Jenyfer Matthews

We had our first big snow fall yesterday afternoon and evening. It wasn’t sticking when I went to bed, but we woke up this this lovely scene. (Click any image to enlarge)

I got up early on purpose because I wasn’t sure whether or not the driveway would require shoveling. My husband decided he and his AWD Subaru were just fine to get out, but what about me and my little VW? Doubtful. I got out the new, handy-dandy, ergonomic shovel.

I look happy don’t it? That was my first five minutes. It became less fun as I discovered that it was about 4 inches of light fluffy snow on top of a layer of slush.

Now I know why the schools gave us a two hour delay – so I would have time to clear my driveway.

I thought the basketball hoop full of snow was funny when I saw it outside. So glad all that didn’t fall on my head as I was passing by with the shovel!!

The service manager of the dealership where I had my car serviced recently told me that my tire tread was at about 60%. I asked him if that was good enough for winter. His response: “You’ll find out the first time it snows.” Guess I’m about to find out because it’s time for school!

When I was young, some of my favorite books were the Little House on the Prairie books by Laura Ingalls Wilder. When my family took road trips – usually from Louisiana up to Wisconsin / Minnesota – I used to look out of the window and imagine how it would be to travel by covered wagon and live out on the grassland.

I used to have an obsession with hoop skirts too. I sometimes think I was born out of my time. A homesteader without a homestead. Then I go stay in the country and realize I like modern city conveniences just fine!

Maybe it was that early influence that has me trying things like making jam and cooking from scratch. I hate to waste anything. One of my closest friends regularly tells me I must have lived through the Depression. Whatever it is, I usually think I’m just being smart.

This weekend I decided that I wasn’t going to let the pumpkins I bought as Halloween decorations go to waste. There were three that didn’t get carved that I decided to convert into pulp for muffins, pancakes, and pies.

I read about it first, I went into this knowing that jack-o-lantern pumpkins were not necessarily the optimal pumpkins to make into smush. I did it anyway. There is so much sugar in muffins that surely it won’t really matter? I doubt the children will notice.

Smart or not, I stared with the largest pumpkin first.

He looks pretty cheerful lying there, doesn’t he? I had to use the largest baking sheet I had. I put the other half in the crock pot, on a suggestion I saw on the web.

Looks really gruesome after an hour in the oven at 425F, doesn’t he? Great thing about the blistered skin is that it peeled right off!

This isn’t all of the pumpkin puree I “harvested” – I ended up taking some pieces out of the crock pot and putting them in the oven because baking it was faster. NOTE: This picture does not show all of my measuring cups – I have a bit of a problem in that area…

(Please don’t judge my cramped kitchen!!!)

I ended up getting nearly 10 cups of pumpkin puree out of this particular pumpkin!

Did I let the seeds go to waste? Not on your life!

I have two more pumpkins to process. I’m planning on making pumpkin pancakes and pumpkin muffins soon and possibly some soup, but I think that before I bake anymore pumpkins I need to aquire a chest freezer…

Here it is, already November and nearly the end of the first marking period for the children’s schools.

My little man seems to be settled in nicely. He’s been happy and comfortable pretty much since day one actually. In the past he’s always given me a hard time about going to school and has had frequent, vague “stomach aches” in the mornings. Those are a thing of the past. He still enjoys the weekends more, mostly because he has a couple of school buddies who live in our neighborhood and a patch of woods off the back of the house to explore. What more could a nine-year-old boy ask for?

My daughter has had a rougher transition. For one thing, she started sixth grade: the dreaded middle school. Not only did she have to learn to use a combination locker (I still have nightmares about forgetting my combination!) but she had to figure out her schedule and switching classrooms / teachers. That made her nervous but at least that change in system was new to every sixth grader. The transition has actually been much harder socially.

Sixth grade is a rough year and can be a nasty age. Whether they acknowledge it or not, everyone is so insecure about themselves and their position in the social pecking order that they will do just about anything to anyone to make themselves feel more powerful and “seem cool”. Not a fun age at all. You couldn’t pay me to go back to sixth grade.

My daughter is new to public schools and is a real marshmallow inside. She’s also used to being fairly popular and is having a tough time figuring out how to fit into this new, much larger school with its unfamiliar social currents. She’s a girl who is a superb athlete and has a tom-boy’s fashion sense which sets her way apart from the majority of the girls in her school (according to her anyway). She’s starting to grow her hair out and is demanding braces.

But more pressing, she’s not fluent in US-speak.

She came home very down one afternoon this week, feeling stupid because there are so many things she doesn’t know. Like what a 7-11 is – or a “slushie.” Someone offered her a “pixie stick” and they were astonished when she asked what it was. It is all so minor that I find it kind of amusing, but she. does. not.

I tried to comfort her by pointing out that none of her classmates knew how to call someone a donkey in Arabic, had taken a school field trip that required a flight and a passport, had gone snorkeling in the Red Sea, or had been inside a pyramid. She smiled when I reminded her of all the things that she had already experienced in her short life and also pointed out that all of this is relative – none of this will matter in a few years.

But it’s tough when all you want is to blend into the crowd and you stand out so much.

Also funny for me to think that she did pretty much blend into the crowd in Cairo because her school required uniforms and her friends were doing all the things she was doing and more… and on that thought I guess it isn’t surprising that the girls on her soccer team who she liked best are the ones whose parents are immigrants…

Any (good) mom will tell you that one of our main job descriptions is being a kill-joy. I’m particularly good at it – just ask my children and their friends.

I love Halloween as much as my children – probably because I remember enjoying it so much as a child – but as a mom? It’s all a bit more conflicted. I love to see how excited my children are by the decorations and the month-long anticipation of dressing up and going trick-or-treating. It was especially fun this year because it was their first proper, American Halloween. I did what I could to make the holiday fun for them while living abroad – we went to their school fair and we trick-or-treated at all the participating apartments in our immediate area (usually no more than a dozen), but it wasn’t the same.

Living in a very family oriented town, in a child-dense neighborhood, the children had an incredible time. They dressed up like zombies and their dad took them out for two solid hours of trick-or-treating. They came home with no less than approximately SIX POUNDS of candy. EACH.

Here’s where the conflict comes in.

As a child, they want nothing more than free access to this unheard of bonanza of candy. I of course 1) don’t want them to eat until they vomit or 2) spend $$$ at the dentist. I let them admire their loot, supervised some trading, and then put their candy sacks away – only to be accessed under supervision.

(Do you want to clean up the puke?)

And yes, there will be dental rinse every night after brushing until this candy is gone.

The fact that I am both the person who makes the holiday fun happen in my various alter egos (Easter Bunny, Santa, etc) and also the one who puts on the brakes on candy gorging is ironic. It’s probably also the biggest reason that my children still believe in those mythical beings – because how on earth could I be both the giver and taker-awayer of candy and fun?

It would be easier to let them gorge themselves and be done with it, but I’ve never been one to take the easy way out…

Just how much I have to do today, that is!

In addition to the usual housework and shopping / errand running, I have to finish up the Halloween decorations. I’ve been thinking all month about buying pumpkins but was holding off because I was warned about ravenous squirrels roaming the neighborhood who make short work of pumpkins. So I waited… and almost waited so long there weren’t any pumpkins at the store! I did finally find a few yesterday – phew! What’s Halloween without a few jack-o-lanterns?

I also foolishly volunteered to help with my son’s class party this afternoon because I somehow thought that life might be a little calmer by now! HA!

After school, it will be rush rush rush helping the kids to get themselves costumed up for their first real, genuine, American trick-or-treat. I am actually pretty excited for them. I’ve done my best to give them the Halloween experience while we were living abroad and of course they never knew what they were missing, but I did. So glad that they can have the real thing while they are both young enough to participate and old enough to remember!

Happy Halloween!

There was a time, long ago in what seems like an alternate life, when I set a goal to try a new recipe once a month. Since this year was one long disruption, needless to say I didn’t stick to that goal. I did cook here and there, but mostly I stuck to favorite recipes that I could make from memory. Most of the time I was happy if I could make reasonably balanced meals – new and interesting wasn’t on my agenda.

With life finally settling down, last week was one of the best ones I’ve had for cooking in a long time. I made some old favorites and tried some newer things as well, including jambalaya and cream of cauliflower soup. Those are not technically “new” recipes to me, just things I don’t make all that often.

I did try one new recipe on Saturday morning though and I am pleased to say that in spite of some initial skepticism from my children, it was a total hit – Pumpkin Pancakes.

I pretty much followed the recipe as is was except that I followed the suggestion of one of the reviewers and used 2 eggs instead of 1 and upped the spices quite a bit. The result was wonderful. The pancakes were pleasantly pumpkin-y but not too sweet. The next time I make them, I’ll likely try replacing some of the white flour with wheat germ or ground flaxseed (Ssshhh!).

The rest of my kitchen equipment is due to arrive tomorrow morning from Cairo. Once I get it all organized and put away, I won’t have any more excuses not to cook (except time!). My current goal is to cook a nice meal at least 4x a week. The other three nights? I think may need to assign those nights to the other three members of my family! It may mean Cheerios for dinner but I could live with that once in a while if it meant I didn’t have to cook every night

This has been a long week and it’s only Wednesday.

I’ve been a bit down the last couple of days. Maybe I’m just tired. Or demoralized. I feel like I never stop bustling around doing this or that or the other thing and yet I’m still surrounded by disorder and chaos and mess. Everywhere I look there is just stuff that needs to be put away. I’m not sure what I’m doing wrong exactly, except that perhaps I am trying to do too many things at the same time. I’m keeping up but seemingly not making much headway.

I am a person who likes to finish projects. When I start a quilt, I finish it. Rarely do I work on more than one at a time, unless they are different sizes and are at different stages – one might be in the quilting process when I start another. I can typically finish hand-quilting a queen sized quilt in 6-8 weeks start to finish. I hate that I had to leave my quilts behind in Cairo ten months ago, particularly one that is unfinished.

The same goes with writing books and I’ve had an unfinished manuscript hanging over me for a year now.

When I consulted with my father about how to refinish the dressers, he suggested that perhaps wasn’t the best time to take on such a project when I’m so busy otherwise. I can see his point of view but here’s the thing: we need the dressers to put away some of the stuff around here and I need the creative diversion. Yes, I admit it: I actually find the process fun and it makes a nice change of pace from washing walls and breaking down cardboard boxes.

My plan was to put down a tarp and some cardboard in what will eventually be my sewing room downstairs and bring in the dresser I intend to paint so I could work on it this week. Then the movers contacted us that our air shipment from Cairo was in Detroit and would be released from customs any day. I decided to hold off on moving the dresser because when the air shipment comes, many of those boxes will need to go into that room. I can hardly complain because the shipment contains my kitchen items and most of my quilting supplies and quilts, but it does delay my finishing the dresser project. Great – more boxes to unpack.

{Insert whining and moaning here}

And just think: if we end up finding a house to buy this spring, we’ll get to do the pack-up-and-move routine this time next year too.

Sigh…

Sorry for the late post today, but it’s been a crazy busy weekend:

* I froze my butt off watching each child play a soccer match on Saturday morning. It was about 50F but the wind was whipping across the flat fields at about 30mph! FYI – I was not the only parent out there all bundled up like this:

(I got this coat at a church rummage sale for $2 )

* I hosted a slumber party for my son’s upcoming birthday with three little boy guests;

* As part of the party, I ate a Happy Meal at McDonald’s so that my daughter, not allowed to attend the party with the boys, could have the Halloween bucket the meal was served in;

* I stayed up later than I wanted to so that the boys could have their fun and I bit my tongue when one of them dropped his smore on my recently cleaned carpet;

(Incidentally, I am thinking of cutting off friend birthday parties at age 10!)

* I drove 2 1/2 hours one way to Toledo to meet a friend who had a BMX bike to donate to my son.

And I did all of the above while on the verge of having a major muscle spasm in my lower back from all the furniture sanding I did on Friday. Thank goodness for heated car seats…

Tomorrow is little man’s actual birthday. I’ll be making a cake and wrapping presents before I lay on the floor for a while for some back therapy.

I’ve been having a lot of fun unpacking boxes – so many things I’d pretty much forgotten I still had!

We moved fairly frequently when I was growing up, so there are a lot of things that I got rid of that I sort of wish I’d kept. I did keep some things though. Like this:

(click any image to enlarge)

Remember these? The records might be worth something (to someone) if I still had the sleeves they came in. Who knows – I haven’t opened all the boxes yet!

I went through a phase where I went to the TG&Y every week and bought several hits off their top 10 display for the week, which means there are some pretty questionable choices in this stack! There are also quite a few Elvis singles included – both mine and also some that my mother bought when she was a teen.

I haven’t even opened this box yet, but the label made me laugh. “Fragile” indeed! Remember when stereos came in single, stackable components?

I do still have cassettes to play in my dual cassette player too. What a mix of genres! There are cassette singles in the box as well – the music industries answer to 45rpm’s before iTunes was invented

I could always fire up one of these more portable puppies too! They look so giant now compared to ipods!

Yes, I have vinyl albums (and a turntable) too. Don’t you just love the “limited edition” albums with the picture printed right on the vinyl? My daughter asked to hold one because she had never touched an album before – then she asked if handling it would “smudge” the lines. Young whippersnapper! Vinyl is making a comeback because it’s actually more durable than digital.

This really is a treasure – from my husband’s childhood. I had never seen the schoolhouse before. I love the metal bell on top!

None of these little people have a cell phone to call home if they fall off the dangerous merry-go-round, but never fear – there is a phone booth nearby!

I would have thought that the children were too old for the Fisher Price toys but they asked me if I could buy them more. Only on ebay…

I’ve been asked many times the secret to my slim figure. It is in large part due to metabolism. The other two things that have worked wonders for me at times when my weight has crept up higher than I’ve liked is breastfeeding and manual labor.

I’ve been done with breastfeeding for years now, but manual labor just keeps presenting itself. There are still boxes to be unpacked and furniture to be moved around but at present my biggest chore is the yard. It’s autumn in the Northern Hemisphere and it is called “fall” here for a reason.

The leaves are currently falling like snow and I’ve already decided that I like “fall” more when it happens out in the woods, away from my house. (Isn’t the above picture gorgeous?) I have no less than ELEVEN large trees in the backyard of this house – which seems like a lot for a suburban house! – and most of them still have the majority of their leaves. That is scary to me because I spent two hours raking and moving leaves on Sunday afternoon and by the time I was done the yard looked as if it had never been touched.

My next house is going to either be surrounded by concrete or evergreens.

I wouldn’t bother raking the leaves, but what else can I do? I know well enough that if I don’t move what is already down, the leaves will only get deeper and heavier. And wet. Moving dry leaves is a pain but moving wet leaves is a real PITA. Also, this is a rental house. If I kill the lawn by leaving the leaves to sit around, I’ll just have to fix it later anyway. (Been there, done that – learned my lesson!)

I should have taken the hint when I found that the landlord left a nearly new, pretty snazzy leaf vacuum in the garage.

I bought a lawnmower on clearance yesterday, one that also mulches and has a bag. Not much grows in a yard with so many trees except ivy and moss, which is how I have gotten away so long without mowing. I only bought a mower now because I am desperate. I thought I could use it as a lawn vacuum of sorts. In addition to the trees, the yard is full of paving stone paths and irregularly shaped flower beds which are alternately covered in mulch or lake stones – all of which is concealed at present by ankle deep leaves. A leaf vacuum doesn’t work so well on mulch or rocks and all the irregular beds certainly does make mowing something of a challenge.

If this were MY yard to do with what I pleased, I’d take out at least half of the trees and knock out all of the wonky flower beds. Simplify. You can’t grow veggies in a shady yard and if I am going to have beds, I’d rather they were full of food producing plants.

You might wonder what I am doing with all the leaves anyway. Apparently the city will send around a truck a couple of times a season to clean up so people just dump the leaves in the street. With everyone doing that at the moment, the streets are all lined with so many leaves that driving is a bit hazardous (I surely wouldn’t want to be the mailman right now!) There is a wooded area behind the house that the neighbor invited me to dump leaves and grass clippings in. OKAY.

The backyard also has a fire pit… hmmm… a cold front is supposed to be coming through…