Happy Birthday, Four-Year-Old

It’s her birthday, and I intend to upload photos from tonight’s much-anticipated party. Till then, here a few from the last couple of years, including one taken today: with birthday cake batter upon cheeks. Fooey was born when our family was transitioning between old-fashioned film and digital, and her babyhood was therefore cheated of in-depth recording. Plus, she was so incredibly cute that no photograph could truly capture her charms: the bald head, the toothless grin, the joyous spirit. She surprised us by arriving fifteen days early; we hadn’t even picked out her first name. She remains a commanding presence in our lives, chatty, vivid, opinionated, creative in her clothing choices, always colourful. She’s spent the last few days announcing, with great seriousness, to anyone who would listen: “It’s almost my birthday.” Yes, it is. Here we are. Happy birthday, youngest daughter. You are loved, loved, loved.

Scraping Time

This little fellow is sick. No wonder he was so grumpy around suppertime last night (though he was THIS happy earlier in the day, when he insisted I clip this into his hair). We spent large portions of last night nursing, and just holding him in bed. It’s a reminder of those early infant days, when night-time does not equal sleep-time. He’s napping right now and I’m watching the monitor for rustlings. There he is.
Albus is playing with a transformer, pretending to blow things up. The girls are reading quietly (Apple-Apple is trying out Madeline L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time, one of my all-time favourites).
I want to thank everyone who expressed support and interest in the Nicaragua writing project. I’ve had encouraging comments, public and private, from a variety of friends, family, and even my former editor.
Uh oh, there he is again (baby, that is). Better run.
Back again. Thinking about time management … that could be my biggest stumbling-block in writing anything (she says, typing one-handed, feverish babe on hip).

Whole Wheat Rolls

This long weekend, I did some serious baking. We baked bread, made a large batch of a master baking mix (for future biscuits, pancakes, and muffins), and these whole wheat dinner rolls, which could also be used as hamburger buns. They’re so good, I’ve marked the recipe in my book like this: *fabulous! The kids ate three apiece hot out of the oven, and Albus said that if we were selling these, and someone bought one, they would take one bite and tell everyone else to come and try some too. The recipe comes from my MCC More with Less cookbook, and makes four dozen large rolls.

Whole Wheat Rolls

In a large basin, dissolve 4 1/2 teaspoons of yeast in 3/4 cup lukewarm water. Once dissolved (about five minutes), add 3 cups warm water, 1 cup dry milk powder, 1/2 cup oil, 2 eggs, 1/3 cup honey, and 2 teaspoons salt. Have ready 6 cups white flour, 4 cups whole wheat flour. Add 5 cups of flour and beat thoroughly with electric mixer (or by hand). Stir in an additional 3 cups of flour, then knead in the rest (adding more as needed). I use local hard bread flour. Knead till smooth and elastic. Oil dough/bowl, cover, and let rise until doubled (about two hours). Punch down and shape into dinner rolls on greased trays. I placed twelve buns on each tray. Cover, let rise (an hour or two), and bake 20-25 minutes at 375 degrees.

We’ve frozen those we won’t be eating fresh. Enjoy!

All in a Day’s Work

Weekends are chore times, and four busy summery weekends had passed without us being here to do the picking up. The kids’ rooms were particularly disastrous. I made several mid-week attempts, with children helping, to tidy their rooms, without getting much of anywhere. Finally, yesterday, we awoke with the gleeful knowledge that we had nowhere to go and nothing much to do. Can one clean gleefully? If you’re Obscure Canlit Mama, yes, yes, you can. There’s something so satisfying about cleaning when it’s really beyond dirty: moving furniture, organizing, purging (don’t tell the kids). Under the couch in the girls’ room I found: fuzz, fabric, dead bugs, a spider’s web with large unhatched egg, crayons, pencils, hair bands, toy cars, Little People figures, several bouncy balls, a nightgown (!), a bath toy, and that’s just what I can recall. Didn’t take any before pictures, but see above … the rooms: floors cleared, shelves tidied, everything in its place and a place for everything. It took hours. And the kids didn’t help (which was helpful in and of itself; thanks, Kevin).
After supper, we hitched up the new bike stroller–yes, we did! After contacting the manufacturer directly, Kevin discovered that the necessary parts were living in our basement (we’d had them all along). So we went for a family ride, all the way to TCBY for frozen yogurt, and then a bit further, too. After jogging with the stroller these many weeks, biking with the stroller didn’t even feel like real exercise. Which was pretty nice.
:: :: ::
Obscure Canlit Mama has news. It’s kind of good news/bad news, except I can’t separate the two. My agent called on Friday afternoon. To set the stage, we’d just gotten home from Nina’s buying club, CJ was pounding on a wok with a barbeque tong he’d dragged out of a bottom drawer, and I was preparing a baked mac-and-cheese for the kids’ supper so that Kevin and I could go out to celebrate our anniversary, so my hands were kept busy during the conversation. My agent hates to give bad news (who doesn’t?). Listen, there’s bad news and then there’s bad news. Along that spectrum, this was disappointing but not unexpected. She doesn’t think the stories will sell (to a publisher). She’s read the earlier novel version, and feels the stories leave too much out, all sorts of research and context; besides, she says, it’s grim out there and publishers aren’t buying novels these days let alone a difficult-to-sell, almost-certainly money-losing dreaded short story collection. But. She said, Let me just toss an idea out there … have you considered writing this material as a memoir?
Um. No.
She said she’d give me a few weeks to mull it over, and call back.
So, let me ask you: if you could choose, would you rather read a short story collection or, hmmm, let’s call it “creative non-fiction,” set in Nicaragua in the early 1980s, during the contra war, told from the perspective of an American child living in Managua, whose parents are peaceworkers? In other words, would you rather read what could have happened, or what really did? Be honest.
Here is the other thing my agent said (to paraphrase): You are meant to be writing, this is what you’re supposed to do.
It’s a tough thing for me to believe, sometimes. I know the work that will be involved, maybe. But I also know I could write what she’s suggesting. I could do it. And it wouldn’t have to mean giving up on the collection of stories, because the two would be quite different beasts.
The real problem is that contemplating taking on this project would be like moving that couch. What awaits beneath? Do I really want to know? And the things I’d choose to purge or to arrange on the shelf: are they even mine, or do they belong to too many other people, too?

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About me

My name is Carrie Snyder. I'm a fiction writer, reader, editor, dreamer, arts organizer, workshop leader, forever curious. I believe words are powerful, storytelling is healing, and art is for everyone.

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