Hannahbanana

Happy Days

Yesterday
Post a comment

I hope time spent with your family and/or friends is as marvelous as mine.

These guys? Rock my world.

Family time

And these cookies aren't half bad either.

Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies

I know why they're called daylilys...here today, gone tomorrow.

Daylily

1 comment

Rainy 4th of July

I was ruthlessly decluttering when I came across a folder of assignments from my creative writing class, taken during my first semester at Purdue. There I found plenty of very poor poetry, and a terrible short story, but one thing struck me: it was all written with complete honesty. It was written by someone who didn't care how she writing was received; I was writing for myself. I don't think I could write with such honesty anymore. Several years of writing for a grade, of regurgitating exactly what the professor wants to hear, seem to have knocked that out of me.

I thought the following assignment was interesting. We had to write a one-page description of ourselves, off the top of our heads. I find that I didn't so much complete the assignment as meander down the lanes of childhood memories as they presented themselves.

Self-portrait on Paper

Sometimes my reflection surprises me. The person looking back at me isn't who I expect to see. She is sometimes older than expected, sometimes younger. She sometimes looks thinner than I expect -- (though so rarely as to be hardly worth mentioning) -- sometimes fatter. Her face nearly always looks longer than I think it should. Looking hard at my reflection reminds me of a game my sister and I used to play when we were young. We called it "Mirror Girls." I'd look at my reflection -- really stare -- and think: Who are you? Who is in there?

By Emily Ann

My chin bears a scar caused by falling off a horse in the Lake District when I was about ten. My horse bolted away from the rest of the group, took off down the mountainside at full pelt. I recall thinking that I really should hang on as tightly as possible, but I found myself slipping sideways, sideways until it seemed altogether easier just to let go. Then my face found a rock. We were camping at the time. A doctor made a house-call to the tent; the gash on my chin had become infected and I was running a fever.

Candid

I have full lips. That's what people say when they mean fat but don't want to cause offense. You cannot imagine what an insult it was to call somebody "fat lips" when we were children. Please, don't ask me why this should be the case. I mean, they're lips. How bad could it possibly be? We used to laughingly call each other frankfurter lips, my siblings and I, because we all have our dad's mouth. We were insulting each other, but ourselves too.

Body parts III

There is another scar on my top lip -- my full top lip. This time I was roller-skating down Buckingham Rise on a summer afternoon. That's what you did in the summer -- you skated and you biked and you took your coins to the ice cream van and you stayed out all day long. (You also, when you got a little older, smoked cigarettes at the golf course, and hung around the Cattle Market, and got caught shoplifting. But not yet. None of that had happened yet.) I had built up speed coming down the hill. I swung around the corner onto Greenways, our street. I was confronted with the sight of two pedestrians just meters away and, not wanting to collide with them, I chose to collide with a lamppost instead. That split-second decision resulted in a trip to Accident and Emergency, butterfly stitches, and the instruction to eat nothing solid for a few days; all food must come via a straw.

The next day at school a friend handed around sweets. Esther, my twin, said, "I'll have Hannah's!" and roughly snatched it from my hand. I cried about the way she snatched it. I would have given it to her if she'd just asked.

Noses are difficult to describe, unless they are in some way extraordinary. I suppose my nose is not extraordinary. I don't suppose you would say I was a candidate for a nose job anyway, but you might say that I could use a facial. My skin is usually clear, thanks to twice-daily antibiotics and an unhealthy amount of sun. The sunlight is problematic: it has helped my complexion but increased the lines on my forehead.

Clueless

In France, you say "My eye!" as an expression of disbelief. I wonder about that...Todd says he can see it in my eyes when I'm lying but whenever he says that, I'm telling the truth. Most of the time, at least. Eyes are strange when you really stare at them. I always thought my were brown, but when I looked they were much lighter than I expected. The only dark brown is a ring around the iris.

In the toilets at the doctor's office

That's as far as I got in my description of myself one page, but as a picture is worth a thousand words....

I feel pretty, oh SO pretty

In Training

5 days ago
7 comments

I am training hard in preparation for the holiday weekend.

Hey, it's a lot of pie but somebody has to eat it.

In this house, we like to consider ourselves as American as ~~apple pie and vanilla ice cream~~ blackberry pie with Half Baked ice cream. Yep, that sounds about right.

food, glorious food

6 days ago
10 comments

I had a simply lovely Sunday.

It began with the pups accompanying Jesse and I on a visit to the botanical garden.

Some enterprising soul had made a rope swing over the river but we, vertiable chickens that we are, lacked the courage to make an attempt.

2 comments

Who you calling chicken?

I had a wonderful date with my hubs watching The Proposal. Naturally, I cried during the trailer for The Time Traveler's Wife because a) I am so full of hormones right now I have been crying for approximately three days straight* and, b) The Time Traveler's Wife didn't just make me cry, it made me grieve. I mean, I went into mourning. I very nearly got a tattoo reading "Henry + Claire 4ever." I was, like, dressed in sack cloth and ashes, keening and wailing. I love that book.

*This is true. Todd will confirm.

As usual, the quality of my day was based upon food consumed.

Mocha from Greyhouse....

....Tabbouleh and Baba ghanouj from The Blue Nile....(lamb kebabs and lentil soup for Todd)

...almond milk bubble tea from Basil Thai.

fyi: i wear your ring every day and think of you

7 days ago
14 comments

A good dose of perspective is always helpful.

My dad, a man of carefully chosen words, sent out the following e-mail this week:

We need your prayers for Beth. She seems to have a ruptured appendix. They plan to operate this morning. But an operation of this sort can sometimes trigger labour – which would not be good at this time! So pray that all will go well.

I am not one for unnecessary worry or drama but suddenly I was faced with the thought of my sister, 25 weeks pregnant and full of infection, undergoing an emergency surgery which put her precious unborn boy at risk.

Hannah, love your family with your whole heart but make sure you tell them and -- above all -- show them.

That's why, with this healthy dose of perspective, I am hanging on every word that Jesse tells me about politics tonight (and you know he's got a lot to say). Because he's here and he's healthy and he's able to tell me what an idiot Sarah Palin is.

I am delighted to listen.

Ah, Memories.

Jun 25, 2009
18 comments

Why am I avoiding my blog, I wonder, even though I've been home for almost three weeks?

Possibly because being home reinforces the reality of the minutia of life: laundry, dog poo, swimming lessons. And that is not something upon which I care to dwell.

I can't even begin to describe how special the two-week vacation I took with Esther, Damian, and the kids was. Time with my kids, time with my best friend, niece and nephews (plus the 50 or so friends, in-laws, aunts, uncles, cousins, nieces and nephews that we saw along the way) fed my soul no end.

Zion National Park

There was no TV.

No WiFi.

Much of the time there was no cell phone reception.

The Nintendo DS's and iPods which were brought were not used.

Totally unplugged.

Bliss!

A pristine environment, the most unsullied landscape

Heads hit pillows at the end of each day spent in God's playground and sleep came in minutes.

We laughed like maniacs with tears streaking down our faces.

At least 3,000 photographs.

At least ten times the memories.

If you know me, you know that vacations like cruises and tours are my idea of purgatory and I wouldn't be seen dead at Disneyland. I've long felt uncomfortable with the thought that we rely upon -- and pay for -- people to entertain us rather than creating our own fun times and memories. I can be as guilty of this as anyone (as Esther pointed out, five-star resorts in Mexico and Egypt do have their place).

The Narrows

"His Native American name is 'Walks With Smile'"

But as John Taylor Gatto says in Dumbing Us Down, (and I'm paraphrasing here), when we, as a society, are incapable of making our own fun and entertaining ourselves, we have problems.

This vacation was everything that I wish my kids' whole childhoods could be -- exploring the natural world, stretching their intellectual curiosity, strengthening family connections, finding untapped determination, discovering they are more capable than they previously believed.

Overheard: "This is the best day of my life!"

Overheard the next day: "No, this is the best day of my life."

My parents took me and my siblings to the Grand Canyon and many of the surrounding National Parks when we were teenagers but the experience meant so much more to me as a parent, rediscovering the natural world through the eyes of my children.

Sunset at Arches -- view from tent

1 comment

"We've seen a rattlesnake, deer, chipmunks, hummingbirds, a kangaroo rat, bats, elk, lizards galore, wrestling cockroaches, peregrine falcons, fairy shrimp...now I just need to see a mountain lion and my vacation will be complete!"

To recap:

Vegas

Hoover Dam

Route 66

Williams, AZ

Grand Canyon

Boating and tubing on Lake Powell

Monument Valley

Navajo reservation and monument

Arches National Park in Moab, UT

Hiking and hiking and hiking and hiking. Climbing and scrambling and hoping not to fall.

Whitewater rafting

Horse riding and Go-Karting

Shooting and shopping

Mount Timpanogoes Cave

Zion National Park

Hiking (swimming) the Narrows.

1 comment

As I said, bliss.

Road Trip

Jun 12, 2009
8 comments

3 comments

1 comment

Choo choo

1 comment

Vegas, Baby

May 25, 2009
15 comments

In Vegas

Just exhausted

Which can only be a good thing

Lots of fun with cousins

being silly wherever they go

like running down the up escalator

Tired children

crashing into bed at the end of the day.

Have somehow been roped into running a 5K

at 8am tomorrow.

Vegas is...unsurprising

Pretty much as I imagined.

In - N - Out burger is way better

than I was prepared to admit.

I thought nothing could compare to Portillos

but I think there may be some competition.

Clearly I will have to eat more burgers

in order to judge. It's only fair.

In - N - Out

1 comment

Green room

May 22, 2009
12 comments

I have hated the colour of my bedroom since the moment I finished painting it. Actually, that's not true -- even while I was painting I was thinking this paint is the colour of diarrhea. That's never a good thing to be thinking.

I had bought sage green paint a few weeks ago with the intention of painting my garage door but then decided to keep the garage white. Of course, I couldn't let a perfectly good gallon of paint go to waste. I am my father's daughter, after all.

So, the question is, what do you do when you have over 100 items on your to-do list? Why, you sit in the coffee shop and wonder aloud how long it would take you to paint your bedroom.

Naturally.

The paint, due to its original purpose, is exterior paint but I can live with that. If I can live with vomit walls for two years, I can live with exterior paint in my bedroom. And the paint really was vomit-coloured. This is more than simply hyperbole, this is a verifiable fact. I know this because I did once actually throw up, quite literally, ON the wall after a particularly debaucherous night at Nine Irish Brothers. It blended right in. (True story, to which Todd can attest -- he cleaned it up.)

Enough talk of bodily expulsions. I painted, I saw, I hated, I repainted...with a little bit of help from a certain furry fellow who walked through the paint tray and marked his territory.

Puppy paw print

I like my green room one hundred times more than I did yesterday. And most of all I love the my new prints, the theme of which is reading.

This is "the book club" from Tollipop. These girls certainly give the impression that they mean business, don't they?

1 comment

They probably read infinitely better -- and more high-brow --picks than my book club does (which is why I don't go to my book club anymore. Jen Lancaster? Really? Two months in a row, no less? Thank you, no, I have standards.)

This is "Oak Reading Room" from Naoko Stoop's Brown Paperbag Collection. I adore it. Check out the little runny babbit! Squee!

Finally, the girl in this print, "A Grand Adventure," by A Cagey Bee could have been me as a child.

Heck, it could be me now. I get sucked right into a story and the images become as vivid in my mind's eye as they do for this little girl.

Oh, and I painted these bird silouhettes, a la Anna Maria Horner.

I also hung Libby's cardinal painting.

Now, back to that to-do list with no shortage of items...

From the market

May 20, 2009
7 comments

Libby has conspicuously inscribed each Wednesday on the calendar with "farmer's market."

The farmer's market means, firstly, that it's any season but winter -- and that can only be a good thing -- and secondly, it ensures that we will actually buy vegetables (even if they don't always get eaten before molding away in the back of the fridge).

Today's dinner was brought to us from the following vendors:

Cleaver Family Farms (1 lb organic minced lamb, $7.98)

Wagoner Family Bakery (1 doz. butterhorn rolls, $5)

Cooley Family Farm (1 lb organic asparagus, $4)

Old Grey Cat Herbs (bunch of organic flowering chives, $2)

We're so divorced from the source of our food I didn't even know what chive flowers looked like, much less that they are edible. Already fond of chives, I found the flowers quite delightful with a mild onion flavour. (And, holy hell, I am making this.) They simply demanded to be put in a risotto and who am I to defy the entreaties of a flower?

1 comment

A quick trip to the store for mushrooms and dinner practically made itself.

Well, if you ignore the full twenty minutes spent chopping onions, garlic, chives, mushrooms, and asparagus and the further twenty minutes spent continuously stirring risotto. If you ignore all that, then dinner practically made itself.

My kids don't even bat an eyelid when I photograph their dinner. I'm honestly not sure how I feel about this.

Dessert

Dessert -- something we don't usually have -- was organic strawberries with custard. Jesse and Libby think custard is the bee's knees. The cat's whiskers. His pyjamas even.