In Lieu of Air Conditioning

If you have no air conditioning and experience two days of temperatures well into the 90s with humidity that results in a "Real Feel" of 100 degrees, it really helps to have a lake.  With private beach, if possible.  And a dock.

That little speck at the end of the dock is Cubby, of course, with a watchful A. in the foreground. 

You'll just have to imagine me floating in the water there near the dock, which is exactly what I did for an hour or so both days.  Our particular spot on the lake is nice because the depth is no more than a couple of feet for quite a distance out, so Cubby can walk around without fear.  Though he still prefers to have a hand on the dock at all times.

Too bad I couldn't sleep in the lake, because nothing was going to result in sleep when the bedroom was 90 degrees.  I'm really, really tired now.  But tonight is supposed to be much better, so I have great hopes of a good night's sleep.  Well, as good as it gets when eight months pregnant.

Oh, and an update on the Great Ice Cream Disappointment.  I called Perry's (which is a very nice, family-run business located in upstate New York) and told them of my cookie-less Cookies and Cream.  A coupon for a free container of ice cream is even now on its way to me.  Which I will, of course, use for White Lightning, NOT Cookies and Cream, because that wasn't even what I wanted in the first place.  

But the heat advisory is over now, so the need for ice cream (and the lake) is not so urgent.  

Highlighting My Shortcomings

Awhile ago when I was at the grocery store, I bought some chalk for Cubby.  We have a lot of stone and concrete patios and walkways around the house, so I figured he could draw to his heart's content outside.  That way I get to sit still for a five-minute stretch and he gets to draw without constant admonitions from me that crayons/pens/pencils are only for use on the paper.  No, Cubby, not that paper; that's a book.  That's a magazine.  Those are Grandma's work papers.  THIS PAPER HERE.  ONLY THIS.

It's not good for the budding artist within, I'm sure.  So freedom to create via chalk. Sounds good to me.  Except he doesn't really want to draw by himself, mostly because he, uh, can't.  Like, at all.  Instead he hands me the chalk and makes a series of increasingly difficult demands for drawings, using the incorrect pronoun because he does that.

So it goes like this:  "I draw boats."  Meaning "YOU draw a boat, Mommy." And I draw a really pathetic-looking boat, because I cannot, in actual fact, draw worth a damn.  Then he continues with, "I draw propeller on boat."  And I draw something that kind of resembles a propeller if you squint and ingest large quantities of alcohol before viewing.  "I draw steering wheel."  Okay, that I can manage.

And then he hits me with something like, "I draw gears."  Uh.  Or "I draw motors."

Right.  I don't even know what a motor actually looks like or what might be in it, much less have any confidence in my ability to reproduce it with a piece of chalk.  At about that time I tell him Mommy is done with drawing and now Cubby can draw.

I should've worked harder in my middle school art class.  It would have been way more useful than algebra.

Living the Nightmare

You know what people's reaction is when they hear you're due to have a baby in July?  A grimace and a comment along the lines of, "Well, you're in for a hot summer!"

Although actually, it would suck a lot more to be due at the end of August, because then you'd have an extra month of pregnant heat exhaustion to deal with.  Though I'm not convinced that cuddling close to a newborn in a heat wave--since the kid will, we presume, expect to be fed with great frequency and that happens while in very close proximity to Mom and her feeding mechanisms AHEM--won't be just as bad as being pregnant during a heat wave.

ANYWAY.

What I was going to say was that ever since I found out I was pregnant and calculated my due date, I've been dreading the whole hugely-pregnant-in-the-heat-of-summer-while-chasing-a-toddler phase. Aaaand here I am.  Hugely pregnant?  Check.  Heat of summer?  Official heat advisory in effect until Thursday WHEE, so . . . check AND HOW.  Chasing a toddler.  CHECKCHECKCHECK, SLOW DOWN, CUBBY, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD AND YOUR HUGELY PREGNANT MOTHER.

But you know, in a way it's kind of a relief to have gotten to the point I was fretting about for so long.  I mean, no, I wouldn't mind if it were twenty degrees cooler, but I really don't think I'm any hotter than I already am during the summer (that is VERY, in case you have missed my extensive bitching on the subject for the past four years).  And we don't sleep when it's hot anyway, and I don't sleep in the last stages of pregnancy anyway, so it all kind of goes together in a grand conglomeration of misery.

That said, anytime this kid wants to come or Mama N. would like to send some cooler weather our way, you will not hear me complaining.

Edited to add:  Also on the topic of hot weather survival is ice cream, because I have been eating enormous quantities of it lately.  We were out of my preferred flavor (Perry's White Lightning--dark chocolate ice cream with white chocolate mint fudgy stuff OH MY GOD SO GOOD) and I knew there was no way I was getting through this coming heat advisory without it.  So we took a trip to the nearby market in a nearby village specifically to get this ice cream.  And they were out.  DAMMIT.  My runner-up flavor was Perry's Cookies and Cream.  I just scooped out a bowl, and you know what?  It is not Cookies and Cream.  Despite the container being clearly labeled as such, there is no doubt at all that the Cookies part done got left out.  It's vanilla. Plain, unadulterated vanilla, without the saving grace of cookies.  That, my friends, is what I call a comical screw by the universe.


I'm eating it anyway, with some maple syrup.  But still, SCREW YOU RIGHT BACK, UNIVERSE.

I'm Seeing a Pattern Here

Apparently our lawn tractors frequently break down for Father's Day.  Their little gift to A., I suppose, because for two of the last three years, he's spent part of his Father's Day fixing our lawn tractor.  Including yesterday.  Last year, he spent it pulling the shed straight and bracing it so it wouldn't collapse on the MiL's car.

He does these things voluntarily, I might add.  I told him that after the dump run on Saturday morning, he had the whole weekend to do whatever he wanted.  He was paralyzed by indecision.  So on Saturday he ended up painting the front porch steps and mowing, until the lawn tractor threw a blade off and then he spent another hour or so taking apart the mower deck and J-B Welding the blade back on.

Then we went down to the beach and A. went swimming with Cubby.

Yesterday morning, again, I told A. he could do whatever he wanted for Father's Day.  So he re-located the movable sheep fence to create a place for the sheep to graze on the front lawn.  Then he installed some heavy-gauge wire across the top of the newest stone wall in the front of the garden, to brace up the sagging gate.  Then he re-attached the mower deck to the tractor and mowed a very overgrown lawn.  Then he raked up the mowed grass and delivered it to his sheep to eat, as an experiment.

And then we took Cubby to a lock on the Erie Canal to fish.  So I guess that was the real Father's Day treat for A.  Well, that and the lamb shoulder roast I made for dinner.

A. and I obviously look for different things on our Special Days.

Bring on the Berries

Picking strawberries with your child sounds like such a wholesome--dare I say idyllic?--thing to do, doesn't it?  Yes.  But "picking" is really just a euphemism for "eating."

Cubby and I accompanied the MiL to the pick-your-own farm yesterday to load up on strawberries.  This is the same farm A. went to with his parents and the same farm the MiL went to with her parents.  That's a long family history of strawberry picking.  

We went with the MiL because I figured that way at least one of us would actually pick in a somewhat efficient manner.  I had no illusions that Cubby would help at all.  In fact, I assumed I would spend most of the time chasing him up and down the rows.

I did.

I filled one bucket, though I picked a lot more than that because about every other berry went into that boy's gaping strawberry-smeared maw.  The MiL picked three buckets full.  She froze some last night and made a batch of strawberry jam.

I made strawberry-rhubarb jam today with some more of the berries.  Cubby helped.

Mashing is an excellent activity for a toddler, provided you have a really big pot to contain the enthusiastic splashing that will ensue.

Shortly after this I kicked him out of the kitchen and enlisted A. to watch him so I could do the boiling of jam and filling of jars for canning without a small child under my feet.  Safer for all that way.

I canned five pints of jam.  It is entirely possible this will be the only canning I will do this year.  Maybe I can get Cubby to do it instead.

Allow Me To Get a Wonderful 80s Hair Band Song Stuck In Your Head

It's the final countdown.*  As of today, I am exactly one month from my official due date.

Let that one sink in for a minute, if you will.

Of course, if this child is anything like his older brother, he won't wait for official, but will instead make his entrance any time he damn well pleases.  In Cubby's case, that was almost two weeks before his actual due date.  So really, we're on red alert right now at all times.

I would not be sad if this child came early.  I only have two things left on my mental to-do list (in case you're interested: purging the current child's overflowing bookshelf downstairs and sending my sister-in-law the gifts for her coming baby, due a month after mine).  I even managed to clean out the enormous toy box yesterday, which, believe it or not, was actually full.  Of course, the reason I cleaned it out was because Cubby was searching for one particular small Lego piece that had fallen to the very bottom and so everything was thrown out anyway in search of the elusive helicopter blade piece.  So I figured I might as well just do the sorting and full-on clean-out.

Now there's some space for the deluge of toys sure to come for the next kid.  He will not be getting his own toy box, so this will just have to be a lesson in sharing and caring (or, let's be real, jealously guarding and fighting) between brothers.

In other baby news, there will be no photos of the new chicks in the near future, for one simple reason: I can't get close enough to them.  They range in a very large area with their mother, who sticks to brushy areas and is as flighty as . . . well, as a semi-wild hen with new chicks.  So photos are a no-go.  Sorry, duckies.  Them's the breaks.

* I really hope you watch that video, if only to marvel at the spectacular effect of male perms and eye makeup.  Men can be just as pretty as women, if only they're willing to work for it.

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.