Birthday Girl

I didn’t expect much from this birthday. Things have been rather turmoily as of late, money tight, and 39 other reasons. So it was a rather pleasant surprise that this was one of the best birthdays I’ve ever had.

And not just because of all the birthday prizes. And they were fantastic this year– my longed-for iPod* in Jolly Rancher green from Robby and money for a purse from Momma (I’ve told Robby repeatedly, when a girl is this age and married and needs a change there are three choices– 1. A new purse. 2. Chop off hair. or 3. Get divorced. The last two didn’t appeal to me– leaving him not much of a choice perhaps?). Trish and the girlies gave me iTunes money, gymnastics tuition for JackRabbit, and a CD burned with a bunch of songs I’ve been wanting. Padre and Lady bought Jacky his bike and me a beautiful bowl that is all mine in the morning. (It’s really going to glam up my oatmeal.) And Chris and Susan feted me with an unbelievably delicious birthday dinner (my first Horseshoe!) and chess pie and a box of Lush. (Last night, for those of you curious, I soaked in the tub that was Lushy and pink and heavenly.)

Momma made clafouti, Lady made mousse, and there was that chess pie from Cinncinnati that nearly sang when the box was opened. I-yi-yi.

It was a three day celebration. Not bad for an old girl.

*The iPod had me wracked with guilt for about 12 hours. By then I’d downloaded a quarter of our CD collection and was so amazed by it’s abilities that I punted the guilt for devotion. (Of course, at lunch with my sister, 5 hours in and still guilt laden, I had to ask, “How do you turn it off? Where’s the off switch.” After she mocked me she kindly showed me how…)

And oy! The free NPR podcasts! I have 10 episodes of Wait, Wait Don’t Tell Me stockpiled. (Why doesn’t Prairie Home Companion have podcasts??) Suddenly the initial cost for the iPod itself no longer mattered when I could finally listen to an entire episode of WWDTM without missing chunks. (I don’t listen to much radio unless I’m in the car. I don’t tend to have a lot of extended driving trips on Saturday when NPR pulls out all it’s stops.)

And really it’s not the gifts themselves– it’s the thought behind them– it’s Robby knowing how much I hate walking unless I’m with Susan or Lady… and how both of them won’t be here this summer. It’s everyone around me knowing all of my favorite things. (Lady tried to get me more Mallomars but it’s too late in the year. Still– the thought that she’d tried made even my toes happy.) It’s the silly extravaganze of bubbly baths and Goo Goo Clusters (okay, confession… Lady gave me a box of those and I didn’t mention it above because I was going to hide them from Robby but now I feel bad about that…) or the promise of a brand new, uncluttered purse to organize in.

My first iTunes purchase was The Proclaimer’s Sunshine on Leith album that I’d lent to a coworker 6 years ago. She was fired a few days later and I never got the CD back. It’s one of my favorites. I’ve mourned the loss of it in my life all these years since. How grand to have it back again! And the Sam Philips song from my favorite Gilmore Girls episode.

Anyway. It was a great birthday. And a good way to kick off this last year of thirtysomething.

Swarming words

I get emails from some of you that ask, “Why no blogging lately?” 

My hands get tied up. Sometimes there is too much going on to nail down any of the thoughts– and really, the best thoughts are the ones I can’t put in print. It’s frustrating. And it’s what kept me from journalism school. Afraid of hurting this person or that with words. (Particularly when it’s so easy to do.)

I can hear the words buzzing sometimes. If I sit still too long they are there, humming as they gather themselves and hover just out of my reach. If I pick one out then there is a flood of others that follow. I have to shake my head clear of them all and reach for something to distract– Word Challenge on Facebook, a book (The Madonnas of Leningrad), or a silly thing on television (hello new season of Deadliest Catch! Ahoy Cap’ts Sig, Phil, et al.)

I clean out closets, sort the plastic containers in the kitchen, search for new recipes. And all the while the words are still sounding their buzzing in my ears.

Which sounds crazy, I know. Virginia-with-her-pockets-full-of-rocks crazy. Or Sylvia-with-her-head-in-the-oven crazy. (Did Virginia think she could escape the words as though they were bees? Slip under the cold water and be free of them? Did Sylvia try to scorch them? or, like Lorelai said on Gilmore Girls, was she just cold?)

At church I’m partnered with one of the kids in the confirmation class. I lucked out and got a great kid. She and I are supposed to read the Gospel of Luke. Reading it straight through is not exactly a comfort. We’re about a third of the way in and in the middle of all the “leave your stuff/family/life as you know it and follow me…” directives. And Jesus, in Luke, only seems to speak in Parables… which, forgive me for saying, must have been incredibly annoying to the disciples.
“Hey, Jesus– we’re running into town to pick up pita sandwiches– what sounds good to you?”
“My brothers, if a man at a wedding feast is sowing seeds in a field…”
“Uh, yeah. So… did you want turkey or cheese?”

Still. It keeps the buzzing at bay. Makes me a little calmer for an hour or two while I marvel at the ability of my confirmation kid to pull out the meaning dead on nearly every time.

I make pots of good tea– or splurge for large Iced Chai at the little coffee place downtown. I savor the chocolate covered almonds we bought last week. I take great delight in Jack’s silly songs that he makes up on the way to school. Snuggle the small baby of our dear friends. Slip into a good book or imagine myself in London with the latest issue of Hello magazine. Stretch out the last of my Christmas Lush box. Take long walks with my pal around our lovely, finally greening park. Curl up with Robby at the end of the day when the baby monitor is only static and the little black dog is softly snoring on Rob’s outstretched legs.

Eventually I’ll wrangle the words back into sentences. Get them to line up into paragraphs even… for now it’s enough to hope that maybe they’ll make something akin to honey if I leave them alone.

Good Friday Passover

Last night we drove past our town’s only Jewish temple. The parking lot was unusually full with cars and people carrying in casserole dishes. We remembered it was the first night of Passover– so figured there must be a big Seder dinner.

Me: Let’s crash the Seder dinner.
Robby: Sure. Yeah. We’ll fit right in with our United Methodist Camp sweatshirts on.
Me (looking down): Oh.

Last week we went to one of the Catholic fish frys. There are about a dozen different ones within a 10 mile radius to choose from… our pals, Chris and Susan, were headed to the fry at St. Mary’s so we met them there. I’ve been to several of the local frys– hit this parish’s version and that’s… I was excited to see the basement of St. Mary’s. It felt illicite. Sneaky Protestants.

Susan, our only true Catholic, ignored our suggestions for dinner conversation. (Topics included “I think it’s just a representation of the body and blood of Christ” and birth control.) Chris and I were sure if we could just throw in a few references to the Pope we’d fit right in and not be detected for our Protestant stance. Bring on the papists! We were speaking their language.

Me: I really admire your framed 11 by 14 inch photograph of the Pope in your dining room. It’s really nice.
Chris: Thank you. We love the Pope.

The fry was a good one– we took over a big, round table with our four adult selves and the littler bodies of our Jack and their baby. The boys were a little disappointed that the beverage selection did not include beer while Susan and I were delighted at the big pieces of three layered cake (pink frosting flowers!). The servers put steamed broccoli on Jack’s plate and I figured, well, more vegetables for me– when the little man surprised us all and ate the spears with relish. Wow. Years from now there will be pilgrimages to St. Mary’s basement made by mothers and fathers of toddlers who observe the Miracle of the Broccoli. (He also enjoyed his fried “chicken”… you know the old saying, Trust the Gorton’s Chicken Man…SHHHHHH.)

I would have made a great Catholic. And a pretty good Jew, too. I’m not a great Methodist– but I’ll work on it. In the meantime maybe I can crash a Rammadan midnight feast or a pilgrimage to Mecca.

True Grits

My pal Wallis is cooking up a new venture. He’s a displaced southern boy living in man’s body in Michigan… and he yearns for the flavors of his youth. That yearning has benefits for the rest of us. Robby and I, for example, usually get a breakfast or two a year out of his valiant attempts at recreating the perfect southern brunch… These magical meals bring about platters of thick bacon, flaky biscuits, savory sausagey gravy, perfectly fried eggs (it is the only time I’ve ever seen Robby dig into fried eggs. He shuns them everywhere else in life– but there, at Wallis’ table, he tucks into them as though they are his favorite food…)– and always, always, there are grits.

I love grits. I came to them via my parents and grandparents– all of us bonifide northern-midwesterners. My mother’s father called them mush and I couldn’t ever decide which I liked better– the first morning’s version with yellow pools of butter and great lashings of maple syrup– or the second morning’s version where the left overs were fried into cakes with crispy edges.

My parents were big on grits, too. Years ago, before The Cracker Barrel restaurants made it this far north, my father would announce, late on a Friday night, “Let’s drive to Kentucky for breakfast”– and we would. Kentucky, being a border state, didn’t shudder at my request for maple syrup. And TCB had enchantingly tiny glass bottles of maple syrup that made it all the more fun…

For years I ate my grits with maple syrup. The same way I ate my Cream of Wheat and Cream of Rice. My mother rotated the Quaker Quick grits with the aforementioned cereals on winter mornings. The bowls, if left unrinsed, would have a ring of steely grit to them.

And then, in college, I met Wallis. And his utter horror that I would slander his good grits with syrup nearly undone any good I’d managed to do with words in our poetry class. I learned to butter and salt my grits. Pepper them even. And ate them this way ever after.

I don’t make grits often. I relish the servings that I get at Wally’s table and the bowls of cheesy grit goodness that our Georgian Uncle Pope makes when we visit. I have, in my fridge door, a tin of really good grits– the kind they use at Zingermans and very, very rarely, I’ll go to the trouble of making them myself but I usually end up with a scorched pan.

Last week we had a grits feast courtesy of Wallis. We did an un-blind taste test with several different varieties. Most of them impressive in their pettigree. Words like stone ground, organic, milled were thrown about while we sniffed and poked and tasted. Really, it was almost as obnoxious as those wine snobs you encounter occasionally. Each of us straining to detect and pronounce the nuance of each speciman.

The results were hilarious. We all liked one variety with almost identical scores. We pronounced the winning grits to be “creamy” and “consistent”… and yet those were the 5-minute Quick ones.

For me, this makes sense. I grew up on the Quick varieties. It’s all that was available above the Mason/Dixon in the 1970s.. but it was funny to see the shocked look on the face of my southern pal Christy– it didn’t seem right to her or me.

On the other flavors we were divided. I learned that I am not a good focus group panelist. I get swayed by worrying out that I will offend the person next or across me if I disagree with their answer. And I second guess myself. I also should have scored my grits based on how I would actually eat them– with butter and salt– and not how they are “naked.” This is why I always score terribly on standardized tests. In all earnesty I start to feel bad for the wrong answers and figure out a way to justify using them. (And yet I don’t have this same level of empathy for, say, some of my boneheaded coworkers…)

By the fourth bowl of grits I was sick wondering whether or not I would like the last one or this one better with bacon or eggs or toast or on the side of a really good steak… Again. Put me on the packaging panel. Or the marketing brainstorming– where I can’t do damage. (By the way– I think “True Grits” would make a really good name. But that’s just me.)

We had, in the end, a marvelous time– as we always do at Wally’s table. Katie’s pots of tea and Wally’s pans of grits combined in our bellies to leave us sated and fat and sloshy. And happy.

Regardless of the grits you choose– make sure they have the proper accompaniments– excellent company and a great deal of laughter. It’s the only real way to enjoy them.

Insomnia

Can’t sleep tonight.

I’ve done all the stuff to welcome sleep– drank some milk, took a bath, read some, facebooked some… but it’s no use. I’m wide awake.

So here are some random thoughts:

1. Read any good books lately? I just finished Geraldine Brooks’ People of the Book. It’s good. Not as good as her Year of Wonders but good. I wonder why her stuff isn’t optioned for movies.

2. I’m down to my last box of Mallomars. And I’m getting nervous about it. My Mother-in-Law gave me two cases of them for Christmas. There’s nothing like a good Mallomar and orange juice.  A little chocolate, a little marshmallow, a little juice– ah, bliss. My bliss, unfortunately is about to run out.  Stupid midwest.

3. I’m wanderlusty lately. I want to pack us all up and go someplace for a few days or weeks. Live out of a well-packed suitcase and eat new things, see new places, return home sated.

4. On Sunday night, also unable to sleep (stupid time change?) I found Mark & Olly on television. Two british men who go off on tangent adventures because they can. The series has them living with an Amazon tribe in some far part of Peru. I watched two and a half episodes that night– this is how I fell into the trap of loving Deadliest Catch, too– but it’s interesting TV.

5. Jack’s vocabulary has exploded again. This time it’s all the funny little in-between words… adjectives and adverbs and the ilk. He used the word “also” today. It broke me up. He’s delighted in our recognition of his new words. And he’s a great mimic. He’ll try out phrases he hears from us or his movies. This week we’ve watched A Charlie Brown Christmas a few times so there is a lot of Linus, Charlie, and Snoopy coming out.

6. I can’t beat Robby in Scrabble. Or Lexulous rather. We play it on Facebook. It’s disconcerting to lose to him when it is a matter of words and not numbers… but he’s a much better strategist than I am. My problem is I get so delighted in discovering a word I forget to pay attention to what might be more advantageous. Sometimes the two letter words get more points than the 7 letter words. It’s frustrating, too, because Lexulous circumvents the rules of Scrabble. I grew up on the rules of Scrabble– my grandmother was unyielding when it came to those rules. And there was no use of the Official Scrabble Dictionary unless there was a challenge thrown– you had to rely on the words you knew and could defend– not thumbing through the dictionary to find a word that incorporated the tiles in front of you. You can cheat quite a bit in Lexulous against those rules– it takes a lot of the fun out of it.
And it makes me a crabby opponent. The other day Robby started a new game (which irritated me– the loser gets to do that, not the reigning champ) and played a word that I didn’t know.
“Oooh! A new word! What’s it mean?” asked me earnestly.
“I don’t know,” came my husband’s hesitant reply.
“Yeah, then we’re done with this game then, aren’t we?”

7. To do: Learn the Kitchener Stitch so I can finish up two pairs of socks. Sew Jack’s teddy a little cape so that he can be “Super Georgia.” Drag Robby to IKEA to look at ideas for the kitchen and dining room (we’ll pay the Swedes in lingonberries). Paint a family tree on the upstairs hallway wall for Jack. Clean the basement. Get Robby to do his Charo impression again.

8. I need to come up with a fun treat for Friday at Jack’s preschool. I like bringing in the treat. It’s fun to try to find something that all 20 kids will eat.

Okay.  This hasn’t helped. I’m still not sleepy.

And now I want a Mallomar.

Listening to the new Durian Durian album…?

Our pals took a recent trip to the foodie mecca that is Jungle Jims. I’ve never made the trek there but was pleased to share in their bounty which included durian fruit, a cheramoya, and Uncle Joe’s mint balls.

So, after heaping servings of Shepherd’s Pie and beer (the boys), Woodchuck cider ale (me), and Vernor’s (the Pregnant One) the weird fruits were presented.

Cheramoya taste like bubble gum perfume. They are somewhere between a cantaloupe and pineapple in texture. One down, one to go.

Durian fruit are about the size of a football and spiny as all get out. They grow in big tall palm-like trees. It wouldn’t, we agreed, be good at all to be under one should it fall.  We touched it gingerly. We sniffed it. The weird food guy, Andrew Zimmern has waxed rather poetically about the horrors of the durian. The Today Show hosts have pronounced it wretched, too. The four of us decided it smelled woody. (It reminded me of the inside of furniture from India. I used to spend a lot of time at Pier One and World Market.) We cracked it open and scooped out the custardy fruit. And, again, disappointedly, found nothing offensive in the taste or texture of it.

We wondered what people do with a durian. There’s a lot of fruit in it. It’s not like a neat little banana or orange– there’s enough to feed several people. We fired up the laptop and did a quick search for durian recipes. We vetoed the originally promising “Durian Gingerbread Pudding” when it needed spinach and fresh ginger. The photo of it was green. Green and pudding are not appealing.

Durian ice-cream? Durian coconut surprise? Durian cake? It was during the reading of the Johnny’s Durian breakfast muffin recipe that the phrase “never drink alcohol while eating durian fruit” jumped out at us. WHAT? A quick google search brought up a slew of old wives tales and anecdotal references to a theory that drinking alcohol while eating durian fruit leads to certain death.

Oh dear.

We push our nearly finished bottle of Woodchuck (me) and glasses of Scotch (the boys) away from us and wonder how long until the Pregnant One will have our three bodies to deal with plus Jack who, all the while, was trying desperately to play with Sadiedog.

A little more searching had us convinced that probably our night will yield only a hangover (it would be my first. How exciting. I’m 19 again. Go College Team! Yay!) and possibly a night or two of diahreaha. (Oh, joy.) Durian apparently sucks the water out of you– we immediately all filled glasses with water and started to drink while laughing off the psychosymatic effects of too much book learnin’.

(It also occured to us that perhaps we should run a google search on “pregnancy + durian”– all’s well there. The three of us still should have a driver to get us to the hospital…)

Poor Pregnant One. She left the room to return to the three of us laying on the floor as though dead. She was nonplussed and set the dog on us.

Uncle Joe’s mint balls were minty but not very ball shaped. Unless your ball had rolled into the street and been flattened by the durian that had fallen out of the tree… They were one of the odder flavors– the mix of toffee and mint was akin to brushing your teeth after eating a slowpoke. Not bad– but odd.

If this is my last blog, however, you’ll know not to consume the very deadly combination of cheramoya and durian. Live and learn. And enjoy a mintball.

My kingdom for a Mallomar…

I love my little Mitten-shaped state. I do. I’m quite happy to be nestled amid the Great Lakes…

But it seems collosally unfair that Mallomars are not distributed here.

I watch a lot of Gilmore Girls reruns. On average, at least every three episodes there will be a mention of Mallomars. I want one. And yet– apparently, it’s a regional thing that cannot be breeched. A Google search tells me that they are only available at certain times of the year in the Northeast.

Which explains why, three years ago, on a trip through Upstate New York to NYC, and 43 separate stops at various sized markets we couldn’t locate any. Poor Robby. I dragged him through all those corner stores in the city and all those sprawling suburban markets for naught. You can’t get a Mallomar in June.

Sigh.

I’m going to go drink a Vernor’s all the while knowing there must be somebody in New Hampshire jonesing for a sip while they eat their box of Mallomars.

Sad.

Note to self: Feed the Koala Bears

It’s raining out. It’s a perfect cold, September rain. The kind that makes the lights seem warmer and yellower. Robby’s working late so Jack and I are watching The Wiggles and killing a little time until the Pajamma hour.

I’m noshing on the perfect autumn snack: salty peanuts and candy corn.

My brain is all mushy tonight. No bright thoughts or pithy observations– if it weren’t for Jack I’d be curled up in bed with my candycorn and the second half of Atonement DVD.

I think the Yellow Wiggle is sucking my will to live.

Waiting for naptime

Shhhhhh. We’re in the post-school napping zone. It’s a small window of the possibility of my small son taking a siesta.

I’ve stacked the deck by pulling a movie off of TiVo. [Three Came Home is one of my sister's and my favorite movies. It's the 1950 account of Agnes Newton Keith's harrowing ordeal of life in British Borneo during the Japanese occupation during WW2. Claudette Colbert stays crisply ironed throughout.] It’s black and white and not very interesting to my Cars loving little man.

The fact that he’s singing “(We’re going to) Jackson” to the little black dog right now is not encouraging.

Meanwhile, our adjustment to preschool is going well. Day 2 seems to be a success. When I went to pick up Jack at noon I got there just a bit early and the children were all seated on their pieces of carpet. My Jack was seated. Quietly. Who knew??? He still think his teacher, Mrs. Brown, is nice.

As for me, it felt a little less strange to be going to the office. It shouldn’t be any different then when Jack’s at my Momma’s or at Robby’s folks, I know, but it is. Besides, Fridays are a great day to work at our Museum– half the staff is always out or tied up in a meeting. I got a lot done. Plus, apparently, the not-so-best-kept-secret about Fridays at work is that there are usually breakfast brunch leftovers! Sausage!? Potatoes!? Yippeekiay!

I met a couple of coworkers near the buffet area– one asked about our upcoming trip to Ireland, “Why are you going there?” “Uh, ’cause it’s there?” Who justifies their travel?

Ahhhh. Jack’s singing “Wildwood Flower” now– that’s a good sign. He’s bringing it down. Shhhhh.

To Do: Make To Do List

What a surreal day. It disappeared under a pile of: cupcakes; an unexpected assignment for a major presskit for an upcoming exhibit due… NOW; a big pot of Irish Stew; Momma swooping in with lunch to rescue me; overnight guests in the forms of my oldest friend Melle and her little son, Trey; a too-brief conversation about death and heaven with my friend Wallis; an article to edit for a local magazine; ironing; a visit with Melle’s little brother and his wife and their daughter plus Melle, Trey, and her two girls; my sister dropping off her central registry form stating she’s not a sexual offender (Jack’s preschool requires it… we’re all so pleased that we aren’t pedophiles. Yay for us.); teaching Jack to use a plastic cookie cutter to make PlayDough ghosties; dinner out with friends; and an Obama rally at our historic, downtown movie theater that was sparsely attended and snackless… so we left early.

Funny how I didn’t get to that new book, isn’t it? I’ll add it to the list tomorrow. Right after the trip to the farmer’s market and donut shop run.