“God is not a second-rate novelist.”

— Richard Price, writer on “The Wire”

Awesome post by Leslie.

Heh heh heh. Just got a note from one of the producers at Oregon Public Broadcasting about… “those moments people have in public when they decide to confront a stranger about behavior they find objectionable. I figure this is something that happens to parents at least once or twice in their parenting careers and thought you might have some interesting stories to share about either being scolded or doing the scolding. (more…)

No, not of that. Damn. Of his favorite love next to me and the kids… BIG SHIPS! I love how the little boats go zipping around, like the Roadrunner on water or something.

(The song is funny, too, you’ll like it.)

(Who the hell knew he could make movies? Huh.)

From Family Fun Cooking with Kids…

for Miss Nan, who is vacationing Down de Islands.

We love this kids’ cookbook best of all (and we have a fairly sizable collection, so we are Quite the Experts over here). My daughter went through and put stickies on every recipe she wanted to make. Would have been faster for her to mark the ones she wasn’t interested in. Heh heh. (Homemade ravioli was excellent, as were Pizza Mummies and “grilled cheese sandwiches” made out of toasted slices of poundcake and frosting tinted yellow. Up next are Popovers, Skillet Lasagna and — I’m hoping, anyway — Asparagus Salad with Sweet Pepper Confetti. Oh, wait. That one isn’t marked).

We subbed plain yogurt for the sour cream, and buttermilk for the plain milk and yum. We left out the nuts, cos while we are nuts, we do not care for nuts. It turned out super-fine. Bon appetit!

From their helpful website (honestly, whatever did I do before Thee Internet?)…

Streusel Coffee CaKe

Moist, buttery, and packed inside and out with brown sugar streusel, this coffee cake is as versatile as it is delicious. You can keep individually wrapped slices in the freezer ready to pop in a brown bag lunch for school, a hike, or a holiday road trip. The recipe itself is short and sweet, but it’s still a great one for aspiring bakers, with lots of measuring, mixing, and other fun cooking jobs.

RECIPE INGREDIENTS:
Cinnamon Crunch Topping
1 1/2 cups pecans or walnuts
1/3 cup packed light brown sugar
2 tablespoons flour
1 teaspoon cinnamon
3 tablespoons cold unsalted butter, cut into pieces

Sour Cream Cake
2 3/4 cups flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup unsalted butter, softened
1 3/4 cups sugar
3 large eggs, at room temperature
1 teaspoon grated lemon zest
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
3/4 cup sour cream
1/2 cup milk

Sweet Glaze
1 1/4 cups confectioners’ sugar
2 tablespoons milk
1. Butter a 9- by 13-inch cake pan. Dust the pan with flour and remove the excess by turning the pan upside down and tapping the bottom. Heat the oven to 350 degrees.

2. To prepare the Cinnamon Crunch Topping, first coarsely chop the nuts, or have your child put them in a sealable plastic bag and lightly tap them with a rolling pin to break them into pieces. Then combine the nuts, brown sugar, flour, and cinnamon in a bowl, using clean hands to mix the ingredients. Cut in the butter with a pastry cutter until the mixture resembles coarse crumbs.

3. To make the Sour Cream Cake, sift the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt into a medium bowl and set it aside. Using an electric mixer, preferably a large stand mixer, cream the butter on medium-high speed, gradually adding the sugar. Add the eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition. Add the lemon zest and vanilla extract and blend briefly.

4. Whisk together the sour cream and milk. Mix about a third of the mixture into the creamed ingredients until smooth. Then blend in about a third of the flour mixture. Continue alternately beating in the liquid and dry ingredients by thirds.

5. Spread half the batter in the prepared pan. Evenly sprinkle half the topping on it, pressing it lightly into the batter. Spread the remaining batter evenly over the topping. Then cover that layer with the remaining topping. Bake the coffee cake on the center oven rack for about 40 minutes, until nicely browned. A toothpick inserted at the center should come out clean. Place the pan on a wire rack and let the cake cool completely.

6. For the glaze, combine the confectioners’ sugar and milk in a large bowl and whisk until smooth and suitable to drizzle. If needed, you can make the glaze thinner or thicker by adding a little more milk or sugar, respectively. Use a spoon to drizzle the glaze on the cooled coffee cake. Makes 12 or more servings.

I cannot get enough of gardening this year! I watered everything, had fresh blueberries and raspberries for breakfast. Wacky Girl made me an iced coffee. I hung out laundry. And more laundry. Then we grabbed rakes and cleaned up underneath one of the rhodys, around (what’s left of) the upright fuchsia, the champagne bush, around one of our ferns. We pulled up weeds and cleared out a messy corner, pruned down suckers from the hazelnut tree, went crazy! We filled up our ginormous yard debris bin the city left, plus our two regular bins, and STILL had a huge pile left over.

After all that excitement, Wacky Girl and her Wacky Brother dragged a blanket under the champagne bush and hid out. (I don’t know what it’s called, this bush, but they grow like crazy. Ours drips long clusters full of white blossoms; my neighbor has one with pink blossoms that look just like pink bubbly. So pretty. And they thrive on neglect — my favorite kind of plant.) They needed a good place to hide. Did you have places to hide, growing up? I did. My favorite spot was right next to my grandparents’ front porch. They had these hedges (a type of laurel? I think) growing up tall and sheltering the porch. It was dry, cool and shady and the perfect spot for me, my two baby dolls, and a handful of books. I spent hours out there.

My other favorite spot (this was at my Dad’s folks place, too) was under the apple tree, sitting perched on a rock. It was the best spot for thinking. Ah, memories.

More from today: Folded laundry, WATCHED GENERAL HOSPITAL (BlackFriend and Laura — finally, some good storylines coming on), baked a fruit tart (with peaches, nectarines and plums), had Indian take-out for dinner (al fresco, the only way we dine around here in the summer) and then… glazed the coffee cake and had dessert outside. This was an A+ day. A+++.

“How much butter?” my husband asked, putting another forkful of cake into his mouth.

Me: “Just a couple tablespoons.”

Our daughter: “Try a couple sticks.”

Oh. My God. So good, with a little lemon extract and vanilla extract, powdered sugar glaze on top…

It was so good that we’re never making it again. No, I’m not including the recipe. You’d make it, eat it and regret it like we are.

Two cubes of butter! Damn. I just lost 10 pounds and I want it to stay lost, not find its way home.

The yard looks great. We’re plotting ways to turn that last empty corner of the yard into a hidey place for the kids. A teepee? A clubhouse? Tents? Trellises, to make a canopy to hide under? We don’t know yet. And we’re missing our fairies! No signs of them so far this year. Maybe they’ll be back soon?

Happy weekend, y’all.

wm

Yeah, that’s a grown-up tooth growing in there, alright. The dentist told us to “push the baby teeth out” with popsicle sticks.

Both kids: “POPSICLES!??!!”

Dentist: “You can re-use the sticks, you don’t have to eat a new popsicle every time.”

The baby tooth in front of the grown-up tooth is hardly wiggling at all — but the one right next to it is. Hmm.

Also, according to Dr. Tooth, this does not indicate that all of the teeth are going to come in crazeee like this — or that the new tooth won’t “float forward.” He also suggested to the kids that they could try his daughter’s tried-and-true method from childhood: Any tooth that is loose, work on it, pry on it, push it back and forth until it comes out.

“It would usually take her two, three days. All of her teeth were gone by age nine.”

Wacky Boy: “Then I’ll be able to get LOTS of money from the tooth fairy!”

“Yeah,” the dentist told him. “You’ll never have to work a day in your life.”

“If you have come to help me you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.”

— Aboriginal activists group, Queensland, 1970s

I read that quote for the first time today — it moves me. I read it here and read about it here.

(I love finding out the history of quotes, don’t you? They can get so muddled and mis-attributed along the way. So it was cool seeing credit go to where it was due on that one.)

Here is something I frequently talk about with people in “real” life, but rarely on the blog: My husband, Steve, is fairly outspoken. (Read this post, too, if you haven’t already.)

That’s getting to be well-known, that he is a political person. People keep asking when he’s running for office and I ask them, “Have you seen our blogs?” I mean, for real. Who would elect either one of us? I am political and vocal, too, of course, just in different ways from Steve. He works through the proper channels, is forthright and has a logical mind; I knit and plot the revolution. What I don’t write about here is how we go about our work. I don’t really blog about our different styles and how they mesh. Or don’t. It is a difficult thing to put into words, but we’ve woven it together pretty well over the past decade plus.

Also, it’s kind of a mystery to me, and I don’t want to mess with it.

I will say that sometimes we clash, mostly we agree. We spend almost all of our free time together, but at the same time completely do our own things. We like our independence, whether it’s expressed in big ways or small. A couple of months ago I planted a little garden at the high school. This turned out to be a tiny and a huge thing, and not just for me. It started because every time I walked by this particular flower bed, I would grimace. Garbage, weeds, NO PLANTS. What is the point of an empty flower bed?

“Please take the space between us/
And fill it up some way/
Take the space between us/
And fill it up some way/”

“O My God”
The Police

More importantly — what is the point of bitching about it (all that garbage! Why doesn’t anyone clean it up? Doesn’t anyone think to plant there?) when you can do something about it?

It took me three hours. I filled it up. (Not really, but it will be after the plants get established and fill it up.)

Daphne, grasses, lavender and rosemary and more lavender. Spiderwort. Some vegetables, which are not perennial, not at all, but I had extra seed packets and wanted to see some vegetables. It’s pretty now. Even the spiderwort, which likes to be babied, is enjoying its independence and thriving. I am working on “letting go and not being a control freak” which you can probably imagine is a huge challenge for me. I’ve decided:

1) if anyone yanks up the plants, I will re-plant. I will not let it get me down.
2) if someone decides that they can put in a better garden than I did, they can have at it.
3) However. If their garden dies from neglect, or if they get bored and abandon it, I will re-plant again.
4) I’ll keep picking up garbage (there are three cans nearby, this is not a big deal) and keep up on the weeding.
5) I’ll try to keep the plantings perennial, native, and in need of little water (once they’re established)
6) no boxwoods, rhodies or camellias, sorry. I love them, but I want something a little different. Maybe a smoke bush? I love these when they bloom.
7) I might plant another bed, too, that’s adjacent to this one (Mom and I planned it out yesterday — we may or may not follow through. Day lilies, lilies of the valley, a smoke bush?, daffodils, iris, something tall, like a tree peony? She has tons of starts, and her friend has a greenhouse with starts to share).

I made friends with a couple of the neighbors, who are helping me water. Did I mention that a water source is a problem? There’s a spigot, but it looks rusted over. No shed for a hose. No little dealie to turn on the spigot. A local gardener/landscape designer stopped by school the other day — she wants to write some grants, do a master plan. I told her go for it.

One of our PTA members and some students she knows went around the whole school, for no particular reason, and did a big clean-up. The alumni association did another clean-up. We have Community Care Day planned for August 23rd. I’m not the only one who is paying attention, is what I’m saying.

Anyway. The custodian? Turns out he likes to garden, too. He’s been helping me water, and he did a bunch of sprucing up to the beds that are near the bed I worked on. Suckers taken down from trees, hedges pruned back, weeds and garbage gone.

“Looks nice around here, doesn’t it?” he asked me yesterday. “People are starting to talk.”

Good.

thirteen things we love about summer, here at Chez Wacky:

1) riding bikes
2) eating ice cream
3) hanging all the laundry outside
4) coffee and breakfast with my husband at the patio table
5) potatoes, tomatoes, strawberries, cucumbers, geraniums, zinnias, begonias and hot peppers in the garden
6) cold showers
7) going to the ocean
8) swimming every day
9) playing in the dirt
10) staying up ’til midnight
11) playing baseball and tennis
12) playing all kinds of games
13) hot summer nights

Happy Thursday, everyone!

love,

wm

We’re at the orthodontist’s yesterday, to get started on Phase I of Project Braces for my daughter with the crookedy teeth and the crazy jaw. (Estimated cost ’til completion of project, as of yesterday when we did a worksheet: $7,000. Insurance will pay: Nothing.)

“So, you’ll be next!” the tech says, perkily, with dollar signs in her eyes, to my son.

I say, “NO! He has my teeth! Straight! She has her father’s teeth.”

“Sorry, sorry, of course, I can see that now,” etc. sez the tech. “Did your husband have braces?”

“No,” I tell her. “My father-in-law has a thing against orthodontists.”

Today, Wacky Girl tells me, perkily, with dollar signs in her eyes, “We can’t eat out anymore. You’re saving for my braces.” Of course. Of course I am, honey. I can see that now.

Not ten minutes later she tells me I need to look into her brother’s mouth.

“There’s something real weird going on in there.”

She’s right, there is something weird going on in there. A great big grown-up tooth, his first, snuggling up right behind his baby tooth. (Which is not wiggling, by the by. Which is firmly holding on to its own real estate, smack up against the big boy tooth.)

She tells him, “You’re like a crocodile! With double teeth!”

He grins a big toothy grin at her.

“Maybe your great-great-great-great grandchildren will have the same problem!” she says, like this is the coolest thing that has ever occurred to her.

At least I won’t be responsible for their dental bills.

We’re seeing the dentist tomorrow.