the squibix family blog

For Leah, the highlight was when I told her that someone had asked Alex and I if we were a couple while we waited in line together for apple crisp. That, and the apple crisp itself. Topping apple crisp with butter crunch ice cream is just decadence, but you need some way to make the afternoon's dose stand out if you've also had apple crisp for breakfast.

I think that means it was a good weekend.

Sure, I could manually yank the chain where I want it to be, and I did just that yesterday at the top of the long descent towards home. But that's hardly practical: doing it while the bike is moving would require contortions of which I don't feel that I'm capable, not to mention the risk of pinched fingers (and unsightly grease-stains). Never say I'm not inventive, however! This morning I stopped to pick up a nice, straight stick, about a quarter-inch wide and two feet long, that was just the thing to apply pressure to the inside of the chain as I pedaled and bump it up onto the bigger ring. Worked like a charm! Not, of course, that I would try anything like that in traffic or whatnot—if nothing else, it would be cumbersome to keep taking the stick in and out of the (conveniently-located) stick-holding pocket of my backpack. But since I don't shift gears that often, it was perfectly adequate for the purpose. And I felt so clever!

I'll see if I can fix the derailleur this weekend.

The catch is that the pies have to be made from local ingredients, which rules out my usual procedure of getting my pumpkin from a can. So this morning Harvey and I headed over to Chip-In to pick up a couple of pumpins, along with the usual milk and eggs. I cooked one of the gourds today, as a test model, and will pie it tomorrow after procuring some local cream; I am not, however, entirely sure I chose the best way to go about it. Anyone with experience on the subject want to offer their advice?

I also can't refrain from mentioning a little mishap we had at the store. Tired Harvey wanted to be carried, so with him in one arm I perhaps didn't grasp the bag of milk and eggs as securely as I should have and I dropped the whole thing onto the concrete floor right in front of the register. Three quarters of a gallon of milk and the glass from three bottles makes quite a mess, it turns out! I was pleased to note, though, that only one of the eggs broke: the result kind of validates my 6th-grade egg-drop strategy, conceived the morning the project was due, of just sticking the stupid egg in an egg carton and wrapping some bubble-wrap around it. See, it could have worked!

There were some bright spots from the disaster, besides the lucky eggs. Because we're such good customers Neil let us have three more milk bottles (and one more egg!) for free, and someone was there to tell us not to cry about it. Kept me from having to make the joke myself!

In any case, Harvey's been walking up a storm lately. Around the block with mama, at the pumpkins at Whole Foods with me, all around Drumlin Farm (pics to be posted later, when Mama has a moment alone with her computer). And not just outdoors, either: those rare moments when he's confined to the house he amuses himself with chasing Rascal, often for some reason walking backwards. Maybe so he can claim it was an accident when he collides with the poor dog? He still falls some, mostly from slippery floors inside or slopes outside, but he's got a pretty hard head and for the most part doesn't complain, even after some fairly spectacular falls.

Cognitive growth is evident as well. This evening we were reading books, and when we finished the stack I sent him to get another one—I was comfortable on the couch, you understand. He was about to go for a boring Baby's First Animals type of book, but when I told him that he should grab Ollie the Stomper instead, he did. Who knew the boy even listens to me?! Harvey, you're now officially ahead of Rascal on the house intelligence chart.

(Don't worry puppy, I don't think he's going to catch up to you on athleticism for quite some time yet.)

All the pies (there were a fair number of apple, too) meant a whole lot of waiting while judges tasted, but we had fun playing with rocks and watching the crowd. Having reset my expectations to zero when I found I wasn't the only entrant (never mind when several things went wrong with the baking) I was pleasantly surprised to hear that my pie was one of three tied for first place after the initial judging! Shortly thereafter I was unpleasantly disappointed to come in last among those three in extra innings, but I will still display my third-place ribbon with pride—grubby as it may be from Harvey's dirty hands.

And that grubbiness was before he got his hands on some of the leftover pie, put out for the crowd when the judging was over. I think he'd be happy to do it all again next weekend... or maybe tomorrow!

[edit: A photo gallery is available on the BFM website; page through all the boring pics until you get to the ones of me and Harvey.]

Well, as of yesterday the rails are no more (that is to say, they're off the bed until we need em the next time). Now that Harvey can totally climb over them if he wants—or flip over them headfirst—they are less useful than they once were, so we thought we'd see what it would be like to sleep in a grown-up bed.

And I have to say, the early returns aren't entirely positive. Both Leah and I kind of got used to the cozy confinement of the rails; now with them gone it feels like we're more on the bed than in it. Also, they were handy to lean against when Harvey was tossing and turning and forcing us further and further towards the bed's edges. Still, it's nice to be able to slip in or out of bed without having to scootch down from the end, and it's certainly easier to make the bed now. And really, I don't think the blue ever really went very well with our bedroom decor.

Harvey had one really good night a couple days ago, but he's now suffering from a cold that has him tossing and turning more than ever the past two nights. If he falls out of bed, those rails are probably going right back on.

Also, no traffic!

So what are we actually doing? In the first place, we're taking our day of rest on Sunday, which I understand it rather non-standard (to say nothing of non-biblical). But we figured that, since we worship on Sunday, it's important to be able to take the time to focus on that rather than rushing around trying to get a hundred other things done—which would certainly be the case if we hadn't done any of them on Saturday. We are not refraining from using electricity, or from driving, or from bicycling or dancing: none of those feel like work to us. We are trying to keep work around the home to an absolute minimum, to avoid shopping, and to make a point of slowing down and enjoying the day.

Our results have been mixed, so far. We feel pretty far behind in the housework on a regular basis, so when piece of mind would be better served by getting some laundry done or bread baked than by leaving those tasks undone, we've been going ahead and doing them. We don't feel guilty about it: it's just pragmatic necessity. And we're just getting warmed up! Obviously, the goal is to be able to build that rest day into the schedule without stressing unduly at other times, and we have managed it a little bit. A couple weeks ago I prepared our Sunday dinner on Saturday, and it felt pretty nice to have a big hot meal with no more effort than popping it in the oven; today we managed to get all of the essential laundry done for the week to come. Will practice make perfect?

If nothing else, it's another notch on our intentionality stick. And I won't promise updates on our practice, but if we either fail utterly at making Sunday different from any other day or guide ourselves to a new sense of spirituality and peace, you'll read about it here.

So we won't miss the Bedford market, as convenient as it may be. We will, however, miss the fantastic Lexington market, which only has two more market days left—and which, I learn, recently won the 2010 Best of Boston award for best Farmers Market. It really is a great scene, with probably four times the number of booths than there are at Bedford and a great crowd every market day. I skipped a couple weeks due to home emergencies and poverty, but you'd better believe I'll be there tomorrow hoping to stock up on squashes and cranberries for the long winter ahead!

So, better luck next year Bedford?

Actually, I'm not really shocked or disgusted. I knew some people watch a crap-load of tv, because I get to hear about so much of it at the lunchroom at work. But the cold hard figures—or rather, the interpretation of the figures presented by the LA Times, because reading that article is as far as I delved into this subject—really brings home to me the immensity of folks' television habit. I just don't understand how they find room to fit all that screen time into their day!

Me, I get home at around 4:00—earlier than a lot of people, I would imagine. As soon as I get home Harvey is ready to play with me for a while and mama is ready for a rest; sometimes the dog needs a walk as well. That takes us up until it's time to start dinner: we usually eat around 5:30. Then we have to get Harvey ready for bed. If he's getting a bath that's mama's job so I get a few minutes to catch up on my RSS reading, otherwise I first get him tired out by romping with Rascal and then read him books to calm him down, before we put him in bed around 7:00 or so. Cleaning the kitchen and baking bread or cookies as necessary takes another hour or so, and then it's time to write a blog post before bed. Where on earth could I ever find the time to squeeze in five hours of television?!

Obviously, that average has to be padded out a little by heavy weekend viewing, but I'm still only home for six hours before I'm dead tired at 10:00; and I go to bed at 9:00 or before when I can. Could I sit in front of the box for four of those hours? Then again, there is a little missing time in my reconstruction of my schedule... a little bit of reading books, perhaps, or stupid things on the internet, or even talking to my wife. That's where I could make up some quality tv time, by skipping those particular pastimes. That's if I even had a tv, of course!

[And hey, readers, I know you're out there: how much tv do you think you average a day! Don't worry, I won't judge you (out loud) by your answers!]

Note the advantages of getting your field pumpkin at Chip-in, where they're priced according to looks and priced to sell! Every single field pumpkin at Whole Foods—moderately-sized all—is $9.00. $9.00? No thanks! Wilson Farms in Lexington I believe is somewhere in between: if I recall correctly, their field pumpkins are more expensive the bigger they get, regardless of shape or blemishes. I guess that's just one of the benefits to running a family farm: you get to examine each pumpkin you sell and price it accordingly. Now that's service!

Wilson's, though, has something that even Chip-in doesn't, and that's truly enormous pumpkins. The pricing for those beasts, as described on the website [link target subject to change, sorry], is entirely reasonable: 59¢/lb. Reasonable, that is, until you learn that Atlantic Giants (which are actually bred from Hubbard squashes rather than real American pumpkins) can reach up to 1,810 lbs. Fancy spending $1,067.90 on your jack-o-lantern this year? Not, of course, that Wilson's carries pumpkins anything like that large: the most expensive gourd I noticed there a couple weeks ago was priced at $159, which—if my calculations are correct—means it weighs in at a measly 269 lbs.

And yet, a hundred and a half dollars also seems like a great deal to spend on a pumpkin, especially when you can get one nearly as impressive for somewhere in the neighborhood of $25. Or even $3, right? (we'll post pictures if we make it into a jack-o-lantern). Sure, kids can't pose for pictures on top of the $25 pumpkin, but on the other hand you don't need a chain saw to try and carve it. It's just like diamonds, which similarly increase wildly in price as they get larger. No simple arithmetic increase for luxury goods like pumpkins and engagement rings, no: if you want one that really stands out you're going to have to pay exponentially for the increase. Scientists might tell us that it's simply what happens when you increase the diameter of a solid arithmetically, but I know it's really all about soaking the rich. And I approve. I just hope that, for the pumpkins at least, the deal also includes door-to-door backhoe transport!

He was a little bit uncertain about the actual trick-or-treating part, until he found out that he would be getting actual candy that he could actually eat (in representative quantities at least). He still wouldn't put his own hand out to take anything, but at least he consented to being carried up to a few peoples' doors.

Now we see how well he sleeps after consuming as much candy as he has. Or coo-key?!, as he describes it.