It would be nice if I could find my cell phone, for a number of reasons. Communicating with the other humans is one. But also, I would like to take a picture of the blackened noodles and former soup that are glude (mispelling but I like it) to the bottom of the pot.
I have a monstrous headcold. On the one hand, it is too bad. On the other, it means I will be sick for a few days, which in the grand scheme is no big deal, because I thought that I was experiencing the rhinitis of pregnancy on a suddenly unbearable scale -- a scale that makes me snore myself awake in terror. And then look over, and see husband hiding with his head in a pillow sandwich with a look of when-will-this-end on his face. Yesterday I thought, and explained very confidently to him, that I simply wouldn't be able to breathe for the next 8 weeks. "Look at my face. My sinuses are swollen. This is because I have 150% the amount of blood of a normal human. This is just something that happens." But then I actually got sick, like the kind where there is one eye leaking all over whatever it's poised over. And as poopy as I feel, I'm sort of relieved that this is an acute condition rather than a chronic one.
Anyhow for most of the hours in the day today I didn't manage to get out of bed or to eat, other than to nibble on the cookies that the yoga instructor brought over yesterday. (I have the same dealer for cookies and yoga -- it's really a best-of-both-worlds situation.)
Anyhow in the fridge there was a pot with some big brand name chicken soup I had made from a packet a few days ago, and there was a tiny bit left over and I decided to heat it up. So I put it on a burner turned to medium in the kitchen. Then my brother in law called and I hung out in the bedroom talking to him for oh, about a half an hour, because we had a lot to discuss, like batman pajamas, and how he'd just received the Salt Lick barbeque we'd had delivered to his house as his Christmas present.
At this point in the story, I am about as offtrack as I was regarding the soup I was heating up. Or, what had become, by that point, the Burning Solid that was the Former Soup.
Because of how we are housing multiple cats who think they are on a reality tv show, or that they are perhaps outside cats, we have to keep the door between the bedroom and the front of the house closed in order to avoid scary acts of cannibalism. So the door closed in combi with an apparent lack of batteries in the fire alarm and my whopper of a headcold meant that I did not see or hear or smell or otherwise realize that the whole front of the house was was full of a throbbing gray cloud of noodle smoke. I actually believe that the noodles must've caught fire because they are whollu black, as is the entire inside of the pot.
I wish I could show you a picture.
Anyhow I was forced to open all of the windows in the front of the house and come up with a new sequestering plan for the wild animals so we could all coexist in the back of the house.
And through this I persisted in having nothing to eat. Since it's wildly snowy outside, I resorted to ordering food from the mediocre place on the main street in our neighborhood that caters to kids by serving things like popcorn. I'm not against popcorn, my any means, but a restaurant cannot live by schtick alone. I just wish that the stuffed mushrooms I ordered were as superlative as my stuffed head.
Friday, December 19, 2008
Wednesday, December 17, 2008
The Big Show?
I realize that I said I look ready for the big show, which I remembered, overnight, pertains to baseball.
To clarify, in case it needs to be clarified: I am not, nor do I look, ready for baseball.
Whaleball, or floatball, or napball, perhaps.
To clarify, in case it needs to be clarified: I am not, nor do I look, ready for baseball.
Whaleball, or floatball, or napball, perhaps.
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
Plateau?
Have we talked about how big the baby is? And as the vessel, how big I am?
We were told at the dr. that we are "a week ahead," meaning . . . what? That the baby is out of the average range for this period of time? Does it mean that it will also come out early?
We are glad that it's big. At our first dr.'s visit ever, when it was not even supposed to be the size of a raisin -- maybe sort of more like a currant -- it tracked 2 days behind what is should have, sizewise, and while I didn't lose sleep over this, necessarily, I was not happy. Our project was not even a whole currant yet -- should we panic?
I was nearly a ten pounder, myself, and having an underweight zygote or whatever the science word is just didn't seem right. Ever since, we've been catching up by leaps and bounds. The next time was 3 days ahead, then 5. Then they stop telling you you are ahead, but you get a length or a weight. When I get a metric, I clock it against a chart and lately, we're been one, then 2 weeks ahead of the average. But that's the average, right? And that takes into account people from . . . wherever people are sort of small. And the dr. never commented on it -- until she said we were big. And when I went home and looked at the chart after that, we were suddenly 3 weeks above the average.
We prefer a leg-bone length that indicates a future in basketball to slick and little like a weasel, if we can infer that bone length correlates to robustness.
Plus, like half of what they calculate on is head circumference, and my niece, who was at 25th percentile of overall size after she was born, was at 95th percentile of head circumference. Getting a shirt over it is still somewhat of a battle.
Whatever the case, I am only 7 months along and starting to look ready for The Big Show. "Looks like someone is just about to have a baby," said the woman at a supermarket this weekend. And suddenly the other day, I caught my husband gaping at my stomach as I changed into my pjs. "It doesn't seem like I should get more pregnant than this, does it?" "No, it really does not," he answered.
Getting bigger is a part of the process, and that is fine. As my friend H who is recovering from the birth of her second said a few days ago, "People are stretchy. Apparently."
Two people (male friends) have suggested this week -- week 32 -- that perhaps I could plateau in terms of size. Like, not get bigger.
The first conversation, which was in my living room:
The second conversation, which was on the phone:
We were told at the dr. that we are "a week ahead," meaning . . . what? That the baby is out of the average range for this period of time? Does it mean that it will also come out early?
We are glad that it's big. At our first dr.'s visit ever, when it was not even supposed to be the size of a raisin -- maybe sort of more like a currant -- it tracked 2 days behind what is should have, sizewise, and while I didn't lose sleep over this, necessarily, I was not happy. Our project was not even a whole currant yet -- should we panic?
I was nearly a ten pounder, myself, and having an underweight zygote or whatever the science word is just didn't seem right. Ever since, we've been catching up by leaps and bounds. The next time was 3 days ahead, then 5. Then they stop telling you you are ahead, but you get a length or a weight. When I get a metric, I clock it against a chart and lately, we're been one, then 2 weeks ahead of the average. But that's the average, right? And that takes into account people from . . . wherever people are sort of small. And the dr. never commented on it -- until she said we were big. And when I went home and looked at the chart after that, we were suddenly 3 weeks above the average.
We prefer a leg-bone length that indicates a future in basketball to slick and little like a weasel, if we can infer that bone length correlates to robustness.
Plus, like half of what they calculate on is head circumference, and my niece, who was at 25th percentile of overall size after she was born, was at 95th percentile of head circumference. Getting a shirt over it is still somewhat of a battle.
Whatever the case, I am only 7 months along and starting to look ready for The Big Show. "Looks like someone is just about to have a baby," said the woman at a supermarket this weekend. And suddenly the other day, I caught my husband gaping at my stomach as I changed into my pjs. "It doesn't seem like I should get more pregnant than this, does it?" "No, it really does not," he answered.
Getting bigger is a part of the process, and that is fine. As my friend H who is recovering from the birth of her second said a few days ago, "People are stretchy. Apparently."
Two people (male friends) have suggested this week -- week 32 -- that perhaps I could plateau in terms of size. Like, not get bigger.
The first conversation, which was in my living room:
friend with red hair: You are BIG in your belly.
me: Mm. And I have 2 more months to go before I'm done.
friend with red hair: Huh. Maybe you'll plateau. Don't women sort of plateau? Maybe you'll plateau.
me: That'd be great. You'll have to excuse me, I have to go take off these pants so I can breathe better.
The second conversation, which was on the phone:
friend from college: I like your MyFace picture. (get it?)
me: Thanks. That's from 2 months ago. I'd like to update but don't know that there are good pictures to be taken anymore. I'm huge.
friend from college: Maybe you'll plateau -- don't women plateau?
me: That'd be great.
friend from college: I love how radiant pregnant women are. For most of the time -- til the end, when they look all waxy and misshapen and their eyes and their nose don't match and their nose and their mouths don't match and they are like aliens. At that point, I want to follow them around with a camera.
me: Huh.
Thursday, December 11, 2008
Rules
My husband and I have been going to Connecticut every other weekend to spend time with my sister, who has ALS, and help out her family. There are a lot of people who need care in that house. My brother in law has been amazing but he is the breadwinner, has 2 kids, and has a very sick wife. He has help from my parents, aunts, uncles, as well as VNA and hospice workers as well as caregivers, but it's a huge amount to organize and he also needs a break every now and again. He's 40 and sort of a superhero but my parents are over 70 and also burned out. We have finally set up a system wherein I am there every other weekend, and Matthew mostly comes with me because he can really help in ways I can't anymore since getting pregnant. (I can't lift much weight.)
For us, there is the travel and the emotions that go along with seeing someone we love so ill. There is the work associated with caring for someone very sick. And then, there are the kids.
Now, anyone who knows me knows that I ADORE these kids. My nephew, who is 8, is smart and creative and as handsome as the day is long.
He is also a full-throttle maniac. He sometimes (always) requires an extra couple of hands at school to keep him on task or ease him through transitions. Not because he's academically challenged, but because making monkey noises is so irresistible that he might have a hard time transitioning to the next part of the school day. And a constant backdrop of his monkey noises, or whatever he's doing that day, can prove academically challenging for his peers.
But he is superlative in enough ways that when I am not considering having him arrested, I am usually surprised and delighted by him. He's the sort of kid who, until recently, wore a Superman costume whenever possible. If there was no one around to help him get it on, he'd just carry it in a bag. When you play a game with him, he isn't interested in the rules as written, but he likes to make up his own. It's not that the games he makes up are, uh, good -- but this is okay because he's not yet aiming for a job at Hasbro -- but it's interesting to watch him relate to the world.
Once, when the topic of kickball came up, he scorned playing and made up a game called "kick catch" on the fly. And then forced us all to play. This started with him standing in his red cape on a stone wall, and instead of running at the ball, he stood static and flailed his little leg out, nearly upending himself. To his highly athletic, non cape-wearing cousin who was over that day, a lovely, well-adjusted kid who is a true team player and excels at sports, this whole show was very confusing. But to me, an adoring aunt who always hated kickball and wishes she'd had the chutzpah to wear whatever and make up her own rules instead, it's a sign of brilliance. Creativity. A welcome iconoclasm.
Over the summer I also witnessed my nephew building sand castles with a little girl. His structures were too close to the shore and got systematically demolished by waves. Instead of changing strategy, he dug in and changed the rules. "The winner is the person whose castle gets ruined first," he explained with utter conviction. Until that point, I don't even think she was aware that they were playing a game, but suddenly, he was winning it.
When we think about him losing his mom, we are so, so sad. But my husband looks at his character and says -- that kid, he's got a very strong character. That kid is going to be fine. I told my sister about that and she wept and thanked me for passing it on. We worry about him, so much, because especially lately, he is very withdrawn.
My niece, who is a piece of glitter on the face of humanity, is 3. Cheerful and loving, she differs from her brother in that she almost seems to appreciate rules. I recently suggested that we make up a character named "Banana Claus" who was a yellow, fruitlike version of Santa -- as if one needed to explain to you, dear reader. But she wanted no part of that scheme. Santa Claus is red, and he has to do with Christmas, not bananas. I'm not saying it wasn't a stupid idea, but her brother would have at least riffed on it for a while with me.
When she first learned to talk and I used to ask her if she was a SuperBaby, she'd very vigorously shake no and say "NO NOT SUPER JUST A BABY JUST A BABY!!!" She's hardly solemn, it's just that she's just a bit more attached to the frameworks in life that are already set up. In the family, it's sort of assumed that she will go with the flow a bit more, ie, no capes, and that this might make her a happier person overall.
I think that I'm not making her out to be the delight that she is. In the face of Beth's illness, the whole family would have likely scalped one another already if it weren't for her. I don't think she's aware of the pressure of keeping us all cheerful . However, she's beginning to understand that her mother is very ill, judging by the fact that she says things like "Some mommies can walk. My mommy doesn't walk." But this is a new phase, and exploratory. At any rate it hasn't hit her like its hit her brother, who has lost his mom's constant company and also, all of the services which frankly kids need and expect. But little niece is better able to understand her mommy's speech than almost anyone else. She LOVES her mommy and tries to climb all over her. She also wears very precious pink clothing along with spiderman socks and a Darth Vader Mark. So I guess she's not that linear, yet.
Anyhow many weeks ago we had a family outing to go apple picking. It was fantastic. My sister and her husband and their 2 kids and my husband and I took a ferry from Rocky Hill over to Glastonbury. If you haven't seen this part of Connecticut in the fall, you're missing out, because it's basically when it was designed to be showcased. Old colonials in excellent historic colors with wavery glass panes in the windows and pumpkins in the yard, winding roads and hills. We took the "ferry," which is a slatted thing that can hold about 3 cars and costs about 3 dollars and takes about 3 minutes, across the river and wound around more through Glastonbury to the Belltown Hill Orchards.
My sister had come up with the agenda for the day. It was great to get out but she wasn't going to be able to apple pick or navigate the terrain of the trees in her wheelchair. She stayed in the car while Matthew and her husband took the kids on the tractor around to get all of the apples. I took a short tour with them and then went back to hang out in the car. They continued on picking Empires and Fujis. When picking, my nephew kept telling people "you can't eat any until they are washed or paid for!" which is a rule that no one else really followed. (I, for one, hid to eat an apple without reproach.) Afterwards, in the car, we shared apple fritters, then went out for slices of pizza at Luna Pizza in Glastonbury.
We brought a zillion apples home to Brooklyn and then make THE MOST DELICIOUS PIE ever. Well, my husband made it. Pie has a lot of rules surrounding it -- all of baking does -- so I mostly undertake the cooking of savory meals, and leave the pie to him.
What I want ot talk about is my husband -- who is a very reasonable, logical, reporter type -- and his interplay with the kids but specifically my nephew, but that is for another post.
For us, there is the travel and the emotions that go along with seeing someone we love so ill. There is the work associated with caring for someone very sick. And then, there are the kids.
Now, anyone who knows me knows that I ADORE these kids. My nephew, who is 8, is smart and creative and as handsome as the day is long.
He is also a full-throttle maniac. He sometimes (always) requires an extra couple of hands at school to keep him on task or ease him through transitions. Not because he's academically challenged, but because making monkey noises is so irresistible that he might have a hard time transitioning to the next part of the school day. And a constant backdrop of his monkey noises, or whatever he's doing that day, can prove academically challenging for his peers.
But he is superlative in enough ways that when I am not considering having him arrested, I am usually surprised and delighted by him. He's the sort of kid who, until recently, wore a Superman costume whenever possible. If there was no one around to help him get it on, he'd just carry it in a bag. When you play a game with him, he isn't interested in the rules as written, but he likes to make up his own. It's not that the games he makes up are, uh, good -- but this is okay because he's not yet aiming for a job at Hasbro -- but it's interesting to watch him relate to the world.
Once, when the topic of kickball came up, he scorned playing and made up a game called "kick catch" on the fly. And then forced us all to play. This started with him standing in his red cape on a stone wall, and instead of running at the ball, he stood static and flailed his little leg out, nearly upending himself. To his highly athletic, non cape-wearing cousin who was over that day, a lovely, well-adjusted kid who is a true team player and excels at sports, this whole show was very confusing. But to me, an adoring aunt who always hated kickball and wishes she'd had the chutzpah to wear whatever and make up her own rules instead, it's a sign of brilliance. Creativity. A welcome iconoclasm.
Over the summer I also witnessed my nephew building sand castles with a little girl. His structures were too close to the shore and got systematically demolished by waves. Instead of changing strategy, he dug in and changed the rules. "The winner is the person whose castle gets ruined first," he explained with utter conviction. Until that point, I don't even think she was aware that they were playing a game, but suddenly, he was winning it.
When we think about him losing his mom, we are so, so sad. But my husband looks at his character and says -- that kid, he's got a very strong character. That kid is going to be fine. I told my sister about that and she wept and thanked me for passing it on. We worry about him, so much, because especially lately, he is very withdrawn.
My niece, who is a piece of glitter on the face of humanity, is 3. Cheerful and loving, she differs from her brother in that she almost seems to appreciate rules. I recently suggested that we make up a character named "Banana Claus" who was a yellow, fruitlike version of Santa -- as if one needed to explain to you, dear reader. But she wanted no part of that scheme. Santa Claus is red, and he has to do with Christmas, not bananas. I'm not saying it wasn't a stupid idea, but her brother would have at least riffed on it for a while with me.
When she first learned to talk and I used to ask her if she was a SuperBaby, she'd very vigorously shake no and say "NO NOT SUPER JUST A BABY JUST A BABY!!!" She's hardly solemn, it's just that she's just a bit more attached to the frameworks in life that are already set up. In the family, it's sort of assumed that she will go with the flow a bit more, ie, no capes, and that this might make her a happier person overall.
I think that I'm not making her out to be the delight that she is. In the face of Beth's illness, the whole family would have likely scalped one another already if it weren't for her. I don't think she's aware of the pressure of keeping us all cheerful . However, she's beginning to understand that her mother is very ill, judging by the fact that she says things like "Some mommies can walk. My mommy doesn't walk." But this is a new phase, and exploratory. At any rate it hasn't hit her like its hit her brother, who has lost his mom's constant company and also, all of the services which frankly kids need and expect. But little niece is better able to understand her mommy's speech than almost anyone else. She LOVES her mommy and tries to climb all over her. She also wears very precious pink clothing along with spiderman socks and a Darth Vader Mark. So I guess she's not that linear, yet.
Anyhow many weeks ago we had a family outing to go apple picking. It was fantastic. My sister and her husband and their 2 kids and my husband and I took a ferry from Rocky Hill over to Glastonbury. If you haven't seen this part of Connecticut in the fall, you're missing out, because it's basically when it was designed to be showcased. Old colonials in excellent historic colors with wavery glass panes in the windows and pumpkins in the yard, winding roads and hills. We took the "ferry," which is a slatted thing that can hold about 3 cars and costs about 3 dollars and takes about 3 minutes, across the river and wound around more through Glastonbury to the Belltown Hill Orchards.
My sister had come up with the agenda for the day. It was great to get out but she wasn't going to be able to apple pick or navigate the terrain of the trees in her wheelchair. She stayed in the car while Matthew and her husband took the kids on the tractor around to get all of the apples. I took a short tour with them and then went back to hang out in the car. They continued on picking Empires and Fujis. When picking, my nephew kept telling people "you can't eat any until they are washed or paid for!" which is a rule that no one else really followed. (I, for one, hid to eat an apple without reproach.) Afterwards, in the car, we shared apple fritters, then went out for slices of pizza at Luna Pizza in Glastonbury.
We brought a zillion apples home to Brooklyn and then make THE MOST DELICIOUS PIE ever. Well, my husband made it. Pie has a lot of rules surrounding it -- all of baking does -- so I mostly undertake the cooking of savory meals, and leave the pie to him.
What I want ot talk about is my husband -- who is a very reasonable, logical, reporter type -- and his interplay with the kids but specifically my nephew, but that is for another post.
Tuesday, November 18, 2008
Hunger
This post isn't about how I eat ice cream even when it isn't night. The baby makes do it, but this one isn't about the baby.
Instead, it's about other hungers. Maybe a hunger for connection with another being, or a hunger for being able to effectively help another being, however small. Lately I am too aware of the difference between situations that can be helped or things that cannot.
This is mostly because of my sister is under siege of ALS. It's a disease that, with a medicine costing $1000 / month can sometimes be slowed by a tenth -- but it cannot be banished in any sense. Whereas people whose ticket comes up saying "cancer" can sometimes cobble together a cocktail of hope and technology and diet and luck and come out kicking and even smiling -- if exhausted, in pain, and possibly missing some important body parts -- on the other side. I in no way mean to discount the horrors of cancer -- it's just that ALS is always described as a death sentence. When a person is diagnosed, the neurologist often doesn't give more information than the patient asks for -- because the trajectory is too grim. The introduction of ALS into my life underscores the difference between things that can be helped or things that cannot.
This leads us, if indirectly, into the cat problem.
There is the larger cat problem, which is rampant in our part of Brooklyn. I like to joke that we live on the inskirts of a cat compound, because if you have nothing better to do -- like my cat, Georgekitty -- then you can sit at the window and watch the action all day long. Fat orange stripey Toms looking for females in heat, a couple of new calicos -- one now dead and lying on a lawn -- and the matriarch Bad Seed Kitty, who has a torn ear but keeps watch on the tribes and subtribes all sharing her bloodline. But these brief character sketches don't begin to explain the panoply in the neighborhood, which is (not quickly enough) trying to organize and implement TNR efforts.
Then there is the smaller cat problem, who is me.
To my great horror, I've recently become a gattara -- which is a more interesting, ie, in Italian, way of saying a cat lady.
As my husband likes to point out, we're now on the 3rd I've taken in since I got married -- a year ago.
The first weighed less than a pound and had no eyes. I took it in in the brief time between wedding and honeymoon. Could you resist a howling, mud-covered runt crashing into a fence in the rain in your front yard? I should hope not. Rainy had to be medically boarded while we were in Turkey. I say she -- but it was too tiny for them to actually tell. While we were away, someone who worked at the vet fell in love and when we returned, he adopted her.
The second was just a few months ago. He was laying in our front yard pretending to have a broken leg. (I must have a reputation in the neighborhood, because shortly after we placed that one in a good home, I saw a squirrel running along Newkirk Avenue holding its wrist in an awkward position. I could SWEAR that it was faking a broken wrist to get my attention.)
Most recently started to feed a very small, insistently friendly black and white cat. I'd walk by the giant white creepy house on the corner, which has been for sale for what seems like years. And the little cat would rush out to greet me and cavort around my ankles. Not like the ferals which populate, and populate, and populate, the neighborhood. But this one would walk alongside of me, standing on hind legs, pawing at me with soft white front feet. Like some sort of fabulous circus animal, which I found charming, but also desperate for my attention, which I also respond to.
It seemed reluctant to stray from the while house but one day it followed me 6 whole houses to my own. And galloped up onto the porch. Guiltily, I brought out a dish of food. When it finished, I tried to wash off its face and chest.
I was afraid to have too much to do with this one -- who wants to jeopardize a marriage to a good man because of a dirty little cat? But there it was on the porch, all the time, and the nice thing about it was that it seemed to want attention as much as it wanted food. (Georgekitty, are you reading this???) The neighbors upstairs -- who think I have a problem with cat stealing -- actually urged me to take this one in. They also fell for the fact that it was pathetic and charming in equal measure -- a la Oliver -- but my nickname for her was Scrappy Doo. She's a really striking looking animal -- huge, round, sea green eyes in a face with a black mask and beard. The lightest possible pink nose, with a somewhat dramatic scratch drawn through it from life in the wild.
I did the routine: asked neighbors if it were theirs; called the shelter to see whether it was full, swung it by to see whether there was a chip implanted; got it checked for the basic bad diseases, established it was starving. Oh, and got it unflea-ed. I brought it home and left it in the bathroom in a carrier while it stewed in the de-flea potion. Then I left for the gym.
When I arrived home after the gym to get them for dinner, husband astutely observed:
"There is not only 1 houseguest: there are 2." (He'd had a friend from Berlin arrive that afternoon.)
I'd be leaving the next morning for Connecticut to visit / care for family without him. "I just want to be clear," he said, in his patient, mellifluous radio voice, "that you will be leaving in the morning, and that I will be looking after this rogue cat."
He is not a cat person, per se.
But when I arrived home on Sunday night, he was already thinking up names. Since we're in the process of naming the baby, there are lots of cast-off good names floating about. Champ, CookiePuss, and Oreo are some things we probably will not name the baby but might name the cat.
A sad cat is a fixable entity. Get rid of fleas, worms, mites; get it shots; give it love; fatten it up; find it suitable person and place. Fixing problems feels great and a cat is a manageable problem.
People are always harder than animals. You expect more, you see the nasty parts of yourself reflected in a difficult person. If they can't care for themselves, or won't care for themselves, or give you lip about caring for themselves. The payoff for fixing a human problem is of course bigger.
In my own defense, I also believe in feeding hungry people, but I often have a hard time doing it. Once, when a woman told me she was hungry, I offered her the container of yogurt I was bringing to work to have for breakfast. She scorned me. "I want a nice hot breakfast. Like from McDonald's?" So do I, lady.
Another time I'd bought a banana, a bagel, and a coffee for a man in Fort Greene who asked me for change every morning. Ragged, skinny, darkness in his eyes, he looked like he needed some nourishment but refused the food when I offered it.
So recently when someone asked me for some money on my way out of a banking kiosk, I tried to avoid him. I'd been scolded and followed on the street a few nights before for dismissing him with the word "sorry" when someone asked me for money, and hadn't yet revised my strategy. (He claimed it would be better to say -- "No, I am not going to give you money," than just "sorry." Thoughts on this, anyone? I generally like to keep encounters with strangers brief.) Anyhow I sort of dodged this guy at the bank, when he asked me for money for soup. I was ducking away, when he said, sort of deflated, "or how about a banana?" And this man's true wish for food struck me. We were next to a fruit stand so I took him over and we had a bonanza, starting with a bunch of bananas. "Can I get a container of strawberries, too? What a great day! How about these plums!" I bought him whatever he asked for at the fruit stand and it cost me all of $6 but I got so much more out of it. At the end of the transaction I suggested to him that he get some protein, and I pointed out a container of nuts.
"But I ain't got no teeth, darling!" he said with a big, seemingly genuine smile, flashed to prove his point. He's smarter than I am, because the next time I walked by that bank I looked for him to feed him -- and my own desires.
Instead, it's about other hungers. Maybe a hunger for connection with another being, or a hunger for being able to effectively help another being, however small. Lately I am too aware of the difference between situations that can be helped or things that cannot.
This is mostly because of my sister is under siege of ALS. It's a disease that, with a medicine costing $1000 / month can sometimes be slowed by a tenth -- but it cannot be banished in any sense. Whereas people whose ticket comes up saying "cancer" can sometimes cobble together a cocktail of hope and technology and diet and luck and come out kicking and even smiling -- if exhausted, in pain, and possibly missing some important body parts -- on the other side. I in no way mean to discount the horrors of cancer -- it's just that ALS is always described as a death sentence. When a person is diagnosed, the neurologist often doesn't give more information than the patient asks for -- because the trajectory is too grim. The introduction of ALS into my life underscores the difference between things that can be helped or things that cannot.
This leads us, if indirectly, into the cat problem.
There is the larger cat problem, which is rampant in our part of Brooklyn. I like to joke that we live on the inskirts of a cat compound, because if you have nothing better to do -- like my cat, Georgekitty -- then you can sit at the window and watch the action all day long. Fat orange stripey Toms looking for females in heat, a couple of new calicos -- one now dead and lying on a lawn -- and the matriarch Bad Seed Kitty, who has a torn ear but keeps watch on the tribes and subtribes all sharing her bloodline. But these brief character sketches don't begin to explain the panoply in the neighborhood, which is (not quickly enough) trying to organize and implement TNR efforts.
Then there is the smaller cat problem, who is me.
To my great horror, I've recently become a gattara -- which is a more interesting, ie, in Italian, way of saying a cat lady.
As my husband likes to point out, we're now on the 3rd I've taken in since I got married -- a year ago.
The first weighed less than a pound and had no eyes. I took it in in the brief time between wedding and honeymoon. Could you resist a howling, mud-covered runt crashing into a fence in the rain in your front yard? I should hope not. Rainy had to be medically boarded while we were in Turkey. I say she -- but it was too tiny for them to actually tell. While we were away, someone who worked at the vet fell in love and when we returned, he adopted her.
The second was just a few months ago. He was laying in our front yard pretending to have a broken leg. (I must have a reputation in the neighborhood, because shortly after we placed that one in a good home, I saw a squirrel running along Newkirk Avenue holding its wrist in an awkward position. I could SWEAR that it was faking a broken wrist to get my attention.)
Most recently started to feed a very small, insistently friendly black and white cat. I'd walk by the giant white creepy house on the corner, which has been for sale for what seems like years. And the little cat would rush out to greet me and cavort around my ankles. Not like the ferals which populate, and populate, and populate, the neighborhood. But this one would walk alongside of me, standing on hind legs, pawing at me with soft white front feet. Like some sort of fabulous circus animal, which I found charming, but also desperate for my attention, which I also respond to.
It seemed reluctant to stray from the while house but one day it followed me 6 whole houses to my own. And galloped up onto the porch. Guiltily, I brought out a dish of food. When it finished, I tried to wash off its face and chest.
I was afraid to have too much to do with this one -- who wants to jeopardize a marriage to a good man because of a dirty little cat? But there it was on the porch, all the time, and the nice thing about it was that it seemed to want attention as much as it wanted food. (Georgekitty, are you reading this???) The neighbors upstairs -- who think I have a problem with cat stealing -- actually urged me to take this one in. They also fell for the fact that it was pathetic and charming in equal measure -- a la Oliver -- but my nickname for her was Scrappy Doo. She's a really striking looking animal -- huge, round, sea green eyes in a face with a black mask and beard. The lightest possible pink nose, with a somewhat dramatic scratch drawn through it from life in the wild.
I did the routine: asked neighbors if it were theirs; called the shelter to see whether it was full, swung it by to see whether there was a chip implanted; got it checked for the basic bad diseases, established it was starving. Oh, and got it unflea-ed. I brought it home and left it in the bathroom in a carrier while it stewed in the de-flea potion. Then I left for the gym.
When I arrived home after the gym to get them for dinner, husband astutely observed:
"There is not only 1 houseguest: there are 2." (He'd had a friend from Berlin arrive that afternoon.)
I'd be leaving the next morning for Connecticut to visit / care for family without him. "I just want to be clear," he said, in his patient, mellifluous radio voice, "that you will be leaving in the morning, and that I will be looking after this rogue cat."
He is not a cat person, per se.
But when I arrived home on Sunday night, he was already thinking up names. Since we're in the process of naming the baby, there are lots of cast-off good names floating about. Champ, CookiePuss, and Oreo are some things we probably will not name the baby but might name the cat.
A sad cat is a fixable entity. Get rid of fleas, worms, mites; get it shots; give it love; fatten it up; find it suitable person and place. Fixing problems feels great and a cat is a manageable problem.
People are always harder than animals. You expect more, you see the nasty parts of yourself reflected in a difficult person. If they can't care for themselves, or won't care for themselves, or give you lip about caring for themselves. The payoff for fixing a human problem is of course bigger.
In my own defense, I also believe in feeding hungry people, but I often have a hard time doing it. Once, when a woman told me she was hungry, I offered her the container of yogurt I was bringing to work to have for breakfast. She scorned me. "I want a nice hot breakfast. Like from McDonald's?" So do I, lady.
Another time I'd bought a banana, a bagel, and a coffee for a man in Fort Greene who asked me for change every morning. Ragged, skinny, darkness in his eyes, he looked like he needed some nourishment but refused the food when I offered it.
So recently when someone asked me for some money on my way out of a banking kiosk, I tried to avoid him. I'd been scolded and followed on the street a few nights before for dismissing him with the word "sorry" when someone asked me for money, and hadn't yet revised my strategy. (He claimed it would be better to say -- "No, I am not going to give you money," than just "sorry." Thoughts on this, anyone? I generally like to keep encounters with strangers brief.) Anyhow I sort of dodged this guy at the bank, when he asked me for money for soup. I was ducking away, when he said, sort of deflated, "or how about a banana?" And this man's true wish for food struck me. We were next to a fruit stand so I took him over and we had a bonanza, starting with a bunch of bananas. "Can I get a container of strawberries, too? What a great day! How about these plums!" I bought him whatever he asked for at the fruit stand and it cost me all of $6 but I got so much more out of it. At the end of the transaction I suggested to him that he get some protein, and I pointed out a container of nuts.
"But I ain't got no teeth, darling!" he said with a big, seemingly genuine smile, flashed to prove his point. He's smarter than I am, because the next time I walked by that bank I looked for him to feed him -- and my own desires.
Saturday, November 15, 2008
omg what do we need
for when the baby is just born?
1. name
2. marriage license since husband and i don't have the same last name, yet he would like to lay claim
3. coming home outfit
4. diapers of some sort
5. place for it to sleep
6. food in case the biological method backfires?
7. food delivery mechanism (bottle?)
8. carseat that has been installed into the car by the police or something
This week I'm a little more than 6 months pregnant and I started having these sudden moments where my belly gets really, really hard. These are apparently pre-labor contractions called Braxton Hicks. I have heard about them, of course. Like many things in life, they sound fine and interesting when other people talk about them, but when my tummy is suddenly hard as a rock (quick! bounce a dime off of it!!) they take me by surprise and I feel sort of uncomfortable. It's not pain, it's just a measure of weirdness.
I also read that we're basically at "viability," where the baby would likely survive if born.
The contractions combined with the possibility of actual life is coming together to make me scared that the baby is scheming to get out.
And here on the outside, we don't even have a little suit for it.
We're supposed to have about 3 more months. Well, like 12 more weeks. But multiple people have told me stories about babies born at 7 months. My cousin Susan was born then. And someone else's baby was just born then. It's not impossible, in other words. The time drawing nigh is leading to a mental shift where I'm thinking -- YOU NEED TO GET RID OF AS MANY SHOES AS POSSIBLE NEED TO GET RID OF CLOTHES THAT DON'T FIT MUST PAINT ASSEMBLE CRADLE ETC . . . . .
Normally that voice is not a voice in my head but rather Matthew's actual voice, gently prodding me to be civilized.
Anxiety leading to organizing is called NESTING. It's because I feel a primordial urge to be ready for the baby. WHICH I AM NOT. I have isolated and given away a lot of shoes and clothes (well, put them into the truck of the car, and that is at least away from the living room and my closet, for now) but I do have some basic questions. Anyone who can help answer them, please answer away.
Do I need one of those stretchy gowns with the hand muffs that you see in photos from the hospital, just in case the baby's fingernails have been growing at a similar pace to my own? Which is that every day, I grow a new set of claws.
Or will the hospital dress it in a tiny gown during the time it spends there?
Do we need to bring the world's smallest nail clippers?
Do I need to get it a really small hat?
We're going to drive home in the car. We'll be using a little-used infant car seat from friends (thanks C & M!!) Does it need to already have one of those sleeping bags to snuggle into?
Will the sun get into its eyes and irritate it? Or will it have mettle, like my husband's stock, and its eyes will be fine?
Is the cradle mattress really going to be soft enough? It's like, 1/2 an inch thick. And do I need a "bumper" so the baby doesn't crash into the walls of the cradle?
Cloth or disposable diapers?
What is the correct decision on circumcision? Sometimes, I am sad that my ears are pierced. It doesn't gross me out when other people do it, but for me -- it's not for me. It seems like a fake thing to have done to my head.* So having my possible son's genitalia altered makes me also want to be sure that it's the right thing to do. "DOES IT REPRESENT A COVENANT WITH GOD?" a friend who is not circumcised recently asked. Um, no. "THEN DON'T DO IT." We're not Jewish, so culturally it doesn't matter. I know that there are pros and cons to both. The most immediate pro would be not having someone take my baby away and cut him. But it's obviously more important to look at the big picture, and there are public health issues which would be the main ones we would consider. I actually think that this is husband's decision.
Ladies (and gents), advice appreciated.
Oh--and Matthew dreamt that it would come out with its own perfect name. Barring that actually happening, we are scouring around for fabulous things to name it. We have some ideas, but it seems like such a --- flag to the world. Such a moment of self-definition. I mean. I drive a silverish toyata camry which errs on the side of characterless. Yesterday we walked by a very low slung red and white sports car that was really fun to look at. Sort of ridiculous, but . . . why not? Names are the same, sort of. Fun to have a fast low-slung red one . . . but for every day?
*not that I don't do other fake things to my head without thinking twice
1. name
2. marriage license since husband and i don't have the same last name, yet he would like to lay claim
3. coming home outfit
4. diapers of some sort
5. place for it to sleep
6. food in case the biological method backfires?
7. food delivery mechanism (bottle?)
8. carseat that has been installed into the car by the police or something
This week I'm a little more than 6 months pregnant and I started having these sudden moments where my belly gets really, really hard. These are apparently pre-labor contractions called Braxton Hicks. I have heard about them, of course. Like many things in life, they sound fine and interesting when other people talk about them, but when my tummy is suddenly hard as a rock (quick! bounce a dime off of it!!) they take me by surprise and I feel sort of uncomfortable. It's not pain, it's just a measure of weirdness.
I also read that we're basically at "viability," where the baby would likely survive if born.
The contractions combined with the possibility of actual life is coming together to make me scared that the baby is scheming to get out.
And here on the outside, we don't even have a little suit for it.
We're supposed to have about 3 more months. Well, like 12 more weeks. But multiple people have told me stories about babies born at 7 months. My cousin Susan was born then. And someone else's baby was just born then. It's not impossible, in other words. The time drawing nigh is leading to a mental shift where I'm thinking -- YOU NEED TO GET RID OF AS MANY SHOES AS POSSIBLE NEED TO GET RID OF CLOTHES THAT DON'T FIT MUST PAINT ASSEMBLE CRADLE ETC . . . . .
Normally that voice is not a voice in my head but rather Matthew's actual voice, gently prodding me to be civilized.
Anxiety leading to organizing is called NESTING. It's because I feel a primordial urge to be ready for the baby. WHICH I AM NOT. I have isolated and given away a lot of shoes and clothes (well, put them into the truck of the car, and that is at least away from the living room and my closet, for now) but I do have some basic questions. Anyone who can help answer them, please answer away.
Do I need one of those stretchy gowns with the hand muffs that you see in photos from the hospital, just in case the baby's fingernails have been growing at a similar pace to my own? Which is that every day, I grow a new set of claws.
Or will the hospital dress it in a tiny gown during the time it spends there?
Do we need to bring the world's smallest nail clippers?
Do I need to get it a really small hat?
We're going to drive home in the car. We'll be using a little-used infant car seat from friends (thanks C & M!!) Does it need to already have one of those sleeping bags to snuggle into?
Will the sun get into its eyes and irritate it? Or will it have mettle, like my husband's stock, and its eyes will be fine?
Is the cradle mattress really going to be soft enough? It's like, 1/2 an inch thick. And do I need a "bumper" so the baby doesn't crash into the walls of the cradle?
Cloth or disposable diapers?
What is the correct decision on circumcision? Sometimes, I am sad that my ears are pierced. It doesn't gross me out when other people do it, but for me -- it's not for me. It seems like a fake thing to have done to my head.* So having my possible son's genitalia altered makes me also want to be sure that it's the right thing to do. "DOES IT REPRESENT A COVENANT WITH GOD?" a friend who is not circumcised recently asked. Um, no. "THEN DON'T DO IT." We're not Jewish, so culturally it doesn't matter. I know that there are pros and cons to both. The most immediate pro would be not having someone take my baby away and cut him. But it's obviously more important to look at the big picture, and there are public health issues which would be the main ones we would consider. I actually think that this is husband's decision.
Ladies (and gents), advice appreciated.
Oh--and Matthew dreamt that it would come out with its own perfect name. Barring that actually happening, we are scouring around for fabulous things to name it. We have some ideas, but it seems like such a --- flag to the world. Such a moment of self-definition. I mean. I drive a silverish toyata camry which errs on the side of characterless. Yesterday we walked by a very low slung red and white sports car that was really fun to look at. Sort of ridiculous, but . . . why not? Names are the same, sort of. Fun to have a fast low-slung red one . . . but for every day?
*not that I don't do other fake things to my head without thinking twice
Thursday, November 13, 2008
Monday, November 10, 2008
what people say when you're pregnant
Lots of people have lots of things to say when you are pregnant. So far, I think I've been really lucky. No one has scolded me for drinking coffee (it's decaf anyhow) and on the rare occasion where I've ordered a glass of wine, it's usually after grilling the waiter on the order of something like this:
"The squid comes with aioli. Does that mean housemade mayo, and if so, does that mean it has raw eggs in it?"
"So I'm pregnant and this is ridiculous but any ham I eat has to be really really cooked. I know that ham is already cooked of course -- but there's this rule. Can you get them to heat up the ham 'til it's extra hot? Like, recooked?"
And then when they are walking off with my carefully considered order, I might say "Oh and can I have a glass of the Sauvignon Blanc?" and as they raise their eyebrows -- really picky about her ham but in a hurry for the wine -- they generally smile. I think all of the waiters I've ordered wine from (probably 4, tops, in 27 weeks of being pregnant) have actually been men and perhaps that helps. I suspect that women, after having been subjected to rules and scrutiny themselves, are more likely to believe that other women should undergo the same restrictions they did. Not unlike hazing.
But really people have been very nice and maybe laughed but not seemed judgmental. (Btw, I've had about 4 glasses of wine total, spread of 8 meals, in 27 weeks of pregnancy, and even my mother, who doesn't drink at all, thinks that is fine.) And at one very nice restaurant I told them I wanted the most succulent and delicious glass of white wine ever and the waiter went way out of his way to figure out the absolute best glass since I could only have one. Which I so appreciated!
At the opposite end of the spectrum, last night in a gas station I bought a bag of trail mix and the attendant, seeing my belly, fell all over himself in an attempt to be extremely helpful, and wanted to know whether he could open the bag for me, or anything. Not that I'm the most coordinated gal under the best of circumstances, but . . . .
When trying to flag down a cab one day when I wasn't SO visibly popped, someone did a precarious u-turn to pick me up. "You're so beautiful and I couldn't leave you standing there." I've been feeling so bloaty and unattractive that I actually thanked him for telling me that. "I'm pregnant and I don't feel attractive, so thanks!" He deflated my ego slightly by saying "Of course I know you are pregnant lady! Is why I turned around to pick you up!" I thought he was judging me according to the normal person rubric rather than the pregnant person one. Still, appreciated any sort of compliment at all.
Which was in contract to yesterday when my mother said "Meredith's getting chubby!" When snapped at, she claims she meant that it was limited to my stomach. Which anyone who's been pregnant knows that it is not, ahem, limited to your stomach, but rather nothing fits from your bra to your wedding ring to your SOCKS, ladies and gentleman. If my face wore clothes, those would not fit, and all of these facts were the root of my defensiveness. Anyhow. I love my mother dearly, and she meant well, I am sure.
The first mention anyone ever made of my changing body was my 3 year old niece, who, one day while laying around with my sister (her mom) and I, said "You have a tummy!" Another time several weeks later when I was in my pjs and t-shirt wasn't covering my stomach, she looked at it and said, "Uh, can you put your tummy down?," meaning, could I cover it. No, I cannot. Now she's aware that there's a baby in there and says "your tummy is big. i mean REALLY big. can i see it?" Like people who are three, though, she's guileless and everything she does delights me.
But my favorite comment comes from my sister's mother-in-law, who I have been seeing every two weeks. She's 80 and German and has a very small build and sort of prances through life having coffee and cake every day at 4 and singing the children songs in German and making sure that everything is very, very clean, and she is delighted that I am going to have a baby. And every time she sees me, her comment is always the same. "Aren't you blooming so nice?"
And I think that's basically the perfect thing to say.
"The squid comes with aioli. Does that mean housemade mayo, and if so, does that mean it has raw eggs in it?"
"So I'm pregnant and this is ridiculous but any ham I eat has to be really really cooked. I know that ham is already cooked of course -- but there's this rule. Can you get them to heat up the ham 'til it's extra hot? Like, recooked?"
And then when they are walking off with my carefully considered order, I might say "Oh and can I have a glass of the Sauvignon Blanc?" and as they raise their eyebrows -- really picky about her ham but in a hurry for the wine -- they generally smile. I think all of the waiters I've ordered wine from (probably 4, tops, in 27 weeks of being pregnant) have actually been men and perhaps that helps. I suspect that women, after having been subjected to rules and scrutiny themselves, are more likely to believe that other women should undergo the same restrictions they did. Not unlike hazing.
But really people have been very nice and maybe laughed but not seemed judgmental. (Btw, I've had about 4 glasses of wine total, spread of 8 meals, in 27 weeks of pregnancy, and even my mother, who doesn't drink at all, thinks that is fine.) And at one very nice restaurant I told them I wanted the most succulent and delicious glass of white wine ever and the waiter went way out of his way to figure out the absolute best glass since I could only have one. Which I so appreciated!
At the opposite end of the spectrum, last night in a gas station I bought a bag of trail mix and the attendant, seeing my belly, fell all over himself in an attempt to be extremely helpful, and wanted to know whether he could open the bag for me, or anything. Not that I'm the most coordinated gal under the best of circumstances, but . . . .
When trying to flag down a cab one day when I wasn't SO visibly popped, someone did a precarious u-turn to pick me up. "You're so beautiful and I couldn't leave you standing there." I've been feeling so bloaty and unattractive that I actually thanked him for telling me that. "I'm pregnant and I don't feel attractive, so thanks!" He deflated my ego slightly by saying "Of course I know you are pregnant lady! Is why I turned around to pick you up!" I thought he was judging me according to the normal person rubric rather than the pregnant person one. Still, appreciated any sort of compliment at all.
Which was in contract to yesterday when my mother said "Meredith's getting chubby!" When snapped at, she claims she meant that it was limited to my stomach. Which anyone who's been pregnant knows that it is not, ahem, limited to your stomach, but rather nothing fits from your bra to your wedding ring to your SOCKS, ladies and gentleman. If my face wore clothes, those would not fit, and all of these facts were the root of my defensiveness. Anyhow. I love my mother dearly, and she meant well, I am sure.
The first mention anyone ever made of my changing body was my 3 year old niece, who, one day while laying around with my sister (her mom) and I, said "You have a tummy!" Another time several weeks later when I was in my pjs and t-shirt wasn't covering my stomach, she looked at it and said, "Uh, can you put your tummy down?," meaning, could I cover it. No, I cannot. Now she's aware that there's a baby in there and says "your tummy is big. i mean REALLY big. can i see it?" Like people who are three, though, she's guileless and everything she does delights me.
But my favorite comment comes from my sister's mother-in-law, who I have been seeing every two weeks. She's 80 and German and has a very small build and sort of prances through life having coffee and cake every day at 4 and singing the children songs in German and making sure that everything is very, very clean, and she is delighted that I am going to have a baby. And every time she sees me, her comment is always the same. "Aren't you blooming so nice?"
And I think that's basically the perfect thing to say.
Wednesday, November 05, 2008
Election!! And Stories About Butterscotch.
Yesterday was a fantastic day. Because schools were transformed into voting stations, kids stayed home, and since kids stayed home, many parents took the day off, and Brooklyn seemed like a huge party all day. Walking by people on the street, they'd ask "did you vote?" and a real sense of hope and community was in the air.
Yesterday evening I watched the election with friends -- slightly reluctant because though they are the best of friends, we've watched some pretty painful elections together, most specifically 8 years ago. And I don't care for sports but I sort of imagine that when we wonder whether we're about to jinx history by being in the room together again while returns are announced, if it isnt sort of like that. (None of us can ever remember where we watched in '04, which suggests that perhaps we all just blocked it out in some sort of group PTSD event.)
Our hostess Meg made a giant shapeless meatloaf in the shape of a turtle. (No offense to the turtle community in calling their shape shapeless -- though I guess freeform would be a better descriptor.) Her meatloaf is sort of the classic -- it has 3 kinds of meat. Beef . . . veal? And the other one may be pork. I am almost sure it is not turtle. It's very special -- richer and undoubtedly harder to shop for than the lowfat turkey meatloaf (pilfered from another blog) that is a weeknight staple in our house. (Mostly, during the week, we eat ground up birds in various permutations -- picadillo tacos, tomatillo chile, and this meatloaf. Well, now we do, since being pregnant makes fish seem as gross or grosser than it seemed during childhood.)
My contribution to the election party was cookies for which I wished, but failed, to find an interesting name, possibly with some sort of political ring to it. Their most interesting characteristic is that they are made from chips -- both butterscotch and potato. Or perhaps it's that they're so very easy that they take less than an hour total for prep and cooking and cooling and you can make them while you talk on the phone.
They come out delicious, even though butterscotch chips are sort of waxy and unpleasant if eaten straight from the bag, which I did try doing. They seem to have the same filler as non-good chocolate. Paraffin? Shoepolish? Butterscotch is better if you make it yourself -- out of butter, and scotch, and brown sugar, but I had a near death experience re: butterscotch last year.
Because when you make pudding . . . you basically turn a solid -- sugar, into a liquid. Sugar melts and boils at about 215 F and can get very much hotter. Not that 212 isn't hot enough, but water gets there and isn't going to get hotter and then when heat is removed, will quickly begin to cool down. However, I brought some brown sugar to the boil and then put it into a bowl to do whatever the next step was -- perhaps whisk something into it, I admit it's all a blur, because at one point, after it had stopped bubbling and was in another bowl looking rather delicious -- I stuck my finger into it.
I regret that action.
Because of all of the cooking accidents -- slicing a finger, letting a whole cake slide onto a lawn, touching the element while removing something from a broiler and turning a patch of skin into something like toasted cheese -- sticking my finger into a bowl of melted sugar was the most painful.
Pain is one of those things that is not possible to conjure when it is not happening -- thank goodness. But I know at least intellectually that it was incredible. I finished up the pudding and my husband came home and we sat down to eat. It was sort of late, as it always is when we eat. I was inconsolable regarding my burning finger. We tried to have dinner but I couldn't stop moaning. My husband is a wonderful person but sort of a strong one and by his own admission, doesn't really "get it" when others are in pain. But I was whinging a lot, as the British people say, and he finally decided to get up and call our neighbor upstairs, Eileen. Eileen is a nurse.
One of the first things we learned about Eileen, who is our landlady, is that she goes to bed extremely early. This is because she leaves for work when it is 4 o'clock in the morning. So we don't call Eileen late.
Without thinking of the time, he called her cell phone and it rang through to voicemail. And he left a message that went like this:
"Hi, it's Matthew, I'm actually calling because Meredith has burned her finger pretty badly . . . " he glanced at the clock and trailed off when he saw it was after 9pm. Then he quickly finished the message by saying, ". . . Oh. It's too late." And he hung up.
Which, since it sounded like I had perished while he was leaving the message, gave Eileen quite a shock the next day when she listened.
Theatrics aside, the pudding was amazing. I can't find the recipe at the moment but will include if I do.
Yesterday evening I watched the election with friends -- slightly reluctant because though they are the best of friends, we've watched some pretty painful elections together, most specifically 8 years ago. And I don't care for sports but I sort of imagine that when we wonder whether we're about to jinx history by being in the room together again while returns are announced, if it isnt sort of like that. (None of us can ever remember where we watched in '04, which suggests that perhaps we all just blocked it out in some sort of group PTSD event.)
Our hostess Meg made a giant shapeless meatloaf in the shape of a turtle. (No offense to the turtle community in calling their shape shapeless -- though I guess freeform would be a better descriptor.) Her meatloaf is sort of the classic -- it has 3 kinds of meat. Beef . . . veal? And the other one may be pork. I am almost sure it is not turtle. It's very special -- richer and undoubtedly harder to shop for than the lowfat turkey meatloaf (pilfered from another blog) that is a weeknight staple in our house. (Mostly, during the week, we eat ground up birds in various permutations -- picadillo tacos, tomatillo chile, and this meatloaf. Well, now we do, since being pregnant makes fish seem as gross or grosser than it seemed during childhood.)
My contribution to the election party was cookies for which I wished, but failed, to find an interesting name, possibly with some sort of political ring to it. Their most interesting characteristic is that they are made from chips -- both butterscotch and potato. Or perhaps it's that they're so very easy that they take less than an hour total for prep and cooking and cooling and you can make them while you talk on the phone.
They come out delicious, even though butterscotch chips are sort of waxy and unpleasant if eaten straight from the bag, which I did try doing. They seem to have the same filler as non-good chocolate. Paraffin? Shoepolish? Butterscotch is better if you make it yourself -- out of butter, and scotch, and brown sugar, but I had a near death experience re: butterscotch last year.
Because when you make pudding . . . you basically turn a solid -- sugar, into a liquid. Sugar melts and boils at about 215 F and can get very much hotter. Not that 212 isn't hot enough, but water gets there and isn't going to get hotter and then when heat is removed, will quickly begin to cool down. However, I brought some brown sugar to the boil and then put it into a bowl to do whatever the next step was -- perhaps whisk something into it, I admit it's all a blur, because at one point, after it had stopped bubbling and was in another bowl looking rather delicious -- I stuck my finger into it.
I regret that action.
Because of all of the cooking accidents -- slicing a finger, letting a whole cake slide onto a lawn, touching the element while removing something from a broiler and turning a patch of skin into something like toasted cheese -- sticking my finger into a bowl of melted sugar was the most painful.
Pain is one of those things that is not possible to conjure when it is not happening -- thank goodness. But I know at least intellectually that it was incredible. I finished up the pudding and my husband came home and we sat down to eat. It was sort of late, as it always is when we eat. I was inconsolable regarding my burning finger. We tried to have dinner but I couldn't stop moaning. My husband is a wonderful person but sort of a strong one and by his own admission, doesn't really "get it" when others are in pain. But I was whinging a lot, as the British people say, and he finally decided to get up and call our neighbor upstairs, Eileen. Eileen is a nurse.
One of the first things we learned about Eileen, who is our landlady, is that she goes to bed extremely early. This is because she leaves for work when it is 4 o'clock in the morning. So we don't call Eileen late.
Without thinking of the time, he called her cell phone and it rang through to voicemail. And he left a message that went like this:
"Hi, it's Matthew, I'm actually calling because Meredith has burned her finger pretty badly . . . " he glanced at the clock and trailed off when he saw it was after 9pm. Then he quickly finished the message by saying, ". . . Oh. It's too late." And he hung up.
Which, since it sounded like I had perished while he was leaving the message, gave Eileen quite a shock the next day when she listened.
Theatrics aside, the pudding was amazing. I can't find the recipe at the moment but will include if I do.
Tuesday, November 04, 2008
vote quote
Soterios Johnson, morning host of WNYC, had a great quote this morning, something along the lines of this, about what a historic day it is. I like that no one was left out:
"First Black president, oldest president, first woman, first Biden!"
Matthew, who is currently a reporter for the above linked station, will be covering polling problems tonight. Which is sad because reporters always have to work on holidays (like election day, which is enough of a holiday that we get to have parties and have alternate side parking canceled.)
But then again he's working a 2-10 shift today, which means he's around this morning and at least we can vote and work in a coffee shop together!
Are you voting? What was it like?
Oh, and one more thing: Matthew points out that if John McCain's grandmother had been very sick and required a visit a week before the election, I would have assumed that he'd scheduled it to draw positive and poignant attention to himself. (I was very exercised regarding canceling everything for hurricanes and financial crisis, etc., which seemed very opportunistic timewise.) I wonder whether I would have assumed that McCain had scheduled his own grandmother's death?
"First Black president, oldest president, first woman, first Biden!"
Matthew, who is currently a reporter for the above linked station, will be covering polling problems tonight. Which is sad because reporters always have to work on holidays (like election day, which is enough of a holiday that we get to have parties and have alternate side parking canceled.)
But then again he's working a 2-10 shift today, which means he's around this morning and at least we can vote and work in a coffee shop together!
Are you voting? What was it like?
Oh, and one more thing: Matthew points out that if John McCain's grandmother had been very sick and required a visit a week before the election, I would have assumed that he'd scheduled it to draw positive and poignant attention to himself. (I was very exercised regarding canceling everything for hurricanes and financial crisis, etc., which seemed very opportunistic timewise.) I wonder whether I would have assumed that McCain had scheduled his own grandmother's death?
Saturday, November 01, 2008
Halloween Execution
That title sounds grim and does not refer to slaughter or any other sort of death. It just refers to what I actually did for my costume. Execution, as opposed to ideation.
To refresh, the idea was to dress my pregnant belly up like a Barack O'Lantern.
This is a great one, of course, well executed with an actual pumpkin by a person with time, drive, and skill. It has the soft glow of white light casting through the orange.
For my costume, I just colored in one of the Yes We Carve stencils, realized I didn't have any safety pins, then took a nap. Matthew came home and helped me attach it to my shirt.
We ate dinner with Andrea and Drew, 2 friends we haven't seen in far too long, at Chavella's which is in Prospect Heights. (Highlights -- a yummy chorizo and potato taco with crema fresca and a pickled jalapeno -- and a flan accented with lots of orange peel.)
Too late in my project -- which mostly involved coloring, which I remembered that I don't particularly enjoy -- did I realize that the friends we were meeting for dinner are actually professional artists, and that clipping a poorly colored piece of paper to my shirt might just confuse them, but it was too late!
To refresh, the idea was to dress my pregnant belly up like a Barack O'Lantern.
This is a great one, of course, well executed with an actual pumpkin by a person with time, drive, and skill. It has the soft glow of white light casting through the orange.
For my costume, I just colored in one of the Yes We Carve stencils, realized I didn't have any safety pins, then took a nap. Matthew came home and helped me attach it to my shirt.
We ate dinner with Andrea and Drew, 2 friends we haven't seen in far too long, at Chavella's which is in Prospect Heights. (Highlights -- a yummy chorizo and potato taco with crema fresca and a pickled jalapeno -- and a flan accented with lots of orange peel.)
Too late in my project -- which mostly involved coloring, which I remembered that I don't particularly enjoy -- did I realize that the friends we were meeting for dinner are actually professional artists, and that clipping a poorly colored piece of paper to my shirt might just confuse them, but it was too late!
Friday, October 31, 2008
Halloweeniac
Happy Halloween! I love Halloween. It's one of the most enthusiastic holidays, and I love enthusiasm. I love costumes, and kids in costumes, and clever adults, and I also of course love pumpkins -- and the color orange. Oh! And candy. Of the commercial candies, the ones I consider top tier are: Snickers, Reese's Peanut Butter Cups, and I think?? Peppermint Patties. What's your favorite candy?
I wish I had one of those blogs with lots of photos and hotlinks and videos embedded.
Well, not really, but you might wish that's what I had.
As evidenced by the text-heaviness of my blog, I am far more word-oriented than visually artistic. Which is why I am TELLING you what I want to do with my Halloween costume rather than showing you.
Have you seen the Yes We Carve site? It's a showcase of people creating pumpkins with the Obama logos. They provide stencils so if you are basically a genius, you can make a pumpkin that glows with Obama's actual face.
Because it's such an exciting time in terms of the election and also, since my tummy is concurrently getting so round as we near week 26 of pregnancy, I wanted to dress my stomach like a Barack O'Lantern.
In terms of Halloween costumes, I'm generally much better on the conceptualization than the execution. I was sort of sick today and after I went to the vet this morning (thanks for jumping to the conclusion but no, I do not go to the vet when I am sick, but the cat did have an annual), I didn't have the energy to make a real costume or even get an orange tee shirt or a white one I could write on, but I doubt I would have, anyhow. I did consider whether our landlords, who are a painter and a potter, could help me, but they weren't around. We'll see if and how it turns out!
I wish I had one of those blogs with lots of photos and hotlinks and videos embedded.
Well, not really, but you might wish that's what I had.
As evidenced by the text-heaviness of my blog, I am far more word-oriented than visually artistic. Which is why I am TELLING you what I want to do with my Halloween costume rather than showing you.
Have you seen the Yes We Carve site? It's a showcase of people creating pumpkins with the Obama logos. They provide stencils so if you are basically a genius, you can make a pumpkin that glows with Obama's actual face.
Because it's such an exciting time in terms of the election and also, since my tummy is concurrently getting so round as we near week 26 of pregnancy, I wanted to dress my stomach like a Barack O'Lantern.
In terms of Halloween costumes, I'm generally much better on the conceptualization than the execution. I was sort of sick today and after I went to the vet this morning (thanks for jumping to the conclusion but no, I do not go to the vet when I am sick, but the cat did have an annual), I didn't have the energy to make a real costume or even get an orange tee shirt or a white one I could write on, but I doubt I would have, anyhow. I did consider whether our landlords, who are a painter and a potter, could help me, but they weren't around. We'll see if and how it turns out!
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
More Somber Than Usual
You know I love to eat. It's how I have fun, and it's not just me, it's a familial characteristic. It often feels strange to blog about light, happy things such as going to restaurants or being pregnant without ever mentioning the darker sides of life. So today I'd like to write about the fact that today my dear sister, who was diagnosed with ALS about 14 months ago, had a feeding tube installed. It's to prepare her for the fact that she is losing the strength to chew and swallow.
To write on a serious topics requires time for digestion of fact and space for personal reflection on feeling. It's actually sort of the opposite of blogging. While I know it's too soon for me to be able to effectively parse thoughts and feelings on this with any sort of emotional distance, I want to try.
If you are personally unfamiliar with ALS, or Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, may you remain so. It's not productive to play a game about "what is the worst disease," but if we were to play, I cast my vote for ALS. Famous for killing Lou Gehrig, and Charles Mingus, and afflicting Stephen Hawking, it's a fatal, degenerative neuromuscular disease that takes the lives of its victims, but only after systematically robbing them of control. In Beth's case, first speech, then the ability to walk, then use her arms, and soon enough, eat. But that physical description doesn't touch some even truer losses -- the lack of power scratch her own nose, or have a sip of a drink when she'd like one -- without first struggling to communicate her needs to another person, who must help her, on their schedule, rather than hers. It doesn't talk about the fact that she is watching her kids watch her die, without the ability to wrap her arms around them to hug them.
Early in 2007, Beth noticed that she was tripping on her words, but at first it was slight. She'd ask whether I could tell and I couldn't -- I was sure she was just in the midst of one of those situations where you become hyper aware of one thing, like the size of your tongue, or how weird swallowing is.
Then she would mention that her eye was twitching. "You need more sleep," I'd say. Beth is my older sister (my only sibling) and she has 2 amazing kids -- one of whom was in the thick of being six years old. He looks like an angel but has an energy level that gets my eye twitching just thinking about him. Her baby girl was about a year and a half at the time, and had recently started to walk. I could not imagine the mom to these 2 kids not needing more sleep!
Though I wasn't concerned about her eye twitching, per se, some other comments she had made over those months did have me worried. In the course of our normal phone conversations, she told me about falling several times. Once was in the driveway, while holding the baby in one of those infant carseats that snap out so you can carry them. Thankfully, Beth and Baby were both ok, though Beth got a significant bruise.
She also fell, at around that time, at the party of one of her friends, walking out onto the back deck. It seemed to me that the stories were beginning to stack up, but she didn’t associate the falls with a lack of balance, or with what was starting to become a slur. She was carrying too much. There was a step she didn't see. She was on a hill and she lost her footing.
I started to read up on MS.
In a very unusual coincidence our cousin, who happens to be a neurologist, left a practice in New York and moved to Connecticut. He and his wife, a nurse, took over a neurology practice about 20 minutes from my sister's house. I don't want to get into a discussion about how doctors don't always advocate for patients, let's just leave it at the fact that I don't know how people function without a medical person in the family when something goes truly wrong, and you can't get in for weeks, or you can't get someone to really listen to you. With the current state of healthcare, you can't get someone to care about you.
Beth talked with our cousin about her symptoms and he started ordering tests. He found some nerve compression but nothing that pointed necessarily to ALS. (It's my understanding that ALS is often a diagnosis of exclusion.) As weeks passed, her slur increased. She was increasingly worried. She'd been reading and she began to be very afraid.
We were planning my wedding then. Beth was my Maid of Honor and one day we were looking at a hotel where we thought the guests might stay. At the front desk, they gave us some keys to a sample room. On the way up to see it, we were in an elevator with some other people, and because she has always been the gregarious person in an elevator, Beth made a cheerful enough comment about the slowness of the elevator. Hearing her speech with other people in attendance suddenly made the change seem much more dramatic. "They think she's disabled," I thought. That was May.
Weeks passed, and she started experiencing other "fasciculations," or twitches of the muscles in her face. At around that time, Beth went to a bagel shop with her son on a weekend morning, where they sat while he worked on a school assignment. A woman getting her morning coffee -- apparently thinking my sister was drunk because of her slur -- told her she was a terrible mother, and that she needed help. Then the woman stomped out. Another person approached my sister's table to say that she agreed.
There isn't a definitive test for ALS, but one, an EMG, and don't quote me on this, shows the firing of the muscles and whether it's normal. (ALS is a degenerative nerve disease that causes weakness and twitching.) The EMG looked okay initially but our cousin sent Beth to an ALS clinic he'd worked at and on that day, July 13, 2007, came the diagnosis.
About a month later, she fell and this time, did hurt herself. She broke her leg so badly that the bone nearly poked through, and spent time in the hospital and then 6 weeks in an intensive physical therapy rehab. At that point, we didn't know whether she'd make it to my wedding, though she made it a goal. She came to the wedding, but she never drove again. Nor has she walked without a walker.
I live more than 100 miles from my sister and see her every few weeks. I dream about her all the time, and in my dreams, she is "sick," or there is the sense that she is not healthy, but she seems fine in the dreams. Her voice is normal.
'Til she lost the power to speak, the voice was the same as mine, to the degree that for years, if one of us called home and just said "hi," our parents wouldn't know which kid they had on the phone.
Having a sister -- maybe any sibling, I don't know -- is a little bit like having a mirror. It's the person who is most like you, in a certain sense, at least physically. Beth can get tan while I cannot and the quality of her skin is a little smoother -- maybe it's the melanin or perhaps because she's always been more likely to moisturize than I am. But to look at her arms: her arms are a little darker, the freckles are a little smaller, the bones are a little more delicate. But her arm is the most familiar arm in the world to me other than my own. We carry weight a little differently -- now, weight is falling off of her. It has always been painful and a little embarrassing for me to see Beth cry, because in a way it's like looking into a mirror and seeing myself cry.
One day, in the summer of 2008, we went to a pool so she could have physical therapy in the water. Beth loves nothing more than swimming and the water.
I wheeled her onto the humid tiled pooldeck, so similar to the one at the high school where we'd have swim lessons, then later, practice, as kids. A physical therapist came over to help her get into the water. Instead of one of the normal caretakers, she had a different person with her than usual -- me. One of Beth's most salient characteristics is her friendliness. She always tries to make people comfortable, and she needed to introduce me to her physical therapist. "This is my sister," she told the physical therapist, who couldn't understand what she was saying. She just shook her head. Moments like this drive Beth crazy. "This is my sister," I told the therapist. It's like a palindrome, the same if you say it either way.
This is my sister. We share so much, yet I can't help with this at all.
With the hazards of choking getting greater every day, she chose this time to get the tube installed in order to stave of choking and to help her get the nutrition and hydration she needs. So many of my memories are tied to my sister, and so many are tied to food. A bottle of cream soda in a case, a single orange tic tac on the ground, the shakers of hot pepper in a pizza restaurant. Any of these things are part of my taste memory of my sister. I hope she can keep her taste memories for a long time.
To write on a serious topics requires time for digestion of fact and space for personal reflection on feeling. It's actually sort of the opposite of blogging. While I know it's too soon for me to be able to effectively parse thoughts and feelings on this with any sort of emotional distance, I want to try.
If you are personally unfamiliar with ALS, or Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, may you remain so. It's not productive to play a game about "what is the worst disease," but if we were to play, I cast my vote for ALS. Famous for killing Lou Gehrig, and Charles Mingus, and afflicting Stephen Hawking, it's a fatal, degenerative neuromuscular disease that takes the lives of its victims, but only after systematically robbing them of control. In Beth's case, first speech, then the ability to walk, then use her arms, and soon enough, eat. But that physical description doesn't touch some even truer losses -- the lack of power scratch her own nose, or have a sip of a drink when she'd like one -- without first struggling to communicate her needs to another person, who must help her, on their schedule, rather than hers. It doesn't talk about the fact that she is watching her kids watch her die, without the ability to wrap her arms around them to hug them.
Early in 2007, Beth noticed that she was tripping on her words, but at first it was slight. She'd ask whether I could tell and I couldn't -- I was sure she was just in the midst of one of those situations where you become hyper aware of one thing, like the size of your tongue, or how weird swallowing is.
Then she would mention that her eye was twitching. "You need more sleep," I'd say. Beth is my older sister (my only sibling) and she has 2 amazing kids -- one of whom was in the thick of being six years old. He looks like an angel but has an energy level that gets my eye twitching just thinking about him. Her baby girl was about a year and a half at the time, and had recently started to walk. I could not imagine the mom to these 2 kids not needing more sleep!
Though I wasn't concerned about her eye twitching, per se, some other comments she had made over those months did have me worried. In the course of our normal phone conversations, she told me about falling several times. Once was in the driveway, while holding the baby in one of those infant carseats that snap out so you can carry them. Thankfully, Beth and Baby were both ok, though Beth got a significant bruise.
She also fell, at around that time, at the party of one of her friends, walking out onto the back deck. It seemed to me that the stories were beginning to stack up, but she didn’t associate the falls with a lack of balance, or with what was starting to become a slur. She was carrying too much. There was a step she didn't see. She was on a hill and she lost her footing.
I started to read up on MS.
In a very unusual coincidence our cousin, who happens to be a neurologist, left a practice in New York and moved to Connecticut. He and his wife, a nurse, took over a neurology practice about 20 minutes from my sister's house. I don't want to get into a discussion about how doctors don't always advocate for patients, let's just leave it at the fact that I don't know how people function without a medical person in the family when something goes truly wrong, and you can't get in for weeks, or you can't get someone to really listen to you. With the current state of healthcare, you can't get someone to care about you.
Beth talked with our cousin about her symptoms and he started ordering tests. He found some nerve compression but nothing that pointed necessarily to ALS. (It's my understanding that ALS is often a diagnosis of exclusion.) As weeks passed, her slur increased. She was increasingly worried. She'd been reading and she began to be very afraid.
We were planning my wedding then. Beth was my Maid of Honor and one day we were looking at a hotel where we thought the guests might stay. At the front desk, they gave us some keys to a sample room. On the way up to see it, we were in an elevator with some other people, and because she has always been the gregarious person in an elevator, Beth made a cheerful enough comment about the slowness of the elevator. Hearing her speech with other people in attendance suddenly made the change seem much more dramatic. "They think she's disabled," I thought. That was May.
Weeks passed, and she started experiencing other "fasciculations," or twitches of the muscles in her face. At around that time, Beth went to a bagel shop with her son on a weekend morning, where they sat while he worked on a school assignment. A woman getting her morning coffee -- apparently thinking my sister was drunk because of her slur -- told her she was a terrible mother, and that she needed help. Then the woman stomped out. Another person approached my sister's table to say that she agreed.
There isn't a definitive test for ALS, but one, an EMG, and don't quote me on this, shows the firing of the muscles and whether it's normal. (ALS is a degenerative nerve disease that causes weakness and twitching.) The EMG looked okay initially but our cousin sent Beth to an ALS clinic he'd worked at and on that day, July 13, 2007, came the diagnosis.
About a month later, she fell and this time, did hurt herself. She broke her leg so badly that the bone nearly poked through, and spent time in the hospital and then 6 weeks in an intensive physical therapy rehab. At that point, we didn't know whether she'd make it to my wedding, though she made it a goal. She came to the wedding, but she never drove again. Nor has she walked without a walker.
I live more than 100 miles from my sister and see her every few weeks. I dream about her all the time, and in my dreams, she is "sick," or there is the sense that she is not healthy, but she seems fine in the dreams. Her voice is normal.
'Til she lost the power to speak, the voice was the same as mine, to the degree that for years, if one of us called home and just said "hi," our parents wouldn't know which kid they had on the phone.
Having a sister -- maybe any sibling, I don't know -- is a little bit like having a mirror. It's the person who is most like you, in a certain sense, at least physically. Beth can get tan while I cannot and the quality of her skin is a little smoother -- maybe it's the melanin or perhaps because she's always been more likely to moisturize than I am. But to look at her arms: her arms are a little darker, the freckles are a little smaller, the bones are a little more delicate. But her arm is the most familiar arm in the world to me other than my own. We carry weight a little differently -- now, weight is falling off of her. It has always been painful and a little embarrassing for me to see Beth cry, because in a way it's like looking into a mirror and seeing myself cry.
One day, in the summer of 2008, we went to a pool so she could have physical therapy in the water. Beth loves nothing more than swimming and the water.
I wheeled her onto the humid tiled pooldeck, so similar to the one at the high school where we'd have swim lessons, then later, practice, as kids. A physical therapist came over to help her get into the water. Instead of one of the normal caretakers, she had a different person with her than usual -- me. One of Beth's most salient characteristics is her friendliness. She always tries to make people comfortable, and she needed to introduce me to her physical therapist. "This is my sister," she told the physical therapist, who couldn't understand what she was saying. She just shook her head. Moments like this drive Beth crazy. "This is my sister," I told the therapist. It's like a palindrome, the same if you say it either way.
This is my sister. We share so much, yet I can't help with this at all.
With the hazards of choking getting greater every day, she chose this time to get the tube installed in order to stave of choking and to help her get the nutrition and hydration she needs. So many of my memories are tied to my sister, and so many are tied to food. A bottle of cream soda in a case, a single orange tic tac on the ground, the shakers of hot pepper in a pizza restaurant. Any of these things are part of my taste memory of my sister. I hope she can keep her taste memories for a long time.
Monday, September 01, 2008
Craving to Aversion
A Nice But Sad Story About A Sandwich
Unlike my usual non-pregnant state of affairs, when people laugh at me for having very specific ideas about what I would like to eat at a particular time, I have not been experiencing cravings, but rather aversions.
However: I've been wanting and wanting one of these Italian sandwiches. The ones on bread with sesame seeds and a hundred kinds of meat of varying shades of pink -- mortadella, salami, capicolla -- meat that you don't want to think too much about but that you do want to have in the context of this sandwich, and provolone and shredded lettuce and tomato and oil and vinegar and cherry peppers that have been packed in vinegar. On occasion my husband will make us go way out of the way for one of these, and when I got a craving I knew I couldn't have the whole hog, as it were, due to the possible poisonous effects of cured meats on incubating babies. But I wondered what could possibly happen if I had one bite of one that was technically his. I explained my desire for a sandwich to him one Saturday morning before we'd gotten up.
"You should have one if you want . . . " he said, in a calm tone that foreshadows how he will be an effective parent, " . . . but would you really be comfortable with doing it?"
Scowl. Not after that polite but reasonable lecture. "What about if you ordered one with everything but the meat," he suggested, helpfully, and since I am more interested in the trappings than the substance (meat) of a sandwich, that actually seemed like a brilliant idea.
I spent some time researching where I could get the best Italian sandwich in Brooklyn. Leoni's Latticini in Bensonhurst kept coming up on sandwich-loving message boards. I mapquested it, and saw that it was an 11 minute drive from our house. It was a weekday so I was sure to finish work by 5:50 because I'd called and they told me they closed at 6:30. I arrived at 6:10 and the lights were lowered and a few men were sweeping up. It looked like it was open enough if you wanted a can of soda or a ball of cheese. BUT WHAT ABOUT A SANDWICH?
"Too late for sandwiches, huh?" I called out as I went in. A Mexican man behind the counter who was finishing cleaning the meat slicing machine responded, "I can only get you a chicken parm."
I like chicken parm, don't get me wrong, but the whole store was hung with exciting signs describing different sorts of subs, and I'd really tried to do my homework in service of getting myself ALMOST the sandwich I wanted, if not the exact one -- and it all seemed a bit sad.
If I couldn't have the sandwich I wanted or even the sandwich I had decided to settle for, there was still no way I was walking out of Bensonhurst with no sandwich. I'd take the bronze.
"I'll take a parm," I told him, with a hint of resignation.
As he cut the bread, the man he asked what I had really come for. I replied that I wanted one of the Italians subs, but without the meat. He did a double take, since Italians subs are all about the meat.
"You want one without the meat?
So I explained that of course I want it with the meat, but I'm pregnant, so I can't have that kind of meat. And I figured I'd just get it with provolone.
He paused. He looked into my soul. He said, "My dear, I am going to make you whatever you like."
People can be lovely, right? He reopened the slicing machines he'd just finished cleaning and made me a giant veggie italian sandwich. I was so happy. I brought it home, settled into a comfortable chair on our porch, and ate 1/2 of it.
I was up all night sick.
Still, I can't blame him if a craving turned into an aversion.
Unlike my usual non-pregnant state of affairs, when people laugh at me for having very specific ideas about what I would like to eat at a particular time, I have not been experiencing cravings, but rather aversions.
However: I've been wanting and wanting one of these Italian sandwiches. The ones on bread with sesame seeds and a hundred kinds of meat of varying shades of pink -- mortadella, salami, capicolla -- meat that you don't want to think too much about but that you do want to have in the context of this sandwich, and provolone and shredded lettuce and tomato and oil and vinegar and cherry peppers that have been packed in vinegar. On occasion my husband will make us go way out of the way for one of these, and when I got a craving I knew I couldn't have the whole hog, as it were, due to the possible poisonous effects of cured meats on incubating babies. But I wondered what could possibly happen if I had one bite of one that was technically his. I explained my desire for a sandwich to him one Saturday morning before we'd gotten up.
"You should have one if you want . . . " he said, in a calm tone that foreshadows how he will be an effective parent, " . . . but would you really be comfortable with doing it?"
Scowl. Not after that polite but reasonable lecture. "What about if you ordered one with everything but the meat," he suggested, helpfully, and since I am more interested in the trappings than the substance (meat) of a sandwich, that actually seemed like a brilliant idea.
I spent some time researching where I could get the best Italian sandwich in Brooklyn. Leoni's Latticini in Bensonhurst kept coming up on sandwich-loving message boards. I mapquested it, and saw that it was an 11 minute drive from our house. It was a weekday so I was sure to finish work by 5:50 because I'd called and they told me they closed at 6:30. I arrived at 6:10 and the lights were lowered and a few men were sweeping up. It looked like it was open enough if you wanted a can of soda or a ball of cheese. BUT WHAT ABOUT A SANDWICH?
"Too late for sandwiches, huh?" I called out as I went in. A Mexican man behind the counter who was finishing cleaning the meat slicing machine responded, "I can only get you a chicken parm."
I like chicken parm, don't get me wrong, but the whole store was hung with exciting signs describing different sorts of subs, and I'd really tried to do my homework in service of getting myself ALMOST the sandwich I wanted, if not the exact one -- and it all seemed a bit sad.
If I couldn't have the sandwich I wanted or even the sandwich I had decided to settle for, there was still no way I was walking out of Bensonhurst with no sandwich. I'd take the bronze.
"I'll take a parm," I told him, with a hint of resignation.
As he cut the bread, the man he asked what I had really come for. I replied that I wanted one of the Italians subs, but without the meat. He did a double take, since Italians subs are all about the meat.
"You want one without the meat?
So I explained that of course I want it with the meat, but I'm pregnant, so I can't have that kind of meat. And I figured I'd just get it with provolone.
He paused. He looked into my soul. He said, "My dear, I am going to make you whatever you like."
People can be lovely, right? He reopened the slicing machines he'd just finished cleaning and made me a giant veggie italian sandwich. I was so happy. I brought it home, settled into a comfortable chair on our porch, and ate 1/2 of it.
I was up all night sick.
Still, I can't blame him if a craving turned into an aversion.
Tuesday, August 12, 2008
places i have recently spit
Ok, this is REALLY disgusting, but part of (my) pregnancy is an interesting yet not-recommended thing called "ptaylism," (pronounced tile-ism) which basically means that your salivary glands kick into high gear, and you do a lot of spitting. I spit into the toilet, the sink, onto the ground, or if driving, into a bottle.
Since I am not always certain when it's going to come on, I've spat in some inappropriate places, lately. Here's a little list.
1. on my foot (while biking, it's sometimes hard to get good aim)
2. on my shirt (uh, it just happened. i don't know)
3. on the subway platform (in a way that I would be SO judgmental of others for doing -- perhaps ptaylism will teach me . . . ptolerance!)
4. on the inside of my own car, while driving, after missing the window hole.
5. in the bathtub, while I was in it, trying to bathe, but my mouth filled up with spit i could not swallow. don't worry, i showered after my spit bath.
6. on a low flying bird who was rounding a corner just as I was planning to. i wonder whether it was embarrased, or will consider it good luck?
What helps? Potato chips, say some. I like minty Mentos. I also like staying at home, which makes this slightly less horrifying.
Since I am not always certain when it's going to come on, I've spat in some inappropriate places, lately. Here's a little list.
1. on my foot (while biking, it's sometimes hard to get good aim)
2. on my shirt (uh, it just happened. i don't know)
3. on the subway platform (in a way that I would be SO judgmental of others for doing -- perhaps ptaylism will teach me . . . ptolerance!)
4. on the inside of my own car, while driving, after missing the window hole.
5. in the bathtub, while I was in it, trying to bathe, but my mouth filled up with spit i could not swallow. don't worry, i showered after my spit bath.
6. on a low flying bird who was rounding a corner just as I was planning to. i wonder whether it was embarrased, or will consider it good luck?
What helps? Potato chips, say some. I like minty Mentos. I also like staying at home, which makes this slightly less horrifying.
Wednesday, August 06, 2008
A Personal Compendium of Nausea-Related Policies, Coping Mechanisms, and Fun Facts
A Personal Compendium of Nausea-Related Policies, Coping Mechanisms, and Fun Facts
by Meredith Phillips
* During the weeks (or months) of morning sickness there is no reason--be it a chunk of food, a white furry coating, or a hygienic habit--that is compelling enough that you should attempt to floss your teeth or brush your tongue. These things are triggers. As I told my husband the other day, "if I were you I would get drunk, eat a lot of salami, and floss my teeth." He looked slightly perplexed but I have always taken these activities for granted, and I wanted to make sure that someone out there was doing these things mindfully, and enjoying them.
* Never make eye contact with a prenatal vitamin! If you need to use your eyes to get it out of the bottle, or for good aim, look at it peripherally or with somewhat blurred vision. If you do let it into your range of vision, be sure not to be thinking about it simultaneously.
* During the attempt, it helps to be both eating a meal and taking sips of chocolate milk. (One could reasonably ask: what does chocolate milk NOT help?) In fact, try to have a hand in at least 3 other projects, which enables you to sort of sneak-take it. Reading an article, eating a meal, and planning out the next thing you're going to do is a good strategy. If you can work a sudoku game in at the same time, go for it. At the moment that you pop it in, don't stop reading, but do start holding your nose with one hand, while you grab the chocolate milk with the other. (You are allowed to look at the milk.) Swallow in a brisk yet non-panicky fashion, and act calm, like nothing terrible is happening. Keep drinking the chocolate milk slowly and taking tiny bites of food. Hopefully these instructions are complicated enough that you can forestall roiling in disgust -- at least until the 16th minute (see below).
* A vitamin is assimilated within 15 minutes after you swallow it.
* My cousin the dr. suggests: on days when you can't even think about the vitamin, take folate pills. Rather than being canoe-sized and saddled with a horrific stink, the tiny, benevolent folate pills are more like the seven spiders that we all purportedly swallow in our sleep every calendar year; you don't even notice them going down. And apparently, other than the shame factor, there is no compelling reason not to take a Flintstones Chewable if worse comes to worst. (I have since amended this post to say -- there is not compelling reason to take a prenatal at all, when you can take a Flintstones Sour Gummy Chewable.)
* We've grown up thinking vegetables are our friends but this is Communist Propaganda. Contrary to evolved adult belief, they are *extremely disgusting.* If you must approach something green with your mouth, consider pistachio ice cream.
* Some vegetation is less evil than others. For instance, spinach is far easier to digest than broccoli or carrots. Pickles must have no nutritional value, because they are really great. If you are going to eat vegetables, eat them at the time of day when your digestion seems to be working best. If you are sick in the morning, avoid them. Being sick in the evening, I would not make an attempt past 4pm.
* Fruit is good.
* Eggs rock, according to our baby. But our baby might just favor smooth round white things, because minty Mentos also rock.
* Don't be afraid to shake up your mealtimes. If your nausea consistently strikes at night, try not eating dinner. Two little breakfasts then a nice lunch in the late afternoon works.
* A banana yogurt shake before leaving bed is the perfect first breakfast. Matthew has an extremely delicious recipe he could share, but the gist is: 5 cubes of ice, a glug of milk, 1.5 bananas, a quantity of yogurt. Flax seeds or berry aren't a bad addition.
* One more thing that has helped me with nausea is sort of giving in to it. You can't so much about it, fighting / worrying about can be nearly as stressful as feeling nauseous, and it does not make it go away. One perk of being literate is that you can hang out in the bathroom feeling sick and practice self-edification. For instance, I just finished East of Eden, which is 630 pages long. When else might I have found the time to get through this American classic?
by Meredith Phillips
* During the weeks (or months) of morning sickness there is no reason--be it a chunk of food, a white furry coating, or a hygienic habit--that is compelling enough that you should attempt to floss your teeth or brush your tongue. These things are triggers. As I told my husband the other day, "if I were you I would get drunk, eat a lot of salami, and floss my teeth." He looked slightly perplexed but I have always taken these activities for granted, and I wanted to make sure that someone out there was doing these things mindfully, and enjoying them.
* Never make eye contact with a prenatal vitamin! If you need to use your eyes to get it out of the bottle, or for good aim, look at it peripherally or with somewhat blurred vision. If you do let it into your range of vision, be sure not to be thinking about it simultaneously.
* During the attempt, it helps to be both eating a meal and taking sips of chocolate milk. (One could reasonably ask: what does chocolate milk NOT help?) In fact, try to have a hand in at least 3 other projects, which enables you to sort of sneak-take it. Reading an article, eating a meal, and planning out the next thing you're going to do is a good strategy. If you can work a sudoku game in at the same time, go for it. At the moment that you pop it in, don't stop reading, but do start holding your nose with one hand, while you grab the chocolate milk with the other. (You are allowed to look at the milk.) Swallow in a brisk yet non-panicky fashion, and act calm, like nothing terrible is happening. Keep drinking the chocolate milk slowly and taking tiny bites of food. Hopefully these instructions are complicated enough that you can forestall roiling in disgust -- at least until the 16th minute (see below).
* A vitamin is assimilated within 15 minutes after you swallow it.
* My cousin the dr. suggests: on days when you can't even think about the vitamin, take folate pills. Rather than being canoe-sized and saddled with a horrific stink, the tiny, benevolent folate pills are more like the seven spiders that we all purportedly swallow in our sleep every calendar year; you don't even notice them going down. And apparently, other than the shame factor, there is no compelling reason not to take a Flintstones Chewable if worse comes to worst. (I have since amended this post to say -- there is not compelling reason to take a prenatal at all, when you can take a Flintstones Sour Gummy Chewable.)
* We've grown up thinking vegetables are our friends but this is Communist Propaganda. Contrary to evolved adult belief, they are *extremely disgusting.* If you must approach something green with your mouth, consider pistachio ice cream.
* Some vegetation is less evil than others. For instance, spinach is far easier to digest than broccoli or carrots. Pickles must have no nutritional value, because they are really great. If you are going to eat vegetables, eat them at the time of day when your digestion seems to be working best. If you are sick in the morning, avoid them. Being sick in the evening, I would not make an attempt past 4pm.
* Fruit is good.
* Eggs rock, according to our baby. But our baby might just favor smooth round white things, because minty Mentos also rock.
* Don't be afraid to shake up your mealtimes. If your nausea consistently strikes at night, try not eating dinner. Two little breakfasts then a nice lunch in the late afternoon works.
* A banana yogurt shake before leaving bed is the perfect first breakfast. Matthew has an extremely delicious recipe he could share, but the gist is: 5 cubes of ice, a glug of milk, 1.5 bananas, a quantity of yogurt. Flax seeds or berry aren't a bad addition.
* One more thing that has helped me with nausea is sort of giving in to it. You can't so much about it, fighting / worrying about can be nearly as stressful as feeling nauseous, and it does not make it go away. One perk of being literate is that you can hang out in the bathroom feeling sick and practice self-edification. For instance, I just finished East of Eden, which is 630 pages long. When else might I have found the time to get through this American classic?
Monday, August 04, 2008
WHO AM I? AND WHAT CAN I EAT???
Due to my present condition -- pregnancy -- I'm not allowed to eat . . . ah, anything? Because there are two sweeping categories of food that are off limits, and it's giving me an identity crisis!
Category 1. Things that are reputed to be dangerous to pregnant women for various reasons, &
Category 2. Things that no longer seem edible due to NVP. (NVP is a fancy acronym for Nauseau and Vomiting of pregnancy, which is morning sickness that is not limited to morning.)
CATEGORY 1
When pregnant, to protect the impending baby, rules have been established about what you're allowed and not allowed to eat. You're not allowed to eat raw fish or drink booze or eat "soft cheese." If you're inclined, you can spend all day long debating online with people who know even less than you do about what exactly what "soft cheese" means. How soft is soft? No brie, feta, goat cheese, fresh mozzarella. No blue cheese. But what is the uniting characteristic of the cheeses you cannot eat? These things seem to have nothing in common, except possible non pasteurization, except we are in the US, where pretty much everything is pasteurized. Mold is apparently another concern.
You can't have sandwich meat, because of a mysterious but bad disease which almost no one has ever gotten and fewer people are getting all the time, and then they do get it seems to be in Europe and from salad. However, it is reportedly so horrible (not just for the person carrinyg a baby -- but for a baby) that one must still avoid it all all costs. Is called Listeriosis. Aside from eating sandwiches in general, it can keep you from eating italian sandwiches, even when you REALLY want them. And this disease is also a reason not to eat soft serve ice cream. Or Rotisserie chicken, or anything that was cooked before the moment you are planning to eat it. Attempting to follow these guidelines could start you sliding down the slippery slope to starvation.
Oh, and try no to eat mercury, which is a key ingredient in old thermometers and anything that comes out of the ocean in some quantity, but especially avoid tilefish, which you won't have heard of until you are pregnant and someone tells you NOT TO EAT IT. Other large fish like tuna, or king mackerel are also on the bad list because of mercury.
Coffee is also off limits except in particular quantities but you might even want to avoid that during the first trimester, they unfortunately discovered right as we conceived, because of a higher than usual incidence of miscarriage. Goodbye, beloved coffee and the attendant pleasant addiction.
CATEGORY 2
The category 1 list seems limiting but there are some things that don't make the list; unfortunately, I am also limited by what I will immediately throw up. This list includes:
green vegetables
vegetables of other hues
anything after 9pm
vitamins
My husband is suddenly thrust into the position of primary cook, and aside from me chasing him around with a box of salt and turning the burners and up and down to his extreme annoyance, he's generally good at it. But I'm a whole new wife. Normally a maximalist with my food -- stinky cheeses! new kinds of curry! everything on my pizza! -- I'm picking little chunks of pepper out of marinara sauce. There's really only so much cheese ravioli with barely any sauce on it that a girl can eat.
I vow that I will not only blog about being nauseous from now on. It's just that -- this condition is such a total departure and nausea conquers all other emotions.
Category 1. Things that are reputed to be dangerous to pregnant women for various reasons, &
Category 2. Things that no longer seem edible due to NVP. (NVP is a fancy acronym for Nauseau and Vomiting of pregnancy, which is morning sickness that is not limited to morning.)
CATEGORY 1
When pregnant, to protect the impending baby, rules have been established about what you're allowed and not allowed to eat. You're not allowed to eat raw fish or drink booze or eat "soft cheese." If you're inclined, you can spend all day long debating online with people who know even less than you do about what exactly what "soft cheese" means. How soft is soft? No brie, feta, goat cheese, fresh mozzarella. No blue cheese. But what is the uniting characteristic of the cheeses you cannot eat? These things seem to have nothing in common, except possible non pasteurization, except we are in the US, where pretty much everything is pasteurized. Mold is apparently another concern.
You can't have sandwich meat, because of a mysterious but bad disease which almost no one has ever gotten and fewer people are getting all the time, and then they do get it seems to be in Europe and from salad. However, it is reportedly so horrible (not just for the person carrinyg a baby -- but for a baby) that one must still avoid it all all costs. Is called Listeriosis. Aside from eating sandwiches in general, it can keep you from eating italian sandwiches, even when you REALLY want them. And this disease is also a reason not to eat soft serve ice cream. Or Rotisserie chicken, or anything that was cooked before the moment you are planning to eat it. Attempting to follow these guidelines could start you sliding down the slippery slope to starvation.
Oh, and try no to eat mercury, which is a key ingredient in old thermometers and anything that comes out of the ocean in some quantity, but especially avoid tilefish, which you won't have heard of until you are pregnant and someone tells you NOT TO EAT IT. Other large fish like tuna, or king mackerel are also on the bad list because of mercury.
Coffee is also off limits except in particular quantities but you might even want to avoid that during the first trimester, they unfortunately discovered right as we conceived, because of a higher than usual incidence of miscarriage. Goodbye, beloved coffee and the attendant pleasant addiction.
CATEGORY 2
The category 1 list seems limiting but there are some things that don't make the list; unfortunately, I am also limited by what I will immediately throw up. This list includes:
green vegetables
vegetables of other hues
anything after 9pm
vitamins
My husband is suddenly thrust into the position of primary cook, and aside from me chasing him around with a box of salt and turning the burners and up and down to his extreme annoyance, he's generally good at it. But I'm a whole new wife. Normally a maximalist with my food -- stinky cheeses! new kinds of curry! everything on my pizza! -- I'm picking little chunks of pepper out of marinara sauce. There's really only so much cheese ravioli with barely any sauce on it that a girl can eat.
I vow that I will not only blog about being nauseous from now on. It's just that -- this condition is such a total departure and nausea conquers all other emotions.
Tuesday, July 08, 2008
Making the Supertaster
I've long been fascinated by the concept of "supertasters," who are people with superior senses of taste due to the presence of dominant alleles of a certain gene. I have a pretty good palate, and pride myself on both being able to enjoy a lot of flavors, as well as identify specifics within a dish. But there is a downside to being an actual bonified supertaster, which is that they are invariably very very picky because things taste too strong, so they lose a sense of enjoyment. Lessened pleasure from food? That takes the fun out of the idea. I was recently reading that when trying to determine a supertaster, you can look at someone's tongue and literally measure their tastebuds, or, there are five questions to ask which can also give you an idea. The first four:
The last question of the series is:
5. Did you mother suffer from morning sickness while pregnant with you?
My mother did was not particularly afflicted, though a certain queasy feeling did dictate that she pack up and hide a certain set of green melamine dishes which had formerly been a staple. So it's possible that I am not a supertaster -- but the news -- admittedly hidden deep in the blog, but hey, this is an eating blog rather than a procreation blog -- anyhow, the news is that I may be making one!
A supertaster, that is. That's right, for the last few weeks or so, I have been bossed by a dime-sized embedded something who has grabbed the wheel, or the reins, or whatever normally drives me around -- OH! My STOMACH! to tell me exactly what is and is not acceptable to eat, and it's not just in the morning. Suddenly, my love for vegetables had turned into a shuddering hatred. I recently tried to get my three year old niece to eat a piece of broccoli. She's generally pretty cheerful, but explained very earnestly -- No. That is DISGUSTING. Which I thought was pretty funny -- but now I relate in a very real way. While dinner is normally the reason I get out of bed in the morning, eating past late afternoon is now a dicey proposition. The joy I take in eating has been temporarily quelled. Extinguished might be a more apt word.
Nevertheless, we're delighted. We might soon have a supertaster in the family! Or if not a supertaster, at least someone who will be able to give a resounding answer "YES" to question number 5.
- Do you enjoy black coffee?
- Do you like scotch?
- Do artificial sweeteners taste different to you than regular sugar?
- Do you tend to oversalt food?
The last question of the series is:
5. Did you mother suffer from morning sickness while pregnant with you?
My mother did was not particularly afflicted, though a certain queasy feeling did dictate that she pack up and hide a certain set of green melamine dishes which had formerly been a staple. So it's possible that I am not a supertaster -- but the news -- admittedly hidden deep in the blog, but hey, this is an eating blog rather than a procreation blog -- anyhow, the news is that I may be making one!
A supertaster, that is. That's right, for the last few weeks or so, I have been bossed by a dime-sized embedded something who has grabbed the wheel, or the reins, or whatever normally drives me around -- OH! My STOMACH! to tell me exactly what is and is not acceptable to eat, and it's not just in the morning. Suddenly, my love for vegetables had turned into a shuddering hatred. I recently tried to get my three year old niece to eat a piece of broccoli. She's generally pretty cheerful, but explained very earnestly -- No. That is DISGUSTING. Which I thought was pretty funny -- but now I relate in a very real way. While dinner is normally the reason I get out of bed in the morning, eating past late afternoon is now a dicey proposition. The joy I take in eating has been temporarily quelled. Extinguished might be a more apt word.
Nevertheless, we're delighted. We might soon have a supertaster in the family! Or if not a supertaster, at least someone who will be able to give a resounding answer "YES" to question number 5.
Thursday, May 22, 2008
I want my baby back
What a cliche of a title, and for that I should be scolded. However, the kudos I offer myself cancel that out. Kudos for falling prey to a package of shrink wrapped ribs at the new and improved Flatbush Food Coop, which is a festival of antibiotic-free meat, which is just the sort of festival this neighborhood needs. (Also like to take a moment to recognize the Natural Frontier Market, some Ditmas Park competition about a year old which I believe was the original impetus for the old, bad FFC stepping and become a destination with things like edible meat and fresh artisanal bread.)
Anyhow except for sausage and bacon as an accent meat in sauces or omelettes, pork and I have been on the outs of late. The last time I cooked a supermarket bought tenderloin, the smell when I opened the package precluded my ability to enjoy the meat even once it was cooked and the smell was gone. It was a strong sulfury smell -- the smell of doom.
But when I saw this $19 pack of ribs. I got a gleam in my eye, dug a twenty out of my pocket, and tried to decide what to do with them.
The internet provides some pretty hilarious "recipe" advice for babybacks, with the ingredients being:
And the method being: Put sauce on the ribs, wrap manageable sections of them tightly in foil, refrigerate for 8 hours or overnight, then cook at 300 for 2.5 hours.
And then everyone writes in with all of their comments. You know the kind, generally something along the lines of: "This was delicious! Except I used coffee instead of barbeque sauce, and hamburgers instead of ribs, and I didn't put it into the oven, just sprinkled it with basil from my garden. My husband couldn't stop eating!"
But in this instance, the kooky general public actually seemed grounded by the recipes. They wrote in saying: I made this and it was really really great. A predominance of people seemed to think that about this crazily simple little instruction, so I wanted to try it myself.
After reading (um, some of) Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma, about the prevalence of high fructose corn syrup everywhere including in our favorite condiment, and a recent New York Times article last week about how much food we throw away, I was far more inclined to make my own bbq sauce out of things I already have then to buy a new bottle -- plus, barbeque sauce is one of those things that's like banana bread: if you taste and adjust, there is no real bad recipe. Tomatoes, orange juice, garlic, and vinegar will do in a pinch. Heck, coca cola and a pinch of salt will do in a pinch. Rendered pork fat goes a long way.
So I scoured around and found this one submitted by CM at Cooks.com for Honey Smoke Barbecue Sauce, and will now treat (or annoy or puzzle) you to my own modifications:
added cinnamon
added a few mashed up chipotles in adobo
deleted lemon because had none but added a dollop of the oily vinegary juice from a can of pickled jalapenos and carrots
ignored call for liquid smoke
Used Maker's Mark rather than JD, since it's what we keep around
It was surprising, at first, how boozy the bbq sauce was. But it adjusted (or I did?) and it was the perfect glaze for in-oven ribs. (A glaze of this sweet would have turned nasty on an open grill but I think that all ribs are at least par-cooked.) I am so gleeful at how delicious and easy these ribs were that I'm fantasizing about starting my own line of bbq sauce. However, I don't know what is involved with that sort of endeavor, and I don't want to spend too much time making the same recipe 2000 times and pouring things into jars I have sterilized, so I will be satisfied with letting you knpw about this experience, and moving on.
We ate these ribs at home and they DISAPPEARED. I had a bit more sauce so used it as a base and augmented and brought home to my family in CT, where they'd gotten 5 lbs of ribs from the local butcher. They were great -- but M and I felt that the organic actually made a difference in this recipe. Still, we polished every single part off, the family enjoyed, and I highly recommend.
Anyhow except for sausage and bacon as an accent meat in sauces or omelettes, pork and I have been on the outs of late. The last time I cooked a supermarket bought tenderloin, the smell when I opened the package precluded my ability to enjoy the meat even once it was cooked and the smell was gone. It was a strong sulfury smell -- the smell of doom.
But when I saw this $19 pack of ribs. I got a gleam in my eye, dug a twenty out of my pocket, and tried to decide what to do with them.
The internet provides some pretty hilarious "recipe" advice for babybacks, with the ingredients being:
- some ribs
- 1 bottle of bbq sauce
- foil
And the method being: Put sauce on the ribs, wrap manageable sections of them tightly in foil, refrigerate for 8 hours or overnight, then cook at 300 for 2.5 hours.
And then everyone writes in with all of their comments. You know the kind, generally something along the lines of: "This was delicious! Except I used coffee instead of barbeque sauce, and hamburgers instead of ribs, and I didn't put it into the oven, just sprinkled it with basil from my garden. My husband couldn't stop eating!"
But in this instance, the kooky general public actually seemed grounded by the recipes. They wrote in saying: I made this and it was really really great. A predominance of people seemed to think that about this crazily simple little instruction, so I wanted to try it myself.
After reading (um, some of) Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma, about the prevalence of high fructose corn syrup everywhere including in our favorite condiment, and a recent New York Times article last week about how much food we throw away, I was far more inclined to make my own bbq sauce out of things I already have then to buy a new bottle -- plus, barbeque sauce is one of those things that's like banana bread: if you taste and adjust, there is no real bad recipe. Tomatoes, orange juice, garlic, and vinegar will do in a pinch. Heck, coca cola and a pinch of salt will do in a pinch. Rendered pork fat goes a long way.
So I scoured around and found this one submitted by CM at Cooks.com for Honey Smoke Barbecue Sauce, and will now treat (or annoy or puzzle) you to my own modifications:
added cinnamon
added a few mashed up chipotles in adobo
deleted lemon because had none but added a dollop of the oily vinegary juice from a can of pickled jalapenos and carrots
ignored call for liquid smoke
Used Maker's Mark rather than JD, since it's what we keep around
It was surprising, at first, how boozy the bbq sauce was. But it adjusted (or I did?) and it was the perfect glaze for in-oven ribs. (A glaze of this sweet would have turned nasty on an open grill but I think that all ribs are at least par-cooked.) I am so gleeful at how delicious and easy these ribs were that I'm fantasizing about starting my own line of bbq sauce. However, I don't know what is involved with that sort of endeavor, and I don't want to spend too much time making the same recipe 2000 times and pouring things into jars I have sterilized, so I will be satisfied with letting you knpw about this experience, and moving on.
We ate these ribs at home and they DISAPPEARED. I had a bit more sauce so used it as a base and augmented and brought home to my family in CT, where they'd gotten 5 lbs of ribs from the local butcher. They were great -- but M and I felt that the organic actually made a difference in this recipe. Still, we polished every single part off, the family enjoyed, and I highly recommend.
Monday, March 24, 2008
Rooh Afza -- It's All Coming Together
http://pakistaniat.com/2007/10/07/ramzan-ramadan-rooh-afza-milk-red-bull-pakistan/
This article, written on the day i got married, shows a man in a pink turban sloshing pink juice around in a gigantic tub. It is a tub full of a shake make from rooh afza, milk, and sugar.
We saw a scene *similar* to this on Easter Sunday this year, in our neighborhood. We got to watch our largely Pakistani neighbors rollicking on Coney Island Avenue at a festive birthday celebration for Mohammad.
The bar in my dining room has two bottles of this stuff; one for my husband and I, and one for my friend Barry, who told me about Rooh Afza after reading about it in Saveur Magazine. Because we are at the epicenter of all things Pakistani, I went out of and bought him a bottle then failed to deliver it to him before he moved to Italy for a year.
We also have a bottle for ourselves, but it makes Matthew sad to think that we have to drink it all before it is gone. But maybe it will make him happy when we are having it as milkshakes! (Matthew, will you try it again in a different formet?)
Also, we saw people drinking something fantastically pink out of a pitcher at a Pakistani restaurant one night when the sun had just gone down--and we thought it looked interesting but they basically explained that what the men at the table were drinking was glucose syrup and that we probably didn't want any. (It was Ramadan and people hadn't eaten all day.) I think now that it was Rooh Afza perhaps mixed with milk?
This article, written on the day i got married, shows a man in a pink turban sloshing pink juice around in a gigantic tub. It is a tub full of a shake make from rooh afza, milk, and sugar.
We saw a scene *similar* to this on Easter Sunday this year, in our neighborhood. We got to watch our largely Pakistani neighbors rollicking on Coney Island Avenue at a festive birthday celebration for Mohammad.
The bar in my dining room has two bottles of this stuff; one for my husband and I, and one for my friend Barry, who told me about Rooh Afza after reading about it in Saveur Magazine. Because we are at the epicenter of all things Pakistani, I went out of and bought him a bottle then failed to deliver it to him before he moved to Italy for a year.
We also have a bottle for ourselves, but it makes Matthew sad to think that we have to drink it all before it is gone. But maybe it will make him happy when we are having it as milkshakes! (Matthew, will you try it again in a different formet?)
Also, we saw people drinking something fantastically pink out of a pitcher at a Pakistani restaurant one night when the sun had just gone down--and we thought it looked interesting but they basically explained that what the men at the table were drinking was glucose syrup and that we probably didn't want any. (It was Ramadan and people hadn't eaten all day.) I think now that it was Rooh Afza perhaps mixed with milk?
Tuesday, February 12, 2008
I have filled the house with pudding, and now am systematically emptying it.
Obviously, too busy to write much. Aside from, happy birthday to my mom!
Sunday, February 03, 2008
Yellow Cake in Multiple Formats
This morning the house has the warm clean feel that it does after a party. You look around at the plants, vases of flowers, our enormous tree, new persian rug (⇐), no clutter, happy plump couches, vibrant velvet pillows, and these things look somehow different, because they are still exuding the warmth of the guests last night.
But then you look at the kitchen, and you fall to the floor, despairing. I cannot provide a picture of the kitchen.
My husband sleeps 15% less than I do, but in a scary twist of fate I've gotten up first, and I really must make a dent in all of these dishes, because he also cleans about 80-100% more than I do.
(I know that these metrics, which we only figured out yesterday, make me seem like a bad person. But I have . . . some . . . good qualities. Read his blog to see what they are. Oh, except I just remembered that his blog is about real estate, not me. Well then, one of my good qualities is having a blog where I mention my spouse. Go ahead, turn that into a percentage.)
Last night was New Jersey night in Brooklyn. We had 2 couples over, and both drove all the way from New Jersey. The first couple to arrive brought their teeny, tiny baby, Jacob, who is three months old and therefore still a really good party guest. The second couple brought a cake shaped like a football, which, no offense parents, was an even better party guest.
But what kind of party guest am I? Guest: ok. Host: I am trying to grow in this regard. You may or may not know that my current objective / project is to be able to have people over with less stress. I love to cook but generally it's just for the 2 of us, and one person is setting the table while the other is stirring, or whatever. But when we have people over my objectives are to 1) visit, 2) feed them something extremely delicious, and 3) not be mean to anyone. So being *really* prepared beforehand with a *really* delicious thing to eat that is easily served and doesn't require my attention while people are actually there is my strategy.
Cooking is the bomb (da bomb?) but takes a lot of time, so one thing we've been doing on weeknights, when M works really late is have "crockpot wednesdays," so that we can have a super easy dinner and actually work on other projects in the evening, instead of just cooking and cleaning up and falling into bed. I love Chicken Paprikash and Moroccan Beef Stew but one of my favorite crockpot dishes is Manuel's Beef Brisket Tacos. I learned about this dish when I lived in Texas (which is where I know Manuel from) and actually it's to be cooked for about 100 hours at 100 degrees in an oven--which in Texas basically means leaving it on the counter, ha, ha, ha--but we do the meat in crockpot. I love this for many reasons, but in part because it's one of these recipes where you just need one of each thing, and the devil is in the time rather than in the details. This isn't a delicate recipe--just a delicious one.
(I also made shrimp taco filling with lime, garlic, red onion, chili pepper flakes, and cumin--and okra and corn taco filling.)
Manuel's Beef Brisket Tacos
The Brisket
1 Brisket (2 lbs is good for 6 people, 3 if you want leftovers)
1 lemon
1 bottle beer
1 beer bottle's worth of water
1 can of pickled jalapenos (can be jalapenos and carrots)
1 onion, sliced into rings, rings then cut in half
sprinkle cumin
Salt and pepper the brisket. Heat oil until hot on medium high in a heavy cast iron pan. (If you don't have a cast iron skillet or dutch oven, get one! You will feel better, all of the time. But don't worry about it for this dish--just use a fry pan.) Place the brisket fat-side down; make it sizzle. Brown on all sides, for about 10 minutes total.
While the meat browns, prepare the braising liquid in the crockpot. Pour in the beer, then refill bottle with water and add that. Watching for seeds, squeeze lemon into the pot. Drain the juice from the pickled peppers into the crockpot, reserving the vegetables for garnishing the tacos. Add the onion and some cumin. If the crockpot has an "automatic" setting, put in on that. If not, turn on high, then turn to low 2 hours later. Cook until the meat is done done done. It will fall apart when you pick it up with a fork. This will take about 5 hours, but you can cook it for longer.
When ready to eat, bring into a stove-top pan and shred. Heat on the stove with some juice. Season with salt. Heat flour tortillas, serve with hot sauce (goya or costena in a bottle is my favorite if I don't get to make it myself), cilantro, sour cream, and the pickled peppers. Spanish rice, refried beans, and salad are all you need to go with.
Finally, it was time for the cake. It was a chocolate frosted ball with white creamy stitches, with with a blue "NY" in cursive. Apparently this is in reference to a big game happening today.
They imported it across 2 rivers all the way from the Snowflake Bakery in Northern NJ, which is touted as being very old-fashioned. Indeed, the delicious chocolate frosting was the same taste and texture as the black part of black and white cookies. Inside was a lovely yellow cake with chocolate pudding bisecting the two layers.
I got a small round end of cake, which had a high frosting to cake ratio, which I construe to be a plus. Still, I felt sort of sad because my piece was small. Luckily I was seated next to baby Jake's dad, who said he's on a diet and wanted to lob off part of his own sagittal football slice, so I eagerly complied.
It's not like *I* need any more cake this weekend. Friday night I met a friend and some of her friends in Queens for a birthday dinner. One person arrived late, a girl from Manhattan who complained about coming to Queens. Ironic, because though Queens and Bklyn are contiguous, there is no straight shot to get there, without some walking between 2 transfers. Hopstop, which I love, timed my trip there at 1 hour and 18 minutes, and it was fairly accurate.
We got invited at the last moment, because she felt weird planning a trip to Queens without me. Thank goodness she was plagued by her conscience, because it gave us a great excuse to go out to what is generally written about as the best Thai restaurant in NYC--Sripraphai. I expected no ambience but it was quite nice. We had a wonderful catfish salad with shreddy little fried crunchy bits supposed to somehow be catfish; pickled pork spare ribs (boneless tangy succulent chunks served with lettuce leaves, peanuts, and ginger); Chinese broccoli in oyster sauce; Drunken noodles with ground beef; another sort of not-as-awesome but still impressive noodles with egg and tofu; a duck curry in green sauce; a shrimp Panang curry; and a red snapper with his eyes fried shut and many many delicious herbs and peppers stuffed in and over him. We ate coconut rice (yum) and a very chewy "sticky" rice which is served in little bags in little baskets. The presentation of this rice is very charming but somehow reminiscent of the drug trade. We didn't want to indulge too much because we know that one of the other guests, Theresa, who is discerning yet hilarious and also, a good driver, had made a cake. Yellow with chocolate frosting! It was amazing. Thank you, Theresa. Thank you, Rose Levy Beranbaum.
Onto some reading new: Last night I finished reading Are You Hungry, Are You Cold by Ludwig Bemelmans. It's a first edition I got for Christmas. I'm sad it's over but it was so good! If you haven't read any Bemelman's, you actually have, because he wrote the Madeline books, but also, he wrote some wonderful things about grownups. They all have Madeline's signature naughty streak, which makes them extra lovable.
Monday, January 28, 2008
Schnitzi Schnitzl: Around the World But Close to Home
Around the World But Close to Home
With recent trips to Turkey, London, and Arizona, JFK is starting to feel as much like home as home.
Trips to the airport are expensive, long, and involve barreling down the Belt Parkway with an eye on the clock, but they do yield a chance for some human companionship--a precious commodity for a telecommuter like me--because I need to get driven to the airport and back. And car service drivers provide some of the most detailed and interesting information about other parts of the world that I am exposed to. One driver, plumbed for information about Haitian food, pointed out a place on Flatbush Avenue that reminds him of home--a place I will be seeking out later in the blog cycle. Another driver repeatedly mumbled questions about when my husband leaves for work, so he could come over and we could "make friends." He got a very polite response from me ("can you speak up, sir? I'm really having a hard time hearing you") until I suddenly realized he was asking. Yet another driver told me all about the city of Islamabad (only 40-ish years old, built recently to replace Karachi as the government center of Pakistan), he told me about an ice palace in Dubai, and his impressions of Iran and Afghanistan. I know more about the world now than I used to, so that trip compensated for the sleaze of the other guy.
Along with the human interaction, this overland travel lets me see a bit of what's being developed in our area. It seems as if we are being crowded on all sides--well, on the south side--by Schnitzel restaurants. Except for health reasons, I could not be more delighted by this.
Schnitzel Fact Sheet
What is Schnitzel? Can you show me a picture of one? But if I don't want to click on the link--just tell me this. Is it noodles? Or am I confusing it with that cheese thing with potatoes that you can get a separate little oven for?
The noodles are Spätzle. The potato cheese thing is Rösti, a food item that sparks all sorts of other debates. (Should I cook the potatoes before I make it? Is it good? Will I feel less or more existential dread if I buy a tiny little oven just to cook one thing that only Swiss Germans eat?)
Calm down, my friend, because you are about to know more about schnitzel than is, uh, strictly necessary. Schnitzel is German-language word which means pounded cutlet which has been egged, floured, breaded, and pan fried in lard. Generally the cutlet is touted as veal, often the cutlet is pork masquerading as veal, and sometimes it is both labeled as and is actually chicken. Chicken pounded flat and breaded and fried, esp. dusted with salt and squirted with lemon and heaped with arugula and finished with cubed tomatoes . . . ahh, that is the dish known in New York City as chicken milanese (or more colloquially Flatty Delicioso) and that is also a dish that is sadly not to be found in this part of South Brooklyn. But in Milan, where cutlet cooking of this sort was originally codified, purists use veal, eggs, unflavored breadcrumbs, no flour, and cook it in butter. Later, in Germany and Austria, it developed its own set of details, resulting in a slightly lower quotient of lip-smackiness.
However, Ashkenazi Jews who migrated to Israel from Eastern Europe imported the notion of schintzel and once in the promised land, where there is no pork*, started making it with chicken or turkey and re-upped the deliciousness, spicing it up Middle Eastern style, cooking it in oil, spritzing it with lemon, and putting lots of garlicky condiments on offer, and that's what Schnitzi is all about. Oh, that, and a more delicious form of bread: the baguette.
From doing a bit of reading (one way of gathering information other than traveling or talking with a car service driver,) I have come to understand that schnitzel on pita is apparently a very important and pleasing part of life in Israel, and some believe it to be the national dish. It was surprising that before Schnitzi we hadn't seen schnitzel in the nabe, because Israeli sandwich stores are one of the few amenities that our neighborhood does. not. lack. We've got the world-class Olympic Pita a few blocks to the south—which is my favorite—and the Famous Pita just a few blocks north, and this is the one which my husband votes for as being the best. Those deserve their own posts (and perhaps some sort of eat-off contest).
Schnitzi Schnitzel
But we noticed Schnitzi last summer, when it sprouted up as a bright shiny clean coin on the face of the CIA (Coney Island Avenue). We knew of it before the wedding but didn't manage to eat their until right after. It was yet another foodery with rabbinical blessings from various sects on the doors. but instead of being an Italian restaurant or a sushi one, this somewhat garish orange and blue storefront promised to bring something new to bring to our experience. Once married, we tried Schnitzi. In the time between the wedding ending (early October) and the honeymoon beginning (mid-October) I developed and then secretly nursed a Schintzl fascination, obsession, and subsequent addiction. Luckily, our trip to Turkey quelled it.
With Spanish (chili peppers and bread crumbs) Greek (garlic and bread crumbs), Italian (herbs and bread crumbs), Polish (bread crumbs and MORE bread crumbs), and Chinese (sesame seeds and I will let you guess what else) as some of the exciting things on Schnitzi's menu, you can eat your way around the world without ever leaving the block of the CIA between Avenues I and J. Think of it as a bread crumb tour of the world with juicy glatt** kosher*** chicken cutlet on a yummy baguette with any number of sorts of sauces.
The chicken is breaded and fried fresh, requiring a huge amount of labor in a very small, open kitchen, which is why the numerous young countermen (sort of Coney Island Avenue Israel hipsters, if that is . . . possible) all wear t-shirts which say, on the back "I'll be with you in a moment."
There is another Schnitzel opened a bit closer to JFK, and soon we will go. Hopefully, sooner than I return to JFK, but that is doubtful. Meanwhile, if you have any questions about where, in the airport, to buy a bag of cashews or a neck pillow shaped sort of like a bear hugging your neck, post in the comments tab and I will get back to you asap. However, I would prefer comments on the topic of sandwiches.
* how could be promised land?
** certified as having died without spots on the lungs, ie very healthy
*** blessed but more important, brined in salt and osmosis makes it extra juicy
With recent trips to Turkey, London, and Arizona, JFK is starting to feel as much like home as home.
Trips to the airport are expensive, long, and involve barreling down the Belt Parkway with an eye on the clock, but they do yield a chance for some human companionship--a precious commodity for a telecommuter like me--because I need to get driven to the airport and back. And car service drivers provide some of the most detailed and interesting information about other parts of the world that I am exposed to. One driver, plumbed for information about Haitian food, pointed out a place on Flatbush Avenue that reminds him of home--a place I will be seeking out later in the blog cycle. Another driver repeatedly mumbled questions about when my husband leaves for work, so he could come over and we could "make friends." He got a very polite response from me ("can you speak up, sir? I'm really having a hard time hearing you") until I suddenly realized he was asking. Yet another driver told me all about the city of Islamabad (only 40-ish years old, built recently to replace Karachi as the government center of Pakistan), he told me about an ice palace in Dubai, and his impressions of Iran and Afghanistan. I know more about the world now than I used to, so that trip compensated for the sleaze of the other guy.
Along with the human interaction, this overland travel lets me see a bit of what's being developed in our area. It seems as if we are being crowded on all sides--well, on the south side--by Schnitzel restaurants. Except for health reasons, I could not be more delighted by this.
Schnitzel Fact Sheet
What is Schnitzel? Can you show me a picture of one? But if I don't want to click on the link--just tell me this. Is it noodles? Or am I confusing it with that cheese thing with potatoes that you can get a separate little oven for?
The noodles are Spätzle. The potato cheese thing is Rösti, a food item that sparks all sorts of other debates. (Should I cook the potatoes before I make it? Is it good? Will I feel less or more existential dread if I buy a tiny little oven just to cook one thing that only Swiss Germans eat?)
Calm down, my friend, because you are about to know more about schnitzel than is, uh, strictly necessary. Schnitzel is German-language word which means pounded cutlet which has been egged, floured, breaded, and pan fried in lard. Generally the cutlet is touted as veal, often the cutlet is pork masquerading as veal, and sometimes it is both labeled as and is actually chicken. Chicken pounded flat and breaded and fried, esp. dusted with salt and squirted with lemon and heaped with arugula and finished with cubed tomatoes . . . ahh, that is the dish known in New York City as chicken milanese (or more colloquially Flatty Delicioso) and that is also a dish that is sadly not to be found in this part of South Brooklyn. But in Milan, where cutlet cooking of this sort was originally codified, purists use veal, eggs, unflavored breadcrumbs, no flour, and cook it in butter. Later, in Germany and Austria, it developed its own set of details, resulting in a slightly lower quotient of lip-smackiness.
However, Ashkenazi Jews who migrated to Israel from Eastern Europe imported the notion of schintzel and once in the promised land, where there is no pork*, started making it with chicken or turkey and re-upped the deliciousness, spicing it up Middle Eastern style, cooking it in oil, spritzing it with lemon, and putting lots of garlicky condiments on offer, and that's what Schnitzi is all about. Oh, that, and a more delicious form of bread: the baguette.
From doing a bit of reading (one way of gathering information other than traveling or talking with a car service driver,) I have come to understand that schnitzel on pita is apparently a very important and pleasing part of life in Israel, and some believe it to be the national dish. It was surprising that before Schnitzi we hadn't seen schnitzel in the nabe, because Israeli sandwich stores are one of the few amenities that our neighborhood does. not. lack. We've got the world-class Olympic Pita a few blocks to the south—which is my favorite—and the Famous Pita just a few blocks north, and this is the one which my husband votes for as being the best. Those deserve their own posts (and perhaps some sort of eat-off contest).
Schnitzi Schnitzel
But we noticed Schnitzi last summer, when it sprouted up as a bright shiny clean coin on the face of the CIA (Coney Island Avenue). We knew of it before the wedding but didn't manage to eat their until right after. It was yet another foodery with rabbinical blessings from various sects on the doors. but instead of being an Italian restaurant or a sushi one, this somewhat garish orange and blue storefront promised to bring something new to bring to our experience. Once married, we tried Schnitzi. In the time between the wedding ending (early October) and the honeymoon beginning (mid-October) I developed and then secretly nursed a Schintzl fascination, obsession, and subsequent addiction. Luckily, our trip to Turkey quelled it.
With Spanish (chili peppers and bread crumbs) Greek (garlic and bread crumbs), Italian (herbs and bread crumbs), Polish (bread crumbs and MORE bread crumbs), and Chinese (sesame seeds and I will let you guess what else) as some of the exciting things on Schnitzi's menu, you can eat your way around the world without ever leaving the block of the CIA between Avenues I and J. Think of it as a bread crumb tour of the world with juicy glatt** kosher*** chicken cutlet on a yummy baguette with any number of sorts of sauces.
The chicken is breaded and fried fresh, requiring a huge amount of labor in a very small, open kitchen, which is why the numerous young countermen (sort of Coney Island Avenue Israel hipsters, if that is . . . possible) all wear t-shirts which say, on the back "I'll be with you in a moment."
There is another Schnitzel opened a bit closer to JFK, and soon we will go. Hopefully, sooner than I return to JFK, but that is doubtful. Meanwhile, if you have any questions about where, in the airport, to buy a bag of cashews or a neck pillow shaped sort of like a bear hugging your neck, post in the comments tab and I will get back to you asap. However, I would prefer comments on the topic of sandwiches.
* how could be promised land?
** certified as having died without spots on the lungs, ie very healthy
*** blessed but more important, brined in salt and osmosis makes it extra juicy
Friday, January 04, 2008
Happy New Year from Brighton Beach! or [the russian symbols won't paste]
Happy New Year! It's 2008 and I started the year off right with a trip to one of my favorite New York places, right at the end of the Q and B lines: Brighton Beach.
Non New Yorkers immediately think Brighton Beach Memoir, a Neil Simon play about growing up Jewish in the 1930s.
The Brighton Beach of the late 90s and aughts or naughts or whatever we are now in is a Russian ex-pat community. A trip out there is about as as close as you can get to leaving the country without actually leaving the country. Not just because it's far out on the edge of NYC, on a body of water overlooking what may seem, to the spatially challenged, to be France, but because of the chance to be spoken to first in Russian and the necessity of asking people to withhold the shaved dried smoked beef from your salad. It's a singular experience.
I love this neighborhood for the Tudorish seaside apartment buildings along the boardwalk and the chance to watch old Russians stroll (or be wheeled) and young ones pony for one another's attention. You can while a day away looking at the ocean over a plate of french fries drizzled with garlic butter and parsley. A few notable experiences aside from the obvious Russian ones don't fit well into narrative format and will therefore be arranged into a chronogical list:
1. She's a Mush
New to New York and battling mice in a tenement apartment in the East Village, I call a 718 number in response to an ad for a kitten. 718 = Brooklyn, I thought, and while I was not technically wrong, I did not yet realize that going from the edge to the middle and back out to a wholly nother edge still requires a hefty train ride. (Now that I've moved deep, deep into this borough, it is an unforgettable fact.)
Arriving in Brighton Beach an hour later, I pick my way over to and ring the bell of a house ponged sour with cat urine. The owner of the house came down to explain that she was eating a roast beef sandwich and that I should wait. (Sandwichless, in the stink.) She let me in the outside door but left me in a vestibule lined on both sides with cages. The staring cats cried and stuck their paws through the bars to get at me. I felt repelled.
Finally I called up to announce that I wasn't going to wait any longer, and the woman, still wiping mayo from her lips, ran to show me the real cat storeroom, which was in the basement. She was particularly eager to give me a 4 month old striped gray one tabby who fell over when she reared up to play with me. I felt a connection to her slight ungainliness. "She's such a mush," the crazy cat person explained. "A mush! Like a dog!" She told me that the cat was half "Russian Blue," which is supposed to be a sexy brand of kitty. Promised an animal with mousekilling abilities but dog's character, I brought her home. In reality, the cat I came home with is standoffish, angry, and insecure. Despite my attempts to name her Katrina or Katrinka or Sabrina or something little and tinkly and Russian sounding in homage to her geographic and genetic roots, I ended up calling her George because of her lack of grace. There is another kind of cat--a French kind commonly described as a "potato on toothpicks," and surely this better describes her. Still, who needs a graceful cat? Character trumps grace, and I could not love her more. And once you fall in love, you don't want your pet to do a job, like eat dirty mice. Pets are for snuggling.
2. "Cheese Eating Cheese"
During a spate of unemployment in early 2002, I have as little energy as I have money. I live in a studio apartment on the ground floor. It's dark and I spend a lot of time alone. One day I muster collect myself as best I can, haul on a blue two-piece and go out to the beach with a paperback, giant hat, and towel. I am alone on this trip. It is a weekday, I will see no one I know, and I will wear my bikini no matter how I look. (How I look is both pale and like I do not have washboard abs.) The moment I set foot on the sand a pretty lithe brown man with big curls runs circles around me, working himself up for an introduction. He's recently moved to New York from the ancient city of Fez, where he worked as a tour guide. He's very bright and very sensitive. I enjoy both his company and his washboard abs. We talk while we splash in the water. Later he walks me to Coney Island, buys me some fried shrimp. We watch people fish off the pier. "You are so crrreeeeeamy and whiiiiiiiite," he describes, in a truly appreciative tone. "You are like cheese," he continues, as we enter the arcade, which makes me laugh, even if that wasn't the intent. He rides the train back to my house with me so we can continue our conversation, before he turns back to Sheepshead Bay to go home, and we agree to see one another again. We date for 2 months until cultural differences intercede. Cultural differences include his proclivity for quotes such as "You are so pretty. Not beautiful, like Monica Lewinsky, but very nice to look at. More like Princess Diana, but your features aren't all in synchronicity such as the lovely Diana's were." But these conversations are amusing, and he does seems to like me. At one point during our relationship he watches me eat a spinach pie on my couch. It is full of fenugreek and fresh mozzerella. He watches intently. "So creamy and white," he breathes. "You are like cheese eating cheese."
3. Booties
I like to go to Brighton Beach with my friends Jennifer and Mike. Jennifer and Mike can both lie in the sun (I need an umbrella) and like to take what they call a "freak walk," which is where they admire the crazy old ladies in leopard-pattern bras, or men in banana hangers, or people with legs splayed in large nylon undies surely never meant to see the light of day. Brighton Beach makes you realize that you're really in the middle, physically and in terms of your taste, and that can be a good thing. In addition to the "freaks," Jennifer is gay and likes to look at ladies. Mike is straight and likes to look at ladies. Mike is married to an upright swimmer with lean haunches, but that's not the sort of thing they're on the prowl for out here. Mostly, they traipse the beach looking for big jiggly booties on girls with smooth brown skin. "You always want things you don't have," says Mike, presumably referring to wife's own booty, in addition to his own.
There is so much more to tell about the wonders of Brighton Beach. On New Year's, my husband and I decide instead to pop into the grocery stores along the Avenue, instead of walk over to the beach. We end up looking at real estate, as all New Yorkers do. What would it be like to live here on an all-Russian 'cept for us block? We could live in a gingerbread house . . . we enter into one grocery store with pastries piled everywhere, and smoked fish sitting in boxes. Steam trays of stuffed cabbage fail to provoke any hunger in me, because I can't help but wonder whether they are holdouts from last year, though it was only 12 hours before.
We check out the holocaust memorial on the Bay, as we are walking up to Sheepshead. It seems that families can pay in with other families to get a stone to honor their dead. It's sobering but moving that a community from the USSR seems intact again in Brooklyn. I don't feel that I have a community that intact.
We stopped into a cafe, which I'd like to write about but it was in Sheepshead--that's another story. In a post coming soon!
Non New Yorkers immediately think Brighton Beach Memoir, a Neil Simon play about growing up Jewish in the 1930s.
The Brighton Beach of the late 90s and aughts or naughts or whatever we are now in is a Russian ex-pat community. A trip out there is about as as close as you can get to leaving the country without actually leaving the country. Not just because it's far out on the edge of NYC, on a body of water overlooking what may seem, to the spatially challenged, to be France, but because of the chance to be spoken to first in Russian and the necessity of asking people to withhold the shaved dried smoked beef from your salad. It's a singular experience.
I love this neighborhood for the Tudorish seaside apartment buildings along the boardwalk and the chance to watch old Russians stroll (or be wheeled) and young ones pony for one another's attention. You can while a day away looking at the ocean over a plate of french fries drizzled with garlic butter and parsley. A few notable experiences aside from the obvious Russian ones don't fit well into narrative format and will therefore be arranged into a chronogical list:
1. She's a Mush
New to New York and battling mice in a tenement apartment in the East Village, I call a 718 number in response to an ad for a kitten. 718 = Brooklyn, I thought, and while I was not technically wrong, I did not yet realize that going from the edge to the middle and back out to a wholly nother edge still requires a hefty train ride. (Now that I've moved deep, deep into this borough, it is an unforgettable fact.)
Arriving in Brighton Beach an hour later, I pick my way over to and ring the bell of a house ponged sour with cat urine. The owner of the house came down to explain that she was eating a roast beef sandwich and that I should wait. (Sandwichless, in the stink.) She let me in the outside door but left me in a vestibule lined on both sides with cages. The staring cats cried and stuck their paws through the bars to get at me. I felt repelled.
Finally I called up to announce that I wasn't going to wait any longer, and the woman, still wiping mayo from her lips, ran to show me the real cat storeroom, which was in the basement. She was particularly eager to give me a 4 month old striped gray one tabby who fell over when she reared up to play with me. I felt a connection to her slight ungainliness. "She's such a mush," the crazy cat person explained. "A mush! Like a dog!" She told me that the cat was half "Russian Blue," which is supposed to be a sexy brand of kitty. Promised an animal with mousekilling abilities but dog's character, I brought her home. In reality, the cat I came home with is standoffish, angry, and insecure. Despite my attempts to name her Katrina or Katrinka or Sabrina or something little and tinkly and Russian sounding in homage to her geographic and genetic roots, I ended up calling her George because of her lack of grace. There is another kind of cat--a French kind commonly described as a "potato on toothpicks," and surely this better describes her. Still, who needs a graceful cat? Character trumps grace, and I could not love her more. And once you fall in love, you don't want your pet to do a job, like eat dirty mice. Pets are for snuggling.
2. "Cheese Eating Cheese"
During a spate of unemployment in early 2002, I have as little energy as I have money. I live in a studio apartment on the ground floor. It's dark and I spend a lot of time alone. One day I muster collect myself as best I can, haul on a blue two-piece and go out to the beach with a paperback, giant hat, and towel. I am alone on this trip. It is a weekday, I will see no one I know, and I will wear my bikini no matter how I look. (How I look is both pale and like I do not have washboard abs.) The moment I set foot on the sand a pretty lithe brown man with big curls runs circles around me, working himself up for an introduction. He's recently moved to New York from the ancient city of Fez, where he worked as a tour guide. He's very bright and very sensitive. I enjoy both his company and his washboard abs. We talk while we splash in the water. Later he walks me to Coney Island, buys me some fried shrimp. We watch people fish off the pier. "You are so crrreeeeeamy and whiiiiiiiite," he describes, in a truly appreciative tone. "You are like cheese," he continues, as we enter the arcade, which makes me laugh, even if that wasn't the intent. He rides the train back to my house with me so we can continue our conversation, before he turns back to Sheepshead Bay to go home, and we agree to see one another again. We date for 2 months until cultural differences intercede. Cultural differences include his proclivity for quotes such as "You are so pretty. Not beautiful, like Monica Lewinsky, but very nice to look at. More like Princess Diana, but your features aren't all in synchronicity such as the lovely Diana's were." But these conversations are amusing, and he does seems to like me. At one point during our relationship he watches me eat a spinach pie on my couch. It is full of fenugreek and fresh mozzerella. He watches intently. "So creamy and white," he breathes. "You are like cheese eating cheese."
3. Booties
I like to go to Brighton Beach with my friends Jennifer and Mike. Jennifer and Mike can both lie in the sun (I need an umbrella) and like to take what they call a "freak walk," which is where they admire the crazy old ladies in leopard-pattern bras, or men in banana hangers, or people with legs splayed in large nylon undies surely never meant to see the light of day. Brighton Beach makes you realize that you're really in the middle, physically and in terms of your taste, and that can be a good thing. In addition to the "freaks," Jennifer is gay and likes to look at ladies. Mike is straight and likes to look at ladies. Mike is married to an upright swimmer with lean haunches, but that's not the sort of thing they're on the prowl for out here. Mostly, they traipse the beach looking for big jiggly booties on girls with smooth brown skin. "You always want things you don't have," says Mike, presumably referring to wife's own booty, in addition to his own.
There is so much more to tell about the wonders of Brighton Beach. On New Year's, my husband and I decide instead to pop into the grocery stores along the Avenue, instead of walk over to the beach. We end up looking at real estate, as all New Yorkers do. What would it be like to live here on an all-Russian 'cept for us block? We could live in a gingerbread house . . . we enter into one grocery store with pastries piled everywhere, and smoked fish sitting in boxes. Steam trays of stuffed cabbage fail to provoke any hunger in me, because I can't help but wonder whether they are holdouts from last year, though it was only 12 hours before.
We check out the holocaust memorial on the Bay, as we are walking up to Sheepshead. It seems that families can pay in with other families to get a stone to honor their dead. It's sobering but moving that a community from the USSR seems intact again in Brooklyn. I don't feel that I have a community that intact.
We stopped into a cafe, which I'd like to write about but it was in Sheepshead--that's another story. In a post coming soon!
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