stories

“All I have is prickly heat”

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‘Fun facts about Youngest Younger Brother Doug on his birthday’

Okay. I am officially Older Than Dirt. A person whose diapers I used to change has just turned sixty. Gosh. It was shocking enough when I turned sixty.

Me as a B-Team Mom. That’s Baby Bro Doug fidgeting in my lap

The person in question is my Youngest Younger Brother Doug; the diaper-changing happened during my B-Team Mom years, which, if so inclined, you can read about here.

This brother is so much younger than me that, for all intents and purposes, we grew up in entirely different families. “Confessions of a B-Team Mom” talks about that too. Heraclitus is mentioned. (A name I still find rather, well, unsettling.)

Me, the year I left home for college. Doug was four

But enough with stuff I’ve already written about. Today I’d like to tell you about this Marvelous Man who was once the object of my babysitting attention. My Baby Brother Doug.

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Let them eat Bunny Cake

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‘An Easter treat that’s hard to beat’

I just realized that I really should have posted this story before Easter. That way you all could have whipped out your cake pans and created a bunny to dig into after your ham or lamb. (Note: we never had lamb at Easter; my mother swears it smells like “hot wet sweaters.”)

Speaking of sweaters, here’s my latest. I haven’t gotten it hot or wet, so I don’t know if it smells like lamb

Oh well, you still could “do” a bunny cake. They’re awfully fun to make, and, what with the coconut frosting and the jellybean whiskers, tasty too.

Besides, bunnies don’t really have anything to do with Easter. Not really. Bunnies and eggs were pagan fertility symbols that the early Christians appropriated; they decided they were symbols of the resurrection of Jesus. Though I have a suspicion that the real reason for “stealing” those heathen bunnies and eggs was to cheer up an inherently downer holiday. (Crown of thorns? Dying on a cross? I mean, even rising from the dead isn’t exactly cheerful.)

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Sifting through a big ole flour sack full of feelings

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‘Emotionally ambushed by a humble household gadget’

So I’m unloading the dishwasher and putting the clean dishes away when the cutting board hits a jumble of Tupperware lids in the back of a cabinet and refuses to slide all the way in.

(Incidentally, I read somewhere about somebody who has two dishwashers in their kitchen — one for clean and one for dirty — so they never have to put the dishes away. Also regarding dishwashers — and this is something that really happened, not something I read about — one time my sister-in-law, in a fit of misguided helpfulness, unloaded the dirty dishes and put them all away, a fact I only discovered when I grabbed a “clean” plate to find it gravy-glued to the one beneath. It was weeks before I found all the sticky ice cream bowls, egg-crusted forks and coffee-besmirched mugs hidden in my cabinets like Easter eggs.)

An Easter egg decorated by Her Childness lo these many years ago

Anyway. This being a below-counter cabinet, I got down on my hands and knees to untangle the Tupperware jumble and happened to spot the flour sifter jammed way in the back.

Well. It wasn’t Memory Lane that flour sifter triggered — it was a whole Four-Lane Memory Highway. A virtual Long Island Expressway of memories.

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The Emotional Support Rock

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‘When it comes to The Kidlet, no stone is left unturned.’

I know I wrote about The Child (AKA “The Kidlet,”) just last week. About how she can recite pi to like a googillion places. (Cool word, googillion. Thanks, Spelling Bee!) But tomorrow’s her birthday. And besides, I thought of a cute story about her Kidletness that I don’t think I’ve told yet.

This is about how, when she was small, The Child would carry a rock around with her pretty much all the time. This would not be a big rock — more like a pebble. (See the photo at the top of this post for a great example sitting right there on the picnic table.) Fortunately, she was attached to just one rock at a time, sort of like mineral serial monogamy. But she had to have that rock on or near her person at all times, usually in a pocket. (Yes, I’d have to check before doing the laundry; we almost destroyed a dryer once when I forgot. You never heard such clunking.)

Look closely and you’ll see a rock clutched firmly in that little toddler paw

It wasn’t just rocks she liked. She was into stuffed animals, too, and had a whole menagerie of plushy friends. There was Lion and Penguin and Bear and Squirrel. Also Cow and Lamb. Their names? Lion and Penguin and Bear and Squirrel and Cow. The Lamb was the only animal with a more namelike name. She called him (her?) “Lammie.”

The Child wasn’t the only one in our house who liked stuffed animals

When we’d go on a trip, she would select an animal to accompany us. “Squirrel got to go to Gramma’s last time; now it’s Penguin’s turn.”

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“Watch the birdie!”

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‘And watch out for water balloons!’

Not only did I promise to pry some bird photos out of Dude Man’s camera and share them with you this week, I forgot to tell you about a pretty important part of our trip.

Here’s a Green-Backed Trogon. Nice, huh?

And that’s the fact that our birding expedition to the wilds of SE Ecuador happened to coincide with Carnival. Now, we do celebrate Mardi Gras, sort of, in some parts of the good ole U S of A. Once, in fact, I almost had a heart attack when The Child traveled to New Orleans with a group of college buds to participate in the revelry there.

Her Childness and Friend meet a shark on the streets of New Orleans

But trust me when I tell you that no one celebrates the days leading up to Lent (AKA “Carnival”) like our neighbors to the South.

But first — even before Carnival — there was The Wedding. We arrived on a Thursday and went to our very nice hotel near the airport to rest up for our trip further south the next morning. (This is the place featuring Sylvester, the Hotel Cat. Last week’s story has a photo.) Little did we know that the hotel was hosting a wedding. (We did see the white tents, and had our suspicions.) Soon enough, we were assaulted by the sound of happy wedding guests dancing the night away. And it wasn’t even the wedding yet. This was just pre-party stuff. Thank heaven for ear plugs.

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“People people people!”

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‘Meet the Energizer Birder’

I just flew back from Ecuador, and boy are my arms tired.

Well, maybe not my arms, but the rest of me is pretty darned tuckered out. Because, speaking of flying, we’ve just returned from another of our wacky birding trips.

Wayne enjoying every second of our latest wacky birding trip. That’s the Energizer Birder on the right

I have written about these trips many times before, of course. About how you get up really early, tramp around jungles in sweltering wet weather, eat strange foods (durian, anyone?) and feel darned lucky at the end of the day if you can manage to stay awake long enough for your hair to dry before your pillow can mold it into strange overnight shapes.

Or sometimes you freeze yourself at 14,500 feet. Doesn’t matter about your hair getting molded into strange shapes — it’s always crammed under a hat

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“My tongue just threw a party for my mouth.”

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‘Lunchtime at the Cameo Cafe’

First: Thank you, Mel Brooks, for the title of this piece. Mel had a million funny lines — no doubt still does — but this one’s my favorite. If (gasp) you have no idea who I am talking about, here you go.

Second: Sorry, everyone, for skipping a couple of weeks of pieces. (Assuming, that is, you noticed I skipped a couple of weeks of pieces.) At least I had a good excuse. It was my turn to visit Mom in our sibs’ “Kid of the Month Club” rotation. And, well, what with sitting around drinking coffee and reading books and sitting around drinking wine and watching movies, I couldn’t find the time.

We also sat around drinking wine and playing Scrabble

We did some culinary exploration, too. Which is pretty exciting for me. Not the culinary part; the exploration part. See, I absolutely hate to drive when I’m someplace “away.” Part of the reason is that I have terrible night vision. But even during the day, I freak out when I have to navigate an unfamiliar route in an unfamiliar car. My dear sister always makes sure wheels are provided when I visit, just in case. But that case hardly ever comes up, and said car sits in the parking lot in the same spot day after day after day.

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Crouching Tiger, Hidden Wombat

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‘Camouflage for kitties. Er, cities.’

“I’d pass the stuffing, but I can’t see you,” I wise-cracked to a Young Relation at the Thanksgiving table this year.

He was wearing a teeshirt in a camouflage pattern, you see. (Or don’t see; hahaha.)

I get my sense of humor — and of the absurd — from my mother, who once famously remarked that she would have bought that set of camo sheets on sale at Target but she was afraid she wouldn’t be able to find her bed.

Look closely; that ornament in front is actually Yours Truly

But back to the Relation in the camo shirt. His was the pattern that one wears while hunting. You know what that looks like; it’s that woodland/jungle pattern that’s not only on teeshirts, but on cargo shorts and leggings, raincoats and totes. Pretty much everything has been “camo’d,” including those sheets on sale at Target. In fact, I’m sticking my neck out and saying that camo print is the young version of animal print. Instead of leopard or zebra, the under-MediCare Fashionista slink around sporting U.S. Woodland or Desert. (See my “At Least it’s not a Dead-Squirrel Stole” for a riff on the Elegantly Mature and their penchant for animal prints.)

In my humble opinion, the only person who ever looked good in this hat is The Child. When she was five.

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Peace on Earth, Good Will toward Socks

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‘The Child’s footwear phobia, conquered at last?’

It’s been cold here in the Great Northeast. Why, last weekend, the temperature dropped from 51 to 15 in twelve hours. But it’s even colder where Her Childness has been spending the Holidays. She reported twenty-nine below on Christmas Day up in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, where the SIL’s family — bless their rugged little hearts — is based.

Forget the frankincense and myrrh. Somebody bring the Holy Family a space heater

And what has The Child been doing every single day she’s been up there in the Frozen North? Why, running, of course. She made a resolution at the beginning of the year to run every single day, no matter what. And, by golly, she’s kept it. Neither rain nor snow nor sleet has kept her from her appointed running rounds. All year long.

What happens when you run every day — including days when it’s -29

I’m not worried about the running-in-all-weathers. Nope, as a Concerned Parent, I’m just hoping that she’s had an attitude adjustment toward socks. 

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How much is too much to pay for a party dress?

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‘Read this before handing over your credit card’

Apologies for being (sort of) late with this week’s post. Unless you’ve been living under an undecorated rock, you too have been attending party after holiday party and don’t have a lot of time for relaxing pursuits like blog writing.

Part of the fun of these parties, for me anyway, is dressing up. What’s the fun of going to a party if you can go “casual?” Since I retired, “casual” is how I dress pretty much 24/7. I like a little duding up.

Speaking of “duding up,” here’s his Dudeness looking extremely spiffy in black tie. Dressing up is so easy for guys

I was at a party last week where I admired a woman’s earrings. (Hi, Elizabeth!)  Coincidentally, we were both talking to another woman who was also wearing stunning sparkly earrings. (Hi, Kim!) Turns out they both got them at the same time, from the same jeweler. And they both spent outrageous sums on them. (No, I did not ask how much.)

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