Cinderella

I snuck away from my life recently and had a giddy 8 hour romp in the big world. Due to whining, sniffling, and fevering children, our plan for a town-based saturday chocked full of errands and rush was unexpectedly cancelled. Instead, I was re-assigned to go solo for my longest childless excursion since my long hours of labor with Nola (does childbirth count as childless experience?? If not, then we’ll have to revise that to say since February 18th, 2007 – YES…more than a year ago).

I loaded up the Ipod and sped away with notepads full of grocery lists and errandly goals. Just the 1.5 hour drive in Blase’s molding and malodorous vehicle whose odometer has been stuck at 160k miles for a couple of years now was an extraordinary pleasure. I listened to a workshop called “Word by Word” given by Annie Lamott. She said everything I needed to hear. It seems that I’ve been a little stymied the consistent experience of rejection in my nascent writing career lately. Her humor and cynicism and optimism and anecdotes were gourmet listenings for me. She talked about writer’s block, too. Her suggestion was to stop writing because maybe when you’re blocked, you’re actually a little empty and you need to stop and fill-up. That’s exactly what my day did for me.. it filled me up. I stopped along the way to take photographs whenever called by some ambling cow, floating red-tail hawk, or waddling porcupine. With no children to wake up or talk-out of their desire to exit the car before reaching our destination, I was living large.

I did do some speeding in order to get to the object of my desire… an afro-brazilian dance class with someone I’ve heard about for years and wanted to dance with for as long. Dandha Da Hora is a renowned dancer and teacher… her name was well known in the samba dance circles I crashed for a few years. I made it to class and though I was nearly the oldest and certainly the rustiest dancer out of the more than 40 people in attendance, I sweated in bliss for two hours. Our friends in Samba Da drummed for the class which dramatically compounded my sensory feast.

After class, I walked back to the dusty and peeling Honda feeling shiny and new. My subsequent whirlwind tour of the grocery store, biodiesel station, Costco, and the laundromat were ridiculously easy. By the fifth hour of being child-free in the world, I started to remember what I felt like. “I” in the biggest sense of the one letter word. Like, oh yeah, I exist on my own, too. I am not just the vessel and keeper and fan club president of two small and awe-inspiring children, I have some dimension and tangibility, too.

I rode home to the tune of more ipod-based inspiration and nursing a gigantic rice milk mocha. The surf was luminous, cows were mesmerizing, and hillsides were delicious with infinite texture. I returned, 7 hours later, bursting with love for my little family and seemingly infinite patience for their needs and antics (the infinite part turned out to be a little short-lived.. oh well).

Off to bed they went, husband included, and again, I had another FIRST …I left home AFTER putting the baby to bed. It’s been more than a year since I’ve left home after bedtime. Wow – it sounds a little pathetic to actually type that reality but what’s a blog for if not to unnecessarily expose and diminish yourself by divulging the lame details of your intimate life? No matter. There was a Valentine’s Masquerade Party afoot and I had to round up a costume fast.

What used to be our costume loft before we had kids has now been reduced to a crumpled costume box – albeit wardrobe sized. Doesn’t leave a girl much to work with at 7:48 on a Saturday night in the middle of nowhere. The clock was ticking – I threw on a wig, donned a mask, slathered on a bit of turquoise eye shadow and some fishnets before teetering into the mud in my lovely black heels as “Zesty”.

Three dances, four hugs, and one bon bon later, the endearing phone call from “Zesty’s” husband holding crying baby while apologizing for interrupting my rarest revelry meant I must rush home to do what he could not: breastfeed. I did just that and decided to get greedy.. the baby was sound asleep again and so was the husband and off I went for round two. Another dance, a snippet of conversation, and a glass of wine later I found myself winning the potted primrose prize for Best Costume. As I began my acceptance bow and speech, the ringing phone broke through the mellow sounds of festive purposelessness and a hand reached out to give me the receiver. “Jen?”… it was Blase. Nola was up again and his mammaries still weren’t cutting the mustard. Off I went again, this time for good, with trophy in hand. All totalled, I accumulated 60 minutes at that party. What a thrill… to be footloose. I was Cinderella – just for an extravagant and ravishing moment. The best part? I still got to be in bed by 9:50.. with two kids that wake up like clockwork no matter what time mom turns out the lights, that’s my kind of nightlife.

eating away the pain

we are drowning our grief in good food over here… not a bad coping technique when you live in the land of plenty.

Turns out we have luscious chantrelle mushrooms that have snuck up in the moist and mossy coves of our back yard. After much anxious research with web sources and real live expert humans to confirm that these little treats will thrill us rather than kill us, we sliced them up and licked our chops. First we had them sliced and sauteed in butter, garlic, salt, and pepper and then just tickled them with finely grated pecorino romano. The drool that is escaping my lips as I write this might endanger this computer so I will move on…. but then we had them chopped and sauteed in oil with some chilies and then hugged in a warm corn tortilla topped with oaxaca mama salsa, avocado, and goat cheese… gheez. SO GOOD.

Then, with the 5 gallons of apple juice we recently pressed, I began brewing hard cider. It doesn’t look to pretty now ( as you can see in the photo), but hopefully it will blossom into a delicious, grown-up drink. I say hopefully, because after rampaging into the brewing project with zero understanding of the process, I realize that I’ve made some significant errors. I’ve consulted with the experts, our friends Josie Brown and Justin Horner – both of whom have confirmed that I have, in fact, made some errors. Justin did inform this kuntrywife that what the mixture is doing now is fermenting. Seems like a no brainer, right? It was news to me. So, “if it smells terrible“, said Dr. Horner, “like sulfur or something, don’t drink it.” This is the kind of practical information I need since I seem incapable of finding time to actually read beyond the ingredient list. I recognize that brewing is a science and an art and that what I’m doing is a bit spazzy and fisher-price. But what if it does work????

Did you know that making pasta noodles is super easy and a really fun thing to do with squirmy toddler? Just found that out myself. Trust me, it’s really easy, and just do it:

2 cups flour

2 eggs

2 teaspoons olive oil or water

1/4 teaspoon salt

Before you read further or toss in the towel, just know that all these bullet points say is: mix ingredients together, knead the dough, roll it, cut it, cook it. I swear it only took Osh and I about 35 minutes from beginning to end – this was 16 minutes longer than it could have taken if she’d been willing to stop kneading the dough a little sooner.

• just make a heap with the flour and scoot a little crater our of the top

• put the eggs, oil, and salt in the crater then break the yolks with a fork

• begin pulling in the flour from the sides of the mound

• bring in as much as you can and then knead the dough.

• get it “silky but not sticky… 3-4 minutes” ( if your toddler insists on kneading for 20 minutes, don’t sweat it, turns out that it still works)

• put the dough in a plastic bag for a 10 ish minutes to rest and soften – meanwhile, you can get out a clean pillow case and a rolling pin and any cookie cutters your toddler desires

• break the dough into a few or four pieces, roll into a ball and then flatten

• begin rolling – roll until thin

• cut into noodley strips with a knife or let your toddler go wild with shapes – Ossian chose the star cutter

• then lay the cut pieces on a clean pillow case to dry – takes just a few minutes

• boil up some water and toss your new noodle friends in

• they cook fast so maybe in 4 ish minutes, check them

they are so good, you can just eat them with olive oil and shredded cheese – or if you must, add some frozen peas during the last minute of noodle boiling and squeeze a clove or two of garlic over the whole mess (this is yet another recipe taken from Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone and debased by me)

Want to liven them up? Add some chopped rosemary, chili flakes, or pepper to the dough

Then, there was last night’s instant, homemade, irresistible chocolate loaf cake…. should I talk about it or hold off for another post? It is dangerously fast and easy…I’m not kidding.

nola jams

Nola loves to play her tiny piano… she’ll do it for a long time. I can almost finish debriding a heaping sinkful of crusty dishes before she finishes a little recital. Check out the video for a sample.

Yesterday, Ossian picked up Bird By Bird, written by Anne Lamott, settled into a cozy valley between laundry pile ranges and announced that she “just wants to read this book for a little while I think”. She then lowered her sunglasses, adopted an exaggeratedly grown-up thinking expression and “read” this 237 page book for nearly a half hour.

This is a great book, by the way, for anyone working on the business of writing something. Though I haven’t gotten very far into the book, I’ve gotten a lot of mileage out of her advice to just write what you can see through a one by one picture frame in your mind. It’s a concrete method of breaking things down into writeable pieces rather than being hijacked by overwhelmedness.

I tend to read multiple books at a time and periodically I try to break myself of this tendency by getting very strict, directive, and linear – with myself. During these periods, I decide that multiple book reading is not methodical enough and that finishing one before starting another is the higher ground. Then I feel a little oppressed and slowly I stop reading altogether. Thankfully, about this time, I alway encounter someone I respect describing the 4 books they are currently nibbling at and I let go of my little fascist exercise and resume reading books again.

I just finished Obama’s auto biography, Dreams from My Father and now, in an attempt to be fair, I am reading Hillary’s, Living History. I was hoping these books would give me fuller picture of how these two potential world leaders think.. what they’ve been through, what they value, how they are motivated, etc. I want a better sense of their personal experiences and inner workings to understand what drives their political wills. I love that Obama was a driven community organizer – he’s seen and responded to the institutional injustice around race and socio-economics that is so obviously emblazoned in communities burdened by poverty. He’s been on the ground, viscerally experiencing the shortcomings, power, and need for responsible domestic policies. He has struggled with his relationship to race and has not shyed away from hard questions he’s sought to answer for himself as the nation aired its dirty racist laundry for all to see. Hilary’s story is so different, but like Obama’s, tells the story of a potent historical era. Hilary, a baby boom girl, coming of age as feminism stepped up its march. All the dreams and hopes of her mother and generations of women before her strapped on her back – all their work and suffering having paved the way for a slightly broader future for her. It reminds me of my mom and the responsibility she has carried throughout her career – early on, to prove she could do it like a man and later, to cheer lead for other women – to bring them along and now, to relax a little and find a sustainable way to balance self, career, health, politics, and baggage.