Larry and Theo have returned, at last, from their New Mexico adventure. They were starting to regale me with tales of the hardships they endured, but I upstaged them with graphic descriptions of the stomach virus we contracted while they were gone. Yes, another one. Unless it was food poisoning. I don't know. All I know is that I was left alone here with clean-up detail and Larry owes me big. On the bright side, all our bedding and slipcovers are now freshly laundered.

Our neighbors have a big For Sale sign in their front yard. I try not to take it personally, but I can hardly blame them. They're probably worried that the fertility is catching.

In case anyone is wondering just how long it takes me to kill a thriving parsley plant, the answer seems to be approximately 2 weeks. The basil plants refuse to die, despite my tender ministrations. The cucumber seeds and zucchini seeds and radish seeds I planted are all optimistically sprouting - they don't know they're doomed. The transplanted peppers and tomatoes are just sort of standing there, wilting. "Why bother?" they're thinking.

Rachel and Brian enjoy accompanying me to the garden for about, oh, 5 full minutes. Then it gets too hot. Or dirty. Or buggy. Did Laura Ingalls complain this much to her mother? Their first time there was typical: Brian started dancing around the way he does when he forgets to go potty before we leave the house. I solved that problem by having Theo (long-suffering eldest brother) instruct him in the manly art of peeing in the woods. Having gazed off in the distance to ascertain that that little project was going correctly, I turned around to find Rachel standing next to me with a puddle forming between her feet. Luckily, it was in someone else's plot.

We were supposed to take care of Theo's plot while he was gone, but I didn't have a machete handy to hack my way past the gate.

Before he escaped with Theo to New Mexico, Larry again outdid himself in the Dutiful Husband category by installing two structures next to my garden boxes for my tomatoes and cukes and zucchini to climb on once they grow big enough (yes, I am being super-optimistic here). He was probably hoping that this whole gardening scheme would blow over by the time he gets back from the hiking trip, and I would return to my usual method of foraging for fresh veggies at the grocery store or the local farm. But I just can't afford to lose face this time. If I have to, I'll buy vegetables at the farm and just tell him they came from my garden.

We are doing our best to make it to the pool as often as possible while we are healthy. It sure beats sitting around the house and listening to the children bicker at each other all afternoon. On non-pool days, we visit the supermarket or Target. It is nice and cold there and Susie enjoys riding around in the cart and the kids don't seem to notice that we have nothing to do.

Imagine - it's not even August yet.

"But It's Summer!"

It's a little soon for another newsletter; but I'm stuck sitting up with Rachel, who has an earache (we, uh, had another bout of cough/cold sickness here, wouldn't you know). Larry could sit up with her, but he's not here. He's in Oklahoma. Clever of him, wasn't it? This time he took Theo (aka my personal chef and pest exterminator) with him. They're headed for New Mexico to enjoy 6 glorious(?) days of hiking in summer heat with no showers or other 21st century conveniences. That man will do anything to get away from me, won't he? I glanced at the little booklet the Boy Scout reservation/camp puts out. It was filled with useful tidbits of info about hanta virus and rabies and (get this) bubonic plague. Considering the sort of year we have had, healthwise, I figure the chances are pretty good that Larry and Theo bring home some version of the Black Death.

So - this may be my last newsletter. I'll try to cram everything in here. Larry and I have a new favorite saying: "But it's summer!" It's an Anna quote, uttered in total shock and dismay when I explained to her she was grounded for the afternoon because she hadn't taken care of her laundry (yes, I'm mean). We can't wait until the next time someone asks, "What's for dinner?" "But it's summer!" we'll wail. Or, "Where's my allowance?" "But it's summer!" Yep, this handy phrase could turn out to be mighty useful.

Larry thinks that I'm going to drive all the way up to Maine in August for a fun week of not visiting any of the places that people normally go all the way up to Maine for in the summer. Instead, we're going to sit in a town 10 miles west of Augusta and pretend we don't want to visit the beautiful Maine coast. Bar Harbor, Mt. Desert Island, Acadia National Park - who needs 'em? We can visit Lake Oochee-Goochee near his sister's house and play on the pseudo-beach. Over my dead body. I'm making (expensive) reservations while he's away. I'm not suffering in a car for 12 hours to relive all that, um, fun I had at Christmas.

You know, we do have some very nice beaches a mere 3 hours or so from our house. I think it's that New Englander's need to suffer (read Ethan Frome) that explains Larry's predilection to travel much farther than we need to, to have way less fun than we could have. Read that sentence twice, and it might make some sense. I'm getting pretty tired here. Rachel's asleep, but I'm scared to move her; she could wake up and scream for another hour, and I just don't think I could take that right now. These kids are wearing me down, bit by agonizing bit. And now I hear the baby stirring. So much for a quiet evening.

Until next time...

Beware The Madness

Well, the madness has struck again. Every few years I get this inane idea that I can manage a small garden - you know, in my spare time. After all, with only 6 children, I'm sitting around twiddling my thumbs a lot. I've read my square-foot gardening book (new and improved), I'm next in line (finally) for one of those organic gardening plots down the road from my house, I've got 6 hungry children to feed. I can do it! Think Victory gardens, think Little House on the Prairie, think about anything but the fact that every other time we've tried this, we've suffered abysmal failures (not to mention that I seem to wind up pregnant each summer we're responsible for one of those plots). This will be the year that we troop down the road, a merry little band of fresh-faced children with their indefatigable(?) matriarch, to pick green beans and lettuce and tomatoes and bring it all home for our supper. Never mind that year that the vine-borers destroyed our promising pumpkin crop and made the children cry. Forget about the watermelon patch that yielded one precious melon which rotted because I didn't have the sense to pick it in time. Totally disregard the fact that by August the mosquitoes get so bad no one dares go near the garden for fear of being eaten alive.

Larry is being amazingly tactful about this plan, considering my record of gardening failures. He seems to accept that this bout of mania needs to run its course before we can get back to living our lives sans horticulture. I don't think he really wanted to spend his day off spreading a weed barrier over our newly acquired garden plot and sawing and hammering wood in the 95-degree heat to construct the garden boxes for me. He probably didn't enjoy hauling the bales of peat moss and bags of planting mix out there either. But he did it. That man has what it takes to stay married, I'll tell you.

And did I mention our compost pile? Recycling at its best. Just throw in all those carrot peels and celery leaves and whatever else; and, with any luck at all, it won't all just sit there and rot the way it has all the other times I've tried this. Anyway, the children are very enthusiastic about the entire enterprise; well, except Anna, who is only too happy to stay home and watch the baby rather than help weed. Works for me, works for her.

Results? Well, so far we have 4 basil plants, 1 parsley plant, and 1 cilantro (all purchased elsewhere) growing happily. It's been a whole 2 days and they're not even dead yet. Pretty good, huh? Maybe if I succeed, we'll all be eating more healthily and we can avoid being sick all the time. Although we haven't been doing too badly lately. I mean, aside from that unfortunate vomiting incident of Rachel's on our not-so-glorious 4th, I think it has been almost 2 weeks since one of us was laid low with any mysterious ailments. And Rachel didn't really need to go see those fireworks anyway.

Well, I've got to go mulch (whatever that is).

Regards,

the Hapless Gardener

Chicken Pox and Birthday Wishes

Okay - mid June - how the heck did that happen? I don't even know where to start. Maybe I won't even bother - I don't really want to remember it, anyway. So skip it. Here we are, and it is finally summer - as in, hot and humid and smelling yucky. But, hey, the mosquitoes aren't too bad yet. And our airconditioning is working (unlike, oh, about 3 weeks ago during a brief heat wave that happened to coincide with Brian's and Rachel's cases of chicken pox). But, no - I'm not going to talk about it. And what's 275 dollars between friends, anyway? Because that's what that airconditioning repairman is - he's my friend. Even if it did take him 4 days to show up, and Brian and Rachel were both prostrate on the couch, each in front of his/her own fan. Fans only move that humid air around, by the way. They make you think you can breathe, but it's an illusion. And they make your sweat feel a little cooler. But that's it. So I love the airconditioning repair guy. And so do my neighbors, because they finally got their fans back.

So now it's summer (let's get back on track here). Summer in these parts is really more an endurance test than a season. I sit here and think, "Okay, I've just got to survive these next 3 months." That's all. 3 months. Of course, if you extrapolate that out to all the years of your life (which I have time to do, as I sit around just surviving), that's one fourth of my life here. One fourth of my life spent hiding inside because it is too disgusting and mosquito-ridden to go outside. Is that any way to live? The only bright spot is the pool. There are no mosquitoes at the pool, and the children are happy at the pool, and we eat popsicles there and generally pretend that summer is still fun. But only at the pool. Because as soon as we step outside its sacred confines, life once again resembles one of those circles in Dante's Inferno, and I think, "Just 3 months..."

Larry, of course, has the right idea. He and Theo are taking off for New Mexico for 2 weeks in July, where they will be hiking at some Boy Scout Reservation and generally roughing it. At least, that's what they tell me. Maybe they'll actually be lounging by some hotel pool in the hot but arid Southwest and making up stories to tell me when they get home about how they ate nothing but beef jerky and dehydrated lizards for 14 days. Larry says the cell phone won't work where they're going. Oh, yeah. Good one. And then they'll come home with whatever plagues they've picked up out there, because Lord knows, we don't want to go an entire calendar month without some weird sickness laying low the entire family. That would be just too boring. The last hiking trip Theo went on, he brought home some sort of stomach flu. That was nice. It's all sort of a blur, mixed up with that heat wave and the broken AC and the chicken pox. Larry was all sympathy for me, of course. He came home from work to find me practically comatose on the couch (I believe I had a pen in my hand and was trying to scratch out a last will and testament on the coffee table) and had the temerity to ask, "Does this mean you're not coming to Anna's flute recital this evening?" That warm, fuzzy feeling from Mother's Day sure doesn't last long, does it?

Was I complaining again? I have to stop that. Things are looking up. Susie is almost done with her chicken pox and we finally managed to celebrate David's birthday (a week late) and we even contrived to throw in some Father's Day festivities to boot. My birthday is in 2 days (ahem), but at this point my sincerest wish is that everyone just leave me alone. In the airconditioning, of course. With a nice box of chocolates and a good book. While Larry and the kids clean the house from top to bottom and throw out all the extra crap they have lying around. Ah, paradise...

More of the Same

I'm thinking of renaming this sporadic blog "My Journal of the Plague Year." That has a nice ring to it, doesn't it? Since I last wrote, we've managed to contract both the real flu and the stomach flu. Any time now, the CDC should be sending men up here in hazmat suits to officially declare our house a hot zone. Currently, having run out of viruses to catch, I am suffering from a bacterial infection on one side of my face (very attractive). "Cellulitis," I heard the doctor mutter, with a look in her eyes I didn't quite like. So I went home and looked up cellulitis. A piece of advice - never scroll to the bottom of these disease pages and check out the "Possible Complications"; it's a hypochondriac's nightmare.

Despite the obvious danger, Grandma C and Auntie Kate showed up for their annual week-long visit on Tuesday. Maybe those CDC guys should leave a couple of complimentary hazmat suits for them. We're enjoying our traditional sewing/knitting/crocheting frenzy with Auntie Kate; she even has Brian sitting there, poking a needle and thread through some scraps of fabric. Grandma isn't repeating herself quite as much as usual, because she keeps falling asleep.

Brian's birthday was this past week, and he spent many hours making plans for the big day. Most of the plans revolved around food - you'd think he didn't get to eat the rest of the year. I love 6-year-olds. His dearest desire was to go to the McDonald's with the outdoor playland - so we did. Anything to avoid having to throw a real party.

Rachel is in big-girl underpants now. Miracles never cease. Now if she would stop waking up every other night screaming that her bottom hurts, we would really be getting somewhere. Either something is very wrong with her, or I am sleepwalking in there and spanking her in my sleep. Anything is possible. Susie has likewise decided that there is no real reason to sleep all night. Don't they realize I need to live long enough for them to grow up?

In case it seems that I have accomplished nothing these past few months (aside from dosing little people repeatedly with over-the-counter meds and complaining to anyone who would listen), I would like to announce that, since mid-January, I have lost over 20 pounds (being ill doesn't hurt the weight-loss effort - there's my silver lining). Larry didn't even seem to mind paying all that money for Weight Watchers. He is going to mind all the money I'm going to spend on new clothes, however. So much to wear, so little time...