A dry heat

It's July and it should be hot and thunderous. With stifling humidity that holds your lungs hostage and frizzes my hair when I walk outside. We should be ducking summer storms, soaking in sweat, swatting mosquitoes and nursing their welts in the morning. But last night was warm and breezy and dry. Absolutely lovely.

But I feel traitorous just thinking that. I shouldn't embrace the weather, I should curse it. During the day our fields are a bristly wasteland where only weeds and corn flowers thrive. The lawn is brown and the boxwoods are dotted with tufts of yellow. Hope for a second cutting of hay fades away. Forecasters tempt us with storms and occasionally they lurk nearby, teasing us with smudged clouds.

But last night's setting sun softens the browns and yellows of what should be green. The kids splash in the neighbors' pool and instead of swatting mosquitoes, I cup a drink in my hand and watch the hummingbirds silhouetted over the feeder. A chorus of katydids tune up in the trees. It's neither too cool or too hot. It's perfect.

In lingering light we toss the kids in the gator and rumble down the drive. The breeze dries our suits and I tear off hunks of zucchini bread (a neighborly parting gift) and the kids lounge in the gator bed, cradling their wedges.

It's a perfect summer night -- temperate, breezy and bug-less. And the dry vegetation is blotted out in the near-dark. The only hint of drought rises behind us -- a long plume of gravel dust, it's smoky haze rising in our wake.

It ain't book learning

There are some life lessons that seep into your brain or hover around, waiting for that light bulb to glow.

And then there are those that jump right up and bite you.

Like the lesson that Hadley hit on the other day: no matter what the temptation, do not thrust your arm through the neighbors' high-gauge electrified livestock fence.

I don't know what drew her to the wire strands -- there weren't any animals in reach -- and Martin and I had our heads buried in a bush, picking blackberries. But with all of that shrieking and her close proximity to the fence, it was pretty easy to deduce what had happened.

Fortunately, barbarians are loathe to show weakness or pain, so she recovered quickly.

No doubt she stored that lesson on the lowest shelf in her cranium, right next to the volume entitled: "don't grasp the door handle of a wood stove when you're visiting your aunt and uncle in Florida in the wintertime."

Swimming success

At age 4 Cayden has proven he can fight gravity's pull in the pool. The Boy is learning to swim.

Which astonishes me since my best stroke -- my only stroke -- is the dog paddle.

"What is that?" Martin asked, the first time he saw me in the water.

"What's what?"

"That thing you're doing."

"What, swimming?"

"No sane person would call that swimming."

It's true, my technique is not very fluid. I sort of tread water and inch across the pool in a herky-jerky fashion. Like a maimed frog.

It's not your fault, Mom told me years ago. My mom grew up in California, a land dotted with chlorinated blue backyards. So she's proficient in the pool. But my dad was born in Hungary. "So you're half Hungarian," she said. "And Hungarians are lousy swimmers. What do you expect? They live in a land-locked country."

When I was a little kid, my California grandmother would place a few quarters on the bottom stair of the pool, to tempt me to put my face in the water. "If you can get those quarters, you can keep them," she'd say.

I'd pick up the quarters with my toes.

Based on my sad swimming state, I'd written off the Boy and Barbarian.

But I forgot that Martin was born with gills. He swam competitively by age 6 and life-guarded at 14.

He looked at me like I was crazy -- crazier then usual -- when I explained the Hungarian curse.

Don't sweat it, he said. The kids will swim.

And he was right. Last week, with a little encouragement from Martin, Cayden shed his swim vest, plunged his head beneath the water and kicked his legs. And started swimming.

Since then he's been unstoppable. We bought him some goggles and now he holds his breath and shoots under water like a little minnow. He's even able to retrieve sunken toys from the bottom of the pool.

And, he picks them up with his hands, not his toes.

The morning quake

By now the earthquake that rattled Maryland this morning is old news. It got the same coverage that a snow squall in Las Vegas or LA receives -- sound bites and quotes from awe struck residents who've never seen a flake of snow, or in this case, haven't felt the earth move except on a subway platform.

One local TV anchor was visibly rattled. She kept telling viewers that she was "freaked out," even as her sidekick admitted that she didn't feel a thing.

I've been in two earthquakes -- the first in my grandparent's beach house in California. It was strong enough to rattle the quake-proof glass in the windows. Then a few years ago, Martin and I sat through a tremor in Arequipa, Peru that shook the restaurant, right down to our beer glasses. We were too buzzed to care.

This morning I was up with Brynn when a low rumbling burbled from below and the house let go a long shiver. My first illogical thought: the furnace was going to explode... even though it's turned off in the summer. Illogical thought #2: a low-flying jet was about to crash.

Maisie did not reassure me. She gave me her thunderstorm stare that plainly says: "This is it. We are all going to die." I clutched Brynn, not sure if I should flee the exploding furnace or duck a crashing plane.

Martin awoke and wondered if it was thunder. It lasted too long, I told him, but we went outside and squinted in the bare dawn at a clear sky. All around us it was quiet and calm. Just the occasional whoosh of an early morning commuter.

Maybe it was some kind of explosion, he said. Or....an earthquake.

As soon as Martin said it, I knew he was right. We went back in and switched on the local news.

It was a 3.6 quake. Not even strong enough to knock a tree down.

But with enough physical and audible presence to scare me, and momentarily remind us of how small and powerless we really are.

Finally Fixed

Three months have passed since we unsuccessfully launched operation kitten capture. Our plan was to sneak up on Felix, catch him and get him neutered. We never expected him to go quietly but with the element of surprise, we assumed he'd be easy pickings. Instead, he surprised us by forcing open the cat box door and fleeing the scene. Since then, I allotted us April, May and June to win back Felix's trust.

Well, we never earned his trust but over time, he's dropped his guard.

So just the other day Martin, the one-handed-bird-catcher, donned fire-retardant gloves, recalled Steve Irwin's tips on croc wrestling, and pounced on an unsuspecting Felix, whose head was buried in a food dish.

Once he pinned Felix inside the crate, the trick was to remove his arm without letting the cat escape. On the count of three he extracted his hand while I slammed the carrier door and I drove Felix to the vet. He yowled all the way.

That afternoon I retrieved him. I set the cat box on the cool barn floor and unlatched the door. He slunk out, cast a dirty look over his shoulder, and streaked outside.

Well, I thought, that's the last we see of you. At least you won't leave a trail of kittens in your wake.

But since the big snip, Felix has turned a corner. He doesn't bump up against our legs, but we can pet him and he's joined the cat crew that accompanies us on dog walks.

I don't think he'll ever be as friendly as Spook, but he's coming around.

Pitching in around here

We expect all of the kids to help around the house and farm, and to consider the needs of the cats, dog, horses and sheep. Everyone's got to learn how to pull their weight.


Even Brynn.

....especially when she insists on being held all of the time.

Although Martin and I use different Brynn-handling techniques:

Weekend mishaps

With three kids, three cats, three horses, five sheep, one wayward Border Collie and 10 acres, Martin and I barely manage to feed everyone and keep the house in working order. And that's on a good day when we're happy, healthy and hopped up on caffeine.

When one of us gets sick, however, things fall apart fast.

On Friday Martin mentioned that his back hurt. He hobbled about, wincing with each step, but by Saturday it was clear that something else was amiss. He was really fatigued; he couldn't finish mowing the back field without stopping three times to sprawl out on the grass and rest.

And in the house I noticed Martin had slithered off his normal perch. From here:

to here:

In fact he spent most of the weekend on the ground. Two hours after the photo above, he showed little improvement:

Normally, I'd offer a couple of aspirin and some cheerful advice -- something like, "buck up and deal...you'll be fine" but this time I got no response from his lifeless body. Not to mention that I kept tripping over him.

That's when I reevaluated the situation and made a preliminary diagnosis: extreme exhaustion and crippling joint pain sounded like Lyme Disease to me.

But lymie or not, I still need help, especially when Mom's car broke down. I loaned her mine and asked Martin if he felt fit enough to pick me up. He swore that he could drive and drive he did -- right over a sign in a parking lot. By Sunday evening I was cooked. The kids were wired, the Barbarian was exercising her right to be a Terrible Two, and Martin was no longer sick, he was sick and irritable. After finally getting everyone to bed, Brynn tuned up and as I held her in my lap, she unleashed a diaper... of volcanic proportions. Let's just say that she got lava all over my shorts, my shirt and me. After much shrieking (from both of us), I bathed her, scrubbed our clothes and calmed her down.

Around midnight I stepped into the shower to wash away the day. With my hair shampooed, I glanced for the soap and realized that I was sharing the shower with a colony of wasps. They were perched on the soap, climbing the shower curtain and buzzing around.

Martin was in a Lymie coma but even he couldn't sleep through all the hollering. He hobbled in and dispatched of the wasps while I fled the scene.

By then it was 12:01 -- the beginning of a new day. A better day, I promised myself, free of explosive diapers, fender benders and wasp attacks.

And with this new day, Martin will see the doctor and we'll ignore the dent in Big Rig.

And I'm going to stock up on wine.

Two years ago this week...

....we were vacationing in the Canadian Rockies, feasting our eyes on glacier lakes, scrambling up remote mountainsides and pigging out on burgers and beer at night. The days were long, the weather perfect, and the scenery, vibrant and green.

This year we're roasting at home where the vegetation is withered and yellowed. The grass crunches underfoot. The raspberries and black raspberries have shriveled into knot-hard lumps. The apple trees are dying and everything is covered in a fine layer of dust. It's dry and hot, and now it's humid.

Instead of coping with the farm and baking in the heat, I'd rather hop a plane and escape here again...

The native woodsman

After 11 years of marriage, I think that I know Martin pretty well: I know the tv shows that lure him into a hypnotic gaze, his choice of beer, flavor of gatorade, the fact that he douses everything in ranch dressing... hell, sometimes I can tell what he's thinking and finish his sentences -- which irritates him. And I know that it irritates him-- and that's why I do it.

Still, he has the power to stun me with his random proclamations. Like the one he sprung on me last week:

"I can smell deer."

Really, I say skeptically. You can smell...deer.

"Yea, I just noticed it the other day when I was outside."

How do you know that you smell deer? What do they smell like?

"Sort of musky, like a fox."

Please, that's like saying that some kind of meat tastes like chicken.

"Maybe it's because it's summer and they're sweating more. Maybe I smell their sweat. But I'm telling you: I smell deer!"


Martin's super-human skill sent me scurrying to the internet where I embarked on an unsatisfying search for answers. As to the deer perspiration question, I dug up an ambivalent paragraph in "Deer of North America" in which biologists suggest that deer, in fact, do not sweat.

My quest for information on humans smelling deer yielded even less, which tells me that with all the ludicrous and idiotic information posted on the web, even the internet has its limits.

So I'm highly skeptical of Martin's olfactory sense. But I'll grant him this: in nine years living here, he's shed his suburban skin. On Friday a bird mysteriously found its way into our kitchen, and bashed up against the window until I called Martin for help. Any able-bodied soul can snag a bird, but Martin approached it with an arm-full of laundry and plucked the bird out of the air. With one hand.

So for the time being, I'll let him think that he smells sweaty deer.

Scenes from the 4th

These photos almost make it all worth it -- the laundry; the dirty dishes; diaper changes; the three times that Maisie ran off -- wait, make that four times -- the temper tantrums (both the kids' and mine, when the dog ran away); the popsicle-stained clothes; the incessant, maniacal Dora/Diego theme music; the times I yelled at someone to shut the door; the colony of flies that came in through the open door; the popcorn debris; the cracker crumbs; the warnings; the time-outs; and the number of times that I impaled my foot on a lego or an army soldier.

Almost....