two things and more

My husband has been gone these past two evenings, leaving home around six-thirty, to be up at his mother's before seven, the time at which the shift of "Bill's Girls" ends...
But that's another story.

Having this time "alone" with my boys, I forget to:
1. think about Dinner,
2. prepare Dinner,
3. clean up after Dinner, and
4. clean up after cleaning up after Dinner.

Don't get me wrong here, my husband appreciates everything (just about) and anything (almost) I manage to get on the table. And likewise. And I really do enjoy it when we all sit down to Dinner, and light the candle, and say nummy-nummies, and talk non-stop about our days. Or at least try to. Usually the conversation does a degenerate doublebackhandspringdismount off the table and into the sewer by the time Dinner is over. Such is family life with three boys.

For the past two nights, though, it's been dinner. Frozen pizza. Michelina's microwaveables, single-serving yogurts, Wheat Thins and cream cheese, juice....whatever else they can scavenge for themselves in the kitchen that requires the bare minimum of preparation. Can't say as I blame them.

Meanwhile, I take a bath. When Bennett interrupts my bath to tell me he wants to listen to Christmas carols, I ask him to ask Grant to put on the Traditional Christmas Carols Pandora station for him. He wants the music on to help him finish up his GT geocity project that's due tomorrow. Grant robotically does what is asked, then returns to his Manga book, which he borrowed from his friend Mika who borrowed it from a friend. In the back of my mind, I think, "That's what makes a book truly good." Even though I could never read it.

You people who have no kids, yeah, I'm talking to YOU! You have NO EARTHLY IDEA what parents and teachers go through during the weeks before Christmas. It's just one deadline and due date after another. Book Project? Check. Final GT project? Check. Scrooge Musical? Check. Orchestra Concert? Check. Concert Band Performance? Check. Poem Memorized? Check. Goodies baked for teachers? Check. Goodies packaged and labeled for teachers? Check. Goodies in backpack to take to teachers? Check.

And those are simply the activities that my family experiences outside the bounds of The Little School. LSV has its own built-in stressor (not counting The Ball and Medieval Day and Robin Hood Family Book Club!): The Beta Quadrant Show. In Three Days. I know what overwhelming satisfaction and happiness will come after we've successfully pulled it off, so it's worth it. But the working up to it....... it's just so much.......work.

After my bath, I plan tomorrow's LSV schedule with an attention to detail that would make someone with ADD proud (because they do, you know, pay exasperating attention to detail. When they want to.).

What was the main idea of this story again?

Oh yeah, I got to spend time with my boys this evening, just helping them with projects, and hanging out. Which brings me to the fact that all I originally started out to say in this blog post is that I would like to share two funny things that made me laugh tonight, one involving each of my sons.

Bennett's gem: Up in his bunkbed, while hugging me good night, he asks, "What, exactly, is the meaning of humbug?"

"It means when you.....you know, when you feel.....well, it means...it means humbug."

Seriously, that was my answer. Good thing the boys thought it was hilarious. Remember when you first realized that some words truly have no definitions? They just ARE? And that to know the word, you have to know so much more than the word? You need its context, its story, its period, its character. Having just played the young man Ebenezer in Scrooge, and actually getting to say "humbug", well... he realized he already knew what it meant.

As for Grant, tonight he finished writing the entire Desiderata in calligraphy. Of course, it's not in any kind of font I tried to teach him, like Carolingian or Gothic. No, of course not. Instead, it's his own script he "invented". Then he refused to use lines under his parchment (ugh!)..... , and refused to start over if he made a mistake (ugh!), but damn! he wrote THE WHOLE FUCKING DESIDERATA in calligraphy! By candlelight. And now he wants to make copies of it, bind them, and sell them at SPQR on Thursday night during the Medieval Fair portion of the show.

Only one small problem while trying to make the copies ... the printer wouldn't work. Grant had just replaced the ink cartridge, and something was wacky. Right at the point when he was most peeved at the printer, I casually, only a bit cruelly, said, "You know, there's a low-tech answer for every high-tech question."

He turned on me as if I were a vampire and he had a wooden stake in his hand. "No. Way. I am so NOT copying this whole thing over ten times. No Way."

It was at that moment, I think, that he truly got the whole "Writing During the Middle Ages" thing. Oh, he knew it on an intellectual level, how monks spent years of their lives copying manuscripts, and about the importance of words and the significance of access to them. But this was visceral. And it was terrifying.

And it was very, very funny.

live blogging of the irish soda bread

12:51: Oven preheating at 425. Cast iron skillet oiled and warming in oven.



12:55 pm: Assemble ingredients, mindfully recollecting the recipe from yesterday so I don't have to look it up. Three cups flour, 1 t. baking soda, 1 t. salt, 1 1/2 cups buttermilk. That's it, really. The recipe is so simple even a home ec. teacher could teach adolescents to bake it.



Here's what I look at while getting everything ready:


I stare for awhile at the watercolor of our house that Cheryl painted, and I feel nostalgic for something I haven't even left yet.

12:56: Detect the odor of lightly burning oil. Take skillet out of oven and set on top of stove. Note that oven isn't yet preheated.

12:58: Dance a little in the kitchen to Blue Plate Special, which I normally don't like, but am kind of in the mood for right now. Plus, I do like the sound of Jeff Bieri's voice.

12:59: Wash hands. Dry them on a clean towel. Throw towel over right shoulder with left hand, and wish once again that I possessed an apron. Think once again about sewing one. Excited to bring out Grandma's sewing machine table once we move a bunch of stuff out of our house. Realize the moment I start typing this that I've gotten computer keyboard germs all over my hands. Shit! No more live blogging until bread is in the oven!

1:01: Wash hands again. Accidentally dry them on the old towels. Throw old towels in laundry. Wash hands again.

1:19: I look up at the digital clock to see what time it is, and it says 1:19. I realize that I failed to start the timer (after taking the picture of it), and instead, turned it off. Reset timer for 30 minutes, remembering that yesterday I cooked it a little less than the prescribed 35 minutes anyway.

Here's what happened between 1:01 and 1:19:

Measured flour carefully. Dismayed to find that I didn't have much Mountain Mama white pastry flour left, so it winds up being about a half white/half whole wheat mixture.

Added the teaspoon (plus a little extra 'cause I like it) salt. Marina turned me on to this gray sea salt:



Added the teaspoon (minus a little for high altitude) of baking soda.




Stirred it up and dug a hole in the center. Only had one cup of buttermilk; no worries-substituted a little plain yogurt and milk.



Poured buttermilk/yogurt/milk mixture into the flour/salt/soda crater. Mixed just until moist. Turned out onto floured board and kneaded gently a few times. Formed the dough into a ball in my hands, and placed it prayerfully in the receiving skillet. Pressed the dough ball into a giant, fat pancake.



Cut the pancake into quarters, and placed it into preheated oven.

Set timer for 35 minutes.

1:42: Waiting not-so-patiently, with butter and jam, and reading this. Then I start reading this, and begin to rethink my decision to take cooking out of my curriculum for next year. Cooking is science and history and math and a whole lot of other things, all in one.

the perfect yellow

My best friend in high school had this poster on her wall, right where we could lie on her water bed and stare at it, dreamy-eyed, for hours. It was 1983. I wonder if she still has it, stored away in some dark place with all the other relics of youth. Seeing it now, I can almost feel the adolescent idolatrous idealist inside of me.

Last night, I danced with two friends to a whole set of nothing but Michael Jackson tunes, at a Denver club where most of the patrons were half our age. They ate sushi; I ate edamame. We were overdressed and didn't give a shit, because we were all wearing something that made us happy. The young men could tell we were dancing in our own little worlds, and they mostly seemed to respect that somehow, even as they joined in. Smiles and just plain fun all around.

Tonight, my sons and I stayed up way past our bedtimes, watching videos of "Beat It" (followed, of course, by "Eat It", at which they laughed hysterically), "Billie Jean", "ABC", and others. A cultural history lesson via youtube. Tomorrow morning, when night has turned to day once again, and the world feels just a little bit safer, we will watch "Thriller". Zombies. Dancing. How could that NOT be good?! Revolutionary, even.

It's all pretty messed up, I know, what with the whole Michael Jackson corpse extravaganza thing and all. Believe me, I KNOW people die every single goddamn day from all sorts of causes: some naturally tragic, some insanely stupid, others completely preventable.

But I really can't get all worked up about either the fanaticism of it all, or the criticism of it all.

All that matters to me, at this moment, is that he be remembered for his music. And the memories he has gifted, at great expense to himself, to an entire generation. That was some kinda magic. Let us all be judged on what we did well. On whatever bit of magic we managed to bring into the world.

I have been contemplating my beige-walled kitchen for awhile. Someday soon, I will go out and search for the perfect yellow: the yellow of Michael Jackson's sweater vest.

in between reality and fantasy

I am only slightly older than the expansion of Israel and slightly younger than the invention of the video game console.

Happy Birthday to me!

Here's to the continual evolution of video games and the eventual devolution of Israel.

america vs. afghanistan: a non-survival story

I read The Sewing Circles of Herat last year. Hosted book club at my house. My husband and boys dressed up like Pashtuns and served us all tea.
At the same time, NEWSPEAK! was calling for real-life survival stories.

The confluence of those two influences led me to write the following words (with minor revisions) just over a year ago:

I have survived 12 years of marriage to a short-tempered squirrel-shooter who grew up in Afghanistan as the son of a diplomat.
I have not survived marriage to a short-tempered Afghan tribal warrior.

I survived English Lit 101, strolling through campus to class with a backpack full of books, paper, and pens.
I have not survived reading James Joyce knowing I could be hanged for doing so, having smuggled in books, paper, and pens under sewing materials in my handbag.

I survived the reelection of George Bush in 2004 when we thought the world would end.
I have not survived a military coup in which two of my cousins, my brother, and my uncle were all captured, tortured, and murdered.

I survived a body cast for four months when I was one, hot and itchy and immobile.
I have not survived years as a woman in a burqa, hot and itchy and invisible.

I survived two pregnancies and two natural childbirths.
I have not survived a bloody miscarriage in a war-torn country.

I have survived my boys playing war games with guns and swords in the backyard.
I have not survived my boys being given Kalishnikovs on their 5th birthdays.

I survived my father leaving my mother for his secretary when I was four years old.
I have not survived my father being dragged by his feet down the hallway by a dozen men with rifles, never to see him again.

empire lite?

Yesterday, a graphic representation of Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States was published. It's called, simply, A People's History of American Empire. Real American history in comic book form! What more could we possibly ask for?!

Here is one of the most amazing 8 and a half minutes of succinct video I've ever seen. It's Howard Zinn's essay "Empire or Humanity? What The Classroom Didn't Teach Me About the American Empire", and contains images from the newly published book. Viggo Mortenson narrates. The video is worth watching, if not for the content, then for the sexy way in which the word "Louisiana" comes sensuously rolling out of Mr. Mortenson's mouth.



You can read the full text of the essay at TomDispatch.com.

rock star

In the sense that I live on a rock but came from the stars.

"We have begun to contemplate our origins: we are star-stuff pondering the stars!" -Carl Sagan, Ithaca, NY

Those are the words at the base of this Sun statue, the beginning point of a monument to Carl Sagan that starts on the Commons and ends a few miles away with Pluto at the Science Center, a fully representational/proportional model of the solar system.

tava

Last night, around a backyard fire, I learned from a very wise man that Pikes Peak used to be called Sun Mountain by the Utes. A little research revealed this to be true. I think I'm going to start calling Pikes Peak "Tava" from now on... maybe it could take hold the way Denali has in Alaska. There's something about it that is sacred, yet it is often so hard to feel amidst the swarm of humanity in its shadow.

From the Pikes Peak Historical Society Museum in Florissant:

10,000 YEARS AGO
Archaic tools and arrowheads found during the archaeological survey of the Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument in 1974 place human beings in the area about 10,000 years ago. Ute Indians say these are their ancestors. The Ute have no migration story, but instead cite a legend wherein Creator made their nation on Pikes Peak. For thousands of years, they perform ceremonies on this sacred mountain which they call “Tava” (meaning sun in their dialect of the Aztec language). The band of Ute Indians in the Pikes Peak region takes its name from this mountain, calling themselves “Tabeguache” (The People of Sun Mountain). They are one of ten bands of the Ute Nation, whose ancestral lands include all of Colorado, Utah, and northern New Mexico.