Ramalamadingdong

This week is not going as planned, so far. But not all in a bad way.

Yesterday began not going to plan on Sunday night, when I realised that I was scheduled to co-op at nursery school the next morning. I had vaguely planned on going back to Target and finalizing some of the gift shopping - the gift shopping that I'd done a week earlier and that had been helpfully sitting on my bedroom floor for the next six days, waiting for me to do something else useful with it.

This problem was compounded on Monday afternoon when I discovered that that very day, not some vague date in the misty future, was the last day for posting by regular mail to Europe. Oops. Because of course 90% of the stuff in the bag on my bedroom floor was to be mailed to Europe, but I'd been waiting for this and that, for the perfect final present to present itself to me at the weekend's craft fair or some other opportune place, before wrapping it. I also subconsciously felt that B. should partake in the wrapping so that he had some input in all this shopping I'd done for members of his family, but since I didn't tell him that, and last week was busy with various meetings and whatnot, it hadn't happened.

Finally, last night, we sat down and had our gift-wrapping extravaganza, and happily we did have enough wrapping paper and tape and I had even bought a box at the post office that was the right size, all of which are no trivial matters.

So that was ready to be mailed first thing this morning, which would only be one day late and therefore practically in time, and would probably make it to Ireland before the big day anyway. Which would have been simple if this was a normal Tuesday, but then we got a snow day.
                                           
Monday had already been a delayed-start for the schools thanks to Sunday night's snow and ice storm, but then it snowed all morning here and they cancelled school entirely. It's only about an inch, and melting already, but I suppose the schools didn't want to deal with the potential mess of getting all the buses in during a snowstorm. We're not in Colorado, you know. Maryland is technically the South, and thus Not Great With Winter.

However, it was the good sort of snow day. The sort when B. has one too. Yes, yes, he was "working from home," but that also meant I could send him to the post office once the snow eased off, which it did at midday or so, and the roads had all been nicely treated so they were fine. So, BOOM, the parcel has been mailed and with a bit of luck everyone in Ireland will get their presents in time after all, and even if they don't, it's out of my hands now.

While he was doing that, I got off my arse and went through the recipes I've been meaning to try out and we made pretzels! BAM! Where's my snow-day baking award?

And Dash made a snowman all by himself for the first time. It's a little leafy, perhaps, but he's proud of it.

In the afternoon, B went out with Dash and got a Christmas tree, which we hadn't got around to doing yet, so that's something else we don't have to wait till next weekend for. DING!

It's beginning to look a lot like...

Welcome

Mild is not a word that's ever applied to the weather in America. In Ireland, it implies an element of grateful surprise that it's not any colder. The weather is mild right now, which is lovely. It's not warm, but it's warmer than we have any right to expect at this point in October. It can be mild and raining at the same time, of course, but if it's mild and breezy and the clouds are scudding past, it's really very pleasant.

The plane came in at 4.30 am and Ireland came up with its fairy lights, as Louis Macniece said, even though it's not Christmas. They were little orange dots, like Lucozade. Exactly like Lucozade.

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That was Monday, and now it's Friday. We've been pretty useful, but I still wonder how we got to the end of the weekdays without feeling like we've done more than dip our toe into being here at all. We've established that Mabel will happily exist on unlimited potato waffles while Dash would like to eat nothing but fresh-baked baguettes from the local shops. Along with milk and chocolate biscuits, these will form the basis of their diets for two weeks, and I'm sure they won't die or develop rickets in that time. Probably.

I've also been reminded that while Dash in personality is very attached to schedule and routine and predictability, in physiology he adapts much more quickly to the five-hour time difference than his sister does. However, since Mabel has slept through, or almost through, every night - in contrast to past years when she's been wide awake and wanting to play at 3am for nights on end - I suppose I'll forgive her the screaming and kicking and hysterical "I'm not tired"-ing at 11.30 for the past two nights.

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Never mind all this talking. How about a picture or two...

Rat's arse

This morning it was still so humid that it was positively smelly outdoors, and I put on capris and a t-shirt and sandals again and complained loudly. Since then the deluge has reached us, the lawn (ahem) is dotted liberally with yellow leaves from the trees behind us, and everything's a lot more autumnal. I made soup for lunch. It's still humid, but getting better.

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I went to a local clothing co-op used clothes/books/toys sale at the weekend, and I had to take the kids with me because their father was out on his Saturday morning long run. I promised they could each get a toy so long as they let me look in the big room with the clothes first. I was in search of one thing: snow boots for each child. I found a perfect pair for Mabel, but the price I paid was more than the $5 I happily forked over to the nice lady at the desk, because in the toy room a disgruntled Dash found the most horrible toy in the world, and I was powerless to refuse, since it cost a mere two dollars.

It's a plastic rat. It is remote controlled, and its little red eyes light up as it whizzes around the kitchen floor. It is the embodiment of evil. And now it lives in my house.

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My body is rebelling against the computer by giving me a sore wrist. It can't really tell me any louder that I need to lay off the Facebook and go and read a book. And yet, here I still am. I'm getting better at surfing with my left hand, mind you.

And/or

What a relief! Summer went away and it's nice and cool and rainy today. I'm sure there are people out there complaining about it - and I'm sure I'll be one of them this afternoon when the children are all cabin-fevery and/or then I have to take Dash to baseball practice in the rain/mud - but right now my brain has switched back on and I can inhale deeply and I'm wearing my jeans and socks and it's good. All that sunshine was giving me a headache.

And I let Mabel's feet get sunburnt yesterday because I slathered her up nicely with sunscreen on arms and legs and face and neck but forgot that she would inevitably ditch her new purple sandals after ten minutes on the playground and leave her lily-white hoofers in the direct glare of the midday sun. Bad mother. (It's okay, they're not lobstered. Just a little extra pink.)

The pink and purple blossoms look positively luminous in the rain, too. It's very April-showery.

A little bloggy PSA and self-publicizing now. As you might recall, I'm going to the BlogHer conference this summer, which is very exciting/terrifying, and because I'm paying more attention to my e-mails from BlogHer I noticed that they are now accepting submissions for Voices of the Year, which is a way they recognise some of the best blog posts from the past year. Even though I always assumed the people who won these things were the "big bloggers," I thought what the heck, and submitted two of my favourite posts, because why not, and who else is going to ever notice your best work if you don't tell them where to look?

The main awards are decided on by a panel of readers, which is fair and means that the blogs with the big readerships don't scoop everything just because they have more people to vote for them; but there's also a reader's choice prize, and if you happen to be also a member of BlogHer, I'd be really delighted if you'd like to take a moment to go and vote for either or both of my nominations, if you like them. (You can still vote for everyone else as well if you feel that would be fairer.)

The page to vote for the first one is here, and the second is here. You can click through to the posts themselves from each of those pages.

And if you have a blog and are a BlogHer member, go and nominate your own favourite posts too and then tell me about it. (You can join BlogHer just to do it.) Share the love.

Boom! Spring

And then, with barely a day's grace, it was not so much spring as a full-blown dress rehearsal for summer.

At least, I hope it's just a dress rehearsal, because I'm not ready for leg-baring and constant sunscreen just yet. I demand that we have some days in the 60s and lower 70s, because taking us straight from 50s to 80s is not helpful.

Now all my Irish readers are putting their best sarcastic faces on and saying "Pity about ya" because their best chance of seeing 83 degrees all year is inside a mug of tea; but it has its drawbacks, this weather.

And now in best Irish tradition, I will proceed to find things to complain about:

1. I've had to start hanging the washing on the line again, because my tiny shred of environmental consciousness won't let me use the dryer in this weather. Though I did cheat by putting the socks and underwear in the dryer because hanging up 265 individual socks with clothes pegs drains my will to live and uses up all my good Facebooking time.

1b. You know what's a little annoying? When you spend all that time hanging out the washing and taking in the washing and find that out of a huge big load there are no more than five items that actually belong to you. And three of those are socks.

2. It's too hot. I'm getting sweaty. I haven't been sweaty since October, and I like it that way. Ugh. Armpits. Yuck.

3. Sunshine. It's giving me a headache.

3b. Sunscreen. Children. Sigh.

4. Birds. Damn birds, singing chirpily all over the gaff. I don't mind, mostly, except that I left Mabel's window open last night because it was so mild/stuffy, and she woke up at 1am, 2am, and 5am, and I'm blaming at least one of those on the deafening dawn chorus.

5. Water. I have to start bringing water everywhere for the children, or - preferably - making them carry their own. But they can't reach the filter jug in the fridge, so I'm still the one constantly refilling it and pouring the water and washing the water bottles with their annoying multiple straw parts and why can't they just be dehydrated and like it, like we did? (Do Irish mothers tote water everywhere for their children in the summer nowadays? I think not.)

The ritual imbibing of the water

 6. My feet. Aaaghhhh the state of my feet. I've put on the ritual first coat of toenail polish, but they're still crying out for a pedicure. Or just your basic amputation, that might make them look better.

6b. Sandals. I have sandals, actually. I bought the same pair that I loved last year when I found them on sale in February. How's that for forward planning? Of course, I'm still wearing the old ones because I want to keep the new ones nice and new-looking. Maybe I need more sandals.

7. The annual putting on of clothes I haven't worn for six months and discovering that, well, they pretty much still fit. But not as well as when I bought them. On the other hand, now that I'm not brewing a pot of tea every five minutes to keep me warm, maybe my muffin consumption will slow down. Just as soon as I get this loaf of banana bread and chocolate bunny out of the way.

New nails, old sandals. (Stupid toes.)

But I suppose we'll just soldier on and make the best of it, until proper spring comes back and we can complain about something else for a while.

Promise

The trees are holding next week's blossoms tightly furled and fuzzy in the palms of their many hands, each one ready to burst forth given just a little more sunshine, a little more warmth, a little more time. They are a beautiful dark red, waiting to explode into pink.

The sky is grey, briefly blue, streaked with white, then grey again. A flurry of snowflakes, a handful of gravelly graupel, some rain that starts and stops and starts again. It's a particularly hard March, and that's just on this side of the Atlantic. At least here I can be pretty sure that eventually spring warmth will come - and after that (with luck, not too soon after) the hot and humid days of summer. In Ireland, though the flowers will bloom and the trees will sway green and lush in the breeze, warmth is what you yearn for and heat will probably only be found somewhere further afield. It will come, the warmth, but not as much or for as long as everyone might like.

 
It's the grey first day of spring break and already the children have dropped their bikes and invaded the neighbour's house, where the toys are better and the snacks more plentiful. I just had a phone call from across the road to ask if they could eat a piece of leftover birthday cake. I was a little surprised that I was being asked such a no-brainer.

Purveyor of Cake: "Dash suggested I call and make sure it was okay to give you some."
Me: "Ah, isn't that sweet of him? What a good child."
P of C: "Mabel suggested she'd have some even if you said no."

That there pretty much sums up the children's personalities at the moment. Up and down; a little give, a lot of take; potential everywhere: just like spring.

Compare and contrast

It's a very Irish-looking day here in America, with the rain, no rain, torrential rain, less rain, no rain until you go out in it, and some rain going on all morning. Looking out the window I'm hard pressed to say what makes it America at all.

I see tall trees, taller than my house in suburban Dublin would have around it, but no taller than some in other parts of Ireland might be. They're still winter-spindly with no sign of spring, but some of the others I noticed this morning have a tiny amount of pink fuzz, just enough to make you gasp in relief, finally heralding a change. The air is softer today too; mild, we'd call it, which is an oft-used word in Ireland for any day when it's not bitter. Those are pretty much our extremes, I think.

The grass is wrong, I know. The grass in my back yard is dead yellow, with tufts of new-growth green in between. That doesn't happen to Irish grass: it stays lush and dark all year. You never understand why the tourists all exclaim over the greenth of the country until you've had a winter somewhere else, or a summer somewhere else for that matter.

There are still dead leaves wet at the bottom of the garden, in the corners and crevices. We're probably supposed to scoop them up, but more likely they'll stay there and turn to mush, to loam eventually, perhaps. We can keep hoping they'll blow away instead. Ivy climbs up the treetrunks, looking just like Irish ivy, dark green on craggy wood against a grey sky. My garden shed does not look like a garden shed. It seems here you can have two types of shed: the sort that looks like a miniature house, or the sort that looks like a barn. Mine looks like a barn, because it's an Amish shed, I'm told. Irish sheds are not Amish. They look like sheds. (If you need further explanation, you're not Irish. I'm not going to try.)

We have a deck, which is unIrish, and a rotary clothesline exactly like the one that still adorns my parents' back garden. I have wooden clothes pegs and plastic ones, but my parents only have wooden ones that are blackened  and thin with exposure and use - becuase in Ireland if you miss the start of the rain, you may as well just leave the clothes out there until the wind starts blowing them again. Here, I am lazy and use the clothes dryer in the winter. I blame it on my Reynaud's, which makes my hands painfully numb doing things like that in cold weather, but the truth is that we have the luxury of large American appliances, and I bask in that luxury and exploit it.

It's lashing again. Torrential. Floods, cats and dogs, Datsun cogs as the old joke goes; pissing, we'd uncouthly say in Dublin. Good for spring, I suppose. A couple more weeks and we'll be surrounded by the beautiful blossoms of the pear trees that line our streets here in the neighbourhood, and the days will be sunny and more than mild and the sky will be blue, and America will look nothing like Ireland once again. Except for my clothesline, the constant.

Geo

The children are ... where are the children?... upstairs, maybe getting dressed, maybe something else... it's Sunday morning, Paul Simon is crooning about a train in the distance, and I feel I should be waxing lyrical. Maybe it's the fault of the music, maybe it's the day, I don't know. The husband is out running, checking out part of the route for his marathon in a couple of weeks' time.

I can't write to music, though; at least not music with words, and I don't really see the point of the other sort. I mean, it's nice, but if I'm just going to try to shut it out so I can concentrate, then I may as well not turn it on. I've never been one of those people who studies with music in the background. Maybe it's because my house was always quiet, so I didn't need to drown out other people to get my homework done. Another of those unnoticed advantages of onlychildhood.

If you gaze out the window for about ten minutes, concentrating hard, you might just catch a snowflake surruptitiously sneaking out of the sky. It's too warm for snow, but for some reason that's what the atmosphere wants to give us, so beyond the bare branches is the colour of nothing and now and then something escapes in the form of a six-sided crystal. I don't know why.

It was doing this yesterday too, when we pulled ourselves out of our Saturday-morning decline/recline and stopped putting on the kettle for another cup of tea and remembered that we have a national park five minutes down the road so there's no need to drive for half an hour and pay a king's ransom to get into a zoo or something. We went geocaching instead.

The kids know about geocaching. They know that sometimes we find little plastic boxes in the woods and sometimes they have toys in them. You're supposed to take a little thing and leave a little thing. We hadn't brought any little things to leave. So we took a pterodactyl from the first box, with B promising to run by and put in something else in return the next day. Then we exchanged the pterodactyl for an orange not-T-Rex in the next one, and finally went home with a green lambeosaurus from the last one. Mabel is particularly pleased because she has a tiny blue lambeosaurus already, who must have been missing her mommy.

Finding the first one went like this:

B: Look, I think this is it.
Mabel: Toys, toys!
B: Not toys. A cache.
Mabel: It's not cash, it's toys.

We had to admit that it was. Anyway, we were outdoors and the children were walking on their own feet and nobody complained and we found nature-y things like rotten logs and deer droppings and a hollow tree trunk and a lot of sticks and it was really quite nice and we should do it again.

A lucky escape

They are thick as thieves, these two, these days. The terrible twosome, double trouble, a handful indeed - at times, two handsful and then some.

She has some clothing on, I promise. You just can't see it.

Remember last summer, when I was a little wistful because Mabel was in a hating phase, experimenting with mean words and cruel actions, and pushing her brother away? Since then she has definitely discovered the power of cooperation, the delights of teamwork and also how much fun it is to gang up on one defenseless parent. At bedtime. When the other has gone to a meeting. For instance.

I had a big long whiny rant here about how tired I am and how hard it is and why am I supposed to not just lock them into their rooms at bedtime to avoid all that undignified crying (of mine), but luckily for you, then I uploaded the photos and would much rather show you some more of those instead.

 

Then they noticed the snow.

Hooray for hand-me-down coats, thrift-store snowboots and yard-sale snow pants. Hat from Dunnes Stores.

Not enough for snowmen, but just about enough to make a grassy snow angel.

There's a fence there before the big drop, you just can't see it.

The snow brings all the kids to my back yard. (That's Mabel and Dash on the left.) After half an hour's sledding there was hardly any snow left on the grass, so they were forced to abandon sled and go to school instead.

Chill

It's a gloriously sunny 20-degree day outside.

All my Irish readers just went "Aaahhhh" in jealous approval. All my American readers went "Brr" in sympathy - or empathy depending on where they are. Twenty degrees farenheit, you see. That's minus six Celcius. Yes. A bit chilly.

I think, as a child, I had the idea that the temperature could only ever be below freezing in the middle of the night when everyone was tucked up warm in their beds. Freezing point, or "zero" as we funny Europeans call it, was the mark of civilization. Only Eskimos, probably, in their cosy igloos, lived where it was that cold on a regular basis.

Apparently I'd never heard of Canada. Or the northern half of the US. Or Russia or even Central Europe, I suppose. (Actually, I was very vague about what and where Canada was. It just never came up. I had no idea that Anne Shirley lived there and that it was not the USA, for instance, and when I read a book set in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, I assumed those were makey-uppey names. Because really. (And I'd just like to illustrate how far I've come by telling you that I just spelled that right first time without checking.))

Anyway, it's very cold outside but pretty nice inside, and I've made the concession of wearing a thermal vest (that's not a vest, if you're American - undershirt?) and I've got my knee socks on and I'm quite toasty, thank you. I'm sure I'm not doing this right, but in this part of the country weather like this doesn't happen often and doesn't last very long, and for all that I complain about the summer weather (and yes, I do complain), I'm happy that we don't live in Minnesota or Montana or even Maine at this time of the year.

Frequent rainbows

I always have Good Hair in Ireland. My skin feels softer, I wore my contact lenses two days running without my eyes shrivelling up and falling out, and when I made lemon scones for yesterday's brunch - even though the tablespoon measure I used turned out to be not-a-tablespoon and I had to chuck in a load more flour to soak up the extra milk - the dough was soft and dreamy to work with and the scones turned out perfectly.

No wonder people want to live here, is what I'm saying. Near-constant rain is a small price to pay for eternal youth and forgiving dough. And to be honest, today is the first day of actual soakage, precipitation-wise. A few drops fell when we were at a playground the other day and we started to head for the shops, but I noticed that all the local children didn't budge, and after a few minutes' dalliance by the park fountain, the drops had ceased and everyone was back on the swings.

Today, in contrast, is one of those days that just looks grey until you focus on the middle distance as you look out the window and the steady tiny drops resolve themselves like a magic-eye picture and you realise that it's lashing. It's the wetting-est rain, this stealth rain - not a torrential downpour as we might get in America, but a constant, fine mist just on the falling side of gravity, sometimes driven sideways by the wind. This qualifies as a filthy day, with no innuendo necessary.

Rain is forecast for the rest of the week, which is about right, since we're heading down the country (out of town, as you might say) for a little extended-family getaway for a couple of days. I had hoped for walks on the beach, but not in the rain.

And then I went upstairs to find something and got sidetracked by a leftover scone or two, and the rain stopped and a big wodge of blue appeared in the sky and Mabel called me into the bathroom to show me the beautiful rainbow. She's never seen a rainbow before, because they're a much rarer phenomenon in the US, and also because when you tell a four-year-old to look over there while you're driving and you see something interesting, they don't find the right direction for ten minutes and by then it's long gone.

I'm sure there's a metaphor in here somewhere.

Ramblin'

Gah. I'm sitting here trying to remember the great idea I had for a blog post last night in bed, and I know it was about two things that were like each other but different and I could draw parallels and... uh...I don't even know if it was a real idea or one of those things that sounds perfectly practical when you're about to fall asleep but actually involves a minature elephant and twenty-five pints of purple rubber and won't work in real life because I don't live in Mongolia anyway.

I'm sure it would have been great. A literary gem. Instead, let us give thanks for bullet points:

• My new phone just arrived and I'm waiting impatiently for the battery to charge so I can play with it. It's sort of a smart phone - in that it has a touch screen and can use the internet and appy things - but I'm still pay-as-you-go so I'll only use the Internet at home and in places with free wi-fi. I know, this seems kinda stupid, but it made sense to me. I don't need a real smartphone because I'm mostly at home within five feet of my beloved laptop with an actual keyboard.
• The weather is ridiculously warm and I've hung the laundry outside again, which I only do when it's warm enough for my fingers not to go numb. Which usually means I use the dryer from October to March. 
• I spent this morning baking cookies for KeAnne, who bid for them in the Hurricane Sandy fundraiser. I hope she likes 'em crunchy, because they're crunchy. And sweet. And buttery. (We've sampled a few. Just to be sure.)
• I was delighted with myself for finally booking dental checkups for the kids and for myself. The reminder postcards had been floating around the sideboard for months. Then I found myself reading an old blog entry (what? it's like leafing through your own photo album, you know?) and discovered that they went to the dentist as recently as last August so they're not overdue at all. However, I suspect Dash has a cavity (on a brand-new adult molar! it must have come up that way) so I think we'll keep his appointment anyway.

Now I have to figure out how to package these cookies so that I can mail them tomorrow. (I'm told popcorn is the answer. I also have bubble wrap.) So if you'll excuse me, I'll be back tomorrow, maybe even with some purple rubber and an elephant.

A Half-Baked Auction

Bake sale! Buy baked goods for Christmas! Contribute to a good cause! Help victims of Hurricane Sandy!

Go to A Half-Baked Life today or tomorrow and bid on some delicious home-baked goodies to fill in that awkward gap between Thanksgiving and Christmas, to give to your loved ones, or to pass off as your own creations.

The white-chocolate-chip-cranberry cookies and the gingerbread muffins are my contributions, but I also highly recommend JeCaThRe's oatmeal cookies, and I bet everything else listed is just as good, if not better.

Sorry, no overseas shipping. If you're in Ireland, maybe we can do a deal over Christmas, though.

Many thanks to JHL for organizing this in aid of a great cause.

The long long weekend

It was cosy in the basement, and we couldn't even hear the winds that were lightly battering the house (like tempura) and not actually, in the event, felling any of the surrounding trees or even tossing the neighbour's un-put-away deck furniture at our windows. What's more, and against all expectations, the stairs light shone all night and the alarm clock I'd optimistically plugged in beside our mattresses on the floor glowed the time redly all the way to 6:23, when Mabel could be restrained by boobies no longer and demanded that Daddy play magnetic dress-up with her.

I'd imagined that opening the door at the top of the stairs this morning would be like entering a post-apocalyptic world, with the possibility (if not the actuality) of strewn possessions, shards of window-glass and broken ornaments, maybe a huge bough coming through the ceiling, scattering wet leaves on our bed and letting the cold wind blow through the house. Maybe no house at all, just grey open sky and the leaves of a sodden paperback whipping back and forth in the cold breeze.

(Maybe zombies. Having an American house with a basement of the sort that is always spooky in movies used to disconcert me a bit. But last night, the basement was homely and comforting. Also, I'm pretty sure all the crickets down there are dead by now.)

Instead of devastation, of course, there was just the usual debris of a day spent at home with no energy left to clean up at the end. Lego people, cushions, pieces of paper with scribbled notes that must be kept forever, half crayons. A couple of dirty coffee cups, some glasses of half-drunk water, cookie crumbs on countertops. Lovely electric light emanating from the microwave and the stove and the inside of the fridge.

Nothing new, nothing dramatic. Home the way it should be, the way it always is. Lucky us.

It was pretty wild outside last night as Hurricane Sandy made landfall up the coast from us, but we didn't flood, we didn't lose power, and no trees fell on our house - or anywhere nearby that I can see. We've had two extra days of weekend in which to bake and clean and play family games and obsessively refresh Twitter. We'll move ahead into the rest of the week - trick-or-treating tomorrow, Mabel's birthday party on Sunday - refreshed and reinvigorated, if somewhat weighed down with too many cups of tea and oatmeal cookies.

Not everyone gets to be so lucky, and we're thankful.

Defying the patriarchy of language

Mabel and I went to get Dash from school yesterday afternoon as the storm continued to threaten. It was warm and very windy, but not yet as dark as I'd expect if the rain was on the way any minute. (Still, we drove the half mile there just in case.)

It seemed like we weren't the only people to arrive early. Everyone wanted to get their kids and get them home before whatever tornadoes we were in store might come. The kindergarteners came out first, as they do. After a few minutes, the teachers started herding the ones who hadn't immediately been retrieved back into the building. Then they called everyone else in too. We scuttled in as the first drops began to fall.

"Did it turn into a warning?" I asked, meaning the hurricane watch. "Yes," they said. I eyed the roof of the gym we were standing in and decided it looked just like those metal roofs you see mangled and twisted off buildings that have been hit by hurricanes. I also eyed my very pregnant friend and asked her if she felt like going into labor right this moment. She thought she might hang on a bit. All of a sudden the rain hit the roof with a thunderous noise. I wondered if we'd all become like one big grumpy family as we bedded down in the school for the night.

Mabel and I moved into the hallway where the roof looked more solid, and milled around some more. They told us we could go down to the classrooms and find our children, so we went to pick up Dash from the computer room. He and Mabel were getting a bit high spirited (let's say), so I herded them over to a corner where I felt they wouldn't be in anyone's way if they ran around in circles for a minute.

The minute was up, and I decided things were crazy enough without having my children ricocheting into the walls. I stopped Dash and tried to talk some sobriety into Mabel by invoking the power of authority.

- Stop running around. See that lady over there? That's the principal. She'll send us out in the rain if you keep running like that.
- That's the principal? But she's a girl.
- Yes, ladies can be principals too.
- But she shouldn't be called a principal then.
...
- Oh, you think she should be a princessipal?
- Yes!

Or a queenipal, she said later.

Then the tornado warning was called off, the rain eased a bit, and we all went home. 

Storm's a-comin'

Nobody dies in Ireland from tornadoes, or earthquakes, or hurricanes. Nobody dies there because some guy decides to kill a bunch of people at the cinema and has an assualt rifle to do it with either. Ireland is a calm, if more often overcast, place to live.

Today here we are under a tornado watch until 7pm. That doesn't mean there is a tornado, or that there will be a tornado, but just that conditions will be conducive to tornadoes and we should pay attention in case it turns into a tornado warning, which is when you go down to the basement for as long as you can stand to keep the kids entertained in the room where broken and unwanted things go to be kept from the children.

We live on the Eastern Seaboard, as they call it, which is not really prone to tornadoes the way the mid-west is. Which is good, because they scare the bejaysus out of me, but in a way it would be nice because at least there they have sirens that go off all over town when there's a tornado warning. Here, you have to happen to tune into the TV or radio at the right time, or see an alert on your computer, or you might miss it altogether. There has been more than one day when I've been told after the fact that we were under a tornado warning for half the morning and I never even realised that I could have been swept up like Dorothy and deposited under a house like the Wicked Witch of the West.

There are big trees right behind our house, and though they've been inspected (a year ago, I think) to make sure none were in imminent danger of toppling, it's always a possibility. I know people who know people who were just missed by a huge branch coming through their roof in the middle of the night, who happened to have gone to the bathroom or they would have been skewered in their beds. Not everyone gets to be lucky.

I have an ominous feeling and I wish it would go away. I had a dream just before I woke up that someone I only know second-hand on the Internet had died. I'm pretty sure dreams are just random firings of synapses, but it wasn't a particularly pleasant way to start the day. I've spent all morning accomplishing nothing, and mooching.

I prefer Irish weather, is what I'm saying.

Home free

It's seven forty and I'm home free.

That is, I'm home, and I'm free of children. The one is asleep, the other is on his way and doesn't need assistance, and there's a glass of red wine beside me. The payoff for early risers is early bedtimes like this, and even if they don't happen every night, it's great when they do. There's also a big basket of laundry to be folded, but I quite like laundry actually. It's one of the few housekeeping tasks I don't mind keeping up with. (I used to iron, even, but that was a long time ago.)

The weather has broken, and like flipping a switch, my brain has turned on and got busy. Or, maybe more accurately, my body. My will to do things other than flollop around complaining, at least.

We had a big storm on Saturday afternoon, and on Sunday all the oppressive heat and humidity had been scrubbed out of the air, leaving shining clear sunlight. It's almost (positively, even) chilly in the mornings, suddenly. I'm not pushing the bedcovers off my body any more. I might have to find some socks soon.

• I've baked two batches of baked goods (banana spice crumb bars and oatmeal muffins).
• I've gone running two mornings in a row. Only a mile, and I only ran half of it, and then maybe a bit more, but it's a start.
• I've started a star chart for the children, wherein they get stars for tidying up and also for using the bathroom more independently (Mabel) and practising some reading (Dash). So far they each have a lot more stars for the practising than the tidying, but I don't care. It's establishing an expectation, and I don't want to have to shell out at Target too soon.

Mabel has complained about going to school for the past two days. I've left her there anyway, stonehearted mother that I am, even though she was crying and telling me not to go. Yesterday it was all for show, and she was smiling as she played with all the dollhouse people when I looked in the window five minutes later. Today she was more tired and a little more upset, as she'd had a late night and two wakeups yesterday - not my fault if she refuses to fall asleep for her father; I was at a board meeting - but I still stood firm.

On the one hand, I don't want to set the precedent of letting her stay home, or - worse - relenting once we get there and taking her back with me. School is school, and we go unless we're sick. On the other hand, the child is three, and it's not like she's missing anything vital to the curriculum if I let her play hookie once in a blue moon. With Dash, once or twice he made a fuss and I let him off - because I know my kid, and he never did that; so when he did, I believed him and it didn't come back to bite me. But Mabel is a different child, and if you give her an inch she'll take a mile, and if I give her an inch she'll probably run off with the whole kit and kaboodle and never come back at all. So no, not doing that. School it is.

Still, I was relieved to come back from my too-short jaunt to Bethesda to see my friend's new baby (tiny! squishy! asleep on me!) to find Mabel's classmates all happily unbitten and her teachers still looking me in the eye. She'd had a bit of an episode when they wiped her nose, but she told me that she felt better after snack, and I agreed that that was often the way.

In fact, might be time for a post-prandial, laundry-folding snack over here right now.

Shiny

We have perfect Spring weather right now: blustery and shiny bright, new-leaf-shimmering, with just the right amount of warmth in the air. I've been wearing my jeans for about two weeks straight (don't worry; I have two identical pairs) because I'm saving up against the time when the weather gets too hot and I have to abandon my beloved denim for three months. I keep putting on loads of washing just because the Irish housewife in me can't resist this wonderful drying weather.

The children leave the house like pinballs, bounce onto their scooters or bikes and spin away up the road, crossing each other's paths once or twice along the way. Mabel abandons hers at the foot of a neighbour's lawn, and runs around the back of the house, where they have an irresistable tub of sand and a variety of toys to play with, and sometimes a small boy or two.

I wander out in their wake, locating her by the downed scooter and wondering what exactly the etiquette is when your child is - permissibly - in someone else's backyard. I don't want to look as if I don't care and am happy to abandon her, but nor do I want to make the adults of the house feel they have to stop and chat to me while we both survey children who are actually mostly just fine without any observation. (Only mostly. Which is why I usually trail after her if she doesn't re-emerge soon.)

We need to get a bench for the front of the house, so that I can "supervise" in comfort while reading a book or making use of the wi-fi connection. Maybe a glass of something refreshingly fruity, some chips and dip...

Spontanaeity

It's the perfect spring morning here, after last week's excesses and the weekend's grey chilliness (or "normal" weather, as we Irish call it) and my washing line is crying out for some sheets to billow upon it in the mild breeze. White petals are falling from the pear trees, skittering along the road in eddies and waves, looking like a host of tiny racers surging forward at the start of a marathon.

Or maybe that's just the image that comes to mind because B was off running another one of those yesterday. Meanwhile, I stayed at home and forced the kids to watch TV while I made his birthday cake. This one, and I have to admit that I'm very close to getting myself a slice to go with my cup of coffee in a minute. Perilously close.

But, because grey days get me moving, yesterday we went to the zoo. (Hah. You know, I went looking for that post to link to because I remembered the title, but I had no idea that it was also about going to the zoo. Apparently I only have one activity in my repertoire. Maybe there's something hidden in my subconscious that links drizzle with zoo trips. Maybe it always drizzled when I went to Dublin Zoo to see the incongruous flamingoes and the sad polar bear.)

It would be lovely to have arranged to go to the zoo with some friends, taken our picnic lunch, and hung out with other people. But spontaneity is where it's at, when you have kids, and at least with two they can entertain/bug each other. I mean, if we'd arranged to go to the zoo and meet friends, the weather would have been either scorching or pelting, we'd all have slept badly, the Beltway would have been backed up, we'd have arrived late, we'd never have found a parking space, we'd have had to rush home after two barely sighted animals for Mabel's nap.

As it was, we all got up late after a pretty good night. I decided in leisurely fashion that I could probably manage a zoo trip before I mentioned it to the kids at the vital moment to get them enthusiastic - and therefore dressed quickly. We left under surprisingly little stress, in no rush because I knew Mabel would manage without a nap today. It took us one hour to get there, front door to cheetahs, including free parking in the side streets near the zoo (score!). We wandered pretty happily, and despite the sometime drizzle and Mabel's penchant for jumping in puddles wearing non-waterproof shoes, we saw a good selection of animals.

The highlight, again, was the orangutan who came and sat right up against the window to inspect the children ranged in front of her - clearly from her perspective, we bring the human zoo to her house for her entertainment.

Looking at that other post, I find I have to compare and contrast some other aspects of this zoo trip almost a year later:

• Free parking: I have learned and grown as a person, and my parallel parking was awesome.
• Mabel wet her pants in the car before we'd even got there, but luckily I had brought spares, and she did use the zoo bathrooms once, so we managed: surprisingly little progress on that front.
• More reptiles, no lions and tigers this time.
• Requisite fighting over statue to pose on:

We shared a popcorn, found the car again, and drove home basking in the glow of having done something, for once.

Boing

Spring has apparently sprung. Perhaps the run-up happened while we were in Ireland, but I'm not the only person who feels that it's indecently sudden for 80-degree days to be happening. I like warmer weather, but I don't really want to bust out the sunhats and the factor 50 just yet.

Still, today I was wearing sandals and tonight the inaugural painting of the toenails will occur. It's time to see which of the kids' shorts still fit them, and where the gaps are in their summer wardrobes. (Shorts: they last forever. No knees to go through, and the torso still fits for years, so if they're below the knee the first year, they're on the knee the second year, and might still work above the knee for a third year, if your children are my children. Mabel, today, was wearing what started out as 18-24-month capri pants. They're just right on the bum (if she's wearing underwear), not yet too short in the rise, and are now pedal pushers.

I'm not saying this is it and we're into summer now - at least, I hope not. This week is a warning shot across the bows, so that we remember all the things that need to be done - summer-camp research, beach-house booking, new-sandal acquisition, perhaps - and get around to them in seemly fashion.

Meanwhile I should probably stop complaining about the heat, admire the burgeoning blossom, and appreciate the fact that lots of good outdoor time today has given me a peacefully slumbering Mabel, even if I did have to wash a layer of grime off the soles of her feet before bed, because shoes in warm weather are not a thing she agrees with.