Cow cookie cutter Pumpkins

Kids and mallets, mallets and kids. What a combo!  I still remember well the time I walked into the backyard to find Jason with a pile of metal and wood at his feet; he explained he'd been "fixing" his bike with the mallet.  Neither the bike nor the mallet survived that fix, as you might have expected.  Still, no children were harmed in that particular mallet adventure.

And that's kind of one of the nice things about mallets, that they "whack" things softly.  When my latest eight-year-old friend told me that he and his mom would using mallets and cookie cutters to carve pumpkins, I immediately saw the appeal.

In fact, I stopped at a market to get a pumpkin for myself, and pulled out some of my fave cookie cutter shapes (indeed, some of my only cookie cutter shapes) and did some whacking.

The verdict?  I have to say, it was highly satisfying -- it's a fun way to carve.  I do think it's something I'd trust to children or other human beings who might not be ready for sharp knives.  Aesthetically, it came out much more clean and decipherable than my usual attempts; I'm an enthusiastic, but not particularly elegant, pumpkin carver.

Those are the plusses.  A minus is that my particular pumpkin seems to be rather thick skinned (perhaps many pumpkins are fleshy that way).  So the cookie cutter couldn't make it all the way through the pumpkin into the hollow middle, and I ended up using a knife anyway to cut things within the cookie cutter, releasing a bit of pumpkin pressure.  Also, my star cookie cutter apparently was designed for pressing gently into soft cookie dough and not for pounding gleefully into hard gourds, and it required some post-pumpkin bending and clamping with my pliers.  (It survived the mallet more successfully than Jason's poor bike derailleur did). 

But back to the plusses: did I mention that the carving came out well?  It did!  I have a pumpkin with star eyes and a cow smile.

It goes well on my porch with all of my cows, some of which are currently dressed as ghosts or witches.

The chalkboard on the left asks,
"Do cows say 'boo' or 'moo'?"

I'm looking forward to the trick-or-treaters coming by; I'm giving out themed pencils, as I usually do, and having a jar of dog kibble that the kids can feed to Prewash.  

And, I'll be on the lookout for mallet-bearing bike fixers.  Happy halloween! 

Tall tales update

Life continues to be rich and tall -- er, I mean rich and full -- here in Enoughsville.  The weather did a winter peekaboo thing this week, with the wind biting into me and numbing all my skin as I rode to the soup kitchen on Tuesday morning, but then warming up so much we opened up the house to let in balmy breezes by the end of the week.  Like, winter peekaboo!  Now it's spring!  Wait, Sunday brought winter back!  

My offspring have done a bunch of traveling, some of them sending the kind of photos that will explain why I could make the tall/full substitution above.

Gosling and Sizzling:  Hi from CN tower yesterday.

Lindsey and mike's Wedding yesterday!

On this trip, Gosling and Colin observed the new family tradition of getting visits from the traveling Covid Fairy, alas.

Went to Canada and all we got was a fun wedding and COVID jkjkjk but we wanted to have a little fun with it.

And where did you go, Inkling?

Inkling:  Sheep and wool festival!!

Sign says: "We are rams. 
If I am letting you pet me, my name is Mr. Silly. 
If I am not, my name is Lucifer. "

I ask:  " Hey, rumors have it you finished your Rhinebeck sweater on time. Photos?"

I finished it around 11pm Friday night,. . .

. . .  then wore it on Saturday

And Kindering and fam, where did you all go, and did it happen to have a tall building you could show me?

Kinderling:  We went to Michigan. Attached is a photo of a lighthouse in lake Michigan :) It's so pretty here!

We are coming back from MI!

Thankful for airports that have play areas!

My guy, without photos to show it, went to our Capitol Building (with nearby tall Washington monument).  He went with a group that was seeking support for Ukraine.  Our Congresspeople sincerely and emphatically reassured the group that they were very much devoted to such support, but then wandered through the underground tunnels to the chambers where they voted for a speaker of the house who opposes such support.  So, alas.

Nelson didn't send photos, but he's happy with how things are working out with his new home.  His good friend Brandon (whose picture I'm going to get soon, right? right?) might help him get a job shoveling snow.  I've heard that snow is a thing that piles up into tall piles and towers a bunch in Minneapolis, so that would be a job with a lot of possibilities!

Me?  I didn't do towers or travel.  I did do a bunch of really fun math research.

The math research I'm doing with my students
is going really well.
I love these chalkboards, which were installed here by my friend.

And also, because sabbatical life is truly amazing, I did a bunch of other cool things:

making a cow smiley pumpkin,
math careers conference,
collecting chestnuts and playing in the grass with the dog,
canning applesauce,
dressing as cows for "dynamic duo day",
reconnecting with former students and adorable kiddos,

and more.  Life is good.

And that's the news from our family, which continues to be wealthy in our adventures.  May you and yours be similarly prosperous. 

Dynamic Cow Duo

Two years ago, Gina [not her real name] emailed me, saying she knew this was an odd question to ask out of the blue, but that she'd heard rumors . . . might I own a cow costume that she could borrow?  I was the Associate Dean of the Faculty at the time, dealing with many weighty and fraught questions, so you can appreciate how very much I loved getting an email with this kind of a light-hearted question.   I was even more delighted to be able to respond, "No: I have two cow costumes!!"

Fast forward to this year; my college has a "Spirit Week" (that is largely ignored/unobserved, even by me, I admit).  One of the week's events, however, is to buddy up with a friend and dress as your favorite dynamic duo.  

So I emailed Gina:  

Next Thursday, would you like to be a dynamic cow duo with me?  Maybe not all day, but at least long enough for a photo we could post to instagram . . . ?

And hence:

Dynamic Cow Duo.  Voila.

And to continue the love, Gina's son is dressing as an animal for Halloween; she's keeping the costume I loaned her for another week so that they can go animaling together on the big day.  Udderly fantastic.

What the trees near me are doing now

I don't think I'd ever noticed before how the leaves on a tree turn from green to some other color, but a tree we walk by every day kinda got all in my face with it.  It's a very show-off-y tree, not that I mind.

This tree, as we walked past it, seemed to have gilt leaves,
like old books whose pages are gold-gilt around their edges.

A closer inspection made it even easier to see the 
gold-gilt edges of these beautiful leaves.

A week later, the gold is creeping inward.
But slowly.

I'm very much enjoying this slow-moving movie, with its cinematic fade from one state to the next.  We haven't gotten to the cliff hanger yet!

mid-October update

Well, life continues to be rich and full here in Enoughsville.  Somehow, Saturdays have gotten filled up, too, these days.  In the past, Saturday evening was my favorite "Alone Time"; I listened to Prairie Home Companion, paid bills, and caught up on my mending.  It was such an entrenched part of my week that once, when my parents invited me to see the show live, I almost declined, saying "I can't; that's when my radio show is on."  Oh, yeah.  These days, I seem to be party hopping on Saturdays -- I just got a last-minute invitation from a student group to attend their formal dinner (which always comes with a really interesting talk by a professor), so I'm dashing this update off and ignoring bags of apples that need to be made into applesauce, so I'll free myself up enough to head out. 

Angela Duckworth walking past a slide that shows
a painting her mom did some 60 years ago. 

Last week, the reason I didn't get around to an update was because of other Saturday fun: I spent the weekend at the EDGE (Enhancing Diversity in Graduate Education) celebration.  It was a fab, fab weekend.  I got to attend a talk by Angela Duckworth, whose book Grit keeps inspiring me and re-inspiring me to take on all sorts of new "stretch goals".  I was even more impressed with her talk, which was actually not at all about Grit; she told a story about her mom that had us all in awe.  A key sentence I wrote down, when I remembered to pull myself out of my trance:  "It's easy to underestimate the power of circumstance".  The whole weekend made me want to lift up the people all around me.

The podium was not designed for people of short stature.  

The cofounders of "Mathematically Gifted and Black" 
gave one of many kick-butt, inspirational talks. 

Health update:  I got yet another covid vaccination. Also, I got a cute red bandaid with a white heart. My arm was sore for about 18 hours, and then seemed to be fine.

We got three new cows in our "Take a Cow/Leave a Cow" box.
I strongly suspect this cute family is the creation of a student 
from our local art college.  They walk by my house a lot,
and they love engaging with the cow-lection.

Social update:  A few weeks ago, I started a book group around a book that my sister recommended to me called "Breaking the Age Code". We've got a good crowd; we've met twice so far and have been having really good discussions. The people who are coming say that the little glimpse we've had so far of this book already changes the way that they look at the world and the way they react to it. One of my friends said that she notices deprecating comments about age more frequently, and is more likely to challenge them. 

Unrelated picture of a newspaper bag,
annotated by my newspaper delivery person:
"Plastic only when it rains"
(rain drops and smiley face)

Another person at the book group talked about going camping in the rain, and how she nearly said to herself "we're getting too old to do this", but then thought about the book and decided instead to think about how her age and experience made her better prepared for such an undertaking. She said that when she looked around at all the other campers in the area, all of whom were younger than she was, she realized that it was, in fact, the case that she and her husband fared better than the others, exactly because of that experience. It was raining and 40° outside, but her tent was so toasty and comfortable that she had to get out of the sleeping bag because she was getting too warm. Reading this book gave her the chance to look at what it was actually happening, and to acknowledge the fact that if you looked at all the different campers, the actual truth was that the older ones, the more experienced ones, were better off, in contradiction to both the stereotype and even to her own implicit suppositions.

Nelson update: He's still having lots of fun coaching basketball.  He's looking into cool programs that are available to people in his group home.  (I personally really, really hope he can get involved in drumming again!)

Gosling Update:  She got to go to a cool concert.  

"Cyril Neville played last night at Richmond folk fest
and had a little Louis Armstrong Mack the knife tribute"

Inkling update:  It's raining at Rhinebeck, where the sheep and wool festival is happening.  Nonetheless, a good time is being had by all, and "all" just happens to include someone I normally see before the sun comes up.

"It's June, your running buddy!"

OfSnough update:  He's learning to fold flags properly for the Red Rose Honor Guard.  Apparently, people who learn to fold flags have to practice a lot.  

Y update:  She rolled into town this weekend, and we were glad that we merited a visit on her whirlwind tour of all her old friends here.   She's got some big career decisions ahead of her, and we're praying that she finds the kind of situation she's been training for and working toward.

Xavier update:  He seems to be healing up still, albeit slowly, from his bad motorcycle accident.  He lost (or broke?) his phone, so communication is a bit more intermittent, but when I do get to hear from him, it's encouraging.  With all the horrendous news coming in from elsewhere in the world, I continue to fret for Haiti, so I'm very glad for the small pieces of hopeful news I get from that direction.

And that's the news from our family, which continues to be wealthy in our adventures.  May you and yours be similarly prosperous.  

. . . and the morning lights come on | A rundown

Now that the sunlight is becoming scarcer, I'm waking up in the dark to meet up with my running buddy several times a week.  I don't like turning on bright lights in the morning if I'm just going to go outside into darkness again, so a series of small nightlights (which, in this case, ought rather to be called "morning lights") illuminate my way.

Let me introduce my little lights to you!  First, in my running-clothes closet:

A quirky lantern given to me by my dad one Christmas. 
It turns on when you pat it on the head.
He gave one to each of me and my sisters, and my sister surreptitiously
passed me hers when I told her I actually like it, so I have two of these.

Next, in the bathroom.

A plug-in LED light, motion sensing, a gift from my sister.
She also gave one to Nelson, who doesn't need it, so I snagged his
and put the second one in the living room. 
(I'm sensing a snagging theme here).

I like the bathroom light so much, that I tried to figure out how to get a similar one for our stair landing.  Here's what I've come up with so far:

Our stairs don't have an outlet, or I'd install a plug-in
like the one my sister gave me (above).
Instead, this is a battery operated, motion-sensing, LED light.
It seems to be quite a battery hog, though, and keeps burning
out, so I don't really recommend this type.

In my husband's closet, there's a motion-sensing light that I gave him (I guess as an antidote to snagging other people's gifts).  I don't actually go into his closet as part of my own morning routine, but we both like this light enough that I thought I'd include it in this run-down [heh; run down]. 

It hangs by an attached hook (so no tape or screws), 
and it recharges by using an USB port, so no batteries.

There are more and more things in my life that recharge (like this little closet light) from a USB port, and the more of these I find, the more I hope I can move away from those batteries with their letters and numbers.  AA, AAA, 9V, I'm ready for a future without you!  

Enough of an update

Life continues to be rich and full here in Enoughsville.  The week started out warm and sunny; a rainstorm elbowed its way in toward the end of the week; what was left when the storm blew out again feels a heck of a lot like fall. The acorns are everywhere.

G and I had a great time gathering acorns last weekend.

He kept saying he was almost done,
and then kept picking more and more and more.

Honestly, when I started this sabbatical I was a bit worried that I'd be kind of isolated and lonely, but instead I find that I'm bopping from one event to another, and my days feel like they're full of good stuff.   My friends and acquaintances are getting to the point of feeling stressed by too-much-too-do-all-at-once, a feeling that has been quite familiar to me, but that's not how I feel now.  As in the past, I find that my daily to-do lists are longer than my days, but now it's more like heading to a buffet with more delicious food than I have actually eat:  I do a lot of fun stuff, and then I save the rest of the fun stuff as leftovers for the next day.

I have, for example, four or five different math research projects going.  Three of those are with other people -- an engineer from a nearby university and two undergraduates.  So I get to chat with my colleagues several times a week about fun math stuff, and I also get to read and write about my own individual projects; it's a great blend of social and quiet time.   And there's still time in the week leftover for

• giving blood,
• serving breakfast at the local soup kitchen,
• going to campus talks,
• reading Spanish stories and attending class,
• attending a meet-and-greet party with a friend,
• going to the theater to see Something Rotten, and
• visiting the art gallery where a friend is displaying aMAZing quilts she's made.

Here are some updates from the rest of the family.  One evening, when my husband served up dinner, I looked at the food on the table and a warm glow came over me.

Me:  Aw, you cooked brown rice instead of white rice.  You must really love me.

Him:  We're out of white rice.

So, there's that.  Also, my guy and Inkling went to New York where she got to see theater and knit, and I made a bit of a collage of the photos she sent back.  

Meanwhile in NYC ... the show last night was fantastic! And in true Io fashion, I made a friend  Emily had the seat next to me and if she lived closer than California I think we would be friends for real

(PS the toy soldier is holding my sock-in-progress)

And then after the show I went to the stage door and got to (briefly) meet Daniel Radcliffe

Instead of taking a self with him or having him sign my program, I asked him to hold my sock (you know, like I do)

He was lovely (and it's blurry because my hands were shaking)

When her sisters asked what D. R. thought about holding the sock (Gosling noted, "I would love to know how many times Daniel gets asked to hold a half-knit sock"), she added

He certainly seemed surprised by it, so I'd assume it's a pretty rare occurrence

Kinderling also sent along some photos of her latest creative project.  She pulled together a lovely farewell party for the dog that's been staying at her house.

K: Pupcorn, puppachino's, dog treats, puppy chow and a farewell Wynnie sign. Treats for goodbye presents:)

Oh ya, and pupperoni and cheese bones

K: Something small. Gotta make it fun for the kiddos. They're going to miss her so much.

Gosling: Can Wynnie come back for visits?

K: I hope so! She was fun :)  

Achild will miss her most, which is why I wanted to throw a party. Figured if we ended on a fun note, it might help. She was really attached to Wynnie. Maybe when (or, if... big IF) things settle down we can add a pup but NOT now hah

And speaking of dogs, Prewash enjoys her time on the porch during these warm days.  She continues to have quite a fan club: sometimes people will call her name from half a block away, there are two different bearded men who make a point of sweet talking her and getting dog kisses, there are a host of children who ask for cheerios (which I keep on the porch) to feed to her, and the college students make a point of walking down our block on their way into and out of the city so they can pet her while she wiggles her whole body at them.  It's quite nice having such a goodwill ambassador in the house.

And that's the early October news from our family, which continues to be wealthy in our adventures.  May you and yours be similarly prosperous.

A cascade that leads to Yay

Decades ago, when I started my job here in this little city I now live in, I switched from donating blood at the American Red Cross to donating blood at a more local blood bank. My reasoning for making the change was not philosophical, but merely pragmatic: the local blood bank donation center was a two-block walk from my office.  

When the local blood bank moved to a more distant location, I fell into habit and just drove the 3 or 4 miles there. When we moved to our new home in 2019, we were now yet another mile further away from the blood donation center. Although I only donate blood about every two months or so, it's probably one of my most regular have-to-use-the-car trips, and I haven't had a kick in the pants that I needed to switch this up until this recent, Rube-Goldberg-like, cascade of events.

• In May, I developed ringing in my ears which eventually led me to an ENT, who said it would be worthwhile getting me an MRI.
• Just before the MRI was scheduled, I had a visit from the Covid fairy, and had to postpone my MRI to a later date.
• Also, because of the visit from the Covid fairy, I had to postpone donating blood to a later date.
• I finally had my MRI, and the report came back full of confusing scientific words intermingled with multiple uses of the easy-to-understand word "normal".
• At my blood donation appointment 48 hours later, phlebotomists informed me that I actually had to wait 72 hours after the MRI to give blood, because part of the MRI includes an injection.
• Even though I didn't end up giving blood, the drive there and back through city traffic took 45 minutes, and it also of course, included using the car (because of course, that's what a "drive" is), reminding me that I wanted to find a closer place.
• Rather than reschedule with my local (but actually not as local as I wanted) blood bank, I looked for alternatives.
• I discovered that the hospital just 3 blocks from our new home had a blood drive on Tuesday, conveniently just past the 72-hours-after-MRI deadline.  So I signed up.

I didn't realize how fortuitous the timing of this all was until I was most of the way through my desanguination.  The phlebotomist who was poking and draining me explained that this location for blood drives was only open every 4 weeks, cycling nearly monthly: one month in the mornings, the next in the evenings.  I'd managed to land just perfectly in the beginning of what I hope will be an 8-week cycle of using this place on Tuesday mornings, as I'm heading back home from the soup kitchen to home, passing this particular hospital along the way.  This is going to be super convenient. 

And that's a summary of the cascade of weird health events that will lead to ditching the car even further, which is a big happy Yay for me.

A serendipitously satisfying sewing job

Sometimes, things just work out like the happiest kind of magic.

My husband put a pair of sweatpants in the Command Center, which means he wanted them mended somehow.  I looked them over and saw that the cuffs were a bit ripped, as though he'd been stepping on them, but I couldn't see anything else wrong.  Sometimes the mending comes into my Command Center "marked" -- for example, a single sock with a pencil helpfully poking through a hole in the toe makes it pretty obvious what the problem is. In this case, the reason he wanted mending wasn't obvious.

I hunted my guy down and asked what the problem was: he said the elastic was so loose, the pants fell down.  Well, who needs that?  So now I had my mission: could I help keep the sweatpants up around my husband's waist instead of down by his knees.

These pants had the kind of elastic that is stitched right on to the waistband.  It's not at all easy to remove, especially because the pants, the elastic, and the thread are all black.  Even if I could remove it, the only other elastic I had in my stash was white, which would clash if I stitched it in similarly.

Since the pants would be worthless if I didn't fix them, I decided to take a gamble on a hack; even if I ruined them, the only real loss at this point would be my time.  I folded the waistband over, into the pants, and then stitched it down to create a tunnel for the white elastic.  This would make the pants about an inch or two shorter than before, but given the torn cuffs, I figured that shorter pants wasn't a problem and might even be more comfortable.  

Black pants with black stitching
are very hard to photograph well.

I didn't think about this beforehand, but I realized mid-project that this hack also made the hand holes in the pockets about 1 or 2 inches shorter, too, because the waistband folded down across the top of them.  At any rate, I kept stitching.  Then I threaded the elastic through the tunnel, sewed one end down, and safety-pinned the other end so that I could have my husband try the mended pants on and adjust if necessary.

The new waistband, with a safety pin
holding the white elastic in place.

And the verdict was . . . success!  The mended pants didn't fall down.  The new length was actually much nicer.  And my guy, unbidden, told me that the pants were now "cell phone compliant": he said that before, he couldn't carry his cell phone in his pockets because it'd fall out, but now it stays.  (He didn't even know I was fretting that I'd ruined the pockets by making the hole smaller).  

So, this 10-minute gamble of a fix not only saved a pair of pants, it actually improved them in a couple of ways.  Whoop!  Huzzah for the magic of mending that goes right.

Update with Pirates interspersed

 Life continues to be rich and full here in Enoughsville.  I've been traveling so much that I didn't have access to internet when I had down time, and I haven't actually had much down time, so all of the news that I've wanted to share keeps piling up and up . . . and it's hard to even know where to start.  Organizing photos is especially tricky while the internet goes in and out on me, so I think I'm just going to take things in order of the way my computer plopped the pictures into this update . . . which means that this will be a bumpy catch-up of a ride.   

You ready?  Here goes . . . 

Jason came back for dinner, the first time (I think?) since 2019.  Man, I've missed that guy, and it was good to see him.

His forehead is not injured; that's a Pirate eye patch.
(More on pirates later).

Inkling is delighted that the weather is cooling.  It's hat weather, finally!   Let us show off . . . 

Also, the Rhinebeck sweater is well underway.

In the middle of last week, we hosted our annual Pirate Dinner.  I had lots and lots of fun making this year's Pirate cake.  The more I do it, the easier it gets to create it, while still leaving room for fun variations.

For example, this year the "Pirate ship cake pan" (also more familiarly known as a "pinched ice cream carton") sprung a leak.  If it were a real pirate ship, this could have been a disaster, but on a chocolate cake pirate ship, it's an island where we can bury treasure.

About the same time that we were celebrating Pirate lore, Gosling and Colin were celebrating for other reasons:

"Happy Gotcha Day, Nova"

And photos of a scurvy dog take us back to the Pirate celebrations, of course.  Every time I travel, my dog Prewash misses me terribly; my husband tells me she even whines. (She's mostly noiseless when I'm around).

Well, it turns out that while my husband was gone for several weeks, our car missed him as much as my dog misses me.  It got what we call "the triangle of death": a red triangle with an exclamation point in the middle.  Maybe that symbol is taken from a Pirate swear word; I don't know.  Fortunately, when my husband returned and started actually driving the car around again (instead of waving to it from the sidewalk, as I tend to do), it recovered.  Apparently it just wants attention to keep its battery charged up.  (Right, Prewash?)

Unfortunately, my guy realized the car was overdue for an inspection sticker, and the garage that subsequently inspected it declared it needed $3K of work . . . more than the actual current street value of the car.  We decided to fork the money over, and fortunately, the fixes not only brought the car up to snuff inspection-wise, but also eliminated a BUNCH of annoying noise the car had been making.  So that's been quite an adventure.  

And then somebody found a bird's nest.  Let me look back through the text messages to remember who that was . . . 

Oh!  It's Inkling's!  It's in the rosebush I got her. 

At any rate, the dogs are happy about gotcha day or bird's nests or fixed cars . . . whatever it is we're talking about now.  It's good to be sedate.

Or to kick people! Under some circumstances, going around kicking people is good, too.  Achild demonstrates below.  

At  her first session of Tae Kwon Do.

So, anyway, Pirates.  Yeah.  We had a great treasure hunt, starting with clues that mysteriously appeared in my wall safe.  My young friend G came with his mom, and even though this was his mom's first time in our home, she ended up being the first to finish her treasure hunt and find the buried treasure.

Also, Ofsnough got his hearing aids!  I don't have photos of those, but it feels like if I had, they would have wound up right about here, so I'll just say it now, serving the information up like it's a slice of pirate cake . . .

And also, I got my flu shot,
and my dentist says my teeth are in fine shape.

After all this, I went to my high school reunion, and visited my dad, and then took a train to Atlanta and a shuttle from there to Alabama, along the way meeting up with former students and sometimes their kids.  

I apparently am very bad at taking photos of the people I'm with (I hope that means I'm relatively good at paying attention to them, instead), so I guess that's enough photos for now.   As I write this, I'm on the train heading back home, where I'll get to see my guy again, and then Prewash, and I know I'll be too busy to write, so I'll just post now, and try to catch up on other stuff later.

So for now, that's the news from our family, which continues to be wealthy in our adventures.  May you and yours be similarly prosperous.