Maple-y things (and other things)

You will all be relieved to know that our rat creature has vacated the premises. Or died. Not sure which. But it doesn't smell and it doesn't wake me up at 2 AM. I am not too interested in the particulars beyond those two things. It helps that it is close to 60 degrees outside. The scrabbling around was definitely worse on nights that were zero. Last week, Justin was in Syracuse working with Evan, so I had to be brave and bang on the wall a couple times a night all by my lonesome. The first night, I didn't hear it at all, which made me think it had left or died. Then I remembered that the night before it had been really lethargic. Justin told me it was probably stuck in a stud bay and starved to death. So I spent all of last Monday feeling sympathy with this fellow creature who was only trying to live the life it was given and thinking further philosophical rat thoughts. That night, my disgusting fellow creature woke me up 4 (FOUR) times. And then I wanted it dead. I was quite merciless about it. That is how most of my philosophical moods go. I spend awhile thinking deep thoughts and complimenting myself on how deep I really am. And then reality intrudes and my philosophy flies out the window. Fortunately, I do not have a good memory for this sort of thing, so I never have to remind myself how pompous and ridiculous I was in thinking all that nonsense. Except about child birth. That is vivid in my mind. The whole telling people who have been through it that I didn't understand how someone could have an epidural or pain meds when it makes the baby so lethargic for the first few hours of life. And other superior I-clearly-have-never-given-birth-but-have-a-lot-of-theories moments that are too shameful to bring to mind. I pack them away in the section of my brain reserved for such moments. When I get Alzheimers at 72, I will probably only be able to remember my suppressed memories of getting my come-uppance. I will wander around the nursing home apologizing to everyone for thinking I knew more about childbirth than they did. And for not writing them back within a week 50 some years earlier. And for thinking I was superior because I didn't struggle with what they struggled with. And since everyone there will be slightly senile, they will thank me for my apologies and feel superior. I will be a joy at 72.

Since Justin was working in Syracuse, I was on my own last week. I don't like it. At all. I feel like this blog is in grave danger of becoming some sort of confessional of all my weaknesses if I don't be careful. But really, not liking to be alone and not liking to deal with rodents can sort of both be shoved under the general heading of Inability To Deal With Real Life Situations Without Making a Great Deal of Fuss and Bother About it. So for my ego's sake, I will just pretend that actually I have only one general weakness. Everyone has one weakness. The fact that my one weakness encompasses 73 other weaknesses is just.... well... convenient.

JoAnna was here for the week last week and Lindsey was here the two weeks before--both being examples of capable, independent women. So I felt challenged to behave like a rational, capable, independent woman too. So I tried. But I was glad to see Justin when he and Evan came back up Thursday night to boil sap on Friday. I am just not sure I AM capable and rational. Especially after last night, when Justin left again and I had to talk myself out of a panic attack or two when the house creaked itself to sleep around 11 PM. The first night is always the worst. And listening to Laura Ingalls Wilder tapes makes me feel even more incapable when Ma took care of life, bears, grasshoppers, no water, and then sat up late into the night waiting for Pa who may or may not have been attacked by a bear on his way home to get home. As I imagined all sorts of human horrors who could have suddenly appeared in Moira and in particular, my living room, my rational brain kept telling me to remember the pioneers. I got up twice in the night with the kids and somehow life isn't as frightening once I have been to sleep and have woke up again without actually having been murdered in my sleep. It is reassuring.

Yesterday was Evan's birthday. Over the weekend, the sap had run well, so Evan decided to come up to help boil it. And since it was his birthday, Clover and the kids decided to stick with him and come up too. It was sunshiney, 60 degrees, with an underlying smell of sweet maple-ness floating in the air from the sugar shack, happy/muddy cousins, and the promise of birthday cake after supper. All this richness just after two weeks with Lindsey, followed by one week with JoAnna. Life doesn't get much better.

Boiling sap is hard. Notice the "Sap Heads, LLC" sign in the corner, present from Evan's dad.

Believe it or not, they were discussing cake decorating.

Mom's daylilies coming up

It was that kind of warm, sunshine-y day. 

Orianna and Cheyenne waiting to decorate the cake Cheyenne made for Evan

Doing taxes. The other end of the table was having ALL the fun yesterday.

Elliott and his gingerbread

Playing on recliners. The cool thing to do.

Getting ready to decorate.

A very serious business

Then the kids who were not allowed to help Cheyenne decorate were allowed to decorate plates and dip pretzels in the icing. Oh yeah, we are that kind of mothers. Icing as afternoon snack--perfect! 

The finished product and the birthday guy. We had to take the cake down to the sugar shack where they were finishing off the syrup

It was quite the par-tay.

Boiling sap and almost syrup

Gilbert doing his happy clap

Enchanting outfit. After getting mud clear up to her knees, Rilla had to wear red overalls that were being handed down from Gilbert to Lincoln. They were capris on Rilla. And then she tied the look together with a pink flower be-decked tutu and red boots. She knows her fashion. 

Sunday night, we enjoyed the last hour of daylight by collecting sap. 

Cody bringing back the tractor

Gilbert and Lily getting a 4-wheeler ride

Orianna driving the 4-wheeler

Lily

It is a hair rising ride into the maple trees they tapped in the woods

Camera's don't really understand taking pictures in the woods at dusk

This is blurry, but it was a really cool picture. Venus and maybe Jupiter through the maple trees.

And since this is mostly about sap, I will put up the pictures of boiling last Friday

The sugar shack with steam rolling off

The overfilled creek

Justin trying to get the cupola to dry the smoke and steam up right

Because it was REALLY steamy in there!

JoAnna showing off the latest in maple syrup production wear

Gilbert loved hanging out with Daddy after a week without him!

Self-discovery and rodents

When I started this blog, I planned on blogging every week day morning. Now, it is over a week since I have updated and that is by no means unusual. Through this blogging journey of self-discovery, I have discovered that I am simply not interesting enough to blog every day. There is very little to self-discover apparently. Humiliating. I always thought, with all my worrying and neurosis, that I would be able to make interesting self-discoveries every hour on the hour. Or at least DO something interesting. Not so, my friends, not so. I am much more boring than my neurosis would lead you to believe. So instead of startling insights, we will talk about rodents.

I hate mice. There is something about scurry, furry creatures being in my house that really sets me off. Whenever I fuss, Justin says, "I thought I married a farm girl--and here you are blubbering about mice for crying out loud." I tell him  farm girls are allowed weaknesses as well. So there.

Lately, the horrifying possibility of seeing a mousie run across my kitchen floor has diminished in horribleness. Not because I am maturing. Not because I feel they are God's creatures too and shouldn't be terrified of being mousies. It is because we now have rats. Seriously. RATS. As in R-A-T-S. Actually, it might be one rat. But even so, I feel strongly on the subject of ANY rat. Even if Templeton in Charlotte's Web is great comic relief and I love hearing Lily and Orianna quote him, I don't feel any kinder to rats in general.

Last month, I opened the kitchen/garage door to toss out a bag of trash and saw a wee mouse nest at my feet, just outside the door where the warm drafts and breezes blow from the kitchen to the garage. Being my rational self I freaked out and then refused to open the door without knocking  and banging on the door loudly to let the mouse know I was coming out. (I hate the idea of interrupting mouse privacy like that!) Even then, I tried to hide behind the door while opening it so vermin wouldn't run over my toes. I made Justin deal with this as soon as possible, much to the disappointment of the kids who were enchanted with having a real live mouse house right outside their door. After Justin took all the trash and mouse nest to the dump, he casually mentioned, as I was standing where the mouse house was a few hours earlier, that it wasn't a mouse, it was a rat. I don't think my blood pressure has ever recovered.

(As I writing all this rattiness, the sun is shining brightly down on our 5 or 6 inches of snow, melting it slowly. Out of the corner of my eye, I just saw a clump of snow sliding off our roof and with the accompanying scritching noise, I jumped about 5 inches, sure the rat had actually gotten into our house.

My nerves are shot.)

The original rat has gone where nasty rats go, namely dying in the wall from rat poison. Dad said it would stink forever, but mercifully, it only smelled for a few days. Now we have a new rat. These rats are really intrigued with the wall area around our stove. They scritch and scratch and make a racket trying to get in. When I thought it was a mouse, I would just bang on the wall and make it stop. So ignorantly brave..... Now I think about banging on the wall and having the wall crumble, allowing the rat to jump onto me. I have stopped banging.

Yesterday afternoon, Lindsey made the kids some macaroni and cheese. It was the homestyle stuff, past expiration date, so I meant to take the leftover stuff over to Owen's piggies last night. I completely forgot, so there it sat in all it's beautiful fake cheese aroma. Tempting the rat beyond what he or she could endure apparently. I woke up at 3 AM to a fearful racket in the kitchen. Very disturbing. The first thing my sleep hazed mind thought was, "Someone is in our house!" As the racket continued I realized only a very stupid burglar, murderer, kidnapper would make so much noise. And then I contemplated for all of 5 seconds how mad Justin would be if I made him wake up and go bang on the wall. Then I hit him several times and whispered "The rat!" It was dark, but the rolling of his eyes seemed to take on a physical dimension, palpable through the darkness. Still, he got up and banged the wall. I followed along, 20 feet behind him helpfully offering words of wisdom. He wasn't very receptive to my words of wisdom. But he DID put the macaroni and cheese in the fridge and generously sprinkle lavender oil on tissues in the general area. We like to give the rat a spa like atmosphere. It also blocks any food smell and makes the rat give up in disgust. Who wants to break into a pleasant, lavender-y smelling kitchen anyway?

The rat retired for the night. As did Justin.

I was painfully wide awake. I asked Justin several questions pertaining to rats ability to chew through brick (on our kitchen wall) and when he told me to GO TO SLEEP, I helplessly whimpered, "But they can chew on kids faces!" He was not impressed and rolled over and was sleeping in 3 minutes. I kept imagining I heard it moving around. Then I kept contemplating what it would feel like if a rat managed to get into our bed. Whenever Justin twitched, I had a nervous breakdown.

I would like to sue the rat for emotional distress.

Gilbert is now unknowingly torturing his sleep deprived mother by playing with his zhu-zhu pet, those mouse like creatures that scoot around making squeaky noises. It keeps running into a little blanket and pushing it across the floor.

Thanks to the rat, I have now self-discovered that rats are much, MUCH more threatening to my sense of well being than mice are.

My nerves are shot.

Saturday

Justin had to work this Saturday, which threw our normal Saturday schedule all out of whack. Normally Justin and I start the day by pretending to not hear the kids getting up and hoping the milk of human kindness, which allows spouses to sleep in while the other one takes care of kids, is running heavily in the others veins. Somehow I generally end up getting up, but I am not sure it would be completely honest to say the milk of human kindness is flowing deep and strong each and every time. After that, we are lazy and try to get kids dressed and ready to go mid-morning-ish. Then we typically spend a lot of the day at Mom and Dad's where Justin can work on sugaring things or vehicles. It is a nice, time-honored schedule. And then Justin works on Saturday.

We all have colds, so after breakfast, we got a huge stack of books from the kids bookshelf and went into our big bed and settled down for a nice lazy day of book reading. I am not sure where this plan got derailed, but somehow I found myself doing dishes, making snacks and lunch like a nice normal mother instead of the lazy, book reading one I had aspired to be. That is okay, because I certainly felt better about myself having a clean kitchen than I would have otherwise.

Orianna reading comics

Gilbert needing his picture taken too.

Gilbert brought me a box of pasta around 10, looking like he just found the secret to happy Saturdays. I decided to get a jump start on lunch and make it at 10 for him, warming some up at 12 when it was actually lunch time. Clover has made me Ranch Mac & Cheese from noplepig.com blog, but I had never made it. It seemed like just the thing for turning Gilbert's box of noodles into lunch. And it was.

Ranch Macaroni and Cheese

1 16 oz box of pasta (I didn't have elbows, so I used small shells)
1 cup milk
1/4 cup butter, cut up
1 envelope Ranch dressing mix (or 3T of the canister of dressing mix)
1 tsp garlic salt
1 tsp garlic pepper blend
1 tsp lemon pepper seasoning
2 c (8 oz) cheese (calls for Monterey Jack and Colby, but I only had cheddar b/c I am boring like that)
1 c sour cream
1/3 c parmesean
crushed saltines is desired (I didn't desire)

Cook the pasta as usual, but without salting the water. Mix everything else, but the cheeses and sour cream AND saltines if you are like that, in a saucepan on low or medium (actually the recipe says dutch oven, but I have no idea why. Maybe Noble Pig has no saucepans). Once hot, stir in cheese. Once that is melted, shut off heat and add sour cream. The parmesean is supposed to be sprinkled on top with the saltines, but I just dumped it in with the sour cream, since I am uninspired about sprinkle-y stuff on my kids macaroni.
Drain pasta. Mix. Enjoy.

It was yum! The kids loved it, with the exception of Orianna who thinks PB&J is the epitome of culinary excellence and doesn't suffer foolish recipes like this gladly.

For my lunch, I jazzed it up a bit. Some leftover chicken, black beans, chipotle peppers in adobe sauce (I might have a love affair with those puppies), some frozen corn, some about-to-go-bad homemade croutons and some cilantro on top. It was SCRUMP-tious.

And if you question why a gestational diabetic is making a lunch of a big plate of pasta, I would have to say, that is between me and my blood sugar monitor, so never you mind. Actually, my blood sugar has been perfect, with slight abberations after chinese buffets and large amounts of chocolate or birthday cake. But I read that eating chocolate every day while pregnant makes your baby more relaxed and happy. Who am I to argue with science?

Then after the noodle thing, I started thinking about Valentines for Orianna. I will admit it--I am a cheapskate. And the idea of going to town to spend $3-$5 on a bunch of silly pieces of paper for kids to throw away is not my idea of a good time. Clover (Clover's ideas were popular today) told me about secret agent josephine's free valentines, so I went to check them out. She has several different years worth on her blog.
Ca-ute! And they are free. Unfortunately, after the last batch of color ink dried out from not being used, I stopped buying color ink. So our printer is just black and white. This is never a problem, except when you want to print out free valentines. Fortunately, there is one page of valentines to color, so that is what we ended up doing.
These were the coloring ones.
http://secret-agent-josephine.com/blog/downloads/free-saj-valentines-bw.pdf
And ones that are just adorable woodland ones
http://secret-agent-josephine.com/blog/downloads/free-saj-valentines2011.pdf

I envisioned a happy afternoon with Gilbert napping, two girls, a new box of crayola crayons, valentines and precious memories in the making. Instead I got a bee in my bonnet to open up the closet and sort it out. It has been 6 weeks since our lice episode, so I thought it was probably time. I set the girls up and went to set the closet to rights.

The table from the kids room broke (it was a freebie and couldn't keep up with the dancing and jumping from it) and the top is very handy to flop down on the floor for a hard surface to color on, as a stage, and as a way to contain toys--Keep them ON the table!!!

This is what my house looked like before I got into the closet mess. I don't know why I didn't clean this all up before pulling more out, but that never seems as interesting. Oh and see my new rug? I ordered it last fall, but never put it down because I was saving it for a mythical someday when I needed a new rug. Justin hates me doing this. He is of the opinion that you buy something if you intend to use it now, not three years down the road. Just ask him about our nice silverware that has never seen the light of day since being purchased in 2008. So on one of his days off, I came home from a doctors appointment to find my rug all rolled out. I love it. 

This was the mess that was the closet. After removing the sofa and chair cushions. Since we shoved stuff in here willy-nilly at 10 PM on a Saturday night, I couldn't put clothes away that were done after discovering lice, so several loads of clothes were stashed here, as well as bags of toys, oodles of blankets and pillows, way too many winter coats, and the girls little chairs. 

This was the living room 10 minutes later. It was depressing. Too terrible to think about. I went and got a glass of water and stood there contemplating the mess. I heard Orianna and Lily talking in their ususal way " 'tend it wasn't there and you didn't know where to look for it." I don't know what they were talking about, but  'tending this mess wasn't there really resonated with me. I thought about running away. I thought about ignoring it. I thought about setting it out by the curb for free. I thought about donating it all to the Salvation Army--if we have lived without for 6 weeks, do we really need it? I thought about just putting it all back in the closet--who needs a place to put clothes anyway? But unfortunately, 6 weeks of not having laundry baskets in my living room and no where NEAR this many toys laying around has made me a softie in regards to messes. I don't LIKE it. I bothers me. Oh how the mighty have fallen. I used to be able to ignore messes like no ones business. So I just decided to deal with it. Three rubbermaid totes of toys were stashed away, a rubbermaid of winter coats was packed away (We have WAY too many of those apparently), and everything else was sorted and put away.

Pollys came back! The girls are extremely happy about this.

Gilbert likes to get in on picture taking now.

Sleeping with the shark that has been AWOL for six weeks

My nice boy!

And this is the current state of the living room. All gone. Except for the box of Polly's. They are back, like it or not.

On a totally different note, my chirstmas cactus is about to bloom! I have had this for a year and a half and it has never bloomed. I am a failure with houseplants. Mom always had great plants inside, but apparently I did not inherit that trait. Lindsey got it in spades and I kill anything that is not a cactus. 

This was the end result of coloring valentines.

Orianna had a lot to color, so by the end, these were her valentines. I told her these were scribbly and she couldn't give them to kids in her class and she broke into tears asking me why I didn't like the way she colored. I told her I liked the way she colored, but not the way she scribbled. Turns out she had seen the Polly's coming out of hibernation and no longer cared about coloring valentines. We have enough other ones to give out without the scribbly ones anyway.

All in all, it was a pretty good Saturday.