We have always celebrated Christmas Eve with my mom’s side of the family. And for as long as I can remember, we have always had Turkey Tetrazzini for dinner, served on fancy holiday paper plates. It may not have been the most traditional or glamorous of Christmas meals, but I looked forward to it for 364 days of the year. The humble but hearty smell of the creamy noodle casserole welcomed me home to my grandparents’ house. It was the first sign that let me know Continue reading “Turkey Tetrazzini With a Side of Dementia”→
It feels a little weird to be blogging. I mean, it has been exactly twenty-three days since I last posted something (not that I have been counting or anything). That is apparently long enough for the WordPress site to stop automatically logging me in, causing me to have to actually type in my username and password…which I almost couldn’t remember. It’s a good thing I am not entrusted with any classified information. I am pretty sure they don’t have a “remember me” box to check when logging into the nuclear launch codes.
Oh hey, Twitter. I forgot you were in here. (photo courtesy of iStockphoto.com)
I guess I can chalk up my lack of blogging to taking to heart the idea that “life grows sideways.”* I have been rolling with the punches. And the punches just haven’t seemed to be landing on blogging lately…or Facebook…or Twitter. (Actually, the punches NEVER land on Twitter. My Twitter account is pretty much like those leftovers you know you should throw out, but you put them in Tupperware anyway because you just MIGHT find a use for them. Like you just MIGHT become one of those people who researches creative ways to reinvent leftovers into a brand new meal. But you never do. But you are also one of those people who is not so good at cleaning out your fridge, so the leftovers just sit somewhere in the back next to the jar of barley malt you bought last year because you needed one tablespoon of it to make homemade bagels, which of course you have never made since. Are you sensing why I am not so good at capping my thoughts to 140 characters?)
What I HAVE been rolling with is basketball practices; indoor soccer games; tumbling classes; birthday parties; First Communion meetings; Brownie meetings; overseeing the selling of Girl Scout cookies; making Walmart my unfortunate second home; powder puff derbies (well, just one of those); sporadic workout schedules; ice skating; school volunteering; randomly deciding to reorganize the kitchen on a Monday afternoon; realizing that a freshly reorganized kitchen “needs” some pops of color by way of new utensil, flour, sugar, and tea cannisters; “sacrificing” my time to scour Pier One and T.J. Maxx for said sources of pops of color…you know, typical mom stuff. Because typical mom stuff is how I roll. Just consider my theme song “Roll With It” by Steve Winwood. That’s right. Winwood. Hey, that brassy 80’s tune worked for my grade school soccer team. Get it?…roll with it…like a ball. Uh huh. We even had a little sideline dance. Take that David Beckham.
I have also found myself, as always, rolling with the hilarity and awkwardness provided by my children. Here are just a few noteworthy moments:
– My son can be rather creative in his dress-up play. He is fearless when it comes to making bold and daring choices. Some of you may remember this ensemble from a previous post:
He has also proven to be unfazed by gender stereotypes, following in the footsteps of young male actors during the time of Shakespeare and stepping into a female role…or the role of a robot monster who also happens to be wearing a dress:
And then just today, he designed this outfit for “Wacky Wednesday” at school:
But the real beauty of his fashion choices are in his interpretations of what the dressing-up transforms him into. Last week, Michael came up to me in just his skivvies and asked me to tie a piece of crepe paper around his neck. It ended up looking like a bow tie. Let me just reinforce that picture for you…skivvies and bow tie. He said he was being a sea monster, which came as a huge relief to me. Because my first guess was Magic Mike.
“Hey, chickie. How ’bout you and me do a little egg fertilizing?” (photo source: Wikipedia)
– Just before Christmas, I mentioned that Grace’s advancing age is bringing on all kinds of questions I am not ready to answer. I also mentioned that I was more comfortable answering her questions about sex than I was about Santa. Well, I may have spoken too soon on that one. The questions I was referring to in the previous post were ones she was asking about anatomy, mostly female. No problem. Last night, however, my husband and I got the “big one.” And it all started with hard-boiled eggs. At dinner, Grace was proudly recounting how she had learned to hard boil an egg. Which led to this:
Grace: “What exactly is the yellow part of the egg? (a bit fearful) Is it the baby chicken?”
Kurt: “No, because the eggs we eat aren’t fertilized. It only becomes a chick if the egg is fertilized.”
Grace:(satisfied, but only for a millisecond) “Oh. What does fertilized mean?”
Me: “You know how human babies are made from part of a mom and part of a dad? Well, it is the same with chickens. The eggs we eat only have the mom part, not the dad part.”
Grace: “But how does the dad part get to the mom part?”
Me:(hoping desperately that she is talking about chicken parents) “Uh, I am not exactly sure how the dad part gets into the egg…” (can you feel my uneasiness?)
Grace: “No, not the chickens. Like people. How does the dad get his part into the mom?”
Me:(DAMN YOU CHICKENS AND YOUR UNFERTILIZED EGGS!!!!! DAMN ME FOR BUYING REAL EGGS INSTEAD OF EGG BEATERS THIS WEEK!!!! DAMN, DAMN, DAMN!!!!)
Kurt:(Eating tomato bisque, just ignoring the whole conversation by this point, mostly because he loves my tomato bisque, and our chatter was ruining the moment between him and his soup spoon. And now that I think of it, I am really annoyed at his timely love affair with tomato bisque when he was the one who brought up fertilizing in the first place. Stupid enginerd.)
Me: “Well, I would love to tell you about that, but it is kind of grown-up stuff, and the dinner table isn’t really the place to discuss it.”
Grace: “Why not? We’re just sitting here, eating and talking. The food doesn’t care.”
Me: “But Michael isn’t quite old enough to know about that kind of stuff yet.”
Michael: “I hate eggs. Chickens have eyeballs. I hate this soup.”
Me: “Um…well,…you know maybe we…(trails off into undefinable mumblings)…HEY! You, little miss, have not told me ONE thing about how school was today!
Grace: “Oh, it was really good! Our class got our 100th marble today for doing good stuff so we are going to have a movie day with popcorn.”
Me: “Wow! I want to hear ALL about these marbles…fascinating…”
This is what happens at my house around 6:05 p.m. just about every day:
Ring Ring
“Hello. This is <insert name> and I am running for <insert office.> Our country…” Click.
Seriously? Seriously. This is getting seriously annoying. And it’s only August, people.
What genius political strategist decided it was a good idea to have their auto-robot callers interrupt the American public’s dinner? These Einsteins are trying to woo my vote by making me listen to their well-rehearsed vapid sound bites when all I want to do is take a bite of my quickly cooling pasta. Didn’t their mothers ever tell them it was rude to call someone at dinner time?
Well, I am going on record to say that I will hereby not vote for any politician who calls and interrupts my dinner. I don’t care what your plan for the economy is or your stance on environmental issues. If you call during dinner time, it is obvious that you hold little respect for the American tradition of families sitting around a table to share the events of their day. It is clear that you put importance of partisan politics and greed over the core values of family, the freedom to assemble, and the right to eat your food while it is hot.
In short, if you call with your campaign slogans at dinner time, then you must hate families…and dinner…and America. So I’m going to vote for the other guy.
Unless he calls me at dinner time, too. Then I’m writing in Nader.
Fact: My husband should never be allowed to dress our children.
Let me give you a few solid reasons why:
1. He once sported the follicle phenomenon known as “a tail.”
2. For an extremely short period of time, his ear was pierced (and still might be today if it were not for the good parenting skills of his mother who must have had the psychic foresight to know I would have never dated a 6’6 man who looked like he should be a member of Wham!)
3. In college, he almost got a tattoo of his fraternity letters on his ankle after having a few too many beers at a Pointfest concert. (His mom was not there this time, but thankfully I was and had the psychic foresight, and sober judgement, to know he would have cursed that tattoo every day of his life after turning thirty.)
4. He wears shirts with holes in the armpits, sweatshirts with shredded sleeves, and thinks putting on something nice means wearing a shirt of the Hawaiian flavor. And most of the clothes he owns are in this condition because he has had them since college, sometimes high school.
Oh, and also because my kids look something like thiswhen he’s in charge of the wardrobe situation (we call it “homeless orphan chic”, and yes, the dirt is usually an added accessory):
Try as I might to instill good fashion sense into Grace and Michael, I fear that my husband’s lack of the fashion gene might have been passed down, or at least severely suppresses any style conscientiousness they may have gotten from me. Especially in Michael’s case. He only ever wants to wear one of two things: what he calls “cool shorts” (which are gym shorts in any form) or his Spiderman costume. Winter, spring, summer and fall, he schleps around in a pair of over-sized yellow rubber boots I got for six dollars at a second-hand shop. And at some point each day, whatever he IS wearing becomes a moot point because he will inevitably end up running around in his underwear (I believe his skivvies made an appearance in an earlier blog post).
And then came the Michael haute couture moment…
The silver lining is that one day, I can use these photos against him as payback. Unless he turns out to be more like his dad, in which case he will probably still be wearing the same stuff.
I will leave you with the most recent fashion creation of The House of G & M. I find the daring mix of fabrics and color to be both modern and progressive. This is a look for kids on the go, who are off trying to find Big Foot in the backyard while being ready to extinguish spontaneous pretend fires set by super villains, or who need to quickly transform for an elegant dinner out with friends at McDonald’s. Nina Garcia on Project Runway might find it a little too pedestrian, but I see a lot of potential here:
What’s black and white and red all over? A panda in a Santa costume of course.
What? You’ve never heard of the Christmas Panda? Well, I feel pretty sorry for you. Because he’s awesome. He brings presents after Christmas, along with a feast of assorted meats and cheeses and grilled pineapple, mimosas, board game fun, and the option to attend the festivities in your jammies, if you feel so inclined.
Panda Day a few years ago. Michael didn’t appreciate wearing the mascot’s hat.
Panda Day is part of our Christmastime tradition. It started a few years ago with my husband’s family as time set aside to celebrate just with his parents and siblings. See, both my husband and I are blessed (and usually not cursed) to have a very large chunk of our extended families here in St. Louis, which means Christmas Eve and Christmas day are practically scheduled down to the minute. So eventually we had the brilliant idea that it was really okay to celebrate part of our Christmas AFTER the actual day. And it has turned out to be a well-loved tradition. Today was our Merry Panda Day.
The “reindeer” that appeared in our backyard
On the way home tonight, I was thinking of all the Christmas traditions we are not only passing on to our kids, but also creating for our kids. I wonder which memories will stay with them, which moments are helping to write the stories of their childhoods? Christmastime is always an indelible chapter in those stories. We try so hard to create magical and perfect holiday moments for our kids to fondly remember. Sometimes those are the visions they hold dear. But sometimes magic happens even when we are not trying. For example, twice this month my kids spied a giant buck in our backyard. We are used to occasionally seeing does and their young, but hardly ever are we treated to the antlered version. And the coincidental fact that this buck made himself known so close to Christmas, and the fact that he could easily be mistaken for a reindeer by my kids, made for pure yule tide delight. Grace was sure it was Prancer checking out our roof for the best place to land on the big night. There is nothing I could have ever orchestrated to make her believe in Christmas magic more than that simple and perfectly timed sighting. Although I do think the phone call from Santa (a.k.a. our friend Bob) that comes every year does a pretty good job as well. There is always that perfect mix of fear and wonder in their eyes at the first booming sound of Bob’s voice on the other end of the line.
We would have the Christmas Panda call too, but well,…who the heck knows what a panda sounds like? That would be an awkward conversation. Besides, he is kind of lazy. He only brings presents to us, and often waits until the after-Christmas sales to do his shopping. Ah, the magic of Panda Day.
My life has just been made complete. I had the most mind-blowing revelation: my real father is a Monkee. Here is how it all played out:
I came across this recent charming article about Mike Nesmith, the famously “missing” Monkee. For those of you who don’t know, he was the one who wore the wool hat. And he is the one who no longer tours with the group. Right now, the other three Monkees are in the midst of their 45th Anniversary Tour, and the frenzy that this has stirred up among Continue reading “Is That You, Dad?”→
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