If you’re anything like me, you’ve spent much of your adult life learning how to communicate properly and effectively with other adults. Only to find out that, typically, you still can’t make these interactions turn out satisfactorily for all parties.

A pessimist might be tempted ask at that juncture, “What’s the point?”

… from The Longest Vacation Evah. Blogging shall resume. At some point.

My sister, who comments here as Bumble, and I were taken up in a hot-air balloon yesterday morning. It was absolutely as fantastic as you always thought it would be. Silent, still, views like the ones off the Sears Tower but without the heat, noise, grime, smells, and concrete. There are photos below the fold, but if you want to skip the narration and go straight to the in-flight pictures, they are here.

I was nervous before we went; not about flying or the height, but since I became a mom, reasonable fears of accidental death have blown up into an occasional, irrational near-certainty that because I’m so careless and rude to my child as to actually take an adventure that has a small chance of possibly going horribly wrong, it will actually happen that way. I tried to wrestle this down with the assurance that our pilot, Dave Bobel, has been flying balloons for more than thirty years and is certainly not about to crash himself just to validate my midnight fears. You won’t catch me going skydiving, though. Details and photos after the jump. (more…)

These are vacation posts, if you can’t tell. Short. Shorter than usual, that is.

I’m trying to learn about photography–i.e. learn what’s actually involved with making my various camera settings produce good photos rather than using Auto all the time, which tends to wash out faces with too-brilliant flashes. It’s perfectly appalling how much light is needed to get a good flashless photo if you’re not deliberately going for a time exposure with a tripod and all. So that even with our technology it’s still amazing how much more efficient the human eye is at its job than the camera.

A friend says to me, of somebody else’s two small children visiting a state other than the one they live in, “First time they’ve been out of [small town in largely rural state where they live].” And just like that I appreciate far more the advantages of my military-brat upbringing.

I’m a mother prone to a little hyperbole. “You took the longest nap in the world!” is a regular comment of mine on the rare occasions when the Bean does nap. Because he’s still battling jet lag, he’s been napping quite a bit this week. He’s always accepted uncritically the idea that whatever we’re talking about at the moment was the [biggest, best, coolest, longest] in the world. Until last night. He looked at me suspiciously and remarked, “Some people take longer ones.”

Sigh.

Flip. Flop. “Stop wiggling.” Wiggle. Waggle.

This is the sound of a little boy who has traveled all day, whose body thinks it is 9 p.m. while the clock says midnight, who took a nap on the plane so he needs an even later bedtime than usual.

One a.m. Ten p.m. on his internal traveling clock. Just about the time he would be going to sleep at home–”I’m hungry!!!!!” A wail. “I need food!!!”

Mom gives in. They troop downstairs to Grandma’s kitchen. Together they eat whatever happens to be around–some tortilla chips, a pop-tart. Mom idly reads a magazine while they eat. “Is your tummy all full?”

“No, I need something else.”

“What do you want?”

“I don’t know.”

Mom flips the pages of the magazine, buying time. “Hang on, I’m thinking.”

“Me too. But I’m using my brain.”

***

Almost everywhere I look up information about caring for cast-iron pans, people are hollering at you not to put soap in your pans. They say in the most definite terms that this is extremely undesirable for your pans and will ruin the seasoning. This just isn’t true–I wash my pans with soap after every use, like my mother before me, and our pans are in perfect condition. Dish soap does not destroy the seasoning–it merely removes the layer of grease that you just cooked in, which is the point of washing something to begin with. As long as you oil the pan after every washing, at least for the first few months after the initial seasoning, you will build up a fine layer of season and your pan will last you indefinitely. You should see the way wash-water rolls off my most frequently used pan–the seasoning is almost waterproof at this point.

How do you get it seasoned like that in the first place? Easy: wipe it with a thin layer of lard or shortening (I use lard; I tried liquid vegetable oil the first time and it gummed up and I had to start over) and put it in the oven for an hour. Some people recommend an extremely high oven temp for this (450-500); others say 350 is fine. Both will work, but the key is a thin layer of grease–if the grease pools it will harden into a stubborn little nodule on your pan. Check the pan 20 minutes into the process and again at 40 (these times are for 350 degrees; if you use higher heat, check at shorter intervals), and if there are grease beads standing on it, wipe them away with a paper towel. Then, each time you cook in the pan, wash and thoroughly dry, then set the pan on a burner to heat for a couple minutes, put more lard or shortening in, wipe it all over the pan (again, thinly) and let the pan sit on the burner a couple more minutes, until the grease is very hot and well soaked into the pan. Turn the burner off, wipe pan with paper towel, and let it sit until cool. It’s okay if the pan remains slightly greasy to the touch.

For especially crusty, old, or rusty pans (or to clear off a botched seasoning job): I cleaned all the gunk of the ages off all my heirloom pans by putting them in the oven during a cleaning cycle–put the pans in the oven while cold, then turn on the cleaning cycle and leave them alone until many hours after the cycle is over, so that they cool gradually. Warning–some people say their pans have warped or cracked during this process, but mine withstood the heat and came out clean as a whistle–well, clean under the flaky ashy stuff, the remains of the formerly crusted-on stuff. From there, just wash, dry, and season. If they’re rusty, take some fine-grain sandpaper or a sanding sponge, sand on them for a bit, rub them with your seasoning medium, then wash with soap and dry thoroughly. Repeat sanding, oiling, and washing until rust-free. Then follow seasoning procedure outlined above.

This is what has worked like a charm for my pans–your mileage may vary.

Mr. Sippican’s Top Ten Things Not to Do to Your House. I agree with all of them except #8 and #10:

10. Blue and Brown.
I’ve lived through this three times now. I’ve ripped all this stuff out twice with customers muttering “What were they thinking?” Powder Blue and Cocoa Brown DO NOT go together under any circumstances, anywhere. Except of course in every room on every show on television.

Chocolate brown and pale blue do go together decently well. Blue/brown overload is a different story.

8. Ceiling fans everywhere.
Do you all really think you live in Casablanca? If I go into another ranch house with a ceiling fan hanging down from a 7 foot 6 inch ceiling, I’m going to go postal. If I can’t stand up in the middle of the room without getting a bruise or a haircut, you’re doing it wrong. There is no stratification of air in a house. Doesn’t happen. You’re screwing a window boxfan sideways to your ceiling. Stop it. Your house has AC anyway. And you live in Wisconsin. Cut it out.

I do have a horrible stratification of air in my house–with a thermostat set to 71 degrees, the downstairs stays borderline cold and the upstairs stays borderline hot (or, in the winter, the downstairs stays borderline toasty and the upstairs stays borderline cold. Which is not so bad since I prefer to sleep with heavy covers). We’re looking at steps to fix this (I got tired of blocking the downstairs air vents with phone books to force more air upstairs), but meanwhile the ceiling fans in the bedrooms are highly efficient comfort-savers. And if you’d get a haircut from one of our ceiling fans, well … sorry, those of us who live here just aren’t that tall.

The morons who built our house with the sucky airflow also put the cooktop in the island, and like Mr. Sippican I hate hate hate it. We don’t even bother having seating on the other side of it.

A phrase from Mr. Sippican Cottage has stuck with me: “…skinny from mindless exertions and not work…”

It’s a phrase from one of his “flash fictions,” to be sure … and there’s no saying (at least not by me) how much of his characters’ thought represents author’s voice. But I tell you this: I’m not much in favor of mindless exertions myself, so if you can find me a household chore or some productive work that will strenthen my abdomen muscles, weaker now than at any other time in my life after being stretched over a baby-laden uterus, as well as diminish the soft little pouch of fat thereon, I’d happily do it rather than the Pilates I keep putting off from day to day. That is all.

Or, the Downside of a Four-Year-Old’s Ability to Read Fluently.

Or, Friday Mommyblogging: Suck It Up, Rachl Lukis.

Scene: Interior, Honda Civic, day. Mother and four-year-old Son are driving to preschool, a 20ish-minute drive depending on traffic. Mother puts in a CD, a film soundtrack that starts off with a slow Natalie Merchant song.

Son: “I don’t want this song. I want the songs I usually listen to.”

Mother: “Let’s listen to this one for a while.”

Son: “No, I don’t like it!”

Mother: “How can you know you don’t like it unless you listen to it?”

Son: “Give me my paper” (referring to flyer from the local indoor skate-hockey/lacrosse/soccer place where Son has soccer once a week and has had one rollerblading lesson). Mother hands him the sheet.

Son (reading from flyer): “Hockey leagues. Adult programs. Required Equipment: Elbow pads. Knee and shin protection. Cup and jock (males).” Son pauses thoughtfully, thinking back to soccer class, where for scrimmage the kids are divided into Pancakes and Blueberries, Blueberries being distinguished by blue jerseys. “I’ll be the cup. I’ll tell [young teammate] he’ll be the jock.”

Mother (startled out of listening to her music choice): “What?”

Son: “I’m a cup. [Teammate’s] a jock.”

Mother: “No, honey, that’s gear. Gear, not people. That’s gear you need for playing hockey.”

Son (continuing down flyer): “Pelvic protector (females)–”

Mother: “Here, baby, let’s listen to your songs now. You ready? Do you want your magazine?”

Son: “No, I don’t want my magazine. I want my songs.”

Mother: “All righty! Here you go! No problem. Give me your flyer–(he hands her the paper)–Yay songs!”

My son’s paternal grandfather has passed away. We’ll all be away coping with that for a while. Be well.

This site is visited frequently by somebody from Downingtown, Pennsylvania. I can’t see a place name ending in -town without thinking of this song, “Morningtown Ride,” by The Seekers:

This is one my dad sang when I was a kid, but it didn’t survive into our later repertoire … until I heard my little cousin, three years old, piping it during a camping trip last year. It came back with a vengeance. Doesn’t get much better than a train lullaby … unless maybe it’s a cowboy lullaby.

And speaking of trains, if you didn’t already, check out these beautiful shots of Appalachian railroad scenes. The photographer, Kevin Scanlon, has an exhibition currently running in Grafton, West Virginia.

Via Rick Lee.