Category — Show and Tell

Show and Tell is wasted on elementary schoolers. Join several dozen bloggers weekly to show off an item, tell a story, and get the attention of the class. In other words, this is Show and Tell 2.0. Everyone is welcome to join, even if you have never posted before and just found out about Show and Tell for the first time today. So yank out a photo of the worst bridesmaid’s dress you ever wore and tell us the story; show off the homemade soup you cooked last night; or tell us all about the scarf you made for your first knitting project. Details on how to participate are located at the bottom of this post.

Let’s begin.

Next weekend marks a full year of Show and Tell. I am open to any suggestions on how to celebrate.

A week or two ago, Josh needed a new cell phone and I tagged along. My cell phone is a piece of crap. First of all, I allowed the Wolvog to choose it which was my first mistake. It hasn’t worked for months–most people who have tried to call me have either had it go to voice mail automatically (and I don’t receive a message waiting beep) or they get to hear the inside of my purse for fifteen minutes or so until the battery dies. Which is a nice sound because the purse is made of some crinkly rip-stop material so they’re treated to a whoosh whoosh whoosh, almost like being beneath my heart.

The store had a 2 for 1 deal going on, so we decided to take them up on it and get me a new phone. I do not know how to send a text message (and we have texting turned off on our service plan), but even better, it has email access! I can check email from the road. I mean, not as I’m driving, but as Josh is driving and I am sitting in the passanger seat. How cool is that? Technology is an amazing thing.

It is also a cheery red colour that I like and when you flip it open, it has a full key pad. I’ve only send a few emails from it because it’s sort of annoying to type with your thumbs. But to know that I have email access on the road somehow fills me with joy.

What are you showing today?

Click here or scroll down to the bottom of this post if this is your first time joining along (hint: link to the permalink for the post, not the main url for your blog and use your blog’s name, not your name). The list is open from now until late Tuesday night and a new one is posted every week.

Show and Tell is wasted on elementary schoolers. Join several dozen bloggers weekly to show off an item, tell a story, and get the attention of the class. In other words, this is Show and Tell 2.0. Everyone is welcome to join, even if you have never posted before and just found out about Show and Tell for the first time today. So yank out a photo of the worst bridesmaid’s dress you ever wore and tell us the story; show off the homemade soup you cooked last night; or tell us all about the scarf you made for your first knitting project. Details on how to participate are located at the bottom of this post.

Let’s begin.

You will be learning this week about the tantrum from hell in reverse order, from aftermath to the bowl of spaetzles that ignited the 18-hour tantrum (intriguing, no? I mean, how could a bowl of German noodles do that much damage?). After calm descended, Josh and I went out to dinner to celebrate the release of the book, Navigating the Land of If, and then swung by the bookstore to see if it was on shelves.

We stopped at Barnes and Noble and went up the escalator towards the fertility section. My heart was pushing itself up towards my ears, thumping and thumping until Josh triumphantly yanked it from the shelf and handed it to me. I promptly burst into tears and an employee reshelving books walked past to ask us (not noticing the fact that I am wailing in the aisle) if the stack of books resting nearby were ours. We told him no and then stood staring at the cover for a long time.

Josh snapped a few pictures of my tear-stained, blotchy face and then gave me a long hug. The man returned and said, “I know the others weren’t yours, but are you planning on buying that book?” Josh said, “we’re not buying it, only because my wife wrote it.” The employee was delighted and asked what it was about, and upon seeing the title said, “aaah, I will not be reading that book. We do not have any problems with fertility. I have four kids.”

And while you may believe that was the best thing said in the aisle (because who doesn’t enjoy having others remind them that they are normal whereas you are a little mess of ill-functioning ovaries and clotty blood), the man continued to tell me that I was the second author he had ever met. Which seemed a little strange since he works in a bookstore that holds readings, but he told me the only other author was Ronald Rood, who wrote the saucily named How do You Spank a Porcupine and Animals Nobody Loves. He met Mr. Rood at the age of four when he saved him by pulling him out of a lake.

At that point, the man pretended that he was going to jump from the second story fertility section into the escalator bank below and told me to save him, and what I wanted to tell him was that I had considered that very act during the ten days I was on Reglan but had reconsidered realizing that two stories was not enough distance to do the proper amount of damage and purchased the Time Traveler’s Wife that night instead. After we all shared a nervous, uncomfortable laugh, we realized that my coupon was actually for Borders and decided to head a mile down the road to the other bookstore.

We found my book again in the fertility section and had another brief cry.

After we went book shopping and used my coupon, we headed out to a fake French cafe–by which I mean that it calls itself French and employs people who speak French, but there is nothing really French about it so it reminds one of the scene in Better Off Dead–for cake and coffee after learning that the diner nearby uses caffeinated root beer in their root beer floats.

What are you showing today?

Click here or scroll down to the bottom of this post if this is your first time joining along (hint: link to the permalink for the post, not the main url for your blog and use your blog’s name, not your name). The list is open from now until late Tuesday night and a new one is posted every week.

Show and Tell is wasted on elementary schoolers. Join several dozen bloggers weekly to show off an item, tell a story, and get the attention of the class. In other words, this is Show and Tell 2.0. Everyone is welcome to join, even if you have never posted before and just found out about Show and Tell for the first time today. So yank out a photo of the worst bridesmaid’s dress you ever wore and tell us the story; show off the homemade soup you cooked last night; or tell us all about the scarf you made for your first knitting project. Details on how to participate are located at the bottom of this post.

Let’s begin.

During Pesach, before she went home, Josh’s grandmother pulled me aside to give me her crystal cake plate. She recently moved from her apartment to a senior community and didn’t have space for everything and she told me that she wanted me to have this, the reason being that cake plays a large role in our relationship.

I am not going to be able to adequately put into words how much this meant to me. I am used to being adored by my own grandmother who has known me since birth. It is quite another thing to be loved by Josh’s grandmother, who notices the small things about me (my love of baking cakes) and presents a gift that speaks volumes. She knows how much family means to me–I have certainly pestered her enough times to recount stories for me from Josh’s family so I can writes them down for the twins–and this cake plate brings with it history. A cake plate is the perfect fit–I am not a jewelry person or a clothing person. I am an old-pictures-or-serving-pieces person.

And beyond that, when she introduces us to strangers, she refers to both of us as her grandchildren. Only if the person questions everyone’s relationship does she clarify and state that Josh is her grandson and I am his wife. But until pressed, we are all her grandchildren–those that she has known since childhood and those that have married into the family–and though I started this post by calling her Josh’s grandmother, she is simply called Grandma by all of us as well, never differentiating which great-grandmother is from my family and which one comes from Josh’s side.

Here is one of those places where words fail–it means more than I can express that she has taken me as a granddaughter rather than a woman who has married her grandson. It is a small distinction, but like the gift, it speaks volumes.

When she gave me the cake plate, she told me that she wanted me to have something to remember her by which made me profoundly sad to consider that future. It is hard to live in the moment with a mind that can comprehend the future–by which we all have this problem. And I am just trying to enjoy today, which includes both the cake I baked yesterday and Grandma, visiting her at her new senior community in Pennsylvania.

What are you showing today?

Click here or scroll down to the bottom of this post if this is your first time joining along (hint: link to the permalink for the post, not the main url for your blog and use your blog’s name, not your name). The list is open from now until late Tuesday night and a new one is posted every week.

Show and Tell is wasted on elementary schoolers. Join several dozen bloggers weekly to show off an item, tell a story, and get the attention of the class. In other words, this is Show and Tell 2.0. Everyone is welcome to join, even if you have never posted before and just found out about Show and Tell for the first time today. So yank out a photo of the worst bridesmaid’s dress you ever wore and tell us the story; show off the homemade soup you cooked last night; or tell us all about the scarf you made for your first knitting project. Details on how to participate are located at the bottom of this post.

Let’s begin. Children are seen in this post in case you want to skip down to Mr. Linky and add your own without reading mine.

The ChickieNob set up this shot while we were at a party last week. Someone gave her a flower and she came over to me and asked me to take her picture. Afterwards, she looked at it on my camera and said, “put that up on your blog.” I follow directions, so the colours in her dress and the flower are my Show and Tell today. The only word I could think of when I saw this shot was “vibrant.” And perhaps, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Girl.

What are you showing today?

Click here or scroll down to the bottom of this post if this is your first time joining along (hint: link to the permalink for the post, not the main url for your blog and use your blog’s name, not your name). The list is open from now until late Tuesday night and a new one is posted every week.

Show and Tell is wasted on elementary schoolers. Join several dozen bloggers weekly to show off an item, tell a story, and get the attention of the class. In other words, this is Show and Tell 2.0. Everyone is welcome to join, even if you have never posted before and just found out about Show and Tell for the first time today. So yank out a photo of the worst bridesmaid’s dress you ever wore and tell us the story; show off the homemade soup you cooked last night; or tell us all about the scarf you made for your first knitting project. Details on how to participate are located at the bottom of this post.

Let’s begin. Children are seen in this post in case you want to skip down to Mr. Linky and add your own without reading mine.

I have another guessing game. I spent the day with a fellow blogger. You get to guess who it is and then I will tell you the story. While I haven’t seen many pictures of her on her blog, the baby has been featured. So that is your best clue if you don’t recognize her. Here are your other clues: she is brilliant, she is funny, and she is a baker extraordinaire–and I’m not sure which fact makes me admire her the most.

And just to be completely immodest, several pictures of myself.

These three pictures were taken at three different points on the same day of the trip: at the Peace Pagoda, the Book Mill, and outside my old university building. They correspond to the places I showed last week, with the exception of Shelburne Falls. When we arrived, the entire area was closed off and under water. It seems fitting that I post instead a picture taken outside my university building, a place where I often figuratively felt underwater.

Laughing at the Peace Pagoda

Outside the Bookmill

On the wall outside my university building

What are you showing today?

Click here or scroll down to the bottom of this post if this is your first time joining along (hint: link to the permalink for the post, not the main url for your blog and use your blog’s name, not your name). The list is open from now until late Tuesday night and a new one is posted every week.