“I hope we find dinosaur bones,” D added.

“Do you want to come dig too?” C asked.

I told him I’d be out in a bit.

“Okay,” C said, “but you better bring some food and a drink of water, cause it is going to take a while.”

This morning, after speech therapy, they went out for some digging time. This time when I checked on them, D explained their scheme to me and showed me how they were going to fit both of them in the hole by making it bigger, and demonstrated how big it was going to be.

“Nice,” I said.

“There is one problem, Mommy,” D added. “How are we going to get back out of the hole?”

I suggested ladders. D was not impressed but decided it was good enough for now. “Okay. We are only digging until we hit lava.”

“We want to see what color lava really is,” C put in.

After Cub Scouts, they went back out to continue their excavations. This time I brought a blanket to sit and watch the proceedings. They showed me how deep they were (about a foot), and how big the hole was (maybe 6 inches across) and explained they were having problems because they kept hitting roots and metal.

“It is probably pipes,” C said wisely.

“It better not be pipes. It’s probably a rock,” I said.

“No, it sounds like metal. I think it’s pipes. We just have to get past them.”

“Below that there is sand. And then crabs. Crabs make holes in the sand, and that keeps the beach nice,” D informed me, and demonstrated with his hands the shape crabs make in the sand.

“There aren’t any crabs down there,” I told him. “Just clay probably.”

“Clay!” C said, laughing at this ridiculous suggestion. “There is a rock layer that is like a thousand percent thick! We are going to need a jackhammer.”

“Yeah, a jackhammer,” agreed D.

I examined the hole again. There were a LOT of roots. “You know, you’d hit less roots if you weren’t digging right next to the trees. Why don’t you dig over there in the middle of the yard?”

“No, that is where I planted my orange seed,” C said, but they decided to move over to the middle of the yard near where he planted the orange seed. I explained to them about backfill and helped them fill in the first hole, then went back to my blanket while they discussed their strategy for the new hole.

“There are a lot of plants here,” D called to me.

“It’s just grass and weeds,” I told him. “Dig through them and you’ll get to the dirt.”

“And then the lava,” he said with relish, and went back to digging.

My mother made most of what we ate growing up, especially our bread. I still have a hard time eating storebought bread. It just tastes so spongy and bland and soggy to me. I like a hearty, dense bread. Thick-cut. With cheese. Mmm. Anyway, so when I’m not being lazy, I make bread which my children then refuse to eat so that I have to pay $2.29 per loaf of HFCS-free no-preservative wheat bread for them at the grocery store which they then eat inside of a week, but I digress. It makes me happy to eat homemade bread and that’s the important thing.

Lightly buttered goodness, waiting to be sliced.

Let’s start with our cast of characters. You’re going to need wheat flour, regular old all-purpose flour (you could use bread flour if you choose. Me, I use unbleached AP flour, because I avoid eating bleach whenever possible. I’m weird that way.), salt, active dry yeast, sugar, honey, and oil. We’re going to make two loaves, which means we’re halving the recipe my mother used. Because I only have two loaf pans, actually. Your yeast should not be the kind that says for bread machines. Probably. I have never actually used a bread machine, so I don’t know if that yeast is any different. But I don’t buy it. No bread machines. Only real bread.

Start out by putting a tablespoon of yeast and 1/2 teaspoon of sugar into a cup or bowl (I use a glass liquid measuring cup. If you only have one of these, don’t use it here cause you’re going to need it later. Just plop the yeast, sugar, and water into a coffee cup). Add 1/4 cup of warm-to-hot water, give it a wee swirl to mix up, and let sit on the counter to proof. If your yeast does not start having some activity within about 30 seconds, it’s probably not going to proof, so keep an eye on this. Nothing will piss you off more than being halfway through the bread-mixing process and realizing your yeast was a dud. In about five minutes, the yeast should get nice and frothy and smell slightly but not exactly like beer.

Now get your mixer out, cause I dislike stirring anything by hand if I can avoid it. You’re going to want to start out with the paddle attachment. Get out a second liquid measuring cup (or that first one, if you only have one) and measure out 1/3 cup of oil into your mixer bowl. I use safflower oil, because that is what I like to believe is healthier, but if you don’t mind using vegetable oil, that works too. Just throw some oil in that sucker, and don’t wash the measuring cup out. Next you’re going to add 1/3 cup of honey. Measuring the oil first means the honey just slides right out of the measuring cup instead of overcoming you with homicidal rage as you try to scrape it out. Now add 2 1/2 cups of water. I don’t bother stirring this up, but I suppose you could if you’re not as lazy as I am.

Measure out a tablespoon of salt and throw that in with the honey and oil and water. Now it’s time to break out your flour.

If you’re hardcore like my mother, you’ll grind your own wheat into flour first. The sheer levels of my mother’s badassery, homeschooling four children and making 80% of our food from scratch, continue to amaze me. And all this while doing several jobs at church, occasionally writing spy fiction, and taking the kids to the beach and museums regularly. Me, I’m just not that hardcore. I buy wheat flour at the grocery store. Thanks, Pillsbury! King Arthur also makes damn good wheat flour.

Get your wheat flour, however you acquire it, and throw 3 1/2 cups of it into your mixing bowl. Now you can give it a good mixing. It should look slightly but not exactly like it’s gluing itself to your paddle attachment. Pour in the yeast mixture, which should be nice and frothy by now, and then break out your all-purpose flour and add 1 1/2 cups. Mix again.

At this point, you’re probably going to want to switch to your dough hook attachment on your mixer. Do that now, then add another 2 cups of AP flour and let the hook have at it. I let this go for about 5 minutes, eyeballing it now and then to make sure the dough isn’t creeping up the hook (sometimes it has a mind of its own). Some days it seems extra-sticky and I add another 1/4 to a 1/2 cup more flour, and some days it doesn’t need it. Just see how it looks. It should be doughy and not overly sticky, but not too floury.

On a side note, if you don’t have a dough hook, let your mixer go as much as it can to integrate those last two cups of flour, then just add to your kneading time. This is how my mom did it back in the day. Although I must say, her Harvest Gold mixer was pretty badass for its time.

Wrestle the dough out of the mixing bowl and into a large, warmed, greased bowl (I pull one out of the cabinet, rinse it in hot water to warm it up, dry it off, then rub some oil into that sucka). Now it’s time to knead. Flour up your knuckles and have at it. If you let the dough hook go for a while, knead for about five minutes. If you don’t have a dough hook, knead for about ten minutes. Sorry. Feel free to get out your aggressions here. I have fond memories of my mother, tongue poked out in concentration (this seems to be genetic, as all four of her grandchildren do the same thing sometimes), punching the hell out of some bread dough, occasionally accompanied by swearwords under her breath.

It’s rising time, y’all. If it’s a warm day, you can let the dough rise on the counter. Throw a kitchen towel over the bowl and let it rise until doubled (anywhere from 30-60 minutes, depending on the temperature). If it’s a cold day, there are a few tricks you can use. Will your big greased bowl fit in your microwave? Winning! Grab a coffee cup, fill it with water, and microwave it for 3-4 minutes. This makes your microwave nice and warm and humid. Pull out the cup of water and pop in the bowl, closing the door. Watch your hand, cause the water in that cup is probably boiling. The beauty of this is that you don’t even need to cover the bowl, because the microwave’s already nice and dark. Dark, humid, and warm = happy yeast. If you can’t get the bowl into the microwave but CAN put it in your oven, you can set the oven to warm, let it heat up, then turn the heat off and pop the bowl in there. It’ll stay warm and dark but won’t be as humid probably. You could put a small pan of water in to help that out, though. Lots of ways to cheat on the rise!

During the first rise, you can wash your mixing bowl and attachments out (I hate cleanup) and prep your loaf pans. Grease those suckers up. Rub it with a butter/margarine wrapper, or some oil, or spray it with cooking spray. I go for the cooking spray, because it requires the least effort.

After it’s risen about double in size, pull it out of wherever you stuck it for the first rise and punch it down. Divide it into two and put each half in a loaf pan, pressing it into shape. I like to give it a bit extra smushdown in the middle, since homemade bread has a tendency to be much bigger in the middle. And put it back to rise again the same way you did before. I usually have to juice up the microwave with another round of microwaved-cup-of-water to get it warm and humid again.

Once the second rise is over, set your oven to 350 degrees and pop those pans in there for about an hour or so – you can check the center with a toothpick, but usually 60-65 minutes will do it. When they’re done, you can brush the tops with a bit of butter to soften them, and cause butter never goes amiss.

Wait for it to cool for the best slices. I keep them in the fridge to make them keep longer, but I always keep bread in the fridge. It’s how I roll. The baked loaves can be frozen and defrosted to eat later if you need to make some extra.

Mmm. Come to mama.

D, eyeing the skillet suspiciously: “What is that?”

Me: “It’s a tomato cream sauce. It’s yummy.”

D: “I will have my noodles plain.”

They never want sauce. I don’t know why I bother, except that I don’t want to eat plain noodles so at least That Man and I can eat the sauces I make. So I finished making dinner and called them in to have each of them try a single noodle (I had made some fusilli for them, because I knew they were going to balk at noodles with SOMETHING INSIDE THEM) with the sauce on it. D acted as if he were being force-fed rotted horsemeat and told me he hated it. C chewed his up with remarkable lack of ceremony, then informed me he’d have to think about it when asked his opinion. A few minutes later when I asked if he wanted his noodles plain or with sauce, he asked for plain. Le sigh.

So I added three tortellini a piece to their bowls of plain pasta (I despair of them, really) for them to try it. It has cheese in it. They like cheese, of almost any variety, as long as it comes shredded. I didn’t point it out to them, in hopes they would just eat it without noticing. But then D wandered past me with Nintendo DS in hand and paused in front of me.

D: “Those noodles you made? The new ones?”

Me: “The tortellini?”

D, gesturing emphatically and making a face as if I had gotten a really unfortunate perm: “They were bad. You should not make them again.”

Me: “Oh, come on. You guys never like anything, you suck.”

D: “I will never eat those noodles.”

Now, the spider is a toy tarantula made out of squishy and slightly sticky stuff, meant to be thrown at windows and fall down in a way that approximates climbing. It is nearly life-size and accurately colored. It looks pretty real if you just catch a glance of it.

I told C, “You can bring it in, but you can’t throw it.”

C assured me he would only toss it from hand to hand lightly, and not at anything.

So in we went, and they sat down near the front door and I looked for the fabric for about two minutes. They were very quiet and when I didn’t see anything like what I needed, I said, “Let’s go to the next store, guys.”

“Um, okay,” said C, “but first I need my spider.” And he pointed up at the ceiling. The spider was directly above the cutting table, stuck with his belly to the ceiling, perched like a real spider. We waited a few minutes, but the spider – contrary to its past behavior – stuck firm and did not fall down.

I looked up at the spider and debated leaving it behind. But I knew C would be devastated, and there was a strong possibility that one of the shop ladies would look up and not realize it wasn’t real and have a heart attack. My heart jumped a bit when I looked up and saw it, and I knew it was fake. Seeing a palm-sized spider straight above you is enough to give anyone pause.

So I asked one of the shop ladies – three of them were fluttering around the UPS man at the time – if they had a broom or something, because my son had thrown his toy spider at the ceiling and gotten it stuck. She looked up, clutched her chest a bit, and said, “I’m glad you warned me it was a toy.”

The shop stepladder was duly brought out, along with a yardstick, and we poked at the spider. It rolled over but stayed stuck where it was.

“You need to get up there and grab it,” the UPS man put in. We all looked up at the ceiling, which was still far overhead even from the top step for any of us. He grinned and climbed up himself, standing on tiptoe at the top step, and was just able to grab it with his fingertips while the shop ladies twittered about caution and their liability.

“Usually it falls right down,” C remarked as the spider was handed back to him.

The shop ladies, who now were all smiles since no one had fallen off the ladder, laughed indulgently at this. “It must like acoustic ceiling tiles!” one said. “You can tell all your friends.”

The spider rescued, apologies and thanks given out liberally, we left the shop with C clutching his spider and grinning widely. I’m sure it was a huge adventure to him, but I may not be able to show my face in that quilt shop again.

As we got in the car, I told C the spider wasn’t allowed in stores anymore. “Yeah,” he agreed, “Cause it sticks really good to acoustic ceiling tiles.”

D: “I am building the Titanic, but I need my brother to help me. Of course, it is a two person job.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=45QyOlJXT4M

Nearly a year later (August 2010). C reading The Very Hungry Caterpillar.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XuiL7Ea8fo4

Nearly a year later again (July 2011). C and D swimming in the pool. C is the one who says “it’s cold underwater”, so you can really measure the speech difference in him.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b9_0Rycm930

And in August 2011, C again reading The Very Hungry Caterpillar.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PTeBhewkYGQ

A hen and ten eggs are on a spaceship. A missile coming out of nowhere hits them in the back of their spaceship.

The spaceship crashes on an empty planet that has a house. Ten more eggs were in the house. The hen moved the house to the eggs.

The hen pulled the house with a long chain, and put all the eggs in the house. Two more hens come and ten more eggs are being carried by one hen, with help by the other hen.

And they all lived perfect in the house together.

The planet had a waterfall. It had a river and they named the planet Earth.

That’s what happened.

The end.