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One good way to keep grandkids coming around is to keep cool toys around. Not expensive toys, necessarily, but interesting ones like parachutes, butterfly nets, ride toys with obnoxious sirens and horns, plastic bats and a thousand plastic balls, old buckets, assorted sizes of rakes and snow shovels, galvanized tubs and a 9-setting nozzle for the garden hose.

That said, there are times you should drop some hard, cold cash. On grabbers.

For the uninitiated, a grabber is a hollow aluminum rod about 3-feet long with a jaw-shaped contraption on the end that you open and close by squeezing a lever on the handle. Grabbers enable grabees to grab things out of reach—cookies on a high shelf, interesting things on stacks of boxes in the garage, your cousin’s leg, your cousin’s arm and your grandpa’s hat right off his head.

Our two grandsons were with us for a short weekend and noticed shiny new grabbers hanging in the garage. They immediately inspected them and demonstrated how to adjust the angle of the jaws. We’d never noticed that before and probably never would have.

There wasn’t much (or many) to grab in the backyard, so we suggested branching out. We asked if they’d like to pick up trash. They were ecstatic. Their thought process probably went like this: “If they take us to pick trash this time, maybe they’ll take us dumpster diving next time.”

Keep dreaming, boys. Keep dreaming.

We grabbed plastic gloves, buckets, a 30-gallon trash bag and headed to a neighborhood strip mall known for lackluster maintenance.

I told the boys we were putting the Broken Window Theory into practice. Their eyes grew huge. Grandma was talking trash only moments ago and now she’s talking broken windows.

“It goes like this, fellas: Trash, litter and broken windows may seem like small things, but they can lead to an increase in crime. Before you were born, the mayor of New York City put the Broken Window Theory to work and had graffiti erased and broken windows repaired nightly. The result was a decrease in crime and the Big Apple became known as one of the safest big cities in the world.”

“Cool! Can we go there?”

“Um. Maybe someday.”

Our destination did not disappoint. Stores, a gas station and bus stop all provided a hodgepodge of finds. Big plastic cups, empty soda cans, beer cans, tiny liquor bottles and disposable coffee cups with lids and stir sticks accounted for the greatest amount of trash.

The problem with “disposable cups” is that a lot of people take it to mean right where they are at the moment.

Tobacco products and masks were the second most frequently found items. Empty bags from the big three of fast food nutrients— crackers, cookies and chips— made an excellent showing as well.

The best find of the afternoon? A smashed car bumper.

“No, we’re not taking it home!”

Although it was productive couple of hours, albeit gross and smelly, nobody wants to go back soon.

That said, the parking lot looked good.

For a whole two days.

After returning from the State Fair, I’m not sure if I should pop into a Catholic church and make a confession or create an online account for Weight Watchers.

We came. We saw. We ate.

Oh, did we eat. Fried things, deep fried things and deep, deep fried things.

They were delicious, every grease-soaked bite.

Summer isn’t summer without an elephant ear—deep fried dough coated with sugar. Not even the name stops me, and it should. If you are what you eat, do I really want to eat something with elephant as part of its name?

Apparently, I do. (She says, licking her greasy sugar-coated fingers.)

We passed sandwiches made of shredded turkey stuffed between two donuts, and it struck me that cardiologists should set up booths interspersed among the food stands. How would they get people to stop at their booths, you ask? Offer free fair food.

We tried practicing some modicum of moderation, splitting food items instead of going whole hog (no offense to the Pork Tent).

When I hesitated at a soft pretzel with cheese dip you could grease axles with, someone in our group goaded me saying, “It’s only one day out of the year.” True, but that’s also what they tell you before wheeling you away for heart surgery. “It’s only one day out of the year.” Then they start the IV and everything fades to black.

In defense of fair food and balanced diets, there were vendors offering vegetables – peppers and onions on the Philly Cheesesteak sandwiches and roasted ears of corn—corn that drips with butter. As a matter of fact, it was more like butter with corn as an afterthought.

You could also find fruit. Apples coated with thick caramel and nuts.

Of course, we did more than eat. We toured the agricultural building with award winning, zucchinis, tomatoes, cabbage and pumpkins (all of which would be tasty deep fried.)

We also toured the animal barns, viewing the world’s largest sow and boar (even though every neighboring state also claim to have the world’s largest sow and boar), and got a whiff of cows and chickens.

Then we went back outside and everything we’d seen inside was available outside—slathered in barbeque and with a side of fries.

One of the grands lamented that she had never had cotton candy, as her mother told her it comes with cockroaches. Her mother had cotton candy when she was 4 and it did have a cockroach in it, which I grabbed and threw to the ground. I bought a cotton candy and thoroughly inspected it. The girl pulled some off, stuffed it in her mouth, closed her eyes and floated toward the heavens.

She made it last three delicious hours and even had some left to take home.

The State Fair is a summer ritual of sights, sounds and tastes we will carry with us for months to come—in our minds, on our hips, midsections and who knows where else.

And now, we are back to reality – and spinach salads.

Our oldest granddaughter left three resumes and business cards scattered about the house touting her abilities as a babysitter.

This was puzzling as we are not anticipating any more babies, but maybe she thinks we may need a sitter for ourselves one day soon.

She left one on the microwave knowing we would find it as we have a deeply ingrained habit of frequently visiting the kitchen for food.

Another was left on the dining room table. We don’t eat in there often, but she knows the big window in the dining room is where we press our faces to the glass, watching and waiting for someone interesting to arrive.

She left a third copy in an upstairs bedroom where she sleeps when she spends the night. That copy was not intended for us as much as it was letting her cousins know she claims rights to the yellow bedroom.

She is 12 and recently finished the American Red Cross Babysitter Training. The resume says she learned “leadership, professionalism, safety, child development, basic childcare and care for emergencies.”

We rather like knowing all these details and are contemplating asking other family members to submit lists of their skill sets as well.

She also completed training in First Aid and CPR – adult, child and infant. It is reassuring to know she is familiar with adult CPR and could go to town on her grandpa and myself should such a feat be needed. It gives new meaning to the term “Immediate Care.”

Under experience she listed babysitting two children of friends of the family. I am familiar with these children and because they are docile and compliant, do not consider them a test-worthy experience. Below that she listed cleaning up after dinner and putting three of her four younger siblings to bed.  I am very familiar with these children. They can outrun their black lab, routinely unload living creatures from their pockets onto the kitchen table and leave footprints on the ceilings. A 12-year-old who can handle this group is someone who can anticipate disaster, move at the speed of light, has six arms, a commanding voice and eyes in the back of her head.

She lists additional skills and abilities as: music, storytelling, liking kids, a good sense of humor, can cloth diaper babies, hold children correctly and much more. She also offers pet sitting — not Red Cross certified — citing experience with cats, dogs, rabbits, fish and chickens.

I asked if there are any potential babysitting jobs on the horizon and she said there is a family she thought of contacting, but she has seen their kids in action and decided the job would not be worth the money. (I’d like to see what their ceiling looks like.)

So be it. Realism is a fine quality to have as well. In any case, she may have another chicken sitting job soon and that is fine with her.

Chickens rarely need a diaper change or CPR.

I have often seen people in large groups wearing shirts emblazoned with the name of their family reunion and wondered what possessed them to draw such attention to themselves.  A few weekends ago, I became one of those people. I know now such shirts are not a bid for attention but a means of keeping a running headcount on a large group.

My sister-in-law, one of the most considerate people ever, had 25 shirts made—each neatly folded and wrapped in a bow, bearing the wearer’s name on it. If it had been left to me, I would have tagged everyone with a label gun.

The shirts were color coded, which my brother explained. “The green shirts are for little people,” he said, eyeing the little people up and down the line.

He then explained that those in blue shirts—the parents, aunts and uncles of the green shirts—were to intervene if they saw a problem among the green shirts.

If the blue shirts were unable to handle the green shirts, the blue shirts would notify the red shirts – myself, the husband, my brother and his wife—and the red shirts would then handle the blue shirts and the green shirts.

There were big eyes among the green shirts. The lower lip trembled on a 3-year old. The blue shirts were on high alert as well.

My brother began enumerating what situations the red shirts could handle: “medical emergencies, hunger, pretty much anything you can think of and fisticuffs.”

The kids were excited, even though half of them were unsure as to the meaning of fisticuffs. I don’t think anyone planned on fisticuffs at our reunion, but I’ve heard of large family get-togethers going south. It never hurts to be prepared.

Our oldest daughter, a natural organizer who enjoys crowd management, immediately asked to trade in her blue shirt for a red shirt even though she was not of the red shirt generation. She was told you don’t just “get a red shirt,” you “earn a red shirt.”

We hung out in a picnic shelter, abandoning all hopes of tablecloths or badminton due to strong winds. During lunch, a gust of wind whipped my sister-in-law’s paper plate out of her hands and into my face. The crowd was disappointed she hadn’t put mustard on her sandwich, as it would have been far more entertaining than the few breadcrumbs clinging to my cheeks.

For a moment, we thought red shirt intervention might be needed at the dessert table when someone put out a box of cookies labeled “Best Cookies Ever.” You don’t do that in a group of good cooks and think it will go unnoticed. It was settled without fisticuffs—there will be a cookie bakeoff next time we are together.

We talked and ate and watched the river sweep huge tree trunks downstream. Some swam in the hotel pool, others hiked a trail and rolled in the poison ivy. A storm blew in and we all trekked inside for dinner out of coolers.

We walked along the river before sunset, admiring a rainbow pinned to lingering clouds in a steel gray sky. My brother led the pack of kids singing, “We’ve Been Working on the Railroad.”

I’ve never known my brother to sing, let alone lead a crowd of kids.

It was the watershed of gladness, the goodness of being together after several years apart and the tenderness of not knowing when we might all be together again.

 

We were having breakfast with some of the grands when one asked if she could have my chicken when I die.

The chicken is not a live chicken, but a ceramic chicken I’ve had since we were first married and use for serving scrambled eggs.

I said she can have the chicken, but she’ll have to make her own scrambled eggs.

Then I left the table and looked in a mirror to see if I should have spent more time on hair and makeup.

Eh.

The thought of dying was not on my mind today; nor was the thought of who should have the chicken – or that anyone would want it, for that matter.

Who knows how their minds work. I’m not entirely certain how my own mind works.

I guess this is a new stage of life I didn’t see coming—the “Hey, Can I Have That When You’re Dead?” stage of life.

Years ago, my mom and dad had one of my brother’s boys with them when they were going to a cemetery to pay off their burial plots. They explained the situation to the little guy who was quiet for a moment, then said, “Grandma, when you die, can I have your credit cards?”

Smart, that one. Very smart.

I was glad someone wants the chicken because in addition to the new “Hey, Can I Have That . . .” stage of life, I’m also in a minimalist stage of life.

Like so many others, I purged closets and drawers during the pandemic and am now unable to stop.

Waffle iron that chews up waffles? Gone.

Yoga mat? Forget about it.

Panini Press? Returned to the gifter.

High heels that cause foot pain? Nice knowing you.

Baby quilts made by my mother? Linen closet, top shelf, going nowhere.

I am constantly looking for big things and small things, anything really, to recycle, donate or trash. It’s a near obsession, one so bad that the husband claims he is afraid to fall asleep on the couch for more than 10 minutes.

He’s safe. There’s no way I could lift him.

There is some comfort knowing that others may want some of the things we still hold onto. Sometimes, if I receive an especially nice gift, one of the girls will yell, “Post-it!” This means she wants a Post-it to write her name on and stick to the item.

A friend who handles estate auctions is adamant that a Post-it will not hold up in court. I’ve told the girls this and they say they’re not going to court; they plan on using the “possession is nine-tenths of the law” rule.

They’re all talk and no Post-its.

Today I am happy knowing that my chicken will one day have a good home and that no one has asked for my credit cards.

Yet.

Three of the grands painted a birdhouse that looks like a beach house on the Florida coast—hot pink with a teal roof. It was only up a couple of weeks before bluebirds moved in, laid three eggs and sometimes played Jimmy Buffet tunes late at night.

The family schooled themselves on elusive bluebirds, knew when the eggs hatched and counted the days until the hatchlings would leave the nest. Despite a faithful watch, they somehow missed the birds’ departure.

They cleaned out the birdhouse, installed a teeny tiny camera and a few weeks later the birds returned and deposited four eggs.

Again, they counted the time until the birds might begin exiting. When one leaves, they all leave.

Our daughter texted before 8 a.m. the other day, saying it was time. One had already flown the coop. Did I want to come watch?

Of course, I did. It would be like watching newborn quads leave a hospital.

Nobody saw No. 1 leave, but there it was sitting on the fence top. Then it took off, smacked into a neighbor’s house and tumbled to the ground. It was back on the fence a short time later. No. 2 also exited unnoticed and camped on a crossbeam of the fence, low to the ground.

My daughter and I, armed with four cameras, planted ourselves in patio chairs to catch the final two making their exit.

It was a large family affair as nine bluebirds, adults and young (probably from the first brood) hovered about, perching on rooftops, a nearby trampoline and fence posts.

They protested loudly when I crept into the yard for a better camera angle. I feared there would be a re-enactment of Alfred Hitchcock’s “The Birds” if I didn’t keep my distance.

We waited and waited. Clouds came and left.

Momma bluebird delivered food to the two cloistered in the birdhouse and popped a worm into the mouth of the one still cowering on the cross beam.

We waited and waited some more.

Bluebirds are tidy housekeepers. Adult birds carry out baby bird poo in a white sac held in the mouth. Perhaps they get the little white sacs at Target or Walmart, next to the 30-gallon Hefty bags.

Lunchtime came and went. We joked about phoning for Door Dash, wondering if they would do Backyard Birdhouse Dash.

Her older sister, in possession of their combined six children and not a big nature lover, texted that the birds were never coming out—they’d been in there too long and would require forceps.

Four uneventful hours later, I called it a day and abandoned the watch. Three hours later I got a call expecting it was the call of defeat.

It was hard to tell through the screaming, but it turned out she saw the last two exit, heads bobbing in the opening to the birdhouse, a final shove, then taking flight, one after another.

It took eight hours, but she saw the baby birds leave home and was over the moon with delight.

The wait on her own baby birds leaving the nest will be far longer, say in the 15-to-18-year range. No doubt, she’ll be emotional then, too.

 

Word has gotten out that I have cake pans. Word has also gotten out that being mildly unhinged, I occasionally agree to make wedding cakes for family members and close friends.

So there they were, the glowing bride-to-be and the debonair groom-to-be, along with her mother, her father, my husband and myself, all gathered in our kitchen for a cake tasting. Shortly, the engaged couple would be having one of their first arguments.

Before them sat their two choices in small scale on pedestal plates. The vanilla cake with chocolate cookie crumbs was covered in white icing and chocolate cookie crumbs, and a lemon velvet cake with raspberry filling was finished in traditional white icing.

They tasted the vanilla cake with cookie crumbs first. They liked it. Everyone did.

The lemon cake was next, and everyone liked it, too. The groom-to-be might have let it slip that he liked the lemon cake better because it looked more traditional.

“Well, I want what you want,” she cooed to him.

“But I want what you want,” he cooed in return.

So it began, two lovebirds locked in a gentle tennis match in which neither wanted the title of winner.

“It’s not about me,” he said. “If you prefer the vanilla cake with chocolate cookie crumbs, I want the vanilla cake with chocolate cookie crumbs.”

“But I think you want the lemon cake because it looks more traditional,” she said.

The tennis match continued, eventually turning into a tennis tournament, so I made coffee.

Back and forth it went until the mother of the bride-to-be exclaimed, “Lemon!” To which the father of the bride-to-be echoed, “Lemon!” Neither of which were heard, of course, due to the engaged couple being engulfed in a sound barrier of euphoria.

On it went with more “I want what you want.”

I shoved the lemon cake to the center of the table hoping to make myself clear.

They never even noticed. All they could see was each other.

“I want you to be happy.”

“But I want you to be happy.”

I was about to ask if they could all stay for dinner.

“I want you to remember this day as the best day ever, so I want you to have the cake you like.”

“But I want you to remember this as the best day ever, so I want you to have the cake you like.”

Someone had to intervene. “I’ll make the cake you want,” I said, “but in my opinion the cake covered in chocolate cookie crumbs looks like something I dug out of the garden. The chocolate cookie crumbs look like dirt. People will think one of your families is depressed about the wedding.”

There. I said it.

Silence.

Then they started again. I want what you want. I want what you want.

“Enough!” snapped her mother.

“Enough!” snapped her father.

“Pick a cake already!” I snapped.

So they did. Lemon velvet for the bottom layer for guests, and vanilla cake with cookie crumbs for the top layer for the bride and groom and wedding party, all finished in a traditional white icing.

It was a creative compromise, a key ingredient to every good marriage. They’re going to do well, these two. May all their arguments be tempered with sweetness and may they always think of the other first.

I was exploring summer travel plans when Bezos announced his summer travel plan to rocket into space. Somehow it took the wind out of my sails.

Or the flames from beneath my rocket.

I am still wondering how you pack for a trip into space. You don’t need much because you can’t move around much. The Armstrong Air and Space Museum in Wapakoneta, Ohio, houses Neil Armstrong’s Gemini 8 capsule, which is unbelievably cramped. And, of course, in space there’s no getting out to stretch your legs. Well, you could get out, but you’d never return.

The Gemini 8 exhibit also details how astronauts contended with everyday matters like personal plumbing. I won’t go into detail but let me just say – gag. But Bezos will be up in space and back within 11 minutes, so bodily functions shouldn’t be an issue.

Not only will the Bezos ensemble travel light by necessity, they won’t have to pack toiletries in a see-through bag and run it through security. Or stand spread eagle and be wanded. Money does have perks.

It is fashionable to be hateful toward people who have a lot money today, which always comes down to anybody who has more money than you do. One of my favorite verses from Proverbs is where the writer asks that he never be so rich as to forget God, and never be so poor that he steals and profanes God’s name. Both poverty and riches are slippery slopes. We are content in the middle, although sometimes I do think, “Test me with riches, Lord. Just once. Let’s see how I do.”

Originally, Bezos was rocketing into space with fellow billionaire Richard Branson, but they turned the Rocket Man Vacation into Space Wars and now it is a competition to see who gets there first. Branson will be rocketing separately. Nothing ruins a vacation like taking separate rockets.

Bezos will be traveling with his brother and a chump who paid $28 million at an auction to secure a seat onboard as well. I shouldn’t have called the winning bidder a chump; that smacks of envy. I’m probably more hateful than I thought. We all are. It’s in the air and extremely contagious.

I know this based on a petition that, as of this writing, has been signed by more than 120,000 people demanding Bezos get out and stretch his legs when he’s in space. That’s right, they want him to take a one-way trip and not return.

Rocket envy. That’s all it is.

Another recent petition made headlines after 14,000 people signed it, calling for Bezos to buy Leonardo da Vinci’s “Mona Lisa.” And eat it.

No, there’s nothing wrong with us. We are perfectly fine.

Happy summer travels to you and yours, on ground or in space, and please, let’s all live within our budgets and leave the Mona Lisa alone.

Although family humor writers primarily write lighthearted stories, surely readers know that our family experiences the same difficulties, setbacks and sorrows as everyone else.

We recently attended three funerals in two weeks. The first one was on a Saturday morning. We dressed, drove to the church and were puzzled no other cars were in the parking lot. We were a week early. So really, it was only two funerals in two weeks, which isn’t good, but better than three.

The other funeral was for a friend who lost her father suddenly. Three days after her dad’s funeral she sat in a hospital waiting room as her husband had cancer surgery.

Even when your own heart doesn’t break, it breaks for others. Suffering is simply part of life.

Several of the grands have been sick recently and are now enjoying good health. I was across the table from one who fights fierce and lengthy battles with asthma and said, “I’m so glad you are finally healthy that I could throw a party.”

Her entire face lit up and she yelled, “WE SHOULD!”

We should, you know; we really should.

We are so fixated on the steady barrage of headlines of tragedies near and far that they all but eclipse moments of goodness right under our noses.

And so we partied. All 19 of us-with badminton games, kids on tricycles circling the patio, kids scaling a tree, burgers on the grill and pitchers of lemonade.

Best of all, we made homemade strawberry ice cream with a White Mountain hand-crank ice cream freezer now 43 years old. The metal parts are rusting and showing their age, but so are we.

Kids clamored for turns at the large metal crank with the wooden handle that turns the dasher inside the metal canister filled with milk, cream, strawberries, sugar and goodness, surrounded by ice and rock salt.

One kid cranks while another sits on top to hold the contraption steady. It’s always good to work as a team when you find yourself in a challenging spot.

As the ice cream mix grows colder and colder, the cranking grows increasingly difficult. Kids take turns that grow shorter and shorter. One of the sons-in-law notices and yells over to ask if we wouldn’t like an electric ice cream freezer for Christmas.

“This is a family tradition that goes back generations,” I yell, turning the crank with all my might. “Your family tradition is going to Florida every summer. I come from a long line of people willing to suffer for ice cream!”

Only the older kids take turns now and they are hanging tough. Nobody gives up. It is a sweet place to learn patience, endurance and fortitude.

Years ago, as a young mother with three children close in age, a husband who worked long hours, and occasionally at the end of my rope, a good friend who had grown up in Berlin calmly said to me: Wo viel Sonnenlicht ist, ist viel Schatten.” Thankfully, she also translated it. “Where there is a lot of sunlight, there is a lot of shadow.”

It’s true. You don’t get one without the other. Life is a constant mix and on a recent weekend afternoon, we were all together, healthy, happy, basking in the sunshine, eating homemade strawberry ice cream from plastic cups until we had brain freeze.

What a party.

We held a trial at the kitchen table before church on Sunday. Seven grands had spent the weekend—five girls and two boys.

There was a ruckus upstairs. I could hear it, but it was far enough away that I could ignore it. I heard them thundering down the stairs but was not quick enough to slip into the garage.

One of the girls said that her brother had picked a lock and busted into the girls’ room and shoved her.

Note to the reader: They have a long history.

Others appeared, all talking at once, with their version of events. He said. She said. This one said. That one said. I said everyone take a seat around the table.

There’s always more to the story. Always, always, always.

I said we would have a jury trial, hear witnesses and return with a verdict. I choose three jurors—one based on maturity, one based on attention to detail and a 5-year-old based on malleability.

The accused sat at the head of the table. His sister took the stand, or in this case the kitchen chair with syrup on the seat. She said he had been upstairs locking doors and picking locks (mechanical, that one, always has been). He picked the lock, crashed into the girl’s room and when they chased him out, he shoved her.

I asked if she fell. No. Did she cry out in pain? No. She said it wasn’t actually a shove, but more like a tap.

The next witness confirmed that he had been picking locks and indeed picked the lock to the girls’ room—but before picking the lock he yelled, “Is everyone dressed?”

I high-fived the accused and congratulated him on respect for privacy.

The next witness— nobody wanted to be a juror, everyone wanted to be a witness—confirmed that the accused had asked if they were dressed before picking the lock and busting in, but added that they were waiting for him, hiding in the closet, under the bed and behind the door to scare him.

The final witness confirmed testimony of the previous witnesses but added that, in addition to ambushing the accused, when they all ran out of the room, she saw his sister shove him.

Bombshell testimony. I rapped a wooden spoon on the table and called for order.

The accused, clearly elated, demanded to testify on his own behalf and against his sister. I told him it was inadvisable and there wasn’t time.

The jurors voted. Writing 1 on their folded slip of paper meant the accused had been out of line and would forfeit 50 cents of garage sale money earned selling lemonade the day before. A 2 would mean he was free to go and everyone should knock it off.

The older jurors voted to let him go. The youngest juror, gentle as a dove and sweeter than honey, wrote both 1 and 2 on her paper. I explained the 50 cents he would forfeit would not go to her. She was more calculated than I had anticipated.

Court adjourned with instructions to load into the cars for church.

Surely Judge Judy would have been pleased.