Cousins

A couple of weeks ago, Miss M. and I were in the car on the highway on the way to visit Granny. I was in the middle lane, and I spotted three motorcycles in the rear view mirror. They were about to pass us on the right, so I pointed them out to her. They zoom zoom zoomed past us and gathered in a pack in front of us. She asked "do they know one another?" I told her I thought they were probably friends. She said "no Mommy, they're cousins."

Because the cousin bond, it's extraordinary and it trumps friendship. Miss M. hasn't any siblings, but her cousins are dear to her - the nearest thing to siblings. She bickers and plays and squabbles with them, all the while loving them ferociously.




Edited to add: This was undoubtedly dredged up from the synapses by Aliki's post yesterday...and her post today reminded me that I should have given her credit.

Teenage Girl or Midlife Crisis

I think I'm turning into a teenage girl. I just bought a magenta rubber "case" for my iPhone, and I made my own ringtone out of the first 20 seconds of Blister in the Sun. Or it's a midlife crisis, and I should just go buy the damned Mini Cooper, right?

Gonna be an engineer...

When I was a little girl I wished I was a boy
I tagged along behind the gang and wore my corduroys
Everybody said I only did it to annoy
But I was gonna be an engineer.

The song that jumped into rotation this morning on the way to daycare was Peggy Seeger’s “I’m Gonna Be An Engineer”, oft described as a feminist anthem. It’s a perky, rollicking song that invites singing along, and it damned near made me weep. I don’t want my daughter to be a dishrag - I want her to be a strong woman, confident in her ability, a force to be reckoned with. I want her to be smart and resourceful, creative and caring.

And I think, at core, that my daughter is why I voted for Hillary Clinton the other day.

I've been a sucker ever since I was a baby
As a daughter, as a wife, as a mother and a dear
But I'll fight them as a woman, not a lady
I'll fight them as an engineer.

If you don’t know the song, you can get the mp3 here. If you don’t know anything about Peggy Seeger, try here or here. And if you need all of the lyrics, they're here.

Bloggity Blog Blog

Yesterday's crossword puzzle included the clue Dictatorial, to which the answer was BOSSY.

Is it a sign that I'm spending too much time in blogland when my reaction to this was Oh, how sweet, our BOSSY has made it into the Times crossword?

I've had a few more little awards, which warm the cockles of my little heart. Really. I'm becoming a sentimental fool. So without further ado, I'd like to pass them on and warm the cockles of some other people's hearts.

Slouching Mom gave me the E for Excellence. I hereby pass that gift along to Oh, The Joys and BipolarLawyerCook and Niobe and Flutter and I Won't Fear Love, because they are all excellent.

The Smile came to me from Where's My Cape. Some of the folks who make me smile regularly are Best to Keep Your Eyes Open and Derfwad Manor and Mayberry Mom.

And the roar came from the funny Mad Mad Housewife. That one can only go to one person: the inimitable Jen of One Plus Two - who roars out powerful words with grace and passion and finesse.

And last but not least, Julie kissed me! So I pass along the Mwah! to BeanPaste and Exurbitude and Ozma and Irish Goddess and Mystery Mommy and Painted Maypole and Poot and Cubby and Slouching Mom and Aliki and I could go on and on and on but the linking is getting tiring. If I didn't mention you, I love you anyway!

Cheers all around! And the navel-gazing is over, for the nonce.

Did you vote?

Okay, maybe there's no voting in your state (or country for that matter). But it's primary day in New York, and there is a palpable excitement in the air. People in the office are talking around the lunch table of delegates and super-delegates and winner-take-all. They are wondering if you can split your delegates - half for Clinton and half for Obama - and checking the web to see. (Maybe there are some Republicans in the office, but they haven't come out of the woodwork.)

For the first time in my life, I think, I've voted for a different candidate than my mother did - my family just another iteration of the many instances of families splitting between Clinton and Obama. But pulling the lever this morning, with my daughter on my hip - for yes, we still vote on old-fashioned lever style machines - was thrilling. Because whichever way the Democratic primary goes, we'll have made history.

Did you vote? Go, now. It's your duty and responsibility and right and privilege. Do it. Vote.

Department of Random, Categorized

>> Evidence that I am a dork:

I just bought a pair of jeans from LL Bean. And they fit. I'm not sure which makes me feel more dorky, the fact that I bought jeans from LL Bean, or the fact that I never tried them before.

>> Too Much Information:

I am suffering from some malaise of the digestion, which the lovely Jessica would refer to as "the mighty wind". In an attempt to have Dr. Google solve my problem, I found the following:

When research subjects ate a diet in which half of their calories came from pork and beans, they experienced a tenfold increase in their normal gas production.

I stopped my research at that point. I'd like it on record that I have NOT been eating an excess of pork and beans, and that I feel for those people, I really do. I hope they were well compensated.

>> Things we like to hear from the backseat:

You rock, Mommy!

>> The Moky Update:

Moky is out of the hospital, and has already had radiation treatment #1 of 16. Every weekday at 5pm for the next three weeks, she gets her head zapped. 5pm. As in cocktail hour. Hey, maybe I'll buy her a case of champagne splits.

25 books, part two

Remember part one, about the pile of books that I'm currently reading? I've finished Decca and Organic Housekeeping (and, I dare say, Decca never cleaned a house in her life).

If I'd been more organized about the other pile, the to-be-read pile, I'd have actually posted this list before starting one of the books from that pile. Because now it's not really the to-be-read pile. Oh well.

Want to know what's in the to-be-read pile? I know you do.

Top to bottom:

1. The Great Cat - Christmas present - an anthology of poems about cats
   
2. High Rising (Angela Thirkell) - Verlyn Klinkenborg, who usually writes about driving across Iowa or standing around in the cold with his horses, wrote a paean to Thirkell at the beginning of January. It sounded great, and I'd never heard of her, so I scrounged up a copy of her first book. And it is great - perfect fluff. I may have to get the whole series. If you like EF Benson and Dorothy Sayers, you'll like Thirkell.
   
3. Growing a Girl (Barbara Mackoff) - Christmas present. This book was something I'd put on my Amazon wishlist. My mother and sister were shopping on-line together, and both thought that I didn't need this book, as its sub-title is "Seven Strategies for Raising a Strong, Spirited Daughter". We have nothing if not a strong spirited daughter. But, you know, I want to help her stay that way, and not get sucked into conformity and materialism.
   
4. Musicophilia (Oliver Sacks) - Christmas present
5. The $64 Tomato (William Alexander) - Christmas present
6. Atonement (Ian McEwan) - pass-along from my sister
7. God is not Great (Christopher Hitchens) - Christmas present
8. Paradise Lost (John Milton) - I got it into my head to read this because of the Philip Pullman Dark Materials trilogy. I'm not sure that it's going to happen - but it's not yet been relegated to the "never to be read" pile.
   
9. Sister Bernadette's Barking Dog (Kitty Burns Florey) - Christmas present. A book on how to diagram sentences, which, if I ever learned, I have long since forgotten.
   
10. A Stew or a Story- Christmas present, last year.
    
11. Watership Down (Richard Adams) - I remember this as a family read-aloud when I was a kid. I stumbled on a copy and thought I'd revisit my childhood, but I haven't gotten there yet.
    
12. Wondrous Strange: The Life and Art of Glenn Gould (Kevin Bazzana) - Christmas present, last year
13. The Thurber Letters: The Wit, Wisdom and Surprising Life of James Thurber - Christmas present, last year. Now that I'm done with Decca, I can put some more letters in rotation.
    
14. An Episode of Sparrows (Rumer Godden)
    
15. The Game of Kings (Dorothy Dunnett) - I bought this because Julia said it was fabulous and she likes other writers I like, like EF Benson and Dorothy Sayers and Patrick O'Brian, so I had to have it.
16. A Very Long Engagement (Sebastien Japrisot) - another pass-along from my sister
17. Running with Scissors (Augusten Burroughs) - and another pass-along from my sister
18. Jerome Robbins: His Life, His Theater His Dance (Deborah Jowitt)
19. Nobody Knows the Truffles I've Seen (George Lang)

I'm almost through with #2 - what shall I start next?

Landmarks of NYC

One of the tiny things I bought at Muji a couple of weeks ago was NYC in a bag. Miss M. has recently identified two little known NYC landmarks:

#1 = the Pirate State Building
#2 = Mr. Willow's Hat Shop

Mr. Wright is probably rolling in his grave at #2.

Moky is still in the hospital. It turns out that she's got several tiny brain metastases. It is apparently treatable with radiation, and if the schedule works out she'll have her head tattooed today and will then be released.

And I'm sick - low grade fever, aches, gloppy eyes and a queasy stomach. Miss M. was flabberghasted that I took her to school in my nightgown - with jeans under and a coat over - but "Look what my mama is wearing!"

Dikfore

My mother is still there. Still sitting around in cold hallways for tests. Still no answers from anyone. Still eating terrible hospital food. Still bored. Tonight will be her third night in the hospital.

While we were waiting in the ER the other day, I remembered a tale once told me by my boss. He was in the hospital for something - long before I met him - and claims to have been abandoned by the nurses. He got out of bed, marched up to the nursing station with his ass hanging out of his hospital gown, and shouted "Who do you have to fuck to get an enema around here?" I relayed this to her, thinking it might be a way to get some action, but it's not quite her style.

Enough about my mother. My boss is a major character, and we had a couple of priceless go-rounds today.

I was in his office this morning, having one of those random conversations that required several trips to the dictionary. First we had to look up "bob", to see if "plumb bob" was one of the definitions (I thought it might only be a plumb bob if the plumb preceded the bob). Then we had to look up "knurled" because he had never heard that word and the afore-mentioned plumb bob had a knurled knob on the end (actually, there were two plumb bobs on his desk - he seems to be collecting them). And then we had to look up "poofta" (or "pufta" or "poufter" or however you want to spell it). I can't remember who I was talking about, but I called someone a poofta and he claimed to have never heard the word. Given that he's been involved in dance in NYC for fifty years, and avoided the draft by claiming to be gay, I was quite surprised. And then, poofta wasn't in the dictionary we were using. I guess we should have hauled out the compact OED, but the type is too damned small.

Later, I googled it. Urban Dictionary came through with a couple of different spellings, so I printed one of the pages out to show to him. The next time I saw him, I handed him the printed page. He went immediately to the Google ad photo on the page - which I hadn't even noticed - and said to me, completely guilelessly, "What's a dick for?" I was hysterical, convulsed with laughter, and he was clueless.

You have to understand, this is a potty-mouthed man once succinctly defined as an "impish motherfucker".

After I recovered my composure, I said to him: "I don't think it's up to me to tell you what a dick is for."

Maybe he's losing his edge.

Amputee Mermaid

Miss M. came home from school one day recently with a nice picture of a mermaid that she'd drawn. Once home, she asked for scissors: "I want to cut out my mermaid". So I gave her a pair of scissors (the ones that have now been archived due to the finger-snipping incident last weekend - they are frightening sharp for kid's scissors). Apparently she was stumped as to how to cut around the arms, because the mermaid ended up without any. Oops.

My mother is in the hospital. It seems that she had a mini-stroke yesterday - a TIA, the kind that resolves without permanent symptoms. She was sitting at the kitchen table while I was making lunch, when she started speaking gibberish. She recognized that she was having trouble speaking, so she tried to write - same result. So I took her to the emergency room, where they ran some tests and admitted her. The gibberish abated, even before we got to the the ER, which is good. But now she's being pushed hither and yon for an echo of this, a cat scan of that, an MRI of the other. I'm glad I was there at her house when it happened. If she'd been home alone, not talking to anyone, not trying to write anything, she might never have known anything was screwy.

If bad things happen in threes, am I due for a third trip to the emergency room this week? I hope not.

Why I Like Having a Cellar

Lots of people like having a cellar so that they can go to warehouse stores and buy many many many rolls of toilet paper. I do that.

But this morning?

I just ordered a case of carnaroli rice. That's 24 pounds of rice.

We like risotto.

I'm glad we don't live in an apartment anymore.

Guiliani. NOT!

In today's paper, the good grey lady issued her endorsements for both of the presidential primaries, blue and red. What was striking and wonderful was the complete indictment of Mr. Guiliani - I do so love some schadenfreude on my morning commute.

It's been a conundrum to me, and to many other New Yorkers, to see how well Guiliani had been playing in the middle of the country. Happily, he's crashing and burning, and the anti-endorsement in the Times can only add fuel to that funeral pyre:

Why, as a New York-based paper, are we not backing Rudolph Giuliani? Why not choose the man we endorsed for re-election in 1997 after a first term in which he showed that a dirty, dangerous, supposedly ungovernable city could become clean, safe and orderly? What about the man who stood fast on Sept. 11, when others, including President Bush, went AWOL?

That man is not running for president.

The real Mr. Giuliani, whom many New Yorkers came to know and mistrust, is a narrow, obsessively secretive, vindictive man who saw no need to limit police power. Racial polarization was as much a legacy of his tenure as the rebirth of Times Square.

Mr. Giuliani’s arrogance and bad judgment are breathtaking. When he claims fiscal prudence, we remember how he ran through surpluses without a thought to the inevitable downturn and bequeathed huge deficits to his successor. He fired Police Commissioner William Bratton, the architect of the drop in crime, because he couldn’t share the limelight. He later gave the job to Bernard Kerik, who has now been indicted on fraud and corruption charges.

The Rudolph Giuliani of 2008 first shamelessly turned the horror of 9/11 into a lucrative business, with a secret client list, then exploited his city’s and the country’s nightmare to promote his presidential campaign.

One Crow for Sorrow

Yesterday a meme rocketed around the interblogs like I've never seen one move so fast. I saw it first at Niobe's; she'd gotten it from Painted Maypole.

It goes like this:

1. Click on this link.
The title of the page is the name of your band.

2. Click on this link.
The last four words of the final quotation on the page are the title of your album.

3. Click on this link.
The third picture is your album cover.

4. Take the picture, add your band name and album title and ta da!

It is eerie, no? I'll spare you my explication, but the translation of the band name is, more-or-less, "well born", and a single crow augers unhappiness.



PS: Artwork by Sheri Burhoe, from Flickr. The crow is available at her Etsy shop.

25 Books, part one

One of the other things I managed to get done last weekend was to organize the books, that is, my unread books. They'd gotten scattered hither and yon around the house, and some were (gasp!) commingling with the already read books. There are now 25 books on my bedside table - six in progress, and the rest waiting patiently.

The books I'm in the middle of - the left hand pile - run the gamut from things that have been kicking around for a while (like since LAST Christmas) to stuff that arrived this past Christmas.

The Whore's Child (Richard Russo) is a book of short stories that I acquired mistakenly thinking I hadn't read it. Apparently, I can't remember a damned thing, because I have already read it, but I'm reading it again, because he's great, and slowly, because it's short stories.

Organic Housekeeping (Ellen Sandbeck) was a Christmas gift from my mother-in-law, who knows that I'm a slovenly housekeeper because she's seen the dustbunnies. It is actually quite amusing - besides what you might expect (use white vinegar to clean almost everything), it has practical wisdom like:

Rather than adding chemicals to the air to mask an unpleasant odor, try to hunt down the source of the odor and eliminate it. (This rule should not be applied to family members or pets. They may simply need to be bathed or have their socks or diapers changed.)

Stones from the River (Ursula Hegi) is a novel I bought a while ago on a friend's recommendation. For some reason, it's taking me a long time to get through it, even though I quite like it and I find it to be well-written.

Decca: The Letters of Jessica Mitford was a Christmas present last year. Oops. But it's letters, and therefore can be picked up and put down, which is my justification for not having finished it yet. She was a major character, the Communist branch of the Mitford clan and a muckraking writer who knew everyone. And her epistolary prose is rough and idiosyncratic and utterly charming, even when you have no idea what she's talking about:

Anyway I loved getting yrs of 18 Aug. Vive la "deep depression!" Serves her bloody well right: might be as salutary, if not more so, than Maya's knee-cap job?

The River Cottage Meat Book (Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall): yeah, I read cookbooks in bed - wanna make something of it? This one is fascinating - both a paean to good meat and good farming and good butchering, and a loving primer on how to cook that good meat.

Vegetable Harvest (Patricia Wells) is yes, another cookbook! It was a Christmas present, this year. She has a wonderful sensibility, and her recipes are generally spot on. In case you're wondering, this is not a vegetarian cookbook - rather, it's a vegetable-centric general cookbook.

The Three Day Weekend

This past weekend, a three day weekend, we managed to pack a whole mess of stuff into the 72 hours. I got a haircut. I made it to the bank to close an account that I've needed to close for months (but had to do in person). I even bought new jeans. The child managed to snip off a tiny piece of her (left) index finger with kiddie scissors, necessitating a trip to the emergency room (where, by the time they saw her, her finger had pretty much stopped bleeding). We took Miss M. to the Museum of Natural History. I had coffee with another blogger who happened to be in NYC (well, she had coffee and I had tea). I went shopping in Soho (and even bought some funny things at Muji). Miss M. had a friend come over, with her mom, who I quite like. And we cooked a bunch of things.

• Pink cupcakes, because someone I know has been obsessed with Pinkalicious lately.
• Two loaves of challah, because I ended up with extra egg yolks after the cupcakes.
• Beet soup, to bring for lunch, with a slice of challah.
• And a gratin for dinner, loosely using a recipe that had been in Sunday's Times (I used swiss cheese instead of blue, and frozen CSA kale and spinach). It was sort of like a crustless quiche with a cornmeal topping. Ill revise it if I make it again - it needed some flour in the topping.

There was other stuff accomplished, but I'll be damned if I can remember what.

How was your weekend?

Three Is A Magic Number

When Mayberry Mom and Motherhood Uncensored put out a call for a virtual Baby Shower for MotherGooseMouse and her impending baby boy, they asked for posts on raising boys, and boy-oriented song lists for the playlist to end all playlists.

Well, I can't offer any advice or commentary on raising boy children, since I've only got a girl, but Julie? Teach him to cook. 'Cause everyone needs to eat, and women love a man who can cook.

But I loved coming up with some songs for the the song list. I plugged "boy" into the iTunes search window and came up with many songs by The Five Blind Boys and the Beach Boys, Jane Siberry's album "When I Was a Boy" and 22 versions of "The Little Drummer Boy". I whittled it down to a manageable handful:

• Pony Boy (Bruce Springsteen)
• Boy From Tupelo (Emmylou Harris)
• The boy who never cried (Steve Earle)
• Pretty Boy Floyd (Bob Dylan)
• Po' Boy (Bob Dylan)
• The Jones Boy (The Mills Brothers)
• Winin' Boy Blues (Leon Redbone)
• Indian Boy (Paul Pena)
• The Boy In The Bubble (Paul Simon)
• Where the Boys Go (The Rolling Stones)
• Danny Boy (Rufus Wainwright)
• The Only Living Boy In New York (Simon & Garfunkel)

And then I threw in my favorite song about the number three: Three is a Magic Number (Bob Dorough).

Julie, lots of luck and love to you and your baby boy. And, I think you might need a new handle. Mother Goose Mouse only accounts for two of your three children. Maybe MotherGooseMouseMonkey?

Factoid Fifteen

Okay, I'm calling the trademark attorney next week - I think "vacation underwear" may be intellectual property to which I need to make a claim.

Slouching Mom thought #10 wasn't about me, that it was not about me. But I disagree, because one summer I actually asked my brother, who was working as a kitchen flunky at a local yacht club, to get me a job as a waitress there and he refused because he thought that I would have been a terrible waitress, about which he's right.

And anyway, it does tell you something about me - in the same way that the statement "I don't have brown eyes" tells you something about me. I remember once having an argument with someone about television and the Nielsen ratings - a hypothetical argument, that is. He thought that if you received a Nielsen questionnaire, but that you never watched television, you shouldn't return the questionnaire because it would skew the ratings - taking the position that the questionnaire was about what you were watching, not whether you were watching. I thought (still do) the opposite: returning the blank form indicating that you'd watched nothing was equally about what you were watching, that is, nothing.

Anyway, here's a fifteenth factoid, for Slouchy, ever so tangentially related to that #10:

15. At the end of the summer of 1975, in sailing class at a different local yacht club, I received an award for "Best Intermediary". They meant "Best Intermediate", as in the level I was sailing at, but someone got it wrong. I have an engraved silverplate bowl to show for it.
    

Set, zeven, tujuh, sju, sete, saba, saith*

Once upon a time, I did that seven random things meme. And then Aliki also tagged me for it, so now I'm up to fourteen. And once again, I'm skipping the rules.

8. I have a master's degree in ethnomusicology. It is, perhaps, the most useless degree ever, though it's good at cocktail parties.
9. I've owned only two cars in my 47 years on the planet.
10. I've never been a waitress.
11. I have worn contact lenses since I was about 15. My favorite ancillary benefit to them is that I don't cry when I chop onions. It's always a shock to whack into an onion while wearing my glasses.
12. I'm a blanket hogger. I have a roll left, roll right technique that simultaneously creates a cocoon around me and steals all the covers from those that share the bed.
13. My two favorite lines are: "I am very good at what I do" and "I am full of good ideas". They strike terror into my husband, particularly the latter.
14. I practice a little-known clothing management technique called "vacation underwear". I figure, even the most decrepit pair of underpants can be worn once more, so I take them on vacation and discard them along the way. That way, they go out in style and I don't have to bring them home dirty.

And a bonus, but not about me: The online dictionary where I found most of the translations of seven for the title has “Portuguese” spelled wrong.



* Catalan, Dutch, Indonesian, Norwegian, Portuguese, Swahili, Welsh

Where What When

1. Living in New Haven, not yet 3 years old, when Kennedy was assassinated (1963).
2. On a family vacation in Montauk, when Richard Nixon resigned (1974).
3. Away at Exeter for summer school, when the infamous NYC blackout occurred (1977).
4. In a college dorm, visiting my boyfriend, when the US hockey team improbably beat the USSR in the Olympics (1980).
5. Just beginning graduate school, when flight KAL007 was shot down (1983).
6. In my mother’s kitchen, when I learned that my grandfather (her father) had died (1984).
7. At work, at a downtown white shoe law firm, when the Challenger exploded (1986).
8. Working at my first non-profit job, when the stock market crashed (1987).
   
9. In the stadium, when the Mets last won the World Series (1986).
10. In San Francisco at the tail end of a California/Oregon driving trip, when Princess Diana died (1997).
11. At home, getting ready for work, when the planes hit the World Trade Center (2001).
12. On the crosstown bus, when I got the call that IVF#2 had failed (2002).
13. Walking up Broadway, when I found out that my CVS was normal and my baby was fine (2003).

I don't really remember #1. But I'm the only one that remembers #12 & #13 - that is, the moment of transmission, not the news in and of itself.

Empathy in Health Care

My mother's oncologist is a person rather lacking in empathy and social skills. The medical care seems to be fine - my mother's coming up on the third anniversary of her diagnosis with Stage IV lung cancer - but the human aspect of the care has been frustrating and occasionally infuriating.

Last week, in the Science section of the Times, there was an article on the need for oncologists to act compassionately towards their patients. In a mad moment, I ripped the piece out of the paper and dropped it in the mail to my mother's doctor, with an unsigned note along the lines of "Perhaps empathy could be your New Year's resolution".

My mother's reaction to this was part titillation, part horror: "You did what?"

Well, last night my phone rang 'round about 8:00. It was my mother. She'd just gotten a phone call from - (dramatic pause) - her oncologist. The doctor called to see how she was, and to remind her that she needs to schedule a scan to check the status of the cancer. The phone call, unprompted, after dinner, was completely unprecedented.

Do you think that perhaps the doctor took the article to heart?

Super Hero

"I'm in a disguise. I'm Super Hero Mulan."

(Yes, those are underpants on her head.)

Clothing Wars

Okay, she dresses herself. Often, this takes mismatched to epic proportions, or veers into inappropriateness (like the tank top on Christmas Eve that prompted my brother to say that she looked like she was off to a poker game in a trailer park). But, it's a battle I'm usually not interested in fighting. Her spunk shows in her wardrobe. And hell, why not wear stripes and plaid when you're FOUR?

Occasionally, though, there are battles.

On Wednesday, she dressed in a pair of white tights with multi-colored hearts, and a black shirt with three ballerinas along the bottom edge. And nothing else. "I don't want to wear a skirt - the ballerinas won't show." "I don't want to wear a skirt - the hearts on my tights will be hidden." Finally, I strong-armed her into an elastic waist skirt, man-handled her into the car seat, and strapped her in so she couldn't remove the skirt. She howled all the way to daycare. She wailed all the way across the parking lot. She cried all the way up the stairs. When we got to the classroom, she stripped off the skirt, threw it across the room and curled up on the floor to sob into her cubby. I left, wishing the school kitchen were stocked with a pitcher of martinis instead of a vat of oatmeal. A teacher talked her into her skirt and all was well.

At day's end, the black shirt was filthy - covered with dabs of paint and big white smears of something. Of course, she announced that she wanted to wear the black shirt again. Of course, I told her it needed to be washed. It went in the laundry basket.

Thursday, the first words out of her mouth were "I want to wear my ballerina shirt". "But it's dirty - you can't wear it." Another clothing battle ensued. However, this time she won, because she totally got my soft spot. "Mommy, I want to wear a black shirt and blue jeans, just like you." Yup. It's my uniform. Black top. Blue jeans. Nearly every day. How could I resist? So off she went to school in her blue jeans and her filthy black ballerina shirt.

And today? Jeans and a pink shirt, no squabbles. Go figure.

Craftiness

Christmas is truly over: the tree got picked up from the curb this morning. And since all of my handcrafted gifts have been distributed, and the "pay it forward" prizes have been mailed, it's time for the reveal.

A while back, I came across Alterknits, a book of offbeat knitting projects, which included instructions for a tote bag made out of an old sweater. I loved the idea. Some years ago, I had the idea to make throw pillows out of old sweaters. And one of my favorite baby presents was a blanket made of felted squares of old sweaters. So I started haunting eBay and Goodwill for appealing cheap wool sweaters, and got to work.

I ended up making six tote bags - all different. One had a lining and an outside pocket, two had webbing handles, some had button/loop closures.

And it turned out that the cut-off sleeves and collars were useful too: I turned them into little bags, for an iPod or cellphone or whatever. Of the two purple ones here, the smaller one was made from the turtleneck of a sweater and the larger one was the forearm part of a sleeve (turned inside out).

The whole project was a lot of fun - even if I did have to run the washing machine over and over again with HOT water. And the cellar ended up full of lint. But I was enormously pleased with myself, and feedback from the recipients has been good: my sister-in-law is worried that she's going to wear hers out from overuse.

If you're at all interested or inspired, the directions for these totebags are here.

Dusk

It’s dusk at five o’clock. The sun is down, but the sky is not yet dark. My train passes a cemetery, a long expanse of graves quiet in the almost night. The graveyard slopes up and away from the train tracks, and the sun has set behind that rise. The trees and bushes among the graves, skeletal in their winter undress, are silhouetted black against the dim grayish blue sky, and as the train moves, they move too. But because of the distance between the tracks and the top of the hill, the near trees appear to be moving faster than the ones in the background – a layered monochromatic beauty unspooling in front of me.

Pirates and Princesses

I rail a lot about the insidiousness of the Disney Princess empire. Despite having no Princess toys at home (beyond that disembodied head of Ariel, which is at the bottom of the toy box and hasn't been looked at in quite awhile), my child knows all the Princesses, and their consorts, and what color eyes, hair and dress each has. She hasn't asked me for a Princess doll, but many of the girls in her daycare class have them, and bring them in for naptime. ("Home" toys are not allowed, except for nap.)

I was pleasantly surprised when a friend of mine gave her a Groovy Girl doll for Christmas - I'd never seen one before, but it's just a doll. No breasts, no attitude, not plastic. A winsome expression on her face, and a mop of curly yarn hair. She adopted it right away and carries it everywhere. So what happened when she returned to daycare after a 10 day break? The Groovy Girl has been dubbed a Princess.

She also, like Javelin's Z., got a pirate ship for Christmas. Over the weekend, we let it and its many little bits out of the box and Daddy helped her set it up. The ship came with two pirates. She gleefully announced "I'm Jack Sparrow, and you can be Will Turner!"

So, her Groovy Girl has become a princess, but she can pretend to be a male pirate.

It's a conundrum of being.

Another Idea for Donating Books

I've become very impulsive about making donations and responding to requests. When Oh, The Joys posted last month about sending books to a school library in New Orleans, I was on it in a flash. And an oddly similar request came to me the other day, when I got an email from a friend, forwarding on an email from a friend of his, soliciting books for a Navajo library. I promptly bundled up a handful of kid's books - all new but duplicates of ones we already had - and will mail the package tomorrow. And I asked Mark to ask his friend if I could publish her letter. She agreed, so it's below. Can you help too?

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This fall, I found out that the Navajo Nation Library System was able to get space and staff for a new branch in Kayenta, Arizona. Back in 1980, I worked as librarian for the Navajo Nation for three years, and we had a small library in Window Rock, and a smaller branch in Navajo, New Mexico. It was always a dream to add on more branches, but money for libraries is hard to get on the reservation. The Bureau of Indian Affairs didn’t consider public libraries to be within its domain, so it would not fund the libraries, leaving it up to the tribe to find the money. And money was always scarce.

We held fundraisers as much as we could, selling mutton stew and fry bread at events, and holding Christmas craft shows. We had a friends group that helped out, and people were generous with book donations. And that helped us get more books into people’s hands and hearts. We also faced three disastrous floods during my years there, and many more building-related catastrophes after my term. When I left to take another job, Irving Nelson became director, and under his 25 years of management, the library finally got a nice building, space, staff, and is now providing a wealth of services, including summer reading programs, special collections of Navajo history you cannot find anywhere else, and computer access to the Internet.

Irving and I have kept in touch, and I was happy to hear he was finally able to get space donated to open a new branch in Kayenta. He’s been scrambling to get furniture and staffing, and of course, books.

Here’s a photo of Irving getting ready to unload the furniture that was donated by ANEW. And here’s one of Trina, the new staff person for Kayenta, and Irving, taking a break.

When I asked how I could help, he said that getting a good collection of children’s books was the most important thing on his list, since he didn’t get additional funding to buy more books for this new branch.

So here’s your chance to help. It’s easy. Go down to your local book store, and find a kid’s book – a colorful picture book, an easy reader, maybe a kid’s science book or natural history or historical book. Something new and colorful – think “what would be really attractive to kids, what would they like to read, what would keep them coming back to the library?” Buy it, wrap it in a box for mailing, and mail it to:

Mr. Irving Nelson, Program Supervisor
Office of Navajo Nation Library
P.O. Box 9040
Window Rock, Arizona 86515

Or if you need a physical address (like for UPS):

Mr. Irving Nelson, Program Supervisor
Office of Navajo Nation Library
Az Highway 264
Post Office Loop Road
Window Rock, Arizona 86515

Include a note, seal it up, and pat yourself on the back. The kids will appreciate it. I have sugarplum visions of Irving needing a pickup truck to bring back the boxes from the post office.

Thanks for reading this, and thank you even more if you decide to play along with me on this.

You can find out more about the library and its services here, and if you want to get in touch with Irving
Nelson directly, he’s at irvingnelson@navajo.org. If you would like to send a check, please make it out to the Friends of the Navajo Nation Library.

I've started a wish list at Amazon.com of great books to buy. Go here for book ideas!

(One last word -- Please DON'T send Irving and his staff your old books, your great collections of National Geographics, or those computer manuals on your desk. Trust me when I tell you that they had at least three sets of National Geographic when I left, and I can just imagine how many there are now. We are looking to build a fresh exciting collection, one that tempts kids to come in and stay. Thanks!)

Negotiation

This morning at breakfast, Miss M. asked for Pirate Booty. I said no. She persisted: Mommy, if you give me Pirate Booty, I'll never ask you for a baby sister again.

(And no, I didn't give in.)

Reading the Paper

They keep saying that the printed newspaper is going to go the way of all things. If that really happens, I will be in a saddened condition, because reading the physical paper is a far different experience than reading the news on a computer screen. I know that I would never have seen this gem of an AP story had I not been holding the good grey lady in my hands on the train this morning:

When the meal a man was cooking at his aunt’s house in Hartlepool caught fire this week, he grabbed the nearest thing from a pile of laundry to put it out: his aunt’s billowing, powder blue, size XL underpants. He ran them under the faucet and tossed them onto the flames, smothering the fire and saving the kitchen, according to a spokesman for the local fire brigade. The fire official said that using a large, wet cloth to cover a grease fire was a sound principle and that with underwear, “clearly it depends on what size you are.”

On the other hand, I probably would have read Marie-Jeanne's obituary with or without newsprint in hand, just because she was a Balanchine dancer and I pay attention to that sort of thing. In case you missed it, she had rather a marvelous entry into this world:

Marie-Jeanne Pelus — she dropped her surname professionally because she thought balletgoers might find it awkward — was born in Manhattan on her family’s kitchen table after her mother, a French milliner, went into labor while her father, an Italian chef, was preparing dinner.

I wonder, though, what happened to the placenta?

The Fruitcake, Unveiled

I feel I owe this to you. So, if you're feeling not faint of stomach, you can check Flickr to see the photos of the unveiling.

Desire :: Regret

In November, the subway posters from Poetry in Motion were running a poem by Vera Pavlova, one that had been published in the New Yorker last summer.

If there is something to desire,
there will be something to regret.
If there is something to regret,
there will be something to recall.
If there is something to recall,
there was nothing to regret.
If there was nothing to regret,
there was nothing to desire.

The end of one year and beginning of another often inspires reflection alongside the usual resolutions for the future. What do you regret? What did you desire? What can you recall? And what do you desire?

A happy and healthy new year to one and all.

Four Calling Birds

My due date, or really my mother's due date, was Christmas Day. She had friends who were all set to arrive at the hospital with camels and myrrh. If you know me off-blog and know my last name, you'd understand that it would have been quite entertaining should I have actually been born on Christmas Day. But I wasn't. I was four days late, and I peed all over the delivery room.

Quite some time ago, Julie wrote a post that I stuck part of in my drafts folder for later use - and now the time has come. Today's my birthday.

December 29 is the 363rd day of the year (364th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 2 days remaining until the end of the year.

Events - Random and Mundane

1851 - The first American YMCA opens in Boston, Massachusetts.
1989 - Václav Havel was elected president of Czechoslovakia. He became the first non-Communist who attained the post in more than four decades.
1998 - Leaders of the Khmer Rouge apologize for the 1970s genocide in Cambodia that claimed over 1 million.

Births - Arts and Culture

1876 - Pablo Casals, Catalan musician (d. 1973)
1936 - Mary Tyler Moore, American actress
1942 - Rick Danko, Canadian musician (The Band) (d. 1999)
1946 - Marianne Faithfull, British singer
1952 - Gelsey Kirkland, American dancer

Deaths - An Assassination!

1170 - Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury (assassinated) (b. 1118)

Holidays and observances

The fourth day of Christmas.

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Here's the meme:

1. Go to Wikipedia and type in your Birthday Month and day only.
2. List 3 Events that occurred that day.
3. List 2 important Birth days (I've indulged myself and listed five).
4. List 1 Death.
5. List a Holiday or Observance. (if any)

Christmas in 13 Bullet Points

Christmas has come and gone, leaving pine needles and presents, sleep deprived children and many empty wine bottles in the recycling bin. Here are some of the highlights:

1 – raucous game of Mille Bornes, because someone was making up the rules and we spent so much time putting him back in his place with the rule book that he didn't want to play again (though we still love him).

2 – apple confections to bookend Christmas day: apple French toast for breakfast, and apple clafouti for dessert.

3 – batches of cookies made by me (ginger thins, cinnamon clouds, and candy cane crisps).

4 – Christmas ornaments received: 1 pair of pointe shoes, a snowman, a Santa Claus and a fuzzy sparkly red ball.

5 – CDs received: Bridge Over Troubled Water, Bonfires of São João, La Radiolina, We'll Never Turn Back, and The Polish Diva's Polka Party.

6 - copies of the Banksy book Wall and Piece that were floating about, either given or lost in transit, I think (we had trouble keeping track).

7 – articles of clothing received by Miss M: two dresses, one shirt, one fleece pullover, one pair of silver plastic mules with pink marabou trim, one pink feather boa, and one pink petal tutu.

8 – grownups at Christmas dinner: me, my mother, my husband, my brother, my sister and her husband, and two spare adopted family brothers, because we fed the children hot dogs and turned on a movie so we could have dinner in peace. How's that for the holiday spirit?

9 – gifts of food and drink received by me and W.: a bottle of Veuve Clicquot, a box of Arborio rice, a bottle of balsamic vinegar, a box of crystallized ginger, a bottle of dessert wine, a package of Beignet mix, a bottle of sherry vinegar, 2# of red popcorn, and one jar of duck rillettes.

10 - lords a leaping...

11 – handmade objects that I’ve given away (or will be, hence no photo!).

12 – picks and probes in the kit I gave to W. – for woodworking, not dentistry!

13 – Princess Diana died when her car hit the thirteenth pillar of a tunnel in Paris, on August 31, 1997. What does this have to do with anything? I gave copies of the Tina Brown bio of Princess Diana to both my sister and my friend Peter.

And yes, we unveiled the fruitcake. It had become dust - and so we buried it.

The Fruitcake

My grandfather died in 1988.

He was a formal sort, nearly always wearing lace up boots and a three piece suit. And for Christmas, he had gift giving traditions - every year we got a fruitcake and a box of pecans. I can still remember sitting around shelling pecans with my mother's antique metal nutcracker, the kind that works like a vice with a screw. There's an exquisite delicate violence to the shelling, with the resulting simple pleasure of extracting the two halves of the nut intact.

The fruitcake was another story. It was always one of those commercial fruitcakes from somewhere down South, the kind that gives fruitcake a bad name. We'd duly put the fruitcake out for consumption at the big chaotic annual Christmas Eve party, and no one ate it, save a few ornery types, and children picking out the glacée cherries. Eventually, it would end up in the compost heap. But my mother always saved the tins - reusing them year after year for storing the dozens of Christmas cookies we made each December. After the cookies were gone, the tins went back into the pantry, to wait atop the freezer until the next December.

One year, round about 1992, my mother was rattling around in the pantry looking for a tin for a batch of cookies. She grabbed one and was startled to find that it wasn't empty. She opened it. Yup - fruitcake. Never opened, its cellophane wrapper intact, it looked perfect. It looked brand new. It looked like it had the the day it arrived, which, given the death of the giver back in 1988, meant it had arrived no later than Christmas of 1987. We oohed and aahed and put it back on top of the freezer. It seemed the only proper thing to do.

Since then, every year we have the unveiling of the fruitcake. For a number of years, it remained perfect, unchanged within its protective film. Then one year, we opened it and discovered that it was covered with a feathery white mold, inside the cellophane. The following year, the mold had transformed into a greyish feltlike covering. One year, we discovered that the plastic wrap had decayed and the fruitcake was oozing out. Sometime thereafter, it began eating through the tin and the tin had to be confined within a plastic bag.

We haven't yet had this year's unveiling - sometime later today, we'll retrieve it from its resting place and see how it's doing. We'll toast it with a glass of sherry, and gently return it to the top of the freezer. And Christmas will have come once again.

13 Ways to Help

For many people, the impending end of the calendar year is impetus to take out the checkbook and give to charity - to get that deduction into this tax year. And it dovetails nicely with the coincident spirit of giving that surrounds Christmas and Hanukkah (and Kwanzaa, though I'm not much of an expert there).

Need inspiration? Here are thirteen ideas:

1. Last week, Oh The Joys wrote about visiting New Orleans, and about how one could help rebuild the Singleton Elementary School's library. It's easy - buy a book via their Amazon wishlist - it'll get mailed directly to the school. Books for kids - what could be better?

2. A whole mess of food bloggers are having a fundraiser for the UN World Food Programme - with a twist. For every $10 you donate to Menu For Hope, you get a virtual raffle ticket toward your choice of prize.

3. Instead of a donation, make a microloan. For small businesses in developing countries, a loan of $25 or $100 can be a real help in getting going and reaching sustainability. There are a handful of "banks" out there connecting lenders and borrowers - one that I've participated with is Kiva.

4. Your local food bank could probably use help - this article from the New York Times explains why. Do you have non-perishable food items that you could spare? Or give them a check and let them put it to the best use.

5. Last spring I wrote about two healthcare organizations in Africa, both tending to mothers with a childbirth injury called obstetric fistula - the Edna Hospital in Somalia and the Addis Ababa Fistula Hospital in Ethiopia. They both have US based non-profit organizations, so your contributions are tax deductible.

6. DonorsChoose lets you direct your contribution very specifically - to a classroom project of a teacher's devising. I've contributed to two: "Dance Classroom Needs Ballet Barres" and "Building Self Esteem Through Music and Movement". Poke around, you might find something that pushes your buttons.

7. Cancer feels omnipresent these days - despite Richard Nixon's 1971 declaration of war on cancer. This year, I've given to the American Cancer Society (by sponsoring my sister at her local Relay for Life, and by donating old clothes to my local thrift shop), to the Pan-Mass Challenge, to Susan J. Komen For The Cure (supporting WhyMommy's walkathon), and to Joan's Legacy. Likely you know someone with cancer - maybe a donation to a cancer support or cancer research organization is the one for you.

8. Schools are an easy one. I give to my college every year, because I'm a happy alumna. I also support my child's non-profit daycare, because they do a wonderful job taking care of and teaching my child.

9. Since moving to the suburbs a few years ago, I've been spending a little more time in the car. Also, we finally got our clock radio fixed. All of this means that we listen to the radio more than we used to. So I've started donating to the local public radio station. Mine's WNYC. But yours probably needs support too.

10. Doctors without Borders does a great job of providing medical care to people who need it - often in war-torn, famine-struck countries.

11. If you want a bit of whimsy with your contribution, give someone a goat! Heifer International takes care of the actual goat procurement, but you get to sleep better at night knowing that some family has a goat because of you.

12. Planned Parenthood is a really good organization, doing really important work. Lots of people have a knee-jerk reaction that Planned Parenthood is all about abortions. In fact, if their family planning and women's health care services weren't around, there'd be a lot more abortions. Bitch PhD says it better than I can - be sure to read her post. If you'd rather help pregnant women, an article in the Times last month profiled the San Francisco Homeless Prenatal Program.

13. Last but not least, look around at your local community. Before the year is out, I'll likely send a check to the local volunteer ambulance corps (with fingers crossed that I'll never need them), the local volunteer fire department (ditto) and the nearby hospital (where a kindly postpartum nurse gave me spare parts for my Medela pump at 8:00 on a Saturday morning right after we moved in and I'd had an accident with the kitchen sink - and, no, I hadn't given birth there).

Okay, open your checkbooks!

The Heart of the Matter

Miss M. helped me decorate the tree. When I unboxed the red glass heart, she wanted to hang it buried deep within, the heart of the Christmas tree.

(Again, too many words for Wordless Wednesday, but what are you going to do?)

More Little NY Moments

The other morning, I saw a child in a stroller, "reading" the Hanna Andersson catalogue. Starting consumerism early? Picking out his winter wardrobe? Looking for things for his Christmas list?

While waiting for my lunch, I heard the expeditor order "BLT, hold the bacon". Hold the bacon? Isn't that the point of a BLT? Especially when the place uses Niman Ranch bacon?

And last week, I was sitting in my boss's office, gazing out the window at the rooftop across the street, when I spotted a guy on the roof having a smoke and taking a leak.

Princess Trivia

Out of the mouths of babes four year olds: Ariel wears a sea bra to protect her deese* from sharks.




* Miss M.'s word for breasts. Don't ask me, I'm just her mother.

A Different Pay It Forward

I've been furiously fabricating Christmas presents, which I can't discuss in any detail because all or most of the recipients read this here blog. (Hi!) Anyway, I'm on a roll, and I've got the supplies, so, when I saw Dawn's post this morning about a "Pay It Forward" homemade object exchange, I had to sign up.

So - the first 3 commenters to commit to doing a give away of something homemade will get something homemade from me.

“I will send a handmade gift to the first 3 people who leave a comment on my blog requesting to join this Pay It Forward exchange. I don’t know what that gift will be and you may not receive it tomorrow or next week, but you will receive it within 365 days, that is my promise! The only thing you have to do in return is pay it forward by making the same promise on your blog.”

For the first 3 people that respond I have a handmade thing that I’ll send you, sometime in January. Your job?

1. Post a comment here and make sure I have (or can find) your email address so that I can contact you for your mailing address.
2. Put this on your own blog, and send something you make to the first 3 people that respond.

CSA Week 25 - The End

This was the last week of our CSA share - all storage vegetables:

• Potatoes (6)
• Red Cabbage (1 head)
• Carrots (2 bags)
• Onions (4)
• Beets (7)
• Butternut Squash (1)

We now have a lifetime supply of carrots, because we still have carrots from several weeks ago and because we accidentally took two bags (Miss M. dropped one in my tote while W. was picking up another and we didn't realize it until we were home). We also have at least a winter's worth of cabbage - both red and white. Luckily I've found two simple and wonderful recipes for cabbage. The first is red cabbage braised in the oven - there's hardly any preparation beyond chopping and it cooks unattended. The second is white cabbage browned in butter - in this case, it's all about the technique, and it's good in the way that browned brussels sprouts are good.

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Braised Red Cabbage (adapted from Riverford)

1 lb red cabbage (about a 1/3 of a head)
1 medium onion
1 clove garlic
1 apple
1 t. ground allspice
1 T. brown sugar
3 T. red wine vinegar
salt & pepper
2 T. butter

1. Pre-heat the oven to 300F. Finely shred the cabbage, finely chop the onions and garlic and peel, core and finely chop the apples.
2. Toss together the onion, garlic, apple, allspice, brown sugar and salt & pepper to taste.
3. Arrange a layer of cabbage in the base of a large casserole then add a layer of the onions/apple mix. Alternate the layers until all the ingredients are used.
4. Pour over the wine vinegar, dot with butter, cover the dish with its lid or some foil and bake slowly in the oven for 1 1/2 to 2 hours.

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Sauteed Cabbage (adapted from Ina Garten)

1 head white cabbage
3 T. butter
1 1/2 t. kosher salt
1/2 t. fresh ground black pepper

1. Remove the core and cut the cabbage in very thin slices, as if you were making coleslaw.
2. Melt the butter in a large saute pan over med-high heat. Add the cabbage, salt and pepper and saute for 10-15 minutes, stirring occasionally, until the cabbage is tender and begins to brown. Serve hot.

Thirteen Pet Peeves

Aha! Killing two birds with one stone - pet peeves for Julie's Hump Day Hmm (okay, a day late) AND Thursday Thirteen. I'm cranky, and I just want to get where I'm going.

1. Men who spit on the street (and it’s always men).
2. People who amble along the sidewalk two or three abreast.
3. Folks who go up the down staircase or down the up staircase.
4. People who fail to stand to the right on escalators.
5. Drivers who don’t signal.
6. Drivers who tailgate.
7. Anyone who talks too loudly on the train (whether on a cell-phone or with a companion).
8. Dogs on leashes that are too long.
9. Wheelie bags anywhere but the airport, because their owners never seem to understand where the bags are.
10. Litterers.
11. People who put their feet up on the seat of the train.
12. Pushy people who fail to let the passengers off first.
13. Anyone who stops – coming or going – in a doorway or at the top or bottom of the stairs.

Can you tell that I commute by train and subway?

Incidentally, my mother had a cat named Peeve. Yup, she had a pet Peeve.

You say Lellow, I say Yellow.

She still can't say yellow.

This morning, as I was putting yellow clips in her hair, I asked her what color they were.

Her: Lellow.

Me: Why can't you say yellow? Say yes.

Her: No Mommy, I don't say that word, I say no.

Gingerbread Houses

I used to make a gingerbread house every year.

In the fall of 1982, I spent four months in London. That Christmas, I decided to make the Tower of London in gingerbread. It came out looking rather more like a Moorish cloister, but it was pretty divine, in I may say so myself. It had a square tower at one corner, and a crenellated round tower opposite. The round tower was tricky - right after it came out of the oven, we rolled the still soft piece of dough around a tube made from shirt cardboard.

At some point, I stopped making a house every year - there just wasn't the time, and I wasn't likely to top the Tower of London. But we did one two years ago, with Miss M. and her cousins involved in the construction, and we only didn't do one last year because my brother got married and that party was rather all-consuming. I think it's got to be back in the annual event category - a simple house with lots of help from all the little cousins.

I've always used the gingerbread recipe from the original Times cookbook, but with some extra flour and extra spices. Start by making a template out of shirt cardboard: the front/back, the side, and the roof. You'll need two of each. Roll the dough out on parchment, so that you can slide the parchment onto a baking sheet and bake it right on the parchment. Cut out openings for doors and windows before you put it in the oven. Make sure and bake through - you might want to bake it a little longer and at a lower temperature than the recipe specifies. If you're feeling up to it, you can used crushed sourballs or lifesavers for stained glass windows, with little strips of rolled dough for muntins. You can also do some decorating with dough before baking, like making shutters, or "architectural detail" along the corners. My favorite roofing material is Necco wafers - it makes a roof that looks like Mediterranean tile. And yes, eat the house, don't store it. Or bring it to work and have the office vultures devour it. I remember taking hunks to school in my lunch bag, well into January.

The only thing to use for icing (glue) is royal icing, which is just egg white, lemon juice and powdered sugar. It's pure white, it's easily dyed with food color, and it hardens like cement to hold the house together, and hold all of the decorations in place. You can also use it as decoration on its own - make a bit of green icing and use it for vines, or make yellow shutters.

And about the roof...I always "sew" it together with a couple of loops of dental floss to "hinge" it at the top. A sturdy needle will slide right through. Sewing it together means that the roof pieces won't slide off before the icing sets up. The dental floss is the only part of the house you can't eat.

The other candy I like to use (beyond Neccos for the roof) includes Life Savers (but only white ones), candy canes, miniature marshmallows, dragees (which are apparently illegal in California), gum drops (but only spice flavored ones, because they taste better with the gingerbread), and cinnamon red hots.

If you read all of the comments on my post about Hanukkah last week, you'll have seen one from my best friend from high school. She mentioned, among other things, those gingerbread houses of yore. So, highschoolbff, this one's for you. (And if you commented on that post, thank you - I appreciate the wisdom and heart that came from each one of you.)

Question, Comment, Command

My backseat driver doesn't tell me which way to go, but she does provide a running discourse.

Question:
What do coyotes eat?

Comment:
You know what a river is? A river is a kind of bath that lives outside.

Command:
Correct your body, Mama! (She wants us to lean into the curve when we're heading for a bend in the road.)

La Sagna

Back in October, I wrote about the sale of the house across the street from my mother, and the accompanying tag sale, and the later dumpster diving. Well, among the items that came back from the dumpster were two index card boxes - her recipe files. Clearly, she didn't need to take them with her to a nursing home where she'll never see a stove again, but it's sad that neither of her kids was interested.

Anyway, I flipped through the cards and stopped short to scratch my head when I saw the name of one recipe. What exotic thing could La Sagna be? Well, it turns out that it's just lasagne. Or lasagna. Or La Sagna.

But so Mrs. Wright's recipe lives on in the hands of folks who might like it, here it is:

I have no idea who Mrs. Joanne Decher is, or was.

Incidentally, according to the all knowing Wikipedia, "lasagne" is derived from the Greek word for chamber pot. Yum!

Riddle Me This

This week, they've been "studying" Hanukkah at our daycare. On Monday, the kids made menorahs - eight marshmallows stuck to a paper plate with frosting, with two stacked marshmallows for the shamash, and popsicle sticks for the candles. She ate hers for a snack Monday evening. On Tuesday, they had latkes for lunch. Sometime yesterday, Miss M. asked if we could light candles - more, I think, because she wants to blow them out, but spurred to ask by the Hanukkah discussions at school.

In scooting around on the web, looking for explanations of Hanukkah, I found this odd tidbit: A festival in which the right of every person to follow their own religion is celebrated.

As I've said before, I'm a Christmas-loving heathen atheist. I grew up in an non-religious household - we went to the beach every Sunday in the summer, and to the skating rink every Sunday in the winter. But we always celebrated Christmas, with aplomb - presents spread halfway across the living room, roast goose, five pound sacks of pistachios, and an enormous party on Christmas Eve every year.

Given the heathen atheist business, one could argue that my celebration of Christmas is hypocritical. However, Christmas as we know it also celebrates the winter solstice, the new year, the cyclical nature of time And, it uses elements from many non-Christian sources in its celebratory traditions: the exchange of gifts, the indoor decoration of a tree, the feasting and general revelry.

So, riddle me this: Since Miss M. has asked to light candles for Hanukkah, why shouldn't we? Why shouldn't we incorporate a menorah and eight nights of candles into our winter, December, holiday celebrations?

Random Quotes

Three things that made me chuckle recently:

“Béjart and Stravinsky is one of those fabled partnerships, like Romeo and Goneril, or bacon and strawberries.” (Clement Crisp as quoted in Alistair Macaulay's Times review of the Ailey opening)

“I couldn’t refuse,” he says. “I would bite my elbows.” (Mikhail Baryshnikov, about going back on stage in a play, from this week's New Yorker)

"I would be going long on picpoul." (Joshua Wesson, quoted in the Times in an article about expected increases in the price of wine)

Three Weeks 'Til Christmas

I've been thinking that there's all this time before Christmas, until I just looked at the calendar and realized that it's the 25th in three weeks. Yikes! Where'd the time go?

Over the weekend, we snuck into the Christmas boxes and extracted some tchotchkes - the Santa matrushka is on the mantlepiece, a stuffed Rudolf is the new favorite toy, and the Jingle Bells music box has already been to school once.

And we got out the Christmas books. I love that we have a collection of books that comes out for one month a year. Some are tried and true, like How the Grinch Stole Christmas! and 'Twas the Night Before Christmas. But others are newer and weren't around when I was a kid, like these two charmers:

Do you have a favorite Christmas book?

One Sentence

I'm all posted out. So, here's my favorite one-sentence joke:

A skeleton walks into a bar and says "I'll have a beer and a mop".

It's about the only joke I can remember with any consistency. You?