Summer reading

I enrolled the kids in a summer reading program at a local library last month (seriously, is anyone else in total shock that it's already July 1st?). C finally decided in the last 2 weeks of school that he liked reading, so I was hoping that the reading program would motivate him to keep it up during the summer months. I was also hoping it would provide something else for him to do other than following me around the house and saying, "What should I do now?" like he did all last summer.

The name of the program is Going Places with Great Books and the tracking sheet they gave to us is filled with tiny suitcases. Every time C spends 30 minutes reading a book, he gets to color in 1 suitcase. In total, the paper has 20 suitcases for him to color, which of course means that he needs to read for 10 hours to complete the sheet. Once we found the right books, including the Captain Underpants and Mighty Robot series, he was off and running.

By yesterday morning, he had completed his 1st sheet and I told him we'd run to the library to turn it in & pick up a second tracking sheet. I may have also said something like, "I wonder what sort of prize you'll get for completing your first 20 suitcases?"

As soon as the word prize was out of my mouth, three things immediately happened:
1. Both of my children strained forward in their booster seats with excitement.
2. Both of them began peppering me with questions about the type of prizes they'd be getting.
3. I realized that I probably should have read the brochure about the reading program a little more closely, because I suddenly wasn't really sure if there would be any prizes waiting for us once we got to the library.

Of course in hindsight perhaps I should have thought a little more carefully about the prize situation before I let those fateful words pass my lips, but it was too late now.

I immediately started back peddling a bit as I imagined the possible scenarios that would occur if we got the library and there were in fact no prizes for completing the first summer reading list. None of those scenarios seemed to end happily.

"Well," I said, "maybe they won't actually have prizes for you to take home today. Maybe there will be some kind of drawing that we can enter. Maybe they'll pull a name out of a bucket later and they'll announce the prize then."

As I looked in the mirror to gauge their reaction to my revision of the earlier prize announcement, I was met with somewhat hostile and disbelieving eyes.

"No Mama," said C, "I'm sure they'll be handing out prizes."

Hmm... I had a sinking feeling that he was going to be disappointed.

Well, we got to library and sure enough, there were no actual prizes to be had. A very young and perky librarian congratulated them on their reading achievement and then explained to the kids that they could write their names on a piece of paper and drop it into one of 5 buckets for a chance to win one of 5 different prizes. She also handed the kids the forms containing their next 20 suitcases and said something like, "Happy reading!"

We went over to the prize buckets so the kids could choose which drawing to enter. C went for the family pass to our local Bounce U and K dropped her name into the bucket labeled "leisure package" that included a lawn chair, bubbles, and a reusable plastic drink bottle.

While thankfully, there were no tears, the mood was decidedly a bit somber as we left the librarian's table. As we walked away, I noticed that there were some coupons attached to the new reading forms. "Oh look guys!" I said enthusiastically, "There is a prize after all! Here are some coupons for us to use. Look, a coupon for a free ice cream cone & check this one out...a coupon for a free meal at Beef O'Brady's!"

C turned to me with a very serious look on his face and said, "You know Mom, those prizes are really more for you than for us. All it means is that you have to pay less money the next time we go out."

When did he get so smart anyway? Since I felt a bit guilty about uttering the word prize prematurely (clearly I am slipping a bit this summer) I decided to throw them a bone.

"Who wants to go over to the Wii game section and pick out a new game to rent? It will be your prize for completing your first reading sheet!"

Suddenly, the mood of my offspring did a 180. "We do, we do!"

And so, another day of summer vacation passed peacefully.

Seeing Red

About mid-May I decided that the trim work on the house was in desperate need of a face lift. The shutters and front door had faded to a hue I like to call "the color formally known as red". It was a light red/orange color that spoke volumes about how long it had been since the last time it had been painted.

I turned to Mr. Crackers & declared, "This summer I am painting all of the trim on the house." He smiled and nodded somewhat distractedly since I had already made the declarations, "This summer I am repainting all the patio furniture." and "This summer I am painting the chiminea." about 2 weeks prior to this latest statement. Apparently I had big plans for a lot of outdoor projects this summer. Outdoor projects are usually the specialty of Mr. Crackers, but since I have yet to agree to his latest idea (a basketball court in the side yard that seems to me as if it will violate all sorts of property zoning laws), and we seem to be at a standstill on trying to find the right pickets to repair our fence, I guess the outdoor projects fall to me this year.

So, we chose a color and I got to work the week before Memorial Day. I figured since we had a lot of company coming over for a cook-out it was the perfect motivator to get all my projects done. In hindsight, I may have been crazy a little overly optimistic about my painting capabilities time-wise. The good news is that I did manage to get the front door finished before company came (even if the paint was still a bit tacky to the touch...)

But I can honestly say that none of the rest of my list of projects was completed. Nevertheless, I felt I had some momentum going, so I decided to tackle the patio furniture next. I had gotten most of the set painted (OK, so I still needed to finish a chair and a side table...and alright, if I'm honest the rest of the set really needed a second coat too) when Mr. Crackers took down all the shutters so I could paint those the following week.

So, I took a short break on my patio furniture painting project and switched gears. I got managed to get the first two shutters painted and then....

rain

and more rain

and yes, even more rain

and then vacation managed to slow me down a bit



In fact, the shutters sat for so long that birds did their business and the spiders built their webs on my newly painted shutters...before I even managed to get them re-hung on the house.

For those of you who can't tell, the freshly painted (yet bird stained) shutters are on the left. The faded and not yet painted shutters (also bird stained) are on the right. Trust me, in person the difference in the two colors is a little more dramatic.

So, feeling a bit behind I got back into the swing of things this week & actually managed to paint another couple of shutters...

So now I am officially half way done with the painting of the shutters. Yea!



I celebrated this accomplishment, but making yet another proclamation to Mr. Crackers, "This summer I am going to paint the back door!" Seriously, you can probably already guess the look I got when making this declaration, can't you?! And since I can't seem to have enough projects "in progress" I decided to go ahead and start painting the door too...



I had the red paint, so I figured why not? I'm not really sure how I feel about it yet. I've decided to finish painting it (are you laughing?) and then decide if I like it. If not, I figure I'll just re-paint it dark brown (now I'm sure you're laughing... is that an eye roll too?) so it will match the dark brown paint on the patio furniture (you know, once I actually get done painting the furniture ...).

I better get off the computer and head outside to paint another 2 shutters since Mr. Crackers has "Re-hang all shutters" on his to-do list this weekend. Nothing like a little pressure to get me to finally finish a project.

The man, the myth, the legend...

Since it's Father's Day weekend, I thought it was probably appropriate to do a little tribute to my Dad... or as I like to call him: The King of the Goofballs.

He and my Mom met back in the late 1960's when Dad was a Marine. He had dropped out of college to enlist and fight in the Vietnam war: an act that was both incredibly brave and patriotic - especially in light of this country's turmoil over what was a very "unpopular" war.



Despite the times and his experiences in Vietnam, He came back home to Mom with the goofy part of his personality intact.

Dad's always had a great sense of humor. I'm not sure, but it may have something to do with growing up in a house surrounded by women. He has always been outnumbered by the female members of his family. Growing up he had 11 siblings: 8 sisters and 3 brothers. I have a feeling that a sense of humor is essential if you grow up living in a house with so many women & only 2 bathrooms.

That's a vintage shot of his family circa 1977 at a family reunion. If you're looking for him, he's in the back row, second from the left.


Here's a more recent shot. He's a bit easier to find in this picture since he's sitting in the front row second from the left. This photo was taken at another, more recent family reunion...back in 2006.

Not only did he grow up surrounded by women, but when it came time to start a family he found himself on familiar ground when he and Mom had 2 girls. Thankfully the female to bathroom ratio was a little better for him. While the house still had 2 bathrooms, now he only had to share them with 3 females. The odds were definitely improving.

I'm not sure what to say except that he was (& still is) and excellent father. I mean, it takes a really special man to agree to wear a feather on his head & dance around in a circle so he can spend more time with his oldest daughter who thought it would be fun to be an Indian Princess.

And don't even get my grandma (Dad's mother-in-law) started...to her my Dad hung the moon. If you listen to her for any length of time you'll get an earful about all of Dad's wonderful attributes.


I can list a few myself...
He's a great photographer, and he also is quite a master at Photoshop. If he had posted any of these older pictures, they'd look a heck of a lot better. He is also a computer genius who has (seemingly) endless patience with those of us who can't seem to even get their printer and scanner working properly. He's also really smart and very logical which makes him a wonderful sounding board for his somewhat neurotic older daughter (thanks Dad!).


He's also a wonderful, patient and generous Grandpa. He loves spending time with all 4 of his grandkids.



And this is a man who takes his fun seriously! Even though he often refers to his grandchildren (and his children before them) as goofballs. I think we all know who the real goofball really is, don't we?





I love you Dad! Thanks for all you for your family. We couldn't ask for a better Dad or Grandpa. We love you very much. Happy Father's Day to you...King of the Goofballs!

So you think you can (Ukrainain folk) dance?

My parents came over to the house this past weekend for a celebratory dinner of Chinese take-out after K's ballet recital. While they were here, my Dad was kind enough to come up to my office and get my scanner up and running.

You know what that means don't you? Yep, I have more grainy pictures from my past to share with you. Today's pictorial focuses on the very early 1980's when I must have had the desire to really delve into my cultural roots.

But since there were no Irish, German or Swedish extracurricular activities at my school, I decided to branch out & delve into someone else's cultural roots instead.

Despite my total lack of grace and coordination, I spent a lot of time in my formative years doing Ukrainian folk dancing. I think the program started when I was about 9 years old. My social studies teacher got our entire class really excited about folk dancing. So excited that we were all willing to give up time normally spent watching Tom and Jerry re-runs to meet in the school cafeteria and listen to Ukrainian folk music. How did she do this? I have no idea. Perhaps she offered us all extra credit, or maybe we were just really excited about all of the fringe on our costumes.

I remember more about the costumes than any of the dances we did. The white skirts were actually pillowcases and our red shoes were made from red rope and circular cutouts from a vinyl tablecloth. We weren't supposed to wear those shoes outside. Ever.

If memory serves, I don't think anyone in my class had a lick of Ukrainian blood in their background. Our teacher's parents had immigrated from the Ukraine and she spent much of that year immersing us in the Ukrainian culture. I'm not really sure why, but we went along with it. (I will once again point out here how much we all loved the fringe on the costumes.)

We even got to travel up to Toronto and perform for what I think was a group of Ukrainian students. Imagine their excitement. "Hey guys, do you want to see a bunch of German and Irish kids from Ohio do some Ukrainian folk dancing for you?" I mean really, who wouldn't be thrilled to watch a bunch of 10 year olds hop around the floor in pillowcases with bits of tablecloth strapped to their feet?

Despite all the practices and performances though, I can't help but notice I always seem to be looking down at my feet with total concentration. Dancing is not really what I would label a strength of mine.

But, at least I was enthusiastic. A surplus of enthusiasm is one of my defining (and some might say annoying) personality traits.

The excitement over folk dancing must have been contagious. It looks like my sister joined in the act the following year. My enthusiasm looks like it's waning a bit in this picture. Perhaps it's the lack of fringe on my costume that's got me so down.

Oddly, sometime later that year we stopped doing Ukrainian folk dancing and started doing country/western clogging instead. I have no idea why the sudden change occurred. I think one day we came in for practice and our teacher announced that now we'd be strutting our stuff to country music. I have never really been a fan of country, but my lack of interest in the music was more than offset by the thrill of getting to wear tap shoes! And twirly square dancing skirts! (also made from pillow cases I believe). Thankfully, I have no photos to share with you from my trip into the world of clogging.

The trip was a pretty brief one. By that point we were all starting down the slippery slope of adolescence and the idea of dancing around in pillow cases just didn't seem as cool as it once had. So, the group disbanded and we spent our newly acquired free time talking about boys and playing Atari (and watching Tom and Jerry re-runs).

UBOs

I was just coming downstairs after taking an afternoon shower (I had gone for a run with a friend) when Mr. Crackers said, "Oh good you're done. I need you to walk around to the side of the house and look at something with me." While he didn't seem overly worried, I nonetheless had a deep sense of foreboding. I was fully expecting him to point out something like rotten pieces of siding on the house or something else equally expensive and time consuming to repair.

What I was not expecting was for him to point to one of the basement window wells and say, "Look down in there & tell me what you see." As I approached the area he was pointing to, I thought I would see some kind of small reptile like a frog or a turtle. But instead, what I saw was a UBO - an unidentified brown object. Well to be absolutely correct what I saw was a pile of unidentified brown objects.


Upon closer inspection (not too close though), I came to the realization that what I was looking at kind of looked like a pile of poo. Yep, I'm not going to sugar coat this, what I saw really looked like it came from the digestive tract of something. The question was...what in the world was going into our window well to relieve itself? I'll tell you this much, whatever had left these UBOs for us was by no means a small creature (if you get my meaning).

Thankfully, we were running late for Sunday dinner at my parents house, so our analysis of the UBOs were cut short since we had to get a move on. But, as we drove there our conversation once again turned to the window well as we both tried to figure out a logical explanation to how the poo came to be there.



It seemed unlikely that a large neighborhood dog was somehow awkwardly lowering the back half of his body into the well just to do his business. It also seemed unlikely (although admittedly somewhat more gross to contemplate) that a child or teenager would have committed this foul deed. We thought maybe raccoons were to blame, but to be honest we thought that perhaps our UBOs were too large to have come from that particular species.



Thankfully for all involved we tabled the discussion once we arrived at my parents house & instead focused on hearing about their wonderful cruise to Greece and Turkey -- which is obviously much more appropriate dinner conversation than what was lurking in the back regions of our minds.



Once dinner had concluded we decided to do a consult with my parents and see if they had any brilliant ideas on what could have deposited the UBOs (I have a feeling we will not be getting any dinner invitations anytime soon from anyone who reads this blog....). Raccoons were once again brought up a likely source, but none of us seemed to know what Raccoon droppings looked like. (Which is honestly something I think we can all be happy about.)



So, we did what anyone with an Internet connection handy does when faced with a question. We typed the words "raccoon scat" into Google to get a visual. Honestly, I have to say that this was something I really never dreamed I'd be using the Internet for, but low and behold we got the photos we were after (Ewww...) and discovered that apparently our window well had become a LATRINE for a COMMUNITY of raccoons. Umm...let me repeat that news again. We were dealing with a community latrine for a large group of rodents. On one hand, you got it hand it to the raccoons - you kind of have to respect an animal that is organized enough to do such a thing. On the other hand...EWWWW!!!

On every website that Google directed us to were giant warnings about the dangers of raccoon scat. The words blindness and death were used heavily in all of the articles and each one seemed to link back to an article written by the CDC. Suddenly the odd little UBOs we discovered earlier had become a life threatening bio-hazard. Darn raccoons!

Needless to say, we scoured the the Internet for advice on how to safely rid ourselves of the raccoon poo. Information in hand, Mr. Crackers bravely donned surgical gloves upon our return home to dispose of the poo ...and the rocks that touched the poo...and some of the soil below the rocks that touched the poo... and the shovel that touched the rocks and the poo and...(you get the picture).

Once the actual scat had been double bagged and thrown into the trash, I dumped 2 gallons of boiling water over the ground in what we will now refer to as the FORMER raccoon community latrine. Apparently the boiling water kills all the bacteria and (shudder, shudder) all of the roundworm eggs on contact.

As a safety precaution Mr. Crackers and I then poured about 2 cups of bleach onto the ground and then scattered moth balls on top of the whole kit and caboodle. I'm not sure what the moth balls were for, but my Dad thought they might discourage the raccoons from coming back again. Honestly, I was pretty willing to do just about anything to keep the raccoons from depositing more possible blindness and death into my basement window wells.


Mr. Crackers checked on everything this morning & I am happy to report we think the raccoons have moved their latrine somewhere else (either that or they are all crossing their little paws until tonight). The bad news is that he discovered an old and (thankfully) smaller pile of scat in another window well. Dang it! I guess I know what we'll be doing tonight...

Hint: I was not abducted by aliens

So let's see, it's been about 2 months since the last time I posted anything here on the blog.

In honor of my return to (hopefully) semi-regular blogging again, here's a little weekend morning quiz for you.

The reason I've been absent from this blog so long is because:

A. I was abducted by aliens

B. I was falsely accused of killing Mr. Crackers & have been trying to catch the one armed man who actually killed him while trying to evade capture by law enforcement officers

C. I am your new American Idol

D. I got a little bogged down with other stuff



As uninteresting as it may sound, the real answer is D. Life got a little busy around here at the House of Crackers, and I found that I kind of ran out of "blogging" time. Thankfully though, summer has arrived and C is finally out of school and is finished with all of his extracurricular activities for awhile. Wahoo!

Even though we have a summer packed with vacations and lots of fun activities, I will be happy to step away from the daily school grind for awhile and take things at a bit of a slower pace.

We got a little jump start on summer over the Memorial Day weekend. The weather here in southwest Ohio has been really hot for the past few weeks, so we've been getting a lot of mileage out of our various sprinklers and water toys.



My Grandma was kind enough to pick this little number up at Target to replace a water slide that the kids had a couple of years ago that finally got so riddled with holes we had to throw it away.

The slide got a LOT of use last weekend.

By our third day, it also managed to get it's first hole of the summer. Really though, what do you expect for $39.99? I haven't got around to patching the hole yet. But that's OK. As usual, Mr. Crackers had an idea.

And so the water fun continued for another day. Thanks Mr. Crackers!

My Nemesis

For the most part, the outdoor maintenance around the House of Crackers falls on the very capable shoulders of Mr. Crackers. He's a down in the dirt, get your hands dirty type of guy. He's the one who maintains the lawn, does most of the planting in the garden as well as initiating any large outdoor projects that need accomplished.

Since I am at home a lot more than Mr. Crackers, I do more of the smaller detail work in the yard like weeding, hedge trimming and occasionally trimming the grass along the picket fence that lines our backyard. Since Mr. Crackers does a lot of the mowing (especially in the Spring) during weeknight evenings, we just never really seem to get the trimming done right away. But after a couple of weeks the grass grows so long that I start fearing we may lose the dog or maybe even one of the children along the fence line, so I decide to try & get the trimming done while Mr. Crackers is at work.

And in almost all cases over the past 6 years, I have failed to get the yard trimmed completely on my own....why? Yard Trimmers are my Nemesis. They are my kryptonite. Something happens when a yard trimmer gets placed in my hands that causes the trimmer to stop working. Completely.

We are currently on our 3rd trimmer in 6 years. The first two were corded electric models that were really inexpensive & I would like to think would have broken down as quickly for anyone. The cords inside the trimmers would either stop feeding correctly, or the top of the cord dispenser would continually pop off or some other plastic part would just plain give out. Mr. Crackers would come to my aid once the weekend hit, but (thankfully) would have just as many issues as I did getting the thing to work for more than 5 minutes in a row. Needless to say, trimming has become one of my most hated chores (second only to ironing).

Finally last year after our second electric trimmer failed we decided to get serious and get one of those incredibly loud, gas powered models.



Since we got it about halfway through the summer last year, Mr. Crackers had fun playing with his new toy & usually did the trimming right after he mowed. Not only did it work well for him, but it trimmed the yard in about half the time as our old electric trimmers. By mid-summer the grass wasn't really growing really quickly anymore, so Mr. Crackers could trim about every 2 weeks & everything still looked good.

But, it's Spring again. And the grass is growing so quickly that Mr. Crackers is pulling out the lawn mower every 5 days or so. And yet, the grass along the fence hasn't been trimmed once yet. I would venture a guess that it was at least 6 inches longer than the grass in the rest of the lawn.

So, last night I asked Mr. Cracker to refresh my memory & teach me how to start the electric trimmer. It took him a few minutes (since it hadn't been used in a few months), but he finally got it started. He then taught me how to do it & I decided I'd get out this afternoon & get it done before we lost the dog or one of the kids in the tall grass.

Ha!

Darn Trimmer! I tried to start that thing until both of my shoulders were sore. But could I get it to start? Nope! I finally walked away in case I flooded the engine (can you flood the engine of a trimmer?). After about 20 minutes I came back & tried it again. And once again that flipping trimmer wouldn't start.

I decided to try some tough love and began cursing a blue streak (quietly so as not to disturb my napping pre-schooler or the other neighborhood children) every time I pulled on the cord and it wouldn't start. Even though I felt a little better for venting, the cursing didn't really help get it started either.

I was getting to be seriously disappointed by yet another lawn trimmer (now that's a phrase I never in a million years thought I would say). I was ready to throw the thing into the street when it finally sputtered & coughed to life.

Hooray! I set to work & began trimming along the fence. Boy does that thing vibrate. Even though it was getting a bit heavy I kept soldiering on determined to for the first time in 6 years get the entire lawn trimmed without the aid of Mr. Crackers. I was feeling a real sense of accomplishment as I trimmed along the final stretch of fencing. I mean, just wait until Mr. Crackers sees that I was finally able to do it. Wahoo!

Then, all of the sudden the trimmer seemed to slow down a bit, then it gave a cough and stopped completely. What the what?! Holy cow did I manage to break yet another trimmer?!

Nope. It was just out of gas. And of course it is one of those engines that need an oil & gas mixture. Something that seems entirely too risky for me to attempt to do with my past trimmer history. I decided it would be best to wait for Mr. Crackers and make sure I do it right. I really don't want another lawn trimmer death on my conscience. Darn it, I was so close. Oh well, at least I didn't break this one.

I guess I better go finish the ironing.