Summer's Daze

Some people in this house turned 13 this month

Is it me or has summer gone by too fast? I looked at the last post I wrote and it was written in JULY. A month ago. And now the days of August are heading towards the past tense. Seems hard to believe.

As you can tell from the photo above, some people in this house turned 13 this month. There are now three official teenagers living right near me. I hear a lot about how teens tend to be wildly annoying, wildly angst-ridden, and wildly histrionic, but so far all I've really noticed is how much they resemble ME in my menopausal, absent-minded, fog. They forget stuff. Lots of stuff, like phone calls (they forget there's a notepad on which to write messages too), where they left their bike key, why they never put their dirty dishes in the kitchen next to the implement with which we clean those very same dishes.

Which is mostly amusing. I don't feel like such a ditz. I've got company.

Here's a behind-the-scenes shot of the Birthday Duo swinging on our Beach Holiday Extravaganza. As you can see, FDPG likes a little danger with her swinging.

Dominic and I both watched this with our mouths slightly agog, after which I shut down the action immediately. She doesn't believe me but she really DOES want to grow up with her brain and skull intact.

 FDPG and Dominic departed from their usual Birthday Gift requests this year. Every year that I can remember they've asked for LEGO. This year they didn't. When I expressed my shock and amazement, FDPG offered up this excuse: "We thought you were sick of buying us LEGO." To which I expressed even more shock and amazement. An era has ended, methinks.

Note that I do not say "legos." Many of my (mostly American) friends do, and while I try not to judge them, I have to confess that I do. I feel like Tom Cruise's character in Magnolia: "I'm silently judging you." 

Go on Sheila, tell us what you REALLY think.



 So this year FDPG asked for, and received, a kayak. As you might note from this photo, provided you look carefully enough. In the middle, with the yellow, red, and blue striped sail, is her father and her brother in the Topper, while at the right is a teeny tiny little blue blip. That's FDPG. No fear, that girl. At least we were able to refuse to let her go out without convince her to wear a life jacket.




To the right is someone we didn't know, but who spent his afternoon following them around. Maybe it's a sailboat thing, I don't know.

 On this very same beach holiday some of us spent a lot of time looking up the status of the sea boats near us. There is (I say with some surprise though I don't know why in this age of Omnipresent Media Attention To All Things) a website where you can track all the ships in the oceans near you. It's quite cool: you can see the stats of the ship, what it's called, where it came from, and where it's going. Eldest Son discovered this site a while back and now spends much of his time tracking large ships then pestering me to take him down to there he can view them with a scope. Fortunately we live on an island so it's easy to get to a coast to view these behemoths. The ship in the photo is a Disney cruise ship. The cruise ships are easily the most impressive boats going up and down the coast, and as they usually glide past in the early evening, lights all aglow, it's an enchanting sight. According to Eldest Son's scope, this was a Disney ship, and he could even see the giant screen playing The Lion King.

 Another dreamy shot of the coastal range mountains on the mainland. We live in a lovely place.

 

New Year Revelations

I'm not the sort of person who usually makes New Year resolutions, to be honest. If I do, I generally try to think of something philosophical or uplifting, like being nicer and less potty-mouthed when I'm behind a car wheel, or being (marginally) more patient with fractious offspring in Trying Moments, but these things never last much past January. A brief spasm of remorse might hit me in late spring, but like most resolutions when viewed from a distance of time, the guilt never lasts long: too many other things are claiming my attention by then. 

The garden, for one thing. 

The back yard in December

Anyhow, this week I had a bit of a revelation about why my New Year's resolutions never come to much. It's this: I don't make the right sorts of resolutions. My resolutions are predicated on certain failure. I need to focus on resolutions that have a higher success rate. 

Take swearing while driving - a useless resolution if there ever were one. Swearing is the single most satisfying method to cope with the stupid behaviours and idiotic driving patterns of one's fellow drivers. Not swearing, by contrast, would be hazardous to my health, I feel quite sure. Besides, it gives the kids a useful compendium of flowery yet articulate expressions from which to draw once they're over 18, the age at which I've deemed it Okay To Swear In Mum's Hearing (although I reserve the right to cringe, wince, or roll my eyes).

Then there was that resolution about being Nice Mummy, as opposed to Mostly Nice But Sometimes Very Shouty Mummy. To illustrate how extra futile that one was, I'll tell you a story: once upon a time Eldest Son was in a rush, and got himself into a state of extra special, no good, simply terrible irrationality while trying to simultaneously burn a CD (for a gift he was very late giving), study for a chemistry test (which was the next day), and write up a 4-H report, all the while finishing his supper. He was doing all this in the Family Room (where we never eat meals, where I have banned all food and drink, and where we have some expensive electronic items on tables). If this were a game of Clue, we'd have the Kid in the Family Room with the Food, trying to kill the Computer, because that's what happened. The moment, such as it was, ended with butter smeared all over my optical drive, many poorly burned CDs, and some choice expressions uttered in the heat of the moment. Another epic failure of resolution. I know, I know, there are contexts and there are contexts, but that scenario made me realize the pointlessness of being someone I'm not, just for the heck of a New Year Resolution.

This week, as I said, I had a revelation. It centred around my new socks. See photo below. These are my new Highly Favoured Household Footwear. I call them sockette thingies. I love wearing my sockette thingies, but they're white, and white is not a colour that lasts long in this house. After a few days of wear that lovely white was gray and brown (and sometimes black). Washing helped a little, but only a little. I resorted to soaking them overnight in Pink Solution before washing, which amused Husband greatly: "What are these things doing in this bucket?" he asked me, in between the odd snicker. "That's not like you."

No, it isn't. I hate doing laundry. Like bed-making, it seems to exist simply so I can do it over and over again. I feel as though I'm in an Escher sketch, doing the Munch Man scream.

 

 But then I realized why my cherished sockettes were getting so dirty. See next photo, below, of floor. Nice uncovered wood floor. Ignore cat tail. He just wants you all to know what a lemur tail he is in possession of. It wends its way into many a photo.

Anyhow, it occurred to me that the reason my sockette thingies were so dirty was because of these lovely wood floors. In addition to rarely making a bed, or doing laundry, I also never mop these floors. I do know people who mop, but let's just say that I'm not one of them.

So I mopped the entire top floor. All seven rooms. I concentrated on where the feet spend most time. I ended up mopping it twice in one week, prompting some odd looks from FDPG and her twin, who had never seen me mop the wood floors before. "Are you sure you're supposed to do that to them?" FDPG asked me, uneasily. "It might not be good for them!" echoed Dominic.

Never mind, I thought, it will be good for my sockette thingies. Finally, a resolution worth making. I'll keep you posted on the success rate of this one.

Making Paté

 Every year I like to have something different for the Christmas Eve menu chez nous. I'm experimenting with Family Traditions, as we all tend to do, and a festive Christmas Eve Supper always sounds so promising. Seafood features prominently, and this year was no exception: we had oyster soup, thick and creamy with a drizzle of tarragon-mint pesto, served over crispy fresh  puff pastry squares. We also had home-smoked salmon with capers and crispy garlic slivers and thyme-scented baguettes. I usually try to have a paté of some sort squeezed in there because we all adore the stuff. In fact, I have to wrap it up carefully and hide it in the back of the fridge so FDPG can't snack on it morning, noon, and night, thus depriving the rest of us of the pleasure of its company.


Last year I made a baked paté. The recipe required chicken livers, bacon, juniper berries and lots of black pepper, all ground up to a manageable but chunky thickness. It was grainy and perfectly, delectably delicious. It also tended to fall apart when sliced and slipped onto a cracker and popped into one's mouth (in between moments of Christmas levity, as one does) and so, as I observed my Less Adventurous At Eating Awkward Food In Public friends struggling during last year's Christmas party, I resolved to try a creamier, spreadable version this year.

I used this recipe (click on this link). I didn't have any shallots or madeira so I substituted a small onion and a large glass of brandy. You will note from the photo at left that large quantities of butter are involved. This is what gives the meat its creaminess, so be forewarned and don't eat the entire bowl in one sitting. Don't eat the entire bowl by YOURSELF, I mean. I use unsalted butter, because I like the taste better. Salted butter tastes overly salty to me.

It's pretty easy to make, so if you're like me: you love it but hate splashing out on the good (and often horribly expensive) stuff, gather together some chicken livers and try this. I will add one caveat before you source your chicken livers: being that the liver is the organ that filters the blood and so is intimately involved in any drug use the body may indulge in, make sure you get livers from birds that haven't been subjected to lots of hormones or antibiotics. Here in BC we're lucky that poultry is always hormone (and often antibiotic) free.

 Don't forget to sample the brandy extensively. Quality control and all, you know.

 Just don't do what I did and tilt the pan over the burner in the hopes of reducing the brandy a little quicker, particularly if you have a gas stove like I do, because you will LIGHT THE ENTIRE PAN ON FIRE, like I did. If you have enough brandy in the pan, like I did, it will result in a terrific panful of giant blue flames.

This will ensure the immediate presence of your husband, who will think you are not safe left alone in a kitchen with alcohol and matches, despite your protestations that we'll all have lots of amusing memories to look back on one day. He might make tart remarks to the effect of "burning down the house is HYSTERICAL, I agree" but ignore him.

The finished product. It's oddly pourable at first, what will all that soft butter and brandy, but not to worry: just find a dish that suits your fancy and pour it in, then leave it to sit for a few hours while it turns to a creamy, thick, perfectly fabulous paste.

Post Hallowed Evening

 FDPG and I found this so wildly funny yesterday that we looked at it over and over again. You may think us shallow, but each time we found it equally hysterical.

I guess we're essentially Cat People when it comes to the category of General Pet Jokes.








It was a perfect day in the neighbourhood for trick or treating. Rain was threatening, and a few times there were brief sprinkles, but we were still able to put out our life-sized paper skeleton and Mr Pumpkin Head, which made the yard much more atmospheric. Nothing says BE SCARED! like a large smiling skeleton, glowing in the dark, right?
Fall has been superlative this year: we've had about 17ml of rain this month, compared to the usual average of 84ml, leaving the leaves in piles of golds and yellows and reds. The rain is due any minute, sadly, so I'm memorizing the colour in this photo for when all those lovely leaves are soggy, brown, and very very slimy.
The Little Chief has been working overtime on the deck, given the perfect dry conditions. The same deck that has been holding court with a baited rat trap.

Yes, Gentle Reader, there are many advantages of having chickens... okay, maybe only one real advantage, but it's mostly definitely NOT the sudden surge in visits from members of the rodent and avian populations. You won't need bird feeders any more because the chickens have a giant one - in their coop - just waiting to be plundered. Rats and birds alike will also love how unconcerned the chickens are around such creatures. They could care less if Ole Ratty or a village of sparrows nip in several times a day for a snack. Mice they will go for, but the others? They don't even LOOK at them. Thanks to our newly acquired rat traps, I now know that rats look JUST LIKE the rat in Ratatouille. Big, gray, and long-bodied, they are. Spread fast, they do. Get into lots of mischief digging holes and tunnels, they can. Not welcome in yard, they are. Sigh.

 FDPG is getting older, and with age comes self-consciousness. This year was all about the Tasteful Kitty. Not a Wild Crazy Out There Kitty, as she might once have insisted upon. Distressingly, it was all I could do to get more than 6 whiskers and tiny black nose on her. I begged to do a little Cirque de Soleil-ish facepainting, to appease my inner Liberace, but in the end I was forced to subterfuge: I whined told a friend, a friend that she likes a lot because he is very tall, very funny, and very generous and kind to her. He told us both that we needed to MAKE THAT FACE UP STAT.

FPDG, ever the rationalist, pointed out that this same person - a teacher - wears a costume to work every year, that he dresses as a Giant Pink Bunny in front of his students, so he was hardly the sort of person she'd listen to in terms of Tasteful Halloween Costume Advice, but she acquiesced in the end. We used a faint smear of white base, a teeny tiny bit of eye liner, and the barest hint of gold glitter stripes. I even think she was surprised how low-key it ended up looking. You can hardly tell, right? (feel free to point this out in the comments section)
Dominic, who is still captivated by the Rabelasian aspect of Halloween, recycled a former costume from his brother: Dr. Arthur O. Pod, field entomologist for the National Geographic Society.
Here he is in the bathroom, looking for errant insects, spiders, or crustaceans. I won't tell you if he found any though.












And now we're dragging somewhat through the morning, watching the rain headed our way.

Ring In New Bells

Has it really been that long since I've posted? Hard to fathom, but I'm noticing the same low level of activity in all the blogs I've been following since I first started being on the blog.

Are we all blogged out?




There have been a lot of new developments in the neighbourhood since I've been away: someone turned sixteen, someone turned a whole lot older than that, someone watched the Doctor Who Christmas Special five times because those snowmen were just too wonderfully creepy, several someones had a lovely anticipatory time waiting for Father Christmas to show up ALL MONTH, and the chickens finally stopped looking like characters in a horror film and starting looking more their beautiful, fluffy selves.

We walked around town, exploring new parks and beaches; we walked around houseboats and listened to the sixteen year old enthuse about living in one of them (there were five for sale at the time, a fact which struck me as suspicious and the sixteen year old as fortuitous).

And all the while Toffee slept.

Consider Yourself

— a recipient of this just finished Christmas card.

We're all there...some of us more than others.

Halloween Cometh

And what do you know but we're supposed to have the wettest Halloween in 18 years. Gosh, how fun is that? What kid doesn't like slogging around the neighbourhood in the pouring rain in a soaking wet costume?

This is perhaps the first year in, well, years that we aren't Frantically Ready and Desperately Waiting for Halloween. When the kids were little I sewed spiders, lizards, fairies, Colorado Potato Beetles, kittens, and more. It was fun, mostly because a tiny costume takes seconds to make. Now of course they are far bigger in size, not to mention far more opinionated, and it's harder to work up the enthusiasm at the idea of spending a week sewing something wildly complicated for just one night. I spent the first part of the month arguing with Dominic, who had the idea of going out trick or treating dressed as an Angry Bird. The Boomerang Bird. The one with the long beak. "It will be super easy to make," he told me, "I have plans down in my room. I will show them to you. All you need is a box."

All I need is a box. If only life were like that.

Luckily the look on my face - when he added "You've left it a bit late, better get moving!"- managed to persuade him that he needed to pick another costume, given that it's THE DAY BEFORE HALLOWEEN. Now he's going as a ghost - the Charlie Brown kind: white sheet with holes. I don't think I will need my sewing machine, either. Nice.

FDPG is going as a Mad Scientist. She originally wanted to go as the Headless Horseman, sans horse, but I worked my persuasive magic and talked her into being a Mad Scientist, as such a costume would involve items we already had in the house and it is, after all, THE DAY BEFORE HALLOWEEN. Plus, we don't have a large suit I can cut holes in and at this stage I don't much fancy the idea of haunting the second hand shops for over-priced suits for her to hack at with scissors.

I'm sounding like a real downer aren't I.

At least their costumes will involve lots of glow-in-the-dark sticks from the Dollar Store. And FDPG gets to wear her Lucius Malfoy wig again, although for some reason she's decided to call it the Blonde Wig (odd considering that it isn't blonde). We had A Moment in one of those cheap jewellery stores today when I showed her some black-rimmed glasses and said "This looks very scientist-y!" and she said, looking oddly furtive, "I'm not going to be a dead scientist, or a diseased scientist, or anything weird looking, Mum." We stared at each other, me aghast at the idea that any child of mine should be so, well, so SEDATE at Halloween; she worried that I was going to insist she be a Dead Mad or Bad Scientist.

Fortunately we managed to compromise: she is going to wear a teeny tiny touch of white face paint and look ever-so-slightly dead (maybe with fangs) and I bought her an overpriced white foam stick that has an LED with 6 different lights in it to use as a Pretend Test Tube (it may or may not have a plastic skull stuck on it, evidence of An Experiment Gone Horribly Wrong). We are both happy with that outcome, although Dominic was annoyed that he didn't bargain harder about the Angry Bird costume.

I'm tempted to tuck Prunella the Moulting Chicken under my arm and walk around the neighbourhood in my dressing gown, telling the neighbours that we just woke up and we're not feeling very good. In all that rain we probably won't LOOK very good either.

In Which I Almost Burn Down The House

Warning: This post originally aired in 2009. All fires are now extinguished.

It was the Canadian Thanksgiving this past weekend; wherein we celebrate, much as Americans do (but we do it earlier), with family and friends and many of us roast Very Large Items like turkeys or geese, and create many a side dish of potatoes or yams (no marshmallows please, I don't care what Nigella says about this) and other roastable products (maple-roasted parsnips anyone?).

So, this being our first house and all, we're having fun creating our own family traditions around all the holidays. This Thanksgiving the kids covered the front steps with mini gourds, white pumpkins, and giant Cinderella pumpkins, grown in the garden; they dipped leaves in beeswax, fragrant additions to the Seasonal Table; they made candle holders with colourful writhing dragons on them, surrounded with black paper, to remind us all of Michaelmas (which is often re-represented by St George fighting the dragon); and finally they brought in armloads of Michaelmas daisies and all the leftover flowers we have in the garden to float in bowls of coloured water with lighted candles. It was all very beautiful. Ethereal. Glowing. Warm. We invited some friends over, we set a turkey in the oven, I made bread and dug up potatoes and peeled many a parsnip.

It was the Yorkshire puddings that foxed me. If only I had put a cookie sheet under the muffin tins I would have been okay. The fire alarm wouldn't have gone off if I'd done that.

But I didn't.

Oh no.

I had to go and douse the muffin tins with generous amounts of oil, then set them in an already (sheila coughs self-consciously) oily oven and no it WASN'T filthy contrary to what Richard the Clean says, without anything underneath them to catch all the dripping oil. And let's face it, I was feeling pretty generous by this juncture of the day, filled with much bonhomie towards my friends and neighbours (and no, I was not drinking - not then at any rate) and it might have been about then that I thought "A giant Yorkshire pudding is much much better than a teeny tiny one, isn't it! I will FILL those muffin cups with batter! They will be giant puddingy puffs!" Sounded reasonable at the time...

So I used what one might call a glad hand with the filling of the muffin cups. All two and a half dozen of them.

Sadly, the oil oozed out all over the floor of the oven after I'd filled them with the pudding batter and slid them in the oven to bake. Not that I noticed, because at that point that I was standing outside on the deck, thinking "Gosh it's hot in that pokey little kitchen, think I'll just have a glass of wine out here in the nice cold air."

It was when I peeked in the window that I noticed the flames.

I dashed in, followed closely by Max (when Large Items are roasted he follows me very closely, because he likes Large Roasted Items and frequently accuses me of trying to starve him by not roasting them often enough for his liking). I gaped. I tried to quell the rising panic in my stomach. I opened the oven for a peek, then shut it. It was filled with flames. Really filled. I don't think I'd ever seen it like that. And it might have been then that I thought "OMG this is a PROPANE OVEN - we're all going to blow up!" But, being the stalwart Jane Austen heroine that I am, I did not shriek out loud. I did not even panic. And I did not faint into a heap on the floor. Instead, I calmly turned off the oven, and shrieked "RICHAAAAAARD!"

Now, accounts vary as to what I said after that. I thought I said "Richard - the oven is on fire and we are all about to die come and do something before that happens" Richard thought I said "I've put the fire out but it's still on fire!" And, since he didn't do anything right away, we both think I then said "RICHARD GET IN HERE RIGHT THIS SECOND THE KITCHEN IS ON FIRE!"

And we might be right. I think I did say that.

Fortunately that got him into the kitchen pretty quick. In fact, it got everyone into the kitchen. I remember wondering why everyone would come into a place that was about to blow up. And realizing that I couldn't very well cut and run with them all standing there, about to blow up with MY stove. It wouldn't look very good. But Richard took matters in hand and started doing something. "Get the Yorkshire puddings out of the oven!" he shouted tersely,  "Shut the oven door! Quick!"

So we did.

The fire went out.

Richard said "Why don't you ever clean that stupid oven? Look at all that oil!"

Our dinner guests said "Wow, it's exciting over here."

I said "I need a drink. Stop talking about cleaning the bloody oven, Richard, and get me a drink."

Max said "Will the Yorkshire puddings be alright? Will we still be able to eat them?"

And you know, they were. And we did.

Holiday Snapshots #1

We were sitting on the sand.

Hot sand. Very hot sand. So hot you couldn't walk barefoot. We were therefore squished together on several towels, drying off from our swim.

Dominic was stretched out like a starfish, perhaps he was even pretending he was a starfish. He was doing his level best to ignore our repeated pleas to stop hogging the towels. FDPG was deep in an Agatha Christie novel, reading about her hero Hercule Poirot (or Pwa-Rot as we like to call him). Max was one log over, pretending he was a cool DJ Guy relaxing on his yacht after a sold out show. Every so often he'd sit up and fix his hair, using his reflective sunglasses as a mirror. I snuck photos of him when he wasn't looking.

Richard and I were reading. Richard - his usual deeply intellectual fare: The Origins Of Political Order. Me - my usual deeply unintellectual fare: Gardener's World magazine. I was just admiring a charming photo of Alan Titchmarsh, immaculate in a periwinkle vest, cutting a large handful of thyme with his equally immaculate pruners, pleasantly determined look on his face. There's something deeply comforting about Alan. Whenever I need a pick-me-up I read his Tales From Titchmarsh column. He's always so nice and encouraging. Black spot on your roses? Never fear! He has 10 top tips for that. Mildew on your squash? Ah, you haven't used your baking soda spray yet, have you? Wilting delphiniums? Try some cheery painted bamboo stakes - practical AND picturesque! Every problem has a happy solution. Even if it IS something you've already tried (and failed with), Alan makes it sound both easy AND feasible.

But I digress.

I was sitting on the towel, trying to ignore the elbowing starfish to my left and a sniffing FDPG to my right (both twins took up the completely irritating habit of sniffing every 20 seconds this summer) when a large flying insect showed up on the sand. Not a hornet. Not a wasp. Not a bee. A bit of all of them: large wings, stripey body, aggressively long torso. It would alight on a speck then fly off, very quickly and very unpredictably. It came closer and closer to us, even landing on my clogs at one point. It kept flashing its wings and waving its antennae menacingly, waking us from our torpor and causing us to skitter about on the towels in an effort not to be its first victim.

When it attacked the grasshopper we all gasped. It clung to the grasshopper's head and made some determined clicking noises. The grasshopper waved its legs feebly as we looked on, horrified. Dominic threw a little rock which bounced off the sand but the insect took no notice. We watched the poor grasshopper writhe and roll around on that hot hot sand, until finally I went over and smacked at the insect with a stick. It flew away and FDPG moved the stunned grasshopper to a little bark house, out of the sun and out of the way of the insect, which by then had returned and was scanning the sand for the grasshopper. It was even more insistent and alarming than before, so of course we all started dashing about and bumping into each other in an effort to avoid it. Even Richard (who is usually quite oblivious to anything but the most urgent of disasters) moved hurriedly out of the way. Things were getting a wee bit panicky. It was a very pugnacious insect.

Finally my stick managed to connect with the insect. I think I stunned it somewhat. I scooped it up in a clam shell and placed it on a log, where it could hopefully settle down and rethink its grasshopper-attacking strategies. Then I went back to my magazine, intent on learning the Four Ways To Banish Bindweed.

Dominic got up and went over to the insect. He picked up a large smooth rock and smashed the insect with it, hard. He banged and bashed for at least a minute while we all watched, startled. Then he put down his rock and went back to being a starfish.

We settled back to our sleepy sunbathing activities, albeit slightly uneasy should another winged terror appear.

A few hours later we were packing up when Dominic went over to the log where the by now completely unrecognizable remains of the insect were. It was definitely a Former Insect. He examined the tiny specks of shell and wing closely.

"I think it's dead now," he said.

No kidding.

August Meanderings

 This is a container FDPG made up a couple of weeks ago for her 4-H Container Garden project. Right after she planted these lettuce and basil starts she left it on the deck. Where Puff the Lettuce Eating Rabbit happened to be lurking. FDPG didn't think Puff the Lettuce Eating Rabbit would notice this container. I tried to convince her that Puff would most certainly notice that container, and that in fact she was probably lying in wait, but FDPG was having none of that. "She's too busy trying not to fall off the deck!" she chortled.

(No rabbits fell off any decks during the planting of this post)

When we came out to have dinner, the lettuce starts were looking sorry. Very sorry. They were practically Former Lettuce Starts. Puff had evidently taken time out from her Not Falling Off The Deck activities to cement her reputation as a Lettuce Eater. FDPG didn't show any sorrow for the demise of her lettuce; in fact, she was thrilled. "That Puff! She is SUCH a monkey!" she said affectionately, squeezing Puff and ruffling her fur. Puff looked, dare I say it, quite smug.

Would that I could evince such delight when I see deer in my garden. I won't tell you what I DO think, though, because I'm not usually a Cougar Annie kind of gal (Deer Sheila doesn't have quite the same ring, does it?).

 Some of us had a birthday this month. Two of us, in fact.

This is the card I made for FDPG. It combines her two passions: Angry Birds and Harry Potter.

Did you know that you can download the Angry Birds font free? I was inordinately thrilled to discover this. I might even have shouted this astounding discovery out loud to Richard (who was less than thrilled, sadly).

Now I not only have the Hogwarts Wizard font, I have the Angry Birds font as well. Oddly (and rather disturbingly), it's called Feast of Flesh, which I can only hope is mistranslated from the Finnish the way my Chinese grocer in Vancouver sold Big Bother apples and Super Parsley.

After the birthday celebrations we went away to our favourite beach. Here is FDPG in a kayak. And no, she is not wearing a life jacket.

Remiss of us, I know, but rest assured: it was very shallow water.

That's Dominic in the background.

Yes, he is wearing a mask. He likes to fall over the edge and do some impromptu snorkeling when the mood strikes.

Needless to say, the kayaks ran low to the water with all that water in them.






 

Here is FDPG snorkeling around a person lying on a floatie. Richard and I watched, initially perplexed, as she sidled, dived, and eventually edged nearer and nearer, breathing heavily through her snorkel the entire time. And I do mean heavily. We could hear her from the shore. She sounded like Darth Vader. She went under the floatie. She went around the floatie. She finally popped up and hovered, right next to the floatie, whooshing noisy gasps of air through her snorkel. She was unabashedly staring. It was then that I started taking photos. When I wasn't laughing unrestrainedly with Richard from the shore. What we couldn't figure out was how the woman could not have noticed this annoying child FDPG. Finally her head lifted and she regarded FDPG for a minute or two. They appeared to exchange words. FDPG snorkeled off. When she came ashore we asked her what she'd been doing. And if she knew what Snorkel Harassment was.

"I was using the floatie as a marker to dive under," she said. "It was really fun. I knew the person wouldn't notice because she was drinking a can of vodka and wearing ear buds."

It was in actuality a can of beer. We used binoculars to settle the argument, because FDPG insisted that it was vodka, despite the fact that she doesn't know her beer from her brandy.

Ahem.

Here she is with Richard, sailing.

And no, those white spots are not whitecaps, as FDPG would have you believe.

They are sea birds.

Trust me.

A Week of Composting

This clip art is from the American Compost website, I realize, but it is so beautiful I'm going to use it anyways.

 It's Official Composting Week. Sounds a little odd, doesn't it? It's sort of like saying "Happy Battery Recycling Day!" Nevertheless, I'm going to use this as a personal platform to encourage everyone to start a compost in their backyard.

That's right, use this Official Week as your personal invitation to start composting. It's easy, it gives you free amendments for your garden (amendments you know the origins of), and it reduces your landfill contributions. All good and important things to consider these days.

Happy Composting. Now get out there and start your own compost. It's as easy as...well, as easy as this.

California Redux

It's rather gloomy outside right now, coldish and wettish, and even though the nectarine trees are covered in beautiful pink blossoms I'm feeling rather sluggish about starting the day.

So instead I'll show you some of the curious yet amusing things I saw when we were in California.

First of all: street sign abbreviations. When Richard and I first moved to California, I thought CYN was pronounced SIN (Richard the Uncurious didn't wonder at all, sadly, leaving me to wonder on my own about this strange and wondrously weird new word). I wondered regularly why the Americans would have such an odd designation. It also struck me as rather appropriate, just like other oddball Americanisms I'd encountered.

It took me about, ooh, maybe 4 months to discover that CYN was actually the abbreviation for Canyon.

The kids and I were all in convulsions about this store: America's Tire.

Methinks someone visited Canada once upon a time, passing a Canadian Tire along the way, and thought "Hey now, there's a darn good idea for a store name. I'm gonna get me home and start a store just like that one there!"

Doesn't have quite the same ring to it, somehow. But it was highly amusing to the kids every time we drove past it. "America's Tire!" they'd all shriek, "that is SO funny!"

Finally, look at the sunny day in that photo below. Just look at that clear blue sky. That landscape. That heat. I want to be there right now.

But I digress.

That tile work was in front of a Lowe's (a DIY store). I loved it so much that we finally parked in the lot and I walked around it, clicking away madly while the cars raced by me, people occasionally peering out at me, wondering no doubt what I was doing out in the hot sunshine, taking pictures of a row of monoliths perched on the edge of a freeway.
Note to self: never put that stupid time/date stamp function in action again. Do. Not. Like.

California Dreaming

This is where I was last week. I'm going to spare you all and NOT post a shot of what it's doing where I am now.

Here's another one. I never used to like the desert...until I moved to a rainforest. Now I find a certain, um, charm in the desert. Particularly when it's winter in my neck of the rainforest.

And of course we can't forget the obligatory Legoland shot. Yes, we were here too, thanks to someone with some free tickets going begging. Some of us were VERY excited about this aspect of the trip. Very excited indeed.

My Funny Valentine

Valentines Day used to happen this way: me preparing madly at night while little babes slept in their beds. Morning would dawn and hey-ho it would be Magical Hearts everywhere. Then we'd wander the neighbour looking for excitement. Drop into coffee shops for kid hot chocolates, visit the library for special storytimes. Wander past the florist on the way home for a nice rose or two. Then home for dinner, exhausted from all the fun. Bedtime involved happy valentine stories.

Now we're all older and, well, different. Some of us are rather self-conscious about making too many public displays of affection, not to mention having a number of high school commitments due every second of every hour. And this was probably the first year I was too harried (from various volunteer jobs - why does everyone think stay-at-home-mums have lots of time on their hands?) to be ready for it all. Like I said, different.

I didn't manage to make heart-shaped cards, but I did produce some heart-shaped pancakes with home-made peach butter. Somewhat to my chagrin this eclipsed the card situation. And I am nothing if not quick to take advantage of an Opportunity Coming My Way.

Dinner will be MY valentine to you all, I announced.

And so it was. Chili truffle filling sitting in the fridge? Cake toppers! The rest of it turned into a miniature cupcake batter.

FDPG's hand there? She withdrew it after one taste. My chili truffle recipe isn't something to be truffled with.



Winter greens sitting in the garden? Doused with sizzling garlic oil! Mandarins peeled and tossed alongside! Fennel blub and sorrel leaves on top. It was a Nutty Madcap Salad, but don't tell Max or he won't eat it ever again just because of the name I gave it.
I've got a new crush in the foodie world, and this was his Quick Puff Pastry recipe, wrapped around some very rare steak, thinly sliced raw fennel, and a few chunks of jalapeno havarti.
It was really good, if I do say so myself.
And for dessert there was a chocolate cake.
A really excellent chocolate cake.
I don't have a photo of it.
I wish I did.
Some of us had heart-shaped chili truffles on top of ours. Some of us kissed afterwards, and felt glad that we'd had all these nice heart-shaped days.

New Year News

I am happy to report that my side of the bedroom remains clear and uncluttered. As for FDPG's bedroom, well, let's just say I'm not buying any giant chocolate bars any time soon.

What about SuperLogic Man? Well, we'll say he's working on that one...

And looky here at what I've managed to do: it's called a Foil The Starlings feeder. An ice cream tub, upside down, with a metal suet feeder jammed inside. I've wired the metal feeder so it can be pulled out for refilling, but otherwise it seems to have genuinely foiled the starlings.

If you like and feed starlings or simply want me to feel a modicum of compassion for them I will preempt you and say you're wasting your breath. I don't like starlings and even if one rescued me from a burning building I'd still find them objectionable.

Piggy bullies, that's what I think about starlings.

(Gosh, Sheila, don't hold back or anything.)

I won't.

New Year's Resolutions

My resolutions:

1) To keep my side of the bedroom clean(er). This resolution came about after I overheard the twins comparing my room with FDPG's room.

"My room is nowhere near as messy as Mum's!" (FDPG, indignant)

"It is too. You and Mum pile stuff everywhere and you each have clothes all over the place. It's sort of gross. If it weren't for Dad's side of the room, Mum's room would be a MESS. I can hardly walk around on her side of the room." (Dominic, sounding revolted)

"Oh, you can say THAT again. Have you seen those magazine piles? Yuck." (FDPG, eye-rolling sounds in her voice)

2) To keep up my morning and afternoon walking regime. Even when it's raining cats and dogs out. Even when it's pre-dawn dark and wet and cold out. Blech. Sounds awful, put that way. Must find a more pleasant way to look at the pre-dawn dark and wet and cold...

3) To stop incurring library fines. The librarians all laugh and rub their hands with glee when I walk in, in ALL the branches. I've resorted to taping nice notes on my overdue books before I pop them into the slots, because it's the only way I can beg for clemency without having to endure their eye-rolling and arched eyebrows. Sigh.

FDPG's resolution:

To keep her room tidier. If she can do this for 60 days I have agreed to present her with a large bar of chocolate, because there's nothing FDPG loves more than chocolate. But her room is a poster child for the HGTV reality television show: Pigsties!

Dominic's resolution:

"Why do I have to make a resolution? I don't have anything I need to change about myself. I'm perfect as I am. Well, I suppose I could resolve to play more with LEGO. Or eat more candy. Or do less work around the house - what do you mean, I hardly do any house work as it is? I do plenty. (Ed's note: he does not) No, YOU should make some resolutions, Mum, especially your room. Have you seen MY room lately? Pretty clean eh? Maybe you could...hey, wait, why are you pushing me out of the room? Oi!"

Max's Resolution:

To be super logical (because he is often accused of being wildly crazily illogical).

Sounds like a super hero in the making, don't you think?

Hello, puny humans, I am SuperLogical Man!

We'll see how that one goes.

Christmas Redux

File this one in the Crafts I'll Keep section. A lot of Christmas crafts, heck, a lot of crafts period, are fun in the making but end up either in the compost or in the recycling bin (note that I did not use the words garish, ugly, or full of junk at any point).

This one I can see staying until it fades. We made them in a few different colours: red, pink, blue. Charming things.





All I'll say about this photo is that it is amazing how much food the teen-age boy can consume. I even heard the sentence "If I wait a bit I'll be able to eat more" come out of someone's mouth. Boggles the mind a bit, doesn't it?




Here are the Webkinz waiting for Santa. They were slightly concerned about the fire and the chimney and Santa coming down the chimney, but we assured them that Santa and his magic pants have long since figured out mundane things like getting around fires in fireplaces.

And yes, this IS the fireplace they use for the Burning Log channel.










The Angry Birds also waited for Santa, but they don't look as though they had such a great time, do they? They always look so, well, so angry.

As you can see, they all received lovely handmade hats for Christmas. That FDPG, she's not only crafty and fearless in the face of such terrible tempers, she's also generous and thoughtful.




Food loomed large this Christmas. We made chocolates and cakes and fizzy punches with herbal syrups and Christmas fruit breads and cacao nib espresso cookies. We roasted things, discovered fresh mozzarella, caramelized things and developed exceptional pizza crusts. Luckily we also went on a lot of long walks, so the fruits of our labours aren't straining the waistlines of our pants...
Jamie Oliver is a huge favourite in this house, so when we had the opportunity to see his Christmas With Bells On series we leapt at it. My kids have loved him ever since they watched him hold a potato in the air in front of a group of elementary kids and say "This is where your chips come from!" while the school kids goggled in disbelief. And I can't count the number of times Dominic has told people (sometimes the same ones over and over again) how Jamie actually BURIED a deep fryer in someone's back yard. Yes, the glee his antics inspire in my kids is rather alarming. Anyhow, he also inspired us to make the dessert you see here. It's called a semifreddo. I know, I know, it looks like a large pile of whipped cream and a blob of chocolate and mini marshmallows, but it's actually a large pile of whipped cream and a blob of chocolate and mini marshmallows with SNICKERS bars. The recipe calls for more Snickers bars than I had on hand — I only had 5 fun size Snickers bars (how this size is fun I'll never know) left over from Halloween — so I improvised a bit, using the chocolate sauce from Max's DIY sundae party and some miniature marshmallows.
Here's the semifreddo before it went in the freezer. I didn't have the fellow dressed as a turkey to fling whipping cream around but I managed to get some on the floor nevertheless. And we didn't have the teeny tiny cones Jamie used, but it sure was good.






Finally, every time I ate a Christmas clementine, I was faced with these words: Win A College Education. I don't know about you, but there is something dreadfully disconcerting about seeing this sentence on one's Christmas orange. I felt affronted anew each time, even though they were remarkably good clementines.

How Does It Feel To Be Fifteen?

No sooner do we get Christmas over with in this house than we must start thinking about a certain eldest child's birthday. We move from Christmas wrap and Christmas tags to birthday wrap and birthday tags in one fell swoop. I know it's very unMartha-ish of me to say it, let alone DO it, but often the birthday wrapping paper around here IS Christmas wrap.

Fortunately this year I can thank Rampant Commercial Consumerism (in the guise of a car advert that ran simultaneously on television and newsprint) for providing me with some fairly glitzy vehicle wrapping paper. They slipped a whole sheet of the stuff inside the newspaper right before Christmas. It's actually quite nice wrap, too.

This year marks a new direction in the Birthday Cake Department. Since I am Chief Designer I get a lot of weird orders. Some suggestion I nix right off the bat (LEGO men that stand, anything over 18", too much black icing) and some I have to guide in slightly less sugary directions, but for the most part the kids can choose any kind of cake they want. I've made cakes that look like ferries, cakes that look like LEGO bricks, cakes with trains on them, and even cakes that look like Totoro, Oms (Miyazaki's Nausicaa) or hamburgers.

This year my instructions were to make a tall cake. A very tall cake. A cake at least two feet high. Which, if you are a careful reader, you will have noted is a direct contravening of the rules (no cake over 18"). That rule is there for a reason. Actually, three reasons:

1) the inside pieces totally lose out when it comes to icing.

2) the Chief Designer doesn't like to do dowels or supports on cakes. A cake over 12" high will require dowels or supports.

3) I don't have a knife that will cut a 24" cake. And I'm not sure I want to have one.

This year, instead of a 24" cake, I convinced the birthday boy to go for a DIY sundae, because it would combine brownies, ice cream, marshmallows, whipped cream, chocolate, butterscotch, and strawberry sauces, and lots of candy in one go. I even took him to the bulk store and let him pick the candy. Well, perhaps pick is not the operative word...let's just say that I guided his hand fairly firmly past the Lindt Christmas truffles and towards the M&Ms and gummies. I'm what I like to call Cheaply Benevolent.

Happily, it all worked out. Right now the birthday boy and his pals are - there's no other word for it - gorging themselves on their creations. There's lots of laughter, choking, dribbles, spills, crunching, and jostling - a perfect mix if you're a teen-age boy.

How does it feel to be fifteen? I don't remember, but I liked the answer one of his friends had:

"I don't know! How does it feel to be 40?" (much laughter ensues)

Such a wit.

Merry Christmas!

If you've seen the December cover of the MSL magazine, you'll know what's going on here; if you haven't, well, you won't know what the heck is going on here. Never mind, go have some more eggnog.

Happy Christmas from all of us here at Greenridge Chronicles, including Angry Bird.

Christmas Eve

I wake up in the dark, with the cat licking my hand and purring in the way he does. His purr sounds like he had a particularly bad case of pneumonia when he was a kitten; it's crackly and uneven and wheezy. If he were one of the kids I'd be inclined to say "get a drink of water for heaven's sakes.." or worry about incipient bronchitis, but since he's a slightly neurotic cat I thump his tummy instead, hoping to get him to shift a little and lower the decibels.

He doesn't. Instead he crawls up the bed until he's lying right in my face, which means his butt is right in Richard's face. He purrs louder, rumbling like a poorly maintained dump truck. Richard is sleeping so he doesn't know that Toffee's bottom is in his face, but the idea of it, combined with his usual reaction when Toffee does this ("Toffee, I do not find the sight of your anal glands very attractive"), causes me to start giggling. Toffee is pleased and starts licking my shoulder vigorously. Together we manage to wake Richard up. Richard is not pleased. He does not find Toffee's early morning wheeze amusing.

It is Christmas Eve. And this is the start of my day.

I don't know what Christmas is like where you live, but where I live Christmas is a big deal: stores close early on Christmas Eve, with signs posted that say things like "Our staff is having a Christmas party this afternoon so we're closing early! We reopen December 27th. Have a Merry Christmas!" Yes, you read that right - things actually shut down for more than a day. When I first moved back here from six years in California I remember feeling quite indignant ("What? I have to think ahead about how much milk I have in the fridge? How LAME is that!"), but the feeling gradually wore off. Canada is quietly and fiercely proud of its parochialism, and six years in the heady wilds of pre-recession California made me forget briefly that I was, for better or for worse, not an American.

We have spent much of the week on our usual Christmas pursuits: making things that smell good, baking things that taste good, crafting things that look good, and getting together, for better or for worse, with relatives and friends. Some of these get togethers are pleasant and we all look forward to them; some we simply endure, like we do the flu, hoping they will end swiftly and without too much trauma. This last instance is why we now have a Post-it note stuck to the answering machine, with various telephone numbers written on it; this is my version of the Do Not Answer list.

"It's _____!" shrieks FDPG (who lives to patrol the telephone) "Do I answer it?"

"NO!!!!" I shriek back, fear and horror gripping my heart like cold death.

Sigh. Christmas.