The perfect cup of coffee...

We take our coffee seriously here at the Pierson household.

Listen, and I shall provide instructions on how to brew the tastiest cup of coffee, ever.

First, you must arise while it is still dark outside. All other members of your household must remain asleep. This is probably the most crucial part of the process.

Stumble into the kitchen. Ignore the whining dog who only wants his breakfast. Move with stealth and surety.

Start with fresh ground beans - one scoop for every two cups.

Use cold, filtered water.

Put beans and water into the coffee maker.

Now, this is the important part. Watch the coffee start to brew. When there is enough to fill your mug, pour yourself a cup.

Do this before the pot has finished.

You will, of course, risk being served divorce papers if your spouse should awaken before you leave for work, and have a cup of coffee from this pot for himself.

Yep, after almost 30 years of marriage, this is the cause of the biggest disagreement between Steve and me. You'd think I'd learn to wait.

But I have trouble denying myself that first, and most flavorful, cup of coffee.

On weekends, when we arise at the same time, Steve actually employs a strategy I believe elementary students refer to as "puppy guarding" around the coffee maker. If I get within a few feet of the brewing pot, he is likely to throw a complete body block in my path.

"Now?" I will whine.

"No, honey," he explains, as if to a four year old, "the coffee isn't ready yet."

Sometimes, if I have made it downstairs a short time before him, he will question me with the tenacity of one of those detectives on Law and Order. And, he never believes me.

"You drank out of this pot already, didn't you?" he'll demand. He pays careful attention to my eyes. I find it impossible to tell lies, but I have, in the case of the first cup, learned to perfect my technique.

"Of course not," I'll reply. "What makes you think I would do something like that?"

Somehow, I think he is still suspicious.

The devil is in the details....

I am the first to freely admit that I never read owner's manuals.

I am, as I keep pointing out to my husband, a "hands on" learner. This means that I never read owner's manuals.

I am usually able to figure out how to use coffee pots, hair dryers, toasters and cameras without too much trouble. You turn them on. They work. End of story.

I do admit, however, to being shocked at all of the things my camera can do. My brother showed me. He has the same camera.

"How did you figure this out?" I asked, clearly in awe of his superior photographic talents.

"I read the owner's manual."

Ahem.

Anyway, I was vacuuming the sofa today, using the upholstery attachment.

I could digress and riff on the amount of dog hair presently in our home, but I shall spare you.

My efforts were laid to waste when I discovered that the vacuum was spewing tufts of dog hair back into my face.

Steve not being home - who needs owner's manuals anyway when you have a husband with the mind of an engineer? - I switched off the vacuum and pulled the attachment off to look at it.

I found this helpful picture, a mini owner's manual for the illiterate. I have posted it above.

Aha! I thought. Now I know the cause of the malfunction. I guess that:

• I should have put on my airport quality headphones, because
• I will look very unhappy as I am vacuuming, due to the fact that
  
• the upholstery attachment should vibrate until it takes flight, at which point
  
• I should unplug it, and
• look at it sagely.

I'm so glad that is all cleared up now. Who knew that owner's manuals could be so enlightening!

The object of her affection....

Apparently, I have become the object of Debbie's affection.

Debbie is my pet pigeon. She lives at my school. I acquired her several years ago....well, it's a long story.

Our school seems to attract a fair amount of animal life. We are set back from the highway, and the back of our building faces a pond and a large open space. Woodland creatures are always paying a visit. Ducklings and snapping turtles have hatched on our property. We have several nests that are used by mommy robins each spring. Deer eat our bushes. I've found mice and weasels in the strangest of places. A snake once took a sunbath in my classroom.

One summer day a few years ago, we discovered an injured pigeon within our fenced playground. This was not just any pigeon - he was long, sleek and white, nothing like the urban pigeons my husband refers to as "rats with wings." He was, however, sporting an injured wing, and it didn't look like he would be able to fly at all.

Being who we are (frankly, mildly insane) we scooped him into a laundry basket and carried him into the school.

This pigeon also had a band around his foot, indicating that he was a racing pigeon. Through the miracle of the Internet, we were able to track down his owner, call him and report finding his pigeon. He showed up late in the afternoon to retrieve his bird.

In the span of just a few hours, I became very attached to this broken guy. We've been over this before...I have a thing about animals.

So, by the time the owner showed up, I had convinced myself that, since this pigeon's racing career was obviously at an end, he was likely a candidate for pigeon euthanasia.

I voiced my concern to his owner.

"Can't we just keep him?" I asked. "He obviously can't fly anymore."

The owner's response is made more dramatic if you say it with a heavy Russian accent.

"Oh no, this bird, he can fly."

I was incredulous, images of my new pigeon friend having his neck wrung the instant he was taken from the building filling my little brain.

The owner continued.

"If you want bird, I get you bird."

And that, I thought, was the end of it.

A few weeks later, however, a woman came to the door of our school carrying nothing but a cardboard box.

With the same Russian accent, she announced "Here is your bird," put the box into my arms and promptly drove away.

With no idea how to care for a bird, I opened the box to reveal a puffed up and angry looking - chicken? This looked like no pigeon I had ever seen.

We promptly named her Debbie, and I set about learning how to take care of her. It took weeks to discover what she liked to eat, and months before I was able to open her cage without her puffing up and attempting to swat me with her wing. But I persisted, and eventually, she let me hold her.

Little did I know that all of that would pay off in an ample amount of pigeon devotion. I would let Debbie out of her cage each morning for a walk around the school, and eventually she became my shadow, following me around like a small prancing dog.

Birds, it seems, attach themselves to one person. Debbie is, after all is said and done, MY pigeon.

For a few glorious months last year, she started laying eggs. Now, she has begun a career as a stalker.

I let her walk around all day during the summer, when we have only a small amount of children in the school. No matter where I am, she will find me, and prance about, head bobbing and cooing, before perching on the highest surface in the room and, well, gazing at me with such concentration that I figure she is trying to control my mind.

Her latest trick is to walk under my desk and, just when I am not expecting it, peck at my feet. An internet search revealed that this is mating behavior. Apparently, in the absence of a suitable male partner, Debbie has decided to devote herself to me.

There are worse things in life than to be adored by a pigeon.

A parenting sin...

Last evening, my son's girlfriend came over, which, in itself, is not news. She spends lots of time at our house. I have to say - I love her. She is a Good Thing for him, and he glows when she is around.

While my son was growing up, I would occasionally think about how I was going to feel when another woman moved into his life and, well, took my place. I imagine most mothers with male offspring wonder about this. There is, after all, that tired cliche that goes something like this:

A daughter is a daughter
all her life.
A son is a son
until he takes a wife.

I am pretty sure that my own mother-in-law felt this way about me when we first got married. I understand now how she probably felt back then. I was an interloper, dragging her son off to be cared for by a woman hadn't birthed him, nursed him through childhood illnesses, watched him hit his first baseball and sent him off knowing she would be replaced.

So, I waited for this to happen to my son. And, sure enough, he looked around and he fell. Hard.

But, when faced with this new paradigm, I realized that it made me happy to see him so happy. When she's around, he smiles and laughs more. He is kinder to everyone, and he engages in conversations willingly. He is, in short, better for being with her. And that's not something I want to mess up.

So, like him, I've fallen in love with her too, and with all of the good she brings to his life.

But I committed a very serious faux pas yesterday. While he and his girlfriend were around, I found that I needed something heavy moved.

So I said, and I quote, "Teetee, will you carry this out to the garage?" I wasn't thinking, and out popped one of his toddler nicknames.

I realized my blunder when there were seconds of dead and heavy silence. Then, girlfriend let out a huge belly laugh.

"You can NEVER call me that, ever," snarled my son.

But we ended up sharing a laugh about it, and it felt good. We - his girlfriend and I - both love him, and we both want to see him happy.

I don't know what the future holds for these two - they're both so young, with so much ahead of them. But I remain thankful that she is in his life right now, and I wonder if she will now call him Teetee too. I hope so.

The solace of solitude...

It happened today. I didn't expect it, nor did I orchestrate it. It's been a long while since the last time it happened. Today, it was a gift.

I was all alone in my house for eight hours.

Now, I must preface my comments by saying that I love my family. I love my husband and kids, and the biggest source of enjoyment I get out of my life is to see who my kids are becoming. My husband and I enjoy each other's company, and it still gives me pleasure to make him laugh.

Having said that, I must add that they are pretty much all around, all of the time.

My husband started working from home several years ago, making only occasional trips into his actual office. It's ideal for him - he comes downstairs, pours coffee and is immediately at work. He manages to be very productive, and he's a much happier camper without a daily three hour commute.

But he's always here.

My kids both work and go to school, but their hours are the same as mine. Of course, they're not toddlers anymore, and their lives are pretty much their own, but they are still residents of my humble abode. They take up space and consume in mass quantities. They make noise and watch TV shows and text and cook and do laundry - all under my nose.

I know my days of having the kids around are numbered. I am already grieving not being a part of their everyday lives. If nothing else, I am at least aware of the fact that they continue to draw breath under my roof. That they sometimes talk to me, voluntarily, is a great treasure.

But they're always here.

Today, however, the stars must have aligned themselves to my sole benefit. Everyone but me left the house early this morning for work or school. I got to sleep late because it is spring break at my school. When I climbed out of bed, the house was silent. Silent. Montessori teachers know the value of silence. It is a condition that soothes the soul.

A feeling of giddy joy washed over me when I realized that I was alone, and that I would be for nearly the entire day.

But what could I do to fill up the hours?

First, I opened windows all over the house. Had anyone been home with me, I know it would have only been minutes before someone exclaimed "Why is it so cold in here? Geez mom, are you crazy?"

No one was here to say that, and I relished the smell of fresh air invading a house that has been closed up for months.

Next, I played music that only I like - goofy country songs, Rod Stewart and Faces, one-hit wonders by obscure bands (Dexy's Midnight Runners, anyone?) and show tunes - and I sang along. Loudly.

No one was around to shoot me a glare or roll their eyes behind my back. I even danced a little in my bath robe.

I puttered. I folded some laundry. I checked my email. I organized a drawer. I read a magazine while I ate my lunch. I completed lots and lots of mundane tasks and talked to the dog the whole time.

I savored every second of my day to myself. I didn't really do much of anything but luxuriate in the solitude, but it was enough.

They're all on their way home by now, my family of adults. They'll return with their stuff and their cell phones and their needs and wants and all of the things that make them my family.

And I won't feel even a tiny bit guilty that I enjoyed their collective absence so much.

(P.S. I just discovered Wikimedia, where you can download images that are in the public domain, just like the painting pictured here. It is called "A Quiet Read" by Walter Langely, and I think it really speaks to the message of this post. It speaks to me at least - I often find myself just completely drawn into a book, losing all track of time and my responsibilities.)

Hitting the road....

This coming summer, I am planning to visit Yellowstone, meet up with some old friends and just allow myself to be awed by what we will see.

I have been spending a large amount of time contemplating whether or not to drag the kids along. At 24 and 18, family vacations hold no appeal whatsoever for them. Luckily, I can relate to this.

I think back to the vacations my family enjoyed when I was growing up. My parents, bless their hearts, were never able to provide a trip that didn't include some sort of disaster. Had Mapquest been invented back in the 60's, they would have done well to plan routes that ended not at tourist high points, but at local emergency rooms.

The most memorable vacation happened when I was 17. What were my parents thinking when they rented a Winnebago and loaded all three of us (my brothers being 15 or 16 and 7) into our rolling home and set off to visit relatives in South Carolina?

Being who I was at the time (have I mentioned that I was not a pleasant teenager?), I laid claim to the bed in the back of the camper and warned everyone away from me for the duration of the trip. My parents and brothers carefully avoided contact with me, and I slept, or feigned sleep, the entire journey.

Our first stop - Indianapolis in an ice storm. Said ice caused our wind shield wipers to cease working. Completely. We waited for nearly an entire day in a K Mart parking lot to have them fixed. I don't remember. I slept.

On we went. The Smokey Mountains were, apparently, quite beautiful and majestic. I don't remember. I slept.

We spent one night pulled over in a gas station in the heart of Deliverance land (really, dad, couldn't you have shelled over the few bucks for a campground?), where I couldn't sleep, convinced as I was that it was only a matter of time until several toothless rednecks would arrive to kidnap us and dump our bodies in the far reaches of the Smoky Mountains.

We finally arrived at our Uncle's house in South Carolina. Our cousins, who had emigrated to the South several years before, spoke a completely different language, and entertained us during our visit by opening bottles of Wild Turkey and sitting on the sofa. I think our cousins took us around to several different houses before the Wild Turkey was brought out. Really, why did these people drink so much?

The final leg of our trip included a trip to Myrtle Beach. We got to stay in a real campground. My brother tamed squirrels to pass the time. We walked the beach. I slept.

Only there was news that we didn't know about. Shortly before our beach sojourn, another relative, my aunt who had been watching our German Shepherd, Heidi, phoned my mother to say that Heidi had gotten away and been killed by a car on the road in front of their house.

My mom didn't tell us right away, knowing it would ruin our trip. It did, of course. I went from sleeping to mournfully walking on the beach all day and into the evening.

Finally, we all just wanted to get home. We set off for our long trip and steeled ourselves for the dogless house that would be waiting.

I must digress for a moment. My dad has never been great about filling up the gas tank. Many a vacation was spent hoping we would make it to the next gas station before we ran out of gas. Up until this point, his track record had been good, although the attendant anxiety probably took years off my life.

This time, we were not so lucky. Our giant Winnebago sputtered out of gas on the side of the interstate, about 50 miles from home. For what seemed like hours, no one stopped.

Finally, my dad and brother decided to head off to some nearby houses to call for a tow truck. This was before cell phones, kids. They returned to the camper, cars continuing to whiz past, and we waited for help.

Help arrived in the form of a tow truck driver and a can of gasoline. Even after adding some fuel, my dad had no luck in getting the monstrosity started. Then the tow truck driver decided to pour some gasoline directly on the carbeurator, which was located inside the camper.

Flames instantly shot up. I was aroused from my slumber only to be knocked in the head by the tow truck driver, whose arm was now on fire. I felt my hair and eyebrows beginning to singe and immediately jumped out of the camper. I surprised myself by remembering to STOP, DROP and ROLL. My mom and youngest brother tumbled out after me.

My middle brother, definitely the coolest head in our family, simply walked to the fire extinguisher in the camper, picked it up and put out the tow truck driver.

That simple act earned an admiration that I still feel to this very day.

We finally called some neighbors to pick us up. We trooped home - singed, defeated and sad - and I swore to myself that I would never take a vacation with my family again.

That vacation became the stuff of family mythology, and my kids know the story well. There is nothing about it that will convince them to journey west with us this summer.

Oh well. We are now empty Winnebago-ers.

The view from the sofa......

My family has been taking good care of me for the past few days as I recover from my knee surgery. I am frequently fed and watered, and have not fallen down the stairs or collapsed in the shower. Steve has completed all of the laundry, and the Pierson children have been pretty patient and willing to fetch things for me. They are even allowing me to claim half of the sectional, flagrantly disobeying Steve's rule that each person is allotted only one couch cushion.

Toby often lays his massive dog head on my bandaged knee. I am convinced that he is displaying doggie empathy. Steve tells me that he just likes to smell open wounds.

All in all, I would say the recovery is going pretty well. I am ready, however, to get on with things.

I am not a very good patient. I am used to doing things for myself, and I find it frustrating that if I leave my glasses in the bedroom, it's not just a quick jaunt up the stairs to retrieve them. It actually requires some thought - should I take the crutches up or just crawl? Shall I impose on someone else to get them, eroding the good will that is still abundant, or should I just squint at the computer screen until I develop a massive headache?

Life sometimes gets reduced to the bare minimum.

I have read three books, worked on a short story for a contest and watched a slew of House Hunters on HGTV. Frankly, I no longer care if the family of four is able to find their perfect house.

So far, that's the way things stand.

Oh, I almost forgot - I figured out how to shave my legs.