The Logic of a Four Year Old

A conversation with Theodore when he was four years old.

Theodore contemplating the mysteries of life.

Mammals have hair, right? 

So, does that mean that bald people are reptiles?

Three Year Old Pickles

Are you familiar with Food Waste Friday, started by the FrugalGirl? It encourages people to post pictures of the food they let go to waste. The idea is to make you more aware of what happens to the food in your house. I was intrigued with the idea, so I thought Ward, the boys, and I would give it a try.

We started by looking in our refrigerator. As I had anticipated, we didn't find much spoiled food. However, we did find a lot of food that nobody had any intentions of eating. We found eight Clementines from Christmas that had dried up inside. Also, there were the three year old pickles that had turned rubbery. Next to them, was a jar of salsa with crusted sauce in the bottom. Unfortunately, the list goes on.

Hot sauce shelf in our newly organized refrigerator.

By the time we had almost filled up our kitchen trash can, I decided that it was too embarrassing to post our waste. When I had checked out other people's pictures, there was a person who found one apple that was starting to shrivel, so she made apple muffins. Theodore said she was just showing off. However, most entries were like that. So maybe, we'll start participating next week when we will have a relatively clean slate to start from—unless we decide to clean out the pantry.

I guess FrugalGirl might be onto something. I don't know if the embarrassment factor is going to get us to waste less food or just hide, but it did get us an organized, clean refrigerator. Thanks to her for that.

Hat Tip: A Place to Reside

A Second Look at Irises 5-26-11

A Second Look around the yard this week found me focusing on the different irises that were in bloom. Because I don't know much about them, I did a bit of reading. I found out that no matter what they're called, most iris are some form of the bearded iris. After that, I got confused with the details. Therefore, I'm naming them by color as you will see. The one thing I do know, is that the word "iris" is used a lot in crossword puzzles (in my experience, anyway) because all of the letters used to spell it are very common.

Pale yellow iris

Yellow-veined iris

Lavender iris

Salmon colored iris

Two-tone purple iris

White iris

Siberian iris

Our Fine Feathered Friends

Recently, for Ward's birthday, we put up a bird feeder, suet feeder, and bird bath. He wanted to become a bird watcher---at least from our windows. We put out expensive seed and suet and waited for the birds to come. Slowly, but surely, they have been finding their way to our gourmet offering.

However, did I mention the whole family is severely lacking in our understanding of birds? Until the new feeder, I was the advanced one because I could identify both a cardinal and a robin. Ward could spot a blue jay, and Wally and Theodore knew a crow when they saw one. That was about the sum total of it. One time, my sister, a long time birder, took me bird watching. While she was saying, "Look at the white on the tip of the bird's wing," I was saying, “Which tree?”

After a couple of weeks of watching, we're very proud of our new knowledge. We can now tell you that house finches are our most frequent visitors, the male cardinal doesn't like sharing, and the feeder REALLY swings when a crow lands on it. We can also tell you that we have both pileated and downy woodpeckers who are enjoying the suet; but neither one seems to resemble Woody Woodpecker. We're still a little confused about all of the little brown and gray birds, but we think we have been visited by a black capped chickadee, a white breasted nuthatch, and a house sparrow.

We've also had the ubiquitous visitor to every bird feeder—the squirrel. So far, the “squirrel proof” feeder is doing it's job, but we are enjoying the squirrel's antics as it tries to eat from the suet feeder in all positions. So far, upside down seems to be the favorite. Perhaps it's trying to copy the woodpeckers.

Who knows what we will see next? Maybe it will be something exotic. I just hope that we will be able to recognize it when it comes.

A Footnote: Special thanks to the boys' Aunt Martha—the bird expert who has been a tremendous help in getting us started.

A Second Look, 5-20-11

A Second Look  around the yard this week found these things.

  

Bearded iris

Honeysuckle--The smell is so sweet. Now if it just wouldn't engulf everything around it.

Sage

Bearded iris

Ground Hog Hole--Front door and back door that is always hidden.

An early blackberry bloom. Or is it black raspberry. I always get them mixed up.

Passports

We had front row seats to see Old Faithful.

Our family applied for passports this weekend. It all started in third grade when one of my friends brought a View-Master to school with pictures from around the United States. Two of the most impressive ones for me were the Old Faithful Geyser in Yellowstone National Park and Niagara Falls in New York. I marveled at these unbelievable acts of nature, and they became icons for me of the amazing things to see in this country. However, I never got to see them in person--that was until last summer when Ward and I saw Old Faithful. It erupted  faithfully, as it has done for countless years, and the experience was all that I imagined it would be. After that satisfying event, we started planning a visit to Niagara Falls.

It was decided that to have the complete experience, we needed to see both the New York and Canadian sides of the Falls, which these days means you need a passport. No one in the family had an up-to-date one, so we had to start the application procedure from the beginning. Soon the excitement of the trip was forgotten as the annoyances of bureaucracy took over.

A dark cloud seemed to be hanging over the process. We couldn't find Theodore's birth certificate. We couldn't find the safe deposit box key to look for his birth certificate. Wally's work schedule didn't fit with the times the post office was open to submit applications. Ward and Wally's work schedules didn't mesh with the schedule of where we could get inexpensive pictures taken.

However, the sun started to emerge Saturday morning. We found the safe deposit box key (under a seat in Ward's car). This enabled us to get the right documents, work around Wally’s work schedule, and make it to the inexpensive place for our pictures. We got our applications submitted, yeah! Now, we hope for clear skies for the people who will be processing them.

Niagara Falls here we come!

Discoveries this week 5-12-11

A Second Look around the yard this week found these new flowers blooming along with a few other things.

Pink azaleas

White azaleas

Siberian Iris

Star of Bethlehem--Some consider this a weed and some consider it a flower.  It spreads easily by both seeds and bulbs, so you have to be careful where you plant it.

Rhododendron

The blossoms are off of the peach tree and peaches are starting to form.

The cows are grazing in the field behind us. They get rotated among the different fields on the neighbor's farm, but usually spend the summer behind us.

A Day in the Life of Lucy

A Day in the Life of Lucy

  

Lucy started her day with a little breakfast.

Then she decided to join Wally who was still in bed.

After her nap with Wally, she joined the family in 
a game of Scrabble.

She soon became bored with Scrabble and decided 
to play cards instead.

All the game playing tired her out, so she took another 
nap with the rest of the cats.

After her rest, she tried her paws at some arts and crafts.

The tedium of the arts and crafts made her nervous, so she chewed on a box to calm herself before her next nap.

When she woke up, she was hungry and demanded to be fed.

After eating, she decided that she would watch some TV with me and Annie, but soon fell asleep.

With her last burst of energy for the day, she caught a "mouse."

And she fell asleep for the night beside Ward.

The end.

Happy Mother's Day

I come from hearty stock. Thank goodness, because raising babies in my family is not for the faint of heart. Just ask my mother.

She gave birth to my oldest sister, Daughter Number One, as young woman one year after she married my father. She said at that point she knew as much about taking care of a baby as she did about being a plumber (not much). My sister did all of the fun things babies do like cry a lot for no apparent reason and never sleep. But soon my sister learned to talk. And talk. My mothered yearned for quiet.

Two and a half years later, Daughter Number Two was born. She followed in the footsteps of Number One and cried a lot for no apparent reason and never slept. Then she learned to walk. And run. And climb. And to never be afraid. She climbed the banisters, moved the furniture, scared the neighbors, and had the fire department rescue her from a drain. She didn't talk much, but that didn't matter, because Number One talked enough for both of them.

Three years after Number Two, I was born. I just didn't cry for no apparent reason, I cried ALL of the time. I cried so much that I burst my tear ducts. I cried so much that the neighbors took me with them when they delivered groceries. They hoped to provide some relief for all involved. I consumed every minute of my mother's time. Meanwhile, Number One talked and Number Two was “busy.”

My mother was tired, but the kids were happy.

Then the miracle happened. Daughter Number Four was born four years after me. She only cried when she needed something. She slept regularly. My mother was afraid that something was wrong with her. She didn't understand this kind of baby. Meanwhile, Number One talked, Number Two was busy, and I cried easily, but we were manageable now—at least compared to before. For a little while, my mother could breathe and just be very busy raising four young girls. That was until my ailing grandmother moved in. But that's another story.

My husband has a theory that the number of kids in a family is equal to the number of easy babies plus one difficult one. Thank goodness my parents didn't subscribe to that formula or I wouldn't be here. I want to thank my mother, on this Mother's Day, for not giving up when I'm sure she wanted to and giving me a great start to life.

A Second Look, 5-5-11

A second look around the yard this week found these new flowers blooming.

Lily of the Valley

Cherry Laurel

Azalea--Last week the pink bushes were blooming. This week the red one joined them.

Wild Cherry

Violet--A favorite spring wildflower that is trying to take over the yard and beds.  

The Long and the Short of It

How long should my posts be? I've been pondering this since I decided to try my hand at blogging. I'll have to admit that I am behind the technology curve that has the trend of shortening everything. I don't regularly text. I tried to open a Twitter account, but kept having problems with my password. I usually use complete words in emails. In other words, it's easy to tell that I'm over thirty. I remember when I was in college, I was introduced to the book,  "CDB" by William Steig. I thought it was very clever. The entire book was just line-drawings and letters that sounded out words.( “CDB=See the bee.”) Who knew years later, that this style of writing would be commonplace.

I looked around a little* and found that different kinds of blogs, on average, have different lengths. Gossip blogs are usually the shortest (~100 words) and reference blogs are the longest (~1500 words.) Most blog entries are 100-500 words. Also, the average person spends about 1 ½ minutes reading a blog post. As an experiment, I asked Ward, Wally, and Theodore to read a well-written long blog post (not mine) for 1 ½ minutes and see how far they got. Theodore read 500 words, Ward read 371 words, and I read 411 words during our 90 second experiments. Wally said he was busy with an online meeting. It seems, from this totally nonscientific project, that bloggers have figured out how long they have an audience and write a length to match this.

What does this mean? I'm not sure except Theodore says that writing about your blog in a blog is odd. That's the short of it.

*How Long is the Ideal Blog Post?
  Post lenght-How Long Should a Blog Post Be?