| | Yikes...and other sentiments.We didn't make it to the farm, to help with the planting, so I didn't get to check it out. We didn't go for a few reasons, but chief among them was this one: since we've been separated for several weeks, my husband and I didn't want to split up on the weekend. Therefore, if my Seattle friend and I were going to check out the farm, we'd have to load the whole family into the minivan and take a day trip to do it. This would be fine, but there is just no way my 2 year old would be able to make any helpful contributions to the planting process. The 6 and 7 year-olds aren't all that great at hard labor either. They're particularly not great at hard labor over a period of four or five hours that requires even a minimal amount of continuous concentration. I was imagining standing in the fields in my straw hat (potentially in the rain) yelling at the boys to stop shoving each other into the dirt while carting my daughter around on my hip. Yeah, not so much.
The yikes part: I got a follow-up email chastising me (and all the other email subscribers) for "not taking community farming seriously." Yikes! I'm not even sure I want to go down this whole community farming road, quite yet, Farmer Joe. One thing I don't need in my life: more guilt. Another thing I don't need: pressure.
Unfortunately I *do* want and need some Mad-Cow-Free beef, and maybe some fresh, organic vegetables along with it. Eggs, too.
We have three strawberry blooms on the strawberry plant. At this rate it will only take six or seven seasons for me to work up a whole fruit salad. I'm an optimist, though: I know the wilting basil that's beginning to take on a pale, unhealthy hue is going to survive.
A friend called me this morning and told me a rather long story that boils down to this: her sixth-grader (age 12) was walking the neighborhood with five boys from his baseball team and four girls who are evidently "super-popular." These girls hooked up with the boys at a neighborhood elementary school carnival, where *they stole* a big stack of elementary school spirit shirts, which they wore for the rest of the day. That's right. They STOLE them. Then, they took the boys to one of their homes, where there were no parents. Evidently one of the girls is known for "2 minutes in the closet," or whatever. Eventually they left that house and went to another house, where one of their fathers gave all the girls Coronas. You know...Corona, the beer. My friend found out about this because she picked her son up at around 5 or so, and took him to family dinner. The other kids, who were apparently still wandering the streets unsupervised, kept calling his cell phone. He told my friend what happened, and she (naturally) freaked out and said he can't hang out with those girls anymore.
Hmmm. There are just so many things wrong with this story, I had no idea what to say.
I helped my seven-year-old son craft an ant out of clay this weekend. We used pipe cleaners for legs. It *sounded* like a good idea, until the clay dried and hardened and took on a weight and density far beyond any you would believe a mere clay sculpture could possess. The legs are utterly useless for holding it up. Also, it has a crooked swivel head. We attached the head to the thorax with a toothpick, but when it dried the hole in the head proved to be big enough that the head swivels at will. Hmmm. Luckily, the instruction sheet says, "bugs created by kids are the most unusual and best additions to our bug fair!!!" By that, I assume they mean they're sick to death of perfect parent creations that could never have been made by someone under the age of twenty-five, and they will love our unfortunate ant with the swivel head. My son wanted a brown ant, because black ants are apparently evil. (??)
I kid you not: I bet some of the bug fair creations are hired works of art. You doubt? Ah, skeptics.
You know what? He's eight. I don't have a seven-year-old anymore. ~sigh~
The next four weeks are going to be extremely difficult, so I'm trying to work up some gumption to tackle them. I don't have the energy to tell you all the ways in which they will be hard, but suffice it to say, on May 29, I will be a very happy person. |
| | Posted 4/28/2008 10:42 PM - 4 comments
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