Virginia’s Blog

Stan is in the process of planting quite an extensive garden in our backyard. Here are some photos of Jamey’s involvement. He LOVES helping!

And here are two of the garden. We already have arugula coming out our ears!!

Here are couple of photos from last weekend that I’ve been meaning to post.

Ginna loves a hat!

I read something a few months ago…I think it was in the book War of Words by Paul David Tripp. There were a number of questions for one to ask himself regarding communication. One question has stuck with me. It goes something like “In your daily communication at home, do you lead or respond?” This often hits me in the face. Here are some of the ways:

When my child is whining, do I respond in like manner, or do I remain the leader?

When I am annoyed by something someone has done at home, do I respond with complaint?

When my “spirited” child gets in a cycle that leaves her with little ability to calm down, do I also “rev up” (get louder, more commanding, etc.) or do I remain calm and help her calm down?

When things start falling apart (like the key incident), do I respond “Virginia fashion” (which means turn into a machine….taking care of things that need to be taken care of in a very calm manner but having very little attention or energy to give to anyone), or do I find grace to extend? I think this is the area where I need the most change. It is easy for me to switch to “calm, mechanical” mode. And because I am not exploding or acting angry…I think it’s ok. But there are many times when I’m in this mode that I am serving myself and thinking only of how I can restore order. Here is my challenge.

I’ve been intending to write issue 2 on world hunger…but more pressing things are on my mind tonight.

Around 4:15pm tonight, I defrosted chicken for tonight’s dinner and starting cooking it. I thought while it cooked I would go outside and wash my car. Actually, Stan has been threatening to take it to have it washed and charge the cost to my “miscellaneous fund” (part of a new budgeting strategy we’re using). In his defense, the car was in serious need of washing.

So, I headed out to wash it. I took Ginna and her two babies with me. She played in the car, fastening them into carseats and pretending to drive. Since she was in the car, I took the keys out and put them on the top of the concrete wall that surrounds our yard. They fell off the other side….so I thought. I waited until I was finished to go look for them. They were not on the other side of the wall. I was mystified…where could they be? I then climbed to the top of the wall and realized I had placed the keys on a section of the wall without capstones…and the keys had fallen 5 feet through the wall to the bottom. Here’s a catalogue of our attempts to fish them out.

1. We look through all closets to find a wire hanger to use….we don’t have wire; he have plastic. I knock on the door’s of two neighbors to ask for one…the second one delivers the hanger.

2. The depth of the hole requires two hangers attached to one another….giving the person doing the fishing very little control over the bottom hanger. We also can barely see the keys…even with one person holding the flashlight and the other trying to fish them out. Did I mention this set of keys has two vehicle keys on it, all of our house keys, and keys to Cal State!!

3. We finally give up on the hanger method and try calling a locksmith. The guy kind of laughs…he says he can open the house for me…not fish keys out of concrete.

4. I decide to go back to neighbor #1 to ask if they have any further recommendations for someone to call. Upon entering their house, I am BITTEN by not one, but TWO dogs simultaneously. One is a pit bull. The neighbor profusely apologizes and holds the dogs back while I make it out the back door so we can look in her garage for something to fish the keys out with. We decide to try wrapping one of the hangers around a broom handle.

5. So, back at the wall we are…..the broom handle adds stability to our fishing, but we still can’t get the keys.

6. So we are now at the last resort…knocking a hole in the wall to get the keys out. This finally brought an end to the saga. Whew. It is now 6:15 and two little people are breaking down. I feed them the boiled chicken and frozen veggies…and make the enchiladas for us to enjoy later…at 7pm.

I remember thinking around 4pm what a peaceful day we were having…

Here’s a photo of the wall. Thankfully, Stan was able to knock a pretty small hole.

I presented a lecture last night to my graduate class on world hunger. It was probably my most difficult topic to present for the semester, but one of the most interesting as well. I have had several experiences in the past few years that shaped my material to present to the class.

1. Several years ago, I attended a forum sponsored by World Hunger Year in NYC. One of the speakers at the meeting was a former UN Ambassador who now runs a non-profit to support Community Supported Agriculture (CSA). I will never forget something he said. He shared that around the world, he overwhelmingly was told that rather than discussing policy abroad, he needed to go back home and fix US farm policy….that the US was causing developing nations to suffer greater poverty and inability to compete in the world market. (In the 1990’s, “Freedom to Farm” was introduced to ag legislation…which removed some of the market stabilizing elements of previous farm legislation…as a result, the price for US’s greatest four exports- corn, wheat, soybeans, and cotton- fell 40%. Other countries can’t compete with our prices. Interestingly, 2/3 of government subsidy money goes to the top 10% of farmers….we are subsidizing multi-national corporations to produce an excess of these commodies and then dumping them on the world market at prices no one can compete with).
2. I worked with an anthrpologist in NYC who studied food practices in Bushwick, a very low income area of Brooklyn. Her paper, published in Social Science and Medicine, is illuminating. It situates childhood obesity within cultural and social contexts. It was great to talk about domestic food insecurity in the light of her paper.
3. When I was working on my graduate degrees, I wrote a research article in conjunction with two sociologists about food insecurity and stunted growth among rural school children in Honduras. So, we also considered food insecurity in a developing nation. Maybe I will expound on this more later….
4. Lastly, we talked about some ways that nutrition can contribute to social and economic development needed to overcome hunger. One particular application was to protect and support nutrition of infants and mothers….to support appropriate feeding practices and breastfeeding. The economic growth of nations is affected by the way mothers and infants are nourished.

Let me know if you guys are interested in hearing more about these things….it’s fun for me….but not sure how interesting it is to others!!

Well, not really. Actually I just have a glimmer of hope for the Gray household…. I lived for 4 years of my adult life with no dishwasher (and two of those with no washer and dryer as well). I had all three of these lovely amenities in our apartment when we first lived to LA…and now there is no going back. We plan to eventually remodel the kitchen in our house…so we didn’t want to actually install a dishwasher. But we didn’t want to buy two, either. So I came up with a plan to install it in a blank space to the right of the sink and have a box built around it. Eventually, it can be installed permanently in the remodeled kitchen.

Anyway, I have been really distraught lately about the function of the dishwasher. If you know anything about my husband, you will know that we did not buy the bottom of the line. But my glasses and flatware have started coming out REALLY etched. I use drying aid…. and I’ve tried recommendations for amount of detergent for hard water situations, which apparently we have. I had decided that it was worth ruining a set of glasses and then getting new ones….when we live somewhere else one day….if I could avoid having to hand wash. I just don’t have time….

Well, I finally called Maytag to ask what I could do. They asked what I do to clean my dishwasher. I asked, “Clean the dishwasher? I use it to clean dishes…I don’t CLEAN it!” Then she asked if I have trouble with my iron and mineral build up. I laughed. I don’t iron. Stan insisted on getting a steam dryer (and a red one, at that) when we moved into the house….and I figure if we spent the money on the dryer, there is no sense in ironing.

So, as a result of the call with Maytag, I have found that there are two products that are revolutionizing my (dishwashing) life. One cleans the dishwasher to remove mineral buildup. The other removes etching from glasses. Amazing! It looks like I have new glasses.

Whew. My hope is restored.

As some of you know, Stan is becoming quite the cycling enthusiast. In fact, as we learned last weekend, if he doesn’t start a weekend off with a ride, it’s all downhill. He has also been commuting to work (along the beach) about 3 days each week. His first “ride” for a cause is coming up. In May, he will be riding as a part of American Diabetes Association’s Tour de Cure fund-raising event. If anyone would like to donate towards his cause, you can visit his site.

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Stan’s mother made Ginna and Jamey’s Easter outfits. She did a beautiful job! We celebrated Easter with a fabulous church service this morning….we were reminded that God loves the beauty and detail of a carefully thought out worship service. There was a string quartet at the service and a choir (which is not normal for us). Our pastor preached about Judas, a very different take on Easter Sunday. Honestly, at the beginning of the service during Scripture readings I was a little upset about Judas….thinking that his sin was needed for God’s plan…. but I was reminded in the sermon that we are all like Judas. We betray God every time we make something else more important than Him. And no one, not even Judas, is beyond God’s grace.

I made a ham, Stan’s favorite dressing (wild mushroom and sausage dressing), and roasted asparagus. The dressing is a traditional Thanksgiving dish in our house. We replaced the chesnuts with carrots, since chesnuts are hard to come by in April.

Ginna and Jamey love holding hands and walking (well, Jamey loves it sometimes….).

Jamey got new boots and Ginna got skates for Easter. Jamey loves shoes, so he was very happy! Ginna is working on learning to skate.

Wing and Granddaddy were in LA this week for Wing’s spring break and Granddaddy to work. Ginna spent two nights at the “hotel house” with them, much to her delight. Here are some photos from Ginna’s Easter party at school.

Dietitian mom strikes again….

Jamey loved participating….in fact, he always wants to stay with Ginna in the Butterfly Room! (Ginna’s class)

Ginna loves to dance!!

I promised to post some memories about Granddad, and I’ve been delinquent in doing so. Here are two of my favorites:

Memory 1:

When I was a child, Granddad and Granny B. lived in the house that my dad grew up in. In fact, they were in that house until I was in grad school, when an electrical fire caused it to burn. That house had a front yard that was about an acre and it sloped down. I had an idea that we could attach a rope to a tree at the top of the hill and to one at the bottom of the hill, attach a pulley and swing seat to it, and ride down the front yard. I asked Granddad to make the contraption for me and hang it, and he was game. We had so much fun flying down the front yard…and hopping off right before smacking into the tree at the bottom!

Memory 2:

I lived in Memphis until I was 7 years old. After that, we lived in Mobile, AL, Louisville, KY, Jacksonville, FL, and Merritt Island, FL. So we made visits in the summers to visit grandparents. My dad came from a family of 4, and there were 13 grandchildren in all. We always had so much fun together. We loved putting on plays at Christmas time together. Anyway, when we would visit, my granddad sometimes would take a few of us to WalMart. Melissa, Abby, and I, being to oldest 3 of the bunch, were put in charge of a few of the younger ones, were given some money, and were set loose in WM. I am not sure how we all got there….or how we all found each other at the end (this was before cell phones!). But we managed. I can’t remember a single thing we bought, but it was always fun!

Ginna and I have had fun the past two days making edible bunnies. Here are two.

Elizabeth, Ben, and Rebecca gave me this cake pan for my birthday. It was so much fun to make! Ginna enjoyed helping make the cake and place the jelly beans.

My college roommate, Rachel, gave me these pancake molds and Easter plates years ago. We still enjoy them…and even moreso with kids!