Happy Holidays!

Cold Storage

Ten years ago, I wore a shiny rock on my finger in the form of what appeared to be an engagement ring. I wore it, not because I was going to get married, but because I didn't want to get married. The ring was fake. I was tired of pointless, uncomfortable dates with promising young men who I had no inkling of an interest in. I was tired of etiquette and my own timidity prompting "yes" after "yes" when all I ever meant was "no" with all of my heart. My heart, you see was usually drifting across continents and oceans to the edge of the Black Sea where my best friend was getting thinner and colder by the day. He had been there, in Ukraine for just over a year, proselytizing in a foreign tongue. I had promised him that I would write and wait, wait and write.  I was keeping that promise.

It was my second year at BYU. I was immersed in a culture of not just Mormons, but Mormons on a mission to get married. Dating was the topic of the month, and the month after that, and the one after that as well. A hefty handful of girls from the floor of my freshman hall had already gotten married at the ripe old ages of 18, 19, and 20. I was flabbergasted. I didn't understand how any of the so-called students at my university were concentrating on anything remotely academic. The dating culture seeped in the widows, it permeated walls and carpets. Everything we touched and breathed was infused with this powerful force. Sometimes it was suffocating. Sometimes I longed for my home in the east.

By this point in my sophomore year, I had reluctantly agreed to a stream of date invitations. I always appreciated the free meal and the kindness offered me by the unsuspecting suitors, but I would have preferred to eat cold beans and rice by myself. Typically, there were no repeat invitations. I was shy and cold as my coveted beans, a true turnoff. Finally, one young man from choir apparently couldn't read my body language. After two consecutive dates, he suggested a third and I flatly refused.

 "You're a nice guy, but I can't drag you on. It's not going to go anywhere with me."

Having done the right thing, I hung up the receiver feeling gut-wrenching horrible. I went to moan about it to one of my roommates. She offered me her shoulder and then she offered a solution. She had come back from her recent trip to China with bargained goods. Music, movies, clothing, and jewelry, all for the price of dirt cheap. The ring was hers and so was the idea. "Wear this on the finger that matters," she said, eyes twinkling, " and you'll never be asked on another date!" I slipped it on and pranced around the room flouncing my hand like a preteen with her first manicure.

This Place I Love

acquired May 6, 2013download large image (2 MB, JPEG, 2384x3560)

The Finger Lakes—a group of long, roughly parallel lakes in upstate New York—got their name for obvious reasons. On a map, the narrow lakes look similar to outstretched digits. Seneca and Cayuga—the two largest Finger Lakes—are among the deepest lakes in North America. Lake Cayuga descends about 435 feet (133 meters) at its deepest point—putting it about 53 feet (16 meters) below sea level.

On May 6, 2013, the Moderate-resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer(MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite acquired this true-color image of the Finger Lakes. Lake water appears dark blue. Farms and orchards, mainly around the northern part of the lakes, are beige. Forested areas south of the lake are brown because leaves had not fully emerged in early May. However, grass and other low-lying vegetation in meadows had turned some parts of the landscape green.

Millions of years ago, the lakes were northward-flowing streams that ran through a series of narrow valleys shaped like a V. Beginning about two million years ago, during a period known as the Pleistocene glaciation,sheets of ice from the Hudson Valley crept south and buried those streams under ice.

As the glaciers pushed south, they gouged the bottom and sides of the narrow valleys, deepening and widening them into vertical U shapes. This process, known as glacial scouring, likely happened multiple times as orbital variations in global climate—called Milankovitch cycles—produced cycles of advancing and retreating ice.

The most recent glacial advance occurred about 21,000 years ago, when a layer of ice about two miles (three kilometers) thick covered all of New York State and much of New England. The glaciers advanced and retreated, sliding back for the last time about 10,000 years ago. In the process, they left debris piles called recessional moraines in the valleys. In many cases, these moraines functioned like dams, blocking streams and causing the valleys to fill with water and become lakes.

• References

• Cornell University Finger Lakes: Graphics. Accessed October 8, 2013.
• Paleontological Research Institution Finger Lakes Geology. Accessed October 8, 2013.

NASA image courtesy of the LANCE/EOSDIS MODIS Rapid Response Team at NASA GSFC. Caption by Adam Voiland.

Instrument: 

Terra - MODIS

November Tradition

During the month of November, we fill a decorated mason jar up with scraps of paper on which we write something we are grateful for.  The family night before Thanksgiving we dump out the contents and read every scrap of thankfulness.  Some make us laugh.  Some make us think.  Some make us feel gratitude all over again.  Some are not for public consumption.  All are sincere.  Here is our (public) list for this year...

Someone in our family is thankful for:

Music and dancing
Dada
All of the art projects that Nolan and Gerret make for me
Grandpa's cookies
Auburn's kind looks
My mom and dad and my brother and my sister and cats and dog
Family (x2)
"Doc-Doc"
The Book of Mormon (x2)
living in the beautiful, calm, quiet country --with Amish people
orange sweaters that look good on my wife
going on runs around my backyard
God
my "manket" (blanket)
pumpkins
the world
IBuprofen
having friends
Cinder
sinks that drain
Snoogy-woogy Wips

This is Halloween

Kids on an adrenaline high.  For two months.  Follow that with a two-week sugar high.  That's Halloween.

They are drawn in by the spooky, creepy, gross, terrifying, and utterly ghoulish. They craft "hand-made" paper decorations to be hung from the ceiling with masking tape.  We also spread our collection of store-bought trimmings around the house.  Spiders and pumpkins, skeletons, and ghosts.

And every year there is talk of costuming and I, the sole curator of costume and disguise, give suggestions that will make my job simple and seamless (as in I don't want to have to sew any seams.)  I am fixated on the goal of doing and paying as little as possible. Reduce, re-use, recycle, be cheap. My mantra.

 For example, Nolan was a second-hand lion in 2007.  It had been worn by my youngest sister in 2003.  This year, Nolan tried to wear it again, but could not negotiate his arms into the sleeves, so Auburn put it on instead, becoming a third-hand lion.

I don't even know where the 2008 bee suit came from, but I assure you it appeared at my door with no effort on my part.  Nolan's ensemble was homemade by my mom for my sister, Olivia seven years earlier.

I used the same cowboy suit the next year on the next boy, but he refused to wear hats.  And like Woody always says, "A cowboy without his hat is like a yodel without its hay-hee-hoo."  The panda costume came in a box of hand-me-downs from my Aunt Pat.  Nolan, the second-hand panda.

I was a youth leader when I was pregnant with Auburn in 2011.  Halloween was approaching and so was my expected due date.  The girls at church wanted to have some Halloween festivities.  I was due the 25th and they hoped I could attend, so we planned the activity for Wednesday, the 19th.  I thought for sure I would make it and I did, dressed as a pregnant panda.  I wore all black, wrapped my tummy in a white crib mattress-pad, squeezed my head in Nolan's panda hood, colored black around my eyes and called it good.  It was really good, considering I thought and executed the idea while having uterine contractions.  I walked in the door at the church and announced to the girls and the other leaders, "I'm in labor."  They all laughed and I did, too, but then I said, "No really, I am."  And we laughed again.  Auburn was born the next morning.

It was September 2010, when I first purchased a costume.  I was pulling the boys in the bike mobile through downtown T-burg.  The window display of the thrift store known as The Gem Shop featured some mediocre second-hand costumes.  The $3 Spiderman get-up caught the eye of my 4-year-old.  It was apparently better than mediocre and would fulfill his heart's fondest wish.  We had a Spiderman for Halloween and almost every day afterward until he outgrew the costume.  That same costume made a reappearance the next year on the same boy at which time I announced that would be his last time squeezing himself into Spiderman.  Wedgie was the word of the day.

We gratefully receive truck-loads of second-hand boy clothes from my three boy cousins.  From those boxes of clothes, we have procured many beloved articles of clothing including some costumes.  One of the costumes was a hooded Batman cape.  Gerret fell in love with that cape and wore it daily, accessorized most of the time by black rubber boots.  It was his Halloween costume in 2010, 2011, and 2012 when it finally bit the dust.  

Grandma and Grandpa gave the kids some costumes, such as Buzz Light Year, a new Spiderman so we could have two at the same time, and a pumpkin princess thing.  When Auburn was a week old, we dressed her as piglet, an insulated winter-suit that came from somewhere in a second-hand sort of a way.  

This year, the boys wore costumes they had been given at Christmas last year, bought cheaply in a post-Halloween sale.

And there you have it.  Reduce. Re-use. Recycle.  Be cheap.  Happy Halloween.

Curl Be Gone

Hair has always been somewhat of an issue for me.  Genetic inheritance accorded me frizzy curls (is there any other kind ??)  I knew from a young age that I was supposed to love those curls, because many a woman (and some unfortunate men) paid good money on a monthly basis to have them chemically induced.  Those women were sure to let me know it, too.  I remember old ladies eulogizing my curls in rapturous refrain.  Curls were lovely!  And amazing!  A blessing from heaven!  How they wished they had been born with curls!  How many uncomfortable nights of hair tied tightly to their heads would it have saved them!

Conversely, I remember my grandmother, who also had curly hair, calling my genetic inheritance a curse.  In fact, most curly haired people I've encountered have had a similar reaction.  They know a secret.  I know it, too.  It is this: To the observer, curly hair looks just fine, nifty, maybe even beautiful or desirable, but to the owner of real live curly hair, it is an uncontrollable monster with a mind of its own.

I spent some teenage years trying to tame and control it with negligible success.  Then I moved to the desert for college where all of my hair taming dreams came true.  Five years of smooth, shiny, flat control.

But home is NY where it rains two-thirds of the year and is humid every remaining day.  Water is to my hair what the full moon is to a werewolf.  Therefore, my hair expresses animalistic qualities in NY.  I would spend a half hour drying and straightening my hair then walk outside to have it morph pretty quickly into a twirly, frizzy monster baring fangs and claws.  It was frustrating and a waste of time, so I gave up the fight.  I came to terms with frizzy-curly beast being just the way it is and experienced some peace in the acceptance.  I just let it grow and grow and sometimes, when I got tired of the length I would flip my head upside down and wield a pair of scissors.  Curly hair absorbs scissors mishaps like it was born to.  On the worst days, rubber bands really came in handy.

My struggles with hair aren't all aesthetic, though.  Sometimes, the wildness is also cumbersome and uncomfortable.   It feels heavy and awkward on my head; it trails in tangles around my neck, in my face, down my back.  In times of discomfort, peace is hard to come by.

About six months ago, I started feeling a lot of angst regarding my hair.  The more cumbersome it felt, the more I noticed its flawed appearance.  The more I thought about how it looked, the more I cared.  The more I cared, the more I thought other people cared.  I became infected with this idea that people looked at my hair before they looked in my eyes.  My hair was me!  It was taking over my entire image of myself, (a desperate situation, for sure).  After working for six years to come to terms with the curly mass attached to my scalp, I had undone every semblance of peace.

One morning, not long ago, I went into the bathroom to shower, caught a glimpse of myself (read: my hair) in the mirror and decided then and there that I had had enough.  I didn't even bother to trifle through our hair stuff for the sharp hair-cutting clippers; I went straight for the somewhat dull kitchen scissors.  And I cut off my pony tail.  All of it.  Then I took out the rubber band and did my best to make the cut even.  When I was done, it could barely be held back.   It hung about three inches above my shoulders, somewhere between my chin and earlobe, still a curly mass, just less of it.  In fact, it seemed even more wild now that it was lighter weight and short.

I decided pretty quickly after the cut that I didn't take off enough of it, but logistically, I couldn't cut my own hair any shorter, so I enlisted my husband who was unsure of his abilities.  That made me nervous, so finally after about a month of my ponytail chop, I determined to pay someone professional to cut the rest off.

Though disappointing to have to pay for it, the cut was a success.  I have never felt so comfortable and unconcerned with my hair.  I've heard women with short cuts say, "Short hair, don't care" and in the past I didn't really understand, but I get it now.  I have short hair and it means I don't have to care about it anymore, because it barely exists.  It isn't heavy or hot.  It doesn't snarl or tangle its way down my neck.  It is even too short to be frizzy or even very curly.  I can make it go straight just by wearing a hat for a while.  It can never get in my mouth or go up my nose.  I couldn't spend much time on it, even if I wanted to.  It is awesome.

Short hair
 Don't care!

Green Feathers, Diminutive Eggs

Our growing chick was turning out to be a rooster.
The touch of green in his tail gave him away.
Plans were made for tender meat; his contribution in lieu of eggs.

But then...

Small eggs this week.  

(When a young hen first starts her laying, her eggs are often half-sized. )

Maybe the rooster is really a hen?

With green feathers?

A true Miracle.

Nap-time for a Two Year Old

We have a nap-time routine, my girl and I.  

At night, when I lay her in her crib, she invariably requests a song, so I sing to her as I pull the blankets up around her shoulders, brush her hair out of her eyes, and click the lamp dark, but at mid-day when I tuck her in, I tell her the fantastic things I think about her.
I'll say "You're smart and you're funny and you're cool and you're kind" or "You're good at sharing and I love your hugs and you make big messes, but you're good at picking them up" or "You're a climber and you're adventurous and you're curious and you're very awesome."  She usually repeats each descriptor as I list them, "Smart... funny! ...cool... kind".  It's a fun exercise between a mom and her girl, I hope it gives her joyful sleep, but it's actually a more deliberate strategy than that.

You see, I started to hear from every direction about how pretty she is becoming or is already or just how cute she looks in her dress or her curly hair.  Strangers at the store, friends at church, and dear family were all saying it.  Pretty, pretty, pretty.  And it's true.  I love the sight of her.  Her smile is dimpled, her eyes are wide and gleaming, her nose is round and cheeks joyful.  I think she will be hearing about her looks for many years to come and from many different sources and that is just fine, but I realized something one day after being out in public and receiving many compliments in her body's behalf.
I realized that those kind of descriptors are not all that I want her to hear.  I don't even want them to be the majority of what she hears.  I can't help what other people tell her, but I can change what I say.  And I hope that will make a difference. (I am, after all. with her the most.)  Perhaps I can shape her inner voice and what it will someday whisper to her about herself.

I want my daughter to know that her body is a gift.  It really is wonderful and useful and good and fun. I hope she enjoys it and uses it to accomplish good things and chase happy dreams, but I really want her to know that she is much more than her body.  She can have goals that are not constrained by anything other than her own desires and dreams.  The world (meaning everything outside of her own self) will want to tell her all sorts of things about who she is and what she should be and do, based solely on her body.  They might see her as an object (because a body is, after all, an object), but I hope by then she won't be fazed by it because she will see herself as more than a body.  I want her to know how to listen to herself.  I want her to know that God speaks in the quiet moments and she needs to trust that she can hear those whispers.  I want her to know that she is inherently good.  I want her to know that she can do great things and become someone even better than the things she does.

Oh, but that's all a long time in the future.  For now, we'll celebrate with cake and balloons and dancing and laughing.  For now, I'll tell her all the ways she amazes me and brightens my days.

She really, truly does.

Pond Praying

We live in the wilderness as far as the LDS church goes.  They call it a "branch" -- a group of people spread thin across four counties of Upstate NY who come together every Sunday and whenever a special occasion calls.  We're kind of like a family.  We laugh and learn, bicker and forgive, love and serve and listen to each other.  We raise our children and nurse our elderly and cry when one moves or another dies.  All this in faith.  Because faith is what brought us together.  It is our commonality.  It is the thread that binds us.  This Branch, it isn't always (or ever) perfect, but what family is?

Most LDS congregations have a big huge tub called a baptismal font with which to fill with warm water for immersing those wishing to be baptized, but in our undersized branch building, a font we have not.  Sometimes we travel to the next closest font in Ithaca's chapel, but other times we improvise with pools, ponds, or a lake.  I've seen them all.  

Last week, one of the boys just a bit older than Nolan and Gerret was baptized by his dad in my parents' pond.  It was reported that the water was warm, the mud gushy, and the algae thick.  The rite was followed by refreshments by the dock and a trampoline full of bouncing, bumbling children.  It was my boys' first experience watching one of their peers be baptized.

"What did you think?"  I asked Gerret later in the afternoon.  "Would you like to be baptized when you turn eight?"

"No, thanks!"

I inquired why not.

"I don't want to get water in my eyes," his matter-of-fact reply.  

Back on the Wagon

Well guys, obviously I fell off.  Blogging has officially lost its luster, so I'm not here today due to any lusteriffic motives.  In fact, I'm not even sure what my incentive is or where it is coming from.  And I don't entirely expect to stay on this wagon, but I'm here today to say:

1. A few months ago, we traveled to Branson, Missouri with my parents and one of my sisters.  It was a grand adventure.  I loved the Ozarks, enjoyed the shows, relished the relaxation of resort vacationing, and found the most joy in being together as a family.  We made great memories.

The Duttons

Cookie Boppa and Gerret take a bus tour

2.  Auburn has been working on adding molars to her repertoire of teeth.  She only had eight teeth until a month ago.  Now she also has three molars with an imminent fourth and is enjoying a newfound ability to crunch.

3.  PTB has a new job within the same company.  It affords him better opportunity and more freedom.  It should also afford our family a better financial situation.  I'm proud of that husband of mine.  He is a hard worker, wise, and intelligent.  I appreciate the sacrifices he makes in my behalf and for the sake of our children.

4.  We inherited my parents' rooster, named Rudy, and let him perform his rooster tricks in our hen pen, hoping we could hatch chicks.  All it took was a broody hen and a few weeks.  We now have our very own home-grown chick. 

"Rudy"

"Miracle"

5.  In light of this week being the annual Hill Cumorah Pageant, we had family in our home over the weekend and toured the historic sites in Palmyra and Fayette.   It was nice to be with family and always a marked occasion when we take time to experience the spiritually and historically significant locations just down the road --even if it is the hottest day of the year and 95% humidity.  Oh, and my boys love that pageant.  

Exciting things around these parts, folks!

Seneca's Shore at Sunset

March 31st to Present

It was a long, slow week, rife with sickness and boredom.  Not a good way to spend Spring Break, but the viruses didn't give us a choice in the matter. Thursday came with a bit of sunshine and a short-lived reprieve from the plague, so we hit the playground in the morning and the hiking trail with some friends in the afternoon.  And that is pretty much all I have to show from an arduous journey through a punishment of a week (other than a truck-load of laundry soiled by one sicky or another).

Taking a break in the woods: Ashley, Josh, Elijah, Nolan and Gerret

Interloken Trail, Fingerlakes National Forest

Auburn drinks from a cup now.  Enough of those irritating sippy tops (she thinks).

From the First Day of Spring

It's 2 am.  I am blogging.  I am still awake and it's not typical, but once you start the process of boiling down sap, you're committed until a dark and viscous liquid is sealed tidily in jars on your counter.  The jars are situated empty next to the stove right now and we're all just waiting, the jars, my boy, and I.  We're waiting for the liquid to turn a little darker and run a little thicker so we can call it syrup and plop our weary bodies in bed.  Until then, I'm telling about the week at 2 am.  Forgive me if my mind is more jumbled than usual. 

So Monday.  A boy came off the bus and found a place next to his brother to unwind in front of a mind-numbing show.  I was out doing something in the kitchen.  A few minutes passed and the boy reappeared with a goofy smile on his face.  "Guess what, Mom!  Look!"  He held his open palm up so I could examine the treasure he was grinning so wildly about.  It was the tiny white tooth that had been wiggly since before Valentine's Day.  He shoved his tongue through the gap in his mouth and opened wide so I could admire the bloody hole.  It was his first lost tooth.  We marked an envelope for the tooth fairy and placed it under his pillow.  The next day he got off the bus all excited to tell me that he could feel the adult tooth coming in already.


These paper-maché eggs full of sweet treats appeared in the mailbox one afternoon, one for each kid from their kind and caring west-coast grandparents.  It was a fun surprise.  Cracking the eggs was the perfect activity for three children who thrill at the prospect of destruction.  Consuming the candy was the perfect activity for the three sweet-tooths that they are.


I do my weekly grocery shopping at Wegmans.  It is a unique grocery store.  I think every shopping experience after you have come to appreciate the offerings of Wegmans is bound to be somewhat (or maybe a lot) disappointing.  One of the many things I love about Wegmans is their produce selection.  I never fail to discover something new when my eyes are open.  This week it was purple potatoes.  I bought two of each-- red, butter, and purple-- and made a mashed medley later in the week.   The red and butter potatoes, though colored on their skin, both had white flesh, but the purple was oozing an even richer hue on the inside.  So the mashed potatoes ended up being light purple.  

We are dog-sitting, house-sitting, horse-sitting, cat-sitting, and chicken-sitting while my parents are out of town.  It's a big job.  Our favorite part is hanging out with our old pal, Cocoa.  She visited our house and made herself comfortable in Gerret's bed with an adoring girl who couldn't hold back a string of clearly excited,"Cocoa! Cocoa! Cocoa!" (The girl's newest identifiable word)

As previously mentioned, our collection of sap was (and is currently being) reduced to a much smaller collection of maple syrup.  We are still learning to be the most efficient that we can be, which is why it's 2 am and we're still awake.  We have more to learn, obviously.

Earlier this week, Nolan and Gerret colored a printout of the Easter bunny to be entered in a contest at a local drug store.  Gerret was pretty quick and careless about his effort.  Three colors scribbled all at once over the entire page and he called it good.  Nolan conversely spent well over an hour researching, detailing, and creating.  His was a master piece, the finishing touch being a bright, beautiful rainbow arching over the scene.  I hoped his hard work and ingenuity would be acknowledged, but there were a lot of entries and I knew some would be from older kids.  We stopped in the morning of the contest to see all of the entries displayed on the wall behind the counter.  As suspected, Nolan's definitely stood out, but there were also a handful of others that could draw one's attention.  The wall was covered in smiling bunnies decked in brilliant color.

I came inside from our sap boiling fire for a minute this evening and just happened to be near my phone when it rang with a T-burg number.  It was the manager from Kinney Drugstore.  After identifying me as Nolan's mom he told me Nolan's picture had been selected as the winner.  His prize was $5 to the store.  You can imagine Nolan's elation and Gerret's deflation when I relayed the news.  We re-inflated Gerret and took at trip to the store to claim Nolan's prize.

And so all is well here in NY where Spring finally made an appearance today and just in time for our long day out stoking a fire.

The Short Story

So it might seem a little late to be talking about last week, but a commitment is a commitment, so here's a list of what went down:

1. My parents' 30th anniversary!

That Was Then
 (photo of a photo courtesy of my phone (hence the pixelation))

This is Now 

2.  First Day of Spring

3. Wednesday Afternoon at the Sciencenter

4. Trip to Syracuse

        You can read all about it here where PTB wrote about it.

5.  Back to the 80's: The Totally Awesome Musical

3. Sunday Hike Around Foster Pond

because Sunday afternoons are made for hiking