Everyday Seems to Be a Holiday

Thanks to my mom I learned today of a new holiday. Mark your calendars, because Saturday night is "Sneak Some Zucchini on Your neighbors Porch Night!" The blurb, quite funny, was in the Press Telegram. Those of you who have grown zucchini before can understand the sheer hilarity of this holiday. (If you haven't, check it out, you may have to scroll down half a page to get to the article sorry)!

How true! I'm under quite a deadline for Saturday! Last year we couldn't give away enough zucchini. This year it's been so cool, their just starting to produce. So for Saturday.... you might need to beware of Cucumbers on your porch from the Ray farm!

Age Ain't Nothin' But a Number....

We began the vacation a few days early so Brian could meet up with some (7) of his high school cronies for fun on the lake, a sort of impromptu 24 year reunion before the "big one" next year :) before the family arrived. Since this involved the boat and getting to Arkansas a bit early, the kids and I holed up in a hotel in Rogers, took in some sites and swam.

Dinner times were interesting. First of all I respect all of you single moms out there. I was a bit shocked when I entered a restaurant the first night and was asked...and is, uh, anyone joining you? Nope. Just me and the kiddos. I felt somewhat looked down upon. When I ordered a sangria she carded me. Well, I guess, no big deal. Almost flattery. I know, I secretly love being carded at the grocery store, don't you?

I appreciated this oh so much more the following night. We went to a Red Robin. The waiter was great with the kids. No interrogation on where my spouse was. As I perused the menu I noticed that it said 'anyone appearing younger than 39 1/2 will be carded.' I order our dinner and beer for myself. HE DID NOT CARD ME!! Now, wait a minute! I was offended. I look young don't I??

Truly I don't care much one way or the other. I love the Uppity Blues Women and the lyric "and like a fine wine, you don't get older, you just get better." I've always felt that way and always felt an old soul, one who's young at heart.

It's just interesting to me how I'm perceived. It could very much be the perceiver. I remember working in customer service (10 years ago or so now) and I discussed a client to a fellow staff member as "that kid" who was just here. She laughed and said he wasn't a kid, he had to be in his early 20's. At the time I was in my late 20's. People seem to look younger as we get older. It just shows relativity doesn't it?

**if you want to hear the song, click the hyperlink ;)

Happy Place

I love my busy life.  I seem to thrive on sheer activity.  But I find myself looking wistfully back to vacation as I've now completed by first day back to work post-travels.  When you find true relaxation and relish family time unencumbered by daily activities and commitments, you don't realize what a true gift it is until life, somewhat in a surreal slow motion, kicks back up to play and sometimes even to fast forward.  

With the day coming to a close, I've accomplished a ton and am catching a glimpse of how the calendar will look with the upcoming school year soon to begin.  I look forward to fall and all of the richness the season has to offer (it's my favorite), but am thrilled too that I have vivid memories that I can go back to on those hectic days so I  can find center and balance. 

What is your 'happy place?'  It can be one place or several snippets in time when you've found pure relaxation and peace.  I love being able to sit down, and just observe the kids, being kids, trying to capture some of that youthful exuberance & wonder myself.

My Budding Activist

We began our vacation and the kids, Sidney especially, were all about goin' fishin.'  As you can see she had a great time catching little perch off of the dock and letting them go.  So one morning, Brian calls me from out on the water and says "tell the kids to come down to the dock and see the giant catfish we caught!"  There was much excitement as everyone ran down to see it.  This excitement was followed by sheer horror and panic by Sidney when she realized it wasn't being immediately let go.

This was no ordinary catfish.  It was indeed a suicidal one.  At about 8 pounds itself, it was found swimming on top of the water with a 3 pound bass wedged in it's mouth.  Having missed it's mark, the bass was lodged in trying to exit through the catfish's gill.  So in effect this was a weakened catfish whose catch made for a good fish story.

Sid was inconsolable.  I am constantly amazed at how deeply she feels for the plight of all living things.  For example, while fishing for fun, she'd use mayflies as bait.  But she'd search out spider webs and only use the ones that were already dead.  This, as you can imagine, was fairly in-effective and switching to dough-balls in the end worked much better.

I went to talk to her, and she said "how would you like to be hooked by the mouth, yanked out of the water, skinned and then cooked??" (the memory of this verbiage is not complete as I was stunned by not only the incredible emotion, but the eloquence of the statement from my 8-year old).  By this point she had thrown herself on the doc very dramatically (wearing her black "I love vampire's t-shirt).  My brother-in-law is a priest and he and another priest friend of the family were at the lake with us.   Fr. Jerome, seeing how distraught she was, approached Sidney and tried to calm her with the story of the loaves and the fishes.  I can assure you she was hearing none of that.

When Brian made it back to the dock about 30 minutes later, she had calmed down some.  She was following a snapping turtle in the water.  Brian went over to  look and she screeched, not you "catfish murderer."  Yikes!  At this point she staged her own sit-in wrapping herself around Brian's leg until he let the fish go.

Discussions of the Circle of Life and humane treatment are fairly common in our family.  In teaching our kids where our food comes from and how what we don't produce gets to our table.  The kids are typically very philosophical in their thought processes, but this time it's somewhat different.  This fish is badly injured and most likely going to die anyway, isn't it better for us to take care of it so it doesn't suffer?  Yes, concedes my daughter, but we can't eat it, we need to bury it.  I let her know of our plan to go out to a catfish restaurant the next night for dinner.  This she didn't mind.  It was more the thought of us being intimately involved in killing our own food, versus someone else doing it.

It is a process.  She has had stages in her young life where she has insisted on being vegetarian (most notably a time when she was six), and we've supported that as long as she ate well.  Now she does eat meat, but always very thoughtfully.  Just as her dad and I lament over things like the peaches from my guilty pleasures post, Sidney laments over every living thing as she tries to understand the circle of life.  Now Charlie, a very thoughtful child in his own right,  just wanted to eat the fish!

Guilty Pleasures

notice juice dripping from chin and read on :)

I may have been unplugged for the last week of vacation, but my blogger mind was running, and I actually sat down with pen and paper to jot down some thoughts which may be reflected in the next several posts.

When I began to formulate this blog, I realized that all of the guilty pleasures that I came up with involved food. hmmm or should I say yummmm....

Something you should know;  I'm not a soda drinker, never have been, and I always try to eat fairly healthy.  Now lets blow that philosophy straight out the window.  Whenever we head South, I know I'm on vacation when I see my favorite fast food joint.  Sonic.   I've loved it since I lived briefly in Kansas, and am absolutely addicted to 2 things.  Chedda-Peppers, and Route 44 Cherry Limeade.  My dear husband braved the drive through, while towing the boat, several times to satisfy this craving of mine (fortunately he loves it almost as much as I do).

I also indulged in Fried Catfish w/ hush puppies, good old fashioned beans and cornbread, old style St. Louis BBQ, Crawfish Etouffee as well as the typical lake fare; brats, burgers etc.  So it was a good foodie week.  Probably standing out most in my mind are the peaches....

I love all of the farm stands in Northwest Arkansas, and was thrilled to see beautiful, ripe, juicy peaches!  What a treat.  I'm forever trying to buy local and seasonal foods as well as support local farmers, so I resist a lot of stuff.  We get our fruit fulfillment from the garden in the summer, and then the local apple orchards all fall.  When I have broken down to buy some shipped in fruits, they're  horribly under ripe and when they finally ripen, completely tasteless.

As we drove out of town, I picked up a case of peaches.  You know the kind that send juice down your chin and make you think you've just tasted a piece of heaven.  We ate them the whole car ride and I'm going to can some today.  When I picked them up I found out that in fact the peaches were from Georgia because the Arkansas crop had been destroyed by a late freeze.  Well, we're fairly close to Georgia and I know it came from a farm connection that this 90 year old farm stand owner had further south, so I bought them.

As we're driving I begin to think more about this.  I am now driving home carrying a case of peaches so in effect am I shipping them??  I began to laugh a little thinking about this concept.  Is the fuel consumption that these peaches are using even more since we're towing the boat?  So I bought fairly local and am now taking them home.  But since we're making this annual drive anyway, bringing the peaches is just a bonus right? It's not really adding more to the shipment line of the peach is it?  What a guilty pleasure, but hey, how many people that you know would have dissected the purchase of peaches like this?