It's noisy in the country.

Cicada shells Grace found.

The kid loves bugs. Just not spiders.

A girl and her pets.

Clingons.

 

A city friend of ours came to visit one time when we lived in Highlandville, Oh about 13 years ago now I suppose, and it was in the middle of the big cicada hatch. As she was getting in her car to leave she said, "It's noisy in the country!" Yes my friend, yes it is.

Grace has been finding a ridiculous amount of cicada shells and live bugs around our house. Since they eat and lay their eggs in twigs, our back yard is pretty much cicada Mecca.

We can hear them in the house, with the windows closed and the air conditioner on. It's like country static.

The next big hatch won't be until 2024 and by that time Grace will be a freshman in college somewhere securing our retirement care and won't likely have much interest in cicadas and bugs. Unless of course she decides to become an entymologist.

As much as she likes the things, that wouldn't surprise me. She slept, against my better judgement, with three of them in a bug cage in her room the other night. I told her if those things started humming, they were going outside. She said she'd close the door.

I'm pretty sure they all made it back outside.

If you'd like to learn more about cicadas check out this link http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/environment/2011-05-11-cicada-great-southern-brood-13-years_n.htm

You can hear what our backyard sounds like here...

Mother's Day

I had a very nice Mother's day. Bryon had to work all Mother's Day weekend so we celebrated the Sunday before by going to Red Lobster and eating lunch after church. Then Bryon and Grace took me to BB&B and bought me the most awesome food processor ever. Behold, the Ninja Kitchen System...

It slices, it dices, it mixes, it smooths... but wait there's more! This is chocolate chip cookie dough in it before and after. I've also made awesome hummus, smoothies and ice cream already. It really is pretty remarkable. My blender wouldn't even make a smoothie, even the ice crusher model, but this thing is the BOMB!

I hadn't even heard of it but as soon as I got home I saw there was an infomercial on DirecTV for it so I watched the whole thing. It has two sized containers the smaller one with the cookie dough and the large pitcher size. I understand it makes wonderful margaritas but I wouldn't know since I swore off tequilla after our 5 year class reunion (20 years ago now).  Eeek!

By the time Mother's Day weekend actually rolled around it was just me and Grace at home and we just bummed around and relaxed. She waffled between loving me and promising numerous homemade gifts  for Mother's Day and being angry with me and telling me she wasn't going to give me anything.

By Sunday I just decided to let her have her way in nearly all things because all I really wanted to do was sit on the back deck and read The Stand. So here is the progressing of things she did on my Mother's Day...

First thing we did was skip church, sleep in and then go to Freda's for breakfast. I was getting dressed in my weekend scuzzies and she came into the bathroom in her dress and makeup and told me I had to dress up because it was Mother's Day and picked out a blouse and skirt for me. Shoes too.

Breakfast at Freda's.

She insisted on wearing my earrings too.

Painted her toe and finger nails herself.

Made herself a crazy fruit, peppermint stick and granola snack with the sharp knife...herself.

Found this totally cute little turtle and finally agreed to release it.

Found worms and a drink and her fishing pole and went to the pond to fish... herself. Notice the tube of lipstick slowly melting in the sun on this bench by the cup of worms.

Baited her own hooks, but I had to help her get the fish off because those dang perch swallow it every time. She caught about a dozen fish.

Yep, that's a perch and Yep that's eyeshadow and lipstick on her.

 Later in the day after we had come inside she came out of her room and asked for a hammer. I asked why she needed a hammer. She just did. I asked what she planned to hammer with it. It was a secret. I gave her a hammer. She went to her room and shut the door and then opened back up and told me she also needed privacy and I was not to come into her room. I did not. After a while and a good deal of hammering, she came out with this Mother's Day gift for me.

The wind chime.

It's a wind chime.

Those are charm bracelet charms wrapped in scotch tape hanging from the yarn.

I put it in the window.

On the inside.

Later I told my Mom about it when I called her on Mother's Day and showed her the picture on Facebook and she said, "Lisa, she's just very creative! You need to encourage that!"

I told her I did.

I gave her a hammer.

At the end of the day she told me I was a really nice Mama today and she guessed it must be because it was Mother's Day.

I told her I guessed so.

Eating Crow: A Second Helping

One of the things that got me thinking about eating crow was when the other day Grace said when she grows up she wants to move to New York and live where the big skycrapers are. I told her I used to want to do that too until we finally took a family vacation there and I discovered it was not what I wanted at all.

Sometimes things are a lot better in your plans and memories than they turn out to be in reality.

I told her she'd just have to visit a lot of places before she decides where she wants to live someday.

So the third ingredient in my Crow Stew is:

3. One pint of Moving to NY to be a journalist.

I was lucky enough to be able to write a column for the Bolivar Herald Free Press when I was in high school. I wrote about all sorts of things; my green pickle car, a ski trip I went on, my Dad's annoying habit of filling the wood heating stove full of wood and then retreating to the basement while we all sweated our tails off upstairs. You get the idea.I wrote lots of columns mostly at the expense of my family. A precedent was set. I received lots of praise and figured my path was clearly set. 

I was also Editor of our school paper which really didn't mean all that much because my power was very limited. Basically, I got to decide what stories we would include etc. That was pretty much it. That experience however is what led me to think I would should become a journalist and live in New York.

This was a brilliant idea since the University of Missouri in Columbia had one of the top five schools of journalism as well as in-state tuition which was a definite plus for my parents. So off I went to Mizzou to take my general ed requirements. I only had one Intro to Journalism class that year. Somewhere around this time I finally got to see Under Fire which was a movie about journalists who pretty much got shot at all the time and killed doing their jobs in a war zone check it out here

The tag line was "The first casualty of war is truth". Well the first casualty of that movie for me was to consider a different profession. I am no hero. That movie and the fact I finally successfully stalked Bryon into submission led me back to SMSU and in search of a new occupation and degree. Hmmmm, what to do, what to do. The world was at my fingertips. I could become anything. I liked to write. I liked to read. I could be a teacher. Now THAT was a great idea! I could share my love of literature and writing with students and it would be all Dead Poets Society instead of Under Fire.

It totally seemed like a good idea at time.

Once again, however, it turned out to be one of those things that is so much better in theory than in practice.

I lasted three years as a teacher of High School English.

Now I have a degree I hope to never use again and I live in Niangua, MO which is pretty much the antithesis of New York. If that isn't a big heaping helping of crow, I don't know what is.

4. One large cleaned and quartered piece of Having Children.

I don't know how many times I said through the years (pretty much beginning in junior high) that I was NOT having children. Bryon was on board with this plan. Actually he was willing to swing either way on that topic but we did have a running list of reasons NOT to have children. We never wrote any of them down, but I know it was long.

Every time we witnessed a screaming kid in Wal-Mart or a restaurant - it got added to the list. Instead of kids we had dogs. Two of them. The great thing about dogs was you no one called DFS on you if you let them in the kennel all day while you were at work or at night when you were out on the town. They loved you regardless of WHEN you came home, they mostly did their business outside, they gave you unconditional love and didn't talk back.

That plan ticked along just fine for 15 years of married life and I professed and defended my plan to remain childless at every occasion.

They we bought land. And built a house. And I turned 35. And my clock started ticking. Not quietly and subtly but LOUDLY and AGGRESSIVELY and it said NOW.

Let me tell you. You can not deny the clock. If it stats ticking. It will win, despite your protests or how much crow you'll have to eat.

I had a whole heaping helping. And now we have Grace.

5. A sprinkling of Diets.

Professing your decision to go on a diet in theory is a good thing. People will support you and encourage you. Unfortunately, they'll also criticize and judge you when you eat half a  pan of brownies after a particularly stressful day with various renditions of "I thought you were on a diet". Even if the words aren't actually said, you can hear them.

I never really dieted at all until around 1996. That was the first year after we went to Yellowstone and as I was looking at photos of me riding horses I thought... who is that fat sorority girl on a horse. Yeah, it was me. And I was never a sorority girl.

I was, however, fat.

That was when the "low fat" craze first hit and I was eating 15 grams of fat a day or less. Then 10 grams of fat a day. I was walking. I totally changed the way I cooked and Bryon and I ate. We both lost weight. It was great while it lasted.

I think mine lasted a year or two, then slowly but surely I eeked back up into the tail end of the regular sizes. Something had to be done. I joined Weight Watchers. I went on a diet. I lost weight. It was great while it lasted. It lasted about a year and then... well let's just say it continues to this very day ad nauseam. 


I think I should stop declaring when I am on a diet and just secretly do it until I get the results I want. 


If only I could keep a secret. 


Good think I have lots of good recipes now for crow. 


http://www.thecrowroost.com/RECIPES.htm

Various and Sundry Interests

I'm not sure what this pile of books I chose to peruse at Barnes & Noble says about me, but I'm sort of skeptical whether I can ever achieve Feng Shui in my home with The Complete Guide to Vampire Mythology on the same night stand.

Eating Crow

It seems as though every time I declare some new ultimatum, plan or declaration it is immediately doomed for failure. Somehow just vocalizing (or writing) that thought almost immediately sets the wheels of destiny on a crash course toward dismantling said ultimatum, plan or declaration.

I'm not sure if that can be blamed or described best by karma or the whim whams of an impulsive mind, but either way, the results seem the same.

Maybe the Rolling Stones really sized it up best, "You can't always get what you want, but you get what you need". I'm sure you have some of your own examples of this happening. It surely can't just be me.

I'm suspect some of this stems from the fact that I am self-actualized enough to know I'm a great STARTER but not such a good SUSTAINER... you can read more about that at this post .

Making a good Crow Stew takes years of eating bad crow dishes before you get the ingredients just right.

Here are a few of my top of mind examples:

1. A dash of Sixth Grade Band. Remember when the local music shop people would come to school and parade all the cool instruments through music class one Tuesday and get you all worked up to play an instrument and be part of the band regardless of your innate musical abilility (or in my case, lack of). Well, I was completely susceptible to that sort of rabble-rousing.

In fact, I vividly remember going home that afternoon and having a throw down, uncontrollable sobbing fit in the corner of my bedroom wedged up against my dresser with my Mom and Dad standing over me patiently trying to convince me that I did NOT need a new trumpet to play in the band. I remember screaming through hiccuped sobs that they never did anything for me or let me do stuff (totally not true in retrospect, but hey I had preadolescent hormones running a muck). They said I would not stick with it and they were not spending $600 some dollars on a brand new trumpet even if it was in 30 easy installments of $20.

I was NOT going to be in the band.

The next day my Dad came home and told me there was a lady he worked with who had a used trumpet I could use and that I could indeed be in the band if it meant that much to me. It did, it did. I made promises and declarations about practicing and taking care of my instrument, etc. etc. etc.  You know the drill.

Hugo the Abominable Snowman: "Just what I always wanted. My own little bunny rabbit. I will name him George, and I will hug him and pet him and squeeze him..."

Well I did NOT love that trumpet. I did not name it George.  In fact, it was pretty gross really. It had this little spit valve on the bottom and after blowing into it for a bit it quickly filled with spit and you had to release it so it would drain out that bottom of the thing onto the floor. I'm pretty sure no girl EVER got a boyfriend by playing the trumpet. Also, that thing stunk. Literally. It had been in a box in the lady's attic for what must have been at least 20 years because it smelled like must and mold and creepy, stinky attic things.

Also, I did not, it turns out, like practicing. I'm pretty sure my parents weren't especially appreciative of my trumpet talent either. Trumpets are loud. Even when you try to play them softly. Alone, a trumpet is not a particularly pleasing or soothing instrument. No one is going to be lulled to sleep or get all gushy listening to a trumpet. It is also not going to inspire screaming hoards of groupies. Most likely it's going to be more of a repellent.

It became quickly apparent to me as well that I really had no natural musical talent and from the looks of it very little hope for improvement. The progress and success was too slow. I found no joy in the repetition of playing scales and meaningless lines of notes. I could not play any recognizable songs. It quickly began so seem rather a waste of time and effort.

It repelled me. I think I lasted a few weeks.

I'll bet my parents were really, really glad they did not buy me that brand new trumpet because I would not have lasted through the first two easy payments.

I'm sure it had happened before, but that is the first time I clearly remember eating some crow.

2. One cup of Becoming a Marine Biologist: I loved Jacques Cousteau. That man was my idol in late elementary into junior high school. Since it was pretty clear that being a rock star of any sort was out of question I became bent on reading about Jacques Cousteau. I had one book of my own about marine life that was about him and I read everything our school library had about marine life (especially dolphins). I was consumed with the man and the ocean.

Some how I got found a catalog (probably in the library at school) that detailed trips through  Earthwatch . They had trips that teens could go on to do everything from helping to get tiny sea turtles into the sea after they hatched to studying dolphins and whales. For only $2,985 plus air fare your teen could go TODAY to study said whales and dolphins off the coast of Scotland! I wanted to GO! I scoured that catalog and got myself on the mailing list so I would receive more and more of them and I studied every expedition description dreaming of going on one.

I'm sure I asked my parents to let me go at some point. I'm equally sure they said no because I never got to go.


As I got into high school and took the ASVAB (Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery), I began to realize that to be a marine biologist you had to have lots of science classes which also meant lots of math classes. Science was pretty fun. Math was my nemesis. It wasn't long before dolphins and marine biology and Jacques got put onto the back burner and I began to hatch a new plan. 

 I'll bet my parents were glad they didn't sent me to some far off land to study dolphins. Not even for 145 easy payments of $20.

I'll save the remaining ingredients for a fine Crow Stew for another post. But if you'd like a sneak peak you can ponder these:

3. One pint of Moving to NY to be a journalist.
4. One large cleaned and quartered piece of Having children.
5. A sprinkling of Diets.


Or you can try the real thing if you are really adventurous. No I haven't made it but if probably tastes better than the metaphorical stuff.

Crow and Mushroom Stew

3 crows
1 Tbsp lard/shortening
1 pint stock or gravy
2 Tbsp cream
1/2 cup mushrooms
salt and pepper
cayenne pepper

Clean and cut crows into small portions and let them cook a short time in the lard/shortening in a saucepan, being careful not to brown them.
Next, add to the contents of the pan, the stock or gravy, and salt, pepper and cayenne to taste.
Simmer 1 hour, or until tender, add mushrooms, simmer 10 minutes more and then stir in cream.
Arrange the mushrooms around the crows on a hot platter.

Like Sands Through The Hour Glass

I heard this week on NPR that two tv soaps were cancelling after a 30 year run. "All My Children" and "One Life to Live"will cancel and that will leave only four of the remaining soap opera staples. The story talked about how watching soap operas had been a tradition passed down from Grandmother to Mother to Daughter to Granddaughter but now working women just didn't have the time or inclination to make the commitment to long term story arcs and decades long plot lines ( NPR story here. )

Days of Our Lives had been our female family tradition. I remember my Grandmother Lower (my Mother's mother) watching it every day and my stay at home Mom and I watching right along. I must have been pretty little or it was summer or both when we were all watching it together out on their 300 acre farm by Fair Play, but I remember it vividly. The story of Tom and Alice Horton and all the crazy things that happened to their family. Doug and Julie. Then came those Brady's and DiMera's (I always thought Tony was hot and dangerous). Man, those people had PROBLEMS. The story started in 1965. I was born in 1968. I don't think I missed much.

Everyone called it their Story back then, not soap operas. Days of Our Lives was the only Story I ever watched faithfully and I kept up with it up through college. In fact, I secretly scheduled my classes around it so I could make sure and see it everyday. Several girls on my dorm floor watched it too as well as my HS friend and roommate Becky. Those were the sweet days of bad boy Patch (yes he had a patch on his eye so he was mostly, rogue pirate biker bad boy but you knew he was good deep down) and Kayla (sweet blond innocent) who he even nicknamed Sweetness.

Man, I didn't think they would EVER sleep together.

 Finally they do it. Part one... click here for what I waited months and months and months for.

It took a long, long, long, long agonizine time. I would have given up on that boy much earlier. Or maybe not. I was a pretty successful stalker in my own right by then working on my own soap opera story.

Let's just say that when they finally did the deed. The roof came off the Gillette girl's dorm at Mizzou. It was a party of epic proportions. 

After college, I pretty much lost touch with the plot lines. The few times I did see my Story I realized that unlike those sands in the hourglass, the story moved slowly. Really, really slowly. And if you waited long enough it was just recycled. Sure someone new was possessed or brought back from the dead... again but basically Patch and Kayla were still having problems and the wheels of time grinded so slowly that it was almost better to skip ahead a few weeks, or months, or years.

Eventually, I didn't even watch at all. Now in the age of the DVR I could probably catch up but I think that ship has sailed because I really DON'T want to invest my time or feelings in decade long plot lines any more. Gosh, when it's your very OWN family sometimes you wonder if that investment is worth it, let along ficticious characters.

Now of course I see that those Story's and my Mom's closet of bodice busting romance novels was really just paving the way for my own escapist reading. So now I am the one possessed by paranormal romance books and a steady flow of naughty bad boys.

At least I finally caught one of my very own.

Happy Easter

Grace made this card for her Nana for Easter and I thought I would share it. 

Happy Easter!

It's a New Car!

This is my new car. It's a 2010 Ford Fusion and it is awesome.

Well, it was awesome, for four whole days until I realized the transmission was wonky. Thankfully, it's still under warranty and in the shop right now getting a renewed transmission. They gave me a nice 2010 Ford Edge to use as a rental while it's getting repaired so that has been helpful. This was the absolute worst week possible for all of this to have transpired with me having to drive back and forth to Rolla four days in a row, but with the help of Grandpa Medley, we somehow made it all work. That man is a saint and if he wasn't here I don't know what the heck we would do as far as taking care of Grace and the farm.

I was pretty excited about getting this car. My work has provided a car for me and paid my work gas for the past 10 years. I had one year in there where I did the Public Relations job and did not have a CBCO car but otherwise, I've relied on them for a steady stream of reliable vehicles which is a pretty dang good perk for a not for profit!

I put on a LOT of miles each year doing my job. I have the largest physical territory and averaged 33,000 work miles the past two years. Then with another 4,500ish personal miles (I didn't drive it very much except for work) that's nearly 40,000 miles a year on a car. I put 800 miles on this week alone.

When work decided to change the policy so that we couldn't have any passengers in our work vehicles, I had to make a change. I can't NOT take Grace to school or pick her up from time to time and the idea of coming home to trade vehicles and drive the truck back and forth was crazy. Thankfully, the blood center is VERY generous with their car allowance so I took a couple of days to car shop and then asked Bryon to drive a couple that I was interested in. This one I found at Don Vance Ford in Marshfield.

Bryon had been sick as a dog on his two days off that week but went to town and test drove two of them and agreed if I wanted to buy one I could go ahead.

I was pretty excited because this is the first car I've ever gotten to buy all by myself. I did it all and they gave me the keys and a new car payment. They were so nice to me and didn't try to pressure me or talk me into a bunch of crap (think the old Reliable Toyota in Springfield when they used to take peoples keys and throw them up on the roof of the building when they test drove cars so they'd have to stay and listen to the spiel). None of that. They were awesome.

So I had four whole days to bask in the glory of the coolest car ever before I noticed the transmission was most certainly NOT right. We had owned two Ford Taurus' in the 90's and I think my Dad had one too. We had to replace transmissions in all of them so I knew what was going on pretty quickly.

I can't blame the dealership because I only test drove it an eight mile loop and they do too. I'd say that's why the previous owner traded it in. I figure it's just payback Karma from the time we traded in our Monte Carlo with a cracked block. What goes around comes around my friend. Karma can be a ... well you know.

So it sits at Don Vance gutted until Monday when I hope to get it back better than ever and still under warranty for 50,000 more miles.

This car has every available option on it except for a built in dvd player. It has navigation, bluetooth, a built in hard drive that holds 2500 tracks (I had been feeding it a steady diet of cd's over the few days I had it), a moonroof and so many cool feathers I've been in mourning this week.

A girl can get used to the nice stuff pretty fast.

I figure I'll drive it for three years and then trade it in for another car. It will have 160,000 + miles by then and as long as I can still get about $5,000 out of it I think I'll break even.

It's going to be hard to find a car nicer or cooler than this one.

And no Dad, Ford does not stand for Fixed Or Repaired Daily.

I hope.

Retirement

So I'm a little behind but didn't want to forget to mention that my Mom is now officially RETIRED! The Bank of Bolivar had a very nice party for her with cake, punch  and several nice write ups in the local paper.

She was so pleased and now ... FREE BABYSITTING and CAMP GRANDMA here Grace comes, ha!

It hasn't taken her long to adjust to retirement life.


I've been thinking I'm ready myself! Only 24 more years to go. Eeek!

I think I'm going to need a plan B. That's just too long to wait.

Euphoric Recall

My friend Anne turned me on to the phrase "euphoric recall" about ten years ago.

Basically, euphoric recall is when someone remembers all of the good things about a particular time and not the bad.

This happens a lot actually.

One night this week, Grace was mad at me because she was not getting her way. We've been butting heads a lot lately.

As we were walking down the stairs, she looked up at the painting on the wall my former mother-in-law had done for us from a photograph. I love the painting. I told her she made me look better than I really do. More Andy Worhol than Botticelli (you know... he painted the chubby girls).

Anyway, as we were walking down the stairs Grace said, "When I was little, and you were nice.. You looked like that" pointing to the painting

Now if THAT isn't euphoric recall, I don't know what is.


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