Five highlights of the weekend:

1. Cleaning the garage. Don't get me wrong: the work itself was as awful as you'd expect. However, the sense of accomplishment now that it's complete? Even better than I expected. Now we just have to get used to using the garage for, you know, our vehicle.

2. First trip to the apple orchard. We're lucky enough to live less than a quarter mile from an apple orchard--the same apple orchard I frequented when I was a child. For about a decade it was caught in a downward spiral until a local family bought and revived it. Now, under new ownership, they once again make fresh cider, offer hayrides, sell cider licks (cider frozen in a cup with a popsicle stick in the middle), and let you pick your own apples. What fun! It was unseasonably warm this weekend, so the girls weren't decked out in their usual apple-orchard-fall-pictures wear (see pic to right), but it was a perfect day for playing chase through the trees.



3. Put up more salsa. We've had a disappointing crop of tomatoes this year: our romas are mealy, our beefeaters and heirlooms often have little black spots, and all of our hybrids up and quit on us. Damn you, June flooding! Apparently it's been a bad year all around the county, but that doesn't change the fact that we had big plans for our 25 tomato plants! Instead we've had to focus our efforts on our top tomato-related priorty: salsa. So yesterday it felt good to put up 7 quarts of our favorite recipe (after having put up 4 quarts last week). We'll never have enough to take us to next year, but at least we should be able to get through January if we exercise some restraint. I may be able to get one or two more batches out of the garden, but we're not going to get the 25-30 quarts we had hoped for. (I'm starting to feel like Ma Ingalls with all this frontier wife talk.)

4. An abundance of time for the four of us. Rob was off on both Saturday and Sunday, and that rarely happens for our family. We stayed around home all weekend, cleaned, read books, played games, engaged in many tickle fights, and generally reconnected as a foursome. I {heart} weekends together.

5. My friend H's baby is on her way to a speedy recovery from major surgery. She's been on our minds, and it's wonderful to hear she's doing so well. Snuggles, Baby K!



P.S. Happy Birthday, M. Much love. xo

It's been a wild week and a half as Bella adjusts to life as a kindergartener and I adjust to life as the mom of a kindergartener. I'm learning many things about both Bella and myself as time passes, so I thought I'd outline a couple of them here. Maybe we'll focus on Bella for today. (Cop out...)

1. My child has the memory of a hammer.

I send her to school with everything she needs: Lunch bag? Check. School picture envelope? Check. "S" object for letter of the week activity? Check. What happens as soon as she arrives at school? All functional knowledge disappears. "Bella, where's your 'S' object?" "I don't have one." This Mrs. Ramaker's recounting of the exchange she had with Bella on Monday. But you did have one!! We even rehearsed! There it was, right in her backpack where I had tucked it away that morning. Oh Bella. She lost her bus pass on the second day of school, her daily take-home folder on the third, and her jacket on Monday. Yet on our drive home last night, she said, "Mom, remember when we went to Minneapolis?" This a reference to our trip three and a half months ago. I say, "Yes." She then says, "I wonder if that lost dog from the poster at the train station has been found." Seriously?

So maybe it's not her memory as much as her idea of what qualifies as worth making room for "upstairs." Still, she's killing me.

2. My child takes the hot lunch/cold lunch decision far too seriously.

I can appreciate thoughtfulness when deciding what you'll eat on any given day, but getting my child to choose between hot lunch and cold lunch is like moving a bill through Congress. First of all, this is brand new to her, and there are questions I hadn't anticipated. "Mommy, what's a chicken patty?" Hmmm, well... "It's like a huge chicken nugget on a bun." She wrinkles her nose. "Yuck, I don't think I'd like that." Wait, was that a bad sell? Not that I believe she should necessarily eat a chicken patty, but my influence in this process is starting to freak me out. Tonight I mentioned that she had one more day of cold lunch and then would have hot lunch on Friday. A grey cloud crossed her face: "What is it? What's hot lunch on Friday?" I tell her mini corn dogs. "What if I don't like them? Can I bring a cold lunch just in case? Oh no, that will never work because we have to take lunch count in the morning. Oh Mooommmmm... can we have a test run tomorrow night?" I think that when I have to orchestrate "test runs" in anticipation of the next day's hot lunch, things have run amok.

3. My child makes my heart crack wide open with pride.

I'll be the first to admit that my sweet girl has things to work on, but there are moments when I watch her and am reminded that she makes life better. I had a moment like that yesterday, and I lay awake in bed last night running the scene through my mind again because, when I think about what people may remember about me one day, I realize it may be my children and I can only hope I'll be worthy of them.

One of the drills at soccer was to kick your ball from one goal to the other. Since there were so many kids, the coach would send a couple of kids out to get started, then send a few more a minute or so later, and so on so there wasn't a huge clog on the field. One little girl who was practicing must have barely made the 4 year old requirement, and she was struggling with every exercise. The coach sort of let her do her own thing, which I understood, but your heart still went out to her when she was always step behind or completely out of the loop.

She had started this drill ahead of Bella, but it didn't take long for child after child to catch up to and pass her on their way to the other end of the field. As Bella approached her, Bella slowed down and appeared to be "checking in" with her to see how she was doing. After an exchange of a few seconds, Bella carried on to the goal, made her shot, grabbed her ball, and sat down in the growing line on the edge of the field. After just a moment, Bella got back up and headed out to be with the little 4 year old in the middle of the field. Bella didn't take over or kick the ball for her, but instead she shadowed the girl all the way down the field, demonstrating how to kick and encouraging her with things like, "That's right! Over here! Good--good job!" It was a painstakingly long journey to the goal, but once the little girl made it, Bella resumed her original place in line and carried on with the rest of her practice.

Maybe it's the teacher in me, but I wanted to catch her in my arms right then and congratulate her on seeing the important stuff. Instead, I simply told her at dinner that I liked the way she took care of her own business on the field and then went back to help that little girl. She didn't seem to think much of it but did check to see if it was enough to earn her some extra dessert. (So enterprising.) Perhaps all she saw was a surrogate little sister to "mother," but it was sweet either way.

For all the moments of frustration I've had in the last week and a half, last night reminded me of my favorite Story People. Perhaps I should hang it in my bedroom as a reminder of what to be loud about.

And to temper the sweet moment from last night? She came home with a Yellow (Caution) slip today. According to Bella, she kept playing "when Mrs. R's voice was on." Yeah, gotta work on that.

You don't call, you don't write...

When you've been away as long as I have, it's almost like starting over. I certainly can't--and shouldn't--update you on the minutiae of the last month, so instead I'll jump into the uninteresting minutiae of today.

Our cool and cloudy August has not helped our tomato crop, but today I finally had enough ripe tomatoes to make our first batch of salsa. Today is also the day I was reminded that my memories of the process of making salsa are much more pleasant than the actual act of making salsa. Important distinction. I was also reminded why I typically make a double, triple, or even quadruple batch: whether I'm chopping one green pepper or four, the food processor still has to be taken apart and cleaned. The difference is whether or not I'm going to do that 10 times in the next month or 4. (Note: there will be no more single batches, even if I have to take my tomatoes to a tanning bed as "prep work.")

The salsa turned out fine, although I cannot seem to get the jalapeno oil off my fingers. I feel like Chevy Chase in Christmas Vacation, when he's plagued with sap on his hands, except instead of ripping pages out of magazines and towing a lamp into bed, I'm giving myself minor skin burns every time I rub my eyes or scratch my nose.

Outside of that, this is our first weekend since the start of the school year. I now understand why not a lot of time is spent teaching children the days of the week before they enter school: what's the point? What day is it? I think it's, I-get-up-and-watch-Sesame-Street-while-mommy/daddy/grandma-makes-breakfast. That's what day it was yesterday, too. But now, since starting Kindergarten, Bella has a new appreciation for the differences in the days of the week. For example, next week she's only eating hot lunch on Friday. And she has Music on Wednesday. She starts soccer on Tuesday. She rides the Blue Squirrel bus on Friday but the Black Cat bus every other day. And on Saturday she gets to decide for herself what she wants to do. Ahhhhhh. The concept of the weekend is starting to take shape in her head. However, this morning she did declare she wanted to go to school but settled for wearing her new soccer shoes and shin guards with her Strawberry Shortcake pajamas in the back yard instead. She's all about compromise, that one.

My first week at school was relatively uneventful. I met all of my new freshmen, welcomed back a great group of 12 seniors, and continued to work on getting my classroom in order. (Note: not there yet.) I had the opportunity to move from teaching English 9 to teaching English 11 after my first year at this school, but I passed it up because I enjoy the freshman curriculum (Romeo and Juliet, The Odyssey). I also enjoy freshmen, which seems an impossibility for some of my colleagues. They often shake their heads when I say I passed up teaching the juniors, and I try to explain that freshmen have a certain energy about them that disappears by the time they enter their sophomore year. They're still a little silly, uninhibited, innocent. In fact, even in my first week I encountered a perfect example of this innocence.

My students were engaged in independent reading at their seats, and a freshman girl raised her hand for assistance. I walked over to her table, and she held up her book (Kite Runner), her finger on a word in the middle of the page. "What does this word mean?" she asked. I looked at the word. I looked at her. I looked at the word again. Was she messing with me? I said, cautiously, "It means what you think it means." She peered at me blankly. "But...I don't know what it means." Did I mention that some freshmen are awkwardly innocent? I chose my words carefully and said, "It's a derogatory term for the female genitalia." She raised her eyebrows and said, "Oohhhhhh..." I thought to myself, "Yeah. 'Ohhhh.' And I look forward to the call from your parents." C U Next Tuesday!