March 18th has come and gone

I've been wearing a little charm necklace lately that has three peas in a pod on it. Annaliese was sitting in my lap on the downstairs porch the other day... we were snacking and watching the sun set-- and she held my charm between her fingers and pointed.

"This one is Daddy, this one is me, and this one is Caspian," she said. "And you are the shell that keeps us all together."

Don't want to forget that one.

We had the book signing, and the book is out and about into the world, and as much as I want it to become an international best seller with script options (because that happens to all cookbooks, right?), the part I also really want to hang onto is how many people showed up to the local bookstore and bought books. Not strangers. There were maybe ten strangers. Instead they were customers and neighbors and friends and my mother and my sister's godmother and almost everybody bought multiple copies. The bookstore staff were astounded.

Not to mention we've sold books like they were the newest apple toy in-store like they were going out of style. All to people we know. I've gotten emails and hugs and phone calls telling me how wonderfully I write and how proud they are of me, the store, and Dixie.

It's incredibly sweet.

This is a good place to call home.

Daffodils are out and I have jars of them set around the house. My garden is planted-- chinese cabbage, snowpeas, sweet peas, broccoli, carrots, potatoes-- and things are growing. Slowly, but growing. The pearl bush I planted next to the front steps and the pink tulips Kagan's sister gave me are blooming. This is my favorite time of year... before the weeds, before the heat, when all is green promise.

My chickens are laying-- all of them!-- and the rooster has learned to crow. K. hauled two pigs to the slaughterhouse yesterday, so the store's freezer is stocked with pork chops and patty sausage, and our freezer at home is full to the gills.

We both have thousands of projects ahead of us but the skeleton is in place, and now we can just do a little here, a little there, when we feel like it, and in five years or so, we'll look up and it'll be amazing.

Caspian's best friend came home with us after school yesterday and played until dinner time. They ran around in the field and played with legos on the porch and Caspian's face just glowed with love and joy. He is so my child.

The avocados are perfect right now. Caspian shucked sweet corn for dinner and we ate pork chops, corn on the cob, sliced avocado, tomato, and drank prosecco at the table last night.

I feel very rich these days.

Time

Is so precious these days and I've been avoiding screens in my off-time. 

Softball try-outs...

Could not resist a stealth shot.

Broccoli, from seed.

Dinner last night.

The boys were out playing with dirt until dark. Annaliese and I had girl time. Baths, pigtails, snuggling, and cat doctoring. 

February... cold, grey, snow, snow day. Everyone in town has reached a level of frustration expressed as a constant stream of commentary about the weather.

Book comes out in a month and people seem excited about it. I am less excited. I hope people like it, and it sells well, and perhaps leads to other revenue-generating income streams for me. I am much more excited about this year's produce season: can not wait to flood my store with peaches, blueberries, Amish strawberries.

Had a brief flurry of baby fever completely cured by a trip to see Stinks' baby, who is adorable, and a good baby, but nonetheless a baby, and so there goes that, thank goodness.

Have been cooking a great deal of good dinners lately and somehow it's relaxing, to lean into that responsability as oppposed to handing it off, as I've been doing for years now. I think about it the day before. That somehow makes it manageable. I also don't try anything very exotic: roast chicken, minestrone, spaghetti. Although I did make a completely amazing risi et bisi that no one seemed to like except me. Salmon cakes, on the other hand, were a winner. Go figure.

Annaliese lost her second tooth yesterday. Caspian is enormous. These are good things.

This pic cracks me up... we were at the store on Sunday to hand over a small lost dog to a good woman (long story) and it occurred to me that there we all were, dressed in our church clothes, and so we handed K's phone to an employee. The kids did not seem as thrilled with this idea as we were.

Oh well.

Pig roast on Sunday. House guests this weekend. K's birthday on Tuesday. My first book club meeting next Wednesday.

Busy times, good times. maybe someday, warmer and sunnier times.

January was off to a rocky start at my house. There was stomach flu, an infected finger, bitterly cold weather, burst pipes, livestock concerns. But I don't want to talk about any of that.

Last night we made a fire and ended up on the couch in front of it, playing rummy with the kids perched on the back of the couch, watching us, since their card proficiency does not extend beyond Go Fish. I'd already played Jenga with them anyhow. They sprawled. There was some tooting. Some teasing. So bitter rummy competition between me and K. It's easy to entertain ourselves these days.

Quotes I'd like to remember:

Annaliese with a birthday package on her lap, Caspian wistfully wondering if there was anything from Grandfather in it for him. Annaliese: "Don't worry Caspian. I'll let you play with my toys. Pinky-swear." 

(And there WAS something for him! A hand-tooled wallet with a $5 bill that completely made his day.)

Caspian, yesterday, as Annaliese handed him a yogurt she'd brought from the store for him. ""I've been waiting for the yogurt truck my entire life." 

Annaliese lost her first tooth this week. She took her gold dollar coin to school to show her class that the tooth fairy does exist. Her other bottom tooth is hanging by a thread but I haven't let K. pull it because I'm not adjusted yet to her missing one tooth, let alone two. 

The store is in the January woes and it's challenging these days to keep solvent, but it doesn't phase me as much as it used to. It's been this way before. It'll be this way again. In the mean time, I get to hang out with my favorite folks. 

Staycation Number One

So, I didn't work this week. Except Monday. Instead, I've stayed home with my babies and listened to them play with each other. I read a few books, colored a few pictures, and we broke out that Chinese checkers game Grandfather gifted us for Christmas. I did not bake, but I got K to make chocolate chip cookies last night, so that kind of counts. I burned my finger badly, walked with them downtown, took them to the exercise store, let them eat BBQ in the truck, dug in the flower beds, ordered rose bushes, fruit trees, and vegetable seeds, folded laundry, cleaned out the downstairs closet a little bit, and lay around quite a lot. And now I blogged. I am a paragon.

Annaliese this morning, before our walk downtown:

The kids spent a solid half-hour building a house together. Caspian was only allowed to build the walls, though they are technically his legos.

We tried to play soccer outside but Annaliese is very bossy and kept making up rules. We tried freeze tag but Caspian is very whiny and kept needing a break whenever i was close to tagging them. Fun was had somehow, nonentheless.

The wagon is in the shop getting tricked OUT (Thanks again, Grandfather!) so K has been letting me drive his struck. Sometimes. When I beg.

Last week Auntie E. came to visit. The poppets adore her.

 She brought Charlie. We took him to the river. Other than my illness, an empty propane tank, and some bad weather, they seemed to enjoy themselves.

Tomorrow, life resumes. I'll be back at work. Annaliese is turning SIX on Monday (!!!!) and so we are taking the birthday girl and some friends out for roller skating and sundaes. School resumes Monday after a two-week break.

I am not sad, exactly, because I like regular life. But the sunshine sure feels good through the windows as you sit on the couch. Til next winter, laziness.

*I WILL have more time off between now and next winter. But most likely it'll be the traveling-to-see-folks time off variety.

The children are singing "Christmas is coming, the geese are getting fat" and working to perfect a surprise for K and I in the kitchen. It seems to involve squeezing lemons and setting the table. I can't wait.

My week to stay home with the kids during Christmas break. Day One: every plan I made was derailed, and so the three of us spent the morning getting produce and the afternoon unpacking it.

They were champions. When we got home, I sat them down and told them so. Pride welled up in their eyes and they immediately set out to impress me more: unpack and put away the groceries, pick up the house, sweep the kitchen floor, and now, this.

Annaliese turns six on Monday. Caspian is four and a half. I am intensely proud of them both.

Just heard Annaliese tell Caspian, "Let's get Mama and Daddy." Report will ensue later.

It's pouring down rain and I am voluntarily driving to the big town north of here, though two of Boatie's windows will not roll up suddenly and mysteriously, which means I will have to drive the store van (and GET the store van).

There I shall drop off old clothes, meet with a bookstore lady about spring promotion etc, and pick up some produce.

Then I have an early lunch date at the store, even though I'm not working today (working a double tomorrow for an employee headed out of town) because Dixie's dishing up local turnip greens and I have never had them for real before.

The sickness that's been chasing me finally caught me and wrestled me to the ground. Went to a different doctor, got shot up with all the stuff I try not to take, and now feel human again. Big, big, big difference.

K's new project is amazing. He's made an enormous amount of progress in a single week, and it's fun watching him be excited to hit the door running. That being said, the balance is swinging again-- for instance, kids, Thanksgiving break, we both have to work, what gives? Guess we'll find out next week.

Next week, in fact, is going to be nuts. Monday, I have to pick up 20 local turkeys from an hour away and get them into our walk-in, while having both children and simultaneously getting interviewed by O magazine. (Uh huh). Tuesday, in between working like usual, I also have to appear in court (I WAS SERVED, Y'ALL, TO serve as a witness in a custody case of a former employee) and pick up Christmas trees. Wednesday is the day before Thanksgiving, meaning folks are going to be picking UP all those turkeys and also pies, cakes, and casseroles, the store closes early, and my mother and sister arrive (huzzah!).

I think Thursday is going to feel really, really good. Friday should be alright too. The store will be kind of half-way open: most people will be out of town, doing the black Friday thing, so we're going to restock, remake, and get decorated for Christmas. Set the trees up, bust out the gingerbread kits and extra goodies I've been squirreling away... I love Christmas at the store, with the smell of evergreen in the air.

So. How are the children?

The children.

The children are sometimes really wonderful and sometimes really awful. Caspian needs to take more naps but no one is at home to let him. Annaliese is ROCKING school but often has the world's worst, most adolescent tone in her voice, which we are working on, working on, working on. I've noticed they are happy to go to bed around 7 on these long dark nights and we are happy to let them.

These chilluns... it's a whole new ballgame these days.

Annaliese has this look a lot: grumpy, hiding a smile, sulky, pouty. Her daddy usually swoops her up and tickles her out of it.

Caspian is into Spiderman, as I think we all know now. His favorite chore at the store is carrying out empty boxes.

We're having a very lean Christmas this year: no storebought presents. Luckily for them, they are the only grandchildren on both sides and have three auntie/uncle sets who spoil them rotten... from us, they're getting built-in bookcases and boring stuff like that :) Annaliese's room is basically boxes set around the perimeter filled with junk that she is inordinately attached to (she's got the hoarder gene!) and she'll actually love it. When I asked them what they wanted for Christmas this year, they both looked up at me with their shining brown eyes and rosebud little mouths and I swear they lisped, "Whatevah Santa brings us, Mama."

Devious beasts!

Alright, time to vault out of pajamas and into the rain....

Chicken Spaghetti

Caspian's at the store more lately. Sometimes, in the middle of the lunch rush, that means he's lounging in the front window, watching Spiderman on Netflix. Sometimes he's playing with other kids, going on trips to the bank and the Post office, making the ladies coffee (he knows how they take it, and sometimes, they tip him), occasionally actually helping me.

Annaliese does not care for her little brother's intrusion on what was before her space.

But she's never at the store lately, being a full-time student and whatnot.

It's been a tough week. I am sick, still sick. Kids are fractious. Weather is unpredictable. K. started a big project and it's night 2 of him coming home around 6, which, spoiled me, I am not accustomed to.

Here's to some ease and laughter heading our way shortly.

I have 27 minutes to get everybody dressed (and awoken) and out the door but apparently, I'm going to write a blog instead.

Went to the doctor yesterday. Bronchitis/early pneumonia. Not like me.

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We have been in this house for a year now and when I look around, I am so very grateful that a year has passed. I am sitting at my desk in our sunroom, able to see the sun rising over the barn through the French doors, pictures on the wall and the floors clean and softly gleaming. Nothing like living in actual, un-fixable, disarray for months to make you relish order. At one point the kitchen was in one place and the stove in another. Piles of boards and sawdust separated them.

Alright. 25 minutes. Must go.

It is NWA%$CSS or something like that month. Write a novel in a month, or blog once a day for a month.

It may be the 11th but I think I shall get in on this action.... I miss blogging.

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That being said, it's 6:45 in the morning and my baby girl just hollered for me to help her come get dressed.

The answer is YES. A sleepy Annaliese is a stinky-breathed, wild-haired wondrous thing that sometimes hugs.

Small Victories

Made sausage-kale-white bean stew for lunch. Gave the kids small bowls with cheese on top. Annaliese was trying to negotiate the amount she had to eat; I said, I don't want to hear one word about your food until your bowl is empty, and then you get a reward.

Silence.

Then, Mama look.

I look. she's holding up an empty bowl.

Great job, I say.

She grins. Then says, but I don't want to eat it ever again in my whole life. I hated it.

WRITTEN A FEW DAYS AGO

Summer is ending and the nights are cool. Tomatoes are gone. Apples are in. Pumpkins are here, though we still have mounds of bright green okra, late squash, muscadines. Pecans and chestnuts aren't here yet but butternut squashes are.

Tomorrow is my eight year anniversary.

We were children when we got married and we're probably still children. Maybe. Though we do take care of a whole lot, from bottle-fed calves to employees to children to buildings galore.

But. We were both very young. I especially was young.  I'd made very few decisions in my life at that point, let alone such a big one, but I'd been taught to think well. To idenitfy the proof was in the pudding. 

I am coming to think that the two main ingredients to a happy life are 1. luck-- there are circumstances a lot harder than others and 2. partner lottey. I won the lottery. K is not the perfect man I believed him to be when we married but he is absolutely irrevocably perfect for me. I make him laugh. He makes me happy. He's a good father, a superb husband, and under neat all the layers of responsability we have diligently applied one by one, my best friend and partner in crime.

Plus he has a wicked tan and strong muscles these days. I chose wisely :)

We have a babysitter booked and a twenty-five-year-old station wagon with a tank full of diesel. It all feels wide open. 

My boys, going fishing:

Posing

First, I would like to state that my daughter instructed  me to strike this pose. 

I don't know where she learned this pose: we do not have cable, and I kind of doubt the endless streaming of Backyardigans and Dinosaur Train have taught her this.

I guess at school?

Anyhow, when we got home from church, she grabbed my phone and told me how to stand. 

We went to the pool and I wanted to snap her picture. This is how she stood. I might be in trouble.

But then again, this girl is pure joy. She wants to be older, just like I did at her age. she has always wanted to do more and be more and that has been part of her personality since the day she was born, when she opened her eyes and lifted her head moments into the world.

Love this girl. 

It was kind of a nutty week.

It started well enough: lovely Sunday, normal Monday and Tuesday, relaxing Wednesday, and then it went mad fast. K took all the doors off the house. my high school best friend dropped in for a visit (haven't seen her for....8 years?). I woke up Friday morning, went to work, and in the middle of a trailer full of watermelons being delivered, realized I was supposed to be in Jackson-- 2+ hours away-- for an award. (Made it for lunch. And the award.)

Saturday was work-- busy work-- and then the afternoon birthday party of a good friend in Oxford. I called K on my way home and said, "I'm done." He concurred. We managed to not fight from the depths of our exhaustion and woke up today feeling ourselves again.

Today was really nice. I made everybody crepes with fried apples for breakfast. We walked to church. Went to the country club for lunch, everyone cleaned their plates, and then we spent half the afternoon swimming. Came home and kerfluffled around until the evening, when we all ended up outside, kids hauling branches from the cut-down (diseased) maple tree, me cleaning porches, K weedwhacking.

Annaliese dressed herself for church. She ended up in a purple dress with a pink boa-like scarf her Grandmama knit her as a shawl. A purse, a necklace, and anklets above her sequined gold ballet flats. Girl had style. In the pew, she settled in, opened her purse, and removed her child's Bible. During the hymns, as K and I stood and sang, she and her brother stood and looked into her open Bible, held exactly as we held ours. It was pretty cute. During the children's time at the altar, Caspian, intrepid as ever, was the only child brave enough to step on a stool and check out the view from the pulpit. He had a lot of old ladies pat the top of his head for that.

The 125 pints of watermelon lemonade that had to be shipped to New York City. That was a week's ago crazy project.

 Waiting for the bus on Annaliese's first day of school. We followed in our car and walked her in-- for the first 4 days. She seems happy as a clam and it's been a very smooth start.

Pretty nuts that my baby goes to school now though.

Next year for this little man:

The pool continues to have been a GOOD idea for our family. We go often.

 But always in style.

Caspian has been helping me at the store lately. Not a lot, but it's a start. He bags green beans, prices items on the scale, and carries surprisingly heavy boxes for a little dude like a pro. Here he's taking a well-earned break. Fifteen minutes every four hours.

We hit up Main Street for an art show. It was a big night.

When I went to work early the following morning, the whole house was still asleep, and this wee little kindergartner had appeared in my bed in the wee hours. 

This week's starting out with a bang: a fairly prominent magazine editor is making the rounds of our small town tomorrow and coming to OUR house, which I am putting out of my mind. But at least the doors are back on.

Business notes

I have had a plethora of people in the last week tell me everything from I look like an adolescent Swiss milkmaid to I am doing a great job.

It's been odd, and weird, and really awesome.

Something has shifted in the last few months, and for the first time in my adult life, people are treating me like I am a success.

I am exactly the same person I always have been, but whatever.

I have also watched people start their own business ventures around me, and I can see that they think I've made it, and they're failing, and all I really want to say is-- we're pretty much in the same place. I'm just a few years ahead. People who have never run their own small businesses before, young or old, have no idea what it takes. It's like parenting. Simply indescribable to anyone who hasn't done it before.

And frankly, just like parenting, some people win and some people lose.

Also, just like parenting, it's not always clear at all times who is winning and who is losing, because there are a thousand moments in a day and the key is to win at the majority, the important ones, because you're going to lose a few. You can't bat a thousand in a row, to expand the metaphor.

It is not clear to me that we have won. It is clear that lately, more often than not, we have been winning.

It's fun.

Chloe's Mama is doing a favor for me today and so Chloe is spending the day at our house. She and Annaliese are double trouble, BFFs, all those things. Caspian is only occasionally the third wheel.

That being said, I don't see nap time in the near future so I am taking my own quiet chilled rest while they play some complicated game involving sand, water, and dogs. Outside, thankfully.

The house has many, many finishing touches yet to come but what's really beyond nice is that it is at this point, less than a year after we moved into an aesthetic hellhole covered in asbestos shingles, a house. Our house. The structure is done, it's just the wee things that will pull it all together left, and we're only 9 months in. I think in another 2 years, time enough for the landscaping we plan to do this fall to soften a  bit, it's going to be fabulous. I am really proud of us. We thought this house with its bizzarre floor plan might be a tear-down and instead, for relatively very little money, we've made it the house we've always wanted. It will be never be the American Gothic farmhouse I longed for, but the cedar siding will gray and I can see it being a very whimsical and romantic place in a few years.

Single parenting continues. We've had some fun times-- a lazy cool morning at the farmers' market (kids above), a pool party, family snuggle time, and fortunately for me, the girl I hired to nanny during the day has been a roaring success-- but we need K to come home. I need K to come home. Life is on pause until he does.

In the mean time, there's always the pool.

Caspian at Natalie's wedding took a bunch of pictures. He's got a true eye:

Isn't that hilarious? love that boy. And my uncle Mike too :).

I was surprised this year by how much fun it was to be at the cabin with my family. One room, a loft, K and I sleep on the screen-in porch, no real activity beyond tadpole hunting and a tree swing, but next year we're going to spend a solid week there as a four-some. It's a really lovely place. I was thinking about how the property taxes are kind of expensive, but then on the other hand, what else would I do with that money? I want my children to remember long days at the cabin their parents built with their own two hands, the freezing water, the bathtub you build a fire underneath. Rainy days playing charades and pictionary. The feeling of being completely away.

Now, some tired babies want to lay on the couch and watch a movie. More later.

It is four o'clock in the afternoon on a Friday and i feel a little bit like I've been run over by a truck. So apparently do my babies-- we got home and I put them to bed because that's all they could cope with and out like lights they went.

Vacation can kick your ass.

We landed on Wednesday, got home around 8, started the workday at 7:20am Thursday. Thank Heaven I had the sense to schedule myself a breather tomorrow because I know we couldn't make it to Sunday without some unstructured time.

Annaliese starts full-time, state-mandated school in less than two weeks. I *might* be freaking out. Just a little.

I am quickly speeding through the transition from harried mother of infants and toddlers to the veteran who tells those harried, very-much-annoyed parents to "savor every moment, it only lasts a little while"! The other day I found myself telling the parents of a difficult sleeper that well, Annaliese didn't reliably sleep through the night until she was around three, but you know, it's just a few years of feeling like you're about to lose your s$%& on a daily basis. No biggie. Between that and having to get to work so early that most days sleeping past dawn feels like a lie-in, I'm quickly becoming a super fun person.

Happy though. I love everything I am doing and don't want to change a thing.

Let's talk about my kids at this moment in time:

Amazing. Hilarious. Troopers. Getting pretty good at yes ma'ams and no sirs. They were so heart-achingly beautiful at K's sister's wedding, where they were much-feted flowergirl and ring-bearer.

A whole day of traveling: 2 2hour car rides, 2 2hour flights-- with not one tear, whine, or fight.

Caspian, vegetable and berry picker extraordinaire. Annaliese, ancient-memoried Annaliese, determined must-practice-swimming little girl who danced the night away up in Vermont and ducked behind someone else every time she saw me because she was afraid I'd make her go home. Until she was ready to go home. When she found me and sat on my lap and let me snuggle her like the baby she is, always, to me.

Love these chillens.

K., who seems to get sexier with every passing month, is still up in VT on his annual dad-cation, where he attempts to relax and does a lot of weedwhacking, so I am solo-parenting the last 2 weeks of summer. I can't wait for him to get home but I am trying not to focus on it. It's been a busy spring and summer, and I feel like ok, I've rested, we've played, now he's resting, then he can come home and we can together rock the frick outta this fall. Can't wait.
'
Chillun pictures: