The first topic up for grabs is my front bathroom soap dispenser. One of you either has it or knows where it is and none of you are talking. I've been looking for weeks now. Where is it? Did one of the kids flush it down the toilet? Did I throw it out rather than clean it? Did someone mistake it for a disposable one?
I've had 2 guests call me into my bathroom and announce I didn't have soap to wash their hands. I'd say something trite here but with my luck they are reading this. For the record there was bar soap in the bar soap "dispenser" but in these modern times that is just not what people expect to see. I'm surprised I am so last century I mean they sell those touchless ones at BBandB. So very international airport, not touching my soap dispenser. Did you know that according to the add I got in the mail offering 15% off, touching soap dispensers is where you pick up like half your daily germs? And in your own house too!

I can totally get with that when I'm cutting up chicken. Though it has been a long time since I cut up meat without rubber gloves. Ah, if only they could see me now. I went from Texas ranch living to being afraid of raw meat.

I'm not going to brag about being productive today because I woke up tired. I'm not productive. I feel over-whelmed and furthermore I did something hugely stupid and I offered to sew something. I thought worse case scenario I've got a needle and thread, right? I didn't think it would be hard because we have this little  The "thing" in question is a banner for the opening day ceremonies of Little League - TOMORROW MORNING.
The banner will be used once, so why should I care if I just staple it together?
I distinctly remember my mother teaching me to sew. I distinctly remember home-ec class. Though after trying to thread our sewing machine (one I got for Celia over the holidays year before  last - so she could make herself a quilt - I even bought her a quilt kit) I realized I had apparently over-fixated on stitching myself to death with the scary sewing machine needle and under-fixated on where the thread goes.
The under thread was actually what was throwing me. Why do I not remember under-thread in any of my mother's lectures?
Celia threaded the damn thing last night (that's right, I'm the older generation, relying on my younger daughter to walk and talk me through all this bright and fizzy modern technology) but it turns out it wasn't her fault it was something to do with a broken tension rod. This is why you take things out of the box and use them straight away, because nearly 18 months later you probably don't know how to return it for one with a not broken tension rod. Thingy.

So my usual savior came over and showed me how to use hem-tape. Stitchwitch. Because it was rocket-SCIENCE and the whole 3 steps of it utterly confused me. Hey look, I never claimed to be a domestic-type. People make that mistake about me a lot. They confuse staying at home with a lot of kids with being somehow house/sewing/craft savvy.

So there. I don't care if you're laughing, I don't see you hemming anything.
Now, because I've decided to continue with this whole high tech thing, I'm going to staple the decoration on it. Staple. I might use duct-tape too. Hey, I grew up in Texas, by the end of this we'll be lucky if there isn't baling wire in there somewhere. Actually, I was thinking I could string some baling wire across the top to make the frame of it a little stronger.


In the meantime, doing the laundry every day turns out to be a mistake because I forgot that to do that you have to commit to putting it away every day too!
I'm feeling over-whelmed because it wasn't spring and then it was, and now I'm feeling really rushed about getting the garden sorted. I mean at least it is the desert and it isn't like I'm going to be choked with weeds any second now. However, the forsythia bloomed last week and everyone knows what that means and I actually woke up in the middle of the night to wonder if I'd waited too long to sew the marigold seeds. Part of that is because I've been vacillating between marigold and cactus. I'm not a fan of cactus as a decorator. If pressed I'd claim that the cactus was there in my random effort to xeriscape and not at all because I feel passive-aggressive angst towards the idiots who park on my curb, trample my flowers and let their dogs pee on my mailbox. (we live across the street from a park, and the weekend party crowd as well as the soccer Moms can be less than caring about my pathetic landscaping attempts). "Wouldn't the cactus look a wee out of place with all that grass you insist on growing in the front - wouldn't it?" You ask. Well, yes, yes it would.

I'm also feeling over-whelmed because it feels like the dust is stalking me and the stains on the carpet are actually turning me against owning carpet again ever. Yet we can't afford to do away with the carpet (though I'm seriously toying with just pulling it up and painting the concrete) and put in laminate or tile or something less attractive to red finger paint. I'm bemused by the fact that every time I notice the red, finger painted carpet stain I think of my friend who told me they had a "red popsicle rule" in her house and rather than making me think, - what could I ban my children from having that would save time on cleaning and or living like my entire house is a Jackson Pollock painting I think to myself "mmmmm red popsicles...."
Pathetic, seriously. I have some in the freezer too.


I bought caulk (caulk is cheap, it turns out it is some thousand dollars cheaper than re-tiling - damn!) and I fully intend on re-caulking the bathroom because it was spotty with mold when we bought the house and I'm terrified of mold growing behind the tiles.

Oh and I'm feeling over-whelmed because I opened the garage yesterday. Really, in reality, what was I thinking? Why did I do that? My plan was to never go in the garage again and just have Brian bring me one or two things at a time to sort. Because every time I open the garage I go into a full blown state of shock and my hard-wired Jewish neurotic brain strangles my strong Texas woman brain in the night (so much for the baling wire) and I find myself on the couch - with the blog - staring at a long-arm stapler and Little League banner and thinking to myself -


Hey - did you know there's cheesecake in the fridge?

• I remembered what I was going to say last week about Leif but forgot what I was going to say this week about Buttercup. 
• The thought on Leif was that sometimes it is the unplanned that turns out to be the most amazing, in this case a gift.
• I saw the most beautiful rain forest book I ever saw a couple years ago, then it went on sale, so I bought it. I gave it to the very next child to have a birthday, that was Leif. The book has become his favorite. Treasured, to the point that we've read the 300 pages of it over and over and he carries it around with him. 
• Keep in mind this is a coffee table book, it is half the size of himself
• He stares at the pages, talks about this is what it is like in Asia and these are the things that grow there. 
• He has more rain forest animals memorized than anyone I know. 
• This is followed only by his love affair with dinosaurs. Particularly Big Al.
• I would hazard that Leif has seen the Big Al movie more than almost any other living person. 
• Leif has every detail of Big Al memorized. 
• I realized today that I will own a pass to the nearest natural history museum until the last of my children out-grow this love affair. 
• When we bought the pass it was after a year of vacillating because as adults we vaguely believed a small natural history museum was a one-trick-pony. However, week after week of our children begging to go back we realized we needed the pass.
• The pass has paid for itself at least 10 times this year, the pass cost $75 for our family. We have been to the museum so many times that by paying as day guests we'd have bought the pass at least 10 times over. 
• How many times did we buy the pass before we actually broke down and bought the pass?
• Who is complaining? I've always loved that children love natural history. I mean the only thing cooler than dinosaurs is space and this place has both!
• Speaking of "natural history" the new computer lab section is actually a favorite of my children and today I found out why. 
• After movies play in the largest room in the computer lab section the screen turns into a massive 20 foot tall and 40 foot wide pong game. My children discovered two controllers built in at either side of the room. 
• My favorite part is that the entire back row of seats double as speakers and if you sit in them, interested in the show or not the sound vibrates through your body. 
• Some of my truly happiest memories are of one of the family farms, the one in Coz. Ne. Time seemed to have an entirely different relativity there. I wish I could replicate a place like that for my own children.
• I dearly miss my Uncle Ted's voice. 
• How stream of consciousness does it get, thoughts on Thursdays?
• Through some fit of madness I offered to sew something for someone. That's the definition of madness in case you were wondering. 
• I just watched Celia spend 5 minutes to unscuccesfully try and put an ironing board down. Ah, domestic innocence. 
• So there

He brought me strawberries. That's where we came in.
I took one out of the box and it was - it was - it was as big as a desert plate.
I wasn't quite sure what to do, I was torn between laughing and crying. Keep in mind my great grandmother has been dead 13 years now. I have no idea if the strawberry was GM, though most things are these days. Even Whole Foods has whored out to some degree. So I have a hard time believing that this early in the year the strawberry was au naturel, when it was actually that big. There were only a few in the 2lb punnet because they were so freaking huge.
I was punchy. One of my best friends was over. (I won't name names because she has a reputation to protect but she knows who she is). I just wanted to figure out which ISO on my camera would do justice to the bizarre strawberries. Really, that's all I wanted. One thing led to another...

The kids had already eaten the biggest of them, before they ate them all I wanted to get a picture...

For the average person, I'm sure they look quite appetizing

This one had a personality all to itself, it wasn't a far stretch to imagine how superior this strawberry felt, both to other strawberries and well to all other fruit in general

Which is probably why the tomato had to die - as well as the guys to the left who got in the way

The unholy alliance between drinks that have added corn syrup and when strawberries go bad

At some point guerilla warfare took over completely, as an impartial journalist, there was simply nothing I could do

This was a still taken from the video they asked me to send to the media, the last remaining hostages are in the colander

the people's rebellion, capture, trial and dispatch of the guerilla leader

The authorities arrive - where were they to begin with in all this?

The bystanders, the bodies, THE HORROR, THE HORROR

This sorta thing always draws a crowd

"Well it looks like we're done here" - "One has to wonder how these things happen?" - "America is going to hell in a handbasket"

Look, say what you want - the strawberries really were massive

The back story:

A good portion of my family is good farm stock. My mother used to tell me I was from really good "stock." Which is how you'd refer to cattle and so every time I fell ill or seemed genetically inadequate I used to wonder what the hell was wrong with me, after all how can such fantastically strong genes produce such a wussy? That's another story. The fact is I was always sort of in love with the farm culture in my family.
The family farms were one of my favorite places to be when I was growing up. The stories passed down from one generation to another or just from the remaining live generations were my childhood novels. My grandmother spent the summer she was 9 at the top of their windmill reading Gone With the Wind.
 I could barely stomach that book when I read it at 15, I was suitably impressed by the windmill story and up until the windmill went with new development I would look at it nostalgically every time we drove out to the family cemetery. We have a family cemetery - that in itself is kinda cool.

My great grandmother introduced me to genetically engineered food. She introduced me to the concept. She told me a story about how a group of investors (she was self made) had been invited to a dinner where everything from the salad course to the mousse desert were made from white fish. Then, they were all served strawberries. "Strawberries?" Strawberries, she said. "As big as your head." Then she laughed. "As big as your HEAD?!" Well as big as the plate anyway. "How big was the plate?" It was a desert plate.
I believed her. She was not the joking kind. I believed her utterly. The conversation used to haunt me.
I asked her "Is that good, is this good, is this the future?" You tell me. You're the future, is it good?
I was clueless. All I knew is I had this weird gut reaction against it.

I knew pro-GM food folks. I heard the stories about food so large it could feed a family, and I thought but it is the same amount of food that feeds a family now, just one strawberry instead of hundreds of little ones. I was still not sold. The GM food grows out of its season, has the forced-grown lack of smell and is harder to kill - in the long run making it cheaper to produce. But...but...it has no smell.

The fact that I was in love with America's farm culture didn't help. Waves of grain used to sooth my soul. I would drive up north, towards Nebraska and the beauty of the endless fields of The Breadbasket of the World would just sing to me. It didn't help my feelings towards GM foods that Americas farms were murdered in the night during my youth.

When I moved to England, I lost touch with it to some degree. America is still hyper-strung when it comes to some of this stuff. The English, believe it or not, or more likely to be overtly against these things and have less of it around them. I heard stories like this one on a myth basis - was it true - had things become that bad?
When I came back to America I felt desensitized to American culture and disconnected from my people.
I was away 8 years. That both does and doesn't sound like a long time. 8 years is a generation. 8 years is longer than the catholic church takes to show you the man. 8 years is nearly a decade. 8 years in American culture is time for so many things to seep in and change on a day to day basis that by the time a person gets back the face of things have changed. You changed my money! You added color and weirdness to the bills! You put stuff on nickels and pennies, like the quarters weren't enough. I was sure this was a ploy to get people to spend less change "oooo it's a buffalo nickel, I like these." You changed the junk food. You changed what stores had and hadn't survived. Fox News - you have to be kidding me, right?
I felt like you all had been pod snatched. I didn't get a long well at first when I came back and I still have my moments.
Like the night I cooked dinner and cut into a green pepper and found - no seeds.
I actually was hit with revulsion. I took it back to the store as defective. The guy looked at me like I was nuts. Nothing was wrong with it. They order green peppers like that. Why? People don't like seeds, so they were grown out of producing seeds. Is there something wrong with you people?
To stem the flow of culture shock I was feeling I immediately switched to organic food. Later, it became about my children and their health. Some things matter more to me than others. I like organic milk, especially for the girls.
So I once again (in saving my own senses) became inured to what was going on around me. Until one day the kids at all the strawberries. They ATE my strawberries. I didn't get ONE.
So my husband, because he loves me, went later that night to the open grocery store and got me strawberries.
Which is where Part 2 comes in.

But you knew that, right?

Actually, the title of that just came from me trying to brilliantly follow Stephanie's blog and obviously being so computer literate that I ended up following myself instead. That reminds me on facebook how it is possible to like your own posts. Actually, given the extremism of facebook I'm surprised you can't friend yourself.

In the meantime, I want you to know that more than 300 hundred books left my house today and another 5 boxes are by the door. The cosmos will step in the way any second now (it is late by my standards actually) and stop all this fantastic progress, I'm sure. However, progress it is. Tomorrow I'll dust the books that are left and then when I get 5 minutes with my husband (not the 5 minutes that implies - seriously people - think up) I will have him drag the bookshelves to and fro for me until they are no longer insulting or assaulting my senses.

Right Now	Next 36 Hours

Right Now	Tonight	Tomorrow	Tomorrow Night
Mostly Cloudy	Mostly Clear	Mostly Sunny	Clea
66°F	44°	75°	46°
Feels Like: 66° Get FREE weather on your desktop	Low	High	Low
Past 24-hr: Precip: 0 in Snow: 0 in	Chance of Precip: 0%	Chance of Precip: 0%	Chance of Precip: 0%

And now - here are some post-it note style threatened pictures.
Where are your commas woman? I mean are the pictures threatened or are you threatening the pictures on someone or what the hell is going on? Seriously?
Where would we be without commas? Now you know. Ha.

Hey (no comma here either) I never claimed not to be random. You'll cope.

Leif and Doctor, she was telling him a story (blurred chicken eyes from the flash)

He liked the story (ignore vacuum cord please)

me thinks someone at the zoo has been tweaking the flamingo dye -

J'Accuse!

Aren't they pretty? This is just a few days worth, give or take with average usage. We don't wash them till we use them - so that's straw, not cracks.

Brian says they look like alien pods. If he doesn't want me to spend money on mature plants, he should be more encouraging....

Apparently the urge to consume does not come upon me alone with regards to baby chicks....

Holy Crap, Batman!

The stuff here actually is in reference to a previous blog entry - do keep up.

I haven't gone through these yet. A friend thought she was doing me this huge favor by taking my books from the piles I'd sorted them into and putting them on the shelves with the books I had sorted onto the shelves. She thought my job was half done and she was "helping." Since I haven't had time to re-do this yet I like to remind people who come to my house that the view expressed here-in (these shelves) do not necessarily represent that of the management or household at large. Again, see the last blog entry. Meanwhile, this is only about a hundredth of the crap detritus headache treasure I've uncovered so far.

The bags at the back are examples of the trashy looking charity bags I mentioned in that entry. Never mind Leif doing his best grossed out Calvin look.

(always end on a high note) In all seriousness these weird little laundry gremlins I find at the bottom of the basket have a lot to do with how long it takes me to do a load of laundry. I also think it explains the missing socks.

Last night, after making the kids french toast I realized we haven't bought eggs in a while. Not only do I not buy eggs anymore but the eggs we have are beautiful, tasty (once you can get around how rich they are), and wholesome.
Then, I started thinking about my first harvest. It is March, it will be a while, but my tomato plant has flowers on it...
I love the first harvest.
Then, I started thinking about cows. Cows are a lot of work, really they are. But wouldn't a cow just complete the set? I mean then I'd have my own milk, and I could seriously get around to making my own dairy products. I mean all cheese is just a variation on a theme. No scary growth hormones. And cows are cuddly.

I sometimes ponder this against the juxtaposition of my personality which requires me to live in cities larger than 500,000 pop., cities with culture and museums and have Ikeas in them. Yeah, you can dis Ikea all you want, I know I know, but I will always have a special place in my heart. (Ikea saved my life once, you don't forget debts like that).
That is why I am in love with the new Urban Farming movements. Let's bring it into the cities.
Still, I'm not sure I could get away with a cow. Los Ranchos in Albuquerque lets you have cows....

Wait, where was I?

A farm house, just the farm stead part. With a cow, a pony for the kids (the ad running on craig's list - Pony Seeking Young Girl to Love Him is killing me right now) and chickens. Some big lopey dogs running about. The kind that you don't have to let in the house if you don't want to. The kids, with ducks on the pond, catching tad poles....

Lost my train of thought. All this was brought to the forefront of my brain today by a conversation Stephanie had with her friend about why I keep chickens.
I suspect you have to have loved a chicken to get chickens. I'm not surprised, I mean they look like fat vultures and they make a real mess. There is that one, the Cochin that looks at me. No, you don't get it - the chicken looks at me.
Celia's baby Ameraucana doesn't move when you go to pick it up. She's so hand tame, she just sits there waiting to be picked up. Today, I realized her wings grew back when she head bobbed at me over and over and failing to notice that meant she wanted attention she flew onto my shoulder and into my hair. Baby chicken wings grow back at an alarming rate. So despite that she's half-feathered and looks pretty gawdawful, she got a kiss on the face, because she loves me. She peeps at me, she wanted to nuzzle my neck. Chickens are the new kittens.

To sum it up yes, in a heartbeat. I think I actually mentioned in a recent post (or post I've not edited and posted) that some of the happiest days of my life were spent on a family farm held by my cousins. I would quite happily take my children off to that environment - if someone else would do the work....
Which cracks me up on some level because I'm SO not country. Neither is my husband but he has the same vision. I think it has to do with the freedom of space we desire in our large family, and how feel-good watching kids around animals is. He was describing it to me the other day, free-range eggs. A safe work environment for people who want to go into Urban Farming themselves, or college kids working through college, or people with green cards who have a hard time finding work because they are still too other. A place the kids can have a pond, ride horses and have ducks. Organic food, grown on our own land by our own hands. Then, he went on to describe the inside of the house, with the movie wall - where one wall would be a cinema sized screen. Or his office with the most high powered computers words can describe. Or our satellite uplinks. We're so neither nor - but at least we match each other. Or maybe we just need to be rich, because looking at it that lifestyle describes the lifestyle of people with money and large estates.

So what's the plan?

So odd, I'm so tired I was just about to write "this Friday brings me with very little to report."
Have I posted since Friday? Am I lost in space? Yeah, I'd believe it. This has been a very weird weekend.
We had 2 rounds of little league, 2 lacrosse games, a study date and more I'm sure. We went to the museum, we entertained friends, we were entertained by friends, we farewelled friends (how sad) and so on.
So today, mostly I'm just tired and not as thoughtful. I was thoughtful earlier but I needed to get to the computer hours earlier and now I've totally lost the thread. Ah well, your loss.
I don't do emoticons or there would have been a smiley face there, print is such a dry medium, can you read irony or sarcasm? Only if it is slathered on, usually I'm not a slathery person.

I have my moments though. You know it.

This reminds me of an interesting segment of my day taken up by toast. Remind me to talk about toast. Toast and Toast torture racks and steam producing toast and slathered toast. All this deserves its very own post.
No, seriously.

One day, I'll read my own blog with a post-it pad in hand and write down all the things I've threatened to talk about at other times and then my dear reader you're in for it.

Tara -