Light and Momentary

Found!

Remember our missing turtle? My 10yo came running up the basement stairs today, crying and shouting, "Joe! Joe! JOE! Turtle's alive!"

Turtle survived a month in our basement, either in pseudo-hibernation or else stealthily eating occasional crickets and drinking from the AC drain hose (eek) while staying out of sight.

We refilled her empty tank (only not so full this time) and plopped her in.

I think she looks a little ticked at being back in captivity.

Starting Out

So I have a job. It's a half-time postdoc based at the university an hour away. In the past they've had trouble filling this position, because who wants to slog through a PhD program only to land a part-time no-benefits low-status job?

Me me me! Sign me up, please -- it sounds perfect.

Postdocs are usually extremely flexible. I have a short list of things I have to do to keep the faculty happy, and a long list of things I can do if I'd like to. I've ordered a couple of statistics books, because I'd like to learn multivariate stats and structural equation modeling. I'm going to get my dissertation and my early research project submitted for publication. I have an idea for a study I'd like to run. And I have a bunch of stuff on my "possibilities" list that I'll talk over with one of my mentors tomorrow.

While I was a student, I didn't spend much time away from Stella. I'll be away more now, but I'm optimistic that it won't stress her out too much. I have a local college student who's coming to our house two mornings a week for three hours at a stretch. This week I stayed here the whole time, so that she and Stella could get comfortable together, but in the future I may send them to the library or go to a coffee shop myself. On those days I'll also work through Stella's nap -- when the house is quiet, she reliably naps for two hours plus. Once a week I'll spend the day on campus while Stella stays with a family I know in that town. I'll be able to pop over at naptime and nurse her down. Every other week I'll spend another morning over on campus while Elwood stays here with Stella.

This week I have been dusting off my early research project ("In Which Jamie Gets Creative With Logistic Regression And Wonders If Anyone Will Notice") and doing matrix algebra problems in preparation for the arrival of my multivariate book. I am SO glad I wrote those R posts, even though they were probably pretty boring for everybody else.

I'm wondering if I should create a "Work" category, or if it's universally a bad idea to blog about work. I think you'd have to work at it to get fired from a postdoc. I hope so, at any rate.

Fitting In

I never fit in when I was in school. I had crazy red hair and thick glasses. We moved around a lot, so that between first and seventh grade I went to six different schools. And the trouble with being a kid who liked to read about offbeat things was never knowing what was offbeat. Sometimes I would say, "Hey, have you guys heard about [insert common knowledge topic here]?" and get a "yeah, duh" response; other times I would say, "That's just like [insert offbeat topic here]" and hear the uncomfortable silence that meant I'd done it again.

I am uncomfortable even writing about being a smart kid. Part of me thinks it's immodest to write about being smart -- the same part of me that wonders if it should go back and edit a couple of recent posts. (It could be construed as boastful to say that I need a better dictionary in my Kindle, or that I like to do math in my head, or that my kids like to read about physics.) Part of me still thinks it's dumb that I spent so much time trying to pass as one of the average kids. If I'd been good at basketball, would I ever have felt ashamed of standing out on the court? Why is it different to stand out in the classroom?

One of my kids came home from the first day of school and said, "I made a mortal enemy today." I responded cautiously: "Oh, yeah?" "Yeah," he said, "this kid named Dustin. We were picking table names and I suggested 'Cesium and the Franciums.' So he said to everybody, 'Raise your hand if you like 'Rock Band' and want to kick that kid.' And so I said, 'If you want our table to be called 'Rock Band,' then explain the quantum wave function collapse.'"

Guess what their table is called. Hint: not Cesium and the Franciums.

This son seems to have embraced his identity. He's smart. Deal with it. (He okayed this post, just in case you wondered.) It's good to embrace your identity, right? It's not, alas, that simple. When is it showing off versus just being who you are? What if it gets in the way of having a big (or even medium-sized) circle of friends?

I just don't know.

My experience of school was reminiscent of Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge, where the tallest blades of wheat got their heads snicked off. This was a huge part of why I homeschooled my older kids. Even if you homeschool, though, the kids have to figure it out eventually. How much do you try to fit in? How much do you just opt to be who you are?

Experiences? Advice? This is still a tender spot for me, so please be kind. ;-)

Newton the Knitter

One of my boys wants to be a physicist. I asked him the other day what he thought he'd like to be for Halloween and he said, "The Higgs boson."

He was critiquing his younger brother's plan to cause some mayhem in their Lego world and he said, "That's a violation of Newton's first law." The brother, predictably, said, "What?"

"Inertia," came the explanation. The brother said, "What?"

They cycled through again. "Inertia." "What?"

I could see a trace of uncertainty in my future physicist's face, the way a person looks when he wonders if he's mangled an unfamiliar word. (I used to think I should say ASK-ance (rhymes with Haskins) and AW-ry (rhymes more or less with story).) He tried again. "Intarsia. Objects in motion tend to stay in motion."

Such are the hazards of chatting with your mother the knitter about the socks she's making. In Newton's alternate laws, #2 and #3 will address Fair Isle and entrelac.

Seven Quick Takes: Escapist Edition

It's the last day of summer. On Monday my kids go back to school and on Tuesday I start my postdoc. Which makes it only sort of the last day of summer -- there's still the weekend -- but it's our last lazy lounge-y weekday. I am having a serenity FAIL, so let me tell you about my summer non-Dickens reading instead of indulging my stressballness.

1. For my 40th birthday, my husband gave me a Kindle. I am by nature a late adopter and I would never, but never, have bought myself a Kindle. I said thanks rather wanly, and was surprised to discover that I love the thing. I love being able to look up words and references painlessly as I go. The built-in dictionary is pretty limited, and if I am stumped by a word it probably will be too, but it's unexpectedly satisfying to have internet access to answer questions on the spot. Pages load fairly slowly, which keeps me from getting sidetracked by link-chaining as I often do with a speedy connection. I also love the highlight function, since I am an inveterate turner-downer of pages and underliner of favorite quotes. This lets me keep them all in one place, with a search function. I also like seeing other people's highlights; it gives me a cozy feeling to be visibly part of a community of readers. And (this one is kind of embarrassing) I love the bar at the bottom that shows me how far along I am. Whenever I read a book I am constantly calculating how far I am into it. The Kindle does it for me and I never have to pause at a tender moment to divide 148 by 567 in my head. 

2. Good Books About Smart Misfit Kids. The first book I read on the Kindle was The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie, which was so, SO much fun. It's reminiscent of Agatha Christie, but chiefly because of its setting. I can't remember when I've enjoyed a character more than Flavia de Luce; I'm glad she's going to have her own series. In real-book format I read a couple of other books that fit this same theme: Born on a Blue Day, a memoir by a man with Asperger's, and The Last Samurai, which my husband picked out for me at the used bookstore. I thought I would just read the first few chapters to be polite but then I gobbled up all 500 pages with intemperate glee. (Are you noticing a theme here, about my husband and his right-on gifts?)

3. Another Book About Smart Misfit Kids. Oh my goodness, I hated The Magicians. For most of the book I could handle the bleakness because it kept looking like there were bits of hope for the main character. The writing is really good too, and I could sympathize with Quentin, a smart loner who grew up loving a fictional series of books about a fantasy world. And then -- this is sort of a spoiler, but then the endpapers are sort of a spoiler -- there is a hideous plot twist. It's as if you went to Narnia and it was a land of anomie and despair. Even worse -- (this bit is definitely spoiler-y so I'm changing the font color; just highlight with your mouse if you want to read it) it's as if the Pevensies had transformed Narnia into a land of anomie and despair. At this point I was 400 pages in, so I kept plugging. The tacked-on implausible ending made me want to fling it across the room.

4. Books About Unexpected Mercy. A Severe Mercy had been on my TBR list for years and I finally got to it this summer. Lit turned into one of those books that I kept seeing everywhere I turned until I finally bought it for my Kindle. (That free sample thing could be dangerous. Pushers everywhere know how to get their customers hooked, I guess.) I am struggling here to say something non-cliched about these books and coming up empty. Gripping. Funny (Lit, not A Severe Mercy.). They reminded me that God is bigger than I tend to think He is. In particular, the blue-chalk Bible story in Lit sent shivers down my spine. (Typing that reminds me of another thing I like about the Kindle: the search function. You can use it for purposes both pragmatic and petty -- when you can't remember, say, which character Joe is, or when you think to yourself, "Didn't he just use that selfsame obscure word in the last chapter?")

5. Easy Reads, Good and Bad. I find Joshilyn Jackson's books both hilarious and un-put-down-able, and so I was looking forward to the release of Backseat Saints. It did not disappoint. I also enjoyed Lady's Hands, Lion's Heart, a midwife's memoir reviewed here. Back in June I picked up Commencement on a whim. Quick read, dreadful book; included here only for the sake of completeness.

6. Fascinating and Scary. I read Fruitless Fall on Lissa's recommendation. Loved it, even as I was horrified by it. Highly recommended to anyone with the slightest interest in food and eating. I'm still kicking around the idea of tucking a hive of bees into a corner of our backyard, though I suspect the neighbors would grouse. (Also perhaps my husband and children would grouse.)

7. Kid Read-Alouds. I read Watership Down to my three middle kids this summer. It was a bit of a battle, with one complaining that it was too boring, one begging to read more, and one who was a bit too young for it but who didn't want to be left out. Well worth the effort, though. I had to stop for a minute to cry during the epilogue ("...the stranger's ears were shining...") and they all piled in around me, patting me and saying, "Mom! Mom, it's okay! Don't cry, Mom!" Lovely memories. Now we're three chapters into Treasure Island, which has been easier so far.

More quick takes here.

Planned Obsolescence

After you're pregnant, then you have a baby.

Fourteen years ago this summer I was pregnant with my oldest son. Four of my friends were also expecting their first babies that summer. When I went to visit my friend Vivian in the hospital I was floored to see that her belly had yielded up an actual...baby, with limbs and hair and a heartbreakingly beautiful fringe of black eyelashes. It's elementary biology, of course -- after you're pregnant, then you have a baby. The assiduity with which I had been reading What To Expect and The Baby Book would have led an observer to believe I was on top of the basics, but such an observer would have been wrong. Who knew? I was growing not just a bulge but a person. The intransitive "I'm expecting" had acquired a direct object: suddenly I was expecting eyelashes.

After you have a baby, then you have a toddler.

Today I met an acquaintance at the park, someone I'd last seen when Stella was a dark-haired infant sleeping peacefully in the crook of my arm. These days she has blond curls that spill across her shoulders, and the gleam in her eye coupled with the set of her jaw should serve as a caution to the observant: she is a force to be reckoned with. She has strong opinions and a favorite video and it's a bit of a stretch for me to call her "the baby" now.

Then you have a preschooler, and then it's time for school.

Tonight Petely and Stella and I took a long walk, down the bike trail and home through the neighborhood. We passed by his preschool and he got wistful. "I wish I could go there instead of kindergarten," he said. "It was a really fun place, wasn't it?" I answered. "You know, though, you've learned everything they teach kids there. I bet you'll have a lot of fun in kindergarten." Pete is on the small side, gray-eyed and sweet-tempered. His backpack, overloaded with school supplies, makes him look like an overly ambitious hermit crab. When I started this blog he was younger than Stella is now. 

Then you have a teenager.

My oldest son left the country without me last week. It's not, of course, as if he ran away from home. He's on a ten-day Scout trip, fishing on the Canadian side of the Boundary Waters. Still: I have a child who's old enough to leave the country without me. I keep butting my head up against this reality like a mama cow at the fence, complaining about being separated from her weaning calf. I know, logically, that this is the goal-- to teach them to get around in the world without my help. But it's a hard goal, a bittersweet goal.

See, I've never had a job before where my goal was to obsolesce. Always before, I wanted to offer something unique, something they'd find tough to replace. I wanted to be a little bit indispensable.

Motherhood's not like that. To be a mother is to make an openhanded offering of the best of yourself, to say, Here is most of what I know about making a way through the world. Wouldn't you like to learn it? How to wipe your nose. How to change a light bulb. How to chop an onion. How to say, "I was wrong; I'm sorry." How to pray for your enemies. How to seek God in all things.

I'm better at chopping onions. Oh, God, make me the mother they need me to be.

After you have a teenager, then you have an adult.

This post was prompted by two friends, both excited and wistful, who are sending their oldest daughters off to college tomorrow. One is coming to Gladlyville for school; the other is leaving. They will probably cross paths on the interstate. I am resolved to offer up my little-kid sufferings of the next few days, the wakeful toddler and the spilled milk, for those mothers and their daughters.

I will do so knowing it's not long until my turn: in five years my oldest son will be 18. I suspect I will look at the boy who once dazzled me with his eyelashes, and wonder when, exactly, he sprouted those wings.

How does your garden grow?

My neighbor ripped out the hideous bushes between our yards in the spring, and I put in a little garden that runs right down our family's side of the property line. I have been thinking that it would be a good idea to make some notes about what went well and what to do differently next year, and you, dear readers, are the victims of my compulsion lucky recipients of my acquired wisdom.

At the north end of the garden I put in a forsythia bush, because it seemed a little weird to me to have a vegetable garden so visible. Bah, I now say. Maybe if it were more obvious to people that a tomato grows in dirt instead of arising from the scum on supermarket shelves like a vegetal Venus, we wouldn't have so many crazy food issues in this country. I am moving the forsythia bush this fall so I can plant more veggies next year. (Any tips on when to do that without stressing it? I do love forsythia.)

I put in six tomato plants, three cherry and three plum. I couldn't believe, looking at my spindly seedlings, that I would really need to put them 3-4 FEET apart -- I just couldn't see ahead to the sprawling behemoths they would become. It's amazing, isn't it, to get all that life from one speck-sized seed? They are cranking out fruit, too, all six of them. I am going to pick up some tomato cages on clearance this fall, because the stakes-and-twine approach just didn't cut it. I practically need a machete to pick those tomatoes in the middle

In the spaces between baby tomato plants I put leeks, summer savory, and rosemary. Before next year I want to read up on herb gardening. Specifically, I'm wondering about putting all the herbs in the part-shade portion of my garden even though their packages say "full sun." My summer savory and my cilantro went to seed in about fifteen minutes.

Just south of the tomatoes, in the last bit of full sun, I put in six pepper plants: three Hungarian wax, three jalapeño. I should have split the jalapeño three-pack with my neighbor.

All of those things just went straight into the existing dirt. I also did a square-foot gardening bed, to which I added vermiculite, peat moss, and compost. (It was a hassle and I don't see a difference in the health of the plants in the bed.) There I planted radishes, peas, beets, carrots, onions, wax beans, green beans, mixed lettuce, and a half-dozen herbs. I will not regale you with every detail, lest you wander away to do something more interesting like watch an eggplant ripen, but here's the memo for next year: those green beans went berserk. They grew like kudzu, pulling down and devouring the pole tepee I put under them (I exaggerate only slightly -- it's a splintered wreck now). They killed the baby beets because they made so much shade. They need more space because by golly they are bent on garden-wide hegemony. I also want to plant more peas, so I can stand in the garden in June and eat them ALL ALL ALL like an off-the-wagon Twelve Stepper (it's really tough to find a Pea Addicts Anonymous meeting in this town), along with a second wave of those peppery juicy piercingly pink radishes.

The SFG bed is in part shade between our houses, and the shade deepens as the rooflines rise. In the southernmost end of the garden strip I planted zucchini (twice), chard, more onions, and rhubarb. Zucchini was a bust. (Who fails at zucchini?) I suspect something amiss with the seeds, since I never got one to sprout indoors or out. Chard, on the other hand, has been a roaring success, bearing all summer. Maybe next year I'll make it a chard-y lettuce-y bed and buy some different zucchini seeds. I'll need to move the onions, since months of growth got me only little almond-sized guys.

The rhubarb is an exercise in optimism: I should bake my first rhubarb pie in 2012. (I can probably harvest enough to fill out a strawberry-rhubarb pie next summer, though.) Next year I'd like to put in some asparagus, to aim even further into the future. I like the idea of planting something that will feed my children all those months from now. I don't know what we'll be doing when the rhubarb is ready, but I love to see its little leaves curling out, getting ready now for a future I can't see.

Goo goo g'joob

Today it's been four weeks since my fortieth birthday and I have slumped. Slumpity slumpity slump, like a lazy walrus soaking up the August sun. In the cornfields. A Midwestern kind of walrus.

My list of stuff to get done by July 19 was a little too ambitious, and I was glad not to have it hanging over my head for the past four weeks. HOWEVER. Things fall apart rapidly when I impersonate a Midwestern walrus, not least because my children complain that those whiskers tickle and my husband dislikes the way that the tusks get in his way when he is kissing me. There's the PAPER. The LAUNDRY. The GENERALLY UNRELENTING nature of managing a home occupied by five children.

One of the big successes of the spring for me was getting consistent about doing the morning tasks promptly every morning. I also have other task lists for myself (Flylady would call them routines but I'm riding a wave of anti-Flylady sentiment at the moment) and I am going to work on getting those done more consistently. If I fold a basket of laundry every day, it doesn't pile up. If I deal with a little bit of paper every day, the sight of my desk doesn't make me curl into a heap of blubbering blubber. (Sing it to the tune of Beautiful Dreamer, all you Judy Blume fans.) It's a cinch by the inch but hard by the yard, as somebody's grandpa once intoned.

The hardest part for me is the evenings. I am tired by the time dinner is on the table, and I cannot always muster the discipline to get those evening tasks done swiftly. But hey-- if I can get into the groove of getting the bathrooms wiped down six mornings a week, surely I can get into the groove of working with the boys to get the kitchen cleaned promptly after dinner. Right?

Aflame

Oh, my friends, it's a cautionary tale.

If you are a novice gardener, and if your jalapeno plants have been bearing little deep green peppers with just the right amount of kick, and if you spy a deep red pepper on one plant, and if a test nibble yields pleasing results--

--do not, DO NOT, bite off a big hunk and chew it contemplatively like a cow with a case of autopyromania.

Because if you do, even if you can pretty much keep up with the big kids when it comes to spicy food, you are going to regret that chewing as soon as the swallow is over. The contemplative chewing will yield to a decidedly uncontemplative post-swallow phase, in which you are consumed by one thought:

YOWZA.

Next you will think, "Huh, who knew there were that many pain receptors on the posterior pharyngeal wall?" (Or maybe you will only think that if you are an SLP.) You will drink a glass of milk slowly, because you've heard that the fat should help to disperse the fire. It turns out that throwing fat on the fire isn't helpful. You will eat a slice of bread, slowly, trying to sop up the incendiary pepper residue. Bread isn't particularly helpful either. You will wonder if anyone has invented a teeny fire extinguisher for this situation. 

You will wander over to the computer, tentatively feeling your stinging lips. You will wonder if there are any holes scorched in your mucous membranes or if it just feels that way. You will write a blog post that starts out "If you are a novice gardener..."

Pauper, Servus, et Humilis

On Monday one of the organists called me and said, "Hey, Jamie, could you sing at a 9:30 funeral on Wednesday?" I said, "Let me see if I can get a babysitter and I'll call you back." She said, "They want 'Panis Angelicus' for Communion." I said I thought I could swing it.

I picked up the music from her that afternoon, and we ran through Panis Angelicus a couple of times last night. The first time it went fairly smoothly, but the second time I goofed up in a couple of places. It's harder to count when there's a baby tugging at your leg and asking to be picked up. The organist left, saying we'd be fine, and I thought, "WHAT have I gotten myself into?"

I was a stressball this morning. I was worried that the 9am adorer wouldn't show and I'd be stranded in the chapel waiting for a sub after my Adoration hour was over. I was worried that the babysitter would oversleep instead of meeting the kids and me in the parking lot at 9:05. I was mostly worried that I would hit some crazy wrong note (or five) and make a mess of the specially requested music for this poor guy's funeral.

But it mostly went fine. As I stepped up to the ambo to cantor the psalm I thought, "I cannot do this." I plunged in anyway, because what choice did I have? --none, and started smiling because Ps. 23 always makes me smile. "It's a funeral," I told myself. "You shouldn't be smiling at a funeral."

It's probably not a big deal to smile at Psalm 23, funeral or no.

The introduction to Panis Angelicus triggered my arrhythmia, worse than it's been in a long time. I thought, "UGH, I should have remembered my beta blocker this morning. Am I going to be able to handle the breathing for this piece if my heart is flying like this?" But one of the priests had come back to distribute communion to the Legion of Mary ladies who come to funerals and sing the congregation's parts, and I thought, "I am just going to sing this for Jesus, the best I can, and let him worry about the details."

The angelic bread becomes the bread of men. The heavenly bread puts an end to prefigurements. O marvelous thing: a servant, poor and humble, feeds upon the Lord.

It's a lovely piece. I think it went well.

Pass the Geritol

Yesterday:

I am telling my 13yo about the first computer classes I took. For some reason we had to read this cartoon history of computers and be tested on things like Charles Babbage and punch cards.

"Punch cards?" he exclaimed. "Did you really start writing code using punch cards?"

"No," I said with a teeny eye roll. "And I never rode a pterodactyl to school either."

"Yeah," he answered thoughtfully. "Definitely would have been a woolly mammoth by that time."

***

Today:

I am tucking in the 5yo, very tired. I roll away to the edge of the bed and he says, "Mama? Turn back so I can see your pretty face." I melt a little inside and turn back to face him. He holds my face in his hands and says, "Your face is so pretty to me. And it doesn't look so old."

Only as old as a woolly mammoth, sweetheart.

Nursing covers are part of the problem

I hate nursing covers. I am cranky as all get-out today, so I am not going to insert any disclaimers like "I understand some women feel more comfortable blah blah whatever works for your family." No one here needs me to tell her to do what works for her family, am I right? So these are my shooting-from-the-hip objections:

1. Nursing covers are weird-looking. Aren't people more likely to stare at you if you're wearing an oversized floral apron around your neck? 


2. Nursing covers are one more THING to get in the way of peaceful outings with a new baby, one more $30 item to clutter up a baby registry. Going out? Don't forget the Boppy! Don't forget the Flap Happy! Don't forget the backwards superhero cape with the cutesy-poo elephant print! Puh, I say. Stick a diaper in your purse and hit the road.


3. Nursing covers don't really help uncomfortable observers to feel more comfortable. Most of our collective craziness about nursing arises from people's discomfort with the reality of breastfeeding: babies are sucking on women's nipples. There's also a frisson of "...and ACK I might see some nipple if I don't look away!" -- but my experiences lead me to believe that people object more strenuously to the idea of a baby nursing in public than to the visual of a baby nursing discreetly in public. And aren't people more likely to think you're doing something you need to hide if you act like it needs to be hidden?


4. In fact, nursing covers perpetuate the problems they're ostensibly designed to deal with. The way to get comfortable with breastfeeding is to be around breastfeeding. Maybe you can sit across the museum from the sweet sleepy baby whose mama is quietly nursing him. You can take the pew behind the wiggly baby who settles instantly when his mother lets him nurse. Here's the thing: you have to see it repeatedly for it to look normal to you. If it's hidden under a giant paisley hairdresser's smock, we're not any further forward.
   
   And -- AND AND AND -- the very names of these products convey Failure To Get The Concept. "Udder Covers." "Hooter Hiders." News flash, O foolish manufacturers: they are not udder covers, because lactating women are not and never will be cows. Don't even suggest that I'm a cow. And woe BETIDE the person who calls my breasts "hooters" -- but we should shell out perfectly good money to someone who seems to be stuck in junior high?

Harrumph, she said in her most curmudgeonly voice, while reminding you that all crabbiness herein is aimed at societal cluelessness and stoopid marketing departments rather than at any individual mothers. Also, happy World Breastfeeding Week.

PS Writing this post left me considerably less crabby and I googled Hooter Hiders because I thought I'd heard they had a new and less offensive name. Do you know what I found?? I found this. Women of America, I implore you: keep your lampshades at home. On your lamps.

Missing, Presumed Dead

We came back from ten days away to discover that Joe's pet turtle was missing. It was a sad homecoming.

I filled the tank a little fuller than usual because we were going to be away. My best guess is that Turtle was able to climb over the side because the water level was higher -- and then not able to find water once she escaped. The friend who stopped by to feed her didn't see her and assumed she was hiding inside her hollow plastic log.

We came home to a foul-smelling house (big miscommunication about how much food a turtle needs) and a turtle-less tank. My husband hauled the tank outside and hosed it out. We searched and searched -- no Turtle.

There is still a nasty smell right at the entrance to our office, but I cannot track it down. How can a turtle disappear? A turtle's not like a snake -- that shell is big and rigid. Was Turtle a secret alpinist? a pole vaulter? Did she light upon a wormhole to Dimension X? Did she tesser off to Camazotz?

I hope it wasn't Camazotz. Maybe Aunt Beast is taking good care of her.

I have this crazy hope that maybe she's just lurking somewhere. Turtles hibernate, right? They shut down all through the winter and don't need food or water? I am wondering if she might have tried to go down in the basement, sensing the dampness. Could she have tumbled through the basement steps into the box of winter things below?

The three middle kids cried and cried last night. Joe said, "I wish we could at least bury her."

I do too.