raindrop picture from Mila Zinkova on Wikimedia commons

My family only lived about 10 minutes away from my grandparents' house, but driving those dark miles home when I was a kid, after a cousin's birthday or an Easter dinner or a Father's day lunch or one of the many other occasions we found to gather at Grandma's house, the distance seemed vast.

Dad would carry my sister and I out to the car one at a time, giggling, slung over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes, as he said, and then we'd be buckled in and I'd lean my head against the cold glass of the window and stare into the darkness the whole way home.

I would watch for personal landmarks along the way. In particular, one tree at the edge of one driveway, marked with reflectors so that no careless driver would back into it: reflectors that had been arranged into the shape of a smile. Seeing the funny-face tree was a drive-home ritual; missing it by carelessley letting my attention waver or my eyes slide shut at the wrong moment was a tragedy.

The rest of the time, on those dark night drives, I spent the minutes just staring, not at the invisible fields and quiet houses slipping past us, but at the raindrops dripping down the surface of the glass (it is always raining in these memories). Lit only by the faint glow of from the dashboard or the occasional glaring streetlight, each drop followed its own crooked path down the window, wandering and wavering downward, until suddenly, its accumulated weight too heavy, it rushed out of my sight.

My friend Joanna brought this memory flooding back to me today with her lovely post about the small moments she remembers in her own life. And it occurred to me that those minutes when we're just sitting still and staring at the rain add something to the accumulation of our lives. That just because nothing is happening at any given moment does not mean it is wasted time.

Call it silly, but that's the reason we don't have a DVD player in the car for the kids to watch, not even on long trips. Because we live in a house with a TV, and dozens of DVDs, and two computers, and I don't think we need to bring yet another flickering screen with us out to the car too. Because there's a great big world rushing past us out there, and it's full of things to see. Because I think our kids need to know that it's okay to just be still and watch the rain.

A few weeks ago it felt like spring; my girls were attempting to wear shorts and tank tops. And now, here we are, end of February and the skies dump down on us.

And with the snow--every year, every time--comes the compulsion to run out and take pictures of my kids playing in snow. Yes, I am compelled, truly compelled, to do it. I don't know why, but I know every other mother in Oregon feels the same way; I know this because I saw all the other moms in my neighborhood doing it this morning, and then I looked on Facebook this afternoon and all my friends had posted hundreds of pictures of themselves and their children out frolicking in the snow.

Maybe because it seems so rare (although it happens at least a time or two every year) or because it's so brief (2 p.m. now and my yard is completely clear) but I just know that it happens: it snows, my children MUST be out in it, and I MUST follow them and take pictures. And then post them on my blog. These are the rules. This is how it must be done. Who am I to fight it?

Lucy kept throwing snow up over her head and then letting it rain down onto her so she could pretend it was snowing again. Trying to prolong the joy.

And then it was in the house for hot chocolate with marshmallows. Lucy still couldn't eat hers. Evie had no such problem.

I've written before about how Mama needs quiet time. Those afternoon hours are when I work, when I write, when I recharge for the rest of the day and the evening. But, let's face it: my kids are getting older. I don't even remember the last time Lucy took a nap, and on the days Beth doesn't have school, of course I wouldn't ask a 6-year-old to take a nap. So if I still want to have my quiet time, that means finding things for my busy kiddos to do.

We have the naptime box, and though I've tried to rotate toys in and out of it, Lucy's getting a little tired of that whole routine. Sometimes I let her do crafty things that we don't do every single day, like painting and playdough.

I could, of course, simply tell my kids that mama is working now and they need to entertain themselves quietly for a specified amount of time. I don't think that's unreasonable, and it's not as though we don't have a house crammed full of toys, books, and crayons for them to amuse themselves with. But too much completely unstructured time tends to lead to squabbles that I have to referee or giant messes that I have to deal with later.

Then,  I read a comment on a friend's Facebook page about something she remembered from her own childhood: her mother would give her a "to-do list" of simple things to keep her occupied.

I immediately recognized the genius of this idea and appropriated it for myself.

Here's the first list that I made:


1. Draw a picture of the most beautiful flower you can imagine.


2. Do 10 jumping jacks.


3. Find a favorite book and look at all the pictures.


4. Go in the back yard and find something interesting. Bring it inside and put it on the table.


5. Find one toy or book on the floor and put it away.

When the list was done, I told them that as a prize for completing every task on their to-do list, they could have a candy heart out of our left-over Valentine candy.


The girls LOVED it. It took them at least half an hour to get through everything on the list. I got interrupted a little bit--they had to come and show me their flower pictures when they were complete, for instance--but for the most part they were kept busy. They weren't bugging me incessantly. They weren't sitting in front of the TV. And they weren't fighting. What more can you ask for? I made them another list, and another, and bought myself a whole afternoon of quiet time.

Now they come to me, begging for lists of things to do. One little part of me worries that they're losing the ability to self-entertain, but the other part of me is just grateful for some free time. I know that if we do this all afternoon, every afternoon, it's going to lose it's appeal, but if it's a strategy that I mix in along with craft times and nap-time box, I figure I can have months of relatively uninterrupted quiet times.

Here are a few of the other favorite list items I've come up with:


Think of a person you love and draw a picture of that person. We will send it to him or her in the mail.
Make up a song.
Look at the shapes of the clouds until you see something interesting (Lucy came up with that one).
Build something cool out of Legos or tinkertoys.
Find three toys or books on the floor and put them away.
Write down five letters of the alphabet and draw a picture of something that starts with each letter.
Make up a new dance move and show it to me.
Run around the back yard four times.

And if my kids are now doomed to grow up to be list-obsessed fools like me? I can live with that.

If you've got any other ideas for fun activities I should put on their lists? Please tell me!

If you're a person with a churchy background, like me, you'll probably relate to this little quote. And if you're also from the Northwest, you'll doubly relate. And if you're a non-churchy, non-Northwesterner, perhaps you can leave me a comment and tell me whether you relate or not.




"Finally, one of the central characteristics of church in the Pacific Northwest is the omnipresence of coffee. Maybe this is the true reason why evangelicalism is flourishing. "On numerous occasions," Wellman writes, "the idea of coffee and worship were twinned as normal and expected in evangelical churches. Coffee, as one evangelical put it, is the 'sacrament of the [Pacific Northwest].' "" 

--Matthew Sutton

This is from an interesting article about the growth of evangelicalism and the decline of liberal churches in the Northwest--thanks to Maggie for the link to it.

What's so sacred about coffee and why do church people love it so much?

The quilt is finally done. It's only 13 days after my new niece was born, but who's counting? It's only three days after her actual due date. That's hardly late at all, right?

I stayed up late last night finishing the quilt, and when it was all done I looked it over. If you step back and look at it from a distance, it's pretty. If you wrap it around yourself without looking, it's warm and soft and cuddly. But if you look at it carefully, with an eye for detail...oh, it's a mess. Imperfect stitching, crooked seams, little things all over the place that just aren't how they should be.

I feel that way about every quilt I make. A mixture of happiness that the project is done, that it all turned out okay, and frustration that it turned out merely okay. Not perfect.  Like so many other things--my writing. It's never as good on the page as I thought it would be in my head. My house, that never seems to be quite as clean or as stylish as other homes that I visit.


But then I have to remind myself that sometimes okay is okay. I could rip out stitches and do it over and over until I get it right, and maybe eventually I'd achieve quilt perfection. But my niece might be 5 years old before she had her quilt. Sometimes you just have to stop, and accept, with humility, that this is the best you have to give. Not perfect, but warm and soft just the same. Trusting that others will accept you, crooked stitches and all.

I walked in the door to help with Beth's Valentine's class party yesterday, and she ran right up to me, grinning. I noticed it immediately--the bottom tooth she'd been wiggling all week was missing.

She told me all about losing it at lunch. She bit into an orange, and then she saw blood--*blood!*--on the orange, and then she felt the hole in her mouth, and then she was afraid she swallowed it, and then she found the tooth on the floor. Quite the exciting event in the day of a first-grader.  She went to the office, where the office manager put it in a special bag for her.

She fished the little baggie out of her pocket to show me. And there it was, visible through the plastic, labeled with a special little sticker with a picture of a tooth on it. It had blanks in which to write in the student's name and the date the tooth was lost. Do school secretaries across the land have special baggies and "I lost my tooth at school" fill-in-the-blank stickers? I had never seen one before, but it was pretty cute. "And she drew a heart in the corner, because it was Valentine's Day!" Beth said, beaming her missing-tooth smile. Sure enough, the office manager had drawn a little heart. I admired the packet whole-heartedly, and then I returned to my position behind the snack table and went back to doling out cookies and apple slices.

And the kids unpacked their Valentine mailboxes, and admired all their cards, and they played a game, and then they started packing up their loot to go home. "Do you have your tooth?" I asked Beth.

She looked on her desk. Not there.

She looked under her desk. Not there.

Pockets, backpack, coat. Not there, not there, not there.

Beth's eyes were starting to fill up with tears, and I was telling her that I was SURE it had just gotten swept up into her pile of Valentines and that we'd find it when we went home, and her teacher stepped in and saved the day. With a voice of confidence and authority, she said, "If your mom writes a note to the tooth fairy and tells her about your tooth, the tooth fairy will accept the note instead."

Beth looked at me, wide-eyed. She may have doubts about Santa Claus, but for whatever reason, she really seems to believe in the tooth fairy. I nodded at her. "Your teacher is right," I said. "I am sure that will be fine with the tooth fairy."

And you know what? When we went home and combed through every single Valentine, every pocket of her coat, every nook and cranny of her backpack...we did NOT find the tooth. That tooth with its special little baggie and sticker simply seem to have vanished. Where could it have gone to? I really don't know.

I encouraged Beth to write her own note explaining the situation to the tooth fairy, but Beth preferred to dictate to me. On a matter of this importance, she couldn't risk misspelling a word or making some other writing error that might hinder the tooth fairy's comprehension of the situation. So I wrote it all down exactly as she asked me to, and then she signed it, and we put that in her tooth pillow at night.


Sure enough, she woke up this morning to four shiny quarters. (Imagine that). The tooth fairy did understand after all. Although I'm not sure there was too much doubt about that. Her TEACHER said it would be okay, after all. And while she may not always agree with what her mother says, if her teacher says it, she knows that it's true.

Lucy, at the dinner table: Where do a penguin and a cow go on a date?

Eric: I don't know, where?

Lucy: When everybody else is dead, to the movies.

Eric: Seems like an appropriate end to humanity.

Lucy: The mooooovies? Get it?

Eric: Oh, I get it.



*Why do my children have such strange, strange thoughts about cows? I just don't know.

When I was a kid, I never never never never ever ate my vegetables.

Nothing green and/or leafy ever entered my mouth. Ever. The only vegetables I would eat were corn (preferably cold and crunchy, straight out of the freezer); carrots (raw, never cooked); or potatoes (baked, roasted, or tots--never mashed).

I don't know how my poor parents put up with me.

I branched out a bit when I entered college--I began eating an occasional salad. That was still about it.

Then I got married, and my husband was not so long-suffering as my mother. He informed me that he didn't care what I ate, but there was no way HE was going to eat frozen corn every single day for the rest of his life. And since I was and still am our primary family cook, I started cooking some more vegetables. For him. Love will do strange things to you.

And while I had no problem turning up my nose at my mother's cooking every night of my childhood (sorry, Mom!), I felt differently once I was the one preparing the food. I knew that time and effort had gone into planning, shopping for, and preparing those meals. Plus, we were broke, and I couldn't exactly make two different dinners each night--vegetable-inclusive, for him; corn-and-baby-carrots-only, for me.

So I started eating more vegetables. And I didn't choke on them. And I tried new ones. And sometimes I liked them.

And now, we come to where we are today. This morning I was making a lunch for my husband, spooning up leftovers of last night's casserole to put in a tupperware container for him to take to work, and I couldn't resist scooping up a spoonful of the casserole just to eat myself because it was soooo good.

And what kind of casserole was it that I was salivating over, you may wonder?

It was a mixed-vegetable and lentil casserole. Lentils. I kid you not. Ten years ago I had no clue what a lentil even was, and here I am gobbling them up by the spoonful because they are so delicious. And it occurred to me how strange it is that I, the vegetable-hating child, was snitching bites of a vegetarian casserole as an adult. (Thanks, Rebekah, for the recipe!)




Brussels sprouts? Roasted, sauteed, or braised, I can't get enough of them. They have such a good, nutty flavor. Spinach! Eggplant! Zucchini! Squash! Yum, yum, yum. I eat vegetables every single day, new vegetables all the time (just tried a recipe with bok choy a few weeks ago, and it was great) and I love almost all of them. (Not parsnips. They are gross). If you would have told me as a child that I would be eating, and enjoying, all these foods, I would have told you that you were dead wrong. Little did I know.

And so I share my story with you, all you mothers of picky eaters out there (myself included. My kids only each the carrots out of the lentil casserole, and the cheese off the top) as a ray of hope in a dark and stormy world. Even the pickiest of picky eaters may one day grow up to eat a variety of healthy vegetables. And even enjoy it.

It was early morning, still dark, and I was out running, my feet hitting the pavement the only sound in the sleepy neighborhood. Then, up ahead, I saw a figure moving toward me.

A man, I could tell from his size. Not tall but stocky and broad-shouldered. Thick gloves on his hands, a hat on his head, and a muffler covering half his face. Dark pants, white shoes. But...something didn't look right. What was he...? And as I moved closer, I could see that this guy was not wearing a shirt. Pre-dawn, biting cold, out walking the streets with his chest bare and belly hanging out.

Maybe you'll understand that I quickened my pace and kept my finger on the trigger of my Mace until I was well past him.

That first encounter with shirtless guy was years ago. I've seen him many times since then, out walking various routes in the same neighborhood I run through, and he's never done anything more than lift a friendly hand in greeting as we pass each other. I'm used to him now, but I still get a little creeped out when I suddenly see his half-naked body looming up at me under the glow of a streetlight. And I've got to wonder: what is WITH this guy?

I've seen shirtless guy in every kind of weather, from pleasant summer mornings to icy winter ones when I wear layers upon layers of clothes before I go out. And he's always appropriately attired for the weather from the belt down and head up. But his torso is always completely bare. It's not as though he's got a fantastic physique to show off, either. This guy is old--I'd guess 60 or up--and though he still looks tough and hearty, he's got a hairy old man chest and a big round belly.

I've seen shirtless guy during the daytime, too, out working in the yard of a house that I assume is his, a nice, well-kept older house in one of Albany's historic districts. He never has a shirt on then, either. But going shirtless while you're working in the yard, especially if it's a hot day, is a slightly tacky but not unusual male prerogative.

But why the bare-chested early-morning walks in the freezing cold? Why doesn't he just put on a sweatshirt, for crying out loud? Because walking around half-naked in a residential area in the early mornings is just creepy. Maybe I need to start carrying a spare with me, so I can toss it to him next time we pass. "Hey, it's called a shirt. Ever consider wearing one?"

I suppose it could be worse. He could be going around pants-less.

I received happy news at about 10:30 last night. My sister-in-law gave birth to a beautiful baby girl, making me an aunt for the second time. And, giving my in-laws five consecutive granddaughters, zero grandsons (yet). (And no, that's not a hint about anything. We have done our share for the grandchild count).

But I admit that after we hung up the phone with Eric's brother and laid down in bed, my thought, as I was drifting off, was annoyance with myself. I haven't gotten the new baby's quilt done yet!!!

Now, granted, she did arrive a week and a half early...surely I would have had it all done if she'd arrived on her due date, right? Or even just a teensy bit late?? I'll tell myself that and try to believe it.


Here's the quilt (thanks to Jenny for the link to the pattern) as it looked this morning, all spread out on my kitchen floor, rows waiting to be sewn together. I now have only three more rows to join up, and then the quilt top will be complete. And after a hugely lengthy trip to the fabric store this morning (did everyone in the world decide they needed to shop at Joann's today?) I now have the material for the backing and binding. Which means I'm all set! I've just got to sew those last three rows. And put together the top, the filling, and the backing. And quilt the whole thing together. And sew on the binding. Yeah, there's not much left to do at all.

I know there's no way in the world I can get the whole thing done this afternoon, before we go meet this new little one. There's just not. (sigh). But...I'm still going to sew my little heart out the rest of the day. So maybe I can get it done by what her actual due date was, and claim to have been on schedule all along.

I forgive you if you think I'm a little schizophrenic in my food choices after you read this post.

You see, in my last post I bragged about how I try to avoid processed foods when buying groceries for my family.

And in this post, I'm going to tell you about a delicious meal that I made for my family this week, a meal that I love, a meal that is (unfortunately) chock full of highly processed foods with unpronounceable items on their nutrition labels.

It's Tater Tot Casserole. And it's soooo good.

I haven't made Tater Tot Casserole in quite a while. Because of the whole food snobbery-avoiding processed foods thing. But then, a commenter on my friend Mike's Facebook wall mentioned Tater Tot Casserole. And I knew as soon as I read it that I needed to have some. Soon.

Tater Tot Casserole is so simple to make, you barely even need the recipe--though I do have it, all written down in my mom's handwriting.




You take a pound of ground beef, and brown it on the stovetop. While it's cooking, you take a packet of dried onion soup mix, and a can of cream of mushroom soup, and dump them together in a bowl, and mix them up until  you have a delicious, salty, brownish gray sauce.

You stop browning the ground beef before it's quite all the way done--you don't want it overcooked in the oven later--and drain the fat off. Then you dump the ground beef into a casserole dish, and spoon the onion-mushroom sauce over the top, and then you get out your bag of frozen tater tots.

You take your tots, and you put a nice healthy layer of them over the top of everything, completely covering the beef and sauce. Then you pop it in a 350-degree oven and bake it for about 35 minutes.

And that's it. You're done.

When you pop it in your mouth and taste the savory ground beef and hot, salty tater tot goodness on top, you'll probably understand why I am so fond of this recipe. But just in case the taste alone doesn't do it for you, I offer further explanation of why it is near and dear to my heart.

When my sisters and I were teenagers, we were each responsible for making dinner one night each week, which of course works out to about four times a month. This means that I knew how to make exactly four recipes: sour cream chicken enchiladas, tacos, breakfast-for-dinner (usually scrambled eggs, ham, and waffles), and tater tot casserole.

Over, and over, and over, I made tater tot casserole. It was my favorite dinner EVER. And when I got married, my mom gave me the gift of a recipe box containing a bunch of family recipes, including this one.

And now, every time I eat it, I'm not just savoring a good hearty casserole, I'm also reliving my childhood, and the comfort and happiness we knew around our dinner table.

So you'll have to excuse me for my occasional lapse from healthy-whole-food-goodness. Sometimes, food isn't just about food. It's about love.

When something becomes its own verb, you know it's a big deal. Couponing. It's a whole new world out there.

I'm sure you've heard of this. Using coupons is not just about flipping through the newspaper and clipping out a few little bargains anymore. It's practically a movement of own, with a name of its own: couponing. There are couponing websites, couponing classes, even. Seems like everytime you turn around there's some woman on TV talking about how she goes to the grocery store and the checkers just automatically fill her cart with food and then hand HER a fistful of money, because she has perfected the art of couponing and now she's going to retire as a millionaire!

For a long time, I've thought that this coupon-clipping was not worth the hype, but with all these people talking about how they cut their grocery bills in half, I decided to give it a go this week.

On Sunday, I went through every page of the fliers in the Sunday paper, pulling out coupons and writing down prices of items on sale. Then I went to a couponing website and sorted through various menus and categories, trying to find more deals. I ended up with a page worth of hand-written notes, a stack of coupons, and a list of four different stores to potentially hit up.





But first--before I drove around to every store in town--I did my normal grocery shopping routine: I went to WinCo, and I looked for the prices on generic, store-brand products. And when I did that, guess what?

Store-brand items were cheaper 87 percent of the time, even if you considered the coupon deals.

Del Monte canned fruit, Chicken of the Sea tuna, Head & Shoulders Shampoo, Eggland's Best eggs--all were on sale in the coupon circulars, all were something I thought I might purchase, but when I actually compared, even when factoring in the coupon prices I had written down, store-brand products were still cheaper.

What's more, some of the prices listed on the coupon website I visited were just wrong. They listed a ton of good deals at Safeway, enough so that I specifically didn't buy certain items at WinCo, planning to go to Safeway next and get the good deals. But then when I got to my local Safeway, the deals that I'd seen listed online simply didn't exist. Whether the website creators got their dates wrong, or their geographic area wrong, or they were just making stuff up for fun to mess with poor ignorant consumers, I don't know. But at that point I wasn't going back to WinCo to get the slightly-cheaper items, so I just sucked it up and bought them anyway.

I ended up spending my entire morning and driving to three different stores, even though I bought the vast majority of my groceries at WinCo and was driving to those other stores in pursuit of just a few specific items. By the end of the day, the kids and I were both exhausted and my 2-year-old was saying, "Why are we at ANOTHER store?" when I pulled into the third grocery store parking lot.


I think that some of the people who are saving so much on their groceries are simply buying different items than I do. If you read this blog post about couponing from TIME.com, and watch the little video in which a coupon guru shows off the deals she got, I would say at least fifty percent of what she bought are things I never purchase. Froot Loops, Frosted Flakes, Cheetos, Coke, Easy Mac? Not things that I buy. How about a coupon for carrots or apples or whole wheat bread--things I go through by the truckload? Now, I'm not getting all food-snob on you here. I certainly do buy hot dogs for my children, and I could go through a box of Wheat Thins all by myself. But, overall, I've been making a conscious effort to cut down on the amount of highly-processed foods that I purchase, and that's what the majority of the items shown in that grocery video are.

So, to sum up, here's why I've decided my couponing experiment was a fail:

1. A lot of the coupons in the paper were for items I don't buy anyway.

2. The ones that were worthwhile to me were usually STILL more expensive than just buying the store-brand item.

3. Going through every page of the paper, searching through websites, and driving from store to store took me at least two hours longer  than my normal grocery shopping routine.

4. In the end, I saved very little money. The only coupons I used were the manufacturer coupons, which would have been good no matter what store I went to. My grand total of savings: $1 off string cheese, $1 off Wheat Thins, $2 off razor blades.

Four bucks. I saved four bucks.

That, my friends, is not worth it.