Not bad!

There's nothing like the satisfaction of a job completed.

I don't think we do at school what you think we do at school

When Andy was four, he came home from pre-school and very seriously said, "Mom, I need to talk to you."

We sat down and I asked what was the matter. He said, "I don't think we do at school what you think we do at school."

"What do you do at school?" I asked. I feared the worst. Does she yell? Hit the children? Is he in some sort of sadistic pre-school where the kids are in danger?

"We just play, eat snack, paint, stuff like that," he said.

What a relief. My baby was fine. He was right where he needed to be, just as I'd thought. He just needed some reassurance. I said, "That's exactly what I think you do at school."

I'll never forget his response. "Well I don't see how any of that is going to help me be an astronaut." I ended up reassuring him that his teacher was not incompetent, and he could trust her, that she really did have the keys to becoming an astronaut.

This morning he finally made it to astronaut school. He no longer wants to be an astronaut, but at least now he can tell that they have everything he needs to be one, if he wants to.

I have a suspicion that the phrase "I don't think we do at school what you think we do at school" will be taking on a new meaning.

Isn't he beautiful?

I don't know what to say. There are no words to add to that picture to improve on it.

It's weird how images live in your memory, though. This is Seth, my oldest brother's son. He joggles up images of Steve, my older brother who is the younger of the two. (As kids, I'd call him my younger brother just to get him going.) If you'd asked me two months ago what he looked like as a baby, I'd have said, "I don't know. I've forgotten." Steve hasn't look like this is years, since he's 48 now. He didn't even look like this by the time he got to junior high, yet without even trying, I opened the attachment and went, "Wow, Steve!" When I was toddling around, the image of his little pre-school face was being burned in my memory and is still there.

They're Magically Delicious!

I almost jumped up in the middle of my dinner to take a picture of it. I was too tired, though. I had cole slaw made with red cabbage from the garden, a tomato slice on my hamburger, and potato planks from the potatoes from the garden.

We wish we'd planted more cucumbers. They are like garden convenience food. I'd eat one every day for lunch. But only one cucumber plant took. We have been eating bowls of tomatoes with dinner. It's like a salad, but just tomatoes. They are sooo flavorful.

Mark harvested the rest of his potatoes. He figures he grew twenty pounds and the seed potatoes cost as much as twenty pounds of potatoes at Wegmans. So I guess potatoes might not be economical to grow.

We eat lots of stir fry with zucchini and peppers. It's been very good.

Don't be after me Lucky Charms

I would have taken a picture of the first coat, but I was too scared. It was leprechaun green. The saleswoman had opened the can of paint, and in response to Mark's squeal, had said, "Don't worry. It dries darker."

So he kept saying, "She said it dries darker." It looked like it might, but I broke it to him: plan on three coats. After the second coat, Mark said, "It seems to dry clear." The old paint spots were a different color than the sanded spots. I tried not to say, "See, you should have sanded down to the bare wood."

I'm good at saying stuff like that. You know, stuff like, "You know what you ought to do?" I just kept busy by saying, "Three coats will be like magic!" Besides, I can always cover it with carpets.


But here it is, all done. The green is not quite the color of the carpet that I sent Mark to the paint store with, but it's not leprechaun green enough to repaint it, either.

There was a stenciling incident, too. Java took a stroll on the wet paint, then stepped on the wood threshold. We considered sanding it or scraping it, but anything we do short of sanding the entire thing and restaining it will look worse than a set of paw prints, so I'm just going to consider it stenciling. It's kind of cute, if you like your cat more than your house, which I do.

Progress

It's hard to see in the picture, but the difference between the cleaned window and the yet to be cleaned window is astonishing. It shows if you compare the green on the left with the green on the right. Dirt is blocking your view of green on the right.

Mark and I are painting the porch. We are trying to combine my talent of nit picking with his talent of grunt work. Together, we will either end up with a beautifully painted porch, or we'll kill each other. Time will tell.

Mark bought the paint and emptied the room. Mark sanded the floor. Mark fixed the vacuum when it over heated. Noticing a pattern? I finally got to feeling bad and started cleaning the dust and windows. I decided that the only way to get the screens clean was to take the vacuum outside. I got one window immaculately clean and it started raining. So I'm taking a break while Mark mows the grass in the rain. My guilt runneth over.

Rob has been washing the glass in the windows. He's been a sport about it. He even washed in the rain. I should get back to work.

An Actual Dinner Conversation

Mark: Honey, could you clean up from dinner tonight, since I cooked it, and, um, grew it?

Alana: Silence. What could I say? I wanted to say no, but on what grounds?

Mark: Does Vanessa have a garden this year?

Alana: Yea, a pot garden.

Andy: Vanessa's growing pot?!?!?

Alana: No. fruits and vegetables, in pots.

Andy: Oh. I thought you said it rather calmly.

You can't fake stuff like this.

Tonight's dinner was a vegetable garden feast. I'd show you a picture of it, but it was too late. Here's some precooking shots. First, a general garden shot. I'm excited because all my previous merged photos were made by Rob, but this time, I did it myself.



Mark harvested his potatoes today. He says he's disappointed in his barrels of potatoes. He thinks the weight of the soil retarded their growth. The yield was the same as the plants in the ground. Both sets were delicious. He picked out the smallest of both kinds, boiled them with salt and put margarine on them. Mmmm........ He said at one point, "Oh, this is what potatoes are supposed to taste like!"



Mark also made a stir fry with zucchini and banana peppers from the garden. He used a seasoning pack from the Asian Grocery Store -- pepper chicken. It was good.

This is the first red pepper we've gotten since a year and a half ago when I bought pepper seeds and announced that I would grow a garden so I could have roasted red bell peppers on the grill every night in the summer. (Last year the peppers didn't really grow till late September, and were green the night before our first frost. This year we accidentally bought banana peppers instead of bell peppers.) This red pepper is from one of our two or three pepper plant rows that aren't banana peppers. A few are Italian Roasters. They are HOT but very good. Mark cooked some on the grill and we bit right into them and discovered they are too hot to just eat. This one is a Hot Cherry Pepper. Great. You can only eat so many hot peppers.

We have about 200 tomatoes that are getting bigger and bigger. Two hundred. Sigh. I still can't get a red bell pepper on the grill, but I've got 200 tomatoes.