Music Monday: Beach Boys & Black Keys

I do not really like the Beach Boys, but my mother did. In the next ten days I am going be very busy. A trip with the kids to visit my sister in FLA, while H stays home. Then a weekend away for some last of summer R & R. Then school starts. Whew a whirlwind!

What I want to know is why are their pants so tight? And seriously, how much did they pay those girls to scream like that... so weird.

Those shirts are scary in black and white...

Now I have to say-- the Black Keys, those guys I like... perhaps it is generational. I seriously doubt my mother would like the Black Keys... in any event as I write this the night before I leave town, after battling through a week full of ear infections (E), fever, headache and chills (L & I), and general mayhem-- I am very much looking forward to seeing my sister, relaxing on the beach and getting some real time with her. It has been too long! I need ocean, sand, sun, and my sister!

And to be fair-- these guys aren't wining any groovy dresser awards either...

June

School is out and summer is in full swing. We started with a rainy day and then an incredibly busy Saturday. Today we are committed to hanging out quietly and enjoying a peaceful day at home.

This month my goal is to get caught up and show you all the stuff that has been happening around the house and with me. I cannot believe how busy May was. I felt like I moved into the kids school some days and we had L's dance show and E's weekly soccer practices and games.

I am ready for summer and the slower pace, the great food and the quiet nights. It is also hard to believe that I made our first summer favorite dessert, before it was even June.

We had gluten free strawberry shortcakes for dessert. I used local berries from the farmers market and I modified a savory biscuit recipe using 1, 2, 3 Gluten Free's biscuit mix. I made drop biscuits, because I was not in the mood to roll out biscuits and honestly, once you smoother them in berries, is there really a reason to have perfect, round biscuits?

E isn't much into shortcake, but he loved eating the left over biscuits with jam.

Music Monday: Lady Gaga - Born This Way

 L had her Spring Dance show this weekend. She has been practicing like there is no tomorrow. This year the theme was music. The girls started in 1900 and danced their way through the decades.  All the way to 2012!

L's group did a great King Swing... then the two youngest members of the Tap Co danced the heck out of Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy! 

While I loved the entire show... the moment that made me cry was the finale, when L came out with a million dollar smile, singing and dancing to Born this Way! Her passion and enthusiasm-- to be who she was born to be.

That is all I want for either of my kids. I want to them to feel that they are free to be who they were born to be. The best part, I don't have a say in this. I firmly believe there are some things about us, that we are just born with. For L it is her passion to dance. Her father and I are not making her do this, we are supporting her. The drive, the enthusiasm,  the talent and the desire. That is all her. 

This goes for who my babies will marry, if they marry. Who they are at their core was decided before they drew their first breath. L danced in my womb and E napped most of the time, with a stretch every now and again. L has a big personality and E is quieter. 

When the time comes, they will fall in love and they may or may not decide to build their own families and I will be happy for them. It isn't for me to decide what or who makes them happy. It isn't for anyone else to decide either... All the gods in the world don't get to decide either-- sure all choices may have consequences in the here after (if there is a here after.)  We own our own choices and we were born that way.

I want my children to grow up in a world where they are free to pick which religion, if one, suits them. I want them to grow up in a world where they are free to love and build a family that fits their image, not someone else's.

My babies were born that way.

Music Monday: Lady Gaga - Born This Way

All in the Family

It is hard to believe that Catty NKA Snickers has been a member of the family since late 2009. I really can't imagine not having her as part of the family.

She really has grown on me. I can also say that my cat allergy or my allergy to her, has waned significantly. Either the near daily exposure to her for 3 years or perhaps me finally getting my health issues in check, has meant less trauma to my immune system and has lead to a significant change in household protocol.

Snickers comes in now.

In the early months with us, she never tried and we never offered. This continued until last fall. In part the reason we kept her out was my allergies and my mother's allergies. If mom was to come spend her last days here, there could be no indoor cat action.

Over the winter, mild as it was, Snickers seemed to want in more and more. To sleep. She just wants to curl up, with all of us around and sleep.

The other day, I swear she was passed out on a dinning room chair like a frat brother after a weekend long kegger. I clocked the sleep time at roughly 5 hours.

I really do want to keep her off the soft furniture and out of the newly remodeled family room. I also think the basement and the first floor are domain enough for her, no being on the second floor. So far she has gravitated to the morning room and the dinning room. She seems to like the big windows and the sun light. She loves to jump up on a dinning room chair and hide under the table or be in the corner. In the morning room, she favors a corner, under the plant stand, near the register.

This is not at all to say that she isn't testing those boundaries. This past weekend she hid in both of the children's closets on two separate occasions. When she burst out of E's closet, she scared me to death.

I think once we put the patio furniture on the deck, she may stay out there more, as she can hide on a chair under the table, which seems to suit her just fine. Last week our neighbor and L's BFF took care of the food and water patrol and predictably Snickers got huffy and ran off, as we were not home. I suspect she would have returned on her own, but the storm Friday might well have gotten her in a state of affairs. She also is minus a bit of fur and her collar.

On Saturday, I dispatched L and her BFF and H to a house up the road a bit. For whatever reason, after storms, she hangs on this family's deck. It is possible, that that house used to be her home or she just goes there when she has lost her way. I theorize that perhaps she did live there, because that house changed hands at about the same time we acquired Snickers. Maybe they didn't want her making the move or perhaps she ran off and they never found her. Either way she favors this house. H carried her home and other than some loud meows and haughty stares, she allowed the in arms transport. Happy to be home, but reminded H not to make a habit of this transport method, thank you very much.

 

Snickers is one of the most social, pack minded cats I have ever known. When we are outside, she is right there with us. She often "stands guard." I will joke that she is our vicious attack cat. I am only half kidding. I think if she thought someone was threatening us, especially the children, she would do her worst to protect us.

This was St. Patrick's Day. I was watching the kids ride their bikes, while waiting on my BFF to come over for dinner. Snickers was one part protecting me and keeping a close eye on her small charges.

Look at that determined face. I wouldn't cross her in a dark alley.

Lady Liberty's Closet

The first grade classes at E's school do a monthly special share. It varies from writing a few sentences to making a how to video. This month we had to make something that involved the Statue of Liberty. E could choose to write a story, a poem, make a poster or build something.

Naturally he wanted to build something. I have to say my building talents are not the strongest and H was slated for a lot of traveling. E and I kicked around Lego creations, foam sculpture and paper mache and chicken wire.

L kept reminding us that we only had a week and that all of those ideas sounded great until you actually got started. She was lucky, in 1st grade her classroom got to do the Flag and we wrote a story and drew a picture.

Then while watching reruns of Bravo's Top Chef, it hit me. We could do a deconstructed Lady Liberty. It is all the rage in food, why not in national symbols?

While we are used to seeing Lady Liberty looking a bit like this:

E and I have transformed her and we proudly present Lady Liberty's Closet:

 

and inside her closet:

She really is very one note when it comes to color. I think she may need a fashion intervention.

E and I crafted all of her items using stuff we found around the house. The box we got from a neighbor's trash pile. It was exactly deep enough and in very good shape. E and I covered the "doors" in duck tape. JoAnn's has piles and piles of colorful duck tape. The door nobs are drawer pulls from a table I got from my mom but immediately changed the drawer pulls out.

For the closet bar, E and I measured and cut some old pvc pipe we found in the basement. I used a hack saw. H was in the kitchen and yelled down, "Are you cutting PVC pipe." I yelled back, "Like a pro."

For the sandals, we traced E's feet and then cut a top strip. The tablet was easy, just free hand a gravestone shape and cut.

For the torch we used a plastic cup and part of a paper towel roll and duck tape. (on the day of the presentation, we have gold tissue paper all prepared to act as the flames.)

While the building was fun, I think E enjoyed dying a length of old white sheet, using hot water and Rit Dye. He got to pour and stir.

The only part of Lady Liberty's outfit, which we bought was her crown. It was a 99 cents foam crown, which came in grey sparkly. The down side is it only has five points and the real one has seven points, but we are working with what we have and seriously, the crown is sparkly. (Even after we painted it.)

While many people thought me using a hack saw was the scariest part of this project; it wasn't. The scariest part of this project was allowing E to spray paint the props. We found, at JoAnn's, blue spray paint that is pretty close to the correct color.

So last Saturday and again on Sunday for touch ups, I placed the sandals, torch, crown, and tablet on newspaper and shook the can of paint and handed it to my six year old. Crazy I know. It was not lost on me, as he began spraying, that this was a spectacularly poor idea.

Although with some coaching, he actually did a pretty good job.

So for about $15, E and I have built something for his project and he is excited to share his creation and the fun facts he has learned about the Statue of Liberty. He has note cards all set, with each clothing item on it in big letters and 1-3 sentences about that item on the back.

I hate to be cliche, but sometimes you just have to think outside the box.

Write me a letter

I shot this pic a few weeks ago. I posted it to instagram and made some comments. It is a letter to my maternal grandfather from his half brother. Oliver. My grandfather was raised by his paternal grandmother in Thurman, Ohio. His mother had "run off" or perhaps more correctly left his father and return home to the Akron area. She was a career woman. She worked as a telephone operator. My maternal great-grandfather was a real peace of work, although as the story goes he wasn't much for actual work, drifting from one odd job to another.

As the story goes Oliver was only a few years younger than my grandfather and was a happy go lucky kind of guy. Amy Jane, my maternal great-grandmother, did not stay married to Oliver's father very long at all either, if in fact she was actually married, as no one could really say if she was actually divorced from my maternal great grandfather.

My grandfather did complete high school and worked a variety of odd jobs in his teens and early twenties. This is all in the mid to late 1920s. He drove a truck from the "hills" up to Columbus on a fairly regular basis, hauling whatever he could find. Christmas trees, coal, lumber, whatever. My cousin, who I have always thought of more as an Uncle, remembers times when they only ate meat because my grandfather had stopped to visit them and brought some, from either down home or he bought it with some of his earnings.

Oliver apparently had been visiting the family at the time the letter was written and had found work at a beer garden or brewery in the Akron area and was explaining to my grandfather that he should come north where the jobs were plentiful.

I am not sure if my grandfather gave this serious thought or not, because shortly after this letter was written Oliver was killed. He was struck by lightening while standing under a tree.

Eventually my grandparents did leave Gallia County and came to Columbus. My grandfather got a job as a "fireman" on the rail road and made a living slinging coal for a number of years. He also worked second and third shift in a factory in what is now the Short North, during the war making munitions. A stick ball injury and a bum ear drum kept him out of the army. The railroad rented them a house on Central Avenue in the early years and later they moved to Grove City and bought a house of their own. This was an accomplishment for two people who left "the hills" with little more than their car and the clothes on their backs. After trying to make a living "down home" they faced the facts and moved. They had no other choice.

Later my grandfather worked at the Ohio Penn, which is now the Arena Distract. He survived the riots and would tear up, telling the story of an inmate who shoved him in a small closet, full of mops and buckets saying, "Captain, you be a kind man and a fair man, and I don't want to see you get hurt, but if you stay out here in the thick of it, they kill you. They want you all dead."

He did survive the riots, he was taken to the hospital for smoke inhalation. The man who locked him away, died in the riots. Most likely shot by corrections officers or killed by an inmate who had witnessed him tucking my grandfather away safely.

I found this letter, tucked in with a box of my mom's sewing stuff. Why? I have no idea. I know there is a box of other letters tucked away still at her place, which is actually now my brother's place.

This letter got me thinking. How will we keep our family histories in the digital age? I seldom keep emails, I just read them, act on them and delete them. Sometimes I keep really special notes and cards, but then again, I don't get long letters these days. Even just 20 years ago, when I was a teenager, I wrote long letters. Sometimes in English to friends in the States and much of the time in German to my pen pals and such.

For historians, letters have been a wonderful window to the past. But what if their aren't letters? What if we have no first hand accounts of life, as normal people lived it. Will my blog survive for my great grandchildren to read? (goodness I sure hope so) With all the changes to technology and the possible electromagnet changes, servers and hard drives could be erased in a blink of the eye.

As the pencil fades and the paper weathers, this note penned in a masculine scrawl, from a man I never met and who lived a very short life, is a piece of my family's past, which is fading away with each passing year.