More summer loving

Laura said it's time to come in!

But the big girls didn't want to come in... because they were enjoying KL's homemade ice cream, delivered into the water just like our rural version of a swim-up bar.



Meanwhile Salvador slept in his basket.

And the junior lifeguards went back to their duties.

While Gracie denied being tired. Or hot. Or anything but quiet.


Someone was always ready to pick up the baby.

And ice cream lured Grace and Cameron back out of afternoon exhaustion.

Sweet friend Emily turned out to be a baby whisperer.

And food. Oh, the food! Pulled pork sandwiches, pesto pasta salad, watermelon and berry salad.

We hated it to be over. And that's why you have to suffer through two posts about the big birthday bash at the lake.

After the water adventures the big girls returned home with us to attempt to stay up late in our glamper (Glamorous camper? Glamper? Anyone?) with movies and snacks.

They slept like puppies in a pile and woke to homemade waffles and more blueberries. Also to the little girls clamoring to join them.

Don't you just love summer?

What are your traditions that let you know it's summertime for sure?

When good dolls go to the spa

You know those days... those days when your husband comes home, looks around, and says (without words), "What did they do all day?"

Well... yesterday might have been one of those days. Sure, we had drop-off and pick-up and a storm warning and its accompanying grocery store run and feed store stop. I hadn't been to the grocery store in a month, friends! Then we took a stab at chores and school.

But what we really wanted to do was to untangle those dolls' hair.

Don't you just love/hate the internet? You truly can learn anything on there.

A little Downy (another love, even in this time of homemade laundry soap and homemade cleaning solutions), a little near-boiling water, and an hour or so later Sophie and Stacy have beautiful flowing tresses again. Ready for braids and adventures.

Grace Hannah And Her Excellent Entourage

When you're 4, and the third girl in a four-daughter household, you might be tempted to retire into shy introspection.

Or you might be a complete drama queen in a bid to capture some territory, noisewise.



But what to do when all the friends belong to your older and infinitely cooler sisters and all the oohs and aahs for the moment are received by your chubby-adorable baby sister?

What to do?

In the case of Grace Hannah, you go big or go home. She has recently introduced us to her friends, all ten of them. They are represented, interestingly enough, by her fingers. All of the boys' names end in "o" and all the girls' names end in "a." This is very Romance Language of her, I think.

The boys all live on her left and the girls all live on her right. They have individual personalities and attributes. She can tell you about them in detail (and trust me, your head would spin). My favorite is her left index finger. His name is Chacho, and he is "very, very naughty." How naughty, you ask, because you can't wait to hear? "He picks noses."

I had brief brushes with imaginary friendship as a child. I remember conjuring a girl named Annie when my stubborn parents wouldn't take me to town to see real children and my brother (I first typed "bother," but there's nothing to that Freud stuff, I'm certain) was too busy selling tickets to "see the biggest bird turd in the world" (aka a spilled can of white paint in the woods) to play with me. Ten cents. That's how much he earned per visitor. Why wouldn't he rather play with me? Why?

Anyway Annie would play with me all day long. But I didn't have a tenth of Gracie's imagination (One-tenth. Hah hah.); my Annie was notably similar to, you know, Broadway's Annie. Red curly hair, orphaned, a great singer. She liked to read with me under the big maple trees. But a lot of time I'd forget her out there.

Not Grace. She takes her friends with her everywhere we go. She whispers her observations to them when Maddy and Sarah won't listen. It's a very attentive crowd.

This morning is like the first bite out of a chilled apple. The landscape taut and defined, the views each framed by fog like a photographer's custom lens trick. On mornings like this I feel supremely blessed to walk around our farmyard acre, feeding animals and checking on plants.

I even woke up at a farmer's hour this morning. Ryan was up at 5, the baby and I shortly after. Madeleine and Sarah dutifully up at 6:15. Ryan asked Madeleine whether she slept in her clothes, so quickly did she get dressed. That girl was born organized. She always chooses her outfit the night before. Sarah is more of a mini me (read: *not* born organized) and spends her dressing time holding the baby, drinking her cocoa, finishing a puzzle. When it's time to go she will exclaim that she has no socks. Usually that is the least of her problems at that point.

Grace didn't wake up until 7:30, just as the girls were leaving for school. She is engrossed in Clifford, eating her circle toast (English muffin) and drinking her cocoa. Today she is going to "gramma 'nita's" while Laura and I go to work with Ryan.

Things at the office are weird. I don't know if that word is right. Actually, I know that word is wrong, but I can't put my brain on the right one. We are facing our second round of payroll, figuring out the cash flow, trying to stay positive as we wait for the busier season to roll around. The phone has started to ring quite a bit and we implemented a system for the estimates to get back out in a timely manner. Ryan is rolling right along with his city contract and trying to find time to do other billable work and get the office going. We have this last payroll check to pay for the sellers' vacation time, then the first payment on the note. We have to talk to them about employment going forward. The first couple of weeks of the new business Ryan was still at his old job and I wondered often whether I have the stomach for running a company. Well, that's a moot question, really. We just do it, to quote Nike.

So my second cup of coffee is almost gone, I'm still in my PJs/barn clothes (this is when I roll out of bed in my sweats and throw one of Ryan's shirts over the whole outfit, slip on my rubber garden shoes and call it good) and I am supposed to deliver Grace to the neighbor's house in 20 minutes. Better go clean up and put on office attire.

Foiled Again

So I write three posts over the weekend. Saturday I had dropped M&S off at the twins' house, plugged in a movie for Grace and put Laura down for a nap. Ryan was off helping my mom move to Lorane and the house was quiet and clean. Who needs Calgon?

So many of the wild ideas I'd been herding were roped and penned and put away for the night. I made lists of topics. I compared/contrasted blogging and journaling and contemplated the concept of thought police. I detailed my crazy moms' night out of Friday with KL. I even apologized (to whom we don't know, since the only folks who read this are Ryan and KL) for my bad attitude toward the B&B neighbors. After writing that most thoughtful and well-conceived blog, I turned to Grace, who had tiptoed up to my elbow to request peanut butter crackers. She absent-mindedly hit a few random and deadly keys. The screen went blank and the blog was not to be revived. I gave up until Sunday after church, when the big girls were back from their sleepover and entertaining Grace and the baby. Ryan, again, moving my mom. I typed an abbreviated version. The "post" key was missing from my screen. I logged off and logged back on and then wrote "argh" and still, no post key.

This morning all is well computer-wise. Maybe I wasn't supposed to apologize for my previous B&B rants. You think?

Spring Break is over. We had such huge and vicious hailstorms yesterday that all my ranunculus (which Ryan told me not to put out yet) are knocked down. The daffodils survived okay, those that the girls hadn't picked. We don't have as many daffodils as KL's lushly covered acre, but ours are thick and naturalized throughout the secret garden and surrounding the "brick house," which is really an old foundation under a grandfather big-leaf maple that the girls use to play house in. I dug out all the bulbs in the new upper horse paddock because I didn't want them hoof -smashed and then Shelly told me they're poisonous to livestock.

So Ryan went back to work today and the big girls are back to school. I haven't fed the horses yet this morning so I will have to catch up on the blogging later. So glad to be able to post again.

ruralite

Having something to say is more important than being able to express it perfectly. An ad on craigslist the other day begged help for writer's block. I stared at the post and contemplated a reply but couldn't think of what to say.

My girls are home from school, the oldest frantically recreating her last two weeks' menus for a nutrition journal. I personally would go for creative writing on that one, but she is very literal. The teacher may not appreciate my menu planning, but he ought to give her an A for her memory. Each bowl of squash soup and each plate of butter noodles is carefully recorded, albeit with a procrastinatory streak she got from me.

An author's note at the beginning of a book I'm reading thanks her family for eating "pretty much whatever" when the writer is on deadline.

Tomorrow I leave for a three-day writing retreat and today I have no words.

Okay, so that's never literally true for me. I have no worthy words. We have spent all of my words these past weeks on lawyers and title officers and accountants and I am more likely to use my retreat in a monklike silence than in finishing a manuscript.

The leaves outside have begun to turn. We had our first frost and the garden withered into the black mushy stuff that is hard to believe ever was edible, even to our ravenous deer population. The chickens, so briefly laying after a fall molt, are now rebelling again. The horses are muddy and furry and my mother-in-law retrieved her clippers so their manes are looking decidedly mohawkish.

The grass hasn't yet begun to green, even though the rainstorms have filled all the leftover summer toys in the yard with rust-colored water. My pantlegs are soaked with dew after each morning's chores. I pulled six dried cornstalks and cut armloads of rosehips and decorated the front porch. I trimmed (almost all of) the lavender hedge and filled three grocery bags with the makings of sachets and eye pillows and Christmas bazaar sales. This all feels pretty rural-lite because nearly every day I have put on citified clothes, or my most citified maternity clothes, and visited a professional to help us wade through the IRS and business-buying and property-selling issues that populate my non-rural, non-mom world.

We did attend the Rural Art Center's movie premiere of the season. Each fall and winter, the RAC lures us from fireside evenings once a month to watch a movie and eat popcorn and socialize in the grange hall. We haven't attended before, but this offering was family-friendly. A screening of the 1927 silent film "The General," filmed in Cottage Grove, along with shorts by local teens and professional filmmakers about Oregon wildlife. I now know quite a bit about nutria. I wish I could say that's what drove me to spend so much time in the city of late.

More after my trip to the coast.

Fall

There's Grace eating marshmallows and quesadillas in the great outdoors. Summer went too quickly, as usual. The deer ate everything from our garden except the cornstalks. The girls ate every possible meal outside. The hornets and wasps ate chunks of me. And now...

We had ice on the horses' water this morning. The hose was slow; the water came out like a slushy. It's September on the hobby farm and we are cold. Last weekend Ryan and a neighbor trenched from our lower well to the barn to bury water and electricity. Hurray! No more hoses and extension cords. Well, as soon as the pipes and conduit are connected we will realize the benefit of this convenience dream.

I'm not sure I'm ready for the the change of seasons. Or maybe I subconsciously am. It seems about this time every year the watering of the garden and flowerbeds gets to be too much ... and getting out of bed gets harder. The chickens and rabbits noticed my tardiness this morning. The horses were stomping and calling for me, blowing their steamy horse breath around the paddock with impatience. I wore one of Ryan's big denim shirts and tread the fine line between hurrying and not slipping on frosty grass.

We have been worried about money again. The first stall isn't closed in and the second stall isn't started. The hay is in the barn but not paid for in full. My freezer isn't full either, thanks to the aforementioned deer. It costs money to build a deer fence too. For some reason I thought they wouldn't bother my tomatoes, peppers, beans. So they did and I will visit a farm stand to do my canning and freezing. The chickens are bothered by molting or the hot days and cold nights or something and anyway we are buying eggs. The school wants $10 per child for classroom incidentals and I am waiting for the FedEx everyday, hoping for the check that is 58 days past due, walking to the post office with Grace and stopping at the general store for the paper to read and do the crossword and wait for the girls to come home. Climbing mount washmore and greatly missing the days of the paid housekeeper.

Applying for jobs. Six months pregnant and hoping for an editing job when I haven't edited -- other than second-checking homework -- in years. I was so excited the other day when a distantly known editor called me out of the blue. So sure that he represented one of the blind ads I'd answered, I gushed my enthusiasm. He was calling to look at houses and I hadn't the guts to tell him about my wished-for transition back into publishing.

Now that I think of it, I am ready for the change of seasons.

Tesser Well

There's Sarah at an end-of-season minor league baseball game. The girls went with Ryan. I don't think the Ems won, but the victory was still there.

I am thinking a lot this week about Madeleine L'Engle. The wrinkly time between my ninth birthday and now, nearly three decades later, when that great lady is now no longer on earth. I have wished to write to her for more than 20 years, for more time than I thought of myself as a writer. I have held out the letter-writing dream as some sort of icon of communication, of mentorship possibility. Every dog-eared book of hers I've collected through Powell's Bookstore and Ebay and hole-in-the-wall vacation spots, I've read with the undercurrent that her words expressed some inexplicable, some circle of quiet I sought and couldn't reach. Now that I know I can't correspond with my hero I am sobered to realize that the passing of the generations is real. Somewhere I read that she had been accused, gently, of too often appearing to be about to burst forth with greatness only to state the obvious. Oh, I wish I could state the obvious so sublimely, in such a way that others would be glad it had been said.

My oldest daughter is named after her; a little presumptious, possibly, but there are other great Madeleines too. I even gained parenting insight through another meditation of Ms. L'Engle's. She wrote at length and brilliantly about the appropriate use of icons. I came to see that my little Madeleine's much-loved teddy bear was nothing short of an icon for the stability of her world. That the bear represented all being right, Mommy and Daddy in the room, warmth and love and more. Who, then, could take away or wean a child from such an icon?

Everything is not alright with my world. I would love to have an icon of comfort and peace to remind me of God's goodness and grace. Of course there are many symbols of goodness, but I could really use something to hold on to.

School

I may have mentioned that we live in a tiny village -- maybe 200 people in an 8-mile radius, but I'm not a statistician nor census amateur -- and that we live in the exact epicenter of this tiny village. A picture postcard, really, with the white Grange and white church and red schoolhouse and red fire station. Oh, and a three-story IOOF lodge, slightly ridiculous, mysterious in its size. And all of it visible from my front room window. Our home was built in 1887, which is ancient in the West, and from our porch we can watch the mini metropolis action. My girls walk to school, so this view from the porch is important. I stand on the porch when it's raining or at the picket fence out front when it's clear. They turn and wave when they reach the building. If I have prematurely turned to go inside, I hear about it at 2:10 when they come home.

Today was the first day of school and the first time that they were not new. It takes a lot longer than a year to overcome the "new" label for adults, of course, but today the kids greeted my children not as outsiders but as old and best friends. Last year was hard; we took a lot of personal days, explaining to the part-time school administrator that the constant rough country hazing required frequent safety zone retreats. So any little excuse had us hideaway hermiting for the day: new chicks to watch, a barn going up, grandpa passing through from the neighboring town, too tired, too shy, too fed up. These were hard decisions, each day we kept them home. How to become a member of the whole when absence is much more comfortable? Their teacher, also new to our community, conceded that they certainly learned more while at home.

But this year is starting on a completely different note. We feel the tiniest bit part of the community, where it takes a village possibly, but that village has to want you.