Just Ten Foods

When I graduated from college my parents moved to Washington, DC. As I was looking for a job, my Dad was learning the phone business and my Mom was renovating a house we lived together in a tiny apartment in Crystal City, otherwise known as the Houston of Washington for its lack of zoning. The apartment had been the model for the building with bad corporate furniture and I slept in the coat closet by the front door. Since we all were new to the city none of us had any friends so I would leave every weekend and go visit friends who were living back home with their parents, but at least in regular sized houses.
One Sunday I returned to the apartment and found my parents sitting on the two chair balcony watching the planes land at National Airport, each scribbling things on pads of paper. “What are you doing?” I inquired. I was quickly shushed and they continued writing.  
My father broke the silence first, “Steak, cheese, potatoes, milk…”
“Milk is a drink and we already agreed that was free,” my mother interrupted.  
“Great, I have to redo my list then,” my father continued.
“Artichokes, Chicken, avocado, eggs, cheese…” My mother said.
“What are you doing?” I demanded from the only other chair inside.
I came to find out that my parents had spent the entire weekend discussing the foods they would choose if they were only allowed to eat ten things for the rest of their lives. Not just one conversation, but a whole weekend. They negotiated the milk truce and other finer points before they finally got to the list point. I thought they had really lost it, but the older I got and the longer I’ve been married, the more I understand it in a weird kind of way.
As I was eating my regular arugula, chicken, goat cheese and caramelized pear salad I thought about what my ten foods would be. It seems to me that I have practically already gotten to the state my parents were only hypothetical about. If I am alone at home I eat exactly the same foods over and over when I am trying to loose weight.  
I thought then ten foods game was a crazy one for my parents to play, but now I have fallen into living it. When I vary from my regular foods I tend to over eat and eat naughty things I know I should not. It is so much easier to make my standard salad, which I really love, but know that it does not make me crave a gooey undercooked chocolate chunk cookies or bowl of salted caramel ice cream.
As much as I like to cook for others when it comes to me alone I am satisfied to just have the regular. I wish my parents had kept their lists. I would love to see if their tastes from the early 80’s has changed or if they would have been happy with those same ten foods for the last thirty plus years.

Perhaps You Are In The Wrong Job

I can only imagine that having a job that I don’t enjoy would make me a little grouchy, but even in my most insignificant jobs I tried to make the most of it, or at least pretend I liked what I was doing. Obviously the economy has a lot of people doing things that they are probably over qualified for, but if they can’t do those jobs well I am not sure they are ever going to go anywhere else.
Today must have been my time to encounter those people. It started with a call to the customer service department at Russ’ life insurance company. Paying your life insurance bill is high on my list to get right. In August I used my banks automated payment system as I do to pay all my bills. I was quite unhappy when I discovered two letters saying I had not paid. I went online and found the confirmation from the back that indeed I had paid, but the check was not cashed.
I called customer service and after an unsatisfactory call with a regular rep who would not talk to me since I was not the policy holder I asked to speak to a supervisor. After many “hypothetical situation” questions, since I was still not the policy holder I finally got out of this guy that they had changed the payment address a year ago and my check probably went to the old one. I got him to take my new payment over the phone and asked what would happen to my check if it ever got to them. I was told they would cash it and credit my account for an extra year. Not the right answer, but I would deal with the bank on that.  
I suggested that they might pay the post office for a longer forwarding service so they would not miss other payments that were automated like mine. “Not my department,” was the I don’t care answer.  
“Yes, but it affects your department with all the customer service calls you have to take,” I said.   
“That’s good job security.”  
Wow. So purposely annoying customers is good for this guy personally. I could feel his disdain for me over the phone. Time for him to get a different job, but as far as I could tell he was unemployable.
After my morning frustration with insurance I went to lunch with my friends Lynn and Christy at a locally owned restaurant. We had a waitress who acted as if serving us was too much trouble. I ordered the beet salad and asked her to leave off the polenta croutons. Her surely response was, “That doesn’t come with croutons.” Then all the better, I did not want them anyway, but for good measure I looked at the menu to make sure since she was not going to request something be left off that she did not think was on there to begin with. I had not been dreaming, polenta croutons big as life in the description. She was not happy about being wrong.
We had to ask for tea refills which took forever as did the change giving from the check. Being the queen of cash I put a twenty in my check folder. Eventually she came back and brought my change. Interestingly even though the ticket said the change was $3.34 she only gave back three ones. I was planning on leaving all the change for a tip, since I feel like restaurant workers are underpaid, but I thought it was quite presumptuous of her to not return the coins. She might not have even made the change, but she certainly did not care enough to check. Really being a waitress is not the right job for her, or perhaps she had just had a terrible run in with an insurance company customer service supervisor.

Giving A Hand Not What I Expected

This morning nine members of the Hope Valley Garden Club assembled at Elizabeth Wiener’s house to get our orange vests, black spider gloves and official road side trash collection bags to help with trash pick up week. Our garden club has volunteered to pick up trash along the sides of the road before and I thought it was a fun way to be with friends, get some exercise and do good at the same time. And who can deny that the orange vest is not a big enticement?
Last time we did this job we were assigned about a half a mile of busy road to clean. We must have done an exceptional job because this time we were given University Drive from DA middle school all the way down to Thai Cafe, a good mile and a half. It seemed like a daunting task.
Elizabeth, ever the organizer had laid out the vests with a pair of gloves on top of each on her front steps. After we had had suited up she had us each pick a playing card from a select group she held in her hand and told not to look at them. Of course I looked before I was supposed to, but I don’t know what difference it made, I did not have any other cards in my pocket to change with. I had the Jack of hearts and after all the cards were picked we were told that we would work in pairs according to our suit. My partner was Beth Sholtz, my birthday partner and good friend. This turned out to be important later.
Beth and I were assigned the north side on University starting at DA. Renee Hodges and Kay Peters took the south side. Starting at the Thai Cafe end was Elizabeth Wiener and Carolyn Sloate on the south and Thecky Pappas, Betsy Ross and Esten Walker on the north. We all started working from our own ends and picked up trash and recyclables until we met in the middle.
This was only a fun job because I had a friend to talk to while we gathered trash, cigarette butts, cans and bottle people had thoughtlessly discarded. The worst things to pick up were the cigarette butts and those little plastic ends from cheep swisher sweet type cigars. As if smoking is not gross enough the people who do it need to realize butts are not biodegradable and not throw them out the window of their car.
About half way down our side of the road Beth and I came upon a cedar tree with branches to the ground that had a lot of trash blown into the trunk. Our arms were not long enough to reach in and get all the plastic bags and beer cans that had congregated inside the tree. Beth brilliantly used a stick to pull things out. I just pushed my way in like a bull in a china shop. What I did not realize is that the rain starved tree’s cedar needles were very brittle and as I was bending over trying to grab the old paper wrapped around the branches I felt a huge bunch of prickly needles go down the back of my jeans.
I stood up and felt like I had a thousand little needles sticking me in the butt. In the most unlady like way, right there on the side of the road I put my hand down the back of my pants but since I was wearing jeans I was unable to dislodge many needles. Beth, being a mother of four and grandmother to two wasted no time and came right over and stuck her hand down my pants while telling me to pull the pant legs away from my full thighs and shake my leg at the same time. With her hand down the back of my jeans, palm towards the pockets she shock me so hard we looked like two dogs mating by the side of the road. Anyone driving by would certainly wonder if two crazy women with Alzheimer’s had escaped from their lock down. Only the orange vest distinguished us as non-runaways.
After a minute of shaking I told Beth we had done the best we could do together and I had to work on the needles inside my underpants myself. The goods is the nine of us were able to clean the whole road in an hour and the needles in my underpants went no farther. Saying we are a close knit garden club is probably an understatement.   

A New Way to Get Steps, at Least For Us

Russ and I took Carter on the first college tour the three of us have gone on together. Carter had already visited one college without us, but it was not the place she thought was a good fit for her.  
Since Carter had off of school today a I planned a visit at a local college just so we could “practice” looking at colleges. I think that it is going to be a very long year of trying to find the place where Carter feels like she has found her people. There are so many variables in the college search. Does a school offer a course of study you are interested in; do you know what you are interested in; is it in the kind of setting you are looking for; is it the right size; do you stand a chance to get in; is it as liberal or conservative as you want and after you figure all those things out are the students your kind of people.
The hardest part of the whole thing is finding the time to visit schools when there are actually students there taking classes. How will you ever know if you have found the right place if you don’t meet the people?
Today as we walked a campus behind a perky tour guide I thought about how we have spent our whole parenthood saying, “don’t judge a book by its cover,” but found that was exactly what we were doing on our visit. Carter looked at the kids and judged, do they look like the kind of people I want to go to school with. Fields of study, even size of dorm rooms did not make a bit of difference, just the look of the students. Now I’m not saying one way or another what she thought, but when a six foot ten inch guy came out of the basketball office Carter did seem more interested. We are not judging schools by how many boys are taller than Carter.
What I do see in our future is a lot of eating pizza at college hang outs and getting our daily steps the slow way while we follow a backward walking tour guide. I am going to try and keep an open mind and actually pay attention on tours, but I bet we could figure out before the tour even starts if Carter has found her people. I hope they are tall.

Has Nantucket Reached The Tipping Point?

I’ve been coming to Nantucket since I was 12 years old. I was lucky enough to have friends that brought me when I was younger and a husband who loved it in my married years. Nantucket has always been a special place — quaint, well preserved, preppy. When I was younger my friends whose families had houses there often had summer jobs scooping ice cream or making deli sandwiches.  
Over the years Nantucket has gotten fancier and pricier. Yes, the quaint still exists but more and more the houses are getting bigger and more outrageous. On this visit my friend Candi looked at the real estate listings and wondered where all the second, third and forth home owners who could afford a five to fifteen million dollar house came from. This got me thinking about the economics of the small island and wondering where all the support people lived.
There has been a strong faction of people who want to keep Nantucket sparsely populated with lots of land in trust. The only problem is that most people who own a six million dollar house don’t clean it, paint it, cut the grass, fix the plumbing, or maintain the security system themselves. In fact most of them only live in it at most a few months a years so they are not even around to keep an eye on their valuable property.
Today while I was taking my long morning walk west of town the majority of people who drove past me were construction, lawn maintenance or house cleaning people of some kind. Where do these people live I wondered? We had a conversation with a restaurant owner last night about the issue of where workers live and she said that it is getting harder and harder for seasonal help to find a bed, let alone a home. College kids whose families own houses no longer want to scoop ice cream. 
N magazine, the island’s full color local yielded some answers to my questions. I found out that last year the most expensive house on the island sold for $21.5 million and the least expensive for $325,000. Imagine you are a waitress, do you think you could afford a $325,000 house. And the supply at the low end is minuscule. N magazine did a feature on how the island relies on a bastion of commuters from the mainland who travel daily either by ferry or plane to their jobs on the island. People like all the fire fighters, the hospital staff, including all the doctors, and most of the craftsmen who build and maintain the multi-million dollar homes. Even the Stop and Shop grocery flys works in daily. Why do they spend two hours a day commuting? Because they can charge a premium to their island customers who have no other choice. But is it really good to have a community where the firemen can’t afford to live?
N magazine was full of ads for the most fabulous estates for sales from $31 million down to a couple of million, but then I ran across a little bullet, home prices are down 20% this year on Nantucket. Wow, that’s a lot. And there are many houses for sale. Have people who own these luxurious places tired of how hard and expensive it is to take care of them?   
Don’t get me wrong, Nantucket is still a fabulous place to visit. And the very rich can certainly spend their money any way they want. Please spend it and keep the economy greased up, but I think Nantucket could benefit from growing their middle class by creating some reasonable housing. Everywhere I went on the island I saw help wanted signs. I probably should have taken on a job for the few days I was there, at least while Russ was working. The business owners I talked to were dying from a lack of help.
Those people who thought they were doing the right thing to keep Nantucket sparse didn’t realize they were creating a place where they might have to clean their own house or cut their own grass or replace their own roof.
This coming weekend a large number of important movers and shakers from all over the world are coming to the island for something called the Nantucket Project. It is a big conference on how people of influence can improve the world. I hope they spend a session or two thinking about Nantucket itself. It just can not be healthy to have an all 1% economy. Eventually it will collapse.

Cause of Death

If something happens to me and I don’t make it through the night my obituary should read, “Poor thing, the lobster took her out.” A giant lobster did not crush my skull or drag me under water and drown me. No, if I don’t wake up tomorrow it was from the lobster taking over my body from the inside.
In my defense I have been at the mercy of restaurant choices made by my husband’s business partner, Rich months ago and with great fore thought. Every day the meal choices have been curated for maximum enjoyment culminating with a double dose of lobster today. Lunch at the White Elephant was the Nantucket Lunch box, a bowl of clam chowder and lobster salad with bib lettuce. I was some what surprised by a giant bowl of clam chowder, yet only one small leaf of bib lettuce. Usually when lettuce is used as a garnish it is not prominently called out on the menu, but neither of those items were the reason for the choice of such an entree. Let’s be serious, the main star was the oh-so-perfectly and lightly dressed lemony lobster salad. Each fork full fully savored and enjoyed.
The partners had to get back to work, so we skipped dessert, but they threw out a comment about craving oatmeal raisin cookies. This gave me and my friends Susan and Ann something to do rather than just shopping the afternoon away. Well, maybe something to do while shopping the afternoon away. We ran across a cute shop off the beaten path that had the nicest woman working there. While I bought a dress we asked her about oatmeal cookie hunting since the in town bakery is closed on Mondays. She phoned up the “something natural” store to make sure they were open and had cookies and told us it was the place to go.
So after some stops at small shops along the way we dropped our bags at the house and walked the cliff road to get the hard workers in our group some cookies. It was important to keep them well fed so they could keep working.
Tonight was our last dinner in a very well fed week of meals and Rich had really saved the best for last. It was the chef’s table on lobster night at Company of the Cauldron. We entered the packed and tiny restaurant and were escorted through the kitchen to the covered back patio with heaters warming the chilly night air. There were no menus to distract us and therefore no anticipation for how much food, and specifically, how much lobster to expect.
The first course was a red rich lobster bisque. Just fabulous and if I could have licked my bowl I would have. A small head of the most perfect baby romain lightly dressed in buttermilk dressing with a small hot lobster cake was next. More than one in our party thought the lettuce was almost the best thing we had and how that was possible with the fabulous lobster we had I do not know. It was quite a competition.  
I would have been happy if I had finished my meal right we there, but no. A plate with a half of grilled lobster tail and the biggest lobster claw I have ever seen in my life, that made lobster boy’s hands on American Horror Story last season look small. Some German potato salad and asparagus that could have won a James Beard competition were on the plate, but who could appreciate them next to so much perfect lobster?
As if I had not come close enough to death the chef tried to finish the job of killing me off along with all the other diners at the table by serving us a homemade donut with raspberry sauce and vanilla ice cream.  
You used to think this was a diet comedy blog, but now it has turned into a how-to blog on the best ways to die. Death by lobster is the way to go. 

  
The Poor Waiters Who Get to Serve Me
Day three in Nantucket and I am already tiring of eating too much good food. Now that does not mean I have stopped eating it or even made the healthiest of decisions, but I can feel the collective weight of bread and desserts as well as just regular salad dressing beginning to take hold of me.  
One of the problems of these company retreats is the big dinners after the days of working. Well today it was a half day working and a small trip on a boat thanks to Captain Mark Schweitzer. Unfortunately boating burns no calories whatsoever, just gives us more fun time together.
Tonight we went to Galley Beach to enjoy the sunset as well as a completely decadent dinner. The poor waiter had to endure my comments as he tried to describe the various specials to our table of nine. Nothing is ever going to go easy on a waiter when he begins by telling us about the “4.7 ounce meatball special.”  
“Is it exactly 4.7?” I interject. “Could it possible be 4.6 or 4.8?”
Thank goodness he had a good sense of humor and found his description as absurd as I did.
“What I mean to say is it is a really big meatball.”  

  
That’s more like it. Don’t describe things to me in terms of how much they weigh. If he said a quarter pounder meatball I would have thought it was huge. The bad news is all that discussion about the meatballs made our whole table crave them so we got three for the table to share. That was like 14 ounces of meatballs for nine of us. I did not need that ounce and a half, but I had it anyway and two bites was just enough.
Russ ordered a pasta appetizer as a main course. He probably would have been fine getting just the appetizer size but the waiter asked him if he wanted to make it a main course size, which means doubling it in food as well as price. I would be better off if I could order half sizes of everything. I want to taste different foods and have a variety to my meal out, but I just don’t need a full meal, let alone an appetizer and a dessert. I know I would feel better when I left the restaurant if I had eaten half as much. I still suffer from the affliction of eating all that is put in front of me, so just don’t give me so much.
I guess that Russ and I are now at the old folks point in life that we need to start ordering one dinner and splitting it. The next thing that is going to happen is we are going to begin arriving at restaurants at 5:00 for the early bird special. I wonder if waiters describe the food there or do they just show you pretty laminated pictures of food?  

Nantucket In Nine Miles On Foot

  
When I am on vacation I try and cut my diet some slack and enjoy myself. Yesterday I followed that rule in earnest and enjoyed a lobster roll, a fig and prosciutto flat bread and multiple bites of many shared desserts. Consequently I had a horrible night’s sleep, paying in many ways for veering so far off my diet course.
As Russ got up at his early puritanical time of six in the morning and started working I finally fell asleep and stayed asleep until 9:30 this morning. I knew I needed to adjust my vacation ways and get back on a track closer to a monks life, yet still have some fun.  
I decided that the best course of action was to make sure I got my nine miles of walking in like I do on a good day at home. Thankfully the weather here in Nantucket was an absolutely perfect 75 degrees and sunny today. It is actually warmer than I had packed for this trip.
While Russ and his business partners were busy slaving away the morning strategizing the future of their business I walked downtown where I met up with two other CMG wives, Candi Chin and Ann Schweitzer. We did a little shopping, which was actually no spending for me and then Ann and I peeled off to concentrate on really getting a good walk in. Ann is a new addition to the partner spouses since her husband Mark recently joined the firm, but Ann and Mark are old friends to us. I grew up two doors away from Mark and both Ann and Mark worked with my father which is how they met and married.

  
As we were attempting to leave the shopping distractions Ann had me side step into a most beautiful store called Paris Style where every item of clothing was truly a work of art. A row of blazers hung on one wall with a thirty percent off sign but no price tags at all. A striking woman approached me as I was fingering the fine fabric of a navy jacket with a bright pink silk lining. She asked if I would like to try one on, as she got one in what she thought was my size.  
I slipped into the garment as she described how each piece was hand made in France to my measurements. Good thing since this jacket was made for a woman who never did any manual labor with her arms, or who did not know the flapping feeling that comes from waving my arm wildly. Ann asked how much the blazers were and amazingly neither of us showed any visible flinching when the proprietor unapologetically said, “$2,400.” The 30% off group were not for a custom one and of course I would need custom with my arms. It was clearly time to walk.
Ann and I got about two miles in before it was time to meet up with the workers for lunch. I had a kale salad feeling like the Presbyterian I am. After lunch Russ and I did a little more looking at stores and then spent two hours getting a big walk in. As we neared our house we just caught a beautiful bride heading into her wedding at the Congregational Church across the street. I spent the next forty five minutes talking to James, the driver of the Wauwinet Inn’s old woodie station wagon who had driven the bride to the wedding and was awaiting the bride and her new husband to take them back to the Inn for the reception. James is from Jamaica and has worked at the Wauwinet for 23 years. I have to say he is the nicest person I have met on the island this visit. Sadly I finally had to cut short our talk since I needed to shower before dinner. I was still short a mile of steps.

  
Our whole group walked to straight wharf for a fabulous dinner where I felt less guilty splitting things with Ann since I was almost up to nine miles and I had only eaten a salad for lunch. Once home from dinner as Russ and came up to bed I realized I was two tenth of a mile short of my goal. I paced the length of our room for a few minutes until my watch buzzed that I had done it. I think that tomorrow I need to get up early and get more walking in before breakfast since Ann and Mark have gotten a boat for an afternoon ride. There is just no exercise riding in a boat, but boy it does make for a fun vacation. 

Little Did We Know 24 Years Ago

When Russ and I got engaged we went on vacation together for the first time to Newport, RI and Nantucket. We stayed at cute bed and breakfast’s. Since the Internet had not been invented yet we found them the old fashioned, by reading books on bed and breakfast spots and calling them up on the phone to see if they had availability. We picked our Nantucket lodgings because it was in town and was reasonably priced.  
When you pick vacations by reading books that had been published years before you never really are sure if what you read was what was happening now so it all was a crap shoot. There were no Trip Advisor reviews letting you know not to take a room on the street side or that the breakfast was not as good as an egg Mcmuffin.
As it happened the place we went first in Newport, although nice as a whole had a great variability in rooms and we had a tiny attic garret that was hardly tall enough for Russ to stand up in. But what the hell, we were young and in love. After a couple of days there we happily left for the ferry to Nantucket.  
Leaving the car on the mainland we arrived at the wharf on Nantucket and walked the three blocks up Broad street to Center Street where we found the Ha Penny House. It was the perfectly typical Nantucket shingle style house where the owners served us afternoon tea before showing to the blueberry room. What a joy it was. A room with a tall king sized bed that over looked the beautiful white Congregational church across the street. It was so much better than described in the old bed and breakfast book, totally making up for the misleading description of our previous Newport spot. Russ and I spent three nights on Nantucket making the end of our first vacation end on a very high note.
Today we flew on to the Island for a five day working vacation of Russ and his business partners and all the spouses. Rich, his partner, had rented a house that was big enough for us all to stay at in town so we could walk to restaurants and shopping. As Google maps led us to the house down Water Street and then on one of the two Ash’s either Ash Lane or Ash Street that run parallel to each other the little voice of the navigator said, “turn right on Center Street and you are at your destination.”  
We pulled up to a beautiful big grey Nantucket colonial right across from the Congregational church, and two doors down from the Ha Penny House. Happiness over came me. Never 24 years ago when we first came to this island could I have guessed all the places we would have gone in our life, the jobs we have had, the homes we have lived in, the friends we have made, the child we have loved to end right back where we started. I can’t wait to see what the next 24 years brings. I know I am lucky if it is half as good as the first 24 years have been.

The Suit Case Dilemma

Traveling is a joy to me now. I have spent so much of my life on the road starting back when I hawked mail opening machines for a living and traveling was more of a chore. It was just a way to get between the joys of visiting Vice Presidents at credit card banks in Delaware and operations managers at the lock box operations in Charlotte to convince them that I could improve their cash flow. Then I moved to the glamorous life of a consultant, flying between Ottawa and Regina, they are in Canada in case you are American, or London and Mexico City.  
The one rule I tried to live with is always carry my suit case on a plane. Anyone who knows my Saskatoon four flight lost bag story knows why. So I am always on the lookout for the perfect carry on suitcase. When I first started flying a lot the road warriors all carried “suiters” — the folding suit bag that was a big envelope to hang your clothes in. It was fine for clothes, but stunk for shoes and toiletries.  
Then the rolling suitcase was invented. I think Lark came out with the first little bag on wheels. That came in light blue meant exclusively for ladies. They must have been add with Barbie play car wheels they had gotten cheep in China. The bags were just a regular hard side suitcases with these tiny wheels and a leash to pull the suit case around. It never really worked, tipped over all the time and was heavy empty. For the record I never owned one of those. I was using the Hartman suiters and a Hartman bag that had something akin to carpeting on the outside.
I will never forget the first time I was sitting in National airport in DC, as it was called when Ronald Reagan was just a president and not an airport name, and I saw a flight attendant walk by pulling a TravelPro rolling carry on. I followed that woman for five or six gates trying to get a look at the name on the bag. There was no internet back in those days, but the Sky Mall magazine yielded the information on that perfect bag. My first Travel pro went around the world at least four years before it was replaced by a second one.
Then the TSA changed the size bag we could carry on and I get a new bag from some place like Tuesday morning because I was not traveling for work anymore. I got red so I could find it in a crowd. It was fine. No bells and whistles but after a number of years the handle gave way and I replaced it with another red one that has served me well.  
Carter coveted my red bag with the extra long handle so when she went to Atlanta last weekend I let her take it. Sadly she checked it rather than following my rule of never check a suitcase. I got it back from her today to pack for my trip to Nantucket and discovered the plastic handle on the base that acts as the foot/balance so the case can stand up had been broken off. It’s too late to replace this bag for the trip in the morning, but I did get right on the Internet to order my next rolling bag so I am well prepared.  
It’s not bad timing since the TSA has once again ever so slightly shrunk the bag size they will allow on planes. I feel like the TSA gets a kick back from suitcase manufacturers every time they change the bag rules. This will be the final voyage for my broken red bag. I am sure I will be annoyed through the whole trip that it won’t stand up just right, but at least I am only going to Nantucket and not doing a planes, trains and subway deal going between European capitals. Oh those were the days.

Profiler Friend Who Can ID Every Slacker

Sometimes and I hope it is only sometimes, I write something unflattering about someone, but I try and not reveal their identity or too much information about them so that they are immediately identifiable. Of course this rule does not hold true if I am writing about a public figure, like Donald Trump, but for ordinary locals or even relatives I try and tell a story without naming names or writing anything that will get me sued.

This also goes for most businesses, especially small local ones. If I am saying something nice I tell you the name of the business all day long, with no gain for me, but if I am slamming the service or some other knuckle headed thing that happened at an establishment I try and not write anything that will cause them to go out of business. So many times when I have encountered the worst possible customer service I want to say, “I have a blog and I am not afraid to use it,” but I hold back knowing that revenge is an unattractive trait. Mostly I just want a good story to tell at the end of the day stupid people doing dumb things make good stories.

For some of you readers you are happy just to read the story and not know whom am I talking about, but for others of you, you have to know and know quickly. You know who you are, the people who call, text, message and practically send smoke signals asking me to reveal all the dirty little details. Only rarely does anyone call and ask me, “Were you writing about me?”

Today while I was with a group of friends one of them asked me about the identify of the unwashed hand pretzel scooper I had written about on Sunday. She did not actually ask me, but said, that person was so-and-so and she was right. I had not described the person by age, gender, ethnicity, home location, family status, or looks, yet she was still able to id the person on first guess.

Then another friend got an aggravating e-mail requesting help for something. As she sat fuming because some people on the group list are notorious non-helpers the Profiler, on first guess, was able to ID the non-helper who was causing the stir.

Now these two back-to-back identifications were impressive and clearly this friend might have missed her calling as a profiler, but more than anything it told me that people are really creatures of habit. If you are a good community member and pull your weight, do your part, chip in and are a positive contributor people will know and consider you as such. But if you are a slacker, free loader, non-responsive, self –important, taker people will also know this about you.

Which do you want to be? No one is perfect all the time, but apparently the imperfect are perfectly consistent in his or her poor member of society ways, so much so that when a bad story is being told about someone anonymous they are the first and correct guess. How horrible to be that person. I am not calling anyone out here, but I am telling this tale of warning. If you are always a slacker, no matter your excuse, just know people are watching and taking note. The best remedy is slacklessness, not always, just every so often. You want to throw the Profiler off.

Scram you Scam

A couple of days ago I read very funny Facebook posting from Holley Broughton about a phone call she got on her cell from “Deputy Howard” with the Durham Sheriff’s Department about warrants for her failing to appear for jury duty. Holley got right on the guy and determined this was a scam.

It was very providential that I had read her whole post because I too received a call on my cell phone today. A local 919 number came up on my car as I was driving so I answered it. A “Deputy Johnson” asked for Dana Lange and I asked whom he was with. As soon as he said the Durham Sheriff’s office my antenna were up. Heaven help me if a real officer ever calls me because the way I spoke to this man should have gotten me arrested.

“How do I know you are a real Deputy?” I asked him. Without skipping a beat he rattled off a string of numbers claiming they were his badge number. “BFD, I told him, that means nothing to me.” He tried to get me to verify my address, which he had right, but I did not confirm, nor did I ever confirm I was who he was calling for. He explained that I had not shown up for a federal trial I was called to for jury duty and there was a warrant out for me, but that since the judge had checked my record and determined I was a good citizen I could get myself cleared by filling out an affidavit. I should have told him I was not a good citizen and seen what he said then.

I told the “deputy” he could send the person he was looking for a registered letter explaining all this. That was when he went into his scare tactics saying that if I got stopped for any reason and the officer found the outstanding warrant out for my arrest I would have to be taken in and may spend time in jail before the problem could be cleared up. I was not falling for this and this guy was good. He went on to say that I could have my lawyer talk with him to clear this up, “You do have a lawyer?” He asked. “A really mean one,” I replied. “But I still don’t have any proof you are who you say you are. Let me talk to your supervisor.”

At this point I was just having fun with these guys, wasting their time so they did not have time to call other poor people who are not Facebook friends with Holley. I was put on hold and after a minute a “Lieutenant” came on the line. He was very well practiced in making this a believable scam. When I told him I would only handle this issue in person he gave me the real Durham Sherriff’s office address. He did say that I needed to finish the “case” on the phone with the “deputy” before I came into to the sheriff’s office and if I hung up the warrant for my arrest would be issued.

Oh so fun! I hung up right away and called the real sheriff’s office where an investigator confirmed this was a big scam they were investigating. I had some information, like the 919 number they called me from and he wanted a description of the men’s voice, like that was helpful. He asked that I spread the word about the scam since many people have fallen for giving these men money to clear up their warrants.

The bottom line is the cops don’t call anyone. If it is a small thing they send you a registered letter, but if it is serious they just show up at your door unannounced. Tell your friends and family. These guys are good and had I not been alerted by Holley I might have gotten taken, or at least been scared.

Does The Bacon Calories Really Count?

My very southern grandmother Granettes taught me how to make tough green beans good by cooking them long and with bacon. The first time I bought pole beans from the farmers market and cooked it that way for Carter she thought she had died and gone to bacon heaven. I finally discovered a vegetable that carter would eat more of than meat. The big question is when you cook with bacon that just flavors the water, but don’t eat it does it impart any actual calories into the green beans? I am just going to hope so!
1 lb of pole beans or broad beans

3 slices of bacon

1 packet of Splenda 

Trim the end off the beans and cut them in half. Put the raw bacon I. A big stock pot and cook on medium heat for three minutes, just to start to render off some of the fat. The bacon will not get cooked to crispy.
Add the beans and cover with water, add a sprinkle of salt. cover the pot with a lid. Put on a medium high heat and cook for at least forty-five minutes. Check while cooking to make sure you still have water in the pot. Add more water if needed as cooking.
You want the beans to be very soft, but not total mush. Sprinkle with the Splenda and taste for salt. Remove the bacon before serving. 

Empty Nest Practice Weekend

Russ recovered from his cross country sickness today by lunch time. It was a slow improvement but I was happy to have him on the way up all day. This was our big weekend of being empty nesters since Carter was away, but it ended up being a stick around at home most of the time weekend. I ended up cleaning out the Disney video cabinet that was full of old vhs tapes and wood beads to string into necklaces that had been very important to Carter’s childhood.
My other excitement was chopping up fruits and vegetables that needed to be cooked or eaten. I made an amateur butternut squash chopping mistake and ran a large cleaver into the base of my finger nail causing a future of bad nail problems I am sure. I have a feeling I am going to be wearing a band aid on my middle finger for the next six months. It makes typing difficult.
By lunch today Russ was stir crazy and wanted to get out of the house so we went to the club where we were lucky to get a table in the grill. We got the worst table closest to the salad bar where I sat facing the bar. This was the worst table because I had a full view of any person who came to get snacks out of the three jars with nuts and pretzels and the like in them that sit on the bar. It was not the proximity to the snacks that was the problem, it was that I could witness who used the proper scoops to ladle out the honey roast peanuts into the little cups provided and who just stuck their hand in the jar of pretzels and hauled out a handful.
It did not really surprise me who the dirty offender was given his lack of manners in all situations, but the fact that no one around him thought to call him out even when he went back to the jar multiple times with the hands he had just licked the salt off. Watching this hygienic disaster was the best diet aid I have come across in a long time. Next time you are feeling a weakness towards a salty snack, think twice.
My dinner meal made up for my lunch experience because we had Church Supper club at the Pottenger’s house. It was a lovely evening with new and old friends made even better by a visit from by my friend Barbara who moved to Alabama last year. We could not stay long at dinner because Carter had gotten home from Atlanta and Russ had not seen her in a week.
Thank goodness she had not fallen asleep before we got home. She told us all about visiting Emory and going to the Ed Sheeran concert and spending time with her friends. Having her home was the highlight of our weekend. Clearly we are not ready for an empty nest. Maybe I should stop cleaning things out now so I have something to do when she is really gone.  

Nurse Shay Shay

Poor Russ was in California this past week and on Friday he got sick in the San Francisco airport, again in the LA airport and again on the red eye. Flying over Friday night after a long workweek is never fun, but being sick the whole way home made it absolutely terrible. Since he arrived home before six in the morning he just went to sleep in the guest room leaving me clueless to his illness. True to form Shay Shay got right up from my bed and went to sleep with Russ. He is her main master and if he is around she is right by his side at all times.

I knew something was wrong when I got up because Russ was more passed out than usual. I tip toed around the house so I wouldn’t wake him. Carter is in Atlanta for the weekend so the house remained very quite. Shay would not leave Russ’ bed all morning, even when I knew she needed to go out.

At last Russ woke up and told me the tale of his horrible night. He thought it might be food poisoning, but as the day and Russ dragged on with not much improvement I think it was an actual flu. Shay snuggled with Russ keeping watch over him all day.

Sadly Russ had to miss the UNC/ NC A&T football game and birthday celebration for Lynn. I knew it was fine for me to go since I was leaving nurse Shay Shay in charge. The actual football game was a lopsided match up with the Heels scoring 53 points before A&T could get one.

The real show was at half time where after a nice showing from the UNC marching band the A&T Machine took the field and put on a superior show. This was what Russ was really missing. In a great spirit of comraderier the UNC band joined the A&T Machine on the field together for one last song. It was clearly the highlight of the game.

I arrived home to Shay reporting that she had taken good care of the patient while I was gone and letting me know that she was still on duty for the overnight watch. Russ was still not well. Hopefully nurse Shay will take care of him by morning.

Why Do You Need to Know My Occupation?

Tomorrow I am going to get a massage. Considering the way so much of me feels I think it is overdue. Since I am going with a friend we had to pick a place that could take us both at the same time so I am not visiting my regular person. Today I received the Client Intake form to fill out before my appointment.

The request was for me to fill it out and bring it to my appointment. I often wonder why we don’t fill these things out in advance in case they read something that would prohibit them from treating me. Like in the health section under “Other” the list includes things like: Tobacco Use, Depression, Contact Lenses and Contagious Diseases. I can totally see that maybe if you have a Contagious Disease you might be rejected, depending on what kind of disease it is, but there is no place to specify what said disease is. On the other hand I am not sure what contact lenses have to do with getting a massage, but since I don’t wear contacts perhaps I am in the dark about these things.

One poorly worded question is “Are you currently under the care of a health care practitioner? Just answer yes or no. Well I take three prescriptions a day so I guess I am always under the care of a doctor. The follow up question was not who is your doctor, but “If yes, please specify:” I know they are not going to like my answer of “regular menopausal woman stuff,” but really what else do you need to know?

My least favorite question on this or any form is “Occupation.” Technically I have business cards that say I am an Editor at a magazine, but really that takes up the least of my time. I am not about to put “Blogger” down because I am too old to consider that a job, and it does not pay me anything. “Professional volunteer” is an oxymoron since being a professional means you get paid and volunteer means you do it for free. I also have Needlepoint Stitching Advisor business cards, which is probably what I spend most of my time doing, but since that card was created as a place card for a Christmas lunch and I pay to do needlepoint not the other way around that cannot be an occupation. Gambler due to my Mah Jongg addiction could also be high on the list of what I actually do and I make money at it. I just don’t know many respectable middle-aged women who list that as their occupation. Lastly there is mother. Again the pay issue. What I really want to write on these forms in the occupation slot is “Intake Form Editor” and see if anyone reads it and asks what that means.

As for now I know the real purpose of this two page form is to wear me down so that I pay little attention to the mice type at the end saying that if anything goes wrong it is my fault and that massage people are not doctors. No Shit. The very last line should be the very first line because it says, “I understand that any illicit or sexually suggestive remarks or advances made by me will result in immediate termination of the session and I will be liable for payment of the scheduled appointment.” Oh my goodness!

Happy Birthday Margaret

May your days mostly be happy. Your life be filled with meaning. The world be touched by the beauty you create. Your family be a comfort to you. Your friends be a joy. Your eyelashes long and lush. Your hair thick and full. Your diet coke at the ready and ice cold. Your car always start. Your house free of pests. Your bed always restful. Your sisters always loving. Santa always visiting you and your birthday the best day of the year.

Don’t Change My Order

I just could not make some of the crazy things that happen to me up. Today’s story is all true, I would not blame you if you swore I made this up, but I have two witnesses who can vouch for every word.
I went to lunch with Hannah and Elizabeth at a casual spot in Chapel Hill where the food is all displayed, you wait in line, order, pay and take a number to your table and await it’s arrival. Since Hannah is a busy working woman we did not have all day. We all ordered individually each getting some variation of the same sampler lunch that involved a server scooping a spoonful of one salad or another from the prepared platters and putting it on a plate.
We got our drinks and waited, eventually Hannah’s lunch arrived and her plastic number on a stand was whisked away. A few minutes later Elizabeth’s plate was placed in front of her and her number was removed. As the minutes ticked by I encouraged my friends to eat their lunch, certainly mine could not be far behind. But I was wrong.
After at least twenty minutes a manager type girl came by looking for my number 30 and brought me a new receipt and said to me, “I changed your order and it will be here.”  
I looked quizzically at her and asked why she had changed my order? She could not really give me a straight answer. Had some diet gods reached down and thought I needed a different lunch than the one I had already picked out and paid for. I showed the manager my original receipt and explained exactly what I ordered, with no special requests. She told me my lunch was on her. “Fine,” I said, but I really just would like the lunch I already paid for, let’s deal with that first. She did not seem to understand what I ordered so I walked her over to the glass counter and pointed to the three platters I ordered from. She promised me I would get my lunch right away and it was on her.
Back to the table with my friends politely not eating their lunches. We waited and waited. Servers passed by with lots of other people’s lunches but not mine. Really, three scoops and I could have my plate, nothing had to be cooked. I finally went into full on Dana Lange Mode and found that manager. “This is ridiculous.” I told her. her response was, “your lunch is one me.” 
“Really,” I said, “so far I have not gotten any lunch and you have not given me any money back.” She spoke to a line cook behind the counter who found my number thirty ticket about 20 tickets from the top and finally scooped out my salads while I stood at the counter waiting to serve myself.
The manger eventually brought over a $20 bill which I had to make change for in order for her to give me the right amount of money. She kept saying she was sorry, which had worn very thin and was making me feel bad. I know you are sorry, but honestly scooping three salads on to a plate is not that hard to get right in a ten minute window, but I a thirty minute window it is inexcusable. I am still at a loss to understand why she was changing my lunch and brought me a new receipt to begin with. Do these things happen to other people or are the blog gods just giving me something to write about?

Good Bye Summer, Hello “What In The World Do I Wear Today?”

One of the joys of living in North Carolina is the good weather sticks around well into the late fall months. This makes for nice days, but crazy mornings standing in my closet wondering what to wear. An early spring in the south means it is just fine to break out pink and white cotton clothes, even summery sandals are fine in March if it’s hot enough. But somehow all those white pants feel inappropriate after Labor Day even when the temperature is on the seersucker reading.
I know plenty of people who don’t fall the white shoes rule, but it seems like I am supposed to retire my colorful summer Capri pants for heaven, don’t say it, jeans. I don’t even know which jeans in my drawer of many sizes even are the ones that fit right now. I can’t even bear the thought of forgoing my white linen skirt for real pants.
Can’t we please change all fashion rules to follow the temperature and not the calendar. As long I am getting up and putting on Bermuda shorts and a t-shirt I feel like I have no cares in the world; no meetings, no obligations, all fun and games. But real clothes make me feel like it’s back to work. Ha, what work? I did go do an interview last week, but can write my story in my night gown, no clothes even needed.
So goodbye to summer. I will miss not just the ease of what to wear and the colorful clothes of the season, but all that summer represents; the vacations, breaks from routine, vegetables from the garden, flip flops. Fall has its good points too, but sweltering in fall clothes when it still feels like summer is not one of them. I’m not going to be able to give up summer clothes cold turkey so I guess I am going to have to do it one piece at a time. You may see me out with white pants and a navy shirt or black pants and a pink shirt. I guess I do have to give up the linen and white sandals, but that is as far as I am taking it until the temperature drops to the low 70’s. NOOOOO, I’m not ready.
   

Baby Eggplant, Okra and Corn Bake

When my friend Stephanie asked me for dinner I asked what I could bring. “How about your spicy okra and tomatoes?” she said. I almost never make the same dish twice and since I did not think I had enough okra to make a whole dish I decided to add baby eggplant I had from the farmer’s market along with some corn to add a different texture. This is a very spicy dish so adjust to your taste.
1 lb. baby eggplant trimmed and halved

1 lb. okra cut in 3/4 inch lengths

Corn kernels from 2 cooked cobs

1 large sweet onion chopped

3 cloves of garlic minced

1 inch of fresh ginger grated

1 28 oz. San Marzano tomatoes

1 t. Cumin

1 t. coriander

1t. Turmeric

1/2 t. Smoked paprika

1/2t. Cayenne pepper

1/2 t. Cinnamon 

2 T. Red wine vinegar

Salt 

Buttered bread crumbs or cracker crumbs – optional
This recipe is best if you sauté the eggplant and the okra seperately, you also could use zucchini or yellow squash. Heat a large fry pan up on high heat and spray with Pam. Add the eggplant to the pan and cook turning the eggplant over every few minutes. Cook about four minutes until the eggplant is almost cooked through and add a pinch of salt.
Set eggplant aside and them add the okra to the pan and cook it for three minutes with another pinch of salt. Add it to the eggplant.  
Spray the same fry pan with Pam again and add the onions to the pan and cook for four minutes, add the garlic and ginger and continue cooking for a minute. Add all the spices and stir cooking another minute. Add the whole can of tomatoes and their juices and salt and cook for five minutes breaking up the tomatoes with a spoon. Add the vinegar and taste to see if you need more salt.
Spray Pam in an oblong casserole dish and add the egg plant, okra and corn and then mix in the tomato sauce. If you want to make this a company casserole dish sprinkle the top with buttered bread crumbs or crushed butter crackers. Place the oblong pan in a 350 degree oven and bake for 20 mins.
     

The Rare Family Dinner

The best way to get to have dinner with our daughter is for us to make a reservation at a restaurant we know she loves and invite her to go, otherwise our chances to see her are greatly diminished. Since Russ is going to be away all next week and Carter was away all last week we decided tonight was our best option for a family night out.  
I am trying to stick to my healthy eating plan and eating at restaurants is tasty for a reason – the wrong reason. Last week while Carter was gone I ate almost every lunch and dinner out. That made me a poor weight loss candidate. So tonight I went out with new resolve, kind of.
I ordered a salad to start, but of course ate the nuts, bacon and cheese that came on it. But then I followed it with the raw seafood platter. Although it was two ice chip platters double stacked with oysters, clams, mussels, shrimp, lobster and stone crab, in actual amounts of edible food it was not that much.  
If I had removed all the flesh from the shells and piled it up I would barely have a small cereal bowl full of meat. Now, don’t get me wrong, it was the tastiest thing in town. I am not about to complain about a lobster claw, but I really could have done without the stone crabs.
I am baffled about why people love these things. The shells of the claws are so thick that even thought they had been whacked in the kitchen by a cleaver I could hardly free any flesh from them with the industrial cracker provided to me. I had to interrupt Russ from his steak tartare to get him to squeeze the little suckers so I could try and pry a shell of and pull out a tiny amount of meat. The workout to get the tiny flakes is hardly worth it. The only problem was that the stone crab claws were the primary bulk of my meal.
There must be a negative calorie exchange in the removing the meat and eating it. I had to burn way more calories getting the whispers of food out of the shell than they were putting into my body. You would think that was a bonus for me, but actually food that causes me such frustration makes me want to stress eat something bad for me afterward just so I could feel like I ate something.
So much for my healthy eating at a restaurant plan. I think I have to go back to my old standby of a green salad with grilled chicken. It is so boring, but then I know exactly what I am consuming and in reality it makes me very happy. Russ’ answer to the whole problem is that we should just eat at home since no matter where we go for dinner he always says, “It’s good, but not as good as you make, Dana.” This may be true, but the we are back to the problem of not having our daughter want to eat with us. I guess I need to set up at restaurant at home. Maybe if I had a cute waiter she would stick around.

Faux Caesar Salad Dressing

  
Faux Caesar Salad Dressing
Every once I. A while I get a little board with my same old healthy salad dressing. I rotate into the balsamic regular some spicy Thai dressing, but even that can wear on me. Today I was craving a Caesar Salad, but eating a regular one of those is equal to eating a burger and fries. I have had success doctoring up the Walden Farms Zero Calorie Caesar Dressing in the past, but since at 1:30 in the afternoon I did not have any I had to get creative. I was not unhappy with the concoction I whipped up so I thought it was worth sharing or at least documenting here so next time I crave Caesar Salad I don’t have to go back to the drawing board.
2 cloves of garlic – mashed

1 T. Worcestershire Sauce

1T. Anchovy paste

2 T. lemon Juice

1/3 c. Greek yoghurt

1 T. Water

Pepper 
Put everything in a blender and whirl it up good. Taste to see if it is a balance you like and correct to your taste buds. I did not add salt because I was adding Parmesan cheese to the salad and that is salty enough.
Romain, grilled chicken and Parmesan cheese with about half the dressing and I did not even miss the croutons.      

Appreciative of Experiential Learning

This week Carter is on her school experiential learning trip. This is something every grade does starting in fifth grade. In the younger years the kids go mostly to camps and although I know they learn a lot, especially about learning to get along, I am not sure they know what they learn. Some years they are learning skills like rock climbing which is helpful when they get to be a senior and have to go on senior challenge and live in the wilderness for a week.
Carter’s junior class trip is the civil rights tour and although it is not developing any outdoor skills I feel like she has gained the best life long lessons she would not necessarily get in a classroom. The trip started in Greensboro visiting the museum that has the Woolworth lunch counter where four brave African American young men posed a sit-in after being denied service. It was a peaceful protest that kicked off the civil rights movement.
From Greensboro they went to Atlanta and visited the MLK jr. Center and happened to get to see one of King’s daughter. Then on to Birmingham Alabama, Selma and ending today in Montgomery. Every once in a while during the trip Carter would text me something that she was learning, or how she was feeling but it was at the last stop today that she really had a big epiphany.
I happened to be texting her that social justice history was happening right now because Kim Davis, the Kentucky clerk was jailed today for denying two gay men a marriage license even though it is the law of the land. Carter texted back that they had just spent the last hour and a half learning about the equality social justice center in Montgomery and heard from a man who had been on death row for 30 years but was innocent and was finally freed. Here is some of what she texted me:
“There was a Q and A with him and I asked him what his most important life lesson was from death row and he said ‘Forgiveness’ and it was just so admirable and it all hit me hard. He made a really big impact on me and even though I was far back in the room he looked me in the eye the whole time he was talking to me and telling me to forgive and love because you can never live a life without forgiveness.”    
There is a lot of learning that goes on in school, but as a middle aged person I can honestly say you don’t always remember how to graph an equation or conjugate a verb in French, hell, I know there is something called the pluperfect, but for the life of me I can’t remember what it is, but for Carter hearing this man speak and tell his story will be something she will hold on to her whole life. If the only thing she learns all year as a sixteen year old is to forgive I will consider it a successful year. Going out and seeing the world and learning from the people who were on the front lines of history is a gift I know my child will always cherish.  
I am so thankful for Durham Academy and the fabulous teachers who make this kind of learning possible. Learning with your heart is the best way to do it.

Always My Little Sister

I was eight and a half when my baby sister Janet was born on this day in 1969. It was a turbulent time in the world, Vietnam was in full swing, Richard Nixon was president and women’s skirts were getting much shorter.  
I was just starting third grade at my third school in four years so change was something I was used to. At this point I had been riding my bike all by myself to a downtown, either New Canaan or Ridgefield depending on where we lived for at least three years. I already knew how to cook breakfast, dress myself, make school lunch and go to the school bus by myself so the introduction of this new baby girl did not change my routine much.
What did change was the amount of joy this kid brought into my life. She was a beautiful baby and when she was tiny was fun to dress up, this quickly ended when she discovered she had a voice in what she wore. The idea of putting on a dress quickly ended along with any patience for getting her hair washed or even brushed. It was really too bad she favored the rat’s nest look because she had the most gorgeous thick hair that my mother eventually had to cut completely off in order to keep it at all neat.
Janet was always good at making us laugh, even being a good sport if we were actually laughing at her and not with her. She developed a high sensitivity for fairness at a young age and was quick to stand up to bullies on behalf of others, many times to her own peril. This innate recognition for right and wrong was personified when she chaired the judiciary committee at boarding school. Not everyone can handle doing the right thing when they are a teenager, but Janet worried little about pleasing everyone as long as everything was fair.
She still is that way today. She works harder than anyone I know and never asks more from others than she is already giving. Of course no one else can do more than she does, but she rarely complains. It makes my heart happy that my own daughter admires her so much and thinks she is a great role model, because she is.
Janet might have been born is a crazy time, but she has always been a voice of reason. I am so lucky to have her as my baby sister, even if she is way more mature than I am. Happy birthday Sista J. I love you more than you will know.

Ice Cream Distraction

Carter left this morning for her junior year civil rights tour school trip. Russ flew off to Washington and then I realized I had a free night. I was planning on eating leftovers for dinner since I was going out to lunch, but then thought I should call my friend Deanne who is home alone since her husband is away for work so off to Thai Cafe we went.
Thai Cafe is a good place to get a yummy meal that stays in my diet and I always end up eating the spicy chicken salad. Deanna had the spicy beef salad and we both were happy and good at the same time. But while we were being healthy in our actual eating our conversation turned to what good things we ate this summer when we went away.
I confessed my favorite thing I did on vacation was eat ice cream for dinner. Not just ice cream for dessert, but ice cream as dinner. I also ate ice cream for dessert which made me feel much more guilty than skipping a real meal and just eating ice cream.  
Deanna thought it was a brilliant idea. She told me that is one of her plans when she next goes to Boston to visit her husband. She had mentioned this to her North Carolina hairdresser in an unrelated conversation, apparently a lot of people are talking about eating ice cream, and she told Deanna about her favorite ice cream spot in Cambridge called, “Two Skinny Knees.” WhenDeanna told me the name I know I made a quizzical face since it is such a strange name for an ice cream parlor, but then again it is Cambridge.
Deanna said, “You are right to wonder. I googled ‘two skinny knees’ and nothing came up, so I searched for best ice cream in Boston and discovered it is called ‘Toscanini’s'”. Then Deanna asked her nephew who was at Harvard and he said, “JP Licks was best.” Now Deanna has to do ice cream for dinner as a two course progressive meal.
Suddenly I am thinking a trip to Boston is in my future. Certainly Carter is going to want to look at a college or two up there, but I really can’t turn college visiting year into ice cream eating tour. So I am going to have come up with some justification scheme to eat some ice cream. How many steps will I have to walk in a month to over come this caloric spike? If I need to walk 20,000 steps a day just to maintain do I have to add 5,000 more to enjoy a double scoop of premium frozen goodness once a month? Do I skip both lunch and dinner in regular food in order to substitute ice cream? So many variables. I could spend a life time juggling this dilemma and never quite get it right.
But for today it was just a dream. The good news was all this discussion of eating ice cream made both Deanna and I feel so guilty that we did not even think of sharing a slice of what is the best dessert on earth, not just in Durham, the Thai Cafe coconut cake. Perhaps this should be my new strategy to talk about a naughty food that is unavailable in the place I am to take my mind of the naughty food I have right in front of me.

Oh So Versatile Mushroom Ragout

I was having a craving for some saucy mushrooms today, but since I am trying to steer clear of pasta I needed to make something I could eat on a bowl of sautéed zucchini and grilled chicken while others in the house could eat it on penne. This meaty dish satisfied us all. Russ ended up skipping the pasta and eating his on bread so it worked as a sandwich as well.
30 oz. various types of raw mushrooms sliced

1 large sweet onion diced

2 shallots minced

1 T. Butter

1 T. Flour

1 12 oz can fat free evaporated milk

1T. Dried Thyme

1/2 c. Grated Parmesan Cheese

Salt and Pepper
Spray Pam in a large non-stick fry pan and place on high heat. Add about a third of the mushrooms when the pan is hot and dry sauté them until they are brown. Set browned mushrooms aside and repeat twice with the remaining mushrooms until they are all cooked. Then in the same pan sauté the onions and shallots and add to the mushrooms.
In a large sauce pan melt the butter on medium heat and add the flour, cook stirring for one minute. Add the mushrooms and onions and then the can of evaporated milk. Cook for two minutes, add thyme and a little salt and pepper. Turn the heat off and let the flavors mingle for at least ten minutes, but more is better. Add the Parmesan cheese right before serving. If the mixture has cooled down to the point the cheese won’t melt, heat it back up on a low temp to just get the cheese to melt.
This stuff will make shoe leather taste good.

Carried Away

Fifty-six years ago yesterday my parents got married. He saw my mother across the quad at Chapel Hill and said that he had a premonition that she was going to marry him and he never looked back. He asked and she said yes so right before classes started for their senior year they were married relieving my grandfather of one of his three daughters. A year and a half I came along.  
It is not an unusual story for their time, but as I think about my own sixteen year old daughter now I could not imagine her getting married five years from yesterday, let alone today or tomorrow. Agreeing to spend the rest of your life with someone seems like a decision you should make when you are old enough to know who you are. But then I consider my own story.
I was the ripe old maid age of thirty when Russ asked me to marry him, old enough to know myself and what I was looking for. But the difference between me and my parents is that I said yes to Russ when he asked me after ten days of dating. It is no less crazy than marrying between my junior and senior year of college. Both scenarios seem risky, but both have worked in their own ways.
I guess the moral of the story is take a risk, but once you do work to make it succeed. So Happy anniversary to my parents. I know it’s work, but living with anyone is a set of compromises. Just know that that give and take is worth it, at least this child thinks so.

Roof Top Downtown Magic 

Russ and I went to brunch today on the roof of the New Durham Hotel. Don’t get excited, they are not yet serving brunch there regularly, but do get excited about going to enjoy a drink on the roof. The space is fantastic. The majority of the roof top deck is covered so it was not a bake in the sunshine situation, but an enjoy the breeze kind of morning. Along one side is an open air, unroofed, terrace with comfy sofas and chairs grouped in intimate clusters. We could look out over the whole of the downtown and were thrilled by how beautiful Durham is from above.
The Durham Hotel is just one of the new hotels making use of old bank buildings in downtown. What was once the mid-century modern Mutual Bank that felt like George Jetson might deposit his moola there is now repurposed as a boutique hotel.  
About fifteen years ago Russ and his business partner Rich got their first office in downtown Durham and people wondered why. They looked around Main Street and thought the old buildings were wildly more interesting than some office park box. The revitalization on downtown was well on it’s way, not in its infancy, but more like a toddler. Today I can say that downtown is way past middle school. Gone are the awkward years of braces and zits.  
We got up this morning and were at the farmers market in Central Park at eight. Stopped by our favorite bakery, Loaf on our way to stop in Russ’ office at American Tobacco before taking our food home in time to shower and change to head back downtown for brunch. Two trips to the center of our city all before noon was something that would be unheard of even six or seven years ago. Now it seems like our first choice destination.
Both Nancy Pike and I showed up on the roof in the same dress at the same time, which we both happen to buy at the same store in Beaufort, but being laid back Durhamites it did not phase us one bit. Enjoying the last wonderful Saturday in August in a beautiful place with friends made us all happy.  

Where were You In 1968?

Do you know what this is? It is a blanket chest of my younger days. Carter’s favorite class at school so far is “the late great 1968.” She had come home everyday this week and talked to me about what I remember from 1968. Since I was seven years old the answers I have to give her are not fantastic, but she certainly is causing me to rack my brain about where I was when RFK was killed. The one thing I do have is a large collection of music some of which was from 1968 and today Carter got me to give her some of my old albums.
We pulled out all the Beatles albums I have, which included Meet the Beatles, The White Album, Revolution, Sargent Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, Let it Be and a few others. Truth be told all these Beatles’ albums first belonged to my Dad and I lifted them from him when I was in high school. My Dad loved the Beatles and even though it used to embarrass me to no end, he could sing along to the radio really well. I have a very strong memory of him singing Penny Lane in his black Corvair while he pulled up to the book return at the New Canaan Public Library and had me get out and drop the book in. I can still hear him harmonizing to the song today.

The power of the music really made a memory.
We are going to the farm on on Sunday so I know that Carter is going to pepper my Dad with questions about what he remembers from 1968. We lived not that far from Woodstock, but since my parents were suburban parents who had just turned thirty it could have been a world away from them. This was an era where “never trust anyone over thirty” was a popular phrase.
We lived in a town with a weekly newspaper that only reported things like new sewer pipes being put in the village center, so if you missed the nightly news you might not know what was going on in the bigger world. In 1968 I was still young enough that when Walter Cronkite opened the news with the number of American who had been killed in Vietnam that day I thought he was actually reporting how many Americans had died in the whole country.
The best source I had for learning what was going on in the world was Time and Life Magazines. Our next door neighbor, Ellen West, was and editor at Time/Life and I always got to look at all her magazines. Her husband, General Charles West was retired from the army, but was still secretly working for the government in that secret agent way. Their only son, Jonathan was enough older than me that he was in the war in Vietnam so when he came home messed up I had an eyeful of what a horror the whole war was. That was as close as 1968 came to me besides the music.     

No Wheel Expert

When my mother turned forty years old my father told her it was going to be a big birthday celebration. Four days before her actual birthday four wheels, like the rims that the tires go on for a car arrived and my mother burst into tears fearing she was getting a new car in four parts. See, she really did not care much about cars.

My father had no idea those new rims for his beloved Sirocco were arriving that day for if he did he certainly would have warned my mother first. Lucky for him he arrived home with four new pocket books and four new pairs of Italian shoes and made my mothers day before she could launch into him about the wheels. That was my introduction to wheels.

Fast forward to today when thanks to a slow leak we discovered a bent tire rim, which requires a new wheel. When the tire man called the dealer to inquire about replacing the one we have he came back to me ashen faced with a crazy price in his hand. I told him I would do a little research before we just ordered from the dealer.

OMG! I had no idea how many car rims there are in the world. What I’m looking for is a fairly basic five spoke alloy aluminum, nothing fancy, but not easy to find. I started looking online and must have viewed hundreds of different models with looks that vary from 5 spoke to 14 with a rainbow of colors.

Apparently rims are the most popular way to customize cars these days. Given that the choices of colors has really dwindled to black, gray, silver, white and one other, either red or blue, car manufacturers don’t want to date their models with paint colors. When was the last time you saw a new teal blue car? But for those who want to get some flash in their ride wheels are apparently it.

Well I am not looking for flash — in fact quite the opposite. I just want to match. It seems like a real crap shoot to me to find a rim for a six year old car that matches anyway. Paying huge bucks for a new one won’t exactly match because it won’t have six years wear on it, but getting a refurbished on also seems tricky.

The only way to ensure an exact match is to buy four new rims. Goodness no. That goes against everything I am about. So now I am going to have to become a rim expert and talk to a bunch of motor heads to ensure I am ordering the right thing before I do it. I am feeling a little bit like my mother when the four wheels arrived at our house in Wilton. I just want to burst into tears over rims.

Everyday is a Dog Day Around Here

If you logged on to Facebook today you would probably wonder if it was the first day of dog school based on the preponderance of sweet fur faces who have supplanted the kid’s first day photos. Today is National Dog Day! I know there are a lot of “days”, like the standard Mother’s Day or Father’s Day, Veteran’s Day, Labor Day all deserving of attention and sometimes a gift or card, but National Dog Day? I thought everyday was dog day! It is at our house.
National Dog day was created eleven years ago to promote “everything about dogs.” It seems like anyone who has ever met a dog would recognize that dogs are good at promoting themselves. I don’t think I have ever met a dog who did not proactively introduce herself, ask for some love and return the favor if offered. Yes, there are shelter dogs who might be kiddish and in need of coaxing, but once they know their human they are usually not so shy about asking for love.
Humans could take some lessons from their dogs. First, don’t hold back on asking for what you need. A bathroom? Just ask. A meal? Let it be known. A belly rub? Lie on your back with your legs splayed open and look cute. Love? Well just love unconditionally all out and never hold back.  
Rather than National Dog Day maybe we could have National Be More Like Your Dog Day. It could put an end to all wars, family feuds, neighbor squabbles and sibling rivalries. If we all started acting more like our dogs we would quickly become a species who are happier with our lots in life and more appreciative of the little things.
One of my favorite quotes is, “I hope to grow up to be the person my dog thinks I am.” It’s not to late to be that good person your dog loves. If you don’t have a dog please visit an animal shelter and see if you can find a friend whose life you can save who will change your life. I promise no dog rescued from a shelter ever forgets where they came from and who loves them.
So happy National Dog Day, or in the eyes of our sweet Shay Shay, just another day where she is the star of our house.

Happy Needlepoint Christmas Eve

Since I needlepoint Christmas ornaments all year long I regularly get a comment from some bystander saying something like, “Wow, you are really getting a head start on Christmas”. This especially true when I am stitching a red and green Santa in May or a snowman in July, but what these well meaning admirers don’t understand is that the Christmas deadline is tomorrow, August 25th. By May or July I am feeling the deadline to complete my canvases so I can have a finished ornament back from the fabricator in time to enjoy it this Christmas season.
At the Christmas deadline party I attended the first full year of stitching Elizabeth, one of the very prolific stitching advisors asked me how many ornaments I had made that year. I proudly said, “34.” In reality it was not a ground breaking number. She challenged me to a contest for the next year that started that very day. I worked my finger to the bone, loving a challenge and never ever wanting to lose a contest.  
I worked and worked and on that years Needlepoint Christmas Day I proudly turned in the last of my 45 canvases, thinking I certainly had won. But no… Although the I had beaten Elizabeth, only because she worked on many non-ornament larger canvases, but Kate, another stitching advisor had pulled ahead and came in with 50 ornaments. Shoot, a dark horse I had not expected.
Elizabeth sat this year out to spend time finishing lots of other works in Progress and Kate was training for her Kilimanjaro hike so I was thinking I had a good chance to win this year. My pace was better than last year so I took the luxury to complete some larger canvases thinking I was still going to having the winning number.   
Come sometime in July, when I had finished about 58 ornaments I asked my friend Christy what number she was on. Sixty-seven was her total with more than a month to go. My heart sank. Another year I would not win, but what was I really losing? There is no money on this race, no trophy, no cake or a sash or even a tiara.  
Tomorrow I will go to Chapel Hill Needlepoint, with my friend Christy. I have ornament number 67 finished and ready to turn in. I may get 68 done by then, but there is no guarantee. I have not asked Christy what her number is, but certainly I know it will we’ll beat mine. In advance I would like to congratulate her on a really good year.
I look at it this way, I won by making 67 or 68 beautiful works of art that I will cherish forever. I am not sure my child will love them as much as I do when I’m gone, but for a I hope many more Christmases I will love taking them out and putting up to celebrate the season. I am officially going to stop competing in the number or ornaments contest and spend the next year concentrating on learning new stitches and taking on my difficult projects. I may never have won the challenge, but I have not been disappointed in the competition.
So Merry Needlepoint Christmas Day. I had to write about it early because tomorrow also happens to be the first day of junior year for Carter. That is a much more important day in my life than the end of the needlepoint year so I have to reserve my blog for that tomorrow. I need to have a little perspective when it comes to needlepoint. 

Hat Hair

I am not a golfer, but I do like to watch a good golf tournament. With the Wyndham Championship happening in Greensboro and Tiger playing it I got more involved I watching on TV than I usually would for a tournament of this ranking. it is obvious from the sweat soaked shirt and slacks of Jason Gore that these players are not the ones who the athletic clothing companies are sponsoring.
As the players finished up their fourth round on Sunday at the eighteenth, man after man took off their ubiquitous baseball cap to shake hands with their opponents and their caddies. One after one these players who impressively were shooting plenty of birdies revealed their less than attractive hat hair once their game was over.
What came to my non-golf mind is why in the world has no one invented a golf hat that does not make their hair look horrible? Companies like Under Armour are spending millions of fabric technology to aid in sweat wicking or wrinkle free slacks, but they are missing the boat in hats.  
Watching movies from back in the olden days when men wore hats all the time I don’t remember men having such bad hat hair then they took off their fedora. Certainly hair itself has not changed that much. Hair style, from long and curly, to practically bald seemed to make no difference in combatting a bad do from wearing the hat. Women are not immune to hat hair either, but visors and pony tails seem to fair better in the style ruining department.  
As far as I can tell, hats are as important to players as shoes since I never see a pro or his caddie on the course without a hat. Keeping the sun out of a players eyes and protecting his noggin from sunburn are good reasons to wear a hat. They certainly are a mainstay of advertising for their sponsors since almost every picture of a winning golfer includes a shot of his head. So given the importance of hats you would think they would garner the attention of the outfitting experts.
Perhaps they do already. Maybe no one but a few of us casual golf watchers care one bit about hat hair. I would guess if Pantene were ever to become a sponsor of a golfer hats would move up in ranking of importance. I guess until then CBS should just do the golfers a favor and turn the camera away when the golfer’s remove their hats and shake hands. Yes, we all like to see good sportsmanship and the humanity of the players who may be congratulating a guy who just slaughtered him, so the camera could zoom in on the hand shake and leave the hat hair out of it. Isn’t it humiliating enough that someone gribble bogeyed the 11th, do you have to show his bad hair too?  

Learning to Love Spinach

When I was a kid spinach was not a favorite in my house. I think it had something to do with Popeye and canned spinach. I’m not sure if the canned spinach producers sponsored Popeye, but that watery tasteless spinach from the can did nothing for me and as a girl of the sixties being strong like Popeye didn’t have any appeal either.  
About the time I was twelve years old my parents went to Italy and my father discovered fresh cooked spinach with garlic. I am forever thankful that my Dad’s love of food and high school Latin classes gave him enough language skills to learn from the Italian restaurant people how to make spinach perfectly. Of course my Dad’s version had a good amount of olive oil in it so it was no wonder it tasted delicious.
Once that first trip to Italy happened there was no more canned spinach in my childhood home. We still had plenty of frozen spinach, but that too was doctored up with fresh garlic and olive oil.  
Nowadays fresh spinach is sold mainly in the baby form. This is a huge improvement over the last century version, which had tough stems. The only issue is that baby spinach cooks down to virtually nothing so it takes a huge amount of raw greens to make a decent serving. Since there are very few calories in spinach why not eat a huge helping? Oh yeah, you need a huge bag.
I stopped at Costco this week to get some salmon and spinach and was lucky enough to find a 2 1/2 pound bag. Carter’s friend Ashley was in the kitchen as I was cooking dinner for me and Russ since the girls were going to a party. “That’s a lot of spinach,” Ashley said as I mounded handful upon handful of leaves into my giant skillet with the barley cooked garlic already in it. I told her to watch as I deftly flipped the raw leaves over in the hot pan with my kitchen tongs two or three times.  
Suddenly the once overflowing pan had a small mound of hot wet spinach, no oil or water was added in my version. A flick of the nutmeg grater and a sprinkle of salt and pepper and it was done. It only took a little more than a pound of spinach to feed two of us. I can’t imagine how many bags it would take for a whole dinner party.
The best part about eating that spinach is that every time I make it I am reminded of the time my father first did it for us when he returned from Italy. Learning the difference between a fresh and canned food unlocked a whole world to me. It also taught me that if I did not like one dish it did not mean that I never would like that ingredient. It started me experimenting with food and taught me that often the simplest way was the best. It also taught me to follow my father’s lead and if I liked the way something was cooked to ask a lot of questions and learn from everyone I could. Popeye could have done a better job selling spinach if he just said it tasted good, rather than saying it made him strong.

When Did Dorm’s Need Decorators?

It’s college move in time and based on my Facebook feed I have quite a few friends who have children moving into dorms right now. I am not at this point in my life so the following observations are completely from a voyeur’s point of view.  
One thing that I find true to the posts I have seen is that girls are completely into decorating their rooms, even coordinated decorating with their roommates whereas the boys look perfectly happy and consider themselves fully moved in with blank bare walls and nary a throw pillow to be found. Nothing much has changed since the days I went to college when a Freshman boy could mistakenly walk into his neighbor’s room, get in bed and go to sleep and not even realize he was in the wrong room.  
Living in a college town, next to another college town means seeing students out shopping for room accouterments with their parents is not an unusual sight. Since so many kids come to Duke and UNC from far off places it makes perfect sense for them to buy their necessities, like sheets and towels and even wall monograms here rather then paying to ship it here. But there is something new In dorm outfitting I recently discovered.
While I was doing an errand at the mall recently I overheard a mother and her freshman daughter discussing which Crate and Barrel sofa she needed for her new dorm. I knew she was a freshman because her mother said, “Let’s get a nice one that will last for all four years of undergrad, but when you go to grad school we can get a decorator for your apartment and she will probably want you to get a new sofa.”   
Whoa… A new Crate and Barrel sofa for a dorm. When I got my off campus apartment junior year it was a big deal to go to Stan’s used furniture store and pick out the world’s most uncomfortable ugly brown sofa because it only cost $25, which at $6.25 per housemate was just right. One friend put a photo on face book of the pottery barn delivery truck outside a UNC dorm on move in day. I assume the delivery truck only brings furniture and not sheets and towels. Must have been for a girl’s room.
When it’s time for my daughter to go to college I am perfectly happy to help her get things for her wall and maybe a nice comforter, but I think that the school provided furniture, you know, dressers, bed, desk and chair, will be just fine for that Freshman room. No brand new sofa and certainly nothing that needs to be delivered. I wonder if anyone has brought in their own wallpaper guy or carpet layer? It all seems just a little to over the top for me.

Who Are The Trump Republicans Who Want To Clean Their Own Houses?

   
I don’t like to write about politics because I feel it is a highly personal issue, unlike the things I regularly write about like under garments, weight struggles or dysfunctional family issues. But as I was watching the news tonight the comedic possibilities so overwhelmed me that I can’t help myself.
I have been baffled for weeks how Donald Trump has stayed so high in the polls. I wrote it off at first that polls are the most old fashioned of tools, calling people who have land line telephones and asking them which candidate they like as a list of sixteen names are read. Let’s consider what a small population of mostly very old people still have a wall telephone in the kitchen and answer it. At their age and probably hearing ability by the time the pollster finishes reading the long list the only person they can remember is Trump. Name recognition goes a long way.
But as the insults from Trump have piled up so have his poll numbers. Today on the news he was touting his plan to get 10 million “illegal aliens” out of the country fast. Wait, wait, wait, who are the republicans who are for this? Which republicans are willing to give up their maids, lawn service workers, country club greens keepers, restaurant dishwashers, fresh fruit and vegetable pickers and poultry processors?
Is there a huge population of unemployed republicans who want these jobs I don’t know about? Are there so many people born in America who want a really hard, barley minimum wage job who can’t get one and are just saying,”Once Donald Trump clears everyone out I will be set for life with my dream job of cleaning someone else’s house?” Are these people republicans who actually vote? They can’t be the people the pollsters are calling because they can’t afford a landline.
Why haven’t the republicans who utilize the many services of these people not gotten together in fear and wondered who is going to cut their grass if Trump wins? Of course, they might not be able to go out and play golf since the course might be closed so the only thing left to do will be to take care of their own property. They better learn to plant gardens because the amount of fresh produce in the store will certainly dwindle with no one to take on the life of migratory worker.
I wonder who the people are that clean the bedrooms in his hotels? Maybe they are relatives of his Slovenia born wife? How did she become a citizen? Is Trump talking about sending people back to Europe who are in America illegally or is it just those Mexicans he does not like?  

I’m just really confused who the republicans are who think this country can run without the huge workforce that the Donald is targeting.

Fries on a Salad?!?!?

I think I’ve heard it all now. My friend Nancy came home from her “taking dad to his childhood Ohio home” tour and told me that everywhere she went in central Ohio they served fries on salads. Even my auto correct does not want to accept this notion and keeps trying to write fries or salad. You read this right, French fries served ON a salad. Something is wrong in the world.
Tomorrow I am taking my friend Jean out to lunch to celebrate her birthday. When I asked her where she wanted to go she said, “someplace I can get just some meat on a salad. That is basically all I am ever looking for when I go out to eat too and let me tell you how difficult it is to find.
Yes, there are a couple of places that have salads, and I mean the plural, like more than one choice, like Bull street Market. But for the most part, it is incredibly difficult to find an interesting salad that is low in the carb department with a number of protein choices to go with it. Now chicken or tuna salad are not favorable choices because the mayo situation throws them into a high calorie stratosphere. 
A Cobb salad does not count because once you put bacon, two kinds of cheese, avocado and then chicken on a salad, add in the dressing you might as well get a burger and fries. The only way to make the Cobb salad more fattening is to put fries on it. Have you ever? May be you have of you are from Ohio. 
The other non-starter in the salad department is the buffalo chicken salad, which is full of fried chicken and blue cheese. This is not what I am looking for. Or with salads that are full of pasta. An Asian a chicken salad with cabbage is good, one with soba noodles is now not a salad, but a cold noodle dish.
Caprese salad, you know, tomato, mozzarella and basil is not the answer because the amount of cheese is equal to a whole Philly cheese steak. If I am going to eat that many calories I want cake, no fooling myself that I am eating healthy with that “salad.”
So restaurants, I can’t be the only person who wants some interesting veggies on good greens, read not iceberg, with some tasty grilled skinless chicken. I know dressings are hard for you chefs,and I am fine with just getting vinegar and not expecting you to come up with a delicious low fat dressing. Just please give us something to put the vinegar on. I’m tired of searching for lunch menus on websites to no avail.
Oh, and whatever you do, don’t think that North Carolina needs to adopt French fries on salads. If we were going to add a fried side dish to a salad it would be onion rings all day long.

The Last Week of Peace

A week from today Carter starts her Junior year of high school. Right now she and her baptismal partner Ellis are watching a movie in the sunroom and eating their dinner. It seems like yesterday that they were being baptized on the same day at our church. Of course no one thought to tell either family that their were going to be two Baptisms on the same day so when Ellis’s Mom, Lynn came to sit in the front pew I was taken aback. We did not know each other. Thank goodness she turned out to be just the nicest person on earth and got over any offense I caused by saying out family was going to take up the whole pew since we were having a baby baptized.  
The time between the baptism and now feels like the calm before the storm of the all important junior year. Yes, we had to get through adolescence and learning to drive, but what comes ahead is the year I have been bracing for. I am trying to take every step at the right time and not worry in advance. I noticed that my answering light was flashing today and when I listened to the message from my Dad about a website that rated college is lots of different ways, including which campus’ were the most dangerous, I started to panic slightly.
I would like this last week of summer to go slowly. I would like to enjoy every last second of life before the college search starts. I would like to remain ignorant of which campus are the most dangerous. I know the path is Carter’s to take, but as my only child I have to walk it with her.
I don’t have the luxury of having multiple children to get more and more laid back on as they apply to college. By the time my youngest and smartest sister was going to college my parents let her pass up multiple offers to Ivies and comparable to go to the University of Colorado, “because I want to ski in college.” Only a third child gets the responses, “That sounds like a great idea.” Sadly, Carter will not have parents who are practiced.
So summer, please stick around a little longer. I know there are parents who are so ready for the kids to get back to a routine and be out of the house for a solid bit of everyday. I am not one of them. Not that I want to go back to six grade either, but just a little more time.

A Successful Surprise

Carter’s wonderful friend Ashley had a very tough time while Carter was at camp with the sudden loss of her beloved Grandfather and the move of her Grandmother from Atlanta to Ashley’s house. Carter and Ashley are more like sisters this I am Ashley’s bonus mother. I had to do some filling in for Carter when Ashley needed an ear to cry to. Six weeks apart is a long time in the teenage world.  
As unluck would have it Ashley was away when Carter came home from camp. Ashley and I discussed this and came up with a scheme to make Carter think she was going to be away two days longer so we could surprise her and have lunch together today.
I asked Carter three days ago if she could drive me to an eye appointment since my eyes would be dilated and I could not drive home. She happily agreed since it was not first thing in the morning. When we were in the car this morning she said, “Isn’t great to have a teenage daughter with her license to help you do these things?” I just laughed and said yes.
Ashley and I had decided to meet at Nordstrom Cafe for the surprise so I lied to Carter that there was a walk in eye clinic near customer service at Nordstrom. Of course she believed me since Nordstrom is full service. I texted Ashley as we neared the meeting spot. Carter was not one bit suspicious. I pretended to go to the fake eye center and circled back behind Carter who was looking at clothes. After three minutes of my lurking behind her waiting for ashley to jump out from behind the dresses Carter turned and saw me. “There is a 40 minute wait,” I quickly lied, “let’s go eat lunch.”
As we walked toward the Cafe Ashley jumped out and surprised Carter. From the tears and the squeals you would have thought they had been apart for a year. Lots of hugging and inquiring how she got back from vacation. Only then did we tell her we had been working in conjunction on this surprise for weeks. It worked beautifully. I am thrilled I have such a trusting daughter that I was able to surprise her, but I might have blown my chances to ever do it again. At least Next time I will have to come up with a better story that an eye appointment at Nordstrom. Even with as good as their customer service is they don’t do medicals. 

Mustard Fig Sauce

After my out of body non-cooking fit yesterday I woke up and wondered who that was. Yes , I would rather play Mah Jongg than do almost anything else, but it does not often take over my personality and cause me to dislike other things I love.
To make up for that I cooked a bunch of things this afternoon so I had good leftover for the week ahead. I made a corn, shallot and cherry tomato hash that made Carter very happy. A baby eggplant and okra dish that I loved and I finished up the chicken thighs I forgot in the oven last night. Since they were already cooked through I warmed them up in the pan on top of the grill and once they were warm I took them out of the pan and charred them directly on the grill. I made a sauce out of some figs that my friend Christy gave me since her fig tree was raining figs. It was perfect on grilled chicken thighs.
1 c. Fresh figs, stemmed and halved

1/4 c. water

2 T. Balsamic vinegar

2T. Good mustard, I used a German one, but Dijon would work fine

1T. Green peppercorns

1T. Honey

1t. Lime juice

Pinch of cayenne pepper
Put the figs and the water in a sauce pan on medium heat and cook covered for ten minutes. Mash the figs up with a potato masher and add the vinegar and mustard and continue cooking for five more minutes. Add everything else and cook another five minutes.
Spoon sauce over cooked meat and serve. Can stay in the refrigerator for a couple of weeks. Also good on pork.

A Cooking Break

I had every intention of making a family dinner at home tonight. I got up early. Went to the farmer’s market. I thawed both chicken and steak to satisfy the requests of both my family members. I was set to cook a full meal for the first time almost all summer, then I got a text for an impromptu Mah Jongg pool session. Sure I could go sit by the pool and play and stitch at the same time and still make dinner.
I played for close to three hours in the sunshine and had no idea much playing outdoors would wear me out. I arrived home at six and realized I was way behind on my cooking plans. With the oven on full blast, I threw the chicken in a pan to par cook it before I planned on finishing it off on the grill.
Suddenly my time in the sun overcame me and the thought of cooking an entire meal seemed undoable. My summer of non-cooking had dulled my skills. Then it dawned on me that we had not met our food minimum at the club and today was our cut off. Cha-Ching. Best excuse that we needed to go out to eat tonight ever.
I alerted the family of our change in dinner plans and called for a reservation. After we had all gotten in the car and arrived at the terrace for dinner did it dawn on me that I had left the house with a pan full of chicken in the hot oven. Thank goodness we live so close and Russ is such a good sport. While Carter and a I pursued the menu, Russ was driving home to rescue the chicken from the oven.
I am not going to keep up this non-cooking life much longer. Now I have a half cooked chicken that I am going to need to finish up. A fridge full of farm fresh veggies that need to be enjoyed. A family who is looking at me wondering where their chef is. I am very happy to have my girl back from camp and for Russ to be home, but not being able to just cook up a pan of chicken one night and eat it all week is causing me pain. I got really used to eating the same thing night after night because one it was easy and two it was healthy and three it removed all the temptation for eating something fattening.
I guess I will ease back into the full meal routine tomorrow, but I obviously can’t wait until six at night to begin preparations because I may back out all together. Perhaps I could feign a headache or a stomach bug. I guess not now. Oh cooking, I did not really miss you.

Practice Parting

Shay is a dog who like to sleep snuggled up on my bed, day and night. most days I have a hard time enticing her to get off the bed to go out or even come to the kitchen for a fine meal. This morning I said to her, “Come on, let’s go get Carter.” And before I could get near the door Shay had jumped off the bed, ran down the stairs and was waiting by the garage door. I wish I had a video of it. Obviously she has been missing Carter too.
Shay and I got in the car for a little road trip to pick her mother up from six weeks at camp. Carter had asked me specifically to bring her baby, but since pick up was on a Friday, that meant I had to ride all the way out to the mountain with my fur baby on my lap. It was hard for me to stretch the drive out so that I did not get there too early since Carter’s duties lasted until 3:30.
As a I turned on to Camp Cheerio road a half an hour early I started to get very sad. Regardless of what happens in the future with Carter getting a job at Cheerio this would be the last time I would pick her up from camp. If she is lucky enough to be chosen to be a counsellor she will drive herself to and from camp. The beautiful cool dry day with a big blue sky and a few white fluffy clouds did not help my sadness. I have come to love Camp Cheerio as much as Carter does, but for very different reasons.
How can I help but be grateful for a place that makes my child feel she is the best version of herself? The friends she makes at Cheerio are deep and true. Drama does not seem to play a major role and competition is nothing but friendly. This CIT year was exhausting and challenging, but it stretched her in all the right ways and she loved every hard minute.
After I wasted some time at the office signing Carter and another CIT we were giving a ride to out and picking up their phones I drove the car to the field by her cabin. Hardly a step out of the big old black Land Cruiser and I saw my girl coming running faster than I have ever seen her run up to hug me while Shay jumped into her arms. Shay monopolized her for much too long.  
I got to go back to her cabin where this session she had eight year olds. Just one little one was still standing there waiting for her parents. Carter sweetly introduced her to me and proudly told me this child was honor camper this session. The little girl hugged Carter and I could see a bond. Carter’s senior and junior counselors enthusiastically met me saying they loved working with Carter. I could already feel how hard reentry back to home life was going to be. No adoring crowds at home, just a small family.
I had three good hours in the car. It was not the full of information dump since a co-cit I did not know was in the car with us, but it was still great to hear the news. Not home half an hour and she was gone again, out to dinner with her friend Cait. Shay is passed out on my bed, exhausted from the excitement of her big trip to the mountain and back. A huge milestone is passed, my last trip to camp. Just practice for future partings.

Friends of All Ages

When Carter was in preschool she used to ask me, “Why are you friends with all the Grandmothers?” I did not want to tell her it was because I was as old as a Grandmother when I had her, or that I had a big work life before she came along, which was different from her friends’ mothers who were very young. Instead I told her, “I like to do the things Grandmothers do, like play bridge and Mah Jongg and do crafty things, like needlework and scrapbook, cook and garden.” That answer was also not untrue.
Well in the years since she was three I am still friends with the grandmothers, but at last the young people mothers have joined my ranks in people who like to play games, needlepoint and all the other “grandmotherly things” I like to do. Evidenced in my young friend Stacey whose birthday it is today. I think she is actually eleven years younger than me.  
My neighbor Mary Eileen had a birthday stitch and bitch lunch for Stacey today. Although I was unable to come to the lunch I happily walked over for an afternoon of gabbing and needlepoint on Mary Eileen’s back porch. It was such a southern grandmotherly thing for us to do, sipping tea and working on our canvases.  
As I looked at the young women around the table I thought that Carter might ask me something like, “Why are you friends with all the little kids’ mothers?” My answer would be, “Because they like to do the same things I do.” I’m glad that my hobbies have become things that young an old alike enjoy. I love having friends of varying ages and stages. It makes the tapestry of life so much more interesting. Happy birthday, Stacey. You will always be young to me, but that’s OK in my book.

I Miss Carter

For the last six weeks Carter has been at Camp Cheerio as a CIT. Except for the 24 hours we saw her in the middle of the sessions I have been without her. Now it is less than 48 hours until I get to drive to the mountain and take back my girl. Six weeks is a much longer time to not talk to her everyday than I thought. I really miss her.
Of course when she first went to camp I was busy with a fun girls trip and cleaning out the house. Then I went to Maine and that really kept my mind off missing her. But for the last week and a half I have done nothing much exciting and the days are dragging on until I can go see her.  
It does not help that Russ has been working like a crazy person and has been away. Poor Russ flew out on Monday morning which involved getting up at 3:45. Then after a long day in Atlanta his flight to Kentucky via Charlotte was delayed six hours causing him to only make it to Charlotte where he got to sleep two hours before getting on the second leg. Last night on his way to the airport in Kentucky to fly to Chicago he texted me that he was in an Uber car with a driver that was only on his second day on the job and he had never been to the airport before in his life. Tonight he called me and asked me what day it was. Poor guy. It must feel like it is Friday, but only if it was I would have Carter back and Russ would be on his way home.
I am trying to document this feeling of missing Carter because I am sure that she has not missed me as much. As soon as she gets home she is going to start up about how much she misses camp and her friends there. I am not going to take it personally. I am thrilled she has a place she loves so much. I am also going to have to remember how much I missed her when she does something that drives me crazy. Not that I can think what that will be right now, but then again I have not gone down to her room and seen the condition she left it in.  
Reentry from camp is never easy. First there is the unending amount of laundry and all the camp stuff, like trunks and crazy creeks and things that need to go to the attic, but instead sit in the hall outside her room. Then there is the catching up on sleep, which is next to impossible to do. Lastly the reconnecting with school friends. There certainly won’t be any time for me. I have to keep that in mind.  
So I am just looking forward to the ride home, but then we are giving another CIT I don’t know a ride. It is going to kill me not to have any alone time to hear all the news and camp gossip. Maybe she will tell me over thanksgiving, or Christmas break or sometime when she is trapped at home alone with me. I guess I need to get used to her being away more and more. I guess I need to plan more trips for myself while she is gone. Clearly being home alone waiting is not good for me.

My Super Power of Choice

If I could have one super power it would not be to be able to fly, be invisible or turn anything into gold, no I want a super power that Marvel comics never represented, nor even thought of, I want the ability to stop eating the moment my body had taken in enough calories just to live. Of course no comic book character has ever had this power because most comics are written by men, but if they were written by woman I think they would be way different. Like I could imagine a friend or two of mine who would like the super power to make dinner appear on the table without her ever having to enter the kitchen, or to grow old gracefully without ever getting a wrinkle.
I recognize that I like to eat and I like to eat good tasting food. My problem is that my body really needs very little food to survive and my mouth likes it more than my body needs it. Knowing that I am never getting any super power I have had to adopt a power tool to help me from eating too much. My tool of choice is my kitchen scale.
At this point in my half century existence my brain has learned what I should eat and how much, it just is not always cooperative. To be at my best healthy place I have to use portion control to the max. Smaller plates and bowls help, but the absolute most fool proof way not to over eat is to measure out my food. Not all my food, lettuce or green beans are not that caloric so if I am going to over indulge in anything, the green things are fine. But things like meat, or cheese or anything with oil, you know the stuff that tastes good and it calorically dense, these are foods that are best weighed so there is no fooling myself that one more bite, or spoonful would be OK.
I know people who need to diet often ask me, “Do I have to weigh and measure my food?”, as if it is a hardship that is too unbearable. No one who needs to lose weight is good at portion control or will power naturally, otherwise they probably would not need to lose weight. None of them have the super power to just push away from the table the second they have consumed just enough to sustain life. That being said, weighing your food is really not that hard.  
My scale has a function that can reset back to zero with the touch of a button. What does that mean? I put an empty plate on the scale, it might weigh 8 oz, but what do I care, I am not eating the plate. I push the zero out button and the weight goes to 0. I put some chicken on the plate, the weight on the scale is only showing me how much the chicken weighs. Once I have four ounces of chicken and I want to add half an ounce of cheese I just push the zero button and add some cheese to the plate with the chicken already on it. It is amazing how little cheese half an ounce is. If I wasn’t weighing it I would easily eat 2 ounces and swear I thought it was half an ounce. And so on. It is not hard, but it is the only way to really be sure I am not over eating.
Next time you go to make yourself a bowl of cereal do this experiment. Take your regular cereal bowl and put in it what you usually eat. Now measure it. Your box of cereal may say that one serving is 3/4 of a cup and is 150 calories. I bet your pour was closer to two servings and you thought it was small. Imagine if everything you ate was double what you thought you were eating. I wish I could invent my super power of choice and sell it. I know it would be a hit.

Kathy Jacobs–Hairdresser, Chef Extraordinaire  

I, like most women, am devoted to my hairdresser. Ok, that might be a terribly old fashioned word, I guess I should call her a hair stylist, but more correctly in my case a I should call her a magician. I have thin, the only thin thing about me, hair, with a double crown – a term she uses to describe how my hair sticks up in the back, not about my royal status. Having grown up in the Marcia Brady days of the 70’s the only hairdo I could do was long, straight and parted in the middle. I was pre-Farrah big wings and never learned to master any styling tools.
Thanks to my poor quality hair and lack of styling skills it really helps that my stylist, Kathy Jacobs at Blueprint Design, takes all this into consideration when cutting my hair. Not only does she give me flattering style, but one I can wash and wear myself. But enough about her profession, her true calling should be as a sauce/salsa maker.
Today I was lucky enough to get a last minute appointment to get my hair cut. Little did I know it was also the day she brought jars of her world famous Pico de Gallo, other wise known as salsa fresca, into the salon. Now I have been the lucky recipient of Kathy’s Pico and BBQ sauce before, but today’s was an extra good batch.  
It could not have come at a better time. Today was my recommitment to my diet day after a three week eating fest while I vacationed and had the floors refinished. It is amazing how easy it is to justify eating naughty food if you are not in your own kitchen. Now I had no excuse since my life is back to normal.
With Russ away all week and Carter still at camp I needed to have a come to Jesus big time clean eating plan. Somehow Kathy knew that Pico was the perfect food to give me to add flavor and freshness to my meal without adding many calories. Really, who better than your hairdresser to give you the answer when you have not even asked the question.
Tonight, with my perfect jar of Pico in hand, I sautéed up a handful of big shrimp and spooned the Pico over the top and ate the most delicious and easy supper I ever could have thought of. Amazing how happy it makes me that my hair is done, my dinner was yummy and my psyche was in a good place all thanks to the magical powers of my Hair Master, Kathy.  
You can’t buy her Pico, but you can be inspired to make your own and keep it on hand, not to eat with chips, but as a condiment for a nice piece of grilled fish or on some roasted chicken. It also makes the best oil free salad dressing ever. Thanks Kathy Jacobs, you made my day.

New Floors, Same Old Face

Have you ever seen those magazine covers of celebrities after they have done one too many plastic surgeries. I often look at them and think, “What were they thinking?” They were very attractive before they started fooling around with self improvement and suddenly they have gone way over the edge.
I think I figured out what leads to this self improvement overload. When we bought our house 21 years ago our floors were already 40 plus years old and had never been refinished. I think that the original owners had a lot of wall to wall carpet that kept them fairly protected, but still they were never close to perfect. Now with our floors clean and beautiful in a way they never have been in my lifetime I begin to look at everything else as old and shoddy. As my bare feet slide over the smooth surface I feel nothing but clean.
I think of an aging celebrity getting a little Botox and then suddenly with a smooth and wrinkless forehead looks at her crows feet as not fitting in so she gets some work on those. Suddenly that slightly droopy neck needs a little tightening, brows lifted, nose thinned, lips plumped, oh hell, pin back those perfectly fine ears and add a cheek implant while you are at it. Now that once darling face is unrecognizable. And it all started so innocently with a little injection.
Thank goodness I am busy enough trying to get pounds off my middle to not worry about minor tweaks to my face, but the floor redoing certainly shows me how an obsession could get started. I am carefully eyeing my next redo opportunity, but a good upholsterer rather than a plastic surgeon is in my future. Before I can get started on that it’s time to get back in the working out and eating healthy saddle. No more trips to keep me out of my house or eating many meals out because I don’t have a kitchen, no more excuses. But I do have nice floors and organized closets and I am not going to fall prey to feeling like I need to upgrade my face to fit into my house.    

Whining Is Bad For Your Waist Line

I admit that I have been incredibly whiny for the last week. Living through the house renovations has caused me not to just lose my sense of humor but also all my willpower. It started with my renovation demanded vacations. After some eating deprivation weeks I mistakenly thought that I deserved not just a vacation from the renovations but from my diet. So lobster rolls, and ice cream were part of my daily diet.
The problem eating continued way past my vacation. Coming home to floor refinishing hell put me in a perpetual bad mood, which caused mood disorder eating. Then the whining really got out of hand. Was I eating because I was whiny or was I whiny because I was eating? Either way neither was good. To top it all off I was writing whiny and that caused me to get quite a few comments from well intentioned friends who felt I should just shut up and stop complaining.  

I wish someone had slapped me earlier because I might have saved myself, both from my bad mood and from my eating.
But the end is in sight. The movers showed up and even though Russ had to to go to work all day I was able to almost get the house back together before he got home. I did give him a little bit of a scare though since he came home to find me almost passed out under one of the beds. Actually I was just resting after I had shimmied under the bed to plug in an extension cord.

After spending all this time and energy to get the floors refinished I figured I should really enjoy some time actually on the floor.
I am going to have no excuse to get back on the healthy eating wagon and exercise routine tomorrow, but for tonight I am hoping that Russ will take me out to dinner. Not to complain, but I don’t have a thing to eat in the house. I just couldn’t cook and put everything I own back in their respective closets at the same time. I really hope my sense of humor returns now that the floors are done. I’m getting sick of living with my whiny humorless self and I can only imagine how others around me feel. Please accept my apology.