So, yesterday I woke up to my children fighting…at 5:30am. Happy Valentine’s Day. How come they just know the day all you want is to sleep in past six, yet they are determined to never let that happen? So, I mustered up my patience and strength and walked downstairs to get the only thing that could brighten my morning- coffee. Oh, please let it be delicious – and strong enough to get me through the morning. Why did I stay up last night? Was that movie worth being this tired today? Ugh…
Lets move on to dinner. My romantic dinner involved inviting the parents over, so the six of us (myself, hubby, 2 children, and grandparents) could enjoy a nice dinner together. So, my husband pounded out some chicken, I made a tomato sauce and a “healthy” (I use this term lightly) alfredo sauce. Oh- and the best part- green beans with oranges and an orange vinaigrette dressing. Delicious. The green beans were possibly the best beans I have ever had.
Now, of course, the grandparents brought chocolate for the boys, so they were flying high after dessert, and I was hit with a “Flicker the flashlight” in my chest, but overall, good food, good family, good night.
Oooh, that brownie mix looks good! I say to a bedraggled customer wrestling one of those carts with the red plastic car on the front which is supposed to entertain toddlers.
mmmm. yes. ha ha. Henry? Are we making brownies later on? ~ {Ms. Bedraggled speaks high pitched baby talk to the red faced furious toddler strapped into the red plastic car} ~ Yes? Oh yes, we are! We are making brownies! Yumm! This girl likes brownies too! {pointing at me with exaggerated gestures}
Haha, yes, haha, Heya Henry! I lean over and wave at Henry,a red faced male toddler with incredible blond curls. Can I come over and make brownies at your house? – Now I turn to Ms. Bedraggled and talk in a normal voice – You know, this morning I was looking up a recipe for “Magic Brownies” and boy oh boy did I find “recipes” for “MAGIC” brownies! Hahaha! I am trying to engage Ms. Bedraggled, to see if I can get the slight edge of hysteria in her voice to soften a little. I hand Henry a Chiquita Banana sticker.
OH MY! Haaahaahaha! Not for Henry! *giggle* {Her tone comes down a notch from hysteria to plain stress}
Oh, no! I meant, well, I was looking for those brownies with the coconut and the different chips and nuts? You know, like, um - I am cut off midsentence fortunately because I have instantly gone from ‘friendly’ to ‘horribly embarrassed and stuttering’.
Oh! Yes! YUMMM! Yes! What are those called? I used to work for a restaurant and we made them all the time!? Um… oh, my, well… {now it is Ms Bedraggled who is stuttering and needs to be rescued from brain-fart-itis}
Yes, those! But boy was I startled by what I found online… I don’t even know where to get the, um, “ingredients”, for the kind of “magic brownies” that popped up on G**gle, you know?! Definitely not for Henry! They are like brownie bars right?
That’s It! Magic Bars! God, now I have to go back into the throngs and get more ingredients, I think I have to make those tonight! {She is so emphatic – I wish, not for the first time, that I worked on commision because I totally just sold more groceries to this customer}
Well, I know that baking supplies are on aisle 5, but as for the “magic” ingredients I think you’ll have to shop somewhere else! I wink and nod and smile and Ms Bedraggled is transformed into young hip momma who is going to bake some magic tonight, with or without Henry, and she pays for her groceries with a smile and a flip little wave of her manicured hand while Henry chews on a Chiquita Banana sticker.
Hello! I say to the next customer in line, How are you doin’ today?
Plastic he says gruffly, and turns to stare off at the exit doors.
I sigh and begin the process of scanning his order while I think about what kind of magic Henry’s momma will make tonight.
During the late afternoon yesterday, it started snowing! The excitement in Charleston was palpable. Schools let out early and everyone was talking about the weather.
I had to go pick up my laptop from Jason Charles, the Daniel Island Computer Doctor, and had so much fun bundling up and walking through the snowflakes. I thought that I’d pick up some carryouts from Wasabi (my favorite sushi place) and hit Daniel Island Wine and Spirits to see if the helpful folks there could help me decipher what was in an “Orange Blossom” ~ a tasty drink that I tried last month.
What was fun and charming earlier quickly became a frustration as dozens of residents descended on the Publix parking lot. It was getting dark and many were not used to driving in snow (which had now turned to freezing rain). I’ve never understood why grocery stores run out of bread when it snows. There are many things that I’m sure that I would need if we were stuck in the house for a day or two. Milk, water, batteries — those are the items that come to mind for me!
The snow accumulated through the night. Colin and Davis spent the night with Grammie and Poppy (still on DI) so we didn’t get to play in the snow with them . They had a great time and were still out playing at 10:00 at night! They usually go to sleep by 8 so I hope they slept in a little bit for the grandparents.
Chad and I showed Miles the snow and we watched in awe as our neighborhood turned into a wonderland. Grammie sent us photos of the boys making a snowman. It was as tall as Colin and even had a carrot nose! They built it outside the condo on Island Park Drive and several people stopped and took photos of it. The boys were so proud!
Once we put Miles to bed, Chad and I sat by the fire and played Scrabble. We would go outside every few minutes and watch the snow. It was a cozy feeling to be inside where it was warm.
It’s now Saturday morning and the snow is already melting. It was fun to see our world transformed by a blanket of snow but we’re thankful that we will probably be back in short sleeves by next weekend.
Back in Compton, California in 1977, a house with a woman and four children inside caught fire and burned to the ground in the middle of the night. When the flames were doused, firefighters found the body of Earlene Williams, 32, inside by the front door. A later autopsy would show she’d been strangled. The four children were missing and there was no trace of them in the ashes. They were Earlene’s three daughters, Ivy Matory, Violet Matory and Yolanda Williams, as well as Sir-Kristopher Marshall, a neighbor boy who was spending the night. Authorities later determined the fire was arson and had been set in the room where the children slept.
They didn’t have to think very hard to find a suspect: Earlene’s husband, James Williams. Twenty years older than his estranged wife, he was already facing serious charges. Back in 1976, James allegedly sexually assaulted his then eleven-year-old stepdaughter Ivy and was charged with child molestation and rape. Earlene, quite sensibly, separated from him when she found out. But that wasn’t enough to keep James out.
When the police picked up James the day after the fire, he had a bad cut on his hand. Probably it was him that made the trail of blood that lead from the Williams/Matory house to a nearby alley. But he said he cut his hand trying to fix his car. He had been on his way to Bakersfield that night, he said, but his car broke down and he wound up sleeping in it. He knew nothing about the fire, Earlene’s death or the whereabouts of the four children. The cops had nothing they could pin on James, so they released him. He was promptly rearrested after Earlene’s autopsy results came back proving she was a homicide victim. A month later, he was facing five murder charges: Earlene, and each of the four children, one of them his own natural daughter.
This I found out through articles on Newslibrary today. The fire, the missing children and James’s arrest received pretty scant press coverage. There were articles in several local papers, but they were not very detailed and all were on the inside pages. An arson, murder, and four missing (and probably murdered) children apparently wasn’t good enough to make front-page news back in 1977, perhaps because the people involved were black and poor. I know that James was convicted of Earlene’s murder eventually and is now dead. I don’t know how the homicide prosecutions for the children turned out, though.
I do know that they remain missing to this day — over thirty years now.
We hear a lot about premature births, but no-one seems to talk much about very long pregnancies.
Doctors always calculate birth dates after a 280 day pregnancy but, as every woman knows, we don’t all have a 28 day cycle. That said, there have been some really long recorded pregnancies.
Aulus Gellius reports that, after a long conversation with doctors and wise men, Emperor Adrian decided that the child of an irreproachably chaste woman, born eleven months after her husband’s death, was legitimate.
The Supreme Court of Frise (Northern province of the Netherlands) decided in October 1634 that a child born 333 days after the death of the husband was legitimate.
The Paris Parliament declared that the child of a widow, born after a fourteen month pregnancy, was legitimate.
Bartholinus mentions an unmarried woman from Leipzig who gave birth after a sixteen month pregnancy.
French and Scottish Law stipulate that the longest possible time for a pregnancy to last, and the baby to remain legitimate, is three hundred days. Prussian legislation made it three hundred and one days.
Historical writers have often mentioned very long pregnancies of twelve months, fourteen months, fifteen months. There have been pregnancies of forty-two to forty-five weeks, three years, twenty-three months, two years and even one of four years.
There is the story of a twenty-five year old woman who became pregnant the 10 February 1876, and felt her baby move the 17 June. The 28 July, she almost had a miscarriage, and was advised to wean the baby she was breast-feeding.
She was expected to give birth mid-November 1876 but it didn’t happen until 26 April 1877, nine months after the first movements of the foetus and four hundred and forty days after conception. The baby was wide-awake and weighed nine pounds.
Another case, from Clifton (West Virginia), is about a young woman who had expected to give birth on 1 June, but kept the baby until 15 September. The foetus had remained in the uterus more than twelve months, nine of them after its first movements had been felt.
There are lots of these cases. I shall end with the story of a thirty-five year old woman, expected to give birth on 24 April 1883 and who, in May, felt contractions which stopped. During the next six months, she stayed about the same size, and it was believed several times that her first contractions had begun.
In September, the cervix dilated to allow the introduction of an index and middle finger which directly touched the head. This state continued for a month, then the dilation disappeared.
During the last nine months of the pregnancy, the baby’s movements were sometimes unbearable for the mother. At last, the morning of 6 November, after a pregnancy of 476 days, she gave birth to a little boy weighing thirteen pounds. Both the mother and the baby were well, in spite of the use of chloroform and forceps.
So, why don’t we hear more about very long pregnancies? Is it because our modern doctors would never allow us to go the natural distance? Or is it because we demand immediate delivery when we arrive around the 280 day mark?
. They had a great time and were still out playing at 10:00 at night! They usually go to sleep by 8 so I hope they slept in a little bit for the grandparents.
