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Taking a break

Since a couple people have asked, I figured I'd officially announce that I'm taking a bit of a break from blogging :). I took a great class with Christina Katz about platform building, so I've been doing some thinking about where I want to go with writing, and in very small steps building a website to help me network. So if you're interested, stay tuned! 

Gavin's first (coffee)bar fight

I could also title this post, "This is why I love my husband."

Last weekend, we took a trip to Nashville to visit Jon's sister Julia. While standing in line at a coffee house to get breakfast, Julia and the woman in front of her, we'll call her Crazy Eyes, began snipping at each other after the woman stepped on Julia's foot and failed to apologize. The woman's husband, we'll call him Beef Head, got involved. Jon stepped in and told everyone to let it go. Nobody did.

While this was happening, I kept an eye on the drama while entertaining Gavin - who had no interest in the altercation of escalating volume unfolding before us, determined as he was to access a bag of bagels stashed behind the pastry counter.

At one point, Beef Head turned to Jon and snarled, "Let's settle this outside."

As he lumbered toward the door, Jon rolled his eyes and called after him, "Go ahead. Have fun getting cold."

Beef Head stalked back inside a moment later, looking about ready to snort fire. He tried to engage Jon outside again, unsuccessfully. Eventually we just left, since nothing was getting resolved. (Beef Head did not follow us out.)

Later, at dinner, we went over the chain of events. "Step outside, who even says that anymore?" Jon shook his head. "What, are we gonna set up an official duel? Did you bring your pistols? Step outside. Whatever."

Jon. If I haven't made this clear, thank you for not getting into a fistfight outside a Nashville coffee shop. I'm really glad we won't have that particular story to add to our family memories. I love you.

The Calamari Queen

The other night I was inspired to cook. Not just in general - on a near-daily basis I cook meals that fall into the quick-but-healthy category - but something more involved, gourmet even. Calamari, in fact.

I started thinking about them at the Dekalb Farmer's Market when I took Gavin on our usual loop through the seafood department to look at all the fish and ice (he's equally fascinated by both). Encased in ice chips, squid tubes glimmered like slimy pearl sculptures and I was reminded of the house mother on my study abroad trip to Spain in college, who one day showed me how to take a squid tube and slice, dredge through flour, and fry it into calamari. The steps had seemed astonishingly simple.

"I couldn't deal with the tube," my mom said now from the other end of my cell phone, as I described the cooking process, and I had to admit it seemed a little gross.

"I'll take one pound of the pre-cut stuff," I told the vender. I left the facility proudly, assuming I had just paved the way for a quick-yet-refined dinner free of complications. (I didn't even have to cut the tube!)

I'm still wondering what went wrong.

Maybe I should have taken my first oopsie as a warning. Before beginning my gourmet dinner project, I decided to refill our olive oil dispenser from the larger container, a heavy, barrel-like canister with an awkward opening. Although I attempted this over the sink, I still managed to pour oil all down the side of the dispenser and my shirt.

Nonplussed, I forged ahead, distracting Gavin with various kitchen appliances, toys, and eventually Nemo, while I powdered squid rings with a flour and spice mixture I'd blended earlier. This proved to be more time consuming than I'd anticipated; I hadn't counted on the tedious nature of tending to an entire pound of squid rings (my house mother had only fried up a few).

I had just heated the oil in a sautee pan and submerged several rings when Gavin ran out of his I-can-be-entertained-by-things-that-aren't-Mom steam, so I did what I normally do in that scenario: stood perpendicular to the stove with Gavin held away on one hip, working one-handed. If all went to plan, I would really only need one hand to direct the tongs and transport calamari from plate to pan to new plate. And, flashing back to haunting memories of watching TV shows like Rescue 911 where children got showered with pans of scalding oil left carelessly on stovetops, my primary awareness was on Gavin's location in proximity to the oil in order to keep him away from it. So it all still seemed possible. And calamari fries up in a handful of minutes so even though the cooking process now included protecting a toddler I held out hope that things would go smoothly.

Except that the squid rings were sticking together. And the oil started spitting and the spitting turned into lightly erupting as I held Gavin away and waved the tongs in defense. I lowered the heat slightly and stood as far away as I could, with Gavin almost behind me, and stubbornly continued.

"Bub-ble!" Gavin exclaimed over and over, trying to point around me at the quivering sautee pan that looked ready to blast off like a shuttle into space.

"Stay behind me, honey. These are dangerous bubbles." At this point, I was sweating and still had half the batch left to fry. I was so distracted I failed to notice the plastic garlic powder container which was off to the side, but not far enough away from the heat to avoid withering like a raisin while I toiled away over the volcanic oil, selecting squid rings one by one and gently, then insistently, shaking them free of their peers, releasing them into their bubble bath, simultaneously keeping Gavin at bay.

When I finally rescued the last calamari, I sighed in relief. Anyone able to witness the scene from afar would have beheld an obviously sweating, wild-eyed mom with an oil stain on her shirt the size of a Caribbean island, holding her curious toddler before a plate of fried calamari ranging from wet-noodle soggy to crisp, with oil puddled over her stove top and surrounding floor, various nests of crumpled, oil-soaked paper towels, and a warped garlic powder container off to the side.

It was like I was on the warpath...except I wasn't angry or hostile.

And it wasn't over. Less than one minute after Jon stepped in from work and whisked Gavin into a hug I poured too much liquid into the food processor; we watched as a would-be soup mixture flowed freely from the food processor's confines and all over the counter, our mail, and phone chargers.

"Didn't you see this?" Jon pointed to a faint line etched in the side of the food processor, after he'd rushed the heavy device to the sink. "The limit mark?"

"I see it now," I said sullenly. We stared at each other, then burst out laughing.

"I'm firing myself," I announced wearily, retreating to the living room with Gavin while Jon, without my asking, cleaned up the disaster I'd left in my wake. Other than posing a handful of gently-phrased but unhelpful questions like, "Why didn't you use a bigger pot?" and "Did you melt the garlic powder?", my wonderful husband did not act perturbed about having been thrown into disaster relief mode upon entering the house, which I will always remember and be grateful for.

However, I think I'll be taking it easy on the culinary front for awhile. Peanut butter sandwich, anyone?

NaNoWriMo fog clears...

Sunday the 28th of November, two days before the deadline, I was wedged between a slumbering Gavin in his giant car seat and the car door as Jon drove us back from Sarasota. It was around noon and we were five minutes from home (we'd left at 4 a.m. to beat traffic), when - so sleep deprived I felt like I had mild brain damage - I laid down the last of my 50,000 words for National Novel Writing Month.

"I finished," I announced, releasing a full-bodied, earth-shattering yawn. Then I lay back and closed my eyes. The achievement felt anti-climactic - there was no audience cheering, no bells bursting, no confetti exploding in my face. Just me with greasy hair and my recently-coffee-stained sweatshirt, dusty laptop perched awkwardly on my lap. As the day wore on I would remember, and marvel, hey, I finished. I finished a novel.

However, I hesitate to even call the file I have saved a novel. Right now, it's just a mass of words thrown together. Sometimes they flowed, light and pleasant...and sometimes reaching my daily word count goal felt like dislodging screws from wood. With my teeth.

The idea of the NaNoWriMo challenge is quantity over quality, though, with the idea that you can go back later, sift through and see what you've got. Even if I've got nothing but a short story - or, well, just nothing - I learned a lot, the most important thing being how to write while caring for a toddler. Before having Gavin, I only wrote in the mornings, and sometimes at work if I was into something. Usually, though, I would get up early and brew tea with honey. Sometimes, if I was really motivated and up in time, I would meditate before writing. Then I would calmly work on something for thirty minutes or so before work.

In the last month, though, in order to come up with 50,000 words, there was no time to cultivate a satisfying atmosphere. Neglecting housework, I wrote during naps of course, and as Gavin and Jon or my mother in law ran around me or played with noisy, singing toys in the background. I threw out words in the car, over Gavin's head while he nursed, on the couch while Jon watched TV and tried not to talk to me, and once standing in the kitchen while on the stove rice bubbled, dried and then joined forces with the pot.

But the important thing is I finished. And now, to the relief of my family, I'm off to do some laundry.

Hiatus Warning

So I've signed on for a writing challenge taking place during November, called NaNoWriMo, which stands for National Novel Writing Month. The challenge consists of writing a 50,000 word novel during the month of November - no editing, no planning, no thinking really, just basically spitting words on a page. Well, keyboard. Quantity over quality.

I keep asking myself what I think I'm doing. You barely have time to do the laundry, when are you going to write 50,000 words?

Regardless of how grandly I might fail, I'm going to proceed. So, in the interest of sanity and my family's laundry, I will not be doing any blogging in addition to the writing challenge this month.

Well, besides this post. Which really could have been going toward my word count. On that note...

And the Thrill is Gone

Last weekend, my sister-in-law's boyfriend - we'll call him Jim - asked an excellent question. We were in the kitchen after breakfast when he paused after setting a dish in the sink.

"So, if I may ask," he began cautiously. "Why were the bananas in the oven?"

We both glanced at the bananas he was referring to. They now sat on the counter, their blackened undersides creating a skunk-like appearance from the five minutes they spent in a preheating oven - before I'd tried to insert a cookie sheet full of biscuits and remembered they were in there. Whoops.

Briefly, I considered offering Jim the true story. I considered telling him how I'd discovered a giant hole gouged out of our last bunch of bananas, and how closer inspection revealed track marks from two prominent front teeth. Since we don't have a mutant baby - and besides, Gavin has eight teeth now - Jon and I had to accept a difficult concept.

The true story is, we've got a rodent problem. Ugh.

"Well..." I stalled.

I almost did tell Jim all of it. If only he had been a jerk, I might have. But this was the first meeting between us and Jim. So far he seemed like a nice guy, and The Rodent Problem definitely didn't feel like a good getting-to-know-you story. So I decided to say something vague, see how he responded, and take it from there.

"The other day I discovered a bite taken from one of the bananas," I said, and waited.

My explanation appeared to satisfy his curiosity; he nodded knowingly. We left that conversation there, although I continued to wonder what conclusion he had reached in his head. Did he assume I was trying to keep Gavin out of the bananas? Did he think Jon had been taking random swipes from the fruit bowl? Was rodent infestation normal for this guy? Or was he just trying to be polite and not ask too many questions, biding his time until he could escape our gross new/old house?

This mouse situation has caused the reality of inhabiting an old home to come crashing down in our faces. Upon moving in, we bleached and scrubbed our way through all drawers and cabinets, and still we've got critters creeping around, gnawing through sealed bags of brown rice, helping themselves to our fruit. We've got a team from wildlife control coming out in a few days to seal up gaps, and luckily there's no evidence that they are anywhere but in the lower kitchen cabinets (and at least one time on the countertop that formerly hosted a fruit bowl), but I'm still horrified.

My interest in old homes has played out kind of like a lusty relationship. At first I coveted the way the house moved and walked and whispered sweet nothings in my ear like CHARACTER and POTENTIAL and COOL OLD CRYSTAL DOORKNOBS. Then I started noticing its flaws. The old windows, most of which have been painted shut. The tiny closets. And, you know, The Rodent Problem. Until then, the other flaws didn't matter too much.

But now, the thrill is officially gone.