Pelican's in Georgia

It has been years since we've been to Pelican's!

We went on a family adventure on Thursday (which I will write about eventually) and there was a Pelican's right across the street! Who knew? 

What's up, Doc?

One of Phoebe's favourite treats to get at the store are the bags of mini sweet peppers. She loves them, will help herself to them, and chomp on them with breakfast, lunch, and dinner (as well as in between meals). But she went shopping with Daddy on Saturday and came home with a new treat—fancy carrots—and has been eating those like they are the best thing in the world.

Half our house is sick right now, so I (sick) stayed home with the sick kids and Phoebe (who is mostly better since she was sick early in the week) while Andrew (not sick because he was also sick early in the week) took the healthy kids to stake conference (and simply didn't want to battle Phoebe).

We (the sick ones) watched a few Friend to Friend broadcasts instead. And Phoebe ate like half a bag of carrots or something, getting increasingly creative with how she was eating them as time wore on.

Calamities of various proportions

Nothing untoward happened on Monday...except that several of us got a little too much sun. But Saturday, Sunday, and Tuesday have certainly had their moments of excitement!

On Saturday, Grandpa bent over to get something out of the fridge and when he stood up he bumped a shelf with his shoulder and sent a jug of orange juice crashing down to the floor. It split open and went all over the floor. It took two full bath-sized towels to mop it up (and then some). 

I was just glad it wasn't my kids who made the mess. 

On Sunday, Darla went to get a bowl out of the cupboard and the shelf—which was missing one of its pegs—tilted and an entire set of dishes came crashing down. Honestly, I'm a little vague on the details here because I was in the bathroom when I heard the crash. 

My first thought was, "I hope that wasn't my kids!"*

*Technically my first thought was, "I hope no one is hurt!" But that thought quickly passed because there wasn't any associated screaming. So it was clear that something had broken and not someone. So my more permanent thought was, "I hope that wasn't my kids!"

Tales from the garden

My garden has been neglected this spring. 

A very wise mentor of mine recently told me to leave myself room to fail—and I have! I have approximately 72 square feet of failure in the front yard (plus, you know, the rest of the yard)!

Sure, the annuals we planted have been pulling their weight. And little bits of zombified compost have popped up through the soil, reanimated tendrils lurching toward trellises—they're sure to offer us a surprise harvest of sorts. And friend who started too many tomatoes offered me her leggy cast-offs.

So it's all chaos out there, but that's okay because it's a beautiful, wild failure.

*****

The same friend who gave me the tomatoes gave me some clustered mountain mint last year.

When I say friend, you should know that this friend and I met on the Buy Nothing Group and our entire friendship is just...the exchange of plants and advice. And it's mostly me taking because—let's face it—my garden is pathetic and I need all the advice I can get.

She's been trying to increase the number of local plants in her garden—mountain mint being one of them. 

Like most mints, mountain mint is a prolific spreader, but it's less of a problem because the shoots it sends out tend to not root very deeply, so it's controllable. Also, it's native, not invasive. 

That mountain mint took to our hillside like it was coming home after a long day and has spread significantly since I planted it at the end of last summer. And that's fine by me. Bees love it—wasps and butterflies, too. It smells delicious.

"Is it edible?" Rachel wanted to know.

"I don't know," I told her. "Most varieties of mountain mint are, from what I've researched. But some aren't and..."

Long story short, Rachel picked a leaf and ate it. 

And she didn't die. And she didn't get sick. 

Yellow Flamingos

Today I was reading Can You Dance Like a Peacock? with Phoebe and she got really excited about the flamingo page. 

"Can we get some flamingos at the store?" she asked. 

"I...don't know...that you can really get flamingos at the store...?" I said.

"You can!"

"Where?"

"Just at the store! They have them! But not usually pink flamingos."

"Yeah, see...I didn't think they had pink flamingos at the store."

"They have yellow flamingos. Can we get those?"

"Yellow flamingos?"

"Yes! I love them!"

Dinner on Thursday

Last night we made Hawaiian Haystacks for dinner, something we haven't eaten (I think) since very soon after Karen's death in 2018, when someone in our ward brought it over for dinner. 

I wasn't really sure what to make for dinner...except that we had a fresh pineapple to use...and time was ticking so I decided to just start a pot of rice cooking and then brainstorm about what to have with the rice while it was cooking.

My three ideas were:

1. Something Mexican (we have leftover taco meat in the fridge)
2. Stir fry of sorts
3. Hawaiian Haystacks

I settled on Hawaiian Haystacks because (a) we hadn't had that in so many years that the kids couldn't even recall what it was and (b) we'd had "Ultimate Salad Bar" earlier in the week and had a lot of leftover toppings that also qualify as Hawaiian Haystacks toppings. 

All I had to do was make some chicken gravy and cut up a pineapple...and a bunch of vegetables. 

Often the gravy is made from a can of cream of chicken soup, but we don't usually have that stocked in our pantry, so I had made it from scratch, which really is not so difficult except that Phoebe wanted to help. She pulled out every single stool in our house and set them all up in the kitchen, forming an obstacle course of sorts (but allowing her to reach any given counter surface...as well as leaving a few in the middle of the kitchen floor to trip over). Then she demanded that she help and help and help.

"Phoebe," I sighed, wish that Andrew was home to be cooking with her instead of...me...having to do it. "I am not as confident about cooking as Daddy is, so I'm not as confident about allowing you to help. This is a step that Mommy has to do on her own, okay? You can have a turn stirring soon..."

So I browned the onions and I blended the water and flour and I made the base of the gravy and then I added the milk, whisked things together briefly, and handed Phoebe the whisk. 

"Finally!" she growl exasperatedly. "I tan tuut!"

And now for something completely different!

Last night we waited to have dinner until after my class. Sometimes we do, sometimes we don't. It depends on how the day goes, who is making dinner, and the level of everyone's hunger. My class gets out at 6:00 so it's not like it makes for a super late supper, but sometimes we like to eat earlier. 

Anyway, Zoë made dinner all by herself while I was in class. She greeted me precisely at 6:00 to tell me so.

"Mmmmm," I said, sniffing the air. "Smells like spaghetti."

"Well, it's not spaghetti!" she said. 

"Oh!" I said in surprise (because it really smelled like spaghetti). "What is it?"

"Something different!"

"But what?"

"You will just have to find out!" she sang, practically dancing out of my bedroom/office.

I followed her downstairs and found a steaming pot of...cavatappi...on the table. 

Cavatappi is a noodle shape. 

So essentially spaghetti.

And it was delicious.

Benjamin's Spritz Cookies

Benjamin needed to make cookies for his youth activity tomorrow. The boys are planning on taking some cookies around to various people, which meant they needed cookies. They asked Rachel if she would make some cookies for them and she said, "No way!" She felt like the boys were perfectly capable of making their own cookies. And she's not wrong!

When we first learned the boys would need cookies (yesterday) we talked about having Benjamin make cake mix cookies since those are so easy. But then I suggested he make spritz cookies because they really aren't much more difficult than cake mix cookies and I...just always want them during Christmas. 

Not that I'll get any of this batch..but if you teach a boy to make Christmas cookies...chances are he'll make them again...right?

So Benjamin made spritz cookies this evening, mostly by himself. We mixed by hand because Rachel was cleaning in the kitchen and we didn't want to disturb her...and because I grew up mixing practically everything by hand so I rarely think to use the stand mixer for cookie dough.

Here he is stirring;

Watermelon pizza

Alexander has been loving reading magazines recently. We get The Week Junior (a magazine on current events) and The Friend (a church magazine) at our house. He loves reading all the stories but has been particularly interested in the recipes. 

He's been hankering for some watermelon fruit pizza since reading about it in The Week Junior and he finally got to make it on Sunday to have with dinner (which was otherwise leftovers). He'd hounded Andrew about being sure to pick up the required ingredients at the grocery store on Saturday. Andrew came home with blackberries, raspberries, and strawberries in place of the cherries the recipe called for, but this was a case where substitutions were just fine.

Watermelon, Sunflowers, and Pollinators

Watermelon is usually pretty good on its own, I think. 

Andrew, on the other hand, doesn't ever think watermelon is good.

Everyone else in our family enjoys watermelon, though, so in the summer Andrew will often pick up a watermelon when he does the grocery shopping (because he does the grocery shopping at our house). He won't typically cut it (though he has on occasion), but he will buy it for us. 

I have never succeeded in growing one, though we had some butternut squash volunteer in our yard this year (from the one time Andrew made butternut squash soup, I guess) and it is going wild. Well, the vines are, anyway. We've got a couple of lovely butternut squashes developing, but that's all. 

Freudian slips: Dishwashing edition (and a cake story for dessert)

We were finishing up dinner this evening...relatively late...because we had things like swimming and music lessons...and we were reminding the kids about their "dinner jobs." One child is in charge of clearing the table, one child is in charge of doing the dishes, one child is in charge of tidying up the floors, and one child is in charge of taking care of the cat (and garbage, if needed). Alexander helps out here and there or helps keep Phoebe entertained and out of the way. 

It sounds like a well-oiled machine, doesn't it? 

After all, we're pretty experienced parents now. We have systems and things like that...

Alas, systems are always better in theory than they are in practice (at least from our experience), so it really works like a rusty, piece-of-junk machine. 

But it's working (I guess), so that's all that matters.

Particularly Pungent Pineapple

Andrew made chicken tikka masala for dinner. It was delicious but was a little spicier than he intended, the little kids suffered through a few bites of the sauce, but mostly ate plain rice and naan. Spicy bites were alternated with bites of fresh pineapple, to quell some of the heat. 

Everything was fine and dandy until I looked over at Phoebe and noticed her lips were bleeding. 

"Phoebe!" I said. "Why are your lips bleeding?!"

I dabbed them off with a napkin, trying to remember if she'd tried to get down at some point and bumped her face on the table or something. Because why would she be bleeding?

And then Benjamin said something, so I turned to look at him and his lips were bleeding.

"Benjamin!" I said. "Your mouth is bleeding, too!"

"Wait, what?" he asked, wiping his mouth with his napkin. 

"He's bleeding, too?!!" Andrew asked.

We started frantically scanning faces: "Alexander's mouth is bleeding, too!" Andrew announced.

"Is mine?" cried Zoë, who hadn't really touched much of her dinner.

Zoë was fine. 

"My mouth burns a little, but I think it's fine," Rachel said. 

Same answer for me and Miriam, both.

Andrew volunteered to be the constant for our study. "I didn't have any pineapple," he said, which launched a long discussion of which fruit he'd prefer in any given pair of fruits because he doesn't often choose to eat pineapple, apparently. 

And with good reason!!

Now, we already knew about bromelaine in pineapples, and have often joked that it's a fruit that you have to digest before it digests you, but we have never had one quite as pungent as this one!

There were a few panicky moments where we weren't sure why everyone was suddenly bleeding, but it only took us a few minutes to clue in to what was wrong. Still—so weird!

On a scale of one to ten...

I will write about our evening out soon! In the meantime, while we have all tested "negative" from COVID-19 and have been improving, we have not been having a fun time at our house. For whatever reason, both Andrew and I developed a post-COVID cough, and it's a doozy. It's possible Zoë and Phoebe have the same cough, but theirs isn't as bad. This cough is seriously no fun. 

And it's not like I didn't have a cough when I was sick with COVID. Because I did! 

I coughed so hard—I kid you not!—I pulled a muscle in my back (or something...must be getting old). I could hardly bend or twist and coughing was so painful! But I got over that cough. And my nose stopped being stuffy. And my back started to feel better. And I tested negative for COVID...and then I developed another nasty—and very productive (medically speaking)—cough. 

I am so tired of coughing. 

But I didn't start writing to complain...at least...not about coughing. 

We're getting better all the time...

Tomorrow Miriam is supposed to be a page at the state senate, but she's been a little nervous about riding downtown with Andrew (who has been down with COVID). He's been taking Paxlovid for about four days now, though, and woke up feeling great this morning, so he took a test this afternoon and...it was negative!

"Wow! You won the COVID race!" I said.

"That's true!" he said. "I was positive for the least amount of time. Of course, I'm taking performance-enhancing drugs."

Which...is true.

So, Zoë is negative, Phoebe is negative, Andrew is negative. 

Benjamin took a test yesterday and it was ever-so-faintly positive, but we let him downstairs to play in the basement anyway...for the first time in over a week...to play LEGO. 

I'm still sick and am scared to test because I'm afraid it's going to be "more" positive than I'd like it to be at this point. While designed to be solely an indication of disease, and are no approved to show how much of the disease is present, the rapid-tests can actually offer an indication of how many virus antibodies are active in your body: "The line that you see on a test 'is actually made up of millions and millions of little antibodies holding onto a dye...so the more virus, the more little dye molecules are going to line up on the line.'" Thus, the tests offer more than a binary (yes/no) answer to the question of whether or not you have COVID; rather, "the intensity of the line does tend to correlate with the amount of antigen in the sample."

So I'm hoping for a faint, faint line. We'll see...if in a few days...when I get brave enough to take a test...

Let's see...

Alexander is still pretty freshly sick, but he's feeling pretty okay. 

Here's a picture of him and Zoë with a puzzle they worked on together yesterday evening:

Just around the river bend...

I feel like I have turned the corner on this illness, which is a good feeling. I mean, I'm just on the other side of feeling really awful, so I still feel really awful, but I feel on the downward slope of feeling awful rather than on the upward climb. So that's good news.

*****

We've been going through popsicles like water over here.

Here's a picture of Zoë so graciously sharing the last of her popsicle with Phoebe...after she dropped it on the ground:

Botulism at the Iron Rod

On Sunday the youth speaker brought a can of beans up on the stand with him, specifically black-eyed peas. I wasn't sure what he was going to speak about per se, but when he held up the can and said, "I just have a can of black-eyed peas here," and set it down beside the microphone, assuring the congregation that "those are for later," I figured that...maybe he was going to talk about New Year's Day. Setting goals, welcoming new opportunities, things like that. 

After all, down in the south, eating black-eyed peas on New Year's Day is said to bring good luck. The speaker himself was raised in the south, but his parents were/are Mexican immigrants, though, so I wasn't sure if he would have grown up with the tradition of eating black-eyed peas on New Year's Day. My own children are of non-southern heritage themselves and we haven't adopted the tradition of eating black-eyed peas on New Year's Day. Many in our congregation are transplants to the south. But maybe there's, like, a Mexican New Year's tradition surrounding black-eyed peas...or beans in general...it's possible.

I spent quite a lot of time speculating about those beans, but everything I hypothesized was way off.

He spoke about the Vision of the Tree of Life and the importance of holding to the iron rod, which, in Lehi's vision, symbolizes the word of God.

"So imagine this Book of Mormon is the iron rod," he said, placing one hand on the book and lifting the can high into the air with his other hand. "And this can of beans represents temptations and things. But if I just hold fast to the iron rod..."

And with that he brought that can of beans down onto his hand. *BAM!*

It was...shocking.

"I'm just fine," he said. "But the can, you can see, is dented. Actually, my pinky hurts a little bit. But, like, only a little bit. It's fine, really. My hand is fine. Because I was holding to iron rod, see?"

I mean...I don't think it's a sacrament talk that we'll soon forget...that's for sure and certain.

And when we got home we had to see whether, in fact, this was an actual thing that people can do to themselves and emerge unscathed. So we watched a few YouTube videos (like this one) and then we went through several cans of pears. 

But evidently it's a thing you can do (it's physics!); we all did it and lived to tell the tale (though evidently it's better to use one finger than it is to use all your fingers like we did).

Here's a video of Andrew and Rachel trying it:

Here's to our dairy-areas!

I don't drink milk with dinner. Do people drink milk with dinner? I have never drunk milk with dinner.

This evening we pulled some leftover dal from the freezer, warmed it up, cooked some rice, roasted some green beans, toasted some naan, and sliced a cucumber. That was dinner. 

Also, because we were feeling fancy (and we have some lemons that needed to be used), we had lemon water. Technically lemon and basil water (because basil and mint are in the same family and it seemed like a good move; it wasn't half bad). 

We had protein in our beans and lentils, plenty of vegetables to go around, and some grains that probably could have been less processed than they were, but...all in all, not a bad meal.

In the middle of dinner, Alexander asked if we could please pass the pitcher so he could get his "dairy" in, and thus round out his nutritional needs for the day.

We passed the pitcher of water in stunned silence. 

"Hey, buddy," Rachel finally said. "Could you...could you define for me what dairy means to you?"

"Well, dairy is...dairy is...ummmm...*hic* dairy *hic* is *hic* ummmm..."

When he starts *hic*ing we know he's having trouble getting his thoughts out.

Orange you glad?

The thing about setting goals, in my opinion, is that the best time to start is now (not next week, not next year). So in that spirit, I offer the following story of Phoebe, who is forever getting into food (and everything else, for that matter). 

She recently learned how to operate the water and ice dispenser in the fridge, for example, so while she's somehow always been able to coerce several people to give her a drink of water (and ice!) and thus end up with several cups of water sitting out all over creation, her independence has exacerbated this issue. We now have cups of ice/water sitting out all over creation. I have tripped on cups on the stairs, in the middle of the hallway. They've been knocked off stools and counters and benches. The child goes through as many cups as she possibly can. 

So thank goodness her siblings have figured out the "coaster system." We don't use the coasters because we care about surfaces so much, but because using a dedicated unique coaster helps everyone else remember which cup they've been using. So everyone else uses one cup per day and Phoebe uses...20 or so. 

The solution here might be to own fewer cups, but I digress.

Frivolity and fritters

I think I'll attempt NaBloPoMo this year, to help me get back in the habit of sharing stories more regularly. I never imagined I might fall out of that habit, but also feel like I sort of have. Not entirely, of course, but just a little bit. So many other things are eating up my time, so many things are weighing heavily on my mind. Like, for example the conflict between Israel and Palestine, the war between Russia and Ukraine, tonight's mass shooting in Maine. It can be hard for anything to hold a candle to the news sometimes. 

This is a picture I took of Zoë on October 16; she and I had gone outside to entertain Phoebe and I was feeling like my entire life was frivolous (given the news), while also a pretty big mess. But we had a fun time blowing bubbles together.

Waste not, want want

On Thursday we attended our co-op. 

Phoebe went to nursery with Rachel for the first hour and did fairly well, but one hour is about all she can handle in there. She refuses to go to nursery alone and needs to be with momma. 

(Interestingly, today she played with Zoë for somewhere along the lines of nine hours while we were working on the basement and she did just fine without me. Of course, they had unlimited snacks and TV and trampoline time, so it felt like a party. But still...)

So she comes to my second hour class—Holiday STEM—with me. I'm one of three co-teachers (in addition to the head teacher) in that classroom, so it's not like my presence/attention is 100% necessary and I can easily split my energy between the students and Phoebe. 

Because we're so close to Halloween and it's a holiday STEM class, the activities were all centered on Halloween. We did some apple-themed activities in September and some leaf-themed activities last time we met. I think it would be neat to see some other holidays factored in there because I know we had, like, Sukkot at the beginning of October, and Diwali is coming up in November. But, I get that while we're a non-denominational group we are also a de facto Christian group. Personally, I think some awareness of other religions would do us some good...and thus the reason for my thesis...and perhaps PhD. 

Evidently I should suggest a world religions course for our kiddos. 

Anyway, we were doing Halloween-themed STEM activities and one of the projects was to figure out how to stack candy corn to see how tall of a tower they could make. The kids were very excited about this—because candy—and kept asking whether or not they were allowed to eat it. 

To be fair, I'm pretty relaxed about these things and probably would have shrugged and told them to make their own choices. But the mom in charge was like, "Oh, goodness, no! You've all been touching them! They've been on the table! They've been dropped on the floor! They're filthy! We'll throw these away and I will give you some clean candies—if your moms allow you to have sugar—on the way out the door."

So that's what happened.