Grandma Duty

IT was a Red Letter Day for me today in that it was the first day I got to care for all three of my grandchildren. Sage and Charlie have been visiting me all summer on my days off and afternoons, but it was the first time we added three year old Ronnie to the boy-pack. Ronnie is Tad's soon-to-be-stepson, and as far as I'm concerned, my third grandson.



We started off for a walk on the beach. Sage wanted to show Ronnie the sand dune near the beach we've been playing on all summer. It was a hit. Ronnie liked it so much he didn't care if we went anywhere else. But we had an ambitious day planned. Noontime found us packed in the car, Chuy included, headed for Sebastopol and a visit to the apple farm. The apple farm didn't materialize. I heard the Gravensteins were ripe and I was hoping to buy several boxes for applesauce but we learned at the fruit stand the growers were only picking this day and there was no product to buy. So we made a provisioning stop at the local organic produce place for fresh mozarella balls and breadsticks and a wierd yellow watermelon for a picnic lunch at the local park.



Chuy was happy. He nibbled everybody's leftovers and the bottles of gourmet root beer were a big hit. Sage burped his way through lunch, then admitted, "I might have drank too much of that, Grandma!" A walk afterward settled everybody's tipsy tummies and then we drove home. Though it's only twenty-some miles, Sage complained that it was "a long drive!"

Ronnie couldn't keep his eyes open on the ride home and nodded off. I had put him in the middle seat between the two older boys.

"I think Ronnie's gone to sleep!" Sage announced in a shocked voice midway home.

"I imagine he has," I answered. "He's a little boy trying to keep up with you big fellas. He's probably worn out."

From the front seat, Chuy looked up at me bleary eyed, agreeing in his dog fashion.

"Nope!" Sage shouted. He was leaning over and peering into Danny's drooping face. "I don't think he's really asleep, Grandma. He's got one eye open a tiny slit and I bet he's faking!"

"Yeah!" Charlie confirmed. "You can't sleep with one eye open!"

"Boys! Leave him alone! He's worn out!" I hissed from the driver's seat.

Chuy closed his eyes and went back to sleep. He knew when to gather his energy for this crew.

A bit later, Charlie announced. "No! He can't be asleep. He's drooling now! Oh yuck! Little-boy-drool!"

"Boys!" I warned, my teeth clenched.

"Oh, look at him!" Sage chortled. "He looks like a Zombie!"

We finally got home and I ordered the big boys out of the car. They took a suddenly awake Chuy into the house and I gathered up the still sleeping Ronnie in my arms. He turned and stretched and mumbled something.

"What'd you say, Baby?" I asked, carrying him into the house.

"The Hucka Muckas were after me." He slowly woke up.

"They were? I hate it when that happens!"

"Yeah, they were chasing me. But the Hucka Muckas didn't get me!"

"Not this time." (Hmmmmm, those Hucka Muckas couldn't have been Charlie and Sage, could they?")

Have a better day and keep the Hucka Muckas at bay.

To-Do Lists

I'm a big believer in To-Do Lists. The older I get, (meaning: the more forgetful I become at times) the more I rely on the To-Do List to make sure I get done what needs to be done. There's something imminently satisfying about checking off numerous items one has done during the day. Makes the day seem that much fuller and your time better spent. I tend to over enumerate too many items on one To-Do List, making a regular list much too long to accomplish in one day. So my To-Do Lists are usually week long lists with anywhere from eighteen to twenty-four items on them. My grandson, Charley, is a fan of my lists and likes to read off what Grandma has failed to do. I guess for him, that's more fun than what Grandma actually got done.

So two months ago, on one of my weekly lists, I wrote down "Get wireless connected to computer". We'd just gotten back here to the beach and had shut off our wireless satellite connection last February. A phone call and it should be re-instated, right? Not so right. Seven weeks and two days after that first phone call, I have finally got our wireless connection re-connected. The "Get wireless connected to computer" has been written and re-written on my weekly To-Do Lists, until I despaired of ever getting it crossed off. There were times I thought perhaps it was too lofty a goal and I should maybe better learn to live with the old "watch the paint dry" dial up connection. It took more than one phone call too. For a while I was calling the wireless satellite people up two or three times a week. They would give me varying degrees of explanations until I'd find myself spluttering incoherently at some stupid reason why they couldn't connect me sooner. On one of those days when I muttered in front of the grandsons that I needed to call the satellite people, Charley looked at me and asked innocently, "Are you going to get mad and cuss at them again, Mackey?" And I sheepishly answered, "I hope not!"

Well, the gist of the problem was a malfunctioning dish which the satellite people finally deemed a work order for a technician to come two weeks ago, so today was the big day. It took him all of an hour to replace the broken part and at the end of the job, when he called the wireless people he was upset with how little they said they would pay him. So he turned on me and announced that he was Never coming back to Dillon Beach again for another service job. And I apologized for calling him but told him he was the one the satellite people said I had to call. So finally, he took his rotten mood back to Santa Rosa with him and I was left (a bit shaken, I admit) with my computer now hooked up to wireless. And I can read my emails and send pictures without thinking that I am in a limbo of stagnation waiting.

And oh yes.... I was able to mark another item off my too long To-Do List. Who knows? I might actually finish all the items on a list one of these weeks.

On Being A Nobody...

Most of us are Nobodies. Nobody anybody is ever going to hear about, read about. Nobody whose life is so important that it has to be talked about on tv or read about in gossip columns. Us Nobodies expect that. We don't expect to wake up Famous some morning and have our lives turned topsy turvy because now the public is watching us. So when something unexpected happens and a Nobody gets some attention, then something shifts inside of us and you start to wonder, what would it be like to not be a Nobody?

I had a niggle of non-Nobodiness happen to me this week. My sister emailed and said she'd found a lady on EBay selling one of my Something Fishy shirts. I checked, and sure enough, a shirt that I had given as a raffle prize at one of our monthly HOG meetings was being offered on EBay for $9.99. The lady said it was used, but in mint condition, which makes me think it was probably tossed in a corner and never worn. When the time came to clean out the closet, out came the Something Fishy shirt and onto EBay it went. The lady who was selling it had it almost right. She said it was a "Something Fish" shirt out of Dillon Beach, California. (Hey, when you're a Nobody and somebody gets it half right, we're satisfied!)

So I don't know whether the used shirt sold or not. The new shirts I'm listing right now aren't selling as fast as I'd like them to. There was a spurt the end of June and I thought, "Ah-Ha! Things are looking up." But maybe that was just the President's Economic Stimulus Checks that were aiding impulsive buys to sites like EBAy and I got some peripheral leftovers from that. Whatever the case, sales are languishing now.

But if somebody wants to make this Nobody feel halfway like a Somebody by re-selling her shirts on EBAy, go for it! For a small slice of time, it feels pretty good just not being a Nobody!

Puny and Defenseless

I'm sure, by now, most of you have noticed the counter at the top of the blog on The Arizona Land Exchange & Conservation Act, otherwise knows as S.3157. The bill got re-introduced, I believe for the third time, on June 18, 2008 by Senator Kyl for another stab by Resolution Copper to get the copper they want from the sacred Apache Leap area, just east of Superior. The bill is scheduled to be heard in the Subcommittee on Public Lands and Forests this Wednesday at 2:30 (SD-366, if you're going to be Washington and want to make your views known).

It's not real popular with the public if the counter at the top of the page is any indication. At the time of this writing it is running 14% For and 86% Against, but I don't think public sentiment means a hill of beans difference to those in Washington when Big Money is at stake. Just shut up, folks, and let us handle it, seems to be the situation here.

I've read the bill on the Thomas website several times and believe me, I'm no lawyer and I haven't got one around to tell me what it is I am reading. But what I'm gleaning from this version of the Land Exchange Bill is that this time around, there are some environmental policies in effect, even if it looks a bit skewed to me. (Hey, I'm willing to admit I might be wrong, but I'm just reporting it the way it appears to be written.) And this time, evidently, NEPA (the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969) will be followed instead of discarded, BUT the Secretary of Agriculture has to issue an Environmental Impact Statement before Resolution Copper "begins production in commercial quantities of valuable minerals". I would have thought that Resolution Copper would have to be responsible for producing an Environmental Impact Report that would then have to be accepted by the Secretary of Agriculture. So why should the onus be on the Federal Government who is going to be the one who will approve it in the end? Maybe I'm missing something here. But it sounds like the same entity is judge and jury. Are there going to be hearings on this Environmental Impact Statement, so the public who appears so negative against this land exchange can weigh in on it? Or are we going to be ignored for this portion too?

I'm aware that the Feds do things differently than the States, but this ignoring of what the public wants, doesn't sit well with me. Resolution Copper badly wants this big vein of copper ore sitting on Federal Land and it looks like this time, the Feds are quite likely to hand it to them, with little regard for what the people want. Will Resolution Copper do the right thing and protect our water supply? Will they ensure that Apache Leap doesn't shift or implode with their block cave mining two miles deep underground? There's no assurances in the Land Exchange Bill. There's very little in the bill that addresses my concerns. So maybe I'm just one of those useless dumb entities that the Feds override to keep "business as usual". But this Land Exchange Bill feels like the Feds and the international copper company are ganging up on the "little guys" to get what they want and the rest of us don't matter.

I'd love to hear other opinions on this matter. It may be that I'm misinformed. What do you think about it?

Kitchen Nazi

Charlie had his head buried in a new book yesterday and Sage was at loose ends, so I suggested he help me mix up a batch of chocolate chip cookies. For six years old, he's a fairly proficient cook and can crack eggs without adding shells to the batter. So we mixed up a batch. He even used the cookie scoop to lay them out on the baking sheet.

But when I opened the oven to slide the first tray of cookies in, Sage was disturbed.

"Grandma, why do you have that pan in the bottom of your oven?" he demanded.

"It's not a pan, Sage. It's a cast iron skillet and it's there so when I bake my French Bread, I pour water in it and it steams the bread, giving it a nice crunchy crust."

"But you're not making bread. We're baking cookies."

"True. But I'm not adding any water to it. It will be fine."

"I wish you'd take it out," he stated firmly. "I find it disturbing!"

So this morning, while cleaning up the kitchen, I took the offensive skillet out of the oven. Think Sage will notice on his next kitchen excursion?

T.M.I.

My cousin gave me three beautiful garlic bulbs of fresh garlic she'd grown in her garden. She recommended they be dried first before I used it. So I tied them up and hung them from a hook in my kitchen. They looked a little odd but I figured in a couple of weeks I could take them apart, peel the cloves and put them in a jar of virgin olive oil. Then... a few weeks more... I'd have me a jar of magic!

I hadn't counted on the boys. Charlie caught sight of the hanging garlic as soon as he entered the kitchen today. His face clouded. "What are you doing with those?" he demanded.

I explained about drying the cloves and then making my olive oil garlic.

"Whew!" he exclaimed, his face returning to happiness. "For a minute there, I thought maybe you were trying to scare away vampires!"

Downhill From Here

A short sentence from the soon-to-be-six-year-old as he departed from the bathroom got my attention. "Uh - Grandma! I think we've got a Big Problem. There's two things..."

Me (gulping): "What are they?"

"One: The toilet might be plugged up. Two: We're out of toilet paper!"


Okay, so that's the way the day started. Now the Soon-To-Be-Six-Year-Old turns six tomorrow and I wanted to make him a special cake. When I visited in March, I had a baker's catalogue with me and showed Sage a picture of some silicone cupcake "people" you can decorate up to look like monsters. They're a silicon cupcake cup set on big colored silicone shoes. They're pretty cute and Sage agreed these would make a great birthday cake for his sixth birthday.

Tonight, after the kids departed, I set to work. The cupcakes baked okay, but were a bit wobbly. The problem was, in the picture they showed, their cake tops rise majestically out of the cupcake wrappers and mine barely came to the top. Their tops were big and rounded and they used wonderful squiggles of icing to make it look like long orange fur. I'd have to add a gob of frosting to make mine 'rise' out of the cupcake cup. I mixed up an extra large batch of buttercream icing and then sliced some of the extra cupcakes I'd baked in half and 'glued' the tops on the silly feet cupcakes in the silicon molds. At least, now my monster people had tops big enough to frost.

But my icing proved too soft for good 'hair' texture. The icing hair was soon melting in my overheated kitchen and losing its shape. Plus, some of the glued tops of the other cupcakes I'd attached were overwhelming the silicon feet and they were lurching forward once I'd iced them, unable to stand up. Things were getting wonky in a hurry.

I jammed on Skittles for eyes and gummy candies for gooey smiles, then hurried the cupcakes one by one out to the spare refrigerator as I finished each one. Suddenly, making twelve Silly Monster cupcakes was assuming bigger proportions. I'd been at it for two hours when I carefully took the last one out. The top shelf of the refrigerator looked like a drunken party of frosting monsters. One leaned confidentially forward into another like he was imparting a drunken secret. Another had planted himself face forward onto the glass shelf. When I tried to right him, his face fell off in my hands. I had more frosting on my hands than I wanted to lick off. The door knobs on the back door and the refrigerator door were sticky with orange or blue icing (the color of my monsters).

Oh dear! The things I can talk myself into just for the approval of a sweet little ole six year old! I think he'll approve even if it wasn't the easiest cake decorating job. I have a much higher esteem for those in the industry who earn their living decorating with icing.

Tomorrow's the big day!