently while I get him to do that for a future post.)

In the meantime, you can have this picture of Darcy at her bridging ceremony. She is moving from Daisies to Brownies next year and these transitions are celebrated in style. Each girl walked over the bridge and then shook hands with all the Brownies, who welcomed them into that level. It was very hot (third floor of an Elks Lodge with over a hundred people), but very cute.

Many weeks ago, all of us volunteered at a Hands-on-History event at historic Millbrook Village, on the New Jersey side of the park. I told visiting students all about food preservation methods, Michael worked in the mill, and Darcy helped churn butter. Sort of. Mostly, she wandered wherever she wanted and harassed teenagers who happened to put on Beatles t-shirts that morning. But in theory, she helped churn quite a lot of butter. We were all in costume (mine was of the oversized-flour-sack variety, with an apron to give it some sort of shape) and had a family portrait taken:

A good time was had by all. I warned students about the dangers of scurvy on long sea voyages and explained that one way to keep bad bacteria OUT was by letting good bacteria eat your food first. I'm not sure they all bought it, but they paid attention. Except the kindergartners who were on their sixth station; they paid attention to the spider crawling on the sauerkraut. It was pretty.

And there is a very random blog post that gives small glimpses into our lives. In other random news: Darcy has hit the first pitch in both of her last t-ball games (they pitch to them in late innings, but go back to the T after five or six pitches); I picked 3.5 pounds of beets from our community garden plot today and many pounds of potatoes are not far behind; we had a full house with grandparents, aunt, cousin, and friends for my sister's birthday weekend; Darcy has become friends with both cicadas and fireflies this summer; we are having insane amounts of rain here, including some thunder now; Michael is brewing beer at a steadily increasing pace this summer; and if you haven't tried the game Qwirkle, you should.

I May Just Be A Careless Mother

There's a photo I've wanted to share of Darcy and Paige-the-kitten for a while. It is absolutely adorable -- a picture I will love forever. The problem is, the photo was taken just after Darcy got out of the bath and she hadn't yet stood still long enough to get clothes on her. Any clothes. So it seemed like a bad thing to put on the internet.

But it keeps taunting me in the photo stream. So I've cropped it and decided to share:

Paige, as you may be able to tell, will tolerate almost any action of Darcy's. She routinely gets flattened to the ground when Darcy gets home; gets carried around like a sausage, held tight at the middle; and manages to avoid biting and scratching through it all. Maybe the extra toes (seen so clearly in this picture) give her extra tolerance. Or maybe she just knows that Darcy is the One Who Must Be Best Loved.

Paige has had a hard day today. She got scolded by a squirrel for five or ten minutes while she was sunning herself on the deck. Then her terrible mother brushed and cleaned her. And then her even more terrible mother managed to (almost completely accidentally) pour water on her while watering plants.

Luckily, Paige has Sluggy to soothe her. Her favorite toy, for several days running now, is a plastic banana slug. She carries it around, tosses it in the air by its tentacles, and bats it all over the house. I'd say she's probably played with it for a cumulative two hours already today and there will no doubt be more. She's a cat obsessed. Do you think that she would hunt down real slugs if she lived in Crescent City? 

Spring Has Sprung

One of the good things about being back in the northeast is the existence of four distinct seasons. I like that. We are now fully in the throes of a beautiful, fresh green spring. It's taken the trees a while to get with the program, but our view is slowly being taken away by leaves. I'm ok with that.

My favorite botanical part of spring -- by far -- is the bright shiny appearance of daffodils. I love daffies of all sizes and color combinations (although I don't really love doubles; a terrible thing to do to a daffodil). So we recently made a trip south to Longwood Gardens to admire the daffies at their peak. I meant to take the camera, but forgot it and was at the mercy of Michael and the iPhone for photos. I think he took less than 20. So sad. But here are a few of them for your viewing pleasure:

Darcy and the forsythia. 

The toothless garden princess. Wish it was a better view of her missing upper teeth!

In a field of small blue flowers.

In the amazing conservatory, where there is an expanded, awesome kids area since I last visited these gardens.

And finally, the bathrooms. Yes, this beautiful hall of living walls is the new(er) bathroom wing of the conservatory. Each of these doorways leads to a spherical, bright red private bathroom. They're awesome. You can see the interior here. (There are also YouTube videos of the bathrooms, but that seems excessive.)

We had a great day. If you live within striking distance of Kennett Square, PA, where the garden is located, you should treat yourself and go visit sometime. It was a great way to welcome and enjoy spring in the northeast.

World War I Reminders

Some of my regular readers might know that April 25th is ANZAC Day in Australia and New Zealand, commemorating the day when the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) troops first landed at Gallipoli. By the time that unsuccessful campaign ended, 8,700 Australian soldiers and 2,700 Kiwi soldiers had died. 

The campaign has been immortalized in film (Gallipoli, one of Mel Gibson's positive contributions to cinema) and song (I'll get to that in a bit). If you've never watched Gallipoli and feel a need to renew your anti-war stance, Gallipoli will do it. As I've learned this year, so will almost anything else that gives a moderately realistic view of the horrors of trench warfare. I had read some classic World War I fiction and poetry in the past, but this year seems to be the year of the first world war for me and the inhumanity of war has screamed out loud and clear.

In particular, Birdsong, a novel by Sebastian Faulk, caught me off-guard. It's part of the famous list of posts past. Yes, I'm still working my way through those hundred books. Many of the books I haven't read are books I know very little about, so when I borrowed Birdsong from the library, I didn't know what I was getting myself into. Turns out that much of the novel is very graphic description of life in and under the trenches, with several key characters being members of a unit working to tunnel under and blow up the German trenches.

Much less graphic, but still a vivid reminder was, of all things, Downton Abbey's WWI episodes. They were the first bookend of my fictional foray into the trenches. I don't think I've yet come to the end of it and that's ok. As awful as it was to see and read about the horrors and incredible waste of trench warfare, it was infinitely worse to live (or die) through it or any other war and it's important to remember the sacrifices and work to make sure there aren't more in the future.

And so, on the American eve of ANZAC Day (it's almost over in the countries that actually celebrate it already), I'll leave you with a very classic song about Gallipoli, The Band Played Waltzing Matilda, as performed very nicely by The Pogues.

Kitten!

At Christmas, Santa Claus left very serious notes in stockings about Darcy getting a cat once we were settled in a house. We visited the local animal shelter a few times, and last week Darcy chose a small tabby-and-white older kitten named Paige:

She's six months old and very sweet, but she hadn't been tested for infectious diseases when we saw her, so we couldn't take her home. For whatever reason, the tests took a long time and our house got more and more ready for the kitten who was not here. A cat door was installed in the door to the basement. A litter box was purchased. Food, too, was added to the Christmas kitten-presents of a carrier and dishes and toys.

For the past few days, I've been keeping my fingers crossed that Paige would be given the ok before the storm hits tomorrow. I can't think of a better way to keep Darcy occupied during a snow storm than a new kitten. And with not much more than an hour left of the shelter's operating hours, we got the call: Paige is negative for all possible diseases and we could come pick her up. 

So we did! 

She behaved beautifully in her carrier on the drive home and allowed us to pet her for a minute or two before going to explore and hide. But she came around by the end of the evening and played a little before crawling under Darcy's dresser for a bath during Harry Potter. She is still up there now, sleeping, just as Darcy hoped.

During her exploration, she showed good taste in books by draping herself across my cookbooks for a while. Didn't look very comfortable to me, but Paige seemed perfectly happy:

She sports a bow-tie-like mustache and extra toes, one of my favorite traits in a cat! I hadn't noticed them at the shelter, but they're obvious now that she's made it home.