Thursday Evening and Where Did the Day Go?

The day didn't get off to a promising start. The mail brought news we could have lived without, a rousing fight with the State of California Franchise Tax Board. It made me cry so Chris took the paper and called and did his best PupDaddy growling and may have actually cleared the whole thing up already. Good Daddy!

I had what seemed like a million things to do to get ready for tonight's first parent/teacher organization meeting (which, like most things in Pennsylvania, is called something different than everywhere else in the U.S.) but if I say Parent Advisory Committee, none of you will know what I'm talking about. So I spent most of the morning working on that and then a couple hours in the afternoon running errands to copy things. Before we knew it, it was time to head back to school to run the extended day Readers' Theatre club. My second graders are sooooo much easier to keep on task than my (Tuesday afternoon) first graders. The time flew by and we scooped up our pups and headed over to grandma's house to help install her new washer.

Then we hurried home and made sausage gravy with biscuits, left the kids with Gaye, and hurried off to meetings. Chris went to a boyscout meeting and I went to my parent org meeting and . . . we met. Chris got home first and freed Gaye.

So here we are back home. All the puppies in bed. Catching our breath and getting ready to put ourselves to bed. But we both agree--tomorrow we have GOT to get some workwork done.
The missionaries are coming for a late dinner and I'm making taco pizza. There's laundry to wash and clean laundry to put away and workworkwork to do.

Makes me want chocolate.

Oops, I Did It Again

I drank Diet Pepsi after 6pm.

And now I'm GETTING WORK DONE! And it's GREAT!

But at 1 am I am going to be soooo bummed.

Now that Chris is Senior Scout Leader extraordinaire of Troop 40's 11-yr-olds, I get to sew a LOT of patches on shirts. HIS shirt gets lots of patches and Max's shirt gets every patch that Chris gets, but more. I am historically pretty shakey on the hand-sewing, but things are looking up. I even managed to go two whole weeks without losing my favorite thimble (which you need to get the frackin' needle through the patch). But it's gone again today. Even so, I've sewn on three patches this afternoon. This is a new record for me. Ordinarily I don't even start sewing on the patch until an hour before the meeting is supposed to begin. This time I was done a whole day early.

Chris is supposed to be coming up with a patrol cheer. This was my suggestion.

Ready? Okay!
Give me a boom!
Give me another boom!
Give me a cardiac arrest!
Whatayagot?
Lightning Squad!!
Yaaaayyyyy!!!

(I learned everything I know about cheering from T-T-T-Torrance! in Bring It On! Also, the above is funnier if you picture Kermit the Frog delivering it complete with the waving arms. Maybe Gonzo the Great should do the boom lines.)

Early September Thoughts

We're in those last days of summer where we're over the heat, bored with all the greenery, wondering if we really need more quarts of spaghetti sauce or not . . . but it is still hot, still humid, and the tomatoes (especially the cherry tomatoes) are still ripening, still flowering even, still producing. They don't really seem to know fall is coming. But there are signs. A few trees starting to turn already (how do they know? Is it a light thing? Because it is still soooo hot.) I would say the corn is already going brown, but that probably has more to do with the lack of rain than anything else.

I haven't been to the garden in days because of the taxing nature of the first week of school and I'm afraid I'm going to find bedraggled, semi-dead plants, dying of thirst. They could have used watering. There's almost no point in watering them tomorrow. They say it'll rain some tomorrow evening. But if I don't water the plants--then it won't rain. And we really need the rain. So I'll water.

The kids all did well this week--I think. I haven't heard a word from Max's teacher, but I'm sticking with the positive for now and assuming that means all is well. She had a behavior system in place on the first day of school. Last year his teacher didn't have one until January some time and it continued to change nearly weekly for another two months. Max thinks this one is pretty on top of things.

Ben and Milo's teacher says "They had a great first week." Ben has a new best friend, W-A. Ben says his first and second name are done together, giving the boy a grand total of 6-syllables in his name. I suspect this is really a first and last name, but I'll take Ben's word for it until I can look more deeply into things next week. I did meet W-A's mom Thursday afternoon. I think she's Castillian Spanish. W-A is the youngest of five and has four older sisters. She's very happy my chatty, gregarious Ben has taken on W-A as a new best friend. In honor of their friendship, I'm going to actually mow, bushwack, clean up the backyard tomorrow so we can invite W-A over for a playdate soon.

Milo has some new friends, too. True to form, he has a list. Two girls and three boys right now.

The twinks are celebrities at their school. Among 140 students, a couple of cute, chatty, outgoing identical kindergarteners can quickly rack up the social points. As they walk through the hall they get shout-outs from a dozen kids--some in kindergarten, but many not. Those who know their names use them. The rest of them call them simply, "The twins."

"There's the twins! Hi, twins!"

Ben and Milo wave back. Ben, without abandon. Milo, stylized, like British royalty. I asked them if they minded being called "The twins." They said they did not. I offered that if they DID, they could reply, "Use our names: Ben and Milo." But Ben simply said again, "No, it's okay." So I shelve my own guilt for "twinking" them together sometimes.

I am focusing mainly on work this week and next--when I'm not doing something for the charter school. But I got fairly far behind in August and I need to get caught up to feel good about things. For some reason, it kind of made sense to pick one knitting project and try to stick with it. I've been working on the Viking Twist on Orange Twist sweater pretty exclusively--although I think next weekend I'll put it aside to finish Baby Girl Sweater #3. This weekend though my-mother-Judy is visiting and we have planned another afternoon of working on unpacking Gaye and there won't be more than a few minutes here and there to knit--so I'll continue on the Orange Twist variant. The Viking cable is working beautifully so far and the design basic enough that if I don't have the chart in front of me, I can pretty well figure out which way to shove the cable needle without it. I can't cable without the cable needle yet though. That's not entirely true. I can cable to the right on a four-stitch cable without it. That's useful when working on Milo's sweater. But that's it. At any rate, I'll try to take a picture of the Twisted Orange Twist (ooh, I like that name better) soon and put that up.

And that is all I have to say about that.

First Day of School

We'll have some photos later. Chris already downloaded them, but they're on his computer where I can't get them to post them because he and Max are already at boy scouts.

Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays are once again the days to survive this year. In addition to the extra hour of school that our charter school has because of the extra half-hour each of Chinese and Spanish instruction, there is the extended day program. At no additional cost to students, we have a big snack break followed by a 40-minute class, another 5 minute break, and a second 40-minute class. Then it's 5:25 and some of the kids still have to ride a bus home.

I've always thought this was a bit much for a little guy, so I don't encourage Max to do the extended day program more than twice a week and I wouldn't have signed up the twins at all--except that Chris and I are teaching Readers' Theatre there twice a week--so the twinks are doing RT with me on Tuesdays and going to kindy Science club on Thursdays.

My class is in the first "hour" and Chris's class is in the second "hour" on Tuesdays, so the twinks and I leave at 4:40 and Max and Chris stay for another 40 minutes and then come home. But Tuesday nights are also boy scouts, so just as soon as we get home, the twinks practice piano while I make dinner. Then Max and Chris get home, we all eat, and the big boys head off to Boy Scouts. The twinks are now reading books on the couch and I plan on trying to get them in bed at 8:00 pm--fully an hour or more earlier than they went to bed most of the summer. But with such a long day--they need some sleep!

But I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's go back to the beginning. I woke up at 6am with a sour stomach. So I went off in a futile search for Tums. I may have taken my medication for the day at this time. I'm not really sure. This is important.

I settled in at my desk and did some more work on the Viking Twist on Orange Twist sweater until the alarm went off. I got the twins dressed, got myself through the shower, Max through the shower, and Chris to feed the twins. I was feeling kind of anxious, so I went to the cupboard and took my medication--again. I had no memory of having taken the medication earlier. Now this anti-anxiety medication--you can't overdose on it. But it WILL put you to sleep. I take a *very* low dose of it, but even so, in all, I tripled my normal dose this morning.

Oops.

We got out the door at 8:00 am, Max gave me a huge before we left the house saying he wanted a hug, but not in front of "everyone in class." He's 11. Honestly, I am just grateful it's taken him this long to get picky about public displays of affections. We picked up Grandma Gaye, and headed over to school. We took pictures of Max and his teacher, pictures of the twins and their teachers, handed out some first-day-of-school treats to the teachers (blueberry jam and salsa, mostly), hugged the twins, and left.

Oh, wait. Little Ben story here. In the kindergarten class was one tiny little kindergartner that is the little sister of one of Max's friends (15 out of 19 students in this year's kindergarten class is the younger sibling of an existing charter school student). She and her baby sister and Ben and Milo had had a wonderful afternoon last winter chasing each other all around the ski lodge.

So anyway, this morning little T was just not wild about this whole kindergarten mess. She had been crying hard and was still sniffling loudly when Ben and I went over to say Hi. The conversation went something like this.

:Mom gets down to Ben and T's height. She puts arm around Ben. Ben stares with concern at T. T glances at Me, but won't make eye contact. On the other hand, she doesn't run away, either.:
Me: T, do you remember Ben?
T shakes head, no.
Me: Ben remembers you!
:Ben raises an eyebrow, but does not correct me. He has already told me that he doesn't remember T, but he's willing to pretend to:
:T glances at Ben again, this time taking a longer look at the face. Nope! Still don't know that kid. Shakes her head a little, but is listening.:
Me: Ben's big brother is friends with your big brother Kurt.
:T glances at me. Her face says, "Keep talking.":
Me: You and your little sister and Ben and his brother Milo met at the ski lodge last winter.
:T glances at me incredulously. She is clearly thinking, "What in the heck is a ski lodge, lady?":
Me: The four of you chased each other around while the big kids went skiing.
:T glances at me again. She has to admit this does sound like something she would do.:
Me: You caught Ben and you were Soooo strong, you even picked him all the way up off the ground!!
:Ben stands up straighter and smiles. He remembers that part.:
:T flashes Ben a dimple. Yeah, she may be half his size, but she could TOTALLY lift that dude up off the floor. She forgets to sniffle.:
Me: Well, Ben needs to go back to his seat now, but he wanted to tell you that he hopes you'll be his friend now in kindergarten and he's glad to see you here.
Ben: Yeah.
T: 'k.
T smiles shyly and turns away. Ben grins and hurries to go tell Milo about T.

Mom and Grandma and Daddy exit, stage left.

We checked the mail (good mail day) and went to the Waffle Shop where we met up with Jill and ate our fill of yummy breakfast food. At the start of breakfast I was starting to feel kind of yawnny, and by the end of it, I was leaning up against Chris to stay upright. Jill, Chris, and Gaye had giggles at my expense as we all realized that I had somehow miscalculated dosages somewhere in the morning.

We headed home and I tried to get started on work, but didn't manage more than a few emails before I had to give up. 15 minutes later I lay down on the couch for a short nap and slept like the dead for over 4 hours. Jill came to get Emily to take her to the park and I have no memory whatsoever of her bringing Emily back. Apparently Schwan's showed up and left a note on the door fifteen feet from the couch, but I have no memory of that either. I feel a little guilty about all the work I didn't get done, but then again--it was a great nap and I woke up in time to throw together the first lesson for this afternoon's Readers' Theatre.

Little Bits

Tonight as Chris and I were making lunches for the boys to eat tomorrow and Chris was trying to talk me down from a full-blown anxiety attack about the boys' starting school tomorrow, we talked about Max starting kindergarten and what that was like (in a word--horrible) and why it won't be that way tomorrow. This led to that and the next thing we knew we were missing some friends of ours in Minnesota--they'd been our friends before we ever lived in Minnesota (they were friends of Chris', I really married into the friendship, but it worked out well for me) and they're just the sort of super terrific people that every couple needs. But they have a full life and we have a full life, and we just hadn't had a good chat in a long time. So I told Chris to go call them up while I finished up the vocabulary lesson I was working on. Two hours later, he's still doing that. I sat and listened in for a good portion of it, and then, feeling happy through association that we'd reconnected, I came upstairs to blog a bit.

I mostly worked today, but I got some vacuuming done (Gaye has loaned us her Kirby because she has two working vacuums and our one vacuum just doesn't get the job done anymore.) and caught up with the dishes and did a spot of knitting.

Now, I'm working on Orange Twist for Max. I cast on a week or more ago, but you know me, I get things done in spurts, so in the last day or two, I got about 5 inches done on the back. Enough for me to start feeling . . . suspicious about it. I added another inch to it today and finally got out the measuring tape. It wasn't going to work. At the rate Max is growing, I need a minimum of six inches of ease, and the more, the better. If I knit it another whole size too big, it might fit perfectly by the time I'm done. So I was going to have to rip back. Before I did, I was trying to decide how many more repeats to add in order to make things the right size.

At the same time, the pattern is rather . . . simple. And to make matters worse, it goes from a simple rib to an even simpler mix of stockinette and a right twist cable. You don't even need a cable needle for it. You just knit into the second stitch and then the first and then pull them both off the needle. That's it. So I was kind of thinking, "You know, as long as I have to pull this out, maybe I could add a couple of more interesting cables to this."

Well, months ago, on a whim, Charlotte sent me a copy of Viking Knits.

Viking Knits is like an Advanced Placement knitting pattern book. The author just goes ahead and assumes you wouldn't be tackling this stuff if you hadn't already mastered every other cable pattern in the Universe. No hand holding in this book. If you have to knit in the round, she won't bother to remind you to be careful not to twist when you join. You'd better have figured out all those basics before hand. And the wacko symbols in the charts? No legend. She breaks down and gives you a legend in the back of the book, but I think she expects you to commit it to memory and never look again at it.

At any rate, there are some lovely cables (seems like you really shouldn't even call them cables, they are just above all that) in the book and I found one that I thought would work with the pattern, so I pulled out some leftover blue in the same kind of yarn that I'm using for Max's sweater and swatched a bit. Having confirmed that they'd work together, I recharted Orange Twist--first, to work it so that the main body of the sweater is done in the round. It's a boxy design and there's no reason not to do the body together until the armpits. I added seam stitches to each side and ran one each of the fancy Viking cables up each side, about three inches in from the edge. The center portion will be "plain" Orange twist (the stockinette & right twist pattern) and hopefully the end result won't be so weird he'll refuse to wear it.

I printed out my pretty chart and cast on 244 stitches. By the end of the day I've got a little more than an inch done. I'll take pictures when I'm out of the ribbing and have the first repeat done.

Well, there. Chris is finally off the phone, so I'm off to hear all the news from him.

Happy Labor Day Weekend

It's been a busy weekend for us, but it's just about over. We don't have a BBQ planned for tomorrow--Chris needs to paint and I need to write and the kids need to squirm anxiously waiting for Tuesday to come and their first real day of kindergarten and 6th grade. Ben told me today that it was going to be "really different from Preschool." I had to agree.

I processed a lot of tomatoes. I had a little less than half a bushel of various varieties of cherry and plum tomatoes. About half of them were yellow varieties, so the juice is very orange. I've canned up quite a few pints of juice to drink, so I put these in quarts for cooking.

I had a little more than half a bushel of various varieties of larger tomatoes, and I had quite a few hot peppers, so I decided to do a batch of salsa. Salsa is more time consuming than just about anything else I can think to can up. Having to skin and de-seed each and every one of those tomatoes is just the biggest buzz kill. The end result is so worth it, but I can't say I enjoy skinning tomatoes. At all. On the upside, this year's salsa finally has some true heat to it. I don't think I can't call it more than medium, but I have two varieties of hot pepper that will be fully ripe in another two weeks and I think I have one more batch of salsa left in me--although perhaps not as large as this one.

After church today we headed over to Gaye's house to see what needed to be done. The kids sat in the living room and watched old Muppet show episodes while the three grownups worked on things. I mostly lined shelves and reorganized the tupperware. We were all tuckered out by 4pm, so we headed home then.

And that about brings us up to date. It's a big week coming up. We'll try to take some pictures.

Kitchen Photos

Okay, so after helpers this morning removed the old fridge to take it to Gaye's house, I mopped the floor and then put away and organized everything that had been displaced in the process of moving the larger fridge from the basement into the kitchen. It won't fit in the space the smaller fridge vacated, so I moved some shelving I have into that space. At the end of the kitchen are stacked some of my food storage buckets (mostly different kinds of flours and grains) and larger pots.





From the other side of the kitchen you can see better the "new" fridge and (for once, clean) counter space and sink.



I thought the line-up of ripening tomatoes was rather photogenic.



Especially this guy:

Especially for Dy

So washing out two fridges really gives a girl some time to think and one of the things I was sort of mulling over was that here we were involved in a "move" again--and how GRATEFUL I was that it wasn't MY move. Even though I was here cleaning out a fridge (or two) for a move, it isn't MY phone number changing, my utility hookups--even though I've done a lot of the work with the Realtors in this move--in the end they're not acting on my behalf. I get to stay in my messy house with the icky carpets and the aging roof and feel rueful over the weeds that have taken over the flower beds (but not my garden!). And I'm really grateful for that. I may even have the cash to get the carpets cleaned at the end of September. How great will that be?

I don't mind that another round of priming and painting is coming up--I never really minded that part. I like the dramatic transformation that two coats of primer and two coats of paint does to a room. I don't mind juggling all the extra tasks around the demands of piano lessons and contracted work. My love language is "acts of service" and I truly love the woman for whom we are doing all this. If it weren't for the financial stresses--that are completely unrelated to the moving activities, they're just part and parcel of 2007 for us--I'd be doing just fine now.

How much more powerful of a sign from God that this is to be our Forever home (Pine Grove Mills/State College--I'm open to moving to a house with a taller basement for Chris when the kids are grown, but in the same neighborhood) that He has made it possible for FAMILY to join us here. I found myself wondering who would be next. I tried to convince my sister and her husband to make the move out of San Diego earlier this year, but her husband has family there in California and I imagine that when you are first-generation American, you don't leave that regardless of the financial cost. So we'll see what the future brings.

Thursday Evening of a Hot and Humid Day

Today wasn't the hottest day we've had so far this summer, but I swear it was the most humid. I've just about saturated the t-shirt and knit skirt I'm wearing in sweat and when I'm done blogging I'm going to go take the third shower of the day.

It's 10:20. The kids are in bed. At least two out of three of them are asleep. It's been a hectic day. I almost forgot to take the dog for a walk this evening.

I got up early, feeling much better than the night before when I'd been feeling flu-ish and had a sore throat. I got dressed in some ugly gardening clothes and ran over to the garden to weed and prune the tomatoes for an hour. The added water a week ago caused the fungus or bacteria that they're all sick with to come raging back--so I've been cutting off the diseased branches and using the opportunity to tie up the plants and get the tomatoes off the ground. I'm on the last square of the garden and the one that was arguably the biggest mess/host to the biggest problems. Therefore an hour only weeded another third of the square and I only got two more plants pruned and tied up. But that leaves me with two plants left to prune and tie and the ground under them to weed. I'm not sure when I'll get to that. Probably not tomorrow. I guess Saturday as there's a bunch of tomatoes ripening and another batch in the front yard and on my window sill. I'll make another small-ish batch of spaghetti sauce. The spaghetti sauce seems to do better when I'm not trying to can up too many tomatoes at once.

At any rate, around 8:30 I hurried and tidied up the plot, put the wheelbarrow and tools away in the garden shed, and raced back home. Grandma Gaye had overseen the dressing of the twins and they were all ready to go. I hopped in the shower and then into clean clothes, inadvertantly grabbing a tomato-stained shirt that I ended up wearing the rest of the day. I must have made a magnificent first impression more than once today.

The kids and I hurried out to the truck. First stop was the drive-through lane of the bank. Second stop was the doctor's office. We got two sets of kindergarten physical papers filled out and one set of 6th grade physical papers filled out. My plan to spread out all the shots over the year had worked and the kids weren't due for shots of any kind. The twins happily answered all of the doctor's questions. They like this doctor and he likes them. His twins are 21 years old. He says they still share clothes (and an apartment).

The boys were pronounced a healthy bunch and we left there to go back home. I did a load of dishes and the boys made themselves sandwiches. Gaye came home from spending a few hours working over at her house and had a sandwich, too. We had a short break and then it was nearing 1:00 pm, so we all piled back in the truck, Grandma Gaye, too, and headed over to the new school building.

The school was fabulous. In the last ten days the construction crew and teachers have worked feverishly to put the finishing touches on the place. The floor was laid, the carpet installed, the ceiling tiles placed, the windows washed, the desks arranged, LOCKERS INSTALLED for the middle school kids (Ooooh, every new 6th grader was in heaven--it was like at the BIG middle school! Only better--because they weren't actually going to be at the big middle school, and they STILL got lockers. Lockers! Look how big we are now!) and each one already labeled with the name of the inaugural middle schooler who would possess them.

The Kindy teacher had asked that we bring the kids' school supplies to the open house so she could have them all put away and labeled or arranged or something for the first day of school. So Max naturally wanted to bring HIS school supplies, even though his list had not said to do that. So he filled his new orange backpack with his supplies. I gave him permission to go out to the car and get his backpack and unload all his stuff into his locker. Nobody thought that was geeky. They all wished they'd thought to do the same thing.

Last year the fifth graders didn't fit in the old building. They had to rent a room in the building next door to the school and at the end of each day break down the tables they'd used and put EVERYTHING belonging to the class away in a storage room. This year as sixth graders they get one of the bigger classrooms and real desks. And the math program is new, too. I like it much better than the Everyday Math program the elementary kids use.

We stayed almost an hour, visiting with some of the other parents, looking around the new building, turning in some paperwork. The twinks spent most of it in the kindergarten room talking to their new teacher and playing with the legos that were out on one of the tables. The K's get their own bathroom IN their classroom and I'm thrilled about that, too.

Then, we came home, had a little down time, and waited for Chris to get home from his lunch meeting. By this time the heat and humidity were beyond oppressive and we all wished we had central air conditioning--but tomorrow is the big moving day as we and friends from church get everything belonging to Gaye OUT of storage and INTO her house. As part of that, we're moving our fridge that we brought with us from California up into our kitchen and moving the fridge that the previous owners left here out of the kitchen and into Gaye's kitchen. The two fridges are nearly the same age, but the CA fridge is bigger and the PA fridge is a better fit for Gaye's kitchen.

So Chris spent about two hours disassembling the CA fridge and getting it moved from the basement to the kitchen (via the driveway, up the front walk, and through the front door) and then I spent about three hours cleaning out two fridges, and moving the stuff from one fridge to the other. I don't clean out the fridge head to toe very often. I'm more of a spot cleaner I guess, so cleaning out the fridges was a big chore. You can miss a lot when you only clean up after big spills. Gaye kept wanting to help, but I felt strongly that they were my messes and anyway, it was a good opportunity to check the expiration dates on everything.

And so now it's a little past 11:00 pm and in spite of a thunderstorm that was supposed to bring in cool air, it still seems unbelievably hot and humid. I actually have some pretty serious work deadlines coming up (got a slew of emails to that point this afternoon) and since I couldn't find a babysitter for the twins for tomorrow, we've decided that I'll stay here and work all day while Chris and Gaye and the volunteers work on the move and then Saturday I'll put in hours helping unpack. Sunday is the Sabbath and then Monday will be another full day of work. Thank goodness for federal holidays--they really help me catch up when I'm behind a bit in work. Tuesday we'll take the kids to school and then meet other parent/friends at the Waffle Shop for a first-day-of-school breakfast. I expect to spend all of next week either working on this work project or unpacking boxes.

I'm looking forward to it actually. It's good to have work and it's good to have family to do things for and it's good to feel really hopeful (and only a little bit worried) about the upcoming school year. Max will NOT have a first-year teacher this year (although she's new to the school) and the twins will NOT have a first-year teacher for kindergarten and there's no reason to think that this isn't the year the kids will have teachers they love and a really fabulous time in school. I think we're about due for that. I'm ready for a year like that. (And I'm ready for the fall. For 55-degree temps and raking leaves and acorns and putting the garden to bed and another blanket on the beds. I'm ready for that, too!)

Family Ties Key to Happy Kids

[Pulled from the online pages of Foxnews.com via Google news.]

Sunday, August 19, 2007

NEW YORK — So you're between the ages of 13 and 24. What makes you happy? A worried, weary parent might imagine the answer to sound something like this: Sex, drugs, a little rock 'n' roll. Maybe some cash, or at least the car keys.

Turns out the real answer is quite different. Spending time with family was the top answer to that open-ended question, according to an extensive survey — more than 100 questions asked of 1,280 people ages 13-24 — conducted by The Associated Press and MTV on the nature of happiness among America's young people.

Next was spending time with friends, followed by time with a significant other. And even better for parents: Nearly three-quarters of young people say their relationship with their parents makes them happy.

"They're my foundation," says Kristiana St. John, 17, a high-school student from Queens in New York. "My mom tells me that even if I do something stupid, she's still going to love me no matter what. Just knowing that makes me feel very happy and blessed."

Other results are more disconcerting. While most young people are happy overall with the way their lives are going, there are racial differences: the poll shows whites to be happier, across economic categories, than blacks and Hispanics. A lot of young people feel stress, particularly those from the middle class, and females more than males.

You might think money would be clearly tied to a general sense of happiness. But almost no one said "money" when asked what makes them happy, though people with the highest family incomes are generally happier with life. However, having highly educated parents is a stronger predictor of happiness than income.

And sex? Yes, we were getting to that. Being sexually active actually leads to less happiness among 13-17 year olds, according to the survey. If you're 18 to 24, sex might lead to more happiness in the moment, but not in general.

From the body to the soul: Close to half say religion and spirituality are very important. And more than half say they believe there is a higher power that has an influence over things that make them happy. Beyond religion, simply belonging to an organized religious group makes people happier.

And parents, here's some more for you: Most young people in school say it makes them happy. Overwhelmingly, young people think marriage would make them happy and want to be married some day. Most also want to have kids.

Finally, when asked to name their heroes, nearly half of respondents mentioned one or both of their parents. The winner, by a nose: Mom.

HAPPINESS IS:

"...two kinds of ice cream," according to the song from "You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown." John Lennon, more darkly, described it as a warm gun. A much more typical description comes from Stacy Rosales, a 23-year-old recent college graduate, who calls it "just a general stress-free feeling where I'm not really worried about anything. THAT makes me happy."

For Chad Fiedler, 17, it's "just waking up in the morning and looking forward to what I'm going to be doing that day." And for Eoshe Roland, a 14 year old from Nashville, it's "playing trumpet in my school band."

However you express, define or feel it, 65 percent of those surveyed say they're happy with the way things are going for them right now.

WE ARE FAMILY:

When asked what one thing makes them most happy, 20 percent mentioned spending time with family — more than anything else. About three-quarters — 73 percent — said their relationship with their parents makes them happy. After family, it was relationships with friends that people mentioned most.

"It's good news to hear young people being realistic about what really makes them happy," says psychologist Jean Twenge, author of "Generation Me" and a professor at San Diego State University. "Research has shown us that relationships are the single greatest source of happiness."

Also confirming existing research, Twenge says, is the finding that children of divorced parents are somewhat less likely to be happy. Among 13-17 year olds, 64 percent of those with parents still together said they wake up happy, compared to 47 percent of those with divorced parents.

FIRST COMES LOVE, THEN COMES...:

Overall, romantic relationships are a source of happiness — but being in one doesn't necessarily lead to greater happiness with life in general.

"It would be nice, but where I am right now is, I want to take care of myself," says Rosales. "Before you can be in a committed relationship you have to know who you are and what you really want."

Eventually, though, marriage is a goal for most young people, with 92 percent saying they either definitely or probably want to get married.

"I don't want to be one of those career businesswomen who just doesn't ever settle down," says St. John, the New York high school student.

MONEY, MONEY, MONEY:

Money may make the world go around, but when asked what one thing makes them happiest, almost nobody in the poll mentioned money or anything material. Still, money does play a role in happiness.

Those who can't afford to buy many of the things they want are less happy with life in general. Just under half of young people think they'd be happier if they had more money, while the same percentage (49 percent) say they'd be just as happy.

"I'm going to college next year," says Fiedler, who will attend Drexel University in Philadelphia. "Not the cheapest thing nowadays. Money isn't the most important thing, but if something happens, it can turn into it."

STRESSES, FEARS:

Young people in this survey had a 10 percent higher stress rate than adults did in a 2006 AP-Ipsos poll. For ages 13 to 17, school is the greatest source of stress. For those in the 18-24 range, it's jobs and financial matters.

Only 29 percent feel very safe traveling, and 25 percent very safe from terror attacks. Still, those interviewed said the fear of terror interfered very little with their lives.

DRUGS AND ALCOHOL:

Alcohol users are slightly less happy than those who don't drink. The differences are more remarkable among 13-17 year olds; just 40 percent of those who drank in the last seven days reported being happy with life, versus 68 percent of those who didn't. And 49 percent of illegal drug users reported being happy with life, compared with 66 percent of those who didn't use drugs.

RACIAL DIVIDE:

While 72 percent of whites say they're happy with life in general, just 56 percent of blacks and 51 percent of Hispanics say that. And 66 percent of whites were happy at the moment the interview began, compared with 57 percent of minorities.

SUSTENANCE FOR THE SOUL:

"I just like believing in something greater than me and everybody else," St. John, who attends a Catholic school, says of her commitment to religion. "When I pray, sometimes it just makes me feel better, if I'm freaking out about things."

Those for whom religion and spirituality plays a bigger role tend to be happier, according to the poll. More than half — 55 percent — say it is either a very important part of life or the single most important thing in their lives.

I NEED A HERO:

Oprah Winfrey? Michael Jordan? Hillary Clinton? Tiger Woods? All those names came up when people were asked about heroes. Of public figures, Martin Luther King, Jr. got the most mentions. But nearly half mentioned one of their parents, with mothers ranking higher (29 percent) than fathers (21 percent.)

"My parents came here from the Philippines in the '70s," says Rosales. "They raised a family and got to where they are from scratch. My mother's now the director of a hospital. I admire them both so much."

"My mother is a pastor, and she's my role model," says Esohe, the 14 year old in Nashville. "She's so giving." Blacks and Hispanics were more likely than whites to name their mothers.

Also mentioned: God (more than 10 percent), teachers (nearly 5 percent); and members of the military, policemen and firefighters.

THE CRYSTAL BALL:

Will young people grow up to be happy adults? Overall they're optimistic: Sixty-two percent think they'll be happier in the future than they are now. (Those over 18 are more optimistic.) But many anticipate a more difficult life than their parents had.

"I think a lot about my kids and what their lives are going to be like," says Fiedler. "There may be wars going on, who knows. I just have a feeling it's going to be harder for the future generation to be happy."

Of Knitting and the Like

It's been a little bit since I've talked about what's on my needles. As usual there's "what's on my needles" and then there's "what I'm actually working on." So this is really "what I'm actually working on." After the last few weeks of steamy temps, I'm not actively working on anything with a lot of wool content. That said, today's high was 73 after a downright COOL overnight (and since Gaye and I found her a nice, $20 airconditioner for her bedroom, the temps will probably stay cool right into September and beyond, LOL), and I find myself looking forward to working again on some of the wooly lace projects. I did have to finish one wooly project and that was a single sample santa mitten for the class I'm teaching later in the month at the LYS. They also wanted the sample baby sweater I'm doing for the class in October, so I started that. Omygizzle, it is sooooo cute!! It's the Baby Bolero sweater from One Skein (I didn't pick it--the yarn store did) and it uses Inca Cotton's 100% Organic Cotton in colorway Ecru (which is the natural color of the cotton--no dyes). Now, this cotton has been out of my price range this year, but since it's a sample for the store, they just gave me the skein and I have to rave about it. It's soooooo soft and just a JOY to work with. Partly because of the yarn, and partly because of the newborn size of the sweater, this thing knits up super fast. I've gotten a bit bogged down in the sleeves because each of them take as much time to knit as the entire rest of the sweater--and there's an obscene amount of SEWING for such a tiny little thing, but it's going to be worth it. The sweater is adorable. I already have a second one on the needle for one of the newborns expected shortly at church and since the Inca Cotton skein has a generous 325 yds (and the sweater only uses 150 yds), I'm going to knit up a second one for the other newborn expected shortly at church.

Anyway, I'm in a sweater mood again, ironically. I think it was the two baby sweaters that I did earlier this summer that did it. I'm about 2/3 of the way through the third version of that baby sweater and making progress and I'm working also on a sweater for Max and one for Milo (sorry, no picture--it's a red stockinette sweater with assymetrical cables running along one shoulder--a large and full-sleeved version of the sweater I made for Cousin O's first birthday.) and I'm feeling like I'd really like to finish those sweater vests for the boys for church AND make some progress on Chris' sweater, but that starts to be a lot to get done between work and school starting soon.

Plus, before you know it, we'll be in Christmas knitting mode and I have to get something for the second piano teacher done before then.

Oh, and the garden? I never got the expected hate mail about my weedy garden and so I still have it. My goal this week and next is to work a tiny bit each week day on it in the hopes of getting things enough under control by this month's weed check that they let me keep the garden another year. When the tomatoes are really and truly done, I'll start replacing the plants with plastic wrap and see if I can't do something about the weediness of the plot. Then next year, plant mostly melons and corn in the garden and make good use of ground covers and mulch. I can't grow tomatoes in this plot for a few years because I'm fairly sure that the dirt is harboring tomato diseases and it takes three-to-four years of no tomatoes to make it safe for tomatoes.

If I can honestly kill off the frickin' frackin' crab grass in the garden, it would be worth keeping. (I have to say that the last three weeks load of a half-bushel of tomatoes for canning each week has done a lot towards improving my resolve to keep the garden. It sure wasn't feeling worth it before I had a couple of batches of pizza sauce canned up. Today I got 4.5 quarts of spaghetti sauce canned up (unburned for once) and I think it's very tasty. I only plan one batch of Mrs. Zook's Tomato soup since I still have quite a few quarts left and I'm not sure yet how hard/easy it will be to get the twins to eat tomato soup in their lunch. I did get them lunch thermoses, so we'll see how that goes. I still have chili, green beans, more beans, and I'm debating doing a chicken soup base to which I could just add noodles.

As an aside, Mrs. Writing and Living, I'm totally sympathetic to your pressure cooker fear. I was more than a little skittish the first few times using mine, but I follow the directions (that came with the pressure cooker) to the letter and I don't go any further away from the canner/cooker than the very next room. I use the kitchen stove timer to check the pressure every five to ten minutes when getting the pressure up to where it needs to be and I've been known to just stand there in the kitchen and watch it go up (if only going to 5 lbs pressure, for example, or if it's just one lb of pressure shy of the goal). I've gotten very good at knowing where to set the temp on my stove to keep it at a very stable pressure (just a little under five on the front right burner, just a little over five on the back right burner). The biggest "chance" I'm taking is that my stove is, um, not approved for canning. You're not supposed to can at all on a glass-top stove. I don't know why, but I've been told it's because of the weight of the massive pots. So I'm taking a risk there--and as soon as the household can afford it, I'll send it over to Gramma Gaye's house and replace it with a propane stove that is safer to use. But that could be another few summers.

August

August is hot, sticky.
It's sweat running down your temples,
down the center of your back.
It's an under dressed hot, young thing
looking wilted.
And it's a well-padded mother-of-three
pausing gratefully under the Wal-mart
airconditioning blast.

August is half-a-bushel of tomatoes every week
in spite of tomato blight and
it's red and orange hot peppers and
juicy, sweet watermelon that tastes
even better
than the airconditioning blast feels.
It's sweeping watermelon seeds off the porch
because 5-yr-olds don't spit well yet.

August is cold showers three times before dinner
and stirring spaghetti sauce in front of a box fan
and the kids wanting to "wait in the car with the airconditioning."
It's not letting them because in February,
we'll think back wistfully to August.

August is snipping at your beloved
because it is just. too. hot.
And then hurried apologies because
you didn't really mean it.
Sorry! Sorry! I love you! I love you, too.
Smooch!
Mmmmm, salty.

Canning Pintos or Black Turtle Beans

Loosely based on the Ball Canning book, and run past the canning expert at the Penn State Extension office, who used to HAVE the Ball Canning book contract (but now someone else does).

(My Ball blue book says 2.25 lbs of dried beans to a quart, but that's total nonsense--I do 5 lbs at a time and I get 9 quarts out of that.)

Anyway, don't do 5 lbs, do 4 lbs--that'll get you about 7 quarts and you can do the whole thing in one load through the pressure canner, assuming you're using a big/tall pressure canner, which you really do need to pull this off. Like one of the 23 qt sizes.

So the afternoon before canning, you rinse the beans really well and fish out anything nonedible. Put them in a large pot (even the canning pot is fine) and cover them well with cold water. Let stand 12 to 18 hours in a cool place (or the kitchen counter, if that's all you've got). Drain. (If it wasn't too cool and there's lots of bubbles on top of the water, maybe rinse and drain a few times.) Put in a large pot and cover with two inches of water. Chop up 3 or 4 LARGE onions and put them in a food processor so they're well diced (I like the sweet varieties for this). Add that to the pot. Add some spices. Honestly, pinto beans suck up flavor like cardboard, so you'd be hard pressed to over season the things. Black turtle beans have some actual flavor of their own, so go a little easier, but with pinto beans I pull out the Sam's club sized seasoning and give a couple big shakes of the "Mexican Pepper Variety" or "9-pepper blend" or something else that normally you wouldn't consider for a meal with the kids. Don't add salt though.

Bring to a boil and cook for 30 minutes (I tend to lose track of time during this stage though and so this is really more like, cook for at least 30 minutes--anything after that won't really hurt). In the meantime, get your jars and lids ready. Put hot beans (and cooked onion and seasonings) in hot (quart) jars, leaving 1-inch headspace. NOW add 1/2 tsp salt to each jar (Ball says 1 tsp, but that's actually more salt than I like in my beans, and I'm a girl who'll eat pasta just to have something to put butter and salt on), wipe off the top of the jars, put your lids and rims in place, tighten them up nicely, put in the boiling pressure canner (you only need 2-3 inches of water though) and after all your jars are in the canner, put the lid on the canner.

Let the steam build up without the weight in place for about ten minutes, then add the weight. Keep an eye on the pressure gauge. Stabilize the pressure at 10 lbs. As soon as you're at 10 lbs, start timing-- the quarts need to stay there at 10 lbs for 1 hour and 30 minutes. After the timer goes off, just turn off the heat and let it return to 0 lbs pressure on its own in its own good time. Don't try to rush it. Rushing around pressure canners means someone gets hurt in my experience (thus far it has been ME burning part of the flesh off my arm, not any of the kids, but just to be safe, I bark and fuss very loudly at the kids that they are to stay OUT of the kitchen when the lid is on the pressure canner).

Once you're at 0 lbs (I promise that thing is still hot as heck and is ready to give you a good steam burn, so take off the weight FIRST, wear oven mitts, and lift the lid so that it points away from your face and be ready with a place to put the lid down). Let the jars sit there in the pot another five minutes, then pull them out and put them some place where no baby or kid can touch them. Leave them alone for 24 hours (they'll probably sit there on your shelf and continue to boil internally for another 10 minutes, honestly), then unscrew the rims, clean the jars if you need to, label, and put on shelf.

When you're ready to eat them, if the recipe calls for them whole, you don't do anything but reheat (if the recipe calls for it). If you prefer your beans refried, spoon them into the food processor, process till smooth, then scrape into a frying pan to reheat (use a non-stick pan and you don't actually need any oil or anything. They'll be nonfat, totally smooth like store-bought, and maybe there's still some nutrition in there since you're pureeing them in the water they cooked in.

The end results is smooth and tasty and (we find) not as prone to give you gas as the usual method of cooking them in an open pot (which doesn't cook them as well as the high temps in the pressure canner/cooker).

Wednesday and a Moment of Peace

I had made enough progress on workwork yesterday that I dared to think last night that after dinner I would knit a bit and then head to bed at a reasonable hour with my husband. Instead I sat in the green chair, picked up my knitting and passed out. Gaye says I woke briefly four times, but I only remember once before Chris coming upstairs to put the kids to bed woke me enough to get me to bed.

I guess I really needed that sleep because I feel soooo much more human today. Today is the official "ready" day of the new charter school building, so Chris and Max are off helping with that. Gaye is trying to get phone service and DSL set up, which Verizon is managing to make far more difficult than it needs to be. We did get her computer set up so she can sit at Max's desk and answer email and troll the Internet looking for the correct trash company and stuff. I am reminded often what an awful lot of work it is to move and how glad I am that I'm only helping this time.

I am working on workwork, the dishes, a bit of canning, and catching up on laundry. I guess that sounds like a lot, but there's nowhere I have to be until 6:30 this evening (when it'll be time for the twins' piano lesson) and the day feels more "normal" than a day has felt in quite a few weeks.
Today Grandma got her computer set up at Max's desk, much to the delight of Max and the twins, since my hand-me-down computer is "bricked" at this point. So Gaye can once again get at her email and the kids got to have a little fun online, too.

I'm off to get some more workwork done, and then hopefully finish my Santa mitten sample for the yarn store.

Tap, Tap, Tap

Is this thing on?

I apologize for being remiss in my blogging. To say things have been busy--well, that's an understatement. Last weekend I went to North Carolina for a few days and learned spinning on a hand spindle and on a machine. I took some pictures, but they didn't turn out very well. I had a great time with my Aunt and I hope to do it again some day with her. I also want to go again with Chris someday. In the meantime, I can recommend the Campbell Folk School without reservation. Not only will you learn some fun skills, but you'll eat fabulous meals and not have to do the dishes when you're done.

I arrived home again between 3 and 4ish on Monday afternoon. I picked up the dog from the kennel and the kids from the family from church who was watching them. We came home and had dinner and just enjoyed being around each other. Tuesday was a whirl with Max's piano lesson, cleaning up the house for grandma, running errands, and picking up grandma from the airport. Wednesday morning I started a batch of pizza sauce that I worked on, on and off, for the rest of the day between looking at houses with Gaye and going to the inspection on the house that Chris and I had found for her. She had an out in the inspection--could decline to purchase the house at that point--but we didn't need it. The house is both the nicest in its price range and one of the best priced (from the buyer's point of view). By the end of the inspection Gaye knew it was the one she wanted and so we went to meet the mortgage broker.

By this time, we were already running out of hours in the day, so Gaye offered to take us out to dinner. She didn't have to ask twice. We all went to Perkins, and after that, took the twins to their piano lessons. After that we all went home and the kids played until bedtime and I brought the pizza sauce up to a boil and then canned it in the pressure canner just to be safe.

Thursday I got some workwork done and then we ran more errands, hitting the post office, Wegman's, and the storage place. Gaye ran over to the bank and opened an account and then we took Max to Penn State for the last of his experiments. While he was there we hit Office Depot for more paper, Barnes and Noble for the book Max is supposed to read for the summer reading program, and Giant grocery store. After picking up Max we went home and I tried to get more workwork done.

Friday was more quiet, with Gaye working the phones to get three quotes on insurance and me trying to get workwork done--Saturday was much the same. Although I did get over to the garden for about 3 hours in the evening on Friday. Mostly I concluded that I'd best cut my losses and get out of the community gardening business. That three hours barely put a dent in the weeds. I've never worked on a square of land that was so infested with crab grass. My other gardens have never had this kind of a battle going. I can't keep up with the weeds and it doesn't do me any good having one more thing to stress about.

On Saturday I took Gaye over there long enough to harvest all of the onions and some of the peppers, melons, and tomatoes. Next weekend I'll pull up the remaining plants and then resign my plot. If that's even necessary--I'm rather expecting to get my second nasty-gram from them about the weeds and it's possible that at that point they'll say I've lost my plot anyway. Maybe I would be fighting things harder if the tomatoes weren't so sick. (And if I couldn't get the tomatoes and other veggies so easily in bushels locally.) Anyway, you can't win every battle.

Today was church in the morning. I must admit that one of the most touching talks I have ever heard was given in church today and instead of just having a bad case of leaky eyes, I flat-out cried. I need to get some hankerchiefs and just keep them in my scripture bag. (That said, I can't find my scripture bag since last weekend.) At least until things have settled down a bit.

When we came home, we had lunch and then I had a terrific nap that left me feeling a bit disoriented, but better about things.

Well, we're expecting Chris in about 45 minutes, so I'm going to go get a quiche started and then do a bit of knitting. Gaye is counting down the days till her house closes and she can move in. We're enjoying having her around (she remembers everything I forget, it's really very helpful) and will miss her when she's got her own digs, but she's only about a mile and a quarter from our house and I'm thrilled that the boys will grow up able to bike over to one of their grandmothers' houses. Gaye says, "Yep. It's going to be pretty good."

Is It August Yet?

2:08 AM and the worst case of insomnia I can remember in ages.

I hope tomorrow is nice to me.

End of July, Beginning of August

Must mean the last of the beans, the first of the tomatoes.

This is the first Tonadose des Conores cherry tomato, and all of its blondkopfchen buddies.

Sunday Evening

Busy day, but by the end of it I was feeling a little more settled about things. Church was amazing--the topic was people's conversion stories--not just people who weren't born in the church but converted for whatever reason, but also the stories of folks born and raised in the church who talked about finding their own testimony. It all made me cry, but was good stuff.

Pictures from earlier in the week:

Canning pintos:


These are the Morning Glories. My Dad used to enjoy growing them and I've wanted to plant them forever, but this was the first year I actually did. They're fun and not too hard to grow, but they definitely need water.


Here's the Classic Baby Cardigan from Vogue Spring/Summer 2007. I used KnitPicks' Shine Sport in Apricot.


The color is most true in this picture. I found the buttons at Michael's. Ben picked them out.

Was Today Wednesday?

Because it hit us here at this house like a ton of bricks.

See, for weeks now, Gaye, Chris, and I (that would be Chris, Chris's Mom, and me) have been trying to get her place sold and her moved out here. We've been through one wingnut offer that fell through after we'd already made plane reservations for Chris to go out there. (I say "we" because we all wanted this to work out so badly, but of course it was hardest on Gaye.)

We went through more weirdage last week. But then finally, finally, finally today all the papers were signed, the pest inspection is tomorrow already--everything will move horrifically rapidly now--Chris goes out there to pack up the rest of her belongings on Tuesday and stay through closing (::counts on fingers) less than two weeks away.

So today was about making plane reservations for Chris, reservations for Gaye, reservations for a moving truck, getting preapproval letters for the house search out here, and in general there were ten thousand phone calls back and forth (thankfully, most with 800 #s) and in the middle of it all--I totally forgot Max's piano lesson. When I realized it was when the lesson was hours before and I felt--I felt the size of a flea.

Nevertheless, I got the twins off to their lesson on time (this is much easier as their lesson is at the same time on the same day each week. For a variety of reasons, that's just not possible with Max's lessons this summer.) and wrote the piano teacher a heartfelt apology and then came home and we ate and talked more about plans for the move.

I have a feeling it will be pretty much The Moving Mom show for the next few weeks. I canned up another 9 quarts of pinto beans today and I think that will have to be it for a few weeks until things settle back down.

Shush, shush, shush, shush

That's the noise the gently rocking pressure regulator on the top of my pressure canner. When I can beans, they are processed for 1 hour and 30 minutes at 10 lbs of pressure, and that pressure regulator makes the shushing sound for the entire time. Every so often I check on the canner, just to make sure we're still at the right pressure.

I would like to say that canning dried beans like pinto and black turtle beans is easy--and it is in the sense that none of its steps are hard to understand. But it's not in the sense that it's time consuming and there are quite a few steps.

But it's so worth it. While canning tomato soup and salsa is fun for me--I distinguish between the two products. The soup is an actual meal. For every quart of tomato soup on the shelf, that's one meal I don't have to buy more groceries for.

Well the beans are the same way. Last year I bought about a hundred pounds combined of pinto and black beans. To my great delight, pressure canning the beans allowed me to add in some flavor (seasonings and some chopped onions) and get a better, smoother bean product at the other end. I almost always puree the beans straight out of the jar and then into a pan on the stove to reheat for burritos or quesadillas. I use the beans whole to add to chili or soups. Today I used a jar to make a corn and black bean salad which is just . . . yummy! Besides the fact that the taste is great--it cuts the preparation time at the other end to 5 minutes tops. And that keeps us from buying expensive frozen convenience foods that aren't good for us and are a waste of our snug grocery budget.