No Foolin'

Lemonade stands and sprinklers in the 80-something degree sunshine; an April Fool's Day for the record books.

Brown Paper Packages

Oh, what a glorious day.

It was nearly 80 here today, and sunny, and there were Easter packages from godparents and grandparents. There was the park all afternoon; there was a solo run right when Jason got home (during which I counted other runners/bikers/walkers on the path around the lake and stopped when I hit 100!); there was the Fancy Surprise Bath the girls created for me upon my return (complete with yard-picked violets floating in the water and lit candles surrounded by Cinderella figurines; what could be fancier?); there was another night of reading Ramona Quimby, Age 8 to Annie, and her reading her 16-page actual book about a girl who doesn't like peas to me just before bedtime; there is the pizza I'm eating right now, made from Wealthy Street Bakery dough and topped with chicken, sundried tomatoes, and lots of cheese; there is the Red's Rye P.A. I drank sitting in a chair on the lawn while I was waiting for the pizza to be done.

But most of all, there was Jemma wearing her One Sweet Chick t-shirt (a gift from her godparents), and there was Lik-M-Aid, (a gift from Annie's godparents). Because nothing says Eastertime like packages full of sparkly shirts and sugar.

Waterworks

There were some "diggers" doing some sort of work around the corner from our house today, and one side effect of that was our house (and the houses around us) not having any water from about 11:00 a.m. until it came sputtering back on around 2:30. I heard it come back on because, not being informed of this multi-hour water shut-off which occurred right during lunch time, I had a load of laundry going, and at 2:30 I heard the machine start emptying into our basement drain again.

The girls literally could not get it through their heads that there was no water to be had at our house. I turned on the kitchen faucet to wash hands when we came in from getting Annie at school, and nothing came out. A neighbor across the street confirmed that theirs was out, too, so I got out the stuff for PB&Js and let the girls make their own after dousing them with hand sanitizer. As they spread the peanut butter messily on the bread, the conversation went like this:

"So, is there water in the bathroom faucet?"

"Nope. No water anywhere in our whole house."

"If we went outside and turned on the outside faucet, would water come out?"

"Nope. No water."

"If we tried to flush the toilet, would water go into it?"

"Nope. No water in the whole house, remember?"

Pause. Spreading peanut butter.

"How about if we tried to turn on the faucet in the upstairs bathroom?"

I raised my eyebrows and forced a smile. "Nope. NO WATER. ANYWHERE." There was much angst about this, as both their water bottles were perilously low, and the hand sanitizer left Annie's hands both smelling and tasting bad, a fact she mentioned, oh, 43 times. Where WAS the water? When would it come back ON? What if we had not yet brushed our teeth for the day? What then? Sigh.

Post-2:30, the girls were delighted to use the water normally again, and I think, seeing as we inadvertently missed Earth Hour earlier this week, it was a good lesson, and one I hope they remember the next time I bust out with the "Some people don't have enough food to eat or a house or clean water" routine.

This afternoon, I built them an obstacle course which involved skipping down the sidewalk, sprinting up the driveway, detouring to sing a favorite song, hopscotch, jumping jacks, somersaults down the lawn, and bouncing a ball while counting to ten. It was a hit with the neighborhood children. I also snuck in a trip to Jersey Junction with them, partly because I very much wanted a vanilla malt and partly because I wanted them to accompany me on a couple annoying errands with no whining. Those chocolate shakes in the backseat did the trick.

Jason's off riding his new mountain bike into the sunset, and I'm off to fold that load of laundry and be particularly grateful for another sunny day and water that works again.

Easy Like Saturday Morning

I was getting ready for my run with Sarah on Saturday morning, pulling on tights and gloves because it was sort of freezing, and Annie was watching me. She was eating her Kashi Cinnamon Harvest Wheat cereal and mixing in dried cherries, slurping up milk.

"I want to go running with you, Mama," she said. And I said that when I got back, she and I could run together wherever she wanted to go. When I got back 45 minutes later, she was indeed waiting for me, wearing leggings and a big hooded sweatshirt plus a knit hat and gloves. We ran around the block a couple times, the sunshine on our faces, and then she said she wanted to go longer. So we went back home, put Jemma in the jogging stroller, and set off for Starbucks, still running. Her little feet pounded the ground, her little arms pumped back and forth. She smiled. "This is fun," she said.

We stopped to get two vanilla milks and a hazelnut latte, then spent the rest of the morning at the playground. Nobody else was there. We pushed each other on swings, chased each other around on the grass, slid down slides, and drank our drinks. We got home just as Jason was making grilled cheese and tomato soup for lunch, and I love that this - run, coffee, park, sunshine - is all we need to be completely happy on a Saturday morning.

Things I Want to Bite

Cheddar, bacon, and fresh chive biscuits;

Mark Bittman's famous no-knead bread,

warm from the oven and smeared with a little roasted garlic;

The entire contents of the website www.smittenkitchen.com, my new favorite recipe site, but most especially this cake, which I intend to make for no reason later this week;

my girls at their dance recital on Saturday, all tights and costumes and gleeful smiles.

Not Cool

You know what isn't cool? Being unable to fall asleep until after 3:00 a.m. for no good reason. Last night, I had writing to do, so I checked e-mail and read blogs and hunted for recipes and then finally got down to writing the article around 9:00. I was finished by 11:00. I e-mailed the article to my editor, finished the tail end of the book I was reading, and then laid wide awake in bed for about four more hours.

Fun!

I blame the subject of the article, which, when it comes out (this Thursday, I think), I want you to read with a few pieces of information in mind. The man whom I interviewed was, I am fairly sure, high. I don't know much of anything about this first-hand (D.A.R.E. worked for me!), but I don't think it's normal for a person to be talking along, completely appropriately, and then, mid-sentence, stop, cover his face with his hands, pause for a good ten seconds (long enough for me to rip my eyes away from my laptop screen and ask, "Are you OK?"), and then resume speaking as though nothing odd had happened. Repeatedly.

The first time it happened, I was concerned for his well-being. After the fourth time or so, I was more concerned for my well-being. It was at this point that the "urban grittiness" of the neighborhood and the "quirkiness" of the local color started to leak into the edges of my subconscious, so that even as I was merrily asking questions and typing the answers, I was also calmly thinking, Jason's car is going to be stolen while I'm in this store. I'm going to have to call someone to come and get me. I wonder what he'll get to replace it.

All's well that ends well, I suppose, and of course I made it home safe and sound. I had never been in any actual danger, either - just a slightly off-beat store in a down-on-its-luck neighborhood on a sunny Friday afternoon. But I don't think my subconscious has completely recovered, and thus, I ran on less than four hours of sleep today.

Unrelatedly, you know what else isn't cool? The way Jemma pretends to be a dog (or a baby, or a cat, or a horse, or today, a rabbit) 75% of her waking hours, complete with constant, repetitive animal/baby noises and Annie believes that she is starring in a musical version of her own life which must be constantly narrated with song and stage direction ("Iiiiiiii . . . . am getting ready for daaaaaaance classsssss . . . . Jemmaaaaaa, pretend you are my baaaaaby and you are crying because I'm going to leeeeeeeave"). At 4:45 this afternoon, after they had sung/ribbited/high-pitch-squealed their way through destroying the living room by dismantling all the furniture for "lily pads" while I started dinner, I stopped them, looked them calmly in the eyes, and said, "I need you to stop making that kind of noise. You are making me crazy. In my brain."

We went outside. That was better.

St. Patrick's Day

"LAPRKAN"s apparently visited Annie's classroom yesterday while her class was in library, tracked mud all around the room, turned the toilet water green, and left gold coins scattered around. Annie ate one chocolate coin at school and saved another one, which she carried home in her hot little hand and presented to Jemma. Then I ruined lunch by taking them to get shamrock shakes after school, and while we were gone, leprechauns scattered jelly beans around the hallway and turned the toilet water green at our house, too.

This was literally all that Annie could speak of for the entire day. She wore green from head to toe, except that she wore one green sock (for St. Patrick's Day) and one pink sock (for Easter, OBVIOUSLY). She drew the above picture just before dinner and just after she'd insisted on calling and leaving a detailed message on Jason's cell phone about all the things that the LAPRKANs had done that day. Jason, it seems, had mistakenly told Annie in the morning that leprechauns "weren't real." When he got home last night just before the girls' bedtime, she accosted him in the kitchen: "Daddy! Leprechauns really ARE real! Why did you say they weren't?"

"Yeah, seriously, why?" I added, eyebrows raised as Annie went flouncing off to read a book with Miss Kelly.

Jason's eyes were wide. "I didn't know this was A Thing!" he protested. Neither did I. So we snuck out the back door and walked to our local Irish pub for pints of Guinness, fish and chips, and a couple hours of celebrating, sans green toilet water. Jemma's rendition below: