Random collection of stuff I've been meaning to post about and haven't gotten to:

• Nadia's blood lead level is back below 10!! Such a major relief. We want it lower, and will keep doing the various things we've started, but at least there isn't some hidden source we missed.


• Canning jars seem to follow hot dog/bun packaging, or absence thereof ( Read more... )

--The costumes that people wear to Ren Faires (not all attendees dress up, but plenty do) run the gamut from carefully crafted SCA-type stuff to basically Halloween. We saw a half-dozen Jack Sparrows, and at least one Hogwarts student. Which is all fine; accuracy is not so much the name of the game. HOWEVER, in my not so humble opinion, it is ( Read more... )

I have long been wanting to learn to preserve food. Not just learn to do it, but actually do it, in quantities that actually make a significant contribution to our food supply in the winter (and perhaps even more in spring before anything has been harvested yet but the weather makes you feel like you deserve fresh food). The biannual pear butter ( Read more... )

So a while back I decided I needed as a self-employed person to schedule myself vacations.  So I put the first week of September down in my calendar as a vacation, told my clients, turned down new projects due that week, and stuck to it even when projects that were supposed to be done in August dragged out (not my fault). I let people believe that ( Read more... )

As I was walking back home from the garden on Thursday with an armload of collards and a purse full of tomatoes (I forgot to bring a bag), I caught sight of some teenage girls on bikes coming toward me on the street ( Read more... )

1. Business class on Amtrak does indeed provide more foot room, and in some cars even enough to really have floor space for a kid to play on. A bonus. It is also in the cafe car and therefore near the tables and benches, which are fun. However, it also has a big thick immobile arm rest in between the seats, making the seat space less flexible, ( Read more... )

Time keeps getting by me. Two weeks ago already, Nadia had her first birthday. She had great fun in the lovely chaos that was her party. She recognized her carrot cake cupcake as food immediately, and after handing it to me for a test bite, and she took to it quite well.


( Read more... )

My column this week was about how parenting has unexpectedly gotten me out of the house more, on account of Nadia being a social critter.

Appropriately, on the Thursday it came out, I finally made it to the annual reading of "Song of Myself" on Walt Whitman's birthday, which is organized by Dan Wilcox and held in Washington Park. It was fun. About a ( Read more... )

The problem with my favorite snappy one-liner after doing something clumsy, "Nothing hurt but my ego," is that you can't use it when you've actually injured yourself. Even if you want to communicate the same light-hearted embarrassment.

I twisted (sprained?) my ankle on Friday. I was coming home from visiting friends, and had been waiting at the ( Read more... )

So many different things to say and they keep slipping away from me. It has been a weird week. Two weeks ago we were faced with a very quick, very big decision: a really awesome job opportunity came up for Robin. One in which he would actually learn all about what he's been wanting to do (learn how to restore/repair old houses) from someone who ( Read more... )