Feeding the (rabid?) vermin

Deprived of a pet since both the gerbils died within the last few months, DH and DD have taken to feeding the local vermin. Not content with leaving food out for them, they have been determined to make friends with them.  Much patience last weekend led to Mamma Chipmunk actually coming up on the front porch and eating out of their hands. (DH swears that chipmunks and squirrels don't carry rabies, though the CDC says that any mammal is susceptible.)

This afternoon when DH came home from work, Mamma Chipmunk was waiting for him - she raced over and stood on his foot, looking up as if to say: "Where's my dinner?" A lot like me really, except I don't stand on DH's foot ;-)

Fun with a sharp knife

Every Halloween we decorate our front step with carved pumpkins. When I say 'we', I really mean DH. I buy the pumpkins, but he's always the one that carves them. He does such a good job it has never occurred to me to help other than by helping to remove the guts from the pumpkins. I rarely even make suggestions about what the pumpkin face should look like, for fear of asking for something too difficult to execute.

Something got into me tonight though - guilt perhaps, that DH always does all the work carving the pumpkins? Or simply some enthusiasm for attacking something with a sharp knife? (It's been a long, busy, and stressful week!) DH was asking the children what kind of designs they would like on their pumpkins this year, and I decided to look for some inspiration online.  I found lots of pictures of spectacular pumpkins, but decided that for my first attempt at pumpkin carving perhaps I'd better stick to something simple.

After looking at some simpler designs though, I came to the conclusion that they were really rather boring. We have a neighbor across the street who puts out a dozen or so very nicely carved pumpkins every year, and I don't want to lower the standards in the neighborhood! Thinking I'd probably bitten off more than I could chew, I finally got started. DD gave me a felt pen, and I drew a rough outline of what I wanted. I'm really not a very artistic person, and I knew that the contours of the pumpkin were going to distort my image somewhat, so I really thought as I got started that the pumpkin was more likely to end up in the compost pile than back out on the front step.

After I got done, and went on to carve the design DD had drawn on her pumpkin, DH decided that the carving will be my job from now on. I'm thinking maybe we should have more pumpkins next year . . .

My owl

DD's spider

DH's ghost

DS's pumpkin

They say time flies . . .

. . . when you're having fun. So I must be having lots of fun then! It is really hard to believe that I've been in the United States for almost 23 years now. TWENTY THREE YEARS? When did that happen?!!

I came here planning on spending 2 years here and then returning to the UK. Then I discovered that unless I paid out of my own pocket to take summer classes somewhere, there was no way I could graduate in less than 5 semesters. (This despite the fact that one semester I overloaded on credits and took far more classes than was recommended. Hah! I passed them all!) So I took some extra classes just because I wanted to (beginning Spanish, skiing, aerobics), and took 6 semesters (3 years) to finish my degree. That 6th semester I met someone who helped me find a job, with work permission, for the following fall. I deliberately turned all the paperwork for graduation in late so that I couldn't graduate in the spring, which meant that officially I was still a student and was able to work on campus over the summer. (Sneaky huh?! I had a good foreign student advisor, though of course his advice about delaying graduation was strictly off the record!) The short-term job I'd found finished in March, and I returned to the UK. I spent several months fruitlessly job-hunting, but then got two job offers back in the US and came back here.

It wasn't until I'd been here for ten years, and already had my green card, that I met DH. Since then, time has just flown by! Last weekend was our twelfth wedding anniversary. I cannot imagine my life now without him or my children. But I'm having a hard time believing I've been married twelve years already! When did that happen?!! Not only have I now lived in the US for longer than I've lived anywhere else, but I've spent more of my time in the US married to DH than not. And yet I'm still only almost American . . .

Blue skies and snowy days

I remember a January day my very first winter in New England - walking across the quiet, almost empty, university campus and really enjoying the feeling of being on holiday. There was snow on the ground and the sky was cloudless. I remember being quite delighted by the sun sparkling off the snow because I don't remember ever seeing snow in England sparkle. When we made Christmas decorations in primary school and used white glitter to decorate them it never occurred to me that snow really could sparkle like that - I thought it was a pretend thing!

Even when it's really cold (and even when I have to go to work), those sunny days in winter lift my spirits, especially when there's snow on the ground. Yesterday was one of those gorgeously sunny days and it was a nice day to be out and about:


Today it is not like that. We woke to grey skies and the forecast of 4 to 8 inches of snow. Instead of sitting in a puddle of sunshine on the dining room floor this afternoon reading a book, as I did yesterday, I've been sitting on the living room floor playing games with the husband and kids.

Quirkle is our game of choice this winter - one of those simple to learn games that requires some thought and strategy to play well. The snow is pretty and it's nice to have family time and an excuse for not having to go anywhere or do anything outside the house.



Having said that, once we get to the end of February I'm usually ready for winter to be over, or at least for there to be no more snow. But for all my griping about the weather, I would definitely miss New England winters if I ever moved back to the UK!

From the fringe of the bell curve

Maddy asks:

"Consider sharing a recipe that your family, a family member or you, enjoy that doesn’t seem to be appreciated by many other bodies on the planet."

I'm not sure that this really counts as a recipe, but something my mum served when we were growing up and I loved, was grated cheese and ketchup sandwiches. I remember her serving them at a birthday party of mine and some of my friends thought they were weird. I seem to remember most people eating them though. Well, some people anyway ... though, come to think of it, maybe that was me and my sister! I tried feeding them to my own kids last weekend as we had somehow ended up with a lot of cheese in the house. (We rarely buy it as too many of us in this household have high cholesterol.) I was very disappointed to find that when offered this rare treat, the children decided they hated it. I thought that as Americans they would eat anything that was accompanied by ketchup.

There's no recipe - just grate as much cheese as you need and then add ketchup until the cheese sticks together in one big glob. A shortcut would be to simply cut slices of cheese (REAL cheese with a nice sharp flavour - none of those horrid plastic squares that masquerade as cheese!) and put them in between two slices of bread and add ketchup. The gloppiness of the grated cheese with ketchup is definitely preferable as far as I'm concerned though - it's a texture thing! Another variation - using HP Sauce (steak sauce) instead of ketchup - was always reserved for grownups as my mother thought we'd find the HP Sauce too spicy.

Happy Birthday DH!

bAs I was writing the previous post, DH came into the room and told me he was going to bed and wanted some help taking his clothes off . . . He added that he'd also like me to make him a sandwich with some chips and get him a large bottle of beer from the basement and bring those upstairs.

Today is his 40th birthday. Unfortunately the above was not a suggestion to celebrate, nor was it an attempt to show off that he's not so old . . . DH came home early from work today because he'd done his back in. Again. He headed straight for the painkillers and asked me to get the TENS machine for him. I bought it at Boots in the UK years ago in the hope that it might help with labour pains, but never needed it and DH has used it more than I have. The first time DH did his back in (by sneezing!) we would have had to call an ambulance to get him to the doctor's if we hadn't had the TENS machine. Good thing we had it - you can't get one here in the US without a prescription.

The card I bought DH had the following text:

TURNING 40?
Listen to your mind say: You're young! You're vibrant! You can do anything a 20 year-old can do!

Then listen to your body say: Ha! Ha! Ha!

And then on the back of the card was printed:

Hey, why aren't you laughing?

A couple of weeks ago we had a get together with lots of DH's friends, some of whom he's known since he was five years old. I decided we should get a birthday cake and celebrate a little early. The children decided that if it was a birthday cake it definitely needed candles. Hmm . . . well, we got the candles, and despite the smoke did NOT set the smoke alarm off!



(Image courtesy of Jenn.)

The little bloggers!

Back in February, DD decided that she wanted a blog of her own. It seemed as though it would be a good way to get her to improve her writing, so I set one up for her. She is very enthusiastic about it, though she does not always follow through and write blog posts about all the things she decides are 'bloggable'.

My brother in the UK has set up a blog for my niece too, and it is interesting to see what she blogs about. There are some nice intercultural exchanges going on as we share stories from our lives. We hear from my brother and sister more often now that we have yet another way to communicate.

Last Saturday DS and I saw a bear in the backyard. Later, as we were going somewhere in the car he was still babbling with excitement about the bear. I was only half listening at first, but then suddenly I heard him say, "I'll have to write about the bear on my blog."

"Blog? You don't have a blog!"

"But I need one so I can write about the bear!"

So I set the blog up, and in the first two days he dictated three posts. He had a little difficulty understanding how it worked at first. We posted one story about the bear, and then he wanted to add to it later. I explained we could do that, but seeing as Aunty England had already read his first post, we should probably just write a second one. He wasn't too sure about that. He also didn't understand at first that he could actually write about things other than the bear. Nor did he grasp the concept of the interface being the same for his blog and for mine when creating posts, so he threw a hissy fit when he saw me writing a post for my blog as he thought I was changing his blog.

So both kids now have blogs and we're a four blog household. Their blogs are open by invitation only, but I am still teaching them to be very careful about what they post on them. No real names, and we think carefully about what photos we use.

And to think it wasn't that many years ago that my brother and I could not even send each other email because the systems we were on didn't 'talk' to each other! Now I have a variety of email addresses for different purposes. When I say we're going to call grandma, the kids automatically head for the computer rather than the phone, assuming I mean we're going to use Skype. They want the instant gratification of a reply to an email the same or the next day, not a letter a couple of weeks later. They ask if we can scan their artwork to send it to grandma, and they expect responses to their blog postings within the hour! Although their computer use is limited (no Club Penguin or Webkins) compared to some of their peers who already have unlimited internet access from computers in their bedrooms (disasters waiting to happen), they are still very firmly a part of the digital generation.

Mother's Day

My American Mother's Day got off to a pleasant start - I was told I had to stay in bed and not go downstairs until I was called. You won't find me arguing with the idea of some extra time in bed in the morning! DS stayed with me and we sat and read Frog and Toad together. Wow, his reading is getting good! He can't read little words like 'is' and 'on' (complains they don't have enough letters!), but has no problem with 'tricky' words like 'friend'!

Breakfast, when I was called downstairs to eat, was served in a much cleaner kitchen than I had left last night. We had scrambled eggs and bacon, toast, canteloupe, strawberries, and watermelon. DH and I had coffee and mimosas to drink. The children had orange juice.

I got my usual Mother's Day present - lots of nice plants. I had picked out most of them myself yesterday with the children, but they had also gone out with DH and picked out a couple of surprises - a rose bush and two flowering quinces. Most of the annuals will go in pots on the deck and front porch. The kids were disappointed I didn't plant them all today, but the weather forecast for the next couple of days is for temperatures low enough to damage the plants so I'll keep them in the garage for now. Last year the begonias got badly frost-bitten, and although they recovered they looked quite ugly for a while.



This afternoon I had a new experience. Despite having grown up in the UK and having been a house-owner here in the US for the last eleven years, I had never ever mown a lawn until today! I decided today was the day I should learn. (DH will get much ribbing when he tells people that for Mother's Day he let me mow the lawn!) As we have about three-quarters of an acre of lawn, we have a ride-on mower. It's not quite as easy as DH makes it look. It's not always easy to tell where you've already mown, or to see the wide swathes you've missed. After I thought I was done, DH walked around pointing out all the bits I had to redo. It took me longer than the hour it usually takes him, but I'm sure I'll get faster at it. Yes, I will do it again. With an mp3 player and some decent music or downloads from NPR, I don't think I'll find it much of a chore.

DH has just brought me a glass of champagne, so it is time to stop writing for tonight. I shall go and snuggle with the children as we read bedtime stories, then snuggle with DH as I finish my champagne. I am really an incredibly lucky person. I have beautiful, talented, adorable children and an amazingly loving, talented, and thoughtful husband. It's good to have a special day to celebrate, but really every day with my husband and kids is special.