Cherry Jam (or "Why canning makes people insane")

On Sunday our neighbor told us we could pick the sour cherries off of the tree in their back yard. My first response to this was giddy delight. That has since transformed, however, as the reality of the situation has unfolded...

First, despite the fact that we have a good ladder, it is NOT a good ladder for picking cherries. It is just not tall enough standing on its own to be able to reach very high into the tree. (It unfolds to lean against the house and is then as tall as we need it to be. But only when leaning against the house.)

Second, picking cherries on a ladder while five months pregnant and with two small children trying to "help me" is a time-consuming, somewhat frightening task, and involves a lot of warning the younger children about the potential of falling, even while standing on the uppermost rung of the ladder and holding onto the tree for balance.

Third, I have this bucket. Full of cherries. That I have to somehow maneuver around. Thankfully I "helped" my parents pick cherries a few times as a kid and copied their idea of using a belt through the handle of the bucket. But then I have a heavy bucket around my 5-month pregnant waist, which works for awhile but gets pretty uncomfortable.

Fourth, right about the time I decided I couldn't reach anymore cherries without seriously endangering myself, we took a break to come in and get some lunch, and I promptly started feeling VERY sick to my stomach. Flu? Kidney infection? Too much pressure on a pregnant belly? Not enough food in the pregnant belly? I don't know, but I really needed to lie down. I put the toddler down for a nap and thought I was successfully distracting the 4yo with computer games, but every time I was almost asleep, she needed help. Anyway, the rest of the night I was feeling like death and had enough of a fever to make me huddle under a sweatshirt in our 75 degree house.

Implied with the fourth point is that I did NOT immediately take care of the cherries in my bucket to turn them into scrumptious jam, jelly, or pie.

Fifth, this morning I discovered that the same 4yo had little red dots all over her body. I spent the morning verifying that it was chicken pox, trying to rearrange all of my mental plans for what we would do for the next 2 weeks, and trying to also recover from my own sickness which was not as poignant but still annoying.

By the time I looked at the bucket of cherries this afternoon, they were rotting pretty quickly. Like a third to a half of them. So I started trying to take care of them and sort out the bad ones. Which leads us to the next thing.

Sixth, while I am trying to cut out cherry pits and sort out rotting moldy cherries, my toddler is "helping" me go through the bucket. Mostly he is just taking handfuls of cherries out of the bucket and throwing them into the garbage. So I move the garbage. So then he starts throwing them on the floor and squishing them with his toes.

Seventh, after working for what felt like forever, and chopping up my precious cherries, I had exactly 2 cups of chopped fruit, and half-a-bucket still left, with rapidly rotting fruit in it. I'm tired and I want to go to bed. I made freezer jam out of the 2 cups (making 2 1/2 pints by the time you add sugar and pectin) which is enough to give my neighbor one as a thank you for giving us cherries, and enough for me to have 1 1/2 left for us.

Oh, and Eighth, my kitchen is a disaster. And did I mention that I still have a half-a bucket of rapidly rotting fruit?

Why did I do this???

Attacking Washington

Some people might say that if you want to rule the world, just conquer Washington, D.C.. After this weekend, I feel almost as though I've earned my crown.

Right now is cherry blossom time in Washington, D.C., and it is also spring break for a good part of the area. Normally, this would be enough to make me avoid downtown D.C. completely. I especially wouldn't try to do it without my husband there to help with kids.

However, sometimes life forces us to step beyond our comfort levels. This week we had guests with us who were extremely interested in seeing things downtown. With my 4 kids home and their baby, there were barely too many people to fit in my 7-passenger car, even with my husband at work. So we took two cars. This means they were following me. Me, driving with no adult to navigate the one-way streets and cryptic left/right-turn only lanes. Me, looking for places for two cars to park while trying to navigate said streets. With four kids in the car. And a billion people already parked and walking around D.C.

I did it, though.

* We found places to park.
* We went to TWO museums (the most crowded ones on the mall, I am sure).
* We fed everyone without having to buy the outlandishly priced and potentially undercooked food on the mall (meaning I packed enough lunches and snacks that everyone was satisfied!)
* Everyone was able to make all the necessary bathroom trips.
* My friend was able to successfully nurse her baby, even with a billion people.
* We got my double stroller into and out of all necessary entrances.
* We were able to find the car again when we were finished.
* I navigated my way out of D.C. during rush-hour traffic. (And I only had to turn around once!)

And then we did it again the next day. Still without my husband. And the kids only complained a little bit about being tired of walking. (Although by the end of the 2nd day, my 7-yr-old did say, "Mom, I am never going to Washington D.C. again. Ever.")

And then I went down (by myself -- no kids!) on the metro the next day to cheer for my SIL who was running the National Marathon. I even brought kites and flew them during kite festival.

The world is mine!!!

Matzos Anyone?

Yesterday my husband bought 5 boxes (each 1 lb -- 14 servings) of Matzos.

Does anyone have ANY good ideas for how to eat them???

Tagged?

Since Tami knows I read her blog, I'm doing this for her :)

ONE. What was I doing ten years ago?
Well, I was about 5 months pregnant with my oldest child, fascinated at the sensation of feeling the baby move inside me, but wearing my husband’s jeans to avoid having to wear maternity clothes. I was teaching a 300-level college course about Matrices in Statistics, made more challenging by the fact that one of my students was blind. At the same time I was also desperately trying to finish my Masters Thesis, and my husband had just been accepted to his PhD program.

TWO. Five things on my to-do list:
* Put my house back together now that SIL’s wedding is over.
* Fix the flat tire on the jogging stroller.
* Take my two oldest boys to buy new shoes.
* (Laundry, dishes, bathrooms, grocery shopping, clean garage…)
* Buy paint for our stupid front door and our stupid window trim because our stupid HOA says they are the wrong color even though we haven’t changed the stupid colors since we moved in to the stupid house two years ago. Oh, and pay them $25 for “permission” to make the changes they are requiring us to make.

THREE. What snacks do I enjoy?
Everything. Unfortunately.
Things I love and can’t have right now because of braces: nuts, Doritos, carrot sticks, caramel, raisins and Craisins, Skittles, Jelly beans, Starbursts, those minty Christmas nougats, spice drops, that wonderful trail mix at Trader Joes (cashews, dried cranberries, white chocolate chips, almonds, white raisins…)

FOUR. What would I do if I were suddenly a billionaire?
Move to a place where it doesn’t cost a billion dollars just to live there.
Buy a piano. Pay 100 million dollars tithing. Try to figure out how to avoid the even bigger tax bill.

FIVE. Three bad habits
I pick at my fingernail polish if it is even a little bit chipped. I don’t know why. Obviously picking at it only makes it look worse, but I can’t stop myself!

I am horrible at getting my kids to bed on time. This is partly because I am a sucker for when my kids ask me intellectual questions. I might have said it was bedtime 20 minutes ago, and then they ask me a math question or start talking about the “main problem” or the “important message” of the book they are reading, and I’m hopelessly involved talking to them.

The dentist says I am supposed to “help” my kids brush and floss their teeth – all of them, every day – to make sure they do a good job. Most of the time I just let them do it themselves. This is mainly due to the fact that when I help them it takes forever to brush and floss all of them, and then I still have to do my own!

SIX. Six places I've lived
Utah
Arizona
Iowa
Texas
New York
Maryland

SEVEN. Five Jobs I've had
Raspberry picker
Math tutor
“Office Assistant” for our city offices (answered phones, processed water bills, etc.)
Youth Counselor for summer recreation program for kids/teens
Statistics Lecturer, TA, and Research Consultant

EIGHT. Five things people don't know about me
* I’ve never been in a hair salon for a cut or style or color or anything.
* One time I had dinner with Oprah Winfrey and Dolly Parton at the same time – at the bottom of the Hoover Dam wearing hard hats.
* I don’t really like chocolate that much. I don’t mind it, but it is definitely not my first choice.
* Calling people on the telephone is terrifying for me. Even my friends.
* I would rather do almost anything than choose paint colors for my livingroom.
* Oh, and I can count on one hand the number of times I have forwarded emails or "tagged" people. So if you are reading this, don't worry. You're not tagged. Unless of course you want to be. Then you can consider yourself officially tagged.

Lost in Translation

I have to tell about this funny thing I saw yesterday.

For reasons too bizarre to explain, I was making a box of some kind of Turkish dessert. This was somewhat of an adventure since the original instructions were in Turkish, and the English translation was not great.

(Not as much of an adventure as the next day when I was making a different pre-packaged foreign dessert that had no translation. Thank goodness for pictures and some good guessing -- oh, and an online translator that got one word right -- saucepan. The rest of the words were translated as things like "text from the Koran," which I was pretty sure had nothing to do with the recipe.)

Anyway, as I was reading the box and looking for any English that might help me figure out what I was supposed to do, I found the following:

"Keep in cool and dry place. Keep away from the bad smelling area."

The bad smelling area?

I laughed for awhile. Because you know, I was really considering putting this package of food right next to my diaper pail.

Confessions of a Bad (or Batter) Mom

So the last couple of weeks here have made for a February to remember. It started on the 12th when my daughter got the fever to match all fevers. As I dabbed her forehead and held her aching, sweaty body, and touched her flushed cheeks, I honestly wished that I could be sick instead of her. She was just so miserable.

And then I got it. And my husband got it. And two of my other three kids got it. (Actually I am amazed that my one son NEVER got it, the whole time all of us were sick. I actually wonder if all the nose-picking and non-hand-washing has somehow benefited his immune system. Is that possible?) Anyway, for the next few days (including Valentines Day) we were all suffering from what I guess was the flu. I'm still coughing and I think I injured my rib cage from coughing so hard! LAME!

Anyway, confession #1 is that I never took any of them to the doctor. I actually never even considered taking them to the doctor because I was fairly certain it was not bacterial. I'm not sure at what point I would have taken them to the doctor. Maybe I have had too many experiences going to the doctor where they take a look and say. Sorry. It's viral. Go home and give them lots of fluids. Oh, and thanks for the $20 copay -- from each kid.

I was realizing that it has been AGES since I have taken my kids to the doctor when they were sick. Because it's almost always a cold, or a stomach thing that I know is going around (and can usually tell you where they got it from.) Anyway, I'm horrible.

Also, I have made three cakes in the past two weeks. I don't even really like cake. But related to it is my second confession.

Confession #2: I sometimes eat cookie dough and cake batter, even though it has raw eggs in it, and even though I am totally insistent that my kids don't touch the stuff. So I guess I am some kind of hypocrite. I sit there telling them that they shouldn't eat this stuff 'cause it has raw eggs, and then I wait until they're out of the kitchen and scrape the bowl myself. Horrible, eh? The thing is, I have never gotten sick from it. And I know I'm gambling every time I do it, but it tastes so good, I just can't resist! Aaah. Guilt.

Ithaca Winter

Yesterday it was about 30 degrees here, with wind gusts of up to 30 mph. To put it bluntly, it was cold. As I was walking my freezing kids to school I started telling them about how cold it was when we lived in Ithaca. I talked about how my eyeballs would get cold. I described how the school had a rule that, in addition to coats, all the kids had to bring snow pants, hats, and gloves every day because it was so cold, and because they went outside for recess even when it was cold. "There was even one year when we had so much snow that I didn't see our grass from November until March."

My oldest then told how he remembered one day when there was an "ice mountain taller than mom" through which they dug a tunnel with the help of their preschool teachers. They also went "sledding" down it (just on their snow pants.)

Skip to this morning.

It was even colder outside. Not as much wind, but colder. I decided to be a little more attentive in bundling at least the younger kids. My 4-yr-old, donning her own snow pants, hat, gloves, scarf, and knee-length coat, asked my 6-yr-old if he wanted to wear some snow pants.

He was emphatic in his response:

"No! I do not want snow pants! We are NOT in Ithaca! And did you know that Ithaca means WINTER in Spanish?"

(Did I mention that he likes to make up words in gibberish and "pretend" it is French or Spanish)

I think I laughed for about 5 minutes.