So, who wants zucchini bread?

After the nuclear winter, there will be nothing left in North America except for cockroaches and zucchini plants. Not that I'm complaining or anything ...

Tied

This post ties June 2007 with March 2006 for the most posts in one calendar month. And I've still got over a week to go in the month - go, me!

Medusa

Looks like we're going to get one ear per stalk. Shucks!

Anyone need a boat? Too bad, this one's sold!

We're selling our 16' Old Town Loon 160T tandem kayak. It's been a good boat, but we hardly ever used it, even before we had 30 pounds of deadweight to haul with us and keep from jumping overboard.

For $400 you get a gently used boat with only minor cosmetic scratches on the underside of the hull, two paddles, a dolly to get the thing to the water, a roller to get the thing into the water, a cover to keep spiders out of the cockpit in the winter, and a set of tiedown straps for use with most standard roof racks. This boat retails for about $700, not including all the extras, so this is an excellent deal.

If anyone is willing to come pick it up in Northeast Ohio, I'd love to hear from you.

UPDATE 6/22/07 - Sold! Gotta love craigslist.com ... this sucker was out the door less than two days after I listed it. Hooray! Now you can see more of our crappy cracked garage floor!

For MLF

Dancer? Person hailing a taxi? Seductress? You decide.

First harvest

Not because I need cilantro right now, but if I didn't trim it today, it was going to bolt to seed and I'd be screwed for the rest of the guacamole season.



And because it's only going to stand still to get its picture taken once, I'll post this, too:

It's pinkie-sized right now, so I'm guessing we'll be starting on the zucchini diet by this weekend, maybe Monday if I let things go a little longer than I should. When I've got so many potential zukes, there's not reason to let them get much bigger than a pickle. And maybe this is the year that I finally try the battered zucchini flower recipe I've seen a million times over the past decade.


PS - my hands smell like tomato stems and cilantro ... regardless of what the calendar says, I say it's already summer!

New one for me

Hmmm, maybe I should contact him, even though I know I'm not related to anyone named Thompson. After all, he wants to split the money 50/50, and we wouldn't be doing bad to humanity ....
***
Dear Sir/Madam, My name is Mr.Golden Ahaiwe. I am a lawyer and the personal attorney to MR. MORRIS THOMPSON, an American citizen from the state of Alaska. Thompson was a Category "A" contractor to the Nigerian government before he died together with his wife and their only daughter aboard Alaska Airline flight number 261, on 31st of January, 2000.

Payment of Twenty Two Million United States Dollars for the last contract he did for Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) in 1998 before his death in 2000 is ready for release. The contract payment is ready for release by INEC but nobody is to receive the payment because he has no Next-of-Kin in his file at INEC, hence I have been asked by INEC as his attorney to provide the Next-of-Kin for the claim of the money within the next 21 official working days.

Since I have been unsuccessfully in locating my late client's relatives, I seek your consent therefore to present you as (an Appointed) Next-of-Kin, so that this contract payment would be released to you and then, you and I can share it at the rate of 50/50. I must let you know that your name and place of residence does not matter in this process. I also want you to understand that we will not be doing bad to humanity by claiming the payment because if we do not claim it, the government will retain it as nobody is to receive the funds as Thompson's next-of-kin. If you are interested in this offer, kindly indicate by sending the following information to me for immediate submission of claim application to the INEC in your favour. The information I want from you are: (1) your full name. (2) Your full address. (3) Your age & occupation. (4) Your private telephone and fax numbers.

Let me hear from you. Best regards, Mr.Golden Ahaiwe Hear from you soon...

Purple?

Quote of the week

(from the backseat, where she's pointing to completely different letters on the label on her carseat):

"mumblemumble-I-Z-A spells (pregnant pause) ROCK!"

There was a little cucumber ...

... who had a little curl, right in the middle of her forehead ...

I gotta say, I'm proud of this one. Not only did I a) notice it, and b) take the time to frame the shot just the way I wanted it, but I pretty much had to stand on my head to do it without stepping into the garden soil. Go, me!

Because I can't resist showing off

First fruits

Sacrificial beauty

Too pretty to eat, really, which is a good thing since I'm not partial to nasturtiums, anyway, and I just planted them because they're supposed to help deter pests from attacking the rest of the garden. Maybe I should have read into that a little further before planting, though, because I'm starting to suspect that they don't repel the bugs (like marigolds do), but instead act as sacrificial lambs, giving the bugs a more appealing meal than what's available in the rest of the garden.

What makes me say that? Well, the last time I planted nasturtiums (exactly a decade ago, in case you were wondering), they ended up getting totally infested with tiny black bugs, which grossed me out so much that I vowed never to plant them again. Mr. Square Foot Garden recommends planting them, though, so I figured I would give it a try. I've been checking every day for signs of nasty black dudes, and as of yesterday, all was quiet on the northern front. But here's what I found today:
Son of a bitch. Both nasturtium clumps have been totally blanketed with every toxic substance I can find in our newly-organized garden shed, so hopefully these suckers are toast (aphids ... suckers ... hee). But now that I've attracted every aphid in Cuyahoga County into my backyard, I fear for the rest of the plants. Looks like me and the sprayer full of Sevin are going to be bosom pals after all.

Did somebody say, "Salsa!"

Looks like I'd better put avocados on the grocery list for next week, since I'm going to have to harvest some of this before it starts getting leggy and sets flowers.

How come this never happened with ours?

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070614/ap_on_fe_st/baby_monitor_space;_ylt=AmEjHOHTOx8.EmkYWQ7Rk_ShOrgF

Oh, yeah - because ours is a piece of shit that won't pick up signals from the transmitter when we're on the deck, 50 feet from the kid's room. Plus, it's audio-only. We never even get to hear anyone else's phone calls ... I'm horribly disappointed.

Sweet, sweet basil

Grow faster, darn it, I'm making pizza tonight!

Hallelujah!

Before:

You can't really tell from the picture, but the lower walls are cinderblock that was cast to look like tumbled bricks, which were painted sloppily in vibrant colors. And the upper walls were a lot more yellow in real life.

And now, after two weeks of working on it every naptime despite a two raging headcolds in the family, about 14 trips to Hell Depot, a fun five minutes spent attacking a cinderblock wall with a hammer to knock off pieces that stuck out too far (ooh, that was fun - can we do it again?), a drillbit-shaped burn on my forearm, a large bruise under my thumbnail, three coats of blue paint, half a gallon of white trim paint, and about 3/4 of a tube of spackle, here's our new guest room.

After:

Inspiration for the colors in the room came from these pillows, which I found after weeks of looking in vain for a color scheme for the room. I bought the pillows and everything else fell into place like dominos - sheets, quilt design, wall color, funky little birdhouses that remind me of Jamaica despite the fact that I've never been there.

I am so psyched about how this room turned out that I actually had a hard time getting to sleep last night, I was so excited to get it cleaned up enough to show it to the world. I decided at the beginning of the project not to talk about it until it was done, and it was killing me - keeping secrets has never been my strong suit.

I am inordinately proud of the fact that absolutely I didn't need any spackle to cover mistakes between the trim and the ledge, or the baseboard and the paneling, or the uprights at each end of the paneling ... it all went into closing the gap between the wavy wall and my not-so-wavy ledge, and closing the gap between the wall and the trim under the ledge, which had to be cut short so I could maneuver it in place. True, we managed to buy panel nails that were 1/32" too long and therefore can't be countersunk (so you can see every nail in the paneling if you look closely), and if you hold a string up to the paneling under the window you'll see that it bows in about 3/4" ... but if you're not looking for it, I swear you can't see it. And I managed to get the baseboard and the trim to bow in exactly the same place, so I didn't have to spackle any gaps - which is a total freakin' miracle, if you've seen any of my past trim installations.

Now all I have to do is finish the second quilt and make a valance for the window ... and stain the cabinet ... and buy headboards for the bed ... and find art I like for the big blank wall over the bed and on the inside wall ... and make a matching valance for the guest bathroom, paint the bathroom, and replace the sink and vanity in the bathroom ... gonna be a long summer at this rate.

Things I never realized

• The reason sand gets hotter the further you walk away from the water is that the wet sand stuck to your feet insulates them for a while, and as it dries it lets more and more heat through to your feet. Thanks, Sybil, for pointing out what should have been obvious to me years ago.
• I'm willing to let my daughter swim in Lake Erie next to trash I would go out of my way to walk her away from in a parking lot - takeout food container, disposable lighter, dead fish, bottle cap, some kind of icky insect larvae-looking stuff that could also have been waterlogged cottonwood fluff, cigarette butt, etc. The water dilutes the yuck, right?
• My daughter understands me well enough that when I tell her not to drink the lake water or eat the sand because it's yucky and will give her nasty diapers like she had the last time she attempted to eat the whole sandbox at one sitting, she actually listens. Listens so well, in fact, that whenever she gets splashed in the face with a wave she starts yelling "Oh, no! Yucky diaper! pthpt! pthpt!" and tries to spit out every last microliter of water that's anywhere near her mouth. That's my girl!
• Dollar General currently has a great selection of temporary tattoos in kid-friendly designs (mostly cartoon flowers - sorry, boys), with sheets of 30 or more for $1. Compared to the $4 I spent for 12 (admittedly very cute) monkey tattoos on eBay, it's a steal. Especially since we'll be using them for potty training, so we're gonna need quite a few.
• My daughter has developed a time sense and a memory, or at least she talks a good game. Yesterday when she was stalling and trying to convince me she didn't need a nap, she claimed she had poop in her diaper. When I checked and she was clean, she laid back down and said " 'member last week? Hand in diaper? Yucky hand!" referring to an incident that was indeed last week, when she (once again) stuck her hand in her poopy diaper and came up with souvenirs on several fingers. My little baby's all grown up and chatty!
• If you tell a child enough times that whining won't get them anything, and you expect them to use a nice tone of voice to ask for things, and you demonstrate the right tone of voice umpteen million times, sometimes the kid will remember. If they're not sick, tired, cranky, or otherwise out of sorts, of course, but it's just so nice to hear "Please have a little candy?" instead of "Maaaaaaamaaaaaa! Little candyyyyyyyy! Pleeeeeaaaase! Maaaaaaamaaaaaa!" that sometimes I'll even break down and give the kid an M&M. And when she wakes up at 6:45am and I bring her into bed with me to snuggle for a few minutes until I am fit to deal with a toddler, and she slides out of bed and comes over to my side and says "Mama, up! Sit here! Right here! Please have some juice please!" in a pleasant voice, darned if I don't get up and do what she wants, despite the fact that I'm not actually awake or coherent yet.

Taking her job seriously

This shot was taken shortly before she took the water leftover in the bucket and dumped it on her head, necessitating a last-minute outfit change before we went to her tumbling class. I guess she was just as parched as the zucchini ...

tassels

I have no idea what the camera decided to focus on, but it obviously wasn't the corn. Oh, well.

So, anyone want to sign up in advance for zucchini bread?

Because we don't have our large freezer going yet, and it looks like we're set for a bumper crop (this is one of three plants ... and I only bought three because they only came in a three-pack, and how am I supposed to throw out two perfectly good plants?).

Sometimes it's the comments that make me giggle

Here's the original blog entry, which is funny, but the comments are even better ... especially:

"I just want to thank you, Alice. For years I've walked the planet searching for something more pointless than non-alcoholic beer and now, thanks to this post, I've finally found it. Non-alcoholic beer for dogs. If the intellectual dynamos that came up with this stellar concept were sitting next to me right now, I would take off my shoe and beat them with it until they were dead. Not even violent death at the hands of a shoe-wielding madman would be as pointless as non-alcoholic beer for dogs."

Our weekend

First we went strawberry picking with our former next-door neighbors:

All of those shots are from the first five minutes we were there, which was the only time I got to be in the strawberry fields - Liza turned into a limpet and it's not like you can pick strawberries while holding 30 pounds of kid, so we went back to the parking lot to throw rocks in the ditch. Not a bad deal, as it meant that Jason was the one who got to spend half an hour hunched over avoiding the thistles so that we can have strawberry shortcake for dessert tonight. Matt suggested that it's ironic that we paid $5 per basket to act as migrant farm workers, and I have to say, that's what it looked like from where Liza and I ended up after she had her little meltdown.
Then we went back to the neighbors' house, where William instructed Liza in the finer points of playing the piano ("No, the Elmo doll goes here, not on the keys"):
And the fishtank (behind William) was admired by all:

After dinner we went down to the community pool, where Penelope was showing off how well Liza's old swimsuit fit her. Of course, since Liza insisted we replace the old one with the exact same suit in a larger size, it made them a little hard to tell apart. Hint: ours is the tall one.

And when we were ready to leave, Liza gave Penelope a big hug. Then she gave her an even bigger hug, and they both fell over on the tile floor and started screaming. Pretty much par for the course with two-year-olds, I guess.

Interloper

The onslaught of weeds has begun. Let the plucking begin!

Jurassic Dance Party

I can't decide which is funnier:
- William's dance moves, including the "tyrannosaurus" at the end
- The fact that Liza has to imitate everything William does
- The fact that Penelope has to imitate everything Liza does
- The fact that big brother Alexander is on the couch, visibly straining to ignore the ruckus going on three feet away.

Carl the Dog

My mother bought Liza one of the Carl the Dog books, which feature a mother who leaves her child in the care of a Rottweiler while she goes off and does something fun. I'm pretty certain my mother just liked the pictures, and she wasn't implying I'd do anything like that myself (we don't have a dog ... dang, it sounded like such a practical solution).

Anyway, the book was so awful that it made me want to claw out my own eyes, so after one or two readings it quietly went to live in the pile of stuff destined for the consignment shop. I've mostly forgotten the horror that was Carl ... until now.

http://www.sweet-juniper.com/2006/10/carl-goes-to-prison.html

My god, this is so funny I actually peed my pants. True, I haven't been keeping up with my Kegels recently, but STILL. If you scroll down to the link for the other selections in the series, you'll see the one where the author invisions what life would be like if Carl's owner was a hobo ... it's just as funny. And the children's book by the Beastie Boys? Priceless.

Sprout

Today's inspection of the garden found buds forming on the zucchini, the start of the tasselly part of the corn peeking out of one knee-high stalk, and teeny tiny buds that will someday be jalapenos. Hooray! They like the soil! They really like the soil! Now if I can just keep them happy during the next week, when it's supposed to be sunny and dry the whole time, we should be well on our way to having homegrown veggies for the chipmonks to attack in a few weeks.

Nature's most perfect vegetable

... at least until the cabbage moth caterpillars hatch.

In training

Support group

Now the cucumbers have someplace to go, and the tomatoes and corn have one less excuse to fall over. Made from two old shepherd's crooks and a metal closet rod I bought at the Seat of All Evilness, aka Home Depot. God, I hate that store.

Summing up my week

See that? That's my daughter wiping a quarter-cup of snot into her hair for the fourteenth time that day ... and it's only 9:30. Of course, since she's been up since 5, she's had plenty of time to practice. At least the dress I made her this winter finally fits her ...

Note to self:

If you've finished painting a room bright blue and your hands don't look like this, you probably haven't used enough paint. See also: the first two times I painted the guest bedroom this week. groan

While I'm making Monty Python references anyway ...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=leEsz9ci5XE&mode=related&search=

Enlist Darth Vader to act as the Black Knight in Holy Grail, and you get this ...

Poised for world domination

"I'm going to muscle up to the edge of this pot, go voom and take over the whole back yard." - Zeke the Zucchini


"Look, matey, this zucchini wouldn't voom if I put 4,000 volts through it." heh.

Strawberries

At the farm market I am grabbing the season's first green peppers and tiny summer squash no bigger than my fingers, but Liza only has eyes for the quarts of strawberries. Before I can stop her, she's grabbed a berry and shoved it into her mouth, eyes opening wide in surprise as she gets her first bite of summer, grit and all. "Shtrawbewwy!" she says, dribbling juice from the corners of her mouth until she looks like an extra in a vampire movie. She hands the half-gnawed bit to me and wanders off to play in a mudpuddle while I pop the rest of the mangled berry into my mouth. It tastes sweet, then tart, then like water. It is furry, and gritty, and seedy. Despite the wet, cold weather today, if I close my eyes I can feel the sun on my face and the bugs on my legs, and I can almost hear the mice and snakes hiding among the plants. I'll take two quarts, please, and we'll be back this weekend to pick more.

Early girl

Recycling your old toys? Here's another thing to worry about

That's what happened when I tried to put the cap back on one of my old toys, a semi-flexible plastic "milk bottle" that came with five other bottles and a basket to carry them in. I didn't even squeeze hard, and my thumb went right through the side, causing it to shatter into nice, sharp, easily swallowed pieces. Luckily this happened after my toddler was in bed - we could have had a nice trip to the emergency room if she had done this herself and either impaled herself on the shards or eaten some of them.

I went through the remaining bottles and this happened with one of the other four I still had, so I pitched the whole set out.

So I guess when I pull out the toys I saved from my childhood, not only do I have to scrub off 30 years of dirt and check to make sure the pieces aren't choking hazards, I also have to make sure any plastic is still flexible enough to not shatter at the drop of a hat (or the squeeze of a thumb). Crud.

Weekend of extreme sinus drainage (and productivity)

Wednesday: Came down with the "something's been dripping down the back of my throat all day" sore throat, which usually signals the start of a week-long cold infestation.

Thursday: Sore throat continues, plus sinus headache and pain so bad I feel like throwing up. The pain laughs at the two kinds of cold medicine and pain relievers I throw at it. So, of course, I take Liza swimming at a friend's neighborhood pool. Thanks to me, the entire kid population of Camelot Farms will miss a good portion of next week's school. In my defense, at this point the symptoms were still indistinguishable from allergies.

Friday: Throat is better, but now I'm blowing my nose so often that the muscles in my neck and back hurt from the effort to get the approximately 14 gallons of stuff out of my body. Liza chooses today to turn into a whiny limpet. The only way I manage to bypass toddlercide is to make her watch Cinderella with me twice, and let her run around outside with the hose running full blast for an hour. Jason gets home from work, I retreat to bed and hide there until it's Liza's bedtime. After she goes to bed, I work on the stuffed dog that I've been knitting since we were in the hotel room. Because, you know, nothing takes your mind off of snot like working on a project you have grown to despise but are finishing because you've invested too much time in it to throw it out.

Saturday: My throat would be better, if I weren't hacking stuff up every five minutes. I talk to my mother on the phone, and she actually sounds worried. I tell her not to fret, at least now I can sing my daughter "Amazing Grace" in an additional lower octave, thanks to Sexy Cold Voice. Jason takes pity on me and goes out with Liza until lunchtime (thank you, saintly husband!), giving me time to finish the quilting on the first of two quilts for our guest bedroom. I'll have photos once I get the binding on. And I manage to make the valance for our kitchen window:

Afternoon is a blur of naps and looking through decorating books for ideas for our bedroom curtains. Jason went over to a friend's house Saturday night, and I knitted and crocheted until my fingers bled. Literally ... although I don't have a picture, unfortunately. I do, however, have pictures of The Dog From Hell, which seemed like such a good way to get rid of a lot of ugly brown yarn, and turned into the project that wouldn't die.

"What's so bad about that?" I hear you thinking. Well, that dog was made in about 30 different pieces, and despite the fact that I cut 60 rows of knitting out of the pattern when it was obvious things were getting out of hand, my boy is four feet long and weighs about five pounds. Here's Liza's first exposure to The Dog of Doom, just so you can get an idea of the scale:

Her actual comment while I was taking the picture? "Mama, help! Take it off! Take it off!" I think she was just ticked off because I put it in the way of her continuing to use the couch as a trampoline, but still.

Ahem. Anyway, Saturday night I also finished up two crochet projects from the bottom of my knitting bag, both made of yarn I had leftover from the zebra:

I've decided to call the penguin "Blotto," and the bear is "Claw." I can't tell you how perfect the beak is on the penguin - it turned out exactly the way I wanted it to.

Sunday I was on the mend, only expectorating twice an hour, although when I talked to my dad on the phone he thought I sounded awful. I had enough energy to work on a summer dress for Liza, which I completed in one naptime. A long naptime, and I still need to take in the waist some to make it fit right, but still. Damn, I'm good.

I'm not kidding when I say I have to take the waist in. Here it is, safety-pinned together in the back so I could judge how much I needed to take it in.

I have to cut off FIVE INCHES of the elastic that holds the waistband up in back, despite the fact that Liza's waist is only one inch smaller than the measurements on the package for this size. Stupid pattern designers.

And then Sunday night I started a new sweater for Liza, which should be big enough for her this winter. Given that the pattern is ridiculously complex and I've already messed it up twice in sixteen rows of the pattern, I'm going to need all the time between now and first frost just to get the thing done. I had to "watch" the episode of Heroes we had on DVR with my head buried in the pattern book, muttering under my breath "ONE perl perl TWO perl perl THREE perl ... damn, it was only supposed to be two. Okay, back on the left needle, guys. Hey, you! Don't you dare drop down one more row! I've got a crochet hook, and I'm not afraid to drag your sorry ass back up where you belong!" I firmly believe that the more I curse at a craft project, the faster it goes. If that's true, I predict I'll have this sonofabitch done next week.

And today I'm mostly healed, except for the hourly removal of great quantities of stuff from my nose. And I've managed to pull all the ugly trim off the basement wall before I even got out of my pajamas, and I got the first coat of paint on the walls during Liza's naptime. So if you'll excuse me, I have a second coat to apply. "Lupine," here I come!

Pearl

Sorry, MLF, but the veggies don't look as good from ground-level right now. I'm going to stick with the giantess vantage point, at least until I spot something interesting down lower.

Pretend this went up yesterday

Photo credit: Jolly Green Gretchen

buddies

signs of life