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  • One More Thing about Hanging Laundry

    • Make sure that you shake out your clothes quite well before bringing them inside, to dislodge any nasty stinging buggers.

    Cassidy put on a pair of pants with a wasp inside, and he stung or bit her, we’re not sure which. She screamed and cried for about a minute, then I remembered that supposedly a thick paste of baking soda and water is an effective remedy for insect bites and stings. So we poured some baking soda on a cold wet washcloth and held it on the site, and Cass settled down after another minute.

    She wanted to know why the bug hurt her, and we explained that it was trapped in her pant leg and she scared it when she put the pants on. She accepted this fairly readily and wanted to see the bug, but we assured her that it had been taken outside.

    Another minute and I took off the washcloth; the swelling was way down. We washed it off and put a Sesame Street band-aid on it, and she was off and running.

    This was my first experience with a sting, so I am not sure what the usual recovery time is. Cass walked for hours that morning at Ag Day, refused Tylenol for the pain, and never complained about it again.

    But I would venture to say:

    Baking soda once again proves itself a miracle powder.

    Also: that Cass is one tough cookie.

    Here she is, hard at work on our next post:

  • I am Tired of Rain

    After the glorious taste of Spring that we have been treated to, my mood has been sullied by two straight days of cold gray rain that will not be wiped away, but rather smears my windshield, forcing me to view a world that is sticky and without shape. I am as morose and sulky as a spoiled child; who, used to receiving a red lollipop every Friday as a just reward for waiting in line to deposit her father’s paycheck, finds herself before the teller, and the lollipop jar empty.

    I am panicky, I do not deal well with depression, I wrap myself with words my father gathered up like autumn corn and stockpiled in his binder silo. I am self-indulgent. I turn to Rilke.

    I will be all right tomorrow.

    Fears

    I am lying in my bed five flights up, and my day, which nothing interrupts, is like a clock-face without hands. As something that is lost for a long time reappears one morning in its old place, safe and sound, almost newer than when it vanished, just as if someone had been taking care of it–; so, here and there on my blanket, lost feelings out of my childhood lie and are like new. All the lost fears are here again.

    The fear that a small woolen thread sticking out of the hem of my blanket may be hard, hard and sharp as a steel needle; the fear that this little button on my night-shirt may be bigger than my head, bigger and heavier; the fear that the breadcrumb which just dropped off my bed may turn into glass, and shatter when it hits the floor, and the sickening worry that when it does, everything will be broken, for ever; the fear that the ragged edge of a letter which was torn open may be something forbidden, which no one ought to see, something indescribably precious, for which no place in the room is safe enough; the fear that if I fell asleep I might swallow the piece of coal lying in front of the stove; the fear that some number may begin to grow in my brain until there is no more room for it inside me; the fear that I may be laying on granite, on gray granite; the fear that I may start screaming, and people will come running to my door and finally force it open, the fear that I might betray myself anf tell everything I dread, and the fear that I might not be able to say anything, because everything is unsayable,–and the other fears…the fears.

    I prayed to rediscover my childhood, and it has come back, and I feel that it is just as difficult as it used to be, and that growing older has served no purpose at all.

    -Rainer Maria Rilke
    Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge

  • My Haircut by Jake

    This is what I looked like yesterday. Then I threw a rock at a birdhouse my brother got at Ag Day. There weren’t birds in it thank God.

    My dad said this was the last straw.
    This is what happens when you throw rocks at our house.

    Bridget, I blame you.
    My sister was not allowed to keep the hair.

    Happily ever after. The end.