Urban gardening

Ali and I spent part of Saturday working in the Angie's List Garden. Ali likes to go because she gets to play in the gym when she gets bored with the dirt. And when she's really lucky, she finds some of the stray cats that have been adopted by the company.

The garden is a fun project led by Kelsey Taylor, our wellness director/trainer. She's not exactly what you would call a country girl, but she's serious about health and is dragging a bunch of us along with her.

She's the person who re-introduced me to my muscle tone and keeps me focused when I want to wander off the work-out reservation. I figure I owe her a few hours in the garden. I may have saved her life Saturday when she picked up a wire that was hanging from the electrical power lines and was encroaching on the garden plot. Well, I didn't exactly save her life. She ignored me when I warned her that she could get zapped if she touched that thing. And it didn't zap her. I still think it was a bad idea to touch it, and I think I might have to ask the Facilities crew what the heck it's doing out there...

Anyway, we dug the garden for the first time last year. This year, we have a bumper crop of Garden Club members, and we had it whipped into shape in record time. It's a little strip of green between parking lots on the edge of Indianapolis' downtown within the Angie's List campus. It always seems like such a little space. Until we get the shovels out. Then it grows by an acre or two.

The first photo is the beginning. Ali and I had to leave before the final box was installed, but this is fairly good look at where we left things.

I'll update you as it goes along. If you're in town this summer and need a little healthy snack, stop by. We might let you snag a little snack. Kelsey might make you do a push-up or two, but it'll be worth it.


***
We had dinner last night with Judy and Ken Beech, two transplants from Trinidad and parents of Amanda, Alison's best girlfriend at school. They are a hoot. Judy rules her kitchen and watching Jeff worm his way into an apron and manning a skillet was a lesson in covert operations. Another guest who's known them for years was in awe. He just kept saying, "Nobody cooks in Miss Judy's kitchen but Judy."

I spent 90 minutes in the gymn this morning trying to work off the chocolate cake, fried plantains and a rice dish that was the most amazing grain that ever slipped into my mouth. I asked her how she made it and she said, "Oh it's a bit of spices in the pot and some raisins and some corn."

I glared at her. "You don't have a recipe, do you?"

She laughed. "Oh no. I just put this in and that it. It's how we do it."

So I'll never have that rice again unless she invites us back. I'm hoping Jeff's encroachment was actually received as well as it seemed and that Kevin's repeated "Nobody cooks in Miss Judy's kitchen.." was not as life-altering as it seemed to him.

Alison stayed over with Amanda and has yet to make an appearance back here. While she was to have attended church, there was some indication that Miss Judy was taking the girls to the mall. Wish me luck that she'll actually come back home.

Miss Judy has more tricks up her sleeve than her fabulous cooking, and I suspect she may have a genetic connection to the Pied Piper...

Party Central

We've had two straight days of partying here at Chez Reed between Mothers Day and Alison's birthday, most of it overseen by Godzilla.

The inflatable monster was actually a wedding gift Jeff and I got from Eric and Tracy Yocum, who I think were cleaning their garage when they said, hey, let's add this to the pile! (They gave us an incredibly generous "real" gift, as well.) We use the All Clad more often than we let Godzilla out, but Ali loves the silly thing. She found it once in its original box downstairs and I think he's come out at every birthday since.

She likes to position it at the front door to greet people.

The poor thing has a slow leak, so sometime before she went to bed, Ali put the couch cushions under its head as it wilted on the living room floor.

So we've been serving up nothing but straight fun for 5 days now. Alison's birthday was Thursday but Jeff had to work so we had her dinner on Wednesday; she opened her family gifts Thursday morning followed up by her annual "It's-my-birthday-have-a-doughnut!" extravaganza. She shares with her class and some extra teachers and friends. Most kids bring in cookies or cupcakes but she doesn't like them. So she brings in yeast doughnuts. This year, we expanded into half of them being chocolate iced because so many of her friends like chocolate.

So we get the sugar to school and I go off to work. She and I laid around like dogs that night, resting up for a Friday sleepover with her friend Amanda and then her party at Laser Flash Saturday. It turned out that a handful of her party friends came over after, (some came early) and Amanda slept over again. I tried really hard to resist the Dairy Queen blizzard cake, but failed miserably. There's still half of it in the freezer downstairs next to my Costco box full of Skinny Cow ice cream. There's a reason "skinny" is not part of the Dairy Queen brand.

I'm not sure how I'm going to trick my taste buds into liking the Skinny Cow stuff again. But that cake has got to get out of my house.

Sunday brought Mothers Day and another pile of presents, including the new Sookie Stackhouse book, high-class coffee and an iPad.

Jeff had agreed to spend part of his Tuesday (Election Day)off work finishing up Alison's birthday shopping. Instead, he called me at work to tell me he's messed up our computer network at home and needed all my passwords again to fix it. He said he'd been trying to fix the thing for hours. I don't remember if I relayed my frustration to him, but I hope I kept it to myself.

Because, as it turns out, he was lying his butt off and calling me from the Apple store where he was loading up the iPad. Our plan is to give Ali the laptop, which she steals every chance she gets. But we can't do that until I figure out how to get my photos from the camera to the iPad.

What do you think I'll read first -- Sookie or the iPad book?

One Fish, Two Fish...

Our very good friends Duane and Kirsten Jasheway agreed to take care of Alison's fish while we were on our vacation in paradise over spring break. Duane was such a good fish fellow. He came by. He probably had conversations with Cody, the Betta who has refused to give up the ghost.

Cody came to us about three years ago and despite my over feeding him, chilly Indiana water and a few weeks when his tank didn't get as clean as it probably should have, he swam happily, albeit silently, around in his little circles. Ali had a book about a kid who trained his fish to jump through a hoop. She claimed to have tried that. The best we got out of Cody was he'd sometimes laze around on a plastic leaf Jeff got talked into buying. Like a fish needs a hammock...

Actually for the first years of Cody's life with us we called him Grace and thought he was a girl. I don't know how we discovered he was a boy and needed a name change, but one day Alison insisted that she was a he and thus deserved a male name.

So there was Duane keeping his vigil. And on the last day of our vacation in paradise, poor Duane went to visit Cody to find him belly up. This is a trick Grace/Cody had pulled on us a time or two. But he wasn't fooling around with Duane. Fancy hammock or no, he had checked out.

Duane was beside himself. He confessed via phone. Jeff got the news at the airport, less than an hour before we would have found the corpse on our own. He may have shed tears. He was really concerned about Alison's reaction. She did cry, and she was truly sad for a little while.

I removed the fatality from her room but didn't know if I should give Cody a solitary, swirling good bye without her. For all I knew, she'd insist on a burial and a color guard. So I did what any good mother would do: I put him in a Ziplock and stashed him in the freezer.

Informed of his whereabouts, his owner was outraged. Initially I thought she was annoyed on Cody's behalf. He was a tropical fish, after all. The deep freeze was kind of not his scene.

Apparently I'd given my daughter more compassion credit than she deserved.

"Mom! That's totally gross. I don't want a dead fish in the freezer with my pizza rolls and tater tots!" she said.

"Well he's in there with a lot of other dead meat," I said, defensively.

"Nice, Mom. Reeeeeel nice," she said.

So Cody, still securely zipped, went into the trash, and that was that. For her birthday, we're thinking of getting her a small aquarium where she can have a couple fish. We were at The Reef checking things out and the nice lady there was pointing out her heartiest crop. Alison liked the most colorful, which, as you might expect, aren't the most hardy of the lot. The lady was delicate in her description.

Jeff interjected. "Honey, what she's saying is those fish are going to die quicker than these. Do you really want those?"

"Uh. Maybe not," she said, looking at the longer lasting ones. The good news is that we'll be able to get two fish to frolic together if we get a big enough tank and if we're careful about the type of fish.

Later, we were in the car and I was telling Ali that we might have dinner soon with Team Jasheway and I reminded her that Duane was still concerned about her. "Oh Mom. It's OK. I know he didn't mean it and Cody was an old fish. Besides, I might be getting new fish," she said.

She later put those thoughts into a little note for Duane just to be sure he knew he was still in her favor. And for that, I take full credit. Witness, if you will, the conversation she had with her father just after she'd expressed her forgiving nature.

"But Alison, you're missing a great opportunity. You could probably pretend you're still sad and get Mr. Jasheway to give you all kinds of stuff," he said.

"Dad!" she exclaimed. "For a lawyer, you're not being very honest. You're trying to get me to bribe him!"

I advised her that it was more akin to extortion. Jeff suggested blackmail, which led to a discussion of definition.

All Ali knew was that her father was up to no good. One of these days I'm going to define "lawyer" to her...

Just slightly ahead of our time

Like most people I've had more than a moment or two of silly indulgence thanks to my credit card, and Jeff can shop for days on end. But for the most part, I've always thought of us as fairly frugal people. We don't get carried away with clutching coins, but we don't toss them in the streets either.

I like the reduction in stress that not living outside my means brings me. I live in fear of reverting to my early years of living on Tab, tater tots and Cheerios, or worse, having some prolonged catastrophic bad luck that that will land us living in the Subaru trolling for spare change in public fountains.

This week, I learned that we're not frugal at all: we're just lazy.

My evidence:

1. Yes, we bargain shop for just about everything we buy, but we're still vulnerable to impulse purchases, good food and fine libations.
2. We try to remember to use the coupons that come to us in the mail but we don't scour the Internet sales flyers or find ways to double up or get free stuff. CVS will never have to shell out free stuff to me because I will never keep the receipt to cash in on that silly racket they have going.
3. I will buy overpriced hair care products at Kroger rather than taking the time to drive to a separate store and it was a happy accident of being below the E there one day that led to my discovery of discounts on gas if I used my Kroger card at the Kroger pumps.

But here's what shoved our laziness in my face. Jeff stumbled across the operating instructions for our microwave. It was copyrighted in 1984. The tag line Panasonic was using back then was "Just slightly ahead of our time."

Just for fun, we flipped through the booklet a bit. We learned that the Panasonic ANE0003X80AP will zap your food with a mind-boggling 600 watts of power. Standard today? 1,000 watts or more.

The operating instructions admonish users not to try to make popcorn in this model. You need the 18450 microwave corn popper for that. But there's amazing change on the horizon: "... special microwave popcorn is available in some ares of the country. This popcorn pops in its own package and does not require a microwave corn popper. It may be used in this oven."

Jeff acquired the microwave when his parents remodeled their kitchen. I don't know how long they used it, but he/we've used it for more than 15 years. The machine works just fine. Better, in fact than the dishwasher and refrigerator that came with the house. They're probably half the age of the microwave.

But they all work , see. And as long as they work, I'm not going to have to replace any of 'em. That's frugal, right?

Nope. It's lazy. The devices are probably all leaking more energy than the windows we had replaced last fall. But until they stutter or groan or start spoiling our food, we'll probably keep them around. Imagine the research we'll have to do to find the best reviewed and priced models. We might have to remodel the whole kitchen to get all the new stuff that'll come with the new appliances. We'll have to learn how this century's wattage affects food. Who has the energy for that?!

In other news, we had a great Easter gathering yesterday at Shakamak State Park where my sister Debbie and I would have won the first annual Easter Duck Scavenger Hunt but my nieces cheated. Damn kids.

Despite the drizzle, we had tons of fun. Alison's determined to spend a week with her cousins this summer, and it may be the week after we spend time in Maine that will work out for her. She wants to do that and go back to Flat Rock camp this summer.

"But Alison, that would be two whole weeks without your parents anywhere around you at all," I said.

"Yeah!" she said, dreamily.

While she was concerned that her braces would make this holiday "The worst Easter ever!" she ended up with some hard candy and lollipops she could actually eat. Coupled with two small new animals, her very first wristwatch, some Grandpa cash and payola from the cousins, she managed.

She also found this card for her father. Hilarious on some many levels. Hope your Easter was a good one, too!

Man, those cheetahs run fast

Alison, Jenna, Amy and I spent a little time with Tony Stewart today.

We were at the Indianapolis zoo and I don't know where the Nascar hero was in person, but in voice and life-size poster, he was outside the cheetah exhibit. The girls and I spent 50-cents each to race the cheetahs as our friend Tony coached us.

"Man, those cheetahs run fast," he said about 75,609,890 times while we were there.

Amer, an Indy car stalwart, was so sick of hearing him speak that I wouldn't have been surprised to hear of a vandalism report. But I think we got away safe. Neither Jenna, Ali nor I were able to outpace the cats. Suprise, I know.

In my defense, I think I was hung over from my night at the annual Gathering of the Goddesses, an event created by my good friend Betty Cockrum to benefit Planned Parenthood of Indiana. I think I've been every year since it started, and this year's was way fun. Tina Noel and Monica Brase and I were a threesome and there were so many of our friends there it was like a high school reunion.

Someone described its a progressive prom, and that's probably more accurate because it was a dress-up affair. We skipped the dancing in favor of a stop at the Red Key Tavern and it was almost Cinderella time when I walked in the door.

Morning came pretty fast. I couldn't even tell you what Ali and I did after Jeff left and before Amy came to get us. I think laundry was involved. And this horribly complicated under-the-sea puzzle. I should have been napping, I'll tell you that.

But the zoo was fun and it was good to get out and around. While we can't run as fast as the cheetahs, I swear those girls are growing faster than the speed of light.
Jenna got her puberty lecture at school the other day and asked if Alison had seen it yet.

I considered saying, "Hey, look, there's a deer!" but instead, I said, no, not yet.
Poor Jenna was ready to talk but had no audience.

"Yeah, I really don't want to see it," said Alison, who shuns romance but loves fart jokes and has developed an unnerving fascination with private body parts.

Alison pointed out a baboon's "doodle" and there was much talk of their upper torsos. On the way to the zoo, we passed the American Cancer Society, which was draped in a string of brassieres to celebrate the annual Race for the Cure.

"Ewww! Look at that! Why are they all right out there?"


Amy explained the significance. They agreed to accept it as decor because there were no actual nipples also hanging out in the open. I can't say the same thing for the two of them when they were hanging upside down on the playground.

Sadly, they noticed it, too. Long gone are the days when they'd pull up their shirts to show their chubby little bellies. They still played, though, and skipped and squealed and were just plain silly.


Then again, that might have been Amy and me. I was hung over. I can't be trusted to accurately report...

Last night at dinner, Alison was telling us about her day. It involved Greek mythology and was delivered as Jeff was telling me about the wine he'd suggested for us.

"Hey Dad, did you know there was a Greek god who liked to drink wine and get drunk?"

He said he was familiar with Dionysus, could that be the god?

"Yeah! And there was this other guy, too. Pan. He was a mix of a guy and a goat or a horse or something."

"Right! I think it was goat," said Jeff.

"Yeah! We saw a picture of him and guess what?! They had put in his doodle!"

"His what?"

"His doodle."

"His what?"

"You know. His thing. His AREA. His junk! You could SEE his JUNK!"

***

Later, she was trying to tell us other stuff about her day and she was telling us that at church the story was a parable about Jesus and a blind man.

"Yeah, so Jesus healed the blind guy," she said, apparently feeling that her summation told the whole story. Her father was hungry for more.

"So then what happened?" he asked.

"Uh, the blind guy could see," she said. "Period. The end."

***

We've been back home a full week now and we're still talking about how much fun our Spring Break trip. On our after Sunday dinner walk, Ali said she'd had a great time and would go back in a minute, but this was even better than Turks & Caicos.

"Here? Why? Because it was 80 degrees today?" Jeff asked.

"No. Just 'cause it's home," she said.

***

Speaking of home, as we were coming back, Alison was talking about how she was missing her house and her bed. "Hey, Mom," she said. "Do you think when we get back we can call Jenna?"

"Sure," I said. "Of course we can."

As the girls have grown up and gone to different schools, we haven't seen so much of Jenna. We've missed her and really enjoyed the times we've gotten to have her. So I called when we got home and it turned out that she could come over. It was so much fun.

Friday night, we had Bunco and Jenna hadn't been spirited away yet by her father and brother. They were planning a great night watching the national hockey playoffs. "Let's call Captain Reed and see where they are," I said.

Being the great dad he is, Jeff came over and swooped them up. Jenna stayed with us and then Ali went with them. They came back wearing best friend tee-shirts and hoping for another few hours together.


I was thrilled to have them together again, and so were they.

I can't help but keep thinking that when Alison was having her little home-sick episode, when she thought of home, it meant three things: her house, her bed and her Jenna.

I hope that never changes.

Just a few days in paradise

This blog is dedicated to Gary Reed, father, father-in-law and Grandpa Extraordinaire who decided last year to invest in some family memories.

And boy did we make some when TeamReed, both branches, spent a week together in paradise. Literally.

White sand like powder. Breezes softer than the petal of a fresh-bloomed rose. Temps hot enough to warm the cockles of Ebeneezer Scrooge (or scrape the first three layers of skin from an insufficiently sunblocked Mainer). Amazing food and drink around every corner. The only shortage was enough hours in the day when you could stay awake to enjoy it all.

It was enough to make you want to immigrate. 'Course we'd have had to find a way to stay at the resort as guests rather than dishwashers and none of use did that. But I'd bet a gaggle of geckos that we each thought about it at least once.

It was amazing. If you need a break, skip Southern California. Miss Mexico. Meander past Miami and go to Turks & Caicos.

I turned off my phone when we boarded in Charlotte and didn't turn it back on until we got back to that airport. On none of the intervening days did I pine for its ping. I checked email a few times, but that was it. It might have been the most relaxing vacation I've ever had.

We sighted nearly 200 geckos if you trust Alison's counting; seven cats (I think there were actually three that we saw multiple times; apply that phenomenon to the gecko count if you're into accuracy...) and an egret or two.

Highlights:

We saw one tiny gecko that appeared to me to have been the victim of a hit and run housekeeping cart.

"No, Mom. It's guts would be right there if was dead. I think it's sleeping," asserted Alison.

**

Jeff and Jen ran on the beach most mornings. It took her only one morning to learn to run into the wind when starting out rather than coming back. Peter and I stuck mostly to the gym where he showed me a squat I'd not been doing. I'm contemplating how to return that favor...

***


We met a couple from Chicago who had two daughters. The wife had a couple of attributes that kept the Reed males hoping she'd come back. After Ali had disappeared with the girls to the water park, Jeff volunteered to go check on "the girls."

"I'll make sure Ali, Sophie and Olivia are OK, too," he said.

***

Auntie Jen and Uncle Peter took Ali to dinner one night so Jeff, Gary and I could go to the adults only French restaurant. The service took a lot longer than we expected. At some point she decided the night was over and informed Jen that it looked like she was having a sleepover. She assessed the bed options and said, "You guys can have that big bed and I'll take this little one over here."

By the time we stopped in to pick her up, she was fast asleep in the trundle.

***

Like all good Edens, there were swim-up bars everywhere you looked and when we skipped the pool for the beach, we parked ourselves with the sea to our front and a bar just behind us. We drank our way through bushwhackers, margaritas, mojitos, pina coladas, drinks of the day, various flavors of daiquiries and of course the island beer.

In the water park area, there was no alcohol served. Ice cream, however, was in plentiful supply. I thought Alison would never leave. "Mom!!!! You can have ice cream RIGHT IN THE POOL!!!!!"

***

Grandpa skipped snorkling, but the rest of us spent a good portion of Wednesday afternoon with our backs to the sky and faces pointed underwater. We saw a family of squid, sea turtles, a lion fish and various other sea creatures.

We were with a group and it was really hard to stick together. You could find Alison fairly easily if you just listened to her squealing and grabbing the closest body to point out a new find.

***

Ali and I met the Chicago family when she and I parasailed. Jeff had done it before and not found it amazing. Alison and I had the opposite experience.

"Mom. This is the best day of my life," she said. And that was before she got her gecko tattoo and spent the afternoon in the water park with her new friends.


***

There was music everywhere none of it country.

"I think you can take a break for a week," proclaimed my rock-n-roll daughter.

***

Coming home, we reflected on the best parts of the trip. It kept us talking for quite a while and as she often does, Ali summed it up best.

"We have the best Grandpa," Alison said.