The parent trap!

First, on the vegetable front. We harvested our lone cucumber. Nine inches long and pretty fat. We're going to see if any others take off, now that the one big one is no longer hording the nutrients absorbed by the plant. We've called off the corn as a bust. The stalks' growth stunted at about 4 feet tall a couple of months ago. We found some two-inch ears with kernels on them...they looked both water-logged AND shriveled....so there was no hope. I've harvested 4 cayenne peppers...one of them is in my snack bag of Cheez-Its, a subtle flavoring perhaps -- or they'll get soggy over the course of the day before lunch. Of course, the most important thing is to wash my hands thoroughly after handling it. And we have three watermelons, but right now none bigger than a baseball. My guess is that the plants will have to be brought inside to mature before the first frost comes. (probably 6 weeks or so for that, so we'll see....)

My older daughter had a sleepover Saturday night -- first time at my house, so that was fun. Three additional eight-year-olds, along with my two kids. Five screaming girls! Keep 'em fed, and you keep 'em quiet :) Really, we made homemade pizza Saturday night, and then there was cake. It was a muddy cake -- chocolate with chocolate-mint frosting, with gummy worms buried in the cake and popping their heads out. Nightcrawlers, anyone? Sunday morning was waffles for breakfast and then hot dogs for lunch. Only one kid tried Erika's favorite topping -- crunchy peanut butter on a hot dog. (It's really good, actually! Especially if the dogs are a little on the burned side from the grill.)

The kids did a lot of swimming, and also some croquet and some soccer. Two of the girls are twins. Freckle-faced cherubic twins -- they both look like Lindsay Lohan, in her pre-skank days. One of those things where you want to say to the father upon dropping them back off, "Your girls are sweet. You may want to steer them clear of cocaine before it's too late!"

One last tale. I am currently navigating Erika through The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker. She plays, I tell her where to go....a practice I mastered with my brother on Zelda III for Super Nintendo all those years ago. I actually won Zelda 2 on the old Nintendo system, but the more complex the controlling mechanism, the worse I do. The mind, however, remains sharp :)