Noodle and the Goose Again

A month later

So it has been brought to my attention. That I haven't posted in a month.

Here's what we missed.

Tulips. Not many, but lovely spots of color in the dreary front yard.

Azeleas.

Apple blossoms.

Dogwoods.

White

and pink.

and Wisteria.

And then, we went to the beach. Ocracoke Island, Outer Banks. Somewhere between the Atlantic and reality.

I love this place.

I would have stayed forever, if I could have.

(Next up: actual words and complete sentences. Maybe.)

WHY???

You might be asking yourself, if you were to drive past our house or to see us tooling down the road somewhere, WHY IN THE WORLD has this:

 

 

very large and very sporty and very white Jeep become part of the Noodle/Goose family?  Have we become Cowboys? Vaqueros? Too cool for words? or (of all things) SPORTY people who have need for a 4 X 4, 4 wheel drive Sport Utility Vehicle with big old tires and attitude?

Worry not, gentle readers. Big White Jeep is only a temporary blip in the life of this mini-van family.

It all began a while back, when we zipped up to Ohio for a quick weekend surprise wing-ding to celebrate Opa's 80th Birthday. Happy Birthday Opa!!!!! It was a splendid quick weekend, chock full of games and astonishing food and dogs running pell mell in the woods  and snuggling the littlest cousin.

 

 

 

 

 

 

(Really, when the curry and gado/gado and waffles and satay and peanut sauce and carrot cake and cookies and 'garbage' sandwiches and everything else we managed to stuff down in very short order was that yummy AND the cousin that SO freaking adorable, one might not remember to get photos of other things we did).

It was all good and Sunday afternoon we struck out for home - 7 hours away. And then. Right - and I do mean right - before we crossed the river out of Ohio the mini-van died. Just died. Right there on the interstate highway. Which could have been so so so so so much worse than it was, because we were right by an exit (#1) and were able to coast all the way down the exit ramp and pull over onto the wide shoulder of the road before all movement stopped within a short stroll to a service station. From which we discovered that within a mile of where we were there was a) a towing company/repair shop, b) a car rental place and c) a dog friendly hotel. The latter being necessary because the car rental place would not open until the next morning and the news on the mini-van required us to make use of both b and c.

So we overnighted in Ohio and the next morning, rented the only available car - the big, white, rental Jeep and headed home. Since then, we've been bouncing around town in our alter-egos and to tell the truth, it's kinda fun, in an 'oh, if only gas weren't so crazy expensive and I so hopelessly nerdy' way.

Don't you think it looks rather well in our rapidly 'springing' front yard?

 

 

Yeah, probably not. So later this week we'll zip back up to Ohio (just barely) and retrieve our resuscitated mini-van and give back the big, white, rental Jeep.

Fun while it lasts.

In other, completely non-related news, we seem to have a hostage situation developing in the bathroom here. Zora has discovered that Maizie can't jump into the bathtub after her and Maizie has discovered that Zora can't jump back out of the bathtub if closely monitored. For hours.

 

 

As if my life wasn't complicated enough already.

Snow Day

I had forgotten that an inch of snow means crisis in the American Southeast, so when the rain turned to snow on Sunday afternoon, I assured the girls they would NOT have a day off of school the next. I was wrong. School was cancelled by bedtime.

Before that, however, we hit the deck for some snowy fun.

Creations were created.

Until toes and fingers got too cold and a hot bath with hot chocolate chaser was in order.

It actually kept snowing a bit overnight and the yard looked lovely in the morning light.

Most of the white stuff had melted by afternoon, but it was still enough for a pleasant diversion and an excuse not to do the laundry.

 

Being All Sciencey

As I believe I've mentioned here before, we are not really big Science people at our house. Sciencey at best. And yet, something possessed T to undertake not one, but two major Science experiences (as Goose calls them) in the past 24 hours.

The first involved what might result if one, on his night off from work, might place two kettles on the hot stove (one pasta, one lentils) turned on high, whilst also positioning  a wooden spoon strategically on a third burner (also on high) with the handle reaching all the way to the counter-top AND THEN leave the house for god only knows what reason, at approximately 4 am.

I don't know what his working hypothesis was, but the results were; a) a smoke filled house, b) a charred and about to burst into flames wooden spoon, c) a hole burned in the counter-top (perfect for making the house ready for sale!), d) a solid block of burned pasta, e) the screeching of 4 properly functioning smoke alarms, f) terrified wife and children yanked from their peaceful slumbers  screaming and screaming and screaming (mostly the children) and running for the front yard. Oh yeah, and the dog howling, yipping and running pell mell around that yard.

By the time he got back from where ever he went (I never did ask, though I suspect it might involve early morning fast food) I had thrown the charred remains of spoon, pasta and lentils into the sink, opened every door and window possible and got the kids back to bed. It took me a bit more time to settle back down.

THEN about 12 hours later came his second experience. This one involving animal behavior. Specifically what might transpire if one left one's PUPPY WHO CHEWS EVERYTHING IN SIGHT all alone, outside  her crate, in the room that your wife just spent the whole entire freaking day cleaning and organizing with the door to the closet wherein said wife just carefully unpacked and repacked all the china and crystal from her mother's house in sturdy cardboard boxes, all carefully labeled and safely stored OPEN. Leaving this puppy while your wife is out grocery shopping, your kids are glued to a movie in another room, three closed doors away and you are sleeping downstairs.

Yeah, well, that one didn't go so well either. The smoke alarms didn't go off, but there was a bit of screaming when the wife got home. And just a bit of crying over some broken china and crystal.  Not too much of the latter, thankfully. But enough to decisively prove MY working hypothesis that WE CANNOT LEAVE THE PUPPY UNATTENDED AND ROAMING FREELY IN THE HOUSE NO NEVER, NOT EVER!!!!!!

I don't know. Perhaps the man was inspired by the other science experiences going on in our house over the past few weeks. Both Noodle and Goose did Science Fair projects this year. And though we all (the girls and I) complained and whined and moaned our way through the projects, in retrospect they were a walk in the park with ice cream on top. Nothing broken, nothing burned. Just three decidedly non-sciencey women trying to wend our way through hypotheses, procedures, results, observations and presentations. Goose did best of all, excited and on-task. Keeping Noodle focused was somewhat harder.

Goose's Experience was about color mixing using color tablets (like for Easter Egg dying), water, test tubes, pipettes, expanding crystals and lots and lots of pretty colors.

It was actually pretty cool and she did such a good job on it.

I was downright proud of her, especially because she insisted on writing everything by herself. Yeah, it didn't win any prizes - which she was rather saddened by - but girl did a good job. And loved the "Science Fair Participant" ribbon that she got.

Noodle's Project was mostly Noodle wanting to play with electricity and me trying to channel that into something Science Fairy. Like trying to determine which kind of light bulb might be more efficient - an incandescent or a compact fluorescent. Because, you know, there's that whole Clean Energy thing going on and it's a very pertinent contemporary political and environmental issue. Plus, Noodle just read a biography of Thomas Edison and was all jazzed about finding out how light bulbs work.

The experiment was not the work of professionals - to be sure.

A six-volt battery, some wire, a few nails, a metal filament (lifted from a metal pot scrubber) and a piece of wood (yes, it is a garden stake, but you use what you have in our house).

Whoo hoo!! a red glowing metal filament!!

Followed by failed attempts to light light bulbs with the 6 volt battery.

Yeah, not so much. But as we know, From the ashes of disaster grow the roses of success!!!

Try Mom's desk lamp!!!

Success!!!

A brightly glowing filament!!!

Success!!!

Measuring the heat given off by the light bulbs (with a drug store digital thermometer!!!)

Success!!!

Success!!

And while I thought her presentation rocked the world (it had a Graph, for goodness sake), the snoot-nosed grad student judges (who were, I suspect, Science People) didn't so much. So yeah, she didn't win either, but as I kept singing to her:

Disaster didn't stymie Louis Pasteur!
No sir!
Edison took years to see the light!
Right!
Alexander Graham knew failure well; he took a lot of knocks to ring that
bell!
So when it gets distressing it's a blessing!
Onward and upward you must press!
Yes, Yes!
Till up from the ashes, up from the ashes grow the roses of success.

And quite frankly?

We've had about as much Science as we can take for awhile.

Autumn Leaves are Falling....

We throughly enjoyed the Fall season this year, which, given our location in the US, lasted a nice long way into November.

Leaves falling from our beautiful golden maple tree were raked.

And romped in and about.

Little Sister got buried.

Photo sessions were had.

And turned into major leaf battles.

"Cease and Desist!!!", shouted the Little Sister.

Big Sister considered.

Could Peace in Our Time be achieved? Might Shalom regin supreme? The lamb lie down with the lion? Swords be beaten into plowshares?

Nah, not a chance.

Those rotten kids even buried their long suffering Mama in a large pile of leaves.

And then jumped on her.

No photos were taken.