First, I hope you are reading this. Second, please don’t be offended.
With tomorrow being May 1st, I turned the calendar page to start filling in the boxes. It’s pretty much a blank slate right now, but I know I don’t have that much freedom. I’m writing in the weekly events that will continue right through to June 17th, the last day of school. There’s some comfort in knowing what the weeks will look like until then. Until all hell breaks loose – in a good way – for summer. What camps are the boys going to? Should we just have an old-fashioned summer instead of all that scheduled entertainment? Shall we have more days like today: With friends here overnight last night, we made smores and then they stayed up late giggling, thinking I wouldn’t hear. And I decided not to hear. I closed my door. This morning all four of them were up early and outside at 8 a.m. spraying silly string and painting a banner and reading on a blanket. Dare we let summer just happen?
I digress. At 1:15 on Mondays, I have no standing obligation. And on my calendar in the May 2nd box are all of my normal morning responsibilities with time and title. But then in the middle of that day’s box: “1:15.” Period. No description of who I’m supposed see or where I’m supposed to be. I hate seeing that and other than a futile brain racking for the next 72 hours, I can do absolutely nothing about it.
If we emailed about 1:15 on Monday, it’s quite possible that email no longer exists. I found Liam last week closing out my email, “Just click on the X in the corner, right Mom?” Yikes, I’m unsure what else got X’d out. And late one night last week, I was cleaning out my inbox and the delete button got stuck. Perhaps a little yogurt from the fingers of my little closer.
1:15, I hope you are reading this and respond. Or, when you call at 1:30 on Monday wondering where I am, I hope we are good enough friends that you forgive this oversight that is bugging the heck out of me.
Saturday, April 30, 2011
Friday, April 15, 2011
Uncovering the Real England: Roasted Potatoes
(Written February 2010)
Regularly a part of an English dinner, roasted potatoes are crackly and perfectly browned on the outside and soft on the inside. I make roasted vegetables at home. I collect a variety of hardy root vegetables: potatoes, sweet potatoes, carrots, parsnips. Then I cube them into my big 60’s barely-yellow mixing bowl, drizzle enough olive oil on to cover them, add salt and pepper – and maybe a little fresh chopped rosemary – and roast them in a 400+ degree oven. After fifteen minutes, I flip them so they roast evenly. They are OK, but they never come out with that great English crunch covering.
Last night I was keeping Anne company in the kitchen while she was making dinner. Steak and kidney pie (steak and mushroom for me), roasted potatoes and parsnips, carrots, green beans, and gravy. We were just waiting on the roasted potatoes. I hadn’t seen the beginning of the process, so I asked Anne exactly what she had done. Anne explained that she had peeled the potatoes, cut them in half, and parboiled them for five minutes. Then she put them in the roasting pan with fat. I hovered to watch the roasting process, looking for the secret of why mine weren’t English. After several minutes in the oven, Anne checked on them. She pulled the pan out, tilted it to one side, and spooned fat from the gully at the bottom of the pan over the potatoes.
Stateside Problem #1: I never use that much oil.
We had a brief chat about the difficulty of really getting them roasted properly because there is usually something else in the oven that can’t take the temperature that proper roasted vegetables need. (My thought: make pot roast in the crock pot and roast veggies in the oven – that would work.) I glanced at the counter and saw an open empty can. Anne followed my eyes. “Ahhh, and that is supposed to be the very best for roasted veg. Goose fat.” A whole can of goose fat was crisping up those spuds in the oven.
Stateside Problem #2: No cans of goose fat at my grocery store.
I had an extra helping of Anne’s English roasted potatoes last night, knowing I won’t – and probably shouldn’t – replicate them at home.
Regularly a part of an English dinner, roasted potatoes are crackly and perfectly browned on the outside and soft on the inside. I make roasted vegetables at home. I collect a variety of hardy root vegetables: potatoes, sweet potatoes, carrots, parsnips. Then I cube them into my big 60’s barely-yellow mixing bowl, drizzle enough olive oil on to cover them, add salt and pepper – and maybe a little fresh chopped rosemary – and roast them in a 400+ degree oven. After fifteen minutes, I flip them so they roast evenly. They are OK, but they never come out with that great English crunch covering.
Last night I was keeping Anne company in the kitchen while she was making dinner. Steak and kidney pie (steak and mushroom for me), roasted potatoes and parsnips, carrots, green beans, and gravy. We were just waiting on the roasted potatoes. I hadn’t seen the beginning of the process, so I asked Anne exactly what she had done. Anne explained that she had peeled the potatoes, cut them in half, and parboiled them for five minutes. Then she put them in the roasting pan with fat. I hovered to watch the roasting process, looking for the secret of why mine weren’t English. After several minutes in the oven, Anne checked on them. She pulled the pan out, tilted it to one side, and spooned fat from the gully at the bottom of the pan over the potatoes.
Stateside Problem #1: I never use that much oil.
We had a brief chat about the difficulty of really getting them roasted properly because there is usually something else in the oven that can’t take the temperature that proper roasted vegetables need. (My thought: make pot roast in the crock pot and roast veggies in the oven – that would work.) I glanced at the counter and saw an open empty can. Anne followed my eyes. “Ahhh, and that is supposed to be the very best for roasted veg. Goose fat.” A whole can of goose fat was crisping up those spuds in the oven.
Stateside Problem #2: No cans of goose fat at my grocery store.
I had an extra helping of Anne’s English roasted potatoes last night, knowing I won’t – and probably shouldn’t – replicate them at home.
Monday, April 11, 2011
BC Survivor: Bumbling at the Y in the Road
(Written November 2010)
Last Thursday I had my first MRI as part of the surveillance plan after surgery, chemo, and radiation. The words I fed myself – “routine” “cancer-free” – while waiting for the results, humored me a bit. But I was in a bit of purgatory: which way will it go?
Preparing myself for the call, I remember that I’ve had a surgery since the last MRI. The pot has been stirred since the last picture was taken. I caution myself that it’s very likely to show something. That I might need another biopsy. But it will probably be a false positive. Because I’ve done everything I could’ve and should’ve to kill every last little cell.
I’m working on a marketing campaign for Liam’s school: a direct mail campaign to 10,000 households, plus supporting print ads. A skill from grad school that I’m putting into practice! It’s fun. But will this stay on the front burner when the results come back?
Volunteering at Will’s school and moving through the first year hiccups occupies another 20 hours a week – mind, body, and soul. It’s a rollercoaster. But will I bail off the coaster when that phone rings?
Waiting, I’m moving through the days, not fully being in any given moment. Bumbling at the Y in the road, like a cow with rabies, circling and looking for a way through the invisible fence. Stunned and foaming at the mouth.
A friend is finishing chemo with crazy numbness throughout her body. Could I do chemo again?
My call comes four days later: “Good news, Linda. Everything looks stable.” The false pressure keeping me afloat the last four days drains. My impulse is to sob as I push the rewind button on the answering machine to hear the message again. But a kick-it-in-the pants Murphy voice interrupts: “Get on with it, Linda!”
Back to volunteering full-time… preparing for Christmas… washing clothes – as if nothing had happened.
Six more months until the next check: a spring mammogram in May 2011.
Last Thursday I had my first MRI as part of the surveillance plan after surgery, chemo, and radiation. The words I fed myself – “routine” “cancer-free” – while waiting for the results, humored me a bit. But I was in a bit of purgatory: which way will it go?
Preparing myself for the call, I remember that I’ve had a surgery since the last MRI. The pot has been stirred since the last picture was taken. I caution myself that it’s very likely to show something. That I might need another biopsy. But it will probably be a false positive. Because I’ve done everything I could’ve and should’ve to kill every last little cell.
I’m working on a marketing campaign for Liam’s school: a direct mail campaign to 10,000 households, plus supporting print ads. A skill from grad school that I’m putting into practice! It’s fun. But will this stay on the front burner when the results come back?
Volunteering at Will’s school and moving through the first year hiccups occupies another 20 hours a week – mind, body, and soul. It’s a rollercoaster. But will I bail off the coaster when that phone rings?
Waiting, I’m moving through the days, not fully being in any given moment. Bumbling at the Y in the road, like a cow with rabies, circling and looking for a way through the invisible fence. Stunned and foaming at the mouth.
A friend is finishing chemo with crazy numbness throughout her body. Could I do chemo again?
My call comes four days later: “Good news, Linda. Everything looks stable.” The false pressure keeping me afloat the last four days drains. My impulse is to sob as I push the rewind button on the answering machine to hear the message again. But a kick-it-in-the pants Murphy voice interrupts: “Get on with it, Linda!”
Back to volunteering full-time… preparing for Christmas… washing clothes – as if nothing had happened.
Six more months until the next check: a spring mammogram in May 2011.
Sunday, April 10, 2011
Taking Inventory: Butter Beans
(Written Fall 2010)
Breaking out the crockpot since cold weather is here. I pulled out my tattered Better Homes and Gardens Crockery Cookbook and went to work picking out two recipes for next week. I turned to the worn beef pages and jotted ingredients for the beef stroganoff that makes my mouth water when I read “sherry.” Then I thought I needed something new and turned to poultry. I can’t fathom chicken in the crock pot, but there was an interesting smoked turkey sausage and beans. Beans! Four different kinds of beans. I probably have that many on the storage shelf in the basement waiting for a purpose in life. In particular the one I see every time I do laundry: butter beans.
No idea how butter beans joined the inventory. I don’t even know what a butter bean is. But I’m happy that I can clean out the beans! I scoop all four cans up. Black beans, small white beans that I’ll substitute for great northern, small red beans that I’ll substitute for red kidney beans. And the “Lady Lee” butter beans. Not wanting to shop more than once this week, I confirm that the beans are good before heading to the grocery store. Really, what can go wrong with a bean? I dusted the layers off the butter beans. Many layers. Really… many, many layers. I flipped over the can and read “July” – this is good! But wait… 1997. July 1997.
I add butter beans to my grocery list, and while in the store, I flip the can over to make sure it’s still in date. 2015. This can of beans will last five more years. So if my math is correct, the old can of beans may have quite possibly been purchased in 1992 if all beans have a five-year shelf life.
This made me nostalgic over the old can that I unceremoniously chucked into the garbage hours before. I had carried that 15 ½ oz. can of butter beans with me for all of my married life: 18 years. Soon after Bill and I were married, I purchased my crockpot cookbook. Then I went to work stocking my cupboards so I could make just about anything at a moments notice with Iowa meat from the freezer, a few spices, and even perhaps liquid smoke or – butter beans. Was it the smoked turkey and sausage recipe that prompted me to buy these butter beans in 1992?
Not only did it twirl along in the lazy Susan of our first house for 13 years, we paid for it to be moved in a semi-truck to a Chicago suburb where it sat with the bean family in the back of a tiny pantry. After a few years there, in 2005 we paid for it AGAIN to be moved 1,600 miles in another semi-truck across the Mississippi River and through Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York and Massachusetts. Once here, it sadly sat on a dark shelf in the basement for five more years, until its demise.
My new can of beans cost $1.19. My old can of beans was worth a lot more. A whole lot more.
Breaking out the crockpot since cold weather is here. I pulled out my tattered Better Homes and Gardens Crockery Cookbook and went to work picking out two recipes for next week. I turned to the worn beef pages and jotted ingredients for the beef stroganoff that makes my mouth water when I read “sherry.” Then I thought I needed something new and turned to poultry. I can’t fathom chicken in the crock pot, but there was an interesting smoked turkey sausage and beans. Beans! Four different kinds of beans. I probably have that many on the storage shelf in the basement waiting for a purpose in life. In particular the one I see every time I do laundry: butter beans.
No idea how butter beans joined the inventory. I don’t even know what a butter bean is. But I’m happy that I can clean out the beans! I scoop all four cans up. Black beans, small white beans that I’ll substitute for great northern, small red beans that I’ll substitute for red kidney beans. And the “Lady Lee” butter beans. Not wanting to shop more than once this week, I confirm that the beans are good before heading to the grocery store. Really, what can go wrong with a bean? I dusted the layers off the butter beans. Many layers. Really… many, many layers. I flipped over the can and read “July” – this is good! But wait… 1997. July 1997.
I add butter beans to my grocery list, and while in the store, I flip the can over to make sure it’s still in date. 2015. This can of beans will last five more years. So if my math is correct, the old can of beans may have quite possibly been purchased in 1992 if all beans have a five-year shelf life.
This made me nostalgic over the old can that I unceremoniously chucked into the garbage hours before. I had carried that 15 ½ oz. can of butter beans with me for all of my married life: 18 years. Soon after Bill and I were married, I purchased my crockpot cookbook. Then I went to work stocking my cupboards so I could make just about anything at a moments notice with Iowa meat from the freezer, a few spices, and even perhaps liquid smoke or – butter beans. Was it the smoked turkey and sausage recipe that prompted me to buy these butter beans in 1992?
Not only did it twirl along in the lazy Susan of our first house for 13 years, we paid for it to be moved in a semi-truck to a Chicago suburb where it sat with the bean family in the back of a tiny pantry. After a few years there, in 2005 we paid for it AGAIN to be moved 1,600 miles in another semi-truck across the Mississippi River and through Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York and Massachusetts. Once here, it sadly sat on a dark shelf in the basement for five more years, until its demise.
My new can of beans cost $1.19. My old can of beans was worth a lot more. A whole lot more.
Thursday, April 7, 2011
Wordsworth's "Daffodils"
Norton Anthology of Poetry. Spring. Daffodils. Wordsworth poem. Memorized. Not.
It's an annual tradition. Unsure if I found the poem first or the daffs first. But this year, I know exactly where to find the 26-year-old anthology, so I can try yet again to memorize it. The chemo shelves in the basement.
Armed with an empty laundry basket, I head to the basement for a double-errand: dry towels & swim trunks and the big book. At the bottom of the stairs, I'm delighted. I remember both the bag and the book. I open the anthology and briefly glance at the poem. It was still there. I would fold laundry upstairs, then sit for five minutes and read the poem.
Two hours, or two days later, I got the basket to the second floor. And with a few minutes at hand went to pick up the book I had laid on top of the towels. Gone. And so much time had passed since pulling it off the shelf, I have no recollection of where it went.
Call it what you like: multi-tasking; distraction; motherhood; age; chemo brain -- my short-term memory has blown a fuse.
"I wandered lonely as a cloud that floats o'er hills and vales, when all at once I saw a crowd, a host of golden daffodils. I gazed and gazed but little thought what wealth to me this sight had brought. For oft when in pensive mood... inner peace and solitude... sprightly dance." And there is my jumbled favorite poem. I extract its meaning even though I've lost the exact wording.
No appearance of the anthology. But thanks to modern technology, I found the poem. http://www.bartleby.com/145/ww260.html The character of the poem is very different on a clean computer screen. No smell of paper and dust. No notes in the sides. No dog-eared page marking the spot. Wordsworth wrote this in 1804; I think he meant for it to be read from paper. Eternally read from paper.
It's an annual tradition. Unsure if I found the poem first or the daffs first. But this year, I know exactly where to find the 26-year-old anthology, so I can try yet again to memorize it. The chemo shelves in the basement.
Armed with an empty laundry basket, I head to the basement for a double-errand: dry towels & swim trunks and the big book. At the bottom of the stairs, I'm delighted. I remember both the bag and the book. I open the anthology and briefly glance at the poem. It was still there. I would fold laundry upstairs, then sit for five minutes and read the poem.
Two hours, or two days later, I got the basket to the second floor. And with a few minutes at hand went to pick up the book I had laid on top of the towels. Gone. And so much time had passed since pulling it off the shelf, I have no recollection of where it went.
Call it what you like: multi-tasking; distraction; motherhood; age; chemo brain -- my short-term memory has blown a fuse.
"I wandered lonely as a cloud that floats o'er hills and vales, when all at once I saw a crowd, a host of golden daffodils. I gazed and gazed but little thought what wealth to me this sight had brought. For oft when in pensive mood... inner peace and solitude... sprightly dance." And there is my jumbled favorite poem. I extract its meaning even though I've lost the exact wording.
No appearance of the anthology. But thanks to modern technology, I found the poem. http://www.bartleby.com/145/ww260.html The character of the poem is very different on a clean computer screen. No smell of paper and dust. No notes in the sides. No dog-eared page marking the spot. Wordsworth wrote this in 1804; I think he meant for it to be read from paper. Eternally read from paper.
Tuesday, April 5, 2011
Floor Findings
In lieu of the summer CSA and farmer's market, the farm stand that stays open year-round has reeled me in. I can drop the boys off for an afterschool activity and run over for a quick produce, fresh meat, and bakery buy. And now, daffodils and tulips -- cheap. The tiny but mighty floral section forms an L leading to the apples. With three bunches of daffodils in my cart, and Wordsworth's poem "I Wandered Lonely as a Could" all jumbled in my head, my glance to the floor stops the magic.
That can't be what I think it is... it is. At that exact necessary moment an emplyee appeared in front of me to straighten apples. He missed stepping on it by a foot. "If you look down at the floor, do you think those are really teeth?"
"Ohhhh... Yeah."
"That's what I thought. I'm just going to keep shopping and let you, the lucky employee, deal with that." And I wanted to see how he would deal with that.
The worst partial I'd ever seen. Honestly, I looked around for hidden cameras thinkng it must have been planted. Three ugly teeth protuded from a fake pink gum. The employee whisked it away in a plastic bag. I'm still wondering: lost & found or the first garbage can he could find?
Loving my daffs but having flashbacks of a wet partial on the floor...
That can't be what I think it is... it is. At that exact necessary moment an emplyee appeared in front of me to straighten apples. He missed stepping on it by a foot. "If you look down at the floor, do you think those are really teeth?"
"Ohhhh... Yeah."
"That's what I thought. I'm just going to keep shopping and let you, the lucky employee, deal with that." And I wanted to see how he would deal with that.
The worst partial I'd ever seen. Honestly, I looked around for hidden cameras thinkng it must have been planted. Three ugly teeth protuded from a fake pink gum. The employee whisked it away in a plastic bag. I'm still wondering: lost & found or the first garbage can he could find?
Loving my daffs but having flashbacks of a wet partial on the floor...
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