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Pumpkin

Friday 31 October 2008

We took the girl to a pumpkin farm last week. She enjoyed hiding behind the pumpkins.

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I enjoyed taking pictures, of her and the pumpkins.

Pumpkins II

Taken with the 10-20mm Sigma

The fields were largely empty. We’d waited too long.

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We’d waited so long, in fact, that we often encountered the not-so-recently departed.

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Still, we all found a pumpkin, even the Girl. “Zrob moj moj!” K suggests (Nana might have said, “Love the pumpkin!”), and L willingly complies.

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Afterward, the Girl rode about a while,

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and I took a few more pictures.

Pumpkins I

Taken with the 10-20mm Sigma

His Choice

Friday 31 October 2008

https://youtube.com/watch?v=5eUz13-pmTY%26hl%3Den%26fs%3D1

Fear

Thursday 30 October 2008

This election is really starting to scare me. I know a lot of people are saying that Obama scares them, and their reasoning is the cause of my fear. It is showing levels of naive stupidity in this country that I simply was not willing to admit to myself existed.

Two pieces of evidence from The Guardian:

  1. There will be a race war in America if Obama is elected.
  2. Obama is the anti-Christ.

I think educated non-Americans around the world are scratching their heads, wondering how a country filled with this kind of thinking could have risen to such heights…

The Door

Saturday 25 October 2008

How many nails does it take to hold a door in place?

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The Old

Apparently only two, because when we ripped out this old door to put in a new one, we used a reciprocating saw only twice, for the two lonely nails on the knob side. The door was held in place, I’m assuming, by the generous application of caulk on the outside of the door. The caulk did double duty, though, for it not only secured the door but insulated the door, and it was a solo gig. Not a scrap of insulation between the door frame and the house; not a pin-point of insulating foam; not even a gratuitous bead of caulk.

No only that, but the door was essentially levitating.

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It’s difficult to discern it in the picture, but that block of lumber looked as if it had been finished with a dull hatchet.

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The whole thing was so poorly installed that if I’d sneezed when closing the door, I might have knocked the whole thing out, frame and all.

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Not this one, though.

In the Orchard

Monday 20 October 2008

I don’t understand why the apple had to take the fall. It’s not a terribly exotic fruit, and it doesn’t seem to inflame the passions like, say, a mango. But perhaps that’s the point: sin isn’t supposed to be exotic — it’s the everyday things that get you.

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But the everyday can be miraculous, and I suppose that’s what Thoreau was getting at in Walden.

Maybe he had an apple orchard nearby. (I can’t recall. I haven’t read Walden since college. I set out to read it again, but my timing was off: I was coming back after two years in Poland and I got absorbed in the sit-coms shown during the flight and I ended up leaving my copy of Walden in the seat pocket in front of me. I’d like to think that brought some joy to the next passenger, but I know full well that the cleaning crew got it first. Hopefully someone read it.)

Apples in an orchard become out of the ordinary — exotic even. After all, a day spent in the orchard can end with a bag of Pink Ladies in your kitchen and a feeling of satisfied exhaustion.

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We spent the day at Sky Top orchard in Flat Rock, North Carolina. Our goal was simple: arrive when the Pink Ladies are ready. K called earlier in the autumn and we planned a visit for mid-October.

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L tries an inferior variety

Pink Ladies are tough to get: they appear late in the season and disappear quickly. K and I discovered these slightly tangy, crisp apples in Asheville, and we always bought as many as we could as quickly as we could.

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Today, we had our pick — literally. We met a group of friends (I represented exactly 50% of the non-Polish delegation), had a picnic,

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and then set off in search of Pink Ladies.

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Kasia and Brian head out on the quest with us

We passed by Golden Delicious, Fuji, Rome, Stayman, and other varities. Good apples, each and every one, but not as multidimensional as a Pink Lady.

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For those of you who’ve never had the treat of crunching into a Pink Lady, it’s an apple that starts of slightly sweet but has a tang that appears moments after the first bite and seems to grow as you eat the apple. It’s sweet without having the cloying flavor of a Golden Delicious and it’s tart without the alum-esque qualities of a Granny Smith.

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The Pink Ladies were all the way at the back edge of the orchard. Past the newly planted grape vines and the empty McIntosh trees.

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We were about the only ones out there. Does no one else know about Pink Ladies?

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After walking, picking, and more walking (the second installment being more difficult carying a basketful of Ladies), we had break, led by L.

Then we had a pumpkin photo session, also led by L:

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And now, finally having a bag full of coveted apples, we’re all so sick of apples they are still sitting, disrespectfully, by the door, right where we put them when we came home.

Words, Shortcuts, Longcuts, and Sentences

Sunday 19 October 2008

Blanket It’s 5:20 on a Saturday morning. K wakes me up: “Can you go get some milk for L and make sure she’s covered up?” If K goes, L starts fussing and crying when she leaves the room; it works out better for everyone if I go.

I stumble downstairs, warm some milk, and head to the Girl’s room. She’s asleep in the corner of the crib, blankets strewn about her but not a single one on her. I pry her sippy cup from her hand, causing her to wake up.  With the refilled cup in her hand, L is about ready to go back to sleep, but she has one more request. She raises her head and says sleepily, “Banket.”

As I start to spread a blanket over her, she begins fussing. “Tata, no! Banket! Banket.” “Banket,” you see, is not just any blanket, but her favorite blanket, a soft yellow blanket she’s had since birth. It’s a bit too think for a chilly evening like this, so I spread the blanket over her, wait for her to drift to sleep, then cover her with a second blanket.

L’s vocabulary increases daily, and she’s begun making sentences and even her own shortened versions of words. Often, I’m not “tata” but “tat.”

“Chodz, tat!” she’ll say to me when dinner’s on the table and K’s sent her up looking for me.

Our cat, Bida, is sometimes “Bid.” “Trzymac” (“hold”) is “trzym,” pronounced “cim” (“chym” in English transliteration). “Jacket” is simply “Jack.”

And yet she’ll also unnecessarily extend some things. “Bida” can also be  — indeed, usually is — “Bida kicia,” which would roughly be translated “Bida kitty.” And all cats, in books and in real life, become “Bida kicia.” We recently met a new cat named Kissy and tried to explain to L that this was “Kissy kicia,” but to no avail: “Bida kicia!”

“Kupa” and “siusiu” (“poo-poo” and “pee-pee”) are always said together. In fact, L likes to call Bida to the door, open it, and encourage her to go relieve herself in the yard. It sounds like this: “Bida kicia, chodz! Idz! Kupa siusiu!”

When Bida is outside and we ask L, “Where is Bida?”, the reply is always the same: “Kupa siusiu!”