The Broccoli

What happens when the novice gardener (a.k.a me) doesn't know it's harvest time:



And because Kurt gave me a hard time about putting the beautiful flowering broccoli in a vase, this could also be labeled:

What happens when you don't ever give your spouse flowers....

or

What happens when you chop down every last hydrangea bloom on the plant out back (and throw them away!) without asking....

or

Need I go on? :)

The Honest Child

While I don't like to make a habit of telling second hand stories about my kids, this one is too good to pass up.

The other night, after having put the kids to bed, I was sitting at the table listening to the girls scrambling around their room. How two kids, who don't weigh 75 pounds combined, can sound like a heard of elephants is beyond me, but one thing is certain: they were not sleeping.

Kurt came in and asked what was going on up there. I told him they were "going to bed" but perhaps he could go settle them down since my efforts had not been fruitful. His story goes something like this:

"Girls, it's time to lay down and go to sleep," Kurt said after entering their bedroom. Madeline was sitting "innocently" on her bed, reading books while Lily was standing up in the middle of her bed, with a spastic energy about her. Both girls complained they "couldn't get to sleep." (Probably due to the circus activities I had been hearing overhead for the last 20 minutes, but then, that's only a guess.) Kurt put them both into "sleeping" position while telling them to be quiet.

"The problem is, I have a headache," Lily said. Kurt went to rub her head and found her dripping with sweat.

"That's because you've been running around up here getting all sweaty," Kurt told her.

Then Madeline chimed in, "Yeah, and because I have been hitting you over the head with my books."

There is nothing quite like an honest child. Have a great weekend!

The Trip: An Overview

I read a book recently by Max Lucado. It was great. I checked it out of my church library and when I got home realized it was the "Comfort Print Edition" (a.k.a LARGE PRINT). I have to admit, it was certainly comfy!

At any rate, one page of his book really struck me as a writer. In it, he wrote:

"I believe in brevity. Cut the fat and keep the fact. Give us words to chew on, not words to wade through. Thoughts that spark, not lines that drag. More periods. Fewer commas.

Distill it.

Barebone it.

Bareknuckle it.

Concise (but not cute). Clear (but not shallow). Vivid (but not detailed.) That's good writing. That's good reading. But that's hard work!" --from When God Whispers Your Name.

Ok, so I fail miserably at brevity in this blog (forgive me but I really like complete sentences!) but for the sake of time, here are a few highlights from this year's FL trip (as concise as I can make 'em...which ain't very!)

The house next to my parents' house recently sold. It's a wreck. The yard is a wreck. The house is a wreck. It's being torn apart inside to prepare for the new family. Workers are there each day but what struck me is this: I was there for over 3 weeks and outside that house sat a pink toilet. In the yard. For three weeks. And of course, this is the house across the street from the people who planted a cactus wall in their front yard and painted the house lime green and have giant tortoises for pets....and who live next to the couple who have trained the neighborhood flock of peacocks to come at certain times to be fed.

I turned out okay, don't ya think?

Liam: We have such a hard time getting Liam to eat (hence the lack of growth) but one day, while out by the pool, I discovered that he LOVES to be squirted in the face with a spray bottle. (Apparently he takes after our cat.) So that afternoon, I was able to get him to eat an entire meal by spraying him for every bite he took. Hey, whatever works.

One day I took the four kids and their cousin down the to park. It was a fairly hot day so we retreated into a nice gazebo where we played Duck, Duck, Goose around a picnic table. Liam, not understanding exactly how it works and being our "lover-child", opted to go around hugging everyone until, after about the third time around, I finally yelled Goose for him. Instead of running back to the empty seat, he ran down the ramp, away from the gazebo. If only I had brought that spray bottle to keep him close!

Lily: When we arrived in Florida, we stopped by my brother Andrew's house for dinner before finishing up the last three hours of driving. As we were loading up to leave, Andrew brought out a pair of his daughter's clogs to hand down to Lily.

"Here Lily, try on these shoes," he said.

"No," Lily refused, suspiciously.

"Lily, just try them on to see if they fit and you can have them," Andrew said.

"No," she stubbornly replied.

"Lily, guess what? These are Magical Princess Shoes!" Andrew explained in an hushed yet excitable tone of voice. "If you put them on, they will turn you into a Princess!"

Lily started crying. "I don't want to try them on."

"Lily, it's okay. You don't have to try them on," Andrew said. "But if you want to be a princess, you have to put them on."

I got into the car. Lily, still crying, blurted out, "Mommy, I don't WANT to be a princess! Do I have to put them on?"

I don't think she is going to wear those shoes, ever. Unless, perhaps, they become "Magical Dragon Shoes" or something.

Madeline: Swimming in the pool one day, Madeline was staring at my rapidly growing belly and said, "Mom, I hope you have another boy.....or a girl."

Phew, I think we got that one covered.

Later in the trip, Madeline was getting homesick.

"Mom, how long until we go home to Minnesota?"

"Two days," I said.

"Ahhh, on one hand that is sad because we have to leave grandma but on the other hand it is happy because we'll get to see Leroy!" (Sorry Kurt, you got trumped by the cat.)

I arrived in Florida with one fairly strong swimmer (Aidan) and three certain drowners. I am happy to report that after three weeks, I brought home 1 strong swimmer, 1 super-duper doggy-paddler (i.e. non-drowner!), 1 so-close-to-getting-it-you-can-almost-imagine-the-drowner-is-just-floating-contently, and one still certain drowner (as was proven a day or two before we left when Liam got knocked into the deep-end on accident and I had to go jumping in after him in my brand spanking new running shoes....what we do for our kids, sheesh!)

And finally, I knew I had fully reintegrated into the south when, after almost hitting a huge wild turkey flying across the highway, my first thought was: "Gee, I wonder if it'd be legal to take it on home to cook up for dinner...you know, if you accidentally hit the thing."

The Zucchini (or When Bigger is Not Better)

Three and a half weeks. That is how long the kids and I were in Florida. After having planted our huge garden out back in late May and early June, we left it in the care of Kurt while we traveled south. Now, when we left, the plants were all seedlings and starter plants: tiny, pathetic looking things, some seemingly unsustainable looking in that great big space.

Then it rained and the sun shined and Kurt tended the garden ever so carefully. And we came back to a forest of tomato plants that had pulled their cages out of the ground and were grabbing out for anything they might catch a hold of while falling every which way, cucumber and squash vines that had all but taken over an entire side of the fence, bell peppers spilling forth, peas and beans coming out the wazoo, baby lettuce that was far past its edibility...and then there was the zucchini plant. Having claimed a rather modest section of the garden to itself, it was healthy but looked like a pretty regular plant as far as I could tell. And then I looked to see if there was anything ready to pick.

Have you ever tried to explain to a guy that there are things in life that are not better when bigger? Let's just say, there is a reason they don't sell zucchini like this in the grocery store. (For starters, it would cost you like $10 upfront, not to mention the medical costs later for throwing your back out loading it into the cart....)

At least the girls got a kick out of it. And who knows, maybe it will give us the urge to enter some veggies in the state fair one of these years....

The Drive

"Chickens also travel well! When we moved from California to New Jersey just a few months ago, instead of giving away our favorite hens we decided to drive across the country with them, and our two rabbits. We had no idea how they would react to 5 days in a car. I had premonitions of being driven mad by continuous screeching and wondered if we would consider chicken salad somewhere around day 3." --From the transcript for the piece: Adventures with Chickens. (This person is like my new hero....chickens AND rabbits! Now THAT is the good life!)

As it turns out, there isn't a whole lot on the web about traveling with chickens. I am guessing that's because most people don't travel much with chickens in tow. Not so with children since it's not like you can just leave them in the coop by themselves and hope for the best. So, when it came time to make our annual pilgrimage to Florida this summer, my mom flew out, we packed up the four kids, and off we trekked, 1600 miles from Minnesota down to Florida, by car...I understand something about considering chicken salad around day 3...the chicks are lucky it only took us two days!

Actually, truth be told, the drive down was pretty non-eventful. The kids were fairly good; we had no major kid-fits until a certain dramatic child completely broke down in the very last few hours of the drive, and except for being bored out of our mind driving through Iowa (no offense to my Iowan friends) and not being able to find a hotel with vacancies for over an hour somewhere in Tennessee late Saturday night, it really went well.

Oh and there was that one lunch stop on Saturday that wasn't perfect as well. It was Lily's fourth birthday on Saturday and so I told her she could choose what she wanted for lunch. Quite unfortunately, she wanted cheesy noodles. (I suppose I should have been a little more specific in the options!)

So, because I am truly my father's child, I did what he would have done: stopped at McDonald's for the other kids, headed over to KFC in hopes that they would have mac-N-cheese as a side dish, in the drive over realized Aidan's burger wasn't cooked to order, arrived at KFC only to find that it had no power, thus no chicken (and mac-n-cheese wasn't even on the menu, doh!), headed to Jack-in-the-Box with fingers crossed that their menu would include cheesy noodles of any sort (nope) and ordered almost the identical order there that we had at our first stop. Lily then announced she needed to go potty while Aidan found that they had forgotten the cheese on his cheeseburgers...sent mom inside to work out both situations while I tried to eat as much of my salad as I could since, as it turns out, driving and salad eating are not so very compatible. And I wonder why it took us so long to get here!

One of the funniest moments of the trip was about half way through day two when Lily started crying, seemingly out of nowhere. After a few minutes Aidan turned around in his seat and said, "Lily, I told you not to join Madeline's club. She executes EVERYBODY!"

And apparently she does it very, very quietly.

And then there were the teaching moments. My favorite was upon finally reaching the south. You know you are in a southern state when you are looking for exit 4, so you start counting exits in the beginning of the state. We passed exit 1 and then exit 4 came next.

"Wait, there wasn't a 2 or 3," Aidan said. Yes son, they do things a little differently down south. Take counting for instance....(I know they have a reason, well, I am assuming there is a good explanation but it was funny nonetheless.)

It was also interesting to watch the different billboards in the differing regions of the country. In the mid-west, you have pro-life signs followed by those telling teens to prevent the stork from showing up unexpectedly through "waiting" to those telling you to give kids over 2 years of age fat-free milk instead of whole. You get to the southern states and you have just as many "life begins at conception" signs but they are followed by signs for the next adult superstore or "entertainment" club. Just an observation.

And personalities are very different between the midwestern states and the south as well. You go into a gas station in the midwest and you're lucky to make eye-contact with the clerk (although they are polite when they do address you.) In the south however, they start tellin' ya all about their family, asking abou'cher kids and where yer headed while making sure to let ya know to just holler if ya'll need anything now, ya hear?

I could go on but having just been on the road for two days straight, I'm in need of some serious shut-eye. Plus, the peacock next door keeps calling me to come see something....either that or it is just a highly annoying bird!

G'night ya'll!

How Do they Find Me???

Crazy Chicken is a fast card game in which players try to lay as many different 'crazy chickens' as possible ... but if their opponent lays more than they have, they must discard all those chickens!

I have come to the conclusion recently that I must have a stamped forehead: Come all ye crazy people, Speak to me. (But since my forehead isn't that big it probably reads something more like "...crazy...me...") Really, am I a magnet for this stuff?

You see, I had this neighbor call me up and ask me if I would help her sell some stuff on eBay. She knew I had done some selling there at one time and really needed to learn how to do it. That's certainly innocent enough, so I said, "Sure, why not?"

Well, let me tell you why not. I had already said 'sure, I'm happy to help' before she went into the back story... but before I can tell you THAT story, I have to tell you this one: (Sorry, too many Captain Underpants books...)

A few years back, this neighbor burnt down her house. Not all of it mind you, just most of it. (Like in the Princess Bride: "Your friend here is only mostly dead. There is a big difference between mostly dead and all dead." You see, it wasn't all burnt down, just mostly burnt down....) Now, for some people, like most of the other neighbors, this is reason enough to assume she is a nut and should be avoided at all cost. But, in my very unassuming way, I just figured she made a big mistake (leaving that candle burning under the bathroom window, complete with curtain drooping down....) because she is kind of spacey, and that shouldn't necessarily be held against her. So, after burning her house down she had to go buy the stuff she lost in the fire. In comes her story.

So, apparently when she was having to go buy stuff with the insurance money as quickly as possible, this "mentor" of hers, who happens to be a witch (according to my neighbor) put a spell on her and made her come to believe that they were best friends and that she should buy all these high ticket items for her witch-friend, and matching everything for herself too, of course. We're talking Prada this, and Marc Jacobs that. Shoes that cost more than my wardrobe and sweaters and hand bags that cost thousands of dollars a piece. (Brand names I have never heard of because you have to shop somewhere other than Target and Costco....and the towns they do business in....) There were matching emerald rings (and even one for the witch's husband) and man, the list goes on. And the scam went on for well over a year.

Ok, I have to pause here. Really? A witch? And a spell? Are you NUTS? She claims she spent over $30,000 on this woman, who assured her she would pay her all back for everything and that they were best friends and that this is what best friends do for each other....yadda yadda yadda. This is where I have to hold back from shouting: HELLOOOOOO?! What planet are you living on?! And how did you survive almost 60 years of life there?

So, there I am, day one of "Selling on eBay 101" listening to this bizarre story. She goes on and on and then tells me her siblings offered to help her sell it all but that she can't have them help her because she knows they will just think she is nuts....(you know, unlike the rest of us.) Funny thing is, I think I must have told her she was crazy at least half a dozen times as she spoke.

"At what point in all this buying did you realize you were being scammed?" I asked. "I mean, if she is never paying you back and keeps saying she is good for it, didn't you think maybe you ought to wait and see if she would ever come through?" (Why Karen? Why are you presenting rational questions?)

"Oh, then she started trying to get me to leave my husband and move in with her and now I know it was because she wanted me to be her slave....turns out she is a part of a group that sells sex to put people under their control and...."

Aaaaaand, you lost me. WHAT?

So, she's in my house, my kids are playing nearby, mostly out of earshot fortunately, and I begin to tell her the ins and outs of selling on eBay versus Craigslist. I ask her the logical questions: Have you tried taking this stuff back to the high-end stores you bought them from? (Yes, they would only take some of it.) Have you thought about maybe just selling them at a Consignment Store? (Which lead to a thirty minute debate over why couldn't she sell them and keep all the money rather than let someone else sell them and take half of it? My rational answers of course landed themselves on my ceiling fan I think because she couldn't comprehend why she couldn't get the majority of her money back from these items. Her argument? Her sister-in-law had sold her mother's entire estate on eBay and made over $80,000 and it was all high end stuff, so why couldn't she get her money back for her high end stuff? Uh....ok, you're right. My bad. We do in fact live in an ideal world. It always works that way and I am sure she made that much money.)

So, after deciding it would be best to post for free on Craigslist to begin with and see how it goes, we got to work. We spent an hour the first day setting up her various accounts and posting a few things. Then she came back the next day and we took all the pictures for the entire lot of items when we were interrupted by the arrival of my piano student (whom I lavishly thanked for coming hours early). And finally, we finished up all the postings the third day, yesterday. Phew. Good deed done. I'm washing my hands of it right......

And then I get the phone message today:

"Karen, I had someone respond to the post for the man's emerald ring. He says he will pay with paypal which is totally legit, but that he is currently traveling and can't come see it so he will pay extra money to have it sent and insured. He wants it for a gift for his cousin. What do you think? My husband says I can use his paypal account but I thought I would check with you. It sounds legit right?"

Sigh. So, you want me to tell you that the guy who is not going to come and look at the ring, didn't bother asking what size it was or any other relevant questions about it, who so happens to be "traveling" and needs it right now and is offering to pay you MORE money than you ask sounds legit? Hmmm. I could be wrong but USUALLY if your gut feeling tells you to call and ask someone else whether it was a good offer....I dunno. What do you think?

I think, in the hand of Crazy Chickens, I win. You guys can go ahead and discard now while I go scrub the stamp off my head....

p.s. If you are a friend of mine and want to tell me your crazy story, just get it over with quickly will ya? I'll add you to my pile. (And somehow still love you none the less.)

Note to the future

"Ok you two, you guys decide whose book gets read first and I'll be right over," I told the girls the other night, while finishing up the dishes. They were sitting on the couch together in the adjacent room, each holding their book selection for the night.

"Mine first!" Lily shouted, half laughing.

"You guys need to decide together, Lily. Talk it over with Madeline, " I said.

"Lily's first," Madeline declared.

Lily looked at her, a confused expression sliding over her face.

"Really? Why?" Lily asked. (I imagine her eyes squinted with suspicion...)

"Because I LOOOOOOVE Lily sooooooo much!" Madeline said with glee.

"No, Madeline, your book first, because I LOOOOOOOOVE Madeline, SOOOOOOO MUCH!" Lily shouted in suit.

This continued on until I arrived on the scene to prevent fighting over who got to selflessly go second.....

I had to write this story in here so that in about 10 years, when puberty has struck our house, I can prove to the girls that at one time in their lives, they really did get along. And actually love each other.