One more sick day

Today I was held hostage in my house to my sons' colds: they both seem to be feeling much better, but they're sneezing and coughing so much that I knew Alex's teacher would thank me to keep him home for a day.

Since we were trapped at home, and since the solstice is tomorrow, I figured I should jump on this last, best chance for some spring cleaning. So I hauled out my hated mop and bucket, while Joey watched me curiously. No wonder: he certainly hasn't seem me do this any time in recent memory.  And I started to draw the mop across the ground, he, just as carefully, carefully tipped his juice cup over and dribbled orange juice across the floor.  Just to add a little interest to the chore. But he made amends by taking his own turn.

I much preferred Ella's method of helping, however.  When she came home from school she watched our Roomba run around the floor for a moment, and then decided some improvements to my little helper robot were long overdue. She really wishes she could figure out a way to make the Roomba say "ouch" whenever it bumps into something, and "om nom nom nom" the rest of the time.  But, as I told her, that's a project for another day.

She had plenty to keep her busy, anyway.  Ella, inspired by the castle in her room, has long been conceiving a play.  She drafted her brother and nochElla as actors.  She herself is more interested with the technicalities of the production, and has written herself into the script as "stage hand."  And she's given herself a fair par, with three major scene changes, plenty of lighting and sound cues, and a dangling sun and moon that she's put herself in charge of operating.  All with a mere two pages of dialogue.  But I think she kept the roles simple, purposely, as she's very mindful of the limitations of her actors.  Particularly Joey, who she's cast as the dragon.

Cue the sun

Anyway, I was cleaned walls and scrubbing the couch free of the stains that I swear to you are chocolate, but fully understand if you find them disgusting, regardless. And Ella was busily finished her script, cutting out and painting cardboard trees, and doing technical dry runs of her production.

Ella has had a gummy feast sitting prepared for weeks,
post-production refreshments for Dennis and me, and
nochElla's parents as well. Mmmm.

Meanwhile, Joey and Alex convalesced, Alex strewing no fewer than five of his beloved pocket handkerchiefs around the house.  At one point Joey had a particularly juicy sneeze, and Alex looked at him with a dawning excitement.  "I know just what you need," he said over his shoulder as he ran off to Dennis's dresser.  And when he came back, he handed Joey his very own handkerchief.  "Keep this with you, always," Alex advised him.  Joey took one look at it and threw it across the room.  He's more of a pretend-to-hug-his-mommy-while-really-wiping-his-nose-on-her-shoulder kind of guy, really.

I wish I could say Alex was as helpful and well-meaning the rest of the day, but being shut inside all day suits him just about as much as it suits me.  He spent most of the day swiping toys from Joey (who just wanted to play with his matchbox cars, darn it!) and finding other ways to needle at his brother and sister, until I finally sent him in to his room to do his own share of tidying.  Finally, finally, he got involved in his own project, building a maze for his remote control robot.

Still, by the end of the day, he was frustrated: bored because I'd been cleaning all day instead of playing him, and he was tired, but with nervous muscles from not exercising all day and a full nose that made breathing difficult. When I tucked him in, he quoted Kevin Henkes to me: "Momma? I think today was a difficult day. Tomorrow will be better."

Vatertag

While Dennis was having a short lie-in this morning, Ella and Alex scurried around, assembling their offerings for Father's Day.  Ella, secure in the knowledge that her daddy loves her artwork, made him a little paper playground this morning. You know, to play with.









And Alex, for days now, has been combing his possessions for treasures to pass on to his father.  This morning Dennis was the grateful recipient of no less than two glittery rocks, one Hello Kitty sticker, a snail shell, a rubber hippo, a small kitty doll, a lump of gold made of plaster, a stress ball shaped like a brain, a cardboard castle, and a lovely fan.

Alex also dressed carefully for holiday, emptying his dresser looking for his "I love Dad" shirt before I reminded him that he'd outgrown it.  He then was agonizingly torn between his tie-dye shirt and his Super Mario Brother's shirt, finally deciding that his daddy would prefer the latter.

Dennis spent the day as all the best daddies do, playing with his kids.  Joey and Alex seemed well enough to take them out of the house, so we took the train to Dennis's favorite spot, the top of Ütliberg, to play on the playground and to have a lunch in the nearby cafeteria. Unfortunately, the kids forgot their solemn promise not to quarrel, Ella, alas, driven to distraction by the chopped chives on her buttered spaghetti.

But we all rebounded, eventually, from the unwelcome appearance of the awful green things, and Dennis organized races across the playground for the kids until it was time to go home.

And then we spent the rest of the day kicking around the house, tidying, playing, using up a little more of our precious bottles of BW3s wing sause, and giving Daddy the only thing he asked for, a nap.

We were running low on cardboard...no longer!

And, by the end of the day, Dennis once again proved himself to be Father of the Year by arranging for a whole roomful of toys to be delivered this evening by one of his coworkers.

Jodlerfest Interlaken

More than anything else--glitter, new books, or even chocolate Kinder eggs--Ella craves one-on-one attention.  Today, with two boys sick and happy to nap and watch television, it seemed like an excellent day to have a mommy-daughter outing.

I had a trip to Lucerne with Ella planned, to a glass blowing factory where you can create your own crystal glass ball (!), but, as I was looking for trains to Lucerne, the SBB website reminded me that trains would be especially crowded because of this weekend's International Yodeling Festival in Interlaken.

The festival fact sheet informed me that "Interlaken will be transformed into the ultimate yodeling mecca. Some 200,000 visitors are expected at the 28th Swiss Yodel Festival, set before the famous backdrop of the Jungfrau massif. Around 10,000 yodelers, flag throwers, and alphorn blowers will take an active part in exciting competitions."  Yodeling mecca! Exciting competitions!

And now, some of you will be asking yourself: is she serious?  Is Cheryl really considering traveling for over two hours to go to a yodeling festival?  And, if you're in that group, I must ask you...

Don't you know me at all yet?  Of course I'm going to the yodeling festival! Besides, it's such lucky timing: this festival happens only once every three years!

So I told Dennis that my plans had changed.  He looked at me strangely for a moment, made fun of me only briefly, and then waved me and Ella on our way.

I have to say, traveling alone with Ella is an exquisite pleasure. It's wonderful to climb on a train without lugging a stroller and trailing bodies behind me.  And she's totally immersed in a book as I was, so she happily read all through the first leg of our trip, to Bern.  

I would have joined her in reading, but I'd invited an elderly man to share our little section of seats, and he so earnestly wanted to talk to chat, to help me practice my German.  He pulled out his newspaper (all Swiss carry their newspapers with them each day and read them on the trains) and pointed out various stories of interest and tried to explain them to me.  At one point he pointed to a picture of a duck sitting in a tree and explained to me "Das is eine Ente. In einen Baum!" I was following him so far, but then he launched into a big, long story, something (judging by his charades) that had to do with him fishing, and maybe a duck stealing his fish? Anyway, he laughed uproariously all throughout the story, and so I joined him with my own nervous laughter.  But he was satisfied, nodded approvingly at my obviously excellent sense of humor, and returned to his paper to search out more stories to share.

The second train we took, from Bern to Interlaken, was of course stuffed.  They were expecting 200,000 visitors in Interlaken, after all.  What I didn't expect was the enormously, delightfully high concentration of folk costumes. Ella's eyes grew wider and wider as we walked through the cars, looking for a place to sit.  We ended up plopping in the entryway of one of the cars for a little while, but eventually we could move into a car, where the all of the festival-goers were laughing passing around bottles of beer.  Every once in a while, the car would hush, and someone would let out a high, clear yodel, and Ella would crane her neck, frantically, looking for the source.  "Mom, it sounds like an angel!"

It drizzled all morning: the gorgeous, foggy mountains
made it tolerable, though.

We followed the masses of people a half-mile down the street until we came to rows and rows of tents.  In America, you can always count on finding fried stuff on a stick at festivals; here, you'll find rows of tents selling sausage, spätzle and cheese, and rosti.  Improbably, there was one tent blasting tejano music, with a sign: "Free lei with every shot!"  I wondered what festival they'd thought they were attending, and who, exactly, their target demographic was. But then, a half-hour later, I saw a cluster of American backpackers, stumbling around with their leis, fake-yodeling loudly.  Ah. Way to represent, kids.

But most of the festival-goers were Swiss, wearing their costumes.  But they did have one thing in common with my countrymen: everyone seemed to be a little bit drunk. Natürlich. It was, after all, after 13:00.

As much as the music, I loved how much fun everyone seemed to be having.  But the music was so fun, too.  Ella and I couldn't stay long enough to see any of the formal competitions, but we did get to see several groups singing in beer tents, some scheduled, but some just giving impromptu concerts.  All around, people were singing softly with the performers: everyone (young and old) knew the tunes.

In addition to folk singing, this was also a weekend for alpenhorn music: we saw many, many people with improbably large music cases slung over their shoulders.  (The horns break into three segments, but they're still, of course, really long.)  I didn't realize that these horn blowers actually played very complex tunes.  (The Ricola commercials, only showed people playing long, sustained notes, after all.) And, of course, there are no valves on these horns: it's all breath control and embrasure.  It's impressive.

Later, looking back at the website, I noted to Dennis, "Oh, I missed the blowing of the world's largest alpenhorn!"  He just looked at me: "Really? I didn't miss that at all."

The third competition of the weekend, the flag throwing, we didn't see much of, but there was one man throwing a flag into the air, as high as he could, waving it somewhat in time to the horn blowers.  I wasn't quite sure what to make of this, but Ella liked him best.  If you listen carefully to the movie, you can hear her asking: "What happens if someone else catches the flag? Do they get to take his place?"  I'm relieved that she asked, first, rather than just seeing for herself.

But her favorite-favorite part of the festival was, of course, the carnival rides and the playground we stumbled upon.  Just before we found the playground, she was kind of dragging, complaining about the constant rain and the water filling her shoes.  But she recovered her energy miraculously as soon as she saw that merry-go-round.

Ella was also keen to pick out a souvenir, and I eyed the billowy blouses and cowbells and carved wooden figurines for sale, wondering what she had in mind.  But, happily, there were many festival sponsors with tents out, and Ella managed to win herself some free souvenirs, in the games they had set up for the kids, to distribute their swag.  She ended the day richer by two decks of cards (with the deuces through sixes missing...made for euchre, I guess?), a pack of mints, a keychain, and a giant inflatable tube of mayonnaise.  Most of the games were cowbell themed: hit the cowbell with a beanbag, or pull the lucky string and ring a cowbell, for example. I have to wonder how much of all of this was tongue-in-cheek.  More than anything, the Swiss remind me of Texans, with their rodeo culture.

We only stayed for about two hours: it was long enough to get the flavor of the festival, at least, and it was nice to avoid the rush home and to get back in time for dinner.  But the train rides were every bit as enjoyable as the festival, so I don't really mind how little time we got to spend there, in proportion to the travel time.  The scenery was gorgeous, particularly Lake Thun, which was a gorgeous transparent aqua blue that I'm simply not capable of capturing on film.

And the company was wonderful: I taught Ella slapjack on the way home with her newly-won prize, and she beat me twice.