Two days ago, I went up to the property to drop off lunches for my husband and older son. My son had been spending his days banging around the property with his friend (the friend’s father was working on my parents’ house). I had four kids in the car with me, two of which weren’t mine. They were all thrilled to go up to The Property. Visiting the campsite (fire! Grandmommy’s snacks!) and running around in the undergrowth is Kid Heaven.

My youngest son had spent the night tenting with my parents. He was all excited about his adventures (and seeing me again, of course). Apparently, some wild animal invaded the camp and smashed the jar of peanut butter. My son slept through the intrusion but still managed to be pretty excited about it nonetheless.

I took lots of pictures of the house.

Certain people want to see it (will these do?), and since my parents don’t own a camera (it’s against their religion) (I’m kidding!), I consider it my daughterly duty to document up the wazoo.

(Or is it whazoo? Wahzoo?)

The roofers were there. Putting down metal roof is a hot business. They told my husband that it’s about 15 degrees hotter on the roof than on the ground. During the heat wave, it must’ve been brutal! However, I think that if they were at all Martha Stewart about their steamy sitcheeyation, they could’ve multi-tasked and baked granola and dried strawberries while they were frying their brains out.

My husband was working on the roof, too. When I leaned out the window to take a picture of him, he danced a jig for me.

I don’t like to watch him work on roofs. I know he does it all the time, but still, I’d just rather not know exactly how high up he is. Though now I can see why he complains of his calves hurting after a day on a roof. Bending my ankles at that angle for hours would probably make me cry.

My daughter found a tick on herself and took it to my father The Biology Teacher to identify.

Ever since people in our neck of the woods have been breaking out in Lyme’s classic bull’s-eye rash, we are all a little on edge about ticks these days. I’ve made all the kids look at pictures, and I’ve lectured them about the symptoms and told them they must inform an adult the very second they see anything unusual.

(So, after my lecture. what did my older daughter do? She went to her room and drew a bull’s-eye on her leg and then came downstairs and said, “You mean like this, Mom?” She almost got me.)

(As I’m typing this, my youngest is tossing about on the floor with a fever. Perhaps I ought to inspect his burning-up little body?)

(One of the symptoms of Lyme’s—only 50 percent of infected people get the classic rash—is an altered mood. Which cracks me up because altered moods are the norm for my family. In other words, if we get Lyme Disease but no bull’s-eye rash, and we’re left with just An Altered Mood as our only identifying symptom, we’re screwed.)

But anyway, my daughter took the tick to my dad and he declared it a normal one and handed her the hammer.

She smashed it into oblivion and that was that. Our at-home extermination method of choice is Burning at the Toothpick. If this sounds cruel to you, it’s not. The little buggers are hard to kill and death by fire is quick and immediate.

By the time I had finished photographing the house from every angle imaginable, I realized that I still hadn’t seen my older son and his friend. They were building a fort down in the woods, I was informed.

As I struck off into the woods, I noticed that I was hearing the buzz of power tools from both behind and ahead of me. The boys were building a fort with power tools?

And then I turned a corner and there was the beginnings of a fort rising up out of the forest floor.

I was impressed.

I was also concerned that it wasn’t braced adequately and said so.

“I don’t think it’s adequately braced,” I said.

“We’re adding more bracing,” they assured me.

“Has Papa seen it?” I said. “I think he ought to see it. He can give you some
pointers.”

“No, he hasn’t seen it and I don’t want him to,” my son said. “It’s fun to see if we can do it by ourselves.”

Despite the whirring blades and machetes, the boys seemed to have all their fingers and toes intact (though the friend did hammer one of his phalanges while I was visiting), so I bid them adieu and headed back to the house.

On the way I spotted my son’s tent in the underbrush. Did he leave home and not tell me?

Back at the campsite, I had to break up the card-playing festivities in order to get everyone loaded up in the van again.

Oh, and by the way, this is the water bucket: 

Do you like their campsite decor?

The next morning, we went over to the property first thing. My mother had invited us all over for pancakes in the woods.

Since my husband has been telling me about her incredible pancakes—he’s been the recipient of her fireside cooking on more than one occasion—I wasn’t about the turn down the invitation.

The pancakes were delicious, buttery and crispy around the edges and tender-fluffy in the middle.

I ate a whole one and it filled me right up.

This same time, years previous: soft and chewy breadsticks, roasted cherry vanilla ice cream with dark chocolate

We are still eating our “curses” and I’m loving it. My meals are more creative and, subsequently, more fun to make. We are all eating a wider range of vegetables and more of them.

Last night while my husband and I were cleaning up the kitchen together, I started going on and on (yet again) about why I’m loving our new style, and he said, “Yeah, it’s growing on me. The meals feel lighter. I like it.”

What we had for supper:

a) roasted carrot and beet salad with avocado
b) tostados
c) crushed meringue cookies with strawberries and leftover whipped cream.

I was pretty pumped about that salad. The elegant combination made me feel classy, and the fact that the kids ate most of their servings helped to make me feel even classier.

When my younger son ate just the beets out of his salad and announced he was done, I said, “Oh, you have got to try the carrot with avocado! Avocados are like butter and you love butter.” (Which is true. The kid would spread a whole stick of butter on his toast if I let him.) “When you eat the avocados with carrots, it’s like eating buttered carrots. It’s just that the butter is green!”

I speared a bit of avocado with carrot, popped it into his mouth, and kept talking.

“Did you know that people make cakes with avocados? And icings? Green icing! And they put them in smoothies, too, I think. Avocados are very rich and so good for you, too.”

He ate every last bite of that salad.

Roasted Carrot and Beet Salad with Avocado
Adapted from Deb of Smitten Kitchen

Deb’s recipe didn’t call for any beets. But I had some in the fridge, already roasted and peeled. When the carrots were nearly finished roasting, I added a handful of the smallest of the beets—I didn’t want to add them sooner because I was afraid they would color the carrots.

1 pound carrots, peeled and chopped into 1 to 2-inch chunks
½ to 1 avocado, sliced
3 tablespoons olive oil
1/4 teaspoon cumin
salt and pepper
1-2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
a small handful of baby beets (or 1 large beet cut into chunks), already roasted

Toss the carrots with 2 tablespoons of olive oil, cumin, and lots of salt and black pepper. Put them in a sided baking dish, cover with foil, and roast at 400 degrees until fork tender, about 30-60 minutes, depending on size. Add the beets for the last five minutes, just long enough for them to heat through.

Tumble the carrots and beets into a serving bowl. Drizzle with the lemon juice and remaining olive oil. Add the sliced avocado and toss gently. Serve immediately.

This same time, years previous: vanilla buttercream frosting, tangential thoughts, strawberry cake

Yesterday morning when I was driving to town to help load the Fresh Air kids onto the bus for their trip back to New York, I heard a little blurb on NPR that I’ve been mulling over ever since. It went something like this:

North Americans have a clutter problem. Fifty percent—40? 70? um … a large number—of garages are so full of stuff that there is no room for the cars they were built to house. And you can tell the state of someone’s house by looking at the outside of their refrigerators. A messy magnet-y mess is indicative of a house with too much stuff.

We do not have a garage, so I ignored that statement. But after a nanosecond of introspection, I realized that my fridge is truly indicative of the state of my house, and not just in regards to clutter.

My fridge is partially covered with papers, beat-up random magnets, a large much-looked at calendar, a bunch of lists, a couple odd-ball pieces of children’s art work, and some other pieces of paper that I haven’t gotten around to tossing for the last two years or so. The top of the fridge is gently mounded with books to return to the library, a broken radio, random cassette tapes, a tube of wrapping paper, a deflated ball, and a couple confiscated sharp sticks. The refrigerator door does not have a handle, and there are dents in its side from where the deck door slams into it.

So according to my fridge, my house is not cluttered (too much) but what’s in it is broken, beat-up, and worn out. Functional wins out over pretty. We have a nightmare of a filing system, and the attic (the house’s top of the fridge) is loaded with forgotten stuff.

I could spend five minutes and whip the outside of my fridge into pristine conditions—well, except for replacing the door handle; that would take more time—but I don’t care so much about the outside of it. It’s the inside that I find more interesting, and tasty. Open the door-that-doesn’t-have-a-handle of my fridge and you’ll find cartons of whipping cream, a bowl of roasted beets, a bunch of special meats for the birthday girl’s supper, cucumbers from a neighbor, bottles of wine, milk, loads of condiments, and dozens of eggs from our chickens (again, in keeping with the theme of less than perfect, many of them are cracked, thanks to pecky chickens and klutzy kids).

I love cozy, put-together, lived-in homes. They are relaxing and welcoming. But no matter how hard I try (admittedly, I don’t try very hard), I can’t get my feathers in a ruffle over finishing the window trim or fixing the dining room table so it doesn’t almost collapse when someone leans their elbows on it (which you’re not supposed to do at the table anyway, so there).

However, of the three adjectives I used in the first sentence of the last paragraph (“cozy,” “put-together,” and “lived-in”, for those of you who don’t like to have to work when you read), I’m only missing the second one. We have lots of gentle lighting (even if the lamp shades are dusty and have permanent marker scribbles on them), soft chairs (that tip over backwards and don’t match), and easily accessible supplies like (mismatched) hanging mugs, (old pickle) gallon jars of granola, and (spilling over) mountains of books. And there’s certainly no doubt about it, we live in this house.

And that’s the story my fridge told me when I looked at it.

The end.

This same time, years previous: sweet traditions