Slinky woes

I don’t recall being particularly thrilled with most toys when I was a kid. Our parents always made a good attempt to buy our most requested items for Christmas, but they didn’t buy us many toys the rest of the year.

“Play” meant going outside and finding something to do—taking a walk, playing wiffleball, climbing trees, swimming in the creek, shooting baskets in a hoop attached to an old smokehouse. 

I got over playing with baby dolls at a very young age.  Barbies bored me too.  

I do recall wanting a Slinky very badly when I was about eight or nine years old.  Slinkys are a tightly coiled flexible spring that you can pour from one hand to another.  You can walk it down stairs once you acquire some Slinky-manipulating skills. 

One Saturday morning trip to town, I convinced Mom to buy me one.  They were just a cheap little toy, so she caved. 

I was so excited!  When we got home, I played with the Slinky awhile, pouring its perfect cool coils from one hand to the other. 

Then I had a bright idea.  I wonder how far it will stretch? 

I called one of my younger brothers over and had him hold one end while I walked backwards with the other end. 

I walked ten feet…twenty feet…that was about as far as it would stretch.  “OK, you can let go now,” I said to my brother. 

He dropped his end.  I expected it to spring back to me.  It didn’t.  Each coil was spread about two inches apart.  I tried squeezing them back together, but they wouldn’t stay. My heart sank. 

Pretty soon, my arms were full of a tangled mass of coils.  I carried them into my room and stuffed them under the bed, fighting back tears. 

I didn’t say anything about the mess I’d made of my Slinky to my parents, but I felt sick about it for days.

May Days, play days

Doing the “Dizzie Lizzie”

My favorite memories of recess, the ones that stand out the most anyway, are also associated with pain. 

The playground at my old elementary school consisted of a large grassy area, a blacktopped square with a basketball goal, and a sandy area with monkey bars and a balance beam that stood about knee high. There was a swing set with three or four swings, but most of the time, only one or two were operative. (Chain broke, seat broke, big mud puddle beneath, etc.)   

I liked the monkey bars, though.  It was a simple apparatus with a row of bars, and a kid could swing from one to the other like a monkey.  It was quite a feat to swing all the way across without touching the ground. 

One day, I was determined to make it across. I almost made it after a few attempts, but my palms burned so bad from swinging and twisting.  When I looked down, I saw that my skin was blistered and peeled back.

One of my teachers noticed and took me to the office to get doctored up, but my hands hurt the rest of the day.

We played relay games a lot at recess, too.  You know, sack races, the three-legged race and the “dizzie lizzie.” 

Did anyone else ever do the “dizzie lizzie?” 

You ran to a designated mark, picked up a ball bat, and placed your forehead on the grip end of the bat.  The other end of the bat stayed on the ground. You circled the bat three or four times in this position, then you dropped the bat and ran back to the starting line.  At least, you tried.  The faster you circled the bat, the dizzier you got and the harder it was to run straight.

Although this “exercise” didn’t exactly hurt, it usually made me feel nauseous. 

Sounds like a lot of fun, huh? 

The "morel" of the story; the mushrooms are gone

Last year's "dry-land fish"

In my hometown of Irvine, we celebrate the mushroom hunting season, a rite of spring for many here in the foothills of Kentucky, by throwing a big ol’ festival dedicated to morels. 

We call it the Mountain Mushroom Festival, and festivities include a “Fungus 5K,” a parade, lots of entertainment, vendors, a car show, an antique tractor show, a rock and mineral show…and much more. 

One of the main attractions is the mushroom market where local morel hunters can bring in their finds and sell them.  A prize is also awarded for the biggest morel. 

When I stopped by the market this afternoon, only one morel had been brought in, and it was partly dried up.  

“Dry-land fish,” as some of us call them, are typically springing up by the dozens out in the woods this time of year. 

However, spring came very early this year, then April turned dry.

Dry is not the best condition for growing “the fungus among us.”     
This is the 22^nd year for the festival, but it’s the first one I can recall that there were few or no morels to sell at the market.  

My hubby and I went hunting for them twice, and he found one small ‘shroom.  I found mushrooms, but not morels.  I wasn’t sure if they were edible or not. 

I’m ready for next year, though.  Today I bought a field guide to identify lots of varieties of edible wild mushrooms, and I bought a bumper sticker that says, “Stay out of my morel patch.” 

I’m just hoping that next year, I’ll have a morel patch.

Simple strawberry shortcake

One of the advantages of an early spring is that strawberries get ripe sooner.

Chelsea and I picked a gallon or so this afternoon.  We ate a few handfuls straight from the patch, then I made old-fashioned strawberry shortcake with some of what was left.

I like this shortcake recipe.  Pound cake or even just a plain ol’ yellow cake is good with strawberries, but often the sweetness of those cakes makes the berries taste too tangy. 

This shortcake, however, is like a lightly sweetened biscuit, so the sweet of the cake doesn’t overpower the fruit. 

Here’s the recipe I used. I think heavy cream would have been good poured over it all, but I didn’t have any, so I used the whipped cream in the can.  For a little bit of a citrus kick, I spooned a couple of tablespoons of that lemon balm syrup that I made last week over it all…Yummy! 

Click here for a classic strawberry shortcake recipe.  

http://allrecipes.com/recipe/old-fashioned-strawberry-shortcake/detail.aspx

This is how you'll feel after you've had some. 

"Blackberry winter" day warmed by good news

Brrrrr…it’s chilly in central Kentucky today!  Old-timers would probably say this is “blackberry winter,” because it’s cold and the blackberries are in bloom. 

Around here, any cold snap that coincides with a bloom time has a “winter” named after it. 

I think redbud winter got lost in March, and if we had a dogwood winter, it wasn’t much. 

But today has been cool and overcast--blackberries are blooming—a good day for sleeping late and sliding into the church pew after the congregational singing had already commenced, a good day for eating a bowl of chili for lunch, taking a brisk walk in the brisk wind, and enjoying a cup of hot cocoa afterwards.

I don’t mind days like this every now and then, especially when our daughter calls and says the baby is having his best post-op day yet!  She got to hold him (first time since surgery), and he’s been able to tolerate a significant morphine wean.  He’s been tolerating tiny feeds well, too. 

Yay!  Finally some good news—news that can warm any kind of “winter” day.

I'm trying to get back on track...

OK, I’m completely off track…I’ve missed nearly a week of posts. This is the third month I had committed to Nablopomo, and the first time I’ve failed to stick with it and post daily. 

Sometimes, though, the mind is just too preoccupied to force onto tracks it doesn’t want to go—or can’t stay on if it tried. 

Last November was the first time I tried Nablopomo, and some of you may remember that my husband and I had just become grandparents of a baby boy born with Congenital Diaphragmatic Hernia at that time. 

I blogged faithfully all through the first month of little Clay’s life when he was so seriously ill.  We honestly didn’t know if he’d make it at times. 

He did though, and he grew and thrived for the next few months, although he was not able to transition off the hospital ventilator on to a home vent. 

Just a couple of days short of his fifth month birthday, his momma—our daughter—had just bought him a new play mat.  They spread it out on the hospital floor, in the corner of nursery eight where Clay has spent his entire life.  Clay kicked and smiled and seemed to enjoy his new toy so much.  Surely, we thought, he’s about ready to come home.   

The next day, however, Clay became extremely sick.  An x-ray was ordered, but there was no sign of reherniation, the fear that is ever-present in the minds of those close to CDH babies.  A culture revealed that Clay had a urinary tract infection. 

Still, that didn’t explain why he acted so frantic and like he was in such pain.  Several hours later, a second x-ray revealed that Clay had indeed reherniated.  It looked like his stomach and some of his bowel had migrated back into his chest cavity. 

The shock of the reherniation and the infection nearly got the best of our Clay.  Within a couple of days, our little guy was again paralyzed by drugs, the vent breathing for him, tubes and drips everywhere.

To make a long story short, after more than three weeks, Clay was determined stable enough to withstand another surgery.  Last Tuesday, doctors performed the second hernia repair, which took about four and a half hours.

These past few days, my mind has been everywhere but on my blog.  I have found it very hard to think of anything but our little grandson and the suffering he is enduring. Not only does he hurt physically, but he’s almost six months old now.  He has enough awareness of what’s going on around him to feel dread and fear now.  Knowing that makes this round harder than the first one, I think. 

Naturally, I worry a lot about his momma too.  Her birthday was just a couple of days ago, and I couldn’t help but compare her first experience with motherhood to mine, which was so much simpler.  I never imagined then the path that was ahead for her—for us.

Clay’s beginning to come around some since his surgery, but he has a long road ahead of him to complete recovery.  

Forgive me if I don’t post every single day--sometimes my mind and emotions are just too spent to concentrate. 

Guess what?

  Any ideas?