Honestly

Within a few days of one another last month, two people (Candy & Ilina) gave me the same award, one of those awards that requires disclosure of things about oneself, not to mention the tagging of others:

When accepting this auspicious award, you must write a post bragging about it, including the name of the misguided soul who thinks you deserve such acclaim, and link back to said person so everyone knows he or she is real. Choose a minimum of 7 blogs that you find brilliant in content or design. Show the 7 victims’ names and links and leave a harassing comment informing them that they were prized with “Honest Weblog.” Well, there’s no prize, but they can keep the nifty icon. List at least ten honest things about yourself. Then, pass it on!

I'm plum out of things to reveal - but here's my one thoroughly idiosyncratic fast-food confession:

When on a road trip, one sometimes must stop for fast food. On those occasions, I invariably order two hamburgers. I never ever get anything fancy or complicated, no Big Macs or Whoppers or cheeseburgers. I carefully remove the bottom half of each bun, the bottom because the pickles and ketchup are always between the burger and the top of the bun, and reassemble the two hamburgers into one double. Top bun, pickle, burger, burger, pickle, top bun. I get a double hamburger for less money, with more pickles. Fast food heaven. Then, because I'm looking out for the seagulls and bunny rabbits, I fling the greasy bottom buns out the window of the moving car. I never consider it to be littering, because I know that some small creature is going to delight in my rejected bottom buns. It does, however, infuriate my husband. (And I stopped doing it when the child became aware, lest she start flinging inanimate objects out the car windows.)

As to tagging? I can't. It's too cold and I have to go to bed now.

Octo-Mom

Plenty of other people have said plenty of things about that woman who had octoplets a few weeks ago. Batshit crazy, she is. I don't really need to add anything.

But every time I read about it, or talk about it, the thing that makes me the saddest - and the angriest - is that she gives IVF a really bad name. And I worry that this event, her litter, is going to cause a backlash against IVF, with the powers that be imposing more regulations and more requirements on the procedure. And the problem with that is that more regulation could backfire on those of us that need(ed) it.

I got pregnant at 42 with my own eggs. It was our third cycle of IVF; there were twelve eggs retrieved, and there were 10 embryos available for transfer three days later. The embryologist chose the best five, and those five were transferred to my uterus. One took, implanted if you will, and now, the one child that resulted is a feisty kindergartner.

There's no question in my mind that transferring five embryos was appropriate - considering my age, our prior cycles, the quality of the embryos. There is also - but maybe it's just me - no question that had I turned up pregnant with quints, a selective reduction would have been in order.

The press hoopla surrounding the octo-mom puts a spotlight on an isolated case - and I sorely hope that it's recognized as an aberration. Take that doctor's license away, but don't take away the ability of good ethical doctors to treat patients in the most appropriate way.

Hiking The Appalachian Trail

I'm way too much of a wuss to do something like through hike the Appalachian trail. Hell, I've never even gone camping, except for camping for sissies, where someone else sets up your tent and erects your cot and cooks your food. But I've always wanted to to walk over the Bear Mountain Bridge - and it's the spot where the Appalachian Trail crosses the mighty Hudson River.

So that's what we did today. We drove up to the western side of the bridge, parked and walked to mid-span and back. It was glorious - a chilly but perfectly gorgeous day.

Afterwards, we clambered down a trail, over a mini-suspension bridge over the Popolopen Creek and back up the other side to the remains of Fort Montgomery.

But hiking the Appalachian Trail? That was the high point for me.

How to Turn A Bad Day Around

I got out of bed this morning in a thoroughly foul mood, angry, sad, pissed off, weepy.

Last week, the kindergarten teacher had sent a note home about Valentine's Day saying "you may send in 18 cards...". You MAY? It sure sounded like a command to me. So, because I'm cheap and the kid was disinterested, we used the free cards that came in the back of the High Five magazine, and it was like pulling teeth to get her to write her name on them. So part of the morning's malaise was feeling like a cross between a slacker mom and a curmudgeon.

But I got to the office and got a link for a free Marvin Gaye song from Amazon, and it perked me the fuck up.

Here's Let's Get It On - download it and maybe it'll perk you up too. The link is only free until the end of the day tomorrow - you know, Valentine's Day.

Flirting

The getting-the-child-to-school schedule is complicated. Three days a week, I drive her to school. Ideally, I drop her off at 7:30 and get on a train before 8, but ideally doesn't happen very often. Whatever.

The other two days a week, she takes the bus and I take the 9:09 train. And invariably, on those two days a week, because my schedule is predictable thanks to the promptness of the bus, I walk by a couple flirting by the overpass to the tracks.

She stands two or three steps up to give the appearance of "I'm running for the train". He, more snappily dressed than one might expect of a taxi-dispatcher, looks up to her, taking a break from putting the babysitters into their car service cars. They flirt, he smiles, she smiles.

I arrived one morning just behind her, and watched as she peeked into the taxi shack, "I'm here". She went to stand in her spot on the steps, he followed a moment later, and they assumed the position.

I never see them part. I'm always up and over before the train pulls in, waiting at just the right door.

But I wonder as I pass them on the stairs. Does she have a boyfriend, a husband, a partner? Does he? Is it just flirting? Have they ever gone out for a beer? Or more? Will they? And I wonder if the same little scene plays out five days a week, or just on the two that I take the 9:09 train.

Grace #3 = The windows are open!

It's 61° in NYC right now, and it is a distinct pleasure to sit in my office, with the window open not six feet away, especially because it was in the teens but a week ago.

The School of Essential Ingredients

I like books.  I like food.  So when Mother Talk put out a call for reviewers for a book called The School of Essential Ingredients, and described it as being about a cooking class, I had to sign up, because, well, it's a fiction book about food...
(read more)

Letterboxing in Sunshine

You’ve maybe heard of geocaching, where you use a GPS device to plunge into the woods and find things.

Letterboxing is the low tech equivalent; instead of entering coordinates into your GPS unit, you follow written instructions (walk .1 mile with the lake on your left, turn right at the huge boulder, count 90 steps from the park bench) until you find your “treasure”. Hidden will be a watertight container with a notebook, rubber stamp, stamp pad and pen. You carry your own rubber stamp and notebook. When you find the spot, you use the hidden stamp to mark your notebook, and your stamp to mark the cached log.

I read about letterboxing ages ago on Scribbletown, and filed it away as a potentially fun outdoor activity. So yesterday, when the sun came out and the temperature climbed up above freezing, the girlie and I headed out.

There were two letterboxes stashed in a local park; we tried the first, but it began with a trek up a steep icy hill, so we backtracked. The second was easy walking, but I did all the clue finding as Mir was more interested in picking up sticks and talking to the non-scary dogs. She did like stamping the book and signing her name, but I think the charm of the enterprise was a little lost on her – it’ll be more fun when she’s a bit older.

Still, it was nice to get out into the sunshine and remember that spring really is going to be here one day.

Butter, Revisited

"What do you blog about?" is a question I got asked a few times the other night. Well, um, stuff - life, food, parents, parenting, work, books - you know, stuff. And while food is in there, and is something I like to write about and think about, it's by no means the focal point of this here blog.

So, it was kind of a mystery to me to get an invitation a couple of weeks ago to attend a cooking class/cocktail party with Cat Cora - who I'd never before heard of. [I've heard of the Iron Chef program, but I've never watched it, so I don't know the participants.] But it was at a swank location, and they were offering car service, and I figured what the hell, it might be an amusing night out. I roped a friend into being my walker, and told them I'd be there.

Before I accepted the invitation, I tried googling to figure out what this might be about - the invitation called it "The BIG FAT Truth"chef dinner and made reference to a "secret ingredient".

Not until the day of the event did I figure out what the secret ingredient was, and what the party was likely to be about - it turns out that Cat Cora is shilling for Unilever's soft spreads, and the event was a kick-off for a new marketing campaign propping up the "right kind of fats".

It seems to me that the people in charge of the invitations didn't do much in the way of due diligence. If they had, they might have noticed that the very first post I ever wrote was about butter.

Whatever.

Peter and I swanned into a drop-dead beautiful loft-like duplex apartment, complete with two fireplaces, enormous kitchen, floor to ceiling bookshelves and a huge wrap-around terrace. The place was beautifully lit, the drinks were terrific, and the gorgeous flower arrangements were in plastic spread tubs.

Cat Cora did a brief demonstration - making vegetable dumplings by sauteing some broccoli slaw in melted soft spread, folding that into wonton skins, and basting them with more melted soft spread before it went into the oven. On the counter in front of her, there were cheese straws in a plastic spread tub.

The dumplings later appeared on trays as passed hors d'oeuvres - with their dipping sauce in plastic spread tubs.

At the end of the evening, they sent us home with a copy of Cat Cora's Cooking From the Hip - which looks like a perfectly nice cookbook, full of olive oil and butter, and not a trace of soft spread - as well as a card file containing lots of "myths" and "truths" and "lies" about butter and soft spreads, as well as recipes for all of the foods served at the party.

I'm sorry, but I don't buy it.

First of all, I'm thoroughly in the Michael Pollan camp - in this case, hewing to the avoid foods with unfamiliar, unpronounceable ingredients edict. Secondly, I like my food to taste good, and that stuff not only doesn't taste good, it leaves a weird coating in your mouth.

Butter tastes great. It has nice mouth feel. It's all natural - if you had a cow, you could make it yourself. Butter's been around for a really long time. Soft spread is a factory invention. Why would you want to ingest that? If you want to cut back on the fat in your diet, use less. If you want to lower your cholesterol and saturated fat intake, use olive oil.

I could go on and on, nitpicking through the press release and the recipe cards, poking holes in this and that. But I'm starting to feel churlish and, to be fair, the evening was fun in more than one respect: I got to hang with Peter, I met a couple of interesting, like-minded bloggers, and they were pouring a lovely crisp fat-free white wine.

Pink Dress

My mother's brother got married, for the first time, when I was just six. I was the flower girl - in a pink dress that my mother made, and a pair of the red Moroccan leather shoes that she bought in series (every size, for party shoes, and they got handed down). The expression on my face slays me - clearly, the wedding will fall to pieces if I fail at walking down the aisle.


Later, that marriage did fail - probably because he is a despicable beast. But, as my mother kept everything, I still have the pink dress, and after the photo resurfaced the other night, I figured I'd better get a picture of the girlie in the dress, before she outgrows it and it's too late.


Please excuse the scab on her forehead; she fell down go boom the other night, smack dab on her forehead and one hip and both knees. She's fine but her father may be scarred for life - he tripped her accidentally and caused the fall.

The dress fits perfectly. Too bad no one we know is getting married.

Fourth

Kelly tagged me to post the fourth picture from the fourth folder. I don't know if I actually found the "right" photo - but here's the girlie. She and I had accompanied my mother to a doctor's appointment, and we were waiting in the hospital lobby. She's wearing a tie-dyed dress that I (badly) tie-dyed in a fit of hippy craftiness, and she's four years old.

The best part of this is that Kelly DIDN'T ask me to show you my legs - which I actually have been shaving, lord knows why, it being the winter and all.

Aimless Archeology

Someday, I'll organize my photos, the old ones, the pre-digital ones (not that the digital ones are in much order). Right now, some of them are sort of sorted, but most of them are just randomly tossed in a big plastic storage box.

In some fit of madness this afternoon, I rummaged around in that box. I found a vast, odd range: baby pictures of me, stuff from college, old boyfriends at the beach, the dear departed cats on vacation in Maine, wallet sized school photos of me and my siblings.

My mother always had a good eye. She dabbled in photography, her father was a commercial artist with a dark room in the cellar, and she had a pretty good Leica camera. One day, when I wasn't yet a year old, she tied me to the high chair and took a series of arty black and white photos of me in an antique baby dress. Eventually I got bored; this is the last in the series.

That high chair is still at my mother's house. Her little grandchildren have all used it; Tiny still does from time to time.

But I wonder where the dress is.

Separation of Church and State, and Why I Would Like a Fortuny Gown

Maira Kalman did a whimsical and moving essay on the inauguration, on-line on the Times site.

In it, she draws a picture of the Lincoln bible that Obama used (and which she got to hold). But she also says this:

And a woman named Renata asked:

"Why on the bible? Why not on

the constitution?" And I think

that is a VERY Good Question.

I too think that is a Very Good Question. If one of the general principles of our country is the separation of church and state, why then is religion so much a part of of the inauguration of the president of the "state"? There was an invocation and a benediction, with a bible in between for an oath that ended with "so help me god".

In the constitution, the oath/affirmation for the President is set forth as follows:

"I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."

No "so help me god".  Please tell me why our politicians feel the need to add "so help me god" and "god bless America" at every turn?  Why do they swear on a bible?

I always say that I'm going to use a dictionary when I get sworn in.

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

Another panel in Kalman's essay is a drawing of a red Fortuny dress. When I win the lottery, I want one. I've wanted one ever since the first time I ever saw one, a long long time ago. Sigh. Something about the pleats makes the dresses flattering no matter what the body shape. The colors are always fabulous. The simple little details. Sigh. I could wear it to my inaugural ball.

And More I Want To Read

An embarrassingly long time ago, someone contacted me and asked if I wanted to review some kid's books - a series called The Fairy Chronicles. I said "sure" and two books arrived in my mailbox.

I read the two books (Marigold and the Feather of Hope, Dragonfly and the Web of Dreams) and thought they were sweet, if somewhat pedantic and rather earnest. I loved the vaguely Victorian illustrations, which remind me a little of Arthur Rackham. And both books ended with an activity at the end - a recipe in one, directions for a woven bracelet in the other.

But I felt ill-equipped to "review" the books. At the time, my child was about three and a half, and they were way beyond her comprehendibility. So I shipped them off to my then five year old niece, who was just beginning to read, and asked her to review them for me.

The books were a little advanced for her, but with the help of her mother, she managed to read them. Eventually, she even wrote the book review I requested, but then the piece of paper disappeared - and didn't reappear until last week. By now, my niece is almost seven, and told her mother "I write so much better now!".

When all is said and done though, I think her "reviw" demonstrates that this series of books (there are about 14 books so far) is very appealing to the fairy-besotted elementary school girl.

Grace #2 = Flowers on a Snow Day

I almost never buy flowers. I'm generally too abstemious to spend money on that kind of frivolity. But a couple of weeks ago, in the supermarket, at the urging of the girlie, I bought a $5.99 pot of daffodils, sprouted but barely even in bud. They've sat on the kitchen table since then, and we've watched them grow, seen the buds develop, guessed which one was going to open first.

Mad's in the throes of renovating her kitchen and today queried as to decorating tastes. My house is your basic eclectic mix, but I find the kitchen eating area very pleasing. It wasn't planned, it just fell into place. There are lots of casement windows with white painted wood work, green paint on what little wall there is, an old dark wood table, green chairs from Ikea, blue/green tapestry placemats, and a green pot holding the afore-mentioned pot of daffodils, now on their last legs.

I highly recommend potted bulbs in the mid-winter - it brings grace indoors, even on a snow day.

Five Words, Redux

There were only six entries in my five words contest - the one where I asked for a paragraph using chthonic, liminal, punctilious, quincunx and usufruct. And they were all good!

Two of them, from Heidi and Vodka Mom, were cleverly subversive by making the words themselves the subject of the sentence.

The others - from Jenn, Liz, YourFireAnt, and Kelly - were great and varied attempts at making sense of nonsense, with wit and style.

So I resorted to the old random number picker.

Number 4! And the book goes to Liz!

I have to start making a new list...

Tickled Pink

I would just like to go on record as stating that I am not a lady. Or a Lady. I'm far too foul-mouthed for that - in the flesh anyway, though rarely on "paper". And I don't own any white shoes. And, while I do own a string of pearls, I can't remember the last time I wore them.

That said, I'm still tickled pink to get a little award of appreciation from Kyddryn, notwithstanding the fact that its qualifications could really be extended to just about every single blogger about there:

The Dardos Award is in appreciation of the merits - cultural, literary and individual - of every blogger who expresses him/herself on his/her blog.

The conditions are to:
Be tickled pink,
Copy and paste the award picture to your blog,
Include the rules,
Link the blog who bestowed you the award, and finally
Nominate 15 blogs for the award.

And you know what? I may not be a lady, but today I'm going to play by the rules, sort of. I hereby nominate 15 blogs from my reader, all of which begin with the letter M.

1. Magneto Bold Too
   
2. Marmite Breath Slept Here
   
3. Mayberry Mom
   
4. Meno's blog
   
5. Mental Pause Mama
   
6. Merlot Mom
   
7. Midlife Mama
   
8. Mom, Ma'am, Me
   
9. Mom-101
   
10. Moments of Perfect Clarity
    
11. Mommy Wants Vodka
    
12. Mothergoosemouse
    
13. Motherhood in NYC
    
14. My Level of Awareness
    
15. Mystery Mommy

What can I say?  I have a fondness for the letter M.  Mwah!

Grace #1 = Hand-Me-Downs

I love hand-me-downs. I love that clothes get used to the best of their ability, that many children wear a given item, that things stay out of the landfill for a while.

Last week, we got a box in mail from my cousin, with a bunch of dresses and shirts and leotards and tights, all outgrown by her little girl. I know that the hand-me-downs went back and forth among my cousins when I was a kid; now they're migrating among the second cousins.

And recently, though coincidentally, I shipped off some of Mir's old clothes to a neighbor, to a blog friend, and to an old friend (who reminded me that she grew up wearing my hand-me-downs). Another batch was delivered to some people who were collecting kid's clothes for a nearby maximum security women's prison, under the aegis of the pre-inauguration Day of Service.

Hand-me-downs come with love, and serendipity, and grace.

Five words that I've had to look up recently

Quincunx

Chthonic

Usufruct

Liminal

Punctilious

It's not that I didn't know "punctilious", it's that some news commenter made a comment yesterday about Obama's parade running late, and said he wasn't as punctilious as Bush. I looked it up to confirm that, in fact, punctilious is NOT a synonym for punctual. Damn newscasters, using four syllable words incorrectly, when three syllables will do.

Anyway, here's a contest. Best paragraph, of less than 50 words, to use all five of the above words, gets a copy of The Mammoth Cheese. Have at it!

1.20.09

At last, change is moving to the White House.



(New Yorker cover, issue date 1.19.09)

Porcupines at 3:15 a.m.

I couldn't sleep last night. I'd woken up around 12:30 with an attack of heartburn that ended with vomiting, and then I couldn't get back to sleep. I lay there, under the duvet, listening to the gentle snoring from beside me, thinking about babies and baby showers, and wondering why there was no Tums in the house.

Suddenly, I heard little feet running across the hall. Without a word, she climbed up, kneed me in the chest as she scrambled over, and burrowed under the covers between us.

This morning, the first words out of her mouth were "do porcupines run?"

I don't know. Was one chasing you last night?

Snow

Multiple choice:

Snow falls in winter. How does snow feel? Circle the two words.

Cold     Dry    Wet     Hot

Blonde. No question about it. Though, when I asked her later, she gave me the same answer: Wet and Hot. I'm sure she's just yanking my chain.

However, the query "how does snow feel?" could be part of the problem. The question ought to be "what does snow feel like?" because the way it was phrased on the Weekly Reader handout, it sounds like it's looking into the psychology of snow. Let's try this again:

Snow falls in winter. How does snow feel? Circle the two words.

Angry     Playful     Happy     Vengeful

How do you think the snow feels?

A Paean To Porridge

Porridge, by Spike Milligan

Why is there no monument
To Porridge in our land?
If it's good enough to eat,
It's good enough to stand!

On a plinth in London
A statue we should see
Of Porridge made in Scotland
Signed, "Oatmeal, O.B.E."

I never used to like oatmeal. It was served periodically when I was a kid, and I remember it as mucilaginous.  I far preferred Cream of Wheat and even Wheatena.

A couple of years ago, I discovered that my favorite sandwich shop served divine oatmeal - steel cut oatmeal, topped with cinnamon brown sugar butter, toasted nuts and/or dried fruit - I get everything, and it doesn't even need milk. And then the cook at the girlie's (former) daycare began serving oatmeal to the kidlets every morning, and Mir started asking for it in the morning.

So I started trying to make oatmeal at home. I tried a bunch of brands, trying to avoid the mucilaginousness I grew up with. The Silver Palate oatmeal cooks up nice and toothy, but it's hard to find. The McCann's steel cut is awesome, but spendy, and it takes a half an hour to make.  Good old Quaker Oats is fine if you use the old-fashioned variety and cook off all the water.  And hallelujah, I've just discovered that Quaker is now selling steel cut oats in the supermarket, for half the price of the McCann's.  

Now, on the two days a week that she takes the bus (and that we therefore have more time in the morning), I make a bowl of 5 minute oatmeal for the girl, and on Saturday or Sunday morning, we make a batch of the 30 minute steel cut for the whole family. It's a nice warm way to start the day in the midwinter.

* * * * * * * * * * *

This post was written for the Parent Bloggers Network as part of a sweepstakes sponsored by The Quaker Oats Company. Quaker is being a good corporate citizen: from now until February 28, for every UPC from a Quaker Oatmeal hot cereal product that you enter at Start With Substance , Quaker will donate one bowl of oatmeal to Share Our Strength, a childhood hunger organization. One hitch is that you need to be a Facebook member to participate. I didn't really follow the rules (so what else is new), because I was supposed to tell you all how I help other people, but I've been down that road recently, so today you just get to hear about oatmeal. Okay by you? Don't forget that nice poem I found you. Does anyone read the fine print? 

Wordless Wednesday: (Dress-Up) Shoe Maven

Purple skirt, orange tights and fuchsia peau de soie spike-heeled pumps, with silver lame pumps in one hand and a snow leopard in the other. Fierce, no?

She Didn't Just Say That, Did She?

O The Joys isn't the only one with a child who says awesomely inappropriate things.

The other night, we went out to dinner, to a Japanese restaurant in town. Whenever we go to a "fancy" restaurant, the girlie orders a Shirley Temple.

We had a chatty, solicitous waitress, who - without being asked - brought a little dish of extra cherries along with the Shirley Temple.

The girlie spent some time dropping the cherries into her drink and trying to fish them out with her chopsticks, until she gave up and asked Daddy to help. Daddy took the chopstick and prepared to spear a cherry, at which point she cried out "Daddy, don't pop my cherry!"

Her mortified parents wanted to slide under the table.

Pre-Sleep and Dream Sleep

Before bed:
I don't wanna go to sleep, it's so boring. I'm bored, bored, bored. Sleeping is so boring.

Talking in her sleep:
I really need help. I want to make it.

What goes on in there?

Fierce

A couple of months ago, I signed the girlie up for an after-school cooking class - something sponsored by the school's PTA, to occur on-site, geared to kindergarteners and first graders. It starts today.

This morning, I reminded her that she'd be going to it this afternoon. She burst into tears, wailed, rent her garments, kicked me, complained that she wouldn't know anyone, and insisted that she didn't want to learn to cook.

I changed the subject, and eventually we got out of the house, reasonably well fed and clothed.

As I pulled into the school parking lot, she said "it's okay, Mommy, I'll try the cooking class". Without prompting. Without me having brought it up again.

She is going to be a fierce teenager.

* * * * * * * *

On a vaguely related note, Tracee Sioux has relaunched her site - it's now The Girl Revolution, and it's all about empowering girls and bashing sexism over the head. You have a girl? Go check it out.

Whee!

So we finally (a month late!) got the Wii and Wii Fit hooked up. And, we seem to be hooked. The first words out of the girl's mouth this morning were "can we go exercise?"

She generally prefers to sit on the couch and watch me, because she's too uncoordinated to do anything right, but she did run around the house several times, running running running, carrying the little remote.

We all went through the Wii Fit calculations. Husband isn't going anywhere near it ever again, because it told him he was 57. I was tickled to be thought 36; and hysterical when the 5 year old was deemed to be 30. Because, you know, it's entirely possibly that I had her when I was six, right?

It's altogether amusing.

A Just Post Call For Help

Those fine Just Post women are hanging up their hats this week. For the final Roundtable, they put out this query:

Dear Readers, What say you? Are you a pragmatist or a Heart of Gold? Or are you some other kind of hybrid altogether? Will you join us in becoming an ongoing financial supporter of a cause you believe in? Will you write about it on your blogs or in your tweets? Will you help to raise money AND the profile of organizations that desperately need aid?

And that's what we are asking for as our farewell gift. Send us your link by the 8th and we'll include it in our last Just Post Roundtable on the 12th.

I've always worked for non-profits. Always. Except for stints at Publisher's Clearing House during summers in college, or part-time at a law firm while in graduate school, all of my employers have been non-profit arts organizations in New York City. All four of them (yes, four jobs in 22 years, I put down roots) have depended on the kindness of individuals (and corporations and foundations and government) for on-going support - because even though there's always a bit of earned income, it's never enough.

Can I tell you how much we appreciate that help? We really really do. Even a check for $5 means something - because that person took the time to sit down and write a check for $5, and put a stamp on the envelope, and dropped the contribution in the mailbox. And that $5 is going to be good for something - it'll buy some socks or a ream of paper. And if 13 people give us $5 each, we can buy a pair of pointe shoes for a twelve year old girl, who would never otherwise have the chance to dance. And 100 gifts of $5 - hey, that's $500 - pretty soon you're talking real money.

Opening up the return envelopes from our end of year campaign is one of the high points of my job, and it's not even my job. I just pitch in and help because I really like opening envelopes with checks in them, especially the ones from people just like you and me. Sure, a big check from a swank foundation is fun too, especially when it's for five or six figures, but the little ones really tug at the heartstrings.

As a result, I take my own personal charitable giving seriously. It's certainly not a lot of money - I haven't got a lot of money - but I try and spread it around to places where it seems like it'll do the most good, and that mean something to me.

In 2008, I made cash contributions to 34 different organizations (and dropped some stuff at the local thrift shop which benefits the American Cancer Society). One organization got three separate gifts, but that's because I'm on the board and there were several campaigns and an event. A few gifts were made because of specific requests by friends or acquaintances (like walk-a-thons, or the $50 gift to Rockefeller University requested in lieu of a present by a friend who turned 50). Others were completely local (the volunteer fire department, the library, the volunteer ambulance corp, the nearby hospital).

Some gifts were made as a result of news items. After the Hurricane Ike, I sent a bit to the Austin Food Bank. The Holy Apostles Soup Kitchen was profiled in the New Yorker; they got a gift. Planned Parenthood got a contribution in memory of Sarah Palin. And I sent a bit to CIMIT after reading an article in the Times about their project to build incubators out of car parts.

Of the 34 organizations, 16 were repeat gifts - I've given to them one or more times in the past five years. I give to my college every year. On my birthday - which is just before the end of the calendar (tax) year, I send the New York Times Neediest Cases Fund my age in dollars. This year, they got $48. Next year, it'll be $49.

Oh, and I have rules. I always slip a note in the envelope asking that they not add me to their list, and that they don't solicit me more than once a year. If they fail to respect that, or if they don't send me a thank you note, I blacklist them.

I'm not telling you this to toot my own horn. I'm telling you this because a little here and a little there adds up, and giving becomes part of your life.

The Just Posts have been a wonderful spotlight on causes that move people, on issues of justice across the board, from access to health care to poverty to volunteering. And so in honor of one of the women who founded the Just Posts Roundtable, my first contribution in 2009 was a modest gift to an organization that helps the homeless.

You can help too. $5 really can make a difference.

What A Day This Has Been...

It started with a 5:17am email from the school district: Schools CLOSED today. The girlie wanted to get up at six, and there was no cajoling her back to sleep, so there we were, up and at 'em. Once it was light outside, I ventured out to peer at the driveway, lusting for the New York Times which never did come. I made my way up our steeply sloped driveway only by climbing in the dirt along the edge; the driveway itself was a slick of ice. I determined the road to be treacherous, so I slid back into the house and emailed the office. I tried this again a couple of hours later - same result. I resigned myself to the fact that we weren't going anywhere beyond the painting easel in the cellar.

Then the phone rang. "Nothing's wrong" said Robin. Beginning a conversation with "nothing's wrong" always means that something isn't right.

Robin lives up the street from my mother and had been driving by, only to find my mother bundled up on her front porch, surrounded by firemen and EMTs and police. It turns out that there'd been a tiny fire caused by a clogged nozzle on the furnace. The aide called the fire department, who came and did what they do. And because there was carbon monoxide registered in the house, and my mother's blood oxygen levels were low, they ferried her off to the ER.

I hauled the girl out of the house, icy roads be damned, dropped her at her grandparent's house, and drove down to join my mother in the ER. I found her, still wrapped in six blankets from her own house, and we sat around for awhile - the lack of urgency in the emergency room is always stunning - eventually they did some bloodwork, gave her some albuterol, and sent us home.

Meanwhile, my brother called the oil company and met the repairman at the house.

In many ways, it was hugely anticlimactic - nothing was really wrong, nothing more wrong than is always wrong. The EMTs were right in sending her to the ER - she couldn't stay at the house until it had been aired out and the furnace repaired. The most bewildering part was that Moky was so out of it at the hospital - it's like she just tuned out as a coping mechanism. I think she knows where we were, but I'm not all that sure. She did perk up when we got home - it must have felt like a huge relief, even though the house was still cold, and smelled of fuel oil.

It was an awful lot of drama for a snow day.

Groucho Moky

Last fall, I couldn't find my passport. And it was really eating at me, because it was expired and I wanted to get a new one, and get one for the girlie. You know, just in case we need to flee the country or something. Eventually it turned up, but then I started wondering where my social security card was, since those kinds of documents usually stick together. I knew I had one - the original one that I'd gotten in high school - but it was nowhere to be found.

I've spent most of the past two weeks away from home, mostly at my mother's house. In between bouts of incompetent nursing, my sister and I engaged in some aimless archeology (and surreptitious updating of one another's Facebook statuses).

Lo and behold, in a box of random treasures, I found my social security card. It was in one of those plastic card/photo holders that slips into a wallet, though the wallet is no longer around. The only other thing in the photo holder was the only picture of a family member that I can ever remember having carried around with me. These days, I've a handful of pictures of the girlie on my phone, and a couple tacked up around my desk, but I've never been the sentimental type that carries photos.

I have no idea when this picture was taken, or where. I don't recognize the house. But it's my mother. I love the ginchy hands, and the way she looks so happy under her Groucho glasses and the family wig.

When I slipped the picture out of its sleeve, it delaminated. It's an old Polaroid, and it had been cut to fit in the sleeve.  I quickly (and crookedly) scanned it and stuck it back in the sleeve.  You can see how the surface layer is cracked - from age, from being sat upon.  

It's a thoroughly goofy photo, and it was good to find it. Because the woman in the photo is now but a shell of herself - her fingers are gnarled, her smile is rare, her plastic nose has been replaced by an oxygen tube. But she once was.

The Twelve Months That Were

I have been thoroughly betwixt and between for the past 10 days - a couple of days here, a night there - hither and yon from home to my mother's house, to my in-law's house, to my father's house - with stops at various and sundry holiday parties and dinners at friends. The Christmas presents received are piled up in the living room, as yet to be absorbed into their proper spots in the house. Don't ask me where the clean laundry is.

So, Slouchy's post today, in which she rounded up the year just ended by quoting from the first lines of each of the first posts of the twelve months of 2008, seemed perfect fodder for filching.

January

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.

The poem, about desire and regret, was completely apropos for each and every marking of the new year.

February

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).

Frightening. This was a post about a pile of books waiting to be read. Of the nineteen listed in that post, I've read five and I'm in the middle of two. So twelve of those books are untouched. Mind you, I've read plenty of other books that weren't in that pile, but still. First in, first out is apparently not the operating concept for my library management.

March

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)

Way to go - this post started with a quote. So here, I'm quoting a quote of a quote?

April

Every year, the pre-school class at Miss M.'s daycare hatches eggs into chicks.

And, yes, the eggs hatched. So what else would be new?

May

After some trial and error, we've found some good aides to help our mother.

Despite its quotidian beginning, this was a funny post - mostly acerbic anecdotes about the care of our ill mother.

June

Herewith let it be known that, if a four and half year old child eats Carvel ice in a not-found-in-nature shade of intense turquoise blue, it will stain her face and hands and legs, and, on the following day, it will cause her poop to be blue.

A two sentence post, the above being the first sentence.

July

Ooh, a pink popsicle from the queen of pink!

That queen of pink would be the inimitable Niobe, but that was probably supposed to be a secret.

August

I tend towards the stoic, I tend to hide my emotions.

Um, yes.

September

The first house that I remember living in was one of four nearly identical little houses in a row.

Gum. If you don't know what to bring to a potluck, bring gum.

October

Her: Mommy, why do you have hair on your parts?

Okay, I cheated. The first line of the post was actually a stage direction of sorts. But this is the first line of content.

November

Here’s the thing about meatloaf – it doesn’t need a recipe, it needs an attitude.

I could say that about a lot of things. I could also, and may, make some more exhortations about food.

December

Every year, I make the same three new year's resolutions:

Eat less
Exercise more
Dress better

And here we are again: New Year's Day.

I wish you all a lovely 2009, full of joy and peace and luck and love.

Brandied Fruits And Felted Ponchos

Not because of the economy, but because of an inborn general frugality coupled with a crafty urge, I managed to purchase very few Christmas presents this year. There were a number of things culled out of the cellar (yes, I regift!), there were things I found at the thrift shop when I was donating some stuff we no longer needed, and there were things I made.

The two little girls of my acquaintance (Miss M. and her six year old cousin) both got ponchos. Months ago, I'd seen a poncho for sale on the website of an Atlanta based craft cooperative, and I said "I can do that". I felted a couple of shetland wool sweaters, cut them out freehand, blanket-stitched the edges, and added some appliques made from scrap felted wool (from last year's projects).

Here's one of the sweaters, showing how it was cut. I also cut the neckhole just along the transition to the collar ribbing, though if it had been a v-neck sweater, that would have been completely unnecessary. The V at the bottom starts just above the ribbing along the lower edge of the sweater, and the indent under the arms is at the point where the sleeve meets the body.

The blue sweater had been a cable-knit, but once it was felted, I decided I liked the inside better - it had a more interesting appearance. The points of the star are plain pearly shirt buttons, and both ponchos are blanket-stitched along the edge with black wool. Miss M. got the one with the star, and her cousin got the one with the heart.

Funnily enough, that same Atlanta craft cooperative has just opened a shop in the next town over from us. I went in there before Christmas and found a rack of the ponchos, and felt oh so smug for having made my own.

For grown-ups who needed gifts, I started some brandied fruits in June, with 13 ounces of perfect strawberries.

By mid-July, I'd added sour cherries, blueberries, apricots and plums. And in August, peaches and nectarines went into the jar.

Last week, I decanted it into seven assorted jars and gussied them up as gifts with scraps of ribbon and tags made from last year's Christmas cards received. I kept one for myself, and I'm looking forward to spooning some of it over a dish of vanilla ice-cream.

What 48 Looks Like

Because Bennie wanted to know.

There's rules on his blog if you want to play. But, it's my birthday and I make the rules today, so I'm just posting the picture of me. Actually, though, since I took it yesterday, it's really what 47 looks like.

Time Stands Still

It's that time when time stands still. We're between Christmas and New Year's, between life and death. We've two weeks off of work and school.

I'm at my mother's house, with my sister. We left our various children home with their fathers, the aides have the weekend off, my brother and his wife have decamped to Canada until after the new year. Christmas feels like it was ages ago, and time is just standing still.

Pinky and I have been drinking wine, going to the supermarket, incompetently nursing our mother, and playing Royalty.

The phone rings, the doorbell rings, the kitchen timer goes off, and time stands still.

Moky sleeps, and we get her up for a meal. And then she sleeps some more. Sometimes she says nearly nothing and needs to be fed, other times she perks up and feeds herself. Last night she asked for a glass of wine, so we gave her a shotglass of the Fat Bastard. At breakfast, her toast was too crunchy crusty and she was having trouble biting into it. She looked up at us and said "get me my wolf". Humor still sneaks through the fogginess.

But it's hard to avoid feeling like it's a death watch. Time stands still.

Wordless Wednesday: Great Balls of Fire

Merry Christmas and a very Happy New Year!

The Fruitcake, Redux

You haven't forgotten the story of the fruitcake, have you? We haven't gotten a holiday fruitcake since the fruitcake tradition died with my grandfather. Oh, my father sends out canned cheese every year (really, in a can, and it's good), and my uncle sends nuts (and it's just not Christmas without Uncle Phil's nuts), but fruitcake has gone the way of all things.

Not too long ago, though, I was flipping through the Archie McPhee catalog, and came across this:


The thought crossed my mind that I could step into my grandfather's shoes and send a "fruitcake" to everyone on that side of my family. But I restrained myself.

Anyway, if I had sent it, would I then have to send one every year? Or could I just send a postcard, "don't forget to blow up your fruitcake!"? Gosh, life is complicated.

Silent Night, Redux

Bennie posted a list of his top ten Christmas tunes, and asked for readers to post their favorites.

I just can't.

Two years ago, I had 36 versions of Silent Night in iTunes.

This year, I'm up to 39. It's more than two hours of Silent Night, or, too much to burn to one music CD. It's a sickness, I tell you.

The funny thing about it is that if you start playing 39 version of Silent Night in a row, it takes people a while to catch on. Because the song is so sweetly innocuous and the renditions are all so very different, they don't realize what's happening to them.

Not all songs are so insidious. Once upon a time, my husband was doing some woodworking in the cellar at my mother's house. There are speakers down there, but they're connected to the stereo in the living room. David Garland was on the radio, on WNYC, playing nothing but covers of the Hawaiian War Chant. After a while, W. came out of the cellar in an altered state. I long to recreate that but I only have seven versions of the Hawaiian War Chant. Can anyone help me out?

The Coconut, Redux

A few weeks ago my brother asked me for my husband's new contact information. I thought nothing of it, figuring that he was just updating his so-called Rolodex.

Yesterday, I got the following email from my husband:

A box addressed to me in T's handwriting arrived at my office today. It contains our old friend from Key Largo, the well-traveled, well-decorated Cocos Nucifera.

Wearing a red Christmas watch-cap.

Hmm. The mind reels with possibility. Any suggestions as to its next appearance?

(If you missed the backstory on this here coconut, click here.)

Little Hats and Just Posts

Those splendid Just Post bloggers put out the penultimate edition of the Just Posts last week - go check out Mad and Jen and Su, and click through to some great posts about making the world a better place.

My post about turning old tee-shirts into hats for Haitian babies was included, which inspires me to show off another found material baby hat that I made.

This tiny knit hat is made of scrap yarn that I found in a drawer at my mother's house, little balls of yarn leftover from other projects, none of which were enough for a full project. So I picked out complementary colors and just kept changing yarn.

Yesterday, I mailed that hat off to Save The Children, for their Knit One, Save One project - the caps will be collected and sent off to babies in need of warmth.

I'm a kind of terrible knitter - I have two lots of yarn at home in a box because I'm just terrified about making the sweaters that I got them for - but little tiny hats, either for newborns I know, or for needy babies I don't? That I can do.

Lions and Tigers and Teeth, Oh My!

This morning was the kindergarten "Winter Sharing Celebration". PC to a fare-thee-well, right? I say, let's call it Festivus Hanukwanzmas and be done with it.

But I digress. Up on the bulletin board in the classroom was each child's response to discussion of gifts that would "make people we love feel happy".


Most of them were on the order of "a chapter book for my sister" or "a robot for my mother".

My lion and tiger and leopard obsessed child? Would like to give a sharp toothed animal to her cousin.

Cookies, Christmas and Otherwise

It being that time of year when one's thoughts turn to Christmas cookies, I've been baking with the small child. She's a great helper monkey, loves to turn the mixer on, dumps with abandon, eats flour straight up. We made a batch of gingerbread the other day, rolled out and cut into bears and bells and trees, undecorated save for the few she scored and poked with a toothpick before they went in the oven. There's twice-baked shortbread to be baked tonight, using an Alice Medrich recipe found at the redoubtable Smitten Kitchen - and it is the best shortbread ever.

And last night, the girlie and I made my favorite Christmas cookies ever - well, as of last year anyway, when I found the recipe on the intertubes - a crispy, chewy, peppermint oatmeal shortbread kind of thing called a Candy Cane Crisp.

This, people, is why I was looking for candy canes the other days and cursing the gods for having invented the abominable fruit-flavored candy canes which were all I was able to find. Luckily, I texted the husband who scored a box of the real thing. Half of them were broken, but hey - the first step in the recipe is to crush the candy canes.

It's a simple recipe - no egg, no leavening - just butter, sugar, flour, oatmeal and crushed candy canes, with more candy canes sprinkled on top giving them a nice pink sheen. You'll want to eat every last one of them because the texture is awesome and the flavor is better.

Candy Cane Crisps

1 cup butter, softened
1 1/4 cups powdered sugar
1 1/3 cups flour
1 1/2 t. vanilla
1 cup rolled oats
1/2 t. salt
about 3/4 cup crushed candy canes (I ran them through the blender)

Preheat oven to 325.
Beat butter and 1 cup of powdered sugar until creamy; beat in vanilla. In another bowl, stir together flour, oats & salt; gradually add to butter mixture, blending thoroughly. Add 1/4 cup of crushed candy canes and mix until well combined.

Roll dough into 3/4-inch balls, then roll in remaining powdered sugar to coat. Place balls about 2 inches apart on greased and flour-dusted cookie sheets. Gently flatten cookies with a fork making a criss-cross pattern with the tines. Sprinkle each cookie with about 1/2 t. of crushed candy canes, or just pile it on top if you're five years old.

Bake for 18 to 20 minutes or until edges are lightly browned. Let cool on baking sheets for 2-3 minutes, then transfer to racks and let cool completely. Store in an airtight container. Makes about 4 dozen, depending on how much dough the five year old eats, and whether you really can make 3/4-inch balls.

(Note: 13 full sized candy canes grinds up to about a cup of dust.)

* * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Over the weekend, I got an email from one of my sister's friends. She'd grown up down the street from us, and her mother was a bit of a foodie who catered as a hobby. Occasionally, for pocket change, I worked KP for her mother when she was catering or having fancy dinner parties.  

Attached to the email was a scan of a handwritten recipe, a cookie recipe that I'd given her mother when I  was eleven years old.  Susie and her mother were doing their holiday baking, and were about to make a batch of these molasses cookies, lo these thirty six years later.  And clearly Lee's made them often - the card shows the evidence of dribbles and greasy fingerprints (oh, and that's not my handwriting, it's hers).  I haven't made these cookies in a long long time, but they were terrific. What's more, I remember exactly where that recipe came from: the mother of an elementary school classmate who lived around the corner from us.  I wonder what ever happened to her.

Cookies kind of worm their way into your soul, part of the memories we make and remake and call our own.  What are your favorite cookies to make?

To Somebody's House Wii Go

Wow. Just wow. I spent the weekend mulling over the many posts and comments from people hoping for that Wii Fit that Nintendo is letting me give away.

The posts ranged from funny to poignant, and from witty to painful. There are lots of mamas out there hoping to lose baby weight - even with babes old enough to be walking and talking and going to school (though Heidi claims to have given birth to varmints, not children). Monkey's Momma and Marmite Breath can't ever set foot in their health-clubs again because of embarrassing treadmill incidents, and some are just too shy to ever go to a gym in the first place. Many people used to do (and love) yoga, but can't find the time to get out of the house to get to the yoga studio.  Rima signed up for Jazzercise, and then didn't go for a year - even though though they were billing her credit card every single month. 

Well Read Hostess nearly seduced me with a recipe that requires copious amounts of egg and butter.  Andi has flat out declared that she'll never be fat again.  Robbin needs a Wii Fit because she doesn't laugh as much as she once did, and her abs are suffering.

Melanie and PicaboDaddy both recounted their video game history, because after all, what's the Wii Fit but the latest in a long line of video games?

And the posts got personal!  Nicole included a photo, with personalized plea on a blackboard, and Cold Spaghetti enlisted her son to make a video.  Ree says she'll make out with me if she wins.

Rick started a blog just to enter the contest, because they need one to take with them when they move to Ethiopia next summer.  On the other hand, Jen declined to participate, because she can't imagine taking one to the jungle with her.

Furrow wants a Wii Fit, because she likes the idea of quantifying her exercise (her cellphone has a pedometer - go figure.)  Stimey wants to set a good example for her kids.  And Painted Maypole - bless her creative heart - rewrote a Shel Silverstein poem as her entry.

But the post that got to me, the one that moved me the most, was from She She.  I can't quite put a finger on it, but her beautifully written and naked tale of her weight struggles - alongside the advice she wants to pass along to her children - resonated with me in a way that demanded that She She be awarded the Wii Fit.  

Here's a little bit of what she said: 

A couple of weeks ago, a friend asked me what would be the one piece of advice I would give to my children if I knew it was the only advice they would take. Without hesitation, I said, “I would tell them to say ‘yes’. Some opportunities only come once. Say ‘yes’.”

There are so many things I didn’t say ‘yes’ to because of my weight. Hiking through the Puerto Rico rain forest, dancing with a Frenchman, having sex with the light on. 

I look back at my 20 and 30 year old selves, and I want to shake them by the shoulders and shout at them, “Say ‘yes’! You will only be here once! Stop using your weight to protect you from new experiences! Stop using it as an excuse not to participate in your life! Say ‘yes’!”

I know, unless disaster strikes me, that I will someday be a 52 year old, and hopefully a 62 and 72 year old. If I’m terrifically lucky, 82 and 92. I don’t want my future self admonishing my 42 year old self to say 'yes'. 

Some opportunities only come once.

I know my weight struggle will be a lifelong one. Genes, habits, and a big taste for cream sauce dictate this. Nothing will make it less so -- not acupuncture, not special tea, not denial. But I feel like I’m ready to take it on. Again. I think I’m ready to say yes to my very own life.

Thank you all for participating - I wish I had a prize for everyone.

The Christmas Elephant

I love Christmas. I love picking out a tree, pulling the ornaments out of the boxes, hanging up a wreath, putting lights on the house, wrapping packages, getting together with family and friends.

It’s always been the holiday in the family. Every year, going back to the early 70s, my mother had a huge Christmas Eve party – kids running around, old neighbors dropping in, lots of wine and cheese, many different cookies, a five pound bag of pistachios. Eddie, the Joyce scholar from down the street, bangs out Christmas carols on the piano and everyone sings, gathering steam for a blockbuster belting of O Holy Night. Stragglers hung around until the wee hours, drinking scotch and telling jokes, until finally stumbling home, leaving us to clean house so as not to awaken on Christmas morn to too many half empty glasses and scrunched up cocktail napkins.

And my mother did Christmas right. Everything had a place – the Christmas tree always in the same corner, a garland over the living room fireplace, another over the hall mirror. Presents – perfectly wrapped in a palette of green, red, silver, white, gold – spilled across the room. My mother made appliquéd, embroidered, felt stockings for everyone – first for the core five, then with additions for cats and spouses and grandchildren and the siblings-by-temperament who’ve joined the family, like David, who was clearly our brother in another life. There are so many stockings now that they have to hang doubled up on the hooks along the mantel. She has enough ornaments for an enormous tree, almost all of them old and glass and fragile, but some of the plain little gold balls ended up on a permanently lit and decorated tree, an artificial tree that spends 11 months in a box in the attic, awaiting its turn in the dining room window.

This year, that little tree is just about the only sign of Christmas at my mother’s house. Oh, there’s a garland around the front door, and one over the hall mirror, and a forest of tiny trees on the mantelpiece, but there’s no big tree, because my mother’s living out her days in the living room.

I’m so at odds. It’s always been that we go to her house for Christmas, to be there for Christmas Eve, and the Christmas morning present orgy, and a big Christmas dinner at the end of the day. And then, we disperse, on the 26th or 27th or so, to spend time with other parts of the family. I’ve never woken up in my own house on Christmas Day. It’s not that I don’t want to – it’s just that it’s never been that way. It’s been Christmas at my mother’s house. Period.

We’re still working out when we can get together with my siblings and their spouses and Mir’s cousins. It’ll probably happen a day or three before Christmas, and then everyone but my brother and his wife will stay with my mother through a quiet Christmas, unlike any other. And then he’ll leave and my sister and I will return, to care for our mother while her aides have some off time.

On Christmas Eve, Mir will go to sleep in her own bed, and Santa will come down our chimney and tuck presents under the tree and eat cookies and milk, and we’ll work on inventing our own Christmas traditions, but still, a part of me is dreading Christmas a little.

Because there’s an elephant in the room where the tree should be.

You know, I'm actually sore

Muscles. I have muscles that are sore. Go figure.

The Wii Fit party was at my house the other night. It was a riot.

The team arrived, flew into action, installed three Wii Fit set-ups (using our TV plus two they brought), commandeered the kitchen to prep and plate food, made sangria, stashed all the bags and boxes in the garage and started the indoctrination of the guests.

I'm "snowboarding".

People laughed and "ski-jumped" and ate and "hula-hooped" and drank and "rhythm-boxed". They stared with great concentration at the TVs as they tried to ride the bubble down the stream or gaze mindfully at a burning candle. There was aerobic stepping, and yoga, and tightrope walking, not to mention penguin sliding and table tilting.

At the end of the evening, the team handed out Wii Fits (and yoga mats and exercise suits) to the guests. There was shrieking and carrying on like we were on Oprah or something.

And then they cleaned up, stashed some tasty leftovers in my fridge and went merrily on their way, spreading Wii cheer in their wake.

The muscles across/under my scapulae are sore. I think it was the boxing. Running up and down the stairs all the time means that my leg muscles aren't too terrible. But boxing? I don't do a lot of hitting. I think this might could actually be a way to get in shape in the privacy of my own home.

* * * * * * * * * * *

You still have a chance to win a Wii Fit (and the Wii console). Pop on over to this post before midnight tomorrow, and let loose with why you need one to get you moving.