Sunday Add-A-Caption GAME 2

Go on, now. Add your caption for big praise from Wazoo.
Once again, "Guidelines" are in the post below.

Sunday Add A Caption GAME: Guidelines

A little explanation may be needed for you all to participate in today's Sunday Add-A-Caption Game.

Martin took the photos of my parent's old Fisher Price doll house this past Christmas for the precise purpose of opening this wonderful game for all of you. Now, I know most of you who visit (about 35 visits a day to Wazoo Farm) never comment--and I love your visits regardless, you strong-but-silent types--but hey, this is your big chance to get a little vocal.

Here are the guidelines:
1. Take a good look at the picture
2. Offer your best caption for each in the comments section below. If you're shy about comments, you who have my e-mail address can shoot me off an e-mail. Remember, commenting anonymously is always an option! Martin and I, the king and queen of Wazoo, will award the winner with public recognition on this site (remember again, you can sign your name any way you choose.)

Thanks a million, lovies!

Maple Syrup

Coomb's Family Farms maple syrup,
Elspeth embarking on new project with five toilet paper rolls,
Merry closed in downstairs bathroom assembling another beauty parlor,
Martin standing by the waffle iron, listening to NPR's Scott Simon giggling over Seattle football team,
Bea pedaling her pink tricycle into the kitchen cabinets,
table littered with sticky plates, half-drunk milk, an sludgy Bodum. . .
everyone in pyjamas.
Ah, Saturday morning. We sing of your glorious slothy slippered goodness.

Happy weekend.

Stop for a minute

My Dear,
If you have a chance, you should watch President Obama’s speech from last night. It’s elegiac and restorative, addressing the Tuscan shootings. I found it—particularly toward the end—very moving (needed a tissue or two). The crowd interruptions are annoying, but they don’t detract much. About thirty minutes long, though you can skip the first minute or two.
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/44/2011/01/watch-president-obamas-full-sp.htmlLove you—
Martin

I took his advice--and completely saturated a tissue and a papertowel with grief I didn't even know I had. It was good to stop, stop the rushing about, and take the time to be a person who is a part of this country, a mother, child, spouse, and person who hopes to help make this world one that is whole and good.

Our Piano Tuner is a Prophet

Martin is cooking bacon and the smell is making me feel like disgracing myself. Truth is, I don't even really like eating bacon all that much--I have a piece once in a blue moon, especially if it's our friend, Mike's, thick-cut, peppered bacon from one of his happy pigs--but the smell! It makes me want to bite into everything, hoping for satisfaction.

The snow is piled a good foot outside in our window box. Today the kids were off school due to the snow, so we all lolled around in bed, happy and satisfied until Martin realized he must pay the piper. So we all rolled out, he rushed through breakfast, and went out to shovel the front walk. Two minutes and he's back in, yelling, "The piano tuner is here!"

Wha?
I was in my big red robe, had just poured milk into my cereal bowl and mixed cream into my coffee. Ah. I have no pride left, not even a little. Stripped the piano of its philodendron, music, lamps, and throw, welcomed the fellow at the door with a big grin that showed the world I love being all mussed up in a robe and opening the door to company.

And tune the piano he did, and showed the girls a DVD of his impressive show dog, and prayed for my uncle, and took my hand a gave me a word from God. The piano tuner, who three years ago on his first visit, seemed taciturn and silent, turns out to be this sometimes very talkative man who is also a prophet. He gave Martin a word from God last year at our annual tune-up but not me. So I was kind of happy he was giving me one this time, and curious--would he make some fabulous prophecy about fame and fortune?

Instead he said, "God says you're doing a really good job with the kids. Keep on doing that good work, and take a break when you need it."

Well! Not a bad word, all in all, kind of nice and encouraging, actually, since he'd been in our house all morning and listened to me interact with our three girls, plus two more, and one boy. I'd only raised my voice once when Elspeth went tromping through the house with snowy boots. Was that the break God was referring to through the piano tuner? That is, I should have taken one right then?

And the news for the evening is, we have run out of diapers. We are absolutely bereft of diapers until some good Samaritan stops by and drops off a little pack of Huggies. Bea's been peeing, in her clothes and in the potty, and thankfully, mostly in the latter.

The piano tuner forgot his galoshes, huge rubber affairs that sat in our hallway like two slouching men until he picked them up just before dinner. "You tried the piano yet?" he asked Martin.

Nope, not yet. My man is cooking us a pot of chili. Time for mama to have a little, God-ordained break. Yes, siree. It was prophesied, after all.

Snow

Oh, my. Perhaps an inch to two inches of snow in a few hours. The flakes are heavy and soft and I feel like licking our porch railing--the ice crystals would dissolve on my tongue instantly. I expect there will be at least a delay for school tomorrow morning. It's the witching hour, the minutes of transition toward dark when my whole spirit feels heavier and heavier, when I turn on a lamp and its light seems meager and insignificant.

After darkness falls completely, my head will clear and I'll be able to better map out our evening. It's Girls Night again, the first one in a month, and though the girls are perfectly happy and well behaved, part of me still waits for someone to blow in the door, someone with fresh perspective and who is old enough to legally split a beer. I think, bound and tied by my own personality which longs for company almost all the time, that to live alone would be terribly hard. I crave the solitude occasionally but then when I have too much of it (which is only once in a blue moon, mind you), I begin to feel listless and without direction.

Last night, Martin and Merry took a warm loaf of pumpkin bread through the snow to the neighbor's house. According to Martin afterward, the house was incredibly warm and thick with cigarette smoke from all the relatives assembled, who sat at a table and "kept to themselves" while the woman, recently widowed, talked to Martin and Merry for twenty minutes straight. She said she'd always been most afraid of being alone, and now God has made her alone. Her love, with her for twenty years, talked so much, she said--at the sink, while he washed dishes, everywhere--and it used to drive her crazy, but now the silence is what she hates most.

Apparently the children found him at the kitchen table, bloodied and still, and called 911 (their mother works nights and was still at work), and then they clung to him until the police and healthcare professionals arrived.

The little girl met us on the sledding hill, her lips bright with lipstick. "Did you hear?" she said in a level voice. "My dad died yesterday." Her eyes were flat; her voice repeated the news to every newcomer. "Did you hear?"

"I'm so sorry," I said, and put my arm around her shoulders. And I am sorry, deeply sorry that family should be left without a husband and daddy.

Snow still falls. Elspeth is climbing on my lap, begging for Lightning McQueen music. The oven has preheated. Merry just finished her puzzle. And the darkness is falling, but it doesn't seem darker. Instead the snow spreads across the sky, piling on dark branches of trees, falling silently and steadily, a quiet and magnificent beauty.

Five-minute message

My dear friend, whom I know as well as my own hand, is in love with a man I have never seen.

My two-year old in blue mittens bangs at the front door: "I wanna come in! Mommy! I wanna come in!"

I am baking holiday pumpkin bread for a little girl who found her daddy dead when she walked into the kitchen two mornings ago. She is Merry's age, and her daddy was about Martin's age.

My five-year old mooned her sister and now is out in the snow making ice pies.

I am bent over the kitchen counter, typing, listening to the hum of my computer, the roar of a truck outside, the cries of my two-year old. I smell cinnamon and nutmeg and cloves. My hands are cold, my body warm.

Life is an odd thing, all in all, full of wonders and happinesses and tradgedy, all in the same minute. It's a cliche but it strikes me as new.

A little cold, a little optimism

I'm sitting at the computer here, half undressed but still wearing my winter coat. Don't even try to figure that out. We're home from church and shopping (bought four bottles of wine, 41 boxes of Annie's mac n cheese, two gallons of milk--set for the week!)--and though I turned up the heat on our return, it takes a while for the house to feel anywhere close to 65 degrees.

It is an exquisite Sunday afternoon. snow, snow, everywhere, marked with footprints and shadows, the fence in reflection, slats ticking up the garden path. The happy squeal of a child flying down our sledding hill. Hopefully said child has missed the various dangers at the bottom of the hill: cold fire pit, frozen creek, picnic table.

Though we watched a fascinating BBC series on the Crusades this morning that left me both laughing at the stupid men who trekked all the way to Jerusalem without proper suitcases, and also full of the awful weight of their sheer barbarism in the name of God--though it is down in my stomach like a ball of lead--I am still filled with gentle optimism. Winter makes me so grateful for sunshine (see my column in the paper for this week), so happy for subtle colors--the wheat-browns of the tall grass in our garden, the snow on the shed roof that catches a bright white light, Merry's ridiculously pink coat travelling by my window. And of course the birds, six black wings flashing up from the ground into a sky so pale it might not be blue, but is.

this and that and the puget sound

Feathery snowflakes fall outside, illuminated by the street light. Tonight we ate our first King Cake, a traditional New Orleans treat--tender brioche dough braided and topped with icing in three colors. I chomped into the hidden baby and quickly passed the piece to Beatrix, who was delighted to find piece of plastic in her mouth. I am now to bake the next King Cake.

At our lovely friends house, we drank wine and ate cheese and sauteed potatoes and freshly baked bread, laughed plenty, washed and dried dishes, and watched their oldest son, home from college, break dance. He said when he was doing field studies in the middle of Podunkity, West Virginia, he lived many hours in a tiny room and felt the need to exercise, so he decided to take up break dancing. (This, I imagine, is not a thought that would have occured to me). Bea was especially impressed, and she and Elspeth went rolling over the floor in imitation.

Now, finally, the Puget Sound from the ferry railing:


And congratulations to Martin, who just got two poems accepted at Prairie Schooner.

And tea, and more soft snow, and happiness to be home with heat roaring.

OH NO

OH NO!

My cry after everything--my pictures I'd downloaded, the entire post I'd worked on during a precious hour when Martin took the girls--GONE. Just because my computer downstairs suddenly stopped wanting cookies. Who doesn't want cookies???

Well, my return to all of you was fresh, full of hope for the New Year, glorious, sparkling like the waters of the Puget Sound on an uncommonly clear day. Martin was gazing into the noonday sunshine; my father was holding Elspeth over the railing of a ferry, and the Cascades were snowcapped. I believe there were even dolphins flipping and seals shouting hello--and now you've just got me, kind of grumpy, jaded, attitude ruined by cookies.

So sorry to return to you like this.

I also described how full of gratitude I felt for such a wonderful vacation in Washington and Texas, how Martin and I went away overnight for the first time without children in seven years, our beautiful presents, and such good food that I went up an entire size. I was witty in the way I described my present detox (hardly any sugar/fat, only a few truffles as compared to a steady diet of truffles), and slightly sentimental when describing how much we loved being with family.

I opened the post with three funny anecdotes: one about Elspeth smearing bubblegum on her eyelids and in her hair today in the car; another about Merry trying to leave the house in two items of my clothing; and the third about Bea's potty training, the way she loves sitting in the bathroom and talking about "peww-oup" and singing the song, "Life is a highway! I'm gonna ride it all night laaa-onge. . ." It was rather funny and meant to bring you back to the warm, silly fold of Wazoo Farm after such a long hiatus.

But it's gone, all gone. Disappeared in a puff of internetty smoke.

Well, folks, I'm back. It's really nice to be home, cookies and all.

Seattle, Week 2

This afternoon we floated over the deep blue waters of the Puget Sound on the Poulsbo-Edmonds Ferry. The sun shone for perhaps the second day since we've been here. From the upper deck, we watched the water churning from the ferry's engines, stretching out in a foaming path; in the distance the Cascades rose distinct and snow-capped; to our right we could see Mount Rainer's bulk, and to our left, the skyline of Seattle, where we'll walk about this evening with my brother and his partner, taking in the lights and finding a Thai restaurant. Or Vietnamese--the jury is out on that.

This morning when I ventured downstairs to my sister's kitchen, my mother met me by the coffee pot. "Does this day feel SPECIAL to you?" she asked. I peered at her from my sleep-blurred eyes. She pressed: "Because when I woke up this morning, the day felt really special."

After a few lovely days of Christmas presents, wine, and conversation, this particular morning promised house-cleaning (my sister's in-laws follow on our heels). I supposed that cleaning toilets would be pretty special, but I still was befuddled when Mom said again,

"Doesn't this day just feel really special?" Had I forgotten my sister's birthday again? I thought wildly. No, it's in January. What was my madre getting at?

Finally she caved. "It's the nineteenth!" she announced.

Sure enough. Twelve years of marriage to Martin. Martin was waiting to see if I'd realize why the day was special too; I'd greeted him this morning by telling him not to wake me up with his questions--since he's just arrived, he's still on Pennsylvania time. I've adjusted to Washington time, so he awakens me far too early with his bright chatter.

But after twelve years of marriage, he was unsurprised that the date had slipped my mind. He is celebrating right now by stuffing himself with corn chips and watching football with my Dad, a past time he dreams about at our house, where we scorn television but dream about watching it at other houses.

If anyone needs to reach me, I'm at my parent's house. Oh, and Sally, will you water my plants? Pleease? I'll send you some rare Seattle sunshine.

Interested in wearing a bra on your head? Read my story in the O-R.

Attracting Females

Near the end of our chicken curry tonight at my sister's house in Washington, my seven year old nephew Josiah, who had been quiet during the meal, spoke up.

"Some males sing. Some fight. I'm going to dance."

We begged that he expand, so he said, "Well, male aminals like to attract females. I'm an aminal, and I'm a male, and I'm going to attract a female."

We asked Josiah to show us his dance but he said, "No. I'll feel foolish."

Bribing ensued, and finally promised four pieces of candy from the gingerbread house, Josiah scooted off his chair and laid himself, belly down on the floor, where he began to slither like a snake.

Bea was curious. Wearing her pink tutu, she sidled up to Josiah where she got down on her hands and knees right next to her cousin. Josiah jumped up.

"I attracted a female!" he cried triumphantly. Then he glanced around. "I need another male!" he announced, "So we can do the fighting thing."

Apparently he was pleased with his first experiment as a male aminal. When neither Granddaddy or his dad offered to take him up on the fighting thing, Josiah got on the floor again and began howling--and was marginally less successful with his singing than with his dancing,

But he received great accolades from the adults, and he is now, at this very moment, eating his reward: four delicious pieces of candy from the gingerbread house.

We,re here. Typing on my sister,s ipad. Super cool but i can,t find the apostrophe. Today sailed over the swells of the puget sound, cascades bright in setting sun.