Fallen

This has always been one of my favorite trees at Small College. I drive past it every day on my (one-block) commute home.

This maple was planted when the science building was built half a century ago, and has grown into one of our most gorgeous harbingers of the changing seasons.

It's the first to leaf out in the spring, and its branches burst with fire at the first touch of fall weather.

This year I haven't loved the tree as much. Can you see why? Maybe you'll see if I give you a different view.

Husband thinks the tree-hugger in me is out of control ("Woodsman, spare that tree!"), but I'm devastated by this mutilation. I understand that branches need to be trimmed away from utility lines, but this?

This makes me want to weep.

A Curmudgeon's Lament

My Free Space group is working through a study on God's grace and last night our leader had us close by singing "Amazing Grace." There weren't many of us, and none has a voice that is more than passable, but the melody and message stayed in my head all night and woke me this morning.

In the world of church music, I am a curmudgeon. I have been dragged into the world of contemporary Christian music much as I have been dragged into the world of pre-made pie crusts: Everyone else is doing it so it must be the right thing even if what we're making doesn't seem to be as good as what we used to have.

Reading the words written by a reformed slave trader so many years ago, though, made me remember what I love about my favorite hymns. A Mighty Fortress Is Our God. Love Divine, All Loves Excelling. Come, Ye Thankful People, Come. Great Is Thy Faithfulness. They are not only tradition (which, I confess, I love) but are solid explanations of a theology to which I adhere: God's grace has brought me safe thus far, and it will lead me home.

By contrast, I find most praise music the equivalent of those teen-aged girls you see hanging around in the mall--beautiful and stylish, deeply emotional, but tending toward the shallow and mind-numbingly repetitious.

That isn't to say I don't appreciate the mall girls. They can be fresh and cute, they're usually inoffensive, and they often make me smile. They may even grow up to be wise and wonderful adults. But if I want depth or something that prompts me to think, "Yes, this is what I believe," I go to my old hymnbook.

Its message is amazing.

Role Model

When my father was 69 years old, he had quadruple bypass surgery.

He is not the guy you expect to have heart problems--he was a school administrator so he put in his fair share of desk time but he was the kind of school administrator who isn't behind the desk very much, and if you didn't find him roaming the halls at school his "hobby" farm meant he was probably bucking bales or shoveling hog feed or scooping out grain trucks. He didn't smoke, and my dietitian mother cooked meals that were filled with vegetables and whole grains even before the food pyramid was built.

In1996, though, my 13-year-old nephew was chosen to throw out the first pitch at a Royals baseball game.  Dad was there to cheer Josh's strike to home plate, but as my father walked down the ramp from the stadium to the car, he felt a tightness in his chest, a shortness of breath. Being the man he is he didn't say anything about the discomfort. The next day, when he experienced the same symptoms in a less strenuous moment of taking out the trash, he did.

Three days later he was in the operating room where doctors opened his chest and rebuilt his heart's circulating system. Dad came through the surgery beautifully, but a few weeks later was back in the hospital. He had developed clots in the leg incision where the reconstruction vein had been removed, and some of the clots already had moved to his lungs. Then he developed an allergy to the heparin used to dissolve the clots.

Any of these health crises could have killed him--the heart attacks, the blood clots, or the allergy.

Instead, Dad fought back. He recovered from the immediate health crises, then set his sights on recovery perfection. He would eat right. He would walk the prescribed two miles, twice each day, in every kind of weather. And he would swim, lap after lap, in the school natatorium that his own fundraising made possible a decade earlier.

When the natatorium had trouble finding personnel to staff the early morning hours, Dad became certified as a lifeguard then volunteered to open the pool several mornings a week at 6 a.m. for early exercisers.

Last Saturday my father climbed into the pool at the state Senior Olympics five times. Five times he climbed back out as the gold medal winner. If you were to ask him about the competition he would say that the level of competition in the 85-89 age group is limited, and that he's just glad he didn't have to be towed in. He would say it's just a game, no big deal.

To which his family would say, "Dad, we couldn't be prouder if those medals were pure gold and you were Mark Spitz."

And he would be wrong, and we would be right.

A Good Report

When the Boys were younger my least favorite day on the school calendar was one that rolled around just about this time of the semester. It's the day blocked off with an ominous-looking X that was labeled "NO SCHOOL. PARENT-TEACHER CONFERENCES."

This didn't actually become my least favorite day until we'd had children in school for a few years and had been lulled into complacency by the feel-good reports that had marked preschool and kindergarten.

"He does a great job!" "So nice and well-behaved!" "Reading well above grade level!"

Why, you'd have thought we were raising a whole pack Osmond children based on the reports of well-mannered overachieving.

Then came Boy#2's kindergarten year. Husband and I parked ourselves in the tiny little chairs they provide in the first grade room and prepared ourselves to respond humbly to the report we expected about the wonderfulness that was our second-born.

Mrs. P. didn't disappoint. He was so bright, and such a leader, and blah-ba-dee-blah. We cast our eyes down modestly.

"There's just one thing," and Mrs. P.'s sweet kindergarten-teacher-ish voice dropped to a whisper. "It's about...the spitting."

And at that point I died.

We had a nice, long family chat about spitting that night, but from there on out school conferences were accompanied by a wary expectation that someone was going to want to talk to me about spitting.

This weekend was Parents' Weekend at the university where Boy#1 and Boy#4 are enrolled. While it doesn't have carry the same dread of the unknown as school conferences did, this kind of weekend is designed so that moms and dads can see how things REALLY are going with their bay-bees. Are they healthy? Getting enough sleep? Keeping up in classes? Making friends? It's a wonderful relief to be able to answer yes, yes, yes, and yes.

It's also a wonderful relief that One and Four still like to hang out with us, and with each other, even if a certain oldest kid makes fun of his mother's favorite hobby, and so is getting his picture published in said hobby:

Also known as smart-aleck.

Ha. Never argue with a man who buys ink by the barrel, or with a woman who blogs. And because I've always been the mom who wants to keep things fair (hahahahaha!) a picture of the youngest kid as well:

Spiffy new band uniforms

I was glad I got this shot because I spent the rest of the evening squinting at the field and saying, "Is that him over there?" No, that's a trumpet player. "How about there?" Nope, that's a baritone.

At least there wasn't any spitting.

Road of Good Intentions

We're off on a road trip today to see Boy#1 and Boy#4--it's parents' weekend at the university where both are conveniently enrolled. (This location was formerly referred to as "Far University" but since we now have a Boy studying at a University that is even Far-ther, I'm going to have to rename. Far University South?)

Since we started this college merry-go-round I've been racked with guilt at not being a very good college mom, or at least I've thought to myself, "Hmmm. I wonder if I should be doing something now that the Boys are all far away? Naw, Top Chef is on." My friends are terrific college moms who send their children care packages and little notes and other reminders that even though the young'uns are far away, they are still present in their hearts. I, on the other hand, THINK about doing those things but the thoughts mostly stay in my head.

So last night I decided to whip up a batch of cookies to take along today. My go-to recipe* is the Molasses Crinkles recipe in the Betty Crocker cookbook we got as a wedding present. It's kind of like my chocolate sheetcake recipe--foolproof, and guaranteed to be good.

Except when it is not, which is the case when you open the cupboard to get out the baking soda and the container of cupckake liners drops into the bowl of the mixer as it is in the process of whipping up the shortening and molasses and eggs. It is astonishing how many cupcake liners can be incorporated into batter during  the frantic lunge to turn the mixer off.

I pulled the sticky papers out and did the best I could to scrape off the goo before I finished adding ingredients, but I think the detour might have affected the final product, since instead of being flattish and crinkled the cookies are roundish and smooth.

It's the thought that counts, right?



*Hey! I just found the recipe online! It's here, but if you don't want to click over, I'm copying it in. It's a BETTY CROCKER recipe. I did not create it myself. I'm giving credit, Betty, so don't send your lawyers after me.

Molasses Crinkles

3/4 cup shortening

 1 cup packed brown sugar

 1/4 cup mild-flavor molasses or full-flavor molasses

 1 egg

2 1/4 cups Gold Medal® all-purpose flour

 2 teaspoons baking soda

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon1 teaspoon ground ginger

1/2 teaspoon ground cloves

 1/4 teaspoon salt

Granulated sugar  

Mix shortening, brown sugar, molasses and egg thoroughly in large bowl. Stir in remaining ingredients except granulated sugar. Cover and refrigerate at least 2 hours. Heat oven to 375°F. Grease cookie sheet. Shape dough into 1 1/4-inch balls. Dip tops in granulated sugar. Place balls, sugared sides up, 3 inches apart on cookie sheet. Sprinkle each with 2 or 3 drops of water. Bake 10 to 12 minutes or just until set but not hard. Remove from cookie sheet to wire rack.

My People: Addendum

As I had anticipated, yesterday's post about my people, specifically Husband and Brother#2, and their freakish knowledge of the Weather Channel personnel stirred the pot in the House on the Corner. It created a low level disturbance, you might say.

Anyway, this was the first exchange of e-mails after the post:

Husband to Me: I figured this would end up in a blog.  I don’t think you’re quoting us correctly but I’ll let it slide this time.  Nice picture of Nichole Mitchell, by the way, but she’s not there anymore.

Me to Husband: And, bang! My point is proven! :-)

He replied something along the lines that it proved nothing, and just because he knew Nichole Mitchell was going to law school doesn't indicate any kind of superfan status. (Yes, we do discuss this kind of thing in e-mails. Don't you and your husband?)

The discussion continued this morning over breakfast, since we simply cannot let a good thing die a natural death. Husband contended that while he may know the goings-on in the lives of the Weather Channel personnel that it's no different from my following the comings-and-goings of hosts on the Today show. To which I pointed out that I don't even watch the Today show.

Husband: "Okay, well what about Top Chef? Why isn't Tom Colicchio hosting any more?"

Me: "That is totally not a good comparison. It's not even Top Chef season right now--we're in Top Chef Just Desserts, and that's hosted by Gail Simmons and Johnny Iuzzini, and ..."

At that point I trailed off, hoist by my own petard. I think maybe knowing the hosts of Top Chef and Cupcake Wars may be even higher on the nerd and dweeb scale than knowing the weather girls.

These Are My People

I spring from a family of nerds and dweebs, and I married into a family of nerds and dweebs.

Would you like to know what underlined this fact over the weekend, and added a handful of exclamation points for emphasis? That would be the conversation I overheard between Husband and Brother#2 as I was gathering provisions for our trip to Small Town's fabulous music festival. (You'd think I was setting off on the Oregon Trail if you were judging by the provisions I packed, including both sunblock and rain ponchos, but that's another story.)

We were scheduled to leave just as Small Town was hit by a thunderstorm that included lots of wicked-looking lightning so the men in the house checked the Weather Channel to see if we should brave the storm for a chance to hear my favorite band. (Names in the following exchange have been changed because my brain is a leaky sieve and I don't remember what the names were, but the essence of the conversation is EXACTLY RIGHT.)

Husband: "Oh, good. It looks like Michelle's back from maternity leave."

Brother: "Yeah, I think she had a boy. Did Janie get done with her military service?"

Folks, my husband and my brother know the Weather Channel women BY NAME. I can barely keep my sons' names straight, and these two not only knew the weather-chickies' names, they also knew their work schedules, their weather specialties (I didn't even know you could be the Low Pressure Girl) and apparently, their due dates.

As soon as I stop my eye-rolling, I'll let you know how proud I am.