28Oct

Comfy Orange Photos

It’s fall, which means:

EuroChocolate

The EuroChocolate festival downtown.

Walnuts

Tough nuts to crack.

Multi-colored leaves

Trees putting on a strip show outside my window.

Mashed potato candle and books

My favorite Buttered Mashed Potatoes candle and classic books.

Luna Park

Evening trips to the Luna Park for some dizzy, colorful fun.

Orange flowers

Orange flowers, orange ribbon, orange pot.

Pocket Coffee

A candy dish well stocked with Pocket Coffee and Lindt Halloween truffles (which are quickly disappearing!).

Red scarf

Jackets and scarves galore.

Italy's largest pumpkin

A riotously large pumpkin waiting to become fudge, pie, and bread. (Also, in the back, fresh pomegranates, mandarins, and kiwi.)

Pumpkin spice latte

Deliciousness abounding.

Mischievous

Three days ’til this one’s birthday!

26Oct

What the World Needs Now…

Where to begin.

I’m sure you all have seen the YouTube videos where the frizzy-haired woman in a McCain t-shirt yammers wildly about how Obama is an ARAB! And a MUSLIM! And a SOCIALIST! And BLACK! And an ANTI-AMERICAN TERRORIST! I have to turn those videos off after about five seconds or I get hives.

Well, it has recently come to my attention that some of my relatives are saying things about Obama that make terrorist rantings sound like compliments. They believe with all their hearts that Barack Obama:
          Is the potential antichrist
          Will incite “riots, terrorism, and chaos”
          Is using “forces of darkness” to become president
          Is being supported by a personal genie
          Plans to overthrow Kenya
          Is hypnotizing voters
          Wants to kill all our babies
          Is a “warlock”
          Utilizes the spirit of a python to “constrict” our finances and health
          Campaigns against McCain and Palin through “chanting, praying to the constellation, theosophy, theomancy, white magic, candle magic, water witching, tribalism, meditation, astral projection, human sacrifices, water spirits, territorial witchcraft, and radical Islamic hatred”

I feel poisoned every time I read their list—an inky black sickness that won’t rub off—and I find myself in the impossible dilemma of wanting to make a stand against hatred while realizing that willful ignorance doesn’t listen. Damn, that sounds preachy. But how do you convince someone that his or her beliefs, no matter how outrageous or unfounded, are wrong? Horribly, hurtfully wrong?

Many Christians I know have aligned themselves with the Republican party without regard to the candidates or the platforms just because Christian = Republican, duh. And they haven’t just aligned themselves; they’ve lashed themselves to the mast with a thick rope and forty-two sailor knots. They approach politics with a religious fervor that easily lends itself to hatred, and rather than look up Obama’s religious background (devoted Christian), they invent one for him (radical Islamic terrorist). They spread nasty rumors and hold prayer meetings to literally curse the Democrats. And they have the audacity to think God is cheering them on.

Last time I checked my Bible, God was love. Not hate. Numerous verses warn against slander, gossip, malice, stirring up dissension, and defaming one’s neighbor, and in his most famous sermon, Jesus told us to bless and not curse. I honestly don’t care if my relatives want to vote for McCain—they have that right, and it in no way indicates they are stupid. But I do strongly care that they not spread outlandish and blatantly un-Christian lies in the name of God about the man I voted to lead our country.

Party politics aside, hatred is never the answer. Never. And I hope that the people I know and love can find the strength of character to rise above ignorance and find the kindness this world so desperately needs.

25Oct

False Lullabies

Thursday, October 23, 2008

After hours, the hospital hums a false lullaby. The road rage nurse has finally stopped jabbing your baby with needles, and her sobs have finally subsided into a stone-heavy sleep. The other little girl in your room has finally stopped throwing up from stress; her parents are no longer shouting to each other across the room or banging large metal things around. (Are you the only parent in Italy who thinks children should have a peaceful environment in which to sleep? Sheesh.) You are folded up on a blue plastic chair for the night. Though you are exhausted beyond all reason, sleep will be hard to come by.

You wonder when—or if—your roommate will turn off the late-night action flicks, though maybe quiet is too much to ask in a building that never rests. You mentally calculate how much time you have before the nurses burst in to flip on lights and take temperatures. (Not enough.) You watch your baby breathe the sterile air, needle-sharp with disinfectant. She is so fragile tonight—pallid, dehydrated skin sticking to tiny ribs—that you feel afraid to touch her, yet it takes all your self-control not to scoop her out of her crib and cuddle her the whole night long. You try to decompress. It proves impossible.

At last, the TV is off, but the resulting quiet is as menacing and green as a storm warning… and it really isn’t all that quiet. Somewhere down the hall, someone else’s baby screams. Operating room doors bang shut, and feet scuttle to and fro outside your room. Even your chair squeaks in opposition as you try to find a comfortable pose. (There is none.) All the mistakes and anxieties of your life converge on you at once, and you can’t summon the energy to bat them away. It doesn’t really matter though, because in two minutes, a nurse will wake your daughter up, and you will spend the rest of the long night trying to get her back to sleep.

If you ran a hospital, you think, you’d have dimming lights and soundproof walls and whispering nurses tiptoeing around in vanilla-scented socks. At 9:00 p.m., everyone would get a sleeping pill with a mug of chamomile tea, and the TV would automatically switch to old-school Coldplay music videos. Every patient’s medical chart would include a prescription for intense rest. You reflect that your common sense is apparently some kind of revolutionary medical secret; does this make you the smartest person in the hospital?

Perhaps the tiredest, at any rate.

Update: We are finally home safe and sound now after Sophie’s hospitalization for gingivostomatitis and the resulting fever and dehydration. Our plans for the evening include SLEEP.

21Oct

Warning: Do Not Scrapbook

I’ve caught that little internet cold that makes its rounds during the chilling downslope of seasons. I was hoping, sincerely, to catch the homey enchantment of A Week In A Life instead; everyone’s week looks so lovely in detail, and scrapbooking! What says “I am a fount of creativity and time-management” more than that? (I have a beautiful bin of scrapbooking supplies myself, but it only comes out during weeks my family agrees not to eat or wear clothes or use the floors. So, not often.) I did try starting a Week In A Life post, and it went like this:

Monday

7:30 a.m. – My alarm goes off, even though I don’t remember setting it last night. I kick husband repeatedly until he gets up to turn it off for me (thankfully for our marriage, he understands I’m not accountable for anything before 10 a.m… and sleeps with me anyway). I lie in bed thinking violent morning thoughts, ruing the day I was born, etc. until Sophie’s hungry shrieks become impossible to tune out.

8:30 a.m. – Natalie, who is coughing up bits of spleen, is sent off to the doctor who prescribes antibiotics and staying home from school. We have a solid ten minutes of fun dusting the living room before she deteriorates into boredom as I start Hour #1 of dishes for the day. “Mommy, can you pleeeeease play with me? Mommy, can you pleeeeease read with me? Mommy, isn’t it a struggle not to succumb to the guilt of wasting away my precious childhood by scrubbing windows that will just be grimy again by the weekend?” She hasn’t coughed once since getting back from the doctor’s, of course.

12:30 p.m. – Sophie, who may or may not be teething, is up from her nap and wants to be held. I, multi-tasker though I am, have limits and cannot manage to hold her whilst simultaneously mashing the potatoes, hanging the wet laundry, and washing Hour #2 of dishes before Dan gets home for lunch. Sophie stands in the middle of the room perfecting her Nazgûl scream. Natalie is frustrated with her puzzle and begins to cry. My sanity calls in a sick day.

Technically, the week started with Sunday, but that found me three seconds away from a nervous breakdown at church, complete with bloodthirsty fantasies toward Natalie’s Sunday School class bully and the very near cussing-out of the kindly old people pestering Sophie into gut-wrenching sobs. It hasn’t exactly been a scrapbook-worthy week.

No, the internet cold I got is the one that makes people forget who they want to be when they grow up and lose inspiration for everything from art to regular showering and wonder why they keep blogging anyway. I caught it right in the face, too. It’s a doozy of a mental crisis, and it usually distills down to The House. More specifically, the messes that characterize The House. Even more specifically, the hours upon vain hours I spend cleaning up the messes that characterize The House under some sort of delusion that it will stay clean. You know, at least for 24 hours.

And now you know how much of a pansy I am. Historically significant elections are going on, my nation is teetering on the brink of economic collapse, war and terrorism are flourishing in the Middle East… and I’m falling into pieces over misplaced loads of laundry and smushed carpet peas. Who knows—maybe The House is just a metaphor for some greater mental tableau I can’t adequately process. I hope I’m that deep.

In some ways, it’s exciting to be in the midst of a breakdown. It means that something is happening, that I could wake up tomorrow with an epiphany or a new superpower. On the other hand, it means I’ve written nary a word in days. It means I feel both aimless and harrowed, and my brain tissue by now is mostly held together with smushed peas. And lemme tell ya—that, combined with soap-splattered clothes and my lack of showering inspiration? Is not a lovely thing.

15Oct

Happiness = Molasses

This:
Baking cabinet
is my culinary art supply cabinet.

Baking cabinet - Top half

Baking cabinet - Bottom half

I tend to bake on the spur of the moment, and I love having a variety of ingredients always standing at attention. For instance, this morning? After waking up from a long insomniac night with a head being clenched in fists of misery, I could whip up some warm molassesey ginger crinkles for breakfast.

Breakfast
Everything is better with molasses.

13Oct

Thinking Without Responsibility

It’s the third full day of some eerie symptomless sickness that has left me bedridden. There’s no pain or congestion or nausea or anything out of the ordinary except for a vast hollowness where my head used to be, and even reading ten pages of a book tires me out. In between the heavy sleeping and the dizzy waking, I’ve been thinking. It’s nice to be able to think without responsibility, when no one expects you to be coherent or figure out so much as a lunch menu.

I’ve thought a lot about the upcoming elections and America’s future. I have little faith in candidates’ platforms, though I am concerned what McCain and Obama plan to do regarding our drowning economy. I find myself drawn toward the candidate exhibiting the most sincere goodwill toward people—not America’s status in the world, not its corporate wealth, not any generalized patriotic ideals—but individuals who are struggling to pay their rent. Who can’t afford health care (raise your hand, anyone?). Who don’t make enough to support their families because of corrupt corporations and an impersonal government. Who feel cheated by decisions our leadership never adequately informed us about (no names, but it rhymes with Shmiraq). Our nation needs a hefty dose of TLC.

I pretty much keep my political ideas confined to 1) my husband, who has always respected what I think, and 2) my own head, because people are pretty polarized about the presidential election and I have no immediate death wish. So no, I won’t tell you who I’m voting for… but here’s a hint: If you’re Alaskan, we may or may not agree. ::Grin::

My thoughts of late have also been occupied with family life. I am a hopeless perfectionist, and my addled brain has latched onto the following ideal of motherhood:

  • Takes the kids for daily hikes, nature walks, and/or camping trips. Teaches survival skills, knot-tying, etc.
  • Structures each day according to Somebody-or-the-Other’s accredited theory of education, packing spare knowledge into all empty spots of the day and raising bright-eyed geniuses. Creepy nighttime learning tapes optional.
  • Plays regular sports with the family. Kids get a wide enough exposure to athletics that they can make educated decisions whether they want to become MBA players or make the Olympic curling team.
  • Converts a portion of the house into a communal art studio, complete with miniature canvases, safety glass scissors, and sippy cups of gel medium.
  • Earns the nickname Mrs. Montessori for her colorful playroom always stocked with dress-up clothes, abaci, and imagination enhancement drugs.
  • Reigns over her little domestic kingdom in high heels and oven mitts, singing supercalifragilistic ditties to scare toys into place and always baking something light and fluffy. By age four, kids would know how to scrub grout and make perfect quiche.

I feel like I’m just now waking up and OMG! I have spawn! and OMG! I have no parenting archetype! It feels a lot like the flu. I’ve done a lot of problem-solving over the last 3.6 years—figuring out how much rice cereal to fix at a time, how to battle diaper rash, how to get a stubborn toddler to stay in her bed—and I’ve relied heavily on mamalove to fill in the gaps. It’s not a bad way to parent. And yet, I want incredibly special girlhoods for my daughters. I want them to remember a mother who was fully present with them, not constantly thinking about writing or worrying about the dirty house. I want us to use our imaginations together and create sparkling memories, whether we’re learning multiplication tables or simply having a ticklefest.

I haven’t done a good job getting my genetic anxiety under control, and OMG! it’s time for me to relax and enjoy life already. Especially with my little girls, who matter 1,000,000% more than anything I spend my time worrying over. So now the question: How to parent more purposefully without stressing out about all the versions of mother I am not? Because I so am not a sports person. Survival skills I have none. We have no space for dress-up clothes, and I don’t even know how to use gel medium. Something tells me that I don’t have to be perfect at everything in the world to be a great mom, but that something has a “Kick me” sign stuck to its bum, compliments of my brain. Stupid brain.

My bedridden thoughts have also drifted toward holiday gifts and Matt Damon and tarte tatin and how I really should shower once this week and I’m just going to stop there. After all, sick people aren’t responsible for hygiene any more than they are for perfect parenting or political involvement. OMG! whew.

10Oct

Dear Crush

Dear crush,

Perhaps it’s because I never know what to expect when you invite me on a date. You’ve taken me to IMAX and waterfalls, Alligator Alley and concerts, ski slopes and dinner, and you never let on what we’re doing until the last possible moment. (I never catch on either, thanks to my gullibility trusting nature and disinclination toward geography.) Last Monday’s date night involved aperitivi in a little downtown bar and then the impossible—“The Dark Knight,” in English, in a large-screen theater. With box seats. You realize I can die a happy woman now, right?

Sake

Perhaps it’s because the next morning, while I was burrowed under the covers effectively not helping you get the girls dressed, you were making me a picture-perfect cappuccino… which you then brought to me in bed. I fully commend you for rising to the challenge and finding a way to wake me without incurring any wrath whatsoever. In fact, I can’t think of a lovelier start to a day than coffee with a heaping spoonful of lovin’.

St. Patty dates

Perhaps it’s because you suspected one day last week had been a little gloomy and brought me home a pot of cheery orange! flowers wrapped in a cheery orange! bow. Of all the people in the world, including myself, you know best how I tick. Perhaps it’s because, even though we’re leaning slightly in different directions about the presidential election, we can still die laughing together at SNL’s political sketches. I’m so glad to share my weird particular sense of humor with you. Perhaps it’s because you encourage me relentlessly until I go completely sane and have a fabulous day.

Roller coastering

Perhaps all of the above are why I find myself loving you a smidgen or two. You never know.

XOXO,

Your secret admirer

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