Category: the neighborhood

Holiday highlights.

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Best Present Ever.
A vintage purple glass chicken candy dish.
And a stocking full of candy to fill it.
I’ve always wanted one of these, but have never said a peep about it. Somehow he knew.  The Kitchen Aid stand mixer (circa Christmas 1995) comes close, but something about finding something vintage, purple and a chicken without any prompting this far into things trumps all other presents ever.  
Did I mention the stocking full of candy to keep it filled for some time to come?
Our first eggs from the girls.

A marathon baking session with Betty.  Okay, more like, I took over Betty’s kitchen and oversaw a marathon baking session that included her chocolate chip cookies, Edie & Soph rolling out sugar cookies while I whipped up 5 pies for Betty’s holiday desserts and cleaned up after everyone wearing my  holiday apron made out of my parent’s former Christmas tablecloth that they received as a wedding present.  It’s got 40-something years of gravy, wine and chocolate cake stains.  It makes me unbelievably happy to wear all those memories while making more. 
An impromptu drop in at the Patience homestead resulting in her sharing one of her mince pies with us that somehow became the property of just Edie – making that not-so-wee-one’s holiday complete.  She’d heard mincemeat pies were traditional holiday fare and knowing I had some mincemeat in the freezer, was lobbying for me to make her a pie.   So, thank you Patience for saving Edie’s Christmas and saving me from making one more pie. She even shared a bite with Pat & I, despite swearing up one side and down the other it was never going to happen.
The best part of the holiday though, may be the days after Christmas, the ones where we sleep gloriously late, stay in our pj’s most of the day and eat our way through the leftovers I spent days cooking in anticipation of hanging up my apron for a few days.  Yes, that is definitely the highlight of my holiday, the complete and utter lack of obligations to anyone and anything other lazing around the house with my two very favorite people in the entire world.
 

We made it.

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No, I’m not talking about the election season, although I’m very grateful that’s over with.

We made it through the latest challenging parenting phase.

Beginning at the age of two, the end of August/start of September, marks the start of a phase in her development that is well, difficult.  When she was two and three, it was expressed in the form of colossal bedtime meltdowns.  Every night for weeks (okay, months) on end was a new level of epic.  It was brutal.

Bedtime meltdowns are fewer and farther apart now, but that time of year still has the tendency to bring some new challenge.  This year’s version included a best girlfriend moving to another country and starting at a new school.  A school that was bigger and much different than her sweet little elementary school, where she had kindergartners hugging her when she got on the bus in the morning and she had known everyone there seemingly her entire life, to a school that challenged her far more academically than she had ever been challenged previously and she certainly didn’t know everyone anymore.  Change is something my girl doesn’t always deal well with, even when she has a long lead time to gear herself up for said change.  And she had plenty of lead time for these changes, which admittedly, were plentiful.

Yesterday afternoon, the phone rang, one of the neighborhood kids, asking for a ride somewhere.  This particular one has left for college, college being that little state university here in town, so he’s still somewhat of a regular around here, known to run through the neighborhood on his morning run. He had come ‘home’ to vote and needed a ride back to make it to class on time.  Edie looks up to this young man, so she came along for the ride.  Along the way, we talked about his transition to college, how he had found it harder than he expected.  I looked in the back seat and I could see my girl nodding her head.  That’s when I knew she was getting past the changes and settling in.  Something about hearing Addison admit to struggling with change opened up something in her, and just like that I could tell, we’re ready to move into the next phase of her life.

It was a bumpy transition, but I think it’s safe to say, we’re on the other side.  It only dawned on me yesterday that we just stared down the 10 year old version of the 2 year old bedtime meltdown phase, with this one including some far more troubling behaviors like skirting responsibility and some dishonesty.   It was definitely rough at times, but I kept in the back of my mind something my Granny used to always say, that it’s all just a phase and that it would pass.

There’s no warning that the sweet little helpless baby you bring into the world goes from being physically demanding to mentally demanding in ways you cannot imagine.  That as they become more self sufficient and seemingly less in need of your full attention as to what they are up to, that they in fact still need a huge chunk of your attention, although slightly veiled, because you can’t hover too closely, too openly.  That the transition of knowing what’s wrong with them and being able to fix it to having to let go and watch them move through the world, not being able to fix what’s wrong is agonizing.  That if you let it, parenthood will make you be a better person, forcing you to grow and change along with that beautiful sweet baby that you know is still in there somewhere, despite how hard they push you away.  Parenthood is a constant exercise in letting go, bit by bit, so that your child is someday able to make their own way through the big world out there, because really, isn’t that the end goal, that they become responsible, independent citizens of the world?  It’s scary, it’s exhausting and it’s the greatest experience one can ever have.

Remind me of that this time next year and the year after and the year after that and so on and so forth, mmkay?

It happens.

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I used to hear women say they hadn’t had time for shower that day and I would wonder to myself, how freaking hard is it to take a shower?  Especially when it was women with older kids – you didn’t have to worry about what they were doing while you took a few minutes to lock yourself in the bathroom with hot running water.  And most especially when it was women who didn’t work outside the house.  Really, what were you doing all day that left no time for a shower?

I now find myself among those women and I sincerely apologize to all of you that I had previously mentally judged.

Take yesterday for instance.  I got up, got Edie off to school.  I had made plans to meet Nancy at the gym for a class at lunchtime, so I ran some errands and got dinner started and figured I’d take a shower after my workout.  No need for two showers really. I sat down and put together the schedule for my Girl Scout troop for the year, having had a mom’s gathering the night before to finalize our details, and got it sent out.  I realized I wanted to take Snapfish up on their 99 prints for 99 cents deal that expired yesterday because I haven’t printed out any photos in eons and I really should.  So, I started going through photos and uploading them, finding the process much quicker than I had anticipated.  I took off to go to the gym, dinner halfway done, photos halfway loaded, feeling pretty good about things.

And then, somehow, my day got derailed.  I spent a little more time than I had intended at the gym, when Nancy convinced me to try doing pull-ups with her after our workout and stretch.  She’s in great shape and I have noticed a difference in my clothes since I started working out with her on a regular basis, so if she asks me to try something, I figure why not?  Instead of paying for my own personal trainer, I just work out with her.

So I came home and thought I’d finish uploading photos which shouldn’t take too long, because the first round didn’t take long. First the website showed I’d loaded them, then it didn’t, so I went back through and reloaded, only to discover that the first process had gone through, so then I had to edit and sort through which photos I wanted to print.  We’re talking over 100 photos and next thing I knew, it was almost 3 pm.

It was a night I was doing Dinnaah, my meals to go, and I had quite a few orders, as I was serving a very popular curried sweet potato, spinach and quinoa dish.  I went out to the garden to harvest some of my spinach and somehow managed to clip my finger with my clippers while I was harvesting.  I finally got my main dish going on the stove when Nancy showed up, having just picked up her youngest from after school clubs, wanting to know if I could put some books I’d promised her on her Kindle.  So, dinner’s on the stove, and I’m looking on my hard drive for those books when Edie comes through the door with a friend, looking for a snack.  They have exactly 25 minutes to grab a snack, get their gear and head back up to school for soccer practice, so I hand Edie a loaf of baguette I’d baked the night before, tell her there’s cheese and fruit in the fridge, make a fruit & cheese plate.  Her presentation was flawless and even if she didn’t clean up the cutting board and knife, she did wrap the bread & cheese back up and put them away.   So, the girls are chattering away, nibbling on bread & cheese and fruit when Betty comes in, announcing that when I heard her son Ben yelling the afternoon before, it was because he had broken his arm again, the second time since June.  (Edie & I had heard him yelling for his mom and I had started out to check on him because I could hear in his voice something was wrong, but by the time I got up there, Betty was pulling out in her car and now I know they were headed to the ER).  So, while she’s telling the story of Ben’s latest ER broken arm adventure to Nancy & myself, Edie & Claire & Alayna were chattering away, I’m trying to figure out where that book is on my harddrive and making sure I don’t burn dinner.

Just as quickly as my living room filled up, it emptied out, as everyone had places to be.  I finished dinner, got orders wrapped up and was getting ready to start baking cupcakes for my friend Rebecca’s birthday, as I had invited her & her daughter down for dinner in celebration that night.  The phone rang and it was Rebecca, asking if I was ready for her to drop Charlotte off.  She’d asked if Charlotte could come down and play when they first got home when I had invited her to dinner on Thursday, as they were getting ready to go on a trip and she wanted to get packed.  I had somehow forgotten that Thursday was Thursday, meaning that Edie had an after school club followed by soccer followed by an immediate playdate that I had set up for her with Charlotte, only she wasn’t home yet and she had homework she hadn’t done because she’d had yoga club followed by soccer practice and Thursday is THURSDAY.  So I told Rebecca to go ahead and drop Charlotte off, Edie wasn’t home yet, but Charlotte could help me make Rebecca’s cupcakes.

Meanwhile, people were stopping by to pick up dinner and commenting on the fact that we had an empty keg sitting by the front gate.  (We are cleaning out the basement – Pat had intended to use it in brewing beer at home, but then realized that just wasn’t going to happen, so he posted it on Freecycle and left it out there to get picked up, making the entrance to our house resemble the entrance to all the houses I lived in college. The universe is shaped exactly like the earth, if you go straight along enough you’ll wind up where you were.) Charlotte was helping to man the door, help whip up chocolate truffle filled cupcakes (the recipe is one I’ve posted before from Cook’s Illustrated, it’s damn good and quite easy) and write some last minute photo descriptions as part of wrapping up my big free lance project.  Pat had to attend a public meeting on behalf of work last night, thankfully, this one was in town which meant he was only gone but a few hours, but it still meant he wasn’t home and Edie had a question about her math homework that I was totally unable to answer.  Edie surpassed my math skills at some point in second grade and why not ask Betty’s son Ben, who’s good at math. So we ran down there, saw the new cast and after a few eye rolls, both of them expressing complete disdain for me admitting to my shortcomings and making them actually speak to each other, Ben was able to answer Edie’s question in about oh, 5 seconds.

I’m really pretty sure she gets a good idea of what it would be like to actually have an older brother in her exchanges with Ben. 

By the time the homework was done, frosting made and on the cupcakes (again, with a huge effort on behalf of 9 year old Charlotte, who can whip some egg whites by hand I tell you), and I had finally managed to sit down to breathe with a glass of wine, Rebecca walked through the door and it was time for dinner.  We ate, had dessert, the girls put on a show and suddenly, it was 8 o’clock and I was still in the clothes I had worked out in, unshowered.  Cleaning the kitchen took the very last of the energy I had – I was cold, I was tired and I was sore – not sure if it was from my workout and my  big 5 pull-ups earlier in the day or leftover from an earlier workout in the week that I didn’t stretch enough after – or my marathon day that had gone off rail or if I was just sore from being cold, because I now get stiff and sore from just getting cold.  Awesome.  If this is September and I’m 42, I cannot wait for January when I’m say, 60. 

At any rate, by the time I finished arguing with Edie about bedtime and had delivered Ben some cupcakes, I was too tired to bother with a shower, so I just crawled into my own bed, realizing that when I worked in an office and had a younger child,  I had way more time to take a shower.  I’m not sure how I got to this point in my life, but here I am.  I really didn’t have 5 minutes to take a shower yesterday.

Go.

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My weekend:
Up early Saturday morning to hit market.  I bumped into neighbor Brian and wandered some with him, comparing notes on the chickens (they live in his back yard) and talking about what we need to do to winterize the chicken house.  I then ran into our friend Straz and wandered around with him.  Normally I make a quick run to the stands I like to patronize and then cut out of there.  Straz hadn’t been to market in a while and I found myself wandering and exploring the market like I haven’t made time for in at least a season, if not more with him.  Bonus, I got some impromptu quality time with Straz, which set my weekend off on a good note.  Thanks Straz.
Came home, packed up the fam for a quick little roadtrip.
Destination?  The Cowpasture River Preservation Association Annual picnic. The Cowpasture River are the headwaters of the James, along with the Jackson River and fall under the duties of my favorite Riverkeeper.

The Cowpasture is one of the cleanest rivers around.  It runs through the western most part of Virginia, in the Allegheny mountains.  It may be one of the most beautiful parts of the state.  As you can see in the above shot, the water is low.  We didn’t go out on the river, but we did enjoy mingling with the members of CPRA. They are a lovely group of folks.
This hollowed out tree was a popular topic of conversation.  Somehow it withstood the derecho while more solid trees around it were blown over.

The hostess of the picnic said there was an article published about it, but I haven’t been able to google it to link it.  It’s big and old and incredibly hollow.  It will no doubt outlive us all.
Another popular topic of conversation was the ensemble worn by the mini-me. The Picasso dress with zebra print rain boots.  Pretty sure only she could pull that off.  And don’t let this picture fool you – she was much friendlier to people who weren’t her mother and didn’t have cameras in their hands.
The ‘tween ‘tude is strong with her.
Johnny, one of Pat’s River Rats, so kindly put us up in his cabin farther down the river that evening.
Yet another quiet unplugged evening by the water….

I love the view from the front of the cabin.  Mountains and cow pastures with the river running behind it.  Quiet and soothing and a little bit of heaven. 
Sunday morning, we had to get up and book it back.

Cville Swaps  had our third swap this weekend.  We had planned it before I knew Pat had so much going on this weekend, so I didn’t have time to whip up any baked goods, but thanks to my pickling habit, I did have a good number of jars to bring.

Which Edie proceeded to swap to get herself some new earrings that Stephanie had brought.
I also brought home some BBQ sauce, peach honey, some of Vikki’s jams as well as her pickled blueberries.  (I am not the only pickling fool around.) My child is much more inclined to eat Vikki’s jams than she is mine.  I chalk it up to years of my bad jam.  I get it. It’s a big reason why we do the swap – so that I can get Vikki’s jams and jellies.  I got some cherry vanilla, peach butter and a peach jalepeno jam that I think is going to go well on a ham sandwich.

Robyn also brought some Paw Paws, so we covered all the bases of home made, home grown and foraged for foods this swap.
Swap over, we dropped Edie at a friend’s and headed south.
The James River Brewing Company was having a pre-opening celebration. Pat’s been working with them on a few things (including a possible pawpaw brew), so we were quite happy to pop in and try some of their new brews.  They officially open this weekend. Their tasting room is beautiful. In addition to the breaktaking white oak counter at the bar, they used reclaimed wood throughout. Warm space, good beer, worth the trek to Scottsville.

 

I sampled a few, the Green Eyed Lady being my favorite.  Pistachios were used in the brewing.  It has a higher alcohol content, which led me to calling it the One Eyed Lady.  A few of those and I’d definitely be one-eyed. 
We headed back into town and grabbed a quick bite at Beer Run.  It was packed and as we were finishing up our meal, we had the pleasure of being forced to listen to the rant of some returning UVa kid who had his parents and grandparents in tow, complaining how they had to wait 10 minutes for a table.  Oh the humanity of it all.  I was surprised they didn’t just pack up and leave he bitched so long and so loud.  Clearly he’s never worked a day in his life in the food service industry.  I was trying to have a pleasant conversation and date night with my husband, after spending a weekend running around going to work with him and here this guy stood right behind us yelling about how horrible it was he had to wait for a table.  It took quite a bit of willpower to not say anything to him, but I realized he’d just start yelling at me too.  It was bad enough I had to listen to him. It was bum ending to an otherwise busy, but good weekend.
And now I need a weekend to recover from my weekend.  The last three roadtrips I have just pulled dirty clothes out of the suitcase, made sure there were clean ones in there and headed back out.  I think it might be time to unpack it, maybe put it away and spend some time at home?  My house is starting to get that September old lady house smell that inspires fall cleaning and I really need to crack down on this regular bedtime thing.  That child must start getting to bed at a reasonable hour on a regular basis before I will allow her any wiggle room on weekend.  That didn’t go over well when I told her that but Pat did high five me on my mad parenting skills. So I’ve got that going for me. 

The Big Yellow Angel is Back!

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Well, sort of.
In our case, it came in the form of the neighborhood 10 year old girls knocking on the door at the ungodly hour of 7:25 (the hour to which we’ve been accustomed to getting ourselves out of bed most mornings for the last 5 years) to walk the two blocks to their new school. Which I realize is way later than every other neighborhood in town where the Walker bus comes through at the ungodly hour of 7 am.
I am lazy and spoiled.  But at least I admit to it.

The Big Yellow Angel is a phrase I picked up from my friend Virgina.  I fully embraced it after Edie’s first Christmas break back in Kindergarten, when I realized how much my child thrived on the structure she got at school all day.  Structured I am not.
She seemed to have a good first day yesterday – she’s been anxious about the change of schools for some time and I knew as soon as she actually got it over with she’d be in much better shape. Her BFF moved to Guatemala a few weeks ago, so a new school is not the only big change in her life.  We’ve known about this added change since last Christmas.  Waiting for them to both actually happen has been like very slowly pulling a band aid off.  Now that it’s finally ripped off, we can move on and find her new normal.  Thankfully, she’s got her crew of neighborhood girls that are right there with her, so she is in good company.

Funky Chickens.

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The chicks are fast growing into chickens, sprouting real feathers.
Some of them have been given names.
Like this one.
Edie named this one Ozzy, after her favorite rock star, mostly because of the black lines around her eyes.

That was before we saw the mohawk too.
Ozzy is quite vocal of a chicken and lives up to her name.
She is our punk rock chicken for sure, because of course we have a punk rock chicken.

Cuddles aka Rosebud aka Rose aka Ruby. 
She’s the neighborhood kids favorite and so everyone has a different name for her (Li has a new name for her almost daily), also the smallest and sweetest of the chickens.
She’s now sprouting feathers on her legs and feet.
She was grey as a chick, but her feathers seem to be coming in more white as she gets bigger.

This is Butters.
There is some concern Butters may actually be a rooster, given her(his?) size and aggressiveness, although I noticed when I was down there today she’s not as aggressive as she had been.  She has been the biggest chick since they were about 3 days old and along with Ozzy, was one of the first one named.

Brian’s named this one Kramer, after the TV character.
She’s a little Krameresque I’ll admit.

Most of them have funky plummage on top, even if they aren’t named.

The chickens are a major source of entertainment for the kiddos around here.  We have been throwing scraps from the compost bucket into their yard and covering it with leaves, hoping to attract some bugs.  (And growing some nice fertilizer while we’re at it.)
In other news, the squirrels have not attempted to enter the house in a few days.  That doesn’t mean I’m leaving the back door open when I leave the house, but I at least feel comfortable leaving it open when I’m not in the kitchen.  I noticed today however, that they have fairly well stripped my tomato plants of fruit over the last 48 hours, so I guess it’s let them have their way in our house or it’s my garden.  We’re still not entirely sure about a dog, but if I’m going to have tomatoes ever again, I am clearly going to have a build a fence.  Either way, looks like my next major digging project is going to be a fence.

We are not alone.

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The whole block, at least our side of the street, is under seige.
I went down to Betty’s yesterday and she told me the tale of how she was standing in her kitchen when she heard a noise.  She looked up and saw a squirrel trapped between her kitchen window and the screen in front of it.  When she opened the window, the squirrel fell through the screen and landed on her kitchen counter. 
You can see the outline of the squirrel in the hole.

Since this is the internet and I can’t pose for you in person the way the squirrels position themselves when chewing through the screens, I got fancy with technology and drew you a stick squirrel.  It’s other foot was below the window line.
Perhaps this one gives you a better idea. The red blob at the bottom is it’s tail.
See it now?

It did some damage to her kitchen window too, trying to chew it’s way through the wood.
Seriously, we are under siege.  We have set the hav-a-heart trap and have gotten the main offender, the one we call Fatty, which was the biggest of all the squirrels, the one that sitting on our porch earlier this year, Pat thought was a small groundhog that had gotten really brave.  No, it was that big of a squirrel.  A few smaller ones have been caught and taken care of as well.  Are we going to have to trap every last squirrel in the neighborhood?  We have dozens of them, it could be never ending!
I’ve even broken down and suggested we get a dog.  Yes, we need a fence, but we have everything we need to build one – you see, we were going to get a dog many moons ago and got everything we needed to build a fence, but then realized that it was going to be a lot of work to build said fence and a baby wasn’t as much work at the outset, so we had a baby instead of getting a dog. I later realized that we could have left the dog home alone much sooner than we could the kiddo. Also, I’m not a dog person.  I’m a cat person.  Who is married to someone who is highly allergic to cats.  And before anyone says, oh, he can take allergy medicine for that, let me tell you, he can and does but he still has pretty horrific allergy attacks around cats that aren’t pretty.  So, we don’t have cats.   And because I have long suspected I would be the one to take care of the dog the most (confirmed when we borrow friend’s dogs just to see how it would go), I have not been quick to get a dog.  But clearly, this squirrel problem is going to take a bigger solution than what we are currently doing.  I may just have to get a dog.  Damn those squirrels.

There’s a new post up over at Cville Swaps, plus the announcement of our latest swap date.  Go see what I’ve been up to when I haven’t been battling psycho squirrels.



I refuse to live in that sort of neighborhood.

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I live in the sort of neighborhood where we leave doors open all the time, especially the back screen door. The kitchen door pretty much only gets closed and locked when we go out of town.  It’s that kind of neighborhood. Or was, until yesterday.

(Click on the photo for a larger view of our unwanted guest.)
The squirrels that I spent most of last summer complaining about because they ate everything in my garden, a dozen plants worth of green tomatoes plus every last peach on the peach tree, leaving me exactly none last summer, have now chewed through the back screen door and as I discovered yesterday, are now entering our house and helping themselves to whatever they can find in my kitchen when we aren’t looking.  I came home from the pool yesterday to find jars of dried fruit scattered on the floor and two packs of buns nibbled through.  Needless to say, it’s ON.
Pat set the hav-a-heart trap
immediately as I walked around ranting about how the squirrels must GO and this morning I discovered we caught a raccoon.  Seems there’s endless wildlife feasting around our urban homestead. I guess I should be happy the raccoon didn’t enter through the ‘wildlife door’ because it might not be able to let itself back out the way the squirrels seem to have figured out and I don’t want to deal with a raccoon in my kitchen.
We still have some peaches left on the tree (it’s a late ripening variety, so they aren’t anywhere near ready to be picked) and there are plenty of tomatoes left on the vine, although while weeding yesterday I found 4 green ones that had been picked for me and something ate the first two ripe ones.  I don’t mind sharing a little bit of food with our neighbors, no matter what persuasion they are, but this breaking & entering has gone too far.  I’m taking the neighborhood and my house, back from the squirrels, because dammit, I like living in a world where I can leave my back door open all the time.  It’s a good world to live in.

Chickens!

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After years of babbling about it, we finally have chickens.
We have been working with a neighbor, fixing up the old coop behind his house. We ordered an assortment of rainbow layers from Murray McMurray and they arrived in yesterday’s mail.

Driving home with them in my car from the post office where I had to retrieve them, they were chirping along to the music.

Brian found someone to split an order of 25 with, which is the minimum order.  We wanted pretty chickens AND pretty eggs, but we only have room for about a dozen hens.
 It’s been a few years since we’ve had a flock of chickens in the neighborhood and we’ve missed the sound of their clucking.  With none of us on this side of the street having dogs or cats right now, we needed a new animal or twelve, so chickens it was.

They are an awful lot of cute right now.
They are installed in Brian’s basement for the time being, where everyone has been wandering in & out, checking on the chicks.  We won’t know exactly what breeds we have until they grow some more, but we do know we have quite a mix.  Lots of little puffballs on their heads, lots of different colors.
One of the things I love about our neighborhood is our sense of community.  Brian’s last flock wandered through all our yards and so it made sense that we pitch in to help out with a new one. We swap plants and produce from our gardens, why not share chickens too?  As I sit here typing this, I hear the kids across the street talking about going down to see the chicks.  There are new chicks on Greenleaf and somehow, all is right with our little world.  As it should be.