The Lazy Eater

Just now as I was standing over the sink eating an enormous slice of watermelon, it occurred to me that I have a somewhat unusual method of disposing of the seeds.  I don't spit them out.  Instead, I flick them out with my finger before I even take a bite.  And the reason I do this is because I am a lazy eater*.

I prefer to have my food ready to chew easily and swallow on immediate contact with my mouth.  This is why I don't enjoy foods like ribs, which require an awful lot of chewing and picking around cartilage and whatever before the actual meat can be consumed.  I used to always carefully trim all meat of excess fat and then cut it into bite-sized pieces before I even commenced eating.  I don't do this much anymore, mostly because food in smaller pieces gets colder a lot faster than larger pieces, a consideration in our cold-ass house.  But it's still how I prefer to eat.

I don't want to have to work hard for my food.  I don't want a challenge.  I just want to eat.

So what about you, poppets?  Do you enjoy challenging foods, or would you rather consume foods that require no effort?

* Because I'm sure some very well-meaning person is going to take it upon him or herself to suggest that perhaps I should just eat seedless watermelon . . . no.  No way.  Seedless watermelon is to real watermelon what network television is to PBS.  That is, tasteless and offensive in comparison.  Seedless watermelon is an abomination of nature and should never be willingly consumed.  There.  I said it.

Mulberries, Scapes, and a Surprise

Yes, it is indeed Mulberry Time at Blackrock once again.  Unfortunately, this year I am doing exactly nothing with the mulberries.

I KNOW.  THE SADNESS.

I just . . . I can't.  I can't deal with the tarp and the beating of the tree; I can't bend over to pick them up; I can't spend hours making juice and canning it.  It is not happening this year.  Blame it all on the coming boy-child and the crippling effect he is having on me.

But the current boy-child!  My my, does he love those mulberries.  He had his first mulberry encounter a couple of days ago, when we randomly went into the ram pasture while A. was pulling out stones from there for another stone wall he was building elsewhere, and when I discovered the mulberries were just starting to get ripe and fall off the tree, that pretty much ensured Cubby's entertainment for the next half hour.

He has quickly learned to eat the dark ones ("That one's too red!" he announces, before throwing it far away), to avoid the ones that are close to the sheep shit that inevitably accumulates under the tree, and to beat the tree with sticks to make the berries fall down.

Does it get any better for a two-year-old?  Maybe next year he can do all the work for me.

Mulberry Time always coincides with garlic scapes.  I snapped off all the scapes this afternoon and sauteed them in bacon fat for dinner.  Man, do I love sauteed garlic scapes.

And now, the surprise!

While Cubby and I were visiting the mulberry tree today for snacktime, I spied one of the hens wandering around in the hollow down there.  And . . . what's that moving behind her?  ARE THOSE CHICKS?!

Why yes, yes they were.  This was the hen that went missing a couple of weeks ago.  We knew she was gone.  We were hoping she had stolen away to sit on a nest somewhere and hadn't just become hawk bait or something.  And there she was.  Foraging quite capably, with two small chicks hopping in her wake.  Now we need to integrate her back into the flock, because those two chicks won't last long free-ranging with their mom like that.  And then we wait to see if we have more egg-producers or . . . chicken dinners.

Either way, a nice surprise for a random Tuesday.

The Silver Lining

Well, hi there!  How are you today?  Cheerful?  Glum?  Sweating incessantly and anticipating a night of very little sleep thanks to the stifling humidity?

Yeah, that last one may just be me.

But!  Lest you think this is going to be yet ANOTHER opportunity for me to bitch and moan about heat and humidity and this totally unfair upstate New York weather that freezes our asses half the year and then tries to melt us into puddles of misery for a couple of more months in the summer . . .

Oh wait.  Looks like I just did the whining part.

ANYWAY.

What I was actually going to say is that one thing I really love about hot weather is how easy it is to get Cubby dressed.  Underwear, shorts, t-shirt, done.  Compare that to getting him ready to go in the winter, which required underwear, long underwear, long-sleeved t-shirt, flannel shirt, wool sweater, wool socks, and wool slippers.  To go outside meant wrestling him into a snowsuit, boots, mittens, and a hat.  I never failed to remember the scene in A Christmas Story when the mom is trying to force Randy into his Michelin Man snowsuit.

Going outside these days means I make sure Cubby has on sunscreen and some kind of footwear.  Sometimes I even let him go barefoot, if I'm feeling lazy (always) and bathtime is approaching.

And there you have it.  The silver lining to the heat.  I knew it had to be in there somewhere.

For Purposes of Comparison

After sorting the many, many bags and bins of small boys' clothing we have accumulated--and discovering that WOW we have WAY more infant socks than anyone really needs, especially as they're an essentially useless item--I washed the smallest stuff in preparation for the coming small person.  In the load of 3-6 month size clothing, I threw in Cubby's current pajama bottoms as well.  As I was folding the clothes in preparation for putting them away, I was struck by the size difference in the pants Cubby wore when he was three months old and the pants he wears now.

Also struck again by the irritating reality that it is virtually impossible to buy pajamas for a toddler that are not obnoxiously emblazoned with some copyrighted cartoon character.

The big boy who wears those lurid pajama bottoms was also adamant that he must go outside this morning, despite the fact that it was POURING rain.  Luckily, his father was already outside, so I put Cubby in his rain jacket with the hood, shoved his feet into rubber boots, and sent him out.  Ten minutes later, I went outside to find this.

So much for dressing appropriately for the weather.

A. informed me that Cubby wanted to "swim" in the "creek" on the driveway.  Meaning he wanted to lie face down in the torrents of water flowing down the driveway.  This is what he does when he goes in the gully, and he was very excited to find that the creek had come to him.  So A., obliging father that he is, stripped him down to his pants, and allowed the kid to wallow in the mud for awhile.  

Cubby also sampled some of the flowing water.  Meaning he put his face in it and drank it.  Gross.  When asked how it tasted, he said, "Muddy."  Yeah, I bet.

That's all.  Happy Saturday, duckies.

Possibly I Shouldn't Admit To This

But you know, it's just so representative of my life, I feel I must.

I'm sure you all remember that Cubby has recently been relocated to a new bedroom?  Well, this relocation meant that I now had access to the Secret Stair again.  The Secret Stair leads from the library to Cubby's old bedroom*, and so it was locked shut from the inside of the bedroom to keep Cubby from attempting the steep steps unbeknownst to us, and then blockaded from the bottom so the Devil Cat wouldn't work the non-latching door open and prowl around outside Cubby's door while said child was trying to sleep.

There are a lot of mischievous creatures at Blackrock.

That meant that the Secret Stair had not been looked in lo these many months.  I was pretty sure there were some bottles and things in there that I might need for the new baby, plus I was VERY sure it could use some cleaning, so I braced myself, opened the door, and started sorting all the junk that had accumulated in there before it got closed off.

I found, in addition to many random papers, books, and magazines, the sandals I was looking for just yesterday, a pair of wool pants that A. had been asking about a long time ago, and three butternut squashes.  Which had been in there since, uh, October.  And yet, miraculously, were not rotted into mush.  In fact, they look perfect.  I haven't cut them open yet, but I must say I'm impressed with their longevity.

Then I made my way to the landing at the top, outside the bedroom door.  When A. was putting insulation in the attic this winter, he dropped down the plastic wrappers from the insulation through the attic trap door that opens into the Secret Stair.  I hadn't known that plastic was up there, so I went to get a big garbage bag to throw it out.  As I was gathering it up and pulling it off the landing, I heard something fall to the bottom of the steps.  I figured it was a work glove or something.

Then I saw the small piece of skull on the landing.

And then I looked down at the base of the steps, where I saw the most mummified, horrifying squirrel carcass I have ever had the misfortune to come across.

Except I didn't know it was a squirrel until I called A. down to identify it for me and he told me he had found it in the attic--already dessicated-- and thrown it down the trap door in preparation for disposing of it, then accidentally covered it with the plastic and forgot about it.

OH MY GOD, THAT IS SO GROSS.

I mean, it wasn't rotting and smelly or anything, but still.  Mummified squirrels falling from on high are no one's idea of a good time.

A. took it away. Along with the plastic, which I refused to have anything more to do with on the grounds that I had no confidence it wasn't concealing more horrors.  I finished my cleaning with trepidation, but didn't encounter anything worse than cobwebs after that.

I knew I was avoiding that staircase for a reason.

* Does this make anyone else think of  the game "Clue"?  It was Miss Scarlet in the library with the pipe wrench!  And she escaped via the Secret Stair.

I Just Love These Unexpected Breaks

Remember when A. took Cubby to see the pile driver in the lake, giving me a glorious and totally unplanned 45 minutes in which to do whatever I wanted?  Okay, so I ended up just eating some breakfast and writing an extremely short post, but whatever.  I was doing it sans Cubby.

Well, today at about 4 p.m. A.'s friend Jason called to let us know he was at our beach and on his way up with some more trout for us.  He dropped off the fish. I gave him one of my extra tomato seedlings and invited him to dinner.  He asked if A. wanted to go out in the boat with him to fish on his way back to his truck where he would get his boat out of the lake. A. asked if Cubby could go too. Jason said sure.  And . . . here I am alone.

Dinner's ready.  It's not quite 5:30 p.m.  I don't suppose they'll be gone much longer, but this time I got a whole hour and a half in which to make dinner and waste time online.

I am all for male bonding if it means an empty house.

The Fun We Have Around Here, You Have No Idea

Today was a pretty shitty day weather-wise, which meant that it was also a pretty shitty day Cubby-wise.

Cubby, as you may have gathered by now, does not appreciate significant amounts of indoor time.  It results in a specific shriek of a pitch and decibel level that I particularly abhor.

Luckily, we received in the mail today a package of newborn-size cloth diapers as a gift.  So several precious shriek-free minutes were devoted to an absolutely hilarious game of, "Does Beaver have a poopy diaper?"

He never did, in case you were wondering.  Those beavers have impressive bowel control.

As entertainment goes, it's a long way from a good book, but it sure beats the hell out of the shrieking.