Tadpole no longer

A Mr. Grimshaw update for those who remember when he was a brown blob resentfully growing legs. He has grown into a strapping bullfrog with a yen for privacy and a look of contempt for his human keepers. He never did figure out that the many little fish in his tank are edible (very Dory "fish are friends, not food"). However he does seem to enjoy his crickets which keep escaping and are all over the house (speaking as one who was under her desk yesterday with flashlight, tissue, and a sense of trepidation as I followed the elusive and greatly annoying chirrups).

The daughter says he is going to get much larger. Much larger?

What's rather lovely is that he is not altogether "right" as one of his feet are not good. Which makes me feel good that he was rescued by us (found at bottom of large goldfish delivery bag at a petstore) as he would not fare well in the wild or with other critters...still, he does not care for us. Ah, well. We live but to serve.

Young at Heart

Watched that amazing documentary, Young at Heart, Saturday night and I had to post this.

A tick-lish subject

I hear the groans. Oh, pooh, I like a bad pun. Anyhoo, a spate of warmish rainy weather has brought the bugs back just when I thought the near frost had done them in - in the living room, a surprise mosquito trying to bite me, a tick finding its way onto the youngest one's back after a hike through the woods...and so because I feel like a nice practical and sturdy post, I will be offering advice on something on which I excel (thanks to my dogs) - tick removal.
Do not pour on gasoline. Do not use a spent match. Do not cover it in gels and goop to smother it. All of this is not useful and potentially harmful. Instead, take a tweezer (and this is where you should have invested in a decent tweezer for the house), grasp it firmly at the entry spot, and pull in a firm, steady motion. Don't freak out if you don't get the total head - don't believe me? Get Dr. Oz's take on the subject.

To get rid of the tick, I have found the best solution (since they seem notoriously hard to kill) is to drop the critter in a little bit of nail polish remover. That seems to do them in entirely. However, if you are concerned about saving it in case of Lyme disease or some other tick-related disease, just put the tick in a jar with a tight lid.

Dear Prudence

A song for the pudding queen, prayers and thoughts, it's a rainy night and I am thinking of you and that conversation you had on the phone with someone about a scary cat. Wish I had a phoneline tonight to you.

The daughter wants me to give a shout-out for "To Write Love on Her Arms" so here is their website, do read about it. A lot of heart and compassion.

A really lovely website for calligraphy and quote fans alike.

Personal religion.

Peace out, you know?

Food Nirvana

My daughter and I hit up Trader Joe's this afternoon and discovered serendipity. Slice and warm thin rounds of their garlic parmesan (Italian) bread. Spread on hummus. Top with olive tapenade. Oh, bliss. Really, bliss. I mean, we were moaning. She, like me, would rather eat this stuff than cake. Although I found her addition of feta overkill, she liked it (note her fab dark nail polish - silly fun doing the "food shoot"). Another fan of this tapenade was found on this blog as well as the great links to other veg blogs. Munch well!

Aliens among us

Our Halloween owl attracted a visitor. What you can't really tell is how absolutely ENORMOUS this Praying Mantis was...he later moved on to sitting (or was he merely biding his time, waiting for some innocent two-legged prey unaware of what lurked nearby?) by the front door forcing my nature-loving-except-bugs daughter to go out the garage door instead. Considering I only recently learned that they can fly really really fast, had I known what was by the front door, I may have opted for an alternate escape route as well....

Yes!

"Yes, we can!"
-Barack Obama in his acceptance speech

Amen to that. I am so proud of my country tonight.

four different votes cast in all probability

My vote is probably different from my husband's and probably different from my son's and probably different from my daughter's obscure choices, but how absolutely amazing that we get to do this - choose to vote for someone who means something to us.

It's enough to barack my world :)

Underneath the stars

Underneath the stars I'll meet you and underneath the stars I'll greet you,
There beneath the stars I'll leave you...

Attention Cooks: Help!

Anyone know a way to salvage a perfectly lovely vegetable soup if too much fresh dill has been added? Was trying to finish up quick as sick nine year old wanted to watch Nim's Island - and I tossed in too much fresh dill - now the soup is just overwhelmingly dill (vegetable soup - onions, carrots, celery, turnip, parsnip with a tomato base). Anyway to neutralize the dill? I'm going to refrigerate it tonight and hope it improves a wee bit on its own, but any suggestions most welcome.

Blast from the past mini-concert

Last night, some mention of an old Billie Gentry song and I had to look it up...as is the way of the computer, one thing led to another...my sister had his album and while I never liked him that much, I have always liked him doing this song (James Taylor has a new cover of it). Then there is this Petula Clark number that as a child made me yearn to be grown up enough to go "downtown". I could not believe I found this, remember it coming over the radio in our years ago kitchen. I remember singing this song before I was old enough to understand what I was singing about, her voice is so fab but those jumpsuits..., but I have to include the song that seemed wickedly sexy once upon a time. Oh, radio in the kitchen, Cousin Brucie and all the hits. I remember thinking this song was what "old people" must feel like. I also remember hearing about the guerilla fighting in Vietnam and asking my Mom how they trained gorillas to fight in the war, so color me naive back then. This eclectic selection was great fun to rediscover and post here. Hope you found an old fave.

Friday Round-up

Remember Andy of Mayberry? Opie? How about the Fonz and that show? A friend (hey Steph!) showed me this today at work, just too fantastic. Ron Howard is a brave man :)
And in the spirit of the upcoming holiday, couldn't resist including this either.
Had to include the monkey who looks spiffy in his costume, and I truly hope to see these curious thespians perform someday.
My son is about to go off to his school Halloween party looking quite smashing as a wizard, so must go, but first this only a former lit student could love offering from the most fabulous VSL site whose posts make my email perky.

We've been Ghosted!

What started and nearly ended as a very drag Monday at work, add to it the little one's cello lesson doublebooked and cancelled after we rushed dinner and showed up, totally bummed all the way around. And then...doorbell rings and ... no one is there! Dogs going beserk. We peek out peephole. Lantern broken, all dark, hmmm. Brave husband opens door and -we've been ghosted! A plastic mug of candy and a pass-it-on hand-out plus a ghost to mark that we got ghosted! We get to play, too? This is great fun. Can't wait to ghost some houses tomorrow night after we pick up some candy. Look out! We may be ringing your bell!

Day in the sort of country

An apple run up to Connecticut for Macouns and cider and the little farm thing in the back that all three kids have gone to over the years ( a ten year difference between the middle child and last child so, yes, we have been doing this forever). Emus remain the most terrifying creatures on earth to me (I am convinced they are direct descendents of these). The place has gotten a lot more "known" since we first ran up years ago (okay, not quite that bad), but still good fun and great apples.

Some favorite things

Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens, bright copper kettles and warm woolen mittens, brown paper packages tied up with string, these are a few of my favorite things...
Thank you, Nan! This is so much more fun!

Goblin Fruit

The new poem, Midnight Streets, is up at Goblin Fruit
http://www.goblinfruit.net

If you click on the little blue dot next to the title of the poem on the title page, you can hear an audio version of it (courtesy of my brilliant college son who set it up for me).

Turkeys!

Just about to leave for work (on a glorious Sunday afternoon, so sad) and my son runs over with great excitement , wild turkeys in the yard. And there they were - I think they are so beautiful, I truly do. When they wearied of us following after them, even though we were clearly enamoured, they FLEW up into A TREE. We were amazed. My husband, son, and I did not know they could fly up into trees, did you? And then they flew down into the back woods which no one but skunks, deer, bad little dogs, and apparently turkeys can access. Just so cool. I drove to work far less grumpy than when I had started.

A lovely surprise...

...to run across an unexpected review in New Pages. http://www.newpages.com/magazinestand/litmags/2008_08/litmagreviews_2008_09_2.htm
They reviewed the literary journal, Feile-Festa, and made positive note of my poem (Susan Moorhead, "History"). I am, of course, quite pleased.

Here's a link to the journal if you want to read the poem: http://www.medcelt.org/feile-festa/index.html

and this is a promise to sit down on Monday when I am finally NOT working (I am working all weekend, sigh) and read Nan's tutorial on how to put in links without all this long, unattractive, word scrambles, and figure it out at long last).

Our version of cozy, I guess

Been cruising the other blogs and admiring all the lovely autumnal scenes of rocking chairs and knitting, autumn walks and colored leaves, apple pies and ... well yes. All of the deep sigh, it's autumn, warm loveliness.

And while we do have tea and afghans, we are without a rocker and the ability to knit (despite a class where I was a horrible failure at it and vaguely scarred for life), and we are without, to my great and ongoing dismay, a fireplace, however, we do have a rat named Caden who is loving that popcorn, snug as a ... well, I guess snug as a rat tucked up my daughter's sleeve.

So that's pretty cozy. I guess.

(I would prefer a fireplace, however).

As long as Caden stays in sleeve, I'm okay. I like my rodents in fictional picturebooks and at a safe distance.

A Grimm-like fairy tale for grown-ups

"Stories were different, though: they came alive in the telling. Without a human voice to read them aloud, or a pair of wide eyes following them by flashlight beneath a blanket, they had no real existence in our world. They were like seeds in the beak of a bird, waiting to fall to earth, or the notes of a song laid out on a sheet, yearning for an instrument to bring their music into being. They lay dormant, hoping for the chance to emerge. Once someone started to read them, they could begin to change. They could take root in the imagination, and transform the reader. Stories wanted to be read, David's mother would whisper. They needed it. It was the reason they forced themselves from their world into ours. They wanted us to give them life."

-from The Book of Lost Things by John Connolly