We’re back at camp again.
Ten hours in the car. That’s what the trip should take. Ten hours. Not … I don’t know … however many it took to get from Penn State to Albany in June. That was a horrible trip. In fact, I think it took longer to get from Penn State to Albany than it took us to get from Virginia to here today. Go figure.
We left at 5:43 this morning. We arrived at 3:50 this afternoon. 3 stops. Bathroom, coffee and gas.
The coolest thing we saw was the uprights of the Delaware Memorial Bridge shrouded in clouds because it was so foggy. That was really neat.
The coolest conversation we had was about the wall between Mexico and the US … this was sparked by an article in a National Geographic magazine I brought to read in the car. There was a quote in the article that I think sums it all up really well … The wall is “A police solution to an economic problem.” So we talked a lot about what that meant. The LightChildren were digging it.
So … we’re here. LightGirl and her cousin are playing an on-line game. LightBoy, his cousin and her friend are playing card games.  LightHusband, LightUncle2 and I are avoiding making dinner … should be a fun evening.
Here’s one for the “Things the Brain Does That I Will Never Understand” file …
So … in preparation for our last trip to Vermont for the summer (okay, our second trip), we’re getting the laundry done. I assigned LightGirl the task of sorting and folding the socks. This has not been done for quite some time in our house. We do not place a high priority on matched socks. Especially during sandal weather. Most of them are white, so … there.
While I folded other clothes she treated me to a litany of where the socks had come from and how they had passed from one family member to another. The girl knows the provenance of our socks for heavens sake.
This is the same girl who cannot learn her times tables or how to spell to save her life. She is 13 and I regularly get hideously mis-spelled e-mails from her.
But she knows the provenance of socks. Socks.
She claims this will stand her in good stead when the great sock monster rises up to take over the world. She will know how to defeat him. In the latter days times tables and spelling will do no good, but the provenance of socks will be her weapon against powerful evil. So may it be.
Since it seems to be vogue these days …
I’ve well-documented my INFP-ness. But this description from the site above really gave me pause:
“An INFP’s feelings form the foundations of the individual. They are sacred and binding, in the sense that their emergence requires no further justification. An INFP’s feelings are often guarded, kept safe from attack and ridicule. Only a few, close confidants are permitted entrance into this domain.”
I would only add that when it becomes clear that an INFP’s confidence has been misplaced, the damage has long term effects.  When, as in my case, those confidants use an INFP’s feelings to their own ends … well … I’m still struggling with how to process that. How to process the fact that something that forms my very foundations was used against me for another’s gain … in a church. Nice (and she spits). On to cheerier notes … there was also this, which I completely agreed with:
“Their job must be fun, although not raucous, and it must be meaningful to them. They need a strong purpose in their work. They want to be recognized and valued, without undue attention given to them. They may become embarrassed when made the center of attention. As a result, they may undersell their strengths in order to avoid being singled out and made to feel conspicuous. They would rather have their worth be noticed gradually over time.”
LightGirl took the test and she’s an ENFP. Well … she’s only 13 and that is likely to change. But maybe not. She is her father’s daughter and he is also an ENFP.
The Multi-Intelligences results were interesting but no surprise.
Gee … drugs turn your brain to mush. I’m still waiting for my brain to come back. So this will have to do in the meantime.
Conversation as LightBoy studied for a Latin test this afternoon …
“Mom! Look! Isn’t this funny?” Pause for him to bring his textbook and show it to me.
“See here … nimbus, it means cloud. Don’t you think that’s funny? You know … cause Harry’s broomstick was the Nimbus 2000.”
Me (trying to keep a straight face and absorb all of this earnestness), “No, I don’t think it’s funny at all. But I do think it’s pretty cool.”
We high five.
Me – “So what does the name Nimbus 2000 tell you about the author of Harry Potter?”
LB – “Well … she knows Latin. I can tell that because all the spells are in Latin too.”
Me – “And what does the name tell you about Harry’s broomstick? Does it tell you anything special about it?”
LB – “OH! That it can go high up into the clouds. And Harry needed that A LOT!!!”
And he was off weaving spells and flying on his own broomstick.
Terrible … that Harry Potter. Teaching my children that Latin is fun.
Is anyone else watching this new series? If so, what do you think?
Here in the UK we are struggling with floods, other parts of the world have similar problems without the infrastructure to cope with it, still others are badly affected by drought…. My son Jon is in Melbourne Australia where apparently it has been snowing ( yes it is winter but still!)…. With crazy weather in mind I bring you this weeks Friday 5…
1. Have you experienced living through an extreme weather event- what was it and how did you cope?
My parents moved to Kansas when I was six months old and we lived there until I was 6 years old. Many times during each summer the air raid siren would go off indicating that tornadoes had been spotted in the vicinity. So we had to go the basement. Ugh. Several times tornadoes did go through our community. It was soooo boring in the basement. When I was six I had a broken leg with a cast on and one time when we were confined to the basement, I took a blue crayon with me … so I colored the whole cast blue – hip to ankle. My mother was not pleased, but it did keep me quiet.
2. How important is it that we wake up to issues such as global warming?Uhhh … how important is it that we keep breathing? or keeping drinking water? I guess if we don’t mind breathing polluted air and drinking polluted water, then we can ignore global warming. The earth is our home and just as we keep our individual home’s clean and livable, we need to keep the earth clean and livable … not too hot and not too cold.
3. The Christian message needs to include stewardship of the earths resources agree/ disagree?
I never understood how the Christian message could EXclude stewardship of the earth’s resources. That just never made any sense to me whatsoever. It makes more sense to me that Christians would be on the cutting edge of being green than anything else. But maybe I shouldn’t use logic with faith so much.
And because it is summer- on a brighter note….
4. What is your favourite season and why?
Spring … because that’s when all the flowers come back and the world is all new and all. Just say the word and it makes you happy. Go on … say it, Spring! See … you’re smiling now.
5. Describe your perfect vacation weather….
70 degrees, blue skies … for about 3 days, then a day of rain and 55 degrees, so I can stay inside and sleep in and read a good book next to a fire.
My friend, Doug, who peregrines around the land hath tagged me once again. It is the dread 8 random facts meme … but I’m not so into random facts lately. I don’t know what to do here. I want to point people to 8 … somethings. But in the end that’s really pointing to me and what I like and there’s something about these memes that are ultimately very self-centered. Of course, the whole blogging thing is too for that matter.
So I am tasked with coming up with 8 items of note about something, someone, or etc. Soo … here are 8 things I am thankful for today:
1. I am thankful that LightGirl’s temperment is not at all like mine. This is not because I have self-image issues, but because I am enjoying watching someone with an entirely different outlook explore and enter the world. I really love talking with her about different episodes in her life and hearing her perspective on them. She is so completely different from me and I am enjoying that very much.
2. I am thankful for antibiotics. I seem to have inherited my maternal grandfather’s predilection for sinus problems and so I’m thankful for the drugs that cure these ills.
3. I am thankful for coffee. I love coffee. If I could travel back in time, I would go back to the time when people first discovered coffee was good to drink and I would kiss their feet. Well … maybe not their feet. But I would hug them and kiss them and tell them what a wonderful thing they had done!
4. I am thankful for cotton. It’s one of three fabrics that feels good to my allergic skin and the other two are frightfully expensive. So I love cotton. I especially love it when it comes in the form of quilting fabric and I’m working on a quilt for someone I love (yes, GreatPea, your time is coming soon 😉 ).
5. I am thankful for BlazingEwe and TexasBlueBelle. They have kept my feet on the ground and helped me put one foot in front of the other more times than I can count.
6. I am thankful for the gift of creativity. The joy that comes from experimenting, designing, doodling and creating is without words. I love to play with color and words and shapes and make them all come together and “say” something using very few (if any) words.
7. I am also thankful for words, because I love to write. I love giving voice to the stories and ideas that wrestle in my head. I love to study the evolution of language and how words have depth, texture and meaning beyond what we think they do. That our language is not flat and two dimensional, but rich and deep and even four dimensional as it changes with time.
8. I am thankful that as I get older I am more and more able to embrace being an introvert. As a woman it is unacceptable to be an introvert, so I had to interact as an extrovert my whole life. But I’m learning how to balance cultural expectations with my own needs a little better now. Interpreted, yes, this means I’m learning to not care what others think quite so much anymore and I’m thankful for that. I’m thankful that I’m growing more comfortable in the skin God gave me.
Sooo … the rules state that I’m to tag eight more people and they have to do this too.
WHATEVER!
Rules … schmools. Did I also tell you that I’m somewhat rebellious? I’m going to tag a few people … I don’t know how many … for the all new Thankfulness Meme … You have to list 6 – 8 things you’re thankful for and then pass it on to whomever you think might need this little exercise in futility … Here are my victims er friends: Doug JJ the Smu Makuta Lyn Mak Erin
The seventh and last Harry Potter book (Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows) is coming out on Saturday. We’ve preordered a copy from amazon.com. LightGirl was also invited to a book party at an independent book store in Arlington with a friend on Friday night … she’ll get a copy then. We’ll have TWO copies in our house. This will be good since three of us will be vying for reading rights at once. Questions abound … is Snape really evil? Who will die … Voldemort? Harry? Neville? Someone we’ve not thought of yet? Is Dumbledore really dead?
There is a piece of me which doesn’t want to read the last book. A part of me which doesn’t want the story to end. I’m not entirely certain I want the answers to those questions. I like living with the not knowing. Come what may, Saturday is very likely to come and with it a special delivery of our book. I will read the book and thus, the mystery and the story will come to an end. It will be sad in a way.
In anticipation of the day, I found this on-line quiz … thanks to Sally at Eternal Echoes. It came as no surprise at all that I’m Hermione, since that’s who I’ve always felt the most resonance with.
Last Thursday night was sort of our last hurrah in Vermont. LightHusband met up with his sister, her children, their parents and LightBoy at a baseball game. LightGirl and I went to dinner and a movie. LightGirl has no patience for baseball games at the best of times, and this was not the best of times. Just thinking about it made her miss hockey and her team and skating and made her a little bit weepy and scared about her knee injury.
We were running late, so we dove into Pizza Hut for dinner. We made an impassioned plea to our waitress that we needed to catch a movie … could our dinner be hurried at all. Certainly, she smiled at us.  But the pace of the restaurant changed not a whit. LightGirl’s pasta and marinara sauce seemed to have been made from homegrown tomatoes … on the vine … grown while we waited as time elastic stretched to eternity. We tried to enjoy conversation and did at first, but the movie time loomed larger and larger on our horizon. Dinner came and LightGirl bargained with me that the movie had already started, we shouldn’t bother those already there by walking in late. My version was someone always comes in late … it would just be us this time. We hadn’t missed that much … maybe just the previews. Off we went to the theatre.
We walked into a mysteriously empty lobby and I said, “Two for Evan Almighty, please.” The girl looked at me and then looked over her shoulder to the boy behind her and said, “I don’t know … can we still do that?” Which took me aback for a moment. The young man looked at me (I was looking very puzzled at the exchange) and said (into his walkie-talkie), “Is it too late to start Evan Almighty in 5?” and I realized … we were the only people there for that movie!!! We had the theater to ourselves. Yes, we were late, but we were the only ones. What a treat. They ran it for us anyway. Just us two in the whole theater … all by ourselves. What fun.
Evan Almighty is a real treat itself. I was a little askance about it after it’s predecessor, Bruce Almighty. But this movie is gentle and fun and for those of us who believe in living our lives a bit differently so that we can express the love of the Creator to all of creation, it has a wonderful message. Morgan Freeman is once again outstanding as God. LightGirl remarked that if God is really like “that guy in the movie. I could talk to him. I haven’t had much to say to God for a while now. But I could talk to that guy. Do you think God is like that guy?” I told her that I thought God certainly had a lot of those characteristics … that if she wanted to imagine that God was like that guy, there wasn’t anything wrong with it. I think I liked the movie so much because the theme that ran all throughout it was that God loves His people and invites them to participate in His mission with Him. What a great way to spend an afternoon or evening … being reminded of that wonderous truth.
On the menu this evening:
Hmmm … well … I dunno. Let’s see what’s in the frig. So I looked in the frig. I found the makings of a grand chicken and wild rice salad with dried cranberries and almonds and some other things that I found (frozen peas, green onions, etc.). It really, really needed a curried salad dressing though. I said as much to LightHusband. But I despaired. There would never be curry powder in this kitchen. My mom hates curry. It just doesn’t sit right with her. She’s well mannered about it and still tries it every now and again. But she simply doesn’t care for it. So there would be no reason to find curry powder in the camp kitchen.
This kitchen is very old. It never does to make assumptions about what one might find or not find in the cupboards of this kitchen. I looked in the regular cabinets. The ones we use all the time with the fresh herbs and spices. I came up with some of the ingredients in curry powder, but not all. I was working the “yankee ingenuity” angle. If I couldn’t have curry, I was going to make a facsimile of curry that still tasted good. LightHusband, on the other hand, was not so easily swayed. He went straight for the jugular.
Yanked open the door, let in some light, clanked a few bottles together and moments later yelled, “Eureka!” Okay. He didn’t yell, “Eureka.” But … He dove into the pantry, searched the antique spice bottles which see only the barest glimmer of light in the far back corner of the cupboard and he found … curry powder. What he said was, “Well I found some … but it’s got to be at least 50 years old! I don’t think it’s ever been opened.” I said, “Do you think I should open it?” It felt like a treasure or something.
But there it was … curry powder that is potentially older than I. So I opened it, expecting it to smell like a sneeze. Instead all the treasures of India met my nose. We were both amazed. I supposed I should know better, I once made pudding older than I when I was a teenager here in this kitchen. But that was then. Older than I, was much younger then. And spices seem to have greater limitations than pudding.  So I used the curry powder in my chicken and wild rice salad. It needed a little vinegar and a dash of salt, but that curry powder has more kick than any curry powder I’ve purchased recently. It was some of the best salad I’ve made in a long time. Too bad I’ll never be able to replicate it … you can’t get 50+ year old curry powder just anywhere!
