Disaster Averted

| Hope

Whew! That was close! For a week or so I’ve been irritated by the sight of what I thought was a young wild carrot, or Queen Anne’s Lace, growing up against a large rock next to our pond. Today, planting potatoes in the large garden beside the pond, I decided I’d seen it one too many times. I marched over, weed-digging tool in hand, prepared to uproot the nefarious imposter. True to my distractible nature, however, my attention was caught by a pinkish, decidedly non-carrot-like outgrowth near the base. I took a closer look…and dropped my tool in horror at my near-fatal mistake. I had nearly destroyed a bleeding-heart plant whose existence I’d completely forgotten. IMG_2812-0.JPG

Birthday Electrician

| Hope

A month ago, I celebrated a birthday.

Well, actually, I spent my birthday cuddling my 15-month-old in bed while we both tried to recuperate from a miserable flu, while my husband wisely took our son out for a father-son outing so I could have a quiet house. By the time he got home, he was feeling the first symptoms of flu himself, but he still managed to finish assembling a creamy, light, espresso-and-rum-soaked  birthday tiramisu, which he’d started early that morning. He spent the following morning in bed while I was starting to feel a little more like myself, and then, with a superhuman effort, he made the delicious dinner he’d planned…and then relapsed from having worked too hard, too soon, and spent the next day resting too. We didn’t have a birthday date. We had a birthday week-of-recovery.

Birthday tiramisu.
Birthday tiramisu.

So the day itself wasn’t exactly sublime. But the effort (and the high levels of deliciousness) made me feel pretty special all the same. And despite the all-around misery, Aaron came through with a perfect gift. My birthday present this year was a bit less tangible than usual, but it was the best ever. Aaron hired an electrician to come to our house and install ceiling lights in our tiny attic room, the first step in turning the space into a craft room for me. In less than five hours, he’d fixed faulty wiring that the previous owners had rigged, placed the track lighting I’d chosen in just the right place, and put a bright flat light in a space that was once a window. It’s showing signs of the beautiful room it will become. But more than just an attractive room, it’s a promise. A promise that someday I’ll have a tiny space that is mine, where someday (when kids can be left alone for more than 30 seconds without disaster descending) I will be able to work quietly, alone, and not clean up my mess. It will be a space for ongoing projects, for never-finished projects, for someday once again grading papers. A space for writing and planning. My own spot. An unbelievable luxury.

This light will be covered with stained glass eventually.
A lighting track along the highest part of the attic.
I chose bronze lights to go with a very dark green paint and dark wood floors.

In the works, possibly to be completed by midsummer: Painted walls in two shades of green (neither of which is the one currently on the walls); wainscoting, which Aaron will build, on the lower half of the wall; a stained-glass window to place over the former window opening; and dark wood flooring. Eventually, storage cabinets and shelves, at waist height so they double as work surfaces.

Sometimes I shake my head in amazement at my good fortune, my blessing, to be married to a man who knows me well enough to know how important it is for me to have both time and space for quietness. Considering that our lives right now don’t allow for much of that, it’s not an easy thing to see — the importance of a quiet place. But he saw it, and acted on it.

I guess this post serves as a very public Thank You to my sweet and perceptive husband. I love you.

Creamy Coconut Hand Scrub

| Hope

It’s that time of year when gardening hands become permanently begrimed, even through gloves, unless serious action is taken. Around this time of year, I usually mix up my first batch of simple olive oil-and-salt scrub that I keep on the kitchen sink for post-gardening clean-up. This past year, though, I’ve been less satisfied with that basic remedy, and this spring I began experimenting with a better mixture that would be creamier, more moisturizing, and easier to rinse off. I’m happy to say that I finally hit on just the right combination!

This dirt-busting scrub incorporates coconut oil and liquid hand soap, and it really is just about perfect. I use it on my hands as well as Niko’s and Sofie’s. It’s gentle enough to use on little ones, but tough enough to scour off even our iron-rich, clay-based soil. It’s also excellent for cleaning off engine grease and tree sap, and scrubbing off leftover sticky labels from jars! On my own hands, I like to use a bit extra for massaging my cuticles before rinsing it off, because the coconut and olive oils are great for giving dry cuticles a moisture boost.

The recipe I’ve given here makes a small batch. I recommend starting small until you see how fast you use the scrub, especially if you’re making it during warm summer months. It doesn’t happen often, but I have had a similar mixture turn rancid after a couple of months in a hot kitchen without air conditioning. I recently made a batch about three times this one, because our family uses it pretty fast.

I like blending salt and sugar because the crystals are different shapes and sizes, so they pack an extra punch as they get into all the crevices of hard-working hands and feet. You could experiment with other crystal sizes, like fine canning salt and coarser sea salt.  Be prepared to adjust the amounts of oil needed. It will fill in the spaces between larger and smaller crystals differently: the finer the crystals are, the more oil you’ll need.

Crystals of different sizes: fine canning salt, coarse sea salt, and table salt.
Crystals of different sizes: fine canning salt, coarse sea salt, and table salt.

To make this easy hand scrub, start by blending one tablespoon of coconut oil with 1/2 cup of salt and 1/4 cup of sugar. Blend till there are no lumps of coconut oil left, and then add 1 tablespoon of liquid hand soap and 3 tablespoons of olive oil. Blend thoroughly. It should look smooth and creamy, with maybe a little olive oil pooling around the edges if you stop stirring. The pooling is just fine — if you use less oil, it will settle below the surface, making the scrub harder to scoop.

A creamy scrub.
A creamy scrub.

Before storing the scrub in a bowl or jar with a firmly-fitting lid, you could add a few drops of essential oils for scent or for extra cleaning or healing power. My go-to oil mix is a few drops of lemon, which is a good cleanser and has a fresh, cheerful scent, and a couple of drops (not too much!) of lavender, which will soothe dry or irritated skin. With my most recent batch, I used DoTerra’s OnGuard blend, an orange-cinnamon blend that’s supposed to boost your immune system’s efficiency. The orange oil, like lemon oil, is an excellent cleaner, and the warm cinnamon smell makes it perfect for a kitchen scrub. In addition to the essential oil, if you have jojoba oil on hand, a drizzle of that will be even more moisturizing and healing for chapped skin.

An assortment of ingredients for a creamy hand scrub: olive oil, hand soap, coconut oil, salts, essential oils, and jojoba oil.
An assortment of ingredients for a creamy hand scrub: olive oil, hand soap, coconut oil, salts, essential oils, and jojoba oil.

This creamy scrub is getting some heavy use in our house! I hope you enjoy it as much as we do.

Strawberries

| Hope

I’m trying to restrain my hopefulness levels, but last week’s strawberry planting endeavors have me very excited.

When we moved to our new home at the end of March last year, one of the beds in the wheel-shaped garden next to the house was planted with strawberries. They were so overcrowded that the babies at the ends of the runners were sitting on top of other plants, and I worried the strawberry bed might not do well. So, with my mother-in-law’s help, I dug up about two-thirds of them and transplanted as much as we could fit into the next bed over (and gave away the rest to friends, thus sparing my conscience some pain). They seemed to adapt to their new space, but they didn’t produce as well as I’d hoped they would.

This year, that original bed was nearly as crowded as it had been last year. I decided to entirely renovate it. This time I paused to do a little research. I discovered that younger plants — the ones at the end of the runners that mature plants send out — are the ones that should be transplanted. They’re supposed to produce better than the older ones, which might be nearing the end of their productivity.

So I dug up the entire bed, lifting out all the plants and keeping them covered with burlap in a big feed container so they wouldn’t dry out. When I finished, Aaron tilled the bed for me, and then I used my handy bulb transplanter to make perfectly cylindrical holes. Niko helped me fill them with compost (a step I missed last year), and in went the babies. I’m hoping that the combination of fresh tilling, composting, and selecting the youngest plants will yield better results. I was a bit worried that they might have dried out too much while waiting for about a week for our family to recover from the flu between digging and transplanting, but now, a week after planting, they’re looking green and putting out new leaves.

A bulb transplanter (much cleaner than mine)
Strawberry plants waiting to be transplanted. This was about halfway through digging up the bed.
Perfect holes, half-full of compost and ready for strawberry babies.
Freshly planted baby strawberry.

But that wasn’t the end of the strawberry saga. Last year we discovered, via farmer’s markets and roadside stands, the most delicious strawberry: the Hood River strawberry. In the fall, in hopes of finding some to plant this spring, Aaron prepped two more wheel bed sections with mounds of compost covered in landscape fabric. And find some we did! We ordered them from a nearby company called One Green World and picked them up from their Plantmobile, and last weekend I planted those babies out, too.

Planting the new ones in the mounds Aaron had made was a little trickier than planting them without landscape fabric. I cut evenly spaced slits in the fabric, scrabbled around through the slits with a tiny spade to make a hole, and then attempted to place the babies into the holes. Their roots spread out, wormed upward, and made themselves into octopus-like tentacles that refused to stay put. Finally, I tried winding the delicate baby roots in a spiral around my fingers before fitting them into their small new homes. That effectively tamed them, and I was able to push the soil back over the roots without leaving any exposed. They’re looking green and perky now, putting out new leaves as they peep up above the fabric, so I think I did just fine.

Wrapping the roots around my finger to tame them.
I love the fresh green of baby leaves.
One row of little plants!

The instruction sheet that came with our strawberries suggested waiting a full season before harvesting fruit, pinching off the blossoms all through the first summer. This helps the strawberries establish stronger roots. I thought that sounded like a terrible idea. Wait an entire year to enjoy fresh, juicy berries? I turned once again to my faithful friend, Google. Only one article I read mentioned waiting a year to harvest, and it was written by a nursery owner who said that she herself never does this even though it really is best. Who can resist the temptation of a crop of strawberries? Not her, and certainly not me. I haven’t that kind of fortitude. No, I have every intention of enjoying those strawberries as soon as possible.

Cody, NO GARDEN!

| Hope

Our puppy, Cody, is sweet and tries so hard to be obedient. He’s pretty good about not going into the gardens to play, mostly. But he’s developed a bad habit that is having unpleasant consequences. He likes to take shortcuts across the corners of the flower beds, or take flying leaps across the raised beds next to the house. Sometimes he plants his back legs mid-garden for extra leverage, rather than going up and down the steps that are conveniently placed at intervals through the beds. Occasionally he likes to explore the garden beds with less exposed soil and more plants, especially the ones with bark mulch — maybe he thinks of them as belonging to a different, non-garden category. And his big, strong puppy paws are churning up the soil, tearing up plants, and leaving muddy paths across the corners. Not a good thing.

Baby Cody when he first came home.
So sweet. So innocent.
Now he leaps over these raised beds like he’s trying to win a hurdle competition.
One of the fragile blooms I’m trying to protect…
Cody at the end of December, about six or seven months old

So I researched “puppy deterrent” and discovered that dogs really dislike citrus scents. Who knew? Not me. I considered what I could do to make the gardens citrus-scented. I was also making slug deterrents at the same time, including a cornmeal trap, and I thought: Aha! I can make scented cornmeal and scatter it around. It shouldn’t hurt the garden, and it just might keep Cody out.

I poured about three cups of cornmeal (all I had left after making slug traps) into a plastic leftovers container, and added all the citrus-scented things I could find in my cupboard. I sprinkled about three tablespoons each of TrueLemon and TrueLime powder, several drops of orange flavoring, a couple of drops of OnGuard (an essential oil blend from DoTerra with orange oil as its first ingredient), and some squirts of lime juice. I have a glass container of orange zest that I collected to use for extracting essential oil (no, I haven’t gotten it to work yet, but they make GREAT garnishes for cosmos), so I tossed some of those in. Then I sprinkled handfuls around the perimeter of all the garden areas.

Some of my magic puppy deterrent ingredients.
The finished mixture.
Sprinkled in the nearly-empty garden.

It worked. Cody would trot down the gravel path, pause at the edge of the garden, sniff, and continue on his way without venturing into the garden. He still took occasional flying leaps over the raised beds, but didn’t take any more leisurely strolls through the middle of any gardens. As a helpful bonus, the slugs loved the mixture, so in the evenings I could walk along with a jar of salt water and just pick them off. Yes, it was disgusting. But it was worth braving the foulness in order to rid the world of another dozen or so slugs.

And then it rained. And Cody stopped caring about the smell, and resumed taking shortcuts through my tender crocus shoots.

I’m out of cornmeal and ideas. And after nearly a month of everyone in this household being sick, one after another as well as all at once, I’m also out of energy. So, dog people: Help! What are your tried-and-true pet deterrents that are also safe for small children? Yes, I do realize that the most logical answer is to buy a bunch more cornmeal, make a big batch of my amazing homemade Bad Puppy mix, and sprinkle it after each rain. But I’d love to hear laziness-friendly ideas, also.

Classroom Nightmare

| Hope

So unfair. Nearly three-quarters of the way through my second year away from the classroom, what comes knocking in my brain? That’s right. A school nightmare. One of those horrible, chaos-filled, downward-spiral dreams, so hauntingly realistic that you have to test yourself upon waking, searching the dream for clues, to determine whether it may have actually happened. As a teacher, I had these every year, starting a few weeks before the first day of school, and recurring periodically throughout the year before major events. But having one mid-year when I’m not even teaching? The universe has it in for me.

I was writing the morning message on the chalkboard [clue #1: I’ve never taught in a classroom with a chalkboard — my classrooms have always had whiteboards] when a dour-faced woman with faded hair walked in and flicked on my lights — MY lights! — which I keep dimmed in the morning to preserve my serenity. “I’ve come to take over for an hour,” she said. “You’re wanted in a meeting.”

I gawked at her. Meeting? “Where is it?” I asked. She shrugged. “I don’t know. I was just told to come to your classroom so you could go.”

“I see. Well, I’m sorry, I don’t have any notes for you, but of course the first ten minutes will just be –”

She interrupted with an impatient wave of her hand. “I know, I know, you start with the Dawnzer song.” She flipped the math workbook open to the last lesson on fractions. “Page 234? Is it on the smartboard?”

I was getting annoyed. “No,” I said. “We don’t sing the Dawnzer song. [That’s clue #2. I’ve been reading Ramona the Pest to Niko, and the Dawnzer song turns out to be “The Star-Spangled Banner.”] We just say the pledge. Then announcements. Then they can do this page independently. It’s review. And no, I don’t use that awful board.” [Clue #3: I LOVED having a smartboard. Loved it.] I flipped backward to the first lesson on fractions.

She lifted an incredulous eyebrow. “Are you sure? Shouldn’t you be doing Lesson 12?”

“I’m sure. Now, when they’re finished –”

The woman lifted her left wrist and looked pointedly at her watch.

I swallowed. “All right, I’d better go. Thanks for coming in.” As I turned to go, I realized that my students had all arrived without my seeing them. They all sat motionless, gazing solemnly at me. I hadn’t even had a chance to high-five or fist-bump each one at the door or tell them each good morning, yet there they were, waiting for me to leave. And instead of the cozy groups of five desks that they were supposed to have, all the desks were arranged in a grid, perfectly spaced. As I surveyed them, their faces all morphed into the sweet, round face of the Kid President. [Clue 4. I love Kid President, but 25 of him? A trifle creepy.] In unison, each one raised a hand and waggled his fingers. Buh-bye, now. As I turned away, I heard the substitute say, “Take out your math books and turn to page 274, lesson 12,” as she stood smugly in front of the lesson displayed on the smartboard. MY smartboard.

It occurs to me some sadly deprived people might not know who Kid President is. Below is a picture of him looking inspirational, along with an inspirational quote. He’s on Facebook. And YouTube. He’s really pretty amazing.

Anyway, to continue: I hurried down the hallway, clutching a pen and cradling a hungrily nursing Sofia in my arms. Wait — how did she get there? She hadn’t been there a minute ago. Bad enough that I hadn’t checked my emails one single time this year, now I arrive at a meeting, probably late (no one had bothered to say when it was supposed to start), with a nursing baby? Worse and worse. This was probably a meeting to fire me.

I turned a corner, descended the steep stairs, and beheld an alcove where the utility closet had been. [I’m sure you can guess that that is yet another clue. I’m going to stop counting now.] At a table sat a man that my dream self recognized as our special ed teacher, someone I’d never seen before in real life, but I knew immediately that I disliked him. Next to him was a couple that I recognized as the parents of the only fifth-grader in my second-grade class [huh???], and next to them was my principal, Heidi. They surveyed me coolly as I settled into an uncomfortably large chair, still nursing Sofia. I slid backward, my feet leaving the ground, feeling like I was disappearing into the chair.

The special ed teacher passed around a heavy stack of the IEP (individualized education plan) drafts. “Here we go,” he said. “It’s all digital, so I was going to make a slideshow of crucial changes, but then I realized that would make the meeting go too fast, so instead I printed it out so we can read the entire thing word for word.” And so the meeting began, with Sofia weighing me down so that I slid further and further into the chair until I couldn’t stretch forward enough to reach the paperwork being handed to me. No one seemed to notice or care that I was becoming invisible, and they didn’t hear my objections to the terms the special ed teacher used to describe the child: “weird,” “stupid,” “retarded,” “dumb,” “problem kid.” No one seemed fazed by his words, not even the parents. I felt rage bubbling up at the way this student — MY student — was being discussed, but the chair had nearly swallowed me, and I couldn’t even reach the edge to pull myself out.

Suddenly, there was a minor commotion at a nearby conference table surrounded by sleek black leather chairs. The table was in a separate room with tall windows looking out onto a city view. The meeting there was breaking up, and chatter and laughter poured out of the room as everyone left. “Quick!” our principal said. “The good table is free! Let’s move!” The members of our team scuttled across the hall and claimed office chairs, and I was left to wallow in the giant chair. With an enormous final effort involving a lot of leg-waving and flopping around, I levered myself up and set Sofia on the ground, where she morphed unexpectedly into a curly-pigtailed kindergartener. She stared at me for a long moment before turning and going down the hallway to her classroom. “Oh,” I said. “That was easy.”

I seated myself in a comfortable chair, flipped open the IEP packet, and opened my mouth to dazzle everyone with my insights about my student. And then the bell rang for the end of the day, and everyone jumped up and deserted the meeting. And then Sofia — the real Sofia — elbowed me in the throat, and it was time to get up.

I guess a teacher is a teacher is a teacher. You can spend two years at home with your own children, and you still care about your students from however many years ago. Still worry that somewhere, some student, maybe one of your own, is being treated unfairly. Still sometimes feel that the education process has more to do with being told what to do by invisible commanders than with what your students themselves need. And then there’s always the worry that your personal life is destroying your career, or vice versa.

Or, you, know, maybe I just had a miserable cold and was sleeping on too many pillows, with an equally miserable Sofia lying on my chest nursing at will all night, after spending far too long scanning Kid President’s Facebook page. Who knows?

Suzy, My Love

| Hope

Lately, the kids and  I have been going for an occasional walk down the road to the field in which Niko’s favorite cow, Suzy, lives. Of course, Suzy isn’t her name. That is to say, it easily could be, but as far as I know, the cow was nameless before we encountered her.

It was Christmas, and Aaron’s parents were here for a visit. We’d walked down that road for the first time that day. It’s a winding country road with no shoulder, and until that day I’d never walked it in the eight months we’d lived here. Despite the lack of paved shoulder space it turned out to be a pleasant walk. We walked about half a mile, until we ended up next to a pasture with three young heifers.

Niko started life as a city boy, and he’s been a bit unsure about cows, especially since last summer when a  startled young steer trampled a barbed wire fence and got stranded in our yard. Frightened by its unfamiliar environment, made anxious by its separation from its buddy on the other side of the fence, and in pain from a barbed-wire gash, the steer abandoned its formerly gentle nature and gave way to panic. It marauded about, lowering and shaking its head, pawing the ground,  trampling the grape vine, devouring the lettuce, and bellowing. Neighbors and the animal’s owners helped return it to its field, but after that Niko was a bit nervous about our bovine neighbors.

Separated friends.
Munching my overgrown lettuce.

But in this new field there was a small, pretty, brown-and-white cow with gentle eyes. Niko’s eyes widened as he looked at her. He stared long and hard. Then, with no precedent at all that I know of, he lifted his hands to his mouth and began to moo. To our astonishment, that little cow lifted her head, uttered a long moo in return, and walked directly to him.

“Moooooo!”
“Mooooo! I come to you!”
“You called?”

Of course, then he didn’t know what to do. Even a young heifer is pretty big next to a four-year-old, and despite his pleasure at her response, he was a bit intimidated. His grandma, Kay, tried to encourage him to stroke her nose through the fence, but the slime streaming from it was a bit of a deterrent. Still, love is not love which alters when it alteration finds, and despite Niko’s disgust, he clearly loved this cow. His eyes rested on her with adoration, and it took some convincing to get him to leave her when the time came to walk home. She was distraught as well, stretching her neck out and mooing as we walked away. “Goodbye, Suzy!” called Kay, and Niko echoed, “Bye, Suzy!”

Almost convinced to pet her nose. Not quite.
Almost convinced to pet her nose. Not quite.

Now, every time we drive by that field, Niko waves to Suzy, and each time we walk that way, she ambles over to greet us. Niko still avoids the slimy nose, but still gazes adoringly at her. And every time, we call, “Goodbye, Suzy!” as we leave.

It’s nice to have a friend, even of the bovine ilk.

Revenge Is Scary!

Image | | Hope

I’ve been following this blogger for a little while, and I absolutely love her sense of humor as well as her skill with a pair of scissors! She uses cut paper to create gently humorous comic strips, usually featuring her daughters. This one made me chuckle. Revenge can be scary…especially when you have sisters. Click here to see the whole story.

IMG_2355-3.PNG

An Introvert With ADHD

| Hope

I’ve long known that I’m an introvert: it’s not that I don’t like people, it’s just that I can’t manage too much time around others without needing to recharge. I do best when I know in advance that human interaction is on the horizon, so I can plan for it and mentally prepare myself. A scheduled playdate for the kids or a routine meeting at work is fine; an unexpected trip to the mall or the arrival of a substitute in my classroom with a summon to an unexpected meeting might throw me for a loop.

I don’t think I’m unique in this regard. An article I just read that reviewed a recent study on introverts said that anywhere from 30% to 50% of people are introverted, so my needs for Alone Time, advance warning before interactions, and a chance to quietly recharge after People Time are all pretty normal. What’s different about my own brand of introversion, though, is that it’s accompanied by ADHD. This means that, while most introverts are content and even happy to skirt the periphery of a crowd and observe others’ interactions, it’s easy for the swirling movement of the crowd and the noise and lights that all go along with social gatherings (or trips to the mall) to become overwhelming, causing me to become agitated, irritable, or withdrawn.

An article about introversion that I just read caught my attention because many of the characteristics as described in this particular case are dead-on for my own experience, right down to the need to avoid caffeine before important events and a dread of talking on the phone. The article’s author, Alena Hall, summed it up nicely:

Little cites the theory of extraversion by Hans Eysenck and research by William Revelle of Northwestern University, explaining that introverts and extraverts naturally differ when it comes to their alertness and responsiveness to a given environment. A substance or scene that overstimulates the central nervous system of an introvert (which doesn’t take much) might cause him or her to feel overwhelmed and exhausted, rather than excited and engaged.

Interesting, huh? (If you didn’t already click the link above, click here to read the article.)