The Barefoot Kitchen Witch

The Wages of Multitasking

Yesterday I babbled on and on about all sorts of things that were going on in the house and the fact that I forgot I had loaves of bread rising in pans and they kind of rose a bit higher than I'd have liked.

Here's how they looked before I attempted to peel the plastic wrap off them.

They looked deflated and tangled and ugly afterward, and I didn't take a picture of that.  I just let them rise back up again and finally baked them. 

They turned out fine.

You're SO relieved, aren't you.

Of Shreds and Patches

It is raining.

Again.

Still.

It's a good thing Bill mowed the lawn the other day - when the sun was still in view - because right now it looks like he won't have that opportunity again until July.  Or something like that.

The rain is great for the gardens, of course - and for me, because it means I don't have to go around watering parched plants - but the sun would be good for them, too.  I'd also like to be able to hang the laundry out to dry.  But that's not happening any time soon.

~~~

Yesterday Julia and I drove up to the middle school where Bill teaches to take pictures of one of his classes.  His grade 7 chorus earned a platinum medal at a recent music festival - first time anyone's gotten a platinum at that school - so yay, Bill and yay, kids!  It's really quite an achievement.  Anyway, they wanted something in the local paper, but for whatever reason (I can't remember), no one from the local paper was going to be able to get there before the next deadline or something, so Bill asked me to come up and take a picture and to write up a little something for the paper.  He's emailing that and the photo to them this morning.  So yay, they'll make it into the next edition.

Julia was all excited to go see Daddy at "his work" and she somehow crawled to her bureau - over and under all the other furniture that's in front of it - and dug out her Easter dress to wear for the occasion.  I put her hair in two pigtails, she put on a lovely pair of very scuffed brown shoes, and off we went.

When we arrived, the bell had rung and classes were changing, so the hallway was overrun with middle school children who were so busy talking to one another that they might have run Julia over if she hadn't moved behind me to travel in my wake.  That spooked her, and she spent the rest of the visit "being shy."  I put that in quotes because I think she would have been fine if it hadn't been for the Running of the Students.  So she didn't want to go into the classroom - Bill came out and had to peel her off of me to bring her in.  And then she stood behind me most of the time Bill's students were arriving and warming up a bit before I took the group shot. 

It was too bad - a good portion of the girls in the class reeeeeaaaaally wanted to make friends with Julia, but she was having none of it.  She just moved behind me and stayed there.

I was able to slip out of her reach a few times to get pictures of her, though.  Here she is - being shy.

She was very glad to leave. 

~~~

On the bedrooms front, later this morning I will tape off Julia's room and put down the drop cloth and PRIME!! 

Can't believe this project is winding down.  Of course, there are still a few ugly parts left.  There is a section of the floor that Bill needs to fill in.  It's where the original doorway to that big bedroom was, and the wall of the double-sized closet it used to have.  There's no hardwood flooring there, so Bill's going to be pulling up some of the existing floor and laying down new hardwood pieces to fill in the gaps. 

That's one ugly project.  He actually started doing some of that last night.

And the final ugly part will be removing EVERY SINGLE THING from the bedrooms and bringing it all downstairs so we (okay, Bill and a friend of his) can sand the hardwoods and then - ugh - put down new layers of polyurethane. 

We still don't know for sure where we're going during that time period.  We can't stay in the house because of the fumes.  There's talk of camping out in the back yard, but the way the rain's been lingering, I don't know about that either.  We'll have to see what the weather's like when it's closer to the time all this will be taking place. 

I look on all of this like labor and childbirth, though.  It's the best analogy I've got.  The pain builds and builds, and then the final series of pushes and then - finally - it's done.  And we'll have shiny new-looking floors and pretty bedrooms to show for it. 

I cling to that.  That there WILL be an end to it. 

~~~

The sour cherry tree is offering up lots of lovely red berries now - and I think the catbirds and blue jays are getting the majority of them.

I marched out there the other day and grabbed what I could reach, but it wasn't much.  And they weren't entirely ripe yet, either.  The thing is, the birds don't care, so they'll just take them, and if I wait until the cherries are properly ripe, there won't be any left.

I have a feeling the birds will win this year.

At least I've managed to grab most of the strawberries.

~~~

Speaking of strawberries, Bill has made us strawberry margaritas a couple times now, and there is NOTHING like a drink made with real fruit.  Mixes cannot compare.  I'd rather have one or two extremely delicious strawberry margaritas and be done with them than have a year's supply of the mixed version.

Just saying.

But we're not big on bottled mixers here anyway. 

~~~

I wonder who will be at the farmers' market this morning.  It's been pouring - it's pouring now - but I really want to get more rhubarb and more goats' milk today.

Why?

Because I want to make more of that rhubarb ginger jam, for one thing.

And -

I'm going to make goat cheese.

My kit arrived yesterday, and I can't wait to get started!!

~~~

I guess that's it for now.  Almost time to make Alex's lunch and get going here.

I wish I knew where my umbrella was.

 

Things Going On Today...

While I have a minute to type.

*  About twenty minutes longer and I can take the pie out of the oven.

*  I made 7 jars of jam.  It would have been 8, but, well, accidents happen.

*  Bill took the kids to their T-ball game earlier today - I had about two hours of quiet while I made the jam.  Ahhhhhhhhhh.

*  Finally, the peapods have appeared - seemingly overnight.  The kids will eat them as fast as they appear, so don't expect to see any peapod recipes here featuring the year's harvest.

*  We have a Swimming Banquet to go to in a little over an hour.  The kids don't know it yet, but I believe they will each get some kind of award or certificate or something from their swim teachers.  Should be fun.

*  Alex's room is allllllllllmoooooooooooosssssssssssttttttttttttttttttt ready to prime and paint.  I know I've been saying that (or hoping it) for an eternity now, but this time it actually seems like a possibility.  Woo hoo!

*  Julia's room - not yet.  Little setback up there, but nothing we (or Bill, really) can't fix. 

*  Sometimes I have more fun making little treats with the scraps of pie dough than I have making the pie itself.

*  The canning bug has bitten me hard.  I've got plans, baby.  PLANS.

*  Bill has done all the work in the bedrooms today - including a ton of ceiling sanding.  THANK YOU!!!  I needed a break.  And besides, I was making jam and baking a pie.  Priorities are priorities!

That's about it for now. 

Things Tugging

So much to do, so little time, and only one of me....

Well, okay, it's not ALL on my shoulders, but there's STILL a lot to do - stuff to do with the bedrooms, normal household stuff, kid stuff, more household stuff, trying to find stuff because it's all crammed everywhere other than normal places because of the bedrooms project...on and on.

Thank goodness we are doing this project in the spring.  The kids' play areas in the house are becoming scarce (scarse?  no, it's definitely scarce...though neither one looks right to me because SOMEWHERE IN THIS HOUSE I HAVE LOST THE ABILITY TO SPELL) and so they're stuck with each other even more than usual, and it's getting on everyone's every last nerve.  Okay, not always, but there seem to be more flare-ups of "Well HE did - " and "Well SHE said - " than usual...but maybe it just seems that way because there are fewer places for me to hide.  heh heh.  did i just type that?

And other things...things that i don't go into here, but that take up a lot of space in my mind and heart...things that I can't do a damn thing about and it's a horrible, frustrating feeling.

Plus I've cooked several things that were fabulous over the weekend, but - I TOOK NO PICTURES! - because...I just didn't think of it in time or didn't feel like it once I thought of it.  I'm in some sort of foodie slump, I think. 

Today's plans include - woo hoo! - another trip to the landfill to get rid of debris from the bedrooms project.  Did I tell you that last week when I went I almost fell into a dumpster?  Now THAT would have been entertaining!

I also need to take more pictures and post them, because YAY - the walls are UP and the ceiling is PATCHED and there are now, officially, two bedrooms where there once was one.  It's fabulous.  In my mind I can see them finished and looking cozy and fun.  It's still going to be a while before that's the reality, but having a wall and the closets done is a big step in the "done" direction.

Now that I think about it, I also have a few loads of laundry to do.  Since we have no access to closets or bureaus, we are living from our laundry baskets, and it behooves me (I just wanted to type "behooves") to keep on top of the laundry because if I don't, the piles of dirty laundry take over our sleeping area in the basement and it's just ugly. 

But for now?  Time to get moving.  It's Monday.  Back to the work/school week routine! 

Have a good week! 

Snippets

Tonight's another Work On the Bedrooms night.  Tomorrow I'm planning to bring 89 tons of debris to the landfill tomorrow morning.  I tried making it sound exciting to Julia, since I'll have her with me, but she wasn't falling for it.

Julia likes playing shallow infield at t-ball - that way she has more opportunities to get the ball and throw to first.  During the first "inning" at practice last night, she batted well and ran fast, but she was put in center field, kind of, when the other half of the group was up to bat, and she was, apparently, so bored that she sat down in the grass, her back to the infield, and picked dandelions.

Alex is having a blast at t-ball this year - he gets to play first a lot, and he's hitting really well (for a little kid), which is great for his confidence level. 

The pollen in the air and the dust from the construction have everyone (except me, for some reason) coughing and sniffling. 

I think I'm going through some sort of manic creative phase.  Except can someone tell me why I can't just pick a damn hobby and stick with it?  why must i keep wanting to do something ELSE!  something NEW!  this will be THE thing for me!   But I like ALL of my creative outlets.  I wish there were more of me so each of me could focus on one thing.  And another me could do the housework stuff.  And another of me could take naps in the afternoon.  I think I'll be THAT me.

I still have to post this week's Tuesdays with Dorie post.  I have the images all ready to go.  Just need to add words to them.  But I keep doing other stuff. 

Like this rambling post. 

So, how are things with you?

Why Valentine's Day Only Causes Pain

I should have just been happy to give him a card and a small bar of (Godiva) chocolate.  The dark chocolate with raspberry filling.  Yum.  That was plenty, right?

But because it was Valentine's day, it didn't end there.

I have to back up a bit first.

Bill recently bought a pair of skiis, and boots.  And a new waterproof coat.  And base wear.  And socks.  And ski pants.  I think that's everything on the list.  He's become a born-again skiier.  And we all suffer the fallout of his fanatacism.

Anyway, his new skiis arrived a few days ago, and he promptly brought them to the local Ski Market so they could put his bindings on and fit them to his boots, or whatever secret ski club stuff they do.  He got them back on Friday after work, and now he's itching to try them out.

So he and a friend were going to go.  Saturday night.  As in yesterday.  Yes.  Valentine's day.

Now, I'm not really over the top about Valentine's Day.  We exchange cards, maybe some chocolate, but that's about the extent of it.  We stay FAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRR away from restaurants.  It's hard to have a nice quiet just-the-two-of-you meal when you're packed elbow to knee with all the OTHER couples trying to do the same thing.  So we eat at home.  And besides, we can cook pretty well ourselves.

Back to the skiing.  He and his buddy decided not to go skiing Saturday - not because it was Valentine's day - there were other reasons, including the slightly warmer weather we've been having.  So they've made plans to hook up some other time in the future.

Bill still wanted to ski, however.  Soon.  He looked up the conditions locally and discovered that despite the weather, they had been making snow like crazy and had plenty of trails open.  (See that, I don't ski, but I can speak a bit of the language.)  He got the look in his eye.  A rubbing-the-hands together, gleam in his eye, boy-waiting-for-Santa sort of look. 

And I cannot resist a good opportunity to torture a person.  So I feigned hurt and asked "You would go skiing tonight?  Valentine's Day?  And when I'm sick?  Cough cough."  (Big sad puppy eyes.)

He looked torn.  I continued.  Then I stopped.  He might as well go.  It's not like I was all that exciting to be around, mucus-filled as I was (and am.)  He said he'd think about it.

Later on, when I was trying to work on one of the current dolls I've got in the works, he came into the room and announced that he was NOT going skiing that night because it wouldn't be right.  On Valentine's day.  I told him not to let that get in the way of things - I'd even make him a little sign to wear on his jacket "My wife said I could go skiing on Valentine's Day" just so no one would chastise him.  But no.  He wasn't going.  Maybe he'd go the next morning, though.

And that was nice.  I had a warm little feeling inside.  Selfless gestures are way better than flowers, after all. 

So.  Fast forward a few hours.  I was getting dinner started.  Nothing fancy - just comfort food - a double batch of chicken tetrazzini.  (One pan for me, the other for everyone else.  No, not really.)

Bill had gone outside to put some things in the garage.  And as I looked out the window, I felt a resurgence of that warm feeling I'd felt when he gave up an evening of skiing to hang out with his germ-laden wife.  Sweet man.  And I just thought - I'll go give him a hug.  Just a simple Valentine's Day hug.  A simple gesture.  Just because.

So, wearing flip flops, because I don't have slippers and that's what I wear sometimes to keep my feet from feeling cold on the kitchen tile, I opened the back door.

And I opened the storm door with my right hand, stepped out with my right foot, onto the little rubber mat on the top step -

And then, quick as the proverbial wink, the mat slipped across the concrete step, bringing my foot with it, and next thing I knew, my foot was jammed under the iron railing on the other side of the step.

Here - in case you'd like a better visual - this is the rubber mat and our concrete stairs outside the kitchen door.  (Well of course I went and took pictures after the fact.  You'd be surprised if I didn't, wouldn't you?)

 

Next up, the railing, which is just beyond the door in the picture above.

 

And now, a closer view of the danger zone.

 

Okay, back to the story.  My right was jammed under that lower rail.  Not all the way to the ankle - about midway between where the toes attach to the foot and the ankle.  Yeah.  All those skinny little bones.  And no padding.  Ouch.

I stood there on my left foot, clutching my right foot with one hand and hanging onto the door with my other hand.  I couldn't move.  I wanted to cry.  In fact, I could feel tears stinging my eyes.  Peripherally I saw Bill look up from what he was doing.  And I knew what he was thinking.  Something along the lines of "What did she do now?"  Because there are times, I admit, when I'm sort of a bit of a klutz.  I stub a toe or whack an elbow from time to time.  More times than normal, in Bill's opinion.  I don't know about that.  But whatever.  I knew he was figuring something like that had happened.  Something minimal. 

I couldn't say anything.  Or move.  He yelled "Are you okay?"  And I think I squeaked out a "no" because he left the garage and came over.  I whimpered a quick explanation of what had happened, and he helped me hobble into the house.  I made my way into the dining room and peeked at my foot. 

"Do you want some ice?"  Bill called from the kitchen.  I think I said yes.  I don't remember.  I was busy staring at the icky top of my foot.  There was a jagged triangularish purple outline and inside that area, it was white.  I don't know why that grossed me out, but it did.  Made me think of episodes of Man vs Wild when Bear Grylls eats caterpillar or worm guts.  That's just how my brain works.  I stared in morbid fascination at that white icky part and, in a bit of a panic, yelled to Bill "CAN I HAVE THAT ICE, PLEASE?"  And then I thought of the ice pack touching my wounded skin and I felt my skin crawl, so I added "AND A TOWEL???"  As I watched, the middle white part slowly turned purple to match the border.  Oddly enough, it didn't look as creepy to me then.

Oh, and yes, it hurt.  Not as much as what happened to my sister several years ago, of course, but still.  It hurt.

Bill brought the ice pack and a dish towel and I gently draped them on my foot.  The kids were in the room, too, looking concerned.  I said I was fine, I'd just hurt my foot a bit.  I'd be fine. 

Bill asked if I needed anything else.  I asked for my camera. 

Here's my foot, after I'd kept the ice on it a bit.

  

I know.  That little thing?  The flash washes it out a bit.  Try this one.

 

You can sort of see a reddish area surrounding the wound.  I'm guessing that will eventually turn bruisy colors. 

 

While I was sitting there, I noticed that the glass on our china hutch needs cleaning.  But not until I'd take a picture of this:

See it?

 

See them now?  The lips?  Not sure who did that.  I'd suspect Julia, of course, but unless she was on a chair, it's too high for her.  Interesting what you see when you're just sitting.

Anyway, that was all yesterday.  Today my foot still hurts, especially if anything touches the scab area.  And also my left calf feels tight, like a leg cramp almost.  But other than that, I'm okay.

And that's my story.  I blame Valentine's Day.  If it hadn't been V-Day, Bill wouldn't have decided not to go skiing, I wouldn't have felt like hugging him out of the blue like that, - in fact, at that time he probably wouldn't even have been home - and my foot would be fine.  It's an evil holiday.  Evil, I tell ya.

Now I'm going to limp upstairs and make pancakes or french toast for us all for breakfast.

If anything more colorful happens with my foot, I'll be sure to post the pictures.

This Is Not a Valentine's Day-Themed Post. Mostly.

Because my day began at around one in the morning when I woke up.  I've got a yucky cold or something and I woke up dry-mouthed, achy-throated, and just generally achy over all.  I couldn't go back to sleep, so I went downstairs, took a variety of meds, made some tea, and went further downstairs to watch stuff on the food network.

I fell alseep during a Good Eats episode about...oranges?  I think?  I don't know.  I just know that's when I took off my glasses, curled up under some blankets on the couch, and just listened. 

I like to listen to Alton Brown.  I like his voice.  More than that, I like his wit and intelligence.  His shows are kind of like story time.  Story time about food.  Which sounds good to me.

So I snuggled down, eyes closed, and listened to the start of the show - and I was out. 

For three solid hours. 

And then I woke up in the middle (or some section) of a weird, unpleasant, kind of disturbing dream that I couldn't entirely sort out.  I went upstairs to my own bed, thinking I just needed to be sleeping in the right place.  It was a lovely idea, but it didn't work.  I lay there, awake, breathing out of my mouth for a while, then I schlepped back downstairs, made more tea, and searched for something to watch.  Not a whole lot to choose from at that hour.  I was hoping for cooking shows on PBS - seems to me I've seen Lidia Bastianich in the wee hours before.  But not this morning.  I watched the tail end of something on the food network again - one of those recipe for success shows about someone starting a business in the food industry, and then figured that would be it.

But no!

There was something coming on...something educational - there was a little blurb at the bottom of the screen that said teachers could utilize the following program in the classroom...

I stared at the screen through half-closed eyes as the show came on.  Bunch of people sitting at the counter in a diner.  One of them spoke.

And

It was Alton Brown.

I would say I wept with joy, but that would be silly.  But I was definitely joyful, in my own, special, congested way.

This show was about potatoes - yay!  I didn't fall asleep this time around, I just watched and wished I had some russet potatoes on hand because a baked potato sounded really good to me right about then.

After the show, I went (again) back to my own bed and fell into a peaceful, contented sleep.

Now it's morning - true daytime morning.  Kids are up - and in the other room "secretly" making me valentine's day cards.  I already made their day with a book each, a little stuffed animal, a card, and some chocolate. 

And that's about all the effort I intend to put into anything today.

Yay, it's Friday

Not that it matters all that much to me which day of the week it is, but at least today there are no after-school obligations for the kids.

Yesterday Julia had a make-up swim class, since she missed Monday's lesson.  We didn't say anything about it when we'd scheduled it.  At that point there was still the possibility that she would be scared to go and would try to find reasons to get out of going.

I told her on the way home from the grocery store yesterday, before we picked up Alex after school. 

And she was fine.  "Okay," she said.  No fear, no tears.  Reconfirming for me that Monday she was genuinely sick, as if the vomiting hadn't done that already.

Anyway, we went to the pool last night, Julia all snug and cozy - and purple - in her new Warm Belly Wetsuit.  Alex has red.  These things are great - no more purple lips or chattering teeth.  Anyway, she went into the water with her teacher, Ms. C, and Alex and I watched from the bleachers.  Well, we watched, and also Alex drew pictures of collections of animals:  Animals from Africa...Dinosaurs...Sea Creatures.  

And Julia did SO well.  It's kind of culture shock for her, especially, in these lessons.  I think I've mentioned that before.  But the main things are 1) the kids don't wear any kind of flotation device during the lessons and 2) they actually are DOING SOMETHING during the whole half hour class.  Before, she was used to casually floating along in the pool with her classmates, maybe swimming, sort of, but nothing really intense or serious or scary.  She would have remained in that same class for another year, probably, because there was no emphasis on progress.  But don't get me started.  Anyway, this time around, she is LEARNING.  And it's not easy.  It's scary.  She's not tall enough to touch bottom with her head above water, so she really needs to keep herself afloat.  And she does.  Last night she swam from the end of the lane to the flags, which is, I think, about ten or fifteen feet.  She floated on her back, and the teacher slowly - talking to her all the time - took her hands away so Julia was floating all on her own.  I watched, remembering that feeling from when I took lessons an eternity ago.  And Julia stayed there, a little purple starfish on the surface of the water, until fear kicked in and she began to sink.  She was scared.  I could see it on her little face - that furrowed brow, the pout, the worried eyes.  But her teacher held her and talked to her and hugged her and worked with her, worked her through it.  It's horrible and wonderful to watch.  After the floating/sinking thing, Ms. C had Julia lie on her back, Ms C's hand under Julia's neck, supporting her.  Then they went up and down half the length of that lane, Ms C counting 1, 2, 3 and then having Julia turn over from her back onto her stomach and swim for another count of 1, 2, 3, and then flip back onto her back and float 1, 2, 3, and then flip back to her stomach again.  Over and over.  So Julia would know HOW to do that herself and NOT just sink down to the bottom in terror. 

And at the end of the class, Julia was all smiles, and I hugged her wet little warm belly'd body and told her how proud I was of her.  She got two stamps on the backs of her hands - they're big on positive reinforcement there - and then we headed back to the locker room, Julia somehow taller than when she'd arrived a half an hour before.

~~~

Let's see, what else....

Well, thank you to the people who have shared their spayed cat/abdominal stitches stories with me in the comments section of this post.  So far Softie is taking it easy (mostly) and her suture wound looks fine.  I check it multiple times a day (much to Softie's growing annoyance) and it is looking pink (not red or bloody) and healthy.  I apparently have strong, rapidly-healing cat stock here.

Funny thing about Softie - I don't know if I've told you about this before - she adores Alex.  It's funny - she's technically Julia's cat, and Scratchy is Alex's.  But really, they're all the family cats.  Of course, cats being cats, they decide where their own individual loyalties lie.  Scratchy, as I've said before, loves me.  I'm not bragging or anything, he just does.  It's obvious.  He is smitten.  And so adorable about it.  If he had opposable thumbs and was allowed outside, he'd probably pick dandelions for me just because.  In the summer, I mean.

But Softie - she loves Alex.  More specifically, she loves Alex's head when it's asleep and on a pillow. 

Last night at some point Julia was out of her bed and in our bed for a little while.  I brought her back to the kids' bedroom, and when I opened the door to go in, out of nowhere, Softie came racing past me, into the room, onto Alex's bed, and to his head, where she paced, purring LOUDLY and rubbing her cheek against his hair.  It's adorable and hysterical. 

I put Julia in her bed, tucked the covers around her, and Softie continued to purr and purr and purr, overjoyed at her luck.  But I had to put an end to her happiness.  Had to (gently because of the stitches) remove her from the bed and from the bedroom and close the door before she could race back in again.  If allowed to stay, she would have woken Alex up with all her loud, insistent affection.  It's only so cute when you're trying to sleep, apparently.  So Alex has asked that we keep the door shut so the cats won't wake him up.  (Scratchy would have joined in the fun, too.  He likes to attack Alex's feet.)

Softie accepted her exile without complaint.  She went back downstairs to sleep wherever she sleeps.  Just waiting, I presume, for the next opportunity to come along.

~~~

And that's it for the moment.  Have to get Alex to school.  Then it's back here for my big exciting project of the day:  I have to clean out the fridge.

Wish me luck.

Trust

It was on Monday.

Bill was at work, Alex was at school.  Julia and I had an assortment of errands to run. 

First we went to Staples, one of my very favorite stores in the whole wide world.  I love office supplies. 

I had to get just a few things.  Julia asked if she could get a package of post-it notes and since she'd been almost very good in the store, I said okay.  Don't want to crush the office supply spirit in my daughter, of course.  She picked out bright pink (of course) for herself, and asked if we could get orange ones for Alex.  I said yes - I'm always happy when they want to get something for the other one. 

A bit later we went to this little shop that sells swimming gear to get Warm Belly suits for the kids.  They're taking swimming lessons at a different place now (we quit the Y - did I write about all that?  In a nutshell, we were tired of the lack of real instruction.  Too much playing around or down time, not enough actually swimming.  The new place is amazing.  One-on-one instruction and the kids are swimming or doing SOMETHING the whole time.  It's a bit of a change for Julia, especially - in this class she is challenged more, and she's having a hard time with it.  But at the same time, she loves her teacher.  So the class is chlorine and tears and hugs, over and over.  But she is learning so much more.) and the pool, I don't know, is maybe colder then the one at the Y.  Anyway, both kids' teeth chatter, and Julia's teacher suggested these suits for the kids.  She wears one herself.  So that's what Julia and I were doing on Monday morning.  Because I am a procrastinator, and their next swim class was that evening and I still hadn't bought the things yet.

We got there and picked out a purple one for Julia and red for Alex.  (The only orange one there was too small.)  They have adjustable velcro straps over the shoulders, so as Alex's genetically pre-disposed to tallness little torso grows taller, we can adjust the suit.  Julia.  Well, she's at the small end of her suit size, so she'll probably have the same one til she's twenty.

Anyway, that was the morning.  We came home and I went upstairs to work on some projects in my little work are in my bedroom.  Julia sat on the bed and tortured played with one of the cats, and eventually she crawled into the bed and, after thrashing around a bit, fell asleep. 

Woo hoo!  Uninterrupted time for me! 

She slept for an hour and a half - then I had to wake her up so we could go pick up Alex at school.  I brushed the tangle of hair from her face and kissed her, and when she woke up she immediately started crying and said her tummy didn't feel good. 

I kissed her forehead and her cheeks, and she felt hot, but she'd also been fully dressed under all the bed covers.  She was a little sweaty, too, but again, that could be from being too hot all that time.  I uncovered her and quizzed her about her not feeling well.  Did she think she was going to throw up?  Did she need to go potty?  Was she hungry?  She hadn't had lunch, really.  Just a little snack that she didn't finish.  She said she wasn't hungry. 

She kept crying, too.  I got her into her boots and coat, hat and mittens, and into the car.  She was quiet (a sure sign something was off) and whimpery and sad.  We got Alex, came home, and I brought Julia upstairs to take her temperature.

Of course, the battery had died in the digital thermometer.  So I'm kissing her head, feeling her torso, trying to decide if she truly feels HOT or if she's just over warm from crying, or what.  I attempted to take her temp the old fashioned way with a glass thermometer under her tongue, but I was too worried she'd chomp down on the glass, swallow mercury and shards, and go insane while her insides slowly shredded, that I took the thing out after only a minute.  Inconclusive.  I don't think she even kept it under her tongue.  I know I didn't like doing that as a kid either.

So what to do?  She felt on the warm side to me, and she doesn't usually wake up crying like that.  Swim class was in about an hour.  Should she stay or should she go?

She felt warm, and she just didn't seem right to me.

So I called and cancelled her lesson.  Bill could bring Alex, and I'd stay home.

About a half hour before the class, Bill called - he was nearly home, should he just go straight to the pool and meet us there?  I told him no, come home, Julia's sick.

He said "Oh." and in that word I heard a boatload of doubt and suspicion.

The previous swim class had been a hard one on Julia.  She was basically taken outside her comfort zone, and she was scared to go back.  Of course, nothing bad was going to happen to her.  Her teacher is fabulous - has Julia do a little something new - face all the way in the water, or swimming about three feet on her own - and then lots of hugs and "I'm so proud of you!" and then maybe something less scary, like swimming using the pool noodle or floating on her back.  So like I said earlier - chlorine and tears and hugs.  

She was a mixture of scared and proud, and wasn't all that excited to go back.  But we'd kept being supportive and encouraging and we told her Miss C would NEVER let anything bad happen to her.  It might be scary at times, but that was part of learning to swim.  And if you face your fears, and work through them, you'll be all the better for it.  (Of course, it doesn't work on trips to the dentist, but that's just me.)

She hadn't said anything earlier about being scared of her swim class - in fact she was VERY thrilled about her new purple Warm Belly suit (which she insisted on calling a wet suit) that day.

But.

So Bill's voice in my ear on the phone allowed some doubt to start working on me.  Julia genuinely seemed sick.  The whole waking up from the nap crying part was so unusual for her....but.

What if?  

It's not like she's never been sneaky.  She's four.  It's part of being a kid.

But she'd felt warm.  Her cheeks were flushed.

I went downstairs to where she was lying on the couch, watching tv.

I asked how she was feeling.

"Not good."

"Julia, did you say you were sick so you wouldn't have to go to swim class?"

She didn't answer.  Just snuggled under the blanket.

"Julia, are you REALLY sick, or did you SAY you were sick so you wouldn't have to go to class?"

She started crying.

"Julia?  Are you REALLY sick?"

"I don't want to go to swim class!"

Grrrr.

"Do you feel sick?"

"I don't wanna go to swim class!"  She was crying and not looking at me.

"Julia, DO YOU FEEL SICK?"

"I just don't want to go to SWIM CLASS!"

"Are you saying you feel sick because you don't want to go to swim class???!!!"  I was getting angry.  Trying to be sure she understood the question and appalled that I'd been duped.

She nodded.  Crying.

"Julia, you lied to me.  I know you're scared to go, but you can't pretend to be sick just because you don't want to do something."  (oh, really?  since when?)

She cried more.  "I don't want to go!"

"Do you feel sick?"

She shook her head.

I swallowed all the yelling that was welling up inside me.

"You can stay down here, then, and you'll go to bed right after dinner.  If you say your sick, you're going to be treated like you're sick."

I went upstairs.

I was furious.  At her for faking it SO WELL.  At me for falling for it, and at Bill for figuring it out so fast when he wasn't even here.

He got home and I filled him in and he nodded like he wasn't the least bit surprised.  I found myself defending my blindness - her warm cheeks, her sweaty head, no lunch, the crying.  I was more annoyed about being fooled than I was about Julia's deception.  I ALWAYS know when they're hiding something.  "How did you know, Mom?"  "Because I'm a Mom.  I just know."

Til now.

Bill took Alex to class, and I tried, unsuccessfully, to convey to him that I didn't want him to tell Julia's teacher of her recent confession.  Because, truth be told, I didn't want to look like an idiot Mom who can't read her kid. 

Dammit.

I made dinner.  Fish tacos.  Easy to do when you use frozen fish sticks.  I was too grumpy to be more creative than that.

Julia seemed to perk up a bit while Alex and Bill were at the pool, so I squashed that quickly and efficiently.

"Julia, do you understand what a lie is?"

"Yeah."

"What is it?"

"...I don't know."

"A lie is when you tell something that isn't true.  Like when you said you didn't feel good but you really just didn't want to go to swim class.  That was a lie.  When you tell lies, it makes it hard for people to trust you.  To believe what you tell them other times.  I'm really not happy about this, Julia."

"I'm sorry." 

Bill and Alex got home - Alex did really well and got two lollipops for his efforts.  He'd eaten one in the car and was finishing up the next one as he came in the door.  Bill was full of praise for him.  He also told me Julia's teacher had suggested a make-up lesson - maybe Thursday?  I said fine.  Call her.  I was still wallowing in grumpiness and feeling like a fool.  Of course I was overreacting, but I was too busy DOING it to notice.

Bill thought I was annoyed about the make-up lesson.  No.  I was just frustrated because DIDN'T HE UNDERSTAND HOW ANGRY I WAS THAT MY FOUR-YEAR-OLD DAUGHTER PUT ONE OVER ON ME SO WELL.  She SEEMED SICK. 

I don't like to be wrong.  I know.  Get over yourself, Jayne.  But honestly.  She really seemed sick.

Anyway, we sat down to dinner.  Alex told me I could win a cooking contest (because fish sticks wrapped in soft tacos are so innovative and tasty, apparently) and Julia didn't want anything to eat.  Just maybe some cheese on a taco.  I fixed that for her, but she just sat and cried.  And cried.

Something in me let go, and all the annoyance evaporated.  She really felt bad about her story.  Time to stop being the dispenser of morals and just give the girl a hug.  So I did.  Several.  She sat in her chair and I sat beside her in mine, and I just hugged her while she cried.

She finally stopped, but she still didn't feel like eating, so I told her to go ahead back downstairs and I'd sit with her in a few minutes.  She went back to watching Sponge Bob or whatever was on, and I ate dinner.

After the plates were cleared, Bill gave Alex a guitar lesson and I went downstairs.

Julia looked so tiny on the couch, all wrapped up in green blankets, her small, sad face on the pillow.

"Would you like me to lie down with you?"  I asked.

She nodded. 

I slid under the blankets beside her and gave her a kiss on the head, then turned to watch the cartoon.

And then Julia made some little noise and threw up.  Not much.  I kind of thought it was some kind of burp with benefits, but she suddently had this "OH NO" look on her face and before I could say anything, she REALLY threw up, on me, the blankets, herself.  Just liquid, but still.

She started crying.  Again.  I shot questions and orders at her:  "Do you think you're going to throw up again?  Upstairs!  Run!  To the bathroom!  Hurry!"  I ran along behind her, a Border Collie, nipping at her heels.  pleasedon'tthrowuponthestairspleasedon'tthrowuponthestairs...

She made it to the bathroom and I flipped up the lid and the seat and told her to just stay there, just in case.  I ran back downstairs and grabbed the wet blankets and tossed them in the washing machine, then went back upstairs in time for Julia to retch again - productively - a couple more times.

She was really sick.

And I have to admit - I was glad.  Not glad she was vomiting.  That's no fun for any of us. 

But I was glad she had been telling me the truth.  I thought back to my earlier interrogation - trying to figure out if she felt sick really, or if she was trying to get out of swim class.  And the answer was now fuzzier.  Less clear.  She felt sick AND she didn't want to go?  She felt sick AND SO she didn't want to go?  She felt sick BECAUSE she didn't want to go?  Who knows?  And what does it matter, at this point.

I cleaned up Julia's face and the couch, put new blankets and towels all around.  Bill brought in a bucket for her, just in case.  But she seemed a lot better.  No more crying.  She was perkier - more like her usual self.

Later, when we were rehashing things, Bill wondered if maybe she'd cried so hard she made herself throw up.  After all, she seemed SO much better immediately after....

Possible, yes, but I didn't think so.  Too much lag time in between the crying jag and the race to the bathroom. 

And I told him I'd had a couple times when I'd maybe eaten something that didn't sit well with me, and I spent several hours just not feeling right, and then, finally, I'd run my own race to a bathroom, and afterward, I felt completely fine.  Like nothing had happened.

So it was certainly possible - or probable - that Julia ate something in the morning that made her feel sick when she woke up from her nap.  She'd spent several hours feeling lousy, and then, finally, got rid of it and felt better.

And I had second guessed myself.  I'd doubted my own intuition, my motherly radar, and I'd believed the worst of Julia.  Believed that she wasn't really sick; that she was faking it and lying to me.  And that she'd been successful.

And I was wrong about that.  I was right the first time. 

And she hadn't lied.

Trust.

I need to remember to trust my own Mommy gut instincts.  And Julia's gut, too, apparently.

Trust. 

I should not have been so quick to doubt. 

To doubt myself or Julia.  Myself, especially.

Lesson learned.

No, I'm Not Really a Slug

I know, posting - of any kind - has been rather light lately.  I realized yesterday that I'm in some other sort of mental state at the moment.  Neither good nor bad, just...other.

So I haven't been posting much of anything.  It was like pulling teeth (my own - horrors) just to put up that TWD post the other day (and a day late at that).  I've got other food posts in the works:  photos taken, edited, ready to join up with some text - any text.  And yet...there they sit.  On my desktop.  Waiting.  Growing cold.

But I haven't been doing nothing - I'm working on some other things (yes, dolls are kind of part of that sort of in a roundabout way), and I've been putting my time and effort into THAT when, before, I would have been typing. 

My pendulum doesn't linger in the middle part for very long.  It's either one upswing or the other.  I'm still working on balance.

Anyway, that's kind of my status update.

Blustery Day

 

This was the view out our big front window a couple mornings ago.  When the snow's not there, that area is part of the boat garden that I started several years ago and Bill finished this past summer.

Above, between some lavender and a beach rose, you can see one of the newer members of our outdoor family.  Bill picked her out.  She's a mermaid, and if she were real I'm sure she'd be really, really cold out there.  But then again, if she was a real mermaid, I'd wonder what she was doing sitting on mulch in a garden rather than swimming through the waves, so I suppose that's enough of the flights of fancy for this morning.  Anyway, the sunlight was trickling in through the trees that morning, and I thought it looked interesting.

In the back left you can also see our sad, pathetic December deer.  They've both fallen and have become welded to the frozen earth and partly buried by the crusty snow.  They still light up at night, though.  It's sort of like something from a Calvin and Hobbes panel, I'm thinking.

No trickling sunlight this morning, though, kids.  The sky is a bluish grey and there are tiny little snowflakes drifting and hovering and falling groundward.  The weather forecast has called for blustery winds and snow throughout the morning, and super cold air.  "Extreme weather conditions" they're calling it.  But as I look outside, I don't really see a lot of extremeness.  Just...winter.  And yet, they've cancelled school in our school district and some others throughout the state.  Because of the cold.  So the kids are home.  I don't mind - they've both got colds/sore throats/coughs (mainly Alex) and I kept them home yesterday because of that.  Another day being away from all the other germy kids isn't a terrible thing.  But still.  I don't remember missing school just because it was cold.  Ah well.  I'm sure there must be other reasons as well.

Anyway, the kids are (at the moment) playing nicely downstairs, and my coffee is cold, so I'm trying to decide if I want to reheat it or not. 

I know.  How can one woman handle SO MUCH???

My plans for today...I need to make bread - there's a chore (hahaha).  Hmmm...maybe I'll make some cookies.  Didn't expect to want to do that, but since I'm home and the kids are...we'll see.  And for dinner I'm planning to make a clam chowder.  I was looking through cookbooks yesterday and saw a recipe for corn chowder and since I have a huge bag of frozen corn at the moment, that seemed like a great idea.  But we also have bags of clams in the freezer downstairs, so...clams, corn and potatoes.  Three of my favorite foods.  So that's the plan.  Let me know if you'd like to join us, so I can be sure to make enough.

The lizard is shedding...that might explain why he hasn't been as aggressive in the last few days. 

The cats keep hopping up onto the kitchen counter so they can gaze, big-eyed, tails twitching, at the birds and squirrels out on the two feeding platforms.  Alex thought it was hysterical yesterday.

Speaking of Alex - he just came in here to tell me he's starving, so I'll end this post for now and tend to my starving children. 

But I'm sure I'll be back soon.

As 2009 Begins...

 

I wish for everyone a year of peace and harmony.

Well, So Much for That

My mistake?  I sat down and had dinner with my husband.

He had been teaching and then met with another guitarist to run through some pieces they'll be playing together this month. 

When he got home, I was in mid-lebkuchen production, and I offered to fix him something to eat.  And I realized I hadn't had dinner either.

So I fixed us a plate of nachos with the previous night's taco leftovers and we sat downstairs, watching Andrew Zimmern and eating nachos.

And it was kind of nice to sit.

And then, we watched "House."  Still sitting.  And that was the end of my baking for the night.

Which, as it turned out, may have been for the best, because Julia, for the first time in, oh, a century, slept through the night.  So if I'd been awake all night, baking, I"d have missed out on sleeping through that myself.

So here we are, a new day.  Bill's heading to work soon, and then it'll be time to get the kids going. 

 And then?  It'll be back to the kitchen for me.

The Coffee is Brewing

I've been up since just before 4:00 this morning.  I was up early yesterday, too, though not as early as this.  Yesterday it was only 5:21.  Slacker. 

This morning it was sort of Julia-related.  She had come into our bed around 3-ish (I only looked at the digital display with one eye, so I didn't see the rest of the numbers, ha, ha.  Yeah.)  Anyway, I vaguely remember that Julia was tearful about something when she climbed up onto my side of the bed and promptly fell asleep between me and one of the cats and Bill.  I don't know what she was upset about, and she didn't say.  She just curled her little pajama-clad body up, cat-like, and all was right again in her world.  I fell back to sleep soon after, but then somewhere near 4:00, she woke me up.

That's the danger of allowing children to sleep in the bed.  The stray arm or leg that will fling itself wildly in any direction - usually in the direction of the bridge of my nose.  That, or the silent territorial dispute that occurs between feline and small human.  Blur had already staked out her usual spot, upstage center, snuggled between the pillows.  (Sometimes, lately, she will take over my whole pillow, and I have to gently remind her that, elder citizen though she may be, the bed, the covers, AND MY PILLOW, are not her property.)  When Julia joined the little group, she unwittingly intruded on Blur's territory.  I moved the cat initially, but she will creep right back again as soon as possible. 

Anyway, I guess Blur had had enough of Julia's wiggling and flailing, and so just before 4 this morning, she must have pushed back.  Just a bit.  Blur is extremely polite and gentle MOST of the time.  Her patience has really been pushed to the limit since we got the kittens, though, as they just don't GET that she doesn't want to play with them.  So maybe some of that impatience is carrying over toward the human children, too. 

Whatever the cause, Julia yelled out "OW!" and sort of whimpered.  That was it.  But I was awake.  And she wasn't.  She shifted around a bit, made a grumbly noise when she bumpted into Blur again (who was NOT moving), and then rolled onto her side and started to grind her teeth.

Ah, such a lovely sound, the grinding of the teeth. 

I was very definitely awake at that point.  I gave up the futile thought that maybe she'd only grind them once or twice and then (hahahahahaha) stop, and I rolled out of bed, picked up her completely floppy little slumbering body and brought her back to her own bed.  I also noticed that her sheet and blankets were all on the floor, so I'm thinking either she rolled around so much that they just slid off the bed, or, she fell out of bed in one big fabric-wrapped bundle.  That would account for the whimpering when she showed up at my bedside.

I dumped her on the bed (just kidding), covered her up again, and...well...was AWAKE. 

So I came downstairs, turned the heat down more (it's on some weird cycling thing where it only heats the bedrooms in the middle of the night, so though they're chilly during the day, they're like the Sahara while you're sleeping.  Even though I don't set the thermostat high at all.  Mmmm, nice, dry, hot, eyeball-dehydrating heat.

And then I brought my laptop and a big glass of icewater down to the basement, turned on PBS and watched "America's Test Kitchen" and then "Lidia's Italy" while I checked email and Google reader and other stuff.

And now I'm here.  In the living room, by the big front window, wrapped in a blanket and my husband's big flannel jacket.  Laptop on my knees, which are propped up by a pillow.  As I snuggled into position here, everyone else asleep, no sound but the random little house noises and the clicking of my fingers on the keypad, I whispered to myself "This is awesome!"  I'm so glad I got up when I did. 

The coffee pot has just chimed to let me know my beverage is ready, and so, for now, that is all.

In Which I Remind You I Am A Moron

For example, when I posted this yesterday.  And told you I wouldn't be posting for Tuesdays with Dorie.  Tuesdays.  And yesterday?  Was a Wednesday.  Yeah.  I's real smart.

And then, to that post, I received the following comment from Chocolatechic:

"Drat.  I was looking forward to your creativity with the cupcakes."

And I thought "that's nice - I am missed..." but I also thought..."yeah, but it's only cupcakes..."

Because - Moron Evidence Exhibit #278,586 - I forgot all about the "decorate them for Halloween" part.

Oh, DRAT INDEED!

I didn't realize I'd forgotten that until I started checking out one or two other TWD members...and I thought...hey, that's funny, they both decorated them for Halloween!  Yes, Jayne.  Clever observation on your part!  Wonder if anyone else noticed???!!!!

Well.

I stopped looking at TWD posts and decided that, despite my tardiness and my moronness, I would make these cupcakes, dammit, and decorate them APPROPRIATELY!!!

So today, while I am also baking bagels and bread, I'm going to make those cupcakes and decorate them somehow. 

Because, while I am a moron, I am also mad at myself for forgetting about the Halloween decorating part, and I can't NOT do it.  So look for something from me later today or - maybe more appropriately - tomorrow.

Tomorrow IS Halloween, right?  Okay.  That's what I thought.

Purple Flowers at CVS

I was out of salted butter, so I went to the CVS near our house just now to get some.  I'm sorry, but I just have to have salted (not unsalted, which I use in my baking) on my toast.  Have to.  Non-negotiable.

Anyway, while I was there I remembered that I am out of bubble bath stuff.  Shower gel/Foaming Bath Gel - whatever it's called.  I need some.  It's cold out now, and therefore the start of my soaking-in-a-hot-bath-while-Bill-puts-the-kids-to-bed season.

Down the end of the aisle there was a display of the brand of good-smelling stuff I like.  Of course, I can't remember the brand.  But whatever - the sale was 2 for $10.00.  I would buy one.  I'm on a budget.  I selected "Ocean Breeze" in the blue bottle, and looked at the others to make sure I wasn't missing one I liked better.  Oh, wait, is that lavender scented?

I picked up the bottle - it just said "Purple Flowers" or something like that, so I opened the top and squeezed ever so slightly so that some of the fragrance might waft out.

It had one of those heart valve-type openings and as I squeezed, suddenly the valves popped open and a little blob of violet goo flew out and hit me right in the face. 

I don't think anyone saw it happen, though depending on where the surveilance cameras are, someone watching may have had a really good laugh this morning.

I put the bottles back, wiped off my lenses and peeked in a mirror above a display of hair clips to make sure there were no unsightly shower gel splatters on my face or in my hair. 

Then I casually strolled to the dairy case to get my butter.

I'm going to smell like Purple Flowers for the rest of the day.

Dating Rituals of the Younger Set

My daughter, as of several minutes ago, has nine boyfriends. 

It took her most of the ride home to get the number sorted out.  First she said five, then seven, then six, and finally, just a block from our house, she settled on nine.

I knew of one.  A little boy in her Pre-K class.

Yes, Pre-K.  Just in case you are new to this site, my daughter is four.

Back to the boyfriends.  There's the one, Z, in her class.  She said the others "don't live there any more; they live next door."  To the daycare.  Oh.

She is so casual about them.  She speaks as if nine boyfriends was the norm.  And, I guess, if  you're a pre-schooler, maybe nine IS the norm. 

Their names, besides Z, are, if I remember correctly, Chewie, Lar, Pretty, Cutie, and four others that rhyme with each other but I can't remember the rhyming root, so I couldn't even make them up.  I don't think she's known them as long.  Pretty and Cutie are, as boyfriends for my daughter, a bit questionable.  Lar - I don't know where he came from, his name sounds Skandinavian or something, except he's missing the "s" I expect to hear on the tail end of his name.  And Chewie...well, I guess a big, strong, gun-toting space pilot is someone good to have in your corner...but I would have hoped she might have gone for Han instead.  Ah well.  And that brings us back to Z.  The only one with a "regular" name, which is why I'm just giving you the initial.  He's real.  And she's been with him the longest.

She and Z like to climb trees and - according to Julia - lick the bark.  I would bet he's a sweet, quiet boy who is perfectly content to let her boss him around.  Just a guess.

O, to be four and in love.

Of course, that's all going to change in a couple of years.

Alex, my son, who is six, is no way in heck going to hang out with a girl if he can help it.  At least not at school.  At this age, girls are icky.  He and his friends spend some of their recess running from the girls.  You know, so the girls can't touch them and give them cooties, or whatever it is the toxic girls are icky with these days.

Just last year, when he started Kindergarten, his first best friend in the class was a girl.  He attended both boy and girl birthday parties, and boys and girls attended his.

But that's all changed now.

And I wonder how they handle it.  This sudden separation of the sexes.  After all, kids grow and change and - eventually - mature at different rates, and how frustrating and sad and confusing it must be, as a girl, especially, to discover that you are no longer just a kid, playing with whoever was in your neighborhood.  Even if you were the only girl and played with a whole mess of boys - first it didn't matter, and now, all of a sudden, this year, when you are six, it matters.

You are no longer invited to play ball, but you haven't figured out how to play with the girls, because before, it didn't matter.  So you stand there, on the playground at recess, fitting in nowhere. 

And then, because you started out playing in the rougher world of boys, you communicate as best you can in a way you think maybe they'll understand.

You shove one of them.  Or you hit one.  Because, well, he's a sweet boy and you thought he was your friend.

You say HEY, look at me!  I want to play ball, too!

Unfortunately, they no longer understand what you're saying.

I tried to explain this, sort of, to my son yesterday. 

He, the recipient of physical miscommunication this year. 

But he's gone over now.  He's six, and a boy, and if there are other boys around, he can't be friends with or play with a girl.  Not right now, anyway. 

She will have to figure out how to play with the girls.  At least for now.

Until the boys learn - again - that girls aren't icky at all.

Unsolicited Commentary

I'm going through the checkout line with Julia a little while ago. 

The cashier is simultaneously ringing up my items and having a conversation with the bagger.

And then she (the cashier) says to me:

"You got a lot of weird-lookin' pasta."

Inspired. Nudged. Kicked in the Pants.

My house looks like some giant 4-year old picked it up, turned it upside down, shook it a few times, and then dropped it on the floor.  A bit later that giant 4-year old's mom tripped over it, cursed, and set the house right-side up again.

We all weren't home when it happened, otherwise we'd have concussions and broken bones and all that.

And I'm sitting here INTENDING to type some long-overdue posts...I've got a whole mess of recipes and photos to post, and yet...and yet...I can't concentrate.

That pink electric Barbie guitar over on the floor, for instance.  Where my little rockin' baby girl left it.  And the knocked-over stack of construction paper in the other room.  The kittens did that.  And the dishes in the sink.  The 58 cookbooks on my little work table in the kitchen.

A little bit here, a little bit there.  It's distracting me.  I tried to ignore it.  Tried to say, well, I'll type for a few hours and then I'll clean until it's time to go get the kids.  So I sat myself down with my coffee and my laptop and started.  Except that first I checked email and submitted a photo to Food Gawker and PhotoGrazing and Tastespotting...and while I was at Tastespotting I clicked on a photo that linked to this post about food photography (it's a terrific post - go read it if you are at all interested in improving your food photos) and so I sat here and read the post and slouched lower and lower because lately I don't think my food photos have been all that good...and so I started thinking, yes, I need to make some improvements tdo the way I do things, don't I...okay, so I bookmarked that post.

And then I figured that since I was already procrastinating (posting a photo of one of the cats doesn't count), I should (should!) check my Google Reader...and there was this post by Susan about - of all people I should encounter on my day of procrastination and self-loathing - Martha Stewart.  She has a blog.  And grumpily I clicked on the link so I could check out Martha's blog.

  

I admit that my initial thoughts were not charitable.

And that's odd, for me, because I have always been a Martha Stewart fan.  Not an "OHMYGODIT'SMARTHASTEWART!" kind of fan.  But more of an "oh, that's a cool idea" kind of fan.  Like, if she was bringing her dogs to the vet and I was bringing my cats to the vet (and we had the same vet), and we were sitting in the waiting room with all our pets barking and hissing at each other, I figure we could share a laugh about the situation.  And take pictures of our fighting pets and then frame them in clever hand-crafted gilt-edged frames we'd fashion from accululated trimmed pet toenails and pine cones.  And then make cookies.

So anyway, I went to Martha's blog - The Martha Blog - and my initial thought (seeing's how I'm in this grumpy mood already) was something like "Oh great, she's got a blog, TOO???  Doesn't she have ENOUGH stuff she's great at?  She's got to go and have a blog, now, so that I feel even more inadequate than I already do????  In my messy house????  With my bad food photos?????  Gee, thanks, Martha." 

And then, because I am a glutton for punishment, I went and read a recent post entitled "Come Visit My Blog Studio at My Home."  And several words in that blog post title stood out.  (Actually, they didn't stand out, they turned away, dropped trou and mooned me.  No, really, they did.)  Those words were:  Blog.  Studio.  at.  My.  Home.  Studio?  Well THAT must be my problem.  I only have a laptop and a juice-stained loveseat.  No wonder I'm not popular!!!!

Anyway, I took a look at the images of her Blog Studio at Her Home.  It's a converted goat shed (darn, I just sold mine at the yard sale) that she's decorated in the Shaker style.  (Ah, my Rococo-influenced goat shed interior was probably too distracting for me to get any work done in anyway...much like the SloppyHomeWithChildren style in my house.  Those Shakers sure knew how to design for maximum productivity in a Blog Studio at Your Home.  Who'da thunk?)

Anyway.  In her glorious converted goat shed Blog Studio at Her Home, Martha has, well, first of all, lots of uncluttered space.  Two computers.  A staff.  A great wall of blog ideas.  And a really good paper trimmer.

And me?  I have a blood blister on my left hand from one of the crappy banquet tables we used during the yard sale to enticingly display some of our rejected posessions.

Does Martha have yard sales?  I wonder if she's got an extra goat shed she doesn't need....

And you know, as I write all of this, I do it with affection.  Or something like that.  I could probably have at least a small Blog Studioette somewhere In My Home.  And I could take better food photos.  

I just need to change the style in my home from SloppyWithChildren to something simpler.  Less cluttered.  I need to tap into my innerMartha, I guess.

Or I need to get a really good paper trimmer.  That might just do the trick... 

My Dangerous Lifestyle

You know how the name of this blog is "Barefoot Kitchen Witch?" 

The "barefoot" comes from - big surprise - the fact that I prefer to go sans socks or shoes if at all possible.  You probably already knew that or you figured it out.

Moving on...

Yesterday was my favorite kind of day, almost.  Clouds and showers and wind.  Didn't like the humidity, but hey, you can't have everything.

I had grand plans - bake some bread and make ravioli.  I've been wanting to try this particular recipe for a while now and finally I had all the ingredients and the time to do it. 

The ravioli is filled with a mixture of meat and spinach, and rather than go out and buy spinach, I harvested the following from our garden - 3 huge bunches of swiss chard, 2 enormous pak choi, several baby arugula plants, some parsley, some basil..........I think that was it.  But there was a lot of "it."  The recipe calls for 2 cans of spinach.  It's an old recipe - I'll talk more about it when I post it eventually - and that will depend on how the pictures look - and so cans of spinach would have been the norm.  But you know how spinach and other leafy greens are - they look big and impressive when you yank them up by the roots from your garden, but once you chop them up and steam them, they shrink.

So I thought - I'm going to need WAY more than just the swiss chard.  That's why I grabbed everything that looked like it would work well.  (I left the cabbage alone.)

So I trimmed leaves and rinsed well in cold water and chopped them up and steamed them and that part was all set.  I did that, by the way, on Saturday.  So Sunday, all I had to do was make the sauce, cook the meat, make the filling, make the pasta dough, form the ravioli and cook them.  (The recipe also calls for leaving them out to dry overnight, but with all our cats prowling around, that would be a disaster.)

Okay, so back to Sunday.  The bread was in progress, the sauce was bubbling, and soon it would be time to cook the meat and put the filling together.  I also needed to make some space on the counter so I could roll out the pasta dough eventually.  My bowl of compost stuff was ready to overflow, so I figured I'd get rid of that stuff first.  Besides, it was hot in the kitchen (bread baking at 400 degrees) so a stroll through the damp grass seemed like a nice interruption.

I carried the compost container outside.  The cold, wet grass felt good on my feet.  The air, despite the humidity, had that feeling of "autumn's coming" to it, and I looked at tomato plants to see if there was anything ripe enough to pick while I was out there.

We've got several garden spiders living near the compost bins.  Makes sense - the perfect place for them to trap flies.  I don't mind them being there - I think they're pretty, and their webs are huge and stunning.  I just don't want to walk into one of the webs if they decide to change locations.  So I paused by the corner of the garage to scope out the path and make sure there were no new webby developments along my walkway.  There were none.  I dumped the vegetable trimmings, said hi to the one spider visible and admired the webs.  Then back past the garage and into the yard.

I walked past the white clematis blooming on the lattice beside the garage, past the garden bench and the overgrown ornamental grass growing around it and up through the slats in the seat.

And then it happened.

Suddenly there was something sharp and extremely painful sticking me on the underside of my right big toe.  Like a splinter, only...more persistent.  More...on fire.

Now...I have a dread of sharp things sticking the undersides of my feet.  I know it's a common enough phobia - sharpthingstickinginthebottomofthefootophobia is the scientific name.  You've probably heard of it.  I know exactly where mine originated.  I was seven years old, and I had a plantars wart on the ball of my left foot.  I don't think Doctor Scholl had been born yet, or if he had, he had only invented wooden-soled flip-flops and hadn't gotten around to the wart removal stuff yet.  So I had to go to the doctor - the REAL doctor, not the flip-flop-making doctor - to have this taken care of.

And though he was a very, very wonderful doctor - he delivered me and my sister - delivered me without doing a c-section, even though I was a breach, so yeah, it can be done - I hated going to his office.  It was a beautiful office, with a huge red leather chair for the patient to sit in while he asked questions...but it was also the chair of torture.  The high back was perfect for cornering small kids who didn't want tongue depressors stuck in their mouths. 

But I digress.  (That could be the name of this blog, come to think of it.)

So I had to go see Dr. N. to get rid of this thing on my foot.  Up til that point, I had lived a rather happy and carefree life, free of pain save for the occasional scraped knee.  But no tonsil problems, no broken bones...none of the painful realities of life.  Until that day.

I followed Dr. N to the exam room - where the exam table, steely and shiny, waited.  My mother and the nurse escorted me, probably to make sure I didn't run.  But I had no desire to run.  Yet.

They had me lie down on the table and Dr. N removed the white Keds sneaker from my left foot and took a look.  He conferred a bit with the nurse and my mother, but I wasn't listening, really, and even if I had been, I wouldn't have suspected what was to come.

And then he got the needle.  It must have been a foot long - really.  He said he had to kill the root of the wart.  He also told me to lie still.  Huh?  Warts have roots??  Like trees?  I was still pondering that when I felt the first sharp pain in my little delicate tootsie.

And I flinched.  I probably recoiled and was ready to fling myself to the floor, but the nurse and my mother - one on each side of the table - stopped me.

And then the awful words.  "Well, I'm going to have to do that again, because you moved."  Out came the big needle again, and with the nurse and my mother practically prone across my struggling little body, kindly Dr. N JAMMED the needle into my foot.

I am sure I made them all aware of the pain I felt.  The pain I felt TWO TIMES because - silly me - I moved the first time.

And then after he injected the wart-root-killing stuff into the right place, he proceeded to kill the wart.  I really don't know what he was actually doing.  I just know it involved my poor little foot, and that if I moved, he might have to start all over again.

Got that?  So I really don't like pain in my feet.  And you'd think that, because of that, I would wear some sort of footwear all the time.  But I don't.  I like to live on the edge.

Back to yesterday.  OW.  Pain - sharp, small, burning pain.  I stood on one foot and looked at the bottom of my other foot, looking for maybe a thorn or an unlikely splinter.  There was nothing to see.  But there, on the wet ground, was the culprit.  A little yellow jacket writhed in the wet grass.

Ah.  That's what happened.  I haven't had that happen since I was a little kid.  A summer's day, my sister and I running back and forth under the sprinkler in the back yard.  Frolicking happily, until one of us stepped on a waterlogged honeybee and got stung and all the fun ended for the moment.  Both of us got stung the exact same way that day.  Each of us, right underneath a little piggy toe.

So yesterday, after I saw the little yellow jacket and figured out what the pain was from, I hobbled/limped/hopped/skipped/looked really silly back to the house as quickly as I could manage - my foot burned. 

I threw the empty compost container on the counter and hiked my injured foot up to the sink so I could look at it again (good thing I'm pretty flexible - it took some contorting to get a good view) to see if the stinger was there (no) and to run it under some water. 

Ow, ow, ow.  I wanted to be a little kid and have permission to cry.  But no.  That era has passed.  Bill hovered on the periphery "what can I do?" - I told him to get me the baking soda.  In the pantry.  The big orange box.  It should be right THERE because I just put it away.  He found it.  I had him pour some in a little bowl and I mixed it with a bit of water and was about to slap some on the general underside-of-the-toe area when he suggested using that "After Bite" stuff we bought for camping trips.  It's for stings, too.  Fine, I'll take whatever you've got.  So he grabbed that from the bathroom and I tried to apply it to where the sting might be originating.  "It's gonna hurt, " he warned.  "It already DOES," I pointed out.  I didn't notice any additional pain, so either I missed the point of entry or it just didn't have the same pain-making power that my little buzzing friend did.  I slapped some of the baking soda-and-water paste on my foot and hobbled into the living room so I could sit.

I also called my sister.  "What do I mix with baking soda for a yellow jacket sting?" I greeted her.  "Ammonia" - that's what I had thought.  I didn't have any.  Then Bill said that's what was in the After Bite stuff.  Oh.  Okay.  So I mixed that with the baking soda and patted that into place and waited for relief.  And I admitted to my sister that yes, I'm a bad mother, bad wife, failure as a human being because I don't have any ammonia in the house.  I thought I did, but no. 

Despite this pain - and the ugly swelling of my already-ugly big left toe - I persevered.  I finished the bread, I made the ravioli filling, I made the pasta dough, and I put the ravioli together, cooked it, and served dinner to my waiting parasites family (JUST KIDDING ABOUT THE PARASITES THING!!!!!!!!).  They all loved the ravioli - no, wait, Julia didn't because she'd fallen asleep earlier and isn't all that hungry or jolly when we wake her up from a nap. 

After dinner, I sat.  Foot UP.  Gradually the sharp stinging/burning faded to a dull, sometimes sharp but mostly throbbing and really annoying constant reminder of why some people wear shoes outside.  My husband suggested that I might want to give that a try.

I'll think about it.

Sidelined

I spent nearly all of yesterday on my feet - walking Alex to school, picking him up after (with Julia in tow), and then reorganizing and cleaning my kitchen (to make room for the newest KitchenAid member of the family - see yesterday's post), and then making pizza dough and sauce and prepping toppings to make pizzas for dinner.  10 pizzas.  Well, okay, Alex and Julia each made their own pizza, so really I only created 8 of them.  I took the last two pizzas out of the oven just before nine. 

Today, my left ankle has siezed up and I can't walk.  I can, however, hobble.  And I've perfected this one-legged sideways heel-toe-heel-toe zig-zag maneuver that is actually faster than trying to put weight on my foot and FEELING LOTS OF PAIN and pausing to do a sort of speeded-up "heh heh heh" Lamaze breathing thing while I wait for the pain to subside, and then repeating the process all over again as I make my way from one room to the next.

I actually scooted down the stairs on my butt this morning.  And in the process, I discovered a great multi-tasking workout for arms and leg (eventually legs, but not today) as I support my own body weight and kind of crab-walk down the stairs.  Really works the triceps!

It's a circus around here today.  Or at least it's my very own freak show.

And you'd think I'd be so grateful to have an excuse to just SIT and type or read or watch cooking shows, or whatever, but actually I'm having a hard time with it.  Because I SHOULD sit, I don't WANT to.

~~~

I'm back.  Never missed me, did you?  I actually went upstairs to look in the deep, dark recesses of my closet to find a couple of old purses/handbags/pocketbooks/whatever you want to call them - for Julia to use.

Right now she's got one that I received at my bridal shower - it's kind of formal, and it's something you have to carry in your hand or maybe looped over your wrist, as opposed to something you can sling over your shoulder and have your hands free.  I'm all for having as many hands free as possible as I go about my day.  So I gave that one to Julia (the strap is too short for me but just about right for Julia, who is considerably shorter, and also hasn't developed a preference for bag styles yet) and another one that I think my sister gave me or I bought because it reminded me of my sister - it's just a simple fabric envelope-like bag on a long thin fabric strap, and the bag itself is embroidered in this cool, offbeat pattern.  It's really nice - actually, and I'm thinking that since my current little bag thing is going to fall apart soon, maybe I should get this other one away from Julia now, before she does something to it.

She actually went for the larger, shorter-strapped bag first.  She looped it over her head and one arm, like she sees me do, and struck a mature-woman pose (in her Disney princess underwear - I think she's featuring Jasmine today) and said "Don't I look like a grown up girl who's going shopping?"  I told her yes and suggested she go show this look to Daddy, because he'd be so proud.

I like to mess with him.

She came back a bit later and removed that purse and went for the other one.  Too formal for everyday wear, I expect.

And then she came over to the couch to tell me - in her best motherly tone - that she was going shopping, and not to worry about "that big boy" in the kitchen, because "he's all growned up."  And then she tilted her head and gave me a June Cleaver smile and said "Just like you are, dear." 

And off she went.

~~~

You might be wondering why just doing stuff on my feet all day would affect my ankle so badly.  I don't know.  I think I have a habit of standing with all my weight on my left foot at times, and I just don't realize it as I'm doing it.  But also, it's most likely due to a lack of good arch support, plain and simple.  Much as I rebel against it, I really should wear my sneakers when I'm on my feet a long time.  Problem is, I don't WANT to.  I'm much happier (at least initially) going barefoot (hence the name of this website) and wearing shoes when I'm not even going to the store or a restaurant or something is just...it's hard for me. 

And yes, I realize how trivial this is.  I'm feeling trivial at the moment.  If you want substance today, look elsewhere.

~~~

While I was polishing up all my beloved KitchenAid workhorses yesterday

(and here they are, all lined up nice and pretty)

 

the kittens were doing this:

 

 

(Yes, that's Softie in mid-leap.)

Oh, how they loved that loud crinkly brown packing paper.  They played with it - in it, on it, under it, around it, between it - for hours.  It gradually got pushed and pulled down the little hall and into the music room - one long sheet of brown paper stretching from here to there.  I redirected the paper into the living room, just because the music room actually has important valuable music stuff and if it done got broke, Bill would be cooking the kittens in the deep fryer.  NOT REALLY!  We don't have a deep fryer. 

Anyway, by the time Bill got home, the paper was all in the living room and heading for the stairs.  He had a student coming over, so he put an end to the fun, but the kittens were deep in slumber by that point anyway.

~~~

For some unfathomable cat reason, Softie and Scratchy love Bill's footwear.  Shoes, sneakers, sandals, and - as you can tell - slippers. 

Five minutes after I shot this, Softie was sleeping. 

~~~

Okay, I think that's enough to bore you with for now.  Time to do my one-legged softshoe routine into the kitchen and get some lunch.

Turn, turn, turn

We went camping for a few days last week, up in NH, in and around Conway and North Conway.  Took the kids to Storyland, built fires, explored, and lazed.  No laptop, no tv, no phones (mostly).  Although we did listen to part of the Sox game Thursday night on the truck radio.  Kids fell asleep early, so Bill and I sat around the fire and listened to some of the game...it was nice.  Didn't need to see it - just listening was enough, watching the flames and coals shimmer in the dark.

Anyway.

Trips like that - northern New England - always affect me the same way.  They make me want to start quilting again.  They make me want to simplify.  To clean out.  To pare down.  To live differently than I do most of the time. 

And coincidentally, it is mid August, and though it is still technically summer, the transition to autumn has already begun.  We can see it in the gardens - plants like the zucchini and pattypan and cucumber have given all they can give.  Leaves are curling up and fading.  Tiny, last-of-the-season fruits are clinging to the vines - itty, bitty pattypans...a half-big, half-small cucumber way up high on the plant. 

We are picking tomatoes as they ripen, and I'll pack some away, but it really hasn't been a banner year for them.  We won't put away nearly as much as last year.  But that's how it goes.  We get what we get.  If I want more, I'll buy them at the farmers' markets, along with corn, which we didn't grow this year because we really don't have the space to make it worthwhile.  It's fun, but the plants take up a lot of space that we could be using for other, higher-yield plants. 

We've got second rounds of some things in...kohlrabi...scallions...more carrots...pak choi...I forget what else.  Bill's gone out to pick the ripe blueberries.  I should make some batches of pesto this week, too.

It's harvest season, yes, or at least the start of it.  But to me, this time of year is more about the start of things than the winding down.  The beginning of the school year has always felt much more like the real beginning of the year than January 1st.  Maybe it's just the feeling of transition, from summer to fall, from shorts and bathing suits to new shoes and school clothes.  So much is new, especially when you're a child - new teacher, new classmates, new pencils and pink erasers.  It is the start of the school year, and really all of your life, at least until you're out of high school or college, revolves around the beginning and ending of that year.  Things don't begin in January at all.  You go back to school after the winter break.  You're in the middle of winter.  It's not even time to start seeds yet.  September - or late August - is really the start of the year, no matter what the calendars tell you.

And spring cleaning?  No...I don't feel like cleaning then.  I feel like it now.  The humidity - at the moment - is somewhere else, and the cooler mornings are so much more invigorating than mid-summer warmth.  

I am in the mood to clear out.  Clean out.  Get rid of what I don't need or want.  Just like my husband will be pulling up the spent vegetable plants and composting them, leaning out the gardens to prep them for next year, so I will do the same in our house.  It's that time of year.  'Tis the season, at least for me.

  

A Quick Hello

I'll be posting later on today - I've got a few things I need to take care of this morning.  But I'll be back.

I've been working on some improvements (I think)/changes/new stuff for this site - I've started a navigation bar just below my banner, and you'll notice one of the options is "Slideshows."  Well, at the moment it's only one slideshow - I wanted to try it out and see how it looked. 

It's a WILDLY EXCITING (hahahaha) slideshow of me kneading bread dough left-handed (because I was holding the camera in my right hand).  I thought that instead of posting 20 pictures of me kneading dough every time I post a bread recipe, I could just refer readers to the slideshow. 

So let me know what you think, and yes, I know, in some shots my arm looks freakishly huge and wide and bizarre.  I have to work on avoiding that in subsequent slideshows....

And Just So We're Clear on This

I personally prefer definition 1b, in case anyone is interested.

Stray Postless Pictures

I take all these pictures, sometimes with the intent to write up some sort of accompanying post, and then it's tomorrow and I make a batch of bread or cheese or something (both of which I did yesterday, but I'll write them up after I sort through all THOSE pictures), and the more interesting (to me) stuff gets the post.

So I've got pictures here and there that are feeling kind of left out and neglected (okay, not really), that I'm just going to post and write a little blurb about and then move on.

First up, I believe that somewhere along the lines I mentioned that Alex had invented a sandwich - Lettuce and Jam.  And it wasn't a fluke - he's had it on more than one occasion.  And here's a picture.  Lettuce, by the way, is from the garden.

After I took the picture, I covered the remaining jam (strawberry) with some more lettuce, just so there would be both the sweet jamminess and the slightly crunchiness in every bite.

~~~~~

Remember when I made that herbed ravioli?  Well, I had more dough than filling, so with the rest of the dough, the next morning, Julia and I made fettuccini.  Or linguine.  One of those flat long pastas.  And I hung every strand to dry...

~~~~~

Two weeks ago Julia and I brought Bill and Alex along to the Farmers' Market.  I got some of my (now) usual things, like fresh strawberries and eggs...

I also picked up a couple of bunches of baby turnips.

We also got a few perennials for the front garden, including a really pretty light blue columbine

and lemon thyme, which is not going in the front garden, it's going in a pot in the back yard.

His name is Herb.

But THE coolest find of the day was Bill's.  He wanted something decorate (and non-floral) for the front garden.  It's got the sunken boat, and he put in stepping stones, but he wanted something else, like a little cement gargoyle or something.  I suggested a birdbath.  At least I think that idea was mine...anyway, here's what Bill found:

Isn't it cute?  The base is a solid piece of rock, and the bowl is (I think) cement with little rocks mixed in.  There were about 8-10 of these - all different sizes and shapes.  Really cool.  I'd love to have several of them, just because I'm nutty that way.  It took a little figuring to get the base securely sunk in the dirt so that the bowl would sit nicely on top, (above is just a picture I took when we got it home and Bill was deciding where to put it) but that's all set now and we don't find it tipped over in the morning any more.

~~~~~

Last week I made a strawberry-rhubarb pie, and here it is.  I didn't take process photos or anything.  Just a shot of the finished product.

That same day, I also made a crust for a quiche that Bill was going to cook ON THE GRILL.  I know quiche isn't all that manly and everything, but - if you cook it ON THE GRILL, then it BECOMES manly simply by virtue of being cooked over hot coals.

Here's the final product - oh, and by the way - YUMMY it was.  Just some onions and herbs and cheese in it, but oh, boy was it yummy.  Predictably, Alex only liked the crust, and Julia only liked the innards.  Which works out nicely for everyone.

That's the quiche still sitting on the grill, but ready to come off.

And here's a shot of a Manly Man who has just successfully grilled a Manly Man quiche on his Manly Man Weber Manly Man charcoal grill.  In the most Manly Manliest of ways.

And who, incidentally, is trying his Manly Manliest best not to smile.

And failing. 

Okay, that's it for the moment, I have to go check on the impromptu batch of ricotta I just made and see how it's draining. 

Yeah - "impromptu batch of ricotta." 

I'm telling you, it IS now a sickness. 

An addiction. 

And in this weather, a labor of love.

Talk to you later...

And Everything in Its Place

Ah.

I'm not the best housekeeper in the world (or on my block), but I do need certain items in my house to be in certain places in order to keep me mentally balanced.  Or something.

Anyway,

My little laptop computer, which is where I do the bulk of my blogging and which holds my photos as I purge them from my camera, has been tucked away for the last week or so, while I've been using this table (this table, the one you can't see, but it's the work table in my kitchen where my laptop sits...it's the closest thing I've got to an office) to make pasta dough.

Well, I finally put all the pasta making stuff away and this morning plugged my laptop in, moved a TON of photo files onto my external hard drive (to make room for the ones stuck in my camera), and now I've got lots of space (relatively speaking) on the hard drive AND things are running a little more efficiently, a little more swiftly.

All of which makes me much more inclined to write.  Yeah, sorry excuse.  But I'm not the best excusemaker either.

So anyway, all that to just say, hi, I'm still here, and I'll be back to write after I offload all those pictures from my camera. 

And, yes, I'll be posting my Tuesdays With Dorie pictures and write-up, too, but that will be this evening, as I haven't MADE the Mixed Berry Cobbler yet.  It'll be for dessert tonight.

And that's all I have to say at the moment.

Carry on.

Farmers' Market Friday

What a perfect day to go browsing for vegetables and more strawberries.  It's sunny and all that, but this morning it was only about 70 degrees - quite comfy.

We got started later than usual this morning - Alex is on a field trip with his class (nice way to spend the last day of school!) and didn't have to go in as early, and also isn't home as early (i.e. not yet). 

Anyway, after we dropped him off and took care of a few other little things, Julia and I were off on our market journey.

She kept asking if we were OH NOW I REMEMBER.  Sorry.  She kept asking me if we were going "to that farmers market where they had the black and white pony and the other horses and the chickens" and for the life of me I couldn't figure out what she was talking about.  Because I'm mentally deficient.  Just as I was writing that first sentence to this paragraph, I remembered.  It was a little farm stand we stopped at a few weeks ago.  Not the farmers' MARKET.  But anyway.

We arrived, like I said, later than usual, and there were a lot of cars there - nice to see.  First thing Julia did once we crossed the little road was to spot the "Honey Stick Man" and race across the grass to pick out honey sticks.  I got some eggs from him again and gave him back the original egg carton from my purchase two weeks ago.  And we got 10 honey sticks. 

Next...some more strawberries, garlic scallions, and some San Marzano tomato plants - oh and a few more eggs - from Ledge Ends Farm...a bagel (Julia chose a poppyseed bagel that looked black, it was so covered with the seeds.  We also got a lemon basil plant and two lobsters.  Yeah, two lobsters.  It's the last day of school for my son and for my husband the teacher, so I figured we could celebrate a little.

I also have cake to bake.  We're having my son's birthday party tomorrow, there's a bunch of kids coming, and I haven't even cracked an egg in the direction of making this cake.  I'm just not organized for some reason.  But I have everything I need, and will bake the cake this afternoon after I get Alex.  He wants (AGAIN) a primitive landscape sort of cake populated with little plastic dinosaurs.  So that's what I'll do.  At least, having done the same theme the past few years for him, I don't really have to figure out what to do.  I'll take pictures (really, Jayne?) and post them when I get a chance. 

And that's about all I've got time to write about today.  I've got to tidy up the house, do laundry, dishes, make cake, and who knows what else.  I'll probably think of some huge major important thing around three in the morning. 

Sorry I've been sort of slacking this week - it's not for lack of subject matter - it's just been the LAST WEEK OF SCHOOL and somehow it's been hard for me to make the time to SIT and TYPE.  But things should improve starting next week. 

I think.

Just a Quick Hello

At least for now.

Alex has a T-ball game later this morning and I will be taking my turn working in the snack bar.  I haven't worked in that kind of environment in YEARS.  I wonder if I can handle the pressure.

Later today my sister's kids will be here - nice cheap labor to help us put in air conditioners, finish the footboard to Julia's bed (long story) and mow the lawn.  And whatever else Bill thinks up for them to do, bwahahahahaha.

But they'll be well fed, and we permit them to sleep in the house, so they really have nothing to complain about.

Actually they're great kids, and they kind of keep my kids out of my hair while they're here, so it's a nice break for me.

Gotta get moving for now.  I'll be back at some point. 

Foodie

As I have said in the past, I'm not much of a joiner.  But - maybe that's changing.

I also am resistant to labels.  Particularly labels that end on a cute syllable...like, well, "foodie." 

For a long time, I have shrugged that label off my shoulders any time it started to try to get comfortable.  Foodie?  What the heck was that supposed to mean?  It sounds like a character my kids would watch on Noggin. 

But...

Well, fine, if the oven mitt fits, I guess I might as well wear it.

Hi, my name is Jayne, and I'm a...a...a foodie.  There.  I said it.  Phew.

And so that is my curmudgeonly way (can women be curmudgeons?) of saying I've joined, and have been added to, the Foodie Blogroll. 

Why?

Because I have discovered, after joining Tuesdays With Dorie, that it's actually pretty nice to interact with others who have interests similar to (okay, pretty much the same as) mine.

Yes, I know.  I'm a slow learner.  And reclusive.  And a bit of an introvert.  I'm a Cancer - it's this shell of mine, you know.  It's thick.

But sometimes I step out of the shell and oh, do these nutting things like join a food blog group...and so here I've gone and done it again.

And you know, I think it'll do me good.

The Payoff

Yesterday was a brew day here - my husband and his friend John brewed up a 20 gallon batch of pale ale, fixed the spigot connection on the side of the house, and played whiffle ball sometimes with the kids.

Brew day has become more than just a day of making beer.  It's also a Cook Really Good Food For Lunch Day.  Or a Show Off Your Most Recent Best Recipe For Something Day.  And occasionally a Cook The Spiciest Food You Can And See Who Is Man Enough To Eat It Without Crying Day.

Brew day also fluctuates between a simple, two-man brewing affair and a three to five man brewing event.  It started with just Bill and John.  And then it grew, as good things, nurtured and tended, will do.

Anyway, yesterday was a kind of relaxing, old home week kind of brew day - just Bill and John.  Not that it's stressful when the other guys are there, but when it's just John, time sort of slows...it meanders back and forth...it spreads out like a blanket on the beach and gets comfortable.

So besides the beer thing, there is, like I started to say, the food thing.  I don't know when it really started, but food consumed on brew day is not just a couple of grinders ordered from Jersey Mike's.  (Although that's not a bad thing.)  Brew day is now about killer fish tacos with Red Thai Curry Paste and freshly made guacamole.  Or Baby Buffalo Ball Sandwiches and Onion Rings.  It's a time to try out new recipes, or to show off improved favorites.

Anyway, for yesterday's Brew Day Bill slow-cooked three racks of ribs on the grill.

Here they are around 8:00 in the morning - seasoned and ready to go:

And here they are, five hours later, ready to eat:

Just take a look at that - the falling-apart yumminess.

Alex ate 7 ribs.  He loves them.

Now, ribs don't require a ton of work in terms of slicing and dicing and mixing and stirring.  Just strip away the sinew on the underside of the rack and massage in some rub and they're pretty well set.  (Bill usually makes his own rub, but this time we used Montreal Steak Seasoning, which was just fine.)

It's the smoking, the grilling, and the tending of the coals that takes some focusing.  These are cooked on a charcoal (Weber) grill with smoke.  The smoke, in this case, was from some raw cedar Bill had left over from something he made (I don't remember what).  The ribs are stacked in a single pile and rotated throughout the duration of the cooking, so that they're all equally exposed to the smoke and can all develop that gorgeous red/brown color.  And, the temperature inside the grill needs to stay right around 225 degrees F.  That's the tricky part.  Monitoring the temperature, adding just enough new coals to keep the temperature constant but not so many that the little arrow on the oven thermometer skyrockets.  These actually went up to 275 at some point because Bill was doing beer things and hadn't checked the thermometer in a while.  But though they were a tiny bit drier at the ends, the ribs were still fabulous.

And while that was going on outside, I was making a few other dishes inside.  A Thai rice salad and a peasant-style dish with broccoli rabe and bread and chickpeas.  I'll be posting both recipes later this week.

The recipes themselves aren't the point of this post.  The point - as I meander about before getting to it - comes from a question John posed to me while I was prepping the side dishes or typing the recipes into the drafts for later posts.  (And here's where I'm going to go rambling all over the place, so buckle up.)

John came into the kitchen and told me about a dining experience he and his wife had had recently.  Basically it boiled down to this - their meals were just...okay.  Nothing special.  Not terrible, not exciting.  Just...adequate.  Meanwhile, over at another table, there was a group of people basically raving and exclaiming over every dish they were served.  And John and his wife watched this going on...and they started to compare...and discuss...and ponder.

Those people - the ones enjoying their meal - were perfectly happy and delighted with the food they received. 

John and his wife were not unhappy with theirs, but they were not...excited by the food.

And so - does that matter?  And if it does...why?  Why seek out the more exciting flavors?  Why step beyond?  Why try to recreate or improve upon the foods we cook and eat?  Why not just be content with basic correctly cooked meals that are what they say they are and no more?

What is the payoff? 

What makes some of us delve into cookbooks and magazines and food blogs, perusing ingredients the way someone else might obsess over baseball stats.  Why do we experiment with flavor combinations...new ingredients...better equipment...why do we hone our cooking techniques...learn to whip egg whites to the correct peak...drizzle truffle oil on our pasta...hone our knife skills...Why?  And why are there other people who don't?

Am I better off, in some way, because I can both detect and appreciate the hint of tamarind in a 17 ingredient hot sauce?  Why spend time measuring out tiny amounts of ingredients, chopping vegetables and cooking and pureeing the whole mess when I could just as easily have picked up something hot and spicy at the store? 

Am I happier because I do all that?  Well...yes.  I am. 

Am I happier than someone who wouldn't do all that?  Someone who would buy something hot and spicy and save themself some time and effort?  No, I'm probably not.

I guess we just all have our own thing.  Our own something that may seem unnecessary and a waste of time to someone else, but which is, at the core, a very necessary part of our living experience.

I guess it's partly a creative outlet.  Cooking - even if you're following someone else's recipe to the letter - is still a creative process.  You are still the one bridging the gap between ingredient and meal.  You may have been following someone else's instructions, but still, you did the work.  You performed this labor of love.

But for some of us, I guess the creativity goes beyond the basic level.  Not only do we want to put food on the table, but we also want - or need - to take it a step further.  We want and/or need to see what would happen if we, say, substituted leeks for onions in this dish.  Used pork instead of chicken.  Chinese five spice powder instead of cinnamon.  What if?

I told John he needs to see the movie Ratatouille.  Yeah, it's animated and all that, but still - it's an excellent movie.  And it kind of relates to this whole issue of being content with what is, and wanting to discover what else it could be.  I explained to John the basic premise of the rat who isn't content to eat garbage...who is excited and inspired by flavors and combinations of flavors...and yes, again, I am talking about an animated film originally intended for kids.  But still.  It's relevant.

Why care about Meyer lemons and Key limes when regular ol' lemons and limes are probably less expensive and easier to get?  Why make a croissant when you can buy one?  And if you're buying, then why buy freshly made croissants at a specialty bakery when the frozen heat-and-serve kind at the grocery store are way cheaper?  Why?

Because...for some of us...those particular little things matter.  It's passion.  It's love.  It's obsession.  It's inspiration.  It's joy.  It's accomplishment.  It's creativity.  Productivity.  Fun. 

And it just can't be helped.  It's who we are, I think.  Whoever we are.  It applies to everything, not just food or cooking.  For many of us, there are certain things, certain areas of our lives, that we cannot leave alone, and cannot ignore.  These are the fires within us.  We hunger...we wonder...we lust...we crave...we cannot sit on the sidelines.  We are not satisfied unless we can touch that magical "IT" with our minds and hands.  Until we can participate, heart and mind and spirit, and feel that sense of accomplishment afterward.  Big or small, I think that is the payoff.

Your thoughts?

 

   

Typing in my Tiara

We had Julia's birthday party yesterday.  Family and some friends, food, cake and ice cream, and - best of all - nice weather, so people could spend some of their time outside.

Today...the cleanup.  I didn't do much more than pack up the leftover food and stick it in the fridge (not that there was much of it) last night. 

And that tiara I mentioned?  Yes, I've been sitting here checking email and other peoples' blogs this morning wearing one of the tiaras I'd bought as favors for the other little princesses that were invited to the party.  Julia told me to.  So I did.  Not much fight in me this morning.  Thing is, none of the invitees from her daycare came, so I'm left with a lovely selection of sequined tiaras in assorted colors.  And bags of assorted necklaces and rings and bracelets, too. 

Right at this very moment, Julia is traipsing through the house in her underwear, adorned with a necklace, three rings, and a bejewelled barrette in her hair.  She is stunning.

The party was fun - really, a nice number of people.  I'm actually glad the daycare chicks didn't come, though it would have been nice if their parents had RSVP'd so I wouldn't have planned for their attendance, just in case they showed.

But anyway...Julia had fun, and that was the main thing.

The birthday cake I made is going to be the focus of my Tuesdays With Dorie post tomorrow, so I'm afraid I won't be sharing pictures of it today.  I can share this with you, however:  I had asked Julia several times (just to make sure she didn't change her mind) what she wanted for a cake.  She wanted a "strawberry cake" with purple on the outside and pink flowers.  So that's what she got, with a bit of artistic license on my part.

(Update:  Julia now has 4 necklaces, 2 barrettes, one hair clip, and no rings.  I think the rings were a bit cumbersome.  She can only handle so much bling.

Sigh.

I'm just looking around.  You know, I had the house looking so nice...but whatever.  The debris is proof of a good party, I guess.

Gotta go get Alex moving along for school...and then it's time to tackle the kitchen.

Talk to you later...

Holding Hands

(Rough lines sketched out in between cooking scrambled eggs and opening cards this morning.)

~~~~~

I remember being smaller,

Walking

A bigger hand holding mine.

The feel of being small, and safe, and loved

All in that clasp.

My mother's long, slender fingers

Pretty nails

Hands that made dinner

Kneaded dough smooth

Formed pie crusts

Baked cookies.

Nurturing.

Softened steel.

And her wedding ring flashing gold.

My father's hand,

A bit rougher, wider

Gentle and capable and strong.

Wrapped around a camera.

My hands resemble his, more than hers.

Short fingers.

Short nails.

Sometimes wrapped around a camera.

Also kneading bread

Forming pie crusts.

Baking cookies.

The other day my daughter and I went to CVS to get apple juice and tissues.

We got out of the car and headed toward the store, and her small hand drifted up and into mine.

Automatically.  It's the rules, when we're in a parking lot.

We walked together this way

Her small hand in mine,

And I wondered

What does my hand feel like

To her?

Timing is Everything

Earlier today I put up a post to let readers know I was going to take a little vacation of sorts from posting - it's a busy week here and I needed to set something aside, and this seemed the logical choice.

And then...because I am a masochist...I was just checking my stats, and I saw a whole bunch of people coming over from Typepad's "Featured Blog" section. 

Oh cool!  They're coming from here!

You know how some days you go along, kind of kicking the gravel as you walk along, not quite sure what you're even doing on that road?

Okay, a bit too philosophical.  Sorry.  I knew I'd been chosen as one of Typepad's Featured Blogs - I just had no idea when they'd post about it.  And so naturally, since I chose today to say "I need a break" - that's when they put up that post.

(I must say, though, I am not sure where they got the idea I have videos on here.  I don't.  Sorry.)

But there's a lot of food, and food talk, and recipes, and pictures - interspersed with talk and photos from the rest of my life, too. 

So, to those of you who have bounced over from that Typepad article - Welcome!

Sort of a Non Post

I have nothing to really write about just now.  I haven't cooked anything very interesting over the last few days - it's just been too busy somehow - I've pretty much fed everyone on leftovers and peanutbutter and jelly.  That'll change soon, but not til tomorrow.

Tomorrow brings many big things. 

First and foremost, it is OPENING DAY OF TROUT SEASON.

I've written about it before (probably every year I've blogged) and so tonight Bill will be busy getting his gear together and putting the canoe up on the truck so he's all ready to go DARK AND EARLY tomorrow morning.

Is he taking Alex?

Oh, no.  Not tomorrow, anyway.  OPENING DAY OF TROUT SEASON is actually a very serious day - not a day for patience with a small boy and his need for assistance and his boredom after an hour.  Or possible dislike for the predicted rain.  No.  No little boys on the High Holy Day of Trout Season.

But we're all going on Sunday morning.  Bill and the kids with their poles, and me with my camera.  (I haven't bought a trout license, but hey, someone's got to capture all the Kodak moments, right?  I'll fish another time.)

Tomorrow we will hopefully be having trout for lunch or dinner, and Bill's got an idea for how he'll prepare at least some of it, so I'll definitely be writing that up.  And I've got a couple things to make to go along with it or after it.  Plus I have to work on my next Tuesdays With Dorie challenge at some point as well.  Fun stuff all around.  And, weather permitting, we'll be taking a couple of zoo trips this coming week (school vacation week) and maybe instead of my own photos, I'll upload some that the kids do. 

I'm mostly just rambling on here because there are a bunch of dishes to do and I am working ever so hard to avoid doing them.

Pathetic, huh?

Okay, okay.  I'll do them now.  And then they'll be done.  And I'll be happy.  And filled with a feeling of accomplishment.  Okay.

Talk to you later.

Niche-less

I've been thinking about this for some time now.  I'm still not sure what I'm going to do.

I was thinking of splitting this blog in two - one for JUST food-related content, and the other for JUST family/kids/my own silly thoughts.

But.

It's not so easy to peel them apart.  My kids help with a lot of the cooking and baking (as you've no doubt noticed if you've been reading me for oh, more than a week)...my husband and I both love food, love cooking...it's hard for me to separate the two.  Because then...if my kids are decorating cookies...is that a food post or a family post?  If my husband and I go out to eat at a new restaurant and I want to talk about the food here...well, it was a "date night" so it's about family, but there was good food involved, so should that be on the food site?

I don't know what to do yet.

Why does it matter?

Oh, because I'm trying to fit into a few different niches.  I'm going for targeted advertising and sometimes there are stipulations - like your blog needs to be a certain percentage of food-themed posts in order to be considered a food blog (in some places)...or a certain percentage of family/parenting posts...or whatever.

The problem is, food is a big part of my family.  We grow it, we catch it, we cook it, we eat it.  (I do most of the dishes, but that's a different issue.)  The point is, we are not separate from the food.  We are intertwined.  Food and family.  Family and food.

I'm still thinking about what I'm going to do.

If anyone wants to put in their two cents...feel free. 

Right now I'm going to help my son create a book of sea creatures.

(See, now, you'd think that would be a family/parenting kind of a situation, however, the story of these sea creatures is that, in turn, each one gets eaten by another sea creature bigger than itself.  So...does that make it a food post?  And WE eat a lot of seafood, too.  Again, food post.)

That's what I'm talkin' 'bout.

Off Course

I still stay in touch with a bunch of people I used to work with, before the emploment ended back in December.  Some of them also read this site. 

Yesterday morning I got a call from one of them.  It was early, on a Sunday, and the news was shocking.  A woman who had also worked there - for the past 10 years - she'd started less than a year after I did - this woman had died.  On Friday.

I knew she'd been out on an extended medical leave since some time after I left.  But no one I asked seemed to know why.  Apparently she kept it to herself, or swore people to secrecy.

I liked her.  She was upper management, and hers was not always the easiest position to hold in a company.  But she was always kind and pleasant.

Over the years I learned tiny bits about her - little tiny things she'd share in conversation, but to the best of my knowledge, she pretty much kept her personal life personal.  Which is fine.  Some people share way too much of their lives with their coworkers.  Less, I think, is more.

I know she and her husband were foster parents for many years, and she adopted her teenage son right around the same time I gave birth to my biological son.  She mentioned this to me when we were going over my maternity leave paperwork, and she told me she was eligible for it as well, because of the adoption.  Just a little thing, just a little peek in the window, but in some way it was more personal than all the other pregnancy and childbirth stories I'd previously heard from friends and family.  She didn't have to tell me anything.  But she did.

To borrow a commonly used phrase, cancer sucks.  It's a gross understatement, especially for those who battle cancer and the loved ones who watch and pray and hold close and hold their breath every minute of every day. 

This woman died of cancer.  Another one of those many instances where your heart just screams out "She was too young!  It's not fair!"  Too many instances.

So since yesterday morning, my brain has been turning this news around and around, checking it out from all angles, like it's a Rubik's cube, trying to line up the images of a fit and healthy person I last saw three months ago, a woman not young, but not old by any stretch of the imagination, with the phone call I received and the obituary I read online.  The squares aren't matching up.  I can't get the colors in the right places.  I can't solve the puzzle.  It doesn't make sense.

Cancer, as everyone knows, doesn't make sense.  Not a sense that you can reluctantly nod and say, yeah, okay, I see why.  I understand.  It's not like, oh, a car accident.  A car slams into a tree, okay, yeah, you can see the car is wrecked, you can see why, even if the driver was wearing a seatbelt, they could not have survived.  Maybe.  It's not a nice comparison, but, you know, there's an "if A then B" bit of logic to it.  Not emotionally, no, but cause-and-effect-ly.

Not so now.  I'm having trouble with this. 

Of course, I was not a part of her family.  Not a close friend or anything.  Perhaps she had been battling this for some time.  So maybe her passing came at the end of a much longer battle.  Like my late sister-in-law, who had been fighting cancer for 4 years before it attacked her brain and put an end to the fighting. 

This one was - at least from my view on the sidelines - so sudden. 

I am saddened by it.  I am so sorry for her family and close friends.  Her son.  Her husband.  This line from her obituary lingers in my thoughts.  "She was the wife, lover, best friend and partner..." of her husband of 25 years.  There is such poignant beauty in that line.  Such love.  Such loss. 

I am so sorry.

It's not fair. 

In Which I Wax Rhapsodic About Manure... And Other Little Stories

I hope it stops raining today at some point so I can go out and take pictures of the gorgeous compost on some of the gardens.

I know - oooooooh!  Sounds thrilling!

On Tuesday I picked up the kids after school/daycare and got them Happy Meals to eat on the ride to get a yard of compost.  Not just ANY compost, either.  It's the "Raised Bed Mix" - one of several types of compost you can get from Earth Care Farm.  The place (if you're into this sort of thing) is awesome.  Huge mountains of compost...good stuff, with - well here's an excerpt from their website:

COMPOST INGREDIENTS

We start with farm animal manure, such as horse, chicken, cow, sheep, goat, and rabbit manures. These we gather along with whatever bedding material was used, such as sawdust, wood shavings or straw. We also mix in elephant, camel and other exotic manures from Roger Williams Park Zoo.

Other raw materials added include: clean gurry (fish scraps), shell fish, seaweed, paper, wood chips, spent bark mulch, wood ashes, mulch hay, flower, vegetable, and shrub trimmings and also food scraps. Our major bulking agent is leaves which we receive from local towns. These ingredients are lended, mixed, and turned in an aerobically managed compost system on our certified organic farm. It takes approximately 18 months before the ingredients are properly cured and considered mature, finished compost.

Nice, huh?  So the owner loaded up the bed of our truck and away we went. 

Then I spent the afternoon clearing out dead leaves and other debris from most of the flower gardens in the front yard.  Mainly the irises, as their rhizomes need sun and dryness to flourish.  I transplanted a few that weren't doing all that well - hopefully they'll improve this year in their new spot.  The kids helped for about 3.4 minutes and then grew tired of all that manual labor.  So they played in the back yard or drew with chalk on the driveway.

When Bill got home he was all excited about the compost and got that truck bed cleared out pretty quickly.  Julia "helped" by standing near a wheelbarrow while he shoveled compost into it.  I would have taken a picture, but my hands were too muddy to touch the camera.  I really need to remember to wear gloves.

Anyway, Bill distributed the compost to the raised bed and to the other vegetable garden areas in the yard, and I added some to the windowboxes as well.

Eventually, it was too dark and too cold to do any more outside.  But things are looking really good.  Nice black compost out there...ready for planting.

~~~~~

So...what to do with leftover vegetables after having a huge Corned Beef Dinner?  I'd already used the potatoes in the hash, but there were still turnips, carrots, parsnips, onions and cabbage left. 

After a bit of thought, I decided I could use some of it in lasagne. 

I was in a lasagne and eggplant parmesan mood anyway, so I got an eggplant, some mushrooms, ricotta cheese and fresh mozzarella at the grocery store.

I mashed up the turnips, carrots and parsnips with some oregano that I'd frozen in olive oil last fall, and some salt and pepper.  I set that mixture in a collander to drain off some of the water, but in retrospect, a better choice would have been to cook that mixture a little in an open pan, to get rid of more of the moisture.  Ah well, live and learn.

I also sauteed mushrooms in butter and marsala til they were dry...and I made a bit pot of sauce, with a lot of the frozen oven-roasted tomatoes I packed away in the fall, and a little container of pureed basil and olive oil...and a cube of oregano/olive oil...and one of parsley.  I'm trying to use up a few things from last year's garden.  Not that I'll freeze anything again til next fall, but still.  It needs to be used.  Oh, and I threw in some garlic, too.  And some chianti.  Let that cook for a while and then put it through a food mill to get rid ot skins and seeds.  Then back onto the stove to simmer some more.

I mixed the ricotta with salt and pepper, two eggs, and a thawed, squeezed-dry (in a dish towel) package of frozen spinach.  And I sliced the mozzarella.  And ate a few slices.  Just the small ones.

Oh, and I peeled the eggplant, sliced it very thin, dredged it in flour and fried it til it was nicely browned.

From all that, and, of course, lasagne noodles, and grated parmesan, I made two pans of lasagne.

ALSO, I made meatballs.  My original plan was spaghetti and meatballs for the kids (I knew Alex, at least, wouldn't want the lasagne - the ricotta mixture alone would turn him off), but when I mentioned that to Alex earlier in the day, he thought a moment, and then said "How 'bout this?  How 'bout you make Sesame Noodles and meatballs?"  And you know...that sounded like a pretty good idea.  So Bill mixed up his tamer (no chile peppers) version of Sesame Noodle sauce while I cooked the pasta, and so that was our weird dinner.  Sesame Noodles, meatballs, and vegetarian lasagne.

Weird, maybe.  But everyone was happy and full when they left the table.  And that's kind of the goal, right?

~~~~~

It's supposed to clear up at some point today - I hope. 

Indoors...I'll be moving the trays of seedlings to their next home at the south-facing dining room window.  Not that it will make much difference in their lives today, if it stays gray like this.  But eventually they will soak up the warmth of the sun and grow strong.  Then we will plant them outside, where they will continue to grow tall and strong.  And then, one day...we will eat them.

The End.

Day of Food

Hi,

Sorry - didn't do a Corned Beef Project Day post yesterday.  I never even looked at the corned beef, to be honest.  Too busy.  The entire day revolved around cooking, however, which is one of my favorite kinds of days, though it leaves time for little else and my feet hurt by the end.  But what's a couple of sore feet after a kick-ass day in the kitchen?

The main event yesterday was a lunch with two of my husband's aunts.  Bill made coq au vin, and I made mashed potatoes, broccoli rabe, and two lemon sponge pie tarts with a chocolate pastry crust. 

Before all that - french toast and bacon for breakfast. 

And after all that - for dinner - steamers and baked clams and leftover baby corn for dinner.

I've got food pictures to upload from the camera, and today's the day I have to flip over all the briskets that are soaking in the corned beef brine. 

Also need to hit the grocery store to get a few things.

Dinner tonight?  Octopus ceviche.  Oh yes, there will be pictures of that, too.

So Far Today

So my eyes are kind of stinging.

Wanna know why?

Here's why.

It's raining this morning.  Not just raining - occasionally it is pouring, and also occasionally there is a monsoon.  And a bit of lightning.

So anyway, earlier, when Bill had to leave for work, the monsoon phase of this morning's precipitation was well under way. 

And since I was too lazy to put out the big trash bin and the almost-as-big green recycle bin last night, I had to do it this morning.  Green is for paper products, in case you were wondering.  These big bins are kind of rectangular, they hold like a trillion gallons of stuff, and there are two wheels on the bottom so you can tilt them back a bit and roll them down to the street easily.  The lids are hinged at the back of the top, where the handle is that you push them with.  Got that?  The visual?  Good.

So I go outside when Bill is going out, and first thing I notice, besides all the trees bending over sideways and a few houses spinning up into the sky toward Oz, is the gushing water spraying sideways from the low corner of the roof, right there on the same side as the driveway.

Oh yeah, that's right, the downspout fell off.  So the water that is rapidly accumulating in the gutter no longer has a nice straight path to take in order to get back to earth.  No, it just pours out of a hole up there, and with all this hurricane-force wind this morning, naturally it can't go straight - it sprays out sideways like an EXTRA rainstorm right across the driveway.

I stood there with the green recycle bin, waiting for my husband (who chooses just the BEST moments to become slower than snails) is arranging himself in the car and adjusting everything - the seat, mirrors, radio, CD/radio selection, and checking his nails for dirt.  Then he is looking at me like he needs to tell me something - maybe something like - "Gee, Jayne, you sure look completely drenched, standing out there in the rain waiting for me to finally back out of the driveway already!" So I move closer to the car, thinking he will UNLOCK the door so I can hear his piece of important information, but no, he doesn't do that - he merely points to the few big rain splatters on his otherwise perfectly dry coat and gives me a look like "Wow, it's pretty rainy out here, huh?"

I nod and roll my eyes and wave him along. 

At last hs is backing away, and I start to follow, pushing the tilted-back green recycle bin and bracing myself for the sideways water spraying from the near corner of the roof.  And just as I am going through that bit of pleasantness, a giant gust of wind blows across the front of the house, several of the neighbors' cars flip over and roll down the street, helpless - and - the lid of the recycle bin snaps up and hits me right in the face.  Hard. 

That was real fun.  I pushed the lid back down and rubbed my head and wondered if Bill might stop the car and take a moment to make sure I was okay.

Hahahahahahaha.  No, he didn't. 

So I continued pushing the recycle bin through the storm to the end of the driveway. 

I was drenched.  In my LL Bean boots, my pajamas, and my corduroy coat.  Drenched.

I got the bin to the curb (if we actually had a curb.  We don't.  It's more like where the dirt meets the asphalt.) and turned to go and get the gray trash bin.  Just as I got back to the sideways water spraying from the gutter, I heard a loud thud and turned to see that the recycle bin - though it was 3/4 full of old magazines, junk mail, newspapers and other paper stuff - had been knocked over by the raging wind and the top layer of paper stuff fell out into - yes - the rushing river that used to be the street.  Coupon inserts and layers of newspapers tried to fly away, past our driveway, but the heavy rain was too much for them and they lost momentum and fluttered, defeated, down into the water. 

I stood there in the rain and just stared for a minute at the mess before grumpily picking up all the soggy paper and righting the fallen bin. 

By now the rain was pouring down my face, in my eyes, blinding me, and I staggered back up the driveway to the house.  I went inside and Alex, who apparently had been watching my little show, called out that I forgot to fix two other bins that had fallen over.  (Further up the street).  I told him it's not my job to stand up everyone's trash bins and to go downstairs and play.  I wiped the puddles out of my eyes and went back out to bring the trash bin to the road.  I was going to just leave it, but for some reason I thought that would mean the monsoon had defeated me, and I wasn't about to let that happen.

So back out I went, through the monsoon, and the sideways spray from the gutter, into the raging river of our street.  Fortunately the trash can didn't fall over.  I made my way through the gushing, blowing March rain and into the house, my eyes closed again, leaking rainwater.  I took off the soggy coat.  I wiped my eyes - which are still stinging from the water and the wind - and got into some dry clothes.

And that's the end of my story.

A Few Little Things

My left eye feels like morning has come too soon and the light is just way too bright for it.  My right eye is fine, however.  Eye strain?  Should I sit facing the other way on this couch on alternate days so each eye is exposed to the vast brightness of outside equally, and the left eye won't be so exhausted?  Perhaps an eye exam.  But then, the last time I was there, the doctor cheerfully told me that when you hit 40, your eyes start to get drier or something and you start to need glasses for reading (or typing on the laptop?).  I was not as cheered by all this as he seemed to be.

~~~~~

I brought Alex to the Dr yesterday because this cough he's had is not going away, and he's congested and snores so loudly the house shakes.  Okay, that last part isn't true.  But his voice has started getting all raspy, and his tonsils looked like little moons in his throat, and so I figured we should check it all out. 

Our appointment was mid-afternoon, after Bill got home from work, so it was just me and Alex, and Julia stayed home with her father.  Alex is fun to hang out with.  Plus he's very sweet and affectionate and cute and my son and my firstborn and an interesting and sensitive little person.  He is generous with hugs and I Love You, Mommy, and I am greedily inhaling and absorbing all of that, because I know the day will come when these things will not be dispensed with such abandon.

Anyway, we hung out in the waiting room for a while - Mondays are busy, especially Mondays after school vacation weeks.  We watched other bits of families come and go...saw a couple of little babies...he's kind of obsessed with babies at the moment.  He wants me to have another one.  I tell him over and over that we want two, we have two, and we're not planning to go beyond two.  I remind him good friends of ours have a baby that he sees on a semi-regular basis.  That should be enough.  But still.  He suggests names for this fictional third child of mine.  He has clearly given this a lot of thought.  Perhaps we should get him another pet.

Finally we were called into the examining room, I told the nurse what was going on, Alex contributed his five cents' worth (he is my child - he has more than two cents' worth of input), she took his temp (normal) and said the doctor would be in shortly.  We played "I Spy" and he showed me how he could hoist himself up on the exam table all by himself because he's a big boy. 

The doctor came in - she's not our regular doctor, but all of the doctors where we take the kids are fabulous, so I don't mind seeing someone different now and then - and looked in Alex's ears, listened to him breathe, and peered at his throat.  He's got some congestion in his right lung, and yes, his tonsils ARE big. 

She decided she'd test him for strep.  His sore throat is gone, and he hadn't had a fever.  But might as well rule it out, since it's prime time of the year for strep and related adventures.  She left the room to get the tube with the giant Q-tips, and when she came back she explained to Alex that she just needed to tap the back of his throat with these things. 

"Will they take the red off it?" he asked.  I love this age.

Well, I guess anyone reading this has most likely had a strep test.  I think I'd rather have a needle in my arm than have giant Q-tips jabbed into my throat.  Just for the record. 

Alex was sitting up on the exam table, and the doctor tried to hold his tongue down with a tongue depressor so she could poke his throat, but he didn't like that tongue depressor.  Not one little bit.  He kept pulling away, or shutting his mouth...lips firmly pressed together, eyes fearful and suspicious.  Need a plan B.

Plan B was to have him sit on my lap and have me hold his hands so he couldn't grab the instruments of torture from her hands.  That worked fine, except his head was still free of restraint, and there wasn't much I could do to keep him from pulling his head back or clamping his teeth down on the oversized popsicle stick and not letting go.  The doctor finally had to emphasize that she couldn't take it out of his mouth until he let go of it.

All this gave me horrid flashbacks to a bright, high-ceilinged office, a huge red high-backed leather chair, a kindly doctor with a big flat wooden paddle that he needed to stick down my throat (it seemed), and the fact that it took my mother and the nurse to hold me in that chair so he could take a look.  The perfume of rubbing alcohol filled the air, and I can't smell it to this day without the urge to gag.

I suggested to Alex's doctor that maybe without the tongue depressor she'd have better luck.  I told him to say "loud" really loudly (* over the weekend he was demonstrating "LOUD" and "soft" and that's when I happened to get a REALLY good look at his throat).  Eventually that worked, and I felt the tap of cotton swab in my own throat when he jerked back from the nice doctor and her giant Q-tips.  He looked betrayed and annoyed and kept swallowing, trying to get rid of that poked feeling.  I told him a lollipop would help.  I told him he deserved two.  The doctor said she'd be back in five minutes with the results.

Five minutes later.  He has strep.  Antibiotics are prescribed.  He can't go back to school til Wednesday. 

As we were leaving, the doctor told Alex he could go get his two lollipops, and he told her they weren't both for him. 

"One is for me because I'm sick and I was a good boy, and the other one is for my sister because she has a bloody face!"  The doctor looked at me but before I could say anything, Alex launched into a lengthy recap of Julia's "agony of defeat" moment on Sunday.  I tried to condense it, but Alex actually waved a hand at me, stepped IN FRONT of me and told me he could tell it because he was there and I wasn't.  The doctor listened intently to the story and then confirmed that yes, Julia did deserve a lollipop after that.

~~~~~

Julia's pink elephant has gone missing.   

Yesterday we were "doing a big clean up" in the kids' bedroom, because I am just so sick of the coughing and congestion and dry air and dust and closed windows and germs and all that.  A part of me wanted to just set all the toys on fire, as that would be the quickest way to get rid of them and whatever stray germs had colonized in the fake fur.  But instead we stripped beds and dusted and cleaned doorknobs and gathered all the stuffed animals into a pile so I can wash them in vats of boiling bleach water batches over the next couple of days, along with all the sheets and blankets and all that.  As we sorted stuffed animlas (I am washing them by size), I put Julia's elephant on her stripped bed because I just washed it the other day.  I didn't want it mingling with the germy toys.  I didn't think about it again until after dinner, when I remade the beds and the elephant wasn't on the matterss any more.  I thought she'd probably been playing with it while Alex and I were at the doctor's.  But Bill didn't know where it was.  Julia didn't.  And it wasn't in any of the obvious or usual spots. 

Last night Julia woke up several times and after searching around in the dark on her bed, would start whimpering because she couldn't find her elephant.  I'd explain that we would find it the next day, and she would cry, so I'd bring her into our bed til she fell asleep and I fell asleep and then I'd wake up when she started grinding her teeth, so I'd bring her back to her own bed and wait for the next round.  Maybe that's why my left eye is so tired.

As I've been typing, the kids have been searching, giant flashlight in Alex's hands, for this missing pink pachyderm.  No luck so far.  I have a feeling I'm going to spend my entire day looking for this thing.

~~~~~

And it occurred to me this morning...Julia had a bit of a sore throat last week, AND a low fever.  So I am thinking I need to get her in to see the doctor today so she can have her throat swabbed too.

That should go well. 

~~~~~

Update:  I found the elephant.  I started loading the first batch of germy stuffed animals into the washing machine and there it was.  I would have SWORN on all sorts of holy publications that I hadn't put the elephant in there.  But clearly I was mistaken.  Or Julia stuffed it in there to be helpful.  Or I am just losing my sanity. 

That last one seems the obvious choice to me.

Low Key

Okay, so we didn't get McDonalds food last night.  I cooked chicken and rice with canned tomatoes and onions and garlic and white wine, and Bill liked it, Julia ate a bit of it, and Alex didn't have any because he's got a sore throat and wasn't interested in food.  Today he's home from school.  He's downstairs on the couch watching cartoons, and Julia is here on the couch, "reading" to me and occasionally glaring at me because I told her I was busy at the moment and would read to her in a few minutes. 

I don't have a whole lot to report today. 

Tomorrow Bill and some friends are brewing something like 25 gallons of beer (to be divided among the 5 of them) and I said I'd make Buffalo Ball sandwiches for them all.  He also asked for onion rings, and somewhere I have a great recipe for the batter, so I need to find that today, too.

Gotta go in a moment.  Alex wants to make a "surprise" valentine's day card for Bill and me, so I need to make sure he has all the right art supplies.  He was too wiped out yesterday to do it.

So that's about it - a rather thin post this morning, I'm afraid.  Perhaps I'll have something more entertaining to say later on.

I'm Valentined Out

I hope you enjoyed the little Valentines Day Ideas food series I did for the first part of this month.  It was fun, and boy did we eat pretty well around here during the past few weeks!  All the recipes are over on the right in my "On the Menu" list, in case you're looking for them at some other point in the year.

If anyone out there made any of these recipes - let me know how they came out, if you think of it, ok?  I'd love the feedback - good or bad. 

And so today is actually Valentine's Day.  Both Alex and Julia have Valentine's Day parties at school and daycare, respectively.

And for us, tonight, for dinner?

I think we'll get McDonald's.

Like Beaten Egg Whites - This is Just a Post Full of Air

Sorry, but I just don't have much to say today.  I started another post about the dinner we (well, mostly my husband) made on Sunday, but I just don't have the enthusiasm for it at the moment. 

I actually suddenly thought - "Another recipe?  People must be getting so bored with that.  Don't you have anything else going on in your life?"

And well yeah, of course I do.  In fact, I'll have to go pick up two of them from school/daycare in an hour or so.  Then we're going to the grocery store to get a few things because - get this - my son wants to learn how to make ratatouille.  Really.  I know.  He's five.  Well, and a HALF.  But still.  He's not even all that nuts about the vegetables that go into ratatouille, but he's willing to forget that in this case.  Thank you Disney/Pixar for this healthy influence on my son.  Because, you know, the only reason he wants us to make this dish is because it's featured in the movie of the same name.  Pretty funny, huh?

So we'll pick up some eggplant and zucchini and tomatoes and all that, and later on we'll make that for dinner, along with the steamed crabmeat dumplings I'd already planned to make.  Interesting blend of cuisines tonight.

And there I go...back to food. 

I've also got other cooking "projects" under way...I'm actually gearing up for a pre-Valentine's day recipe series.  To begin on Feb 1st, or at least that's the plan.  So I'm doing the food prep ahead of time, so I can have all the images ready to go.  At times I think I'm a looney.  But it's fun. 

And I'm not even really all THAT into Valentine's Day, either.  The enforced giving of valentines to all your classmates...the ugly, loser feeling if you don't get as many as other kids...ugh.  Horrible pressure.  And it just escalates from there.  I like romance well enough, but I don't like to have it scheduled for me by Hallmark and FTD.  And roses on Valentine's day?  Please.  It's inSANE what they cost.  Just crazy.  I'd rather have a new toaster if you're going to buy me something.  Actually, Bill knows that (plus the cat tries to eat the baby's breath if there is any in a bouquet of roses, and usually also ends up knocking over the vase in the process, and then later hacking up a mess of tiny half-digested white flowers.  Now there's some mood music for you.) - and the best Valentine's Day gift he gave me one year were some Godiva chocolates - inside a 14 inch All-Clad sauce pan - with lid!  Nothing says "I love you" like - "here's a big pan, go make me something."  But see, actually, that IS what it says to me.  That's why we are married.   

Another thing about Valentine's Day that bugs me is the people out there who say Valentime's Day.  No, it's not "Time for Valen's Day."  It's not Valen TIME.  It's ValenTINE.  TINE.  Like as in the tines of a fork.  Which, unsurprisingly, brings us back to food again.

We don't go out to eat on ValentiNe's Day.  There's no fun in it.  You have a long wait - even with reservations - in an overcrowded restaurant with stressed waitstaff and you are just SUPPOSED to have the best meal of your life...and you don't. 

I'd rather we cook it ourselves, after the kids have gone to bed, and dine quietly and peacefully and without any waiting patrons eyeing our table to see if we've paid the check yet.

To me, there is romance in preparing a meal for someone.  Food isn't love - it's the preparing of it that's love.  You make a meal - any kind of a meal - for someone else...something you know they will enjoy and appreciate - that's romantic.  That's love.  And so that's kind of what I want to convey in the February posts leading up to Valentine's Day.  There will definitely be some fancy-schmancy things - particularly desserts - but they're really not that hard - they just take some planning and preparation. 

But there are the simple things, too.  Nothing, for example, says "I love you" to my husband like a grilled cheese sandwich.  And not some fancy gruyere on a baguette grilled cheese, either.  I'm talking sliced American cheese on white bread, with yellow mustard, fried crisp golden brown on the outside/warm and melty and goopy on the inside - in plenty of butter.  That's it. 

I guess what I'm really trying to say, in my babbling, rambling, run-on sentence sort of way.......

.......is that it is apparently impossible for me to write about anything anymore without turning it into a piece about food.

So I think I'll end this post now and go peruse my cookbooks for a ratatouille recipe.

   

Did you miss me?

On Friday I spent the day pretty much doing stuff with my kids and around the house.  Just wasn't in the mood to type. 

And then yesterday - well, remember several days ago when Alex was sick?  Well, yesterday I spent most of my day in bed curled up in a shaking ball, praying I wouldn't throw up.  And you know what?  I didn't.  I just felt like I might.  I ate nothing all day - except a lemon yogurt and a cappuccino that Bill made in the morning.  The cappuccino was probably not a great idea, but it just smelled really good....Anyway, that was it.  I had sips of water and felt hot and cold and achy and miserable.  Fun.  A few times I thought, well, maybe I could get my laptop and sit in bed...but then I really didn't feel like going all the way downstairs to get it.  So I just stayed put.

Bill pretty much kept the kids occupied and distracted, though they both came up to visit me periodically through the day.  Julia because she wanted me to read to her, and Alex, because he is a sweet boy who just wanted to see how I was feeling.  (Sigh.)  Bill took them to the grocery store at one point, and when they got back, both kids raced upstairs, coats and boots still on, to bring me "Mommy!  We got you something!" a bouquet of roses.  It's on the dining room table, in a vase, and they smell good.  I have pretty nice kids.

The toughest part of the day was when Bill made dinner for the kids.  He did breakfast for dinner, which is fun, and he saw the turkey breakfast sausages I'd bought at the store on Friday...and so he cooked THEM and some eggs.  The smell.  It nearly got the best of me.  Ordinarily it would have pulled me out of bed and I'd be elbowing kids out the way to get my fair share, but last night?  I just wanted to leave the building.  Through a window.  My only solution - and a temporary one at that - was to go into the bathroom and run the shower and open all the tubes and jars of lotions and shampoo and so on, just to make that one room smell friendly.  Of course, Julia came a-knocking on the door "Mommy, I have to go potty!" and so with a groan (this never EVER happens to Bill) I let her in and asked "who's in the other bathroom?" and she said "No one."  She just wanted to be in the bathroom I was in.  I let her take care of business and then I sent her on her way.  And I hung out in the little steamy room until the good smells faded and the scent of sausage crept back in.

There wasn't going to be any escape from it.  So I just inhaled deeply and resigned myself to further misery.  And got back in bed and pulled the covers over my head to escape a bit.  But then it was too hot and I couldn't breathe.  So, yeah, the sausages won.  Kind of. 

Anyway, I'm sort of better today.  I am afraid to eat anything, but I might try a banana in a little while.  And some tea.  That sounds safe.

Almost Back

Hi,

I know, posting has been very light this past week or so.  Sorry about that.   I'd intended to get back to some sort of regular writing schedule before now, but it didn't happen.  This is the first time I've actually had time off (okay, I'm unemployed, but still) with my family that didn't have to do with any of them being sick.  It's been an actual vacation, of sorts.  And so I've...vacated.  Kind of.  We've been mainly living off of holiday leftovers until last night, and I've done as little around here as possible.  I've sat around reading.  I've napped.  I've played Free Cell on the computer til my eyes hurt.  I've done little art projects with the kids.  I haven't baked a single cookie.  (okay, I used up the puff pastry dough left over from the pain au chocolate, but that doesn't count in my mind, since the dough was already made.)

I almost baked bread yesterday, but I never got around to it.  I took a two hour nap instead. 

Part of this is because Julia hasn't been well (okay, so that blows the no-kids-were-sick-in-the-taking-of-this-vacation) - she'd had a tick bite about a month ago and then two weeks later her ear got swollen and red.  They put her on an antibiotic, which seemed to do the trick, but then within the last week she's been waking up crying (really crying, not just whining) and said her ear hurt.  I brought her back to the doctor this past Thursday, and now she's on another antibiotic - one they use to combat lyme disease.  I still don't think it was a deer tick, but better safe than sorry.  She's been waking up in the middle of the night a few times, very weepy, very clingy, very much in need of lying on the couch in the middle of the night with mommy and watching cooking shows.  I haven't had a decent night's sleep in a while now.  But finally, last night, the improvement seemed to begin.  Because though she woke up, she wasn't AS miserable.  Just had to go potty, and have some juice, and watch a bit of a cooking show before going back to bed VOLUNTARILY.  And she woke up early this morning, but still - it was a lot better than it has been.  So looks like the new meds are working.  Her ear looks better, and the red splotchyness that had started between her ear and eye on the left side has diminished.  So - GOOD.  It's a two-week prescription.  Hopefully that will knock it all out of her system.

So that's one part.

And I think the other part of my lethargy has been the combo of holiday prepwork (fun) and the end of my employment at a job I've had for a long time. 

I felt kind of...I don't know.  In limbo.  Falling.  Floating.  Lost.  Scared.  Relaxed.  Worried.  In a panic.  Depressed.  Excited. 

All kinds of stuff.  But initially it was mostly the draining feelings.  The OHMYGODNOWWHATAMIGOINGTODO?????? feelings.  The "I'm a loser" feelings.  Yeah.  They can drag on you and make it hard to want to take a shower each morning.

But I started feeling a little more positive about things yesterday.  The better feelings started to kick in.  The re-realization that this is a huge OPPORTUNITY for me, if I approach it that way, and that yes, despite my not infrequent feelings of uselessness, I DO have some creative abilities that I SHOULD be making better use of.  And that the main thing, really, is to (this is the hardest thing for me) believe in myself.  It's corny and cliched (clicheed?)(a cliche), but it's true.  My biggest obstacle is my own self doubt. 

It helps, for me, to develop a sort of rebellious, "oh YEAH?!" kind of mind set.  I don't know why.  But somehow, it motivates me if I have something to prove.  So, I'll use that for a while.  I can't sustain it forever, but it's a good way to kick start myself.

I'm still on vacation, in my mind.  I'll finish that up once the school year starts and we have our daily routines again. 

And then?  Onward.

Unbearable Cuteness

I mean, really.

Last Day (at work)

Nope - sorry - no cookie recipe last night.  I packed up more cookies to give out, including assortments for the kids' teachers, and after I got the kids in bed and did the dishes and FINALLY wrote out (most of) my Christmas cards...I was done.  I flopped on the couch and watched something on TV with my husband about how the Grand Canyon was formed (did you know it was aliens what did it?  Just kidding.) - and then I fell asleep.

So today is my last day at work at the place I've been for the past 11 or so years.

I think I'll need to pick up a box of tissues on my way in, since I don't have any at my desk.  I just have a feeling it will not be a dry-eyed day.

But also, I have Christmas shopping to run around and do on my lunch break, and maybe on the way home, too.  Bill's picking up the kids from daycare today so I don't have to worry about that.

But still.  I have to take stuff home with me today from my desk.  Pictures of the kids.  Coffee mugs.  Stuff in the bottom drawer of my filing cabinet that I've accumulated - I'm not even sure what's in there or what I'll actually keep.  And a huge prayer plant that did well at work because the cat couldn't chew on the leaves.  Not sure where we'll put that here....there is no safe place.  Oh well.  We'll figure that out.

Sorry this is an uneventful post.  I'm trying to just not think about stuff too much yet. 

So instead - a few pictures. 

I had done a post about Short Dough not too long ago.  Here are a couple of cookies I'd cut out for ME (not the kids) to decorate.  I really love doing this sort of thing.  I wish I'd had time to do a bigger variety, but that didn't happen this year. 

Anyway - I did angels...

And one of my favorites - cows.

I'm calling them Ho Ho Ho Holsteins.  No I'm not really.  But I could. 

I think they're cute.  And I love cows.  And why should reindeer get all the Christmas festooning?  Just because they can fly and all....

I'm babbling.  Time to get the kids moving along, I think.  Get this day going. 

I'm sort of dreading it, to be honest. 

Twenty Minutes

I set the kitchen timer for twenty minutes.

Twenty minutes, so I could just check my email and write a post about biscotti or torrone or gnocchi or something before the day gets too far under way.

Twenty minutes, before it would be time to get the kids cleaned and dressed and ready to go see Santa later this morning where I work.

Twenty. Lousy. Minutes.

Twenty minutes of "uninterrupted" time.

Because, unless I'm the only human in the house, I have no "uninterrupted" time.

I put "uninterrupted" in quotes like that because it's not a real word, a real concept.  It's all theoretical. 

But I persist.

I get my laptop and my wireless card and my recipe notes and my cold coffee and sit on the couch and go into one of my email accounts.

And Bill decides he's going to fix the storm door NOW, rather than after we get home.

And Julia comes upstairs FOR NO OTHER REASON THAN I AM SITTING QUIETLY TRYING TO DO SOMETHING OF MY OWN.  I already cooked them all breakfast.  I was already up at 3:30 with Julia and then Alex joined us at 4:21 and so it's already been a long day of needs and wants.

And now Julia has to go potty.

And Bill is taking the window part out of the storm door.

And Julia "I'm DONE!" needs me to turn the water on so she can wash her hands because she's too short, even on a stool, to reach the faucet.

And where does Bill decide to bring the window that he's fixing the frame of for the storm door?

Right into the living room where I am!!

So he can TALK TO ME ABOUT WHAT HE'S DOING AS HE'S DOING IT.

And then Julia wants to show me the two "Little People" that are playing together - apparently Mary and one of the Wise Men like to wrestle.  Hmm.  I'm just going to ignore that.

And then "AHA!"  Bill has been successful in some fashion.

He needs to TELL ME!

So he does.  "The screen was bent and you know there was no way it was going to be fixed and the directions weren't quiet accurate for this door, they weren't matching up, and screen screen screen fix and bent and there was just no way" he is shaking his head "just no way" and I am staring at him without changing expression as he becomes more emphatic at the just no wayness about the screen or something - and to be honest, I wasn't listening, I was just wondering how long he would continue to talk and talk and tell me about the door and the screen and didn't I say I just wanted twenty minutes, TWENTY STINKING MINUTES, just to do what I wanted to do????

He reiterated - "There was NO WAY that screen something something something."

And he looked at me with that expectant expression, waiting for me to be equally up in arms about the screen and its issues.

And I just burst out laughing. 

And he thought it was because of the screen.

And then Julia came over and watched me type and hollered "RED LIGHT!" at me so my fingers would stop, but I RAN that red light and kept typing, because these are MY TWENTY MINUTES even though the timer went off two minutes ago but I figure I used up time helping Julia with the faucet and Bill with the listening.

And then Bill is bringing the window back to put it in the door thing, and while he's gathering his stuff for that, Alex comes up "Mommy?  C'n I have some juice?  Where's Mommy?  Mommy - c'n I have some juice?"  And Julia is making a stuffed animal bunny hop on my head, and Bill is talking again but I think it's to himself this time.

And now, my twenty minutes are long gone.

I wonder if they were ever here.

Always

This post is for my Mom, in a way.  It's her birthday today.  She's always been a wonderful mother, except for that time when we were little and she told us we could eat AS MUCH CANDY as we wanted.  That frightened me.  But apart from that...she's done a damn fine job.  From her I've inherited a love of books, and of cooking, and of music, and, hopefully, decent mothering abilities.  Time will tell.

Happy Birthday, Mom.  Mind how you go....Love, Jayne

Not long after my mom's father passed away, after the funeral was over, and we were supposed to start to "get back to normal", I was in my old bed at my parents' house, and I dreamt of him. 

In this dream, I was sitting on a bench in a park - I don't know where, I didn't recognize it.  And he, Grandad, came over and sat beside me.  He didn't look like he had looked toward the end - tired and gaunt and shrunken and sharply angled.  Instead, he was tall and healthy and hearty - full of "vim, vigour and vitality" as he used to say.  He looked as he had when I was younger, when I looked up at him always in awe and admiration and love and a huge desire to be with him all the time. 

I was so blessed with the lives of all of my grandparents when I was a child.  I knew each of them. I have separate and distinct memories of them.  My dad's parents moved to Arizona when I was nearly 4, and they came east once more when I was in the 6th grade.  I never saw my paternal  grandfather - Grandpa - again, but I did see my grandmother shortly after Grandpa passed away - Dad and I flew out to California, where they had moved, and we visited and I met other family members for the first time.

My mother's parents were constants in my young life, especially after I turned 7 and my grandfather had retired and the two of them moved up to Rhode Island and into a house on the same block as ours.  I was 22 when my grandfather passed away - so that's a huge chunk of my life with him in it.

Anyway. 

There I was on the park bench, and him sitting beside me.  And he was wearing a thin maroon windbreaker sort of jacket.  He used to walk down to Healy's News Store on Sunday mornings to get the paper.  He'd pick up two and drop one off at my parents' house before going home.  I can see him coming around the corner of Main street, newspapers rolled and tucked under an arm.... 

He walked at a purposeful, destination-bound pace.  He neither sauntered nor meandered, and I think this was true in most aspects of his life.  I remember sleeping over at my grandparents' house and wanting to get up to get the paper with him.  I knew I had to be up and ready to go on time, so I slept in my clothes, just to make sure he wouldn't leave without me.  I was young and small; he was larger than life.

When he sat down on the bench beside me, he spoke to me in his strong, London-laced voice.

And he said "I always love you."

It was a strange phrase.  Not "I will" or "I have...loved..." - but more of an "I do...."  Not "when I was alive" or "looking down from wherever I am now" - no - it was a constant, uninterrupted thing.

I woke up in tears. 

Days later, back at the house I shared with some college friends in CT, I told one of them - the one with the most religious upbringing - about the dream and asked if he believed that the dead can visit us in our sleep.  It had been so real...I could recall the feel of cool nylon jacket on my palms and fingers as I clung to him in a hug.  He felt solid.

My friend said no, something like that was more likely the work of the devil.

And since I had no way to prove otherwise, I let the subject drop.  With him.  But I didn't agree.  How could that dream be an evil thing?  How?  If anything, it was...uplifting, and joyous, and beautiful.  I didn't discuss it again.  But I still think my dear, wonderful friend was full of crap that day.

Someone larger than life leaves a huge gap in the lives of his family when he is physically no longer present.  The fallout, I think, has never stopped, though the vibrations have softened.  We all handle things differently.  Sometimes wisely, sometimes not.  Regardless, time continues on, oblivious.

I don't visit the grave where both my grandparents now lay.  Well, the physical part of them.  I don't really think they are there.  I think my grandfather, wherever he is, continues to move purposefully and with some destination in mind.  I think he visits libraries, and opera houses, and small amateur boxing clubs where the fighters are there to fight and not just for spectacle or ear-biting. 

For a long time, I kept the green vinyl recliner that had been his.  I actually had it before he died - my grandmother or my mother or someone wanted to get him a new chair.  I couldn't bear the thought of them throwing this chair away, so I claimed it. He'd had the chair when they lived in New Jersey.  When we went down there to visit, my sister and I would sit on his lap on that chair, listening to the soundtracks of "Oliver!" and "My Fair Lady." 

The chair smelled faintly of pipe tobacco.  Borkum-Riff Whiskey blend.  It came in a black and white and silver tin, and there were tall-masted sailing ships on the top and sides.  Even when the chair was no longer in his house, when he hadn't smoked a pipe in many years, especially since the heart attack, I could, if I pressed my face against the vinyl in just the right spot, still smell the tobacco.  I inhaled it like a drug. 

My husband and I have now lived in our house for just over 6 years now.  The whole house had been refurbished before we bought it - so much of it was like new.  It smelled of paint for months.

A couple of times, upstairs here, I have caught a whiff of that pipe tobacco smoke.  Unannounced, unexpected, unexplained.  (I don't have the chair any more.)  I wondered at first if maybe someone in a nearby house was smoking that same pipe tobacco, and that the wind had carried a bit of it in through an open bedroom window.

But I have dismissed that idea.  It didn't last long enough to have come from anywhere outside.  There was no more of it than a fleeting olefactory glimpse.  It was an eye blink of a smell.  There and gone.  But definitely there.

So he has stopped by, I believe, to check in on things.  And I'm sorry the books aren't in better rows, spines flush with the edge of the shelf.  And that I sometimes dog-ear the pages.  But I don't think it matters much.  I think so many of the things that matter to us on a daily basis, things we worry about and obsess about and torture ourselves with and bury - as if that will make it go away when all it does is hide if for a while - I think they don't really matter at all.  They just keep us busy.  And moving.  And distracted.  And we do them anyway.  Because we must do things.

Monday night - two nights ago - I was watching TV with my husband.  The program he had been watching ended, and I took up the remote and began to scroll through the programming guide to see what else was on.  I  am weird like this: no matter what channel we are on, I need to scroll to channel 2 - to the beginning - and proceed from there.  So I did, paging back from wherever we had been until I reached the beginning.  And there, on channel 2 - "Carreras, Domingo and Pavarotti in Concert."  I hit the info button - it was the 1990 concert in Rome.  I hit "Select" and settled in for the night.

My grandfather died in 1988 - two years before the concert took place.  I'm sure he was there, floating above in the night sky, eyes closed, index fingers twitching, perhaps, as he conducted along with Zubin Mehta.   He would do that.

I know the whole concert by heart.  I know some of the songs in Italian, or French, German, Spanish...and what I don't know that way, I "know" phonetically.  I even sing along with the orchestra.  I'm sure I'm quite annoying to be around, but I don't particularly care.

I thought about my grandfather while I watched and sang in my chair.  I thought about my Mom, his only child, and wondered if she knew this was on, and if she was watching.  The holiday season is tough on her, I know.  But then, the season is tough on so many people who have lost loved ones and must celebrate without them in a chair at the dinner table. 

I sat there and kind of waited to feel tearful.  I really did.  I waited for emotion to well up in me, perhaps while Domingo sang "e lucevan le stelle", and pour from my eyes.  I waited to feel them sting a bit, and for my nose to feel prickly as it does when I'm going to cry.  But none of that happened.  I just listened, and sang along softly, and groaned and rolled my eyes whenever the program was interrupted because the public television station was in the middle of their fundraising.  And I got annoyed with this one woman who kept pronouncing Pavarotti "pavarot-tay" - what is that?  Get over yourself dear, you sound ridiculous.

And while there was singing, I also wondered if, maybe, I might suddenly smell some pipe tobacco.  Of course that's asking a lot, I know.  He could be watching this from anywhere.  Actually, he could be hanging out with Luciano instead, discussing other great tenors of the past and which arias were their favorites.  But still...I wanted something to happen.   

I've been watching Lisa Williams / Life Among the Dead.  I thing she's fabulous.  First - because she seems genuine.  And because she's got a great smile and funky hair and a cute little blond son and an English accent.  And because I have always been interested in the other side.  And according to Lisa, yes, they do communicate - though not always in the ways you expect them to.  So you have to be open to it, in whatever way it comes.

Well, I sniffed the air - quietly, so my husband wouldn't wonder what my problem was - on and off for a while.  Nothing.  I physically tensed as I tried REALLY HARD to - I don't know - squeeze pipe smoke from thin air through sheer force of will.  Didn't work.   

During one of the breaks, when the smiling, unblinking, fund-raising folk returned, waving CDs and DVDs, I went upstairs to move our son out of our bed and into his own.  He falls asleep on our bed because if both kids go to bed in the room they share, neither one falls asleep.  So this is how we're doing this for now.  It can't go on forever.  My son is five and a half, and growing taller by the minute, it seems.  It's a production picking him up off of the bed - sound asleep, so he weighs twice what he weighs when he's awake.  I lean in and hug him to me and then bend my knees a bit and lean backward to shift his weight onto me instead of the bed, and then straighten up so I don't fall over backwards.  I lug him as gently as I can from our room down the short hall to the kids' bedroom, trying not to whack one of his dangling legs against the door frame in the process.  Then I heave him up so he's somehow horizontal in my arms and then gently - in theory - set him down on the bed.  Cover him with the sheet and blanket and comforter, kiss him on the cheek, whisper "I love you" in his ear.  Sometimes he stays right where I put him, other times he sits up and slowly lays back down against the pillow, rearranging himself into a more comfortable position than the one I dumped him in, or he sometimes  mumbles or babbles in his sleep. 

So I got him settled in and whispered "I love you" and kissed him and was on my way toward the door when he spoke - perfectly clearly, as if he was awake, except that his eyes were closed.

And he said "I always love you."

I was so focused on not waking him or his sister up that what he said didn't really hit me until I was sitting on the couch watching the last portion of the concert, where all three tenors are on stage for that one grand and glorious and fun medly of opera and musical theatre and folk songs. 

And then I suddenly thought - huh?  What did he say? 

He said "I always love you." 

Not "I will..." or "I have .... loved..."  - future or past...

It was more like "I do" - something constant, in the present - in the ever-present tense.  The always.

And I watched the remainder of that concert lying on the couch, snuggled under a blanket, smiling.  I felt...happy.  I didn't feel sad at all.  My nose refused to prickle; my eyes would not cry. 

And - that's a good thing, I think. 

I don't believe we are supposed to cry forever.  I think we are supposed to live our lives - really live them - not wasting a single moment if possible.  I think that is the best way to honor those we have lost.  "Every day an adventure," as Grandad was wont to say.  Our time here is precious.  It's wrong to waste a minute of it.  I think we are supposed to love and cherish those around us - hug our loved ones tightly - and work hard and play hard and laugh and yes, remember, and move purposefully toward our destinations, wherever and whatever they may be.

Sure, maybe my son saying what he said, that way, that night, was a coincidence. 

But I don't believe in coincidences.

I do, however, believe love is endless.

Always.

 

Do Intentions Count?

Well, I sincerely meant to write about either springerle or pfeffernusse last night, but clearly that didn't happen.  After the kids' swim class I baked off all the springerle that had been sitting out since I pressed and cut them the night before.  And they came out better than I expected, some of them.  That's pretty typical for me - I think "oh this is the worst I've ever done" and then, well, no, not yet.  Keep trying, you'll hit your worst eventually.

And then after all the cookies were baked and cooled (and a couple sampled, because, of course, you have to) and packed away, I had dinner and watched a bit of TV with my husband and then got sidetracked by what I was watching, and next thing I knew it was nearly time to go to bed.

So I do apologize.

And this morning - just not enough time to do a recipe justice, so yet again, I am putting off the writing.  Tonight I will roll out and cut AND bake the lebkuchen, so not sure if I'll get to write anything tonight, either.  But Wednesday night I will NOT be baking anything (I think) and hopefully I can catch up on all this.

In the meantime, here's a picture of a lot of pans of springerle waiting to be baked:

Well, except for the top two pans on that rack.  The top one is an experiment - two nations merging: lebkuchen biscotti.  More on that when I write about lebkuchen.  And below that - the pfeffernusse that, when I took the picture, hadn't been baked yet.  So this must have been Sunday night....

Anyway, thus began my baking.  So much more to do, and so little time because I'm stuck at work all day staring at my computer screen with very little to do now that I've trained some other people to do what I do.  I am not sure what my purpose is there, now, but apparently it is to take up space.

I do that pretty damn well.