Pumpkins

This weekend I took the girls to The Pumpkin Patch on Sauvie Island, a place where u-pick meets consumer kitsch, and the parking lots overflow with cars from all over the region. We haven't been there in a while. Duchess brought a new friend she met in French class, an exchange student (somewhat bewilderingly) from Sweden, and Skipper brought a friend whom she first met when they were both toddlers tagging along to their big sisters' kindergarten dropoffs. It was a nice outing, and the kids were all good company. I'm generally opposed to chauffeuring, and I usually stay out of the way of their friends, because I am embarrassing, but I was reminded today that it is often a pleasure to hang out with them and their friends, who are generally interesting and funny and able to keep a conversation rolling merrily along. (And apparently I was able to keep my embarrassingness under the tolerance threshold.)

Things are fine. The weather has been unseasonably warm and sunny. Duchess is in the throes of college applications. Skipper continues to do crosscountry and ultimate frisbee. Cook has been taking time off work to do house work, because that is still how he rolls. I just emptied my entire work email inbox into a new folder labeled "old stuff - unsorted" so that I can PRETEND I don't have 300 un-dealt-with emails looming over my head. I recommend this dumb psychological trick - I feel amazingly relaxed.

Farm Munny

Skipper and Duchess both get an allowance. Duchess has gotten more careful over time about how she spends her money, but Skipper has been miserly from the start. When I ask her if she wants to bring her money to, say, the candy store or the toy store, she always says, without hesitation, some variation on this:  "No, because if I spend my money I won't have it any more."

Yesterday I asked her what she's saving her money for, and she said, again without hesitation, "Animals." It turns out that she's saving up to buy a farm.

I found the perfect pumpkin...

I took the kids on our traditional annual trip* to The Pumpkin Patch. Skipper hated most of it, and made me carry her most of the time. (She did find a clod of dried mud that she she liked a lot, and she brought it home.) Dutch had a great time. And now we have pumpkins!

*2010,  2009, 2008, 2007

This weekend

 Dutch started telling us this evening that she might decide to get rich when she grows up. "I know how to get rich," she informed us casually. Cook and I gave her our full attention, but when she said "Well, to start with, you have to have at least $300," I decided I had to film the explanation.

*

And then when I plugged the camera into the computer to download the video, I discovered that there were about twenty short videos on the camera (which was surprisingly low on battery power when I picked it up) that Skipper had taken. Apparently she's been furtively filming for the last month or so. Here is what Cook and I judged to be her finest work, shot yesterday. She hasn't done any editing, so it's a little rough.

*(Dutch got a haircut this weekend. It looks pretty great, actually, though this very unflatteringly-lit video suggests otherwise.)

Catching Up

1) I'm finished with the winter term! Now I just have to get through four more days of work (spread out over nearly three weeks), and then I'll have my table cleared of everything except gestating and The Big School Project. (My Big Project teammates, incidentally, are cool with the whole giving-birth-in-the-middle thing. One of them has infant twins, and cheerfully expressed the opinion that "you can do anything with just ONE baby at a time!")

2) Things are changing in Uterus Land. I'm not going to give any grisly details, but I will tell you that I am aware that my body is moving into the home stretch. This does not at all mean that I will give birth any time soon (the kid needs to marinate a few more weeks), but Anaximander and I have turned a corner.

3) I fell down this morning, crossing the street at higher speed than was wise.* I scraped my hands and knees, gave Anaximander a good thump (on my jacket-filled bag, fortunately, rather than the asphalt), and generally scared the bejeezus out of myself, Dutch, and a whole lot of horrified bystanders.** We all seem to be fine - it wasn't at all a serious fall, and the impact to my torso was pretty gentle. If it had happened to somebody else, I would confidently reassure them that everything is surely perfectly fine. But I felt shaky and scared all morning. Thinking about it right now is giving me the cold sweats. The world is a dangerous place! Also, I remembered that I fell while crossing the street when I was more or less this pregnant with Dutch,*** and I had the exact same horrifying sensation of crashing down and forward in slow motion, my legs scrambling under me like Wiley Coyote's, unable to recover myself because of my ridiculous center of gravity, the pavement coming up toward me... ugh.

4) I realized that the three days I have coming up with Dutch next week (her daycare is briefly closed during my spring break) will be our last sibling-free time off together. I'm going to try to be as mindful as possible for at least SOME of that time - it sounds silly and new-age-y, but I'd like to spend some time just being with her, without any agenda, to see what she's all about. I'm looking forward to it. I'm sure I will spend lots of time trying to rush her along on my agenda, and being irritated, and trying to avoid playing unicorn games, but I'm going to do my best.

5) I've found a fabulous summer camp for Dutch! It's located very close to us, and involves lots of outdoor-in-nature time (though they have a slightly alarming warning on the website that you shouldn't send your kid to this camp unless s/he "can be a real kid" - I'm hoping Dutch doesn't turn out to be a fake kid, because I've invested a lot in her, and that would be a bummer), AND has camps for 4-5-year-olds with the sort of themes that could have been custom-tailored for Dutch. I mean, really - giving her a choice between "Big House in the Little Valley" (aka "Old Days Camp") and "Faeries, Elves, and Mostly Friendly Dragons" (aka "Mom, there aren't really fairies, right? Right? Camp") is basically like giving her a choice between pink glitter and silver glitter.**** I told her she could go to one session (mornings only!), as I'm desperately going to need some time off from at least the one kid this summer, and we can't afford more than one week. She has chosen the first option, in spite of the fact that I told her firmly that they will not have horses and wagons available,***** and decided she'll do dragon camp next summer.

6) Dutch has declared her ambition to be, when she grows up, "a mom who lives on a farm and rides horses a lot." My girl dreams big. (Though, in fairness, this ambition is probably temporary and fueled by the reading of this series.)



*In my defense, I was engaged in playing, at Dutch's behest, a newly-minted game called "The Wife and The Unicorn," which requires some frolicking. All the unicorn games do.
**Apparently the sight of a massively pregnant woman crashing to the ground in the middle of the street is not a happy one.
*** NOT playing unicorn games; just attempting to cross the street before the light went red...
**** There's no right answer here. We just love glitter.
***** I've requested Little House in the Big Woods from the library, and am expecting to spend the next six months playing homesteading games. Which I think I'll probably like better than princess and unicorn games.

Seasonal

We have these friends, Emma Goldman and Brendan Behan,* who are completely fantastic about holidays. They invite us over for all sorts of holiday-related events, like Christmas-cookie-making, St Patrick's Day parties, and so on (and, of course, Thanksgiving), and there is always some sort of craft, and also heaps and heaps of food. This Halloween, we have been over to their house to make a scarecrow for their porch, and this weekend to make masks (one for Dutch to wear, and some others for their decorations), and pick pumpkins! We went to the same enormous place as last year - a vast empire of harvesty consumerism. Better weather this year, though!














































This year, Dutch got to go on the Cow Train, that she wanted to ride so badly last year. She paid for her ride with her own money, and went all by herself, on a "cow" with limply dangling front legs, wheels for back legs, and an unpleasantly butcher-themed name. She was thrilled













This is what she looked like running toward us after her adventure.













Then we went over to Super-Crafty House to paint the papier-mache masks that we had made the day before. It was a nice day.













* We really have very few non-kid-related friends in Portland, so we cherish those we have.

The Lollipop Guild requests another story.

Yesterday I made a profound discovery that I'm sure many people have made before me. (Since maybe a hundred billion people have ever been born, probably 999,999,999,000 people have preceded me.) When your kid asks you to tell her a story, you DO NOT HAVE TO MAKE ONE UP. (And if, like me, you have no imagination whatsoever, and always tell stories about nice kids who brush their teeth very thoroughly and say please and thankyou in the course of their incredibly boring days, this is a very good discovery to make.) You can retell a story you remember dimly from your childhood, and your kid will listen raptly to your every word, and beg to hear the whole fumbling thing again.

If you happen to pick a story that at one point involved Judy Garland and the entire midget population of California, you may have difficulty recalling the plot, which is weird. This doesn't matter. Your kid thinks this is the most mindbogglingly fantastic story ever, even though you keep backtracking ("oh, and there were these shoes!") and the plot has some serious holes in it. Your kid doesn't care, because at least nobody brushes their teeth, and when the witch gets squished, nobody apologizes. Also, it's SCARY. This is thrilling.
You will never have to make up another boring story again. Congratulations!

(photo of amazing pumpkin from http://www.flickr.com/photos/digitalburn/283576582/)

Fall Weekend

We are winding up a crazy weekend that was unusually social and strangely thematic. We made and canned applesauce on Saturday, and on Sunday we went to one of those bizarro, sprawling places where they sell pumpkins and hayrides and tours of the corn maze and whatnot.

Dutch threw some fantastic whining fits in the vast pumpkin field (she was ticked off that we didn't spring for a ride on the Cow Train, which we totally would have sprung for had it actually been as cool as it sounds), but cheered up when we got back to the "farm" and she got to climb on a hay-bale mountain. (Also crawl through the 20-feet-long parent-freakout-inducing culvert pipes placed under the haybale-mountain.) And see the animals in the "Animal Barn," which featured a dead goat. (Seriously. They removed it in a cardboard box while we were there. Dutch didn't notice, fortunately.) It was all both creepy and delightful, and I felt like I was getting to fill some sort of gap in my childhood that I hadn't even realized existed. Picking pumpkins out of a HUGE field, with lots of other people! Cool! We got ourselves $5 worth of pumpkins and some pictures of Dutch ogling squash.

And stepping on rotten pumpkins.

And admiring the peculiar photo op. Aren't these usually supposed to involve bodies for your face? Or is the kid supposed to be a worm in the pumpkin?

Also, we got to ride the tractor hayride, which was very exciting for Dutch, and almost made up for missing out on the Cow Train.

Farm Bill!

So... the Farm Bill! Call your senator! You can read a bit about it here (and read a public health-oriented explanation here) and you can take easy email action here (though I personally added some extras about subsidies and corn) and somewhat less easy action here. The Farm Bill is a HUUUUUUGE bill chockfull of pork (for my grandmother, who hates pork, I include this link - just click on it, Farmor) that benefits agribusiness and subsidizes junkfood, while ignoring or giving short shrift to small family farms, sustainable farms, local food systems, farmers markets, farm-to-school programs, and foodshed-building efforts. It impacts all of us, and everybody should do something about it in the next week or two, as the Senate considers it. If you don't feel like contacting your senator or writing a letter to the editor, you should go to the farmers market nearest you, and buy something. I hear the tomatoes are lovely.

More Gorgeous Produce

Today we went to the farmers market again, and loaded up on all sorts of lovely things. I made and froze some pesto (and was astonished by how little pesto comes from bushels of basil). We're having lemony green beans for supper, and peach-blackberry crisp, and pizza (another way to combine starch with tomatoes, basil, and mozzarella). Dutch met yeast for the first time.

Speaking of Food

I've been thinking a lot about produce lately, what with it being August and all. Our farm share is inexplicably yielding no tomatoes, which is a weekly source of irritation. We did get a giant bag of amaranth greens, of all things, this week. Also squash blossoms, which are very pretty but do not inspire my taste buds. We've been taking Dutch to farmers markets galore, too, to indulge her insatiable appetite for corn, and she's very clear on the wondrous potential of samples. I think she ate her weight in samples (peaches, bread, nectarines, plums, goatcheese, hazelnuts, strawberries, blueberries, blackberries, tomatoes...) at the market today, and also had her first donut (maple, with icing), which she referred to later as a "candy bagel" when she requested more. Today we're having summer squash casserole, cucumbers vinaigrette, and corn for dinner. Very yellow, but the blueberries for dessert will balance it out, and we can have amaranth greens tomorrow.

I'm pretty thrilled with the swell of interest in local fresh produce. I love going to a farmers market packed with people buying mountains of peaches that have traveled 30 miles from their picking place. I read a provocative article the other day (from Above the Fold, which I recommend to all) which said that walking rather than driving actually PROMOTES global warming, because our food system is so oil-dependent that the calories you have to eat to fuel your walk actually cost more gas than driving your car, if you eat in a conventional developed-world way. The message is that we need to turn our attention to our food systems, and make them more sustainable. (Not that we should all stop walking.)

I do have good intentions; I try to buy locally and seasonally. Mostly, though, I'm motivated to shop locally because I love good tomatoes in season, especially the expensive and gorgeous heirloom tomatoes, and most especially heirloom black tomatoes. I have a visceral thrill of pleasure every time I pick one of those things up, warm from the sun, thin-skinned, heavy as a guinea pig. Every summer, Cook and I end up eating a lot of meals that involve a big bowl of raw tomatoes, olive oil, basil, and mozzarella, usually with pasta and parmesan, and maybe a side dish if we can remind ourselves that there are other produce items we should be eating. Also, I love orange cherry tomatoes. And blueberries. Having a toddler around gave me an excuse last summer to buy huge quantities of blueberries (she needs to learn about healthy treats!), something I'd never done before, due to the expense. I can't think of many domestic experiences more luxurious than having a ton of fresh blueberries in your kitchen waiting to be eaten.

Anyway. I've got squash to cook, and blueberries to wash. May you all have nice produce in your kitchens.

Produce

Today was the second week of the Harvesting of The CSA Share. The principle of CSA (Community-Supported Agriculture), in case you've missed my food lecture, is that you give the farmer a whole bunch of money upfront, when they need it to buy seed and equipment and get things started, and then you get a share of the harvest all season, however large or small it turns out to be - risk-sharing. It's a great system, guaranteeing the farmer some income, eliminating the middleman, and cutting out a substantial amount of packaging, processing, and transportation from the food chain. The farmer drives a whole bunch of produce to a local dropoff spot once a week and we go fetch our vegetables. This week we got fava beans, spinach, mixed sauteeing greens, lettuce, carrots, and something called "garlic chives" that is surely destined to get increasingly flaccid in the fridge hydrator until we eventually clean it out. ("Eventually" in this case meaning probably three months from now, by which time it will actually have become integrated into the matrix of the plastic drawer. )

I had to schlep a bunch of work stuff (plus some new trashy books from the library) by train to Dutch's daycare, take her and my stuff on a train and then a bus, then walk 7 blocks to the pickup site, pack up all our veggies, walk 6 blocks, and catch another bus home. Dutch and I were both pretty grumpy and tired, but my burden was lightened by the sight of her, seriously grimy from a long day of daycare, sitting on a busstop bench in her pink cowboy boots, gnawing on a carrot. We self-satisfied yuppie mommies are always raving about the joys of sharing gardening and fresh produce with our delightful children, and IT'S TRUE. She loves the farm carrots so much that she can't wait for me to get the rest of the produce - I must prepare a carrot for her as soon as I start picking them out of the box. (Preparing entails rubbing the carrot on my jeans to get some dirt off, then sloshing some backwashy water from her bottle over it. I hope the farmer isn't having any trouble with E. coli...) And it's not even that they taste fabulous, though they're perfectly nice carrots. She's excited about eating that carrot because the farmer brought it in the truck! And the farmer's dog licked her! And the carrot still had its top on, but we took the tops off all the carrots and put them in the bucket to be given to another farm-sharer's pet rabbit! And there's some dirt on the carrot! And you can't eat the green part, only the orange part! Apparently the produce from the grocery store is too tame for Dutch. She walks on the wild side.