Fordham Miller Fare

how i spent my weekend

i was blessed this weekend by being given a ticket to the falcon ridge folk festival (thanks liz!), a ride (thanks dianne!) and a pass by my family (thanks!) to go alone all of saturday day and night.  it was tremendously fun and relaxing to have the time to myself.  there is so much going on at the festival - three different music stages, and a wonderful funky midway with wares and massages and tons of incredible food choices.  i dozed and listened and ate and listened, and woke up and listened.  i made it all the way to the closing act, marton sexton, and even though i was sleepy it was well worth staying up.  and with the help of a cell phone call to bill (thank you weather.com!), i managed to avoid the one storm of the day, safely tucked away in my tent.

sunday, bill and the kids came out to meet me.  i was all recharged and ready to shepherd the kids along in whatever they wanted to do (there are many kids activities at falcon ridge) as i had had my alone time, and plus i was carrying a walkman on which i could catch whatever was playing on the main stage.  morgan and i played with those funky hippie catchy stick thingies, and maddy learned to lanyard weave at the kids art tent, and i got them settled for a couple of great shows.  and then... this happened...

that's the view from outside.  but we were inside the kids performance tent, where many of the adults, myself included, were trying to hold down the roof of the tent in an effort to keep it from collapsing, like the main concession tent did, as seen in the videos above (exterior) and (interior) below...

oddly enough, things in the kids tent were much calmer, probably due to the fact that (1) all us grownups were trying to put on a good show for all the kids, and (2) our tent did not actually collapse.

gone fishin'

i am trying to pack us up for our annual vermont getaway, but yesterday was felled with a nasty fever that sapped me of all my strength and momentum.  today, i'm feeling woozy and tired, but i've got my eyes on the prize....

the internet fairy

thank you thank you thank you to the sprite who somehow managed to hand-deliver a dose of my beloved awaken to my mailbox this afternoon!

there's more than one way to smell like a gin & tonic

i am almost out of my arbonne awaken body lotion; i ran out of the awaken sea salt scrub several months ago, but have been getting by with the lotion until now.  i love the smell of this stuff - it is combination of lemon and corriander.  which, interestingly enough, could also describe a good gin & tonic (if you went with hendrick's).  mmmmm...

i don't think he meant it quite that way...

for about a week before mother's day, there was much abuzz in our house. i was commanded not to enter certain rooms except with my eyes closed, asked what kind of waffles were my favorite (i had a proustian moment as i recalled the pecan waffles with cherry coulis that i once had at the now defunct wild iris cafe in madison, wisconsin), and highly encouraged to sleep in on the day in question.  on sunday, i awoke to find bill gone to work, the kids gone down to the TV room to watch cartoons, and not so much as a cold cup of coffee waiting for me by the microwave.  sigh.

however, i was treated to a really wonderful day.  i got to start in on my dream of building square foot garden boxes for the front yard (we would have finished them had not my powerdrill battery peetered on out on me), we attended a lovely brunch hosted by friends where i was relieved of the duty of tending to the several teary breakdowns of my children, and i was showered with a whole bunch of homemade presents - poetry, re-gifted mardigras necklaces, a couple of drawings, and a special gift from morgan, with this note (follow along phonetically):

Dear Mommy,

here aer some bath salts

for you

ples tac a bath

Love

Morgan

message in a bottle?

this morning, i discovered my email had been hacked.  someone had actually obtained my password, and sent out a message to everyone in my address book (and if you use gmail, you know i mean EVERYONE) advertising an apparently oddly legitimate wholesale electronics website.  luckily it happened when i was at my computer, so i was able to send out an apology to my entire address book just minutes later.

what a drag, thought i.  i changed all the appropriate passwords and security questions (oh, those damn security questions.  does anybody who is over the age of 5 really have a favorite color?  that doesn't change?  even today, i forgot my passoword to typepad, and couldn't remember how i had TYPED the answer to my security question.  augh!).  creepy.  i hoped nothing else ill would come of it.

and then the nice thing happened.  all these people that i love responded to my email.  people i haven't talked to for...in some cases, years!  i'm not sure what the metaphor is....echo?  feedback loop?  maybe a boomerang, that you thought was just a frisbee.  now, to return a few of those emails....

please stand by. we are experiencing technical difficulties...

on the few occasions i have tried to run over to the computer and file a quick post, i am envariably dogged by technological mayhem.  internet too slow, computer hung up on memory hogging virus detection software, or the computer just plain crashes.

anyway, where was i?  oh yes.  lice.  the post below was written in early march.  i managed to resolve the bug problem with my own head in two easy treatments, but inexplicably madeleine's remains a constant battle.  i simply can not understand the tenacity of these creatures.  no matter what i do, they come back, after weeks of checking and seeing absolutely nothing.  here's what i have NOT done:  i have not tried mayonnaise; i have not tried olive oil; i have not tried the electronic Robi Comb; i have not tried combing through her entire head every single day of the week, which by the way takes an hour at a minimum, and washing her sheets every day, and cleaning the entire house every day, and getting rid of all hairbrushes and headbands and hats and all whatnot.  i HAVE tried Rid, cetaphil (the Rid plus cetaphil combination worked on Morgan), Resultz (which cured me), and just plain combing on an every two to three days schedule.  i clearly will NEVER get rid of them, so i might as well just get used to it!  i'm going to try next the "Head Lice to Dead Lice" program, which involves olive oil, and is meant for 'persistent infestations.'  and i promise not to bore you with any of the details anymore.  ugh, on top of everything is the tediousness of it all!

head lice. they're not just for kids anymore.

that's right.  after getting ready to declare madeleine yet again free of the creepy crawlies (ha!), i came down with them myself.

the good news?  that after the third go around, i purchase a product called Resultz i found on the internet.  it has been approved in Canada, but not here, but was easily (although somewhat expensively) purchased through the internet.  i used it most recently to treat madeleine, and was delighted with the fact that (1) it is not a neurtoxin, and one needn't call poison control should it get into one's eyes, and (2) it does not require the massively labor intensive approach of the cetaphil program.  the active ingredient is apparently found in everyday cosmetics, including lipstick, which can either make you say, 'a delousing agent?  in my lipstick?' or 'thank god there's something you can just pour on your head and wash off without major risk of chemical exposure.

i won't bore you with the details - oh, okay i will.  it works by dissolving the waxy coating on the lice, thereby dehydrating them.  think of it as a kind of citrasolve for the insect world.  saturate the hair from roots to tip, wait ten minutes, and shampoo out.  it is a pretty oily substance, so my experience has taught me that at least two if not three shampoos in a row are necessary to get the hair really clean again.

my googling shenanigans have earned me enough of a reputation that i ended up selling a bottle of the beloved lotion to a friend in the late evening hours.  thankfully i thought to re-order - just in case.  here's hoping this stuff does the trick.  if not, i'll be emulating twiggy for my next haircut.

job - that's a long 'o'

surely the field of psychology (or perhaps the war college) has information on roughly how many times you can ask someone to do something without them ever doing it before you actually go crazy.

sad

earlier in the year, madeleine struck up a new friendship with a boy in her class.  classroom crushes are nothing new to madeleine.  she has had one about every year she's been in school.  in kindergarten, her crush led to wild disappointment when the young gentleman in question settled in enough to take up with the boys and leave her in the dust.  all summer when we encountered this boy, bill coached madeleine on the art of 'playing it cool.'  it worked, and in no time she was a pro at handling rejection.

this time, when things came to an end, it was not madeleine but i that was crushed.  she and this boy had been such sweet and smitten friends, it was somewhat astonishing to witness.  (i also especially appreciated the fact that their playdates were not fraught with the hysteria and tantrums that are so often a part of her playdates with girls.) i was sure that this would send her on her way to a solid understanding of what a healthy loving relationship is. i mean, she is only 9, and of course it was only a puppy dog kinda crush, but she's always been precocious, and i couldn't help but be buoyed by their mutal affection.  we even went to a family contra dance together. i foolishly thought it was forever.

of course it wasn't forever, and while i tried to smooth over the rough edges of whatever slight precipitated the end, it was all for naught.  it's a done deal.  she's moved on.  for what it's worth, it appears it's a mutual split.

but the other day, when i was furiously cleaning her room in a particularly angry and fragile state (see previous post on entropy and baby powder), i saw that she had tossed out an envelope that had once contained several baseball cards, sent by the boy in question early in their infatuation.  the sight of it in the garbage can, the third grade handwriting, the sentiment behind it, brought me to tears.