The after school trip to our neighborhood coffee joint has been getting more complicated.
Something as simple as a small chai latte invites all manner of doctoring.
Sprinkle, stir. Squirt, stir. Taste, stir. Sprinkle, discuss. Stir. Taste. Stir. Squirt.
By the time they were done with the add-ons and augmentations, the formerly empty shop had filled up.
So they had to share one chair outside.
Alas
No Milkbones today
The saddest day indeed.
There was Sabi & Fadi's Halloween potluck to attend last night, so here I am preparing cranberry jalapeno dipping sauce for butternut spring rolls, which turned out fine, if a little skimpy on the butternut. Lots of basil and toasted pepitas stepped in. The sauce was delightful.
Halloween was mellow, sweet. Carson amassed heaps of contraband and out of all that I get my pick of Dum-Dums: cream soda, root beer, butterscotch being my favorites. The girls raked in $50 for Unicef, too, which made them proud.
And now, it's November.
This year, Cars and The Little Mrs. decided to be colors for Halloween, purple and yellow, respectively. They did a trial run last night for Carsy's annual school Halloween party.
So here's a story.
I like Tuesdays, because on Tuesday mornings I meet my friends Karen and her hubba-hubba husky Sakari for a brisk walk down at the Rose Bowl, a place, it seems, to which I am tethered at all hours of daylight and sometimes beyond, but that's not the point of this story.
Karen and I talk and talk and talk and talk and walk and grouse and tell each other things we wouldn't tell anyone else, hardly, and it gets engrossing and so sometimes, in and among all those compelling moments, we make decisions that might otherwise, on a day when we are not totally involved in hearing aloud the woes of ourselves and each other, have been more carefully baked. This is why I put my fob key in my bra.
An aside: even though I treated myself to a few new bras somewhat recently, they are not quite as snug as they used to be.
I put my fob in my bra because when I walk with Karen I like to tote along as little as possible. I can't stand having my pockets loaded, if I even have a pocket; stuff like cell phone, water, keys, and the like drag me down and make me bulky, so I lock it all up in my car and just take my little fob, which is quite manageable cupped in the palm of my hand. Until I have to go pee, in which case the fob goes in my bra, for but a minute or two.
I put the fob in my bra when I go pee because it's a park bathroom and, you know. You all know park bathrooms. They're not latrines, per se, but they might as well be. I didn't want to have to put my key down on the park bathroom stall floor. Ew. So I did pee and during the contortions I find necessary in order to flush the latrine-like toilet in the park bathroom without actually touching the flusher with my hand, I heard a splish!plink!sliiiide just like that. I looked at the latrine-like toilet bowl. Nothing. I felt my bra. Nothing.
I am in the latrine-like park bathroom stall looking down the tiny hole of a public toilet for my car key. I shout to Karen to please come in and lend me moral support. She obliged me, and with her presence as a source of strength and comfort, I stuck my hand down the hole of a public park bathroom toilet.
"Aw, lookit the dookie coming up!" shouted Karen. "Man!"
I am not entirely sure what happened after that, because I had to transport my mind to somewhere else, a place where my hand was not crammed down a dark toilet hole that was as slimy and textural as algae covered rocks in a stagnant creek on a hot day. Fifteen minutes later, I emerge triumphant, my dripping fob intact, my hands drenched to the forearm, my ego and dignity pretty much shot to shit for the next, say, twenty five years. Karen wisely ducked out of hugging me goodbye.
I ran to the locker room in the aquatic center and spent the next ten minutes trying to scald my hands and arms off my body. After the scalding I soaped up to the elbows and scrubbed like a surgeon for another ten minutes. Then I scrubbed my fob with soap and it occurred to me that after all this, I was probably ruining my key in all that water anyway, but that was too depressing a thought so I went back to imagining myself a surgeon. There was a big lady swim club getting showered and dressed in the locker room while I was doing all this and after awhile I noticed them all sort of staring. That's when I left.
My key thankfully worked enough to open my trunk, where I threw it behind my first aid kit. I had a spare fob in my purse (another long story) so I used that to get my car going, fast, up the hill and home. Once I got there I took off my shoes and socks and threw them in the trash. I know, but before you say anything, these were my really old trainers with a whole plethora of holes, so. After that I took off all my clothes on the porch. I was planning to throw those away, too, but Jaime reminded me, as I stood naked in the doorway, that this is my favorite over-shirt
and the pants are brand new and the tee shirt is Carson's.
So they're now balled up and on the back deck.
My advice to you is, if you lose weight, buy new bras. Also, if you need to do something disgusting and fetid, bring a friend like Karen, whose shouting about dookie was completely unhelpful, but whose subsequent email, later that day, referring to me as a poop-covered inspiration, made me feel kind of heroic, if a little malodorous.
Even more exciting than my treasures was Carson finally dipping into thrift store fever wholeheartedly; this trip was transforming for her. She meandered, gasped, poked, sifted, and took her time checking everything out. She's been patient and mildly curious for 11 years, but now, I think, she understands, and thus, is hooked. For some of us, it's the thrill of unearthing something beautiful, for others, it's the bargain aspect or the notion of reuse, recycle. For Carson, her joy seems to be rooted in stories and histories--whose was this? How old is it? How can I use it now? What was it meant for? Why did someone give it away? She found an old case of miniature office supplies yesterday (.50!) and spent the better part of an hour cleaning, polishing, testing stuff out. She also got a rolling massage thingie for .30, which has been used on all of us many times so far.
So am I encouraging a new member of The Useless Ephemera Society? Perhaps. But I'm also watching a curious, busy girl, enchanted and intrigued by the mysteries of old stuff, something so close to my heart that I feel...proud. Is that kind of dumb?
The week I got canned, I made a list of things I felt I had to pretty much give up, or at least severely limit. I'm glad to announce that while some sacrifices have indeed been made (for instance, I had to cut my coffee budget in half, because when you're unemployed, $80 a month on beans seems just dumb), but other things? They happen. Not as often, but that makes them more exciting. Like visiting Kelly the waxing lady, or our now-becoming-regular Friday morning jaunts to one of the two thrift stores that happen to be on our route when we pick up the pizza for the school's weekly pizza lunch.
Yesterday's haul included these sweetie-pie finds--the great radio (works perfectly!) to replace my beautiful 50s console that blew out last week, an incredible! I'm still gazing at it! Japanese apron, which fully wraps around and is thick and reversible. I am agog over it and plan to wear it over a white skirt today. And then there's the seagulls. When I got them home I realized there isn't really a way to hang them on a wall. I have no clue where or how to place them. But they make me happy, and they make me think of Rashie, and she and Carson and Jaime and Mary "you pick up?" will know why.
Cha. So gorgeous.
I have 45 days of laid-offedness under my belt, time during which I have changed, a little, I think, from who I was as a working person to who I now am as, well, a not working person. The changes are subtle, mostly, although the one that people keep talking about is weight loss (again!), because they love me and they're worried. I have analyzed the situation and think I've dropped some recent lbs because a) I am more active than I used to be (a flexible schedule makes for more time to exercise); b) I'm sitting on my ass lots less (too-da-loo, ugly veneer desk and slow, old PC) and c) far less mindless snacking, in fact, none at all. I'm sure my body will get adjusted to these changes and level out, but I will have to say I hope that happens soon because I am running out of pants that fit.
Speaking of eating, another change is the whole phenomenon of lunching at home. I can't tell you how much I enjoy it. Most often it's leftovers from the night before, but it's the counter time I covet--on my stool, with a few cookbooks and index cards, figuring out dinner, making shopping lists, reading the mail.
This is cauliflower bisque from Anna Thomas's great new soup cookbook, adorned with a whole heap of toasted pecans and minced chives. When I'm alone, who's going to notice if I have more nuts than soup?
Further discovery, although given my nature, it's not necessarily surprising: I function best under a little pressure and with a lot of structure, thus a weekly schedule that is vital to my sense of order and meaning and I like that. I mean, I mess with it a little and I try not to be too harsh on myself if things don't always go the way the schedule mandates, but still, it keeps me humble and on task. And it's kind of fun, which brings me to another new world.
Domesticity. I love home and hearth and have always treated both with reverence, but frankly I worried myself a little as I was bargain shopping for mops this Monday. I find myself smiling in not a wry way when I toast the coconut to top Carson's berries for her after school snack. I made a rotation schedule for the washing of the bath towels. Thursday cleaning takes me an average of five hours. I am, in a phrase, all assed up about the housefrau gig. This is a job for my therapist, or would be, could I afford that at the moment. I would really rather be putting more of these Herculean efforts into a volunteer stint at our local farmed animal sanctuary, but I haven't made the call yet. I'm still infatuated with my apron and my cheap but efficient new mop. It's time for lunch, anyway.
We commissioned Carson to capture Jaime and me in portrait on the happy occasion of Jaime's 50th, which was yesterday. This was the least blurry and the only one that actually had both of us in frame, so. The rest of the day involved roaming the Saturday market with my parents, hanging out with Ann and Sophia, making Jaime's birthday pie, walking to the pumpkin festival, and eventually heading to Hollywood for an Ethiopian feast and birthday trip to Amoeba.
50 years has its own funky stigma. I've known Jaime for over half of that time and can say with conviction that he's the same fellow I laughed and drank beer with when I was 17, plus a few gray hairs, pounds, and mortgages. He's laid back and even tempered and jolly and humble and neighborly. He can sing along with all the songs on every Ray Coniff Christmas album. He will always swoon over any dinner I cook and never, ever fails to make me feel lovely and sexy and important. We have been a couple-couple for almost ten years and I am greatly looking forward to the next ten and the next 50.
Happy day, Viejo.
I am using both oven and stove quite a lot these days, during this wee cold snap; a marked departure from the cold platters we called dinner more often than not in September. Soups, particularly have come back in a big way, and baking has, too, which means extra exercise, of course. Cause and effect indeed.
Cars and I get home from the pool around 7:00 every evening. We're both cold and Bee is famished, so a waiting pot of gingery butternut squash soup was kind of thrilling on Tuesday. In the afternoon I roasted up three squash, caramelized an onion, added ginger, garlic, the teeniest bit of lemongrass, and a few cups of water, blended it up, added maple syrup and a pinch of cayenne to bring out the sweetness, and let it rest while Carson swam. When we got home all I had to do was heat it up, give it a big squeeze of lime juice, and finish with toasted pumpkin seeds on top, along with a drizzle of olive oil. Greens wilted with warm balsamic mushrooms and that's that. Fall makes me really happy.
I can't stop
Looking at
My teeth
It was a chilly and gorgeous October Sunday, spent in two fine ways:
At the PCC swap meet, where I fell for this dreamy dresser (on wheels!). Of course the last thing I need is another piece of furniture, so in my dreams it will have to stay.
At Googe and Lisa's, who threw a fantastic Beatles Rockband party, complete with Beatles place cards and posters. And pie! Who can complain about ending a beautiful weekend with a hunk of pie and lots of singing, I ask you?
This feels so important that I could shout it off rooftops: IT'S NOT 103 DEGREES ANYMORE! If you're a Southern Californian you know just how sweet and surprising it feels every year, the true shift from summer to fall. It's still new, and still in transition. The Saturday market is not yet completely full of autumn, but there are glimpses here and there: the late little sugar plums; small, intense Mission figs; big, creamy heads of cauliflower; a handful of Bartletts; thick-walled, deep crimson bell peppers; crisper, juicier apples. This is the time of year I covet, cooking wise--early fall entices and inspires me in the kitchen more than any other season.
Coming home from the market and making lunch is probably my favorite Saturday moment. Yesterday I was heavily crushed out on the Breadman's thin-sliced corn-rye bread, so it felt right to whip up a little hummus, slice up one of the very last tomatoes, and top my sandwich with lots of broccoli sprouts from Joan the sprout lady, a favorite market stop of mine for certainly over 20 years. Oh, my! 20+? Really?
Sunday morning: Jaime attempts to get Carsy amped for her all-weekend-long swim meet last Saturday and Sunday. Personally I think the dorky swim dad look is darling but Carson was mortified. Not too mortified, though: she had a good, solid meet with some excellent times and a fantastic, smiling attitude despite a few small disappointments.
One would think that a lay-off would give a person scads of time to dream up and compose all manner of blog posts, but I'll have to say, not so much. Busy! Busy!
So my first Thursday big clean? I was ready for it. I have been inspired by Concha over the past many years--she is a professional and has a efficient and orderly system which I intended to follow: work each room from the inside out, top to bottom, bathroom and kitchen last. I started at 8:30 and had lunch plans with friends at 12:45--plenty of time, right? Wrong. I was just finishing up in the first room, Carson's, when I looked at the clock. 11:15. Almost three hours in one room? Where had I gone wrong? I had to move faster. After my bedroom (far more minimally appointed than Carson's) I checked my time. 12:30. Not going to make lunch. Here I was, over the time limit I had allotted the entire house plus the deck and porch, and I had only done two rooms. Aside from that, we were in the middle of a heat wave and I wanted to hold off on the A/C until I was completely done. The house thermostat was registering at 90 something. Late, hot, nowhere near done, canceled lunch. The lid popped open on my can of cranky.
All told, I finished at around 4:00. The house, she was sparkling. Every piece of furniture was moved, every inch of floor was scrubbed, every book dusted and organized, dog and cat beds and blankets washed, subway tiles scoured, lampshades dusted. The one thing I could not make happen was emptying the icebox and freezer and giving them the what-for. That's on the list this week.
Conclusions: 1) I have no idea how Concha could manage all of that in four hours. 2) I am very methodical and slow-moving, something like a sloth or a tortoise. 3) I don't need to be such an effing martyr about it all, good Lord, like why the rule about the A/C? 4) Once a control freak, always a control freak. 5) Don't make lunch plans on cleaning days as your friends will make fun of you for canceling because your toilet is waiting. 6) I do not have the knack for getting all my stainless steel streak-free. Frankly, it looks awful. 7) I need more rags. I have dozens and I used them all. 8) Good vacuum cleaners are a gift from God.
Harbingers of our dubious California autumn:
New shoes for school
The season's first Bartletts
Afternoon shadows and naps
Holy cow! Carson's many events for her first away meet of the season coming up in a few weeks. Sister's gonna be doing some heavy duty racing, sheesh.
Jaime's Locas II is out and, as is the custom with a book release, he had a signing and "discussion" with a writer.
I think I should be the person who interviews Jaime at these things. I have a whole heap of good questions: How has being a cartoonist all your life positively or adversely affected your work? What do you do with all your old, unused stories? Name a song that has made you draw better. Does your wife barging into your studio to get the cordless vacuum annoy you?
Thanks to friends and family who made the trek.
We were in the park near the farmer's market this morning when Bruce Nauman's skywriting piece launched. The whole sentence was "Leave the Land Alone." Carson and her friends asked, or actually kind of yelled, "What's THAT mean?!", providing my art-loving self with the beloved query: what do you think it means? I'd like to say that they pondered over it and came up with any number of critically thought-out discussion points, but in reality they went right back to the monkey bars.
School starts today and after seven years, I know better than to pop out the camera in the playground on the first day. I also fear coming across as maudlin, so I made an agreement with myself: no caterwauling about how quickly time marches on, or how just yesterday Cars was in kindergarten. Therefore, without further ado, my first day of school post:
Bluer skies
A double-dip at Scoops
Interesting to have been fired during the fires, during what seems to be the longest heat wave in history, and during which my car A/C has been, with a spontaneous and much lauded twenty minute exception a few days ago, inoperable. In a phrase, I have been emotional, smoked-out, and overheated.
Yesterday morning I couldn't take it anymore so I went for a walk, even though they (the infamous they) keep imploring people not to work out with the horrible air quality. And it is horrible, no doubt about it, but it's even more horrible to not have exercised in that many days, particularly when you need to process something big. Walking is almost always when I come to terms with transitions. So I walked for an hour and got a sore throat, but it was well worth it. I came up with an immediate plan.
1. Go ahead and sign the hesh-up contract given to me by my former place of employment
2. Really do hesh-up about it, except maybe to Janice, who also has to hesh-up about it, so it doesn't count
3. No panicking! Panicking will change nothing and is unnecessary
4. Gather up the gumption to visit the EDD website
I also came up with a list of easy things to give up:
1. Magazines (whether newsstand or renewal)
2. New books (go to the library!)
3. Superfluous purchases (black nail polish, fancy dish-washing gloves, bright red boy-cut choners that would look perfectly trashy nice under a certain white skirt)
4. Very expensive lemon flax seed oil
5. Pedicures
6. Lapdances
7. Buying a $9 bottle of Japanese IPA just because the label is attractive
Here is my list of very difficult things to give up, even though I have to, at some point soon:
1. Our wonderful housekeeper
2. My stoopid car if it keeps breaking
3. Weekly pit stops at thrift stores
4. Gettin' waxed
5. Giving the amounts I'm used to giving to the non-profits I support every year
More importantly, I suspect, than lamenting lapdances lost, I have worked out a preliminary financial manifesto that will help me, us, cope with the sudden loss of my salary. Which honestly? Wasn't very much. But still. It was essential to how we were used to doing things. I know, especially now that I was able to walk and think it out, I know we will be OK. We have big, big decisions to make, which I'll talk about at some point in the future, but seriously, we'll be OK. And that feels good.
Now if I could just figure out what to do all day.
Yes, there is a massive wildfire burning near us, so close that I can see giant leaping flames if I casually glance at the foothills from the kitchen window while washing dishes. But never mind all that, what's more fun is talking about the swim clinic that Cars and The Little Mrs. went to yesterday down in San Diego.
Taught by three Olympians, the girls (and about 40 other swimmers) did four mini-workshops concentrating on each stroke, raced the pros, and then did one big relay. Up there is Bee working on breaststroke with Ous Mellouli.
Bop's start got scrutinized by Ben Wildman-Tobriner
Misty Hyman told her amazing underdog-takes-gold story from the Sydney games
and, as always, my favorite swimmers had a blast together. They are so close that at this point they're like sisters, with swell times, cranky times, and everything in-between.
Three hours of swimming and six autographs later, they showered and we went to dinner. Vegan brownie mousse cake for everyone!
On our way home, the A/C in my car died, leaving us no option but to drive the remaining two hours in 100+ degrees, with the windows halfway open on the freeway. We cranked the Beach Boys and made the best of it.
