Lift Up Your Hearts!

I spent several of my formative years in the City of Soft-Pretzel-y-Love.  Not the fancy, cheese-filled mall variety, or the bake-at-home frozen blandness, but the soft, chewy, salty Philadelphia Pretzel, preferably from a germ-laden street vendor's cart and drizzled, of course, with mustard.  Nothing ever tastes as good as memory makes it, so for over thirty years I have been making do.

Enter Facebook.  Bear with me here, it's a convoluted story.

It all began, for me, when Janet joined Facebook.  I no longer remember what brought her, reluctantly, to that point, but she had so much fun re-connecting with old friends that she persuaded me to join as well.  The connecting-with-old-friends bit only works if one's friends are also on Facebook, which is much less likely for folks of my age, but nonetheless I've made a few enjoyable connections.  As a whole I find the Facebook package more annoying than not, but can put up with it for the few gems it tosses my way.

Like the inspiration for this post.  This summer I met a friend of my son-in-law-to-be.  Enjoyable as our time together was, we are far apart both generationally and geographically, and in the old days the chances of her sharing a recipe with me would have been nil.  But she is on Facebook, and graciously accepted my "friend request," the result of which is that when she posted a video on pretzel-making, I found it.  There are actually two in the series:

It is a very good thing we do not have cable television.  Put me in front of a food channel and I might not move all day.  Other shows by this guy are proving a major temptation getting in the way of progress this week.  "This guy" is Alton Brown, and his show, Good Eats, is on the Food Network (whatever that is).  Some related links:  One set of shows on YouTube, another set of shows on YouTube, and the fan page.  (I spent a fair amount of time trying to determine the legality or lack thereof of having the shows posted on YouTube, without success, but they've been there for quite awhile without being removed, and one of the posters runs the fan site and knows the chef, so I'm feeling free to enjoy them unless convinced otherwise.)

After all the preliminaries...ta da!  What I Did Yesterday:  I made the pretzels!  It was easy!  Dark brown, shiny, chewy, and exceedingly delicious, with or without mustard.

 

Did I say they were good?  I mean really, really good.  Even without the umibacillus vendorophilus.

We've lived in Florida over 20 years and have had a few interesting animal encounters, like the time we were driving home from choir rehearsal and had to stop while an alligator crossed the road ahead of us.  Usually, though, it's pretty tame around here, once you get accustomed to lizards in the house, palmetto bugs (aka cockroaches on steroids), and spiders half the size of your hand.

There is a small part not far from our house that hosts a suprising variety of flora and fauna for its size.  From pileated woodpeckers to herons and sandhill cranes, from squirrels to gopher tortoises, you never know what you'll encounter on the jogging trail.  Once I even met a red fox.

I try to walk every day for about an hour, and at my pace four times around the jogging trail runs just five minutes over that, so since I had to be out in the car anyway, that's where I decided to walk today.  It was on my second lap that I had The Encounter:  wending its way across the trail just a few feet in front of my striding legs was my first ever, in-the-wild, live-as-it-could be coral snake!

Pencil-thin and about a foot long—perhaps he was a youngster—he was minding his own business and slithered off into the woods on the other side of the trail, so I did not let his presence deter me from completing my circuits.  On returning home, however, I hastened to google "coral snake" to prove my memory, which has been confused ever since I realized that the old jingle, "Red and yellow, kill a fellow; red and black, friend of Jack" (and variations thereon) could easily be reworked to say just the opposite.  It's like when I thought I was clever to remember how to get to the public parking lot near St. Luke's Cathedral in Orlando:  Turn at the first president.  Easy enough; one turns on Washington Street.  But then I realized that when driving one actually encounters Jefferson Street before Washington, so in another sense that is the first president, and I remained confused until I had made the trip often enough to remember to turn on Washington without any clever memory aids.

In the future, I don't think I'll be needing rhymes to help me tell the difference between a coral snake and the harmless scarlet king snake or milk snake.  Those equal-sized red and black stripes separated by narrow yellow bands will be hard to forget.  I've seen coral snakes in zoos before, but that is not the same thing as a personal encounter, and adrenaline sharpens memory.

I love to cook, but that's something I keep forgetting.  Maybe I need an audience; it hardly seems worth the time and effort when I'm eating alone, and even when I'm not we're usually so busy it hardly seems reasonable to spend much time cooking.  But Porter keeps talking about how this is the best restaurant in town, so it seems only fair to work towards making that a reality.  On Saturday, we had some of our favorite company over for dinner—the best kind to cook for, because they're always appreciative and don't mind being guinea pigs for whatever I want to try out.

Earlier this summer, my nephew had feasted us on Hazelnut-Crusted Chicken with Raspberry Sauce, a Bon Appétit recipe from Epicurious.com.  The taste was even more amazing than this beautiful presentation (click on picture for larger view):

It was a recipe I knew I had to add to my repertoire, so that's what I served.  Sort of.  Well, actually, that was the starting point, but I never can resist changing things along the way.  One of our guests doesn't eat meat, so I used salmon instead of chicken.  I had the store take the skin off the filet, then sliced it into pieces about two inches wide.  I could have bought hazelnuts, but had pecans in stock, and I used raspberry balsamic vinegar instead of white wine vinegar, canola oil instead of safflower, Cherchies' Champagne Mustard instead of honey mustard, Penzeys' Florida Seasoned Pepper for half the black pepper—you get the picture.  And because it was fish, I baked it for about 20 minutes instead of frying it first.

Despite all the changes, the end result was still really, really good.  I'm going to go raid the leftovers now....

Last night the Orlando Philharmonic Orchestra presented Fanfare, its 2008-2009 season opener, featuring the U.S. Army's Herald Trumpets.  As always, it was an enjoyable concert, though odd in a way, since I often found the orchestra too loud.  I'm accustomed to that in everyday life, and carry earplugs with me nearly everywhere I go, because whatever is amplified is nearly always amplified too much for my taste.  Yet this was live, acoustic music, and it wasn't just the guest trumpets that were too loud.  Orchestras are supposed to be too loud only if you're sitting directly in front of the percussion or the trumpets—not when you're far away in the balcony.  Weird.  Perhaps my ears are getting better as my eyes are getting worse.

As the oboe section is of primary importance to our family, we immediately noticed a gaping hole—where was Principal Jared Hauser?  And Laura Hauser was not amongst the bassoons, either.  There turns out to be a good reason for their absense:  Jared left to take the position of oboe professor at the Blair School of Music at Vanderbilt University.  Good for them, but very sad for us.  I'm particular about oboe playing, and I loved Jared's sound.  This reminds me of when Principal Flute Aaron Goldman left to become Assistant Principal Flute of the National Symphony Orchestra.  The OPO seems to be a sending-off point for really good (and nice) musicians.  I'll never forget the fun we had listening in one night when Jared and Janet played baroque oboe duets together.  I was hoping for a repeat some day—but now one is in Nashville, and the other in Switzerland.

Oddly enough, in a concert that featured such greats as Verdi, Shostakovich, and Richard Strauss, my favorite work was Tromba Lontana, by the living composer John Adams, whose Short Ride in a Fast Machine I had enjoyed when Janet performed it at Eastman.

Added 2008-09-29:  Stephan was kind enough to point out that I had written "Tromba Iontana" instead of "Tromba Lontana."  It comes of not knowing Italian, I suppose.  (The title was translated as "Distant Trumpet.")  I will grumble just a bit and ask why the program chooses to use a lower-case letter in a font where the lower case L and the upper case I are identical, and in a publication where most of the other titles have all major words capitalized—but I checked in the pdf version and it is, indeed, a lower-case L.

In my efforts to confirm the true title, I discovered these two YouTube videos, which you might enjoy.  I wonder, just a bit, about copyright issues when works like this are put on YouTube, but for now I'll give them the benefit of the doubt.

Tromba Lontana

Today we celebrated the Smithsonian Institution's Museum Day by visiting The Maitland Historical Society's Waterhouse Residence Museum.  If you're going to get in for free, why not check out a museum you didn't even know existed?  The Maitland Historical Society's museums are located on lovely Lake Lily in Maitland, and we enjoyed a walk around the lake after our tour.  I believe we can call Museum Day a hit; everyone in our almost-crowded tour had brought web-printed admission passes, and for most of us the museum was a new experience.

Since Mr. Waterhouse came originally from "the north," I can't help wondering if he was a descendant of my eighth great grandfather, Jacob Waterhouse, who immigrated from England to New London, Connecticut in 1676.  He had a nice house, much more so than would be expected for a middle class family, because he was a carpenter and buit much of it himself.  Part of the museum is his shop, which is filled with antique tools.  "Antique," I'm sure—but it let us know how old we are when we found ourselves giving a sotto voce commentary throughout the tour:  "This house is the same age as the one I grew up in," "My aunt had a stove like that," and "Those tools look just like the ones in my dad's workshop."

The Associated Press hasn't taken up the story yet, though I know from experience that will probably change.  I wish private grief could remain private; since it is not, however, I need have no qualms about providing updates for those whose love and prayers support the particpants in this unfortunate drama.

Nearly six years after Isaac's birth, and more than four after she was charged in his death, Judy Wilson's formal trial began.  Although they support Judy and never wished her to be charged, Heather and Jon were subpoenaed by the prosecution as witnesses—the only eyewitnesses other than Judy herself.  Required to report to the Allegheny County Courthouse by 8:30 a.m. on Monday, we packed ourselves up—three sleepy children, breakfasts for eating in the car on the way, a cooler with lunch and snacks, an overstuffed diaper bag, Jon's laptop bag (Lime Daley service must be available, trial or no), a bag of books, toys and games, plus jackets, blankets, baby slings, and oh yes, legal paperwork—and headed for Pittsburgh, in the middle of rush hour.

Eventually we found a parking place and began our assault on the courthouse.  If you're going to try to bring half a mountain of belongings through a security scan, make sure at least one of them is an extremely cute two-week old baby.  Faith was the hit of the courthouse, winning hearts and smiles all day long, even from people stuffed into the elevator with us—though some folks took one look at our entourage and murmured, "I'll wait for the next one."

After reporting to the witness room, we set up our encampment outside the door, as the room was small and not a good place for two active boys to wait.  The courthouse is not exactly laid out to be family-friendly.  A door labelled "Children's Playplace" promised to make our stay more enjoyable, but reneged on that promise:  children are only allowed in if they leave their parents behind the closed door, and there are strict sign-in and sign-out procedures.  Well, the building did originally house the County Jail....  The true function of the Playplace is apparently as a holding area for children whose parents need to be in court and who have no other adult to watch them.  Bring your own adults and the cool toys are off limits.  The nice lady watching over the often-empty room did thrill the boys by giving them some gummy candies, though.

If the set-up wasn't meant for families, at least the smooth marble floor of the historic courthouse was perfect for racing Matchbox cars.  Jonathan was pretty good about keeping the cars away from the other inhabitants of the courthouse, and the people going about their business were pretty good about not screaming when a car whizzed past their feet as they turned the corner.

The people going about their business were an interesting mix.  Suit-and-tied attorneys, neatly dressed witnesses, casual reporters, and people so grungy that one hoped they weren't planning on getting anywhere near the inside of some judge's courtroom. People who clearly were comfortable in that imposing and intimidating building, and people who clearly were not.  People black and people white, though oddly enough I saw no Asians and heard no Spanish spoken.  Male and female there were, but very few on the outer edges of the age spectrum.  Jonathan, Noah, and Faith stood out even in this patchwork fabric of humanity.

There was plenty of time to observe the courthouse denizens, because after checking in our chief occupation for seven hours was waiting.  There is a definite hierarchy in the witness world, and Heather and Jon were on the bottom of it.  Police officers and paramedics have to finish their testimonies early, so they can get back out on the street.  Doctors and other bigwigs can't be kept waiting too long, of course, and though the midwives were treated rather shabbily as well, they still came before the self-employed and the parents.  I guess they just saved the best for last—from the news reports, it seems the media would agree.  But I'm getting ahead of myself.

We spent the morning keeping the boys entertained and somewhat corralled, and feeding, changing, and holding Faith—punctuated by occasional trips to investigate one floor up (where the courtroom was) and one floor down (where the bathrooms were).  Memo:  if you're two weeks postpartum and supposed to be avoiding stairs, and the ladies room is a very slow elevator ride distant, bathroom breaks require advance planning.

The highlight of the day may have been our lunch break.  We enjoyed our tuna sandwiches, kefir, and Hydrox cookies in the courtyard, by the fountain.  The boys enjoyed running around (not in) the flower beds, which to our surprise contain lantana—one of my favorite flowers—which I thought would not grow this far north.

If we had been told to come at noon instead of 8:30, we still would have had a three and a half hour wait.  The afternoon was much like the morning, only we were all a little more touchy and a lot more tired.  Jon created a "nap cave" for Noah out of a table and some chairs; he blissfully slept away a couple of hours of boredom, lying on the floor with some diapers for a pillow.

Jon was to have testified first, but time was getting short, and they (mercifully) decided to call Heather in hopes she would be finished and not have to return for another day.  Once again it was a matter of hurry-up-and-wait.  She was called up to the hallway outside of the courtroom just as the person before her began to testify.  Jon was able to take hungry Faith to her, but the judge was annoyed by the baby noise outside the door.  What looked as if it might have been an uncomfortable scene turned 180 degrees when the officials realized the situation, at which point they allowed Heather and Faith to move to a more private (and quiet) spot.

It's a good thing Faith was topped up, because Heather's testimony took up the rest of the afternoon.  Apparently she held up well, responding clearly, calmly, and cogently.  She masterfully restrained herself from offering explanations and elaborations that she knew were "not her place" and would only rile the judge.  I don't think I could have done as well, as frustrated as I am by leading questions and surveys that require yes or no answers to questions that don't have binary answers.

We were all thankful that the cameras were not allowed in or near the courtroom, and that by that point Heather knew the courthouse well enough to return to us via a path that did not take her past where they were set up.  Very thankful we were, also, to pack up and be on our way, even though frustrated that Jon would need to return Wednesday.

Since we were now caught in rush hour, we made a side trip back to Carroll Street, where we showed Faith off to some friends and enjoyed a leisurely Thai dinner.  It was a great meal, although it was amusing to note that my "6" rated spiciness was hotter than Jon's "8."  Jonathan's "2" was fine, however, and he devoured more than half of a full-sized pork, vegetable, and noodle dish.

Rush hour was over by the time we were on the road again, but it was very late before we finally made it home, since we stopped at a friend's house for Jon to help one of their kids with a computer problem.  The wait was not bad for the rest of us, however, since it was accompanied by good company, good conversation, and awesome, warm-from-the-oven molasses cookies (yes, the same ones mention in the previous post).  But make it home we eventually did, and collapsed into bed.  I did take a few minutes to send a "we're okay" e-mail to concerned family members, which turned out to be a good thing, since this blog post has been longer in creation than I had intended.

No matter what those who schedule the order of testimony might have thought, to the media, Heather was the star of the show.  The news reports so far, with commentary:

The first one, Monday night, from KDKA.  This is the only one with video; click on the left-most thumbnail picture on the right hand side, or click here.  Although the report is current, all the pictures are from four years ago.  The baby with Heather is Jonathan.  It's a good thing court stenographers take more accurate notes than reporters.  I can't speak for all of the quotes, but one thing I do know is that Heather did not say that "what happened to their son was not a crime."  I suppose that technically that is the same thing as the way it was expressed in a previous report—"They don't feel anyone is criminally liable for this"—but it sure sounds different.  Footling breech presentation is what the article means, not footlength.

The best one, Tuesday morning, from the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review.  Generally accurate, from a reporter who was more observant than most, noticing that Heather smiled at Judy during the proceedings.  One misunderstanding that many people would make (as I would have) is that the statement that Isaac "had no pulse" meant his heart wasn't beating, which was not true.  Also, although the reports (and, I suppose, the prosecutor) made much of the fact that Heather spent an hour and 40 minutes pushing Isaac out, that's the same amount of time she pushed with Jonathan, whose birth was completely normal.  And I spent four hours pushing when Heather was born.

The not-so-good one. Tuesday morning, from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.  This seems more of a cut-and-paste effort from previous reports. The statement, "When they learned at about 30 weeks' gestation that the baby was breech and midwives [at the Midwife Center for Birth and Women's Health, where Faith was recently delivered] might recommend an ultrasound or a surgical procedure, the Daleys found Mrs. Wilson," is untrue.  Heather and Jon sought out Judy because they wanted a home birth, and the midwives at the Midwife Center do not do home births, no matter what the baby's presentation is.  And for a baby to be in the breech position that early in the pregnancy is not unusual, which is why the midwives weren't worried about it.  Worse, as an answer to the question of whether or not Heather would have still wanted to continue at home if she'd known there was a risk of Isaac dying, "Yes" is not a fair summary of "There's a possibility a baby could die during any birth.  I don't know what I would have done. I can't say I definitely would have transported to the hospital or I definitely would not have."

The local angle.  Tuesday morning, from the Butler County Radio Network.  Short, but manages to make two new, blatant errors.  Heather was 23 years old, not 28, when Isaac was born, and she and Jon did not choose a home birth, nor to be attended by a direct-entry midwife, based on their religious beliefs.  Their religious beliefs do, indeed, affect every part of their lives, from birth choices and childrearing to what kind of work they do and how they spend their money.  But members of their (very normal) church would sure be surprised to find anything in the Bible forbidding hospital births.

What Heather would like to have been able to clarify in her testimony is the difference between the medical model of care for childbirth, which informs the assumptions of both the prosecution and the doctors who testified, and the Midwives' Model of Care.  I trust the defense will do that in due time.

I never used to pay attention to the weather forecast, and was amused by my mother-in-law's apparent fixation on the topic.  She was a Connecticut Yankee, and the weather sometimes meant life or death to her early New England ancestors.

So too, for Floridians, and ever since 2004, when we emerged from our 40-year hurricane lull, I've found it wise to keep an eye on the forecast, at least during hurricane season.  I have my favorite Tropical Weather link, and have carefully followed the progress of Fay, Gustav, and Ike recently.

Not carefully enough, however.  I tend to ignore them once they have gone far inland and are down to tropical storm strength.  This proved to be a mistake, as I took my eyes off Ike. I thought its remnants would miss the Pittsburgh area, and in any case were still a coupe of days away from getting near us. Ike did not take its eyes off me, however, and visited us with strong winds Sunday night.  Even then I was clueless and did not associate the wind with a hurricane.  If I had, I might not have so casually stepped outside to enjoy the weather, even before the dinner dishes were washed.  I remember how much I enjoyed a good windstorm as a child, often experiencing them from a perch in one of my favorite climbing trees.  But in Florida, strong winds generally mean hurricanes, and hurricanes blow trees down.

Blissfully ignorant that this was anything more than a simple storm, the boys and I cavorted in the breeze.  Jonathan especially loved to see the tree trunks swaying, and Noah sought the moon as it played hide and seek amongst the clouds. The ashes from a neighbor's fire pit blew into our eyes, but that was only a minor annoyance.

Expecting rain, Jon decided the new gutters needed some more solid fastenings, so he and Porter braved the wind and the approaching dark to do the job.  I really only started worrying when the ladder blew down; after that the boys and I watched the proceedings from the porch.  By the time they were finished I was glad to get into the safety of the house, but before we could get back to washing the dishes, the power went off.  When the lights had flickered earlier, Jon had filled two five-gallon buckets with water for toilet flushing, and we had some jugs of potable bottled water, so the best course of action seemed to be to go to bed.  (The water was needed because the well pump requires electricity.)

Sometime in the middle of the night the power came back on, but for less than a minute.  Porter arose at 5:15, intending to catch an early flight, and wondered how he was going to get hot water for shaving.  Lo and behold, just as he was asking that question, the power returned, more seriously this time.  Porter's flight was delayed by about an hour, thanks to the effects of the storm, but the day was fine and we didn't think more about it, just washed dishes, did laundry, and otherwise savored the joys of having power and water.  We could tell that all was not well, however, because we had no Internet connection (the cable company was without power) and two of our three cell phones worked poorly if at all (probably due to the nearest AT&T cell tower being out; Heather's phone uses a different service).

In the mid-afternoon we went for a walk around the neighborhood, and when we returned we discovered that the Internet connection was back.  I had just started to catch up when the power went out again!  I was able to complete an explanatory e-mail to family members, thanks to the UPS, but soon Heather turned that off to conserve its battery.  The power company was less than helpful, with no explanation why we lost power the second time, only an assurance that all would be well by midnight Tuesday.

Jon had spent the day in Pittsburgh, so he didn't have much time before dark to deal with another problem:  the wind had blown several shingles from the roof and dislodged others.  He was able to make some temporary repairs; fortunately, the storm brought no rain with it.  The boys had great fun lighting candles and running around with flashlights, and would have had an even more glorious time had we not been concerned with conserving the batteries.  We left another pile of dishes (and some partly-done laundry) and again went to bed.

This time the power returned at about 1:30 a.m. In the morning I tackled the mound of dishes and the interrupted laundry, and was just about to step into the shower when we lost power yet again.  Our cell phone service had returned to normal strength, and the Internet still worked, but the latter was not much good without electricity, so Jon spent most of the day with a friend who still had power, and the rest of us went into Pittsburgh.  The Church of the Ascension (Women's Bible Study meeting), the Carnegie Library (genealogy research), Trader Joe's (shopping), the bank, and Wendy's (lunch) all had power, but some traffic lights were out and a number of stores were still dark and closed.

We headed for home, hoping the outage would be nearly over, since the power company had said this morning all would be fixed by 6:00 p.m.  When we picked up Jon, however, we learned that what they had really said was 6:00 p.m. on Friday!  We began to make plans to deal with that eventuality, but returned home to find the lights on, much to our relief.  True to pattern, the Internet was down again, but returned fairly soon after that.  Once again, we washed dishes and did laundry—Heather was really glad to get a diaper wash done—and I finally got my delayed bath.

We filled the water containers again and made further preparations, not knowing how long the power will last this time—but so far, so good.  Annoying as the on-again-off-again behavior has been, it is a blessing, as it gives the refrigerator and freezer time to recover.  Many people have been continuously without power and have lost food.

Those of you who have had more reliable access to news probably know more about the broader situation than we do.  I know we had record winds, with gusts of nearly 80 mph, though I don't think we personally experienced any that strong.  Many trees are down, though none here.  There's not a generator to be bought in town.  Stores like Home Depot don't stock as many as they do in Florida, and much of what they did have they sent to Florida, Louisiana, and Texas recently, never dreaming how much demand there would be for them right here in Western Pennsylvania.

The morals of this story:

• Be prepared, as the Boy Scouts say
• Keep short accounts—don't count on being able to get anything done at the last minute, whether laundry or e-mail or bathing
• Relax and have fun with unusual circumstances, whether it be enjoying a candlelit dinner or eating up the ice cream so it won't melt
• Take time to be grateful for what you take for granted, such as electricity, phone service, and water
• And keep a weather eye out!

At four days old, Faith saw the pediatrician for a general checkup.  The only news of note is that she weighed 9 lbs. 11 oz., up half a pound from birth, putting her right on track to follow Jonathan's lead as "sumo baby," especially since Noah has weaned himself.  (Noah followed a more normal weight gain because he shared the abundant milk supply with Jonathan.)

For the most part, Faith eats and sleeps, although she is looking around more, and today had her first opportunity to spend some time on her tummy on the floor.  Heather tried to get a picture of her lifting her head, but the duration is still short and the camera delay long, so I don't know if she was successful.

Faith is three days old and mother and daughter are doing great.  Heather is healing rapidly, faster than with any of her other births.  Faith is a champion nurser.  Eating, sleeping, and looking adorable are her primary activities, but she also likes to look around and has quite decent head control for a three-day-old.

A nurse came to visit (part of the package with the Midwife Center) and seemed happy with everything.  She did a heel stick on Faith for the PKU and other testing, and as soon as she did, Jonathan and Noah jumped and stood by their sister like knights—they weren't allowed to fight off the nurse, however.  The main problem was not the heel stick itself, but trying to get enough blood for the tests required a lot of heel manipulation and squeezing, and Faith's cry was clearly more from anger than from pain.

Dad-o had to fly back to Phoenix, but Grammy and Papa popped in from New Hampshire, thrilling the two boys and soaking up as much "holding time" with Faith as possible given that their visit was actually shorter than the driving time.

Church people have been generous with meals and if they keep up this rate and quantity very long, Heather and Jon will have meals for six months.  :) 

Sunday night was a difficult one, but last night went better.  We're all a bit sleep-deprived, but it's not entirely Faith's fault.  I, for example, went to bed early tonight then stayed up to write this post.

Click on a picture to see more.

Early and middle labor:  Heather's still smiling, and the men are assembling a wheelbarrow.

  

Proud big brothers and daddy

  

Happy aunt, happy mother at home

 

 Faith Elizabeth Daley!

On Saturday, September 6, 2008, at 6:35 p.m., Heather delivered a beautiful baby girl!  She weighs 9 lbs. 3.5 oz. and is 20.75 in. long.  That may sound like a big baby, but she's a pound lighter than big brother Noah at birth.

The name of the newest member of our family, the first girl in over 26 years, is

Faith Elizabeth Daley

Everyone is very happy and doing well.  As time permits, I'll publish a longer version of the story, and you can follow it from a more direct perspective on Heather and Jon's blog.

Jon:  If you had to pick, would you rather have a live mouse or a dead mouse in your house?

Heather:  A dead mouse.

Jon:  Then I have good news for you!

I'm tired and have too much to do.  Therefore, I'm procrastinating.  I'm putting our guesses about Little Baby Daley's arrival here where it's easy to update as they come in.

JW:  September 1, 11:00 p.m., girl, 8 lbs. 5 oz.

DL:  September 2, boy, 10 lbs. 2 oz., 22 in.

JMD:  September 3, 3:00 p.m., 9 lbs. 15 oz, 21.5 inches.

PW:  September 4, 3:00 a.m., girl, 7lbs. 12oz.

SS:  September 4, 19:56, boy, 4210 grams, 51 cm (7:56 p.m., 9 lbs. 4.5 oz., 20 in.) 

LW:  September 5, girl, 8 lbs. 8 oz.

HD:  September 6, 6:00 a.m., 9lbs. 8 oz.

SL:  September 6, 9:06 p.m., boy, 9 lbs. 6 oz.

NA:  September 9, boy, 9 lbs. 9 oz.

More to come.

Holcomb Farm has posted the winning photographs from its 2007 Photo Contest.  My favorite is the third prize winner.

Last night our neighbors called to ask if we had noticed a terrible odor.  They had just returned home after a few hours away and smelled something awful as soon as got out of the car; it was so strong they couldn't tell if it was widespread or localized.  We stepped outside of our house and smelled no more than the normal hot-and-humid Florida vegetation smells.

Until we approached their house, that is. We were then hit with what was, indeed, a foul odor.  But not, I was certain, a what-died-in-here? odor; it was something chemical rather than biological.  Don't get started on the truth that biology is also chemistry; I'd say it was an inorganic smell rather than organic, but that's not true either.  I know what I meant, and you would, too, if you'd smelled it.

But where was it coming from?  Although the house and the yard were permeated with the smell, it seemed pretty clear that the garage was the source, not that that narrowed the possibilities down much.  Diligent dog-like sniffing could not pinpoint the origin.  Well, not really "dog-like"; our noses were not in danger of physical contact with anything, and we made frequent retreats outside for fresh air.  I did more thinking than sniffing, myself, in an effort not to complicate the scents by vomiting on the garage floor.

My first reaction was "propane," but a brief opening of the valve of a known propane tank proved that the scents were not the same.  There's no gas line to the house, so it couldn't have been a gas leak. Finally, my eyes lit on a container of weed killer, and I had a "Eureka!" moment:  Insecticide.  The smell was the chemical reek left in the wake of some pest control operations.

With that in mind, it was not long before our neighbors found—behind closed doors, in a box, on a shelf in the back of a cabinet—a leaking bottle of malathion.  They carefully bagged it up, removed the wooden shelf onto which it head leaked, and set it all outside to be taken on the morrow to the county's toxic waste facility.  Mystery solved, and the garage and house could begin to air out and detoxify.

The atmosphere in the neighborhood, on the other hand, deteriorated rapidly.  Even bagged up, the permeation of the malathion was amazing.  After returning home, opening either the front or the back door immediately let in an overwhelmingly foul odor.  We turned off the air conditioner so as not to bring outside air into the house.  I, worried about what harm our exposure might have done, and whether or not our neighbors should spend the night with us instead of in their polluted house, turned to Google.  I was somewhat reassured that malathion is not one of the banned pesticides, but still in use, and that we'd probably already received far greater exposure through mosquito-control spraying.

We had planned to go to bed early, but the adventure had already scotched that idea.  Furthermore, since I'd read that symptoms of malathion poisoning can take 30 minutes to a couple of hours to appear, we decided to stay up a bit longer and watch the final episode of Season Two of Monk.  (Monk is our latest Netflix TV show venture about which I intend to post at some point; we tried it at the recommendation of a friend, and because Season Four of Numb3rs is not yet available.  So far we have found it very enjoyable.)

If the point was to keep us awake, it succeeded.  If the point was to distract us from worrying, it was the wrong show to watch.  The lyrics of the theme song,  in case you don't know it, are thus:

It's a jungle out there
Disorder and confusion everywhere
No one seems to care
Well I do
Hey, who's in charge here?
It's a jungle out there
Poison in the very air we breathe
Do you know what's in the water that you drink?
Well I do, and it's amazing
People think I'm crazy, 'cause I worry all the time
If you paid attention, you'd be worried too
You better pay attention
Or this world we love so much might just kill you
I could be wrong now, but I don't think so
It's a jungle out there

When they got to "poison in the very air we breathe," I took notice, and by "if you paid attention, you'd be worried to" I'd decided to make a call to Poison Control.  Our neighbors were going to call the fire department, which in the past has been very helpful with oddball situations (including the time an insect set off our smoke alarm), but there is no longer an off-hours phone number, and it didn't seem like something to bother the 9-1-1 folks about.  Fortunately, Poison Control is a different system, and they were not only avaiable, but very helpful.  We were able to sleep well, and our neighbors were glad to know that they didn't have to evacuate.  Here's a tip from Poison Control that I woudn't have thought of:  Today's kitty litter is very useful for cleaning up liquid chemical spills.

This morning when we awoke a sniff out the back door revealed nothing but a chlorine smell from the pool, but the front yard was as bad as ever.  I find that pretty amazing.  That's powerful stuff!  We're fine now, though, as the offending substance has been properly dealt with.  I'm very glad it all happened in a situation in which it was discovered quickly—no more than a couple of hours from leak to clean up.  What if our neighbors had been on vacation, or even just gone for a normal work day?

I's a jungle out there.