Saturday, December 11, 2010

Snapshot of a marriage

This has been T's forty-first-birthday party day. I got him an olive-drab field jacket and some subdued flag and Appleseed patches to put on it. (Hey, it's more romantic than lots of the other things on his list -- like, say, the gas cap for his Charger -- although only marginally less expensive.) It's been a crazy-hectic but fun day.

Now we're both sitting on the couch, and I'm attempting to compose an abbreviated modern retelling of "The Gift of the Magi" (don't ask). T is providing valuable editorial advice. ("No, it's much better if he sold his collection of game cartridges and she bought him a vintage Atari system from eBay than it would be for her to buy the games and him to sell the system. Obviously!")

This one made me laugh very, very much:

T: He could sell his project-car Camaro to buy her one of those plastic hair clips at Wal-Mart. She sells her hair to buy him a shift knob for the Camaro.

Maybe you have to be a Dodge guy, or married to one, to get that. And if any Chevy guys read this -- don't shoot the messenger. Right?

(T says, "Hey, Chevy guys, don't get mad. It was a *really* nice two-tone hair clip.")

THE HIJINKS. Don't you wish this was your marriage?

Sunday, December 05, 2010

SHE'S ALIVE!!

I kept trying to write a 1,000-character Facebook post and finally gave up. Look! I'm using a blog. How does this thing work again?

I am tempted to do a big catch-up blog post but let's face it, if you know about this blog, you probably know about my Facebook page and my Twitter feed and you've been following my zany antics all along, so there's no point in that.

Why am I doing this again? Oh yeah. Too Many Characters.

All right, so I can't help it. Quick recap of the last oh, say, year of my life will be AT THE BOTTOM OF THIS POST.

Meanwhile:

I took C to the ballet this past weekend. We went to see the Nutcracker, of course. We wanted to go see this big fancy production of it in Fresno, with (I think) a live orchestra and a couple of her 4-H friends in the company, but we couldn't afford that, so we went to this smaller one put on in a smaller city -- actually in a small outlying suburb of a smaller city -- and it was really very nice. Two thumbs up, Merced Civic Ballet. As usual, watching any kind of production made me want to be involved somehow. Not in a ballet -- ha ha oh my gosh NO -- but in something with, you know, a stage, and an audience, and lights and curtains and that rush of happy adrenaline that you get when you're in front of a crowd as part of a group.

Wow, I have no idea where C gets her drama-queen tendencies. Do you?

Apropos of nothing, I am leading a 4-H Theater Arts project this upcoming year. I know you must be shocked. (I'm also leading photography and knitting/crocheting. Pray for my soul.)

This weekend overall has been a flurry of activity, mostly because of the craft fair where C was helping in the 4-H booth and selling some of her own little crafty things that she'd made herself. This afternoon while the boys are off at a Scout event, C and I are having a quiet afternoon at home, after doing something (some things) that, I realized later, would have totally humiliated me at the age of, say, fourteen or so. Are you ready for this SHOCKING STORY?

We 1) walked 2) to a yard sale (A YARD SALE OH MOM NO WAY WHAT IF SOMEONE SEES ME) and then we 3) walked home while I 4) carried a lampshade. I didn't think anything of it until after we were home, and of course it's nothing to me now, but I am relatively certain that there was a time in my life when I would have sported an attitude that would have filled my loving mother's head with filicidal fantasies before I would have carried a lampshade along the shoulder of a public road where someone from school might see me.

Man, being a teenager was lame.

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

I've been taking chemistry this semester, along with Online PE which is exactly as awesome as it sounds like it would be. I like chemistry, I really do; I love the mathiness and mad-scientistishness of it. I even like my instructor, which I didn't at first because she is one of those instructors who looks at anyone who approaches her with a question with an expression that says, "What the hell? How'd this cockroach get in here? JANITOR!" So that took some getting used to, and still, seventeen weeks into the semester, my lab group will do a round of rock-paper-scissors to decide who has to go up to the desk to face her withering scorn if we have a question we can't figure out among the four of us.

Oh yeah. QUICK recap. I have problems with "quick".

The kids are fine by which I mean that they are growing up far, far too fast and I can't seem to do anything about that so I have to just embrace it. C is eleven -- very, very eleven, with all the drama and joy that the word implies. We have so, so much fun together. She has a new BFF, whom she actually calls her bee-eff-eff. She wrote a 15,000-word novel for the Young People's NaNoWriMo in November and it's actually not half-bad, especially for something written by an eleven-year-old at a rate of a thousand words per day. NSLT is [counts on fingers] fourteen and a half and is now the tallest member of our extended family at 6'1". (My dad used to be taller than that, but then he had back trouble.) He got his first pair of glasses in November. He looks like A MAN. There is an additional MAN LIVING IN MY HOUSE NOW. He needs to SHAVE. He and his dad go out and work on their car projects together and HE ENJOYS IT. He draws pictures on his church bulletins of HIS CAR DOING A BURNOUT. Like I said: a man! I am totally not making this up.

T is forty-one (well, he will be in three days) and is exactly the same as he was when he was thirty. Maybe he's a wee bit more grim in his expression, if that is possible, but he is still zany and funny and very, very much in love with his car. And with me. And with being a dad. We grown-ups are boring.

I am almost thirty-six and I am also very much the same. Still overparticipative in class! Still talkative and loud! Still completely fashion-clueless! Just a little fatter than I used to be. I tell all my female acquaintances who are afraid of turning 30 that the thirties are fabulous, because they are, but I do neglect to mention the way weight just kind of starts to stick on you when you're not looking. I figure why make them fret in advance, right? Or maybe it's denial and it's all my fault and nothing to do with my age. Denial and ice cream. No, it couldn't be that.

The garden did better than we thought it would do after the giant freeze we had in the middle of May. The peppers bounced back admirably. The tomato plants grew nice and big, but didn't put on much fruit. The squash was wonderful and now it's all gone and I'm sad. And nothing else did much of anything. The chickens now have the run of the frost-blasted, weary garden, and they're loving it.

We now have twenty-two hens and two roosters. Claire entered two of her birds in the fair and they actually won prizes and stuff. It was a big deal.

You know what I miss most about blogging is the books posts. I don't read nearly as much as I used to (SAD CLOWN), because of school -- mine and the kids'. (Speaking of which, homeschooling is still going swimmingly. NSLT is studying geometry, C is doing sixth-grade math, and they're both studying world history, geography, physical science, essay-writing and Julius Caesar.) But I have probably read about fifty books this year and I have reviewed none of them. Maybe I'll try to get back into that in the new year. It was a new year's resolution originally, back about five years ago, that got me doing the books posts in the first place.

And there you have it. Think of it as your bulk-mailed Family Christmas Letter (which I'm very much not planning to do this year. Here, I'll even put in a picture.

Wednesday, June 09, 2010

A month of silence, broken by... a recipe. Fabulous.

(I am brewing a books post. I am always brewing a books post, I know, but with the onset of summer and a sudden near-glut of free time -- or what feels like a glut of free time compared to the jury duty/college/finals/home-school-wrap-up/garden-panic month that was May -- who knows? Maybe one will someday soon magically appear in this space.)

Tonight I made an experimental dinner and it turned out OK so I wanted to put the recipe in a place I'm not likely to lose it. Yes, I pay money to host an absurdly long domain name so that I can have a searchable, online recipe file. Right?

Without further ado (ha ha! my LIFE is all about further ado):

Pork Chops with Caramelized Apples and Onions
with a side of Roasted-Garlic Mashed Potatoes
and Green Beans that are Slightly Less Boring than the Ones In A Can

First I took a head of garlic, sliced off the top, peeled off the outside paper, and wrapped it (garlic, not paper) in oiled aluminum foil. I put it in the oven at 350º. It takes about an hour for it to roast. (Yes, I felt actual guilt about running the whole oven for an HOUR just for a little head of garlic.) I pulled some home-frozen green beans out of the freezer -- fresh would be better, but you can't have everything -- and set them in the steamer, ready to go when needed.

Then I started out with a couple of pounds of pork steak (item: how is this different from pork chops?), sliced pretty thin. I rubbed this on both sides with pressed garlic, coarse pepper, and kosher salt* and let it sit while I got the potatoes ready. (This is just your standard mashed-potato preparation -- wash, peel, and chop a couple of potatoes per person and set them in water on the stove; turn on the heat and when they come to a boil, let them boil merrily along for fifteen minutes or so.)

While the potatoes did their potato-y business, I cooked the pork steaks in a little bit of oil on mediumish heat until they were done and brown on both sides. While THEY cooked, I peeled and sliced (thin slices are good) four green apples and one yellow onion; then I tossed the slices together with a little bit of oil, some coarse pepper, and some kosher salt.

About this time I started the steamer with the green beans in it. Thought I'd forgotten those, didn't you.

When the meat was done, I set it aside on a platter and put the onions and apples in the pan -- actually it was two pans -- and let them cook down until they were pretty soft and rather brown, stirring often. (After I'd turned them a couple of times, I put the meat on top to absorb the flavor a little.) When the apples were close to done, I heaped the apples and onions and meat all in one pan and used the other one to sauté the steamed green beans with a little butter, coarse pepper, and kosher salt.

I took the garlic out of the oven, unwrapped it, and after it had cooled a little I squeezed the pasty roasted garlic out of the cloves with the side of a big kitchen knife. I added the garlic glop to the potatoes I'd just drained along with an unholy amount of butter (Grandma always used one tablespoon per potato and who am I to mess with tradition?) and -- you guessed it -- some coarse pepper and kosher salt. When mashing the potatoes, you want ot make sure to mix everything together, but leave them a little bit coarse.

Serve each person a pork steak with apple and onion stuff on top; put some mashed potatoes and green beans on each plate. No gravy required or desired. (Even if your husband insists. He won't keep insisting for long, I promise.)

I'm tired just writing about it. But mmm, it was good.

*I may never buy olive oil but heaven help you if you hide my kosher salt. Seriously.

Tuesday, May 04, 2010

like Easter every day (minus the slightly-Christianized paganism)

It's spring. Serious, get-down-to-business, ludicrously over-the-top SPRING, complete with exuberant lilacs, carefully-planted garden beds, and plenty of sneezing. Notably, the grass this year (thank you, El Niño) is incredibly tall -- from across the way it doesn't look waist-deep, but by golly if it isn't! We have a new gate on our yard, too, which keeps our dogs in more securely, and our neighbors' dogs seem to have learned their boundaries a bit better, so -- finally I come to the point -- we've been letting the chickens roam around at will all day long (as opposed to only when we are outside directly supervising them like, um, mother hens), which they love. They also love finding tiny little hiding places in the long, tall grass, especially among leaning stacks of pallets or wildly unpruned grapevines, to make cunning little nests. Do you have any idea how tiny a hen's nest can be? Very tiny. Girls: it's cute and all, but please, we need your eggs. They are why you are here, happily clucking and preening and eating little bugs instead of reclining at ease in our freezer. So when we finish weed-eating and all of your sweet little hiding places are laid bare, please remember that, in a roundabout way, it's for your own good.

Thursday, April 29, 2010

moonrise

Driving out of the valley, singing along with the Beatles, heading northeast: a bright orange gibbous almost-disc nearly made me lose control of the car when it burst into view through my passenger-side window, suspended just above the oak-lined horizon next to the narrow mesa my kids like to call a volcano even though they know it really isn't one. It stayed in position, skimming along the treetops, until it hid behind an embankment as the road curved into the grade up into the Real Foothills from the Almost Foothills, and then there it was again when I reached the top, caught in closer trees and looking whiter and if possible even larger than it had from the valley. Whoosh! around a turn, and it was perfectly framed at an uphill bend in the road so that it looked like if I chose not to turn I could jump over it like a nursery-rhyme cow or a fairy-tale fairy. Back in the trees, clattering silently through the branches, laughing at me from the other side of the road -- can't catch me! -- as I dipped down into town. Top of Spring Hill: the lowered horizon left it hanging serene and still and solemn in the sky, behaving for all the world like as if it had never done anything so undignified as playing hide-and-seek-tag with that little black car speeding along toward home.

Thursday, April 15, 2010

school

See, this is why this blog is dying. I'm done with my tasks for the day, and I have something I want to write about, but I'm so tired I can barely stay awake. So this will be short (I hear you cheering).

And here's another reason it's dying: What I'm about to write, you already know if you see me on Facebook or Twitter, which just about everyone who's ever read this does. This keeps me from writing here, which stinks because six months from now everything I write today at either of those two sites will be, for all intents and purposes, buried forever (even though it will be archived at the Library of Congress which freaks me out more than a little), but this post will still be here, with nobody actually reading it ever, but, you know, here. In case I need it.

Oh Lord I have issues. Moving on to the ACTUAL SUBJECT OF THIS POST which is school. My school. Which I don't think I've actually written anything about here this semester at all.

I am about 3/4 done with a very strange semester, because I am taking one class which I wildly and ardently adore (trigonometry), and one I can barely stand to think about (sociology). So while I'm wishing the semester could last a few years so that I could keep solving trigonometric equations until I had my fill of them if that were possible, I'm also wishing that I could put myself on fast-forward for the next seven weeks so as to end the SOC-01 nightmare before the last few drops of joy have been sucked from my academic existence.

Meanwhile, my 4.0 is in no danger as far as I can tell, and I've registered for chemistry and finally after several semesters of disappointment, the much-longed-for ONLINE PHYSICAL EDUCATION class. I need two units of PE, which would, under ordinary circumstances, mean two semesters of a three-day-a-week class at the college which would entail changing out of my clothes and communal showering and other horrors, but which can be completed in the safety and comfort of my own home thanks to the wonders of the Internet. I'm not sure how exactly, but by golly if the good Lord is willing I will be finding out in August.

Also, I'm contemplating changing out the chemistry for Spanish, so as to have a break from the two trips per week to the valley, and to give my free-child-care providers a break as well. They are champs and I couldn't do this without them and I feel terrible being so beholden to them even though they swear they enjoy having my kids with them on a regular basis. And even though I don't need Spanish to graduate, seeing as how this is California, I'll need to know some Spanish anyway if I'm ever going to be employed outside the home (how do you say, "Where does it hurt?"), and like a snobby (and boy-crazy, but that's a long story for another time) dork, I took French in high school instead. French was fun and all, but its real-life applications in this part of the world are mostly limited to reading century-old British novels and seeing if I can translate the foreign-language instructions for products that are also marketed in Canada. But poor chemistry has already been shafted once, in favor of the beloved and awesome trigonometry class, and part of me doesn't want to keep putting off the core science classes that will move me forward toward the nursing program, even though realistically I won't be applying for at least two or three years anyway, until the kids are old enough to be left home on their own or enrolled in classes at the college.

Oh yeah hi this was going to be short, wasn't it. Oops. It's a good thing it's such scintillating stuff or you'd probably have clicked away by now. Hello? hello?

Wednesday, April 14, 2010

ouch.

Oh, it's been a long time since I used this category. Now I'm all nostalgic.

So, how many of you have seen the rear end of a car outside of a car? Show of hands? How many of you have seen one with the leaf springs attached? Well, you all don't live the same kind of life of privilege that I do, apparently.

See, there's this automotive rear end out next to my clothesline. (He swears it isn't there permanently.) And my son (who's six feet tall and 160 pounds now) and I were at the clothesline, and somehow we ended up trying to see if we could balance each other, fulcrum-problem style (because math is everywhere, even in really stupid ideas like this one), on one of the leaf springs (I am totally going to have to go take a picture of this thing as soon as I can move my limbs again), and somehow I wound up flying through the air, catapult-in-Monty-Python-and-the-Holy-Grail fashion. For about two seconds, it was totally awesome. Then my chest came down on the ground a split second before my hips did, and it wasn't so much fun anymore, except it was still funny so I was still laughing. I even got up and finished with the laundry before I came inside to die. But one crazy thing about getting older is the way pain shows up after an incident. The way I remember it, when you're ten and you fall down, you cry and then the pain is kind of a declining gradient after that. The worst moment is the moment of impact. When you're thirtyohmygoshfive years old, not so much:

T + 0=oooh, that's gonna hurt.
T + 10 seconds: ohmygosh my SPINE is it still ATTACHED? Can I stand UP?
T + 30 seconds: OK, I can move if I'm careful.
T + 5 minutes: WTH? My shoulder? I didn't hit my shoulder!
T + 1 day: I am gonna die and really it can't be soon enough.

So. Ice when an injury is fresh, right? Finally, an excuse to sit down and knit for a while.

Thursday, April 01, 2010

some people's opinions about literature

I really, really want to do a books post but I don't have time today. Instead, this little snippet:

Kids took a break from bickering to discuss the book Claire is reading (The Mysterious Benedict Society).

LT: So who dies in that book, Claire?

Claire: Nobody. [ed. note: oops. Spoiler.]

LT: But, wait, what's it about?

Claire: Spies.

LT: But people die in spy books!

I: Not kids' spy books.

LT: BOOO-ring.

In other kidlit news, the Fuse #8 blog is down to Number 8 in its 100 Children's Chapter Books countdown. THE TENSION! It is KILLING ME! Just like a person in a spy book, right?

Wednesday, March 24, 2010

tweets, 3/23-24/10

I have a lot of thoughts rattling around up there but I don't have the energy to sort them all out, so I'll let my tweets for the last couple of days serve as writing prompts.

We are sad: We'll watch some *I Spy* tonight in his memory.
about 5 hours ago via web

Robert Culp died. We LOVE Robert Culp. One of the surrealish sad things about preferring to watch TV shows from previous generations is that many of the people you see on the screen and come to think of as acquaintances (don't look at me funny! You're all addicted to Lost! And this is different how?) are either dead already or will be soon. This evening we put in a DVD and watched a 35-year-old athletic ladies' man who actually just died today at the age of 79 get himself into and out of espionage-ish scrapes. (It was a really good episode.) It was comforting and sad at the same time: He'll always be 35 for us. (Well, except when we watch Greatest American Hero* and he's fiftyish.)

*I bet you totally have that theme song stuck in your head now. Evil, thy name is Rachel.

I now have a phone with a camera in it, just in time for the year 2000! Oh, wait.
about 5 hours ago via web

Only because my old phone was on its last legs. I really do like the new one though, even though the camera is (as I knew it would be) lame. I do like that I can transfer pictures to it via memory card (see below) and use my own shots as backgrounds. I got so everlastingly tired of the boring stock images in my old phone, and I'm way too cheap to download new ones. Yes, I know I could transfer the pictures through the air just like in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, but even if I wanted to spend $10 a month on a data package (and I don't; see above re: cheap), data transfer doesn't work 'round these here parts anyway.

Just bought a 2GB Micro-SD card for $10. That's $2000 worth of hard drives in 1995 money; could lose it in a coin purse. Where's my jetpack? about 8 hours ago via web

Wow! That is such an original thought and I am sure I am the only person on the planet clever enough to think of it while looking at the memory-card display at Wal-Mart! Did you know that the sky is blue? It seriously is!

OK, whom do I have to befriend to get one of these for a pet?
about 9 hours ago via web

SERIOUSLY. Cutest baby animals EVER. My husband is all, "They just look like puppies," and I am all, "Yeah, if puppies were so eye-searingly cute that you couldn't look at them for five minutes without exploding from the buildup of glee." Did you see them?

C and I are thinking about auditioning for a community theater play. You only live once, right? Worst they can do is laugh. For days. At me.
about 24 hours ago via web

I alternate between thinking this is a crazydumb idea and nevermind, and thinking this is a crazydumb idea but I already told Claire and the Internet about it so I'd better go through with it because I can't lie. Hi yeah I'm totally going to go sing on a stage in front of strangers. By myself. Ha ha! It'll be a lark. Or else, you know, it'll be a memory that makes me cringe on a daily basis for the next fifty years.

My new theory: "The Book Report" from *You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown* was carefully engineered to stick in human brains and never leave. 3:05 PM Mar 23rd via web

It's unfortunate, though, that there are four people singing that song at once, because otherwise it would be a fantabulous audition piece. DO YOU SEE HOW CRAZYDUMB THIS IDEA IS. I just typed the phrase "audition piece", for crying out loud.

I love teaching my son algebra, especially when he just GETS it. Systems of equations today = my momgeekery firing on all twelve cylinders.
2:47 PM Mar 23rd via web

I looked ahead in his book and I'll be teaching him to complete the square in a couple of weeks and that is so full of awesome that I seriously think each morning about how it's one day closer to completing the square. As if completing the square were Disneyland. (It's maybe better. It doesn't cost $60 per person, and there are no crowds.)

I try not to want to smack Kit Kittredge, but every time Claire watches this insufferable movie, the urge is stronger.

This is really not like me but my gosh I just cannot stand that character. She's so... smug. And saccharine. And self-important. And too-cute-for-words. And I'm a hateful bitter cynic who should spend the rest of her life sitting by her window waving her cane at the neighborhood and yelling GET OFF MY LAWN. I know.

Sunday, March 21, 2010

easy, cheap chili for a crowd

La la la, I am going to post a recipe because I am not going to write about politics.

We had a family gathering here today to celebrate the birthdays of my niece and nephew. I made a pot of chili to go with the hamburgers and hot dogs. People! Chili is SO EASY. Years ago I used to think you had to buy one of those $2.50 brown-bag spice packets to make good chili, but I was so wrong. And considering that this batch served about eighteen people (small servings) with leftovers, it was cheap. And it was an excuse to use my new anniversary-present slow-cooker*.
*I just had the best anniversary date EVER with my husband. He bought me the aforementioned slow-cooker, and he took me to bookstores and the Olive Garden and A PLAY. How many years have I wanted to go to a community theatre play with him? Sixteen years, that's how long! It was so, so awesome. Also, we went to Winco. Winco is one hot date just by itself. There may have been smooching in the bulk-bin area. Hey, we have a license to do that.

So. Recipe. SERIOUSLY SO EASY.

You'll need:
*About, I dunno, a quart of dry beans. Maybe more. (I love love love black beans. Black beans are my very favorite foodish thing right now and they are excellent in this chili AND they are available in Winco's bulk bins.) (You could, of course, use canned beans, but that seriously decreases the cheapskate value of this meal because it's going to take something like five or six cans to get the same amount of beans. But then, your house will smell less like boiled beans later, so that's a bonus.)
*Some bacon if you like to cook your beans with bacon, or salt pork, or ham, or, hey, whatever, just salt if you want.
*2 pounds of very lean ground beef
*a yellow onion, chopped
*a couple of cloves of garlic, minced
*some chopped bell pepper if you like bell pepper in your chili (I used the very last bit of last year's bell peppers for this today. My only comfort is that this year's bell peppers are beginning their lives under a grow-light on top of my kitchen cupboards as I type this.)
*About 3 or 4 tablespoons of chili powder
*A tablespoon or less of cumin
*Salt and pepper
*Some canned tomatoes if you want (I usually don't, for chili, but whatever floats your boat.)

*You could also fully customize this by adding a bunch of hot stuff if you wanted to. Also, I bet you could do these up in some animal-friendly vegetarianish kind of way, if you like plain beans without meat. And let's face it, if you're a vegetarian, you're used to boring stuff like that already, so it'd probably be just fine for you. Go for it! (Also: MUCH CHEAPER.)

Soak the beans. You can do this overnight, or you can, like I always do, cover them in a few quarts of water, bring them to a simmer, simmer for a couple of minutes, and then let them sit for an hour with the lid on.

Then cook the beans in a few quarts of water. (I generally do not change out the soaking water. You get more nutrients this way, I am convinced. Also: I am lazy and I like to conserve water for totally non-green reasons.) You can add some bacony goodness, or you can not. You can add some salt, or you can wait till they're cooked and do it then. Hey, whatever. You want to cook them thoroughly, for two or three hours at a slow boil. (This time I put them in the slow cooker overnight on High**, but I usually don't.)

(**I think I got up in the wee small hours and turned them down to Low. But anything I do in the middle of the night is liable to be completely forgotten or else remembered incorrectly by morning. So. All night on High might be too much cooking for beans. Or it might not.)

When the beans are cooked, brown the ground beef with the onion, garlic, spices, salt, and pepper. Add the bell pepper when the meat's almost done. Then, once the meat is done, add the beans (or, if you're like me, add the meat and stuff to the beans in the slow cooker). Stir well. Bring to a boil and then simmer, covered, for at least half an hour; the longer the better.

DO YOU SEE HOW EASY THAT WAS? People, it's just beans, meat, garlic, onion, bell pepper, chili powder, and cumin. That is SO MUCH EASIER THAN PIE.

This filled the 6-quart crock of my slow-cooker (it's not a Crock-Pot-Tee-Em so I can't call it that, now, can I?). My next canning project (late this week, I'm thinking) will involve canning some of this chili. With store-bought bell peppers. Snif.