I need to learn how to blog again.

Four days ago Hazel and I had a self-proclaimed snow day – the streets were sheets of ice and seven busses weren’t able to run, but they didn’t call school for our county. I stayed home from work, and she from daycare, anyway. One of those days where I am extra-grateful for my job. Now it’s almost sixty degrees, and yesterday she and her little buddy, Xavier, made “snow angels” in the pea gravel at the playground, with no need for outerwear / hats / gloves.

I’ve ventured into the worlds of air plants (so weird and impossible, inspired by these open-faced christmas balls that I bought on clearance for fifty cents each.) And the world of green smoothies (so far mostly spinach and celery and avocado, with some berries thrown in, a little juice, some chia or flax seeds… whatever leftover fruits or veggies are in the fridge… so far I haven’t had one turn out green because I am still playing it safe with my spinach : berry ratio. Two giant handfuls of spinach is my max.) Only a few days in, and I have markedly higher energy levels, which is much needed after two months of limping along, nursing some now-mild shit-in-my-throat illness that may or may not be whooping cough (apparently it’s going around? Hazel never got what I had?)

And I made a Pinterest. God help me.

Listning: Nick Drake pandora

It’s supposed to get cold, finally, in a couple of nights. The weather forecast and a grocery bag full of apples from my uncle and grandpa directed the afternoon towards cooking. Applesauce, apple crisp, pesto from the basil that was still hanging on, and bringing in all of the tomatoes that were left out there… salsa verde? I don’t know if I like salsa verde, but I also don’t know if the coming week has enough sunshine power to ripen these little green babes by the window. I already have this back patch winterized, lasagna-style, to build up a raised bed in the spring (seriously, how easy is that task going to be? It already has three raised sides!) I have enough trash-picked cardboard boxes to cover the other side of our strange little back yard and do the same, as soon as I have a bit of time to clean up all the pots that are still there. My mother has lovingly offered to bring me some loads of aged manure for the job. A gift of poop!

Hazel and I were out somewhere the other day and she noticed something that made her declare “I want to pwant another gah’den, Mama.” My heart crumpled a little. I don’t think I’m ready for winter. Maybe I can pacify her with some bulbs.

…some things growing from the cracks in the sidewalks in a two block radius. Touched, pondered, smelled and named by miss Hazel in between collecting a bag of rocks for Uncle Ben and Megan (I’m not sure why) and rejecting every “banana pine cone” available for the taking. I am totally blowing up your instagram feeds, I know. The statute of limitations on keeping a gifted bag of rocks from your niece is like, two visits later when she brings you enough other things to forget about the rocks, right?

Black-eyed Susans (I think), thistles, lemon balm, and snow on the mountain. I’m currently trying to get a cutting of the snow on the mountain to root, I’m pondering some acquisition of lemon balm (but I don’t know how – root it in water? dirt?), and I just got some cosmos and bee balm seeds (and sunflower-seed-harvesting lessons) from my neighbor. Yip! Happy birds, this winter.

First tomatoes! They will have ripe siblings soon, I hope.

Vintage yardsticks gifted from my grandpa…

+

…thrifing find…and some casters…

=

a coffee table.

YUM. You know I can’t wait to decide what gets to live inside all those little magical drawers and make LABELS for each and every one. I have spent more time over the past few weeks contemplating the labels – library cards? typewriter font stamps? just get my typewriter working so it’s authentic? fsjdfkasd – than I have spent trying to locate more vintage yardsticks. They are of a particular thickness, you know. A quarter inch, and most I’m finding are for advertising and have a phone number sans exchange (I finally went through two pages of ebay listings last night.) I’ve yet to purchase any more, but if I wait for enough of them to show up at yard sales and goodwill, it could be years. I’ve been watching, but not buying. I’ll get there. Hazel clearly doesn’t mind that the top is unfinished, anyway. It still serves as a good platform for putting Snoopy to bed with a book, standing to declare things to the kitchen, to “cook”, etc.

(Eventually it will live in front of the couch like all good coffee tables do. But for now… it’s heavy.)

- I love my wee back porch. These little succulents in their mismatchy milk glass homes love it there, too. One of Hazel’s current favorite things (and the only plant she’s ever chosen to buy, beyond selecting flower colors) are the “baby toes” in the middle. She loves to pet them and look in the little windows on their tips.
- Sometimes there is an owl asleep on the kitchen floor.
- Thrifted a pretty pretty pretty (and functional!) vintage Belgian Descoware pot… smothers wish for a Le Creuset, matches a tiny decorative version that belonged to my grandma, looks smashing living life on top of the stove with a turquoise teapot, and doubles as deadly weapon to use against any potential back door intruders. The goodwill gods have smiled upon me once again.
- Text message from my brother requesting books 3 & 4, and practically running down the block with Hazel to deliver. Yay for new Potter fans! And yay for my brother and his gal living so nearby that Hazel’s “is ‘dat Uncle Ben’s house?” pointing inquiries are limited to less than 10 houses between theirs and ours.
- Snoopy band aids for wee injuries!
- …and “band aids” for the rest of the “injuries” in this house. What is it with two year olds and band aids? All over their parents and stuffed animals and dog and…I do not have the kind of band aid budget that Hazel would like, but I LOVE to watch her play doctor, so instead I give her these labels that look like small neon band aids. She loves them. I pay a penny or so each, and sometimes go about my day with nine of them all over my shins. Win.

The best salad I’ve ever eaten – baby lettuce seeded, watered, loved, and constantly chattered about by my two year old farmer. While thinning out the biggest leaves and tossing them into a colander yesterday evening, a friend stopped in our back yard and Hazel proudly announced that she grew the lettuce for our salad. “Want salad now, Mama!”, and downed a few leaves rinsed in the hose. I wasn’t sure about the light against the back of the house, but our container gardening experiment is going well so far.

Two kinds of tomatoes, sugar snap peas, onions, radishes, lettuce, spinach, cucumbers, zucchini, and basil. More lettuce to come as soon as I retrieve my yardsailed pots from my mom and buy some more seeds. And maybe some kale. And… ?

Listening: Neil Young

After an all-day workshop on suicide prevention, this happy thrifting find cheered me up 50%. Other 50% will be found someday when I locate its sugar-mate, I hope.

Baby plants become unbearably cute with the addition of “cute ‘spouts, Mama! Baby ‘pants! Yook Mama, gettin’ big!”

There’s almost nothing that is more satisfying than successfully navigating witching hour with an activity so distracting that Miss Hazel Mae hasn’t even noticed that 6:00 has come and gone with not a single ounce of Whine. This particular evening – scraps of felt and wooden beads & buttons, chosen individually and handed to Mama for stringing… 40 minutes straight until she declared it Done…

…which is, of course, perfect.

After more than two years of mothering, this is among my top 5 favorite things: watching her begin to very mindfully, rather than experimentally, make art. The girl is a fan of glitter, big paper, stickers, and the color white.

the baby is napping. i half cleaned my sewing table this morning, removed excess hair from the dog and from mikey’s head, took out all the trashes and recycling, and ran a couple of errands. the sunshine makes me feel a little more human and some crocuses are coming up – that helps.

i have a free subscription to parents magazine that comes to my parents’ house, and i’ve been catching up on the issues that were waiting for me when we went home. it’s so, SO terrible – just a fashion magazine disguised as a parenting magazine, really. i page through it because the art projects & recipes are always good (and hey, it’s free), but a lot of the actual “parenting” content is pretty contrary to our style, and some things just make my eyes bug out – i never find any of it worth keeping & donate them to the freestore. at the beginning in the obligatory conglomeration of all the little odds & ends that all magazines seem to have, they always spotlight “the world’s cutest kid” (or something like that) in a corner of a page, with a couple tidbits of information and a photo. this month’s featured a cute little seven-month old girl and proclaimed that her favorite character is someone from yo gabba gabba. i’ve had totally rational parent friends tell me that amongst kids’ programming, yo gabba gabba is pretty respectable, but hello… SEVEN MONTHS OLD?? the issue redeemed itself slightly with some good recipes and an article on raising a bilingual child, and then i came to a page of various medical things and one tidbit was the promotion of the newest thing to get your kid to drink their medicine – you can buy tiny medicine cups rimmed in a crust of hot pink sugar. like….. a cocktail. what. the. hell.

i really don’t want to be one of those snobby parents always looking at other people and wondering what in god’s name they are thinking, but magazines liket this do not help. perhaps in the future i will skip directly to the art projects and the recipes. i am not completely anti-television, but seven months old? every day?  no way. the other day i sat hazel in my lap and let her watch a few classic sesame street videos online. the only one she seemed to really enjoy (not just stare at) was kermit singing the song about being alive. she smiled at him :)

she is sitting up well on her own and is quite proud of herself, although a quick look to either side can sometimes tip her over. this morning she was playing on the floor while i was sitting beside her eating my cereal and she started coughing on her own spit, so i leaned over to take her into my arms and pat her back a little. when she was through her little fit i put her back on her blanket amongst her toys & and picked up my cereal bowl to continue eating. she studied my face for a second, and then offered a weak, dry cough. i thought i was imagining things, and then she did it again. was she really fake coughing to get me to pick her up??? at less than six months old?? surely not. she blew some spit bubbles and picked up a toy to shove in her mouth, and when she noticed that i was still watching her carefully she paused and offered one last dry cough in my direction, waited a moment expectantly, and then gave it up and went about her playing. unbelievable.

they’re putting green bins by each of the family housing buildings to collect organic waste, which we are to put in little containers that they are going to distribute this month, which we then empty into the big bins outside. a few days ago they sent out a letter explaining the procedure and included a list of things that can and cannot be included in the bins – our one disposable diaper per day can go in, yay! it says no wipes, but ours are biodegradable so i think they are safe. on the list of things that CAN’T go in – “because they are not organic and won’t break down” – are hair and dead animals. oh really. hair and dead animals are not organic? i thought i was noticing an awful buildup of all the hair and dead animals that have accumulated since the dawn of time – this must be why. green bin = good, though. between that, and recycling in our buildings for paper & cardboard, glass & plastic containers, batteries, lighbulbs, CDs / DVDs & VHS, and ink cartridges, we will hardly ever have trash.

my terrariums are coming along nicely at one week old. the baby fern in the tiny fishbowl is now almost out of the top of the glass – three inches or so in one week. i keep inspecting them for wildlife – so far, so good. i stood at our window the other day and watched the rain pour and sniffed my terrariums and it was an okay substitute for actually being present in the woods if i used my imagination.

listening: the morgantown rounders