Edgy Mama

Now that I’ve received the “Best Writing” award from the slightly biased but lovely BlogAshevillians, I’m feeling the pressure. Which makes me queasy. Because, really, I would be much more comfortable winning the “Biggest Hack” award.

Next year, by the way, I think we should have Oscar-type statues created, but instead of Oscar–the buff, bald dude–the statuettes will be golden reproductions of Asheville’s central phallic display, the Vance Monument.

But I digress. I want to tell you about the mutant squash. And I will. But first, I know you all want to know why I have been blogging so little, writing so rarely, well or otherwise. Don’t you?

Whether you do or not, I’m in an excuse-making mood. So….

One, the kids are not in school.

Two, I went to the beach.

Three, my four-year-old son and I just had three days alone together. Our house is much quieter without the extrovert, type-A spazzes around (Enviro-spouse and the girl) although I missed all that non-stop energy.

The boy and I hang. A lot. We re-enact scenes from his two favorite fairy tales: Jack and the Beanstalk and The Three Little Pigs. As I write this, he’s building “houses” out of tambourines. Three of the Seven Dwarfs are standing in for the porky ones. Grumpy, of course, is the Big Bad Wolf.

Additionally, the boy and I read books, take slow walks, eat meals whenever we want, and sleep late (relatively). Life is good, albeit quiet.

Today, we discovered the BBC’s kid’s website, CBeebies, which has interactive fairy tales AND nursery rhymes AND pages from said stories to print out and color. Both my computer and much of today’s writing time were thus co-opted by the boy and the BBC.

How soon, I wonder, until we have to buy the kids their own computer? And install 800 parental screens?

In other news, every year in our vegetable garden, we have random volunteer plants. In past years, we’ve always had a squashy volunteer vine that turns out to be a butternut squash vine, which rambles its way across our yard producing 20-30 yummy golden-brown squash.

This year, when the squash-like vine sprouted, we left it to its own devices, waiting with mouth-watering hope for the butternuts. Yesterday when I went to check on the garden and pick some sugar-snap peas, I discovered that the vine is not of the butternut variety. Nor is it of the yellow-hooked or zucchini variety. It is of the mutant variety.

Anyone have any recipes for weirdly-shaped mutant squash? Anyone want any mutant squash?