A Quiet Christmas

It was a very quiet Christmas here and in our home. Apparently, the majority of the Juniors and Lulubelles behaved sufficiently that there was no need for me to send emergency emails.GOOD!

Much better than I-

Much better than anything I could have written this weekend!

Another good one!

Please pray not only for the relatives of the Connecticut tragedy, but for parents everywhere who are so much like Nancy Lanza, with severely mentally ill children and doing their best. Until you've lived with it, you simply don't know.

Merry Christmas, Bill Cosby and Remember When

MERRY CHRISTMAS. If you celebrate something else, feel free to greet me with whatever that is. We celebrate Christmas here, taking a side trip here and there to Hanukkah. I get SICK of the "Happy Holidays" generic greeting. If you prefer it, grow a spine. If you don't, get a life, already! Just because somebody says, "Merry Christmas" does not mean they hate everything you stand for, and are out to make your life miserable and marginalized.
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Once upon a time, not too long ago, over a decade plus a couple years, which older people will tell you is no time at all- Belle was a very clever toddler who was bright and happy and just the cutest little girl in the world. Lulubelle was busy taking a stab at attempting to straighten out her life before she gave up on that; going to college; working part time; along with making the gesture of attempt to take care of Baby, who really was a baby then.

A frequent mother's helper during that time was the television. Before you judge, remember the Mister and I were there, and this was NOT when Baby developed her affinity for "Divorce Court" and "Maury." And please don't tell me how it effects vision- they see much better than I. This was in addition to reading to all the children, along with plenty of games and interaction. When we were there- and after I quit working full time, one of us was ALWAYS there for the most part- there was no "Tonight Show" or even so much as a whisper from "Jimmy Kimmel Live." There was "Bear in the Big Blue House", and "Rollie Polie Ollie", and "Oswald", and good programs whether current or in syndication, such as "Everybody Loves Raymond" and "the Cosby Show."

Belle's favorite, over Bear and Ojo, was Cosby. I have never in my lifetime seen a child, let alone a toddler, relay such affection to a sitcom. She seemed to be particularly interested in the newer episodes, those being the 7th and 8th seasons. We thought at first she had a thing for Raven, as Raven at the time was a small child much like herself. But we were never sure.

No. Belle was under the impression the Huxtables were her "other" family.

Belle was a very smart little girl. She's a smart young woman now, but back then, we were still impressed with how much she understood and when she understood it. In her two-year-old mind, she knew kids came from two parents, and each of those parents had a family as well. We figured this out because, when we asked her about the Huxtables, she called Cliff "Grandpa" and Claire "Granny." We knew that wasn't the Mister and me. He was "Papa" at the time, and we won't tell you who I was, because then you will know who I am. 

And as far as we could figure out, Theo was her father, the one who never came to see her except through the good offices of the cable box. And as sad as the story sounds, a two-year-old who replaces the father who was never there for her with a sitcom character, well, we had to give her props for dealing with her situation as best she could.

The Huxtables were actually preferable to the "other" family. Belle's real paternal grandmother has wanted nothing to do with our side of the family since the pending announcement of Belle's arrival. I wrote Sonny's mother what I considered a nice letter, and I received, on loose-leaf paper, a diatribe on what was wrong with me (she'd never met me), with my daughter, who stole Grandma's son- you get the point. I still have the letter in a box, lest it is ever needed for court. More than a few seemed on making grandbabies out-of-wedlock, second generation. But for the most part, Sonny's family seems to have preferred that we drift away with the grandchildren, no doubt somewhat due to some behaviors we discovered on Lulubelle's part, but certainly more than a fair share of their own foibles and faults.

So who would not prefer Cliff, Claire, Theo and the rest of the gang? Cliff and Claire would've set Theo straight if he had caused a pregnancy, and most certainly he would not have skipped out on child support or visitation. Their daughters were certainly nice, and little Winnie and Nelson would have made excellent cousins for Belle and Baby. I'm sure something would have been set aside for both Baby and Belle's college. For I all I know, Theo might be successfully raising the children now. If I was picking shows for Belle to prefer, "the Cosby Show" would have been at the top of the list. 

However, it was not Theo that was Belle's father substitute.

We were remembering, after the annual mental health check, when Belle was a member of the Huxtable family, if not in name then in desire.

"Why do you always say that about Theo?" Belle asked.

"Because you said 'Daddy' when he came on the screen," I replied.

"Yeah, but I didn't think he was my dad. I thought it was the other guy. I wanted the other guy to come on, but it was always Theo."

"Which other guy? Cockroach? Russel? Cliff? Elvin?"

"No. The Navy guy with the little girl. I used to pretend I was the little girl."

OK. This makes more sense. Joseph C. Phililps was Martin Kendall. In the show, he played a Navy officer. Belle's biological father is not an naval officer, but he should be retiring from the military next year (why they keep him confuses me greatly, but that's another story).

"Do you know who the little girl was?" I was about to launch into a monologue on "That's So Raven," another favorite show of Belle's.

"Of course. She was me. Some of our clothes were even the same. She was living with her grandparents in a nice house in a safe place. And they loved her."

Tears. And thankfulness for second-hand clothes and thrift stores. 
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Speaking of remembering when- I am stifling my craving to bring in Lulubelle's quilt and work on it. The kids who live here won't permit me to ruin my Christmas this year.

A Tale of Intrigue

When I was a girl, back in the days when we rode the dinosaur to school, it was not at all unusual for girls (and they were girls, not prewomen, not young women) under the age of fourteen to play with dolls. Little girls, those in the toddler through age 8 or even 9 bracket, played with baby dolls, and all that came with playing with baby dolls. Baby dolls had high chairs, and bottles, and diapers, and everything for the younger set to pretend they were mommies, and to mother as their mothers did the little girls. 

Older girls, girls not ready to date and too old to play with baby dolls, had other options. 

The first was the paper doll. Paper dolls came in a book with a theme, for anywhere from 29 cents to a whole dollar for the really good ones! Paper dolls lived life on the edge, between TV show characters, brides, airline stewardesses, teachers and nurses. Just about every book contained at least one male paper doll, be he the groom, a pilot, a doctor or the principal. 

While the theme of the paper doll book was established, and with the theme the wardrobe, a smart older girl could easily whip up a wardrobe by studying the position of the tabs that held on a particular paper doll's clothes. Into my second year of magnet high school as an art major, my paper dolls wore fringed vests, bell bottoms, flares, body shirts, headbands, hot pants and culottes. They hadn't come with those outfits. They came with a mid-1960s bridal outfit and changes of clothing for the honeymoon. It got to the point where I no longer imagined my dolls in each other's arms doing who-knows-what. I had a good idea of what did happen, having heard the tales in the locker room. I just enjoyed making the clothes, seeing how realistic I could make them by applying what I learned in class. I discovered years later that I was not the only girl in my high school to secretly harbor paper dolls, or to design wardrobes for them. Some managed to hang onto their fashions despite their mothers cleaning them out when they went to college. One left the designs on sheets of paper and put them in her portfolio. 

None of my daughters has ever enjoyed paper dolls. They didn't like the fact that they had to actually cut the dolls' clothes from the paper, even with the prepunched sets. Even the famous Tom Tierney paper dolls at Dover didn't inspire them. After six months, I swept them up and they are no more.

Belle and Baby do enjoy Barbies. So do I . So do a lot of other grown women, some in their 70s and 80s who were moms when Barbie came out.

In my day, Barbie drove a Corvette my parents never bought us. That's OK. Our Barbies drove a shoe box we converted to a truck, which doubled as a bus. Her house was made from Pampers boxes covered in wallpaper samples from the local furniture store. She sometimes worked at the Neisner's behind the soda fountain counter. But usually, she worked for our doctor in an office, as a nurse, sometimes as a pharma saleswoman. Barbie occasionally took the veil and taught at a Catholic school. We often fashioned our own clothes for Barbies, not bothering with patterns and the like. 

As I got older, Barbie faded off with my sisters. I would sometimes play with my youngest sister and cousins when I baby-sat, strictly to help her out of course. Barbie was in love with Donny Osmond, but wasn't fond of Marie. Barbie dated Greg Brady and David Cassidy. Barbie finally got her car. 

I've heard the stories, about how Barbie is bad for the self-image of girls, and those hard plastic boobs make young girls pine away that their bodies are hopelessly never going to be as perfect as Barbie, with her feet shaped exactly for high heels. Balderdash. Barbie sparks the imagination, and that is a good thing.

One of the ways we found out Belle and Baby were in peril was Baby's recitation of TV programs in preschool. The other kids told the teacher, an older woman who had been teaching for some time, about Rollie Pollie Ollie or Bear in the Big Blue House or even Arnold and the Wild Thornberries. Not Baby.

Baby's first show described a man and a "lady" on stools, watched when Lulubelle was allegedly taking a nap during the afternoon. Another man, with a giant stick and wearing glasses, told the man on the stool, "It's 99% not your baby." The man apparently hurled invectives at the "lady" who screamed and cried. Her second show described a "lady in a long dress at a big table with a hammer" who listened to a man and "a lady in a pit." After listening to the woman cry and the man scream, the lady at the table banged her hammer, and said, "Divorce granted. All the money goes to the wife."

It was bad enough to know that Baby was left alone to watch "Jerry Springer" and "Divorce Court" at the age of 3 and 4. But when we found out Lulubelle left both kids to watch nighttime TV, we really started paying attention.

After we took her to our house again, some days later, Baby lined up the Barbies we'd scavenged on a toy couch. Baby had a big furry bank form the zoo, purchased by the Mister in an indulgent mood, called Wolfie. All of the sudden from the kids' room we heard, "And now, Live from Las Vegas, it's the Tonight Show, with Wolfie the Wolf and his Wolfman Band. Tonight's guests are Barbie 1, Barbie 2, Jerry Seinfeld, and tonight's host, Wolfie the Wolf, live from Las Vegas!"

It was later in play therapy that we discovered the kids had been left to do as they pleased through the night, as Lulubelle was asleep with her face on the keyboard of her computer, after drinking the "brown stuff" as the kids called it. They apparently preferred Jay Leno over Dave Letterman, a wise choice in my opinion. Barbie has been very helpful indeed.

These days, Baby still plays with Barbies, while Wolfie has been retired to a ranch in the San Fernando Valley, which is also Baby's desk. Belle will occasionally join in, and even a couple of the kids' friends have been known to participate a time or two.

TV is strictly regulated in our house. An adult must be in the house when the TV is on, in case questions are raised. The digital programming controls who sees what and when. But the kids are older now, and the shows have changed. The Barbies, as they are called, and were always called, live new lifestyles and have new adventures spawned by TV and imaginations.

The Polly Pockets were recently sent to juvenile hall as the result of mention of juvy in a Disney show. And the Barbies are on the move: 3 are in witness protection, under new identities. Hawaiian Barbie has taken up residence as the head of the Five-0 team, replacing Steve McGarrett, who was captured by Wo Fat and the alleged CIA agent who claimed to be his mother, then made Wo Fat's houseboy on an undisclosed island- and poor Steve must cook and clean, every day. Fashion Barbie is actually a CIA agent, who has a back story of another life in Seattle working for Microsoft, and was the jilted girlfriend of Bill Gates. You don't even want to know about the turnout at the Barbie National Convention, with a Barbie standing in for Condi Rice, Sarah Palin and Ann Romney (yes their Barbies are diverse, but strong in party unity).

Just Living Life

I haven't written anything in almost a month. 

Communication from other grandparents who follow this blog has been minimal. I think we're all busy, with education in full-force, not to mention all that autumn stuff.

Belle is being confirmed in a few weeks. While I have already been confirmed, thank you (in 1967), receiving the Sacrament of Confirmation means a great deal of preparation in the United States. The prep work is all on Belle, but as she isn't quite old enough to drive, the chauffeur service depends largely on me and the local public trans. Yes, I let the kids use public transportation. But public trans doesn't get everywhere at every hour, so it's up to me to make sure she gets where she's going when it doesn't.

I picked up a carload of pumpkins from the pumpkin farm. The farm charges by the car, and there were already kids occupying my small "clown" car. Nonetheless, we managed to get in quite a few pumpkins, some in places we never imagined. Pumpkin pie at home will be fresh, as will ravioli and gnocchi. We've already harvested the seeds of 8 Jack O' Lanterns, and we have at least thirty to go.

Herbal plants have been moved indoors, along with my geraniums. Geraniums make me very happy in winter, as did rosemary last year. I'm hoping the big pots of oregano, basil and peppermint bring the same cheer this coming winter. 

Other than that, it's been college Western Civ I with the kids on Mondays and Wednesdays, followed by English 101 on Tuesdays and Thursdays. It amazes me that college courses I CLEPed as an adult, these kids are taking with ease. Belle is scheduled to start College Algebra in the spring. If you knew her pedigree, you would know how unprecedented this is, a female mathematics genius in our family! I've heard my two nieces were very good at math, and the one now a scientist is an ace. My Lulubelle struggled with any type of math, and  while I passed College Algebra, as well as Intro to Accounting, math has not always been my thing. My mother always claimed the girls in our family "just aren't good at math," something that was pointed out as a fallacy to me by my second grade teacher. Anyway, Western Civ is blending itself into a variety of readings and writing, almost a semester unit study.

Novels for class time have included Theras and His Town (how we skipped this in the past I have no idea), the Year Money Grew on Trees and Sophie's World. The research that accompanies college classes can be a little intimidating, even for these kids. Sophie's World ties in nicely with all the survey reading their instructor has them doing of ancient authors. 

Baby is herself, as ever. Our pastor thought he was getting another Belle when he saw Baby enter his Confirmation prep class! Oh no! Baby is conscientious in her own right, but she loves to have fun, loves to cut up, and is not afraid to speak her mind. He will find her assignments match those of her friends in class, even if she has to call them five minutes before they are due. 

So, that's our autumn thus far. The kids have their Halloween costumes planned, invitations to parties now that they're older.  Confirmation will bring my very dear friend from out-of-town, to serve as Belle's sponsor. Thanksgiving will come immediately after that, and then the Christmas rush will begin!

Grab an Affy Tapple before the season ends at your local Woodman's! Autumn is really my favorite season, for a lot of reasons. I intend to be out in it every day if I can do so.

Next Year's Garden Shapes Up

I am continuing my hanging garden plans for next year, the one that's going to grow between the poles formerly known as clotheslines. I don't hang laundry from them, so they might as well be useful for something. 

I estimated I needed at least 52, up to 72, hanging containers. I managed to pick up more Topsy Turvies, bringing my count up to 20. I'm saving gallon milk jugs, gallon vinegar jugs (we use it as a fabric softener for certain items), gallon detergent jugs and 3-liter soda pop bottles. We are at the 52 mark, so only 20 to go.  Drink up!

I have to protect the roots from overexposure to the sun, growing upside down like that. I suppose I could wrap the planters in a blue or green duct tape, much like a Topsy Turvy, but I think that would ruin my garden aesthetic. So, I cut down some already smallish pillow cases that weren't doing anybody any good and made bottle snoods. They have drawstrings top and bottom, and maybe I'll market them. I'm going to try a couple with Velcro as well. Hanging is a cinch: I have a pile of wire coat hangers nobody will use.

I was looking for something stronger than wire or clothesline on which to run the planters. I found this nifty steel cable at the big-box home supply store that is placed in a plastic tubing of sorts.  I'll put the metal clips onto the cable, first, then hang the cable in place.

As long as I am going for the gusto, I am also looking for other ways to stack and hold planters. I'm certainly not moving my wire baker's rack to the yard! I was thinking of converting a couple of old bookshelves that have stood the test of time. If I don't get to that, I can always make shelves with old boards, bricks and cinderblock. 

We're going to try a few experiments next year. I have some old boxes that are deep, that can have drainage holes so the containers can hold carrots, rutabagas, radishes, broccoli, garlic and onions. Not sure about doing potatoes that way. We have some cleared and ungrassed ground for in-the-ground veggies and fruits as well. 

As far as dirt- I have two compost piles at present. They meet local code and are covered. I am not going as far as putting human waste, or any animal parts whatsoever into them. Leaves, veggie and fruit peelings, worms to root around and aerate the soil. I have spare soil, about 200 pounds, and a big supply of Perlite and sand to lighten things up. I also have several fertilizers I bought at close-out. 

So now I am foraging seeds, both from plants we eat, plants we've grown, and close-outs at local stores. There was an interesting experiment on  growing pumpkins inside pumpkin shells that I'm anxious to try. We currently are set with: peppers of various colors, cucumbers of various sizes and uses, squashes that do and don't squish, herbs galore, chards and kales.

I will be making more planter snoods during the winter, and checking the compost, turning the soil. I can't start seeds indoors until at least early February. All in all, it's starting to be a lot more fun than I thought it would be. The kids are interested as well, except for the composting part.   

ddd 

Ring out the bells! Go get the dresses!

We have been invited to FOUR weddings this Autumn: Two cousins, a godson and an aunt.  While we won't be able to attend the godson's wedding Texas,we will be able to attend the local or near-local nuptials. 

This requires dresses for Belle and Baby. There is only one small problem. They are in growth spurts. Up. Tall. 

I am at a loss as to where the tall comes in. My mother's brother is quite tall, as were several late uncles from my father's side. My father is 5'7". Ex is about 5'9". Sonny, my Lulubelle's ex, is 5'7", while Lulubelle is 5'8" (Junior, our son, is 5'6"). My mother is 5'8", as is one of my sisters. I am 5'4".  I also have a sister who is just 5' even. So, while the DNA lottery points to short, it seems the kids are going to be tall. They give the Mister credit for it, at 5'11", but he actually has no chromosomal input into the matter of their height.  

Not only is this tallness affecting dress purchases, it is affecting ALL clothes purchases for the kids. Both Belle and Baby grew an inch overnight, within 3 weeks of each other. Belle can no longer hand down clothes and shoes to Baby. They wear the same size clothes; moreover, Baby wears a larger shoe size than Belle. Belle and I can exchange shoes, and do, as long as we're not going to the same place and want the same shoes. 

So, I have waited until a week before the first wedding to go shopping for dresses. I'm glad I did. The dresses they tried on in July at a closeout would never fit them now without leggings. 

And I can mend, and do lovely handwork such as embroidery and quilts. But I don't sew clothes well. I've never gotten the construction thing. I took 2 years of drafting in high school, as well as 4 years of commercial art, so my view of sewing clothes is not the same as a woman who learned to sew in a class. What often happens is a look of horror, followed by, "You made that, didn't you?" For all my advanced spatial ability, I can't do fabric 2D to 3D. I've tried imagining dresses as just a lumpy quilt, or upholstery. No dice.

Belle still has to practice walking in heels and not killing herself or others. She got the prettiest pair of plum kitten heels at a liquidation sale. Her Confirmation outfit in November will hopefully match them, provided she doesn't grow again, foot-wise. 

So, it's off to attempt to find two dresses, preferably that match shoes we already own (not Baby's "boy" PF Flyers-style gym shoes).  It should be interesting, hopefully not traumatic. The wallet will hopefully cover the expense.