Hysterical

Last night I went over to my cousin Wendy's house for a salon. Not a place where you go to get your hair done, but this other type of salon. I try to say the word confidently, but I have no idea what a salon is supposed to be- I just knew that everyone there would probably be more sophisticated than I am. But I gathered up two good pals and we were salon-bound. This was a gathering to celebrate the publishing of a book by a friend of Wendy's. I have met this woman a time or two and she is funny in that great kind of funny way. She doesn't seem to be cracking jokes on purpose, in fact she doesn't seem to be cracking jokes at all. The stuff that comes out of her mouth is just always chuckle-worthy. Apparently she is an English Prof and used her sabbatical to research current American humor. And then she took what she had learned and wrote a memoir. So after a bit of general salon-ing we gathered in the living room, Sara took a seat on a stool up front and she commenced to read a chapter from her book. At first I chuckled here and there, and then the woman next to me started laughing so hard that I couldn't help but laugh at/with her. It got to the point where I even wiped a tear or two. And then it ended and we clapped and she dove into a different little tale. Almost right away this one hit my funny bone and set me off down the trail of good hard laughter. About ten minutes into it I was firmly out of control. Laughing, weeping, sniffling, snorting, sweating. There was one point where I felt a bit of panic creeping in. I was so thoroughly out of control with laughter that I was sure that one of my friends was going to have to give me a swift slap to the face to bring me back to my senses. Or maybe even take me out back and shoot me. Really. I didn't see how I was going to regain control. But then the tale was over. We clapped. I wiped my eyes and let out an occasional last guffaw or chortle, but eventually was able to settle back down to talk quietly with my friends while chuckling continued to break out around the room. I found that my cheek muscles hurt. It was fabulous. Sara Ford is the name. The book is on a small scale release, but can be found at Amazon.com. It's titled "Apparently I Know Who Satan Is." I can't guarantee that it will have the same effect on you, but why not risk it?

Secrets

The other day my neighbor stopped me in the street as I was peeling out, already late for work. But Michelle had a tip and wanted to share it. Having Michelle for a neighbor is like having a concierge for your street. She knows what is happening, where it's happening, and who should be there. But it's not about hipness or a cool factor or something like that- her tips are for good clean family fun. And this one was one she promised I would love. It was about an organic farm that makes pizzas out of ingredients grown on the property. But only on Tuesday nights. And only pizzas. You have to bring your own chairs, blankets, cups, drinks, snacks- everything but the pizzas. And you have to carry out your trash. Oh, plus it's 1.5 hours away. I admit, the pizza did sound delicious. But it also sounded like a lot of work. She was making the pilgrimage the next day and I agreed to round up my troops and join her. But then we got rained out and I put it on the back burner, thinking that it sounded great, but too much trouble.

But the very next week we went. And I can't tell you where it is because then I would have to kill you. It's such a fabulous experience that I want to share it, but I don't want it to get to be any more discovered than it is. This last Tuesday was just one of those fabulous summer days that demands that you eat outside. So we gave a last minute call to some friends who seemed the most likely to agree to a last minute car trip to an unknown destination. And they were in. The drive was lovely- raptors soaring, corn fields waving, deer prancing- hopefully that is not enough detail to give away the whereabouts. Then we turned off the highway and onto little backroads. After a few miles with NO sign of any pizza parlor in sight- we were clearly headed away from any sign of civilization (the last town we passed through was population 82) and into the cornfields to meet an unspecified doom. But then we turned one more corner and suddenly there were parked cars along both sides of a dirt road. And people getting out with picnic supplies. We followed suit, a little uncertainly. We trekked down the road a bit, and then all of the sudden you hear this hubbub. A true hubbub. Murmurs, laughter, glasses tinkling, and you come around this tree and in this grassy shady yard are hundreds of people all decked out in various levels of picnic-ness. The setups ran the gamut from the basic blanket to tables with tablecloths, cloth napkins in napkin rings, goblets, candelabras...everything! And every last person was smiling. Even those still waiting for pizzas. And the wait is considerable, but it passed in the blink of an eye. We wandered the grounds, fed the goats, watched people play lawn games, and took notes for what we were going to bring next time. We knew there would be a next time even before we tasted the stone oven fired pizzas. That definitely sealed the deal. Jon did point out that after waiting two hours for ours to be delivered, we might have exclaimed over cooked cardboard, but these lovely pies were the real deal. I tell you that I had a silly smile plastered to my face the whole time we were there, it was all just so fabulous. It was like there was this invisible dome over these acres out in the middle of nowhere that encased this perfectly happy bubble of loveliness. Which is why I really probably have to tell you where it is- this kind of treat needs to be shared, and even if you do decide to go and make my next wait for a pizza longer, I think I'm ok with that- because I have taken notes and I now know to bring snacks and lots of them. Plus a few bottles of wine. And I do think there might be no nicer place to kick back and wait for dinner. So I'll tell you this--it's....it's....it's somewhere in Wisconsin. Enjoy.

Beefy

I journeyed up to the Northwest Y the other day to swim in their lovely outdoor pool. And then I left half of my swimsuit in the lockerroom. The bottom half. I hate losing things.
Anyway- today the boys and I were driving to the library to see a supposed 'comedy juggler' ( for the record- he was NO Bill the Juggler...not even close.) and I suggested to the boys that maybe later we should go to the Highland Pool for a swim since it was getting nice out. Here's their conversation:
Theo: But Mom doesn't have a bottom half of a suit!!
Eli: She has a different one- or we could make her a bottom out of some cloths.
Theo: Yeah! Like bandanas. (They do have many uses afterall).
Eli: Theo! Would you REALLY want to use your bandana again after it has been on Mom's butt?
Theo: Ohh...well, other cloths.
Eli: But they are not waterproof- we'd have to figure out how to make them water proof...
Theo: We could put a bag around them or something.
Eli: Welllllll.....it would have to be a really big bag. Mom does have pretty beefy legs.

BEEFY LEGS??? I let them know that I was feeling a bit of rage at that comment. And now Jon just called and said he had been at the Y and retrieved my poor lost swimsuit. So now I don't need their stupid cloths and beefy leg bags- but I am taking them to the pool and holding them underwater until they take that back!!

New Shoes

Theo can be a little tough on a pair of shoes. Give Theo several months in a pair of Eli's old hand-me-downs, add 4 days on a river and that is a recipe for shoe blow-out of major proportions. So the kid needs a new pair. We looked real quickly at Famous Footwear but the guady factor of the kids shoes sent me into a major fit of decision paralysis. Today Theo and I made a quick swing through Target and we found a nice pair of gray 'running' shoes as Theo calls them- it was very important to him to get running shoes. The only problem was that they had shoelaces. Theo hasn't had a pair of shoes that require actual tying since....ever. But he thought they looked fast, and I thought the price and guady factor were both quite low so we bought them. Put them on in the parking lot. I tied them of course, with a promise of a lesson once we got home. When I pulled up in front of the house Theo popped out, did a few funny little stretches (he also pulls these stretches out during the middle of soccer games- apparently last night while he was stretching out his hams mid game someone kicked the ball, it bounced off Theo's knee and into the goal- that's where stretching will get you!) and then took off around the house as fast as he could. As he sprinted back to me at the car he caught his breath, said "And that was just a jog" and then bent down to dust off the new runners.

For the record, he has quickly become a shoe tying champ. I now feel confident that I will be able to send him off to college someday.

Oh- and there were no bugs!

That might be the greatest advantage the Namekagon had- atleast this time around. There were virtually no bugs. Of course a deerfly or horsefly would come by every now or then to check us out, but I would kill it dramatically and call out "And let that be a lesson to your brothers and sisters!!!" and that would be the end of that. There was the report of one mosquito one evening in Sam and Becky's tent. And really, it does only take one mosquito in the tent to drive you a little wild- but with that one pesky critter cooped up in their tent, we were doing fine. Ticks were spotted here and there, but never with their heads buried in our flesh. Bugs can ruin my attitude pretty quickly- so we were all lucky to be spared the fate of an ornery Gretchen.

Canoe Tripping

It has been a long long time since I have packed everything I needed for a few days and pushed off in a canoe. Too long. Getting back out there has whet my whistle for more. But I am definitely a river gal. I'll do the Boundary Waters because you can't say no to that- but the Namekagon has many attributes that should not be overlooked- the first and foremost being a rip roaring current. When your bowsmen are in the single digits age-wise and more prone to resting their paddles on their knees while they study the stunning dragonfly than giving you a little muscle power- currents keep you moving. The Nam is moving along so quickly that when the boys jumped ship to float alongside they were whisked along at such a clip that it elicited whoops and hollers that were 45% glee/55% panic.

I know that the BWCA has crystal clear waters, but so does the Nam. During our two sunny days I could not pull my eyes from watching the river bottom float by- I was enraptured with the sight of the mighty sturgeon that would coast by- prehistoric in appearance and beyond belief in size. I promised myself that if I saw one while the boys were in swimming I would not say anything until they were back in the canoe. But then a fish glided by right below Eli and I swear that they were precisely the same length and I bellowed "Oh!!!!! Look!!!!! There's a sturgeon as big as Eli!!!! Right BELOW him!!!!" Eli kicked it into high gear downstream while the sturgeon, unruffled, continued up the river. To Eli's credit, he remained in the water for atleast another hour. I would have leaped into the canoe in a single bound. Eagles often soared overhead and we saw some amazingly large turtles. Sure they were snappers. They looked like they could have snapped a child's leg right off. Luckily, despite much time in the river instead of on it, none of the boys came to any harm.

We started off with two days of the best weather you could hope for- sunny skies, light winds, warmth that got you in the river, but didn't roast you when you were in the canoe. After two days of this we were hit by rain. We were lucky enough to get everything packed up before the first drops, but the second we got in the canoes it started to drizzle. This turned in to an all day rain. After a drizzly lunch on the river bank I watched Eli climb back into the duffer's seat. He, who does not like even one grain of sand in his shoes, had done a fabulous job of wearing wet, sandy shoes each day in the canoe. But I saw his distaste as he looked down into the gritty sandy wet bottom and contemplated sitting in it. As we paddled away I saw him shivering and asked, "Eli- are you doing ok? Are you cold?" His answer, delivered matter-of-factly: "Mom, my present state leaves MUCH to be desired." I had a hearty laugh- of relief as much as humor. This rain had been getting me down and I worried if it was going to ruin the trip for the boys. But no, they seemed to be getting through it just fine- granted, there was much to be desired- but they were not complaining. We drifted downstream through the pouring rain trying to solve two-minute mysteries and before we got to the end of the second one the sun was trying to peep through. Later we did have to weather two pretty stunning storms, but by then we were in our nice little tent reading Huck Finn and delighting in being in out of the rain- even if our protection was only whisper thin- it was enough.

Heading out

We are on the eve of a departure for a little trip down the Namekagon with Becky D and her son Sam. Jon is not joining us. It's not that he wasn't invited, exactly....but it was pitched as a mother/son outing and if he wanted to come along he was free to do so. For some reason he has decided to sit out. He is in the throes of training for a half Ironman (he prefers to call it a 70.3 and when you are moving your body under your own power for 70.3 miles in one outing, then I see why you wouldn't want it called a HALF anything) and sitting on his rear in a tin canoe soaking up the rays for four days is probably not a highly rated training regimen.

Anyway- the boys and I have been gathering up our goods for the last few days and at one point I introduced them to the single most important piece of canoe tripping equipment- the bandana. When they gave me skeptical looks I listed off a few uses. They came around. Wanted one for their very own. Now. So the next time we were out and about we found some and they grabbed one each. They brought them home and compared them to my old ones and I am happy to report, found that their new stiff ones did not measure up...yet. I told them that of course a good bandana had to be broken in, so they honestly spent the next several hours wetting them down, wringing them out, running around the house holding them aloft to dry them....over and over and over again. I admired their dedication. They are starting to get a little supple. The bandanas- not the boys. There is more work to be done and they are eager to do it. I am sure they will come back from our escapade with true canoer's bandanas- and they will deserve them. Becky and I are bringing two canoes so these guys are going to have to spend a lot of time in the bow getting us to where we need to be. Wish us luck!

Suddenly Salad

Here's another fabulous habbit Theo has picked up this summer: When we are home for lunch on these lovely summer days I ask the kids what they want to eat. Theo immediately and unfailingly has been answering with a shout, "A salad! And a pita sandwich!!!" Then he swings out the porch door, slips on his flipflops and heads to the garden. From the kitchen window I can see his little head down there at lettuce level, selecting just the right greens for his personal chef salad. Sometimes he spies a ripe peapod and grabs one or two of them to pop into the mix. Then he plops his harvest into a waiting little tupperware of HOT water (for some reason he needs it HOT) and swishes them around. After that it is over to the hose, a handful of greens clutched to his chest. He uses the hose to rinse the leaves as he marches around the yard. I don't know why he feels the urge to march while rinsing, but he does. His shirt often also ends up rinsed, which is fine and mostly needed. Once they are rinsed to his satisfaction he tosses them into a papertowel that he has already laid out on the grass and then gathers them up and brings them in. If there are some raspberries in the kitchen he will toss them in with his greens, add a dab of dressing and dig in. I never have the pita and the hummus ready for him because I am always too absorbed in watching his little ritual to do anything but smile contentedly. I promised Theo that I would NOT mention what the end result of so many berries/smoothies/salads in his life might be. Let's just say that if you happen to be hanging out in the path to the bathroom when he needs it, you will be run over.

The Hardy Boys of Summer

For a good long while now Eli has been floating through life without sticking his nose deep into a book. This is big news. The kid is an astonishing reader, in regard to fluency, speed, and depth of understanding. I have been amazed to watch him plow through what seems to be atleast half of our local libary's kid section. To give an idea of his efficiency- he once read The Two Towers from The Lord of the Rings in a weekend. Anyway- for a while now he has traded the novel for comic books. And he does devour quite a number of them, but we've seen more of him as he works his way through this break in his reading. I think it has something to do with the fact that his ability far outstrips his content comfort level. So on some unconcious level he has told himself to hold off until his social knowledge matches his reading skills. But I digress. As Eli has fished around, trying to find the next great book that will recapture his attention, Jon has not been shy about name dropping. What should I read? is almost always answered by Jon with....The Hardy Boys! Jon and Eli took a brief foray into the land of these dectective brothers a few years back, but since then Jon's old blue-covered hard backs have been sitting untouched on the shelf.

Recently Jon got more proactive and took them all off of the boys' shelf and stacked them up near Eli's old reading chair. And it worked, Eli dived in. He's read two since yesterday. After he finished one this morning he came up for a breath, and as is his custom, found a parent do to a little debriefing. We got to talking about the some of the old time language and had a little laugh over the frequent description of the Hardys' "stout friend Chet". Stout is used often. Poor Chet. Never smart, or handsome, or wily, just stout. And then Eli commented on how the boys often used radios to communicate, or even telegrams. This got us off on a thread about wondering if they were rewritten today (are they? Eli thinks there is a modern author who has taken up the tale) how things would be different. The Hardy's would email, facebook, text to solve their crimes. And then Eli was able to weave in other new trends by coming up with a plot that involved the Hardys twittering to solve the crime about how old Stout Chet was cheated out of his victory on The Biggest Loser. He just went off on this riff that pretty much smacked those Hardys right down into 2009- gave me a hearty chuckle. Love that kid.

The Smoothie Meister

Theo is a fan of the smoothie. Luckily we are smack dab in the high season of our raspberry patch and have a plethora of strawberries, both fresh and frozen, from a recent outing to a pick-your-own farm. So in the mornings Theo will stumble down in his pjs, and while still bleary eyed he will get out the blender, a mixture of berries, maybe a banana, and a touch of juice and yogurt. He follows no recipe and no two smoothies are ever the same, but they are all delicious. It is a joy to watch him wake up as he concocts his magic brew. He oohs and ahs over the color and texture, adding ice or juice to get it to right where he wants it. He can't quite negotiate getting the whole lid off by himself, so he just pops off the little top part which he calls his window and plops in the ingredients as needed. The whole process is delightfully independent of me- although I sometimes try to give him advice which he rarely heeds. By the time he is clamboring up into the cup cupboard he is fully awake and ready to start his day- he grabs a glass, pours himself a healthy dose of his homemade elixer, and off he goes. He has never been much of a breakfast eater and he continually runs at just a faint dewdrop above dehydrated, so this selfmade liquid breakfast is a cureall. I am currently stocking the freezer with the daily harvest of 'extra' berries, hoping we can keep this trend going past the berry season.

Little laughs

As we were trying to get the kids into bed tonight we realized that we had failed to pick up a refill of one of the FIVE drugs Theo is currently taking for his asthma (see below). I decided that even though I did not feel like walking down to Walgreens right then, I felt even less enthusiastic about dragging the freshly laundered sheets up from the basement and making the beds. So I headed out down Brimhall with a touch of a bad attitude. But then I got to the old Walgreens pharmacy counter and said that I was there to pick up a prescription for Theo Sage-Martinson. The pharmicist could not see the hyphen in the name when I said it aloud (quite surprisingly, that happens often), so looked at me blankly and asked, "And which one of those would happen to be his last name?" I told him it was two of them, Sage and Martinson. He grabbed the drugs and as he was scanning them said, "You know, that's a pretty cool name, it means the wise son of Martin." I said, "I know, good thing too, because the other sons of Martin are complete dumbshits." And he guffawed. Which made me smile. Now you out there who might count yourselves among the other Sons of Martin, I apologize. I didn't mean it. The guy just set me up and the comment slipped out, surprising both of us.

Sucks to your as-mar

Maybe you haven't read Lord of the Flies- but I was forced to read it in high school and the line "Sucks to your asmar" has been passing through my mind often lately. As in SUCKS to Theo's asthma. The kid is currently on 5 drugs. 5. Ok, one of them is for pink eye, but the other four are attempting to join forces and beat his lungs into shape so that he can get more oxygen in and less coughing out, and therefore I can get more sleep. Which is the bottom line. Or maybe the bottom line is that Jon and I kind of suck at being the parent of a kid who has pulmonary issues.

Earlier this spring, after about 4 years of trying to treat Theo's asthma with a nebulizer, we watched old brother Pete swirl up a batch of drugs for his son, Max, who has a propensity for croup and ends up with the little fishy mask on with some regularity. We watched the familiar motions of opening the vials and pouring them in the contraption, and then Pete put this little stopper thingy on the end. Stopper thingy? We never use that....but we looked through our neb case and sure enough, we had one of those. So the next time we had to fire up machine for Theo we put on the stopper thingy, and boy oh boy did that elongate the nebulization process. Hmmm.

And then this week, Theo would seem great during the day but go to bed and the wheezing, the coughing, would set in with a vengeance. So Jon and I did a little thinking.....what could it be about his bedtime routine that could trigger this? Could it be the moldy book (soaked it in the river last weekend...oops...big library fine) that we should probably toss but are at the climax so can't stop reading to him? Or perhaps it was a mistake to wash all of his bedding last week and hang them on the deck to dry on a day that was great for line drying due to the 30 mph winds. Could those winds have been carrying all the pollen in the tri-county area? Seems so. Tonight we paid up our fines to the library and got ourselves a second, fresh, copy of the book- the moldy one is now ours to keep, but me thinks we should give it the old heave ho- and we washed all the bedding and dried it in the drier. And we used the stopper thingy on the neb. We're hoping that we are turning over a new leaf here and that the boy will rebound. Sometimes I wonder how I ever passed that parenting license test that they give you.

Looking forward

The boys have been talking a lot about our upcoming pilgrimage to Camp DuNord. My favorite comment so far came from Theo yesterday musing about the 5 hour carride up to Burntside Lake. "Mom, what I like best about the carride is two things. One is getting out at Ely and eating at that one restaurant and the other is when we pull up down by the tents and we start unloading all of our stuff and we get to run around from tent to tent and remember everything from last year. But Mom, my most favorite thing is that moment when we are outside our house before we even leave and you guys are packing up the car and then we're ready to go and you get in the car and you shut the door. That is my most favorite moment ever. When you shut the door and we're finally ready to go!" I just love that something about his little radar out into the world has identified that moment as it- the big moment when you are finally ready and actually poised to move out, but you haven't gone anywhere yet and everything, every possibility, is still out there in front of you. Just waiting.