on the range {week 17}: in the dirt

{On the Range} is my weekly series where I discuss what we're doing, reading, and eating. It's a little bit 52 project and other photo projects, and a little bit {Did you Read?} and {In the Ranger Kitchen}.

On the Range

April 23 - 29, 2013

"A portrait of my children, once a week, every week in 2013."

My week...

• Has been spent with the front door open. As a way of explaining my absence--apart from celebrating the queen's fifth birthday and the visit of a much-missed mother--note exhibit A below:

Media

• All of my library holds arrived in the same week (does this happen to you?), so I now have in my possession a stack of books that make me out to be more intelligent than deserved. They are:
• A Victorian rebel: the life of William Morris by...somebody I can't remember
• Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace
• Lean In: women, work, and the will to lead (the sound recording) by Sheryl Sandburg
• The Sound and the Fury & As I lay Dying by William Faulkner
• Persuasion (annotated version) by Jane Austen (and the annotator, name I can't recall)
• Mom and I watched a few episodes of "Bored to Death" the past few nights, and I chuckled a lot out loud, which is my only requirement of 30-minute programming. I recommend it if you can find it at your library.

I'm going now to catch up on the blogs, since all I could manage in the past week is Elle's hilarious portrayal of the horseshittery (her word, stolen by yours truly) of fellow parents. Her mordant humor slays me. Also, I wish I could say I've been cooking, but apart from cranking out Dutch babies by the armful, I've been on a heat-and-serve kick. Must be all that spring fever. 

What have y'all been up to while I've been gone? Do tell of your doings, lovelies. 

winter in perpetuity

The cat finds creative places to get warm and simultaneously gives me an excuse not to fold clothes.

Update (3:40pm): I published this post a few minutes before I heard about the blasts at the Boston Marathon. From what we can see on the news, they still are not sure what the explosions were, but since I can't get my phone to work right now to reply to the text messages I'm getting, I'll say it here that we are at home safe, watching the news to find out more.

I love three-day weekends. We are having one right now because of a Massachusetts holiday known as Patriots' Day, which commemorates the battles of Lexington and Concord at the start of the Revolutionary War. My favorite part about the holiday is that they also run the Boston Marathon today, so there is an air of festivity about the day. This is also the start of "April Vacation" (aka "spring break" everywhere else in the country), so I'm enjoying the relaxed atmosphere in our household.

On Saturday we did pretty much nothing at all. The morning was spent sipping coffee at the dining room table and planning our summer trips while the girls played in a homemade sofa fort in the living room. We're looking forward to a kidless beach vacation in August. More on that later. Charlie had a fever all day, so much of the day was spent snuggling with her and reading my book. I didn't mind the excuse to slow down, and she's a trooper when sick. She just wants to cuddle but makes very few other demands of me. Every now and then she'd say in her cute toddler voice "Mommy, I gots a temper-sure. I need some mee-sin."

After the kids were tucked in, we watched the latest film in the Mission Impossible series, and I have to say I enjoyed it much more than I thought I would. It was fast-paced and somewhat cheeky, served with very little cheese, just the way I like it. I have become a big Jeremy Renner fan, so I enjoyed seeing him in two movies in a row (the last being The Avengers, which I also unexpectedly liked). When did Simon Pegg get so skinny?

I began yesterday morning with a cleaning bug, to the point that I sprang out of bed and started scrubbing the toilet before 8am. Nate staggered into the bathroom and looked at me as if I had three heads. With only a quick glance in his direction, I shouted "Clean all the things!" and continued on my merry scrubbing way. I barreled through the rest of my morning with a caffeinated zeal for purging our home of the unwanted things that linger in corners and drawers.

It must have been an infectious bug because before I knew it, Nate was at work doing some spring cleaning of his own. In another of our home organization vignettes, I sometimes I find Nate standing in a room for several minutes, and I know he is silently plotting something. This happened yesterday in the guest room--I interrupt him and asked him what he was thinking, because I am nosy. Then because I am the conceptual thinker, I loved his ideas and want to commence the project immediately. Being the analyst he is, he prefers to consider details from every angle first. Sigh. I left him alone for a while to ponder, attacking a closet in my quest to declutter, and then offered my services of lugging and hauling when he was ready to begin. We got rid of an ugly old dresser and consolidated the girls' furniture, then swapped out the guest bed for a roomier futon sofa. It looks great!

Later that day I went to afternoon tea with a girlfriend. Tea is one of my favorite and most-missed British traditions that I have gladly continued on occasion since returning to the states. Boston has maintained its tea connection, so you can find many a tea shop that offers afternoon tea in our area. We pigged out for two hours and still had enough to bring home for the kids to sample.

Today we had hopes of seeing the marathon on a pretty spring day, but alas our lengthy winter is plodding forward with high winds and low 40's. The girls spent their morning sitting in the sunlit upstairs landing, the only warm spot in the house. I hope we'll get in a bike ride this afternoon while we still have a Daddy day-off. Right now I am sitting on a cozy chair while the kids have their quiet time, eating Haagen Dazs while I pretend not to notice the pile of laundry a few feet away. Now you know everything.

xoxo
~J

Easter with southern flavor

Note: crocs and sneakers were the kids' choices. But they did run around outside all day in them!

I'm titling this post with the name of one my favorite bluegrass banjo songs by Bill Monroe. I reckon it could serve as a mighty good soundtrack for this here post.

Maybe it's the fact that I'm in the midst of re-reading To Kill a Mockingbird, or because I just always miss my family, but I decided to give Easter supper a southern flare. We had "hammus Alabamus," as my Grandaddy would say, cucumber salad, potato salad, homemade bread with butter, pickles, and ambrosia. Basically, I ripped off my aunt's traditional Easter supper, minus the bunny cake she always makes, which involves lots of coconut and is rightly gilded with plenty of jelly beans. Instead of bunny cake, I swapped in our tradition of hot cross buns (n.b.: cute video of Charlie in that link), except this time I made Jacques Pepin's brioche and used Thomas Keller's idea for how to put them in a pan instead of a brioche mold. Hot cross buns are supposed to be made on Good Friday, but I couldn't get my act together by then.

The ham was so easy. I got a pre-cooked and spiral-sliced ham from Trader Joe's that came with a packet of glaze mix. Ambrosia is easy too; I leave out the nuts and marshmallows and just keep it at pineapple, mandarin oranges, cherries, and coconut, tossed together with a little sour cream.

For an appetizer, we took half the Easter eggs (that hadn't gone into potato salad) and made deviled eggs with them. Mine include salt, lemon juice, mustard, mayo, and dried dill or dill relish, with the obligatory sprinkle of paprika on top.

What did you do for the holiday? Hope it was tasty!
xoxo
~J