How To...

brush your teeth. With Evelyn. And her guest, the Firefly Toothbrush (thank you thank you thank you Aunt Melissa).

First : Apply tooth paste.

Second: Shake tooth brush enthusiastically while telling Mama tales from your day.


Third: Begin Brushing Proceedure


Fourth: Continue brushing as long as your tooth brush flashes


Fifth: Raise feet off of stool and place them on the wall in an acrobatic type position and maintain this position until brushing is complete.


Sixth: RINSE!

Seventh: More brushing-why not?


Eighth: Return brush to holder


Ninth: Display gleaming chompers for Inspection.

Now, you can brush your teeth just like The Bean. That is, if you can maintain that feet up pose. AND you have a flashing toothbrush.

Figuring Things Out

It was bound to happen, I guess. Evelyn has figured out that death comes to us all. She has been asking questions and playing around the edge of things since we lost Stella two weeks ago.
She started with Billy Bones. She has had two cats die and she remembers them both, and even though we lost The Grinch about 2 years ago, she was still crying about him occasionally, well up to now. So she remembers. Now Stella is gone and Evelyn is older and wiser, and she keeps asking pretty difficult questions, like, "where are they?", "when can I see them again?", "where did you take them?", "why did Grinch have to go to the Doctor first but you just let Stella stay at home?". Even in the middle of some play time, she will just, BLAM! hit me with an inquiry and I stutter about and gulp down tears and try to answer as simply and honestly as I can.
Where are they? They are just gone.
When can she see them again? In a long, long while honey.
I took Grinch to the doctor because I KNEW he was sick and we were trying to make him better, didn't know Stella was going to die.
So THEN, she looks at Billy Bones, she knows that he has been having some breathing trouble. She says, "Mom, when will Billy die? , I answer that I don't really know but we will love him and enjoy him and try to keep him safe and healthy and happy. She seems okay with it but will fire off a "Billy will die in a few weeks" sort of thing. Okay, I get it, she is assimilating and coping but it still makes my heart jump whenever she says it.
THEN, she remembers that my Grandma, her GG, has been sick with heart stuff. Can you see where this is going? I actually had to walk out on that conversation and let Leslie take over.(he did a great job, by the way. Better than I would have done.)
NOW, she is asking when WE will die and if it will be in a few weeks. A few weeks is understandable, it's the outermost limit of her understanding of time. Understanding that lives end, that's .... well, that sucks.
I was hoping that she wouldn't come to these conclusions I was hoping that I could keep her ignorant a little longer. Maybe I could have, by telling sweet lies and keeping her insulated, that's just not my way though. I know how intelligent she is, I know how she resents being talked "down" to, hell, I know that I resented (and still do) that very same thing. I also feel that Life's hard truths are better broken down into small increments and handled a bit at a time....
With Mama.
And Papa.
And lots of ice cream.

Just take a moment to dwell on The Cute-ness

The Balm of Gilead

More about cats?!?! Why yes. We dearly love our feline friends around here.
I just wanted to mention that healing over the loss of Stella is happening. We are all still hurting and feeling the emptinss that her death has left. BUT, we do have Billy Bones.
Billy has been working over time to ensure that we are all filled up with feline love and companionship. It warms my heart to see him concerned and doing his best to comfort us, while he is obviously upset about Stella as well. I know that not everyone is going to understand what I am talking about, not everyone has pets or feels for them the way we do or even pays as much attention to them as we do, but let me say, they have moods and emotions and are as affected by loss as humans are.
Our sweet, biting, striped, toe salad of a cat is doing his best to help us all feel better. Well, who couldn't feel better with such a handsome fellow on the job?

Link-O-Rama

Not link as in "check out this cool web-site", Link as in the character from the Zelda games. Link, the Elfin Hero. Link has become a huge figure in our lives. Let me explain....

We bought a Wii.

Then we bought Legend of Zelda:Twilight Princess.

Then we let Evelyn watch the game. Alot apparently.

Now we have an obsessed fan on our hands.

Really.

She asks all of the time if we can turn on the Wii and play Zelda, so she can watch Link and imitate everything he does.

An aside: These Zelda games have always been big with my family , we played the original like nobody's business (even my parents) and years later before this new onslaught of Zelda games, my Mom named her cat Zelda, so what I'm saying is , Evelyn gets it honest.

For those of you that don't know, Link is the main character and you follow him in a first person type adventure where you have to save everyone you meet and you get to swim, jump, run, ride horses- all kinds of video game fun.

UMMMMM...where was I? Oh yeah. Evelyn is now crazy mad for Link. I have to call her Link half of the time, she runs around with various objects shoved down the back of her shirt to act as a sword, she uses Peppermint as a horse, she wears rubber rain boots as her "iron boots". She will shout out hints and instructions during play and sometimes gets so involved that she has to be sent from the room to calm down. The newest thing is this: Mom and Dad brought the Game Guide to us (because okay , as nuts as we are? My Dad has played through twice and is on his third round and no longer needs the book), and Evelyn lays about constantly pouring over it. Honestly. She hugs pictures of Link and kisses them and I have to look a hundred times a day at the various pictures of him, the only conversation that I have had with Bean today is, what I call, "degrees of Link love".

So instead of a little witch or fairie at Halloween, guess what Evelyn wants to be? I told Les he better start working on a sword and shield because she wants a Link costume-BAD.

I CAN'T wait until she's old enough for Buffy!!!!!! ' Cause it seems that she has the makings of a true fan-girl, just like her Mama.

Omage in Food

Yesterday morning I made a big breakfast here at The Casa. This is noteworthy because we are the grab and go, breakfast types. I made Mexican omelets, fried sausage and toast. Okay, maybe not a HUGE breakfast, but big for these here parts.... And as always, when I was chowing down on a "regular" type breakfast I started to reminisce about some childhood memories......

When my sister and I were little Mom and Dad would drive us (not often enough) to Indiana to visit our Grandpa and Grandma there. These visits were always a wonderful break from our inner city life, they lived on a farm, in an old farm house and Grandma Rose was not afraid of the kitchen, I can tell you that. She would get up every morning of our visits and make these huge country breakfasts. She would have bacon, sausage, biscuits, jelly, jam, eggs, hash browns....I would sit and eat and eat and eat- she probably thought that I had never been fed before , the way I would tuck in at her table. Looking back over my life and the many, many meals that I have had, I can say that those early morning breakfast with Grandma Rose and Grandpa Matt were some of the best meals of my life. I think that's why my favorite "going out" meal is breakfast.

It wasn't just the food that made the visits special, my sister and I loved sleeping upstairs in those elegant bedrooms, whispering to each other and listening to the bugs. It was bug hunting with Grandpa. It was the Indiana air and space. It was the absolute comfort in the home that they had and the way that they loved us. I guess I sum all of that up into "breakfast". So that's why, anytime I plop, hot eggs and sausage or bacon down on the table, Les has to hear all over again about our visits to Indiana, even though I'm sure Grandma never served Mexican omelets, it amounts to near enough for me and my memories.

Then, last night, using shared bounty from my sister-in-law's garden, I made a "country supper". It started out as just regular dinner, using leftovers from Leslie's party, but it changed and before I knew it I had a cast iron skillet on the stove and I was frying up my favorite food of all time, Fried Green Tomatoes. Can I get an "Amen!"? So we had FGT, fried cheeseburgers, corn on the cob, fresh sliced yellow tomatoes and vidalia onions for the burgers (thanks Jenny), day pickles and I topped it all off with a tall glass of iced milk. WOW! That was a great meal. And it was one very similar to the way that my Grandma (Jean or GG, to Evelyn) would out supper on when I was little. As you can imagine then, Leslie and Evelyn were regaled with tales of Grandma and her cooking and how special she was to me then (and now of course).

Fried Green Tomatoes in the pan

Me and my tomatoes = happy

The Supper Spread- don't mind the hodge-podge dishes

Happy Birthday Leslie

Yesterday, on Saturday August 16, my husband turned 36.
We had some family and freinds over for a cookout celebration. We grilled burgers and dogs and bbq chicken. We had a seafood past salad, deviled eggs, day pickles (or a vinegar based cucumber salad), baked beans, veggies and of course, cake and ice cream. It was a fun time, sadly, I didn't snap one photo, I was too busy cooking and visiting.
So Les, I hope that you had a nice day. I hope this upcoming year in your life affords you more love and happiness than you can stand. I never thought that I could be this happy spending my life with an old man, but, you went and proved me wrong again!

I'll wrangle Les out into the backyard in a few days to get some birthday pictures of his handsome face up on here.