Monkey talk

Today I went to talk to my friend Cara’s 6th graders about howler monkeys. I went to speak to her classes last year as well, and for the second time, I was amazed at their inquisitiveness. 6th graders have so many questions. About everything. At any given moment, there were 25 small people seated in front of me, all frantically waving their arms high in the air trying to get me to pick them next. Their questions were really great, showing that they’d paid attention to the story they read prior to my visit and that they were paying attention to the things I was talking about. One girl asked, “How did the monkeys get to Ometepe Island?” which is a really great question nobody has an answer to. A lot of students wanted to know if I’d kept a monkey as a pet or if I’d brought a monkey home with me. I tried to impress upon them what a bad—and illegal—idea that would be. I explained that monkeys are wild animals who belong in the trees, that they are not happy in captivity. I likened it to trying to keep a squirrel as a pet, and most students thought that was hilariously ridiculous. “But Willie Wonka had a pet squirrel,” one student pointed out. Before I even had a chance to contemplate that statement, another student countered, “Yes, but Willie Wonka is fiction.” Enough said.

Some of my favorite questions actually had nothing to do with monkeys:

• “What is your Japanese sign” one student asked me. My what? I had no idea what she was talking about. “Your Japanese sign,” she said. “Uhh, I don’t know,” was all I could say. “Mine is the rat,” she said proudly. So I guess she meant the Chinese Zodiac. I don’t know what my sign is, but I’ve since looked it up and found it is the ram.

• “Look, I can write in gnomish.” It wasn’t so much a question, but a proud statement and display of a sheet of notebook paper covered in strange and interesting symbols.

And in the last class of the day, as the bell had rung and students were gathering their things and filing out of the room, one particularly energetic boy (who’d asked about a billion questions) rushed up to me, gave me a hug and a handshake, and asked for my email address.

At any rate, I really enjoyed speaking to Cara’s classes. It’s great to be surrounded by students who are still young enough to be excited about everything. The only downside is that, just like last year, my throat hurts from demonstrating howler monkey vocalizations all day. Oh well, I guess a sore throat will be company to my sore knee, which has been bothering me for a while now. As it turns out, my refusal to give myself a break after the marathon has resulted in some nasty tendonitis. It’s not the end of the world—it just means that I can’t run for a while, which is excruciating for me. I’ve been going strong at 30+ miles a week since August. And now I’ve come to a complete standstill. Considering that the world outside is a solid slick of ice and snow and the windchills have been below zero for a few days, I guess a rest will do me good. It’s just frustrating to be immobilized, but I’ll try to hang in there.

Again, thanks to everybody for your get well wishes to my grandma. Please keep her in your thoughts! Thanks for reading.

You're a vegan? What do you eat? (#1)

So a while back, I mentioned that I was thinking of starting a segment on the blog entitled “You’re a vegan? What do you eat?” I’ve decided to try to do this once a week (I’m tentatively thinking Wednesdays). I feel like, for the 11 years that I’ve been a vegetarian, I’ve had a pretty good diet, but ever since becoming a vegan, my diet has improved by leaps and bounds. Seriously, I’ve never felt better. Most people seem to think that eating a vegan diet must be impossibly difficult (an opinion I definitely shared before actually trying it myself), but really, it’s pretty easy.

I’ll start off by introducing a winter staple around the Ragfield house: Minestrone soup. I generally don’t follow a recipe for this (just using whatever I have on hand), but a good template for this soup can be found at Vegan A Go-Go. Some basic essentials are garlic, onions, celery, and carrots. Beyond that you need kidney beans, tomatoes, vegetable broth, and some kind of pasta. I also usually add chopped kale and red cabbage.

The particular soup in this photo was actually proclaimed Melissa’s Best Ever Minestrone by none other than Rob. And it was really great. The thing is, I’m not sure what I did to make it so great, and I’ve never quite been able to reproduce it. What I am sort of suspecting is that in this particular batch, I’d used the last of the garden tomatoes (the ones I’d picked green before the first frost and let ripen in a paper bag in our pantry). Maybe it’s the canned tomatoes that make this soup a little lack-luster. Even so, a sub-par minestrone is still pretty good. And right about now, minestrone is Rob’s favorite thing to eat. He doesn’t mind eating batch after batch of the soup as I try to recreate that Best Ever Minestrone made with the season’s last fresh tomatoes.

Thanks for reading!

One more post about the Christmas tree

Can the internet handle one more picture of the Ragfield Christmas tree? Rob and I were at Target the other night, and as we walked past the aisles of Christmas decorations, this beautiful silver star caught my eye. It was only $9.99, which I considered totally worth it. For years I’ve been looking for something like this, but I’ve never found any that I liked enough to buy. Now that it’s on the tree, I’m not sure if it makes the tree more or less folksy than the red and gold bow that was there before. Either way, I like it.

Thanks to everybody who has called, emailed, etc to ask about my grandma and wish her well. It really means the world to me, to know that there are so many people out there rooting for her. Some have asked if there is anything they can do to help, and I’d say, just keep Grandma (and my mom and aunt too) in your thoughts. All that love and energy really does help, I can feel it. Thanks again so, so much.

The things I couldn't say

Sometimes, there are just things I can’t write about.

For whoever finds this blog, please send your very best thoughts and wishes to my grandma, whose health has taken a turn for the worse, and to my mom and aunt, who are looking after her.

The women in my family (myself included) tend to have a stubborn streak, to harbor strong opinions, to fight like a lion for those that we love, to be unable to do things in moderation, and to feel that we must never be idle because there is always a meal that needs to be cooked or a tub that needs to be scrubbed. All of this stems from grandma, and for 93 years, she’s been going strong. Recently, she’s had to slow down a lot though. On Friday afternoon she suffered a series of strokes or seizures or both, and now we’re all having to come to terms with the fact that things aren’t going to be the same anymore.

I still can’t really say or write the things that are going on in my head. Auntie is the one who’s probably sorting it all out and writing it into one of her poems that sums up everything and makes us all smile even though we’re kind of crying at the same time too.

I keep remembering that when I was in second grade, I had to do this art project where the teacher gave us the beginning of a sentence and we had to complete the thought by drawing a picture. The phrases were things like, “It makes me happy when…” or “My favorite food to eat is…” One of the phrases was, “Sometimes I cry when…” I finished it off by writing, “when its time to leave Grandma and Grandpa’s house.” I drew a picture of Grandma, her hair red (rather than the blonde she always insisted she was) and Grandpa, with his cap on, standing in front of the barn with their dog Tasha. It doesn’t really feel like it was more than 20 years ago that I drew that picture.

At any rate, I can’t really write or draw these days. I’m only posting this with the hopes that anyone who reads it will take a moment to send a thought or prayer or wish—whatever you call it—to my grandma. I know it works, because the love and energy that people have sent to me during tough times have gotten me through a lot.

Thanks.

The Ragfield Family Christmas Tree (cont'd)

If this tree gets any more cute and folksy, it will wink and say, "You betcha." (Let's hope it doesn't come to that.)

I actually really love our folksy tree. Making the popcorn and cranberry garland took forever, but it was a nice way to be productive during my unrelenting insomnia.

I haven't had any luck in finding a more suitable top for the tree. You wouldn't think it would be too hard. All I want is a plain silver star. Over the weekend I looked at Prairie Gardens and Michael's, and neither of them had anything even remotely like that.

Here are a few photos of some of my favorite ornaments.

I picked up this ornament in San Francisco in a cute little shop at Fisherman's Wharf for only $1.49

Round and round the Christmas tree

When I was little we had this stereo-hutch type thing that held an actual record player. Around Christmas, we would play actual records on this record player. It may have been a bit of an antiquated system, even at the time, but I always remember it as being so much fun.

There was one particular song I remember listening to all the time. I don’t know who sang it or even what the name of the song was, but the chorus went something like this:

Round and round the Christmas tree
Opening presents with the family
One for you and two for me!
Oh what a Christmas Day!

Last night as Rob and I decorated our tree, that song was going through my head. In case anybody who found this doesn’t already read Rob’s blog, here is a video of us decorating the tree. A while ago Rob built this remote timer thing for his camera, and while we were decorating the tree he set it up so that it would take a photo every 10 seconds. Then he strung all these photos together and made a video out of it.

(Technical note: Okay, I just looked at this post and realized that the smallness of the video really sucks. I need to get back to my dissertation now, but sometime soon I will try to fix the video. And maybe also convince Rob to add some kind of music to the video [if that is even possible]).

If you look closely, you will see that at one point we dropped an ornament and it shattered. At the time I was disappointed to have broken an ornament, but in retrospect, it is pretty funny on the video. Also, you may see me go in and out the front door a couple of times. Although it looks like I am trying to run away, I was actually just putting up a wreath and some other small decorations outside.

I would also like to point out that (what may end up as a future blog entry), the finishing touches have not yet been added to the tree. I am trying to make a popcorn and cranberry garland (which is taking a lot longer than I'd hoped), and I'd kind of like to get an actual star for the top.

Thanks for reading!

The Ragfield Family Christmas Tree

I was actually being sarcastic when I suggested to Rob that we go pick up a Christmas tree on our tandem bike. But he called my bluff and took me up on it.

The whole endeavor was made more interesting because when we woke up this morning, the world of Urbana was covered in snow. Finally this afternoon we rode Big Red through the slush over to the Custard Cup parking lot, which is where they sell Christmas trees every year. It wasn’t actually too difficult to pick one out, given that there were only a few trees in our price range.

The day after Thanksgiving, the Custard Cup parking lot transforms into a Christmas tree lot.

We bought the tree and Rob used bungee cords to secure it to the make-shift trailer he had constructed. Then we headed for home. It probably wasn’t the safest ride we’ve ever done. By this time, it was after 4:30 and becoming dark, it was sleeting a little bit, and with a 7-foot tree strapped to the back of the bike, we couldn’t see if there were any cars behind us. It was kind of scary every time we had to turn a corner or come to a stop. But luckily we only had about 2.5 miles to go, and we made it home just fine. I was a little disappointed not to have a photo or video of the adventure. I’d been hoping to stage a victory lap around our block so we could get some photos, but by the time we made it back, it was getting dark and I was convinced that all my fingers and toes were frostbitten.



I can only assume that this will now become a Ragfield Tradition. Hopefully next year we’ll ride over to pick out our tree before the first snow of the season.