Some questions have easy answers

Me, complaining to the piano music: How many fingers do you think I have?
LW: Ten, Mommy. You have ten fingers.

Toys I Am Not Buying My Kids for Christmas

I'm browsing Amazon's toy section, looking for ideas for LW. Here's what I'm shaking my head over tonight:

* Wild Planet Spy Gear Night Goggles--The last thing I want is a toy that encourages my five-year-old to stay up late.

* Crayola Color Wonder Sound Studio--Who had the brilliant idea to turn coloring into an electronic activity?

* Bacon Band Aids--Why?

They're Around Here Somewhere

3:00--Guest calls to say she and her family are coming up for a wedding today and staying with us. (Someone else booked, and is paying for, their room.) Do we know where the wedding is? Michael says we can give her directions if she knows the name of the venue. She doesn't. She hangs up.

6:00--Guest arrives with her family right as we are sitting down to dinner. She still doesn't know where the wedding is and seems to think this is our problem. Michael's calls to the person who booked the room go unanswered. The guest says it has something to do with a farm, so Michael calls around. The X Barn has a wedding, but it's the wrong one. The X Barn mentions that the Y Barn also has a wedding today. Michael calls the Y Barn, but no one answers. Since it is only a 15 minute drive, he circles our location and the Y Barn on the map. Guests seem a little confused about the idea of a map, but after many repetitions of the directions, they set off. Shortly after, Michael takes a call from someone with the wedding, who confirms that it is at the Y Barn.

7:50--Man calls from the wedding asking if we have seen the guests, since they have not arrived yet. I forward him through to their room just in case, although I think it unlikely that they would return here without coming to ask for something.

So the question is, where are they? And will we see them again?

What the kids are saying today

LW is trying to communicate with me without using words. It's frustrating for both of us.

IM: Why did I have to get Mauritius for my report? It's the only African country with no problems and [teacher] expects half the report to be about problems!

NB: I've figured out a way for telepathy to be scientifically possible. You know how your brain communicates with your body electronically? Well . . .

EM is saying precious little today, although he did divulge that they are studying the Opium Wars in history and that his mouth feels slightly better than it did yesterday.

New York City by the Numbers

1.5
Number of hours it took me to fly to NYC.

7
Number of nights I slept in NYC.

8.5
Number of hours it took me to ride the train home.

3
Number of people (my mom, my sister, and my sister-in-law) who joined me on my adventure.

4
Number of shows we saw: a comedy show, Black Angels Over Tuskegee, Wicked, and Memphis.

2
Number of art museums we visited: Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Frick Collection.

8?
Number of motorcades we saw. (It was opening week of the United Nations.)

6
Number of buttons on the spiffy Japanese toilet in the sashimi restaurant: lid up, lid down, flush, wash front, wash back, and dry. There was no button for heating the seat. That happened automatically.

354
Number of steps to the crown of the Statue of Liberty.

5'5"
Maximum height to escape hitting your head during the climb to the crown. (I'm guessing a bit here. I'm not quite 5'5" and I was bump free. My sister is slightly taller and was not so lucky.)

956
Approximate number of times I laughed during the week.

Death by Hugging

LW is a very affectionate kid. Hands down the most physically loving of any of my kids, and also full of compliments about how wonderful I am and how much he loves me.

It's very sweet. Really.

And I know I will miss this terribly in another year or two when adoring your mom isn't cool anymore.

But this weekend I find myself craving a few hours in an isolation tank. Who knew being the object of adoration could be so wearing?

Too bad I can't bottle this up to sprinkle through his teen years.

First Day of School

The kids started school last Wednesday. This is the last year they will all have the same first day of school, because next year EM will start one day later. (The freshmen have the run of the high school the first day.)

EM is starting 9th grade, NB and IM are starting 5th, and LW is starting P4.

Sadly, the last group first day of school pictures didn't turn out that well.



This is what the bus stop wait typically looks like. The three younger kids chatting together:

While EM does the cool teenager act off to the side:

Library Basket

This morning, we had that rare library trip where the kids were actually quiet and well-behaved, and I got to browse. (My trick: I took them for a walk through the woods first.)

Want to see what I got? There is no way these will all end up on my Books Read list.

• Childhood's End--I picked up this one in the children's section, where it had been mistakenly shelved. I assume because it has "childhood" in the title. I decided this was as good a time to read it as any.
• The Lost Memoirs of Jane Austen--A novel purporting to tell the tale of Jane Austen's secret love affair. I don't have high expectations, but I'll give it a chance.
• Waiting on a Train--The abysmal state of America's rail system is a favorite rant of Michael's, so I had to get this book for him when I saw it. I'll probably give it a skim as well.
  
• The Well-Tended Perennial Garden--The flowerbeds around the inn are getting overgrown and need some sort of drastic revival, but I'm a bit flummoxed about where to begin and how to proceed. I'm hoping to get a pointer or two from this book, which promises "planting and pruning techniques."
• Losing Moses on the Freeway: The 10 Commandments in America--I'm partway through the first chapter and beginning to think that the title is the best part of the book.
• Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography--I've seen video clips of Crossan speak and read quotations from him in other books, but I've never read one of his books. It should be an interesting juxtaposition with A Marginal Jew, which I read during Lent.
• The Town that Food Saved: How One Community Found Vitality in Local Food--I'm pretty sure I'll finish this one. It's a quick read about a favorite subject.
• Full Moon Feast--I should have looked at this one a bit more. I was hoping for lots of seasonal recipes (I need some new pot-luck recipes for the fall), but this has more musings on food and fewer recipes than I wanted. I haven't yet determined if the musings are interesting.
• bon appetit (August edition)--I was seduced by the blackberry, lemon, and gingersnap cheesecake pudding on the cover. Since I haven't been responsible for day-to-day cooking in almost seven years, this falls under the category Michael and I call "food porn," much like my Food Network viewing. (Just so no one gets the wrong idea--Michael is an excellent cook and spends a lot of time serving up tasty meals. I just really like to eat and like to pretend to myself that I like to cook.)

The kids also loaded up on books, and as I type this, everyone has his or her nose in a book.

Appointment August

I am officially declaring this month Appointment August.

So far, we have the following scheduled between today and August 25, when the kids go back to school:

• Three eye exams (on three different days)*
• Four doctor visits (two on one day and two on another)
• One orthodontist appointment
• Four dentist visits (thankfully, all on the same day)

I'm hoping to squeeze in haircuts for IM and EM as well. (Michael normally cuts the kids' hair, but these two like the occasional professional cut.)

And, since EM's orthodontist appointment is the official "Yes, we are going ahead with braces" visit, there's a good chance he'll have another appointment to actually install them sometime this month.

Thankfully, Michael is a modern dad and does his fair share of appointment driving.

* Yes, really. Could I have done a worse job of planning? The initial appointment time (set up last year) turns out to conflict with IM's theater camp. And it is also 17 days too early for the insurance to cover EM's visit. The health insurance pays for one eye exam every two years and they figure it down to the day. Really. So EM's visit, in order to be covered, could be no earlier than August 19. And by the time I figured that out, there was no way to get all three kids seen at the same time before school started.

July Reading Notes

Johnny Tremain--I finally finished reading this book to the three youngest kids. (Since we usually read at the bus stop, our routine falls apart in the summer.) It's been almost thirty years since I read it initially, and I'd forgotten everything except the very basic premise: boy in Boston at the start of the American Revolution. I was surprised by the sophistication of the language, which was a definite step above most of the children's books I've read recently.

New York--My first Rutherfurd book, Sarum, has a very Mitchneresque feel. It literally starts with the glaciers receding from Europe. This book starts in New Amsterdam in 1664, and although I was disappointed to see so little of the Native American experience reflected in the book, the shorter time period does make this story more cohesive than Sarum. It's a great overview of the history of New York City since the Europeans settled the area. I learned new things and remembered things I had learned but forgotten. Definitely a good book to read in preparation for my trip to NYC in September.

The Secret Magdalene--My friend who loaned me Queenmaker, loaned me this book also. It takes the premise that the Apostle John and Mary Magdalene are the same person (remember The Davinci Code?) and tells a story of how that came to be. The first half of the book dragged, and I came very close to quitting . There are so many other books on my To Read list, I wasn't sure I wanted to spend any more time with this one. But I have a hard time not finishing a book I have chosen to read, and I'm glad I stayed with it. The book's coverage of the events in the Gospels is more interesting than the coverage of the lost years. I don't think this is a plausible version of what happened, but it did make for an interesting look at Jesus through gnostic eyes.

Harris and Me--This is the assigned summer reading for the twins, so I thought I should read it. It's not great literature, but I did laugh out loud several times. Harris is a delight.

Of Mice and Men--One of the two books EM must read this summer. It met my two expectations: depressing and well-written. The surprises were the length (it's practically a short story) and the Gollum-like scene at the end.

My Life Needs Footnotes

Yesterday I was reading Click, Clack, Moo to LW. It's a delightful children's book about a farmer whose cows find a typewriter, learn to type, and send letters demanding electric blankets because the barn is cold.

We've read the book numerous times. LW enjoys it and always laughs.

This time, he turned to me and asked, "What's a typewriter?"

And I suddenly realized that he's never seen one in action. Have you ever tried to explain a typewriter to a child born in the computer age? NB and IM joined in with questions about how the paper advances and how you correct mistakes when you're typing.

Oddly enough, I'd just shared with a coworker earlier in the day that my children once asked why we say "dial a phone number" when there is no dial involved. And her comments about how people with no memory of carbon copies still cc people on emails prompted me to have a conversation with EM about the origin of the term.

I'm suddenly feeling very old. Things I have used in my life are so strange to my children that they need explanations to understand references to them in text.

How Many Minds Are in There?

LW didn't want to go to sleep because he's been having nightmares. I told him he should think about something happy while he's falling asleep. He said, "I'm sorry, but my dream list has a mind of its own."

Some Ideas Should Not Be Tried

Several years ago, I heard a mom say that during the summer they have ice cream sundaes for Sunday dinner. I thought it sounded fun, but Michael, the family chef, did not. Since he's out of town for the week, I decided today would be a perfect time to try it.

The kids have been counting down the days ever since the ice cream entered the house.

I made sure we all had a healthy breakfast and lunch, and then I made brownies. For dinner, we had brownie sundaes with two kinds of ice cream, hot fudge sauce, butterscotch, and whipped cream. Sugar shock hit me two bites in, and I went in search of the leftover pasta salad. After that, I spent an hour lying on the couch.

NB and LW ate their small first helping and made it half-way through their seconds. NB then made himself a roast beef sandwich.

IM and EM asked for thirds, but when I said no they also scrounged up something healthy.

I learned two things today. One, this is not a new family tradition. Two, there are limits to my sweet tooth.

Who says a word has only one meaning?

LW: Mom, we have a tiny problem. And by tiny, I mean huge!

(For the worriers who might be reading, a Lego structure collapsed.)

No, the non-smoking policy does not have an exception for your before-bed cigarettes

The guest in room 7 just called.

I notice the sign on the door says that it's a non-smoking room.
Yes, we don't have any smoking rooms.
I usually smoke a couple of cigarettes right before bed.
There is no smoking allowed in the room.
I wouldn't smoke any other time.
There's a $100 fine for smoking in the room.
I guess I'll have to go outside to smoke.
That would be great. Thank you.

He's called two other times in the last ten minutes. He's having trouble setting the alarm clock in the room.

Temporary Pet

NB was fetching something from the basement, when he yelled, "Mom! There's a snake down here!"

Sure enough it's a baby milk snake. EM caught it, Michael found the snake cage we keep on hand, and it is now residing on top of my piano.

Reading Notes

I was shocked to realize I haven't written about my reading since February. I'm going to aim for once a month from now on.

Chocolat--Set in France during Lent, it seemed an appropriate book to read during Lent while preparing to visit France. The book was enjoyable and adequately crafted, but it was less than I expected. Less sensual. Less controversial. Less substantial. A French beach read, with the unfortunate side effect of making you crave chocolate.

Chasing Vermeer--A children's book the twins were reading. It reminded me of The Westing Game, which I read when I was their age.

My Life in France--I saw Julie & Julia in the theater last year during one of my trips to Waltham, so I had some idea of what to expect when Michael brought the book home from the library. The descriptions of the food were fantastic, of course, but I found that I prefer Meryl's Julia to Julia's Julia. By the end, there were simply too many examples of underhanded criticism and self-centeredness. I was happy to finish the book and leave her behind, so I was surprised when I looked through my quotation book to discover I had one from My Life in France:

Oh, how I yearned for a passel of blood-brother friends to celebrate with. We had plenty of acquaintances in Oslo, but, as in Plittersdorf, we suffered months and months of nobody to really hug but ourselves. p215

The Zookeeper's Wife--Some books are in the air and you can no longer remember who recommended them first. Such is the case with this one. I interrupted my French series to read it in April because it was the selection for a fledgling book group. (So fledgling it has yet to meet.) I have mixed feelings about The Zookeeper's Wife. On the one hand, I came away with a new-found understanding of the Polish experience in World War II and an appreciation for the Polish spirit. (And more information about the Nazi party. Did you know Nazis were frequently environmentalists and animal rights activists? Humans truly are baffling.) On the other hand, the author is prone to long, flowery descriptions and the subject of the book suffers somewhat in comparison to the side stories. Still, I filled my book with quotations such as these:

One of the most remarkable things about Antonina was her determination to include play, animals, wonder, curiosity, marvel, and a wide blaze of innocence in a household where all dodged the ambient dangers, horrors, and uncertainties. p166

At the outbreak of the war, thinking to decapitate the country, the Nazis had rounded up and shot most of the Polish intellegentsia, then outlawed education and the press, a strategy that boomeranged because it not only made learning subversively appealing, it also freed the surviving intellectuals to focus their brainpower on feats of resistance and sabotage. p169

Yet 70,00o-90,000 people in Warsaw and the suburbs, or about one-twelfth of the city's population, risked their lives to help neighbors escape. p189

After the defeat of Communism in 1989, with characteristic good humor the Poles turned the former Gestapo headquarters into the Ministry of Education, the former KGB headquarters into the Ministry of Justice, the Communist Party headquarters into the Stock Exchange, and so on. p321

A Marginal Jew, vol. 1--"Suppose that a Catholic, a Protestant, a Jew and an agnostic--all honest historians cognizant of 1-st century religious movements--were locked up in the bowels of the Harvard Divinity School library, put on a spartan diet, and not allowed to emerge until they had hammered out a consensus document on who Jesus of Nazareth was and what he intended in his own time and place." (1) A Marginal Jew attempts to be that document. This volume describes the concepts, evaluates the sources, discusses Jesus' birth and family, and provides a basic chronology. The author (a Catholic priest and professor at Notre Dame) does a fantastic job of weighing evidence and explaining why he draws the conclusions he does. I found especially interesting his discussion of why the Last Supper was not a Passover meal. I need to go buy volume two.

Queenmaker--I was handed this book by a friend when I saw The Red Tent on her bookshelf and said how much I enjoyed it. This is the story of Michal, daughter of Saul and wife of David. I was surprised a couple of times to find that a situation I had assumed was the author's creation was in fact taken from the Bible. Queenmaker was enjoyable, but it didn't have as much of an impact on me as The Red Tent. That might have more to do with changes in me than with the respective qualities of the books.

The Farseer Trilogy (Assassin's Apprentice, Royal Assassin, and Assassin's Quest)--I read Assassin's Apprentice in 2007, but abandoned the trilogy because it felt wrong to pay $3 in Inter-Library Loan fees for each paperback book. Instead, I put them on my Christmas wish list, and Michael bought them for me last year. Since it had been so long, I decided to start by rereading the first book. I really liked it. (Again.) The second book turned darker, and I started to realize I wouldn't get an ending as happy as I would like. The third book dragged for a bit in the middle, but I found myself sobbing through the last 100 pages. PMS? The fact that I had just said goodbye to our closest friends after a week-long visit? I don't know, but I was relieved I was reading in the privacy of my bedroom. Think Frodo leaving Middle Earth.

Vacation Remorse

LW came to me Friday night and demanded to know when he was going back to school. I pulled down the calendar, pointed to June 11, and then showed him August 25.

He burst into tears.

Apparently, although he's been talking eagerly about summer vacation, he hadn't realized that during summer vacation you don't go to school.

Weeping. Wailing. Gnashing of teeth.

It turns out he had a P3 bucket list, and he hadn't finished it yet.

Buying train tickets

Yesterday I bought tickets for my trip to New York City in September. I'm flying down, but taking the train back.

This is the first time I've purchased Amtrak tickets online. There are a few quirks in the process.

First, on the page where you enter your credit card information, there is a little notice that informs you that prices aren't guaranteed until your credit card is charged. I figured Amtrak is large enough I could trust them, but really! Requiring me to enter in my credit card information with no guarantee that the price displayed on the screen is the price I would end up paying?

Second, the page that displays at the end of the process has big bold letters across it: THIS IS NOT A TICKET. Which is true. You have to either pick up your ticket at the station or pay to have it mailed to you. The problem is that if you read the smaller print you realize that the NOT A TICKET page has a bar code that you need in order to retrieve your ticket. And I can verify that the bar code doesn't come through correctly in Google Mail. So although it might not be a ticket, it's a really good idea to print the page.* If you don't, you'll be standing in line at the ticket window instead of being able to get your ticket from a kiosk.

I can't decide if Amtrak thinks its patrons are gullible or sophisticated.

* Don't worry, Mom. I printed it.

The Secret in their Eyes

Last night, Michael and I took advantage of the empty inn and went to see a movie with some theater friends. We saw The Secret in their Eyes, an Argentinian film that won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film this year.

I'm still thinking about it this morning.

The movie takes place in two times--the present, and twenty years ago. In the present, a retired judicial employee is trying to write a novel about a rape-murder case. The flashbacks show the initial investigation.

The acting was excellent, and the aging of the actors completely believable.

I was worried it would be depressing (in my experience, Oscar-winning foreign films tend to be), but it wasn't.

It was, however, haunting.

Hand over the Oscar

NB and LW just called me up to their room because there was a spider on NB's bed and they wanted me to remove it and not kill it.

Clearly, I have been doing an amazing acting job for the last ten years if they thought calling me for help with a spider was a good idea.

But, Michael is at rehearsal, so what's a mom to do?

The spider is now alive and well and outside.

I even managed not to shudder until the kids were back in bed.

O's Sneaky Marketing

I received an envelope in the mail from the Office of Credit & Adjustments of O, The Oprah Magazine. The envelope had IMPORTANT ACCOUNT INFORMATION across the front.

I thought this was odd, since I haven't subscribed to O in years, but I was curious enough to open the envelope.

The top of the letter said "Credit Amount: -$42.00." The fine print informed me that due to my "credit adjustment" I needed to pay only $12.

Does anyone actually fall for sneak marketing like this? Are there people mailing in their $12 today because they think they owe it, not realizing that if they aren't getting O and don't want to get it, they owe nothing?

The marketing department at O clearly doesn't think much of their potential readers.

LW is at it again

Me: IM, you are being awfully picky about the music today.
LW: Picky? That's my job!

After I tucked NB in first (because LW was still in the bathroom): That's not what Moms do to kids who love them!

The Vegetable Nazi

On our first Sunday in Burgundy, we went to the market in Chablis. French markets have everything you would expect to find in an American farmer's market--produce, meat, honey and jams, baked goods--and many things you wouldn't. Mattresses, for example.

We strolled through, buying some cheese Michael had heard about. Checking out the olive and dried fruit booth. Did you know you can dry kiwi slices? The most popular meat booth had an entire pig (head and all) on display. There was a long line waiting to be served there.

After we had finished exploring, Michael asked me to pick up some vegetables while he purchased some picnic supplies from another booth. The vegetable booth we were standing in front of had tables of vegetables on either side of the walkway. Michael assured me he had seen customers picking out vegetables themselves, and he pointed to the plastic bags available to hold them.

And then he left. I found the onions and carrots he wanted and put them in plastic bags, being careful to only touch the ones I was buying. The tomatoes were on the table on the other side of the walkway, and I noticed that customers there were waiting for the vendors to help them. There was a line, so I waited.

All of a sudden, a man walked up from behind me, grabbed the vegetables out of my hands, and put them (still in their bags) back on the table. I held out my money, but he waved me away.

And then I realized that those vegetables had come from his vegetable booth, which curved around the corner of the street. I had taken his vegetables and was attempting to pay his competitor for them.

I tried to apologize and pay him, but he shook his hands at me and turned his back.

"No vegetables for you!"

French Chateaus

We eventually arrived in France on Thursday (after waiting in line for three hours to check in at the Air France counter in Montreal).

We went straight from the airport to Versailles:



We skipped the interior and focused on the gardens. I was a bit surprised to see that none of the flowers were planted yet. I expected spring bulbs.

The drive from Versailles to our rental house was supposed to take about 40 minutes. Let's skip over the gory details and just say that the A86 was designed by Satan, shall we? Not my finest navigating moment. But we eventually found the house, although not in time to buy towels. (The rental contract for this house was all in French, so we missed that we needed to bring our own.)

Due to arriving in France five days late, we had to scrap most of what we wanted to see that first week, including Paris. We ended up focusing on chateaus.

On Friday, we visited Vaux-le-Vicomte, a chateau so elaborate that a jealous Louis XIV imprisoned the owner for life and seized the property.



Visitors at least 10 years old get to climb up to the dome:



And the stonework is rife with Italian fence lizards. Each boy stalked his own.



Saturday morning we had to pack up again and drive to our next rental. We visited Fontainebleau on the way.

The kids were amazed by this fountain. It doesn't show up well in the picture, but the dogs are all peeing. (You can buy a full-size replica of the dog in the gift shop, to bring a touch of France home to your garden.)



Napoleon bid farewell to France from the top of this staircase.



Interesting tidbit from the audio guide: French queens were required to give birth in public to prove the child was legitimate. Barbaric and nonsensical.

Canada

I had never considered Ottawa as a vacation destination, but there was quite a bit to do.

This picture was taken outside the Museum of Civilization, with the Houses of Parliament in the background.



All the museums were closed on Monday, so we drove to Parc Omega. We followed the suggestion to buy one bag of carrots each and then set off into the park.

You feed the larger animals from the car:



But you can feed the deer on foot:





We also visited the Museum of Science and Technology, where I was most impressed with the flawless way the presenters switched from French to English and back in the same session, and the Museum of Nature. The dinosaur floor was a huge hit:

When You Can't Go to France, Go to Ottawa

(Note: I tried to post this from our hotel room in Ottawa, and just realized the posting attempt failed.)

Once our Friday-night flight was officially canceled, Michael and I spent about an hour on hold with Air France. End result? We now have tickets to fly on Wednesday evening.



My plan was to stay home and get stuff done until Wednesday. Michael didn't think much of that plan, so he made reservations at a hotel in downtown Ottawa.



We drove up Saturday. We're closer to the Montreal airport than we were at home, and in the meantime, we can keep busy having fun instead of sitting at home feeling sorry for ourselves. It's working so well that I find myself with surprisingly mixed feelings about our chances of getting to France later this week. (Partly this is due to dreading a trans-Atlantic flight with a 4-year-old once the initial excitement of going on vacation has worn off a bit.)



Ottawa is a charming small city. Saturday night we walked up to the Houses of Parliament. The kids liked the rabbit we saw hopping around on the yard, and the unicorn and lion statues. The grounds of Parliament and the nearby park have thousands of tulips that are almost ready to bloom. In another week or two it will be absolutely beautiful.



We also found the Byward Market area, which has many small ethnic eateries. Because we arrived right as most places were closing, we ended up eating Chinese, but not the typical Chinese food we can get in the Valley. The twins shared a huge seafood soup, and the rest of us had pork and thick noodles. And then we discovered beaver tails, a Canadian version of the fair food we called elephant ears in Oregon. The Canadians are more inventive with the toppings. My favorite so far is maple icing, but they have all been good.



Sunday morning, we returned to Byward Market to eat breakfast at the French bakery. Obama ate here once, and there are pictures of him all over the place.



We spent the bulk of the day at the Museum of Civilization. Did you know the Tsimshian people thought that humans and fish share the same group of souls? When you die as a human, your soul returns as a fish so you can help feed the current humans. The totem poles on display were impressive. There was also an interesting exhibit of artifacts from Afghanistan, but LW dragged me through that pretty fast. (He was eager to get to the IMAX movie.)



We find reminders of France everywhere, from the numerous French bakeries to the out-of-business Made in France store to the French embassy to the bilingual signs. These sightings sting a bit, but the pain is easing somewhat.

How I Became Obsessed with a Volcano in Iceland

Not so much the volcano itself, actually, as the big ash cloud it created over the airspace between here and France.

Our flight for tonight is not officially canceled, but it's also not showing up on Air France's web site.

LW removed the last paper on the count-down calendar this morning. It was rather sad.

I will be shocked if our flight leaves tonight, and yet I still feel compelled to do all the last-minute tasks so we are ready in case a miracle happens.

I'm trying to remind myself that this is not a big problem, in the grand scheme of things. We have our health. We have our family. I have a good job. The inn is doing well. It feels pretty selfish to be so disappointed over a missed vacation.

And yet I'm finding it hard not to cry.

Packing

Today I finally started packing for France in earnest.

I dreamed last night that we arrived in France with no toiletries and, more importantly, no shirts for me or the three younger kids. I decided to pack so my subconscious won't bother me tonight.

The three older kids can pretty much pack for themselves, although they need a bit of guidance about clothes and a lot of reminding about no liquids in the carry-ons. Yes, contact solution counts and so does glasses cleaner!

The hardest thing about packing is making sure that all the kids have seven days of photograph-appropriate clothes. My kids are hard on clothes, and for the sake of sanity and budget I have long since stopped stressing about holes in the knees or paint stains. But clothes that look passable in rural life somehow look rattier in pictures. (This is one of the hidden costs of our trips.)

This year, what with work and Easter and Michael's trip to Costa Rica and our unexpectedly large tax bill, I didn't do as much shopping. Maybe we'll take lots of head shots.

Attention, Telemarketers

When I tell you that I'm not interested, "But you can't be not interested! You haven't seen our product yet" is not an appropriate response.

Slightly Skewed Work Estimates

Spring has arrived here in the Valley, at least temporarily. Yesterday, while I was digging rocks out of the ground in preparation for reseeding the back lawn (a casualty of the construction process last summer), the younger kids were exploring the woods for the first time this year.

IM came back all fired up with plans to build a bridge out to the island in the river. (In the summer, the kids can wade to it, but the river is far too wild in the spring.) Digging rocks was "too hard" but carrying concrete blocks down to the edge of the property and rigging them up on supports? That we could easily do. And should do. Immediately.

This is not the first time our kids have come up with hare-brained schemes that they are convinced are less work than the chores we assign them.

I think LW is the only child who hasn't yet suggested that building a room-cleaning robot would be easier than picking up the room.

But the classic case in our family comes from EM, when, at the age of three, he managed to lock the bathroom door on his way out of the bathroom. Given that the upstairs toilet was not always reliable, there was a certain urgency and stress involved in coming up with the solution. As Michael and I debated various lock-picking strategies, EM grinned. "I know! We can build a robot that will flatten itself, slide under the door, and open it from the other side! That will be best."

Is it any wonder that as adults we underestimate construction projects?

Parent of a High School Student?

We met this week with EM's high school counselor to plan his classes for next year. He has decided to drop band so he can double up on math.

I can't decide if by supporting this we are encouraging his passion or giving him enough rope to hang himself academically. He has no doubts. He's convinced that honors algebra 2 is an easier class than band. (And it might be. Our band program is not for the faint of heart.)

Taking this route means that we'll be winging it a bit for his senior year, since he will finish the formal math offerings as a junior. There are options (independent study B/C Calculus, a summer class at the state university, a night class at the community college), but they aren't guaranteed.

But hey, I figure this feeling of closing my eyes and trusting EM can handle it should be good practice for when he gets his driving permit.

LW's on a Roll Today

On the way to church this morning
LW: Mom, look at me.
Me: I'm driving. I have to look at the road.
LW: I want you to see if I look cute.
Me: You always look cute.
LW: Yes, but I want you to tell me if this is the cutest ever.

During Children's Time, the minister was talking to the kids about the importance of focusing on the present.
Reverend Susan: So you shouldn't live in the past . . .
LW, interrupting: Because if you lived in the past, you'd be dead by now!

One of the other members of the congregation asked Susan how she felt being the straight man for a four-year-old.

Flooding

Sunday I drove down to Waltham for a week of meetings at work. It was raining heavily during the drive, but that's not unusual, so I didn't really think much of it, other than wishing my cute little rental car didn't have such a tendency to hydroplane.

And then I got onto the side streets. I've never seen water gushing up out of the storm drains before. The size of the puddles reminded me of the Cost Rica guidebook's tips on crossing rivers. I wished I'd left the rental car with Michael and brought the SUV with its high clearance.

Turned on the news Monday morning to watch people being evacuated from their homes in Waltham in the middle of the night. Luckily, the hotel sits on a hill, and the streets between here and work are relatively dry.

The rain stopped sometime Monday night, but the Charles River is still very high here in Waltham, in part because they've had trouble opening the floodgates on the dam. As of this morning, they had only succeeded in opening 5 of the 12.

I'm hoping the flooding concerns ease up by tomorrow night, because I want to go to the Irish pub for dinner so I can listen to the live Irish music on St. Patrick's Day. But the pub (and most of the good restaurants in Waltham) are on the other side of the river. In fact, I'm pretty sure that the news coverage about the dam that I saw this morning was shot from the patio of the Mexican restaurant I'm eating at later this week.

Stress

It's been a surprisingly stressful past few days.

Work needs me to spend a week in Waltham before we go on vacation, and once I factored in Michael's trip to Costa Rica, Passover (my boss is Jewish), and various kids' events, this coming week looked to be the best week. So I arranged my meetings and lined up my hotel room and rental car.

And then the floodgates opened. I am feeling decidedly guilty at the week Michael is going to have, and telling myself that the inn was his idea and we have two employees who can help him with breakfast is not making me feel better. Of course, by the time I realized how awful it was going to be, it was too late to change my trip.

We've also been trying to wrap up some financial matters before I go (corporate tax paperwork due Monday and a loan refinance). So we've both been corresponding with our attorney and loan officer (old and new) and the accountant. The loan officer was nice enough to stop by the inn yesterday, so we could sign papers with LW napped.

So far, today's schedule has looked like this:

5:30 Wake up and start prepping for an early breakfast (racers today and tomorrow)
6:30--9:30 Breakfast
9:40 Take the kids to swimming lessons
11:20 Back from swimming
12:40 Take IM to ski resort to sell Girl Scout cookies at the booth
2:20 Get back from cookie selling and have Michael drop me off to pick up rental car. (Garage is closed on Sunday.) Pick up tax forms.
3:00 Michael leaves for Costco. I deal with guests.

I still need to do laundry so I can pack, but at this point I need to wait until the guests have all showered and left for dinner.

It doesn't help that our streak of low-maintenance guests seems to have come to an abrupt end, right at the end of the season when our cheer is at its lowest.

I'm currently trying to reach a guest room to tell them that I've had complaints about their middle of the night party last night and there can't be a repeat tonight. This is not the room someone complained about at 10:30 last night. Michael called them then, and as far as we know they settled down.

Ironically, when our housekeeper went in this morning to clean the room of the complainer (who was quite angry), she reported that he's been smoking pot in the room. I thought pot was supposed to mellow people out?

Four-year-old wooing

LW just came down from bed sobbing.

I just love you so much when I grow up I'll never be able to find someone else to marry! I'll never find anyone as pretty as you!

On booking travel

We are finishing our trip in France with a stop at Disneyland Paris, and booking our reservations for that was at the top of my To Do list this weekend.

Disney's web site assumes if you are using a browser with English as the default language and you want to look at the Disney Paris pages, you must be in the United Kingdom. So I've been using the UK Disney site.

When booking, Title is a mandatory field, and on the UK site, in addition to Dr., Mr., Mrs., and Ms, the list includes Lord and Lady.

I was tempted to give myself a promotion.

On a related note, my ever-vigilant credit card company denied payment at first, despite my call to them yesterday notifying them that I would be booking travel in Europe this weekend. When I called to clear that up, the nice young man in India tried to sell me identify theft protection, so no one could make fraudulent charges.

Fraudulent charges? I can't even make legitimate charges without multiple phone calls.

Gargoyles

LW and I looked at Cathedral yesterday, in preparation for our France trip. He was especially taken with the gargoyles and how the rainwater runs down the gutters and flows out of their mouths.

His swimming teacher was not quite as impressed with his imitation of a gargoyle during his lesson today.

Vie de France

Subtitled Sharing Food, Friendship, and a Kitchen in the Loire Valley, this book is essentially food porn.

The author, a former chef, spent a month in France with a group of friends, doing some sightseeing and a lot of cooking and eating. This book is a meal-by-meal description of the month. I salivated over every page. It was all I could do not to grab my passport and head for the airport.

And since Michael told me he'd like me to do some of the cooking in France, it was good to start thinking of shopping and cooking in a foreign country. Michael's a great fly-by-the-seat-of-his-pants chef (his chicken noodle soup last night was divine), but I tend to be overly reliant on recipes and not very flexible. Two months of mental preparation is about right.

One funny note: I checked this book out from the library, and emblazoned across the front and back cover, it says, "Uncorrected Proofs for Limited Distribution. NOT FOR SALE."

The Princess of Cleves

Wanting to continue reading books about France, I scoured our shelves for something appropriate and found this book left from Michael's college days.

Once you get past the info dump on who was who in the court of Henri II, this is an easy read. Of course, I had Michael's margin notes to guide me: Important page. Theory of romantic love.

The Princess of Cleves is a woman faced with a dilemma: tell her husband she is in love with another man so he can help her avoid tempting situations? Or keep her love a secret and risk succumbing?

I think Anna Karenina would make a fascinating contrast, but my memories are twenty years old and far too fuzzy. I went so far as to pick my copy off the shelf, considering re-reading it. The sight of the 868 closely typewritten pages dissuaded me, and I put it back. I'm not quite that curious.

Snow!

Tuesday morning when I woke up, I could see grass in places. Grass. In February. In northern New England.


Wednesday morning, I woke up to this:






It snowed for the next fifteen hours, although the rate eased up at times. We ended up with around two feet, with a chance for more later this week.

And the phone rang off the hook. The guests who had reservations were cancelling them because of the driving conditions, while others were making new reservations to take advantage of the improved skiing conditions.

The Happiness Project

I found this book in a round-about way. The author has a blog, and Michael's cousin Lis linked to it from her blog a couple of months ago. I liked what I read, and meant to pre-order the book, but life intervened and it took me until February to actually get my hands on a copy.

I love self-improvement books--it's so much easier to vicariously improve yourself than to do the actual work of changing--and this was no exception. It's akin to The Year of Living Biblically, which I also enjoyed. (It turns out the authors know each other.)

Much of this book resonated with me, starting with the premise of the Happiness Project:

And more important, I didn't want to reject my life. I wanted to change my life without changing my life, by finding more happiness in my own kitchen. I knew I wouldn't discover happiness in a faraway place or in unusual circumstances; it was right here, right now. (p12)

I tend to be drawn to books and movies and music with that same central theme: Carpe Diem. Live deliberately. Dance.

Maybe I'm a slow learner.

The Count of Monte Cristo

Shortly after we were married, Michael discovered I had never read this book. Once he recovered from his shock, he urged me to read it. Sixteen years later, I decided it was finally time.

It's a very fun read.

Alexandre Dumas wrote it roughly twenty years before Victor Hugo wrote Les Miserables. Both are French novels with long time lines. Both involve one character pursuing another through the years.

But there the similarity ends.

The Count of Monte Cristo reads like a soap opera: jealousy, intrigue, disguise, murder, revenge, secret romance, fabulous wealth. The story is very plot-driven, and Dumas keeps the story moving at a modern pace. No fifty-page tangents here.

It's a good classic to give a young teen, and I plan to assign it to EM before our trip to France, but IM has asked to have a stab at it first.

Olympics snark

From tonight's TV Guide listing: In live action, U.S. men's curling faces France

Action? Has the writer ever seen curling? The Canadian women's team has an alternate player who is five months pregnant, for heaven's sake.

What a way to greet the morning

Awakened at 5:45 to a little voice saying, "Mommy, I have something to tell you. I vomited in the sink."

Thoughts on toe tapping

Our middle school has an excellent music program. I actually enjoy listening to the middle school band.

And yet . . .

It's a very different music program than I participated in during middle school and high school.

Someone--I believe it was Mr. Vicks, my orchestra teacher for fifth through eighth grades--drilled into us that there was no need to ever tap your shoe while playing. If you absolutely couldn't hold the beat internally, you could tap your toes inside your shoe. But the sole of your shoe should stay firmly planted on the floor at all times.

This is obviously not a belief shared by EM's band teachers.

Although I recognize that many of the rules that seemed inviolate to me as a teenager are not that important in the grand scheme of things, I must confess that a part of me spends the middle school concerts wishing I had a nail gun to drill the tapping shoes to the floor.

Just the tippy toes. I promise not to hit the feet.

Fun with the Girl Scout health history form

IM is joining the Girl Scouts. She's thrilled. She's wanted to join since kindergarten, but until last week, there wasn't a troop close enough to be feasible and she does not have the sort of mom willing to organize a troop.

So tonight I filled out the registration form and the Girl Health History Record. I'm generally pretty exact about forms like this. I answer all the questions, providing a titch too much information.

Not this form.

Since last health exam, has participant had

• a serious injury requiring medical attention? (If you receive medical attention, doesn't that become your last health exam?)
• any prescribed or over-the-counter meds? (Really? They really want to know that I gave her Tylenol for a fever in October and decongestant flying back from Oregon in August?)
• a surgical operation or fracture? (See earlier comment on medical attention)
• treatment in hospital or emergency room? (Ditto)
• any exposure to a contagious disease? (Nope. Not my child. She hasn't been exposed to the cold or flu since July. What? You don't believe me?)

And then there's the section on Other Health Conditions. These are all over the map, from wearing glasses to nosebleeds to fainting to immune disease. But the kicker is "Emotional Disturbances." They do realize they're talking about ten-year-old girls, right?

But I was good. I told them about her glasses and heart murmur and kept all snarky comments to myself, Michael, and all of you.

Still trying to figure out winter

LW, on being told it was time for swimming lessons: In the outdoor pool or the indoor pool?

Pretty as a picture

IM, riding in the car today: Mom, do they make lots of postcards of our state? Because if they don't they should. I mean, look at this!

An update on my "dentally delayed" son

I took EM to his third pre-braces consult with the orthodontist recommended by his dentist.

Of the five baby teeth he had in August, he'd only lost one. The orthodontist pulled two more in the process of wiggling them to see how loose they were. (EM was supposed to be wiggling these regularly, but it turns out he had grown confused about which ones he was supposed to be wiggling.)

The plan is to have the remaining two teeth pulled by the dentist asap. (Fortunately, they are in the same quadrant, so he'll only need one set of numbing shots.) Then we'll give his adult teeth some time to grow in and he'll go back to the orthodontist in May.

With any luck, he'll be in braces and headgear by June.

In the meantime, having seen the estimated bill, we're seeking a second opinion and estimate.

Finished books

First, a bit of 2009 catch up.

The last book of the year was Christmas: The Original Story. This book was a gift from my mother-in-law and made a great Advent read. I did feel a bit as if I were dropped into the middle of a lecture. I think in order to fully evaluate the author's arguments in this book, I would need to read her earlier book on temple theology. I'm not yet completely convinced of some of the assertions that are bedrock to her interpretation of the Gospel birth stories. I'd like to read her more completely developed arguments for those.

The first book of 2010 was Four Queens. This is a wonderful non-fiction book that reads like a novel. It's the story of four sisters, the daughters of the count of Provence, who grew up to become the queens of France, England, the Holy Roman Empire, and Sicily. The writing is great with lots of sarcastic asides.

A Garden of Thorns is a memoir of the son of Italian immigrants growing up in Dijon, France, during World War II. Dijon was one of the last areas of France that was liberated. It's pretty cheerful as WWII European memoirs go. Michael recommended this to me based on the opening chapter. The writing isn't strong in the rest of the book, but I had an extra interest in the story since we'll be visiting Dijon on our trip in April.

I just finished Vanished Smile. Another easy and yet fascinating read. Michael had to remind me once, or twice, or three times, that if he wanted he could read the book himself, so maybe I could finish this anecdote and then stop talking? Did you know the Mona Lisa was stolen from the Louvre in 1911 and was missing for two years? Did you know Picasso was one of the suspects and appeared in court to answer charges?

Two things struck me as particularly shocking. One was that the king of France had the Mona Lisa hanging in his bathroom at Fontainebleau for years. Of course. Because all priceless masterpieces love heat and humidity.

The other was that it took several hours from the time someone noticed the Mona Lisa wasn't hanging on the wall before anyone alerted the authorities. The reason?

The camera was becoming an indispensable instrument in the creation, conservation, and reproduction of art, and Director Homolle was so enthusiastic about the new medium that he allowed the photographers unlimited access. Any contract photographer or curator could saunter into a gallery and remove a painting from the wall without making a formal request, obtaining permission, or informing the guard. Because the paintings were simply hung on hooks--not even the most priceless masterpieces were wired or bolted--anyone could take them down and carry them off. page 19-20

So, any other great books about France I should read between now and April?

We Made It!

We have officially survived Christmas week, but what a week it was.

First, the good news. The kids had a fun Christmas and thoroughly enjoyed their time off. I found that our new-in-2009 division of labor here at the inn did make for a less dreadful week for me. The weather was decent, with fresh snow several days during the week, although we had rain early on and high winds some days. And our guests were almost unanimously cheerful. That's a lot of good.

Now for the bad news. This was the week of facility issues. Here are the problems we discovered since December 23:
1. There was a crack in the fire wall of our oil burner which caused part of it to collapse, creating a pocket which resulted in an incomplete burn. And smoke. And, we thought, carbon monoxide. We discovered this on Christmas Eve, and the furnace repairman came out, removed the cracked firewall and said to keep an eye on it. We're still waiting for the replacement part to come in, but it has been burning cleaner.
2. Something is wrong with the draft in the wood boiler. We discovered this slowly, over several days of continuing carbon monoxide issues. It is now completely shut down (a fun process for Michael, that) and awaiting assistance from the company that sold it to us.
3. One of our leach fields appears to be failing. We discovered this on Saturday. Michael is still exploring solutions.
4. We had no cable at the inn for much of yesterday. Fortunately, the guests were understanding.
5. We had no Internet connection for most of yesterday. (This and the cable issue seem to have been caused by a power surge, although everything is plugged into surge protectors.) This is a much more critical issue than the cable, since people can book rooms online, and if we can't see what they are booking, it's easy for us to rent out the same room to someone who calls on the phone. I spent hours over the course of the day on the phone with tech support at our Internet service provider and our wireless provider, diagnosing the problem (the cable modem was not working) and trying to get the system up and running once the service tech connected the new modem. We got connection back yesterday evening, about 10 hours after it went down.

In the meantime, I've been coping by immersing myself in a TV show.