bg/tomato war continued

view from BG room at sunrise

I have seen a great many sunrises in the last eight months. One of the few perks of nightwaking babies.

There have been a great many things on my mind lately, and it seems unlikely that each one will get its own post. So in no particular order:

-- the house/building renovations need some divine assistance. Send good thoughts our way.

-- Writing/motherhood really IS a full-time gig. So at the end of this month, I'll be dropping my "part-time" (6-day-a-week, definitely more than 20 hours) job. I'll still manage the Farmers Market, and I am busy planning a downtown movie showing in October, but it won't be what I do every day while neglecting the things closest to my heart. So that's a good thing. Three cheers for K., who-- as always-- knows me better than I know myself.

-- Annaliese is living up to her name meaning (favor from God) more and more every day. I know she will not remember or appreciate how much K. and I delight in her, but it is enough to be this particular soul's caretaker as she eases into life.

-- I really am beginning to miss the East Coast. The smells. The mountains. The architecture.

-- K. might not post, but he is busy being a champion at every step. Annaliese LOVES him. In the morning, after she's woken me up and been fed and is in our bed, she looks over to her still-slumbering papa, grins, and reaches her small hand to him. If he's in reach, she thwacks him until he opens an eye-- and then she BEAMS and kicks her legs. It's the cutest thing ever.

love to all, pics to follow

Yeah, I know, you know. I was busy.We went to Blooming Grove for Annaliese's first Tomato War. To those who don't know about this 75-year-old ritual: a bunch of the same people, who all belong to the same hunting and fishing club in a n idyllic corner of Pa with some fabulous private lakes, meet up once a year for the Tomato War. There are the blacks and the Reds. My family is and have always been Blacks. Almost everyone has been a General of the Black Army at one time or another, including my sister.There is much pomp and cirumstance over the weekend which concludes in the two armies meeting and pleting each other with tomatoes. If you're hit, you're dead.I always die, but the Black Army always wins, so c'est la vie.Behold the weekend:

One of my many cousins:

And the littlest warrior herself:

More Columbus.

morning glories and columbus

i am home.

and despite the immaculate house and well-nourished and rested child, (which obviously proves that I am not needed), it's wonderful.

annaliese is practically GROWN, but it's wonderful.

tomorrow, i go to columbus. for 48 hours. by myself.

Some pics (and fingers) (and tomatoes) to chew on:

Danielle really was here, y'all. And despite the baby's eyes, they really did have fun.

though perhaps not QUITE as much fun as one of Mama's Green Zebra tomatoes, plucked from the fruit bowl instead of the pear.

It really doesn't get more fun than that.

Sunday morning is here again.

The child is on the rug in the living room, rocking back and forth with her hands in the air-- oh, she's clapping now, and singing, ahhhhh, ooohhhh, aahhhhhhhooooo, and then breathing audibly. She has some spitup on her chin, and she is the cutest thing I've ever seen.

It has been a tumultuous two weeks here at the Ponder. Deadlines and clock-watching and fatigue and exorbinant quotes from tradespeople. Our two projects-- the house and the building-- have seemed particularily overwhelming, and our time together is never long enough.

I have been praying about it, in between the hand-wringing. We'll see where that leads.

I write a bimonthly column for the newspaper in the o-town and this was published last week. SO many people seemed to get a kick out of it that I thought I'd post of for y'all (and For K., who has not read it yet).

I have taken a hiatus from novel #3 to work on a book of essays and this is one of them.


Bovine Ambition

Outside my study window lives the only sign of my agricultural ambitions: a fifteen by twenty plot of raised beds, including a pre-existing boxwood, and forty-one heirloom tomato plants.

Thirty-nine, come to think of it. The blight got two that I ripped out yesterday.

I am twenty-five years old and there are days when I want nothing more than to rise at dawn, don overalls, and pad forth from my sleeping family to go deal with chickens, fruit trees, a vegetable garden, and yes, a cow. A milk cow, to be exact.

Somehow, the whole town knows of my ambitions. Yesterday at the farmers' market, the husband of an acquaintance asked me how my pursuit of cow-dom was going."It'd have to be a commuter cow," I began. "We need at least three acres, what with the soil being unreliable down here."

His eyes glazed over so I cut to the chase: "I want one. But not now. Not until we can have one on our own land."And then I sighed and said, "but it sure is tempting."

What kills me is that nearly everyone in my life seems to be set up to have a family milk cow: my mother-in-law. My sisters-in-law. My mother, with seventy acres, could have a whole HERD. Instead, she lets three unridden horses wander around inside the fencing. She calls them her lawn ornaments.

(But at least my mother uses milk on her granola. Kagan's parents? Soy milk all the way. His mom makes cornbread with soy milk. Did God send us a bean so that we could make milk with it? I don't think so.)

When I tell people I want a cow, I get two responses: from non-farmers, polite confusion, and from former dairymen, pursed lips and a wagging of the head.

"They're work," one said. I may not have ever had a cow, but I understand that they don't involve chaise longues and bon-bons.

My grandfather is the only one who seems to understand. "I'd get up every morning and milk the cow before work," he told me over the phone, and breathed steadily for several seconds. He is ninety, and his cows are long gone. "It was nice," he said, and then paused. "It felt like I'd really done something."As if his desk job with the Department of Agriculture didn't count.

But though I am cow-less myself, I know what he means-- because of Saturdays. Saturdays I keep farmers' hours.

Because Kagan works for all day on his renovation project downtown, I am free to commit my day to whatever project I can dream up. This year, I am rising at five to bake miniature baguettes that I sell for a dollar off my card table under the magnolia tree at the farmers' market.

As a farmers' market aficionado, I've been to quite a few. Salmon quesadillas in Anchorage; goat cheese and bread in Silver Spring.Water Valley's is much different, and yet, I love it. Fiercely.I love the homemade sandwich sign that anounces the market; I love the early-morning bustle and then the long slip into late morning. I even kind of love that I'm the only one growing heirloom tomatoes; everyone else is stuck on the Boys (Big and Better).I make my baguettes because it satisfies something in me to sit beneath the magnolia tree in the company of farmers. Last week I made eighteen dollars.

I'm doing it again this week.

When a retired dairyman tells me that cows are work, I believe him. But so are my Saturdays, and I love them.

So if we ever have enough acreage, I'll get Kagan to build me a little barn and throw up some fence. "Someday," I've been known to sigh. "Someday, I'll get me a cow."

Anika's in Zanzibar

And she started a blog. I've linked to it on the left.

Child Update:

Fourth pediatrician visit on Monday.

Weight: 17 lbs 10 oz.

Length: 26 and 3/4 inches.

Head size: Still big.

Overall: "The picture of health."

Thank God.

After a long hard week, this Saturday has been like a present. The weather is delicious summery the way summer should be, with that faint harbinger of fall in the air. We slept with the screen doors open and the ac off last night...And Annaliese, after a remarkably grumpy week, is cooing on the rug before me and playing with a bowl, a comb, and the dog, rocking back and forth and trying to pluck strands of the rug up. Not to mention Danielle is here and so I have both good company and someone to hold the baby.

There was a fab F Market this am. I didn't bake this week... just sat under the magnolia tree and watched young moms and families and old people walk through, stopping to chait and make plans for the future. It is such a good thing, this market, and it feeds my soul like church does, only I get to wear a t-shirt and run my mouth for 3 hours.




Last night, we learned that Annaliese likes penne. Pretty cute huh?

And I took this one about five minutes ago. Check out the shiny eyes...and the teeth! She's flashing them!

Happy Saturday, all.

It's the dog days of August

The biggest news around here is we've ordered half a hormone/antibiotic-free hog, running around one county over today, to be slaughtered tomorrow, to be delivered to us in nice neat packages of bacon and mild sausage and chops on Friday.

We're pretty excited.

The biggest news EVER

No, it's not the adorable highchair that hangs off the table and allows Annaliese to eat as part of the family.

Yesterday, Annaliese was on my lap at work, chewing on my finger, when suddenly I felt something besides gum. Yep, that's right... little A had a tooth! And by the afternoon, the other one had popped through!!!!

I am so, so, so proud.

I am sorry. There are no new pictures, because Kagan takes them with his new iPhone.

It is a sunny Sunday morning in Mississippi. Annaliese just went down for her morning nap, quietly so far, though I doubt she's asleep yet. She has two soft stuffed animals in her crib, a pink sock monkey from the GAP and a black-and-white Newfie dog purse, and she likes to roll around with them.

I often find her with the monkey draped across her chest and a leg hooked through the newfie purse, as if sleep smacked her down right in the middle of a wrestling match.

K. too is (still) sleeping. Sundays are his day to sleep in, and Wednesdays are mine.

So this sunny Sunday morning is all mine, and for the first time in a while, I feel like I've slept enough.

A note on Annaliese's sleep habits: after a PISSPOOR beginning, she's now what I think other people's babies are usually like: she goes to bed around 8, 7.30 if she had a poor late afternoon nap, and then she takes usually 3 naps during the day, generally about an hour a piece, at 9, 1, and 4-ish. She wakes up at 7 and has 1 night feeding. And she's easy to put down now... no more endless rocking.

There are always exceptions, but that's the standard-- and thanks to her beginnings, it never ceases to amaze me. I now have no one to blame for being tired other than myself. And K., what with his nightowl ways.

Annaliese is turning into such a little person, and K. and I just love her. The grip-your-gut, Thank-God kind of love. I said the other day that I thought we should have another one kind of soon to spread that feeling out, because it's on the edge of too intense, and without asking what I was talking about, K. just said, "I know."

(Of course, the funny part is when you think you can actually PLAN a family. You can plan to stop. Not really to start.)

Now for a long story that will eventually get to a point:

There is another couple that is roughly in our peer group at church. He's a lot older, but she's our age, they have a child about a year older than ours, blah blah, and she told me the other day that she loved watching K. and I in church because she could see things in us that reminded her of her own marriage back when it was young.

"How long have y'all been married?" I asked, and she said, "Three years."

Our third anniversary is in September.

I did some quick math and figured out that she got pregnant around 3 months into their marriage, while K. and I had a full year-and-a-half of childless, pregnancy-free matrimony.

But here's the thing: I don't really remember it.

I asked K. about it and he does.

"Did we have fun?" I said, and he said, "Yeah, we did."

Sure, I have memories, but not really eighteen months worth. It seems like I was always pregnant, like we've always had Annaliese, and yet it ASTONISHES me that she's nearly 7 months old and I still don't have rock hard abs (which will CHANGE. When school starts, our babysitter will walk to our house three days a week after school gets out and watch Annaliese so I can run errands and go to the gym and man, I'm glad school starts early down here because I got to get in a bikini, people, SOON.)

I am now busier than I've probably ever been. I've got a 20-hours+ job to which I take my infant child, I'm still writing, I've got a house and 2 dogs bent on destroying it, a garden full of tomatoes, peaches spread on my counter waiting to go into our new chest freezer, a husband who is home too rarely between his various commitments, and then I've got fun projects like knitting and quilting and that damn slipcover THAT WILL GET MADE, all in the company of a baby who can amuse herself for about 10-15 minutes a time.

But you know, I am pretty sure I felt just as busy when it was just me, in the house, with one novel. Expansion and contraction of time and happiness and franticness is not so much linear, ya know?

But here's the point: I want to keep putting K. and me first. There is so much else, always, but he is the most precious thing that has ever happened to me. Even though Annaliese is a miracle, K. was the first miracle, and I do not want to lose knowing that.

I don't ever want to tell someone that my husband and I used to be in love too.

a sop, forsooth

there was an auntie and a nonni and a swimsuit: oh my.

it had pink polkadots and white strings and annaliese loved the ties!

and since it has been a very full day indeed, that's where my rhyming abilities end...

mom and sister were here, which was fab. Catfish was eaten, blueberries were picked, we hit the lake yesterday for a nice afternoon with friends and boats and babies galore, and now...and now, the baby is asleep, there is mounds of laundry to do, and I'm procing chest freezers on the internet because ours is already full and we've got a bushel of peaches to process.

behold our little mississippi queen:

on solids

We've started feeding Annaliese solids on a regular schedule, meaning, at dinnertime.

I read other moms' blogs and they have recipes. They puree and mash and steam.

So far K's prepared the actual babyfood, and his strategy is thus:

Make whatever soft and mushed enough. Put in jar. Feed child from jar for ~4 days.

This week the jar is sweet potato and carrot, and there are some fun pics that will follow, from which you will conclude-- we need a high chair.

I can't really understand why everyone is so psyched about the solids thing. The baby has yet to have a tooth in her head, she's a little chunkster already, and now, I have to clean the entire kitchen, change her outfit, and give her a very THOROUGH bath after each dinner. Not just behind her ears, but IN her ears, for example. Plus her poop is weird.

Who knew being a parent would involve so much manual labor?

Things are not the same.

Intellectually, I've known this since last April. When I slunk down to Fred's and used my left hand a LOT as I bought my first pregnancy test. 

But today, it really sunk in.

After getting up at dawn to bake baguettes to sell at the local market (I am so tres charming I can't stand myself), I came home with fresh produce and a small bag of homemade peanutbutter fudge.

I did not mean to come home with such a thing, but I did. Traded a few baguettes for it, in fact. 

So at noon, I had myself some fudge and the daily cup of coffee I'd been too busy for in the morning.

And then, because the baby went down for her one o'clock, I took a nap. Passed out, in fact.

Two things: used to be I couldn't sleep for EIGHT HOURS after a cup of coffee, so I know I'm dead tired. That comes as a surprise to no one; Annaliese's sleeping habits are miles from what they were, but it's rare that I make it through the night, she wakes up at seven am every day of the week, and it's hard not to stay up late after her bedtime to savor the delicious wee hours (like, say, ten pm).

But here's the thing:

No matter how tired I am, no matter how firmly I am sleep, there is now ALWAYS a part of me that is wide, wide, wide awake and monitoring the household. I now sleep like a watchdog, ears moving as I slumber. 

It's the strangest thing.

I don't wake up for ordinary sounds: K. coming to bed (he really does stay up to the wee hours, especially since Caitlin gave him a box of Terry Pratchett); I don't wake up for Annaliese's mumbling episodes, or the dogs moving around, etc. 

But when something happens to jolt me awake, I'm not starting from oblivion; I can look past the sleep and rewind the small awake part of my brain and say, oh, Annaliese has been awake for a while, or Fresh Air started playing about twenty minutes ago, or whatever.

I wonder when that wears off.

calico rock ctd

a pretty place, arkansas.
we're overlooking the white river in these pics.
but the house is a wreck and we're going out tonight and i need to write a novel and bake bread, and go to the post office and set up the farmers market sign so that's all you get.

love,

a.

To the Ozarks and Home Again

But for now, these pics (taken at Saturday's lunch in an ice-cream shop) will have to suffice-- along with the statement that Arkansas is neat, but the best part, by far, was getting to hang out as a trio.

I blog a lot in my head.

But things don't always make it to the Web. So, in my particular order:

The bureaucrats I hear on NPR talking about how we need to implement tracking systems for produce so that we can prosecute whoever sold samonella-contaminated tomatoes make me really, really mad. How about we go for PREVENTION and try to avoid INDUSTRIALIZED MONOCULTURE. heh? anyone? Because I seriously doubt tomatoes from a small farmer would 1. be contaminated or 2. even if they were, poison 200-plus people in twenty-something states.

Also, people, eat your meat. It's good for the enviroment. Grassfed, sustainably raised, MEAT. EVEN BACON (though hogs eat slops, meaning they're walking compost piles who are also kickass rototillers.) Stop driving, and start eating locally. That's good for the enviroment.


Thirdly?
I got a job.
20 hours a week, my own historically renovated office within walking distance of the house, where I am welcome to bring Annaliese. So for the last two days, we've seen K. off and then strollered down to the office, where she plays/naps and I work, from 9-12.30. I know, that's not twenty hours, but I also work on Saturdays, and longer hours on Wednesday, when Annaliese hangs with her papa. And it pays. Not a whole lot, but enough to pay the rent and the phone bill.

So what am I doing?

I am the manager/executive director of this.


Annaliese can't believe it either.

Say rabbit.

Why we bought the house across the street and not, say, something livable is easy: it was cheap. About half of what we paid for our used truck, and with an acre-plus lot. So there we go. We bought a house I've never been inside of (evictions are underway) and one we won't live in until spring, assuming it's decent enough to fix.

Last night we made plum jam until midnight, and as I type this, twenty-four amber pint jars are glowing on the counter.

We spent the entire time arguing about how to make jam and how to tell if the jam has set. I'd say, but I don't like runny jam, and K. would say, you don't know what you're doing. It just has to get to the gelling point. Then we would try to freezer test and watch our jam fail to gel, in between glaring at each other.

K. said it would be fine. He grew up canning.

We now have twenty-four jars of plum syrup. Absolutely no thickness whatsoever.

Not really how I wanted it to go.

the fam-a-lee

Annaliese is sitting on my lap right now, chewing on a (capped) red pen. We kind of love her now. I even like the dogs more, now that Annaliese is obsessed with them, so in the world of the family, all is good.

We're heading to the Ozarks over the 4th. I was about to type that it should be fun-- but who knows? I've never taken a nearly-six-month-old Annaliese to a bed and breakfast before. One things for sure, parenthood is a brand-new gig all the time...

There are professional things in the wind. More on that later. But the strangest thing about babies is they're not static, and so it's hard to make plans. Sure, I can do x, y, and z now, but in two months, when Annaliese is crawling? I've never had such a cest la vie attitude in my life (and for you francophiles: I am perversely enjoying the butchering of las francais, mais oui? immature but true).

In other news, the tomatoes are acoming, I've been managing WV's farmers market, which continues to continue despite a lack of produce and a preponderance of negativity, and my morning glories are clambering up the kitchen porch most pleasingly. I just can't grow container plants worth a damn.

Last, but not least, most of y'all know we've been looking high and low for a home of our own.

We finally found one:

TO BE CONTINUED...

lackadaisical motherhood

my kid's got dried banana on her eyebrow (she's not really into solid foods yet, so don't get excited. but we periodically give her tastes to confirm that she's not interested, and indeed, is kind of appalled, judging by the shudders and pushing away).

Banana is also on last night's onesie. Not to mention a certain...funky dampness in her nether region from this morning's poop. And I'm all like, whatever kid, so you're dirty--- you've got a clean diaper and I got to finish my coffee, nest pah?