As I’m consumed by 24/7 cooking, baking, and cleaning, I have been remiss in responding to comments and blogs.
Please accept my apology — I’ll be back in a few days.
Until then, I’m on….
Will Return Soon…
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The Convoluted Logic of Our Mother’s Day Tradition
It started with my own mom; she presented ME with gifts on Mother’s Day — thanking me for being her daughter — and any excuse to shop is a good one, right?
I was born on Mother’s Day, so it makes sense to give me lots and lots of presents. Even though it only occurs that way every seven years, it’s still always within the same week.
I enthusiastically carry on the tradition with my son; well, because — uh –if it weren’t for him, I wouldn’t have a reason to celebrate Mother’s Day at all, would I?
As my son would say, “Duh.”
This year I got him an array of products from Kiehls — skin cream, shaving cream, shampoo, and penned a mini-poem:
You have always been my Angel Boy
As your mom
Every day has been filled with joy.
Other girls wanted to be doctors, lawyers, teachers — all I ever wanted to be was a mom.
While all the other mommies are having breakfast or brunch or lunch, I’ll be spending my day driving to the airport to for a Southwest Airlines delivery of my Angel Boy. Can’t wait!
Best of all, he’ll be here all week and that is my best birthday present ever.
Happy Mother’s Day to cat and dog lovers!
Sometimes Things Fail…Epically
This is an example of a fail.
Not a major failure in the grand scheme of things, but a fail nonetheless.
It’s okay to laugh — I laughed at myself.
It’s one of my better qualities; self-deprecation, not taking myself too seriously.
But seriously, WTF was I thinking?
Check out my Goldfinger — 24K pond — I got a little carried away with being all crafty and thought a simple restoration was in order — you know, Mother’s Day is coming up and my Angel Boy is gonna be here, and I’m singing the song of a happy mommy.
This morning I received an email to let me know that my tugboat man is a comin’ home too!
Yay!
My Angel Boy AND my Tugboat Man! Woooohoooo!
I’ve been re-inspired to complete a bunch of projects and clean the house (yes, again) so I’ll have free time to play with my two best boys.
So…ya wanna see the debacle? Here ya go — you might need to put your shades on, it’s kinda bright…in the sun….the blinding glare of a haphazardly spray painted nature pond.
I’m definitely conveying a mixed message here.
Is it a garden sanctuary or Jersey Shore? Wow.
I had to turn off the pump for the waterfall; too much overspray from the gold paint. Yes, you’re seeing correctly–for some reason, I painted the trunk of that tree.
I’m very proud of this pond — except for the gold. I dug it out, mixed and poured the concrete with no help from anyone, and that includes placing each and every rock and boulder.
This is an epic fail. My task this afternoon is to empty the water and try a wire brush to remove as much of the paint as I can.
If THAT fails, I’ll have to send out a mayday call for a captain to assist.
Related articles
- Make Your Fails Epic. (emscrant.wordpress.com)
- Epic Fail. (cdmfun.wordpress.com)
An Enchanted Book Review: “where we belong”
One of the few joys I look forward to as an on again-off again single woman when my tugboat man goes out to sea is the freedom to read in bed as long as I want, without being told to “turn the light out and put the book down.”
That’s why I was soo excited to find a new Emily Giffen novel.
where we belong (click on the title to read a chapter preview), is a radical departure from her other novels, and I’ve read them all:
An Emily Giffen story is usually so fun and captivating — it’s like comfort food with the classic story structure: action, background, conflict, development, and the ending — with a happily ever after.
I’m pretty easy to please when i read chick lit. I don’t ask for much — a little romance, a little fashion, a little roadblock to the romance, some witty repartee, conflict resolution, and a happy ending with a huge diamond.
But not this time. What a disappointment this was!
[Spoiler alert]
Giffen’s character development was flat, stereotypical, and full of cliches. The entire premise was kind of hard for me to believe. A teenager (Marian) gets pregnant, tells her mom but no one else — not the teen’s dad nor the teen’s boyfriend (Conrad); they conspire to hide her away somewhere until she gives birth and subsequently offers up the three-day-old child for adoption, and immediately gets on with her life to eventually become a successful producer of televison shows. Eighteen years later, the child (Kirby) searches for her birth mother and father, and ultimately all four parents attend her high school graduation. The reader is left with the hint that the bio-parents still have the hots for each other.
That’s it!
That’s all I got out of it the 372 pages.
My overwhelming feeling is that Giffen is looking to cash in on another series — will they or won’t they act on their feelings? Even the Reading Guide hints at this: “What do you think happens after the last page in this novel is turned? What future do you see for Kirby, Marian, and Conrad?
Sorry Emily Giffen, I’m not a fan of this one.
Have you read this one? Let me know what you think about it.
Related articles
- paris jackson reunited with birth mother (thesun.co.uk)
How to Bring Joy to an Empty Nester Mommy
Answer: Enjoy an hour-long Skype video conversation with her son.
That’s the highlight of my day. My Angel Boy and I Skyped for over an hour and it was rainbows and sunshine and glitter all rolled into one. The wonderfullness of seeing his face makes everything OK.
When my son first went to college, it was just down the road at UCSD (University of California at San Diego), about a half hour away. He lived on campus in a dorm for a few reasons: traffic on our freeway is horrible and would have been too stressful to drive every day, we wanted him to have a true “college” life experience, away from home — for the first time — although we were close enough to be around if needed. He was seventeen when he was a freshman, and I really worried about him for all the reasons you can imagine.
He did just fine; I was the basket case.
Talk about empty nest syndrome; I was bereft, tearful, wandering into his room at all hours of the day and night…the silence was hardest to bear. No doors slamming, “I’m home, mom, I’m hungry!” No one saying, “Hey, the guys are coming over to skate. Can we have snacks?” No one to need my help — not with anything.
That’s the hardest part of being an empty nester, I think.
It’s not being needed every day.
Sigh.
That was in 1998. We didn’t have the luxury of Skype — and mobile phones hadn’t yet attained their ubiquitous status. He had a laptop with an Ethernet connection and we thought that was a big deal.
We talked on a landline several times a week and he came home most weekends. We drove down to get him (and his laundry) and take him back with clean clothes and enough brownies and cookies and snacks to last the week.
In his junior year, he had the opportunity to go to Germany for his year abroad experience. He left for the University of Goettingen in September and I flew there in February and stayed for a week.
I met his friends and his professors and we walked for hours and talked and laughed non-stop the entire time. That’s what we’ve always done and that tops the list of what I miss most about him being all grown up and everything – besides the hugs and smiles and his messy room and being hungry all the time — he and I can talk for hours about anything.
It was a tradition started in Kindergarten. We’d leave the house every morning around 7:30 a.m. to walk our dog before school began at 8:05 a.m. During that half hour he’d practice arithmetic, spelling, brain teasers, chat about his day in school, and what I would be doing with my time. With a final kiss and hug from me and a goodbye from his dog, he skipped off to meet his friends. Never looking back. Self confident and prepared for learning. That was my goal, and I think I accomplished it.
It’s full circle time for my Angel Boy — he’s taught freshman and seniors at Yale. I couldn’t be prouder. When you’re a mom of a little one, you hope to plant the seeds for future life success; it’s a happy day when you see the fruits of your labor — a magnificent, tall, strong bountiful harvest. But that doesn’t mean that I don’t miss him terribly! Sigh…
Related articles
- Downsizing by empty nesters helps lift housing market sales (triblive.com)
- April 9: Boomers, Empty Nesters and Seniors: What’s Your Next Move? (patriotledger.com)
- How To Deal With The Empty Nest Syndrome (tomfit247.com)
The Last Supper: An Indian Feast
When my tugboat man abandons me goes off to work oceans away, I like to make a special goodbye dinner. Last night it was Indian food. I tried to recreate the delicious dinner we had at Mt. Everest restaurant in Berkeley and I don’t know if it was exactly the same, but it was a pretty good effort, and much appreciated by my hubs.
Some of the ingredients…whew!
This is Raita, an amazing dipping sauce for Naan. It’s so simple.
Plain yogurt mixed with shredded and chopped cucumber, cayenne, cumin, pepper, and fresh cilantro. It would be good on anything, every single day.
I think it was the best part of the meal– and so beautiful!
Lentil Daal (recipe below) So fragrant and healthy.
Naan Bread
Naan Bread Rising
And while I’m not confirming NOR denying where he’s going, this might be a clue– or maybe not.
Recipes
Naan Bread:
http://www.mybakingaddiction.com/naan-bread/
Raita:
http://chefinyou.com/2011/04/cucumber-raita/
Related articles
- Top 5 *Indian* Food Musts in New Delhi (thecultureur.com)
- Food / Indian (tahsinthegood.wordpress.com)
- Tempered Cucumber Raita – South Indian Style (kelipaan.wordpress.com)
- My First Attempt At Homemade Naan (lilsuburbanhomestead.com)
She sees seashells and shelves near the seashore
That “sometimes he’s here, sometimes he’s not” tugboat captain of mine is leaving again in a couple of days.
I’m working hard on a meal for tonight that recreates the lovely Nepalese and Indian food we had in Berkeley.
I’m making Lentil Daal, Curried Rice, Naan Bread, and Raita, a delicious yogurt-based dipping sauce.
I’ll document it all for tomorrow’s post.
In the meantime, I took photos of a few new shelves hubs so kindly made for me to display my ever increasing hoard of shells, his craft of marlinspike seamanship, and my small but growing collection of mudmen from China, and fans.
Yes, those really are seashells covering the screws in the lower part of the shelf.
Seashells can be so very useful, can’t they? Useful and beautiful.
Related articles
- The Matticus Kingdom # 200 (enchantedseashells.com)
- ‘Shelling’ with family led to lifelong love of seashells (napavalleyregister.com)
- A Seashell Quest (seashellsbymillhill.com)
- Welcome to Bali Seashell (balishell.wordpress.com)
- Seashell Bowl (idontgiveacraft.wordpress.com)
I Just Want to Pee Alone… A Must-Read Book Review
Trust me, this is one of the best (and most irreverent) guides to the real world of mothering you’ll ever read.
It brought me back with laughter to the days when the bathroom was a place to hide for a few brief moments of precious solititude — where I’d hide a book to attempt to read and eke out a few sentences before the scratching and whining at the door would start to let me know I’d been discovered.
Ahhh, the good old days!
Way back when my son was a baby, we didn’t have blogging or the opportunity to use humor as an outlet to the rewarding — but unrelenting — job of being a mommy.
Raising kids properly is hard work. Every mom can relate to “I just want to pee alone!”
I Just Want to Pee Alone is a collection of hilarious essays from thirty-seven of the most kick ass mom bloggers on the web. “Grown Up Words in a Pint-Sized Mouth” by Momaical (Tracy Winslow) is laugh-out-loud funny and is a must-read. She’s in great company with the rest of the bloggers, including People I Want to Punch in the Throat, Insane in the Mom-Brain, The Divine Secrets of a Domestic Diva, Baby Sideburns, Let Me Start By Saying, and Rants From Mommyland.
Read it for yourself and I’m sure you’ll agree with me.
This is a super gift for a baby shower or a new mom, as necessary as a stroller or a car seat!
Related articles
- The Most Official Review of I Just Want to Pee Alone (whencrazymeetsexhaustion.com)
Beginnings and endings: 1966 and 2007
“Nature gives you the face you have at twenty; it is up to you to merit the face you have at fifty.”–Coco Chanel
Two special dates: July 1966 and April 2007
Beginnings and endings.
July 1966 – Detroit, Michigan
I’m in the bathroom, calling out to my mom.
“MomMomMOM MOMMEEE!! Where ARE you? Guess what?”
You know what they say, a mom always knows.
“Honey, I bet you just started menstruating, am I right?” (She was a nurse and always always used a medical term instead of slang. Like we always said “urinate” instead of pee; vagina and penis instead of -well– instead of anything else.)
After a hug and a lengthy (yawn) tutorial about personal hygiene, my mom took me out for lunch and a shopping spree to commemorate this milestone towards womanhood. She told me that when she first began to menstruate, all she got was a slap in the face from her mother, some kind of archaic ritualistic symbolism that had something to do with the fact that her father (my grandfather) was a rabbi. She told me that she was horrified and never forgot it, and if she ever had a little girl, she’d mark the occasion with a celebration, not a punishment.
At school it was called “Aunt Flo” or “Secret Sam” (don’t ask me why.)
Back then everyone used cumbersome huge Kotex pads attached by a hellish contraption known as a “Kotex belt.” Made up of white elastic encompassing your waist along with two plastic clips that attached to each end of the pad, it took some getting used to — and felt very much like my biking shorts do now. It was a great day when I graduated to tampons.
That started years of worry. Worry about waiting to “start”. Worry about what to wear to avoid an accident, and later, worry about NOT starting, waiting every month with a silent prayer to the Period Goddess — please oh please let me start; I’ll be more careful next time. And then getting married and wanting to start a family; holding my breath every month and willing my body to NOT– becoming compulsively scientific, taking temperatures and stressing over ovulation days and counting. Worry, worry, worry.
Worry about the baby I did become pregnant with…will he be healthy, will I be a good mom, will I produce enough milk, can I protect him from all harm and sadness–the what ifs drove me crazy.
April 2007 was the date of my last menses, my last period. At the risk of alienating my peers, I have to be honest and admit that I had no symptoms of menopause — I experienced none of the common complaints. Oh, I had an occasional hot flash–which I actually enjoyed since I’m always cold — for a few brief moments, it felt like I had my own personal heater. And once in a while, I’d feel a bit tingly which brought back awesome memories of a similar feeling when I was breastfeeding and my milk “let down”. I told my doctor all this and she nodded her head and said she had experienced the same sensations.
I am so happy to be done with all that worry. I don’t have to check the calendar every month and worry about when or if I’m going to need to carry tampons with me.
It’s not that I’m not still kinda crazy, but my level of worry is diferent. Not that I don’t worry constantly about my son, but he’s a grown up thirty-two- year-old Yale professor and my worry for him is a bit less intense.
I feel freer. Tranquil. Confident. Satisfied. I can take a deep breath now and exhale.
Don’t get me wrong; I do believe Coco Chanel. I still work out like a fiend every day to fit in my size two skinny jeans; I fight the good fight with Botox and color my gray hair, but I’m a very happy fifty-eight-year-old, and proud to say it. Bring on the next chapter of my life. I’m ready!
This post is written for a Generation Fabulous BlogHop. Generation Fabulous is a new website for and about women who are rocking middle-age and beyond. Please click here to see more.
Child Shaming WTF
Could we please stop having children if we’re going to make their childhood and adult lives miserable? Please? I have just about had it with the child shaming crap.
PEOPLE, LISTEN TO ME. THAT IS NOT A VIABLE PARENTING TOOL.
I get it that you were probably treated like shit by your parents or parent or babysitter or daycare or left to your own devices. I get that. And I’m sorry you weren’t loved and guided properly. But pull-eazze stop ruining the emotional psyches of the next generation.
Making your eight-year-old kid wear a t-shirt to school that proclaims to the world that they shoplift or pretending they’re a living breathing Elf Shaming Doll is abusive.
Read my lips. ABUSIVE.
I’m supposed to be getting ready for my tugboat man to come home in a few hours and now I’m all riled up and pissy and looking for a fight.
I had the news on this morning (big mistake) and saw Matt Lauer and a few women: Star Jones, Nancy Snyderman, and Suzie Orman (I think, I was only halfway paying attention to who was saying what) talking about this most recent example of “child shaming” and why it’s unhealthy and abusive and just plain MEAN. At least they all agreed it was horrible.
Unlike elf shaming, which I thought was funny for about ten seconds.
Then I Googled “child shaming” and found the story of the dad who posted on Reddit a picture of his three-year-old wearing a sign shaming her for pooping in the shower. I’m not going to perpetuate the inappropriateness or abuse of this child by posting the pic or the link.
I’m outraged.
Children need love. They don’t deserve public humiliation or to be fodder for social media.
Don’t you agree? Am I all alone on this island?
I gotta go. I still don’t know what I’m wearing to the airport!
THIS is what we need more of, right? Lots of hugs and kisses.
P.S. Not my baby, you can tell because there’s not a curl in sight!
