Now What?

Bind Off

That's all I have to say, really. For those of you who have been following the progress of Baby Ben's sweater, the hood of the hoodie is about to be a hood. More later, but I know the excitement has been mounting so I wanted to keep you all updated. Just kidding...sort of...I have, in fact, been asked about the progress of the sweater.

Free to Pee, You and Me

Every parent has one of these stories, whether it's his/her own or that of a friend. Tuesday, while Jamie was in our bedroom changing his clothes after school, Duncan stripped himself naked and peed on the couch. If that parent is (un)lucky, he/she has another. This morning, before Duncan even made it to breakfast, he stripped off his diaper and pajamas and peed on his bath. It has been 48 hours straight of laundry. If only we knew the motivation of a 2 1/2 year old...this could be a good thing, right? An awareness that one has to pee and difficulty navigating all the variables to make a trip to the potty happen? Or it could be naughty...but he doesn't seem to find it funny. Any advice? I don't want to risk traumatizing the kid and setting back his toilet training, so we're left with reminders that there are two places to pee (in your diaper or in the toilet) and requiring him to participate a little in the cleaning up so that he realizes there are some consequences. The boy is home from school so I have to run because anything could happen, and we don't yet have one of those stories about poop...

YA LIT: My Drug of Choice

I read like a madwoman. More specifically, I read young adult literature like a madwoman. I do it because I love it but also because I buy a lot of reading books for school. In the business of converting children to the world of reading, it's important to be able to match the right book to the reader. And you gain a lot of street cred among the grade 7 -12 crowd if you can just get it right once. If you can find a reluctant reader just one book that he kinda sorta maybe doesn't hate, then he'll come back for more. And each time, you can up the ante with a longer book, a more sophisticated book, a more classic book, a book with a GIRL for a protagonist. And then his friend comes to borrow that first book, and you've got it made. But you have to gain their trust, which means you have to predict what they'll read, and to do that, you have to read. I LOVE this part of my job.

I meant to write this post in August, but life got away with me. My friend Michelle, our beloved bookseller, left Oblong Books and Music in August after 7 years of providing local children and adults with all the best in children's and young adult literature. Michelle reads more than I do and never failed to recommend a book I liked (and usually loved). She left Oblong to do something near and dear to my heart...teach Kindergarten. I've been thinking about Michelle a lot as I drive by her house or find a new, fantastic book, or encounter a new, challenged and challenging reader. I've been wondering how her new job is going and if her students know how lucky they are.

I say all this because today I went back to Oblong for the first time A.M. (after Michelle). I was there to pick out books for Kildonan's Parents' Day book sale, and Michelle would be proud. I think I picked out about 3 boxes full of books. It wasn't the same without Michelle, and that nice, innocent part-time woman working in Oblong, Jr. was okay but not great. She tried. I missed Michelle's enthusiasm and expertise, but I reminded myself that she's getting in at the ground level! She's creating readers before they even hit first grade! I also realized that I DO know what kinds of books appeal to young adults. I can trust my own instincts, and I can continue to read voraciously. It's research, after all. When my child is 16, I hope he'll have someone like me to lead him to great books, but I realize he'll be a lot more receptive to someone like me at 16 if he starts his education with someone like Michelle. That's wordy, but it does the job.

Read on. Get hooked. Read more. Pay it forward.

Greening Amenia, One Step at a Time

My friend Karl just finished Animal, Vegetable, Miracle; like me, he also found it inspirational, eye opening, and well written. (No, I don't know Barbara Kingsolver personally, and I am not receiving royalties for this book!) It changed the way he thought about food. He called me and said: "I thought it would be easy. I thought I could just stroll the aisles of the supermarket and choose the things that come from within 200 miles. But there's nothing. Even the granola let me down." (Why is it near impossible to find produce that is grown anywhere but California? We are literally SURROUNDED by farms. I'll tell you why...the farms are producing corn to feed the cows that we eat as beef...and so on. Most of what we grow in this country is corn, and most of it is used for animal feed...)

I told Karl to take heart, go to Daisi Hill farm for squash, and make pear sauce from Diana King's home grown, organic pears. We can walk to Diana's house. You can't get much greener than that. The best thing that came out our shared literary and gustatory experience is that Karl and I are talking about sharing a subscription to the (sort of) local CSA, the Chubby Bunny Farm. Karl also admitted that he's tempted to try making his own cheese. Maybe we can have a cheese making party. I'm excited to have a new partner in my green adventures. Today, I ordered a food mill to facilitate the sauce making (this way I don't have to peel or core), and when it arrives, I'll make a huge batch of pear sauce and more apple sauce. I harvested all the green tomatoes from our garden (nothing ripened, but we decided we should pick them before we get hit with frost) and am ready to make a chutney. It's not easy, but we'll take one green step at a time.

Knit Organic

Remember when this blog used to be about knitting? I think that was one day during the winter (the day I named the blog, obviously) and then perhaps one day during the spring. Recently, I picked up the needles again and made some serious progress on the mysterious baby sweater. No longer a mystery, for I told Marcie it was for Ben in a desperate attempt to encourage me to finish it, the sage green organic cotton sweater is growing, slowly but surely. It is size 12 months; Ben is size 12 months; you understand my desperation. I'm working on the hood, and then naught is left but stitching it together. That, of course, is the part I know nothing about so I welcome any advice (or assistance) anyone can offer. In the mean time, here's a trailer. I hope we'll be able to post a picture of Ben in it soon. Next (if there is a next), I'm excited to knit a sweater for Duncan who has an odd interest in sweaters and an even stranger interest in hand-knit sweaters. Only 4 more inches to go...

1500

This summer, I read Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, and because I love Barbara, I was willing to believe it is possible for a family in America in the 21st century to live off the land. Although I know that I don't have the time or persistence to do it myself, I began to believe that I could least live a little bit closer to the land. I was inspired to start a garden, which has produced little but been a source of much inspiration. We'll get it together next year, and hopefully I'll keep us in tomatoes, cucumbers, carrots, and beans. Then I read Plenty and realized that I can still make smarter choices in the grocery store even if I am not ready to commit to slaughtering my own turkeys and growing 11 kinds of tomatoes. Both books hammered home the point that the average food item that we put on a plate in America has traveled at least 1500 miles to get there...and at these gas prices? Astonishing. Let's just say that again for the shock value...1500 miles. The average food item on our dinner plate has traveled 1500 miles. What is wrong with that picture? What is RIGHT with that picture. Many of us (dare I say most?) are eating produce that is picked unripe, loaded onto trucks, and shipped across the country to arrive bland and pricey. In fact, we have nearly bred the life out of American produce to mold it into this system.

I tried to buy more locally grown produce. To be honest, this is the one area in which I have failed in my attempts to live greener. For several weeks, we visited the farmers' market as well as Daisi Hill farm and bought as much locally grown produce as we could, but our life makes it difficult to add yet another errand to our week. Our garden hasn't produced anything worthwhile except herbs and the odd carrot here and there. There's a cute little Halloween pumpkin, already orange, about 5 inches in diameter. We also have a couple of bigger ones but not exactly the SLAUGHTERING of pumpkins I was anticipating. The cucumbers that threatened take over simply stopped growing, and some small animals ate the tiniest baby pumpkins. I DO look at the origins of my food more closely now. I'm happy when the broccoli comes from Maine instead of California. I buy vegetables that are in season because they are more environmentally friendly and taste better. Asparagus is never in season, and I love it, but I can live without it having such a long commute. On the other hand, we LOVED the vegetables we bought from Daisi Hill, and next summer I'll make them a part of our field trips with Duncan. I try to buy as much unprocessed food as I can, choosing baked potatoes over frozen fries, home baked cookies over store bought, and fresh vegetables whenever possible. We picked two pecks of apples so far and have made two batches of apple sauce. I think when we go to the pumpkin patch, I might actually cook one. It's certainly not sustainable living, but we will only continue to improve.

I need to post this now so that Dawn will stop nagging me, but stay tune for the next installment of my attempts at greener living. Food was our least successful area, but I'm pretty pleased so far with the other changes we have made. Read Barbara's book if you haven't already. I can't recommend it more highly.