Mardi gras in exurbia…it’s just not the same.
In the early 90s, I would have been following Zulu and Rex down Saint Charles after a week of nonstop partying. Today it was free pancakes at IHOP with and old friend (and the ever present Coco). I had already promised Henry pancakes for supper in honor of Shrove Tuesday so wound up having them twice. This reminds me of something I read in a Boris Akunin novel about pancake week in Russia, which apparently features blini, bonfires, performing bears and group fistfights (??). Must get around to checking that out one of these days.
I checked Wikipedia and discovered that pancakes (or some kind of doughnuts or pastry depending on where you are) became traditional foods for mardi gras as a way for folks to use up rich/fatty ingredients before Lent. This was back when people routinely gave up meat, dairy and eggs during the 40 day fast.
I do like vegetables and I like the idea of simplifying, but not sure I could manage the full on Lenten fast. I was considering giving up chocolate or alcohol (which I’ve almost given up anyway) until Christian had a better idea: whereas the first months of 2009 have been rough in many respects and, well, let’s just say that romance has not been on the front burner, we’ve decided to give up celibacy for Lent.
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
Starfish and Coffee
Have been reflecting a bit on my Prince dream (see previous post) since my friend Jake (whose wife Rachel was featured) asked me what I thought it was all about. My informal analysis, I’m sorry to say, has induced me to revisit the 80s, a period I would much rather forget altogether. And yet, somehow, I’m pretty much confronted with it on a daily basis lately. This undoubtedly has something to do with the fact that I (grudgingly) live in a town 20 minutes from where I grew up. I run into people I went to high school with way more than I would like. I even encountered my prom date on a preschool fieldtrip last fall. It turns out he lives a few miles away and has a kid in another class at Henry’s school. I have to say I was a little nauseated when I made the connection. It wasn’t really about him per se. He’s a perfectly nice guy, and there wasn’t anything serious between us. I just don’t want to be reminded (yet again) of that chapter of my personal history. Facebook, by the way, does not help either. I can only thank God that, so far, no one has posted any embarrassing pictures of me from that most horrible decade (the ever lovin’, I should note, has not been so lucky).
Anyway, Prince, in my opinion, is quite possibly the best thing to have come out of the 80s (besides my baby sister, that is). And I can’t think of Prince without thinking of my old friend Kim. She pretty much single handedly saved me from total geekdom in high school. A year ahead of me, she was a glamorous badass who took pity on me and started driving me to school when I was a sophomore. She convinced me to quit band (absolutely the key to leaving one’s loser status behind) and introduced me to Bartles and Jaymes. I knew about Prince before, of course, but didn’t truly become a convert until I heard Sign o’ the Times in her room in 1987. Kim now lives in Ohio. She’s a former television newsgirl, now a pharmaceutical salesperson, with a devoted husband and three gorgeous kids. We haven’t stayed close but were at each other’s weddings and are occasionally in touch by email. She’s still a knockout, of course.
So, how does Rachel fit into things? She and Jake live in NYC. They got together after I had left town, and I’ve only had a chance to spend time with her on a handful of occasions over the past few years. She’s an interesting woman, with a PhD in history and a great laugh. Certainly someone I’d like to get to know better. I have concluded that my subconscious has singled her out as the kind of gal I’d be hanging out with if I still lived in New York. So you see, it all comes down to my quest for female friendship. So there it is. Eat your heart out Carl Jung.
Anyway, Prince, in my opinion, is quite possibly the best thing to have come out of the 80s (besides my baby sister, that is). And I can’t think of Prince without thinking of my old friend Kim. She pretty much single handedly saved me from total geekdom in high school. A year ahead of me, she was a glamorous badass who took pity on me and started driving me to school when I was a sophomore. She convinced me to quit band (absolutely the key to leaving one’s loser status behind) and introduced me to Bartles and Jaymes. I knew about Prince before, of course, but didn’t truly become a convert until I heard Sign o’ the Times in her room in 1987. Kim now lives in Ohio. She’s a former television newsgirl, now a pharmaceutical salesperson, with a devoted husband and three gorgeous kids. We haven’t stayed close but were at each other’s weddings and are occasionally in touch by email. She’s still a knockout, of course.
So, how does Rachel fit into things? She and Jake live in NYC. They got together after I had left town, and I’ve only had a chance to spend time with her on a handful of occasions over the past few years. She’s an interesting woman, with a PhD in history and a great laugh. Certainly someone I’d like to get to know better. I have concluded that my subconscious has singled her out as the kind of gal I’d be hanging out with if I still lived in New York. So you see, it all comes down to my quest for female friendship. So there it is. Eat your heart out Carl Jung.
Sunday, February 22, 2009
On the Mend
Boy wonder is on the mend, bouncing off the walls as usual. Mama, on the other hand, has been a basket case thanks to sleep deprivation, general anxiety and the challenge of trying to entertain a restless preschooler and an increasingly independent toddler without leaving the house.
Hank’s procedure went smoothly, but the past few days have been grueling all the same. We had chosen a hospital around 40 miles away, and our admit time was scheduled for 5:30 am on Thursday. So, at the suggestion of our surgeon’s office, we decided to spend the night before in a guesthouse adjacent to the hospital operated by the ladies auxiliary. This turned out to be a mistake. While it was nice getting the commute out of the way the night before, we had failed to consider the many drawbacks of sleeping in a strange place. Henry was out of his element and going nuts until almost 11. With my anxiety about the surgery, plus my first night ever away from my baby girl (sleeping peacefully at home with grandma), I couldn’t get to sleep until 3:30 am…about an hour before the alarm went off. Right in the middle of a nice dream in which an old friend’s new bride was showing me her collection of Prince albums.
We did make it to the hospital on time where we were promptly admitted and watched cartoons on PBS until they came to wheel him away. The doctors would only let one parent stay in the room while they put him under, and we agreed that Christian would certainly handle it better, so I bailed for the waiting room. After an hour or so, they called us back to the recovery area where we were met by a screaming, disoriented three year old. (As it turns out, little kids are a mess coming out of anesthesia. Fortunately, I had been warned about this--on facebook-- by a former colleague whose son had had a broken arm repaired a few days earlier.) We spent another hour in recovery with a very surly patient, thanks to the anesthesia hangover and having had nothing to eat or drink since the night before. And then they sent us on our way, with just a tiny wound covered with a bandage. There are, by the way, no stitches. Just some crazy space age tape called steristrips which hold the skin together.
So we headed back to Lovetown dazed and exhausted. On the way home, I officially put myself on the list of contenders for the worst mother ever award: we decided to stop at the drugstore on the way home to pick up the opiate-laced elixir recommended for a painless recovery. The plan was for me to run in while the boys waited in the car, but Henry insisted on coming in to pee. I carried him in to the store but let him walk out of the bathroom on his own, upon which he immediately fell and hit his head on the floor. So there I was, haggard and bleary-eyed, with a screaming child, filling a prescription for codeine.
Coco, meanwhile, was apparently having a blast with my mother. I’m not at all surprised since they are both party girls (as evidenced by the empty mini-bottle of Sambuca Christian discovered on his bedside table).
Hank spent the next two days drugged and watching videos I had checked out of the library (Christian has now become a devoted fan of Miffy the bunny). But by Saturday, he was ready to rumble, barreling through the house and finding new ways to push my buttons. When I refused to give him a cookie before bed last night, he got a devilish look in his eye and hollered, “I’m going to push on my hernia. Push! Push!”
Overtired and housebound once again (just when we were finally starting to regain some semblance of normalcy), I had a little breakdown yesterday when I convinced myself that Coco had swallowed a couple of refrigerator magnets. The boy, who had lost the bloody things in the first place and stubbornly refused to help me look for them, seemed to find my agitation pretty amusing. However, after a costly medical procedure, throttling him seemed ill advised, so I changed strategies and resorted to bribery, upon which the magnets were located in short order (stuck to the leg of one of our chrome kitchen chairs).
Hank’s procedure went smoothly, but the past few days have been grueling all the same. We had chosen a hospital around 40 miles away, and our admit time was scheduled for 5:30 am on Thursday. So, at the suggestion of our surgeon’s office, we decided to spend the night before in a guesthouse adjacent to the hospital operated by the ladies auxiliary. This turned out to be a mistake. While it was nice getting the commute out of the way the night before, we had failed to consider the many drawbacks of sleeping in a strange place. Henry was out of his element and going nuts until almost 11. With my anxiety about the surgery, plus my first night ever away from my baby girl (sleeping peacefully at home with grandma), I couldn’t get to sleep until 3:30 am…about an hour before the alarm went off. Right in the middle of a nice dream in which an old friend’s new bride was showing me her collection of Prince albums.
We did make it to the hospital on time where we were promptly admitted and watched cartoons on PBS until they came to wheel him away. The doctors would only let one parent stay in the room while they put him under, and we agreed that Christian would certainly handle it better, so I bailed for the waiting room. After an hour or so, they called us back to the recovery area where we were met by a screaming, disoriented three year old. (As it turns out, little kids are a mess coming out of anesthesia. Fortunately, I had been warned about this--on facebook-- by a former colleague whose son had had a broken arm repaired a few days earlier.) We spent another hour in recovery with a very surly patient, thanks to the anesthesia hangover and having had nothing to eat or drink since the night before. And then they sent us on our way, with just a tiny wound covered with a bandage. There are, by the way, no stitches. Just some crazy space age tape called steristrips which hold the skin together.
So we headed back to Lovetown dazed and exhausted. On the way home, I officially put myself on the list of contenders for the worst mother ever award: we decided to stop at the drugstore on the way home to pick up the opiate-laced elixir recommended for a painless recovery. The plan was for me to run in while the boys waited in the car, but Henry insisted on coming in to pee. I carried him in to the store but let him walk out of the bathroom on his own, upon which he immediately fell and hit his head on the floor. So there I was, haggard and bleary-eyed, with a screaming child, filling a prescription for codeine.
Coco, meanwhile, was apparently having a blast with my mother. I’m not at all surprised since they are both party girls (as evidenced by the empty mini-bottle of Sambuca Christian discovered on his bedside table).
Hank spent the next two days drugged and watching videos I had checked out of the library (Christian has now become a devoted fan of Miffy the bunny). But by Saturday, he was ready to rumble, barreling through the house and finding new ways to push my buttons. When I refused to give him a cookie before bed last night, he got a devilish look in his eye and hollered, “I’m going to push on my hernia. Push! Push!”
Overtired and housebound once again (just when we were finally starting to regain some semblance of normalcy), I had a little breakdown yesterday when I convinced myself that Coco had swallowed a couple of refrigerator magnets. The boy, who had lost the bloody things in the first place and stubbornly refused to help me look for them, seemed to find my agitation pretty amusing. However, after a costly medical procedure, throttling him seemed ill advised, so I changed strategies and resorted to bribery, upon which the magnets were located in short order (stuck to the leg of one of our chrome kitchen chairs).
Monday, February 16, 2009
Powers of Deduction
Found out a few weeks ago that poor Hank has a hernia. Feeling a little guilty about all the heavy lifting we make him do around the farm…Actually, it’s a genetic weakness (that would be on Christian’s side, of course). It doesn’t seem to bother him much—just kind of pops out whenever he gets worked up about something. However, can apparently cause problems if untreated so we’ve scheduled him for surgery later this week. Henry has read Curious George Goes to the Hospital and seems to be taking the whole thing in stride. But mama’s biting her nails, mostly because of the general anesthesia thing. I’ve never been under the knife myself, thank heaven, and have done a pretty good job of staying out of hospitals. Even had both kids without medication, but that’s another story.
Of course, this had to come up not long after we made the switch to a high deductible HSA-type insurance policy. This is the kind of crummy plan that Newt Gingrich and his ilk are always touting (for everyone but themselves) which covers preventive care and anything over $5000. The idea is that you’re supposed to put an amount equivalent to your deductible into a dedicated savings account. Of course, we never got around to that part so we’ll have to come up with some cash. (It’s hard to get the hospital to give us a figure, but I’m guessing it’s going to run us a couple thousand all together). Fortunately, it’s an outpatient procedure, which will keep things a little less exorbitant. And the hospital seems fairly open to letting us pay in installments, so won’t be pawning the engagement ring just yet. It’s no fun being under-insured, but we just couldn’t keep shelling out $1000+ a month for a traditional plan. Self-employment can be a drag. Oh well, at least we have something and are not yet reduced to seeking care at emergency rooms and public health clinics with all the illegal immigrants. I am, btw, on the lookout for a government job with fat bennies, humane hours and a short commute. Not overly optimistic with local agencies cutting thousands of jobs and a 3-year hole in my (not really all that stellar to begin with) resume. Hmmm…I’m going to get it together one of these days, I swear.
Of course, this had to come up not long after we made the switch to a high deductible HSA-type insurance policy. This is the kind of crummy plan that Newt Gingrich and his ilk are always touting (for everyone but themselves) which covers preventive care and anything over $5000. The idea is that you’re supposed to put an amount equivalent to your deductible into a dedicated savings account. Of course, we never got around to that part so we’ll have to come up with some cash. (It’s hard to get the hospital to give us a figure, but I’m guessing it’s going to run us a couple thousand all together). Fortunately, it’s an outpatient procedure, which will keep things a little less exorbitant. And the hospital seems fairly open to letting us pay in installments, so won’t be pawning the engagement ring just yet. It’s no fun being under-insured, but we just couldn’t keep shelling out $1000+ a month for a traditional plan. Self-employment can be a drag. Oh well, at least we have something and are not yet reduced to seeking care at emergency rooms and public health clinics with all the illegal immigrants. I am, btw, on the lookout for a government job with fat bennies, humane hours and a short commute. Not overly optimistic with local agencies cutting thousands of jobs and a 3-year hole in my (not really all that stellar to begin with) resume. Hmmm…I’m going to get it together one of these days, I swear.
Sunday, February 15, 2009
Love and Indigestion
One of my social networking connections (someone I barely knew in high school whose friend request I accepted mostly out of a desire to avoid generating any kind of bad facebook karma) appears to be going through a virtual divorce. I recently opened my homepage to discover a back and forth among this woman and some other gals from hillbilly high on the subject of her romantic turmoil. Her husband, it seems, recently listed himself as single on facebook (ouch), throwing her into a state of despair and leading her to question the foundation of their marriage. I’m not at all clear on the back story here, but I should note that (as far as I can tell) we are talking about a couple of nouveau-bohemians who run a tattoo parlor in a resort town in Mexico. The whole thing made me feel a little queasy and voyeuristic. But she obviously wants it out there, so I’m kind of looking at it like a mini soap opera with no commercials. The heartache of a new age diva has me feeling pretty grateful about my tame little life here on the farm.
Not that everything’s in a constant state of peachiness. Au contraire: parenting and money issues have certainly taken their toll on my relationship with the old man. The spark is still there but often damn hard to capture through the murky haze of raising young children and all the petty bullshit that seems to go along with running a household. I often feel that family life is a long, hard slog interspersed with moments of great warmth and intense joy. We do our best to give our offspring what they need, while trying to remember (and maybe even occasionally recapture) what it was like when we were just a couple of carefree lovebirds (not that fighting wasn’t one of our hobbies before we had kids….). Like housewives through time out of mind, I so often find myself resentful of my spouse’s opportunities to spend quality time in the outside world. On top of that, for an Obama mama, being married to an Obama disser is a little taste of bitter tea every day. Overall, however, I would say that the aggravations of married life are far outweighed by the rewards.
Anyway, we are in many ways pretty conventional around here. But I certainly wouldn’t say we’re bound by convention. For example, we don’t really do Valentines Day. I’m not really a flowers and chocolate kind of gal. I mean, I like chocolate, but I’d rather just have a little brick of 70% to gnaw on than a heart shaped box of buttercreams. I stopped wearing perfume when Henry was born so that it wouldn’t interfere with the pheromones related to breastfeeding. I’m averse to giving and receiving useless crap and, at this point, I don’t want to shell out the cash for something really good. And greeting cards are, in my opinion, pretty much pointless. I’ve never enjoyed the restaurant scene on V-day—fighting the crowds for overpriced, mediocre food is not my idea of fun. Besides, we just had a date on Monday night (half price burger night at a local pub) and both of us ended up hung over after a beer and a half each. I’m usually up for putting together a nice meal myself. However, I had already outdone myself with a fabulous dinner for Christian’s birthday earlier in the week (roast pork tenderloin with plum sauce, potato gratin, and savoy cabbage sautéed with bacon) and was simply too exhausted to do it again. So Valentines in Lovetown consisted of leftover birthday cake and Merle Haggard on iTunes. And because it’s us, a beastly fight, resolved, with great effort, before bedtime.
Not that everything’s in a constant state of peachiness. Au contraire: parenting and money issues have certainly taken their toll on my relationship with the old man. The spark is still there but often damn hard to capture through the murky haze of raising young children and all the petty bullshit that seems to go along with running a household. I often feel that family life is a long, hard slog interspersed with moments of great warmth and intense joy. We do our best to give our offspring what they need, while trying to remember (and maybe even occasionally recapture) what it was like when we were just a couple of carefree lovebirds (not that fighting wasn’t one of our hobbies before we had kids….). Like housewives through time out of mind, I so often find myself resentful of my spouse’s opportunities to spend quality time in the outside world. On top of that, for an Obama mama, being married to an Obama disser is a little taste of bitter tea every day. Overall, however, I would say that the aggravations of married life are far outweighed by the rewards.
Anyway, we are in many ways pretty conventional around here. But I certainly wouldn’t say we’re bound by convention. For example, we don’t really do Valentines Day. I’m not really a flowers and chocolate kind of gal. I mean, I like chocolate, but I’d rather just have a little brick of 70% to gnaw on than a heart shaped box of buttercreams. I stopped wearing perfume when Henry was born so that it wouldn’t interfere with the pheromones related to breastfeeding. I’m averse to giving and receiving useless crap and, at this point, I don’t want to shell out the cash for something really good. And greeting cards are, in my opinion, pretty much pointless. I’ve never enjoyed the restaurant scene on V-day—fighting the crowds for overpriced, mediocre food is not my idea of fun. Besides, we just had a date on Monday night (half price burger night at a local pub) and both of us ended up hung over after a beer and a half each. I’m usually up for putting together a nice meal myself. However, I had already outdone myself with a fabulous dinner for Christian’s birthday earlier in the week (roast pork tenderloin with plum sauce, potato gratin, and savoy cabbage sautéed with bacon) and was simply too exhausted to do it again. So Valentines in Lovetown consisted of leftover birthday cake and Merle Haggard on iTunes. And because it’s us, a beastly fight, resolved, with great effort, before bedtime.
Saturday, February 7, 2009
Blue Skies and Green Thumbs
Finally a little sunshine on this balmy mid-February day--a taste of spring and a little light in my weary soul. Ended the day with an empyreal late afternoon hike during which Henry jumped as high as he could with arms outstretched (trying to catch the moon). In other news from the funny farm:
Little Co is working on her walking and talking. She’s also started quacking. In addition, she is preparing to take on Joey Chestnutt and the Tsunami at Nathan’s annual hot dog eating contest (will they keep doing that now that Coney Island is being turned into a mall?). She wolfed down two turkey dogs in short order last night, immediately following a rather impressive pretzel binge. Henry, meanwhile, has become a You Tube aficionado. It started innocently enough with Christian showing him a few music videos (old blues guys mostly) and such. Then, during our weeks of misery, I discovered that some naughty copyright infringers had put up the UK Thomas the Tank Engine Series and shamelessly cranked that up to avoid pulling my hair out. His latest fixation is watching people’s random trainspotting videos—no music, no narration—just minute after minute of trains. Anyway, it was all under control until the boy wonder learned how to double click, which gets him to some interesting places when I’m not looking.
A month into 2009, I finally got a new desk planner. I have to say, I’ve been feeling lost without one, despite the fact that my life has been rather excruciatingly uneventful lately. Last year’s is mostly full of lists of mundane tasks (God forbid the bath mats should not get washed…) and things I need to look up on the internet, although I did write down some of Coco’s early words and some of the sweet and entertaining things that come out of Hank’s mouth.
The bread baking is still going and inspired me to reproduce a heavenly miso-tahini spread from Angelica Kitchen, my favorite vegan restaurant in New York. I’m not a vegan by any stretch, but always found this place to be phenomenal. Found the (very simple) recipe on an interesting blog called Meal By Meal. To balance out the sesame and soy, another new favorite has been meatloaf muffins, courtesy of the brilliant (if somewhat disturbing) Rachael Ray.
And finally, I have at last managed to crack open a charming gardening book Christian’s Aunt Polly gave me for Christmas in 2007. It’s called How to Have a Green Thumb without an Aching Back and is a memoir/how-to published in 1950 by an amazingly hip woman born in the 19th century. Polly is a true domestic goddess and gardener extraordinaire and says that this book set her on the path to her current state of gardening glory. I’m hoping it will help me start kicking some vegetal ass in the growing season to come—miracles do happen, right?
Tuesday, February 3, 2009
A Little Perspective from Our Far Flung Correspondents
From what I’ve been reading in Libération, Madagascar appears to be falling apart (not that you’d know this from any US news outlet). Apparently, a power struggle between the sitting president and the mayor of the capital city has led to rioting and at least 68 deaths. This has me thinking about my old friend Corinne, who was a colleague of mine when I worked for the French government in NYC at the turn of the millennium. She’s a lovely Malgasy-Chinese blend who spent much of her youth in Europe and landed in New York after winning a green card lottery. We hit it off as soon as I arrived at the trade office, and she remains one of my favorite coworkers ever. This despite our dissimilarities: she’s tiny and reserved, I’m statuesque and imposing. We never failed to crack each other up. There was this running joke we had which involved using the phrase faire les antiquaires (go antiquing) as a euphemism for sex. We also had endless giggles making fun of Corinne’s boss, an airheaded French aristocrat with atrocious fashion sense and a coiffure that would have been perfect on a poodle. Sigh. Almost makes me miss the entertainment value of office politics.
Corinne wound up leaving NYC a year or so after I did. She and her partner now live in northern France and have a little girl who’s 9 months older than Henry. We had lost touch for a couple of years but recently reconnected through facebook. Anyway, she has lots of family on the Grande Ile (including her mother who lives alone in Antananarivo) and is, of course, very concerned. Along with rampant violence, the big worries are food shortages and skyrocketing inflation, she reports. Yet another reason to stop whining about my own minor tribulations.
Corinne wound up leaving NYC a year or so after I did. She and her partner now live in northern France and have a little girl who’s 9 months older than Henry. We had lost touch for a couple of years but recently reconnected through facebook. Anyway, she has lots of family on the Grande Ile (including her mother who lives alone in Antananarivo) and is, of course, very concerned. Along with rampant violence, the big worries are food shortages and skyrocketing inflation, she reports. Yet another reason to stop whining about my own minor tribulations.
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