Bitter Sweet

This is bittersweet. It's a vine that goes pretty much unnoticed until the fall, when the orange and red colors just grab you and make you want to bring them home. As children, my mother has us keep an eye out for it on our walks to the slough each weekend. We'd then clip it, or if we were lucky we'd have to climb a tree to clip it so she could use it to "jolly" the house. I've been looking for it this fall, my memory of it jolted by my parent's health decline, but hadn't found it until we were walking home from the beach at their place last weekend. I clipped it on our way home and jollied my own house it it.

On our walk this weekend, at the edge of Bull Frog Lake in the forest preserves closer to my childhood home, I spotted this on the edge of the path. It just jumped out at me, memory and reality all at once.

Our weekend hike was in mostly mundane surroundings. We chose a popular mountain biking and expert cross country skiing path - not a highly recommended route with a 3 1/2 year old, but no one got hurt. We did come across a huge maple that had come down recently and witnessed the bug damage in the core. And we climbed some wonderful hills, which explains it's attraction to the mountain bikers. But it was the lake itself that most enchanted the kids - the rest of the woods was smothered by buck thorn. A narrow foot path took them right to the cattails, which they picked and opened to see the seeds.

And then, just as suddenly as it came upon us, the one day weekend was gone. Mark got to spend an hour with the kids this morning before heading back to the plant. Bitter sweet.

I'm not surviving

This is one of three, only three, pictures in our camera from November. We are a family that documents every other breathing minute of our lives. We have had three pictures in nine days. It's a good one, though, isn't it?

This is our second week of the outage. I know in my brain it's a good thing for the nuclear power industry to shut down the plants every year and fix the problems they've accumulated. But it's a really bad thing for me and my family. During the year, I always feel like Mark is paged in the middle of the night when a toilet needs plunging - "Who is Gary and why is he in my bedroom?" is one of my more infamous five a.m. questions.

What happened to my house? Where did Flylady fly off to? What about my routines, my schedule, my full house dusting on Mondays to control allergies? And where, exactly, is my laundry? I have a fabulous three section, wheeled laundry sorter in the basement - an extravagance made reality by a gift certificate from my brother to The Container Store for my birthday last year. It's hard to believe that a laundry sorter will change your life, but this one did. Until last week. Mark is so exhausted from his 12 hour schedule, the fifty mile each way commute, his psycho , demanding, also sleep deprived (depraved?) boss, that he doesn't carry down the laundry daily. The laundry sorter's industrial strength Velcro and aluminum frame collapsed from the burden of too many whites, colors and darks. It's really a metaphor for the entire household, this shinny new collapsed thing.

I skipped the gym today - let's not mention the many, many reasons this was a bad idea - in order to vacuum up an entire third rabbit from my kitchen and dining room floors. Roomba has been going most nights - the kids want their allowance - but without the regular vacuum, the rabbit hair gets tucked into every nook and cranny that he can't get to. Honestly, the hair I sucked up could have made something fabulous for someone who knows how to spin. I also vacuumed up the main stairs, quite an accomplishment as the rest of my family seems to be waiting for a stair vacuuming robot to be invented. In doing so, I managed to miss the doorbell ringing and a new-to-homeschooling Mom living mere blocks from me dropping off a check for a field trip.

But it's not just the house, that's only the part that affects me the most. The Little Man said to me today "Daddy-o is my new friend. He's my Daddy." The older two are enjoying their father giving them spelling, grammar, handwriting, math and reading each morning, but they miss him dearly at night. Our dinner routine has vanished. And two nights in a row our nine year old has slept on the floor of our room out of loneliness for his father. Most of the rest of the time the kids are all at each other's throats. I need a mute button.

I'm not surviving. The kids aren't surviving, unless you thing a touch of Lord of the Flies is a good thing. But mostly, Mark isn't surviving. He's getting more total hours of sleep than before, but his biorhythms are all off and he's got those puffy under eye things that cosmetic counter girls lunge after. Maybe he should head to Nordstrom's tomorrow???

Our New Library

The new LaGrange library opened quietly over the weekend. A big opening celebration is planned for this coming weekend, but we couldn't wait to check out our new space.

We've been six long weeks without a library, seven weeks without being able to request anything on line. Our library card allows us to check out material from any library in the suburban library system and local libraries were very helpful during the closure. But I've felt like we've been homeschooling with one hand tied behind my back because my late night catalogue hunting and requesting was cut off. As soon as I could get back into the system I requested a Mandarin Chinese instruction for kids DVD, a Bill Cosby CD, books on ancient Africa, sandhill cranes, drawing, papermaking and wetlands. Those are our current interests.

Our old library was an uninviting architectural nightmare. The staff has always been fantastic and helpful, the materials have been good and the system has always allowed me to get almost anything I've even needed. If the suburban system we belong to doesn't have an item, the librarians are more than willing to search elsewhere for it. But we didn't spend much time in the old building, it wasn't a place to hang out. When the community passed a referendum for a new building, our library temporarily relocated to an old warehouse building bigger and slightly more inviting than the old space.

This new library is truly a wonder. The children's section practically defines the word inviting. The picture books are low to the ground and shelved with the covers facing out instead of the spines hiding their wonder. There is a large reading area and a specially crafted reading tree - a hollowed out burr oak sculpture with floor pillows where kids snuggle in for a good read. The children's program room is large, inviting with a child sized door and an taller person's door, beautiful panoramic mural and child sized chairs.

We spent a good hour or so there on Saturday, learned the new self check out system, briefly went upstairs and had a great time. Many more hours will be spent in this charming place in the years to come, I'm sure.

Boys on a Log

We had another great outing with my Roots&Shoots group yesterday. The forest preserve was so far off the beaten path that four moms stayed with me, which turned out to be a great help. We got completely lost on our first attempt into Spears Woods. I had thought there was only one trail head, but there were two. The first was narrow and petered out in the leaves after a few short minutes. The second was a wide berth for horses, mountain bikers and cross country skiers. Once we found that one, we were on our way.

My oldest ran on ahead to show the kids a log we had discovered across a ravine. They all clambered across that one, safely only about four feet off the ground. Then the looked around and saw one about 10 feet off the ground. The kids who trusted their balance went across, the others knew their limits.

We hiked into a meadow along a narrow side path that was not marked on my little map. The scenery was absolutely beautiful, the path had endless curiosities for the kids, who ran far ahead of my with the Little Man on my shoulders. Once they were all out of my line of sight, I got a bit nervous and left my guy examining a pile of horse droppings with "Ka-wen" as he calls her and caught up to the rest of the group engaged in an argument about which way to go. We all examined the path and decided on a route that felt right.

After enjoying the sight of a frantically slithering garter snake, we happened across the slough we had set out to explore earlier. Here the kids played with algae, mud and other vegetation, got really dirty and had lots of fun. When I tried to tear them away from this fun, one actually said "Not now, we're having the time of our lives!"

How can you argue with that?

We survived

We made it through Halloween. After much whining on my part, we are still standing. Here is the rabbit costume, completed. It stopped shedding after I put some fray stop on the seams inside. The other two costumes obviously didn't require much effort on my part. The skeleton, funny ghost mask guy went trick or treating with friends (and their dads pulling a cart of adult beverages), causing me just a little anxiety.



Now, I have this second picture to prove that I am the biggest whiner ever! The kid in the black coat? My friend Karen actually sewed that costume! It's a fully lined, button up the whole front, pleated back coat that billowed dramatically in the wind. Fabulous. He's some character from The Matrix, I've never seen it. And there I was complaining about a silly six pieces I had to sew together.

My Thomas the Tank Engine had the worst trouble with Halloween. After going to two houses with his sister and coming home to eat his candy, he was told he couldn't have it. They were Milk Duds and Snickers. Danger, Will Robinson! My carefully placed organic lollipops were rejected. We went to another house, M&Ms this time and again he was offered the lollipop. He collapsed in a heap with the realization that the entire evening was going to be this way. After removing his costume and demanding to be carried, I dug through the basement to find the stroller we never use anymore. He rode in that as I took the Rabbit ("I'm NOT a bunny!") and her Spiderman and Batman friends for a couple blocks of loot gathering. The Rabbit gets it, she kept passing the dangerous stuff to her friends.

When the Skeleton came home, two thirds of his bucket were placed in our candy bowl to go back out the door. He gets it too, it's the advantage of age. Thomas the Tank Engine eventually tried his Starburst and Skittles, but didn't like any of them. He really enjoyed passing out our little toys at first, but when he saw the candy we were re-gifting, he was upset all over again.

My organic lollipops are still being rejected.