Miser Family update, earthquake edition

Life continues to be rich and full in the Miser Mom household.

Perhaps the biggest news this week is that an earthquake struck nearby; this is the third largest quake since I moved here 25 years ago.  It was initially reported as 2.7 on the Richter scale, but later downgraded to 2.3.  

We have earthquakes seldom enough that the tremors caused some consternation.  There were multiple calls to 911, with people worried that the rumble/boom they'd heard was North Korea bombing us. (This makes perfect sense, if you think that  a likely strategic target of the North Koreans would be a small inland city surrounded by Amish farmland).  The local newspaper later carried reports that objects on the top of people's dressers in nearby Millersville, the center of the earthquake, had been knocked over.  Fortunately, recovery and rescue efforts all seem to have gone smoothly, and life here in our little city seems to be returning to normal.

On Monday morning, I broke a tooth.  My dentist was very busy and finally saw me late in the day; she said that three different people had broken teeth that day.  (I told her I blamed the Sunday earthquake). It looks like I'll need "crown enhancement" before I can actually get my new crown, although I won't know for sure for a little while. My dentist referred me to an oral surgeon who will see me next week; the surgeon has been out of the office this week, probably rearranging objects on the top of his dresser.  Although it was disconcerting to break a tooth, I'm rather comforted by the nonchalance and lack of sense of urgency of my dentist and oral surgeon.

N-son  played drums in church on Sunday; then later in the day both he and I-daughter sang in a beautiful local concert. N-son's ROTC commander was at the concert, and was impressed enough that he asked if N-son would sing the national anthem at the upcoming end-of-year ceremony.  N-son has been avidly practicing the anthem around the house ever since. Sometimes I ask him to practice a little more quietly.

J-son had an impromptu boxing match on Monday, which had the effect of prodding his coach to prod J-son to start running again (which he'd cut back on) and to train even harder.  So all this week, J-son has been coming home from the gym very sore and very tired.  I love it.

K-daughter has been looking for jobs, and in the process has started helping the boys to look for summer jobs. (Thank you, K-daughter!)  Right now it seems like N-son is aiming for food service jobs, and J-son thinks he'd be perfect for a job where he'd clean fish tanks.  Let's cross fingers that they get hooked up (or cooked up, depending) with steady work!

My husband's classes finished up this week (oh, I suppose mine did, too, now that I come to think of it!). He gave a presentation downtown at our local CS Lewis group.  He's spending Saturday (today) in Philadelphia at the Climate march, while I spent Saturday downtown at our local market doing voter registration. This was too late for our municipal primaries (which are coming up on May 16) and probably too early for the midterm elections, but it was a good practice run for a bunch of novice activists.

Loveliest of streets

About a hundred and fifty years ago, A.E. Housman wrote a poem about my front yard.  He wrote,

Loveliest of trees, the cherry now
is hung with bloom along the bough,
and stands along the woodland ride
Wearing white for Easter-tide.

Okay, maybe this poem wasn't about my particular street, because Housman lived in Bromsgrove England, not in central Pennsylvania.  But this time of year, my street really is about the most beautiful street in my city.  The whole street is full of flowering trees that pop into bloom come the end of April.  Both sides of the road, plus a grassy median divider down the middle of the road, are all awash with cherry blossom trees as well as dogwoods.  They're wearing white and pink for Easter-tide, and it's just about the most amazingly wonderful place to be.

In fact, this is a view from my bedroom window earlier this week. There are dogwood blossoms, and there's a squatting dude.

The squatting dude was taking pictures of the trees as well as pictures of a young couple standing in the grassy median, surrounded by the trees.

I'm guessing that this couple had just gotten engaged, and that this was their professional engagement picture.  And of all the beautiful places in world they might want to have this moment commemorated, they chose the street in front of my home.

It's a picture of loveliness.  Or of loveliest.  It's a reminder to me to be grateful for what I get when I just walk out the door.

Housman's poem is about gratitude, too, as well as about how we can apply mathematical insights that enhance our gratitude, insights that allow us to make the most of the time we have amid beautiful places.  The people out my window were young, like Housman.  He computes the years remaining to him, and uses his meditation on time to think about the trees even more,

Now of my three score years and ten
Twenty will not come again,
and take from seventy years a score,
that leaves me only fifty more. 

And since, to look at trees in bloom,
fifty springs are little room,
along the woodland I will go
to see the cherry hung with snow.  

Me, of my three score years and ten and possibly more, fifty one will not come again.  But still, I'm heading out to see the cherry hung with bloom.  Life is good.

Miser Family Update, Easter-Tax Day version

Life continues to be rich and full in the Miser Mom household

We began the week celebrating Easter, both in the Christian and in the secular sense.  Last week, I'd bought my candy from our local farmer's market, handing the canning jars to the woman behind the counter and asking her to fill them up. Even though I hadn't bought candy from her since a year ago, she recognized me and asked, "Are you the woman that only puts out one trash can a year?"  (I told her no, I actually put out 9 trash cans last year, so she must have me confused with someone else).  So we had our usual easter baskets with canning-jar-eggs, and our next door neighbor hid plastic eggs in the back yard for N-son and J-son to find, and we had a sweet morning, in many senses of the word "sweet".

Later in the week, on Tuesday, we celebrated Tax Day with our annual family "Money Dinner".  We invited a couple of guests over to share the wealth, and we served dollar-shaped soft pretzels, ("bringin' home the") Bacon, green tortilla quesadillas cut into dollar shapes, and lettuce that the older people saw as metaphorical for money but the younger people thought of as confusing.  Oh, and gold-foil-covered chocolate coins.

N-son played squash against his coach.  J-son visited his foster mom.  My husband went to the Earth Day protest in Philly.  I picked up an extra calculus class, because one of our department's mathematicians got sick suddenly at the end of the semester.  Baby-A can count backwards from 4.  

Garbage offsets

This post isn't about tomatoes.  Still, I want to show you how happy my tomatoes are, enjoying their recent field trip outdoors.

Tomatoes in the sunshine.

I've started them in canning jars, per my usual custom, because (a) I don't want to spend money on plastic starter trays, and (b) plastic starter trays are so small that they require up-potting the plants anyway and (c) I already have gobs of canning jars just sitting around, and (d) this hasn't resulted in tomato genocide in past years, so I figure why the heck not stick with what's worked?

In the same way that I'm too cheap to buy plastic starter trays, I'm also too cheap to get grow lights, and even when I borrowed grow lights, I was too cheap to leave them turned on.  (Sometimes it's hard being a Miser Mom; I get a little too wound up about leaving on the lights).   But my high-E windows mean that my tomatoes languish without additional help, making the transfer from jars to the ground problematic, unless I give them a way to get full-spectrum light.  So during April and early May, whenever the weather is warm enough, I take my tomatoes outdoors to play during the day, and then bring them back in at night to protect them from cold and/or rain.

The tomatoes in their new "school bus",
hanging out with the violets.

What's different this year is that these field trips have a new tomato school bus, so to speak. Instead of carrying my tomato-canning-jars around in their cardboard boxes (a dozen to a box), I now have a fantastic wooden basket with handles that just perfectly fits all two dozen jars. This box is a most excellent acquisition, because not only does this box allow me to carry all the jars out (or back in) in one trip, but it also means I don't have to worry that errant rain will destroy my storage boxes by making them soggy. I love my new tomato school bus.

And where, you might ask, did I get this wonderful box?

From my neighbor's trash pile.

My neighbors, they throw away such amazing stuff.  Here I am, agonizing over two tortilla bags that go with feeding 8 people at our family's annual money dinner (internal monologue: "Is there  any way I can buy green tortillas around here without plastic bags?"  fret, fret, fret . .  ).  I obsess over eliminating material that is designed exclusively for the purpose of being disposed of.  And my neighbors, their trash piles contain object after object that remains perfectly useful . . . just not useful to my neighbors.  I've rescued I-don't-know-how-many beautiful wicker baskets, art canvases, flower pots, pieces of furniture, children's toys.   Just the other day, I pulled out a tea kettle.

This gets me steamed.

The kettle is in perfect condition.  But my neighbors are renovating their kitchen, and apparently the kettle no longer fits the decor.  I admit I don't need a kettle either, but I couldn't bear the thought of this thing taking up space in our increasingly overflowing landfill, so I grabbed it off the top of their trash pile and added it to our "donate" box.

To be more specific, I added it to our "donate -- household goods" box.  We have donation boxes for household goods, for clothes, for books, for scrap metal, for rags, and for arts and crafts, all near our garbage can, which is slowly-but-surely filling up for the third time this year.  I saw the level in my own garbage can rising even as I rescued the tea kettle from my neighbor's garbage, and a thought struck me.

If companies (and even individuals) can buy carbon offsets from other sources to make up for their own excesses, maybe I could use garbage offsets to make up for my own landfill contributions.  What would happen if, for every garbage can my family produces, I rescued an equal amount of perfectly good stuff and got it into the hands of people who could use it?  My net effect on the local landfills could be zero, even if I'm not technically zero waste myself.

I want to be clear that I know I sound like a zealot and/or crazy person saying all this. I don't actually root around in other people's garbage cans, and I'm not about to start doing that now, nor in the future.  (I've only rescued the stuff in plain sight, left on the top of the can or on the ground next to it).  I don't actually want to structure my life around being the Don Quixote of Garbage, riding off to tilt at trash cans every garbage day.

And yet, the idea of having a net-zero effect on our landfill appeals to me.  If I can't quite figure out how to avoid the tortilla bags and other soft plastics that seem to make up the bulk of our garbage, maybe I can help see to it that our garbage has a little less companionship as it heads off to its final resting place.

It's something to think about.

What seams difficult . . .

On Saturday nights, I listen to Prairie Home Companion, and I pay bills, and I mend clothes.

Except that now that my sons are finishing up 11th grade, getting closer and closer to the day they'll launch into the world on their own, I pay bills and have my sons mend their own clothes.

Fixing a ripped seam -- like the one on N-son's bike jersey -- takes maybe 3 minutes if you know how.  And I darned well want my sons to know how, and not to toss a piece of clothing that's easily fixed just because they're too intimidated by the process of pinning the fabric or threading the sewing machine.

The first time my sons asked me to mend some clothes and I turned the job back over to them, they panicked.  To me, that says that the lessons were all the more vital.  How did I let them get to that point?

I'm really pleased that by now, they accept the task matter-of-factly.  They know how to back-stitch at the beginning and end of the repair, how to remove pins as they stitch along, how to turn the needle so that it finishes up, how to snip the threads when they're done.

They're even sort of proud of their skills.  Sort of.  But I guess I don't have to leave that particular chore up to my sons; I can take on the the task of being proud so they don't have to do it themselves.

[addendum:  when I read a draft of this post to N-son, he replied, "Boo-YAH, I'm proud!"  So I guess that's yet another thing he can handle, after all.]

Miser Family Update, the good rut edition

Life continues to be rich and full in the Miser Mom household.

My husband has done more than his share of political activism this week; he began the week with a bike ride to Harrisburg (~75 miles round trip) to join in an Immigration solidarity rally, after which he happily joined with his usual Tuesdays-with-Toomey protest, then attended (with me) a neighborhood reception for a candidate for mayor of our local city, and finished the week with enthusiastic participation in the April 15 Tax Day march, urging our current president to be as transparent about his finances as our previous presidents and presidential candidates during the last half-century.  

And if that last paragraph sounds like my husband is merely getting better at traveling along in the rut he's gotten used to, then it'll be no surprise to say that J-son had a boxing match this weekend.  He fought a 25-year-old, muscle-y guy.  He fought well in the first round.  In the second round he lost his mouth guard and the fight paused while he got it back.  In the third round, just as in his previous fight, he walloped his opponent so hard that he won on a TKO on a standing 8 count.  He earned a belt that my husband describes as "incredibly gaudy, plastic black belt with chrome attachments".

And look!  His face isn't all smashed up!  Way to go, J-son!

N-son likewise persisted with his usual routine of ROTC, squash, school, and culinary arts.  In addition, he signed up to take the SATs in early June.

As for me, I of course did more of my teaching (giving back Calc 2 exams) and committee work.  By the end of the week, I got to enjoy a balmy weekend day watching my granddaughter Baby-A.  She loves building things with the wooden blocks that my sister built for her.  She also loves going "ahhside" (outside), which meant that we got to do a lot of weeding and garden prep.  I think that "ahhside" is her favorite word. She's destined for a fabulous career as an environmental engineer, I think.

Let's start a tower . . . 

What an awesome sense of balance this 2-year old has!

Miser Family update (lost-and-found edition)

Life continues to be rich and full in the Miser Mom household. 

We try to have a "Family Fun Night" about once a week, and this week was one of those wonderful gatherings where everything accidentally fell together perfectly.  I-daughter and K-daughter came over for dinner, and after dinner little Baby-A had us all in stitches while she ran circles around J-son and N-son.  Like, literally, she ran around her uncles in circles about 100 times, all three of them full of lots of energy.  There was lots of giggling and fun.   

My husband has ratcheted up his riding in anticipation of his long summer ride across Russia; on Saturday he rode to New Jersey (75 miles). 

N-son has been grooving to his culinary arts program, and he's also snagged a few babysitting jobs, watching Baby-A while K-daughter is at her wedding planner job.

J-son got to spend the weekend with his birth dad --- this is the first time that they've gotten to meet face to face in well over a dozen years.  It's good to see J-son forging these connections.  He's also been working harder than ever at boxing (if that's even possible), and his coach is talking about maybe taking him pro someday.

As for me, I had an experience this week that I haven't had since 1996:  I almost lost my planner (my calendar/to-do list/external memory).  The last time this happened, I had been out to a restaurant with my then-boyfriend and another friend, and when we got in the car to go home, I realized I didn't have my planner with me.  Fortunately, my friend called to say I'd left it at his home . . . but until I got the phone call, I was in an awful emotional state (and the fact that my then-boyfriend thought it was funny is probably a big part of the reason he's no longer my boyfriend).

At any rate, this week I gave a talk at a nearby college and accidentally left my planner behind in the room where I spoke.  I spent an anxious 90 minutes driving around and trying to find it again (the organizers had picked it up and taken it to the dean's office), but eventually I was happily reunited with my planner,  . . . and so all is good with the world again.