Thai Squash Soup & Jokes

I kind of mixed this from a couple of recipes, adding my own touches. It's very tasty, uses ingredients I have on hand (and that last well) and is easy to remember without a recipe. Let me know if you try it.

olive oil to saute onion and garlic
1 medium onion, chopped
2 medium cloves garlic, crushed
1 tsp curry powder

winter squash (about 6 cups, peeled, seeded and cubed) I used one butternut and one acorn, both medium sized. I would have just used butternut if that's what I'd had
1 quart chicken broth
1/4-1/2 tsp thai red curry paste (or red pepper)
1 can light coconut milk
salt and pepper to taste

Heat oil in a large dutch oven or soup pot. Add onion and saute for a few minutes. Add garlic and curry powder, stir and cook a few minutes more.

Add cubed squash and broth together, maybe add a little water if it doesn't seem enough liquid to cook the squash without sticking. Cook until squash is tender (depends on how small you cut it, half-inch or a little smaller seems to take about 20 minutes. Once tender add coconut milk and curry paste or red pepper. Puree in batches, or with an immersion blender. Salt and pepper to taste and serve with crusty bread.

Joke of the day (from Laura): What school does Eli go to? Nursing school! (She didn't realize though that there is actually such a thing as nursing school).

Maybe someday she can graduate up to something like this (from dad):

How do we know Lehi's family had a pet?
Because he was commanded to take his family and flea into the wilderness.

Scientific Discovery of the Day

Made by Charlie, around 10 am when the kids made themselves microwave popcorn (yes, we are lax like that, especially lately).

"When I put my nose near it (a tiny piece of popcorn) it moves all by itself!" Charlie was beyond excited about his discovery.

The kids were sneaking a snack, but we didn't much care. Our house has been in a constant state of projecting (a verb I made up which means being in a state of chaos during a project and during which tools are everywhere, mixed in with the mess of daily life that has not been cleaned up, and during which said tools and other things needed for the project seem to move around by themselves so they are never where you thought you would find them) for the past few weeks. Jared has been on a float month during which he has had little responsibility and many opportunities to leave early (sometimes 9 am). The weather has gotten warmer here too (and sunny! for almost a week!), spurring us to try to complete as many outdoor projects as possible. We've painted the two porch ceilings, the soffits and gutters around the porches, two of our doors that lead outdoors, and the garage floor. Today's project has been the railings of our porch and front walk. Once again we'll be finishing in the dark. If they didn't before, all of our neighbors surely believe we're crazy. Who else paints while holding up a lamp to see what they're doing? Who else wears scrubs and a white coat (never worn at work it has become a painters' smock), stands on the porch railing (one story above our driveway) to paint his house? That would be Jared. I'm just glad he didn't fall, and that he has been pushing these projects along.

My Life of Leisure

True confession: I haven't used an alarm clock for the last seven years. I live a largely unregulated life, choosing what to do and when to do it. Some days I go to the park and sit there for hours, some days I go on long meandering walks. Yesterday I read a novel from start to finish. I also made dinner (an eggplant and pasta dish, much to the kids' chagrin), raked and bagged some leaves, moved some laundry around, went to the toy library and "worked" a shift (while reading and attending to C & E), but not much more. There's much of the routine that I don't really enjoy, but I'd say that's true of pretty much anyone's life. Many chores are inescapable, but I scale back where I can by lowering my standards (Slightly dirty clothes, yeah they're OK. That stuff all over the kitchen counter, so what? I'll be using it again at lunch).

Last week after many sick days cooped up in the house, I decided we were going to seize the beautiful autumn day and head to the park. We headed out (slowly, because that's how any of our endeavors happen) and started down the walking trail through the woods with the bright blue sky above us. An arc of trees, golden, orange, and red, arched above us. Squirrels were chattering and running in the woods and birds chirped as they flitted between the branches. I was the picture of the person I had hoped to someday be. The mom with her cute little kids heading off on an adventure of her own making. No work schedule keeping me at a boring desk all day (I realize some jobs are more exciting than the ones I've held, which were pretty much all painfully boring, lots of wasted time, etc). No school schedule making me feel like I needed to burrow into texts and finish a paper or study for an exam.

There were, of course, some hang-ups. Laura wanted to stop and pick up every possible leaf. Charlie and Eli wanted to get out of their stroller if they were going to move so slowly. Eli coughed and sneezed and screamed as I wiped his streaming nose. After a while Laura's exclamations of "it's so pretty! I'm so glad we came here!" turned to "how much farther? I want to ride!" Sitting on her brother's lap, and then with Charlie sitting on the stroller's canopy we made it to our stopping point (a playground) where we took a play break, observed a big hawk sitting in a tree, and let Eli finish out his nap.

This life of leisure is a little more trying than I'd often like to admit (I say "like" to admit, because I do frequently admit it, usually by complaining loudly). There aren't large looming deadlines, just the feeling that time , and my kids' childhood, is slipping quietly through my fingers and that what I'm doing may not be enough. The feeling that the small tests-- maintaining calm and composure at any number of exasperating behaviors, paying attention and responding in ways that encourage my kids' wonder about the world, negotiating treaties between warring parties, I mean children-- may be adding up to one giant score of C minus (or an F as Alexander has declared on several occasions) is a worrying nagging thing as I muddle through my days (when I'm not muddling, I usually feel like I'm doing a better job).

This experiment, though it wasn't set up to be one, provides ample lessons about natural consequences. I don't have to feed my kids on a regular schedule. I don't have to feed them meals at all. They can snack all day on their halloween candy, for example (except that it's already gone!). But I and they suffer the consequence of feeling yucky, grumpy and sugar-addicted. Now that A & L attend school, we do have to be up and ready by a certain time. We have assignments to work on (Alexander) and left-out children to assuage (Laura, who wishes her school had homework too). If I spend all day at the computer screen, there's not much time left to pick up the things we're tripping on at home. I have an avalanche of things fall on me right around the time Alexander arrives home from school and I realize I need to fix dinner.

I want my life of leisure, but without the consequences. Since I've been realizing that is not to be, I'm trying to make some adjustments. Keep the leisure, mix in some more structure, make everyone happier. And write a little about it, and then edit that. But right now I have to go comfort a crying baby.

Fumes

Coming from each floor of our house today, there were fumes. I guess we were spurred on by the sun making its appearance after a week in hiding, but we were all busy. Jared told our sad story about lack of tub and shower use to his attending this morning and was let go (just for the day) to go work on it. He was home before I got back from dropping off Laura at school and my futile shopping run which ended after realizing I had forgotten my wallet and that the bookstore didn't open til 10 so the little boys couldn't go in and play with the trains.

At home I found him up in our room, in the closet. He is strange, but that had nothing to do with it. The closet is home to the access panel for our bathroom's tub and shower. He was working on take 2 of soldering a bunch of pipes that will connect to new leak-free, uncorroded knobs and faucet. And the propane torch, used in close proximity to the bathroom's wallboard, copper piping and the mysterious plumber's flux put out a toasty smell like a campfire.

I went downstairs to toast some chilis for our dinner. Got them smelling good and fragrant on the cast iron skillet, and then removed them. Went back upstairs to help with some measurements of pipes. A while later a weird chemical smell comes wafting up. I run down to find our plastic spatula melting to the middle of the pan. Yum, the smell of plastic. It always make me wonder if we should be using the stuff at all. Definitely smells toxic.

Jared runs down to the basement to get something and starts complaining about some smell. I tell him about my spatula trick. He calls back up again about some smell, I again attribute it to the spatula. He then calls up, with me catching the key words, "Laura, glitter, spray paint."

My little girl, the mountain goat when craft things call her name, got down glitter spray-paint and jingle bells to make something sparkly. She threw in some colored permanent marker for fun and went to the smallest, least ventilated room in the house (basement bathroom, of course) to work her magic. Fortunately, she made it out of there alive. She even ran all the way upstairs and hid when we called her.

We overcame the fumes today-- the dinner was good, the pan was saved, the spatula got an honorable discharge (10 years working for us, we put it to rest in the garbage can), the pipes don't leak, Charlie & Eli took a bath, and Laura's bells, though not as sparkly as she wanted, will live to see another painting day.

Crying at the Door

Sometimes I don't know what to do with this child. He likes to close doors, with a dramatic show of "look what I can do." Then he wants them open again. So he pushes on them. When that does not achieve what he wants, he screams. Then if I, or another person capable of opening doors, goes to help, he screams and pushes against the door. His best "how dare you?" look is likely to follow.


Seeing that I was stuck in my room with him screaming and pushing against the door, I decided to document it. He found it very insulting.

Blessing Anniversary

Last year at this time, Jared had just begun a month-long rotation in Washington D.C. As you may have noted, we do not live in Washington D.C., or within any reasonable commuting distance of it. I was literally sweating every time I thought about it for months before. I don't do well during evenings on my own. By 5 or 6 o'clock, I'm pretty well ready for help (as in, I'm coming unhinged). And last September E. was 4 months old and an evening crier and an extremely clingy baby. Then there were those older three who, as you've seen in other posts, are not always at their angelic best.

Of course, as you've noticed, I'm good at complaining, so friends of mine knew what was coming. And while Jared was gone, one brought me a meal each week. One helped me get my kids ready for bed several times. Two people that I barely knew (one who had just moved here and one was investigating the church) came over on two separate evenings to help me feed the kids, clean up and get kids into bed. One friend came and took the older 3 for an evening park and ice cream outing. I met a friend (whose husband wasl ong-distance commuting across the country) to walk at the park in the mornings, and she and her kids came over once a week to share our crazy dinner and evening. And each week, Jared drove home for the weekend. Usually a long weekend. Actually, the last week, I think he came home on Tuesday night. (Fortunately he passed anyway.) All that help was a huge blessing, and an example to me of Christ-like love.

Being able to remember it is also a blessing on this gray, depressing day.

Bath Rules

The real reason that children should not be left unattended in the bath is that the combination of warm water, bath products and each other renders them incapable of resisting temptation. We have bath rules, but no set of rules is more thoroughly disregarded and disobeyed. And that's saying a lot. I'd say the basic rules are: no getting water outside the tub, no pouring water on other people's heads, and no dumping out entire bottles of baby soap, shampoo, etc. When one kid at our house gets in the bath (today the bath began because Eli had removed his diaper, pooped on the floor and then walked off to find me) the others invariably want to join in on the fun. The fun, however, seems to require getting a large amount of water on the floor (a few years ago, pre-blog, they (only A&L at the time) dumped bucketfuls out of the tub and we ended up with water raining down from the kitchen light fixture) and lately, with making "potions" with whatever they can find. We've gone through baby shampoo, body wash and face scrub in the last few weeks.

Today, Eli ended up with hair full of cold cream.

Cold showers for them from now on?