Gooey Random

I just witnessed, first hand, the power of the Coolatta. I was busy pretending to be busy doing some organizing in the basement. (College departure is two weeks from today so you know I have to find some part of my universe to restore order to. The basement was a poor effort.) It was nice and cool down there though, so at least I was comfortable if not productive. Walking back upstairs slapped a bit of warmth and mugginess into my face, while the thermostat read 75 degrees. (I also was met with the news that Kermit and Miss Piggy have decided to end their relationship. My daughter has her finger on the pulse of news.) 

Powers of suggestion (no need to say whose) caused my son to embark on a Dunkin Donuts outing. Upon his return, we all sat on the porch watching the rain, and the temperature drop, while drinking our frozen fruity beverages. That rain sure was cooling things off. I had to come inside because I was chilly and ended up putting on a long sleeved shirt, as I walked by the thermostat that now reads 76 degrees. Hmpf, this is kind of a boring discovery, but since I took the trouble to type it up, I might as well leave it in with the random. Let's move on…

…to another temperature related phenomenon! Don't hide your bag of gummies in a secret compartment of the car so that you don't eat them all at once on a road trip. There is a chance you might hide them so well that you forget about them and then…

…Oh no! A glob of randoms!!! That hunk of melted togetherness could be some sort of metaphor for my brain when the random gets to be too much!

Stay tuned for Part 2 of the Barn Swallow Shenanigans! (Part 1 is here if you missed it.)

Part 1 - The beginning is still the beginning

Nearly every year on my blog, there has been mention of my plight with the barn swallows involving various degrees of both lunacy and success. This year things sort of spiraled a bit for us, and I became so concerned about how the tale was unfolding in our lives, and when I would have a complete story to tell, that I lost sight of the fact that the story still needed to start at the beginning. Now months have gone by, and the point at which to start is still pretty much the same, so let's go there, shall we? (If you need more background into my history with barn swallows, there are posts here, here, here and a little over here.)

I may have been slightly off my game this past spring. This could be due in part to the fact that on April twelfth...

...we were still unsure as to whether or not spring was actually going to arrive. As time passed by and the weather warmed up, I convinced myself that the barn swallows had found a better place to build their homestead. There were some tree swallows bothering a few of the neighbors by building simple nests in mailboxes while I just scoffed from the safety of my uninhabited porch. It may be worth mentioning that I had purchased new chairs for the porch and pondered whether the bright colored cushions were keeping my fine feathered nemeses at bay. (That was probably only worth noting if I was trying to give further evidence of my often fuzzy logic.)

"Hey, I like your new furniture!"

 "Noooooooooooo!"

"What? She got new furniture?"

"Yeah, couldn't you see the color from like really far away? Like a signal, almost!"

I kept a close watch on things, and repeatedly shouted random indications that I was not interested in whatever these swoopers had to offer. My efforts proved to be as ineffective as one of our remaining deterrents from a previous struggle...

Cliffside living. Yep, that is what these exceptions to the barn swallow rules of nest building were all about. Apparently they were not discouraged by the previous season's building debris. 

 "We're baaaaaaaaack!" 

(and the flash makes us creepier than ever)

I alerted the Lord of the Outdoors and handed him the tin foil. Now sure, I have heard that if you want something done right, you should do it yourself. However, I also thought practice made perfect, so I guess I was expecting artfully crafted tin foil swans strategically displayed as the ultimate warning that we meant business. Why am I such a slow learner?

 Really? Okay, well that would suffice...

 …IF WE DIDN'T HAVE MORE THAN ONE CORNER ON OUR PORCH! Come on! What a rookie mistake, as if this was our first rodeo. Glad someone was amused...

"Shut your squawking face."

This seems like a logical stopping point for today…stay tuned!

Hey, remember when there used to be that Superhero Sunday thing around here? Well, let me tell you, it took superhero powers to force myself to sit my rear end down in a chair and actually work on this post that has been taunting me. Thank you for reading!

An order of random, heavy on the photos!

We were on vacation in Cape Cod! If I had known what day it was at any point last week, I might have posted some of these last Tuesday.

The fishing was a little…

…well those fish are just little, and perhaps one has just a touch of the rigor mortis, but that didn't cause us to make waves...

(Seriously though, where were the waves that day?)

We tried not to be crabby…

(Clearly we embarrassed him.)

…even though some things were bugging us.

(One of my many kills, as I have never seen the green heads out in such force.)

I learned how to take panoramic photos on my phone. This does not serve as proof of that.

Flat Lillian and Flat Kari were there!

  We had treats!

Black raspberry chocolate chip yogurt…yummmm

Onion rings!

 We could barely share our onion rings with each other, let alone this intrusive seagull!

Maybe he could go find some Twizzlers like his friend did…mmm, Twizzlers!

My new favorite sign!

The day after we returned home from Cape Cod, we shuffled off to Buffalo for an overnight. Suffice to say, the re-entry into whatever the current state of normal is here at home has me moving at a pace much like this one...

(My husband found this guy in his mother's yard. The rare Buffalo Snail?)

Back to random nature

I just realized that Tuesday had not completely passed me by. We successfully hosted my son's graduation party over the weekend, and as I perused my days of to-do lists, I realized that the kitchen floor never got cleaned. Outrageous, I know! It is amazing what people will overlook if you put out enough food to distract them. "Have another cookie! Eyes up here, please."

The other night when I was having trouble falling back to sleep, I started to think about our son leaving for college. One of my first considerations for how to best deal with the inevitable sadness was "maybe in the morning I will ask Siri how to handle this". Suffice to say, I have not checked in with her yet. (This is only due in part to the fact that I would have to ask my kids for help in getting a hold of her, and my iphone ineptness has caused them enough shame as it is.)

Frogs and toads give me the eebie jeebies. It is something about the way they sneak up on a person, and the whole hopping thing. I am not sure what kind of range they have, and find them unpredictable. As a result, this sighting almost caused me to exile myself from the family camp for the rest of the summer.

 

These ducks tried to lure me back in by making the new swimming platform look so inviting, although the seaweed tried to negate the good vibes.

Just when I started to look forward to grabbing a Twizzler (required camp snack) and a comfy lounge chair, I saw this picture that my mother posted on facebook... 

DEAD BAT ON THE CAMP DRIVEWAY! Gadzooks! Someone commented that it might just be Donald Trump's hair. I have been vacillating between being afraid of running into a live bat and being concerned about what killed this one. ICK!

We have taken our one with nature selves to the ocean, far from the batty camp near home. This little dead fish interrupted our search for heart shaped rocks, but was not overly terrifying. (We artfully placed him on the rock for a photo shoot, for no good reason whatsoever.)

On that note, the minutes are running out of this Tuesday.

Randomly waiting

While you were patiently waiting... 

...for this week's random, I was juggling a series of tasks, distractions and procrastinations. I didn't even remember to eat any m&m's. I'll be back soon!

Random ReCap and Gown

I showered and got dressed, in a dress no less. My pasty white chicken legs blended in, or may have even paled, against my new white shoes. My hair was fine. This was the big time, and I was confident that I had done well enough for the supporting role I was to be featured in. I stared down the mascara tube and decided "I've got this" and waved that dark brown across my dry lashes.

I had been walking past various parts of his gradation get-up for a couple of weeks…slowly desensitizing myself. A cap here, a cord there, the gown hanging in their bathroom in hopes of the shower steam taking care of the wrinkles. "Photos! We must make a first attempt at photos!" The glance into the camera's viewfinder was the first time I paused to truly take him in…

…in all of his goofy and sun-glared glory. Yes, this was a very special day, but this was still my boy. Take that mascara, as I still had this.

We survived the car ride downtown, got a parking spot, finally found some seats that were relatively acceptable, endured a forty-five minute wait for the main event and then…an announcement of the ceremony being moments away and something about bagpipes. Oh, there is something about bagpipes. Before I could finish texting one of my lifelines, the overhead lights were turned off and a spotlight shone on an amazing woman, who collectively spent six years teaching orchestra to my kids in middle school, all decked out, marching in, playing Amazing Grace on the bagpipes. I heard the mascara whispering its doubts, but I blinked them away. (Seriously though, bagpipes?) 

Over 600 caps and gowns filed in to take their seats. Do you see him?

And so it went. Less than two dry-eyed (okay, that is a lie as I did have watery eyes when they switched their tassels and whatever was said after that, but no drops fell) hours later we were outside waiting for our graduate. He came towards us looking me straight in the eye, and I knew from recent past experience that if I cried, he would as well. So I smiled, grabbed him and hugged for as long as I thought I could get away with before passing him off to his father. I certainly would have cried watching him hug his sister, but was spared...

Honestly, these two. The graduates were given roses after they walked across the stage and were told at the end of the ceremony to give them to the person who inspired them the most, and other nice things along those lines. After  announcing that he was going to throw his rose on the ground and let us all fight for it, he handed the flower to his sister.

Are you bored yet? Not much longer, and then it will be three years before we do this again. Oh, but there will be that thing in August…never mind! So proud, so happy…yes, happy!

Did you notice the fountain in the background there? Maybe the first mother whose son ran through didn't have time to tell her son to take his shoes off. Maybe she didn't see it coming. This mom did though, and held his shoes.

Congratulations!

Andrea - 1

Mascara - 0

Mangia Monday*

*Also could be titled "That one where I try to make a blogging comeback-beyond the random".**

In an effort to declutter not only my brain, but the piles of paper that are once again threatening to take over our home, I stumbled upon a legal pad displaying a blog post for a Mangia Monday series that I considered back in March. (It started with a post about artichokes followed by one about risotto.) Not only was the story complete, it also seemed to have been put through some sort of editing process, as evidenced by stray ink marks making threatening jabs at my usual pencil scratchings. Rather than move the piece of paper to some other sorting system, only to be found a few more months from now, I figured I would throw havoc to the wind, sit on the couch for a little bit longer and do some typing. I might even make a morning of it and look for the photos I had planned to have accompany this post. Without further ado, before I don't...

Toast is Simple

Do you remember the super thin bread made by Arnold? Long before sandwich thins and other ways to reduce the carbs in a sandwich came into fashion, there was that bread you had to practically peel from the loaf. I recall sitting at my grandparents' kitchen table in the Bronx, opening that plastic outer bag to get to the inner wrapping. It was a very downstate New York thing for me, like some sort of tourist experience, as we didn't typically have that melba thin bread at home in Central New York.

The puzzling question at the time was just how many slices of toast were appropriate to call breakfast. It seemed to take at least four to equal two regulation sized slices of bread. I can still see my cousin sitting across from me at the table as we delicately navigated the cooking time to as not to burn our wafers.

My toaster companion cousin and me with my grandmother, who I always remember smiling just like this, and my hairdresser grandfather.

If there happened to be leftover Italian bread, the adults would step up the game...stove toast. Now I have always had a soft doughy place in my heart for bread, especially Italian bread. When I say I enjoyed bread, I mean that dunking bread in milk was often a highlight to end my dinner with (ew, shudder). Back to the toast...the Italian bread would get cut into things more resembling hunks than slices, far beyond what a toaster slot could accommodate. The bread was speared by a long handled meat fork and then toasted over the open flame of the gas stove burner.

Oh, how I wanted to savor that taste, joyfully partake in the stove toast event. However, no amount of butter could override that faint taste of gas. I swear that's what it was. Plus, let's face it, nobody was really toasting their bread campfire marshmallow style, slowly roasting to a golden perfection. Call it blackened if it sounds more gourmet, but that toast absolutely had burnt to a crisp spots. I know that burnt is a taste some have acquired, but the mix with the gas stove taste was too much for me to enjoy. This did not stop me from trying, nor does it make me cherish the memories of my father, aunts and grandparents holding out that fork any less.

The stove toasters!  Gooda-gooda Grandma, Grandma, Aunt Fran, me, Aunt Bea, Dad and Grandpa.

**Perhaps also could have been titled "Lotsa Links"