Yesterday, I stacked two cords of firewood in the garage. The little neighbor kids helped me. That is, Ponytail made a fort out of the eight tires in our garage (snow tires, which we’ll be putting on soon) while Biker Boy kept going up to the woodpile and screaming, “I think I see a snake!” To celebrate the cool fall weather, I made a big pot of vegetable soup, using up the week’s vegetables from the CSA up the road.
This afternoon, I made a couple of apple pies. Ponytail and Biker Boy arrived after school just in time to help me. I knew they’d never have enough patience to wait until the pies were done and cool, so I gave them the leftover pie crusts I had trimmed off the edges of the pies and showed them how to sprinkle on cinnamon sugar. The pie crusts bits baked nicely in just ten minutes, and they ate them eagerly with the cut-up apples we’d put in the microwave. “This brown stuff smells good,” Biker Boy kept saying. “I like how your house smells.”
This evening, bribed by homemade apple pie and hot soup, my older kids came home, bringing dirty laundry and textbooks with them. After we ate, With-a-Why and my husband sat down on the floor to play a game of chess. Boy in Black stayed at the table with
Classical Mechanics, while my daughter curled up in the red chair with
Applied Behavior Analysis. Shaggy Hair Boy was at the piano, of course, playing music over the sounds of the dishwasher humming from the kitchen area. I took a spot on the couch, where I could work on my laptop and drink a cup of hot tea, listening while Shaggy Hair Boy played the jazz standard
Misty.
