And The Living Was Easy

June 2013

The main thing that happened this summer, in the time of No Blogging, was that my sister and her family came to the US from Australia and stayed for six glorious weeks. We hadn't been together in a year and a half. Which is a long time in the lives of some of these people. Here's the before shot:

October 2011

This was the picture I described taking in this post. Which also has a ripping yarn about a pair of nightstands. Look at the kids! And look at Dad--so much less of him. And more of baby Gabriel. And of Laura, who is now taller than her Aunt Amy.

And the Nike pullover being worn by Matt in the top picture was also worn by Jason in the bottom picture. That's mountain house style for you.

It was a relatively last-minute thing that they could come. From late June until they left the first week of August, we made it our main priority to spend time with them, here in the ATL and up at the mountain house. They also squeezed in trips to see Dave and Katie on their forty haunted acres, and a trip to Florida as well. Y'all, it was so nice. The kids were perfect ages to disappear for long periods of time. And we talked and talked and talked. Nobody ate a cricket this time either.

Then, THEN, we all went to Disney World. In August. Of our own free will. When this idea was first broached, Matt and I were like, NOOOOOooooo....But Amy usually gets us to do what she wants and that's what she did and we were glad we did. I'll save that for its own post. Too much magic! The story about the corndogs alone needs its own post.

Here are a few more snaps from our time together. Summah flashback!

Dudes

Gabe

A happy Fourth of July

This is how tired I like children to be.

Nate and Hank!

Ava and Laura

Sibs

Thank you for indulging me in this summer throwback. Basically, besides kid activities and lots of sweating and mediocre tennis, the salient fact of the summer was the Australian clan visiting us. Now it's like you were there! Go get some rest for that scrolling finger! xoxox

I Would Have Done Such Wonderful Things

Such wonderful things with that golden hour that was taken from us today. I know that complaining about something to do with clocks is zzzzz but there it is. I kind of lost the hour in which I was going to blog a real post.

What I did instead of blog with the limited time available to me today:

Woke up late, still at the mountain house. Farewelled Matt's departing family.

Had some coffee and ate supper leftovers for brunch. Didn't want to take a lot of food home.

Started reading Death Comes to Pemberley by PD James. If you are an Austen fan, you would really like it. Usually when someone attempts to imitate Austen's style and tone, it makes me feel a deep, deep sadness. But not in this case.

Texted with four people to find out what was going on, in real time, with our Sunday team's tennis match today. The news was mixed.

Played a board game that Laura had spent the morning making. It involved buying lottery tickets to get ahead and win. Hmm.

Stripped/made a bed. Policed our area and gathered our belongings. Cleaned the kitchen. Directed children through the sub-par performance of cleaning jobs. While Laura was on her knees cleaning something off the kitchen floor, she said, "I feel like Cinderella!" Matt said, "Only the Cinderella who always gets to go to the ball? And doesn't ever work?" I chimed in that there was a name for that Cinderella--it's the evil stepsisters. Laura harrumphed.

Then I gave Hank some glass cleaner and some paper towels, and honestly, watching a young child attempt to clean a pane of glass effectively...it is just something. Something character-building. I showed him how to do it better and then we did it together and a lot of paper towels died in the process.

Read some more while Matt and the kids had one last hot tub.

More light reading.

Shut down the mountain house and locked the door behind us. It is always strange to me to think of it sitting there, cooling down, empty and waiting, the rays of sun traveling across the rooms day after day and nobody there. Except the ladybugs, who are wintering in the corners.

Sat in the passenger seat and provided color commentary on all of life while Matt drove us home to Atlanta.

Played a little Rock Band 3 with the family. Found that child bedtime came quickly, more quickly than the kids felt was just. Matt announced, like the closing-time bartender, "You don't have to go to sleep but you can't stay here."

Watched an episode of Game of Thrones with Matt. Watched the very first episode again because now we know who the heck everyone is.

Sat in bed and instead of blogging, let Matt show me some of the new parts of his game, Dungeon Blitz. It's looking great.

Wrote this post.

Tomorrow morning's wakeup is gonna be tough. xoxo

Of Buckets

We are in the mountains this weekend with Matt's mom and brother. It was a very quiet day today. Highlights were: Staying in bed until 11am while Betty tended our children, playing boardgames, inspecting a mudslide that has buried one of the mountain roads, and washing rich brown mud off of two dogs.

Mudslide or landslide? I don't know the difference.

Hank can somehow read now and that has expanded his game access.

During an afternoon hot tub with the kids, they asked Matt to give them riddles and puzzles. This is one of their favorite things. He came up with a set of questions that everyone had fun with, and I thought you might like to use them with your littler people.

He started by telling the kids that they had two buckets, a five-gallon and a three-gallon, and they were standing on the shore of a lake with unlimited access to water. They must come up with exactly two gallons. How to do it?

After some cogitation and false starts--Laura wanted to just eyeball the amounts of water in the buckets, Hank wanted to go get two gallons of milk and compare--even Hank realized that five minus three is two, and that you fill the five-gallon, pour as much as will go into the three-gallon, and you are left with a certain two-gallons of water.

One of the ground rules was that Hank was allowed to guess and think aloud, but Laura couldn't speak up until she was exactly sure of the correct answer. When she broke this rule, Matt ordered her to get out of the hot tub and run a lap around the house. Hank was then like, "Can I run a lap?" and wanted to use the physical challenge as an escape from thinking about the problems. Eventually we let him run a lap too, because why would I prevent a child from running around outside in a wet bathing suit on a winter day?

With that basic bucket puzzle theme established, with the five and the three-gallon buckets, Matt built up to asking them how to get one gallon, how to get seven gallons, etc.

I admit the seven gallons stumped me for a second. I have no ego in this area and I don't mind saying.

Play around with it, it's fun!

After the kids got out and went inside, we were like, "Yeah, those two are bright enough but I don't think they're exactly geniuses." I just have to trust that with their other strengths, they'll make their way in the world somehow.

That's the scene here today. What are y'all up to?
xoxo   

Moonshine and Magnolia

Her: "It'll be like Abbey Road but in Sylva."  Me: !!!

Mountain house reading.

Dolled up.

Happy New Year to you! And you. And to you, little blog.

We were up at the mountain house in western NC for the weekend leading up to New Year's Eve.  Man, the stuff the happens up there. It really is a different place.

One case in point: Mom and Dad returned from the little bookstore one afternoon and reported that they'd seen a guy--a kinda militia-looking dude with a crewcut and a Krav Maga t-shirt on--buying multiple copies of A Witches' Bible. He said they were gifts for the members of his coven, and that that night was a special celebration for them. Then he said the German name for it, which sounded to their ears like "Frauyellen," but I'm sure that's not how you spell it, and it meant that it was a night to "celebrate the women."

He said they were all going down to the lake, and that they would wash the women's feet by the light of the moon.

I actually thought that sounded delightful. I mean, probably chilly. But I just thought, there is stuff you could be into that makes way, WAY less sense to me than that. Like golf, or the Tea Party. Sure, he is not the person that I would have thought would be up in that, but carry on people. Carry right on, good mountain folk.

.....

Another case: On the afternoon of New Year's Eve, Dad cozened Matt, my brother Dave, and me into going with him on his usual walk around the mountain. We've done this lots of times, and it's more for fitness than nature contemplation, as it involves about 50 minutes of briskly climbing steep hills. So, okay, but on this day he said he had added a section on a forest track that extended it to about three miles and just over an hour. We were game, so we set out.

A little ways in, we ran across some neighbors from down the way, friends of mom and dad's who may or may not have a small-batch home distillery for spiritous liquors. I cannot say for sure, in case there are any revenuers reading this, or perhaps Boss Hogg. We exchanged the pleasantries of the season and complimented him on a recent batch of his work that we had sampled. Then we went on our way again.

We headed into the new portion of the walk, and I kept saying, "I mean, where ARE we?" It was just parts of that mountain I ain't never seen before. There are just a handful of houses on the whole side of the mountain, but somehow this was like, really truly the back side of nowhere. And it also seemed like more than three miles. As we climbed a hill, me thinking we would crest it and see Shangri-la, who should reappear but the crafty neighbor, coming the other way. I was like, how did he get here? We left him way back there and, I don't know, is he a leprechaun?

He hailed us, we stopped, and he handed my dad a mason jar filled with almond liqueur that he'd made. He had gone home to fetch it and set out to meet us again. I still don't know exactly how he knew where we'd be, but probably leprechaun powers. But yeah, mason jar of hooch. That's some mountain hospitality. We opened it and all sampled it, and it did fortify us for the walk home.

Which turned out to be much longer than three miles, Dad having misundercalculated, and was in fact closer to eleventy-nine thousand miles. But it the walk hadn't been so long, we might not have come upon the mason jar of booze.

....

So we did that little hike and then the youngsters among us left our children with mom and dad and got gussied up and went to Asheville for some New Year's revelry, where I danced for two hours basically sober, then we saw the New Year in, and came home and hot tubbed the New Year in some more, and I went to bed and was awakened by Laura coming down with a stomach flu, which I then proceeded to get, and was sick in bed all of January 1 but it's all okay now.

And that's the rest of the story.

What are you up to? Did you have a nice Christmas? I bet you did. xoxox

Just Try Not To Look Weird

Do I not have any puffier clothing in which to be photographed?

We are back home in Atlanta tonight, somewhat grudgingly. It was such a good relaxed time up in the mountains, I kind of didn't want to leave. I mean, it's basically ideal--I'm almost embarrassed--because whenever we're up there with a grandparent, we're minimally responsible for the custodial care of our children. Grandparents are up early, they're making breakfast, they're dispensing pearls of wisdom. Everyone is happy and I can keep to my preferred sleep hours, 2-10am.

6:15 is gonna come early tomorrow morning.

This morning before we all went our separate ways, I herded the family outside for Andy to take our picture. I need something to put on Christmas cards. When we had first awakened this morning, I said to Matt, "I need to get a picture for Christmas cards," and he goes, "We don't have a picture?" And I'm like, no. And he's all, I don't believe you? And I'm like, it's complicated but just put on pants. I mean, Reader, is there anything less rewarding than explaining to a man why you need a certain picture of the family at a certain time in a certain way? But we got some good shots, and then tonight I was messing with different xmas card layouts, and I showed one to Matt, and he goes, "Well I look like a sad troll, but sure." So I picked a different picture even though I looked fractionally hotter in the sad troll one. Compromise!

Lots going on this week. A couple get-togethers with friends, for which I need to bring food, and a tennis match, for which I need to bring food. And several things I'm forgetting right now. And tomorrow Hank has to bring a Christmas stocking and "24 like items" to school. I think the teacher is giving them little goodies every day in December? I have a bunch of Smencils to send, which used to be cool. In 2011 they were the new silly bandz. Don't know if they still are.

Good luck with your reentry. Right now I must to bed. Sad trombone!

Shopping Small

Nichol's House Antiques in Sylva, NC, where more is more.

Betty with wildlife

Today we went in different directions. Matt took the kids to see Wreck-it Ralph, their second viewing, and Betty and I drifted down to Sylva's Main Street to stimulate the local economy. Actually I spent zero dollars, but I offered crucial moral support as Betty navigated through the purchase of a set of coasters, a dish cloth, and a vintage lace tablecloth. We were digging through an entire sideboard full of table linens, with the proprietress helping us, and we kept finding things that were pretty but not quite right. Of one, a little oblong linen piece with french knot embroidery, I said, "Betty, you could put this on your piano." Betty thought and said, "There is a fine line between pretty and little old lady." Then she and the other lady laughed and high fived each other in generational solidarity.

This store is set up in an old house, with each room containing its proper things: bed linens in the bedroom, more masculine stuff in the study, etc. Lots to wander around and look at, and I always appreciate their maximalist approach to Christmas decorating. There is a unified sensibility to the place that makes it feel almost like someone's actual house.

I was sort of looking for things for my nieces, but I don't think that tween girls have the proper appreciation for a punch bowl resting on a pedestal made of antlers.

I blame Taylor Swift?

We remain here in the Thanksgiving mountain citadel. All of the leftovers are almost gone, so we might have to move on soon. You? 

  

Constitutional

At Deep Creek.

We didn't do much today and we didn't start that until after lunch. It was gray and wintry-looking here, without actually being very chilly. Matt and the kids and I headed to Deep Creek, our favorite summer tubing spot, to walk in the woods. I like this time of year for a hike; with no leaves you can see so far through the woods. You can see the shapes of the ridge tops and hills. When we got down to the river, we kept marveling at how different it all looked with bare trees. Or different-yet-familiar, like it had been remodeled. Let's just open up this space here and get some more light in.

As I snapped this picture, Hank was reaching into his pocket for a little bag of skittles he'd saved from the movie the other day and brought along. We laughed remembering that the last time he'd walked this trail, he was about two-and-a-half, and he'd had candy in his hand then too. It was February, and he'd been given a little Snoopy Valentine that contained exactly three pieces of chocolate. Even though he was a toddler, he made the journey carrying that heart box in his hand, and he rationed the candy as he went. While we all stood around with no snack and no candy, he would pause, sit carefully down on the ground, and have a chocolate. He had one at the beginning, one in the middle, and one at the end. I remember that he was so little, he was still wearing a one-piece outfit that snapped up the legs. He was potty-trained then, but just barely, and I remember several breaks to "go pee pee like a bear." Today he said he remembered that day, but I think he just remembers our recitations of it.

As we walked today, the kids wanted to do riddles and puzzles, so we dredged up every one we could think of. Laura solved the Riddle of the Sphinx but was completely stumped by, "What state is tall in the middle and round on both ends?"

Then there was leftover-eating and hot tubbing. Another highlight: I took the pie tin containing the last piece of pumpkin pie into the sun room with Betty, closed the door to children, and and had a long catch-up session on the entire extended family. As we talked, I finished my piece and ate every remaining morsel of pie, mashing the crumbs with my index finger. When I was fully up to speed on all goings-on, the plate was clean. All's right with the world, but we are sad to see that pie go.

What is up in your domestic citadel? Are you still in holiday isolation? I have not even bought anything online. Asceticism! xoxo

They Came Back

Dad, 50 pounds lighter since December; kids inherit his old pants.

My mom and dad were in Australia forever but now they are back and badder than ever. We went up to the mountain house on Friday night to see them, not having enjoyed our preview of their deaths. Guess who else was there? Baby nephew guy, Gabriel!

A happier baby there is not.

Gabriel brought his parents too. We didn't do much. A little eating, a little hiking. I noted with happiness that Katie has completely blossomed into motherhood, and I listened to my brother tell me the plot of the first 250 pages of The Brothers Karamazov. In case there is a quiz. And Dave played the guitar and we also entertained the baby.

Did you guys get to see the Super Moon? It really was a super moon! Even if it did take 4-evah to clear the ridge behind the house, not becoming visible to us until 11:30pm, when Hank had given up and gone to sleep on the couch. We had a great view of it with Laura's Astroscan telescope, and we stayed for a good long look. Laura and I kept trying to put our phone cameras up to the eyepiece of the telescope, which did not really work.

Oh, also, the whole family dived into this pit of facebook crazy--one of those terrible political threads where you argue with people you don't know in real life and it just goes downhill fast, fast, fast. I just can't even. It is really not like us to do this. Everybody was mad, I took to drink, and my mother had to shut the whole thing down by quoting scripture. It was like that.

Aussie beach glass

Mom brought this beach glass home from the beach in Kiama. She also brought me a zillion tea towels and another jacket that says "Australia." Oy oy oy!

We had to leave early this morning so I could get down to Atlanta in time for my tennis playoff match. The bummer-ish way this works is that the two teams play until one team has won three matches. For me playing in line 4, this meant that we were 4-3 in our first set and then my team finished losing the first three matches and we had to retire. Like, our match was over right there. We shook hands and left the court. And there had been ugliness in one of the matches over someone reaching over the net and a lot of other hysterical lady business. I am glad I got to play even a little, but I left the mountains early for that noise?

Oh well. Did you have a good weekend? Whatcha doing?

xoxo

PS: Sherlock on PBS tonight.

The Haunting of Briar Patch

Well, with daily blogging going on, it was only a matter of time before I shared this movie the kids made. Laura filmed it with her ipod and edited it in iMovie. Briar Patch is what we call the mountain house sometimes.



I swear, it's only a minute and a half long, and it might make you laugh. It did me. And it's more fun than me telling you what I did today (tennis, talking to children, eating food).

The kids have no school tomorrow--it's an inclement weather day we didn't use and so get to take off--so Laura is at a sleepover and Hank has stayed up this late reading Harry Potter with Matt. Pretty weather tonight. This day started off with me in a jacket and ended with me wearing as little as is legal maybe. April. 

You guys gotta tell me some stuff to blog about for the next few days. I am a husk. A happy husk, but you know.

Hope you're cruising into a pleasant evening. xoxo

Zip Zip Zip, From Tree to Tree

Strapped.

Have you ever been on a zip line? Last month, when my sis and her family were visiting from Australia, four of us went zip lining in the Nantahala Gorge.

It is awesome. The first thing that happens is that you drive out into the woods. Seeing as you are already out in the woods, this will be a feat in itself. Then some rustic gentlemen help you don a complicated system of nylon straps. That is a novel experience in itself, potentially worth the price of admission. The gentlemen have names like Tbone, Porkpie, Grizzly, and Chad. One of them, perhaps Chad, will be playing an honest-to-God banjo while this is happening.

I liked the strapping-up part. Any safety fears I had went away when we got all that gear on our bodies. (Amy was still nervous though, I think.) Each strap could hold, like, a school bus, and it just feels pretty secure. And I first thought the helmet was unnecessary, but I can't tell you how many times I went on to conk my head against the cable.

Then we had a brief tutorial in how to start and how to stop. Starting is easy. But here's a fun fact: On a zip line, the brake is your gloved hand pushing down on the top of the cable. I was a little worried that there wasn't more technology involved. Push harder to stop faster. Do not grip the cable, however, as then your body will be traveling, quickly, away from your clenched hand, and your shoulder does not like that. I did that once, ouchy.

I had nervous butterflies for the first zip, but then it felt wonderful, not quite Segway wonderful because nothing in this mortal plain will ever feel that good, but still really good. Amy was a little scarified, so every time they would give us instructions or tell us about a line coming up, one of our guides would look at her and say, "Amy, don't freak out." Old Tbone and/or Chad really had an astute grasp on that girl's personality.

Again, look at her selling it.

It's a great squirrel's eye view of the woods, but one tricky part is when you're out in the canopy and all ten or twelve people must stand on a platform the size of your kitchen table, if your kitchen table had a tree growing up through the middle of it. Your safety line is always clipped to a cable, but if you slipped off the edge, it would be a bruising experience.

40 or 50 feet up.

My Zip Buddy, Brother Dave

Up in the trees.

We did this for almost three hours, but I could have gone on longer. I discovered that by leaning way back in my harness and pulling my knees up, I could go faster, though sometimes this sent me in to slow spins that I could not control. And Amy was like, "How do you do that?" And I'm all, "I'm a natural."

Y'all, if you get a chance to do this, you should. It was great as a way to see the woods, and it was cool to get out and do something new and different with my people. We had lots of adventures that trip, actually. One thing I love about being in the mountains is that the adults get out and play. Aside: One of my favorite mountain memories ever was the time we found some fallen apples and took turns pitching them to each other and whacking them with a bat, just to see who could bust one into the most pieces. Then we went after some old potatoes. Why don't we do stuff like that all the time?

Here's a quick video my brother-in-law Jason took of me on our last zip run, which was about 600 feet. Or was it 600 yards? I dunno, it was really long. Observe my balletic grace. RIGHT?



Zip lining: gentle thrills and a fun time for all.

Love,
Me

All Happy Families Are Alike

Say hi to Gabriel!

My sister Amy called me last night on the way to the airport. They were out in California, having already slipped back that far back west, about to get their flight to Sydney. By now they will be almost home. Gosh, I hate to see them go. Amy told me she thought it had been their best trip ever back to the states. I think so too. It was just filled with good things. All of us meeting Dave and Kate's new baby. The kids being the perfect age to play together, tirelessly and peacefully. Lots of great adult time, and having a beautiful place we could all gather in. For some reason I've held off blogging about it, maybe because it was totally wonderful and it seems unnarratable. Like, possibly of only local interest. (Yes, I hear you saying, "Well Beck, a lack of general interest never stopped you before."

We made our way to the mountain house, all my sibs and their families under one roof with mom and dad, and we had a blissful five days together. I love having unstructured time from morning 'til night. Drink some coffee, shoot the breeze, hold a baby, go out and get sweaty, come back and drink a beer while making some trenchant observations on the State of the World Today, read a magazine, holler at kids, eat some cheese, sass and be sassed, ride in the jeep, play some cards, stay up late chatting, let the dog out one last time, stand outside and shiver in the cool air, go to bed. That was the basic itinerary and if heaven is like that, it will be great and I'll totally already know how to do it.

The only bad thing that happened was that, one day, my dad came home from a trip to the dump and said, "I saw what looked like a pair of nightstands in the back of the Swap Hut." (You might remember my mentioning the Swap Hut. It's where I found my owl lamp. O Hut of wonders!)

I said, "A pair of what? A what? A pair? What did they look like?" He said that they'd been at the back of the hut, but he could see that they were "blond wood, kind of blocky, maybe you could describe them as mid century modern."

He had left them there. I vowed to remedy that.

An hour later, my brother-in-law Jason and I were heading down the mountain. I don't know where we were going, but we had some kids with us and we were going into town. I asked him to please detour by the recycle center so I could peer into the Swap Hut.

The nightstands were gone. There were no nightstands. There was nothing in the hut. Only emptiness, in the hut and in my heart. I got back in the car and fumed to Jason, who didn't seem that upset about not needing to get out of the car at the dump and load furniture. I said, "I can't believe he left them there! A pair. A pair! You take a pair of anything, I don't care if it's gilded turds!"

Jason pursed his lips, eyes on the road. "Gilded turds," he said, with an air of meditation. I think the subject of his meditation was how crude his sister-in-law is.

In my mind's eye, the Lost Nightstands have become someone's meticulously cared-for but discarded Heywood Wakefields. Oh well. I'll go on. But it still hurts!

Some of our adventures need their own posts, and Baby Gabriel, the cutest and smartest baby ever seen, definitely does. But here are a few pictures, and more are here.

See how I'm just smiling but Amy is really selling it?

Handsome Nate

Jason fussed at by ranger for riding on top of jeep backseat.

He's a hunter-trapper.

Add caption

This family group picture, oh man. The night before, Amy and Mom and I were agreeing on the need for such a picture, and I said something like, "Okay everybody, you know these group picture situations are stressful and there will be people who don't want to be in the picture and we'll lose patience with each other and there may be some bitching, crying, and snapping involved. Let's just commit to the process and we'll get through."

The next morning, while a large contingent was still down at the Waffle House (Ava wanted to experience the WaHo), I scouted locations and checked lighting. Then they returned, and Jason and Dad moved a bench out in front of the house, with only a minimum of lip. I did, at one point, have to bark, "I just want you to stand there and reflect light!" Which caused them to snicker and make smartypants rejoinders. Lacking a proper tripod, I built one out of a kitchen stool, three game boxes, and an overturned plastic ice cream bucket. Then Hank was upset and not wanting to be in the picture, causing Amy and then me, independently and unknown to each other, to offer him bribes for cheerful compliance. Finally everyone drifted toward the photo spot and assembled themselves, where they got that look of impatient passivity that people have when they're waiting for the photographer to do something.

Y'all, I loved this moment so much. They were all standing there while I looked through the viewfinder one more time, and then pushed the button to start the timer. Then everyone suddenly has that sense of urgency, you know? Like, "Okay, come over here! Right here! Quick!" Even though you have ten leisurely seconds and you could saunter over to take your place before the shutter clicks.

But I did hurry to them. I pressed the button and ran around and up the slight hill to slide in behind Hank. We did this a few times. Afterwards I realized that I'd felt pure joy. Seeing the family arrayed there, expectant and still, with me in motion. The crunch of the gravel and the beeping of the camera. Matt holding out his hand to me, beckoning. Running to them, whirling around, and smiling. And watching them all wait for the time to smile. They couldn't see themselves like I could--that's the photographer's privilege, I guess--but then I could join them and be part of the scene too. There was just such pleasure in it.

I hope you found some pleasure in your week. I missed y'all, I'm back on duty now. xoxo

I Am Kind Of The Normal One

Did you guys know my sister and her family are visiting from Australia? Goodness! If I would stop blogging about tennis for even one minute, I could have filled you in on this important fact. They landed a week ago today, and I had them all, plus my mom and dad, at my house for a few days, and then they went up to mom and dad's mountain house, where the kids and I joined them for the weekend. Apparently the weekend lasts through Monday because we are still here. Anyway.

A campfire is a necessary ritual.

Foil-roasting the s'more leads to better melting.

This happened: my father roasted and ate a cricket at our s'more campfire. For some reason, little crickets kept leaping into the flames, maybe drawn by the heat? It was a disturbing thing, this cricket suicide. We saw one on the rocks, poised to leap, and Dad said, "Wait, I will eat him!" The kids reacted with shock and squeals of disbelief. They didn't think he would do it. I squealed because I knew that he would indeed do it.

He caught the cricket in his hand, and finding it to be too small to properly skewer, he stuck it to a half marshmallow left on his stick.

That bothered me more than the outright eating of an insect, the mixing of the cricket with another food. Ew. I think there are some food cultures where the eating of insects is acceptable, but I am pretty sure they don't mix the bug with marshmallows.

Then he roasted it and ate it. The kids were very, very impressed. Then he ate another one. Then the little boys wanted to be shown edible plants. I ate a second s'more while this was happening.

Later on, the kids were tucked in bunk beds in the basement, and I was lying down with Hank for a few minutes. I started to receive a flurry of emails and texts from upstairs, summoning me to come play cards. I hauled myself up stairs to see that Amy, Jason, Mom, Dad, and Aunt Kathy were all arrayed at the table with the cards shuffled and dealt.

They waited for me as I went to the kitchen and started making tea. I wandered to the table, played a card, and went to get my tea. They made noises of impatience which I ignored. I was ready with the tea, but then I espied a chicken leg in the fridge, so I pulled it off the bird and hastened to the table. There was much protestation from the assembled company: "Oh now we're going to have chicken grease on our cards!" and "Don't you want a plate? Gross!" Like I was the one who ate a bug.

I gave them a no-chicken-grease guarantee and then sat at the table to play my turn. But just then I had a chicken leg malfunction. As I bit into the chicken, the whole top part of the leg separated from the bone and was dangling from my mouth. Obviously I had to go to the kitchen to tend to it, even though by now I was taxing their patience to the last reserve, and I can assure you, they were annoying me way more than my chicken situation was delaying them.

So I handled the chicken problem and came back to the table, and Dad passed the deck to me. It was my turn to deal. But I found that the vigorous wiping I had given my lips had left them feeling chapped. I said to the gang, "I really need to go get the Burt's Bees, my lips are chapped. Do I have to shuffle these right this second?" And they all died of vexation. And they were dead. The end.

No, that's not the end. My dad pulled his Carmex out of his pocket and said, "Shuffle!" Then he dabbed his finger into the Carmex and applied it to my lips. I leaned towards him so he could get good coverage and I shuffled and dealt so they would stop bitching for one tiny second.

Then, as we all looked at our cards, my dad said, "I used the cricket finger."

Cricket finger!

I said, "But you took a shower!" He said, "Yes, but I kept it wrapped in a bread baggie."

And then those people had the nerve to gripe about how poorly I'd shuffled.

There is no moral to this story, but it is something that happened.

Amy stuffing a s'more into her face. Ha! Revenge.

I hope you had a good weekend. Look out for Cricket Finger.

Men with Schemes

My dad is like the Thomas Edison of western North Carolina, especially when it comes to the drinking of whiskey. He is filled with schemes and little lifehacks to make it better and more pleasurable. Over the weekend he decided to wash some river pebbles and then put them in the freezer, in hopes that they would cool his drink without diluting it.

Sidebar: growing up, there were often weird things in our freezer. My siblings will testify. One I remember was an Indigo Bunting that died in our backyard. Dad wanted to figure out why it died, so he froze it, in our household freezer, for some future postmortem. Then there was the time that a Sharp-Shinned Hawk smacked the sliding glass door and died, so Dad took his feet (!) and put them in non-iodized salt to dry them out. They went on the bookcase. And THEN there was the time he took the head of a dead cardinal and put it in an ant bed so the ants would clean the skull. He reports he still has the skull, yes, on his bookcase. You would be right in thinking he is something of a character--kind of a cabinet-of-curiosities naturalist--but lovable and normal-seeming. Normal enough. Also, at this very moment, in the mountain house freezer, my mom has a bunch of bright fall leaves from last year. I guess she was conducting an experiment to see if they'd stay fresh and colorful. They are really quite a pair.

Anyway, so the river rocks were supposed to cool the whiskey without melting like ice. Dad reports that it turns out, they don't cool the drink. I'm thinking that if that worked--if rocks held on to cold like that--mountain rivers would stay icy 'til June. But I'm not the scientifical one.

And on Friday night, I saw him inflate an air mattress with a leaf blower. Ingenuity.

I look different with a mustache.

Sunday afternoon, my mom and I joined the literati of Sylva, NC to hear Ron Rash read from his new book of poems. I admire his work, and he's one of the town's favorite sons. If you liked Serena, you'll be glad to know he has a new novel coming out in April. I think that when the movie of Serena gets made, he'll be a big(ger) deal. Anyway, we got some culture and there was wine there.

Then we went to an antiques barn, where I inspected every piece of merchandise in the place. I scored a Russell Wright cream pitcher, perfect condition, for six bucks. Now I will spend my life looking for its sugar bowl. WHERE ARE YOU, SUGAR BOWL? I also snagged a $7 Italian vase that I think isn't exactly Bitossi but is a Bitossi cousin or step-cousin. Nice mid-century look, in any case.

That's it on the left. It looks happy with its new family, the little Rosenthal-Netter and that Danish egg thing, don't you think?

Mom and Dad took us to a new swimming hole on Straight Fork Creek, just inside the national park. It was beautiful. Also, this just in: beagles are not water dogs. Percy checked the place out for a while, and then went and sat by the car. I had to snap a pic of her in her signature pose.

What I didn't do this weekend was blog. Darn it! But it was such a nice respite from Atlanta, where it was hot as balls last week. Did y'all have a nice one? Did you get Irened?

Missed you. More tomorrow. xoxo