Day 18: Signs of Spring?

OK, so I sort of slipped behind in my daily photos...again.  It's really hard being pregnant, and having kids, and maintaining all the things I need to do during the day.  I'm just going to go ahead and continue the day count and ignore the fact that I missed a couple weeks because if I try to do it perfectly then I'll completely miss out on recording our days.

I thought it would be fun to have a series of spring photos; Signs of Spring.  I've encountered a glitch though...technically it is spring, but there have yet to be any signs to show us that it really is here.  Here's one thing that usually means spring to us:  Stella.

She comes back from her 'migration' each spring and then we know the seasons really have turned.  This year, not only did she come back a little early, but this is also the year that the snow hasn't wanted to go away.  The snow and Stella don't usually co-exist, so it was weird to have her around while the snow was still on the ground.  Anyway, here she is in her winter glory.  She wanted me to take a picture of her in her snow clothes to send to her grandkids in Florida.

Day 28: Summer Lovin'

This is Melissa, Stella's granddaughter. They were visiting for a week and it was like having a neighbor-playmate for a week. It was awesome. Everyday Jacob and Melissa played with each other. Sometimes Jacob went over to Stella's, but for the most part we had Melissa over here, and I loved having her. She's such a sweet girl, and a good influence of Jacob to boot! When they played in the house, it was so calm and quiet, relatively speaking. I'm told Melissa just loves Jacob and wants to play with him all the time - you know, that she's *sweet* on him. I think the feeling was mutual because he was a totally different kid around her - not like a little punk and whatnot. I can't really describe it; he has other little girl friends that he plays with but this was different.

They've gone home now, 1,500 miles away and I don't know that we'll be seeing them again. Melissa was really sad about leaving and not seeing Jacob anymore. At least for now they can be pen pals...

New Stella

It seems every other year Stella is in favor of our family. The other years she's into one or another of our neighbors. She'll leave for Florida one autumn in one frame of mind only to come back here the next spring with a completely different agenda. This year when she came back north I was very indifferent to her, stayed away as much as I could because last year was the year she anonymously called the cops on us because of the smoke from a backyard fire. We traveled a lot in the first half of the summer anyway, so we just didn't see that much of Stella.

And then one day we were taking a walk, as usual, when Dorothy came hobbling out of her house to say hi. She loved visiting with us and told us so. She showed her pleasure with life and the people who are good to her. She told Jacob he's a good boy and told me what a lovely person I am, and wondered how I got to be such a nice person. Dorothy is the complete opposite of Stella. She asked that we come back often and to always knock on her door when we're going by.

Jacob was completely taken with Dorothy from the beginning and I think a lot of it probably has to do with the fact that his great-grandmother passed away just a few weeks before we met Dorothy. Meeting her probably filled a void in Jacob.

Over the next few weeks we learned a lot about Dorothy, but she learned very little about us because she'd need to ask the same questions each time we knocked on her door. For good reason though, because together we figured out her age - she couldn't remember how old she was, but told me the year she was born and I told her that will make her 94 this fall.

We've been bringing her baked treats, crafts and a photograph of us with our names on the back so she can remember who we are. In turn, Dorothy has told us a lot of her history and about her two sons - one 'bad', one 'good'. She can't remember her late husband's name but knows he fought in WWII and that he was never the same after that.

She has her favorite neighbors, like the ones who take her to church every week, and her not-so-favorites, like the one who has the crazy wife. Dorothy loves to show off a picture of herself and say how pretty she used to be, you know, back when she had teeth, she jokes. She has a very good sense of humor. Today I said we couldn't come in because I had to go home and make lunch. "You've gotta go get drunk?" she asked. I laughed as I corrected her and she smirked back at me.

It's almost as if Stella has sensed the shifting dynamic in the air because she's been by more often the last couple weeks than most of the summer. More than likely though, it's probably because the back neighbors have pissed her off again. She actually called the cops on them the other day because the daughter's boyfriend kept driving his diesel truck up and down the driveway. So now we're the good guys again. She sits and chats like old times and brings over a plate of whatever she cooked that day. It's nice to have the company, and I'm starting to warm to her again. Sabine points across the yard in recognition now when she sees Stella.

I hope our old lady friends are around when Sabine is a bit older so that she will have nice memories of them like Jacob does. And I hope when I'm that age I have a little family to come visit me.

Posted

I think we've pretty much confirmed that what we suspected was going on with Stella is actually happening.

Stella owns quite a bit of the land surrounding her house, including the woods behind her house through which we cut across to get to the street on the other side. If not for that path through the woods I would have to walk a small child and a newborn down a busy highway just to take a stroll or to walk to Jacob's favorite ice cream place. When we moved in Stella told us (and has repeatedly told us over the years) that we should cross her land to safely take a walk because it's not safe to walk on the road we live on.

When I mow the lawn I usually mow one strip through the fields that lead to and away from the wooded area so that we can easily walk through. I haven't mowed since before Sabine was born so last week when Zach was mowing I asked him to mow in there as it had gotten pretty overgrown. He did.

The next day Zach saw Stella dumping something back in the field area. This is what it was:


That's the path he mowed with two little piles of grass clippings at the start of it. Are those piles intended as a physical barrier to keep us off her land or just a passive-aggressive message? Kinda seems to me she's marking her territory.

Stroll down the path a bit and you see this:

That's four large pieces of watermelon rind equally spaced apart (ie, intentionally placed) that she layed down the day after she started with the grass clippings. The smaller white pieces are chunks of bread that she put down yesterday after I watched her walk out back, in an increasingly awkward gait, with a bag in hand.

Is she just being creative with her compostable material or trying to gross us out enough so we leave her land alone? Either way, all she's going to do is attract some pretty good sized wild animals.

Round the corner out of the field and into the woods and you'll see this:

That's all the confirmation we needed. So it's clear we're no longer welcome on her property. The only questions left are will we abide, and what is the cause of Stella's odd behavior? I'm not sure
I want to know the answer - I don't think it's a happy one.

Neighborhood Nuisance

The story I'm about to tell happened two weekends ago, so it's lost most of its humor on us by now, but it still has to be told.

Zach was in the backyard cutting down an apple tree that had been dying ever since we bought this house five years ago. We've had a huge stack of tree branches out by the road for a good six weeks waiting for the town to come pick up so Zach just wanted to burn some of the small limbs from the cut-down apple tree. He started the fire in our fire pit and then headed over to Stella's yard to cut down a tree she had been bugging him to take care of since she came back to town in April.

He was in the middle of cutting down her tree when she came out to chat. They chatted. Everything was friendly. She went back into her closed-up, air-conditioned house and Zach came back home to man the fire. Ten minutes later the police pulled into the driveway. "Hey. I imagine you're here about the fire?" Zach offered.

"Yeah....I am," the cop hesitated, "but it looks like you've got it under control. I came expecting this huge, out-of-control bonfire. One of your neighbors called to complain, I don't know which one..." He trailed off.

"Oh, I have an idea who that was." Zach said, and then the cop confirmed the last name.

Stella.

WTF?

She called and said that the smoke was coming in her windows and she couldn't breathe. Her closed-up windows.

Now we know she likes to make trouble among the neighbors. She often tells horror stories about them to us and we wonder what she says to them about us, but we've always chalked it up to her being 80+, living alone for over 15 years, and simply looking for something to pass the time. We can't figure out what motivated her behavior this time. There is usually something we can pin-point each time she acts up like this. "Oh, you didn't fix her screen door when she asked so now the across-the-street neighbors are her favorites."

There's nothing we've been able to think of in this case. Zach had just done her a favor. And they were out talking, why didn't she mention the smoke then? Because it didn't bother her, she just wanted to make trouble. But it still doesn't make sense, so the only thing I've been able to come up with is that he age is finally catching up to her. She hasn't really seemed right this year, and maybe dementia is setting in or something. She's been acting very weird, and then coming over with little gifts the next day. I think she feels guilty for treating the way she often does, and then comes around the next day to try to make up for it.

We just play dumb though. Zach hasn't told Stella he knows she's the rat. He's 'saving it' for the next time she asks a big favor and then gives him heck about it.

So the cop said he felt kind of silly asking Zach to put out the fire. He said it all looked normal and safe. Zach told him that the funny thing is that Stella just been outside chatting with Zach, that she could have mentioned it then. The cop laughed at that but seemed just as baffled as us. It's really just sad to see what's happening to Stella.

She's something else

The phone rang a little while ago. Jacob answered it. From his end of the conversation I could tell it was someone calling to ask about the baby status. Yup, those calls are starting to happen. Or maybe it's not the actual purpose of the call, but it's the first thing the caller wants to know when we answer.

Anyway, it was Stella. "Did you git your baby?" She quipped.

"What?"

"Did you go git your baby?"

"Huh?"

"I saw you go out late the other night in the green car. I said to myself I bet they're going to git the baby!" I guess she thought I was in labor and that we were headed to the hospital to 'get the baby'. So, what...we go to the hospital to meet the stork who presents us with our new child? Just like that?

She'd been spying on us again and saw the car leave late one night, but she can't remember what night and didn't know exactly what time it was. The best I can figure is it was the night (Monday?) that I sent Zach out to get fudgsicles. He must have taken the Civic for some reason. Either that or Stella is hallucinating.

May Day

So far a nice start to May. The day turned out sunny and nice and we got to have a nice gathering with friends at someone's house, hiked in the woods, and visited with their 30+ chickens. Two very exciting and very much anticipated things happened today.

I called Zach at work to tell him the news on our end and he delivered good news of his own. Stella came home and had just been visiting us. Zach had just checked his bank account and the "free money" from Dubya came in.

So yes, Stella came home. We had known it was imminent because her son had been by a couple times in the last week to prep things for the homecoming. Then yesterday she showed up in our driveway. Jacob was freaking out excited. He was doing the Marlon Brando impersonation thing out the window to summon her, and then there she was, like a mirage of Jacob's, at our doorstep. We sat on the front porch for a few minutes chatting before she had to get back to getting "the yard in shape."

In the first minute of her arrival she started in on the "Is he in school yet?" line of questioning. Actually, now she directs the questions at Jacob because she knows I am a lost cause. If you don't know what I am talking about, I've previously written about the fact that Stella does not approve of my plans to homeschool Jacob. Why she cares is beyond me. So now instead of directing her assaults at me, she quietly works on Jacob while she thinks I'm just out of earshot. "Don't you want to go to school and play with all the other kids?" she goads him. I've asked her to stop making these comments to Jacob, but what can you do?

In the second minute of being in our presence she informed me that the leaves which Zach put on the side of the road across the street from her house (where she'd previously told us to put them to be picked up by the town) weren't going to be picked up because they weren't in bags. Apparently she'd waived down the town truck earlier that day and inquired about their policy. They only pick up loose leaves in the fall. So what to do with our leaves that fall on the ground after the snow has already started? Anyway, she didn't miss a beat, "They're starting to blow in my yard and are making more work for me" (not true at all - they are weighted down by the fact that they're half decomposed from being under snow all winter and not blowing anywhere).

In the third minute of her visit she was quick to list off three 'jobs' she had for Zach to do. 1) Cut down a huge limb that had fallen; 2) Cut down a tree; 3) "Take care of that hill" (whatever that means). Some problems I see with this are 1) Why is she telling me this? 2) Why does she expect these free services out of my husband? 3) If she wants us to cater to her needs, shouldn't she be a little nicer?

Anyway...I was trying to think of something wise to say here. I will come up with it one of these days. Maybe mayday would have been a more appropriate title?

Signs of Spring

Spring is upon us. Actually, it's been so warm it's more like summer, except that is was just a couple weeks ago that we had snow. Weird. Here's some pictures from around the yard yesterday. Kori, if you're reading this you might want to skip any of the pictures after the first three flowers!

Tulip

Red Tulip

Too pretty to be a weed

I named him Harry

He enjoyed climbing on the bunnies' playpen

Someone's lunch

Lost and found


And last but not least, the really nasty tick that was on Zach this morning...

I told him it was the most embedded tick I've ever seen. It was really in there. It's a deer tick (the kind that can transmit Lyme Disease) so it's being analyzed now and Zach will find out tomorrow if he needs to go on antibiotics. What would spring be in the northeast without a good tick scare?

Oh, and the one thing that I didn't get a picture of...the floater(ie, mouse) in the baby pool that sits in the back yard full of leaves and green water. Ginger had a romp in it today so I went back to investigate the conditions of the pool. And there is was. Oh yuck. I almost spewed all over the place. My mom was here at the time and she's even worse about stuff like that, so I told her that I wish Stella was here. Stella wouldn't be afraid of it. She'd come right over and pull that thing out with her bare hand. But we've got word that she'll be back from the long winter in just a couple days. Jacob is more excited about that than Christmas!

We're heading up north in the morning and won't be back until Sunday. I'm hoping when we get home she'll already be here. Kind of like when you get up to go to the bathroom in a restaurant and when you come back to the table your food has arrived.

The Facts of Life

Not for the faint of heart of weak-stomached.
---------------------------------------------

On Saturday I had plans to take Jacob to Keene Pumpkinfest like I do every year, but I couldn't get anyone to go with me and I was apathetic about going alone. So we lingered here at home for a little too long and the passage of time alone sort of ruled out Keene as an option. So instead, Jacob and I opted to go to a familiar town about halfway between here and there. I was upstairs putting the finishing touches on my face when Jacob yelled up that there was a deer in the road. He tells some tall tales a lot so I didn't believe him at first. Then he said it was laying in the road, so I peaked out the upstairs window where I could see traffic stopped. Then I ran downstairs in time to see the deer struggle to get up, stagger into our driveway and cross over to Stella's lawn. I must have gone to yell to Zach - although he tells me he was at the window by then, so maybe I just filtered it out of my memory. After that the deer disappeared.

A bunch of cars were stopped all along the highway, and people were getting out of their cars. I was already crossing the lawn with the phone in my hand, but at that point I couldn't think straight enough to remember who it was you should call in a situation like that. It was apparent that someone had already called the police so Zach, Jacob and I just kind of stood around on the front lawn trying to figure out what to do. Eventually we realized that someone Zach knows from work was pulled over on the side of the road, so he went over to talk to him and I took Jacob to knock on Stella's door just incase she didn't already know what was going on. Everyone had assumed that the deer had run off into the woods, but when we rounded the corner the deer was right there, sitting on the side of Stella's driveway.

It was startling and it was beautiful. I've never been that close to a deer in the wild. He just looked at us and appeared as if he could just be hanging out.

Up until that point it hadn't occurred to me that anything would have to be done. I guess I just naively thought that he got a little knocked around and would be fine, maybe need to be rehabilitated. This is how childlike I am in my awe of nature and all things belonging to nature. For a split second I had visions of us nursing it back to health in our backyard, etc, etc.

Since Stella wasn't home we went back to our house and I reported to Zach and his friend that the deer was still there. The friend said they'd have to 'put it out of its misery' and walked with me while I pointed out the deer, and then back to our lawn again. It was clear that we'd been in some mode of packing or unpacking so he asked us, "Are you coming or going?" He suggested that we try to leave as soon as we could, "because it's probably going to be a gunshot," he said motioning toward Jacob with his chin. I was stunned. I hadn't realized that they'd have to put the deer down. And in the minute between realizing that and hearing that it would be by gun, I was imagining a soft, peaceful injection with people petting the deer and cooing sweetly to it, just like at the vet's. I guess I was just in shock and the rational part of my brain was taking a temporary vacation.

Zach and I kind of looked at each other and panicked. We hurried inside, where the house reeked of smoke (Jacob's forgotten grilled cheese still in the grilling process) and set about to finish packing what Jacob and I would need for our day trip. We rushed out the front door but no sooner were the words "Oh shit" coming out my mouth and I was grabbing Jacob by one arm, lifting him into the air and back into the house. I could see two police officers getting into position on Stella's back lawn, but thankfully a low bush was blocking the thing they were forming around because as far as Jacob is concerned that was the sound of a car backfiring.

They fired two shots before we could get back inside, and another two before I could make it to the depth of the house, closing Jacob in the bathroom with me. I'm grateful he didn't ask why we were in the bathroom, but he's not dumb, I'm pretty sure he has a hunch - a good enough hunch to know that he doesn't want to know; the same way I don't want to know what's on the evening news.

They kept firing shots, and I could swear it numbered in the dozens, but Zach says it was only eight. I still think he's wrong. It really is just like they say with witnesses to crimes. Psychological studies show that witnesses are frequently completely off on blatant details you would normally be right on with given an ordinary circumstance. We had no choice, and I couldn't keep sitting in the driveway, so we chanced it and made a run for the car as they were reloading or something. Then we made our way down the street to hear the last of the bullets.

Zach was already late for work, but I guess he had to stick around to speak with the officer because Stella wasn't home. He got the awful details of what went down. He reported to me that since it was the weekend no one from the DEC was available. They would normally come with a rifle which would be a more humane (?) way of 'taking care of it'. Instead the officer only has a little hand gun to work with. And so the deer, while being repeatedly impaled with bullets, kept getting up in an attempt to run away. I can't even deal with that information. I wish Zach hadn't told me that detail, but I guess like me, he needed to purge himself of the wretchedness. After the job was done, they left the deer there. Zach was informed that it was Stella's responsibility to remove the deer since it was on her property. Doesn't matter that the deer way hit on the highway, it staggered into Stella's yard, so it's hers to deal with. That's such bull shit. Between Zach calling the station and telling them there's no way an 85 year old woman was going to be able to deal with that, and some other magic, the deer was removed but we still don't know by whom.

Before the police left though, they walked Zach over to where the deer ended up so he would know to alert Stella. He said that the deer looked peaceful. I don't know if that's true or not, but I'm choosing to believe it.

I can't get past the whole deer thing. It's just so senseless. He didn't even look that banged up. He looked strong and marvelous and there's no reason for the violent way he was killed. I'm sure I must sound crazy to most people for talking about a deer this way. But that is me. I love all animals, value their lives just as much as humans (who are just another kind of animal) and I am extremely sensitive. I find myself just standing there at the front door, or in the driveway on my way to get the mail, frozen in place, watching it happen over again. I don't feel sorry for myself, or even Jacob who saw the deer get hit. I did feel bad for the police officer and for the man who hit the deer. I feel terrible for the deer, for the way he had to die and the fear that must have been pulsing through him.

I did feel bad for the man until Zach told me what a dick he was. He never once ventured over to see the deer, to make sure it was ok. All he did was stand there and bitch about how much it was going to cost to fix his car and how much his insurance was going to go up. I can't stand people like that, who treat animals as if they are a nuisance - ever think we're the nuisance?

So the one thing that makes me feel better about hating this guy, but is also the most saddening thing about it: Zach told me later, when the guy was getting out of his car, he accidentally put his hand in the deer crap that was smeared on his car. Nothing says ass hole like that.

Crochity, Cantankerous and Ornery

Meet the three dwarves they don't like to talk about.

Those are the words of the day. I didn't start using ornery on Jacob until later in the day when all my reserves of patience had been used up, but don't you know, once I did he repeated the word back to me perfectly. Now every time I tell him no to something he's gonna point and tell me to stop being ornery.

Early this morning Jacob and I were awoken by Stella pounding away on something metal in her back yard, for what purpose other than to wake us, I have no idea. When we went out to walk the dogs, she started to come over and I said to Jacob, loud enough for her to hear, "Look, it's the alarm clock lady." She didn't like that. She wanted her caulk back. I guess she'd asked Zach to caulk something for her the other day and he hadn't quite gotten around to it yet. She said, "That's the last time I'll ask him to do something for me." I want to believe she meant it like, the poor dear, he is so busy, I shan't trouble him like that. But I can't avoid the fact that it came out more like, rotten, ungrateful neighbors can't even help an old lady...

The she told me how the back neighbor mowed down the field behind her house for her and how she joked with him that if other people aren't going to help take care of it, then he'd better put up a no-trespassing sign. I laughed and started to walk away and Stella stopped me one more time. "Don't you pick up their crap?"

"Oh, well, if they go in the woods, like where no one walks then I don't, but if they go on someone's lawn..." I trailed off cuz she didn't look happy.

"Well where's your bag?" She demanded.

"Um...it's in my pocket." I lied and walked quickly away before she could see I was sorely lacking pockets.

I was so bleary-eyed from not yet having coffee that it took me a minute to realize by bringing up Zach's inaction in the caulking department, and the neighbor's activity in the mowing department, she was making a clear distinction - Us:Bad, Neighbors:Good. And when she joked about the no-trespassing sign, she was threatening me with expulsion from her land should my husband fail to be the fix-it man next time her roof starts leaking. Geeze, whatever happened to simply loaning a cup of sugar from time to time? She may be all of those words, but boy is she good.

Just Call Me Tracey

I was reading on another blog last night about a mom who has this neighbor, who after two years still calls the son by the dog's name...hehe. So I mentioned last week that Stella calls me Tracey. She's never called me by my actual name. In the beginning it was clear that she really didn't realize my name is Stacey. It made me mad and I tried all the time to correct her, in subtle ways. She knows my name is Stacey, she's got to. I'll call her up and Identify myself, or Zach will reference me in conversation. Who the hell does she think is Stacey if not me? And what's up with Tracey? To all you people who aren't named Stacey, it might sound like pretty much the same thing, just a wee bit different. To me though, it evokes a completely different image, a completely different person, not remotely like who I am.

Anyway, it doesn't bother me anymore. I like it now. It's endearing and it's our 'thing'. It's just funny when she introduces me to people, as she did yesterday with one of our other neighbors. This lady, Ann, looked at me and said, "Hi Tracey, nice to meet you." and it was totally weird. That lady is always going to think of me as a Tracey and I feel like it's going to change the way people look at me. What must she think about me? Tracey is just such a random name (random in a good way, incase anyone reading this is Tracey, or Tracy, or Tracie...). So here I am as Tracey, random, boring, blah. Weird. And don't tell me that you don't draw an immediate impression of someone based on their name. It's interesting though, I can completely reinvent myself if I want. I can go with the Tracey thing and be different than I am. I can ask myself each step of the way, "What would Tracey do?"

Back to Stella though...where is she coming from with this? What is her point in mis-naming me? Maybe she has some hidden wisdom, and she's trying to give me the gift of a second identity, one I can escape to when the stay-at-home mom woes are too much to bear. Perhaps Tracey is the name of the daughter she always dreamed of having, so rather than creating an alternative universe for me, she living out one of her own. Or might there have been a Stacey she grew up with who was a bitch? It could be she doesn't approve of my name, just like she won't give her blessing to the vegetarian thing or the homeschooling thing. Maybe she's just testing me, seeing how long she can get away with it, sitting at home right now, laughing and wondering how, in almost four years, I haven't yet realized she's been calling me Tracey.

Stella!

No, I'm not doing a Marlon Brando impersonation. I'm referring to my next-door neighbor, Stella. What can I say about her? She's quite a character. Everybody should know a Stella. Maybe you have one of your own, but she's called Betty, or Mary, or whatever it is they were naming the babies 80 years ago. Stella is a feisty kind of lady, I think they actually invented the word to describe her. The type who grew up during the Great Depression, has lived alone for more than a dozen years, has been in the same town all her life and has the stories to prove it.

When I asked her if it was ok to use her name on here, she started spelling it for me. I think she would like me to write a book about her...somebody probably should because this lady has stories! I love to hear about how everything we can see from our house used to be farmland, and how there's an ancient Freihofer's truck burried in our back yard. I want so badly to dig up the yard just to see, and thinking about it now...I want her to be right. When it comes to who lived in which houses and during what years, Stella knows it all. But her favorite topic is neighborhood gossip (not that we have a neighborhood). She's a walking soap opera. I'm not going to detail any of it here, but the stuff she comes up with is pretty outrageous.

My favorite story about Stella happened a couple years ago just after her son had taken her ladder away because she was climbing it to the roof to clean out the gutters. Like that was going to stop her. Any reasonable person would give up and leave the gutters to a teenager looking for odd jobs.

So one morning I was getting the mail and I saw a butt coming out of the third story attic window. No lie. I was really very curious so I stood there watching and soon a pair of legs appeared. Then a torso strongly resembling the one belonging to Stella. And when her head cleared the window frame it was confirmed. I don't think I need to say anything more here, just close your eyes and picture it for a minute.

I wanted to yell up to her, but I was more than a little afraid that I would startle her and she'd fall to the ground right before my very eyes. I did anyway, and told her to get down from there. She refused on account of something up top needed attending to. After I was done with the scolding I decided it was too painful to watch so what could I do but go inside and cross my fingers. Later that day Stella came over to have a laugh about it and begged me to not tell her son what I had witnessed. Every once in a while something reminds Jacob of this incident, he laughs to himself and shakes his saying "Stehwa was on the roof!" This is how much we have told the story, Jacob actually thinks he remembers it.

Stella comes over a lot. She just shows up at the door. Now that we've got a front door with a window, I sometimes walk around the corner to see a face pressed to the glass, hands cupped around the temples, and it scares the hell out of me for a second or two before I realize who it is. Or I'll be in the other room and I hear the faint twisting of the door knob. My brain goes into overdrive, "Where's the phone? Call 911! Go get a knife...no, a big one." It just kills me! And I mean this in a funny sort of way. She knows I keep the door locked at all times. Is she trying to send me a message? Is she just testing me? "Good, your door was locked. That's the way it should be."

Mostly she catches me just out of the shower, or still in my pajamas. Today was the latter. In she came, fresh from her backyard where she'd been doing some heavy-duty yard work. "Just a little break." she said. I had been on my way out to the car when Stella got here, so I carried on with getting the stroller out to the trunk and came right back in. I was out of the house for less than a minute, and when I opened the door I saw the two of them on the floor singing the ABC's. Then they did some counting. "I think I know what's going on here," I thought.

Ever since I told her this past spring that Jacob is going to be homeschooled, she's been acting strange at times. "You going to go to school soon?" she asked Jacob. "No, we're going to give homeschooling a try," I interjected. "You're what?" looking at me like I had three heads. I explained, she still didn't get it. Then, turning to Jacob, she said "Nooo, you don't want to stay at home. You want to go to school like all the other kids, don't you?" In all her meddling, this is the only time I ever actually got mad. "Stella! You're not allowed to do that, to say those things to him!" I fired back. She didn't come back over for a long time after that.

When she did start coming back, it was a complete 180. She'd play it totally cool and act like she was hip to homeschooling thing. I think she knew that she crossed the line that day and was trying to make up for it. So now when she's here, it's tutor time or something? Like she's personally responsible for his at-home learning.

Jacob loves it when she's here, and it's been a while since she's come in further than the entry way, so he got so excited to show off all the new toys and the work that's been done in the bathroom. "Here, I'll show oou, pum on Stehwa, I'll show oou the bathroom." This is becoming on of his trademark phrases, "here, I'll show oou." And it's so damn cute.

After a bit Stella decided it was time to go so she asked Jacob to help her up off the floor. I joked around with her by asking what she'd do if she was home alone and couldn't get up. I told her she needed one of those emergency buttons to wear around her neck. She said, "I have one, I just don't wear it." That's our Stella, such a rebel.