SITY: Ragweed or Not?

Posted on 10/01/2016 by chick

In September I had persistent post-nasal drip, and it was giving me one hell of a sore throat. I wondered what was causing it. Was it something in the house?

And then it occurred to me that I had been sitting next to an open window every day. Suspiciously, there was a powdery film all around the window. Pollen? And then it also occurred to me that it was ragweed season. Not that I’d ever been allergic to ragweed (as far as I knew), but it sounded like a plausible explanation.

So I said to my husband, “Do you think we’ve got ragweed growing around here?” And he replied, “Yeah, just look out front!”

I looked at the very beautiful, crazy mess of wildflowers growing out front and was offended on their behalves. Those were asters, goldenrod, and silverrod, not ragweed!

goodandwild

That’s silverrod in the foreground, goldenrod behind, and asters on the right.

But then I had to wonder about the goldenrod. How many times have I heard someone refer to goldenrod as “ragweed?” I had long wondered what the difference was between the two plants. It seemed at least possible that the plant I’ve always called “goldenrod” could in fact be ragweed.

The Internet is not as helpful in this matter as you’d think. I had to plow through a lot of misinformation, but I think I eventually uncovered the truth. As I understand things, those golden flowers are definitely goldenrod, and they don’t cause hay fever. Goldenrod’s only crime is to bloom at the same time and in the same types of places as ragweed. They say that there is one reliable rule when it comes to identifying ragweed: if the flower is golden, it’s not ragweed. Ragweed has small, greenish flowers that don’t draw attention to themselves.

So, now that I knew what to look for, I walked around the rest of my property, looking at all of the other wild patches. And there, on the hill to the side of the house, I found a likely culprit.

ragweed

Ragweed?

I was amazed by how much of this plant I found once I starting looking for it. It grows along the sides of the road all over town. This could be it. What do you think? Ragweed or not?

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A Nice Evening

Posted on 09/28/2016 by chick

I took the kids to the library after school yesterday. Our trip was a huge success before we even set foot inside the building, thanks to two monarchs on a butterfly bush next to the parking lot. Unafraid, they fluttered so close we thought they’d land on us. We watched, delighted.

Inside the library, Livia found the baskets of Fancy Nancy, Pinkalicious, and Curious George books. Rapture! And then she found a Barbie movie she hadn’t seen (“Barbie in the Pink Shoes”). Heaven! We checked out 20 books and 2 movies. We could barely carry them all back to the car.

At the grocery store, Marshall requested pizza, which seemed like a fine idea for dinner. I gave him the job of carrying the pizza box, and he took excellent care of it. Livia put on her cutest smile and nicest manners when we ran into an acquaintance in the check-out line.

When we got home, dinner went smoothly. Marshall did both his math and reading homework without complaint. My husband got the kids ready for bed, and they went to sleep right away.

There have been times when the kids have behaved so badly in public that I swore I’d never take them out again. The drama that often surrounds dinner, homework, and bedtime is sometimes enough to make me scream. But then there are the nice evenings like this one. This kind of evening makes me glad to be a parent.

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Inner Beauty

Posted on 09/28/2016 by chick

Everyone likes a compliment, me included. But I seem to be a magnet for strange compliments. For example, I was once complimented on my septic tank.

Yesterday I would have put that particular compliment at the top of my Strange Compliment List, but now I’ve got one even better. I’m going to share it, because it’s funny, but just FYI, it is TMI. If you don’t like TMI, then don’t continue reading.

Now commencing with TMI…

I went to the gynecologist yesterday. After the examination she said, “That was the best pelvic exam I’ve done all day. I wish my trainee was here so that he could examine you. You could be a pelvic model and be paid for it. Your uterus and ovaries are so distinct!”

You know, I had always wondered what my best physical feature was. I had thought maybe it was my hair color (or the fact the my eye color nearly matches it). I also have high cheekbones, which will hopefully hold up my face nicely as I age. But neither of those features has ever inspired such admiration as I received yesterday, so it must be that my best feature is my distinct internal anatomy.

They say that beauty is found on the inside. That has always sounded to me like the kind of thing people say to console you for not being physically beautiful. But now I have found the truth in the saying. Literally 😉

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That Powerful Smell

Posted on 09/24/2016 by chick

Earlier this year we took a three-day vacation at an indoor water park. We all had a great time. The kids didn’t want to leave, and they still say that they’d like to go live there.

One thing about the place that stands out in my memory is the strong smell of chlorine. The smell was not just in the park’s water, but everywhere, even in our hotel room. Though we all showered after playing at the park, and I rinsed all of our bathing suits repeatedly, the smell of chlorine would not go away. It was particularly strong in the bathroom, thanks to the line of drip-drying bathing suits.

Some people like the smell of chlorine. They think it smells clean. Not me. I don’t like the chemical reek of it. So I was surprised when, as I was cleaning a toilet with a bleach-based cleaner yesterday, the chlorine smell brought back flashes of memory from our vacation. I don’t usually have such pleasant thoughts while cleaning the toilet.

Smell has a powerful effect on the brain. There are smells I encountered in childhood that still, almost forty years later, bring back wonderful memories and nostalgic feelings. So I hope this new correlation in my mind (bleachy smell = happy memories) will be equally lasting. It might make me want to clean more often, or at least enjoy the task more when it can’t be avoided!

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Marshall in 2016

Posted on 09/18/2016 by chick

Dear Marshall,

We celebrated your seventh birthday in 2016. It’s hard to believe that you’ve been with us for seven lucky years! I can still see in my mind’s eye the infant who used to roll around on my bed making adorable raspberry noises at me.

But you’re in second grade now. You still roll around, and you still make fart noises, but you can also read and do math. You build intricate structures out of whatever you have handy, be it LEGOs, cardboard boxes, or disposable plastic cups. You draw interesting, detailed pictures of strange gizmos and TNT. You don’t seem to enjoy coloring as much as Livia does, but when you color with us, you make up stories to explain what you’re doing. For example, as you were coloring a large green section in one picture, you said, “Now green is taking over the world!”

You sound so grown-up sometimes. Do you remember your pet fish Zoulie (aka Senor Fishy Pants)? He died earlier this year, and we all missed his fishy little face. You were particularly sad. I told you that some people believe that there is a Heaven where people and animals go when they die. You said, “I don’t believe it, but I hope it’s true.”

You also eat a lot more than you used to. I would even go so far as to say that sometimes you’re a bottomless pit. I wish you were more consistent about it, though. On one day, you’ll be satisfied with just a bowl of pasta. The next, you’ll wolf down a half dozen eggs, several pieces of buttered toast, some fruit, and a big cup of whole milk, then announce, “I’m still hungry!” I wish I had a dollar for every time you said “More food!” (it would help pay for the groceries!). 😉

During the summer you were suffering from allergies, so we started giving you allergy medicine. Taking the medicine became a ritual that both you and your sister looked forward to, thanks largely to your father. He made a special, silly sign to go along with each dose. I think you still have some of the notes. They’ll probably disappear over time, so I’ve included a photograph of one, just to give you an idea. The notes always made you smile.

Speaking of your smile, you finally have a full one. You had knocked out your top front baby teeth early, so you had a gappy smile for a long time. Your new teeth started coming in during the summer of last year. One of them was growing in crooked. It seems to have straightened itself out this year, and now we see the first gleamings of your adult smile. You’re growing up so fast!

Love,

Mom

 

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The D Stands for “Daily”

Posted on 09/09/2016 by chick

I was so absolutely exhausted yesterday that it occurred to me to take my Vitamin D. I really needed to take it, because blood tests have revealed that my level is extremely low. The lack of Vitamin D will, the medical establishment warns, make my bones crumble. (Well, they won’t necessarily crumble, but they’ll get all the calcium leached out of them, leaving them brittle, and before you know it I’ll be a sad, old, crippled lady in a convalescent home. I expect to be sad and old someday, but I’d rather skip the crippled part.)

So I took my megadose yesterday, and I will try really hard to remember my regular dose today. I would go out and get some sun, too, but it’s cloudy today. Why is the weather not cooperating with my plans?

Perhaps the sun will come out again tomorrow, and if it does, I should go bask in it for a few minutes. This Vitamin D thing is important. I have to keep telling myself that now, while I’ve still got strong (I hope) bones.

Vitamin D: the D stands for “Daily!”

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Making Time

Posted on 09/08/2016 by chick

My spam filter has filtered out tens of thousands of spam comments since I installed it. While it occasionally fails to identify a comment as spam, it has never mistakenly put a real comment into the spam box. So why do I look at every comment in the spam box before deleting it? Shouldn’t the filter have earned my trust by now?

This is just one way in which I waste little slivers of time. Those little slivers have never seemed to have much value, because they are so small. I begin to wonder if I should be trying to salvage them, though. Could I create something for myself by cutting out stupid little tasks like individually deleting spam comments and then stitching all the little slivers of time into something bigger?

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Latest Trio of Books

Posted on 08/25/2016 by chick

I recently  finished The Paper Magician series by Charlie N. Holmberg. I read the three book on my Kindle, courtesy of my Kindle Unlimited subscription.

  • The Paper Magician, Grade: A-
  • The Glass Magician, Grade: B
  • The Master Magician, Grade: B-

In the first book, The Paper Magician, Ceony (whose name rhymes with “peony”) has just completed her education at the Tagis Praff School for the Magically Inclined. She must now complete a two-year apprenticeship to become a fully-licensed magician. She had hoped to become a Smelter (a magician who works with metal), but due to a shortage of Folders (magicians who work with paper), she is pushed into the paper-folding line. She is apprenticed to a Folder named Emery Thane. Emery teaches her the basics of paper magic, which she begins to see is more interesting than she had thought it would be, and she starts to care deeply about her teacher. Suddenly, Emery’s life is in threatened by an Excisioner (an evil magician who works with human flesh). Armed only with her apprentice-level magic and some paper, she sets out to save Emery’s life.

I’m going to try not to give too much away, but there may be spoilers ahead.

The first book ends with Ceony doing some magic that has never been done by a Folder before. The way that she did it seemed like a beautiful opportunity for the author to make a statement about the power of books, reading, words, etc. I was looking forward to that, and when it didn’t happen in the first book, I thought surely it must happen in the second. Since I had enjoyed the first book’s combination of fantasy and romance, I decided to proceed to the next book.

Unfortunately, when the author finally explained Ceony’s new power, she didn’t go in the direction I had expected. Instead, she basically undid the very foundations of the magical system that she had invented in the first book. That was hard to take. It was not just a missed opportunity. It was a huge fantasy-genre no-no. Everyone who reads fantasy understands consciously or subconsciously that magic must have a lot of limitations. If it did not, everyone would abuse it, and there would be nonstop chaos.

Also, student-teacher romances are not so cool. In the first book, Ceony had a crush on Emery. Emery seemed potentially attracted to her, too, but he didn’t say what he was feeling. I like romance, so I wanted him to like her, but I didn’t want him to act on his feelings. Not yet. Even though Ceony was over 18, she was still his student. He was in a position of power over her, so she needed to be off-limits until she finished her apprenticeship.

But, dammit, he does act on his feelings before she finishes her studies, and there’s an ick factor to that. It made me like him a lot less. The author is clearly aware of the problem inherent to Ceony and Emery’s relationship. A female teacher tries to warn Ceony off throughout the series, but Ceony won’t listen. In fact, that is Ceony’s main problem. She always thinks she knows best, and she does not grow up over the course of her two-year apprenticeship. If anything, she becomes less mature. In the first book, she gets involved in a fight that’s way over her head because she has to. In the sequels, she foolishly rushes into danger, against the orders of everyone older and wiser than herself, and it’s as if she does it simply for the sake of getting there first.

So overall this was a disappointing series. I liked the first book. However, the second and third not only felt rushed, but the story went in directions that I think would disappoint many readers, especially feminists and fans of the fantasy genre. I do not recommend the sequels.

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SITY: Change of Seasons

Posted on 08/21/2016 by chick
aster-1

Asters Growing in a Rock Pile

aster-2

New to Our Yard: Mini Asters

Before moving to this house, the only time I ever gave the aster a thought was when doing a crossword that contained the word ASTER. Thanks to the word’s pattern of vowels and consonants, it is well-shaped for puzzles. It shows up regularly in crosswords and other grid puzzles, usually clued using some variation on the phrase “Fall flower” or “Late bloomer?”

So I’ve known for a long time that asters bloomed in the fall, but I never gave that fact much thought. But here, in this weedy yard of mine, we get asters every year. And just as violets mark the spring, asters are the marker of summer’s end.

Flowers don’t follow arbitrary, man-made schedules but rather the unstoppable patterns of nature. When our asters start to bloom, as they now have, that means summer is over for real. The days are going to get shorter and the weather cooler, and there’s nothing we can do to stop it.

Sometimes they make me think of the beginning of fall, cheerfully reminding me of all the things that fall has to offer. But sometimes, like this year, they make me think about the ending of summer, reminding me of all the things we’ll miss once the summer is gone, and providing visual proof that the clock is ticking on the year.  Time is passing too quickly.

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Anatomy 101

Posted on 08/15/2016 by chick

The kids have an anatomy book that was written for children. It talks about the birds and the bees, and it has some interesting art, including a depiction of a woman giving birth. Livia took one look at that and said, “Oh, come on! Why do I have to do that?”

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