WTF?!

Well, that’s a much cleaner and succinct way of conveying my initial reaction when I finally got around to Googling the trailer for The Time Traveler’s Wife, but you get the idea.  The trailer does a not-completely-half-assed job at conveying the storyline, the requisite tug-at-your-heartstrings music is well placed, and the casting is not completely unforgivable.  I was even moved to tears – but not because of the stupid song or seeing that some of my favorite scenes from the novel survived the cutting room floor or even the grudging realization that Rachel McAdams may actually be able to pull off Clare (although I still think it should have been Lauren Ambrose) – I felt tears welling up because HELLO THIS MOVIE WAS FILMED IN CANADA.

The Field Museum, the CSO, the Art Institute, the Newberry Library, Bookman’s Alley…

Perspective

There will be no more whining about how much I miss distance running, all of the lost marathon opportunities, or my stupid prolapsed pelvic organs.  My husband was just diagnosed with severe rheumatoid arthritis.  He’s only 33.  Bah!

Addendum:  Mar tells me I can still whine, a little bit.  Because if he ever needs robot feet, he thinks that would be SO COOL.  Argh!  He’s right, though – it would be as if I married Mr. Heavyfoot, my all-time favorite KITH character.  And who doesn’t love Mr. Heavyfoot? (If you disagree, I will crush your head!)  Hey, he even ran a marathon!  30 Helens Agree – robot feet would not be so bad.

Sayonara, Snooze Button!

I’m not usually a joiner – I prefer to hang out on the periphery, do my own thing.  But this really cool “participatory social media event for every month of 2009,” Experimonth, has sucked me in!  Every month of this year, a different 30-day experiment takes place.  The complete list is here; the hyperlinks take you to either the blogs of completed/in progress experiments, or to a sign up page for those to come.  The goal of June’s experiment, entitled “It’s five o’clock somewhere.” is to wake up at 5 am every morning for the month of June.

Here’s my first post about my experience so far:

Sayonara, Snooze Button!

2009 June 9

by windycityvegan

I stumbled across Experimonth at the end of March, just before Get the Lead Out was set to begin.  Oh. My. God! I thought, how cool is this? The thing is, the reason I thought it was so cool was because I was already sending things via post back to my friends and family in Chicago nearly every day – a little deal I’d made with myself so I wouldn’t feel so homesick (and so I would stop calling them on my way to work, when they were all still blissfully asleep – who knew one little time zone change would make them so cranky?).  I ultimately decided not to join Experimonth, because it felt too much like cheating.

Ditto for May’s Mileage May Vary.  Having recently moved from the heart of Chicago to 15 acres in Saxapahaw, NC, I easily walk a mile every day just chasing my toddler around the property or taking her for a run in the jogger along back country roads.  I also run every single day on my lunch break.  So – again with the sense of cheating.

Finally out of excuses, June’s Experimonth couldn’t have come at a better time.  Sure, there was some hemming and hawing – I already get up at 5 o’clock every day for work, I thought smugly to myself; this will be a piece of cake quickly gave way to will participating really impact my life that much? And then my alarm went off at five o’clock on Monday morning, and I was suddenly aware of something I had been conveniently ignoring for several months now – I like to hit the snooze button.  A lot.  My husband alleges that I do it every single day, but he’s not including the mornings I get up with our daughter when it’s still dark as pitch outside.  Those count, right?

Anyway, this is the month that I got on board, and after nine days I’m already a happier person for deciding to participate.  I have a satisfying work-life balance; it’s my family-self balance that needs adjusting.  Before having my daughter, I was fiercely selfish about my alone time – that is SO not the case anymore.  Getting up at 5 a.m. has helped me recapture some of that.

During the week, it was little things:   getting in a full hour of yoga before leaving for work, walking the gardens, uninterrupted reading.  Even throwing in a load of laundry and doing the dishes was different without the clamor of my family around me, almost like meditation.  This past weekend I took a walk around my new little town, camera in hand:

It’s pure luck that these photos turned out at all – you don’t want to know how many I took total.  But I’m hoping to document a few more of my mornings as I discover things that make me thankful for this precious alone time.

I know, I know…

I haven’t been around.  Did anyone miss me, out here in the great wide open of the blogosphere?  I’ve been busy, life hasn’t passed me by – I took a blissful trip, ALONE!!, back to my beloved Chicago and to visit my very best friend in the whole wide world to spend one last child-free extended weekend with her… she went into labor two days after I left (Welcome home, Gabriel Robert!).  I’ve read several books – two of them on the aforementioned trip, one good, one not.  I’ve been cooking like a fool – homemade coconut peach ice  cream, pasta with caramelized onions and fresh marjoram, homemade tots (SO much better than those frozen turds from the grocer – thank you, Hardy Boys, for the inspiration! (the restaurant, not the detective duo, you silly readers)) and of course, lots and lots of bread.  But when it comes down to it, I’ve just not been in the mood to share.  That phase has passed and I’ll probably have something to say about some of these topics – or maybe not.  I don’t know.  Well, at least about the books (A.M. Homes, how could you let me down?).  And the food.  Oh, alright, I’m sure I’ll have lots to say – but later, because right now I’ve got to lace up my running shoes and check out a new campus route.

yoga with a toddler

Assume Mountain pose, heels slightly apart and second toes parallel.  Breath deeply and feel your body lengthen from your arches through your thighs, your core, your neck, the crown of your head.

Begin with your preferred Sun Salutation, moving slowly with each breath.  Perform five salutations, or as many as needed until your mind is focused and any tension has melted away.

With your next breath, move into Downward-Facing Dog.  Press your hands into your mat, extend your tailbone, and lower your heels towards the floor.  Hold this pose for five counts.  With each inhalation, feel your tailbone rising and your spine lengthening.  With each exhalation, let your hands ground themselves and your heels reach further towards the floor.

Lower yourself into plank position, back straight and forearms on the floor.  Curl your toes under and press your heels back.  Hold this pose for two counts.

With your next breath, move into Cobra.  Begin to straighten the arms and lift your chest off of the floor –

“SLIDE!!”

Brace yourself as your toddler lunges onto your shoulders and attempts to slide down the curvature of your back.  Slowly lower yourself back onto your mat.  Call for help, if necessary.  This concludes today’s session.

short story review

I’m going out on a limb here and am recommending both a novel and a collection of short stories that I haven’t read yet.  They are The Children’s Hospital and A Better Angel, by Chris Adrian.

I just finished Adrian’s uncollected short story “A Tiny Feast” in the 20 April New Yorker.  It’s a story about a child with leukemia, told from the perspective of his immortal parents – for you see, the boy is a changeling, and they’ve never had to deal with sickness before.  I don’t want to say anything else; my description does not do this story justice.

Chris Adrian is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, something that I hold in such high regard (only pertaining to short stories, don’t even get me started on the tragic literary disaster that is Thisbe Nissen) that almost nothing else ever trumps it.  However, he also has completed a pediatric residency at UCSF, is attending Harvard Divinity School, and is finishing up a fellowship in pediatric hematology oncology.  All of these experiences have informed his writing; he makes what could be a horrifying and depressing event into something magical and transcendent.

I’ll probably devour A Better Angel this weekend, and then I’ll spend the rest of the month hunting down his uncollected shorts.

If you are so inclined, you can read the version of “A Tiny Feast” as published in the New Yorker here.

This glass will remain half full, dammit

Yesterday was just one of those days, one thing after another going wrong until the only way I can think of to blow off that much steam is to go for a really long, hard run, ticking off the miles and pounding the hills as my mind goes numb and my anger dissipates. Ironically, therein lies the rub. As it turns out, my distance and hill running days are O-V-E-R.

After meeting with multiple specialists, each one better and more knowledgeable than the next, I had yet another consult yesterday with someone who finally spelled things out in black and white, with no wiggle room to form subjective conjectures full of false hope. In addition to some inconveniently permanent nerve damage, I also have multiple pelvic organ prolapse, and am not a candidate for surgery. In a few years I will run out of options and will have to resort to surgery, which may actually worsen my condition. On top of all of that, I was experiencing my third round of unexplained nausea over the past two weeks. I’ve been waiting to schedule a tubal ligation because I may end up having an oophorectomy, but am worried about the side effects of losing my ovaries at the age of 36. Suddenly, the possibility of going through early menopause was looking like the least of my problems.

There are three things that saved the day from being a total disaster. First, the specialist is a runner herself, and instead of sugar coating things and giving me a bunch of bull about cross training, we immediately engaged in a passionate discussion about speed work. Oh, to own a pair of racing flats again! Back when I used to run sub-9:00s, I could justify owning them. But after I developed asthma and then had a few stress fractures and then had Nina and the whole mess of issues that resulted from her L&D, well, they were a distant memory. But believe me, if I have to give up marathons, I will find some new way to focus that running energy.  I spent the afternoon Googling my old race splits and looking at racing flats, and started formulating a new training schedule.

The second thing was that I made the most amazing soup last night (recipe here).

The third? You guessed it – Nina is still an only.  Happy happy, joy joy!

I knew that New Yorker subscription would eventually pay off

When I was at university, most of the guys I chased after looked like this:

When I was out of university, most of the guys I chased after looked like this:

I’m not above recommending these identical twin poets based on cuteness (just look at them!). As it turns out, they are also both incredibly talented writers. After reading about them in the New Yorker a few weeks ago, I decided to check out their work and decide for myself. I cannot tell you how moved I was – if I were still single, I have no shame in admitting that I would have hopped a plane to their next poetry reading just so I could ogle them in person (at the very least). Since I’m still swooning over how absolutely adorable they both are, I don’t fully trust myself to give their writing an objective review. Instead, you can read about them here, here, here, or here.

The books I picked up are:

The Girl Who Cried “Mine!”

Nina has finally started using the word “mine,” and it’s accompanied by tantrums I never envisioned in my worst parenting scenarios.  Most of this weekend it was tolerable, even humorous – drunk with power, she started wielding the word so frequently that she’d say it without any actual material object in mind, then look around flummoxed until she zeroed in on something to stake her claim.  A remote control, stuffed animal, caterpillar – everything was fair game.  What I didn’t anticipate was that she would use  it while helping me in the garden.  I was transplanting a couple dozen heirloom tomato and pepper plants and thought she might enjoy helping me dig around in the dirt.  Unfortunately, Ninazilla had plans of her own – after I got a row planted, she would stomp over to the poor plants, screech “MINE!!” at the top of her lungs, and then pull them out of the ground.

I finally gave up and decided to go inside and do some baking.  In the middle of the afternoon.  When it was over 90 degrees outside.  The heat doesn’t bother me, but I don’t live by myself.  Poor Mario – between preheating the oven and baking two boules, I had the oven going at almost 500 degrees for several hours.  Nina must take after me, though…the heat didn’t slow her down one bit.  Damn.  The bread turned out quite well, though.

Nina also extended her dominion to include the strawberries I picked up at the market.  She would bite into them one by one, screwing her face up in disgust when she bit into a seed, throw the berry down, and then exclaim “mine!” as she reached for another.  So, the strawberries became strawberry mini muffins, which we knew she would actually eat (another favorite word is CAKE).  But even the muffins didn’t escape her territorial clutches; she would sneak into the kitchen, and one by one throughout the afternoon, she bit just the tops off of all the muffins.  When we asked her about it later, she just smiled and said, “mine!”  This is going to be a long summer.

Weekend pictures

My sister and brother flew in from Chicago to hang out with us last weekend. Thank goodness they both brought cameras, I never think to take photos…

With Aunt Jennifer

With Uncle Nicholas. Go Cubs!

Doing a pull up at the playground. Have I mentioned that Nina is freakishly strong?

She loved her new sunglasses, wouldn't even take them off for a bath.

One of my all time favorite pictures of Nina...

Breakfast of champions

What do you do when you’ve got ripe bananas and no one will touch them? You make cookies, of course.

Nina was up early today and we made these at the crack of dawn, so as far as I’m concerned, they count as breakfast food. She wolfed down a cookie before they were even cool, and Mario will probably eat the rest of them in the next couple of days. You can see the recipe here.

lazy days of summer

This picture pretty much sums up our week:

Look closely, and you will see a nearly solid sheet of water just a few feet behind Nina.  It rained, and then it rained some more, a 48 hour torrential downpour.  I wasn’t able to go running, so I decided to make a double batch of cupcakes instead.  Between the pizza last Sunday, the cookies at the beginning of the week, and now the cupcakes, I was burned out on making anything that takes more than a few minutes.  As a result, we’ve been basically eating picnic food the past few days.  Granted, it is yummy picnic food – hummus, guacamole, homemade veggie burgers, orzo salad – but it is still picnic food.  The most ambitious thing I made was quinoa tabbouleh, and that was only because I had vegetables coming out of my ears and I didn’t want to throw anything away.  It was pretty good, though (recipe here).

As soon as the sun came out Nina suited up and made a bee line for a basin of rain water.  The flowers were happy, too.

Back to civilization!

Well, maybe civilization is too strong a word – I love my little microcosm of flora, fauna, and family. But I’m a city girl at heart, and I was starting to feel like I was trapped in a terrarium! A really pretty one, but still – trapped is never a good feeling. Add to that the not so startling revelation that stay-at-home parenting is not my calling, and it was time to get back on the workhorse. So, I wrapped up my incredibly long summer vacation, went for one last leisurely mid-week run, and reëntered the workforce (hence my absence from the blogosphere).

It’s a happy coincidence that my first couple of job offers fell through, because they would have put me out in suburbia – which is my personal ninth circle of hell. Instead, I am working in Chapel Hill – a gorgeous campus, surrounded by brainiacs, hippies, and even a few brainiac hippies…suffice it to say I have found my niche. No, it’s not Chicago, but it’s progressive and beautiful and besides, when I need my big city fix, we’ll just take a long weekend in NYC. 

Homage to Sweet Corn

Sweet corn is one of my favorite foods – something easily attributed to growing up in Iowa, but most likely because one of my uncles was a sweet corn farmer (before the days of GMO crops, thank you very much). As far back as I can remember, every summer when his harvest was at its peak, a weekend would be staked out on the calendar and dedicated to freezing enough corn to get us through the winter. My siblings and I were relegated to husking dozens upon dozens of ears of corn, a simple task that I still dread to this day. But the payoff was always worth it.

As an adult I’ve become a bit of a sweet corn snob, and refused to so much as sample the offerings at the markets in Chicago. Last summer my friend Amy who still lives in Iowa, and wholeheartedly understands my aversion to non-Iowa corn, graciously went to her local farmers’ market and bought me a carload of the best sweet corn she could find, drove six hours to deliver it, and even helped me shuck, cut, and freeze it all. Now that I live in North Carolina, my Iowa sweet corn days are O V E R. Every week at the local farmers’ market in Carrboro, I stalk past the sweet corn vendor, throwing sidelong glances at the throngs of people lined up to buy this corn of theirs. No way, I think to myself. I’ll just learn to live without. *Dramatic sigh*. I think we’ve established that I’m a teensy bit stubborn, but my curiosity finally got the best of me…and I have to admit, I was wrong. Oh, I am so happy I was wrong! It was some of the best sweet corn I’ve ever tasted, and I’m counting the hours until the next farmers’ market when I will buy as many ears as I can carry.

I missed the boat on canning tomatoes this year, but I will be freezing sweet corn all weekend long, and I can hardly wait! Pulling a bag of sweet corn from the frosty depths of the freezer, slowly coaxing it to melt, and then simmering it to perfection – it’s a winter ritual that I always look forward to. Nothing beats eating it fresh off the cob, and I’ve gone summers where I literally did so every day. But the stew I made last night reminded me that there are a million and one ways to prepare those glorious little golden kernels…and I will figure out as many of them as possible before next summer. The aforementioned stew was both sweet and savory, with sweet corn, sweet potatoes, red bell pepper, chickpeas…and a little dash of cinnamon and splash of maple syrup to round things out. You can find the recipe here.

Celebrity crush

I’ll be the first to admit, my celebrity crushes have been a little unorthodox. Sure, I had a fairly normal tween fascination with Remington Steele, Michael P. Keaton, and pretty much every guy in St. Elmo’s Fire; but as soon as I upgraded my library card and discovered MTV’s 120 Minutes (nothing beats 80s punk/alternative music in my heart) I fell off the Teen Beat bandwagon for fellas with a little more character. Suddenly, I was swooning over the protagonist in The Stand, the lead singer of Fugazi, Ducky in Pretty in Pink. All right, everyone fell for Ducky, but you know what I mean.

As an adult I’ve widened my circle of infatuation to the likes of Woody Allen, Mo Rocca, Ira Glass, David Sedaris – guys who are so good with words that I just want to pick their brains and find the loci of their wit and wisdom. I can get my geek chic fix quite easily by popping in Annie Hall, turning on NPR, re-reading a short story. I’ve even seen Glass in person (twice!) and had to restrain myself from rushing the stage and snatching those glasses right off his adorable little face.

Somehow my affections have expanded to include a few celebrity chefs. There’s just something about watching them exploring the alchemy of food, manipulating flavors and textures and acidity. Bittman, Bayless, Trotter, and just about anyone who’s french – as long as they aren’t some overindulgent fatty like Mario Batalli, they have my attention. At some point Bobby Flay made it onto my radar, and to my chagrin, he stayed there. Nothing really sets him apart from the rest; in fact his schtick can be quite grating. But after I read an article about him cookin’ it up in the Big Easy, I couldn’t stop thinking about his johnny cakes.

Anywho, the point I’m slowly ambling towards is that Mr. Flay will be at the NC State Fair in a few days, and I’m trying to talk myself out of attending his performance. Maybe it’s my newfound interest in southern foods, but I’ve had a case of the bobbys ever since I moved to this little corner of the world. If I almost traveled all the way to France a few years ago with the intent of a Sedaris sighting high on my itinerary, who knows what I’d do in such close proximity to Flay? Now that I think about it, my infatuation would probably be stopped dead in its tracks, since he’s a carnivore with a big fat capital C. Skimming over a recipe or zoning out during one of his programs is easy to do, but having it right in front of me is another matter entirely. I guess I just found my winning argument. That’s all right, though – I’ve got my eye on Sedaris’ public appearances schedule, so I will get my celebrity crush fix sooner or later.

VeganMoFo

Whoops, just about missed the boat on this one. October is VeganMoFo – which is a really fun way of saying Vegan Month of Food. MoFo! The idea is for vegan bloggers to write as much as possible about being vegan, and most vegans I know – especially the food bloggers – have been at it all month. Unfortunately, my food blog has been sitting idle (as has this one) now that I’m working. Plus, I’ve renewed my obsession with knitting, and I’ve been at it with a vengeance. I’m limited to projects that can be done on circular needles, because I am very nervous about what Nina will do when she finally gets a hold of my regular pointy ones. This weekend is my birthday, which is just an excuse to buy more yarn. Actually, I’m flaunting my birthday status to make sure we get a bunch of things done this weekend:

1. VOTE!!!! We are voting tomorrow, even if it means taking the Neenster with us and taking turns to vote. She’ll probably scale a voting booth or show off her new jumping skillz (while wearing her slightly-too-big froggy boots) to a bunch of strangers, providing some comic relief, and possibly resulting in an injury depending on her balance. She jumps with a lot of force, but hasn’t quite mastered landing. It’s really awesome when she jumps so hard that one of her boots flies off; I’ll try to get a picture next time that happens.
2. Finding the best yarn store around these parts so that I can replenish my dwindling stash. It’s either that, or hitting the Le Creuset store for another addition to my kitchen…
3. I need new boots, and I refuse to buy them online – unless J Crew can make them materialize in my hands as soon as I punch in my credit card number, even next day air isn’t good enough.

That was a lot of rambling about mostly nothing. It’s my birthday, so I don’t care. We are also making Nina’s Halloween costume this weekend, and if we can find the time, I want to visit a pumpkin patch. Yep, I’m beating this birthday thing into the ground! We were originally going to spend a long weekend in New York, splitting our time between Farm Sanctuary in Watkins Glen, and Brooklyn. I put the kibosh on that – I want Nina to be old enough to appreciate a visit to FS, plus we see goats and horses every day on our runs, and we have deer on our property all the time.

Even if you’re not vegan, you still need your veggies. So don’t forget – MoFo!

Snow!

I had no idea how much I missed snow until I saw it this morning.  Happy Friday to me!  For my running friends out there, you will understand how difficult it was not to suit up and sneak a couple of miles in before heading in to work.  Nothing beats feeling the crunch of fresh snow under your feet while new flakes land softly on your face, feather soft and melting instantly.  Instead, I fed the cats and made my morning espresso.  This photo that I took with my phone will have to suffice for now because I didn’t have time to upload the ones I took with the camera at 5:30 this morning.

Could this day get any better…?

I don’t have to go to France to meet David Sedaris. He’s going to be in my ‘hood this coming April. Giddyup! Tickets go on sale at 10 o’clock this morning, and I’m watching the clock like a hawk.

one of us, one of us, one of us…

Knowing that my extremely hyper daughter will be up in just a couple of hours, one of my oldest and closest friends is visiting for a much-too-short weekend and I want to get the most out of every waking moment, and I am fighting to keep my eyes open to the point of contemplating propping them open Clockwork Orange style, what in the hell am I still doing up?

Considering that I dropped almost two hundred dollars on yarn this afternoon for a couple of projects that I painstakingly selected after much deliberation and planning over the past few weeks, I SHOULD be knitting, if anything.

But no, instead, I have been sucked into the bandwagon zeitgeist of the moment, also known as …

.

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wait for it …

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.

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TWILIGHT.

GodDAMmit! Me, who feels genuine pity (and more than just a touch of disgust) for those who don’t appreciate or have the intellectual capacity to understand the sheer genius of The Corrections, actually got sucked in. I’ll hang my book snob head in abject denial as I do the walk of shame to the best seller’s display at whatever Big Box Bookseller is stocking the next installment of the series. And then I’ll rush home like the rest of the masses and tear through it just as fast as I can, only to continue the cycle until I’ve completed all four of them.

I wish I could fully succumb to the guilty pleasure of reading Twilight. I really do. Unfortunately, I have the entire playlist of They Might Be Giants…Here Come the 123’s! running through my head at the same time.

Cake vs. Pie – New Year’s Day Throwdown!

Oh, if only it could be that simple. It’s more like gluten-free cake vs. vegan pie, but it will still be yummy.

The Carusos are throwing down for Nina’s birthday, and taking on food allergies at the same time.

How did I get roped into this? I’m not one for throwing parties, but two things changed that forever:

(1) I had a kid

(2) She was born on New Year’s Day

Since Nina is “deprived” of things like fast food, cable television, most plastic toys, and anything that might be purchased at a big box store, I thought I had it easy. No ridiculous, self-imposed pressure to set the mood by festooning the house with her favorite cartoon character, pre-ordering an overpriced cake, or pulling some other Momzilla move that would just overwhelm the poor girl, when she isn’t even old enough to grasp the significance of what we’re celebrating.

As it turns out, Nina is obsessed with the “High Five” song on her new TMBG counting CD, so we have a theme to work with – she will probably spend the entire afternoon trilling “five!” and holding her tiny hand up expectantly for all passersby to slap. And all food served must be dairy, egg, gluten, soy, and nut free. It’s a good thing I like to cook, because I am not a chips and dip kinda gal.

I’m getting excited about pushing my culinary boundaries, but I won’t be able to really plan the menu until tomorrow. Our party isn’t until Saturday, so I have plenty of time. Hopefully things will turn out well – I will post photos and recipes in a few days.

This should make any food resolutions a piece of cake, ha ha ha.

Happy New Year!

Argh!

There is a reason why I run – I have absolutely no coordination whatsoever, and moving in a straight line seems to be the path to least injury or embarrassment.

Yesterday I thought I would trade in my daily lunch hour run for a sculpting class.  Little did I know that “sculpt and tone” is code for “Jazzercize-esque step aerobics torture with a wee little bit of pseudo sculpting sprinkled in as an afterthought.”

Yeah, I made an ass of myself.  You betcha, I did!  In an effort to throw people off of the fact that I can barely walk today, I am wearing the highest heels I could find in my closet.  I may only have a 4″ stride and look like a geisha tip toeing on ice, but it’s better than trying to affect a normal walk and groaning every time I move.

And now for a brief service interruption.

My life is in absolute chaos until the end of the month, as I’m a slave to deadlines and my job is nothing but until the 28th.  I even gave up my daily run last Friday, came into the office on my day off, AND worked several hours from home, so you know I mean business.   Keeping Nina and her orange  crayon away from my paperwork was an exercise in futility, so now I also have some artwork for my walls.  Thankfully, due to a two inch snowstorm (so wrong, but so true!) the office is quiet this morning.   I thought it was absolutely beautiful (and yes, I packed a new sports bra with a snowy lunch hour run in mind), but the collective anxiety of the other drivers was almost palpable.  Which makes me wonder about drivers in the South: I got hit by a car WITH NO DRIVER on Friday, and I experienced my first North Carolina “snow storm.”  What’s with these people?  More on that later – I have work to do!  Catch you all on the flip side.

Snow Day!

I have work to do, but I couldn’t resist throwing a few pics from Nina’s romp in the snow yesterday. I guess this much snow around these parts is a freak occurrence – who knows when Nina will see this much snow again?

You can't tell from this picture, but Nina is swiping the snow from our lawn chair with much force. Nothing is gentle with this girl!

Burying her froggie boots.

Sneaking off to the pond...so tiny, but so determined

off to find a bananafish

Ever since I picked up my first Salinger book in junior high, I’ve been enamoured with the Glass family, the whole lot of ‘em. I have a soft spot for Seymour in particular, which is why I can’t believe it took me over four years to figure out that my husband is just like him! From his skinny white shoulders to his droll sense of humor, Mario embodies Seymour Glass, inside and out.

For those of you who actually know who Seymour Glass is (excuse the sarcasm, but that’s probably one or two of you at most), you may think I have a penchant for tragic endings – well, don’t. Or, if the only way you know of Seymour is from Nine Stories, then shame on you! SHAME! ON! YOU! Do yourself a favor and read the rest of Salinger’s stories, post haste. Then you, too, will be able to see past Seymour’s heart-rending end, and appreciate the interplay of his wit, mood, and personality.

The same dichotomy exists within my Mario, and it’s fascinating.  Even on his worst days, when the world is all doom and gloom and he wants to build a bomb shelter or live off the grid (actually, given the state of things lately, those aren’t all together bad ideas – but I digress), he still has more creative energy than most people have in their left pinkies.

In fact, I bet he and Nina are out at the pond looking for a bananafish this very moment.

Scottish oats so simple it’s ridiculous!

I’m kind of an all-or-nothing person, especially when it comes to food. I think everything tastes exponentially better when it’s cooked from scratch, by someone who enjoys cooking from scratch…all that love and attention are imbued into the end result. Oatmeal - real oatmeal – is one of my comfort foods. I would love to eat it every morning, but I just don’t have the time to make it during the week…poor, deprived Monika, wasting away without her oatmeal, resorting to drinking espresso to get that morning jolt instead of a proper breakfast, her midday runs suffering because she isn’t properly fueled…

Rubbish!

My friend Tania, a fellow whole foods foodie and slow-cooking aficionado, mentioned in passing yesterday that her oatmeal was especially good that morning. “Oh, did you get the steel cut oats at Whole Foods on your way to work?” I queried, kicking myself that I was too cheap (and often running too late) to drive over there myself for a proper breakfast. She quickly informed me that no, of course not, she made them herself. IN HER CROCK POT. Why didn’t I ever think of this before?

One cup of steel cut oats, 4 – 4 1/2 cups water or milk (depending on how creamy you like them), a little brown sugar or maple syrup, set the crock pot on low, and let them cook all night. Voila! A real breakfast that even the most cooking-phobic person could make.

Oh, and I still had my morning triple espresso – who was I kidding?

Keepin’ it real

I’m no baby whisperer

Nina is stubborn.  I usually find this endearing, because she gets it from me.  Nina is also clever.  The one single thing that really freaks me out about parenting on a daily basis is that her language acquisition and pronunciation skills are a bit lacking.  I know this is rubbish, but it is the thing that I can’t let go of.  Nina has finally picked up on this, and it amuses her to no end.

Instead of creating phrases, Nina has started to refer to herself in the third person (as in “baby’s”), while at the same time gesticulating impatiently to get the other half of her request/story/question across.   Once in a while a phrase slips out, or she’ll combine a spoken word with sign language, but then it’s back to playing her version of charades.   Most of the time I know exactly what she’s communicating, but she finally stumped me the other night.  She went over to a drawer in the kitchen, pulled it open, pointed, and excitedly cried “baby’s!”  Trying not to discredit her communication skills, I asked, “Nina opened the drawer?  Um, good job!” – she shakes her head no and repeats a little more emphatically, “baby’s.”  “Nina wants something from the drawer?” – no.  “Nina put something in the drawer?” – no.  “Nina wants to get in the drawer?” – no!  She looks at me with her ’serious’ face, points directly to a seemingly random food storage container, and says very slowly, “ba-by’s.” “Nina wants the bowl?” – no.  “Nina wants to put something in the bowl?” – no.  You get the picture; this goes on for another five minutes until she stomps off into her room, clearly exasperated with her idiot mother.

A couple of weeks later, I come across this photo:

Nina has a bit of a hat fetish, but it never crossed my mind that she was trying to tell me about her new hat.  What I’m trying to remember now, though, is how amused my husband must have been, since (i) he was sitting at the table with us and saw my escalating frustration, and (ii) he is the one who took this freaking photo, and probably put the container on her head in the first place!

Fashionista

Nina’s naked phase is still in full swing, so when she shows any interest at all in wearing clothing, we are more than happy to give her a wide berth.  Here are a few of the outfits she’s put together recently:

You'd never guess it was almost 80 degrees outside this day

gardening attire

I have no idea why she's sniffing that ear of corn, but her Rolling Stones t-shirt is still cooler than mine!

Old hat, new threads

For Easter, I embellished one of Nina’s many hats:

chickadees (front)

bunnies (back)

I found the embroidery patterns here and whipped this up on Sunday morning, just in time for the neighborhood egg hunt.

Keeping in step with her recent choice of attire, Nina paired it with her froggie boots, flourescent pink fleece mittens, and a striped poncho.