Cortland Apples: A First Taste

Wheeling through the produce section of my local grocery store today, driving a "car cart" with my daughter in the front, steering away, I was stopped by an anonymous shopper who insisted that the cortland apples on sale were absolutely magnificient. I am usually a gala apple girl, but the cortland apples were on sale for a remarkably reasonable price, so I decided to risk the week's apple consumption and try the shiny cortlands out. I bought a five pound bag. Sarah and I had one for supper tonight. Actually, Sarah ate nearly the entire apple, and I had a couple of bites. When she wasn't looking, I carefully swiped a section and scampered to the basement stairwell where I crunched away.

I was quite impressed with cortland apples. I don't know that I'd want to eat them every week, but they were a nice change of pace. They were fresh and crisp, with a snow white flesh that looked almost eerie next to the blood red peelings on the exterior surface. (Sarah preferred her without the skins. I tried to be a good mother and make her eat the skins, but she started gagging, so I kindly peeled them for her). The cortland apples were a bit more tart than gala apples, but in autumn, I enjoy a nice tart apple.

I was interested to find that these particular cortland apples had been grown in my local state of Wisconsin (strange, to live in a state that actually produces apples for grocery store consumers) and I noted that the apples went particularly well with cheddar cheese slices, something else that is in no shortage in Wisconsin.

Camping at Copper Falls

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Originally uploaded by super rachel zana.

Last weekend we drove through beautiful Northern Wisconsin forests, a collage of red, orange, yellow and greet colors mixed together to go camping at Copper Falls State Park. While we hiked through beautiful, vibrant forests, stared at amazing waterfalls and cooked on a campfire, one of the best features of our trip was the least expected, a small lake surrounded by forest with a little swimming beach. Sarah spent hours each day playing in the sand and even better, taking off her shoes and wading through the water. She would run through the sand, covering her appendages with "dirt" and then run to the water and wash it all off, calling the bits of foam along the edge of the sand her soap. She splashed, she shuffled, and she jumped until she was exhausted, soaked from the belly button down. When we finally extracted her from the shore, she smelled like a fish and begged to go back the next day.

3 Hole Paper Punches

Black, sleak
the paper punch slices through eight and a half by eleven paper
leaving small holes, a crisp absence
in the standard locations
The paper finds its way into binders of various expense
heralding information, random transformed into systemized
Left behind, the holes
wait patiently for the vacuum cleaner
littering the living room carpet like a dusting of October snow

Emotionally Exhausted

Sunday afternoon my husband, Sarah and I explored a fall festival. There were hundreds of booths of artists selling various goods under their pure white tents, ranging from hand lotion to CD's, from crafts to organic beeswax. Sarah held our hands and maneuvered through the crowds of people (what a different perspective to be eye level with the general population's knees). She was magically drawn to the center of the park where there was an inflatable slide and jumping house. She plopped herself down on the grass and spent the better part of a half hour watching kids of all ages and sizes climb to the top of the inflatable slide and bounce down, transfixed. We couldn't tear her away.

My husband wanted to take her on the slide in the worst way. He begged. He pleaded. He cajoled. He offered to go with her. Nothing motivated her to actually want to slide down. She kept replying that she was too little. She wanted to watch the big kids slide down. Eventually my husband convinced her to try. Up they climbed to the top on an inflatable staircase and my husband sat down situating Sarah on his lap. She had pure terror in her eyes. I waited at the bottom of the slide, ready for disaster. Off they went, and her terror turned to pure joy as they bounded and bounced their way down, three seconds of bliss. When they landed at the bottom in a heap, her joy turned to a look disgust. She wiggled off the slide into my arms and told me she was ready for a nap. So we took our emotionally drained toddler home and we all had a nice Sunday afternoon nap.

Brownie Bliss

Yesterday I made a quick trip to the local grocery store for milk and other supplies. As luck would have it, I had the opportunity to have a free piece of Wisconsin's largest brownie in the process. The grocery store bakery had on display a brownie that, if I remember correctly, was thirteen feet long, decorated in Green Bay Packer regalia. They were distributing small pieces of brownie to all customers walking by, and when asked if I would like the opportunity to taste the state's largest brownie, how could I resist not becoming a part of a state bakery record? I savor a brownie under nearly any condition, but this brownie was especially delectable. I walked down the cereal aisle, munching away, tantalizing my tongue with the rich chocolate taste.

I found it interesting that the brownie was decorated in honor of the Green Bay Packers. I haven't lived in a state that had it's own big football team previous to this year and am often surprised at the dedication of Packer fans, who dress themselves and their children in green and yellow most days of the week, who dress their houses in green and yellow, and even their pets. They are so loyal that at the outdoor fall festival in the park today you could find thirty or forty loyal fans sitting under a tent listening to the Packer game on the radio, and as you walked along the path peering at craft booths, nearly all the artists were sitting down in their chairs, ears glued to their own personal radio listening for play by play commentary. Not a sports fan myself, I find it interesting to observe these foreign practices, and I giggle to myself.

Double Knot

Double knotted shoelaces are an enigma to me. As a child, I was never able to perfect the double knot. Unless I was blessed enough to have a pair of velcro shoes in my size, I was runnning about with at least one shoelace flopping in the wind, dragging in the mud, or sliding through the slush and snow. I am still unable to tie a good double knot. As a result, my daughter's shoelaces are nearly always flopping in the wind, dragging in the mud, or sliding through slush and snow. Once a pristine shade of pink, her shoelaces are now a medley of various shades of gray speckled with brown mud. Although I am not really upset about color transformation (I never really cared for dressing her in pink shoes in the first place, but they were available and ready) I do feel a bit guilty about ruining a good pair of shoes. Think of the poor children who recieve them as hand-me-downs. I have been ever so tempted to just purchase new velcro shoes, but $14.95 goes against my whole principle of dressing my children in clothes that cost less than $3.00, usually found at garage sales. So I have refrained, and it paid off, because today at a stellar garage sale, I located a pair of velcro tennis shoes, size 9, perfect for next summer! Hooray! And better yet, they are decorated in gender neutral colors, excellent for handing down to subsequent children.

Reading Bear Books

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Originally uploaded by super rachel zana.

I am learning and experimenting with my digital camera. My recent photography purchase has been a large swath of black material that I drape over my piano for a background. Sarah likes to climb on the material and read books, in particular, books about bears. I caught her looking up from her favorite bear book, "What was that?" She nearly has the book memorized, and her telling of the tale is very dramatic. Here, she pauses to regain her thoughts.

Snakes

Mice do not alarm me. Spiders, bugs, worms I am fine with. But snakes, I despise. I have been blessed this summer. The only snakes I have seen were caged, in a pet store, or dead, on a highway. In fact, the highway snake was so dead and had been squashed so many times by traffic that he was barely discernable from the pavement itself, just the way I like to find a snake.

There is something sneaky about snakes slithering through the grass. You don't know they are there until you have almost stepped on them. Their ugly little tongue flicks in and out, and they just aren't one bit trustworthy, in my estimation. I dislike the wiggling they do with their spine in order to move. I don't even like looking at pictures of snakes in a book. They give me the shivers.

When I lived on a farm as a young girl I rarely went out of my mother's yard (where one did occaisionally see a snake, but she was usually close enough to run it over with the lawnmower or chop it into little pieces with a shovel) without some weapon to rely on. Usually this weapon was a pitchfork. I remember walking along the lake with a pitchfork and one of my friends on a warm spring afternoon. After we had walked along the mucky shore (there wasn't much sand because we had received much rain that year) for about a half mile my friend suddenly inquired exactly why was I carrying a rusty pitchfork? I replied confidently, "To ward off snakes."

"Like that one there?" she asked. I looked over in the reeds, and sure enough, not three feet away was a snake. I forgot completely that I was even carrying a pitchfork and began screaming at the top of my lungs, draggging my friend and the pitchfork through the lake at a frenzied, hysterical pace. She eventually lost her footing and fell face first into the water, and I went down with her. There we were, both of us soaking wet. I don't know whatever happened to the sly little reptile, but she refrained from ever mentioning the word snake again when she saw me walking around with a pitchfork.

Things I Plan on Doing Someday

Admittedly, I am not an overly well-rounded person. I have many interests and have had many experiences, but there are also many experiences I am just not interested in having. However, I do have a list of things I would like to experience sometime in the future. Most of these things will likely not be undertaken soon.

1. I would like to ride in a hot air balloon in the fall in Wisconsin while the trees are changing colors. This is unfortunately a very expensive experience.

2. I'd like to ride down a luge track like you see at the Olympics. This is a dangerous experience, and I don't know how a person would really go about accomplishing it, but those luging people always look like they are having an exhilarating ice- coated waterslide ride.

3. I'd like to take a tumbling class. Adult tumbling classes are, unfortunately not available in my area.

4. I'd like to take a pottery class.

5. I'd like to learn several bookbinding techniques.

6. I'd like to own a cat that sleeps on my feet at night. My husband has put the kabosh on this idea several times. He hates the smell of litterboxes, and I'm probably not clean enough to keep a cat anyway.

7. When my children are past the point of drowing in shallow containers of water, I would like to have a goldfish pond with a fountain in my yard.

8. I'd like to go on a cathedral tour of Europe.

9. I'd like to spend a month in a cottage on the Pacific Ocean.

10. I'd like to meet Oscar the Grouch in person.

Canadian Lynx

At our zoo there is a Canadian Lynx who paces furiously in his habitat. Around and around it makes a quick, decisive, somewhat circular path around his cage. It has the strangest step, a lilting, prancing feel to the way it walks that makes you think it could pounce on you or preferably something inside its cage at any given moment if it chose to do so. As it steps, its head bobs slightly forward, almost like a chicken would walk, but much more crafty and subtle. Pacing around and around, it has an almost hypnotic effect on those watching it. There is something truly eery about the way it looks straight ahead, never deviating from its path, eyes set apart, wide open, tongue hanging out slightly to the side, lips parted ever so gently like a small child with a sinus infection. I imagine it must have sharp teeth, maybe big teeth, and an untrustworthy disposition. Even though it is much smaller than the docile lions who sleep nearby on their shelf inside a separate cage at the zoo, I would be much more terror stricken if the lynx was on the loose.

Crisp Cracker (A Memory Inspired by a Paint Chip)

A small girl, I loved butter with a passion. My parents would take me to the cafe in town (there was only one cafe in town, a greasy spoon affair with questionable cleanliness) and I'd order fried ham. While waiting, I would consume all the packets of butter left in a basket on the table next to the ketchup. I'd unpeal the packets and eat the butter with a spoon.

On chilly days, I'd sit at my grandmother's kitchen table, propped up in a big chair on my knees and beg, plead, for butter sandwiches. My grandmother would dig in a cupboard near the stove for a box of Townhouse crackers, hand me the butter dish and a dull table knife, and let me go at the task of smearing butter on the crackers, pressing them together to make miniature sandwiches, far tastier than bologna on white bread. I'd feast, the crackers crisp, the butter squished inside, erupting through the airholes on the top of the cracker, everything made even better by the abundance of salt.

paint samples

We are in the middle of a lot of home improvement projects at the moment, the largest of which is painting and recarpeting the largest room in our basement. My husband is doing all the work. I'm just available for directions. This weekend he painted the walls a light color of green, which, like all the painting we have done so far, has turned out different than I envisioned. It isn't bad, just different than the picture in my mind. Sometimes I feel like cursing those little paint samples . . . it is nearly impossible to tell what a wall is going to look like from a 2 inch square. I am adjusting to the green and liking it even more each day. I think it will work just fine.

However, I do admire the people who think up names for paint samples! How creative! I would love to be employed as a paint chip namer. The paint I am contemplating for the stairwell to the basement is called "cheerful moon." The paint in the basement was entitled "garden fantasy." You'll find even better names if you just stand in front of the paint sample rack and read the paint for its literary value.

One of my friends from the Writing Project in Grand Forks wrote a whole lesson plan on creative poetry using paint sample titles. I think I may try writing a collection of paint poems myself.

My Kitchen Floor

Smeared grapes, squashed peas
dribbles of unidentified dried liquid
cheerios reduced to crumbs
anxiously wait in in the corners and crevices
looking for suspicious movement
as my feet pad through the kitchen and back again

carrots and shredded cheese, dried
bonded to the linoleum with unexplainable zest
smirk at me from their vantage point underneath my daughter's chair

I've closed my eyes for days
ignoring the batttle cries of dried banana slices
crushed granola bars
spilled milk, dehydrated, flaking away underfoot

The deadline is nearing
The truce is ending
Soapy water and a worn rag my weapons of choice

I will scrub this floor before midnight.

Sarah's Picture

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Originally uploaded by super rachel zana.

Tuesday is a big day at my house. Between 10:00 a.m. and noon, the garbage truck arrives on our street, and Sarah is glued to the living room picture window. She hops around in delight as it picks up our neighbor's garbage across the street and then has an excruciating wait as it travels up to the cul de sac and back down our side of the street to pick up our own garbage. I took this picture while she was waiting, waiting, waiting for the green garbage truck's imminent return.