There is a noise in my truck.
Sort of a cross between a cheep and and a squeak.
It’s the kind of noise that might be made by a small animal or bird.
It’s also the kind of noise that could be made by some sort of springs or belts doing whatever mysterious things they do.
Unfortunately, I have the kind of truck where neither source of squeaking would surprise me.
A Friday ritual.
A single photo – no words – capturing a moment from the week.
A simple, special, extraordinary moment.
A moment I want to pause, savor and remember.
I have this picture that I keep meaning to share but I’ve been holding off waiting for just the right caption to come to me.
It’s not coming.
Help me out.
How would you caption this picture of the poor sad puppy who appears to be locked out of the house by the grumpy cat?
Clara, what’s your favorite…
Color – I have couple, teal, blue, green, yellow and purple.
Animal – I have couple, dolphins, bees, foxes (I just like the look of them) and ummm what are they calllled, manatees.
Bug- Bees and earwigs. *laughing* NO I don’t like earwigs!! And that’s when I knew this was going to be interesting…
Food – Lots of stuff, like pizza, spaghetti, kielbasa, the skillet you make, ice cream and candy.
Clothes –Skirts and t-shirts if its summer, but in the winter I like to wear long sleeves, long pants and socks cause I like skating around the house. And that’s where we diverged from list making into a much more interesting conversatuon…
Dog – I have couple… *big breath* Trip, Storm, Goose, Digby, Cooper (poor Cooper has been gone for years but glad he still made the list) Rosie, Birkie, Buzz, Turk, Bailey, Ruby.
Cat –Gypsy, Cassie, Fiona, Baby, Pester, Ginger, Blacky and Oreo (It seems our youngest cat didn’t make the cut and the last three are kittens her friend’s family “might” adopt. Makes you wonder what Simone did to her recently).
Person – You, Dad, Jane, Ivy, Grandma Grandpa, Grandma Pat, Grandpa Al… Like all my grandma’s and grandpas and aunts and uncles. Lola, Lucy, Brent, Rachel, Macy, Evelyn, Joe… I cut her off around here before she listed everyone she knew.
Me: Do you know what favorite means?
Clara: …yeaahhh…
Me: What’s it mean?
Clara: You really like them.
Me: Does favorite mean one or lots?
Clara: ….
Me: So, most people think favorite means the thing they like the most.
Clara: Yeah… but I can’t choose.
Alright then. Moving on…
Thing to do –A couple… Like two… Swim and we play on the playgrounds, oh three, and play on the computer, or ipad or phone… or do arts and crafts… I can’t choose!
Thing to do inside – Annoy Ivy. Great…
Thing to do outside – swim
Chore – *laughter, lack of eye contact* Ummm nothing. – Oh! Clean the pool out cause then you get to be in the pool.
Time of day – Two. I like how we are numbering the favorites now. Dinner time when it’s close to dark out. And in the morning and at midnight. And how that doesn’t cut down on the number of things what so ever. Or make them factual. She’s a monster in the morning and she doesn’t ever get to stay up until midnight.
Place to go – Umm couple… Like to Florida, to the beach, to Lola’s and to the Cambridge Elementry and the pool house at Lola’s and where I saw the kitties at Lola’s. Lola is Clara’s best friend, can you tell? Also she likes going to school? Judging by her morning behavior, I’m totally suspicious of that.
Song – I don’t really have one… I like… Katie Perry, or Lady Gaga but I don’t like Lady Gaga as much as Ivy. Who does really?
Flower – Three I doubt it. Like the ones that go and are like in the summer… SCILLA! One Ummm what are they called, they are in the summer and some of them have white petals… Oh yeah, daffodils Two and tulips Three and the roses with not a lot of petals cause the ones with tons of petals-*makes a disgusted face* uh ehhh! Four. I’m totally with her on her rose feelings though.
Farm Animal – Horses and goats. What? That’s it?
Thing about school – Couple things, recess, snack time – cause she usually reads a book to us, and um um um um I don’t remember. And this Clara is why favorite implies one thing. A thing you like enough that you remember it.
Friend – You know… You know… Lola! Yes. Yes we do know.
Movie – I don’t have one. Believable.
Thing to do with Ivy – Annoy her. Me: How do you like to annoy her? Clara: By going like, “Ivy , Ivy, Ivy” and if she says “What?” I just keep saying, “Ivy, Ivy, Ivy…” This explains a lot of the yelling that I’ve been hearing lately.
Thing to do with Jane – Annoy her and play legos. Me: How do you like to annoy Jane? Clara: Go, “Jane, Jane, what’s that, what’s that, Jane, Jane…” This explains the rest of the yelling I’ve been hearing.
Thing to do with Dad – Couple things, not annoy him. If only that were true… Go to parks with him, play in the garage and make obstacle courses and help him build like sailboats. That would be a reference to the two pieces of wood she nailed together 3 years ago and dubbed a sailboat.
Thing to do with Me – I don’t know, watch movies. And if you wanted proof that I’ve been a bit stressed and cranky lately there you have it. Like what kind of movies? We don’t watch very many movies. Selkie one maybe? The selkie movie was Song of the Sea which was beautiful and she cried through half of it. Again, were you wondering about my general attitude lately?
Book – I don’t have one. This answer bothered me far more than the previous one. You can not like me but no favorite book?!? Tragic!
Meal – Breakfast. I think she’s losing steam.
Thing to do in the car –Color and annoy people. Me: Can you not annoy people on the drive tonight? Clara: Ok, but its what I love to do!
When you get older what kind of problems do you want to help solve? This required further explanation. Her eventual answer: “No.” She creates problems, she does not solve them.
What do you want to do when you are grown up? – Have a lot of cats. But if I get a husband he would have to do the cat litter boxes. This is where I almost swallowed my tongue trying not to burst laughing.
Anything else? – Candy!- Sour candy! I think that might be it… oh wait my favorite kind of fruit is… I have couple… lemons, limes, apples, grapes, pineapple, watermelon and peaches. Oh, and pears!
But that was all yesterday…
Today Clara turned eight! 
Happy Birthday to my girl who has all the favorites!
I like whiskey.
I am a woman.
Would I recommend it? I think that you have to really like whiskey and history to really get into this one. This book takes you from ancient civilizations when women were the first brewers, through the witch hunts when women distillers were tried as witches, in and out of two World Wars, prohibition and bootlegging, right through advertising campaigns and up to modern day practices.
Women have played a far more prominent role in whiskey’s history than one would guess and as the book follows the history of women and whiskey, it also shows women’s role in society through the ages.
It was all interesting.
It was not captivatingly told, but it was interesting anyway.
Probably the best thing you could do is get a friend to read this book and then have them tell you all the highlights. Unless you really like whiskey and history, then you should read this book too, our friends may need us to tell them the highlights!
We reached a major milestone in our family today.
It wasn’t one of those big ones they tell you about in baby books, nothing involving potty training or lost teeth. It wasn’t even one of those that parents dream of together while talking at the edges of playgrounds. Nothing like being able to buckle their own car seats and pour themselves cereal on a Saturday morning.
No, today, officially, all of our children can cut up their own pork chop.
Pork chop cutting is nothing like pancake cubing, or carrot slicing or even chicken chunking. No, pork chop cutting is hard. It requires a sharp knife and use of a fork at the same time, combine that with a meat that isn’t known as the most tender of dishes, and inevitably they make the terrible silverware on a plate screech.
Pork chop cutting is, in the words of my nephew, the worstest.
I loath pork chop cutting so much that I stopped buying, making and cooking pork chops. When John insisted I was being ridiculous, I said that was fine, if he made them he could also cut them. ALL of them. Because, there was a time in the house that if you were going to make pork chops you would have to cut up three other peoples’ pork chops in addition to your own. And you can’t just cut them into man sized hunks but r
ather into tiny, little, chew-able, girl, tidbits.
In addition, anyone with kids who isn’t some sort of super mom (the variety who gets all the required food, accouterments and drinks to the table before they sit down) knows that a mom doesn’t simply sit at the table, cut up pork chops and eat.
Oh no.
There are water spills to manage, bbq sauce to retrieve, the last pot of beans that you forgot to get, a cat to lock up, a dog to let out to pee, a kid to send to the bathroom and – oh look. You’ve only cut up one and half pork chops and the other cat is busy dragging yours out the door because you weren’t looking. But it’s fine because it’s cold and hard now and you can’t actually imagine risking more of that screeching noise to cut up another one anyway
And that is why I banned pork chops.
Tonight John made pork loin, which I am well aware is just a sneaky way of getting around the no pork chop rule. But tonight all the girls cut up their pork by themselves. They didn’t even ask for anything more than to pass the knife.
Pork chops are back on the menu!
Attending a civil war reenactment has taught me many things over the years.
-Deserters will be shot – and then their boots will be stolen.
-General Grant never wanted to be a solider.
I don’t know what this man does when he isn’t General Grant but he does an amazing job. A natural story teller with an encyclopedia of knowledge!
-Some doctors are better at cleaning their instruments than others but all of them will cut your leg off if they need to.
Notice Ivy on the fanning assist in the background?
Patient was a young girl that was hit by a stray bullet. No bones broken, she kept her leg and she had one of the best doctors, I think she’ll be fine.
-The horses are amazing.
For real. The training they do with these guys is impressive!
-And never say the last bend has been taken out of these instruments so that the “noise” carries back to the marching soldiers. That’s music that comes out of those horns.
Or so I have been told…
Sometimes wedding anniversaries are fun, magical days where you can bask in the knowledge that you ended up with just the right person to spend your life with.
Sometimes wedding anniversaries are a perfect storm of events that mess with even a modestly planned date night and you go to bed slightly aggravated at the world but still certain you ended up with just the right person to spend your life with.
Yesterday was our 14th anniversary, it didn’t go as planned. But that’s okay because the ribs John grilled were delicious, the lightening storm was impressive and he’s still my favorite man.
Happy Anniversary Honey!
(That’s a ten minute time lapse of the lightening over the neighbors corn field- it was awesome!)
The new puppy is Trip’s nephew (for real, Goose is his half-brother Turk’s pup) and Trip has taken to his Uncle-y duties well – not a single growl or grumble.
This is probably because he has, so far, refused to acknowledge that the puppy exists. Well, other than this look he keeps giving me:
Judging from past puppy experiences, I suspect that when Goose gets a bit older Trip will be willing to play, but until then, Trip has gotten to go on a bit more car rides and gotten to be on the flip side of the naughty dog coin.
Today while Trip was sitting by my side with his head in my lap and we watched (well, I watched, Trip looked the other way) Goose attack a knothole in a post in the living room. I looked at Trip and said, “Someday he’ll be a good dog too… Someday…”
The new puppy has arrived!
And his name is Goose.
Despite many people’s dubious reaction to his name, I’m keeping it.
Partly because within the first two hours the kids had already called him Goose 7 gazillion times (revisit the saga of Sarah Cat and wonder why I didn’t learn my lesson) and partly because I like it (and Mom still gets ultimate naming power because I did learn something from the Sarah Cat saga).
Besides, his dad’s name is Turkey so it makes perfect sense.
But now what I need is an official registered name for Goose. On paper he’s the offspring of Mr. Impressive and Fearless (none of this Turkey and Trixie business on the official documents) but so far my inspiration has only taken me as far as Super Goose.
And so, brilliant people of the internet, give me your best idea for a registered name for Goose!
Behind the Willows 