In keeping with the German tradition of my husband's childhood, we celebrated St. Nicholas Day by placing our Christmas lists in our shoes and leaving them out for the elves, who ride on reindeer collecting the lists.
You may notice that huge white sneaker in the middle.
It belongs to my daughter, who now wears a size 7 1/2 AA. Where did this child get those big feet?
There are five shoes because the children made a wish list for our dog Violet, and put that out too.
We hope the elves and reindeer enjoyed their pretzels, clementine oranges, shredded carrots and Butterfinger. There were also some Tootsie Rolls stuck in the shoes with the lists.
Some of the items on this year's lists include the I-Dog and the I-Cat.
Whose list do you think had socks and underwear on it?
This morning, after the rant to which I referred in the previous post, I broke down and left the house with the intention of buying a pack of cigarettes. Oh, Demon Nicotine, why must you mock me?
Instead of buying a pack of Marlboroughs, I went to a Weight Watcher's Meeting and joined. The meeting was held at the YWCA, so I joined that too. I went back to the Y tonight and a trainer oriented me on the use of the machines.
I did a quick 10 reps on each machine, then swam laps in the pool for 30 minutes. Then I hit the shower, and came home.
I did manage to do enough cardio tonight to reach my target heart-rate.
..unlike when I took kickboxing, and my pre-class resting heart-rate was higher than the specified target heart-rate.
I know how to take it slow and easy. That was part of my weight-gain program.
Ahhhhhhh, it is so good and fresh it leaves me feeling tingly and happy all over.
I swear, if it did not cost so darn much I would bathe in it. No calories, no sugar, much flavor. I'm hooked.
Halloween is less than two days away.
My To-Do list grows.
1.
Make Harrison an
alternate costume related to his curriculum for the school costume parade because in his class there is a child who does not celebrate Halloween.
That child's family will be offended if there is a "Halloween" activity, so we will just call it something else to trick them. Now instead of being a ghost, my child needs a spotted owl costume.
This reminds me of when, the week before Easter, Eden's nursery school teacher on Love Lane had the children make "Spring Eggs" so that the non-Christian children would not catch on. Boy were they fooled!
I'm sure that on Friday night every mother was pleased to learn that she had to create an extra costume by Tuesday.
My sympathy to those who do not actually look at Friday's backpack until Monday morning. (That would be me about 93 percent of the time.)
2.
Make Soul Cakes.
3. Make spaghetti and meatballs to feed the eight children who will be trick or treating with us, and their parents.
4. Carve pumpkins.
5.
Mail the packages that have been in the back of my car for the past week (Sorry Mrs. G.).
6. Schedule Parent-Teacher Conference.
7.
Self medicate in preparation for Parent-Teacher Conference.
8. Change altar to reflect the holiday.
9. Remove all sharp objects and blunt weapons from the house in preparation for Parent- Teacher Conference.
10.
Wash clothes so Dennis can pack for his trip to New York, which just happens to fall so that he gets to miss Parent-Teacher Conference.
11. Call Amy to cry after Parent-Teacher Conference.
Dennis has adjusted well to life here in the mountains of Appalachia. As you can see here, he has made friends and is doing well.
I, on the other hand, am counting the days until the end of the school year and plotting our next escape, err.
.ahh..
I mean move.
We do enjoy many things about this area. I love the downtown, and we all enjoy the restaurants, abundance of live music, the craft traditions and of course the waterfalls, trails and mountains.
Yet, I think we could live here for a decade and not feel like we were home.
Although my boy child cries at the thought of uprooting again, girl child is thrilled. She loves it here and she has made friends, but she misses being able to go into New York City on a whim.
She likes the adventure of moving to a new place and will do well anywhere we land. She knows it is not very hard to keep in touch with friends. She can always continue to have virtual play dates with them on Club Penguin, their favorite internet game site.
Harrison hates the thought of leaving his friends, but he misses many of the things that we identify with New York. He keeps up with the new exhibits at the Museum of Natural History and keeps asking when we will have our next opportunity to go there.
He is a pizza snob, and misses Michelangelo's.
He loves his school, but looks forward to one day again attending a school with an actual playground, cafeteria and computer lab.
And of course, there is the issue of bagels.
Yesterday, a very pitiful Harrison came to us with big tears in his eyes, and with a small cracking voice asked if there was anywhere we could go to get a bagel.
Dennis drove him across town to the bagel shop.
Harrison happily ran up to the counter and, with a gleam in his eye, ordered an egg bagel.
The baffled bagel man was confused.
"Egg bagel? Do you mean you want us to put an egg on yer bagel?"
Harrison just shook his head, and settled for a plain bagel.
He brought a bag full of them home. Throughout the day he ate half a dozen plain bagels. He was glad to find bagels, but he was just not *quite* satisfied.
Dennis goes on another real estate search in less than two weeks.
He has been advised to stay there as long as it takes to find a house, and to bring back a dozen egg bagels and some Boars Head pastrami.
I'll be here packing, and writing a business plan for the real bricks and mortar Mermaid Cafe.
Q. What would you like to talk about?
Q.
What was your favorite part of yesterday's photo shoot?
Q. What is the best part of being a model?
Q. What is the worst part of being a model?
Q.
What was the worst part of the shoot yesterday?
EF. Having to lift a two ton log (and I am not over exaggerating, by the way) and how Dad kept calling us weak girls and stuff.
Q. How did that make you feel?
Q.
Some readers of this interview may not be familiar with the term "SQUISHY!" Can you explain to them what exactly a SQUISHY is?
EF.
A squishy is when you take a little ketchup or mayonnaise packs and fold them over, place them between the toilet seat and the toilet, and when someone sits down to go, SQUISHY!!!
!!!
!
Q. Do you think that will teach Daddy a lesson?
Yesterday I took Eden to a birthday party for one of her little girlfriends in Black Mountain. It was a lovely party at a park, with a dog theme. The goodie bags were filled with chocolate dipped sugar cookies that looked like dog bones.
It was really sweet.
I snuck away from the party for a few minutes and went to Song of the Wood.
I went in to look at the dulcimers.
It's a groovy little folk instrument.
The strumstick has three strings and is tuned to G-D-G, the Gs being one octave apart. It has a little of the dulcimer/Appalachian bagpipe sound going on with the drone string.
It is said to be the easiest instrument to play, having been designed for folks like me that don't know how to play.
Having never played guitar, I have tender fingers. My index finger is a little bruised because I've been sitting on the front porch all afternoon figuring out a rendition of Uncle John's Band.
I am sure if I was tripping the music would look and sound a lot prettier.
I'm one note away from figuring out Oh, Susannah and I can manage This Land Is Your Land and Old Joe Clark. There is a book of Celtic tunes I can get that seemed kind of neat.
I think this will lend itself well to Cat Stevens.
It takes very little to get me really excited.
I'm really excited about this little strumstick, but I think I might be driving the neighbors a little insane.
Yesterday was Friday the 13th, and although I am known to be very superstitious, this date does not cause me concern. My children are a different story. They spend a week getting themselves all worked up about Friday the 13th.
"Why does my oral presentation book report have to be due on Friday the 13?" one wails on the way to school.
Of course I tried to reassure her, stressing the origins of the superstition about Friday the 13th, how the pagans who celebrated the goddess Frieda would venture out on Friday the 13th to do ritual and the Christians would kill them.
For the pagans, leaving one's house on Friday the 13th could prove to be very unlucky indeed. Since we do not worship Frieda and Christians are not allowed to kill us, we have nothing to worry about.
She was unconvinced.
At the end of the day I asked, "So how did your presentation go?"
"Just my luck!" she cries, "I did all that work and was all prepared and we ran out of time and I didn't get to do mine!
I have to do it next week, and with my luck, I'll forget everything by then!"
I'll have to place some rosemary for remembrance under her pillow.
Our neighbor has two black cats, both of whom wander back and forth across my path all day.
I rather enjoy watching them. The kids point out every time they cross our paths.
I never worry about spilling salt, because I know salt has protective qualities, and I am frequently distributing it around the perimeter of the yard and in little pots on the wall at our entryways.
What's a little on the floor?
Although I have never broken a mirror, Dennis has been known to break them on purpose to use the shards for lighting. Considering his career success, this does not seem to have had any negative affect on him.
I've never had problems with mirrors, but when I am under great stress I have a tendency to shatter glass and have been known to shatter light bulbs just by standing under them. Someone asked me about the scar on my neck and when I told her how I got it, she recommended I convert my entire kitchen to cobalt blue. Blue deflects the energy that causes the glass to shatter.
One rainy morning last fall, Dennis opened a black umbrella in the front room while the kids and I screamed at him, "NO! Don't do that inside the house!"
He laughed at us.
It was bad luck for Dennis, but good luck for our chiropractor.
He got rear-ended less than an hour later, after dropping the children off at school.
He considered not telling me, knowing what I might say, but with his back all wrenched up, he could not keep it a secret for long.
I will never carry an old broom into a new house, and my housewarming gifts are usually a new broom, a bag of rice or loaf of bread, and a candle.
I become very upset when I see someone rock an empty cradle, and for some reason I see a lot of this, at garage sales and in stores. I don't even like it when I'm at a birth and the nurses start rolling that empty isolette around the room just as the baby crowns.
I immediately try to walk widdershins around it seven times (without being noticed) but I'm usually holding some woman's leg up in the air, so I just have to pray on it until after the birth.
Of course, I made sure to walk up a flight of stairs with my babies before we left the hospital, because I knew we would have to walk down a few steps to get to the car when we left. I grew a big pot of rosemary in the nursery and hung it above the crib, even though neither child ever actually slept in the crib.
My wedding began at 6:31, so that the hands on the clock were going up, and the next morning I got out of the bed on the same side I'd gotten in on the night before. My boquet contained ivy for fidelity. There was coinage in my shoe.
I serve hoppin' John, greens and country ham on New Year's Day, a day on which I know not to wash clothes.
I get up early on May 1 and take the kids outside to roll in the dew on the grass. We have always done this naked, but this year the kids have gotten modest so I think we'll go to washing only our faces in the dew.
A bird in my house brings chills to my spine, and when a bird gets in, I immediately begin to pray for the dead. When I visit the cemetary, I don't step on graves. After leaving a burial, we wash our hands before going into the home.
I mourn for a year.
I usually don't buy eggs at night, but if I do, I try to leave them in the car or at the front door.
I don't wear opals, but I don't wear turquoise either (only because I don't own any turquoise).
I have been working on a turquoise design for a necklace, but I am still acquiring the right stones.
You'll never find a horseshoe pointing down on my property, because I know the luck will run out. Instead, my horseshoes are hung properly, so that they look like the letter U.
I kept a cyclamen plant on the bedside table, until Dennis realized that cyclamen increases fertility. Now the bedside table holds only a lamp, a book, a box of condoms and a glass of water.
I put a glass of water on the bedroom window sills if the children complain of bad dreams.
I put knots in my handkerchiefs, and untie knots at a birth.
I'll put cream and sugar in your beverage before I serve you, but I won't stir your cup.
I'm not afraid of ghosts, nor do I fear evil spirits.
When I was a small child, I was taught what to say if I encounter either, and I was taught that they can only hurt you if you are afraid.
Stevie Wonder sings, "When you believe in things you don't understand then you suffer", but I disagree. I believe in things I don't understand.
These beliefs bring a certain calm rhythm to my life that makes sense, even if it only makes sense to me.
The thing about loving to decorate for the holidays, is that I started small and things just got bigger and more Martha Stewart-like each year. Then our family has all these wonderful memories of how fun and spooky our house is.
Along with these memories comes a certain expectation that Mom will always be able to do these things. I suspect my family thinks I am like Samantha and can just twitch my nose and transform our home into a fun filled wicked wonderland.
Some years I can.
Other years, well, I just can't easily get it together.
This is an off year.
You see, last year I had gathered some really sweet vintage knockoffs, felt garlands and spooky little felt black cats and little witches, things that I was so looking forward to using.
This year I am missing them, as well as the strings of little cloth ghosts I have been decorating with since before Eden was born.
I can't blame this one on the mischievous little fairies that have been reeking havoc on my kitchen. This time, the blame falls entirely on me.
All I can find this year is the cheap plastic orange pumpkins we fill with baked goods and spice scented candles that we leave on our neighbors' doorsteps when we ring and run. We make these little baskets and leave them with instructions that they are to refill them and leave them on another neighbor's doorstep.
Included in the basket is a sign they can hang in the window that says BOO!
, which indicates which homes have received baskets and who still needs to be treated. Then each morning on the way to school, we watch as we drive down the block to see who got BOO!ed.
It is great fun for the kids to ring and run, and we end up starting several baskets (or shall I say cheap plastic pumpkins) though the weeks just before Halloween.
Tomorrow night we are starting with the neighbors who have dogs but no children, so we will fill their pumpkins with a loaf of fresh banana bread, some chocolates, and dog biscuits. The following night we will leave baskets for the neighbors we hang out with.
They'll get bottles of wine, chocolate and homemade cookies.
In any event, I have to get going to make Halloween happen here. Eden wants to be a bee.
We have a bee costume for Violet the dog to wear as she walks with us trick or treating, and Eden wants me to be the Queen bee - a bee costume with a robe and crown to boot. We are trying to get Dennis to be the worker bee, but he is less than enthused. Perhaps I can get him to wear dress up as a bee keeper.
Harrison wishes to be a plain old sheet with two eye-holes ghost. He has become a very practical kid. He likes classic things.
It's not too easy to find yellow and black striped shirts these days, and I do not want to take the time to sew, so I have to find an easy way to do this without spending a small fortune on store bought items.
I better get busy..
.I wonder if they still make Bit-o-Honey candies?
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