Changing times

I am having a nice chat with Dr. Hausfrau. I'm looking out the bedroom window -big flakes of snow are slowly drifting down. The sun is shining.








As we talk the wind picks up. The sunshine disappears. The flakes of snow begin to swirl around.

In a very short time, the snow has become intense, the ground is covered, and the day looks completly different.
All in the course of one phone call!

The day is over but the scent lingers on...

Valentine's Day roses From a romantic kind of guy.

Hearts for Valentine's Day

Stuffee makes a reappearance for my Wonderlab theme of hearts. Behind the appliqued heart on his chest is a plastic heart that really throbs (it is made to soothe babies). It can be passed around so each child can feel it beat and hear it thump. They have a little more trouble feeling their own heart - their hands are on their tummies. We try feeling pulses. Do they feel anything? Maybe... We jump up and down for a count of 60. Are our hearts beating faster? They are unsure. They can jump up and down all day without feeling it. "Look here," says the panting leader, "you can feel my pulse - it's going really fast."
As we go on I realize that not only is my old bony wrist an easy place to feel the pulse but they can easily see the blue veins on the top of my hand - and wiggle them around. I'm as good a demonstration as Stuffee. One of the unsung advantages of age.

At the sales with Mimi

I didn't take pictures of this epic shopping trip - you will just have to imagine it.
Me and Mimi at the sale at Tivoli.
Me feeling that this store is awfully expensive, even with things on sale.
Mimi pulling one thing and then another off the rack:
"This is classic - you can wear it for years"
"This will go with anything"
"You can wear things like this"
"I had one like this and I loved it"
"Just feel this fabric!"
The saleswoman gets into the spirit.
"This little top would look good with that"
Picture my dressing room totally piled full of things to try on. Not another hanger could be hung in there.
I try on a teal jacket with gold swirls. A soft black jacket. A denim-blue jacket/slack set. A cute jacket with a ladybug shirt. And on and on.
I come out of the dressing room and swirl around in front of the mirrors.
Mimi and the saleswoman are estatic.
Everything fits!
Everything looks lovely on!
I can't buy everything!

Finally I decide that I can wear this wonderful red jacket for the Wintertelling tonight. It is silk, with a design stitched in black and subtly beaded with black beads. It's no more than two tanks of gas...and less than a trip to the grocery store. I can afford that.
Mimi buys the black jacket.
We celebrate the successful hunt by having lunch at Samira.

Happy Year of the Rat

These wonderful little shoes were found in a file cabinet drawer. Along with a splendid dragon - you can see him suspended across the top of the case.
Two 3rd grade guys went by as I was putting the display together. "Hey, look at all the Korean stuff!" one said. I thought it was mostly Chinese, myself, but I didn't say anything. They know a lot more than I do. A teacher admired all the red: "It looks so warm!" I think she was tired of the white snowflake display and possibly tired of Winter as well.
The regular lizard commentator is looking for a place in the zodiak.
I'm wishing a Happy Year Of The Rat to all of you!

On the passage of time...

Mr. Charles Dodgson so exactly captured the feeling....

"He thought he saw a Rattlesnake

That questioned him in Greek:

He looked again, and found it was

The Middle of Next Week.

"The one thing I regret," he said,

"Is that it cannot speak!"

Thanks to the 6th grade art class for the cereal box Grecian urns that decorate the library and embody the essence of this poem!

An even rarer title

Cousin Edie is full of surprises. My Dad's youngest cousin, she was always a fiesty gal. She's one of the people who keep me from thinking that I can predict what someone 86 will do. What's she done now? Well, she's written and 'published' a little book and sent me one of the few copies!
I am so glad to have this little gem that shows her persistent sense of humor.

Josh's Book

Last Saturday I went to a Children's Literature conference - and it was wonderful. A whole day of thinking about authors and illustrators and the books they create for kids. A whole day of meeting the real people behind some tremendous books. I carried away some signatures in a few special books - Flotsam by David Wiesner (whose talk on wordless books was just inspiring) and Bella at Midnight by Diane Stanley (I got the last copy!). But the rarest treasure I brought home was a little book by a little known author/illustrator - my friend Josh Johnson. His artwork perfectly matches his cryptic text in which plain simple sentences somehow conceal great mysteries. For some reason it reminds me of Edward Gorey, only without the castles and crumbling British estates.

Check it out at : http://spindletons.com/

Formatted For Matt

Every day this plant grew taller and taller, until finally the buds began to show a little color. Then it literally burst into bloom.



So, to give you an idea of how fast this happened, just view these pictures quickly one after the other.

It's a flip book!

Thanks for both flower and entertainment, Matt.

Ice

The ice once merely coated the sides of the waterfall and glazed the creeping jenny (Dec. 6).

Now the rocks are covered by a frozen ice-fall. Is it all frozen and stopped?No, look closer through the ice. Can you catch a glimpse of dark water slipping by like a little furtive animal?
And here - the ice curtain parts for a small spot to peek out.

Underneath it all, water is still flowing.

Baby, it's cold outside...

The last bell rings. Everything is proceeding as usual, the regular announcements over the intercom as each bus is called.
I look out the library window. The sky is as blue as a winter sky can be. The sun is as bright as a winter sun could be.
The principal comes on the intercom. "Listen, students, this is important!" she says. "I just stopped two children in the hall because they were not wearing coats. You MUST wear your coat! It's below zero out there!" Her voice rises. "This is important!" she insists. "BUNDLE UP!"

As I get my own coat I speculate - don't know why I have this feeling, but I'd bet those two kids were guys.

Oh the weather outside is frightful...

But inside, the room full of preschoolers was warm as summer as Stephaie and I told sea stories - one could almost feel the sunshine on the shore as hermit crab stepped along "by the sea in the sand, scritch-scratch, scritch-scratch..." We could practically hear the waves as all the little arms undulated and all the little voices chanted "here is the sea, the wavy sea..."

So there's my beach vacation.

And to you...

Just before lunch the last morning class files out of the library. The air still vibrates with the energy they brought to the challenge I gave them of writing poems using the words of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
The weary desk volunteer puts the last of the library cards away and goes off to her lunch. For a moment the library is empty. I stand behind the desk thinking about which of several tasts to begin next and am inclined to do none.
Across from the desk the door to the computer lab is open.
Suddenly a tousled curly head pops out of the door. Giving me a gamin grin, the kid flashes me a "V" sign - "Peace!" he proclaims, and disappears back into the dark lab.
I nod.
However brief, the library indeed is at peace.

T.L. rides again

Yes, I am again librarying...temporarily.

I walked into the school library early in the morning, giving myself time to go over lesson plans and to organize the day.

I had barely turned on the computers when a fifth grade teacher sailed in - did I know I was to judge the Geography Bee this morning?

Oops. Did I need to know any geography? Thankfully, no. All the answers would be provided.

The Cafeteria was full of classes and there were ten students on the stage - the winners of their classroom competition. They introduced themselves, some with a swagger and some with a nervous shiver. Parents set up video cameras on the sidelines.

Then the questions - and they were HARD questions! A perky fellow got his question right - his classmates cheered and were hushed by the principal. A tall, gawky girl leaned over the mike and missed her question, trying to hid tears as she sat down. They identfied the mountains of Pennsyvania but missed Chesapeake Bay and the islands of Hawaii. Everyone got the Vatican City.

Slowly the stage emptied, until only two students were left - the championship round! By this time the audience was restless, girls playing with each other's hair, guys poking each other, kids squirming on the hard floor and bumping into each other.

Then the older contestant missed a question - and the confident fourth grader won. Cheers, applause, and photographs....

And a deep sigh of relief from the judges' table.

Counting crows

I pile up the recycling, cleaning out the breezeway after everyone has left. It is only now that I discover that the pizza box left there is not empty after all.
Yup, that wonderful leftover pizza with the onions and black olives and feta and sun dried tomatoes....it's still here. I thought someone had eaten it up, or maybe that someone had taken it back to the suite with them. But no...
So I sadly tear the slices into bits and scatter them outside on the driveway.
The dog considers this a dreadful waste. She wouldn't mind week old pizza one bit. Fortunately she is restrained by the leash.
Back in the house, I hear the first tentative caw of "What's that?".
Soon the maples fill with large black bodies. They taunt each other. "You go first" "No, you" . Finally a brave soul flies down to the lawn and hop-walks over to the driveway. It cocks its head to one side, then the other, considering. The aroma of the rancid cheese is too much. It fills its beak with a giant morsel and can barely fly away with it.
The rest of the flock notices that this brave scout is still alive and happily ripping into a first class meal. The driveway fills with crows. I can't find the camera.
When the crows leave the only trace of pizza is a smear of grease on the blacktop.

Mimi's house

Let's all go to Mimi's house.

It's a special place. The grown-ups all get comfortable and conversation flows all around you.
There are tiny, old-fashioned toys that your mother played with when she was little.
And no matter how much you've grown or shown her otherwise, Mimi still thinks you're a little kid.
Her backyard is a special place too.

You can talk to her trees
or find a wild animal to tame.
She gets out the stack of special books (it's nice to have someone to read them to you)
and feeds everyone lots of tasty food.

Mimi's house is a great place to visit!

Baking

The glossy cover of the Christmas Cookie magazine tempted me as I went through the check-out lane at Marsh. "This is the year", I thought, "when I'll make something new for the old cookie tins." I piled the sugar, butter and flour into my cart. Real butter, white sugar, white flour. They are so bad and so good...and it's just once a year, right? Then E. came home with a Christmas Cookie recipe book and lots of new things that she wanted to try. I went back to the store and added cartons of eggs and exotic spices and sacks of walnuts and hazel nuts . We carefully planned a whole day of cooking - with only two ovens, everything had to be choreographed. The house already had the lovely aroma of Grandmother's Russian tea simmering on the stove, and each batch of cookies added a new layer of scent to the mix.

And the results...well....there were some failures (check out the Christmas Eve crises)....and some learning opportunities (so I now know that the pistachios shouldn't have been salted)...some that didn't last long enough (next time I'll double the chocolate chip recipe)... and my favorite this year: the rugelach:

It began as balls of sweet dough before Christmas.

And ended as the most decadent of breakfasts - the spicy tea, the tangy clementine, and the perfectly flaky, fruity cookie.

The best secret

There were lots of Christmas secrets. Presents hidden in brightly colored paper, stockings with mysterious lumps and bumps - the usual sort of things. But one secret was special. Covert phone calls confirmed dates, tantalizing clues appeared on websites, conspirators dropped veiled hints...

and then SURPISE!

Who would have guessed that these good friends would actually be together this year?
I'm just glad that our town is the meeting place for people from such far-flung places.
Let's all do this again this summer!

The many faces of...

"Here's a game", I say. "See if you can make a face like you're mad...like you're surprised....like you're happy."

And here he is, folks, the best at this game this year!

Waiting

It's hard to get everyone together at the same time for things like meals and parties and opening presents. There are always some of us who are not yet here, and some of those who are here have trouble waiting for everyone to gather. These are not the ones of us who are cooking and getting things ready. These are the ones who get taken out to the backyard with the foam swords and a new kick ball. En guarde!
You got me!
The dog takes over the kick ball.
The kid? Oh, did we lose the kid?

Just for luck

Not to claim any superstitious value for these activities, but still...
we did burn the traditional bayberry candle from one year through to the next


















Everyone ate cabbage for New Year's day (but no dimes in it - one has to draw the line somewhere.)






And, for a bit of extra luck, our marzipan pigs came all the way from Germany.

So I expect everyone to be healthy, happy and prosperous in this coming year! See to it!

Second Christmas

Christmas is over, but there are still presents underneath the tree and two stockings still hanging on the mantle. Someone is still playing Christmas carols.
And there are still lots of wonderful Christmas treats to eat.
There are some elaborate constructions still to put together.
It's a new cast of characters come for
Second Christmas!