Jenyfer Matthews

Two months to go… of summer that is.

I have been in idling mode this last week. Technically now that school is over, summer vacation has begun but it doesn’t really feel like it yet. I’ve just been killing time.

I’ve been told I’m a good mother, but I am not without my weak points. For instance, I am no good at organizing housebound activities. Though I am a crafty person myself, I am no good at directing craftiness in my children. They are always enthusiastic about making things, but inevitably the set-up and clean-up portions of the program last much longer than their actual interest in the project. Also, they take a much more haphazard approach to making things and I have a hard time not interfering in their process. In short, I either take over or make it an unpleasant process for us all. (They want to make pet rocks and bottle cap magnets for an upcoming arts festival in Minnesota… god help me!)

It’s better for me to just step away from the paint pot / glue gun / glitter glue and leave that to their teachers at school.

I much prefer just keeping the kids moving and active. Tennis lessons, swimming, zoo trips – anything where we can get out and go. It not only keeps them busy and entertained, but it usually has the bonus of making them tired as well. Win-win for me.

I’m starting my summer this weekend with an overnight trip to Cave City, Kentucky. It’s apparently one of (the?) largest natural cave formations in the world and it’s only a few hours from here. How could I *not* go to see it? One of the cave tours is offered on a boat. Cave exploring on a boat? I am so there.

Stay tuned…pictures next week.

It seems impossible to think that I left Egypt five months ago. I had no idea of what to expect when we left – of how long we’d be gone or if we’d even be able to go back but what I wasn’t expected was five months of wait-and-see.

Our decision for me to stay in the US with the children wasn’t an easy one, but I’d like to think it was the most sensible thing we could do under the circumstances. I am more willing to take chances with my own safety (which I proved when I had my picture taken with a tank (what was I thinking??)) but we weren’t willing to do the same with our children.

There really are no words to describe how utterly fantastic the children have been through this whole period. They left Egypt with us believing us when we told them it was going to be a short trip, an unscheduled vacation of sorts. We struggled through homeschooling for a month before we came to Ohio to stay with my high school friend, then they had to settle in to a new school here.

Adapt to a new school might be a better description because it was not simply a matter of not knowing their way around the building and having to make new friends. They went to a British curriculum school in Egypt. Here in Ohio they not only had to learn a new American curriculum but a whole new set of teacher expectations.

I wouldn’t say it was an easy process for them to find their way, but they certainly made it look easy. After initially struggling a bit, particularly in math, my daughter brought home an honor roll certificate on her last day of school. I am particularly proud of the “B” she earned in math. It was hard won, and if she’d have had another couple of weeks of school it might have even been the “A” she was striving for.

Both children were teary when I picked them up in the afternoon – simultaneously wishing to return to Egypt to see the friends they left behind and also wishing they could turn back the clock here so they could have a bit more time with their new friends. My own heart ached for them both from a mother’s perspective and from my own – I know all to well that feeling of being torn between places and friends and I wouldn’t wish it on anyone.

With our summer vacation, life just may begin to feel a bit more normal. We’ll spend the next few months doing our usual Minnesota north-woods summer thing. After that? Things are still a bit up in the air, but if nothing else I am confident that my children will land on their feet.

They are even more agile than I am

I’m in my usual stressed out, pre-travel packing mode at the moment. You might think that I’d be an expert at packing by now…yes and no. Stop by friend and author Shelley Munro’s blog to find out what special packing challenges I’m facing this year. Leave a comment and you’ll have a chance to win a PDF copy of SEPARATION ANXIETY.

I’ll be back with you, live from Egypt next week. Have a great weekend and send me positive thoughts for a smooth trip back!

Summer started so early in Northern Minnesota this year that most of the berry season was finished before I even arrived. I’ve had many fewer raspberries this year than usual and even the blueberries we picked a few weeks back were nearly a month earlier than the typical season.

As warm and sticky as it was last week, it seems that summer is ending a bit early too. The wind started howling a few days ago, whipping up the water on Lake Superior to nearly surfer sized waves. With the wind came cooler temperatures. Much cooler temperatures. Cool enough that many more deer are beginning to show up in the yard in the mornings and evenings, looking for corn. Cool enough that I’m wearing socks to bed and pulling on a thick quilt at night. Cool enough that I wouldn’t be surprised to see the leaves changing color next week.

Too bad I won’t be here to see it.

The children and I will be leaving for Egypt on Sunday, where it most definitely still summer. I’m trying hard to look forward to that – to the fact that in Cairo I still have time to wear the two new sundresses I ordered for myself that only just arrived in the mail here. I’m looking forward to the start of the school year and having a little more time to myself during the day. A change of scene has given me the time to recharge my creative juices and I’m bursting with new ideas for writing and quilts and cooking and…well, lots of things.

But I still wish I could be here in Minnesota to see the change of seasons from summer to autumn and from autumn to winter. I wonder how my husband would feel about commuting…

I have less than a week before I reverse my course and go back to Cairo. Where did the summer go? I feel like I just got here. And need I say that all my plans for my summer education program for my children went right out the window? I had planned to make my daughter do 10 minutes of math a day, my son read and do a bit of writing. To date we’ve done absolutely nothing. Since school starts about a week after we return and we’ll all be settling back in and getting over jetlag, I’m guess that nothing will change once we get back.

Sigh.

My bedroom at my father’s house is a very stressful place right now, surrounded as I am by a mountain of Amazon boxes. I’ve been in denial, but I won’t be able to keep that up. I really need to make a start on packing. And I know that I’ll feel better once I can see the floor again.

I am happy to say I’ve made good progress on my next book while I’ve been here, in spite of falling asleep while writing the other night. I woke up a short time later to four pages of k’s. Overall, I’m going home with about 20K words than I came with – best yet, they don’t weigh a thing

I keep hearing from everyone here how hot it is. Frankly, until they mentioned it, I didn’t really notice. Compared to what I’m used to in Cairo, it’s been absolutely heavenly. I think I’m in the minority though.

The foxes are either hot or very, very relaxed.

I think they mistook the function of this pool of water – or maybe they like the bird flavor!

I love this pose. It makes you wonder what he was thinking as he gazed at his own reflection. Mirror, mirror, on the wall…

How would you caption this guy?

Today it’s cool and damp and drizzly. Uncomfortably sticky, perhaps but NOT HOT.

We were surrounded – a herd of does and fawns on one side, and a pack of foxes on the other, all of them hungry. They were discontent, one step away from an angry mob – my only advantage being that they didn’t actually have pitchforks or fiery torches. I did the only thing I could do in such a situation: I walked outside armed only with a red plastic coffee can in each hand – one filled with corn for the deer and one filled with whole roasted chicken pieces for the foxes, chicken that my step-mother had bought and roasted especially for the yard pets.

After I poured out the corn, I did as my step-mother the fox tamer instructed and sat in the grass with my arm extended, offering a drum stick. As much as the first fox to approach wanted that chicken, he wasn’t quite sure about me. He got close enough to me that I could hear his little feet in the grass and the snort from his nose as he assessed the situation. When he decided that I looked like a bad risk, he danced away a short distance watching me. He still wanted that chicken. I admit a certain amount of relief. I stood up slowly and walked over to the little knoll they like and left the chicken pieces there.

They seemed to enjoy their dinner, as they didn’t immediately disperse after. It seemed they knew that their regular chef wasn’t home and they were in the mood to put on a show for her understudy. Kind of like school children do when they have a substitute teacher! The deer eventually chased several of the foxes on to the roof of the shed up the driveway and shortly after they all left.

The next morning I was two hours later than they all would have preferred for breakfast as well, and lucky for me there was only one hungry fox out there still loitering and hoping. We were both in luck: I only had about enough left for one fox anyway and he got it all. My step-mother can tell them all apart. The only thing I could tell is that this fox wasn’t worried about me at all – he just wanted his breakfast. He pretty well stood his ground as I approached the knoll. If I had wanted to sit in the dew-wet grass in my pajamas, he probably would have stuck his head in the bucket and gotten the remaining chicken for himself!

I locked the doors before I went to bed. The way the animals all seemed to know that a newbie was in charge I was a little afraid that the bears might decide to let themselves in for a midnight snack!

The only thing better than a swim in a cold lake on a hot summer day…

is a beer margarita on a hot summer day!

My son is off on his overnight camping trip with his grandpa and step-grandma – and I’m on fox feeding duty this evening and tomorrow morning. The question remains whether I’m brave enough to try hand feeding them and whether or not they’d come up to me if I did.

Stay tuned and have a great weekend!

Who needs a trip to the zoo when you have creatures like these visiting the yard on a daily basis?

My stepmother has made pets of several foxes in the area. At least a few of them come around for breakfast and dinner a couple of times a day.

My stepmother has also got a couple of “pet” deer. One of them will even let her pet them when she is in the mood for an ear rub.

I myself haven’t seen many bears in the yard personally, which is why it was that much more thrilling when this guy showed up on Monday evening.

He didn’t look so very threatening, grazing on clover in the yard – but I still took these pictures from the safety of the house!

When he started to look too comfortable and got too close to the house, my father shooed him away. They can be incredibly destructive to things like bird feeders. The deer were keeping a close eye on the bear as well.

Is it any wonder the children prefer to play in the clearing, closer to the house??

I’ve heard about the fabulous blueberry picking opportunities in the area nearly every summer I’ve visited my parents, but have never gone picking myself until this weekend. There is an area up the Gunflint Trail that has been cleared at different times by forest fires where the blueberries grow plentifully. I could tell you more specifically where we went, but then I’d have to kill you.

It was a hot day and very still – and it takes longer than you’d think to fill up a gallon sized ice cream bucket even if the berries are fat and juicy!

If I crouched too long, I’d get stuck in that position.

But standing wasn’t so much better!

Even after we’d been out there a couple of hours and I’d filled my bucket 2/3 of the way, I still couldn’t stop. We had decided to go back to the car and maybe find another spot but I kept having to stop and pick just a little more because the berries were so pretty!

As you can see, all that hard work paid off in the end. Is there anything better than fresh blueberry pie?