Watching caterpillars poop, and other joys of summer

The boys and I are home today, enjoying perhaps the most perfect weather Minnesota has dished up all year. We spent an hour in the hammock this morning, swinging in the shade and reading the third Harry Potter. The boys are currently taking turns in the hammock, wrapping each other up and pushing wildly. The laughs are intermingled with terrified screams. As long as the laughs outnumber the screams, I don't interfere. Up until now the summer has been a bit hectic, with work, planning the Croixathlon, the kids bussing out to daycamp, and altogether too much soccer. We're laying low this week and loving it. Here are some of my favorite moments from June:

• Watching our two pet monarch caterpillars so closely that we just saw one poop- kind of up close and personal. We thought we were peering at its head, but that was soon proved incorrect. (A 'not-joy' was having one of the original caterpillars commit suicide by diving into the water jar, and then another try to escape- after looking everywhere, including the bottom of my shoes, I found it hightailing down a table leg. I recaptured the escapee and now it is happily munching imported milkweed. And pooping. A lot.)


• Sitting in the shade in one of our swinging chairs and watching the boys entertain themselves. Eli tells himself elaborate stories and acts them out when he thinks I'm not looking. Theo talks to himself with his lips curled down over his teeth. That has been his story narration style ever since he was a ear-infected toddler with constant snot running down his upper lip. He kept it curled tightly down, and that pose reasserts itself whenever he is thinking hard.


• Seeing Theo in the garden, quietly collecting pea pods in a pouch he made out of his shirt. The second trip where he put freshly picked strawberries in this shirt pouch made me less happy, but things wash out. Or they don't.


• Having the Neske-Moens over for dinner and seeing all five boys piled into the hammock sucking on popsicles. Later they all moseyed over to the garden and were all talking non-stop as they popped strawberries into their mouths. I am certain a few slugs were swallowed in the process. But these particular slugs are real small. Probably chock full of protein.


• Having the boys return on the little mini-bus from DayCroix, filthy and exhausted, but full of stories and songs and adventures.


• Theo telling me that he 'discovered a new speed' at daycamp and now can run faster than ever before. This 'new speed' keeps coming up. Like in: "Tonight at soccer I am going to be hard to stop since I discovered my new speed."


• Watching Eli watch skits at the DayCroix campfire. The old 'throw water on the unsuspecting counselor' skit suddenly became new again when it caused Eli to throw back his head and guffaw.

Craigslist

We have had a pretty good relationship with our local Craigslist. During our year on the 'compact' I managed to find such things as a dishwasher, legos, and other assorted gifts. I always stick to the St. Paul items and won't be tempted into driving to Minneota for a 5-pack of used dishclothes. Won't do it. I do have standards. So when I found a cordless electric mower just a few blocks from home, I bit. I think it had something to do with the fact that the dandelions were towering above Theo's knees and our push mower was just daintily bending them over when I ['mowed'. I was at the end of my dandelion rope. This is NOT a good place from which to make a purchase. I sent Jon out to check it out and he came back with concerns about the battery. He researched a bit and found a place where you could order a new one. So we did and I went to go pick up the mower. As I rolled it from the garage to my waiting car I did notice that it looked a little sad and old, a little wobbly, but I handed over the $49 and drove away. I unloaded it right in front of the meanest patch of dandelions and turned it on. It certainly did not 'roar' to life, but this is why we were buying electric in the first place, right? We didn't want to wake up the neighborhood nappers each time we mowed..... Turns out that the thing should have been emitting more than the lowest whimper. It did at least bend the dandelions over with a bit more force than our old mower. They stayed at half mast for almost half a day! But the next morning there they were again in all their glory. I was going to have to await the battle until the new battery arrived. It did. We got it in, the mower roared (in a small cat type of way- say panther, not lion) to life and away I went, casting dandelion heads to the wind with my powerful new implement of destruction. Until I turned around to come back the other way and the back wheel plopped right off. For about 10 minutes I did this interesting little mowing dance....I put the wheel back on and started out, eyes only on the wheel....it would start to wobble to the end of the axel and my left foot would dart out and kick it back on, where it would stay for 2-3 strides...kick....stride....kick. I know that our neighbor across the street, Don, with the golf green lawn, was inside his house howling with laughter, or tears (he does, afterall, annually construct a little alter to his fertilizing technigues and puts it up at the curb- subtle).
After about 10 minutes of this dance I let the wheel drop off without kicking it back on and instead booted it into the sidewalk and went about my mowing with a three-wheeled contraption. It works. Not well.
The saga is not ended there.... Jon spent at least 35 minutes and 3 trips to the hardware store this past weekend in an attempt to reattach the errant wheel. It worked and I took off mowing. One stripe later I was back to the tricylce version of our mower. Now we have enlisted Rodg and he thinks he has the solution. We'll see.
The moral of this story is to always try to bring down the cost on craigslist. I would feel so much better about this whole mower incident if I had 'gotten the best' of the sellers by only offering, say, $45, instead of paying their asking price of $49. That would have gotten them! and I wouldn't feel like such an idiot as I mow my lawn with a three-wheeled rust bucket that has a new $150 battery inside it. I gotta go, I'm cruising craigslist for a 'new' bike for Eli.

Diving fool

After 257 belly flops during the last session of swimming lessons, Eli has become a diver. The breakthrough actually happened 5 minutes (and 7 flops) after the end of his last lesson, but he was determined to get it. And now he can't be stopped. Today at the Highland pool he was happily diving off the edge and I was encouraging him to try the board. He was having nothing to do with it until I (misguidedly) said, "If you dive off the board, I will too." He took one look at me sitting in my as-usual dry suit on the side of the pool and started for the diving board. Luckily for me the lifeguards called a safety break. We got to retire to lounge chairs and read our books for 15 minutes. As soon as the whistle blew to resume swimming, Eli stood up, marched to the board, went right to the end of it and executed a sweet little dive into the pool. No hesitation. The same can not be said for me. But let the record show that I did get in.

Jon has Theo up on the north shore for a night of backpacking/camping and Eli and I have about 36 hours together, just the two of us. We started the day with an eye-popping visit to the farmers' market - the flowers are amazing right now- then joined some friends for a 12 mile bike ride. Eli was the only one on a one-speed, but I swear that the rest of us had to work to keep up with him....those legs were flying. We went back to Crosby Farm, the locale of the 'snake that rattled' sighting from last week, and we saw it again! It is a biggy! We saw a sign that identified such snakes as Fox snakes, and they do indeed rattle, but they are not rattlesnakes, and more importantly, not poisonous. We still gave it a wide berth and did not poke it with any sticks. After the ride we ate a quick lunch and then hit the pool before any more storms blew in. We are now enjoying a nice little rest hour after a day full of fun. If today is any indicator, this is going to be a sweet summer.