Elvis has left the building

In celebration of Friday, I headed to Papa Murphy's to pick up a take and bake and a salad. Yep, that's what it's come to. If I have not already endorsed this particular product, let me do so now. Papa Murphy's pizza is delectable. No, it does not compete with the deep dish Chicago pies, or Z's pizza (RIP) on 6th Street south of the University of Arizona. But for chain pizza, Papa Murphy's is definitely superior. Yes, you have to pick it up yourself. Yes, for god's sake, you have to bake it yourself. Nevertheless. Also? It is three blocks from our house.

While the enthusiastic teens assembled my pizza, I trotted over to Pal Do World Korean Market to pick up some beer. Although in some ways it would be nice to have a boring old supermarket around the corner from our house, I am mostly glad that instead we have Pal Do. Because I have done the Murphy's and beer run before, I know that the good people at Pal Do politely request that I spend more than ten dollars if I am going to use my credit card. So I had to play a quick game of Supermarket Sweep in an attempt to boost my Tsing Tao purchase over the ten spot limit.

At Pal Do World, there is, naturally, a vast assortment of Korean and Japanese food. But there is also quite an extensive assortment of "European" food. There are some very tasty baked goods in the front, from some place called the Euro Bakery. There is in fact an entire aisle labeled "European" food. (Really, the only kind of food that Pal Do expressly doesn't carry is...American. So we do not shop there for bread, cheerios, canned peaches, milk...you get the idea). I headed down the European aisle for something else to buy (ridiculous why I did not just find an ATM...), and found a great number of jars of food that were labeled not just in another language, but in many cases, in another script. And the food wasn't identifiable, even when seen through the glass. It's one thing to try something new when you at least know the name of it. It's another when you don't even know what it's for. One jar tried to be helpful- along with the Russian words, there was an English name: "A chunky relish." Mmm. Even knowing the English name? Does not help me understand what I would be taking on buying this jar. So I settled for some wafer cookies with cocoa hazelnut filling. For some reason they were called Neopolitans.

I forgot to mention that Pal Do World has two restaurants, one Korean, one Japanese. When a certain contingent of Malaysian in-laws were here for two months, we spent many a dinner eating Korean food at the Pal Do restaurant. The woman who runs the place was wild for my in-laws, for my husband, and for my baby. Sadly, she has some eye condition which makes it difficult for her to see me. But the food is good. It is these once frequent dinners at the Pal Do on which I base the following bold assertion: the background music at Pal Do is always, always Elvis Presley. And not, as you might expect, an entire range of early Elvis, Vegas Elvis, gospel Elvis. No, it was the same dozen or so songs, over and over. You ain't nothing but a hound dog, crying all the time. Don't be cruel to a heart that's true. Everybody in the old cell block, dancing to the jailhouse rock.

Once, during the beer run where I learned of the ten dollar credit card rule (and the cashier let me off with a polite mention), I made a comment about how he must be a little tired of Elvis. He just looked at me. Today, I went up to the counter with my Tsing Tao and my Neopolitans and my bunch of bananas, and noticed that the cashier was singing along with the storetrack, and that it was very definitely Not Elvis. It was peppy Korean pop music, and the singer jovially shouted the chorus, like a Korean Chumba Wumba (as did the cashier). My total was $13.92. I have eaten about that many Neopolitans, two slices of Papa Murphy's, and one bottle of Tsing Tao. And that, ladies and gentlemen, was my Friday night.

The Baby Across the Street, or, Serious Overthinking

This is more like a letter I should submit to Miss Manners or Dear Abby (love your work, Miss and Dear!) than an actual event worth ruminating on. Even so, I have given some thought to it already, so I may as well go all the way and give some thought to it out loud (so to speak). The issue in a nutshell is: our neighbors have had a baby- what should my response be? Keep in mind that the longer I ruminate, the more I have made a default decision for myself. The history is thus…

The house across from ours is a piece of new construction on a street of 1956 split levels. It’s big and red and has gables, a funny brick-walled front yard (with impeccable groundskeeping) and a wide front porch at ground level. And it seems it is not just a house, it’s a home. An assisted living home, to be exact. Mobility buses coming by many times a day to schlep the assisted livers here and there, and when we first moved here and I wasn’t yet working, I got a little jealous that these assisted livers seemed to have so much more of a life than I.

Also living in the “Steakhouse,” as my local friend has dubbed it (because of how it looks, not any darkly comic sense), is a family of four- husband, wife, and two small children. They are from some eastern European country. I assume that the woman looks after the residents, and the man looks after the building (though it could be the other way around. He certainly mows the lawn, more, though...). Our association with them has been limited to occasional waving (especially waving at the man and his children, who sometimes go out for little walks in the neighborhood).

At Christmas time, as is the tradition in my family, I loaded up a few plates with Christmas cookies and candies, and carried them to each of our neighbors’ houses. The only one who was around to receive their goodies was Sheila, who celebrates Hanukah instead, but was still very gracious about accepting the cookies. When I brought a plate to the Steakhouse, a young woman who works there took them from me, saying, I’m not the owner, but I’ll give them to her. Fast forward to Easter, a few weeks ago. The doorbell rang (an excitingly rare event), and when I opened it, there stood the woman from across the street. Whom I have never met or spoken with or even really waved at, since it’s her husband who is outside much more often. Unsmiling, she handed me a plate of pastries she had made for Easter. I thanked her, hugely smiling, and asked her (recklessly!) if she was expecting (because she looked about six months pregnant). She said she was due in two weeks (Wha?). She told me her name, Adina (I am spelling it on a whim here). I told her if they needed anything, to call on us. She said they would be just fine. Kind of meanly, it felt like.

And of course, she had the baby. We have seen him from our windows, tucked into his baby bucket and covered with a blanket, being carried in and out of the car. Catching him outside once, I asked the father if the baby had come, he said yes. I asked the little boy if he liked his little brother, and he gave me a very sour scowl. We know the baby is here. We don’t know the family very well. But they have made a kind gesture to us (the Easter pastries were pretty tasty), they are a young family with a new baby, and they are our neighbors. I want to do something nice for them, on the other hand, I fear (a little irrationally, I’ll admit) that doing something for them will be perceived as something like meddling, which I genuinely don’t want.

Am I mired in a simple cultural difference? I know Americans are more grinny and boisterous in their attempts to be “friendly” with others (especially me! I blush a little at my uber-friendly try at conversation with the borderline sullen Adina as she handed over the Easter sweets). Or is she genuinely just not a warm, friendly person, perhaps one who would neither notice nor care about an extra pack of onesies and a Hallmark card? This is one situation where the golden rule might not apply. I would want my awkwardly smiley, new-to-the-street neighbor to come over with a small, cute baby present if I had a new baby. To me, that would be just great. But also? I think it’s easy to see how not everyone might feel that way.

Mother's Day Revisited

I am going back in time just a bit, but instead of gushing about what a good Mother's Day I had, I will save a thousand words and display a certain Mother's Day causal agent, enjoying a jazz combo, and having recently enjoyed about a half dozen strawberries.

Mean Girls

Last night I read an article about “mean girls,” establishing and re-establishing pecking orders in the miserable struggle known as junior high. It sparked an email conversation with a friend this morning, in which we tossed memories back and forth of our roles and the groups we were in or out of. Neither one of us had ever been a “queen bee,” as we remember it, but I have some unpleasant “bystander” memories, and my friend remembers being a “sidekick” and a “floater.” Both of us have victim stories, though mine seemed pretty trivial next to the stuff I read in the article.

In a sidebar, the writer told how she sat her soon-to-be sixth-grade daughter down and explained that she shouldn’t be surprised if her friends started to act strangely and to say and do things inconsistent with the friendship up till now. It made me wonder whether you can really get a girl ready for that, and if it’s a good idea to do so. And how do you help her through it, if it does happen? The article had some suggestions I appreciated, like the mom having the girl practice responding to the situation. And what you practice aren’t zingy, stinging comebacks, just simple statements like “It’s not OK for you to treat me like that.” I confess to imagining with some horror, however, the meanie response that would rain down on the girl if anyone ever found out that she had “practiced” behavior with the help of her mommy.

Besides the obvious implications for my own navel gazing and a few drops in the parental psychic and emotional over-planning bucket, one thing that jumped out at me was an interesting statement- that these situations subtly teach the youngsters involved that the people with the power can behave more or less as they wish. And if you speak up, you put yourself in danger of being destroyed. So in a country that claims to be all about freedom and the voice of the individual, so many of these individuals are seeing and hearing sheer madness from their elected leaders, and responding, in effect, by keeping their heads down. My head’s down, most of the time. But I hope I can start modeling a little fearlessness for my tiny future junior-high girl and member of the voting public. I’ll work on it.

The Happy Homemaker

I did not intend for this to be a confessional, where I bare to the world (or, you know, no one at all) my many foibles. Even so… I am a scheme hatcher, and am always coming up with plans (or the concept behind the plans) and systems (that go unimplemented) for tackling life’s various requirements, mostly in the domestic arena. One of the habits I am trying to build into our household is cooking dinner at home, regularly, easily, nutritiously, whatever. I know, this is not exactly an unusual one. Recently I came up with a kind of dial a dinner plan that involved brainstorming dinners that we are fairly proficient at preparing, figuring out what ingredients I would need to shop for at the beginning of the week, and so forth.

Naturally, the plan has languished. Not to say we’re not cooking at home, just to say, well, we’re not exactly making it on one grocery trip a week. And takeout continues to be taken out. But yesterday after work, in a burst of ambitious good feeling brought on by the warm sunshine, I made a list and ran to the grocery store on the way home. Part of the framework of my original plan involved scheduling dishes to take advantage of whatever ingredients I bought that week, and since I wanted tacos yesterday, I knew I could use half the ground turkey on the tacos (turkos), and half for lasagna. AND, I could actually make the lasagna ahead of time. So that’s where I was, last night, after the youngster had finally been put to bed, browning the rest of the turkey, mixing up the ricotta, and halving the recipe on the no-bake noodle box. This was harder than it sounds, because the recipe made it seem like I was going to have a certain number of layers, so I fractioned the ingredients accordingly, and when I found myself with one fewer layer of noodles to work with, I had to just glob the extra layer of cheesy stuff on an already existing cheesy stuff layer. And from this description, isn’t it something that no one has offered me my own cooking show, as of this writing? So, noodles on top, lots of sauce (since I didn’t bother to halve the jar sauce), cheese, foil, fridge. Ta daa! I made Tuesday’s dinner on Monday night. I had arrived. Just as I closed the refrigerator door, I looked over at the stove, where I saw a nice big skillet of…browned turkey.

Fortunately, Jim was there to help. Actually, he came running when he heard me say one of the words I recently and with some struggle gave up saying on account of one big-eared little pitcher. He thought I had cut my finger off. We got the lasagna out of the fridge, lifted off the top layer of no-bake noodles (preserving most of the cheese), and dumped the turkey into the already burgeoning top double layer. Replace noodles, replace foil, replace in fridge.

Tonight, top-heavy lasagna. I will let you know how it comes out.

Another career door swings shut

Well, it is not as if I really ever specifically believed that there was a job for me in photojournalism or nature films or baby photography. Or any kind of photography for that matter. But I have always been one of those egotistical wonders who believes that really, I could be good at a lot of things if I just set my mind to it. But I have realized that in fact I am just plain not very good at taking pictures, and more specifically, at capturing moments on video. For illustration, I offer today’s tale.

Naomi is home sick today. We are aghast that perhaps we have all contracted another round of stomach virus (Can it be? The fourth round?), but if not, it is some kind of food poisoning that is hanging on for a few days. I am staying with her until noon, then super daddy is coming home to watch over her in the afternoon. In the meantime, I am “working from home,” which means, “checking my email over the web.” Neat. Because her condition means that a few times a night she wakes up covered in poo, and because after all you do have to bathe babies occasionally, and because when she wandered into the bathroom this morning and did her bath sign vigorously and repeatedly (while wrapping herself up in the shower curtain and saying “Hiyeee!”), I thought it would be a good idea to give her a bath.

While I was scrubbing up the tub a bit (there are a few elements in this paragraph that give away clues to how hopelessly untidy our house is currently, can you spot them?), Naomi decided she would be helpful by “putting away” some of her laundry that was in a basket in the hallway. This struck me as enormously cute, and I decided to sneak out and get the video camera to capture this new behavior. Three times she took something out of the basket, walked around the corner with it, and deposited it in one of the baskets in her changing table where all her clothing and blankets and whatnot live. As soon as the camera comes out, she reverts to her more natural behavior (cuter when she first started doing it six or eight months ago), which is taking clothing out of the baskets and spreading it all over the floor. Opportunity lost.

In any case, this explains why the video camera was in the bathroom when the naked sprite finally got into the tub. Before I had a baby, I was always a little mystified at the allure of the naked baby picture. Babies look cute in clothes, was my line. But for some reason, seeing our little bunny all naked wakes up some primal cute-worshipping mommy love chemical gland, and I am struck by how beautiful and perfect and vulnerable and so damn cute! she is. I know, it’s a little much. Sorry. But this leads us to the point where again I am compelled to uncap the Panasonic and capture some baby bath goodness to watch when I am old and Naomi is off sitting on the supreme court or taking a van tour of the Northwest with her all girl ska band. So I started filming, and she proceeded with her normal bath things, including her newly emerging skill- pouring! And then, out of nowhere, she lost her balance and toppled backwards, and her head thankfully hit nothing but the surface of the water, which naturally it broke right through, until she was…underwater! I turned the camera off at this point, and rescued the unwilling swimmer, who somehow, when I righted her, leaped to her feet and wailed with righteous indignation (though only for a moment- she really likes having a bath and was keen to get back to it).

Anyway, the fact that moment that her head went underwater is now preserved for all time in the video camera could be seen as a sign that in fact I am ready to go to great lengths to get my shot. Or it could just mean that I have that unfortunate lag time between comprehending a situation and reacting to it. In any case, I think it is a good indicator of personal growth when you can admit to yourself that you are just not that great at everything. I am not going to be the next Anne Geddes (you’re welcome). But at least I am smart enough not to post the video stills of my baby’s dunking- I would like to keep her, thanks!

Won't you be my neighbor?

Now that the weekend is over, I can look back and honestly reflect on how very, very short it really was. Lately it seems like weekends hurtle by at the speed of light. Friday evening we had a little picnic at the small park a few blocks away. Luna enjoyed lying on the grass while shamelessly begging for food (as opposed to the hard, uninteresting wood floor of home), Naomi enjoyed wandering toward the swings, only to be summoned back and forced to eat (more on her ongoing reluctance to consume food another time), and Jim and I enjoyed eating outdoors, which seems at once a celebratory partnership with nature and a defiant declaration of freedom from rain. Naomi has a puzzling relationship with swinging, which is to say, when she sees Woodstock swinging in the book he stars in (Hiding! Singing! Flying! Crashing!), she gets excited and starts to simulate swinging back and forth. When we get to the park, she gets excited and runs to the swings. When we get on the swing… she wants to get off. It’s more the idea of swinging she likes. Anyway, after a quick dinner and a few aborted attempts at swinging, we had to admit that it was getting chilly and saunter back home.

On the way back, we passed a house with a couple of young people outside. Out of nowhere, they started shouting things at us. I can’t remember all the things they said, but it’s difficult to forget the voice of the young woman saying, “You got a fat ass, girl!” That pretty well reflects the tone of the discourse. Such as it was. Jim was a little angry, I could tell, but for my part I just felt completely bewildered. It would have been weird if they had started shouting at anyone who had just happened by (as we did), without any provocation (that we could come up with). But doesn’t it seem weirder still that our little caravan (Mama, Daddy, stroller with cute grubby baby, big lovable [perhaps trained in attack?] dog) was the object of their verbal abuse? I suppose I am used to a little bit of special treatment as a person in charge of and in possession of a baby. People are generally more smiley and friendly when the baby is around. Come to think of it, the dog also has this effect. Yet even with the one-two punch of disarming likeability factors, we got the epithets. Isn’t it mysterious?

We kept walking, of course. It didn’t seem like the right thing to do, dragging the dog and the baby into a street fight. I had a moment of superior dismissal for the behavior of our young alternate-Jerry Springer-reality neighbors, but the more I thought about it, the more I wished I knew the really truly right thing to do in that situation. Because after all, being a peacemaker doesn’t just mean saying no to a fight. It can also mean knowing how to love your neighbor when your neighbor is not being all that lovable.

Later, Jim assured me that my ass was not fat. Although, you know, what was he going to say?

Entry the first

Having become a habitual and frequent checker of the two blogs I know of that are related to people I actually know, it is difficult to resist the notion that surely there are people who would be just as inclined to habitually and frequently check what I have to say about my life. Oh, gullible, simple girl. So I launch this blog, hopefully, as so many have been launched before, with the intention of adding entries whether or not something noteworthy happens, and whether or not there are in fact people who desperately want to keep up with the minutiae that my life, like the lives of so many others, churns out like sawdust from the mill. You know, the sawmill.