What time is "Closing"?

Guests expect innkeepers to stay on top of the local restaurants: what's good, what's not, and when they're open.

I try, but the restaurants don't make it easy. They switch their hours and their days off. And they send helpful emails like this one:

New Winter hours
Thursday – Monday
5PM- Closing

I don't know about you, but my clock never says "Closing." Since, with a job and an inn and kids, I don't hang around restaurants late into the evening, I have no idea what time they close. Why not just post the hours "Opening-Closing"?

Christmas theology from my four-year-old

This morning, while the kids were waiting to go see what Santa brought, LW and I were discussing baby Jesus.

LW: Mary was Jesus' mommy but then she grew up into a man and became God.

In the middle of trying to sort that out, he surprised me yet again: Mommy, is Jesus a boy or a girl?

I wonder what else he thinks that I don't know?

What the grocery store checker said to me today

"And your total is . . . wow! I didn't think you had enough groceries to cost that much!"

Not what the store manager wishes she'd said, I'm sure.

It's better than my French, but . . .

Michael and I are tossing around ideas for our family vacation in April. Michael is leaning heavily toward a return to France, so I'm perusing rental listings in Burgundy.

I found this charming description:
An ideal of holidays and romanticism for the amateurs of forests, of lake and waterfalls. Our asses and horses shall welcome you as a friend.

Caroling

The twins, LW, and I went caroling in the village with a group from church this evening.

As we were pulling away from the first house and the farewells had died down, LW called out into the silence, "Merry Christmas! Ho! Ho! Ho!"

Christmas Pageant

The book I'm currently reading emphasizes Christmas as the "expected in the unexpected" and that's a pretty good description of our pageant most years. This year, the pageant featured a shepherd-versus-cow wrestling match. Here they are before they started wrestling.

Due to H1N1 concerns and the lack of a baby of the appropriate age, we used a doll as the baby Jesus. Which was a good call, as the cow turned around and punched the baby Jesus halfway through the pageant. (In the cow's defence, his baby sister is one week old today and I don't think anyone is sleeping much.) LW announced that the baby Jesus was "a fake," but since he was whispering I think only the first row heard him.

NB and IM were the world's most morose magi. (They were trying to look solemn.)

EM was the narrator. Numerous people commented on how deep his voice is.

Fourth grade philosophy

Picking up LW at school today, I noticed a bulletin board with bits of wisdom various students had shared as part of a recent writing project.

What gems came from my children?

NB: In my life, I have learned that every mountain you climb has the best view.

IM: In my life, I have learned that if you ask for extra computer time, you will get zero computer time the next day.

Attention Gap Kids

If my daughter talked like the girls in your commercial, she wouldn't be getting any Christmas presents, let alone clothes from your store.

For those of you who haven't seen the snottiest kids currently starring in a commercial, you can check them out here.

Good thing I still have the award

Remember the Worst Mom in the World Award? The one I was going to keep for awhile?

I solidified my claim last week.

Driving home from the Christmas play on Saturday, NB said, "Mom, you never took treats to school for our birthday."

Ooops.

The twins turned 10 the day after Thanksgiving. I usually take treats to school on the Monday following. This year, that Monday was my monthly slot to teach the environmental science unit in their class, and I was also helping to pack up the Scholastic book fair.

Cupcakes completely slipped my mind.

And since their teacher was out with back problems for two days last week, she didn't remember to do their birthday circle last week either.

*sigh*

I made arrangments with the teacher to bring in treats on Friday. I've already purchased the cake mix and frosting. Now all I need to do is remember to actually make them.

I wonder if the grocery store would let me put up cans to collect change to pay for their therapy bills.

The Ethics of Innkeeping

One aspect of innkeeping that I didn't anticipate is the ethical questions that come with the job.

Some things of course are cut and dried. Yes, I pay taxes on all payments I receive, even if you pay me in cash. No, I won't let you put six people in a standard room even if that's the only way you can afford a ski vacation.

Other situations linger in my mind and leave me second-guessing myself.

Should I discount a room for the local family staying at the inn because their pipes burst? How much? What about the woman and children staying at the inn because they are avoiding violence at home?

Do I have to rent a room to the couple having the extra-marital affair?

Should I bend the no-personal-checks rule for the young couple with the hard-luck story? Even if the last such person's check bounced, leaving me with a $60 bank fee on top of providing a heated room, hot shower, and breakfast for free?

Should I let the young family sleep in the breakfast room if I'm full and they will otherwise have to sleep in their car? Even if the door separating the breakfast room from our living space has a very inadequate lock? What if it's winter and their car is out of gas?

Should I make a room available for the local church to house a homeless family because the shelter is full? Does the answer change if one of the parents has a criminal record?

When mercy and common-sense disagree, how do I choose between them? It's one thing to sit in church and agree that Jesus calls us to radical hospitality. It's another entirely to realize how radical that hospitality can be.

Skiing Term of the Day

There's a skiing term Michael shared with me that describes the current skiing conditions on the mountain.

WROD: White Ribbon of Death

It's what you get when the resort has concentrated its snow-making efforts on one trail, and it's the only trail that's open.

The Birth of Venus

I read this book because I ran into a friend at the library and she pulled it off the shelf, handed it to me, and said, "Read this."

The Birth of Venus belongs to the "historical fiction with an anachronistically feminist heroine" genre. I tend to like these books, despite the anachronism, and this one was no exception.

It's set in Florence at the end of the fifteenth century. Don't know who Savonarola is? Neither did I until I started this book.

That said, there are a couple of scenes that are a little graphic, so I wouldn't recommend it for everyone.

scroogenomics

Want to freak out your kids? Check this book out from the library: scroogenomics: Why You Shouldn't Buy Presents for the Holidays. Bonus points if you do so in November or December.

The author doesn't actually suggest you make any changes in the gifts you give your young kids, but the kids don't know that. The title of the book and the picture of the crying child on the cover are enough to strike fear into children's hearts.

That was an unintended consequence of checking out the book. I saw it sitting with the new books in the library and thought it looked interesting. It wasn't until I saw the look of horror on IM's face when she skimmed over my books that I realized how it must look from her perspective.

In any case, this book looks at gift-giving from an economic perspective. The author's main point is that since gifts usually provide less satisfaction dollar-for-dollar than money we spend on ourselves, holiday gift-giving provides a net economic loss. I'm not entirely convinced, but it was interesting to see him lay out the argument.

What I did find fascinating was the comparison in holiday shopping between the United States and other countries and between the present and the recent past.

When comparing the bump in spending attributable to the December holidays (as a percentage of sales), the United States is lower than the median. Not only that, the bump's percentage has not grown since 1935. And in fact, holiday spending is a smaller share of the economy now than it was then.

A Long-Overdue (and Long) Post about Books

I've been reading, but not blogging about it. I like to blog about my books because it helps me remember, so here is the Reader's Digest Condensed Version of my reaction to the last several months' of reading.

Wild Designs--Fun fluff.

The Canon: A Whirligig Tour through the Beautiful Basics of Science--Reading this book should be a prerequisite for a high school diploma. If you are over 18 and haven't read it, go read it now. Chapters cover thinking scientifically, probabilities, calibration, physics, chemistry, evolutionary biology, molecular biology, geology, and astronomy. I read the library's copy, but this is definitely a book I want to own. That will make it handy to assign it to EM in a couple of years.

A Study in Scarlet and The Hound of the Baskervilles--My first Sir Conan Doyle, if you can believe it. It was interesting to see the birth of Holmes and Watson. Both books were enjoyable, although I personally found the shift from London to Utah halfway through A Study in Scarlet to be disconcerting. Interesting to see an outsider's view of Mormon polygamy.

The Year of Magical Thinking--Joan Didion's account of the year after her husband died.

Life changes fast.
Life changes in the instant.
You sit down to dinner and life as you know it ends.
The question of self-pity.

Bridget Jones's Diary--I found this a pathetic excuse for a Pride and Prejudice retelling. Just like the movie, the characters start out amusing but grow tiresome halfway through. Unlike the movie, Hugh Grant and Colin Firth weren't there to distract me.

Passage--An intriguing look at Near Death Experiences by Connie Willis. Good, but not as good as The Doomsday Book.

The Martian Chronicles--Fascinating but grim.

The Hunger Games and Catching Fire--Young adult page turners. Quick reads, with lots of interesting issues to discuss. I'm already anticipating the release of the third book sometime in 2010 (I hope).

Life Together--I picked up this book by Dietrich Bonhoeffer because I'd been impressed with some of his essays I'd read last year in an Advent collection. I didn't like this quite as much, I think mostly because it conflicted with my universalism. I copied many quotes, but quite often I'm not sure I agree with them.

rabbit, run--This would be a depressing book if I actually cared a whit for the characters. Since I didn't, it left me feeling numb. Which I rather think was the point. I don't see me reaching for another Updike book anytime soon.

The Language of Bees--The latest in the Mary Russell/Sherlock Holmes series. This was not my favorite, but it was still quite enjoyable. With every book of Laurie King's I read, my curiousity grows: what is this woman's religious background?

Wild Things: The Art of Nurturing Boys--I checked this out looking for insight into parenting my middle son. It was helpful, although the take away message was (as it so often is) Be Present. Some days I think if I could just manage that consistently, I'd solve most of my problems in life.

Unlikely Destinations: The Lonely Planet Story--This book was a gift from my friend Shirley. Michael and I own a lot of Lonely Planet guide books (we converted during our trip to Spain, when we realized the wretched binding of our England Rough Guide was a feature of those guidebooks, not a fluke), so it was fun to read how the company started. At times the book dragged, and there were sections whose primary purpose seemed to be to drop names I didn't recognize, but the travel sections and the chapters on writing guidebooks were very interesting.

Holy Silence--This is a book about Quaker silence. It's an easy read and gave me more of an understanding than I had going into it. Silent meditiation is something I'm increasingly drawn to, while simultaneously being really bad at it. I'm slightly less bad at it after having read this book.

How bad was the sleep deprivation?

I'm sorting through the Christmas stuff in the basement, trying to tame the mess.

I stumbled across a box of unused Christmas cards. Or so I thought. Imagine my surprise to discover twelve addressed envelopes with signed cards inside.

I know the cards were from a Christmas after LW was born, but I don't know exactly which year. I'm assuming 2005, because an infant seems like the only even partially acceptable excuse for that level of brainlessness.

Did I write other cards? Did all of you not receive cards from me that year?

How tired was I?

Offense against Nature

I like candy corn. I like them a lot. Since I have become an adult I have not let a Halloween go by without buying at least one bag for me to eat all by myself. (It helps that Michael detests candy corn. It's pretty hard to hide treats from him.)

Tonight, however, I saw something that just should not be.

Christmas candy corn. Red, green, and white.

I will not be buying them.

Not even when it is actually Christmastime.

My name eez Treebeard

Today at the bus stop, the kids and I were singing Christmas carols. (Carols before Thanksgiving is normally a punishable offense around here, but they need to practice for a holiday play they're in.)

NB interrupted to ask, "What's a French ent?"

A what?

NB: "You know, 'on the third day of Christmas my true love gave to me three French ents.' How is a French ent different from a regular ent?"

(If you're having trouble remembering what an ent is, refresh your memory here.)

Halloween

I love Halloween in the village. We've been here long enough to know the traditions and look forward to them. The weather is unreliable this time of year. Some years it's freezing cold, and we put gloves on the kids and nurse cups of hot cider. Some years it's unseasonably warm. I've heard stories of the year it snowed so much that they cancelled school the next day. This was the first year since we moved here that we had to deal with rain.

Lots of rain. Even with umbrellas and the judicious use of house porches during the worst downpours, we were soaked. LW had a great time for half an hour and then voted for taking refuge in our church, where he cheerfully chatted up the adults who were handing out the candy there and checked out everyone else's costumes while we waited for Michael and the twins to finish up.

Here they are, as we were getting into the car and watching the first sprinkles fall:



LW has wanted to be a vampire for the past 365 days--ever since last Halloween. NB is a ninja. IM is a penguin.

Trip to Newport

Last week the kids had a couple of days off school, so we went on a quick road trip to Newport, Rhode Island. For Michael and the older kids, it was their first trip back since we moved almost six years ago.

It was not a good picture weekend, but I thought I'd post a few anyway.

Hand over the Worst Mom in the World Award

I'll be holding onto it for a while.

Now that we have wall space (hallelujah!), we decided it was about time to unpack the framed pictures that have been in storage since we moved to Vermont six years ago next month.

We had two boxes of framed prints and one box that held a large piece of original art given us by Michael's parents. As I opened the box, I was surprised to find, cushioning the artwork, a pillow and . . . IM's star blankie.

You know, the one that was a match of NB's star blankie? The one we thought we had left in a hotel? The one we scolded her for leaving behind?

Yeah, that one.

I have weird kids

Maybe I should make this a running series of posts.

Today's entry is courtesy of LW.

Last night he insisted we play "ghost firefighter spiders" before dinner. Yes, you read that right. Ghost is because it's almost Halloween. Firefighter comes from the fire safety assembly at school last week. I don't know why he decided on spiders.

At the moment, he is pretending his Duplo tractor is a baby ant. We must pet the truck and say how cute the baby ant is.

Communication Failure

As an innkeeper, I say the same phrases over and over, year after year. Check in is anytime after 3. Check out is at 11. We do take pets in most rooms. Do you have an email address we can use to send a confirmation?

And then there are times when the usual phrase fails to communicate.

Me: And would you like to hold the room with an American Express, MasterCard, or Visa?
Guest: You only take American Express?
Me, more slowly: We take American Express, MasterCard, and Visa.
Guest: Well, I have a MasterCard, but it's from Citibank.

I assured her that would be fine.

Labor Day Hike

Labor Day morning, the kids and I hiked up to a popular lookout. We had planned to hike up around lunchtime and have a picnic, but the noxious odors of the spray-on insulation drove us out of the house earlier in the morning.

My hiking companions were, from left to right:

• An avid naturalist who insisted on pointing out every single fungus we saw. Twice (coming and going).
• An almost-ten-year-old drama queen who forgot to bring her sweatshirt and was therefore chilly.
• A teenager who figured that since Michael wasn't there, the position of male parent was his to fill, thus setting off the drama queen.
• A three-year-old who attempted to stomp on every fungus he saw, thus setting off the naturalist (who nevertheless continued to loudly call attention to every fungus).
  

Our time on the ledge admiring the view and petting all the dogs (quite a few valley residents and visitors also decided to do that hike on Monday), calmed everyone down, and the hike back to the car was quite pleasant. LW did the entire 2.2 miles by himself.

Here are two examples of the fungi we saw:




As you can see, we are still in the beginning of foliage season.

Chip off the Old Block

LW: Mama, guess what I'm planning.
Me: What are you planning?
LW: A trip to Disney!

Constructing the addition--End of Week 8

We have siding!




And insulation! (K and S, does this look familiar?)

First Day of School

Today was the first day of school, and the first time we've had all four kids in the public schools.

LW was very excited to get to ride the bus and go to "the big kid school." He seemed a little sad at the end of his first day. Apparently, he thought he would actually be in class with IM and NB, now that he was a big kid too. He was disappointed to discover that his classmates were all three, just like him.

Not the thanks we were expecting

I've just lived through the most anti-climactic release of my tech writing career.

For the last year, my company has been working on a large release that would update and integrate most of company's existing standalone software. I was assigned to the project in December, and I've tackled a steep learning curve in the last nine months, necessitating a shift to full time. The release date slipped, as release dates will, from June to July to August.

Everyone looked forward to the day the project would wrap up and we could breathe. Stretch. Clean out the email box. Celebrate.

Instead, just as I finished posting my doc set, my boss called a "quick update" meeting and told us that the company was laying off 60 employees, including one writer. (Not me.) More details to follow Monday.

Nothing says "thanks for the hard work" like pink slips, eh?

Now, in the company's defense, they were a bit between a rock (the slipping release date) and a hard place (needing to plan for our fiscal year, which starts October 1). Officers and managers have admitted that the timing could not have been worse for those involved in the release. And it seems they are treating the departing employees well.

Still. Not quite the release party we were expecting.

State of the Addition

Michael pointed out the other day that if I didn't update the blog I would miss the entire process. (Or rather, you would. I see it all the time.) Of course, now that we are dealing with enclosed spaces, I'm finding it hard to take pictures that show what it is like.

This is the living-room end of the main room in the addition.

This is the end that will eventually be a kitchen. I'm planning to put all the bookshelves here.

This is the front door into the addition.

These are the stairs leading up to our current space.

And this is our future closet.

Summer Reading

Vacation and our big software release at work left me with little time for reading this summer, but I did manage to finish a few books. Here's what I read:

The Shack--I read this one because someone at church was doing a book discussion on it, and I was hoping to go. (Then reality hit me over the head. Attend book group? The day I arrived home after flying back from Oregon on the red-eye with the four kids and without Michael?) Anyway. The book is horribly written, and the theology struck me as neither profound nor shocking. Not worth your time unless you are seeking great examples of info-dumping. Then read the first chapter or so.

Marley & Me: Life and Love with the World's Worst Dog--Now this book, I highly recommend. Or would, if there were anyone left in American who hadn't already read it. I laughed out loud. Many times. Of course, I've actually lived with a psychotic Labrador retriever. It might not be quite as funny if you've only known normal dogs. (And yes, I cried at the end. Hard.)

Leaving Church: A Memoir of Faith--This is an interesting look at one woman's journey as an Episcopal priest, and what led her to quit her position in a congregation to become a college professor. It makes me want to hug my minister and ask her if she is taking enough time for herself. This book also marked the return of my quotation book, which fell by the wayside for a while.

"I will keep the Bible, which remains the Word of God for me, but always the word as heard by generations of human beings as flawed as I. As beautifully as these witnesses wrote, their divine inspiration can never be separated from their ardent desires; their genuine wish to serve God cannot be divorced from their self-interest. That God should use such blemished creatures to communicate God's reality so well makes the Bible its own kind of miracle, but I hope never to put the book ahead of the people whom the book calls me to love and serve.
"I will keep the Bible as a field guide, which was never intended to be a substitute for the field. With the expert notes kept by those who have gone before me, I will keep hunting the Divine Presence in the world, helped as much by the notes they wrote in the margins while they were waiting for God to appears as by their astonished descriptions of what they saw when God did. I know that nine times out of ten, the truth scripture tells us is the truth about the human search for God."

House of Mirth--I am not positive, but I think this might be my first Edith Wharton novel. The writing is brilliant, as you might expect. Unfortunately, it gets more and more depressing to read, as you also might expect. The title (not the original) comes from Ecclesiastes: "The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning; but the heart of fools is in the house of mirth." Part of me wants to re-read Anna Karenina, because I think it would be interesting to compare Lily and Anna. But I'm really not eager to live in Anna's world again. I did like this quote from Selden: Why do we call all our generous ideas illusions and the mean ones truths?

If only it were that simple

LW, handing me one of his Spanish picture books: You just need to read this one in the hola voice. Can you say hola?

The Many Faces of Me

Guest checking out this morning: So, the woman who checked us in last night, is she the owner?

Me: That was me.

Guest: Oh. You look completely different this morning.

It's hard to argue with science

The kids were watching Star Wars the other day, and discussing how unrealistic it is for the space ships to make noise in space, since sound doesn't travel in space.

This morning, LW was singing "I am I, Don Quixote" at the top of his lungs while I was cooking breakfast for guests. When I told him (again) that he needed to be quiet during breakfast, he looked at me and said earnestly, "But I'm in outer space, so you can't hear me."

Constructing the addition--Day 5

On Friday, the concrete mixer can to pour the foundation.



This is what we ended up with:




I've been very happy with the progress of this first week. However, there will be a delay in the arrival of the roofing trusses, so I'm expecting things to slow down soon.

Constructing the addition--day 4

The weather made for a short day on Day 3, but by the end of Day 4 we were all ready for the cement. You can see the rough piping for the bathroom and kitchen. (We're roughing in the kitchen even though we aren't currently permitted for it.) The clear piping on the floor is for the radiant heat.

Constructing the addition--Day 2

Little boys love excavators.




So do big boys.





It's a little unnerving to see the excavator so close to your house, especially when the operator wears an eye patch. (Isn't that supposed to mess with your depth perception?) However, it didn't take long to realize that he was very skilled.



Here's what we had at the end of Day 2.



On the down side, here is what the excavator did to the lawn. Repeat after me, "It will get worse before it gets better. It will get worse before it gets better."

Constructing the addition--Day 1

I was only able to take one Before picture before the camera battery ran out of juice. Here is the old porch (down) and deck (up).

All gone. It's amazing how much light comes in now that the porch is gone. I'm (almost) sorry we're adding on.

The dumpster arrives tomorrow. Good thing.

My job for the next who-knows-how-long is to keep LW from opening the back door onto the lovely drop. We might have to rig up some kind of additional lock.

Speaking of LW, if you are looking for a way to entertain your preschooler for the summer, I highly recommend a construction project. He was glued to the window most of the day. Our general contractor is his new hero.

And the backhoe arrives tomorrow. He'll be over the moon.

The birds and chipmunks, incidentally, are extremely confused by the removal of the bird feeder. They haven't yet found the one we put up around the corner.

Book catch-up

I forbid myself to start another book until I post about the ones I've read. I knew I was behind, but didn't realize how far. So here are speedy reviews of the last nine books.

• Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America--an interesting look at the difficulty of supporting yourself with minimum wage jobs. Eye-opening.
• One to Nine: The Inner Life of Numbers--Remember the physics book I struggled through last year? Meet this year's equivalent. It started off promising, but by chapter 4 it fell into a depressing pattern. I would understand the first third of the chapter, vaguely grasp the second third, and be completely lost for the last third. Ugh. Maybe what I need is Physics for Dummies.
• Temples, Tombs & Hieroglyphs--an engaging read that is a lay-person's guide to both Egyptian history and the history of Egyptian history. I think the stories of the early archaeologists were my favorite part of the book.
• Taking Time Off--as EM gets older, I think more about his post-high school life. So far he doesn't show any sign of wanting a gap year, but that might change.
• The Virgin Blue--interesting mystery novel split between medieval and modern-day France by the author of The Girl with the Pearl Earring.
• Home--the sequel to Gilead, which was my first book of the year. A quiet, beautifully written book about family and faith.
• Elbows Off the Table, Napkin in the Lap, No Video Games During Dinner--a guide on teaching your children manners. Nothing earth-shattering, but some useful insights.
• The Enchantress of Florence--my first Salman Rushdie book ever, and the big surprise of the year. I had the idea that Rushdie's books were dense and boring. Clearly, I should read one of his books sometime, but it would undoubtedly be a chore. Certainly not a quickly-moving and engaging novel of historical fiction. It did illustrate how much I don't know about the history of India, Florence and Persia during the sixteenth century, but my ignorance didn't detract from the book too much.
• The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society--very quick read. As a bonus, you get to learn about the English Channel Islands during WWII.
  

Not dead yet

The deadness of my blog aside, I am still here. Life has just been very busy, with a definite lack of the quiet that generates blog posts.

School ended in the usual flurry of field trips and concerts. And last-minute trips to buy gifts for teachers.

LW finished up his last day at the preschool he's been attending for two years. He's looking forward to joining NB and IM at the Big Kid's School in the fall for his first of two years of preschool there. (Darn fall birthday.) He's especially eager to ride the bus.

NB and IM are excited to keep their teacher for next year. (Our school likes to keep kids with the same teacher for two years in a row, but the special circumstances that put the twins in the same class won't exist next year, and we weren't sure if the school would move one of them into the other 3/4 class.)

EM won end-of-the-year awards in Spanish and math. His track season ended in a drizzly whimper when the last meet of the season fell victim to a very rainy spring.

I've been working the sort of insane hours that cause Michael to mutter about work-life balance. Let's just say that my SWAGs for this project turned out to be really wild. Aren't learning curves fun? I'm awaiting word tomorrow on whether the train will hit as scheduled on 7/24 or whether we get a small reprieve.

I did make time to paint the upstairs hall (finally!) and complete a massive decluttering of the kids' rooms.

Oh, and I finished my 26th book of the year. Halfway through the 52-book challenge and right on schedule. I hope to post more on that later, once all of my complete sentences aren't going to work.

What about the CSA?

The past two years, this is the time I start getting antsy for the start of the CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) season. Not so, this year.

Basically, the summer squash and kale did us in. And sadly, no, I'm not really joking. We allow the older kids to each create a three-item Will Not Eat list. At one point last summer, summer squash was on all three lists. That left a lot of squash for Michael and I to eat. And despite my determination to find ways to prepare kale that we would enjoy, we found a grand total of one recipe we really liked. And it had sausage and heavy cream, so I didn't want to serve it that often.

So this year, we decided to take the cost of a CSA membership ($375) and spend an equivalent amount of money on local produce purchased from road stands or the weekly farmer's market. I'll keep track of what I buy, and at the end of the summer, we can compare it to last year and see which way is the better value for our family.

The CSA pickups don't start this early in June, but one of the advantages of this method is that I can start when I want, so I started yesterday.

Purchased: one head of romaine lettuce, one-pound bag of spinach
Cost: $8.50 ($2 for the lettuce and $6.50 for the spinach)
CSA last year: n/a

I think I've seen this before . . .

IM, summer of 2006

IM, summer of 2009

She fractured the wrist end of her distal radius. The cast should come off on June 26.

SCA

The kids and I spent the day at a gathering of the Society for Creative Anachronism. EM spent several hours at the youth combat arena. He's been itching to fight since he watched some adults back in November, but this is the first time he was able to suit up. He ended up winning his division, but as he pointed out, this might have something to do with being the oldest in his age group and the tallest by several inches.

Here he is in one of his first fights. (His opponents did get taller than this.)

NB spent some time in combat as well.

We ended the day on the archery range. All three of the big kids did well. EM especially impressed the instructor, but all of us hit the target at least once. EM and IM are both left-eye dominant, and so shoot with their left hands.

LW was disappointed that he is too young to fight or shoot. He consoled himself with turning a wooden stick from a children's game into a spear.

As we left, all the kids were trying to convince me to make the hour-and-a-half drive back for the fun tomorrow. "But they're having a woods fight! And a dragon hunt! Pleeease?"

Just call me the chauffeur

Here's my day:

8:00 leave house to drive EM to school so he can catch the bus to his track meet
8:40 arrive home
11:15 drive twins and LW to town. Buy present for birthday friend and browse farmer's market. (The first market of the year!) Return home at 12:15.
12:45 leave to drive to EM's track meet so I will be there at 1:30 to (hopefully) watch one of his events.
2:30 leave track meet so I will be home in time to . . .
3:30 drop twins off at birthday party. Depending on whether other girls are sleeping over . . .
7:30 Pick IM up from party.

I'm hoping EM is finished with his track events by 2:30 so he can come home with me and I don't have to toss in another trip up to school to pick him up.

Designing the addition

We're in the process of trying to add on to our living space at the inn. This is going to be a long process. I've been trying not to think about it, out of fear I'd get my hopes up and then something would happen and we wouldn't be able to add on. However, we have to submit a site plan to the town as part of getting the building permit, so I have to make some decisions.

We want to add a living room, bedroom, and bathroom. Because this doesn't make much sense from a business perspective—future owners are unlikely to need four bedrooms, and even our need will change as the kids get older and head out on their own—we are designing the new piece in such a way that it can connect to our space now but be closed off and rented separately later.

This means we can't just plunk it on where our current porch is. That would work great for now, but it wouldn't work at all for renting the space out separately. Our back door would open into the new space, and I don't want to get that cozy with the guests.

So we're designing a connecting piece to join the new addition to our existing space. There are just a few constraints: Nothing can be closer than ten feet to our existing well cap, which is very inconveniently placed. We have to enclose the existing entrance into the basement. We have to work with the placement of the back door out of the existing space.

I had graphed out a plan that did all of that while letting more light into the kitchen window.

And then the contractor came.

He thinks it would actually be easier and cheaper to enclose the entire existing porch (of course, that would make it impossible for me to have a door that opens into the mudroom from outside). So I have two choices: I can have my kitchen window open into my mudroom, or I can create an oddly sized space between the mudroom and the wall and have the kitchen window open into that.

I'm not found of looking at the mudroom all day long, since the whole point is to hide the mess. I get to look at piles of boots, coats, and ski pants under the current system. I won't miss it.

On the other hand, I don't quite know what to do with a 5.5 x 10 foot space. Computer nook, maybe? I want to figure out how we're going to use it before we start building it, so I can be smart about placements of windows, electrical outlets, phone jacks, etc.

What would you do with a small open space near the entrance, mudroom, and new living room?

It doesn't take much

Because I was in Oregon for Mother's Day, I got my Mother's Day presents today. LW gave me a potted pansy, a picture of a yellow blob labeled "Spaceship," and the following card: I love my Mom because we have tables and chairs inside our house.*

There you have it. The key to your child's heart.

A dining room set.

* And no, I have no idea what sparked this comment. We haven't purchased any new furniture lately. We have the same table and chairs we've had since before LW was born.

Now for the fiction

One weekend when I had a cold, I read Dead Until Dark. It was described as a more adult version of Twilight. It actually reminded me more of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. In fact, it reminded me a little too much of it. As in, "this idea was developed so much better in Buffy." Not horrible, but I won't seek out the sequels.

Then I read The Time Traveler's Wife, a love story with an intriguing premise. The writing is beautiful and the story touching.

I took Dune with me on vacation. Michael said there are two kinds of people who read Dune. Those who think it is the best book ever (or right up there) and those who don't see what all the fuss is about. I don't know that I agree, as I'm in the middle. This was not one of my top 10 reading experiences, but I did find myself wanting to reread it almost as soon as I finished it. Interesting ideas about politics and religion and the interaction between the two. I can see how it could be someone's favorite book, even though it isn't mine.

Michael brought Duma Key home from Mexico and suggested I read it, so I tossed it in the suitcase when we headed to Virginia. I already had a book to read after Dune, but it's always nice to have a book in reserve. As it turned out, EM inhaled his books and was all out of reading material with five days left in the vacation. So he read the book I'd planned to read, and I read Duma Key. It's 771 pages of can't-put-it-down story. Not too scary by Stephen King' standards, although I did a little nervous walking back to our cabin in the dark by myself.

A bunch of books

I didn't blog much in March and April, but I did read.

In honor of our trip to Virginia, I started with His Excellency: George Washington, by Joseph J. Ellis. Ellis, a Pulitzer winner, is a fantastic and extremely readable author and his biography of Washington is very manageable. Exhaustive it isn't, but it provides fascinating insights into the development of Washington's character. I was amazed at how much I didn't know about Washington.

I'm having a hard time restraining myself from typing all the quotations I copied.

When historians debate Washington's most consequential decisions as commander in chief, they are almost always arguing about specific battles. A compelling case can be made that his swift response to the smallpox epidemic and to a policy of inoculation was the most important strategic decision of his military career. p 87

Lafayette was the major outlet for Washington's human side, and their letters provide the clearest evidence that he had one. p 116

Most tellingly, the outcry over the society [of Cincinnati] forced him to realize, probably for the first time, that the American Revolution had released egalitarian ideas that he was at pains to understand, much less find compatible with his own version of an American republic, which was elitist, deferential, virtuous, and honorable—in short, pretty much like him. p 151

I also finished The Virtue in the Vice: Finding Seven Lively Virtues in the Seven Deadly Sins, the basis of my church's Lenten study group this year. It was a pleasant, but unremarkable read.

I picked up Return of Depression Economics and the Crisis of 2008 at the library, in an attempt to shore up my very weak economics background. (It's not my high school's fault. They tried to require two economics classes, but I kept finding loopholes.) This is an engaging and interesting, if ultimately depressing, look at world economics.

The point is that because speculative attacks can be self-justifying, following an economic policy that makes sense in terms of the fundamentals is not enough to assure market confidence. In fact, the need to win that confidence can actually prevent a country from following otherwise sensible policies that would normally seem perverse. p 113

I'll talk about the fiction books in another post.

April Vacation--Part 5

After a week at the condo in Williamsburg (during which we also spent a day at the Virginia Beach Aquarium and a day at Busch Gardens), it was time for us to say goodbye to the Utah relatives and head back north.

Our first stop was Mount Vernon. Unfortunately, Saturday was the end of the very pleasant weather we'd been enjoying. It was hot. Very hot. None of us felt like waiting the required 35 minutes standing in line to get into the tour of the house. (And LW struggles a bit with house tours at the best of times.) So, we looked at the outbuildings, sat on the verandah overlooking the Potomac, saw Washington's grave, and headed for the air-conditioned museum. It was the one day on our trip that our touring suffered because of the weather.

By the time we'd checked into our hotel in Washington, the day was starting to cool off, so we walked by the White House before dinner . . .

and saw the Washington Monument and the World War II Memorial after dinner.

We spent two days in Washington, visiting some of the Smithsonian museums, Arlington Cemetery, the other monuments and memorials on the Mall, and the Capitol. Then we went to New York state for two nights in a cabin at a KOA campground. While in New York, we stopped by the Storm King Art Center--a large outdoor park of modern sculpture. The rest of the family enjoyed this somewhat less than I did.

April Vacation--Part 4

On Wednesday, we visited a plantation on the road to Richmond and then spent a couple of hours at the Maymont gardens. We especially enjoyed the Italian and Japanese gardens.

April Vacation--Part 3

We spent a day at Jamestown, which is only a short drive from Williamsburg. We saw both the original settlement site (not a lot to see there) and a recreation next to the original site. NB and Michael's mom sit in one of the Native American dwellings.

LW takes a turn grinding corn. At 20 minutes per person per meal, kids his age probably would have had to help. Kids as young as 2 learned to make rope.

Grandpa and the kids on a recreation of one of the three boats that carried the original Jamestown settlers. The third boat was the smallest, and EM was amazed it could cross the Atlantic. Those early settlers had guts.

LW couldn't wait to try on the armor, but once he felt how heavy it was, he couldn't wait to get it off. Not even long enough for the group picture.