The wrong kind of help

Yesterday I took possession of a 30-pound box of beautiful Jersey blueberries. We look forward to blueberry day with great anticipation around here. This is the third year we have had the opportunity to buy this large quantity at a great price. A friend of a friend knows someone who grows berries, or something like that. In any case, we get berries.

But this year something was different. The berries were washed on site before being packed up. I don't know why; I have a 3-degree separation from the grower so can't ask. I assume the grower did it to be helpful. How nice to have pre-washed berries, right? We can just open the box and eat!

Except that the wet berries were placed in a plastic bag which was then sealed in a cardboard box. Do you see a problem with this?

Blues are pretty sturdy as berries go. They have a longer shelf or fridge life than raspberries or strawberries. But once they are washed they go soft pretty quickly.

So when I opened my box of berries my heart sank a little. They were very wet. I knew I had to get them out of there right away. Usually I have at least 2 - 3 days before I have to make my way through the whole box, washing, sorting, and freezing. And eating! Eating beautiful fresh berries. But not this time.

So after dinner we put towels out on the kitchen table and started setting the berries to dry. At least the table was clear so we didn't have to declutter it before spreading out the towels! We covered the entire table. 30 pounds of blueberries is a lot!

As we spread we sorted through them to discard the bad ones. There were many more than in past years. Lots of soft squishy broken sad berries. We found that the towels were soaking through so we had to move things around to change them out. As we got some berries dry, we loaded up the cookie sheets to put in the freezer.

Sorting took a long time. As I sorted, I pondered the true cost of this fruit. The berries were cheap, much cheaper than I can buy them in any store. But there was so much waste! Of course with fresh produce there is always waste, but this was a lot. Then there is the time to dry and sort. (Oh wait, I'm a stay-at-home mom; my time has no value!) Then there are all those towels to wash. Water, electricity, more time.

Once again I assume the grower was trying to help. Maybe some customers requested that the berries be washed ahead of time. Maybe the ladies getting ready to make jam and can pie filling like omitting the washing step. Maybe I'm just too fussy and too critical. I'm sure that I've made mistakes trying to help someone, or inconvenienced someone in the effort to help another. We all just have to do our best and we can't please everyone.

Still, I am not sure I'll order a box next year, not unless I can be sure the berries won't be washed. I feel disloyal to this farmer I don't even know for thinking that way. How sad for him if he loses some customers in an effort to please others.

In any case, we enjoyed our cobbler last night! And we have berries for a year, and that is truly something to be thankful for.

The bright sides to a flooded basement

1. Finding things that can be donated to the Girl Scout garage sale.

2. Rediscovering old picture books we'd forgotten about.

3. Realizing that some of those old picture books are not as precious as we'd thought (see #1).

3. Discovering that we stored the cardboard boxes of books in the driest end of the basement.

4. Finding a cooking magazine with a recipe I'd been missing and thought was lost forever. Once I found the magazine it was in, locating it online was easy, so I never have to lose it again.

First day of summer schedule

Homeschool schedule, that is.

We finished our academic year last week, just before Grandparents came to visit. So that was vacation... and now we're on summer schedule, which we'll follow till July 1.

About an hour of "schoolwork" each day: math, composition, phonics, stuff like that. Things we must keep up or they will be lost. Regular chores because laundry and dishes and bathroom cleaning never go away. Piano lessons and practice. And then...

Drawing, reading, playing games, trying out fun experiments, and just messing around. Unless we're going to swimming lessons, or (less frequent) therapy appointment, or the park, the library, or some other interesting place we've been wanting to see (or wanting to see again) but haven't had time to.

Aaaahhhh.....

"He has a very small repertoire...

of insults."

Thus said my boy about a friend of his who dissed my kid's new quick-dry, zip-off-leg, built-in-sunscreen pants. The friend said they look like nurses' pants.

Once he said that I realized that because of their green color (somewhere between khaki and forest) they look a bit like scrubs. Yeah, like nurses wear - and doctors.

We got the pants for a Boy Scout canoe trip, and because they were on sale and I had a coupon (in other words, they were really cheap). He approved the color. And he still seems to like them, despite his friend's comment. He doesn't understand insulting comments about clothing, because he really doesn't care about clothing. Oh, he wouldn't wear pink pants, but pretty much as long as his clothes are comfortable and functional, who cares? And why would anyone else care what he is wearing?

Still, he was a little upset over that and other things that happened at a recent get-together. He hasn't had a lot of exposure to mean kids, or kids who are generally nice but under certain circumstances (like around bigger boys), make nasty comments. Last year he had a little trouble with a few guys in his Little League team, and once a few years ago at a summertime day camp when some boys didn't like our last name. Those were pretty isolated incidents. So he hasn't really developed the ability to take such insults in stride, or respond to them.

Now opponents of homeschooling might say well, this is your fault for keeping him out of school where he would have been exposed to this more and learned how to deal with it. Well, maybe so, maybe not. Maybe relentless exposure would have further demoralized him and made him withdraw into a shell (my own personal experience), or made him just as mean as the meanest boy around. Hard to tell. I'll go with this: having less exposure, not more, is the healthier option.

In any case, we talked about the stupidity of insulting someone for their clothes, and I tried to coach him on the proper response: why do my clothes bother you? It's hard to teach him the withering glance and disdainful tone of voice.

In the end, he shrugged it off with the comment about the boy's repertoire of insults. And we had to laugh.

Doesn't everyone have wood shavings all over their kitchen table?

Last week the boy got a Swiss Army knife and a Boy Scout knife card at a Webelos meeting, along with a class on proper knife use, care and safety. The card is to be carried at all scouting events at which the knife is carried; if a scoutmaster or older scout asks to see the knife card, and it is not produced, the knife can be confiscated till the end of the event. Say what you will about Boy Scouts, they seem to take knife safety seriously. As far as I can tell.

Then the boy found an old clementine box near the trash. I probably had put it in the trash but somehow it got out, which rendered it not trash. He dismantled the box.

Now he's whittling. He cut himself right off, so now he is wearing one of my tyvek gloves, which my husband' bought me from a cafeteria worker at his former employer. I cut myself a lot; or used to - a few months with the tyvek gloves and I find I don't cut myself anymore!

Anyway. Now our kitchen table is covered in little wood shavings. It's just everywhere. That is life with a boy who owns a knife, I guess.

Coincidentally, my girl has decided to try to be more graceful, so the background noise this morning is the sound of a book falling off her head as she walks around the house. Humming, of course. I don't think the humming adds to the gracefulness but try telling her that. Ooh, she just informed me she can walk down the stairs and scratch her heel with the book on her head. But do graceful women scratch their heels? Probably not, but try telling her that.

This is the life we chose. It must sound like a weird life to some people. A life with freedom to whittle and walk around with books on the head. Not all day, and not always first thing.

And not with good books. I told her to use a book we don't care about. So what did she choose? Of course: her grammar book.

UPDATE: She can now curtsey with the book on her head. The whittling moved to the living room floor so he could listen to me read aloud. (He can absorb an enormous amount of information from listening, even while whittling.) The wood shavings are just about all swept up. Life does go on.