Dullsville, Population 3

We have finally caught up to the 20th century. Yes, you read that right: the last century. We still don’t have a tv with a remote or a cell phone, but we do have a DVD player (2 actually—1 American and 1 European), and as of yesterday we have a cordless phone. This from a family who hooked up DSL before our computer was even delivered.

This morning I asked John if I should make a Black Forest Cake this weekend.
“Do we really need a cake?”
“Don’t you like a cake for celebrating?”
That’s when he got the deer-in-the-headlights look. I know it might seem self-serving to others, but I didn’t want him to be caught flat-footed tomorrow when there will definitely be no opportunity for him to run out and make a last-minute contribution to our anniversary festivities. I don’t actually want anything, but I want him to at least have a chance at doing something, if he wants to.

When we do our grocery shopping on Saturdays, we each get a candy bar. That is John’s idea from the Swedish tradition of “Saturday candy”. Sometimes I let Hannah get a magazine in addition to/instead of her candy, if she is with me at the store; last week it was a Barbie magazine (aargh!). During our outing last Sunday, she had it in the back seat of the car and was checking off all the items she wanted out of a mini-catalog on the back page. She tallied up her choices: 250 Euros! She asked if I would buy her everything on her list. No-o! Well, how many chores would she have to do to buy them? I would never have to lift a finger around the house again. She automatically rejected cleaning up cat barf—that would still be my job. Then she decided to try a new tactic. She pared a few items from the list. How about buying her 120 Euros worth of stuff? Still no go. She has been working on the list every time she comes across the magazine this past week.

John was tired of the moth-sex paper in the pantry, especially since he thought it was cruel to leave Wormy Little Bastard stuck on there indefinitely. WLB seemed to be getting dehydrated, etc. So John took the paper down and was going to remove WLB from his hormone-laden prison. But in doing so, he pulled WLB in half. Which is much less cruel than leaving him stuck on the pantry wall. So farewell, Wormy Little Bastard. You were a much better pet than Missy Cat, and you left Eliza Cat in the dust.

We have spent the better part of the last winter stockpiling newspapers, in the event we ever got around to buying wood for our wood-burning tile oven, which we didn’t. I was reading up on ways to form logs out of the paper, and I was planning on trying it out one of these nippy mornings. But of course it is getting steadily sunnier/warmer, so even that pitiful attempt to light up the oven just once this year is doomed to failure.

Remember the fruit seeds I saved for planting? Those are doing fine, but now John is getting in on the action with some walnuts that were sprouting in the pantry.

This one is already pretty far along; the other one is just starting to peek out from its shell. Maybe tomorrow I’ll fix up one of the window boxes with the onions that are sprouting.