Once again, I've placed an Etsy order.  I can't wait for these beauties to arrive.  Because I find the site quite daunting, I always default to ordering from this same woman, whose taste I share.  You can find her url in the archives under 'pretty things' in my first Etsy post.  She's over-the-top generous and usually includes some bonus 'treat' or other in the package.

If you are an Etsy oldie and aren't such an online shopping chicken as I, please let me know in the comments section which Etsy sites you've come to know and love.  I'd love to be fast-tracked to gorgeous-ness!  But in the meantime, feast your eyes on these:

This is a post I've suspected I need to write for some time now.  I hate to, though.  So very much.  In fact, my heart quails at the thought of it.  That's because I'm a terrible marketer.  However, the fact remains that my dream is to someday become a published author.  Those lovely ones of you out there who continue to read these self-centered little meanderings fuel me to keep trying.

Some time ago the JoyBoy mentioned that he thought that when the time comes for me to begin to send out the finished book manuscript, it would help tangibly for me to be able to include the little tidbit to the various would-be publishers that I've somehow-or-other accumulated a blog following.  He thought it would be all the more impressive if it were to be a large blog following.  Can you hear me cringing here in my kitchen as I type?

The long and short of it is that I was hoping that those of you who find that Joy Is So Yellow adds something meaningful to your lives would consider passing along the internet address and your recommendation to your loved ones.  I'd be ever so grateful.  The one other thing that I'd ask is that if you're one of those who know who I am in non-cyber life (thanks Facebook!), you'd not mention my real-life identity.  I find I'm able to write so much more freely if I know that I'm writing for mostly strangers.  It helps me to let 'er rip all the more easily.  And don't you want me to be able to let 'er rip?

I'd be so grateful.  Thanks for continuing to read.  It means a lot to me.

Each time I darken the door of the bowling alley, I wonder why it is that I don't come here more often.  I love this place and I love bowling.  Over the weekend, the JoyFam and I darkened away.

We paid the very reasonable lane rental fee and sat down to replace our street shoes with what we all agreed were the coolest shoes in the Universe.  We also all agreed that we'd secretly like to steal our bowling shoes, only we restrained ourselves.  We thought it might look fishy if six pair went missing all at once.   As the kids and I compared newly hippified feet, JoyBoy furtively went to register our names with the teenaged boy at the front counter.  To our great, noisy mirth, we looked up at the screen to see that the kids were dubbed Manstink, Tugboat, Bologna and Bill for all the bowling world to see.  JoyBoy, interestingly enough, had his regular old name and I was shackled with my childhood moniker of Jench.  As in Jench the Wench for those of you not in the know.  The uncomprehending teenaged boy at first spelt Manstink as Mansink, so JoyBoy had to yell out a correction from across the alley to Anabel's combined horror and delight.

I went first and confidently shot a strike.  Wait a minute.  Does one 'shoot' in bowling?  I think what I meant to say is that I bowled a strike.  Anyway, exultation rocketed straight to my head, rendering me stunningly overconfident and my game devolved from there.  There were no more strikes for me for the rest of the hour. 

The hero of the hour was Bill, or Oliver as you'll know him.  He was, to our surprise and great  hilarity, an excellent bowler.  We laughed and laughed as the seven-year-old trounced us all, over and over again.  Each time he'd throw/shoot/wing another excellent shot, he'd dance around in merry triumph, tiny arms pumping high above his bespectacled head.  His little chicken legs clad in his little skinny jeans gyrating about in lordly joy made our time worth every penny just in and of itself.   O my goodness did we laugh at Bill and his bowling triumphs.

The other kids were pretty good too, which I'm quite sure makes us a family of geeks.   Of course, it helps tremendously that we insist upon having the bumpers down, thus eliminating any gutter balls that would most certainly plague us otherwise.    We also have no real problem with lofting.

The JoyBoy was a highly inelegant Second Placer.  With not an iota of humility, he'd dance around in a superiority-induced frenzy, yelling out things like sucka!  you pack of suckas!  as he swung his hips about in a very in-your-face fashion.  Have I ever mentioned that JoyBoy has taught me a lot about parenting?  Part way through our terrifically loud game, another family rented the lane right next to us.  In their ranks were three little children, all under the age of what looked to be 8.  These little children appeared to never have seen anything like us.  They stared and they stared.  They didn't smile back at us when we attempted same because, I think, they were frightened.  For fear of alarming them further, we tried to tone it down a bit.  I mean, we didn't want to look like freaks or anything.  Goodness knows we wouldn't want to malign our true nature.  Our hour came to a close shortly thereafter.   We're going again next week.

Mesmerized, I watched an unexpected dynamic unfold at the senior's home.   I very nearly couldn't take my eyes off the scene.  A mean girl reigned supreme. 

It reminded me of middle schoolers, vying for social status, self-esteems too trampled to care what means they used to achieve the social significance they slavered after.  Those that hurt the most so clearly hurt the most, you know?  

We'll say that her name was Elma (it wasn't) and in describing her, we'll say that if you ignored the pinched expression on her face, she looked like someone's beloved grandma (perhaps she is).  She had sweetly curled white hair and round spectacles with pretty gold chains securing them to her person for fear, I assume, of misplacing them.  She wore a warm purple cardigan and elasticized slacks, as surely all good grandmas do at times, and she was significantly more mobile than most of the rest of the ladies I met that day.  Perhaps this no-doubt-coveted mobility was a key to her supremacy over some of the more mild-mannered ladies there.  Perhaps mobility is to life in a senior's home what name brand clothing is to life in a middle school.  Most of what you read so far is speculation.  What I can say for sure, though, is that the way she treated some of the other ladies reminded me very much of how my children act immediately prior to a time-out here at home.  Unkind is a word that springs to mind.  Bossy is another.  And tattling.

My first job of the day was to go to the laundry room and wheel a big bin of freshly washed towels and face cloths to the TV room.  When I'd sorted the laundry into manageable piles onto a table I had set up earlier, the ladies began to congregate.  I was interested to learn that they (or most of them, anyway) love to do work like this.  It's a way where they can contribute and feel useful.  As we chatted in loud voices to make ourselves heard by everyone, Elma began to critique.  She didn't like the way certain other ladies were folding.  I ignored her and chatted obliviously.  Elma then ramped her strategy up a notch and her voice raised discontentedly.  She looked at me and said She's doing it all wrong!  We don't do it that way!  It's all wrong!  I was fascinated to note that she looked to me as an authority figure of sorts, even though I was a mere volunteer, and brand new at that.  But even as a green, green rookie, I could see that she was genuinely upset and I felt a pang of remorse that I had discounted her concerns so immediately.  Her voice rose further in a plaintive helplessness and I began to see that maybe the perfect folding of the laundry helped her to carve out some meaning and some order to her existence here.  I began to see that  mean-spiritedness wasn't the only thing at work.  I comforted her in the way that I used to shush a fussy baby pressed close to my chest in a snuggly and said, It's ok, Elma.  It's ok.  Don't worry.  I'll show Margie how to do it your way.  It's ok.  My heart was touched to see that this approach seemed to connect with her and that she calmed.  Her powerlessness was palpable.

Later I served tea and coffee and Elma yelled out emphatic orders every step of the way.  The cups aren't in that cupboard.  No!  Those cups are special.  You can't use those.  She's not allowed to have two cookies.  Don't let her!  Honestly, it was all I could do not to laugh right out loud.  As they finished up with their refreshments, she announced aggressively to the other quiet ladies in the room I'm going to the chapel now.  You should too.  Bertha, are you coming?  Marta, come along!  When I told her we weren't slated to do our exercise class in the chapel for another 15 minutes, she responded that she needed to warm her chair.  I thought she was showing a promising flash of humor and immediately leapt at the chance to lighten things up a bit.  I laughed and she very scornfully lashed out I'm not kidding.  Those chairs are cold, you know! 

Ah.  It's going to be fun.  I truly can't wait.

I've mentioned to you that one of my New Year's resolutions is to volunteer in a senior's home this year.  I've now jumped through most of the myriad hoops required in order to do so.  Though the hoops are time, energy and even money consuming, I'm pleased to know that they exist.  The seniors I'll be working with are easily hurt and the  hoops are in place to insure that no one takes advantage of these lovely, lonely people.

Tomorrow, I’m to go to the senior’s home for the first time to volunteer.  I feel many things as I think about it.  First and foremost, I feel excitement as this is something I’ve wanted incorporate into my life for several years now.  Second, I feel some disappointment, as the volunteer coordinator has slotted me in a position I find to be quite ironic.  I’ll be folding laundry alongside seniors.  I practically fold laundry for a living in my current life.  A load spins comfortingly as I type.  Mostly I feel happy, though.  I’m pleased that they’ve placed me with the seniors I feel best equipped to help.  They didn’t place me with the dementia patients and they also didn’t place me with the seniors living in the assisted living apartments, who can mostly fend for themselves and who have the best rate of family involvement in their lives as it is.  I’m with those who are well aware of their faculties and surroundings and so are therefore probably most lonely. 

I felt alternating pangs of sadness and growing joy when I went in for my interview.  The sadness stemmed from seeing the advanced dementia patients sitting motionless in their wheelchairs, mouths gaping as they watched television.  Though the care workers were obviously compassionate people trying their best to enhance the lives of these people, everything felt so gray.  I looked at the half circle of wheelchairs and read their names neatly labeling the back of each chair and I felt acutely aware of the whole, once vibrant lives those inadequate white labels represented.  It felt stunningly wrong to see these mothers and fathers and husbands and wives, artists and entrepreneurs sitting so still before the daytime television that now occupied their existences in a disproportionate way.  They seemed sapped of their very selves and yet I learned that many of them have vibrant, alert minds trapped inside those motionless, dependent bodies.  Of course this saddens one further. 

The growing joy part stems from knowing that I'm taking a step - albeit an infinitesimal one - to do something to build into the lives of some lonely people.  When I reflect back on my own life, one of the more meaningful relationships I've yet been a part of was the one I shared with my Grandma Dixie.  I loved her with every ounce of my neophyte heart.  I knew as soon as I was able to process such things that my Grandma was good.  She taught me things that I've never forgotten.  It seemed to me then that wisdom practically seeped out of her pores.  She knew how to knit and crochet and make pancakes, such pancakes!  I thought back then that maybe she was God's smartest person.  As I think about her, I think about how in her later years, she was confined to a senior's home and about how unhappy that made her feel.  And naturally my thoughts turn to the countless others like her living perhaps against their will in these places.   And I want to be with them and do what I can to make them smile, even if only for a moment.

Oliver's class is in the middle of doing a fun project where each child has to bring in and present one of his or her favorite recipes.  Since our littlest is a passionate pancake sort of guy, he's slated to bring in the following recipe this week.  They are required to go shopping for the ingredients for their recipe and also to make the actual recipe together with a loving adult in their lives.  I think it's such a creative way of introducing the little Grade Ones to things like list-making, public speaking and cooking and the consequent math  involved.  Ollie's recipe is from Barefoot Contessa's Family Style.

Makes 12 pancakes

1 ½ cups unbleached flour

3 tablespoons sugar

2 teaspoons baking powder

1 ½ teaspoons kosher salt

½ cup sour cream

¾ cup plus 1 tablespoon milk

2 extra-large eggs

1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

1 teaspoon grated lemon zest

Unsalted butter

2 ripe bananas, diced, plus extra for serving

Pure maple syrup


In a medium bowl, sift together the flour, sugar, baking powder and salt.  Whisk together the sour cream, milk, eggs, vanilla and lemon zest.  Add the wet ingredients to the dry ones, mixing only until combined.

Melt 1 tablespoon of butter in a large skillet over medium-low heat until it bubbles.  Ladle the pancake batter into the pan.  Distribute a rounded tablespoon of bananas on each pancake.  Cook for 2-3 minutes, until bubbles appear on top and the underside is nicely browned.  Flip the pancakes and then cook for another minute, until browned.  Wipe out the pan with a paper towel, add more butter to the pan, and continue cooking pancakes until all the batter is used.  Serve with sliced bananas, butter and maple syrup.  Another fun option is to serve with maple whipped cream and blueberries.

I looked at her enthralled profile, hardly recognizing her.  She was emerging from her chrysalis, right before my fascinated, devastated, admiring eyes.  We were at her first rock concert together and I keep telling myself I'm lucky because she's still happy to be in places like this with me.  The music is so loud, I can feel it pound through my body almost as much as I can hear it through my old-school - even flourescent orange  - ear plugs.

I suspect that this gauntlet is all the more difficult to cross because she's my precious first-born.  I feel so conflicted inside, wanting to stifle the all-too-fast beginnings of this burgeoning new person and at the same time admiring and respecting her so much.  She is everything I hoped she would be and then more.  I didn't know that thirteen-year olds could be so confident and insightful.  I didn't know that they could show glimmers of being so much more than their parents.  And yet, I feel only a tremendous gratefulness that she is mine, even if only for this very short time.

The music is just what she loves and her appreciation is tangible, though not in quite the same way as the three shrieking, shimmying, terribly off-key  adolescent girls directly behind us.  There has always been a dignity about my Anabel.  She's not flamboyant and she isn't all that drawn to physical touch.  Even as a infant, not yet even able to control her own neck muscles, she'd arch her little back away from our snuggles, trying to procure for herself some much valued personal space.  I'm reminded of that little newborn tonight as I watch her.  Her eyes are bright and if you look closely, you can see the joy lining her face, but she's still and quiet.  Though I don't much like the music (I've become that old woman, much to my secret mirth!), my own feet are proving to be far more active than my girls'.  She is careful to avoid touching the person next to her, for that would equal social unpleasantness to her.   I know that she'd undoubtedly be a great deal noisier and overtly 'teenager-ish' if she were here with a pack of girlfriends, but in the meantime, I just try to record all the little observations I make tonight so that I can remember her, here, right now, forever.  She represents eternity in no small way and I'm so happy to be along for the ride.

We have a little dynamic at work in our family of late.  Little Lucy has just now entered the world of online shopping and is currently experiencing the less exhilarating side of it.  She waits for her treasure to arrive.  She waits and she waits and then she waits.  And then, in a burst of flamboyant frustration, she waits some more.

Every day after school, she asks me if I've checked the mail.  Every day I tell her no.   We then proceed to our next stop and pick up our Bigs and our carpool friend.  Every day Lucy then asks me if we can check the mail.  Every day I say yes and smile and hand her the key as I pull over to the  mailboxes, her daily tormentors.  These mailboxes - they mock her.  They sadden and they grieve her.  She hates these mailboxes and then she tries a different tack.  She's cheerfully manipulative and sunnily, as she makes her way toward these witholding  metal boxes, out surely to thwart the fulfillment of her joy,  she calls over her shoulder, wish me luck!  And then she's angry again as she sorts through that day's contents only to find that all the Universe conspires against her to squash her sunshiney joy.

She's ordered an American Girl bathtub, complete with dazzling artificial pink bubbles.  Daily, she pages through the American Girl catalogue, which is dog-eared and tattered from all the loving perusal it's undergone.  She saves her allowance each week and painstakingly works her financial way toward more American Girl paraphernalia.  She hates that in its company name though, it excludes her Canadian devotedness and says so regularly.  When she's grouchy, American Girl's lack of Canadian-ness is oft lamented. 

So she's just now in that heady, unusual position of actually having ordered something from this precious catalogue of hers.  And now she waits and she decries the state of the nearby Canadian border crossing, which has almost certainly mistaken her beloved bath tub for a kilo or two of cocaine.  She's indignant to be mistaken for a drug dealer.  She wonders aloud if maybe one of these selfish border guards has taken her bath tub home for his own, undeserving little girl to play with.  She vows that she'll check it out very carefully for signs of clandestine play when it finally arrives.  I listen to her and if I'm feeling gracious, I laugh at her nine-year-old obsessiveness.  If I'm tired of hearing all these same conjectures time and time again, I don't laugh and instead, I tell her abruptly one more time about the concept of a postal tracking number.  And then I tell her not to talk about it anymore for today and a fairy-tale mother's smile does not light up my saintly face.

But really, she's so cute.  And she's learning so much.  I love her more - much more - than I love myself and I'm so pleased that it's me God has chosen to show her how to grow to be a patient shopper and so much more.  What a beautiful duty.  What a blessed woman.

I have a good dad.  He's not flashy, but then, he doesn't value flash.  There is something about his non-flashiness that defines him, that settles deep within him an intrinsic sense of pride, I imagine.  He's from Alberta and lives there for most of the year, barring the four very coldest months, in which he flees to the balmier days and golf courses  Arizona has to offer. 

The fact that he is an Albertan means something here, in this sketch.  He has the humility of an Albertan, the common sense of an Albertan.  He always knows what to do should Nature conspire against you to dump massive amounts of snow down upon you.  He owns all the tools that could ever be necessary under these, and countless other circumstances.  There is no one better to rely on and he proves that your faith isn't misplaced time and time again through the simple living out of his life.  He's just always there and it makes him feel good to ease your load through life.  That's how he shows love - by easing your load.  He doesn't want to carry your load for you, mind, for that would be robbing you of opportunities to grow your character.  As frustrating as I found this penchant of his while right smack dab in the middle of the Selfishness that was my teen years, I admire the wisdom of it, here and now.  Now that my own state of parenthood defines me to some extent, I understand that even though it's often just easier to carry that load for one's children, the way of truth dictates that we show them how it's done and then do what we can to ease it while they do the actual carrying for themselves.  The difference between the two I now know to be miles and miles.  And perhaps even lightyears.

My Dad, cliche though it may be, is a rock.  When he's there, everything feels settled and safe.  My Dad doesn't live under the burden of a fear of what mankind may think of him.  He's eminently whole and has nothing to prove.  You can see that he likes himself and that he lives by all the little truisms he used to say to me.  Things like if you don't have anything nice to say, then maybe you shouldn't say anything at all.  I disliked it when he used to staunch the flow of some unkindness coming out of my mouth about another person with that little ditty.  Now I understand that our mouths and what we let come out of them shape our hearts.  The way we allow ourselves to speak about people directly shapes what we believe about those same people.  My Dad is a wise man.

When I think back upon my childhood and moments with my Dad, I think of crawling in under the afghan on the couch downstairs with him as he watched hockey.  I hated hockey, but I loved my Dad, and the hockey ensured that he'd stay still for a minute so that I could snuggle with him.  I think of Old Dutch BBQ chips and French salad dressing.  In my mind, these things were Dad's.  As were macaroni and tomatoes.  Mac and Cheese was reserved for the realm of Mom. 

My Dad is as different from me as day is from night, but I honor and cherish him.  I admire him a great deal.  I'm proud of him and love it when he comes to visit me so that I can parade him around to my friends.  He is a beautiful man who doesn't talk nearly so much as I do.  He values relationship highly and any one of you could confidently trust him with your life.  There's no doubt that he's often bewildered by me and by the verbal hurricane that I  (and mine) represent, but I think that some elemental thing within each of us knows that within the heart and soul of the other, lies a small version of home.

It's now time to scoot the kids away from the kitchen so that I can begin  the day's dinner preparations.  The noisy, life-filled kitchen draws them, though, and scooting them is  substantially easier said than done.  They love the kitchen.  For one, the family laptop permanently resides here and for another, here is where all the people are.  My kids are not of that - to me - enigmatic ilk where they like to spend quiet time off alone in their respective bedrooms.  They like to be in the same room as the rest of the family, which while sweet and from their mother's biased perspective, endearing, is also a big pain in her blankedy-blank at times.  I love to cook, but not while eight thousand people pepper me with questions and anecdotes all at the same time.  And it frequently feels like eight thousand. 

We don't have television and contrary to what most people think when they  first hear of this oddity of ours, we didn't make that decision due to a brittle insistence on sitting on our resoundingly superior moral high horses.  Initially we were just too poor to swing cable financially and found that we really liked the resulting lifestyle that came along with no TV.  That's it.  Mind you, now that I've been without it for nearly eighteen years, I find that I'm frequently shocked at what is on television these days.   (Alotta pretty overt hoochy going on out there, I note sqeamishly.)  Anyway, it is during my daily dinner preparation times where I secretly wish for TV.  I don't say it out loud, though, because I'm loathe to create an issue where none now exists.  Not one of the kids has yet ever requested "channels," (as the Littles call it) but when  they do, we may have to reevaluate our choice then.

When our kids turn 12, they begin to prepare one dinner per week for the family, which I thought was a genius plan initially, but which has actually turned out to create a lot of upfront work for me.  I failed to factor in the fact that they were beginning with zero knowledge and that that knowledge wouldn't spring forth magically from a vacuum.  I remind them (or more accurately, just Anabel now, at this juncture) to choose their meals two weeks at a time and create the resulting grocery list, which because of their initial enthusiasm often features very exotic and difficult-to-find items.  Then of course I cook the loftily grandiose meal alongside them while showing them the different techniques.  Anabel is just now beginning to be able to do large chunks of the meal on her own.  I grit my teeth as we go and tell myself that I'm saving myself a lot of work in the long run.  I find that we make far more exotic and time-consuming meals this way because of her excitement than I'd normally be inclined to do.  Anabel makes things like Chicken in Phyllo and Gourmet Mac and Cheese (her personal favorite) and lazily perusing cookbooks has become one of her very favorite activities.  So really it's a win, albeit a very time and energy consuming one.

Most days of the week, we have evening activities.  For those of you so bored to find yourself interested, Mondays is youth group and piano lessons.  Tuesday is also youth group.  Wednesdays are guitar.  Thursdays are currently swim lessons and then there's the blessed release from the Have-To's over the weekend.  I've always been very strident about not scheduling formal children's activities over the weekend, though I know that many families do and are consequently even busier than we are.  However, our weekends are now full with sleepovers and birthday parties and Valentine's parties and Easter parties for kids.  Two of our four are now of the age where it doesn't just seem to be birthday parties anymore.  A sad new phenomenon I note in our lives is that we are often separated into divergent groups on weekends now.  I'm off doing an errand with a kid or two and JoyBoy is driving someone else to a bowling party and since there are six of us, life has shaken down where it feels a lot simpler for us to divide and conquer.  I think back fondly of the days where if one of us had something to do, the rest of us would naturally accompany.  We did family activities more, like trips to the zoo or Science World.  Now it seems that we all have impossibly full social calendars that take the emphasis off of family and on to friends.  Inevitable, I suppose, but it saddens me nonetheless.

Fewer times a week than I'd have thought proper before having these real, live, fleshy little creatures in my life, (a paltry three-ish) I bathe Oliver and Lucy.  Because we have only a single soaker tub in our house, my el-cheapo nature insists that they always be bathed in multiples of twos.  Not together any  longer, mind you, they'd never have that.  Along those lines, a refrain of Don't look at my bum! meets my amused ears tonight as I gear Oliver up for his plunge.  As hard as it may be for you to believe, I answer, looking at your bum isn't my primary goal for tonight.  Yes, it is!  Looking at my bum is your hobby!  he bellers out triumphantly in return.  He's at the age where the more frequent the references to bums, the happier his little heart feels.  He always asks for what we've come to term 'the business bath.'  This means a quick dip where one is rapidly soaped and shampooed up and then out.  I always say yes and without fail, he always changes his mind once in.  The allure of the warm, soapy water and the empty shampoo and bubble bath bottles I save to just this end are more than he can resist.   They, along with his little black motor boat sing their siren call.  I have to bring things to a close for when it is Lucy's turn.  He grouses a bit and laughs and insists again that no one look at his bum.  I clean his ears, though conventional wisdom says I should not, and in the blink of an eye, he's in his long-john-type Paul Frank pajamas that make him look younger and so cute that the image makes my eyes sting.  And then it's my Lucy-girl's turn.  She knows that she'll just love her bath because that's how Lucy approaches life.  She just knows she'll love everything.  She comes, carefully prepared and armed with her little family of mermaids.  There are two babies and a Mommy mermaid who come to chat  and swim merrily with her as she soaks her little nine-year-old body.  There are long moments of swooshing her own hair back and forth as she's magically transformed into a mermaid herself.  I know these fantasies.  I once had them too.  I remember our old blue bathtub that was perfect for transitioning from regular old life in my regular old bathroom to the translucent majesties of queenly life underwater.  I watch my little girl, swooshing obliviously, and I am so happy for her.  I delight in her carefree little mermaid life.