Some Pig

It's Worth The Trip*

Today at the playground, Celeste invented a role-playing game.  Under her direction, I would "drive" up to the imaginary take-out window where she would ask me, "Do you want coffee and Munchkins, Mommy?"  Then she would hand me my order and say, "There you go!" after which I would "drive" away, before starting the whole routine over again.

This brings several thoughts to mind:
1) What does this say about my parenting?
2) What does this say about Ceecee's future career aspirations?

I'm going to gloss over the other role-playing game, where we "drove" to the grocery store to buy dinner, which consisted of macaroni and cheese and hotdogs, and nothing else.

* Extra credit to those of you who get the reference

Everything I Need To Know I Learned From "The Brady Bunch"

Once again, I tried to half-ass my way through life and got totally caught out.  Take this as a cautionary tale:

So you know that episode of The Brady Bunch where one of the kids puts the wrong soap in one of the appliances and it spews suds all over the kitchen? 

Well, we had a dishwasher full of dishes that we couldn't wash because we're out of dish detergent.  It's ninety degrees and ninety percent humidity around here, and anything food-related left out for any length of time starts to smell, even just the rinsed dishes in the dishwasher.  So to heck with it, I figured.  I squirted in just the teeniest-tiniest dollop of regular dish soap, turned the dishwasher on, and took India to swim lessons.

Then I came home and found a huge puddle of suds on the floor, dangerously close to the computer tower that sits under the desk in the kitchen.  I opened the dishwasher to find it FULL of suds.  Ran the dishwasher through the second half of the cycle - still sudsy.  Ran it through the short wash - still sudsy.  Finally I just opened the door and dumped a couple mixing bowls of water over the remaining suds, which seems to have done the trick. 

I always thought that overflowing-suds thing was just a plot device.  Serves me right for ever doubting the wisdom imparted by The Brady Bunch.  On the other hand, our dishes are really, really clean... as is the floor right in front of the dishwasher. 

Let's not tell Warren about this, mmmkay?

ALREADY EDITED TO ADD:  I take that back about the dishes being really clean.  The plates and big, flat items are fine, but I've had to handwash most of the flatware and a bunch of the glasses.  Turns out that yogurt spreads all over anything it's near, and then the high heat of the drying cycle bakes it right on.  NICE.

That Takes the Cake, Second Serving

"I don't see what you're complaining about," Warren commented, holding aloft a slice of the cake that had gone so terribly wrong. 

I shot my hubs a sharp look, convinced that he was taking the mickey at my expense.  But no, he and his partners in crime, my father and our mutual friend Adrian, had sliced their wedge of doorstop cake into thin slivers are were happily munching away - after having dipped said slivers into their evening tipple of rye, I need to add.

"You know what you did, don't you?"  My father asked me later.  "You invented a gateau!  It's a cake that you soak in something," he added helpfully.  I believe I pointed out that HE had decided to do the soaking, but no matter.  For the whole cake-soaked-in-booze idea is my segue into...

Cake Tale #2

Many moons ago, when I was but a slip of a girl making my way in the cold cruel world of social services (snort), a college chum hauled off and decided to get married.  She had been a bosom buddy during my junior year abroad in Merrie Olde England, and being young and dumb and possessed of a credit card, I decided to hie myself across the pond.  A. had fortuitously timed the nuptials to coincide with Thanksgiving, and thanks to the services of Messrs. Master and Card I could go ruin my credit rating without losing vacation days!  A.'s intended (whose name escapes me now, so I am arbitrarily calling him B.) was one of those middle-class Britons who are defined by their quintessential Britishness.  There is a subculture of Britons who are secretly convinced that the Empire will cease to exist without their manning the bulwark against Americanization from without and boorishness from within.  I'm talking about the green wellies and tattersall shirts on balmy summer days, referring to oneself in the third person as 'one', come round for drinks in the garden type of Briton.  In short, B. was a pompous bore - but a NICE pompous bore, as opposed to a mean or petty pompous bore.

The impending match between A. and B. was an odd bit of matchmaking, given B.'s love of propriety and A.'s past love of - well, non-propriety, but that is another story.  Let's just say that with B. as the affianced, it is no suprise that the wedding plans simply reeked of decorum and rectitude.  In order not to be the ugly American, I had to buy myself a fancy hat to clap on my head for the service, and I must say it was smashing. (If I can find the picture I'll scan it in.)  After we dispensed with the Anglican ritual of up down turn around, pick a bale of cotton, lean to the left, lean to the right, stand up sit down fight fight fight, or whatever it is the non-heathens do at their weddings, we toddled off to Claridge's for a champagne reception.  At this point I was all a-flutter with anticipation.  A champagne reception?  At the world-renowned Claridge's Hotel???  I could only imagine what a sublime spread awaited us under the moniker of 'champagne reception'.

As it turns out, I could NOT imagine what awaited us, never in my wildest dreams.  For when A. told me it was a champagne reception, she forgot to add, "and damn-all else besides."  It was the most bizarre reception I had ever been to before or since, AND I went to the wedding of the near-vegan and the crazy lady.  Basically we all stood around the reception room, as there was very little seating if memory serves, while waiters passed around the allotted two glasses of champagne per person AND NO MORE.  They had gimlet eyes, those servitors, and they could sense a goldbricker when they saw one.  Hungry and footsore and increasingly lightheaded, we searched around for something resembling sustenance.  Every once in awhile the swinging doors to the kitchen would burst open, bam!  Then a skittish waiter bearing a tray of pigs-in-a-blanket would dash across the floor with a pack of famished receptiongoers hard at his heels, much like the rabbit in front of the pack of greyhounds.  And that, my friends, was the famed Claridge's champagne reception.

What the -?  I hear you think.  I thought she said this had something to do with cake. Keep your hair on, people, I'm getting there!  You needed the back story to appreciate this all the more.  Two days before the Big Event, A. had filled me in on the all the details - most of which, as you can guess, centered around tradition! protocol! social conventions! the done thing! up to and including the wedding cake. For in addition to promising to love, honor, and obey, A. had agreed to have a traditional British wedding cake.  She went on at length about how this cake was made a month in advance, then turned daily and sprayed down with some kind of hard liquor (rum or brandy or whiskey, I don't remember which), and so on and so forth etc. etc. etc. Basically I expected this cake to be nothing short of ambrosial, given the buildup. 

So picture me, jetlagged, buzzed, sore of foot and back, and most of all, HUNGRY.  The speeches have been speechified, the telegrams read aloud (because this WAS in the days before text messaging, folks; I imagine nowadays no one bothers to send telegrams when they can type out "Herd u got mried 2day! Congrats!" with their thumbs while driving 75 mph down the freeway), and the bride and groom toasted from here to next Tuesday.  The new spouses have lovingly, if boringly, fed each other decorous nibbles of cake, and the remainder of the truly massive specimen of the baker's art has disappeared behind the aforementioned swinging doors to be chopped into what I hope are substantial pieces.  The now gun-shy waiters return wheeling carts of plates, each bedecked with a slice of cake about the size and dimension of your middle finger. 

That was the first disappointment.

Then the trolleys come closer, and I notice the cake is... well, it's brown.  Not the glossy near-black of a nice chocolate cake, but the plain Crayola-crayon brown of an applesauce cake, or a spice cake.

Things are not looking up at this point.

Then I notice the cake has - well, it has chunks in it.  Chunks of something squarish and shiny and chewy-looking.

The realization breaks over me like the cold sun on a bleak midwinter's day.

It's a fruitcake.  A FRUITCAKE.  This highly anticipated, time-honored, tradition-laden piece of British wedding custom is the exact same beast as Grammy's annual unwelcome contribution to the holiday larder.  And that, my friends, was the wedding supper:  Champagne, pigs in a blanket, and fruitcake.  No wonder the marriage didn't last out the first year.  You know the groom insisted on saving the top tier of the cake for the first anniversary dinner, and weren't NO ONE willing to choke more of that sucker down, wedded bliss be damned!

That Takes the Cake, Part I

I have two tales of confectionery to share with you, one from my recent past and one from the archives of the Caroline files.  The only thing the two share in common is that they both involve cake, but as far as I'm concerned, that's as good a leitmotif as any, don't you think?  So without further ado...

Cake Tale #1

I made the mistake this past Easter of trying to make like a domestic goddess with the dessert plans for Easter dinner.  I know, I know!  Everyone knows that trying to overreach yourself when you're having four additional people for dinner is just daring the gods to hit you with a thunderbolt, but o, what fools these mortals be and all that.  I had it in my mind that I wanted to make this Easter bunny cake because Warren's cousin Kate, who IS a domestic goddess (as well as being wildly successful professionally and charming and down to earth and happily married and stylish to boot; and yes, if she weren't so friendly and caring and overall nice I would be green with envy) made one some years ago when we spent Easter at her house.  So some hubris is involved, because, hey!  If Kate could take time out of her crazily hectic life to make a delectable homemade dessert with the help of her small children, well, then, dammit, I could too!  I was, of course, ignoring all evidence to the contrary that I can barely get through the week in my usual near-dysfunctional state, never mind adding pastry chef duties to the list.  But I digress.  I emailed Kate for instructions, which she speedily mailed back. 

Gone Native

It's finally happened.

Despite having the poor fortune to have been born outside the six New England states, I've lived in New England for the past 38'ish of my 41'ish years on this planet.  It's only taken the better part of four decades, but at last I've gone native.

How can I tell?

When I look outside the window at the driveway, here's what I see:  Cars, comma, lots of, including one with a significant ding in the front quarter-panel.  Big, lunky kids' toys made of plastic.  A pile of firewood, covered with tarps and awaiting a sunny day (or even a not-sunny-but-at-least-not-raining day) to be stacked. (And by way of an aside, do you know how lucky we were to find a firewood dealer who would give us the time of day this year?  Jeezum crow, it was like a bad relationship!  I'd practically beg these guys to please sell us some wood and they'd be all, "Sure, I'll deliver to Town With An Elite Private School!  I'll call you."  Um, yeah - because I didn't date for most of the Pleistocene era, I have NO idea that "I'll call you" is code for "when hell freezes over or I damn well feel like it." Jerks.)

Yep, we New Englanders love our lawns and driveways - love putting things in them, that is. I'm not talking about blue-blooded Mayflower-descended Colby-College-graduated house-in-Cape-Something New Englanders here, either.  Show real, honest-to-God, salt-of-the-earth New Englanders an empty driveway and an untrammeled lawn and watch them start to twitch.  There's something downright unnatural about a front yard devoid of large broken objects in their book.  Oh, sure, they may have a garage attached to the house, but the garage is for the higher class of broken stuff (e.g., stuff that may actually work someday, provided you can find that missing part down to the dump store or in Uncle Henry's). Here's a true story:  The realtor's aide who helped us buy our first house came by to drop off a Christmas calendar the year we moved to The State Formerly Known As Home.  Actually, she came by several times.  Why?  Because every time she came by, there seemed to be no one home - at least, there weren't any cars in the driveway.  After awhile, she got nervous.  Had something happened to us?  Was something wrong?  Why wasn't anyone ever home?  So she called to see what was up.  Where were we?  Was everything all right?  

Answers:  We were right there the whole time.  Everything was fine.  Our cars weren't out because we - check this out for freaky behavior - parked them in the garage when we were home.  

Here's how you know the girl was a true local:  That possibility had never occurred to her.  "We're in New England!" she replied, "We put our stuff in our garage and our cars in the driveway!"

"I'm from New Jersey," Warren snapped (and you know it's bad if he's willing to fess up to that), "I put my stuff in my house and my car in my garage."

Lest you think I'm slipping from the pinnacle of class and grace where I usually reside, this situation is temporary (I hope).  The wood will be stacked out of sight (if it ever stops raining).  The toy slide is going back in the garage.  We are attempting to whittle down the number of excess cars we have from four to two (Don't ask - it's a long and very dull story, but we have twice as many cars as licensed drivers in our family for reasons we hope to remediate soon.).  Then I can go back to being the arbiter of gracious living you've come to know and love.  Snort. I'll pretend I didn't choose to spend half an hour of my life watching Pamela Anderson's reality show last night so I can keep a straight face!

Take THAT, Madge!

We cleaned our basement.

Some clarification is in order.  "We" means "Mostly Warren but I helped out when no one was screaming or breastfeeding".  "Cleaned" is not a strong enough verb for what we have gone through.  "Purged" is more like it.  Boy, have we purged.  Josef Stalin, Chairman Mao - they got nuttin' on us.  We could teach them a thing or two about purging.  We got rid of things that have followed us through three moves, many of which followed me through four or five or more.  I threw out notebooks from grad school for courses I don'[t remember taking.  I threw out candles - scented, pillared, half melted, even one shaped like a kitty cat.  I threw out student journals from 1998.  Why do I keep stuff so long?  I don't know.  That's what happens when you grow up in a very large house with a very big attic.  There's never a compelling reason to get rid of anything, so you might as well keep everything. 

Nothing makes my husband happier than a thorough purge, unless it's a thorough purge of my stuff.  Even though I would far rather have been watching a "Flip This House" marathon instead of inventorying my excess worldly possessions, I had to keep my eye on him lest he chuck out the wedding photos. ("What?  You were there.  Don't you remember?  Besides, you see me every day, you already know what I look like.  Whaddya need those photos for?") To my credit, I got rid of all kinds of things, including a box of assorted fabric that has followed me through at least six moves through three states without ever being used.  I even - deep breath here - culled my very large book collection from eight large moving boxes down to four. I have to admit I did so with one eye toward posterity.  I kept the more highbrow offerings, the classics and whatnot, and got rid of a lot of the pulpy stuff.  Should I fall down dead tomorrow, people will think I actually spent my free time browsing through the Nicomachean Ethics, not reading Janet Evanovich novels.  The worst lies are the ones we tell ourselves, I know, but I choose to prolong that delusion anyway.

After several frantic days of moving, lugging, mopping, dusting, sorting, tossing, recycling, and shuffling, we are rewarded with a lovely new office space in the basement, a lovely reclaimed guest bedroom upstairs, a lovely new play space for India in our never-used formal living room, and a lovely TV room restored to its original purpose.  We are feeling very virtuous and proud of ourselves, having sworn - sworn! - we will NOT let our newly spanking clean and organized common spaces get that cluttered and chaotic ever again.  Now stop laughing.  No, really, I mean it.

In the Total Non-Sequitur Department:  Warren and I checked out Rome on HBO recently.  Verdict:  Don't bother.  Go watch I, Claudius over again - it's so clearly what Rome tries (yet fails) to be.  Rome has the desperate air of working too hard about it.  Look!  Ancient Rome was full of gore!  Blood!  Grafitti of penises!  Bare boobies!  Perversion!  Why, it's practically like modern times, only without the internet, coffee, or road rage.  The sets are elaborate, the costuming detailed, and I'm sure the whole shebang was exhaustively researched for versimilitude, but I, Claudius was much more compelling. In fact, Rome strikes me as a more telling commentary on America than it is on ancient history. We always think that bigger is better, that redoing something that was already done well, only a grander scale and with more frills and fancywork, will automatically mean it's better. Feh.  I think we'll Netflix the first season of 24 instead.

If It's Worth Doing, It's Worth Doing Half-Assed and Late

I have never made any bones about the fact that I am lazy.  I have referred to this phenomenon several times already in this blog, most recently here and here, among other places.  Because we live in New England, which is Mecca for people who are practical, handy, and purposeful, I feel perpetually guilty about my lack of ambition.  People around here are doers.  Go to any hardware store, auto parts store, or DIY place at 7 am on Saturday and you will be amazed at the number of people who are already up and at 'em.  "Yep," they say, "We're not up to much this weekend.  I just finished changin' the oil in Mother's cah.  Now we hafta clean out the gutters and regrade the lawn before we insulate the attic."  Being lazy around these parts is a challenge, I tell you.  It requires grit and determination, but I'm willing to tough it out.

I'm not saying this because I'm proud of myself; I figure the best way to handle reality is to look it smack in the eye and then ignore it.  My husband truly is my "better half" in this respect.  He is the human perpetual motion machine.  I can walk by the same small nagging problem a million times and not even see it.  He walks by it once and immediately HAS to fix it.  He spends his weekends in a whirlwind of activity, from chopping wood to making dinner to changing brake fluid (with frequent hand washes in between, just so you know).  Even his relaxation is purposeful.  He meditates as part of a Buddhist study group.  Me, I "meditate" by lying on the couch and staring at the boob tube, preferably with a big ole piece of pie and a nice cold glass of milk in front of me.  You would think our marriage would be a case of opposites attracting, wherein I would calm him down and he would motivate me.  Instead, we seem to intensify one another's natural inclinations, so that he does more and more and I do less and less. 

Laziness is just one of many characteristics of mine, both personal and physical, that I hope our daughters manage to avoid.  I certainly hope they get Warren's legs.  Mine are so short and stumpy as to be almost vestigial, like pelvic bones on a whale.  According to my father, it's a wonder they reach the ground, they're so short.  On the other hand, Warren can't spell for crap, so I do bring something to the table, genetically speaking.  (How bad a speller is he?  Let me put it this way:  He's accusing me of teaching India her letters so she and I can spell things out in front of him.)  And while I'm picking and choosing what I want the girls to inherit from each of us, I certainly want them to get Warren's self-discipline and energy.

Being lazy is problematic, mostly because I'm not lazy about everything, so I know I can do more and do it better.  I'm situationally lazy.  I'm not lazy when it comes to doing things I like to do.  I know - what a shocker!  Imagine that!  But this quality seems to evidence itself more strongly in me than it does in most other people.  For example, I'm not lazy about blog posting.  I'm willing to work on a blog post like it's my job (And wouldn't it be nice if it were?  Nah. Then it would feel like work.).  But reconciling the credit card receipts, which I could be doing right now, and which actually serves my family's interests a lot more than blogposting does?  No thanks.  I'm happy to spend hours structuring the perfect lesson plan, replete with goals, objectives, activities, lists of materials, references to Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, the whole nine yards, because I like planning lessons.  Then the student work I have to correct at the end of the lesson sits in my bookbag, moldering away, because I hate correcting. 

This topic has been much on my mind lately because of an issue hanging over my head, or more accurately, sitting under my feet.  It's the basement.  Our basement is, to put it bluntly, a pigsty.  The previous owners had it beautifully set up as a spare room/exercise center in one half and a terminally organized storage area in the other.  When we moved in, we just dumped random boxes and unwanted furniture any old place and swore to ourselves that we'd get around to organizing things soon.  Five years later, "soon" doesn't seem to be coming up on the calendar anytime in the near future.  In fact, since we added a kid or two to the mix, we've just increased the number of large, bulky items sitting around in no particular order waiting for sorting and categorization, or the millennium, whichever comes first (and I mean the next millennium, obviously, not the one that most recently passed).  I keep meaning to address this black hole of disorganization, but unlike most black holes, it has a reverse force field - something that keeps pushing me away from dealing with it, not drawing me in.  Lately I've taken to shielding my eyes as I walk from staircase to washing machine, lest the sight of all our cultch lead to a guilt-induced work seizure.

Of all the piles of stuff we've accumulated, the largest pile, the one that sits smack in the middle of our - ahem - "storage area", consists of baby gear.  Baby gear comes in two forms:  Critical Items You Can't Live Without and Stupid Things You Never Use But Can't Get Rid Of.  The problem is, you never know when you get a large item made from petrochemical by-products if it is going to be a CIYCLW or a STYNUBCGRO.  For example, before India was born, we were given a baby seat that reclines, bounces, vibrates, and plays heartbeats or bird songs.  India hated the thing and sat in it for approximately 3.2 seconds.  Ergo, it was a STYNUBCGRO that served no purpose other than taking up space in the basement.  Then Celeste comes along, and about the ONLY way I can take a shower without listening to the dulcet tones of her screams is to put her in this seat.  Ta da!  Now it's a CIYCLW.  [NB: Even newborns have their distinct preferences, and boy, they'll let you know about it.  The catch is, they don't come with a manual listing their likes and dislikes so you know which large pieces of gear you should buy and which you should pass up.  You know less about the human being you just pushed out of your innards than you do about someone you meet through the personal ads.  And doesn't that bring some interesting ideas to mind? "Hi!  I'm Celeste!  Me: long walks on the beach, bouncy seats, hanging out with friends (but no bottle feeding, please!).  You: willing to wake up at odd hours, lactating.  Let's get together for a long-term meaningful relationship - I'm thinking eighteen years!"]

To add to our storage woes, nearly all baby gear is targeted to a very age-specific developmental stage of babyhood, so that today's CIYCLW is tomorrow's STYNUBCGRO.  That one item you use daily is absolutely critical to your continuing existence - until it isn't.  One day the exersaucer rules supreme, taking up half the floor space in the kitchen and forcing everyone to skirt the edges of the room, but it's a compromise you are more than willing to make because the little one!  Loves it!  And sits in it!  Happily!  For hours!  Until the dread day comes when you go to put the little bleeder in his seat so you can cook dinner, or blog, or conduct an illicit affair, whatever it is that fills your free nanoseconds, and whoops!  He's too big for the seat!  Or he's decided overnight that he hates it, and screams nonstop until you take him out of the exersaucer and give him your collection of kitchen knives to juggle.  And one more large piece of gear joins Mount Crapmore in the basement.

As any dedicated procrastinator will tell you, the hardest part is taking that first step.  So I faced facts, made that monumental initial effort ... and passed off a bunch of work onto someone else.  I swept all the photos, trimmings, and loose scrapbook pages I never got around to putting together in my wedding album into a bag and gave it to a co-worker who scrapbooks in her spare time.  This album, which has been a work in progress since before we got married, is a perfect microcosm of how I deal with big tasks like this.  I get totally overwhelmed and discombobulated because I can't decide which sub-task I should tackle first, then I throw up my hands and invent a compelling reason why I have to go do something else for the next year or two of my life, or until we can hire a professional to deal with it for me.  Laziness: It's my small way of contributing to the economy.

Unfortunately for me, 2007 is shaping up to be the year I'll have to pay the piper for all my slothful ways.  We're broke, so I can't palm off my chores on hired help, and we desperately need both more storage space and more living space.  We're going to need easier access to the stuff in Mount Crapmore as Celeste grows up, and then we'll need to get rid of the things she outgrows.  Eventually someone, and by "someone" I mean "me", is going to have to pull up her big girl pants and get to work. To add insult to injury, damn it all, Madge went and cleaned HER basement ... when she was approximately 237 weeks pregnant!  I reveled for forty-plus weeks in the fact that my pregnancy gave me an excuse to be even lazier prevented me from doing anything as strenuous as unpacking boxes of grad school textbooks and shuffling around furniture, and then she goes off and cleans up her mess under the same conditions.  Way to retroactively blow my cover, Madge!  On the other hand, she's now outed herself as being good at organizing.  How much free babysitting would I have to offer to get her to clean up our basement??

 

The To (Not) Do List

I had big plans for this holiday season, BIG plans.  For the first time EVER in my adult life, I would not be working outside the home during this most festive time of year.  As I looked toward my maternity leave, I had all kinds of ambitions for a shelter/lifestyle-magazine-perfect holiday. Now. with 72 hours left until Christmas, I think I can safely say that the following is not going to get done.

Caroline's To Not Do List:
I am not going to make an atttractive centerpiece for my dining table out of seasonal greenery and ornaments not already used on the tree.

I am not going to string icicle lights in the bay window in the kitchen.

I am not going to write a holiday letter that makes my life sound like a nonstop whirlwind of social activity and professional achievement, all of which I handle effortlessly.

I am not going to host an elegant soiree, a themed dinner party, a classy cocktail/buffet reception, or any kind of social gathering at all.  We actually were planning to do this, but the day we had tentatively intended to host this shindig, we spent in a haze of sleep deprivation and chores.

I am not going to go to anything remotely resembling the abone.  It's kind of depressing, our total dearth of social life.  My parents, who are of an age when they should eat their gruel and be in bed by 7:30, have much more of a social life than we do.  We haven't seen them in weeks because they have so many commitments.  We're so far out of the social swim of things that if we want to attend a party, we have to throw it, and now you know how that's worked out for us!

I am not going to make a variety of toothsome baked goods that require unsalted gourmet butter, imported flour, a recipe of twenty or more steps, and/or an extension course at the Culinary Institute of America.  For that, you are going to have to see Julie.   I did make jam, a fact which continues to amaze me some ten days after making it.  But jam is not culinarily complicated.  Jam consists of no cooking methodology more complex than boiling.  I can boil.

You already know I'm not going to write individual notes on my greeting cards this year. I'm not going to get them out on time for a bunch of you, either.  Think of them as First Night cards.  Or very, very early Valentines.

I'm not going to make my own wrapping paper by hand-stamping paper bag material using a stamp carved out of a potato.  I'm not going to top my packages with unique and clever little decorations like pine cones attached with a twist of twine or a bread-dough ornament for the tree.  Other people do that and it says "creative" and "artistic".  I do that and it says "summer camp" and "the item inside was made with popsicle sticks and homemade clay."

I am not going to the mall.  I have not gone to the mall since August.  And after being stuck in mall-bound traffic today for the better part of an hour with a full bladder and a screaming baby in the car, I'm not going anywhere near the mall until, oh, March.  Of 2010.  In a related move, I am not going to make my kids have their pictures taken with Santa and I am not wearing anything made by the Quacker Factory. .

Here's what I AM going to do:
Finish eating the contents of the goodie bag my friend Jen gave me.  Mmmmm, buckeyes!

Drink a nice glass of wine.  Or three. 

Let India watch more TV than usual, eat more junk than usual, stay up later than usual, and basically take full advantage of the holiday spirit.

Stare at my beautiful baby while she's sleeping.

Sleep.

Go visit friends for the week.   That's where we'll be for the duration of December.  It means hauling down the Jersey Pike with two tiny ones in a smallish car, but it should be worth doing ... once.

Happy ChristmaHannuKwanzaMas!

My Domestic Goddess Application is on Hold

Well, if nothing else happened this summer, the scales have fallen from my eyes.  I have figured out that I am not meant to be a stay-at-home mom, as being at home all the time stresses me out.  At the same time, I am not meant to work full time outside the home, as that stresses me out too.  Feel free to insert your favorite anecdote about how much more humane the work/parenting balance is in the Scandinavian or western European country of your choice.

I am secretly looking forward (a little) to the beginning of school, because it means I'll get to go out of the house for a nice chunk of time every day.  I am also looking forward to it because, Nigella Lawson and her advice books be damned, I have figured out that I am a lackluster housekeeper at best. At the beginning of the summer, it was something of a novelty to do housework.  Dirt doesn't talk back, forget its homework, or ask to go to the bathroom a million times in two hours, and there's something very soothing about completing those tasks on the to-do list.  I felt all maternal and shit, wresting order from chaos and making a happy hearth and home for my family, blah blah blah.  But over the past few weeks, the bloom has faded from that rose. As I quickly figured out, the problem with staying at home in your clean house is that it rapidly returns to being an unclean house, and the reward for all one's heroic efforts in the homemaking department is the opportunity to do it all over again tomorrow.  Whee!

I'm kind of a washout at the other major elements of Domestic Goddess-dom, childrearing and cooking, right now as well.  Oh, sure, India loves me to pieces, but she's hard-wired to do that.  Basically I live for those moments when she's busy and occupied with something other than interacting with me - Sesame Street, playgroup, whatever.  I know I will miss her so much it physically hurts when she goes back to day care, but right now, that's a trade I'm willing to make.  And as for cooking, I actually enjoy cooking. It's all the ancillary stuff (thinking of things to cook, buying things to cook, cleaning up what I've cooked) that I don't enjoy.  And one unfortunate side effect of this pregnancy has been the loss of any culinary imagination I once had.  I spend a lot of time starting at around 5:00 pm, staring blankly at a group of unrelated food items, knowing that somehow they can be combined into a delicious, healthy, satisfying meal, but not quite sure how to go about doing that.  Thankfully, corn and tomatoes are in season, so I can get away with a menu of corn + tomatoes + (add an item) a couple of times a week for awhile.  I am counting on my culinary mojo returning after this kid is born, so if something similar happened to you and you never got your groove back, please, don't tell me - I prefer to live in blissful ignorance.

So that leaves one realm of goddess-ness left:  Laundry.  And if I do say so myself, I kick ass at doing laundry!  I have perfected a stain-removing regimen this summer.  I was forced to do so because I keep staining my shirts in the "drop zone" - the top of the belly shelf that collects all the stray crumbs and dribbles - and because I have a toddler who likes ice cream, yogurt, berries, basically anything that stains.  And because I am a benevolent goddess, I will deign to share my laundering tips with you mere mortals at no charge to you.

First, get a liquid stain remover (not a stain stick) and immediately spritz any noticeable stains with the remover.  If you have a heavily greasy stain (like from a BBQ grill), immediately wash it with dish detergent (for the sink, not the dishwasher) marketed as a grease cutter.  I have gotten engine grease out of Warren's clothes that way.  For more run-of-the-mill stains, I usually troll through the supermarket or Target looking for the "miracle" stain removers just to try them - my current choice is one called "Gonzo".  I have found that I can tell which are the better stain removers if fruit stains (like berry or grape juice) change color when they're doused.  And douse them thoroughly, by the way.

When you have a number of stained items to wash, set the washer on the hot/cold cycle.  Put the fill level at one notch above the size of your wash load - you want plenty of room for the clothes to swish around.  For top-loaders, let the washer fill before you put the clothes in.  Add two scoops of an oxygen-based color-safe bleach (oh hell, I'll just say it - OxyClean), your laundry soap of choice, and a bunch of baking soda.  Then put in the clothes.  Either poke them into the wash with a broom handle or shut the lid of the washer briefly until all the clothes are fully soaked (front-load washer folks, you're on your own for this).  Then - and here's the kicker - shut the washer off once it is full of hot, soapy water and clothes, and let it sit for as long as you can manage before starting the wash cycle.  Six hours is good, twelve is great, overnight is ideal.  The run the wash. 

That's it!  There are a few caveats - don't do this with items that you don't know for sure are color-fast, and when the wash is done, check any items that were heavily stained and if the stain hasn't come out fully, don't put it through the dryer or the stain may set.  Soak with stain remover and set aside again.  I haven't had any problems with shrinking or ruining clothes because of the hot water, probably because they sit in the water until it's cold and then are washed.  The prolonged soaking starting in hot water seems to be crucial, though, so if you think something's too delicate for the hot water treatment, you may need to try something else.  The only stain I have had no success removing is a shirt of India's that she covered in melted chocolate ice cream.  After repeated tries, the stains are now an old reddish-brown color, so it looks like she wore it to a crime scene.  In return for this wealth of information, feel free to forward me any easy dinner recipes that don't include canned cream of mushroom soup, as Warren has an irrational prejudice against it. 

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On an unrelated note, I am sad to note that several more of my favorite blogs are no longer with us or taking extended leave.  Mari is pulling Mommy-Brain as of the end of this month, Nervous Girl hasn't posted in ages (although she does have a second blog, Cooking With Whine , that seems to be sucking up all her creative juices continuing merrily along, and now Madge has announced that she's going on hiatus until October - something about being physically tired, working a lot, trying to get ready for a new baby, yadda yadda.  All I can say is, what about ME?  No one seems to be thinking about how I'M doing with all this change.  (And for those of you with sense of humor deficiencies - I AM JUST KIDDING!)  I am starting to think that I'm the Black Hole of blogdom.  Blogs go on my List of Blogs I Read and they don't come out.  However, if you blog, and you'd like to be considered for my Blog Roll of Doom, or if you know of other cool blogs I haven't found yet, suggest away. 

My Favorite Dwarf is Sleepy. Does That Give You A Clue?

Things have taken a very serious turn around the Some Pig household. 

India napped very little on Saturday, and refused to nap on Sunday.

Got that?  Refused.  To.  Nap.  Despite the fact that her eyes were ringed with violet shadows, and her temperament was rapidly heading from Cheerful to Crabby to Nuclear Meltdown, she would not settle down.  Even after reading several stories.  Even after bribing her with sleeping in Mommy Daddy bed.  Even after giving her cuddles, kisses, songs, and exhausting (sleep joke! ha!) my whole repetoire of getting-to-sleep tactics (of which I have precious few), she refused to sleep.

This could be the beginning of the end.  If she's given up on naps, this summer will be a LOT longer than originally anticipated.

I lay the blame for this squarely on Warren's shoulders.  As my parents frequently remind us, my sister and I never passed up on an opportunity to gain some extra rack time.  We were a babysitter's dream - at 8:30, we'd remind them that it was time for us to put on our jammies and go night-nights.  My parents were sorely concerned that I would never learn to drive because I fell asleep whenever I was in the car for more than 30 minutes.  India, on the other hand, labors under the common toddler delusion that time spent sleeping is time spent missing out on something exciting, and it's better to be awake and crying hysterically than to be unaware of what's going on.  Genetically speaking, that's Daddy's fault.  This is, after all, the man who used to stomp around the bedroom on Saturday mornings around 9:30 am and ask, "Are you going to sleep all day???" and then seem astonished every time to find out that, yes, that might actually be my intention.

Not napping is only one of the sleep issues that has recently reared its head.  India hates her crib now too.  She used to go down, if not happily, at least uncomplainingly.  Now she goes into full avoidance mode as soon as the last story's read.  "No sleep in crib!" she sobs, as she attempts to throw herself out of my arms, "sleep in MommyIndiaDaddy bed!" Aside from the obvious presumption inherent in that statement (since when was it MommyIndiaDaddy bed?  I always thought it was Mommy-Daddy bed.  Warren is a little miffed that he gets only third billing.  And who died and left her in charge of allocating the bedrooms, anyway?), now we have to decide what to do about the little wiggly presence insinuating itself in our bed every night.  We never intended to be co-sleepers, but it seems like we're headed rapidly down that path. Also, India doesn't want to go to bed until 8:30 or 9:00 pm, which means she doesn't want to get up in the morning, which means I have to drag her out of bed in order to get all of us where we need to go on time.  All of these issues have culminated with the result that the delicate rhythm of our household has been, if not destroyed, seriously disrupted.

I know I deserve at least a little of the angst I'm feeling.  I admit it, I got cocky.  Aside from an inability to pass the cat without wanting to grab its tail (admittedly, it's a temptingly convenient handle), India has shown no serious toddler personality issues until now.  Any tantrums, fisticuffs, and general ill behavior she's evidenced heretofore have had readily identifiable and rectifiable causes.  We had a routine going that everyone seemed to be able to live with.  Terrible twos?  What terrible twos?  And did I just ask for that thunderbolt to hit me on the head, or what?

The worst part about giving up the crib is that I now come face-to-face with one of my greatest deficits:  I am not good at buying furniture.  This is not entirely my fault; it's partly my heritage.  I come from a line of people who don't buy furniture, we have furniture.  If you own it and it's not actually falling into pieces, or so unsafe that it threatens to sever digits, well, then, what's wrong with it?   Point in fact:  My mother has had the same couch for almost the entire duration of her 40-plus year marriage.  She has had it reupholstered once.  Given its advanced years and wear, you might not be surprised to learn that it is not a thing of beauty nor a joy forever, although it does seem eternal.  Recently (by which I mean for the past five years or so) Mom has started talking about getting rid of this object and replacing it with two overstuffed loveseats, which means she might actually get around to it in the next five years.   (Ohmigod. I just had a huge sense of deja vu.  I went through my archives and realized I already told this story in February.  Pretty much verbatim.  Oh, how embarrassing.  I'm so boring, I'm repeating myself on my own damn blog.  Next I will turn into one of those teachers who tells the same joke every class period, and is the only one laughing, and doesn't notice.  Lord help me.)

Anyway, repetition or no, suffice it to say that Warren and I, we don't do furniture.  Our house is decorated in Early Grandmother, meaning that all our "major" furnishings are heirlooms, which is a nice way of saying that people had to die for us to furnish our house.  We wouldn't have a dining room set if my grandmother hadn't left it to me in the will.  You would think we have a end table fetish, as we acquired all of his grandmother's after she no longer needed them.  And they are nice, sturdy, high-quality pieces of furniture we could never afford to match now.  This is why the thought of having to replace the crib (free, from a coworker), which is clearly a temporary setup, with something a little more substantial and longer lasting, puts me in a cold sweat.  I just know I'm going to buy something, get it home, and then discover it's hopelessly shlocky, or I paid way too much, or it's just wrong, wrong, wrong, but I will be too cheap and too overwhelmed to replace it.  All my research to date (two visits to two different furniture stores) bears this out:  The high quality bedroom set I like and that's well made is $1100, and the crappy set I hate and that looks ready to fall apart with one good sneeze is $300-something. 

Fortunately, there may be a way clear of this morass.  I was bemoaning my fate (okay, whining about how much I hate furniture shopping) at lunch today, and one of my coworkers brought clarity out of darkness with one simple sentence:  "What about IKEA?"  Sheer genius!  I'll know exactly what I'm getting, I won't care if it's not just what I want because I can always pretend I'm going to shop for "real" furniture later, and if India totally spurns her new bed as thoroughly as her old crib, well, at least I didn't drop a grand on it.

So that's the current plan.  God knows if it will work.  One thing about dealing with autonomous human beings who have their own ideas is that there's only so much I can do to influence her behaviors.  It's humbling, especially as someone who spends a lot of time looking at teenagers' actions and wondering if they were brought up in a rugby scrum. Turns out, many times the parents are just as mystified as we are by what they hath wrought. One of my most favorite parent interactions ever was a phone call I made home to the mother of a kid who seemed to be part Tasmanian Devil, part whirling dervish.  That first contact often sets the tone for the year's relationship, so I was nervous.  I started off with my usual patter about how I "just want to touch base and let you know how things are going with Brian."  This is my opening line when I need to soften up a parent before hitting them with statements like, "I found him swinging from the light fixtures in my room today, and by the way, is there a chance he didn't take his medication?" 

Before I could slide into my spiel, the mom cut me off.  "Before you go any further," she said jovially, "I just want you to know:  I only have one child (dramatic pause) because I have this child.  Okay, now what were you going to say?"  I can still hear the wisdom and good humor in her voice.  I hope I can bring some fraction of that perspective to the rest of India's Terrible Twos and beyond (but don't feel the need to tell me the 3's are worse - let me live with my delusions a little longer).