Week in Review

Stuff from this week (because I feel like remembering it, even if no one else feels like reading it...)

The New Work Ethic

This week my kids figured out how to successfully avoid doing any household chores: cooperative play.

Yes, all it took was them spontaneously playing soooo nicely with each other (and for more than two minutes), that I found myself willing to pick up all the toys, put away all their laundry, and wipe down all the counters just to keep the good times rolling. Now I just can't figure out which should I be more shocked about.

Peachy

My elderly neighbor (not the ones moving this summer, but on our other side) has a peach tree, but she's so elderly that she doesn't pick the peaches anymore. The first summer we lived here she told me that I could pick up the "drops" worth salvaging off of the ground to use. So I did, because peaches are peaches after all, even if I have to cut out a few bruises to use them. And then I kept the ground free of all the rotten drops for her with the hopes that she'd give me license to pick just a few unbruised ones off of the branches the next year. But instead she told me that she was considering having the tree cut down just to rid herself of the hassle. Well, that got me in a tizzy, because in case you don't know me well enough, it's a crime to let good food go to waste.

I have to admit that I became a little obsessed about the tree. There were a solid few months when every time I heard a work truck on the street I immediately checked out the window to see if it was a tree truck tree. I started plotting how I could get on her good side in order to keep the tree alive. All year I waged a campaign of delivered baked goods, back yard visits, cards at holidays, waves when passing in the car, etc... And every so often I was sure to have a conversation something like this, "Oh, your azaleas are just fantastic this spring. I sure enjoyed those peaches last summer. How's that new hip holding up? Did you know that those peaches make delicious jam? "

Well, here we are, four years later and the tree survives--so far. Whether or not she recognized my very covert yet persuasive campaign, she's now given me full reign of the tree. So this year I picked, peeled, pitted enough peaches for a few pies, several breakfasts of sliced peaches swimming in heavy cream, and nine batches of jam. Don't even ask how much sugar that uses. Really I should say that I made sugar jam flavored with peaches. I've learned my lesson after the one year I made peach jam sans sugar using fruit juice instead. Think peach applesauce, except not as good as that sounds. And no one would eat it (including me).

Utils

The guy driving the ice cream truck hit pay dirt: the community pool. He's now swinging by the pool every afternoon. The first time I heard him I guffawed to myself thinking that he'd be sorry at his own expectations and ultimate stupidity since the pool already sells little frozen treats for just a fraction of the price (duh!). But no, apparently the duh is on me since the kids went streaming out of the pool and into the parking lot with their dollars in hand. No matter, I thought. I just chalked it up to the idea that the first time's a novelty, but that the next time he came around no one would bite. Apparently I don't understand economics these days because day after day the truck rolled in, and day after day the kids grabbed the fistful of cash that it takes to buy one stinkin' cone and went running out to meet him. And who's begging to be in line with them, but Olivia. Every day she's asking, and every day I'm saying NO. And then we're home and I'm making dinner and trying to keep people from sneaking Fritos and chocolate chips out of the pantry because they're sooo starving even though we're almost about to eat, and Olivia starts crying and crying about how she really wants an ice cream bar from the ice cream truck. And because I'm a kind and sympathetic parent who is interested in helping her navigate the world's pitfalls, I tell her that I'm. not. buying. any. ice cream. bars. from. the. truck! And does she want to know why? So I swing open the freezer and pull out the half-gallon of rocky road we currently are stocking (except that it's actually not even a half-gallon anymore, like all ice cream companies thought that we wouldn't notice that they're short shrifting us on that one--ha!) and explain that for $3 she can buy one stupid ice cream bar, or for the same $3 she can buy a whole carton! Now, don't you want a whole carton? And what did she answer? She looked away from me and angrily mumbled, "I still want the ice cream bar."

Well, I had nothing to say to her after that because I guess that I can understand how sometimes you really want something, even if the price is just utterly ridiculous. And then I'll try and remember how many plastic bead bracelets I can buy at Target for that fabulous jewelery I keep daydreaming about every time I get a Sundance catalog in the mail. We all have our foibles.

Dinner and After Dinner

Tonight we had the missionaries and another couple over for dinner. None of them had ever been to our house before, and over the course of the evening, I tell a story--one of my old standards--that Adam has heard me tell at least a dozen times before. Come to dinner and you too can hear it! But he smiles and listens and even laughs at the appropriate times (because I am a good story-teller, after all!), and from his reaction, our guests probably don't know just how worn out this particular story is. Later in the evening, Adam tells one of his own anecdotes, one that I've heard at least as many times as he's heard mine, and I can't help but smile. Not because we recycle our stories, but because after 11 years of marriage I'm still enjoying his old stories and his telling them. That's just how it is, and I'm pretty darn happy about that.

But after dinner when Adam loads the dishwasher, even after 11 years, I still have to re-load it. One of us is of the Martha Stewart philosophy where no-dish-should-touch-another-while-being-washed....and some of us are not. For the record, I fit in seven additional dessert plates, one more bottle, and two more cups.

FOUND

Celebrate. My lost Oreos have been found. Adam found them, but my favorite part was how for a few days following he still wouldn't tell me where they were, but instead taunted me by bringing out a few cookies here and there when I was extra snacky. And, if you're wondering, after 3 months, they turned out to be a bit soft.