Winter of my discontent

Tuesday morning we woke to this:

Again.

See that stuff on the road? That's ice. Ice. In April. Snow I can do, but ice? Come on.

Third Tuesday in row, besides. Soccer was cancelled. Baseball was cancelled. All activities celebrating the great outdoors were shut down, possibly forever, because how exactly are we going to do swim season, or camping season, or anything season, with a blizzard every Tuesday? Helen's soccer team hasn't had a practice in over a month (games, though. They've had those. All I will say  is that apparently the other teams are finding space to practice.)

It's had an effect on my mood.

Technically the shores of Duluth, but it could be my heart.

 Not helping is my annual freak out about summer. This year, oddly, has mostly been better: perhaps I have come to accept certain truths, such as that my platonic ideal of summer - a blend of a few childhood experiences, the farm from Charlotte's Web, and various other cultural suitcases that I have not had time to unpack - does not actually exist in the universe as we know it. Also that staying home with my children all day every day would be an unmitigated disaster, one that would have to begin with quitting my job. Therefore: I'm signing the kids up for a blend of camps, sports and babysitters, with a goal of minimizing drive time and camp time, and I'm fine with that. Mostly. We did run into one stumbling block: when I went to sign Helen up for swim team, the team she was on last year, the one with all her friends, was full. I briefly lost my will to live. Just to put in context, this was three days after the bombing in Boston killed three and shattered lives and limbs. So I pulled myself together and decided I had just lost the will to live here, in this competitive, crowded, rat race of a suburb where everything is a fight and a struggle and I'm always having to hustle and bark.

Then I signed Helen up for a different swim team and moved on.

Meanwhile, we are going about our days. It's supposed to be seventy-five this Saturday: that's a good thing. Not all of the tulips and daffodils got snapped in the superfreeze we had at the beginning of April ( 6 degrees. It got down to 6 degrees Fahrenheit), so that's also something. (The lilacs, though, are toast, and one looks as though it might be permanent toast.) Helen and I went for a run slash bike ride yesterday after work; it was warm, or warmish, so long as we kept moving. We saw kingfishers and muskrat and sparrows and turtles and talked about returning to the ponds in the summer with a friend. I found a program for Silas for next year where he can serve as a volunteer in the local parks & rec offices: perfect, I'm thinking, because what he needs more than anything right now is a job. I mean, he'll have to wait until next year, but still. Just knowing that is out there eases my mind.

Blooming

The nectarine tree is full, rich bloom, and while I can only sigh with pleasure at its abundance of creamy pink blossoms, part of me wants to whisper tactfully that it miiiiight want to wait a little next year. Our average frost-free date is two months away. Slow down, buddy.

In other news I've been researching small homemade greenhouses. What's a little coddling between friends, after all, especially if that coddling results in nectarines? Nothing. Nothing at all. I wouldn't think twice about coddling a tomato--why should a tree be any different?

Beautiful. And doooomed.

(For perspective, to look at our lawn you wouldn't think I thought much of coddling at all. Or home maintenance, for that matter.)

Speaking of coddling, we've been experiencing an unusual reversal at home in terms of which child has been receiving the Most Difficult to Tolerate Award most days. For years, our high-scorer in that category was the oldest, hands-down. Screaming fits about routine tasks, like fingernail clipping and the weekly bath? Check. Back talk? Check. Throwing body to the floor weeping in response to missed homework or the potential thereof? Check. Bossiness, oversensitivity, meltdowns that took over the house, sheer random acts of shittery? Check, check, check and check. But lately--and by lately I mean the past six months or more--the youngest has been making steady gains and now the Most Likely to Interrupt Dinner/ Get a Time Out/ Receive a Stern Talking-to During a Playdate has been H for several months running. Of course, her style is different from her older brother. Her policy toward homework is: if I like it, I'll do it. Attempt to convince her that something else is worth doing and hoo boy. Look out. (I admire that in a kid, especially regarding homework.) Routine upkeep is not an issue. She rarely has full-on, drop-down, scream-the-house-down tantrums. But! Good lord, the bossiness. She bosses everyone. Parents, friends, Romans, countrymen. Not teachers, I think. Not yet. Hence her popularity at school. But try to gently correct her course of action ("Sweetheart! It's time for dinner! Go wash your hands!") and she will stop in her tracks and scream at you. Last week she yelled at me in front of her entire soccer team because I was bringing two tupperwares full of apple slices instead of one. You can see that there are other factors at work--this sort of breakdown is not really characteristic and I think that like most of us she'd prefer to stay poised before an audience--but a little bit of performance pressure just fries any sort of ability she has to modulate her response. I sympathize, even as I hiss at her to stop it, already, it's just two tupperware, for god's sake.

Recent neighborhood visitor. Not coddled.

Silas, on the other hand, has retreated from some of his characteristic need to control. M. surmises that it's a developmental stage, the ability to relinquish the need to Control Everything, and Si has reached it (while H still struggles mightily.) I remember the days when Si would go through the cards prior to playing, say, Candyland, and arrange them in the exact order for one player to have a perfect game (orange first, so you get to cross the Rainbow Bridge). Or when he would throw a fit because his cousin just. would. not. put the Legos together in the proper order. He hasn't quite attained the art of the imperturbable Zen smile in the face of chaos, of course--we're all, uh, working on that one--but he's just on average more pleasant to be around. Usually reasonable! Mostly helpful! Easy to predict!

Right now his all-baseball-all-the-time schedule seems to be working in his favor (at which I am surprised and very, very grateful). He comes home from practice bright and energized, and except for his unfortunate reluctance to take a shower immediately, or *cough* at all, what seems on the surface to be overscheduling is apparently meeting most of his needs for activity, focus and attention. He does his homework. He sets the table (I even found myself looking up, at his request, the proper order of silverware in the Joy of Cooking the other day. Now there's a piece of knowledge I hadn't anticipated using. Like, ever.) He loads the dishwasher. He sets his watch timer and goes to play his allotted 40 minutes of Wii without complaining of its brevity or saying things like But I've looked forward to this ALL DAY. He comes back up and sits companionably beside us as we watch Portlandia or March Madness. I ask if he wants me to read him and he says, "I guess," in a hopeful way.

It's so very nice and reminds me of how all the childhood books say that at ten years old you have the personality you will have when the nonsense of the teen years are done. You are your real self, in other words. This makes me cast my mind back to being ten: what was my personality in fourth grade? While I can state with certainty what my likes and dislikes were, I can't really put a finger on my personality. Kind of a peacemaker, overall? Loyal to my small but sufficient group of friends and uninterested in anybody else? A bit dreamy, a bit vague? Occasionally self-aggrandizing and confident in my classification as a Smart Person, but lacking the snappy comeback or spunky smart-aleckiness to make this evident to anyone else. I guess those are personality traits, and they're pretty consistent today.

This also makes me remember with a wistful sigh how our fourth-grade teacher made us all decorated blown eggs at the end of the year. On the eggshell she'd drawn a picture of us as a grownup, engaged in our predicted profession. She'd predicted I would be a botanist, and I'm shown with a big smile and a test tube. This is one of those memories that makes me think I've missed my calling, somewhere. I was supposed to stay on the path, take all those specialized plant id classes, and end up writing papers on the role of pollen protein folding in the plant reproductive strategy or some such. Instead I stepped out too soon and ended up just editing those papers: it still feels like a disappointment. Like I've let myself down.

Then I remind myself that I haaate lab work. I hate the smell of all those chemicals and having to use the hood and spending all of a summer's day indoors checking on the deterioration of plants in response to some poisonous chemical. That's why I stepped off the path. That and a million other reasons. I'd much rather be out in the dirt, whispering advice to an early-blooming nectarine or staring at the ground, wondering whether the kale seeds are going to come up this year or not.

Spring trip

Last weekend we took a trip east and visited with my parents. My sister came too (meaning that half this blog's readers were in attendance! Hi everyone!). This was one of those vacations that seemed like a good idea in January, when we bought the plane tickets--it's Easter! Obligations will be low! It will be spring! The Midwest is beautiful in spring!--and then the closer we got, the more misguided and downright reckless it seemed. The kids would have to miss two days of school--what was I thinking? M had a sudden onslaught of work-related obligations--why did I think that a vacation during the school year would even work? And then the weather was predicted to be rainy and miserable. As we headed to the airport in Thursday evening rush hour traffic, I was basically apologizing to everyone (note: the kids, after a brief moment of "what if they talk about something really important while I am gone?" panic, were not upset at all to miss school).

Neverthless, it was still spring: And the kids are finally old enough to purely enjoy the woods, without needing constant attendance and/or changes of clothes. They ran around for four days straight, in rain and cloudiness and even in the brief 20 minutes of actual watery sunlight we got on Easter day.

We visited the family compound of my childhood best friend, where Si got to swing on the old rope swing that flies out over this creek:

He also got to swim in that creek, in 50 degree weather, after he slammed into the concrete landing and lost his grip. Poor guy--but he recovered nicely and twenty minutes later was taking a lead role in the multifamily charades game (charades! --I was surprised at how fun it was, despite the slight overabundance of terms like "Resurrection" and "Good Friday." Our friends managed to mostly suppress their disapproval of our heathen ways).

The kids got to explore the woods every day, both with and without adults. I tried to instill in them an appreciation of the woodland wildflowers, which were out in force, but the kids were more interested in acorns, skeletons and mushrooms. I can live with that.

The mushrooms were spectacular, after all.

They also did a lot of frog and tadpole gathering--

(this guy is waiting with baited breath for the kids to GO HOME )

In the end, Si and Helen spent about fifty percent of their visit stalking the pond's wildlife. We actually bundled a slightly damp Helen straight from the pond into the car when it was time to go back to the airport.

In other words, it was pretty much a perfect visit. One which I wish we could make much more often.


Happy Monday!

Friday favorites

Man, I have been DROW ZEE this week. It's killing me. Whenever I get like this, I always say "the weather must be changing" and roll my eyes in an exasperated way at that old screwup, Weather. Then I feel about 80 years old. My kids, and most likely my grandkids, will remember this as one of my traits that I think is loveable and they think is just annoying.

Speaking of grandkids, Helen told me the other day that when she has a "girl kid" she's going to name her Maggie. I said, Hold your horses right there, Missy! Ain't NO grandkids coming to this house until the kids have moved out! Okay, I kid. I did say something awkward about how that's great! But you don't even need to have kids! Lots of people don't! Apparently I'm worried that she's going to pay too much attention to the cultural imperative to breed. (note: she is FIVE. Also, it's Si with his lax attention to things like dental floss and helmets that is likely to make him an early breeder.)

Moving on! I believe it's been a while since I did a Friday Favorites post. I'm going to travel again for work next week (Duluth! in April! whoo-hee!), which could be a great topic, but I think I'm going to take the easy way out and list my favorite things about April:

1. The shrubs and trees are starting to make their flowering plans known. I run out every evening when I get back from work and check the fruit trees for bud action (last year neither of them flowered, due probably to a late cold snap but which in my mind was due to my negligence and/or their recalcitrance). I also keep poking my fingers in the lilac buds, trying to determine the size and color of their flowers-to-be.

2. We can leave the windows wide open at night again. I love sleeping with the windows open. There's been a great-horned owl in our pine trees the past two nights--listening to it makes me feel like I'm listening to somebody's fascinating secret life (although I think his secrets are probably more like, Come here, baby. Woo-woo. Come here, baby).

3. Arugula! I strategically let a few go to seed last year, and now half the weeds in my garden area are arugula. I find this stuff addictive in small doses. It's like the macadamia nut of the leafy greens world.

4. Ants! We have carpenter ants in our roof! Isn't that gr--okay, it sucks. SKIP.

5. Long days. I have daylight or at least dusk at both ends of my day, now. Partly this is because I haven't been able to drag myself out for a run before 6 a.m. this week, but still! Daylight! LOVE!

Project Time Again

Fact: this time of year, EVERY year, I hate my yard. It doesn't really matter which yard we're talking about; they all have patchy grass coming up in tufts like hair after chemo; there's always dog doo everywhere, or, if I've been keeping up with the yard-cleanup duties , there are mysterious brown chunks that look like dog doo but end up being something else; there are always bits and pieces of broken and abandoned toys; there are always little flowers that look like trash. The most vigorous plants in mid-April are always the weeds. I always find the yard exhausting and discouraging.

Not fully capturing the suckitude of the yard.

However, this year we have a plan. By the end of the summer we're going to have a little deck action; we're going to have some raised vegetable beds; and we're going to have some flower beds. What isn't in beds is going to be in some other kind of generally pleasant-to-look-at shape, instead of piles-of-dirt-and-branches shape.

The plan. Also possibly a diagram for an uncomfortable method of birth control.

The deck will be for eating and also for covering up the great grassless region.

See those railroad ties? This is the year I make myself do Freecycle. (Anyone want some railroad ties?)

Raised beds-in-training. They can't really pretty up the back of the house, but my focus here is utility.

The bright side: the yard really can only get better.
The other bright side: I do like doing this kind of work. Even if thinking about it makes me want to crack open a beer and sit down in despair.

Winter

I have been experiencing an excess of winter lately. Yes, there is this (10 more inches! March snow, I love you, but please! be done!); but I seem to be accidentally augmenting real winter with fictional otherplace winter.

First, in January, I read a book that took place mostly in winter in upstate New York (Amateur Barbarians). Then I read a book that took place entirely in winter in New York City, and then it was a symbolic, dystopian winter that extended past winter into summer and beyond (Chronic City). Then I started reading a book that so far takes place in wintry Wisconsin (A Gate at the Stairs). Then I listened to The Places in Between, Rory Stewart's (wonderful) account of his walk across Afghanistan in the winter of 2002. Now I'm listening to Endurance, an account of Ernest Shackleton's 1914 Antarctic adventure (now there's a book to make winter seem mild. At least I'm not stuck in a 22-foot boat with fifteen other men in a raging Antartic Sea, drenched and rotting and reduced to eating frozen penguins for food! Things are good!)

So, uh...I'm kind of ready for plants. And dry sidewalks. And drinking a beer on a warm summer evening, and riding a bike across town, and dashing about the yard checking on which bulbs have come up. I'm ready for spring, in other words.

How about you?

Happy St Patrick's, Etc

1. I sent a child off to public school today NOT wearing green. As Hubs says, "everyone has to do that once!" Ha ha ha ha have a good character-building experience, kiddo!

2. I didn't go for a run yesterday or the day before and I thought I would DIE from the antsiness. It's like restless leg syndrome, except it hits you at work. I couldn't sit still! I was too sluggish! I had to get up THIS SECOND and stretch my back! I could barely read the words on the screen before me! Ugh.

3. I did go running this morning, and then for a walk at lunch. Ahhhhh. Even though I'm back to running in the pitch-black dark (thanks, DLS!), it just makes the whole day better.

4. All of my library holds are coming in at the same time so that my evening reading has become a race against time. Normally in this situation I would just bail, but people, I worked HARD for those books. I was hold number 163 of 167 when I requested Barbara Kingsolver's new novel! I'm not going to the back of the line for that one!

5. It's warm, which means a family's heart turns to tearing up the backyard. You would think that our back yard is so crappy and torn-up it just couldn't get much worse, but oh, you'd be so very wrong.

6. This is the first house we've lived in where my husband takes an interest in the yard and actually has ideas for it. On the one hand, great! Maybe we'll actually accomplish some of our more ambitious plans for it. On the other hand, I seem to be having trouble sharing.

How many posts can I write about spring?

Signs of spring:

• Almost stepped on a snake during my run. This one actually sounds sort of Biblical curse-ish. But it made me happy.
• Water-strider on the little creek we cross on the way home from school.
• Ants!
• Daffodils & pansies. And crocuses.
• The sand cherries are flowering.
• Pussy willows.
• Singing birdies.
• More ants! Everywhere! Swarming in our patio, our sidewalk, the wall behind the TV! Ack! I just keep sweeping them out of the house and reminding myself that they'll be done with this swarming thing in a few weeks (and until then, dear god, keep them away from the SUGAR).
  

Yesterday, all that seemed springlike were a few crocuses and the first sprouting leaves of weeds and tulips; today it seems like spring is EVERYWHERE. And I'm already getting weird hits of nostalgia for last summer, when everything around here was new (and sort of awful). I'm also, oddly, longing for it to be hot. Which, Self, enjoy that longing now. Because in two months you're going to be longing for COLD.

Hubs went into Si's class today to help with reading and to have lunch, and also to do a little reconnaissance scouting/ anthropological data-gathering: how's our little savage doing? Silas was very cool-cat about the whole thing except that he was pretty much glowing with excitement, like a little lightbulb.

Turns out the savage is doing fine, too. Hubs said the lunch line experience was a little too much like his own lunch line memories, though, complete with the lunch lady chewing everybody out for taking all the chef salads. "I overlook it in the kindies and the 1st graders, but you're in second grade! You should know better!"