THIS place

When we moved 500 miles north this January, we packed all of our earthly belongings onto two 18 foot moving trucks, then unpacked them in our new, bizarre house in our new, bizarre town.

During a move like this, it is typical for people to toss all kinds of useful stuff. I had a large box in our front room for a month, and I added things to it daily; things I hadn't used in a while or didn't expect to ever really need. The wine and cheese picnic basket, maternity clothes, baby clothes, fifteen extra bed pillows.. Then there were things that I simply didn't want to decide on, clean, pack or otherwise handle. These things live as the careless disposals in my memory. My huge, blank canvas, my ice cream maker, my garment rack, a gigantic planter; things that I am positive that I would use if I had them right now.

Despite my attempts to be methodical about assessing our belongings, I became careless.

After settling in to our new home in Illinois, I returned focus to my craft instead of the arrangement of our belongings. With my fabric cataloged in the largish closet and iron plugged in, I began to think about what project I was going to begin. That's when I remembered that my machine had broken back in Knoxville, just before our move. I had intended to take it to a local store in K town that I had experience with, and I had even put it in the back of my truck and drove it around for a couple of weeks before the move. It never made it to the fix it place, instead it made it from the back of my truck straight into the back of the moving truck, without having been fixed.

I HAD attempted to fix the machine myself. I took the top off, one of the inner plates, and could see that one of the gears looked suspiciously asymmetrical. That's as far as I got, and I didn't even put the thing back together again. I put all the plates and bolts and screws into a zip lock bag, then duct taped it to the base of the machine. I put the machine into a plastic pepsi crate, and put it into the truck.

Since I do have a couple back up machines, I located the better one and proceeded to get my sew on. I put the busted machine in my car, and somewhere between a month and six weeks later, I took the thing to the sew n vac place in Champaign.

I had seen the place in my exploration of the town and made a mental note of it's location. I recalled there being something "strange" about the place, but I had forgotten what till the day I took the machine in.

While I appreciate salvaging anything that can be, I had never associated the action with that of the lord Jesus Christ. My attitude was "I might as well at least try and repair this thing; what is the worst that could happen? It would wind up in the shit heap anyway. Maybe I'll learn something about these things in the process."

Comparing a man's salvation to that of a vacuum cleaner is hard for me to comprehend. The analogy gets confusing; if Jesus is to mankind as what this guy is to vacuum cleaners and sewing machines, then I have a few questions. First of all, does God direct you in your work on vacuum and sewing machines? Are you a martyr, or do you symbolize a sacrifice to small machines on God's behalf?

Jesus:Mankind

This guy:Vacuum and sewing machines

I decided against asking the man these questions, instead I explained the problem with my machine, and he fiddled around with the baggie of parts.

"Seems like the casing is missing. Do you have any more parts?" He asked.

I blanked, and looked in my pockets and purse for no reason. I went out and looked in the trunk of my car, knowing it wasn't there. If the part wasn't in the baggie, there was no telling where it was. I went back in and explained that we had moved, and that the part was likely in my sewing room. He said that I could leave the machine there and bring the part by when I found it.

In the back of mind I knew there was no way I would ever find that part, but I destroyed my craft room anyway. Every box emptied, every corner swept, every cabinet searched. No part.

When I finally gave up looking, I decided I would take my better back up machine in and get him to spruce it up a little. The tension plates were never very sensitive; it is a Kenmore domestic machine from the early 1990s which has been used and abused, so it could use a thorough once over.

After calling the proprietor of the shop and letting him know the piece was gone with the wind, I drove the other machine there to swap out.

The proprietor's son works in the shop along side him and there's clearly a dominant/submissive type relationship between the two.

When I dropped my Singer off, a man was there purchasing three bags of vacuum cleaner bags and a bottle of cleaning solution. When he was checking out, the son, in an attempt at being James Bond radical, said "That's $14.95, those two are $15.40 each, and the solution is $12.65, so that would be.. ummm let's see, $58.40 plus tax, and for that I'll have to..."
Interrupting, his father said in a low voice "Sixty two oh five. With tax", as he slowly turned his head and torso away from helping me to meet the pleading gaze of his son.

The expression on his face when he turned back to me was one of bitter disgust accented by embarrassment.. He was shaking his head very subtly. Bearing a striking resemblance to Lyndon B Johnson, but less healthy, this man didn't possess a certain je ne sais quoi .

These situations used to embarrass me, but for some reason, now-a-days it is just amusing.

Junior had the same demeanor and style as Napoleon Dynamite's brother.

Last time I had the Kenmore machine serviced was over 10 years ago in Boone, NC where I went to college. I recall the shop in Boone charging me $80 for a routine tune up and cleaning, and they removed all my super cool stickers. After a decade the machine accumulated lots of new stickers, one of them being a radical "What Would Wesley Do" sticker designed by my friend, Brad Pope. It is an image of Wesley Willis with "What Would Wesley Do" superimposed across it. I couldn't help but wonder if he considered that sticker; it is ripped and half worn off, but I think the message is clear.

Three weeks after getting the message that the machine was repaired, I went to Champaign to pick it up. The proprietor made a point of bringing up the record of the transaction while both of my children climbed and stood on the same stool. I paraphrased the situation and the transfer of machines, and told him that I already had a check in the amount he quoted on the message. He continued reading from the computer and when he got to the note he had left himself about the message left, he recited it, then turned and looked at me, repeating, "Yes. That message was left September 18th. A full 23 days ago"

I apologized and tried to explain that weekends are better for me to go places without my kids, and that since his store isn't open weekends I had put it off over and over.

He took the check and looked at it at an extreme angle accessing just the right spot on his spectacles. Setting the check back on the counter, the man turned and shuffled into a back room returning with my machine, stickers intact. As intact as they were when I brought the thing in, at least.

The volume of my children was increasing, and with the combination of that and the man's attitude I was starting to loose it.

Sliding the check towards him, I grabbed the machine, and wrangled my kids to the door. He asked if I could manage, and I said that I could.

Settled back in the car, the kids and I pulled out of the parking lot and onto the street.

"That is a really weird store Mom." Fox declared.

"Why do you say so?" I asked

"That grumpy man has a bunch of signs and crazy stuff hung up everywhere and the store looks like it should be shut down"

I agreed with him and we giggled about that guy and his son.

I guess spreading the good word with a "repair shop" metaphor is as good as any evangelical approach.

second amputee painting

I haven't been possessed to write lately.

Most of my evenings and weekend moments have been spent painting.

This is my second "amputee" painting.

It is a work in progress.

Sorry about the glare.

the writing on the wall

As soon as I saw the graffiti on the ceiling of the picnic shelter at our local park, I knew my six year old son would see and be able to read it. Miraculously, he did not see it that sunny day, and we played on the monkey bars, then went home. Three more trips to the park came and went without notice of the scribbled "fuck you" inscription on the structure.

Last week we were at the park. The kids were at the swings begging me to come push them; something "fun" for the pusher for about five minutes in 100 degree heat, then it becomes an expectation leading to angry fits when not realized by the pushed. Rainer is never satisfied with my swing pushing; she constantly screams "higher, HIGHER", so her rear end leaves the seat for a moment, then she jerks the slack and wiggles back and forth till equilibrium is reached. It's horrendous! She's only two years old and 25 pounds at most. She isn't gratified with the swing set unless she nearly falls off, then catches herself, body dragging the ground as her seat dangles at her back as she clings, white knuckled, to the chains. After these experiences she doesn't enjoy simply swinging. She wants to have a "close call". Thrill seeker already, I guess.

So I was avoiding responding to the children's calls by sitting at the picnic table working a crossword puzzle and drinking ice water. They eventually gave up, and decided to throw rocks in the creek instead. Fox, red-faced and sweating, came running to me to take a drink of water. He sat on the top of the table and drank the rest, then laid back and stared at the raftered ceilings.

I knew what was coming next.

"Fuck You" he said slowly and clearly, then again, "Fuck You, Mom, what does Fuck You mean? It says it there", pointing upward.

Maintaining focus on my puzzle, I nonchalantly glanced at him, and tried very hard not to sound effected.

"Well; have you ever heard anyone say the F word, or F you?"

He said he had, and asked what it meant.

"The F word is a cuss word like damn, hell or ass, but it's much worse. People might ignore the other words, but NOT the F word. And if you say that to any of your friends and they repeat it in front of their parents, or if they get in trouble at school for saying it, they will tell their teachers and moms YOU taught it to them, then their moms won't let them play with you anymore and the teachers will think you're a bad kid."

Fox thought about it for a while mouthing the word silently to himself.

"Do you understand? You can't get away with saying the F word."

"Yes. I understand", he replied. "It would be really crappy not to get to play with my friends, and I don't think I'm a bad kid."

"Good, you aren't a bad kid, and you shouldn't even think about that word because the more you think about it the more likely it might slip."

"That would be really bad. Like a million bad. I would never say that, and that person didn't know how to spell the word you, so they just put the letter u. See?" Fox pointed again at the writing and lingered there for a moment before hopping down and scooping up a shirt tail full of rocks to throw in the creek. '

Tiny Door

When we moved into our present rental home, we had neither time nor resources to facilitate the process. After two moving trucks full of stuff, we were so tired of unpacking that we were just putting boxes in the storage area in the basement and garage and telling each other that we would go through it "first thing next week". Since Jason was still finishing his dissertation, that task got pushed again and again, till we decided that never would be a good time to go through that mess.

Everything found it's place, and we bought a dining room table on craigslist for $50. My only friend in town, a lady with nine children who lived next door to me, abruptly moved away. I was really bummed since I had just recently gotten to be friends with her and discovered that she wasn't involved in a creepy commune or cult. They are christian to the max, but the great kind that are nice to people and don't evangelize every chance they get. She is funny, strong willed, and an incredible task master. Her children are all sweet and smart. Anyway, when she left she pretty much gave me my pick of furnishings from her house. I was so disappointed in her move that I wasn't as jazzed as I normally would have been, but it was really cool to suddenly have an extra bookshelf and an air hockey table.

I also signed up for the local free cycle list serve and have gotten rid of items which we haven't had use for. The snowmen dishes, the size XL scrubs that mysteriously appeared in my sewing stuff, the footboard of the bed frame that the children obliterated with their incessant jumping; all taken.

Fantastically, I have an entire room specifically for sewing and painting, and have been working lots. When I initially started moving my things into the room I remember noticing a tiny door in the corner of the room and wondering about it. It was teeny like the door in Being John Malchovitch, and I entertained a host of scenarios regarding the mystical properties of the door, and somehow, I never opened it. As curious as it was, I was happy wondering and concocting stories and ideas.

Finally one day, Jason was in the room and he noticed the door. He opened it and it was full of laundry. Pre-teen laundry, to be exact. I had noticed the chute in the upstairs bathroom and considered it, but the door made a really excellent platform for my gigantic jade plant, so it has been closed since our arrival. At first glance you could see a lime green bandanna, something Hannah Montana print, and the tiniest, underwire bra I've ever seen. I asked him to close it and just leave the stuff there, since it wasn't hurting anything.

Again, I ignored the door for some time. Looking around my sewing room, I thought about items that could fit into the door; things that would be really funny to store there. My daughter has a fuzzy hair troll doll in a Hawaiian shirt that would be hilarious in the chute. It would be a good place to store my eleven pairs of scissors and five pin cushions since the kids can't seem to resist them. I imagined shoving baby dolls into the doorway till they filled the chute all the way up to the bathroom. If I decided to do this I would certainly wait till Fox was in the upstairs bathroom because, besides myself, he would appreciate a doll geyser more than anyone in the family. I'd have to move the Jade plant, but it would be worth it. Another great use of the chute would be to suspend someone's cell phone halfway down to drive them crazy.

Last week my other neighbor asked me if I was interested in looking through some hand me down clothes. She runs a home-based daycare, plus she has four kids, so when the neighborhood yardsale weekend came, a few of the parents of the kids in her daycare brought things for her to sell. Her oldest daughter is in the fifth grade and full of sass. She waits for the bus with Fox in the morning and I have talked to her a number of times. She is really cute and funny, and every time I talk to her she reminds me that her friend used to live in my house.

After picking through the immense amount of hand me downs while mentally patting myself on the back for never making the mistake of having a home based daycare, I settled on two large bags of little girl clothes, and started to head back across the street. My neighbor volunteered her daughter to help me with the bags since I also had my daughter and a stroller. She walked beside us and started to tell me about her friend, Janayah (rhymes with papaya) who lived in the house.

"Her room was the one at the top of the stairs beside the bathroom. And her sister and brothers shared the big one with the two huge closets. For a while one of them lived in the closet! The downstairs bedroom was Janayah's mom's room. AND YOU KNOW WHAT? THERE WAS A LAUNDRY CHUTE FROM THE BATHROOM TO HER MOTHER'S ROOM! IT WAS SO COOL!"

I remembered the stuff behind the tiny door and I invited her in to see what the house was like now. She followed us in and went straight to the tiny door. She looked at it, then looked at me and my daughter.

"Go ahead and open it" I permitted.

She reached over my drafting table and opened the door, then gasped.

I opened my eyes really wide and asked her if she thought that was Janayah's stuff.

"I BET IT IS!! I'M SURE IT IS!! I REMEMBER THAT BANDANNA!"

"Maybe you could take it to Janayah." I proposed; "Do you think she would still want that stuff?"

The girl believed that Janayah would be really excited to have her things back, and, quite frankly, I was really happy to free up that secret space for other ventures.

While Fox gave her a tour of the rest of the house I put the laundry into a plastic grocery bag for Janayah. They came stampeding down the steps and she wanted to get another look at the chute.

"I can't believe you don't use the laundry chute" she said in disbelief, shaking her head. "It's just SO COOL"

"Well, I guess if the downstairs room wasn't my sewing room, we might. But I really don't want the entire family's dirty clothes coming out that tiny door onto my drafting table."

"Maybe you could move your bedroom down here and put your sewing room upstairs" she suggested.

I told her that I'd think about it and that it was kind of a shame not using the chute.

what we done with them

When you love morels as much as we do, it's hard to know when to say when. Looking for them without finding them, looking for them and finding three or four, looking and finding 650-700...harvesting them, cleaning them, preparing and eating them, giving them to people, drying them.. Every step of the process is rewarding, and no matter how many we find, the desire to find more is strong.

Since this is the case, I have developed many morel recipes, all which one could substitute another mushroom depending on the season. A few years ago I made a pretty radical dip. We hadn't found any asparagus, and we really had a TON of morels, so I made another, similar dip. Here it is

Morel Dip 2

3 lbs fresh, clean, chopped morel mushrooms

1 package cream cheese

6 oz parmesan cheese

1 med white or yellow onion, minced

2 large cloves garlic, minced (three or four ramps, including green leafy parts can be substituted)

2 ribs celery, minced, including leaves

1 small package imitation crab meat, roughly chopped into penny sized pieces

1/2 t crushed red pepper

1/2 t freshly ground black pepper

1/2 T sea salt

2 cups white wine, sweeter types like pinot grigio, riesling, or some chardonnay

1/4 stick of butter

-Saute the onions, garlic (or ramps) celery, peppers in butter till translucent. -Add the morels and toss to cover with oil. -As morels become soft and limp, add the wine and allow to reduce in half -Lower heat, add "crab meat", half the parmesan cheese and stir -Chunk cream cheese into the pan a tablespoon at a time, stirring constantly to mix -Pour everything into a casserole or pyrex container -Cover the top with the rest of the parmesan cheese, a grind of black pepper, and a pinch of red pepper flakes Bake at 375 deg for 25-35 minutes.

I also made a breakfast frittata that was delicious

Sweet Potato and Morel Frittata

2 lbs fresh, clean, chopped morel mushrooms

3 green onions, chopped

1 small sweet potato, peeled and sliced into rounds

a handful of chopped spinach

2 cloves minced garlic

10 beaten eggs

1 T salt

1/4 t black pepper

1/4t thyme

1/4 c milk

3/4 c cottage cheese

1/4 c olive oil, or coconut oil

Preheat to 375

-Saute the green onions, garlic morels, spinach, thyme and black pepper in one T of oil

-Let cool in pan. Transfer contents of pan into town scraping the sides so there is nothing clinging to sides of pan. Put remaining oil into pan and put in preheated oven.

-add the beaten eggs, milk and cottage cheese to the mushroom mixture in bowl, stirring to completely blend

-Carefully remove warmed oil from oven and pour egg/mushroom mixture into it. Lay sweet potato slices over surface of mixture.

Bake for 25-40 minutes, or till golden in color, and a knife stuck into center comes out clean.

And finally I couldn't help but try

Morel Fettucini Alfredo with Smoked Andouille

1 lb fresh, clean, chopped morel mushrooms

One container cream cheese

one cup sour cream

1/2 stick butter

5 T milk

2 minced ramps or shallots

3 large cloves garlic, minced

1 1/2 C parmesan cheese

4ox andouille sausage sliced into moons 1T salt

1t pepper

1/4 t nutmeg

1/4 t allspice

Walnuts

-In a large pan sauté the garlic, sausage, shallots/ramps in 1 T butter. Cook till edges are just browning, then add garlic

-Remove the sausage and set aside where no one can see and devour it

-Add mushrooms and toss till they cook down. If the oil looks sparse add a few splashes of olive oil

-Add salt, pepper, spices, and remaining butter.

-Whisking constantly, add sour cream, chunked cream cheese, and the milk one T at a time.

-When the sauce looks smooth, add the parm cheese, a little at a time, reserving a little for the top. Toss sausage in sauce. Serve with parsley or crushed walnuts over pasta of your choice.

So that's what we have been doing with the insane number of morels we found.

the hunt

AAAhhhhh! Spring. Everything looks good again and my lease on life is renewed. I'm slowly becoming convinced that it is, in fact, spring. Cautiously, I remove myself from beneath the rimy ice anvil that has been hanging above my head since moving to Illinois and stare at the blooms in disbelief. The calendar peeled from March to April, and suddenly it's time to file my tax extension again. It's official.

So often my perception of time is like this; my birthday is here, then christmas, suddenly it's three days after Jason's birthday and no one said anything, then Rainer turned 2, and it's going to blow my mind how fast July comes, bringing with it Fox's 6th birthday. Like a rock skimming the rippled surface of water, time careens onward. Oh wait; maybe it's me careening through time. No, then what would represent my experiences? Maybe my I am the rock, time is the pool, and the ripples are my experiences. But if that's the case shouldn't the pool be my life, the ripples my experiences, and the rock time? No. So what, I'm a rock skimming over my own life?

Anyway, the bottom line is this: Time flies in retrospect. Pausing and recollecting memories forces a person to not only abbreviate the extent of the situation, but to minimize "unremarkable" periods of time, which can account for the skimming sensation.

Spring makes me evaluate these ideas. It just seems to come so often, and each spring my family and I set out on search of morel mushrooms. It's something we all enjoy enough to have fun, and it gives us an imperative to spend lots of time outside in the emerging forest. Those of you with families know how tricky it is to find things to do that everyone enjoys. Spending time together can become another job if there aren't common interests and passions.

Morel mushroom hunting is an antidote to the cruel, skimming rock of life. Searching for morels involves lots of patience, attention, and stamina. Spending three hours in the woods just looking around you; silently searching and noticing, remembering a tree, a creek, following a bird, straining to hear voices whisper in the wind... These activities do not fly by, but command a level of experience that actually communes with time face to face; the unchanging changing, the things which remain constant, yet change,that aren't relative to age or dates, unparalleled with any human construct.

We began hunting very early, despite our assessment that Illinois would be at least three or four weeks behind what we were used to. There were five or six trips before we found the first mushroom. As an adult I am able to enjoy these fruitless searches, but as you can imagine the children didn't share my attitude. The second trip was the hardest for my 5 year old son. He remembers the gleamingly abundant times in our past hunting trips at the mention of the word 'morel', so he compares every trip with those embellished times. Looking for hours and finding nothing is a paradoxical torment for a child. We can only hope that these are exercises in patience and stick-to-itedness for the kids, otherwise I expect to have two future city dwellers on our hands.

Hunting in Illinois was such a change from Tennessee and North Carolina. Granted, we had patches in the southernmost states which we knew well; close in proximity to our homes so we could check them in a matter of minutes and know if it would be worthwhile to drag the kids out. As new residents we started looking in the only public forests we knew of. Homer Lake, Crystal Lake Park, Kickapoo state park, and other urban parks. We searched and found so many interesting things that weren't mushrooms. While searching the littered woods of Chief Shemauger park we came across the East Lawn Cemetery; a large garden which was evidently established in 1927. We found very old markers that had eroded to the lowest trenches of the yard and were being used as retaining walls in some sections. There were many gravestones that were overturned and smooth with age and abrasion. There were stones from the early 1800s. Much of the trash in the wooded area of Chief Shemauger park consisted of gravesite decor blown over from the cemetery. The wind makes a dump of any wooded or brushy area up here. People help, but it is amazing at the number of plastic bags and bud light boxes out in the middle of a prairie.

Since Homer Lake is the closest to our residence we checked it most. The most remarkable thing about this place was the number and variety of condom wrappers in the parking lot. I noticed one the first time I ever went there. The next visit just a few weeks later I noticed another, then yesterday when we went there was another, different condom wrapper. We ended up finding about 10 or 12 morels on the river bank above the lake, then another 10 in the meadowy forest above the banks. We were thrilled. The first place we found morels in Illinois was at the Kickapoo State park in Vermilion County. As we approached the park from the west we noticed a huge wind farm was being built on the prairie. The parking area was a small gravel lot set off of a county road, and the place really reminded me of East Tennessee. Especially this place on the corner of Hank and Bocephious:

The parking area was littered, as seems to be the norm, but this time with surgical gloves. An entire box of them had blown out and were all knotted up in the grasses. The area we explored was established as horse trails and the path lead through apple trees around a ridge, then went steeply into the river ravine. It was really lovely. We searched the area meticulously and found nothing. Rainer and I were heading towards the river since she was tired of being lugged around, and as I set her down on the clearing at the river's edge I saw the first crummy morel.

We found 15 or 20 there. That was our third trip to Kickapoo this season, and the first two visits we parked in other places; with 2,842 acres of reclaimed strip mines there is lots to explore and see there.All the pits have been filled with water by the river and springs and are now big recreation areas. One of our prior visits Fox found a near complete deer skeleton. He was entranced. We hiked down the hill and found a few more large bones and blades that had been dragged off by animals. Fox became obsessed with reconnecting the remains. He ran up and down the steep bank with his arms full of bones. Yelling directions to the rest of us, speculating on the animal's death... He is a little science nerd.We didn't find any morels that time. We did see some guys fishing with a radical homemade slayer decal made using electrical tape, though.

We didn't hit it big till we came home to Asheville for Easter. My husband (that's Dr. Jason Robinson PhD to you)had to be in Knoxville the week before to defend his dissertation at the University, so we decided to blur the appointment with the Easter holiday and go straight from Knoxville to Asheville. He had planned his defense according to last year's morel calendar, so we were expecting to hit our old spots just in time. After striking out in our "sure thing" patch, we proceeded to our neighborhood spot and looked there, also unsuccessfully. We went to another place and found some shitty remnants of morels that looked to be a couple of weeks old. Morels bloomed 2-3 weeks early this year almost everywhere. My typical gauge is to start looking when the dogwood flowers open, but with the early heat, all notions went out the window. One of our patches in Knoxville is in the woods beside the house our friends used to rent, so when we go we are trespassing. There is a close-knit community who rented the house to our friends, and they reside on down the gravel road beyond the rental. There are many children between the houses, and when we used to hunt we would run into their hideouts and secret, creek places. This is their newest instillation:

I was impressed not just with their resourcefulness, but their workmanship. As I recall there were two smallish girls, probably 8 and 10 years old now. They did some heavy lifting and over-head hammering to construct the roof on their shanty.

After striking out all over Knoxville, we were feeling defeated. During our brief spell in Knox we did, however, get to spend some quality time with our friend Lee, and his sidekick, Terry.

Had I realized how much I would miss Lee after our move I would have savored those last few weeks living next to the guy. As we pulled up, I saw Lee in his yard with his friend Terry, who has dialysis three times a week nearby and usually comes to Lee's house afterwards and sits on his porch swing. Lee looked up and recognized my truck, and he started laughing and tore the hat off his head. I hopped out, momentarily leaving the kids strapped in their safety seats, and met Lee in an embrace in his driveway. It was so great to see him.

The next day, after Jason's defense, he and I went to see Lee again and to talk to the guy renting our house. It was as if nothing had changed, and no time had passed. His cousin came over and visited with us for a while, another friend, Duncan came by. Lee had a fire and moonshine in the middle of the damn day. As we were standing around talking Jason (naturally) noticed a ton of bees in Lee's yard, and realized that there was a rogue queen bee in the grass. She was huge, and all the other bees were swarming around her, just 10 feet from where we were hanging out. Lee has everything, even a swarm of bees. Lee's bees. Lee's cousins keep bees, so he called them and told them to get them suits an come over here quick! They weren't able to come immediately, since it was in the middle of a workday, but they said they would come out after work if they were still swarming.

We went to Asheville and spent lots of time with our awesome family and ate ham and chocolate. After getting an Easter basket from my mom, Fox opened a hollow chocolate bunny and broke it in half. Inhaling deeply, he stuck his nose inside the hollow bunny head and said "Mmmmmm it smells so good in there".

Jason's Aunt hosted an easter egg hunt for all her sister's grandchildren in Burnsville at her home, and we went a little bit early so we could look around there. We went up in the woods on the mountain side where an old lumber road was cut, zig zagging across the steepest parts. Hunting for morels became just picking morels! We dragged the kids around for an hour or so till Jason's parents arrived and the egg hunt started. They took the kids back down to the house and Jason and I stayed on the mountain, raking in morels as fast as we could. As I would spot one and kneel to pick it, I would spot five more! Careful attention to footing was necessary not to step on them. In two and a half hours we picked 650 morels. Two Ingles bags full. We have never seen such an abundance, and I think it was the high point of the break for Jason, outranking hustling a Jamaican pool shark AND earning a PhD.

After a trip like that it will be very difficult for Fox to simply enjoy the hunt in the future.

know it all

As we were sitting at the dining room table coloring yesterday afternoon my son, Fox looked at me and said "Mom, did you know that Jupiter has 63 moons and Earth has just one?"
"Doesn't Jupiter have 66 moons?" I asked.
"Nope. FALSE.", he replied, just as annoyingly poised as Donald Trump on Celebrity Apprentice.

"Where did you hear that?" I asked, referring to his Dwight Schrute-esque usage of the word FALSE, as that of an impartial critic.
"From my placemat you silly!" he chirped, wearing the proud smirk of condescension. I glanced at the placemat and noticed the publication date; MCMXCVII. Ah. Therein lies the answer to that problem.

Certainly you know that I didn't sign in tonight to dispute the alleged discoveries of Jupiter's moons, but to call attention to the phenomenon that is know-it-all-ism among 4-6 year olds.

Not too long ago, my son thought I was the end all of greatness. Every word that escaped my mouth was like the sound of breaking glass to him. He carefully considered conversation and remained silent. Only later would he recall and repeat the dialogue; questions emerging from the fertile soil of his mind, recently tilled with the induction of new ideas and concepts. Nestled within his wide eyes was a wonder so immense; so incredibly hungry for all things new. So pristine that notions of cynicism and pride would have arrived as cloaked strangers; unrecognizable as the child comprehends.

His desires were innocent; Learning, experiencing, loving, pleasing and helping. His expectations were surpassed by reality. Nothing was as wonderful and amazing as the process.

That being said, I am now grappling with the next phase in Fox's process which is much less endearing and sweet. My child behaves like a know-it-all 99% of the time. He asks a question, and 7 seconds into my response, he rolls his eyes and attempts to change the subject by way of a restroom visit or an outburst of noise. Righteousness is a constant motivator for him, but the method is lazy and he comes across as a turd.

Life has become a contest, all of the sudden. It's as if Fox woke up late one day and has been sprinting from one thing to the next ever since. The process has little meaning to him; the conquest and the domination seem to be at the forefront of his mind.

This weekend I tried to accomplish a few tasks I had been putting off, and Fox was climbing the walls. He came to me every five minutes with another crucial problem or desperate question to be addressed, completely indifferent of my activities. The last 30 minutes of my vacuuming the stairs was peppered with interruptions. Fox stood on the step I was vacuuming mouthing, "I NEED TO ASK YOU SOMETHING for an eternity. My expectation of impermeability by means of vacuum were squelched.

His eyes dramatically widened, he waited until I shut off the machine and addressed him.

"What's the problem?" I asked as impatiently as a woman vacuuming stairs would.
"Could you make a collage with me now?" Fox asked, sweetly.

"As soon as I'm done cleaning up I would love to make a collage with you." I honestly replied. (It's true! I would always rather be making a collage)

He shifted around on the step, clearly dissatisfied and I turned the machine off again and looked at him.

"I mean now now, Mommy. I want you to make a collage now.

This time I did the eye rolling and switched the vacuum machine back on and finished the horrible job at hand. An hour later I was finished, and I joined Fox at the dining room table.

"So what are we going to collage today?" I asked.

"I'm going to make question blocks and fire flowers and thwamps on this side, and you are going to make kupas on that side", he explained. I began cutting and hole-punching and gluing and before I knew it I had started a really awesome blue fish swimming over an earwig/eel.

"Mommy?" Fox warbled, "You aren't supposed to be making snakes right now. And don't put those on that side; I said to put them here" he said, pointing to a blank spot on his side of the page.

"Well what are you working on anyway? You haven't made any pictures since we sat down" I asked, genuinely miffed. Fox set down the hole punch he was stress testing with seven sheets of construction paper and sighed.

In his most "frustrated" voice he groaned; "Oh I don't know what to say! I'm done!", grabbed the pinking shears, then overly-gesturally crossed his arms.

I tried to engage him with another pinching bug, and he seemed excited momentarily. He made a few snips with the shears, then took a thumb loop in each hand and started manically snipping the scissors and making a machine gun noise.

"Please stop" I said firmly. "You are either going to hurt yourself or the scissors".

Fox tossed the scissors across the table, crossed his arms again and acted like I had just asked him to respirate without breathing. Time elapsed. I continued crafting. He continued sulking and complaining.

"What's wrong Fox? You were practically dragging me in here to craft with you and now you say you're finished and you haven't even made anything. What's up with that?"

"Exasperated and evidently fatigued, he shrugged and asked if we could get out the play-dough.

Looking around at the shreds and dots of paper, I expressed to Fox that I would rather he continued collaging since I had to start supper. He groaned and complained with reddened eyes saying "But I don't want to collage anymore! I'm through doing this!"

I said, "OK. Well let's just clean this mess up so we can start on another mess..." Before I even finished with my bullshit quip, he was out of his chair, emoting his utter powerlessness, his inability to help me (help him) clean up. It was distressing for him, obviously, but for me to see him so overwhelmed; so powerless in the face of challenge, it was devastating.

I tried convincing him that the hardest part was starting, and after a few minutes of tears and whining, he began picking up the paper.

After we were finished and the floor was "clean"* Fox remarked "It's true. Starting was harder than just picking all that stuff up. Picking it up was just kinda blah, blah, blah."

"Yeah", I agreed, "Not too many people love cleaning, but it's something that every single person is able to do. And the sooner you start the sooner you're finished".

He was quiet for the first time in hours.

* The floor wasn't technically clean, and it never is.

Hello Kitty's house on fire

This afternoon as my daughter was waking from her nap, my son pondered aloud; "I wonder what Rainer dreams about?".

We considered the possibilities; dreaming of flying, running, playing ball, climbing on rocks... Then it occurred to him; "I think Rainer was dreaming about Hello Kitty and her friend and they were playing at Hello Kitty's house and it caught on fire."

"Uh-oh" I replied, surprised at the sinister twist, imagining bubbling pink plastic and noxious, green flames engulfing Hello Kitty. Billowing black smoke. Melting sugar...Faces dripping in flaming globs... "Hopefully no one was hurt in her dream" I said, wrapping up my own daydream.

"Well Rainer and Hello Kitty were ok but their friend got a little bit hurt. She was running away and fell on the carpet and got a little burned. Hello Kitty fell down the stairs, but Rainer was ok." Fox assured.

"So Hello Kitty fell, but was ok?" I asked.

Fox shook his head and looked downward. and walked out of the room. Maybe the friend, but Hello Kitty? Essentially that's what an unnamed friend is for. Raw!

Having a hilarious child is truly one of life's blessings. Despite having zero non-relative friends here, I manage to laugh and have a good time.

Yes, it rates good on a completely different scale of good times, but currently, everything is relative to that same scale.

If I were using another good time scale, say, for instance, that from my college days, my present good times would rate much lower. Probably a 1.5 or 2 out of 10. According to the scale from pregnancy, my current state would rate very high if either A. I lived in Asheville, or B. I had friends here in Illinois, but still would score a solid 5, maybe 6. If I were contrasting my experience with the scale I used between the years of 2002 and 2005, my rating would automatically sound alarms and sirens. Strobe lights hardwired to the infer structure would illuminate, and emergency party patrol officials would deploy.

Honestly I am trying not to whine and complain too much. Everyday is busy and I'm able to go outside, exercise, eat decent food and sit down if I feel like it. To continue my path towards contentment, I have been working on a few paintings and drawings. Some are landscapes, and some are general expressions of positivity. According to me, of course, so I'm not sure if they will come off particularly "happy", but the themes therein are uplifting or somehow inspiring to me. I wonder what other people without friends do? Especially people without children to eat up all their otherwise idle time. My guess is computers.

We moved far away

Things are changing. It's springtime, it costs a bajillion dollars to fill up my gas tank, and we have moved to central Illinois. From the casual reader's end I guess this sounds sudden; brash maybe, but it was planned, sorta. And we weighed our options, briefly. It was in our favor to move and get on with the damn show, we decided during the course of the six weeks prior to the move. Opportunities like this one have been in short supply the past few years, and when a reasonable one presented itself to my husband, he had no trouble seizing it, punching it in the face repeatedly, then dragging it back to his cave where he feasted upon it's meaty carcass.

Other than the obvious inconveniences, our move has been bucolic. We found a picturesque rental property that's dignified without being overly imposing; nothing beyond the realm of what we could repair, erase, or otherwise reverse. Our children behave as if they had always lived in Illinois; discussions of Abraham Lincoln's superior leadership and the disappearing prairie landscape are as natural as the rising sun. Our son arrived into his new school and immediately had new friends, new mentors, and a new bus number. There were virtually no glitches.

The home we own in Knoxville was successfully rented to a professional couple. A couple who had hosted a departmental party a number of years ago at their previous residence, which my family and I attended. The home was tidy and their furnishings were thoughtful. We were thrilled to have them in our home and hoped they would be comfortable there, comfortable even after they inevitably met their new neighbor, Lee. We weren't close friends with the pair; Jason was acquainted with them through the university, so we don't communicate with them outside of rental details and queries. We are both consumed with curiosity regarding their unavoidable relationship with Lee.

Life in the midwest is contrastive by function. Living in a town of 1200 people 15 miles from the metropolis dictates much of our daily activity. Our village has the absolute bottom line of commercial enterprise, including an insurance sales office, a local bank branch, a hair salon, a saloon which serves bar fare, a tanning salon, a furniture refinishing place that doesn't have store hours, a store that sells random items that doesn't have regular hours, a local post office, a small library*, a gas/ convenience station, and finally, during the months of April through September, a homemade ice cream stand. Each day I walk to the post office to check my mail, go to the park, then go on a long walk from one end of the town to the other. Generally I walk south and cross the railroad track, then turn left until I get to the next county road, then turn left again to Main street as it turns back in to a county road at the east end of town. This is where the corn fields begin to the east. My daughter in a stroller, I then walk west on Main a mile till the sidewalk ends at more cornfields. Sometimes we then walk north to a stream where there are trees and reeds, sometimes we walk south past the corn processing place and water processing plant. The water tower bearing the town's name overhead, we watch the trains fly by.

Having neither friends nor options to recreate in a social, non-church environment has created a strange and unfamiliar dynamic in my life. The acquaintances I have made have been through these few establishments; the postmistress, the librarian, the young woman who owns the tanning salon... We are all somehow busy in this trace of a town. Even if I actively took the opportunity to make friends out of these casual encounters, I'm not sure it would be possible to contrive. The librarian has three children ranging in age from 2 to 19. The postmistress is retired, then gone back to work. The neighbor immediately next to me has 9 children with another on the way AND she home schools, AND they are bible translators. Across the street is a lady who has a home day care and her house is crammed with children of all ages, and cars come in and out so much her lawn looks like a parking lot. Anyone can see that these people are busy, and none of them want any more kids around, I speculate. All of this makes me think of my old neighbor, Lee, and I remember how annoying he was. Annoying, but friendly, and almost always available to chat. When we left Knoxville and said goodbye to Lee, I cried like an exhausted baby. Here is his goodbye letter.

Anyway. I'm certain this place will eventually feel like home. Sometimes I'll see a fat man in overalls cruise by on a moped, or a man pushing a wheelbarrow full of garbage and I think I wonder if there is another "Lee" in this town?.

*Library Hours Monday, 9:00 a.m. - 12 noon, 4:00 p.m. - 7:00 p.m. Tuesday, 9:00 a.m. - 12 noon, 4:00 p.m. - 7:00 p.m. Wednesday, 9:00 a.m. - 12:00 noon, 4:00 p.m. - 7:00 p.m. Thursday, 9:00 a.m. - 12 noon, 4:00 p.m. - 7:00 p.m. Friday, 9:00 a.m. - 12 noon, 4:00 p.m. - 7:00 p.m. Saturday, 9:00 a.m. - 12:00 noon