of bar­gain lunch­es and such

Avery’s grand­fa­ther is nap­ping, Avery and her grand­moth­er are lying on the tram­po­line far down the lawn between the pond and the stream, John’s deep in Exile, by Richard North Pat­ter­son, a good polit­i­cal thriller, he reports. We’re all slight­ly comatose from a mam­moth lunch that hit all the right but­tons for me: it used up left­overs so my con­science is clear, it cost almost noth­ing, and… every­thing looked and tast­ed delicious.

Club Sand­which­es

I have to tell you: my dear moth­er in law offered to get the meat off the hens for me, and while it was a sticky, messy job, there is a lot to get, so do go for it. And I don’t know if you can get the super-spicy Ched­dar where you are, but it’s deli­cious in a slight­ly processed, bor­der­line junk food way. Here’s a source for super-hot, and here’s a source for a milder ver­sion. I love it that there is a blog devot­ed entire­ly to hot things to eat.

Then too we had:

Instant Game Hen Salad

Let’s see, we’ve been find­ing that our vocab­u­lary these days is great­ly enhanced by… lit­tle Jane. She has a way of hold­ing out her hand, palm up, when she talks, which lends an old-fash­ioned, earnest air to every­thing she says. “Aunt Kris­ten, I can’t stand on one foot in my Crocs. I’m not big enough, and it makes me very wob­bly.” This she demon­strates by hop­ping wild­ly from one foot to the oth­er, “Whoa!” Then a cou­ple of days before her birth­day par­ty here, she saw a pile of present all wrapped up, on a bench. “Uncle John, are those pack­ages for me?” “Of course, Jane, for your par­ty on Mon­day, when your mom­my gets back from her busi­ness trip.” “Oh.” Pause, then, “Uncle John, I’m think­ing about open­ing those pack­ages and do you know what? I can’t wait.” Hand out­stretched in appeal. “Oh, we can’t wait either, Jane!” Anoth­er pause. “No, I CAN’T WAIT.” Avery observed sot­to voce, “She’s not say­ing that idiomat­i­cal­ly. She means she lit­er­al­ly CAN’T WAIT.” And she was right. Every after­noon finds some­one say­ing, “I can’t wait,” about something.

And she’s obsessed with things being “auto­mat­ic.” Joel explained that this all began when she was exposed (quite lit­er­al­ly, which was the scary part) to an auto­mat­ic toi­let at a shop­ping mall. Scared her to death, nat­u­ral­ly! So now she is under­stand­ably a lit­tle skep­ti­cal of unfa­mil­iar toi­lets, which do unex­pect­ed things that she has­n’t asked them to do. Things she’s not in con­trol of. So over the week­end as she was see­saw-ing with Avery, the end she was on went too high, and she said sud­den­ly, “Aunt Kris­ten, is this see­saw auto­mat­ic?” We had to reas­sure her that no, Uncle John was in com­plete con­trol (ish) of every move­ment it made. The dear girl.

And she pro­nounces “banana” “bah­nah­nah” after her favorite Kip­per video! And accord­ing to her (and Kip­per, appar­ent­ly), peo­ple mow the “grahss.” And eat “tom­ah­toes.” Too fun­ny to hear Avery switch to her full-on Queen’s Eng­lish at that point!

Then we’re all find­ing ways to deal with the inex­plic­a­ble influx of fly­ing insects on our ter­race. Whether it’s the water­mel­on rind we’re leav­ing for Gary the Ground­hog, or the out-of-date pick­les we threw behind the fence for the skunk, I don’t know. Oh, side sto­ry: I came home from the gro­cery with, among oth­er things, a jar of pick­les. “But Kris­ten,” my long-suf­fer­ing hus­band object­ed, “we already have SO MANY pick­les.” “No,” I said, “Avery says we’re out.” Silent­ly he went into the kitchen and brought out… THIS MANY jars of pick­les. How did that hap­pen? I guess every time I shop I think we’re out. Eeek! But I digress. My point was, there are a lot of per­haps bees, in par­tic­u­lar, fly­ing around and nei­ther Jane nor Avery likes them one bit. Why did it so crack Jill and me up to hear Jane say, “It’s too bug­gy; it’s not a good idea to eat out­side.” She sound­ed so adult! I tried, “Don’t wor­ry, Jane, the bugs say. We won’t hurt you.” But she was­n’t buy­ing. “Bugs do not talk, Aunt Kris­ten.” “But if they did, they might say that, Jane.” “But they don’t.”

Now I see Avery and her Non­na have moved on to catch­ing min­nows in the pond, so I shall go join them before ten­nis lessons. Is there any­thing sweet­er than a child and her grand­moth­er play­ing togeth­er? It warmed my heart so to see Avery with my mom, dis­cussing the infin­i­tes­i­mal­ly tiny paper doll clothes Avery was design­ing and cut­ting out at the birth­day par­ty on Sun­day. There seems to be a spe­cial brand of patience that comes with the gen­er­a­tion gap. Or more like­ly, Avery’s two grand­moth­ers are unusu­al­ly nice peo­ple. Or maybe it’s grand­par­ents in gen­er­al: my sweet dad think­ing of teach­ing her to play crib­bage so he can send her a set for her birth­day, John’s dad spe­cial­ly pack­ing a bag of But­terfin­gers to give her for her treat draw­er. I feel incred­i­bly lucky to have had all four of them with us this summer.

Enough sap­pi­ness: min­nows beck­on. Real­ly, Jane, they DO.