Telephone

Do you know the children's game Telephone? Everybody sits in a circle, and one person starts a "rumor." They whisper it to the person next to them, who whispers it to the next person, and so on. The last person to hear it says it out loud, and then everybody laughs at how different it is from the original.

Well, this story may be like that. I don't know.

This is a true story. It happened to some friends of the in-laws of a friend of my sister's. (Got that?)

So the family is in Chicago for a day, and they decide to go to the aquarium. They've heard great things about it, and they know their kids will have a good time there. But, they've only been there for a little bit when they realize that their four-year-old is missing. They look for him quickly, don't see him, and grab a staff member from the aquarium to report that he's missing. The staff shut down the aquarium, and they find him THREE HOURS LATER. Ellen, my sister, was telling me this, and I was practically hyperventilating. I cannot even imagine the fear and panic those parents must have been feeling.

So, they finally find him, and they're so relieved that they just leave. The older siblings are a little annoyed because in the midst of all the panic, they never really got to have fun there. They've been on the road for just over an hour, and everybody's kind of zoned out, and the little boy says, "Daddy? Getting lost wasn't the worst thing I did today."

And the dad, only half paying attention, says, "What was the worst thing you did today?"

"I have a flamingo in my backpack."



No one's quite sure what to think. But they have to check. They pull off the road. The dad hops out, runs around to the passenger door, and opens the backpack.

There's a baby flamingo inside.

They turn around and drive back to the aquarium.

They return the flamingo.

They are asked to never return.



True story.

Growth & the Color of the Day

My garden is growing. And, we had to install a "fence" to keep Lily out. After the weekend's rain, though, the rope had stretched enough that she just jumped over it and ran through my garden beds, so Bob tightened it up on Sunday afternoon.

The girls helped me label the seedlings coming up yesterday.

This little zucchini sprout makes me happier than I can say.

And my tomato plants (which, apparently, my dad didn't think would make it!) are doing just fine, thank you very much!
This is my Mother's Day rose. I can't wait to get it in the ground. And I didn't even attempt subtlety when we were at the greenhouse picking it out: this is what I would like for Mother's Day each year. A new rosebush.


Changing the subject: Lucy has been having trouble identifying colors, so I decided we should make flashcards.

Necessary supplies: paint, paper cut to size, paintbrushes, baby food containers for the paint, tape to hold the paper in place on the table, and Caffeine Free Diet Coke.

Caroline was very focused and methodical, covering every inch of her paper.

Lucy's still working on finding a comfortable grip on her paintbrush.

The finished products:

Today's color of the day:

Quotes from my house:

"I'm just going to put this beer on top of the frozen breast milk." --my husband, on chilling some beer in the freezer

"Not everyone has a pulpit in their foyer." --Bob again. And I want to know, if you don't have a pulpit, why not??

"But I've had a hard day, and I need to snuggle." -- Caroline, on why she didn't want to get up from her nap yesterday.



And, I'm sorry for this, but every time I think about my garden, in my head I hear "Plants in the ground/ Plants in the ground/ Looking like a fool with your plants in the ground..."

On my mind:

• My throat hurts, a lot.
• I really really want to get a treadmill. I keep checking Craigslist for a good deal. The only question is if I'm willing to have it out and visible in the house ... you know, since I'm trying to make the house more cozy. Nothing quite says cozy like a treadmill.
• I have so much laundry to get done before we head out of town for a week! And not much time to get it done.
• We're planning to get away (without kids!) for our eighth anniversary in July, and I'm excited already. We're both running on fumes these days. My parents are going to stay with the kids, and we're going to head to Chicago and use the gift certificate generously given to us for Christmas. (Thanks, Jon & Tomo!)
  
• Bob's mentioned the Iowa Writer's Workshop a couple times to me lately, and it was enough to make me go check it out. Because, you know, I'm ready to start a career. (Not really. But I occasionally think I'd like to be a pharmacist, and Bob suggested that, rather than going to pharmacy school, I should study writing. And make good use of that Accounting degree I worked 3 1/2 years for.)
• Really, my dream job would be to buy old houses and rehab them. And make a profit, I guess, though really, I'd just like to see the houses come alive again.
• Will has decided he likes solid foods, which makes my life easier.
• The tree next door is still down. No sign of any trimming or clean-up any time soon. Is it possible that it's our tree?

(Can you see the top of the neighbor's skateboard ramp? And the sword that's stuck in the tree trunk that's still standing? No? Well, I can.)

• We had a really nice time with my brother-in-law Jon, when he came last weekend for a quick visit. Caroline really loves her uncle Jon, and it was no surprise when she wanted him to put her to bed. And it didn't hurt that she got to (try to) skype with Tomo in Japan on Jon's new iPad.

April showers

Leviticus 26:

³ " 'If you follow my decrees and are careful to obey my commands, ⁴ I will send you rain in its season, and the ground will yield its crops and the trees of the field their fruit. ⁵ Your threshing will continue until grape harvest and the grape harvest will continue until planting, and you will eat all the food you want and live in safety in your land."

...

⁹ " 'I will look on you with favor and make you fruitful and increase your numbers, and I will keep my covenant with you. ¹⁰ You will still be eating last year's harvest when you will have to move it out to make room for the new. "

These are beautiful verses, and now that I have a garden, I feel much more in tune with the weather. I need rain for my crops. All of a sudden, we have been sent rain in its season, and my little tomato plants are liking it.

Unfortunately, the beautiful big old weeping willow tree that's between our house and our neighbor's? It didn't make it through the rain unscathed. It was in rough shape already, scarred, awkwardly trimmed, but what was growing grew well. Tonight, I was really sad to discover that a huge portion of the tree, almost half of it, fell today. If it hit their house, it was just barely: I don't believe there's any damage to the house. But, oh!, the tree! Even in its uneven, awkward state, it was still a thing of beauty. Now it's mostly ugly, with a patch of beauty.

I am grieving.

An archaeological dig...

or at least it feels like one.

In the course of digging my garden, I have come across:

4 marbles
1/2 of a bone
1 souvenir-type bicycle license plate from California that says JOSHUA
1 clothespin
1 piece of some kind of gear
1 metal tube, rusted, and filled with soil

and, of course:
lots of earthworms
a snake hole, I think
rotted tree roots
tons of ants
some rocks

It's been fun. And I'm not quite done. Beds 1 and 2 are complete and ready for planting. Bed #3 has been single-dug (as in, all the soil removed to one spade's depth); next up is to turn the next spade's-depth worth of soil with a pitchfork, then put a layer of compost on top of that, and then return the topsoil to the bed. Bed #3 has been my most efficient yet, with the single-digging taking an hour and a half. The turning and composting is fairly quick, and I hope to get that done today. The most tedious part for me is breaking up the clods of topsoil so that the top of the bed is airy and ready for new roots to dig in.

I hope to plant the first seeds in the garden by the end of the week, and my seedlings that I started inside are doing well already.

I'm finding gardening to be very addictive...

We are Dorks.

Yes, we are.

I planted some basil and cilantro seeds in some little pots on my kitchen windowsill. They came in a sweet little kit from my sister, for my birthday a while back.


As the seeds started growing, I became suspicious. The basil didn't look like basil at all, but more like parsley. I told Bob they'd given us the wrong seeds in that little kit. I was amused and annoyed. I was getting ready to call Ellen and tell her about the mix-up, when all of a sudden, Bob solved the problem.

I had just put the the labels on the wrong pots. It's true, that never occurred to me.

And you know how I said we are dorks? Well, Bob was super-gluing something yesterday, and set the super glue down on his desk. No, not on his desk exactly, but on a book. And last night, he brought this down to show me. Yep. Super glue stuck to his Bible.

We are dorks.