School’s out for summer
You always wonder what kind of a boss you’ll be. I’ve always hoped I’d be the hard-ass but fun editor, quick with a joke but with enough presence so when she yells “jump!” her reporters yell “how high?”
Now I know what kind of an editor I am. And it’s embarrassing.
I’m the editor who laughs as her reporter is mauled by a police dog.
And then posts links to the video all over the Internet for maximum exposure of her reporter’s plight.
See? I’ve done it again.
What would Perry White do?
How do I love her? Let me count the freckles
We’re talkin’ ’bout my girl…
Some day, she’s going to hate her freckles. But how can you not love them?
And her eyes. Hazel. Some days they’re green, some days they’re more brown.
And have I mentioned what a patient model she can be when she’s in the mood? Love you, baby girl!
I’m flunking the World Language Banquet
Somewhere, in a top secret vault in the Grafton Public Schools, there is a book of great power. I imagine it’s dusty, thick and bristling with bookmarks and Post-It notes.
“Never fails!” reads one note, topped with a smiley face.
“You won’t believe the look on their faces! LOL!” reads another. If Post-Its could laugh, this would be the most evil laugh of all.
The title of this tome? “Cooking for Class: Recipes to Torture Parents.”
Tomorrow is the Grafton Middle School World Language Banquet. I just attempted a recipe I believe is from this cookbook and I’ve thrown in the towel. I had olive oil and egg all over my counter, chunks of uncooked potato and a mess that absolutely refuses to dislodge from my cast-iron skillet.
Believe it or not, it’s actually a worse recipe than the one my daughter brought home last year for a history project: she had to make “Revolutionary War Balls,” which the recipe proudly stated were carried by soldiers during, you guessed it, the Revolutionary War. My then 9-year-old was supposed to make this with parental help.
How do you make Revolutionary War Balls? You mix together a batter — she did help there — and then you drop them into a few inches of sizzling oil. Once cooked, you roll them in powdered sugar. Which is when I realized:
- Holy hell, my 9-year-old is supposed to be deep-frying?
- Wait a minute, Revolutionary War soldiers carried Dunkin’ Donuts Munchkins into battle?
- In their pockets? Really?
Today’s recipe is a version of a Spanish tortilla, which has nothing to do with the tortillas used in Mexican food (put the margarita glasses away, guys). It’s essentially an egg and potato dish. I’ve actually made a similar recipe many times, successfully, and should have listened to my inner instinct to just make that one.
“We have to make this recipe,” insisted my son, who refuses to eat any kind of egg dish. “My teacher said it has to be this one.”
The cast of characters included four large potatoes, an onion, four eggs and a some olive oil. I sliced and prepped and, following directions, brought out the handy 9-inch well-seasoned iron skillet.
Problem one: as I’m heating the oil, I’m convinced there’s way too much oil.
Problem two: as I add the potatoes and onions, I realize there are more potatoes than will fit in my fairly deep skillet. I scoop a few out and continue cooking, figuring they will cook down.
Problem three: they don’t cook down.
I added the potato and onions to the beaten eggs and left them to rest, as instructed, for 15 minutes before adding more oil to the pan and throwing the whole mixture inside.
Problem four: the potatoes are supposed to be browning and I’m not supposed to be touching anything as it cooks, since that will scramble the egg. I’m turning the heat down, but I’m still smelling something scorched at the bottom of the pan.
Problem five: as instructed, I place a plate on top of the pan and attempt to flip the tortilla over. The aforementioned egg and oil drains, hotly, all over the counter and the tortilla stubbornly stays in what is generally a non-stick pan.
I give up.
It’s 95 degrees out. I’m all out of eggs and potatoes.
Trust me. You’re not going to miss this tortilla.
Somewhere, in a top secret vault in the Grafton Public Schools, there is a book of great power. It’s now glowing in the darkness and it flips open on its own, the pages rapidly turning as another Post-It is added to a page of Spanish recipes.
“For extra fun, make them cook it during a heat wave!”
Anyone for pitchforks and flaming torches?
Back in 2008 — oh look, two years ago this month — I lost my temper and started a blog.
The reason? Space issues at Grafton Middle School, which my son would soon be entering, and the need to examine continuing space problems at Grafton High School. It made me do something I never did before — lose the journalistic objectivity and actively campaign for a solution to the school space issue.
I did not, the entire time I was urging people to get out and vote for the modular classrooms at Grafton Middle School — a $750,000 expense for four classrooms that opened well over a month late this past fall — ever think “and gosh! If we get a new high school, we could use those modulars to house the Superintendent of Schools’ offices!”
Of course I didn’t think that. Who in their right mind would think that? Oh, wait.
Words cannot describe the absolute rage that went through me when our superintendent blithely suggested that those modular classrooms might be suitable for his new office space. Instead of, you know, the municipal center. Because it would be so much more convenient to displace students from their brand new classrooms than force the superintendent to actually move across the parking lot to a building that — gasp! — isn’t a school (except it was, at one time).
Seriously. Absolute rage. I had to leave the meeting right after the committee voted to move the preschool because I just couldn’t sit in that meeting anymore. I wanted to throw things. I wanted to yell. Those are my son’s classrooms. In a few years, they will be my daughter’s classrooms. They are classrooms, with desks and chairs and Smart Boards and lockers and clocks that actually seem to tell the correct time. They are the absolute nicest classrooms in the entire middle school, according to my son, and we’ve barely even begun to pay for them.
If anyone sets a toe in there and suggests they be used for anything except classroom space? I’m leading the angry mob.
So much for journalistic objectivity.
All right guys, I have two more sites for your Central Mass. news enjoyment: today we launched TheDailyWestborough.com and TheDailyHolden.com. And what did YOU do this weekend?
For those keeping count, that brings CentralMassNews.com to eight towns, nine websites (look in the link list for all of them, bearing in mind that the one I write, of course, is TheDailyGrafton.com).
Not bad for a little Grafton start-up in the attic of One Grafton Common in just one year’s time, eh?
Dance, like a newborn baby lamb
It’s possible that I may crash in the middle of writing this post, because I’ve been up since 4 a.m. Why? We’re launching TheDailyWestborough.com and TheDailyHolden.com on Monday so I basically shot awake early and said “yeah, let’s just get to work.”
But that’s not the point of this posting. The point of this posting is this: it’s lambing season at the Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine at Tufts University!
I was already out with my camera shooting things in Westborough, so I drove by Tufts on a whim. Sure enough, the grass is finally looking green, and we have little lambs.
You probably don’t want to know that you could, if you choose, order one of them, or their relatives, through the new meat program at Tufts, right? Oh no. You prefer to think the meat was born wrapped in plastic in the back room at Stop & Shop, don’t you?
Yes. This guy is going to sit here and quietly judge you.
But this post isn’t meant to be an ode to vegetarianism (I eat meat, after all, just not lamb. I’m not a fan). This is all about the new sheep.
I mean, just look at them!
So cute and fuzzy!
You know, one of these days, I’m going to post pictures of sheep and they’re NOT going to be mostly sheep butt. I swear, they’re so anti-paparazzi.
My friend Susan, who writes the MySouthborough blog, has found herself in a bit of hot water with the Board of Selectmen in her town. The issue: they didn’t like what one of her commenters had to say so… they’ve been serving her with papers demanding to know the commenter’s identity.
Yeah. Really.
Susan was featured in the MetroWest Daily News last week but, as we all know, I don’t link there anymore. So here’s an article that appeared in Commonweath today.
The money quote from Susan:
“This all seems like it could have been handled so easily without lawyers, with the town coming out and saying ‘The search committee didn’t violate the law and this is why,’” she says. “This whole thing would have gone away. It baffles me why they took this action.”
You go, Susan!
Time flies
It was only yesterday — I swear, only yesterday — that I sent my little boy off to stay in the woods. It wasn’t that I was sending him off with wolves or anything. Far from it. My 5 year old would be spending most of his summer days at Camp Harrington, where he’d swim, swing over a peanut butter pit and learn camp songs.
He never did get eaten by bears or neglected by counselors or struck by lightning. He’d hop off the camp bus daily, mosqito-bitten and filthy — my basic standard for a kid having a good time in the summer. He had tales of frogs and friends, excuses for not learning to.swim, admiring stories about the cool older kids who helped him through his day.
Last week was something new: we visited camp when there were still snow drifts beneath the trees. And my child, the kid who was too little for camp, had his first job interview. He’s now one of those cool older kids — he turns 13 this summer, and he’s officially a counselor in training.
Life gets a little blurry at times. The kid who didn’t want to swim? Well, he still doesn’t want to go in the water.
The perils of saying yes
A few months ago, I was sent (in regular mail!) a letter which asked me to attend an informal meeting about the 275th anniversary of Grafton’s founding. Being a curious type, and it being news, I went.
I also came down with H1N1 that night, but I don’t think it was connected.
Having been to one meeting, and having offered to help out with publicity, I went to another meeting. And another. Next thing I knew, my name was on a list that went before the Board of Selectmen for the “official” committee.
Today was the kicker, though.
I had to raise my right hand and solemnly swear, “so help me God,” that I’d uphold the business of the town of Grafton. I signed a bunch of things and received my very own copy of the Open Meeting Law. I even get to take an online ethics class, for which I need to submit a form to the town clerk providing that I now have ethics.
Who knew Grafton re-instated the draft?
One interesting thing, for me at least, is the committee has been holding its meetings all over town in various historic sites. I had never set foot in the Farnumsville Firehouse, for example, and it’s really cool on the inside — the upstairs reminded me of my great-great cousin Ethel’s house, had Ethel engaged in taxidermy. It was just filled with all kinds of eclectic objects and chairs and it was just a neat place.
And I’m sure Ethel would have been all over the firehouse’s stuffed porcupine. It pleases me to think of my genteel relative happily hunting, maybe with a crossbow, and turning her prey into parlor decor. Ethel would have slapped a doily on that sucker, though.
