Oh. My. Stars.

So here's something not many people know about me. I'm not proud of this. I love poptarts. Love them. I'd eat them for breakfast, lunch (well, maybe dessert) and bedtime snack seven days a week if I could.  I admit, they're kind of gross for dinner though. And they have to be the frosted kind. The unfrosted ones just strike me as too ... healthy.

Sometimes I'll buy the brown sugar ones because I know the boys don't like those, and then I'll get the whole package to myself.

So I got all excited when I was browsing the Williams Sonoma clearance table ($14 for a jar of hot pepper jam? No, thank you. I'll stick with your clearance items), where a pop tart maker toaster pastry press was marked down from $10 to $5. So of course I bought it.  It came with a recipe on the package.


And this morning I made the oh-my-stars-best-freaking-poptarts I've ever eaten.  The recipe called for two sticks of butter, and I ended up with 5 pop tarts toaster pastries. Subtracting the one tablespoon of butter that I dropped on the floor and left for Zoet, that's 3 tablespoons of butter per tart pastry.  I used the food processor, and they could not have been easier to make.  And of course, a single serving of these is two, right?  I mean, they're poptarts.  I filled them with Nutella and jam I made with those raspberries I picked a while back.

I think we'll have poptarts for supper tonight.

A Day In Western Massachusetts

96 at Glendale Falls, Middlefield, MA

I spend so much time on here bellyaching about my kids. Stupid teenagers. How they have to complain about everything. Thank goodness they're there to correct me all the time because, well, I'm stupid.


Not all the time, I guess.

98 and Zoet at the Falls

I gotta tell you, my kids were great today. Today we did a little day trip to the western part of the state, to see some waterfalls and hike a bit. Did you know there are fossilized dinosaur footprints in Massachusetts? Neither did I!

Don't get me wrong -- they didn't want to go, and made sure I knew it. The lure of an early allowance (even with the caveat that early allowance meant no complaining today) bought me a day of peace and quiet (Unlike their mother, I guess these kids can be bought. For cheap.) So we drive the two-plus hours to the first stop, to the utterly foreign sound of ...

What is that sound, anyway? No. It can't be. But it is. Is it? I think it's siblings. Siblings getting along.  With each other. Dare I detect even some enthusiasm?

We had a lovely picnic lunch at Glendale Falls, and took a bit longer rock climbing than I expected, so we decided to forgo Chesterfield Gorge so that we wouldn't miss the footprints.  But there it was, right off the road we were on, so we stopped at the gorge, which might actually be the prettiest spot in Massachusetts, and then headed to our final destination: the footprints in Holyoke.

Chesterfield Gorge, Chesterfield, MA
And to think we almost skipped this place! This was my favorite stop of the day.

The Falls

Dinosaur footrprints. You can see the three toes in the upper left.

A closer look

All those fossil footprints are provided courtesy of all these layers

Did I mention the best part? All of these sites are maintained by The Trustees of Reservations, and all were free. Free to park, free to enter; donations appreciated.

18 Months ...

Today is 18 months. Tom died at precisely 6am on Sunday, February 7, 2010. It's been a long haul, but I think the boys and I are adjusting okay, and we're getting on with business. The boys have done well in school, we're getting ready for our new school year in a couple of weeks. But I just miss Tom. So. Damned. Much.

A brief list of things I miss would include kissing his bald spot, scratching his back and cuddling on the couch watching the Sunday morning talking heads shows (I think he'd really like Christiane Amanpour on This Week. We patiently held on during the "Sam and Cokie" debacle and the George Stephanopoulos shoutfests, longing for the civilized Brinkley days of yore). I miss hearing him talk to himself in the shower, and the smell of coffee brewing in the morning (and the mug of tea that would have magically appeared in the bathroom before I stepped out of the shower). I miss the sound of his car pulling into the driveway at the end of the work day. And this week in particular I miss C and Ada, who thought Tom walked on water.  And grocery stores will never feel the same to me.

I miss Tom's spectacular garden.   Oh, I've put one in this year, of course, but this garden sucks and it's my fault because I didn't till, because that was Tom's job. He loved to fill the minivan with manure and bags of peat moss and fertilizer and spread it all out and then till it all in. And then he'd till again, deaf to (or more likely ignoring) my protestations that he was just making things harder for himself. I didn't till this year, and I didn't till last year, and so the garden sucks and it's all my fault.

I have had his ashes in one of his favorite pieces of pottery for a year and a half now, sitting on his dresser in my room. Unfortunately, the dresser is becoming increasingly cluttered with a year-and-a-half's worth of accumulated stuff that doesn't have a home.  But Tom hated clutter and I can't imagine he'd approve of his current arrangement. Someone gave me the idea to put his ashes on his workbench until I'm ready to spread them in the Fells (which I'm not), and I think he'd like that.  He'd be glad that I'm taking care of the workbench, using it, even. And with the help of about half a can of WD-40, I recently got the table saw up and running for the first time since the flood. All his tools are neatly sorted and hanging on his pegboard (no, I haven't gone so Martha-Stewarty as to draw outlines on the pegboard to indicate the exact location of every tool, but I'm tempted). There's his hammer and his Wonder Bar (probably his favorite hand tool. No household problem was so big it couldn't be resolved with the booming command, "Get me my Wonder Bar"), and his row of about 23 screwdrivers, sorted by size. I think he'd like to know his tools are okay.

I know he'd be glad to know we're getting there.

Ada - She Was A Great Cat

I'm not going to lie to you. This photo makes me sad. Tom with Ada, Gibbs and C
This photo sat in a frame on my desk at work  for the longest time:
Who's that? What's his name? What does he do? When are we gonna meet him? Who is he?

There's that honey paw.

Tom adopted Ada and C shortly before we met, so Ada's been a fixture in this home as long as this home has been in my life. I will miss her sorely. She was definitely Tom's cat, though; Tom was definitely her favorite, but she tolerated me in a pinch.  These last few months, it must have started with the cold weather last fall, Ada slept with me, under the covers nestled next to me, every night.  I have a very heavy quilt that I use year-round (yes, even during these recent hot nights) and it got to the point where, when she walked across me at night, I couldn't feel her footsteps because she had lost so much weight. She was a bare little slip of a thing.

Adopted from the Northeast Animal Shelter, she came with the name "Honey" after a single, tan front paw. Not nerdy enough for a household containing a Gibbs, a Maxwell, and a C (who, tipping the scales at 24 pounds plus had a few nicknames, C Monster and C++ jumping immediately to mind). She was renamed after Ada Lovelace, whom some consider the actual inventor of the first mechanical computer, an invention more often credited to her gentleman friend, Charles Babbage.

Okay, history lesson over. Back to our sweet little Ada.

Don't get me wrong: Ada was not the friendliest cat. I'd call her tolerant, at best. On a bad day, you knew to steer clear (if you were another cat, I mean, or a dog).  98 nicknamed her Missy Hissy.  I shudder to think of the nickname he'd have devised if he meant to comment on how she'd swat at you if you got too close to her food.

C and Ada, not littermates but adopted at the same time from the Northeast Animal Shelter, were a finely tuned pair, indeed. I do not believe I ever witnessed Ada eat a bite of human food. No cheese, no table scraps, no bones pulled from the garbage. Strictly cat food and kibbles. I worked my way into Tom's heart by way of C's stomach, never arriving at the house without an edible treat for him. I learned to fake cough whenever I unwrapped American cheese slices, lest C come bombing into the kitchen for his due.  Ada took care of invading birds and insects while C was responsible for land crawlers and slitherers. I believe the forces of gravity worked against C when it came to leaping for a bird, so it seemed a natural division of labor.
 

Until yesterday, Ada partook of her meals with gusto. Even if her weight loss was interminable, it was not for lack of effort. Her mealtime pleasure was audible.

After breakfast yesterday I let her out, and like every other day, I expected her to walk out the back door, do whatever things cats do out there in the morning shade behind the garage, and come back in five minutes later, just as she has done every day for the last six months.  None of us saw her again all day; I went out a few times checking for her, the last time with the flashlight at bedtime, to no avail. I sadly sort of assumed that we simply wouldn't see her again, but I was lifted when there she was at the door this morning.

Something was definitely different, though, and she was unable to nag at my feet to hustle me along with the breakfast preparation.  She wouldn't be able to make it down the cellar stairs (where I feed the cats behind a dogproof cellar door) and fed her at the top of the stairs. She ate a bit, but I could tell it was a struggle.

She sleeps all day most days, but today's was a different kind of sleep, and it became clear when she couldn't walk across this kitchen floor to reach the water dish, that the end was near. I did not want her to suffer, and I do not believe she did. I think she was very tired, and I believe she was ready to cross the Rainbow Bridge.

She liked to sit in stuff.

Especially stuff that belonged to the boys.

I guess I should be flattered that she didn't like how much
attention the boys paid to the bookshelf. If there
was a little space on the bookshelf, she sat there.

She brought softness and warm cuddles and purrs and occasionally laughter to this home, for which I am grateful. She was, well, Ada.

Not a Drop To Drink

My water bills since the beginning of the year:

			2/2/2011	$104.18
			4/2/2011	$91.92
			6/9/2011	$87.28

Then this came today:

click to enlarge

I  was expecting an increase.  What hurts is that when I first looked at the bill without my glasses I read it as $45.22.  See how there's no dollar sign next to the amount due?

But what really hurts is that I've started on the paperwork to put in a second meter for the irrigation system, which the City says should save about half (the sewer amount). They've informed me that the line into the house is lead, which means I'm going to have to dig up the lawn to replace the line. Yes, the line that goes under my brand new lawn, the lawn which is probably steadfastly rooted because I've dumped about the equivalent of the Atlanta Aquarium on it in the last two months.  Estimate for the project, including associated plumbing and yard work and the meter and its $300 application fee, is up to about $4500.  Oh, and everything from the house to the street is my responsibility.

Now, think of the worst swear word you've ever heard me say.

Multiply that by eight hundred and forty-five point twenty-two.