our own little cat burglar

dan and john with maria, james peeking in the back

Last night we were on the patio and James and Maria spotted a big nail pounded in the siding up above the kitchen. It's painted white, so it's obviously been there a while.

I told them John had done that back when he was in homeschool.

"Seriously? Why?"

Well, he had this little crystal radio he'd built and he took a long wire and climbed out his bedroom window onto the flat roof outside it, and then went around and over onto the kitchen roof, where he sat and pounded in the nail.

The best part of this story is that there was a stereo up there. He didn't have to hunch on his bed with a crystal radio at all.

The whole reason I even knew he'd been on the roof was because Kirsten had appeared in the kitchen and asked to go on the roof. When I told her no, she said, "John is up there."

Sigh. He is, hunh?

He also wouldn't sleep with the windows open, no matter how hot it was upstairs. The house is built...well, it's a grandma house. The walls upstairs are straight for about 4-5 feet, and then angled to follow the roof. There's whatever insulation was used in 1940, which could not have been much, and it gets HOT up there after a long afternoon of sun.


When I insisted he open the windows--why on EARTH NOT? He closed his eyes and did a funny thing with his little mouth, and then he said, "If I can climb over the roof and get in the window, I figure any decent cat burglar could do it." Goodness. A smallish cat burglar. And what do we have to steal anyway? Still. He slept with a broken pool cue in the corner by the headboard, just in case.

Fast forward, years and years later... one afternoon we came home and Heidi and Kirsten were sure someone had broken into their room. ??? It made no sense. But there was the evidence--the bent aluminum storm, the hook on their door--placed on the outside to keep little kids out when they were gone--was broken. The bed was rumpled and then neatened differently, the phone had been moved.

Jay insisted it was fantasy. "Nobody's been in here! It doesn't even make any sense." He left.

The girls were mad, going over the evidence, and here Dad didn't even believe it.

But I sat there on the bed, thinking maybe we should call the police.

As I sat there though, in their girly pink bedroom...with the blonde 40s dressers, the Barbie house in the corner... I started thinking... about a kid who could scale the house and get in the second floor. He did it for us when we were locked out a couple times.


He'd climb from the stair railing onto the mailbox and up onto the roof over the front door, where Heidi and Kirsten's window was... then he'd climb over the top of the roof and come down on the flat roof behind, near his own bedroom window, and climb in.

Hmm, hmm, hmm.

I called his cell phone, but he didn't answer, so I called Dan. He answered, and was actually at a restaurant with John. Dan had no idea what I was talking about, breaking in the house? What? But I told him to ask John.

"Yeah, I did! What's the big idea locking the door anyway! I had laundry to do!"

Excuse me? How about calling ahead? That made him laugh.

He said it was harder to get in the window than it had been when he was small. His belt hung up on the window sill and he had to kick and squirm across the girls' bed to get his long self in.

You know, we were sort of glad it was hard for him.

I told him we thought it was really, really weird...a second floor break in and yet nobody took anything? He confessed, "Oh. I did take your book 'Wedding Planning for Dummies.'"

The girls were disgusted at first, but relieved, and shortly thought it was all a good joke. Someone DID break in, but it was just JOHN.

Oh well, another dumb story, for another dumb day. Time to load the dishwasher and say good night. love, Val

oh yeah, with the treasure hunt and all

oh yeah, the little treasure hunters all dressed up for the wedding last fall

They went down into the storage area behind the office... and had an adventure. A treasure hunt, he called it.

Aww, give me a break.

They took out Christmas gift tags, mittens, an old iron, music tapes, the long tail from a cat costume, put stickers on the dehumidfier... okay, that's not right.

But when I hauled them down there to help clean up the mess, they acted like they didn't know what to do, didn't remember what boxes any of it came out of, baffled little faces

They looked in the floor drain instead and talked about that, and the creatures that live in there, and why they stuffed a tennis ball in it...(I can get it out again. I'm married to a plumber. No creatures live in the floor drain, just for the record.) Grrr.

Dang kids. I thought they were in the other basement entirely, playing with their own toys. Not. I became suspicious when they appeared in the kitchen with big, old heavy suitcases they'd found, and asked if they could have them. ??? "What for? What are you kids doing?"

Duh, Mom. "We found a LOT of stuff you don't know about."

So who is going to clean up the toy mess in the other basement? Think they can handle that one? Probably not. It looks like people were jumping on the beds down there too, and it's hard for them to straighten beds with their little, short arms.

However, there are Moo Jrs in the freezer down there...maybe I can handle it with enough ice cream.

Tomorrow, though, not tonight. Right now it's bedtime, and the laughing down the hall has finally quieted. It's almost bedtime for grown ups too. The windows are all open and the breeze smells like spring. Tomorrow I'm mailing our taxes...big thankful sigh. Time for bed. love, Val

oh, sure.

Tonight before supper I took Maria out driving. She's on her permit and needs the practice, and it was such a beautiful evening.

Jay was painting windows on the second floor, so we had to take the little kids with us.

It was a fine trip out. She didn't run over anybody, crash the car, or get us arrested, so it's all good.

On the way home, when we passed the gas station, there were a couple teenagers lying on the hill between the sidewalk and the parking lot. The girl was on her belly, chin propped on her fists, and the boy was on his side, head propped up on his hand. The two of them were talking, bothering no one.

As Maria rounded the corner, Julia's squealy laughing burst from the backseat, "Oh, I thought that girl was a GORILLA!"

What?

We all stared at her. Well, not Maria. She shook her head hard, but kept her hands on the steering wheel at ten and two.

More squealing and laughing, "Her hair looked like a gorilla!"

No. It looked like normal human hair, but whatever. Maybe gorillas have distinctive hair? Hmm. I've never noticed. That girl didn't seem to have a silver back, but then again, who was paying attention?

I told Maria though, "Like gorillas are just lyin' around on the sides of the road. We've got that all over the cities."

"Yeah," Julia giggled, "That'd be funny."

Sigh. It would make driving more interesting, gotta say. love, Val

once upon a time, i had a very fine lint roller...

I bought a pair of new black pants last week. They're good. I like them, except lint and fuzz is attracted to them. They're just some kind of cotton twill, but stuff sticks to them as bad as it would to velvet.

My mom and I were discussing this today and she laughed, "You used to have a lint roller."

Yes I did.

It's been a few years ago... when Tim was a bit younger. He saw me rollering my winter coat and was quite impressed. He wanted to know if he could take it and roller a few things? Why not, eh? How much trouble can a guy get into with a lint roller? I told him to bring it back when he was done, and he went skipping off. I forgot all about it.

A couple hours later, there's Maria, with the lint roller. "Mom. I don't know what's going on, but I found THIS in the toilet upstairs."

MY LINT ROLLER!

And it was pulled out, like a piece hanging there, and there were dog tooth marks all over it.

I didn't know it was even possible to destroy a lint roller, short of running it over with the car, maybe. But he'd managed to.

So that's the dumb story of my lint roller. Might get a new one...not gonna share it. love, Val

and the caterpillar said....

Jay and I worked today. When I came home and asked the kids where he was, they said he was asleep on the patio.

Really?

Yeah. I found him, head on the metal arm of the swing, left leg twisted in a pretzel bend for balance, asleep on that little swing.

When he woke up, we sat there trying to talk about work... and JULIA was bouncing around like a crazy woman, incessantly interrupting.

I suppose she missed us. (I was only gone a few hours, sheeze.) But she'd found a caterpillar and had it in a glass tumbler with a stick and grass, and his name was Bobby and did we want to hold him and see him walk?

Okay, sure. He's cute. Fuzzy-like and all, little suction cup feet crawled all over my hand. Julia likes to hold him on the stick. The little suction cup feet freak her out.

Finally she said, "I'm going to show Bobby around the yard and the house!"

As she went inside, I admit I thought, "Oh goody, she's leaving for a minute."

But no. In a minute she was back and held Bobby up on his stick so he could see over the fence along the edge of the patio. Then she giggled her outrageous squealy giggle and said, "I showed him Dad's van. He said, "Woooow."

Jay rolled his very tired eyes at me and said, "It's a pretty awesome sight all right."

Yeah. It made a caterpillar say wow. love, Val

ten years later

The thirty-eighth birthday was spent in bed in the sun with beautiful newborn Kari. Lori came with buns and sandwich meat, and we all had a picnic in the bedroom. The kids took silly video, bouncy, seasick video. Kari slept.

The forty-eighth? Babysitting b.g. and dropping off our LAST tuition check at preschool. (The school Lori suggested back in the beginning.)

While slipping the check into the box, I teased the school's director, "Carol, do you know what this is?" She's been there since John started in 1982,and said she may have to retire now. She said it's sad. I know what she means. I'll miss them too, feel a little wistful, but it's okay. It's time.


Later t.c. called on the phone to sing Happy Birthday. I perched on the stool near the phone to listen and when he got to the words, "Dear Gramma," his scratchy little voice finally got to me. I had to dry my eyes on my sleeve. "That was a great song, Buddy. Will you sing me 'Going to the Cabin, All Night Long?'" (That's one he made up on a long car ride in the dark.) He said no. He can't sing that without Julia. It is a pretty loud song, true.

Oh and this: Tim and Julia were playing Rock, Paper, Scissor to decide who had to take a bath first. They had the right idea. One, two, three... but then didn't know what to do with the results. Tim: "A scissor can't cut a rock, Julia. Rock makes paper fly in the air." Aww, man. Kirsten and I just put our heads back on the couch and listened.

And he wanted to engage Joe in some wrestling. This is some form of Tim affection, tease and harass and then tussle around. Joe was being dignified until Tim coughed at him...big, loud coughing, very near him. The third noisy coughing attack, Joe jumped off the arm of the couch and chased after him, said he can't stand coughing, "Cover up your mouth!" Who knew? Well, apparently Tim did.

Happy Friday. love, Val

this baby girl

Yeah, this one, this little cute one...


who emerged wound so many times in her cord that her dad had to untangle her...

whose first words were: "No!" "Mine!" and "Stuck!"

kari, and her brother dan, on her birthday

...the one who has been charming us and cracking us up for years, turned ten years old today.

An entire decade. What on earth did we ever do before she got here? I can't imagine it. It must have been so boring.


I don't even know what to say. Who were we without HER?

Here we are with the cake before...pink frosting for my baby, cooperative expression on her face...

Here's Tim begging me to give him the camera...

Here's afterward...photo by Tim

And after that...

Happy Birthday, Sweetheart. Oh my gosh, we love you. love, Mom