Three Cornered Hat

I think you could safely say that I was a nerd in high school. I was a band geek, I dabbled at chess, I got a 5 on the AP biology exam. I hung out with people who liked (and played) classical music, and we'd bake together for fun. Pretzels were always entertaining, because you get to shape the dough, into shapes that weren't necessarily pretzel shapes. [Go ahead, think about teenage boys making pretzels.] And more than once, we made hamantaschen. Recently, in trying to organize the MANY recipes floating loose around my house, I found the handwritten recipe for the hamantaschen we made some 30 years ago. Since Purim starts tonight, I thought I'd post it. And, just to make sure they were okay, I made some last night.

They're good, but not as good as I remember. The filling is a little bit too sweet, and I really do like apricot better than prune.

Looking over the old recipe is funny. It was written out by one of my best friends from high school [who has her own blog], but it's got little handwritten notes from someone else who I think may have been an old boyfriend. It also has admonitions, like "don't eat the dough!"

Go out and make some noise! Or go home and make some hamantaschen!

---

HAMANTASCHEN

DOUGH

• 1 ½ sticks of butter
• ½ cup sugar
• 3 cups flour
• 1 egg
• ¼ cup milk
• ½ t. vanilla extract

Cream butter and sugar in a standing mixer, until light and fluffy. Beat in ¼ cup of the flour, and then the egg. Mix vanilla into milk. Alternating dry and wet ingredients, add a third of the remaining flour, half the milk mixture, another third of the flour, the remaining milk and then the remaining flour. Beat well after each addition. Gather dough into a ball, wrap in waxed paper and refrigerate for 30-60 minutes.

FILLING

• 1 cup lekvar (prune butter)
• ½ cup finely chopped blanched almonds
• 2 T. grated orange rind
• 2 T. sugar

Mix all together and set aside.

ASSEMBLY
Preheat oven to 350°F. Roll out the dough on a lightly floured surface. Cut into 4” circles with a biscuit cutter or a glass. Reroll scraps as necessary, to make as many circles as possible.
Put a scant teaspoon of filling in the middle of a circle, and form into a triangle (like a tricorn hat). Pinch well at the corners so they don’t open up in the oven. Leave the filling exposed in the center. Transfer to the cookie sheets. Bake for 20-25 minutes. Transfer to a rack, and let them cool before eating.

If you’re viscerally opposed to prunes, you could use apricot preserves instead. If you're feeling fancy, you could do an egg wash (1 egg yolk mixed up with 2 T. milk, brushed on the pastry before baking).

Wordless Wednesday: Dancer/Tulip

I don't know where this came from, but I think it's lovely.

Punctuation Errors

Several weeks ago, there was a flurry of hoopla about a semicolon, a particular semicolon that had appeared on a NYC subway placard and was lauded for being a properly used "pretentious anachronism".

Being the crank that I am, I could only think of all the many transit placards with errors in punctuation. The consistent error that particularly galls me is that their graphic designers seem to have decreed the period verboten, so there are no periods at the ends of the instructions as to what to do in an emergency. However, for some inexplicable stylistic reason, they deign to use internal punctuation. So, if an emergency command is a single sentence, it gets no period at the end. But if the command is in two parts? The first part ends with a period and the second doesn't. It makes me nuts.

Yesterday, I happened to be standing on the subway in front of one of those signs. I took a picture (oh hail the iPhone!) so I could present you with evidence. Please review the punctuation, particularly in the third box.

A.A.R.P.R.P

Dear Mr. Novelli,

Thank you ever so much for your invitation to join AARP. While I love the idea of retirement, I'm only 47 and don't expect to actually retire for a good 20 or 30 years. Furthermore, the fact that I have a 4 year old means that I won't be able to retire for some time - I need to be able to put the child through college, and that will require an income.

About that 4 year old - I suppose I might join your illustrious organization if it were providing some useful information on the care and feeding of small children. However, it appears that you're trying to protect pension rights and supplying long-term care insurance and offering discounts on cruises, rather than advocating for early childhood education and mandated maternity leave coverage and flexible work arrangements for parents and excellent childcare for all.

And while you're at it? Your letter talks about making "the most of life over 50". Since I'm not yet 50, you might want to look at your database. It can't be cost effective sending mailings to people like me. Hell, you might as well try to enroll my child! I've got it: change your name to American Association of Rambunctious Pipsqueaks and Retired Persons, and then everyone can join. Let me know when you've done that. In the meantime, I'll stick to Moms Rising. It does a better job of advocating for me and my needs.

All best,

-Magpie

Scent memory

I got off the train this morning in Penn Station, not my usual entrance point to Manhattan, and immediately recognized the smell. It's not a bad smell, but a curious one - no matter the time of day, Penn Station always smells like fried food with an overlay of mustiness. And it's a powerful memory provoker. I think if you deposited me blindfolded on the platform for track 18, I could tell you where I was, even though I haven't commuted through there on a regular basis in about 25 years. It's that distinct a smell.

Last night, after a day of schlepping the gimpy Moky to doctor's appointments and tests, I thought a wee dram was in order. I opened the pantry liquor cabinet at my mother's 1909 house and was transported to every liquor store I've ever been in, again, by the smell. The liquor cabinet smells of wood and old dust and the essence of whiskey with a veneer of cork. And that wee dram, of Irish (not Scotch) whiskey, tasted oh so very good.

And this morning, as I helped my mother in the bathroom, I thought about the difference between baby pee and adult urine. Somehow, the baby pee never seemed to smell. Are the diapers that good? Is it just that there's so little of it?

The circle of life - from the mewling, puking infant to the second childishness born of aging. My mother diapered me, I diapered my child. The child is toilet-trained, my mother is regressing.

All things considered, her doctor's appointments were okay. Her general weakness is probably all steroid related, but she's tapering them off now. There's no evidence of blood clots in her legs, just edema. There's no evidence of a spinal tumor. Her blood work was perfect. We're keeping our fingers crossed that going off the steroids will result in a general improvement.

Sandwich

Cream cheese and jelly?

Tomato and goat cheese?

Ham & swiss on rye with lettuce and mustard?

Nope. 47 between 72 and 4.

My mother's not doing well. My brother and sister and I are juggling our own families and work so that someone is available to help Moky. Tomorrow, she has an appointment to see the oncologist - her first visit since the hospital stay and the three weeks of whole brain radiation.

So the other day, I arranged to take tomorrow off. And to allow me more time at my mother's house, and to cut down on my travel time, I decided to stay at her house on Wednesday and Thursday nights. So: work Wednesday, take the train to her house Wednesday evening, take her to the Thursday appointment, return to NYC and work on Friday, and return home on Friday night.

I packed a bag last night.

This morning, Miss M. woke up running a fever of 100.5°. W. had already left for work and I couldn't take today off (nor can I take off Friday). Luckily, Grandma was able to come to the rescue.

I'm going through with the Moky plan, because it's imperative, but oh the guilt of leaving the little sick chicken home.

I now understand why I'm called the "sandwich generation".

The Disconnect

Okay, my hometown paper, and probably yours, is full of stuff about Eliot Spitzer today. Understandably.

But a comment from Alan Dershowitz rather puts the whole thing in perspective:

“I always thought he was somebody who would come down on crimes with real victims,” Mr. Dershowitz said. “Prostitutes aren’t victims — they’re getting paid a thousand dollars an hour, and the johns aren’t victims. What upset me the most was that they wiretapped thousands of e-mails and phone calls. In an age when terrorism needs to be stopped, they’re devoting these kinds of resources to a prostitution ring?”

I'm in no way condoning Spitzer's behavior. But was this really a good use of taxpayer dollars?

* * * * * * * *

In a weird synchronicity of disconnect, yesterday's Times had an article on getting married with no one present, and another on making a baby with no one there.

In Montana, it's possible to have a double-proxy wedding. The groom is hither, the bride is thither, and random strangers say the vows for them in a Montana courtroom. It's one thing to have a wedding where one of the parties appears by proxy - it lets a soldier marry a hometown sweetheart while deployed. But two proxies? It boggles the imagination.

And in India, commercial surrogacy is legal and, because of the (low) costs involved, is attracting foreigners. So you get scenarios like this one:

Yonatan Gher and his partner, who are Israeli, plan eventually to tell their child about being made in India, in the womb of a stranger, with the egg of a Mumbai housewife they picked from an Internet lineup.

There's no relationship, no connection, no contact, nothing but a contract and some consideration. I have no problem with surrogacy, but this too boggles the imagination.

I'm not condemning either of these practices; I find them fascinating examples of a lack of barriers engendered by the global economy, the internet and modern technology. And I read both of those articles word for word, reveling in the fact they were both in the same section of the same paper on the same day.

* * * * * * * *

Back to Spitzer: he is suffering from a disconnect. From his wife and family, from his own high-minded ethics, from his constituents, from common sense. What was he thinking?

An Unanswerable Question

Why is it that her wind-up giraffe plays “Happy Days are Here Again”? It’s a kid’s toy. All she knows are happy days.

The Lure of the Limerick

I love limericks. We had books of risque limericks floating around the house when I was a kid, I once posted my favorites, and my husband is holding his breath for the day that the rumored-to-be brilliant limericks of T.S. Eliot are finally published (they are allegedly embargoed until his wife has died).

So when I found Niobe making up limericks about bloggers, in response to a challenge at Weebles Wobblog, I was ready. I printed out my bloglines list, and sharpened my pencil for the train trip home.

Aha! Crunchy granola. Five syllables = perfect.

Crunchy granola
is my favorite breakfast
day in and day out.

Um, oops. That's a haiku.

I scratched my head some more.

I'm not one for praying or mass.
I don't like sea bream or bass.
But I'm given to braying
A favorite saying
The apposite "this too shall pass".

However, granola had wormed its way into my head.

I know that she likes Coca-cola
and possibly crunchy granola.
But I never can tell
if blogger FreshHell
knows the difference 'tween shit and shinola.

How about you?

Open, please

The dentist's office
always had one magazine:
Highlights For Children

The email the other day from the Parent Blogger's Network was titled Blast From the Past. And indeed, that's what it felt like. Because Highlights For Children was very much a part of my past: there was always a stack of them at the dentist's office. I don't remember seeing it anywhere else, and we never had a subscription, but it was a reliable treat when waiting to see the dentist - that and the cartoons in the New Yorker.

We had a great dentist, Dr. Eisenberg, a kind man who worked out of a suite of offices attached to his split-level suburban house. His wife, who dyed her hair black, was the office manager, and doled out little plastic toys when you were done getting your teeth examined. My mouth is full of fillings, all still intact lo these many years later. I think it's a testament to his skill that my original fillings are still solid - my husband is the same age as me and has had to have nearly all of his childhood fillings replaced; they just crumbled away in his mouth.

I hope that Miss M. is spared the drilling and filling - she brushes with fluoride toothpaste, drinks fluoridated water and has had one dentist office fluoride treatment. And I hope she grows up knowing that the dentist is nothing to be scared of. But most of all, I hope she never has to go to the orthodontist because those people are costly sadists who never have the good magazines!

The Kindness of Strangers

A building fell down yesterday, causing the suspension of all train service in and out of Grand Central. So instead of getting to the station with no time to spare before my train, I found myself in the women’s room – a surprisingly clean and tidy public loo, in case you’re in the area. While ensconced, I heard a commotion outside – a woman cajoling, a child shrieking. I emerged to find a harried looking mother trying to get her child off the floor, and the bathroom attendant clucking nearby. Eventually, the attendant shooed the woman into the nearest stall and stood watching the child, trying to get him to stand up. As she closed the door, the mother said helplessly “he’s autistic”. The attendant bent down and asked the boy to show her the little truck he was clutching. And with that, the child calmed down, and pushed the truck along, but remained lying on the floor. Imagine that mother, snatching three minutes of time alone, a kindly stranger watching her child. It haunts me still.

And I wonder, does having a child of my own make me more attuned to that small drama, more sympathetic to that mama and son? For, though my child doesn’t have autism, she’s certainly pitched tantrums in public and lain on skanky restroom floors. And I could feel that mother’s desperation: “Get off the floor, I need to pee!”

To be dependent on the kindness of strangers – it’s both a blessing and a curse.

Wiki Wiki Joy

I don't read the New York Review of Books with any regularity, but I come across articles from time to time and often really like them. Yesterday, I read a wonderful piece about Wikipedia, by Nicholson Baker, an idiosyncratic writer of both breadth and minutia.

Baker's piece is ostensibly a book review of a "manual" on how to contribute to Wikipedia, but really it's part history, and part personal chronicle of his own volunteer work inside Wikipedia. Baker dives in deep: he edited pages on bovine somatotropin, Sleepless in Seattle, and cobbler. He worked to save pages that were slated for deletion by editing in reputable citations and became thoroughly and compulsively enmeshed in the, yes, minutia of Wikipedia.

Have you ever edited a Wikipedia page? I have, and I can well see how one could get completely sucked into it. I've only brushed against a couple of pages that are work-related, but a comma here, a link there, and soon Pop Tarts need a little attention.

Where would your Wikipedia obsession begin? What do you itch to edit?

Quote to Live By

When I was raising my kids, I used to say that work was therapy for home and home was therapy for work. (Eleanor Clift in an interview with Deborah Solomon in yesterday's Times)

I think she hits the nail on the head, even though right this minute I'd love to be home nursing my cold and reading Angela Thirkell in bed. I'm a better parent because I don't spend 24 hours a day with my child, and a better employee for having a life outside of the office.

Report Card: English

Name: Miss M.
Age: 4 and a quarter
Grade: Pre-school

Subject
English – Poetry
Rhymes with abandon

Daddy:
What did you have for breakfast this morning?

Miss M:
Snap crackle pop with granola on top. Hey, pop and top rhyme!

Subject
English – Vocabulary
Able to use four-syllable words when one will do

Yesterday, she described a strawberry as gargantuan, when big would have been more than acceptable.

Subject
English – Grammar
Budding stickler for the proper use of language

Miss M. to her mother: I don’t want you to lay, to lie down with me.

Subject
English – Handwriting
Capable of writing name, largely unprompted

This sanctioned bragging brought to you by the Parent Bloggers Network and Jenifer Fox.

Ah, the good old days

The other day, as I was aggressively deleting spam to my office email account, one made me laugh out loud. The subject referred to increasing the size of my, ahem, well, something that I don't have. But the text inside is what got me:

When I was your age, we had eight inch floppies.

The thing is, I remember eight inch floppy disks. One of the first real jobs that I had was a part time job at a white shoe law firm, and the then state-of-the-art IBM computer that I used had two eight inch drives - and no hard drive. The word processing program lived on one floppy and that data lived on the other.

The first computer I owned was a second generation Macintosh - not the one so famously introduced in 1984, but the Fat Mac that arrived soon thereafter. It also had two floppy drives. A hard drive was available as an accessory - but I was a graduate student and a hard drive was an unthinkable luxury. That Fat Mac, with its printer, cost about $2500 - in the mid 1980s. In today's dollars, that's about $4900. For $4900 today, you can get a whole lot more computer power than I had in 1985, with enough left over for a cup of coffee.

Where am I going with this? If my spam correspondent was my current age in 1985, he's 69 now. You think he even has a floppy?

Cranky Cranky Cranky

The kid's been sick since Thursday. I got it over the weekend. We both stayed home yesterday. This morning she was perky, and not running a temperature, so I sent her to daycare and loyally went to work. I shouldn't be here - I think I have a low grade fever, I know I have a runny nose, I have chest pain from an atrocious cough. Yes, I'm some kind of a martyr. But at this point, I'm almost too beat to get up and go home.

Niobe did that "do not get" meme a couple of weeks ago. Given how cranky and sick I am, it seemed like the perfect icing for a grey day.

I just don't get...

1. Vodka. I drink gin in the summer, scotch in the winter, and wine all the time.
2. Football.
3. Margarine and other imitation dairy products. Eat real food, please.
4. Mayonnaise, the kind out of a jar. Homemade mayonnaise doesn't taste anything like the stuff in a jar. [Don't get me wrong, it's not like I ever make mayonnaise. I just know the difference between the two.]
   
5. Ralph Nader.
   
6. Thongs. Why would you want to wear such a thing?
7. Red mulch. Who thought it was a good idea to dye the mulch a color not found in nature?
8. Pepsi. But I love Coke. Out of a can. With sugar and caffeine, thank you very much.
9. Facebook. Yes, I joined Facebook. But I don't get it. I do play Scrabble there. But I still don't get it.
10. Hummers. Especially driven by suburban housewives.

I feel better already.

The Liar's Diary

I feel a little like I'm in sixth grade, with a book report due. In some fit of madness, I signed up to do a book review for Mother Talk. What do I do? It seemed so easy when I was raising my hand – I read books, I write about stuff, hey, write about a book! Yeah, right.

To start with, the book is a murder mystery, so writing about it is tricky; I don't want to give away the plot. And, I find that I read viscerally rather than critically. Is it any good? I don’t really know. Did I like it? Yes and no.

The assignment was The Liar’s Diary by Patry Francis. Francis writes a blog called Simply Wait, and this is her first novel.

In short, it’s a thriller of suburban sturm und drang – families and individuals appear perfect but are hiding substantial secrets, all against a background of school hallways, pretty houses and trips to the grocery store. Nothing is as it seems.

The book is written in the first person, a necessary device but one that often feels stilted. Too many sentences begin with “I”, “Since I”, “Realizing I”, “I don’t know”. The narrator is Jeanne, a suburban doctor's wife and mother, with a job as the school secretary in the local high school, where her son goes to school. A new music teacher arrives at the school, and turns everyone’s life topsy-turvy. Ali, the music teacher, keeps a diary that eventually goes missing. Is Ali a liar? Is she prevaricating in her diary? Or is the “liar’s diary” of the title a reference to the book itself? After all, a diary is a first person narrative, and Jeanne may not be the most reliable storyteller - she's psychologically stilted and unable to recognize the darkness in her marriage.

The book is absolutely a page turner; I read about 2/3 one night and finished it the next. And it’s cunning – the plot twists and turns, with little foreshadowing of the next revelation. The denouement was a surprise. In retrospect, maybe it shouldn’t have been, but I let myself be carried along in a stage of suspended disbelief, because sometimes escapist fiction is just the ticket. At the same time, though, that final revelation is completely preposterous and quite implausible. Does that matter? It depends on what’s important to you in reading fiction. Harry Potter is completely preposterous too.

Am I happy to have read it? Yes.

Is it going on the list of favorite books of all time? No.

Are you intrigued a little bit? In need of some diversion for a trip to the beach? If you are, leave a comment and I’ll do a random drawing on March 1st – the winner gets my copy of The Liar’s Diary.

Edited to add: Susie J won the book!

Excellent Hearts

The very funny Kelley not only invented a prize, she gave it to me! But it seems to bear a word of explanation. If you look at the "less than three" symbol sideways, it looks like a heart (and if it doesn't look like a heart, try the other sideways). Anyway, Kelley hearts me, and I heart Becky and Becky. Because, you know, they're both named Becky. Well, really because they're great. Go, see for yourself.

Her Grace passed along another E for Excellent. As I went as poking through my feed reader, I realized that I have twenty-nine posts from one blogger marked "save as new". In other words, I'm using Bloglines to bookmark recipes from Smitten Kitchen because I want to try nearly everything Deb writes about. She's a terrific food writer, with great taste and a wonderful eye. So, E for Excellent to Deb and Smitten Kitchen. Check her out if you haven't already. And come to think of it, I think that this afternoon is a perfect day to make some lemon squares.

Incidentally, are you on my blogroll? Should you be? Do you want to be? Let me know.

How Well Do You Know Wal-Mart?

I came across a witty and perhaps esoteric internet quiz the other day: Walmart vs. Donald Judd. I scored 83%.

I sent it to my brother and my accountant. My brother scored 100%, but then he's an architect and has been to Marfa a lot. More amusingly, my accountant scored 100%, but he's cool for an accountant - he used to be in a rock band, and goes to Marfa every year.

How'd you do?







Edited to add: Marfa is a town in Texas. Donald Judd bought an old military base there which is now a "destination" for art pilgrimages.

Sick Day/Snow Day

Poor little chicken
High fever is misery
Can't enjoy snow day

We've had a beautiful snowfall today, 8 to 10 inches of the first real snow since December, and the kidlet has been running a fever since about 3am on Thursday. So her daycare is closed because of the lovely snow, and not only can she not go out to play in it, she doesn't even want to. Poor thing.

She's lying pitifully on the couch, working her way through all of the Miyazaki movies, while I alternate between mopping her fevered brow and attempting to work from home.

I did drag her off to the doctor, who said it wasn't throat or ears, and that there was a virus making the rounds that did nothing much but cause a high fever for FOUR to SIX days. Let's hope for four days, because the small lump of humanity in the other room is the saddest thing I have ever seen.

What's on Page 123?

I had the damnedest time trying to figure out the rules to this meme. The page of the book starts in the middle of a sentence of dialogue. The next paragraph maybe has five sentences, but there's dialogue involved, so it may really be three sentences. So instead, here's the second full paragraph.

A pause developed, and prolonged itself to uncomfortable lengths. Then, unexpectedly, the other laughed. "Oh Douglas, oh Douglas, Tender and true...I am moved to respect. Very well. The bargain stands. Tell me the name of your friend, and you shall have your documents."

It's from Dorothy Dunnett's The Game of Kings - a gripping historical fiction of the Scottish and English in the mid-16th century. I'm not done with it yet, but I was smitten on page 15, with this sentence:

It was only a sneeze; but a sneeze outside the door of their chamber, which dislimned every shade of their privacy.

Dislimned! Be still my heart.

Here are the rules:

1. Pick up the nearest book (of at least 123 pages)
2. Open the book to page 123
3. Find the 5th sentence
4. Post the next three sentences
5. Tag 5 people

Who She She tagged me. I tag Alejna, Suz, Sarah, Julia and Becky - because I want to know what they're reading!

Wordless Wednesday: Old and New

Out with the old:


In with the new:


Thanks, Granny!

The Yangtze Glitter

The child has a mind like a steel trap.

Last night, I ran a bath for her. While she was in her bedroom getting undressed, I tossed in a yellow tub tint tablet (because the yellow ones are never ever her choice - her choice is pink). She arrived to climb in and exclaimed "Look Mommy, it's the Yangtze River!"

I knew immediately why she'd said that, but it still floored me. We've got at least 100 books in rotation in her room - everything from baby board books to books that have more words than pictures. And one of them is The Story About Ping - about a little duck who lives on the Yangtze River, the yellow waters of the Yangtze River. We hadn't read Ping in a while, so for her to instantly conjure up the Yangtze out of the yellow waters of the bathtub was startling. I guess her little head isn't as cluttered up with as much randomness as mine is. [Like, why is the title The Story About Ping, and not The Story Of Ping?]

Recently, as I was cuddling her to sleep, she said to me, quietly and seriously: "Daddy said a bad word". "Honey, what'd he say?" "He said 'Fuckin' glitter'". It was one of those parenting moments where I didn't know whether to laugh or to cry. Yes, he probably did say that. Yes, the glitter comes home from school and gets everywhere. Yes, he shouldn't have said that bad word. Yes, glitter is evil and persistant. And yes, he has a propensity for using profanity where none is required, not to mention using more words than anyone ever needs to put in a sentence. [My favorite quote ever? The day he spilled a bottle of pills in the bathroom and yelled "Goddamn Fucking State of Affairs!"]

Maybe I should get some yellow glitter for the bathtub - we'll make the Yangtze Glitter!

Family Photos

My mother has been redoing the floor to ceiling bulletin board in her kitchen - rearranging photos, deaccessioning some, adding others. It's a work in progress, a place to give family photos - old and new - a place to shine. The grandchildren love it: Look, there's me as a baby! In a pile awaiting pinning is this photo of herself with the family dog, taken in 1937. At the time, my mother was just shy of 2 years old, and the scottie in the picture appears to be bigger than she is. The dog, named Sandy, may or may not be the dog that once bit my mother on the face, scarring her for life - or so she says.

Also in the waiting stack is this charming, slightly blurry photo of her - same vintage - walking across the grass with a paper umbrella. Where was she going? What's she holding in her other hand? If I didn't know better - hey, 1937 - I'd think she was holding a telephone to her ear.

The Planets

Miss M.'s daycare class has been studying the solar system - learning the planets and some of their characteristics, making posters, building papier-mâché models, singing songs.

The Sun's a hot star,
And Mercury's hot, too.
Venus is the brightest planet,
And the Earth and the Moon are home to me and you.
Mars is the red one,
And Jupiter's most wide.
Saturn has those icy rings,
And Uranus spins on its side.
Neptune's cold and windy,
And Pluto's cold and small.
We wanted to name the planets,
And now we've named them all.*

But what I want to know is when they decided to change the pronunciation of Uranus. I learned it as Yer Anus. Now it's Urine Us? Either way, school children everywhere are going to giggle.

Luckily, I found a petition to change its name altogether - but who do we send it to?




*The song is from Blue's Clues, but she learned it at school, not from the TV.

Be My Valentine?

5 - 7 - 5 at 6 am

Phone at six o'clock
Daycare delays opening
Screws up my whole day.

After I answered the phone from a deep sleep, and learned that daycare was going to open two hours late because of the weather, I lay in bed composing haikus in my head as I listened to the beep beep beep of the snowplows on the street and the scrape scrape scrape of W. shoveling the driveway.

Eventually, Miss M. and I got up, had some pie for breakfast, and settled down to the rare treat of watching Sesame Street (her) and reading the paper on the couch (me). And somewhere along the line, I told her that school was going to be late, at which news she burst into tears. "I want to go to school!"

Why is it that at least once a week, she has a morning tantrum of the "I don't want to go to school" variety, but today she pulled the opposite?

Why we rubberneck:
There but for the grace of god...?
No, schadenfreude.

Bugs

Last week, my husband sent me the little bug - he'd seen it somewhere, tried to swat at the screen, and realized that I'd love it. He was right. So I stuck it in the header to see if anyone would notice.

I've always liked bugs.

For a long time, I had checks with bugs on them, back in the days before online banking became widespread. I'd whip out a check at the doctor's office and get the desk clerk to shriek. And they amused me every time I had to pay Con-Ed.

That said, I'm not interested in eating bugs and the article in the Times Magazine on Sunday was more than a little repellent. Some guy is trying to convince people "that consuming insects is both pleasing to the palate and good for the planet", calling insects the "terrestrial cousins" of shrimp and lobster.

Well, for me? I don't like shrimp OR lobster, so I think I'll skip the Thai giant water bug, "a creature the size of your thumb" which "yields a thimbleful of meat the consistency of crab and has a surprisingly powerful citrus aroma". Yikes.

Ding Ding Ding: Quiz Answers!

I love that two of those books were known by nearly everyone who commented, and that the third was nearly completely obscure. But Melanie got it!!!

#1 is of course Claudia, from From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler (E.L. Konigsburg, 1967). In it, two suburban children run away and hide out in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I was a suburban child and I wanted to do that - I wanted to sleep in that antique bed, and bathe in the fountains, and hide in the bathrooms.

#3 is Milo of The Phantom Tollbooth (Norton Juster, 1961). Imagine driving through a tollbooth parked in the middle of your own room and ending up elsewhere - ending up in a topsy-turvy and playful world full of numbers and words and puns and riddles and puzzles.

And #2 is the spunky Maria of Mistress Masham's Repose (T.H. White, 1946). Maria's an orphan and discovers that Gulliver's Lilliputians are living on an island in a lake on her dilapidated estate. A spunky orphan! With an evil governess and an indulgent Cook! And little tiny people! And a map on the endpapers! This is an utterly charming book that takes a kernel from Gulliver's Travels and spins it into something completely its own. I found a little essay about it that well encapsulates the whimsy of the book - and I highly recommend it to all.

Claudia, Maria and Milo

Mystery Mommy's been posting quizzes, in which she asks you to identify some books by their first lines. I did staggeringly badly, so I thought I'd redeem myself by offering up one of my own. Here are the first lines of three books that I can't wait to share with Miss M. - do you know what they are?

1. Claudia knew that she could never pull off the old-fashioned kind of running away.
   
   
2. Maria was ten years old.
   
   
3. There was once a boy named Milo who didn't know what to do with himself - not just sometimes, but always.
   
   

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.