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dragonlady7via https://ift.tt/2KAyS7T
on thanksgiving, and the day before, the kids entertained themselves enormously by taking some sleds up the hill behind the farmhouse, and sledding themselves ragged.
meanwhile, my dad was working on the barn up there. while i was gone, it went from just uprights to a fully-framed structure, and i don’t even know when this happened but it got a roof on it. Now it has its entire north side enclosed with siding. Dad worked alone for a while because Farm-BIL had to run about a thousand other errands. And then my older sister went up to help. Her husband had briefly helped, but went hunting, which to be fair he had been promised he could do while he was here.
but the sledding hill was kind of adjacent to the barn.
from inside the house we could see and occasionally hear the kids. and I should come up with some poetic way of describing it, but. My older sister was inside at one point while they were sledding, and pointed out how great the colors of the children’s winter clothing looked. She’d taken pleasure, as she’d bought them, in thinking of how they’d look against a white hillside.
And they were like little jewels on the white-and-mud hillside, in bright red and teal blue and brilliant purple and neon green, having a fantastic time.
One of the sledding sessions ended with Farmkid coming inside crying because she’d smacked her head into her cousin’s head, and she’d hit her teeth somewhere and it had hurt a lot. By the time she got indoors, with her father attending (her father dressed head-to-toe in a drab tan Carhartt coverall, in funny contrast to the kids’ jewel tones), she’d gone from genuine tears to the loud fake-cry she tends to favor when she feels Wronged, and it was simple enough for her mother to inspect her for injury and then deliberately make an incorrect assertion that she’d have to correct, and then she’d forgotten to keep crying and was over it except for needing hot cocoa and snuggles, which with a family that size of course someone was delighted to devote themselves to.
The next day, we discovered that her cousin, who had been largely unmoved by the ordeal and had scornfully declined to accompany Farmkid indoors, had a sizeable bump on the back of her head where Farmkid’s teeth had connected with her skull in the impact. Cousin acknowledged that sure, she’d taken a hit, but she didn’t care. Which, for her, is pretty par for the course. (She is seven and despite her complete physical fearlessness, she did her darnedest to have some toddler temper tantrums, but at seven it’s hard to ignore consequences, and while she has a magnificent ability not to care what people think, it’s not infinite. Also in a household where there’s so much exciting stuff going on, it’s real hard to commit the time and attention to a proper tantrum.)
Last night was the oldest Southern nephew’s 11th birthday party (he really turns 11 today), and his big gift from his dad was an air rifle of his very own. His big gift from his grandma was a bit more exciting, though; it was a like 1500-piece Lego robot thing he put together in record-breaking time.
We did not have any real political discussions around the table any of the nights, but last night we were split up into two rooms, and my dad wasn’t there, and the Southern BIL was, and he had a funny rant about how his mother (a native of Baton Rouge, I think) had started saying something or other about Robert E. Lee and he kept interrupting her with “but Mom, he was a traitor” and she’d try to get another sentence out and he’d be like “but traitor” and she went off on some Lost Cause nonsense and he was like “traitors, mom” and it was a very funny monologue. He also pointed out that he’d figured moving from Georgia up to Maryland would cut down the Confederate flag nonsense he dealt with on a daily basis but somehow no. (I will say, I helped them move, and he himself owns at least one Confederate flag, but I will also say I have no problem believing that he did not deliberately set out to acquire this item.)
So he and Farm BIL had a good bonding session over growing up with really racist relatives and how obnoxious that can be.
We did not find anything to argue about in all of this, though. Possibly because my dad wasn’t in the room, you just never know when he’ll somehow lightning-rod his way to a Rush Limbaugh talking point (I genuinely cannot discover where he encounters these things, maybe they’re actually literally in the air or the water of this godforsaken land). Both of the nephews were, though, and I felt like maybe it was good for them to hear such a good session of brother-in-law-ly bonding.
Anyway– today’s a farmer’s market day, so i’m probably going to babysit Farmkid a little here or there, and then we’re hitting the road back to Buffalo. I hope Dude will drive the whole way, I feel like butt.
(Your picture was not posted)
on thanksgiving, and the day before, the kids entertained themselves enormously by taking some sleds up the hill behind the farmhouse, and sledding themselves ragged.
meanwhile, my dad was working on the barn up there. while i was gone, it went from just uprights to a fully-framed structure, and i don’t even know when this happened but it got a roof on it. Now it has its entire north side enclosed with siding. Dad worked alone for a while because Farm-BIL had to run about a thousand other errands. And then my older sister went up to help. Her husband had briefly helped, but went hunting, which to be fair he had been promised he could do while he was here.
but the sledding hill was kind of adjacent to the barn.
from inside the house we could see and occasionally hear the kids. and I should come up with some poetic way of describing it, but. My older sister was inside at one point while they were sledding, and pointed out how great the colors of the children’s winter clothing looked. She’d taken pleasure, as she’d bought them, in thinking of how they’d look against a white hillside.
And they were like little jewels on the white-and-mud hillside, in bright red and teal blue and brilliant purple and neon green, having a fantastic time.
One of the sledding sessions ended with Farmkid coming inside crying because she’d smacked her head into her cousin’s head, and she’d hit her teeth somewhere and it had hurt a lot. By the time she got indoors, with her father attending (her father dressed head-to-toe in a drab tan Carhartt coverall, in funny contrast to the kids’ jewel tones), she’d gone from genuine tears to the loud fake-cry she tends to favor when she feels Wronged, and it was simple enough for her mother to inspect her for injury and then deliberately make an incorrect assertion that she’d have to correct, and then she’d forgotten to keep crying and was over it except for needing hot cocoa and snuggles, which with a family that size of course someone was delighted to devote themselves to.
The next day, we discovered that her cousin, who had been largely unmoved by the ordeal and had scornfully declined to accompany Farmkid indoors, had a sizeable bump on the back of her head where Farmkid’s teeth had connected with her skull in the impact. Cousin acknowledged that sure, she’d taken a hit, but she didn’t care. Which, for her, is pretty par for the course. (She is seven and despite her complete physical fearlessness, she did her darnedest to have some toddler temper tantrums, but at seven it’s hard to ignore consequences, and while she has a magnificent ability not to care what people think, it’s not infinite. Also in a household where there’s so much exciting stuff going on, it’s real hard to commit the time and attention to a proper tantrum.)
Last night was the oldest Southern nephew’s 11th birthday party (he really turns 11 today), and his big gift from his dad was an air rifle of his very own. His big gift from his grandma was a bit more exciting, though; it was a like 1500-piece Lego robot thing he put together in record-breaking time.
We did not have any real political discussions around the table any of the nights, but last night we were split up into two rooms, and my dad wasn’t there, and the Southern BIL was, and he had a funny rant about how his mother (a native of Baton Rouge, I think) had started saying something or other about Robert E. Lee and he kept interrupting her with “but Mom, he was a traitor” and she’d try to get another sentence out and he’d be like “but traitor” and she went off on some Lost Cause nonsense and he was like “traitors, mom” and it was a very funny monologue. He also pointed out that he’d figured moving from Georgia up to Maryland would cut down the Confederate flag nonsense he dealt with on a daily basis but somehow no. (I will say, I helped them move, and he himself owns at least one Confederate flag, but I will also say I have no problem believing that he did not deliberately set out to acquire this item.)
So he and Farm BIL had a good bonding session over growing up with really racist relatives and how obnoxious that can be.
We did not find anything to argue about in all of this, though. Possibly because my dad wasn’t in the room, you just never know when he’ll somehow lightning-rod his way to a Rush Limbaugh talking point (I genuinely cannot discover where he encounters these things, maybe they’re actually literally in the air or the water of this godforsaken land). Both of the nephews were, though, and I felt like maybe it was good for them to hear such a good session of brother-in-law-ly bonding.
Anyway– today’s a farmer’s market day, so i’m probably going to babysit Farmkid a little here or there, and then we’re hitting the road back to Buffalo. I hope Dude will drive the whole way, I feel like butt.
(Your picture was not posted)
