Church Avenue Chomp

migrated to wordpress

2010-03-04T10:07:00.000-08:00

dear readers, church avenue chomp has migrated over to wordpress. read "sleep. or not." at http://churchchomp.wordpress.com/ -- and please leave a comment over there to let me know that you found (and nibbled) the breadcrumbs!

The Fanciest Folks There, or the Help?

2010-02-28T08:43:00.000-08:00

Last night we went to the ALS Victory Ball for the Connecticut chapter of the ALS Association. Our team, the Phillips 66, was honored to receive a fundraising award! On the invitation, the dress for the event was described as Caribbean or Black Tie. Basically, opposite ends of the spectrum.

Dressing up may seem more complicated, but after some conjecture, it's not as complicated as digging around for something vacationy that fits postpartum that one can wear in 20 inches of snow with a February pallor. We chose black tie. It was as easy as shucking the everyday clothes and slipping on a luxuriously dress of heavy silk. Excellent! Oh, and my snowboots, good for climbing through drifts. (I did bring acceptable shoes in the car.)

After summoning our sitter and unsnowing the car, we drove out to Westport, only to learn on arrival that every other invitee had opted to dress Caribbeany. We joked, on seeing the satin bowtie and cummerbund of the coat check girl, that it was fine -- that everyone would probably just think that we worked there.

It was fun, except for the whole fact of how much ALS totally sucks, and except for when I assumed out loud that a woman seated at our table was married to her own, dear, grieving , much-older-than-her, father, who was seated to her left. As opposed to her actual husband, of her same generation, who was seated to her right. (Uh, who did I think that guy was?) And when I realized my mistake, I described (in actual voiced words, that everyone could hear) the scenario of being married to your own dad (while mine own dad was sitting to my left) as "totally creepy." Which it is, of course, but it's not like that helped the situation. And then I fell silent, listening my words echo roarfully in my ears, while I desperately tried to think up some followup comments. Matthew somehow managed to engage those folks on the topic of steel drums, something he definitely knows absolutely nothing about. Thanks, honey!

We had to leave early because of the long drive back to the city. And indeed, just as M and I were about to make our exit, glowing with rum punch and an evening out and recognition of our efforts, faux pas forgotten, the very woman who had presented us the award for fund raising stopped him as he was about to enter the men's room. Without really focusing on him, she just looked at his tux and told him that one of the lightbulbs in the men's bathroom had blown out, and asked him to see to it that it got fixed.

Which frankly, he probably would have been happy to do -- he really doesn't like it when no one changes lightbulbs when they blow out. However, she quickly realized her error, blurted "nevermind no nevermind" as she turned on her strappy summer sandal, and sprinted off in horror. Hilarious.

While ALS robs some people of the ability to speak, others of us could stand to learn something from a little well-placed silence!

One Year, Three Cakes

2010-02-22T11:05:00.001-08:00

Henry is one!

And what this means that he is old enough to mock you. Well, mock me. He was probably raised too well to mock you.

But if I blow my nose, or sniff in, he'll call attention to my indelicate body functions by saying a big long "ffffffffffffffffffff." If I clear my throat or sneeze or cough, he'll respond with a very dramatic fake cough. It's hilarious.

He also meows with the best of 'em, and every evening when I start to real cook, he starts to fake cook. He gets a pot on the floor, and some spoons, and a colander, and clatters around and pretends to cook food. It's adorable. Except that he won't share his fake soup or porridge or whatever it is with me. (If it's invisible, and I'm not allowed to have any, how the heck am I supposed to know what it is?)

Being one also means, of course, that he is old enough to eat cake. Well, eat cake and have me announce it publicly. If you must know, he ate a little cake before he was one.

I anticipated being the sort of parent who would outlaw cake, but the truth is that I am the type of parent who has to try REALLY hard not to squirt Redi-Whip directly into my little one's gaping mouth. (I have not done this. And I feed him spinach and carrots and myriad other fruits and veg and whole grains every day. But I have thought of doing this -- because it has the capacity to bring SO MUCH JOY.)

The thing is that I hail from a very cake-oriented family. Some husbands might believe it is too cake-oriented. He comes to this conclusion simply because we have about 30 different cakes every time someone has a birthday. It's because we love the person who is having the birthday! It's because we love singing! (It's because we love cake.)

A few weeks after Henry was born, my parents came to stay overnight and in order to celebrate his existence, I ordered a cake that had "Happy Henry" scrolled across the top. He was too little to do much more than sleep through that song, but we did celebrate his initial birthday. I can't get my hands on the picture of that cake right now, but it was sort of a fake black forest cake from a bakery down the street, and it had goopy cherry filling, and that bad white frosting. It looked WAY more special than it tasted.

For the one year birthday celebration, we started with a family party. We held it at my sister's house so she could participate, though as it turned out she was exhausted, and ended up sleeping through the bulk of it. Upsetting. But my in-laws came from Chicago, and Henry's other set of aunts came from New Hampshire! Lots of cousins came, along with Henry's great aunt and uncle. It was very wonderful once it started. But it was also enormously stressful before it began. Like, my eyeballs almost flew out of my head from sheer pressure that morning, though I got it catered (!!!) and everything.

(Do you know how much getting things catered costs? Enough to make your eyeballs fly out, etc.)

The catering was done by Bliss Market, which is a great butcher and has delicious prepared foods. I bought paper and plastic things so that we wouldn't have to wash stuff. I ordered all the food. I even chose food that didn't need to be heated up. (You know about this theory, right? If not, let me know, and I will post.) Still, I stressed. So my new theory is that for ease of entertainment, it's very important to have parties at your own home, rather than someone else's.

We had fruit and cheese (a hit), frittatas (a hit), and asparagus with orange essenced onions (not a hit, nope, not at all). Here's a piece of advice: never order asparagus for 20 people. Maybe order asparagus for 3 people, and only in season. My cousins were swirling around the giant scary tray of thick-stalked, onion smothered asparagus talking about how much their pee would stink just from looking at it. Man, do I love my cousins. No, really, I do. But I also really love asparagus, and somehow, this was just gross. Even grosser than my lovable cousins.

Our own contributions were few and far between, and included a green salad, the expensive sort from a box that we do not wash that we eat with every single meal, topped with imported vinaigrette. (It's imported from Brooklyn: my husband is great at salad dressing. His secret? Rice wine vinegar combined with one other kind, as well as mini bits of chopped red onion.)

I made a country pate. After I unearthed it from the pan and plated it, I showed my mother, because I'd had nightmares that it wouldn't come out well, and I was frankly terrifically proud that it had. "Nice, honey," my mom said, in that highly uncertain way mothers have of speaking when they feel suspicious that their nutty daughter is about to willfully foist raw meat upon everyone in the bloodline. "Are you planning to cook it?"

Mmmmph. I suppose that steamed bacon can look kind of raw, if you are not accustomed to looking at terrines. The terrine goes like this: line a metal loaf pan with bacon. Put 8 strips across the bottom, with the arms flopping over the sides. Then put 3 up each short side. Then fill with filling, which is ground pork mixed with chopped bacon mixed with reduced cognac, eggs, savories, and spices. And then, since you may be tired of touching raw pork, layer with some strips of ham steak (cooked pork!) Once you have suitably recuperated, resume with the raw material, and then smother it down with the loose ends of the bacon strips. Place the loaf pan in a larger metal pan with a quantity of water in the bottom and cook for a few hours. When you're done, weight and chill and wait. If you are really going to make it, please follow the instructions in the recipe linked above. (I should get paid to shill for Epicurious. Or sued for stealing all of their recipes.)

The best thing about terrine, aside from the triple delicious porkiness, is that you can make it 4 days in advance. FOUR! And you don't have to serve it warm. It's a great thing to make for a party. And it's delicious, even if your own mother suspects that you're serving raw liver (it's not liver!!) to everyone on the premises.

The table's coup de grace was a huge pistachio cake with white chocolate mousse filling within and buttercream frosting without. Well, with, but outside. As a rule I am against white chocolate mousse, but I decided, for once, to close my eyes, relinquish control, and trust. I was able to do this because I thought that a pistachio cake might be green, and I thought that would be fun, and the Bliss people make incredible cakes.

Good that I did, because this pistachio-flavored cake was insanely delicious. And one of the best things about it is that they accidentally gave me one that was several inches larger across than what I'd ordered. The cake just said Henry! across the top, because thinking that they'd give me the size cake I ordered, instead of the amount of cake I REALLY wanted, I'd supplemented the cake order with a cupcake order. And those were to spell "HAPPY BIRTHDAY," one letter per cupcake.

As it happened, we ended up with enough cake for about 50 people, rather than about 20 people. Don't worry, I finished it.

And for his first cake experience (on record), Henry chose a the chocolate cupcake with a big bright pink "B" on it. He make slow but very thorough work of it. He may have his dad's looks, btu he obviously inherited the cake-eating gene from my side of the family. We are praying he also got what we call the Burgie gene, which is a gene for sleeping late.

A week later we also had a party for babies over at ours, and this is the lesson: even when you are cooking the food, and cleaning the house, even when you have invited 9 neighborhood babies over, it is somehow far less stressful to have a party at your own place. We had tea sandwiches (spinach dip on pumpernickel; almond butter and cherry preserves on wheat; cheddar chive rounds sans chives, since I couldn't find any), in addition to fruit, veggies and dip, another terrine, and carrot / apple cupcakes with cream cheese frosting. Oh, and with the leftover batter, a tiny round cake that I made in the bottom of a metal bowl. Thinking, at the last minute, "I'll make a monkey face cake!" Which is something my sister has done. Then realizing that chocolate frosting would be better, as would some sort of plan in addition to artistic ability. Then I thought, "I'll make a snowman cake!" Wait, just a snowman head? So that was quickly replaced by, "no, I'll make a mouse!" But people, this goes back to my whole Halloween costume situation. Great ideas, and lame-o-la execution.

"No, he doesn't need a mouse, he needs an "H" or perhaps an "HAPS" stenciled in sugar!" No, he needs for his mother to calm the hell down.

Regardless of how simple it was, I was finally able to MAKE a birthday cake for my son, which was as it should be. Because no matter how beautiful and delicious the Bliss pistachio cake was, it's actually my belief that birthday cakes should be homemade, and that they should look like someone loved them into being. Voila!

butter for the spine, butter for the mind?

2010-02-08T08:01:00.000-08:00

I love yoga. When it's "good," it reminds me of Catholic Mass when I was small. The sidelong attention you pay to the person in the front of the room, the rote comfort of the standing up, the getting down, the incantatory pattern of works from an unfamiliar lost language, the metaphorical application of one thing to another, the uplifting power of music.

I have so many favorite parts of yoga practice but one is when it's really hard: after lots warrior poses, with arms lifted to shoulder level and held extended, the vinyasa that ends in "child's pose," and you get to feel your heart pound in such an exhilarating way while experiencing real relaxation.

This morning, during pigeon pose prep, we did pigeon prep including a spinal twist. (It included a bind for those who could hack it; mine was wholly bindless). During this pose, the yoga teacher said something that seemed directed straight to me:

"this twist is like a tray of ice cream . . . well, whatever your favorite thing is. Maybe this pose is like a tray of butter. This twist is like a tray of butter for your spine."

Yoga is like the anti butter, but it's also like butter for my mood.

crunchy, creamy, sour, sweet, bitter, smooth, gritty, peppery, syrupy, salty, pungent, fragrant, warm, cool

2010-02-07T09:45:00.000-08:00

Recently I tested some recipes from Mache Bistro in Maine, which is the restaurant owned and run by dear friends Marie and Kyle. They are putting some recipes into a book and needed a few friends to try them out in their home kitchen.

The first recipe was for hangar steaks. It was my first time cooking hangar steak. In short it's: rub with oil, then chopped garlic, and a rub made from pepper, rosemary, garlic, and salt rub. Cook briefly on a hot hot hot cast iron pan, then dress with some blue cheese and herb compound butter. Mm!

My favorite recipe, though, was for a cabernet poached pear.

Now, a recipe for a poached pear doesn't sound up my alley, for a number of reasons.

1. if i can afford cabernet, i don't want it, as a general rule. it's going to be too tannic

2. overloaded on balsamic in the 90's

3. i embarrasingly do not like honey because it tastes way too floral in a sickly way to me

4. this may not make sense, but pears seem to take themselves a bit too seriously. if they were able to eat, they would be gourmets rather than gourmands. in other words, they leave me somewhat cold and once, in high school, i gave them up as my new year's resolution.

5. the filling is blue cheese, which i never go out of my way to eat.

However: wow, was it delicious. I guess that cab is different if you cook with it (tannens are tamer.) As for balsamic, I experienced a backlash when it was on menus everywhere, but that part of history is over, plus I now mostly eat at home. So sometime last year I began

to experience what I like to think of as a frontlash with regards to balsamic vinegar, which is, objectively, delicious. (This also happened with portobello mushrooms.) Honey is good when you cook with it. And the pear thing, that was a lame new year's resolution. And of course, blue cheese is a super ingredient esp. for contrasting with different textures and tastes, which this recipe did absolutely delightfully.

It has: crunchy, creamy, sour, sweet, bitter, smooth, gritty, peppery, syrupy, salty, pungent, fragrant, warm, cool. And a mix like that is RIGHT up my alley.

It was freaking awesome. Can’t wait to get to Mache Bistro sometime!

daily bread / daily dread

2009-12-06T17:13:00.000-08:00

Not much time recently. My work schedule has been in upheaval, and whatever budgetary inconveniences this entails, it does means more time with my son, which is a huge and lovely bonus. It also means I can make midweek trips to see my sister, who is not doing well.

I keep struggling to express the multi-dimensional aspect of grief, or pre-grief, or however this state I've been in for the last 2.5 years should be categorized. I sway from being sad; to being angry that I can't call my sister to complain about, or laugh about, new parenting challenges. Often I feel normal, but when something suddenly happens to remind me of the gravity of the situation, I'm shocked back to my place of sadness or grief or whatever, where I stand at attention until something joyful or even just daily beckons again.

My sister can't wander from it -- why should I be able to? One good thing about siblings is that like it or not, you've learned to share. But one bad thing about a physical problem is that you can't share.

There is a living-on-edge aspect to these times. When the phone rings early in the morning, I panic. What if this is the call. When my parents call to tell me about some trip to the hospital via ambulance, or a further decline, I'm generally hit with the ultra-sad realization that I'M NOT PAYING ENOUGH ATTENTION through all of this. And to me, this seems unfair to my sis, who cannot ever escape the situation, but then also scares me that I'm living in some sort of denial. And that if I don't try my hardest to get used to this now, I will pay for it later.

Yes, I am in therapy. I pay someone $110 / 50 minutes to remind me that you cannot live with the constant loom of death's breath tickling your neck. You sometimes get distracted. And that is ok, according to her.

But every time I see my parents' phone number show up on my phone -- or worse, my sister's -- I suck in my breath and wait for terrible news.

Sometimes, my family even forgets to tell me terrible news. I had already been visiting for a few hours the other day when I overheard my parents telling some a caretaker who'd called in that Beth's feeding tube was clogged. This was for the second time.

The first time was Christmas Eve, and my mom had told me by phone. (We Brooklynites were sick and had put off our visit.) It meant a trip to the hospital via ambulance, but only after 4 days of living on nothing but an IV. (Living on a feeding tube is bad enough.) She went to the hospital, oddly cheerfully, actually. I think that getting out of the house . . . EVEN IF IT MIGHT ENTAIL SURGERY . . . is a good thing for her these days. They unclogged it but when it clogged a second time, two weeks ago, was when people forgot to mention right off that there was a problem. It just shows that you can become desensitized. Even to really bad stuff.

She's since had it replaced. Getting one replaced, by the way, isn't nearly as much of a production as getting one in the first place.

Don't burn up during the reentry.

2009-10-14T07:52:00.000-07:00

Hi, blog. It has been MONTHS. So good to see you! Have you lost weight?

Ha.

Lots of topics I'd like to cover. What I have been cooking. The continued joys and travails of nursing. Difficulty of integrating a child into my schedule. Hired help: guilt at working and having hired help, dread at not having hired help. Difficulties of managing hired help. Division of labor within the house. Fun milestones like pulling up to stand, bouncing, crawling, shouting "birthday" randomly, when you can't even talk. And of course, solid foods for my kiddo. That makes me smile.

Should I start with solid foods? This blog is supposed to be about eating. Actually, let's briefly discuss what the adults in my life have been eating. Since we cannot go out, we have been eating a lot of homecooked meals.

* In fall, I'm addicted to the following things: roasted vegetables. parsnips, you've got my number. beets. brussel sprouts. tiny onions. garlic. broccoli. i even sliced up and roasted an orange the other day, to eat with some irish sea trout. (slice through skin and rub a bit of good quality olive oil on the orange. into an enameled cast iron gratin dish. into the oven for about 10 minutes at about 400 degrees. SCORE. skins and burnt bits were the best part. nice over the fish. served with some broccoli with whole coriander seeds, cumin seeds, a dash of chile powder, and salt.)

* slow cooked meals. recently I did a braised short rib recipe a la giada. short ribs are fantastic. for the uninitiated, season and sear; add ground savories, tomato products, broth and wine; braise until the meat is falling off the bone. then remove the bones and cartiladge, and return to the sauce. over fresh linguini. and giada's twist is to grind a bit of bittersweet chocolate over the top, to bring up the flavors. hoy hoy umami!

* Another slow cooked meal -- indian lamb with lentils, from "the complete meat cookbook." This book is one of the go-to reference books in my kitchen. I'm linking to Amazon so you can buy if you don't have. I'm so happy to finally live in a house with cardamom seeds. Those plus cumin and coridaner, and this curry had coconut milk in it. Sometimes, i think my own mother must've been a coconut, is how soothed and wonderful coconut milk makes me feel. And i made some saffron rice, albeit with shorter than called for grains. Still, good stuff. Oh, on the Indian thing but not on the slow-cooked thing: i tried a superfast and easy tandoori shrimp, too with a yogurt marinade and served with a cilantro chutney. (Was inspired to buy the chutney at the crazy "Eastern Market" emporium of treasures and rotting fruit near my house. Then had to find something to serve it with.) Loving the foray into indian flavors, which is totally new for me.

* Brownies. They replace the summer's ice cream obsession. But it's not like i don't think about brownies a lot when it's summer, too. I try not to make that many of them, though, because they are one thing that I eat until they are gone. I like the kind from the box, but i also like the kind that you make with ghirardhelli sweet ground chocolate. Those taste like brownies from a box, just richer. For what it's worth, I have absolutely no interest in getting brownies at a bakery. They don't approach what I like, which is a total harkening back to childhood. I believe that they are a primal comfort food. I have a crystal clear memory of a very special evening: January 29, 1976. It was the night the muppet show debuted. My mom, knowing that something special was on deck, made brownies, gave me two hot from the pan with a huge glass of milk, and sent me into the den to watch TV. What happened next amazed me, but it is the brownies that I remember the most. I had just turned 4. I still need a huge glass of milk with them.

* Pizza. I got some dough at Fairway (I know, I know, I could make it myself, but the joy is that I didn't, and that dinner was done pretty much right after baby was in bed.) I made a pancetta, thyme, and onion topping. Just used ground tomatoes from a jar, made less brusque with a little cinnamon, and then a combo of fresh and "nonfresh" mozz. Husband asked me to put on the "delicious so make a lot" list that we have on our fridge.

That's all for now! As always, I am interested in hearing what people who love to eat make for special, but, but also, for delicious midweek meals. Do you have a list on your fridge?

Near-Pro Status

2009-06-09T15:08:00.000-07:00

This morning, as I was nursing my baby and making my breakfast concurrently, I realized that it’s finally time to write about breastfeeding.

Let me set the scene. My husband generally gives a bottle of milk I’ve expressed the day before in the morning, then he puts baby down for a nap. At that point still trying to catch up on fractured sleep from being multiple overnight feedings. But on most days, I force myself out of bed before Baby's nap concludes ends so I can start the coffee, express a few ounces of milk, and make some oatmeal porridge. On really special days, I also get to shower.

So this morning I’m making some decaf coffee – Baby H cannot tolerate caffeine – when I notice that the coffee maker is taking an awfully long time to finish what, frankly, is its only task. The coffee is not dripping into the pot. I can hear it frothing and burbling around in there, so, where is it going? I also notice a suspicious red light on, and above that light is a tiny sign that says “self clean.” Perhaps the coffeepot actually does have more than one task? Cook coffee and clean itself? Well, everyone knows that cleaning is not as important as coffee, as evidenced by my own choice to get coffee rather than get clean. Perturbed and not sure what to do, I move on to start the other parts of breakfast.

Oatmeal for whatever reason helps ladies make lots of milk, so it’s my morning staple. I used to find oatmeal punishing, but that was before I started making it with milk instead of water. I also make other modifications. I add a pinch of salt, a swig of vanilla, and copious cinnamon to the milk. I sprinkle in dried fruits – some combo of raisins, blueberries, cranberries, or apricots, so they can steep and become delicious, instead of gritty and bad, like plain dried fruit. I top it with whatever sort of chopped nuts are around, and either sliced banana or sliced apple. I stir a little butter through the oatmeal, and then add a little maple syrup. I read somewhere that one of the advantages of breastfeeding is that it allows a new mom to eat like a professional wrestler and still lose weight; I love this oatmeal.

I am getting out the nuts when I hear Baby H starting to cry over the monitor. The baby, like his mother, does not wake up delighted to see the world, but rather puzzled and angry that he is still alive.

So I look quickly at the little oatmeal pot on the stove and see that it’s not quite at the bubble stage, so I rush in and pick him up and start to nurse him but instead of nursing him in my bed or in the glider in the living room, I carry him into the kitchen with me. He’s nursing still but in my arms while I walk around. I’ve done this before, when I need to get up and get the phone or the door, but I’m not wearing the magical pink pillow that straps around my waist and lends support, I am just nursing him while walking around — and cooking.

I stir the oatmeal into the milk. I look over to the coffee – there’s a little liquid in the pot. It’s approximately a third the amount of coffee that I’d intended to brew, however. I don’t know why this is, and I’m sure that it’s not going to be very good, but I want to drink my coffee, and this is apparently my coffee. So I pour it into a cup, slosh in a bunch of milk, and it’s still sort of brown. It tastes like sludge. I decide to add . . . coffee lovers, avert your eyes . . . I decide to add water. Cold water, from the tap. “It’s an Americano,” I think. No wonder it’s lame to drink Americanos.

The oatmeal is ready, so I put it into a bowl, and sprinkle on the nuts. I’m almost ready to sit down and finish my appalling, cold, decaf Americano and eat my beloved oatmeal – but where is the fruit? I’m a maximalist, and I love the fruit. I look around and realize that while there is a half an apple on the cutting board, it has neither been peeled nor sliced. I’m pretty embarrassed to tell you about the coffee, but I should draw the line at the apple. I consider the situation. I can’t easily use a large knife; aside from the sharpness, I can’t make too many sudden moves, since my nipple is encaged (sleepnessness enhances my vocabulary) in the jaws of steel. Which makes me think about my own jaws of steel. So I bite tiny chunks off of the apple, and spit them into the bowl with the oatmeal. Breakfast is complete. Voila!

I’m getting to be a pro. “You’ll really be a pro,” a woman with three children told me, “when you find yourself flipping a grilled cheese sandwich and nursing at the same time.”

The woman who suggested this was watching me try to nurse publicly at a wedding shower, about a month before. The baby, at that point, looked like a precious figurine of a child who’d been out Christmas caroling, with little white dewdrops of snow stacked up delicately in his eyelashes.

I had firehosed him, yet again, with my milk. I was having a difficult time that day with supporting the baby properly while nursing and not sharing intimate information about my body with other people. But when it came to the learning curve of breastfeeding, a Christmasey looking baby and some public indiscretion were the least of the problems. But this is a happy post! I will write more about the challenges of breastfeeding another day.

For now, I am celebrating near-pro status.

HERE COMES TINY VALENTINE

2009-06-04T12:56:00.000-07:00

Two years ago on Valentine’s Day I was explaining to a friend that aside from being my cat's birthday, the day held no real significance for me.

It’s a holiday that you notice most when you are lacking romance, and once you’re not bemoaning a terrible lonely life, you don’t attach so much importance. And as for going out, I’d far prefer not to pay extra, fight crowds, go public with romance.

It was blizzarding that day and M had been to Philadelphia for work. When he got back to Brooklyn it was on the late side, and I surprised him with a dinner of linguini and clam sauce.

After dinner M gave me some fancy chocolates, then we danced to Nina Simone in the living room. When we sat on the couch for a break, he asked me to marry him. No kneeling and the ring came later.

The whole thing was very much in keeping with our life together – cozy, domestic, wonderful.

So now our tradition is – was – linguini with clams and a night at home.

This year on Valentine’s Day, I was 4 days past my due date in my first pregnancy. If I didn’t go into labor before, I would be induced on 2/16. On the morning of 2/14, a Saturday, I walked over to the big, icky drugstore in our neighborhood. I picked out some Prilosec, a Valentine card, and a chocolate fish. The fish was modeled after the kind of fish that is hung on the wall and wiggles and sings, which is modeled on the lodge-aesthetic kind of fish that someone has caught and mounted. This fish was hollow, made of questionable chocolate, and said “YOU’RE A REAL CATCH” on it. It did not wiggle, nor was it real, nor did I expect it to taste that good, but it had a certain charm.

Before I left the store, I took my blood pressure using the dirty, public blood pressure cuff back near the pharmacy. My blood pressure was high – even higher than it had been during our false starts that resulted in visits to the labor and delivery floor. I rushed home. SHOULD I CALL THE OBSTETRICIAN?? I was practically hollering.

Supporting my theory that in any dyad, one person in a froth serves to compose the other, husband had all sorts of calm, slowly delivered reasons as to why my blood pressure might be up. I hadn’t eaten yet that day (you need to take Prilosec ½ hour before breakfast; not to mention that you need to take Prilosec so you don’t accidentally digest your own face with stomach acid). I’d had a glass of wine the night before, when in a desperate plea to put me into labor, we went out and ate a whole lot of eggplant parmesan, supposed to trigger labor at least if you eat it at one place in Georgia. And eggplant parm is also really salty, and saltiness elevates blood pressure, etc. All sorts of reasons.

Meanwhile, I was lumbering around in a panicked circle: dining room living room kitchen dining room living room kitchen. I was almost as terrified to give birth as I was to stay pregnant. “At least have breakfast before you call the obstetrician,” he advised.

I was becoming obsessed with obstetricians. They, and everyone else, kept wishing me a "magical vaginal birth," which is patently ridiculous and also, annoying. Everyone I talked with had lots of suggestions for induction.

“Intercourse! Have intercourse!,” people would urge, with an impossibly serious look on their face. Please, that clinical tone but also, PLEASE. It had been a month since I could even sit on a chair designed for human beings, and you are asking me to do what?

After eating breakfast, we exchanged Valentines. Matthew gave me a huge, gorgeously orange box of Jacques Torres truffles. I sheepishly gave him the drugstore fish. Then we returned to the store to take my blood pressure. Still up, so I called the doctor, who told me to come in that night so they could begin induction. Because my body hadn ’t yet manifested any signs of being ready, it was likely that induction would be a long, painful, possibly ending-in-surgery process. So, I did everything I could think of to try to induce labor naturally, yes everything, and then we left for the hospital that evening.

I was assigned a crabby nurse with shells woven into her hair. The belly band, blood pressure cuff, the endless questioning. At one point a doctor and a nurse were in the same room with me, each asking the SAME QUESTIONS -- please list all surgeries you've ever had, are you allergic to any medications, have you had any complications with the pregnancy, do you have gestational diabetes -- but not listening to one another, and filling out completely separate forms -- one typed, one handwritten. I wondered whether they were even aware that they were asking the same questions, except one was one question later than the other. Then a cervical check, which showed that I was physically no closer to being able to push a baby through my cervix than anyone else in the room, and finally, the insertion of something that would ripen my cervix if we were lucky, so that my water could be broken and the process of labor might start. Husband finally went home to sleep a bit, since we knew we'd likely be up all the next night. We agreed that I could call anytime labor started and he’d return. If labor didn’t start, he’d come back in the morning.

Fluorescent lights don't quite lend themselves to romance, but anticipating our first child was sort of the perfect way to spend at least some of the 2 year anniversary of deciding to make our life together.

The next morning I was in agony -- no no, not from labor, but from the fact that I’d been doomed to a night in a plastic foam hospital bed. I am not exaggerating the pain. I’d been told that I could get up and walk around, but instead I’d been in the same position, except for the occasional bathroom trip, since the night before. The crabby shell-bedecked nurse had forgotten to tell me when I could move, and I’d missed the window. When sleeping at home those days, I'd wake up and desperately need my crampy legs massaged. And this was with a fortress of pillows and my nice bed. The hospital bed, where I had one pillow and lots of things strapped to me so I couldn't turn over, nearly did me in. I needed to stretch my hamstrings, but the baby inside me kept me from bending over. On top of that, I hadn’t dilated at all. So after “manually dilating” to 1 cm by jamming a finger into my cervix and wiggling it around, the doctor broke my water and started a Pitocin drip.

Pitocin is synthetic oxytocin. Now, oxytocin is the hormone released during orgasm, and breastfeeding, is also necessary for contractions that allow birth to happen. My husband and I were at the hospital alone, after hearing that the best way to generate enough oxytocin for birth to happen naturally is to be as alone as possible.

But Pitocin, oxytocin's unpopular, if not evil, cousin, is supposed to kickstart labor with none of the warm fuzzy feelings – just a fast ramp up of contractions, and it frequently leads to a mom needing an immediate epidural. However, I seemed immune even to the Pitocin. They dripped in bag after bag until I had contractions 2 minutes apart, but not ones strong enough to open my Fort Knox-style cervix. I had no problems asking for an epidural, but I wanted to wait until my contractions were productive enough that it wouldn't slow down my natural progression. And according to my cervical checks, this wasn't happening. I wasn't comfortable, by any means, but I didn't NEED an epidural. This was in contrast to a woman in the room next door who sounded like she was being declawed. We'd recently seen ROOTS on Netflix, with Kunta Kinte's gallantly lovely mother holding onto a pole and giving birth in a comparatively elegant manner. She was acting, of course, but I wanted very badly to preserve the Mandinka image and what I was overhearing was not helping me do that.

Every time the dr. would come in I'd say -- no, I don't need an epidural right now, except, I DO NOT WANT TO BECOME LIKE THAT WOMAN, so do not let the epidural administrators go too far. The obstetrician assured me that I did not seem to be on that trajectory.

I was not on that trajectory because, of course, I was notprogressing.

Waiting around in the hospital forever is boring. So I just sat on my friend the yoga ball, and waited, listening to podcasts, reading George Saunders essays aloud to my husband, playing cards, grimacing at the build in what midwives call "sensation," but what is actually called pain. Still, it wasn't bad.

After 9 or so hours of strong Pitocin, and no food but a couple of illicit slurps of unsolidified Jello I’d brought in a Poland Springs bottle, we had a meeting with my obstetrician. I was back in the bed and horribly, horribly uncomfortable due to the cheap foam mattress. I was at 2.5 or 3 cm – again, this was from doctors reaching inside me and stretching manually, rather than any movement of my cervix. I was not yet in active labor, and they couldn't give me any more pitocin without possibly putting stress on the baby. I was tired, hungry, far from comfortable, and not appreciably closer to my goal. My goal was multi-tiered -- have the baby before the mean nurse came back on the night shift, and get something to eat. So after 26 hours of trying to get induced, they asked whether I wanted a c-section. What I really wanted was a plan, and that sounded like a fine one. The baby did not seem to want to come out, but needed to come out, so they would take him out. Fine.

The hospital is all about waiting, but suddenly once the c-section was inevitable, a team crawled out of the woodwork and bustled into action, scrubbing in and bringing consent forms and giving me a tiny cup of antacid and explaining the spinal.

Less than an hour after we’d decided, I was on an operating table in a pretty periwinkle room, behind a blue tarp strategically placed so I couldn’t see my insides coming out and piling up on my belly. I'd had a little crisis of confidence as we started. I'd been well assured that the baby looked wonderful and strong through all of the contractions. He'd been monitored for hours. But the spinal is somewhat harrowing, so they'd asked my husband to wait in the hall. I thought they'd forgotten him. So did he. We later figured out that it's a precautionary measure to keep partners calm. But I remembered how much I hated the feeling of total lack of control that anaesthesia brings. I couldn't flex my legs and kept worrying and then also thinking about how terrible life must be for my sister, how claustrophobic she must be losing control over her whole body. Then I needed to throw up and I didn't feel like anyone was paying attention to me so I got a little panicky. They attributed nausea to my blood pressure dropping and administered some sort of medicine to raise it, and gave me a tiny kidney shaped bowl to vomit into. Why does anyone think those are good for vomiting?

They finally brought my husband in and started the process. A c-section doesn't take long -- about 10 minutes of actual surgery and then getting sewn up takes much longer. One of the most notable parts of it -- aside from astounding, incomparable miracle that a baby comes out of you -- is that you are required to have your arms spread to the side. Wide open, in a position that feels quite vulnerable, which is not what you're interested in with a full awareness that your bladder et al are on the outside.

Additionally, the medicine they give you makes you shiver uncontrollably, so your arms are nearly flapping. This would have been extremely disturbing if I hadn't heard it from a friend, but as it was, it didn't surprise me.

But what I did not expect was the extreme force required to remove Baby Henry from my belly. The story about caesarian surgery goes that you can feel pressure, but not pain. Well, someone was leaning down on my ribs as hard as possible while someone else was pulling up on the baby to remove him, thuckkkkkk, from my uterus. It was like a cartoon of being at the dentist where the dentist has to use a wrench and put his boot up on the arm of your chair to get the baby out. I mean, the tooth. That baby, he did not want to come out, and in the days afterwards when the hospital staff would check on my incision, I consistently asked them whether my aching back could be from broken ribs.

The biggest surprise, of course, was the arrival of the baby. We hadn't found out the gender but various details -- lots of morning sickness, the way I was carrying, and the fact that I couldn't picture having a boy -- made us both think we would have a daughter.

"It's a boy," someone yelled, then since he had just been through surgery he was bundled over to some pediatricians for assessment, siphoning, weighing, and footprinting before he was bundled over to me. He was two ounces shy of nine pounds, and the operating room staff were marveling at his loud, insistent, nonstop cry before he was brought over to me. This, I admit, made me nervous -- having a baby whose cry surprised the staff at a hospital. I heard his Agpar scores of 9 before I ever saw his dear, dear, swollen face. Henry, our tiny valentine, you're here!

In the recovery room, the first person to try to help me breastfeed was a gay Philipinno male nurse who grabbed my breast first then backtracked to ask if it was alright. Yeah, it's alright. The pregnancy adventure was over -- but parenthood, and its attendant adventures, were just beginning.

Sounds Like Two Deaf Parents in Here

2009-04-30T07:27:00.000-07:00

I went out with a guy once who looked great on paper — talldark&handsome, architect, motorcycle, lots of wooing. We'd go swimming at night, he'd leave notes on my car, he made me a bouquet made entirely out of roasted corn. (Listen: the bouquet of roasted corn was better than it sounds.) But our chemistry was off, and we broke up, and finally, we both realized that he was gay. Is the gayness the punch line? It is not.

While it lasted, I also thought that his parents sounded very interesting because they were both Jehovah's Witnesses. They were also both deaf.

Where the heck is this going?

Well, whenever he told people about his two deaf parents, they'd comment that his house must've been very quiet. He would reply that to the contrary, his house was QUITE LOUD — that deaf people are far less aware of how much noise they are making, especially if they have started a household with another person who is immune to loud noises.

I think about this a lot lately because when I wake up in the middle of the night, the baby, who is 10 weeks old, is making about as much noise as I imagine two deaf parents might make.

I'm not talking about crying. There's a loud suctiony pop that happens when he's sucking his wrist or fingers but isn't yet coordinated to quite get purchase on them before he jerks his arm and the thumb goes flying out. POP! This is in addition to slurping, gurgles, grunts, clucks and snorts. He sighs and lets out yawns that have a little vocalization attached. And, HICCUP! HICCUP! And he has started to talk, in a manner of speaking. "ahhh, ahhh, ahhh," he says.

The one-man band is punctuated by the occasional prolonged fart. He's sharing a room with us but is completely matter of fact about the farting situation, which I admire, at least in someone so tiny.

There is also the noise that only a twelve pound human zipped into a little fleece blanket bag could make, which is achieved by the flinging of legs up into the air. He can't flip over or move much on his own unless his legs are pushed against something, but he's sort of at sea in the middle of the cradle. The idea behind the flinging, I think, is that the legs come down in a slightly different position, and if he flings them high and hard enough, he can dislodge himself from the little foam mountains we wedge him between in order to keep him on his back, or wiggle the whole package -- body and mountains -- towards the bars of his cradle.

If it were your roommate or spouse or two deaf parents making these noises, it might be aggravating, but when it's your baby making them, holy moly, it's just delightful.

He used to cry or not cry and that was about it, but as the weeks have gone by he's become far more active, noisewise, and the best way I can describe it is that he's more colored in. It's a developmental thing I've witnessed in other babies as well.

First, it happens physically. A friend had a baby last summer. Eli was sweet when he was born but had the appearance of the very new or the very old. At the time wasn't thinking that so much but it was clear when I saw him a few months later, and his lips had bloomed into red and his cheeks were rosy, eyes bright and focused, skin more jelled on his face. I was amazed at the change, and Henry has seen the exact same trajectory, physically. I thought he was pretty handsome when he was born but look back at pictures and he looks comparatively squinty and gray and collapsed. Henry would grasp his hands together and hold tight and glower with the air of an aging male Russian politician.

These days, with smiling and laughing, he seems a lot more like a baby.

LEADING UP TO THE BIRTH

2009-04-18T09:22:00.000-07:00

It’s been hard, to say the least, to get anything posted on the blog since the baby came. During most spare moments during the day, I must do something important, like look for the housekeys I lost due to sleep deprivation. Or look for my spare housekeys, which I have also lost.

Or do something crucial, like try to get a nap in, generally to the tune of escalating hunger squeaks, then coughs, then cries, of a waking baby with an eager tummy.

Or do something hypothetical, like wonder why no one ever coaches the baby, “You know what you need to do, right? Sleep when Mommy sleeps.”

If you are a parent, you undoubtedly know the correlative phrase well: well-wishers of all shapes and sizes almost sternly admonish you to “sleep when the baby sleeps.” Chances are that you, like your baby, would get a lot more sleeping done if your meals were delivered directly into your mouth as you snuggled on a pillow in a near dream state, and you were not interested in keeping “going to the bathroom” a literal phrase. Or if the word on the street was that you really only needed to bathe once visible cheese had accumulated in the creases of your wrists.

I digress.

The weeks leading up to Henry's birth were largely uneventful. And I do mean, LARGELY, ba dumbum. As I came closer and closer to 4 digits on the scale, I fell into a pattern of going to one of the three obstetricians every few days

1. to see whether Henry was breech again (he was not)
2. to see whether his head had descended into my pelvis (nope)
3. to see whether I had become effaced or dilated yet (uh, no)

Another thing they do at these appointments is to look for signs of pre-eclampsia – a condition where the placenta, the organ invented during a pregnancy to nourish the baby, starts to deteriorate in function. Pre-eclampsia is indicated by elevated blood pressure, protein in urine, headaches, and visual disturbances. For the sake of a baby and the sake of a mom, it is important to avoid.

Most of the time, I’d leave the dr.’s appointment with no signs of a problem, nor any signs that I was any closer to having the baby. “Honey, at this point, MY cervix is riper to give birth than yours is,” explained the gayest and funniest obstetrician in the practice. I liked his humor, except, huh. Time was marching on, and I simply did not seem ready to give birth, though it’s all I thought about. Was I having cramps? Was there any sort of unusual and meaningful feeling in my belly?

One thing that the labor classes tell you is that you don’t want to show up at the hospital before you are really ready – going into the part of labor where you want to bite people. The doctors I was seeing advise patients not to leave for the hospital until they are screaming in raw animal pain. Why? You will get sent home, and getting sent home is bad for morale. Also, in our case, home is about an hour away from our hospital of choice. So if there’s one thing you know, it’s that you shouldn’t see the inside of the hospital until it is time to have the baby!

However, during a routine appointment at week 38, my blood pressure was a bit high. A sign of pre-eclampsia? "Well, at the hospital," another obstetrician calmly explained, without leaping about the room in a crazy anticipatory dance, or frankly even looking me in the eye, "they have a lab. It’s faster to get some the bloodwork done there." Sure, they have labs in hospitals. But he didn't indicate in any direct manner, YOU MIGHT HAVE THE BABY LATER TODAY, so my husband and I didn't get it.

This was something we would come to understand more and more during the process. You are having a baby, but everyone who is helping you has a job where they help people have babies every day, so it’s hard for them to muster the sense of wonder and urgency that you are feeling. It’s frankly sort of hard for them to muster anything at all: unlike they experience you are having, they’re just at work.

"So . . . what time should I tell my office I'll be back?" my husband asked. The OB shook his head. Then looked me. “You may have pre-eclampsia, and the cure for preeclampsia during week 38 is getting the baby out. There is a chance you will get sent home from the hospital. But a better chance that you will have your baby overnight.”

We explained to him that we didn't have any of our bags. This, as it turns out, means exactly nothing to the medical community.

After all of our carefully concocted plans to bring an iPod with the correct music and the birth ball and 5 extra pillows and all of my carefully chosen pajamas and the camera and the copy of Great Expectations that we read aloud to one another . . . and my snacks . . . I’m sorry, you just want us to GO?

The truth is that to have the baby, you just need you.

The baby?

Huh. The baby. I'd thought of little other than having a baby for months -- for like, a year -- but faced with actual possibility that it might really arrive, I was just sort of blank. With the details of the PREGNANCY overwhelming me from every angle, and the potentialities and possibilities of BIRTH, I hadn’t been able to think about the outcome – the baby – for a while. I’d gone through a time when whenever I’d drive I’d picture the money shot, the moment of eeking out the baby, with attendant pile of slick goo slithering out shortly thereafter, and I’d hear it let out its first lusty wail, and someone would say, “you have a . . .” whatever I was going to have, and they would put the baby on my chest, and I would say the first sentence to welcome the baby into the world, into my arms, into our lives, but in the middle of my sentence, I’d have to stop, because I’d be overcome with a sob. And I wouldn’t just sob in my daydream, I would sob in the car.

However, these reveries were all before week 38. It was when I was less tired, still small enough to drive the car, 10 pounds lighter. It was when my maternity clothes still fit, and I didn’t have to order 2 desserts at a time. But at a certain point, I was just marching forward as the carrier of the baby and I could not even hold a particularly excited thought about the birth anymore, anything more complex than “When . . .will . . . this . . . come. . . out.” Or, “Will it hurt wicked bad?” Or, every day after dinner – "do not let me go into labor tonight, I am far too tired." Birth vs. baby is like the difference between a wedding and a marriage: easy to lose sight of the big picture in all of the commotion, and I had lost sight of the baby and could only consider the birth. And when faced with the birth, I guess I sort of wanted to procrastinate.

The dr.’s office is on 43rd street and before going to the hospital, we stopped at Grand Central to get a book. I’d heard that there was a great coffee shop in there and wanted to look around for it. We’d been told I could have a light snack . . . where should we go?

Matthew finally reminded me that we had to get to the hospital, and started in the direction of the subway. He figured we could take the shuttle across and then the A train up to 59th street. “You want me to take the TRAIN to the HOSPITAL?” I was fake-scandalized but secretly delighted, since I could tell everyone that I took the subway to the hospital to have the baby, and it was clearly the best way to travel there at rush hour.

And, after months of deferential treatment by the traveling masses, no one gave my big jouncing stomach and I a seat. Even better, since the trip wasn’t long and it added to the drama of the NOW I AM HAVING A BABY narrative unfurling in my head. When I walked into the hospital lobby, someone crossing the lobby to leave looked me up and down and exclaimed “I hope you make it upstairs in time!” Sort of rude, but also, exciting. I was ready to have a baby! And everyone could tell!

We checked into triage. I liked the nurses and they set me up with a series of monitors.

In case you haven’t been in this situation, I will explain what the baby monitor is like: you take off your normal clothes in order to put on a hospital Johnny. You are handed a garment – and in this instance garment should probably be in quotes -- that looks like gigantic granny-style underpants without a crotch. It is a tube. You know it has to do with having a baby since pink and blue things are knitted into it the white fabric, so it looks like a newborn hat. Except you could get 30 newborn hats out of that amount of material. After the nurse stretches the tube out enough – and that takes a while – you pull it delicately up around your huge, huge belly and then recline, on your back, in the bed. The tube holds monitoring devices close to you so the heartbeat of the baby and also, your contractions, can be recorded onto a spool of paper that drops to the floor and someone periodically comes in to nod at apprasingly, then fold into a neater pile. However, this was set up by someone normal, not someone 9 mos pregnant, since being reclined on your back is so uncomfortable at that point. If you shift position, like if you try to sit up so that heartburn acid doesn’t shoot out of your mouth like a fountain and your uterus isn't crushing you, then the monitors can shift and things are not properly recorded and someone will come in and look at the flat lines on the paper and either give you the stinkeye and tell you have to recline again, or they will tell you nicely.

And you cannot eat, or even take Tums.

In my case, since the baby hadn’t descended, and I was not at all dilated or effaced, they recommended a c-section since an induction would likely end in a lot of labor, then surgery anyhow, under those circumstances.

It is not possible to have a c-section until it’s been 8 hours since you ate. A certain set wil find me evil for saying it but that evening, I was far less concerned about the vagaries of surgery--something I was relatively unfamiliar with and had grown accustomed to the idea of when the baby was breech--than I was the immediate and escalating discomfort of heartburn leading to sleeplessness and barfing, which was my specialty. The heartburn was just going to escalate if I couldn’t eat, which I couldn’t, and it was going to be a long, long night, the prospect of which was exhausting. And when I was through, someone would hand me a baby, and I would never sleep again.

Crap.

Except, I was not to have the baby. After being in the hospital for a short period of time, and having my sinking blood pressure andtotally normal blood tested, it became clear that I wasn’t pre-eclamptic, and I was sent home, with nothing but a whale-sized container in which to collect my urine for the next 24 hours, and a heightened sense of anxiety about how uncomfortable the hospital beds were going to be when I did manage to have the baby.

Henry

2009-03-04T19:01:00.000-08:00

Last I wrote, we hadn't met Henry. It has been nearly three weeks now and I want to get the word out, blogstyle, that on 2/15 at 11:57 pm Henry Atticus Phillips Schuerman was born.

At birth Henry weighed 8 lbs., 14 oz. and was 31 inches long.

Except, perhaps I mean 21 inches long? Whichever length is just slightly longer than the average baby -- but not like, a lengthy, serpentine, snake baby from the Guinness Book of World Records. I think actually Henry was 21 inches long -- which is a generously sized baby.

He is beautiful and extremely spunky and seems -- knock on wood -- like a very, very vital boy. More on this in the story of the birth! I am working on more comprehensive post but wanted to get this out and up.

It's very surreal that Henry is here. In part because I am so sleep deprived that I want to call in the National Guard so they can hold down the fort while I nap, but in part because it's like anything else huge, like getting married. I keep telling myself "I have a son." WE have a son. But it's hard to get it. I still can hardly believe that I am married, and now, this!

Also, I get to start to recognize the physical gestures from the person who was knocking around inside of me for all of those months!

Welcome to you, dear Henry.

Breech, Breech Baby

2009-02-09T02:38:00.000-08:00

There is so much great stuff going on to write about – I mean, I don’t know whether it’s that great to read about – but this has been a week of implementation of a lot of interesting tactics because we found out on Monday (I started this post on Jan 9th) that the baby is breech.

Lots of people don’t know that much about their own births. Because my mom has always told me the story of my birth on my birthday – with great warmth and fondness, no less, bless her, I have always known a few key things about mine.

1. I was huge -- 2 oz shy of 10 lbs. This, owing to the fact that
2. I was three weeks late, which they would never let happen today, especially if
3. A baby is breech, or with its head up rather than down, which I was.

So. I’ve always viewed my mother as sort of a superhero for various reasons, but when I think about these facts, especially. And I’ve always been sort of proud of the breech detail – in the same sort of way that I like that I am left-handed.

However.

The obstetrician confirmed the other day that the large round place which, depending on the moment, is either nesting comfortably near or chipping painfully up against the ribs on my right hand side – the spot that if I scratch it, lightly, produces a referred flutter of movement low, low in my pelvis – was a head. My sister had been speculating that it was a bottom up there, and that when I scratched it, I got punches in my lower abdomen. But it’s a head rather than a bottom, which is the other big round hard sticky outy part that babies have got.

That means that the head is up, which means that the baby is not head down. These days, being head down is a pre-requisite for being born through the most obvious exit.

(Obstetricians used to be trained to deliver breech babies, but that is no longer standard practice – these days, if a baby is head down at the time when a mom-to-be goes into a labor or need to be induced, the solution is a c-section.)

I was told that one way to deal is to see an expert in turning at the hospital. Apparently, just as they sent us to St. Luke’s Roosevelt Hospital to see a specialist in doing amniocenteses, they have a special who does something called a “versioning,” which basically means that this person is specially trained to manipulate the position of a baby inside of a person from outside of the person’s stomach. By pushing. It's generally done at 37 weeks, and may or may not include its own epidural: it doesn't feel good. It can result in placental tears, and emergency Caesarian section, and bruising to the mother, and I would think, discomfort for the baby.

I asked whether there was anything I could do to try to change the position of the baby.

There are three obstetricians in our practice and the 3 docs within have very different modes of operating. Counter to the way I often fee, I like and trust all of them but the one I was with that day is clearly the least amenable to say, woowoo practices, like the hiring of a doula. He told me: “WELL. If I were a midwife – which I am clearly not – I might tell you to get your hips up off of the ground several times a day to let the baby turn. Other people recommend acupuncture. I’ve never seen any of these things work. But these are the things that people try.”

The versioning sounded frankly terrible, so I decided to pull out all of the stops to avoid it. Below, I will detail the hocus pocus we tried to move the baby. And tune in at the bottom to see whether or not it worked!!

THE HOCUS POCUS

MUSIC DOWN THE PANTS

This is the most obvious and easy-to-try-at-home trick: put headphones low, low, low on your belly and wait for the baby to dance down to listen. They definitely do react to music even while still inside – for months this one been expressing opinions about swingtime music, the song Back in the USSR, anything with a blastpunch of happy horns. The problem is that you never know whether the kicking and punching means “more!” or if it means “the outside must be scary. why would you put me through this?” I always prefer to think, “more!,” but the things I listed are all things that I love.

ACUPUNCTURE

I contacted Laurel, an acupuncturist I’ve seen before for help with nausea (and out and out vomiting) in the first trimester. She told me to come on in. She did some points in my feet and elsewhere to help with reflux, but also, burned "moxibustion" sticks near points on my toes to try to encourage turning. Lots and lots of people had recommended this Chinese medicine therapy. I’d heard about Chinese medicine you can put on your toes to make a baby turn and this is the stuff.

Moxibustion sticks are like incense sticks but not as stinky. She burned a few in her office, then she gave me a bunch to take home. At night, M would have me sit in my glider and put my feet on the ottoman and he’d burn it near the "spleen points" on my smallest toes and try get them hot but not burned. And inside I could feel Baby start to flounce and scrabble. And outside I could watch M’s eyes water, not from emotion: from smoke.

The doctors had told us that the baby was really pretty big – possibly too big to turn again, so we didn’t know if it was in vain, but we tried this for several evenings, in conjunction with . . .

YOGA

Laying on your back when pregnant isn’t pleasant –unless you have a thing for being smothered by your own outsize organs. (I would like to say something about my uterus: at one point, I swallowed my pride and asked one of the obstetricians whether it was possible that it had actually expanded to the degree that a portion have climbed to the outside of my ribs. He said, "uh, no." But the head was RIGHT THERE, so that is to give you an idea of the size.) And laying on the back is bad for circulation, so it’s bad for baby, but like many things about pregnancy – like nutrition – the mother’s health gets compromised first. Ie, a pregnant person would puke or pass out before anything happened to the baby. But my yoga friend / teacher Marisa came over with a bunch of information and some hilarious props and we did a supported bridge – an arching pose we’ve avoided during pregnancy except for in this situation. But she’d checked it out and it was the solution, plus she was monitoring me and the OB had basically mentioned it. And it's not dissimilar from the old “propping the ironing board up on the couch and laying with your head down and feet up” that people recommend for turning breech babies.

Anyhow we tried this after some chanting of things to activate certain chakras and also, playing a little gong she brought over. It was great. There we were, pulling out all of the stops! The supported bridge made me immediately clammy and nauseous, though, and I had to roll off and we put me into the supported chauvasana that makes me nap and snore and smile. In contrast to the supported bridge, it is pretty much the most comfortable I pretty much ever get during pregnancy. This is not a picture of me but it shows you the position. If you are pregnant and can’t get comfortable, I recommend a yoga session ending with this!

HEADSTANDS IN THE POOL

This is another thing that was highly recommended by many people as helping out with flipping a baby, with no real logic provided, but it’s hard not to try to think about the logic, and this is all I can come up with: “well, if I am a baby who likes my head up, and my nest gets upended, I will not know, being a baby and stuck in a cocoon of goo, but will be conscious enough to claw my way around to have my head up, which is actually down.”

Huh.

We went over to the Chinatown YMCA. I wasn’t big enough to need a maternity suit last summer, and just never got one, and couldn’t find one to borrow, so putting together the swimming outfit was going to be a challenge.

I ended up with a bikini top I have that ties rather than clasps, some boy shorts which are my normal bottoms but worn a little lower, and a t-shirt over it. We don’t, though, have a full length mirror in our house, so seeing my, uh, splendorous body in the mirror at the Y was really something! I think that I gasped. Everyone at the pool was very tolerant and tried not to stare.

Anyhow, I did a few laps then some headstands, but water does not negate heartburn in the way that it negates weight, and so as the acid started to sizzle my eyes, it was pretty quickly time to get out of there.

If the towels at the Y wrap around you, consider yourself lucky! Well, normal, but I certainly missed that feeling.

CHIROPRACTOR (The Webster Technique)

Rather than in needles, the acupuncturist seemed to put most of her baby-flipping faith in moxibustion and in something called the Webster Technique, which is a thing that chiropractors do with ligaments connected to your hips to ensure that a breech baby has enough space to get head down. The acupuncturist actually shares space with a chiropractor but suggested I go to a specialist in Park Slope.

For some reason, I have always been suspicious of chiropractic endeavors though I am, if not the first, definitely not last in line to sign up for other hocus pocus. But I’ve had the experience with some acupuncturists and it has been my impression of chiropractors that what they REALLY want to do is get you to commit to going twice a week for the rest of your life. So you can pay them a lot? And to do this, they ask just a few targeted questions before telling you that your life is going to hell in a handbasket.

But I trust the acupuncturist I see now and wanted to give this a try, so I called and set up an appointment with the chiropractor. I was told it would take alternating sessions – regular adjustment, then Webster Technique, regular, then, etc. I made an appointment for the next day.

My jury remains on whether chiropractic stuff is brilliant or bullshit. I met the woman, she looked at my posture, I got on her table belly down on a maternity-style pillow with a stomach cut out, I felt horrible in that position but she told me it wouldn’t take long.

First, she touched my back for a second. Like you’d expect a chiropractor too, right? Right before they started crunching you and twisting you around? But then she quickly moved her hands down and got to business in my, uh, butt crack. Or gluteal cleavage, as they say in the bodywork business. This part of me was wholly clothed in corduroy pants, but I can’t describe what she did to me in any better terms than . . . slowly stroking up and down my butt crack. Sorry – ahem. Gluteal cleavage. She did, to her credit, briefly acknowledge that it was an unusual place to pet me. Then she would do a rapid hand movement that felt like nothing more or nothing less than she was picking up and flicking away a piece of lint.

From my butt crack.

In order to turn my baby.

There was no crunching, twisting, aligning. It was just energy work. When I left I called my husband, who expressed concern that I was getting all sorts of things done that he figured might harm an otherwise healthy baby. A valid concern, but I tried to explain to him that she just lightly stroked my buttcrack and then picked lint off of me. I cannot remember whether or not I mentioned the fact that it cost $175. But he asked me to PLEASE call the obstetrician to get this okayed. This time, I got a different of the 3 docs on the phone, who said that as long as she didn’t manipulate my belly, it was ok with them.

I saw the chiropractor again the next day when she did the actual Webster Technique. This time I had to lay on my back (also very uncomfortable) but she stuck her finger into my -- sort of in between my abdomen and my hip crease. On my right side. For a matter of seconds. Then she released it and sent me home.

I was ready to never go back. And I didn’t.

WHAT NOW?

The baby still had a hard round spot crammed up under my right ribs and I thought we had failed. It was time to go back to the obstetrician, but I wasn't that interested in the versioning. I wholly expected the obstetricians to try to talk me into it, but it was just the opposite. The one I saw for my next appointment said he’d schedule if it I like, but he also told me that in my situation he’d never opt for it.

I was glad to hear this – because one thing I’d learned through all of the breech madness is that my MOTHER had experienced a versioning on the day I was born.

She went into labor at 43 weeks and when the dr. poked around and determined that I was still breech, he called in a very large nurse.

Now, my father had asked to be present at the birth – unusual for that time period. And he hadn’t seen my sister be born 5 years previous, so when he saw a gigantic, Brunhilda-ish nurse climb on top of the table where my mother lay, and straddle her, begin to push on the bump, he figured that this was a part of all births. (No one had mentioned to him that I was breech.) Because of my mom's experience, I should at least be willing to try it if it was recommended. I apparently was squooshed into a better launch position and born vertex -- ie, head down. I thought that both she and the OBs would figure I should try it.

As it turns out, my mom's scenario with me went as good as it could have. Versionings are now done at 37 weeks, which is an acceptable time to be born, but not an ideal one.

If the baby wanted to or could turn, I thought, it would. I wasn't sure about forcing it. I talked with my mom, who absolutely agreed. And then, the obstetrician I saw that day decided to put a c-section on the calendar for 39 weeks. C-sections are things that typically make women feel bad. Bad in a way because someone slices through their tummy muscles -- but more than that -- emotionally put through the ringer. People feel like failures because of something that I actually feel we should be happy was invented -- it's a procedure that keeps death from childbirth at a FAR lower rate that used to be. It is not what I had pictured, but I had talked myself into the fact that if I needed a c-section, then that would be okay. I sort of refuse to be a woman who feels bad about something that I can't help.

But then he did a sonogram, and alas, baby was head down!

Not to switch gears so fast, but it wouldn’t stay that way, of course. Big baby, schmig baby. It swam around and about for the next several weeks. Now I am at 39 weeks and as of last appointment, was head down, so I did not go through with the scheduled c-section, which would have been on Friday.

There have been other excitements in the pregnancy, which will come in the next post. But as for breech, I will check in again at the OB in a few hours and we will see!

Antacids!

2009-01-30T08:48:00.000-08:00

Every once in a while, we joke about what sort of store we could open out of our apartment.

Some of the stores:

1. Cayenne Pepper For some reason we once acquired 3 bottles in quick succession. Various recipes also required, at around that time, every single kind known to man of paprika –- be it sweet, hot, smoked, etc. -- so the kitchen was awash in containers of red dust of all sorts. However, by putting our mind to it, we’ve managed to eat up a lot of it, and while you should certainly call on us if you need some for a recipe, or expect some to show up in your food if you come over, it no longer seems like a worthwhile business venture.

2. Benjamin Moore sample jars of paint Paint is perhaps the most difficult thing to agree upon in our house, since I like secondary saturated colors and M likes earth tones. Every now and again the twain shall meet, but we find that it requires a heck of a lot of arguments and even more samples. We’ll sell you some, real cheap.

3. Most recently, it's an antacid store. I actually thought the whole store idea was a pretty good framing for a blog piece centered around antacids, but I can feel my pulse escalating just THINKING about someone selling my antacids out from under me. What we might have here is an antacid museum.

Let me explain:

I had a few good weeks in there. They were during the glorious second trimester of pregnancy, which did not start as soon as it was advertised, and also seemed to end somewhat early. But for a few weeks, there was no particular stomach upset.

Heartburn is such a dramatic term for a physical condition, if you stop and really listen to the word. But in a way another way, it seems completely benign. People get heartburn. During childhood, when I watched lots of TV, there were lots of commercials about acid indigestion, with adults waking up in the middle of the night and making theatrical faces.

And as for the commercials I was like, yeah, whatever, I cannot connect with this, in the way that I can connect with, say, the Dow Scrubbing Bubble commercial.

Then a few years, when I was old enough to have developed a sympathetic streak, my mom had really bad heartburn for months on end. I didn’t like that my mom wasn’t feeling well, but she took what seemed to be some intense steps to get out from under the thrall of something I simply couldn’t relate to. For instance, she stopped drinking tea – her favorite -- and started drinking mugsful of – warm water. I was completely confused. Warm water is so much grosser than tea. What’s the point?

I’ll tell you the point. Heartburn is completely abstract -- until you are in it! When you are pregnant, chances are about 70% that you will at some point be in it. Why? Because in addition to growing a giant uterus, all of the organs that normally are in your trunk – stomach, intestines, esophagus – are smushed and there is no room. In addition, you muscles relax, making food sit around in your already compromised belly for longer. For some, this leads to insane levels of farting. I guess I should feel lucky that the accumulated gas buildup in my system pushes upwards. Sometimes, my feet pounding the pavement is enough to send burps roaring up and out. And the last trigger is that during pregnancy, joints loosen. Joints are cartilage. And so is the flap, I think, that normally keeps one’s esophagus closed. And keeping the esophagus closed is like keeping the acid where it should be. When it gets out, it burns. Hence, heartburn.

TUMS
First, I tried Tums. I got one tiny little roll of them. They made me feel better. And I acquired more as I ramped up my habit. I started keeping rolls in various states of chewed through-edness in my pockets, my car, my purse. This is apparently quite common for pregnant ladies.

I don't understand how Tums work – I just know that they are calcium-based and either fruity or minty and cheap and you can get them at nearly any corner store. We took lots of evening walk during the summer and fall and started to refer to certain delis as "Tums stores," since, once I’d passed through the nauseous phase where I ate roll after roll of Mentos, and then chewed through pack after pack of Juicy Fruit, Tums became what we were in search of on the evening walk.

Eventually, I got a bottle of 48. This was the master, and it lived on my nightstand. I sped through the bottle.

You can run into some problems with Tums -- they're pretty unpleasant to upchuck if you take them when it's too late and you’re already too full of acid. And people were starting to tell me that if you take too many, you are defeating the purpose because your stomach will start to make more acid to compensate. Yeah yeah, this is possible, but these people weren't actively suffering from heartburn which dragged them out of bed at night to sit up for several hours, or made them sleep sitting up, or throw up. I often didn't meet the 10/day limit listed on the back, but I always had the tally going in the back of my mind.

Soon, I was onto the bottle with 96! These were extra strength. They were berry flavored. According to the bottle, you're only supposed to take 7 per day. I had about 108 days of pregnancy left at that point. “I wonder whether I could make this bottle last the rest of the time?” I considered it a personal challenge. Not necessarily one that I would undertake – but one that I would think about.

I generally work from home in Brooklyn but one day, I had a meeting at the New York Department of Education as well as a few others, so I went into the city. Normally I would have brought my laptop but I didn't want to be hauling anything around while pregnant, so the sum total of what I brought was a little black purse and my jacket. And most of what was in my little black purse was my giant container of TUMS.

At the end of the day, the container was missing. A few days later, I was talking on the phone with a colleague who had been at the meetings that day. He’s a jokester, and he was one who’d told me that TUMS can affect you badly if you take too many, and he was also one who’d recently had a pregnant wife. I got up my nerve – I knew how silly and paranoid I would look if I was wrong – but I asked whether he had taken them.

He was horrified. Both at the suggestion that he was take TUMS from a pregnant woman, but probably also at my level of desperation. He insisted we terminate the phone call and that I go out and get another huge container of them, right then and there.

I also tried Rolaids at around this time. I only crunched my way through one pack so I don’t think they get their own section. “Less chalky,” said a teenaged girl at a suburban gas station who sold them to me. What are suburban teenaged girls doing with acid indigestion? Poor baby. But I tried them and they were alright.

When I confessed to my obstetrician that I told her that I had a constant tally of how many TUMS I could take during a 24 hour period, she suggested a more proactive approach to acid. “How about Zantac?”

ZANTAC
I will never forget the first night I tried it. I was with my husband and we’d been out swimming after work. He was trying to tell me a funny story on the way home but I wanted to steer the car into a pole to end our lives right then and there, is how crabby I felt, because of my throat and the burning seeping up into it. I was able to maintain a dim grasp on reality for long enough to force him to leap out and go into a pharmacy where he came out with a pack of Zantac 150. We came home and ate whatever we were going to eat. As I recall, it might have been some horribly acidic (to a member of the ranks of the afflicted) turkey and tomatillo chile that I make that you might find enjoyable, as I used to, before I realized that it could also take the paint off of the walls, acidwise. And I think we were watching a Buster Keaton movie called “The General.” I sat up at straight as possible and prepared to eat. Right before I did so, I took the tiny, five-sided minty pill with the active ingredient called Ranitidine.

And my life totally changed. Within about 4 minutes, I felt like a happy, healthy, normal girl without fire in her throat and thoughts of arson in her head. The change was so extreme that I could only wonder what HAVOC this medicine was wreaking on me.

We had a pretty good run of it, Zantac and me. I tried to sell everyone I knew on what seemed to be a wonderdrug. About a week later, I realized that I was having irregular heart palpitations. And that my vision was blurred. I looked up the side effect and . . . I knew it! Like all of the pleasure that crack or crystal meth is supposed to afford that first time around, it’s just too good to be truly, uh, good. But I was so hooked that when I explained to a friend that Zantac had changed my life, and that though it gave me blurred vision and a weird heart, she laughed at how extreme of symptoms I was willing to put up with, I realized how intense it was. I got sick a day that week and went off Zantac.

“Mylanta,” my mom suggested.

MYLANTA
It was during a meeting of our tiny Brooklyn community association that I knew I needed a new form of help. At first, it was everything a community meeting should be – held in the basement of a Mormon church on a rainy Thursday night. In fact we’d been so excited for the meeting that we’d put off seeing friends from Texas until the next night. We were meeting our neighbors and eating oreos and talking about the feral cat problem and how to support local businesses. It was pouring rain and getting there yielded wet ankles for all the neighbors, since many of the corners were flooded with water that wasn’t able to get into the sewers due to too many leave. Never mind, the sanitation dept. had come out to the meeting to discuss our problems, as well as the policeman responsible for our part of town, who drives around fighting crime in a tiny three-wheeled box that probably can’t even go on the highway. I have no idea what he’d do if he trapped an actual criminal – it doesn’t seem that a criminal of normal dimensions and a police officer could both fit into the box.

Anyhow, we had to abruptly leave the meeting because no matter how straight I sat, my throat, like the local sewers, could not cope with the sheer quantity of acid bathing it from the inside.

“Mylanta,” I sat there inwardly chanting. “This is the night.” I’d done my research on what to get on the web. We crept out of the meeting. We needed dinner started, and it was dreadfully rainy, and we had only one umbrella with us, there were oreos crumbs bathed in acid creeping back up into my throat, and I needed Mylanta.

We went out of the way to the favorite local deli run by Mexicans, who only carried the liquid kind. I needed the other kind, that you chew. That M sent me, a wife increasingly dyspeptic in both senses, home with the umbrella and sloshed exposed to the unpleasant elements and in his work clothes, to an obscure, late-night, well-stocked Bangladeshi pharmacy to get me some baby blue minty Mylanta tablets, is proof of how much he loves me. The man should have a cape with an M on it. M for Mylanta. M for M.

Calcified foodstuffs and I have been at war for a while. But for the first few days, I had never tasted anything so delicious in my life.

“Yum, honey!!” I would shout through a mouthful. “We could chop this stuff up and put it on ice cream – seriously!”

Just typing that now makes me gag. At a certain point, I hit the wall. I’d like to be able to remember and say the pithy saying about love being fickle, but I am too pregnant for my brain to achieve that sort of targeted recall; please recite the saying to yourself.

PAPAYA
I learned in the self-satisfied birthing class we took a class at an institution I find incredibly annoying because 1. They try to convince you that your obstetrician, should you have one, is likely out to get you to make bad decisions and 2. They make pregnant women – sit on the floor for 3 hour classes. As if a normal 37 year old could withstand that sort of torture. However, I really did like our teacher.

Anyhow – to start that sentence over: I learned that papaya tablets are supposed to be helpful in managing heartburn. Naturally. “Naturally!” I thought. I thought that my whole life was going to be better / different.

I picked some out at the health food store. The label said to check with a health care provider so I called my sister in law who is a nurse practitioner, naturopath, and pregnant. She also has really sucky heartburn so I knew I would have her ear. She thought it sounded good.

I take about 3 after each meal and it does quell the hiccups. But it didn’t fix it. Plus, I read that too much unripe papaya early on can trigger early labor.

On to the big guns . . .

PRILOSEC
Prilosec actually shuts down acid productions. Seems dicey – and the opposite of natural. Isn’t there some reason we need acid? Perhaps not floating up through our burp tubes into our eyeballs – but for digestion? I don’t know.

It doesn’t matter. I would like to work for the company who makes Prilosec. You take a course for 2 weeks, and it gives the esophagus a bit of room to heal. It stops constant burping and hiccupping and it mitigages the need to sleep upright. I would still never do anything so crazy as . . . sit on the couch. That is a position that doesn’t help digestion at all. But Prilosec helps the desperate!

diary of sick

2008-12-19T16:51:00.001-08:00

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.

The Big Show?

2008-12-17T07:16:00.000-08:00

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.

Plateau?

2008-12-16T19:32:00.001-08:00

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:

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.

my life in capsule:

2008-12-11T09:20:00.000-08:00

1. i have constant heartburn.
2. do you need a cat?

Rules

2008-12-11T08:29:00.000-08:00

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.

Hunger

2008-11-18T08:31:00.000-08:00

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.

omg what do we need

2008-11-15T07:38:00.000-08:00

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

Shopsins

2008-11-13T13:26:00.001-08:00

what people say when you're pregnant

2008-11-10T13:30:00.001-08:00

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.

Election!! And Stories About Butterscotch.

2008-11-05T06:16:00.001-08:00

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.

On Voting

2008-11-04T07:20:00.000-08:00

I pulled the lever.

I teared up at being able to vote for a person of color.

I ate a donut.

vote quote

2008-11-04T05:10:00.000-08:00

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?

Halloween Execution

2008-11-01T07:56:00.001-07:00

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!

Halloweeniac

2008-10-31T15:21:00.000-07:00

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!

More Somber Than Usual

2008-09-24T09:18:00.001-07:00

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.

Craving to Aversion

2008-09-01T15:04:00.000-07:00

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.

places i have recently spit

2008-08-12T10:01:00.000-07:00

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.

A Personal Compendium of Nausea-Related Policies, Coping Mechanisms, and Fun Facts

2008-08-06T06:10:00.000-07:00

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?

WHO AM I? AND WHAT CAN I EAT???

2008-08-04T06:15:00.000-07:00

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.

Making the Supertaster

2008-07-08T21:09:00.000-07:00

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:

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?

These questions all lead to the question of whether or not you have oversensitive taste buds. Unlightened coffee and scotch both have a bitterness which a supertaster would shy from. And oversalting food can tip the scales away from the bitter flavor naturally occurring in many foods. Bitter is why children don't like vegetables. My answers? I definitely need to mitigate my coffee with dairy; I find scotch rather bitter; artificial sweetener tastes like I imagine rat poison does; and I am a big fan of salt.

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.

I want my baby back

2008-05-22T19:34:00.000-07:00

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:

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.

Rooh Afza -- It's All Coming Together

2008-03-24T12:55:00.000-07:00

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?

I have filled the house with pudding, and now am systematically emptying it.

2008-02-12T10:15:00.001-08:00

Obviously, too busy to write much. Aside from, happy birthday to my mom!

Yellow Cake in Multiple Formats

2008-02-03T06:41:00.001-08:00

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.

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.

(I also made shrimp taco filling with lime, garlic, red onion, chili pepper flakes, and cumin--and okra and corn taco filling.)

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.

Schnitzi Schnitzl: Around the World But Close to Home

2008-01-28T06:31:00.000-08:00

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

Happy New Year from Brighton Beach! or [the russian symbols won't paste]

2008-01-04T07:02:00.000-08:00

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!

Settled in at last. Want to know what we are eating?

2006-11-12T14:54:00.000-08:00

The entire idea for the blog has changed. Why? Because we no longer can look to Church Avenue as the main drag where we will eat. We are still living South of Church Avenue, probably about a mile. But the new focus will be to explore edible things on Church Ave. and South--out towards Coney Island, which we are getting eerily closer to. We're going to be doing some ethnic food tourism with Israeli sandwiches, Turkish food, Italian in Gravesend, Bangladeshi, maybe some Thai. Check back after we've eaten . . . .

2006-06-29T05:34:00.000-07:00

UPDATE: We're abandoningship. Well, not ship so much as our new place.

It's an irony that this place was where people came to drink in fresh air in the summer, because though the mold inspector we asked our landlords to hire called it fine, I can see from the readings that is has spore counts similar to a building that's been flooded. I've actually been diagnosed with asthma since we moved in our apartment. I now have purple flying saucer of an inhaler that for all its Jetsons charm, terrifies me. After some sturm and drang M and I have both decided to get out of here.

We did a brief search. The first house was around the corner, and we thought we might live there because it would be easy to carry all of our belongings over and we could save on movers.

I thought we might even save on boxes. "We could buy about 4," I thought, "and then fill them up, and then tote them over, and then unpack, and then tote them back" . . . it's an easy way to drive oneself crazy. It didn't work out anyhow: the owners were delightful, the current tenants were delightful, and the house itself was delightful, but we smelled mildew in the all-weather carpet on the back stairs leading up to the second floor of the house. Lately, M and I just walk around sniffing in then neighborhood. So I had to turn the lovely Irish dr. down and then I had to explain why. Luckily, instead of being offended, he probably just wrote me off as crazy.

We looked at another on the same block about 2 subways stops farther out. It's where M's mother stayed when she came to visit us a month ago. His mom was going to stay with us but I was afraid that the bad air, which gives me a horrible cough, would poison her, too, so we suggested a B&B. We didn't check this one out before she came and when we went for the first time, were were greeted by a plump (dead) bunny taxidermied on the newl post. What a fluffy tail! It's really the central focus when one walks in the house. I found it terrifying and delightful in perhaps equal measure.

The inside of the B&B was the second floor of one of these old houses, and it was actually a complete apartment, full of some bad furniture choices and someone else's clothing. M's mother is a huge sport though, and took it in stride, even though the proprietor demanded that she pay in cash and also explained that the lock on her door didn't necessarily function.

On our way over to the B&B to pick up M's mom, he and I stopped to ask which was the closest subway stop of a woman pulling weeds in her yard. She was very pleasant. In a twist of fate, that weed-pulling woman will likely be our new landlord.

Must go to work!!

2006-06-10T13:07:00.000-07:00

After a long day of priming the living room (which doesn't appear large to the naked eye but which contains hundreds of tiny, nearly unpaintable details) I was hoping that M and I and perhaps a few others would go to Jerk City, a chicken place on Church Avenue that was written up by Peter Meehan in the $25 and under column in the New York Times.

That article appeared in the food section just days after I'd come up with the idea for the blog, and it reinforced what I was already hoping: that Church Avenue is a wellstorm of low-priced ethnic wonders. I'd first read about a place called E & R (seen elsewhere as ENR) which Robert Sietsema wrote up in the Voice. To paraphrase his sentiments: you are stupid if you spend money at French restaurants in Manhattan, because this Haitian restaurant with terrible ambience where no one speaks English is better. I quickly disseminated that article to my boyfriend, to my friend at work, and to my friend John in order to perk up interest in a) exploring food in Brooklyn and b) being enthusiastic about an eating in a neighborhood that could go either way. (I am a food enthusiast but sometimes I need other enthusiasts to help me along to realize my dreams of eating delicious food.) All of these people nodded vigorously, and I became very cheerful.

(I think that E & R has changed hands, but here is the article, in case you are interested:

http://www.villagevoice.com/nyclife/0044,sietsema,19402,19.html)

These events led me to looking around for writings about other Church Avenue places, and I found some, and then the piece about the chicken joint appeared.

http://events.nytimes.com/2006/05/24/dining/reviews/24unde.html

I was delighted to see it there, but M pointed out that it's pretty sad that NYC is so pricey that the $25 and under column is relegated to chicken shacks way, way in the outer boroughs. He does sort of have a point.

We wanted to go, though, and would have if we hadn't been distracted by some leftover fried chicken left over from a very succesful fried-chicken and Jaws-watching party we'd been to the night before, an event designed to kick off the summer season. That chicken was from Dirty Bird, a place on 14th Street in Manhattan that boasts fried organic chicken. When it opened, rumor was that it wasn't salty enough, or spicy enough, but then the Dirty Birders realized their errors and from the taste of it, they also added a bunch of sugar to the mix--which is not a complaint. (Knowing that in the best of foods the line between sweet and savory is somewhat wiggly, I add both sugar and cinnamon to my spaghetti sauce but only when M isn't looking because it grosses him out. M, if you are reading this, I am just kidding honey, of course I would not do that to you.)

Because we love fried chicken and because we have been sulking about our lack of kitchen, our hosts from the night before had given us leftovers. During a particularly horrible part of the painting, we were therefore forced to stop and eat cold fried chicken which is even better than greasy hot fried chicken. M knew that it would ruin his taste for chicken but I didn't think it would matter. It did, however, curb my appetite. Not for poultry, but just in general. Instead of the Church Ave project, we decided to go out to Coney Island instead to say hello to the ocean. But after painting, I was too tired for even that. Eventually we went out for a walk and M steered us in the direction of Church to see what we could see.

What we saw is a complete split from one side of the street to the other. On the south side are gigantic old rarefied houses that you wouldn't imagine you'd find in Brooklyn. Where did they get shingles, why aren't there bars on the windows, etc. But the north side of Church Avenue is PURE brooklyn, with bodegas and kids in do-rags and a couple examples of the kind of car service that aren't even regulated by the Taxi and Limosine Commission.

After walking up and down a few blocks and realizing that we're far from any of the places I've read about except for E & R, which is closed, we happen into a brand-new Mexican place called La Huasteca. We're wondering whether they're closed, but they're not. Can we eat there? Yes. Do some drug dealers follow us into the restaurant? Yes. But they finish their business in the bathroom, quickly, and we're left with a bunch of nice Mexicans who basically speak no English but seem at the ready to give us Al Pastor tacos, and me a lime agua fresca.

We brought it home to eat and M actually glowed with pleasure at his enchiladas, whose tortillas had been passed through some rich mole sauce before they were filled with chicken, and then resauced with tomatillo. Even though I don't seek out mole, I do, as a maximalist, approve of multiple saucings for the same plate of food. My tacos al pastor were actually pork in red sauce accidentally, but I also really enjoyed it. We have since been back and I will write further about that meal but in brief, El Huasteca has cleaner flavors and fresher-seeming food that our local Mexican on Cortelyou, called Cinco de Mayo. I will defend Cinco de Mayo to the death in part because it's one of the only restaurants REALLY close to our house, because since living in Texas I love all real Mexican food. However, we both *love* La Huasteca. They have many different kinds of soup, including a ranchera-style tortilla soup, as well as chicken caldo. The quesadillas are on flour tortillas (as opposed to the unusual cornboats that CdM serves) and the pico de gallo is chunky, bright, and hot.

Unfortunately, I haven't yet been to other Church Avenue restaurants.

This is for a few reasons:

During the week ,we work too late to consider straying too far for dinner, and even though Church Avenue is only 3 blocks up, it's still 3 long blocks up.

The REAL reason, though, is because the real project at hand is the house project. And while we've made some steps forward, we've also taken some steps back. I will tell you a little bit about our house using LISTS as a medium.

LIST OF GOOD THINGS ABOUT OUR HOUSE:
1. M and I live in it together
2. It doesn't cost very much
3. The ceilings are weirdly fantastic: 6 different tin ceilings
4. There are picture moldings on the walls, so it's sort of like we live in a castle
5. It is 1 block from the Q, which is an express train that takes M and I to work
6. There is a family of baby kitties in the backyard, and even M., who is theoretically opposed to kitties, realizes how excellent it is to have a pile of kittens outside. He might call it a tableau vivant, because that is the sort of thing he calls things. We can't get to them since we can't get down into the yard, which M. thinks is fine but I think is bad because c'mon, it would be good to pet these kitties AT LEAST ONCE but he knows where it would go. But we, and the cat we already live with, can watch them through the window. In this way, it is like we are at the zoo, but it is like WE are at the zoo, and the kitties are the patrons, since we are the people locked in and they are the free ones frolicking around through the weeds, which are very tall, so the tiny ones have to hop, which is enormously cute. I don't think they paid to get into the yard, though. They are feral.

Okay, 6 is enough for now. Don't want to exhaust them all at once. I will try to think of a succint list of bad things about the house:

LIST OF ONLY 5 BAD THINGS ABOUT OUR HOUSE
1. It makes me cough
2. This is because we have a mold condition but we don't know where it's coming from
3. We don't really have walls in the kitchen and if we want them, we have to pay to get them. Same with a vent in the bathroom, which is perilously small and in a weirdly public part of the apartment.
4. The house has recently settled even further and the bathroom door, formerly very wonky, now won't even close, and if you do force it, you are afraid that the pressure will be the final force that makes the back wall fall off into the back yard.
5. There are acoustical tiles first thing when you walk in the door which everyone--or everyone with eyes, at least--hates.
6. Pigeons hang out on our ledge in front, which is bad except for the fact that it makes M suggest nearly every day that we get an owl, which is a really interesting idea.

Would more birds really help us?

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

A good piece of news is that despite the fact that our sink is on sawhorses and we don't have walls in the kitchen, we've actually been using it. More later.

The Idea

2006-05-25T10:32:00.000-07:00

I am a tiny bit tired of New York, maybe a little bit ready to move out of the city. But it isn't time to move out yet. New York is big and deserves credit for lots of different kinds of neighborhoods, so why not seek a new one out? My strapping yet civilized boyfriend, M, felt much the same way. When it recently came time for us to join households, we decided to move to a new neighborhood in Brooklyn, one with bigger houses, lower rents, swaying trees, stay-at-home dads.

Ditmas Park is a turn of the century "suburb" of New York within the city itself. It's a place with enormous trees and 11 bedroom Victorian houses, some of which have turrets. It's said that wealthy New Yorkers retreated here to escape cholera here during the summers, though the person I hear saying that most is me, and I can't remember quite where I heard it.

We're very much middle-class Brooklynites who are retreating here to escape escalating rents. We were seriously considering $2400 apartments before we settled on this place, but this far out in South Brooklyn hasn't reached the frenzied pace that our last neighborhoods have. In fact, we chose a place where the deposit for our apartment was exactly $100.

As we searched for a new neighborhood, I knew that I'd wanted to live somewhere superlative in at least one way--and this certainly fit into that category. Super big houses. On the other side of a ridge that precludes us from even seeing Manhattan. Very low rent on a 100plus year old house, but a lot of work that we'd have to do ourselves.

Lest you think we've moved to either Chappaqua or Staten Island, Ditmas Park also claims a a growing gay population and an elementary school where 52 languages are spoken. In other words, it's diverse. Afghanis, Mexicans, fill in the blank, I guarantee that there are some of them here. Would you like to see someone in a chador? Come on over! I guarantee you a good parking spot. Except, please pack a lunch, and pack one for us, too:

None of these interesting people seem to be cooking too much delicious food for us to eat.

There aren't too many restaurants, or at least, the kinds of restaurants that we think of when we think of such. Ditmas residents are said to have pooled together to lure another restaurant to the neighborhood, and it's under construction right now: it will be exactly the second gentrified restaurant in the neighborhood--but even the ethnic places don't seem to be abounding on the main drag of the neighborhood where we live.

Since we've decided to settle in a bit more than usual, we thought that was okay. What we *didn't* realize was that our kitchen in our fixer-upper rental would need to be wholly remodelled and that the only contractor we could afford would take a long vacation in Guyana before he could help us. We moved in a month ago, and in that time we've been limited to things that either cross the threshold already warm or are simply toasted.

So welcome to Church Avenue Chomp. This is where we hope to explore and report upon what Church Avenue has to offer. Church Avenue is a commercial strip's several blocks to the north: a bustling bazaar of things that we might like to eat. It's a utopia of lower-middle class ethnic groups in Brooklyn. Caribbean? Polish, Russian, Dominican, these are the things we are hoping for. More later!