family-photo Friday

Anyone else get completely sideways some weeks about what day it is? Maybe because we did a two-night turnaround to visit my bestest CL and her gang, returning on Tuesday, I’ve just been flummoxed since about last Saturday. So, here’s my family-photo Friday post. On Thursday.

We encourage sporting activities. The attire, however, we don’t dictate.

Megan at the bat

Kira could use a bit of work on her form

Nothing like a trip to the dressup box to really make a girl really shine in the batting box.

Saturday’s silver lining

It was a hell of a ride.

Note to self: when sweet Emily mentions to you that a given climb “really kicks my ass,” expect elevation of the sort and character that may require mere mortals to dismount midway to rest.

So we were right along at 50 miles for the day — gorgeous, spectacular, and ass-kicking miles — when we arrived back at her car. I’d completely drained both water bottles a few miles earlier as we traded pulls with two guys in full kit we’d run into, and wasn’t planning on being the least bit shy about helping myself on the drive home to the Dasani I’d seen in her console. Not one bit.

I’d just racked my bike when I heard Emily’s sudden intake of breath. “Oh, NO! No, no, no!!!”

She’d unlocked, tossed her shoes, wheel, and keys in the trunk, and then racked her own bike. And then somehow, when she shut her door, the whole thing locked. With the keys in the trunk.

With no shoes or wheel, she couldn’t ride back to her house. I could have ridden the 10 miles home — though it assuredly wouldn’t have been pretty — and gotten a vehicle, but it seemed to make a tad more sense to call the MPM and ask to be rescued.

Emily apologized 27 times before I even dialed the phone. (I counted.) “Won’t he be pissed off? I don’t want him to be pissed off. I’m sorry. I’m so lame.”

You’re not either, I said. These things HAPPEN. And nope, he won’t be. She looked at me doubtfully. I called. He asked a few questions, said he’d be on his way and hung up, patently Not Pissed.

A bit later it occurred to me that hey, maybe Triple-A offers lockout service and I should call them instead. So I did, and they do. When I called the MPM back to belay the rescue request, did he express annoyance that I didn’t think things through up front? Nope. Did he turn around at the next wide spot? No, by golly, he didn’t.

He drove on over with the huge honkin’ iced water I’d asked him to bring along. Hey, he said, he was most of the way there, and he knew I was thirsty. Told Emily she shouldn’t feel bad; that he appreciated getting some use for once out of our AAA membership dues.

And after he left, as Emily and I sat there waiting on the Triple-A dude, it led to a great conversation about how we so often end up in skewed dynamics with people who get annoyed at us in our human frailties, and are critical of us, trying desperately to please them instead of telling them to go jump in a lake.

And about some of the reasons I chose to marry the man I did, having dated over almost two decades a rather spectacular assortment of less-appropriate candidates, and how much his character matters to me. And as I sat there on the grassy overlook verbalizing those qualities, I felt my focus on them sharpen anew.

It was a wonderful wiping-clean of my Marital Small Annoyances slate, the one with “not a morning person,” “tea bags left in sink,” “dark socks in light hamper,” et cetera, scribbled peevishly thereon.

Especially when Emily dropped me home and I found the kitchen tidy, the girls fed (twice) and dressed, and the house appearing only marginally trashed after an entire morning of four children runnin loose. While my bike and I are off on another three five-hour outing.

Nope, you can’t have him. He’s mine.

what to do with yellow squash

I met Beth last summer, at a going-away party for mutual friends.   I’d known of her for years, since she’s been a journalist with our local newspaper just about as long as I’ve lived here which is, heavens to Murgatroyd, going on a couple decades.  I’d always stopped short of actually introducing myself, since jeez, she’s an awesome writer and like practically a celebrity.

But at that party, we got to chatting and it turned out we graduated from high school the same year, practically shouting distance from one another, and she visits my tiny hometown regularly on her trips back.  And we had some other stuff in common too and it was an evening-long conversation that begat a book group, among other things.

Now she’s off to Hah-vahd.  Girl landed herself, well deserved, one a them prestigious Nieman Fellowships for Journalism.  So she’s packing up the fam and heading to Cambridge for a year.  Happily, she’s begun a blog, so we won’t have to live without her wonderful facility with the written word while she’s on leave from her regular journalism duties.

Selfishly, I want to host more dinner parties where she and her husband are at the table, so I am crossing my fingers in real honest prayerful hope that she’ll actually return after that year.  It seems likely but, as they say, nothing is certain in the world, and the future of print journalism may find itself sharp on the cutting blade of that old saw.

Anyhoo, in the packing-up part, Beth finds herself contending with an eat-down of pantry-plus proportion.  You can read her post on that process, and I’m going to remember here to thank her for reintroducing me to Mark Bittman, the New York Times’ “The Minimalist” food writer.  I can’t wait to try some of his Simple Salad recipes!

In her post is a plea for what to do with a quantity of yellow squash, and I promised I’d share my best recipes for putting paid to the overabundance that is, inevitably, summer squash. Both recipes will work with zucchini as well, or a combination.

Yellow Squash with Sausage

4-5 medium yellow squash, sliced in 1/4-inch rounds
1 pack smoked sausage such as kielbasa, sliced in rounds
1 onion, sliced vertically very thin
2 T olive oil (approximate)
1/2 t or so cajun seasoning

Saute onion and sausage in large skillet with small swirl of oil until onion is translucent.  Add squash and rest of oil.  Turn to high heat to sort of carmelize the squash, stirring frequently.  Add cajun seasoning.  Lower heat slightly; cover for a few minutes to thoroughly cook squash if necessary, or simply continue to saute until nicely carmelized/brown.

Can be served over rice for a complete meal.

_______________________________________________________

Now, if your squash is so sizeably mature as to resemble a fungo bat, it may not lend itself pleasantly to sauteing.  Try this instead:

Squash Cake

3 eggs
1.5 c sugar
1/2 c oil (canola or somesuch)
1/2 c applesauce
2 c flour
2.5 t baking powder
2 t baking soda
2 t cinnamon (feel free to add pie spice, nutmeg, cloves, etc)
3/4 t salt
2 c yellow squash (pureed or just shredded; squeeze it out a bit)
1 t vanilla

In large bowl, beat eggs w/sugar.  Add oil and beat.  Sift dry ingredients and beat into creamed mixture.  Stir in squash and vanilla and mix well.  Batter will be quite liquid.  Turn into a greased/floured bundt pan.  Bake at 350 degrees for about 55 minutes. My oven is off one direction or another, so it’s worth checking it at 50 minutes or so.

a novel day

Today I did two things, though not at the same time, that I can’t remember having done in several years.  1)  I wore jeans in July.  In the South.  And didn’t regret it.  Because it’s been some kind of crazy cool around here this past week.  2) I went on the Famous Tuesday Night Beer Ride.

Well, I went on part of it.  And it wasn’t exactly intentional.  I had the opportunity to sneak out for a few miles, and I knew there was a chance that I’d bump into some portion of the ride’s staggered starters by leaving my house when I did and riding where I did — but I hadn’t expected to get caught up in the thick of it.

I struggle with huge group rides.  I’ve been on some, in other cities, where sanity prevails, where double pacelines roll smoothly, where there seems to be more orchestration and less chaos.  And more attention to sharing the road.  Yes, it’s hard — and not even desirable — for a gaggle of cyclists to cede the road entirely, but if a concerted effort is made, it’s truly possible to coexist in a manner that doesn’t lead to dangerous passing attempts and middle fingers flying.

My wish would be to be seen as a gentle voice of reason on these rides.  Instead I find myself a lone screecher of  “car back!  CAR BACK!!  CAR BACK!!” as the riders ahead of, behind, and around me casually drift into double or triple file, or end their pull with apparent utter disregard for the commuter traffic that is the Blue Ridge Parkway at that hour.

It stresses me out.  As does riding in close proximity to too many riders I don’t know and thus don’t trust.  So at the point where the group(s) diverged off the Parkway and onto surface streets, I did a one-eighty and headed home, solo once more.

Certainly a piece of it is that I’m not in the kind of shape these days that makes it possible to hang easily at the front of the pack, with the handful of guys who know what in heck they’re doing.  But a larger part of it is simply that there’s no culture of mentoring here, to bring novice cyclists — some of whom are plenty strong — along in the etiquette of pacelining and group rides.  And so the knowledge pool grows shallower and shallower, and fewer and fewer riders are schooled in the rules, and the doctrine and philosophy fade even more.  Entropy in action.

I dearly miss the synchrony and elegance of a well-oiled paceline, and the benefit of group tempo miles.  But I’ve had to accept that they simply don’t exist around here.  And the shame of it is, few others seem to feel the lack.  My occasional forays into discussions of paceline practice and tempo rides have met with blank stares and blunt “No one wants to do a ride like that” commentary.

Nah, I guess not.  It lacks the testosterone punch and the ego dance of the “every ride a race” approach.  What’s the fun of training like the pros do, after all?

Tomorrow it’s back to typical muggy 80s.   And shorts and small group rides for me.

a midsummer night’s dinner

I wrote this post immediately following our return from Ohio, and just discovered it tucked away in my Drafts folder.  There’s been an update to the cucumber status since then, but I’m gonna make you wait for that.  Try as best you can not to lose any sleep in anticipation.

We strive to Eat Healthy here at the casa Fraught, yes we do. With the advantage of being raised by organic-shopping soyburger-making garden-growing parents, I’ve probably consumed fewer processed foods and pesticides in my lifetime than most any of my peers. You’d think this might equate to, say, greater health, fewer colds and such, but at least in the short-term of immunity, I haven’t reaped — as I’ve bemoaned before — any noticeable benefit.

Though I strayed after my teen years into the tidily boxed and packaged aisles of Mainstream Foodstuffs, the last decade of my life has seen me return to my roots. I’m a much better cook than either of my parents (can I have an amen here, bro?), but despite my best efforts over the years, I have never developed a fondness for that health-food staple: tofu.

What, after all, is to love about a block of white stuff that is the purest essence of bland, with a texture that frankly defies description?

I did learn a few years back that if you add chocolate and sugar, blend it into utter oblivion, it will pass (astonishingly enough) as chocolate mousse. Not exactly entree fare, however.

So last year I was reading once again about the reasons I, not to mention the MPM, should be eating More Tofu, and I discovered a new preparation method for the stuff:  grill it. And hallelujah, I’m a convert.

This time of year we swim in a veritable sea o’ salad greens, courtesy of our CSA. Romaine, red leaf, green leaf, mesclun mix… pounds of it every week.

And apparently my pre-departure Neem Oil application on the various vine crops was successful, because we returned home to find an ABUNDANCE of cucumbers. Several of them, in fact, large enough to require disclosure to proper agencies for their status as lethal weapons.

So, what else to do? Salad, indeed. Topped with delicioso grilled tofu, which even my girls — BOTH of them — eat with gusto. (The salad itself, not so much, though they like the cukes.)

GREEN SALAD WITH GRILLED TOFU

For the marinade:
* 1/4 c canola oil
* 1/4 c soy sauce
* 1/4 c balsamic vinegar
* 1 T brown sugar
* 2 cloves garlic, minced
* 1.5 t ground ginger
* 1/4 t sesame oil
* 1/2 t salt
* 2 tsp crushed red pepper flakes (adjust to your preference)

For the salad:
* whatever greens and add-ins you have on hand. we like:
* green olives
* red peppers
* feta cheese (more precisely, I like it; the MPM says meh.)
* sunflower seeds
* avocado

Cut your block of tofu crossways into 1/2-inch slices.

NOW — and this is crucial, my loves — lay them on a kitchen towel

… and press the liquid out (you can smoosh it with your hands, but this trick works nicely — let it sit 10 minutes or so.

Pour half of the marinade into the bottom of a 9×9 Pyrex, add tofu, then flip to coat.

Let sit 20 minutes or so, then grill 5 minutes per side.  Eat straight up, or cube and top your salad:

Me, I’m partial to Annie’s Goddess dressing, cut with balsamic vinegar, or use your favorite tangy type dressing.

Oh, and save the other half of the marinade for next time.  Stores for ages in a little jar in the fridge.

the photographer’s wife

… doesn’t go camera-less. Especially when she’s an artist herself.

This is just one of some very cool photos taken by Missy (of Guadalajara Year there on my links) on a recent solo trip to Oaxaca.

They will soon be returning stateside, and I fervently hope she plans to continue blogging, because they are moving away from us, permanently this time (SO sad), and on to the next adventure in their lives, and I want to stay updated.

A new blog title might be in order, of course, so I was thinking maybe she could run a contest. With a framed photo for a prize, maybe.

I’ll be stuffing the ballot box.

butt ban

This morning I heard that Pentagon health experts are recommending the elimination of sales of cigarettes on military bases, and prohibition of smoking by anyone in uniform.

Chalk me up in favor of this idea for the long term, not least because I understand that a study released late in June indicates that the Department of Veterans Affairs spends over $5 billion a year in treatments for tobacco-related illnesses. And “the DVA spends” means you and I fund, of course.

However. While the universe would expand and contract yet again before I would consider myself an advocate of smoker’s rights, to put such a ban into effect in the short term, in war zones, of which we have more than we want, strikes me as wrongheaded.

Quitting smoking is stressful, and hard, wickedly hard, under the most ideal of circumstances. I’m thinking we can all pretty much agree that a war zone falls something like galactically short of an ideal circumstance.

And indeed, Robert Gates stated today that there would be no such ban put into effect in the short term, so I don’t have to write my senator or anything, but it was intriguing to me to realize that there actually is a situation where I find myself saying, “Oh, no, people, don’t even THINK about taking away the smokes!!”

It’s all about context, isn’t it? Funny how that works.

the all-star

The MPM and I are both products of that post-baby-boom 2.2-child family, with one sibling apiece. My brother and his wife, lovely people who warmly welcome small people into their home, long ago made the decision not to have any reside there permanently.

So our girls have exactly one set of cousins, and they live Way Out West, and we see them once a year. The boys are polite and pleasant, and the crew of them get on famously, really, for the disparate ages, and it does make me envious of families where there are oodles of cousins romping around creating a rich fabric of summer memories.

There are three cousins, and my sister- and brother-in-law. The brother-in-law is a more recent addition, with the youngest cousin even more so, at almost-two quite the cutie pie.

The tween and teen stay with my in-laws in their 2-bedroom patio home, with the rest overnighting at a hotel. Last year they came for eight days, toward the end of which my mother-in-law said to me, with no one particularly far out of earshot, “This has been horrible. Absolutely horrible.” Disruption to her precise, controlled routine is hard on her, exceedingly so. And it’s a long time to have a whole slew of folk in your home, no question. The boys are polite and well-mannered, and growing Average American boys; they get up late, open and close the refrigerator twenty-two times an hour, snack nonstop and drink vats of soda while eschewing breakfast entire. And they have big dirty feet, traipsing around on the light-colored carpet. And they get B-O-R-E-D at Grandma’s.

So this year, taking all that into account, they are coming for… ten days. Because, you see, it’s a long way, after all, and expensive to get here. Perhaps the thought is that if we extend it far past the point of misery, no one will have any desire for it to happen more often anyway? It’s beyond me.

All that aside, when they come in it’s three generations of baseball players and baseball fans, and since we have a double-A team in town, attending a game is one of the big outings we plan.  Eleven bodies meant three cars, and I had the fun of driving with my two girls and the middle cousin, 9-year-old Brandon.  Cute kid, great with the younger kids, with plenty of personality and a serious athletic bent.

He pitches, as did his uncle back in the day, and we were chatting a bit about that.  He allowed as maybe his curveball was his best pitch, and was explaining to Megan — or attempting to, since she’s never yet stood at a plate — what it was and how to throw one.

After he concluded, Megan stated, in a manner I can best describe as casually — no, make that studiedly — offhand, “Well, I must say that I’m quite the sports player myself.”

I had to work very, very hard to keep my face remotely in the realm of straight.  First, her wording, and second, there’s the small fact she has given a complete pass to any and all team sports because “they keep score.”  By the time we found out that in T-ball they don’t, she’d already missed half the season and it was too late to sign up.

So apparently she was basing her self-described immersion in athleticism on the single “fun run” she participated in a couple months back, along with the fact that she and her daddy play catch sometimes and we’ve been known to kick a ball around with her.

She’s by no means uncoordinated — she can drop-kick one of those 99-cent rubber balls a fur piece and throws a mean overhand — but it reminded me that there’s a fine balance between encouraging interest by boosting confidence, and keeping in check the overinflation of reality that your child holds in their mind.

She’s a precocious, sensitive, bright, athletic little girl.  How to buttress all that, yet underpin the confidence with realism, not to mention maybe a smidge of humility, is our task.  Anyone got any good hints?

smiles, and miles

Here’s a sadly bad photo of a really good time:

one of these girls isn't as sweaty as the rest. we love her anyway.

Happily, our Blue Moon rides have been occurring more than once in a blue moon this summer. Yesterday’s turnout was our largest to date, maybe, just maybe, because we actually thought ahead of time and remembered to invite more people, and it was so fun to have a sizable group of women on the road together.

There were a few who failed to succumb to beer pressure and persisted in ordering something other than a Blue Moon, and one who allowed as she didn’t care for fruit in her beer, but we’ll keep working on them. Maybe when we get the matchy-matchy jerseys they’ll feel more like joining in lockstep.

If we invite them back, that is. Can’t have dangerous maverick types wandering around stirring up trouble, you know. (Anyone else have a little Tina Fey flashback there?  Me, I can’t hear the word “maverick” any more without doing an involuntary whole-body shudder. And oh, wasn’t that just Some Speech last week?? Can you fathom that That Woman came That Close to the second-highest office in the free world? It boggles. It truly does.)

So we rode our 20, and then bright and early this morning I rode 40 and seriously had to fend off the urge to lie down on the gentle grassy sloping edge of the road upon which I rode.  Couldn’t fathom for the life of me why my legs felt most like somewhat shapely railroad ties affixed at one end to my hips and at the other to my pedals.

And finally, mile 37, following the moment I literally began to see spots in my peripheral vision — which I divined as a sign that I should perhaps stop standing on that climb and sit my ass down in the saddle until further notice — it dawned on me that on Monday, I trailered Kira to the zoo and then, later, downtown.   The zoo destination represents, oh, approximately 900 vertical feet of climbing in a few short miles.  Tare weight on the trailer = 18lbs.  Kira = 28lbs.  Going back up to my house isn’t flat, either.

And on Wednesday, I happened into a ride that ended up being me and one of those guys with less hair on his legs than I have, for a total saddle time of 2.5 hours.

And then there was Friday, above; not hard, not long, but miles nonetheless.  Hello, muscle fibers?  Day 4 of 6? Can you kick it in another 40, Parkway grade climbing?  NO?  You CAN’T?  Oh.

Yeah, and those Tour guys ride, what, 21 days out of 23,  covering 2000+ miles… sigh.  Ah well.  They are insane-crazy testosterone-driven boys in their twenties and thirties living on a razor’s edge of training.  I’m a 45-year-old mommy with a triple ring.  Who rides, in an average week, twice at most.

So can I just say, my legs?  Are so freakin tired this evening that I’m giving rightful consideration to the idea of sleeping on the couch just so I don’t have to climb the stairs even One. More. Time. tonight.

it’s bean so long…

Oh, but I love this time of year, when the star-billing summer crops are just beginning to come in. Before you start to wonder what in green harvest HELL can be done with six more zucchini, another gallon of beans. Right now is the fun part, when I get all giddy about seeing what’s ready to be eaten.

It’s been like 10 months since I had fresh green beans straight from the vine. Before we left for Ohio, they looked about like toothpicks on the trellises.

I used to grow a couple kinds of beans every year, but this year I finally decided I could quit pretending I didn’t unremittingly favor one over the others, and grow only the one variety.

Really, I’ve never tasted a more delicious green bean, and as a bonus, if you miss one — and they hide, I swear they do — and it grows past its optimal picking point, it will get all lumpy and bumpy and not so pretty, but it stays tender and delicious, never a string to be found. Even the girls gobble them up.

that's my Fortex

And it’s fun to see how long they get, too. We look for record-breakers every year. Snapped in half and boiled for 4 minutes and 45 seconds, I’d happily eat these every day for lunch AND dinner.

And in about two more weeks I won’t have much choice in the matter, of course.

name that tune

I will own up to quite a repertoire of soft, soothing songs of a lullabye sort. A good number of them are in minor keys, and ever since she was little Megan never wanted me to sing them. As she got older, she could tell me it was because “they make me sad, Mommy.”

Fair enough, but I love the whole litany, so when Kira came along and enjoyed them night after night, I was thrilled. One of her recent favorites was “I Know Where I’m Going” — not exactly cheery fare, but it has a lovely tune and it reminds me of my mom, too, in a good way. And at least no one gets, uh, slain in it. I have lots of those, too: Tom Dooley, Long Black Veil, Banks of the O-Hi-O… ah, great stuff.

Recently, however, she’s begun eschewing such tender tunes, and if I open with one will immediately request “Something DIFFERENT, Mommy.” Different = rollicking and silly, I’ve learned; so we make our way through the one about Charlie and the MTA (a great little 1949 ditty about the fare increase on the Boston subway), A Horse Named Bill (sung to “Dixie”), Clementine, Hole In The Bucket, Billy Boy, and a raft of other oldie-goodies.

I learned every last one of them from my dad, who had them written (or typed, by Mom’s 100wpm fingers) in a ragged three-ring binder and would render them in about the deepest bass voice known to man, goofy songs for the amusement of himself and his kids.

Kira’s gotten familiar with the review and will ask for some specifically, and though to my mind they’re hardly soporific, I’m generally happy to oblige. Tonight, however, she was insistent on one in particular — only I hadn’t a clue what she was talking about. “The six four three song, Mommy.”

Six four three? Yes; six four three. I went around and around with her, and eventually it dawned on me: “I’m In Love With a Big Blue Frog.” The chorus has the line, “It’s not as bad as it appears / he wears glasses and he’s six-foot-three.” I highly suspect that to be Mom’s contribution to my repertoire and not Dad’s — I don’t believe he ever made it, musically speaking, to the Peter, Paul & Mary era.

I sang it. I wish I could say it made her drift into slumber, but no. She had herself a righteous Burley nap today, and that means the wise course is to just let her run herself down, so after twenty minutes of far-too-lively “snuggling” and singing in the bed, I gave up, and she’s down here now playing with a pinwheel in front of the fan while I post, silly girl.

Happy birthday, sweet thing. You’re three today, and it’s about breaking my heart. I hope you’ll remember and sing those songs to your own little loves someday.

fraught for now

As you may know, last month I flirted, and tramp that I am, even slept with, the notion that I was going to shutter up here at Fraught. But it hasn’t come to pass; my bloggy burnout seems to have faded, and I find myself wanting to reconnect with my known readers here.

So. Thanks for sticking around. I don’t promise prolific postings, but in between the busy that is summer, I’ll have something to say here and there. I might even get around to changing that header image up there to something properly seasonal.

What about the ‘hood? Well, I’ve come to think that there’s not much that needs to be said about other people, really. (Not that I spent much time there before, but just a dab’ll do. Word up.)

And if I happen to want to say it anyway? Let’s just say I won’t be saying it here.

‘Nuff said. See you soon.

road trip: post #2

So here I am, still in my hometown, on the 4th of July.  I don’t know if this is true other places as well, but it’s always been a reunion kind of holiday hereabouts.  Maybe it’s the annual pick-up soccer tournament. I doubt it’s the spectacular fireworks pulling people in (a small-village budget does not an explosive extravaganza provide), but whatever it is, people from far away and long ago invariably show up.

So I’m disappointed, because although we did get the chance to meet up with a small group of high school alumni last night, the parade and fireworks have now been canceled due to anticipation of precipitation.  Which may or may not come to pass.

Well, they haven’t actually been canceled, but for our intents and purposes they have — they were rescheduled for Sunday, and we won’t be here.   And not only was I looking forward to the chance to see and visit with old schoolmates, I’d gotten quite attached to the notion of sitting out on the hill at Gaunt Park watching fireworks, re-experiencing that memory of childhood with my girls.  Megan had gotten quite attached to the notion of decorating her bike and riding it in the parade, too, so we are a long-faced bunch today, eyeing the gray but dry sky.

I spent many, many hours of my childhood at Gaunt Park.   Named after Wheeling Gaunt, a former slave who came to Yellow Springs in the 1860s and owned the land at the time of his death, the park is many things to this town — site of baseball/softball diamonds, soccer fields, municipal pool, and both water towers, not to mention the aforementioned hill, best known for fireworks viewing and snowtime fun.

To my eyes today it’s hardly anything of a hill, but it IS the only place in town with any elevation at all to speak of and it made for fine sledding.  My memory rings faintly with the fact that it was a landfill many decades ago; Kira took one look at it when we were there earlier this week picking mulberries and promptly christened it “Trapezoid Hill,” and though I’d never taken note of it before, she’s absolutely right and it will probably live forevermore in our family lexicon as such.

So we’re trying to make the best of the last day of our road trip with, as Megan said, “Nothing at all to look forward to.”  Kira and her daddy are napping, and Megan has been appeased with Aunt Darla’s ginormous craft bag.

Me, I’m just pouting.

road trip: post #1

We were scheduled to leave town Sunday after lunch, so in the morning I headed up to the garden at light-thirty while all the rest were still asleep to do a final watering.  We’ve had such a damp spring that I’ve only watered twice and don’t have the sprinkler set up yet, so I armed myself with my watering wand for a watering wander through the paths, a good opportunity to check everything out.

Jeez but those cucumber leaves don’t look good, not at ALL.  Bleah:  cucumber beetles, by the dozens.  How could I have missed them up to now?  Shitfuck.  I start squishing.  Then I realize they’re in the flowers, and there are literally hundreds of flowers, and I’ll never find them all, and by the time we return the hidden ones will have eaten their way through every leaf  and laid eggs that will hatch, and THOSE beetles will infiltrate the melons, and all those lovely baby cucumbers and cantaloupes that are starting to grow will die,  the end, boohoo.

I stomp back down to the house to find husband awake, but sitting down and reading the paper just as if we didn’t have cucumber beetles and more than a morning’s worth of pre-departure items to check off.  I proclaim, loudly and bitchily, that WE HAVE CUCUMBER BEETLES and thus WE DON’T HAVE TIME to read the paper.  Husband eyes me mildly and sets the paper down.  I stomp off to get the bottle of Neem Oil Concentrate and fire up the hose-end sprayer.

Thoroughly dose the cukes, the cantaloupes, and the beans for good measure.   Cross fingers.

Morning passes in a fog of frenzied packing and cleaning, because I can’t bear to leave a house that I don’t want to come back to.  Lunch is eaten, the kitchen is cleaned again, and we finally load up the girls at about 1:45.  Not bad, all things considering.  Make a run through the downtown farmer’s market with the notion of picking up some local peaches to drive 400 miles to enjoy, but in vain — Sunday pickings are slim, and there are no peaches to be found.  On the road, officially, at 2p.

And the rest of it was truly uneventful.  The girls traveled beautifully; Kira fell asleep a few minutes out of town and Megan entertained herself practically to West Virginia, where Kira woke.   We played games and I doled out eggies and snacks; more games, and counting bridges and crossing rivers and then BAM, we’re in Ohio.

Stopped in Jackson, about an hour out from our destination, for dinner, which is a big deal since road trips are just about the only time the girls get fast food.  Megan’s been lobbying for Arby’s since Charleston and praise be, we find one even though it wasn’t listed on the handy blue exit sign.  Per usual, she eats only her meat and Kira eats only her bun.  One of these days we’ll wise up and just buy one for them to share, and maybe I’ll get a Jamocha shake, large, for myself with the savings.

I marvel every year how much longer it stays light in Ohio, being as we drive toward the farther reaches of the timezone.  As a bit of amusement, the gas light came on well before we exited Route 35, with just 290 miles on the tank, but onward we drove.  Maybe three bikes on the roof rack had something to do with compromising the mileage.

In any event, we pulled in to Yellow Springs at 8:40 and the fireflies were just starting to come out in the drifting light.  So the girls chased and we chatted in lawn chairs on the front lawn at my folks’ place for a good hour, at which time it was truly dark and truly time to head to my brother’s and put the girls down.

I love being back in my hometown.  And I love being on vacation.  We’ve done a whole lot of not-much, all of it fun, most of it majorly relaxing, although I did go out and meet up with a group ride last night for an energetic 40.

There’s rumbling about some folks reuning (I’ve assessed the lay of the linguistic land, and recently decided to stop curmudging and cantankering and tasked myself to just vault right on up on the verbing wagon) at a local watering hole on Friday, and Megan has decided that she wants to stay and do the parade and fireworks here instead of back home, so it looks like we’ll be extending our visit at least 24 hours.  I’m all in favor.

Hopefully my unbridled joy & enthusiasm is shared by our hosts, my brother and his lovely wife.  Having hit the three-day mark today, I imagine we’ll be quite redolent by Sunday morning.

Wait til they hear Megan’s already decided she wants to stay a MONTH the next time we come.