Snoop, the fatter of our black cats, was sitting in the middle of the gravel path when I got back from dropping the kids at the bus stop.  In the winter he’s a committed house cat, rarely moving except from bed to bed and then to the food bowl.  Spring comes, however, and a young cat’s thoughts turn to chasing chipmunks, and the morning’s victim was already wriggling in Snoop’s jaws when I came up the path.

I’ve watched this dance often enough to know the game had just begun.  I never interfere in animal kingdom games – I figure Mother Nature knows what she’s doing (and, as a vegetable gardener, I do have a dog in this fight).  Today, though, the cloudless sky and lush trees newly-dressed for spring created a such feeling of peace that I couldn’t believe she had allowed another torturous game of cat-and-chipmunk to begin.

Snoop stopped near the daffodils and dropped the chipmunk.  The chipmunk shook its head and started to run, but Snoop got in his way.  The fuzzy rodent backed into the forsythia and then, deciding humans were less dangerous than cats, raced over my foot and into the woodshed. Apparently cats are susceptible to fits of arrogant laziness because Snoop waited and watched the chipmunk for a minute before barreling past me and trying to corral his victim again.

I started walking toward the door, reasonably confident how this would end, but as I glanced over my shoulder, I saw the chipmunk make one last heroic jump into a crack in a pile of firewood.  Snoop pounced, but he was too slow, and the peace was preserved.

As usual, Mother knew best.  Remember that kids.

The kids are in the school yard when seven-year-old Thing2 hops out of the car.  He never climbs out.  He hops.

When he’s done hopping, he runs up to one friend.  Then they run to another friend.  The three boys run from spot to spot because why would you ever not run from spot to spot?

Watching them, it’s impossible not to wonder what secret they have that infuses every movement with happiness.  I would ask, but I’m not sure they even know what they have.

Here are some questions to try to answer honestly.

1.  Have you tried to stop gardening for a season but started drawing up new plans before the last frost?

2. Do you wish people would stop telling you to just buy your vegetables at the grocery store?

3. Do you drive buy farm stands and mentally calculate how much more space you’d need to start your own?

4. Have you ever switched from rows to beds to moderate your gardening?

5. Do you occasionally start the day with a walk out to your garden for a quick eye-opener?

6. Do you stop to pull one weed and stand up two hours later with a bucket full of dead dandelions?

7. Do you envy others who can control the size of their gardens?

8. Do you ever stop at the grocery store and walk out with flats of flowers or veggie starts instead of the food items on your list?

9. Do you tell yourself you can stop gardening anytime you want to?

10. Do you have Garden-Outs?   Do you wander into your garden at 7AM on Saturday morning and wander out at 5 wondering how so many new beds appeared fully planted?

If you answer ‘Yes’ to four or more of the questions above, you may have an addiction.  You are not alone, and you should know that there are other gardening addicts who are willing to tell you it’s not a problem.  Go ahead and feed it.  If you answered yes to six or more, your addiction may be severe.  It’s still not a problem, just be sure you keep another set of books to hide from the non-gardeners in your family who may not understand that the $165 willow trellis really necessary to support the pole beans.

Most of the images on this blog start with my pencil and a look at one or both of my kids.   None of the images are photorealistic, but I can watch my kids grow and change if I click through the pages of the site.

Most of the time, the kids are just getting bigger, but yesterday I drew something I’d never attempted before.  It wasn’t difficult to add a few elongated dark dots on what was supposed to be my son’s cheek and upper lip.  It wasn’t even bittersweet.  It was just sweet to realize that this person I admire more everyday is crossing the divide.

It was also a reminder to keep watching to make sure every small step finds its way to my sketch album.

 

Thing1 is going to hit high school next fall, and, even in out-of-the-way Arlington, VT, stories of adolescent bacchanals fill most parents with dread.   Thing1 and I have talked about booze and consequences, but everyone in a while I get an unexpected bit of help helping him resist temptation.

On the TV, little yellow minions were shepherding a dozen kinds of fruit down a conveyor belt into a jam-making vat.  When the fruit hit the vat, the stars of Despicable Me2 began stomping the grapes and apples into jam.  One of the minions got stuck in a jar on the way to the next step, and seven-year-old Thing2’s curiosity crested.

“Is that why the jam tastes so bad,” he asked.

“Because there’s a million kinds of fruit in one jar?” Thing1 asked looking for clarification.

“No, because they’re stepping on the fruit with their feet.”

“Maybe,” said Thing1.

“I think it’s the conveyor belt residue,” I said.  Then I added, “Anyway, that’s how they still make wine some places.”  Thing2 gave me a funny look.

“They step on it?” he asked.  “Is that why wine tastes so bad?”

I was quiet for a moment and then said, “Ye-e-e-ss.”  Thing1 doesn’t really like the taste of wine, but he was dubious about the source of the bad taste.   Thing2 was quiet as he mulled over the science of wine making.

“So basically wine is just foot jam with water,” he said after a few more minutes of watching the movie quietly.

“Wow,” groaned Thing1. “I’ll never be able to get that thought out of my head when I look at a bottle of wine again.”

When my own stomach finished doing backflips over the thought that I’ve been drinking glorified fermented fruity foot-jam-juice with my pasta all these years, I gave Thing2 a quiet kiss on the head as Pharrell’s ‘Happy’ began to play on the TV screen.

 

Summer is when being a WAHM (Work-At-Home-Mom) has it’s challenges.

Two boys are suddenly home all day and summer camps create odd chauffeuring schedules. The challenge is to keep the focus on work without letting them focus only on iPads or Computers.

I always think back to summers at that age. My mom was a study at home mom for a long time – she was getting a PhD – before she became a work at home in the summer mom as she prepared for her classes in th fall. She was every bit as busy as I am, but (and this could be the wonderful myopia of nostalgia) I don’t remember TV or gadgets being such omnipresent lures in our summertime day.

I remember hopping on bikes and spending all day pedaling miles to visit friends or walking to the pool for the day – sometimes expecting to see our mom in the afternoon. Other days we’d walk home with our friends and spend a quarter at the candy store or at the ice cream truck.

One thing that makes my kids’ summer so different is our location. They have an abundance of nature right outside their door, but we don’t live in the suburbs. We live on a dirt road in the middle of a minor mountain. They ride bikes in the driveway and, even though they’re 6 years apart, they do play together a little. But there aren’t miles of sidewalk-lined paved roads with neighborhoods full of friends to bike to. There’s no walk to the local pool, and sometimes I worry we’re shortchanging them.

But, as I’m ordering a porch swing to retro fit on the swing set that only gets used as a slide and daredevil jumping spot, I’m thinking not only of my home office for the summer. I’m planning an outside place to snuggle with seven-year-old Thing2 as he makes his way through the Harry Potter books this summer and a spot where I can listen to them argue about who’s going into the woods this time to get the baseball. And I’m still determined to make sure they get their summertime memories. And it won’t be with an iPad.

 

The table was loaded with all the fixings for a vegan taco feast.  I’d followed the recipe to the letter, congratulating myself for finding one more recipe that all members of the family would eat (Rule number one when I’m dieting is that only one meal is made for the whole family).

But as the boys were loading up their plates with beans and tomatoes, I hovered over the calorie counter on my iPhone, tapping in each item that was about to go in my gullet.

“Mom, has anyone ever wanted to go on a diet?” Thing2 had stopped shoveling and now rested his chin on his hand as he watched me suck the pleasure out of a meal I’d worked very hard to find.  I wanted to skip the calorie counting, but I didn’t dare stop.

The last few months I’ve been a bad, bad girl.  I didn’t fall off the diet wagon. I stress-ate and gorged and over-indulged so much I  broke both freaking axels, and my imaginary work animal went on strike.

So I kept on tapping.  The boys were into serving number two by the time I had my first fork full.  It was all food I love, but it took a few bites to remember I’d picked this recipe so we could all enjoy a healthy meal.

“No,” I finally answered a Thing2 who had long forgotten the question.  “Nobody has ever wanted to go on a diet.”

Sometimes I get the feeling that Mother Nature is the ultimate wise ass mom.

Why else would it be, that when brushing wet hair that I’m not supposed to be brushing because it’s more likely to break when wet, the only strands that seem completely invulnerable to that rule are the adamantine threads that have turned a silvery gray?

The war is my To-Do list, and, lately, I’ve been waging extreme peace.  Instead of picking battles, I’ve been letting the fights come to me, if I can’t absolutely avoid them.  Even my favorite “battle”, my garden, is only being fought because it’s the beginning of May, and this may be the last time this summer I have a jump on the weeds.

For the last 13 summers, I’ve had a decent sized garden – about 1600 square feet of beds or rows, depending on how artistic seven-year-old Thing2 and I are feeling when we lay out the veggies.  We get a lot of food out of our good earth, but thanks to the wild raspberry bush that apparently escaped from a Little Shop of Horrors set to squat at my garden gate and the weeds that begin to invade rows and paths alike, we also get a big mess by the end of the summer.

This year, in an homage to middle age, I’ve decided not to not climb that hill, but rather to move it to a smaller, more manageable spot.

Thing2 was not happy with the announcement – he loves to have a hand in the garden design.  I could try trotting out a cliche for him about how good things come in small packages. I’m hoping, however, when August gives us a slightly smaller crop and a lot less work, he’ll figure out that sometimes victory is as much about identifying the goal as it is about expending blood, tears, and sweat.

For me it’s a few months of fresh picked salad without taking on a third or fourth career.

Thing2 floats above and around the kitchen table.  A moth might be drawn to the pendant light hanging over the table, but my seven-year-old flutter-bug isn’t attracted to light.  He makes it on his own.  I think it’s light anyway and not a repressed need to go potty.

What isn’t repressed is the energy that keeps him dancing around the single worksheet that’s assigned for the night.  He does a row and then he needs to examine a bump in the dog’s fur.

“Is that a tick, Mom?  I need to hug you.”

“Sit down and do your homework.”  He smiles and slide-spins back to the table.  He never struggles with the numbers – only the sitting.  Another row of problems is done.

“I can’t get that song out of my head,” he tells me.

“You’re supposed to be having math problems in your head,” I answer.  Before his butt gets too far off the wooden seat I say, “Sit down and do your homework.”

The next three rows go faster. He’s remembered something he wants to do when it’s done, but we have one more round of distraction and reseating before the flutter-bug is done with his assignment.

“Mom, I can’t wait to go to school and see my friends,” he says as he finishes the last row, “but why do we have to have homework?”  He flits over to me to get his worksheet initialed.  The numbers are surprisingly neat and accurate.

“I thought you liked homework,” I say as he dances back to the kitchen table to get his spelling list.

“I hate it,” he says slipping the yellow sheet of words into my hand.  He pirouhettes away from me, waiting for the first word.

“Crumbs,” I say.  Thing2 is now concentrating on an arabesque, but he manages to tap out the letters, finishing the word with a kick and a leap.  He flutters from one end of the great room to the other as he taps out the letters for the next ten words, and I don’t bother trying to get him to sit.  The last letter of the last word gets a special flourish and I get a hug that should squeeze me down a jean size.  Yeah, he hates homework alright.