I’ve always thought that a person’s home should represent that person.  Perhaps I have carried this a bit too far in the decor (heh) of my current home, but hey.  I happen to like having all those bookshelves in the bathroom, and having push-button talking pictures on the walls in there.  I like my orange sofa and my red chair.  I am able to comprehend that they do not match, but the liking compensates for the ferocity of their clashing.  I like more than a dash of funk in my surroundings.  I want my house to be tasteful but groovy.

I read somewhere that having lots of pictures of friends and family members framed and hanging or sitting about the house isn’t cool.  Says who?  I LOVE seeing beloved faces on the walls and on the tabletops.

Sometimes I look at the pictures of rooms in magazines and sigh; they’re just so, well, RIGHT.  The colors match and the accessories match and there’s not a pile of shoes in sight.  In fact, those pictures seldom show any indication that anyone actually lives in those rooms.  I think this is because no one does.

In houses wherein people actually live, there are signs of life.  There is the pile of shoes under the table (well, that’s where I keep my shoes, anyway) and there are magazines, and there are books with markers in them, and there are laptops on the coffee table beside little piles of earrings.  The cushions have been known to live most of their lives on the floor or tossed behind the sofa.  Sometimes there’s an indentation on one end of the sofa arm because if the sofa is comfortable, people lie down on it.  Why isn’t there ever any cat hair on the furniture in those pictures?  What’s a home without a cat?

The kitchens are always pristine in magazine pictures.  You never see bowls of cat food and spilled water on the floors.  You never see spilled cereal mixed with cat hair and dust under the kitchen counters.  People walk across kitchen floors barefooted and never have to stop to flick off “something” clinging to the sole of their foot.

You never see ten thousand boxes of half-eaten cereal sitting around in a magazine picture.  The tables are always absolutely clear and clean, with perhaps a bowl of fruit or a vase of fresh flowers.  In my house, a bowl of fruit would last about ten minutes, and although I love fresh flowers in the house, I chose to have cats, and cats love fresh flowers, too.  In fact, they refer to a vase of fresh flowers as “the salad bar.”  Sigh.

Also?  Those magazine rooms always have curtains at the windows.  I’ve never had curtains.  However, I will have them soon enough.

We’re moving.  But I digress.  I’m also scared of the concept.

Having only to choose, and it’s a choice we are all free to make, I have chosen to LIVE in my house and to encourage others to do likewise.  We could do better, naturally, and not a day goes by when I don’t wish for just a little touch of magazine perfection, but ultimately?  We live here.  And if you stop by – and I certainly hope you do – I want you to make yourself at home, too.  Keep your shoes on; YOU are more important than a speck of dirt your shoes might track in.  (I never feel really welcome if I’m told to remove my shoes.)  (If you have white carpet, that’s a choice YOU made.)  (Not even if it were free.)  (Nope.)  I love my guests more than I care about a carpet.  Besides, I’d rather vacuum up a little dirt later than have to smell your feet all night.

I am always so very sorry for children who live in a house with white carpet, unless the adults who chose it aren’t really all that fussed about keeping it white.

We are currently downsizing to the max here.  My big house is packed to the gills with the accumulation of many years, and the house we are renovating from the skin out is a LOT smaller.  I am not a person who can live sanely with clutter and piles of “stuff,” (I read magazines with scissors in hand and the minute I finish, it goes in the recycle bin) and my husband saves everything.  You’ve seen “Clash of the Titans?”  (The original; not that insipid remake.)  We are the Titans.  I am also the Kraken.  And I have been released.

You’ve been warned.

People have been shopping at my house via FreeCycle like mad these past few months.  Do any of you need anything?  Whatever it is, I bet there’s one here, somewhere.

In the meantime, come on in. The love seat is occupied, but you can sit on the orange sofa. Put your feet up on the coffee table. Sure, you can take your drink into the living room. We live in this house. While you are here, you can live in it, too.

Pity the house that discourages comfort and living.  Pity the sanitized magazine house.

I much prefer a home.

Dear house in town: Steel your nerves.   We’re coming to turn you into a home.  (I’m sure you’re already breathing easier with all that ghastly wallpaper gone.)

Mamacita says:  Sunday is Independence Day! And, if you do not believe in that, then, Sunday is the Fourth of July.

Deny it if you will, but you will be wrong. You have a fourth of July. Everybody has a fourth of July. It’s right there between the third and the fifth, so none of your lip now. If you live here, this country’s history is now your history, too.

When our kids were younger, we used to use our deck as a launching pad for bottle rockets. Well, the actual launching pad was a pop bottle, but who can find those any more? Now, we just jam the rocket between the cracks in the deck boards, light it, and stand back. Our deck is covered with black burn marks, but I kind of like that. It makes me remember happy summers with small children.

Oh, hush. We watched them carefully.

When the kids were older, we used to set off the big stuff in the back yard while the children sat safely on that same deck, watching. But I won’t go there in case there are any of those prissy types reading.

Our sidewalk is covered with black spots, too. That’s where we set off the coiling snakes. I’m still kind of partial to those. I like to look at the sidewalk spots, too, because they make me remember those giggling little kids, watching the coiling black snakes with big laughing eyes. The kids, not the snakes.

Nothing perfect can be truly beautiful. I’d rather have my spotty sidewalks and the memories than a pristine landscaped lawn. Good thing, too, since our grass is over a foot high in places the regular mower can’t go. The tractor’s in the shop.

The thing is, I don’t schedule my ventures into the savannah that is my yard.  I start ripping into the weeds at random moments, and I never have those gloves with me when the mood strikes.

I’ll be walking from the car to the door and I’ll be seized with a desire to RIP those confounded * weeds OUT of the GROUND by the ROOTS before I so much as take another BREATH.

And I start tearing at them with my bare hands.  And I don’t stop until they’re gone.  Until they’re DEAD.  DEAD, uprooted.  Piled in the driveway with one end a foot higher than the other because I ripped them out by the ROOTS.

Ahem.  I’m fine now.

Well, except for the fact that, as always, my hands are covered with blisters and splinters and cuts, one of which might need a stitch, and the itch, it is beginning.  We’ll see.  In the meantime, ouch, and bring on the bandaids.

But the weeds?  They are no more.

* Coot-talk for “damn.”  Really, it should be “damned,” but who’s scoring grammar for cussing?  Besides me, I mean.

“No two people are alike, and both of them are damn glad of it.”

That’s a quotation; that’s not me saying “damn,” although I frequently occasionally do. I am, to my shame, greatly afflicted with “potty mouth,” and although I managed to control it somewhat while my children were tiny, thanks to what I think of as my “Shit Epiphany,” it’s back, in full force. Honestly? I need help.

But I digress. No two people are alike, but both of them are expected to progress at the same rate by our public schools.

Our children are expected to learn to read and write by a certain age lest they be labeled “special education” and given an IEP and pulled from the classroom to be tutored in the Reading Room. Most of them are little boys.

Old hippies like me sometimes have a hard time admitting that there really are gender differences that no amount of “environment” is going to change. One of those differences is this: a lot of little boys need a few more years than a lot of little girls need, to mature enough so that their bodies and brains can sit still, together, long enough to learn how to read and write. Whether we like it or not, it is a fact that while a lot of little girls are reading “Gone with the Wind,” many of the little boys sitting next to them are still struggling to recognize letter combinations. It is also a fact that some of these little boys who still can’t do it in the third grade, or the fourth, somehow have their own “epiphany” in the middle grades; something in their brain becomes aware of symbols and their meanings and how to translate them to Harry Potter. It wasn’t that these little boys didn’t TRY down in the lower grades; it was that their bodies and brains weren’t THERE yet.

I saw this miracle happen over and over again. With my own eyes I saw it. Sometimes, when I tried to tell other teachers, especially elementary teachers, about this awakening, they did not believe me. “I had that boy in third grade and I’m telling you, Jane, that he just doesn’t have what it takes to be a reader, a good student. He just can’t do it.”

And I’m telling you, Madeline, that I don’t give a rat’s ass* what the child did in your class. I am trying to tell you that in my class, the boy can read. One week he couldn’t, and the next week, he could. And he’s ecstatic.

Heidi learned to read overnight. It does happen. At age eight, Heidi learned to read overnight. And then she went home and taught her friend Peter how to read, and he was in his teens. The “learning how to read when convinced one would never be able to learn because it was just too hard” theme is a big one in this book.

My point? Do I have to have one? I guess I could drag one in by the hind legs if you must have a point. How about this one:

Hold off on the IEP’s and the labeling until the kid is in middle school. Tutor, yes. Give special help, yes. Hang a label on his forehead and put it in his permanent record? Not so fast there, Teach. Don’t do it Not yet. Not just for reading. Save the labeling for the children who genuinely need the help; don’t fill up the room with little boys who just need a few more years to mature.

Same-sex classrooms in the lower grades? Why not? It might work. It would certainly be better for the little girls who, most of them, just naturally catch on to the reading faster; they could move on! It would be better for the little boys, too; they wouldn’t feel pressured and might get comfortable enough to relax and blossom, too.

Many of our most highly esteemed scientists, inventors, etc, were late bloomers. Edison wasn’t even allowed to continue at his school; he was so slow, he held the others back!

Let’s give our little boys a break, what say, people?

And by the way, taking away a child’s recess because he couldn’t finish his vocabulary words quickly is cruel and unusual punishment. I suppose the boy would then be punished because he was extra wiggly since his ‘outlet’ was taken from him? Energetic little children NEED to be let loose on the playground several times a day!!! Taking away recesses for punishment or to make more room for standardized test review is the action of a halfwit who knows nothing about either education OR children and probably hasn’t been in a classroom since 1972 politician, superintendent, or some other administrator who falls into the ‘nimrod’ category of typical la la land unawareness of real people and how we live. Probably people who do that don’t know how to access their email, either, or use a computer. But then, that’s what secretaries are for.

I put up with this for 26 years. No wonder I had a potty mouth.

Back in the olden days, there were plenty of outlets for restless boys to work off their excess energy. Families sent their  boys out to chop wood, plow, herd cows, walk miles to a neighbor or a store, etc. Our boys fell into bed exhausted from genuine labor every night. Now, few boys have any safe or easily obtainable or legitimate outlets, other than sports, for their physical energy and it gets kind of balled up (sorry) in them and then they explode, sometimes for no conceivable reason other than that the kid simply needs an outlet. I’m a huge proponent of self control, but self control can only do so much. Any teacher can tell you that a middle-of-the-day segment devoted to intense physical activity is of vital importance for our students. Girls need it, too, but I’m focusing on the boys in this post. Afternoon classes full of boys who have had absolutely no physical outlet are a nightmare.

Organized games are not enough. Not every kid will get to play; plus, once the adults take charge, it’s no longer free play; it’s business. Let the kids run wild for a half hour or so and let the teachers stand there and try to keep them from getting hurt. Tim’s elementary school had a hill to slide down and a piney grove to play in. I taught in that same school for years and by then, the piney grove, the hill, and most of the coolest playground equipment had been removed because a kid fell down. Go figure. Our kids don’t even know HOW to fall down these days. When they are on ice or trip and really DO fall down, they get hurt because they’ve had no falling-down experience. Kids fall down. Live with it. Sheesh.

And by the way, this guv’ment standard of requiring our tiny first and second graders to sit still for NINETY MINUTES and read without interruption is ignorance in action on the part of whoever thought that one up. Tell me, Mr. Standards: Can YOU sit absolutely still for ninety minutes and read without interruption? I thought not.

*Dammit **, there I go again.

** Crap.

She told him she did it that way, because her mother always did it that way.

So the young husband asked his mother-in-law why she had always cut the beef roast in half before she put it in the pan. Her reply? She did it that way because HER mother had always done it that way.

At the next family dinner, the husband asked his wife’s grandmother why she had always cut the beef roast in half before putting it in the pan. Her reply? Because her mother had always done it that way.

His wife’s great-grandmother was still alive, so he went to the nursing home and asked her why she always cut the beef roast in half before putting it in the pan. Her reply?

“I only had the one small pan, and the only way a roast would fit in it was if it was first cut into two pieces.”

When my children visit, I often think of this story. I don’t know if it’s true or not, but it might as well be, because so many of the things we do make no sense except in the context of the past.

First of all, both of my children love grilled cheese sandwiches. I mean, who doesn’t? Secondly, neither of my children will touch a grilled cheese sandwich unless it was made with Velveeta.**

Thirdly, and most importantly, I can grant these wishes because A. I won’t eat a grilled cheese sandwich unless it was made with Velveeta, either, and B. Velveeta is a name brand food I can actually AFFORD!

My son comes down to visit me frequently (Yay)  and the minute he enters the house, he requests grilled cheese sandwiches. When he was a little boy, the only way he could eat a grilled cheese sandwich was if I mashed it down flat with the spatula after the Velveeta had melted. THEN his little mouth could close around it, and he could eat the sandwich “like a man.”

He is 24*** years old now, but he still wants his grilled cheese flattened with the spatula. Because that’s how his mother always made them.

When he gets married****, I can’t wait to hear his wife’s reaction when he asks her to mash a perfectly good sandwich flat. Will she question it, or just do it?

Sometimes, family traditions have serious beginnings and funny middles. As for the endings, there aren’t any, not really.

*beef roast vs. roast beef: is it regional or are these two different cuts?

**No, I got no money or Velveeta from Kraft for saying this.  It’s just, well, true.

*** He’s 29 now, but who’s counting?

**** Mommy is still waiting.

Once upon a time, we were just sisters and wives and daughters when we got together, sharing a mom and having first names.  Now, we’re all Mom, Mommy, Grandma, Mamaw, Aunt, Great-aunt, mother-in-law . . . . I can remember days when I couldn’t remember the last time someone called me by my actual name.

I also remember, clear as a bell, the first time my child said my new name.  Mama.  That moment is etched on my heart, in beautiful calligraphy, and decorated with fresh flowers.  I still love to hear my children say “Mom.”  These women whose children refer to them by their first names, instead of some variation of mother?  I pity both woman and child.  Somethin’ WRONG wit dat.  Somebody gots her priorities all messed up.

Contrary to popular belief, mothers are not omnicient, we don’t have eyes in the backs of our heads, and we can’t read your mind.  The only exception to that would be MY mother.

And speaking of my mother. . . Mom, I have tried to emulate you in many ways, all of my life.  You read to us.  You sat down on the floor and played with us.  You used the power of Parenthood and created Special Days, all throughout the year.  Christmas is a holiday, sure, but it was YOU who created OUR Christmas.  I have tried to “do” holidays just as you did, all my married life.

I’m looking forward to Sunday, dear sisters and nieces and daughters and all of the other wonderful descriptions that come with all of you.  I might be the weirdo of the bunch – oh, it’s not like I don’t KNOW that!!!! -but I might also be the most sentimental of the bunch.

1.The phrase “working mother” is redundant. ~Jane Sellman

2. The moment a child is born, the mother is also born. She never existed before. The woman existed, but the mother, never. A mother is something absolutely new. ~Rajneesh

3. I remember my mother’s prayers and they have always followed me. They have clung to me all my life. ~Abraham Lincoln

4. A mother is a person who, seeing there are only four pieces of pie for five people, promptly announces she never did care for pie. ~Tenneva Jordan

5. The heart of a mother is a deep abyss at the bottom of which you will always find forgiveness. ~Honoré de Balzac

6. He is a poor son whose sonship does not make him desire to serve all men’s mothers. ~Harry Emerson Fosdick

7. An ounce of mother is worth a pound of clergy. ~Spanish Proverb

8. My mom is a neverending song in my heart of comfort, happiness, and being. I may sometimes forget the words but I always remember the tune. ~Graycie Harmon

9. Any mother could perform the jobs of several air traffic controllers with ease. ~Lisa Alther

10. Grown don’t mean nothing to a mother. A child is a child. They get bigger, older, but grown? What’s that suppose to mean? In my heart it don’t mean a thing. ~Toni Morrison, Beloved

11. The only mothers it is safe to forget on Mother’s Day are the good ones. ~Mignon McLaughlin

12. A mom forgives us all our faults, not to mention one or two we don’t even have. ~Robert Brault

13. One good mother is worth a hundred schoolmasters. ~George Herbert

14. Mother is the name for God in the lips and hearts of little children. ~William Makepeace Thackeray

15. Every beetle is a gazelle in the eyes of its mother. ~Moorish Proverb

16. All that I am or ever hope to be, I owe to my angel Mother. ~Abraham Lincoln

17. No one in the world can take the place of your mother. Right or wrong, from her viewpoint you are always right. She may scold you for little things, but never for the big ones. ~Harry Truman

18. God could not be everywhere, so He created mothers. ~Jewish Proverb

19. Biology is the least of what makes someone a mother. ~Oprah Winfrey

20. I regard no man as poor who has a godly mother. ~ Abraham Lincoln

21. The mother loves her child most divinely not when she surrounds him with comforts and anticipates his wants, but when she resolutely holds him to the highest standards and is content with nothing less than his best. ~ Hamilton Wright Mabie

22. The hand that rocks the cradle is the hand that rules the world. ~ William Ross Wallace

23. There never was a woman like her. She was gentle as a dove and brave as a lioness… The memory of my mother and her teachings were, after all, the only capital I had to start life with, and on that capital I have made my way. ~ Andrew Jackson

24. Who is getting more pleasure from this rocking, the baby or me? ~ Nancy Thayer

25. No matter how old a mother is, she watches her middle-aged children for signs of improvement. ~ Florida Scott-Maxwell

26. Sometimes when I look at all my children, I say to myself, ‘Lillian, you should have stayed a virgin.’” ~ Lillian Carter

27. And so our mothers and grandmothers have, more often than not anonymously, handed on the creative spark, the seed of the flower they themselves never hoped to see — or like a sealed letter they could not plainly read. ~ Alice Walker

28. Women do not have to sacrifice personhood if they are mothers. They do not have to sacrifice motherhood in order to be persons. Liberation was meant to expand women’s opportunities, not to limit them. The self-esteem that has been found in new pursuits can also be found in mothering. ~ Elaine Heffner

29. If you bungle raising your children, I don’t think whatever else you do well matters very much. ~ Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis

30. I looked on child rearing not only as a work of love and duty but as a profession that was fully as interesting and challenging as any honorable profession in the world and one that demanded the best I could bring to it. ~ Rose Kennedy

31. A mother is not a person to lean on, but a person to make leaning unnecessary. ~ Dorothy Canfield Fisher

32. She was the archetypal selfless mother: living only for her children, sheltering them from the consequences of their actions — and in the end doing them irreparable harm. ~ Marcia Muller

33. Spend at least one Mother’s Day with your respective mothers before you decide on marriage. If a man gives his mother a gift certificate for a flu shot, dump him. ~ Erma Bombeck

34. No one ever died from sleeping in an unmade bed. I have known mothers who remake the bed after their children do it because there’s a wrinkle in the spread or the blanket is on crooked. This is sick. ~ Erma Bombeck

35. Becoming a mother makes you the mother of all children. From now on each wounded, abandoned, frightened child is yours. You live in the suffering mothers of every race and creed and weep with them. You long to comfort all who are desolate. ~ Charlotte Gray

36. Giving kids clothes and food is one of thing, but it’s much more important to teach them that other people besides themselves are important and that the best thing they can do with their lives is to use them in the service of other people. ~ Dolores Huerta

37. Blaming mother is just a negative way of clinging to her still. ~ Nancy Friday

38. I love people. I love my family, my children . . . but inside myself is a place where I live all alone and that’s where you renew your springs that never dry up. ~ Pearl S. Buck

39. The most important thing a father can do for his children is to love their mother. ~ Father Theodore Hesburgh

40. When, however, one reads of a witch being ducked, of a woman possessed by devils, of a wise woman selling herbs, or even a very remarkable man who had a mother, then I think we are on the track of a lost novelist, a suppressed poet. . . indeed, I would venture to guess that Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman. ~ Virginia Woolf

41. A mother’s love for her child is like nothing else in the world. It knows no law, no pity, it dares all things and crushes down remorselessly all that stands in its path. ~ Agatha Christie

42. You do not really understand something unless you can explain it to your grandmother. ~ Albert Einstein

43. If there were no schools to take the children away from home part of the time, the insane asylum would be filled with mothers. ~ Edgar Watson Howe

44. What the mother sings to the cradle goes all the way down to the coffin. ~ Henry Ward Beecher

45. My mother had a great deal of trouble with me, but I think she enjoyed it. ~ Mark Twain

46. Over the years I have learned that motherhood is much like an austere religious order, the joining of which obligates one to relinquish all claims to personal possessions. ~ Nancy Stahl

47. There never was a child so lovely but his mother was glad to get him asleep ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

48. At work, you think of the children you have left at home. At home, you think of the work you’ve left unfinished. Such a struggle is unleashed within yourself. Your heart is rent. ~ Golda Meir

49. A mother is she who can take the place of all others but whose place no one else can take. ~ Cardinal Mermilod

50. A mother’s yearning feels the presence of the cherished child even in the degraded man. ~ George Eliot

51. There are lots of things that you can brush under the carpet about yourself until you’re faced with somebody whose needs won’t be put off. ~ Angela Carter

52. Isidor Isaac Rabi’s mother used to ask him, upon his return from school each day, “Did you ask any good questions today, Isaac?” ~ Steve Chandler

53. Sometimes the poorest woman leaves her children the richest inheritance. ~ Ruth E. Renkel

54. Mother love is the fuel that enables a normal human being to do the impossible. ~ Marion C. Garretty

55. A mother is never cocky or proud, because she knows the school principal may call at any minute to report that her child has just driven a motorcycle through the gymnasium. ~ Mary Kay Blakeley

56. It would seem that something which means poverty, disorder and violence every single day should be avoided entirely, but the desire to beget children is a natural urge. ~ Phyllis Diller

57. Parents often talk about the younger generation as if they didn’t have anything to do with it. ~ Haim Ginott

58. If you want your children to turn out well, spend twice as much time with them, and half as much money. ~ Abigail Van Buren

59. Making a decision to have a child–it’s momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body. ~ Elizabeth Stone

60. If you want your child to be brilliant, tell them fairy tales. If you want your child to be very brilliant, tell them even more fairy tales. ~ Albert Einstein

P.S.  What’s that she’s saying?  She needs to FIND HERSELF?  “Find herself” my Aunt Fanny.  Grow a pair, and be a parent to your child.  He’ll have pals his own age.  YOU can “find yourself” after your job is done.

P.P.S.  Does anybody else love it when, out in public, a child says “Mama?” and forty women instinctively turn their heads?

My husband still speaks wistfully of the day he and the kids visited his step-grandmother Margaret (she whom John Dillinger once tried to carjack. . . .) and she shared with them her unbelievable and, naturally, SECRET, morel mushroom patch.

Remember now, Hoosiers do not share this kind of secret with ANYBODY. People who will show a stranger their genital surgery scars will not share a morel mushroom location with their own mothers. Margaret took Tim and the kids across her fields and invited them to help themselves to the mushrooms.

They were everywhere. It was like a planted crop. You couldn’t take a step without stepping on morel mushrooms. They were all afraid to move, because around these parts, folks, you just don’t STEP on morel mushrooms if you can help it at all. They’re too valuable!!

How valuable are they? Well, if you can bear to part with yours, you can easily sell them for fifty bucks a pound. But it’s rare to find anyone who would part with them.

They came home fully loaded.

We once went to dinner at a friend’s home, and when we got there, she was preparing morel mushrooms as a last-minute addition to the meal. It seems that the night before, her husband had gone to their secret mushroom patch and had dumped two huge buckets of morels into their kitchen sink. All the guests were flabbergasted; usually, people don’t share their found mushrooms with others, either. To this day, none of us can remember what the main dish was at that meal. All anybody can remember is the mushrooms.

Except for me. Naturally, except for me. I am a freak, for I do not care all that much for morel mushrooms. I enjoy preparing them, but as for eating them. . . . well, let’s just say that everybody wants to sit by me, because I don’t eat mine and am happy to share.

And speaking of preparing them. . . . don’t let anybody tell you to use crushed saltines!!!

The proper Hoosier method is to mix together a little flour and a little cornmeal and a dash of salt, coat each mushroom, and fry in butter for just a few minutes. Remember to turn them.

Let them cool just enough to tolerate, and turn your crowd loose on them. There will never be enough.

Back in the middle school, my students used to bring breadsacks full of morel mushrooms and sell them to the teachers for twenty dollars apiece. The teachers got morel mushrooms for bargain rates, and the students got cash. It worked out pretty well for both parties concerned. I never bought any from a student; it wasn’t that I didn’t trust them, it was just that, well, I’d seen these same kids try to tell the difference between a noun and a verb all year, and pick wrong every time. There was something about believing that they could tell the difference between a mushroom and a toadstool and pick correctly every time, that just didn’t hit me quite right. I’m sure they knew; outdoor kids know these things. It was just a feeling I had.

As for the finding of them, I am probably the only Hoosier in the history of the state who not only doesn’t like to eat morel mushrooms, but also can’t find them even if they’re right there by the toe of my shoe. I can’t SEE them. I also tend to step on them, which makes me the kid who is picked last for anybody’s mushroom team. Usually, I just stay home and get ready to cook them when they’re brought home, whether I end up with a bowlful or a handful.

But if you live around these parts, around this time of year, around now, anywhere you might go, you won’t be able to escape the morel mushroom stories. In southern Indiana, we’d rather hear about the morel that got away, than about your boring old six-feet-long fish that got away.

And since I don’t care for them myself, that would be the “Queen’s We” that I’m using here.

I love to say that. It sounds so borderline.

Mamacita says:

Happy Easter, everyone.

What? Oh, oops. . . . .

Here. This is more like it. I do love those vintage Easter postcards. I hated growing up and finding out that those baby kittens were probably going to eat those baby chicks. I would also hate to have to tell you all how old I was before I realized that the bunnies weren’t really responsible for all those eggs.

But ultimately, this is Easter to me.

And isn’t it wonderful that so many of us, with so many different beliefs, can hang out here in the Blogosphere and get along great and love each other without having to constantly proselytize and try to sway each other to our own beliefs?

Oh, sure, those people are online too, but I don’t pay much attention to them.  Not here; not anywhere.

It’s the people whose beliefs are quietly lived every day, the people who show me by example what their values are, who get my attention.

And who says God doesn’t have a sense of humor? If you don’t believe me, just look around for a minute or two. Think of your family.

And if you’re alone, look in the mirror.

See?

Happy Easter, dear internet people. Eat chocolate. Get together with family.  Smile. Have some eggs. Rejoice over something.

It’s a good day for rejoicing. . . .

(Originally posted on Easter, 2005, but nothing’s changed since then.)

Oh, tis a wondrous thing to be Irish, although the same could not be said earlier in our country’s history.  Many people do not know how unwelcome the Irish were here,  in those days.  We’ve since learned wisdom.

I loved to read about Beany Malone for so many reasons, some of which were the casual ways their Irish ancestry was a part of their everyday lives.

Click here for some cool St. Patrick’s Day experiments for you and your kids to do, stolen borrowed from the Master Magician Scientist, Steve Spangler.

For another foin Irish activity, why don’t you and your kids make a leprechaun trap and see what you catch in it?  And what’s a little green water between friends?

(This picture is by Tim Nyberg, a fantastic artist who draws awesome things for the Wittenburg Door, which is a wonderful thing in and of itself.)  (Don’t click the link if your corncob makes you walk funny.)

What is it supposed to be?

Why, it’s St. Patrick driving the snakes out of Ireland, of course.

Happy St. Patrick’s Day to you all. If you’re not wearing green, strangers are allowed to pinch you.

What’s that?  I can’t hear you.  Come a little closer. . . thaaaaat’s right.  Gotcha.

I repost this, adding a little here and there and subtracting a little likewise, each March 17, so if it looks familiar to you, you’re not crazy.  Well, not about this post, anyway.

Pogue Ma’Hone to you all, for you know why you deserve it even if I don’t.

Mamacita says:

Happy New Year to all of my Blogosphere friends.

We’ll be spending New Year’s Eve, as we have done for the past many, many years, with our best friends, playing euchre far into the night and talking about everything under the sun.  It’s a mixed metaphor kind of evening: the very best kind.

I hope all of you are doing something lovely tonight, brand-new or traditional.

Traditions, remember, are lovely things, but important as it is to keep them, it’s equally important to create them.

Have fun tonight, and get home safely.

Tomorrow begins the taking down of all the Christmas things, so I’ll be sleeping in late and inventing tasks to put off the big task that I really don’t want to do.

I don’t really want to do laundry, either, but it’s better than removing the vestiges of the happiest time of all the year.

I might even clean the oven.

Nah.