I'm dreaming of...

...fresh roasted corn on the cob
...ice cream from the Dairy Bar
...blue ribbon 4H projects
...newborn calves
...the world's largest hog
...racing pigs
...Percheron horses
...sheep being shorn
...the petting zoo
...tractor pulls
...watermelon seed spitting
...airborne dogs
...giant cheese carvings
...crazy-big pumpkins
...sword-swallowing men
...Japanese gardens
...Zumba classes
...sumo wrestling
...interactive robots

It'll be a dream come true at the Indiana State Fair.

(For more reasons why I love the great Indiana State Fair, click here.)

Four Fragment Friday

It's Friday and you know what that means...Friday Fragments with Mrs. 4444s! I'm gonna keep it short and sweet today. (Gotta hop in the shower and then we're off to pick up Annie. PTL! because the estrogen has been in short supply at my house this week.)

1. I'm going to make a confession. Maybe it's embarrassing, maybe you all will say "Me too!" I like to watch "Say Yes to the Dress" on TLC. So I was really jazzed to find Tales from a Dressing Room, a blog written by an anonymous wedding dress consultant. It's like SYttD without the cable bill.

2. Read this. Share this. It's important enough that I am giving you the link twice.

3. Do you Swag? I'm coming up on $40 in free Amazon.com gift cards. It's easy. You search on SwagBucks.com like you would on Google or any other search engine. You randomly win SwagBucks. You can earn SB by answering the daily poll and finding daily codes (get them easily at Swagcodes.org) Then you save them until you have enough to buy a prize -- gift cards, t-shirts. I know there is more, but I just go for the Amazon.com gift cards. Anyway, if you want to Swag, click my link here and I'll get a bonus for the referral: http://www.swagbucks.com/refer/4thFrog

4. Is this a mellow dog or what?

Have a terrific weekend!

Guilt and a dead guy

I'm enjoying a glass of wine while writing this post. We don't usually have alcohol in the house, but this was left over from a movie night I had with a friend earlier in the week and I'd hate for it to go to waste.

Tonight was to be a movie night as well. A very fun, very BIG movie night. I had the opportunity to see a sneak preview of "The Wildest Dream," an IMAX movie about two men who attempted to climb Mt. Everest, 75 years apart.

While I was really looking forward to the movie, I was feeling guilty about leaving the boys with a babysitter. They'd been with a sitter all day while I was at work. I wrestled with what to do for most of the day. Go and make it up to them tomorrow? Or not go and miss the chance to see the film for free and to turn it into a post for the Indiana Insider?

After unsuccessfully trying to give away the tickets to another Visit Indiana blogger, I asked about bringing the boys with me. Turns out, that was just fine.

Sweet! I could see the movie that I wanted to and that I'd planned to blog about later without feeling guilty about leaving the boys home with a second babysitter for the day.

So I picked them up from the sitter and told them we had a special night planned. We drove downtown, keeping our eyes open for any strangely dressed folk attending the massive Gen Con gaming conference. (The boys were disappointed that there weren't very many in costume.)

We took advantage of the free parking at TGI Fridays/Marriott complex (I thought about you, Joanie!) and went there for dinner. After dinner, we walked around the grounds of White River State Park for a bit, including walking along the canal, where I just KNEW that Robbie was going to fall in. Ok, sometimes I'm wrong...

Safely away from the water, we checked out the county sculptures built into the facade of the Indiana State Museum (never did find our county), and then finally -- much to the boys' delight -- headed in to get our seats for the film.

Before the movie started, Robbie was a little antsy and I wondered if we would make it through the whole thing. He was quite fidgety as Indianapolis native and Mt. Everest conqueror David Carter spoke for about 10 minutes before the film.

While Robbie was busy being bored, I was fascinated with the history of George Mallory, the 1924 Everest climber who died, along with his hiking companion Sandy Irvine, on the face of the mountain, never to be found until 75 years later.

With Robbie bored and me fascinated, Charlie was getting anxious. He's in a phase right now where he has some anxieties about death. He said, "Mom, if they start talking about dying in the movie, can I go out?" No, I told him, but he could pull his sweatshirt hood over his eyes.

Soon the movie began with some gorgeous shots of Mt. Everest, big as anything on the IMAX screen. Within a minute or two the word "died" was spoken. I looked over and Charlie was hunched under his sweatshirt.

The film went on to begin to explain how, in 1999, climber Conrad Anker found Mallory's body, still intact, frozen on the mountainside. Only it didn't just explain the finding. It showed, in recreation, Mallory's partially exposed body, face-down in the rock. I looked over and the opening of Charlie's sweatshirt hood was pulled tightly closed over his whole face.

I watched another 5 or 10 minutes of the film, casting frequent glances in Charlie's direction to see if he was warming up to the story. Nope. Not even a little bit. I leaned over and asked him if he was all right. He shakily said, "Not really..."

Poor kid. I felt bad about trying to make him stick it out, even for just that short time. So, it was guilt that got me to take them to the theater with me and guilt (ok, and love) that got me to take them out.

I tapped Robbie and told him that we were going to leave. Not really being a documentary-type of fellow, Robbie was more than happy to get up and asked if we could watch Bugs Bunny when we got home.

At least that's not something I feel guilty about.

Taking the heat

See that picture up there? That's the external thermometer in my car when I left Target this afternoon. When I first got in the car, it read 104 degrees, then cooled off to the much better 102 degrees once I started driving.

This kind of heat makes me remember things.

Things like that quote from the movie Biloxi Blues: "Man it's hot. It's like Africa hot. Tarzan couldn't take this kind of hot."

And the one from Good Morning Vietnam (warning, a little adult language ahead): "It's hot! Damn hot! Real hot! Hottest things is my shorts. I could cook things in it. A little crotch pot cooking." Well, tell me what it feels like. "Fool, it's hot! I told you again! Were you born on the sun? It's damn hot! It's so damn hot, I saw little guys, their orange robes burst into flames. It's that hot! Do you know what I'm talking about?"

This kind of heat makes me remember days when I was about Charlie's age. We'd frequently visit my grandparents whose house didn't have air condition. The windows on the back of the house were hinged on the top and tilted up to open. I would go in my Aunt Molly's room with the lights off. I would lie on the bed, as perfectly still as possible, and try to catch any wisp of breeze that might come through, as well as any snippet of conversation from the adults sitting on the back porch near my aunt's windows.

This kind of heat makes me remember last summer when I weighed 30 pounds more than I do now and how I could not even imagine going outside for longer than a minute or two because the heat was just so unbearable. Yet tonight, I took Gabby for a 20-minute walk before both of us gave up and came inside to icy cool air and cold gulps of water.

This kind of heat makes me remember last winter, when the neighborhood streets were deserted -- no one playing outside, kept in then by blizzard-ish winds, not blistering heat.

This is the kind of heat that makes me expect that on some city street somewhere, firefighters might open the hydrant and invite all the neighbor kids to splash in it for some short relief.

It's the kind of heat that makes me think that the only possible thing I might serve for dinner is popsicles, that makes me thankful for central air, and has me counting down the days to crisp, jeans and sweater weather of fall.

It's that hot.

Gone camping

Annie is away at camp until Friday. We dropped her off around 2:45pm on Sunday and by 5:30pm that same day, I was missing her.

It could have had something to do with the fact that the boys (all 3 of them!) were driving me straight up the banana tree with their over-the-top energy, their boy humor -- think burps and farts -- and Star Wars/Spongebob quote fest. But mostly I think it was that not being able to talk to her for five days just seems like so long.

Curiously, the way I'm feeling is a little how I felt when she went to kindergarten. In preschool, when I picked her up there was always a sign outside the door telling me of all the day's activities. I could chat with the teachers about how her day was. When she went to kindergarten, no one sent home a daily note with a list of what they did in art and whether they had math or reading centers and if she ate a good lunch that day. I felt a little bit lost and disconnected, kind of like I'm feeling not having a chance to talk or text or e-mail her until the close of camp on Friday.

Annie's been to sleep-away camp once before. But at that camp, they would post pictures each night of what had happened throughout the camp, so I could at least look for her among all the other girls. For this camp, we can send letters and e-mails, which are printed out and given to our camper. But it's a one-way street. There's no writing back. That's ok because she is most likely too busy swimming and canoeing and all those things you go to camp to do.

As ok as it is, it's a little hard for this Mom-of-oldest-child-at-camp to get used to. I think of her several times a day, wondering what's she's doing right then. She was a little nervous when we dropped her off; so I worry a bit that she's homesick, though she's there with a friend and I'm sure having a great time.

I don't consider myself a hovering, overprotective parent, so I'm kind of surprised that I'm feeling this way. I guess it's just one of those million little separations we help our kids make on their way to one day leaving the nest. I'll get over it, or maybe just get used to it, I'm sure.

And next year, when I send the boys off to camp with her (they were begging to stay when we dropped off Annie), instead of being sad, I'll probably throw a party underneath that banana tree.

Word to the Wide 5.0

When going for a walk with the family, if you have even the slightest indication that your 7-year-old son will want to race you -- repeatedly -- be sure to wear your sports bra and underwear that is not likely to roll down as you run.

For more Word to the Wide (from one highly experienced wide woman), check out these earlier versions:

• Word to the Wide (the original)
• Word to the Wide 2.0
• Word to the Wide 3.0
• Word to the Wide 4.0

Sundays in my City: Hidden Treasure

I love the idea of farmer's markets. All that fresh, home-grown produce set out in friendly spaces. Card tables full of delicious goodies that I love to eat, but am ill-equipped (or too lazy) to grow myself. But the problem with most farmer's markets is that they take place on Saturday mornings when I want to be sleeping or at least still lounging in my jammies.

My friend Ann told me about Your Neighbor's Garden, a farmer's market just off the path I drive on a daily basis. I'd seen the simple "Farmer's Market" signs with arrows pointing the way, but had never followed them. But one day last week, I had the hankering for some fresh fruits and veggies and decided to check it out.

I knew I was at the right place, when I saw this sign in front of the house:

But when I'll pulled up to the market at the end of the driveway, I was surprised to not find picnic tables or card tables piled with produce and someone sitting with a small cash box. Instead, this sign, posted on the side of a small building greeted Robbie and me.

We walked inside and found...air conditioning, which was amazingly welcome on the 90+ degree day that we were there! The walls were lined with white-painted shelves offering fruits and veggies, each section tagged with the name of the produce and its price. There was a scale for weighing your selections and that was it. No one else was there. It turns out that Your Neighbor's Garden is a self-serve operation. You add up your purchases and leave your cash or check or a Visa voucher in the safebox.

Robbie and I looked around at all we had to choose from. I picked up some zucchini because Annie has wanted to make zucchini bread. Five ears of corn for that night's dinner. At 40 cents each, they were slightly more expensive than the ears I'd bought at the grocery store. But I found when we cooked them that they were 10 times better in taste! A couple of big tomatoes because something is eating the few tomato plants I managed to get in the ground this year. A pint of cherry tomatoes for Charlie.

Robbie asked if we could get blueberries. I went with the pint for $2.50. I wish I'd bought the quart for $4.25. They were so juicy and sweet. Of course Robbie wouldn't know, because when I offered him a few when we got back to the car, he said "Eww! Yuck! I don't like that stuff!"

He also asked for cabbage. I said no, I didn't think we'd buy cabbage today. But he insisted. "Please Mom? I love cabbage!" So now I have a head of cabbage I don't know what to do with. Any easy suggestions (my reputation should precede me) are welcome.

The last thing I slipped into my sack was a beet. I had never bought a beet before, but I was inspired by Eternal Lizdom's recent experience with beets. So I selected just one beet and promptly called Liz to tell her that I bought a beet because of her and what the heck was I supposed to do now. (Peel and quarter it. Drizzle it with oil, sprinkle it with some lemon pepper seasoning. Bake at 425 for 30 minutes. It was good! Kind of had a bit of a sweet potato taste.)

Maybe next time I'll try the rhubarb.

Then I weighed what was sold by weight, added up my total and left $15 in the safebox. Here's what my money got me:

Your Neighbor's Garden does sell at some of the farmer's markets around town. But there's something about going to this hidden gem that appeals to me. This week they'll have lots of new stuff including peaches, raspberries and green tomatoes. If you go, leave some for me.

Note: I'm linking this up to Unknown Mami's Sundays in My City. Click here to visit cool finds in other cities.